The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Catholic World, Vol. XIII, April to September, 1871, by Various.

The Hon. Henry Wilson, recently re-elected senator in Congress from Massachusetts, may not be distinguished as an original thinker or as a statesman of commanding ability, but no man is a surer index to his party or a more trustworthy exponent of its sentiments and tendencies, its aims and purposes. This gives to his article in The Atlantic Monthly, indicating the policy to be pursued by the Republican party, a weight it might not otherwise possess.

Mr. Wilson is a strong political partisan, but he is above all a fervent Evangelical, and his aim, we presume, is to bring his political party to coincide with his Evangelical party, and make each strengthen the other. We of course, as a Catholic organ, have nothing to say of questions in issue between different political parties so long as they do not involve the rights and interests of our religion, or leave untouched the fundamental principles and genius of the American system of government, although we may have more or less to say as American citizens; but when either party is so ill-advised as to aim a blow either at the freedom of our religion or at our federative system of government, we hold ourselves free, and in duty bound, to warn our fellow-citizens and our fellow-Catholics of the impending danger, and to do what we can to avert or arrest the blow. We cannot, without incurring grave censure, betray by our silence the cause of our religion or of our country, for fear that by speaking we may cross the purposes of one or another party, and seem to favor the views and policy of another.

Mr. Wilson's New Departure is unquestionably revolutionary, and therefore not lawful for any party in this country to adopt. It is expressed in two words, National Unification and National Education—that is, the consolidation of [2]all the powers of government in the general government, and the social and religious unification of the American people by means of a system of universal and uniform compulsory education, adopted and enforced by the authority of the united or consolidated states, not by the states severally each within its own jurisdiction and for its own people. The first is decidedly revolutionary and destructive of the American system of federative government, or the division of powers between a general government and particular state governments; the second, in the sense proposed, violates the rights of parents and annihilates the religious liberty secured by the constitution and laws both of the several states and of the United States.

The general government, in our American political system, is not the national government, or any more national than the several state governments. The national government with us is divided between a general government having charge of our relations with other powers and internal matters of a general nature and common to all the states, and particular state governments having charge of matters local and particular in their nature, and clothed with all the powers of supreme national governments not expressly delegated to the general government. In the draft of the federal constitution reported by the committee to the convention of 1787, the word national was used, but the convention finally struck it out, and inserted wherever it occurred the word general, as more appropriately designating the character and powers of the government they were creating. It takes under our actual system both the state governments and the general government to make one complete national government, invested with all the powers of government. By making the general government a supreme national government, we make it the source of all authority, subordinate the state governments to it, make them hold from it, and deprive them of all independent or undivided rights. This would completely subvert our system of government, according to which the states hold their powers immediately from the political people, and independently of any suzerain or overlord, and the general government from the states or the people organized as states united in convention. A more complete change of the government or destruction of the federative principle, which constitutes the chief excellence and glory of our system, it would be difficult to propose, or even to conceive, than is set forth in Mr. Wilson's programme.

Mr. Wilson, however, is hardly justified in calling the revolution he proposes a "New Departure." It has been the aim of a powerful party, under one name or another, ever since 1824, if not from the origin of the government itself. This party has been steadily pursuing it, and with increasing numbers and influence, ever since the anti-slavery agitation seriously commenced. At one time, and probably at all times, it has been moved chiefly by certain business interests which it could not advance according to its mind by state legislation, and for which it desired federal legislation and the whole power of a national government, but which it could not get because the constitution and the antagonistic interests created by slave labor were opposed to it. It then turned philanthropist and called in philanthropy to its aid—philanthropy which makes light of constitutions and mocks at state lines, and claims the right to go wherever it conceives the voice of humanity calls it. Under the pretext[3] of philanthropy, the party turned abolitionist, and sought to bring under the action of the general government the question of slavery manifestly reserved to the states severally, and which it belonged to each to settle for itself in its own way. A civil war followed. The slaves were emancipated, and slavery abolished, professedly under the war-power of the Union, as a military necessity, which nobody regrets. But the party did not stop here. Forgetful that the extraordinary war-power ceases with the war, and military necessity can no longer be pleaded, it has, under one pretext or another, such as protecting and providing for the freed-men and reconstructing the states that seceded, continued to exercise it ever since the war was over, and by constitutional amendments of doubtful validity, since ratified in part under military pressure by states not yet reconstructed or held to be duly organized states in the Union, it has sought to legitimate it, and to incorporate it into the constitution as one of the ordinary peace-powers of the government.

The party has sometimes coincided, and sometimes has not strictly coincided, with one or another of the great political parties that have divided the country, but it has always struggled for the consolidation of all the powers of government in the general government. Whether prompted by business interests or by philanthropy, its wishes and purposes have required it to get rid of all co-ordinate and independent bodies that might interfere with, arrest, or limit the power of Congress, or impose any limitation on the action of the general government not imposed by the arbitrary will of the majority of the people, irrespective of their state organization.

What the distinguished senator urges we submit, therefore, is simply the policy of consolidation or centralization which his party has steadily pursued from the first, and which it has already in good part consummated. It has abolished slavery, and unified the labor system of the Union; it has contracted a public debt, whether needlessly or not, large enough to secure to the consolidation of the powers of a national government in the general government the support of capitalists, bankers, railroad corporators, monopolists, speculators, projectors, and the business world generally. Under pretence of philanthropy, and of carrying out the abolition of slavery, and abolishing all civil and political distinctions of race or color, it has usurped for the general government the power to determine the question of suffrage and eligibility, under the constitution and by the genius of our government reserved to the states severally, and sends the military and swarms of federal inspectors into the states to control, or at least to look after, the elections, in supreme contempt of state authority. It has usurped for the general government the power of granting charters of incorporation for private business purposes elsewhere than in the District of Columbia, and induced it to establish national bureaus of agriculture and education, as if it was the only and unlimited government of the country, which it indeed is fast becoming.

The work of consolidation or unification is nearly completed, and there remains little to do except to effect the social and religious unification of the various religions, sects, and races that make up the vast and diversified population of the country; and it is clear from Mr. Wilson's programme that his party contemplate moulding the population of European and of African origin, Indians and Asiatics, Protestants and Catholics, Jews and[4] pagans, into one homogeneous people, after what may be called the New England Evangelical type. Neither his politics nor his philanthropy can tolerate any diversity of ranks, conditions, race, belief, or worship. A complete unification must be effected, and under the patronage and authority of the general government.

Mr. Wilson appears not to have recognized any distinction between unity and union. Union implies plurality or diversity; unity excludes both. Yet he cites, without the least apparent misgiving, the fathers of the republic—Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, Jay, and Madison—who were strenuous for the union of the several states, as authorities in favor of their unity or consolidation in one supreme national government. There were points in which these great men differed among themselves—some of them wished to give more, some of them less, power to the general government—some of them would give more, some of them less, power to the executive, etc., but they all agreed in their efforts to establish the union of the states, and not one of them but would have opposed their unity or consolidation into a single supreme government. Mr. Wilson is equally out in trying, as he does, to make it appear that the strong popular sentiment of the American people, in favor of union, is a sentiment in favor of unity or unification.

But starting with the conception of unity or consolidation, and resolving republicanism into the absolute supremacy of the will of the people, irrespective of state organization, Mr. Wilson can find no stopping-place for his party short of the removal of all constitutional or organic limitations on the irresponsible will of the majority for the time, which he contends should in all things be supreme and unopposed. His republicanism, as he explains it, is therefore incompatible with a well-ordered state, and is either no government at all, but universal anarchy, or the unmitigated despotism of majorities—a despotism more oppressive and crushing to all true freedom and manly independence, than any autocracy that the world has ever seen. The fathers of the republic never understood republicanism in this sense. They studied to restrict the sphere of power, and to guard against the supremacy of mere will, whether of the monarch, the nobility, or the people.

But having reached the conclusion that true republicanism demands unification, and the removal of all restrictions on the popular will, Mr. Wilson relies on the attachment of the American people to the republican idea to carry out and realize his programme, however repugnant it may be to what they really desire and suppose they are supporting. He knows the people well enough to know that they do not usually discriminate with much niceness, and that they are easily caught and led away by a few high-sounding phrases and popular catchwords, uttered with due gravity and assurance—perhaps he does not discriminate very nicely, and is himself deceived by the very phrases and catchwords which deceive them. It is not impossible. At any rate, he persuades himself unification or consolidation can be carried forward and effected by appeals to the republican instincts and tendencies of the American people, and secured by aid of the colored vote and woman suffrage, soon to be adopted as an essential element in the revolutionary movement. The colored people, it is expected, will vote as their preachers direct, and their preachers will direct as they are directed by the[5] Evangelicals. The women who will vote, if woman suffrage is adopted, are evangelicals, philanthropists, or humanitarians, and are sure to follow their instincts and vote for the unification or centralization of power—the more unlimited, the better.

But the chief reliance for the permanence in power of the party of consolidation is universal and uniform compulsory education by the general government, which will, if adopted, complete and preserve the work of unification. Education is the American hobby—regarded, as uneducated or poorly educated people usually regard it, as a sort of panacea for all the ills that flesh is heir to. We ourselves, as Catholics, are as decidedly as any other class of American citizens in favor of universal education, as thorough and extensive as possible—if its quality suits us. We do not, indeed, prize so highly as some of our countrymen appear to do the simple ability to read, write, and cipher; nor do we believe it possible to educate a whole people so that every one, on attaining his majority, will understand the bearing of all political questions or comprehend the complexities of statesmanship, the effects at large of all measures of general or special legislation, the bearing on productive industry and national wealth of this or that financial policy, the respective merits of free trade and protection, or what in a given time or given country will the best secure individual freedom and the public good. This is more than we ourselves can understand, and we believe we are better educated than the average American. We do not believe that the great bulk of the people of any nation can ever be so educated as to understand the essential political, financial, and economical questions of government for themselves, and they will always have to follow blindly their leaders, natural or artificial. Consequently, the education of the leaders is of far greater importance than the education of those who are to be led. All men have equal natural rights, which every civil government should recognize and protect, but equality in other respects, whether sought by levelling downward or by levelling upward, is neither practicable nor desirable. Some men are born to be leaders, and the rest are born to be led. Go where we will in society, in the halls of legislation, the army, the navy, the university, the college, the district school, the family, we find the few lead, the many follow. It is the order of nature, and we cannot alter it if we would. Nothing can be worse than to try to educate all to be leaders. The most pitiable sight is a congressional body in which there is no leader, an army without a general, but all lead, all command—that is, nobody leads or commands. The best ordered and administered state is that in which the few are well educated and lead, and the many are trained to obedience, are willing to be directed, content to follow, and do not aspire to be leaders. In the early days of our republic, when the few were better educated than now and the many not so well, in the ordinary sense of the term, there was more dignity in the legislative, judicial, and executive branches of the government, more wisdom and justice in legislation, and more honesty, fidelity, and capacity in the administration. In extending education and endeavoring to train all to be leaders, we have only extended presumption, pretension, conceit, indocility, and brought incapacity to the surface.

These, we grant, are unpopular truths, but they, nevertheless, are truths, which it is worse than idle to deny. Everybody sees it, feels it,[6] but few have the courage to avow it in face of an intolerant and tyrannical public opinion. For ourselves, we believe the peasantry in old Catholic countries, two centuries ago, were better educated, although for the most part unable to read or write, than are the great body of the American people to-day. They had faith, they had morality, they had a sense of religion, they were instructed in the great principles and essential truths of the Gospel, were trained to be wise unto salvation, and they had the virtues without which wise, stable, and efficient government is impracticable. We hear it said, or rather read in the journals, that the superiority the Prussian troops have shown to the French is due to their superior education. We do not believe a word of it. We have seen no evidence that the French common soldiers are not as well educated and as intelligent as the Prussian. The superiority is due to the fact that the Prussian officers were better educated in their profession, were less overweening in their confidence of victory, and maintained better and severer discipline in their armies, than the French officers. The Northern armies in our recent civil war had no advantage in the superior education of the rank and file over the Southern armies, where both were equally well officered and commanded. The morale of an army is no doubt the great thing, but it does not depend on the ability of the common soldier to read, write, and cipher; it depends somewhat on his previous habits and pursuits—chiefly on the officers. Under the first Napoleon, the Prussians were not superior to the French, though as well educated. Good officers, with an able general at their head, can make an efficient army out of almost any materials.

It is not, therefore, for political or military reasons that we demand universal education, whether by the general government or under the state governments. We demand it, as far as practicable, for other and far higher reasons. We want it for a spiritual or religious end. We want our children to be educated as thoroughly as they can be, but in relation to the great purpose of their existence, so as to be fitted to gain the end for which God creates them. For the great mass of the people, the education needed is not secular education, which simply sharpens the intellect and generates pride and presumption, but moral and religious education, which trains up children in the way they should go, which teaches them to be honest and loyal, modest and unpretending, docile and respectful to their superiors, open and ingenuous, obedient and submissive to rightful authority, parental or conjugal, civil or ecclesiastical; to know and keep the commandments of God and the precepts of the church; and to place the salvation of the soul before all else in life. This sort of education can be given only by the church or under her direction and control; and as there is for us Catholics only one church, there is and can be no proper education for us not given by or under the direction and control of the Catholic Church.

But it is precisely education by the Catholic Church that Mr. Wilson and his party do not want, do not believe in, and wish to prevent us from having even for our own children. It is therefore they demand a system of universal and uniform compulsory education by the authority and under the direction of the general government, which shall effect and maintain the national unification proposed, by compelling all the children of the land to be trained in national schools, under Evangelical control[7] and management. The end and aim of the New Departure, aside from certain business interests, is to suppress Catholic education, gradually extinguish Catholicity in the country, and to form one homogeneous American people after the New England Evangelical type. Of this there can be no reasonable doubt. The Evangelicals and their humanitarian allies, as all their organs show, are seriously alarmed at the growth of Catholicity in the United States. They supposed, at first, that the church could never take root in our Protestant soil, that she could not breathe the atmosphere of freedom and enlightenment, or thrive in a land of newspapers and free schools. They have been disappointed, and now see that they reckoned without their host, and that, if they really mean to prevent the American people from gradually becoming Catholic, they must change fundamentally the American form of government, suppress the freedom of religion hitherto enjoyed by Catholics, and take the training of all children and youth into their own hands. If they leave education to the wishes and judgment of parents, Catholic parents will bring up their children Catholics; if they leave it to the states separately, Catholics in several of them are already a powerful minority, daily increasing in strength and numbers, and will soon be strong enough to force the state legislatures to give them their proportion of the public schools supported at the public expense.

All this is clear enough. What, then, is to be done? Mr. Wilson, who is not remarkable for his reticence, tells us, if not with perfect frankness, yet frankly enough for all practical purposes. It is to follow out the tendency which has been so strengthened of late, and absorb the states in the Union, take away the independence of the state governments, and assume the control of education for the general government, already rendered practically the supreme national government;—then, by appealing to the popular sentiment in favor of education, and saying nothing of its quality, get Congress, which the Evangelicals, through the party in power, already control, to establish a system of compulsory education in national schools—and the work is done; for these schools will necessarily fall into Evangelical hands.

Such is what the distinguished Evangelical senator from Massachusetts calls a "New Departure," but which is really only carrying out a policy long since entered upon, and already more than half accomplished. While we are writing, Mr. Hoar, a representative in Congress from Massachusetts, has introduced into the House of Representatives a bill establishing a system of national education under the authority of the general government. Its fate is not yet known, but no doubt will be, before we go to press. The probabilities are that it will pass both Houses, and if it does, it will receive the signature of the President as a matter of course. The Evangelicals—under which name we include Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Dutch Reformed, Baptists, and Methodists, etc.—all the denominations united in the Evangelical Alliance—constitute, with their political and philanthropic allies, the majority in Congress, and the measure is advocated apparently by the whole Evangelical press and by the larger and more influential republican journals of the country, as any number of excerpts from them now before us will satisfy any one who has the curiosity to read them. We did think of selecting and publishing the more striking and authoritative among them, but we have concluded[8] to hold them in reserve, to be produced in case any one should be rash enough to question our general statement. There is a strong popular feeling in many parts of the country in favor of the measure, which is a pet measure also of the Evangelical ministers generally, who are sure to exert their powerful influence in its support, and we see no reason to doubt that the bill will pass.

But while we see ample cause for all citizens who are loyal to the system of government which Providence enabled our fathers to establish, and who wish to preserve it and the liberties it secures, to be vigilant and active, we see none for alarm. The bill, if it passes, will be manifestly unconstitutional, even counting the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments as valid parts of the constitution; and there may be more difficulty in carrying it into effect than its framers anticipate. It is part and parcel of a New England policy, and New England is not omnipotent throughout the Union, nor very ardently loved; not all the members of the several evangelical denominations will, when they understand it, favor the revolution in the government Mr. Wilson would effect. There are in those denominations many men who belong not to the dominant party, and who will follow their political rather than their denominational affinities; also, there are in them a large number, we should hope, of honest men, who are not accustomed to act on the maxim, "the end justifies the means," loyal men and patriotic, who consider it no less disloyalty to seek to revolutionize our government against the states than against the Union, and who will give their votes and all their influence to preserve the fundamental principles and genius of our federative system of government, as left us by our fathers, and resist, if need be, to the death the disloyal policy of unification and education proposed by Mr. Wilson.

The Southern states are reconstructed and back now in their place in the Union, and will not be much longer represented by Northern adventurers, or men of little ability and less character, but very soon by genuine Southern men, who, while strictly loyal to the Union, will speak the genuine sentiments of the Southern people. The attempt to New-Englandize the Southern people has not succeeded, and will not succeed. When to the Southern people, who will never acquiesce in the policy of unification, we add the large number of people in the Northern states who from their political convictions and affinities, as well as from their conservative tendencies, will oppose consolidation, we may feel pretty sure that the policy Mr. Wilson presents as that of the Republican party will not be adopted, or if adopted will not be permitted to stand. As not wholly inexperienced in political matters, and looking at the present state of parties and temper of the nation, we should say that Mr. Wilson, as a party man, has committed a blunder, and that, if he has fancied that his New Departure is fitted to strengthen his party as a political party, and to give it a new lease of power, he has miscalculated. Nothing in our judgment would be more fatal to the continuance of his party in power than for it boldly and unequivocally to accept Mr. Wilson's programme. There is such a thing as reaction in human affairs, and reactions are sometimes very powerful.

The educational question ought not to present any serious difficulty, and would not if our Evangelicals and humanitarians did not wish to make education a means of preventing the growth of the church and[9] unmaking the children of Catholics, as Catholics; or if they seriously and in good faith would accept the religious equality before the state which the constitution and laws, both of the Union and the several states, as yet recognize and protect. No matter what we claim for the Catholic Church in the theological order—we claim for her in the civil order in this country only equality with the sects, and for Catholics only equal rights with citizens who are not Catholics. We demand the freedom of conscience and the liberty of our church, which is our conscience, enjoyed by Evangelicals. This much the country in its constitution and laws has promised us, and this much it cannot deny us without breaking its faith pledged before the world.

As American citizens, we object to the assumption of the control of education, or of any action in regard to it, by the general government; for it has no constitutional right to meddle with it, and so far as civil government has any authority in relation to it, it is, under our system of government, the authority of the states severally, not of the states united. We deny, of course, as Catholics, the right of the civil government to educate, for education is a function of the spiritual society, as much so as preaching and the administration of the sacraments; but we do not deny to the state the right to establish and maintain public schools. The state, if it chooses, may even endow religion, or pay the ministers of religion a salary for their support; but its endowments of religion, when made, are made to God, are sacred, and under the sole control and management of the spiritual authority, and the state has no further function in regard to them but to protect the spirituality in the free and full possession and enjoyment of them. If it chooses to pay the ministers of religion a salary, as has been done in France and Spain, though accepted by the Catholic clergy only as a small indemnification for the goods of the church seized by revolutionary governments and appropriated to secular uses, it acquires thereby no rights over them or liberty to supervise their discharge of their spiritual functions. We do not deny the same or an equal right in regard to schools and school-teachers. It may found and endow schools and pay the teachers, but it cannot dictate or interfere with the education or discipline of the school. That would imply a union of church and state, or, rather, the subjection of the spiritual order to the secular, which the Catholic Church and the American system of government both alike repudiate.

It is said, however, that the state needs education for its own protection, and to promote the public good or the good of the community, both of which are legitimate ends of its institution. What the state needs in relation to its legitimate ends, or the ends for which it is instituted, it has the right to ordain and control. This is the argument by which all public education by the state is defended. But it involves an assumption which is not admissible. The state, having no religious or spiritual function, can give only secular education, and secular education is not enough for the state's own protection or its promotion of the public good. Purely secular education, or education divorced from religion, endangers the safety of the state and the peace and security of the community, instead of protecting and insuring them. It is not in the power of the state to give the education it needs for its own sake, or for the sake of secular society. The fact is, though statesmen, and[10] especially politicians, are slow to learn it, and still slower to acknowledge it, the state, or secular society, does not and cannot suffice for itself, and is unable to discharge its own proper functions without the co-operation and aid of the spiritual society. Purely secular education creates no civic virtues, and instead of fitting unfits the people for the prompt and faithful discharge of their civic duties, as we may see in Young America, and indeed in the present active and ruling generation of the American people. Young America is impatient of restraint, regards father and mother as old-fogies, narrow-minded, behind the age, and disdains filial submission or obedience to them, has no respect for dignities, acknowledges no superior, mocks at law if he can escape the police, is conceited, proud, self-sufficient, indocile, heedless of the rights and interests of others—will be his own master, and follow his own instincts, passions, or headstrong will. Are these the characteristics of a people fitted to maintain a wise, well-ordered, stable, and beneficent republican government? Or can such a people be developed from such youngerlings? Yet with purely secular education, however far you carry it, experience proves that you can get nothing better.

The church herself, even if she had full control of the education of all the children in the land, with ample funds at her command, could not secure anything better, if, as the state, she educated for a secular end alone. The virtues needed for the protection of the state and the advancement of the public or common good, are and can be secured only by educating or training the children and youth of a nation not for this life as an end, but for the life to come. Hence our Lord says, "Seek first the kingdom of God and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you." The church does not educate for the secular order as an end, but for God and heaven; and it is precisely in educating for God and heaven that she secures those very virtues on which the welfare and security of the secular order depend, and without which civil society tends inevitably to dissolution, and is sustained, if sustained at all, only by armed force, as we have seen in more than one European nation which has taken education into its own hand, and subordinated it to secular ends. The education needed by secular society can be obtained only from the spiritual society, which educates not for this world, but for the world to come. The virtues needed to secure this life are obtained only by seeking and promoting the virtues which fit us for eternal life.

This follows necessarily from the fact that man is created with a spiritual nature and for an immortal destiny. If he existed for this life only, if he were, as some sciolists pretend, merely a monkey or a gorilla developed, or were like the beasts that perish, this indeed would not and could not follow, and the reconciliation of the nature and destiny of man with uniform human experience would be impossible. We should be obliged, in order to secure the peace and good order of society, as some unbelieving statesmen do not blush to avow, to educate in view of a falsehood, and take care to keep up the delusion that man has a religious nature and destiny, or look to what is false and delusive for the virtues which can alone save us from anarchy and utter barbarism. Yet what would serve the delusion or the falsehood, if man differs not by nature from the dog or the pig? But if man has really a spiritual nature and an immortal destiny, then it must necessarily[11] follow that his real good can in no respect be obtained but in being educated and trained to live for a spiritual life, for an immortal destiny. Should not man be educated according to his spiritual nature and destiny, not as a pig or a monkey? If so, in his education should not the secular be subordinated to the spiritual, and the temporal to the eternal? We know well, experience proves it, that even the secular virtues are not secured when sought as the end of education and of life, but only in educating and living for that which is not secular, and in securing the virtues which have the promise of the life of the world to come.

All education, as all life, should be religious, and all education divorced from religion is an evil, not a good, and is sure in the long run to be ruinous to the secular order; but as a part of religious education, and included in it, secular education has its place, and even its necessity. Man is not all soul, nor all body, but the union of soul and body; and therefore his education should include in their union, not separation—for the separation of soul and body is the death of the body—both spiritual education and secular. It is not that we oppose secular education when given in the religious education, and therefore referred to the ultimate end of man, but when it is given alone and for its own sake. We deny the competency of the state to educate even for its own order, its right to establish purely secular schools, from which all religion is excluded, as Mr. Webster ably contended in his argument in the Girard will case; but we do not deny, we assert rather, its right to establish public schools under the internal control and management of the spiritual society, and to exact that a certain amount of secular instruction be given along with the religious education that society gives. This last right it has in consideration of the secular funds for the support of the schools it furnishes, and as a condition on which it furnishes them.

Let the state say distinctly how much secular education in the public schools it exacts, or judges to be necessary for its own ends, and so far as the Catholic Church has anything to do with the matter it can have it. The church will not refuse to give it in the schools under her control. She will not hesitate to teach along with her religion any amount of reading, writing, arithmetic, history, geography, music, and drawing, or the sciences and the fine arts, the state exacts and provides for; nor will she refuse to allow it to send, if it chooses, its own inspectors into her schools to ascertain if she actually gives the secular education required. Let it say, then, what amount of secular education it wants for all the children of the land, and is willing to pay for, and, so far as Catholics are concerned, it can have it, and of as good quality, to say the least, as it can get in purely secular schools, and along with it the religious education, the most essential to it as well as to the souls of all.

But the difficulty here, it is assumed, is that the spiritual society with us is divided into various denominations, each with its distinctive views of religion. That, no doubt, is a damage, but can be easily overcome by bearing in mind that the several divisions have equal rights, and by making the public schools denominational, as they are in Prussia, Austria, France, and to a certain extent in England, where denominational diversities obtain as well as with us. Where the community is divided between different religious denominations, all standing on a[12] footing of perfect equality before civil society, this is the only equitable system of public schools that is practicable. If the state does not adopt it, it must—1, let the whole business of education alone, and make no public provision for it; 2, establish purely secular, that is, godless schools, from which all religion is excluded, to which no religious people can be expected to consent, and which would ruin both public and private virtue, and defeat the very purpose of all education; or, 3, it must practically, if not theoretically, recognize some one of the several denominations as the state religion, and remit the education of childhood and youth to its management and control, as is virtually the case with our present public schools, but which would be manifestly unjust to all the others—to non-evangelicals, if evangelicalism is made the state religion, or to the Evangelicals, if a non-evangelical denomination be established as the religion of the state. The only way to be just to all is, as everybody can see, to recognize in practice as well as in profession the equal rights of all denominations in the civil order—make the public schools denominational, and give to each denomination that asks it for the sake of conscience its fair and honest proportion, to be as to their internal economy, education, and discipline under its sole control and management.

Mr. Wilson proposes for our admiration and imitation the Prussian system of public schools, and though we do not know that it is superior to the Austrian or even the French system, yet we think highly of it. But, what the Evangelical senator does not tell us, the Prussian system is strictly the denominational system, and each denomination is free and expected to educate in its own schools its own children, under the direction of its pastors and teachers, in its own religion. The Prussian system recognizes the fact that different communions do exist among the Prussian people, and does not aim to suppress them or at unification by state authority. It meets the fact as it is, without seeking to alter it. Give us the Prussian system of denominational schools, and we shall be satisfied, even if education is made compulsory. We, of course, protest against any law compelling us to send our children to schools in which our religion cannot be freely taught, in which no religion is taught, or in which is taught in any shape or degree a religion which we hold to be false or perilous to souls. Such a law would violate the rights of parents and the freedom of conscience; but with denominational schools compulsory education would violate no one's conscience and no parental right. Parents ought, if able, to have their children educated, and if they will not send their children to schools provided for them by the public, and in which their religion is respected, and made the basis of the education given, we can see no valid reason why the law should not compel them. The state has the right, perhaps the duty, in aid of the spiritual society and for its own safety and the public good, to compel parents to educate their children when public schools of their own religion, under the charge of their own pastors, are provided for them at the public expense. Let the public schools be denominational, give us our proportion of them, so that no violence will be done to parental rights or to the Catholic conscience, and we shall be quite willing to have education made compulsory, and even if such schools are made national, though we should object as American citizens to them, we should as Catholics accept them. We hold state authority[13] is the only constitutional authority under our system to establish schools and provide for them at the public expense; but we could manage to get along with national denominational schools as well as others could. We could educate in our share of the public schools our own children in our own way, and that is all we ask. We do not ask to educate the children of others, unless with the consent or at the request of parents and guardians.

The Prussian system of denominational schools could be introduced and established in all the states without the least difficulty, if it were not for Evangelicals, their Unitarian offshoots, and their humanitarian allies. These are religious and philanthropic busybodies, who fancy they are the Atlas who upholds the world, and that they are deputed to take charge of everybody's affairs, and put them to rights. But they forget that their neighbors have rights as well as themselves, and perhaps intentions as honest and enlightened, and as much real wisdom and practical sagacity. The only obstacle to the introduction and establishment of a just and equitable system of public schools comes from the intolerant zeal of these Evangelicals, who seek to make the public schools an instrument for securing the national, social, and religious unification they are resolved on effecting, and for carrying out their purpose of suppressing the church and extirpating Catholicity from American soil. They want to use them in training our children up in the way of Evangelicalism, and moulding the whole American population into one homogeneous people, modelled, as we have said, after the New England Evangelical type. Here is the difficulty, and the whole difficulty. The denominational system would defeat their darling hope, their pet project, and require them to live and let live. They talk much about freedom of conscience and religious liberty and equal rights; but the only equal rights they understand are all on their side, and they cherish such a tender regard for religious liberty, have so profound a respect for it, that they insist, like our Puritan forefathers, on keeping it all to themselves, and not to suffer it to be profaned or abused by being extended to others.

Prussia, though a Protestant country, does not dream of making the public schools a machine either for proselytism or unification. She is contented to recognize Catholics as an integral part of her population, and to leave them to profess and practise their own religion according to the law of their church. Our Evangelicals would do well to imitate her example. We Catholics are here, and here we intend to remain. We have as much right to be here as Evangelicals have. We are too many to be massacred or exiled, and too important and influential a portion of the American people to be of no account in the settlement of public affairs. We have votes, and they will count on whichever side we cast them; and we cannot reasonably be expected to cast them on the side of any party that is seeking to use its power as a political party to suppress our church and our religion, or even to destroy our federative system of government, and to leave all minorities at the mercy of the irresponsible majority for the time, with no other limit to its power than it sees proper to impose on itself; for we love liberty, and our church teaches us to be loyal to the constitution of our country.

The wisest course, since there are different religious denominations in the country, is to accept the situation, to recognize the fact, acquiesce in it,[14] and make the best of it. Any attempt to unmake, by the direct or indirect authority of the state, Catholics of their faith or any denomination of its belief, is sure to fail. Each denomination is free to use Scripture and reason, logic and tradition, all moral and intellectual weapons, against its rivals, and with that it should be contented. Whatever may be the rightful claims of the church in the theological order, she is contented with the civil protection of her equal rights in the political order. She asks—with the wealth, the fashion, the public opinion, the press, nine-tenths of the population of the country, and the seductions of the world against her—only "an open field and fair play." If she does not complain, her enemies ought to be satisfied with the advantages they have.

We have entered our protest against a party programme which threatens alike the genius of the American government and the freedom of religion, for so much was obviously our duty, both as Catholics and citizens. We are aware of the odds against us, but we have confidence in our countrymen that, though they may be momentarily deceived or misled, they will, when the real character of the programme we have exposed is once laid open to them, reject it with scorn and indignation, and hasten to do us justice.

THE CROSS.

THE HOUSE OF YORKE.

CHAPTER I.
GENEALOGIES.

Under a thickly-branched tree in the northern part of one of the southern counties of Maine is a certain gray rock, matted over with dim green lichens that are spotted with dead gold. From under this rock springs a sparkling little stream. It is no storied fountain, rich with legends of splendor, poetry, and crime, but a dear, bright little Yankee brook, with the world all before it. That world it immediately proceeds to investigate. It creeps through thready grasses and russet pine-needles; it turns aside, with great respect, for a stone no larger than a rabbit; and when a glistening pitchy cone drops into it, the infant river labors under the burden. When the thirsty fawn comes there to drink, nearly the whole rivulet flows down its throat, and the cone is stranded high and dry; what there is left flows southward. A sunbeam pierces the scented gloom, creeps down a tree-trunk, steals over a knoll of green-and-brown tree-moss, which then looks like a tiny forest on fire, over yellow violets, which dissolve in its light, over a bank of rich dark mould veined with the golden powder of decayed pine-trees, moist and soft, and full of glistening white roots, where the flowers push down their pearly feet. Over the bank, into the water, goes the sunbeam, and the two frolic together, and the stream dives under the gnarled roots, so that its playmate would believe it lost but for that gurgle of laughter down in the cool, fresh dark. Then it leaps up, and spreads itself out in a mirror, and the elder-tree, leaning over to look at the reflection of its fan-like leaves and clusters of white flowers, gets very erroneous ideas concerning its own personal appearance; for the palpitating rings that chase each other over the surface of the water make the brown stems crinkle, the leaves come to pieces and unite again, and the many flowers in each round cluster melt all together, then twinkle out individually, only to melt again into that bloomy full moon. Over this shimmer of flowers and water big bees fly, buzzing terribly, dragon-flies dart, or hang, purple-mailed, glittering creatures, with gauzy wings, and comical insects dance there, throwing spots of sunshine instead of shadow down to the leafy bed. Then the brook flows awhile in a green tranquil shadow, till, reaching the interlaced roots of two immense trees that hold a bank between them, it makes a sudden, foamy plunge the height of a stag's front. She is a bride then, you may say—she is Undine, looking through that white veil, and thinking new thoughts.

Now the bear comes down to drink and look at his ugly face in the deepening wave, foxes switch their long tails about the banks, deer come, as light-footed as shadows, drink, and fling up their short tails, with a flit of white, and trot away with a little sniff, and their heads thrown back, hearing the howl or the long stride of the wolf in pursuit. Rabbits come there, and squirrels leap and nibble in the branches above. Besides, there are shoals of pretty, slim fishes.

So through the mellow gloom and[16] sunny sparkle of the old forest, the clear brook wanders, growing wiser, and talking to itself about many things.

Presently the wild creatures withdraw, sunburnt children wade across from bank to bank, grassy clearings abound, there are farm-houses, and cows with tinkling bells; and then comes a bridge, and boats dance upon the water, and the stream is a river! Alas for the Indian name it brought up out of the earth with it, and lisped and gurgled and laughed to itself all the way down—the name spiked with k's and choky-looking gh's, rough to the eye, but sweet in the mouth, like a hazel-nut in the burr. The white settlers have changed all that.

Now, indeed, the young river puts on state, and lets people see that it is not to be waded through; and when they build a dam across, it flows grandly over, in a smooth, wine-colored curve. Times are changed, indeed, since the little gray birds with speckled breasts looked with admiration at its first cascade, since the bear, setting down his great paw, clumsily splashed the whole stream up over his shaggy leg. There are farms to keep up appearances before, mill-wheels to turn, and ships to bear up. Pine-cones, indeed! Besides, a new and strange experience has come to it, and its bosom pulses daily with the swelling of the tides. And here one village street, with white houses, follows its course a mile or so, and another street with white houses comes down to its bank from the west, crosses over, and goes up eastward. This town, with its two principal streets forming a cross near the mouth of the river, a white cross at the end of a silver chain—shall we call it Seaton? It is a good enough name. And the river shall be Seaton River, and the bay into which it flows shall be Seaton Bay. But the ocean that makes the bay, and drinks the river, shall be Atlantic still.

We follow the road that follows the stream on its eastern bank, cross West Street, get into a poor, dwindling neighborhood, leave the houses nearly all behind, go over two small, ill-conditioned hills, and find at our right a ship-yard with wharves, at our left a dingy little cottage, shaped like a travelling-trunk, and not much larger than some. It stands with its side toward the dusty road, a large, low chimney rises from the roof, there is a door with a window at each side of it. One can see at a glance from the outside how this house is divided. It has but two rooms below, with a tiny square entry between, and a low attic above. Each room has three windows, one on each of the three outer walls.

The kitchen looked toward the village through its north window. Opposite that was a large fireplace with an ill-tempered, crackling fire of spruce-wood, throwing out sparks and splinters. It was April weather, and not very warm yet. In the chimney-corner sat Mr. Rowan, sulkily smoking his pipe, his eyes fixed on the chimney-back. He was a large, slouching man, with an intelligent face brutalized by intemperance. Drunkard was written all over him, in the scorched black hair, not yet turning gray, in the dry lips, bloated features, and inflamed eyes. He sat in his shirt-sleeves, waiting impatiently while his wife put a patch in his one coat. Mrs. Rowan, a poor, faded, little frightened woman, whom her female acquaintances called "slack," sat near the south window, wrinkling her brows anxiously over the said patch, which was smaller than the hole it was destined to fill. The afternoon[17] sunshine spread a golden carpet close to her feet. In the light of it one could see the splinters in the much-scoured floor, and a few fraggles in the hem of Mrs. Rowan's calico gown.

At the eastern window sat Edith Yorke, eleven years of age, with a large book on her knees. Over this book, some illustrated work on natural history, she had been bending for an hour, her loose mop of tawny hair falling each side of the page. So cloistered, her profile was invisible; but, standing in front of her, one could see an oval face with regular features full of calm earnestness. Bright, arched lips, and a spirited curve in the nostrils, saved this face from the cold look which regular features often give. The large, drooping eyelids promised large eyes, the forehead was wide and not high, the brows long, slightly arched, and pale-brown in color, and the whole face, neck, hands, and wrists were tanned to a light quadroon tint. But where the coarse sleeve had slipped up was visible an arm of dazzling whiteness. Outside the window, and but two rods distant, hung a crumbling clay bank, higher than the house, with a group of frightened alder-bushes looking over the top, and holding on with all their roots. Some day, in spite of their grip—the sooner, perhaps, because of its stress—the last frail hold was to be loosed, and the bushes were to come sliding down the bank, faster and faster, to pitch headlong into the mire at the bottom, with a weak crackling of all their poor doomed branches.

Presently the child looked up, with lights coming and going in her agate-colored eyes. "How wonderful frogs are!" she exclaimed involuntarily.

She glanced at her two companions, scarcely conscious of them, her mind full of something else. "But everything is wonderful, when you come to think of it," she pursued dreamily.

Mr. Rowan took the pipe from his mouth, turned his forbidding face, and glowered at the girl. "You're a wonderful fool!" he growled; then resumed his pipe, feeling better, apparently, for that expression of opinion. His wife glanced up, furtive and frightened, but said nothing.

Edith looked at the man unmoved, saw him an instant, then, still looking, saw him not. After a while she became aware, roused herself, and bent again over the book. Then there was silence, broken only by the snapping of the fire, the snip of Mrs. Rowan's scissors, and the lame, one-sided ticking of an old-fashioned clock on the mantelpiece.

After a while, as the child read, a new thought struck up. "That's just like! Don't you think"—addressing the company—"Major Cleaveland said yesterday that I had lightning-bugs in my eyes!"

Without removing his pipe, Mr. Rowan darted an angry look at his wife, whose face became still more frightened. "Dear me!" she said feebly, "that child is an idjut!"

This time the long, fading gaze dwelt on the woman before it went back to the book again. But the child was too closely ensphered in her own life to be much, if at all, hurt. Besides, she was none of theirs, nor of their kind. Her soul was no dying spark struggling through ashes, but a fire, "alive, and alive like to be," as children say when they wave the fire-brand, winding live ribbons in the air; and no drop of their blood flowed in her veins.

The clock limped over ten minutes more, and the patch was got into its place, after a fashion, botched somewhat, with the knots on the outside.[18] Mr. Rowan took the coat, grumbled at it, put it on, and went out, glancing back at the child as he opened the door. She was looking after him with an expression which he interpreted to mean aversion and contempt. Perhaps he mistook. May be she was wondering at him, what sort of strange being he was. Edith Yorke was very curious regarding the world she had got into. It seemed to her a queer place, and that she had at present not much concern in it.

Her husband out of the way, Mrs. Rowan took her knitting-work, and stood a moment at the north window, gazing up toward the town, with a far-away look of blunted expectancy, as if she had got in the habit of looking for help which never came. Then she drew a long sigh, that also a habit, and, resuming her chair, began to knit and to rock herself, letting her mind, what there was left of it, swing to and fro, unmeaningly and miserably, to the sound of the clock as it ticked. "O dear! O dear!"—that was what the ticking always said to this poor soul. As she sat, the afternoon sun, sinking lower, crept about her feet, climbed to her lap, got hold of her knitting, and ran in little bright flashes along the needles, and snapped off in sparks at the ends, so that she seemed to be knitting sunshine.

This woman was what remained at forty of a pretty, flaxen-haired girl of eighteen, who had captivated handsome Dick Rowan, for he had been handsome. A faded rag of a woman she was, without hope or spirit, all the color and life washed out of her in a bitter rain of tears. The pink cheeks had faded, and only the ghost remained of that dimple that had once seemed to give meaning to her smiles. The curly hair was dry and thin, and had an air of chronic untidiness. The blue-gray eyes were dim and heavy, the teeth were nearly all gone. The pretty, chirping ways that had been captivating when youth covered their silliness—oh! where had they gone? She was a weak, broken-hearted, shiftless little woman, and her husband hated her. He felt wronged and cheated by her. He was more disappointed than Ixion, for in this cloud there had never even been a goddess. If she had sometimes turned upon him, when he acted like a brute, and scorned him for it, he would have liked her better; but she shrank, and cowered, and trembled, made him feel himself ten times the brute she dared not call him, yet gave him nothing to resent. "Gentle, is she?" he cried out once in a rage. "She is not! She is weak and slavish. A person cannot be gentle who cannot be something else."

So the poor woman suffered, and got neither pity nor credit from the one who caused her suffering. It was hard; and yet, she was nobler in her misery than she would have been in happiness. For sorrow gave her now and then a touch of dignity; and when, stung with a sudden perception of her own nothingness, she flung her desperate hands upward, and called upon God to deliver her, a certain tragical power and beauty seemed to wrap her round. Mrs. Rowan happy would have been a trivial woman, meaning no great harm, because meaning no great anything; but the fiery furnace of pain had scorched her up, and what remained was pure.

When the two were alone, Edith dropped her book, and looked across the room at her companion. Mrs. Rowan, busy with her own sad thoughts, took no notice of her, and presently the child glanced past her, and out the window. The view was[19] not bad. First came the dusty road, then the ship-yard, then the river sparkling, but rather the worse for sawdust and lath-edgings that came down from the lumber-mills above the village. But here all that was sordid came to an end. The meanness and misery on the hitherward bank were like witches, who cannot cross running water. From the opposite bank rose a long, grassy hill, unmarred by road or fence. In summer-time you could see from far away the pinkness of the wild-roses that had seen fit to bind with a blooming cestus the dented waist of this hill. Behind them was a green spray of locust and laburnum trees, then dense round tops of maples, and elms in graceful groups, half-hiding the roofs and gables of Major Cleaveland's house—the great house of the village, as its owner was the great man. Behind that was a narrow rim of pines and spruces, making the profile of an enchanted city against the horizon, and above that a vast hollow of unobstructed sky. In that space the sunsets used to build their jasper walls, and calm airs stretch long lines of vapor across, till the whole west was a stringed instrument whereon a full symphony of colors played good-night to the sun. There the west wind blew up bubbles of wry cloud, and the new moon put forth her gleaming sickle to gather in the sheaf of days, a never-failing harvest, through storm and sunshine, hoar-frost and dew. There the pearly piles of cumuli used to slumber on summer afternoons, lightnings growing in their bosoms to flash forth at evening; and there, when a long storm ended with the day, rose the solid arch of cerulean blue. When it had reached a certain height, Edith Yorke would run into the south room, and look out to see the rainbow suspend its miraculous arch over the retreating storm. This little girl, to whom everything was so wonderful when she came to think of it, was a dear lover of beauty.

"O dear! O dear!" ticked the clock; and the barred sunshine turned slowly on the floor, as if the ugly little house were the hub of a huge, leisurely wheel of gold.

Edith dropped her book, and went to Mrs. Rowan's side, taking a stool with her, and sitting down in the midst of the sunshine.

"I'm afraid I shall forget my story, Mrs. Jane, unless I say it over again," she said. "And, you know, mamma told me never to forget."

Mrs. Rowan roused herself, glad of anything which could take her mind from her own troubles. "Well, tell it all over to me now," she said. "I haven't heard it this long time."

The stitches were counted and evened, half of them taken off on to a thread, and the other half, with the seam-stitch in the middle, knit backward once. Then Edith began to repeat the story confided to her by her dead mother.

"My grandpapa and grandmamma were Polish exiles. They had to leave Poland when Aunt Marie was only a year old, and before mamma was born. They couldn't take their property with them, but only jewels, and plate, and pictures. They went to Brussels, and there my mamma was born, and the queen was her godmother, and sent the christening-robe. Mamma kept the robe till she grew up; but when she was in America, and was poor, and wanted to go to a party, she cut it up to make the waist and sleeves of a dress. Poverty is[20] no disgrace, mamma said, but it is a great inconvenience. By-and-by, they left Brussels, and went to England. Grandpapa wanted some way to get money to live on, for they had sold nearly all their pictures and things. They stayed in England not very long. Countess Poniatowski called on grandmamma, and she had on a black velvet bonnet with red roses in it; so I suppose it was winter. Then one day grandpapa took mamma out to walk in a park; so I suppose that was summer. There were some gentlemen in the park that they talked to, and one of them, a gentleman with a hook nose, who was sitting down on a bench, took mamma on his knees, and started to kiss her. But mamma slapped his face. She said he had no right to kiss people who didn't want him to, not even if he were a king. His name was the Duke of Wellington. Then they all came to America, and people here were very polite to them, because they were Polish exiles, and of noble birth. But they couldn't eat nor drink nor wear politeness, mamma said, and so they grew poorer and poorer every day, and didn't know what they would do. Once they travelled with Henry Clay two weeks, and had quite a nice time, and they went to Ashland and stayed all night. When they went away the next day, Mr. Clay gave mamma and Aunt Marie the little mugs they had had to drink out of. But they didn't care much about 'em, and they broke 'em pretty soon. Mamma said she didn't know then that Mr. Clay was a great man. She thought that just a mister couldn't be great. She had always seen lords and counts, and grandpapa was a colonel in the army—Colonel Lubomirski his name was. But she said that in this country a man might be great, even if he wasn't anything but a mister, and that my papa was as great as a prince. Well, then they came to Boston, and Aunt Marie died, and they buried her, and mamma was almost nine years old. People used to pet and notice her, and everybody talked about her hair. It was thick and black, and it curled down to her waist. One day Doctor Somebody, I can never recollect his name, took her out walking on the Common, and they went into Mr. John Quincy Adams's house. And Mr. Adams took one of mamma's curls, and held it out, and said it was long enough and large enough to hang the Czar with. And she said that they might have it all if they'd hang him with it. And then poor grandpapa had to go to Washington, and teach dancing and fencing, because that was all he could do. And pretty soon grandmamma broke her heart and died. And then after a little while grandpapa died. And, after that, mamma had to go out sewing to support herself, and she went to Boston, and sewed in Mr. Yorke's family. And Mr. Yorke's youngest brother fell in love with her, and she fell in love with him, and they married each other in spite of everybody. So the family were awfully angry. My papa had been engaged ever since he was a little boy to Miss Alice Mills, and they had put off getting married because she was rich, and he hadn't anything, and was looking round to see how he should get a fortune. And the Millses all turned against him, and the Yorkes all turned against him, and he and mamma went off, and wandered about, and came down to Maine; and papa died. Then mamma had to sew again to support herself, and we were awfully poor. I remember that we lived in the same house with you; but it was a better house than this, and was up in the village. Then mamma's heart broke, and she died too. But I don't[21] mean to break my heart, Mrs. Jane. It's a poor thing to do."

"Well," resumed the child, "then you kept me. It was four years ago when my mamma died, but I remember it all. She made me promise not to forget who my mother was, and promise, with both my hands held up, that I would be a Catholic, if I had to die for it. So I held up both my hands, and promised, and she looked at me, and then shut her eyes. It that all right?"

"Yes, dear!" Mrs. Rowan had dropped her knitting as the story went on, and was gazing dreamily out the window, recalling to mind her brief acquaintance with the fair young exile.

"Dick and I grew to be great friends," Edith continued rather timidly. "He used to take care of me, and fight for me. Poor Dick! He was mad nearly all the time, because his father drank rum, and because people twitted him, and looked down upon him."

"And Dick gave his father an awful talking-to, one day," Edith went on, still more timidly. "That was two years ago. He stood up and poured out words. His eyes were so flashing that they dazzled, and his cheeks were red, and he clinched his hands. He looked most splendid. When I go back to Poland, he shall be a general in the army. He will look just as he did then, if the Czar should come near us. Well, after that day he went off to sea, and he has not been back since."

Tears were running down the mother's cheeks as she thought of her son, the only child left her of three.

Edith leaned and clasped both her hands around Mrs. Rowan's arm, and laid her cheek to them. "But he is coming back rich, he said he would; and what Dick said he'd do he always did. He is going to take us away from here, and get a pretty house, and come and live with us."

A hysterical, half-laughing sob broke through the listener's quiet weeping. "He always did keep his word, Edith!" she cried. "Dick was a gallant lad. And I trust that the Lord will bring him back to me."

"Oh! he'll come back," said Edith confidently, and with a slight air of haughtiness. "He'll come back himself."

All the Christianity the child had seen had been such as to make the name of the Lord excite in her heart a feeling of antagonism. It is hard to believe that God means love when man means hate; and this child and her protectors had seen but little of the sunny side of humanity. Christians held aloof from the drunkard and his family, or approached them only to exhort or denounce. That they had any kinship with that miserable man, that in his circumstances they might have been what he was, never seemed to occur to them as possible. Dick fought with the boys who mocked his father, therefore he was a bad boy. Mrs. Rowan flamed up, and defended her husband, when the Rev. Dr. Martin denounced him, therefore she was almost as bad as he. So shallow are most judgments, arraigning effects without weighing causes.

Nor did Edith fare better at their hands. She was to them a sort of vagabond. Who believed the story of her mother's romantic misfortunes? She was some foreign adventuress, most likely. Mr. Charles Yorke, whom they respected, had married a native of Seaton, and had two or three times honored that town with a short visit. They knew that he had cast[22] off his own brother for marrying this child's mother. Therefore she had no claim on their respect.

Moreover, some of the ladies for whom young Mrs. Yorke had done sewing had not the pleasantest of recollections connected with her. A poor person has no right to be proud and high-spirited, and the widowed exile was a very fiery woman. She would not sit at table with their servants, she would not be delighted when they patronized her, and she would not be grateful for the scanty wages they gave her. She had even dared to break out upon Mrs. Cleaveland when that lady had sweetly requested her to enter her house by the side door, when she came to sew. "In Poland a person like you would scarcely have been allowed to tie my mother's shoes!" she cried. The lady answered suavely, "But we are not in Poland, madam;" but she never forgave the insolence—still less because her husband laughed at it, and rather liked Mrs. Yorke's spirit.

These were the ladies whom Edith had heard talk of religion; so she lifted her head, dropped her eyelids, and said defiantly, "Dick will come home himself!"

"Not unless the Lord lets him come," said the mother. "Oh! no good will come to us except by him. 'Unless the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it: unless the Lord keep the city, he watcheth in vain that keepeth it.'"

"I will thank him!" the woman cried out in a passion. "I will trust him! He is all the hope I have!"

"Well, well, you may!" Edith said soothingly. "Don't let's talk about it any more. Give me the scissors, and I'll cut the fraggles off the hem of your gown. Suppose Dick should come home all of a sudden, and find us looking so! I hope he will let us know, don't you? so that we can put our best clothes on."

The best clothes in question were a black bombazine gown and shawl, and an old-fashioned crape bonnet and veil, all sewed up and hidden away under Edith's bed in the little dark attic, lest Mr. Rowan, in one of his drunken frenzies, should destroy them. These articles were the mourning which Mrs. Rowan had worn seven years before, when her last daughter died. With them was another bag, belonging to Edith, equally precious to its owner, but from other reasons. There was a scarlet merino cape, lined with silk of the same color, both a little faded, and a faded crape scarf that had once been gorgeous with red and gold. In the innermost fold of this scarf, wrapped in tissue-paper, and tucked inside an old kid glove of remarkable smallness, were two locks of hair—one a short, thick wave of yellow-brown, the other a long, serpentine tress of ebony blackness.

While they talked, the door of the room opened, and Mr. Rowan looked in. "Aren't we going to have any supper to-night?" he demanded.

Edith fixed a look on him that made him shrink out, and bang the door behind him. His wife started up, glanced at the clock, and went about her work.

"No, dear. There isn't much to do, and I'd rather do it." Mrs. Rowan's voice had a sepulchral sound, her head being deep in the fireplace, where she was putting one hook into another on the crane, to let the tea-kettle down. She emerged with a smooch of soot on her hair and forehead, and began flying round bringing[23] a table into the middle of the floor, putting up the leaves, spreading the cloth, taking down the dishes, all with trembling haste. "If you want to knit a few times across the heel of that stocking, you may. But be careful not to knit too tightly, as you almost always do. You can begin to narrow when it's two of your forefingers long."

Edith took the knitting, and went to her favorite chair in the back window. The room had grown smoky in consequence of Mrs. Rowan's piling of soft wood on to the fire, and hurrying about past the fireplace, so she pushed up the window, and fastened it with a wooden button fixed there for the purpose. Then she began to knit and think, and, forgetting Mrs. Rowan's directions, pulled the yarn so tightly over her fingers that she worked a hard, stiff strip across the heel, into which the looser knitting puckered. The child was too much absorbed to be aware of her mistake, and it did not matter; for that stocking was never to be finished.

While she dreamed there, a deeper shadow than that of the clay bank fell over her. She looked up with a start, and saw Mr. Rowan standing outside the window. He had placed himself so as to avoid being seen by any one in the room, and was just turning his eyes away from her when she caught sight of him.

"What makes you stare at me the way you sometimes do?" he asked angrily, but in a low voice, that his wife might not hear. "Why don't you say right out what you think?"

"You think that I am a wretch!" he exclaimed. "You think I am a drunkard! You think I abuse my wife!"

He paused a moment, then went on fiercely. "If there is anything I hate, it is to have people look at me that way, and say nothing. If you scold a man, it looks as if you thought there was something in him that could tell black from white; and if you are impudent, you put yourself a little in the wrong, and that helps him. He isn't so much ashamed of himself. But when you just look, and say nothing, you shut him out. It is as much as to tell him that words would be thrown away on him."

"But," Edith objected, much at a loss, "if I answered you back, or said what I thought, there would be a quarrel right off."

"Did I fight when Dick gave me such a hauling-over before he went away?" the man questioned in a rough tone that did not hide how his voice broke, and his blood-shot eyes filled up with tears. "Didn't I hang my head, and take it like a dog? He said I had acted like a brute, but he didn't say I was one, and he didn't say but I could be a man yet, if I should try. Wasn't I sober for three months after he went away? Yes; and I would have kept sober right on if I had had some one to thorn and threaten me. But she gave up, and did nothing but whimper, and it maddened me. When I ordered her to mix my rum for me, she did it. I should have liked her better if she had thrown it, tumbler and all, into my face."

"You'd better not find fault with her," said Edith. "She's a great deal better than you are."

The child had a gentle, sincere way of saying audacious things sometimes that made one wonder if she knew how audacious they were.

The man stared at her a moment; then, looking away, answered without any appearance of anger, "I suppose she is; but I don't think much of that kind of goodness when there's a hard job to be done. You can't lift rocks with straws. I'm sorry for her; but, for all that, she aggravates me, poor thing!"

He leaned back against the house, with his hands in his pockets, and stared at the clay bank before him. Edith looked at him, but said nothing. Presently he turned so suddenly that she started. "Girl," he said, "never do you ridicule a man who has been drinking, no matter what he does! You may hate him, or be afraid of him, but never laugh at him! You might as well look down into hell and laugh! Do you know what it is to be in the power of rum? It is to have serpents twining round you, and binding you hand and foot. I've gone through the streets up there with devils on my back, pushing me down; wild beasts tearing my vitals; reptiles crawling round me; the earth rising up and quaking under my feet, and a horror in my soul that no words can describe, and the men and women and children have laughed at me. Perhaps they were such shallow fools that they didn't know; but I tell you, and you know now. Don't you ever dare to laugh at a drunkard!"

"I never will!" Edith cried out, in an agony of terror and pity. "O you poor man! I didn't know it was so awful. O you poor man!"

Mr. Rowan had stopped, gasping for breath, and, with his patched sleeve, wiped off the perspiration that was streaming down his face. Edith tore off her little calico apron with such haste as to break the strings. "Here, take this!" she said, reaching it out to him.

He took it with a shaking hand, and wiped his face again; wiped his eyes again and again, breathing heavily.

"Couldn't you be saved?" she asked, in a whisper. "Isn't there any way for you to get out of it?"

"Don't say that!" the child entreated. "It is wicked; and perhaps you will die if you say it."

The drunkard raised his trembling hands, and looked upward. "I wish to God that I were dead!" he repeated.

Edith shrank back into the room. She was too much terrified to listen to any more. But after a moment he called her name, and she leaned out again. His face was calmer, and his voice more quiet. "Don't tell her what I have been talking about," he said, nodding toward the room. "I would sooner tear my tongue out by the roots than say anything to her."

"Supper's ready," Mrs. Rowan announced, coming towards the window. She had heard her husband's voice in conversation with Edith, and wondered greatly what was going on.

Mr. Rowan turned away, with a look of irritation, at sound of her timid voice, walked round the house, and came sulkily in to his supper.

Their meals had always been comfortless and silent; but now Edith tried to talk, at first with Mrs. Rowan; but when she saw that the woman's tremulous replies, as if she did not dare to speak in her husband's presence, were bringing an uglier frown to this face, and that he was changing from sullen to savage, she addressed her remarks and questions to him. Mr. Rowan was a surveyor, and a good one, when he was sober, and he was a man of some general information and reading.[25] When he could be got to talk, one was surprised to find in him the ruins of a gentleman. Now his answers were surly enough, but they were intelligent, and the child, no longer looking at him from the outside, questioned him fearlessly, and kept up a sort of conversation till they rose from table.

It was Mr. Rowan's custom to go out immediately after supper, and not come home till late in the evening, when he would stagger in, sometimes stupid, sometimes furious with liquor. But to-night he lingered about when he had left the table, lighted his pipe, kicked the fire, wound up the clock, and cursed it for stopping, and finally, as if ashamed of the proposal even while making it, said to Edith, "Come, get the checker-board, and see if you can beat me."

She was quick-witted enough, or sensitive enough, not to show any surprise, but quietly brought out the board, and arranged the chairs and stand. It was a square of board, rough at the edges, planed on one side, and marked off in checks with red chalk. The men were bits of tanned leather, one side white, the other side black. She placed them, smiled, and said, "Now, I'm ready!"

Mrs. Rowan's cheeks began to redden up with excitement as she went about clearing the table, and washing the dishes, but she said nothing. She had even tact enough to go away into the bedroom, when her work was done, and leave the two to play out their game unwatched. There she sat in the falling dusk, her hands clasped on her knees, listening to every sound, expecting every moment to hear her husband go out. The three curtains in the room were rolled up to the very tops of the windows, and, in their places, three pictures seemed to hang on the smoky walls, and illumine the place. One was a high clay bank, its raw front ruddy with evening light, its top crowned with a bush burning like that of Horeb. The second was a hill covered with spruce-trees, nothing else, from the little cone, not a foot high, to the towering spire that pierced the sky. Some faint rose-reflections yet warmed their sombre shadows, and each sharp top was silvered with the coming moonlight. The third window showed a deserted ship-yard, with the skeleton of a bark standing on the stocks. The shining river beyond seemed to flow through its ribs, and all about it the ground was covered with bright yellow chips and shavings. Above it, in the tender green of the southwestern sky, a cloud-bark freighted with crimson light sailed off southward, losing its treasure as it went. These strong, rich lights, meeting and crossing in the room, showed clearly the woman's nervous face full of suspense, the very attitude, too, showing suspense, as she only half-sat on the side of the bed, ready to start up at a sound. After a while she got up softly, and went to the fireplace to listen. All was still in the other room, but she heard distinctly the crackling of the fire. What had come over him? What did it mean?

Presently there was a slight movement, and Edith's voice spoke out brightly: "Oh! I've got another king. Now I have a chance!"

The listener trembled with doubt and fear. Her husband was actually sitting at home, and playing checkers with Edith, instead of going out to get drunk! He could not mean to go, or he would have gone at once. She longed to go and assure herself, to sit down in the room with him, but could scarcely find courage to do so. She held her breath as she went toward the door, and her hand faltered on the latch. But at last she summoned resolution, and went out.

The lamp was lighted, the checker-board placed on the table beside it, and the two were talking over the slackening game. Edith had a good head for a child of her age, but her opponent was an excellent player, and she could not interest him long. She was trying every lure to keep him, though, and made a new tack as Mrs. Rowan came in, relating an experience of her own, instead of questioning him concerning his. "I want to tell you something I saw last night in my chamber," she said.

Edith's chamber was the little dark attic, which was reached by a steep stairway at one side of the fireplace.

"I was in bed, wide awake, and it was pitch dark. You know you put the cover over the skylight when it rained, the other day, and it has not been taken off. Well, instead of shutting my eyes, I kept them wide open, and looked straight into the dark. I've heard that you can see spirits so, and so I thought I might see my mamma. Pretty soon there was a great hole in the dark, like a whirlpool, and after a minute there was a little light down at the bottom of it. I kept on looking, just as if I were looking down into a deep well, and then there came colors in clouds, sailing about, just like clouds in the sky. Some were red, others pink, others blue, and all colors. Sometimes there would be a pattern of colors, just like figures in a carpet, only they were blocks, not flowers. I didn't dream it. I saw it as plainly as I see the fire this minute. What do you suppose it was, Mr. Rowan?"

He had listened with interest, and did not appear to find anything surprising in the recital.

"I don't know much about optics," he answered; "but I suppose there is a scientific reason for this, whether it is known or not. I've seen those colors—that is, I did when I was a child; and De Quincey, in his Opium Confessions, tells the same story. I don't believe that grown people are likely to see them, for the reason that they shut their eyes, and their minds are more occupied. You have to stare a good while into the dark, and wait what comes, and not think much of anything."

Mr. Rowan leaned back in his chair, with his hands clasped behind his head, and considered the matter a moment, some finer intelligence than often showed there kindling behind his bloated face.

"I should guess it might be this," he said. "Though the place appears at first to be dark, there are really some particles of light there. And since there are too few of them to keep up a connection in their perfect state, they divide into their colors, and make the clouds you saw. I don't know why particles of light should not separate, when they have a great deal to do, and not much to do it with. Air does."

Mr. Rowan gave a short, silent laugh. He knew that the child was only questioning in order to keep him. "No reason why not," he said. "According to Sir Humphry Davy, and some other folks, I believe, heat isn't caloric, but repulsive motion. It isn't matter, but it moves, goes where nothing else can, passes through stone and iron, and can't be stopped, and can't be seen. Now, a something that is not matter, and yet is powerful enough to overcome matter, must be spirit. Heat is the soul of light; and if heat is spirit, light is alive. Voilà tout!"

He had forgotten himself a moment in the pleasure of puzzling his questioner; but catching his wife looking at him with an expression of astonishment, he came back to the present. The smile died out of his face, and the frown came back.

He made a slight motion of dissent, but it was not decided; so she brought out the pack of soiled cards, and laid them before him. There was a moment of hesitation, during which the heart of the wife throbbed tumultuously, and the nerves of the child tingled with an excitement that seemed to snap in sparks from her eyes. Then he took the cards, shuffled them, and began to play. Mrs. Rowan opened a book, and, holding it upside down, so as to hide her face, cried quietly behind the page. Her husband saw that she was crying, cast a savage glance at her, and seemed about to fling the cards down; but Edith made some remark on the game, leaned toward him, and laid her head lightly on his arm. It was the first time in all their acquaintance that she had voluntarily touched him. At the same time she reached her foot, and pushed Mrs. Rowan's under the table. Mrs. Rowan dropped her book, turned her face away quickly, and said, with an effort of self-control rare for her: "Why, it's nine o'clock! I'll go to bed, I think; I'm tired."

Nobody answering, or objecting, she went away, and left her husband still over his cards.

She got up slowly, unwilling to go, yet not daring to stay. Oh! if she were but wise enough to know the best thing that could be said—something which would strengthen his resolution, and keep him in. It was not yet too late for him to go out; for, when every safe and pitiful door is closed, and slumber seals all merciful eyes, the beacon of the grog-shop shines on through the night, and tells that the way to perdition still is open, and the eyes of the rum-seller yet on the watch.

"How glad I shall be when Dick comes home!" she said. "Then I hope we can all go away from here, and wipe out, and begin over."

She could not have said better, but, if she had known, she could have done better. What he needed was not an appeal to his sentiments, but physical help. Words make but little impression on a man while the torments of a burning, infernal thirst are gnawing at his vitals. The drunkard's body, already singed by the near flames of the bottomless pit, needed attending to at once; his soul was crushed and helpless under the ruins of it. If an older, wiser head and hand had been there, started up the failing fire, and made some strong, bitter draught for him to drink, it might have done good. But the child did not know, and the sole help she could give was an appeal to his heart.

It is as true of the finest and loftiest natures, as of the perverted, that they cannot always conquer the evil one by spiritual means alone. Only spirits can do that. And often the tempter must laugh to see the physical needs, which were made to play about our feet like children, unnoticed when the soul speaks, starved till they become demons whose clamorous voices drown the spirit's fainting cries.

But this man's demon was indulgence, and not denial. He was not hovering on the brink of ruin, he was at the bottom, and striving to rise, and he could not endure that any eye should look upon his struggles.

Edith started back, and, without another word, climbed the narrow stair to her attic. Before closing the trap-door, she looked down once, and saw Mr. Rowan tearing and twisting the cards he had been playing with.

He stayed there the whole night, fighting desperately with such weapons as he had—a will broken at the hilt, the memory of his son, and the thought of that dear little girl's tender but ineffectual pity. As for God, he no longer named him, save in imprecation. The faith of his orphaned childhood had gone long ago. The glare of the world had scorched it up before it had fairly taken root. That there might be help and comfort in the church of his fathers never entered his mind. "Drink! drink!" that was his sole thought. "If I only had some opium!" he muttered, "or a cup of strong black coffee! I wonder if I could get either of 'em anywhere?"

The day was faintly dawning when he staggered to the window, tore down the paper curtain, and looked out for some sign of life. At the wharf opposite lay a vessel that had come up the evening before, and he knew by the smoke that the cook was getting breakfast there.

"I'll go over and see if I can get some coffee or opium," he muttered, and pulled his hat on as he went out the door.

"I'll ask for nothing but coffee or opium," he protested to himself, as he shut the door softly after him.

CHAPTER II.
WIPING OUT, AND BEGINNING ANEW.

The next morning was a gloomy one for the two who had nursed that trembling hope overnight, but they did not say much about it. Mrs. Rowan's face showed the lassitude of long endurance. Edith's disappointment was poignant. She was no longer a looker-on merely, but an actor. The man had confided in her, had tacitly asked her sympathy, and his failure gave her a pang. She cast about in her thoughts what she should do, having a mind to put her own young shoulder to the wheel. Should she go in search of him, and give him one of those scoldings which he had acknowledged his need of? Should she lead him home, and protect him from abuse?

"Hadn't I better go up to the post-office?" she asked, after breakfast. "I haven't been there this good while, and there might be a letter from Dick."

Mrs. Rowan hesitated: "Well, yes." She disliked being left alone, and she had no expectation of a letter. But it seemed like slighting her son to make any other reply to such a request. Besides, the village boys might be hooting her husband through the streets, and, if they were, she would like to know it. So Edith prepared herself, and went out.

The ship-yard was full of business at this hour, and two men were at work close to the road, shaving a piece of timber. Edith looked at them, and hesitated. "I've a good mind to," she thought. She had never gone into the ship-yard when the men were there, and had never asked any one a question concerning Mr. Rowan. But now all was[29] changed, and she felt responsible. "Have you seen Mr. Rowan anywhere, this morning?" she asked, going up to the man nearest her.

He drew the shave slowly to him, slipped off a long curl of amber-colored wood from the blade, then looked up to see who spoke. "Mr. Rowan!" he repeated, as if he had never heard the name before. "Oh! Dick, you mean. No, I haven't seen him, this morning. He may be lying round behind the timbers somewhere."

The child's eyes sparkled. Child though she was, she knew that the drunkard was more worthy of the title of gentleman than this man was, for he was rude and harsh only when he suffered.

"Little girl," the other called out as she turned away, "your father is over there on board of the Annie Laurie. I saw him lying there half an hour ago, and I guess he hasn't stirred since."

The two burst into a rude laugh, which effectually checked the thanks she would have given for their information. She turned hastily away, and went up the road to the village.

Mrs. Rowan finished her work, and sat down in the west window to watch. She was too anxious and discouraged to knit, even, and so did not discover the tight little strip of work around the stocking-heel. It was employment enough to look out for Edith; not that she expected a letter, but because she wanted company. She was conscious of some strength in the child, on which she leaned at times. As for Dick, she had little hope of good news from him, if any. She had no part in Edith's rose-colored expectations. Dick in peril from storm, foe, or sin; Dick dying untended in foreign lands; Dick sinking down in cold, salt seas—these were the mother's fancies.

After half an hour, a small figure appeared over the hills between the house and the village. Mrs. Rowan watched it absently, and with a slight sense of relief. But soon she noticed that the child was running. It was not like Edith to run. She was noticeably quiet, and even dignified in her manners. Could she have seen or heard anything of Mr. Rowan at the village? The heart of the wife began to flutter feebly. Was he lying in the street? or engaged in a drunken quarrel? She leaned back in her chair, feeling sick, and tried to gather strength for whatever might come to her.

Edith was near the house, now running a few steps, then walking, to gather breath, and she held her arm above her head, and swung it, and in her hand was a letter!

Away went all thought of her husband. In two minutes Mrs. Rowan had the letter in her hand, had torn it open, and she and Edith were both bending over it, and reading it together. It had been lying in the post-office a week. It came from New York, and in a week from the date of it Dick would be at home! He was on board the ship Halcyon, Captain Cary, and they were to come down to Seaton, and load with lumber as soon as their East Indian freight should be disposed of. He had met Captain Cary in Calcutta, Dick wrote, and, having done him a service there, had been taken on board his ship, and now was second mate. Next voyage he would sail as first mate. The captain was his friend, would do anything for him, and owned half the ship, Major Cleaveland owning the other half; so Dick's fortune was made. But, he added, they must get out of that town. He had a month to spare, and should[30] take them all away. Let them be ready to start on short notice.

Having read this joyful letter through once, they began at the first word and read it all through again, dwelling here and there with exclamations of delight, stopped every minute by a large tear that splashed down from Mrs. Rowan's eyes, or a yellow avalanche of Edith's troublesome hair tumbling down as she bent eagerly over the letter. How many times they read that letter would be hard to say; still harder to say how many times they might have read it, had there been no interruption.

A crowd of men were approaching their door—close upon them, and darkening the light before they looked up. "Had Dick come, and were the neighbors welcoming him?" was the first thought.

In her haste, Edith had left the outer door ajar, and now heavy feet came tramping in without any leave being asked; the inner door was pushed open, and—not Dick, but Dick's father was brought in and laid on the floor. This was not the first time he had been brought home, but never before had he come with such a retinue and in such silence, and never before had these men taken off their hats to Mrs. Rowan.

"We've sent for the doctor, ma'am," one of them said; "but I guess it's no use."

"I wouldn't have ordered him off, if I hadn't thought he was steady enough to go," said another, who looked very pale. "The captain was expected on board every minute, and it would be as much as my life is worth if he found a man drunk there."

Their talk was, to the bewildered woman, like sounds heard in a dream. So were Edith's passionate words as she ordered the men away. The one who had refused the dead man any better title than "Dick" was just coming in at the door, staring right and left, not too pitiful even then to be curious regarding the place he was in. "Go out!" she said, pushing the door in his face.

Some way, still in a dream, they were got rid of, all but two. Then the doctor came, and looked, and nodded his decision—"All over!"

The bedroom was set in order, the silent sleeper laid out there, every stranger sent out of the house and locked out, and then Mrs. Rowan woke up. It was a terrible awakening.

Madame Swetchine comments upon the fact that the thought of death is more terrible in an arid existence than in the extremes of joy and sorrow. It is true not only of those who die, but of the survivors. We go out more willingly on a difficult journey when we have been warmed and fed; we send our loved ones out with less pain when they have been thus fortified. It is the same, in a greater degree, when the journey is that one from which the traveller never returns. It adds a terrible pang to bereavement when we think that our lost one has never been happy; how much more terrible if he has never been honored!

Of her husband's future Mrs. Rowan refused to think or to hear, though she must have trembled in the shadow of it. It might be that which made her so wild. She would allow no one to come near or speak to her save Edith. Those who came with offers of help and sympathy she ordered away. "Go!" she cried. "I want nothing of you! I and mine have been a byword to you for years. Your help comes too late!"

She locked them out and pulled[31] the curtains close, and, though people continued to come to the door through the whole day, no one gained admittance or saw a sign of life about the house. Inside sat the widow and the child, scarcely aware of the passage of time. They only knew that it was still day by the rays of sunlight that came in through holes in the paper curtains, and pointed across the rooms like long fingers. When there was a knock at the door, they started, lifted their faces, and listened nervously till the knocking ceased, as if afraid that some one might force an entrance. One would have fancied, from their expression, that savages or wild beasts were seeking to enter. They never once looked out, nor knew who came.

Still less were they aware of Major Cleaveland standing in his cupola, spy-glass in hand, looking down the bay to see if that cloud of canvas coming up over the horizon was the good ship Halcyon coming home after her first voyage. Down-stairs he came again, three stairs at a jump, as joyful as a boy, in spite of his forty years, gave directions for the best dinner that the town would afford, ordered his carriage, and drove off down the river-road.

The Halcyon was the largest vessel that had ever been built at Seaton, and as its launching had been an event in the town, so its first arrival was an incident to take note of. When Major Cleaveland drove down to the wharf where Mr. Rowan had that morning lost his life, more than a hundred persons were assembled there waiting for the ship, and others were coming. He stepped over to the Rowans' door, and knocked twice, once with his knuckles, and again with his whip-handle, but received no answer. "I would force the door, but that Dick is coming," he said. "It is a shame to let the poor soul shut herself up alone."

Soon, while the crowd watched, around the near curve of the river, where a wooded point pushed out, appeared the tip, then the whole of a bowsprit garlanded with green wreaths, then the leaning lady in her gilded robes, with a bird just escaping from her hand, then the ship rode gracefully into sight on the incoming tide.

A ringing shout welcomed her, and a shout from all hands on board answered back.

Foremost of the little group on the deck stood a man of gigantic stature. His hair was coarse and black, he wore an enormous black beard, and his face, though scarcely middle-aged, was rough and scarred by the weather. Everybody knew Captain Cary, a sailor worthy of the old days of the Vikings, broad-shouldered, as strong as a lion, with a laugh that made the glasses ring when he sat at table. He was a plain, simple man, but grand in his simplicity. By his side stood a youth of twenty, who looked slight in comparison, though he was really manly and well grown. He had sea-blue eyes, quick, long-lashed, and as bright as diamonds; his face was finely moulded, ruddy, and spirited; his hair, that glistened in the sunlight, was chestnut-brown. A gallant lad he was, the very ideal sailor-boy. But his expression was defiant, rather than placid, and he did not join in the hurrahs. The welcoming applause was not for him, he well knew. They were no friends of his who crowded the wharf. He had some bitter recollections of slight or injury connected with nearly every one of them. But he was no longer in their power, and that gave him freedom and ease in meeting them. The time had gone by when he could look upon these country folks as final judges in any matter whatever, or as of any great consequence to him.[32] He had seen the world, had won friends, had proved that he could do something, that he was somebody. He was not ashamed of himself by any means, was young Dick Rowan. Still, it was no pleasure to him to see them, for it brought back the memory of sufferings which had not yet lost their sting.

All this shouting and rejoicing was as the idle wind to the mourners across the way. Their fears of intrusion set at rest, since no one had attempted to force an entrance to the house, they no longer took notice even of the knocking at the door. Both had fallen into a sort of stupor, induced by the exhaustion of long weeping, the silence and semi-darkness of their rooms, and the removal of what had been the daily tormenting fear of their lives. There was no longer any need to tremble when a step approached, lest some one should come in frenzied with drink, and terrify them with his ravings and violence. Mrs. Rowan sat by her husband's side, leaning back in her chair, with closed eyes and clasped hands, only half-alive. Edith lay on the kitchen-floor, where she had thrown herself in a passion of weeping, her arms above her head, her face hidden, and her long hair veiling her. The weeping was over, and she lay silent and motionless. Neither that shouting over on the wharf, nor Major Cleaveland's loud knocking with his whip-handle, had made the slightest impression on her.

But at sunset came one who would not be denied. He tried the lock, and, finding it fastened, knocked gently. There was no answer. He knocked loudly, and still there was no reply. Then he set his knee against the rickety panel, took the knob in a strong grasp, and wrenched the door open. Stepping quickly into the little entry, he looked to right and left, saw the girl lying, face down, on the floor, and the woman sitting beside her dead, both as still as the dead.

Something like a dream came into the half-swoon, half-sleep in which Edith Yorke lay. She heard a slight cry, then a stifled sob, and words hurriedly spoken in a low voice. Then there was a step that paused near her. She put her hair back with one hand, and turned her face listlessly. The curtain had been raised to let in the light, and there stood a young man looking down at her. His face was pale with the sudden shock of grief and distress, but a faint indication of a smile shone through as she looked up at him.

Her first glance was a blank one, her second flashed with delight. She sprang up as if electrified. "O Dick! O Dick! How glad I am!"

The world moved rightly at last! Order was coming out of chaos; for Dick had come home!

He shook hands with her rather awkwardly, somewhat embarrassed by the warmth of her welcome. "We're to go right off," he said. "Captain Cary will help us."

"Yes, Dick!" she replied, and asked no questions. He knew what was right. With him had come all help, and strength, and hope.

The next morning, long before dawn, they started. A boat was ready at the wharf, and Captain Cary and Dick carried out the dead in a rude coffin that had been privately made on board the Halcyon. "They shall not stare at our poor funeral, captain," Dick had said; "and I will not ask them for a coffin or a grave."

"All right!" his friend had answered heartily. "I'm your man. Whatever you want to do, I'll help you about."

So the watch on the Halcyon was conveniently deaf and blind, the boat[33] was ready in the dark of morning, the coffin carried out to it, and Mrs. Rowan and Edith helped in after. When they were in their places, and the captain seated, oars in hand, Dick went back to the house, and stayed there a little while. No questions were asked of him when he came away, bringing nothing with him, and he offered no explanation, only took the oars, and silently guided their boat out into the channel. The banks on either side were a solid blackness, and the sky was opaque and low, so that their forms were scarcely visible to each other as they sat there, Mrs. Rowan in the bows near her son, Edith beside Captain Cary, who loomed above her like a mountain of help.

Presently, as they floated around the point that stood between the village and the bay, a faint blush of light warmed the darkness through, and grew till the low-hung clouds sucked it up like a sponge and showed a crimson drapery over their heads. It was too early for morning light, too fierce, and, moreover, it came from the wrong direction. The east was before them; this sanguinary aurora followed in their wake. It shone angrily through the strip of woods, and sent a long, swift beam quivering over the water. This fiery messenger shot like an arrow into the boat, and reddened Mrs. Rowan's hands, clasped on the edge of the coffin. By the light of it, Dick saw all their faces turned toward him.

The captain nodded approval, and Edith leaned forward to whisper, "Yes, Dick!" But Mrs. Rowan said not a word, only sat looking steadily backward, the light in her face.

"I'm glad of it!" sighed Edith to herself. She had been thinking since they left the house how people would come and wander through it, and peer at everything, and know just how wretchedly they had lived. Now they could not, for it would all be burnt up. She sat and fancied the fire catching here and there in their poor little rooms, how the clock would tick till the last minute, even when its face was scorched and its glass shivered, and then fall with a sudden crash; how the flames would catch at the bed on which the dead man had lain, the mean paper curtains, the chair she had sat in, Mrs. Rowan's little rocking-chair, at the table where they had sat through so many dreary meals. The checker-board would go, and the cards with which Mr. Rowan had played the night before, and the knitting-work with the puckered heel, and her apron that the drunkard had wiped his ghastly face with. The shelves in the little closet would heat, and blacken, and redden, and flame, and down would come their miserable store of dishes, rattling into the yawning cellar. Fire would gnaw at the ceiling, bite its way into the attic, burn up her books, creep to the bed where she had lain and seen rainbow colors in the dark, spread a sheet of flame over the whole, rise, and burst through the roof. She saw it all. She even fancied that each long-used article of their scanty plenishing, worn away by human touch, constantly in the sight of human eyes, would perish with some human feeling, and send out a sharp cry after them. The crackling of flames was to her the cries of burning wood. But she was glad of it, for they were going to wipe out and begin anew. There seemed to her something very grand and exceedingly proper in it all.

When their boat glided from the river into the bay, others besides themselves[34] became aware of the conflagration, and the village bells rang out a tardy alarm. Dick laughed bitterly at the sound, but said nothing.

"They were sorry for you, Dick," the captain said. "I heard a good many speak of it. They would have been glad to do your family any kindness. I don't blame you for coming off; but you mustn't think there was no kind feeling for you among the folks there."

"Kindness may come too late, captain," the young man answered. "I would have thanked them for it years ago, when I had nowhere to turn to, and hadn't a friend in the world; now I don't thank them, and I don't want their kindness. Even if I would take it at last, neither they nor you have any right to expect that I will run to take the hand that has struck me so many blows the first time it is held out. I don't trust 'em. I want proofs of good-will when I've had proofs of ill-will."

"Dick is right, captain," his mother interposed in a weary tone. "You can't judge of such things if you haven't felt them. It's easier to hurt a sore heart than a sound one."

Within an hour they reached one of those desolate little sandy islands with which the bay was studded; and now the faint spring dawn was breaking, and the heavy masses of cloud lifting and contracting, pale reaches of sky visible between. By the cold glimmer they scooped out a grave, and placed the coffin in it. The water washed the shore, and a chilly, sighing wind came up from the east.

As the first shovelful of earth fell on the coffin, Mrs. Rowan caught back the captain's arm. "Don't cover him out of sight without some word spoken over him!" she implored. "He was once young, and ambitious, and kind, like you. He would have been a man if he hadn't had bad luck, and then got into bad company. He was more wretched than we were. O sir! don't cover him out of sight as if he were a dog."

The sailor looked both pained and embarrassed. "I'm not much used to praying, ma'am," he said. "I'm a Methodist, but I'm not a church-member. If there was a Bible here, I would read a chapter; but—there isn't."

Dick walked off a little way, turned his back, and stood looking at the water. Mrs. Rowan, kneeling on the sand-heap beside the grave, wept loudly. "His father was a Catholic," she cried. "I don't think much of Catholics; but, if poor Dick had stood by his religion, he could have had a priest to say some word over him. I wouldn't have minded having a priest here. He'd be better than nobody."

Captain Cary was a strict Methodist, and he felt that it would never answer to have the absence of a Catholic priest regretted. Something must be done. "I could sing a hymn, ma'am," he said hesitatingly; and, as no one objected, he straightened himself, dropped his spade, and sang, to the tune of the "Dead March in Saul,"

In a confined place the sailor's voice would have been too powerful, and, perhaps, would have sounded rough; but in open air, with no wall nearer than the distant hills, no ceiling but the sky, and with the complex low harmony of the ocean bearing it up and running through all its pauses, it was magnificent. He sang slowly and solemnly, his arms folded,[35] his face devoutly raised, and the clouds seemed to part before his voice.

When the hymn was ended, he remained a moment without motion or change of face, then stooped for his shovel, and began to fill in the grave.

While listening to him, Edith Yorke had stood in a solemn trance, looking far off seaward; but at sound of the dropping gravel, her quiet broke up, like ice in spring. She threw her arm, and her loose hair with it, up over her head, and sobbed behind that veil. But her tears were not for Mr. Rowan. Her soul had taken a wider range, and, without herself being aware of it, she was mourning for all the dead that ever had died or ever should die.

The first sunbeam that glanced across the water showed a feather of smoke from a steamer that came up through the Narrows into the bay, and the row-boat, a lessening speck, making for the wharf. Twice a week, passengers and freight were taken and left at this wharf, three miles below the town.

SAUNTERING.

"They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean," says Thoreau. I found the Holy Land in Paris, the city of fashion and gaiety, and where le suprême bonheur is said to be amusement. Every church is a station of the divine Passion, and to every votary therein could I say:

Before these churches, consecrated to some sweet mystery of the Gospel or bearing the hallowed names of those who had put on the sacred stole of Christ's sufferings, I always stopped. I was like Duke Richard, in the Roman du Rau:

And one might well kneel upon the threshold stone of these ancient churches, feeding mind and soul with sacred legends of the past embodying holy truths which are depicted on the outer walls, as at the north door of Notre Dame de Paris, the arch of which contains in many compartments representations of a diabolic pact and of a deliverance effected by our potent Lady, which is related in a metrical romance composed by Ruteboef, in the time of St. Louis. Saladin, a magician, wears a cap of pyramidal form. And what a mine of legendary and biblical lore all over these venerable walls! Sermons in stones come down to us from the stonen saints in their niches and the bas-reliefs which speak louder than human tongues. The first stone of this edifice was laid by Charlemagne, and the last by Philip Augustus. How much this fact alone tells! And there is the Porte Rouge, an[36] exquisite specimen of the Gothic style of the fifteenth century, the expiatory monument of Jean-sans-Peur after the assassination of the Duke of Orleans. In the arch are the Duke and Duchess of Burgundy, in the attitude of supplication, one on each side of our Saviour and the Blessed Virgin. It is an eternal Libera me de sanguinibus, Deus.

And then the Portail du Milieu, with the last judgment in the ogive, the angels sounding the last trump, the dead issuing forth from their graves, the separation of the righteous from the wicked, the great Judge with the emblems of the crucifixion, the Virgin and the loved apostle John, and, finally, a glimpse of the joys of heaven and the horrors of hell. Yes, one could linger here for days before this Biblia pauperum, were there no more powerful attractions within. And this is not the only church the very exterior of which is full of instruction.

In the porch of St. Germain de l'Auxerrois is the statue of a maiden holding in one hand a breviary and in the other a lighted taper. By her is a demon with a pair of bellows, vainly trying to blow out the light—symbol of faith and prayer. This is the statue of one who deserves to be ranked in history with Joan of Arc on account of her heroism, for twice she saved Paris by her courage and her prayers. Would that she might once more have intervened to save the capital of fair France from the invader! St. Genevieve is placed thus at the entrance of the church of St. Germain to remind us of his connection with her history.

When St. Germain, Bishop of Auxerre, and St. Lupus, the learned Bishop of Troyes and the intimate friend of Sidonius Apollinaris, were on their way to Britain to combat the heresy of Pelagianism, they passed through the village now called Nanterre, about two leagues from Paris. All the inhabitants of the place poured forth to meet them and obtain their benediction. St. Germain noticed in the crowd a little girl with a face as radiant as an angel's. His prophetic instinct told him she was destined to be a chosen vessel of God's grace, and, when she expressed a wish to be the spouse of Christ, he led her with him to the church, holding his apostolic hands upon her head during the chanting of the vesper service. He afterward suspended a bronze medal, on which was a cross, from her neck, in remembrance of her consecration to God, bidding her henceforth give up all ornaments of silver and gold. "Let them who live for this world have these," said he. "Do thou, who art become the spouse of Christ, desire only spiritual adorning." Dr. Newman says it was a custom, even among the early Christians, to wear on the neck some token of the mysteries of their religion. Long after, in memory of this event, the Canons of St. Genevieve, at Paris, distributed upon her festival a pain bénit on which was an impression of this coin.

Eighteen years after, St. Germain again passed through Nanterre, once more on his way to Britain. He had not forgotten Genevieve. At the age of fifteen, she had received the virgin's veil from the hands of the Bishop of Paris. Her parents dying, she went to Paris to reside with her godmother. Here she suffered that persecution so often the lot of those who live godly lives. Those who outstrip their fellows even on the path of piety are objects of envy, and they who leave the beaten track of everyday religion are derided. St. Genevieve was visited at Paris by the holy Bishop of Auxerre, who saluted her with respect as a[37] temple in which the divine Presence was manifest. Her life was one of prayer and penance. She used to water her couch with her tears, and when the adversary of our souls extinguished the taper that lighted her vigils she rekindled it with her prayers. When Attila, king of the Huns, threatened Paris, she besought the inhabitants not to leave their homes, declaring that Heaven would intervene to save them. The barbarians, in effect, were dispersed by a storm, and betook themselves toward Orleans. In the church of St. Germain there is a chapel dedicated to St. Genevieve, with a painting representing her haranguing the inhabitants of Paris.

When Childeric besieged Paris, and sickness and famine were carrying off the inhabitants, St. Genevieve laid aside her religious dress, took command of the boats that went up the Seine for succor, and brought back a supply of provisions. And when the city had to surrender, the conquerer treated her with marked respect, and Clovis loved to grant her petitions. The remains of paganism were rooted out of Paris through her influence over him and Clotilda, and the first church built on the spot that now bears her name, but then dedicated under the invocation of Sts. Peter and Paul. In that church was the shepherdess of Nanterre buried beside Clovis and Clotilda. St. Eloi wrought a magnificent shrine for her remains, but it was destroyed at the Revolution, and the contents publicly burned. A portion of her relics is now enshrined at the Pantheon. I found lights burning there, and flowers and wreaths, and votive offerings, and the sweet-smelling incense of prayer rising from a group of people praying around. But the magnificence of the Pantheon is miserably depressing, as Faber says. How much more I delighted in the interesting church of St. Etienne du Mont, where is the curious old tomb of St. Genevieve! There too were lights and ex-votos, and an old woman sat near the tomb to dispense tapers to those who wished to leave a little gleam of love and prayer behind them. Once what lights and jewels blazed around such shrines, and what crowds of devout pilgrims! Now, a few dim tapers, a few prayerful hearts, light up the place.

Now the world seems to begrudge the temple of the Most High the silver and the gold that belong to him. And jewels are not to be thought of. Such wealth must be kept in circulation, that is, on Prince Esterhazy's coat, I suppose, and by ladies of fashion. The world nowadays is like Julian the Apostate, who was displeased at the magnificence of the chalices used in the Christian churches. For me, I love these offerings from time to eternity, as Madame de Staël says. Let all that is most precious be poured out at the feet of the Saviour, and let no one murmur if such offerings are crystallized. I took pleasure in looking at some splendid vessels of the sanctuary at Notre Dame, and thought:

In my saunterings I frequently lingered before the tower of St. Jacques de la Boucherie, the highest in Paris, and the most perfect specimen of Gothic architecture. The remainder of the church was demolished at the Revolution. The tower was saved by the artifice of an architect, who besought the crowd to imitate the enlightened English revolutionists, who destroyed their churches, but preserved the towers to be converted into shot-houses! In this church crowds used to assemble to hear Bourdaloue thunder, as Madame de Sévigné expresses it. I fancy I can hear that uncompromising preacher ringing out like a trump in the presence of the Great Monarch, "Thou art the man!" This exclamation should have appealed to the heart of the people, and saved the church he loved from profanation.

This church was built by the alms of pious people. Nicholas Flamel built the portal in 1388, which he covered with devout images and devices, which were regarded, even by the antiquaries of the last century, as symbols of alchemy. This Flamel was a benefactor to many churches and hospitals of Paris, which he took pleasure in adorning with carvings in which he made all things tributary, as it were, to the worship of God. At first a simple scrivener, he became painter, architect, chemist, philosopher, and poet. He certainly had the fancy of a poet, and wrote in durable materials. He left by his will nineteen chalices of silver gilt to as many churches.

These churches and religious houses are all connected with the history of the city. Paris owed its extension on the north side of the Seine to the school in the Abbey of St. Germain de l'Auxerrois, which was famous at an early age. There were four great abbeys around Paris in the time of the third dynasty—St. Lawrence, St. Genevieve, St. Germain de l'Auxerrois, and St. Germain des Près. These were surrounded by their dependencies, forming villages which gradually extended till they united to enclose the city, then chiefly confined to the island. The poor loved to live near these abbeys. St. Germain des Près, besides providing for the poor in general, used privately to support several destitute families who were ashamed of their poverty. The old abbots of this monastery were both lords spiritual and temporal in the suburbs on that side of the city. This abbey was a monument of repentance. Digby says when it was rebuilt in the year 1000 the great tower and the portals were left as before. The statues of eight kings stood at the entrance, four on the right hand and four on the left. One of them held a scroll on which was written the tragical name of Clodomir. And another, with no beatific circle around his head, held an open tablet on which were the first and last letters of the name Clotaire. These were the statues of the murderer and his victim.

The square tower of the monastery, built in the time of Charlemagne, contributed greatly to the defence of the house against the Normans. A stout old monk, Abbon, conducted the defence, and proved himself on this occasion a valiant defender of the walls of Zion. Perhaps it was his skilful hand that wrote an Homeric poem on the siege of Paris by the Normans in the year 885. If not by him, it was by a monk of a similar name.

The Pré aux Clercs, now the Faubourg St. Germain, took its name from being a place of recreation for the students of this abbey. One of the scholars, Sylvester de Sacy, so learned in the Semitic languages, ascribed the bent of his mind to the aid and encouragement given him by one of the monks who took his constitutional in the abbey gardens at the same time as the boy, then only twelve years old.

The library belonging to this abbey was celebrated in the middle ages, and there were monks of literary eminence in the house. Dacherius was the librarian when he composed his Spicilegium. Usuard compiled a martyrology. They had a printing press set up immediately after the invention of printing, which gives one a favorable idea of their mental activity. Most of these old monastic libraries were accessible to all; that of the Abbey of St. Victor was open to the public three days in the week; and there were public libraries attached to some of the parish churches. In the time of Charles V., rightly named the Wise, he ordered the Royal Library of Paris to be illuminated with thirty portable lamps, and that a silver one should be suspended in the centre for the benefit of those students who prolonged their researches into the night. The numerous collections of books in Paris made that city very attractive to certain minds even in the middle ages. Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham, in England, who established the first public library in that country, used to resort to Paris for fresh supplies. "O blessed God of gods in Sion!" he exclaims, "what a flood of pleasure rejoices our heart whenever we are at liberty to visit Paris, that paradise of the world, where the days always seem too short and too few through the immensity of our love! There are libraries more redolent of delight than all the shops of aromatics; there are the flowering meadows of all volumes that can be found anywhere. There, indeed, untying our purse-strings, and opening our treasures, we disperse money with a joyful heart (evidently the truth, for he paid the Abbot of St. Albans fifty pounds weight of silver for thirty or forty volumes), and ransom with dirt books that are beyond all price. But lo! how good and pleasant a thing it is to gather together in one place the arms of clerical warfare, that there may be a supply of them for us to use in the wars against heretics, should they ever rise up against us!"

What would this book-loving prelate have done had he foreseen that the church would one day be accused of being a foe to progress and to the diffusion of knowledge! This bishop, who lived in the thirteenth century, was the Chancellor and High Treasurer of England, and celebrated for his love and encouragement of literature. He had libraries in all his palaces, and the apartment he commonly occupied was so crammed with books that he was almost inaccessible. He was said to breathe books, so fond was he of being among them. None but a genuine lover of books would give such amusing directions for their preservation. "Not only do we serve God," says he, "by preparing new books, but also by preserving and treating with great care those we have already. Truly, after the vestments and vessels dedicated to our Lord's body, sacred books deserve to be treated with most reverence by clerks. In opening and shutting books, they should avoid all abruptness, not too hastily loosing the clasps, nor failing to shut them when they have finished reading, for it is far more important to preserve a book[40] than a shoe." He then goes on to speak of soiling books; of marking passages with the finger-nails, "like those of a giant;" of swelling the junctures of the binding with straws or flowers; and of eating over them, leaving the fragments in the book, as if the reader had no bag for alms. Waxing warm over the idea, he wishes such persons might have to sit over leather with a shoemaker! And then there are impudent youths, who presume to fill up the broad margins with their unchastened pens, noting down whatever frivolous thing occurs to their imagination! And "there are some thieves, too, who cut out leaves or letters, which kind of sacrilege ought to be prohibited under the penalty of anathema." The bishop had evidently had some sad experience with his cherished tomes. His testimony respecting the appreciation of books by the monks of his time is valuable. Remember the age, reader—that period of deepest darkness just before the dawn! "The monks who are so venerable," says he in his Philobiblion, "are accustomed to be solicitous in regard to books, and to be delighted in their company, as with all riches, and thence it is that we find in most monasteries such splendid treasures of erudition, giving a delectable light to the path of laics. Oh! that devout labor of their hands in writing books; how preferable to all georgic care! All things else fail with time. Saturn ceases not to devour his offspring, for oblivion covereth the glory of the world. But God hath provided a remedy for us in books, without which all that was ever great would have been without memory. Without shame we may lay bare to books the poverty of human ignorance. They are the masters who instruct us without rods, without anger, and without money. (The bishop had evidently forgotten those fifty pounds of silver, and many more besides!) O books! alone liberal and making liberal, who give to all, and seek to emancipate all who serve you. You are the tree of life and the river of Paradise, with which the human intelligence is irrigated and made fruitful."

But I did not always linger at the doors of churches, studying the walls and pondering on their history. The true Catholic knows that these magnificent churches are only vast shrines enclosing the great Object of his adoration and love. M. Olier, when travelling, never saw the spire of a church in the distance without calling upon all with him to repeat the Tantum Ergo. He used to say: "When I see a place where my Master reposes, I have a feeling of unutterable joy." This feeling comes over every one at the first glimpse of that undying lamp before the tabernacle, "that small flame which rises and falls like a dying pulse, flickering up and down, emblematic of our lives, which even now thus wastes and wanes."

The very first act on stepping into a church completely changes the current of one's thoughts. The holy water, the sign of the cross, dispel the remembrance of material things and recall devout thoughts of the Passion.

The bénitiers at St. Sulpice are two immense shells, given to Francis the First by the Republic of Venice; but for all that, the eau bénite seemed just as holy, and I made the sign of the cross just as devoutly.

For devotion, I prefer the largest churches, because the seclusion is more perfect, as at Notre Dame. Behind some pillar or in the depths[41] of some dim chapel, one can find perfect solitude where he can be alone with God. Alone with God! that in itself is prayer. The world-weary soul finds it good simply to sit or kneel with clasped hands in the divine Presence.

Joubert says the best prayers are those that have nothing distinct, and which thus partake of simple adoration; and Hawthorne asks: "Could I bring my heart in unison with those praying in yonder church with a fervor of supplication but no distinct request, would not that be the safest kind of prayer?" Surely every devout soul feels that "prayer is not necessarily petition," and what is technically known as the prayer of contemplation is the very inspiration of such churches. In this temple of silence, man seems to be brought back to his primeval relations with his Creator.

What mute eloquence in these walls! What an appeal to the imagination in the calmness! Earthly voices die away on the threshold, and peace, dovelike, broods over the very entrance. A daily visit to such a temple gives life a certain elevation. The very poor who come here to pray must acquire a certain dignity of character. How many generations have worshipped beneath these arches! The saints have passed over the very pavement I tread. I recall St. Louis, who, out of respect to our Lord, had laid off his shoes and divested himself of his royal robes, bearing solemnly into this church the holy Crown of Thorns. And great sinners, too, are in this long procession of the past. There is Count Raymond of Toulouse, barefoot, and clad only in the white tunic of a penitent, coming to receive absolution from the papal legate before the grand altar.

When one recalls the popes, cardinals, and other dignitaries of the church, the kings and queens and knights of the olden time who have been here, one almost shrinks from entering such a throng of the mighty ones of the earth. It seems as if he were elbowing the Great Monarch or the gallant Henry of Navarre.

On the galleries around the nave were formerly suspended the flags and standards taken in war, and it was in allusion to this custom that the Prince of Conti, after the victories of Fleurus, Steinkerque, and La Marsaille, made an opening in the crowd around the door of the church for the Marechal de Luxembourg, whom he held by the hand, by crying: "Place, place, messieurs, au tapissier de Notre Dame!"—"Room, room, gentlemen, for the upholsterer of Notre Dame!"

It is charming to see the birds flying about in the arches of this church, as if nature had taken its venerable walls to her bosom. It made me think of the old hermits of the middle ages, living with the sea-birds in their ocean caves. Like St. Francis, the canons of Notre Dame say the divine office with their "little sisters, the birds;" and the bird is the symbol of the soul rising heavenward on the wings of prayer. We, like the birds, build our nests here for a few days. Blessed are we if they are built within the influences of the sanctuary which temper the storms and severities of life. It is only in the clefts of the rocks that wall in the mystic garden of the church that there is safety for the dovelike soul.

In the transept is the altar of Our Lady, starry with lamps. Above her statue is one of her titles, appealing to every heart—Consolatrix afflictorum![42] To this church M. Olier came, in all his troubles, to the altar of Mary. There is also a fine statue of her over the grand altar, formerly at the Carmes. No church is complete without an altar of the Blessed Virgin. Wherever there is a cross, Mary must be at its foot, as at Calvary, directing our eyes, our thoughts, our hearts, to him who hangs thereon.

In traversing Paris, one passes many private residences of interest which have a certain consecration—the consecration of wit and genius. I cannot say I ever went so far as Horace Walpole, who never passed the Hôtel de Carnavalet, the residence of Madame de Sévigné, without saying his Ave before it, much as I admire her esprit, and though she was the granddaughter of St. Jane de Chantal, the foundress of the Nuns of the Visitation. Walpole thought the house had a foreign-looking air, and said it looked like an ex-voto raised in her honor by some of her foreign votaries. It was once an elegant residence, with its sculptured gateway and Ionic pilasters, and its court adorned with statues. In the day of the spirituelle letter-writer, it was the resort of the learned and the refined; now, O tempora! it is a boarding-school, and the salon of Madame de Sévigné (the temple of "Notre Dame de Livry," to quote Walpole again, if it be not profanity) is converted into a dormitory. Truly, as Bishop de Bury says, "all things pass away with time," but the wit and genius she embodied in her charming letters are eternal.

In one of the upper stories of a house in the Rue St. Honoré lived Joubert, the Coleridge of France. His keeping-room was flooded with the light he loved, and from it, as he said, he saw a great deal of sky and very little earth. There he passed his days among the books he had collected. He rigorously excluded from his library all the books he disapproved of; unwilling, as he said, to admit an unworthy friend to his constant companionship. To this room he attracted a brilliant circle of conspicuous authors and statesmen by his conversational talents, and there he wrote his immortal Pensées. He said he left Paris unwillingly, because then he had to part from his friends; and he left the country unwillingly, because he had to part from himself. Writing from that sunny room, he says: "In many things, I am like the butterfly; like him, I love the light; like him, I there consume my life; like him, I need, in order to spread my wings, that there be fair weather around me in society, and that my mind feel itself surrounded and as if penetrated by the mild temperature of indulgence." But he wrote graver and more profound things there. One of his friends said of him that he seemed to be a soul that by accident had met with a body, and was trying to make the best of it. And he, ever indulgent to the faults of others, said of his friends, "When they are blind of one eye, I look at them in profile."

The Abbaye aux Bois is interesting from its association with Madame Récamier and her circle. Her rooms were in the third story and paved with tiles, and they overlooked the pleasant garden of the monastery, and, when lit up with wit and genius, they needed no other attraction. Among her visitors there were Sir Humphry Davy, Maria Edgeworth, Humboldt, Lamartine, Delphine[43] Gay, Chateaubriand, etc. They must have been like the gods, speaking from peak to peak all around Olympus. Lamartine read his Méditations there before they were given to the public. Chateaubriand thus speaks of the room: "The windows overlooked the garden of the abbey, under the verdant shade of which the nuns paced up and down, and the pupils played. The top of an acacia was on a level with the eye, sharp spires pierced the sky, and in the distance rose the hills of Sèvres. The rays of the setting sun threw a golden light over the landscape and came in through the open windows. Some birds were settling themselves for the night on the top of the window-blinds. Here I found silence and solitude, far above the tumult and turmoil of a great city."

To the church of the abbey, a plain, unpretending structure, Eugénie de Guérin went every day to Mass during her first visit to Paris. There, too, were the bans of her brother Maurice published, and there he was married.

The house of Madame Swetchine, in the Rue St. Dominique, must be regarded with veneration. There was no austerity about the salon of this remarkable woman. It was adorned with pictures, bronzes, and flowers, and in the evening it was illuminated with a profusion of lamps and candles, giving it a festive air. And then the great lights of the church, always diffusing their radiance and aroma in that favored room, Lacordaire, De Ravignan, Dupanloup, De la Bouillerie, etc. To have found one's self among them must have seemed like being among the prophets on Mount Carmel. They all loved to officiate and preach in her beautiful private chapel, which was adorned with a multitude of precious stones from the Russian mines, gleaming around the ineffable presence of the Divinity. Mary, too, was there. On the base of her silver statue was her monogram in diamonds, which Madame Swetchine had worn as maid of honor to the Empress Mary of Russia.

These circles, and many others I could recall, are now broken up for ever. We have all heard and read so much of those who composed them that they seem like personal friends. We linger around the places to which they imparted a certain sacredness, and follow them in thought to the world of mystery and eternal reunion, thanking God that the great gulf from the finite to the infinite has been bridged over by the Incarnation.

One morning, I went to the church of the Carmelites. A tablet on the wall points out the spot where the heart of Monseigneur Affre was deposited—the heart of him who gave his life for his flock. Around it were suspended some wreaths. On one, of immortelles, was painted, in black letters, A mon Père, the offering of one of his spiritual children. Wishing to have some objects of devotion blessed, I went into the sacristy (I remembered Eugénie de Guérin speaks of going into that sacristy), where I found one of the monks prostrate in prayer, making his thanksgiving after Mass. Enveloped in his habit, his bald head covered by a cowl, he looked like a ghost from the dark ages. Not venturing to approach the ghostly father, I made known my errand to a good-natured-looking lay brother, who conveyed it to that part of the cowl where the right ear of the monk might reasonably be supposed to be, which brought back the holy man to earth, causing me some compunction of conscience. The brother spread out my articles, brought the ritual and the stole, and the father, throwing back his cowl,[44] murmured over them the prayers of holy church, and then disappeared into the monastery. Presently I heard the voices of the monks saying the office, which they do, like nuns, in choir and behind a curtained grate, so they are not seen from the church.

This monastery may be compared to the Roman amphitheatre where the early Christians were thrown to the wild beasts. Here indeed was fought the good fight, and the victors rose to heaven with palms in their hands. I know of nothing more sublime and thrilling in the annals of the church than the massacre of about two hundred priests that took place here on the second of September, 1792. I cannot refrain from giving a condensed account of it by one of the writers of the day: "For some weeks there had been assembled and heaped together two hundred priests, who had refused to take the schismatic oath, or had nobly recanted it. During the first day of their incarceration, these loyal priests had been inhumanly imprisoned in the church. The guards in their midst watched to prevent their having the consolation of even speaking to each other. Their only nourishment was bread and water. The stone floor was their bed. It was only later that a few were permitted to have straw beds. These priests, whom martyrdom was to render immortal, had at their head three prelates whose virtues recall the primitive days of the church. Their chief was the Archbishop of Arles, Monseigneur du Lau. He had been deputed to the states-general; his piety equalled his knowledge; and his humility even surpassed his merit. The day after the memorable 10th of August he had been sent to the Carmelite monastery (then converted into a prison) with sixty-two other priests. Notwithstanding his age (he was over eighty) and his infirmities, he refused all indulgences that were not also extended to his brother-captives. For several days a wooden arm-chair was his bed as well as his pontifical throne. Thence his persuasive words instilled into those around him the sentiments of ineffable charity that filled his own heart, and when his exhausted voice could no longer make itself heard, his very appearance expressed a sublime resignation.

"Two other bishops, brothers, bearing the name of De la Rochefoucauld, one the Bishop of Beauvais, and the other of Saintes, also encouraged their companions in misfortune by their words and by their example. The Bishop of Saintes had not been arrested, but, wishing to join his brother, he made himself a prisoner. There were members of every rank in the ecclesiastical hierarchy: M. Hébert, the confessor of the king who wrote to him at the beginning of August, 'I expect nothing more from man, bring me therefore the consolations of heaven;' the general of the Benedictines, the Abbé de Lubusac, several of the curés of Paris, Mr. Gros, called the modern Vincent of Paul, and priests brought from various places, holy victims whom the God of Calvary had chosen to associate with his sufferings, and judged worthy of the most glorious of all deaths—that of martyrdom.

"For more than two days, the wretches who hovered around their enclosure had filled the air with cries of blood, and predicting that the sacrifice was about to take place. One said to the Archbishop of Arles: 'My lord, on the morrow your grace is to be killed.' These derisive insults recalled to the holy captives the judgment-hall of their divine Master,[45] and like him they bore them in silence, forgiving and praying for their enemies.

"On the second of September they could no longer doubt that their last hour had arrived. The hurried movements of the troops, the cries in the neighboring streets, and the alarm-guns they heard made them somewhat aware of the sinister events that were passing without. At the dawn of day they had gathered together in the church. They made their confessions to each other, they blessed one another, and partook of the Holy Eucharist. They were singing the Benediction together at about five in the evening when the ominous cries came nearer. Then two holy hymns succeeded the prayers for the dying. All at once the jailers entered, and began calling the roll, which already had been done three times that day. The prisoners were then ordered into the garden, which they found occupied by guards armed with pikes and wearing the bonnet rouge. The murderers filled the courts, the halls, and the church, making the venerable arches re-echo to the noise of their weapons and their blasphemies. The priests, one hundred and eighty-five in number, were divided into two groups. About thirty, among whom were the bishops, rushed toward a little oratory at the extremity of the garden, where they threw themselves upon their knees, recommending themselves to God. They embraced each other for the last time, and began saying the vespers for the dead, when suddenly the gates were flung open, and the assassins rushed in from various directions.

"The sight of these holy priests upon their knees arrested their fury for an instant. The first who fell under their blows was Father Gerault, who was reciting his breviary regardless of their cries. That breviary, pierced with a ball and stained with blood, was discovered on the spot at the restoration of the Carmelites, and it is preserved as a precious relic. Then the Archbishop of Arles was demanded. While they were seeking him through the alleys, he was exhorting his companions to offer to God the sacrifice of their lives. Hearing his name called, he knelt down, and asked the most aged of the priests to give him absolution; then, rising, he advanced to meet the assassins. With his arms crossed upon his breast and his eyes raised toward heaven, he uttered in a calm voice the same words his divine Master addressed to his enemies: "I am he whom you seek." The first stroke of the sword was upon his forehead, but the venerable man remained standing; a second made the blood flow in torrents, but still he did not fall; the fifth laid him on the ground, when a pike was driven through his heart. Then he was trampled under the feet of the assassins, who exclaimed, 'Vive la nation!'

"The general massacre then ensued. While the unfortunate priests, with the instinct of self-preservation, were flying at random through the garden, some screening themselves behind the hedges and others climbing the trees, the murderers fired at them, and, when one of them fell, they would rush upon his body, prolong his agony, and exult over his sufferings. About forty perished in this manner. Some of the younger priests succeeded in scaling the walls and hiding themselves; but, remembering they were flying from martyrdom and that their escape might excite greater fury against their companions, they retraced their steps and received their reward! The Bishop of Beauvais and his brother were in the garden oratory with thirty[46] priests. A grating separated them from the murderers, who fired upon them, killing the greater number. The Bishop of Beauvais was not touched, but his brother had a leg broken by a ball.

"For an instant this horrid butchery was suspended. One of the leaders ordered all the priests into the church, whither they were driven—even the wounded and dying—at the sword's point. There they gathered around the altar, offering anew to their Saviour the sacrifice of their lives, whilst their executioners, calling them out two by two, finished their butchery more promptly and completely. To each one life was offered on condition of taking the revolutionary oath. They all refused, and not one escaped. Whilst these assassins added blasphemous shouts to their murderous strokes, whilst they demolished the crosses and the tabernacles, the holy phalanx of priests, which death was every moment lessening, kept praying for their murderers and their country. The two bishops were among the last executed. When it came to the turn of the Bishop of Beauvais, he left the altar upon which he had been leaning, and calmly advanced to meet his death. His brother, whose wound prevented his walking, asked for assistance, and was carried out to his execution. It was eight in the evening when the last execution took place. Over four hundred priests were massacred in different parts of Paris at this period, besides many isolated murders."

The constancy of these martyrs has made many do more than exclaim with Horace Walpole: "Almost thou persuadest me to be a Catholic!" He says, in a letter dated October 14, 1792: "For the French priests, I own I honor them. They preferred beggary to perjury, and have died or fled to preserve the integrity of their consciences. It certainly was not the French clergy but the philosophers that have trained up their countrymen to be the most bloody men upon earth."

In 1854, this monastery, where flowed the blood of martyrs and which had echoed with their dying groans, resounded with the strains of O Salutaris Hostia! on the festival of Corpus Christi, and priests bore the divine Host through the alleys of the garden where, sixty years before, had rushed those who were swift to shed blood. An altar had been erected under the yew-tree where the Archbishop of Arles fell. Children scattered flowers over the place once covered with blood. Well might the pale-lipped clergy tearfully chant in such a spot:

Every age has its martyrs. They are the glory of the church, and their blood is its seed. The church must ever suffer with its divine spouse. Sometimes its head—the Vicar of Christ-is crowned with thorns; sometimes its heart bleeds from a thrust in the very house of its friends; and, again, its feet and hands are nailed in the extremities of the earth.

And every follower of Christ crucified has his martyrdom—a martyrdom of the soul, if not of the body. The sacred stigmata are imprinted on every soul, that embraces the cross, and no one can look upon him who hangs thereon, with the eyes of faith, without catching something of his resemblance. Suffering is now, as when he was on earth, the glorious penalty of those who approach the nearest to his Divine Person.

SOR JUANA INES DE LA CRUZ.

So little is known of Spanish American literature that any fresh report from its pages seems to have the nature of a revelation. Our acquaintance with Heredia, Placido, Milanes, Mendive, Carpio, Pesado, Galvan, Calderon, is slight or naught; yet these poets are most interesting on account of the countries, peoples, and causes for which they speak eloquently, even if we deny that they add greatly to the genuine substance of our literary possession. Less question, however, can be entertained of the importance of some older names whose fame made for itself a refuge in the Spanish churches and cloisters of the New World long before revolutionists took to shooting the Muses on the wing. In the seventeenth century lived and wrought Cabrera, Siguenza, and Sor or Sister Juana Ines. They belonged to a country which claimed for awhile as its scholars, though not as its natives, Doctor Valbuena, author of the very well-known epical fantasy called The Bernardo, and Mateo Alaman, who wrote the famous story of Guzman de Alfarache. Juan Ruiz de Alarcon, one of the most remarkable dramatic poets of a great dramatic age, was a native of that same country, Mexico. Siguenza, as mathematician, historian, antiquary, and poet, has been well esteemed by Humboldt and the scholars of his own race. It is much to say that the land which produced an artist as great as Cabrera also gave birth to a scholar and poet as renowned in her day and as appreciable in ours as Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz. Among all these celebrities, who would have been eminent in any time among any people, this Mexican nun of the seventeenth century holds a place of her own. Looking back upon the past with all our modern light, we cannot but regard her as one of the most admirable characters of the New World.

Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz was born at San Miguel de Nepantla, twelve leagues from the city of Mexico, in the year 1651, and died at the age of forty-four. When but three years old, she was able to read, write, and "cipher," and at eight she wrote a prologue for the feast of the Holy Sacrament. Once she cut her hair, and would not allow it to grow till she had acquired the learning she proposed to herself, seeing no reason why a head should be covered with hair that was denuded of knowledge, its best ornament. After twenty lessons, it was said, she knew Latin, and so great was her desire to learn that she importuned her parents to send her to the University of Mexico in boy's clothes. When seventeen years of age, and a cherished inmate of the Viceroy Mancera's family, she amazed a large company[48] of the professors and scholars of the capital by tests of her various erudition and abilities. Notwithstanding her beauty and fortune, her rank and accomplishments, and the life of a gallant and brilliant court, she determined at that early age to retire to a cloister, and in a few years became known as Sor Juana of San Geronimo, a convent of the city of Mexico. After this appeared her poems, The Crisis and The Dream, in the latter of which she writes much of mythology, physics, medicine, and history, according to the scholastic manner of her time. With these and her subsequent poetic writings, such as her sonnets, loas, romances, and autos, she had rare fame, and won from some of her admirers the enthusiastic titles of "The Phœnix of Mexico," "Tenth Muse," and "Poetess of America." The writer has an old volume before him bearing literally this title-page: "Fama, y Obras Posthumas del Fenix de Mexico, y Dezima Musa, Poetisa de la America, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Religiosa Professa en el Convento de San Geronimo, de la Imperial Ciudad de Mexico. Recogidas y dadas a luz por el Doctor Don Juan Ignacio de Castorena y Ursua, Capellan de Honor de su Magestad, y Prebendado de la Santa Iglesia Metropolitana de Mexico. En Barcelona: Por Rafael Figuero. Año de MDCCI. Con todas las licencias necessarias." Thus it appears we owe to the Prebendary Castorena the edition of the posthumous works of Sor Juana given to the light in 1701, six years after her death.

But, whether as the sister or the mother of a convent, Juana Ines de la Cruz was more than a mistress of vain learning or unprofitable science. Her daily assiduous exercise was charity, which at last so controlled her life and thoughts that she gave all her musical and mathematical instruments, all the rich presents which her talents had attracted from illustrious people, and all her books, excepting those she left to her sisters, to be sold for the benefit of the poor. Though she had evidently prized science as the handmaid of religion, the time came when her verses upon the vanity of learning reflected a mind more and more withdrawn from the affairs of this world to the contemplation of the next. When an epidemic visited the Convent of San Geronimo, and but two out of every ten invalids were saved, the good, brave soul of Madre Juana shone transcendently. Spite of warnings and petitions, and though all the city prayed for her life, Madre Juana perished at her vigil of charity—the good angel as well as muse of Mexico.

Of the enthusiasm created by her genius, we have abundant and curious proofs. Don Alonzo Muxica, "perpetual Recorder of the City of Salamanca," wrote a sonnet upon her having learned to read at the age of three, when "what for all is but the break of morn in her was as the middle of the day." Excelentissimo Sir Felix Fernandez de Cordova Cordona y Aragon, Duke of Seffa, of Væna and Soma, Count of Cabra, Palomas, and Olivitas, and Grand Admiral and Captain-General of Naples, speaks of her in a lofty poetic encomium as for the third time applauded by two admiring worlds of readers, and praises her persuasive voice as that of a sweet siren of thought. Don Garcia Ribadeneyra, with the grandiose wit of his day, says in a decima that this extraordinary woman surpassed the sun, for her glorious genius rose where the sun set, that is to say, in the West; and Don Pedro Alfonso Moreno argues piously that St. John the Baptist's three crowns of Virgin, Martyr, and[49] Doctor were in measure those of Madre Juana, who was from early years chaste, poor in spirit, and obedient, according to the vow of religious women. Don Luis Verdejo declares that she transferred the lyceums of the Muses to Mexico, and that the light of her genius is poured upon two worlds. Padre Cabrera, chaplain of the Most Excellent Duke of Arcos, asserts that the Eternal Knowledge enlightened Juana in all learning. "Only her fame can define her," writes one of her own sex; and when the Poetess of the Cloister wrote with her own blood a protestation of faith, it was said of this "Swan of erudite plume" that she wrote like the martyr to whose ink of blood the earth was as paper. Her gift of books to be sold in order to relieve the poor inspired Señora Catalina de Fernandez de Cordova, nun in the Convent of the Holy Ghost in Alcara, to say thus thoughtfully:

At thought of her death, Don Luis Muñoz Venegas, of Granada, wonders that the sun shines, that ships sail, that earth is fair, that all things do not grieve her loss, whose happy soul in its beatitudes enjoys the riches of which death has robbed the world—sweetness, purity, felicity. Fray Juan de Rueda, professor of theology in the college of San Pablo; Licentiate Villalobos of San Ildefonso, and Señor Guerra, fellow of the same college; Advocate Pimienta, of the Royal Audience, and Bachelor Olivas, a presbyter; Syndic Torres, Catedratico or Professor Aviles, Cavalier Ulloa, have all something to say in Spanish or Latin on the death of our poetess. Doctor Aviles imagines the death of Sor Juana to be like that of the rose, which, having acquired in a brief age all its perfection, needed not to live longer. Don Diego Martinez suggests beautifully that the profit which other excellent minds will derive from the posthumous writings of the poetess will be like the clearness which the stars gain by the death of the sun. Mingled with these honest tributes of admiration is much extravagance of comparison; but they prove at least that Sor Juana was regarded by the learned of her day as a woman of astonishing powers.

Amid all her studies and labors, we read that Sister Juana was constant in her religious devotions, and faithful to the least rules of her order. But her conscientious spirit, moved by a letter of Bishop Fernandez of Puebla, determined her at length to renounce the exercise of her talents for the strictest and purest ascetism. Hence, one of her Mexican critics is led to say that we have only the echoes of her songs, only the shades of her images, inasmuch as her sex and state, and the reigning scholasticism, were not convenient for the true expression of her thoughts. The noble, ascetic literature of Spain, respecting which it is with reason boasted that the world contains nothing of the kind more valuable, discredits in good part this supposition. Moreover, the recognition of Sor Juana's work and genius was, as we have seen, not inconsiderable. The world is still in its infancy as regards religious ideality, and, spite of the highest evidences, often refuses to believe that thoughts fed from the divine source can fulfil the true poem of life, be it written or acted. What the thoughts of Sor Juana were like in her ordinary religious life we understand partly from a number of daily exercises and meditations which have come down to us. Here are specimens of these compositions:

These compositions doubtless give us a better idea of the interior thought of Mexican monasticism than some yellow-covered speculations. In that life grew the finest genius, the greatest woman, perhaps the most remarkable character in all respects that Mexico ever produced. Considering the time and place in which she wrote, the New World has scarcely produced her superior among women of genius. Up to the nineteenth century America had, doubtless, no, literary product comparable to the poems of Sor Juana Ines. What Cabrera, was to the art, Sor Juana seems to have been to the literature of her country; and both these workers of genius gave their powers to the service of religion. It is here worthy of remark that not only were the greatest painter and poet of Mexico studious servants of the church, but that its most celebrated scientist was the Jesuit Siguenza y Gongora, author of a funeral eulogy of Sor Juana[51] Ines, whom he knew and appreciated, for he, too, was a poet. Without social helps, without emulation, such as is ordinarily understood, such proofs of her high intelligence as we possess have come to light. Perplexed as it was with the mannered erudition of the schools, her poetry nevertheless reveals noble sensibility and thought in superior forms. Thus she sings in her verses entitled "Sentiments of Absence:"

This is like a voice of the Elizabethan age; but what woman even of that day has left us so rare a record of poetry and piety combined as the nun of San Geronimo, she who lived in 1670 in far-off, outlandish Mexico? What chapter of literature would seem too good to entertain this Tenth Muse, to whom we owe such sonnets as these:

These rude translations give but a poor idea of the poet's expression, but they allow the height and quality of her intellect to be understood. In one of her most thoughtful poems, the Romance on the Vanity of Science, she argues against self-seeking knowledge, and the perils to which genius exposes itself by too much seeking its own devices. This poem is so representative and remarkable that we must give it entire quotation:

We may dispute, in some respects, the drift of Sister Juana's philosophy; but we cannot question the poetic wisdom of many of her reflections. How true it is that in a multitude of reasons one finds no reason at all; that the rank overgrowth of knowledge does not bear the best fruit; that genius, allied with base substance, grows brighter, by a kind of self-consuming; that wisdom can sometimes find refuge in ignorance! No one, be his fame what it may, has stated a grand and touching truth with better force than appears in Sor Juana's grave misgiving with regard to the genius "which seeks a throne in fire, and finds a sepulchre in tears." Is not this the history, at once sublime and pathetic, of so many failures of the restless intellect? Sor Juana knew how to preach from such a text, for she was a rare scholar, and mistress of verse, and religious woman. The variety of her literary employments was considerable, in comparison with the bulk of Mexican verse and prose, notwithstanding the old-fashioned manners of her cloistered muse. She wrote, in addition to sonnets and romances, the dramatic religious pieces called loas and autos, among which we find dialogues and acts entitled "The Sceptre of St. Joseph," "San Hermengildo," and "The Divine Narciso." Her poetic moods were not, it appears, limited to hymns and to blank-verse; indeed, she had the qualities of a ripe poet—humor, fancy, imagination, able thought, and, if anything else should be added, doubtless the reader will find it in the ideality of a sonnet so superb as the one in praise of Our Lady. Of her religious tenderness we have a fine example in the following lines from "El Divino Narciso," which have been compared by a Mexican critic to the best mystical songs of St. John of the Cross and other Spanish ascetics. They convey the appeal which the Shepherd of Souls makes to a soul which has strayed from the flock:

Our last quotation from Sister Juana's poems will be one of those tributes which, in verse or prose, she so often paid to the Blessed Virgin. It is a song taken from her villancicos, or rhymes for festivals. The literary manners of her time seem to have obscured the native excellence of her thought, but the buoyant style of the following lines meets with little objection from her modern Mexican critic:

The scarcity of the poems of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, even in her native land, is cause for wonder, but not if we first remark that still greater marvel—the long-continued discomposure of Mexican society. It is one hundred and seventy years since the parchment-bound book, from which we have drawn a number of facts in the life of the Poetisa, was published. Our impression of the rarity and age of her printed works, as derived from acquaintance with educated Mexicans in their own country, tempts us to doubt whether they have been issued in any complete shape during the present century. For a good portion of the extracts we have presented we are indebted to an intelligent and scholarly review prepared in Mexico, two years ago, by Don Francisco Prinentel, the author of a number of books on the races and languages of Mexico. Outside of the monastic or rich private libraries of that country, it is doubtless a task of much difficulty to find the poems of Sor Juana. For this reason we are disposed to excuse the able American historian of Spanish literature for omitting everything in relation to her except the mere mention of her name as a lyrical writer. It is hoped, however, that this notice of her life and works, probably the first which has[56] appeared in the United States, will supply the omission of what should be a chief fact in any American notice of Spanish literature. The claim which we make for Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, as regards the literature of the New World, is not short of the very highest.

DION AND THE SIBYLS.
A CLASSIC, CHRISTIAN NOVEL.

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

CHAPTER XXIV.

At the golden gate of the Temple courtyard, a Roman legionary soldier (detailed as body-servant to the General Paulus) met him. The soldier was leading a small, wiry Tauric (or really Tartar) horse. Paulus, twisting a lock of the animal's mane in his left hand, and taking up with the little finger thereof the loop of the bridle, sprang into the ephippia. The soldier smiled, as the still handsome and youthful-looking legatus settled himself on the back of his steed.

"It was like the spring I saw you take years ago at Formiæ, when I was a boy, upon the back of the horse Sejanus, which no man, my general, ever rode save you," replied the soldier.

"Ah!" said Paulus, smiling sadly; "were you there? I fear I am not so agile now. We are all passing away."

"Just as agile still, my general," returned the legionary, in a cordial tone; "but about twice as strong."

"Away! begone!" cried Paulus, laughing; "I am growing old." And shaking the reins, he waved a salute to Longinus, turned his pony round, and rode away again into the valley westward, while the centurion entered the city by the golden gate, and repaired under the walls of the Temple to Fort Antonio, where he was detailed as officer of Pilate's guard that night.

Paulus, meanwhile, rode slowly on his way, between the Kedron Brook and the walls of Jerusalem, till he came to the Pool of Siloam. There, he turned south, galloped to a fort which was near, turned back again to his right, or northward, followed the valley of Hinnom at a walking pace, looking up at the white and dazzling buildings on Mount Zion.

As he slowly passed them, he speculated which could have been David's palace. He saw Herod's plainly enough. On his right he noticed the aqueduct from Solomon's Pool, and followed its course as far as the Tower of Hippicus northward. There he entered the city by the Gate of Gennath, and followed the valley of the Cheesemongers (or Tyropæon hollow) until he came to Ophal.

In the middle of a very narrow[57] street in this low and crowded quarter, where the Romans afterward under Titus were repulsed, he met a file of people, some mounted, some on foot, led by a richly-dressed, haughty-looking, burly man, riding a mule.

So narrow was the street that either Paulus would have had to go back as far as the Tower of Marianne, or the richly-dressed and haughty-looking man about one-quarter of the distance, to the bridge between the street of the Cheesemongers and the court of the Gentiles. Paulus, always full of courtesy, amenity, and sweetness, was in the very act of turning his small Tauric horse, when the burly man in rich dress, who led the opposing file, called out, "Back! low people! Back, and let Caiaphas go by!"

"And who is Caiaphas?" demanded Paulus, instantly facing round again and barring the way.

"The high-priest of Jerusalem," was the answer, thundered forth in rude and minatory tones.

"I respect," said Paulus, "and even revere that holy appellation; but he who uses it at this moment, for some present purpose, has flung against me, who am a Roman general, the mandate of Back, low people. Where are the low people? I do not believe that I am a low person. Where, then, are the low people?"

He himself, being the file leader, began then to move forward, till he came immediately in front of the traveller who had so courteously spoken to him.

"If you want," said Paulus, "to pass me at once, I must get into the ditch, or throw you into it; which do you prefer?"

"I prefer," quoth Caiaphas, "that you should throw me into the ditch, if you either dare or can."

"Sir," says Paulus, "I am sorry for the sentiment you express, or at least imply. But I will stand up against your challenge of throwing you into the ditch, because I both could do it, and dare do it, as a Roman soldier, only that there is One among you who has come to settle all our disputes, and who has a divine right to do so. For his sake I would rather be thrown into that drain by you—soldier, officer, general, and Roman as I am—than throw you into it."

Paulus, whose behavior at Lake Benacus against the Germans, and previously at Formiæ, and afterward in the terrible Calpurnian House on the Viminal Hill, the reader remembers, made no answer, but, riding back to the Tower of Marianne, allowed the high-priest and his followers there to pass him; which they did with every token of scorn and act of contumely that the brief and sudden circumstances allowed. Caiaphas thus passed on to his country-house at the southwest-by-south of Jerusalem, where he usually spent the night.

Paulus then put his pony into a gallop, and soon reached the bridge across the Tyropæon into the courtyard of the Temple, commonly called the courtyard of the Gentiles. Such was the nervous excitement caused by his recent act of purely voluntary, gratuitous, and deliberate self-humiliation, that he laughed aloud as he rode through the Temple yard, coasting the western "cloisters," and so reaching Fort Antonio.

There his servant, the Roman legionary, who had before met him at the golden gate, and whose name was Marcus, was awaiting him.

CHAPTER XXV.

That night the palace of Herod the tetrarch resounded with music, and all the persons of rank or distinction in Jerusalem were among the guests. The entertainment would have been remembered for years on account of its brilliancy; it was destined to be remembered for all ages, even till the day of doom, on account of its catastrophe, chronicled in the books of God, and graven in the horror of men.

Paulus, unusually grave, because experiencing unwonted sensations, and anxious calmly to analyze them, was assailed for the first time in his life by a feeling of nervous irritability, which originated (though he knew it not) in his having suppressed the natural desire to chastise the insolence of Caiaphas that morning. He sat abstracted and silent, not far from the semi-royal chair of Herod the tetrarch. His magnificent dress, well-earned military fame, and manly and grave beauty (never seen to greater advantage than at that period of life, though the gloss of youth was past) had drawn toward him during the evening an unusual amount of attention, of which he was unconscious, and to which he would have been indifferent.

The "beauty of the evening," as she was called (for in those days they used terms like those which we moderns use, to express our infatuation for the gleams of prettiness which are quenched almost as soon as they are seen), had repeatedly endeavored to attract his attention. She was royal; she was an unrivalled dancer. Herod, who began to feel dull, begged her to favor the company with a dance, sola. Thereupon the daughter of Herodias looked at Paulus, to whom her previous blandishments had been addressed in vain (he was well known to be unmarried), and heaved a fiery sigh. The mere noise of it ought to have awakened his notice, and yet failed to accomplish even that small result. Had it succeeded, he was exactly the person to have regarded this woman with a feeling akin to that which, some two-and-twenty years before, she herself (or was it Herodias? they age fast in the East) had waked in the bosom of his sister under the veranda in the bower of Crispus's inn, leading out of the fine old Latian garden near the banks of the Liris.

She proceeded to execute her ballet, her pas seul, her dance of immortal shame and fatal infamy. Cries of delight arose. The creature grew frantic. The court of Herod fell into two parties. One party proclaimed the performance a perfection of elegance and spirit. The other party said not a word, but glances of painful feeling passed among them. The clamorous eulogists formed the large majority. In the silent minority was numbered Paulus, who never in his life had felt such grave disgust or such settled indignation. He thought of his pure and innocent Esther—alas, not his! He thought that, had it been his sister Agatha who thus outraged every rudimentary principle of the tacit social compact, he could almost find it in his heart to relieve the earth of her.

Thus pondering, his glance fell upon Herod the tetrarch. The tetrarch seemed to have become delirious. He was laughing, and crying, and slobbering, and clapping his hands, and rolling his head, and rocking his body on the great state cushion under the canopy, where he "sat at table." While Paulus was contemplating him in wonder and shame, the wretched dancer came to an end of her bounds. Indecency, scientifically accidental, had been[59] the one simple principle of the exhibition. Herod called the practised female before him, and, in the hearing of several, bade her demand from him any reward she pleased, and declared upon oath that he would grant her demand. Paulus heard the answer. After consulting apart with her mother, she reapproached the tetrarch, and, with a flushed face, said that she desired the head of a prisoner upon a dish.

Paulus gazed at the miserable tetrarch, "the quarter of a king," not from the height of his rank as a Roman general, but from the still greater height which God had given him as one of the first, one of the earliest of European gentlemen. He knew not then who John was. But that any fellow-creature in prison, not otherwise to be put to death, should have his head hewn off and placed upon a dish, because a woman had tossed her limbs to and fro in a style which pleased a tetrarch while it disgraced human society, appeared to Paulus to be less than reasonable. What he had said, the tetrarch had said upon oath.

A little confusion, a slight murmuring and whispering ensued, but the courtly music soon recommenced. Paulus could not afterward tell how long it was before the most awful scene he had ever witnessed occurred.

A menial entered, bearing, on a large dish, a freshly-severed human head, bleeding at the neck.

"It was not a jest, then," said Paulus, in a low voice to his next neighbor, a very old man, whose face he remembered, but whose name he had all the evening been trying in vain to recall—"it was not a base jest, dictated by the hideous taste of worse than barbarians!"

"Truly," replied the aged man, "these Jews are worse than any barbarians I ever saw, and I have seen most of them."

Paulus recognized at these words the geographer Strabo, formerly his companion at the court of Augustus.

At a sign from Herod, the menial carrying the dish now approached the daughter of Herodias, and presented to her the bleeding and sacred head. She, in turn, took the dish and offered it to Herodias, who herself bore it out of the room with a kind of snorting laugh.

Paulus rose slowly and deliberately from his place near the tetrarch, at whom he steadily looked.

"This, then," said he, "is the entertainment to which you have invited a Roman legatus. You are vexed, people say, that Pilate, the Roman governor of this city, could not honor your birthday by his presence in your palace. Pilate's local authority is of course greater than mine, for I have none at all; but his real, permanent rank, and your own real, permanent importance, are contemptible by the side of those which a Roman soldier of such a family as the Æmilian has gained on the field of battle; and it was a high honor to yourself to succeed in bringing me hither. And now, while disgracing your own house, you have insulted your guests. What is the name of the man you have murdered because a woman dances like a goat? What is his name?"

"What! John the Baptist? John the Baptist, yea, and more than a prophet—John the Angel of God! Is this he whom you have slain?"

"What had he to say to my marriage?" answered Herod, through whose purple face a livid under-color was penetrating to the surface.

"Why," exclaimed Paulus, "the holy books of your own nation forbade such a marriage, and John could not hear of it without rebuking you. I, although a Gentile, honor those books. Out upon you, impious assassin! I ask not, where was your mercy, or where your justice; but where has been your sense of common decency, this evening? I shall never cease to lament that I once stood under your roof. My presence was meant as an honor to you; but it has proved a disgrace to myself."

Taking his scarlet cloak, he flung it over his shoulders, and left the hall amid profound silence—a silence which continued after he had quitted the courtyard, and begun to descend from Mount Zion to the labyrinth of streets branching downward to the Tyropæon Valley. In one of these, under a bright moonlight, he met again that same beautiful youth whom he had seen in the morning when he was descending the Mount of Olives.

"Stay!" cried Paulus, suddenly stopping in his own rapid walk. "Said you not, this morning, that he who was called 'John the Baptist' was more than a prophet? Herod has this moment slain him, to please a vile woman. The tyrant has sent the holy prophet out of life."

"Nay; into life," replied the other John; "but, brave and noble Roman—for I see you are both—the Master, who knows all things, and rejoices that John has begun to live, grieves as well."

"Because," replied the other John, "the Master is verily man, no less than He is Who is."

"He is the Christ, whom John the Prophet, now a witness unto death, had announced."

Hereupon the two went their several ways, Paulus muttering: "The second name in the acrostic."

But, really, he had ceased to care for minor coincidences in a huge mass of convergent proofs all gaining possession of his soul, and taking alike his will and his understanding captive—captive to the irresistible truth and the equally irresistible beauty of the message which had come. The immortality of which he was an heir, the reader has seen him long since believing; and long since also rejecting both the pantheism of the philosophers and the polytheism of the vulgar. And here was a great new doctrine authoritatively establishing all that the genius of Dionysius had guessed, and infinitely more; truths awful and mysterious, which offered immediate peace to that stupendous universe that is within a man, while assuring him of power, joy, and honor to begin some day, and nevermore to end.

He had not been in Jerusalem long before he learnt much of the new teaching. He had secured for his mother, close to the Fortress Antonio, where he himself lodged, a small house belonging to a widow who, since her husband's death, had fallen into comparative poverty. The Lady Aglais, attended still by her old freedwoman, Melena, was allowed the best and coolest part of this house entirely to herself, with a staircase of their own leading to the flat roof. There they passed much of[61] their evenings after the sun had set, looking at the thickly-built opposite hills, the mansions on Zion, or down into the Tyropæon from which the hum of a great multitude came, mellowed by the distance, and disposing the mind to contemplation. Many wonderful things, from time to time, they heard of him who was now teaching—things some of which, nay, the greater part of which, as one of the sacred writers expressly declares, never were recorded, and the whole of which could not be contained in the libraries of the world. It may well, then, be imagined in what a situation Paulus and his mother were—having no interest in disbelieving, no chair of Moses to abdicate, no doctorial authority or pharisaic prestige inciting them to impugn the known truth—in what a situation they were, for accepting or declining what was then offered.

After twenty years of separation, a trace of Esther had been recovered by Paulus. One evening, his mother was on the flat roof of her residence awaiting his customary visit, when her son appeared and alarmed her by his pallor. He had seen Esther on foot in a group of women at the Gate of Gennath, going forth into the country, as he was entering the city on horseback. Aglais smiled sadly, saying: "Alas! dear son, is that all? I long since knew that she still lived; but I would not disturb your mind by the useless intelligence."

"Scarcely altered," murmured Paulus abstractedly, "while I am quite old. Yes, she must now be past thirty; yes, near thirty-five."

"As to that," said the mother, "you are thirty-eight, and scarcely seem twenty-nine. Old Rebecca, the mistress of this house, who lives still in the ground-story, as you are aware, has told me much about Esther."

"No," replied Aglais. "She has had innumerable offers (spite of her comparative poverty), and has declined them all."

"Old Josiah Maccabeus is dead," said Aglais. And here mother and son dropped the subject by mutual consent.

The dreadful days, closed by the most awful day the world has known—closed by the ever-memorable and tremendous Friday—came and went. On the Saturday, Paulus met Longinus, who said he had been on Mount Calvary that afternoon, and that he, Longinus, was now and ever henceforth a disciple of him who had been crucified. The Sunday came, and brought with it a prodigious rumor, which, instead of dying out, found additional believers every day. The disciples, most of whom had shown themselves as timid as they were known to be ignorant, now seemed transformed into new characters, who loudly affirmed that their Master had risen from the dead by his own power; and they were ready to face every torment and all terrors calmly in the maintenance of this fact, which they predicted would be received and acknowledged by the whole world. And, indeed, it was no longer a rumor, but a truth, attested by the only witnesses who could by possibility know anything about it, either for or against; and whose earthly interests it would have been to deny it, even while they knew it to be true—witnesses who, if they knew it to be false—and they certainly knew whether it were true or false (this much was granted, and is still granted, by all their opponents)—could have had no motive, either earthly or unearthly, for feigning that they believed it.

So pregnant is this simple reasoning, that a man might ponder it and study it for a whole month, and yet find fresh strength and an ever-increasing weight in the considerations which it suggests; not even find a flaw if he made the one month twelve. Paulus's mind was determined, and so was his mother's. The son sought that same beautiful youth whom he had seen twice before; told him the new desire, the new belief, which had made his mother's and his own heart glad; and by him they were baptized as Christians, disciples of him that had been crucified—by that fair youth, I say, who was to be known for ever among men as "Saint John the Evangelist."

"After all, mother," said Paulus, when they were returning together to her dwelling, "it is not so very mysterious; I mean that difficulty about the lowliness of our divine Teacher's chosen place among men. Because, see you, if the builder of those glorious stars and that sublime firmament was to come at all amongst us, he would be certain to take the lowest and smallest lot, lest we should deem there was any difference as before him. We are all low and small together—the earth itself, I am told, being but a sort of Bethlehem among the stars; but, anyhow, we are but mites and emmets on a blade of grass in his sight, and had he taken a great relative place amidst us, it might countenance the lie and the delusion of our silly pride. That part of it is to me not so mysterious, although I don't wonder at the Jewish notion that their Messiah was to have been a great conquering prince—that is probably what the Antichrist will be. It would suit the blindness of vanity better."

As he spoke the words, they heard a quick footstep behind, and were overtaken by Longinus, who, saying he had just heard of their reception, greeted them with every demonstration of rapturous affection.

"Now," pursued he, walking by their side, "good for evil to Master Paulus's family. Forgive the apparent intrusion, dear general, if I mention that I happen to know the story of your youthful love, as all the world have witnessed your fidelity to an unavailing attachment. But learn from poor Longinus that Esther Maccabeus is now a disciple; and the Christian maiden can wed, under a still holier law, the brave Gentile whom the Jewess was bound to refuse."

With this he turned into an alley under the court of the Gentiles, and disappeared.

CHAPTER XXVI.

One still and sultry evening, the decline of a brooding day in spring, two persons were sitting on the flat roof of a house in Jerusalem. They were the Athenian Lady Aglais and her son, the comparatively youthful Roman General Paulus—he who has so largely figured, even from his gallant boyhood, in the events and affairs we have been recording.

It was the 30th of March, and a Wednesday—the first of all Easter-Wednesdays—the first in that new and perpetual calendar by which, throughout the fairest regions of earth, among all enlightened nations and civilized races, till the crash of doom, time was for evermore to be measured.

A servant, carrying a skin-cask slung over his shoulders, was watering the flowers, faint with thirst; and these, arranged in fanciful vases, which made an artificial garden of the housetop, shook their drooping[63] heads under the fresh and grateful shower, and seemed to answer it with smiles of a thousand blooms and rays. As the man stole softly to and fro about the roof, now approaching the lady and her son, now receding, he seemed, in spite of the foreign language in which they spoke, and in spite of the low and hushed tone they observed, to follow, with intense and breathless though stealthy excitement, the tenor of their conversation; while his figure, in the last evening rays, cast a long, shifting shadow that streaked with black the yellow flood to its farthest limit, climbed the parapet, broke upon its grail-work of balusters, and then was beheaded, for it flung off its head out of sight into empty space, leaving the calm bright air unblotted above the stone guard-wall.

An occurrence took place of which (that Wednesday evening) Paulus and his mother were witnesses—an occurrence in dumb show, the significance of which they were destined, only after several years, to learn; yet the incident was so singular, so strange, so impressive—it was such a picture in such a quarter—that when, long subsequently, the explanation came, they seemed to be still actually assisting in person at the scene which, while they beheld it, they had no means of understanding. We are going, in one moment, to relate that occurrence; and we must here request the reader to grant us his full belief and his confidence when we remark that, in comparison of his amusement, his profit, and that mental gallery of pictures to be his henceforth (which we try to give to all who honor these pages with a perusal), we feel the sincerest contempt for any mere display of scholarship or learning. For this reason, and this reason alone, and certainly from no scantiness, and still less from any lack of authorities, we shall almost disencumber our narrative of references to the ancient writers and recondite documents (such as the Astronomic Formula of Philip Aridæus) which establish as positive historical facts the more striking of the occurrences still to be mentioned. In one instance the intelligent reader will discern that the most sacred of all evidence supports what we have to record. But if we were to show with what nicety of precision much profane, yet respectable and even venerable, testimony accords with the passage here meant in the Acts of the Apostles, and how abundantly such testimony corroborates and supplements the inspired account, this book would cease to be what it aims at being, and would become a historical treatise of the German criticism school.[3]

Satisfied, therefore, with the footnotes below (at which the reader will oblige us by just glancing, and which are appended, in perfect good faith and simple honesty, as implying no more than we could make good), we will avoid boring those who have a right to, and who expect, the conclusion of a straightforward story at our hands.[4]

Paulus and his mother were conversing, as has been described, in Greek, while the serving-man, despite his ignorance of that language, had the air of half-following the drift of what they said, and of catching the main purport of it with wonder and awe. There was, indeed, at that moment, only one topic in all Jerusalem. He who, less than a week ago, had been crucified, and with the time of whose coming (as much as with all the particulars of his life, teaching, works, and death) the old prophecies were found more and more startlingly, circumstantially, unmistakably, the more they were studied, questioned, and canvassed, to agree, point by point, down to what would seem even trivial details (indicated as if merely to emphasize the incommunicable identity of the Messiah)—he had himself stated, distinctly and publicly, that, by his own power, he would rise from the dead in three days; that, in three days after, he should be "lifted up" and be made "a spectacle for men and angels;" in three days after they should have destroyed it, he would rebuild the holy temple of his body. And now these rumors—these minute, these positive accounts—had he, then, really reappeared, according to his word and promise? Was it possible? Was it the fact?

Many had, on the previous Friday night, stated that, of a verity, they had seen their deceased parents and relatives. Again, on the Saturday, many declared, amid awe-stricken groups of listeners, that the unknown land had sent them its visitants, in various places, under various aspects, to startle the guilty city; which, after killing the King's messenger-servants, had just killed the King's Son, who had come, as had been a thousand times announced, in the very fulness, the exact maturity of days, to deliver the final embassy to men.

On that Wednesday evening, there was, in truth, but one theme of conversation, one subject of thought, all through Jerusalem, and already far beyond Jerusalem; among poor and rich, high and low, natives and strangers, the robbers of the Syrian hills and Arabian deserts, the dwellers in the city, the travellers on the roads and at the inns, among Sadducees, Pharisees, Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, and barbarians.

No wonder, then, if the humble serving-man, as he watered the flowers, penetrated the drift of the mother's and the son's discussion. For him and such as he was the message. The poor Syrian had once, for a while, rendered occasional out-door service to the family of Lazarus; and he had known Lazarus in three states—had known him living, dead, again alive. After days of death in that fierce climate, where inanimate flesh putrefies fast, he had beheld Lazarus, at the call of one upon whose lineaments he gazed, at the time, with unconscious adoration, come forth, not merely from death, but from incipient decomposition, back into balmy life—back to the "vita serena."

Now, was he who, in that instance, had allowed it to be perceived and felt that he was really the Lord of life, whom death and rottenness were manifestly unable to disobey—was he himself, as his disciples declared he was, living again among them, since the morning of the last Sunday (the feria prima), according to his own public prediction and distinct promise? Was he not? Was he?

Aglais and Paulus had heard more than one circumstantial account of[65] this, his reappearance, according to that, his promise. By this one and by the other he had been met. They had gazed upon him, spoken to him, heard him in reply, touched him, in such a place, on that bridge, that road, in such a garden. He had walked conversing with them, had sat with them at meat, had broken bread with them, as was his wont, had then vanished.

Where was his body, over which the Pharisees had set their guard of soldiers? Not in the grave. No; but where? Had the Pharisees accounted for it? Could they tell what had become of it? Could the soldiers? The disciples could, and they did.

"Mother," said Paulus, "do you know what those soldiers say? One of them once served in a legion which I commanded. Do you know what they say?"

"You mean," replied Aglais, "about their inability to hinder the abstraction. What?"

"That an act to which they are the only witnesses could not be stopped by them, because of it they were not witnesses, being buried in sleep."

"Consistent," said the Greek lady. "Yes; but a much weightier fact is that expectation of the disciples, to prevent the realization of which the Pharisees set their guard."

"What expectation? And why weightier? What can be weightier?" asked the general.

"That their Master would keep his word, and fulfil his prediction of rising from the tomb on the third day. If they saw him again alive within the promised time, they and the people would worship him as God; but, if the Pharisees could show the body on the third day, or could even account for it, that belief would die."

"Clearly," answered Paulus, "the disciples expected to see him again on and after the third day, waiting for his word to be fulfilled."

"Now, Paulus," pursued Aglais, "suppose this expectation of theirs not fulfilled; suppose that not one of those waiting for his word was conscious of any reason for believing it to have been realized—"

"There is only one possible way in which they could be induced to believe it realized—namely, that he should be seen again alive."

"Quite so," she resumed. "But suppose that he has not been seen; suppose that not one of those who expected to see him again has thus seen him. How would they then feel on this Wednesday morning?"

"They would feel that the expectation which he had solemnly and publicly authorized them to depend upon was idle and vain; they would not and could not by any possibility feel that they had, in this great particular, reason to consider his word to have been kept. They would be discouraged to the very last degree. They would, of course, hide themselves. I would do so myself, and I believe I am no coward. In short, they would feel no reason to hope in his protection, or to expect that his other and still mightier promises concerning their own future eternal life would by him be realized. They would not incur any inconvenience, or brave any danger, or take any trouble, or risk any loss—"

The lady continued in a low tone: "If, expecting, upon his own assurance, that some among them should see him," she asked, "not one of them had seen him, would they, at[66] this moment, have any motive for bringing upon themselves the tortures, insults, shame, and death which he underwent, and all this in order to induce others to believe apparitions and a resurrection which in their own hearts they did not themselves believe, and for believing which they were, moreover, conscious that they possessed no ground, no reason, no pretext?"

"And in order by deliberate circumstantial lying, of an awful and blasphemous kind, to please the God of truth; and to compensate themselves by his protection above, in a future life, for the present and immediate destruction which they are incurring among the Pharisees and the men of power here below!"

Never had she seemed to Paulus so beautiful; but there was a marked change; for, however intellectual had always been the translucent purity of that oval brow, through which, as through a lamp of alabaster, shone the vivid mind within, there was now the mysterious effluence of "that Essence increate" who had come to abide in, and had strangely transfigured the appearance of, the faithful-souled Hebrew maiden. And when Paulus, after she had embraced his mother, abstractedly took her hand, his heart was lifted upward with a species of wonder; and, without adverting to it, he was asking himself to what marvellous kingdom she had become heiress, in what supernal court of everlasting joy and unassailable prerogatives was this beautiful creature destined to live, loving and beloved, adorning almost the glories which she reflected, dispensed, and multiplied, as if from some holy, mysterious, and spiritual mirror.

"O dear Lady Aglais! and O legatus!" she said, with a gesture amazing in its expressiveness and pathetic fervor (she had brought the finger-tips of both hands together under the chin, and then lowered them with the palms outward toward her hearers, and so she stood in an attitude of the utmost grace and dignity combined, like one appealing to the candor and good faith of others)—"O dear friends! I was just now passing through my own garden on my way hither, when, under the fig-tree (where he used to sit poring over the holy books of our people), I beheld my dead father, but standing, and not in his old accustomed wicker-chair; and he gazed upon me with large, earnest eyes; and as he stood, his head almost touched the leaves of that hollow, embowering fig-tree; and he was pale, so extremely pale as he was never during life; and he called me: 'Esther,' he said, and his voice sounded far away. Ah! my God, from what a huge distance it seemed to come! And lo! lady, and thou, legatus, he said these words to me: 'I have been in the vast, dim house, and have seen our Father Abraham; and I have seen our great Lawgiver, and all our prophets, excepting only two, Elias and Enoch; and I asked, Where were they? And in all the dim, vast house none answered me, but the forefinger was pressed to the silent lips of those who there waited. And, suddenly, there was the noise of innumerable armies coming swiftly from afar—but your ears are mortal and your eyes veiled, and were I even permitted to tell you that which shook, beyond this little world, the large world and its eternal thrones, your mind would not at present understand my words. Enough, Esther, that I have been allowed to renew to you, in my own behalf, and that of others among our[67] people who have been called before you to the vast, dim, silent city, the exhortation which our ancestor Judas Maccabeus sent with offerings to the high-priest; namely, that you will pray for our spirits. Our innumerable company has just been thinned; the glorious Judas Maccabeus, our ancestor, and that holy mother of the Maccabees, and almost all who were waiting with me in the dim, vast kingdom of expectation, have gone for ever; and I, and a few, have been commanded to expect yet a little time; until the incense of holy prayer shall have further gone up in the presence of the Great White Throne.'"

Esther paused, her eyes dilated, and stood a moment with the hands again brought together; and so perfect a figure of truthfulness, and such an impersonation of sincerity, she looked, that the Jewish servant, who understood not a word of the tongue in which she addressed the Greek lady and her son, gazed at her; his work suspended, his cask held high in air, with all the marks of one who heard and accepted some sacred and unquestionable revelation.

"I asked the pale image what this meant, that he should term the condition in which he is waiting and has yet to wait a little time—that vast, dim condition—'a house,' 'a city,' and 'a kingdom.' 'The dwellers,' he replied, 'are watched in that kingdom by silent protectors, mighty and beautiful, whose faces, full of a severe, sad love, are the torches and the only light those dwellers ever see; and the vast, dim city has a sunless and a starless sky for its roof, under which they wait; and that sky is the ceiling which echoes the sighs of their pain; and thus to them it has been a kingdom, and a city, and a house; and, until the ninth hour of last Friday, they were numerous as the nations of men!' 'And at the ninth hour of that day, I asked, 'O my father! what occurred when so many departed, and you and a small number were left still to wait?' And he gazed at me for an instant with a wan and wistful look; then, lo! I saw nothing where he had been standing under the fig-tree.

"But it was at the ninth hour of the last Friday the Master had expired by the side of the penitent who was that very day to be with him in paradise!" cried Aglais.

At Esther's arrival, Paulus and Aglais had both risen from a kind of semicircular wicker settle which occupied one of the corners of the roof; and they now, all three, when Esther had finished her strange, brief narrative, leaned silent and musing against the parapet; where, under the shade of a clustering rhododendron, they had a view westward (drawn, as people are who ponder, toward whatever object is most luminous) of the towers and palaces and pinnacles of the Holy City, then reddening in the sunset. One word respecting the spot where the little group was thus collected, and (among modern, and especially western, nations) concerning its peculiar scenic effects.

The roof was an irregular parallelogram, protected on all sides by a low, thick parapet, at two opposite corners of which, in the diagonals, were two doors of masonry, bolted with massive round bars of iron, or left open; thus excluding or admitting communication with the contiguous houses. The writer, many years ago, saw such parapet doors on the house-tops of modern Algiers; nor was the arrangement unknown in the more famous Eastern cities of antiquity, where the roofs glowed with plants[68] in vases. When, on some public occasion, the passages were opened, the richer inhabitants, far above the noise, dust, squalor, sultriness, and comparative darkness of the narrow and noisome streets, could stroll and lounge for miles, in mid-air, among flowers; could cross even flying and embowered bridges (of which a privileged number possessed the keys, like those who have keys to the gardens of our squares); and so Dives, unseen of Lazarus, but seeing far down all things little and supine, could wander through parterres of bloom, and perfumed alleys, and shrubberies of enchantment, with effects of sunlight sprinkled, so to speak, with coolness and with shadows, soothed out of the noonday fierceness into tints various and tender; unsoiled of the stains and pains that stained and pained the poor sordid world below; until the hearts of those who thus promenaded amid circumstances of such delicious refinement and luxury, bearing and hearing news, and exchanging civilities, were "lifted up," and became even like to the heart of Nabuchodonosor the king. Sometimes the pecten-beaten dulcimer, or the fingered lyre of six strings, made long-forgotten airs of music beguile the declining day, and linger for hours longer, ravishing the night under the stars of the Syrian sky. Such the scene.

But none of the roof-doors were open that Wednesday evening. Something ailed the Holy City. Out of the hushed heavens, mysteries and a stern doom were brooding over Jerusalem. Already the fermenting germ of those dreadful factions which were to tear to pieces, with intestine rage, the whole Jewish body, while the city was writhing in the vain death-struggle against Titus, a few years later, had begun to make itself sensible to the observant. A fierce hatred of the Romans and an insane eagerness to re-establish the old Jewish independence had taken possession of certain youthful fanatics; and "possessed" indeed they seemed. On the one side, the Roman officers of the garrison, from Pilate down, had received anonymous warnings, in the wildest style, requiring them to withdraw from Jerusalem within a given time, or they should be all executed in the streets, as opportunity might occur; on the other, the prefect of Syria had been earnestly requested by Pilate to strengthen the garrison; while in the city itself the soldiers were strictly admonished to keep to their quarters, to avoid late hours, and to hold no intercourse when off duty with the inhabitants. Leaves of absence were stopped. A few legionaries had been already murdered in the neighborhood of wine-shops, in the small winding alleys, and in places of evil repute, and no efforts succeeded in identifying the perpetrators.

But these were only the feeble and evanescent symptoms, destined to disappear and reappear, of a political and social phase which was not to become the predominant situation until another situation should have exhausted its first fury. This, the first, was to be the war of the Synagogue against the disciples of the Messiah, whom those disciples went about declaring to have risen from the tomb, according to his distinct promise; whom they went about declaring to have been already seen, and heard, and touched by themselves, again and again.

No wonder, then, if Aglais and Paulus and Esther had discussed in hushed tones and in Greek the wonders and various portents attendant upon the supreme and central fact—that Resurrection of the Master[69] which absorbed their whole hearts and minds, leaving no room for any other interest therein at this tremendous epoch—the grand turning-point of human destinies and of our whole planet's history.

From the parapet against which they were leaning, they now gazed in silence upon the splendid scenes below and opposite. Across a maze of narrow streets they saw the mansions, the pinnacles, the towers, and that great supernal "Temple of God," all so soon to perish violently, in a general, a complete, and an irreversible destruction. They saw the play of light and shadow upon one long tree-lined side of Herod's proud palace; they saw the ripple of quivering leaves reflected upon the white colonnades (and their tessellated, shady floors) of Pilate's fatal house; and, while revolving thoughts and questions of unspeakable importance and solemnity, they all three suddenly beheld an acted picture, a passing scene, voiceless to them, yet impressive, which blent itself into their recollection of other scenes, never to be effaced from the memory of mankind, which, not a week before, had been under those very colonnades enacted.

A woman in the attire of a Roman matron came quickly forth upon the first-story balcony in the house of Pontius Pilate, and, leaning over the rail, waved her hand with an imperative gesture to some one below.

She was followed into the balcony more slowly by a man wearing the grand costume of an ancient Roman military governor, who held in his hand a sealed and folded letter, tied with the usual silk string. The man was evidently Pilate himself. He looked long and gloomily at the letter, and seemed to be plunged in thought. He even let what he carried fall at his feet, and did not appear to be aware of this for some moments. It was the woman who picked up the letter, and gave it back into his hand. Then Pilate leaned over the balustrade, in his turn, and spoke to a man below in military costume, who was mounted on a powerful horse, and seemed to be equipped for travel. The soldier saluted, looking up, when he was addressed, and saluted again when his superior had ceased speaking; whereupon Pilate dropped the letter (a large and heavy dispatch), which the soldier caught and secured under his belt, inside the tunic, or "sagum," immediately afterward riding away at a canter. Our three friends saw Pilate, his head bent and his eyes on the ground, slowly and ponderingly re-enter the house by a screen-door, the same through which he had come out upon the balcony; but the lady, clasping her hands a little in front of her forehead, gazed into the heavens with a face ashy pale, and with eyes from which tears were streaming.

It is a well-known and for centuries universally received tradition, besides being a fact recorded by one most respectable and trustworthy author (who, besides, was not a Christian, but a Jew)—a fact without which the allusions to it in various ancient authorities, together with Phlegon the Chronologer's subsequent recital of Tiberius's extraordinary conduct, would be unintelligible and unaccountable—that Pontius Pilate, harassed by the unappeasable reproaches of his wife, and stung by something within his own bosom which allowed him peace no more, until (sleepless, and unable again, unable for ever, to sleep) he bequeathed, some years afterward, by an awful death, whether intentional or not, his name to a great Alpine hill, a hill not thenceforth named, or to be named, while time and mountains[70] last, by any name but "Pilate's" among distant and then barbarous nations—it is well known, I say, that Pilate sent to Tiberius Cæsar a long and minute relation concerning the life, the death, and the disappearance from the tomb of him whom he had scourged, and whom the Jews had crucified, together with a notice of the supernatural wonders wrought by him; his previous notorious announcement of his own intended resurrection; the directly consequent and equally notorious precautions taken to hinder it; the disappearance, in spite of this, of the body; the testimony of the soldiers that they were witnesses to the abstraction, which they were unable to stop, because they alleged that they were not witnesses of it (being buried in sleep); that, in fact, their testimony proved nothing save the body's disappearance from the massively-sealed tomb (which would have stood a small siege); the failure of the Synagogue to account for the body; the account of it by the disciples; and, finally, the admissions of the Pharisees that all their prophets had become unexplainable if this was not their Messiah, yet that such a conclusion was to them impossible, because he was to have been their king, and a conquering king, and to have founded an empire extending through all nations and tongues; their stern and ever-growing disaffection to the Roman rule; the universal amazement, excitement, and anxiety arising from the circumstance that, while neither the Synagogue nor the soldiers could throw any light upon what had become of the body, the disciples of him who had predicted his own resurrection explained the event openly and fearlessly by stating that they had again and again met him since the previous feria prima; that they cared for no protection except his alone; that the dead was once more among them—living, and henceforth immortal—their Master and God; the ultimate Judge of this world, and the foretold Founder of an everlasting kingdom! Pilate added several strange and astounding particulars.

This, in a general way, is known; and it is likewise known that Tiberius Cæsar was so deeply impressed by the dispatch of the Jerusalem governor, arriving in his hands about the same moment, as we shall find in the next chapter, when a strange incident (narrated by Plutarch) took place, that he suddenly convened the senate in a formal indiction, and proposed to them to raise a temple to Christ, and to rank him solemnly among the gods of the empire! But not such nor of such acknowledgments was to be the kingdom of the "jealous" and the only God.

Aglais, Paulus, and Esther had assisted at a memorable pantomime. They had beheld the mounted soldier who rode with a memorable letter to the sea-coast; they had seen the vain effort of him who had offered the people a choice between Barabbas and "the desired of nations," to call the great of the earth into his perplexities, to quiet his awakened conscience, to turn aside from the dread warnings whispered to his soul, to lull—by futile means—an all too late remorse.

CHAPTER XXVII.

In our last chapter, Paulus and his Athenian mother had obtained, through Esther's recital of her waking dream or vision, one little glimpse at that prison, that place of detention, which she had termed (as she herself had heard it termed) "the dim, vast house," "the vast, dim city," and the "dim, vast kingdom."

The vague notion she could give[71] of that scene of immurement cannot be expected to prove interesting to so large a number, as Mr. Pickwick has cause to feel an interest in his glimpses of the "Fleet Prison," once famous in London. But such interest as the former house of detention commands is of a different kind, and those who may experience it are a different class. Plato (as a great critic observes) has been translated from age to age into some dozen great modern languages, in order that he might be read by about a score of persons in each generation. But that score are the little fountains of the large rivers that bear to the sea the business of the world. Few are directly taught by Kant, Sir William Hamilton, John Stuart Mill, Cousin, or Balmez; but the millions are taught and think through those whom they have taught to think. Between the good and evil originators or conservators of ideas, and the huge masses who do all their mental processes at third hand, stand the interpreters; and these listen with bent heads, while they hold trumpets which are heard at the extremities of the earth.

Paulus lingered in Jerusalem. Weeks flew by. Spring passed into summer; summer was passing into autumn; and still, from time to time, as, in the evenings, mother and son sat among the flowers on the flat roof, Esther would join them.

One night, she had hardly appeared, when Longinus the centurion followed her, bearing a letter for Paulus, which, he said, had just arrived at Fort Antonio, by the hands of an orderly, from the governor. The letter was from Dionysius of Athens, now l'un des quarante, a member of that great Areopagus of which the French Academy is partly a modern image; and it was written immediately after his return from a tour in Egypt, and a cruise through the Ægean Sea, among the famous and beautiful Greek Islands, to resume his duties as a teacher of philosophy and a professor of the higher literature at Athens.

Paulus, after a word with his mother and Esther, desired Longinus to favor them with his company. Sherbets and other refreshments were brought. They all sat down on the semicircular wicker settle at the corner of the roof, under the bower-like branches of the large rhododendron; a small lamp was held for Paulus by the Jewish serving-man, and Paulus read the letter aloud to that sympathetic group. Extracts we will give, in the substance, concerning two occurrences. The first, as the reader sees, the listening circle learned from Dionysius; but we have it in reality from Plutarch, upon whose narrative Eusebius and many other weighty authorities and grave historians have commented.

The captain and owner (for he was both) of the vessel in which Dion sailed back from Egypt to Athens was an Egyptian of the name of Thramnus (some call him Thamus). He said that a very weird thing had happened to him in his immediately previous trip, which had been from Greece to Italy. Dion was at the time at Heliopolis, in Egypt, with his friend, the celebrated philosopher Apollophanes, who, though (like Dion himself) only between twenty and thirty, had already (in this also resembling Dion) obtained an almost world-wide fame for eloquence, astronomical science, and general learning. When Thramnus had neared the Echinades Islands, the wind fell, a sudden calm came, and they had to drop anchor near Paxos. The night was sultry; every one was on deck. Suddenly, from the lonely shore, a loud, strange[72] voice hailed the captain: "Thramnus!" it cried. None answered. Again, louder than human, came the cry, "Thramnus!" Still none answered. For the third time, "Thramnus!" was thundered from the lonely coast. Then Thramnus himself called out: "Who hails? What is it?" Shrill and far louder than before was the voice in reply: "When you reach the Lagoon of Palus, announce then that the Great Pan is dead."

Thereupon, everything became silent, save the sluggish wash of the waves under the vessel's side. A sort of council was at once held on board; and first they took a note of the exact date and the hour. They found that it was exactly the ninth hour of the sixth jeria, or day, in the month of March, in the fourth year (according with Phlegon's corrected and checked astronomical chronology) of the two hundred and second Olympiad: in other words, this, being translated into modern reckoning, means, six in the afternoon of Friday, the 25th of March, in the thirty-third year of our Lord.

Dion breaks off in his letter here to remark: "You will learn presently what happened to me and to Apollophanes, and to the whole renowned city of Heliopolis, at the same hour exactly of that same day; and it is the coincidence between the two occurrences which has fixed them so deeply in my mind."

Well; he proceeds to say that Thramnus, having asked his passengers, who happened to be unusually numerous, whether they considered he ought to obey this mysterious mandate, and having suggested himself that, if, on their reaching Palus, or Pelodes, the wind held fair, they should not lose time by stopping, but if the wind were there to fail, and they were forced to halt at that place, then it might be no harm to pay attention to the injunction, and see what came of it, they were all unanimously of his opinion. Thereupon, as though by some design, in the midst of a calm the breeze sprang up freshly again, and they proceeded on their way. When they came to the indicated spot, all were again on deck, unable to forget the strange incident at Paxos; and, on a sudden, the wind fell, and they were becalmed.

Thramnus, accordingly, after a pause, leaned over the ship's side, and, as loudly as he could, shouted that the great Pan was dead. No sooner had the words been pronounced than all round the vessel were heard a world of sighs issuing from the deep and in the air, with groans, and moanings, and long, wild, bitter wailings innumerable, as though from vast unseen multitudes and a host of creatures plunged in dismay and despair. Those on board were stricken with amazement and terror. When they arrived in Rome, and were recounting the adventures of their voyage, this wild story sent its rumor far and near, and made such an impression that it reached the ears of Tiberius Cæsar, who was then in the capital. He sent for Thramnus and several of the passengers, as Plutarch records for us, particularly one, Epitherses, who afterward, at Athens, with his son Æmilianus, and the traveller Philip, used often to tell the story till his death. Tiberius, after ascertaining the facts, summoned all the learned men who chanced then to be in Rome, and requested their opinion.

Their opinion, which is extant, matters little. The holy fathers who have investigated this occurrence are divided in their views. It must be remembered that Plutarch relates another truly wonderful fact universal in its range, as being notoriously simultaneous with the singular local adventure[73] above described—the sudden silence of Delphi, and all the other famous pagan oracles, from the 8th day before the Kalends of April, in the 202d Olympiad, at six P.M. At that hour, on that day (March 25, Friday, Anno Domini 33), those oracles were stricken dumb, and nevermore returned answers to their votaries. Coupling these phenomena together, in presence of a thousand other portents, the holy fathers think, one party of them, that the enemy of man and of God, and that enemy's legions, were grieving and wailing, at the hour which Plutarch specifies (the time of evening, and on the very day, when our Lord died), at the redemption just then consummated; others, that the Almighty permitted nature "to sigh through all her works," in sympathy with the voluntary sufferings of her expiring Lord.

"Now, hearken," proceeded Dion in his letter, "to how I was occupied, hundreds of miles away, in Heliopolis, at the time, the very hour of the very day, when so wild and weird a response came from the powers of the air and the recesses of the deep to those who shouted forth, amid a calm on the silent breast of the Ægean Sea, that the great Pan ('the great All,' 'the universal Lord,' as you, my friends, are aware it means in Greek) had died!

"I had gone out, shortly before the sixth hour on this sixth day, to take a stroll in the tree-shaded suburbs of Heliopolis, with my friend Apollophanes. Suddenly, the sun, in a horrible manner, withdrew its light so effectually that we saw the stars. It was the time of the Hebrew Pasch, and the season of the month when the moon is at the full, and the period of an eclipse, or of the moon's apparent conjunction with the sun, was well known not to be then; independently of which, two unexampled and unnatural portents, contrary to the laws of the heavenly bodies, occurred: first, the moon entered the sun's disc from the east; secondly, when she had covered the disc and touched the opposite diameter, instead of passing onward, she receded, and resumed her former position in the sky. All the astronomers will tell you that these two facts, and also the time of the eclipse itself, are equally in positive deviation from the otherwise everlasting laws of the sidereal or planetary movements. I felt that either this universal frame was perishing or the Lord and Pilot of nature was himself suffering; and I turned to Apollophanes, and, 'O light of philosophy, glass of science!' I said, 'explain to me what this means.'

"Before answering me, he required that we should together apply the astronomical rule, or formula, of Philip Aridæus; after doing which with the utmost care, he said: 'These changes are supernatural; there is some stupendous revolution or catastrophe occurring in divine affairs, affecting the whole of the Supreme Being's creation.'

"You may be sure, my friends, that we both took a careful note of the hour, the day, the week, month, year; and I intend to inquire everywhere whether in other lands any similar phenomena have appeared; and what overwhelming, unexampled event can have taken place on this little planet of ours to bring the heavens themselves into confusion, and coerce all the powers of nature into so awful a manifestation of sympathy or of horror."

He ended by conveying to Aglais and Paulus the loving remembrance of the Lady Damarais.

Aglais and her son and Esther were spell-bound with amazement[74] when this letter had been read; and Paulus exclaimed:

"What will Dion say when he hears that we also saw this very darkness at the same moment; that the veil of the Temple here has been rent in twain; and that he who expired amid these and so many other portents, Esther, and in the full culmination of the prophecies, is again living, speaking, acting, the Conqueror of death, as he was the Lord of life?"

"Let us go to Athens; let us bring our friends, the Lady Damarais and our dear Dion, to learn and understand what we have ourselves been mercifully taught."

So spoke Aglais, offering at the same time to Esther a mother's protection and love along the journey. Paulus was silent, but gazed pleadingly at Esther.

It was agreed. But in the political dangers of that reign, Paulus, owing to his fame itself, had to take so many precautions that much time was unavoidably lost.

Meanwhile, he had again asked the Jewish maiden to become his wife. Need we say that this time his suit was successful? Paulus and Esther were married.

Christianity in the interim grew from month to month and from year to year, and our wanderers had but just arrived at last in Athens in time to hear, near the statue of "the unknown God," while Damarais, the friend of Aglais, and Dion, the friend of them all, stood near, a majestic stranger, a Roman citizen, him who had sat at the feet of Gamaliel, the glorious Apostle of the Gentiles, who had been "faithful to the heavenly Vision," though he had not seen the Resurrection, explain to the Athenians "him whom they had ignorantly worshipped." And when the sublime messenger of glad tidings related the circumstances of the Passion, the scenes which had been enacted in Pilate's house (so well remembered by them), the next day's dread event, and when he touched upon the preternatural accompaniments of that final catastrophe, and described the darkness which had overspread the earth from the sixth hour of that day, Dionysius, turning pale, drew out the tablets which he carried habitually, examined the date of which, at Heliopolis, he and Apollophanes had jointly made note, and showed symptoms of an emotion such as he had never before experienced.

He and Damarais, as is well known, were among the converts of Saint Paul on that great occasion. How our other characters felt we need not describe.

Yielding to the entreaties of their beloved Dionysius, they actually loitered in Greece for a few years, during which Christianity had outstripped them and penetrated to Rome, where it was soon welcomed with fire and sword, and where "the blood of martyrs became the seed of Christians." Esther shuddered as she heard names dear to her in the murmured accounts of dreadful torments.

Resuming their westward course, how Paulus rejoiced that he had in time sold everything in Italy, and was armed with opulence in the midst of new and strange trials! They gave Italy a wide offing, and passing round by the south of Germany, with an armed escort which Thellus (who had also become a Christian, and had, while they were in Greece, sent for Prudentia) commanded, they never ceased their travels till they reached the banks of the Seine; and there, undiscernible to the vision of Roman tyranny in the distance, they obtained, by means of the treasures they[75] had brought, hundreds of stout Gaulish hands to do their bidding, and soon founded a peaceful home amid a happy colony. Hence they sent letters to Agatha and Paterculus.

Two arrivals from the realms of civilization waked into excitement the peaceful tenor of their days. Paulus himself, hearing of the death of Paterculus, ventured quickly back to Italy, in the horrible, short reign of Caligula, and fetched his sister Agatha, now a widow, to live with them. Later still, they were surprised to behold arrive among them one whom they had often mourned as lost to them for ever. It was Dionysius. He came to found Christianity in Gaul, and settled, amidst the friends of his youth, on the banks of the Seine. Often they reverted, with a clear light, to the favorite themes of their boyhood; and often the principal personages who throughout this story have, we hope, interested the reader, gathered around that same Dionysius (who is, indeed, the St. Denis of France), and listened, near the place where Notre Dame now towers, to the first Bishop of Paris, correcting the theories which he had propounded to the Areopagus of Athens as the last of the great Greek philosophers.[5]

One other arrival greeted, indeed, the expatriated but happy settlement. Longinus found his way among them; and as the proud ideas of a social system upon which they had turned their back no longer tyrannized over Aglais or Paulus, the brave man, biding his time and watching opportunities, found no insurmountable obstacles in obtaining a fair reward for twenty years and more of patient and unalterable love. He and Agatha were married.

EUROPE'S FUTURE.

To be able to form a correct judgment regarding the future of Europe, there are several points and theories which must be previously considered. First on the list comes—

I.
THE RACE THEORY.

"The key to the success of the Prussian arms in the contest with France is found in the decadence of the Latin and the virility of the German race. The Latin peoples are corrupt; their star is waning; their moral vigor is gone; while the German nations are still young and fresh. German culture, German ideas, German muscle and energy, are taking the place of the decrepit French civilization. The German victories are but the outward expression of this historical process. We are on the threshold of a new epoch in the history of civilization—of a new period which we can appropriately call the German era." Such is the theory which now possesses the German mind, and is expressed in the newspapers, pamphlets, on the railroads, and in the inns all through Germany, with great national self-complacency. Even many Sclavonians and Italians adopt this view. The conquest of the Latin by the Germanic races; the downfall of the former; the world-wide sovereignty of the latter—these are high-sounding phrases which have a dramatic effect and are popular in Germany. But do they express a truth? Are they philosophically and historically correct in view of the actual condition of political and social life? In the first place, what and where are the Latin races about which we have been hearing so much during the past ten years? The southern inhabitants of the Italian peninsula can lay no claim to Latin origin; for it is well known that they were anciently Greek colonies, which have since intermarried with Romans, Spaniards, and Normans. The Lombards of the north of Italy are mostly of Celtic and not of Latin origin, since they inhabit the ancient Gallia Cisalpina. The old Iberians of Spain were not Latins; and they are now mixed with Gothic, Moorish, Celtic, and Basque blood. As for France, its very name imports that the Latins gave a very small contingent towards forming a nation which is certainly of Celtic and German origin, and many of whose provinces are purely of German race, as Alsace and Lorraine. Where, then, shall we find the Latin races?

There are none properly so-called. Looking at the origin of languages, we may, indeed, speak of Latin, or, rather, of Roman nations. In this regard, we may class the Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese, and French together, on account of the Roman element prevailing in their tongues, in opposition to the Scalavonic-German, the Celtic-Anglo-Saxon-Danish-Norman forming the world-wide English, the Scandinavian, and the pure Sclavonic families. Does this[77] theory mean that nations of the same tongue should all be politically and socially united, flourish for a period, and then perish together? Understood in this way, the race theory would have few defenders. It may be true that nations, like individuals, must live a definite period—rise, flourish, and decay. It is true, historically, that every nation has an era of prosperity and an era of decadence. But when we come to the question of universal sovereignty, we may ask, When did the Roman nations ever exercise it? Each of them has had its golden age of literature, art, science, and material prosperity; but none of them has had, for any length of time, the sovereignty of Europe. Not Italy, for instance, unless we go back to the days of old Rome, and then we have not an Italian but a specifically Roman supremacy. Not Spain, for although she exercised great power beyond the ocean, and for a time possessed a preponderating influence in Europe, from the reign of Charles V. to the first successor of Philip II., yet who could call the accidental union of so many crowns on the head of a Hapsburg prince a universal sovereignty for Spain? Lastly, France had her age of glory during the reign of Louis XIV., whose influence, or that of the Napoleonic era, cannot be denied. Yet what gaps separate the reign of the great King from that of the great Emperor! Great as was France under Louis XIV. and Bonaparte, she fell to the second rank of nations during the Restoration and under the July dynasty. As leader in the Revolutionary movement, she has always controlled Europe, even in her periods of political weakness, from the days of the encyclopædists to the present time. Even Germany acknowledges the sway of French literature, politeness, and taste. Victorious Berlin copies the fashions and manners of conquered France, as ancient Rome, after conquering Athens, became the slave of Athenian civilization.

Germany, too, must have already passed the period of her maturity, according to the race theory; for, under the Saxon Othos, under the Hohenstaufens, and Charles V., until the Thirty Years' War broke the strength of the empire, she was superior even to France. Does not German genius in its peculiar walks rule the world now? German science, German music? Does not England, usually considered as belonging to the German race, rule the commerce of the world? And was not her political influence on the Continent until recently all-powerful?

No! political sovereignty can be explained by no race theory. From the fall of the first Napoleon until 1848, England with the powers of the "Holy Alliance," or rather with Austria and Russia, held the first place in European politics. From the beginning of 1848 until the Crimean war, England and Russia were in the foreground; after that war it was France and England; now it is Prussia. These are but examples of the political fluctuations which follow each other in continual change, and are seldom of long duration.

And do not the champions of the German race theory see that there is a laughing heir behind them in the Sclavonic supremacy? Once admitting the race theory, we must confess that the Panslavist argues well when he says: "The Roman nations are dead; the German are on the point of dying. They once conquered the world; their present effort is the last flicker of the expiring light which points out the road to us. After them comes our race, with fresh vigor[78] on the world's scene. Europe's future is Panslavism."

The whole theory is radically false. There are no more primitive races to take the place of the old ones. The Germans are as old as the Romans; or, rather, the Romans were simply Germans civilized before their brethren. Russia alone is young in Europe, but she has nothing new to give us; and physical force, without a new social or moral system accompanying it to establish a conquest, never prevails long. We cannot, therefore, judge of Europe's future by this theory of races.

II.
LIBERALISM.

One would have thought that the sanguinary war of 1870 should have dispelled the illusions of liberalism for ever. By liberalism, we mean that party which believes in the principles of 1789, whose ideal is to have the middle classes, or bourgeoisie, the ruling power, to have society equally divided, to have an atheistical state, and to obtain eternal peace through unlimited material progress, which would identify the interests of nations. Liberalism, rationalism, and materialism are different names for the same system. A state without God, sovereignty of capital, dissolution of society into individuals, united by no other bond than the force of a liberal parliament majority under the control of wealth; material prosperity of the middle classes, founded on gain and pleasure, with the removal of all historical traditions, all ecclesiastical precepts—such is the dream of this "shopkeepers' system." Has not the present war dispelled the dream of happiness arising from mere material prosperity? We doubt it. Notwithstanding the many hard lessons which the liberal school has received since the days of Mirabeau and the Girondins, from the lawyers of the July dynasty to Ollivier, it never seems to grow wiser. It is superficial, never looks into the essence of things. It is in vain to charge the present misfortunes of two great nations on the illiberalism of Napoleon and Bismarck, and thus exalt the merits of liberalism; for liberalism or mere material prosperity was at the bottom of all their plans. From 1789 to 1870, France, with few exceptions, was governed by liberalism; and the revolutions begat the natural consequences of this system in anarchy and military despotism. France during this period has made the most wonderful material progress.

We read lately in a liberal journal that the only remedy for the rejuvenation of states was "the inviolability of the individual, and respect for the popular will." Always the same emptiness of phraseology with these impracticable dabblers in philosophy. What will you do if the infallible "popular will" refuses to recognize the inviolability of individuals? Cannot these gentlemen see that their system merely opens the door for socialism? They take away religion, and teach the epicurean theory of enjoyment; they destroy constitutional forms of government, and base authority on the ever-shifting popular whim. Socialism comes after them, and says, "You say there is no God, and I must have pleasure. I have counted myself, and find that I am the majority; therefore, I make a law against capital and property. You must be satisfied, for you are my teacher, and I merely follow out your principles to their logical consequences."

III.
SOCIALISM.

A new era is dawning. Not a mere political period, but a complete social change, for the actual order of things is disorder, a compound of injustice and abuses. We must have fraternity and equality. Away with the nobles; away with the wealthy classes; away with property; all things must be in common. The happiness of Europe will never be realized until socialism reigns supreme. Such is the socialistic theory. But does not every one see that its realization is impossible, and brings us back to barbarism? The right of property is essential to society. It is contrary to nature to expect that mankind will give up this right to please a whim of drones—a system according to which the lazy and indolent would have as much right to property as the industrious and hard-working. If all is to be common property, who will work, who will strive to acquire, whose ambition will be aroused, whose interest excited for the attainment of something in which he will have no right or title? And in fact, both liberals and socialists use words which they do not mean; they are far more despotic when they get power than those whom they are continually attacking. At the Berne Congress of 1868, a socialist orator said: "We cannot admit that each man shall choose his own faith; man has not the right to choose error; liberty of conscience is our weapon, but not one of our principles!" By error he meant Christianity. In fact, ultra-radicalism is simply ultra-despotism. Men blamed the despotism of Napoleon III.; but look at the despotism of Gambetta, and remember the despotism of Robespierre and the "Reign of Terror." Destroy religion, and you have nothing left but egotism. Man becomes to his brother-man either a wolf or a fox.

Socialism may indeed have its day in Europe's future. The logic of liberalism leads to it; but it will be a fearful day of disorder and revolution; a sad day for the wealthier classes; but still only a day. Earthquakes are possible, and sometimes they engulf cities; but they pass away, and quiet returns. New vegetation springs up on the ruins. If socialism ever gains Europe, it will vanish in virtue of the reductio ad absurdum; therefore its mastery can never be permanent.

IV.
THE INTERNATIONAL POLICY OF EUROPEAN STATES SINCE 1789.

Since neither the race theory, nor liberalism, nor socialism, can enable us to solve the problem of Europe's future, let us pass to other considerations, glance rapidly over the past, study the present external and internal condition of the continent, in order to be able to form a judgment on the subject which we are discussing.

The French Revolution of 1789 had its effects all over Europe. In France since that date, liberalism, anarchy, and Byzantinism have held alternate sway. The Bonaparte invasions carried through the rest of Europe the liberal principle of secularization with the Code Napoléon. The writings of the philosophers and encyclopædists, and Josephism, had prepared the way. The reaction of 1815 was based on Masonic theories of philanthropism and religious indifferentism. The Emperor Alexander and the Holy Alliance were infected with these views. The revolutionary movement[80] in Germany, Italy, and Spain has since been simply against office-holders and the police. The influence of religion has been ignored. Palmerston was the coryphæus of the liberals, and during his time English diplomacy played into the hands of all the irreligious and revolutionary elements in Europe. This unprincipled system was finally represented by Napoleon III., in whose diplomacy the theory of "non-intervention," of "nationalities," of "sovereignty of the people," were put forward as the types of the perfection of modern society. In point of fact, they are mere words used as a cloak to cover up Macchiavellism.

The "balance of power" theory, of purely material import, ruled in 1815, but it soon gave way before the influences of the "liberal" doctrines of humanitarianism and the race system. Religious convictions and Christian institutions were ignored in politics, and a system of police substituted in their place. Greece received its king in consequence of this system which has prevailed in the external relations of Europe since 1830. In 1848, the revolutions and insurrections in Europe were merely premature appearances of the socialistic element in liberalism. Napoleon III., by his Macchiavellian policy, which Guizot has happily termed "moderation in evil-doing," coerced them. He gave all the sanction of French power to the principles of the liberal school which he was supposed to represent. On the principle of "non-intervention," he prevented the interference of Austria and Spain in favor of the Holy See. He protected the seizure of Naples and Sicily; approved the invasion of the Papal States, and substituted, in the place of dynastic right and popular right, the colossal delusion of the plébiscite. On the nationality theory, he allowed Austrian power to be destroyed, and founded, in opposition to all French interests, Italian and German unity.

Although very defective since it ignored the full claims of religion, still there was a fixed public law in Europe from 1815 to 1859. Respect for the minor powers; the sentiment of the solidarity of thrones against the efforts of Carbonarism and the cosmopolitan revolutionary party; and regard for treaties, characterize that period. The traditions of the people were respected; and treaties repressed avarice or ambition; and there was real peace in Europe—the peace of order, according to the beautiful expression of St. Augustine. It is true, far-seeing minds saw the threatening cloud on the horizon of the future, and knew that the system of 1815 did not rest on the right foundations. Still, even mere external forms are a protection.

But since 1859 law or treaties no longer seem to bind. There seems to be nothing fixed in the public law of Europe. All is whim; might instead of right, sentiment instead of principle. Powers can no longer unite, for they cannot trust each other. Instead of all being united to protect the individual state, now all are hostile to each other. Italy insists on unification in spite of law and right, and to gain her purpose depends to-day on Prussia; yesterday, it was on France. She hates Austria, and Austria acts as if she did not perceive the hatred, and will not interfere lest she might offend the liberals. Vienna is in dread of Berlin and St. Petersburg; St. Petersburg is in dread of Berlin. England looks jealously at Russia, who, meanwhile, is arming in grim silence, and with occasional manifestations of her old predilections. France counts now for nothing. Prussia, which fifteen years[81] ago was allowed merely by the favor of Austria to sit in the congress of the great powers, is now the only great military power in Europe. We say military, for it is not the real, the hidden power. As in the Greek mythology grim, inexorable fate ruled above all the gods, so the head lodge of the secret societies makes of the Prussian leaders its blind tools; Italy obeys it; Napoleon was its slave; Austria, its sacrifice; and now Prussia also must bend the knee. Such is Europe ten years after the Franco-Austrian war: the Europe of Metternich, Nesselrode, and Wellington.

V.
THE INTERNAL POLICY OF THE EUROPEAN STATES SINCE 1789.

The revolution has changed the internal policy of states as well as their external relations. Forty years ago, Donoso Cortes remarked that England was endeavoring to introduce its constitution into the Continent; and that the Continent would try to introduce its different governmental systems into England. We are now witnesses of the truth of this observation. Democratic ideas are gaining ground in Great Britain; and bureaucracy, with its centralizing tendencies, is replacing the English theory of self-government. Military conscriptions, along with universal suffrage, will come next. Owing to the extension of the franchise, the House of Commons is losing its aristocratic character, and the House of Lords its influence. England will go the way of France.

We see what the liberal system begotten of the revolution has caused in France. An enervated, un-self-reliant, disunited generation, without traditions, organization, consistency, faith, or true patriotism, is its result. The decrees of the Code Napoléon concerning inheritances have broken up families; the departmental system has destroyed the provincial peculiarities in which lies the people's strength; the system of common lodging-houses for the laboring classes has destroyed respect for authority, and afforded ready material for the purposes of despotism or secret societies.

In Italy and Spain, we see the same spectacle. The French, led into Italy by the first Napoleon, brought thither the principle of centralization and a revolutionary code. After Napoleon's downfall, the restored princes allowed too much of his system to remain. This arose from a want of judgment. The ancient municipalities were destroyed, even to some extent in the States of the Church; Piedmont receiving most of the poison, and thus becoming the hearth of the revolution. Constitutionalism, anarchy, and military governments in Spain prove the working of revolutionary doctrines. The old freedom of that Catholic country, the growth of centuries, gives way before a nominal liberty, but a real despotism.

In Germany, too, centralization carries the day. This country had the good fortune to be composed of several independent states, without any great central power, and the provincial spirit consequently remained strong. But now two un-German words, "unification" and "uniformity," expressing un-German tendencies, are carrying the Germans into despotism. Germany will be Prussianized, and Prussia Germanized, say the unificators; but all will, in the end, be compelled to give way before the republicans and socialists. The high schools of Germany are all infected with the revolutionary doctrines and Masonic ideas.

What shall we say of Austria?[82] Thanks to "liberalism," it has disappeared, and is now a dualism in its government and tri-parliamentary in its system.

The licentiousness of the press helps to destroy everything stable in governments. Journals without principle, honor, or religion, filled with scandals, edited by adventurers, whose only object is to make money and serve faithfully their owners, issue their thousands of copies daily to corrupt the public mind. Evil spreads more rapidly than good, and consequently the influence of the religious press is weak compared to that of the revolutionary papers, subsidized by the agents of secret societies or by the unprincipled men of wealth, who readily purchase the aid of corrupted minds to help on their ambition.

VI.
THE POSITION OF THE CHURCH UNDER THE LIBERAL SYSTEM.

Governments have therefore ceased to be Christian, and have become "liberal," that is, infidel. According to liberalism, religion is the private affair of each individual. Civil society should recognize no dogma, no worship, no God. We know well that this principle, from its very intrinsic absurdity, cannot be practically carried out. For instance, God will be recognized when it is necessary to swear fidelity to a constitution, and the external forms of religion will be invoked at the opening of a new railroad or a session of parliament. But in principle the liberal state ignores all positive religious belief. Its only dogma is that a law passed by a majority of voters remains a law until the next majority abrogates it. This system is called "separation of church and state," or "a free church in a free state." Then follow broken concordats—in France and Bavaria, broken by organic articles; in Baden, Piedmont, Austria, and Spain, destroyed by the will of the prince and cabinet ministers. Then follows a usurped educational system, in which the rights of the family and church are disregarded. In all of these states, more or less, there is a public persecution of the church; a repression of her rights; enthrallment of her ministers; invasion of her privileges. God is in heaven, consequently the church should confine herself to the sanctuary; that is to say, God does not trouble himself about the conduct of nations, politics, legislation, or science. These are all neutral affairs, over which his authority does not extend, and therefore the church has nothing to do with public life. So say the liberals. They take from God and give it to Cæsar, the modern civil divinity, all that is his, except one thing which it is impossible for them to take from him, and that is conscience. They endeavor to estrange conscience from God more and more by education, by the press, and by public opinion manufactured by the leaders of the secret societies. Hence all the talk about "liberty of conscience." For the same end, they talk of toleration, but they mean simply indifference, which hence becomes the shibboleth of the party which the church unceasingly opposes.

This is, in a few words, the actual condition of the church in European society. It is an unnatural condition. Even Macchiavelli says: "Princes and republics which would remain sound must, before all things, guard the ceremonies of religion and keep them ever in honor. Therefore, there is no surer sign of the decay of a state than when it sees the worship of[83] the Most High disregarded." Macchiavelli spoke from the lessons of experience and as a mere utilitarian. Our modern utilitarian politicians have not his capacity or penetration. They are mere superficial observers of fact, and cannot see that the summum utile is the summum jus. This fault lies in ignoring the assistance of the supernatural order—in their erroneous opinion that there is no absolute truth. The church is not a hospital for diseased souls; Christianity is not a mere specific for individual maladies; but as our Lord has taught us to pray, "Thy kingdom come ... on earth as it is in heaven," so must revealed truth pervade the earth; percolate through civil society, not merely in its individual members, but in all its natural relations, family, municipal, and state. This is what the church has taught Europe, and only by conforming with this teaching can Europe stand. Since Christianity came into the world, the Christian state is the normal condition of political governments, and not an ideal impossible of realization. Undoubtedly, human weakness will always cause many aberrations from the rule. But the question is not regarding this point, but as to the recognition of the rule. The sin against the Holy Ghost is the most grievous of all sins. Our Lord, always so mild and forbearing toward human passions, is unflinchingly stern against malicious resistance to truth, and this has been precisely the great evil of our time ever since 1789. In the early ages, individuals and nations fell into many errors, but they never touched the sacred principles of religion. Liberalism and Freemasonry have caused the denial of truth itself.

"Must we, then, fall back into the darkness of the middle ages?" Such a question, while it shows little knowledge of the middle ages, exhibits likewise a spirit of unfairness in discussion. For our purpose, it suffices to show the latter. What would we think of a man who, on being told that our faith should be childlike, should say to the priest, "Must I, then, become a child again?" Plainly, we would say to him: Good friend, you talk nonsense; for you know well that you cannot get again your infant body, nor blot out the knowledge and experience acquired in a life of thirty years. But was not the sun the same four years ago as it is now? Do not two and two make four now as long ago? Did you not eat and drink when you were a child as you do now? Some things are always true in all places and times; and therefore we do not want to bring you back into the middle ages merely because we want to give the church that position which God has assigned to her.

"Then you want to saddle a theocracy on the back of the nineteenth century?" Let us understand each other. In a certain sense, a theocracy must be the aim of every rational being. God has appointed two orders to govern men: they are church and state, neither of which must absorb the other. Theocracy is not a government of priests, as those imagine who have before their eyes the Hindoo civil systems. Let us for a moment forget these catchwords, "middle ages" and "theocracy," and go to the marrow of the subject.

The church is the guide of consciences; not the arbitrary teacher of men, but the interpreter of revelation for them. St. Thomas likens the office of the Vicar of Christ to that of the flag-ship of a fleet, which the other vessels, that is, the secular governments must follow on the open sea in order to reach the common haven of safety. Each vessel has its own sails[84] moves in its own way, and is managed by its own mariners. The church never interferes in the appropriate sphere of the secular power. But she warns; she advises; she corrects all civil authority when it deviates from the truth and opposes the revealed order. Her authority over the state is not direct, but indirect; she teaches, but she cannot coerce; she must teach, for political and social questions necessarily have relations with dogmatic and moral subjects. The church must condemn wrongs, no matter by whom perpetrated, whether by states or individuals. This is all the theocratic power the church claims. A Christian state will respectfully hear her warning voice, and thus avoid the danger; while a pagan state shuts its ears, despises the church's admonitions, and plunges into the abyss.

Modern paganism in civil governments has brought Europe into her present miserable condition. Can she get out of it, or is European society hopelessly lost?

VII.
EUROPE'S FUTURE.

The Franco-Prussian war of 1870 is one of the most important events in the history of Europe. The prostration of France is no indication that she will never rise again, for in 1807 Prussia was in a worse condition than France is now. In 1815, and until the past few years, Prussia was last in the list of the great powers, though now she is the first. France, then, in a few years may rise again to her full power. There are no more fresh, uncivilized races to come into Europe to take the place of those which are now said to be decaying. We have shown that liberalism has reached its acme, been found wanting, and is dying. Its efforts in Italy, Spain, Germany, Vienna, and Pesth are but the last convulsions of an expiring system. The natural child of liberalism—socialism—must also disappear before the common sense of mankind. What remains? Will there be in Europe the alternate anarchy and despotism of the Central American republics without any end? Must we despair of Europe's future? No, a thousand times no! We look to the future with hope and consolation.

Common sense and religion will win the day; Christianity has still the regenerating power which she showed in civilizing the barbarians. Christianity has been the principle of national life since the Redeemer established it as a world religion. The spiritual life must be renovated by truth and morality. Christianity is both. We Christians hope, therefore, for the conversion of the popular mind; we begin even now to perceive signs of regeneration, renovation, renewed energy, and vigor in mental convictions and civic virtues.

God's punishments are proofs of his mercy. He chastises to convert. The first punishment of France, in 1789, was not enough to teach her to repent. Louis XVIII. came to the throne a free-thinker instead of a Christian. The prostrate armies of Metz and Sedan are the result of corrupting and enervating infidelity. God chastises ambition and pride in nations as well as in individuals. The Republic has shown itself incapable, because it possessed neither honor, principle, nor religion. The victories of Prussia are a blessing of God for France. The Prussian army is but the instrument which God has used to punish a culprit nation—a revolutionary, irreligious, and frivolous system of government. Victorious Germany,[85] too, will be taught to reflect when it sees the blood of its thousands of slaughtered sons, and the miseries which the war has entailed on its once happy families. Wars teach unruly nations to reflect. Will the present war suffice to humble Europe, and cause her to reflect? We know not; but God will send other chastisements if this one avails nothing. Dark clouds are already rising in the East, which may soon burst over Austria and Germany. The rod of God's anger will be felt by Austria again, for her lessons of 1859 and 1866 have been forgotten. They have only made her throw herself more fondly into the arms of the devil. In Italy, the secret societies will yet avenge on the house of Savoy the blood of the defenders of the Vicar of Christ.

But the German empire has been re-established under a Prussian emperor. Yes, but this is only an episode in the actual crisis of the world. A Protestant emperor of Germany is entirely different from a German emperor. The old German emperors represented the idea of the Christian monarchy; the Protestant emperor in Berlin represents modern Cæsarism. His empire cannot last long, for history tells us that empires of sudden and accidental growth lose rapidly the power which they as rapidly acquired. But is not Prussia's triumph the triumph of Protestantism in Europe? Such a question is easily answered: Protestantism as a positive religion no longer exists in Prussia or elsewhere; and Protestantism as a negation exists everywhere, perhaps more in some Catholic lands than in Prussia. On the battle-fields of Wörth and Gravelotte, the Catholic Church was not represented by France, and Lutheranism by Prussia. Catholic Bavarians, Westphalians, and Rhinelanders fought for Prussia, and would be astounded to hear that they were fighting for heresy. Priests and Sisters of Charity accompanied them to battle. Who, on the other hand, would call the Turcos Catholics? Or the French officers, who never heard Mass, and who curtailed the number of Catholic chaplains to the minimum? Were the French soldiers, who drilled on Sundays instead of going to church, on whose barracks, in some cases, was written, "No admission for policemen, dogs, or priests"—were they the Catholic champions? No; the Christian soldier in France first appeared, in this war, with Charette and Cathelineau in the Loire army, demoralized and destroyed, however, by the mad-cap radical, Gambetta, and his infidel associates. In fact, the Prussian army was more Catholic than the French. The latter must be won back to religion from the enervating influences of Freemasonry and Voltairianism before it can regain its prestige. The only hope for France is in her zealous clergy, in the vigor of the old Catholic provinces, and in her humiliations, which ought to bring repentance.

The rustling of Catholic renovation is heard all over Europe. The rising generation will bring Italy back to the church. The spirit of the Tyrol and of Westphalia is spreading through Germany. The Ultramontanes in Saxony, Bohemia, Steyermark, show the energy of this renovation. The peasantry of Austria and of a large portion of Germany are still uncorrupted. Hungary is steadfast in the faith. The seizure of Rome by the Sardinian robbers has roused the Catholic heart of the world and helped on the cause of regeneration. Where the Catholic faith was supposed to be crushed, lo! it has raised its head defiantly.

The deceived nations want peace,[86] freedom, order, and authority. These blessings infidelity and liberalism have taken away. The people are beginning to see that the old yet ever young Apostolic Church alone can guarantee them. They will turn to Rome, where lives the Vicar of Him who said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life;" to Rome freed again from the barbarians; to Rome become Roman again when it has ceased to be Sardinian; to Rome will the people look for peace and order. It is Rome that tells men that Christ is Lord of the world; that he conquers; that he governs. The social dominion of Christ will again be established. We shall see again Christian states founded on Christian principles and traditions, with Christian laws and rulers. Whether these rulers will be kings or presidents we know not; but they will in either case consider themselves as mere delegates of Jesus Christ, and of his people, not as Byzantine despots or representatives of mob tyranny. They will understand that statesmanship does not consist in giving license to the wicked [6] and forging chains for the good. We shall have Christian schools, Christian universities, Christian statesmen. Ye liberals in name, well may ye grow pale! The future of the world belongs to the principles of the Syllabus, and this future is not far off. We conclude with the words of Count de Maistre: "In the year 1789, the rights of man were proclaimed; in the year 1889, man will proclaim the rights of God!"

BISHOP TIMON.[7]

We hope the day may come before many years when historians will see in the records of the struggles, misfortunes, and triumphs of the church a theme for the employment of brilliant pens as tempting as they now find in the clash of armies and the intrigues of statesmen. Scholars have devoted to our records the patient investigation of years; the general history of the church has been summarized for popular reading in most of the principal modern languages; and for the use of theologians and students there are elaborate and costly collections. Individual biographies of saints and preachers innumerable have been written for the edification of the devout. Sketches of local church history, more or less complete, have occasionally appeared—sketches, for instance, like The Catholic Church in the United States, by De Courcy and Shea; Shea's History of the Catholic Missions among the Indian tribes of America, and Bishop Bayley's little volume on the history of the church in New York. But a work of a different kind, broader in its design than some of these excellent and useful publications, more limited in scope than the dry and [87]costly general histories, still awaits the hand of a polished and enthusiastic man of letters. Why should not the same eloquence and learning be devoted to the religious history of the great countries of the globe that Macaulay, and Motley, and Froude have expended upon the political revolutions of states and the intricate dramas of diplomacy? Why should not some glowing pen do for the pioneers of the cross what Prescott did for the pioneers of Spanish conquest in the new hemisphere? Properly told, the church history of almost any country of the world, of almost any period in Christian times, would be a narrative not only of religious significance, but of thrilling interest. No men ever passed through more extraordinary adventures, considered even from a human point of view, than the missionaries who penetrated into unknown lands or first went among unbelieving nations. No contest between hostile kingdoms or rival dynasties ever offered a more tempting theme for dramatic narrative and glowing description than the contest which has raged for eighteen centuries and a half, between the powers of light and the powers of darkness, in all the different quarters of the civilized world. Think what a brilliant writer might make of such a subject as the church history of Germany! Think what has yet to be done for the churches of England and Ireland and France, when the coming historian rescues their chronicles from the dusty archives of state and the gloom of monastic libraries, and causes the old stories to glow with a new light, such as Gibbon threw upon the records of the declining empire!

We doubt not the literary alchemist will come in time, and melt down the dull metals in his crucible, and pour out from it the shining compound which shall possess a popular value a hundredfold beyond that of the untransmuted materials. Nowhere, perhaps, will the labor be more amply repaid than in America. Nowhere will the collection of materials be less arduous and the result more brilliant. Our church history begins just when that of Europe is most perplexing, and to an investigator with time, patience, and a moderate revenue at his command, it offers no appalling difficulties. In a great part of America, the introduction of the Catholic religion is an event within the memory of men still living. The pioneers of many of the states are still at work. The first missionaries of some of the most important sees are but just passing to their reward. There are no monumental slanders upon our history to be removed; no Protestant writers have seriously encumbered the field with misrepresentations. Industrious students of our own faith have already prepared the way; scattered chapters have been written with more or less literary skill; the store-houses of information have been discovered and partly explored; and every year the facilities for the historian are multiplied. And certainly the theme is rich in romantic interest and variety. From the time of the monks and friars who came over with the first discoverers of the country down to the present year of our Lord, when missionaries are perilling their lives among the Indians of the great West, and priests are fighting for the faith against the cultivated Protestants of the Atlantic cities, the Catholic history of the United States has been a series of bold adventures, startling incidents, and contests of the most dramatic character. In the whole story there is not a really dull chapter. The Catholic annals of America abound also with that variety which the historian needs to render[88] his pages really attractive; and among the great men who would naturally be the central figures of such a work, there is the widest difference of character, the most picturesque divergence of pursuits and personal peculiarities. Group together the most distinguished of the Christian heroes who have illustrated our chronicles, and you have what an artist might call a wonderfully rich variety of coloring. There are the simple-minded, enthusiastic Spanish Franciscans, following the armies of Cortez and Pizarro, and exploring the strange realms of the Aztecs and the Incas. There is the French Jesuit, building up his Christian empire among the Indians of the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes. There is the gentle Marquette, floating in his bark canoe down the mighty river with whose discovery his name will ever be associated, and breathing his last in the midst of the primeval wilderness. There are Jogues and Brebœuf, suffering unheard-of torments among the Iroquois; Cheverus, the polished and fascinating cardinal, winning the affection of the New England Puritans; England, conciliating the Huguenots and Anglicans of the South. The saintly Bruté, most amiable of scholars, most devout of savans, is a quaint but beautiful character around whom cluster some of our most touching associations. Bishop Dubois, the "Little Bonaparte" of the Mountain; Gallitzin, the Russian prince who hid the lustre of his rank among the log-cabins of the Alleghanies; Hughes, the great fighting archbishop, swinging his battle-axe over the heads of the parsons; De Smet, the mild-mannered but indomitable missionary of the Rocky Mountains—these are specimens of our leaders whose place in history has yet to be described by the true literary artist. Several have been made the subject of special biographies, but none have yet appeared in their true light as the central figures of an American church history.

The book which suggests these remarks is a contribution of materials for the future historian, and as such we give it a cordial welcome. Mr. Deuther, it is true, is not a practised writer, and is not entirely at his ease in the use of our language. But he has shown great industry in the collection of facts, and has rescued from oblivion many interesting particulars of the early career of Bishop Timon in a part of the United States whose missionary history is very imperfectly known. Thus he has rendered an important service to Catholic literature, and earned full forgiveness for the literary offences which impair the value of his book as a biography. The episcopacy of the estimable man whose life is here told was not an especially eventful one, and except in one instance attracted comparatively little public notice. The most conspicuous men, however, are not always the most useful. Bishop Timon had a great work to perform in the organization and settlement of his new diocese, and he did it none the less efficiently because he labored quietly. The best known incident of his official life—the lamentable contest with the trustees of the Church of St. Louis in Buffalo—is not one which Catholics can take any satisfaction in recalling; but it had a serious bearing upon the future of the American Church, and its lessons even now may be reviewed with profit. Bishop Kenrick in Philadelphia, Bishop Hughes in New York, and Bishop Timon in Buffalo have between them the honor, if not of destroying a system which had done the church incalculable injury, at least of extracting its evil principle. Mr. Deuther gives the history of this[89] warfare at considerable length, and with an affluence of documents which, though not very entertaining to read, will be found convenient some time or another for reference. We presume that most people will be interested rather in the earlier chapters of the biography, and to these we shall consequently give our principal attention.

John Timon was of American birth but Irish parentage. His father, James, emigrated from the county Cavan in the latter part of 1796 or the beginning of 1797, and settled at Conewago,[8] in Adams County, Pennsylvania, where, in a rude log-house, the subject of this biography was born on the 12th of February, 1797, the second of a family of ten children. The father and mother seem to have been remarkably devout people, and from an anecdote related by Mr. Deuther we can fancy that the lavish beneficence which characterized the bishop was an hereditary virtue in the family. Mr. James Timon called, one day, upon a priest whom he had known in Ireland, and, taking it for granted that the reverend gentleman must be in want of money, he slipped into his hand at parting a $100 bill, and hurried away. The priest, supposing Mr. Timon had made a mistake, ran after him, and overtook him in the street. "My dear friend," said the generous Irishman, "it was no mistake. I intended it for you." "But," said the clergyman, "I assure you I am not in want; I do not need it." "Never mind; there are many who do. If you have no use for the money yourself, give it to the poor." The Timon family removed to Baltimore in 1802, and there John received his school education, such as it was. As soon as he was old enough, he became a clerk in a dry-goods shop kept by his father; and Mr. Deuther prints a very foolish story to the effect that he was so much liked by everybody that by the time he was nineteen "he had become a toast for all aged mothers with marriageable daughters," and had refused "many eligible and grand offers of marriage," which we take the liberty of doubting. From Baltimore the family removed, in 1818, to Louisville, and thence in the following spring to St. Louis. Here prosperity at last rewarded Mr. Timon's industry, and he accumulated a considerable fortune, only to lose it, however, in the commercial crisis of 1823. In the midst of these pecuniary misfortunes, John Timon suffered a still heavier loss in the death of a young lady to whom he was engaged to be married. Mr. Deuther's apology for mentioning this incident—which he strangely characterizes as an "undeveloped frivolity" in the life of a bishop of the church—is entirely superfluous; he would have been a faithless biographer if he had not mentioned it. We may look upon it as a manifestation of the kindness of divine Providence, which called the young man to a higher and more useful life, and designed first to break off his attachment to all the things of this world. He heard and obeyed the call, and, in the month of April, 1823, became a student of the Lazarists at their preparatory seminary of St. Mary's of the Barrens, in Perry County, Missouri, about eighty miles below St. Louis.

The Lazarists, or Priests of the Mission, had been introduced into the United States only six years before, and their institutions, founded, with great difficulty, in the midst of a poor and scattered population, were still struggling with debt and discouragement. The little establishment at the Barrens[90] was for many years in a pitiable condition of destitution. When Mr. Timon entered as a candidate not only for the priesthood, but for admission to the congregation, it was governed by the Rev. Joseph Rosati, who became, a year later, the first Bishop of St. Louis. The buildings consisted of a few log-houses. The largest of them, a one-story cabin, contained in one corner the theological department, in another the schools of philosophy and general literature, in a third the tailor's shop, and in the fourth the shoemaker's. The refectory was a detached log-house; and, in very bad weather, the seminarians often went to bed supperless rather than make the journey thither in search of their very scanty fare. It was no uncommon thing for them, of a winter's morning, to rise from their mattresses, spread upon the floor, and find over their blankets a covering of snow which had drifted through the crevices of the logs. The system upon which the seminary was supported was the same that prevails at Mount St. Mary's. For three hours in the day the students of divinity were expected to teach in the secular college connected with the seminary, and for out-of-door exercise they cut fuel and worked on the farm. Mr. Timon, in spite of these labors, made such rapid progress in his studies that, in 1824, he was ordained sub-deacon, and began to accompany his superiors occasionally in their missionary excursions.

They lived in the midst of spiritual destitution. The French pioneers of the Western country had planted the faith at St. Louis and some other prominent points, but they had left few or no traces in the vast tracts of territory surrounding the earlier settlements, and to most of the country people the Roman Catholic Church was no better than a sort of aggravated pagan imposture. Protestant preachers used to show themselves at the very doors of the churches and challenge the priests to come out and be confuted. Wherever the Lazarists travelled, they were looked at with the most intense curiosity. Very few of the settlers had ever seen a priest before. The Catholics, scattered here and there, had generally been deprived, for years, of Mass and the sacraments, and their children were growing up utterly ignorant of religion. Mr. Timon was accustomed to make a regular missionary circuit of fifteen or twenty miles around the Barrens in company with Father Odin, afterward Archbishop of New Orleans. The duty of the sub-deacon was to preach, catechise, and instruct. Sometimes they had no other shelter than the woods, and no other food than wild berries. At a settlement called Apple Creek, they made a chapel out of a large pig-pen, cleaning it out with their own hands, building an altar, and so decorating the poor little place with fresh boughs that it became the wonder of the neighborhood. In 1824, Messrs. Odin and Timon made a long missionary tour on horseback. Mr. Deuther says they went to "New Madrid, Texas," and thence as far as "the Port of Arkansas." New Madrid, of course, is in Missouri, and the Port of Arkansas undoubtedly means Arkansas Post, in the State of Arkansas, which could not very well be reached by the way of Texas. Along the route they travelled—where they had to swim rivers, flounder through morasses, and sleep in the swamps—no priest had been seen for more than thirty-five years. Their zeal, intelligence, graceful and impassioned speech, and modest manners, seem to have made a great impression on the settlers. They had the satisfaction of disarming much prejudice,[91] receiving some converts, and administering the sacraments; and, after an interesting visit to an Indian tribe on the Arkansas River, they returned to the Barrens. About this time (in 1825), Mr. Timon was promoted to the priesthood and appointed a professor at the seminary. His missionary labors were now greatly increased. Mr. Deuther tells some interesting anecdotes of his tours, which curiously illustrate the state of religion at that time in the West. One day, Father Timon was summoned to Jackson, Missouri, to visit a murderer under sentence of death. With some difficulty he got admission to the jail, but a crowd of men, led by a Baptist minister named Green, who was also editor of the village newspaper, entered with him. The prisoner was found lying on a heap of straw and chained to a post. The hostile mob refused to leave the priest alone with him; but, in spite of their interference, Father Timon succeeded in touching the man's heart and preparing him for the sacraments. While they were repeating the Apostles' Creed together, the minister pushed forward and exclaimed, "Do not make the poor man lose his soul by teaching him the commandments of men!" and this interruption was followed by a violent invective against Romish corruptions.

"Mr. Green," said the priest, "not long ago, I refuted all these charges before a public meeting in the court-house of this village, and challenged anybody who could answer me to stand forth and do so. You were present, but you made no answer. Surely this is no time for you to interfere—when I am preparing a man for death!"

Mr. Green's only reply was a challenge to a public controversy next day, which Father Timon immediately accepted. The minister then insisted upon making a rancorous polemical prayer, in the course of which he said: "O God of mercy! save this man from the fangs of Antichrist, who now seeks to teach him idolatry and the vain traditions of men."

"Gentlemen," exclaimed the priest to the crowd which now filled the dungeon, "is it right that, in a prayer to the God of charity and truth, this man should introduce a calumny against the majority of Christians?"

How far the extraordinary discussion might have gone it would be hard to guess, had not the sheriff turned everybody out and locked the jail for the night. The next morning, the debate took place according to agreement, the district judge being appointed moderator. After about three or four hours' speaking, Mr. Green gave up the battle and withdrew. Father Timon kept on for an hour and a half longer, and the result is said to have been a great Catholic revival in the community. The prisoner, who had steadily refused to accept the ministrations of any but a Catholic clergyman, was baptized immediately after the debate.

On another occasion, Father Timon carried on a debate with a Protestant clergyman—apparently a Methodist—in the court-house at Perryville. The Methodist was easily worsted, but there was soon to be a conference meeting some eighteen miles off, and there he felt sure the priest would meet his match.

Father Timon refused to go under these circumstances; but, learning afterward that a rumor was in circulation that he had pledged himself to be on the ground, he changed his mind, and reached the scene of the[92] meeting—which was in the open air—just after one of the preachers had finished a discourse on Transubstantiation and the Real Presence. "There is a Romish priest present," this orator had said, "and, if he dares to come forward, the error of his ways will be pointed out to him." So Father Timon mounted a stump, and announced that in a quarter of an hour he would begin a discourse on the Real Presence. This was more than the ministers had bargained for. They had been confident he would not attend. They surrounded him, in considerable excitement, and declared that he should not preach. Father Timon appealed to the people, and they decided that he should be heard. He borrowed a Bible from one of his adversaries, and with the aid of numerous texts explained and supported the Catholic doctrine. The discussion was long and earnest. The preachers at last were silenced, and Father Timon continued for some time to exhort the crowd and urge them to return to the true church. Which was, to say the least, a curious termination for a Methodist conference meeting.

One of the most serious difficulties which the pioneer missionaries had to encounter was the want of opportunities of private converse with people whose hearts had been stirred by the first motions of divine grace. The log-dwellings of the settlers rarely contained more than one room, and that often held a pretty large family. Many anecdotes are told of confessions made among the cornstalks in the garden, or under the shadow of the forest, or on horseback in the lonely roads. On one occasion Father Timon had been summoned a long distance to visit a dying man. The cabin consisted of a single room. When all was over, the wife of the dead man knelt beside the body and made her confession, the rest of the family and the neighbors, meanwhile, standing out-doors in the rain. Then the widow was baptized into the church, and, as the storm was violent and the hour past midnight, Father Timon slept on the bed with the corpse, while the rest of the company disposed themselves on the floor.

Ten years had been passed in labors of this kind, when, in 1835, letters arrived from Paris, erecting the American mission of the Lazarists into a province, and appointing Father Timon visitor. He accepted the charge with great reluctance and only after long hesitation. It was indeed a heavy burden. The affairs of the congregation were far from prosperous. The institution at the Barrens was deeply in debt. The revenues were uncertain. The relations between the seminary and the bishop were not entirely harmonious. Several priests had left the community, and were serving parishes without the permission of their superiors. To restore discipline would be an invidious task on many accounts. But, having undertaken the office, Father Timon did not shrink. He saved the college and seminary from threatened extinction; he brought back his truant brethren; he revived the spirit of zeal and self-sacrifice; he restored harmony; he greatly improved the finances. In a short time, he made a visit to France, and returned with a small supply of money and a company of priests. On Christmas Eve, in 1838, he sailed for Galveston, in order to make a report to the Holy See upon the condition of religion in the republic of Texas. He found the country in a sad state of spiritual destitution. The only priests were two Mexicans at San Antonio, who lived in open concubinage. There were no churches. There were[93] no sacraments. Even marriage was a rite about which the settlers were not over-particular. Father Timon did what little he could, on a hurried tour, to remedy these evils; but a year or two later he came back as prefect apostolic, accompanied by M. Odin, and now he was able to introduce great reforms. Congregations were collected, churches begun in all the largest settlements, and the scandals at San Antonio abated. Firm in correction, but gracious in manner, untiring in labors, insensible to fear, making long journeys with a single companion through dangerous Indian countries, struggling through swamps, swimming broad rivers—the prefect and his assistant, M. Odin, travelled, foot-sore, hungry, and in rags, through this rude wilderness, and wherever they passed they planted the good seed and made ready the soil for the husbandmen who were to come after them. In the principal towns and settlements they were invariably received with honor. The court-houses or other public rooms were placed at their disposal for religious services, and the educated Protestant inhabitants took pains to meet them socially and learn from them something about the faith. We find in the account of these tours no trace of the acrimonious polemical discussions which used to enliven the labors of the missionaries at the Barrens. There was little or no controversy, and the priests were invited to explain religious truth rather over the dinner-table than on the rostrum. At the request of Mr. Timon, M. Odin was soon afterward appointed vicar apostolic of Texas, and sent to continue the work thus happily begun.

It was in 1847 that Mr. Timon was removed from the Western field and consecrated first Bishop of Buffalo. When he had disposed all his affairs and made ready for his departure, his worldly goods consisted of a small trunk about half-full of scanty clothing. He had to borrow money enough to pay his way to New York. But meanwhile some friends, having heard of his poverty, replenished his wardrobe, and made up a purse of $400 for his immediate needs. He was consecrated in the cathedral of New York by Bishops Hughes, Walsh, and McCloskey, on the 17th of October, and reached Buffalo five days afterward. It was evening when he arrived. An immense crowd of people—it is said as many as 10,000—were in waiting for him at the railway station. There were bands of music, banners, and flambeaux, a four-horse carriage for the bishop, and a long torchlight procession to escort him home. It is reported—but the biographer gives the story with some reserve—that, after the cortége had gone some distance, the humble bishop was discovered, valise in hand, trudging afoot through the rain and mud, behind the coach in which he was supposed to be riding. In after-times he must have sadly compared the cordial greeting of his flock on this night with the trials, the insults, the persecutions, which he had to bear from some of the very same people during almost the whole of his episcopate. We shall not enlarge upon the history of these sad years. The scandals which arose from the factious and schismatical spirit of the trustees of the Church of St. Louis in Buffalo are too recent to have been forgotten by our readers. The troubles began while Bishop Timon was still a humble missionary in Missouri. They had been quelled by the firmness of Bishop Hughes, but they broke out again very soon after the creation of the new diocese, and Bishop Timon suffered from them to the end of his life. Having no cathedral and no[94] house, he lodged when he first arrived with the pastor of St. Louis's, but he had been there only a few weeks when the trustees, in their mad jealousy of possible invasion of their imaginary rights, requested him to find a home somewhere else. This brutal behavior was the beginning of a long warfare. Those who may care about studying it will find the necessary documents in Mr. Deuther's book. Let us rather devote the short space remaining at our disposal to a description of some of the charming traits of character of the holy man who crowned a life of incessant labor with an old age of suffering. From the moment of his elevation to the episcopal dignity, the sacred simplicity of his disposition seems to have daily increased. If the anecdote of his behavior at the torchlight reception is not true, it is at any rate consistent with his character. Bishop Hughes declared that the Bishop of Buffalo was the humblest man he had ever known. Though he was very neat and precise in everything relating to the service of the sanctuary, rags of any kind seemed to him "good enough for the old bishop," and it was only by stealth, so to speak, that his friends could keep his wardrobe tolerably well supplied. In his visits to the seminary it was his delight to talk familiarly with the young men. At the orphan asylum the children used to ride on his back. Visiting strange churches, he would kneel in the confessional like any other penitent. In his private and official intercourse with his clergy, it was not unusual for him to beg pardon with the utmost humility for fancied acts of injustice. On one occasion he had slightly rebuked a priest for some irregularity. Satisfied afterward that the rebuke had not been deserved, he invited the priest to dinner, placed him at the head of the table, treated him with marked distinction, and afterward, taking him to his own room, in the presence of another bishop, threw himself upon his knees and begged to be forgiven. In the course of a visitation to a disturbed parish, a member of the congregation he was addressing publicly spat in the bishop's face. He took no notice of the occurrence, but went on with his remarks. "Never shall I forget," wrote the late distinguished Jesuit, Father Smarius, "the days of the missions for the laity and of the retreats for the clergy which I had the pleasure to conduct in the cathedral of Buffalo during the three or four years previous to his holy demise. The first to rise in the morning and to ring the bell for meditation and for prayer, he would totter from door to door along the corridors of the episcopal residence, with a lighted candle in his hand, to see whether all had responded to the call of the bell and betaken themselves to the spot marked out for the performance of that sacred and wholesome duty.... And then, that more than fatherly heart, that forgiving kindness to repentant sinners, even such as had again and again deservedly incurred his displeasure and the penalties of ecclesiastical censures or excommunications. 'Father,' he would say, 'I leave this case in your hands. I give you all power, only save his soul.' And then, that simple, child-like humility, which seemed wounded by even the performance of acts which the excellence and dignity of the episcopacy naturally force from its subjects and inferiors. How often have I seen him fall on his aged knees, face to face with one or other of my clerical brethren, who had fallen on theirs to[95] receive his saintly blessing!" He took great pains to cultivate the virtue of humility in his clergy. A proud priest he had little hope for. To those who complained of the hardships of the mission, he would answer, "Why did you become a priest? It was to suffer, to be persecuted, according to the example laid down by our Lord Jesus Christ." In the strictness with which he tried to watch over the spiritual welfare of his clergy, and changed their positions when he thought the good of their souls required it, his rule was like that of the superior of a monastery rather than the head of a diocese. He was filled to a remarkable decree with the spirit of prayer. He began no labor, decided no question, without long and fervent supplication for the divine assistance. On occasions of festivity or ceremony, he loved to steal away to the quiet of the sanctuary, and under the shadow of a column in the cathedral to pass long hours in meditation. In travelling he was often seen kneeling in his seat in the cars. His household was always ordered like a religious community. The day began and ended with prayer and meditation in common. The bishop rose at five, and in the evening retired early to his room—not to sleep, but to pass most of the night in devotion, study, and writing. Up to the very close of his life he used to set out in the depth of winter to visit distant parishes unannounced, starting from the house before any one else was awake, and trudging painfully through the snow with his bag in his hand. Religious communities, when they assembled for morning devotions, were often surprised to find the bishop on his knees waiting for them. By these sudden visits he was sometimes enabled to correct irregularities, which he never suffered to pass unrebuked; but he used to say that in dealing with others he would rather be too lax than too severe, as he hoped to be judged mercifully by Almighty God.

Mr. Deuther, in attempting to show that the bishop had to conquer a naturally quick temper, has created an impression, we fear, that this saintly man was irascible if not violent in his disposition. It is most earnestly to be hoped that no one will conceive such an utterly wrong idea. Mr. Deuther himself corrects his own unguarded language, and it is only necessary to read the book carefully to see that he does not mean what at first glance he seems not to say, but to imply. Nobody who knew Bishop Timon will hesitate to call him one of the kindest and most amiable of men; whatever faults he may have had, nobody will think of mentioning a hot temper as one of them. The sweetness of his disposition was in correspondence with the tenderness of his heart. The patience with which he bore the sorrows of his episcopate was equalled by the keenness with which he felt them. Toward the close of his life several anonymous communications, accusing him of cruelty, avarice, injustice, and many other faults—of cruelty, this man whose heart was as soft as a woman's—of avarice, this charitable soul, who gave away everything he had, and left himself at times not even a change of linen—of injustice, this bishop who pardoned every one but himself—were sent him in the form of printed circulars. So deeply was he wounded that his biographer is assured that the incident hastened his death; he never was the same man afterward. At the end of the next diocesan synod he knelt before his priests, and, in a voice broken by tears, asked pardon of every one present[96] whom he might have in any manner treated unjustly. He died on the 16th of April, 1867, after a rapid but gradual decay whose termination he himself was the first to foresee, and his last hours were as beautiful and inspiring as his years of holy labor.

GUALBERTO'S VICTORY.

OUR LADY OF LOURDES.

PART SIXTH.
I.

The enemies of "superstition" had lost a good deal of ground in their desperate struggle against the events which for the last ten or twelve weeks had scandalized their distressed philosophy. As it had become impossible to deny the existence of the fountain whose pure streams were flowing before the eyes of the amazed people, so it was becoming impossible to continue denying the reality of the cures which were being worked, continually and in many places, by the use of this mysterious water.

At first the incredulous had shrugged their shoulders at the report of these cures, taking the simple course of denying them out-and-out, and refusing to make any examination. Then some skilful persons had invented several false miracles, to enjoy an easy triumph in refuting them. But they had very soon been confounded by the multiplicity of these wonderful cures, of which a few have been mentioned. The facts were evident. They became so numerous and so striking that it was necessary, however painful it might be, either to acknowledge their miraculous nature or find some natural explanation for them.

The free-thinkers, then, understood that, unless they were willing either to surrender or to deny in the face of complete evidence, it was absolutely necessary to take up some new line of tactics.

The most intelligent of the clique, indeed, saw that things had already gone too far, and perceived the grave error which they had committed at the outset in denying prematurely and without examination facts which had afterward become patent and perfectly well established, such as the appearance of the fountain, and the cures of a great number of many who were notoriously incurable by natural means, and who were now to be seen going about the streets of the town in perfect health. What made the mistake worse and almost irreparable was that these unfortunate denials of the most well-attested events were authentically and officially recorded in all the newspapers of the department.

II.

The greater part of the cures effected by the Massabielle water had a character of rapidity, nay, even of instantaneousness, which clearly showed the immediate action of sovereign power. There were some, however, which did not present this evidently supernatural appearance, being accomplished after baths or draughts repeated a few or many times, and in a slow and gradual manner—resembling somewhat in their mode the ordinary course of natural cures, though in reality different.

In a village called Gez, near Lourdes, a little child of seven years had been the subject of one of these cures, of a mixed character, which, according to one's natural inclination, might be attributed to a special grace of God or to the unaided forces of[99] nature. This child, named Lasbareilles, had been born entirely deformed, with a double curvature of the back and breast-bone. His thin and almost withered legs were useless from their extreme weakness; the poor little boy had never been able to walk, but was always either sitting or lying down. When he had to move, his mother carried him in her arms. Sometimes, indeed, the child, resting on the edge of the table or helped by his mother's hand, could manage to keep himself up and to take a few steps; but it was at the cost of violent efforts and immense fatigue. The physician of the place had professed himself unable to cure him; and the disease being organic, no remedy had ever been resorted to.

The parents of this unfortunate child, having heard of the miracles of Lourdes, had procured some of the water from the grotto; and in the course of a fortnight had applied it on three different occasions to the body of the little fellow without obtaining any effect. But their faith was not discouraged on that account; if hope was banished from the world, it would still remain in the hearts of mothers. A fourth application was made on Holy Thursday, the first of April, 1858. That day the child took several steps without assistance.

The bathings from that time became more and more efficacious, and the health of the patient gradually improved. After three or four weeks, he became strong enough to walk almost as well as other people. We say "almost," for there was still in his gait a certain awkwardness, which seemed like a reminiscence of his original infirmity. The thinness of his legs had slowly disappeared together with their weakness, and the deformity of his chest was almost entirely gone. All the people of the village of Gez, knowing his previous condition, said that it was a miracle. Were they right or wrong? Whatever our own opinion may be, there is certainly much to be said on both sides of the question.

Another child, Denys Bouchet, of the town of Lamarque, in the canton of Ossun, had also been cured of a general paralysis in very much the same way. A young man of twenty-seven years, Jean Louis Amaré, who was subject to epileptic fits, had been completely though gradually cured of his terrible malady solely by the use of the water of Massabielle.

III.

If we were not acquainted with the wonderfully varied forms which supernatural cures have assumed since the Christian era, we might perhaps be inclined to believe that Providence had thus disposed things at this moment to cause proud human philosophy to catch itself in its own nets, and to destroy itself with its own hands. But let us not think that there was in this case such a snare on the part of God. He lies in ambush for no one. But truth in its normal and regular developments, the logic of which is unknown to human philosophy, is of itself an eternal snare for error.

However this may be, the savants and physicians of the country hastened to find in these various cures, the cause of which was doubtful, though their reality and progressive nature were well ascertained, an admirable opportunity and an excellent pretext to effect that change of base which the increasing evidence of facts made absolutely necessary.

Ceasing, therefore, to ascribe these cures to such a commonplace cause as imagination, they loudly attributed them to the natural virtues which this remarkable water, which had been discovered by the merest chance, undoubtedly possessed. To give this explanation was of course equivalent to recognizing the cures.

Let the reader recall the beginning of this story, when a little shepherdess, going out to gather some dead wood, claimed to have seen a shining apparition. Let him remember the sneers of the great men of Lourdes, the shrugging of shoulders at the club, the supreme contempt with which these strong-minded individuals received this childish nonsense; what progress the supernatural had made; and how much incredulity, science, and philosophy had lost, since the first events which had so suddenly occurred at the lonely grotto on the banks of the Gave.

The miraculous had, if we may use such an expression, taken the offensive. Free thought, lately so proud and confident in its attacks, was now pursued by facts and obliged to defend itself.

The representatives of philosophy and science were none the less positive, however, and showed as much disdain as ever for the popular superstition.

"Well, be it so," said they, affecting a tone of good humor and the air of good faith. "We acknowledge that the water of the grotto cures certain maladies. What can be more simple? What need is there of having recourse to miracles, supernatural graces, and divine intervention to explain effects similar to, if not even exactly the same as, those of the thousand springs which, from Vichy or Baden-Baden to Luchon, act with such efficacy on the human system? The Massabielle water has merely some very powerful mineral qualities, like those which are found in the springs of Barèges or Cauterets, a little higher up in the mountains. The grotto of Lourdes has no connection with religion, but comes within the province of medical science."

A letter, which we take at random from our documents, presents better than we could the attitude of the savants of the neighborhood regarding the wonders worked by the Massabielle water. This letter, written by an eminent physician of that region, Dr. Lary, who had no faith whatever in the miraculous explanations of the cures, was addressed by him to a member of the faculty:

This explanation, once admitted and considered as certain in advance, the doctors were less unwilling to accept the cures worked by the water of the grotto; and from this period they set to work to generalize their thesis, and to apply it almost without any distinction to all cases, even to those which were marked by the most amazing rapidity, which could by no means be ascribed to the ordinary action of mineral waters. The learned personages of the place got out of this difficulty by attributing to the water of the grotto extremely powerful properties, such as had been previously unknown. It mattered little that they discarded all the laws of nature in their theories, provided that heaven got no profit thence. They willingly admitted the preternatural in order to get rid of the supernatural.

There were among the faithful some perverse and troublesome persons, who by impertinent remarks interfered with the profound conclusions of the scientific coterie.

"How," they said, "is it that this mineral spring, so extraordinarily powerful that it works instantaneous cures, was found by Bernadette when in a state of ecstasy, and came after her accounts of certain celestial visions, and apparently in support of them? How did it happen that the fountain sprang out precisely at the moment when Bernadette believed herself to hear a heavenly voice telling her to drink and bathe? And how is it that this fountain, which appeared suddenly under the eyes of all the people in such very unusual circumstances, yields not ordinary water, but a water which, as you yourselves acknowledge, has already cured so many sick persons whose cases had been abandoned as hopeless, and who have used it without medical advice, and merely in the spirit of religious faith?"

These objections, repeated under many different forms, provoked the free-thinkers, philosophers, and savants exceedingly. They tried to evade them by answers which were really so poor and miserable that they ought, one would think, to have hardly presented a good appearance even in their authors' eyes; but then, to find any others was no doubt very difficult.

"Why not?" said they. "Coffee was discovered by a goat. A shepherd found by chance the waters of Luchon. It was also by accident that the ruins of Pompeii were brought to light by the pickaxe of a laborer. Why should we be so much surprised that this little girl, while amusing herself by digging in the ground during her hallucination, should have come upon a spring, and that the water of this spring should be mineral and alkaline? That she imagined at the moment that the Blessed Virgin was before her, and that she heard a voice directing her to the fountain, is merely a coincidence, entirely accidental, but of which superstition tries to make a miracle. On this occasion, as on the others, chance has done everything, and has been the real discoverer."

The faithful were not, however, moved by this sort of argument. They had the bad taste to think that to explain everything by accidental coincidence was to do violence to reason under the pretext of defending it. This irritated the free-thinkers, who, though acknowledging at last the reality of the cures, deplored more than ever the religious and supernatural character which the common people insisted upon giving to these strange events; and, as was natural under the circumstances, they were inclined to resort to force to stop the popular movement. "If these waters are mineral," they began to say, "they belong to the state or to the municipality; people should not use them except by the advice of a doctor; and an establishment for baths should be built at the spot, not a chapel."

The science of Lourdes, forced to assent to the facts in this case, had arrived at the state of mind just described when the measures of the prefect, relative to the objects deposited in the grotto, and the attempt to imprison Bernadette under the pretext of insanity, were announced—this attempt, as we have seen, having been defeated by the unexpected intervention of the curé, M. Peyramale.

IV.

A certain and official basis for all these theses of the desperate adherents of the medical theory was still a desideratum. M. Massy had already bethought himself of asking such a basis from one of the most wonderful and indubitable sciences of the age—namely, that of chemistry. With this view, he had applied, through the mayor of Lourdes, to a chemist of some distinction in the department—M. Latour de Trie.

To show, not in detail by the examination of each special case, but once for all, that these cures which were rising up as formidable objections were naturally explained by the chemical constitution of the new spring, seemed to him a masterstroke; and he considered that, in accomplishing it, he would lay science and philosophy under obligation, not to mention also the administration, represented by the minister, M. Rouland.

Seeing that it was impossible to have Bernadette arrested as insane, he urged the analysis, which was to show officially the mineral and healing qualities of the water. It was becoming imperatively necessary to get rid of the intrusive supernatural power which, after having produced the fountain, was now curing the sick people, and threatening to pass all bounds. Though its abominable influence should continue strong in many quarters, a really official analysis might be of great service.

The chemist of the prefecture, therefore, set to work to make this precious investigation of the water from Massabielle, and, with a good conscience, if not with perfect science, he found at the bottom of his crucibles a solution perfectly agreeing with the explanations of the doctors, the reasonings of the philosophers, and the desires of the prefect. But was truth also as well satisfied with it as the prefecture, the philosophers, and the faculty? At first, perhaps, this question was not proposed, but it lay in store for a future occasion. But, not to consider this for the present, let us see what was this analysis which M. Latour de Trie, chemist of the administration, addressed officially, on the 6th of May, to the mayor of Lourdes, and which the latter immediately forwarded to the Baron Massy:

The civil order is not so well disciplined as the military, and, through misunderstanding, false steps are occasionally taken in it. The prefect, in the multitude of his avocations, had omitted to give his orders to the editors of the official newspaper of the department, the Ere Impériale, so that, while the chemist of the prefecture said white, its journalist said black; while the former was recognizing in the spring at Lourdes one of the future medical and mineral treasures of the Pyrenees, the latter was calling it dirty water, and joking about the cures which had been obtained.

"It is needless to say," he wrote on the precise day on which M. Latour de Trie sent in his report—that is, on the 6th of May—"that the famous grotto turns out miracles in abundance, and that our department is inundated with them. At every corner you will meet with people who tell you of a thousand cures obtained by the use of some dirty water.

"The doctors will soon have nothing to do, and the rheumatic and consumptive people will have disappeared from the department," etc.

Notwithstanding these discrepancies, which might have been avoided, it must be acknowledged that Baron Massy was, on the whole, attentive to his business. On the 4th of May, at about noon, he had delivered his address to the mayors of the canton of Lourdes, and given his orders. On the 4th of May, in the evening, the grotto had been stripped of the offerings and ex-votos. On the morning of the 5th, he had ascertained the impossibility of having Bernadette arrested, and had abandoned this measure. On the 6th, in the evening, he received the analysis of his chemist. Fortified with this important document, he waited the course of events.

What was about to take place at Lourdes? What would happen at the grotto? What would be done by Bernadette, whose every movement was watched by the Argus eyes of Jacomet and of his agents? Would not the fountain at the grotto disappear in the coming hot weather, and thus put an end to the whole business? What attitude would the people assume? Such were the hopes and anxieties of the Baron Massy, imperial prefect.

At the grotto the miraculous fountain continued to flow, abundant and clear, with that character of quiet perpetuity which is generally found in springs coming from the rock.

The supernatural apparition did not cease to assert its existence, and to prove it by benefits conferred.

The grace of God continued to descend visibly and invisibly upon the people, sometimes quick as the lightning which flashes through the clouds, sometimes gradual like the light of dawn.

At six or seven kilometres (four miles) from Lourdes, at Loubajac, lived a good woman, a peasant, who had formerly been accustomed to labor, but whom an accident had for eighteen months past reduced to a most painful inaction. Her name was Catherine Latapie-Chouat. In October, 1856, having climbed an oak to knock down some acorns, she had lost her balance, and suffered a violent fall, which caused a severe dislocation of the right arm and hand. The reduction—as is stated in the report and the official statement, which are now before us—though performed immediately by an able surgeon, and though it nearly restored the arm to its normal state, had nevertheless not prevented an extreme weakness in it. The most intelligent and continuous treatment had been ineffectual in removing the stiffness of the three most important fingers of the hand. The thumb and first two fingers remained obstinately bent and paralyzed, so that it was impossible either to straighten them or to enable them to move in the least. The unfortunate peasant, still young enough for much labor, for she was hardly thirty-eight, could not sew, spin, knit, or take care of the house. The doctor, after having treated her case for a long time without success, had told her that it was incurable, and that she must resign herself to give up the use of that hand. This sentence, from such a reliable authority, was for the poor woman the announcement of an irreparable misfortune. The poor have no resource but work; for them compulsory inaction is inevitable misery.

Catherine had become pregnant nine or ten months after the accident, and her time was approaching at the date of our narrative. One night she awaked with a sudden thought or inspiration. "An interior spirit," to quote her own words to myself, "said to me as it were with irresistible force, 'Go to the grotto! go to the grotto, and you will be cured!'" Who this mysterious being was who spoke thus, and whom this ignorant peasant—ignorant at least as far as human knowledge is concerned—called a "spirit," is no doubt known by her angel guardian.

It was three o'clock in the morning. Catherine called two of her children who were large enough to accompany her.

"In your present condition it is impossible," replied he; "to go to Lourdes and return is full three leagues."

No objection had the least effect upon her, and she set out with her two children. It was a fine moonlight night; but the awful silence, occasionally broken by strange and mysterious sounds, the solitude of the plains only dimly visible, and seemingly peopled by vague forms, terrified the children. They trembled,[105] and would have stopped at every step had not Catherine reassured them. She had no fear, and felt that she was going to the fountain of life.

She arrived at Lourdes at daybreak, and happened to meet Bernadette. Some one telling her who it was, Catherine, without saying anything, approached the child blessed by the Lord and beloved by Mary, and touched her dress humbly. Then she continued her journey to the rocks of Massabielle, where, in spite of the early hour, a great many pilgrims were already assembled and were on their knees.

Catherine and her children also knelt and prayed. Then she rose, and quietly bathed her hand in the marvellous water.

Her fingers immediately straightened, became flexible, and under her control. The Blessed Virgin had cured the incurable.

What did Catherine do? She was not surprised. She did not utter a cry, but again fell on her knees, and gave thanks to God and to Mary. For the first time for eighteen months, she prayed with her hands joined, and clasped the resuscitated fingers with the others.

She remained thus for a long time, absorbed in an act of thanksgiving. Such moments are sweet; the soul is glad to forget itself, and thinks that it is in Paradise.

But violent sufferings recalled Catherine to the earth—this earth of sighs and tears, where the curse pronounced upon the guilty mother of the human race has never ceased to be felt by her innumerable posterity. We have said that Catherine was very near her confinement, and as she was still upon her knees she found herself suddenly seized by the terrible pains of childbirth. She shuddered, seeing that there would be no time to go even to Lourdes, and that her delivery was about to occur in the presence of the surrounding multitude. And for a moment she looked around with terror and anguish.

"Good Mother," said she simply, "you have just shown me so great a favor, I know you will spare me the shame of being delivered before all these people, and at least grant that I may return home before giving birth to my child."

Immediately all her pains ceased, and the interior spirit of whom she spoke to us, and who, we believe, was her angel guardian, said to her:

Accordingly she took the road to Loubajac, holding them by the hand, without intimating to any one her critical state, and without showing any uneasiness, even to the midwife of her own village, who happened to be there in the midst of the crowd of pilgrims. With inexpressible happiness she quietly traversed the long and rough road which separated her from home. The two children were not afraid of it now; the sun was risen, and their mother was cured.

As soon as she returned, she wished still to pray; but immediately her pains returned. In a quarter of an hour she was the mother of a third son.[12]

At the same time, a woman of Lamarque, Marianne Garrot, had been relieved in less than ten days, merely by lotions with the water from the grotto, of a white eruption which had covered her whole face, and which for two years had resisted all treatment. Dr. Amadou, of Pontacq, her physician, was satisfied of the fact, and was an incontestable witness of it subsequently before the episcopal commission.[13]

At Bordères, near Nay, the widow Marie Lanou-Domengé, eighty years old, had been for three years a sufferer from an incomplete paralysis in the whole left side. She could not take a step without assistance, and was unable to do any work.

Dr. Poueymiroo, of Mirepoix, after having ineffectually used some remedies to restore life in the palsied parts, though continuing his visits, had abandoned medical treatment of the case.

"When shall I get well?" the good woman would say to Dr. Poueymiroo, every time that he came.

"You will get well when the good God sees fit," was the invariable reply of the doctor, who was far from suspecting the prophetic nature of his words.

"Why should I not believe what[107] he says, and throw myself directly on the divine goodness?" said the old peasant woman one day to herself, when she heard people talking of the fountain of Massabielle.

Accordingly, she sent some one to Lourdes to get at the spring itself a little of this healing water.

They took her out, and dressed her hurriedly. Both the actors and spectators in this scene were somewhat disturbed.

She extended her trembling hand toward the quickening water and dipped her fingers in it. Then she made a great sign of the cross on herself, raised the glass to her lips, and slowly drank the contents, no doubt absorbed in fervent and silent prayer.

She became so pale that they thought for the moment that she was going to faint.

But while they were exerting themselves to prevent her from falling, she rose with a quick and joyful movement and looked around. Then she cried out with a voice of triumph:

Those who were holding her withdrew their arms partially and with some hesitation. She immediately freed herself from them, and walked with as much confidence as if she had never been ill.

Some one, however, who still had some fear of the result, offered her a stick to lean on.

She looked at it with a smile; then took it and contemptuously threw it far away, as a thing which was no longer of use. And from that day, she employed herself as before in hard out-door work.

Some visitors, who came to see her and to convince themselves of the fact, asked her to walk in their presence.

"Walk, did you say? I will run for you!" And, true to her word, she began to run.

This occurred in the month of May. In the following July, the people pointed out the vigorous octogenarian as a curiosity, as she mowed the grain, and was by no means the last in the hard labors of the harvest.

Her physician, the excellent Dr. Poueymiroo, praised God for this evident miracle, and subsequently, with the examining commission, signed the procès-verbal on the extraordinary events which we have just related, in which he did not hesitate to recognize "the direct and evident action of divine power."[14]

OUR NORTHERN NEIGHBORS.

In the adjustment of differences to which conflicting interests or a spirit of rivalry may give birth, governments, like individuals, are prone to satisfy themselves with conventions limited to matters immediately in dispute. They are like medical doctors, who treat symptoms as the malady to be cured, and, satisfied with alleviating present pain, leave its causes to war against mortal life, until disease becomes chronic and incurable.

Whether the labors of the Joint High Commission, now sitting in Washington, will be of this description, remains to be seen; but such, it appears to us, has been the character of treaties or conventions affecting commercial relations with our Canadian and provincial neighbors. They seem not to have been founded upon any intelligent consideration of the wants of contracting parties, but, presupposing that there must be conflicting interests, are devised to prevent rival industries from merging in unfriendliness and strife. We ask, then, whether these rival interests have legitimate existence. The answer to this question will be derived from an examination of the statistics of the two countries—their agricultural and other products—their climatic and social conditions, and the commercial relations actually subsisting between them, as well as those which both sustain to other countries and peoples.

The productions of a country are properly classified according to the sources whence they are derived.

We have, then, five distinct classes of products, namely: The natural productions of the sea, the earth, the forest, and the results of industry applied to agriculture and manufactures.

Let us now turn to the map of British America. Beginning at the east, the waters of Newfoundland and the Gulf of St. Lawrence are rich in fisheries. They yield salmon, mackerel, codfish, haddock, ling, herring, and oysters, in great abundance. Newfoundland has not enough of agriculture to save its own population from absolute suffering when there is a failure in the catch of fish along its shores. It possesses rich though undeveloped deposits of copper, iron, and other ores. Prince Edward Island, in the centre of the mackerel fisheries, is, perhaps, more favored by nature than the other maritime provinces. Every acre of its surface may be reckoned as arable land. Its agriculture, always limited to the growth of hay, oats, potatoes, and turnips, is only partially developed, though even now yielding a considerable surplus for export. Its forests are exhausted of timber. And though, from habit, its people still continue to build wooden ships to send "home" for sale, they are obliged to import the material for their construction. The southern part of Nova Scotia contains a considerable portion of good farm lands; yielding the invariable crops of hay, oats, potatoes, and turnips. In some districts, apples and pears, of excellent quality, are grown in abundance. The eastern portion, especially the island of Cape Breton, is rich in coal, lime, freestone, and marble; all so placed as to be easily accessible to commerce. Even[109] now, despite protective duties on colonial products, the streets of some of our Atlantic cities are lighted with gas from Nova Scotia coal.

Gold has been found in sufficient quantity to afford opportunity for speculation, but not for profit. The yield for 1867 was 27,583 oz. = $413,745; for 1868, 20,541 oz. = $308,115. The same amount of capital applied to the growing of potatoes would doubtless afford a much larger return. Coal is the most important mineral product; and its chief market is found in the United States. The net amount mined in one year was 418,313 tons; sold for home consumption and to neighboring colonies, 176,392 tons; sent to the United States, 241,921 tons.

New Brunswick offers the same agricultural products as the neighboring provinces of Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia. A great part of its territory, like the northern part of Maine, is cold, rocky, and inarable. But its forests yield large quantities of pine lumber, oak, beech, maple, and other valuable woods, and bark for tanning leather. This source of wealth is, however, rapidly failing. The forests begin to give evidence of exhaustion. St. John already asks what shall be her resource when the lumber is gone. Formerly, ship-building was a large interest in these lower provinces. But from the growing scarcity of ship timber, as well as from the more general use of iron vessels, it has been declining from year to year.

We see, then, what these provinces can now contribute to commerce; and we also see their prime deficiency. They cannot supply their people with bread. That comes from Canada and the United States. But Canada does not want their mackerel or other fish, their oats, potatoes, turnips, or hay. She wants money; and for want of a nearer market, the surplus oats must be sent upon a very doubtful venture across the ocean, the mackerel to the United States, and the dried fish to the West Indies and Brazil, to get money to pay for Canadian bread. But time is money. It is more than money—it is life. And when we take into account the loss of time in going to and fro across the ocean, and the great expenditure of unproductive labor that is required by this selling to Peter on one side of the world to pay Paul on the other, we cannot help believing that the poor provincial pays a high price for bread to eat and clothes to wear, as well as for the various products of other lands which, from being only conveniences, have become the necessaries of life.

We come now to the Province of Quebec—prior to the Dominion, called Canada East. Nearly all her territory lies north of the forty-sixth parallel of latitude. Need we say that agriculture, save for the few and slender productions of cold climates, is here impossible? For nearly seven months of the year the greater part of her rivers and harbors are closed to commerce by bars of impenetrable ice. The soil, and every industry relating to it, is under the dominion of frost.

The forests of timber may be accessible despite the snows of winter, and in the early spring her people may hunt seals along the coasts of Labrador; but during the long period of actual winter, her agriculturists, nearly her whole industrial population, must be employed upon indoor labor, or be left to hibernate in positive idleness. It is simply impossible that agriculture can ever be a successful industry in so rigorous a climate as that of Quebec.

Going westward through what[110] was once called Canada West, now the Province of Ontario, we find a peninsula bounded by the St. Lawrence River, Lake Ontario, and Lake Erie, on the south and east; and by Lakes St. Clair and Huron, with their connecting straits, on the west. This peninsula, south of 45° N., comprises the wheat-growing lands of Canada east of Lake Winnipeg. Its area is something less than that of the State of New York. It produces good crops of wheat and other cereals, and nearly all vegetables and fruits grown in our northern and northwestern states. Farther west, we have the valleys of the Saskatchewan and its tributaries, capable of producing cereals, grasses, potatoes, and other vegetables. But our information, derived from missionaries and others long resident in that region, induces the belief that it is mere folly to regard a country in whose streams the fish lie torpid, and where the snow-fall is not enough to protect the land from killing frosts, in winter, as suited to the growth of cereals for export, or as capable of giving bread to any considerable population.

Much has been said and written concerning the territory lying on the Pacific coast. We believe it is well ascertained that the climate of British Columbia west of the mountains—we might well add the southeast coast of Alaska—is as mild as that of the state of New York. Unfortunately, it is very much more moist; so much more that it never can become a good agricultural country. The reason is so obvious that one is hardly disposed to question the assertion. The vast accumulations of ice and snow in and immediately north of Behring Strait, and on the high mountain range lying on the east side of this territory, must produce intense cold when the wind blows from the north and east. When the warm air comes from the southwest, the whole atmosphere must resemble a vapor-bath. Seeds may readily germinate, but can they produce ripe crops?

We have recently discussed this subject with a friend who has had intimate personal acquaintance with this coast for more than ten years, and we but reiterate his assertion in saying that, north of Oregon, agriculture is not a safe reliance for the support of a colony. We do not doubt that hay, oats, and potatoes will grow there. It is well known that they may grow where the sub-soil is everlasting ice. But we know that agriculture cannot be profitable either there or where the heats of summer last just long enough to melt the snows on adjacent mountains and convert the soil to mud. There must always be an excess of moisture to contend with in maturing crops. Our information as to the fact is positive. But suppose that, in process of time, by the clearing of forest lands, and other causes incident to the peopling and cultivation of the soil, these difficulties were overcome. Does any one believe that the products of the land could be carried by rail and inland waters through a distance of three thousand miles, and two or three thousand more by sea, and, after successive reshipments, at last pay the producer—save in cumulation of expenses added to the original cost of goods received in return? If, then, this far western country should ever have an excess of food or other commodities, they must find a readier market than either the far-off country of eastern Canada or more distant lands can afford. Its trade must be with the neighboring states of Washington, Oregon, and California. Will the people, on either side, long consent to pay tribute to government officials for the privilege[111] of exchanging the fruits of their toil?

Were they really of different races—distinct in language, manners, and customs beyond the degree that always makes the dwellers in one village imagine its "excellent society" a little superior to that of the neighboring hamlet—we might say, yes! But knowing, as we do, that they are by race, by conditions of soil and climate, and by reason of mutual interests, but one people, we do not believe it.

Let us now glance at the map of the United States. Leaving out Maine, northern New Hampshire, and Vermont, in the northeast; the narrow belt north of the 48th parallel, between Lake Superior and the Pacific Ocean, in the northwest; Florida, Louisiana, and Southern Texas in the south; the whole vast area between the 32d and 46th parallels of latitude, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean—in extent equivalent to three-fourths of all Europe—is suited to the production of wheat, rye, barley, Indian corn, oats, hay, potatoes, and every fruit found in temperate climates. There are no frosts to render agriculture a mere speculative enterprise; no bonds of ice to close the ports to commerce. Seed-time and harvest may be counted upon as certainly as the succession of seasons. Can there be a doubt that here the material interest forming the basis of all others is agriculture? We have no exact data for a comparison of the several products of the United States and British America; but for our immediate purpose it is quite unnecessary to present tables of statistics. We refer only to chief products. First—of those common to both countries, the productions of the United States are to the productions of Canada and the Lower Provinces as 13 to 1. The whole agricultural products of the United States, excluding those of orchards, vineyards, and gardens—which would present a still wider difference—are to those of Canada as 15 to 1. The annual yield of Indian corn in the United States is worth upwards of $800,000,000, or about five times the entire value of the agricultural product of British America. If we include in the comparison the values of animals and animal products, orchards, vineyards, and gardens, the proportion is something nearer 30 to 1, while the breadth of improved land is not as 10 to 1. And this while the breadth of our improved land is not more than one-thirteenth of our territory—though double the whole area of Great Britain and Ireland—and while any great expansion of agriculture in Canada is forbidden by the conditions of soil and climate. Are not these considerations sufficient to show the absurdity of persistence in the development of rivalry in agricultural and commercial interests? Do we not see that in the United States agriculture is legitimately the greatest industrial interest, and that in Canada it is not? And we may well ask why the industrial population of Canada should not be employed in utilizing its timber and other products of the forest and the mine, or, where material is more readily found in the neighboring country, using the forces so abundantly provided by their inland waters and mines of coal, as well as by the muscle half-wasted for want of use, in supplying fabrics which they now import, and pay for by the scanty labors of just half the time that God has given them? These considerations are in some degree applicable to New England. The difference is, that New England knows it, and acts upon the knowledge.

Manufacturing is the appropriate industry of cold climates. When this is acknowledged, hibernation ceases. The people are no longer forced to eke out a meagre existence in winter upon the slender profits of toil spent in contention with chilling winds and frosts. True, Canada—a small part of it—produces bread for export. We know it: and we also know that every loaf costs twice as much, in human toil, as the better loaf yielded by the more generous soils and genial suns of Illinois, Minnesota, Iowa, New York, Ohio, Maryland, Virginia, and California. Canada produces good beef, mutton, pork, and, of course, the raw materials for manufactures incident to these products. But the herdsmen on the plains of Illinois, Iowa, Florida, and Texas would grow rich in selling beeves, swine, and sheep for the cost of their keeping through a Canadian winter!

On the other hand, we see, in some parts of our own country, whole communities of people engaged in mechanical industries, while the earth calls for tillage. Even in our more populous territories, enough of what should be fruitful lands to yield subsistence to a larger population than Canada will ever contain, lies fallow and neglected. But our commercial relations are adverse to the proper adjustment of industrial pursuits.

The Canadians dare not rely upon their neighbors for bread to eat, any more than those neighbors would venture to build their workshops and factories in Canada. The more venturesome try to obviate the difficulty, to some extent, by illicit trade; but all the obstacles to legitimate commerce—to the conveniences of living—remain; and they must remain as long as the American and Canadian producers have to pay tribute to Cæsar on exchanging the fruits of their labors. Reciprocity treaties may modify, but they cannot remove, this great obstacle to prosperous trade.

Treaties regulating trade cannot so change the industries of the two countries as to confine large agricultural enterprises to the soil and climate that would insure success, nor send the artisan, now living on rich uncultivated lands, to till the earth. What means the extraordinary emigration from Canada to the States? And how can we account for the sudden expansion of manufacturing industries in Montreal and other Canadian towns? It means that, while governments are discussing treaties for reciprocal trade, their people are practising reciprocal emigration—but with a difference. The Canadian becomes an American citizen—the American very rarely a British subject. We recollect two incidents in our own experience apropos to the matter under consideration.

Some two years ago we passed a summer in the "Lower Provinces." In the parlor of our hotel, we fell into conversation with an intelligent man of business who proved to be a commercial traveller from Canada. His specialty was boots and shoes. On mentioning that Lynn, in Massachusetts, was the great shoe factory of "the States," his reply was, "Yes! the head of our firm is from Lynn." Lynn had gone to Montreal to employ Canadian hands in turning Canadian leather into boots and shoes to supply colonial markets. "The head of our firm," like other heads of firms, had solved the problem of appropriate industry as far as he was concerned. He had learned where material, and hands to work it, were cheapest, and he was utilizing them. He had emigrated to employ the cheap labor that could not emigrate. At another time, we met a well-dressed mechanic who was not at home.[113] His home was in "the States." He was only visiting his birthplace and kindred. In reply to the remark that the high wages which had enticed him to the States were only high in sound, since greenbacks were at a great discount, and food, clothing, and rent at inflated prices, his reply evinced a perfect understanding of the whole question, as it affected him and the class to which he belonged.

"True," said he, "I am paid in greenbacks; but I have a better house, better food, and better clothes than I ever had before. And at the end of the year, my surplus greenbacks are worth more, in gold, than I could get for a year's labor in this colony."

Here are two parties whose interests are reciprocal, whose social conditions are essentially the same, who live in juxtaposition to each other, but with broad ocean between them and other countries and peoples, frittering away material interests, wasting revenues that of right should be employed for their advancement in social life, to gratify a spirit of antagonism where even rivalry should be deemed insane. But is there no remedy for these disorders in our political economy? We think there is a very obvious one; and if we may not say, "What God has joined together, let not man put asunder," because the parties are not agreed, we can and do say, the sooner they are agreed, the better for both. We would say to Canada, do not waste your time and strength in trying to effect impossibilities. Let us see your many rivers alive with the artisans who can send to the market something else than ship-timber and deals. Let us see the smoke of the forge and the foundry rise in proximity to your mines of coal. We want all that you can make, and have no fear that you will in any degree impair the prosperity of our own industrial people. And we will pay you in bread, better and cheaper than you can get from your colder and less fruitful lands. And when your coarser materials are wrought into shape for export, we have skilled labor, nearer than Britain, to receive your surplus products and fashion them into the thousand fabrics which only skilled labor can supply.

We have no desire to see your wheat-fields fail or to decry their products in the market. We only say that they are too limited for dangerous competition with ours. And we further say, that if you will but develop other and more legitimate industries, so that your wheat-growing districts cannot feed your people, we will be sure to have bread enough and to spare. And you may be also sure that all your efforts will not so overstock the markets we can offer as to make trade languish, when the thousands now peopling this continent shall become millions, though the Old World should want nothing that you can give. And, then, you have but a doubtful road to the markets of the Old World. For half the year your highway to the ocean and to other lands must be across our territory. Intercolonial railways through unsettled and unproductive countries will not answer the demands of commerce. They will not pay; and, if they would, the interests served ought not to be so burdened where access may be had to readier and cheaper lines of communication.

Does all this imply annexation? Call it what you will. As one of your Canadian statesmen said to the people of a lesser province, "If you do not want us to annex you, we are willing that you should annex us." If you are more conservative than we are, a little conservatism will do[114] us no harm; and the interests you would conserve would be quite as safe under the eagle's beak as under the lion's paw. If one be a bird, the other is surely a beast of prey; and we believe that harmless folk have less to apprehend from one alone than from the jealous rivalries of both.

Of one thing we feel assured: the time is not far distant when the people of this northern half of America will have to adopt a policy so distinct from that of the older nations of Europe that self-preservation will demand a union of power where there is now an evident identity of interests.

It were well that this union should be preceded by such guarantees of existing rights and privileges as might, without specific and just conventions, be open to subsequent question and dispute. And it were also well for governments to direct the march which necessity compels their people to make, rather than incur the risk of finding themselves at variance with those for whose greater good civil government is designed. We do not purpose to discuss the origin or foundation of civil government. It is enough for us to know that man requires and God wills it; and that, in the absence of other and higher sanctions, the best evidence of his will is found in the intelligent, honest consent of the governed. Does any one doubt what the more intelligent and honest people of Canada and the United States require? We do not ask what may be the rôle of the political adventurer, the office-seeker, the government speculator or tuft-hunter. We always know that the end of all their loyalty or patriotism is self. But we ask what is needed for the greater good of the people. Not alone the people of to-day or to-morrow, but of the future as well. How the people of to-day esteem the policy of their lawgivers, may be known by their conduct under it. And the army of government revenue officers and detectives on either side along the frontiers of Canada and "the States" offers sufficient evidence of the esteem in which the laws of trade are held. We know not which is the more corrupt—the law-breakers or the agents of the law; but we do know, from the notoriety of the fact, that the commercial relations now existing between the Canadas and the States are, in effect, so demoralizing, to commercial people and commercial interests, that the laws which propose to govern them were better abrogated than left to offer a premium to chicanery and fraud.

We are neither alarmists nor political propagandists. We have no greedy desire for our neighbor's goods, no fanatical wish to impose our political dogmas or theories upon the people of other states. We but behold and see what is before and around us—and, seeing it, we only give utterance to belief that has grown and strengthened, until scarcely a doubt remains, when we say that we believe the ultimate union of the United States and British America to be inevitable. The time may be more or less distant, the occasion and the means may be as yet undreamed of; but the event seems as certain as the coming of the morrow's sun while the shades of evening gather over and around us. If, unfortunately, war should take the place of peaceful union, the calamity would hardly be less to us than to Canada.

By peaceful union, existing rights of the weaker party are made secure. By war, they are jeopardized and may be lost. But to us, as well as to them, war would be a calamity of such fearful magnitude, that we are[115] constrained to look with hope to the time when the conflicting interests of the Old World shall have no power to disturb the peaceful relations that should always exist between ourselves and our neighbors.

ON THE HIGHER EDUCATION.
SECOND ARTICLE.

The whole scope of the subject properly comprised under the title "Higher Education" obviously includes all that belongs to every kind of institute of learning above common schools. We have selected this title in order to leave freedom to ourselves to discourse upon any part of the subject we might think proper, although in our first article we limited our remarks to a class of schools intended for that which is more strictly to be designated as intermediate education. We have a few additional remarks to offer upon the same part of our subject, after which we will proceed to throw out a few suggestions upon some of its remaining and still more important portions. We are not attempting to treat these topics fully and minutely, and our observations will be, therefore, brief and desultory.

In regard to the course of studies to be pursued in intermediate schools, it is a question of great practical moment how to arrange the several branches to be taught to the pupils in such a way as to prepare them most efficiently for the future occupations of their lives. The course common to all ought to be made up of those studies which are alike necessary or important to all. In addition to these common studies, certain special branches should be taught, or the distinct branches of the common course more extensively carried out, for distinct classes of pupils, varying these optional studies according to the different occupations for which they are preparing. For instance, a moderate quantity of mathematics and a rudimental, general course of instruction in physical sciences are sufficient for all, except those who will need greater knowledge and practice in them for use in their profession. It is useless to attempt, in these days, education on the encyclopædic principle. The common and solid basis of all education once laid, the more specific it becomes, the better; and for want of good sense and skill in selecting studies, apportioning the relative time and labor given to them, and directing them to a definite end, very great waste and loss are incurred in education.

One other most important point, which we merely notice, is the propriety of providing the most thorough instruction in the modern languages, especially the French, which can more easily be done, as we suppose, in the schools of which we are speaking, that no time whatever, or at most but a moderate amount, is given to the ancient languages. Without going further into details, it is obvious that schools of the intermediate class have an unlimited[116] sphere in which they can give any kind and degree of instruction belonging to the most extensive and liberal education, deducting the classics, and stopping short of the university, properly so called. Nor is there any reason why, if we had universities in the highest sense of the term, the pupils of these schools should not afterward enjoy all the privileges they offer which do not require a knowledge of the ancient languages. We will not say anything on the vexed classical question. Did it seem to be practicable, we should strongly favor making the study of Latin a part of the education of all who go beyond the common rudiments, as well girls as boys, to such an extent that they could understand the divine offices of the church. For all other uses or advantages, we are inclined to think that many pupils who occupy a great deal of time in gaining a very imperfect smattering of Latin and Greek, might better spare it for other studies.[15]

However the question may be eventually settled in regard to the classics as a part of general education, it is certain that they must retain their place in the education of the clergy, and of at least a select portion of those who are destined for other learned pursuits and professions. We shall speak more fully about this part of the subject a little further on. Before leaving the topic of English education, however, we have one or two supplementary observations to make, suggested by the remarks of other writers which we have come across since we began writing the present article.

F. Dalgairns, in an article which he has published in the Contemporary Review, has expressed himself in a manner quite similar to our own respecting the necessity of a return to the scholastic philosophy. His remarks have given us great pleasure, and they furnish one more proof of the tendency toward unity in philosophical doctrine among Catholics which is daily spreading and gaining strength. One observation of his on this head is specially worthy of attention. He says that it is necessary, if we desire to teach the scholastic philosophy to those who have received or are receiving a modern or English education, to translate and explain its terms in the best and most intelligible English. A mere literal translation from Latin text-books will not answer the purpose. This is very true, and we cannot refrain from expressing the wish that the health and occupations of F. Dalgairns may permit him to write an entire series of philosophical essays, like the one he has just published on the Soul, to which we have just referred. Indeed, we know of no one better fitted by intellectual aptitude for metaphysical reasoning and mastery of the requisite art as a writer, to prepare a manual of philosophy for English students.

The Dublin Review has repeated and sanctioned the observations of F. Dalgairns, and has added something to them equally worthy to be noticed—to wit, that our Catholic text-books of logic need to be improved by incorporating into them the results of the more careful and thorough analysis of the laws of logic which has been made by several English writers. It is very true that, although the English metaphysic is a sorry affair, there have been several very acute logicians among modern English thinkers; as, for instance, Mr. Mill, Mr. De Morgan,[117] and Sir William Hamilton. We suppose that the Dublin Review intends to designate the doctrine of what is technically called the "quantification of the predicate" made known by the two authors last mentioned, simultaneously and independently of each other, as a real discovery in logical science, and an addition to Aristotle's laws. We hope the matter will be further discussed, and that not only English and American writers interested in the subject of philosophical teaching will give it their attention, but Continental scholars also. For our own part, our rôle at present is the modest one of giving hints and provoking discussion, and we therefore abstain from going any deeper than a mere scratch of the rich soil we hope to see well dug and planted before long.

From another and very different quarter, we have found within a day or two a corroboration of several opinions we expressed in our first article. Prof. Seeley, of the University of Cambridge, England, in a little volume of essays, noticed by us in another place, advocates the teaching of logic in English schools, dwells on the importance of teaching history after a better method, and sketches out a plan of improving the instruction given in medium schools and universities, which is well worthy of being read and thought over by those who have the direction of education.

But we will turn now to another and still higher department of education, which embraces the courses of study proper to the university and the schools which are preparatory to it. Beginning with that branch of study which must undoubtedly still continue to form an essential and principal branch of the strictly collegiate education, the classics, we do not hesitate to say that this branch, instead of being less, ought to be more thoroughly and completely cultivated. In so far as Latin is concerned, it is evident that those who aim at anything more than the degree of knowledge requisite for understanding better the modern languages, and the terms which are in common use derived from Latin, or, perhaps, for a more intelligent appreciation of church offices, ought to master the language fully, together with its classical literature. The reasons which prove this statement apply with tenfold force to ecclesiastics, for whom Latin ought to be a second mother-tongue. It is not necessary to give these reasons, for they are well known and fully appreciated by all who are concerned with the collegiate or ecclesiastical education of Catholic youth.

The question of Greek is a distinct one. For those who study the classics for the sake of their intrinsic value as works of art, Greek has the precedence of Latin in importance. It is evident, therefore, that a most thorough and extensive course of Greek is necessary for students of this class. Whether such a course ought to be made a part of the obligatory collegiate curriculum of studies, or merely provided for a select class who may choose to enter upon it, we leave to the discretion and judgment of the learned. Undoubtedly, we ought to have a certain number of accomplished Grecians among our men of letters. It is necessary in the interests of ecclesiastical learning that we should have thorough Greek scholars among our clergy. For all useful purposes, however, the value of the amount of Greek actually learned by the majority is exceedingly small, and not to be compared with the practical utility of a knowledge of any one of several modern languages, for example, the German.[118] A clergyman, for instance, who does not aspire to become a learned philologist, but only to make himself acquainted with the labors of the best commentators on the Scripture, will not find it very necessary to be able to read the Septuagint or the Greek New Testament. As for Hebrew, whatever can be learned by a short and superficial course will be almost useless. If he desires to read Aristotle, Plato, or the Greek fathers, for the sake of their sense and ideas, he can do so in the Latin translations without any fear of being led into any erroneous interpretation. The point we are driving at is, that the thorough study of Latin is the most essential thing to be secured in a classical course. Philosophy; a moderate course of mathematics; the English language and literature; the physical sciences, and the modern languages, especially the French, are the other essentials of a complete collegiate course. Whatever time remains will be most usefully employed in the study of history and of modern political and social questions, branches which are certainly essential to a complete liberal education, though for many, or perhaps most, students their thorough cultivation may have to be postponed until after their college course is finished. The improvement of the collegiate education in all these branches, requires, of course, a corresponding improvement in the preparatory schools, since the school and college depend on each other. It is our opinion, in which we are sure that the men most experienced in these matters concur, that those who begin their schooling at the earliest suitable age need to be well trained in an excellent preparatory school until the age of seventeen, before they are fit to profit fully by a high collegiate course. Those who begin later must enter college at a more advanced age, unless they can make up by diligence for lost time, or be content with a shorter course of study. The raising of the conditions for entering college, which can be done gradually, must improve the preparatory schools, and the improvement of these schools will in turn benefit the colleges, by furnishing them with subjects fitted for a higher course of studies.

In saying this, we beg to disavow any intention of undervaluing or finding fault with the colleges and schools at present existing, or the learned and laborious corps of teachers employed in them. They deserve the highest meed of praise and gratitude, and we may well congratulate ourselves on the truly vast work which has been accomplished, at great cost and by dint of great efforts, in the cause of Catholic education in this country. But our motto should ever be, like that of the past generations of laborers in this great cause, "Upward and onward!" We trust, therefore, that all we may say in favor of improvement will be taken as an encouragement and not as a fault-finding criticism—as a friendly suggestion, and not as a presumptuous attempt at dictation.

We have now reached the proper place for speaking of the great necessity of a Catholic University in the United States. A well-conducted college for undergraduates is not a university, though it is often dignified with that name; but is merely one of the principal constituent parts of a university. In regard to the proper constitution, nature, and conduct of a university, much has been written, of late, both in Europe and America. In Europe, those who write on the subject either consider the subject of improvement or reform in universities already existing, or the demands existing in various[119] quarters for the foundation of new ones. These last are chiefly among Catholics, who are extremely alive to this necessity in several countries, but especially in Germany and England. The foundation of a great Catholic University for Germany at the spot which is most appropriate for such a grand undertaking, on account of its hallowed and scholastic memories, Fulda, has been determined. We hope that the efforts to make the Catholic University of Dublin completely successful, and to found another in England, may speedily produce their desired result. In this country, the heads of the older Protestant colleges are considering what measures can be taken to raise these institutions to the level of the universities of Europe. Among the papers which we have read from different quarters on this subject, those of Professor Seeley, of Cambridge, and of one or two professors of Yale College, writing in the New Englander, have especially attracted our attention; and we may have occasion to reproduce some of their remarks or suggestions in the present article. Among the Catholics of the United States, the Germans have manifested what looks like the most serious disposition which has yet shown itself for taking the actual initiative in the movement. We rejoice to see it, and hope they may go on. They are a most respectable body; their energy, wealth, and power of organized action are great. Germany is full of young ecclesiastics of the best education, who are sighing for employment, and competent to fill chairs in all the departments except that of English literature. We have but one precaution to suggest, in case this enterprise is undertaken, which is: that proper care be taken to secure the entire subordination of the corps of governors and teachers to the hierarchy and the Holy See, and to ascertain the strict orthodoxy of the persons called to fill the professorial chairs. We want no followers of Hermes, Döllinger, or any other leader of a German sect in philosophy or theology; and persons of that class whose rôle is played out at home, might be the very first to look out for a new field in which to practise their manœuvres, in a German University in the United States, if they saw a chance of securing in it the desirable position of professors—a position which has special attractions for the German mind.

The Advocate of Louisville has recently spoken out very strongly on the need of a Catholic University in this country; and the topic is frequently broached in conversation, as, indeed, it has been for the last fifteen years. Let the Germans go forward and take the lead if they are able and willing; but this will not lessen the necessity of the same action on the part of the other Catholics of the country, who, we may hope, will be stimulated by the example of a body of men so much smaller in number than themselves. When the time comes for action in this matter, the direction of it will be in higher hands than ours; but, meanwhile, we will indulge ourselves in the at least harmless amusement of sketching an ideal plan of the university as it lies in our own imagination, and of the possible method of making it a reality.

A university is a corporation of learned and studious men who are devoted to the acquisition and communication of science and art in all their higher branches. It may be more or less complete and extensive. In its greatest extension it ought to comprise one or more colleges for undergraduates, schools of all the[120] special professional studies, and a school of the higher and more profound studies in every department of literature and science. It must have a permanent body of learned men residing within its precincts, whose lives are entirely devoted to study and instruction. It must have a vast library; museums of science and antiquities; a gallery of painting, sculpture, and all kinds of artistic works; a complete scientific apparatus, a botanical garden, magnificent buildings, beautiful chapels, and a grand collegiate church, with its chapter of clergymen and perfectly trained choir. It should have, also, a great publishing-house, and issue regularly its periodical reviews and magazines, as well as books, of the first class of excellence in the several distinct departments of science and letters. It must be richly endowed, and well governed, under the supreme control and direction of the hierarchy and the Holy See. A plan combining the chief distinctive features of the Roman University, Oxford, Louvain, and the best universities of France and Germany, with some improvements, would represent the full and complete idea we have in our mind.

When we come to the practical question. What could be done now, at once, toward the beginning of such a colossal undertaking? it is by no means so easy to solve it as it is to sketch the plan of our ideal university. We do not fancy, of course, that such a grand institution as this we have described, or even one similar to the best existing European universities, can be created in a hurry by any speedy or summary process. But if it is commenced now, can it not be brought to completion by the beginning of the twentieth century? It seems to us that in the year 1900 or 1925 we shall need not one only, but three grand Catholic universities in the United States. That we can and ought to begin the work of founding one without delay, we have no doubt. The difficulty is, however, in pointing out a sensible and feasible method of doing well what many or most of us are ready to acknowledge ought to be done quickly. Let us suppose that the requisite authority and the necessary funds are confided to the hands of the proper commission, who are to lay the first stones in the foundation of a university. How should they proceed, and what should they first undertake? As these high powers exist only potentially and in our own imagination, we can be certain that they will not take offence if we presume to offer them our opinion and advice.

What is the first and most obvious want which we seek to satisfy by founding a university? It is the want of a collegiate system of education and discipline superior to the one already existing in our colleges, and equal to any existing elsewhere. The first thing to be done, then, is to select some already existing college, or to establish a new one, as the nucleus of the future university. We will suppose that some one of our best colleges can be found which has the requisite advantages of location, etc., making it an eligible place for a great university. Let measures be taken to place the grade of education and instruction in this college at the highest mark. The first of these measures must be to give it a corps of professors and tutors fully equal to their task, and to make the position of these professors a dignified, honorable, and permanent one. Another measure of immediate necessity would be the total separation of the college from the grammar-school, and the establishment of a system of[121] discipline suitable not for boys but for young men. The mere announcement by sufficiently high authority that such a system would be inaugurated in a college, would draw at once within its walls students enough eager to begin a thorough course of study, to secure the success of the experiment. At first, the course of study already in vogue might be carried on, merely adding to it such branches as would not presuppose a previous preparation not actually possessed by the students. For admission to the class of the next year to come, the conditions might be raised one grade higher, and thus by successive changes, previously made known, the maximum standard might be reached without inconvenience or injustice to any; and the grammar-schools would be enabled and obliged to prepare their pupils expressly for the examination they would have to pass for admittance into the college. The college thus properly planted and cultivated would grow of itself in due time to maturity and perfection. Nothing more is wanted than a good system, fit men to administer it, plenty of money, and a body of youth fit and desirous to be instructed and educated in the best manner. The library, the scientific cabinets, the philosophical apparatus, the buildings, grounds, and other exterior means and appliances, should be provided for as speedily and amply as circumstances would permit.

The second great want, in our opinion, is the provision for ecclesiastical students of the advantages for education which can only be completely furnished by a university, and which cannot, therefore, be fully enjoyed at separate ecclesiastical seminaries. The Little Seminary is only a superior kind of grammar-school, even though it gives instruction in the ancient languages and some other branches to the same extent with a college. The Grand Seminary is, strictly speaking, a college for instruction in theology, although it includes a year or two of that study of philosophy which is only introductory to the theological course. A thorough university course, in which all the instruction preparatory to theology should be finished, would give a more complete and thorough education to young ecclesiastics, fit them much better for their professional studies, and prepare them much more efficaciously for the high position which belongs, by all divine and human right, to the priesthood. This is the way in which the clergy, both secular and regular, were trained during the Middle Ages. The system of separate training came in afterward, and has been kept up by a sort of necessity, chiefly because the universities have become so secularized as to be dangerous places. We have touched, in these last words, the tender spot, which we well know must be handled delicately. The great argument for secluding young ecclesiastics in seminaries entirely separate from secular colleges is, that their morals, their piety, their vocation, are otherwise endangered. We reply to this by a suggestion intended to do away with the objection to a university life, and at the same time to show how its advantages may be secured. Let both systems be combined. Let there be a college exclusively intended for young ecclesiastics, in which they shall be kept under the discipline of the Little Seminary, at the university. The Little Seminary will then take its place as a separate grammar-school for boys who are intended for the ecclesiastical state. From this school they can pass, not before their seventeenth year, to the college at the university,[122] and they will have seven years still remaining in which to finish their education, before they arrive at the canonical age for ordination to the priesthood. It seems to us that the separate college is a sufficient security for the morals, piety, and vocation of any young man above seventeen years of age who is fit to be a priest in this country outside of the walls of a monastery. Moreover, we are speaking about a model Catholic university, which, we should hope, would not be so extremely dangerous a place for young men. We have never heard that Louvain is considered in that light by the clergy of Belgium, and the glimpse we had of a large body of the Louvain students at Malines during the session of the Congress of 1867, gave us the most favorable impression of their virtuous character.

The university should also be the seat of the principal Grand Seminary, and of a school of Higher Theology. The reasons for locating the place of education for ecclesiastics at a university apply to all the grades of their distinct schools above that of the grammar-school with nearly equal force, and they are very weighty in their nature. They concern in part the professors and in part the students. So far as the former are concerned, it is evident that they would derive the greatest advantage from the facilities for study and intercourse with learned men afforded by the university, and would exercise the most salutary influence over the professors in the departments of philosophy and secular science. One great end of the university is to collect together a great body of learned men devoted to the pursuit of universal science; and it is obvious that this cannot be successfully accomplished unless the ecclesiastical colleges are included within the corporation.

In regard to the students, it seems plain enough that all that part of their course which precedes theology can be much more thoroughly carried on at a university of the highest class than at a Little Seminary, especially if these seminaries are numerous and therefore necessarily limited in numbers and all kinds of means for improvement. A concentration of the endowments, the instructors, and the pupils in one grand institution, makes it possible to give a much better and higher kind of education, and saves a great deal of labor besides. It is especially, however, in relation to the lectures on physical science, and the cultivation of other general branches distinct from the routine of class recitations, that the university has the advantage over the seminary. The students of theology, moreover, can receive great benefit from lectures of this kind, and from the libraries, museums, cabinets, etc., which a great university will possess, as well as from the greater ability and learning which men chosen to fill the chairs of sacred science in such an institution are likely to have, in comparison with those who can be made available for giving instruction in many of the smaller seminaries. Over and above all these advantages for actually gaining a greater amount of knowledge, there is the immense advantage to be gained of bringing up together and binding into one intellectual brotherhood our most highly educated Catholic youth. There is something in the atmosphere and the surroundings of a great university which quickens and enlarges the intellectual life; brightens the faculties; trains the mind for its future career, and fits it to act in society and upon men. The alma mater is a centre of influences and associations lasting[123] through life. The learned men residing there, and their pupils in all professions, are bound together by sacred ties, which are not only a cause of pleasure to them in future years, but of great power for good in the community. Such a university as we have described would in twenty-five years produce a body of alumni who would intellectually exert a great influence over the Catholic community throughout the United States, and make themselves respected by all classes of educated men. The clergy ought to retain the first place and a commanding influence among this body of educated Catholics. For this purpose, it seems to us that they ought to be educated with them, and look to the same university as their alma mater.

We see no reason, moreover, why the religious orders and congregations should not share and co-operate in the labors and advantages of this great enterprise. The smaller congregations find the suitable education of their postulants a difficult task. One or more colleges at a university, where these students could reside by themselves, under their own rule and superior, but receiving their instruction from the university professors, would solve this difficulty. The older and more numerous religious societies have greater facilities for educating their students, and are governed by their own old and peculiar traditions. We will not presume so far as to give them any suggestions from our modern brain in regard to matters in which they have the experience of from one to six centuries. It strikes us, however, as a very pleasing and quite mediæval idea, that our proposed grand university, which we may as well make as splendid as possible while it remains purely ideal, should have its Dominican, Jesuit, Sulpician, and Lazarist colleges. There is no reason why such colleges should not make constituent parts of the university, each one having its own laws and regulating its own internal affairs according to its own standards.

We will say nothing about the law, medical, scientific, and artistic schools which a university ought to have to make it complete.

We have only attempted to show how a university might be started on its career. Once really alive and in motion, the rest would be more easily provided for. Undoubtedly, a vast sum of money would be requisite for such an undertaking. Our wealthy Catholics would have to exercise a princely liberality, and the whole mass of the people would be obliged to contribute generously for many years in succession. We must admire the remarkable instances of princely liberality in the cause of general education recently given by Mr. Peabody, Mr. Cornell, and a considerable number of other wealthy gentlemen in the United States, whose benefactions to colleges and schools have been frequent and munificent. Let us have one-twentieth part of the money expended on education by other religious or learned societies, and we will show again what we did in former ages, when we founded Oxford, Cambridge, St. Gall, Bec, Paris, Salamanca, Fulda, Louvain, Cologne, Pavia, Padua, Bologna, and the other famous schools of the middle ages. What more important or more glorious work can be proposed to the Catholics of the United States than this? We know what our Catholic youth are, for we have spent much time in giving them both scholastic and religious instruction. What can be more ingenuous, bright, and promising than their character—more capable of being moulded[124] and formed to everything that is virtuous and noble? They contain the material which only needs the proper formation to produce a new and better age, which we fervently hope is already beginning to dawn. As the Alcuins, Lanfrancs, and other illustrious fathers of education in former times were among the principal agents in producing epochs of new life, so those who take up their work now in our own country, and throughout Christendom, will be among the principal benefactors of the church and the human race, and deserve for themselves a most honorable crown.

Our topic in the present article has led us to present almost exclusively and in strong light the advantages to be derived from a university and from university education, in relation both to the ecclesiastical state and secular professions. To prevent mistake, we add in conclusion, that we do not desire or anticipate the suppression or merging into one institution of all our colleges and seminaries. It is scarcely possible that all the students of this vast country should be educated in one place. The necessity for other colleges and seminaries will of itself create or continue them. The university will give them an example and model to follow, will furnish those not already amply provided for from the bosom of old and learned religious orders with professors, will give those who desire it a chance to complete their studies after leaving college by residing for a time within its walls, and will reign as a queen among lesser institutions, giving tone, character, and uniformity to the scientific and literary community of Catholic scholars throughout the country. There are doubtless certain respects in which the universities of Europe must always have an advantage over any institution we can hope to found in this new country. Some, or even many, will always have a longing for a residence abroad in these ancient seats of learning, which they may and ought to gratify, when it lies in their power to do so. Above all other places, Rome must ever draw to her those who desire to drink faith, piety, and knowledge from their fountain-head. And, if a better age is really coming, not only will the Pope necessarily be secured in a more tranquil and firm possession of his temporal kingdom in all the extent which he justly claims, that he may govern the church with all the plenitude of his supremacy, but also that the wealth and prosperity of the Roman Church may give to her institutions of learning an amplitude and splendor which they have never yet attained. Planets are nevertheless necessary as well as a sun in a system, and so also are satellites. However ample and extensive the provisions made at Rome may be for educating a select portion of the clergy of all countries, they can never make it unnecessary to provide also in every country for the best and highest education of its own clergy. So far as we can see, every reason and consideration cries out imperatively for the speedy foundation of a Catholic University in the United States.

THE WARNING.

WRITING MATERIALS OF THE ANCIENTS.

It is curious to remark the various and apparently incongruous substances which men, in their efforts to preserve knowledge or transmit ideas, have used as writing materials. The animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms have each and all been laid under contribution. In every land and in every age, stone and marble have been employed to perpetuate the remembrance of the great deeds of history. Inscriptions cut in jasper, cornelian, and agate are to be met with in every collection of antiquities. A cone of basalt covered with cuneiform characters was found some years since in the river Euphrates, and is now preserved in the Imperial Library of Paris, side by side with the sun-baked bricks on which the Babylonian astronomers were wont during seven centuries to inscribe their observations on the starry heavens.

The Romans made books of bronze, in which they engraved the concessions granted to their colonies; and they preserved on tablets and pillars of the same durable material the decrees and treaties of the senate, and sometimes, even, the speeches of their emperors.

"The Bœotians," says the learned Greek geographer Pausanias, "showed me a roll of lead on which was inscribed the whole work of Hesiod, but in characters that time had nearly effaced."

"Who will grant me," cries Job, "that my words may be written? who will grant me that they may be marked down in a book? With an iron pen and in a plate of lead, or else be graven with an instrument in flintstone?" (xix. 23 24.)

Tanned skins were likewise employed for writing purposes by the Asiatics, the Greeks, the Romans, and the Celts. In the Brussels library there is to be seen a manuscript of the Pentateuch, believed to be anterior to the ninth century, written on fifty-seven skins sewed together, and forming a roll more than thirty-six yards long.

The custom of writing on leathern garments appears to have been prevalent during the middle ages. The great Italian poet, Petrarch, used to wear a leathern vest, on which, while sitting or sauntering near the shaded margin of the fountain of Vaucluse, he would note each passing thought, each poetic fancy. This precious relic, covered with erasures, still existed in 1527.

We read, too, of a certain abbot who strictly enjoined his monks, if they happened to meet with any of the works of St. Athanasius, to transcribe the precious volumes on their clothes, should paper be unattainable.

The use of prepared sheep-skin, that is, parchment, dates from about a hundred and fifty years before the Christian era; its Latin name, pergamena, is very evidently derived from Pergamos, but whether because invented there, or because it was more perfectly prepared in that city than elsewhere, is a question not yet decided. Besides white and yellow parchment, the ancients employed purple, blue, and violet. These dark shades were intended to be written on with gold and silver ink. Several very beautiful manuscripts of this description are to be seen in the Imperial Library of Paris. Parchment manuscripts were sometimes of great[127] size; thus, the roll containing the inquiry concerning the Knights Templars, which is still preserved in the archives of France, is full twenty-three yards long.

Parchment became very scarce during the invasions of the barbarians, and this scarcity gave rise to the custom of effacing the characters of ancient manuscripts in order to write a second time on the skin. This unfortunate practice, most prevalent among the Romans, and which was continued until the invention of rag paper, has occasioned the loss of many literary and scientific treasures. The primitive characters of some few of these doubly-written manuscripts, or palimpsests, as they are called, have been restored by chemical science, and several valuable works recovered; among others, for instance, Cicero's admirable treatise on the Republic.

Even the intestines of animals have been used as writing material. The magnificent library of Constantinople, burnt under the Emperor of the East, Basiliscus, is said to have contained, among its other curiosities, the Iliad and the Odyssey, traced in letters of gold on the intestine of a serpent. This rare specimen of caligraphy measured one hundred and twenty feet.

The most ancient inscribed characters we possess are upon wood. A sycamore tablet containing an engraved inscription was discovered, about thirty years since, in one of the Memphis pyramids; the learned Egyptologist who deciphered it pronounced it to have been in existence some five thousand nine hundred years! The Chinese, also, before they invented paper two thousand years ago, wrote upon wood and bamboo. Many oriental nations still make books of palm-leaves, on which the characters are scratched with a sharp-pointed instrument. The Syracusans of bygone times used to write their votes on an olive-leaf. The modern Maldivians trace their hopes, fears, and wishes on the gigantic foliage of their favorite tree, the makareko, of which each leaf is a yard long and half a yard wide. The Imperial Library of Paris, rich in all that is rare and interesting, possesses several ancient leaf manuscripts, some beautifully varnished and gilt.

In Rome, before the use of bronze tables and columns, the laws were engraven on oak boards. "The annals of the pagan high-priests," says a French writer, "which related day by day the principal events of the year, were probably written with black ink on an album, that is, a wooden plank whitened with white-lead. These annals ceased a hundred and twenty years before Christ, but the use of the album was kept up some time longer." The Romans also wrote their wills on wood.

Linen cloth covered with writing has been found in most of the mummy-cases that have been opened. The Egyptian Museum in the Louvre contains several rituals on cloth. The Sibylline Oracles were traced on cloth. The first copy of the Emperor Aurelian's journal that was made after his death was written on cloth, and is still preserved in the Library of the Vatican. On cloth were written also some of the edicts of the first Christian emperors.

No certain epoch can be ascribed to the fabrication of paper from the papyrus reed. The celebrated French savant, Champollion the younger, discovered during his travels in Egypt several contracts written on papyrus, which by their date must have been drawn up seventeen hundred years B.C.

Egypt appears to have kept the monopoly[128] of the papyrus paper trade. The principal manufactories of it were situated at Alexandria, and so important an article of commerce did it become that a dearth of papyrus was the cause of several popular disturbances in some of the great cities of Italy and Greece. Under the Emperor Tiberius, a scarcity in the supply produced so formidable a riot in Rome, that the senate was compelled to take measures similar to those necessary in years of famine, and actually had to name commissaries, whose duty it was to distribute to each citizen the quantity of writing-paper he absolutely required.

The papyrus reed seems indeed to have been ancient Egypt's greatest material blessing, for not only was it the principal article of foreign commerce and source of immense wealth in the form of paper, but it was also of the most extraordinary utility to the poorer classes. Household utensils of every description were fabricated from its roots; boats were constructed of its stem; roofing, sail-cloth, ropes, and clothes were made of its bark; and from the appellation of "eaters of papyrus," often applied to the Egyptians by the Greeks, some have thought that it was a common article of food. How extraordinary does it then seem that a plant of such inestimable value should ever have disappeared from a land which derived such benefits from it. Nevertheless, it is a singular fact that the papyrus is no longer to be found in Egypt; recent travellers assure us that not a stalk is to be seen at the present day in the Delta. Sicily alone now possesses the beautiful reed.

We are ignorant of the exact period of the introduction of the papyrus paper into Greece and Italy, but Pliny has left us copious details concerning the manipulations it underwent among the Romans. Sizing was then, as it is now, one of the most important operations in paper-making. The membranous covering of the stem of the papyrus reed was far from being of a firm, compact texture, and the Alexandrian factories probably sent it forth very imperfectly prepared. The best quality of paper was made by gluing together, with starch and vinegar, two sheets of papyrus, one transversely to the other, and then sizing them. These sheets were sometimes of considerable dimensions; documents have been discovered written on paper three yards in length.

Those true lovers of literature, art, and science, the Athenians, raised a statue to Philtatius—to him who first taught them the secret of sizing paper!

It is a curious fact that, about thirty years since, the vegetable size used by the ancient Egyptians was introduced, with some slight improvement, as a new discovery, into the paper manufactories of France, and has now almost entirely abolished the use of animal size in that country for all purposes connected with the fabrication of paper.

About the fourth century, the Arabs made Europe acquainted with cotton paper, just then invented in Damascus, thereby causing a great diminution in the papyrus trade. A long struggle ensued between the rival productions, which was only put an end to at the commencement of the twelfth century, by the invention of paper manufactured from flaxen and hempen refuse. The papyrus disappeared at once and completely; soon forgotten by commerce, but immortal in the remembrance of poets and sages—immortal as the pages of Cicero and Virgil, whose sweet and eloquent thoughts were first traced on Egypt's reed.

Until the present time, this flaxen[129] and hempen rag paper has been produced in sufficient quantities for the necessities of our civilization, but as civilization increases, and as education becomes more general, especially among the masses of Europe, it is evident that the supply of rags will be inadequate to the demand, and wood will most probably again be brought into requisition, as in the age of Pericles.

Not, however, in the form of the ancient tablets, but transformed by mechanical and chemical science into sheets of white and pliant paper; or the numerous fibrous plants of Algeria, Cuba, and other tropical countries will be turned to account, and no longer permitted to waste their usefulness on the desert air. Even now, in France, among the Vosges Mountains, there is a paper manufactory where wood is manipulated with the most complete success. And some few years since, a newspaper paragraph informed the civilized world that a process of making paper from marble had been discovered by a canny Scotchman of Glasgow! It is not, indeed, impossible that the marble painfully hewn and engraven by our forefathers to perpetuate the memory of a bloody struggle or of some vain triumph, may in time to come, by the magic power of modern science, become a sheet of snowy tissue, whereon the fair, slight hand of beauty shall trace the dainty nothings of fashionable life!

The tablets so continually mentioned by ancient writers must be noted. They were made of parchment, thin boards, ivory, or metal, prepared to receive ink, or coated with wax and written on with a stylus, or sharp-pointed pencil. In the Fourth Book of Kings we read: "I will efface Jerusalem as tables are wont to be effaced, and I will erase and turn it, and draw the pencil over the face thereof." Herodotus and Demosthenes speak of their tablets. In Rome, they were used not only as note-books and journals, but also for correspondence in the city and its environs, while the papyrus served for letters intended to be sent to a distance. The receiver of one of these notes not unfrequently returned his answer on the same tablet. Made of African cypress and highly ornamented and inlaid, they were given as presents, precisely as portfolios, souvenirs, and note-books are nowadays. On the wax-covered tablets was generally traced the first rough copy of any document, to be afterward neatly written out either on papyrus or parchment. These wax-covered tablets were used in France until the beginning of the last century.

Two-leaved tablets were called diptychs, and were sometimes of extraordinary cost and beauty. The Roman consuls and high magistrates were accustomed, on their first appointment to office, to present their friends with ivory diptychs, exquisitely engraved and carved, and ornamented with gold.

Ancient ink was composed of lamp-black and gum-water. Pliny says that the addition of a little vinegar rendered it ineffaceable, and that a little wormwood infused in it preserved the manuscript from mice. This ink was used until the twelfth century, when our present common ink was invented.

Not only black, but also red, blue, green, and yellow inks were employed in antiquity. Sepia ink and Indian ink are mentioned by Pliny. Red ink, made from a murex, was especially esteemed, and reserved for the emperor's exclusive use, under pain of death to all infringers of the privilege. Gold and silver inks, principally[130] used from the eighth to the tenth centuries, were also prized; writers in gold, termed chrysographers, formed a class apart among writers in general. The Imperial Library of Paris possesses several Greek Gospels, and the Livre des Heures of Charles the Bold, entirely written in gold. Few manuscripts are extant written in silver; the most celebrated are the Gospels, preserved in the Upsal Library.

The stylus, a dangerous weapon when made in iron, and proscribed by Roman law, which required it to be of bone; the painting brush, used still by the Chinese; the reed, which was cut and shaped like our modern pen, and with which some oriental nations write even now; and the feather pen, which is mentioned by an anonymous writer of the fifth century, were the general writing implements of antiquity and the middle ages. Metallic pens are also supposed to have been known; the Patriarchs of Constantinople were accustomed to sign their official acts with a silver reed, probably of the form of a pen.

Some paintings found in Herculaneum give evidence that the ancients were accustomed to make use of most, if not of all the various conveniences with which modern writers surround themselves. The writing-desk, the inkstand, the penknife, the eraser, the hone, and the powder-box were well-known. They do not seem, however, to have had the habit of sitting up to a table to write, but rested their tablet or paper on their knee, or on their left hand, as the orientals do at the present day.

DOÑA FORTUNA AND DON DINERO.[16]

Well, sirs, Doña Fortuna and Don Dinero were so in love that you never saw one without the other. The bucket follows the rope, and Don Dinero followed Doña Fortuna till folks began to talk scandal. Then they made up their minds to get married.

Don Dinero was a big swollen fellow, with a head of Peruvian gold, a belly of Mexican silver, legs of the copper of Segovia, and shoes of paper from the great factory of Madrid.[17]

Doña Fortuna was a mad-cap, without faith or law, very slippery, uncertain, and queer, and blinder than a mole.

The pair were at cross purposes before they had finished the wedding-cake. The woman wanted to take the command, but this did not suit Don Dinero, who was of an overbearing and haughty disposition. Why, sirs! my father (may glory be his rest!) used to say that if the sea were to get married he would lose his fierceness. But Don Dinero was more proud than the sea and did not lose his presumption.

As both wished to be first and best, and neither would consent to be last or least, they determined to [131]decide by a trial which of the two had the more power.

"Look," said the wife to the husband, "do you see, down there in the hollow of that olive-tree, that poor man so discouraged and chop-fallen? Let's try whether you or I can do more for him."

The husband agreed, and they went right away, he croaking, and she with a jump, and took up their quarters by the tree.

The man, who was a wretch that had never in his whole life seen either of them, opened eyes like a pair of great olives when the two appeared suddenly in front of him.

"Yes, sir; I have six children as naked as colts, with throats like old stocking-legs; but, as to property, I have only grab and swallow, and often not that."

"Why? Because I can't find work, and I'm so unlucky that everything I undertake turns out as crooked as a goat's horn. Since I married, it appears as though a frost had fallen on me. I'm the fag of ill-hap. Now, here—a master set us to dig him a well for a price, promising doubloons when it should be finished, but giving not a single maravedi[18] beforehand."

"The master was wise," remarked Don Dinero. "'Money taken, arms broken,' is a good saying. Go on, my man."

"I put my soul in the work; for, notwithstanding your worship sees me looking so forlorn, I am a man, sir."

"But there are four kinds of men, señor. There are men that are men; there are good-for-naughts; and contemptible monkeys; and men that are below monkeys, and not worth the water they drink. But, as I was telling you, the deeper we dug, the lower down we went, but the fewer signs we found of water. It appeared as if the centre of the world had been dried. Lastly, and finally, we found nothing, señor, but a cobbler."

"In the bowels of the earth!" exclaimed Don Dinero, indignant at hearing that his ancestral palace was so meanly inhabited.

"No, señor!" said the man deprecatingly; "not in the bowels; further on, in the country of the other tribe."

"My friend, I am going to do you a favor," said Don Dinero pompously; and he put a dollar in the man's hand.

The man hardly credited his eyes; joy lent wings to his feet, he was not long in arriving at a baker's shop and buying bread, but, when he went to take out his money, he found nothing in his pocket but the hole through which his dollar had gone without saying good-by.

The poor fellow was in despair; he looked for it, but when did one of his sort ever find anything? No; St. Anthony guards the pig that is destined for the wolf. After the money he lost time, and after time patience, and, that lost, he fell to casting[132] after his bad luck every curse that ever opened lips.

Doña Fortuna strained herself with laughing. Don Dinero's face turned yellower with bile, but he had no remedy except to put his hand in his pocket and bring out an onza[19] to give the man.

The poor fellow was so full of joy that it leaped out of his eyes. He did not go for bread this time, but hurried to a dry-goods store to buy a few clothes for his wife and children. When he handed the onza to pay for what he had bought, the dealer said, and stuck to it, that the piece was bad; that no doubt its owner was a coiner of false money, and that he was going to give him up to justice. On hearing this, the poor man was confounded, and his face became so hot that you might have toasted beans on it; but he took to his heels and ran to tell Don Dinero what had happened, weeping the while with shame and disappointment.

Doña Fortuna nearly burst herself with laughing, and Don Dinero felt the mustard rising in his nose.[20] "Here," said he to the poor man, "take these two thousand reals; your luck is truly bad; but if I don't mend it, my power is less than I think."

The man set off so delighted that he saw nothing until he flattened his nose against some robbers. They left him as his mother brought him into the world.

When his wife chucked him under the chin and said it was her turn, and it would soon be seen which had the more power, the petticoats or the breeches, Don Dinero looked more shame-faced than a clown.

She then went to the poor man, who had thrown himself on the ground and was tearing his hair, and blew on him. At the instant the lost dollar lay under his hand. "Something is something," he said to himself; "I'll buy bread for my children, for they have gone three days on half a ration, and their stomachs must be as empty as a charity-box."

As he passed before the shop where he had bought the clothes, the dealer called him in, and begged of him to overlook his previous rudeness; said that he had really believed the onza to be a bad one, but that the assayer, who happened to stop as he passed that way, had assured him that it was one of the very best, rather over than under weight, in fact. He asked leave to return the piece, and the clothes besides, which he begged him to accept as an expression of sorrow for the annoyance he had caused him.

The poor man declared himself satisfied, loaded his arms with the things; and, if you will believe me, as he was crossing the plaza, some soldiers of the civil guard were bringing in the highwaymen that had robbed him. Immediately, the judge, who was one of the judges God sends, made them restore the two thousand reals without costs or waste. The poor man, in partnership with a neighbor of his, put his money in a mine. Before they had dug down six feet they struck a vein of gold, another of lead, and another of iron. Right away people began to call him Don, then "You Sir," then Your Excellency. Since that time Doña Fortuna has had her husband humbled and shut up in her shoe, and she, more addle-pated and indiscriminating than ever, goes on distributing her favors without rhyme or reason,[133] without judgment or discretion—madly, foolishly, generously, hit or miss, like the blows of the blind stick; and one of them will reach the writer, if the reader is pleased with the tale.

ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI.

LETTER FROM ROME.

Four months have gone by since the Italian troops entered Rome through the breach made by the cannon of Cadorna, four months since a new light dawned upon the Eternal City, and its regenerators set about the accomplishment of their aspirations. What has been the development of this third life of Rome—la terza vita, as Terenzio Mamiani has been pleased to style it—in this its primal stage? The child is father to the man—the seed produces the tree and its fruit. So, too, do the beginnings of a political state give an index of its future, fix the causes that are to produce the results of the future. The history of these four months, then, must be looked on with interest, and pondered with care.

The present century is universally considered an age of progress, and it was in the name of progress that the forces of Victor Emmanuel entered the capital of Christianity. Progress implies motion from one state or condition to another more perfect: the simplicity of this statement cannot be gainsaid, and we shall assume it as uncontested. The party of progress took possession of Rome in the interest of progress. Has Rome progressed during these months since the 20th of September? Has she gone from her past state to one more perfect? Facts must speak; and facts we give. One thing at a time.

Abundance and cheapness of food are the first essentials in the well-being of a state, and necessarily connected with this is the facility of obtaining it. We cannot say that food is scarce in Rome; but the absolute and the relative cheapness have undergone a decided change, to the disadvantage of the poorer as well as the wealthier classes, since the 20th of September. The mocinato, or so-called grist-tax, extending even to the grinding of dried vegetables, chestnuts, and acorns, has sent up[135] the price of bread. Salt has risen at least a cent per pound. The further application of the system of heavy taxation is not likely to make other articles of prime necessity cheaper. And while this state of things exists, the facility of obtaining food has become much less for the poorer classes. The causes of this are to be sought in the want of employers. It is the universal complaint that there is no work. Before the coming of the present rulers, the army of the Pope, composed in great part of young men of some means, spent a great deal among the people. This source of gain ceased with the disbandment of the Papal troops, for it is notorious lippis et tonsoribus, that the men of the present contingent have barely enough daily allowance to keep body and soul together. Besides this, ecclesiastics spent their revenues, fixed by law and sure, with a liberal hand. Now, when they find difficulty in getting even what they cannot be deprived of; now that confiscation hangs over their heads with menacing aspect; now that religious orders are called on to make immense outlays to send their young men to places of safety—in one case to the extent of six thousand dollars—it would be foolish to expect them to sacrifice what is necessary for themselves; though, to do them justice, they are always willing to share their little with the poor. Dearth of foreign ecclesiastics, and of foreigners in general, is another source of distress, and this is directly a consequence of the invasion. The result of all this is that there is more misery in the city of Rome than has been seen for many a day—beggars are more numerous in the streets, and needy families, ashamed to beg, suffer in silence or pour their tale of woe into the ear of the clergy, who always are honored with the confidence of the poor and afflicted. Surely this state of things is not an improvement on the plenty which characterized the rule of the pontiffs. We cannot say Rome in this respect has moved into a better sphere—that she has progressed.

Security of person and property is another essential object of the attention of every state. No state that cannot guarantee this is deserving of the name of having a good government. Under the Papal rule, it is well known that not only in Rome did good order prevail, as the immense multitude present at the Œcumenical Council can attest, but that also on the frontiers of the territories governed by the Pope, after the withdrawal of the French troops from Veroli and Anagni, the energy displayed by the Roman delegate was such as to liberate completely the provinces from the bands sprung from the civil strifes of southern Italy. The city of Rome itself was a model of good order and of personal safety. Now things are changed. Only a few days ago, a "guardia di pubblica sicurezza" was stopped in the streets and robbed of his watch and revolver. There is not a day that has not in the daily papers its record of thefts and acts of personal violence. Only a few days ago, there was a sacrilegious robbery in the Church of St. Andrea della Valle. On the 8th of December there was rioting with bloodshed in Rome. A band of young students under the charge of a religious were stoned on Sunday, January 15. On the 16th, the Very Rev. Rector of the "Ospizio degli Orfanelli" was struck with a stone. It would be easy to multiply examples, but those we have given are quite enough to show that progress in security of person and property has not been attained since the 20th of September, 1870.

Then public morality in the centre of Christianity could not fail to be at a far higher standard, now that the regeneration of the city of Rome has been accomplished. What bitter illusions fortune delights in dispensing to those that trust her! Before the entrance of Italian statesmen into Rome, vice and immorality did not dare raise their heads—they could[136] not flaunt themselves on the public ways. Now there is a change, and the moral order of Italy has entered through the breach at the Porta Pia. We say no more, the subject is a delicate one, and we therefore refrain from penning facts notorious in Rome. Surely, none who has received even an elementary training in virtue will deem this state of things progress—an elevation to a higher and more perfect state.

But the King of Italy came to Rome to protect the independence of the Sovereign Pontiff, to save him from the bondage of foreign hordes. Now, as the Pope is principally a spiritual sovereign, it is his spiritual power that most needs protection; consequently, the King of Italy and his faithful servants have been most zealous in preventing acts or publications that would tend to diminish the respect due to the Holy Father.

Incomprehensible, but true—the very opposite has taken place! We have at hand the satirical paper, the Don Pirlone Figlio, of January 19. On its first page is a ridiculous adaptation of the heading used by the cardinal vicar in his official notifications to the faithful. The same page has an article grossly disrespectful to the Sovereign Pontiff, and insulting to the Belgian deputation, who have just come on to present the protest of their countrymen, and their contributions. The Holy Father is styled Giovanni Mastai detto Colui ex-disponibile anche lui; the members of the deputation are given ridiculous names; and the contributors of Peter Pence are blackbirds caught in a cage; finally, a ridiculous discourse is put in the mouth of the Pope, concluding with a benediction. The illustration represents Pius IX. with a boot in his hand, in the act of giving it to the Emperor of Germany, who figures as a cobbler. Such are the illustrations and articles one sees exposed to the public day by day. When we who have seen Rome under far different circumstances witness these things, is it at all strange that we refuse to see "the general respect shown to ecclesiastics in the exercise of their sacred functions," even though on the faith of a Lamarmora it be asserted to exist? Can we be blamed for thinking that anything but progress in veneration of religion has been the result of the taking of Rome?

After this, any of the advantages arising from the occupation of Rome can have no weight sufficient to warrant much attention—for they must be, as they are, material and of a low order—chiefly regarding facility of communication and despatch in business matters, things desirable in themselves, but, it would seem, purchased at a fearful sacrifice.

Is this state of things to continue? Is the Italian kingdom on such a permanent basis that the Papacy has no hope of a change that may give it back its possessions? Or can the kingdom of Italy be brought to make restitution of what it has seized, without itself undergoing destruction? A word in reply to each of these queries. And first, is this state of things to continue?

When we consider who the Sovereign Pontiff is, and consult the opinions of men famed for their foresight and statesmanship, it is difficult to deny that the restoration of the Pontiff to his rights is very possible. Napoleon Bonaparte, although he afterwards made Pius VII. his prisoner, left recorded his opinion that it was impossible that the Pope should be the subject of any one sovereign, and that it was providential the head of the church had been given the possession of a small state to secure his independence. M. Thiers, in commendation of whom we need say nothing, as his reputation is world-wide, has clearly and forcibly proclaimed this very opinion. In the debates on the temporal power in the French Senate, in 1867, his voice was heard calling on France to protect Rome, and it was his energy forced from the hypocritical[137] government of his country the famous word, uttered by Rouher, that struck terror into Italy—"Jamais." One would imagine that now Rome has fallen, and France is reduced to the verge of desperation, no man of "liberal" political views would be foolhardy enough to risk his reputation by reiterating an opinion like this. Yet, strange to say, there is one who has been willing to run the risk, and that in the very Chamber of Deputies at Florence. Only a few weeks ago, the Deputy Toscanelli, a liberal, and, we learn, a free-thinker, with a courage, a strength of argument, and flow of wit that gained the respect and attention of the house, almost in the words of M. Thiers gave the same opinion. In the days of the last of the Medici, said the distinguished deputy, there was a court-jester riding a spirited horse down the Via Calzaioli, in Florence. The horse got the better of his rider, and started off at full speed. "Ho! Sor Fagioli," cried out one of the crowd, "where are you going to fall?" "No one knows or can know," was the jester's answer, as he held on with both hands. Just so is it with the government; it has mounted a policy that is running away with it, and neither it nor any one else knows where it is going to fall. The government has gone to Rome, and in Rome it cannot stay; it cannot hold its own face to face with the Pope. "I give you, then, this advice: leave Rome, declare it a free city under the protection of the kingdom of Italy." So much for the opinions of political men of eminence; we will examine the question for a moment on its intrinsic merits.

We know the Sovereign Pontiff in his official capacity of teacher of the whole church is infallible in declarations regarding faith or morals. But in other matters of policy, of fact, he has no guarantee against error beyond what is afforded him by the use of the means which he has at hand, the information of his advisers, and especially of the Sacred College of Cardinals. Suppose for a moment this means of information is done away with, or made a vehicle of untrue statements. Suppose unworthy men are artfully intruded on the Pope, and act in accordance with instructions received from the rulers of Italy. Imagine Italy at war or on bad terms with the United States or England. A crafty statesman sees an opportunity of putting in a position to aid him in one or the other country an able man, through the influence of some high ecclesiastic, whose good opinion will have great weight with men of standing or with the people. The whole matter is artfully carried out. There is an understanding between the Italian statesman and his American or English friend; both act cautiously and avoid alarming susceptibilities. The affair works well. Persons around the Pope are made to drop a word incidentally in praise of the virtue and ability of the one whom it is intended to raise to power. The Pope in his relations with the bishops of foreign countries, speaking of the prospects of the church in good faith, speaks also to the ecclesiastic of whom we have made mention, and in favorable terms, of the person in question. Who that knows human nature can fail to see the thorough nature of the influence thus used? The crafty originators are the ones to blame, and the harm done is effected in perfect good faith by the unconscious instruments of their design. To show we are not building on our fancy, we turn to the pages of a man whose name all revere—Cardinal Wiseman. In his Recollections of the Last Four Popes, he speaks of the character of Pius VII.:

Such are the words of a man writing after years of intercourse with the first men of Europe. They are instructive words—for human nature is ever the same. There are men still in Italy who follow out closely the principles of Macchiavelli—to whom everything sacred or profane, no matter what veneration may have surrounded it, is but the means to self-aggrandizement and the satisfaction of ambition. It is for the nations of the world to say whether they are willing to allow the existence of the permanent danger to themselves, arising from the subjection of the spiritual head of the church to any crowned head or even republic whatsoever. Perhaps, of the two, the latter would be the more to be dreaded. The Roman mobs that drove Eugenius IV. from Rome, and pelted him as he went down the Tiber, or made many another Pope seek safety in flight, could be easily gotten together again, as the present residents of the Eternal City know only too well.

We answer, then, our first query, and say that this state of things cannot last. Time, the great remedy of human ills, will solve this question, and establish the See of Peter on a perfectly independent basis—independent of all sovereign control, even if this be not done shortly through the armed interference of European powers.

It is hardly necessary to inquire whether the Italian kingdom is so firmly constituted that no hope of restoration of the Pope is to be seen. For ourselves, we think there are indications that point to a speedy dissolution of this state on the first breaking out of a war between Italy and any great power. Her policy is to avoid entangling alliances, and this she is following out, striving to propitiate the Emperor of Germany for her leaning towards France. The first army that will enter the peninsula to aid the Pope will shiver Italy to fragments. The southern provinces have too lively a recollection of the days of plenty under their kings, and too painful an impression of heavy taxation and proconsular domination of the Piedmontese race, to hesitate between submission to them and the regaining their own autonomy, which will make Naples again one of the queenly capitals of the world.

One index of the general discontent or indifference is the small number of those who vote at the elections in proportion to those who are inscribed on the electoral lists. The motto proposed by the Unità Cattolica, the foremost Catholic journal of Italy—"Neither elected nor electors"—has been adopted and acted upon by very many throughout the country. We feel no difficulty in saying that the majority of the Italians are not with the House of Savoy, nor are they in favor of United Italy. The ruling power has the government and the command of the army, a fact that quite accounts for the existing state of things.

Our third question, whether the kingdom of Italy can be brought to make restitution of the territories it has seized, without itself undergoing destruction, remains to be answered. We believe it cannot, unless[139] half-measures—always more or less dangerous—be adopted. The late spoliation is not more criminal than the first, and no amount of plébiscite can make it legitimate, no more than—to use the words of the able editor of the Unità Cattolica—the popular approbation of the condemnation of Jesus Christ legitimized the crucifixion. The claim, then, to restitution extends to the whole of the former provinces, justly held by the Popes to supply them with the revenue needed to make them independent of the precarious contributions of the Peter Pence, and which was none too large for that purpose.

Whatever may come, we know the future of the church is in the hands of One in whose holding are the hearts of princes and peoples. What we have to do is to pray earnestly for our spiritual head, aid him by our means, console him with our sympathy, and give him whatever support, moral or other, it be in our power to offer. And while we do so, it is a joy to us to know we have lessened the grief of his hardships by what we have done hitherto, even gladdened the hours of his captivity. A few days ago, speaking to the Belgian deputation, Pius IX. said: "Belgium gives me very often proofs of her fidelity. Continue in the way in which you are walking; do not allow your courage to fail. What is happening to-day is only a trial, and the church came into existence in the midst of trials, lived always amid them, and amid them she will end her earthly career. It is our duty to battle and stand firm in the face of danger.... We have an Italian proverb which says: It is one thing to talk of dying; quite another to die. People speak very resignedly of persecutions, but sometimes it is hard to bear them. The world offers to-day a very sad spectacle, and particularly this our city of Rome, in which we see things to which our eyes have not been accustomed. Let us all pray together that God may soon deliver his church, and re-establish public order, so deeply shaken. Your efforts, your prayers, your pious pilgrimages, all tend to this end, and I therefore bless them with all my heart." May the words of the Holy Father find an echo in our hearts; let us not lose courage, but keep up our efforts, so happily begun, and never rest till wrong be righted, until we see the most sublime dignity and power on earth freed from the surroundings that would seek to make it as little as themselves.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

Dr. Holmes is a Benvenuto Cellini in literature, and everything he produces is of precious metal, skilfully enchased, and adorned with gems of art. The present address is no exception to the general rule, but rather an unusually good illustration of it. It is a remarkably curious piece of work, containing many interesting facts and speculations derived from the author's scientific studies on the mechanism of the brain. There is nothing in it positively[140] affirmed which is necessarily materialistic, as far as we can see; rather, we should say that its doctrine stands on one side of both materialism and spiritualism, and can be reconciled with either. It can be explained, if we have understood it correctly, in conformity with the Aristotelian and scholastic philosophy, in such a way as not to prejudice the truth of the distinct and spiritual nature of the soul. The author, indeed, appears more inclined to that belief than the opposite, although we are sorry to find him expressing himself in so hesitating and dubious a manner. When he passes from thought to morals, he gets out of his element, and displays a flippancy and levity which may pass very well in humorous poetry, but are out of place in treating of graver topics. His remarks on some points of Catholic doctrine are so completely at fault as to show his entire incompetency to meddle with the subject at all. His language in regard to the Council of the Vatican and Pius IX. is more like that of a pert and vulgar student of Calvinistic divinity than that of an elegant and refined Cambridge professor. "But political freedom inevitably generates a new type of religious character, as the conclave that contemplates endowing a dotard with infallibility has found out, we trust, before this time" (p. 95). Dr. Holmes has apparently profited by his close observations among that class of the female population of Boston who are wont to thrust their bodies half out of their windows, and "exhaust the vocabulary, to each other's detriment." We congratulate him, and the learned Society of Phi Beta Kappa, on the choice sentence we have quoted above. We trust those Catholics who are disposed to think that we can make use of Harvard University as a place of education for our youth, will take note of this sample of the language they may expect to hear in that and similar institutions, and open their eyes to the necessity of providing some better instruction for their sons than can be had at such sources. Notwithstanding our high appreciation of Dr. Holmes's genius, and the great pleasure we have derived from his works, we regret to say that we must consider his influence on young people grievously detrimental. In virtue of a reaction from Calvinism, he has swung into an extreme of rationalism the effect of which is checked in his own person by the influence of an unusually good heart and an early religious education, but in itself is sure to overthrow all reverence, faith, and moral principle. The whole effect of this address on the minds of young men tends to a most pernicious result, and encourages them, with a kind of thoughtless gaiety, to rush forward in a career of mental and moral lawlessness.

Here we have a plain, practical, but very attractively and charmingly written book of spiritual reading for everybody. It emanates from the Convent of Poor Clares, Kenmare, County Kerry, Ireland, who are anything but poor in intellectual gifts and religious zeal. We suppose it is from the pen of the gifted authoress of the History of Ireland and several other works of the highest literary merit. The idea of the volume is apparently taken from the "Parable of a Pilgrim" in F. Baker's Sancta Sophia, of which it is a minute paraphrase and commentary. Its minuteness, diffuseness, and fluency of style are, in our opinion, great merits, considering the end and object of the book. It is easy reading, explains and enlarges on each topic at length and in detail with great tact and discretion, and is eminently fitted to help a person in the acquisition and practice of the homely, everyday Christian virtues. Its bread is of fine quality, broken up fine. It is[141] eminently adapted for the young and simple, timid beginners, and persons living an everyday busy life, and also for the sick, the suffering, and the afflicted. At the same time, a professor of theology, or even a bishop, may read it with great profit and satisfaction. We recommend this book with more than usual earnestness, and we trust the good Sisters of Kenmare will keep on with their series, which must certainly produce an extraordinary amount of good.

Fernan Caballero is the nom de plume of Madame de Baer, who is now an aged lady, though still in the full possession of her intellectual powers. We admire the old Spanish character, customs, faith, and chivalry. Mme. de Baer is their champion, and the enemy of the revolution which has desolated that grand old Catholic country. This is one of her stories written to that point, and we trust it will find even here many a reader who will sympathize with the author, and help to neutralize the poison, too widely spread, of modern liberalism—the deadly epidemic of Spain and all Europe. It is a very suitable book for school premiums, and ought to be in every library. Other persons, also, will find it a lively and entertaining book, with a strong dash of the peculiar quaintness usually found in Spanish stories.

These essays are cleverly and agreeably written. Their topics are very miscellaneous, but all of them important and interesting. Those on "Liberal Education in Universities," "English in Schools," "The Church as a Teacher of Morality," and the "Teaching of Politics," are especially worthy of attention. Some of the writers of the "Broad Church," to which Prof. Seelye belongs, are quite remarkable for their honorable candor, largeness of mind, originality of thought, and, in certain respects, approximation to Catholic views. We like to read them better than most other Protestant writers, and often find their writings instructive. We have seldom seen a book written by a Protestant in which a Catholic can find so many things to approve of and be pleased with, and so few in which he is obliged to differ from the author, as the present volume.

The Ven. Grignon de Montfort was a priest of noble birth, who lived and labored in France as a missionary, and became the founder of two religious congregations, during the eighteenth century. He was a person of great individuality of character and many peculiar gifts and traits, which made his life quite a salient one, if we may be allowed the expression. His talents for poetry, music, and the arts of design, and a marked poetic fervor in his temperament, gave a certain zest and raciness to his career as a missionary, and were a great help to his success. His character was chivalrous and daring, and his sanctity shows a kind of exaltation, a sort of gay mockery of danger, contempt, privation, and suffering, which it almost takes one's breath away to contemplate. His life was very short, but his labors, persecutions, and services were very great. He is best known in modern times by his extraordinary devotion to the Blessed Virgin. It is altogether probable that ere long the process of his canonization will be completed, and a decree of the Vicar of Christ enroll[142] his name among the saints. Those who are capable of profiting by an example, and by writings of such sublime spirituality, will find something in this book seldom to be met with even in the Lives of Saints.

Chemical science, as Prof. Barker remarks in his preface, has indeed undergone a remarkable revolution in the last few years; and the text-books which were excellent not long ago are now almost useless, as far as the theoretical part of the subject is concerned. And though, in all probability, more brilliant discoveries as to the internal constitution of matter, the formation of molecules, and the nature of the chemical adhesion of atoms are in store than any yet made, still the conclusions recently attained on these points maybe considered as well established, and can by no means be considered as crude speculations, to be overthrown to-morrow by others of no greater weight. Chemistry seems, at present, to promise better than ever before to solve the problem of the arrangement of the ultimate material elements, though, perhaps, the laws of the forces which connect them, and the nature of the molecular movements, will be rather obtained from other sources.

Prof. Barker's book is an admirable exponent of the science in its present state. The first quarter of it is devoted to an explanation of the principles of theoretical chemistry, and it is this, of course, which is specially interesting and important at present, though the remainder will be found much easier reading. The work is one, however, which is meant to be studied, rather than merely read, containing a great deal of information, and giving much material for mental exercise throughout. It would not have been easy to put more valuable matter in its few pages, and its merits as a text-book are very great. The type is very clear, and the illustrations numerous and excellent.

If Mr. Gaskin had not stated in his preface that "the present work is, in great part, based on a lecture delivered by the author before a highly influential, intelligent, and fashionable audience," we would have anticipated, from the title of his book, something not only interesting but instructive relating to Irish history. But knowing very well what pleases a highly fashionable audience in the dwarfed and provincialized capital of Ireland, this announcement was enough to satisfy us that his conception of what makes history was neither very lucid nor comprehensive. It is unnecessary to say that, within the shadow of Dublin Castle, any rash man who would be unthinking enough to write or speak seriously about the history of Ireland—that protracted tragedy upon which the curtain has not yet fallen—would soon be voted a bore, or something worse, by the fashionable people who are privileged once or twice a year to kiss the hand of the representative of royalty. But the author is evidently too well bred to commit such a solecism, and accordingly, under a very attractive exterior, he treats us to all sorts of gossip, from the doings of Gra na' Uile, a sort of western Viqueen, to the murder of Captain Glas, a Scotch privateersman. The intervals between these two great historical events is filled up with the mock regal ceremonies that used to be observed annually on the island of Dalkey; reminiscences of Swift, Dr. Delaney, Curran, and other distinguished men of the last century, which, though not new, are pleasant to read; and some correct and elaborate[143] descriptions of scenery in the suburbs of Dublin, which will not be without interest to those who have visited that part of Ireland. The Varieties is not a book which will find much favor with historical students, but for railroad and steamboat travellers, who wish to read as they run, and as a book for the drawing-room, being light in style and handsomely illustrated, it will be found entertaining and agreeable.

The best thing we can say about this book is that it affords another striking proof that the Catholic Church is the genius of all true poetry and art. One-half of the volume is devoted to sketches of the lives of Catholic saints, the other half being equally divided between legends of German localities and the gods and goddesses of Greece and Rome. We look in vain for some notice of works of art or poetic legend to which Protestantism, with its heroes, or modern Rationalism, with no heroes, has given inspiration. The authoress, however, is not a Catholic, for she calls us "Romanists," a vulgar term, the use of which, she ought to know, we consider as impertinent and insulting.

False legends and true biographies of our saints are strung together without discrimination. This we would not complain of so much, if, as she would seem to imply, they are both illustrated by art; but the instances in which these apocryphal and unworthy stories have been chosen by the painter or sculptor as fitting subjects are exceedingly rare, and where they are, as in the case of Durer's painting of "St. John Chrysostom's Penance," which is reproduced by the authoress (shall we say with her in the preface, "to interest and instruct her children"?), they bear evidence of an art degraded in inspiration and debased in morals.

This short historical novel has been written for two purposes—to disprove the correctness of the saying, attributed to Voltaire, that the Irish always fought badly at home, and to illustrate, in a popular manner, the struggle between James II. and his son-in-law, the Prince of Orange. With due respect to the author, we submit that too much importance has already been attached to Voltaire's ipse dixit with regard to the fighting qualities of the Irish. It is of little importance, indeed, what that gifted infidel has said about anything or anybody, as it is pretty well understood in our day that among his numerous failings veracity was not very conspicuous. Mr. Conyngham has, however, succeeded very creditably in accomplishing his main object, and presents us with a succinct and truthful view of the rival forces which, for three years, contested for the English crown on the soil of Ireland. There is very little plot in the story, the principal interest centring in the acts of Sarsfield and other well-known historical personages; but the narrative of the war is well sustained, and the author's conception of the inner life of his principal characters is in the main correct and natural.

This is one of that class of books for boys full of hair-breadth escapes and improbable incidents. It is the first of The Pleasant Cove Series, which means five more just like this. The fact that the characters have been introduced in a former "series," and are to be carried forward through the coming five volumes, renders the story a little obscure at times. This, however, will not prevent[144] boys who enjoy tales of perilous sea voyages and marvellous encounters from finding this volume interesting and amusing.

The subject and nature of this little book are sufficiently expressed in its title. The position of the Very Reverend author, and approbations by the Archbishop of New York and the Right Reverend Bishop of Wheeling, testify to its sound doctrine and usefulness as a book of instruction.

Pussy Willow is a charming girl and a charming woman, but we think that it is not often that nature accomplishes so much even with the aid of country air and simple, healthful habits and pleasures. However, we must not forget the fairy's gift, of always looking at the bright side of things. Pity we had not more of us this gift! But the girls must read for themselves.

This little memorandum book will be found quite useful for the purpose designed. Besides the pages appropriated to the record of Masses, there are also "Indices Neo-Communicantium, Confirmandorum, Confraternitatum," etc., etc.

Before its republication, this work should have been placed in the hands of a competent editor. As it is now, it is very objectionable, and loses all its value. Here is one quotation, taken at random. Under the year 1362, we read: "Pope Urban V. at Avignon; beautifies the city of Rome; presents the right arm of Thomas Aquinas to Charles V. of France as an object of worship."

We have read this unpretending little volume with much interest. The author is a true poet, and has the merit of originality quite as much as of descriptive power. His more serious poems display a high appreciation of the beautiful and the romantic, and there is a Catholic tone about them. Those in dialect, with the other humorous pieces, are equally pleasing in their way. The former, particularly, reflect a side of life which is generally supposed the least poetical of all. Mr. Bret Harte has "gathered honey from the weed."

Corrigendum.—In the article "Which is the School of Religious Fraudulence," in our last number, p. 791, col. 2, near the middle, the sentence beginning, "It is no mark of falsity, therefore, in any document," should be thus concluded: "that it occurs there, unless it occurs there alone and nowhere else."

THE CHURCH ACCREDITS HERSELF [22]

Archbishop Manning's pastoral letter to his clergy on the first council, The Vatican and its Definitions, to which are appended the two constitutions the council adopted—the one the Constitutio de Fide Catholica, and the other the Constitutio Dogmatica Prima de Ecclesia—the case of Honorius, and the Letter of the German bishops on the council, though containing little that is new to our readers, is a volume which is highly valuable in itself, and most convenient to every Catholic who would know the real character of the council and what is the purport of its definitions. Few members of the council were more assiduous in their attendance on its sessions or took a more active part in its deliberations than the illustrious Archbishop of Westminster, and no one can give a more trustworthy account of its dispositions or of its acts. We are glad, therefore, that the volume has been republished in this country, and hope it will be widely read both by Catholics and non-Catholics.

The character of the book and of the documents it contains renders any attempt by us either to review it or to explain it alike unnecessary and impertinent. The pastoral is addressed officially by the Archbishop to his clergy; the constitutions or definitions adopted by the Holy Synod declare, by the assistance of the Holy Ghost, what is, and always has been, and always will be the Catholic faith on the matters defined; and we need not say that we cordially accept it as the word of God, and as the faith which all must accept ex animo, and without which it is impossible to please God. What the council has defined is the law of God, and binds us as if spoken to us directly by God himself in a voice from heaven. He speaks to us by his church, his organ, and her voice is in fact his voice, and what we take on her authority we take on his authority, for he assists her, vouches for her, and commands us to believe and obey her.

There are, indeed, enemies of the faith who pretend that Catholics believe[146] solely on the authority of the church as an organic body; but this is a misapprehension. We believe what is revealed on the veracity of God alone, because it is his word, and it is impossible for his word to be false; and we believe that it is his word on the authority or testimony of the church, with whom the word is deposited, and who is its divinely commissioned keeper, guardian, witness, and interpreter. The word of God is and must be true, and there is and can be no higher ground of faith or even of knowledge than the fact that God says it. Nothing can be more consonant to reason than to believe God on his word. Certainly, it is answered, if we have his word; but how do I know that what is proposed to me as his word is his word? We take the fact that it is his word on the authority of the Catholic Church; we believe it is his word because she declares it to be his word. It is permitted no one to doubt the word of God is conceded; but whence from that fact does it follow that I am not permitted to doubt the word of the church? Or why should I believe her testimony or her declaration rather than that of any one else?

To this question the general answer is, that she has been divinely instituted, and is protected and assisted to bear true witness to the revelation which it has pleased God to make, to proclaim it, declare its sense, and condemn whatever impugns or tends to obscure it. Supposing she has been instituted and commissioned by our Lord himself, for this very purpose, her authority is sufficient for believing whatever she teaches and declares or defines to be the word of God is his word or the truth he has revealed; for the divine commission is the divine word pledged for her veracity and infallibility. This is plain enough and indubitable; but how am I to know or to be assured that she has been so instituted or commissioned, and is so assisted?

There are several answers to this question; but we would remark, before proceeding to give any answer, that the church is in possession, has from the moment of the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the apostles on the day of Pentecost claimed to be in possession of the authority in question, and has had her claim acknowledged by the whole body of the faithful, and denied by none except those who deny or impugn authority itself. Being in possession, it is for those who question her right to show that she is wrongfully in possession. They are, to use a legal term, the plaintiffs in action, and must make out their case. Every one is presumed in law to be innocent till proven guilty. The church must be presumed to be rightfully in possession till the contrary is shown. They who question her possession must, then, adduce at least prima facie evidence for ousting her before she can be called upon to produce her title-deeds. This has never been done, and never can be done; for, if it could be done, some of our able and learned Protestant divines would, in the course of the last three hundred years and over, have done it. There is, then, in reality no need, in order to justify the faith of Catholics, to prove by extrinsic testimony the divine institution and commission of the church to teach all men and nations all things whatsoever God has revealed and commanded to be believed.

But we have no disposition to avail ourselves just now of what some may regard as a mere legal technicality. We answer the question by saying the church is herself the witness in the case, and accredits herself,[147] or her existence itself proves her divine institution, commission, and assistance or guidance.

The church was founded by our Lord on the prophets and apostles, being himself the chief corner-stone. This is asserted here as a simple historical fact. Historically, the church has existed, without any break or defect of continuity, from the apostles down to our times. Its unbroken existence from that time to this cannot be questioned. It has been a fact during all that period in the world's history, and too momentous a fact to escape observation. Indeed, it has been the one great fact of history for over eighteen hundred years; the central fact around which all the facts of history have revolved, and without which they would be inexplicable and meaningless. This assumed or granted, it must be conceded that she unites as one continuous fact, in one body, the apostles and the believers of to-day. She is a continuous fact; a present fact during all the period of time that has elapsed between the apostles and us, and therefore is alike present to them and to us. Her existence being unbroken, she has never fallen into the past; never been a past fact; but has always been and is a present fact; and therefore as present with the apostles to-day as she was on the day of Pentecost, when they received the Holy Ghost; and therefore presents us not simply what they taught, but what they teach her now and here. She bridges over the abyss of time between our Lord himself and us, and makes us and the apostles, so to speak, contemporaries; so that, as it is our Lord himself we hear in the apostles, so it is the apostles themselves that we hear in her.

This continuity or unity of the church in time is a simple historical fact, and as certain as any other historical fact, and even more so, for it is a fact that has never fallen into the past, and to be established only by trustworthy witnesses or documents. By it the church to-day is and must be as apostolic and as authoritative as in the days of the apostles Peter, James, and John. Individuals die, but the church dies not; individuals are changed, as are the particles of our bodies, but the church changes not. As in the human race individuals pass off, but the race remains always the same; so in the church individuals pass away, but the church remains unchanged in all its integrity; for the individuals die not all at once, and the new individuals born in their places are born into the one identical body, that does not die, but remains ever the same. No matter, then, how many generations succeed one another in their birth and death, the body of the church is subject to no law of succession, and remains not only one and the same church, but always the one and the same present church. The church of to-day is identically the church of yesterday, the church of yesterday is identically the church of the day before, and thus step by step back to the apostles; on the other hand, the church in the time of the apostles is identically the church of their successors down through all succeeding generations of individuals to us. There has never been an interval of time when it was not, or when it lost its identity as one and the same body. The church is precisely as apostolic now as it was in the beginning, or as were the apostles themselves.

Now, if we suppose our Lord communicated the whole revelation to the apostles either by his personal teaching or by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, then he communicated[148] it to her, and she is an eye and ear witness to the fact of revelation in the same sense that the apostles were, and her historical identity with the apostles makes her a perpetual and contemporary witness to the fact of revelation and to what is revealed. What misleads not a few on this point is that they regard the church as a mere aggregation of individuals, born and dying with them, or succeeding to herself with the succession of each new generation of individuals. But this is no more the case with the church than with the human race itself, or with any particular nation that has an historical existence through several generations. In all historical bodies the generations overlap one another, and no generation of individuals is either aggregated to the body or segregated from it all at once. The body does not die with the receding nor is it born anew with the acceding generation. The church, indeed, is an organism, not a mere aggregation of individuals, but even if it were the conclusion would not follow; for though the individuals are successively aggregated or affiliated, they are aggregated or affiliated to her as a persistent body, and though they pass off successively, they leave the body standing, one and identical. This is the simple historical fact. The church, as an ever-present body, remains one and the same identical body amid all the successive changes of individuals, and is just as much the depositary of the revelation and an eye-witness of the facts recorded in the Gospels, as were the apostles themselves.

We say, then, the church is herself the witness, and a competent and credible witness, to her own divine commission to teach and declare the word of God which he has revealed, and no better, no more competent or credible witness is needed or, in fact, conceivable. She is competent because she is the identical apostolical body, the contemporary and the eye-witness through the successive ages of the facts to which she testifies. She is a credible witness, because even as a human body it would be hardly possible for her either to mistake or to misrepresent the facts to which she testifies, since they are always present before her eyes, since, however her individual members may change, she herself knows no change with lapse of time, and no succession. She could not forget the faith, change it, or corrupt it, because there is at all times in her communion an innumerable body of living witnesses to its unity, purity, and integrity, who would detect the change or alteration and expose it. It is not with her as it would be with a book having a limited circulation. Copies of the book could easily be altered or interpolated without detection; but the living testimony of the church, spread over the whole world and teaching all nations, cannot be interpolated or corrupted. It is on the fidelity of the church, her vigilant guardianship, and uniform testimony that we depend for our confidence in the genuineness and authenticity of our copies of the sacred writings, and it is worthy of note that in proportion as men throw off the authority of the church, and reject her traditions, they lose that confidence, and fail to agree among themselves what books, if any, are inspired; so that without the testimony of the church the Holy Scriptures themselves cease to be an authority in matters of faith.

In human tribunals the supreme court is presumed to know the law which constitutes it, and it defines its own jurisdiction and powers. It declares the law of which it is the[149] depositary and guardian, and though the judges have only their human wisdom, learning, and sagacity, it is remarkable how few mistakes through a long series of ages they commit as to what is or is not the law they are appointed to administer, and nearly all the mistakes they do commit are due to the changes the legislature makes in the law or in the constitution of the court. Why should the church be less competent to judge of the law under which she is constituted, and to define her jurisdiction and powers? And since her constitution, as well as the law she administers, changes not, why should she be less exempt, even as a human court, from mistakes in interpreting and declaring the law, than the supreme court of England or the United States? What higher authority can there be to judge of her own constitution and the law given her to administer than the church herself?

The church received her constitution in the commission given to the apostolic body with whom she is one and identical, and the law or revealed word in the reception of it by the apostles. Being one and identical body with them, she has received what they received, and knows what they knew, is taught what they were taught, understands it in the same sense that they did, and has the same authority to interpret and declare it that they had. If they were commissioned to teach all nations to observe all things whatsoever our Lord commanded them, she is commissioned in their commission to do the same. If he promised them his efficacious presence and assistance to the consummation of the world, he made the promise to her; if he made Peter the prince of the apostles, the father and teacher of all Christians, and gave him plenary authority to feed, rule, and govern the universal church, he made the successor of Peter the visible head of the church, and gave him the same authority. The church, being the apostolic body persisting through all times, knows what the apostles received, knows therefore both her own constitution and the law deposited with her, and is as competent to judge of them as the apostles were, and has full authority to interpret and declare both, and it is to her, as to the supreme court of a nation, to judge what they are, and to define her constitution, jurisdiction, and powers.

The objection which many make to this conclusion arises from their confounding the authority of the church to interpret and define the law—and, as a part of the law, her own constitution, jurisdiction, and powers or functions—with the authority to make the law: a mistake like that of confounding the supreme court of the United States with Congress. The church, like the court or the supreme executive, may make her own rules and orders—what are called the orders and rules of court, for the purpose of carrying out the intent of the law—but she no more makes the law than does the civil court make the law under which it is constituted, and which it administers. God alone is the lawgiver or lawmaker, and his revealed word is the law—the law for the human reason and will, and which binds all men in thought, word, and deed. We want no church, as the supreme judge of the law, to tell us this, for it is a dictamen of reason itself. It is the revealed word of God, which again is only his will, the will of the supreme Lawgiver—that is the law under which the church is constituted, and which she guards, interprets, and declares, whenever a question of law arises. She does not make the law;[150] she keeps, interprets, declares, and defends or vindicates it. Even with only human wisdom, she can no more make the law, or declare that to be law which is not, than the supreme civil court can declare that to be civil law which is not civil law. The objection, therefore, is not well taken.

The law, it is agreed on all hands—that is, the revelation, whether written or unwritten—was deposited with the apostles, then it was deposited, as we have seen, with the church identical with the apostolic body. Now, she knows, as the apostles knew, what she received, the law committed to her charge, and, as she is constituted by the law she has received, she knows, and cannot but know, her own constitution and powers, also what promises, if any, she has received from her divine Lawgiver and Founder. The promises of God cannot fail; and if he has promised her his assistance as an immunity from error she knows it, and knows that her judgments of law, or in matters of faith, are through that assistance infallible. Of all these questions she is the divinely constituted judge. She is the judge of the law constituting her, of her own appointment and commission, and of her rights, powers, and jurisdiction, no less than of the law or revelation committed to her charge, for all this is included in the law. If she defines that in her commission is included the promise of the divine assistance to protect her from error in interpreting and declaring the law—that is, the faith, the revealed word of God—then of all this she judges infallibly, and she is the infallible authority, not for believing what God has revealed—for that is believed on the veracity of God alone—but for believing that what she teaches as his revealed word is his revealed word, and therefore the law we are to obey in thought, word, deed, as the supreme court is the authority for defining its own constitution and powers, and what is or is not the law of the state. Say we not, then, truly that the church is her own witness and accredits herself? Say we not truly, also, that she is the faithful and infallible witness to the fact of revelation, and teacher and judge of what God has or has not revealed? The fact, then, that the church defines that she is the divinely appointed guardian and infallible teacher and judge of revelation, is all we need to know in order to know that it is God we believe in believing her.

None of the sects can apply this argument to themselves; for no one of them can pretend to be the identical apostolical body, or to span the distance of time from the apostles to us, so as to be at once their contemporary and ours. They all have either originated too late or have died too soon for that. Not one of them can pretend to have originated in the apostolic communion, and to have existed as one continuous body down to us. There were sectaries in the lifetime of the apostles, but they were not in the apostolic communion, but separated from it; and there is, as far as we know, no sect in existence that originated in apostolic times. Some of the Gnostic sects sprang up at a very early day, but they have all disappeared, though many of their errors are revived in our day. The Nestorian and Jacobite sects still subsist in the East, but they were born too late to be of apostolic origin, and our modern Unitarians are not the old Arians continued in one unbroken body. The Lutheran and Calvinistic sects are of yesterday, and they and their numerous offshoots are out of the question. The poor Anglicans talk of apostolic succession indeed, but they separated or were cut off from the apostolic[151] body in the sixteenth century, and, with all the pretensions of a few of them, are only a Protestant sect, born of the Reformation, as the greater part of them strenuously contend. There is something in people's instincts; and it is worthy of note that no people who have cast off the authority of the Holy See have ever ventured to assume as their official name the title of APOSTOLIC. Even the schismatic Greeks, while they claim to be orthodox, do not officially call their church apostolic; and the American Anglicans assume only the name of Protestant Episcopal. Protestant apostolic would strike the whole world as incongruous, and very much as a contradiction in terms.

Let the argument be worth little or much, the only body claiming to be the church of Christ that has or has had an uninterrupted historical existence from the apostles to us, is the body that is in communion with the See of Rome, and recognizes the successor of Peter in that see as the Vicar of Christ, the teacher of the nations, supreme pastor of the faithful, with plenary authority from our Lord himself to feed, rule, and govern the universal church. The fact is too plain on the very face of history for any one who knows history at all to deny it. Nor, in fact, does any one deny it. All in reality concede it; and the pretence is that to be in communion with that see is not necessary in order to be in communion with Christ, or with the universal church.

But this is a question of law or of its interpretation, and can itself be determined only by the supreme court instituted to keep, interpret, and declare the law. The court of last resort has already decided the question. It is res adjudicata, and no longer an open question. The court has decided that extra ecclesiam, nulla salus, or, that out of communion with the church there is no communion with Christ; and that out of communion with the Holy See there is no communion with the universal church, for there is no such church. Do you appeal from the decision of the court? To what tribunal? To a higher tribunal? But there is no higher tribunal than the court of last resort. None of the sects are higher than the church, or competent to set aside or overrule her decisions. Do you appeal to the Bible? But this were only appealing from the law as expounded by the church or the supreme court to the law as expounded by yourself or your sect. Such an appeal cannot be entertained, for it is an appeal, not from an inferior court to a superior, but from the highest court to the lowest. The law expounded by the individual or the sect is below, not above, the law expounded and declared by the church. The sect has confessedly no authority, and the law expounded and applied by the sect is no more than the law expounded and applied by the private individual; and no private individual is allowed to expound and apply the law for himself, but must take it as expounded and applied by the court, and the judgment as to what the law is of the court of last resort is final, and from it, as every lawyer knows, there lies no appeal. To be able to set aside or overrule the judgment of the church, it is necessary, then, to have a court of superior jurisdiction, competent to revise her judgments and to confirm or to overrule them. But, unhappily for those who are dissatisfied with her judgments, there is and can be no such court to which they can appeal.

There might be some plausibility in the pretended appeal from the church to the Bible, if the church had[152] not the Bible, or if she avowedly rejected its divine authority; but as the case stands, such an appeal is irregular, illegal, and absurd. The church has and always has had the Bible ever since it was written. It was, as we have seen, originally deposited with her, and it is only from her that those outside of her communion have obtained it or their knowledge of it. She has always held and taught it to be the divinely inspired and authoritative written word of God, which none of her children are allowed to deny or question. There is no opposition possible between her teaching and the Bible, for the Bible is included in her teaching, and consequently no appeal from her teaching to the Bible. It would be only an appeal from herself to herself. The only appeal conceivable in the case is from her understanding of the sacred Scriptures or the revealed word of God to—your own; but as you at best have confessedly no authority to expound, interpret, or declare the law, your understanding of the written word can in no case override or set aside hers.

The Reformers, when they pretended to appeal from the church to the Bible, mistook the question and proceeded on a false assumption. There never was any question between the church and the Bible; the only question there was or could be was between her understanding of the Bible and theirs, or, as we have said, between the Bible as expounded by the church and the Bible as expounded by private individuals. This the Reformers did not or would not see, and this their followers do not or will not see to this day. Now, count the authority of the church for as little as possible, her understanding cannot be below that of private individuals, and the understanding of private individuals can never override it, or be a sufficient reason for setting it aside. The Reformers had recognized the church as the supreme authority in matters of faith, and the question was not on admitting her authority as something hitherto unrecognized, but on rejecting an authority they had hitherto acknowledged as divine. They could not legally reject it except on a higher authority, or by the judgment of a superior court. But there was no superior court, no higher authority, and they could oppose to her not the authority of the Bible, as they pretended, but at best only their private opinion or views of what it teaches, which in no case could count for more than her judgment, and therefore could not overrule it or authorize its rejection.

It is all very well to deny the divine commission and authority of the church to expound the word and declare the law of God; but a denial, to serve any purpose, or to be worth anything, must have a reason, and a higher reason than has the affirmation denied. One can deny only by an authority sufficient to warrant an affirmation. It needs as much reason to deny as to affirm. The authority of the church can really be denied only by opposing to her a truth that disproves it. A simple negation is nothing, and proves or disproves nothing. Yet the Reformers opposed to the church only a simple negation. They opposed to her no authority, no affirmative truth, and consequently gave no reason for denying or unchurching her. Indeed, no individual or sect ever opposes either to the church or to her teaching anything but simple negation, and no one ever makes an affirmation or affirms any truth or positive doctrine which she does not herself affirm or hold and teach. Every known heresy, from that of the Docetæ down[153] to the latest development of Protestantism, simply denies what the church teaches, and affirms nothing which she does not herself affirm, as Catholics have shown over and over again. These denials, based as they are on no principle or affirmative truth, are gratuitous, and count for nothing against the church or her teaching. Who would count the denial by a madman that the sun shines in a clear sky at noonday?

The simple fact is that whoever denies the church or her judgments does it without any authority or reason but his own private opinion or caprice, and that is simply no authority or reason at all. It is not possible to allege any authority against her or her teaching. Men may cavil at the truth, may by their sophistries and subtleties obscure the truth or involve themselves in a dense mental fog, so that they are unable to see anything distinctly, or to tell where they are or in what direction they are moving. They may thus imagine that they have some reason for their denials, and even persuade others that such is the fact; but whenever the fog is cleared away, and they have easted themselves, they cannot, if they have ordinary intelligence, fail to discover that the truth which in their own minds they opposed to her or her teaching is a truth which she herself holds and teaches as an integral part of her doctrine, or as included in the depositum of faith she has received. Do you say there is truth outside of the church; truth in all religions; in all superstitions, even? Be it so; but there is no truth outside of her in any religion or superstition that she denies or does not recognize and hold, and hold in its unity and catholicity. There may be facts in natural history, in physics, chemistry, in all the special sciences, as in the several handicrafts, that she does not teach; but there is no principle of science of any sort that she does not hold and apply whenever an occasion for its application occurs. None of the special sciences have their principles in themselves, or do or can demonstrate the principles on which they depend, and from which they derive their scientific character. They all depend for their scientific character on a higher science, the science of sciences, which the church and the church alone teaches. The principles of ethics, and therefore of politics as a branch of ethics, all lie in the theological order, and without theology there is and can be no science of ethics or politics; and hence we see that both, with those who reject theology, are purely empirical, without any scientific basis. An atheist may be moral in his conduct, but if there were no God there could be no morality; so may an atheist be a geometrician, but if there were no God there could be no geometry. Deny God, and what becomes of lines that may be infinitely projected, or of space shading off into immensity, on which so much in the science of geometry depends? Nay, deny God, and what would become even of finite space? Yet without the conception of space, which is in truth only the power of God to externize his acts, geometry would be impossible. All the special sciences are secondary, and are really science only when carried up to their first principles and explained by them. What more absurd, then, than the attempt of scientists to prove by science there is no God, or to oppose science to the theology of the church, without which no science is possible?

We need but look at the present state of men's minds to see how the world gets on without the church. Never were men more active or indefatigable in their researches: they send[154] their piercing glances into all subjects, sacred and profane; they investigate the heavens and the earth, the present and the past, and leave no nook or corner of nature unexplored, and yet there is not a principle of ethics, politics, or science that is not denied or called in question. In the moral and political world nothing is fixed or settled, and moral and intellectual science, as well as statesmanship, disappears. Doubt and uncertainty hang over all questions, and the distinctions between right and wrong, just and unjust, as well as between good and evil, are obscured and well-nigh obliterated. The utmost confusion reigns in the whole world of thought, and "men," as a distinguished prelate said to us the other day, "are trying the experiment of governing the world without conscience." All this proves what we maintain, that they who deny the church, or reject her teaching, have no truth to oppose to her, no reason for their denial, and no principle on which they base their rejection of her authority. Their rejection of the church and her teaching is purely gratuitous, and therefore, if not sinful, is at least baseless.

This much is certain, that it is either the church or nothing. There is no other alternative. Nothing is more absurd than for those who reject the church and her teaching to pretend to be Christian teachers or believers. They cannot believe the revelation God has made on the veracity of God alone, for they have no witness, not even an unassisted human witness, of the fact of revelation, of what God has revealed, or that he has or has not revealed anything, since they have no witness who was the contemporary of our Lord and his apostles—they were none of them born then—and they have no institution that dates from apostolic times, and that has continued without break down to the present. In fact, what they profess to believe, in so far as they believe it at all, they believe on the authority of the church, or of that very tradition which they reject and deny to be authority. They agree among themselves in their doctrinal belief only when and where they agree with the church; whenever and wherever they break from Catholic tradition, preserved and handed down by her, they disagree and fight with one another, are all at sea, and have neither chart nor compass. Do they tell us that they agree in the essentials of the Christian faith? Yet it is only so far as they follow Catholic tradition that they know or can agree among themselves as to what are or are not essentials. There is a wide difference between what Dr. Pusey holds to be essential and what is held to be essential by Dr. Bellows. Nearly the only point in which the two agree is in rejecting the infallible authority of the successor of Peter; and, in rejecting that authority, neither has any authority for believing what he believes, or for denying what he denies. Deny the church, and you have no authority for asserting divine revelation at all, as your rationalists and radicals conclusively prove.

But, happily, the other alternative saves us from all these logical inconsistencies. The church meets every demand, removes every embarrassment, and affords us the precise authority we need for faith, for she is in every age and every land a living witness to the fact of revelation, and an ever-present judge competent to declare what God reveals, and to teach us what we have, and what we have not, the veracity of God for believing. She can assure us of the divine inspiration and authority of the Holy Scriptures, which without[155] her tradition is not provable; for she has received them through the apostles from our Lord himself. She can enable us to read them aright, and can unfold to us by her teaching their real sense; for the Holy Ghost has deposited with her the whole revelation of God, whether written or unwritten. Outside of her, men, if they have the book called the Bible, can make little or nothing of it, can come to no agreement as to its sense, except so far as they inconsistently and surreptitiously avail themselves of her interpretation of it. They have no key to its sense. But she has the key to its meaning in her possession and knowledge of all that God reveals, or in the divine instruction she has received in the beginning. The whole word of God, and the word of God as a whole, is included in the depositum she has received, and therefore she is able at all times and in all places to give the true sense of the whole, and of the relation to the whole of each and every part. In her tradition the Bible is a book of divine instruction, of living truth, of inestimable value, and entitled to the profoundest reverence, which we know it is not in the hands of those who wrest it from her tradition, and have no clue to its meaning but grammar and lexicon.

The notion that a man who knows nothing of the Christian faith, and is a stranger to the whole order of Christian thought and life, can take up the Bible, even when correctly translated into his mother-tongue, and from reading and studying it arrive at an adequate knowledge, or any real knowledge at all, of Christian truth or the revelation which God has made to man, is preposterous, and contradicted by every day's experience. Just in proportion as men depart from the tradition of faith preserved by the church, the Bible becomes an unintelligible book, ceases to be of any use to the mind, and, if reverenced at all, becomes, except in a few plain moral precepts, a source of error much more frequently than of truth. One of the most precious gifts of God to man becomes instead of a benefit a real injury to the individual and to society. Our school-boards may, then, easily understand why we Catholics object to the reading of the Bible in schools where the church cannot be present to enlighten the pupil's mind as to its real and true sense. It is the court that keeps the statute-books, and interprets and applies the law, whether the lex scripta or the lex non scripta.

The church, existing in all ages and in all nations as one identical body, is a living witness in all times and places, as we have said, of the fact that God has revealed what she believes and teaches, and is through his assistance a competent and sufficient authority for that fact, and to interpret and declare the revealed law, as much so, to say the least, as the supreme court of a nation is to declare what is the law of the state. The objection made by rationalists and others to believing on the authority of the church, or to recognizing her authority to declare the faith, is founded on the false assumption that the church makes the faith, and can make anything of faith she pleases, whether God has revealed it or not. We have already answered this objection. The church bears witness to the fact of revelation, and declares what is or is not the faith God has revealed, as the supreme court declares what is or is not the law of the state; but she can declare nothing to be of faith that is not of faith, or that God has not revealed and commanded all men to believe, for through the divine assistance she is[156] infallible, and therefore cannot err in matters of faith, or in any matters pertaining in any respect to faith and morals. Since she cannot err in declaring what God has revealed and commanded, we are assured that what she declares to be revealed is revealed, or to be commanded is commanded, and therefore we know that whatever we are required to believe as of faith, or to do as commanded of God, we have the authority of God himself for believing and doing, the highest possible reason for faith, since God is truth itself, and can neither deceive nor be deceived; and the highest possible law, for God is the Supreme Lawgiver. It is they who reject the church or deny her authority that have only an arbitrary and capricious human authority, and who abdicate their reason and their freedom, and make themselves slaves, and slaves of human passion, arrogance, and ignorance. The Catholic is the only man who has true mental freedom, or a reason for his faith. His faith makes him free. It is the truth that liberates; and therefore our Lord says, "If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." Who can be freer than he who is held to believe and obey only God? They whom the truth does not make free may fancy they are free, but they are not; they are in bondage, and abject slaves.

The church in affirming herself is not making herself the judge in her own cause, is not one of the litigants, as some pretend, for the cause in which she judges is not hers, but that of God himself. She is the court instituted by the Supreme Lawgiver to keep, interpret, and declare his law, and therefore to judge between him and the subjects his law binds. She, in determining a case of faith or morals, no more judges in her own cause than the supreme court of a nation does in defining its own jurisdiction, and in determining a case arising under the law of which it is constituted by the national authority the judge. She has, of course, the right, as has every civil court, to punish contempt, whether of her orders or her jurisdiction, for he who contemns her contemns him who has instituted her; but the questions to be decided are questions of law, which she does not make, and is therefore no more a party to the cause litigated, and no more interested or less impartial, than is a civil court in a civil action. Indeed, we see not, if it pleases Almighty God to make a revelation, and to set up his kingdom on earth with that revelation for its law, how he can provide for its due administration without such a body as the church affirms herself to be, nor how it would be possible to institute a higher or more satisfactory method of determining what the law of his kingdom is, than by the decision of a court instituted and assisted by him for that very purpose. In our judgment, no better way is practicable, and no other way of attaining the end desired is possible. We repeat, therefore, that the church meets every demand of the case, and removes every real difficulty in ascertaining what is the faith God has revealed, as well as what is opposed to it, or tends to obscure or impair it.

It is agreed on all hands, by all who hold that our heavenly Father has made us a revelation and instituted a church, that the Church of Rome, founded by Saints Peter and Paul, was in the beginning catholic and apostolic. If she was so in the beginning, she is so now; for she has not changed, and claims no authority which she has not claimed and exercised, as the occasion arose, from the first. She is the same identical body as she has been from the beginning.[157] All the sectarian and schismatical bodies that oppose or refuse to submit to her authority acknowledged her authority prior to rejecting it, and were in communion with her. The change is not hers, but theirs. They have changed and gone out from her, because they were not of her, but she has remained ever the same. Take the schismatic Greeks. They originally were one body with her, and held the successor of Peter in the Roman See as primate or head of the whole visible church. They got angry or were perverted, and rejected the authority of the Roman Pontiff, and have never even to this day ventured to call themselves officially the Catholic or the Apostolic church. The men who founded the Reformed Churches so-called—Anglican among the rest—were brought up in the communion of the Catholic Church, and acknowledged the supremacy of the Roman Pontiff, and the Church of Rome as the mother and mistress of all the churches. The separation was caused by their change, not by hers. She held and taught at the time of the separation what she had always held and taught, and claimed no authority which she had not claimed from the first. Evidently, then, it was they and not she that changed and denied what they had previously believed. She lost individuals and nations from her communion, but she lost not her identity, or any portion of her rights and authority, as the one and only church of Christ, for she holds from God, not from the faithful. She has continued to be what she was at first, while they have gone from one change to another, have fallen into a confusion of tongues, as their prototypes did at Babel; and Luther and Calvin could hardly recognize their followers in those who go by their name to-day.

In the very existence of the church through so many changes in the world around her, the rise and fall of states and empires, assailed as she has been on every hand, and by all sorts of enemies, is a standing miracle, and a sufficient proof of her divinity. She was assailed by the Jews, who crucified her Lord and stirred up, wherever they went, the hostility of the people against his holy apostles and missionaries; she was assailed by the relentless persecution of the Roman Empire, the strongest organization the world has ever seen, and the greatest political power of which history gives any hint—an empire which wielded the whole power of organized paganism; she was driven to the catacombs, and obliged to offer up the holy sacrifice under the earth, for there was no place for her altars on its surface. Yet she survived the empire; emerged from the catacombs and planted the cross on the Capitol of the pagan world. She had then to encounter a hardly less formidable enemy in the Arian heresy, sustained by the civil power; then came her struggle with the barbarian invaders and conquerors from the fifth to the tenth century—the revolt of the East, or the Greek schism; the great schism of the West; the Northern revolt, or the so-called Reformation of the sixteenth century; and the hostility since of the greatest and most powerful states of the modern world; yet she stands erect where she did nearly twenty centuries ago, maintaining herself against all opposition; against the power, wealth, learning, and refinement of this world; against Jew, pagan, barbarian, heretic, and schismatic, and preserving her identity and her faith unchanged through all the vicissitudes of the world in the midst of which she is placed. She never could have done it if she had been sustained only by human virtue,[158] human wisdom, and human sagacity; she could not have survived unchanged if she had not been under the divine protection, and upheld by the arm of Almighty God. The fact that she has lived on and preserved her identity, especially if we add to the opposition from without the scandals that have occurred within, is conclusive proof that under her human form she lives a divine and supernatural life; therefore that she is the church of God, and is what she affirms herself to be.

Believing the church to be what she affirms herself to be; believing the Roman Pontiff to be the successor of Peter, the Vicar of Christ on earth, the father and teacher of all Christians, we have no fear that she will not survive the persecution which now rages against her, and that the Pope will not see his enemies prostrate at his feet. Through all history, we have seen that the successes of her enemies have been short-lived, and the terrible losses they have occasioned have been theirs, not hers. It will always be so. Kings, emperors, potentates, states, and empires may destroy themselves by opposing her, but her they cannot harm. See we not how the wrongs done to the Holy Father by Italian robbers, obeying the dictates of the secret societies, some of which, like the Madre Natura, date almost from apostolic times, are quickening the faith and fervor of Catholics throughout the world? Not for centuries has the Holy Father been so strong in the love and devotion of his faithful children as to-day. Never is the church stronger or nearer a victory than when abandoned by all the powers of this world, and thrown back on the support of her divine Spouse alone.

BORDEAUX.

One of the first objects that strikes the mariner ascending the Garonne towards Bordeaux is the ancient tower of St. Michel. I visited it the very morning after my arrival in that city. It is the belfry of a church of the same name, but is separated from it, being about forty yards distant. It was built in 1472, and is two hundred and fifty feet high. Formerly, it was over three hundred feet in height, but the steeple was blown down by a hurricane on the 8th of September, 1768. The view from the top is superb. Before you, like a map, lies the whole city—a noted commercial centre from the time of the Cæsars—encircling a great bend of the river. The eye is at first confused by the mass of roofs, spires, and streets, but in a moment singles out the great cruciform churches of St. André, Ste. Croix, and St. Michel. They lie beneath like immense crosses with arms stretched out—a perpetual appeal to heaven. Such remembrances of Calvary must ever stand between a sinful world and the justice of Almighty God. How can he look down upon all the iniquity of a great city, and not feel the silent Parce nobis of these sacred arms extended over it, repeating silently, as it were, the divine prayer, "Father,[159] forgive them, for they know not what they do!" Oh! what a love for the Passion dwelt in the heart of the middle ages which built these churches. Absorbed in the thought, I lost sight of the city. Its activity, its historical associations, the fine buildings and extensive view, all disappear before the cross. Bordeaux is generally thought of only as a wine-mart, but it also has holier associations. "Every foot-path on this planet may lead to the door of a hero," it is said, and very few paths there are in this Old World that do not bring us upon the traces of the saints—the most heroic of men, who have triumphed over themselves, which is better than the taking of a strong city. They it was that made these great signs of the cross on the breast of this fair city, hallowing it for ever.

Beneath the tower of St. Michel is a caveau, around which are ranged ninety mummies in a state of preservation said to be owing to the nature of the soil. Why is it that every one is enticed down to witness so horrid a spectacle? Dust to dust and ashes to ashes is far preferable to these withered bodies, and a quiet resting-place, deep, deep in the bosom of mother earth till the resurrection. Edmond About says the twelfth century would have embroidered many a charming legend to throw around these bodies, but the moderns have less imagination, and the guardian of the tower, who displays them by the light of his poor candle, is totally deficient in poesy. Had this writer been at Bordeaux on the eve of All Souls' day, he would have been invited at the midnight hour, "when spirits have power," to listen to the lugubrious cries and chants that come up from the caveau, where, as the popular voice declares, these ninety forms are having their yearly dance—the dance of death! I wonder if the mummy next the door, as you gladly pass out into the upper air, has his hand still extended like an au revoir.... Yes, there is one place where we shall meet, but not in this repulsive form. May we all be found there with glorified bodies!

The church of St. Michel is older than the tower, having been built in the twelfth century. It is of the Gothic style, and one of those antique churches that speak so loudly to the heart of the traveller from the New World—one in which we are penetrated with

The ancients had a deep meaning when they represented the veiled Isis with her finger on her hushed lips. The soul profoundly impressed by the Divine Presence is speechless.

In one of the side chapels is the tomb of an old bishop of the middle ages, in a niche of the wall. On it he lies carven in stone, with the mitre on his head, and clad in his pontifical vestments, and his hands folded in prayer.

The cathedral of St. André is another of these venerable monuments of the past. Founded in the fourth century, destroyed by the barbarians, restored by Charlemagne, and again ruined by the Normans, it was rebuilt in the eleventh century, and consecrated by Pope Urban II., in 1096. I went there at an early hour[160] to offer up my thanksgiving for the happy end of this stage of my journey. The canons were just chanting the hours, which reverberated among the light arches with fine effect. Masses were being offered in various chapels, and there were worshippers everywhere. I was particularly struck with the devout appearance of a venerable old man in one of the dimmest and most remote chapels, enveloped in a hooded cloak, with the capuche drawn over his head. He looked as if his soul, as well as his body, was almost done with time.

Through all these aisles and oratories, which whispering lips filled with the perfume of prayer streaming through the old windows came the morning sun,

I can still see the purple light filling the chapel of the Sacred Heart and ensanguining the uplifted Host.

And all the worshippers in this church were turned toward the holy East, whence cometh the Son of Man. The glory of the Lord came into the house by the way of the gate whose prospect is toward the East. I like this orientation of churches now too much neglected. The old symbolic usages of the church should be perpetuated. This turning to the East in prayer was at one age the mark of a true believer, distinguishing him from those who had separated from the church. True, some of the old basilicas at Rome and elsewhere have their altars at the west, but, according to the ritual of such churches, the priest turns toward the people, thus looking to the East. Cassiodorus and others say that our Lord on the cross had his face toward the west. So, in directing our thoughts and hearts to Calvary, it is almost instinctive to look to the East.

While I was lingering with peculiar interest before a monument to the memory of Cardinal de Cheverus, the first Bishop of Boston, and afterward Archbishop of Bordeaux, whose memory is revered in the Old World and the New, I heard a chanting afar off, and, looking around, saw through the open door a funeral procession coming hastily along the street toward the church, and singing the Miserere—coming, not with mournful step and slow, as with us, but like the followers of Islam, who believe the soul is in torment between death and burial, and so lay aside their usual dignified deportment and hurry the body to the grave. But in France the funeral cortége does not necessarily include the relatives, and I felt this very haste might be typical of their eagerness to commence the Office of the Dead. Anyhow, I forgave them when, in the chapel draped in black, I saw them devoutly betake themselves to prayer[161] during the Holy Sacrifice. I, too, dropped my little bead of prayer for the eternal rest of one whose name I know not, but which is known to God.

The confessionals seemed to be greatly frequented the day I was at St. André's—those sepulchres into which rolls the great burden of our sins. There

What non-Catholic has not felt, at least once in his life, as if he would give worlds for the moral courage to lay down the burden of memory at the feet of some holy man endowed with the power of absolving from sin! Almighty God has made his church the interpreter between himself and his creatures; hence the peculiar grace a holy confessor has to meet the wants of the human heart laid bare before him. Zoroaster told his disciples that the wings of the soul, lost by sin, might be regained by bedewing them with the waters of life found in the garden of God. It is only the consecrated priest who has the power of unsealing this fountain to each one of us. These confessionals are distributed in the various chapels, everywhere meeting the eye of the parched and sin-worn traveller who would

Of course there is a Ladye Chapel in this church, as in all others. Jesus and Mary, whose names are ever mingled on Catholic lips, the first they learn and the last they murmur, are never separated in our churches. Devotion to the Virgin has grown up through the church, beautifying and perfuming it like the famous rose-bush in the Cathedral of Hildesheim in Germany—the oldest of all known rose-bushes. It takes root under the choir in the crypt. Its age is unknown, but a document proves that nearly a thousand years ago Bishop Hezilo had it protected by a stone roof still to be seen. So with devotion to our Mystical Rose—quasi plantatio rosæ in Jericho—its roots go down deep among the foundations of the church; saints have protected and nourished it, and all nations come to sit under its vine and inhale its perfume.

What a safeguard to man is devotion to Mary Most Pure! It is like the Pridwin—the shield of King Arthur—on which was emblazoned the Holy Virgin, warding off the strokes of the great enemy of souls.

There are some poetical associations connected with Bordeaux: among others, the memory of the troubadours who enriched and perfected the Romance tongue, but whose songs at last died away in the sad discord of the Albigensian wars. Here the gay and beautiful Eleanor of Aquitaine held her court of love, gathering around her all the famous troubadours of her time, and deciding upon the merits of their songs. Among these was her favorite, Bernard de Ventadour, chiefly known to fame by being mentioned by Petrarch. Eleanor herself was a musician and a lover of poetry—tastes she inherited from her grandfather, William, Duke of Aquitaine, generally called the Count de Poitiers, one[162] of the earliest of the troubadours whose songs have come down to us. Around this charming queen of love and song gathered the admiring votaries of la gaia sciencia, like nightingales singing around the rose, all vowing, as in duty bound, that their hearts were bleeding on the horns!

Poor maligned Eleanor was too gay a butterfly for the gloomy court of Louis VII. She wanted the bright sun of her own province in which to float, and the incense of admiring voices to waft her along. She herself was a composer of chansons, and is reckoned among the authors of France. She dearly loved Bordeaux, her capital, and was adored by its people. Here she was married with great pomp to Louis, after which the Duke of Aquitaine laid aside his insignia of power, and, assuming the garb of a hermit, went on a pilgrimage to St. James of Compostella, and devoted the remainder of his life to prayer and penance in hermitage on Montserrat, by way of preparation for death. It is well to pause awhile before plunging into the great ocean of eternity.

These pilgrimages to Compostella were exceedingly popular in that age, and hospices for the pilgrims to that shrine were to be found in all the large cities and towns. There was one at Auch, and another at Paris in the Rue du Temple, which was particularly celebrated and served by Augustinian nuns. And here at Bordeaux was the Hospice of St. André for the reception of the weary votary of St. Jago.

"Here comes a pilgrim," says one of Shakespeare's characters. "God save you, pilgrim. Where are you bound?"

Digby says the hospitality and charity of these hospices had their origin in the bishops' houses. Fortunatus thus speaks of Leontius II., Archbishop of Bordeaux, who, in accordance with the apostle's injunction, was given to hospitality:

That the devotion of the middle ages is yet alive in the church is proved by the influx of pilgrims at the shrine of St. Germaine of Pibrac, at Notre Dame de Lourdes, and a thousand other places of popular devotion. So great is the number of pilgrims to Lourdes, drawn by the brightness of Mary's radiant form, that the railway between Tarbes and Pau was turned from its intended direct line in order to pass through Lourdes. In one day the train from Bayonne brought nine hundred, and at another time over a thousand pilgrims. And as for the continued charity and hospitality of the church, witness the monks of St. Bernard and of Palestine, known to all the world. How disinterested is genuine Catholic charity, done unto the Lord and not unto man! Some suppose the good works practised among us is by way of barter for heaven, but they little know the spirit of the church. Charity is one expression of its piety, which, in its highest manifestations, is devoid of self-interest. Listen to John of Bordeaux, a holy Franciscan friar, who, after quoting a saying of Epictetus, that we generally find piety where there is utility,[163] says: "He does not come up to the standard of pure Christianity: he pretends that piety takes its birth in utility, so that it is interest that gives rise to devotion. Yes, among the profane, but not among Christians, who, acquainted with the maxims of our holy religion, have no other end but to serve God for his love and for his glory; forgetting all considerations of their own advantage, they aspire to attain to that devotion which is agreeable to him without any view to their own interest."

And in these practical times another holy writer, Dr. Newman, says in the same spirit: "They who seek religion for culture's sake, are æsthetic, not religious, and will never gain that grace which religion adds to culture, because they can never have the religion. To seek religion for the present elevation, or even the social improvement it brings, is really to fall from faith which rests in God, and the knowledge of him as the ultimate good, and has no by-ends to serve."

But to return to the romantic associations of this land of the vine, we recall the celebrated old romance of Huon of Bordeaux, which contains some delightful pictures of the age of chivalry. Here is one which I have abridged, showing how the religious spirit was inwoven with the impulses of the knightly heart. The Emperor Thierry, furious because his nephews and followers had been slain by Huon, seized upon Esclarmonde (Huon's wife) and her attendants, and threw them into a dungeon, there to await death. Huon, greatly afflicted at this, disguised himself as a pilgrim from the Holy Land, and set out for Mayence, where the emperor lived. He arrived on Maunday-Thursday, and learned that it was the custom of the emperor to grant the petitions of him who first presented himself after the office of Good Friday morning. Huon was so overjoyed at this information that he could not sleep all that night, but betook himself to his orisons, imploring God to inspire and aid him so he might again behold his wife. When morning came, he took his pilgrim staff and repaired to the chapel. As soon as the office was ended, he contrived to be the first to attract attention. He told the emperor he was there to avail himself of the custom of the day in order to obtain a grace. The emperor replied that, should he even demand fourteen of his finest cities, they would be given him, for he would rather have one of his fists cut off than recede from his oath; therefore to make known his petition, which would not be refused. Then Huon requested pardon for himself and for all of his who might have committed some offence. The emperor replied: "Pilgrim, doubt not that what I have just promised, I will fulfil, but I beg you right humbly to tell me what manner of man you are, and to what country and race you belong, that you request such grace from me." Huon then made himself known. The emperor's face blanched while listening to him, and for a long time he was unable to speak. At last he said: "Are you, then, Huon of Bordeaux, from whom I have received such ills—the slayer of my nephews and followers? I cannot cease wondering at your boldness in presenting yourself before me. I would rather have lost four of my best cities, have had my whole dominions laid waste and burned, and I and my people banished for three years, than find you thus before me. But since you have thus taken me by surprise, know in truth that what I have promised and vowed I will hold good, and, in honor of the Passion of Jesus Christ, and[164] the blessed day which now is, on which he was crucified and dead, I pardon you all hatred and evil-doing, and God forbid that I should hold your wife, or lands, or men, which I will restore to your hands." Then Huon threw himself on his knees, beseeching the emperor to forgive the injury he had done him. "God pardon you," said the emperor. "As for me, I forgive you with right good will," and taking Huon by the hand, he gave him the kiss of peace. Huon then said: "May it please our Lord Jesus Christ that this guerdon be returned to you twofold." Then the prisoners were released, and, after a sumptuous entertainment, the emperor accompanied Huon and his noble lady on their way back to Bordeaux.

Bordeaux is interesting to the English race, because, among other reasons, it was for about three hundred years a dependency of the English crown, being the dowry of Eleanor of Aquitaine, who married Henry II. after her divorce from Louis le Jeune. We associate the city, too, with Froissart and the Black Prince, who held his court here. Richard II. was born hard by at the Château de Lormont. And Henry III. came here to receive his son's bride, Eleanor of Castile, and gave her so extravagant a marriage feast as to excite the remonstrances of his nobles. The country prospered under the English government. The merchants had especial privileges granted them by Eleanor, and their wines then, as now, found a ready market in London. Bordeaux in particular increased wonderfully, and outgrew its defensive walls. The church of St. Michel dates from the time of English domination, and in that quarter of the city may be seen old houses, one story projecting beyond the other, and the whole surmounted by a pyramidal roof, said to be of English origin, and such as are to be seen in some of the oldest streets of London.

Eleanor always used her influence for the benefit of her people. The most ancient charter of privileges granted the Gascon merchants was given by her on the first of July, 1189.

The English seem to have taken their war-cry from the old dukes of Aquitaine who charged to the sound of "St. George for the puissant duke." A devotion to St. George was brought from the East by the Crusaders. Richard I. placed himself and his army under the special protection of this saint, who, the redoubted slayer of the dragon and the redresser of woman's wrongs, appealed to the tenderest instincts of the chivalric heart. St. George's remains were brought from Asia by the Crusaders, and a large part is enshrined at Toulouse, in the great basilica of St. Sernin. The crest of the dukes of Aquitaine was a leopard, which the kings of England bore for a long time on their shields. Edward III. is called a valiant pard in his epitaph.

These old dukes of Aquitaine seem always to have gone to extremes either as sinners or saints. Eleanor's grandfather, as I have said, was one of the earliest of the troubadours. He was distinguished for his bravery, his musical voice, and his manly beauty. His early life was such as to incur the censure of the bishop, but he ended his career in penitence, and the last of his poems is a farewell á la chevalerie qu'il a tant aimée for the sake of the cross. He was one of the first to join the crusades at the head of sixty thousand warriors, but he lost his troops and gained neither glory nor renown.

The term Aquitaine was given this country by Julius Cæsar on account[165] of its numerous rivers and ports. The ancient province of this name extended from the Loire to the Pyrenees. In the time of the Roman dominion, Bordeaux was its capital under the name of Burdigala. The origin of the city is uncertain. Strabo, who lived in the first century, mentions it as a celebrated emporium. Some suppose its first inhabitants to have been of Iberian origin. The real history of the city commences about the middle of the third century, when Tetricus, governor of Aquitaine, assumed the purple and was proclaimed emperor. About the same time St. Martial preached in this region. But the pagan divinities were still invoked in the time of Ausonius. In the annals of the Council of Arles, in 314, Orientalis, Bishop of Bordeaux, is mentioned.

The intellectual superiority of the Romans was always even more potent than the force of their arms. Barbarism disappeared before the splendor of their civilization. Burdigala under their dominion felt the influence of this superiority, and rose to such a degree of magnificence and luxury as to be a theme for Ausonius, St. Jerome, and Sidonius Apollinaris. The remains of buildings at Bordeaux belonging to this epoch give an idea of its prosperity and importance. There is still an arena in ruins, commonly called the Palais-Gallien, but the most remarkable Roman monument of the city was a temple called Piliers de Tutelle, which, partly ruined, was demolished in 1677, by the order of Louis XIV., for the construction of a quay. Schools were established at Bordeaux at an early day. We learn from St. Jerome that in his time the liberal arts were in the most flourishing condition here. In the time of the Roman dominion, there were universities at Bordeaux, Auch, Toulouse, Marseilles, Trèves, etc. The edicts issued for their benefit showed the importance attached to their prosperity by the government. The college of Bordeaux furnished professors for Rome and Constantinople. Valentinian I. chose Ausonius, a native of Bordeaux, to superintend the education of his son Gratian. When the latter became emperor, he made his old tutor a Roman consul (A.D. 379). The poems of Ausonius are still admired, but there is much in them that is reprehensible. They were translated into French by M. Jaubert, a priest at Bordeaux, who lived in the last century.

That the wines of Aquitaine were already celebrated in the fourth century is shown by the writings of Ausonius

St. Paulinus, bishop of Nola, lived at this time. He was born at Bordeaux in the year 353, and was descended from a long line of illustrious senators. One of the several estates he owned near the city still bears the name of Le Puy Paulin, puy being a word from the langue Romaine, perhaps synonymous with the Latin word podium. One of the public squares of Bordeaux also bears the same name. Paulinus possessed great elevation of mind and a poetical genius, which he cultivated under Ausonius, for whose care he expresses his gratitude in verse. But Ausonius was magnanimous enough to acknowledge that Paulinus excelled him as a poet and that no modern Roman could vie with him.

In his early life Paulinus held dignified offices under government, but his intercourse with St. Delphinus, bishop of Bordeaux, inspired him with a love for retirement, in which his wife, a Spanish lady of wealth, participated. They passed over into[166] Spain, and spent four years there in the retirement of the country, but not as anchorites. He seemed to have given up all of life but its sweetness when he composed the following prayer: "O Supreme Master of all things, grant my wishes, if they are righteous. Let none of my days be sad, and no anxiety trouble the repose of my nights. Let the good things of another never tempt me, and may my own suffice to those who ask my aid. Let joy dwell in my house. Let the slave born on my hearth enjoy the abundance of my stores. May I live surrounded by faithful servants, a cherished wife, and the children she will bring me."

While in Spain they lost their only son, whom they buried at Alcala, near the bodies of the holy martyrs Justus and Pastor. This loss weaned them completely from the world. Their Spanish solitude had been a garden of roses, but now they chose the lily as their emblem, and resolved to lead a monastic life. Paulinus received holy orders, and they both sold all they possessed and gave the money to the poor. This drew upon Paulinus the contempt of the world. Even his own relatives and former slaves rose up against him, but to all their invectives he only replied: "O beata injuria displicere cum Christo." "O blessed scorn that is shared with Christ." Ausonius, in particular, was grieved to see the extensive patrimony of Paulinus cut up among a hundred possessors, and reproached him in bitter terms for his madness. But if the world rejected him, he was received with open arms by such men as St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, and St. Augustine. His devotion to St. Felix, whose tomb he had visited in his childhood, induced him to fix his residence near Nola in Campania. Here he lived close by the church where his favorite saint was enshrined. He had put on the livery of Christ's poor ones, and contented himself with his cell and garden-plot. And his meekness and sanctity, joined to his talents as a writer, drew upon him the admiration of the world. Persons of the highest rank from all parts went to see him in his retreat, as St. Jerome and St. Augustine testify. In his seclusion he writes poems that have all the delicacy and grace of Petrarch. He describes the church of his loved saint, whose life and miracles he is never weary of dwelling on, as hung with white draperies and gleaming with aromatic lamps and tapers; the porch is wreathed with fresh flowers, and the cloisters strewn with blossoms; and pilgrims come down from the mountains, marching even at night by the light of their torches, bringing their children in sacks, and their sick on litters, to be healed at the tomb; for all the world, a picture of an Italian shrine of these days.

He loved the humblest duties of the sanctuary. "Suffer me to remain at thy gates," he says. "Let me cleanse thy courts every morning, and watch every night for their protection. Suffer me to end my days amid the employments I love. We take refuge within your hallowed pale and make our nest in your bosom. It is herein that we are cherished, and expand into a better life. Casting off the earthly burden, we feel something divine springing up within us, and the unfolding of the wings which are to make us equal to the angels." These words sound as if coming from the cloistered votary of the middle ages, or even of the nineteenth century; the same is the spirit of the church in all ages.

The writings of St. Paulinus show his devotion to the saints and their relics, a belief in the efficacy of prayers for the dead, and in the doctrine[167] of the Real Presence. What can be more explicit, for instance, than these lines on the Holy Eucharist?

He adorned the walls of his church with paintings and composed inscriptions for the altar, under which were deposited the relics of St. Andrew, St. Luke, St. Nazarius, and others, and sings thus:

After fifteen years of retirement, St. Paulinus was made bishop of Nola. Shortly before he died, as the lamps were being lighted for the Vesper service, he murmured,

The prosperity of Bordeaux under the Romans was interrupted by the invasion of the barbarians that swept down from the north, bringing ruin and desolation to the land. For nearly a century the city remained in the power of the Visigoths, who, being Arians, persecuted the Catholic inhabitants. Sidonius Apollinaris deplores the injury done to learning by their invasion, but perhaps the decline of learning was partly owing to a growing distaste for pagan literature among Christians. The barbarians were finally routed by Clovis in 507, and he took possession of Bordeaux. Charlemagne made Aquitaine a kingdom for his son Louis le Débonnaire. Louis, son of Charles le Chauve, was the last king of Aquitaine. When he ascended the throne of France, it resumed its former rank as a duchy.

The college of Guienne was founded here in the middle ages. In the sixteenth century, it had, at one time, twenty-five hundred pupils. The famous George Buchanan, whom everybody knows, because his head adorns the cover of Blackwood's Magazine, but who is more spoken of than read, taught in this college three years. He came here in 1539. Among his pupils was the great Montaigne, who passed most of his life at Bordeaux and is buried in the church of the Feuillants. As Buchanan was somewhat given to hilarity and loved the flavor of Gascon wines, this city probably had its attractions for him. In his Maiæ Calendæ, full of gaiety and merry-making, he speaks of the grapes of the sandy soil of Gascony:

One vintage season, Buchanan went to Agen to enjoy it at the residence of his friend, the celebrated Julius Scaliger, who had been a professor at the college of Guienne, but was now settled as a physician at Agen.

Among the other literary celebrities of Bordeaux is Arnaud Berquin, whose charming writings are still popular. His Ami des Enfants was crowned by the French Academy in 1784. And Montesquieu was born at the château of La Brède near Bordeaux, whence he took his title of Baron de la Brède.

Bordeaux is now the finest city in France after Paris, and it ranks next to Lyons in importance. Perhaps I cannot do better than quote what a popular French author of the day says of it:

One of the glories of Bordeaux is the bridge across the Garonne built by order of Napoleon the Great. It has seventeen arches, and there is an interior gallery communicating from one arch to another which is accessible.

There are some fine pictures in the Musée des Tableaux—a Perugino, and others by Titian, Vandyke, Rubens, etc. Some excellent artists have been formed in the School of Design, among whom is Rosa Bonheur. But the people in general are more fond of music and the drama than the other fine arts.

The commerce of Bordeaux is extensive, but is surpassed by that of Havre, perhaps because there is too much of the laisser-aller in a more southern temperament. Nevertheless, the city is progressing. The port, says the author already quoted, is a third edition of the Thames at London and the Golden Horn at Constantinople.

THE "AMEN" OF THE STONES.

THE HOUSE OF YORKE.

CHAPTER III.
DIEU DISPOSE.

The early morning of Mr. Rowan's burial had been heavy and dark; but as they left the island a shower of golden light broke through the clouds, the water sparkled on all sides, and the sighing air became a frolic breeze. Dick and the captain brightened, and exchanged a few words in seamen's phrase complimenting the weather. Mrs. Rowan also roused herself, brushed the sand from her clothes, arranged the folds of her veil, and even smoothed her hair. The poor creature's vanity was dead, but at the prospect of meeting strangers it gave a slight post-mortem flicker. Out it went, though, the next instant, on the breath of a sigh. What did it matter how she looked? But she glanced anxiously at Edith.

The child had put on her mother's red cape and drawn it up over her head, and she still held it there, one slim hand pulling the folds close together under her chin. That she might appear outlandish did not trouble Edith. Indeed, she claimed the right to be so on account of her foreign blood. But when she noticed Mrs. Rowan's attention to her own toilet, and met her glance, she pushed the cape off her head, and, putting her arms up, began to smooth her hair and plait it into a long braid. It was rich, long hair, not given to wilful ringlets, but would curl when in the mood. Now the wind blew little curls out about her face, and the risen sun steeped the tresses in a pale flame.

The braid finished, she tossed it back, and caught it lightly into a loop, the motion revealing a pair of round white arms, to which the hands and wrists looked like colored gauntlets. Then she unfolded her precious Indian relic of tarnished red and gold, and bound it straightly about her head, half-covering the forehead, so that the long, fringed ends hung behind, and a loose fold fell over each ear.

Beholding her in that guise, Captain[170] Cary thought that she looked fitter for some oriental scene than for this crude corner of a crude land. "She might be a stolen child stained with gypsy-wort," he said to himself.

But she was Gypsy only in color. No wild fires burned in her face; her cool eyes looked out calm and observant; her mouth was gently closed. The very shape of her features expressed tranquillity.

The sailor found himself much interested in this little girl. Besides that her appearance pleased him, his good-will had been bespoken; for on one of those days when their ship had lain becalmed in southern waters, Dick had told him all her story. Listening to it, half-asleep, as to something that might be fact and might be fancy, all the scene about him had entwined itself with the history and with the heroine's character. The solid golden day, shut down over a sea whose soft pulses told of perfect repose; the wide-eyed, radiant night, which seemed every moment on the point of breaking into music far and near, a fine, clear music of countless sweet bells with almost human tongues—they formed the background on which her image floated. Seeing her did not dispel but rather strengthened the illusion. Something golden in her hair, something tranquil in her face, something expectant in her eyes—all were like.

The rough giant of a sailor mused tenderly over this as he sent their boat forward with powerful strokes, and watched Edith Yorke bind on her Egyptian coiffure.

They did not row to the wharf, where the steamer had already arrived, but to a place a few rods above, where the sea had taken a good semicircular bite out of the land. Here a straggling bit of dilapidated woods had been allowed to remain by the vandals who had turned all the rest to grass and pasture, and a mossy ledge broke the teeth of the soft, gnawing waves.

Edith stepped lightly on shore. She was young, healthy, brave, and ignorant, and pain, though it called forth her tears, was stimulating to her. That pang had not yet come which could cut her heart in twain and let all the courage out.

They stood awhile in the grove, Dick and the captain making some business arrangements. The Halcyon was to remain four weeks at Seaton, and it was agreed that Dick should have that time to get his mother settled. Then the ship would touch at New York, where he would embark for the East again.

While they lingered, a large yellow coach, loaded with passengers, rattled past amid clouds of dust.

"There is no hurry," Dick said. "It will take an hour to get the freight off and on. But you needn't wait, captain. They'll be looking for you at the village."

The others drew near to Captain Cary at that, holding his hands and trying to utter their thanks.

"Oh! it's nothing," he said, much abashed. "I haven't done anything to be thanked for. Good-by! Keep up your courage, and you will come out first-rate. There's nothing like grit."

A subsiding ripple tossed his boat against the shore. At that hint he stepped in, dallied with the rope, then said, with a perfectly transparent affectation of having only just[171] thought of it: "Oh! I've got a ring here that Edith is welcome to, if she will wear it. I brought it home for my niece; but the child is dead. It won't fit anybody else I know."

Mrs. Rowan immediately thanked him, and Edith smiled with childish pleasure. "You are very kind, Captain Cary," she said. "I always thought I would like to have a ring."

Dick alone darkened; but no one noticed it. He had meant to do everything for her; and here was a wish which she had never expressed to him, and he had not known enough to anticipate.

The captain drew a tiny box from his pocket, and displayed a small circlet in which was set a single spark of diamond. Edith extended her left hand, and the sailor, leaning over the boatside, slipped the ring on to her forefinger.

"Good-by, again!" he said then hastily, and gave each of them a grasp of the hand. Dick could take care of himself; but the other two, putting out their tender hands impulsively, grew red in the face with pain at the grip of his iron fingers. The next instant his boat shot out into the bay. They looked after him till he glanced back and saluted them with a nod, and two arches of spray tossed from his oars; then turned and climbed the shore, Dick assisting his mother, Edith following.

"Good-by, trees!" said the child, glancing up. "Good-by, moss!" stooping to gather a silken green flake and a cluster of red-topped gray. The prettiest cup had a spider in it, and she would not disturb it. "Good-by, spider!" she whispered, "I'm never coming back again."

She had friends to take leave of, after all—not human friends, but God's little creatures, who had never hurt her save in self-defence.

When they reached the wharf, there was no one in sight but the men who trundled the freight off and on. At the upper end of the wharf there was a small building used as office and waiting-room. The passage to the boat being obstructed, Dick sent his mother and Edith there, while he went on board to get tickets. They went to the door of the waiting-room, hesitated a moment on seeing it occupied, then went in, and seated themselves in a retired corner.

The party who were already in possession glanced at the new-comers, and immediately became oblivious of them. This party were evidently the members of one family. Some indefinable resemblance, as well as their air of intimacy, showed that. An elderly gentleman walked up and down the floor, his hands clasped behind his back, and a lady not much over forty sat near, surrounded by her three daughters. At a window, to which the mother's back was turned, looking up toward the village, stood a young man whose age could not be over twenty-three. The ages of the daughters might vary from sixteen to twenty. They formed rather a remarkable group, and were attractive, though the faces of all expressed more or less dissatisfaction. That of the young man indicated profound disgust. The elder lady had a sweet and melancholy expression, and appeared like an invalid. The youngest daughter, who sat beside her, was as like her mother as the waxing moon is like the waning. She was pretty, had clinging, caressing ways, a faint dimple in her left cheek, splendid auburn hair, and gray eyes. They called her Hester. On the other hand sat the eldest daughter, a rather stately, self-satisfied young woman, whose attentions to her mother had an air of patronage.[172] This was Melicent. She was rather fair, neutral in color, and excessively near-sighted. The second daughter stood behind her mother, and was very attentive to her, but in an absent way, often doing more harm than good by her assistance. "My dear Clara, you are bundling the shawl all about my neck! My love, you pull my bonnet off in arranging my veil! Why, Clara, what are you doing to my scarf?" Such remarks as these were constantly being addressed to her. Clara was a dark brunette, with small features, a superb but not tall figure, and large gray eyes that looked black. Her coal-black hair grew rather low on the forehead, straight black brows overshadowed her eyes and nearly met over the nose, and an exquisitely delicate mouth gave softness to this face which would otherwise have been severe. She seemed to be a girl of immense but undisciplined energy, and full of enthusiasm.

The gentleman who paced the floor was slightly under-sized and thin in figure, thin in face, too, dark, and sallow. The very look of him suggested bile and sarcasm. But let him speak for himself, since he is just now on this subject. "Bile, my dear," he said to his wife—"bile came into the world with original sin. I am not sure that bile is not sin. It is Marah in a pleasant land. It is a fountain of gall in the garden of paradise. It poisons life. Doctors know nothing whatever about bile, and liver-medicines are a superstition. He who shall discover a way to eradicate bile from the system will be a great moral reformer. Every sin I ever committed in my life took its rise in my liver. I believe the liver to be an interpolation in the original man. We should be better without it."

The gentleman who spoke had a wide, thin mouth, very much drawn down at the corners and nowise hidden, the gray moustache he spared in shaving being curled up at the ends. His manner was that of a person who would scarcely brook contradiction. His speech was clear and emphatic, and he pronounced his words as if he knew how they were spelt. A long, delicate aquiline nose had a good deal to do with his profile, as had also a pair of overhanging eyebrows. From beneath these brows looked forth a pair of keen gray eyes, with countless complex wrinkles about them. The chin was handsome, well-rounded, and, fortunately, not projecting. A projecting chin with an aquiline nose is one of the greatest of facial misfortunes. Caricature can do no more. The forehead was intellectual, and weighty enough to make it no wonder if the slight frame grew nervous and irritable in carrying out the behests of the brain hidden there. The head was crowned by a not inartistic confusion of gray hair which seemed to have been stirred by electricity.

"I am sorry, madam, that I cannot compliment the climate of your native state," he remarked after a pause. "The spring is a month or six weeks behind that of Massachusetts, and the fall as much earlier. The travelling here is simply intolerable. It is either clouds of dust, bogs of mud, or drifts of snow. I quite agree with the person who said that Maine is a good state to come from."

"We all know, Charles, that the climate of Massachusetts, and particularly of Boston, surpasses that of any other part of the world," the lady replied with great composure.

The gentleman winced very slightly. He was one of those who constantly make sarcastic observations[173] to others, but are peculiarly sensitive when such are addressed to themselves. In his society, one was frequently reminded of the little boy's complaint: "Mother, make Tommy be still. He keeps crying every time I strike him on the head with the hammer."

"Here will be a chance to practise your famous English walks, Melicent," the father said. "I presume the old chaise is dissolved. I remember it twenty years ago nodding along the road in the most polite manner. By the way, Amy, did you ever observe that in genuine country places people leave their defunct vehicles to decay by the roadside? I am not sure that there is no poetry in the custom. The weary wheels crumble to dust in view of the track over which they have rolled in life, and are a memento mori to living carriages. It is not unlike the monument of Themistocles 'on the watery strand.'"

Melicent, who had been waiting for a chance, now spoke. "You don't mean to say, papa, that we shall have no carriage?"

"Wait till the pumpkins grow," he said with a mocking smile. "I will give you the largest one, and your mother will furnish the mice. I don't doubt there are mice, and to spare."

"Dear me, Melicent, how persistent you are!" interrupted Clara impatiently. "One would think there was no need of borrowing trouble."

The elder sister gazed with an air of superiority at the younger. "I was speaking to papa," she remarked with dignity.

The father frowned, the mother raised a deprecating hand, and the imminent retort was hushed. Clara went to her brother, and, leaning on his arm, whispered that, if Mel were not her own sister, she should really get to dislike her.

"How silent you are, Owen," said Hester, looking around at him. "All you have done to entertain us so far has been to make faces when you were sick. To be sure, that made us laugh."

"A sea-sick person may be the cause of wit in others, but is seldom himself witty," was the laconic reply.

The speaker was a slim, elegant youth, with golden tints in his light hair, with rather drooping and very bright blue eyes, and a beautiful, sensuous mouth.

Edith Yorke watched this party with interest, and the longer she looked at the elder gentleman the better she liked him. His manner of addressing the ladies suited her inborn sense of what a gentleman's manner should be. There was no contemptuous waiting before answering them, no flinging the reply over his shoulder, nor growling it out like a bear. Besides, she half-believed—only half, for her eyes were heavy with weeping and loss of sleep—that he had looked kindly at her. Once she was sure that he spoke of her to his wife, but she did not know what he said. It was this: "My dear, do you observe that child? She has an uncommon face."

The lady glanced across the room and nodded. She was too much preoccupied to think of anything but their own affairs. But her husband,[174] on whom these affairs had the contrary effect of driving him to seek distraction, approached Edith.

"Little girl," he said, "you remind me so much of some one I have seen that I would like to know your name, if you please to tell it."

He had bent slightly toward her in speaking, but at sound of the name he stood suddenly upright, his sallow face turned very red, and he looked at her with a gaze so piercing that she shrank from it. "Who were your father and mother?" he demanded.

"My mother was Eugénie Lubormirski, a Polish exile, and my father was Mr. Robert Yorke, of Boston," said Edith. Her eyes were fixed intently on the gentleman's face, and her heart began to beat quickly.

He turned away from her and resumed his walk, but, after a minute, came back again. "Your father and mother are both dead?" he asked in a gentler tone.

Mrs. Rowan had shown some agitation while this conversation was going on, and when Edith put out her hand, she grasped it as if meaning to hold on to the child. Her reply was made in a somewhat defiant tone. "When Mrs. Robert Yorke died, she asked me to have pity on her daughter, and keep her out of the poor-house. I have taken care of her ever since. The Yorkes had turned them off."

The gentleman drew himself up, and put out his under lip. "Thank you for the information," he said bitterly. Then to Edith, "Come, child," and took her hand.

There was a slight sensation and a momentary pause; but the lady recovered immediately. "I am glad to see you, dear," she said in a kind voice. "Who is that person?" she added to her husband, glancing at Mrs. Rowan.

The widow was staring at them angrily, and seemed on the point of coming to take Edith away by force.

"One who has taken care of the child since her mother's death, Amy," he answered. "She has no claim on my niece, and will, of course, give her up to us. The little girl is named for my mother. Robert was always fond of mother."

"You must perceive that there is no other way," Mr. Yorke continued with some state. "Aside from natural affection and pity for the child's friendless condition, an Edith Yorke must not be allowed to go about the country like a Gypsy with a shawl over her head."

"It is just as papa says," Melicent interposed, and immediately took Edith by the hand and kissed her cheek. "You are my little cousin, and you will go home and live with us," she said sweetly.

Miss Yorke's manner was very conciliating; but her suavity proceeded[175] less from real sweetness than from self-complacency. She prided herself on knowing and always doing what was comme il faut, and took great pleasure in being the mould of form.

"I shall go with Dick! I am going to live with Dick!" Edith cried, snatching her hand away. A blush of alarm overspread her face, and she looked round in search of her protector. At that moment he appeared in the door, paused in surprise at seeing where Edith was, then went to his mother.

"The Yorkes have got her," Mrs. Rowan said to him, breathless with excitement. "That is Mr. Charles Yorke. I knew him the moment I set eyes on him."

Dick wheeled about and faced them. Edith, too proud to run away, looked at him imploringly.

Then Miss Melicent Yorke arose, like the goddess of peace, adjusted her most impregnable smile, and sailed across the room. "I am Miss Yorke," she said brightly, as though such an announcement would be sure to delight them. "Of course, the dear little Edith is my cousin. Is it not the strangest thing in the world that we should have met in such a way? I am sure we shall all feel deeply indebted to you for having protected the child while we knew nothing of her necessities. Of course, we should have sent for her directly if we had known. But, as it is, we have the pleasure of meeting you."

Pausing, Miss Yorke looked at the two as if they were the dearest friends she had on earth and it gave her heartfelt joy to behold their countenances.

Dick choked with the words he would have uttered. He felt keenly the insolence of her perfectly confident and smiling address, yet knew not how to defend himself. If a man had been in her place, he could have met his airy assumption with a sufficiently blunt rebuff; but the young sailor was chivalric, and could not look a woman in the face and utter rude words. His mother's emotion did not prevent her replying, and, fortunately, to the point.

"Do you mean to say," Mrs. Rowan exclaimed, "that you are going to take Edith away from us without leave or license, after we have supported her four years without your troubling yourselves whether she starved in the street or not?"

For a moment, Miss Yorke's social poniard wavered before this broad thrust, but only for a moment. "Every family has its own private affairs, which no one else has either the power or the right to decide upon," she said smilingly. "All I need say of ours is that, if Mr. Yorke, my father, had known that his brother left a child unprovided for, he would have adopted her without delay. He did not know it till this minute, and his first thought is that there is only one proper course for him. His niece must be under his care, as her natural protector, and must have the advantages of education and society to which she is entitled. I am sure you would both be friendly enough to her to wish her to occupy her rightful position. As for any expense you may have gone to on her account, papa—"

"Stop there, madam!" Dick interrupted haughtily. "We will say no more about that, if you please. As to Edith's going with you, she shall choose for herself. I don't deny that it seems to be the proper thing; but allow me to say that it was my intention to give her a good home and a good education, such as no girl need be ashamed of. I will speak to Edith, and see what she thinks about it."

He turned unceremoniously away from Miss Yorke's protestations, and[176] went to the door, beckoning Edith to follow him. As he looked back, waiting for her, he saw that the whole family had gone over in a body to talk to his mother.

Edith clasped the hand he held out to her, and looked up into his face with large tears flashing in her eyes.

He smiled involuntarily, but would not take advantage of her affectionate impulse. He saw clearly that her true place was with her relatives. They could do for her at once what he could do only after years of weary labor. Perhaps they could do at once what he could never do. But it was hard to give her up. Down in the bottom of his heart was a thought which he had never fully acknowledged the presence of, but of which he was always conscious: he had meant to bring the child up to be his wife some day, if she should be willing; to load her with benefits; to be the one to whom she should owe everything. But with the pang it cost him to put this hope in peril came the glimpse of a possibility how far more triumphant! Following his own plan, he should be hedging her in; giving her up now would be making her free choice, if it should fall on him, an infinitely greater boon. Besides, and above all, it was right that she should go.

Dick leaned back against the wall of the building, and folded his arms while he talked to her. At first Edith broke into reproaches when she learned that he meant to give her up, but immediately an instinct of feminine pride and delicacy checked the words upon her lips. It was impossible for her to press her society on one who voluntarily relinquished it. She listened to her sentence in silence.

She perceived no such necessity, but did not tell him so. "Then I shall never see you any more!" she said in a whisper, without looking up.

Dick's eyes sparkled with resolution through the tears that filled them. "Yes, you will!" he exclaimed. "I mean to do the best I can for mother and myself, and you shall not be ashamed of us. And however high they may set you, Edith, I'll climb! I'll climb! I won't be so far off but I can reach you!"

The coach had taken its first load of passengers to the village, and now came down to bring those who were to take the steamer and carry the Yorkes back. It was time to go on board. Dick stepped to the door of the waiting-room. "Come, mother!" he said. "Edith and I will see you to your state-room, and then I will bring her back. She is to go with her uncle."

He was not surprised to see that his mother had been completely talked over by Edith's relations, and that, though tearful, no opposition was to be expected from her. They seemed to be the best of friends; and when the widow rose to take leave of them, Mr. Yorke himself escorted her to the boat. In fact, it was all very comfortably settled, as Miss Yorke observed to her mother when they had taken their seats in the coach.

When Edith and Dick appeared again, hand in hand, Mr. Yorke stood at the coach-door, waiting to assist his niece to her place.

"How picturesque!" Clara Yorke exclaimed, as the two stepped over the planks and came toward them. "It is like something out of the Arabian Nights. He is Sindbad, and she[177] is one of those princesses who were always getting into such ridiculous situations and difficulties. The child is absurd, of course, but she is lovely; and the young man is really very fine—of his kind."

Sindbad and his princess were both very pale. "Sir," the sailor said, presenting the child to her uncle, "I hope she will be as happy with you as I and my mother would have tried to make her."

As he released her hand, Edith's face suddenly whitened. All her little world was slipping away from beneath her feet.

Mr. Yorke was touched and impressed. He liked the young man's dignity. "I must compliment you, sir, on your honorable conduct in this affair," he said. "Let us hear from you; and come to see us whenever you are in our neighborhood."

Dick Rowan, in his turn, would have been touched by this unexpected cordiality, had not a slight raising of Miss Melicent Yorke's eyebrows neutralized its effect. The young woman thought that her father was really condescending unnecessarily. That faint, supercilious surprise checked the young man's gratitude, and he was turning away with a cold word of thanks, when Mrs. Yorke called him back. She was leaning from the carriage, and held out her hand to him.

"Good-by, Mr. Rowan!" she said aloud. "You need not fear that we shall not cherish this orphan whom you have kindly protected so far, and you need not fear that we shall try to make her forget you. Ingratitude is the vice of slaves. I am sure she will never be ungrateful to you."

"Thank you!" Dick said fervently, melted by the kind smile and tremulous sweetness of tone. It was none of Miss Melicent's exasperating affability.

"And I have a favor to ask," she added, leaning still further out, and lowering her voice so that only he could hear. "I take for granted that you will write to my niece. Will you allow her to let me read your letters?"

Dick blushed deeply as he stammered out another "Thank you!" It was a delicately given warning and kindly given permission. It showed him, moreover, that the lady's soft eyes had looked to the bottom of his heart. At that moment he was glad that the ring on Edith's finger was Captain Cary's gift, not his.

"I would like to see the steamboat just as long as it is in sight," Edith said faintly.

Her uncle immediately gave orders to the driver to take them round to a place from which they could look down to the entrance of the bay.

The boat steamed out over the water, glided like a swan down the bay, and soon disappeared around a curve that led to the Narrows. Edith gazed immovably after it, unconscious that they were all watching her. When it was no longer visible, she closed her eyes, and sank back into Mrs. Yorke's arms.

CHAPTER IV.
THE OLD HOME.

Mrs. Charles Yorke was a native of Seaton; her maiden name, Arnold. Her mother had died while Amy was quite young, and in a few years the father married again. This marriage was an unfortunate one for the family;[178] and not only the daughter but many of Mr. Arnold's friends had tried to dissuade him from it. Their chief argument was not that the person whom he proposed to marry was a vulgar woman whom his lost wife would not have received as an acquaintance, but that she was in every way unworthy of him, and would be a discreditable connection. They met the fate which usually awaits such interference. Truth itself never appears so true as varnished falsehood does. Mr. Arnold was flattered and duped; and the end of the affair was that Amy had the misery of seeing his deceiver walk triumphantly into her mother's sacred place. Nor was this all. In a moment of weakness, the father betrayed to his new wife the efforts that had been made to separate them, and she half-guessed, half-drew from him every name. From that moment her instinctive jealous dislike of her step-daughter was turned to hatred.

Had the young girl been wise, she would have known that her only proper course was to withdraw from the field; but she was inexperienced and passionate, and had no better adviser than her own heart. Had she been a Catholic, she could have found in the confessional the confidant and counsel she needed; but she was not. In Seaton there were no Catholics above the class of servants and day-laborers. She was left, therefore, completely to herself, and in the power of an unscrupulous and subtle tormentor. Miserable, indignant, and desperate, the young girl descended to the contest, and at every step she was defeated. She called on her father for protection; but he saw nothing of her trials, or was made to believe that she had herself provoked them. It was the old story of adroit deceit arrayed against impolitic sincerity. But, happily, the contest was not of long duration.

Amy was not a person to remain in a position so false and degrading. There came a time when, quite as much to her own surprise as to theirs, she had nothing more to say. But their surprise was that she contended no longer, hers that she had contended so long. The way was clear before her, and her plans were soon made. Her father had an unmarried cousin living in Boston, and this lady consented to receive her. Only on the day preceding her departure did she announce her intentions. The sufferings she had undergone were a sufficient excuse for her abruptness. She had become too much weakened and excited to bear any controversy upon the subject. Besides, the parting from her father, if prolonged, would have been unbearable. She must tear herself away.

He sat a moment with downcast eyes after she had communicated to him her design. His face expressed emotion. He seemed both pained and embarrassed, and quite at a loss what to say. In fact, his wife had proposed this very plan, and was anxious that Amy should go, and he had entertained the project. Therefore he could not express surprise. For the first time, perhaps, a feeling of shame overcame him. He was obliged to deceive! His pride, revolting at that shame, made him impatient. Unwilling to acknowledge himself in the wrong, he wished to appear injured.

"If you mean to deprive me of my only child, and would rather live with strangers than with your own father, I will not oppose you," he said. "But I think you might have shown some confidence in me, and told me your wishes before."

Amy's impulse had been, at the first sight of his emotion, to throw[179] herself into his arms, and forgive him everything, or take upon herself all the blame. But at these words she recoiled. Her silence was better than any answer could have been.

"I don't blame you, child," her father resumed, blushing for the evasion he had practised. "It would be cruel of me to wish you to stay in a home where you cannot live in peace. I am grieved, Amy, but I can do nothing. What can a man do between women who disagree?"

"Find out which is wrong!" was the answer that rose to her lips, but she suppressed it. She had already exhausted words to him. She had poured out her pain, her love, her entreaties, and they had been to him as the idle wind. She had been wronged and insulted, and he would not see it. She turned away with a feeling of despair.

"At least, let us part as a father and daughter should," he said in a trembling voice.

She held out one hand to him, and with the other covered her face, unable to utter a word; then broke away, and shut herself into her chamber. There are times when entire reparation only is tolerable, and we demand full justice, or none.

So they parted, and never met again, though they corresponded regularly, and wrote kind if not confidential letters. The only sign the daughter ever had of any change of opinion in her father regarding the cause of their separation was when he requested her to send her letters to his office and not to the house. After that they both wrote more freely.

In her new home, Amy did not find all sunshine. Miss Clinton was old and notional, and had too great a fondness for thinking for others as well as herself. Consequently, when the young lady favored the addresses of a poor artist who had been employed to paint her portrait, there was an explosion. With her father's consent, Amy married Carl Owen, and her cousin discarded her. There was one year of happiness; then the young husband died, and left his wife with an infant son.

In her trouble, Mrs. Owen made the acquaintance of Mrs. Edith Yorke, who became to her a helpful friend; and in little more than a year she married that lady's eldest son, Charles. From that moment her happiness was assured. She found herself surrounded by thoroughly congenial society, and blest with the companionship of one who was to her father, husband, and brother, all she had ever lost or longed for. Mr. Yorke adopted her son as his own, and, so far from showing any jealousy of his predecessor, was the one to propose that the boy should retain his own father's name in addition to the one he adopted.

As daughters grew up around them, he appeared to forget that Carl was not his own son, at least so far as pride in him went. Probably he showed more fondness for his girls.

Mr. Arnold died shortly after his daughter's second marriage, and his wife followed him in a few years. By their death Mrs. Yorke became the owner of her old home. But she had no desire to revisit the scene of so much misery, and for years the house was left untenanted in the care of a keeper. Nor would they ever have gone there, probably, but for pecuniary losses which made them glad of any refuge.

Mr. Charles Yorke appreciated the value of money, and knew admirably well how to spend it; but the acuteness which can foresee and make bargains, and the unscrupulousness which is so often necessary to insure their success, he had not. Consequently,[180] when in an evil hour he embarked his inherited wealth in speculation, it was nearly all swept away.

"Why should I wait?" he asked. "Will my debts contract as the cold weather comes on? I prefer an immediate settlement."

Not displeased at his refusal to profit by their generosity, they hinted at a willingness to take a percentage on their claims.

"A percentage!" cried the debtor. "Am I a swindler? Am I a beggar? I shall pay a hundred per cent., and I recommend you in your future dealings with me to bear in mind that I am a gentleman and not an adventurer."

We have said that the two principal streets of the town of Seaton crossed each other at right angles, one running north and south along the river, the other running east and west across the river. These roads carried themselves very straightly before folks, but once out of town, forgot their company manners, and meandered as they chose, splintered into side-tracks, and wandered off in vagabond ways. But the south road, that passed by the Rowans', was the only one that came to nothing. The other three persisted till they each found a village or a city, twenty-five miles or so away. Half a mile from the village centre, on North Street, a very respectable-looking road started off eastward, ran across a field, and plunged into the forest that swept down over a long smooth rise from far-away regions of wildness. Following this road half a mile, one saw at the left a tumble-down stone wall across an opening, with two gates, painted black in imitation of iron, about fifteen rods apart. A little further on, it became visible that an avenue went from gate to gate, enclosing a deep half-circle of lawn, on which grew several fair enough elms and a really fine maple. After such preliminaries you expect a house; and there it is at the head of the avenue, a widespread building, with a cupola in the centre, a portico in front, and a wing at either side. It is elevated on a deep terrace, and has a background of woods, and woods at either hand, only a little removed.

To be consistent, this house should be of stone, or, at least, of brick; but it is neither. Still, it would not be right to call it a "shingle palace;" for its frame is a massive network of solid oaken beams, and it is strong enough to bear unmoved a shock that would set nine out of every ten modern city structures rattling down into their cellars. When Mrs. Yorke's grandfather built this house, in the year 1800, English ideas and feelings still prevailed in that region; and in building a house, a gentleman thought of his grandchildren, who might live in it. Now nobody builds with any reference to his descendants.

But Mr. Arnold's plans had proved larger than his purse. The park he meant to have had still remained three hundred acres of wild, unfenced land, the gardens never got beyond a few flowers, now choked with weeds, and the kitchen-garden, kept alive by Patrick Chester, Mrs. Yorke's keeper. As for the orchard, it never saw the light. Mrs. Yorke's father had done the place one good turn, for he had planted vines everywhere. Their graceful banners, in summer-time, draped the portico, the corners of the house, the dead oak-tree by the western wing, and swept[181] here and there over rock, fence, or stump.

Back of the house, toward the right, was a huge barn and a granary; the eaves of both under-hung with a solid row of swallows' nests. On this bright April morning, the whole air was full of the twirl and twitter of these birds, and with the blue glancing of their wings some invisible crystalline ring seemed to have been let down from the heavens over and around the house, and they followed its outline in their flight. But the homely, bread-and-butter robins had no such mystical ways. They flew or hopped straight where they wanted to go, and what they wanted to get was plainly something to eat. One of them alighted on the threshold of the open front-door and looked curiously in. He saw a long hall, with a staircase on one side, and open doors to right and left and at the furthest end. All the wood-work, walls, and ceilings in sight were dingy, and rats and mice had assisted time in gnawing away; but the furniture was bright, and three fires visible through the three open doors were brighter still. Redbreast seemed to be much interested in these fires. Probably he was a bird from the city, and had never seen such large ones. Those in the front rooms were large enough, but that in the kitchen was something immense, and yet left room at one side of the fireplace for a person to sit and look up chimney, if so disposed.

"Bon!" says the bird, with a nod, hopping in, "the kitchen is the place to go to. As to those flowers and cherries on the floor, I am not to be cheated by them. They are not good to eat, but only to walk on. I am a bird of culture and society. I know how people live. I am not like that stupid chicken."

For a little yellow chicken, without a sign of tail, had followed the robin in, and was eagerly pecking at the spots in the carpet.

The bird of culture hopped along to the door at the back of the hail, and paused again to reconnoitre. Here a long, narrow corridor ran across, with doors opening into the front rooms, and one into the kitchen, and a second stairway at one end. Three more hops brought the bird to the threshold of the kitchen-door, where a third pause occurred, this one not without trepidation; for here in the great kitchen a woman stood at a table with a pan of potatoes before her. She had washed them, and was now engaged in partially paring them and cutting out any suspicious spots that might be visible on the surfaces. "It takes me to make new potatoes out of old ones!" she said to herself with an air of satisfaction, tossing the potato in in her hand into a pan of cold water.

This woman was large-framed and tall, and over forty years of age. She had a homely, sensible, pleasant, quick-tempered face, and the base of her nose was an hypothenuse. Her dark hair was drawn back and made into a smooth French twist, with a shell comb stuck in the top a little askew. It is hard to fasten one of those twists with the comb quite even, if it has much top to it. This comb had much top. The woman's face shone with washing; she wore a straightly-fitting calico gown and a white linen collar. The gown was newly done up and a little too stiff, and to keep it from soil she had doubled the skirt up in front and pinned it behind, and tied on a large apron. For further safeguard, the sleeves were turned up and pinned to the shoulder by the waistbands. At every movement she made these stiff clothes rattled.

This woman was Miss Betsey Bates. She had lived at Mr. Arnold's when Miss Amy was a young girl, had left when she left, and was now come back to live with her again.

"Just let your water bile," Betsey began, addressing an imaginary audience—"let your water bile, and throw in a handful of salt; then wash your potatoes clean; peel 'em all but a strip or two to hold together; cut out the spots, and let 'em lay awhile in cold water; when it's time to cook 'em, throw 'em into your biling water, and clap on your lid; then—"

Betsey stopped suddenly and looked over her shoulder to listen, but, hearing no carriage-wheels nor human steps, resumed her occupation. She did not perceive the two little bipeds on the threshold of the door, where they were listening to her soliloquy with great interest, though it was the chicken's steps that had attracted her attention. That silly creature, dissatisfied with his worsted banquet, had hopped along to the robin's side, where he now stood with a hungry crop, round eyes, and two or three colored threads sticking to his bill.

Betsey's thoughts took a new turn. "I must go and see to the fires, and put a good beach chunk on each one. There's a little chill in the air, and everybody wants a fire after a journey. It looks cheerful. I've got six fires going in this house. What do you think of that? To my idea, an open fire in a strange house is equal to a first cousin, sometimes better."

Here a step sounded outside the open window behind the table, and Pat Chester appeared, a stout, fine-looking, red-faced man, with mischievous eyes and an honest mouth. Curiously enough, the base of his nose also was an hypothenuse. Otherwise there was no resemblance between the two. Betsey used to say to him, "Pat, the ends of our noses were sawed off the wrong way."

"And I must see to them clocks again," pursued Betsey. "The idea of having a clock in every room in the house! It takes me half of my time to set 'em forward and back. As to touching the pendulums of such clocks as them, you don't catch me. But I do abominate to see one mantelpiece a quarter past and another quarter of at the same time."

Here a little peck on the floor arrested Betsey's attention, and, stretching her neck, she saw the chicken, and instantly flew at it with a loud "shoo!" With its two bits of wings extended and its head advanced as far as possible, the little wretch fled through the hall, peeping with terror. But the robin flew up and escaped over Betsey's head. "Laud sakes!" she cried, holding on to her comb and her eyes, "who ever saw a chicken fly up like that?"

Wondering over this phenomenon, Betsey went up-stairs and replenished the fires in three chambers, and set some of the clocks forward and others back, then hurried down to perform the same duties below stairs. Just as she set the last hour-hand carefully at nine o'clock, Pat put his head in at the dining-room window. "It's time for 'em to be here," he said, "and I'm going down to the gate to watch. I'll give a whistle the minute they come in sight."

Immersed in her own thoughts, Betsey had jumped violently at sound of his voice. "I do believe you're possessed to go round poking your head in at windows, and scaring people out of their wits!" she cried, with[183] a frightened laugh. "Here I came within an ace of upsetting this clock or going into the fire."

Pat laughed back—he and Betsey were always scolding and always laughing at each other—muttered something about skittish women, and walked off down the avenue to watch for the family.

"I believe everything is ready," Betsey said, looking round. She took off her apron, took down her skirt and sleeves, and gave herself a general crackling smoothing over. Then suddenly she assumed an amiable smile, looked straight before her, dropped a short courtesy, and said, "How do you do, Mrs. Yorke? I hope I see you well. How do you do, sir? How do you do, miss? I wonder if I had better go out to the door when they come, or stand in the entry, or stay in the kitchen. I declare to man I don't know what to do! How do you do, ma'am?" beginning her practising again, this time before the glass. "I hope I see you well. To think of my not being married at all, and her having grown-up children!" she said, staring through the window. "The last time I saw her, she was a pretty creature, as pale as a snow-drop. Poor thing! she had a hard time of it with that Jezebel. She never said anything to me, nor I to her; but many a time she has come to me when that woman has been up to her tricks, and held on to me, and gasped for breath. 'O my heart! my heart!' she'd say. 'Don't speak to me, Betsey, but hold me a minute!' It was awful to see her white face, and to feel her heart jump as if it would tear itself out. That was the way trouble always took hold of her."

She mused a moment longer, then broke off suddenly, and began anew her practice. "How do you do, ma'am? I hope I see you well."

Presently a loud, shrill whistle interrupted her. Betsey rushed excitedly into the kitchen, dashed her potatoes into the kettle, tied on a clean apron that stood out like cast-iron with starch, and hovered in the rear of the hall, to be ready for advance or retreat, as occasion might demand.

The old yellow coach came through the gate, up the muddy avenue, and drew up at the steps. The two gentlemen got out first, then the young ladies, and all stood around while Mrs. Yorke slowly alighted. She was very pale, but smiled kindly on them, then took her son's arm, and went up the steps. Mr. Yorke stopped to offer his hand to a little girl who still remained in the coach. "My sakes!" muttered Betsey. "If it isn't that Rowan young one!"

"Mother dear," said the son, "it is possible to make a very beautiful place of this."

She looked at him with a brightening smile. "You think so, Carl?" She had been anxiously watching what impression the sight of her old home would make on her family, and exaggerating its defects in her own imagination, as she fancied they were doing in theirs. Their silence so far had given her a pang, since she interpreted it to mean disappointment, when in truth it had meant solicitude for her. They thought that she would be agitated on coming again to her childhood's home after so long an absence. So she was; but her own peculiar memories gave precedence to that which concerned those dearest to her.

"Besides, mother," Owen continued, "this spot has a charm for me which no other could have, however beautiful: it is yours."

That word conveyed the first intimation Mrs. Yorke had ever received that her son felt his dependence on a stepfather. But the pain the knowledge[184] caused her was instantly banished by the recollection that the cause of his uneasiness was now removed.

"My great-grandfather had ideas, though he did not carry them out," remarked Melicent. "If he had built his house of stone, it would have done very well. It is astonishing that he did not. But the earlier settlers in this country seemed to revel in wood, probably because it had been to them in the Old World a luxury. With heaps of stones at hand, they would persist in building their houses of logs."

At this point Betsey rushed out to welcome Mrs. Yorke. The sight of that pale face which seemed to be looking for her, and the slight, clinging form that used to cling to her, quite overcame her shyness.

"You dear creature, how glad I am to see you once more!" she cried out. And, seizing the lady by the shoulders, gave her a resounding kiss on the cheek.

"Please do not touch Mrs. Yorke's left arm. It gives her palpitation," said the son rather stiffly.

Young Mr. Owen had an invincible repugnance to personal familiarities, especially from inferiors.

"Dear Betsey, this is my son," the mother said proudly, looking at her manly young escort, as if to see him anew with a stranger's admiring eyes. "Carl has heard me speak of you many a time, my old friend!"

Betsey immediately dropped a solemn courtesy. "I hope I see you well, sir!" she said, remembering her manners.

"This must be Betsey Bates!" cried Miss Melicent, coming forward with great cordiality. "Mamma has spoken of you so often I knew you at once."

Miss Yorke did not say that she recognized Betsey by her nose, though that was the fact. The impression left on the woman's mind was of something highly complimentary, that some air expressive of honesty, faithfulness, and affection, or some subtile personal grace not universally acknowledged, had led to the recognition.

On the threshold of the door, Mrs. Yorke turned to receive her husband. She could not utter a word; but her face expressed what she would have said. In her look could be read that she placed in his hands all that was hers, regretting only that the gift was so small.

One saw then, too, that Mr. Yorke's sarcastic face was capable of great tenderness. As he met that mute welcome, a look of indulgent kindness softened his keen eyes, gave his scornful mouth a new shape, and lighted up his whole countenance. But he knew better than allow his wife to yield to any excitement of feeling.

"Yes, Amy!" he said cheerfully, "I think we shall make a very pleasant home here. Now come in and rest."

They went into the sitting-room at the left of the hall, and Mrs. Yorke was seated in an arm-chair there between the fire and the sunshine, and they all waited on her. Hester, kneeling by her mother, removed her gloves and overshoes, Clara took off her bonnet and shawl, and Melicent, after whispering a word to Betsey, went out with that factotum, and presently returned bearing a tin cup of coffee on which a froth of cream still floated.

"I've taken a cup, mamma," she said, "and I can recommend it. And breakfast will be ready in two minutes."

Owen Yorke, missing one of the company, went out, and found Edith standing forlorn in the portico, biting[185] her quivering lips, and struggling to restrain the tears that threatened to overflow her eyes. For the first time in her life the child felt timid and disconcerted. She was among her own people, and they had forgotten her. At that moment she longed passionately for Dick Rowan, and would have flown to him had it been possible.

"Come, little Gypsy!" he said. "You're not going to run away, I hope? Did you think we had forgotten you? See! I have not."

Owen Yorke's face was very winning when he chose, and his voice could express a good deal of kindness. Edith looked at him steadily a moment, then took the hand he offered, and went into the house with him. As they entered, Mrs. Yorke rose to give the child an affectionate welcome to her new home, and the daughters gathered about her with those bright, profuse words which are so pleasant even when they mean so little.

A folding-door opened from the sitting-room into the dining-room, which occupied the front half of the west wing, and here a breakfast was set out that dismayed the eyes of those who were expected to partake of it. There was a fricassee which had cost the lives of three hens of family, and occasioned a serious squabble between Pat and Betsey; there was a vast platter of ham and eggs, and a pyramid of potatoes piled so high that the first time it was touched one rolled off on to the cloth. Poor Betsey had no conception of the Yorke ideal of a proper breakfast.

"The good creature has such a generous heart!" Mrs. Yorke said, checking with a glance the titter which her two younger daughters had not tried to restrain. "And I am sure that everything is delicious."

Taking a seat at the table, Edith recollected that a trial awaited her. It was Friday; and abstinence from meat on that day was the one point in her mother's religion which she knew and practised. Otherwise she was as ignorant of it as possible.

Owen Yorke, sitting opposite, watched her curiously, perceiving that something was the matter. He noticed the slight bracing of the muscles of her face and neck, and that she drew her breath in like one who is preparing for a plunge, and kept her eyes steadily fixed on Mr. Yorke. Edith's way was to look at what she feared.

"No, sir, I do not eat meat on Friday. I am a Roman Catholic," the child answered with precision. And, having made the announcement thus fully, shut her mouth, and sat pale, with her eyes fixed on Mr. Yorke's face.

A smile flashed into Owen Yorke's eyes at this reply. "Little Spartan!" he thought.

Edith did not miss the slight contraction of the brows and the downward twitch of the corners of the mouth in the face she watched; but the signs of displeasure passed as quickly as they came. "Then I am afraid you will make a poor breakfast," Mr. Yorke said gently. "But I will do the best I can for you."

There was a momentary silence; then the talk went on as before. But the family were deeply annoyed. It seemed enough that they should have to take this little waif, with they knew not what low habits and associates, or what unruly fires of temper inherited from her mother, without having an alien religion brought into their midst. Catholicism as they had seen it abroad appealed to their æsthetic sense. It floated there in a higher atmosphere, adorned with all[186] that wealth and culture could do. But at home they preferred to keep it where, as a rule, they found it—in the kitchen and the stable.

After they had returned to the sitting-room, Mr. Yorke called Edith to him. She went trembling; for, in spite of himself, her uncle's face wore a judicial look. The girls, who were just going up-stairs, lingered to hear what would be said, and Owen took his stand behind Mr. Yorke's chair, and looked at the child with an encouraging smile.

"And Mr. Rowan wished to make a Catholic of you?" Mr. Yorke said, his lip beginning to curl.

The child lifted her head. "Mr. Rowan had nothing to say about me," she replied. "It was my mother."

"Oh! yes," Edith said with animation. "I remember how she looked, and what she said. She made me hold up my hands, and promise that I would be a Roman Catholic if I had to die for it. And that was the last word she ever said."

Mr. Yorke gave a short nod. To his mind the matter was settled. "N'est ce pas?" he said to his wife.

She bowed gravely. "There is no other way. It is impossible to ask her to break a promise so given. When she is older, she can choose for herself."

"Well, you hear, girls?" Mr. Yorke said, looking at his daughters. "Now take her, and make her feel at home."

Miss Yorke was dignified and inscrutable, Hester unmistakably cold, but Clara took her cousin's hand with the utmost cordiality, and was leading her from the room, when Edith stopped short, her eyes attracted by a cabinet portrait in oils that stood on a shelf near the door. This portrait represented a young man, with one of those ugly, beautiful faces which fascinate us, we know not why. Careless, profuse locks of golden brown clustered around his head, steady, agate-colored eyes followed the beholder wherever he went, and seemed at once defying him to escape and entreating him not to go, and the sunshine of a hidden smile softened the curves of the mouth and chin.

Edith's eyes sparkled, her face grew crimson, and she clasped her hands tightly on her breast.

"That is your father's portrait, my dear," Mrs. Yorke said, going to her. "Do you recognize it?"

The child restrained herself one moment, then she ran to the picture, clasped her arms around it, and kissed it over and over, weeping passionately. "It is mine! It is mine!" she cried out, when her aunt tried to soothe her.

"You are right, dear!" Mrs. Yorke said, much affected. "I am sure no one will object to your having the portrait. You may take it to your own chamber, if you wish."

Edith controlled herself, wiped her eyes, and put the picture down. "Dear Aunt Amy," she said, "you know I want it; but I won't take it unless you and Uncle Charles are quite willing."

It was touching, her first acknowledgment of kinship, and expression of trust and submission. They cordially assured her of their willingness, kissed her again in token of a closer adoption, and smiled after her as she[187] went off with her father's portrait clasped to her heart.

Melicent and Hester still lingered. Melicent remembered faintly her Uncle Robert's marriage, and the disagreeable feeling in the family at that time. It had left on her mind a prejudice against "that Polish girl," and a shade of disfavor toward her daughter. But she said nothing.

"It will be so disagreeable having a Catholic in the family!" Hester complained.

"Hester, listen to me!" her father said severely. "I want no bigotry nor petty persecutions in my family. Your Cousin Edith has as good a right to her religion as you have to yours; and if either should find herself disagreeably situated, it is she, for she is alone. Don't forget this; and don't let there be anything offensive said, or hinted, or looked. I mean to be consistent, and allow others the same freedom which I claim myself. Now, let me hear no more of this."

Hester took refuge in tears. It was her sole argument. She was one of those soft creatures who require to be petted, and have a talent for being abused. Possibly, too, she was a little jealous of this new member of the family.

"Melicent, will you lead away this weeping nymph, and dry her tears?" the father said impatiently. "Common sense is too robust for her constitution."

The sisters went up-stairs, and Owen followed them presently, and climbed to the cupola. Leaning on the window-sill there, he looked off over the country. The horizon was a ring of low blue hills, with a grand amethyst glittering to tell where the sea lay. Through the centre of this vast circle glimmered the river, silver, and gold, and steel-blue, and the white houses of the town lay like a heap of lilies scattered on its banks. Everywhere else was forest.

Shadows of varying thought swept over the young man's face as he looked off, and drew freer breath from the distance. "Henceforth my shield must bear a martlet," he muttered. "But whither shall I fly?"

That was the problem he was studying. He had come to this place only to see his family settled, and collect his own thoughts after their sudden fall from prosperity; then he would go out into the world, and work his own way. It was not pleasant, the change from that life of noble leisure and lofty work which he had planned, to one where compulsory labor for mere bread must occupy the greater part of his time; but it was inevitable. And as he looked abroad now, and breathed the fresh air that came frolicking out of the northwest, and remembered how wide the world is and how many veins in it are unwrought, his young courage rose, and the plans he had been building up for that year crumbled and ceased to excite his regret.

Only a few months before their change of circumstances, his mother had been won to consent that he might visit Asia. He had meant to go north, south, east, and west, in that shabby, glorious old land, make himself for the nonce Tartar, Chinese, Indian, Persian, what not, and get a look at creation through the eyes of each. This young man's sympathies were by no means narrow. He had never been able to believe that God smiles with peculiar fondness on any particular continent, island, peninsula, or part of either, and is but a stepfather to the rest of the world. He was born with a hatred of barriers. He sympathized with Swift, who "hated all nations, professions, and communities, and gave all his love to individuals." Or,[188] better than Swift, he had at least a theoretical love for mankind unfenced. He did not have to learn to love, that came naturally to him; he had to learn to hate. But he was a good hater. Take him all in all, Carl Owen Yorke was at twenty-one a noble, generous youth, of good mind and unstained reputation; and it was no proof of excessive vanity in him that he believed himself capable of taking any position he might strive for.

"My dear Minerva tells me that I have in me some of the elements of failure," he said. "I wonder what they are?"

This "dear Minerva" was Miss Alice Mills, Mr. Robert Yorke's deserted fiancée. She and Owen were very close friends. It was one of those friendships which sometimes grow up between a woman whose youth is past and a youth whose manhood has scarcely arrived. Such a friendship may effect incalculable good or incalculable harm, as the woman shall choose.

"Well," he concluded, not caring to puzzle over the riddle, "she will explain, I suppose, when she writes. And if anybody can get at the cube-root of the difficulty, she can."

Meantime, while the son was musing, and the daughters were selecting their chambers, and making up a toilet for Edith, Mr. Yorke had sent for Patrick Chester in the sitting-room, and was questioning him concerning Catholic affairs in Seaton. They did not seem to be in a flourishing condition.

There was no priest settled there, Patrick said; but one came over from B—— once in two months, and said Mass for them. They had no church yet, but a little chapel, what there was left of it.

"Why, sir, some of the Seaton rowdies got into the chapel, one night, not long ago, and smashed the windows, and broke up the tabernacle, and destroyed the pictures entirely. And they twisted off the crucifix, though it was of iron, two inches wide and half an inch thick. The devil must have helped the man that did it, savin' your presence, ma'am."

"There are some fine folks in Seaton," said Pat, who did not know what vandals are. "But the rowdies have everything pretty much their own way."

"You mean to say that there was no effort made to discover and punish the perpetrators of such an outrage?" exclaimed his master.

"Indeed there was not, sir!" Pat answered. "People knew pretty well who did the mischief, and that the fellow that broke off the crucifix was taken bleeding at the lungs just after; but nobody molested 'em. It wouldn't be well for the one who would lift his voice against the Seaton rowdies. Why, some of 'em belong to as wealthy families as there are in town. They began with a cast-iron band years ago, and everybody laughed at 'em. All the harm they did was to wake people out of sleep. Then they broke up a lecture. It was a Mr. Fowle from Boston, who was preaching about education. And then they did a little mischief here and there to people they didn't like, and now they are too strong to put down. And, indeed, sir, when it's against the Catholics they are, nobody wants to put 'em down."

Mr. Yorke glanced at his wife. She did not look up nor deny Patrick's[189] charges. She was a little ashamed of the character of her native town in this respect; for at that time Seaton was notorious for its lawlessness, and was even proud of its reputation. No great harm had been done, they said. It was only the boys' fun. They were sorry, it is true, that a respectable lecturer should have been insulted; but that a Catholic chapel should be desecrated, that was nothing. They did not give it a second thought.

"Well, Patrick," Mr. Yorke resumed, "my niece, Miss Edith Yorke, is a Catholic, and I wish her to have proper instruction, and to attend to the services of her church when there is opportunity. Let me know the next time your priest comes here, and I will call to see him. Now you may go."

OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE.

The story and celebration of Our Lady of Guadalupe are not so familiar to Catholics, or so well appreciated by others, as to render useless or uninteresting, especially in this month of Mary, an account of her veneration in Mexico. What this actually, veritably is, no writer, so far as we are aware, has yet undertaken to show—at least, from such literary evidences of popular conviction as best illustrate the subject. How anything supernatural could shine or blossom in a land of wars, robbers, Indians, is an old doubt, notwithstanding that revelations have taken place in countries which needed them less than did the once idolatrous Aztecs. Let us now endeavor to make clear what the true nature of the miracle of Guadalupe is; to exhibit its real veneration by means of testimonies borrowed from the worthiest Mexicans; and to prove that the faith of Guadalupe is not shallow, but long and well-established, widespread, and sincere.

Here follows a brief history of the renowned miracle of Tepeyac. In 1531, ten years after the conquest, the pious and simple Indian, Juan Diego, was on his way to the village of Guadalupe, near the city of Mexico, there to receive the instructions of some reverend fathers. Suddenly, at the hill of Tepeyac appeared to him the Blessed Virgin, who commanded her amazed client to go forthwith to the bishop, and make known that she wished a church to be built in her honor upon that spot. Next day the Blessed Virgin returned to hear the regret of Juan Diego that he could not obtain the ear of the bishop. "Go back," said the Holy Lady, "and announce that I, Mary, Mother of God, send thee." The Indian again sought his bishop, who this time required that he should bring some token of the presence and command of his patroness. On the 12th of December, Juan Diego again saw Our Lady, who ordered him to climb to the top of the barren rock of Tepeyac and there gather roses for her. To his great astonishment,[190] he found the roses flourishing on the rock, and brought them to his patroness, who threw them into his tilma or apron, and said: "Go back to the bishop and show him these credentials." Again came the Indian before the bishop, and, opening his tilma to show the roses, lo! there appeared impressed upon it a marvellous image of the Blessed Virgin. The bishop was awestruck and overcome. The miraculous occurrence was made known and proved. Processions and Masses celebrated it, and its fame spread far and wide. A large new cathedral was erected on the hill of Guadalupe, and multitudes from all parts flocked thither. Specially noteworthy is the fact that the new shrine to Our Lady was erected in the place where once the Indians worshipped their goddess Totantzin, mother of other deities, and protectress of fruits and fields. The marvellous picture was found impressed upon the rudest cloth, that of a poor Indian's apron, the last upon which to attempt a painter's artifice—and hence the greater wonder, the artistic testimony regarding which is something formidable and wonderful in itself.

What is known in Mexico as the Day of Guadalupe is extraordinary as a popular manifestation. On the 12th of December every year, fifteen or twenty thousand Indians congregate in the village of that name to celebrate the anniversary of the Marvellous Apparition. The whole way to the famous suburb is crowded with cabs, riders, and pedestrians of the poorest sort, a great number of them bare-footed. All day there is an ever-moving multitude to and from the village, and, indeed, the majority of the inhabitants of the city of Mexico seem to be included in the parties, families, and caravans of strangely contrasted people that wend their way to the shrines on the hill. The most numerous class of pilgrims are the saddest and the most wretched—we mean the ill-clad, ill-featured, simple, devoted Indians. On them the luxuries of the rich, the passions of the fighters, the intrigues of politicians, have borne with ruinous effect. Drudging men and women; hewers of wood and drawers of water; bare-breasted peasants, with faces dusky and dusty, the same who any day may be seen on Mexican roads carrying burdens of all sorts strapped to their backs; children in plenty, bare, unkempt, untidy, and sometimes swaddled about their mothers' shoulders; numerous babes at the breast, half-nude—these are some of the features in a not overdrawn picture of the primitive poverty which assembles at Guadalupe, and, in fact, in every Mexican multitude whatsoever. Perhaps nowhere outside of Mexico and the race of Indians can such a problem of multitudinous poverty be seen. Its victims are those over whom the desert-storms of wars and feuds innumerable have passed, and, spite of all their wanderings as a race, they yet wear the guise and character of tribes who are still trying to find their way out of a wilderness or a barren waste. Let enthusiasts for self-willed liberty say what they will, wars of fifty years are anything but conservative of happiness, cleanliness, good morals, and that true liberty which should always accompany them. However fondly we cherish our ideals of freedom, we must yet bear in mind the wholesome, wholesale truth of history, that no actual liberty is reached by the dagger and guillotine, or by massacre, or is founded on bad blood or bad faith. Those who lately celebrated the execution of Louis XVI. and the intellectual system of murder established by Robespierre, and not totally disapproved[191] by Mr. Carlyle, have good reason to be cautious as to how they offend this menacing truth.

A cathedral and four chapels are the principal structures of the picturesque hillside village of Guadalupe. By a winding ascent among steep, herbless rocks, tufted here and there with the thorny green slabs of the cactus, is reached at some distance from the cathedral the highest of the chapels, which contains the original imprint of the figure of Our Lady. Looking up to the chapel from the crowd at the cathedral may be seen a striking picture, not unlike what Northern travellers have been taught to fancy of the middle ages, but the elements of which are still abundant in the civilization of Europe. It is simply the curious crowd of pilgrims going up and down the hill, to and from the quaint old chapel, built perhaps centuries ago. The scene from the height itself is charming and impressive. The widespread valley of Mexico—including lakes, woods, villages, and a rich and substantial city, with towers and domes that take enchantment from distance—is all before the eye in one serene view of landscape. In the village there is a multitude like another Israel, sitting in the dust or standing near the pulquerias, or moving about near the church door. As Guadalupe is for the most part composed of adobe houses, and as its mass of humble visitors have little finery to distinguish their brown personages from the dust out of which man was originally created, the complexion of the general scene which they constitute can only be described as earth-like and earth-worn. Elsewhere than in a superficial glance at the poverty of Guadalupe we must seek for the meaning of its spectacle. Is this swarming, dull-colored scene but an animated fiction? No—it is the natural seeking the supernatural. And the supernatural—what is it? It is redemption and immortality, our Lord and Our Lady, the angels and saints.

The cathedral is a building of picturesque angles, but, except that it is spacious, as so many of the Mexican churches are, makes no particular boast of architecture. A copy of the marvellous tilma, over the altar, poetically represents Our Lady in a blue cloak covered with stars, and a robe said to be of crimson and gold, her hands clasped, and her foot on a crescent supported by a cherub. This is the substance of a description of it given by a traveller who had better opportunities for seeing it closely than had the present writer during the fiesta of Guadalupe in 1867. Whether the original picture is rude or not, from being impressed upon a blanket, he has not personal knowledge, though aware that it has been described as rude. Nevertheless, its idea and design are beautiful and tender. Everywhere in Mexico it is the favorite and, indeed, the most lovely presentment of Our Lady. Like a compassionate angel of the twilight, it looks out of many a shrine, and, among all the images for which the Mexican Church is noted, none is perhaps more essentially ideal, and, in that point of view, real. Where it appears wrought in a sculpture of 1686, by Francisco Alberto, on the side of San Agustin's at the capital, it is, though quaint, very admirable for its purity and gentleness. Time respects it, and the birds have built their nests near it. The various chapels in and about the city dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe are recognized by the star-mantled figure. The Baths of the Peñon, the cathedral at the Plaza, the suburb of Tacubaya, have each their pictorial witnesses of the faith of Guadalupe; and to say that its manifestation[192] abounds in Mexico is but to state a fact of commonplace. Rich and poor venerate the tradition of the Marvellous Appearance, now for three centuries celebrated, and always, it seems, by multitudes.

What else is to be seen at Guadalupe besides its crowd and its altar is not worthy of extended remark. The organs of the cathedral are high and admirably carved; over the altar's porphyry columns are cherubim and seraphim, all too dazzling with paint and gold. Here, as in other places of Spanish worship, the figures of the crucifixion have been designed with a painful realism. Outside of the church a party of Indians, displaying gay feathers, danced in honor of the feast, as their sires must have done hundreds of years ago. Inside it was densely crowded with visitors or pilgrims, and far too uncomfortable at times to make possible the most accurate observation of its ornaments. But it may be well to repeat that the church is divided into three naves by eight columns, and is about two hundred feet long, one hundred and twenty feet broad, and one hundred high. The total cost of the building, and, we presume, its altars, is reckoned as high as $800,000, most of it, if not all, contributed by alms. The altar at which is placed the image of Our Lady is said to have cost $381,000, its tabernacle containing 3,257 marks of silver, and the gold frame of the sacred picture 4,050 castellanos. The church's ornaments are calculated to be worth more than $123,000. Two of its candlesticks alone weighed 2,213 castellanos in gold, and one lamp 750 marks of silver. To Cristobal de Aguirre, who, in 1660, built a hermitage on the summit of Tepeyac, we owe the foundation of the chapel there. It was not, however, until 1747 that Our Lady of Guadalupe was formally declared the patroness of the whole of Mexico.

Of the many celebrations of Mexico, none are altogether as significant as that of Guadalupe. It has become national, and, in a certain sense, religiously patriotic. Maximilian and Carlota, the writer was informed, washed the feet of the poor near the altar of Our Lady, according to a well-known religious custom. The best men and women of Mexico have venerated the Marvellous Appearance—which, however amusing it may be to those who are scarcely as radical in their belief in nature as conservative in their views of the supernatural, is but a circumstance to the older traditions which have entered into the mind of poetry and filled the heart of worship. What of the wonderful happenings to the great fathers of the church and the mediæval saints, all worshippers of unquestionable sublimation? Say what you please, doubt as you may, saints, angels, miracles, abide, and form the very testament of belief. There is not a Catholic in the world who does not believe in miracle, whose faith is not to unbelievers a standing miracle of belief in a miracle the most prodigious, the most portentous; and yet to him it has only become natural to believe in the supernatural. The Mexicans venerate what three centuries and uncounted millions have affirmed, whence it appears that their veneration is not a conceit or humbug, but at root a faith. How can this be more clearly illustrated than by quoting the following very interesting poem of Manuel Carpio, Mexico's favorite, if not best modern poet:

Manuel Carpio, who wrote this, his first poetic composition, in 1831, when forty years of age, was a scholar and professor, and in 1824 a congressman. He made the Bible, we are told, his favorite study; and certainly it supplied him with the themes for his best poems. But he was not the only poet of Mexico who bore earnest witness to the faith of which we speak. Padre Manuel Sartorio, who wrote about the time of Iturbide, deprecates the idea of preferring a capricious doubt respecting "la Virgen de Guadalupe" to a constant belief founded in tradition. In the following lines the[194] nature of his own belief is fully attested:

In other lines on the same subject, Sartorio speaks of the Lady of Guadalupe as "the purest rose of the celestial field," and pays special respect to her image in the Portal of Flowers, of which there is a tradition, not vulgar, of having spoken (hay tradicion no vulgar de haber hablado) to the Venerable Padre Zapa, in order to instruct the Indians, as relates Cabrera, "Escudo de Armas de Mexico, numero 923." Who this Cabrera may be we are not aware, and cannot affirm that he is identical with the great painter Cabrera, whose belief in Our Lady of Guadalupe was so distinct and positive.

One other poet of Mexico we shall summon to give testimony. It is Fray Manuel Navarrete, who wrote a series of poems, well-known to his countrymen, called "Sad Moments." He was also the author of a number of tributes to the fame of Carlos IV. and Ferdinand VII., and seems to have possessed more influence, if not more merit as a poet, than Padre Sartorio. From a posthumous volume, bearing date of 1823, we take the following lines, the allusions of which sufficiently explain at what time they were written:

How sadly, how oddly, sounds in modern ears this felicitation of a poet that peace, which has left the greater part of the world, has taken refuge in Mexico! Evidently our Fray Navarrete did not foresee the results of the war begun by the clerical revolutionist Hidalgo. But whatever may have been the political bias of this religious writer, he retains the esteem of his countrymen as one of the fathers of their fragmentary literature.

Our last witness is Miguel Cabrera, the great Mexican painter, whose merits have with reason been compared by an Italian traveller, the Count Beltrami, to those of Correggio and Murillo. Altogether, as carver, architect, and painter, the New World has not produced the equal in art of this extraordinary man, who wrought almost without masters or models, without emulation or fitting aid and recompense, and whose worth has yet to be made well known to the continent which he honored. But our object now is to lend the weight of this preface to the following statement of the Mexican writer, Señor Orozco y Berra:

STATISTICS OF PROTESTANTISM IN THE UNITED STATES.

Under the term Protestantism, it is intended to comprise all persons of any religious sect, denomination, or church in this country, except Catholics, Jews, and Chinese. So numerous are the divisions and subdivisions that our limits will permit us to present only the name of each, with perhaps a word as to its distinctive features, its numbers at different periods, and its average annual increase for a given period. The given period thus selected is the twenty-five years and upward preceding the year 1868; because the statistics of all the denominations which are accessible, are at present more complete up to that date than they have yet become up to any subsequent year, or even up to the present date. The statistics are taken entirely from Protestant sources, and chiefly from official documents published by the respective denominations. The final results are then brought together, and compared with the results presented by the Federal census of the population at different periods.

1. The name "Lutheran" was given to the first Protestant denomination, in order to designate the followers of Martin Luther. A part of the members of the denomination in this country have recently changed their name to "Evangelical Lutheran Church."

The statistics, chiefly official, of the denomination for a series of years have been as follows:

The average annual increase during a series of years (ending always with 1867) has been as follows:

2. The German Reformed denomination made its appearance, soon after the Lutheran, in the German part of Switzerland, and sprang out of a dispute between Ulrich Zwingli and Martin Luther concerning the import of the words, "This is my body," "This is my blood."

3. The "United Brethren in Christ" are the fruits of a "reformation" in the German Reformed denomination—a sort of Methodistical offshoot. The statements of their numbers are as follows:

4. The "Moravians," or United Brethren, are a distinct denomination from the preceding one. As known in this country, they descended from a colony of dissenters, who were first gathered on his estate in Upper Alsatia, in 1772, by Count Zinzendorf.

5. The "Dutch Reformed Church," as it was known until 1867, when the name was changed to "Reformed Church in America," is a descendant of the Dutch Reformed Church of Holland.

The average annual increase of the denomination at different periods has been as follows:

6. The Mennonites derive their name from Menno Simon, born in Friesland A.D. 1495. He was contemporary with Luther, Bucer, and Bullinger. He obtained a great number of followers. In 1683, the first of them came over to this country, others soon followed.

7. The Reformed Mennonite Society was first organized in 1811. The members ascribe their origin to the corruptions of the Mennonites. The reform extended into several counties of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New York, but their doctrines are regarded as too rigid for general acceptance.

8. The denomination known as the "German Evangelical Association" first appeared in one of the Middle States, about the year 1800.

This denomination is now regarded as German Methodists, and their numbers have been as follows:

The average annual increase of the denomination in twenty-four years has been 1,791.

9. The "Christians," or "Christian Connection," profess not to owe their origin to the labors of any one man, like the other Protestant sects. They rose almost simultaneously in different and remote parts of this country, without knowledge of each other's movements.

The new organizations of this denomination held their twenty-third annual convention in June, 1868. The number of organizations was one hundred and sixty.

The "Church of God," as it exists by that name in the United States, is a religious community, who profess to have come out from all human and unscriptural organizations, and to have fallen back upon original grounds, and who wish, therefore, to be known and called by no other distinctive name.

This denomination exists in Ohio and Pennsylvania and the Western States, and their numbers have been stated as follows:

11. The denominations thus far noticed are chiefly of German origin. The next class contains those of Scottish origin. Among these the Presbyterian holds the first place in age and numbers. The first organization here was made in 1706, and known as the Presbytery of Philadelphia. Their first synod was convened September 17, 1718.

The first General Assembly met in 1789, and a more efficient and extensive development ensued. In 1810, a division arose, and the formation of the "Cumberland Presbyterian" organization. But the most extensive division took place in 1838, by which a body was organized and known as the "New School," while those who remained were designated as "Old School" Presbyterians. The split thus made has continued for thirty years, but is now ostensibly removed by measures of reunion.

The statistics of the "Old School" Presbyterians for the year 1863 first show the effect of the separation of the Southern portion during the war. The report of numbers has been as follows:

The average annual increase of the denomination previous to the division caused by opposite views on political questions was as follows:

The average annual increase of the whole denomination (North and South) to 1868 has been as follows:

12. The division of the Presbyterian Church was entirely consummated in 1840, by the meeting of a General Assembly representing the seceders, or "New School."

Subsequently, the loss of the Southern churches by the "Old School" denomination, and the increase of the anti-slavery sentiment in the Northern portion, suggested a reunion with the "New School" soon after the outbreak of the recent war. At length, in 1868, one General Assembly met in Albany, while the other was in session in Harrisburg, Pa. A plan of union was mutually prepared, which, on being approved by the local presbyteries, went into effect in 1870.

13. The "General Synod of the Reformed Presbyterian Church" is the title of a denomination which claims to be a direct descendant of the "Reformed Presbyterian Church" of Scotland.

14. The "Synod of Reformed Presbyterians" was formed by certain persons who separated from the Reformed Presbyterians (General Synod), principally on the ground that they were of opinion that the constitution and government of the United States are essentially infidel and immoral. The separation took place in 1833.

The few statements relative to the numbers of this denomination have been as follows:

15. Another division is the "Associate Presbyterian Church." This is located chiefly in the Middle and Western States. The members of the denomination claim to be a branch of the Church of Scotland.

In 1858, the Associate Reformed and the Associate churches reunited under the name of "United Presbyterian Church in North America."

The statistics of the Associate Presbyterian denomination after 1859 are merged in those of the United[199] Presbyterians, and have been as follows:

The average annual increase of the denomination during the six years subsequent to the union, ending in 1867, has been as follows:

The statistics of the "Associate Synod of North America" above-mentioned have been as follows:

16. Another order of Presbyterians in this country is known as the "Associate Reformed Church." Since 1822, the denomination has existed in three independent divisions, the Northern, the Western, and the Southern. These divisions are quite small in numbers, and their growth has been insignificant. They have been stated as follows:

The Associate Reformed Synod of New York in 1843 had 34 ministers and 43 congregations. In 1867, it had 16 ministers and 1,631 members.

The Associate Reformed Synod of the South in 1843 had 25 ministers and 40 congregations; and in 1867, estimated at 1,500 members.

The Free Presbyterian Synod, consisting, in 1861, of 41 ministers and 4,000 members, had previously separated from the New School Presbyterian denomination, but was reunited and absorbed after the outbreak of the recent war.

17. The Independent Presbyterian Church in South and North Carolina consisted, in 1861, of 4 ministers and about 1,000 members.

18. Another denomination of Presbyterians remains to be noticed. It is called the "Cumberland Presbyterians" and first appeared in Kentucky in the year 1800. In 1829, there were four synods and the first General Assembly of the denomination was held. During the recent war the Southern churches were not reported in the Assembly, and there are no complete statistics of that period.

19. Another large class of denominations is known by the name of "Baptists." They are divided into ten separate sects: Baptists; Free-Will Baptists; Seventh-Day Baptists; German Baptists or Brethren; German Seventh-Day Baptists; Free Communion Baptists; Old School Baptists; Six-Principle Baptists; River Brethren; Disciples of Christ, or Campbellites.

An estimate of the numbers of the regular Baptists at different periods, made by themselves, presents the following results:

The average annual increase of the denomination during twenty-five years has been as follows:

20. The "Free-will Baptist Connection" made its first organized appearance in this country in 1780. In 1827, a General Conference was organized to represent the whole connection. The statements of their numbers have been as follows:

The average annual increase of the denomination during the last twenty-five years has been as follows:

21. The "Seventh-Day Baptists" are so-called because they differ from all other Protestant denominations in their views of the Sabbath. They have gradually spread in the Eastern, the Central, and some Northwestern and Southern States.

22. There is a denomination of German Baptists which has assumed for itself the name of "Brethren," but they are commonly called "Dunkers" or "Tunkers" to distinguish them from the Mennonists. They have also been called "Tumblers" from the manner in which they perform baptism, which is by putting the person head forward under water (while kneeling), so as to resemble the motion of the body in the act of tumbling.

In 1843, their larger congregations contained from two to three hundred members; but little was then known among themselves of their numbers. Their subsequent statistics have been as follows:

A membership of 20,000 has been stated for this denomination during the last half-dozen years without increase or diminution.

23. The "German Seventh-Day Baptists" first made their appearance in Germany in 1694. From these, after their organization in the United States, sprang the Seventh-Day branch. Their numbers in 1860 were estimated at:

24. A society designated as "Free-Communion Baptists" arose in 1858 in McDonough Co., Illinois, and organized a quarterly meeting conference. At the quarterly meeting in 1859, one preacher, four licentiates, a few small churches, and 104 members were reported.

25. The "Old School," or Anti-mission, Baptists were formerly a portion of the regular Baptists, above-mentioned. They are opposed to the academical or theological education of their ministers, and to Bible, missionary, and all other voluntary societies of like nature.

The average annual increase of this denomination during seven years by these statements has been 6,143.

25. The denomination called "Six-Principle Baptists" originated in Rhode Island as early as 1665. They are distinguished from other Baptists by deducing their peculiarities from the first three verses of the sixth chapter of Hebrews.

Recent statements put their numbers about the same, and there probably has been no important increase.

27. The "River Brethren" is an organization in Pennsylvania and other states, so-called to distinguish them from the German Baptists or Brethren above-mentioned.

Their meetings are generally held in dwelling-houses, or barns fitted up with seats; in other respects, they are similar to the German Brethren.

28. The "Disciples of Christ," or, as the denomination is often called, "Baptists," "Reformed Baptists," "Reformers," "Campbellites," etc., originated in the early part of the present century. The first advocates were Thomas and Alexander Campbell in Pennsylvania.

The average annual increase, according to these statements, has been in twenty-one years, in members, 4,762.

29. The first appearance of the Puritans, since known as "Congregationalists," was in the early part of Queen Elizabeth's reign. The first church formed upon Congregational principles was that established by Robert Browne in 1583. The denomination is the largest in New England, and exists in small bodies in a number of the states.

The average annual increase of this denomination during the last twenty-five years has been as follows:

30. The denomination of "Unitarians" arose in this country from a division of opinion among Congregationalists on the divinity of Christ. Their statistics contain no report of the membership. All who are respectable and orderly members of the society are admitted to the sacraments if they desire to be.

The average annual increase has been estimated for a series of forty or more years at about one per cent., or 300.

31. The denomination of "Universalists" first made its appearance in England about 1750. In Gloucester, Massachusetts, the first Universalist society was formed in 1779. No statistics of the denomination contain the "membership" like those of other denominations, as to believe is to become a member. The active members have been estimated in 1850 at 60,000, although the population among which Universalism exists to the exclusion of other denominations may be ten times greater.

32. The Protestant Episcopal Church is a well-known offshoot of the church established by the British Parliament in England.

33. Another large class of denominations is embraced under the general term "Methodism." The first denomination, out of which all the others have sprung, was an offshoot of the Church of England, known in this country as the Protestant Episcopal Church.

The average annual increase since the separation of the South, and during seventeen years, has been 30,377. Since the close of the war conferences have been organized in eight of the Southern states, and 100,000 members gained from the church South.

34. A secession took place in 1830 from the Methodists, and the persons who composed it assumed the name of the "Methodist Protestant Church." Its statistics have been as follows:

In 1866, a convention was held [203]in Cincinnati to unite the Methodist Protestants, the Wesleyan Connection, the Free Methodists, the Primitive Methodists, and some independent Methodist congregations, under the name of the "Methodist Church." The union was joined by few save the Northern conferences of the Methodist Protestant body, who now compose the Methodist Church; the Southern conferences retain the original name of Methodist Protestant. Their numbers in 1867 were estimated at 50,000; in 1869, they were estimated at 72,000.

There has been no actual increase in those now indicated by this name in twenty-five years preceding 1868.

35. The "Methodist Church" is composed of the Northern conferences of the Methodist Protestant Church which, in attempting to form a union with others in 1866, caused a split among themselves. Their report, made in 1867, states as follows:

This is strictly an increase of the Methodist Protestants, but appears under a new name. It is an average annual increase of 2,000.

36. Out of the original separation of the Methodist Protestants from the Methodist Episcopal another denomination sprang up, under the name of the "True Wesleyan Methodists."

The denomination has increased very slowly since its organization, as appears by the following statements:

37. The African Methodist Episcopal Church owes its origin to the prejudice against the colored members and attendants of the Methodist Episcopal Church. In the early days of the latter, this prejudice was so deep that the colored persons were not unfrequently pulled from their knees while at prayer in the church, and ordered to the back seats.

This denomination has greatly increased by the addition of emancipated slaves. Its statistics are as follows:

38. The operation of the same prejudice against color in New York gave rise to the "Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church." Its statistics show a large increase recently at the South, and are as follows:

39. The "Methodist Episcopal Church, South," is the second largest body of Methodists in the United States. It arose from a division of the Methodist Episcopal Church, in accordance with resolutions of the General Conference in 1844.

The membership of this denomination has been reduced by the war, by the invasion of its territory by the Northern Methodist Episcopal, and by the African and Zion churches. Its statistics are as follows:

40. The "Free Methodist Church" originated in 1859, and consisted of a few congregations in New York and other Northern states. Its statistics have been as follows:

41. The "Western Primitive Methodist Church" held its twenty-second annual conference in New Diggings, Wisconsin, 1866. The subject of union with other non-episcopal bodies was favorably considered. Their numbers were in 1865 as follows: Preachers, 20; members, 2,000.

42. The "Independent Methodist Church" organized its first congregation in New York City in 1860. The third annual session of its conference was held in 1864, and a movement made toward union with other non-episcopal bodies.

43. The "Friends," or "Quakers," arose in England about 1647, under the preaching of Mr. George Fox. The numbers of this denomination are estimated at 100,000, comprised in eight yearly meetings.

44. A division took place during the first quarter of the present century among the Friends, under Mr. Elias Hicks. A distinct and independent association was made under his name. Their numbers are estimated at 40,000.

45. The "Shakers," or United Society of Believers, are a small denomination which first made its appearance in this country in 1776.

They are found in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Kentucky, Connecticut.

46. The "Adventists," or "Second Adventists," owe their rise in the United States to Mr. Wm. Miller, of Low Hampton, New York.

In 1859, they were estimated to comprise about 18,000 persons, and in 1867 about 30,000, exclusive of members of other denominations. Average annual increase in eight years, 1,500.

47. The "New Church," or "Swedenborgians," accept as their rule of faith and discipline the Holy Scriptures as interpreted by Mr. Emanuel Swedenborg.

48. Modern "Spiritualism" made its appearance in Western New York about twenty years ago. It came at first in the form of rappings, knockings, table-tippings, and other noisy demonstrations, for the purpose of attracting general attention. The believers held conventions and public meetings, but adopted no form or plan of organization. Great numbers in all denominations are supposed to approve more or less of their views; but the number of separate public adherents is estimated at 165,000.

49. The "Mormon Church," or "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints," was first organized in the town of Manchester, New York, on April 6, 1830, by Mr. Joseph Smith, of Vermont. The fortunes[205] of the church thus started have been variable in New York, Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois, until persecution has compelled her to withdraw to the wilderness of Utah. Their number is stated to be 60,000. The average annual increase in twenty-five years, 2,000.

50. Four miles from Oneida, Madison County, New York, is located an organized community the members of which call themselves "Christian Perfectionists." It was started by Mr. John F. Noyes, a native of Brattleboro, Vermont.

They have now a community in Oneida, Wallingford, Conn., New Haven, Conn., and New York, which consisted of 255 members in 1867. This is an average annual increase of 10.

51. The "Catholic Apostolic Church," or "Irvingites," originated from the views of Mr. Edward Irving, preached in London in 1830.

There are about a half-dozen of these congregations in this country, estimated to contain 250 members.

A number of small nuclei of perhaps future denominations exists in different states, which it is unnecessary to mention.

Thus the whole number of members of Protestant churches in the United States in 1867 was 6,396,110. The average annual increase of this membership during the preceding twenty-five years has been 134,802.

The population of the United States according to the usual census and that of the Bureau of Statistics for 1867, has been as follows:

If we deduct from the population of the United States in 1867 the number of persons who were members[206] of Protestant churches, there will remain 30,347,088 persons in the United States in 1867 who were not members of Protestant churches, who made no public profession of faith in their doctrines, and who did not partake of their sacraments.

If we suppose the church-membership of Protestant denominations to increase at the same average annual rate during the next thirty-three years, until the year 1900, that increase will amount to 4,448,466. If this increase is added to the number of church-members in 1867, the membership of all the Protestant churches in the year 1900 will be 10,844,576.

If we suppose the population of the United States to increase in the same average annual rate during the next thirty-three years, until the year 1900, that increase will amount to 24,040,797. This amount added to the population of 1867 will make the population in 1900 reach the number 60,784,945, of whom 49,940,419 will not be members of any Protestant church, nor make a public profession of faith in their doctrines, nor partake of their sacraments.

It may be said that the average annual increase of Protestantism for twenty-five years subsequent to 1867 will be numerically greater than for the previous twenty-five years. So will also be numerically larger the average annual increase of the population for a like period, but the relative proportion of the denominations to the population would remain unchanged.

ON A GREAT PLAGIARIST.

MARY BENEDICTA.

We were at school together. We little dreamed, either of us, in those mischief-loving days of frolic and fun, that she was one day to be a saint, and that I would write her story.

Yet look well at the face. Is there not something like a promise of sainthood on the pure, white brow? And the eyes, blue-gray Irish eyes, with the long, dark lashes throwing a shadow underneath, "diamonds put in with dirty fingers," have they not a spiritual outlook that speaks to you with a promise—a revelation of some vision or growth of some beauty beyond what meets your gaze? Yet, though it seems so clear in the retrospect, this prophetic side of her beauty, I own it, never struck me then.

I am going to tell her story simply, with strict accuracy as to the traits of her character—the facts of her life and her death. I shall tell the bad with the good, neither striving to varnish her faults nor to heighten, by any dramatic coloring, the beautiful reality of her virtues. The story is one calculated, it seems to me, to be a light and a lesson to many. The very faults and follies, the strange beginning, so unlike the end, all taken as parts of a whole in the true experience of a soul, contain a teaching whose sole eloquence must be its truth and its simplicity.

I said we were at school together, but, though in the same convent, we were not in the same class. Mary (this was her real Christian name) was a few years older than I. Her career at this time was one of the wildest that ever a school-girl lived through. High-spirited, reckless, setting all rules at defiance, she was the torment of her mistresses and the delight of her companions. With the latter, her good-nature and good temper carried her serenely above all the little malices and jealousies that display themselves in that miniature world, a school; and, at the same time, her spirit of independence, while it was constantly getting her into "scrapes," was so redeemed by genuine abhorrence of everything approaching to meanness or deceit that it did not prevent her being a universal favorite with the nuns. One in particular, who from her rigorous disciplinarianism was the terror of us all, was even less proof than the others against the indomitable sweet temper and lovableness of her rebellious pupil. They were in a state of permanent warfare, but occasionally, after a hot skirmish carried on before the public, viz., the second class, Mother Benedicta would take the rebel aside, and try privately to coax her into a semblance of apology, or mayhap a promise of amendment. Sometimes she succeeded, for the refractory young lady was always more amenable to caresses than to threats, and was, besides, notwithstanding the war footing on which they stood, very fondly attached to Mother Benedicta, but she never pledged herself unconditionally. This was a great grievance with the mistress. She used to argue, and threaten, and plead by the hour, in order to induce Mary to give her "word of honor," as the phrase was amongst us, that she would observe such and such a prohibition, or obey such and such a rule—silence was the chronic[208] casus belli—but all to no purpose.

"No, sister, I promise you to try; but I won't promise to do or not to do," she would answer, undefiantly, but quite resolutely.

It was a common thing for Mother Benedicta to say, after one of these conferences which ended, as usual, in the cautious, "I'll try, sister," that, if she could once get Mary to promise her outright to mend her ways, she would never take any more trouble about her. "If she pledged her word of honor to be a saint, I believe she would keep it," observed the nun, with a sigh.

I mention this little incident advisedly, for, though at the time we, in our wisdom, thought it must be pure perversity on the part of our mistress that made her so pursue Mary on the subject, considering that we were all in the habit of pledging our words of honor any given number of times a week with no particular result, I lived to see that in this individual instance she was guided by prophetic insight.

She never succeeded, however, in inducing Mary to commit herself during the four years that she was under her charge. It was war to the end; not to the bitter end, for the strife did not weaken, nay, it probably strengthened the enduring attachment that had sprung up between them. By way of sealing irrevocably and publicly this attachment on her side, Mary added the nun's name to her own, and even after she left school she continued to sign herself Mary Benedicta. When the time came round for frequenting the sacraments, it was the sure signal for a quarrel between the two belligerents. There was no plea or stratagem that Mary would not have recourse to in order to avoid going to confession. Yet withal she had a reputation in the school for piety—a queer, impulsive sort of piety peculiar to herself, that came by fits and starts. We had an unaccountable belief in the efficacy of her prayers, and in any difficulty she was one of those habitually appealed to to pray us out of it; not, indeed, that we were actuated by any precise view as to the spiritual quality of the prayers, only impressed vaguely by her general character, that whatever she did she put her heart in and did thoroughly. Mother Benedicta used to say that her devotion to the Blessed Sacrament would save her. But this devotion consisted, as far as we could see, in an enthusiastic love for Benediction; and as Mary was passionately fond of music, and confessed a weakness for effective ceremonial, Mother Benedicta herself occasionally had misgivings as to how much of the devotion went to the object of the ceremony and how much to its accessories, the lights, the music, and the incense. At any rate, once over, it exercised no apparent control over her life. The rules of the school she systematically ignored; the rule of silence she looked upon with special contempt as a bondage fit for fools, but unworthy of rational human beings. To the last day of her sojourn in the school, she practically illustrated the opinion that speech was of gold and silence of brass, and left it with the reputation of being the most indefatigable talker; the most unruly and untidy subject, but the sweetest nature that ever tried the patience and won the hearts of the community.

When she was about eighteen, her father sent her to the Sacré Cœur, in Paris, to complete her education, which, in spite of considerable expense on his part, and masters without end, was at this advanced period in a sadly retrograde state, the little she had learned at school in Ireland having been assiduously forgotten in[209] the course of a year's anarchical holiday, when reading of every sort and even her favorite music were set aside for the more congenial pastimes of dancing, and skating, and flying across country after the hounds.

I was then living in Paris, and Mary was placed under my mother's wing. We went to see her on the Jours de Parloir, and she came to us on the Jours de Sortie. But it did not last long. As might have been expected, the sudden change from a life of excitement and constant out-door exercise to one of seclusion and sedentary habits proved too trying to her health, and after a few months the medical man of the convent declared that he was not prepared to accept the responsibility of taking charge of her, and strongly advised that she should be sent home.

We communicated this intelligence to her father, begging at the same time that before he came to remove her she might be allowed to spend a month with us. The request was granted and Mary came to stay with us.

That we might lose as little as possible of each other's company while we were together, she shared my room. We spent the mornings at home; I studying or taking my lessons, she reading, or lolling about the room, watching the clock, and longing for the master to go and set me free, that we might go out.

My mother, who only in a lesser degree shared my affection for Mary, and was anxious to make her visit as pleasant as possible, took her about to all the places best worth seeing in the city—the picture-galleries, the palaces, the museums, and the churches. The latter, though many of them, even as works of art, were amongst the most interesting monuments for a stranger, Mary seemed thoroughly indifferent to. When we entered one, instead of kneeling a moment before the sanctuary, as any Catholic does from mere force of habit and impulse, she would just make the necessary genuflexion, and, without waiting for us, hurry on round the building, examine the pictures and the stained glass, and then go out with as little delay as might be. This did not strike my mother, who was apt to remain all the time at her prayers, while I walked about doing the honors of the church to Mary; but it struck me, and it pained and puzzled me.

She was too innately honest to attempt the shadow of prevarication or pose even in her attitude, and her haste in despatching the inspection of every church we entered was so undisguised that I saw she did not care whether I noticed it or not. Once, on coming out of the little church of St. Genevieve, one of the loveliest shrines ever raised to the worship of God by the genius of man, I said rather sharply to her, for she had beaten a more precipitate retreat than usual, and cut short my mother's devotions at the tomb of the saint:

"Mary," I said, "one really would think the devil was at your heels the moment you enter a church, you are in such a violent hurry to get out of it."

She laughed, not mockingly, with a sort of half-ashamed expression, and turning her pure, full eyes on me.

"I hate to stay anywhere under false appearances," she said, "and I always feel such a hypocrite kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament! I feel as if I would choke if I stay there over five minutes."

"Don't look at me as if I were possessed of the devil," she said, still[210] laughing, though there was a touch of sadness, it struck me, in her voice and face. "I mean to be converted by-and-by, and mend my ways; but meantime let me have my fun, and, above all, don't preach to me!"

"I suppose you think I'm gone beyond it. Well, you can pray for me. I'm not gone beyond the reach of that!"

This was the only serious conversation, if it deserves the name, that we had during the first week of her visit. She enjoyed herself thoroughly, throwing all the zest of her earnest nature into everything. The people and their odd French ways, the shops and their exquisite wares, the opera, the gay Bois with the brilliant throng of fashion that crowded round the lake every day at the hour of promenade—the novelty of the scene and the place altogether enchanted her, and there was something quite refreshing in the spirit of enjoyment she threw into it all.

One evening, after a long day of sight-seeing, we were invited by a friend of hers to dine at the table d'hôte of the Louvre. It was the grande nouveauté just then, and Mary was consequently wild to see it. We went, and during dinner the admiration excited by her beauty was so glaringly expressed by the persistent stare of every eye within range of her at the table that my mother was provoked at having brought her and exposed her to such an ordeal. But Mary herself was blissfully unconscious of the effect she was producing; indeed, it would hardly be an exaggeration to say she was unconscious of the cause. Certainly, no woman ever had less internal perception or outward complacency in her beauty than she had. This indifference amounted to a fault, for it pervaded her habits of dress, which were very untidy, and betokened a total disregard of personal appearance. The old fault that had been one of Mother Benedicta's standing grievances was as strong as ever, and it was all I could do to get her to put on her clothes straight, and to tie her bonnet under her chin instead of under her ear, when she came out with us.

But to return to the Louvre. It had been settled that after dinner we should walk across to the Palais Royal, and let Mary see the diamond shops illuminated, and all the other wonderful shops; but during dinner she overheard some one saying that the Emperor and Empress were to be at the Grand Opera that night. Her first impulse was to take a box and go there. But my mother objected that it was Saturday, the opera was never over before midnight, and consequently we could not be home and in bed before one o'clock on Sunday morning.

With evident disappointment, but, as usual, with the sweetest good temper, Mary gave way. Her friend then proposed that, before going to the Palais Royal, we should walk on to the Rue Lepelletier, and see the Emperor and Empress going in to the Opera. There was no difficulty in the way of this amendment, so it was adopted.

On coming out of the Louvre, however, we found, to our surprise and discomfiture, that the weather had been plotting against our little programme. The ground, which was frozen dry and hard when we drove down from the Champs Elysées less than two hours before, had become like polished glass under a heavy fall of sleet; the horses were already slipping about in a very uncomfortable way, and there was a decided disinclination[211] on the part of pedestrians to trust themselves to cabs. Fate had decreed that Mary was not to see the Emperor on any terms that night. It would have been absurdly imprudent to venture on the macadam of the boulevards, and increase the risk of driving at all by waiting till the streets were so slippery that no horse could keep his footing on them. There was nothing for it but to go straight home, which we did, the horse snailing at a foot-pace all the way.

It was a memorable night this one of which I am chronicling a trivial recollection—trivial in itself, but weighty in its consequences.

We went to bed, and slept, no doubt, soundly. None the less soundly for the thundering crash that, before we lay down, had shaken the Rue Lepelletier from end to end, making the houses rock to their foundations, shattering to pieces every window from garret to cellar, and reverberating along the boulevards like the roar of a hundred cannon. The noise shook half Paris awake for that long night. The people, first merely terrified, then lashed to a frenzy of horror and of enthusiasm, rushed from their houses, and thronged the boulevards and the streets in the vicinity of the Opera. In the pitch darkness that followed simultaneously with the bursting of Orsini's bombs, it was impossible to know how many were murdered or how many wounded. There had been a great crowd of curieux and strangers as usual waiting to see their majesties alight—the street was lined with them. Were they all murdered, blown to the four winds of heaven, in that explosion that was loud enough to have blown up half Paris? Of course, popular fear and fury exaggerated the number of the victims enormously, and the night resounded with the shrieks and lamentations of women, the plunging and moaning of horses, wounded or only frantic with terror, and the passionate cries of Vive l'Empereur! intermingled with curses on the fiends who, to secure the murder of one man, had sacrificed the lives of hundreds.

While this ghastly tumult was scaring sleep and silence from the city close to us, we slept on, all unconscious of the cup of trembling to which we had stretched out our hand, and which had been so mercifully snatched away from us.

It was only next morning, on going out to Mass, that the concierge stopped us to tell the news of the attempt on the Emperor's life.

And we had been vexed and felt aggrieved with the rain that drove us home, and prevented our going to stand amongst those curieux in the Rue Lepelletier!

Mary did not hear of it till we met at breakfast. I never shall forget the look of blank horror on her face as she listened to the account of what had happened on the very spot where we had been so bent on going.

Although this attack of Orsini's comes into my narrative simply as a datum, I cannot resist making a short digression toward it.

Most of my readers will remember the singular stoicism displayed by the Emperor at the moment of the explosion. One of the horses was killed under his carriage, which was violently shaken by the plunging of the terrified animals, and a splinter from one of the bombs, flashing through the window, grazed him on the temple. In the midst of the general panic and confusion of the scene, the equerry rushed forward,[212] and, taking the Emperor by the arm, cried hurriedly:

"Let down the steps," observed his master with unruffled sang froid, and quietly waited till it was done before he moved.

He entered the Opera amidst deafening cheers, and sat out the representation as coolly, and to all appearances with as much attention, as if nothing had occurred to disturb him, now and then quietly drawing his handkerchief across the splinter-mark on his forehead, from which the blood was oozing slightly.

Next day a solemn Te Deum was celebrated at the Tuileries. The Empress wished the little prince, then a baby in arms, to be present at the thanksgiving for her own and his father's miraculous preservation. The child was carried into the Salle des Maréchaux, where the court and the Corps Diplomatique were assembled, and immediately put out his hands, clamoring for his father to take him. The Emperor took him in his arms, and the child, looking up at his face, noticed the red mark on the temple.

The hard, sphynx-like face struggled for a moment; but the child's touch had melted the strong man. He clasped him to his heart, and literally shook with sobs.

These details, which were probably never written before, were told to me by one who was present at the attempt the previous night, and at the Te Deum Mass next day.

That night, when we were alone, Mary and I talked over the diabolical crime that had within four and twenty hours shaken the whole country like an earthquake, and over the merciful interposition that had arrested us on our way to what might have been for us, as it was for many, a certain and horrible death. Mary, though she said little on this latter point, was evidently very deeply impressed, and what she did say carried in it a depth of religious emotion that revealed her to me in quite a new light.

It was agreed that she would go to confession next day, and that we were to begin a novena together in thanksgiving for our preservation.

"Mary," I said impulsively, after we had been silent a little while, "why have you such a dislike to go to the sacraments? I can't understand how, believing in them at all, you can be satisfied to approach them so seldom."

"It isn't dislike; it is fear," she answered. "It's precisely because I realize so awfully the power and sanctity of the Blessed Sacrament that I keep away. I believe so intensely in it that, if I went often to holy communion, I should have to divorce from everything, to give up my whole life to preparation and thanksgiving. I know I should. And I don't want to do it. Not yet, at any rate," she added, half-unconsciously, as if speaking to herself.

I shall never forget the effect her words had on me, nor her face as she uttered them. The night was far spent. The emotions of the day, the long watch, and perhaps the flickering of our bedroom candle that was burning low, all conspired to give an unwonted pallor to her features that imbued them with an almost ethereal beauty. I always think of her now as she sat there, in her girlish white dressing-gown, her hands locked resting on her knees, her head thrown back, and her eyes looking up, so still, as if some far beyond were[213] breaking on her gaze and holding it transfixed.

Nothing broke on mine. In my dull blindness I did not see that I was assisting at the beginning of a great mystery, a spectacle on which the gaze of angels was riveted—the wrestling of a soul with God: the soul resisting; the Creator pleading and pursuing.

She left us at the end of January to return home. We parted with many tears, and a promise to correspond often and pray for each other daily.

For a time we did correspond very regularly—for nearly a year. During this period her life was an unpausing whirl of dissipation. Balls, visits, operas, and concerts during the season in town were succeeded in the country by more balls, and hunting, and skating, and the usual round of amusements that make up a gay country life. Mary was everywhere the beauty of the place, the admired of all admirers. Strange to say, in spite of her acknowledged supremacy, she made no enemies. Perhaps it would have been stranger still if she had. Her sweet, artless manner and perfect unconsciousness of self went for at least as much in the admiration she excited as her beauty. If she danced every dance at every ball, it was never once for the pleasure of saying she did it, of triumphing over other girls, but for the genuine pleasure of the dance itself.

Her success was so gratuitous, so little the result of coquetry on her side, that, however much it might be envied, it was impossible to resent it.

I am not trying to make out a case for Mary, or to excuse, still less justify, the levity of the life she was leading at this time. My only aim is to convey a true idea of the spirit in which she was leading it—mere exuberance of spirits, the zest of youth in the gay opportunities that were showered upon her path. She was revelling like a butterfly in flowers and sunshine. The spirit of worldliness in its true and worst sense did not possess her; did not even touch her. Its cankerous breath had not blown upon her soul and blighted it; the worm had not eaten into her heart and hardened it. Both were still sound—only drunk; intoxicated with the wine of life. She went waltzing through flames, like a moth round a candle; like a child letting off rockets, and clapping hands with delight at the pretty blue blaze, without fear or thought of danger. There was no such thing as premeditated infidelity in her mind. She was not playing a deliberate game with God; bidding him wait till she was ready, till she was tired of the world and the world of her. No, she was utterly incapable of such a base and guilty calculation. She had simply forgotten that she had a soul to save. The still, small voice that had spoken to her in earlier days, especially on that night of the 15th of January, stirring the sleeping depths, and calling out momentary yearnings toward the higher life, had altogether ceased its pleadings. How could that mysterious whisper make itself heard in such a din and clangor of unholy music? There was no silent spot in her soul where it could enter and find a listener. But Mary did not think about it. She was inebriated with youth and joy, and had flung herself into the vortex, and raced round with it till her head reeled. On the surface, all was ripple and foam, rings running round and round; but the depths below were sleeping. The one, the visible hold that she retained on God at this time was her love for his poor. Her heart was always tender to suffering in every form, but to the poor[214] especially. As an instance of this, I may mention her taking off her flannel petticoat, on a bitter winter's day, to give it to a poor creature whom she met shivering at the roadside, and then running nearly a mile home in the cold herself.

After about a year our correspondence slackened, and gradually broke down altogether. I heard from her once in six months, perhaps. The tone of her letters struck me as altered. I could not exactly say how, except that it had grown more serious. She said nothing of triumphs at archery meetings or of brushes carried off "at the death;" there seemed to be no such feats to chronicle. She talked of her family and of mine, very little of herself. Once only, in answer to a direct question as to what books she read, she told me that she was reading Father Faber, and that she read very little else. This was the only clue I gained to the nature of the change that had come over her.

At the expiration of about two years, a clergyman, who was an old friend of her family, and a frequent visitor at the house, came to Paris, and gave me a detailed account of the character and extent of the change.

The excitement into which she had launched on returning home, and which she had kept up with unflagging spirit, had, as might have been expected, told on her health, never very strong. A cough set in at the beginning of the winter which caused her family some alarm. She grew thin to emaciation, lost her appetite, and fell into a state of general ill-health. Change of air and complete rest were prescribed by the medical men. She was accordingly taken from one sea-side place to another, and condemned to a régime of dulness and quiet. In a few months the system told favorably, and she was sufficiently recovered to return home.

But the monotony of an inactive life which was still enforced, after the mad-cap career she had been used to, wearied her unspeakably. For want of something better to do, she took to reading. Novels, of course. Fortunately for her, ten years ago young ladies had not taken to writing novels that honest men blush to review, and that too many young ladies do not blush to read. Mary did no worse than waste her time without active detriment to her mind. She read the new novels of the day, and, if she was not much the better, she was probably none the worse for it. But one day—a date to be written in gold—a friend, the same who gave me these particulars, made her a present of Father Faber's All for Jesus. The title promised very little entertainment; reluctantly enough, Mary turned over the pages and began to read. How long she read, I cannot tell. It might be true to say that she never left off. Others followed, all from the same pen, through uninterrupted days, and weeks, and months. She told me afterward that the burning words of those books—the first especially, and The Creator and the Creature—pursued her even in her dreams. She seemed to hear a voice crying after her unceasingly: "Arise, and follow!"

Suddenly, but irrevocably, the whole aspect of life was changed to her. She began to look back upon the near past, and wonder whether it was she herself who had so enjoyed those balls and gaieties, or whether she had not been mad, and imagined it, and was only now in her right mind. The most insuperable disgust succeeded to her love of worldly amusement. She cared for nothing but prayer and meditation, and the[215] service of the poor and suffering. An ardent longing took possession of her to suffer for and with our Divine Master. Yielding to the impulse of her new-born fervor, she began to practise the most rigorous austerities, fasting much, sleeping little, and praying almost incessantly. This was done without the counsel or cognizance of any spiritual guide. She knew of no one to consult. Her life had been spiritually so neglected during the last two years that direction had had no part to play in it. There was nothing to direct. The current was setting in an opposite direction. The supernatural was out of sight.

Under cover of her health, which, though it was fairly recovered, still rendered quiet and great prudence desirable, Mary contrived to avoid all going out, and secretly laid down for herself a rule of life that she adhered to scrupulously.

But this could not go on long. As she grew in the ways of prayer, the spirit of God led her imperceptibly but inevitably into the sure and safe high-road of all pilgrims travelling toward the bourn of sanctity and aiming at a life of perfection.

The necessity of a spiritual director was gradually borne in upon her, as she said to me, while at the same time the difficulty of meeting with this treasure, whom St. Teresa bids us seek amongst ten thousand, grew more and more apparent and disheartening.

Her father, a man of the world and very little versed in the mysteries of the interior life, but a good practical Catholic nevertheless, saw the transformation that had taken place in his daughter, and knew not exactly whether to be glad or sorry. He acknowledged to her long after that the first recognition of it struck upon his heart like a death-knell. He felt it was the signal for a great sacrifice.

Mary opened her heart to him unreservedly, seeking more at his hands perhaps than any mere father in flesh and blood could give, asking him to point out to her the turning-point of the new road on which she had entered, and to help her to tread it. That it was to be a path of thorns in which she would need all the help that human love could gather to divine grace, she felt already convinced.

Her father, with the honesty of an upright heart, confessed himself inadequate to the solving of such a problem, and bravely proposed taking her to London to consult Father Faber.

Mary, in an ecstasy of gratitude, threw her arms round his neck, and declared it was what she had been longing for for months. Father Faber had been her guide so far; his written word had spoken to her like a voice from the holy mount, making all the dumb chords of her soul to vibrate. What would he not do for her if she could speak to him heart to heart, and hear the words of prayer-inspired wisdom from his own lips!

They set out in a few days for London; but they were not to get there. The promise that looked so near and so precious in its accomplishment was never to be fulfilled. They had no sooner reached Dublin than Mary fell ill. For some days she was in high fever; the medical men assured the panic-stricken father that there was no immediate cause for alarm; no remote cause even, as the case then stood; the patient was delicate, but her constitution was good, the nervous system sound, although shaken by the present attack, and apparently by previous mental anxiety. The attack itself[216] they attributed to a chill which had fallen on the chest.

The event justified the opinion of the physicians. Mary recovered speedily. It was not judged advisable, however, to let her proceed to London. She relinquished the plan herself with a facility that surprised her father. He knew how ardently she had longed to see the spiritual guide who had already done so much for her, and he could not forbear asking why she took the disappointment so coolly.

"It's not a disappointment, father. God never disappoints. I don't know why, only I feel as if the longing were already satisfied; as if I were not to go so far to find what I'm looking for," she answered; and quietly set about preparing to go back home.

But they were still on the road of Damascus. On the way home, they rested at the house of a friend near the Monastery of Mount Melleray. I cannot be quite sure whether the monks were giving a retreat for seculars in the monastery, or whether it was being preached in the neighboring town. As well as I remember, it was the latter. Indeed, I doubt whether women would be admitted to assist at a retreat within the monastery, and, if not, this would be conclusive. But of one thing I am sure, the preacher was Father Paul, the superior of La Trappe. I don't know whether his eloquence, judged by the standard of human rhetoric, was anything very remarkable, but many witnesses go to prove on exhaustive evidence that it was of that kind whose property it is to save souls.

To Mary it came like a summons straight from heaven. She felt an imperative desire to speak to him at once in the confessional.

"I can give you no idea of the exquisite sense of peace and security that came over me the moment I knelt down at his feet," she said, in relating to me this stage of her vocation. "I felt certain that I had found the man who was to be my Father Faber."

All that passes between a director and his spiritual child is of so solemn and sacred a nature that, although many things which Mary confided to me concerning her intercourse with the saintly abbot of La Trappe might prove instructive and would certainly prove edifying to many interior souls, I do not feel justified in repeating them. If I were even not held back by this fear of indiscretion, I should shrink from relating these confidences, lest I should mar the beauty or convey a false interpretation of their meaning. While she was speaking, I understood her perfectly. While listening to the wonderful experiences of divine grace with what she had been favored, and which she recounted to me with the confiding simplicity of a child, her words were as clear and reflected her thoughts as luminously as a lake reflects the stars looking down into its crystal depths, making the mirror below a faithful repetition of the sky above. But when I tried to write down what she had said while it was quite fresh upon my mind, the effort baffled me. There was so little to write, and that little was so delicate, so mysteriously intangible, I seemed never to find the right word that had come so naturally, so expressively, to her. When she spoke of prayer especially, there was an eloquence, rising almost to sublimity, in her language that altogether defied my coarse translation, and seemed to dissolve like a rainbow under the process of dissection. The most elevated subjects she was at home with as if they had been her natural theme, the highest spirituality[217] her natural element. The writings of St. Teresa and St. Bernard had grown familiar to her as her catechism, and she seemed to have caught the note of their inspired teaching with the mastery of sainthood. This was the more extraordinary to me that her intellect was by no means of a high order. Quite the contrary. Her taste, the whole bent of her nature, was the reverse of intellectual, and what intelligence she had was, as far as real culture went, almost unreclaimed. Her reading had been always of the most superficial, non-metaphysical kind; indeed, the aversion to what she called "hard reading" made her turn with perverse dislike from any book whose title threatened to be at all instructive. She had never taken a prize at school, partly because she was too lazy to try for it, but also because she had not brain enough to cope with the clever girls of her class. Mary was quite alive to her shortcomings in this line, indeed she exaggerated them, as she was prone to do most of her delinquencies, and always spoke of herself as "stupid." This she decidedly was not; but her intellectual powers were sufficiently below superiority to make her sudden awakening to the sublime language of mystical theology and her intuitive perception of its subtlest doctrines matter of great wonder to those who only measure man's progress in the science of the saints by the shallow gauge of human intellect.

"How do you contrive to understand those books, Mary?" I asked her once, after listening to her quoting St. Bernard à l'appui of some remarks on the Prayer of Union that carried me miles out of my depth.

"I don't know," she replied with her sweet simplicity, quite unconscious of revealing any secrets of infused science to my wondering ears. "I used not to understand them the least; but by degrees the meaning of the words began to dawn on me, and the more I read, the better I understood. When I come to anything very difficult, I stop, and pray, and meditate till the meaning comes to me. It is often a surprise to myself, considering how stupid I am in everything else," she continued, laughing, "that I should understand spiritual books even as well as I do."

Those who have studied the ways of God with his saints will not share her surprise. In our own day, the venerable Curé d'Ars is among the most marvellous proofs of the manner in which he pours out his wisdom on those who are accounted and who account themselves fools, not worthy to pass muster amongst men. But I am anticipating.

Her meeting with Father Paul was the first goal in her new career, and from the moment Mary had reached it she felt secure of being led safely to the end.

Those intervening stages were none the less agitated by many interior trials; doubts as to the sincerity of her vocation; heart-sinkings as to her courage in bearing on under the cross that she had taken up; misgivings, above all, as to the direction in which that cross lay. While her life-boat was getting ready, filling its sails, and making out of port for the shoreless sea of detachment and universal sacrifice, she sat shivering; her hand on the helm; the deep waters heaving beneath her; the wind blowing bleak and cold; the near waves dashing up their spray into her face, and the breakers further out roaring and howling like angry floods. There were rocks ahead, and all round under those foaming billows; sad havoc had they made of many a brave little boat that had put out to sea from[218] that same port where she was still tossing—home, with its sheltering love and care; piety enough to save any well-intentioned soul; good example to give and to take; good works to do in plenty, and the body not overridden by austerities against nature; not starved to despondency; not exasperated by hunger, and cold, and endless vigils, and prayer as endless. It was a goodly port and safe, this home of hers. See how the deep throws up its prey on every side! Wrecks and spars, the shattered remnants of bold vessels, and the lifeless bodies of the rash crew are everywhere strewn over the waters. "Take heed!" they cry to her as she counts the records one by one. "This is an awful sea, and bold must be the heart, and stout and iron-clad the boat that tempts the stormy bosom. We came, and perished. Would that we had never left the port!"

Mary never argued with the storm. She would fall at the feet of Him who was "sleeping below," and wake him with the loud cry of trembling faith, "Help me, Master, or I perish!" and the storm subsided.

But when the wind and the waves were hushed, there rose up in the calm a voice sweet and low, but more ruthlessly terrible to her courage than the threatening fury of ten thousand storms. She was her father's oldest and darling child; she had a brother, too, and sisters, all tenderly loved, and cousins and friends only less dear; she was a joy and a comfort to many. Must she go from them? Must she leave all this love and all the loveliness of life for ever?

Mary's vocation, notwithstanding its strongly marked supernatural character, was not proof against these cruel alternations of enthusiastic courage, and desolate heart-sinkings, and bewildering doubts. Nay, they were no doubt a necessary part of its perfection. It was needful that she should pass through the dark watch of Gethsemani before setting out to climb the rugged hill of Calvary.

All this history of her interior life she told me viva voce when we met. In her letters, which were at this period very rare and always very uncommunicative, she said nothing whatever of these strifes and victories.

But her adversaries were not all within. A hard battle remained to be fought with her father. His opposition was active and relentless. He had at first tacitly acquiesced in her consecration to God in a religious life of some sort; but he believed, as every one else did, that to let her enter La Trappe would be to consign her to speedy and certain death; and when she announced to him that this was the order she had selected, and the one which drew her with the power of attraction, that she had struggled in vain to resist, he declared that nothing short of a written mandate from God would induce him to consent to such an act of suicide. In vain Mary pleaded that when God called a soul he provided all that was necessary to enable her to answer the call; that her health, formerly so delicate when she was leading a life of self-indulgence, was now completely restored; that she had never been so strong as since she had lived in almost continual abstinence (she did not eat meat on Wednesday, Friday, or Saturday); that the weakness of nature was no obstacle to the power of grace, and there are graces in the conventual life that seculars did not dream of, nor receive because they did not need them.

In answer to these plausible arguments, the incredulous father brought[219] out the laws of nature, and reason and common sense, and the opinion of the medical men who had attended her in Dublin, and under whose care she had been more or less ever since. These men of natural science and human sympathies declared positively that it was neither more nor less than suicide to condemn herself to the rule of St. Bernard in the cloister, where want of animal food and warmth would infallibly kill her before the novitiate was out. They were prepared to risk their reputation on the issue of this certificate.

Mary's exhaustive answer to all this was that grace was always stronger than nature; that the supernatural element would overrule and sustain the human one. But she pleaded in vain. Her father was resolute. He even went so far as to insist on her returning to society and seeing more of the world before she was divorced from it irrevocably. This check was as severe as it was unexpected. Though her disgust to the vanities of her former life continued as strong as ever, while her longing for the perfect life grew every day more intense and more energizing, her humility made her tremble for her own weakness. Might not the strength that had borne her bravely so far break down under the attack of all her old tempters let loose on her at once? Her love of pleasure, that fatal enemy that now seemed dead, might it not rise up again with overmastering power, and, aided by the reaction prepared by her new life, seize her and hold her more successfully than ever? Yes, all this was only too possible. There was nothing for it but to brave her father, to defy his authority, and to save her soul in spite of him. She must run away from home.

Before, however, putting this wise determination into practice, it was necessary to consult Father Paul. His answer was what most of our readers will suspect:

"Obedience is your first duty. No blessing could come from such a violation of filial piety. Your father is a Christian. Do as he bids you; appeal to his love for your soul not to tax its strength unwisely; then trust your soul to God as a little child trusts to its mother. He sought you, and pursued you, and brought you home when you were flying from him. Is it likely he will forsake you now, when you are seeking after him with all your heart and making his will the one object of your life? Mistrust yourself, my child. Never mistrust God." Mary felt the wisdom of the advice, and submitted to it in a spirit of docility, of humble mistrust and brave trust, and made up her mind to go through the trial as an earnest of the sincerity of her desire to seek God's will, and accomplish it in whatever way he appointed.

She had so completely taken leave of the gay world for more than a year that her reappearance at a county ball caused quite a sensation.

Rumor and romance had put their heads together, and explained after their own fashion the motive of the change in her life and her total seclusion from society. Of course, it could only be some sentimental reason, disappointed affection, perhaps inadequate fortune or position on one side, and a hard-hearted father on the other, etc. Whispers of this idle gossip came to Mary's ears and amused her exceedingly. She could afford to laugh at it as there was not the smallest shadow of reality under the fiction.

Her father, whose parental weakness sheltered itself behind the doctors and common sense, did not exact undue sacrifices from her. He allowed her to continue her ascetic[220] rule of life unmolested, to abstain from meat as usual, to go assiduously amongst the poor, and to devote as much time as she liked to prayer. There were two Masses daily in the village church, one at half-past six, another at half-past seven. He made a difficulty at first about her assisting at them. The church was nearly half an hour's walk from the house, and the cold morning or night air, as it really was, was likely to try her severely. But after a certain amount of arguing and coaxing Mary carried her point, and every morning long before daybreak sallied forth to the village. Her nurse, who was very pious and passionately attached to her, went with her. Not without hesitating, though. Every day as regularly as they set out Malone entered a protest.

"It's not natural, Miss Mary, to be gadding out by candle-light in this fashion, walking about the fields like a pair of ghosts. Indeed, darlin', it isn't."

The nurse was right. It certainly was not natural, and, if Mary had been so minded, she might have replied that it was not meant to be; it was supernatural. She contented herself, however, by deprecating the good soul's reproof and proposing to say the rosary, a proposal to which Malone invariably assented. So, waking up the larks with their matin prayer, the two would walk on briskly to church.

Once set an Irish nurse to pray, and she'll keep pace with any saint in the calendar. Malone was not behind with the best. The devout old soul, never loath to begin, when once on her knees and fairly wound up in devotion, would go on for ever, and, when the two Masses were over and it was time to go, Mary had generally to break her off in the full tide of a litany that Malone went on muttering all the way out of church and sometimes finished on the road home.

But if she was ready to help Mary in her praying feats, she highly disapproved of the fasting ones, as well as of the short rest that her young mistress imposed on herself. Mary confessed to me that sleep was at this period her greatest difficulty. She was by nature a great sleeper, and there was a time when early rising, even comparatively early, seemed to her the very climax of heroic mortification. By degrees she brought herself to rise at a given hour, which gradually, with the help of her angel guardian and a strong resolve, she advanced to five o'clock.

During this time of probation, her father took her constantly into society, to archery meetings, and regattas, and concerts, and balls, as the season went on. Mary did her part bravely and cheerfully. Sometimes a panic seized her that her old spirit of worldliness was coming back—coming back with seven devils to take his citadel by storm and hold it more firmly than ever. But she had only to fix her eyes steadily on the faithful beacon of the Light-house out at sea, and bend her ear to the Life-bell chiming its Sursum Corda far above the moaning of the waves and winds, and her foolish fears gave way.

No one who saw her so bright and gracious, so gracefully pleased with everything and everybody, suspected the war that was agitating her spirit within. Her father wished her to take part in the dancing, otherwise he said her presence in the midst of it would be considered compulsory and her abstention be construed into censure or gloom. Mary acquiesced with regard to the square dances, but resolutely declined to waltz. Her father, satisfied with the concession, did not coerce her further.

So things went on for about a year. Father Paul meantime had had his share in the probationary action. He knew that his patient's health was not strong, and taking into due account her father's vehement and up to a certain point just representations on the physical impossibility of her bearing the rule of St. Bernard, he endeavored to attract her toward an active order, and used all his influence to induce her to try at any rate a less austere one before entering La Trappe. Animated by the purest and most ardent love for the soul whose precious destinies were placed under his guidance, he left nothing undone to prevent the possibility of mistake or ultimate regret in her choice. He urged her to go and see various other convents and make acquaintance with their mode of life. Seeing her great reluctance to do this, he had recourse to stratagem in order to compel her unconsciously to examine into the spirit and rule of several monastic houses that he held in high esteem. One in particular, a community of Benedictines, I think it was, he thought likely to prove attractive to her as uniting a great deal of prayer with active duties toward the poor, teaching, etc., and at the same time of less crucifying discipline than that of Citeaux. He gave her a commission for the superioress, with many excuses for troubling her, and begging that she would not undertake it if it interfered with any arrangement of her own or her father's just then.

Mary, never suspecting the trap that was laid for her, made a point of setting out to the convent at once. The superioress, previously enlightened by Father Paul, received her with more than kindness, and, after discussing the imaginary subject of the visit, invited her to visit the chapel, then the house, and finally, drawing her into confidential discourse, explained all about its spirit and manner of life.

Mary, in relating this circumstance to me, said that, though the superioress was one of the most attractive persons she ever met, and the convent beautiful in its appointments, rather than enter it she would have preferred spending the rest of her days in the dangers of the most worldly life. Everything but La Trappe was unutterably antagonistic to her. Yet, with the exception of Mount Melleray she had never seen even the outside walls of a Cistercian convent, and the fact of there not being one for women in Ireland added one obstacle more in the way of her entering La Trappe.

When Father Paul heard the result of this last ruse, he confessed the truth to her. Noways discouraged, nevertheless he persisted in saying that she was much better fitted for a life of mixed activity and contemplation than for a purely contemplative one, and he forbade her for a time to let her mind dwell on the latter as her ultimate vocation, to read any books that treated of it, even to pray specially that she might be led to it. To all these despotic commands Mary yielded a prompt, unquestioning obedience. She was with God like a child with a schoolmaster. Whatever lesson he set her, she set about learning it. Easy or difficult, pleasant or unpleasant, it was all one to her cheerful good-will. Why do we not all do like her? We are all children at school, but, instead of putting our minds to getting our lesson by heart, we spend the study-hour chafing at the hard words, dog-earing our book, and irreverently grumbling at the master who has set us the task. Sometimes we think in our conceit that it is too easy, that we should do better something difficult.[222] When the bell rings, we go up without knowing a word of it, and stand sulky and disrespectful before the desk. We are chided, and turn back, and warned to do better to-morrow. And so we go on from year to year, from childhood to youth, from youth to age, never learning our lesson properly, but dodging, and missing, and beginning over and over again at the same point. Some of us go on being dunces to the end of our lives, when school breaks up, and we are called for and taken home—to the home where there are many mansions, but none assuredly for the drones who have spent their school-days in idleness and mutiny.

To Father Paul, the childlike submission and humility with which Mary met every effort to thwart her vocation were no doubt more conclusive proof of its solidity than the most marked supernatural favors would have been.

At last her gentle perseverance was rewarded, grace triumphed over her father's heart, and he expressed his willingness to give her up to God.

In the summer of 1861, we went to stay at Versailles, and it was there that I received from Mary the first definite announcement of her vocation. She wrote to me saying that, after long deliberation and much prayer and wise direction, she had decided on entering a convent of the Cistercian order. As there was no branch of it in Ireland, she was to come to France, and she begged me to make inquiries as to where the novitiate was, and to let her know with as little delay as possible. I will not dwell upon my own feelings on reading this letter. I had expected some such result, though, knowing the state of her health, it had not occurred to me she could have joined, however she might have wished it, so severe an order as that of the founder of Citeaux.

I had not the least idea where the novitiate in France was; and, as the few persons whom I was able to question at once on the subject seemed to know no more about it than I did myself, the hope flashed across my mind that there might not be a convent of Trappistines at all in France. But this was not of long duration.

We had on our arrival at Versailles made the acquaintance of a young girl whom I shall call Agnes. My mother was already acquainted with her parents and other members of the family; but Agnes had either been at school or absent visiting relations, so from one cause or another we had never met till now. She was seventeen years of age, a fair, fragile-looking girl, who reminded most people of Schaeffer's Marguerite.

Agnes had a younger sister at the Convent of La Sainte Enfance, not far from her father's residence, and she asked me one day to come and see this sister and a nun that she was very fond of. I went, and, being full of the thought of my sweet friend in Ireland, I immediately opened the subject of Citeaux with the pretty talkative little nun who came to the parlor with Agnes's sister.

"What a singular chance!" she exclaimed, when I had told as much of my story as was necessary. "Why, we have at this moment a community of Cistercian nuns in the house here! Their monastery is being repaired, and in the meantime we have permission from the bishop to harbor them. See," she went on, pointing to a row of windows whose closed Persiennes were visible at an angle from where we sat, "that is where our mother has lodged them. You can speak to the prioress, if you like, but of course you cannot see her."

I was more struck by the strange coincidence than overjoyed at being so near the solution of my difficulty. I could not, however, but take advantage of the opportunity. Sister Madeleine, which was the little nun's name, ran off to ask "our mother's" permission for me to speak with their Cistercian sister, and in a few minutes returned with an affirmative.

I was led to the door of the community-room, and, through a little extempore grating cut through the panel and veiled on the inside, I held converse with the mother abbess.

A few words assured me that Sister Madeleine had been mistaken in supposing her guests to be the daughters of St. Bernard. They were Poor Clares—an order more rigorous, even, than the Trappistines; bare feet, except when standing on a stone pavement or in the open air, when the rule is to slip the feet into wooden sandals, are added to the fasting and perpetual silence of Citeaux. Of this latter the abbess could tell me nothing—nothing, at least, of its actual existence and branches in France, though she broke out into impulsive and loving praise of its spirit and its saintly founder, and the rich harvest of souls he and his children had reaped for our Lord.

Here, then, was another respite. It really seemed probable that, if, in a quarter so likely to be well informed on the point, there was no account to be had of a Trappistine convent, there could not be one in existence, and Mary, from sheer inability to enter La Trappe, might be driven to choose some less terrible rule.

Mary meantime had set other inquirers on the track of St. Bernard, and soon learned that the novitiate was at Lyons. The name of the monastery is Notre Dame de toute Consolation.

After some preliminary correspondence with the abbess, the day was fixed for her to leave Ireland and set out to her land of promise.

She came, of course, through Paris. It was three years since we had met. I found her greatly altered; her beauty not gone, but changed. She looked, however, in much better health than I had ever seen her. Her spirits were gone, but there had come in their place a serenity that radiated from her like sunshine. We went out together to do some commissions of hers and the better to escape interruption, for this was in all human probability to be our last meeting on earth, and we had much to say to each other.

We drove first to Notre Dame des Victoires, where, at her constantly recurring desire, I had been in the habit of putting her name down for the prayers of the confraternity, and we knelt once again side by side before the altar of our Blessed Lady.

From this we went to the Sacré Cœur, where Mary was anxious to see some of her old mistresses and ask their prayers. Perseverance in her vocation, and the accomplishment of God's will in her and by her, were the graces she was never weary asking for herself, and imploring others to ask for her. Her greediness for prayers was only equalled by her intense faith in their efficacy. She could not resist catering for them, and used to laugh herself at her own importunity on this point.

The sister who tended the gate gave us a cordial greeting; but, when she heard that Mary was on her way to La Trappe, her surprise was almost ludicrous. If her former pupil had said she was going to be a Mohammedan, it could not have called up more blank amazement than was depicted in the good sister's face on hearing her say that she was going to be a Trappistine.

The mistress of schools and another nun, who had been very kind to her during her short stay at the Sacred Heart, came to the parlor. I was not present at the interview, but Mary told me they were quite as much amazed as the sœur portière.

"It only shows what a character I left behind me," she said, laughing heartily as we walked arm in arm. "My turning out good for anything but mischief is a fact so miraculous that my best friends can hardly believe in it!"

It was during this long afternoon that she told me all the details of her vocation which I have already narrated. She seemed transcendently happy, and so lifted by grace above all the falterings of nature as to be quite unconscious that she was about to make any sacrifice. She was tenderly attached to her family, but the pangs of separation from them were momentarily suspended. Her soul had grown strong in detachment. It had grown to the hunger of divine love. Like the Israelites, she had gone out into the desert where the manna fell, and she had fed upon it till all other bread was tasteless to her.

When I expressed surprise at seeing her so completely lifted above human affections, and observed that it would save her so much anguish, she answered quickly, with a sudden look of pain:

"Oh! no it will save me none of the suffering. That will all come later, when the sacrifice is made. But I always seem to have supernatural strength given me as long as it remains to be done. I took leave of Father Paul and my dear old nurse, and all the friends that flocked to say good-by, almost without a tear. I felt it so little that I was disgusted with myself for being so heartless while they were all so tender and distressed; but when it was all over, and the carriage had driven out on the road, I thought my heart would burst. I didn't dare look back at the house, lest I should cry out to them to take me home. And I know this is how it will be to-morrow."

"And have you thought of the possibility of having to come home after all?" I asked.

"Yes, I have a great deal of it. It is possible my health may fail, or that I may have mistaken the will of God altogether in entering La Trappe," she answered, with a coolness that astonished me.

"What a trial that would be!" I exclaimed. "What a humiliation to come out, after making such a stand about entering!"

"Humiliation! And what if it were! I don't care a straw if I go into ten convents, and come out of them one after another, so long as I find out the right one in the end. What does anything signify but finding out God's will!"

There was no mistaking the perfect sincerity of her words. It was as clear as sunlight—the one thing necessary, the one thing she cared one straw about, was finding out the will of God. Human respect or any petty human motive had simply gone beyond the range of her apprehension.

"And the silence, Mary?" I said, smiling, as the memory of her old school-day troubles came back on me. "How will you ever keep it? To me it would be the most appalling part of the discipline of La Trappe."

"Well, is it not odd?" she replied. "It is so little appalling to me that I quite long for it. Sometimes I keep repeating the words, 'Perpetual silence!' over and over to myself, as if they were a melody. It was it, I[225] think, that decided me for La Trappe instead of Carmel, where the rule allows them to speak during recreation. It seems to me the hush of tongues must be such a help to union with God. Our tongues are so apt to scare away his presence from our souls."

We came home to dinner. While we were alone in the drawing-room, she asked me to play something to her. She had been passionately fond of the harp, and stood by me listening with evident pleasure, and when I was done began to draw out the chords with her finger.

"Does it not cost you the least little pang to give it up for ever—never to hear a note of music for the rest of your life, Mary?" I said.

"No, not now. I felt it in the beginning; but the only music that has a charm for me now is silence."

On her arrival at Lyons, the fatigue and emotions of the journey told on her. An agonizing pain in the spine to which she was subject after any undue exertion obliged her to remain at the hotel, lying down on the sofa nearly all day.

The following morning, her father took her to the monastery. Like Abraham, he conducted his child to the mount of sacrifice, and with his own hand laid the victim on the altar; but no angel came to snatch away the sacrificial knife and substitute a meaner offering for the holocaust. He left her at the inner gate of La Trappe.

"I was less brave at parting with my beloved ones than I ought to have been," she said; "but, on account of the pain that kept me lying down in the midst of them nearly all the previous day, I had not been able to pray as much as usual, and so I had not got up strength enough for the trial-time. I seemed to have let go my hold on our Lord a little and to be leaning on them for courage; but, when I had been a few hours before the Blessed Sacrament, the pain calmed down, and I began to realize how happy I was. I am in great hopes that I have found the will of God."

One trifling incident which gave innocent delight to Mary I must not omit to mention.

She was asked on entering what name she wished to bear in religion, and on her replying that she had not thought of one and would rather the prioress chose for her, "Then we shall call you Mary Benedicta," said the mother. "The saint has no name-sake amongst us at present."

The only thing that disappointed her in the new life was the mildness of the rule and the short time it allotted for prayer!

It may interest my readers and help them to estimate the spirit of the novice to hear some details of the rule that struck her as too mild.

The Trappistines rise at 2 A.M. winter and summer, and proceed to choir, chanting the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin. Mass, meditation, the recital of the divine office, and household work, distributed to each according to her strength and aptitude and to the wants of the community, fill up the time till breakfast, which is at 8. The rule relents in favor of those who are unable to bear the long early fast, and they are allowed a small portion of dry bread some hours sooner. I think the novices as a rule are included in this dispensation. The second meal is at 2. The food is frugal but wholesome, good bread, vegetables, fish occasionally, and good, pure wine. Fire is an unknown luxury, except in the kitchen.[226] The silence is perpetual, but the novices are allowed perfect freedom of converse with their mistress, and the professed nuns with the abbess. They converse occasionally during the day amongst each other by signs. They take open-air exercise, and perform manual labor out-of-doors, digging, etc. In-doors, they are constantly employed in embroidering and mounting vestments. Some of the most elaborately wrought benediction-veils, copes, chasubles, etc., used in the large churches throughout France, are worked by the Trappistines of Lyons.

Mary described the material life of La Trappe as in every sense delightful; the digging, pealing potatoes, and so forth, as most recreative and not at all fatiguing. After her first Lent, she wrote me that it had passed so quickly, she "hardly knew it had begun when Easter came."

Her only complaint was that it had been too easy, that the austerities, "which were at all times very mild," had not been more increased during the penitential season.

"I wish you could see me in it," she said. "I felt rather odd at first, but I soon grew accustomed to it, and now it is so light and pleasant. I am so happy in my vocation I cannot help being almost sure that I have found the will of God."

This was the burden of her song for evermore: to find the will of God! And so in prayer and expectation she kept her watch upon the tower, her hands uplifted, her ears and her eyes straining night and day for every sign and symbol of that blessed manifestation. She kept her watch, faithful, ardent, never weary of watching, rising higher and higher in love, sinking lower and lower in humility. She had set her soul like a ladder against the sky, and the angels were for ever passing up and down the rungs, carrying up the incense of the prayer, which, as soon as it reached the throne of the Lamb, dissolved in graces, and sent the angels flying down earthward again.

The world went on; the wheel went round; pleasure and folly and sin kept up their whirl with unabating force. All things were the same as when Mary Benedicta, hearkening to the bell from the sanctuary, turned her back upon the vain delusion, and gave up the gauds of time for the imperishable treasures of eternity. Nothing was changed. Was it so indeed? To our eyes it was. We could not see what changes were to come of it. We could not see the work her sacrifice was doing, nor measure the magnitude of the glory it was bringing to God. Poor fools! it is always so with us. We see with the blind eyes of our body the things that are of the body. What do we see of the travail of humanity in God's creation? The darkness and the pain. Little else. We see a wicked man or a miserable man, and we are filled with horror or with pity. We think the world irretrievably darkened and saddened by the sin and the misery that we see, forgetting the counterpart that we do not see—the sanctity and the beauty born of repentance and compassion. We see the bad publican flaunting his evil ways in the face of heaven, brawling in the streets and the market-place; we do not see the good publican who goes up to the temple striking his breast, and standing afar off, and sobbing out the prayer that justifies. We forget that fifty such climbing up to heaven make less noise than one sinner tearing down to hell. So with[227] pain. When sorrow crushes a man, turning his heart bitter and his wine sour, we find it hard to believe that so much gall can yield any honey, so much dark let in any light. We cannot see—oh! how it would startle us if we did—how many acts of kindness, how many thoughts and deeds of love, are evoked by the sight of his distress. They may not be addressed to him, and he may never know of them, though he has called them into life; they may all be spent upon other men, strangers perhaps, to whom he has brought comfort because of the kindliness his sorrow had stirred in many hearts. Some miser has been touched in hearing the tale of his distress, and straightway opened his purse to help the Lazarus at his own door. A selfish woman of the world has foregone some bauble of vanity and given the price to a charity to silence the twinge that pursued her after witnessing his patient courage in adversity. There is no end to the small change that one golden coin of love, one act of heroic faith, one chastened attitude of Christian sorrow, will send current through the world. It would be easier to number the stars than to count it all up. But the bright little silver pieces pass through our fingers unnoticed. We do not watch for them, neither do we hear them chime and ring as they drop all round us. We do not listen for them. We listen rather to the wailing and the hissing, hearkening not at all to the rustle of angels' wings floating above the din, nor to the sound of their crystal tears falling through the brine of human woe and lamentation.

One more virgin heart is given up to the Crucified—one more victory won over nature and the kingdom of this world. One more life is being lived away to God in the silence of the sanctuary. Who heeds it? Who sees the great things that are coming of it?—the graces obtained, the blessings granted, the temptations conquered, the miracle of compassion won for some life-long sinner, at whose death-bed, cut off from priest or sacrament, the midnight watcher before the tabernacle has been wrestling in spirit, miles away, with mountains and seas between them. Only when the seven seals are broken of the Book in which the secrets of many hearts are written shall these things be made manifest, and the wonders of sacrifice revealed.

Mary Benedicta was drawing to the close of her novitiate. So far her health had stood the test bravely. She had passed the winters without a cough, a thing that had not happened to her for years. The pain in her spine that had constantly annoyed her at home had entirely disappeared.

Every day convinced her more thoroughly that she had found her true vocation, and that she was "doing the will of God." Her profession was fixed for the month of December. She wrote to me a few lines, telling me of her approaching happiness, and begging me to get all the prayers I could for her. Her joy seemed too great for words. It was, indeed, the joy that passes human understanding. I did not hear from her again, nor of her, till one evening I received a letter from Ireland announcing to me her death.

Till within a few days of the date fixed for her vows, she had been to all appearance in perfect health. She followed the rule in its unmitigated rigor, never asking nor seemingly needing any dispensation. She attended choir during the seven hours' prayer, mental and vocal, every day. There were no premonitory symptoms of any kind to herald in the messenger that was at hand. Quite[228] suddenly, one morning, at the first matins, she fainted away at her place in the choir. They carried her to the infirmary, and laid her on a bed. She recovered consciousness after a short time, but on attempting to rise fell back exhausted. The infirmarian, in great alarm, asked if she was suffering much. Mary smiled and shook her head. Presently she whispered a few words to the abbess, who had accompanied her from the choir, and never left her side for a moment. It was to ask that she might be allowed to pronounce her vows at once.

Was this, then, the summons? Yes. She was called for to go home. The joy-bells of heaven rang out a merry peal. The golden gates turned slowly on their hinges. The Bridegroom stood knocking at the door.

A messenger was dispatched in haste to the archbishop for permission to solemnize her profession at once. Monseigneur Bonald granted it, and sent at the same time a special apostolic benediction to the dying child of St. Bernard.

That afternoon Mary pronounced her vows in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, and surrounded by the sisterhood, weeping and rejoicing.

An hour later, summoning her remaining strength for a last act of filial tenderness, she dictated a few lines of loving farewell to her father. Then she was silent, calm, and rapt in prayer. Her eyes never left the crucifix. The day past and the night. She was still waiting. At daybreak the Bridegroom entered, and she went home with him.

THE LORD CHANCELLORS OF IRELAND [30]

The most indefatigable student of the history of Ireland is, at some time or another, sure to become wearied of, if not positively disgusted at, the interminable series of foreign and domestic wars, base treachery, and wholesale massacre which unfortunately stain the annals of that unhappy country for nearly one thousand years; and were it not that the study of profane history is a duty imposed upon us not only as an essential part of our education, but as a source rich in the philosophy of human nature, there are few, we believe, even among the most enthusiastic lovers of their race or the most industrious of book-worms, who would patiently peruse the long and dreary record of persistent oppression and unfaltering but unavailing resistance.

The few centuries of pagan greatness preceding the arrival of St. Patrick, seen through the dim mist of antiquity, appear to have been periods of comparative national prosperity; and the earlier ages of Christianity in the island were not only in themselves resplendent with the effulgence of piety and learning which [229]enshrouded the land and illumined far and near the then eclipsed nations of Europe, but were doubly brilliant by contrast with the darkness that subsequently followed the repeated incursions of the merciless northern Vikings, to whom war was a trade, and murder and rapine the highest of human pursuits.

The ultimate defeat of those barbarians in the early part of the eleventh century brought little or no cessation of misery to the afflicted people; for, with the death of the Conqueror, the illustrious King Brian, in the moment of victory, no man of sufficient statesmanship or military ability appeared who was capable of uniting the disorganized people under a general system of government, or of compelling the obedience of the disaffected and semi-independent chiefs. The evils of the preceding wars were numerous and grievous. The husbandman was impoverished, commerce had fled the sea-ports before the dreaded standard of the carrion Raven, learning had forsaken her wonted abodes for other climes and more peaceful scenes, and even the religious establishments which had escaped the destroyer no longer harbored those throngs of holy men and women formerly the glory and benefactors of the island. It was in this disintegrated and demoralized condition that the enterprising Anglo-Normans of the following century found the once warlike and learned Celtic people; and as the new-comers were hungry for land and not overscrupulous as to how it was to be obtained, the possession of the soil on one side, and its desperate but unorganized defence on the other, gave rise to those desultory conflicts, cruel reprisals, and horrible butcheries which only ended, after nearly five hundred years of strife, in the almost utter extirpation of the original owners.

Had the Norman invasion ended with Strongbow and Henry II., or had it been more general and successful, as in England, the evil would have been limited; but as every decade poured into Ireland its hordes of ambitious, subtle, and landless adventurers, who looked upon Ireland as the most fitting place to carve their way to fame and fortune, new wars of extermination were fomented, and the wounds that afflicted the country were kept constantly open. To facilitate the designs of the new-comers, the mass of the people were outlawed, and the punishment for killing a native, when inflicted, which was seldom, was a small pecuniary fine. The efforts of the "Reformers" to convert by force or fraud the ancient race and the bulk of the descendants of the original Anglo-Normans, who vied with each other in their attachment to the church, perpetuated even in a worse form the civil strife which had so long existed between the races, and terminated, at the surrender of Limerick, in the complete prostration of the nation. But it was only for a while. The extraordinary revival of the faith in Ireland, and its substantial triumphs in recent years, almost make us forget and forgive the persecutions of "the penal days," and not the least of these auspicious results is the appearance of the noble book before us, written by a distinguished gentleman of the legal profession of the ancient race and religion.

In his voluminous work, Mr. O'Flanagan, avoiding all matter foreign to his subject, and touching as lightly on wars and confiscations as possible, while relating succinctly and carefully the lives of the numerous lord chancellors of Ireland, necessarily gives us a history of English[230] policy and legislation in that country in an entirely new form, and fills up in its historical and legal records a hiatus long recognized on both sides of the Atlantic. In ordinary histories, we see broadly depicted the effects of foreign invasion and domestic broils: in the Lives, we are permitted to have a view of the most secret workings of the viceregal government and of the managers of the so-called Irish Parliament; of the causes which governed British statesmen in their treatment of the sister kingdom, and the motive of every step taken by the dominant faction of the Pale, supported by the wealth and power of a great nation, to subdue a weak neighboring people, who, though few in numbers, isolated and disorganized, possessed a high degree of civilization and a vitality that rose superior to all defeat. The book has also this advantage, that, while it supplies the links that bind causes with effects and develops in a critical spirit the true philosophy of history, it neither shocks our sensibilities uselessly with the perpetual narration of mental and physical suffering, nor tires us with vain speculations on what might have been had circumstances been different. The author is content to accept the inevitable, and deals exclusively with the subject in hand.

The partial success of Strongbow in conjunction with the Leinster troops induced Henry II. to project a visit to Ireland, partly from a fear that his ambitious subject might be induced by the allurements of his newly acquired greatness to forget his pledge of fealty and allegiance, and partly in the hope that his presence with an armed retinue would so overawe the native princes that their entire submission would follow as a matter of course. He therefore landed at Waterford, in 1172, and after visiting Lismore, where a provincial synod was being held, entered Dublin on the 11th of November of that year. But though he remained in that city during the greater part of the winter, surrounded by all the pomp of mediæval royalty, his blandishments were only partly successful in winning any of the prominent chieftains to acknowledge his assumed title of Lord of Ireland. He rested long enough, however, to establish a form of provincial government for the guidance and protection of the Anglo-Normans, and such of the Irish of Dublin, Kildare, Meath, Wexford, and of the surrounding counties as acknowledged his jurisdiction, and these became what was long afterwards known as the English Pale. The head of this system was the personal representative of the monarch, appointed and removed at his pleasure, and called at various times lord deputy, viceroy, chief governor, and lord-lieutenant, and in case of his absence or death a temporary successor was to be chosen by the principal nobles of the Pale, until his return or the appointment of his successor by the king. In the year 1219, during the reign of Henry III., the laws of England were extended to the Anglo-Norman colony, and a chancellor in the person of John de Worchely was appointed to assist the viceroy in the administration of the laws and public affairs.

The office of chancellor, or, as he was afterwards styled, lord high chancellor, was known to the Romans, and many of its peculiar duties and powers are directly derived from the civil law. In England, its establishment may be considered as contemporary with the Norman conquest, and from the first it assumed the highest importance in the state. "The office of chancellor or lord keeper," says Blackstone, "is created by the[231] mere delivery of the great seal into his custody, whereby he becomes the first officer in the kingdom and takes precedence of every temporal peer. He is a privy counsellor by virtue of his office, and, according to Lord Ellismore, prolocutor of the House of Lords by prescription. To him belongs the appointment of all the justices of the peace throughout the kingdom. Being formerly, usually, an ecclesiastic presiding over the king's chapel, he became keeper of his conscience, visitor in his right of all hospitals and colleges of royal foundation, and patron of all his livings under the annual value of twenty pounds, etc. All this exclusive of his judicial capacity in the Court of Chancery, wherein, as in the Exchequer, is a common law court and a court of equity."[31] In Ireland, while the chancellor exercised the same functions within a more contracted sphere, his political power and duties were more directly and frequently felt. The viceroys, particularly those of the early periods, were generally soldiers expressly deputed to hold the conquests already gained, and to enlarge by force of arms the possessions of the Anglo-Norman adventurers. They were little skilled in the arts of government, and, from their short terms and frequent removals, knew little of and cared less for the people they were temporarily sent to govern.[32] The chancellors, on the contrary, were the reverse, being from the first up to the reign of Henry VIII., with a few exceptions, ecclesiastics, generally men well versed in law and letters, and having been usually at an early age selected from the inferior ranks of the English clergy and promoted to the highest positions in the church in Ireland, as a preliminary step to their appointment to the most important judicial and legislative office in the colony, they had every inducement to become familiar with its affairs and with the dispositions and influence of the people among whom their lot in life was cast. "Learned men were those chancellors," says O'Flanagan, "for the most part prelates of highly cultivated minds, attached to the land of their birth, while exercising important sway over the destinies of Ireland."

For the first two hundred years after the creation of the office of chancellor, very little can be gleaned by the author of the Lives, except the mere names, date of patents, and a few dry facts usually connected with well-known historical events. The destruction by fire of St. Mary's Abbey in Dublin, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, and of the Castle of Trim, in both of which valuable public records were kept, accounts to some extent for this paucity of materials, while, as he says, "others were carried out of the country, and are met with in the State Paper Office, the Rolls Chapel, Record Office, and British Museum, in London; others are at Oxford. Several cities on the Continent possess valuable Irish documents, while many are stored in private houses, which the recent commission will no doubt render available"—a sad commentary upon the way in which everything relating to the history of the country has been neglected by that government which so frequently parades its paternal inclinations.

The want of judicial business during this period was amply compensated for by repeated but vain efforts[232] to reconcile the different factions into which the colonists of the Pale were divided, and to prevent the followers of the rival houses of Ormond and Kildare from open warfare whenever the slightest provocation was offered by either side. While the power of England was expended in foreign wars or in the internecine struggles of the Roses, her grasp on the dominion of Ireland was becoming every day more relaxed, and it was only by the judicious pitting of one party against another, by alternate threats and bribes, that even the semblance of authority could be maintained at all times. Thus, in 1355, Edward III., writing to the Earl of Kildare, uses the following emphatic words:

This was strong language, but fully justified by the unsettled condition of affairs in and outside the Pale. Chancellor de Wickford, Archbishop of Dublin, who was appointed in 1375, found that his sacred calling and official dignity were no protection to him even in the vicinity of the capital, and was therefore allowed a guard of six men-at-arms and twelve archers, while the lord treasurer had the same number. Nor was this precaution taken against the Irish enemy alone, for we find that Thomas de Burel, Prior of Kilmainham, when chancellor, while holding a parley with De Bermingham at Kildare, was, with his attendant lords, taken prisoner. The lay noblemen were ransomed, but the prior was kept a prisoner only to be exchanged for one of the De Berminghams then confined in Dublin Castle. This family seem to have held the judicial officers somewhat in contempt, for we read at another time that Adam Veldom, Chief Chancery Clerk, was captured by them and the O'Connors, and obliged to pay ten pounds in silver for his release. When John Cotton, Dean of St. Patrick's, was appointed chancellor in 1379, and commenced his tour, accompanied by the viceroy, from Dublin to Cork, he was allowed for his personal retinue, independent of his servants and clerks, not very formidable opponents, it is to be presumed, "four men-at-arms armed at all points, and eight mounted archers," a circumstance which shows that the Irish and many of the Anglo-Irish of the country had very little reverence for the person of even an English chancellor.

In 1398, Dr. Thomas Cranley was sent over to Dublin as its archbishop and chancellor of the colony, and from his high position and known ability it was expected that he would not only remedy the disorders of the Pale, but bring back the great lords to a sense of their duty to the king, and devise measures for the collection of his revenues, which these noblemen did not seem inclined to pay with the alacrity befitting obedient subjects. After several years of fruitless endeavors to effect these objects, he was obliged to write to King Henry IV. for funds to support his son, who was then acting as viceroy. "With heavy hearts," says the chancellor, speaking for the privy council, "we testify anew to your highness that[233] our lord, your son, is so destitute of money that he has not a penny in the world, nor can borrow a single penny, because all his jewels and his plate that he can spare of those that he must of necessity have, are pledged and be in pawn. All his soldiers have departed from him, and the people of his household are on the point of leaving him." And he further significantly adds, "For the more full declaring of these matters to your highness, three or two of us should have come to your high presence, but such is the danger on this side that not one of us dare depart from the person of our lord." This was indeed a sad condition for the son of the reigning monarch and his council to find themselves in, while the Talbots, Butlers, and Fitzgeralds were feasting on the fat of the land surrounded by thousands of their well-paid followers. Again, in 1435, when Archbishop Talbot was chancellor, the council through that prelate addressed a memorial to the king, in which the following remarkable passage occurs:

This extraordinary admission, made two hundred and sixty-six years after the landing of the Normans, would be almost incredible did it rest on less weighty authority. This was the time for the Irish people to have regained their freedom, and, had they had half as much of the spirit of nationality and organization as they possessed of valor and endurance, a decisive blow might easily have been struck that would have for ever ended the English power in their island. But the propitious moment was allowed to pass, and dearly did they pay in after-times for their supineness and folly.

The dissensions were not confined to the natives. The quarrels and bickerings of the nobles and officials of the Pale seemed to invite destruction. Rival parliaments were held; viceroys who were attached by policy or affection to the houses of York and Lancaster contended in the Castle of Dublin for the legitimacy of their respective factions; and even the Lord Chancellor Sherwood, Bishop of Meath, and the members of the privy council, whose office and duty it was to preserve the peace between all parties, were found the most turbulent; "the chancellor and chief-justice of the king's bench requiring the interposition of the king to keep them quiet, while the Irish so pressed upon the narrow limits of the English settlements that the statute requiring cities and boroughs to be represented by inhabitants of the same was obliged to be repealed upon the express ground that representatives could not be expected to encounter, on their journeys to parliament, the great perils incident from the king's Irish enemies and English rebels, for it is openly known how great and frequent mischiefs have been done on the ways both in the south, north, east, and west parts, by reason whereof they may not send proctors, knights, nor burgesses."[33] Such was the condition of Ireland in A.D. 1480, just three centuries after the advent of Henry II. to her shores.

One of the principal duties of the Irish lord chancellors, even to the [234]very moment of its extinction, was the management of the Irish parliament. The body that for so many centuries bore that pretentious title, but which never spoke the voice of even a respectable minority of the people, is said to have owed its origin to the second Henry, though according to Whiteside, who follows the authority of Sir John Davies, no parliament was held in the country for one hundred and forty years after that king's visit.[34] Except in an antiquarian point of view, the matter is of little importance, as such gatherings in Ireland, even more so than those of England, could not at that time be called either representative or deliberative bodies, for their members were not chosen by even a moiety of the people, and they were mere instruments in the hands of the governing powers, who moulded them at will when they desired to impose new taxes or unjust laws on the people, ostensibly with their own sanction. From the days of Simon de Montfort to those of George IV., the English parliamentary system has been an ingeniously devised engine of general oppression under the garb of popular government.

Of the ancient parliaments, the most famous was that held at Kilkenny during the chancellorship of John Trowyk, Prior of St. John, in 1367, at which was passed the statute bearing the name of that beautiful city. Though the name only of the chancellor, who doubtless was the author ex officio, has come down to us, that delectable specimen of English legislation is doubtless destined to survive the changes of time, and expire only with the language itself. It prohibited marriage, gossipred, and fostering between the natives and the Anglo-Irish under penalty of treason, also selling to the former upon any condition horses, armor, or victuals, under a like penalty. All persons of either nationality living in the Pale were to use the English language, names, customs, dress, and manner of riding. No Irishman was to be admitted to holy orders, nor was any minstrel, story-teller, or rhymer to be harbored. English on the borders should hold no parley with their Irish neighbors, except by special permission, nor employ them in their domestic wars. Irish games were not to be indulged in, but should give place to those of the English, as being more "gentlemanlike sports." Any infraction of these provisions was to be punished with rigor, for, says the preamble to the act, "many of the English of Ireland, discarding the English tongue, manners, style of riding, laws, and usages, lived and governed themselves according to the mode, fashion, and language of the Irish enemies," etc., whereby the said "Irish enemies were exalted and raised up contrary to reason." This enactment is perhaps without a parallel in the history of semi-civilized legislation, if we except that passed at a parliament held at Trim in 1447, and for which we are indebted to no less a person than the Archbishop of Dublin, lord chancellor at that period. It enacts "that those who would be taken for Englishmen (that is, within the protection of law) should not wear a beard on the upper lip; that the said lip should be shaved once at least in every two weeks, and that offenders therein should be treated as Irish enemies." As no provision was inserted in the statute providing for the supply of razors, or mention made of the appointment of state barbers, we presume it soon became inoperative.

By such penal legislation it was weakly supposed the evils of the country could be cured most effectually, but, unfortunately for the lawmakers, it was easier to pass statutes than to enforce them. On the mass of the people they had no effect whatever, except, perhaps, to bind them faster to their ancient laws and customs, and he would have been a bold officer indeed who would have attempted to carry them out, even among the Anglo-Irish families outside of the Pale; for we find that, at a parliament held in Dublin in 1441, under the supervision of Archbishop Talbot, a strong request was made to the king to furnish troops for the defence of the colony, the privy council having some time previously represented "that the king should ordain that the Admiral of England should, in summer season, visit the coasts of Ireland to protect the merchants from the Scots, Bretons, and Spaniards, who came thither with their ships stuffed with men of war in great numbers, seizing the merchants of Ireland, Wales, and England, and holding them to ransom."[35]

The selfish but sagacious policy of Henry VII. had done so much to remedy the evils inflicted on England by the wars of the Roses that when his son, Henry VIII., ascended the throne in 1509, he found a united and contented people, a well-filled treasury, and a subservient parliament. The character of this notorious ruler is too well known to need comment, and the effects of his crimes are still perceptibly felt by the country that had the misfortune to have given him birth. His influence on Irish affairs, though more disastrous in its immediate results, has happily long since been obliterated. Dr. Rokeby, Bishop of Meath, and afterward Archbishop of Dublin, first appointed chancellor in 1498, was retained in his office by the new king. He is represented as a man of marked piety and learning, but he would have been unfitted to fill an office under the English crown had he allowed any scruples of conscience to stand between him and the behests of his royal master. What these were may be judged from a passage in a private letter from Henry to his viceroy. "Now," he writes, "at the beginning, political practices may do more good than exploits of war, till such time as the strength of the Irish enemy shall be enfeebled and diminished; as well by getting their captains from them, as by putting division among them, so that they join not together"[36]—an advice eminently suggestive, but by no means new, for the policy of arraying the Irish against each other had been practised long before with fatal effect. Rokeby held the great seal for twenty-one years, and his long term was marked by his successful efforts to reconcile the hostile Anglo-Irish factions, his negotiations with the native chiefs, for the purpose of inducing them to acknowledge the sovereignty of Henry, and the consequent extension of the functions of the courts over the greater part of the island. The success of the first and last of these measures was mainly due to the personal efforts of the lord chancellor, and the submission of the Irish party resulted from the loss of the battle of Knocktough, in 1504, and the favorable promises held out by the chancellor and viceroy, inducements, it is needless to say, which were never fulfilled. He was succeeded by the two St. Lawrences, father and son, of whom nothing notable is recorded, but that [236]they were laymen and natives of the soil; and by Archbishop Ingle, who, however, held office for but one year.

The next ecclesiastical chancellor was Dr. Alan, commissioned in 1528. This distinguished official was remarkable not only for his great mental capacity, but as a not unfavorable sample of the English political churchmen of the era immediately preceding the so-called "Reformation"—men who, by their laxity of faith and worldly ambition, paved the way for the subsequent grand march of heresy and immorality. Born in England in 1476, he studied with credit both at Oxford and Cambridge, and at an early age entered the priesthood. His varied acquirements and experience of mankind gained him, in 1515, the degree of doctor of laws and the confidence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, then Lord Chancellor of England, by whom he was sent to Rome on a special mission. On his return, he was appointed chaplain to Cardinal Wolsey, and judge of his legantine court. In both capacities he appears to have given satisfaction, particularly in the latter, in which he materially assisted the ambitious cardinal in suppressing certain monasteries, and appropriating the revenues, it is more than suspected, to his own and his patron's use. For these services he was rewarded with the archbishopric of Dublin and the Irish chancellorship. His two great vices, avarice and the love of intrigue, became now fully developed. When not begging for increase of salary or emoluments, he was writing scandalous letters to his friends at the English court, complaining of the conduct of the viceroy, the unfortunate Earl of Kildare, and it was mainly through his instrumentality, supported by Wolsey, that that nobleman was called to England and committed to the Tower of London. His next step was to circulate a false report that the earl had been executed. This led, as he anticipated, to the rebellion of Kildare's son and deputy, better known as Silken Thomas, and a number of Irish chiefs with whom the Fitzgeralds were allied, and, upon its suppression, to the confiscation of vast estates in Leinster and Munster. But Alan did not live long enough to behold the result of his sanguinary policy. Alarmed at the storm he had raised, he endeavored to escape from the country, but the elements seem to have conspired against him, for he was cast ashore near Clontarf, and, on being discovered by some of Thomas's followers, he was put to death. He was succeeded as chancellor by Cromer, Archbishop of Armagh, who was, however, shortly after deprived of his office for his unflinching opposition to Henry's absurd pretensions of being considered "Head of the Church." It was of this prelate that Browne, the king's Archbishop of Dublin, wrote to Lord Henry Cromwell, in 1635, "that he had endeavored, almost to the hazard and danger of his temporal life, to procure the nobility and gentry of this nation to due obedience in owning his highness their supreme head, as well spiritual as temporal; and do find much oppugning therein, especially by his brother Armagh, who hath beene the main oppugner, and so hath withdrawn most of his suffragans and clergy within his see and diocese."[37]

Unable to coerce or cajole the Pope, Henry at length threw down the gauntlet to the Holy Father, and, emboldened doubtless by the ready submission of the English, resolved to enforce his new ideas of religion [237]on the people of Ireland. The parliament of that country, pliant as ever, voted him king of Ireland and head of the church, and would as willingly have conferred on him any other title, no matter how far-fetched or absurd, had he desired it. Archbishop Browne, of Dublin, was a Christian after the king's own heart, and, in his way, as consistent and as zealous a reformer; and with the chancellor, Lord Trimblestown, at the laboring-oar, the task of converting the Irish to the new faith was considered quite easy. Here and there a stubborn recusant was anticipated, but were there not monasteries and nunneries enough to be confiscated, and lands and revenues to be given away, to satisfy those benighted adherents to the old faith? A grand tour of proselytism throughout the country was therefore projected, and the lord chancellor, the archbishop, and the other members of the privy council sallied out, accompanied by their men-at-arms, procurants, clerks, and retainers, to expound the Gospel according to King Henry, and to enforce their doctrines, if all else failed, by the carnal weapons of the lash and halter. They visited in succession Carlow, Kilkenny, Ross, Wexford, and Waterford, where they are mindful to acknowledge "they were well entertained." The archbishop on Sundays "preached the word of God, having very good audience, and published the king's injunctions and the king's translation of the Pater Noster, Ave Maria, the Articles of Faith, and the Ten Commandments in English," while on week-days the chancellor took his share of the good work; for, continues the report, "the day following we kept the sessions there (Waterford) both for the city and the shire, where was put to execution four felons, accompanied by another, a friar, whom, among the residue, we commanded to be hanged in his habit, and so to remain upon the gallows for a mirror to all his brethren to live truly."[38] This judicious mixture of preaching and hanging, the Lord's Prayer and the statute of Kilkenny, it was thought, would have a salutary effect on the souls and bodies of unbelievers, and was a fitting form of introducing the Reformation to the consideration of the Irish people.

The war on the faith of the nation having been thus openly and auspiciously inaugurated, we must henceforth look upon the chancellors of Ireland not only as the persistent defenders of the English interest in that country, but as the most dangerous because the most insidious and influential enemies of Catholicity.

Sir John Alan was appointed chancellor in 1539, and in the following year we find him at the head of a royal commission for the suppression of religious houses. The authority to the commissioners sets forth, with a mendacity never surpassed in a state paper, and rarely paralleled, even in the worst days of anti-Catholic persecution, the following pretexts for striking a deadly blow at the bulwarks of charity, religion, and learning:

It is unnecessary to say that this measure of wholesale spoliation was promptly and thoroughly carried out. The thousand ruins that dot the island attest it, and the title-deeds of many a nobleman's broad acres bear date no earlier than this edict of the greatest monster that ever disgraced the British throne.

From this time forth, the lord chancellors found their best passport to royal favor in devising measures for the destruction of the popular faith. Being generally needy adventurers, with nothing but their legal knowledge and facile consciences to begin the world with, they neither loved the country nor respected the people, and their titles and wealth depended simply on their zeal for Protestantism. Of the hundreds of penal laws which disgrace the statute-book of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, every one of them owes its inception and enactment to one or another of those subtle-minded officials who, as the head of the lords, president of the privy council, and the dispenser of vast judicial and executive patronage, had a potent influence in all public affairs. They continued industriously to carry out the designs of Henry during the successive reigns of his worthy daughter Elizabeth, the Stuarts, William, Anne, and the House of Brunswick. Even when the fears of foreign invasion in 1760, and the noble resistance of the fathers of our republic some years later, had awakened the fears of the British authorities and induced them to relax somewhat the chains of the Catholics, the voice of the lord chancellors was still for war. Apart, however, from this spirit of intolerance which seemed to be naturally attached to the office, it must be confessed that from the days of Henry the great seal was held by many able lawyers and distinguished statesmen, some of whom were not unknown in the world of letters as authors and liberal patrons of learning and science. The names of Curwan, Loftus (who founded Trinity College University), Boyle, Porter, Butler, Cox, Broderick, Bowles, and many others, occupy honored positions in the legal annals of Great Britain and Ireland, and their lives, full of incident and variety, are fully and fairly placed before us by Mr. O'Flanagan.

The treaty of union in 1800, by which Ireland lost her parliament, and legislatively became a province, deprived the Irish chancellors of much of their original political power; though, strange as it may appear, this object was effected mainly through the exertions of Lord Clare, who at that time held the office. In this man's character, distinguished as it was for many private virtues, and for every public vice that it is possible to conceive, were united the good and bad qualities of all his predecessors, joined to a wonderful mental capacity which far surpassed them all. Born in Ireland, he was of English extraction and more than English in feeling, and, though of an exemplary Catholic stock, he was the[239] son of an apostate clerical student, a most violent Protestant and a rancorous proscriptionist. A profound jurist and an upright judge in purely legal matters, his anti-Catholic prejudices seemed totally to have warped his judgment whenever the question of religion presented itself, and, though a steadfast friend in private of those who agreed with or did not care to differ from him, he never failed to carry into official life the hatreds and animosities engendered in political struggles or domestic intercourse. A powerful orator, full of strong legal points, logical propositions, and keen, and sometimes coarse, sarcasm, he ruled his party with a rod of iron, and, when persuasion and threats failed, he hesitated not to use bribes and cajolery. His mental energy was equal to any amount of labor, and his physical courage was beyond question, even in a country and age where bravery was ranked among the highest of virtues. Such was John Fitzgibbon, first Earl of Clare, born near Dublin in 1749, a man pre-eminently fitted by Providence to adorn his country and benefit mankind, but who perverted his great gifts and employed them with too much success in destroying that country's remnant of independence, and in devising new methods of persecution for his Catholic relatives and countrymen. He died in the plenitude of his power in 1802; his name when mentioned is reprobated by all good men in the nation he betrayed; his title, so ingloriously won, is extinct; and his bench in Chancery and his seat in the House of Lords are filled by one of that race and creed which he so cordially detested and so ruthlessly persecuted.[40] Sic transit gloria mundi.

Mr. O'Flanagan brings down his Lives to the time of George IV., but this latter portion of his valuable collection of biographies belongs more to the domain of law than of history. Indeed, the entire work is full of curious and interesting information which will be highly prized by the legal profession. What the late Lord Campbell has done so well for the English chancellors, the author has endeavored to do for those of Ireland, and with equal success, notwithstanding the scarcity of materials and the loose manner in which the Irish records have been kept. One of the most attractive features of this book is the total absence of passion or prejudice in the narrative of events and estimation of character; but every necessary circumstance is detailed in a plain, lucid, and intelligible style, and with something of judicial gravity and impartiality befitting so important a subject. As far as the author's own political predilections are concerned—and we suspect that they are by no means intensely national—the tone of the book may be said to be colorless, a peculiarity in modern biography which, while it may detract from its vivacity, will certainly add much weight to its value as an authority. We are promised a sequel to the chancellors, containing the lives of the lord chief-justices, which we hope will soon appear, for the more light that is shed on those darkened pages of Ireland's history, the better for the cause of truth, justice, and humanity.

GOTTFRIED VON STRASSBURG'S GREAT HYMN TO THE VIRGIN.

The period of the German Minnesinger, dating from about the middle of the thirteenth to the middle of the fourteenth century, witnessed probably the intensest and sincerest devotion to the worship of the Virgin Mary in the whole history of the Catholic Church. Intense and sincere pre-eminently, because so expressed in the vast number of paintings and poems in her glorification whereof we have record. That whole period, indeed, was one of fervent religious feeling, stimulated by the Crusades, and naturally choosing the Virgin for the chief object of worship, as the whole knightly spirit of that age was one of devotion to woman. The pure love—for Minne is pure love—of woman has never, in the history of literature, been so exclusively made the topic of poetry as it was during that century of the Minnesinger; it is the absorbing theme of the almost two hundred poets of that time, of whom we have poems handed down to us, and its highest expression was attained in those poems that were addressed to the woman of all women, Mary, the mother of Jesus.

The German language in the thirteenth century had attained a development which fitted it pre-eminently for lyric poetry in all its branches. What it has since gained in other respects it has lost in sweet music of sound. Furthermore, the true laws of rhythm, metre, and verse for modern languages, as distinguished from the rules that governed classic poetry, had been discovered and fixed; rules and laws the knowledge whereof subsequently was lost, and which it gave Goethe so much trouble, as he tells us in his autobiography, to find again. The purity of rhyme has never since in German poetry attained the same degree of perfection, not even under the skilful hand of Rueckert and Platen, which the Minnesinger gave to it; and thus altogether those matters, which constitute the mechanism of poetry, were in fullest bloom.

Now this mechanism and the wonderful language which it operated upon being in the possession and under the full control of such men as were the poets of that day, the result could be only poems of perfect form, and yet at the same time naïve, earnest, intense, and enthusiastic in their character. For those poets were not—like those of our modern poets who have completest control of the mechanism of poetry, as Tennyson, Swinburne, etc.—poets of a cold, reflective bent of mind, but they were simple knights, with great enthusiasm in the cause of the Crusades and of ladies; at the same time gifted with a wondrous power of versification. A considerable number of them, some of the best, as Wolfram von Eschenbach, Ulrich von Lichtenstein, etc., could not even write and read, and had to dictate their poems to their Singerlein, or sing it to him—for these poets invented a melody for each of their poems—which Singerlein again transmitted it in the same manner until, in the course of time, these unwritten Minnelieder were, as much as possible, gathered together by the noble[241] knight, Ruediger von Manasse, his son, and the Minnesinger, Johann Hadlaub, put into manuscript, and thus happily preserved for future generations.

The songs that these Minnesingers sang are of a threefold character: either in praise of the ladies, usually coupled with references to the seasons of the year; or of a didactic character; or, finally, in praise of the Virgin.

Their form is only twofold: either they are lays or songs proper. The song or Minnelied proper has invariably a triplicity of form in each stanza, that is, each stanza has three parts, whereof the first two correspond with each other exactly, whereas the third has an independent, though of course rhythmically connected, flow of its own. The lay, on the contrary, is of irregular construction, and permits the widest rhythmical liberties.

Of the many Minnelieder addressed to the Virgin we have presented to us examples of both kinds, lays and songs. Chief among them are a lay by Walther von der Vogelweide, and the Great Hymn by Gottfried von Strassburg.

The latter is probably the finest of all the Minnelieder—worldly and sacred—of that period. Ranking next to these two there is, however, another poem to the Virgin, not to be classified strictly under the general title of Minnelieder, but still the production of a famous Minnesinger, and withal a poem of wondrous beauty, which for two centuries kept its hold upon the people. This is Konrad von Wuerzburg's Golden Smithy—a poem that is written in the metre of the narrative poem of that age, namely, in lines wherein every line ending in a masculine rhyme has four accentuations and every line ending in a female rhyme has three accentuations, the syllables not being counted—a metre that Coleridge has adopted in his poem Christabel.

In this Golden Smithy the poet represents himself as a goldsmith, working all manner of precious stones and gold into a glorious ornament for the Queen of Heaven, by gathering into his poem all possible images and similes from the world of nature, from sacred and profane history and fable, and from all the virtues and graces of mankind. It is a poem of wonderful splendor, and has a great smoothness of diction. "If," says the poet in the opening of the poem, "in the depth of the smithy of my heart I could melt a poem out of gold and could enamel the gold with the glowing ruby of pure devotion, I would forge a transparent, shining, and sparkling praise of thy worth, thou glorious empress of heaven. Yet, though my speech should fly upward like a noble eagle, the wings of my words could not carry me beyond thy praise; marble and adamant shall be sooner penetrated by a straw, and the diamond by molten lead, than I attain the height of the praise that belongs to thee. Not until all the stars have been counted and the dust of the sun and the sand of the sea and the leaves of the trees, can thy praise be properly sung."

But even this poem is far surpassed in beauty every way by Gottfried von Strassburg's Great Hymn. Indeed, Konrad himself modestly confesses this in his Golden Smithy, when he regrets that he does not "sit upon the green clover bedewed with sweet speech, on which sat worthily Gottfried von Strassburg, who, as a most artistic smith, worked a golden poem, and praised and glorified the Holy Virgin in much better strain."

There is, indeed, a wondrous beauty in this hymn of Gottfried von Strassburg, a beauty much akin to that of his own Strassburg Cathedral,[242] which was begun about the same time.

"It is," says Van der Hagen, "the very glorification of love (Minne) and of Minnesong; it is the heavenly bridal song, the mysterious Solomon's Song, which mirrors its miraculous object in a stream of deep and lovely images, linking them all together into an imperishable wreath; yet even here in its profundity and significance of an artistic and numerously-rhymed construction; always clear as crystal, smooth and graceful."

The poem separates into three parts: in the first whereof the poet exhorts all those who desire to listen to his song of God's great love to endeavor to gain it by unremitting exertion; and furthermore to pray for him, the poet, who has so little striven to attain it for himself. In the second part, the poet calls upon the heavens and Christ to bend down and listen to his truthful lays in praise of Christ's sweet mother. Then in the third part begins the praise of the Virgin, followed by that of her Son, and the poem reaches its supreme fervor when it breaks out finally in praise of God himself. Thence it gradually lowers its tone, and finally expires in a sigh.

I suppose it is impossible to give an adequate idea by translation of the melodious sound of words, the perfect rhythm, and the artistic gradation of effect which this poem has parts of the poem, and so selected as to give a general idea of both the manner and the matter of the poem. The selection opens with the first and ends with the last verses of the whole poem; but the whole itself being composed of ninety-four stanzas, it was necessary to take from in the original. I can say only that I have done my best in the following stanzas, selected from the various the intermediate ones only specimens. The imagery may often seem far-fetched, but it must be remembered that the men of that period likened God and the God-begotten unto everything on earth and in heaven, for the simple reason that they deemed it irreverent and impossible to characterize them by any single predicate or word.

Of the poet himself we know very little. His name indicates him to have been a citizen of Strassburg. His title Meister (master) shows that his station in life was that of a citizen and not of a noble or knight, their title being Herr. He was undoubtedly the foremost poet of his age, and—together with Wolfram von Eschenbach—was then and is still so considered. His greatest work is the narrative poem, Tristan und Isolde; but that he left unfinished. We have no other work of his handed down to us except three or four small Minnesongs.

A WORD TO THE INDEPENDENT.

We depart from our usual course to reprint the above rather, long article, which appeared some time ago in the Independent, one of the leading Protestant papers of the country, not because of its intrinsic merits or special untruthfulness, nor yet for its assumed knowledge of the views and duties of the reverend gentleman to whom it is so pointedly addressed, but because we consider this a fitting time and place to answer the invidious attacks which, under one guise or another, are so constantly being made on the church in America by those who are neither able to meet openly our arguments, nor to arrest covertly the astonishing progress which our holy religion is happily making in every part of this republic. These assaults sometimes take the form of wholesale and mendacious assertion and passionate appeal to blind prejudice and unreason;[249] while sometimes, like the one before us, they assume the thin disguise of personal courtesy and general charity to all men. The former are perhaps the more manly, the latter have the merit of permitting us, without loss of self-respect, to reply to them. The object in either case is the same: a vain endeavor to stem the tide of Catholicity which, in a succession of great waves, as it were, is fast spreading over the land, and an attempt to make our faith an object of aversion to those of our countrymen not yet in the church, by associating it with all that is impoverished, illiterate, and immoral.

It is true, as the writer says, that the Americans are a practical people; but we are not by any means a very reflective people, and are very apt to judge hastily of others without sufficiently considering the various causes which underlie the surface of society, or the effects which may be produced on a people less fortunate than ourselves by ages of misrule and persecution. Knowing this national failing very well, the writer in the Independent adroitly seeks to hold the Catholic Church responsible for the faults and vices of a certain class of nominal Catholics in our midst, when he is fully aware that these very vices, so far from being the growth of Catholic teaching, are not only in absolute contradiction to it, but are the direct and logical results of an elaborate system of penal legislation, designed to produce the very degradation of which he complains, and persistently carried out to its furthest limit by the leading Protestant power of Europe.

Take New York, for instance. Here the church is practically the growth of but half a century. There are some among us whose Catholic ancestors came to this country in the last or even in the seventeenth century; others who have sought refuge from the doubts and uncertainties of Protestantism in the peaceful bosom of mother church; but by far the greater number are immigrants of this century, and their children, who, glad to flee from famine and persecution with nothing but their lives and faith, have sought refuge on our shores from the tyranny of a hostile government, which the world has long recognized as both insincere, oppressive, and illiberal, but which, by virtue of its assumed leadership in the Protestant revolt called the Reformation, wantonly and tenaciously continued to persecute its subjects who dared to profess their devotion to the faith of their fathers. Any one, be he lawyer or laymen, who reads the penal acts of the parliaments of England, Scotland, and Ireland from the reign of Henry VIII. downward, must be satisfied that a more complete network of laws for the purpose of beggaring, degrading, and corrupting human nature has never been devised. Some of them, in fact, are almost preternatural in their ingenuity; and the wonder is how any class of people coming under their operation could, for any length of time, retain even the semblance of civilization. Everything that it was possible to take by legislation from the Catholics of Great Britain and Ireland was taken, every advantage arising from the possession of land or the acquisition of commercial wealth was denied them, and the avenues to honor and distinction were, and are partially so to this day, closed against them, generation after generation. That many of the descendants of these persecuted people who have come among us are uneducated is true, that they are generally poor is a fact patent to every one; but it ill becomes the Independent to taunt them with their ignorance and their poverty, knowing, as it does, that[250] it was Protestantism, of which it is the expounder and the eulogist, that has robbed them of their birthright, and striven, with some success, it seems, to plunge their souls in darkness. Is it fair or generous to hold these people up to public contumely because of the scars they have received in their unequalled struggle for the freedom of conscience and nationality; is it just or American to try to steal from those who seek an asylum on our soil that for which they have imperilled and lost all else—their faith, which is to them dearer than life itself? Or is it more in keeping with all our ideas of true manhood and republican liberty that while we extend one arm to shield the victim of oppression, the other should be stretched forth in reprobation of his plunderer and persecutor? If they have vices—and what people have not?—let a share of the blame at least be laid at the doors of those who designedly and continually debarred them from all means of enlightenment and every incentive to virtue, instead of being attributed to the influence of the church.

And yet, in view of the gloomy history of these people—a chapter in the annals of England which the best of her Protestant statesmen are endeavoring to efface from the popular memory—the writer in the Independent appears to be surprised at what he calls Catholic prejudice against Protestant missions. No man, we are safe in saying, has less prejudice against his fellow-man than the American Catholic, in all the usual intercourse of life; but when a person under the garb of charity invades the sanctity of his home simply to abuse his religion, or waylays his children in the streets and inveigles them into mission-houses and Sunday-schools by the proffer of a loaf or a jacket, for the purpose of telling them that their fathers' faith is rank idolatry, is it not too much to expect that he will remain unmoved and uncomplaining? The writer should recollect that the class of so-called missionaries who infest the quarters of our poorer fellow-Catholics are not new to those people. They have seen their counterparts long ago in Bantry and Connemara, in the fertile valleys of Munster and on the bleak hills of Connaught, in the dark days of the great famine, when the tract distributer followed hard on the heels of the tithe-proctor and the bailiff, tendering a meal or a shilling as the price of apostasy. If heads are occasionally broken, they are not the heads of those who attend to their own affairs and let their neighbors attend to theirs, but of some intermeddling tract-scatterer, whose salary depends upon the number of copies he can force into the hands of Catholics without regard to their wishes or feelings. The provocation emanates from them, and they must take the consequences. If the law permits us to inflict summary chastisement on the burglar who enters our house to take our goods, shall we have no remedy against him who prowls about our doors to steal our children and abuse our faith?

If Protestant missions were properly conducted, they would have none of these difficulties to contend with. But are they properly conducted? The writer in the Independent seems to have some doubts on this point. We have none. Whoever will take the trouble to attend the Bible-classes, prayer-meetings, day-schools, and Sunday-schools of the Howard Mission and its adjuncts, will be satisfied that they are nothing but ingeniously contrived machines for the purpose of proselytizing Catholic children. Abuse of Catholicity of the most unqualified and vulgar kind forms the staple of the[251] instructions there from beginning to end. Even the material relief is diverted to this purpose. The poor half-starved lad, as he eats his food, swallows it down with a draught of no-popery cant, and the ragged little girl, as she dons some cast-off garment, has her young mind polluted by aspersions on the name of her whom Holy Writ declared should be called blessed by all nations. We have before us a periodical issued from the Howard Mission, under the superintendence of a Rev. W. C. Van Meter, which is as full of that canting, snivelling, anti-Catholic spirit as ever characterized the days of God-save-Barebones or of John Wesley's unlettered disciples. As a specimen of the veracity of this modern apostle to the Fourth Ward, and for the benefit of the Independent, which has some doubts as to whether Protestant missions are properly conducted, we extract the following prominent article from its pages:

Now, we ask, is the man or men who penned and circulated this atrocious calumny likely to command the respect of any class of Catholics, learned or ignorant? He or they knew, or ought to have known, that it contains several deliberate falsehoods. Take, for example, the portion of the extract relating to Great Britain and Ireland. By referring to the report of "Her Majesty's Inspector of Schools, August 31, 1868," we find that in England and Wales the average attendance at all the schools in the kingdom was 1,050,120, in Scotland 191,860, and in Ireland, at the model schools alone, 354,853, or nearly twice as many as in Scotland, and, in proportion to the population, one-seventh more than in England. From the official report of the statistics of crime in the same year (the latest published reports that have reached us), there were convicted of crime in England 15,003, in Scotland 2,490, and in Ireland 2,394. Of those sentenced in England, 21 were condemned to death, 18 to penal servitude for life, and 1,921 for a term of years. In Scotland, one was condemned to death, and 243 to penal servitude, while in Ireland none were condemned to death, and but 238 to penal servitude. We find also that in England alone 118,390 persons are reported as belonging to the criminal classes known to the authorities, and but 23,041 in Ireland; and while the former country has 20,000 houses of bad character, the latter has 5,876. The number of paupers in each of the three countries shows even a greater disparity. England [252]in 1868 had, exclusive of vagrants, 1,039,549, or one in every twenty of the population; Scotland, 158,372, or one in every 19; and Ireland, 74,254, or one in every 80![42]

If it were not foreign to our present purpose, we could prove that the managers of the Protestant missions are equally untruthful in their invidious comparisons instituted between other countries,[43] but we have shown enough to convince any impartial person that they are not fit to be entrusted with the care of youth of any class, much less of Catholic children. If the supporters of the Independent are sincere in their desire to benefit the destitute, the needy, and the vicious, let them first remove all suspicion of proselytism from their charities by appointing proper persons to administer them. If they have conscientious scruples against co-operating with the various Catholic charitable societies, who know the poor and are trusted by them, there are other ways of dispensing their bounty judiciously than by tampering with the poor people's faith, and their charity will then become a blessing to the giver as well as to the receiver. Then let them, above all things, advocate a fair and impartial distribution of the public school funds. It is well known that the Catholics as a body are far from being rich, and that while they are struggling hard to sustain their own schools, they are heavily taxed for the support of those to which they cannot consistently send their children, and from which, in many instances, the offspring of the rich alone receive any benefit. Can we not in this free democracy have laws regulating education at least as equitable as those of Austria and Prussia—countries which we are pleased to call despotic? Help us to the means to educate our children in our own way, as we have a right to do, and you will see how the stigma of ignorance and its consequences will be removed from the fair forehead of this great metropolis. We ask not charity, we simply want our fair share of that public money which is contributed by Catholic and Protestant alike for educational purposes, and the liberty to apply it with as much freedom from state interference as is enjoyed in the monarchies of Europe.

The writer in the Independent assumes, with a coolness approaching impertinence, that the clergyman whom he addresses knows that the Catholic population "furnishes more, vastly more, than its proportion of paupers and criminals." He knows no such thing, nor does any right-minded man in the community know it. That there are many and grave crimes committed by nominal Catholics is, alas! too true, but that many such are perpetrated, to any appreciable extent, by the hundreds of thousands of practical Catholics in this city, no sane man believes. Poor and ignorant, if you will, without capital, business training, or mechanical skill, many thousands of our immigrants are from necessity obliged to make their homes in the purlieus of our great cities. Disappointed in their too sanguine expectation of fortune in the New World, some seek solace in intoxication, and in that condition commit acts of lawlessness which their better nature abhors. But much as the commission of crime in any shape is to be regretted and reprehended, it must be admitted that most of the offences are comparatively trivial in their nature and consequences, and few, even of the darkest, are the result of premeditated villany. In[253] searching over the criminal records of our state and country, we seldom find a contrived infraction of the law by the class to which the writer so ungraciously alludes. A gigantic swindle, a scientific burglary, a nicely planned larceny, an adroit forgery, a diabolical seduction, or a deliberate and long-contemplated murder by poison or the knife, is seldom committed by that class, but by those who were reared in as much hostility to Catholicity as the writer of the Independent himself. This higher grade of crime, this "bad pre-eminence," we might with some show of justice ascribe to the effects of the laxity of Protestant morals, but we have no desire to do so here; and with even much more truthfulness might we charge the sects who teach that marriage is merely a civil contract with the responsibility of those other vices which, striking at the very foundations of society and the sanctity of the family, are more lasting in their consequences and more demoralizing in their immediate effects, than all the others put together. The columns of this same virtuous Independent have obtained an unenviable notoriety by spreading the most shameful and corrupting doctrines on this vital subject. But we have no wish to retort: the records of our divorce courts will prove that this class of criminals is made up almost exclusively of non-Catholics.

The writer in the Independent, throughout his appeal, assumes a tone of superior knowledge and a lofty contempt for details that might mislead some into the belief that the Catholic body of this city was an inert and helpless mass. He asks, "Will you not lift up your powerful voice to plead with the church to use her almost unlimited influence for the regeneration of her people?" Does the writer know, or has he attempted to ascertain, all that the church has done and is doing in this city, as in every other, for the "regeneration of her people"? If he does not, by what right does he assume that the voice of any one man or any number of men is required to plead with the church to do her duty? If he be ignorant of his subject, then by what authority does he take upon himself the office of mediator between the church and the people? If he be not in ignorance, then his carefully worded sentences and smoothly turned compliments merely cover, without concealing, a tissue of base insinuations, beside which downright falsehood were rank flattery.

Let him look at what the church has done in New York in the past generation! Forty churches and chapels have been built, with a capacity, it is said, to seat fifty-six thousand persons, but really equal to the accommodation of five times that number, as in every church the divine service is offered up at least three times each Sunday, and all are attended beyond the greatest capacity of the building. To many of our churches is attached a free day-school for boys and girls, and invariably a Sunday-school—thronged weekly by the youth of both sexes, to listen to the instruction and counsel of competent teachers. Every parish has its St. Vincent de Paul Society, counting hundreds and in some cases thousands of members, whose aim it is to visit the sick, the afflicted, and the needy; and its temperance society, the strength of which may be judged by the long line of stalworth men we see parading our streets on festal occasions. Colleges, schools, and convents there are in great numbers for the teaching of the higher branches of education. Hospitals for the sick and afflicted, asylums for the blind, the orphan, the foundling, and the repentant sinner, a reformatory for erring youth, and a shelter for old age. Almost[254] every conceivable want of weak humanity has its appropriate place of supply among our charitable institutions.

All this grand system of charities is, however, lost on the writer in the Independent. His special attention is directed to the "dense Catholic sections." Well, we will take the Fourth Ward, which is blessed with the Howard Mission and the beneficent supervision of Mr. Van Meter. St. James's Church is situated in this ward, and its parish embraces all the Protestant missions so-called, and most of their offshoots. Upon personal inquiry, we find that there is erected in this parish a magnificent and spacious school-house, at a cost of one hundred and twenty thousand dollars, attended daily during week-days by upwards of fourteen hundred boys and girls, taught by twenty-two teachers of both sexes. The tuition is entirely free, the expenses amounting to about twelve thousand dollars annually, being sustained by the voluntary contributions of the parishioners. The Sunday-schools of this church are attended by twenty-five hundred children, about one-half of whom, being employed during the week, are unable to attend the day-schools. Then there is an industrial school, attended by between one and two hundred poor children, mostly half-orphans, who are provided with dinner every day, and to whom are given two entire suits of new clothing every year, on July 4th and Christmas Day. In addition to these there is a branch of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, numbering several hundred members, forty of whom are constantly on duty, visiting the sick, counselling the erring, helping the needy, and performing other works of charity. This society alone expends annually at least five thousand dollars. Besides, there are two temperance societies, numbering nearly nine hundred men, who not only discourage intemperance by their example, but seek by weekly meetings, lectures, and other popular attractions to win others to follow in their footsteps. Now, these are facts easily verified by any one who may wish to do so, and may be taken as a fair specimen of the gigantic efforts which the church is making in every parish in this city for the conservation of the morals and the education of her people. St. James's Parish may be said to contain the largest proportionate number of our poorer brethren, who, though heavily taxed as tenement holders and retail purchasers of all the necessaries of life, contributing of course their quota to the public school fund, can yet afford, out of their scanty and often precarious means, to educate and partly feed and clothe over fifteen hundred children. Can the Independent show any similar effort on the part of any of the sects?

The writer in the Independent says, "We come to you for help." What sort of help? If it is assistance to prop up the decaying Protestant missions which have so long been sources of discord and bad feeling among our Catholic fellow-citizens, profitable only to their employees, we respectfully decline: if he is in truth and all sincerity desirous to devote a part of his leisure time and means to improve the condition of his less fortunate fellow-beings in the denser populated portions of the city, we cannot advise him to do better than to consult the pastor of St. James's or of any of the churches in the lower wards, who will give him all the help required for the proper disposal of both. And, in conclusion, let us suggest to him that no amount of politeness will justify the violation of the commandment which says, "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor."

OUR LADY OF LOURDES.

VI.

The press of Paris and of the provinces was beginning to discuss the events at Lourdes; and public attention far outside the region of the Pyrenees was gradually being attracted to the Grotto of Massabielle.

The measures of the prefect were loudly applauded by the infidel papers and as vehemently condemned by the Catholic ones. The latter, while maintaining a due reserve on the subject of the reality of the apparitions and miracles, held that a question of this nature should be decided by the ecclesiastical authorities, and not summarily settled according to the will of the prefect.

The innumerable cures which were taking place at the grotto, or even at distant places, continually drew an immense number of invalids and pilgrims to Lourdes. The Latour de Trie analysis, and the mineral properties claimed for the new spring by the official representative of science, added yet more to the reputation of the grotto, and made it attractive even to those who depended for their cure only on the unaided powers of nature. Also, the discussion, by exciting men's minds, added to the throng of the faithful there assembled another of the curious. All the means adopted by the unbelievers turned directly against the end which they had proposed to themselves.

By the irresistible course of events, then—a course fatal in the eyes of some, but providential in those of others—the crowd which the authorities had been trying to disperse was continually assuming larger and larger proportions. And it increased the more, because, as ill luck would have it, the material obstacles which the frosts of winter had produced had gradually disappeared. The month of May had returned; and the beautiful spring weather seemed to invite pilgrims to come to the grotto by all the flowery roads which traverse the woods, meadows, and vineyards in this region of lofty mountains, green hills, and shady valleys.

The provoked but powerless prefect watched the growth and spread of this peaceable and wonderful movement, which was bringing the Christian multitudes to kneel and drink at the foot of a desolate rock.

The measures already taken had, it is true, prevented the grotto from looking like an oratory, but, substantially, the state of things remained the same. From all sides people were coming to the scene of a miracle. Contrary to the hope of the free-thinkers, the fear of the faithful, and the expectations of all, absolutely no disturbance or breach of the peace occurred in this extraordinary concourse of men and women, old and young, believers and infidels, the curious and the indifferent. An invisible hand seemed to protect these crowds from mutual collision as they daily thronged by thousands to the miraculous fountain.

The magistracy, represented by M. Dutour, and the police, personified in M. Jacomet, looked at this strange phenomenon with astonishment.[256] Was their irritation all the greater on his account? We cannot say; but for some dispositions extremely fond of authority, the spectacle of a multitude so wonderfully orderly and peaceable, is certainly anomalous and revolutionary, if not even insulting. When order preserves itself, all those functionaries whose only business is to preserve it feel a vague uneasiness. Being accustomed to have a hand in everything in the name of the law, to regulate, to command, to punish, to pardon, to see everything and everybody depend on their person and office, they feel out of place in the presence of a crowd which does not need their services, and which gives them no pretext for interfering, showing their importance, and restraining its movements. An order which excludes them is the worst of all disorders. If such a fatal example should be generally followed, the procureurs impériaux would no longer have a sufficient reason for their existence, the commissaries of police would disappear, and even the prefectoral splendor would begin to wane.

Baron Massy had indeed been able to order the seizure of every object deposited at the grotto; but there was no law recognizing such deposits as criminal, and it was impossible to forbid or punish them. Hence, in spite of the spoliations of the prefect, the grotto was often brilliantly lighted by candles, and filled with flowers and votive offerings, and even with silver and gold coins contributed for the building of the chapel which the Blessed Virgin had required. The pious faithful wished in this way—though it were an ineffectual one—to show the Queen of Heaven their good-will, zeal, and love. "What matter is it if they do take the money? It will have been offered all the same. The candle will have given its light for a time in honor of our Mother, and the bouquet will for an instant have perfumed the sacred spot where her feet rested." Such were the thoughts of those Christian souls.

Jacomet and his agents continued to come and carry everything off. The commissary, much encouraged after having escaped the dangers of the 4th of May, had become very scornful and brutal in his proceedings, sometimes throwing the object seized into the Gave before the scandalized eyes of the faithful. Sometimes, however, he was obliged in spite of himself to leave a festal appearance at the holy place. This was when the ingenious piety of its visitors had strewn the Grotto with innumerable rose-leaves, and it was impossible for him to pick up the thousand remains of flowers which formed its brilliant and perfumed carpet.

The kneeling crowds continued meanwhile to pray, without making any reply to this provoking conduct, and let matters take their course; showing an extraordinary patience, such as God alone can give to an indignant multitude.

One evening, the report was spread that the emperor or his minister had asked for the prayers of Bernadette. M. Dutour raised a shout of triumph, and prepared to save the state. Three good women, who, as it seems, had made such a statement, were brought before the court, and the procureur demanded that they should be treated according to all the rigor of the French law. Notwithstanding his indignant eloquence, the judges acquitted two and condemned the other only to a fine of five francs. The procureur, dissatisfied with this small amount, insisted upon his suit, and made a desperate appeal to the imperial court at Pau, which, smiling at his anger, not only confirmed[257] the acquittal of the two, but also refused to sustain the very small judgment pronounced against the third culprit, and dismissed the charge altogether.

We mention this little occurrence, though an insignificant one in itself, to show how keenly the judges were upon the watch, and how carefully they searched for some offence, for some opportunity to be severe, since they employed their time in prosecuting poor simple women whose innocence was soon after declared by the imperial court.

The people still continued quiet, and afforded no pretext to the authorities for making an attack upon them in the name of the law.

One night, under cover of the darkness, unknown hands tore up the conduits of the miraculous spring, and covered its waters with heaps of stone, earth, and sand. Who had raised this vile monument against the work of God, what impious and cowardly hands had secretly committed such profanation, were not known. But when the day broke, and the sacrilege became known, a sullen indignation, as might have been foreseen, pervaded the multitudes who were collected at the place, and that day the people filled the streets and roads in agitation like that of the sea when it foams and roars under a violent wind. The police, magistracy, and sergents-de-ville were on the watch, spying and listening, but they could not report a single lawless action or seditious word. The divine influence which maintained order among these enraged multitudes was evidently invincible.

But who, then, was the author of this outrage? The judges and police, in spite of their active and zealous endeavors, did not succeed in detecting him. Hence it happened that some evil-minded persons dared to suspect the police and judiciary themselves (though evidently with great injustice) of having tried by this means to produce some disorders, in order to have an occasion to proceed with rigor.

The municipal authority most earnestly exculpated itself from all connivance in the affair. That very evening, or the next day, the mayor gave orders to replace the conduits, and to clear the floor of the grotto of all the rubbish with which the fountain had been obstructed. The mayor's policy was to not assume personally any decided position, but to keep things as they were. He was ready to act, but always as a subordinate, upon the prefect's orders and responsibility.

Sometimes the people, fearing that they would not be able to control their feelings, took precautions against themselves. The association of stone-cutters, numbering some four or five hundred, had planned to make a great but peaceful demonstration at the grotto, and to go there in procession singing canticles in honor of their patron feast of the Ascension, which came that year on the 13th of May. But, feeling their hearts indignant and their hands unsteady under these proceedings of the authorities, they distrusted themselves, and gave up the idea. They contented themselves with relinquishing on that day in honor of our Lady of Lourdes the ball they were accustomed to give every year to conclude their festival.

"We intend," said they, "that no disturbance, even though unintentional, and no entertainment not approved by the church, shall occur to offend the eyes of the Holy Virgin who has deigned to visit us."

VII.

The prefect perceived all the time, more and more, that coercion of any[258] ordinary kind was impossible for him on account of this surprising quietness, this peace as irritating as it was wonderful, which maintained itself without exterior force in these great collections of people. There was not even an accident to disturb it. He was therefore obliged either to retrace his steps in the course which he had thus far pursued, and to leave the people quite alone, or to come to open violence and persecution by finding some pretext for the imposition of arbitrary restraints upon them. It was necessary either to recede or to advance.

On the other hand, the variety and suddenness of the cures which had been worked seemed to many good people rather poorly explained by the therapeutic and mineral properties ascribed to the new spring. Doubts were raised as to the strict accuracy of the scientific decision which had been given by M. Latour de Trie. A chemist of the vicinity, M. Thomas Pugo, claimed that this water was in no way extraordinary, and had not of itself any healing properties whatsoever; and in this he was sustained by several other very capable professors in the province. Science was beginning to assert the entire incorrectness of the De Trie analysis; and the rumors to this effect had become so strong that the municipal council of Lourdes took cognizance of them. The mayor could not refuse to gratify the general desire to have a second analysis made of the water from the grotto. He, therefore, without consulting the prefect (which seemed to him useless on account of the conviction entertained by the latter of the accuracy of the results of M. Latour), procured from the municipal council a vote authorizing him to obtain a new and definitive analysis from Prof. Filhol, one of the principal chemists of our day. The council at the same time voted the funds required for the due compensation of the celebrated savant.

M. Filhol was a man of authority in modern science, and his decision would evidently not be open to appeal.

What would be the result of his analysis? The prefect was not chemist enough to tell; but we think we cannot be much mistaken in thinking that he must have been somewhat uneasy. The verdict of the eminent professor of chemistry of the faculty of Toulouse might, in fact, disturb the combinations and plans of M. Massy. Haste was becoming imperative, and on this ground especially it was necessary to fall back or press forward.

In the midst of such various passions and complicated calculations, people had not failed to subject Bernadette to some new trials as useless as the preceding ones.

She had been preparing to make her first communion, and made it on Corpus Christi, the 3d of June. This was the very day on which the municipal council of Lourdes requested M. Filhol to analyze the mysterious water. Almighty God, entering into the heart of this child, made also the analysis of a pure fount, and we may well believe that he must have admired and blessed, in this virginal soul, a most pure spring and a most transparent crystal.

Notwithstanding the retirement in which she preferred to hide herself, people continued to visit her. She was always the innocent and simple child whose portrait we have endeavored to present. She charmed all those who conversed with her by her candor and manifest good faith.

One day, a lady, after an interview with her, wished, in a moment of enthusiastic veneration easily conceivable by those who have seen Bernadette,[259] to exchange her chaplet of precious stones for that of the child.

"Keep your own, madam," said she, showing her modest implement of prayer. "You see what mine is, and I had rather not change. It is poor, like myself, and agrees better with my poverty."

An ecclesiastic tried to make her accept some money; she refused. He insisted, only to be met by a refusal so formal that a longer resistance seemed useless. The priest, however, did not yet consider his case as lost.

"Take it," said he; "not for yourself, but for the poor, and then you will have the pleasure of giving an alms."

"Do you, then, make it yourself for my intention, M. l'Abbé, and that will do better than if I should make it myself," answered the child.

Poor Bernadette intended to serve God gratuitously, and to fulfil the mission with which she had been entrusted without leaving her honorable poverty. And yet she and the family were sometimes in want of bread.

At this time the salary of the prefect, Baron Massy, was raised to 25,000 francs. Jacomet also received a gratuity. The Minister of Public Worship, in a letter which was communicated to several functionaries, assured the prefect of his perfect satisfaction, and, while commending all that he had so far done, he urged him to take energetic measures, adding that, at all costs, the grotto and miracles of Lourdes must be put an end to.[44]

On this ground, as well as on all the others, it was necessary either to retreat or to advance.

VIII.

The plan of the divine work was gradually being developed with its admirable and convincing logic. But at that time no one fully recognized the invisible hand of God directing all the events, manifest as it was, and M. Massy least of all. The midst of the mêlée is not the best position from which to judge the order of battle. The unfortunate prefect, who had set out upon the wrong track, saw in what occurred only a provoking series of unpleasant incidents and an inexplicable fatality. If we remove God from certain questions, we are very likely to find in them something inexplicable.

The progress of events, slow but irresistible, was overthrowing successively all the theses of unbelief, and forcing this miserable human philosophy to beat a retreat and to abandon one by one all its intrenchments.

First, the apparitions had occurred. Free thought had at the outset denied them out-and-out, accusing the seer of being only a tool, and of having lent herself to carry out a deception. This thesis had not stood before the examination of the child, whose veracity was evident.

Unbelief, dislodged from this first position, fell back on the theory of hallucination or catalepsy. "She thinks she sees something; but she does not. It is all a mistake."

Providence meanwhile had brought together from the four winds its thousands and thousands of witnesses to the ecstatic states of the child, and in due time had given a solemn confirmation to the truth of Bernadette's story by producing a miraculous fountain before the astonished eyes of the assembled multitudes.

"There is no fountain," was then the word of unbelief. "It is an infiltration, a pool, a puddle; anything that you please, except a fountain."

But the more they publicly and solemnly denied it, the more did the stream increase, as if it had been a living being, until it acquired prodigious proportions. More than a hundred thousand litres (twenty-two thousand gallons) issued daily from this strange rock.

"It is an accident; it is a freak of chance," stammered the infidels, confounded and recoiling.

Next, events following their inevitable course, the most remarkable cures had immediately attested the miraculous nature of the fountain, and given a new and decisive proof of the divine reality of the all-powerful apparition whose mere gesture had brought forth this fountain of life under a mortal hand.

The first move of the philosophers was to deny the cures, as they had before denied Bernadette's sincerity and the existence of the fountain.

But suddenly these had become so numerous and indubitable that their opponents were obliged to take yet another step in retreat, and admit them.

"Well, granted; there are some cures certainly, but they are natural; the spring has some therapeutic ingredients," cried the unbelievers, holding in their hands some sort of a semblance of chemical analysis. And then instantaneous cures, absolutely unaccountable upon such a hypothesis, were multiplied; and at the same time, in various places, conscientious and skilful chemists declared distinctly that the Massabielle water had not any mineral properties, that it was common water, and that the official analysis of M. Latour de Trie was meant simply to please the prefect.

Driven in this way from all the intrenchments in which, after their successive defeats, they had taken refuge; pursued by the dazzling evidence of the fact; crushed by the weight of their own avowals; and not being able to take back these successive and compulsory avowals, publicly registered in their own newspapers, what remained for the philosophers and free-thinkers to do? Only to surrender humbly to truth. Only to bow the head, bend the knee, and believe; only to do that which the ripe grain does when its cells begin to fill.

"The same change has taken place," says Montaigne, "in the truly wise, as in the stalks of wheat, which rise up and hold up their heads erect and proud as long as they are empty, but, when they are full and distended with the ripe grain, begin to humble themselves, to bend toward the ground. So men, when they have tried and sounded all things, ... renounce their presumption and recognize their natural condition."

Perhaps the philosophers of Lourdes had not an intellect open or strong enough to receive and hold the good grain. Perhaps pride made them inflexible and rebellious to manifest evidence. At any rate, with the happy exception of some who were converted, that change did not come to them which has come to those who are truly wise, and they continued to keep the lofty and proud attitude of the empty stalks.

Not only did their attitude remain thus, but their impiety, after being disgracefully pursued from one quibble, sophism, or falsehood to another, and finally driven against the wall, suddenly unmasked itself and showed its real face. It passed, as we may say, from the domain of discussion and reasoning, which it[261] had been trying to usurp, to that of intolerance and violence, which was its proper home.

Baron Massy, who was perfectly informed as to the state of public feeling, understood with his rare sagacity that, if he took arbitrary measures and resorted to persecution, he would have a considerable moral support in the exasperation of the unbelievers, who were defeated, humiliated, and furious.

He also had been defeated as yet in the contest similar to, if not exactly the same as, theirs, which he had been carrying on against the supernatural. All his efforts had come to nothing.

The supernatural, beginning at the base of a desolate rock and announced only by the voice of a child, had entered upon its course, overthrowing all obstacles, drawing the people with it, and gaining to itself on the way enthusiastic acclamations, prayers, and the cries of gratitude from the popular faith.

One course yet remained: to resist evidence, and to make an attack upon the multitude.

IX.

In the midst of all these turns of fortune, the question of the prefectoral stables had become more and more exciting, and greatly increased the prefect's exasperation. The month of June had come. The season at the watering-places was beginning, and would soon bring to the Pyrenees bathers and tourists from all parts of Europe, and show them the disturbance which the supernatural was making in the department governed by Baron Massy. The instructions of M. Rouland were becoming most urgent, and pointed to summary proceedings. On the 6th of June, M. Fould, the Minister of Finance, stopped at Tarbes on his way to his summer residence, and had a long interview with M. Massy. It was rumored that this conference related to the events at the grotto.

The act of drinking at a spring upon the common land of the town could not be considered as in itself an offence against the law. The first thing to be done by the opponents of superstition was therefore to find a pretext for so regarding it. Arbitrary proceedings have not in France the official right which they enjoy in Russia or Turkey, but need a cover of law.

The able prefect had an idea on this subject as ingenious as it was simple. The site of the Massabielle Cliffs belonging to the town of Lourdes, the mayor, as its administrator, could prohibit any one from visiting them, for or even without any reason whatever, in the same way as any private owner of land forbids at his pleasure the trespass of others upon it. Such a prohibition, publicly announced, would turn each visit to the grotto into a formal crime.

The plan of the baron hinged upon this idea; and, having hit upon it, he decided to act it out and play the despot.

Accordingly, on the following day, the mayor of Lourdes was instructed to issue the following order:

"The mayor of the town of Lourdes, acting under the instructions addressed to him by the superior authorities, and under the laws of the 14th and 22d of December, 1789, of the 16th and 24th of August, 1790, of the 19th and 22d of July, 1791, and of the 18th of July, 1837, on Municipal Administration;

"And considering that it is very desirable, in the interest of religion, to put an end to the deplorable scenes now presented at the Grotto of Massabielle,[262] at Lourdes, on the left bank of the Gave;

"Also, that the care of the local public health devolves upon the mayor, and that a great number, both of citizens and strangers, come to draw water from a spring in the aforesaid grotto, the water of which is suspected on good grounds to contain mineral ingredients, making it prudent, before permitting its use, to wait for a scientific analysis to determine the application which may be made of it in medicine; and,

"Also, that the laws subject the working of mineral springs to a preliminary authorization by government:

It was not without some hesitation that M. Lacadé consented to sign and undertake to execute this decree. His character, somewhat wanting in decision and inclined to compromise, necessarily disinclined him to such a manifest act of hostility against the mysterious power which hovered invisibly over the events which had centred round the grotto at Lourdes. On the other hand, the mayor, as was very proper, enjoyed the exercise of his office, and perhaps had even a little undue fondness for it; and his alternative was either to become the instrument of the prefectoral violence or to resign the honors of the mayoralty. Although perhaps not really trying, the situation was certainly embarrassing for the chief-magistrate of Lourdes. M. Lacadé hoped, however, to conciliate all parties by requiring M. Massy, as a condition of his signature, to insert at the head of the decree, at the very outset, the words, "Acting under the instructions addressed to him by the superior authorities," as above.

"In this way," said the mayor to himself, "I assume no responsibility before the public or in my own eyes. I have not taken the initiative, but remain neutral. I do not command, but only obey. I do not give this order, but receive it. I am not the author of this decree, I only execute it. All the blame rests upon my immediate superior, the prefect."

Coming from a soldier in a regiment drawn up for battle, such reasoning would have been irreproachable.

Having reassured himself on this principle, M. Lacadé took measures for the execution of the prefectoral edict, having it published and put on the walls in all parts of the town. At the same time, under the protection of an armed force and the direction of Jacomet, barriers were put up around the Massabielle rocks, so that no one, except by breaking through or climbing over them, could reach[263] the grotto and the miraculous fountain. Posts with notices, as prescribed by the decree, were also set up here and there at all points of entrance to the common land which surrounded the venerable spot. They prohibited trespass under pain of prosecution. Some sergents-de-ville and gardes kept watch day and night, being relieved hourly, to prepare procès-verbaux against all who should pass these posts to kneel in the vicinity of the grotto.

There was at Lourdes a judge of the name of Duprat, who was as violently opposed to the supernatural as Jacomet, Massy, Dutour, and others of the constituted authorities. This judge, not being able under the circumstances to sentence the delinquents to anything more than a very small fine, contrived an indirect method to make the fine enormous and truly formidable for the poor people who came to pray before the grotto, and to beg from the Blessed Virgin, one the restoration of health, another the cure of a darling child, a third some spiritual favor or consolation under some great affliction.

M. Duprat then imposed upon each offender a fine of five francs. But, by a conception worthy of his genius, he united under a single sentence all who disregarded the prefectoral prohibition, either by forming a party together, or even, as it would seem, by visiting the grotto in the course of the same day; and he made each liable to the whole amount of the fine. Thus, if one or two hundred persons came in this way to the rocks of Massabielle, each one of them was responsible not only for himself, but also for the others, that is, to the extent of five hundred or a thousand francs. And as the individual and original fine was only five francs, the decision of this magistrate was without appeal, and there was no way to correct it. Judge Duprat was all-powerful, and it was thus that he used his power.

Such an outrageous interference in the important question which had for some months been pending on the banks of the Gave implied on the part of the authorities not only the denial of the supernatural in this particular case, but also that of its possibility. If this had been admitted for an instant, the measures of the administration would have been entirely different; they would have had for their object the examination, not the suppression, of the controversy.

One thing had been absolutely certain, namely, the cures; whether they had been brought about by the mineral qualities of the water, by the imagination of the patients, or by miraculous intervention, these cures were indubitable, and officially recognized by the infidels themselves, who, not being able to deny them, merely tried to explain them on some natural principle.

The faithful and perfectly trustworthy witnesses to the efficacy of the water in their own cases could be counted by hundreds. There was not a single one who reported that its effects had been prejudicial. Why, then, all these prohibitory measures, these barriers put up, this menacing armed force, these persecutions? And why, if such measures were proper, should not the principle be carried out further? Why not close every place of pilgrimage where a sick person has been restored to health, every church where any one[264] has received an answer to prayer? This question was in every mouth.

"If Bernadette," said one, "without saying anything about visions and apparitions, had simply found a mineral spring possessing powerful healing virtues, what government would ever have forbidden sick people to drink of it? Nero himself would not have gone so far; in all countries, a reward would have been given to the child. But here the sick people kneel and pray, and these liveried subalterns, who crouch before their masters, do not like to have any one prostrate himself before God. This is the real reason. It is prayer which is persecuted."

"Is not the church able to take care of that and to guard the faithful against error? Let her act in her own province, and do not make an œcumenical council out of the prefecture, and an infallible pope out of a prefect or a minister. What disorder has been caused by these events? None whatever. What evil has occurred to justify your precautionary measures? Absolutely none. The mysterious fountain has only done good. Let the believing people go and drink of it, if they please. Leave them their liberty to believe, to pray, to be healed; the liberty to turn to God and to ask from heaven consolation in their grief. You who demand free thought, let prayer also be free."

But neither the anti-christian philosophy nor the pious prefect of Hautes Pyrenees would consent to notice this unanimous protest, and the severe measures were continued.

The intolerance of which the enemies of Christianity so unjustly accuse the Catholic Church is their own ruling passion. They are essentially tyrants and persecutors.

THE SHAMROCK GONE WEST.

About a generation ago, there might have been seen moving across the Wabash Valley, Indiana, one of those heavy-built wagons, with broad canvas tops, known in the West as prairie schooners. The wheels, which had not been greased since they left New Hampshire, were creaking dolefully, and the youth who urged on the jaded team declared that the sound reminded him of the frogs in his father's mill-pond. Attached to the rear of the wagon was a coop, containing a rooster and half a dozen hens, evidently suffering from their long confinement; while underneath the coop, swinging to and fro, as if keeping time to the music of the wheels, was a bucket.

Nat Putnam held the reins with a tight grip, his eyes were fixed straight in front of him, and his steeple crowned hat, which looked as if it might have been a legacy from one of his Puritan forefathers, was placed as far on the back of his head as possible,[265] so as not to obstruct the view. He was perhaps twenty-one or two years of age; but it would have been rash to gauge his wisdom by the date of his birth. If ever there was a Yankee hard to outwit, it was our friend, and his mother had often declared that her boy could see through a stone wall. The very shape of his nose, which was not unlike an eagle's beak, warned you to be on your guard when you were making a trade with him; while his face, spotted all over with freckles, could readily assume every expression from highest glee to deepest melancholy; thus enabling him to fill whatever post in life might be most congenial, were it circus clown or ruling elder.

"Mr. Putnam, when are we going to halt?" inquired a female voice, which seemed to come from the interior of the wagon. Before the youth answered, the speaker had placed herself at his side and was gazing at him with a woeful look. Poor thing! well might she ask the question. Ever since he had picked her up in the State of New York, he had kept travelling on and on, until Mary O'Brien thought he was never going to stop. Her father, who had been with them the first week of the journey, had died, and Nat had only tarried long enough to bury the old man, and let the daughter say a few prayers over his grave.

"Don't find fault," he replied. "The spirit moves me to keep pushing West; the further I go, the better I feel. This everlasting woods must come to an end by-and-by, and when we reach the open country you'll not grumble."

"But I'm quite worn out," pursued Mary; "and my shamrock is tired too. If you'd only rest and make a home, and let me plant it! The jolting of the wagon and the want of sunlight is killing it. Poor shamrock!" Here she left the seat, but presently returned, carrying a box filled with earth, in which was a little three-leafed clover.

"See," she exclaimed, "how different it looks from a month ago. 'Tis drooping fast." As she spoke she gave the plant a kiss. Her companion glanced at her a moment, then with a smile of pity, "How old are you?" he asked.

"Humph! I guess you're out of your reckoning. If you were that old, you'd chuck that piece of grass away and take to something serious. There's my Bible, why don't you read a chapter now and then? 'Twould instruct you, and keep me from getting rusty—a thing I'd deeply regret, for I may take to exhorting if farming don't pay."

"Throw my shamrock out of the wagon! Why, Mr. Putnam, 'twas father's, and he brought it all the way from Tipperary. I'm going to keep it—as long as I live, I am. It may wither, but I'll never throw it away."

"Well, well, as you like. But I repeat—why can't you read the Bible once in a while, instead of wasting your time playing with a lot of dried peas? Do they come from Tipperary, too?"

"Oh! these are my beads," she replied, taking her Rosary from her pocket; "and it's praying I am, when you see me slipping these little round things through my fingers."

"Well, can't your spirit be moved without using them peas, or beads as you call them? It seems to me they must bother you."

"I use 'em, sir, to keep count, or I mightn't say all the Hail Marys and Our Fathers." Here Nat started, and lifting his sandy eyebrows, "Aha!"[266] he exclaimed. "So! Indeed! Then 'twas keeping a tally of your prayers? Well, now, there's something in that. I really didn't believe you were so 'cute. The devil couldn't say that you hadn't been square on your devotions when you'd kept a strict tally."

The girl smiled, then, bowing her head, seemed to be whispering something to the shamrock.

"Different from other gals!" thought Putnam, as he glanced at the pale face and long, raven hair, which without braid or ribbon flowed down until it rested on the bottom of the wagon. "Yes, different from other gals! Can't quite make her out. She ain't a child, yet seems like one. Keeping a tally of her prayers is the first sign of her being 'cute. But that's a beginning anyhow. I'll educate her little by little. Oh! if she'd only take to the Bible." Here he gave the reins a jerk, then asked Mary to read him a chapter from the Book of Proverbs.

"Can't read! Can't read! That I won't believe. Why, there's Jemima Hopkins, in Conway, where I come from, that not only reads, but has started on a lecturing tour; and she ain't—let me see; she was born the year of the comet—no she ain't a day over fourteen."

"But don't own it," said the youth. "Talk as little as possible, and then the world may not find it out. Why, I know a chap in Conway that passes for 'larned,' and all 'cause he has the toothache every time he's asked to make a speech. You see, he puts on a wise look, holds his tongue, and has so humbugged the folks that they call him Uncle Solomon."

"Well, I don't want to be taken for what I'm not," rejoined Mary, a tear trickling down her cheek.

"What ails you now?" exclaimed Nat. "Oh! how different you are from Jemima Hopkins!" The girl made no response, but sighed, "Father, father."

"The old man's underground," pursued the youth, in as soft a voice as he could assume. "Crying won't bring him back. Dry your eyes, and vow to smash to atoms every whiskey-bottle that ever comes within your reach. I suspect his constitution was undermined by habits of intemperance.

"Father didn't drink in Ireland," sobbed the girl. "'Twas at that horrid grog-shop in New York he got the habit."

"Pure fountain water," murmured Nat, rolling his eyes toward the heavens, "what a blessed thing thou art! Those who give thee up for alcohol make a poor swap." Then suddenly fixing his gaze on the young woman, "Mary," said he, "I never but once tasted liquor. 'Twas at a cattle show year afore last; and do you know what happened? I paid two hundred and fifty dollars for a horse that was foundered and kicked so bad I couldn't drive him home. Now that's something I'd never have done if my head had been clear; but 'twas a lesson—a good lesson, and I told Jemima Hopkins (who got wind of it—women find out everything) to make her first lecture on temperance."

The young woman, who seemed not to have been listening to this episode in his history, was now moaning piteously for her father, nor did she cease until her companion in an agitated tone bade her keep quiet. "Your lamentations," he said, "are horrible to listen to."

"Don't you love your father?"[267] spoke Mary, gazing at him through her tears. "Wouldn't you cry if he were dead?"

"Cry if he were dead!" repeated the youth with a shudder. "Oh! why did you ask me that question? You're a strange being. Who gave you power to look into my heart? Do you know that I quarrelled with the old man, and left without saying good-by, and every mile I've travelled his last look has haunted me? 'I am near the grave,' he said, 'don't abandon me. Attend the mill, 'twill soon belong to you.' But I laughed in his face. 'The mill,' said I, 'is out of repair, and only fit to shelter rats and swallows; while the soil won't yield more than fourteen bushels of corn to the acre.' And then I turned my back on him."

"When he's dead, you'll be sorry for that," said the girl. "Write home and ask his forgiveness. Do, before it's too late."

"Home!" murmured the youth as he drove along. "Home!" Oh! what memories were awakened at the sound of that word which spoke in a thousand magic whispers! He was again a little boy seated on his father's knee, in the old house at the foot of Mount Kearsarge, listening to stories of the Revolution. The wind was howling—the snow coming in through the key-hole and under the door—a fearful night to be out. But what did he care about the tempest? He was safe on his father's knee.

"Mary," said Putnam, just as they reached the foot of a hill, "I'll take your advice, and write home the first chance I get. And I'll tell the old man that I'm sorry for the hard words I used. I'll ask him, too, to follow me-for I'm going to halt by-and-by; and I'll make him as comfortable as if he were in New Hampshire."

Here he placed the reins in her hands, then, telling her that he was going to reconnoitre and find which was the best way to get over the hill, he left the wagon with a lighter heart than he had known in many a day.

A little climbing brought him to a spot where the ground was again level, but where the timber was thicker and the wagon would have hard work to get along; and he was wondering if the everlasting forest was never coming to an end, when he was startled by a rustling noise, and, looking round, saw a wild turkey dart off her nest, while at the same instant ever so many young ones, which appeared as if only just hatched, began scattering in every direction. "I'll catch this fellow," said Nat, running after the nearest bird, "and make him a present to Mary." But, young as it was, the little thing managed to reach a clump of hazel-bushes about thirty yards distant, into which, its pursuer dashed only a step behind, and in his excitement Nat kept straight on, nor did he stop until he found himself clear of the thicket. But there he came to a sudden halt, and for almost a minute stood as if rooted to the earth. Was the scene which had burst upon him a vision of paradise? The forest had ended, the hill sloped gently to the west, and before him like a boundless sea, fired by the rays of the setting sun, lay the prairie of Illinois. Then he shouted for Mary, who with impatient step hastened up the hill, wondering what was the matter, and who arrived just as he was beginning to sing Old Hundred. The glorious view brought tears of joy to her eyes, for she felt sure Nat had at length found a spot where he would be willing to settle down and make a home, and, clasping her hands,[268] she likewise offered up a prayer of thanksgiving.

"Isn't this ahead of anything you ever dreamed of?" exclaimed the youth, when he had finished the hymn. "I've heerd Parson Job at camp-meeting trying to picture heaven; but, although I'd not have dared say it aloud, yet really I never felt as if I'd care a straw about such a place as he described—fellows with wings and harps skipping around, and singing hallelujahs for all eternity without ever getting out of breath. But here is a country I can imagine like the home of the blest."

"Heaven is more beautiful than this," rejoined his companion. "Yet 'tis a glorious country. Oh! settle here, do, and give my shamrock rest."

"As you say," continued Nat, patting her cheek, and at the same time piercing her through with his sharp gray eyes. "You're my 'Blessing.' I owe you more than I ever can pay. When you made me promise to write home and ask the old man's forgiveness, a load heavier than a millstone was taken off my heart. You ain't as larned as Jemima Hopkins, and you ain't 'cute—though keeping a tally of your prayers is something, and shows what you may become by proper education—but, ignorant as you are, there's still a great deal in you." Here he left her, and went back for the wagon, which, after not a little difficulty, he managed to bring across the hill; then, having chosen a spot near a spring of water, he unhitched the horses, while Mary let out the fowls, who clapped their wings as if they were mad; nor did the rooster stop crowing until the hens—anxious to make their nests—gathered round him, and forced him to hold his tongue and be serious.

As it was sunset, Putnam could do little more than reconnoitre the vicinity of the camping-ground, so, shouldering his rifle, he walked off, leaving the girl to prepare the evening meal.

But Mary had scarcely lit the fire when he came running back, and pointed out to her a figure on horseback, advancing along the prairie. "It may be an Indian," said he. "If he's peaceful, I'll read him a chapter in the Bible; if he's ugly, I'll shoot."

In about a quarter of an hour the stranger had approached near enough for them to discover that he was a person of their own race, with long, white hair, and a cross hanging at his side; so, throwing down the gun, Nat shouted welcome. The traveller, although astonished to hear a human voice, did not draw rein, but kept on up the hill, and in another moment the youth had grasped his hand and was giving it a hearty shake.

"So soon!" exclaimed the Jesuit missionary—for such was the character of the new-comer. "Already! Oh! you Americans are a great people. In a few years you will be across the continent."

"Well, I've fetched up here," said Putnam, grinning. "Not that the spirit didn't move me to push further West; but yonder gal—my 'Blessing,' as I call her—urged me to stop."

"I haven't any sister," replied the youth, "and ain't 'spliced' yet. She's a gal I picked up as I was coming through York State. Her father was with her, and I took him along too; but he died in a few days, and I buried him on the roadside, and as she had no home I told her she'd better stick to me. She's awful green, but for all that she has her good points,[269] and has made me happier than I've been in a long time."

With this Nat beckoned to Mary, who, as soon as she discovered in whose presence she was standing, fell on her knees, while the missionary gave her his blessing.

That evening the youth, true to his promise, wrote an affectionate letter to his father, which the Jesuit assured him he would deliver with his own hand. "And I will bring you an answer," said the latter, "for I shall pass this way on my return to the mission, which I hope to reach before winter sets in."

The next morning, when Putnam awoke, he found that the priest had already departed.

"That," said the youth, "is a point in his favor. The early bird catches the worms. So, Mary, he was one of your preachers? First I ever saw."

"Well, his coming so handy to take my letter did bend me toward him; yet I don't think I ever could sit still under his preaching."

To this the young woman made no response, but gazed sorrowfully at her companion a moment, then turned her eyes toward the West. The scene was enchanting. The breeze, which had risen with the dawn, was coming joyously over the prairie, brushing aside the mist, gathering up the perfume of ten thousand flowers, and touched Mary's lips like a breath from the Garden of Eden. And as it played with her raven hair, and brought the roses to her cheeks, Nat could not help thinking she was as fair as any lass he had ever met in New Hampshire.

"Yet she don't seem to know it," he said. "She's very green about her beauty." A herd of deer were feeding only a short distance away—in every direction the grouse dotted the plain—while circling round and round, in bold relief against the azure sky, was an eagle.

The whole of this day and the next, Putnam kept hard at work felling trees to build a log-house, while the girl remained near the wagon, plying her needle, watching her shamrock, which already showed signs of renewed life, and gathering the eggs, which the hens insisted on laying every hour, so as to make up for lost time.

At length, when he had cut down trees enough, he bade Mary follow him out on the plain, having first filled her apron with stakes—for what purpose she could not imagine.

"What on earth are you doing?" she exclaimed, after having walked by his side almost an hour.

"Upon my word," replied the girl, "your conduct is distressing; yes, it frightens me to see you turning and twisting in every direction, driving these pieces of wood into the ground, and counting on your fingers. Oh! what'll become of me if you've gone mad?"

"Was born the year of the comet," interrupted his companion, laughing, "and I'm only a goose."

"Well, don't own it if you are; I'll educate you. And now here goes the first lesson." With this he lifted his forefinger, then shutting one eye, "You must know we won't be long in such a beautiful spot without company. My wagon-tracks will lead many to Illinois who wouldn't have stirred from the shadow of Mount Kearsarge if I hadn't set the example. Me-thinks[270] even now I hear 'em cracking their whips and bidding good-by to the old folks in Conway. They'll come, too, from other parts of New Hampshire; ay, by the score and hundred they'll come. Now, such being the case, why not have a town laid out by the time they arrive? And right here where we stand shall be our mansion: 'cause, you perceive, it's a corner-lot. While yonder, on t'other corner—so as to be handy in case of rain—I'll get 'em to build the meeting-house; and oh! won't I be proud when it's finished! And what a fine rooster I'll put on the steeple!"

"What! a cross, emblem of popery, on this virgin soil, where there's never been one seen, unless 'twas that which your preacher carried yesterday? No, indeed! I've heerd enough about popery."

"I'll pray God to enlighten you," said the girl, at the same time heaving a sigh.

"Well, the more light I get, the less I'll want a popish emblem on top of the meeting-house." Here Nat struck his forehead, then gazing at Mary with an expression of anger, "Have you come so far with me," he said, "to quarrel at last? Bah! you are a goose." With this he turned on his heel and walked off, muttering to himself and evidently very much excited.

Poor Mary did not open her lips again that day, but helped build the log-house with the greatest good-will. Nor did Putnam address her a single word. In fact, it was not until a week had gone by and the dwelling was almost finished that he so far recovered from his ill humor as to speak to her in a friendly way.

"Mary," said he, looking proudly up at the mud-plastered chimney, "this is a good beginning. The first house is always the hardest to erect; and you've worked like a beaver. Tell me, now, are you still of the same mind about the cross? Will you stay away from meeting unless I give up my point?"

"Open my eyes! Well, you're the first mortal ever insinuated that Nat Putnam wasn't wide-awake. But enough; there's a split between us nothing can mend. Alas!" Here he walked off to the hill muttering, "What a pity! what a pity! Ignorant as she is, there's yet something about her which goes to my heart. I love Mary O'Brien. I might even ask her to become my wife, if she hadn't such foolish notions about religion. But not content with making the sign of the cross afore every meal, she actually wants one put on top of the meeting-house. What an idea! A cross! A thing never seen on this virgin soil till that old preacher came along."

For more than an hour the youth wandered about the hillside, lamenting Mary's obstinacy and superstition, until at length he heard her blowing the horn for dinner.

"Let her blow," he said, "I'm in no humor to eat anything. I'll just lay down and take a nap." With this he threw himself on the ground, and was about settling his head on a comfortable spot, which seemed as if intended by nature for a pillow, when he gave a start and rose to his feet. "As I live," he cried, "this is a grave! And if there isn't a cross at one end of it!—and some thing carved upon the wood—what can it be?" Here he stooped, and, after brushing away a little moss which[271] partly covered the knife-cuts, spelt out the words,

"Well, now, this does beat all," he continued. "Who'd 'ave believed a cross had got to this place ahead of me? And there's something about the epitaph which makes me feel solemn. I wonder how long since these words were cut. Perhaps for years and years only the deer and eagles have gazed upon them. Perhaps since the day the corpse was buried, no lips but mine have spoken over this lonely grave, 'May his soul rest in peace!'"

For a few minutes the youth lingered by the mound, wrestling with himself—for he was conscious that a change was coming over him—then wended his way back to the cabin, resolved to be frank with Mary, and confess that a cross had got here before Nat Putnam.

He had arrived within a couple of paces of the door, which was half-open, when, hearing her speaking, he stopped. "She is praying," he said. "What a fine voice she has! Better than Jemima's." Then, softly advancing, he discovered her kneeling on the floor, her hands clasped, and her cheek wet with tears. In an earnest tone she was asking God to pardon her father his many sins of intemperance; then with equal fervor, she began to pray for the speedy return of the missionary, bringing Putnam a blessing and forgiveness from his aged parent.

At these words the youth trembled with emotion, and bursting into the room, "Mary, Mary," he cried, "I take back all I said. I laughed when you made the sign of the cross, and I called you ignorant. But you're more larned than Nat Putnam. Your prayer, a moment ago, stirred me up as I never was stirred at camp-meeting. It made me feel as when through the dark clouds I see blue sky peeping out. Praying for the dead! O God! if your preacher comes back and tells me father is dead, I can do one act of reparation—pray for his soul. And but for you, I'd not have written home; but for you, black remorse would have gone on eating deeper and deeper into my soul—and remorse is hell."

"Mr. Putnam," said the young woman, who, startled by his wild look, had risen to her feet, "my prayers have been heard."

"Yes, they have. I am a Catholic, and vow that our first meeting-house shall have a cross upon it. O my 'Blessing!' never can I be grateful enough to the Almighty for throwing you in my path!"

"It seemed an accident," pursued the girl, "yet it may indeed have been God's work. If it has proved for the good of your soul, it, perhaps, has saved mine. I cannot tell you how I was tempted when I lived in the city of New York. Why, one night, when I was out looking for father, somebody whispered in my ear that I might live in splendor if I chose. The tenement-house where we lodged seemed to hold as many people as there are in the whole of Tipperary. Father and I, with a score of others, slept in a damp room underground. Oh! when I think of those days, it is like a horrid dream."

"Well, why don't them people follow my tracks? There's land enough here, dear knows. Yes, let 'em all come; only they must leave whiskey behind. I want this to be a temperance settlement." Then, after a pause, "But, Mary, I wonder if amongst them I'd find another like you, my 'Blessing'?" With this, he rose, and was about to throw his arms round her neck, when he checked[272] himself; then, after fumbling a moment in his pocket, went out to where her shamrock was blooming, and, close by it, he put in the ground a pumpkin-seed. Happy were the June days which followed. With what a light heart did Mary watch the youth at work!

"He's a strange being," she would say; "different from any I ever met in the Old Country. But, for all that, he is good; and when Father De Smet returns I'll have him baptized, and then there'll be no firmer Catholic than Nat Putnam."

And the young man—how shall we describe his feelings as, hour after hour, he follows the plough?

"I'm making a home," he would say, "for my 'Blessing.' How she leans upon me! If I were to die, what would become of her? She don't know enough to give lectures, like Miss Hopkins. Oh! if I could only mix her and Jemima together. Yet she's pretty handy at the needle, and since she's overhauled my things I ain't lost a button. And yet my suspenders, darn 'em, do give awful jerks once in a while."

One morning, while he was thus silently praising Mary's skill in the art of sewing, he stopped, gave a groan, then, letting go the handle of the plough, "Wrong!" he exclaimed. "There goes one! Rip! whew!" and, as he spoke, he grabbed a button out of the furrow. For more than a minute the youth examined it thoughtfully, turned it over and over, put it to his eye; then, with a grin, "No," he said, "Mary didn't sew this on; the thread sticking to it ain't the kind she uses. Ah! Jemima Hopkins! Jemima Hopkins! 'tis some of your work. Yes, I remember; 'twas just afore you started off lecturing, and when your head was full of big words. O Jemima Hopkins!"

And so the summer passed away. The corn came up magnificently, and when it was in all its glory, with the west wind shaking the tassels, Putnam would call Mary out to admire it. "It looks," he would say, "like a regiment of militia on parade." The pumpkin-seed which he had planted was now well above ground, and creeping slowly but steadily round and round the shamrock. Once the girl was tempted to pull the vine up, but, on reflection, it occurred to her that she had better not. And she was right; for under its broad leaves her little plant found shelter from the scorching rays of the sun; and when the thunder-storms burst over the prairie, the shamrock would have been crushed by the great rain-drops, which fell thicker and faster than ever she had known them fall in Ireland, but for the same kindly protector.

One evening, toward the middle of September, Nat came home from work at an earlier hour than usual. He appeared troubled; there was evidently something on his mind; and, when the girl asked what was the matter, he scratched his head, devoured her a moment with his sharp, gray eyes, then, turning on his heel, walked off to a log near the door. There he seated himself, and, after musing awhile, beckoned her to approach.

The young woman obeyed, not, however, without some misgiving. "Mr. Putnam," she thought, "has got tired of living so long in one place, and is anxious to move further west. Alas!"

In another moment she was seated near him and gazing anxiously in his face. He returned her look only for an instant, then coughed, and, rolling up his eyes, "'Tis a solemn thing to do," he murmured. "But I can't help it, and wouldn't if I could. I've felt it coming over me ever since the[273] day she persuaded me to write home to father. Jemima Hopkins would grab at me like a sunfish at a worm in April if I gave her a chance; but this girl is so innocent-like that really I don't know how to begin. And then her very dependence on me, the solitude of this spot, makes her kind of sacred, and I dread lest even words of purest love might give her offence."

"Well, Mr. Putnam," said Mary, interrupting his soliloquy, "you're not going to move away? Don't make my shamrock travel any further. Speak! Oh! I feel so anxious."

At these words, Nat cleared his throat, cracked his knuckles, then, in a voice singularly agitated for one of his temperament, "Mary," he began, "I am never going to move from this spot. You are fond of it, and that's enough." At this unexpected announcement the girl clapped her hands. "But," he went on, "I am not contented; there is yet something wanting to make me perfectly happy."

"And, pray, what is it, sir? I know I am very green, but tell me if the fault be mine; tell me, and I promise to do all I can to please you."

"Well," he pursued, raising his hand and pointing at the pumpkin-vine which circled round the shamrock, "do you see yonder plant almost hiding, and at the same time protecting, the smaller one?"

As he spoke, he gazed earnestly at her. A faint blush crimsoned the girl's cheek. She seemed a little startled; and when she replied, "Yes, I will be your shamrock!" it was in a voice low and scarce above a whisper.

"Well done!" cried Nat, tossing his hat in the air. "Well done! As soon as the priest comes, we'll have the knot tied."

That very evening, the missionary arrived, bringing Putnam news from home, which, although sad indeed, was yet not unmingled with consolation. His father was dead, but the last words he had spoken were words of forgiveness to the youth who had abandoned him in his old age. The Jesuit remained at the log-house almost a fortnight, instructing the convert in the faith, and, before he departed, the latter had the happiness of serving a Mass offered for the repose of his father's soul.

"This never would have happened but for you, my 'Blessing,'" said Nat, pressing Mary's hand. "Those who will follow me to this enchanting spot may laugh at my becoming a Catholic, but 'twill be because they are ignorant. Your religion has in it something sublime; it reaches across the grave, and, by our prayers, gives us a hold upon those who have gone before us. Father! father!" Here his voice failed, and for a minute or two he wept. At length, mastering his grief, he turned to the priest and signified that he was ready for the marriage ceremony to begin. It was short; but while it lasted, a song-sparrow (the first the youth had heard since he arrived in Illinois) alighted upon the window-sill and piped a joyous carol. Often had he heard the bird at his home near the foot of Mount Kearsarge, and now its sweet notes fell on his ear like the voice of a spirit come all the way from the Saco Valley to wish him happiness on his wedding-day.

That evening, he took his wife and the priest to visit the mound on the hillside, and around it they knelt and offered a prayer for the unknown whose dust lay beneath.

As they sauntered back to the cabin, Putnam expressed a lively hope that all his friends in New Hampshire would emigrate to the West. "And when Jemima arrives," he said, closing one eye and looking at his wife with the other, "you'll see something worth seeing; for she's awful smart, and when we get arguing together it's diamond cut diamond. But I'll convert her; oh! I will."

"No doubt," rejoined Mrs. Putnam, "the discussion will be animated and interesting, for you have a clear head and a ready tongue, while Miss Hopkins was born the year of the comet; but believe me, husband dear, it is praying, not arguing, brings into the fold those who are out of it."

"That must be so," he continued, "for you never argued with me, and yet now I'm a Catholic. O happy day when Nat Putnam met Mary O'Brien! And while I will strive by every honest means to improve my worldly condition, I will remain true to the faith. Illinois is a wilderness now, but they're coming, Mary, they're coming; and, before your raven hair turns gray, a city will stand on this prairie; and opposite our corner-lot shall be a church with a cross upon it—a Catholic church. And 'twill be thanks to you, my 'Blessing;' yes, thanks to the shamrock gone West."

SAYINGS OF THE FATHERS OF THE DESERT.

An aged monk said to a brother who was tempted by evil spirits: When the evil spirits begin to talk to thee in thy heart, do not reply to them; but arise, pray, and do penance, saying: Son of God, have mercy on me. But the brother said to him: Behold, O father, I do meditate, and there is no compunction in my heart, because I do not understand the meaning of my words. And he replied: Yet do thou meditate; for I have heard that Abbot Pastor and other fathers have spoken this proverb: The charmer knows not the meaning of the words which he says, but the serpent hears, and knows the virtue of the charm, and is humbled and subjected to the enchanter. So also with us, even though we be ignorant of the meaning of what we say, yet the evil spirits, hearing, tremble and depart.

Abbot Elias said: I fear three things. One, when my soul shall depart from the body; the second, when I shall come before God; the third, when sentence shall be pronounced upon me.

Archbishop Theophilus, of holy memory, when he was about to die, said: Blessed art thou, Abbot Arsenius, because thou hast ever had this hour before thy eyes.

VESPERS.

THE LEGEND OF SANTA RESTITUTA.

Ischia is one of the gems of the Bay of Naples, and fortunately one of the least known and least visited of the tourist-haunted island group.

The Monte Epomeo rises in its midst, a mass of tufa rock, perforated here and there by fumarole, that is, openings through which volcanic exhalations are constantly sending forth their thin blue threads of hazy smoke to mingle with the blue and hazy atmosphere that veils the whole island in a fairy and gossamer robe. Two or three villages are built upon the low girdle of sand that lies at the foot of the mountain; on one side of the island are ledges of rock where the vine grows, on the other is a projection, or rather a separate rock, on which is built a state-prison. Only one road passes through Ischia, and no wheels ever leave their marks there, save when a royal visitor brings a modern carriage with him. The inhabitants walk barefoot, and the strangers ride donkeys, or are carried in open sedan-chairs, called "portantine." The women lounge about at their cottage-doors, spindle in hand, their heads curiously bound up in silken handkerchiefs, and their ears weighed down by huge ear-rings. There is a wonderful and unspeakable charm hanging over the place; the beauties that elsewhere in Italy hardly surprise you, seem to hold you spell-bound here. The sea is now blue, now green, now purple, always of an intense color, and seemingly an inverted firmament, where the white fishing-smack sails stand for clouds, and the little silver-crested wavelets for stars. The air is very pure, yet warm and balmy, and, when the storm visits the island, even the lightning must make itself more softly beautiful than elsewhere, for it is often seen in rose and violet colored flashes, making the heavens like to a vault of opal. The myrtle grows on the mountain-side, and the oleander blooms lower down, the vines climb from the water's edge to the roofs of the few rustic hotels the island boasts, and among all these beauties are hidden springs of medicinal water and hot sea-sands, all of them much used by Italians chiefly in the shape of baths. The sand-bath is a hole within four shanty-like plank walls, and the patient has himself buried in it up to his neck for the time prescribed.

Of course, much is said to strangers concerning the beauty of the sunrise from the top of Epomeo. But, as usual, when you go to see the sun, you find him behind sulky curtains of gray-white clouds that roll like another sea between the blue unseen Mediterranean and the bright purple heaven above. Still, this, too, is beautiful, though coldly so, and very unlike the lovely western sunrise over the Atlantic. But the glory of Italy is in her sunsets, and toward evening sea and mountain, tufa rock and yellow sand, put on a marvellous robe, a veritable "coat of divers colors," and life seems to breathe and sigh in things that before seemed lifeless.

Ischia, like all Italian localities, has its patron saint; they call her Santa Restituta.

When persecution was raging in Egypt, in the third century, says the simple legend, the body of a young[277] maiden, with a millstone tied round her neck, floated across the sea and rested in a creek on the south side of the island. The creek is called after the martyr to this day, and above it are rocks whose black mass literally overhangs and roofs in part of the bay. Just where her body rested, in a sandy, barren place, lilies grew up and continued to bloom; they are there now, and are very peculiar as well as very lovely, a sort of cross between the lily and the iris, with delicate pointed petals, five in number, and a tall smooth stem with very little verdure. Not only do these flowers grow nowhere else in the island or out of it, but they will not even grow in a land of their own sandy soil if transplanted with a quantity of it elsewhere. The millstone that was round the saint's neck is said to be embedded in a wall in the neighborhood of her church: there is such a stone, whether the same or not no one can tell. Later on, a church was erected over the remains of the martyr, and she was chosen patroness of the island. A very curious Byzantine figure, gilt all over and nearly life-size, was made in wood and placed over the altar. In one hand, she was pictured as holding a book of the Gospels, and, in the other, a full-rigged vessel. When the south of Italy was invested by Saracen hordes, Ischia did not escape pillage, and of course, judging the most precious things to be in the church, as they always were in Catholic times, the marauders rushed to Santa Restituta's shrine, and attempted to carry off the golden statue, as they believed it to be. The statue, naturally, was a movable one, and used to be carried in procession on certain stated occasions. But now it remained rooted to the spot, and no effort of the stalwart infidels could move it a hair's-breadth from its pedestal. In rage and disappointment, one of them struck at it savagely with his scimetar, and a mark upon its knee still attests this outrage. The sacrilege was promptly punished, for the men themselves now found they were unable to move, and remained invisibly chained at the foot of the miraculous image. If they were released, the legend does not say; let us hope that they were freed by faith, and that conversion followed this strange sign. The statue remained immovable ever since, and another image was made to be carried in procession, with the addition of the miraculously riveted Saracens, in a small painted group on the same stand as the figure itself. Whether the legend be absolutely true or only partly so, whether fact and figure be mixed together, and things spiritual typified under tangible forms, it is not for us to decide, but the simple faith of the happy islanders is certainly to be admired, and even to be envied. They have yearly rejoicings, fireworks, processions, songs, and services, and a military parade of what national guards they can muster, to celebrate their saint's anniversary; they are proud of her, and point out her statue and tell her history to strangers with the same enthusiasm with which soldiers speak of a favorite general.

And, if my surmise be true, they have had her celebrated in art by no less a painter than Paul de la Roche, whose "Martyre" is well known all over Europe as one of the chastest, truest, and most reverent as well as most beautiful representations of martyrdom. He has painted a fair maiden in a white robe, and her hands tied with a cruel rope in front. The long, golden hair is gently moved, like a strange and new sea-weed, by the rippling water that flows over it; the cord cuts into the flesh[278] of the white, delicate hand, and the water seems reverently eager to pour its coolness into the wounds and to stay the cruel fever in them; the face is that of an angel that is looking on the Father's countenance in highest heaven; a coronal of light rests, like a sun-touched cloud, just above her head, and in the dark background a large mass of overhanging rock, just like the rocks of Ischia, frown down upon the sea-green bay, and shadows of muffled, lurking figures are seen watching the floating wonder from above.

If the painter had not Santa Restituta in his mind, the coincidence, at least, is curious. Yet it is true that so many blessed saints died this death that he may have meant to portray a typical rather than an individual representation in this picture, which is one of his masterpieces.

There is another floating figure, with golden hair and folded hands, which is more familiar to most people than this one, and, though the comparison is strange, I cannot help introducing it here. I mean the figure of Tennyson's Elaine, whom Gustave Dore has made his own in his unapproachable illustration of the Idyls of the King, but whose history and especially whose death has been the source of many a painter's inspiration. I hardly know one more touching object in all modern poetry, save that more solemn and more dignified one that closes the idyl of Guinevere, and whose calm sublimity almost touches the divine. But though the analogy of the "Lily Maid of Astolat" borne down the river to the oriel-windowed palace of Arthur's Queen to that other lily maid, the virgin-martyr of Egypt, be brought to mind by the likeness in both cases of the floating waters and the unbound hair; yet here the analogy ends, for we see that as far as heaven is from earth, so far are these two beautiful figures removed one from the other. Both died for love, both died pure; but the love of the one was such as, once quenched in death, would never live again, for she would be "even as the angels;" while the love of the other not only did death not quench, but would make tenfold more ardent, as she would "follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth," and sing "the new canticle" no man could sing but those "who were purchased from the earth."

Tennyson's Elaine is a figure of earth in earth's most sinless form and most innocent meaning, yet still earthly, still imperfect, still embodying the idea of man's natural weakness and inherent decay. Paul de la Roche's "Martyre," or Ischia's Santa Restituta, is a figure of heaven, an already glorified soul, who, having conquered the flesh, the world, and the devil, having offered her body to God "a living sacrifice," and having "put on immortality," has passed beyond our understanding and beyond our criticism into that region of bliss whose very dimmest ray would be unbearable glare to our eyes, and the full vision of which would bring a blessed and a painless death in its inevitable train.

It has been the fashion of our days to think lightly of legends and traditions of saints, to ridicule their so-called inventors, and pity their supposed victims. On the other hand, we see families clinging to certain versions of certain facts relative to their long descent and the doughty deeds of their world-famed forefathers; we see nations dwelling complacently on marvellous explanations concerning their origin, and proudly pointing to distant feats of knightly prowess performed by northern Viking and Frank or Vandal chief; we see[279] tradition already growing up like irrepressible vines around the memory of great men buried perchance but yesterday, and even around the persons of living men to whom the wheel of fortune or the rarer gift of genius has given a temporary prominence; and is it strange that Catholics should love to repeat similar legends concerning their forefathers, the founders of their spiritual nation, their forerunners in the kingdom of heaven? We, too, have in our faith a family pride, a national pride, and a pride born of personal friendship and attachment for some of God's living saints, his yet uncrowned champions. We are all one family, we all call to God "Abba," that is, Father; we are "the sons of God" and the "joint heirs with Christ." We cannot help rejoicing over the glory of one of our brethren or sisters; we cannot help being proud of their virtues and seeking to perpetuate and honor their memory. We are all one nation, too, for there is but one Head, one Lord, one Christ; and in the history of the saints we learn the history of the church, our state, our country, our kingdom. And among our great men, whom no wheel of fortune but the divine decree of Providence has lifted to pre-eminence among us, and with whom, for the most part, holiness and humility take the place of genius—is it strange we should single out some of whom, having known them, we willingly speak and hear little details told, and treasure them up, and weave them into heart-poems for our children's children? So grows tradition, and a mind that has no place in it for tradition's evergreen vines to spread their beautiful network is but a misshapen likeness of the mind that God created in Adam, and endowed with sympathetic tenderness and appreciative discrimination.

Some among us have had the happiness to be brought into contact with men greatly favored by God. And who that had daily seen his humble, hidden convent-life, that sweet soul-poet and child-like priest, Frederick Faber, could fail to accumulate concerning him loving traditions, and what our descendants may hereafter call fond and vain legends? And who that had once heard the voice of Henry Newman, the leader of the school of thought of our days in the simple converse he loves best, or in the plain instructions to his school-children at catechism, could help treasuring up such a recollection as more precious by far than a token of royal friendship, or the memory of some unexampled intercourse with state minister or powerful diplomat? There are others who have lived or are living in the same cold, beliefless days as ourselves, and whose presence, either tangible through personal acquaintance or reflected through their sermons or their books, is a perpetual fragrance, which we seek ever to keep alive in the garden of our hearts by heaping up and stowing away in our minds all manner of details belonging to their useful and everyday lives.

Pius IX. and Montalembert, and the Curé d'Ars, and Father Ignatius Spencer, and the Père de Ravignan; Lacordaire and the convert Jew, Hermann, the musician and Carmelite who has but lately passed away, and will be remembered, let us trust, even as the Fra Angelico of the nineteenth century; Mother Seton and the Sœur Rosalie; Thomas Grant, the saintly Bishop of Southwark, who meekly laid down his burden in the City of the Catacombs when his Lord called him from the Council of the Vatican to the foot of the throne; and Henry Manning, and John Hughes, and others yet whose names[280] are known only to a few friends on earth, but widely known among the hosts of heaven, sons of Benedict and daughters of Scholastica, all these are among the chosen ones whose names cannot but be speedily wreathed in legendary and traditional history. And even if it happens that some detail lovingly told comes to be exaggerated, and have accessories linked to it by earnest—if indiscreet—zeal, shall that be accounted as a crime and a malicious distortion of truth? An error of love can be surely forgiven by mothers who are proud of their battle-stained sons; by children who worship the mother that taught them, and the father who guided and corrected them; by soldiers who tell round the camp-fire of the iron men who led them to victory, or who bore with them and for them an equally glorious captivity and defeat; by sick men who do not forget the "Sister's" care; by all, in a word, who have a heart wherewith to be grateful, a mind wherewith to admire, a memory wherewith to give honor.

What is true of the saints of to-day is so, and was so from the beginning, of the saints of long ages ago. And if their history has come down to us woven of fact and legend both, it is thus only the more historical to us, for it tells us the history of the church's love for her glorified children, as well as the record of the real life of those children themselves. Santa Restituta has thus led us far from Ischia's scarcely known beauties and simple island shrine, but she now leads us back to her own sanctuary by the thought here suggested, that, even as many hidden saints walk among us now, so there are many hidden nooks of the earth, like her sea-girt home, where faith is still the daily bread of the people, and where an almost primeval innocence reigns under the protection of that happy, childlike ignorance which, according to modern civilization, is the root of all evil.

Hidden saints are like to these little inclosed gardens of faith; their hearts are valleys sequestered from the glare of the world's unbelief and the world's selfishness; their souls are as rock-bound creeks where lilies grow and wavelets ripple over golden sands; with them, too, the sunset of life is ever the most glorious hour, as it is with Ischia's myrtle-clad rocks and vine-crowned cottages.

Santa Restituta, pray for us, and, if we are not worthy to be of the number of the saints ourselves, suffer us to be the historians, the biographers, the poets of such saints as those who are known only by name in one remote corner of God's universe, or of such other saints of whom glimpses are now and then revealed to us by the very simplicity and utter unguardedness of their sweet and undefiled nature.

A LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT OF A COLLEGE.

You have a talent for evoking thought. The excellent paper on higher education, which you published in your issue for March, has set me a-thinking; and as I hold you to be a wise counsellor, I hope you will allow me to communicate my poor thoughts to you. I want to talk to you about some of the difficulties of Catholic education in the United States.

By the way, the subject of your article was working at the same time in several minds. I read in the Galaxy for March a long dissertation, full of idolatry for Germany, on higher education; and the students of St. John's College, Fordham, New York, celebrated Washington's birthday by a series of splendid speeches on the same theme. Would you, Mr. World, feel complimented if I should exclaim, "Les beaux esprits se rencontrent"?

Well, then, in the matter of college education—for that is what I have been thinking on—as in a multitude of other matters, Catholics in this country owe eternal gratitude to their clergy. If we have any colleges at all, to whom do we owe them? To the zeal and self-sacrifice of our Christian Brothers, of our priests and our bishops. I think that all our colleges were established by churchmen, whether secular or regular. It were, perhaps, invidious to mention names—but we ought not to withhold a deserved and willing tribute of praise from the heroic men who gave us our colleges. We say heroic, for these men were truly such. Lengthy reflection is not necessary in order to justify the epithet. What a mountain of obstacles had to be cleared away to purchase the site of these colleges, to build them, to man them, to govern and carry them on! Education is a noble and fertile subject to speak about. It is an immense blessing to be really educated. But what an amount of toil and anxiety does not this delicious fruit cost those who seek to bestow it on our children! How many harassing days and nights have not the faithful superior, professors, and prefects of a college to spend in the exercise of their several functions! All the world knows that boys are not a very inviting material to work on. They are unreasoning, ungrateful, thoughtless, inconstant; often weak, lazy, perverse, and incorrigible. Many of them act in college as though they went there to torment everybody—or, at most, for the benefit of the officers, and not at all for their own good. Of course, if boys were merely to be taught lessons, much of the trouble connected with their education could be avoided. But Catholic colleges mast make moral men and Christians—and that, as we all know, is a difficult task, for the young heart is very[282] wayward. Then, too, what heartburns with fathers and mothers and guardians! How little pecuniary compensation for the educator! Yet our clergy, be it said to their undying honor, have nobly braved, outfaced, all these privations and humiliations. They are doing so even at this day. Let them refuse to sacrifice their time, talents, health, and temporal weal, and we ask whether there is in the United States a single Catholic college which would not have to suspend operation to-morrow? We must remember that our colleges are not endowed. In a financial point of view, they depend almost entirely on the fees of their students. Commonly, too, they have more or less of standing debts, for which yearly interest must be paid. Were the presidents, professors, and prefects of such houses to exact fat salaries in return for their sublime abnegation, what, Catholic Americans, would be the fate of all your colleges? Do you often think of this when, amid the ease and luxury of your drawing-rooms and dinner-tables, you run down this college, sneer at that other, and wonder why a third does not do this, that, and the other thing in the shape of improvement? You have colleges because your clergy are willing to sacrifice their time and tastes, to submit to drudgery, to wear out their very lives, and live and die in poverty. All praise to you, Catholic priests and bishops, to you religious orders of these United States.

These remarks go to prove that our first difficulty in the walks of higher education is the slender means of our colleges.

In the next place, it appears to your unworthy correspondent that very little is done to put an end to this precarious and from-hand-to-mouth existence. What generosity does the laity show to our colleges? People contribute munificently to convents, asylums, churches, etc.; but how many make donations to colleges; how many found prizes, medals, or scholarships in them? Very few, at least so far as my knowledge goes. Colleges, like poor bears in winter, are supposed to live on their own fat. No one asks them whether they are in debt, in need of money, would not accept of a collection of books, minerals, philosophical apparatus, or anything of that kind. No one says: Wouldn't you allow me to build you a good gymnasium, an exhibition hall, give you an organ for your chapel, or transfer to you some of my shares in this or that lucrative business? No, dear colleges, be comforted. Live on as best you can. The result is that these institutions can never fully shake off their debt, they can make but little material improvement, or, if they attempt improvements, it must be at a snail's pace. Even graduates will forget the wants of Alma Mater, and despise her for her blameless penury, just as some gross-natured upstarts scorn their poor parents and friends. What a different spectacle we should soon witness in our colleges were gentlemen of means to show their zeal for education, and follow the wholesome example of Protestants by bestowing upon our seats of learning a portion of their wealth! Progress would then be possible, college bills could be lightened entirely or at least partially, gratuitous education might be granted to deserving young men. As things now stand, charity is out of the question for most of our colleges. We must endeavor to beget and promote in our people this enlightened and patriotic spirit toward our colleges.

Difficulty number three: Many persons take a narrow view of education.[283] Some act upon what may be called the system of the three R's, that is readin', 'ritin', and 'rithmetic. They fancy their sons educated when they can read, write, and cast up accounts. Others may raise their eyes a little higher, but in the end, like the old Romans laughed at by Horace, they value education only in so far forth as it is a money-making machine. Few are broad-minded enough to see in education a development of the entire man, and, as a necessary inference, a slow and gradual process. In consequence of the errors afloat on this head, parents will not allow time sufficient for the education of their children. They force colleges to crowd an immense circle of studies into a short space. The consequences are not flattering. The mind cannot be thoroughly developed, and education degenerates into ill-digested instruction. Depth is lost. Your paper, which led me to think upon all these topics, speaks very sensibly about philosophy. But how, I ask, can anything like a deep, serious, thorough course of philosophy be taught in one year? Still, that is all our young men get, and that is all the generality of parents will concede. Look at our colleges—how many graduates of the first year return to study a second? Were it not better to give no degree until the close of the second year? The diploma once obtained, though it is only a cowardly sheep-skin, fills our young graduates with valor, and makes them fancy that they are fit to play roaring lion all the country over. Every college should devote at least two years of its course to the study of philosophy. Education without a sound philosophy must always be a mere broken shaft, a truncate cone, an abortion. We ought to organize a crusade for the welfare of philosophy in our colleges. I was right glad, Mr. World, to hear you advocating the study of this crowning branch of education, and insisting, I think, upon sound scholasticism. Scholastic philosophy, that is the philosophy.

My next difficulty shall be proposed in the form of a question: Could not our Catholic colleges come to an understanding, so as to have in all of them about the same programme and the same text-books? At present, there is a very great divergence on these points. For instance, what a multitude of grammars we have, and what wretched things for boys some of these grammars are! They lack method and logic, they dive too deep into philosophy, and are too learned and philosophical. Banish philosophy and philology to their proper spheres. When grammars of the dead languages were much more modest and unpretending, Latin and Greek were better known, better written, if not also better spoken. What I say of grammars applies with equal force to many other books now used in our colleges. A convention of our college authorities for the discussion of these topics might do as much good as many other conventions, if not far more.

Parents and guardians have a great share in the troubles experienced by colleges. Nowadays, boys decide almost everything with respect to their education. It is they who make choice of their college, determine whether they shall study, how long and what they shall study. All that parents seem to have to say or do in the matter is to obey their whimsical offspring. I can understand that there is no use in forcing a lad to study what he reasonably cannot learn; but I cannot see why the management of his education should be given over to him in fee-simple. This violation of the fourth commandment[284] throws honest colleges into a dilemma. On the one hand, they would like to keep their students, and, on the other, they feel bound to make those students work. But the young lord of his destinies often does not wish to study, and, if he is urged to do so, he grows dissatisfied, says the officers are too cross, and leaves the institution. Should he not be urged, he will idle away his time, annoy everybody, learn nothing, and finally, by his ignorance and bad conduct, injure the reputation of his college. Parents, when they send their sons to college, should not forget that these sons are not immaculately perfect. They need a strong dose of discipline. They must be taught by word and deed that they have to study and to obey. The word of college authorities should weigh more in the balance than that of weak, lazy, and roystering young lads. If these ideas prevailed somewhat more than they do, and were acted up to, colleges would have an easier task to perform, their task would be better performed, and the education given to boys would be more vigorous. There is too much womanish fondness, too much indulgence, shown to boys in these days. We live in an age of feeling, of likes and dislikes. Energetic, self-controlling, strong manhood is on the wane. Magnificent men could be made out of our American boys. I love them dearly. Their character is full of fine traits. They are clever, generous, open, and manly. Why should they be emasculated by false kindness and compliance?

Once in college, let us subject these boys to solid and stiff examinations. Those who fail, if they are in the graduating class, should not graduate that year, no matter what great man or great woman may intercede, scold, or shed tears in their behalf. No prædeterminatio physica should settle on the gentlemen of the graduating class. Because they happen to be in that class, their graduation must not become a fated necessity. No doubt, it is a very nice sight at the close of the year, on the annual commencement day, to behold a large number of young gentlemen receiving their diplomas. The heart of Alma Mater throbs with gladness at the beautiful spectacle. But it is a much nicer thing for Alma Mater to have to say that her diploma is deserved, and that she tells no lie to the public when she asserts that her graduate is bonæ spei et rite probatus. Then the diploma is a testimony to worth: it is an honor to possess it. If undergraduates miss their examination, put them down mercilessly into the class below that in which they fail. By this process you will lose a few boys, but you need not regret them. For, first, they were either idlers or stupid fellows. In the next place, you can raise the standard of your classes, you will make your pupils work seriously, get a good name for your college, and end by having more students. Sensible people will always send their children to institutions that insist upon hard study and rid themselves of idlers.

Another difficulty which I must notice regards the action, or rather inaction, of the state. It is a pity that our government, with all its fuss about education, does so little real honor to higher education. What is the necessity or emolument of a diploma from a college? I think that, without a diploma, I can occupy any position in the gift of the country, save perhaps that of officer in the regular army or navy. In one way, the state is too much of a busybody; in another, it does not[285] fulfil its office in regard to education. But I do not wish to open the question, to-day, on the office of the state in education.

One of the gravest obstacles in the way of higher education arises, I think, from our colleges themselves. It is this: our colleges are too numerous. With the exception of some boys from Spanish America, we receive no pupils from other countries. At home, the number of Catholics who can afford a college education for their children is limited. Supposing, then, all our colleges patronized, it is impossible that any of them should reach a respectable figure in the number of its attending pupils. Besides, it must be no easy task to find competent professors and directors for so many colleges. If we had fewer colleges, each one would have a larger number of pupils, and be more fully provided with all that is necessary for education. Yet there appears to be a stronger desire to open new colleges than to perfect those actually in existence. Why do we thus weaken and scatter our forces? Why do we render success and large, grand centres of learning next to impossible? Grammar-schools, or schools in which boys are prepared for college, should be multiplied, but not colleges. Then our colleges would resemble a university more than they do to-day. It is a great plague for them to be obliged to do at once the work of the grammar-school and of the college properly so-called. They are burdened with a crowd of children, who are no companions for young men, and lessen the dignity of a college. And now, Mr. World, let me end these remarks by asking: When shall we see each diocese in the Union possessing a petit séminaire? When shall we see arise in our midst a noble Catholic university?

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

We always knew that the Archbishop of Baltimore is an able writer of the more solid kind of essays, but were not before aware how gracefully he can use his pen in description. In his preface to the pamphlet whose title is given above, he draws a very pretty and graphic picture of Geneva, the ancient headquarters of Calvin, and in right, though not in possession, the See of St. Francis of Sales. Some interesting, curious, and gratifying facts in connection with that city are mentioned by the archbishop. He tells us that half the population of the city and canton is Catholic, and of the other half only one-tenth is Calvinistic. John Calvin's house is a convent of Sisters of Charity. The gloomy heretiarch and his companions are unhonored and almost unknown in the city which was once called the Rome of Protestantism, but which is now a sort of temporary centre of Catholic activity in Europe, while the Holy City is desecrated by the rule of the Lombard usurper. The pamphlet itself is a letter addressed by a young law-student of Geneva to our old friend the eminent romance-writer, Merle[286] d'Aubigné and one of his confrêres, both of whom, it appears, seized the occasion of the absence of the bishop at the Council to make a feeble assault on the church. It is a manly, sensible letter, more interesting as a specimen of what a young student can achieve in a polemical combat with veteran antagonists than from anything new or peculiar in its arguments. The youthful champion uses his sling and pebble with skill and dexterity, although he had not so hard a skull as that of Goliath of Gath to crack. Our young gentlemen who are training for professional life ought to be interested to see how he does it, and the noble, chivalrous spirit of faith and honor which is manifest in the letter is one we desire to see extended as much as possible among these generous youth who are able to do as much for the cause of truth.

"Our true religious life begins when we discover that there is an inner light, not infallible, but invaluable, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. Then we have something to steer by, and it is chiefly this, and not any anchor, that we need." These are the two opening sentences of the above lecture. If an "inner light, not infallible" is all that our author has "to steer by," we beg, for our part, not to enter on board the ship of which he is the captain. In this case, it is not the "inner light, not infallible" that is invaluable, but the anchor, unless one would foolishly expose himself to certain shipwreck.

If this be man's plight, then let him keep silence until he finds something that will give him certitude. For what else can an erring guide lead to than error? It is the blind leading the blind into the ditch.

Think, too, of the absurdity of the author's pretensions, with such a guide, to criticise all religions in order to give to the world "the religion"!—"the religion of all ages!"

These free-religionists who talk so much about the value of reason have yet to learn its true value and the great dignity of the human soul. If the author's premise be true, it is an insult to our common sense to read his lecture.

We might perhaps appropriately designate this work as "The Popular Theology of Heaven:" theology, because it is strictly accurate in its dogmatic teaching; popular, because the whole subject, without being lowered, is brought within the sphere of the popular mind. We might call it also the "Spiritual Geography of Heaven," since it gives us such a knowledge as we can have at this distance of the promised land which we must hope one day to inhabit. We are told what is that beatific or happy-making vision of God which is the essential bliss of the elect; what is the light of glory by means of which the soul sees God; what are the occupations of heaven, the social joys of the blessed; the qualities and enjoyments of the glorified body and senses; the degrees of beatitude, yet the complete and satiating happiness of each individual, without envy or jealousy, without regret of the past or fear for the future. The book presents an elegant appearance, and is brought out in Messrs. Murphy & Co.'s best style.

To the many excellent volumes which Father Perrone has contributed during his long career to the theological library, he has now made in the work before us an addition[287] in no way inferior to his previous writings. It is a work addressed to the learned alone, and in the language of the learned; but it is one which they will prize very highly, not only for its depth of theological lore, but also for its peculiar fitness to the present time. Its subject is the fundamental dogma of Christianity—now so much attacked and, we may add, outside of the Catholic Church so little believed—the Divinity of Jesus Christ, which it proves and defends against the infidels, the rationalists, and the mythics of our day.

In the first volume, we have the proofs drawn from the pages of the Old Testament; in the second, those furnished by the New Testament. The third volume establishes the Divinity of Christ on evidence drawn from the institution of the church, and, in particular, from the institution of the Roman Pontificate. The author demonstrates how the promises made by the Redeemer to his church, the characteristic marks by which he distinguished her, the gifts with which he enriched her, give evidence of a Divine Author and Founder. A most convincing argument springs from the Primacy conferred on St. Peter and his successors in the See of Rome, since God alone could have established and maintained throughout the ages and the nations of the earth so exalted a dignity, together with the prerogatives which befit its possessor.

Of all the works produced in our day on this important subject, Fr. Perrone's is without doubt the most satisfactory, because the most forcible, learned, and exhaustive.

F. Lallemant was one of the brightest lights of the Society of Jesus, and occupies in French spiritual literature a place analogous to that of F. Alvarez in the Spanish. This book, of which a new edition has been lately published, is now well known in England and the United States through the translation which was brought out under the auspices of F. Faber. It ranks among the best of modern times, and even deserves to be classed with the works of the celebrated authors of past ages. The pietistic mystics among the Protestants, and even some Catholics, prepossessed by certain unfounded prejudices, have accused the Jesuits as the enemies of interior spiritual piety. There was never a more unfounded charge. The present work is one signal proof, among many others, that strict orthodoxy in doctrine, unswerving fidelity to the teaching of the Roman Church, and accurate theological science, so far from having quenched spirituality in the Society of Jesus, have only given it purity and illumination. The writings of the thoroughly orthodox masters of the spiritual life are, beyond all comparison, superior, in respect to their insight into the mysteries of faith and their knowledge of the higher paths of the ascent toward union with God, to any of those who have fancied themselves illuminated with a private and personal light of the Holy Spirit, which they have thought should supersede the infallible teaching of the church. F. Lallemant is specially remarkable for his skill and accuracy in pointing out the perfect harmony which must always exist between the genuine interior guidance of the Holy Spirit in the soul and the exterior, divinely-appointed, infallible guidance of authority to which it must always be subordinate. The Spiritual Doctrine is orthodox and precise in its teaching without being dull or dry; fervent and spiritual without any tinge of vague or visionary enthusiasm; clear, judicious, and practical in its treatment[288] of every topic; void of all wordy declamation and vapid sentimentalism; addressing the will and the heart through the intellect; clothing the thoughts and feeling of a saint in the style and language of a scholar. It is just the book for the more intellectual and educated class of readers, provided they have some desire for solid Christian virtue and piety.

To weave into a story interesting incidents of colonial life in the state of Connecticut, during the reign of James II. of England, is the intention of these two volumes. The delineation of that remarkable incident in Connecticut history, the seizing of the state charter from under the very eyes of the British authorities, and its secretion for many years in the famous Charter Oak, and the picture of the regicide Goffe living in perpetual fear of detection are well drawn.

The story in some respects shows a pen not yet perfectly at home in this kind of writing; but no one who takes an interest in our early colonial history can fail to find in reading these volumes both pleasure and much useful historical information.

The reproduction, in America, of this work, originally written in Ireland, will prove to be a benefaction in many a homestead. This is the work of a man who thoroughly knows his subject. It is a book for the time, free alike from the doubtful stories of too many writings of the same kind and the tedious dryness that meets the youthful eye in most books of instruction. We wish a hearty God-speed to this valuable accession to our English Catholic literature. No Catholic family in the land should be without a copy of this book. It will be worth more than its weight in gold to those who read it; and to those who practise the lessons of wisdom it contains it will be their glory on earth and their crown in heaven.

It is a book that ought to be encouraged on missions and by all priests having charge of congregations.

We have here a touching but 'ower sad' tale of the life of a Scotch Covenanter who, being found in arms against his king Charles II., is condemned to death, but has his sentence changed by the interposition of a friend to a life of hard labor in the Cornish mines. His wife, the Countess of Glosswood, will not leave her husband, but with her infant daughter follows his hard fortune, all communication with the world outside of mining life being forbidden by his sentence. But the good God, in compensation for their desolate lives, sends them the priceless gift of faith, through the instrumentality of a Catholic priest, disguised as a miner that he may win souls for Christ, in times when to be known as a priest was to give one's self up to certain death. The countess had been taught to regard the Catholic Church with hatred and terror, and the agony of mind through which she must pass in learning to love what she had before hated is forcibly described; and the gentle way in which she is led step by step toward the light by the devoted priest cannot fail to give satisfaction to the earnest reader. The doctrine of indulgences was, of course, a terrible stumbling-block in her way, and Father Deymand's explanation is specially clear and convincing. The book comes to us in an attractive dress, with tinted paper and good type.

SARDINIA AND THE HOLY FATHER.[46]

The volume giving the call and proceedings of the meeting held last January at the Academy of Music, in this city, in celebration of Italian unity, especially the occupation of Rome and the suppression of the Papal government, is handsomely printed, and does credit to the taste and skill of our New York book-makers; but it is a sad book, and almost makes one despair of civil society and natural morality. Nothing can be more sad and discouraging to all right-minded men than to see a large number of the most distinguished and influential men of a great nation-statesmen, politicians, judges, lawyers, officers of the army, ministers of religion, journalists, poets, philosophers, scholars, professors and presidents of colleges and universities—assisting, by their presence, addresses, letters, or comments, to applaud events notoriously brought about by fraud, craft, lying, calumny, and armed force, in contravention of every principle of international law and of public and private right. It is a sad thing for our republic when so many of its representative men, whose names are recorded in this volume, can endorse the fraud and violence by which the Sard king has effected what he calls the unity of Italy, and congratulate him on his successful sacrilege and spoliation in the Roman state; and the only consolation left us is that, with a solitary exception, no Catholic name appears on the list, and all the sympathizers are Protestants, and all, or nearly all, prominent adherents of the same dominant political party.

To the unity of Italy, under some circumstances, we might not seriously object. It is true, we hold small states are more favorable to the growth of intelligence, the development of elevated and strong personal character, to individual liberty, to social well-being, to the moral progress of the people, than huge centralized states or empires, which can [290]be governed only despotically, and in which there is so great a distance between power and the people that personal and affectionate relations between the governors and the governed, and which do so much to soften the asperities of authority and to render obedience willing and cheerful, are, for the most part, impracticable. But if the several independent Italian states that have been absorbed by Sardinia to form the new kingdom of Italy had freely and of their own accord given their consent to the absorption, and no craft, fraud, violence, or disregard of public or private right had been resorted to in order to effect it, we might doubt its wisdom, but we could not object to it on the ground of international law or of natural justice. We, of course, defend the temporal sovereignty of the Pope; but if the Pope had, motu proprio, without coercion, the show or the threat of coercion, given his consent to the absorption of the Roman state in a united Italy, we should have nothing to say against it, for it would have been the act of the Roman state, no public or private right of justice or morality would have been violated, and no blow struck at the equal rights of independent states or nations, at the authority of the sovereign power of a state to govern it, or to the duty of obedience to it.

But it is well known that such is not the case either with the Holy Father or the several other Italian sovereigns that have been dispossessed and their states absorbed by Sardinia in order to effect Italian unity. In every case, the absorption was effected by violence and force, without and against the consent of the sovereign authority. The Pope refused his assent to the absorption of the ecclesiastical state, and said, to the demand to surrender it, "Non possumus." The Roman people, without the Pope, gave no assent—had no assent to give or to withhold; for, without the Pope, they were not a state or a sovereign people. It matters not whether plebiscitums can or cannot be alleged, for a plebiscitum, where there is a legitimate government, cannot be taken without its authority, especially not against its authority; for without its authority it would be a legal nullity, and against it it would be revolutionary and criminal. Nor would it help the matter for the absorbing state to invade with its armies the state to be absorbed, overthrow the legitimate government, take forcible possession of the territory, and then call upon the population to decide their future condition by a plebiscitum, so long as a legitimate claimant to the government remains living. This was the case in the Roman state and in the other independent Italian states that have been absorbed. As a plebiscitum before the conquest is treasonable and not permissible, after the conquest it is a mockery, for the fate of the state is decided, however the population may vote.

Let us look the facts in the face, and see by what deeds and on what principles the unity of Italy has been effected. Sardinia, aided by France and Prussia, made an unprovoked war on Austria, and wrested from her the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom, and appropriated it to herself. Neither she nor her allies had any just cause of war against Austria, or even of offence, except that sire wanted to get possession of all Italy. France wanted the left branch of the Rhine for her boundary, and Prussia wanted to absorb the rest of Germany. There was no other reason for the war. The several independent Ducal states fell with Austria, with whom they were closely allied, and were invaded and[291] taken possession of by the Sard king. The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was invaded by Garibaldi and his filibusters, backed—covertly at first, openly at last—by the Sard government, conquered, because the Neapolitan king listened to the insidious advice and deceitful promises of Imperial France, said to have been given not to offer any serious resistance, taken possession of and appropriated as the highwayman appropriates the traveller's purse. The Æmilian provinces of the Roman state, prepared for insurrection by the secret societies and Sardinian emissaries, were invaded by the Sardinian forces and appropriated by the House of Savoy. Finally, the Roman state was invaded by the same Victor Emmanuel, with too strong a force for the Papal government to resist, its sovereign declared deposed, its government suppressed, and its territory and people annexed to the so-called kingdom of Italy.

This simple recital of facts tells the whole story. Sardinia, aided by the arms and diplomacy of France and Prussia, by the foreign policy of the Whigs and Radicals of Great Britain, the intrigues of the secret societies, the money and co-operation of the Protestant propaganda, the malcontents and malefactors of all the states of Italy, and adventurers and miscreants from all nations of the earth, has succeeded, without any right, without having received any offence or provocation, in the violation of every principle of international law and every precept of morality or natural justice, in absorbing every Italian state, and effecting the unification of the whole peninsula under her own royal house. These are the facts, stated in their simplest form, without passion and without exaggeration.

These facts, being public and notorious, must be as well known to those distinguished American sympathizers who addressed the meeting or wrote letters of approval to the committee that called it as they are to us. We dare not so insult the intelligence of such eminent men as to suppose, for a moment, that they did not know what they sympathized with, or that, in applauding the unity of Italy, they were ignorant of the craft, violence, and robbery that had been resorted to in order to effect it. What, then, must we and all right-minded men think of their own principles, of their religion, their politics, or their sense of justice? Does their Protestantism or their hatred of the Papacy justify, approve the violation of international law, the equal rights of sovereign states, the sacred rights of property, public and private, the principles of natural justice the basis of the state and of all legitimate authority, without which not even natural society itself can subsist? Does it authorize them to applaud unprovoked war and conquest, and public and private robbery? If so, how can they justify their Protestantism or their hatred of the Papacy? If they cannot assert either without denying all public and private right and trampling on all laws, human and divine, how can they regard either as defensible?

There is no mistaking the real character of the acts by which the sovereign states of Italy have been suppressed by Sardinia and her allies, and the present unification of Italy effected; and it only adds to their atrocity that it was done in part by exciting the populations, or a portion of them, to insurrection and rebellion against their respective sovereigns. There is nothing meaner or more unjustifiable than for one sovereign to tamper with the fidelity of the subjects of another, especially in time of profound peace between the two states. If persisted in, it is a justifiable[292] cause of war. International law, or the law of nations, makes all sovereign states equal in their rights, without regard to the form of government, size, race, language, or geographical position; and the law of ethics, at least, requires each sovereign state to respect, and to cause its subjects to respect, the authority of every other sovereign state over its own subjects, as it requires every other to respect its authority over its subjects. The rule is, no doubt, often violated, but it is none the less sacred and binding on that account. It is equally wrong for the citizens of one state to attempt to seduce the citizens of another state from their allegiance. International law, national law, municipal law, as well as the moral law, know nothing of the doctrine, so eloquently preached by the ex-Governor of Hungary, of "the solidarity of peoples."

Hon. Richard H. Dana, Jr., an able lawyer, reputed to be well versed in the law of nations, and who affects, in his elaborate letter to the committee, to argue the question as it affects Catholics with fairness and candor, appears to have some doubts whether the invasion of the Roman state by the Sardinian troops, the deposition and virtual imprisonment of its sovereign in his own palace, and the annexation of its territory and inhabitants to the dominion of the House of Savoy, is really a violation of international law; but he evidently, besides arguing the question on a collateral issue, takes a juridical instead of an ethical view of international law, and considers it only so far as it enters into the national jurisprudence, and is enforcible by the nation through its own courts on its own citizens. Yet he cannot be ignorant that there are violations of international law which cannot be taken cognizance of by the national jurisprudence, and which may be, and often are, justifiable causes of war. The basis of international law is the law of justice, or droit naturel, as it is the basis of all natural ethics. There may be treaty or conventional agreements between nations, which must be considered whenever the case comes up juridically, or the law is to be juridically enforced, but these cannot abrogate or modify the law of justice, the jus gentium of the Roman jurists, which is the principle and foundation of all law. Acts in contravention of justice, St. Augustine and St. Thomas after him tell us, are violences rather than laws, and are nullities. International law applies justice to the mutual relations of sovereign states, precisely as ethics does to the relations of individuals. It declares all sovereign states equal in their rights, the territory of each to be sacred and inviolable, and that no one is permitted to do to another what it would not have another to do to it. The rule is plain and practicable, and under it Mr. Dana's doubts ought to vanish. For one sovereign state to invade with its armies another, suppress its government, and absorb its territory and population, without any provocation or any offence given, but merely because it wants it to complete and round off its own territory, as Sardinia has done to the Roman or ecclesiastical state, is too manifestly a violation of international law to leave any doubt on any mind that does not hold the principle of all law to be that might makes right.[47]

No doubt certain untenable theories of popular sovereignty and certain alleged plebiscitums have had something to do with blinding the eyes of our American sympathizers to the atrocity of the acts they applaud. But plebiscitums cannot be pleaded when taken without the order or assent of the sovereign authority, if there is a sovereign authority, as we have already said. In the case of every Italian state absorbed, there was a sovereign authority, and the plebiscitum taken was not by its order or assent, but against its positive prohibition. It is idle to say that the people of these several states gave their consent to be absorbed, for except as the state, represented by its sovereign authority, there is no people with a consent either to give or to withhold. The people, no doubt, are sovereign in the constitution and government, but not otherwise, for otherwise they have no existence. A people or population of a given territory wholly disorganized, without constitution or laws, and deprived of all government, must necessarily, for simple preservation, reorganize and reconstitute government by conventions or plebiscitums as best they can; but when they have reconstituted government or the state, their sovereignty merges in it. The people of the United States and of the several states can amend the constitution, but only constitutionally, through the government. The notion which has latterly gained some vogue, that there persists always a sovereign people back of the government and constitution, or organic people, competent to alter, change, modify, or overturn the existing government at will, is purely revolutionary, fatal to all stable government, to all political authority, to the peace and order of society, and to all security for liberty, either public or private. We see the effects of it in the present deplorable condition of France.

The resolutions reported by the committee and adopted by the meeting, and which Dr. Thompson in his address tells us "are constructed on a philosophical order of thought," attempt to place "the temporal power of the Pope within the category of all earthly human governments, and bound by the same conditions and subject to the same fortunes." This may be successfully disputed. The Roman or ecclesiastical state was a donation to the Holy See or the Church of Rome. Gifts to the church are gifts to God, and when made are the property, under him, of the spirituality, which by no laws, heathen, Jewish, or Christian, can be deprived of their possession or use without sacrilege. They are sacred to religious uses, and can no longer, without the consent of the spirituality, be diverted to temporal uses, without adding sacrilege to robbery. Whoso attacks the spirituality attacks God. The property or sovereignty[294] of the Roman state vests, then, in the Holy See—hence it is always called and officially recognized as the state of the church—and not in the Pope personally; but in him only ex officio as its incumbent, as trustee, or administrator. Hence the Pope denied his right to surrender it, and answered the Minister of Sardinia, Non possumus. The temporal power of the Pope is therefore not within the category of all earthly human governments, but is the property of the spirituality. Victor Emmanuel, in despoiling the Pope, has despoiled the Holy See, the spirituality, usurped church property, property given to God, and sacred to the religious uses. The deed which our eminent jurists and Protestant divines sympathize with and applaud, strikes a blow at the spirituality, at the sacredness of all church property, of Protestant churches as well as of Catholic churches—at the sacredness of all eleemosynary gifts, and asserts the right of power when strong enough to divert them from the purposes of the donors. These Protestant ministers assert in principle that their own churches may be despoiled of their revenues and funds without sacrilege, without injustice, by any power that is able to do it. They defend the right of any one who chooses to divert from the purpose of the donors all donations and investments to found and support hospitals, orphan asylums, retreats for the aged and destitute, asylums for idiots, deaf-mutes, the blind, the insane, public libraries, schools, colleges, seminaries, and academies, peace societies, tract societies, home and foreign missionary societies, and Bible societies; they not only defend the right of the state in which they are placed to confiscate at its pleasure all funds, revenues, and investments of the sort, but the right of any foreign state to invade the territory in time of peace, take possession of them by armed force, as public property, and to divert them to any purpose it sees proper. Did the learned divines, the eminent jurists, who approve the resolutions ever hear of the speech of Daniel Webster and the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the famous Dartmouth College case? Or are they so intent on crushing the Papacy that they are quite willing to cut their own throats?

But the fact of the donation to the Holy See is denied. Be it so. Certain it is that the Roman state never belonged to the Sard kingdom; that the church has always claimed it, had her claim allowed by every state in the world, has possessed the sovereignty, not always without disturbance, for a thousand years without an adverse claimant; and that is sufficient to give her a valid title by prescription against all the world, even if she have no other, which we do not admit—an older and better title than that of any secular sovereign in Europe to his estates. Every sovereign or sovereign state in Europe is estopped by previous acknowledgment, and the absence of any adverse claimant with the shadow of a right, from pleading the invalidity of the title of the Holy See. The Roman state is therefore ecclesiastical, not secular.

Whether Père Lacordaire ever said, as Dr. Thompson asserts, that "in no event could the people be donated," or not, we are not authentically informed; but if he did, he said a very foolish and a very untrue thing. The people cannot be donated as slaves, nor could any of their rights of property or any of their private or public rights be donated. Every feudal lawyer knows that. The donation, grant, or cession could be and was only the right of government[295] and eminent domain, or the right the grantor possessed; but that could be ceded as Louisiana was ceded by France, Florida by Spain, and California by Mexico, to the United States. In the cessions made to the Holy See, no right of the people to govern themselves or to choose their own sovereign was ceded, for the people ceded had had no such right, and never had had it. The sovereign who had the right of governing them ceded his own right to the church, but no right possessed or ever possessed by the people or inhabitants of the territory. International law knows no people apart from the sovereign or government. The right of self-government is the right of each nation or political people to govern itself without the dictation or interference of any foreign power, and is only another term for national independence. What was Pepin's or Charlemagne's, either could cede without ceding any right or possession of the people. So of the donations or cessions of that noble woman, the protectress of St. Gregory VII., the Countess Matilda. If Père Lacordaire ever said what he is reported to have said, he must have forgotten the law to which he was originally bred, and spoken rather as a red republican than as a Catholic theologian, statesman, or jurist.

But waiving the fact that the sovereignty of the Roman state has a spiritual character by being vested in the Holy See, and granting, not conceding, that it is in "the category of all earthly sovereignties," its right is no less perfect and inviolable, and the invasion and spoliation of the Roman state by Sardinia, as of the other Italian states, are no less indefensible and unjustifiable on any principle of international law or of Christian or even of heathen ethics; for one independent state has no right to invade, despoil, and appropriate or absorb another that gives it no just cause of war. Nor is the act any more defensible, as we have already shown, if done in response to the invitation of a portion, even a majority, of the inhabitants, if in opposition to the will of the legitimate authority. Such invitation would partake of the nature of rebellion, be treasonable, and no people has the right to rebel against their sovereign, or to commit treason. Men who talk of "the sacred right of insurrection," either know not what they say, or are the enemies alike of order and liberty. The people have, we deny not, the right to withdraw their allegiance from the tyrant who tramples on the rights of God and of man, but never till a competent authority has decided that he is a tyrant and has forfeited his right to reign, which a Parisian or a Roman mob certainly is not. How long is it since these same gentlemen who are congratulating Victor Emmanuel were urging the government, leading its armies, or fighting in the ranks, to put down what they termed a rebellion in their own country, and condemning treason as a crime?

But the Romans and other Italians are of the same race, and speak the same language, we are told. That they are of the same race is questionable; but, suppose it, and that they speak the same language. They are no more of the same race and speak no more the same language, than the people of the United States and the people of Great Britain; have we, on that ground, the right to invade Great Britain, dethrone Queen Victoria, suppress the Imperial Parliament, to annex politically the British Empire to the United States, and to bring the British people under Congress and President Grant?

But as Italy is geographically one,[296] it ought, we are told again, to be politically one. The United States, Canada, and Mexico, including Central America and British Columbia, are geographically one; but will any of the honorable or reverend gentlemen who addressed the meeting, or wrote letters to the committee that called it, contend that we have, therefore, the right unprovoked, and simply because it would be convenient to have them politically a part of our republic, to invade them with our armies, suppress their present governments, and annex them to the Union?

"Rome is the ancient capital of Italy, and the Italian government wishes to recover it, and needs its prestige for the present kingdom of Italy." But in no known period of history has Rome ever belonged to Italy; Italy for ages belonged to Rome, and was governed from and by it. Never in its whole history was Rome the capital of an Italian state, or the seat of an Italian government. She was not the capital of any state; she was herself the state as long as the Roman Empire lasted, and as such governed Italy and the world. The empire was not Roman because Rome was its capital city, but because Rome was the sovereign state itself, and all political power or political rights emanated, or were held to emanate, from her; and hence the empire was Roman, and the people were called Romans, not Italians. If you talk of restoration, let it be complete—recognize Rome as the sovereign state, and the rest of the world be held as subject provinces. Italy was never the state while Rome governed, nor has the name Italy at all times had the same geographical sense. Sometimes it meant Sicily, sometimes the southern, other times the northern, part of the peninsula—sometimes the heel or the foot, and sometimes the leg, of the boot.

It might or it might not be desirable for the pretended kingdom of Italy to have Rome for its capital, or the seat of its government, though we think Florence in this mercantile age would be far more suitable. But suppose it. Yet these Protestant ministers must know that there is a divine command that forbids one to covet what is one's neighbor's. Achab, king of Israel, wanted Naboth's vineyard, and was much troubled in spirit that Naboth would not consent to part with it either for love or money. His queen, the liberal-minded Jezebel, rebuked him for his dejection, and, fearing to use his power as king of Israel, took measures in his name that Naboth should be stoned to death, and the vineyard delivered to Achab. It was all very simple and easily done; but we read that vengeance overtook the king, fell heavily on him, his household, and his false prophets; that Jezebel fled from the Avenger, was overtaken and slain, and "the dogs came and licked up her blood." There is such a reality as justice, though our American sympathizers with the liberal and enlightened Jezebel seem to have forgotten it.

Dr. Stevens, the Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Pennsylvania, rejoices at the spoliation of the Pope, the absorption of the Roman state, and the unification of Italy, because "Italy is thus opened to liberal ideas, and Rome itself unlocked to the advancing civilization and intelligence of the nineteenth century." Which advancing civilization and intelligence are aptly illustrated, we presume, by the recent Franco-Prussian war, the communistic insurrection in Paris, the prostration of France, the nation that has advanced farthest in liberal ideas and nineteenth-century civilization.[297] We have here on a fly-sheet a specimen of the liberal ideas to which Italy is opened, and of the sort of civilization and intelligence to which Rome is unlocked. We extract it for the benefit of Bishop Stevens and his brethren:

This programme of the Association of Free-thinkers in Rome is not an inapt commentary on the letter of the Bishop of Pennsylvania, and is a hearty response to the sympathy and encouragement given them in their work of destruction by the great and respectable New York meeting. It at least tells our American sympathizers how their friends in Rome understand their applause of the deposition of the Pope from his temporal sovereignty and the unity of Italy. Are they pleased with the response given them?

There may be a difference between the free-thinkers and their American friends; but the chief difference apparently is, that the free-thinkers are logical and have the courage of their principles, know what they mean and say it frankly, without reticence or circumlocution, while their American sympathizers have a hazy perception of their own principles, do not see very clearly whither they lead, and are afraid to push them to their last logical consequences. They have not fully mastered the principles on which they act; only half-know their own meaning; and the half they do know they would express and not express. Yet they are great men and learned men, but hampered by their Protestantism, which admits no clear or logical statement, except so far as it coincides with the free-thinkers in regarding the Papacy as a monster, which must, in the interests of civilization and liberty, be got rid of. Yet we can discover no substantial difference in principle between them. The deeds and events they applaud have no justification or excuse, save in the atrocious principles set forth by the free-thinkers. We are willing to believe these distinguished gentlemen try to persuade themselves, as they would fain persuade us, that it is possible to war against the Papacy without warring against revealed religion or Christian morals, as did the reformers in the sixteenth century; but these Roman free-thinkers know better, and tell them that they cannot do it. They understand perfectly well that Christianity as a revelation and an authoritative religion and the Papacy stand or fall together; and it is because they would get rid of all religions that claim to be revealed or to have authority in matters of conscience, that they seek to overthrow the Papacy. They attack the temporal sovereignty of the Pope only as a means of attacking more effectually his spiritual sovereignty; and they wish to get rid of his spiritual sovereignty only because they wish to rid themselves of the spiritual order, of the law of God, nay, of God himself, and feel themselves free to live for this world alone, and bend all their energies to the production, amassing, and enjoying the goods of time and sense. It is not the Pope personally, or his temporal government as such, that they call the worst enemy of mankind, or the "monster that for ages has made the earth a field of blood," but revealed religion, but faith, but the supernatural order, but the law of God, the spiritual order, which the Pope officially represents, and always and everywhere asserts, and which his temporal power aids him to assert more freely and independently. They recognize no medium between the[299] Papacy and no-religion. They disdain all compromise, admit no via media, neither the Anglican via media between "Romanism" and dissent, nor the Protestant via media between the Papacy and infidelity. They war not against Protestantism, though they despise it as a miserable compromise, neither one thing nor another; they even regard it with favor as a useful and an efficient ally in their anti-religious war.

The free-thinkers in Rome and elsewhere present the real and true issue between the Papacy and its enemies, and give the real meaning of the atrocious deeds which have effected the deposition of the Pope, the absorption of the state of the church, and the unity of Italy under the House of Savoy. They present it, too, without disguise, in its utter nakedness, so that the most stolid cannot mistake it; precisely as we ourselves have uniformly presented it. The issue is "the Papacy or no-religion," and the meaning of the deeds and events the New York meeting applauded is, "Down with the Papacy as the means of putting down religion and emancipating the human conscience from the law of God!" How does the Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Pennsylvania, and his brother Protestant Episcopal bishops among the sympathizers with Italian unity, like the meaning or the issue, when presented truly and honestly, and they are forced to look it squarely in the face? What does Mr. Justice Strong, of the Supreme Court of the United States, think of it? He is the president of an evangelical—perhaps we should say fanatical—association, whose object is to procure an amendment to the preamble of the Constitution of the United States, so that the republic shall be made to profess, officially, belief in God, in Christ, and the supernatural inspiration of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. What says he to the assertion that "religions said to be revealed have always been the worst enemy of mankind"? Yet his name appears among the sympathizers with Italian unity. Do these gentlemen know what crimes and atrocities they applaud, and what is the cause with which they express their sympathy? Or, like the old Jews who crucified the Lord of Life between two thieves, are they ignorant of what they do?

These Roman free-thinkers only give us the programme of the secret societies, who have their network spread over all Europe, and even over this country; of the Mazzinis and Garibaldis, of the Red Republicans and Communists, who have instituted a new Reign of Terror in Paris, who are filling the prisons of that city while we are writing (April 7) with the friends of order, with priests and religious, plundering the churches, entering and robbing convents and nunneries, and insulting and maltreating their peaceful and holy inmates, banishing religion from the schools, suppressing the public worship of God, and drenching the streets in the blood of the purest and noblest of the land, all in the name of the people, of liberty, equality, and fraternity—the programme, in fact, of the whole revolutionary, radical, or so-called liberal party throughout the world. The realization of civil liberty, the advancement of science, the promotion of society, truth, and justice, are—unless, perhaps, with here and there an individual—a mere pretext to dupe simple and confiding people, and gain their support. The leaders and knowing ones are not duped; they understand what they want, and that is the total abolition of all revealed religion, of all belief in the spiritual order, or[300] the universal, eternal, and immutable principles of right and justice, and the complete emancipation of the human intellect from all faith in the supernatural, and of conscience from all the law not self-imposed.

Are our American sympathizers with Victor Emmanuel in his war on the Pope, with the unity of Italy, and the revolutionary party throughout Europe, and with which the Protestant missionaries on the Continent in Catholic nations are in intimate alliance, really dupes, and do they really fancy, if the Papacy were gone, the movement they applaud could be arrested before it had reached the programme of the Association of Free-thinkers in Rome? We can hardly believe it. Europe was reorganized, after the fall of the Roman Empire, by the Papacy, and consequently on a Christian basis—the independence of the spiritual order, and the freedom of religion from secular control or intermeddling, the rights of conscience, and the supremacy of truth and justice in the mutual relations of individuals and of nations. No doubt the Christian ideal was far from being practically realized in the conduct of men or nations; there were relics of heathen barbarism to be subdued, old superstitions to be rooted out, and fierce passions to be quelled. The Philistines still dwelt in the land. In reorganized Europe there was no lack of great crimes and great criminals, followed often by grand penances and grand expiations; society in practice was far from perfect, and the good work that the church was carrying on was often interrupted, retarded, or destroyed by barbarian and heathen invasions of the Normans from the North, the Huns from the East, and the Saracens from the South.

But the work was renewed as soon as the violence ceased. Under the inspiration and direction of the Papacy and the zealous and persevering labors of the bishops and their clergy, and the monastic orders of either sex, assisted not unfrequently by kings and emperors, secular princes and nobles, the Christian faith became the acknowledged faith of all ranks and classes, individuals and nations. Gradually the old heathen superstitions were rooted out, the barbarisms were softened if not wholly subdued, just and humane laws were enacted, the rights of individuals and of nations were defined and declared sacred and inviolable, schools were multiplied, colleges established, universities founded, intelligence diffused, and society was advancing, if slowly yet surely, towards the Christian ideal. If men or nations violated the immutable principles of justice and right, they at least recognized them and their duty to conform to them in their conduct; if the law was disobeyed, it was not denied or so altered as to sanction men's vices or crimes; if marriage was sometimes violated, its sacredness and indissolubility were held to be the law, and nobody sought to conform it to the interests of lust or lawless passion; if a feudal baron wrongfully invaded the territory of his brother baron, or oppressed his people, it was acknowledged to be wrong; in a word, if the conduct of men or nations was bad, it was in violation of the principles which they held to be right—of the law which they owned themselves bound to obey. The conscience was not perverted, nor ethics and legislation made to conform to a perverted conscience.

But in the sixteenth century, bold, base, and disorderly men rose not only in acts of disobedience to the Pope, which had been no rare thing, but in principle and doctrine against[301] the Papacy; declared it a usurpation, hostile to the independence of sovereigns and the Bible; denounced the Papal Church as the mystery of Babylon, and the Pope as the man of sin. The sovereigns listened to them, and the people of several nations believed and trusted them, cast off the Papacy, and interrupted the progress in manners and morals, in society and civilization, which had been going on from the sixth century to the sixteenth under the auspices of the Popes. The reformers, as they are called, no doubt really believed that they could cast off the Papacy and retain the church, Christianity, revealed religion, in even greater purity and efficiency. Yet the experiment, it must be conceded, has not succeeded. The church, as an authoritative body, has been lost with the loss of the Papacy. The Bible, for the want of a competent and authoritative interpreter, has ceased to be authority for faith, and has been made to sanction the most various and contradictory opinions. Faith itself has been resolved into a variable opinion, and the law of God explained so as to suit each man's own taste and inclination. Religion is no longer the recognition and assertion of the supremacy of the spiritual order, the rights of God, and the homage due to our Maker, Redeemer, and Saviour; nothing eternal and immutable is acknowledged, and truth and justice, it is even contended, should vary from age to age, from people to people, and from individual to individual.

The state itself, which in several anti-Papal nations has undertaken to supply the place of the Papacy, has everywhere failed, and must fail, because, there being no spiritual authority above it to declare for it the law of God, or to place before it a fixed, irreversible, and infallible ideal, it has no support but in opinion, and necessarily becomes dependent on the people; and, however slowly or reluctantly, it is obliged to conform to their ever-varying opinions, passions, prejudices, ignorance, and false conscience. It may retard by acts of gross tyranny or by the exercise of despotic power the popular tendency for a time, but in proportion as it attempts it, it saps the foundations of its own authority, and prepares its own overthrow or subversion. If in the modern non-Catholic world there has been a marked progress in scientific inventions as applied to the mechanical and industrial arts, there has been an equally marked deterioration in men's principles and character. If there is in our times less distance between men's principles and practice than in mediæval times, it is not because their practice is more Christian, more just or elevated, for in fact it is far less so, but because they have lowered their ideal, and brought their principles down to the level of their practice. Having no authority for a fixed and determined creed, they assert as a principle none is necessary, nay, that any creed imposed by authority, and which one is not free to interpret according to one's own private judgments, tastes, or inclination, is hostile to the growth of intelligence, the advance of science, and the progress of civilization. The tendency in all Protestant sects, stronger in some, weaker in others, is to make light of dogmatic faith, and to resolve religion and morality into the sentiments and affections of our emotional nature. Whatever is authoritative or imposes a restraint on our sentiments, affections, passions, inclinations, fancies, whims, or caprices, is voted tyrannical and oppressive, an outrage on man's natural freedom, hostile to civilization, and not to be tolerated by a free people, who, knowing, dare maintain their rights.

Take as an apt illustration the question of marriage, the basis of the family, as the family is the basis of society. In the Papal Church marriage is a sacrament, holy and absolutely indissoluble save by death, and the severest struggles the Popes engaged in with kings and emperors were to compel them to maintain its sanctity. The so-called reformers rejected its sacramental character, and made it a civil contract, and dissoluble. At first, divorces were restricted to a single cause, that of adultery, and the guilty party was forbidden to marry again; but at the pressure of public opinion other causes were added, till now, in several states, divorce may be obtained for almost any cause, or no cause at all, and both parties be at liberty to marry again if they choose. There are, here and elsewhere, associations of women that contend that Christian marriage is a masculine institution for enslaving women, though it binds both man and woman in one and the same bond, and that seek to abolish the marriage bond altogether, make marriage provisional for so long a time as the mutual love of the parties may last, and dissoluble at the will or caprice of either party. No religious or legal sanction is needed in its formation or for its dissolution. Men and women should be under no restraint either before or after marriage, but should be free to couple and uncouple as inclination dictates, and leave the children, if any are suffered to be born, to the care of—we say not whom or what. Say we not, then, truly, that without the Papacy we lose the church; without the church, we lose revealed religion; and without revealed religion, we lose not only the supernatural order, but the moral order, even natural right and justice, and go inevitably to the conclusions reached by the free-thinkers in Rome. One of the greatest logicians of modern times, the late M. Proudhon, has said: "One who admits the existence even of God is logically bound to admit the whole Catholic Church, its Pope, its bishops and priests, its dogmas, and its entire cultus; and we must get rid of God before we can get rid of despotism and assert liberty."

Let our American sympathizers with Victor Emmanuel and the unity of Italy look at modern society as it is, and they can hardly fail to see that everything is unsettled, unmoored, and floating; that men's minds are everywhere shaken, agitated by doubt and uncertainty; that no principle, no institution, is too venerable or too sacred to be attacked, no truth is too well established to be questioned, and no government or authority too legitimate or too beneficent to be conspired against. Order there is none, liberty there is none; it is sought, but not yet obtained. Everywhere revolution, disorder—disorder in the state, disorder in society, disorder in the family, disorder in the individual, body and soul, thoughts and affections; and just in proportion as the Papacy is rejected or its influence ceases to be felt, the world intellectually and morally, individually and socially, lapses into chaos.

We describe tendencies, and readily admit that the whole non-Catholic world has not as yet followed out these tendencies to their last term; in most Protestant sects there are undoubtedly those who assert and honestly defend revealed religion, and to some extent Christian doctrines and morals; but, from their Catholic reminiscences and from the reflected influence of the Papacy still in the world by their side declaring the truth, the right, the just, for individuals and nations, and denouncing whatever is opposed to them, not[303] from Protestant principles or by virtue of their Protestant tendencies; and just in proportion as the external influence of the Papacy has declined and men believed it becoming old and decrepit, has the Protestant world been more true to its innate tendencies, developed more logically its principles, cast off more entirely all dogmatic faith, resolved religion into a sentiment or emotion, and rushed into rationalism, free religion, and the total rejection of Christian faith or Christian morals, and justified its dereliction from God on principle and at the command of what it calls science—as if without God there could be any science, or anybody to cultivate it. The Protestant world has no principle of its own that opposes this result, or that when logically carried out does not lead surely and inevitably to it. The principles held by Protestants that oppose it and retain many of them from actually reaching it are borrowed from the Papacy, and if the Papacy should fall they would fall with it.

Now we ask, and we ask in all seriousness, the learned jurists, the distinguished statesmen, the able editors, the eminent Protestant divines, poets, and philosophers, who took part in or approved the great sympathy meeting, where but in the Papacy are we to look for the nucleus or the principle of European reorganization, for the spirit that will move over the weltering chaos and bid light spring from the darkness, and order from the confusion? We know they look anywhere but to the Papacy; to the Parisian Commune, to Kaiser William and Prince Bismarck, to Victor Emmanuel, to Mazzini, and to Garibaldi—that is, to the total abolition of the Papacy and the Catholic Church. But in this are they not like the physician who prescribes, as a cure to the man already drunk, drinking more and more deeply? Are they not like those infatuated Jews—we are writing on Good Friday—who demanded of Pilate the release, not of Jesus in whom no fault was found, but of Barabbas, who was a robber! Can Barabbas help them? Will he help re-establish the reign of law, and teach men to respect the rights of property, the rights of sovereigns, and the duties of subjects?

We say not that the Pope can reorganize Europe, for we know not the secret designs of Providence. Nations that have once been enlightened and tasted the good word of God, and have fallen away, lapsed into infidelity, and made a mock of Christ crucified, cannot easily, if at all, be renewed unto repentance and recover the faith they have knowingly and wilfully cast from them. There is not another Christ to be crucified for them. We have no assurance that these apostate European nations are ever to be reorganized; to be saved from the chaos into which they are now weltering; but if they are, we know this, that it can be only by the power and grace of God, communicated to them through the Papacy. There is no other source of help. Kings and Kaisers cannot do it, for it is all they can do to keep their own heads on their shoulders; the mob cannot do it, for it can only make "confusion worse confounded;" the popularly constituted state, like our own republic, cannot do it, for a popular state, a state that rests on the popular will, can only follow popular opinions, and reflect the ignorance, the passions, the fickleness, the selfishness, and the basenesses of the people; science and philosophy cannot do it, for they are themselves disorganized, in a chaotic state, uncertain whether man differs from the brute, whether he has a soul, or is only a congeries of matter, and whether[304] he is or is not developed from the monkey or the tadpole; atheism cannot do it, for it has no positive principle, is the negation of all principle, and effective only for destruction; Protestantism cannot do it, for it is itself chaos, the original source of the evil, and contains as its own no principle or organite from which a new organization can be developed. We repeat, then, if there is any hope, it is in the Papacy, which rests on a basis outside of the world, and speaks with divine authority; and the first step to reorganization must be the re-establishment of the Holy Father in the full possession of his rights. Whether there is faith enough left on earth to demand and effect his restoration, remains to be seen.

Certain it is, let men say what they will, the Pope is the only sovereign power on earth at this moment that stands as the defender of the rights of independent governments, of international law, the equality of sovereign states without regard to size, race, language, or geographical position—the sole champion of those great, eternal, and immutable principles of justice on which depend alike public liberty and individual freedom, the sanctity and inviolability of the family, the peace and order and the very existence of society. If the kings and rulers of this world are with him, or dare utter a feeble whisper to encourage and sustain him, the people are opposed, or cold or indifferent, and pass him by, wagging their heads, saying in a mocking tone, "He trusted in heaven, and let heaven save him."

It were little short of profanity to indicate the contrast between his sublime attitude and the abject and servile attitude of these distinguished countrymen of ours. They but prove themselves slaves to the spirit of the age, and only reflect popular ignorance and passion, and follow the multitude to worship at the shrine of Success, and to trample on the wronged and outraged. He dares arraign the fierce and satanic spirit of the age, to face the enraged multitude, to defy popular opinion or popular passion, to proclaim the truth it condemns, to defend the right it tramples under foot, and uphold the scorned and rejected rights of God, and the inviolability of conscience. It were an insult to truth and justice, to moral greatness and nobility, to dwell on the contrast. His attitude is that of his Master when he trod the wine-press alone, and of the people none were with him. It is grand, it is sublime, beyond the power of mortal man, unless assisted with strength from above. No man, it seems to us, can contemplate his attitude, firm and inflexible, calm and serene, without being filled, if he have any nobility or generosity of soul, or any sense of moral heroism or true manliness in him, with admiration and awe, or feeling that his very attitude proves that he is in the right, and that God is with him. Let our American sympathizers with his traducers and persecutors behold him whom they calumniate, and, if they are men, blush and hang their heads. Shame and confusion should cover their faces!

FLOWERS.

Is a pleasure accorded to few only of the dwellers upon earth; seldom indeed to the few who could best appreciate the privilege. A large portion of the sum total of human existence is spent in cities. Outside of these, the wants of life, best supplied by the co-operation of numbers, gather people together in towns and villages. Travelling is generally such only as may be needful in the exercise of trades and professions, with a view to their ultimate end, the accumulation of wealth; or such as exhausted energies demand to fit them for further toil. The invalid, it is true, seeks to revive his failing powers in far-away balmy climates and delicious scenes—and there is a love for his birthplace in the heart of many a wanderer which leads him back time after time to the old homestead, and invests it with countless charms, although bleak and barren its surroundings may be—but to how few individuals it is given, in the fulness of their health and mental faculties, to rove abroad at will through the beauties and sublimities of creation—to look on her rolling oceans and broad lakes; her foaming cataracts and stupendous mountains; on the luxuriant loveliness of the torrid zone, and the icy wonders of the north!

Yet such things always make part of the expectancies, the bright anticipations of youth—the day-dreams, crushed down at last by hard realities. For to generation after generation the story of life is strangely the same. Its general events unfold themselves in a succession marked for each one with singular uniformity; a uniformity, indeed, so susceptible of calculation that on it are based many of its most extended speculations.

Pecuniary interests generally push their claims first and most boldly, because least to be evaded. Then come the petty edicts of an artificial social existence, which command and receive submission before their presence is even suspected, and though their power be neither recognized nor acknowledged. Gradually the turning kaleidoscope of time shows more sombre colors; the path to be trodden is made visible—the mind bends itself to the narrow way—earthly happiness seeks its realization in a circumscribed sphere—and so, one by one, the winged thoughts lower their circle of flight, and the dreamer ceases to dream.

But the love of nature is implanted too deeply in the heart of man to be ever entirely eradicated; and the sentiment finds for itself an expression coextensive with its existence in the universal love of flowers. They have a charm for the eye and soul welling from a deeper source than those graceful forms and brilliant colors, for they are a portion of the great universe. They are a link, and an important one, and the one most exquisitely fashioned, in the mighty chain which holds beside them not only the everlasting hills, but

Year after year they return to us with a beauty which never palls, to make us wiser, and better, and happier; and as punctually they meet from each true heart a greeting fitly due to their fairy manifestations of the same boundless Power which called forth those mightier, sublimer forms of matter so often placed beyond our reach.

Flowers, when mention is made of them in the Old Testament, are consecrated (so to say) by the most lofty associations; they typify virtue—happiness—the Deity himself. When the inspired writer would fain depict in language level to our humble capacity pleasures of which we can have not the most distant idea—the pleasures of man's first terrestrial paradise—he calls it a garden; as the word best embodying to us happiness sinless and complete; and the Deity in the same sacred volume prompted

as the most appropriate figures of his own divine holiness. Flowers with lamps of fine gold made part of the decorations of Solomon's temple. The Scriptures were originally written in the land of bold imagery and under a burning sun, where herbage and water constitute wealth; consequently, we find throughout its pages rich pastures and flowing streams suggested themselves as emblems of rewards not only in this world, but of those beyond the grave. Again, the brief span of life, and the uncertainty of all earthly possessions, are imaged by the fading flower and the withered grass; and the prophets in their denunciations of the wicked constantly compare them, in the desolation of utter abandonment, to a garden without water.

Asia has always been the especial land of flowers; from the rose-gardens which Semiramis [49] planted at the foot of Mount Bajistanos, 800 B.C., to the fragrant gardens now to be seen in almost every oriental city. The fame of these rose-gardens extended so far that Alexander the Great, on his Eastern expedition, turned a long way from his course to visit them. The city which Solomon founded, Tadmor in the wilderness (Palmyra), about midway between the Orontes and Euphrates, was celebrated, and indeed derived its name, from the abundance of a magnificent species of palm-tree which grew there. This tree (the Borassus of Lin.) yields a liquor seducing and pernicious, and in taste resembling weak champagne.[50] The ruins of this city and its surroundings are described by travellers as exceedingly imposing. The city of Susa (in Scripture, Susan), in a district lying on the Persian Gulf, was in ancient days the residence of the Persian kings; their summers being [307]spent at Ecbatana, in the cool mountainous district of Media. The name Susa signifies a lily, and is said to have been given on account of the great quantity and beauty of these flowers which grew in its vicinity. The fertility of the land of Bashan is mentioned in Scripture, and its oaks are coupled with the cedars of Lebanon. Media also is mentioned by old writers; and Carmania, north of the Persian Gulf, boasted of vines bearing clusters more than two feet long.

China in modern times calls herself the flowery kingdom, but she is not the only one; in many other parts roses are extensively cultivated for the purpose of distilling from them the ottar (attah-gul) of commerce; and the landscape is often converted for a hundred acres into one great rose-garden. It has been estimated that one-half of all the varieties of roses scattered over our gardens were originally brought from Asia; and perhaps, counting the fields planted there for distillation, it may be said that one-half of all in actual bloom adorn that quarter of the globe. Yet the simple wild roses of Asia, like our own wild roses, are very inconspicuous little flowers; it is only under the skilful hand of the florist that each one of those many varieties develops its own peculiar beauties, and we obtain the cultivated roses of the garden. The Afghan province of Turkistan is, in some parts, at the present day famous for its roses. Balkh, the modern capital, is so exceedingly hot that each spring the inhabitants in a body leave it for the little village of Mezar; and Mezar boasts of the most beautiful roses in the world—a fragrant red rose which they name gul-i-surkh. This peculiar variety grows on the pretended tomb of Ali (whose real monument is at Nedjef). They say that these roses will flourish in no soil but that of Mezar—an experiment (they say) which has been repeatedly tried and failed. Mr. Vambéry, who was there in 1864, says, "They are certainly more lovely and fragrant than any I ever saw."

Mr. Vambéry was sent in 1863, by the Hungarian Academy, on a scientific mission to Central Asia. At Teheran he assumed the dress of a dervish and the name of Hadji Rechid, and in this character he joined a company of twenty-four pilgrims, "ragged and dirty," who were on their return from Mecca to their far-away home in the northeast. They never penetrated his disguise—and with them he traversed an extent of country never before visited by a European. They travelled mostly by night, to avoid the excessive heat. Of course much natural landscape was lost, but we are struck with the abundance of flowers and gardens along this route. One which he mentions is not fascinating, but that was an exception; before leaving Teheran, he visited two European friends near there, and found "Count G—— in a small silk tent in a garden like a caldron; the heat was awful! Mr. Alison was more comfortable in his pleasant garden at Guhalek."

When the pilgrims resumed their journey at Teheran, such as were rich enough hired a camel for two, as partners. Mr. Vambéry soon loaned his animal to a "dirty friend," and joined the pedestrians, who, like true believers—followers of the Prophet—buried all care in one word, kismet.[51] As they tramped on (he says), "When their enthusiasm had been [308]sufficiently stimulated by reminiscences of the gardens of Mergolan, Namengan, and Kholand, all began with one accord to sing a telkin (hymn), in which I joined by screaming as loud as I was able Allah ya Allah!"

The gardens at Tabersi, a place where they rested, were very beautiful, also there were "abundance of oranges and lemons, tinted yellow and red with their dark-green leaves." From scenes of luxuriant vegetation they passed into the desert of Turkistan, which extended on all sides, far as eye could reach, like a vast sea of sand, on one side slightly undulating in little hills, like waves in a storm, on the other side level as a calm lake. Not a bird in the air, nor a crawling thing on the earth; "traces of nothing but departed life in the bleaching bones of man or beast who had perished there!" But mark how rapid the transition once more to beauty and fertility! On emerging from this desolation and reaching the frontier of Bokara, they had only proceeded half an hour through a country resplendent with gardens and cultivated fields when the little village of Kakemir lay before them.

Bokara (the city) is at this day the Rome of Islam. There is a small garden not far from it whose fame is widely extended; for in it stands the tomb of Baha-ed-din, the national saint of Turkistan, second in sanctity only to Mahomet. Pilgrimages are made to this tomb and garden from the most remote parts of China; and the people of Bokara go every week. About three hundred asses ply for hire between the garden and the city. It is considered a miraculous devotion in these animals that, while they go thither with the greatest alacrity, only the most determined cudgelling can turn them homeward—but then, asses may have rural proclivities.

Samarcand is the most beautiful city in Turkistan; magnificent in her splendid gardens, and in the tale of past glory told in her ruins. Two of the lofty domes which greet the eye of the stranger as he approaches are associated with Timour—the one is his mosque, the other his tomb, where the warlike Tartar rests among flowers. If we can picture the many lofty edifices with their imposing domes, and then suppose the whole intermixed with closely planted gardens, we shall have a faint idea of the loveliness in the first view of Samarcand. The way from Samarcand to Karshi, south, lies for the last two miles entirely through gardens.[52]

In Karshi is a large garden called Kalenterkhane—literally, beggar's house; but we would rather translate it pilgrim's house. The words are somewhat synonymous there, where the most saintly pilgrims to the tomb of the Prophet subsist on alms. But this is a lovely garden on the bank of the river, with walks and beds of flowers; and here the beau monde of Karshi are to be seen daily from about two o'clock until past sunset. In different parts of the place the Samovins (gigantic Russian tea-kettles) are constantly occupied in furnishing their customers, gathered around them in circles two and three deep, with the national beverage, tea.

We have a slight glimpse of tropical flowers in a greenhouse, but nothing of their native beauty and abundance; for what a poor representative of its class is that dwarfed and solitary specimen, faded in color and deficient in the perfume of a hot climate! Then how can imagination [309]fill out the entire landscape—when vines and trees cluster together, and twist their dark leaves and a thousand such blossoms into one sweet mass? Then the nard grass; and the spicy chandan, which old books say once covered the mountains of Malaya; and the groves of catalpa—not the catalpa of our latitude, but that which opens under an Indian sky, which the bee seeks before all other blossoms! The morning-glory (Ipomea) here has no fragrance, but one which grows wild in Southern Asia gives out a perfume like cloves.

One thing we remark in Asia is the quantity of flowers cultivated in cities, even the largest and most densely populated; in those of China especially, flowers are a household necessity. In most other lands—certainly in ours—they are associated with life in the country, or, at least, they are the pleasant privilege of the little village. Flowers in a city are luxuries only within reach of the wealthy. A bouquet bought in the market-place is a rare excess of floral expenditure, and it must needs be trimmed and watered until the last leaf withers. The dweller in a labyrinth of brick walls is happy if he can, one time in a year, escape to grass and gardens, and refresh memory that such things exist; but in Asiatic cities flowers are a part of life. A modern traveller says:

The home of Ponqua-qua, a retired Chinese merchant and mandarin, was crowded with flowers and sweet shrubs. Besides a greenhouse of choice plants, and the customary garden, his banqueting-hall opened on a grove of orange-trees and camellias, all covered with singing-birds. In years long past, the same tastes prevailed. Sir John Chardon, who was in Persia in 1686, dwells on delicious city gardens of "roses, lilies, and peach-trees." And further back still, in A.D. 1086, lived Atoz, a celebrated Chinese statesman and writer. In a description of his villa and grounds, he enumerates hedges of roses and pomegranate-trees—banks of odoriferous flowers—bamboo groves with gravel walks, willows and cedars, with the added treasure of a library of 5,000 volumes.[53]

In almost all pagan countries some certain flowers, either real or imaginary, receive a sort of veneration from being associated with supernatural and invisible things. Oftentimes the plant so honored is a tree, as the Soma of the Hindoos (the Persian Homa), which was "the first tree planted by Ahura-marda by the fountain of life. He who drinks of its juice can never die." In the Hindoo Mahabharet, the mountain Mandar, the occasional abode of the deities, is covered with a "twining creeper;" and India boasts a vine well befitting to deck the home of the gods! It is the Bengal banisteria of Linnæus, the most gigantic of all climbers. Its blossoms are pale pink shaded with red and yellow—so beautiful and so fragrant that it has gained the native name "delight of the woods." Another mountain, Meroo—a spot "beyond man's comprehension"—is [310]adorned with trees and celestial plants of rare virtue.

The Pelása (Butea frondosa) is held in great veneration; it gave name to the plain Plássey, or more properly Pelássey. It is named in the Vedas, in the laws of Menu, and in Sanscrit poems. Few plants (says Sir W. Jones) are considered more venerable and holy. There was a famous grove of it once at Crishnanagar.

The oriental Nauclea gives an odor like wine from its gold-colored blossoms, hence it was called Halipriga, or beloved of Halin, the Bacchus of India.

The ash-tree is very conspicuous in the fables of the Edda, and, as some part of the Scandinavian creed is said to have been carried thither from Asia, we may speak of it here. In the fifth fable of the prose Edda, the first man was named Aske (ash-tree), and the first woman Emla (elm-tree). We ask, Why these two especial trees? But see further—they were created by the sons of Bore from two pieces of wood found floating in the waves—and, behold, a sensible reason!

An ash-tree is in the palace of the gods; it typifies the universe. Its ramifications are countless—penetrating all things—and under its branches the gods hold council. But this ash-tree in various shapes is almost the only green leaf in Scandinavian mythology. Whatever else Sigge (Odin) carried thither from Asia, he left behind the countless (and some beautiful) flower legends. Or did they die in the icy north—and in their place spring up that machinery of blood and fierce passions which made Valhalla not the flower-clad mountain of oriental climes, but a battle-ground, where life was renewed only to be again pleasurably extinguished, and where boar's meat and mead was joy sufficient?

Flowers seem literally to pervade almost all oriental literature, ancient and modern. They inspire kings to lay aside care and enact the poet. In the middle of the last century, one of the Chinese emperors, Kienlong, distinguished himself by a long poem, in which he painted the beauties of nature and his admiration of them. He was contemporary with Frederick the Great, who also, as his French friend sneeringly informs us, always travelled with a quire of foolscap in his pocket. On which of the monarchs the muses smiled most kindly, no Chinese critic is here to tell. See-ma-kung, a Chinese statesman, wrote a book called the Garden—and very many similar might be named.[54]

What can express the softer emotions of the soul as well as flowers? The oriental lover can find no sweeter name for the object of his passion than "My rosebud!" Her form is the young palm-tree, her brow the white jasmine, her curling locks sweet hyacinths; her grace is the cypress; she is a fawn among aromatic shrubs!

Listen to a song from the Schar-Namah of Fedusi, one of the most celebrated Persian poets. In the original, the lines rhyme in couplets; this is only an extract. One can scarce think of the maiden as walking the earth. Surely she must have reclined on some rose, or floated round some lily!

Nor is it only love which levies this tribute on flowers. We subjoin an extract from Mesihi, another poet whose fame is world-wide: Mesihi the irresistible!—who paints in many a lyric, with graphic touch, the fascinations of beauty, and in the concluding verse of one of them (with happy self-complacency) thus soliloquizes:

In the following subject, flowers would be expected, but in the long poem of which this is only a part they are truly—the whole:

Flowers are beautiful—but such a profusion of them in print is not congenial to our northern tastes, despite other testimony in the enthusiasm of some oriental scholars. Of course, for those who are so happy as to read the originals there is a charm which is lost in translation—but there is good reason why we fail to sympathize. Hemmed in by cold and snow half the year, thought, passion, and deep feelings seek expression through channels not made of things visible; and their tides are not the less deep and strong because less demonstrative. The passionate and imaginative literature of the East is the outpourings of the soul under circumstances widely different from those under which similar effusions here (and some of the most impassioned and eloquent, too) have been penned. Each calls forth different tropes and figures—and if it is difficult for the one side to stir up imagination to untiring flights through rose-gardens, equally would the poet of Negaristan find it impossible to picture the charms of his mistress, and die of love or despair, before a coal-fire in the lamp-light.

Who can hear of roses without calling up an image of the nightingale, or, in Eastern phrase, the Bulbul? The mutual loves of the two (for roses can love there) have made the theme of tales and songs without[312] number. Whether the story is fact or fiction—whether the bird really pours forth its most thrilling notes in the atmosphere of that perfume, may be a disputed point with "outside barbarians," but with native writers the belief is fully accepted. Here, again, the repetition is wearisome; and here, again, it is pleasant to blame—not our lack of imagination, but our peculiar surroundings; for, alas! our vault empyrean is colorless or cloudy; the melodious Bulbul a thing to dream of; and the song, generally, only a prosaic translation!

The southwestern part of Asia is the land of spices, frankincense, and myrrh. It is also the land of sweet flowers, although few modern travellers say much about them. One reason, perhaps, is that the extreme heat obliges the stranger to rest most of the day, and night is for stars, not flowers.

But who ever associates flowers with Arabia? Is it the prolonged and baleful influence of that little wood-cut map which monopolized a whole page in infantile geography—the map which presents Arabia arrayed in dots, which we were then and there informed meant desert? Or is it the omnipresent muffled figures, camels, and tents which typify Arabia in all books devoted to juveniles? Whatever the cause, Arabia and Arabians always come to mind sandy and wandering.

Not so the Arabia which Niebuhr traversed in the last part of the last century, with most ample opportunities for information.

Arabia, he writes, enjoys almost constant verdure. It is true, most of the trees shed their leaves, and annual plants wither and are reproduced; but the interval between the fall of old leaves and the reappearance of others is so short that it is scarcely observable.[55]

Here are found most of the plants of two zones. On the high lands, those of Europe and Northern or rather Middle Asia; on the plains, those of India and Africa, not precisely identical with those of Europe, but a different species or variety. Delicious and abundant also are all kinds of tropical fruits; and so plentiful the melons that they serve as food for their camels. From Arabia were also first brought many of those plants which we cultivate as curiosities rather than for beauty—the cactus tribe. One of the most remarkable has its stem expanded to a globular form, about the size of a man's head; this rests on the earth, and from it proceed branches bearing flowers. In seeking for the most showy flowers, we must turn to their forest trees. Their forests are not very extensive, and such as they have are rarely seen by strangers, being quite distant from the usual course of travel. But the majestic height of the trees, covered with bright-colored and fragrant blossoms, are in marked contrast to our own forest trees, whose flowers, generally, can scarcely be distinguished from the leaves. One kind, the keura, is so very fragrant that a small blossom will perfume an entire apartment. Among small sweet plants is the panicratum, something like the sea-daffodil, of the purest white; an hibiscus, of the most brilliant red; and the moscharia, which gives from leaves and flowers the perfume of musk. But a catalogue of their names alone would exceed our limits.

There is poetry in this custom. "It is said that this nation alone has produced more poets than all others united" (Sismondi). Arabia shares more than flowers with the rest of Asia; she, too, joins to them poetry. Her people have the same fertile imagination, aversion to the restraints of cities, love of freedom and of nature, quick feelings and ardent passions, which make the true poet. The day is past—even so long past that they have forgotten it—when all this found expression in compositions, which we read now, and marvel at their rich inventions and glowing imagery; but, nevertheless, they are poets still! A distinguished French author writes:

Seven of the most remarkable old Arabian poems, written in gold, are hung in the Caaba, or Temple, at Mecca; and the authors show themselves not in the least degree behind other orientals in heaping up flowers and metaphors.

Flowers were once held, in Arabia, of high importance in science. Next to the sciences of mathematics, they valued that of medicine; and many volumes were written on their medical plants. Somewhere about the year 941, Aben-al-Beïther made a botanical tour over Europe and Asia, and a part of Africa, and, on his return, published a volume On the Virtues of Plants. Still earlier than this, in 775, Al-Mansour, the second prince of the Abassides, invited a Greek physician to his court, and obtained through him translations of many learned Greek works on medicinal plants. Such are flowers in Asia.

It is no wonder that, where nature has lavished her choicest productions, and all classes delight in cultivating them, flowers have increased ad infinitum. No wonder their brilliant hues inspired a native poet to sing:

II.

The little colony who passed from Asia to Egypt and first peopled that portion of the Mediterranean shore, in that time so long past—time without a date—must have carried with them many of their native plants; for several found indigenous only in India are found cultivated there. Among others is the Nymphæ nelumbo, the Lotus. This bore in India a sacred character; the Hindoo fable taught that the little god of love, their Cupid, was first seen floating down the Ganges on a lotus leaf. In very many ways this flower is interwoven with the Hindoo creed, or introduced in their literature—as in the following. It is part[314] of a sublime Hymn to Narayena, in which that great Invisible is thus addressed:

—and the radiant being, dazzling and beautiful, who springs to life and typifies the material universe,

In Egypt, when carried thither, it naturally retained a sort of sacred character. It is represented in their paintings and sculptures more frequently than any other plant; in scenes of festivity and processions, where it is twined with other flowers into wreaths and chaplets; and also in sacred scenes. Mr. Wilkinson describes a painting found at Thebes, in which is represented the final judgment of a human being:

Lotus buds have been often found in the old tombs. It was also introduced into their architecture. The most favorite capital for a column was a full-blown water-plant, supposed to be the papyrus, with a bud of the same, or a lotus bud. A large variety of it called Lotomelia is cultivated there still in gardens.

Within the last few years, some information has been gathered relating to the domestic life of the early Egyptians, which was previously only conjecture. To use the words of Sir J. G. Wilkinson: "It has been drawn from a comparison of the paintings, sculptures, and monuments still existing, with the accounts of ancient authors."

On fragments of stone in different degrees of preservation, taken from the ruins of temples, tombs, and dead cities, are found representations of those who once stood here, surrounded by all the wealth and glory, the luxuries and magnificence of which this is the wreck. Cut in lines which time has not all effaced, or traced in colors which centuries have scarcely dimmed, we see here master and slave, kings, priests, and people, in all the occupations of ordinary life—a half-obliterated record of the pursuits, customs, habits, and tastes of a nation so remote that their place in the past cannot be even conjectured. We only know, from unmistakable evidence, that they came originally from Asia, and lived thus in the land of Egypt. Looking at these fragments of their skilful workmanship, thought goes back to an era almost fabulous! For who can call up even in fancy that period, when the Nile ran through its primitive landscape, and no foot of man had pressed its shore! When no cities stood in that fertile valley, and the first stone of the first pyramid was not yet laid! What a space of time must have elapsed between the first landing and the accomplishment of all these mighty labors! There is a mist over it all, gathered through uncounted centuries; and although science and research have thrown some light, it is not much more than the flickering torch with which one walks at midnight; a little is revealed near at hand, but all beyond is darkness.

Nevertheless, so much of interest is connected with Egypt that the least added knowledge is of value; for not only is it mentioned by the most ancient profane writers as mysterious in antiquity even to them, but it is the land of the Old Testament. Mounds of ruins, great in height and extent, on a branch of the Nile, yet mark the place of Tanis,[57] the Zoan of Scripture, where, according to the Psalmist, Moses wrought those miracles which ended in the exodus of the Jews. On paintings found at Thebæ, the No-Ammon of Scripture, are representations of slaves engaged in making bricks, with taskmasters superintending them; and although these may not be Jews, for brick-making was a universal menial occupation, it carries us back to the days when "bricks without straw" were demanded. The departure of the Israelites from bondage, B.C. 1491, was in the reign of Thotmes III., the Pharaoh of Scripture, which records his destruction in that day, when,

It is remarkable that a drawing found at Thebes represents his son Amenoph, who succeeded him, as coming to the throne a mere child, under the guidance of his mother. But we digress too far.

Among other things learned by patient research, we perceive the admiration of the early Egyptians for flowers, and the care with which they cultivated them. "Flowers are represented on their dresses, chairs, boxes, boats, on everything susceptible of ornamentation; and flowers and leaves are painted on the linen found preserved in the tombs" (Wilkinson).

Pliny, in enumerating the flowers of ancient Egypt, says the myrtle is the most odoriferous; the reason, doubtless, for its being so often placed, as now found, about the dead. At present it is only cultivated in gardens. The other plants Pliny names as indigenous are the violet, rose, myosotis, clematis, chrysanthemum, and indeed nearly the whole catalogue of a modern garden. Figures on their paintings are decked with crowns and garlands of anemone, acacia, convolvulus, and some others. In the old tombs are found date-trees, sycamores, and the tamarisk.

There is a design at Thebes which represents the funeral procession of one evidently of rank. There are cars covered with palm branches, then female mourners, other personages, and next a coffin on a sledge decked with flowers.

In another very extensive and elaborate painting a similar procession is represented as crossing the lake of the dead, and going from thence to the tombs. The first boat contains coffins decked with flowers; in another is a high-priest, who offers incense before a table of offerings; another boat contains female mourners, others male mourners, and others chairs, boxes, etc.

To better understand an ancient Egyptian garden, we will first look at their dwellings. In some few cities where the size and something[316] like a plan can be distinguished, the streets are seen, some of them wide, but more very narrow. Their houses, garden-walls, public places, all but the temples, were of brick. The plan of the houses was similar to what now prevails in warm climates; the principal apartments were ranged round a courtyard, with chambers above them. In this court were a few trees, some boxes of flowering-plants, and a reservoir of water. Their houses were generally three stories in height.

Such a scene is represented in an old painting. The company are seated in the boat under a canopy; while slaves, or at least menials, walk along the bank and drag it after them, in a way similar to our canal navigation.

To ancient Egypt we are doubtless indebted for the invention of artificial flowers, now so prominent in female attire. They were made there first from the papyrus, the plant of which paper was made. Some old writer relates that, when Agesilaus was in Egypt, he was so charmed with a kind of crowns and chaplets which he saw in use there, formed to resemble flowers, that he carried many of them home with him to Sparta. They were perhaps imitated in Greece and became universal, yet retained the name of the inventors; for Pliny says:

Everything that pictures the domestic life of this people has such great interest that it is difficult to avoid digression. Every record of it expresses wealth and their peculiar tastes. Walls are profusely covered with various designs, doors are stuccoed to imitate costly wood, and their carved chairs have furnished symmetrical copies to modern art. Interspersed with these things, we have these traces of their flowers and gardens—a story of their rural pleasures in that day of glory, when they built the pyramids—that day which has no date! The hieroglyphics carved in stone, on which they doubtless securely relied for fame and a name to the end of time, yet cover the walls still standing of their superb temples; they are traced on tombs—on urns—on the rocks which surround cities—on the sarcophagi of the dead, even on the very linen which envelopes them—but they speak in a lost language! We comprehend only one brief epitaph—that a numerous and opulent people have entirely disappeared.

In the middle ages, Egypt was still noted for flowers and valuable aromatic shrubs and herbs. Cyrene in the north part was remarkable for the beauty of its adjacent country, which even then, says a writer,[317] bore traces of having been in former times a perfect flower-garden.

In the time of Julius Cæsar, roses must have received particular attention and extensive cultivation, for we read that a ship-load of the most fragrant was sent as a gift to Cæsar. He received them, however, with the graceless remark that he could show finer ones in Rome.

THE HOUSE OF YORKE.

CHAPTER V.
NEW FRIENDS

Enough is not only as good as a feast, it is better; and a little less than enough is better yet. How dear is that affection in which we have something to forgive! How charming is that beauty where the defects serve as indices to point out how great the beauty is! How wholesome is that salt of labor which gives a taste to leisure! For since the time of Eve, the point of perfection, save with God, has been the point of decay; and profuse wealth has often deprived its possessor of great riches.

What we arrive at by this preamble is that the Yorkes had been unconsciously suffering from the apathy of satisfied wants, and were now delighted to find that comparative poverty brings many a pleasure in its train.

"Mamma," Clara exclaimed, "I do believe there is a certain pleasure in making the best of things."

It was the morning after their arrival, and the young woman was standing in a chair, driving a nail to hang on a picture. She had begun by groaning at sight of the wall, a white stucco painted over with brown flower-pots, holding blossoming rose-trees. But the cord of the frame matched those roses, and in some unexplained way the picture looked well on that background.

Mrs. Yorke, looking on, smiled at the remark. "There is a very certain pleasure in it, my dear," she said; "and I am glad that you have found it out."

Clara considered, gave the nail another blow, evened the picture, and contemplated it with her head on one side. It was an engraving of Le Brun's picture of Alexander at the camp of Darius. "Mamma," she began again, "I think that Alexander the Great ought to have had another name after the adjective."

"Goose! Why didn't he, instead of crying for more worlds to conquer, try to get at the inside of the one he had conquered the husk of? Why did not he study botany, geology, and—poverty?"

"You are right, Clara," the mother replied. "Excess is always blinding. Why, we might have our whole house covered with morning-glories, yet never see the little silver tree that stands down in a garden of light at the bottom of each."

Clara clapped her hands with delight. "But fancy the house covered[318] from top to bottom with morning-glories all in bloom! It would be magical!"

The girl stepped down, and walked thoughtfully toward the door. "How odd it is," she said, pausing on the threshold, and looking back; "I never see one truth, but immediately I perceive another looking over its shoulder. And the last is greater than the first."

"It is perhaps an example of truth which you see at first," Mrs. Yorke said. "And afterward you perceive the truth itself."

Clara went slowly toward the stairs, and her mother listened after her, expecting to hear some philosophical remark flung down over the balusters. Instead of that, she heard a loud call to Betsey that the hens and chickens were all in the parlor, screams of laughter at the scene of their violent expulsion, then a clear lark-song as Clara finished her ascent.

Up-stairs, Melicent and Hester were busy and cheerful, quiet, too, till Clara came. She soon created a breeze, and sounds of eager discussion came down to their mother's ears. They were laying plans for the summer. They would have company down from Boston, and, when winter came, would each in turn visit the city. They would have more help in the house; and, in order to pay for it, would write for publication. Every one else wrote; why not they? Indeed, Melicent had appeared in print, a friendly editor having taken with thanks some sketches she had written between drive and opera. "What is worth printing is worth paying for," she said now; "and I shall feel no reluctance in announcing that in future my Pegasus runs for a purse."

Clara had never been before the public; but she had reams of paper written over with stories, poems, plays, and even sermons. She caught fire at everything, and, in the first excitement, dashed off some crude composition, but seldom or never went over it coolly. Melicent, to whom alone she showed her productions, had discouraged her. "You are like Nick Bottom, and insist on doing everything," she said. "It is a sign of incompetence."

Miss Yorke was one of those hyper-fastidious persons who establish a reputation for critical ability simply by finding fault with everything. Clara, on the contrary, was supposed to have a defective taste, because she was always admiring, and searching out hidden beauties.

But now at least Melicent condescended to admit that her sister might be able to accomplish something in a small way, and it was agreed that they should broach the subject to the assembled family that very evening.

At this encouragement, Clara rejoiced. "You see," she exclaimed, "I've been afraid that I might gradually grow into one of those lugubrious Dorcases who go round laying everybody out."

Edith, following her aunt and cousins about, rejoiced in everything. To her, this house, with its rat-holes and its dingy paint and plaster, was superb. The space, the sunshine, the air of elegance in spite of defects, the gentle voices and ways, all enchanted her. She found herself at home. Her own room was the last bubble on her cup of joy. They had given her the middle chamber over the front door, with a window opening out on to the portico, and each of the family had contributed some article of use or adornment. Mrs. Yorke gave an alabaster statuette[319] of the Blessed Virgin, Mr. Yorke a Douay Bible, Melicent hung an engraving of the Sistine Madonna where Edith's first waking glance would fall upon it, Clara gave an olive-wood crucifix from Jerusalem, with a shell for holy water, Hester brought an ivory rosary, and Carl a missal in Latin and French, which she must learn to read, he said.

They covered the floor with a soft Turkey carpet, set up a little iron bed, and draped it whitely, and put a crimson valance over the lace curtain of her window. The sisters worked sweetly and harmoniously in fitting up this bower for their young cousin, and were pleased to see her delight in what to them were common things. When she gratefully embraced each one, and kissed her on both cheeks, they felt more than repaid. Clara blushed up with pleasure at her cousin's caress.

"The little gypsy has taking ways," Carl thought; and he said, "If you kiss Clara that way many times, she will have roses grow in her cheeks."

Then Edith went down-stairs to her aunt, and Carl went out to assist his father.

Mr. Yorke was no exception to the general cheerfulness. He found himself more interested, while planning his summer's work with Patrick, than he had ever been while engaged in the finest landscape gardening, with an artist at his orders. Early in the morning he had captured two boys who were loitering about, and they willingly engaged themselves for the day to pick up wheel-barrow loads of small stones, and throw them into the mud of the avenue.

"Mr. Yorke has got himself into business," Patrick remarked to Carl. "That avenue has a wonderful appetite of its own."

Carl repeated this observation to his father. "And I think Pat is right," he added. "See how complacently that mud takes in all you throw to it. It seems to smile over the last load of pebbles."

Mr. Yorke put up his eye-glasses. He always did that when he wished to intensify a remark or a glance. "I intend to make these avenues solid, if I have to upset the whole estate into them," he remarked.

Mrs. Yorke sat in a front window holding an embroidery-frame, and Edith occupied a stool at her feet. The child had told all her story; her recollections of her mother, her life with the Rowans, of Captain Cary, and her ring. But of Mr. Rowan's burial she said nothing. That was to remain a secret with those who had assisted.

When Mrs. Yorke occasionally dropped her work, and sat looking out at her husband and son, Edith caressed the hand lying idly on that glowing wool, and held her own slender brown fingers beside those fair ones, for a contrast. She could not enough admire her aunt's snow-drop delicacy, rich hair, and soft eyes.

Mr. Yorke was too much engrossed to notice his wife; but Carl looked up now and then for a glance and smile.

"Do you recollect anything that happened when you were a little girl, Aunt Amy?" Edith asked.

The lady smiled and sighed in the same breath. "I was this moment thinking of a tea-party I had on that large rock you can just see at the right. I had heard my father read Midsummer-Night's Dream, and my fancy was captivated by it. So I invited Titania, Oberon, and all the fairies, and they came. It was an enchanting banquet. The plates were acorn-cups, the knives and forks were pine-needles, the cakes were white pebbles, and we drank drops of dew out of moss vases."

"I've read that play too," Edith said brightly. "Mr. Rowan had it. And I read about Ariel. But I didn't like Caliban nor Bottom, and I think it was a shame to cheat Titania so. Do you remember anything else?"

"Yes. When I was five or six years old, my father brought home a new map of the State of Maine, and hung it on that wall opposite. It was bright and shining, and had the name in great letters across the whole. My father held me up before it in his arms, and said I should have a silver quarter if I would tell him what the great letters spelt. How I tried! not so much for the silver, though I wanted it, as for the honor of success, and to please my father. But I couldn't make less than two syllables of it. To me M, A, I, N, E, spelt Mainé. But my father gave me the quarter. I suppose he thought that the language, and not I, was at fault."

"I don't see why letters should be put into words when they are not needed there," Edith remarked. "I would like to have them left out. It makes a bother, and takes time."

The child did not know that she was uttering revolutionary sentiments, and that the reddest of red republicanism lurked in her speech.

Mrs. Yorke mused over her embroidery, set a golden stitch in a violet, drew it too tightly, and had to loosen it.

"Oh!" Edith exclaimed, her memory catching on that thread. "That makes me recollect that I knit a tight strip into the heel of Mr. Rowan's stocking, and I can see just how it looked. But I didn't know it then."

There was a sound of wheels, and Mrs. Yorke looked up to see a carriage drawn by a pair of greys coming up the avenue. Major Cleaveland had lost no time in calling on his neighbors.

Mr. Yorke went down to meet his visitor, the road being too penitential for travel, and the two walked up together. They had known each other by sight in Boston, where the major spent his winters, but had no farther acquaintance. Now they met cordially, and stood a while talking in the portico before going in to see the ladies. Major Cleaveland was fresh-faced, pleasant-looking, and rather pompous in manner. A deep crape on his hat proclaimed him a widower. Indeed, Mrs. Cleaveland had not long survived young Mrs. Yorke, and the two had, ere this, let us hope, amicably settled the question of precedence.

The visit was an agreeable one to all, though it was evident that the visitor felt more at ease with the ladies than with his host. He was slightly disconcerted by Mr. York's piercing eyes, aquiline nose, and emphatic mode of speech, and on the whole found him rather too dominant in manner. It appeared that there were to be two lords in Seaton instead of one.

We doubt if the most amiable of Bengal lions would be altogether pleased at seeing his proper jungle invaded by even the politest of Nubian lions; and we may be pretty sure that the lioness would hear in private more than one remark detrimental to the dignity of that odious black monster with his desert manners. And in return, it is not unlikely that the African desert-king might sneer at his tawny brother as rather an effeminate creature. It is not the lionesses alone who have rivalries. Certain it is that, when Major Cleaveland had gone, and the ladies chose to praise him very highly, Melicent pronouncing him to be a superior person, Mr. Yorke saw fit[321] to greet the remark with one of his most disagreeable smiles.

"He has intellectual tastes, but no intellectual power," answered "papa" most decidedly. "He has glimmerings."

But for all that, the call was a pleasant one, the gentleman lingering half an hour, and then going with reluctance. The presence of Edith had caused him a momentary embarrassment. He was not sure that it would be delicate to remember having ever seen her before, and yet her smiling eyes seemed to expect a recognition. But Mrs. Yorke brought her forward immediately. "Edith tells me you are an acquaintance," she said, "and that you have been very kind to her."

Before going, Major Cleaveland placed his pews in the meeting-house at their disposal, and offered to send a carriage for them the next morning. "I have two of the best pews in Dr. Martin's church," he said, "and since my boys went away to school, there has been no one but myself to occupy them. There is room in each for six persons; and I sit in one, and put my hat in the other. Of course, we look like two oases in a red velvet desert. Do come, ladies, and make a garden of the place."

They all went out to the portico with him when he took leave, and he went away charmed with their cordiality, and with several new ideas in his mind. One of the first effects of this enlightenment was that the major appeared at meeting the next day without a crape on his hat.

It was a fatiguing day, that Saturday; but at sunset their labors were over, all but arranging the books. The boxes containing these Mr. Yorke had brought into the sitting-room after tea, and the young people assisted him. He classified his library in a way of his own. Metaphysical works he placed over science, since "metaphysics is only physics etherized," he said. One shelf, named the Beehive, was filled with epigrams and satires. History and fiction were indiscriminately mingled. Mr. Yorke liked to quote Fielding—"pages which some droll authors have been facetiously pleased to call the history of England."

"There are certain time-honored lies which every intelligent and well-informed person is expected to be familiar with," he said. "Not to know Hume, De Foe, Fox, Cervantes, Froude, Le Sage, etc., argues one's self unknown."

In a corner of the case was the Olympus where Mr. Yorke's especial intellectual favorites were placed—among them Bolingbroke, Carlyle, Emerson, and Theodore Parker. "They are fine pagans," he said of the two last.

Mrs. Yorke mused in the chimney-corner, her head resting on her hand, the smouldering fire throwing a faint glow up in her face. Edith sat by a table looking over William Blake's illustrations of Blair's Grave—a set of plates that had just been sent them from England. The daughters took books from the boxes, and called their names; Carl, mounted on steps, placed the upper ones; and Mr. Yorke did everything they did, and more. He scolded, ordered, commented, and now and then opened a book to read a passage, or give an opinion of the author.

"Don't put Robert Browning beside Crashaw!" he cried out. "You might as well put Lucifer beside St. John."

"So I do; but half his lustre is phosphorescent. It is a spiritual decay, and the lightnings of a superb[322] mind. But Crashaw is an angel. Edith must read him."

Looking at such a library, a Catholic remembers well that the serpent still coils about the tree of knowledge, hisses in the rustling of it, and poisons many a blossom with his breath. Worse yet, though the antidote is near, few or none take it. Those for whom slanders against the church are written, never read the refutation. How many who read in Motley's Dutch Republic that absolutions were sold in Germany at so many ducats for each crime, the most horrible crimes, either committed or to be committed, having an easy price—how many of those readers ask if it be true, or glance at a page which disproves the slander? Who on reading Prescott looks to the other side to see exposed his insinuations, his false deductions from true facts? How many of those countless thousands who have been nurtured on the calumnies of Peter Parley, drawing them in from their earliest childhood, have ever read a page on which his condemnation is written? And later, in the periodical literature of the day, with a thousand kindred attacks, how many of those who, within a few months, have read in the Atlantic Monthly Mrs. Child's impertinent article on Catholicism and Buddhism, stopped to see that her argument, such as it was, was directed less against the church than against Christianity itself? or looked in Marshall's Christian Missions to find that the resemblance is simply a reflection of the early labors of the only missionaries who have ever influenced Asia—the faint echoes of "the voice of one crying in the wilderness"?

The books in their places, Mr. Yorke seated himself to look over a casket of precious coins and rings. "Wouldn't you think that papa was dreaming over some old love-token of his boyhood?" whispered Clara to her brother.

Her father had fallen into a dream over an old ring with a Latin posy in it; and what he saw was this: a blue sky, jewel-blue, over Florence, in whose air, says Vasari, "lies an immense stimulus to aspire after fame and honor." He saw a superb garden, peopled with sculptured forms, and three men standing before an antique marble. It is Bertoldo, Donatello's pupil, young Michael Angelo, and Lorenzo the Magnificent, the glory of Florence, whose face all the people and all the children love; and they are walking in the gardens of San Marco, the art-treasury of the Medici. Farther off, moving slowly under the trees, with his hands behind his back, and his eagle face bent in thought, is the learned and elegant Poliziano. Suddenly he pauses, a smile flashes across his face, he brings his hands forward to clap them together, and goes to meet the three who have respected his seclusion. "How now, Poliziano," laughs the duke, "do we not deserve to hear the result of those musings which we were so careful not to intrude upon?" And the scholar, whose epigrams no less than his Greek and his translations are the pride of the court, bows lowly, and repeats the very posy engraved on this ring over which Mr. Yorke now dreams in the nineteenth century, in the woods of Maine, in April weather.

The bright Italian picture faded. Mr. Yorke sighed and put the magical ring away, and took up a volume of Villemain's Histoire de la Littérature Française, turning the leaves idly.

Melicent made a slight movement, and begged to be heard. "We girls have been talking matters over to-day," she said, "and would like to submit our plans to you. We have divided the house-work into three parts, which we take in rotation. One is to be lady's-maid and companion for mamma, another is to make the beds and dust all the rooms, and the third will set the table, wash the china and silver, and trim the lamps."

Mr. Yorke looked up quickly as his daughter began, but immediately dropped his eyes again, and sat with a flushed face, frowning slightly. It was his first intimation that his daughters had not only lost society and luxury, but that their personal ease was gone. They would have to perform menial labors.

"I think your arrangement a very good one, Melicent," Mrs. Yorke replied tranquilly. She had all the time seen the necessity. "But the post of lady's-maid will be a sinecure. However, let it stay. It will be a time of leisure for each."

"Why, papa!" Clara cried out, "Betsey can scarcely spare time out of the kitchen to do the sweeping. When we come to making butter, we girls will have to help in the fine ironing."

They all laughed, except Hester, who affectionately embraced her father's arm. "Why shouldn't the butter come when you churn, dear papa?" she asked.

"We don't mean to do this sort of work long," Melicent resumed. "There is no merit in doing servile work, if one can do better. Clara and I will write, and so pay for extra help. I think"—very indulgently—"that, with practice, Clara may make something of a writer. I shall write a volume of European travels. On the whole, looking at our reverses in this light, they seem fortunate. Living here in quiet, we can accomplish a literary labor for which we should never otherwise have found time."

"That is true," Mr. Yorke said; but his look was doubtful and troubled. "Still, Melicent, I would not have you too confident. I would advise you to try a story. It would be more likely to sell. Europe réchauffée has become a drug in the market, and our experiences abroad were pretty much what those of others are. A vagabond adventurer would have a much better chance of catching public attention."

Edith gazed in awe at her companions. She was in the midst of people who made books! She saw them face to face. So might pretty Psyche have gazed when first her husband's celestial relatives received her, when she saw Juno among her peacocks, Minerva laying aside her helmet, Hebe pouring nectar. This, then, is Olympus!

"If you write a story, do take one suggestion from me, Melicent," Carl said. "Pray give your hero and heroine brushes to dress their hair with. Have you observed that even the finest characters in books have to use a broom? The hair is always swept back."

"I don't want to discourage you, daughter," her father went on. "But[324] you must recollect that it is one thing to give a sketch to an editor, who is a friend, and dines with you, and another thing to offer him a book, which he is expected to pay for. Then he must look to the market and his reputation. Some of the finest writers in the world have described these very scenes which you would describe. Can you tell more of Rome than Madame de Staël has? or paint a more enchanting picture of Capri than that of Hans Andersen? If not, you run the risk of reminding your reader of Sidney Smith's reply to the dull tourist who held out his walking-stick, boasting that it had been round the world. 'Yes; and still it is a stick!' says Sidney."

Miss Yorke held her head very high, and her color deepened. "I will then put my MS. into the fire," she said in a quiet tone, casting her eyes down.

Her father gave an impatient shrug. "Not at all!" he replied. "But you will take advice, and try to think that you are not above criticism."

"Clara has an idea," Carl interposed. He had been bending over some papers with his younger sister. "She also turns to travels, but very modestly. She calls them gleanings, and her motto is from De Quincey: 'Not the flowers are for the pole, but the pole is for the flowers.' Here is the preface. Shall I read it?"

"Oh! I am afraid of papa!" Clara cried, blushing very much. But Mr. Yorke, who only now learned that his second daughter was also a scribbler, laughingly promised to be lenient; and she suffered herself to be persuaded. They all looked kindly on her, even Melicent, in spite of her own mortification; and Carl read:

"I do not presume to write a volume descriptive of European travel. Many, great and small, have been in that field, some reaping wheat, others binding up tares. These leaves are offered by one who gathered a few nodding things which no one valued, seeing them there, but which some one may, if fortune favor, smile at, since they grew there. One such might say: You're but a weed; but you grew in a chink of crumbling history; I know where, for I measured the arch, and sketched the colonnade. And I recognize the green leaves of you, and the silver thread of a root, with a speck of rich old soil clinging yet. And, à propos, I saw there a child asleep in the shade, with a group of spotted yellow lilies standing guard, as if they had sprung up since, and because she had closed her eyes, and might change to a group of tigers if you should go too near. She had long eyelashes, and she smiled in her sleep.

"I do not claim to be an artist, O travelled reader! but I stretch a hand to touch the artist in you."

"That isn't bad," Mr. Yorke said immediately. "And your motto is very pretty. I am glad to have you familiar with De Quincey. He is good company. He is a man who does not overlook delicate hints, and he is respectful and just to children. He annoys me sometimes by a weak irony, and by explaining too much; but, I repeat, he is good company."

Immediately Clara passed from the deeps to the heights. Her bosom heaved, her eyes flashed. She felt herself famous.

"Why, I haven't written anything but the preface," Clara was forced to acknowledge.

Mr. Yorke smiled satirically. Clara was notable in the family for making great beginnings which came to nothing.

"But I have other things finished," she said eagerly, and brought out a poem. All her fears were gone. She was full of confidence in herself.

We spare the reader a transcription of this production. Mephistopheles had a good deal to do with it, and it was probably written during some midnight ecstasy, when the young woman had been reading Faust. It was meant to be very fearful; and as the authoress read it herself, all the terrible passages were rendered with emphasis.

Mrs. Yorke listened with a doubtful face. The reading was quite out of her gentle mental sphere; and Carl's hand shaded his eyes, which had a habit of laughing when his lips did not. Mr. Yorke, with his mouth very much down at the corners, his eyes very much cast down, and his eyebrows very much raised, glanced over a page of the book in his hand.

"I chanced to-night across the first touch of humor I have seen in Villemain," he said. "He quotes Crébillon: 'Corneille à pris le ciel, Racine la terre; il ne me restait plus que l'enfer. Je m'y suis jetté à corps perdu.' 'Malheureusement,' says Villemain, 'malheureusement il n'est pas aussi infernal qu'il le croit.'"

Without raising his face, Mr. Yorke lifted his eyes, and shot at the poetess a glance over his glasses.

Mrs. Yorke spoke hastily. "I am sure, papa, the dear girls deserve every encouragement for their intentions and efforts. I am grateful and happy to see how nobly they are taking our troubles; and I cannot doubt that, with their talents and good-will, they will accomplish something. But it is too late to talk more about it to-night. You must be tired, and my head is as heavy as a poppy. Shall we have prayers?"

She rose in speaking, went to the table, and, standing between her two elder daughters, with an arm round the neck of each, kissed them both, tears standing in her eyes. "If you never succeed in winning fame, my dears," she said, "I shall still be proud and fond of you. Your sweet, helpful spirit is better than many books."

The Yorkes had never given up, though they had often interrupted, the habit of family devotion. Now it was tacitly understood that the custom should be a regular one. So Hester brought the Bible and prayer-book, and placed them before her father, and her sisters folded their hands to listen.

"I think we should have Betsey in," Mrs. Yorke said; and Melicent went to ask her.

Betsey and Patrick were seated at opposite sides of a table drawn up before the kitchen fireplace, where a hard-wood knot burned in a spot of red gold. One of the windows was open, and through it came a noise of full brooks hurrying seaward, and a buzzing, as of many bees, that came from the saw-mills on the river. Betsey was darning stockings, and Pat reading the Pilot.

"We are to have prayers now," Melicent said, standing in the door. "Will you come in, Betsey?"

Betsey slowly rolled up the stocking, and stabbed the darning-needle into the ball of yarn. "Well, I don't care if I do," she answered moderately. "It can't do me no great harm."

Melicent gave her a look of surprise, and returned to the sitting-room, leaving the doors ajar.

"Come, Pat," said Betsey, "put away that old Catholic paper, and[326] come in and hear the Gospel read. I don't believe you ever heard a chapter of it in your life."

"No more did St. Peter nor St. Paul," answered Patrick, without lifting his eyes from the paper. He had been reading over and over one little item of news from County Sligo, where he was born. The old priest who had baptized him was dead; and with the news of his death, and the description of his funeral, how many a scene of the past came up! He was in Ireland again, poor, but careless and happy. His father and mother, now old and lonely in that far land, were still young, and all their children were about them. The priest, a man in his prime, stood at their cottage door, with his hand on little Norah's head. They all smiled, and Norah cast her bashful eyes down. Now the priest was white-haired, and dead, and little Norah had grown to be a careworn mother of many children. The man was in no mood to hear taunts. Read the Gospel? Why, it was like reading a gospel to look back on that group; for they were true to the faith, and poor for the faith's sake, and they had lived pure lives for Christ's love, and those who had died had died in the Lord.

"But Peter and Paul wrote," answered Betsey. "And what they wrote is the law of God. You'll never be saved unless you read it."

"Many a one will be damned who does read it!" retorted Patrick wrathfully. "What's the use of reading a law-book, if you don't keep the law?"

"Oh! if you're going to swear, I'll go," Betsey replied with dignity, and went. But she took care to leave the doors ajar behind her.

It was true, Patrick did not read the Bible much; but he knew the Gospels and Psalms in the prayer-book, and was as familiar with the truths of Scripture as many a Bible student. But he had heard it so be-quoted by those who were to him not much better than heathen, and so made a bone of contention by snarling theologians, that he did not much care to read the book itself. He could not now avoid hearing it read without leaving the room; and he would not have had them hear him show that disrespect to them.

Mr. Yorke's voice had a certain bitter, rasping quality, which, with his fine enunciation, was very effective in some kinds of reading. In the sacred Scriptures it gave an impression of grandeur and sublimity. Patrick dropped his paper, and listened to the story of the martyrdom of St. Stephen. He knew it well, but seemed now to hear it for the first time. He saw no book, he heard a voice telling how the martyr stood before his accusers, with "his face as the face of an angel," and flung back their accusation upon themselves, till "they were cut to the heart," and "gnashed with their teeth at him."

As Mr. Yorke went on with the story, and the saint, looking steadfastly upward, declared that he saw the heavens open, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God, Patrick rose unconsciously to his feet, and blessed himself. To his pure faith and unhackneyed imagination the scene was vividly clear. He heard the outcry of the multitude, saw them rush upon their victim, drive him out of the city and stone him, till he fell asleep in the Lord.

The prayer that followed grated on his feelings. The reader lost his fire, and merely got through this part of the exercises. Evidently, Mr. Yorke did not believe that he was praying. Neither did Patrick believe that he was.

The next morning Major Cleaveland's carriage came to take them to what they called church. Melicent and Clara had already set out to walk. Carl stayed at home with Edith, and only Mr. and Mrs. Yorke and Hester drove. They overtook the others at the steps of the meeting-house, and found Major Cleaveland waiting in the porch for them.

Mrs. Yorke was one of those sweet, unreasoning souls who fancy themselves Protestant because they were born and trained to be called so, but who yield as unquestioning an obedience to their spiritual teachers as any Catholic in the world. She unconsciously obeyed the recommendation, "Don't be consistent, but be simply true." Absurdly illogical in her theology, she followed unerringly, as far as she knew, her instincts of worship, and the opinions that grew naturally from them. It would be hard to define what her husband thought and believed of Dr. Martin's sermon. He did not find it a feast of reason, certainly; but he swallowed it from a grim sense of duty, though with rather a wry face. The young ladies knew about as much of theology as Protestant ladies usually do, and that is—nothing. They left it all to the minister; and, provided he did not require them to believe anything disagreeable, were quite satisfied with him.

Coming home, they entertained their brother with a laughing account of their experience. The major had escorted Melicent to her seat, to the great amusement of the two sisters following. For Miss Yorke, sublimely conscious of herself, and that they were the observed of all observers, had walked with a measured tread, utterly irrespective of her companion; and the major, equally important, and slightly confused by his hospitable cares, had neglected to modify his usual short, quick steps. The result was, as Clara said, that "they chopped up the aisle in different metres," thus oversetting the gravity of the younger damsels following. Then their minds had been kept on the rack by an old gentleman in the pew in front of them, who went to sleep several times, following the customary programme: first a vacant stare, then a drooping of the eyelids, then a shutting of them, then several low bows, finally a sharp, short nod that threatened to snap his head off, followed by a start, and a manner that resentfully repudiated ever having been asleep.

"Poor old gentleman!" Mrs. Yorke said. "The day was warm, and Dr. Martin's voice lulling. How could he help it?"

"But, mamma," Clara answered, "he could have pinched himself; or I would have pinched him cheerfully."

A good many people called on them that week, and the family were surprised to find among them persons of cultivated minds. Beginning by wondering what they were to talk about with these people, they found that they had to talk their best.

They had made the mistake often made by city people, taking for granted that the finest and most cultivated minds are to be found in town. They forgot that city life fritters away the time and attention by a thousand varied and trivial distractions, so that deep thought and study become almost impossible. They neglect to observe that cities would degenerate if they were not constantly supplied[328] with fresh life from the country; that the fathers that achieve are followed by the sons that dawdle, that the artist gives birth to the dilettante. 'Tis the country that nurses the tree which bears its fruit in the city. But, also, the country often hides its treasures, and the poet's fancy of "mute, inglorious Miltons" is as true as it is poetical.

In the country painting and sculpture and architecture are, it is true, only guessed at; but they have nature, which, as Sir Thomas Browne says, "is the art of God;" and books are appreciated there as nowhere else. The country reader dives like a bee into the poet's verse, and lingers to suck up all its sweetness; the city reader skims it like a butterfly. In the country the thinker's best thought is weighed, and pondered, and niched; in the city it is glanced at, and dismissed. In those retired nooks are women who quote Shakespeare over their wash-tubs, and read the English classics after the cows are milked, while their city sisters ponder the fashions, or listen to some third-rate lecturer, whose only good thought is, perhaps, a borrowed thought.

Still, all honor to that strong, swift life which grinds a man as under a millstone, and proves what is in him; which sharpens his sluggishness, breaks the gauze wings of him, and forces him out of a coterie and into humanity.

One day Dr. Martin called. Mrs. Yorke and her daughters, with Carl, were out searching for May-flowers, and there was no one at home to receive him but Mr. Yorke and Edith. Dr. Martin and the child met with great coldness, and instantly separated; but the two gentlemen kept up a conversation, though neither was quite at his ease. They needed a gentler companionship to bring them together. The minister was a man of good mind and education, and a kind heart; but his prejudices were strong and bitter, and the presence of that little "papist" disconcerted him. He soon took occasion, in answer to Mr. Yorke's civil inquiries respecting the churches in Seaton, to give expression to this feelings.

"We have, of course, a good many papists, but all of the lowest class," he said; "I have tried to do something for them; but they are so ignorant, and so enslaved by their priests, that it is impossible to induce them to listen to the Gospel."

Mr. Yorke drew himself up. "Perhaps you are not aware that my niece, Miss Edith Yorke, is a Catholic," he said in his stateliest manner.

Edith, standing in a window near, had not made a sound; but she looked at the minister, and fired at him two shots out of her two eyes. He in turn raised himself with an offended air at Mr. Yorke's reproof.

"I was certainly not aware that your sympathies were with the papists, sir," he said.

"Neither are they," was the cold reply. "But I profess to be a gentleman, and I try to be a Christian. One of my principles is never to insult the religious beliefs of another."

"But," objected the minister, stifling his anger, "if you never attack their errors, you lose the chance of enlightening them."

"Doctor," Mr. Yorke said with a slight laugh, "I don't believe you can ever enlighten a man's mind by pounding a hole in his head."

And so they dropped that part of the subject. But Mr. Yorke thought it best to define his own position, and thus prevent future mistakes.

"I believe in God," he said. "A man is a fool who does not. And I believe that the Bible was written by men inspired by him. But there[329] is no one thing in it for the truth of which I would answer with my life. It is the old fable of the divinity visiting earth wrapped in a cloud. Somewhere hidden in the Bible is the truth, but I see it as in a glass darkly. I think as little about it as possible. To study would be to entangle myself in a labyrinth. It is natural and necessary for man to worship; but it is neither natural nor reasonable for him to comprehend what he worships. To take in the divine, your brain must crack."

CHAPTER VI.
BOADICEA.

Within a few weeks came a letter from Mrs. Rowan to Edith. It is not natural for people to write in their own way—that comes with education and practice; but this letter breathed the writer's very self. It radiated a timid distress. She had surprising news to tell. Instead of being in a tenement of her own, among plain people whom she would feel at ease with, she was installed as housekeeper in what seemed to her a very magnificent establishment. Mr. Williams, her employer, was an importing merchant, and his family consisted of a daughter, eighteen years of age, and an awful sister-in-law who lived in the next street, but visited his house at all hours of day or evening, superintending minutely his domestic arrangements. This gentleman knew Major Cleaveland well, and had for many years had business relations with Captain Cary. Indeed, it was their sailor friend who had procured the situation for her, and insisted on her taking it. She had refused as long as she could, but Dick himself joining against her, she had finally yielded. Mr. Williams was very kind. He had assured her that he did not want a city housekeeper, but some quiet, honest countrywoman to be in the house with his daughter, and see that the servants did not rob him.

At the conclusion of this letter, Mrs. Rowan added that Dick sent his respects, at which Edith's heart sank with disappointment. Where was the hearty affection, the eager remembrance she had looked for?

The child would have been less indignant had she known what pains Dick was really taking for her sake. He had searched out, and borrowed or bought all the printed correspondence of famous letter-writers that were to be had for love or money, and was studying them as models. He had also invested extravagantly in stationery, and was striving to bend his clear, clerkly penmanship to something more elegant and gentlemanlike. Even while she was accusing him of forgetfulness, he was carefully copying his tenth letter to her.

But still, Edith was not to blame, though she was mistaken. Affection has no right to be silent.

After a few days, however, came his farewell before sailing for the East. Over this note, Edith shed bitter tears, as much for the manner as for the matter of it. For Dick, with an eye to Mrs. Yorke as a reader, had composed a very dignified epistle after the manner of Doctor Johnson. Poor Dick! who could have written the most eloquent letter in the world, if he had[330] poured his heart out freely and simply.

The child had scant time allowed her for mourning, for her studies began immediately. The family were all her teachers, and she began at once with music and languages. The common branches were taught indirectly. Geography she learned by looking out on the maps places mentioned in their reading or conversation. History she learned chiefly through biography. For arithmetic, some one gave her every day a problem to solve. She added up household expenses, measured land, laid out garden-beds, weighed and measured for cooking. Her study was all living: not a dead fact got into her mind. She read a great deal besides, travels, all that she could find relating to the sea, and poetry. As her mind became interested, she settled once more into harmony with herself, and her feelings grew quiet. The impression left by Dick's strange behavior after their parting faded away, and she remembered only his last fervent protestation: "I'll climb, Edith, I'll climb!" How it was to be, and what it really meant, she knew not; but the old faith in him came back. "What Dick said he'd do, he always did."

She associated him with all she read or heard of foreign lands and waters. He had sailed through phosphorescent seas by night, under wide-eyed stars, while the waves tossed in fire from his prow, and trailed in fire in his wake. He had lain in the warm southern ocean, where the tides are born, had held his breath during that pause when all the waters of the earth hang balanced, and swung his cap as he felt the first soft pulse of the infant tidal wave that was to grow till its rim should cast a wreath of foam on every shore from the North Pole to the South. Palms and the banyan-tree, pines almost huge enough to tip the earth over, each in turn had shaded his head. His venturesome feet had trod the desert and the jungle. Jews and Moslems had looked after him as he sauntered through their crowded bazaars—the bright-eyed, laughing sailor-boy! Norsemen had smiled as they saw his hair blown back and his face kindled by the tempest. It was always Dick to the fore of everything.

On one of those spring mornings, Carl, wandering through the woods, came out into the road in front of an old school-house that stood at the edge of the village. The door was open, and showed a crowd of children at their studies inside. On the green in front of the door lay a log, and on the log sat a deplorable-looking little man. He was neither young nor old, but seemed to be stranded on some bleak age which time had forgotten. His clothes were gentlemen's clothes cut down and patched. A hat that was too large for him reached from his forehead to his neck. It was not crushed, but it was shabby, and drooped sorrowfully in the brim. His hair was thin and long, and patted down. Tears rolled over his miserable face as he sat and looked in at the children saying their lessons in a long class. He did not cover his face in weeping, but lifted his eyebrows, wiped the tears occasionally, and continued to gaze.

Carl was one of the last persons in the world to intrude on another, or allow any intrusion on himself, but after a moment's hesitation he ventured to approach this pitiful little figure, and ask what ailed him.

The man showed no surprise on being addressed, but poured out his grief at once. His name was Joseph Patten, he was poor and had a large family, and was obliged to receive[331] town help. As a condition of that help, he must give up one of his children to be bound out to work, or adopted into a family. The parents were allowed to choose which child they would part with, and "Joe," as he was called by everybody, was now trying to make up his mind. His story was told in a whimpering voice, and with many tears, and the listener was quite as much provoked to laugh as to weep.

"It isn't easy to part with your own flesh and blood, sir," said Joe. "There's Sally, my oldest girl, named for her marm. She helps about the house. My wife couldn't get along without Sally. The next one is Joseph. He's named for me; and I don't want to give up the child that's named for myself, sir. Then John, he's got the rickets, and is used to be fed and taken care of. You couldn't expect a man to send away a child that's got the rickets, and let him drop all his food before he gets it to his mouth. Then Betsey, she's named for my mother. How am I going to send away the child that's named for my own mother, when she's dead and gone, and let her live among strangers? Jane, she's homesick; she cries if she is out of her marm's sight a minute. She'd cry herself to death if she was to be carried off. Then there's Jackson, named for General Jackson. You don't suppose I could give away a child that's named for General Jackson! And George Washington, named for the father of his country. Why, I could do without any of 'em sooner than I could without George Washington. And Paul, he's named for the 'postle Paul. It would be a sin and a shame to give away a boy that's named for the 'postle Paul. And Polly, she's the baby. You can't give a baby away from its own mother."

There had been several other children who had died, chiefly from unwholesome little fevers, to which they seemed addicted.

Carl was unable to assist the man in his choice; but he comforted him somewhat by promising to visit his family soon, and left him weeping, and gazing through the door at his children.

That same afternoon Carl and Melicent went out to visit Joe Patten's family. It had occurred to the young woman that she might be able to train one of the pauper's boys for a house-servant, and thus benefit them and her own family at the same time.

The Pattens lived directly back of the Yorkes' place, about half a mile farther into the woods, and their house had no communication with the public ways save by a cart-road. Joe's sole income was derived from the sale of little snags of wood that he hauled into the village, and exchanged for groceries. In Seaton wood was a drug in the market. A man must cut his beech and maple into clear split logs, and season it well, if he expected to get two dollars a cord for it.

The walk through the woods was a pleasant one, for nature was stirring all alive about them. This nature was no Delilah of the tropics, and to one who loved a bold and gorgeous beauty it was poor. But for those who like to seek beauty in her shyer, hidden ways, it had a delicate and subtle charm. The profuse snowy bloom of wild-cherries showed in a cloud here and there against the red or salmon-colored flowers of maples and oaks. Silver birches glimmered through their shining foliage, like subsiding nymphs, and the tassels of the larch swung out their brown and gold. Violets blue and white opened thickly in wet[332] places, sisterhoods of snowdrops stood with their drooping heads tenderly streaked with pink, little knubbles of land were covered thickly with old and young checkerberry—"ivry-leaves" the children called them, drops of gum oozed through the rough bark of spruce and hemlock, brooks rushed frothing past, and birds were returning to their nests or building new ones.

Soon they heard sounds of human life through the forest quiet, the loud voice of a scolding woman and a confused babel of children's voices.

Suddenly they came out close to a small log-house that stood in an irregular clearing; and now the scolding and the babel were plain to be heard.

"I'll lick you like a sack if you don't bring some dry sticks to get supper with!" cried a woman's voice, and at the same instant a ragged little boy bounded from the door, helped, apparently, by some outward application, and ran for the woods, his bare feet seeming insensible to sticks and stones. Then, all at once, there was silence, and clusters of two-colored heads in the windows, and peeping from the door. The visitors had been discovered. As they approached the door, a large, wild-eyed Boadicea came to meet them, and invited them in with great ceremony and politeness. She had an unwholesome, putty-colored skin and black hair and eyes. In one corner sat Joe, with the baby in his arms, and his hat on his head. This he removed, half-rose, and performed a salution which was more a courtesy than a bow. But he uttered not a word. "In this house clearly,

With a sweep of the arm she banished the children all into one corner of the room (the house contained but one room), brought two strip-bottomed chairs, from one of which her husband had meekly fled at her approach, and, dusting them off with her apron, invited her visitors to be seated.

"You must excuse the confusion reigning in my poor mansion," she said with great suavity, and a very good accent. "Children are always disorderly. Sarah!" raising her voice, "bring the besom and sweep up the embers."

Melicent turned a look of dismay on her brother, who was taken with a slight cough. Sarah, otherwise Sally, came bashfully out from behind her father, where she had been crouching on the floor, and swept up the hearth with a brush broom.

The poor woman, anxious to do all honor to her visitors, and, also, to show them that she was above her circumstances, knew no other way than by using the largest words she could think of. Her idea of polite conversation was to make it as little as possible like anything she was accustomed to.

Melicent stated her errand at once, and the mother, with many thanks, and lamentations on her misfortunes, called the little ones forward, and placed them at the lady's disposal. She stopped in her compliments to dart a threatening look toward the door, where the boy who had been "named for the 'postle Paul" stood with his burden of dry sticks. He dropped them instantly, and came forward, and his mother as instantly resumed her smiling face. She could change her expression with remarkable facility.

Melicent fancied this boy at once, and promptly concluded a bargain to give a week's trial to him and his eldest sister. They were to go to "the[333] hall," as Mrs. Patten politely called it, the next day, and begin their training. They would work for their food and clothing, and perhaps, after a while, when she should think them worthy, they might receive wages.

This settled, Miss Yorke and her brother departed, followed by Mrs. Patten's compliments to the door, and stared after by all the children. Joe's only movement on their going was to perform another courtesy like that with which he had received them.

"Poor souls! they are delighted to have their children with us," said Melicent, when they were out of hearing. "But I hope the mother won't come to see them often. Betsey says she is half-crazy."

"I respect her for it!" Carl exclaimed. "You can see that she has some talent and ambition, and that she has read some, though she is absurdly ignorant of the ways of the world. With such a husband, such a troop of children, and such poverty, I repeat I respect her for being crazy. She can't have a person to speak to but her own family, immured in those forest solitudes, as she says."

Mrs. Patten looked after them as long as she could see them, her face glowing with pride. Then she went into her house, went to the fireplace, and withdrew a pair of iron tongs that lay with red-hot tips in the coals there. "There is no need of them now," she said exultingly.

These tongs had been kept red during the last week for the better reception of any town officer who should venture to come for one of her children. Mrs. Patten did not by any means propose to submit tamely. Then she turned tragically, and faced her husband with a look of withering contempt.

"I was meant to be such a lady as that!" she exclaimed, with a grand gesture of the arm in the direction where Melicent Yorke had disappeared. "And yet, I sacrificed my birthright—fool that I was!—to marry you, Joe Patten!"

Joe shrank, and hugged the baby up to him. "I know you did, Sally!" he said deprecatingly—"I know you did!"

"Learn to respect me, then!" she said, drawing herself up. "Call me Mrs. Patten!"

"Hold your tongue!" commanded his wife. "Paul, bring me those chips." And she proceeded to get supper.

Poor Sally Patten was not nearly so cruel as she appeared. In truth, she had never laid the weight of her hand upon her husband. But, then, he was always afraid she would.

MEXICAN ART AND ITS MICHAEL ANGELO.

The society of Mexico has become a ruin in which it is necessary to search with some labor to discover monuments of literature and art. Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz, though for her time an extraordinary woman, is unknown to the greater portion of the continent of whose letters she seems to have been the true morning star. Of Siguenza, mathematician, philosopher, historian, antiquary, and of Velasquez Cardenas, the astronomer and geometrician, the world knew little until Humboldt praised their remarkable talents. Not without a shrug of surprise, we imagine, did the readers of half a century ago accept his assurance that "M. Tolsa, professor of sculpture at Mexico, was even able to cast an equestrian statue of King Charles the Fourth; a work which, with the exception of the Marcus Aurelius at Rome, surpasses in beauty and purity of style everything which remains in this way in Europe." Miguel Cabrera, a greater artist than Tolsa, and the most vigorous imaginative genius which Mexico has produced, has yet to be adequately recognized in America. The art of our northern republic boasts the names of Trumbull, Stuart, Allston, Inman, Vanderlyn, Sully, Neagle, Hamilton, Rothermel, Church, Crawford, Powers, Akers, Greenough, Hosmer, and others; but we doubt if among all these can be found an artist as praiseworthy as was this Mexican Cabrera. Do we exaggerate? No; we are addressing a practical public, much in love with its own works and ways and ideals, and not too well disposed to imagine the difficulties of a Mexican artist one hundred and thirty years ago.

But, first, let us describe, so far as we may, the scene and circumstances of his artistic labors. Mexico, as compared with our northern cities, is a wonderfully old-fashioned capital. The walls of its houses have been built to last till doomsday, and its doors are like doors of castles. Many of its flat fronts boast stuccoed ornaments: all are painted with tints ranging from yellow to pink and pale blue—colors of art which, as applied in particular cases, are seldom at once tolerable to a foreign eye, but which find their reason in necessity as well as taste, and partly in the dull, unlovely character of the building material. This is often a kind of lava-stone or tezontle, a stone the volcano itself seems to have supplied for the purpose of resisting earthquake, and which defies the insidious action of Mexican damps. The churches are instances of colored architecture. La Profesa is yellowed; the cathedral's chapel is browned. San Domingo, San Agustin, and, in fact, all the Mexican churches are tinted more or less, the favorite hue being a mild and not offensive yellow, qualified by white plasters. One remembers gratefully that neutral tint which makes a long range of Mexican houses, with their balconies and tasteful awnings, quaint and elegant letterings of signs, and flags hung out at shop-doors, so picturesque, so pleasant, and so characteristic. The perspective of a Mexican street, especially toward the close of the day, enjoys a repose of many colors well[335] blended with such lines of substantial houses as cannot but impress the eye of the musing stranger. Their architecture, so simple and massive, but so different from a certain wide-awake familiarity which is written upon the houses of the North, best assimilates in his view with some mood of twilight. Yet, seen at dawn or at dusk, or under the moon, the city of Mexico never loses its one decided charm of picturesqueness. It was this exceeding quality which doubtless delighted the eye of Humboldt when he praised Mexico as one of the finest of cities. He had, perhaps, beheld from its cathedral's steeple a most unique capital—a city set not on a hill, but in one of the dreamiest of valleys near one of the dreamiest and shallowest of lakes, with Popocatapetl and Ixtaccihuatl, snow-crowned and heaven-seeking, for monuments of its guardian valley.

In such a scene, Cabrera and his contemporary artists did their work. Their school was the church. What this church was in their day the splendid traditions of art found even now in its corridors and near its altars bear faithful witnesses. Something from their hands has gone into every community of Mexico, and, if war has spared one-half the relics of her art as it existed one hundred and fifty or two hundred years ago, the republic is still fortunate in one respect. The cathedrals of Puebla and Mexico, and La Profesa, were perhaps the chief homes of that genius of painting which was manifested not merely in one, but in a number of Mexicans. Who are the artists of the exceedingly fine pictures which may be seen in the church at Puebla the stranger rarely ascertains. The tradition that Velasquez, the great pupil of Murillo, and Cabrera, the native Mexican, sowed the religion of the New World with their pencils some centuries ago, supplies him with the morsel of vague knowledge with which he reluctantly leaves a building full of rich and curious shrines. Mexico is to all appearances singularly deficient in a proper memory of her noblest painters. Go into one of the city's oldest churches, and your friendly guide, though he be a priest, may not be able to tell you who painted the saints on the walls and the heads of the apostles on the shrines. The information possessed outside of the church respecting its treasures of art has, under stress of various revolutions, dissipated into vague generalities. Three or four remarkable names are known, and a few famous pictures; but who can at once point out to us the masterpieces of any of the five or six painters whose works are worth remembering, or tell us near what shrines, outside of the capital itself, we are likely to find rare pictures? Nevertheless, art is almost the chief boast of Mexico, aside from its natural endowments, though, like so much else in a land subject to all manner of vicissitudes, the boast is to some extent shadowy and unsubstantial. In successive revolutions, it is conjectured, those true homes of fine art, the convents, have been despoiled, and the saints and angels of their galleries sent hither and thither, to be kept by natives or to be sold to foreigners as Joseph was sold by his brethren. Another spoliation, and perhaps a searching and sweeping one, is said to have taken place under the eye of the French during their mercenary intervention. How or by whom robbed and mutilated in the last half-century of wars, Mexican art is but the wreck of what it was. That so much of it still survives is a proof of its original abundance and vitality.

But, notwithstanding the whirlwinds[336] of revolution, art in the country of Cabrera has retained a number of impregnable and indestructible asylums. Altar ornaments of gold or silver may have been stolen from the cathedral, but apparently no sacrilegious criminal has ever carried away its pictures. These treasures of the church are set fast in their places round the shrines, so closely and plentifully that, wherever they are most congregated, the altar-places seem walled and tiled with them. Not all of them are worthy of Cabrera or Xuarez or Ximenez, let alone Murillo and Velasquez; but all have their value as portions of a chapter in art the like of which is not to be seen elsewhere on the American continent. Confused and perplexed as the real beauties of many of these paintings are by the endless bedizenments of altars, it is impossible to ignore or conceal the richness, delicacy, and even tenderness which belong to their best specimens. The extravagance of gilding, the wilderness of carved flourishes, which the taste of the sixteenth century placed at the back of the altars, do not form the best repository for the subdued beauty which a noble picture acquires with age. The great back altar-wall of the cathedral is from floor to roof one mass of most ingenious carving and gilding, out of which what seem to be pious aborigines, associated with warriors and saints on the same background, blossom in paint and gold. Our modern and practical tastes do not easily give room to an ornamentation as loud and prodigal as figures in this great recess; but it is nevertheless a rare and meritorious work in its way. Other shrines display the same gilding in an inferior degree; and we must divest ourselves of some prejudice, artistic and otherwise, before we appreciate the merit of extreme elaboration in their ornaments, and discover, notwithstanding this lavish wealth of surrounding decoration, the modest worth of the best pictures of the church.

The cathedral is well constituted to be the ark and refuge of religious art. It is about 428 feet long and 200 wide, while its general height is almost 100, that of its towers being nearly 200 feet. These dimensions argue an interior vast enough to enclose three or four such churches as we may see on Broadway, without taking into account its large adjoining chapel. Its exterior is a congregation of heavy masses crowned by great bell-shaped towers, but wanting a grand unity and exaltation. Nevertheless, the charm of picturesqueness which belongs to so many solid monuments of the sixteenth century has rested upon this cathedral, in spite of its dinginess and heaviness; and a view of it under the magic of a moonlight which Italian skies could not more than rival is one of the finest of a series of Mexican lithographs. Gothic height, space, and freedom are the prime qualities of the cathedral's interior. Not less than twenty-two shrines are there visible in an extent of two aisles and twenty arches, the columns of which are each quintupled. The high porphyry columns, the range of the apostles, the burst of gilded glory, and the outspread angels over the principal altar are exceedingly impressive, notwithstanding an exuberance of colors. The choir, altogether the best architectural feature of the great building, rises rather toward the middle of the church, and up from the floor, in a high and luxurious growth of oaken carvings and embellishments. Inside is the assembly of the saints, finely panelled. Cherub and seraph are busy apparently with the superb organ-pipes,[337] and make merry overhead with all the instruments of an orchestra, while impish faces beneath them seem to be out of temper. The nobleness of the choir as a work of art is, in great part, due to its gravity, though it is as ingenious, perhaps, as anything of the kind need be, without seeking comparison with the mightiest fancies of the Old World.

Even to an ordinary observer it is plain that the old cathedral is well endowed with pictures. The pure olive-faced Madonna, over the nearest and most popular altar, is said to be Murillo's; it may be Velasquez's. She is a mild, meek lady, with a boy in her lap, veritably human in feature. Out of the rich shade of a great old artist's mood cherubs seem to swarm upon them. In the fine gloom of Vespers, when only the face of the Madonna is seen, the religious mildness of this picture is especially venerable. Other altars have many curiosities, more or less associated with art. There is at one a Man of Sorrow, sitting and leaning in wretched plight; at another, a sallow and agonized Redeemer on the cross; and painted statues and crucifixes only less realistic and distressful than these are common throughout the church. The ghostly figure of what may be a dead saint is laid out in wax, as upon a bed, at one shrine, and elsewhere what seems to be a dead Redeemer is altared in a glass case. In the chapel the artistic character of the cathedral is repeated, save that its high altar-columns, its cross-bearing angel, its splendidly-rayed apotheosis of the Blessed Virgin, its statues of Moses and John the Baptist, have a more modern workmanship. The Madonna, in lady-like wax, with a crown upon her head, and holding daintily a babe in her arms, is the principal figure of one of the auxiliary shrines, though not the best specimen of an art in which Mexicans excel, and which, as represented in a black-robed figure of the Mother of Sorrows, is sometimes admirable and religiously effective. These instances, though but a few of the numberless curiosities of wood and wax amid which the painters have found their abiding home, will serve to illustrate the very mixed artistic complexion of the Mexican cathedral. The statues and paintings are of all sorts, colors, and styles. But the shadowy picture of a sad, nunlike face of Our Lady of Sorrows; the quaint-hooded countenance of the Blessed Virgin, apparently wrought in tapestry of the middle ages; or that of our Lord, after he had been scourged, plainly apprise us that the sincerity of art, first consecrated by the church, has become a part of its own consecration. These are sacred pictures, truly. Weary and wretched, his head bound with thorns, our Lord leans in agonized contemplation, while an apostle looks up to him in tears. The elements of this exquisite painting are gloom and pathos developed out of Murillo-like colors and shadows. Another painting, equally reverend, pursues the same theme and mood. To whose genius do we owe them? Perhaps to Velasquez, of whose works the church, it is said, possesses a noble number; perhaps to Cabrera. Who shall decide? One of the fathers or cathedraticos might tell us, but which father and which professor? The condition of topsy-turvy succeeding a revolution is not favorable to the pursuit or the memory of art; and, as we have hinted, the proper rediscovery of Mexican art must be a matter of unselfish and laborious search. Mexico does not, perhaps, even yet know its proper historian.

Yet some thing we do know of Cabrera. The fine head of St. Peter,[338] pointed out to the writer by a padre of San Hypolito, is by him. One of three immense canvases in the sacristy of the cathedral is also his surprising handiwork. It is a pictorial homage to the Pope, wherein the successor of St. Peter, gray and grave, sits on the topmost seat of a ponderous car of triumph, which is pushed by giants of the faith led by heroes and saints. What seems to be the genius of history has a seat in the van, and disporting cherubs hover on flank and rear, while the aged Pope is being ministered to or counselled by a saint or apostle. This picture, perhaps the largest, though not necessarily the best, painted by Cabrera, is very remarkable for its vigor and variety of form. The other great canvases are by Xuarez and Ximenez, both Mexican painters of genius. One represents the victory of Michael celebrated by the angelic powers; the theme of the other appears to be the reception of the Holy Lady in heaven. Pictures of this extensive character are certainly calculated to display the energy of artists, but not always to develop the highest expression of religion. There can be no question of the vigor of these paintings, especially of Cabrera's; but probably we shall have to seek among smaller canvases and less complicated subjects the true masterpieces of Cabrera, Xuarez, and Ximenez. Some years ago they might have been found in the Convent of La Profesa or of St. Dominic, or, perhaps, in the Academy of San Carlos; but where are they now? That academy, once, doubtless, the finest of its kind in America, and still among the best, does contain, it is true, some master paintings by Xuarez, Rodriguez, Joachim, Ludovicus, bearing date after the close of the sixteenth century; but these do not give us assurance of being the best examples of what was done about Cabrera's time. The walls of San Carlos, we may remark in passing, contain a very large, melodramatic descent from the cross by Baltasar de Chaue, and a beautiful Shepherd Boy, by Ingies, whose simplicity recalls the fact that the Lute Player, one of the few genuine Murillos said to be in the country, is in the possession of a Mexican club.

But what of Cabrera? Alas! that the walls of San Carlos should tell us little or nothing; that the padre who guides us through La Profesa knows about as much! The poor muse of painting has been a good-for-nothing these many years, a wretched Cinderella sitting at a ruined hearthstone, or, rather, sweeping up the rubbish in the corridors of confiscated and despoiled convents. La Profesa, however, is an asylum of art. As it now stands, it is a fine old church, whose rigid and antiquated countenance many a praying Mexican woman knows for that of a mother. Nothing of its ample, simple, sturdy architecture has crumbled in the last two centuries. Its plateresco—the "frolic fancy" which sixteenth-century art put upon the front of churches, and of which the façade of the cathedral presents an immense example, entangling cherubs and bewildering saints in the ingenuity of its small sculptures—still remains intact. The apostles are in their niches, and "Nuestro Señor" is invoked in a text cut on the outside walls. Not many years ago, La Profesa was not merely a church, but, as its name indicates, a house for religious women, and that, too, one of the richest and most extensive in Mexico. Many courts, many corridors and fountains, and some pleasant gardens, with eaves-haunting birds to remind one of St. Francis's gossips, the sparrows, were no doubt among the possessions[339] of this convent as of other convents in the capital, from whose now deserted walks and cells one may hear the flow of fountains and the song of birds. But a few corridors of the many that belonged to the house have been left to the church out of a general ruin made necessary for the cutting of a wide street through what was once a vast building or number of buildings. These corridors and the church itself were in 1868 visited by the writer in company with a courteous young padre, but he could learn comparatively little of the unmistakable riches of art deposited there. Who painted the superb heads of the apostles framed in an altar near the sacristy? Cabrera or Velasquez? The padre did not know. As we entered the first of the wide, heavy stone corridors, two old men, looking like pensioners, were saying their prayers aloud before a shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe. We stood opposite a mammoth scene of the crucifixion, wherein Christ and the thieves are most painfully individualized on the gloom of Calvary. Age and neglect had seemingly eclipsed the larger portion of this canvas, and left no shade of the painter's identity in the mind of our student of the cloister. In another ill-lighted corridor were paintings by Cabrera, Xuarez, Ximenez, Joachim, Correa, Rodriguez, and some others, all Mexicans, it is said, and evidently men of decided gifts. Here was a picture by Xuarez of the Saviour in apparition among the apostles—a presentment in tenderest and most luminous colors of ethereal gentleness. The finest picture in the gallery, entitled St. Luke, might have been by a pupil of Murillo, but really the padre could not tell. Another corridor more neglected than the rest seemed to be a very charnel-room for art—a place for the rags and lumber of unhung, undusted, unrestored pictures. The distracted church has been a sorry sexton for its dead painters. After all, the best efforts are not certain of immunity from the outrages of time and ignorance. Well enough if the great unseen critic applauds.

Nowadays the common visitor to La Profesa searches not at all for Cabrera, but looks at a dome brilliantly painted with scenes from the life of the Saviour by the Spanish Mexican Clavel. Except the dome of Santa Teresa's by Cordero, there is perhaps nothing of the kind, at least in the three principal cities of Mexico, to compare with Clavel's work. Cordero, whose picture of Columbus at court received all the honors of an exhibition in the palace of Prince Poniatowski at Florence, and who has received high encomiums from his brother artists in Italy, is by some regarded the best of existing Mexican artists. Like the two Coras, who, with Tolsa, appear to be the most noted of the sculptors of Mexico, Cordero is a native of the country. To Jose Villegas Coras, who was born in 1713, the city of Puebla owes those statues of our Lord and Our Lady, which one of his admirers declares have a sublimity of expression and a grace in details not easy to find in the best schools of Europe. Jose Zocarias Coras, his nephew, was less an idealist, says his critic, but more faithful to nature, and is distinguished by his sculptures of the "Crucified," in which are exhibited a profound agony. The two statues which crown the towers of the cathedral are also the work of the younger Coras, who died in 1819, in the sixty-seventh year of his age. The work of these men was ill-requited, like so much else in Mexican life and industry. The writer is not able to speak of[340] them upon personal or from a very common knowledge of their sculptures; but it is well to note them here as artists who are thought worthy of a place in that scarce and not too steady literature, Mexican biography. It may serve others who visit Mexico to know that, in the latest phase of art at the capital, Clavel, Rebull, Cordero, and the sculptor Islas, with some others, have distinguished themselves.

Let us now speak freely of Cabrera, the father and master of Mexican art—of him whose pictures are at once so numerous and so scarce, whose fame is so well-founded, yet of whose life so little is known. The first important fact in his biography is, that, like the greatest ruler which the country has produced, its greatest artist was an Indian—a Zapotec Indian, too, from the native country of Benito Juarez, Oaxoca. The next is that, under the patronage of the Archbishop Salinas, he painted those many admirable pieces which are the reproachful glory of his country. According to a modern Mexican writer, Señor Orozco, works of Cabrera may be found in the churches of Mexico and Puebla especially, and in the convents of San Domingo and La Profesa, but we have seen under what circumstances. His masterpieces, if we may credit the intelligent opinion reported by Señor Orozco, are contained in the sacristy of the church at Tasco, where a whole life of the Blessed Virgin is portrayed, the scene of the Nativity being distinguished by its light and freshness of color. The same writer assures us that Cabrera wrote a treatise on the celebrated picture given to the Indian Juan Diego during the Marvellous Apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and in it he concurs with other painters of his day in affirming that the miraculous painting, which he had examined carefully in the light of art, is not the work of human hands. This is the judgment of an Indian artist respecting a wonderful revelation made to one of his race, and, however it may be viewed by those who discredit all supernaturalism of a later date than eighteen hundred years ago, gives the stamp of conviction to the faith of Guadalupe. What the opinion of Cabrera was worth in a question of art, what the artist himself should be worth in the estimation of mankind, is signified to us in the following extraordinary notice of his genius by Count Beltrani, an Italian traveller:

What say our American pilgrims to Italy of this report of an Italian pilgrim in America? Here, then, was an Indian Michael Angelo of whom few artists of the New World know anything whatever. We need not strain an objection that Count Beltrani's dictum may be an exaggeration, for there are not many travellers who care to praise Mexico, and very few to overpraise her—at least, in respect to art. The fact remains[341] that the country which gave birth to Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz, perhaps the most remarkable character in all American letters, also had for its native the greatest painter of the New World, and one of the most singularly meritorious in an age when great painters were numerous. In judging of Cabrera, we must fairly consider the time, the place, the elements in which he wrought; for schools, masters, models, emulation, royal encouragement, and proper recompense and fame were all denied to him, in a greater or less degree. Cloistered as a great artist must necessarily be at any time, he would have felt, perhaps, especially abandoned in far-off Mexico in the sixteenth century. That Cabrera did suffer this abandonment the facts of his life attest. Yet, to speak a literal truth, Cabrera has no biography. It is not known when he was born or when he died, and, says a Mexican writer, "we only know that he lived in the eighteenth century by the dates of his paintings." Alas! for fame; alas! for genius!—and this, too, in the eighteenth century! We know more of Shakespeare, more of Lopé, more of Sor Juana, more of Alarcon—he, too, was born in Mexico, yet we know his birthday—than of Cabrera, who could not have died more than a hundred and twenty-five years ago, and respecting whom it was said: "There is hardly a church of the republic which does not contain some work of his distinguished pencil." Alas! for work and worth! How much of all this may have perished or vanished beneath the storms of the last fifty miserable years of Mexican life, overridden by swaggering pronouncers, stolen by intervening robbers, the torch of genius extinguished in the dust raised by defiant nobodies. Yet Cabrera survives, as few artists can, a veritable wreck of matter. Happily for him, it may be, his only biography is in his works; and they are full of life, and of life better than his own, yet in some respects received into it—lives of saints, apostles, angels, the Blessed Virgin, and the Divine Redeemer. Let these speak for his life to men, and commend his work to the unseen Master.

"THE SERIOUS, TOO, HAVE THEIR 'VIVE LA BAGATELLE.'"

WHAT OUR MUNICIPAL LAW OWES TO THE CHURCH.

The wisdom and bravery of our forefathers having at length enabled them to sever the ties which had bound the original thirteen colonies to Great Britain, their experience, knowledge, and foresight were called into requisition to form a government for the new nation, and adopt a code of laws which, avoiding the complex and erroneous features of those of the Old-World countries, the necessary result of centuries of contradictory legislation, would confirm to the people their newly-acquired liberties, and guarantee to every citizen not only justice from the state, but, in their relations with each other, ample protection for life and liberty, property and reputation. As a foundation for this new system of jurisprudence, the statesmen of the Revolution selected the English code almost in its entirety, partly because the late colonists had been familiar with its workings on either side of the ocean, but mainly because they considered it, comparatively, at least, humane and liberal, and the most suitable for a free government. Many statutes and customs peculiar to monarchies were at the time necessarily omitted, and several enactments have since been passed by our national and local legislatures liberalizing ancient laws, as intended to keep pace with the rapid development of our industrial resources, which, from time to time, creates new and complicated relations between individuals. Still, to all intents and purposes, our body of laws is fundamentally identical with that of England in the last century, is founded on the same general principles, and has the same origin and history. Therefore, in speaking of the jurisprudence of our republic, we also speak of that of Great Britain, for whatever applies to one as a whole equally applies to the other.

Our municipal law, consisting of the common law (lex non scripta) and the statute law (lex scripta), springs from three distinct sources, each of which in its degree has materially contributed its share to the general stock which goes to make up our legal system, which, for completeness and enlightenment of spirit, may well challenge the admiration of mankind. These three sources are—the ancient common law of England, the civil law of the Roman Empire, and the canon law of the church. Though originating at distinct periods and places, and intended primarily to operate on diverse elements, the provisions of these three codes have in process of time become so interwoven, one with the other, in the body of the English law, that it is often difficult and sometimes impossible to discriminate between them.

The common law, in its general acceptation, is composed of the ancient customs of England, beyond which the memory of man runneth not to the contrary, of reports of cases and decisions of judges thereon, and of the writings of persons learned in the law. Sir William Blackstone, the celebrated author of the Commentaries on the Laws of England, is by universal consent the greatest expounder of the common law. With the legal profession, his opinions[343] have a force little less binding than that of a positive enactment, while his definitions, whether borrowed from his predecessors or his own creation, are accepted by the learned of all classes as the most comprehensive and satisfactory in the language on this branch of study. Unhappily for posterity, but more unfortunately for his own reputation, Blackstone lived and wrote in an age when it was the fashion to introduce into every department of English literature the most absurd calumnies against the church, and to advance the most preposterous claims in favor of the so-called Reformation. The wild fanaticism and lust of plunder with which that stupendous rebellion against God's authority was inaugurated had in a great measure subsided in the middle of the last century, and it behooved those of its advocates who attempted to look back into the past to justify present crimes by maligning their Catholic ancestors, or, when that could not be hazarded, by imputing the worst of motives for the best of actions. The great commentator, with all his perspicacity and legal acumen, was nor above resorting to this dishonest method of bolstering a sinking cause, and hence we find in his otherwise invaluable work that he loses no opportunity, in or out of season, to ignore the transcendent merits, misrepresent the conduct, and misconstrue the intentions of the ecclesiastics of the early and middle ages of the church, who, in their time, had done so much to reduce our laws into something like system, and make them conform in justice and equity as much as possible to those revealed by the Creator. Surrounded by the mists of doubt and dissent, the emanation of a hundred jarring creeds, he failed to see beyond the horizon of his own generation, or to perceive the reflux of that wave of heresy which, in the sixteenth century, submerged England, and threatened to inundate the whole of Europe. As an expounder of law, Blackstone still holds a position in the front rank of our jurists, but so warped are his views by the prejudices of the epoch in which he lived that, before the enlightened spirit of our time, he is gradually but surely losing his vantage-ground as an impartial authority, even on questions upon which he is really most reliable. Another defect in the writings of this able professor, but one of much lesser importance, is his constant tendency to exaggerate the merits of the Anglo-Saxon lawgivers, and to attribute to them the credit of originating many laws which were wholly unknown in England till many years after the conquest; but as we have the authority of Hallam for saying that his knowledge of ancient history was rather superficial, we may attribute this fault more to a deficiency of historical knowledge than to a wilful intention to deceive.

The civil law is founded principally on the ancient regal constitutions of Rome, on the laws of the twelve tables, the statutes of the senate and republic, the edicts of the prætors, the opinions of learned lawyers, and on imperial decrees. So numerous, however, had these various enactments become, and so contradictory in terms and penalties, that the study of them was the labor of a lifetime, altogether beyond the ability of the great mass of the governed to overcome. It was therefore found necessary in the reign of Theodosius, about A.D. 438, to codify them, and, by rejecting all superfluous matter, to greatly reduce their bulk. About a century later, under the Emperor Justinian, they[344] were again submitted to a similar process, the Institutes being reduced to four books, and the Pandects, containing over two thousand cases and opinions, to fifty. To these were added a new code, being a continuation of that of Theodosius, the novels or decrees of that emperor and his successors, as well as those of Justinian himself. These taken together formed the corpus juris civilis of the Eastern and Western Empires. It is in the new code and the novels that we first begin to perceive the influence of the church in civil legislation. From the time of the conversion of Constantine, the emperors, with one or two exceptions, were the fast friends, and, in matters spiritual, the obedient children of the pontiffs. The laws of pagan times, particularly those respecting distributive justice and the domestic relations, were utterly unsuited for the government of a Christian people, and, as the church was recognized as the sole arbiter of right and wrong in the abstract, it is natural to expect that the Christian emperors before and after Justinian not only conformed to the dicta of the church in their decrees and decisions, but frequently consulted their spiritual advisers on matters affecting conscience in their twofold capacity of legislators and judges. Justinian in particular appears to have borrowed many of his ideas of temporal law from the church, for we find him paraphrasing or adopting bodily many of the canons of the early councils.[59] Hence we easily perceive that much of the more modern portion of the corpus juris civilis, though bearing the impress of imperial authority, is in reality little more than a copy of the rules laid down previously for the spiritual and social guidance of the children of the church, and that those grand principles and delicate distinctions which are as true to-day as in the time of the apostles, and are as applicable to our advanced state of civilization as they were then, are simply the result of the infusion of the spirit of Christianity into the civil polity of a once pagan people. Thus we find the Institutes or Elements of Justinian commencing with the solemn invocation, "In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ," and ending with the equally edifying aspiration, "Blessed be the majesty of God and our Lord Jesus Christ," and in harmony with this pious disposition we find among other laws relating to the rights of the church the following: "Those things which have been consecrated by the pontiffs in due form are esteemed sacred; such as churches, chapels, and all movable things, if they have been properly dedicated to the service of God, and we have forbidden by our constitution that these things should be either aliened or obligated unless for the redemption of captives."[60] A novel of Valentinian, in A.D. 452, in recognizing the right of bishops to try cases of only temporal concern where the parties were in orders, extends their jurisdiction over laics who have power to "oblige themselves to obey the sentence of the bishop," which sentence, if necessary, was to be enforced by the civil authorities.[61]

The church did not conform, either in her discipline or her doctrine, to the rules or underlying principles of the civil law, but on the contrary subjected that law to the most rigid examination and the most careful analysis, expurgating what was opposed to justice and retaining all that [345]she found in consonance with divine truth; and as the Roman civil law was at that period a rule for all civilized nations, this may be considered her first great human gift to mankind, equal if not superior to her subsequent culture of the arts, sciences, and literature. Admitting, then, the harmony which existed between the Roman laws and the teachings of the church, we are not surprised to find that when, in the eleventh century, a copy of Justinian, discovered at Amalphi, Italy, was published, it was eagerly received by European nations, adopted in whole or in part by all Christendom, and that it to-day forms the main foundation of the jurisprudence of all enlightened peoples.[62]

About the time of the revival of the study of the Roman civil law, Gratian, an Italian monk, published in three volumes, arranged in titles and chapters after the manner of the Pandects, a collection of the decrees of the general councils of the church, a digest of the opinions of the fathers, and the decretals and bulls of the Holy See. Other collections had been previously made by ecclesiastics in Spain and elsewhere, but none were found to be complete or reliable. However, as Gratian's work was itself far from perfect, Pope Gregory IX. authorized Raymond de Pennafort, a learned divine, to compile a new collection, which was published by authority of his Holiness, A.D. 1234, under the title of Decretalia Gregorii Noni. It was divided into five books, and contained all that was worth preserving of Gratian, with the subsequent rescripts of the Popes, especially those of Alexander III., Innocent III., Honorius III., and Gregory IX. "In these books," says Hallam, "we find a regular and copious system of jurisprudence, derived in a great measure from the civil law, but with considerable deviation and possible improvement."[63] Boniface VIII., sixty years afterwards, published a sixth part, known as Sextus Decretalium, divided also into five books, in the nature of a supplement to the other five, of which it follows the arrangement, and is composed of decisions promulgated after the pontificate of Gregory IX. New constitutions were added by Clement V. and John XXII., under the titles respectively of Clementine and Extravagantes Johannis, and a few rescripts of later pontiffs are included in a second supplement, arranged like the Sextus, and called Extravantes Communes. Up to the Council of Pisa, in A.D. 1409, these books constituted the whole of the canon law or corpus juris canonici, and though principally intended for the government of ecclesiastics, were often applied to temporal purposes, in law and equity, when neither the civil nor common law met the requirements of a disputed point. The study of the canons had been encouraged from the first in the colleges and schools of Europe, but, upon the publication in a systematical form in the eleventh century, it became universal, and with the Roman civil law constituted an essential branch of clerical education. [346]At first the Canonists and Glossators, as the professors of civil law were called, formed separate but not antagonistic schools, but in the thirteenth century Lanfrancus, a professor of Bologna, united the study of both laws, a custom which has since been generally adopted.

As we have before remarked, Sir William Blackstone would fain have us believe that every principle of English common law originated with, and was recognized by, the Anglo-Saxons from the remotest period of their history, but there is neither fact nor probable suspicion to sustain those unqualified statements of our partial commentator. The Romans, who held possession of Britain for more than four hundred years, may have left on the vanquished people of that country some impress of their laws, but the Britons themselves, soon after the departure of the legions, were driven to the mountains of Wales by the Angles and Saxons, and for centuries held no intercourse with the victorious intruders. These latter, the outpourings of the woods and swamps of the north, are represented by all reliable historians as the veriest barbarians, illiterate and idolatrous, and altogether incapable of conceiving or appreciating the broad principles of free government or the varied regulations which control the intercourse and commerce of man with man, such as we find in civilized society; much less those which affect the conduct of household relations, which, originating in the church, could only have been properly expounded by her ministers. The Danes, who subsequently invaded and for many years held possession of the larger portion of the island, were little less barbaric, nor can we trace to them any well-recognized custom or fundamental principle of our present laws. "In the barbarous specimens of legislation due to the era of Saxon and Danish rule," says a late able writer on this subject, "the few texts of Roman law which occur appear to us traceable through the Papal canons. How faint is the impression which even the Anglo-Saxon laws have left upon our system? We have still the local court and the local officers, and some of the rude democratic elements of judicial procedure and constitutional law have been nurtured into real civilized liberty, but happily for us, the harsh and partial regulations savoring of original Teutonic savageness which awarded the various penalties of crime have passed away, and the ancient absence of all expressed regulation in many most important points has been supplied by the legislation of more enlightened times and more cultivated men."[64] After the arrival of St. Augustine, towards the close of the sixth century, the gradual evangelization of the island of Britain necessitated the abolition of the heathen customs, the basis of the Anglo-Saxon legislation, such as it was, and the introduction of a new code of government. The primitive ignorance of the inhabitants and the subsequent decline of learning consequent on the repeated incursions of the Northmen, had the effect of limiting whatever knowledge was still possessed in the country to the ecclesiastics, who, amid the most adverse circumstances, and very often at the sacrifice of their lives, fed the torch of learning and kept its brilliancy undimmed when all around was darkness. They became not only the makers but the dispensers of the law, for, though surrounded on all sides by anarchy and ignorance, they had still the guidance of their canons and some acquaintance with the elaborate [347]code of the empire. The clergy, admits Blackstone, "like the Druids, their predecessors, were proficient in the study of the law."

This marked and beneficial interference of the ministers of the church in the legislative and judicial affairs of newly converted nations not only arose out of political and social necessity, but may be considered as a logical sequence of the establishment of Christianity itself. "The arbitrative authority of ecclesiastical pastors," says Hallam, "if not coeval with Christianity, grew up very early in the church, and was natural and even necessary to an isolated and persecuted society, accustomed to feel a strong aversion to the imperial tribunals, and even to consider a recurrence to them as hardly consistent with their profession; the early Christians retained somewhat of a similar prejudice even after the establishment of their religion. The arbitration of their bishops still seemed a less objectionable mode of settling differences, and this arbitrative jurisdiction was powerfully supported by a law of Constantine which directed the civil magistrate to enforce the execution of episcopal awards."[65] Justinian went even further than his illustrious ancestors, for he not only gave the bishops in the first instance, without the consent of the parties, the power of trying temporal causes in which the defendant was an ecclesiastic, but the episcopal order was absolutely exempted by him from all secular jurisdiction.[66]

If such clerical intrusion into the province of the civil magistrate was not only tolerated but encouraged in the best and most Catholic days of the Western and Eastern empires, how much more salutary must it have been in its effects among the semi-civilized and turbulent Saxons and Northmen! Unfortunately, scarcely any record is left to us of the labors of the priesthood in this direction during those centuries which preceded the Norman conquest, for the compilations of Alfred and Edward the Confessor are irreparably lost; but here and there we catch a glimpse of their presence legislating or deciding causes. Thus, as early as A.D. 787, at a provincial council held at Calcluith, a place long obliterated from the map of England, it was solemnly enacted "that none but legitimate princes should be raised to the throne, and not such as were engendered in adultery or incest." "But it is to be remarked," says Hallam, "that, although this synod was strictly ecclesiastical, being summoned by the Pope's legate, yet the kings of Mercia and Northumberland, with many of their nobles, confirmed the canons by their signatures."[67] Another instance of clerical legislation is to be found in the canons of the Northumbrian clergy, and that one of peculiar interest to students of law and history, presenting, as it does, the first germ of that glory of English law not inaptly called the palladium of the subject's liberty—trial by jury.[68] "If a king's thane," says the canon, "deny this (the practice of heathen superstition), let twelve be appointed for him, and let him take twelve of his kindred or equals (maga) and twelve British strangers, and if he fail [348]let him pay for his breach of law twelve half-marcs; if a landholder (or lesser thane) deny the charge, let as many of his equals and as many strangers be taken for him as for a royal thane, and if he fail let him pay for his breach of law six half-marks; if a ceorl deny it, let as many of his equals and as many strangers be taken for him as for the others, and if he fail let him pay twelve oræ for his breach at law."[69] This quasi-jury system appears to have been applied to other cases, for we learn from the history of Ramsey, published in Gales's Scriptores, that a controversy relating to some land between the monks and a certain nobleman was brought into the county court, when each party was heard in his own behalf, and after its commencement it was referred by the court to thirty-six thanes, equally chosen by both sides.[70]

The invasion and speedy conquest of Britain by the Normans not only overturned the Saxon dynasty, and reduced the people of that and the Danish race remaining in the country to a condition of absolute servitude, but introduced a new language and completely revolutionized the municipal laws of the entire nation. The sacrifice of human life incident to the conquest was small in comparison to the amount of misery, wretchedness, and degradation entailed on the vanquished for centuries afterwards by the conquerors-men gathered from every quarter of Europe, whose fortunes were at their swords' points, and whose fidelity and support were only to be purchased by the fruits of plunder and spoliation. Still, it must be admitted that the conquest had its advantages, and very great ones. From the departure of the Romans until the arrival of William, England proper cannot be said to have enjoyed any appreciable respite from foreign wars or domestic dissensions. The Britons, deprived of the powerful protection of the legions, were constantly harassed by their rapacious neighbors from the north side of the Tweed, and in trying to escape from them they fell into the clutches of their false allies, the Angles and Saxons, and narrowly escaped extermination. These latter were no sooner settled in the country than they established as many monarchies as they had chiefs, and, having for a time no foreign foe to contend against, readily turned their arms against each other on the slightest provocation. Weakened and distracted, they soon fell an easy prey to the piratical Northmen, who, under Canute and his successors, fastened on the fair lands of the middle and northern portions of the island and on the contiguous sea-ports a grip so tenacious that all the subsequent efforts of the Saxon monarchs could not unloosen it. This diversity of race and traditional forms of government naturally gave birth to laws and customs entirely at variance with each other in letter and spirit, and what was binding in one section was unknown or disregarded in another. The Normans, with the thoroughness of genuine conquerors, disregarded all such local distinctions, and reduced the entire native population to a level, thane and ceorl alike being made to endure the same burdens of servitude and compelled to obey implicitly the will of their new masters.

But the Normans were Christians, at least by profession, and boasted of a species of rude chivalry which prevented them from imitating the excesses of their pagan predecessors. While greedy enough for the secular lands of the defeated Saxons, they seldom interfered with churches or institutions[349] of learning and charity; on the contrary, they were wise enough to protect the one and encourage the other in every manner possible consistent with their design of total subjection. They introduced generally the new system of feuds and a foreign hierarchy, it is true, but they did not deprive the people of the consolations of religion, and they gave to the country for the first time unity, the necessary precursor of rational freedom, and a national government with uniform laws, which, if born amid the clash of arms, rested its principal claims to support on the ways of peace.

The feudal system, though burdened with its aids, reliefs, seisin, wardship, and many other equally onerous conditions, was for that time the best and in fact the only proper form of government for England, and it is mainly to its uniform establishment by the conquerors, and to the judicious statesmanship of her great ecclesiastical lawyers, who subsequently gradually mitigated its harsher features, that the past and present greatness of that country is to be traced. The theory that the sovereign, representing the majesty of the nation, was the owner of all the lands of the kingdom, and that directly or indirectly all the occupiers of the soil were his tenants, holding by right of fealty and service, gave to the people what they so long wanted, a centre of unity and a common authority to which they could look for redress and protection. Besides, the system had become so general on the Continent, and had proved so admirable a machine for defence or aggression, that its adoption by the new Anglo-Norman kingdom had become a political necessity.

Though sadly behind many of her sister nations in the arts of government, England was not at the time of the conquest altogether deficient in the knowledge of civil or common law. On the contrary, she had many eminent professors of both. The monks of Croyland and Spaulding were distinguished as jurists, and Egelbert, Bishop of Chichester, is said, even by Norman authorities, to have been thoroughly acquainted not only with the canons and what was then known of the Roman civil law, but with "all the ancient laws and customs of the land."[71] The Normans, however, preferring to place their own countrymen in positions of trust and influence, invited from the Continent many learned bishops and professors, to whom they gave the charge of the principal sees and universities, and these, having been trained in the schools of Italy and France, soon substituted the study of the clearer and more equitable regulations of the lately-revived civil law for the illogical and conflicting customs of the natives. Thus the Pandects of Justinian were introduced into England by Vicarius, professor of canon law at Oxford, A.D. 1138, and he was succeeded by Accorso, a doctor of the civil law. Bishop Grosseteste wrote a treatise in favor of the study of Roman law, and Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury, founded a professorship in Oxford to promote the same object. Of the latter prelate, it is said that he was accustomed to retain in his house "several learned persons famous for their knowledge of law, who spent the hours between prayers and dinner in lecturing, disputing, and debating causes."[72]

The conquerors of the Anglo-Saxons, though by no means deficient in the scholarship and accomplishments of that rude age, were too intent on retaining by force the possessions [350]they had won by the strong arm, to cultivate the arts of peace, and, consequently, the framing of the laws, the judicial authority, and even the pleading of causes, necessarily devolved on the ecclesiastics. Hallam, a writer equally prejudiced with Blackstone, though a much better historian, is forced to admit that "the bishops acquired and retained much of their ascendency by a very respectable instrument of power—intellectual superiority. As they alone were acquainted with the art of writing, they were naturally entrusted with political correspondence and the making of the laws."[73] And it was well for the conqueror and conquered alike that it was so, for to them, and them alone, was given the skill and authority to restrain with one hand the ruthless oppressions of the lawless barons, and with the other to alleviate the sufferings of a down-trodden people. To the wisdom that proceeds from long communion with the works of great and good men they joined the authority of the church, which they failed not to call into requisition when persuasion and reasoning equally failed. To them we owe every successful effort that was made in the middle age of England's history, either against the tyranny of the crown or the injustice of the nobles. Magna Charta, that famous instrument, which, like our own constitution, is so frequently talked about and so little understood, issued from the fertile brain of Archbishop Langton, and was signed by every bishop and abbot in the land.[74] It was they who took up the serf, educated and ordained him, and made him not only the equal but in many cases the superior of his late master. They also regulated the alienation and descent of lands, and by their introduction of fines and recoveries, uses and trusts, and other forms of conveyance, not only abolished many of the worst evils of feudalism, but even, according to Blackstone, "laid the foundation of modern conveyancing." For many centuries they were the confidential advisers of kings, their trusted ambassadors abroad, and their names always appeared first in every writ summoning a council or parliament to legislate for the welfare of the realm, and the laws thus made were regularly dispensed in the county courts by the bishops and the civil magistrates sitting together with equal jurisdiction.

But it was in the court of chancery that the wisdom, clemency, and equity of the bishops of those days shone with the greatest brilliancy. This was a court of extraordinary jurisdiction, unknown in England before the conquest and unparalleled in contemporary nations. The chancellor and his assistants, almost without exception, up to the time of Wolsey, were ecclesiastics. Their decisions, resting upon conscience alone, though unsupported[351] by express statute or even in contravention of its letter, had all the force of legal enactments, and formed, collectively, the basis of much of our modern remedial legislation, as well as an unerring rule for the guidance of our highest civil justices. The affairs of married persons, infants, idiots, corporations, bankrupts, testators and intestates, grantors and grantees of land, and of nearly every conceivable condition of life, are even at the present day within the special and almost exclusive jurisdiction of our courts of equity. In the words of a distinguished English lawyer, "It gives relief for and against infants, notwithstanding their minority, and for and against married women, notwithstanding their coverture. All frauds and deceits for which there is no redress at common law, all breaches of trust and confidence, and unavoidable casualties, by which obligors, mortgagors, and others may be held to incur penalties and forfeitures, are here remedied. This court also gives relief against the extremity of unreasonable engagements entered into without consideration, obliges creditors who are unreasonable to compound with an unfortunate debtor, and makes executors, etc., give security and pay interest for money which is to be long in their hands. The court may confirm the title to lands, though one has lost his writings, render conveyances which are defective through mistake or otherwise good and perfect. In chancery, copyholders may be relieved against the ill-usage of their lords, enclosures of land which is common may be decreed, and this court may also decree the disposition of money or lands given to charitable uses, oblige men to account with each other," etc.[75]

A system of laws like that of Chancery, so comprehensive and so equitable, defined and administered by a long succession of the most upright and enlightened men of the land, could not but have left a deep impression on the entire jurisprudence of the people who profited by its protection—an impression, indeed, that neither the mental obliquity of the fanatic nor the sophistry of the pedant has been able to obliterate. "So deep hath this canon law been rooted," says Lord Stairs, "that even where the Pope's authority is rejected, yet consideration must be had to these laws, not only as those by which the church benefices have been erected and ordered, but as likewise as containing many equitable and profitable provisions, which because of their weighty matter and their being once received may more fitly be retained than rejected."[76]

Had the prelates and priests of the Saxon and Norman periods done nothing for our law but what we find in the decisions of their equity courts, they would have conferred upon us an incalculable blessing, one equally calculated to liberalize the spirit of legislators, enlighten the understanding of jurists, and make government what it was designed to be, a shield for the weak and helpless, and a terror to the wicked and dishonest. But, as we have seen on the authority of writers conspicuous for their anti-Catholic bigotry, they did infinitely more. Statesmen as well as lawyers, they framed most of our best statutes as well as adjudicated upon them, and they originated or perfected every feature in our entire code which has stood the test of time, and enlarged civilization from trial by jury to the unqualified right of every man to dispose of his property as seems [352]best to himself. They have thus placed us under obligations which we can only in part repay by transmitting their maxims unimpaired to our descendants, and by, at length, doing justice to their memories. And now, as we believe that the world is growing wiser as it is growing older, when time has healed many of the wounds inflicted during the great schismatic revolt of the sixteenth century, and, uninfluenced by passion or unawed by power, the scales of prejudice are falling from the eyes of those who through the fault of their fathers are aliens to the truth, it is not too much to hope that they will neither be ashamed nor afraid to acknowledge how much they are indebted to the church and her ministers for the generally admirable system of laws under which we live—laws which are at once our highest boast and best protection.

TO THE CRUCIFIED.[77]

LAS ANIMAS [78]

Uncle Romance. Welcome, Señor Don Fernan. Your worship comes to this, your house, like the sun, to illumine it. Has your worship any commands?

Uncle R. Story again! Señor, does your worship think that my yarns are like Don Crispin's titles, that were past counting? Your worship must excuse me; I'm in a bad way to-day; my memory is broken-winded, and my wits are heavier than bean-broth. But, not to disappoint your worship, I'll call my Chana.[79] Ch-a-a-a-na! Sebas-ti-a-a-na! What ails the woman? She is getting to be like the Marquis of Montegordo, who remained mute, blind, and deaf.[80] Ch-a-a-na!!

Aunt Sebastiana. What do you mean, man, by bawling like a cowherd? Oh! Señor Don Fernan is here. God be with you, señor! How is your worship?

Aunt S. No, señor, it isn't that. God and his dear mother do not take away our flesh, but the child when he is born, and the mother when she dies; and my son—my own life—

Uncle R. There, Chana, don't mention Juan, the big hulk, with more ribs than a frigate.[81]

Aunt S. Don't believe it, señor; he just talks to hear himself, and don't know what he's saying. That boy of mine is more gentle and reasonable; he wouldn't say scat to the cat. He has served in the army six years, and has got his lights snuffed.[82]

Uncle R. His lights are those of midnight. He entered the uniform, but the uniform hasn't entered him.[83]

Aunt S. My man, here, would do it better. Your worship knows that he has the name of being such a good [354]story-teller. He never wants for a tale.

Uncle R. Come, come, woman, don't keep his worship in expectation, like a watch-dog. A story, and a good one; for you could talk if you were under water.

Aunt S. There was once a poor woman who had a niece that she brought up as straight as a bolt. The girl was a good girl, but very timid and bashful. The dread of what might become of this child, if she should be taken away, was the poor old woman's greatest anxiety. Therefore, she prayed to God, night and day, to send her niece a kind husband.

The aunt did errands for the house of a gossip of hers that kept boarders. Among the guests of this house was a great nabob, who condescended to say that he would marry if he could find a girl modest, industrious, and clever. You may be sure that the old woman's ear was wide open. A few days afterwards, she told the nabob that he would find what he was looking for in her niece, who was a treasure, a grain of gold, and so clever that she painted even the birds of the air. The gentleman said that he would like to know her, and would go to see her the next day. The old woman ran home so fast that she never saw the path, and told her niece to tidy up the house, and to comb her hair, and dress herself, the next morning, with great care, for they were going to have company.

When the gentleman came, the next day, he asked the girl if she knew how to spin.

"What have you done, madam?" cried the niece when the gentleman had gone, after giving her three hanks of flax to spin for him. "What have you done? And I don't know how to spin!"

"Go along," said the aunt, "go along, for a poor article that will sell well, and don't set your foot down,[84] but let it be as God will."

"Well, see that you get out of it," answered the aunt; "but these three hanks must be spun, for your fortune depends upon them."

The poor girl went to her room in sore distress, and betook herself to imploring the blessed souls, for which she had great devotion.

While she prayed, three beautiful souls, clothed in white, appeared to her, and told her not to be troubled, for they would help her in return for the good she had done them by her prayers; and, taking each one a hank, they changed the flax into thread as fine as your hair in less time than would be worth one's while to name.

When the nabob came, the next day, he was astonished to see the result of so much diligence united with so much skill.

"Did I not tell your worship so!" exclaimed the old woman, beside herself with delight.

"And why shouldn't she?" answered the aunt with spirit. "Pieces of sewing are no more in her hands [355]than cherries would be in the big snake's mouth."[85]

The gentleman then left her linen to make him three shirts, and, not to tire your worship, it happened just as it had the day before; and the same took place on the day after, when the nabob brought a satin waistcoat to be embroidered; except that, when, in answer to her many tears and great fervor, the souls appeared and said to the girl, "Don't be troubled, we are going to embroider this waistcoat for you," they added, "but it must be upon a condition."

And so it turned out, for, when the gentleman came, the next day, and saw his waistcoat so exquisitely wrought that it seemed as though hands of flesh could not have touched it, and so beautiful that to look at it fairly took away his eyesight, he told the aunt that he wanted to marry her niece.

The aunt was ready to dance for joy. Not so the niece, who said to her: "But, madam, what will become of me when my husband finds out that I don't know how to do anything?"

"Go along! and don't make up your mind," answered the aunt. "The blessed souls that have helped you in other straits are not going to desert you in this."

On the wedding-day, when the feasting was at its height, three old women entered the parlor. They were so beyond anything ugly that the nabob was struck dumb with horror.

The first had one arm very short, and the other so long that it dragged on the ground; the second was humped and crooked; and the eyes of the third stuck out like a crab's, and were redder than a tomato.

"Jesus, Maria!" said the astonished gentleman to his bride, "who are those three scarecrows?"

"They are three aunts of my father," she replied, "that I invited to my wedding."

"Tell me," he said to the first, "what makes one of your arms so short and the other so long?"

"My son," answered the old woman, "it was spinning so much that made them grow that way."

The nabob hurried to his wife and told her to burn her distaff and spindle, and to take care that she never let him see her spin.

He immediately asked the second old woman what made her so humpbacked and crooked.

"My son," she answered, "I grew so by working all the while at my broidery-frame."

With three strides the gentleman put himself beside his wife, and said to her: "Go this minute, and burn your broidery-frame, and take care that in the lifetime of God I do not catch you with another."

Then he went to the third old woman, and asked her what made her eyes look so red and as if they were going to burst?

"My son," she answered, giving them a frightful roll, "this comes of continual sewing, and of keeping my head bent over the work."

Before the words were out of her mouth, the nabob was at his wife's[356] side: "Go," said he, "gather all your needles and thread, and throw them into the well, and bear in mind that the day I find you sewing, I will sue for a divorce. The sight of the halter on another's neck is warning enough for me."

Aunt S. And now, Señor Don Fernan, my story is ended; I hope that it has pleased you?

Don F. Ever so much, Aunt Sebastiana; but what I learn from it is, that the souls, notwithstanding that they are blessed, are very tricky.

Aunt S. Now, señor, and is your worship going to insist upon doctrine in a romance, as if it were an example? Why, stories are only to make us laugh, and grow better without precept or name of lesson. God will have a little of all.

Don F. True, Aunt Sebastiana; and what you express with your simple good sense is more wholesome than the critical reverence of the overstrict. But, uncle, I am not going without another to correspond with this, and it is your turn now. If, as I think you have told me that you were on other occasions, you are a devotee of San Tomas,[86] here are some Havanas as an offering to his saintship.

Uncle R. By which your worship means to say that, without an ochavo, you can't make up the real.[87] Well, let me think. Since the talk is about animas, animas it is. Their sodality in a certain place had for mayordomo a poor bread-lost[88] of a member, one of those who are always like the sheep that misses the mouthful.[89] He was without a cloak, and went with teeth chattering and limbs benumbed with cold. What does he do but go and order himself a cloak made, and, without so much as saying chuz or muz,[90] or by your leave, sirs, take money from the funds of the animas to pay for it. When it came home, he put it on, and went into the street as consequential and high-stomached as those rich folks recently raised from the dust. But at every step he took, some one gave the cloak a jerk, and though he kept a sharp lookout he could not see who. The instant he drew it up on the left shoulder, down it slid from the right, causing him to keep a continual hitch, hitch. You would have thought he had a thorn in his foot.

As he went along, pestered and chap-fallen, trying to make out what it could mean, he met a gossip of his, who was mayordomo to the Hermandad del Santísimo.[91] This fellow was stalking loftily, filling the street with his air that said, Get out of the way, I am coming. After "How d'ye do?" this one asked the other, "What is the matter, comrade, that you seem so down at the mouth lately?"

"Matter enough!" answered he of the souls, pulling his cloak up on the right shoulder while it slipped off from the left. "Know that in the beginning of the winter I found myself in difficulties. I had sown a pegujar[92] without seeing the color of wheat. My wife brought me two boys, when, with the nine I had already, one would have been too many; the delivery cost her a long [357]sickness, and me the eyes of my face. In few, I was just stuck to the wall like a star-lizard, and hungrier than an ex-minister. I had to borrow money of the souls to get this cloak; but what the seven ails it I don't know, for, whenever I put it on, it seems as though somebody was giving it a pull here and a jerk there. Two rudder-pins couldn't hold it fast to my shoulders."

"You did wrong, my friend," responded the steward of El Santísimo. "If, like me, you had taken a loan of a great powerful and giving personage, you wouldn't have to go about as you do, chased and persecuted for the debt. If you borrow of miserable destitute wretches, what can you expect but that the poor things will try to get back their own when they need it so much?"

SAINT JOHN DWARF.

HOW ROME LOOKED THREE CENTURIES AGO.[93]

Let us suppose a company of travellers through Italy—strangers from foreign climes, England, Germany, and France—reaching Rome at the period of the accession of Sixtus V. to the throne of St. Peter. Approaching the Eternal City by the road from the north, they find themselves before the Porta del Popolo.

On entering the gates, they pass into an open place of irregular shape. A large convent occupies nearly the entire eastern side, which, with the graceful campanile, or bell-tower, of Santa Maria del Popolo, and the high houses with wide portals between the Corso, the Ripetta, and the Babuino, are the only edifices visible. The obelisk is not yet placed there by Sixtus V., and the two little churches with their heavy cupolas, so well known to the modern tourist, and the other buildings now seen there—the work of Pius VII. and the architect Valadier—did not then exist. The Piazza del Popolo was then less symmetrical, but more picturesque. Wayfarers on horseback and on foot pass to and fro; muleteers arrive and depart, driving before them lines of mules and beasts of burden. In the centre of the place women are washing at a circular basin. Idlers follow and gaze at the strangers while they make their declaration to the bargel, or public authority, and submit their effects to the examination of the custom officials. These preliminaries through, our travellers may pass into the city by a street leading around the base of the Pincian Hill, by another going toward the Tiber, both of which have long ceased to exist, or by the well-known Corso. Some find their way to the then celebrated and already venerable hostelry,

THE BEAR,

widely known and greatly in vogue ever since the reign of Sixtus IV. Its peculiar octagon pillars fix the period of its construction. Strange to relate, this patriarch of hotels, which has seen four centuries and twenty generations of travellers pass over its head and through its halls, has continued in existence, and is still open as a tavern in Rome to this day. True, its guests are now no longer, as they were in the sixteenth century, such personages of distinction as foreign prelates, noted scholars, philosophers like Montaigne, and, soon afterward, the earliest known tourists. Its inmates and frequenters of the nineteenth century are now country traders, cattle dealers, and wagoners.

Others of our travellers who intend to make a longer stay in Rome seek out the houses in the neighborhood of the Pantheon or the Minerva, nearly all of which are let out to strangers in rooms or suites. These apartments are luxuriously fitted up and ornamented with the then famous Cordova leather hangings, and richly sculptured[359] and gilded furniture. Everything is brilliant to the eye, but the nineteenth century tourist would have found fault with the lack of cleanliness and the stinted supply of fresh linen.

THE CORSO,

the Via Lata of the ancient Romans. There is no sign of business on it at this early day. But few of the aristocracy have as yet transferred their residences here, but it already wears an air of life and animation, and is well filled at the hours of the promenade.

We pass along between vineyards and vegetable gardens. A single large edifice just completed strikes the stranger's attention. It is the magnificent Ruspoli palace, built by Rucellai, the Florentine banker, upon the designs of his countryman Ammanati.

Now we reach the Via Condotti, to-day well-known to every American who ever saw Rome. Let us turn into it to the left, and traverse it to the Piazza della Trinita (now Piazza di Spagna), whence we may scale the hill above and obtain a commanding view of the entire city.

In doing this, we pass through the then worst quarter of Rome, physically and morally, for the triangle formed by the Corso, the Via Condotti, and the Babuino was at once of the most evil repute and the most unhealthy in all Rome. In this quarter were sure to break out all the epidemics which at that period occasionally decimated the population of Rome. Seeking to mount

THE PINCIAN HILL,

the traveller of that day might have looked in vain for the broad flight of easy marble steps we now see there, and he ascended by a steep and narrow staircase. On reaching the summit, he found himself on the collis hortulorum of the Romans, and saw it still covered with vineyards and tilled fields, and the comparatively modern innovation of the garden of the Villa Medici. The elegant world of Rome in 1585 had to content themselves with taking their promenade and their enjoyment of the evening air about the Porta del Popolo, and knew naught of the charming promenade, the delightful walks, the purer breeze, and the beautiful view which later generations enjoy on the hill above it.

The great painters of the succeeding age who came to Rome, the Carracci, the Domenichinos, the Guidos, and the Salvator Rosas, were the first to discover the attractions of the Pincian Hill, and, braving custom, lack of accommodation, the bad neighborhood, and the unhealthy contiguity of the quarter below, were the first to establish themselves upon it. This was the foundation of the modern Pincian settlement.

Some years ago, the writer of this article occupied apartments in the first house to the right on reaching the summit of the Pincian steps. The tradition of the house ran to the effect that these rooms had been occupied by Salvator Rosa; and if, as they say, he selected them for the sake of their view of the setting sun, he chose well, for all the sunsets of Rome may there be seen to the best advantage. As an American, however, views of the setting sun in Italy were not specially attractive to us, and we always regretted for Salvator Rosa's sake that he had never seen a transatlantic sunset, compared with which those at Naples and Rome are tame spectacles. The traditional "beauty of an Italian sunset" is one[360] of the many English provincialisms we have adopted and believed in along with numerous other errors embalmed in the literature of England. But we forget that we are standing on the Pincian in 1585. All is silent and deserted around us, and Rome is spread out at our feet.

To the left are the salient points, the seven hills—for the Pincian was not one of them—the towers of the Capitol, the ruins of the palace of the Cæsars in the Farnese gardens on the Palatine, the belfry of Santa Maria Maggiore on the Esquiline, the Quirinal, as yet without the imposing mass of the pontifical palace. The Rospigliosi palace was not yet built, but the villa of Cardinal Sforza is seen, the same afterward known as the Barberini palace. We turn our eyes upon the lower city—inhabited Rome—and with difficulty make out but three or four cupolas. On the other hand, we see a perfect forest of towers on every side, some of them of prodigious size. On the left bank of the Tiber, many of these towers have of late years disappeared, but the Trastevere, as might be expected, is still full of them—so full, indeed, that a distant view of that quarter presents the appearance of a comb turned teeth upward. At that period, these towers were the universal appendage of an aristocratic dwelling. San Gemiguiano near Sienna is the only city in all Italy which has preserved them to this day.

As our stranger of three hundred years ago looks over Rome and listens to the confused noises which meet his ear, he is struck with the rarity of the sound of bells and with the small number of churches discernible. The great Catholic reaction consequent on the Reformation had for fifty years moved souls, but had not yet begun to move the stones. It is the following era which is to imprint upon Rome the architectural marks of the church triumphant. Later in the day, when our strangers shall have descended into the city and entered the churches, they will be struck with the barrenness of their interiors, and with the absence of paintings. They are probably ignorant of the fact that in Italy, during the middle ages, there was but one altar in a church, that there alone Mass was celebrated, that the mosaics and frescoes came in with architectural innovation, and that only toward the end of the sixteenth century were altars and oil-paintings multiplied with the side chapels.

And yet this comparative quiet of the city was animation itself, compared with the sights and sounds discernible from the same point at the period when the popes returned to Rome from Avignon.

ROME IN 1400.

The residence of the Cæsars was covered with fields, vineyard, and pasture. The Pantheon, the Coliseum, some ruins, and detached columns alone arose over the surrounding waste as witnesses of former grandeur.

It was at this period that the Forum received the name of "The Cow Pasture" (Campo Vaccino). A remnant of life yet remained in the plain extending between the Tiber, the Pincian Hill, and the Capitoline, but the total population of Rome was reduced to 17,000 souls, the great majority of them huddled together and crowded in hovels clustered under the shadow of the baronial and aristocratic strongholds. High battlemented towers filled the city. Of the scores in the Trastevere, that of the Auguilara family exists to this day. On the Tiberine island arose the Frangipani[361] towers, on the left bank those of the Orsini, from the Porta del Popolo to the Quirinal those of the Colonna, while the towers of the Mellini and the Sanguigni may still be seen on the site of the stadium of Domitian.

Of all the seven hills of Rome, one only had not fallen into the hands of the barons. The Capitoline was still held by the people. But commerce, industry, and the arts had all disappeared. Rome had long been cut off from connection with the active world, and when the work of material revival and rebuilding began, not only architects and sculptors, but stone masons and carpenters had to be brought in from Tuscany and Umbria.

AN ARCHITECTURAL RETROSPECT.

Under the pontificates of Sixtus IV. and his two successors, Pintelli, a pupil of Brunellesco, ornamented Rome with such monuments as San Pietro in Montorio, the façade of St. Peter, and the Sistine Chapel. He brought to his work the boldness and taste of his master, who had made profound study of the monuments of ancient Rome.

This was the period of the first renaissance, with its charms and imperfections, at once timid and capricious, imitating the models of antiquity in their details, but utterly mistaking the proportions which are the essential, while succeeding brilliantly in the accessories and ornaments borrowed from the ancients and used in profusion with some endeavor to adapt them to the ideas and needs of the period. The fundamental principle of architecture, which requires that the exterior should express or respond to the use for which the interior is destined, was unknown to Pintelli.

To break the monotony of the lines, the façade of any given building was, as it were, framed, decoration was freely used, and the object was to please the eye, no matter by what means. At that day, the architect was also the painter, and the majority of artists were both. The first renaissance obtained its apogee toward the year 1500. In the nature of things it had then outlived its day, and a change became indispensable at the risk of degradation.

Fortunately Bramante was ready to answer the call. He was from Umbria, and Raphael was his nephew. He had studied in the north of Italy, where, amid plains devoid of stone, the architect was forced to use brick. Hence the novelty of combination introduced by him in Rome, whose inexhaustible stone quarries were such ancient monuments as the Coliseum. It is from the absence of heavy building-stone and the contrast of the German taste of the Longobards with the Byzantine style of Ravenna that the Lombard style is begotten. It brought with it precisely what the renaissance most needed, namely, its exquisite sentiment of proportions, and it forms the transition between the two schools of the renaissance, the latter of which formed the golden era of architecture in Italy.

Its reign in Rome has left indelible traces. Its productions—and among them are the court of St. Damas, the Belvedere, the galleries of the Vatican, the Giraud palace—were the pride of the age. They taught the comprehension of proportions, the calculation of perspective, the culture of harmony of detail and ensemble, reformed false taste, and created an epoch in profane architecture. With increase of public security, even the Roman barons began to understand that the greatest beauty[362] of the architectural art might be found elsewhere than in a high tower or a battlemented block-house. Even the mezzo-ceto, or middle class, began to contract a taste for something beyond the absolutely necessary, and sought to adorn even their modest habitations. A private dwelling-house built at this period and exclusively bramantesque may still be seen in Rome on the strada papale, opposite the Governo Vecchio. It yet bears the date of its construction (1500) and the name of its builder.

After the death of Bramante appeared Raphael, Michael Angelo, Giulio Romano, and Balthasar Peruzzi, who, prodigal of their treasures of genius, created a golden age.

Romano's Villa Madama became the type of the country-seat; Peruzzi's Farnesina, that of the modern palace. Raphael, more as painter than as architect, composed the designs of the palace Vidoni. It was the great epoch of the culture of simplicity in grandeur, of disdain for the small and the superfluous, of faithful and noble expression of the idea conceived.

The models of antiquity were still followed, but they were transformed. The architect translated modern conceptions into the sonorous but dead and strange language of the old Romans. In interior ornamentation, however, the artist could give free rein to his inspirations, and throw off the trammels of the severe rules scrupulously followed as to the façade and the general composition of the design. Alas! it was here they planted the germs of degeneration and decay. Public taste—never a safe guide—seized upon and clung to these prodigalities of an exuberant and fantastic imagination supposed to be inexhaustible. At Florence, in his work on the chapel of the Medicis, Michael Angelo was the first to enter this flowery but treacherous path.

We see and admire these niches, windows, and ornaments, charming indeed to the eye, but which have no raison d'être. It was at a later period, under the pontificate of Paul III., that the painter of the "Last Judgment" and the sculptor of "Moses" revealed himself at Rome, as an architect stamped his work on the Farnese palace, and astonished the world by reconstructing St. Peter's. Soon this style gained the upper hand. Simplicity yielded to riches; logic to caprice; unrestricted liberty succeeded the voluntary curb which the great masters of the epoch had imposed upon themselves. Presently came pauses. Halts were made. As in all human affairs, action and reaction succeeded. Not so much in details as in ensemble, Vignoli in Rome, Palladio at Vicenza, and to a certain degree Scamazzi in Venice, brought back architecture to the sobriety of the commencement of the century.

But the death of Michael Angelo appeared to have completely demoralized the architects who survived. For thirty years he had reigned supreme. In him alone had the popes confidence; and upon architects employed by them, they imposed the obligation of following him. Piero Ligorio, architect of St. Peter, was dismissed because he manifested an intention to put aside Michael Angelo's plans. In thus officially guarding the manes of the dead master, they apparently hoped to transfer his genius to those who succeeded him. But it was a sad and fatal mistake.

The amount of building effected in Rome during the last third of the sixteenth century has never, probably, been exceeded. In examining the productions of that epoch, the struggle between the servile imitators of Buonarotti and the men of progress,[363] desirous, but through lack of originality incapable, of emancipating themselves, is readily discerned. But let us leave this retrospect, descend the steps of the Pincian Hill, and, traversing the Piazza di Spagna and the Via Condotti, enter

THE CORSO AGAIN,

at the points where to-day's tourist sees the Via della Fontanella, by which he goes toward the bridge of St. Angelo, on his way to St. Peter's. Here our travellers of 1585, passing under the arch of Marcus Aurelius, which separated the Corso into two distinct parts, and was afterwards swept away by Alexander VII. to straighten and widen the thoroughfare, find themselves really in Rome. On either side are solidly built houses without windows or balconies, covered with frescoes, and so high that the sun reaches the pavement only at mid-day. Looking down the Corso, the traveller perceives at its extremity, above the palazetto of St. Mark, the battlemented convent of Ara Cœli, and the tower of the Capitol. Leaving the Colonna place and the Antonine column to the right, our travellers soon reach the place and palace of St. Mark, with its immense battlemented façades, surmounted by a colossal tower built of stone almost entirely taken from the Coliseum. With the exception of some few modifications in the windows of the façade fronting on the Via del Gesú, and in the roof of the tower which formerly projected, this palace—now known as the Austrian—to-day appears to us as the traveller saw it three hundred years ago. Near by is the Church and Convent of the Apostles, where in after-years were shown the cells occupied by the two friars who became respectively Sixtus V. and Clement XIV. (Ganzanelli). When the monks of this convent called in a body upon Sixtus V. to felicitate him on his accession, the cook of the community went up alone to the pope at the close of the audience. "Holy Father," said he, "you doubtless remember the wretched repasts of which you partook when with us?" Sixtus replied that the expression "wretched repasts" perfectly described the meals in question. "Well," continued the cook, "the cause was the want of good water—give us water."

Sixtus declared that this was the only reasonable demand yet made of him, and immediately ordered the construction in the ancient court of a beautiful fountain, which, although much injured by time, yet exists.

Still progressing towards the Capitol, our travellers pass the Gesú. In the small house adjoining it Ignatius Loyola died, and St. Francis Borgia has but lately expired there. And now they ascend to the Capitol by the cordonata of Michael Angelo. Looking still onward, they catch a glimpse of the Forum (Campo Vaccino), enlivened only by droves of browsing cattle and here and there a searcher of buried antique statues. Beyond the Arch of Titus all is silent solitude.

ROME OF THAT DAY

was within the triangle bounded by the Corso, the Tiber, and the Capitol. Our travellers turn their faces towards the St. Angelo Bridge, and approach it by long, narrow, and crooked streets, nearly corresponding with the Via Giulia and the Monserrato which we to-day traverse. This was the Faubourg St. Germain of the period, full of palaces, but stately and silent. The strangers[364] find the activity, movement, display, and exuberant activity of Rome in the street now known as the Banchi, then lined with the residences of wealthy bankers, in the rich Spanish quarter beyond the Piazza Navona, in the Tordinone and Coronari.

From the rising to the setting of the sun, throngs of people fill these badly paved thoroughfares, which are more thickly lined with palaces as they approach the bridge. Our strangers are impressed with the great crowd of people, and are of the opinion that it exceeds that of the Marais in Paris, and is second only to the throngs they saw in Venice. About the Pantheon and the Minerva are the houses already mentioned where travellers and visitors to Rome find furnished suites of apartments—the Fifth Avenue and St. Nicholas Hotels of the period. A few years later (1595), on beholding this, the Venetian ambassador writes that "Rome has reached the apogee of its grandeur and prosperity."

With difficulty a passage through the crowd is effected, and the task is rendered even dangerous by the large number of carriages in circulation.

In 1594, there were eight hundred and eighty-three private carriages in the city. They were almost an essential. The great St. Charles Borromeo said, "There are two things necessary in Rome—save your soul and keep a carriage." And a singular-looking carriage it was to our eyes. In shape resembling a cylinder open at both ends, with doors at either side, knocked and tossed about in a sort of basket on four clumsy wheels. The elegants and beaux of the day usually had an opening in the top of the vehicle through which, as they progressed, they admired fair ladies at their windows. "They make an astrolabe of their carriage," thundered a preacher in denunciation of the practice. The crowd increases as the St. Angelo Bridge is approached, and it equals the human pressure of the period of the jubilee as described by Dante:[94]

No ladies are seen. They seldom go out, and then only in carriages. We find the modern Italians highly demonstrative. Their ancestors were more so, as our travellers noticed at every step. Men meeting acquaintances in the street exchanged profound bows. Friends embraced "with effusion." People threw themselves on their knees before those of whom they had favors to ask.

DINNERS AND BANQUETS

for invited guests were sumptuous and of long duration. The culinary art of that epoch—as we learn from a work of Bartholomew Scarpi, the Grand Vatel of the sixteenth century and head cook of the saintly Paul V., whose personal meals cost sixty cents a day, but who, in state receptions, entertained magnificently—was something wonderful, according to our modern ideas. For grand dinners, there were four courses. The first consisted of preserved fruits and ornamented pastry, from which, on being opened, little birds flew out, making it literally a vol au vent. Then came the other courses composed of a multitude of the most diverse [365]dishes, poultry with all the feathers on, capons cooked in bottles, meat, game, and fish, alternating with sweet dishes in confused pell-mell, utterly subversive of all our modern gastronomic ideas. Some dishes were prepared with rose-water, and substances the most heterogeneous and contradictory were mingled in the same preparations. The sublimity of the style was to effect the sharpest possible contrast of materials and odors.

The wines most in favor were the heady wines of Greece, the Malvoisy, and the great Neapolitan brands, the Lachrima and the Mangiaguerra, described as black in color, powerful, spirituous, and so thick that it could almost be cut. So, at least, reports the Venetian Bernardo Navagero, writing from Rome in 1558: "E possente e gagliardo, nero e tantospesso che si potria quasi tagliare."

Before the dessert, the cloth was removed, the guests washed their hands, and the table was covered with sweet dishes, highly perfumed, preserved eggs, and syrups.

Both before and after the repast, distinguished guests used what we would now call finger-bowls and mouth-glasses, demonstratively and even noisily. On arising from table, bouquets of flowers were distributed among the guests. From contemporaneous statements as to the cost of various entertainments of that period, we should judge that the Roman provision supply was much cheaper than we to-day find it in those marvels of modern architecture, the Washington and Fulton Markets. Thus, for instance, a wedding-supper, given by a Roman nobleman (Gottofredi), and which was at the time (1588) noted for its beauty as well as its extravagance, cost five hundred crowns, equivalent, allowing for the difference in specie values, to about nine hundred dollars of our money.

THE HORSE-RACES ON THE CORSO,[95]

during the carnival, are, of course, witnessed by our travellers. These races were formerly one of the traditional holiday amusements of the Piazza Navona, which is on the site of a Roman amphitheatre, and they were transferred to the Corso by Paul II. (1468). Seated in the small room of the corner of the Palazetto of St. Mark, whose windows command a view of the entire length of the Corso, this good-natured pontiff, who was fond of promoting the innocent amusement of his subjects, witnessed the running, and had the barberi (little horses) stopped at that point. The poor governors of Rome have ever since borne and still bear the servitude of this tradition. Four hundred years have gone by since Paul II. sat at the window on the Corso, but to this day the Governor of Rome, clothed in the official robes, whose cut and fashion have not varied a line in all that time, must, in the very same room and at the very same window, witness the running and have the horses stopped at the same points. Under Gregory XIII. these races had somewhat degenerated. Buffaloes of the Campagna, as well as horses, were run, and races were even made for children and for Jews. Sixtus V. reformed all this and made new regulations, which, with slight modifications, are to this day in force.

LITERATURE AND THE THEATRE.

At the period of which we treat, there existed a decided taste for the drama—such as it then was—but it [366]was a taste exercised under difficulties. During the carnival of 1588, permission was obtained, as a great favor, from Sixtus V. to allow representations by the Desiosi troupe, at that time the most celebrated in Italy. But the license was hampered with the following conditions:

Such a public edifice as a theatre was at that time unknown in Italy. True, many princes had halls constructed in their palaces for dramatic representations, and the Olympic Academy of Vicenza erected a building for the purpose, which was completed on the designs of Palladio.

As for the dramas represented, it is easy to understand their inferiority when we know that Guarini's Pastor Fido gained a reputation not yet entirely lost, by reason not of its merit, but because of the inferiority of every dramatic production of the time.

The costumes, decorations, and mise en scène formed the main attractions, but the plays themselves loudly proclaimed the decay of literature. They possessed neither originality, invention, nor poetry. When we contemplate our own elevated and purified stage of the present period, with its bouffe, Black Crook, blondes, and brigands, how profoundly should we not pity the benighted Italians of 1585!

About this time, the first edition of Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered made its appearance. Issued without the author's consent, it was both defective and incorrect. In spite of the enmity of the Grand Duke Francis and, what was more to be feared, of the opposition of the Della Cruscan Academy, the Jerusalem at once achieved an immense success—a success purely due to its beauty of diction. Contemporary criticisms of Italian poets whose names have since become immortal read strangely now. Tasso was sneered at, Ariosto's merit seriously contested, and Dante absolutely condemned.

"This poet," says Giuseppe Malatesta, a distinguished writer of that day, "has borrowed the wings of Icarus to remove himself as far as possible from the vulgar, and, by dint of searching for the sublime, he has fallen into an obscure sea of obscurities. He is both philosopher and theologian. Of the poet he has only the rhyme. To measure his hell, his purgatory, his paradise, one needs astrolabes. To understand them, one should constantly have at hand some theologian capable of commenting upon his text. He is crude and barbarous; he strives to be disgusting and obscure when it would really cost him less effort to be clear and elegant, resembling in this certain great personages who, possessed of an admirable calligraphy, nevertheless, through pure affectation, write as illegibly as possible."

THE MOTHER OF PRINCE GALITZIN.[96]

In presenting our American Catholic readers with a notice of the Life of the Princess Amelia Galitzin, it would be sufficient apology to mention that this illustrious lady was the mother of the great religious pioneer of Pennsylvania—that worthy priest whose services in the cause of Catholicity in our country have endeared his name to the American church and have kept his memory still alive in the filial love born of a new generation whose fathers he evangelized.

But even if this apostle-prince had never landed on American shores; never sacrificed an opulent position and a brilliant career, to labor as a humble missionary in the wild western forests of Pennsylvania; never indelibly engraved his name, as he has done, on that soil, now teeming with industrial and religious life, there is that in the life of the princess, his mother, which would amply recommend it to our interested attention.

Her career was beyond the common run of lives. It was wonderful in its blending of the ordinary with the extraordinary. It is the story of a great, strong mind—a high-principled soul, entrammelled in circumstances commonplace, disadvantageous, and entirely beneath it, struggling for ascendency to its own level above them. A notice, then, of her life possesses a double interest for our readers—its own intrinsic interest, and that which it borrows from the foreshadowing of the great and useful life spent in our country, with which we have already been made acquainted, and of which, we are glad to learn, we are soon to have a more extended account.

The Princess Amelia Galitzin was born at Berlin, in August, 1748. Her father, the Count de Schmettau, a field-marshal of Prussia, was a Protestant. Her mother, the Baroness de Ruffert, was a Catholic. This difference in the religion of the parents led to the understanding that the children of the marriage should receive, according to their sex, a different religious education. Amelia, the only daughter, was destined, then, to be educated in the Catholic faith. For this purpose she was sent, at the early age of four years, to a Catholic boarding-school at Breslau.

It seems that at this establishment the religious as well as the secular training was sadly defective; for, at the end of nine years, the young countess left the pensionnat with no instruction, little piety—even that little of a false kind—and with but one accomplishment, a proficiency in music, the result of the cultivation of a great natural talent. As for literary acquirements, she scarce could read or write. Another school was now selected for her, and this selection reveals the negligent character of her mother, who, from failing to use a wise discretion, or to exert that softening and moulding influence that mothers hold as a gift from nature, may be held accountable for the troubled darkness and painful wanderings of mind that[368] afflicted her daughter in her curious after-career. At thirteen she was placed at a kind of day-college, in Berlin, directed by an atheist. Such a step would have been a dangerous experiment, even with a child of the most ordinary mind, whose impressions are easily effaceable, but with the self-reliant spirit and keen intellect that were destined to be developed in Amelia, it was more than dangerous, it was a ruinous trial. The results of her eighteen months' attendance at this school were not immediately apparent, at least they were but negatively so. At scarcely fifteen years of age, she left this atheist school to become a woman of the world, by making what is technically called her entrance into society. What that entailed on a member of a noble house, and in a gay capital like Berlin, especially the Berlin of the eighteenth century, we may well surmise. There was another feature in its society worth attention, beyond the stereotyped round of lévées, soirées, and midnight revels of high life. The great dark cloud of incredulity had just settled on sunny France. France then stood at the head of the western nations. A reflection of her brilliancy was found in surrounding societies. Imitation of her tastes, literary and material, was deemed no disgrace. Even her quick, dancing, musical language was ludicrously set, by fashion, to the rough, guttural tones of the Teutonic tongue—so great was her fascinating influence. No wonder, then, that the thick shadows of that dark cloud in which she had shrouded her faith should have fallen heavily around her. They fell on Prussia, and fell heaviest when Voltaire became the guest of Frederick. The fœtid, contagious atmosphere floated in on the society of her capital. To be rational was the rage, when rational meant incredulous. Statesmen became skilled in the new philosophy. Since the king had turned philosopher, grand ladies suddenly found themselves profoundly intellectual and controversial, and their drawing-rooms became like the salons de Paris—no longer the frivolous halls of pleasure, the depots for the lively gossip of the niaiseries of life, but private school-rooms, inner circles in aid of the grand revolt of reason against God which had already begun throughout Europe.

In such society, then, did this young girl, fresh from an atheist school, find herself at the age of fifteen, with no arm of a Christian to do battle for her soul; neither the "shield of faith" nor "the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God." But, happily, that society was not immediately to possess her young heart. An ennui—a nameless weariness—intensified by a morbid self-love, now settled on her mind. And it was in this trial that her defective instruction first began to tell against her. The only relic of its early impressions left her was a confused notion of the horrors of hell and the power of the devil, which now rose before her but to increase her misery. Beyond that, she believed in nothing, hoped for little in this life, and saw not the next. True, she accompanied her mother to Mass on Sunday, but to her it was as an idle show. She understood as little about the ceremonies as about the text of the delicately-bound French prayer-book she was obliged to hold in her hand. She could find nothing in what she knew or saw of religion to fill the void that caused the weariness of her heart. She determined to seek relief in reading. Her father's library was scant. So she sent rather a confiding request to the proprietor of a neighboring reading-room[369] to supply a young lady who was anxious to improve herself with useful books. This gentleman's ideas of improvement and utility were somewhat singular, for he forthwith dispatched a large packet of sensational romances. With the same confiding spirit she accepted the selection, and novel after novel she fairly devoured, devoting night and day to her new occupation. That the frivolities of a gay society had no attractions for her as a resource in her extremity, that they could not "minister to her mind diseased," shows a soul of no ordinary mould, and shows, too, that it was not through the senses, but through the intellect, that its cravings were to be allayed. Comparative peace of mind returned, for she made her reading a very preoccupying labor by keeping a diary of its results and impressions. Music, always her favorite pastime, she now made her recreation.

She was just beginning to taste the sweets of living in a little peaceful, busy world within herself, when a young lady, who had been an intimate friend of hers, was admitted to a share in her occupations. This resulted in not only breaking her utter isolation from society, but in leading her to mingle in it once more. The calm of the previous months was not entirely undisturbed. At intervals the thoughts of her utter irreligiousness would conjure up again those appalling images of Satan and hell, and their recurrence became more frequent as she relented in her labors. But now in the gay drawing-room assemblies she met many ladies of her own rank who, professing to be Catholics, did not hesitate to express freely, in their brilliant conversations, the sentiments of incredulity which filled her own mind. In their example she found her self-justification. She believed it fashionable to think and act as other ladies, and so, dismissing what she now deemed her idle fancies, she permitted herself undisturbed to glide into the easy way of unbelief.

But an unseen mercy followed on her path, and soon again cast before her warning signs of her danger. Her fears of the supernatural grew again; and this time, in spite of every example, in spite of every effort to treat them as fancies that could be laughed away, they increased to such an extent that her health became endangered. Once more she formed a plan of escape from her terrors of mind and the weariness they entailed—this time an unaccountable and for her an unexpected one. She resolved to devote herself to meditation, that, as she said in her journal, "by force of thought she might raise herself to union with the Supreme Being," and thus neutralize the effects of the frightful pictures of eternal punishments which wearied her imagination. We cannot help seeing in this effort a noble struggle of a great mind, untutored in childhood, and left in early youth without guidance or encouraging support.

She immediately entered on her new project, and made great and persevering efforts; but she groped in the dark and made little progress in meditating. Yet these efforts were not wholly unavailing. She succeeded by her bare strength of thought in impressing deeply and thoroughly on her mind the dignity of a highly moral life, which led her to the conviction that everything gross or vile was utterly unworthy of the noble soul that dwelt within us.

What child of sixteen have we ever known or heard of whose young life presents a history of mind so curious and so wonderful? Few even of riper years have ever displayed[370] a mere, bare natural power of soul at once so strong and so refined as that which led Amelia to so beautiful a conclusion.

Be that as it may, it was for her a saving result in the change that was now about to come over her position in life. It was arranged at this time, by her parents, that the young countess should join the court, in the capacity of lady robe-keeper to the wife of Ferdinand, Prince of Prussia, brother to Frederick II.

If we called the court society of that epoch gilded corruption, we believe we would be epitomizing the detailed chronicle of its character. Yet, armed with her high-souled conviction, Amelia glided untainted through its seductions and scandals, though her youth and beauty and the affectionate simplicity of her manners made her the object of much attention.

From the character of her mind we may well imagine that she had little relish for her new duties. To any one of a high order of intellect, and consequent intellectual aspirations, the mean, material duties of arranging a wardrobe, sorting dresses, seeing them set out in their respective turns, and changed with every changing fashion—in a word, being a mere waiting-maid to any one, no matter of what rank, must necessarily be irksome and distasteful. And though we will not draw the exaggerated sarcastic picture that Lord Macaulay gives of Frances Burney's life at the court of England, yet the fact that the young countess stole many an hour from her irksome post and still more wearying ceremonious court-pleasures to enjoy the instructive conversation of elderly men of known literary tastes and acquirements, gives us full ground for at least compassionating her in a position so evidently unbefitting her gifted and aspiring mind.

In her twentieth year she accompanied the princess on a summer trip to the waters at Aix-la-Chapelle and Spa. It was during their residence at the former place she first met and received the addresses of the Prince Dmitri Galitzin. The story of their love does not seem to possess anything above the ordinary interest, and even extended over a much shorter period than is usual before marriage. All we learn about it is, that the match seemed very advantageous in the eyes of her protectress the princess and her brother, General Count de Schmettau (her mother, long extremely delicate, having died during her residence at the court), and that the marriage ceremony was performed with great éclat in August of the same year in which the proposal had been made and accepted.

Almost immediately after her marriage she had to set out with her husband for the court of St. Petersburg, of which he was an attaché. Her sojourn, however, in the Russian capital was very brief, for soon after his arrival the prince was sent as ambassador to the Hague, in Holland. Five years previously he had filled the same post at Paris, where he became the intimate friend of Voltaire and Helvetius. For the latter he paid the expenses of the publication of his famously infamous work, De l'Esprit. He himself seems to have been quite a littérateur. He contributed, while in Paris, to the Journal des Savants, and published two or three works of a scientific and political character. But to return.

A new life now opened for Amelia at the Hague. She became the star of the brilliant society that daily filled the halls of the palace of the Prince Ambassador of Russia; she lived in[371] courtly splendor, and received the flattery of homage that queens might have coveted.

She had now resided two years in Holland, and had given birth to two children, a daughter and a son. It may be naturally expected that now the duties of a mother would bring her life and her mind to the level of ordinary interest. Not so. The routine duties of her station had all along been tasteless to her. The constant round of pleasures which engaged her, the flatteries she received, in which meaner minds would have loved to live and revel, had for her no soothing or beguiling influence; not even the total change of existence and occupation which married life induces wrought any change upon her spirit. An aching void was still within her heart, and, seeing nothing around her with which to fill it, she began to pine away. At length a strong inclination seized her, one of those yearnings for some one project which swallows all our thoughts and to which all else must yield; we may call it a humor precisely in Ben Jonson's sense:

This humor was nothing less than entire abandonment of the world and its cares. Notwithstanding the obligations of her married life or those of her position in society, she determined to retire to some solitary spot, and there engage her mind in hard study of difficult and dry subjects.

Alarmed for her health, and probably deriving little comfort from such a moody consort, her husband consented to her retiring to live in a small country villa a few miles from the Hague. She engaged a distinguished professor of the city, named Hemsterhuys, to give her lessons in Greek, with a view to following under his guidance, too, a course of Greek philosophy.

Strange to say, the moment she entered with ardor on this uninviting task, her mind became completely calmed, and she felt a peace and contentment which for years she had not known.

Besides the seeking of her own peace of mind, the resting the weariness of her heart, she had another object in view—to prepare herself to be doubly the mother of her children by imparting to them herself a thorough education. In the six years that she toiled in this seclusion, this was the great sustaining motive of her labors.

When the children grew to the years of discretion, she relented in her harder studies to devote herself with no less assiduity to their early instruction. Everything was made subservient to that end. Even the recreations requisite for herself, and the amusements necessary for them, the pleasure excursions away from home, all were designed to open and mature their young minds.

But in these respects Holland had but poor resources. One quickly wearies of its changeless lowlands. It can boast of no wild scenery which grows new at every gaze and invites repeated visits, and it has few places of any peculiarly instructive interest. It was this consideration that determined the princess to remove to the more picturesque and favored land of Switzerland, where her husband owned a country-house near Geneva.

Her preparations for this change of residence were nearly completed, when news reached her of the projects of the Abbé de Furstenberg for a reform in the method of public instruction.

This Abbé de Furstenberg was one of the most remarkable men of that day in Germany.

Of noble birth, he received a thorough civil and ecclesiastical education, and at the age of thirty-five found himself chief administrator, spiritual and temporal, of the principality of Münster, under the prince-bishop. His administration was attended with most marked success, and had brought the little state to an unequalled degree of prosperity, not only religious and political, but even commercial and military. His latest labor was his educational reform regarding the method of teaching. To mature this scheme, he had studied, consulted, and travelled much during seven years. When, at length, he published the result of his researches, it was received far and near with much applause, whose echoes had now reached the Princess Amelia in Holland on the eve of her departure for Switzerland. She at once indefinitely deferred this journey, and resolved to lose no time in making the acquaintance of this accomplished ecclesiastic, in order to master under his own guidance the details of this new method of instruction. For this purpose, in the May of the year 1779, she set out for Münster, intending to pay only a short visit. She remained nineteen days, and, though the greater part of the time was spent in the company of the learned abbé, she found it impossible in so short a space to take in the result of his experience. This, and probably a certain charm which his great conversational powers exercised over her, made her determine to return again, and, with the permission of her husband, remain a whole year in Münster before setting out for Switzerland. Consequently, in the same year, she took leave of her husband and her old preceptor Hemsterhuys, purposing not to return to the Hague, but to pursue her Swiss project after her year's sojourn at Münster. But this programme was never to be carried out. Any one who has ever felt the influence of our affections on our plans and schemes—how plastic they are beneath them, how readily they yield in their direction—will easily divine the cause of this. In fact, so strong had grown this intellectual friendship between the princess and the Abbé de Furstenberg that every idea of going to Switzerland yielded before it; so much so that, before the end of the year, she had purchased a house in Münster, and engaged a country-château for the summer months of every year.

All this time she had kept up a frequent correspondence with her husband and her old professor, and she had made them promise to come and spend as long a time as they could spare every summer at her country-seat.

She was yet in the unchristian portion of her life. In her conversation and communications with Hemsterhuys, she had worked out a complete scheme of natural virtue and happiness, which she embodied in a work entitled Simon; or, The Faculties of the Soul. While we must admit that this is a curious specimen of a mere human, religionless view of a virtuous and happy life, yet we cannot allow that it could have been drawn up had not some faint remembrances of early Christian teaching still lingered in the mind of the authoress; much less can we grant that it could have been realized in any life without the sustaining aid of divine grace. Even if it were practicable, its practicability would, from its very character, be necessarily limited to a few rarely gifted minds; consequently, lacking the generalizing principles of the truly Christian[373] code, which makes a life of Christian virtue accessible to all, the lowly and the great, the rude and the wise alike, it is assuredly a failure.

She now applied herself with great assiduity to her children's education. Not content with imparting the mere rudimentary portion, she aimed at giving them a higher and more thorough course of instruction than most of our graduating colleges can boast. It was a bold task for a woman, but the order of her day at Münster shows us how little its difficulty could bend the will or weary the mind of one who could unswervingly follow the regulations it contained.

The household rose early every morning. Some hours were devoted to study before breakfast, and soon after the lessons of the day began. To these she gave six hours daily. With the exception of classic literature and German history, for which she engaged the services of the two distinguished professors, Kistermaker and Speiskman, she gave unaided all the other lessons.

She had competent persons to superintend the studies of the young prince and his sister while she was engaged in her own, but she reserved the teaching exclusively to herself. She very often spent entire nights in preparation for the morrow's instruction. After the labors of the day, she always devoted the evenings to conversation. It was then she received the visits of Furstenberg and a number of his literary friends, among whom was the Abbé Overberg, with whom she was afterwards to be so intimately related. Her old friend Hemsterhuys sometimes made one of the party, and he was the only one of her guests at that time who was not a Catholic.

This was the beginning, the nucleus of that brilliant literary circle which, a little later, became so famous throughout Germany.

Invitations to the literary soirées of the princess soon began to be coveted as no common honor. The most distinguished Protestant authors and savants sought introduction to that Catholic society, and even infidels who did not openly scoff at religion were soon found among its members. It would have been a sight of curious interest, standing aside unseen in that drawing-room on any evening of their reunions, to watch that strangely mingled crowd. The Princess Amelia is evidently the ruling spirit, and the marks of respect and homage which her distinguished visitors pay her on their arrival tell plainly that her presence is not the least among the attractions of that pleasant assembly. Scattered through the room are men of the most varied minds and opposite views. There were many there who had already acquired literary notoriety of no mean degree. There were many more, the history of whose minds would have been the story of the anxious doubts and bold speculations of unbelief which swayed society in the waning of the eighteenth century.

In the charm of that literary circle, Jacobi found rest from his restless scepticism. There Hamann could quiet his troubled mind. The cold infidelity of Claude thawed in the presence of venerable ecclesiastics and before the influence of their dignity and learning. Even Goethe himself confessed that the pleasantest hours of his life were passed in the society of the Princess Galitzin. During three years, these reunions were a literary celebrity.

Though the princess had not allowed her mind to be tainted by the impious philosophy of her time, and had formed, with the assistance of[374] Hemsterhuys, a better philosophical system of her own, founded on the idea of the divinity, yet in all her views she was completely rationalistic, rejecting all positive religion. And she had to confess, too, the defectiveness of her system in its practical bearing on her life; for at this time she complained feelingly, in one of her letters, that instead of growing better, according to her idea of virtue and happiness, she was daily growing worse.

In the spring of 1783, she fell dangerously ill. Furstenberg took this first opportunity to persuade her to taste of the consolations of religion, and to try the virtue of the sacraments of the church. But, though he actually sent her a confessor, she declined his services, alleging that she had not sufficient faith, promising, however, at the same time, that, if her life were spared, she would turn her thoughts seriously to the subject of religion. It was spared, and she kept her promise; but it was a long time before her reflections took any definite shape or had any practical result. This was undoubtedly owing to a want of direction, and we cannot divine why, among so many distinguished clerical friends, one was not found to do her this kindly office. Yet so it was, and, most likely, the fault was all her own.

The time had now come when her children were of an age to receive religious instruction; and, this being a part of the self-imposed task of their education, she determined not to shrink from it. But what to teach them, when she herself knew nothing, was a most perplexing question. Hitherto her own researches only plunged her into a restless uncertainty of soul which betrayed itself even in her sleep. Her conscience would not allow her to impart to her children her own unbelief, nor yet permit her to instruct them in a religion of whose truth she herself was not convinced. She relieved herself from this perplexity by deciding not so much to instruct them in any religion as to give them a history of religion in general, abstaining from any comments that might betray her own incredulity, or be an obstacle to the choice she intended they should subsequently make for themselves.

To fit herself for this task, she commenced the study of the Bible. This was the turning-point in her destiny; she held in her hands, at length, what was designed to be for her the instrument of divine grace. Long years ago, when a child, at the Breslau boarding-school, it had been remarked that, when nothing else could curb her proud and self-willed nature, an appeal to her affections never failed of its effect. That tenderness of her young heart was to be her salvation.

She opened the sacred text to seek there only dry historic facts, which she was to note down and relate to her children. For aught that concerned herself, the study was undertaken with a careless, incredulous disinterestedness. But as she went on and on through the sacred volume, and the sublime character of the Almighty was unfolded before her in all the beauty and tendernesses of his mercies, and shining in all the brightness of his wisdom, her soul was moved, her heart was deeply touched; she bowed down before the omnipotent Creator, and, for the first time, felt herself a creature. She read on still; she came to the Gospel, that record breathing love—compassionate, prodigal love—on every page, and before its charm her heart melted, her pride of intellect faded away, her life came before her as a useless dream, and her tears flowed fast upon the sacred[375] page; for now she not only felt what it was to be a creature, but had realized what it was to be saved.

Her work now became a labor of love. She not only taught her children, but she instructed herself. With her usual intrepidity of intellect, she was soon acquainted with every mystery of our holy religion, and with every duty of the Catholic life. From the knowledge to the fulfilment of her duty was always with Amelia an easy step; consequently, she began immediately to prepare herself for a general confession. After a long and serious examination of her whole life, she at length made it, on the feast of St. Augustine, 1786, and, a few days later, approached the holy communion, for the first time, with feelings of deep and tender devotion.

From this moment, a complete change was wrought in her whole manner. Her habitual melancholy gave way to a cheering serenity, which was as consoling as it was agreeable and charming to all around her. Her children and her many friends were greatly struck with the visible effects which divine grace had so evidently produced in her soul.

She now wished, for her more rapid advancement in perfection, to place her conscience entirely under the direction of the saintly Abbé Overberg. She was not content to have him merely as her confessor, but she wished to enter on the same relations—to have the same intimate friendship with him—as existed between St. Vincent de Paul and Mme. de Gondi, St. Francis de Sales and St. Jane de Chantal, St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa. Though she had written to him several times on the subject of her direction, yet she never dared fully to propose her project to him, lest he might reject her request altogether. However, she took courage at last, and, to her great joy, she was not disappointed.

This holy priest took up his residence in her palace in 1789, and remained there, in the capacity of chaplain, even after her death.

In the following year, Hemsterhuys, her old friend and preceptor, died; and in this year, also, the young Prince Dmitri, having finished an education which would have fitted him for any position or profession in life, took leave of his mother, to commence, in accordance with the fashion, his post-educational travels. For what particular reason he turned his steps toward the New World does not appear. It was during the voyage that he resolved to embrace and profess the Catholic faith. But Providence had designed for him more than a visit to the United States; his life and his labors in our country have made the name of Galitzin a familiar and much-loved word to American Catholics.

In 1803, the husband of the princess died suddenly at Brunswick. This loss she felt most keenly. He had ever been to her a good and indulgent husband, yielding, with even an abundance of good nature, to all her plans, and never interfering with the various projects of her life. We may suppose, too, that her grief was deepened as his unexpected death suddenly blighted all her hopes for his conversion.

But sore trials of another kind yet awaited her. The property of the prince, which, by the marriage contract, should have reverted to her in trust for her children, was seized by his relatives. Penury threatened her for a time, but her appeal was, at length, heard by the Emperor Alexander, and the property was restored.

Meanwhile, she began to suffer from a painful malady which produced[376] hypochondria. The patient, plaintless manner in which she bore her pains; above all, the calm of mind which she preserved in that terrible physical malady which poisons every pleasure and clouds every brightness of life, shows what a high state of perfection she had already attained. Religion was now her solace and her succor. By the perfection of her resignation to the divine will, she not only succeeded in concealing from her friends her painful state, by joining cheerfully in every conversation and pastime; but she cheered the melancholy and depression of others without once evincing that she herself was a victim to its living martyrdom.

With equal fortitude, she was bearing at the same time yet a harder trial. It is always wounding enough to our feelings to have our actions misappreciated, our whole conduct misunderstood, by persons merely indifferent to us. But what is there harder to endure in life than to be misunderstood by those to whom we were once tenderly devoted, to whom we were bound in the closest friendship of intimacy, and to bear their consequent coldness and slights, and sometimes cruel wrongs? Yet this pang was added to the other trials of Princess Amelia. But her great charity checked every human feeling. She was never heard to complain of any neglect, or even the annoying treatment of false friends, and she never sought to soothe the sorrow of her tender heart by any human consolations. In a letter regarding the Abbé de Furstenberg, she described beautifully the rule of charity she followed in this sorest of her trials. Whenever the memory of her slighted friendship would send a pang through her soul, her love of God was her first resource; then she resolved never to intensify the sorrow of the moment by indulging in any dreams of the imagination with regard to an irremediable past, or in any speculations whatever on the subject which would strengthen her sorrow or tend to an uncharitable feeling.

Thus, in these purifying trials, were passed the last years of her life; and when, at length, the gold of her merits was made pure enough in the crucible to be moulded into her crown of glory, she rested from her sorrows.

In 1806, she died the death of the holy, and, at her own request, she was buried beneath the chapel of her country-house at Angelmodde, near Münster.

Were we right in saying that her life displays the struggle of a great soul for its own level above disadvantageous circumstances? She struggled above the sad defects of early training, then above the commonplace routine of ordinary lives in the world, and finally above the clouds of infidelity and ignorance of divine things, to the bright, clear atmosphere of the faith, where the love of her ardent heart was sated, and her yearning aspirations found their lasting rest.

It may be, too, that we now have an easier clue to the wonderful character of the Apostle of Western Pennsylvania since we have become better acquainted with the mother of Prince Galitzin.

EGBERT STANWAY.

If Germany was the cradle of the Reformation, England can claim to have been its nurse, and to have fostered in it many phases even at present unknown to the land of its originators. In its last-born and perhaps most dangerous outgrowth, Ritualism, we see the English spirit that was already timidly visible long before, now fully flowering in delusive self-existence, uniting in this novel combination the cherished independence of Rome, that Englishmen are taught instinctively to regard as the only palladium of national freedom, and those æsthetic aspirations which come down to them, we venture to think, as instinctively, from their forefathers of "Merrie England" and the "Island of Saints."

But if there are in the English character great capabilities for evolving unthought-of theories out of stern dogmatic codes, there is also a strange power of assimilation by which it can engraft upon itself the alien modes of thought of other lands, and yet infuse into them something that is not their own—something that renders them unspeakably more attractive and, withal, more hopelessly earnest.

Such a power was most likely to have been encouraged and developed in Egbert Stanway by his almost foreign education and most sensitive and contemplative nature. The love of German philosophy and German literature had descended to him from his father, who had been a disciple and a friend of Goethe, and who had early sent him to the university at Heidelberg, where the boy still was at his father's death. The weird old city, with its castle overlooking the rushing Neckar, and its antique houses enshrined by woods of chestnut, was the earliest home he could remember, and as, during his holidays from the school where he had been preparing for university initiation, he had never left Germany, it was almost as a foreigner and a stranger that he visited Stanway Hall to attend his father's funeral.

The evening he arrived, the gloom of the old house, and the long shadows creeping round it, the hooting owl in the dark fir plantations, and the grim and spreading cedars nearly touching the hall-door, everything he saw, in fact, seemed to make a most painful impression on his sensitive mind. The old servants crowded round him in affectionate and mournful welcome, for they remembered the little fair-haired child that used to prattle so merrily through the house many years ago, and they thought they saw in his face the same expression that had melted their hearts within them as they had gazed on the child's dead mother the night he was born. One of his guardians, a cousin of his father's, a kind, grave man, with grizzling hair and soldier-like bearing, came and took his hand in silence, and led him to the low, wide dining-room where the coffin lay under its heavy velvet pall. There, in the gloom that the few tall candles near the bier could hardly brighten, he told the son how his father had fallen from his horse while returning at night from a distant farm where he had been to see the sick tenant, and relieve him from the rent that was due and which his family[378] could not meet. Egbert's face glowed as he lifted it from the coffin against which he had been resting his forehead, and as he said in faltering accents:

The words were simple, but the old soldier could not refrain from the tears that his own narrative had not yet forced from him. The child's comment unlocked his heart, and after a few moments' silence he said:

"My boy, you will try to live like him, and try to do your duty like him. You know you will soon have power in your hands: use it as he did. In a few years you will be your own master; even now you are master of this house and this estate. Never forget the responsibilities you will have. Always be kind to your servants, and just to your tenants, and charitable to the poor. Be loved as your father was, so that, when you die, you may be regretted as he is."

Egbert pressed his guardian's hand in silence, and presently knelt down by the coffin. There was a wreath of cypress on it, and he broke off a little twig and hid it in his bosom. His lips seemed to move—was he praying, or thinking half aloud? The old man's hand was on his shoulder, and he felt its pressure weighing him down. When he stood up again, he said nothing, only motioned his guardian to the door, and followed him. There were a few relations, mostly men, gathered before the fire in the drawing-room, and as the boy came in there was a general welcome of silent sympathy, and then a pause. Some few spoke in whispers, but the gloom was too deep to be broken. There seemed in the dead man's son more dignity and manliness than is usual, even under such circumstances, in one so young, and there was deference and surprise as well as pity in the looks that were bent on the boy of sixteen, to whom nearly all were strangers, and to whom his own home and his own household were themselves but new and strange associations.

As night came on, every one disappeared noiselessly from the room, Egbert himself having left it at an earlier hour. He had gone out into the summer moonlight to roam through the grounds he scarcely remembered, and to be alone with his own thoughts that would not let him sleep. The tall formal evergreens that skirted the broad terrace threw their shadows across the many flights of ornamental steps leading to the flower-garden; the scent of the heliotrope and mignonnette in the borders was wafted on the cool breeze that came from the sedge-encircled pond where the water-fowl played and hid in the rushes; the smooth-stemmed beeches stood like columns of silver in the moonlight, supporting their vaulted arches of interlacing leaves; the rooks cawed solemnly from their restless homes as the soft wind blew the branches backward and forward across the mossy mound; squirrels made cracking noises as they chattered in careless gaiety on the slender twigs of the spruce-fir; and hares and rabbits scudded away with terror-impelled swiftness as they heard human footfalls on the dewy grass.

The tall church-spire seemed to speak when the bell tolled out the hours through the night, and Egbert gazed longingly toward it, not as one who answers a well-known voice, but rather as one who strives painfully to guess the meaning of words he would gladly understand and yet cannot fathom.

"Oh!" he thought, "my father knows now all I wish to know; but he cannot come and tell me, and I shall have to live on, perhaps as long[379] as he did, and never know what I seek, and never find the satisfaction and peace I look for. If I too could die, and know all at once!"

He thought, too, of the ceremony that would take place in that church to-morrow, and of the cold, damp vault his father's body would be laid in. And so great was the horror of this to his mind that the beauty of the night turned to hideousness for him, and its wooing sounds were changed into ghoul-like beckoning. Tears would not come to relieve his heart, and he felt as if an icy grasp were upon him, crushing out his young life, his father, he could only think of as he was, mute and helpless, not as he once had been, a true guide and monitor; his home, where was it? his duty, to what dreary fields of thankless labor might it not carry him? his friends, who were they? friends of yesterday? friends of the family, perhaps, but that was conventional friendship to him—or friends to him as the young landlord, but that was interested friendship!

And then came back a rush of Heidelberg memories, of the reckless young companions of his scarce-begun career, of the kind old professor, Herr Lebnach, and of his child-daughter Christina, of rambles among the chestnut woods, when the band had done playing in the castle gardens, and of two or three darker and more solemn rambles when he had gone to follow a dead comrade to his self-made grave.

The chill morning dew roused him at last, just when a faint-breaking light was to be seen over the fir-planted hill behind the house, and he went in and threw himself, all dressed, on his bed in the dim haunted-looking room he remembered as his nursery in days so long past that he could remember nothing else of them. The sun rose and gilded the many-hued flower-garden, and lighted red fires in the diamond-paned windows on the east side of the house, and sent long arrows of light into the tapestried and wainscoted chambers where the guests slept; it took the church-steeple by storm, and poured in floods of molten gold through the stained-glass windows of chancel and clerestory; it flashed through the dark beech grove, and blinded the uneasy rooks whom it roused to a new and jangling chorus; it threw rosy sparks across the pond, on the margin of which floated the water-lily and nestled the forget-me-not; and, lastly, it penetrated the sombre curtains of the darkened dining-room, and, braving death on his throne, threw a coronal of light on the very cypress wreath on the bier. And had it not a royal right, nay, a God-given mission, so to do? For the morning of the resurrection is ever near, and each morning's sun is its fit representative and the forerunner of its joy.

The same consoling ray that would not leave the dead alone in death's own shadow shone on the boy's fair curls as he bent, half in sorrow, half in slumber, over the hidden coffin. Soon, very soon, that coffin would not be there in the dear sunshine. It would be away in the darksome earth, in a lonely vault, with no one save the bats to make any moan over it, and, if ever the sun's darts made their way to it through low, grated air-holes or widening cracks in the stone, they would be pale and spectral themselves, like torches in a deadly atmosphere, like phantom lights over the quaking bog.

The hours wore on, and the time came for the funeral. Again there was a gathering together of friends and relatives, and a marshalling of tenants and servants, a whispering among the awed assemblage, and the[380] boy asked once to have the pall lifted and the lid removed. In silence it was done, and in silence Egbert Stanway came near, and laid his right hand on his father's cold, calm forehead. His lips seemed to move, and a deeper expression of mingled sorrow and resolution settled upon his features; and thus, without a tear, he took leave of the best friend and best lover he had ever had on earth. He seemed much quieter after this, and the funeral procession now started on its way to the church, Egbert walking next the coffin as chief mourner.

Four years passed by. Egbert Stanway was high in honors at the university, renowned among the reading set as an indefatigable scholar, beloved by his favorite professor, Herr Lebnach, and his no longer child-daughter, courted by all the best men, and respected by all the worst, in the old city of Heidelberg. Having resolutely set his face against duelling and all kinds of brawls, and even against all innocent-seeming meetings that, nevertheless, were likely to end in brawls, he had yet not acquired the unenviable notoriety of a misanthrope, and, though many called him proud, still none called him churlish. Herr Lebnach used often to gather a few real friends about him, and there was generally some musical banquet provided for his delicate and discriminating guests.

His room was one of those that are dreamt of, but seldom seen, homely and artistic at once, quaint and suggestive as one of the mysterious dens of those sages whom modern times have called sorcerers and tamperers with arts forbidden. There stood on one side a great oak book-case, massive and plain, filled with huge folios, and smaller books laid carelessly across their dust-covered edges, old tomes that looked black enough for magic, though they might contain nothing more than medical lore and visionaries' dreams; over the carved mantelpiece, where a dark stove hid itself in the wide space it could not fill, was an array of pipes, meerschaum silver-mounted, and rare wood cunningly wrought; pipes of tarnished Eastern splendor, and calumets of Indian workmanship; a real old spinning-wheel, where Gretchen might have sat as she sang of her demon-lover Faustus, stood in one corner, and a collection of antique armor hung on all the spaces on the wall that were not occupied by medical portraits and angel-crowded tryptichs in twisted golden frames. Here, in one oak-carved case, was Venetian ruby glass and old Dresden ware, and there, on the quaint low tables, lay illuminated missals of the thirteenth century, alongside of dainty woman's embroidery-frames, and the last new pamphlet on the last new philosophical incomprehensibility. Then, as the dim light of the lamp flashed when some motion was made near the long table by the stove, there appeared on the other side of the room a great organ, with golden pipes and carved case—a world within a world, the kingdom of music enshrined within the surrounding kingdom of science and of literature. The treble manual, with its tiers of smooth white notes sheathing the melodies a moment's touch might set free, shone under the golden arbor of the spreading pipes, and beneath the dark carved garlands of oak-leaves and hanging fruit and sporting beasts, that seemed only as petrified embodiments of the thoughts that had once been living and breathing in those keys.

A girl sat by the organ, her hair[381] seeming to have caught the golden reflection of the music-laden pipes, and her slender fingers the litheness of those easily-moulded keys. Beside her was a large basket, where balls of wool mingled with half-finished garments of domestic mystery, while in her own hands she held a piece of knitting. A kitten played at her feet, and now and then tangled the long thread that fell from her work. Egbert Stanway sat quite close, one hand resting on the organ-notes, reading aloud by the dark light of one little candle in the fixed organ candlestick.

A few men began to drop in, but the reading was not interrupted, for the room was large, and the professor was sitting not far from the door. Some came in with rolls of white music; some with instruments tenderly imprisoned in warmly-lined cases; some, again, with their hands unoccupied, but their large pockets bursting with the treasures of meerschaum and tobacco; some thoughtful, student-like, long-haired; some gay and rubicund, as if dinner were but a late and cherished memory; some young and uneasily conscious of the stranger by the organ. Presently one came in who was neither student nor professor, but long-haired and quaint-looking nevertheless, with iron-gray locks, straight and wiry, strongly-marked features, tall, spare figure, and almost kingly demeanor, so mixed was it of haughtiness and courtesy.

Christina rose and signed to her companion to close the book. She went forward, and said a few words of blushing welcome to the royal stranger, and then turned to Egbert, saying:

He put out his hand with kind eagerness, and, as he did so, Egbert noticed the long, slender, nervous fingers, like iron sheathed in age-tinted ivory.

"I am very glad to see you, Herr Stanway," he said, "and very glad to see you here, for I have no better friend than Christina's father."

The girl fell back as he spoke, and passed through the room, speaking, now and then, to the bearded guests, who all smiled at her like the Flemish saints in the old pictures of the Maiden-mother and her mystic court; and made her way to an inner apartment where a grand piano occupied most of the space, and round the walls of which were many brackets with bronze and marble busts of sages and poets, philosophers and musicians, gleaming out, ghost like, against the heavy crimson draperies that fell round window and doorway.

The stranger was still talking to Egbert in German when the sounds of tuning instruments in the next room drew his attention. He took the young man's arm, and hurried in, casting a glance over the sheets of music scattered on the piano. A flush of pleasure and surprise came over his countenance; they were headed, "Overture—St. Elizabeth." Egbert looked across to Christina, but she was busying herself with a refractory violoncello-case, whose huge fastenings would not open, and whether or no she saw the maestro's puzzled air remained a mystery both to the young man and to his companion, whose glance had followed his own, as if half-guessing what it meant.

Herr Lebnach struck his friend on the shoulder as he approached the wondering musician.

"You must forgive my boldness," he said; "in fact, I can only call it smuggling. I got a copy from a pupil of yours—one whose enthusiasm was stronger than his sense of[382] obedience; but, of course, this is all among friends-it shall go no further. Indeed, if you wish it, I will burn the manuscript after the performance."

"No, no, dear friend," returned the composer; "it will be publicly performed and given to the world in a month or two, and I am glad you should have the first-fruits."

The amateur orchestra was in a state of nervous delight at these words, and as the maestro took the baton in his hand there was a hush that said far more than words could have embodied. Christina and her father and Egbert sat aloof near the doorway, and a few others gathered in silent groups round the room. The music came forth, at last, like the rush of an elfin cavalcade out of darksome caverns and cloven rocks of unimagined depth, wild and weird, like the cry of the storm-tossed sea-gulls among the reverberating crags of foam-washed granite. It was the music of delirium, the music of madness, the music of despair. It was the voice of a soul that had lost its way in a labyrinth of dreams so fantastic that they had thrown a spell over its returning footsteps, and so made it for ever an enchanted exile among their mazy paths. It was unintelligible, yet full of meaning; unapproachable, yet full of allurement; impregnable, yet full of sympathy. Later on, in great cities, and before critical audiences, it was held to be the music of a maniac, while it lacked the charm or the interest of Shakespeare's maniac-heroes and their too-faithful rhapsodies; and even now, though the performance was a labor of love, it was not without difficulty that many phrases were interpreted.

Christina seemed to think more of the composer than of his work, and more of his pleasure in seeing his music appreciated than of his actual skill in composition. Indeed, her father and Egbert shared her feelings, as was apparent from their careful watching of the conductor's face rather than of the performers' bows. But when the long piece was over, and every one started forward to congratulate and be congratulated, there was a general appearance of satisfaction at having mastered something that was no little difficulty, and offered such a grateful and acceptable homage to one whose heart seemed to value it so highly. Soon there was a hush again, and Christina glided to the piano, where the maestro was now sitting.

A smile and a soft chord were the speedy answer; and now the piano spoke and wailed, pleaded and wept, as the strong, supple fingers swept its astonished keys. It seemed as if there were within it an imprisoned and hitherto dumb spirit, whose voice was now unshrouded and allowed full power over the hearts of those who had scarcely before suspected its hidden existence. Far different from the tempestuous overture was this soft and swift blending of chords in garlands of sweet sound. Flowers were dropping around the feet of the artist; clouds of faintly-suggested and dream-like fancies were fanning the air around his head; a spell, as of Eastern languor, was slowly deadening the senses of the listeners to any other sound save that of the marvellous melody the piano was sighing forth, when, with a wild toss of the head and a sudden bending forward of the body, the maestro changed the key, and burst into a half-triumphant, half-defiant pæan—a chant of patriotic and maddened enthusiasm—which soon merged into the last movement of his impromptu and the last appeal of every Christian to the[383] God that made him; a solemn, dirge-like hymn, full of unspoken sadness, full of expressed confidence, a lifting up of the soul above everything of earth, a consecration, a supplication, a thanksgiving, and a sacrifice.

Never before had Egbert heard anything like that prayer; never after was he destined to hear it again.

Christina drew a long sigh, as if such beauty were too heavenly to be gazed upon without pain, and turning to the young man:

"I am glad," she said, "I cannot play the piano. One could not dare to touch the instrument after that, unless it were to destroy it!"

"You are right," he answered slowly and musingly; "but where can he have learnt the things he puts into his music?"

A dark shade of melancholy passed over Egbert's face; there was pain at the implied rebuke, and a vague sorrow, as for something lost, in that fugitive expression, but the music chased it away as the violins were tuning up again for Beethoven's "Septet."

So the evening wore away, and chorus and concerted piece followed fast upon one another, till the musicians were so excited they could hardly speak. The maestro conducted all through, and as he shook his hair like a mane about his eyes and swayed to and fro in the intensity of his enthusiasm, Egbert whispered to Christina:

When all was over, and some of the guests had left in singing groups that would probably serenade the town for the rest of the night, the great artist called the young Englishman, and asked him to show him the way home.

"I am somewhat of a stranger here, my friend, and there is no one whose company I would more gladly ask under the pretence of wanting a guide home."

As soon as they were out of the house, he turned suddenly on his companion, and, lingering so as to stay for a few moments in the full moonlight, he said:

A start and a blush that he could not repress were Egbert's first answers to this abrupt but not unkind question, yet the old man saw that his arrow had perhaps overshot the mark.

"No, mein herr," replied Egbert, with slow and sorrowful composure; "and I fear it never will be."

"I have hoped, but I see now how useless it must ever be for me to think of her except as a friend."

"I have never asked her for anything, and I never shall, and it suffices that she knows as well as I do what the reason of my silence is."

"Only this, that, if there are angels, they are not more remote from me than she is."

"You speak in riddles. I have no wish to force your confidence, my friend; but I have known that child from her cradle, and I cannot help being interested in anything concerning her."

"O mein herr! I have nothing to conceal; you misunderstand me.[384] She is a Catholic; that is why she is so far from me."

"In a few years, dear young friend, you may think differently. I was very like you once, only far worse; yet, you see, I too am a Catholic now."

The young man shook his head in silence. They had journeyed through the dark winding streets very near to the maestro's temporary home, and the old artist turned now solemnly and affectionately to his companion, putting his hand on his shoulder:

"Herr Stanway," he said, "I may never see you again, and you must forgive an old man for speaking so plainly to you; but I cannot bear to leave Heidelberg, where your friends and mine have made me so happy, without trying to do something towards your happiness, and, I am sure, towards hers. Do not, for Heaven's sake, give way to those foolish and yet wrecking tendencies of the young men of your day. Stand by religion, for I tell you by experience she is the best philosopher, as well as the best comforter; she is the only friend for the student, as well as for the priest; and, above all, she is the only guardian for the home, and the only giver of true peace. Remember that as an old man's advice, and, if you trust to the word of one who has run the round of all pleasures without finding true ones till very late, you will save yourself the long struggle of experience that wears the body and sears the mind, and leaves you in your old age but a shattered wreck to carry back to the feet of him who sent you forth a perfect man. Will you remember this, dear young friend?"

"I will try to do so," Egbert answered slowly, with intense but hopeless yearning to be able to do so. He kissed the hand of the old man whose words seemed to him but a mortal record of that other one written in notes of fire on the awakened instrument at Christina's home, and the artist took him in his arms and embraced him as a son. They parted, the one to go to his peaceful rest, the other to turn for consolation and for calm to the wild woods above the castle, whence through vistas could be seen the silver-flashing river, with here and there its dark semblances of reversed houses, and spires, and turrets. "My father! my father!" thought the young man, "why can you not tell me what you know—why can you not assure me of all I long to believe, yet cannot? She has often said that the dead are all of her faith when they reach God's throne, and that they believe in it even more firmly, if possible, than those of her creed do on earth—because to them evidence has been given. Perhaps to some the evidence is eternal fire—if that exist! But surely, he who made this earth so fair, he who gave us this solemn night-beauty to enjoy, and a mind fitted to admire it, he cannot have meant to bind us to cruel, unyielding formulas. If one heart feels its love go out to him in one way, and another in a different way, why should not both be as welcome to him as is the varied beauty of the many different-tinted and different-scented flowers? Who has been to God's feet and learned his secrets, and come back to tell us with certainty that he loathes one heart's worship, and accepts another's? Not till I have such an assurance will I, or can I, if I would,[385] go to Christina, and say, 'I am a Catholic.'"

And so the specious and seemingly religious poison worked on and cankered his heart, notwithstanding the solemn warning of his new-found friend, whose voice, he should have known it, was near akin to that of the spirit-witness he was but now invoking.

The night was very lovely, and reminded him of that one preceding his father's funeral, when already wandering dreams of a self-revealed faith were turning him away from the belief in a just and personal God. The Church of England Catechism, which he had learnt by heart as a child, the teachings of a zealous Episcopalian clergyman who had prepared him for confirmation in Germany itself, rushed back upon his memory as he looked on the symbolic beauty of the dying night; but in the dawn that already stirred the birdlings in their nests and shot pale darts of virgin light across the purple-blue heaven, he could see no emblem of truer life coming to his soul nor any sign of silent joy offering itself to his weary heart. And yet the dawn was shining into a little flower-scented chamber, and striking a sweeter perfume from the silent prayer of its occupant than it could draw even from the fragrant blossoms of the golden lime and the starry pendent clusters of flowering chestnut gathered in the large earthen vases near the window.

Night again, summer again, but a year has passed, and the German student is now an English landlord. To-morrow he will assume the duties of his new position; to-day he received the first-fruits of its honors.

The customary rejoicings attendant on a "coming of age" in Old England had been duly gone through; there had been banqueting in the hall, and feasting in the dining-room; healths had been drunk and speeches had been made, and every one was supposed to be in a superlative state of happiness. Probably every one was—that is, according to their kind, and to their capability of enjoyment. Egbert alone seemed thoughtful and preoccupied; his assembled relations thought him reserved and cold; some said a foreign education could be no good to an Englishman, and he would never be popular in the country; others thought he would marry abroad, some said he would turn Roman Catholic, and the sporting squires wondered whether he would ride and would subscribe to the hunt.

Contrary to the expectation of the marriageable young ladies of the neighborhood, there was no ball included in the programme of the birthday fêtes, and the guests who were not staying at the house all left towards dark, lighted on their way by the last explosions of the fantastic fireworks that had been introduced as a finale to the rejoicings. After dinner, Egbert and his guardian, the one we alluded to in the beginning of this tale, sauntered out on the terrace, talking in a desultory way about the little incidents of the day.

"You gave us so little time, my dear boy," he said presently, "to make your acquaintance over again, considering the time you have been abroad, that I feel almost as a stranger to you."

"I should not like ever to be a stranger to you," replied Egbert; "but I own I felt a shrinking from coming here at all, much more upon such an occasion, and to meet such people."

"I have led a very quiet life for the last few years, and I feel much older than I am, and quite different from all the young people, both men and girls, I have met to-day; and, to tell you the truth, I felt shy, so I delayed coming to the last moment. But if you will stay when the house is quiet again, I am sure we shall understand each other."

"With all my heart, my dear fellow; your father was my earliest friend, and I should like his son to be as my own."

"I am glad you are alone in the world, Charles, if you will allow me that cousinly freedom; for I own I should have been scared at a bevy of ladies, and probably committed some dreadful solecism, and have got myself ostracized for ever."

"Well, well; it will all come in time, no doubt; and now tell me all about your life at Heidelberg."

Could Charles Beran have looked back at that life, and known what was called back to existence by his careless question, perhaps he might have asked it less carelessly, and been less astonished at the effect it produced. His cousin grew pale.

"My dear boy," he added hurriedly, "if there is any painful recollection I have stirred up without knowing it, pray forgive me."

"No," answered Egbert slowly, "I have no painful recollection in all my life, not even my father's death (Beran looked at him anxiously); for nothing has happened to me without making me sadder and wiser, that is, teaching me more and more that I know nothing."

His companion did not answer. Egbert was getting beyond him, but he pressed his hand to show him that, whatever he might mean, he had one to sympathize with, even if he could not share, his sorrow. Egbert understood the wistful, loving sign of the old man whose happy disposition most fortunately kept him ignorant of the paths of gloom through which he himself was passing, and went on to tell him, in general terms, of his outward life and habits at Heidelberg. He made no concealment of his intimacy with the family of his old professor, but simply and truthfully said that, on account of her religion, Christina, he felt sure, could never be his wife.

"Perhaps," interrupted the old man, "it is better so, and Providence meant you to marry an English wife, and think more of your property and your own country."

Egbert smiled at this innocent pressing of Providence into the upholding of a mere actional prejudice; and said, unconsciously using the endearing phraseology of his adopted language:

"I knew you would think so, dear friend; but do you fancy that, coming from the feet of an angel, one would be likely to rush into the arms of a child of earth?"

"My dear fellow, you have grown too German by far! Excuse me, but this will never do for England, you know."

"I am afraid England will not do for me," Egbert replied, laughing; "that is, if England is to mean Englishmen and Englishwomen.

"Oh! you will think differently when you have mixed with them a little; we really must try and cure you."

"Well, you can try, if you like. Perhaps we had better go in and begin with the assembled company around that piano," said the young man, as he shrugged his shoulders and pointed to a white-robed girl attitudinizing before a splendid instrument, which, I think, could it have spoken, would have begged to[387] be delivered from the attacks of unmusical school-girls on the matrimonial lookout.

But every one was tired now, even school-girls and croquet-playing young gentlemen—and heir-huntresses, and heiress-hunters, and diggers after coronets, and the various other pliers of unhallowed trades—so Egbert was soon left to himself again, which with him always meant a long night-ramble in the whispering woods.

The English beauty of his own unknown possessions was new to him; it was also sad, for it was associated with the memory of his father's funeral; but, because of its very sadness, it was the less new, the more familiar. Across the flower-garden, across the terraced lawn dotted with rare trees from Rocky Mountain gorges and California valleys, across the network of gravel paths, he walked thoughtfully over to where an old ruin stood, with its mantle of ivy, shrouding crumbled wall and broken buttress, climbing over scutcheon and carven doorway, and flinging its tendrils like falling lace across the tall mullioned windows. This gray ruin had been a house once, but now it was disused and had fallen into decay. Opposite, only parted from it by a shrubbery, was the church where Egbert's father was buried, and to the left stretched a wide and long quadrangle with walls of coral-berried yew, and hedges of trailing rose and honeysuckle within, enclosing a tract of wild, rank grass, and little, nestling, creeping flowers hidden among the tall tufts. In the centre stood a sun-dial, lichened over in brown and yellow patches, catching the moonbeams now, as if it were a solitary tombstone in a desecrated graveyard. The long shadows from church and ruin stretched themselves across the lonely enclosure; the sweetbrier gave forth soft perfume that carried on its breath some remembrance of the Heidelberg limes and chestnuts; falling twigs made a ghost-like rustling in the tall trees beyond, and the voice of the night seemed to say to the young man's heart, "Peace is nigh."

Egbert wandered on till he came to the sun-dial; he leaned upon it and looked around. His thoughts were deep and sad, but something within him seemed changed—he himself knew not what. "Is it my father's spirit calling me, or Christina's heart sending me some heavenly message? Is it that I am going to die, or to live and know God?" Such were the flitting thoughts that sped like restless wanderers through his mind, and all night through, as he walked backward and forward in the yew quadrangle, and then by the edge of the beech-shadowed pond, these same thoughts pursued him, and shaped themselves to his fancy into the whispering of the ever-quivering leaves and the trembling of the unrestful grass.

It was dawn again before he left the grounds, and he had scarcely been asleep a few hours when a hasty message came to him that a poor woman from the village was asking for him in great distress, and was sure he would not refuse to see her. It seemed that she came to say her little girl was taken suddenly ill, and the doctor thought she would not live. Egbert had specially noticed this little one, and played with her during the preceding day, when the school-children were enjoying their share of the day's delight; and, without the slightest hesitation, he followed the poor mother to her cottage, where he found a whole nest of children; some old enough to look sorry and frightened, some hardly able to do aught else than crow and laugh and give trouble to the elder ones.[388] Up-stairs in a poor little garret lay the sick child, rocked on the knees of its eldest sister, and looking very pinched and white and mournful. A Catholic priest was in the room, and there were a few rude prints and a crucifix on the walls. The little one was very silent, but the mother said it had asked piteously for the "pretty gentleman" to bring it some flowers. Egbert took its hand and stroked its small, thin face. The child was not pretty, but it had that patient, confiding look that always stirs the heart, that prematurely yet unconsciously sad expression that is a thousand times more winning and more touching than beauty. For this very reason had Egbert noticed it the day before, and asked its name and age with an interest that made all its companions jealous.

As he bent down to it, it said something he could not make out, and turning to the mother for explanation, "She says, sir," answered the poor woman, "would you please say a prayer?" The young man reddened and looked at the priest. Again the child spoke. The priest said to Egbert: "She has a fancy for it. Will you not say an Our Father for her?"

He had chosen a prayer on which there could be no controversy, he thought, and was surprised when Egbert, instead of the Lord's Prayer, began a beautiful and impromptu supplication. For some time he went on, and the child listened bewildered; but as he stretched his hand towards her, and drew her head upon his arm, she said with a soft, childish accent, as if recovering from an unintelligible surprise: "No; say the Hail Mary."

The priest saw his head suddenly droop, and his fair hair touch the child's darker locks; his voice sank, and sobs came instead of words; then there was silence.

Egbert never raised his head, but in a broken voice he said the prayer as the little one directed, and the Our Father directly after. But the priest noticed that he said it as Catholics do, omitting the superadded words of the Protestant liturgy.

A few moments after, the child's father came in; he had been sent for from his work.

It was not long before God counted another angel in his train, and the mother one treasure less upon earth.

Egbert left the cottage with the priest, promising to send flowers for the little one's coffin, and to return to see it one more in the evening.

He was silent for some minutes, his companion watching him in appreciative sympathy, half-guessing the truth, and giving thanks to God for his double accession to his church in one and the same hour. At last the young man said:

"I know more than them, and I always thought that, could I make any form of faith my own, it would be yours."

"I will tell you the truth, Mr. Carey. Up to this morning I could not bring myself to any tangible belief; at this moment, thank God, I think I may venture to say I am a Catholic."

"My dear Mr. Stanway, this is indeed happy news. And see the instrument God has chosen for your conversion!"

"I have only one more question to ask you. I have studied the Catholic faith a long time; I may[389] say I have loved it long, and, now that I feel it to be the faith of my understanding as well as of my heart, may I not be received at once?"

"Of course, if you will only come to my house, and we will have a few moments' conversation. I have no doubt you can be made one of us before to-night."

The priest's house was a humble little cottage beyond the village green, and it had indeed needed all the Oxford scholar's taste to make its evangelical poverty the type rather of voluntary detachment than of necessary want.

Here, in a modest little room, whose only ornaments were two or three Düsseldorf prints and a book-case of theological and controversial books uniformly bound, Egbert and Carey sat down for a short time, that a few questions might satisfy the latter's judgment as to the propriety of at once receiving the new convert. He rose at last, and pointed to a temporary confessional that stood in one corner. Egbert was soon prepared, and every ceremony was rapidly performed. The priest could not help noticing the look of perfect peace that seemed to be the expression of the young man's predominant frame of mind. As he was still fasting, Egbert pleaded hard to be allowed to receive communion directly after baptism, and, after a moment's hesitation, the request was granted. He then paid another visit to the poor cottage where God had wrought this marvellous change in him, and reverently kissed the tiny white forehead of the little angel who had gone before him. And from that hour, there was not one in the village that would not have died for the "dear, kind gentleman that never said one hard word to a poor man." That day was remembered long years after, when the children of the girl he had seen nursing her little sick sister followed his own honored remains to their last earthly abode, and when another and a less kind master had come to reign over Stanway Hall.

Meanwhile, in the great dining-room where the guests were assembled for breakfast, conjectures were rife about the absent host, and laughing questions were put about his idleness on his too-romantic morning wanderings, until Mr. Beran, who also came in rather late, dispelled the whole mystery by an explanation consisting of one word, itself a mystery to many there present—business; and a courteous apology from Egbert, who hoped his friends would consider Mr. Beran as his delegate for the house. A few portly matrons and unmusical school-girls looked rather black at this substitution; but against fate what avails impatience? and against Beran, what availed black looks?

But when at luncheon Egbert did not appear, and when at dinner he came in with a saddened, grave demeanor, the discontented ones thought it really was time to throw up the game and go to other and more tempting hunting-grounds. So the party broke up the next day, and Egbert and his Cousin Charles were free again. The old man was soon made acquainted with what had taken place, and two days after both he and the young lord of the hall followed the little child's funeral to the Catholic cemetery.

But Egbert's heart was not yet satisfied. Heidelberg's memories were with him night and day, and it was not many weeks before he started for his German home with his new English friend as companion. He had not cared to trust his precious news to the slender certainty of foreign posts. He wanted to see the[390] very first glimmering of the expression he knew it would call forth on one ever-dreamt-of face, and the journey was to him a ceaseless preparation for a joy that would come suddenly after all.

Leaving Beran at the "Golden Kranz-Hof," he walked through the darkling streets, past the silent platz, up to the old house he knew and loved so well. He never rang, for the door was open, and the next moment he stood in the organ-room. It was empty—so was the next apartment. A fear came over him, and he covered his face with his hands.

Presently the door opened, and Herr Lebnach came in, looking aged and haggard. There was no surprise on his face as he saw his pupil and friend. "I knew thou wouldst come," he said simply.

And this was his welcome! this the home he had been journeying to! Christina was lying in a small iron bed by the window, a vase of golden-lime blossoms on the table near her, and a prayer-book beside it. Her hands were clasped carelessly on her knees, and her head propped up very high with pillows. Egbert took her white, cold fingers in his, and knelt down by the bed. She only said his name—it was the first time she had ever done so.

"Christina," he said at length, "I came to tell you something. Your faith is mine now."

"My God, I thank thee! My prayer is answered!" So she spoke after a few minutes.

"And I came to ask you something also," continued Egbert. "Do you love me as I always hoped you did?"

"Egbert," she answered solemnly, "I loved you from the first time I saw you; but, when I found you did not love and know the dear God, I offered my life to him for your conversion, and he has answered me."

Egbert told her briefly the circumstances that had occurred. A few days passed, and one evening, when the red sunset was firing the casement, and her father, her lover, and Charles Beran, were around her, she suddenly said, taking the two former by the hand:

"God is calling me—do not forget me. Your blessing, dearest father! O Egbert!"

Strangers often asked, when they came to see the beautiful Catholic Church adjoining Stanway Hall why it was dedicated to the virgin martyr St. Christina.

THE SCEPTICISM OF THE AGE.

The strong current of scepticism which set in during the eighteenth century extends into the nineteenth. Among the lower strata of society, among the dwellings of the poor—long the last refuge of religion—and especially among the factories and workshops, this scepticism has made various inroads on the ancient foundations of faith. By the sulphurous glare of the ominous flashes which momentarily relieve the clouded European horizon, we often catch glimpses of the horrors that are steadily accumulating in the lowest social depths. A powerful Christian current, whose volume has as usual increased with persecution, runs evidently by the side of this scepticism, but the latter, nevertheless, preponderates, and it is therefore not surprising that the barometric mean of our civilization should be such a low one.

The frivolous scepticism of the Voltairean school, now almost extinct in the French army, still survives among a majority of the political and military leaders of the other Latin nations, as, for instance, in Spain and Piedmont. For this reason the noble Spanish people, in spite of their hereditary virtues and high spirit, are still accursed with mediocre party leaders, while statesmen like the pious and chivalrous Valdegamas are only too rare. In Piedmont, unbelief, leagued with Italian cunning and rapacity, has during the last years borne blossoms which may well make us blush for our boasted civilization. "The proclamation of Cialdini and Pinelli" (one of which calls the Pope a clerical vampire and vicegerent of Satan), observed Nicotera, speaking in the National Assembly of the conduct of these generals in Naples and Sicily, "would disgrace a Gengis-Khan and an Attila!" "Such acts," exclaimed Aversano, alluding to the same subject in the Italian Parliament, "must disgrace the whole nation in the eyes of the world!" "It is literally true," said Lapena, President of the Assizes at Santa Maria, "that in this second half of the nineteenth century a horde of cannibals exists in our beautiful Italy!"

Other nations may perhaps thank God with the Pharisee in Scripture that they are not like the Italians. But if they have not gone to the length of fusillading defenceless priests (the case of Gennaro d'Orso, Gazette du Midi, February 1, 1861)—if they have never trodden under foot the crucifix—if their mercenaries have never raised blasphemous hands against the consecrated Host (Giornale di Roma, January 24, 1861)—in short, if other European nations have not yet been guilty of such atrocities as the Italians, very few have much cause to pride themselves upon their godliness and piety. Even in Germany, the fanaticism of infidelity has brought men close to the boundary-line which divides a false civilization from barbarism, and in some cases this line has already been crossed. At Mannheim the cry, "Kill the priests, and throw them into the Rhine!" was raised in 1865. In many parts of Southern Germany, the members of certain religious orders have been grossly ill-treated by an ignorant and brutal populace. "It is but too true,"[392] says the Archbishop of Freiburg, in his pastoral of May 7, 1868, "that the servants of the church are often exposed to insult and violence."

Ascending from the levels of ordinary life into the higher regions of civilization, science, and art, we discover that the scepticism of the last century has made more progress among our philosophers and poets. It is especially among the former that this scepticism seems to have gained ground, for materialism ranks lower in the scale of intelligence than the deification of the human mind. This return to the atomic theory of Epicurus is calculated rather to stupefy than to enlighten, for Humboldt remarks that a multiplicity of elementary principles is not to be met with even among the savages. Materialism is utterly incapable of elevating the heart, and destroys therefore a branch of civilization quite as essential as intellectual culture itself. Where all this tends to, how it brutalizes man and degrades him below the animal, how it obliterates every distinction between good and evil, how it robs our accountability of all meaning, how it makes the savage state with its attendant ignorance and barbarism our normal condition, has been forcibly pointed out in Haeffner's admirable treatise on The Results of Materialism. "The materialist," says Haeffner, "virtually tells man: You are wrong to set yourself in aristocratic pride over the other brutes; you are wrong to claim descent from a nobler race than the myriads of worms and grains of sand that lie at your feet; you are wrong to build your dwelling above the stalls of the animals: descend, therefore, from your grand height, and embrace the cattle in the fields, greet the trees and grasses as equals, and extend your hand in fellowship to the dust whose kindred you are."

As in modern philosophy, so the scepticism of the preceding century is equally manifest in modern poetry. "No department of human activity," observes a profound thinker of the present day, "is so feeble and occupies so low a moral standpoint as poetry, through which all the demoralization of the eighteenth century has been transmitted." It is a sort of confessional, from which we publish to the world our own effeminacy and degradation—not to regret and repent, but to defend and make parade of them. What we feel ashamed to say in simple prose, we proclaim boldly and complacently in rhyme. If a poet soars now and then to virtue, it is generally only virtue in the ancient heathen sense. Hence it comes that, when a political storm impends in the sultry atmosphere of the Old World, the night-birds and owls of anarchy fill the air with their cries. In times of peace they luxuriate in our modern political economism with the law of demand and supply, by whose agency human labor has been reduced to a mere commodity. In literature they preach the evangel of materialism under the flimsy guise of so-called popularized science, and even the school has been perverted into an institution whose sole object seems to be to supply labor for the white slave mart.

Those who desire to behold the fruits which spring from this unchristian culture of material interests should go to England for an illustration. Though the Anglican sect is the state religion, infidelity has made nowhere greater progress than in that country. Its principal church, St. Paul's, London, gives no evidences of Christianity. The interior does not address itself like Paul to the Areopagus, but like the Areopagus to Paul, for it inculcates an unadulterated[393] heathenism. The first monument that arrests the attention of the visitor is dedicated to the pagan Fama, who consoles Britannia for the loss of her heroic sons. The next monument belongs to the heathen goddess of Victory, who crowns a Pasenby; while a Minerva calls the attention of budding warriors to La Marchand's death at Salamanca. Then come a Neptune with open arms, Egyptian sphinxes, the East India Company seal. When the principal religious edifice of a nation is thus turned into a heathen temple, the people themselves must become heathenized, and this we find to be so here. In Liverpool 40, in Manchester 51, in Lambeth 61, in Sheffield 62 per cent. profess no religion at all. So says the London Times of May 4, 1860. In the city of London thousands and tens of thousands know no more of Christianity than the veriest pagans. In the parish of St. Clement Danes, on the Strand, the rector discovered an irreligiousness incredible to believe (Quarterly Review, April, 1861). For generations hundreds and thousands of coal miners have lived in utter ignorance of such a book as the Bible. In answer to the question whether he had ever heard of Jesus Christ, one of them replied: "No, for I have never worked in any of his mines." Innumerable facts attest that civilization retrogrades in a ratio with this deplorable religious ignorance. "Among all the states of Europe," remarked Fox in the House of Commons (Feb. 26, 1850), "England is the one where education has been most neglected." The justice of this observation is fully sustained by the report presented in May of the same year by the board of school trustees of Lancashire: "Nearly half the people of this great nation," say they, "can neither read nor write, and a large part of the remainder possesses only the most indispensable education." Out of 11,782 children, 5,805 could barely spell, and only 2,026 could read with fluency. Out of 14,000 teachers, male and female, 7,000 were found grossly incompetent for their positions. Among the troops sent to the Crimea, no more than one soldier in every five was able to write a letter home.

A glance at a few statistics will clearly show that moral deterioration keeps even pace with the intellectual. From 1810 to 1837, the number of criminals has annually increased, in certain districts, from 89 to 3,117; from 1836 to 1843, the average number of persons arrested each year in the manufacturing districts of York and Lancaster increased over 100 per cent., and the number of murderers 89 per cent.; from 1846 to 1850, the number of criminals in the Dorset district increased from 726 to 1,300, giving, in a population of 115,000 souls, 1 criminal to every 60 individuals. In London, the number of persons arrested in 1856 amounted to 73,260, whence it appears that about 1 inhabitant in every 40 passes through the hands of the police. Of the 200,000 criminal offences tried each year before the English tribunals, one-tenth part are committed by children, and 50,000 by persons less than twenty years of age. In London alone, 17,000 minors are yearly tried, which is 1 inhabitant in every 175; whereas the ratio for Paris is only 1 inhabitant in every 400. Mayhew computes that £42,000 are stolen during the year in the metropolis; and the London Examiner lately deplored that there should be less danger in crossing the great desert than in passing through some of the more remote suburbs of London at night.[394] The story of a Professor Fagin, who gave private lessons in stealing, has often been regarded as a canard; but we read, in the Morning Chronicle, an advertisement in which one Professor Harris announces a similar course of instruction, and even promises his pupils to take them, for practice, to the theatres and other places of public resort. Among these startling fruits of British civilization must be included the 28 cases of polygamy which occurred in London in a single twelvemonth; the 12,770 illegitimate children born, during 1856, in the workhouses alone; the children market, held openly in a London street every Wednesday and Thursday, between the hours of six and seven, where parents exhibit their offspring for sale, or hire them out for infamous purposes. Such being the condition of an overwhelming majority of the people, it is no longer difficult to credit the existence of the new race which is now said to be growing up in England—a race whose civilization Dr. Shaw contrasts, rather disparagingly, with that of the African and the Indian. "After a careful investigation," says Dr. Shaw, "I have been forced to arrive at the conclusion that, while the moral, physical, intellectual, and educational status of the lowest English classes is about on the same level with that of the savage, they rank even below him in morals and customs."

And what has England, politically considered, done for the cause of civilization since cotton achieved its great triumph over corn? As one of the great powers of the Christian world, she has virtually abdicated. For national right and justice, for really oppressed nationalities, she has long ceased to upraise her voice or her arm. It is only when some Manchester cotton-lord suffers an injury in his pocket that her fleets threaten a bombardment. She is an asylum for the refuse of all nations, and freely permits the torch of the incendiary to be cast into the dwellings of her neighbors. Her literature, philosophy, religion, as well as her industry, trade, and diplomacy, are intended to hand the nations completely over to materialism. Wherever England's policy predominates, there virtue and simplicity, happiness and peace, disappear from the earth, and out of the ruins rises an arrogant and inordinate craving for the goods of this world. British influence has destroyed Portugal, weakened Spain, distracted Italy, and impaired the moral prestige of France. Her religious apathy encourages a degrading heathenism. Britain's political economy has inaugurated in Europe not only a serfdom of labor, but a serfdom of mind. The Scotchman, Ferguson, predicted that thought would become a trade, and Lasalle remarks that it has already become one in the hands of most English scholars. And these are the results of our much-vaunted civilization!

The pernicious example set by England in philosophy, poetry, and letters has unfortunately found but too many imitators on the Continent of Europe and elsewhere. Our literature is at present in the same condition in which it was in the days of Sophists and Greek decadence. When God desires to punish a civilized people—remarked some years ago an eloquent French pulpit orator—he visits them with such a swarm of unbelieving scholars as the clouds of locusts which he inflicted upon ancient Egypt. Men of perverse heads and corrupted hearts generate, in centuries which are called enlightened, a darkness upon which the goddess Genius of Knowledge sheds uncertain flashes, resembling the[395] lightning which relieves the evening sky on the approach of a storm: The Sophists of ancient Greece were such heralds of impending wrath and desolation, and this class of men closely resemble the majority of our modern literati. If we compare the atheistic, material tendencies of a Protagoras, Antiphon, or Œnopides with our present progressive science; if we recall the time when Prodikus or Critias, in their efforts to destroy the religion of Greece, represented it as an invention of selfishness or of the ancient lawgivers; if Hippias offered himself to lecture on every conceivable subject, just as prominent writers now undertake to discuss all topics; if the latter again cloak their designs under the same phraseology; in short, when all this is once more re-enacted, then the parallel between that age and our own will be found almost perfect. The same class of scholars flourished in both eras; in both they claimed to be the high-priests of truth, although they are no more entitled to this honor than those whom Lucian describes leading the Syrian goddess on asses about the land. We live, in fact, in the days of a declining civilization, and nothing but a speedy return to the cardinal principles of Christianity can save us from relapsing into barbarism.

MATER CHRISTI.

OUR LADY OF LOURDES.

PART VII.
I.

The clergy still kept away from the grotto and aloof from all share in the movement. The orders of Mgr. Laurence were strictly observed throughout the diocese.

The people, cruelly harassed by the persecuting measures of the administration, turned with anxiety toward the authority charged by God with the conduct and defence of the faithful. They expected to see the bishop protest energetically against the violence offered to their religious liberty. A vain hope! His lordship kept absolutely silent, and let the prefect have everything his own way. Shortly afterward, M. Massy caused to be circulated in print a report that he acted according to agreement with the ecclesiastical authority; then astonishment became general, for the bishop did not publish a line in contradiction.

Hitherto the ardent faith of the multitude had been at a loss to explain the extreme cautiousness of the clergy. At the present juncture, after so many proofs of the reality of the apparitions, the springing up of the fountain, and so many cures and miracles, this excessive reserve of the bishop during the persecution of the civil power seemed to them like a defection. Neither respect for his private character nor even his office could restrain the popular murmurs.

Why not pronounce upon the matter, now that the elements of certainty were flowing in from all quarters? Why not, at least, order some inquiry or examination to guide the faith of all? Were not events which might suffice to overthrow the civil power and raise a sedition worth the attention of the bishop? Did not the prelate's silence justify the prefect in acting as he did? If the apparition were false, ought not the bishop to have warned the faithful and nipped error in the bud? If, on the other hand, it were true, ought he not to have set his face against this persecution of believers, and courageously defended the work of God against the malice of men? Would not a mere sign from the bishop, even an examination, have stopped the prefect from entering upon his course of persecution? Were the priests and the bishop deaf to all the demands for recognition which came from the foot of this rock, ever to be celebrated as the place where the Mother of our crucified God had set her virginal foot? Had the letter succeeded in killing the spirit, as among the priests and Pharisees of the Gospel, so that they were blind to the most striking miracles? Were they so occupied with the administration of church affairs, so absorbed by their clerical functions, that the almighty hand of God outside the temple was for them an affair of little account? Was this time of miracles and persecution[397] a proper season for the bishop to take the last place, as in processions?

Such was the clamor that arose and daily swelled from the crowd. The clergy were accused of indifference or hostility, the bishop of weakness and timidity.

Led by events and the natural bent of the human heart, this vast movement of men and ideas, so essentially religious in spirit, threatened to become opposed to the clergy. The multitude, so full of faith in the Trinity and the Blessed Virgin, seemed about to go where the divine power was plainly manifest, and to desert the sanctuary, where, under the priestly vestment, the weaknesses of men are too often to be found.

Nevertheless, Mgr. Laurence continued immovable in his attitude of reserve. What was the reason that made the prelate resist the popular voice, so often taken for the voice of Heaven? Was it divine prudence? Was it human prudence? Was it shrewdness? Or was it mere weakness?

II.

It is not always so easy to believe, and in spite of the striking proof, Mgr. Laurence still retained some doubts, and hesitated to act. His well-instructed faith was not as quick as the faith of the simple. God, who shows himself, so to speak, to souls who cannot pursue human studies, is often pleased to impose a long and patient search upon cultivated and informed minds who are able to arrive at truth by the way of labor, examination, and reflection. Even as the Apostle St. Thomas refused to believe the testimony of the disciples and the holy women, so Mgr. Laurence desired to see with his own eyes and touch with his own hands. Exact, and far more inclined to the practical than to the ideal, by nature distrustful of popular exaggeration, the prelate belonged to that class who are chilled by the passionate sentiments of others, and who readily suspect self-deception in anything like emotion or enthusiasm. Although at times he was startled by such extraordinary events, he so feared to attribute them rashly to the supernatural that he might have put off his acknowledgment of their true source until it was too late, were it not that his natural bent had been well tempered by the grace of God.

Not only did Mgr. Laurence hesitate to pronounce judgment, but he could not even make up his mind to order an official inquiry. As a Catholic bishop penetrated with the external dignity of the church, he feared to compromise it by engaging prematurely to examine facts of which he himself had insufficient personal knowledge, and which, after all, might have no better foundation than the dreams of a little peasant and the illusions of poor fanatical souls.

Of course the bishop never had counselled the measures taken by the civil power, and warmly disapproved them. But, since the wrong had been committed, was it not prudent to draw from it an accidental good? Was it not well—if, perchance, there were some error in the popular stories and belief—to abandon the pretended miracle, and allow it to sustain single-handed the hostile examinations and persecution of M. Massy, the free-thinkers, and scientists leagued together against superstition? Was it not proper to wait, and not to hasten a conflict with the civil power which might prove entirely unnecessary? The bishop privately answered after this manner all who pressed him to interfere: "I deplore as much as you the measures[398] which have been taken; but I have no charge of the police, I have not been consulted with regard to their proceedings, what then can I do? Let everybody answer for his own acts.... I have had nothing to do with the action of the civil power in reference to the grotto; and I am glad of it. By-and-by the ecclesiastical authority will see if it is necessary to move." In this spirit of prudence and expectation, the bishop ordered his clergy to preach calmness and quiet to the people, and to employ all means to make them submit to the prohibitions of the prefect. To avoid all disturbance, not to create any new difficulties, and even to favor, out of respect for the principle of authority, the measures adopted in the name of government, and to let events take their course, seemed to the bishop by far the wisest plan.

Such were the thoughts of Mgr. Laurence, as is manifest from his correspondence about this time. Such were the considerations which determined his position and inspired his conduct. Perhaps, if he had possessed the strong faith of the multitude, he would have reasoned otherwise. But it was well that he reasoned and acted as he did. Because, if Mgr. Laurence, with the prudence becoming a bishop, looked from the standpoint of possible error, God with infinite wisdom saw the certainty of his own acts and the truth of his work. God willed that his work should undergo the test of time, and should affirm itself by surmounting without human aid the trials of persecution. If the bishop had from the start believed in the apparitions and miracles, could he have refrained from a generous outburst of apostolic zeal and energetic interference in behalf of his persecuted flock? If he really had believed that the Mother of God had appeared in his diocese, healing the sick and demanding a temple in her honor, could he have balanced against the will of heaven the pitiful opposition of a Massy, a Jacomet, or a Rouland? Certainly not. With what an ardent faith he would have set himself with mitred brow and cross in hand against the civil power, as St. Ambrose of old met the emperor at the church-door of Milan! Openly and at the head of his flock, he would have gone without fear to drink at the miraculous fountain, to kneel in the place sanctified by the footsteps of the Blessed Virgin, and to lay the corner-stone of a magnificent temple in honor of Mary Immaculate.

But in thus defending the work of God at that time, the prelate would have infallibly weakened it in the future. The support which he gave it at the start would hereafter render it suspected as emanating from man and not from God. The more that the bishop kept aloof from the movement, the more rebellious or even hostile he may be showed to have been to the popular faith, so much the more clearly is the supernatural manifested by its triumph, singly and in virtue of its truth, over the hatred or neglect of all that bears the name of power.

Providence resolved that so it should be, and that the great apparition of the Blessed Virgin in the nineteenth century should pass through trials, as did Christianity, from its very birth. He wished that universal faith should commence among the poor and humble, in the same way as, in the kingdom of heaven, the first were last and the last first. It was then necessary, according to the divine plan, that the bishop, far from taking the initiative, should hesitate the longest, and finally yield[399] last of all to the irresistible evidence of facts.

See how, in his secret designs, he had placed at Tarbes on its episcopal throne the eminent and reserved man whose portrait we have just sketched. See how he had kept Mgr. Laurence from putting faith in the apparition, and maintained him in doubt in spite of the most striking facts. Thus, he confirmed in the prelate that spirit of prudence which he had bestowed upon him, and left to his episcopal wisdom that character of long hesitation and extreme mildness which, in the midst of their excitement, the people could not comprehend, but whose providential usefulness and admirable results the future was about to manifest to the eyes of all.

The people had the virtue of faith, but in their ardor they wished to force the clergy into premature interference. The bishop possessed the virtue of prudence, but his eyes were not yet opened to the supernatural events which were taking place in the sight of all. Complete wisdom and the just measure of all things were then as ever in the mind of God alone, who directed them toward the end and made use both of the ardor of the people and the prelate. He willed that his church, represented by the bishop, should abstain from taking an active part, and keep out of the struggle until the supreme moment, when she was to step forward as the final arbiter in the debate and proclaim the truth.

III.

Less calm and less patient than the bishop by their very nature, and now carried away by enthusiasm at sight of the miraculous cures which took place daily, the people could not bear themselves so indifferently toward the measures of the administration.

The more intrepid, braving the tribunals and their fines, broke through the barriers, and, flinging their names to the guards, went to pray before the grotto. Among these same guards many shared the faith of the crowd, and commenced their watch by kneeling at the entrance to the venerable spot.

Placed between the morsel of bread which their humble employment procured and the repulsive duty which was demanded by it, these poor men, in their prayer to the Mother of the weak and needy, cast all the responsibility upon the authority which controlled their acts. Nevertheless, they strictly fulfilled their duty and reported all the delinquents.

Although the impetuous zeal of many believers caused them to expose themselves willingly in order to invoke the Blessed Virgin in the place of her apparition, nevertheless the jurisprudence of M. Duprat, whose fine of five francs could be raised, as we have explained, to enormous sums, was sufficient to terrify the great mass. For most of them, such a condemnation would have been utter ruin.

And yet a great number endeavored to escape the rigorous surveillance of the police. Sometimes the faithful, respecting the barriers where the guards were stationed, came to the grotto by secret paths. One of the number watched and gave notice of the approach of the police by an appointed signal. It was with the utmost difficulty that the sick could be transported to the miraculous fountain. The authorities, being notified of these infractions, doubled the number of sentries and intercepted all the paths.

Still, many swam across the Gave to kneel before the grotto and drink at[400] the holy fountain. Night favored such infractions, and they multiplied continually in spite of the vigilance of the police. The influence of the clergy was greatly lessened and almost compromised on account of the reasons which we have set forth.

In spite of the efforts which they made to carry out the orders of the bishop, the priests were powerless to calm the general agitation or to cause their flock to respect the arbitrary measures of the civil power. "We ought to respect only that which is respectable," such was the revolutionary motto which everywhere found echo. The personal ascendency of the curé of Lourdes, who was so universally loved and venerated, began to give way before popular irritation.

Order was threatened by the very means that were taken to maintain it. The people, wounded in their most cherished beliefs, wavered between violence and submission. While on one hand petitions to the emperor were signed in all parts demanding the withdrawal of the orders of the prefect in the name of liberty of conscience, on the other hand the planks which closed the grotto were several times torn off during the night and thrown into the Gave. Jacomet vainly strove to find out these believers, so wanting in respect for the civil power as to abandon themselves without shame to a crime hitherto unknown to our laws, nocturnal prayer with trespass and breach of enclosure.

Sometimes they prostrated themselves at the stakes which formed the boundary of the forbidden ground—a mute protest against the measures of the government, and a mute appeal to Almighty God.

On the day which saw the sentence of the tribunal of Lourdes set aside by the court of Pau with reference to several women who were prosecuted for innocent conversation about the grotto, and two others who were acquitted, then an enormous crowd gathered around the stakes, they shouted victory, and passed the barriers in compact masses without a word in answer to the cries and efforts of the police. The latter, disconcerted by the recent check at Pau and overpowered by the multitude, gave way and let the torrent pass. The following day orders and remonstrances from the prefect came to comfort them and to prescribe a stricter watch. The force was increased. Threats of dismissal were bruited by the agent of the government, and vigilance redoubled.

Sinister reports of imprisonment absolutely false, but cleverly circulated, were readily accepted by the multitude. The real penalties not being sufficient, it was necessary to resort to imaginary ones in order to make a stronger impression on the souls of the faithful. By such means they succeeded in hindering for a time any renewal of the open infractions of the law.

Occasionally, unfortunate victims of blindness or palsy from a distance, who had been abandoned by the physicians and whose ills God alone knew how to cure, would come to the mayor and entreat him with clasped hands to give their lives one last chance at the miraculous spring. The mayor was inflexible, showing in his execution of the prefect's orders that energy of detail by which feeble natures so often deceive themselves. He refused in the name of the superior authority the desired permission.

The greater number then went along the right bank of the Gave to a point opposite the grotto. Here on certain days an immense throng collected, beyond the reach of the[401] prefectoral power; for the land belonged to private parties, who believed that the benediction of Heaven would fall upon the footprints of the pilgrims, and gladly permitted them to kneel upon their land, and to pray with eyes turned toward the place of the apparition and the miraculous fountain.

About this time, Bernadette fell sick, affected by her asthma and also fatigued by the number of visitors who wished to see and speak with her. In hopes of quieting souls by removing every cause of agitation, the bishop availed himself of this circumstance to advise Bernadette's parents to send her to the baths of Cauterets, which are not far from Lourdes.

It would serve to withdraw her from those conversations and inquiries which served to increase popular emotion. The Soubirous, alarmed at her state, and observing the bad effect of these continual visits, confided Bernadette to one of her aunts who was about to go to Cauterets, and who undertook the care and expenses of her little niece. The cost of such a visit is considerably less at that time of the year than any other, as the baths are almost deserted. The rich and privileged come later in the season. Here, as an invalid seeking repose and quiet, Bernadette used the waters for two or three weeks.

IV.

As the month of June draws to a close, the fashionable watering season begins in the Pyrenees. Bernadette returned to her home at Lourdes. And now, tourists, bathers, travellers, and scientific men from a thousand different parts of Europe began to arrive at the various thermal stations. The rugged mountains, so wild and lonely during the rest of the year, were peopled with a throng of visitors belonging for the most part to the higher social class of the great cities.

By the close of July, the Pyrenees became suburbs of Paris, London, Rome, and Berlin.

Frenchmen and foreigners met in the dining-halls, jostled one another in the salons, rambled among the mountain-paths, or rode in every direction, along the streams, over the ridges, or through the flowery and shaded valleys.

Ministers worn out by labor, deputies and senators fatigued by too much listening or speaking, bankers, politicians, merchants, ecclesiastics, magistrates, writers, and people of the world, all came to provide for their health, not only at the famous springs, but in the pure and bracing mountain air, which gives energy to the pulse and fills the mind with vigor and activity.

This motley society represented all beliefs and disbeliefs, all the philosophic systems, and all the opinions under the sun. It was a microcosm. It was an abridged edition of Europe—that Europe which Providence thus wished to place in presence of his supernatural works. Nevertheless, as of old in Bethlehem he showed himself to the shepherds before his manifestation to the Magian kings; so at Lourdes he first called the humble and the poor to behold his wonders, and only after them the princes of wealth, intelligence, and art.

From Cauterets, from Barèges, from Luz, from St. Sauveur, strangers hastened to Lourdes. The city was filled with rattling coaches, drawn, according to the custom of the country, by four powerful horses, whose harness and trappings are of many colors and adorned with strings of little bells. The greater proportion[402] of the pilgrims paid no attention to the barriers. They braved the law and went into the grotto, some out of motives of faith, and others led by mere curiosity. Bernadette received innumerable visits. Everybody wished to see and could see the persons who had been miraculously cured. In the salons at the baths, the events which we have recounted formed the universal topic of conversation. Little by little, public opinion began to be formed, no longer the opinion of an insignificant nook at the foot of the Pyrenees, and extending only from Bayonne to Toulouse or Foix, but the opinion of France and Europe, now represented among the mountains by visitors of all classes, of every intellectual shade, and from every place.

The violent measures of Baron Massy, which vexed curiosity as much as piety, were highly censured by all. Some said that they were illegal, others that they were misplaced, but all agreed that they were utterly inadequate to suppressing the prodigious movement of which the grotto and the miraculous spring were the centre.

The evidences of this total inefficiency drew upon the prefect severe criticism from those who shared his horror of the supernatural, and who at the start would have loudly applauded his policy. Men in general, and free-thinkers in particular, judge the acts of government rather by their results than by philosophic principles.

Success is the most certain means of winning their approval; failure, a twofold misfortune, since universal blame is added to the humiliation of defeat. M. Massy was subject to this double mishap.

There were circumstances, however, which put the zeal of the police and even the official courage of M. Jacomet to a rude test. Illustrious personages violated the enclosure.

Once they suddenly halted a stranger, of strongly marked and powerful features, who passed the stakes with the manifest intention of going to the Massabielle rocks.

"You will soon see whether I can or cannot pass," answered the stranger, without for a moment arresting his progress towards the place of the apparition.

While the process was being drawn up against the celebrated writer, a lady crossed the limits a short distance behind him, and went to kneel before the planks that shut up the grotto. Through the cracks of the palisade she watched the bubbling miraculous spring and prayed. What was she asking of God? Was her prayer directed towards the past or the future? Was it for herself or others, whose destiny had been confided to her? Did she ask the blessing of Heaven for one person or for a family? Never mind!

This lady did not escape the watchful eyes of him who represented at once the prefectoral policy, the magistracy, and the police.

"Madame," said he, "it is not permitted to pray here. You are caught in open violation of the law; you will have to answer for it before the police court. Your name?"

"Certainly," replied the lady; "I am Madame l'Amirale Bruat, governess to his highness the Prince Imperial."

The terrible Jacomet had, above all things, a respect for the social hierarchy and the powers that be. He did not pursue the procès-verbal. Such scenes were often renewed. Certain of the procès-verbaux frightened the agents, and may possibly have frightened the prefect himself.

A deplorable state of things: his orders were violated with impunity by the powerful, and cruelly maintained at the expense of the weak. He had two sets of weights and measures.

The question raised by the various supernatural occurrences, by the apparitions—true or false—of the Blessed Virgin, by the breaking out of the fountain, and by the real or imaginary cures, could not remain for ever in suspense. Such was the conviction of everybody. It was necessary that the matter should be submitted to severe and competent inquiry.

Strangers, who spent but a short season in the place, who had not witnessed from the first the miraculous events, and who could not form a conviction from personal knowledge, as could the inhabitants of the surrounding country, amid the various accounts and opinions that were to be heard from all quarters, were unanimous in their astonishment at the apparent indifference of the clergy. And, while they blamed the inopportune meddling of the civil power, they also censured the prolonged inaction of the religious authority, personified in the bishop.

The free-thinkers, interpreting the hesitation of the prelate to their own advantage, felt confident of his final verdict. The partisans of Baron Massy began to announce an entire accord between the sentiments of the bishop and those of the prefect. They cast the entire responsibility of the violent measures upon Mgr. Laurence.

"The bishop," they said, "might, by a single word, have put a stop to this superstition. It was only necessary for him to deliver his judgment on the matter. But in default of his action, the civil authority has been forced to proceed."

But in view of the evidence for the miracles, the faithful considered the final judgment as certainly favorable to their belief. Moreover, a great number of strangers who had no conviction nor party prejudices, sought to be relieved of their uncertainty by a definitive examination. "Of what use," said they, "is religious authority if not to decide such matters, and to fix the faith of those whom distance, or lack of documents, or other causes, prevent from examining and settling the question for themselves?"

Continual demands reached the ears of the bishop. The murmur of the crowd was swelled by the voice of those that are usually styled the "enlightened class," although their lesser lights sometimes cause them to lose sight of brighter ones. Everybody demanded a formal inquest.

Supernatural cures continued to manifest themselves. Hundreds of authentic affidavits of miraculous cures, signed by numerous witnesses, were daily received at the bishop's palace.[100]

On the 16th of July, the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Bernadette heard again within herself the voice which had been silent for some months, and which no longer called her to the Massabielle rocks, then fenced and guarded, but to the right bank of the Gave, to the meadow where the crowd knelt and prayed beyond reach of procès-verbaux and annoyance of the police. It was now eight o'clock in the evening.

Scarcely had the child prostrated herself and commenced to recite her beads, when the divine Mother appeared to her. The Gave, which separated her from the grotto, had no existence for her ecstatic vision. She saw only the blessed rock, quite close to her, as formerly, and the immaculate Virgin, whose sweet smile confirmed all the past and vouched for all the future. No word escaped her heavenly lips. At a certain moment she bent towards the child as if to take a long farewell. Then she re-entered paradise. This was the eighteenth apparition: it was to be the last.

In a different or opposite sense, strange facts now took place which it is necessary to notice. On three or four occasions, certain women and children had, or pretended to have, visions similar to those of Bernadette.

Were these visions real? Was diabolical mysticism endeavoring to mix with the divine in order to trouble it? Was there at the bottom of these singular phenomena a mental derangement or the ill-timed trickery of naughty children? Or was there a hostile hand secretly at work pushing forward these visionaries in order to cast discredit on the miracles at the grotto? We cannot tell.

The multitude, whose eyes were fixed on all the details, and who eagerly sought to draw conclusions from what they already knew, were less reserved in their judgment.

The supposition that the false visionaries were incited by the police immediately took possession of the public mind as being very consistent with the policy of the authorities. The children who pretended to have had visions mingled their accounts with most extravagant incoherencies. Once they scaled the barrier which enclosed the grotto, and, under pretence of offering their services to the pilgrims, of procuring the water for them, and of touching their beads on the rock, they received and appropriated money. Strange to say, Jacomet did not interfere with their proceedings, although it would have been quite easy to have arrested them. He even affected not to notice these strange scenes, ecstasies, and violations of the enclosure. From this surprising behavior of the shrewd and far-sighted chief, everybody concluded the existence of one of those secret plots of which the police, and even the administration, are sometimes thought capable.

"Baron Massy," so they said, "sees that public opinion is withdrawing from him, and, convinced that open violence is insufficient to put a stop to these events, has sought to dishonor them in principle by encouraging the false visionaries, full accounts of whom we shall soon see in the journals and the official reports. Is fecit cui prodest."

Whatever might have been the truth of these suspicions, perhaps incorrect, such scenes could not but disturb the peace of souls. The curé of Lourdes, moved by these[405] scandals, immediately expelled the pretended seers from the catechisme, and declared that, if similar occurrences took place in the future, he would not rest until he had exposed their true instigators.

The position and threats of the curé produced a sudden and radical effect. The pretended visions ceased at once, and nothing more was heard of them. They had only lasted four or five days.

M. Peyramale notified the bishop of this occurrence. M. Jacomet, on his part, addressed to the authorities an exaggerated and romantic statement, of which we will have future occasion to speak. This audacious attempt of the enemy to destroy the true nature and honor of the movement only added to the reasons which called peremptorily for action on the part of the bishop. Everything seemed to indicate that the moment for interference had come, when the religious authority should set about examining and giving sentence.

Men of distinction in the Catholic world, such as Mgr. de Salines, Archbishop of Auch; Mgr. Thibaud, Bishop of Montpellier; Mgr. de Garsignies, Bishop of Soissons; M. Louis Veuillot, chief editor of the Univers; and persons less widely celebrated, but of national reputation, such as M. de Rességuier, formerly a deputy; M. Vène, chief engineer of mines, and inspector-general of thermal waters in the Pyrenees; and a great number of eminent Catholics, were at that time in the country.

All had examined these extraordinary facts which form the subject of our history; all had interrogated Bernadette; all were either believers or strongly inclined to believe. They tell of one of the most venerated bishops, that he was unable to control the emotion awakened by the naif statement of the little seer. Gazing upon the open brow which had received the glance of the ineffable Virgin Mother of God, the prelate could not restrain the first movement of piety. The prince of the church bowed before the majesty of that humble peasant.

"Pray for me; bless me and my flock," he cried, choked with emotion, and sinking on his knees.

"Rise! rise! my lord! It is yours to bless her," said the curé of Lourdes, who was present, and instantly seized the bishop's hand.

Although the priest had sprung forward quickly, Bernadette had already advanced, and, all abashed in her humility, bowed her head for the blessing of the prelate.

VI.

The entire course of events, the testimony of such grave men, and their evident conviction after examining, were facts which made a lively impression on the clear and sagacious mind of the Bishop of Tarbes. Mgr. Laurence thought that the time had now come to speak, and he came forth from his silence. On July 28, he published the following orders, which were immediately known throughout the entire diocese, and produced intense excitement; for every one understood that the strange position which he had hitherto assumed was now about to have its solution:

His lordship had scarcely issued this order when he received a letter from M. Rouland, Minister of Public Worship, entreating him to interfere and arrest the movement.

In order to comprehend the full meaning of this letter, it will be necessary for us to turn back a short distance.

VII.

Whether the police or administration had incited the false visionaries or were the innocent victims of universal suspicion, it is impossible to[408] know with certainty; it is still more impossible to establish either opinion by authentic documents. In such cases the proof, if there be any, is always destroyed by interested hands. There are, consequently, no other means of getting at the truth, except the general appearance of things and the unanimous sentiment of the contemporary public, sometimes assuredly just, though often tinged by passion or infected with error. In view of this chaotic state of the elements, the historian can only relate facts both authentic and alleged, express his own doubts and scruples, and leave the reader to determine upon the most probable explanation.

Whatever the cause or hidden hand might have been which pushed forward two or three little ragamuffins to make seers of them, M. Jacomet, M. Massy, and his friends felt bound to magnify and spread their silly story. They endeavored to attract the attention of the people, and withdraw it from such grave events as the divine ecstasies of Bernadette, the bursting forth of the fountain, and the miraculous cures which had laid hold of popular faith. When the battle had been lost on one point, these able strategists sought to lure the enemy on to a field surrounded by ambuscades and mined in advance; in short, to make a diversion.

The sudden disappearance of the false visions and visionaries before the threatened scrutiny of M. Peyramale upset, for several days at least, the fond hopes of the free-thinking strategists. The common sense of the public remained firm on the true ground of controversy, and did not permit itself to be deceived. The enlightened intellect of Minister Rouland did not fare so well. What follows will explain how this independent spirit was overthrown.

MM. Jacomet and Massy were striving against a triumphant and irresistible force, and taxed the utmost resources of their genius to make out of these slight events a final pretext for repairing their losses and reassuming an offensive part. They sent to the Minister of Public Worship an exaggerated and fantastic account of these childish scenes.

Now, by an illusion barely conceivable in a politician acquainted with ordinary practice, M. Rouland placed blind confidence in their official reports. He was not without faith, although injudicious, one may say, in selecting the object of his trust. The philosopher Rouland had no faith in Our Lady of Lourdes asserting herself by cures and miracles, but he had perfect faith in Massy and Jacomet. These two gentlemen made him believe that, under the shadow of the Massabielle rocks, children officiated as priests, that the people, represented by creatures of dishonest life, crowned them with laurels and flowers, etc., etc.

They did not disguise the uselessness of violent measures against the general excitement of spirits. According to their account, material force was vanquished and the civil authority completely brought to naught. The religious authority alone could save the day by energetic action against the popular belief. Desperate as to their own straits, and little considering the dignity of a Christian bishop, they presumed to think that strong pressure from the upper heights of the administration could force Mgr. Laurence to condemn what had transpired and to follow their views. Accordingly they signified to the minister their judgment that the solution of all difficulties would be the direct interference of the prelate.

This was to push his excellency in the direction towards which, as is well known, he naturally inclined,[409] viz., to mix himself in religious questions, and to foster the desire of making out a programme for the bishops.

The minister, although he had once been procureur-general, did not think of asking how it was that the police had not prosecuted in the courts the profanations which they reported. The strange abstinence of the magistracy in view of the pretended disorders did not occasion him the slightest suspicion.

Accepting with more than ministerial candor the romance of the police and the prefect, and imagining that he saw the whole truth; moreover, believing himself nothing less than a theologian, and, because Minister of Public Worship, something more than an archbishop, M. Rouland settled the whole affair in his cabinet, and wrote to Mgr. Laurence a letter, in all respects a worthy mate of the one he had formerly addressed to the prefect, and which we have cited. It was strongly impregnated with the same official piety, and whilst we read it to-day by the light of true history, we cannot restrain a smile at the manner in which rulers are sometimes hoodwinked and mocked by their inferior agents. Indeed, it is not without a sad irony that one sees the following letter written by the very minister who, in a short time, was to sign the permission to build a splendid church on the Massabielle rocks in eternal memory of the apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary:

VIII.

This missive reached Mgr. Laurence just after he had issued the ordinance already known to the reader, and had appointed a commission to examine the extraordinary works wrought by the hand of God.

Although singularly astonished and indignant at the fantastic account so gravely offered by the good minister as the truth itself, nevertheless, the bishop answered his letter in measured terms. Without expressing a complete judgment, in order not to hasten a premature solution of the matter, he rehabilitated the facts which had been so shamefully misrepresented. He set forth with great frankness the line of conduct which he and his clergy had pursued, until events had got to such a pass that it was necessary to interfere and order a commission of inquiry. To the minister, who, without knowledge or examination, had said, "Condemn," he answered, "I will examine."

Such was the letter from Mgr. Laurence to M. Rouland. It was clear and decisive, and left nothing to be said by either party. The Minister of Public Worship did not reply. He re-entered his former silence. This was very wise. Perhaps, however, it would have been wiser for him never to have come out of it.

IX.

At the very moment when Mgr. Laurence, in the name of religion, ordered an inquiry into the unwonted events which the civil authority had condemned and persecuted and wished to reject à priori, without condescending even to examine; on the very same day on which the bishop's letter was mailed for the minister, M. Filhol, the illustrious professor of the faculty of Toulouse, delivered the final verdict of science on the water from the grotto of Lourdes. The conscientious and perfectly thorough labor of the great chemist reduced to nothing the official analysis of M. Latour de Trie, the expert of the prefecture, about which Baron Massy had made such a noise. M. Filhol testifies as follows:

"I, the undersigned, Professor of Chemistry to the Scientific Faculty of Toulouse, Professor of Pharmacy and Toxicology to the School of Medicine of the same city, and Knight of the Legion of Honor, certify that I have analyzed the water from a spring in the neighborhood of Lourdes. From this analysis it appears that the water of the grotto of Lourdes is of such composition that it may be considered good for drinking purposes, and of a character similar to that which is generally met with among those mountains whose soil is rich in calcareous matter.

"The extraordinary effects which are said to have been produced by the use of this water cannot, at least in the present state of science, be explained by the nature of the salts whose existence in it is detected by analysis.[102]

"This water contains no active substance capable of giving it marked therapeutic qualities. It can be drunk without inconvenience.

Thus, all the pseudo-scientific scaffolding, on which the free-thinkers and wise counsellors of the prefect had painfully built their theory of the extraordinary cures, on the examination of this celebrated chemist toppled and fell. According to true science, the water of the grotto was by no means mineral water, and had no healing property. Nevertheless, it did heal. Nothing was now left for those who had so rashly put forward imaginary explanations, but the confusion of their attempt and the impossibility of withdrawing their public acknowledgment that cures had been effected. Falsehood and error were taken in their own net.

KING CORMAC'S CHOICE.[104]

THE APOSTASY OF DR. DÖLLINGER.

The formal and public act of renunciation of the Catholic faith by Dr. Döllinger which has been looked for as a probable event for many months past, has at length been made. In itself, such an act cannot be regarded by any sound Catholic as of any moment whatever to religion or the church. It is only one suicide more, which destroys an individual, but does not hurt the stability of the church, whose life is in God, and, therefore, immortal. It may have more or less of accidental importance, however, on account of its effect upon certain persons who are weak or ill-instructed in the faith, and the use which may be made of it by the enemies of the church. We think it proper, therefore, to make some explanations concerning the past and present acts and opinions by which Dr. Döllinger has gradually but surely approached and finally reached his present position of open, declared rebellion against the infallible authority of the Catholic Church.

Dr. Döllinger has been living, until a recent period, upon the reputation which he had acquired during his earlier career as a professor and an author, supported by his high rank in the church as a mitred prelate, and in the state as a member of the Bavarian House of Peers. His great intellectual gifts and extensive learning in the department of history have never been questioned, and he was deservedly honored through a long course of years as one of the chief ornaments and ablest advocates of the Catholic religion in Germany. The relative superiority very commonly assigned to him, however, we are inclined to think, is only imaginary. Even in history he has met with some very severe defeats from antagonists more powerful than himself, and in philosophy and theology he has never shown himself to be a master. He is now an old man, seventy-three years of age, having spent above forty years of this period in his professorial chair at the University of Munich. During the earlier part of his life, as is proved by unimpeachable testimony, he was a strict Ultramontane in his theology. The gradual progress by which he went slowly down the declivity towards his present position we cannot pretend to trace accurately. It is certain, however, that no public expression of opinions having a heterodox tendency, on his part, excited any general notice before the year 1861. Even then, although the murmur of dissatisfaction which has been growing louder ever since began to be heard, and the sure Catholic instinct began to make its wounded susceptibilities known, the substantial orthodoxy and loyalty of Dr. Döllinger were not questioned or even doubted. This is proved by the language used by the editor of Der Katholik at that time, in which he says that the book which had given offence, namely, the celebrated "Church and Churches," "is imbued with the genuine color of sincere Catholic faith and immovable fidelity to the church and her supreme head."[105] From that date to the present time, [416]these first indistinct intimations of what now appears as a full-blown heresy can be seen in their successive stages of clearer manifestation in the writings and acts of Dr. Döllinger. The language used by him is ambiguous, and generally capable of being understood in a good sense, and his steps are cautious. There is nothing to compromise him seriously, before the time of the intrigues which went on under his direction for the purpose of defeating the Vatican Council. Looking back, however, upon the dark ways in which he has been walking, and the dark sayings which he has been uttering, in the light which his present open declaration of rebellion casts behind him, everything becomes clear and apparent to the day. There is a continuity and a logical sequence manifest in those ambiguous utterances, when explained in a schismatical and heretical sense, which they otherwise could not have. The acts and expressions of Dr. Döllinger's disciples in Germany, France, and England appear in their coherence and in their relation to the instruction which they received from their master. Moreover, a series of historical facts, in connection with the University of Munich and with Dr. Döllinger himself, show themselves in their proper bearing; and among other things of this kind, the secret end and object of the famous scientific congress of Munich become perfectly manifest. In a word, Dr. Döllinger has had an idea which has gradually supplanted the Catholic idea in his mind, and for the sake of which he has at last sacrificed the last lingering remnant of honor, conscience, loyalty, and divine grace in his soul, and stooped so low as to write his name at the bottom of that long and infamous list of traitors and heretics against whom none have ever pronounced sterner sentence of condemnation than himself. This great idea has been nothing less than the reunion of Christendom on a basis of compromise between the Catholic Church and the Eastern and Western sects, excluding the supremacy of the Roman Church and Pontiff. This is no new idea of Döllinger's. The only thing which was new and original in it was the particular scheme or plan of operation for carrying it into effect. Even this was not originated by Döllinger himself, but first planted in the mind of Maximilian II., King of Bavaria, during his youth, by Schelling. When this able and enterprising prince ascended the throne, he undertook the extraordinary task of effecting a universal intellectual and moral unification of Germany, of which Munich should be the radiating centre. The union of the different religious confessions formed a principal part of this plan. Moreover, Germany was to become the mighty power, after being united in herself, to bring all the rest of Christendom into unity in a perfect Christian civilization, which would then extend itself triumphantly through the rest of the world. The great lever by which this mighty work was to be accomplished was to be a society of learned men and able statesmen, directed by the sovereign authority of the king himself. The gathering point for these learned men was naturally the University of Munich, and from the chairs of this university would proceed that teaching and influence which should train up a body of disciples ready to sustain and carry out in their various professions and posts of influence the grand project conceived in the philosophic brain of Schelling and eagerly adopted by his royal pupil. As a matter of course, those professors of the university who were thoroughly loyal[417] to Rome must either submit to the royal dictation or be removed. Phillipps and several other distinguished professors sacrificed their places to their conscience. Döllinger submitted. This was the fatal rock on which he split, the one which has caused injury or total shipwreck in every age of the church to so many eminent ecclesiastics. It was necessary to choose between unconditional loyalty to the spiritual sovereignty of the Pope, or subserviency to the usurpation of the temporal prince. This was the real question from the outset, and hence Dr. Döllinger's utter abjuration of the Papal supremacy is but the last logical consequence of this weak yielding at the beginning. Bossuet yielded to Louis XIV. in a similar manner. But Bossuet was a thoroughgoing theologian, priest, and bishop. He yielded against the grain, and his heart was always Roman and on the side of the Pope. Therefore Bossuet only marred but did not destroy his character and work as a great bishop and a great writer. His Gallicanism is only a single flaw in a majestic statue. But in the case of Döllinger, the German, the ambitious scholar, the courtier has predominated over and finally cast out entirely the Catholic, the theologian, and the priest. He has not been a passive tool, but a most active and energetic master-workman in carrying out the plan of Schelling and Maximilian. Nevertheless, he has been cautious, secret, and indirect in his method of working, not attacking openly, but artfully undermining the citadel of the faith, throwing out hints and scattering seeds which he left to germinate in other minds, in his published works, and chiefly intent upon privately initiating certain chosen persons into his doctrines. In this way, a subtle and deadly poison has long been spreading its baleful influence among a certain class of intellectual Catholic young men not only in Germany, but also in France and England. Thank God! this secret poisoning by concealed heresy has been stopped. The poison is now openly exposed to view, and advertised as a pleasant refrigerant or gentle purgative medicine, but is likely to deceive no one who is in good faith, for its color, taste, and smell betray it; and whoever has made his head dizzy for awhile by hastily swallowing a few drops by mistake is likely to be trebly cautious for the future.

We have already described in general terms the Munich heresy, but we will make a more precise and analytical statement of its principal component elements. As we have already said, it proposes certain principles and methods for the reconstruction of Christendom. First, the Catholic Church must be reformed in doctrine and discipline. The Œcumenical Councils as far back as the Seventh are to be set aside. The authority of any Œcumenical Council is only final in so far as it is a witness of the traditional belief of the whole body of the faithful. The authority of the decisions of the Holy See must be set aside, and the supremacy of the Sovereign Pontiff be reduced to a mere patriarchal primacy. The state is completely supreme and independent. Sacred and secular science are exempt from all control except that of the dogmas of faith. When the Catholic Church is purified in doctrine and discipline, the other portions of Christendom are to be united with it in one grand whole, combining all that is good in each one of them, and itself more perfect than any. The supreme and ultimate judgment in regard to religious dogmas is in the universal[418] Christian sentiment or consciousness, enlightened and directed by men of science and learning.

To certain minds, there is something specious and high-sounding about this theory. It is, however, a mere Russian ice palace, which melts when the direct rays of the sun fall upon it. It is essentially no better than the doctrine of Huss and Luther. It is very nearly identical with that of Dr. Pusey. It is old Protestantism revamped, and varnished with a mixture of rationalism and orientalism. The supreme authority of the Holy See being set aside, and the decrees of general councils submitted to the judgment of the great body of the clergy and people, where is the rule of faith? Pure Protestantism gives us, in lieu of the infallible teaching authority of the living church, the Bible, interpreted by the private judgment of each individual. The Munich theory gives us the Bible and apostolic tradition, interpreted by the public judgment of the aggregate mass of the faithful. But how is the individual to determine what that judgment is? The historical and other documents by which the common and universal tradition of all ages can be ascertained are voluminous. Moreover, it is a matter of controversy how these documents are to be understood. Only the learned can fully master and understand them. The common people must, therefore, be instructed by the learned. But the learned do not agree among themselves. What, then, is left for the individual, except a choice among these learned doctors or among several schools of doctors which one he will follow? This choice must be made by his private judgment, and, if not a blind following of a leader or a party, it must be made by a careful examination of the evidences proving that this or that man, Dr. Döllinger, for example, thoroughly understands the Scripture, the Fathers, and ecclesiastical history, and truly interprets them. Is there any hope of unity by such a method? Is there any hope of any individual, even, arriving at certainty by it? It is a return at last to the old Protestant principle of private judgment, with a substitution of something far more difficult than the Bible in place of the Bible which Luther substituted for the church.

Practically it amounts to this: Dr. Döllinger is the greatest and wisest of men; he knows all things. Take his word that so much and no more is the sound orthodox doctrine handed down from the apostles and believed in all ages, and you are right. Let the Pope and the bishops and the whole world believe and obey Dr. Döllinger. It is Luther's old saying repeated by a man of less strength and audacity, but equally absurd and insupportable pride. Sic voleo, sic jubeo: stet pro ratione voluntas.[106] Pius IX. and the bishops in the Vatican Council, so far from complying with the modest desires of Dr. Döllinger, have condemned the very radical idea of his heresy, and all other heresies cognate with it, have crushed his conspiracy, and blown away into thin air the painted bubble of a reformed Catholic Church, and a reunion of Christendom on a basis of compromise. There was no alternative for Dr. Döllinger and his partisans except submission to the decrees of the council, or to the anathema by which they were fortified. Ample time for reflection and deliberation was allowed him, and now, seven months after the solemn promulgation of the decrees of the Council of the Vatican, he has deliberately and [419]coolly refused submission, thereby openly and manifestly cutting himself off from the communion of the Catholic Church. His manner of doing it is a signal illustration of the ridiculous attitude which a man of sense is often driven to assume when he has given himself up to the sway of pride. He desires the Archbishop of Munich to permit him to be heard in his own defence before a council of German bishops, or a court formed from the Cathedral Chapter. If this is to be considered as an appeal from the Council of the Vatican to another tribunal, whose decision he is willing to submit to as final, nothing can be more absurd. An appeal from the supreme tribunal to an inferior court is certainly something unheard of either in civil or canon law. The dogmas denied and rejected by Dr. Döllinger have been thoroughly examined and discussed in a general council. Judgment has been pronounced, and the case is closed for ever. The Archbishop of Munich and the German prelates are bound by this judgment, have assented to it, and have proclaimed it to their subjects. They have no authority to bring it under a new examination, or reverse it, in a judicial capacity. If they sit in judgment on Dr. Döllinger, or any other individual impeached of heresy, that judgment is their paramount law, according to which they must decide. The only questions which can come before them in such a case are, whether the person who is a defendant before their court has contravened the decisions of the Vatican Council by word or writing, and whether he is contumacious in his error. It can scarcely be supposed that a man who refuses submission to a general council and the Holy See could have any intention or disposition to submit to a national council or an episcopal court. The only alternative supposition is that he desired to prolong the controversy, to gain time, to inflame the minds of men, to create a party and inaugurate a schism. Really and truly, his demand amounts to this: "The majority of the bishops of the Catholic Church, having been misled by their theological instruction, have made an erroneous decision in a matter of dogma. I therefore request the bishops of Germany to permit me to give them better instruction, and persuade them to recall their adhesion to that decision. If that cannot be done, I request the Archbishop of Munich to do me that favor." The silliness of such a demand is only equalled by its effrontery. Dr. Döllinger must be very far gone indeed in pride to fancy that the Archbishop of Munich or the German prelates could think for an instant of making themselves his docile disciples, or entertain the thought of following him into schism and heresy. It is an act of parting defiance, the impotent gesture of a desperate man, whose last stronghold is crumbling under his feet, but who prefers to be buried under its ruins rather than to repent and return to his allegiance.

The appeal to German national sympathy and prejudice is worthy of a man whose worldly and selfish ambition has extinguished the last spark of genuine Catholic feeling in his bosom. It is a cry for sympathy to the bad Catholics, the Protestants, and the infidels of Germany. It is a repetition of that old saying of Caiphas against Jesus Christ, "The Romans will come and take away our place and nation." Nothing can be more unhistorical than the assertion that Papal supremacy wrought division in the past German Empire, or more contrary to sound political wisdom than the assertion that the same threatens division in the German[420] Empire of the present. Martin Luther sowed the dragon's teeth from which sprang civil war, disastrous foreign war, internal dissension, and all the direful miseries which have come upon Germany since his inauspicious rebellion against the Holy See. The so-called Reformation turned the Protestant princes against the Emperor, stirred up the revolt of the peasants, inspired the treachery which opened the gates to Gustavus Vasa, and instigated that alliance with Louis XIV. which lost Lorraine and Alsace to Germany. That infidel liberalism which is the legitimate offspring of the revolt against Rome is the most dangerous internal enemy which the present empire has to fear. It is summed up in the list of errors condemned by Pius IX. in his Encyclical and Syllabus. On the contrary, the complete restoration of Catholic unity and Papal supremacy in Germany would bring back more than the glories of the former empire, and renew the epoch of Charlemagne.

As for the vain and feeble effort of two or three cabinets to prohibit the promulgation of the decrees of the Vatican Council, it is too absurd to argue about, and too harmless to excite any alarm or indignation. Neither is there any danger that Dr. Döllinger's apostasy will cause any serious defection among the Catholic people of Germany. The professors of the University of Munich have been appointed by the king. Some are Protestants, others are infidels, and others have been hitherto Catholics in profession, but followers of the heresy of Janus in their heart. There are many laymen and some clergymen of the same sort among the professors of Germany, and a certain number of persons in other walks of life, whose faith has been undermined and corrupted. We have always expected that the Council of the Vatican would cause a considerable number of defections from the communion of the church. But we have no expectation that this defection of individuals will consolidate into a new concrete heresy. John Huss and Martin Luther have exhausted the probabilities of pseudo-orthodox reformation. Its race is run. The time for heresy is past. Organized opposition to the Catholic Church in these days must take a more consistently anti-Christian form. Pius IX. and Garibaldi represent the only two real parties. Döllinger is nobody, and has no place. That a great many baptized Catholics have totally renounced the faith is undoubtedly true. But the Catholic people who still retain the principles and the spirit of their traditional faith are with Pius IX. This is true of the Bavarian and other German popular masses, as well as of the people of other nations. The German prelates, the clergy, the nobility, are strong and enthusiastic in their allegiance to the Holy See. The orthodox theologians and savants can wield the ponderous hammer of science with as much strength of aim as any of the scholars who have been fostered in the sunshine of royal favor. The boast made by Dr. Döllinger at the Congress of Munich of the pre-eminence which Germany will gain in Catholic theology and sacred science will probably be in part fulfilled, though not in the sense which he had in his mind. It will be fulfilled, not by men who bid a haughty defiance to the saints and doctors of the church, who utter scornful words against the scholars of other nations, who are governed by narrow-minded national prejudice and unreasoning obstinacy, and who are faithless in their allegiance to their spiritual sovereign, while they[421] are servilely obsequious to a temporal monarch. It will be done by true, genuine Catholics, the legitimate offspring of the great men who founded, governed, taught, and made illustrious the old church and empire of Germany in past ages.

The gist of the entire quarrel of Dr. Döllinger with the Archbishop of Munich consists in an appeal from the supreme authority in the church to the principle of private judgment. In form, it is an appeal to the Holy Scriptures and the Fathers, but this is only an appeal to Dr. Döllinger's own private interpretation of the true sense of Scripture and the Fathers. It is the same appeal which heretics and schismatics have made in all ages: Arius, Nestorius, Pelagius, Huss, Luther, Cranmer, Photius, Mark of Ephesus, the Armenian schismatics of Constantinople, and all others who have rebelled against the Holy See. It is the essence of Protestantism, and in the end transforms itself into rationalism and infidelity. The ancient heretics, the Oriental schismatics, Anglicans, Lutherans, Calvinists, Unitarians, all have a common principle, all are Protestants. That principle is the right of private judgment to resist the supreme authority of the Catholic Church. So long as private judgment is supposed to be directed by a supernatural light of the Holy Spirit, and to possess in Scripture and tradition, or in Scripture alone, a positive revelation, Protestantism is a kind of Christianity. When the natural reason is made the arbiter, and the absolute authority of the doctrine of Jesus Christ as taught by the apostles is denied, it is a rationalistic philosophy, which remains Christian in a modified and general sense until it descends so low as to become simply unchristian and infidel. The Catholic principle which is constitutive of the Catholic Church as a body, and of each individual Catholic as a member of it, is the principle of authority. There is no logical alternative between the two. One or the other must be final and supreme, the authority of the church or the authority of the individual judgment. If the authority of the church is supreme, no individual or aggregate of individuals can reject or even question its decisions. It is the Catholic doctrine that authority is supreme. The church is constituted by the organic unity of bishops, clergy, and people, with their Head, the Bishop of Rome, the successor of St. Peter. He is the Vicar of Christ, and possesses the plenitude of apostolic and episcopal authority. His judgment is final and supreme, whether he pronounces it with or without the judicial concurrence of an œcumenical council. This has always been the recognized doctrine and practice of the church. It is nothing more or less than Papal supremacy as existing and everywhere believed, as much before as after the Council of the Vatican. The word "infallibility," like the words "consubstantial" and "transubstantiation," is only the precise and definite expression of that which has long been a dogma defined under other terms, and always been contained in the universal faith of the church based on Scripture and apostolic tradition. The first Christians were taught to obey implicitly the teachings of St. Peter and the apostles, because they had received authority from Jesus Christ. There was nothing said about infallibility, because the idea was sufficiently impressed upon their minds in a more simple and concrete form. Their descendants, in like manner, believed in the teaching of the successors of the apostles because they had inherited their divine authority.[422] Whoever separated from the Roman Church and was condemned by the Roman Pontiff was at once known to have lost all authority to teach. The teaching of the bishops in communion with the Roman Church, and approved by the Roman Pontiff, was always known to be the immediate and practical rule of faith. Whoever taught anything contrary to that was manifestly in error, and, if contumacious, a heretic, who must be cast out of the church, however high his rank might be. Moreover, the Roman Pontiff decided all controversies, and issued his dogmatic decrees to all bishops, who were required to receive and promulgate them under pain of excommunication. This unconditional obedience to an external authority evidently presupposes that the authority obeyed is rendered infallible by the supernatural assistance of the Holy Ghost. Hence, the express and explicit profession of the infallibility of the church as a dogma of faith has been universal ever since it has been made a distinct object of thought and exposition. It is nothing more than a distinct expression of one part of the idea that the church has divine and supreme authority to teach, with a corresponding obligation on the faithful to believe her teaching. In like manner, the divine and supreme authority of the Pope to teach includes and implies infallibility, as the vast majority of bishops and theologians have always held and taught. The erroneous opinion that the express or tacit acquiescence of the bishops is necessary to the finality of pontifical decrees in matters pertaining to faith and doctrine, was tolerated by the Holy See until the definitions of the Council of the Vatican were promulgated. The infallibility of the church itself produces this agreement of the episcopate with its head. In fact, therefore, and practically, the pontifical decrees were always submitted to by good Catholics, and the Holy See did not formally and expressly exact any more than this as a term of Catholic communion. Dr. Döllinger and others of the same stamp took advantage of this toleration of an illogical and erroneous opinion to undermine the doctrine of Papal supremacy and the authority of œcumenical councils. The Pope cannot possess the supreme power of teaching and judging, they argued, without infallibility. He is not infallible, therefore, he is not supreme. Moreover, the only certain criterion by which we know that a council is œcumenical is the sanction of the Pope. If he is not infallible, he may err in giving this sanction. Thus, the way was opened to dispute the authority of the Councils of Trent, Lateran, Florence, etc., and to rip up the whole texture of Catholic doctrine, just so far as suited the notions of these audacious innovators. The event has proved how opportune and necessary was that distinct and precise definition of the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff which has for ever shut out the possibility of sheltering a fundamental heresy like that of Döllinger behind an ambiguous expression. There is now no more chance for evading the law and remaining ostensibly a Catholic. The law is clear and plain. All dogmatic decrees of the Pope, made with or without his general council, are infallible and irreformable. Once made, no pope or council can reverse them. There is no choice left to the prelates about enforcing them on their clergy and people. No clergyman holds his position, and no one of the faithful is entitled to the sacraments, on any other terms than entire submission and obedience. This is the Catholic[423] principle, that the church cannot err in faith. She has declared it to be an article of faith that the Roman Pontiff, speaking ex cathedrâ as the supreme doctor of the church, is infallible. It is therefore a contradiction in terms for a person who denies or doubts this doctrine to call himself a Catholic. We cannot too constantly or earnestly impress this truth on the minds of the Catholic people, that the rule of faith is the present, concrete, living, and perpetual teaching of that supreme authority which Christ has established in the church. We believe, on the veracity of God, by a supernatural faith which is given by the Holy Ghost in baptism, those truths which the holy church proposes to our belief. The church can never change, never reform her faith, never retract her decisions, never dispense her children from an obligation she has once imposed on them of receiving a definition as the true expression of a dogma contained in the divine revelation. To do so, would be to destroy herself, and fall down to the level of the sects. The idle talk of writers for the secular press, whether they pretend to call themselves Catholics or not, about the church conforming herself to liberal principles and the spirit of the age is simply worthy of laughter and derision. No Catholic who has a grain of sense will pay any heed to opinions or monitions coming from such an incompetent source. The church is the only judge of the nature and extent of her own powers, and of the proper mode of exercising them. The pontiffs, prelates, pastors, priests, and theologians of the church, are her authorized expositors and interpreters, her advocates and defenders. Those who desire to be her worthy members, and those who wish to learn what she really is, will seek from them, and from them only, or from authors and writings which they have sanctioned, instruction in the true Catholic doctrine. The unhappy man whose defection has called forth these remarks has lost his place in the Catholic hierarchy, and henceforth he is of no more account than any other sectarian of past times or of the present. The ecclesiastical historian will record his name in the list of the heretics of the nineteenth century, and his peculiar ideas will pass into oblivion, except as a matter of curious research to the scholar.

FALSE VIEWS OF SAINTSHIP.

We often hear the saints spoken of as men of another race and stature than ourselves, splendid masterpieces of perfection meant to be admired from a distance, but certainly not to be copied with loving and minute care.

Now, this is a mistake—the most fatal mistake for ourselves; for we thus tie down our faculties to commonplace life, and refuse to give them the wider scope that nature herself meant for their exercise; the most unfortunate mistake for religion, because in making her heroes inaccessible and almost unnatural, we deter others from laudable efforts, and attach to our faith the stigma of present sterility.

Not only can each one of us become a saint, and that by a simple and ordinary course of life, but the canonized saints themselves bear witness that they reached heaven in no other way, and attained their crowns by no other means. The saint, be assured of it, is the truest gentleman, the pleasantest companion, and most faithful friend.

He is no morose misanthrope, no disenchanted cynic; he is a man with all the natural feelings of humanity, all the amiable traits of good-fellowship, all the nameless graces of good society. There is no pleasing, amenity of human intercourse, no rational exchange of human sentiments, no harmless relaxation of a refined mind, that need be foreign to his nature, and a stranger to his heart.

All men prize honor and straight-forwardness; they welcome cheerfulness and vivacity; they admire a strong will; love of nature and art, sympathy with suffering and with poverty, zealousness in the cause of learning, are all passports to their favor, and incline them to seek the friendship and trust the advice of those in whom these qualities shine.

Now, if we show them that canonized saints and great men well known in the annals of the church have always been distinguished by these traits, will they refuse to admit that the more a man loves his God, the fitter he is to win human sympathy and command human imitation?

The saints have not seldom been unfairly treated, and chiefly by their overzealous biographers; for their holiness has been distilled into such ethereal and miraculous abstractions that we no more dream of grasping it as a means of encouragement than we do of seizing for nourishment upon the summer clouds whose lovely shapes entrance our eyes in the western heavens.

Every one of the saints had an individual character, touching weaknesses of disposition and innocent partialities of nature. Every one of them went to heaven by a separate road, and his specialty of human and natural character alone determined that road. Some were kings and emperors, princes and popes, and great men of the earth; they had to wear soft garments and ermine robes, and spend much time in the display their state required. Now, many sanctimonious persons would have us believe that such display is absolutely and in itself wrong, and[425] can under no circumstances be allowable. The church thinks otherwise, and more generously, and has canonized these men.

Some were beggars or servants, mechanics or husbandmen; passed their days in menial pursuits, and apparently had their minds occupied only by the sordid necessities of their humble degree. Many presumptuous people like to tell us that servile work deteriorates the mind, that beggary is invariably a criminal state, that poverty dwarfs the understanding and hardens the heart. The church thinks otherwise, and more charitably, and these too she has canonized.

Again, some were statesmen and scholars, and the wranglings of courts, the tumult of embassies, the disputes of universities, were the daily atmosphere they breathed. Some officious persons tell us plainly that solitude is the only nurse of holiness, and that, with these surroundings, it is impossible to live unbewildered by the world's noise and untainted by the world's corruption. The church thinks otherwise, and more liberally, and has canonized these men also.

No station in life is too low or too high for God to look upon, and therefore not too low nor too high for God's saints to thrive in.

The secret of saintship lies in the power of a man to fashion his surroundings, and mould the circumstances attendant on his lot in life, till he makes them into a ladder wherewith to climb to heaven.

Suppose a man is born to high destinies, and a great fortune: they are ready-made instruments in his hand for the glory of God and the good of his neighbor. Let him recollect that Jesus was of a royal race, and was visited by Eastern kings.

Suppose, on the contrary, he is born poor, and sees no means of future advancement all his life: there again are his weapons chosen for him to fight the good fight. Let him remember that Jesus was born in a stable, and lived in a carpenter's shop.

If a man is clever, intellectual, talented, his road to heaven lies in the good use he makes of these gifts of mind; if he is cheerful, good-humored, well-bred, his road to heaven lies in the charitable use he makes of his natural attractiveness; if he is placed in circumstances that grievously try his temper and his patience, long-suffering, resignation, and gentleness will be the evident path for him; if surrounded by difficulties and occupying a responsible position, discretion and delicacy will be his appointed road.

There is no forcing the spiritual life; it grows out of the natural life, and is only the natural life, shorn of self and self-love, supernaturalized.

Life is a battle; we all have to fight it, but even in a material combat, what general would arm all his soldiers alike? Are there not cavalry and infantry, lancers and riflemen? Do not some wield the sword, others man the guns? So in the combat whose promised land is paradise; we fight each with diverse weapons, and our one thought should be, not to envy others their arms, but do effectual service with our own. Men fight one way, women another. Both can fight as well; but only by using their own weapons.

There is an old French fable that speaks of the frog who sought to swell himself to the size of the ox, forgetting that he could be as happy and as useful in his small fish-pond as the larger animal in his spacious meadow. He would not be a frog, but of course he could not become an ox, so he died of his effort, and the world counted one worker less. Just so do[426] some of us act when we sigh over the life of some great saint of old, and, putting down the book in sentimental admiration as barren as it is useless, cry out, "If only I could be an Augustine, a Theresa, a Thomas Aquinas!" To such might we answer: "Do you know why they were saints? Because they acted up to the lights they had. If you act up to your inferior but no less true lights, you too will be a saint." If Augustine, and Theresa, and Thomas Aquinas had spent their lives in sterile sentimentality, calling upon the dead saints before them, where would they have been, and who would have heard of their names? At that rate, there would have been no saints at all after the twelve apostles, and even they would have sat down in profitless discouragement because their holiness could not equal that of the Son of God!

Did not the Creator say to all things living, vegetable or animal, "Increase and multiply," and "Let the earth bring forth the green herb, and such as may seed, and the fruit-tree bearing fruit after its kind"? In that one commandment lies the secret spring of the energy and fruitfulness of every created thing, spiritual no less than temporal. Let each one of us bear fruit according to his kind, and God will be satisfied. Augustine and Gregory, Thomas and Bonaventure, Francis of Assisium and Francis of Sales, Charles Borromeo and Vincent of Paul, Philip Neri and Ignatius Loyola, were men, very men, and, had they not been men, they could not have been saints. We mean, their sanctity would have been other than it actually was; it would have been even as the holiness of the angels, the untempted steadfastness of pure spirits. Had they been born as the Blessed Virgin, immaculate in the very initial moment of existence, they would not have been the saints they are, the imitable, human, weakling beings we yearn over and love with a natural and sympathetic love.

Nature, whatever people may say of her, is not contrary to grace: not in this sense at least, that she is the field, and grace the plough. The plough does not alter the earth it furrows; it only prepares it, stirs it, turns its better surface uppermost, and displays its richest loam to receive the grain. As neither rain, nor dew, nor manure can turn one soil into another, so can no efforts of overstrained piety, no devices of ambitious perseverance, re-create the soul and portion it anew. As God made us, so we stand: by taking thought, we cannot add to our stature one cubit, neither can we force a foreign growth to bloom on the low-lying lands of our soul. One sort of grain grows best in one sort of earth. Would any husbandman dream of planting the wrong grain in it? God is a husbandman, and shall he do less well than mortal man, and shall he endeavor to force one soil to bear the crop it cannot nourish? No, no! God gave us one nature as well as the graces he plants therein, and we may trust to him to see the harvest reaped. It is men, it is ourselves, who interfere with our sowing and reaping time; it is ourselves, who ambitiously seek to grow grain we can never rear, or it is others who maliciously sow tares in a soil they too quickly overrun. Then the world will see in us her saints, men going simply through the round of their daily duties, very unostentatiously, very quietly, never boasting, because to have time to boast they must needs leave off their work; never lamenting, because to lament they would have to leave off their prayer; but letting their nature fill itself to[427] the brim with God, and, when it is full, letting it quietly overflow to their neighbor.

That sounds very simple, does it not? Yes, because everything that belongs to God is simplicity itself, and the more simple a man is, the nearer God he is.

All the great men and women whose names stud the calendar of the church owed their greatness to their simplicity, and the words of the greatest saint that ever lived, the words of her, were they not the simplest ever found on record: "Be it done unto me according to thy word"?

Saints of our timid generation, saints of our half-hearted century, saints of our hitherto barren civilization, start up, and fill the plains and the valleys of all lands, fill the offices of the city and the homes of the citizens, fill the church, the courts, the universities, fill the lowly serried ranks of the poor, fill the more burdened and more responsible phalanx of the noble and the rich!

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

This is a good stout volume, like St. Thomas himself. It is a book for its outward appearance such as we seldom see. We have many well-printed books, but this one is remarkable for its large, clear type, which makes it pleasant and easy to read. The subject is one of the greatest interest and importance. The life and times of St. Thomas have a peculiar charm about them, aside from the history of his genius, and of his philosophical and theological system. The two together make a theme which far surpasses in grandeur and attractiveness even the history of the majority of great saints. St. Thomas is the great doctor of the church. His intellectual sway is something without a parallel. The study of his works is on the increase, and he is likely to acquire even a greater and more universal sway than he enjoyed before the Reformation. We have never before had a really good biography of St. Thomas in English. Father Vaughan has taken hold of the work with zeal and ability. It is only half published as yet, but the first volume presents so large a portion of the angelic doctor's life before us that we can estimate its value as well as if we had the whole. An analysis of some of the principal works of St. Thomas is given by F. Vaughan, and he endeavors to present to the reader a picture of the times when he lived, as well as to describe the events of his personal history. Every student should have this book. It is indeed a wonderful thing to see such a specimen of genuine old monastic literature issuing from the English press. It makes us hope that England may yet become once more the merrie Catholic England of the olden time.

Met with in the pages of a review or magazine, Mr. Lowell's prose is[428] always sure to be more or less pleasant reading. His wit, his refinement, and a certain something which we are only unwilling to call his delicacy of appreciation, because, in spite of his generally acknowledged merits as a critic, he seems to us not always perfectly reliable in that capacity, always find him willing and amused readers. But when he shuts up too much of his work at once between a pair of covers, and gives whoever will a too easy opportunity of comparing him with himself, we doubt whether even his admirers—a class in which we are not unwilling to include ourselves—do not find him a little wearisome, and discover in him a poverty of suggestion and a timidity of thought which gibbet him as a book-maker, although, being in a measure counterbalanced by an abundance of lighter merits, they would have left him an easy pre-eminence over most of his contemporaries as a magazinist. Nor, if we may for once adopt a method of criticism from which our author himself is not averse, and trust our instinct to read between the lines, is Mr. Lowell altogether free from a suspicion that such may possibly be the case—and that, as affecting his own culture and habit of mind also, it was a far-reaching mistake in our Puritan ancestors to cut themselves quite asunder from the traditions of the past before they came here to establish free thinking and free religion along with a free government. However it may be with government, neither thought nor faith seems to flourish well without having its roots in the past. Like their transcendentalist sons, our New England progenitors were themselves "Apostles of the Newness," and simply antedated them by a few generations in the experiment of throwing overboard a great deal of valuable freight, and trying to right themselves by laying in a supply of useless ballast. The sentiment which they dignified by the name of trust in Providence appears nowadays under a less equivocal disguise as self-reliance; and while it produces certain easily appreciable results both in society and literature, it makes instability, a want of solidity, and an absence of germinative force permanent characteristics of both of them. Not, however, to make an essay on a sufficiently suggestive topic, but to confine ourselves to the particular matter in hand, it is perhaps Mr. Lowell's thin-skinnedness as an author, and a characteristic modesty as to the value of his utterances, none the less apparent for being put carefully out of sight, which give him, to our thinking, his best claim to the liking of his readers—while at the same time it is a modesty so well justified by the actual state of the case as to explain why it is that one is always more ready to accept with satisfaction what he has to say about an author whose claims have been tested by more than one generation of critics, than to trust him for a thoroughly reliable estimate of a literary workman of to-day. Even in the former case one inclines to believe that he may sometimes feel a just preference for his own opinions in contradistinction to those of Mr. Lowell—who is not, for instance, likely to elicit much intelligent sympathy with his verdict on the poetical merits of the "Rape of the Lock." By far the pleasantest portions of the present volume are the three opening essays, in which Mr. Lowell quite forgets that he is a critic, or, at least, that he is a critic of books. The essays on Carlyle and Thoreau contain also a good deal of sound, if not particularly subtle, criticism; and in general, although the book does not show Mr. Lowell in his most characteristic vein, it pleases us all the better on that account, as giving us what substance there is in his thought, with much less than ordinary of the technical brilliancy which wearies quite as often as it entertains.

Dion and the Sibyls is a work of uncommon merit, and may be classed, in our opinion, with Fabiola and Callista, which is the highest compliment we could possibly pay to a romance of the early period of Christian history. The Dion of the story is Dionysius the Areopagite in his youth, and before his conversion. The Sibyls are introduced in reference to their predictions of a coming Saviour of mankind. The object of the author is to exhibit the fearful need which existed in heathen society for a divine intervention, and the general, widespread desire and expectation of such an event at the time when our Lord actually appeared on the earth. This is done by means of a plot which is woven from the personal history of a nephew of Lepidus the Triumvir, a young Roman noble of Greek education, and an intimate friend of Dionysius, who came to Rome with his mother and sister at the close of the reign of Augustus, to claim the sequestrated estate of his father, one of the generals who helped to win the battle of Philippi. The appeal of the young Paulus Æmilius Lepidus to Augustus at a time when the latter was visiting the wealthy Knight Mamurra at his superb villa at Formiæ, and a plot of Tiberius Cæsar to carry off Agatha, the young man's sister, afford an occasion of describing the principal persons of the Roman court. This is done in a graphic and masterly manner. The representation of the aged Augustus is something perfect in its kind. The portraits of Tiberius, Germanicus, Caligula, then a child, the royal ladies, Sejanus the Prætorian prefect, Velleius Paterculus, Thellus the chief of the gladiators, and a number of other persons representing various classes of Romans, are admirably and vividly drawn. The breaking of the ferocious Sejan horse by the young Æmilius at the public games of Formiæ is a scene of striking originality and power. The campaign of Germanicus against the Germans is also well described. In fact, Mr. Keon makes the old Roman world reappear before us like a panorama. He shows himself to be a thorough and minute classical scholar and historian on every page and in every line. But beyond and above all this, he exhibits a power of philosophical reasoning, and an insight into the deepest significance of Christianity, which elevate his thrilling romance to the rank of a work of the highest moral and religious scope. The description of the demons by the Lady Plancina is an original and awfully sublime conception surpassing anything in the Mystique Diabolique of Görres. The author's great masterpiece, however, is the argument of Dionysius on the being of One God before the court of Augustus, a piece of writing of which any professed philosopher might be proud.

The history of Paulus Æmilius, who is really the hero of the work, brings him at last to Judæa at the time of the murder of St. John the Baptist, and the closing scenes of the life of our Lord. This gives the author the opportunity of describing a momentary glimpse which the brave and virtuous Roman was favored with of the form and countenance of the Divine Redeemer, as he was passing down the Mount of Olives. Mr. Keon undertook a difficult task, one in which many have failed, when he ventured on introducing the august figure of our Lord into his picture. We are fastidious in matters of this kind, and not easily satisfied by any attempt at giving in language what sculptors and painters usually fall short of expressing in marble and on canvas. Mr. Keon's bold effort pleases us so much that we cannot help wishing he would try his hand at some more[430] sketches of the same kind. We should like to see some scenes from the evangelical history and the Acts of the Apostles produced under an ideal and imaginative form with an ability equal to that which our author has displayed in his pictures of the Augustan age. The success of Renan's Life of Jesus is due not so much to the popularity of his detestable and absurd theories, as to the attraction of his theme and the charm of a vivid, lifelike representation of the scenes, manners, and events of the period when our Lord lived and taught in Judæa. A similar work, produced in accordance with the true Catholic idea of the august, divine person of the Son of God made man, would do more to counteract the poison of the infamous infidel literature of the day in the popular mind than any grave argumentative treatise. We pronounce Mr. Keon's Dion and the Sibyls without hesitation to be a dramatic and philosophical masterpiece, and we trust that he will not allow his genius to lie idle, but will give us more works of the same sort. Whether the vitiated taste of the novel-reading world will appreciate works of so classical a stamp, we are unable to say. But all those who relish truth conveyed through the forms of the purest art will thank Mr. Keon for the pleasure he has given them, if they shall, as we did, by chance take up his book and peruse it attentively, and will concur with us in wishing that a work of so much merit and value might be better known and more widely circulated.

The essays contained in this volume are ten in number: Authors in their Relations to Life; Novels and Novelists; Wit and Humor; The Ludicrous Side of Life; Genius; Intellectual Health and Disease; Use and Misuse of Words; Wordsworth; Bryant; Stupid Conservatism and Malignant Reform.

Of these the first six were originally delivered by Mr. Whipple as popular lectures many years ago, and were collected and published in 1849.

The last four articles are later productions of the author, and are first published together in this enlarged edition of his early work.

In a somewhat extended notice of Mr. Whipple's essays on the "Literature of the Age of Elizabeth" more than a year ago, we pointed out some of his excellences and defects as they appeared to us. Both are perhaps even more apparent in this book.

Its style is marked by that command of expression for which the author is always so remarkable, and is at the same time clear, pointed, and unaffected.

Yet the essays sometimes bear marks of the object for which they were written, and one cannot help wishing that the author had not been so evidently restricted in the materials he used and in the characteristics of his style by the necessity of their adaptation to the audience of lecture-goers to which they were addressed.

The distinctively critical essays are the best, and it is in literary criticism that Mr. Whipple is always most at home.

His appreciative estimates of the genius of Dickens and of Wordsworth have, we think, been very seldom equalled in force and justice by any of the numerous criticisms of those authors which have been published.

Those who are familiar with Mr. Whipple's essays will be glad to see them republished in so elegant and convenient a form, and those who are not cannot now do better than to make their acquaintance.

The wish so often expressed of seeing "The Catholic Tracts" in a book form has been met by this volume. The variety of its contents makes it a book for circulation among all classes of society. Short, popular, and conclusive answers are given on questions of the day, making it of great value as a work of actual controversy, while not a few of the tracts are instructive and devotional, rendering it equally important to Catholics.

The volume is printed on good paper, and its price brings it within the reach of every one. We recommend it to the attention of clergymen, and the confraternities, sodalities, and Rosary societies, as a book for distribution among a reading and thinking people seeking after religious truth. We give the preface entire:

This handsome work supplies a want long felt. It contains meditations on each phrase of the Litany from the Kyrie eleison to the Agnus Dei. These meditations are of suitable length for May devotions, and are admirable for their solidity no less than for their piety. The Abbé Barthe is an honorable Canon of Rodey (France); and we cannot do better than quote the letter of his bishop. He says: "I rejoice that a priest of my diocese ... has given to learned and Christian France a work which will be widely diffused, and which will make the august Mary loved, admired, and venerated in these lines, when, more than ever, we need to place ourselves under her glorious protection."

There are also letters of commendation from Cardinal Giraud, Archbishop of Cambria, and his grace the Archbishop of Paris, to which is added the approbation of the Bishop of Philadelphia.

May this "Monument to the Glory of Mary" (as it is called) meet in this country with the circulation it deserves, and be the means of spreading wide and deep the love and worship of her whose Immaculate Conception is our patronal feast.

To those who take a delight in reading about the planets and stars, this work will prove both instructive and interesting. The illustrations are very fine, and the work is got up in uniform style with the other volume of "The Library of Wonders," noticed in these pages before, of which it is one of the series.

This is an interesting story descriptive of a family living in the Roman province of Cappadocia in the fifth century, giving quaint pictures of life in those early days, and lovely glimpses of the natural beauties of the country. The object of the tale is to illustrate the special judgments of Almighty God on disobedient children and an overindulgent parent, who out of a weak fondness put no restraints upon her children in their youth. The terrible retribution that follows a parent's curse, and the remorse and bitterness of heart that must be the portion of neglectful parents, are well portrayed by Madame De La Grange. The volume will be an excellent addition to our Sunday-school libraries.

We would suggest to the publisher the propriety of a thinner and better paper. It does not look seemly to print books on common paste-board.

This is a paper of no great length, but of great service to the cause of faith. It is in every respect worthy of the pen of Father Coleridge. He sets before us the parables in quite a new light, as meant to teach us the ways of God to men. Why our Lord chose the parabolic form of teaching and why he said so much about his Father are shown with great force and clearness.

This is a continuation of Professor Hall's able researches on the fossils of this state. It contains descriptions and figures of the Brachiopoda of the Helderberg, Hamilton, Portage, and Chemung groups. The plates are admirably executed, like those in the previous volumes, and the name of the author is a sufficient proof of the accuracy and value of the descriptions which they illustrate. The work is a solid and valuable contribution to science.

AN IRISH MARTYR.

Towards the close of the year 1645, the venerable oratorian, Father Peter Francis Scarampo, who had spent two years in Ireland on a special mission from the Holy See, was permitted to resign his position and return to Rome. He was accompanied thither by five young students whose relatives desired that they should complete their theological studies in the colleges of the Eternal City. Of these, the most distinguished for early proficiency and gentleness of disposition was a youth named Oliver Plunket, then in his sixteenth year, having been born at Loughcrew, county of Meath, in 1629, a near relative and protégé of the Bishop of Ardagh, Doctor Patrick Plunket, and closely connected by ties of kindred with some of the noblest families of Ireland, and with many distinguished ecclesiastics at home and on the Continent. Father Scarampo had borne himself so wisely and with so much charity and discretion while in Ireland, that his departure was regarded as a public misfortune, and his retiring footsteps were followed to the sea-coast by thousands of pious and grateful people; and, though his humble spirit would not allow him to accept the distinguished post of Papal Nuncio, and so remain among them, he never ceased to remember their hospitality and long-suffering and to befriend their cause at Rome upon all occasions. On the young men entrusted to his care he bestowed every possible favor, and especially on young Plunket, in whom he took a fatherly interest up to the day of his untimely death on the plague-stricken Island of St. Bartholomew, even to the extent of defraying that student's expenses for the first three years of his novitiate.

Soon after his arrival in Rome, Oliver Plunket entered the Irish College of that city, then under the charge of the Jesuit Fathers, and for eight years devoted himself with great industry and success to the study of philosophy, mathematics, and theology, subsequently attending

the usual course of lectures on canon and civil law in the Roman University. Previous to his appointment to the See of Armagh, the Rector of the Irish College, in response to an enquiry of the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda, presented the following honorable testimony of the character and abilities of the future Primate:

Having at length received his ordination in 1654, Dr. Plunket was obliged by the rules of the college either to proceed forthwith on the Irish mission or to obtain leave from his superiors to remain to further perfect his studies. He chose the latter course, and at his own request the General of the Society of Jesus, to whom he applied, permitted him to enter San Girolamo della Charità, where for three years he quietly devoted himself to the accumulation of knowledge and the duties of his sacred calling. Marangoni, in his life of Father Cacciaguerra, speaks of Doctor Plunket's conduct while in that secluded retreat in the following eulogistic terms:

The disturbed condition of his native country has been alleged as the cause of Dr. Plunket's delay in Rome, and this in itself would be sufficient reason, if we reflect that at that time the soldiers of Cromwell were in full possession of every nook and corner of it, and that hundreds of priests, left without congregations, were obliged to fly for their lives to the Continent, or to seek refuge in mountains and morasses; but it is more than probable that the young ecclesiastic had an additional motive for remaining longer in the Holy City, and, having a forecast of his future eminence in the church, and of the vast benefits he was capable of rendering to the cause of religion and his country, desired, as far as possible, to qualify himself for the glorious task to which he was afterwards assigned at the fountain-head of Catholicity, before undertaking a labor which he must have known would be accompanied by many trials and dangers.

But even from the seclusion of San Girolamo his fame as an accomplished and profound scholar soon spread to the outer world, and in 1657 Dr. Plunket was appointed professor of theology and controversy in the College of the Propaganda, a position[435] which he held with great credit for twelve years, until his departure from Rome. Though thus occupied in the responsible and laborious duties of his professorship, he was also consultor of the Sacred Congregation of the Index and of other congregations. In the performance of the high trusts thus imposed upon him, the young professor was frequently brought in contact with many of the most exalted personages of the Roman Court, some of whom subsequently filled the chair of St. Peter, from all of whom he experienced the greatest kindness and repeated proofs of affection, as he frequently mentions with gratitude in his correspondence. Still the confidence reposed in him and the companionship of so many holy and erudite men failed to satisfy the cravings of his soul or reconcile him to his enforced exile. Of a highly sensitive and even poetic nature, his patriotism and attachment to his family were second only to his love for learning and religion, and his mind was constantly tormented by the accounts daily received in Rome of the barbarities practised on his compatriots and co-religionists by the licentious soldiery of the English Commonwealth. In writing to Father Spada, in 1656, on the occasion of the death of his friend and counsellor Father Scarampo, he exclaims in the bitterness of his spirit:

But, notwithstanding his own afflictions, he was ever ready to succor by his slender purse and powerful influence such of his destitute young countrymen who sought an opportunity in Rome to procure an education, of which they were so systematically deprived at home; and it was doubtless from a just perception of his great repute and thorough acquaintance with ecclesiastical affairs in Rome that, in the early part of 1669, he was requested by the Irish bishops to act as their representative at the Papal Court, an office which he cheerfully accepted and filled to the entire satisfaction of his venerable constituency.

But he was not long allowed to occupy this subordinate position in connection with the church in Ireland, nor even to retain his chair in the Propaganda. He had now entered on his fortieth year, his mind fully developed and stored with all the sacred and profane learning befitting one called to a higher destiny, and his soul imbued with a zeal so holy and so far removed from worldly ambition that no temptation was likely to overcome his faith, and no persecution, no matter how severe, to shake his constancy. He was therefore appointed Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of all Ireland, to succeed Dr. Edmond O'Reilly, recently deceased in Paris. Like the great apostle of his country, of whom he was about to become the spiritual successor, he had spent a long probation in the society of men remarkable for the purity of their lives and the extent of their knowledge, and as St. Patrick longed to revisit the[436] land of his adoption, he also yearned to be once again among the Irish people. Yet his appointment to the primacy of Ireland was neither sought nor anticipated by Dr. Plunket at this time, as we learn from a letter from the Archbishop of Dublin to Monsignor Baldeschi, Secretary of the Propaganda, in which he says:

The names of many clergymen distinguished for piety, devotion, and learning had been forwarded to Rome, from which to select a fitting successor to Dr. O'Reilly; but, while their various merits were under discussion, the Holy Father, Clement IX., it is said, simplified the matter by suggesting Dr. Plunket as the person best qualified to fill the vacant see, and to govern by his experience and force of character the hierarchy, and, through it, the priesthood of Ireland. The views of the Pope met with unanimous approval, and, the selection being thus made, it was out of the power of Dr. Plunket, no matter how diffident he might have been of his own abilities to fill so elevated a position, to decline. We have seen how this important decision of the Sacred Congregation was viewed by Dr. Talbot, of Dublin, and his opinions seemed to have been shared by all the bishops and priests in Ireland. Dr. O'Molony, of St. Sulpice, Paris, afterwards Bishop of Killaloe, writes:

The Bishop of Ferns, also, in addressing the Secretary of the Sacred Congregation, says: "Applauding and rejoicing, I have hastened hither from Gand, to the Most Reverend and Illustrious Internunzio of Belgium, to return all possible thanks to our Holy Father, in the name of my countrymen, for having crowned with the mitre of Armagh the noble and distinguished Oliver Plunket, Doctor of Theology;" and Dr. Dowley, of Limerick, adds, "Most pleasing to all was the appointment of Dr. Plunket, and I doubt not it will be agreeable to the government, to the secular clergy, and to the nobility."

These warm expressions of esteem and regard, if known to the new primate, must have inspired him with renewed courage to accept the grave responsibilities imposed upon him, and truly, if ever man required the support of friends to nerve him to encounter dangers and unheard-of opposition, he did. But he seems to have had within himself a courage not of this world, but superior to all earthly considerations. It is recorded on the very best authority that, when about to leave Rome, he was thus accosted by an aged priest, "My lord, you are now going to[437] shed your blood for the Catholic faith." To which he replied, "I am unworthy of such a favor; nevertheless, aid me with your prayers, that this my desire may be fulfilled."[108] The condition of the country to which the primate was hastening fully justified this prophecy. It was to the last degree forlorn and full of discouragement. The sufferings of the Irish people at this period defy description; and were it not that we have before us the penal acts of parliament, numerous authenticated state papers, and the published statements of some of the highest officials of the crown and the agents of the Commonwealth, we would be inclined to believe, if only for the credit of human nature, that the relation of the atrocities at this time perpetrated by English authority on the Catholics of Ireland was the work of some diseased mind that delighted in horrors and revelled in the contemplation of an imaginary pandemonium. The Tudors and the Stuarts as persecutors of Catholics were bad enough, but their ineffectual fires paled before the cool atrocity and sanctimonious villany of the followers of Cromwell; men, if we must call them such, who, arrogating to themselves not only the honorable title of champions of human liberty, but claiming to be the exemplars of all that was left of what was pure and holy in this wicked world, perpetrated in the name of freedom and religion a series of such deeds of darkness that not even a parallel can be found for them in the annals of the worst days of the Roman emperors. So deep indeed has the detestation of the barbarities of Cromwell taken root in the popular mind of Ireland, that, though more than two centuries have elapsed since his death, his name is as thoroughly and as heartily detested there to-day as if his crimes had been committed in our own generation. Previous to the Reformation, though wars were frequent and oftentimes bloody between the English invaders and the natives, they were generally conducted in a certain spirit of chivalry and with some degree of moderation, which usually characterize hostile Catholic nations even in times of the greatest excitement. Churches and the nurseries of learning and charity were respected, or, if destroyed through the stern necessities of warfare, were apt to be replaced by others. But the followers of the new religion knew no such charitable weakness, for from the first they seemed actuated, probably as a punishment for their sin of wilful rebellion against the authority of God's law, with an unquenchable hatred of everything holy, and a craftiness in devising measures to destroy the faith and pervert the minds of the Catholics so preternatural in its ingenuity that we can only account for it by supposing it the emanation of the enemy of mankind. That any people stripped of all worldly possessions, debarred so long from religious worship and the means of enlightenment, outlawed by the so-called government, ensnared by the spy and the magistrate, and ground to dust beneath the hoofs of the trooper's horse, should not only have preserved their existence and the faith, but have multiplied amazingly, both at home and abroad, is one of the most remarkable incidents in all history, as well as one of the strongest proofs of the enduring and unconquerable spirit of Catholicity.

There were probably at this time in Ireland nearly a million and a half of Catholics, though Sir William Petty estimates their number at about[438] 1,200,000; the native population having been fearfully reduced by the late war and the pestilence and famine which succeeded it, by the emigration of forty or fifty thousand able-bodied men to Spain and other countries, and by the deportation of an equal number of women and children, as slaves, to the West Indies and the British settlements on our Atlantic coast. Yet, notwithstanding the immense loss of life occasioned soon after by the Williamite war, the constant drain on the adult male population in the latter part of the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth centuries, to fill up the decimated ranks of the Catholic armies of Europe, amounting, it is said, to three-quarters of a million, the periodical famines to which the peasantry were constantly exposed, and the great famine of 1846-7 and 1848, which swept away at least two millions, the Irish Catholics of to-day and their descendants in all quarters of the globe number at least fifteen million souls. It is a singular and interesting fact that the Irish Catholics resident in London out-number the entire population of the city of Dublin; that in the cities and towns of England and Scotland there are more Catholics of Irish birth than existed in every part of the world two hundred years ago; and that, while the children of St. Patrick count nearly five millions on the soil which he redeemed from paganism, many more millions of them and their descendants born within the present century are planting the cross of Christ everywhere in America and Australasia. This indestructibility of the Irish race seems to have raised an insurmountable barrier against the designs of the reformers. James I. having planted part of Ulster with some success, the Long Parliament determined to follow his example on a more comprehensive scale, and to utterly exterminate the people who persisted in adhering to their ancient faith. Accordingly, in 1654, all Catholics were ordered under the severest penalties to remove before a certain day from the provinces of Ulster, Leinster, and Munster, and take up their abodes in Connaught, the least fertile and most inaccessible division of the island. In their front a strip of land some miles in width, following the sinuosity of the sea-coast, and another in their rear along the line of the Shannon, were reserved for the victors and protected by a cordon of military posts, the penalty of passing which, without special license, was death. Thus encompassed by the stormy Atlantic and the broad river, with an inner belt of hostile settlements, it was fondly hoped that the remnant of the gallant Irish nation, completely segregated from the world, would speedily perish, unnoticed and unknown, among the sterile mountains of the west. A more diabolical attempt on the lives of a whole people is not to be found recorded in either ancient or modern history, and, to do but justice to the canting fanatics who conceived the plan, no means were left untried to carry it out to a successful issue. But Providence, with whose designs the Cromwellians assumed to be well acquainted, decreed otherwise, and no sooner had their leader sunk into a dishonored grave, and the legitimate sovereign been restored to the throne, than every part of the country swarmed again with Catholics, who seemed to spring, as if by magic, from the very soil. The people, it was found, had actually increased in numbers, and the clergy, who it was supposed had been effectually destroyed by expatriation, famine, or the sword, still amounted to over sixteen hundred seculars and[439] regulars, as devoted as ever to the spiritual interests of their flocks.

The restoration of Charles II. in 1660 was hailed by the Catholics as a favorable omen. They had faithfully supported his father, and had lost all in defending his own cause, and hence they naturally expected, if not gratitude, at least simple justice. But Charles was a true Stuart. Opposed to persecution from a constitutional love of ease and pleasure, as much as from any innate sense of right, he had neither the capacity to plan a reform nor the manhood to carry out the tolerant designs of others. He was, moreover, weak-minded, vacillating, and insincere, more disposed to conciliate his enemies by gifts and honors than to reward his well-tried friends by the commonest acts of justice. The greatest favor that the Catholics could obtain was a toleration of their worship in remote and secret places, and even this qualified boon was dependent on the whim of the viceroy, and was soon withdrawn at the command of parliament.

But the evils of the English Protestant system did not stop here. The death or involuntary exile of most of the Irish bishops and the dispersion of the clergy created a relaxation of ecclesiastical discipline, particularly among the regulars, and the impossibility of obtaining proper religious instruction at home, and the difficulty of procuring it elsewhere, necessarily lowered the standard of education among the priests of all ranks. Left for the most part to their own guidance, and only imperfectly trained for the ministry, many friars, particularly of the Order of St. Francis, so illustrious for its many distinguished scholars and eloquent preachers, were disposed to rebel against their superiors when the least restraint was placed upon their irregular modes of living, and some were found base enough to lend the weight attached to their sacred calling to further the designs of the worst enemies of their creed and country. Ormond and other so-called statesmen, while avowing unqualified loyalty to their sovereign and a secret attachment to the church, were insidiously betraying the one by placing him in a false position before Catholics and Protestants, while vainly endeavoring to strike a blow at the other by using these apostates to create a schism in her ranks. In the latter scheme they signally failed, and their defeat was mainly due to the untiring energy and profound foresight of the Archbishop of Armagh during the ten years of his administration. The very announcement of Dr. Plunket's appointment seems to have struck terror into the secret enemies of the church in Ireland, and to have given new hope to the friends of religion. This event occurred on the 9th of July, 1669, when the bulls for his consecration were immediately forwarded to the Internunzio at Brussels. Dr. Plunket was desirous of receiving the mitre in Rome, and even made a strong request to be granted that privilege, but the prudential motives which induced the Sacred Congregation to select Belgium in the first instance still remained, and the favor was reluctantly refused. As his first act of obedience, the archbishop bowed cheerfully to this decision, and after presenting his little vineyard, his only real property, and a few books to the Irish College, he bade a final adieu to his Roman friends in the following month, and commenced his homeward journey—his first step to a glorious immortality. He arrived during November in the capital of Belgium, and was cordially welcomed by the Internunzio, who was not unacquainted with his[440] extensive learning and unaffected piety. At the request of that prelate, the Bishop of Ghent consented to administer consecration to Dr. Plunket, and the solemn ceremony was duly performed on the 30th of November, in the private chapel of the episcopal palace in that ancient city. Dr. Nicholas French, Bishop of Ferns, one of the few persons present on the occasion, thus describes it:

After this short delay, the Primate continued his journey, stopping long enough in London to see his friends at the English court, and to present his credentials to the Queen, who was a devout Catholic, and who received him with great cordiality. He had also leisure to become somewhat conversant with the policy and views of the leading public characters in the English capital, and to study the workings and temper of the parliament. After a tedious and fatiguing journey, he at length landed in Ireland, in March, 1670, having been absent from that country a quarter of a century, where he was joyously received by his numerous relatives and friends. Great was the change which had been wrought in his life during those twenty-five years, but, alas! how much greater had been the alteration in the circumstances of his countrymen. As a lad he had left them in the full enjoyment of their religion in almost every part of the island, their nobility in the possession of their estates, the peasantry and farmers prosperous, the clergy respected and freely obeyed, and all full of hope for the future, and sanguine of yet attaining their independence. As an archbishop and primate, he returned to find nothing but desolation and ruin, sorrow and dejection. The nobility had either been banished or reduced to the condition of mere tenants on their own property, so that only three Catholic gentlemen in the province of Armagh, which embraces eleven dioceses, held any real estate; the original cultivators of the soil who had been spared by the sword and had not been transported or compelled to emigrate were formed into bands of plunderers, and infested the highways under the name of tories, while such as remained of the bishops and clergy were to be found only in bogs and mountains or in the most obscure portions of the larger towns and cities.

Undaunted by the scenes of woe and destruction around him, the Primate, like a diligent servant of God, had no sooner set foot on his native soil than he proceeded to the performance of his pastoral labors. Writing to Cardinal Barberini, Protector of Ireland, an account of his journey from Rome, he says:

The nobleman here alluded to was Lord Berkeley, who held office in Ireland for a few years, and under whose politic and tolerant, if not very sincere, administration the Catholics enjoyed at least comparative security. Personally, he, as well as his successor, Lord Essex, entertained a very high respect for the primate, and treated him with great kindness, when it was possible to do so without incurring the displeasure of the ultra-Protestant faction. Indeed, Archbishop Plunket, well aware of the difficulties which constantly beset his path, and feeling the futility of defying the government authorities, set his mind from the first to conciliate those whom he knew had the power to thwart or second his efforts, without yielding anything of his episcopal dignity or compromising his character as an ardent patriot. His long probationary course in Rome and his intimate association with so many of the best and most accomplished minds at the Papal court must have eminently qualified him for dealing with the leading British officials in Ireland. In his voluminous correspondence with the Holy See, he frequently alludes to his interviews with the lord-lieutenant and other noblemen, and to the judicious use he was able to make of his influence with them for the benefit of his less fortunate or more demonstrative brethren in the ministry. In a letter addressed to Pope Clement, dated June 20, 1670, he says:

It is not, however, to be supposed from these isolated instances of toleration that the new primate was allowed the full exercise of his functions in the land of his nativity, and where his flock so vastly outnumbered their opponents. On the contrary, we learn from a letter of Lord Conway to his brother-in-law, Sir George Rawdon, that even before Dr. Plunket reached Ireland orders had been issued by the lord-lieutenant[442] for his arrest as being one of "two persons sent from Rome, that lie lurking in the country to do mischief;" and even when he had taken possession of his see, his labors for the most part were performed in secret or in the night time. This was more particularly so after 1673, when the persecution was renewed against the Catholics, that we have his own authority and that of his companion in suffering, Dr. Brennan, Bishop of Waterford, for saying that at the most tempestuous times he was obliged to seek safety by flight, and frequently to expose himself to the horrors of a northern winter and almost to starvation in order to be amid his people, and ready to administer spiritual consolation to them.

So great indeed was the danger of discovery at this time, and so watchful were the emissaries of the law, that he was compelled to write most of his foreign letters over the assumed signature of "Mr. Thomas Cox," and was usually addressed by that name in reply. He even tells us that he was sometimes obliged to go about the performance of his duties in the disguise of a cavalier with cocked hat and sword.

Dr. Plunket is represented by his contemporaries as a man of delicate physical organization, highly sensitive in his temperament, and disposed naturally to prefer the seclusion of the closet to the excitement and turmoil of the world. The contrast between the scholastic retirement in which he had spent so many years of his life, and the circumstances by which he now found himself surrounded, must have been indeed striking, but like a true disciple he did not hesitate a moment in entering on his new sphere of usefulness. Shortly after his arrival in Dublin, on the 17th of June, 1670, he called together and presided over a general synod of the Irish bishops, at which several important statutes were passed, as well as an address to the new viceroy declaring the loyalty and homage, in all things temporal, of the hierarchy of Ireland to the reigning sovereign. Two synods of his own clergy had already been held, and in September following a provincial council of Ulster met at Clones, which not only reaffirmed the decrees of the synod of Dublin, but enacted many long required reforms in discipline and the manner of life of the clergy. In a letter from the assembled clergy of the province of Armagh, date October 8, 1670, and addressed to Monsignor Baldeschi, they thus speak of the untiring labors of their metropolitan:

But the good pastor was not contented with these extended labors among the laity. To make his reforms permanent and beneficial, he felt that he should commence with the clergy, who as a body had always been faithful to their sacred trust, but, owing to the disturbed state of the country for so many years past, had been unable to perform their allotted duties with that exactness and punctuality so desirable in the presence of a watchful and unscrupulous enemy. He therefore ordained many young students, whom he found qualified for the ministry, and, taking advantage of the temporary cessation of espionage consequent on the arrival of Lord Berkeley, he established a college in Drogheda, in which he soon had one hundred and sixty pupils and twenty-five ecclesiastics, under the care of three learned Jesuit fathers. The expenses of this school he defrayed out of his slender means, never more than sixty pounds per annum, and frequently not one-fifth of that sum, with the exception of 150 scudi (less than forty pounds sterling), annually allowed by the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda. When, in 1674, the penal laws were again put in force in all their original ferocity of spirit, the college was of course broken up; but Dr. Plunket in his letters to Rome was never tired of impressing on the minds of the authorities there the necessity of affording Irish students more ample facilities for affording a thorough education. His suggestions in regard to the Irish College at Rome, by which a larger number of students might be accommodated without increased expense, though not acted upon at the time, have since been carried out, and it was principally at his instance that the Irish institutions in Spain, previously monopolized by young men from certain dioceses of Ireland only, were thrown open to all.

In the latter part of 1671, we find Dr. Plunket on a mission to the Hebrides, where the people, the descendants of the ancient Irish colonists, still preserved their Gaelic language, and received him with all the gratitude and enthusiasm of the Celtic nature. In 1674, notwithstanding the storm of persecution then raging over the island, he made a lengthy tour through the province of Tuam, and in the following year we have a detailed report of his visitation to the eleven dioceses in his own province, every one of which, no matter how remote or what was the personal risk, he took pains to inspect, bringing peace and comfort in his footsteps, and leaving behind him the tears and prayers of his appreciative children.

If we add to this multiplicity of occupations the further one of being the chief and almost only regular correspondent of the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda in the three kingdoms, we may presume that the primate's life in Ireland was fully and advantageously occupied. The number of his letters to Rome on every subject[444] of importance is immense, when we consider the difficulty and danger of communication in those days. He was also in constant correspondence with London, Paris, and Brussels, and, though he sometimes complains of the weakness of his eyesight, caused doubtless by exposure and change of climate, he frequently regrets more his poverty, which did not enable him to pay the postage on all occasions. At one time, indeed, he avers that all the food he is able to procure for himself is "a little oaten bread and some milk and water."

The last important act of the primate was the convocation of a provincial synod at Ardpatrick, in August, 1678, at which were present the bishops or vicars-general and apostolic of all the dioceses of Ulster. Many decrees of a general and special nature were there passed with great solemnity, and upon being sent to Rome were duly approved. It was upon this occasion that the representatives of the suffragan diocese of Armagh, deeply impressed and edified as they were by the labors and sanctity of their archbishop, addressed a joint letter to the Sacred Congregation, eloquently describing the extent and good effect of his constant solicitude for his spiritual charge.

Had the distinguished body of ecclesiastics who thus voluntarily testified to the merits of their archbishop anticipated the awful catastrophe that was soon to remove him from them and from the world, they could not have epitomized his career in more truthful and concise language for the benefit of posterity. The end, however, was now at hand. In the same year that the provincial synod was held, the persecution against the Catholics, intermittent like those of the early ages of the church, broke out with redoubled violence. Forced to the most extreme measures by the parliament, the English court sent the strictest orders to Ireland to have arrested and removed from the country the entire body of the bishops and the clergy. The statute of 2d Elizabeth, declaring it præmunire or imprisonment and confiscation for any person to exercise the authority of bishop or priest in her dominions, was revived, and liberal rewards for the discovery of such offenders were publicly offered, to stimulate the energy of that class of spies known as "priest-hunters."[445] Dr. Talbot, Archbishop of Dublin, was arrested and thrown into prison, where during a long confinement he languished and finally died. Dr. Creagh, Bishop of Limerick, the Archbishop of Tuam, and several of the inferior clergy, were also imprisoned and subjected to many annoyances and indignities previous to being expelled the kingdom. Dr. Plunket, who hoped that the storm would soon blow over, while prudently seeking a place of safety in a remote part of his diocese, frequently avowed his determination never to forsake his flock until compelled to do so by superior force. Learning, however, of the dangerous illness of his relative and former patron, Dr. Patrick Plunket, he cautiously left his concealment, and hastened to Dublin, to be with the good old bishop during his last moments, and it was in that city, on the 6th of December, 1679, that he was discovered and apprehended by order of the viceroy. For the first six months after his arrest he was confined in Dublin Castle, part of the time a close prisoner, but, as the only charge openly preferred against him was, to use the expression of one of his relatives, "only for being a Catholic bishop, and for not having abandoned the flock of our Lord in obedience to the edict published by parliament," and as the punishment for this at the worst was expatriation, his friends did not fear for his life. They were not aware then that a conspiracy had been formed against him by some apostate friars under the patronage of the infamous Earl of Shaftesbury, the leader of the English fanatics, with the object of accusing him of high treason, and thus compassing his death. On the 24th of July following, he was sent under guard to Dundalk for trial; but so monstrous were the charges of treason against him, and so thoroughly was his character for moderation and loyalty known to all, that, though the jury consisted exclusively of Protestants, his accusers dared not appear against him, and he was consequently remitted back to Dublin. But his enemies on both sides of the Channel were thirsting for his blood, and, in October, 1680, he was removed to London, ostensibly to answer before the king and parliament, but, actually, to undergo the mockery of a trial in a country in which no offense was even alleged to have been committed, where the infamous character of his accusers was unknown, and where he was completely isolated from his friends. The result could not be doubtful. Without counsel or witnesses, in the presence of prejudiced judges and perjured witnesses, and surrounded by the hooting of a London mob, he was found guilty, and, on the 14th of June, 1681, he was sentenced to be executed at Tyburn, a judgment which was carried out on the 11th of July following, with all the barbaric ceremonies of the period. During the trial and on the scaffold, his bearing was singularly noble and courageous, so much so, indeed, that many who beheld him, and who shared the violent anti-Catholic prejudices of the hour, were satisfied of his perfect innocence. He repeatedly and emphatically denied all complicity in the treasonable plots laid to his charge, but openly declared that he had acted as a Catholic bishop, and had spent many years of his life in preaching and teaching God's word to his countrymen. His life in prison between the passing and the execution of the sentence is best described by a fellow-prisoner, the learned Benedictine, Father Corker,[446] who had the privilege of being with him in his last hours. In his narrative, he says:

About two years afterward, this pious clergyman, upon being liberated, disinterred the body of the late primate, and had it forwarded to the convent of his order at Lambspring in Germany; the trunk and legs he had buried in the churchyard attached to that institution, and the right arm and head he preserved in separate reliquaries. The former is still preserved in the Benedictine Convent; the latter is in Dundalk, in the Convent of St. Catharine of Sienna, a nunnery founded by the favorite niece of the martyred prelate.

Dr. Plunket's judicial murder was the source of great grief to the friends of the church throughout Europe, and even many contemporary Protestant writers expressed their regret at his unmerited sufferings, while the unfortunate agents of his death, becoming outcasts and wanderers, generally ended their lives on the scaffold or in abject poverty, bemoaning their crimes, to the pity and horror of Christendom. The memory of Dr. Plunket, one of the most learned and heroic of the long line of Irish bishops, is sacredly and lovingly preserved in his own country and in the general annals of the church; and let us hope, in the language of the Rev. Monsignor Moran, who has done so much by his researches to perpetuate the name and fame of his glorious countryman, "that the day is not now far distant when our long-afflicted church will be consoled with the solemn declaration of the Vicar of Christ, that he who, in the hour of trial, was the pillar of the house of God in our country, and who so nobly sealed with his blood the doctrines of our faith, may be ranked among the martyrs of our holy church."

MARY CLIFFORD'S PROMISE KEPT.

It was the day after a storm. The morning had been cool, almost cold; banks of cloud were piled up on the horizon; the summits of the friendly Franconias were shrouded; the White Mountains were invisible, and the wind whistled and howled, reminding one of "the melancholy days" to come. By afternoon, however, there was a change. Every cloud had magically disappeared, the wind had gone down, fields and young maples seemed to have renewed their early green, and everything stood out in clear relief, bathed and steeped in September sunshine. Not a red-letter day, but a golden day; one to be remembered.

I believe I shall remember it all my life, even if there should be days as bright and far happier in store for me. I was in an open buggy with a gentleman named Mr. Grey, I driving and he calling my attention to one thing after another, and both of us rejoicing in a light-hearted way in the sun, and sky, and yellow leaves, and roadside trees laden with crimson plums; in the golden-rod, and purple asters, and the bee-hives, and picturesque, bare-footed, white-headed children; and in ourselves and each other, and in our youth and strength; and in the sunny present, and the mysterious, enchanted future.

"I never knew the animal go so well before," said Mr. Grey; "you seem to understand how to make him do his best. Only remember that the faster we go, the sooner we shall get home. Will you not sacrifice your fancy for fast driving, to my enjoyment of the drive? Give me time to realize how much I enjoy it."

"You always seem to feel as if stopping to think about it will make the time go slower," I said.

"It does to me, I assure you, at least at the moment. Yet I do not find, in looking back, that this past month has flown any less fast, for all my little arts to detain it. Here comes the stage, crowded as usual, inside and out. I wonder whether we make a part of the picture to them, and whether they will remember us with it? The mountains before them—look back, Miss Clifford, and see; that crimson maple on your side of the road; and this green hill with its firs and rocks on mine."

"Then they are not appreciative. Don't think I mean to take any of their supposed notice to myself, except so far as I am with you. To me, all the rest, all that we can see and admire, is the frame, the setting as it were, to your face. It has been so ever since I came here."

I found this somewhat embarrassing, of course, though Mr. Grey spoke in a simple, matter-of-fact way, that had the effect of veiling the compliment. He did not seem to expect an answer, and continued, "That reminds me of 'In Memoriam.' Do you recall the lines about the 'diffusive power'?"

"I have no doubt you will find[448] them familiar, yet I will repeat them, because I like them so much." And he recited these lines, which I write down, because they bring before me the whole scene, and I seem to hear again the low voice and the appreciating accent with which he spoke:

"I can imagine it. Do you suppose that Mr. Tennyson's friend was really so much to him?"

"Perhaps," he said gravely. "I'll tell you, Miss Clifford, what I think about that. It is not right to feel so about anybody, because that is exactly the way we ought to feel about God. Don't you see that it is? If everything reminded us of him, it would be just right."

"I can't believe it would be possible to make God so personal to us. We think naturally of what we know and have seen, not of what we merely believe in."

"Ah! but God may be 'personal to us,' as you say. You forget that he is near us, with us, and even in us. That would be the only way, it seems to me, of loving him with our mind, and soul, and strength, because we can't help loving all this beauty in everything. Just as Tennyson says,

There was a bough of deep-red leaves overhead, and I looked longingly at it, for they were just the color that I liked to wear in my hair; yet I did not want to ask for it, lest Mr. Grey should think that I had not been attending to him. He must have seen the look, though, for he jumped out of the buggy and ran up the bank to get the branch. I stopped the horse, thinking, as I watched the capturing of the prize, "I might have known my wish would be anticipated. Every one but he waits to be asked and thanked." When he came back, I told him I was tired of driving, and asked him to take the reins.

"May I spin the drive out?" he asked. "You are not in a hurry to have it over, are you? Do you know it is the only time we have ever driven together?"

"Why, I thought we had taken a great many other drives. What are you thinking of?"

"We have driven often, as you say, with parties of other people, but have we ever taken a drive by ourselves before?"

"It is a part of the whole," continued he. "I have been in a kind of dream for a month. I dread the awakening, though everything reminds me of it now. It has been a new experience to me, this boarding with other people and seeing them so familiarly. There is no way of getting into easy and friendly relations with others in a very short space of time so effective as this; and, as the household has happened to be a very pleasant one, I have enjoyed the experiment greatly; though it is strange to think that I may never see any of our number again."

"You are really very flattering, Mr. Grey," I said, a little hurt.[449] "Then I am never to see you again! I am glad you have given me warning, or I might have invited you to visit us in Boston, next winter."

"You are kind, very kind," he answered hastily; "nothing would give me greater pleasure than to meet you, but I shall not be in America next winter. I hope to be in Rome."

"No, I am not so fortunate as to have that vocation. I am going abroad to try to find a wife, singular as it may appear."

"It does seem strange that a man with such strong American feelings as you should wish to have a foreign wife."

"I want to marry a Catholic," he said, switching off the tops of the golden-rod with the whip.

"No doubt; though I have not yet found the one I am looking for. Among converts there are girls who suffer for their faith, who are called upon to make sacrifices, to lose position, and the approbation, even the affection, of their friends. 'It is so odd!' they say, 'so unnecessary, to break away from early associations, and from forms of worship which have been sufficient for all their friends—and very good people too—and embrace a foreign religion.' Haven't you heard such remarks?"

"Among these brave girls," he continued, not noticing my remark, "one meets heroism, fervor, and a practical recommendation of the religion for which they are proud to suffer; but I also want to see what I shall find in other countries—women who have grown up in a Catholic atmosphere, and acquired their faith unconsciously, as the breath of their lives. These have developed into beautiful forms of grace and piety, as delicate as flowers, and, like them, breathing innocence and purity such as no other education can give or even preserve."

"Do you mean to say that innocence and purity cannot be found among Protestant girls?" I asked sarcastically.

"I am sure I hope they can," he answered earnestly; "yet do not be offended if I say, not in the same degree. You cannot conceive, Miss Clifford, of the beauty of a soul which has been guarded and sustained from infancy by the graces and sacraments of the church, and has kept its baptismal whiteness without stain. It is not often found, even within the church, and is, I believe, nearly impossible outside it."

"I hope you'll find this angel next winter. Please let me know when you discover her, for I should like to see her."

He was silent, and as I was thinking about a good many things, we drove on very quietly for some time.

It may seem strange that I should remember so well what Mr. Grey said to me that golden September afternoon, and as I think I know the reason of it, I will write it down as frankly as I have written the description of our drive so far, and as I mean to put down all I recall of it to the end.

Mr. Grey had boarded for a month in the same house with me and my sister, and a dozen other people, all of whom we met for the first time. My sister and I were the only persons whose society he seemed to seek, and as she, not being strong, was obliged to keep quiet, I had seen more of him than any one else. He was very polite and pleasant to every one,[450] and the whole household liked him; yet he never talked to the other ladies as he did to me, nor paid them the same watchful little attentions. He thought me pretty, and had a curious, unconscious way of alluding to it that did not seem offensive like common flattery, and there was a delicacy and appreciation about his treatment of me that was original and very, very pleasant.

True, he was a Catholic, and a very devout one, having his religious books and papers always with him, and talking of his faith with real enjoyment to any one who showed the smallest interest. Rose, my sister, had talked with him once or twice, and to her he very soon expressed his disapproval of marriage between Catholics and non-Catholics (as he called them), and declared his determination never to marry at all if he could not have a Catholic wife. Rose had alluded to this in my presence, so he knew that I understood what his intentions were. On account of this understanding, there was more freedom and less constraint in our intercourse than would otherwise have been; and as he was a gentleman, and an educated one, I found great pleasure in being with him and in his sympathy. His attentions, unobtrusive, thoughtful, and constant, were not only acceptable to me, but in that short month I had come to depend upon them more than I was aware of, forgetting that when they ceased it would be harder for me than if I had never received them.

Mr. Grey had never talked to me exactly in the way that he did that afternoon, and because I thought it unusual I have been able to recall what he said in nearly his very words.

"I have thought a good deal of you lately, and of a feeling I have had about you from the first—as if it were a great merit in you to be so lovely, and sweet, and charming, and that any one who felt and appreciated your loveliness as I have owed you a kind of debt, as it were, which it would be an honor and a happiness to try to pay."

His face was turned from me, and he trailed the whip-lash in the road, while I, leaning back, could not help looking at him, and, because I did not know what to say, I laughed.

He continued: "Yet with that thought came the realization of its injustice; for you cannot help your prettiness, and you are clever because it is natural to you; and I thought, 'Now, if I am just, I shall pay my debt not to her, who did not make herself, but to God, who made her. I shall love not only the beauty, but also the Giver and Perfecter of it.' Would not that be better, Miss Clifford?"

"Yes, I suppose so. I understand what you mean. Only, then, why have you been so good to me?" I had to look away, for my voice trembled and my eyes were suddenly full of tears.

"Why? Because it has made me happy, and I have been unjust; because I have said to myself, 'This is a dream—a sweet and charming dream. Soon I shall wake and go back to real life; for the present, let me be weak and enjoy it.'"

The glory of the sunshine was departing, the hills were in deep shadow, and the slanting rays were no longer warm and cheering. Mr. Grey wrapped my shawl round me, just as I remembered that I had one in case I should need it.

When I could speak steadily, I remarked: "Something that you have said makes me think of the parable[451] of the talents. It has always perplexed me. Will you tell me if you think I have a talent, and what I am to do with it? I don't want to bury it in the ground."

"Your talents are clear enough, I am sure," he answered. "Your power of pleasing and making yourself loved is one."

"I am not good, though perhaps the reason why you have done me good lies more with me than you. I don't suppose—forgive me for saying it—that your beauty was given you only to win men's hearts, because that does not make them happy, or better."

"You are thinking, I suppose, of Mr. Falconer. I am sure I did not want him to fall in love with me, and make such a fuss. It was very uncomfortable."

"Well, yes, I might perhaps have stopped him if I had been rude and disagreeable to him."

"There! that is just it!" I exclaimed. "Why, isn't that using my talent, taking for granted I have it? What ought I to do with it?"

"I know what a Catholic girl would think of, because Catholics are taught in all things to acknowledge God, and to refer all to him. Think what this gift of beauty is—the key to all hearts; it challenges and receives love as soon as seen. Don't you feel instantly attracted by a beautiful face, and turn with pleasure and affection toward the possessor, before she has given any evidence of other claims to be loved?"

"Yes; and for a person who can't help wanting to please and to be loved, it is an advantage, isn't it?"

"It is more than that, it is the gift of God; and therefore intended for good. The saints were in the habit of saying, 'God created all this beauty in order to lead me to love him.' Now, if a woman thinks of this, she will not prize her beauty for the purposes of vanity, but to lead her admirers to something higher than herself. I grant you this is not common, nor would a woman think of it, unless she had been taught to think of God as the first principle of her life. But I will not preach any more."

"You remind me of my little 'Mrs. Barbauld.' How long it is since I have thought of it! 'The rose is beautiful; but he that made the rose is more beautiful than it. It is beautiful; he is beauty.'"

"I have been unusually serious, perhaps because I have felt the end of the dream drawing very near. I am going away the day after to-morrow."

The sunset clouds had faded away, and the stars were coming out above our heads. We had reached the top of one more long hill, and there was the little meeting-house before us, and we saw beyond our own white cottage, with a light in the parlor-window, showing that tea-time was passed. Mr. Grey spoke again.

"No, indeed, Mr. Grey. On the contrary, you have given me something to think about. No one ever spoke to me in this way before."

"And do you think you shall be likely to remember this afternoon? and with pleasure?"

"Well, then, I have an odd fancy, and it is this. I want you to promise me, after I have left this beautiful place and you, that you will write a description of this drive, as if to an unknown third person, with the details and necessary explanations. I will do the same. Then, if we meet again, you can read mine and I yours, if we like, and look back to this time. Will you promise?"

I considered a minute, and then said, "I think I can see that such a description will not be an easy thing to me; yet, if it is your wish, of course, Mr. Grey, I promise."

"We may meet after many years, you an old lady and I an old man; and these accounts will bring back to us this perfect day, and all that we have seen and felt."

I looked at him and smiled. "Mr. Grey, I have been invited to spend a year abroad with some friends, and my father says I may go if I choose. We may meet next winter, in Rome."

And in Rome we did meet, sure enough—that Rome to which "all roads lead." I began to take one of those roads soon after Mr. Grey's departure. I found it a road "so plain that a fool could not err therein," a "path of peace." And when we stood side by side in the Rome of the Seven Hills, he made up his mind to share the seventh sacrament with a "convert girl."

THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE.

So great and painful are the sufferings and terror now weighing upon the nations of Europe that, setting every other subject aside, it is toward that the mind necessarily turns, and we will accordingly lay before our readers the deeply rooted convictions we entertain, not merely in reference to the year gone by, but to that on which we are just entering. These convictions take within their scope the present most deplorable and shameful condition of Europe, and a future that cannot be very far distant. But which of these subjects shall we undertake to discuss? Or, were we to satisfy the necessity there seems for the treatment of both, should we be thereby exceeding the limit of our obligation as journalists? Nothing is easier, nothing more agreeable in our case, than to satisfy both the one and the other. For, if we place before our readers our reflections on the present and future of the Christian nations of Europe, we shall be at the same time defining and specifying the principal field of our studies.

I will then examine into the reasons of the present condition of the church and of civilization, and I will do so with a mind as free as may be from prejudice and the heat of passion. After judging of events by the great laws of history, I will endeavor[453] to trace out the path which ideas and facts must follow at no distant period. My words will indeed be addressed in an especial manner to the true children of the church, but I do not doubt that they will indirectly reach some who are removed and even separated from us. Neither do I deny that I am animated by the hope of helping to sustain the courage of my brethren, so that each one may be able to say to himself, Modicæ fidei quare dubitasti.

II.

Towards the close of the year 1869, and the commencement of the year that followed, two solemn utterances resounded through Europe and agitated the nations of the universe. The first of these proceeded from the Roman Pontiff, the convener of the Œcumenical Council; the other was the cry of modern civilization, proclaiming its own power and its ideas of universal progress. Both utterances were of solemn import, but the one was in contradiction to the other. The first, or that of the Pontiff, with all the weight of his divine authority, laid open to view the true principles of the other, and strove to reclaim it to Christ with the new and more effulgent light of truth and the more ardent fire of charity. Such words ought indeed to have found an echo and penetrated through every fibre of the universe, for they were in substance the language of love; from love they came, and to love they tended. Had they thus been accepted by the nations, we should not have had now so many sufferings to undergo, nor been menaced by a future still more calamitous. The other utterance, that of modern civilization, inspired by the idea that it was an invincible and independent power, spurned the thought not merely of supernatural aid, but even of supernatural authority. Moreover, in proof of its power, it collected then under distinct heads all the evidences of the progress of the present age, proffering them as an infallible guarantee of new and still greater progress in the immediate future. Thousands listened with credulity to such language, and, opening their hearts to glorious dreams of the future, exulted over the hopes they had conceived with a joy whose folly was unquestionable, though it would be hard to pronounce whether it proceeded most from impiety or pride. It is, however, a satisfaction to speak with boldness and candor, calling things by their right names: such joy was foolish, because it was at once both proud and impious. The words of the Supreme Pontiff were derided, and abuse and calumnies of every description were heaped with a lavish hand on the acts of the Œcumenical Council.

Now, assuming the active opposition of these two powers, what consequences must result from it in the domain of facts? The problem is unquestionably an important one, and we must treat it by first going back and tracing it downward from first principles.

III.

The decree of the Pope when summoning an Œcumenical Council may be defined as the supreme exercise of his authority; and the council so assembled is the greatest and most universal act of the power of good with which the church has been invested; she who is the City of God, yet a pilgrim upon earth. Reasoning on these same questions, a year ago, I recollect having thus expressed myself: "Assuming that the life of the Catholic Church is charity[454] both in its source and its organization, and that the Papacy is the central seat of charity; what, then, is the Œcumenical Council, that supreme act of the Papacy and the church? The answer is not difficult: it is the supreme act of charity peculiar to Catholicity, and is therefore that power of supernatural love which is alone strong enough to combat with and put to flight the gigantic and many-sided egotism of the times we live in."

Now, such an act of this all-powerful charity did the church initiate on the 8th day of December, 1869—a day that will live for ever in the memory of posterity, and never fail to be spoken of with blessings. To the eyes of Catholics, the Council of the Vatican appeared—and such it is—a new and living fountain of hope. It seemed as if the yearnings of three centuries and many generations were at last to be gratified by this council. It seemed, in a special manner, as if the tendencies and wants of the nineteenth century converged toward this council, like rays to a common centre. And here, the better to understand the truth of these sentiments, we trust it will not be unacceptable to our readers if we lay before them what we ourselves—partakers in and witnesses of the universal conscience—published on the very day on which the Œcumenical Council opened in the Vatican:

Now, two such qualities and tendencies of humanity, acting in an especial manner, or, in other words, more powerfully and universally than ever before, rule over and exalt our age. He who should say that these two tendencies, naturally common to all men, all times, and all places, had become the passions of the age, and even its most ardent passions, would express our ideas on this subject, and give an adequate description of the times in which we live.

Liberty, then, and union, are the[455] cry from every quarter, the thought, desire, hope, strength, and occupation of all intellects, of all classes, of everything that belongs to man, from the highest to the lowest. Trades, business, and commerce cry aloud for liberty, and for union with liberty. The free co-operation of the industrial arts and workmen's societies, of societies of merchants and banking-houses, are ideas and facts so common in these days that the dominion of the two tendencies referred to above is clearly made manifest in the lower order of civilization. And this order, quickened by such ideas and making use of such aids, becomes the instrument of new liberty and still greater union. Thus, the power of steam triumphing over the obstacles of matter, and the speed of electricity overcoming the resistance of space and time, favor the free expansion of nation toward nation, and make, I might almost say, one single society out of the most distant nations.

Rising from this lower order of civilization, the industries of every kind, to what is far nobler, that of science, we observe the same aspirations, perhaps more universally diffused and more passionate in degree toward liberty and union. Freedom of thought, freedom of education, freedom of speech and of the press, seem to be the idols of the day; for, strange to say, freedom of the intellectual life is deemed by very many not as the dowry of science, but the fundamental principle of all human instruction. There exists, also, with this desire for intellectual freedom, a craving after union. Scientific congresses, either general or confined to some particular branch of knowledge, succeed each other at no distant intervals, sometimes in one place and sometimes in another, so as to unite men of intellect whom distance of space had kept asunder. The literary journals, whose number is so great as to excite amazement, have become the arena for the free diffusion of thought; they keep alive the work of the scientific congresses, and spread its knowledge—spreading it in such a manner as to complete the intellectual union of the human race, by making the speculations of the great men of science familiar to the most ordinary intellects.

Turning our gaze from the industrial and intellectual to the moral life, that is to say, to the life of society, the two aspirations appear stronger and more manifest; so strong and manifest that we might be tempted to call them insane and mischievous. To the cry of liberty, the civilized nations of earth respond with transport, and rise in rebellion against whatever can be shown to be in any way opposed to freedom. Never in previous times were such social changes witnessed, so unexpected, so general, so profound, and carried through with so much enthusiasm, as those just enacted and initiated with the cry of liberty. The political organization of nations, the administrative control of provinces and municipalities, have all been regulated by the principle of free election, freedom of vote and opinion. The slavery of man to man, a lamentable relic of paganism, has been abolished in many places by legal enactment, and is universally looked on with more repugnance than heretofore. After the hard-fought battles in North America on the question of slavery, the negroes there have been raised to the dignity of freemen.

No less vigorous and resistless has been the tendency toward social union. The principle of nationality has traversed all Europe with the rapidity of lightning, kindling as it passed the minds of men, exciting and agitating them in a wonderful manner.[456] Even as we write, the cry for unions still more comprehensive—the union of races—strikes upon our ears.

It is, then, an indisputable fact, a fact whose evidence is clear to all and is admitted by all, that the aspirations of our age are towards union and liberty.

We shall therefore hail the council as the final goal of these aspirations of the human race. And yet, in saying this, we have not stated all that the council implies; for it serves also to satisfy an essentially human want that equals those twofold aspirations, or, to speak more correctly, is still stronger and more universal than they. What, then? Shall it be said that the aspirations and wants of the human mind are not directed to the same object? Most assuredly; the end, but not the immediate object, is the same. They proceed from different impulses: the one arises from the tendencies of the age, but without any regard to the good or evil qualities inherent in such tendencies; the other is the result of a vice that modifies and corrupts such tendencies, a vice that may prove fatal to nations, alluring them by the cry of liberty and union to slavery and desolation. The want we refer to argues a vice to be corrected, an infirmity to be healed, a danger to be shunned, express it as we will; but let us not deny the fact, a most sad and painful one, for which the council furnishes a sovereign and most efficacious remedy.

But what, it will be asked, is this vice which degrades the noble aspirations for liberty and union, and causes such misery to nations? It is the rejection of authority—a rejection absolute and unlimited, that has penetrated into every relation of human life. The better, however, to make our sentiments clear on this subject, and to bring under consideration, not the existence of such a vice, but the cause that produced it, we must trace the question back to its source.

The fundamental dogma of the Protestant Reformation gave birth at the same instant to a double negation—the rejection of liberty and of union—so that the servitude of the human will and individualism were exalted to the dignity of a principle. It seems like a contradiction that the basis of Protestantism, namely, private interpretation, which is the rejection of a supreme authority, should have led in its consequences to servitude. But the contradiction disappears when we reflect that so necessary is authority to man that he will bow to fatalism or force if he has no legitimate authority to which to turn. History bears evidence that two centuries and a half of debasing servitude and cruel separations followed. Such a long period of slumber must necessarily have had an awakening; for the innate tendencies of humanity may for a time grow faint or dormant, but they can never be extinguished. Moreover, should they, for any length of time, be checked in their natural expansion, this necessity grows to gigantic proportions, till it sweeps before it every obstacle like a torrent in its impetuous course. Such was the result to be expected, and which really took place, at the close of the eighteenth century. But the minds of men having been seduced by the sophistries of the Reformation, the new era of liberty and union must of necessity reflect its deceitful philosophy. Therefore, liberty and union, when they arose, cast aside the principle of authority, as Protestantism had done at its first appearance. Liberty rejected religion to become atheistical, and fraternity or union affiliated itself to pantheism.

And, in truth, atheism and pantheism—two systems that harmonize because they are convertible—have penetrated into and made conquests in every condition of life. Fourierism and the abuse of industrial unions, while rejecting authority, have touched materialism on the one side and communism on the other, and are the atheistic and pantheistic forms of labor. Freedom of speculation, by spurning at every authoritative principle, has ended in rationalism; the systematizing of science has fallen into pantheism or syncretism; rationalism and syncretism are the atheistic and pantheistic forms of the intellectual life. The modern code of morality and justice, by stripping liberty and the brotherhood of mankind of legitimate authority, have ended in naturalism and socialism, the atheistic and pantheistic forms of society.

Now, these two vices, atheism and pantheism, the leading errors of the day, have changed the universal movement toward liberty and union into matter for the deepest and keenest sorrow. In the midst of the immense riches that our age has been accumulating through its free and associated industries, there seems to be nothing that man touches that can cheer or console him in the solitude of his heart, and, free lord as he is of matter, yet he feels himself its slave, because he has made it the grave of his noblest aspirations. It might almost be said that matter, subjugated in so many ways by the liberty and union existing among men in these days, was secretly tyrannizing over and dividing them, denying man's authority over it because man has himself cast off the true and supreme authority raised over him. In the same manner, in the life of thought all our knowledge is felt to be, as was said of old, but vanity, and a vanity that crushes and keeps us asunder from one another. Many, yes, very many, agree in crying loudly for liberty and the union of intellect, but theirs are merely outward words—words which do not respond to the real life of man's intellectual powers. We shall proclaim openly that it is a falsehood, and a falsehood by which man strives to deceive himself, and, if possible, conceal his sorrow. Without fear of error, we can say that modern science tyrannizes in secret over the intellects of men, and divides them, because liberty and the union of intellects rejected or rather usurped the supreme control over the minds of men. Rationalists and pantheists cannot deny this; we appeal to the truthful testimony of their own consciences and of history; we appeal to the candid avowal of Frederick Schelling. Is it not true that, beneath the pompous appearances of liberty and union, the inner powers of thought are under the grievous yoke of so-called systems, and, in addition, are slaved and tormented by secret and constant doubts? Is it not true that great differences exist among men of intellect, who reject to-day what was believed yesterday, and that there is no agreement whatever in the greatest and most important principles? To sum up: the intellectual life of the nineteenth century has neither interior liberty nor union, because with Protestantism it has denied the principle which could alone give freedom and unity to the minds of men, and this denial is the only instance of that liberty and union of which it makes so great a boast.

Neither in regard to the moral and social life of nations is the case in any way different. From the atheistical liberty of an independent morality has resulted the interior servitude of the will, which means the truly despotic empire of passions most degrading[458] to the mass and the individual and the despotic atheism of states. And from the pantheistic union exhibited in the practice of centralization and the theory of socialism, there resulted a sanguinary war in the heart of Christendom: a war of the state with the church, of the people with monarchy, a war of everything in subjection against everything in authority. Hence we see in the most civilized countries the despair of its noblest citizens, men like the younger Brutus and Cato; hence the despondency of the higher station, blended with scorn and indignation; hence the frantic aims of the populace breaking forth into rebellion; hence the enormous standing armies; hence amidst the shouts for liberty and fraternity the nations are arming, and every citizen is enrolled a soldier.

If such, then, is the condition of the age and the ferment in the minds of men, if such is the condition of the populations, what, let us ask, is at present the great, the urgent want of mankind? To contradict the sentiment of union and liberty would be madness; to contradict the atheism of liberty and the pantheism of union is wisdom and true charity, and therein safety is to be found; for, take away pantheism from union, and atheism from liberty, there will remain union and true liberty both exteriorly and interiorly. And assuming that the deadly principles of atheism and pantheism sprang from Protestantism, which rejected the Papacy, the supreme personification of power, the return to authority, the true and only source of liberty and union, is the great and universal want of the present age.

IV.

To satisfy so great a want, the City of God, exercising the most perfect act of its power of goodness and love, convoked the Council of the Vatican. But in opposition to the City of God in its exercise of this supreme act of love and goodness, stands the City of Satan, which has always combated it, and will continue to do so to the end of time. It was, therefore, an easy matter to predict that the City of Satan would assuredly put forth its utmost powers of evil in opposition to that supreme effort of the church of Christ. Such a conclusion would be warranted both by reason and history. By reason, inasmuch as humanity may well be likened to a battle-field, wherein the powers of good and evil contend for mastery, falsehood, and truth, the old Adam and the new, Cain and Abel, Satan and Christ, so that a state of warfare may be said to be the law of this life; and as no real progress can be made but as the result of a hard-won victory, it follows logically that our own age, being subject to the same law, must pass through a terrible conflict. History bears evidence to the same effect, how at critical times the whole powers of evil rose up in terrible conflict against the great undertakings of the church. And I will add that as the work of the Vatican Council was to bring to light in a special manner the naturalism of modern civilization, which deduces its origin from atheism and pantheism, and afterwards to strengthen and exhibit in a clearer light the supreme authority of the Pope, so, on the other hand, modern civilization had to put forth all the strength it derived from naturalism to crush the Papacy.

All this might have been and was foretold. Two periods are to be distinguished in the brief existence of the Vatican Council: they are those which correspond to the two[459] sessions which the Pope presided over in person. The first was directed specially against those monster errors from which naturalism springs; the second, after not a hasty but a long and comprehensive discussion, decreed the universal supremacy of the papal authority, the supremacy of his teaching, that is, the infallibility of the Pope, when he speaks (to use the language of the schools) ex cathedrâ. You might have said, then, that the great task of the council was ended, and time will perhaps show that you would not have judged amiss.

However, the City of Satan was meanwhile no idle spectator, but exerted its powers in many and various ways, yet so that it may be said with truth that two of these corresponded singularly to the two important periods of the council. In the first place, there was witnessed a great and portentous gathering of free-thinkers from all countries of the earth, and to this was assigned the title of Anticouncil, to signify in the most open way possible the war which the naturalism of the day is waging against the church and the Papacy. But this gathering failed to accomplish anything, so that, as was justly said, the infant cries of the new-born Anticouncil were also the last gasp of its mortal agony. In vain, besides, were all the efforts of the irreligious press, its sarcasms and calumnies; in vain the intrigues of anti-christian diplomacy. In vain, too, was that last effort, those appeals of discord flung into the camp of the assembled bishops. Nor do I say all when I affirm that such guilty efforts accomplished nothing against the council. I might have added, and I do so without hesitation, that they shed additional lustre on it. For, if they prove nothing else, they prove at least these two truths: first, that all the efforts of the world and hell shall not prevail against the church; et portæ inferi non prevalebunt adversus eam; secondly, that the freedom and fulness of discussion that took place in the council before defining dogmatically was greater than its adversaries expected or even desired. A new proof, were any such needed, that the church of Christ is neither an opponent nor a weakener of the powers of human reason, but is the harmonizer of the human element with the divine, of science with faith, of liberty with supernatural authority.

This was the first great effort of the adversaries of the council, but there soon followed a second. Peaceful opposition having failed, it was easy to foresee that modern civilization would change its mode of warfare, and instead of moral force would call to its aid physical force and violence. But for this it was necessary that some opportunity be given, and the invasion of Rome by ruffian bands as contemplated was too hazardous an undertaking, so long as the French eagle cast the shadow of its protection over the Vatican. The opportunity wanted was not long in presenting itself. Strange coincidence! At the very time when papal infallibility was added to the dogmas of faith, and almost on the very day, war broke out unexpected between France and Prussia. How Satan must have exulted with ferocious joy at that terrible hour! Such a war seemed to supply his city with the means of renewing its assaults on the City of God.

The Prussian minister Bismarck, the chief representative of modern civilization, had been for a long time in closest alliance with the double atheism of authority and modern liberty, that is to say, with the autocracy of Russia and modern revolution, which both desired the triumph of the German arms. In consequence of this alliance,[460] France came single-handed into the contest, while Prussia drew with her all Germany. The Northern armies won astonishing victories, and their allies shared in the advantages of them. Preponderance in the East was again made practicable to the atheism of authority, and the atheism of liberty took possession of Rome—Rome from whose walls, through a blunder or a crime, the French government had withdrawn its troops. As a consequence, the Pope was stripped of his temporal power, and the council suspended.

This was the result of the war against the Papacy; this was the crowning effort of the City of Satan against the City of God—an effort in relation to which modern civilization showed more clearly than before both its character and the end at which it aimed. All the organs of the press that have sold themselves to the false spirit of the age—and their number is very great—all with unanimity of sentiment and in one chorus extolled the shameful outrage to the skies, and made it the subject of a senseless triumph. And what deserves notice, in as far as it goes to show the truth of our opinions, is that all pronounced this exploit as the greatest victory of modern civilization against Catholic superstition and the theocracy of the middle ages.

Was it a real victory? And will it be lasting? Will it be in our power, reverentially and with due timidity, to withdraw a little the veil that covers the designs of Providence in reference to these facts, and predict the future? The answer to these questions cannot be briefly given, and must therefore form the subject of a future article. Nevertheless, to close this article and prepare the minds of our readers for what is to follow, I think it necessary to draw a conclusion from the matters discussed, and it is this: that our brethren in the faith have no reason in the world to be astonished at the painful events happening in these times. Such things were necessary—so necessary were they that we ourselves, a year ago, ventured to predict this contest, when the political atmosphere was still unclouded, and all around breathed an air of peace. "This new year," said we on the first day of January, 1870, "will be doubtless one of the most memorable of all recorded in history. In it, not two ages, but two great eras meet and trace broadly their distinction one from the other—an era that is closing, and one that is about to begin. And in this same year, a momentous struggle will correspond to the meeting of the two eras—the struggle of two contrary principles which aim at the conquest of the human race. The two eras are, that of Protestantism religious and civil, and that of Christian revival in all the orders and relations of the Catholic Church. The two principles are egotism and charity—egotism, which begot and animates Protestantism, and charity, which is the life of Catholicity." The conflict, fierce, terrible, and waged under different forms, was a necessity; why, then, be astonished that what was to take place has really happened? Is not the spouse of him who espoused her with his sacred blood sent forth to combat? Had this conflict not taken place, we should have been tempted to say that it would be necessary to call in question the great law of human history—progress through suffering.

Away, then, with astonishment, which would be folly! Away with vain fears! The church has combated and overcome all the moral force brought to bear against the Papacy and the council, and shall it tremble before brute force? Is not the first victory a most certain pledge of the second?

THE HOUSE OF YORKE.

CHAPTER VII.
DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.

One Saturday evening in June, the Seaton mail-coach, with two passengers, drove out of the city of Bragon on its way eastward. Both these passengers were gentlemen, and both young. One was large and light-complexioned; the other, slight and dark. The large one had a hard, white face, whose only expression seemed to be a fixed determination to express nothing. Such a look is provoking. Let us read a little of the man in spite of himself. People have no right to shut themselves up in that way. One would say immediately that he is what is called a very good man, one of those good men whom we praise, and avoid: that is, he does not offend against the decalogue nor the revised statutes. But there is a law radiant with a tenderer glory, dropped, verse by verse, through the Scriptures, taught constantly by the church, attested to human hearts by the very need of it, and that law he keeps not. One wonders at such a man, and, in softer moods, fancies pitifully that he aches under that icy coating, and that down in the depths of his heart some little unfrozen spring perpetually troubles his repose by its protesting, half-stifled murmur. One is also exasperated by him. "In his society," as Miss Clara Yorke said afterward, "one's thoughts and feelings become all puckered up." He is indeed a powerful moral astringent.

As if conscious of our observation, he turns stiffly away, and looks out of the window at his elbow, entertaining his mind with a view of the spiders that hang from the beams of the covered bridge through which they are driving. We are not to be baffled, however, but can pursue our scrutiny. He has large, heavy white hands, his broadcloth is of the finest, and in the breast-pocket of his coat is a manuscript sermon. He would like to have us listen to that sermon, but will not.

The gentleman who sits at this person's left is as different as could well be. He has a thin face, a long nose inclining slightly upward toward the end, and haggard, bright eyes. His forehead is high, and all the hair is brushed straight back from it, and falls on his neck. He has a small mouth, with lips so vividly red that they seem to be painted. In his breast-pocket is a bottle of laudanum, which seems to be very much at home there.

These gentlemen had never met before they stepped into the coach together; and it would be safe to say that they had no ardent desire to meet again. They were very slow, indeed, to improve the opportunity afforded them to form an acquaintance, and probably would have maintained a very formal demeanor toward each other, had not circumstances forced them into a most undignified intimacy. There had been a succession of pouring rains, and the roads were frightful, heavy with mud, and full of pitfalls. After the coach got out of the town and into the woods, their situation became[462] very trying to the passengers. To say nothing of the pain of bumps and bruises, their dignity and sense of propriety were constantly being outraged by their being thrown into each other's arms, or having their heads knocked violently together. Under such difficulties, silence became impracticable. Apologies became necessary, and exclamations irrepressible. He of the sermon never said anything worse than "Bless me!" but the other had occasionally to stifle an ejaculation which would not have been so pleasant to hear.

The coach was due at Seaton at four o'clock in the morning; but as hours passed, and still their motion was chiefly lateral and perpendicular, their prompt arrival receded from a probability to a possibility, and thence became impossible. They had started at nine o'clock; and at three of the next morning they yet lacked nearly a mile of reaching the half-way house where they were to change horses. At that point one of the wheels suddenly slipped into a deep rut. The four steaming horses strained and tugged till they started the coach, when it immediately gave a lee-lurch, and went into a hole at the other side. At the same moment, something, whatever it is which holds horse and carriage together, snapped, and the quadrupeds started off on their own account, leaving the coach and the bipeds to follow at their leisure. The driver, having the reins in his hands, was of course pulled off the box; but the road received him softly. The passengers need have suffered no damage, but that the tall one, having, curiously enough, the impression that they were being run away with instead of from, jumped out of the coach with more haste than discretion. The spot he sank into was the rut from which the front wheel had just been drawn, and the result was that he emerged upon the roadside in a deplorable masquerade, being clad in a complete domino of well-mixed clay and water. Moreover, his ankle was quite severely sprained.

"You'll have to walk to the half-way house, gentlemen," the driver said, calmly wiping the mud from his face. He had been over that road too many times to be much disturbed at any mishap of the kind. Having spoken, he shouldered the mail-bags, and started in advance. It was full three minutes before the other passenger appeared, and, when he did, his face was perfectly grave, though very red. He threw a blanket he had found inside out into the road, and stepped on to it. He next reached in and got a cushion, with which he completed the bridge across the mud, then walked over them as unstained as Queen Elizabeth over Raleigh's mantle, and stepped dry-shod in the neatest of boots on to the rim of the delicate moss that spread its carpet all along the roadside under the trees. Having landed safely, he turned toward his companion, who was trying to wash himself in a brook and scrape his clothes with sticks. "I should advise you, sir," he said, "to come right on to the house, and get a complete change of clothing. It is useless to try to clean those."

The other was speechless, and seemed too much stupefied to do anything more than obey.

Morning was just breaking, cloudless and beautiful, the forest was fresh with June, and through it could be heard the elfish laughter of brooks. While the travellers had through the night been racked and tormented, conscious only of misery and mud, all around them nature had reposed in her loveliness and purity, with her birds sweetly nestled, her flowers dewwashed,[463] her streams crystal-clear. Their road had been like a foul thread woven across a beautiful web.

When they reached the half-way house, the tall traveller was in a perfectly abject state. His pride had quite disappeared, his dignity was nowhere to be seen. He allowed himself to be arrayed in a suit of rough farming-clothes a good deal too short, in which he beheld himself without a smile, and humbly begged his fellow-traveller to bear a message from him to his expecting friends in Seaton. Not only his toilet, but his sprained ankle would prevent his proceeding on his journey for some hours at least. His name was Conway; he was a Baptist minister, and was expected to preach in Seaton that day. Would the gentleman be so good as to send word to the church, as soon as he arrived, that their looked-for candidate had met with an accident? He was not personally acquainted with any one in Seaton, therefore could not direct him, but presumed that the driver could.

The gentleman with the bright eyes cordially promised, then asked for breakfast and a clothes-brush, and the other withdrew to rest.

"There's not time to cook anything but coffee and fish," the landlord said. "Passengers never stop here to breakfast; and the driver is going on in fifteen minutes. But I'll do the best I can for you."

In ten minutes all was ready. The traveller brushed his clothes scrupulously, combed his hair back in a silken wave, bathed his face and hands, gave himself one more look to be sure that his toilet was correct, then seated himself at table. The principal dish before him was an eel fried in sections, then carefully put together, and coiled round the plate.

"Sir!" exclaimed the traveller in a deep voice, "I asked for fish, and you give me a serpent! I would as soon—I would sooner eat of an anaconda than an eel."

"I'm sorry you do not like it, sir," the man replied. "If we raised anacondas here, you should have one; but we don't."

The traveller drank his coffee, and found it not bad. "I will try to do without snakes, this morning," he remarked.

There were twelve miles yet to travel; but the road improved slightly as they went on. Still it was tedious work; and when at last they drove into the town, it was past ten o'clock, and the bells were ringing for Sunday service.

When the coach reached the post-office, in the centre of the town, the traveller jumped out, and asked to be directed to the Universalist meeting-house. "And please send word to the Baptist people of the accident which befell their minister," he said. "It will be impossible for me to do so now."

The driver promised, and directed the stranger. "Go over the bridge here, and up the hill, and you will come to a white meeting-house with green blinds," he said.

The traveller hastily followed the direction, and soon came to a house answering the description given. The congregation were all in their seats; and as the new-comer breathlessly entered, he heard a voice from the pulpit. "My beloved brethren," the voice said, "I am sorry to inform you that the minister who was to have preached for us to-day will not probably come. The stage has not come in, and has, most likely, met with an accident. But since you have all gathered together here to-day,[464] it seemed to me a pity that you should go away without hearing the word of life. I have therefore brought a volume of sermons by the reverend—"

Here the deacon stopped at sight of the stranger hurrying up the aisle, made an awkward gesture, took out his pocket-handkerchief, and, finally, descended sheepishly at one side of the pulpit as our belated traveller went up the other.

The minister seated himself on the red velvet sofa, which in the temple occupied the place of an altar, fumbled a while in the hymn-book for a hymn he could not find, wiped his heated face, finally read at random. Presently there was heard from the gallery over the entrance the faint twang of a tuning-fork, then a man's voice feeling for the key, which he had to transpose from A to C. Pouncing upon it at length in a stentorian do, he soared gradually up through dominant to octave, the choir caught their parts, and the hymn began. Unfortunately, however, in their haste they had selected a common metre tune for a long metre hymn, as they discovered at the end of the second line, where they found themselves in difficulty by reason of two syllables which were unprovided for by the music, yet could not well be left out.

While they were extricating themselves, and finding a more fitful tune, the minister took breath, and looked round on his congregation. They disappointed him. He had been informed that his hearers were to be the young, progressive spirits of the town; and these looked anything but young and progressive. They were nearly all old and antiquated, and their faces struck a chill through him. They seemed to be the faces of people who believe that one of the chief pleasures of heaven consists in looking over the celestial battlements and witnessing the torments of the condemned, rather than of those who hold the comfortable doctrine of universal salvation. Stern, fateful, stolid, they sat there, not even provoked to a passing smile by the ludicrous contretemps of the choir. The minister frowned. He was tired, he had been irritated by his travelling companion, and now he was bitterly disappointed. Seaton was a growing town that would soon be a city, and he had looked forward with pleasure to the prospect of being settled there. There seemed nowhere else for him to go, and he was not rich, and he was homeless. The sight of this congregation, which he saw at once he could never reconcile himself to, disturbed him greatly. Moreover, in his haste he had forgotten to take his morning dose of laudanum; and, altogether, but for a glimpse he got of two faces near the pulpit, he might have marched down, and left the deacon to read as many sermons as he chose. These two reconciling faces belonged to Miss Melicent Yorke and her brother Owen, who were visiting the different Seaton churches. The fair, tranquil face of the lady, her delicate dress, her folded hands, even the wreath of violets that rested on her flaxen hair, all made a pleasant picture for the cultivated glance that swept over it. Of Owen he saw only the top of the head, and the hand that covered his face. But his attitude showed that he was hiding a laugh; and anybody who could laugh in that congregation was balm to the minister's eyes. In those two he felt sure of sympathy.

The congregation listened with lengthening faces. In fact, the disapprobation was mutual. In the first[465] place, they were shocked that the candidate for their pulpit should travel on the Lord's day; in the next place, his looks and manners were too little like those of their former pastor, the Rev. Jabez True; thirdly, they had never before had the Our Father foisted on them for a prayer. They were accustomed to hear a long and explicit address to the Deity, in which their wishes and thoughts were explained to him, and their praises and thanks duly meted out—a prayer which they could talk about afterward. Elder True had been gifted in prayer, and would sometimes pray half an hour without a moment's hesitation. It was certainly a very shabby thing to put them off with the Lord's Prayer.

Then came the sermon. Only two persons present knew that the text was from the Koran. It was a story of a certain good man who had a plantation of palm-trees, to which he used to call the poor, and give them such fruit as the knife missed or the wind blew off. He died; and his sons felt too poor to give anything away. So they agreed to come early in the morning, and gather the fruit when the poor could not know. But in laying their plans, they omitted to add, "If it please God!" In the night a storm passed over the garden, and in the morning it was as one where the fruit had all been gathered.

There are various ways in which such a text could be treated. Our speaker, changing his plan at the last minute, irritated by the cold and unsympathizing faces about him, and by his personal discomforts, chose to enforce this thought: there are those who fancy that all the fruits of grace are theirs, that they are the elect, and that those outside of their walls shall perish with hunger while they are feasting. Behold, the whirlwind of the wrath of God shall sweep away the good they only seem to have, and leave them poorer than Lazarus. It was a forced interpretation; but the speaker was dextrous, and made himself appear consecutive even when he rambled most. With passionate vehemence, he denounced those sanctimonious souls who mistake a curvature of the spine for humility, and a nasal twang for an evidence of grace. "I love not," he said, "those cold and heavy souls that never take a generous fire. One wonders if they ever will burn—under any future circumstances. They flatter themselves that they are good and just and reasonable because they are emotionless. It is not so. No heart is pure that is not passionate; no virtue safe that is not enthusiastic. Is the diamond less fine because it is brilliant? Has the sea no depth because it sparkles on the surface? Would the cannon-ball go further flung by the hand than it does when shot from the cannon's mouth? Is truth always a mountain crowned with snow? It may be a volcano. A strong and sweet thinker has said, 'The wildest excess of passion does not injure the soul so much as respectable selfishness does;' and he says rightly. I protest against the apotheosis of phlegm. There are many phases of good, and each has his way; but, for my part, I prefer the faults of heat to the faults of cold. The former are often generous faults, the latter never so. The faults of the former are on the surface, and can neither be denied nor hidden; those of the latter are deep-rooted, and may be and often are mistaken for virtues. Who were the great saints? Look at the reckless Magdalen, the vehement St. Paul, the hasty St. Peter. St. John of the Cross quotes as an axiom in theology the saying that God moves all things in harmony with their constitution;[466] and the history of the world shows that, when he wanted to kindle a grand and holy conflagration, he took for workers combustible men and women. Among the apostles, the only one who was cold and calculating enough to count money and think of the purse when the Lord was near enough to set all their hearts on fire was Judas, and not the worst Judas in the world either. For since his time many a pretended follower has weighed the Holy One in a balance, and sold him for a price, and has lacked the after-grace to hang himself."

It was only when Miss Yorke and her brother rose, that the astonished and scandalized congregation understood that the sermon was really over, and they were to stand up and listen to a prayer.

The minister spoke in a voice yet vibrating with excitement: "O Lord God of morning and evening, of storm and sunshine, of the dew that bathes the violet and the frost that cracks the rock—God of the east and the west, and all that lies between them—God of our souls and our bodies, of bliss and of anguish—O God, who alone rewardest failure, who for thy mantle, which eludes our grasp, givest us thy hand to clasp—may all thy creatures adore thee! Our praise goes up like the note of the small bird in the branches; but thou hast made us weak. All power is thine! Our hearts swell and break at thy feet as the waves break upon the shore; but thou hast set our limit. Space is in the hollow of thy hand! We lift our eyes toward thee, and their gaze is baffled; but thou, who seest all things, hast sealed their vision. Glory and honor and power be unto thee, inscrutable Wisdom, for ever and ever. Amen!"

"Why, it is like a Catholic prayer!" whispered Melicent to her brother. "And he quotes St. John of the Cross, and the Koran, and Ecce Homo. He must be an eclectic minister."

The congregation went out with very glum faces, and scattered to their various homes. Only the deacon waited in the porch, as in duty bound, to invite the minister home to dinner.

The deacon stared. "We were expecting the Reverend John Conway to preach to-day, as a candidate for our pulpit," he said, eyeing Mr. Griffeth suspiciously. "Do you come in his place?"

An expression of perplexity, instantly succeeded by one of poignant amusement, passed over the minister's face. Then he became grave. "It seems that I have come in his place," he said, "but most unwillingly. Brother Conway met with an accident which delayed him. He sent his regrets to you by me, and hopes he may be here this afternoon. Good-morning, sir! I will not burden your hospitality to-day."

The deacon's face cleared. It was a blessed relief to find that they would have no more to do with this man.

The stranger crossed the portico to where Melicent and Carl still lingered, having overheard this conversation. "I beg your pardon!" he said. "But will you have the kindness to tell me of what denomination the church is in which I have been preaching?"

"It is Baptist," Carl replied; "of[467] the kind, I think, they call 'Hard-shelled.'"

Melicent immediately insisted on his going home with them. "We can at least protect you from the Hard-shells until your own friends find you," she said.

The invitation being cordially given, and seconded by Carl, the minister thankfully accepted it, and they started on their homeward way. "My blunder is likely to give great offence to one-half the town, and great amusement to the other half," he said, as they went along. "I am truly thankful to find a refuge from both."

Mrs. Yorke received her unexpected guest with the greatest kindness; Mr. Yorke, with the greatest courtesy. It was one of the pleasantest families in the world to visit. Not easily accessible to everybody, nor quick to form intimacies, whomever they did receive, they made at once at home. There was a charming ease in their company. Your sole reminder that they understood the proprieties of life was the fact that they never sinned against them.

Seated in the midst of the family, who gathered about him, the minister related the adventures of the last twenty-four hours to his smiling auditory. Only two persons present were grave. Edith could perceive nothing ludicrous in the circumstances. It was a most sad and uncomfortable fact that Minister Conway should have got into the mud, she thought; and, as to preaching in the wrong pulpit, that seemed to her a very awful mistake. The other solemn face belonged to little Eugene Cleaveland, five years old, Major Cleaveland's youngest son. The child was a pet of the Yorkes, and always stayed with them when his father was away from home. He had quite adopted them as his relatives. Mr. and Mrs. Yorke were his aunt and uncle. The others were all cousins. Leaning on Clara's lap, quite unmindful of her caressing hand in his hair or on his cheek, he gazed with large, bright black eyes at the minister, drinking in every word, and thinking his own thoughts.

"Isn't your God as good as their God is?" he asked suddenly in the the first pause.

"We have all the same God, my child," the minister replied; and immediately added to the others, "I perceive that we had better change the subject, lest the little ones should be scandalized. I fancy I even read reproof in the eyes of your niece, madam. And, by the way, she looks like some solemn, medieval religious."

"It is odd she should suggest that thought to you," Mrs. Yorke said. "The child is a Catholic. Come, my dear, and show Mr. Griffeth what a pretty prayer-book you have. It was given me by a very lovely and zealous French lady whom I knew in Paris. I thought it would do Edith most good."

Edith approached the minister with hesitation, half-pleased with him, half-doubtful. But while he talked pleasantly to her, glancing over the book without a sign of prejudice, explaining and praising here and there, her doubts were forgotten. What the child instinctively felt was, that the man had no religious convictions; but, her reason being undeveloped, she could not understand what he lacked. When he learned that she was half-Polish, he delighted her by telling how, in the glorious days of Poland, when the nobles heard Mass, they unsheathed their swords at the Gospel, to show that they were ready on the instant to do[468] battle for the faith, and he promised to procure for her a little handful of earth from the sacred soil of Praga. He then repeated and translated for her an anonymous hymn to the Holy Innocents, written in the fourth century, and, at Mrs. Yorke's request, copied it into the prayer-book. It was this:

Miss Yorke presently excused herself with the smiling announcement that she must prepare the dessert for dinner, and Clara went out to gather flowers for the dinner-table, taking Eugene Cleaveland with her.

They roamed about the edge of the woods, finding wild-roses and violets; they ventured into wet places for the blue flower-de-luce; they gathered long plumes of ferns, and in a dusky cloister where a brook had hidden one of its windings, they found a cardinal-flower lighting the place like a lamp.

Suddenly the little boy cried out, and began to dance about. There was a bug gone away up in his jacket, he declared.

"There's nothing on you, little dear!" she said. "Come home, now. It is dinner-time, and you must help me to arrange the flowers. There is no bug, child; it is all your imagination."

The last exclamation referred to a creeping at his throat; and out hopped an active little frog, which had been circumnavigating the child ever since he pulled the last blue lily.

They went homeward with their baskets of flowers, and encountered on the way Boadicea Patten with her baby in her arms. She had come to see her son and daughter, and was trying to keep out of sight of the front windows, where she saw a stranger.

Clara Yorke immediately seized upon the infant. No baby ever escaped her caresses; and this one the young ladies had taken under their especial charge. They supplied its wardrobe, and went to see it, or had it come to them every week. It was a pretty child, bright, white, and well-mannered, with a lordly air of taking homage as if it were due.

When Clara entered the parlor, she found only the gentlemen and Edith there; but that did not prevent her insisting on her little one being received with enthusiasm. She called attention to the wonderful dimpled shoulders and elbows, pulled its eyelids down pitilessly to display the long lashes, uncurled its yellow locks and let them creep back into rings again, and crowned it with violets, quoting Browning:

Then she consigned the child to her brother. "I have domestic cares to attend to," she said, "and you must amuse my beauty while I am gone. 'What must you do?' Talk to it, of course. 'What shall you say?' Why, Owen, do not be stupid! Say whatever you can think of that is suited to the darling's capacity. Come, Eugene, we have important affairs on hand."

Carl looked at his charge with immense good-will and not a little perplexity, and it stared back solemnly at him, waiting to be entertained. Something must be said.

"What is your opinion concerning the origin of ideas?" asked the young man, at length, with great politeness.

Instantly the little face brightened with delighted intelligence; the lips became voluble in a strange language, and the dimpled hands caught at Carl's sunny locks.

"Oh! for an interpreter," he exclaimed. "If we had an interpreter, we could confound the savants. Clara," to his sister just returning, "what is this little wretch saying?"

"He is saying that he loves everybody in the whole world!" she cried, catching the babe in her arms, and half-stifling it with kisses. "And, now, please come to dinner."

"It is not a bad solution," mused the minister, as he and Carl went out last. "Perhaps love is the root from which our ideas grow. Undoubtedly the kind of ideas a person has depends on the nature and degree of his loving."

"You see that here we stand not upon the order of our going," Clara laughed back from the doorway; "or, rather, we follow the style of ecclesiastical processions, and place the principal person last."

There was a cluster of yellow violets by Mr. Griffeth's plate. His eyes often turned on them, and always with a grave expression. "They remind me of a brother I have lost," he said at length to Mrs. Yorke. "Philip used to paint flowers beautifully, and a bunch of yellow violets was the last thing he painted. If you were not new-comers in Seaton, I should think it possible that you might have seen or heard of him. He went to school here to an old minister, Mr. Blake, the predecessor, I believe, of Dr. Martin."

"Philip Griffeth!" Mrs. Yorke exclaimed, blushing with surprise, "Why, I went to school with him. I recollect him perfectly. This is my native place, Mr. Griffeth. Yes, Philip was the favorite of every one, teacher and pupils. He used to help me with my Virgil. Mr. Blake made us all study Latin, and the boys had to study Greek. The minister thought that no person should be admitted into polite society who did not know one at least of these languages. I recollect him, a small, pompous man, with an air of fierceness very foreign to his character. He wished to be thought a stern and fateful personage, while in truth he was the softest man alive. When he used to come to our house, and extend his awful right hand to me, I always knew that the left hand, hidden behind his back, held a paper of candy."

The discovery of this mutual friend formed a strong tie between the minister and his new acquaintances, so that they seemed quite like old friends. The family pressed him to stay till evening, when they would send for some of his people to come for him; and he, nothing loth, consented.

"But, I warn you," he said to the young people, when they had returned to the parlor, "that, unless you allow me to see you often, this hospitality will be a cruel kindness. I should find it harder to lose than never to have had your society. I could not console myself with less than the best, as this pretty rustic did," taking up an illustrated copy of Maud Müller that lay at his elbow. "But what a perfect thing it is!" he added.

Mrs. Yorke was just passing through the room on her way to take an afternoon siesta. She paused by the table, and glanced at the book. "It is perfect all but the ending," she said; "that is too pre-Raphaelite for me. Doubtless it would have happened quite so; but I do not wish to know that it did."

"But should not art be true to nature?" asked Mr. Griffeth. He liked to hear and see the lady talk. Her gentle ways and delicate, pathetic grace, all charmed him.

"Art should be true to nature when nature is true to herself," she replied. "I am not a pre-Raphaelite. I believe that the mission of art is to restore the lost perfection of nature, not to copy and perpetuate its defects. Otherwise it is not elevating; and what it makes you admire chiefly is the talent which imitates, not the genius which sees. I believe that genius is insight, talent only outsight. My husband defines genius as artistic intuition. Why should the poet have cheated us into loving a fair, empty shape? If the girl had been disappointed, and had lived apart and lonely to the end of her days, the picture would have been lovely and pathetic. But now it is revolting."

"I agree with mamma," Miss Yorke interposed. "If Maud Müller had married the judge, she would never have appreciated him. If she had been capable of it, she could not have condescended to the other after having seen him."

"I should believe," the minister said, "that, if she had possessed true nobleness of soul, she could not have so lowered herself, even if she had seen nothing better. To my mind, people rise to their proper level by spontaneous combustion, needing no outward spark, women as well as men. The philosophy of the Comte de Gabalis may be very true as to gnomes, sylphs, and salamanders; but for women I think that such radical changes never occur. That theory belongs to those men who, as Mrs. Browning says, believe that 'a woman ripens, like a peach, in the cheeks chiefly.'"

"So we have disposed of poor Maud Müller," said Mrs. Yorke. "I repent me of having been so harsh with the sweet child. Let us say that the poet wronged her; that in truth she faded away month by month, and grew silent, and shadowy, and saint-like, not knowing what was the matter with her, but feeling a great need of God's love; and so died."

With a sigh through the smile of her ending, Mrs. Yorke passed noiselessly from the room. The shadows of the vine-leaves seemed to strain forward to catch at her white dress, and the sunlight dropping through turned her hair to gold. Then shadow and sunlight fell to the floor and kissed her footsteps, missing her.

Mr. Yorke was out walking about his farm, inquiring of Patrick how many months it took in that country for plants to get themselves above ground; if green peas were due early in September; if cucumbers were not in danger of freezing before they arrived at maturity; if their whole crop, in short, did not promise to give them their labor for their pains; and making various other depreciatory comments which his assistant inwardly resented. The young people sat in the parlor and improved their acquaintance. Soon they found themselves talking of personal matters and family plans, especially those relating to Owen.

Mr. Griffeth strongly urged his remaining in Seaton. "I think it would be better to remain if you should conclude to study law," he said. "You could pursue your studies here without the distractions of a city life, and you could begin practice with a clearer field. You would at once be prominent here, but in the city there would be a crowd of able and experienced practitioners in your way."

"'I would rather be second in[471] Athens than first in Eubœa,'" Carl objected.

"Undoubtedly!" was the immediate response. "But you might save time by trying your wings in Eubœa before essaying your flight in Athens."

The sister eagerly seconded the proposal, delighted with any plan by which they could keep their brother with them and yet not injure his prospects. Carl listened with favor. His new friend had completely captivated him; and, sure of such congenial companionship, Seaton appeared to him a tolerable place to live in.

"Of course, I am not quite disinterested," Mr. Griffeth said. "I want you to stay. But, also, it does seem to me well. The place is promising. I am told that it has some superior people, and that it is growing rapidly. My own coming was a chance, and already I rejoice in it. One impulse pushed me toward the south, another toward the north: obeying a philosophical law, I came east, and here I shall stay. I recognized a Providence in it. May not you the same?"

"What can I do when the evening star pleads with me?" said Carl with a smile. When he was pleased with his youngest sister, he called her Hesper.

"And you know, Carl, you promised to teach me to spell, this summer," said Clara. "I cannot spell!" she confessed to the minister.

"But it is not ignorance," she said, blushing very much. "English spelling is nothing but memory, you know. Now, my memory is situated in my heart, not my head, and it retains only what I love or hate. You do not expect me to be fond of vowels and consonants, or enamored of poly-syllables, surely."

The minister protested that he was always enchanted to meet with an educated person who could not spell. It was, he said, the mark of a mind which catches so ardently at the soul of a word that it misses the form. "I have no doubt," he said, "that you might talk with a person a hundred times, and comprehend his character perfectly, yet not be able to tell the color of his eyes nor the shape of his nose. You could also go unerringly to a place you had once visited, though you could not direct a person there. You do not gather your knowledge like corn in the ear, but in the golden grain; and when anybody wants the cob, you have to go searching about in waste places for it."

Mr. Yorke came in, and presently Mrs. Yorke, with a little sleep-mistiness hanging yet about her.

"Where have you been, auntie?" cried Eugene Cleveland, running to her. He had his hands full of dandelion curls, which he began hanging in her ears, having thus adorned the young ladies.

"Mr. Griffeth says that I am a little man," the child announced, with an air of consequence. The remark had been made an hour before, and was not yet forgotten. The lad had indeed an exceedingly good opinion of himself, and never forgot a word of praise.

Clara called him to her. "You are no more a man," she said, "than potato-balls are potatoes."

He sobered instantly, and went about for some time with a very forlorn countenance. After awhile, when she had forgotten the remark,[472] he came back to her. "Cousin Clara, do potato-balls ever grow into potatoes?" he asked anxiously.

In the evening the Universalist deputation arrived, and took their minister away with them.

"Now, Pat, you mark my words," said Betsey, as she saw the family stand on the moonlight veranda to watch their visitor down the avenue: "that man will marry one of the Yorke girls."

Betsey considered the speedy marriage of the young ladies a consummation devoutly to be wished.

Patrick was still smarting under the insults offered to his garden, and would not in any case have hailed the alliance of a minister with the family. "Oh, bali! they wouldn't look at him!" he replied crossly. "A rogue of a minister, with his nose in the air!"

Betsey went into the house, banged the door behind her, and began setting the kitchen to rights with great vigor. She swept up the hearth so fiercely that a cloud of ashes came out and settled on the mantelpiece, and put the chairs back against the wall with an emphasis that made them rattle.

Patrick put his head in at the door, prudently keeping his body out, and looked at her with a deprecating smile. "Now, Betsey!" he said.

"You needn't speak to me again, to-night," she exclaimed, looking severely away from him. "You've said enough for one time."

She faced him. "I wonder if in your country it is considered a compliment to tell a woman that she has a bee in her bonnet," she said.

"Ah! is that where you are?" said Pat, coming half into the room. "I never meant the least harm in my life. And, sure, Betsey, did ye ever see a bonnet without a b?"

CHAPTER VIII.
FATHER RASLE.

One summer morning, Mr. Yorke appeared at the breakfast-table with a very sour face. He was bilious, and he had not slept well. Even Hester's cooing ways failed to mollify him.

He moved his chair impatiently. "Yes, your mother insisted on my taking charcoal instead of calomel, and I think she must have slily administered a lucifer-match with it: I radiate heat."

Mrs. Yorke took these complaints very quietly. She knew that nothing could be further from her husband's heart than to be dissatisfied with anything she did. "We were disturbed by that fearful noise," she said quietly, taking her place at the table.

Owen began to laugh. The Seaton "cast-iron band" had been out the night before, and the young man found himself very much amused by it.

"Well, sir, in this case it is the law of common decency, of respect for the clergy, and courtesy to strangers.[473] Father Rasle, the Catholic priest, came here yesterday, and that Babel of cow-bells, and sleigh-bells, and mill-saws, and tin trumpets, and wooden drums, and I know not what else, was before his door. I call it a shameful outrage."

The young ladies all exclaimed indignantly; but Edith dropped her eyes and was silent. Theology was nothing to her, and as yet her faith had no life in it. She was deeply ashamed of that religion which all seemed to scoff at save those who tolerated it for her sake. Only her promise held her to it. That the voice of the people is not always, is very seldom, the voice of God, she could not be expected to know; neither could she be expected to love that church which as yet she had heard spoken of only by its enemies. She did not dream of forsaking the religion of her mother; but her constancy to it seemed to her of the same nature as Mrs. Rowan's constancy to her drunken husband.

After breakfast, her uncle bade her dress to go with him to call on Father Rasle. She obeyed, though with a shrinking heart. She had heard priests spoken of in the street and by the school-children with contempt and reviling, and her impression was that they must be very disagreeable persons to meet. But the religion was hers, and she must stand by it, never confessing to a doubt nor allowing any one to reproach it unchallenged by her. And if she stood by the religion, she must stand by the priest.

Father Rasle, being only a missionary there, had no house in Seaton, but stopped with a decent Irish family. It was a poor place, and the room in which he received Mr. Yorke and his niece was as humble as could well be imagined. But there needed no fine setting to show that he was that noblest object on earth, a Christian gentleman. His age might have been a little over forty, and his manner was almost too grave and dignified, one might think at first; but it soon appeared that he could be genial beyond most men.

Mr. Yorke presented his niece, and, before explaining their errand, apologized for the insult that had been offered the priest the night before.

"Oh! I certainly did not expect the honor of a serenade," said Father Rasle, laughing pleasantly. "But, if it gratified them to give it, I am not in the least offended. It is, perhaps, a loss to me that I did not care; for I might have derived some profit from the mortification. On the contrary, I own to you, sir, that I enjoyed that concert. It was the most laughable one I ever heard."

Mr. Yorke looked at the speaker in astonishment. Here was a kind of pride, if pride it could be called, which he could not understand. In such circumstances, his own impulse would have been to shoot his insulters down instantly. What he despised he wanted to crush, to rid the earth of, to spare himself the sight of; what the priest despised he pitied, he wished to raise, to excuse, to spare God and the world the sight of. It was admirable, his visitor owned, but inimitable by him.

Not being able to say any more on the subject, he then stated Edith's case. "You will know what she needs," he concluded, "and I shall see that she follows your directions."

The father questioned his young catechumen, and found her in a state of the most perfect ignorance. "The child is a heathen!" he said, in his odd, broken English, his smile taking the harsh edge off the words. "She[474] must study the catechism—this little one—and see how much of it she will have to say to me when I come here again in a month. I will then prepare her for her first confession."

Edith uttered not a word, except to answer his questions. She was not sure whether she liked him or not; she was only certain that he did not offend her.

There was a little more talk, then Mr. Yorke rose to go, cordially inviting the priest to visit him. As they were going, "I think, Edith," he said, "that you should kneel and ask Father Rasle's blessing."

She knelt at once, for her mother's and her uncle's sake, with a murmured, "Please to bless me, sir!" But when he had given the blessing, laying his hand upon her head, and looking down into her face with that expression of serious sweetness, she felt a dawning sense of reverence and confidence, and perceived dimly some sacredness in him.

She went to Mass the next day in the little chapel that had been desecrated. The picture-frames still hung on the walls, with the rags of the stations in them. There was enough left to show how Christ the Lord had suffered, and this new insult was but a freshening of the original text. Mr. Yorke sat on the bench beside his niece, and she stood, or knelt, or sat with the rest, not in the least understanding what it all meant, but impressed by the gravity and earnestness of those around her. When Mass was over, the priest, who had seen them, sent for them into the sacristy. He had some books for Edith, and wanted to point out the lessons she was to learn first.

"And I have a present for you," he said, giving her an ormolu crucifix, with a broken foot that showed marks of violence. "This is the crucifix that was torn from our tabernacle. I want you to keep it; and whenever you are called upon to suffer, and feel disposed to complain, look at this, and remember that our Lord was not even allowed to hang upon his cross in peace."

She took the crucifix from his hand silently, and held it against her breast as she went out. She did not propose to endure suffering; she desired and looked for happiness; but something in this relic stirred her to a strange pity, mingled with anger. The idea that lay behind it was to her dim and vague; but, failing to grasp that, she would have defended with her life the symbol of that monstrous wrong and that heart-breaking patience. Reaching home, she went directly to her own chamber and hung the crucifix beneath the picture of her father, then stood and looked at it awhile. There was a wish in her heart to do something—to offer some reparation to the real Sufferer behind this image of pain. She kissed with soft lips the broken foot of the cross, and a tear fell where she kissed. She took it down, and pressed the rough edge against her bosom till the sharp points pierced the skin and brought a stain of blood. Then, hearing some one call her, she hastily replaced it, and brought as an offering to it a precious bouquet of ribbon-grasses, that Carl had gathered that morning to fasten in her hair. She had meant to keep it because of some sweetness with which it was offered, but now she gave it up to that unseen Patience and Love. Her instinctive action proved that the feeling and precept of the church only sanctifies, but does not change the impulse of a pure and tender nature.

"I observe that Edith has an inclination to stay alone a good deal,"[475] Mr. Yorke said, "and I do not wish to have that encouraged. It is not a wholesome disposition. Her father was a visionary, her mother was a visionary, and she is—"

"A vision!" concluded Mrs. Yorke, as Edith appeared, with the thoughts of the last few hours still in her eyes and on her lips.

About that time, Carl received a letter from Miss Mills which he read many times. "You ask my advice," she wrote, "and you tell me that I know better than you know yourself. I would not claim so much as that, but I think I may tell you something more clearly than you yourself perceive it, or confirm you in some thought which you doubt or wish to doubt. As to your choice of a profession and staying in Seaton for the present, you might well try the experiment; but I cannot express any great confidence as to the result. It is almost a disadvantage to you that your powers are so various. There are a good many things which, with application, you could do excellently; whether you have any specialty remains to be proved, and will be hard to prove; for, in order to find that out, you must concentrate your powers, and that you hate to do. If this world were but a playground, then you would have nothing to do but follow in the trail of every new beauty which calls you; but life is earnest, and you must work, or you not only lose what you might accomplish, but you lose yourself. You are one of those whom the devil finds worth fighting for, and, lacking faith to your armor, you have all the more need of labor. Qui laborat orat, might have a sort of truth even for one without faith.

"Let me warn you against two dangers: one is, that you may be injured by flatterers. Not that you like flattery in itself, but it will soothe your painful sense of not having reached your own ideal. It will seem to you that your best must have transpired at least, and that you must have done better than you thought. Not so; receive that soothing praise only when you have striven hard, even though you failed, but never when you have tried weakly or not at all. What the flatterers like in you is not your best, but your worst. They have no wish for you to rise above them; they praise you to keep you low.

"I warn you, too, against your excessive love for the beautiful, in which you are an ultra-pagan. The infinite beauty is alone worthy of that passion with which you seek and admire; and infinite beauty is infinite truth. Seek truth first, and you will always be rewarded by the vision of beauty; but, if you seek beauty first, you will find to your sorrow, possibly to your ruin, that it is often but the mask of falsehood.

"Lay aside some of your fastidiousness, my dear friend, and take up your life strongly with both hands. Do something, even if it should prove to be the wrong thing. Wrong work done honestly prepares us for right work. Strengthen your will, and be manly, as a man should be. Discipline yourself, and you will escape much pain and loss of time, for, let me assure you, Carl, you need either an immensity of resolution or an immensity of suffering.

"My lecture is done, and I am Minerva no longer. My thoughts follow you with solicitude and indulgence. On the night after you left, which you spent on the sea, I went to the quiet chapel near me, and placed you under the protection of Stella Maris. But life has waves and gulfs more fearful than those of the sea, and my prayers for you do not cease with the end of your journey.

"Look well at Robert Yorke's child, remembering what the story of my life is; and then, if you think that I could love her, kiss her on the forehead for me, and tell her that I send a loving greeting."

Owen folded the letter, and hid it in his bosom. He had been walking in the woods, and he returned thoughtfully homeward. The afternoon was sultry and still. The low brooks hissed along like white flames, the branches drooped over the birds that murmured, and the flowers hung wilted. All about the house was silent as he entered. Going through the kitchen, he saw Betsey sitting in the northern window reading a novel. Betsey was the most romantic soul alive, and, having got hold of David Copperfield, was crying her eyes out over poor little Dora. Passing on to the sitting-room, he found his father sitting asleep in a deep wicker-chair, a copy of Religio Medici lying open on his knee. The quiet tone of the book, familiar by many readings, had lulled him into a pleasant slumber, and his hand had dropped with the finger pointing to a passage on which he had closed his eyes: "I love to love myself in a mystery, to pursue my reason to an O altitudo!" From that the reader had gone out into the mystery of sleep with a smile lingering on his face.

"It is the castle of indolence," muttered Owen, stepping noiselessly on. He paused at the foot of the stairs and listened. No sound came down. His sisters, in white wrappers, each with a pillow under her head, were lying on the cool matting in the north chamber, too much exhausted to talk. He went out into the portico, and stood there a moment, seeing no one. Then, turning, he beheld Edith asleep on a bench in the shadow of the vines, her arms thrown up over her head. Smilingly he approached her, literally to obey the command of his friend, and look well to see if his uncle's deserted mistress could love his uncle's child. She was fair enough to love, for all the roughness of her former life had passed away. The bloom of the lily was in her face, warmed now to a rose by the heat, and her hair had a shine of gold.

She stirred, her face grew troubled, and she started up with a cry: "Dick, come back. I did not mean to!"

She sighed on seeing Owen. "I was dreaming that I had hurt Dick, and he was going away angry," she said.

"Why, of course!" she echoed, with a look of surprise. "If I were to do anything to Dick to make him unhappy, I should never forgive myself, never! I have written him a letter to-day, and told him I want him to be a Catholic."

Edith blushed deeply. "No; the good reasons were the reasons why I wanted him to," she said.

SAINT CECILIA.
HER INFLUENCE ON LITERATURE AND THE ARTS.

While the great men who have dreamed of distinguishing their names die and are forgotten, or at least, as Juvenal said of Alexander, become the idle theme of a rhetorical recitation, those who in this world have lived and suffered for God leave behind them, through all ages, an immortal memory.

The work for which each of us has been sent into the world has been conspicuously accomplished by the saints. This makes them our rightful masters; and, while we rarely imitate them, we can at least understand that such heroism must elevate the soul, and we admire them all the more that we feel ourselves unable to follow in their steps. Nor is such a recognition a useless sentiment. From the mansion of glory whence they see all things, the saints never cease to interest themselves in the affairs of the world, and among the dogmas of the Catholic Church which our estranged brethren have rejected, the communion of saints is one of the most touching and sublime.

There is indeed between the two worlds, visible and invisible, a strange but undeniable communication. Each of us, in investigating his own soul, will find there certain phenomena which have their origin neither in ourselves nor in the outer world: sadness from no apparent cause, inexplicable sensations of internal happiness, bursts of enthusiasm or sudden inspirations which Plato attributed to superior intelligences. Many of us, recalling some miraculously escaped danger, and profoundly touched by this heavenly protection, will bear willing witness, unless checked by dread of worldly criticism, to this influence of the saints and angels on our human career. "The people," with the good sense which so happily inspires them (at least, where the sophists have not succeeded in corrupting them)—"the people" believe in it; and when the peasant or the poor working-woman gives a name in baptism to the child just entering on the struggles of life, she believes, in her simple, lucid faith, that she is securing a patron for it. It is not in vain, they say, that a young girl is called Mary; surely she will the more readily share in the sweetness, the self-denial, the incomparable purity, of the Queen of Virgins; the name of Agnes will be a pledge of innocence; that of Theresa promises a heart of fire; that of Cecilia, a soul gentle yet strong, eager for harmony; while the name of Francis recalls heroic isolation; those of Paul and of John, indefatigable zeal and perfect charity. If it is not always thus, it is because the human soul is free to resist grace; but these occasional rebellions do not prevent a harmony between heaven and earth as mysterious as it is sure.

These thoughts have frequently passed through our mind; but one day last October, while visiting the church of St. Cecilia in Rome, they monopolized it.

In such moments, we persuade[478] ourselves very easily that we can express them in writing. Undoubtedly, they are not new; but, if the life of this great saint, one of the glories of Rome, is well known, it is a story which will bear repetition: really fine old melodies never lose their charm, and, if they thrill one human soul with a divine emotion, who will complain of hearing them again?

HISTORY OF SAINT CECILIA.

In the year 250 after Christ, in the reign of Septimus Severus, at a time when the Roman Empire was still the most formidable power of the world, there lived in Rome a young girl who will be famous when the imperial glories shall be forgotten.

Beauty, the reflection of heaven in the human countenance; grace, mysterious charm whose origin is invisible; modesty, that exquisite reserve of a virgin soul; nobility, precious perfume of the past; and, above all, the power of loving, the most magnificent and the most powerful present of the Creator to the created: all these gifts were united in the daughter of Cæcilius. It was an illustrious family: in the records of the Republic it counted eighteen consuls and several conquerors, nor had it degenerated under the Empire.

To-day, when the traveller, weary from a day spent in the galleries of Rome, setting forth from the city towards sunset, wanders pensively down the long Appian Way, while he contemplates with emotion the outlines of the aqueducts with their broken arches, the Sabine mountains gilded by the light, and all that celebrated landscape of the environs of Rome, majestic and melancholy as a fallen queen, he finds upon his right, rising like a great tower, the tomb of Cæcilia Metella. There slept of yore the long-forgotten ancestress of her who will render immortal, for time and for eternity, the name of Cæcilius.

Cecilia was eighteen. The Roman poor knew her charity. Often had they seen her in the caves of the martyrs alone, or only accompanied by a faithful servant. Her father, although he respected her religion, did not share it: he hoped, indeed, at a suitable time to marry his daughter to some distinguished husband, and to see himself, through her, live again in her beloved children. But Cecilia had raised her heart above this world, and night and day prayed that the palm of virginity she had dreamed of should not be taken from her.

He whom her parents had chosen for her seemed not unworthy of the honor. Though still a pagan, Valerian possessed at least those natural gifts which prepare the soul for faith, hope, and charity, the supernatural gifts of Christ crucified. Nevertheless, who can express the fears of the young Christian? Had not God accepted all her heart as she had offered it? Could a pagan understand this mystery, and would not this union of the soul with an invisible spouse seem a strange folly to a man still living in the world of the senses? More than one Christian soul has felt these chaste doubts. It is honorable to hesitate before making for a mortal a sacrifice for which a young girl sometimes can never console herself. Cecilia felt these terrors most acutely, but she loved God well enough to feel perfect confidence in him. So she poured forth her whole soul in prayer, and, against all hope, trusted in his aid.

So, when, towards evening, already married in the eyes of the world, she found herself alone with her husband,[479] she said to him in that incomparable conversation whose charm has come down to us in her life:

"There is a secret, Valerian, that I wish to confide to you. I have a lover, an angel of God, who watches over me with jealous care. If you preserve inviolate my virginity, he will love you also as he loves me, and will overpower you with his favors."

"Go to Urban. When the poor hear my name, they will take you to his sanctuary: he will explain to you our mysteries."

Drawn by an unknown power, the young man consented to go. We know the result of this decision—his interview with the Pope in the catacombs, his conversion, and his baptism. Still dressed in his white robe, he returned to Cecilia. He could now understand the love of the angels, and its perfect beauty. In future, he loved Cecilia as his sister in God, to whom belong the heart and mind.

In those Christian ages others loved as he did. Undoubtedly most of them carried their secret with them to the tomb; but among those whose genius has made them famous, Dante had his Beatrice; Petrarch sang of Laura: and these pure loves, unknown to the ancient pagans, and scoffed at by our modern pagans, will remain an ornament to the soul, an act of faith in its immortality, and for us who read their history a breath of heaven on earth.

No one knows what conversation took place, in those hours of rapture and prayer, between this pair, whose marriage was to be perfected in heaven; what thanksgivings they rendered to God, who in a moment transforms hearts: nor would it be easy to describe. Of all the arts, music alone might perhaps dare to attempt it, and the revelation would require the genius of Handel or Beethoven.

So, when the beloved brother Tiburtius sought them, what eloquence they displayed to prove to him that his gods were only idols! Subdued by the mysterious charm of the Christian virgin, conquered by the eagerness of the convert, Tiburtius also wished to see the angel who watched over Cecilia. If for this it was necessary to be purified, purified he would be; and thus became the first conquest of his brother, who had besought God for it.

Such souls were too beautiful for pagan Rome. In the absence of Septimus Severus, Almachius, the governor, summoned Valerian and Tiburtius before his tribunal. The two young patricians avowed their faith in Christ, to the great scandal of the worldly and prosperous. Valerian went to his martyrdom as to a triumph. He went to wait for Cecilia in heaven.

Tiburtius did not forsake him. On the Appian Way, four miles from the city, they were beheaded for having dared to worship a different God from those of the Empire. Cecilia piously reclaimed their bodies, and prepared to rejoin them. Called in her turn to answer for her conduct, she disconcerted the judge. Before such purity, innocence, and heroism, entreaties, artifices, and threats failed; the daughter of Cæcilius, convicted of loving the poor and a crucified God, was instantly confined in the bath-room of her own house, there to be suffocated in a hot vapor bath. But in the midst of this fiery atmosphere[480] she remained uninjured. The stupefied jailers related how they had discovered her singing the praises of God. Such a delusion could but provoke Almachius. The executioner was summoned. With a trembling hand, he inflicted three wounds on the neck of the virgin martyr, without succeeding in severing the head. Then, terrified himself, he fled. Stretched on the flags, bathed in her blood, Cecilia lived three days. The Christians gathered round her. She was able to bid farewell to the poor, to whom she had bequeathed her property. Then, feeling her strength fail, while Urban was in the act of giving her his blessing, she drew her robe around her, and, turning her face away, gave back her soul to God.

According to her last desire, the Pope transformed the house that had witnessed her martyrdom into a church. The bath-room became a chapel; and by its arrangement bears witness to-day to the truth of the saint's life. One can still see the mouth of the pipes which let in the vapor, covered with a grating; and on the same flags where the Roman virgin expired, the kneeling Christian can ponder in his heart the example of heroism that she has given to the world. He who has not had the good fortune to pray on the tombs of the martyrs cannot appreciate the strength one finds there, or what precepts their relics give forth. The martyrs are the incontrovertible witnesses of the value of faith, of the power of love; and it is said that their beatified spirits lend to these bones, which were their bodies, an all-powerful eloquence.

The remains of the young girl were taken down into the catacombs of St. Callixtus, and remained there six centuries. After the invasion of the Lombards, most unhappily, all trace was lost of them till, in 822, the place where they were hidden was revealed to Pope St. Pascal.

The long-sought coffin was placed in the basilica of St. Cecilia, which had been repaired by the Pope's care. It was placed under the high altar. And even in our day the custodian points out to the pilgrim a curious fresco of the thirteenth century, representing the apparition of the saint to the sleeping Pope. In 1599, Cardinal Sfondrate ordered the tomb to be opened with solemnity. To the great delight of Christian Rome, the corpse of the Roman virgin, respected by centuries, appeared, miraculously preserved.

The chaste folds of her dress were restrained by a girdle. At her feet were found the blood-stained cloths which had bound her wounds; and her arms, thrust forward, still seemed to serve as a veil. Three fingers of her right hand were open, only one of the left, as if even in dying she had wished to avow her belief in one God in three persons. Finally, so that she might not give to the world her last look, but think only of Christ, her spouse, by a supreme effort she had turned her head aside.

Thus she reposes on her bier of cypress; thus extended on the flags she had died; and thus a great artist has faithfully represented her to us. The celebrated statue of Etienne Maderno, lying on its side, full of modesty and of grace, seems the dying virgin herself; and the whiteness of the marble, which so resembles the paleness of death, adds yet more to the illusion. Seen in this honored place, in this house which was the saint's and has become God's, this masterpiece of Christian sculpture, admirably executed and in exquisite taste, touches the heart profoundly.

THE INFLUENCE OF ST. CECILIA ON LITERATURE.

Such a beautiful story could not fail to be repeated. As long as the persecutions lasted, to strengthen their courage, the faithful passed from mouth to mouth these details which had been so affectionately collected. So great, indeed, was the enthusiasm for the memory of Cecilia that she obtained the great and rare honor of being mentioned in the canon of the Mass with Saints Felicitas, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucy, Agnes, and Anastasia. Thus for fifteen centuries, throughout the Catholic world, wherever the holy sacrifice is celebrated, her name is invoked; and, truly immortal, each hour, each moment perhaps, her memory rises from earth to heaven with incense and with prayer.

Her acts, chronicled in the fifth century, have since then been the subject of several works. We shall only mention the Greek translation of Simeon Metaphrastes, the verses of St. Adhelme and of the Venerable Bede in England, the works of Flodoard at Rheims, and Rhoban Maur. Then, during that magnificent efflorescence of philosophy and Catholic literature, we see Victor de Beauvais relate the story of St. Cecilia;[109] Albert the Great, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Bonaventure, preaching several sermons in her honor. In the fifteenth century, the eloquent St. Vincent Ferrer recited her praises; but the Reformation came soon after, and it is only in Italy now that they think of the glories of St. Cecilia.

In vain her history is its own defence; in vain may it claim in its favor the imposing testimony of Christian tradition, in the East as in the West, during fourteen centuries; in vain the liturgies of the churches of Rome, of Milan, of Toledo, of Greece, and of Gaul have inserted in the office for the 22d of November fragments of the text; in vain even the discovery of her body testified anew to its veracity. Towards the middle of the seventeenth century, the Jansenist school rejected it.

The historical works on the first centuries of Christianity which during the last forty years have been undertaken in France and Germany, by tracing out the original sources with scrupulous care, and taking advantage of monuments, have dealt justly with this excessive criticism.

But error is more prone to spread than easy to uproot. Launoy, that "great demolisher of saints," who, in attacking the most poetic beliefs of the faithful, strayed into the road to rationalism, made a school. Even now Feller's Dictionary of Universal Biography, and, following him (for these works usually copy each other), those of Michaud and of F. Didot, have repeated, on the authority of Tillemont and of Baillet, that the authenticity of the life of St. Cecilia is very doubtful, although the arguments cited in support of this thesis had been successfully refuted by Laderchi early in the eighteenth century,[110] and annihilated for ever twenty years ago by R. P. Dom Guéranger, in his excellent book on St. Cecilia.[111]

The touching story of St. Cecilia must also inspire poets. Without [482]mentioning the ancient hymns to be found in the Italian, Spanish, and Gallic liturgies, several poems in her honor may be quoted. At the time of the Renaissance, Baptiste Spagnuolo made it the subject of a real epic poem, where we find, as in the Æneid, the speeches of Venus and Juno, and the conspiracies of the inhabitants of Olympus against common mortals. The god of pagan love, accompanied by his mother, comes sadly to Juno to complain of the disdain of Cecilia, who wishes to remain a virgin. Forgetting her resentment, the wife of Jupiter inspires the father of Cecilia with the idea of uniting his daughter to a pagan. Foiled in their attempt by the conversion of Valerian, the angry goddess instigated Mars to suggest to Almachius the plan of drowning in blood this Christian band, rebels against the Olympian gods. Among the nine hundred verses may be found some fine ones, but we must confess that these unfortunate pagan reminiscences, so popular in the sixteenth century, ruin the poet's work for us.

Happily, the Roman virgin was to have her life, her death, and her glories sung in poems of purer inspiration. Angelus Tangrinus, priest of Monte Cassino,[112] wrote on this subject a long epithalamium,[113] which lacks neither grace of expression nor of thought.

The English poet Pope has also written an ode to St. Cecilia. The poem is elegantly versified, but cold and unmarked by any Christian feeling. The classic author recalls the magical effect of music in all ages, nor has he forgotten the adventure of Eurydice; he speaks with complacency of the Styx and of Phlegethon, of Ixion and of Sisyphus, of Proserpine and the Elysian Fields. Finally, feeling a pang of remorse, and remembering that he had dedicated his ode to a virgin martyr, he asserts that the poets must instantly abandon Orpheus and proclaim Cecilia the queen of music; for if the musician of Thrace drew by his music a spirit from hell, Cecilia by hers raised the soul to heaven.[114]

Very recently, Count Anatole de Ségur has published a dramatic poem, which seems to us the finest homage that poetry has yet offered to St. Cecilia. The style pure and musical, the interest sustained and engrossing, it merits the praises which the best judges have bestowed on it;[115] and we should willingly quote some verses of this exquisite book,[116] did we not prefer to leave our readers the pleasure of perusing it as a whole.

THE INFLUENCE OF SAINT CECILIA ON THE FINE ARTS.

We have seen the story of St. Cecilia inspire eloquence and poetry, but it was destined to exercise a still greater influence on the fine arts. There are, indeed, some general rules for these intimate relations between art and holiness that it would be well to remember. Besides, we may say that the saints were themselves powerful artists. Who has sought the ideal more eagerly than these indefatigable lovers of heavenly things? But they have not contented themselves with seeking infinite beauty in an abstract form; they have endeavored, as far as it was possible to human weakness, to realize it in their lives. As the sculptor [483]cuts into a block of marble to render it into beautiful forms, they, with obstinate labor, have sought to model their souls, to render them more pure, less unworthy of God. The contemplation of martyrdom, so habitual to the first Christians, gave them that serene dignity now become so rare. As a bride prepares herself for the bridegroom, so did these souls of virgins, of mothers, of the young and of the old, endeavor, day by day, to grow in grace in the eyes of Jesus Christ, till the blade of the executioner harvested them for heaven. The soul, grown beautiful, transfigures in its turn the body which it animates, and the living mirror of the countenance reflects strength and gentleness, peace and ardent zeal, purity and ecstatic rapture. Thus we may fairly conclude that Christianity has offered to artists, through the saints, not only the perfection of form, but a type of human beauty elevated by an ever-constant love.

But why was St. Cecilia singled out from such an innumerable band of the beatified to become especially dear to artists? Many others, gifted with all worldly advantages, in all the radiance of youth and beauty, died, like her, virgins and martyrs, without attaining her distinction. We will examine later the motives of the musicians in taking her for their patron. As for the artists, they had no long discussion on the causes of this secret sympathy. Each one, when he dreamed of heaven, painted Cecilia, saying to himself, probably, that there was not in the world a young girl's face which could so perfectly express the rapture of the soul listening to ineffable harmony.

It would require time to glance even hastily over the long gallery of pictures of which our saint has been the subject. We will only mention the most celebrated. It is probable that many, scattered through the many galleries of Europe, have escaped us; but we wish only to discuss those which we have appreciated with our own eyes, and, also, the limits of this article would prevent our attempting to mention all.

In order to preserve some regularity in this examination, and that it may not become an adventurous journey through all ages and countries in search of pictures of St. Cecilia, we will separate these works into three classes, and, according to their nature and their predominant tendencies, we will class them, one by one, in the sensualistic, rationalistic, and mystical schools.[117] Nevertheless, we must say that here, as in all other classification, the confines of each class are very apt to mingle with each other. Sometimes, indeed, in the same picture one figure will express sensuality and the others religious emotion.[118]

But let us render judgment on the entire effect of the picture and its predominant tendency. We must repeat here that in all artistic works we note two things: first, the idea of the artist, and, in consequence, the order of psychological effect—sensual pleasures, spiritual joy, or heartfelt rapture—which the picture gives rise to in the souls of those who behold it; [484]secondly, the execution, the dexterity, more or less perfect, with which the idea has been expressed, and, consequently, the greater or less satisfaction felt by connoisseurs, whom a special education has fitted to appreciate the technical merits or faults of a picture. These are two widely different points of view; and, to be just, one should specify from which standpoint a picture is judged, for it might easily happen that the spirit of a picture would be really beautiful and the execution very feeble; the coloring perhaps unpleasing, the perspective faulty, or even the drawing incorrect.

First, The sensual school. Among the greatest geniuses, Rubens, perhaps, falls oftenest into sensualism. It is to the senses, indeed, that he usually addresses himself; hence the vividness of his coloring, the brilliancy of the flesh, which seems palpitating with life and ready to rebound under the critic's finger. But, indeed, except "The Descent from the Cross" and "The Elevation of the Cross," nothing could be less religious than most of his religious pictures. In vain his "St. Cecilia" passionately raises her eyes; her plumpness and her dress wake only worldly thoughts. Others may admire the intensity of the flesh tints, the lustre of the robes. We think such exuberant health little suited to the young Christian who watched and fasted the more entirely to give herself up to prayer. As for the pouting cherubs which frolic round her, they are not adapted for inspiring heavenly aspirations.

But let us look no longer to the sensual school for a type of beauty which it cannot give us. Let us see how St. Cecilia has been understood by those artists who, without troubling themselves much to express Christian ideas, have, at least, endeavored to satisfy the intelligence and to appeal to the mind through the eyes.

Second, The rationalistic school. Of all the painters whom we class under the name of the rationalistic school (that is, spiritual without being Christian), Domenichino is the most celebrated, or, at least, the one who has consecrated the most important works to the glory of St. Cecilia. His frescoes in the church of St. Louis des Français, at Rome, are considered classics. There we see St. Cecilia distributing, from the terrace of her house, her garments to a crowd of poor people, who, in picturesque groups, are disputing over them. Then, Almachius, on his judgment-seat, commanding, by an imperative gesture, the saint to sacrifice to the idols. But she expresses with dignity her horror; and it is in vain for the priests to offer a goat, and in vain incense smokes on a tripod before a statue of Jupiter. Here Cecilia dies, surrounded by kneeling women; some watching her, others putting the blood from her wounds into vases by the aid of sponges. In the meanwhile, the Pope, Urban, gives her his blessing, and an angel brings her, from heaven, a crown and a palm. In yet another fresco, an angel presents crowns to Cecilia and Valerian. And last, on the ceiling is painted the apotheosis of the saint supported in the arms of angels, and borne to heaven.[119]

But Domenichino's picture in the great gallery of the Louvre is more generally known than the frescoes of St. Louis. Here St. Cecilia is standing, and while she sings the glories of God, accompanying herself on a violoncello, an angel offers her a music-book. But she does not heed it, and raises to heaven [485]eyes that seem just melting in tears. Undoubtedly the head is truly dignified and inspired, but we must regret that the religious sentiment is not more manifest in this fine picture, for without the nimbus round the head one might take the saint for a sibyl.[120]

Guido, with his usual grace, has represented Cecilia dying, lying on her side, as in Maderno's statue. She has, however, her arms crossed upon her breast, and the head is not turned aside; two women staunch her bleeding wounds with cloths, and in the background an angel holds a palm, which he hastens to give her.

To Annibal Carracci is usually attributed the St. Cecilia which is to be found in the Museum of the Capitol at Rome. At all events, one easily recognizes, by a certain shade of naturalism, a work of the Bologna school. As before, the saint is singing and accompanying herself on an organ; but here, we see beside her the Blessed Virgin holding the infant Jesus in her arms, and a Dominican priest—expressive faces, apparently enraptured with the celestial concert.

The majority of French artists, above all in the reign of Louis XIV., belong to the rationalistic school. Their composition is clever, their drawing correct, the style dignified, sometimes almost theatrical. They are indeed almost always natural, but with the exception of some of Lesueur's, one rarely perceives in their works the inspiration of a superhuman emotion. There are in the galleries of French art in the Louvre two pictures which do not contradict these observations. Jacques Stella, who lived during the first half of the seventeenth century, has left us a St. Cecilia. She is standing playing on an organ, her eyes modestly lowered, while two angels are singing at her side. She wears a wreath of roses in her hair; but, more charming than inspired, resembles the portrait of a young girl of the age of Louis XIII. with a taste for music.

Mignard's picture is, however, more celebrated. Of finished execution, perfect in detail, so that even the glimpse of landscape seen through the pillars of the portico is treated with great care, it inspires artists with admiration also by the beauty of its coloring. The saint, richly dressed, and wearing a large turban, which gives her a very oriental look, is seated playing on the harp. No wonder that this picture pleased the king, or that he desired it to adorn his collection. Unfortunately, all this magnificence fails to move us. We see the Persian sibyl executing a prelude to her oracles, but nothing reminds us of Rome and the early martyrs, and neither in the piteous figures nor in those up-raised eyes can we trace any Christian feeling.[121]

Third, the mystical school. Beyond the region of the senses and of that which usually bounds the human spirit, opens the supernatural and divine world. One cannot enter here without a pure heart, and to enjoy its beauty we must by prayer and humility, those two wings of the soul, rise above ourselves and transitory things. Thus the mystical school of art, disdained by hypercritical connoisseurs, requires a sort of moral [486]preparation, and might write above its door, as a salutary warning, "Let none enter here save him who loves God entirely." It is here that we must finally seek the type of St. Cecilia in all its supernatural beauty: a human face illuminated by ecstasy.

We shall only mention, for the satisfaction of antiquaries, the St. Cecilia of Cimabue at the entrance to the magnificent Uffizi Gallery at Florence. This also is a type of the Byzantine virgin, not however without a certain majesty in its stiffness. Far more celestial is the impression left on us by the St. Cecilia of blessed Fra Angelico da Fiesole, in that wonderful picture of the "Incoronazione della Vergine," which so worthily commences the great gallery of the Louvre. Cecilia is in the foreground, close to St. Magdalen, recognizable by her long golden hair. Entirely absorbed in the contemplation of Christ, and indifferent to the world, she turns away, so that one sees only the long blue mantle and the crown of roses, emblems of virginity, which encircles her head. Nevertheless, the lost profile which we can only glance at is not without grace, and suggests a countenance radiant with love and purity.

To the mystical school also may be attributed five little pictures by Pinturicchio in the gallery at Berlin, which were much admired by Dom Guéranger. Undoubtedly, Pinturicchio has none of Cimabue's stiffness; we willingly acknowledge his ease and natural grace; but how far he is from the angelic touch of Beato, or the perfection of Raphael!

Perhaps Bologna contains the largest array of fine pictures. In the chapel of St. Cecilia, behind St. Giacomo Maggiore, ten admirable frescoes represent the entire history of St. Cecilia. By the hand of Francesco Francia himself, we have her marriage with Valerian, and her funeral; six other scenes were painted by his pupils, G. Francia, Chiodarolo, and Aspertini. The two representing Pope Urban instructing Tiburtius, and the virgin distributing her property to the poor, are considered Lorenzo Casta's masterpieces. But it is to the Museum one must turn to admire the St. Cecilia of Raphael, one of the most beautiful of pictures, and certainly the most splendid homage offered by art to the Roman virgin. It was to be seen in Paris from 1798 till 1815, when it was taken back to Bologna; and it is well worth a voyage across the Alps. Letting fall the organ she still retains in her hands, St. Cecilia stands, seeming to listen in ecstasy to the concert of angels, contemplating this transporting choir, which the artist has revealed in the yawning skies. At her side stand St. John, St. Paul, St. Magdalen, and St. Augustine; at her feet lie the broken instruments of earthly music. Apparently Raphael wished to recapitulate on this sublime page the highest precepts of philosophy. Here is typified by the instruments of pleasure the world of the senses, whose bonds we must break and free ourselves from. But if it is well to know something of this material world, the realm of the human intellect, it is necessary sometimes to know, like Cecilia, how to raise one's self still higher and prepare to listen to the ineffable music of the soul. Do we accuse ourselves of being sinners? Here is Magdalen with her vase of ointment, and behind her Augustine. They may well inspire us with hope, they also have experienced the temptations of the senses and the proud rebellions of the will, but there they stand to prove that humility and penitence may conquer these. Do you say that, obliged to lead an active life, you daily[487] find yourself overwhelmed by a thousand cares? Behold St. Paul, the apostle of nations, who also experienced pain, labor, shipwrecks, and dangers of all kinds; nevertheless, leaning on his sword, he meditates. Finally, are you philosophers or theologians? Behold St. John, the master of you all. Radiant, he contemplates the enraptured saint, and seems to say, "Forget yourselves for a space; turn from the sound of human words; like Cecilia, listen to the celestial harmonies of the Word. Look at this young girl. She has known how to find love, peace, and happiness."[122]

According to M. Passavant,[123] it was also the history of St. Cecilia, and not the martyrdom of St. Felicitas, as is usually believed, which formed the subject of Raphael's fresco, formerly to be admired in the chapel "De la Magliano" at Trastavere. In 1830, an unknown vandal of a proprietor bethought himself of cutting a huge gash through the centre in order to place a "pew, where he could hear Mass without mingling with his servants!" Thus mutilated, the fresco was transferred to canvas in 1835, and has probably been bought by some more enlightened connoisseur; but the most enthusiastic appreciation cannot now repair such outrages.

Among the moderns, we shall only mention, in Germany, the St. Cecilia of Molitor, whose attitude reminds us much of Raphael's. Certainly it has not the same nobility of style, but we find there the charming grace of the Düsseldorf school. In France, we may mention with praise the St. Cecilia of Paul Delaroche. Seated on an antique chair, dressed in a robe falling in long folds, the virgin with one hand restrains her mantle, bordered with a fringe of gold, with the other she touches a little organ presented to her by two kneeling angels, under the semblance of pure-faced boys. This sweet picture, full of poetry and grace, is a happy contrast to some others, and makes us the more regret the painter of this Christian martyr, so beautiful and chaste—night brooding on the face of the waters.

But of one art St. Cecilia is especially the patron, and that is music. Why the Roman virgin was chosen from so many others, would be very difficult to explain with any precision. The mystic sense of the tradition which makes Cecilia the queen of harmony is now lost, and on this point we are reduced to conjectures. Let us hope, however, that the conjectures we shall advance may seem probable after a little reflection.

Undoubtedly Cecilia, the daughter of a noble family, enjoying all worldly advantages and instructed to please, was taught music. Without doubt, also, she consecrated to God a talent acquired for worldly ends; and in the meetings of the faithful in the catacombs she must have taken part in the psalms and canticles. But the most weighty argument in favor of this glorious patronage which the Christian ages have ascribed to our saint, is the sentence from her life incorporated in the Roman Litany: "Cantantibus organis, Cæcilia Domino decantabat: Fiat cor meum immaculatum ut non confundar."

In January, 1732, a Jansenist critic, otherwise entirely unknown,[124] remarked, in the Mercury of France, "that the selection of St. Cecilia as [488]the patron of music was not a good choice." Indeed, he says, a little farther on, "we can easily see that this saint was very insensible to the charms of music; for on her wedding day, while they played on several instruments, she remained absorbed in prayer."[125] Poor man! he could not get beyond the outer husks of things, and the material side of art. He did not know that elevated natures naturally respond to human music by prayer, that heavenly music. And undoubtedly, he had never heard those sublime melodies which a loving soul sings to itself, and of which the most beautiful concerts of this world are but a feeble echo.

But the Christian people had a better inspiration. They understood that music, and, above all, religious music—the most beautiful of all, whose highest aim is to free us from the senses and lift us out of ourselves, in order to raise us to God—might well be protected by this young girl, whose soul had become like a lyre, from which the faintest breath will wake harmonious vibrations, and who, virgin and martyr—while for three days she lay on the bloody flags, seemed in a long song of love to render back her spirit.

In Rome and Italy, musical societies early placed themselves under the patronage of St. Cecilia. We find one in France, founded in 1571, at Evreux, "by the choristers of the cathedral church, and other pious inhabitants of this city, for the purpose of learning music." Henry III. gave letters patent to the "Society of Madame St. Cecilia," established at Paris, in the church of the "Grands Augustins," by zealous artists and amateurs of music. These societies disappeared with many others in the revolutionary troubles, but their charitable intentions have been revived. Every year, on the 22d of November, the Association of Musical Artists gives in the great church of St. Eustache at Paris a musical mass,[126] whose proceeds are destined to relieve their sick and poor members. Undoubtedly one might often wish more religious music. These pretended masses are far too theatrical to seem much inspired when compared to the oratorios which Handel and Beethoven have dedicated to St. Cecilia. Nor is it there that one could find pious meditation. Nevertheless, we may still rejoice that at a time when materialism has corrupted so many hearts, these solemnities still attract crowds. Indeed, one may say of music as Tertullian said of the soul, that it is naturally Christian. To draw the soul from all that occupies it, weighs on it, and destroys it, to sustain it by prolonged melody, inspiring dreams of infinity, is also to elevate it above itself, and gently prepare it for the broken utterances of prayer.

We know, then, that St. Cecilia is powerful enough in heaven to turn an idler into yet another Christian. Never in vain was she approached while on earth, or her memory celebrated since she has reigned in heaven. She has held her court of littérateurs, poets, painters, and musicians, men with impassioned hearts, which she has gently drawn toward heaven. For each she has obtained some special grace. Let others come; for the treasures she distributes are never exhausted.

In the early Christians who read her history, she inspired love of purity and a martyr's strength; to the artists who have striven to represent her, she has revealed a type of beauty [489]unknown on earth. For the most humble of her servants, she has smiles which heal the soul wonderfully. Who has inspired more masterpieces? who has been more loved than this virgin? who is more alive than she, who has been dead for sixteen centuries? But, martyr to love, she died for Christ. Is this really dying?

DISILLUSIONED.

ORIGIN OF CIVILIZATION.[128]

Sir John Lubbock, though his name is not euphonious, is, we understand, an English scientist, highly distinguished and of no mean authority in the scientific world, as his father was before him. He certainly is a man of large pretensions, and of as much logical ability and practical good sense as we have a right to expect in an English scientist. He, of course, adopts the modern theory of progress, and maintains that the savage is the type of the primitive man, and that he has emerged from his original barbarism and superstition to his present advanced civilization and religious belief and worship by his own energy and persevering efforts at self-evolution or development, without any foreign or supernatural instruction or assistance.

One, Sir John contends, has only to study and carefully ascertain the present condition of the various contemporary savage tribes, or what he calls the "lower races," to know what was the original condition of mankind, and from which the superior races started on their tour of progress through the ages; and one needs only to ascertain the germs of civilization and religion which were in their original condition, to be able to comprehend the various stages of that progress and the principles and means by which it has been effected and may be carried on indefinitely beyond the point already reached. Hence, in the volume before us the author labors to present us a true picture of the present mental and social condition of contemporary savages as that of the primeval man. He assumes that the mental and social condition is that of the infancy of the human race, and by studying it we can attain to the history of "prehistoric" times, assist, as it were, if we may be pardoned the Gallicism, at the earliest development of mankind, and trace step by step the progress from their first appearance on the globe upward to the sublime civilization of the nineteenth century—the civilization of the steam-engine, the cotton spinner and weaver, the steamboat, the steam-plough, the railway, and the lightning telegraph.

This theory, that finds in the savage the type of the primitive man, is nothing very new. It was refuted by the late Archbishop Whately, by the Duke of Argyll in his Primeval Man, and on several occasions by the present writer in The Catholic World. The facts Sir John adduces in the support of this theory, as far as facts they are, had been adduced long ago, and were as well known by us before we abandoned the theory as untenable, as they are by Sir John Lubbock or any of his compeers. They may all, so far as they bear on religion, be found summed up and treated at length in the work of Benjamin Constant, La Religion considerée dans sa Source, ses Developpements, et ses Formes, published in 1832, as well as in a mass of German writers. Sir John[493] has told us nothing of the mental and social condition of savages that we had not examined, we had almost said, before he was born, and which we had supposed was not known by all men with any pretension to serious studies. In fact, we grow rather impatient as we grow old of writers who, because they actually have learned more than they knew in their cradles, imagine that they have learned so much more than all the rest of mankind. No men try our patience more than our scientific Englishmen, who speak always in a decisive tone, with an air of infallibility from which there would seem to be no appeal, and yet utter only the veriest commonplaces, old theories long since exploded, or stale absurdities. We have no patience with such men as Herbert Spencer, Huxley, and Darwin. We are hardly less impatient of the scientists who in our own country hold them up to our admiration and reverence as marvellous discoverers, and as the great and brilliant lights of the age. We love science, we honor the men who devote their lives to its cultivation, but we ask that it be science, not hypothesis piled on hypothesis, nor simply a thing of mere conjectures or guesses.

The modern doctrine of progress or development, which supposes man began in the lowest savage, if not lower still, is not a doctrine suggested by any facts observed and classified in men's history, nor is it a logical induction from any class of known facts, but a gratuitous hypothesis invented and asserted against the Biblical doctrine of creation, of Providence, of original sin, and of the supernatural instruction, government, redemption, and salvation of men. The hypothesis is suggested by hostility to the Christian revelation, prior to the analysis and classification of any facts to sustain it, and the scientists who defend it are simply investigating nature, not in the interests of science properly so-called, but, consciously or unconsciously, to find facts to support a hypothesis which may be opposed to both. Any facts in nature or in history, natural or civil, political or religious, that seem to make against Christian teaching, are seized upon with avidity, distorted or exaggerated, and paraded with a grand fanfaronade, sounding of trumpets, beating of drums, and waving of banners, as if it were a glorious triumph of man to prove that he is no better than the beasts that perish; while the multitude of facts which are absolutely irreconcilable with it are passed over in silence or quietly set aside, as of no account, or simply declared to be anomalies, which science is not yet in a condition to explain, but, no doubt, soon will be, since it has entered the true path, has found the true scientific methods, and is headed in the right direction. Science is yet in its infancy. In its cradle it has strangled frightful monsters, and, when full-grown, it will not fail to slay the hydra, and rid the world of all its "chimeras dire." But while we do not complain that your infantile or puerile science has not done more, we would simply remind you, men of science, that it is very unscientific to reason from what you confess science has not yet done as if it had done it. Wait till it has done it, before you bring it forward as a scientific achievement.

We confess to a want of confidence in this whole class of scientists, for their investigations are not free and unbiassed; their minds are prejudiced; they are pledged to a theory in advance, which makes them shut their eyes to the facts which contradict it, and close their intelligence to the great principles of universal reason[494] which render their conclusions invalid. There are other scientists who have pushed their investigations as far into nature and history as they have, perhaps even further, who know and have carefully analyzed all the facts they know or ever pretended to know, and yet have come to conclusions the contrary of theirs, and find nothing in the facts or phenomena of the universe that warrant any induction not in accordance with Christian faith, either as set forth in the Holy Scriptures or the definitions of the church. Why are these less likely to be really scientific than they? They are biassed by their Christian faith, you say. Be it so: are you less biassed by your anti-christian unbelief and disposition? Besides, are you able to say that these have not in their Christian faith a key to the real sense or meaning of the universe and its phenomena which you have not, and therefore are much more likely to be right than you? Do you know that it is not so? There is no science where knowledge is wanting.

The unchristian scientists forget that they cannot conclude against the Biblical or Christian doctrine from mere possibilities or even probabilities. They appeal to science against it, and nothing can avail them as the basis of argument against it that is not scientifically proved or demonstrated. Their hypothesis of progress, evolution, or development is unquestionably repugnant to the whole Christian doctrine and order of thought. If it is true, Christianity is false. They must then, before urging it, either prove Christianity untrue or an idle tale, or else prove absolutely, beyond the possibility of a rational doubt, the truth of their hypothesis. It is not enough to prove that it may, for aught you know, be true; you must prove that it is true, and cannot be false. Christianity is too important a fact in the world's history to be set aside by an undemonstrated hypothesis. And it is anything but scientific to conclude its falsity on the strength of a simply possible or even probable hypothesis, not as yet indeed proved, and of which the best you can say is that you trust science will be able to prove it when once it is out of its nonage. You cannot propose it at all, unless you have scientifically demonstrated it, or previously disproved aliunde the Christian revelation. So long as you leave it possible for me to hold the Christian faith without contradicting what is demonstrated to be true, you have alleged nothing to the purpose against it, and cannot bring forward your theory even as probable, far less as scientific; for, if it is possible that Christianity is true, it is not possible that your hypothesis can be true, or even scientifically proved. The scientists seem not to be aware of this, and seem to suppose that they may rank Christianity with the various heathen superstitions, and set it aside by an unsupported theory or a prejudice.

Let the question be understood. Christianity teaches us that in the beginning God created heaven and earth, and all things therein, visible and invisible, that he made man after his own image and likeness, placed him in the garden of Eden, gave him a law, that is, made him a revelation of his will, instructed him in his moral and religious duty, established him in original justice, in a supernatural state, under a supernatural providence, on the plane of a supernatural destiny; that man prevaricated, broke the law given him, lost his original justice, the integrity of his nature attached thereto, and communion with his Maker, fell under the dominion of the flesh, became[495] captive to Satan, and subject to death, moral, temporal, and eternal; that God, of his own goodness and mercy, promised him pardon and deliverance, redemption and salvation, through his own Son made man, who in due time was born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, was dead and buried, and on the third day rose again, ascended into heaven, whence he shall come again, to judge the living and the dead. This doctrine, in substance, was made to our first parents in the garden, was preserved in the tradition of the patriarchs, in its purity in the synagogue, and in its purity and integrity in the Christian church founded on it, and authorized and assisted by God himself to teach it to all men and nations.

According to this doctrine, the origin of man, the human species, as well as of the universe and all its contents, is in the creative act of God, not in evolution or development. The first man was not a monkey or a tadpole developed, nor a savage or barbarian, but was a man full grown in the integrity of his nature, instructed by his Maker, and the most perfect man of his race, and as he is the progenitor of all mankind, it follows that mankind began not in "utter barbarism," as Sir John asserts, but in the full development and perfection of manhood, with the knowledge of God and Providence, of their origin and destiny, and of their moral and religious duty. Ignorance has followed as the penalty or consequence of sin, instead of being the original condition in which man was created; and this ignorance brought on the race by the prevarication of Adam, the domination of the flesh, and the power of Satan acquired thereby, are the origin and cause of barbarism of individuals and nations, the innumerable moral and social evils which have afflicted mankind in all times and places.

Now, to this doctrine Sir John opposes the hypothesis of the origin of man in "utter barbarism," and his progress by natural evolution or self-development. But what facts has he adduced in its support, or that conflict with Christian teaching, that prove that teaching false or even doubtful? He has adduced, as far as we can see, none at all, for all the facts that he alleges are, to say the least, as easily explained on the supposition of man's deterioration as on the supposition of progress, development, or continuous melioration. Some of the facts he adduces might, perhaps, be explained on his hypothesis, if there were no reason for giving them a contrary explanation; but there is not one of them that must be so explained. This is not enough for his purpose, though it is enough for ours. He must go further, and prove that his facts not only may but must be explained on his hypothesis, and can be explained on no other. If we are able to explain, or he is unable to show positively that we cannot explain, all known facts in accordance with the Christian doctrine, he can conclude nothing from them against Christianity or in favor of his naturalism. We do not, he must remember, rely on those facts to prove the Christian doctrine, but he relies on them to disprove it, by proving his hypothesis; and if he cannot show that they absolutely do disprove it, or positively prove his hypothesis, he proves nothing to his purpose.

Sir John dwells at great length on the real or supposed rites, forms, and barbarous customs observed by outlying savage tribes or nations, but, before he can draw any conclusion from them in favor of his theory of[496] progress, he must prove that they were primitive. He knows them only as contemporaneous with what he would himself call civilized marriage: how then, without having first proved that the race began in "utter barbarism," conclude from them that they preceded civilized marriage? One thing is certain, we never find them without finding somewhere in the world contemporary with them the civilized marriage. There is no history, historical intimation, or tradition of any custom or conception of marriage older than we have in the Book of Genesis, and in that we find the true idea of marriage was already in the world at the earliest date of history, and the vices against it are plainly condemned in the Decalogue, contemporary with these very usages, customs, and notions of savages on which Sir John dwells with so much apparent delight, and which are barbarous, and lax enough to satisfy even our women's-rights men; and, so far as history goes, preceding them, the true idea of marriage as something sacred, and as the union of one man with one woman, was known and held, and therefore could not have been, at least so far as known, a development of barbarian marriages.

The same answer applies to the question of religion. Contemporary with the savage and barbarous superstitions of the heathen, and even prior to them, we find practised in its fervor and purity the true worship of the true God. True religion is not developed from the impurities and absurd superstitions of the heathen, and is by no means the growth of the religious sentiment becoming gradually enlightened and purifying itself from their grossness, for it is historically as well as logically older than any of them. Men worshipped God the creator of heaven and earth before they worshipped the fetish, the elements, or the hosts of heaven. Religion is older than superstition, for superstition is an abuse of religion, as the theologians say, by way of excess, as irreligion is its abuse by way of defect; but a thing must exist and be entertained before it can be abused. Nothing can be more certain than that true religion has never been developed from false religions, or truth from falsehood; for the true must precede the false, which is simply the negation of the true. Christianity is, if you will, a development, the fulfilment of the synagogue or the Jewish religion; Judaism was also, if you will, a development of the patriarchal religion; but in neither case a self-development; and in neither case has the development been effected except by supernatural intervention. It would be absurd to suppose the patriarchal religion was a development of heathenism, since it is historically prior to any form of heathenism, and every known form of heathenism supposes it, and is intelligible only by it. So far was Judaism from being self-evolved from the superstitions of the heathen, that it was with the greatest difficulty that the Israelites themselves, as their history shows, were kept from adopting the idolatry and superstition of the surrounding nations, which shows that their religion was not self-evolved, and that it was above the level of the moral and religious life of the people. Christianity develops and perfects Judaism, but by supernatural agency, not by the natural progress or self-development of the Jewish people; for if it had been, the bulk of the nation would have accepted it, and we know that the bulk of the Jewish people did not accept it, but rejected it, and continue to reject it to this day.

We know, also, that the progress of the heathen nations was very far[497] from raising them to the level of the Christian religion. Traces of some of its principles and several of its moral precepts may be found with the Gentile philosophers, as we should expect, since they pertained to the primitive revelation; but these philosophers were not the first, but rather the last to accept it. Nowhere amongst the heathen did any Christian communities spring up spontaneously or were of indigenous origin. Christianity sprang out of Judea, and the nations adopted it, in the first instance, only as it was carried to them by Jewish missionaries. And who were these missionaries? Humble fishermen, publicans, and mechanics. Who first received them, and believed their message? Principally the common people, the unlettered, the poor, and slaves of the rich and noble. "For see your vocation, brethren," says St. Paul (1 Cor. iv. 26), "that not many are wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble." Were the fishermen of the Lake Genesareth, and the slaves of the Roman Empire, we may ask with Mgr. Maret, "the most enlightened and advanced portion of mankind"? Who dare maintain it, when it is a question of natural development or progress? Had Christianity been the natural evolution of the human mind, or the product of the natural growth of human intelligence and morality, we should have first encountered it not with the poor, the ignorant, the unlettered and wretched slaves, but with the higher and more cultivated classes, with the philosophers, the scientists, the noble, the great generals and the most eminent orators and statesmen, the élite of Greek and Roman society, those who at the time stood at the head of the civilized world. Yet such is not the fact, but the fact is the very reverse.

The Biblical history explains the origin of the barbarous superstitions of heathendom in a very satisfactory way, and shows us very clearly that the savage state is not the primitive state, but has been produced by sin, and is the result of what we call the great Gentile apostasy, or falling away of the nations from the primitive or patriarchal religion. When language was confounded at Babel, and the dispersion of mankind took place, unity of speech or language was lost, and with it unity of ideas or of faith, and each tribe or nation took its own course, and developed a tribal or national religion of its own. Gradually each tribe or nation lost the conception of God as creator, and formed to itself gods made in its own image, clothed with its own passions, and it bowed down and worshipped the work of its own hands. It was not that they knew or had known no better. St. Paul has settled that question. "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all impiety and injustice of those men that detain the truth of God in injustice. Because that which is known of God is manifest in them. For God hath manifested it to them. For the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made: his eternal power also and divinity; so that they are inexcusable. Because when they had known God, they glorified him not as God, nor gave thanks; but became vain in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened; for, professing themselves wise, they became fools. And they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of a corruptible man, and of birds, and of four-footed beasts, and of creeping things. Wherefore God gave them up to the desires of their hearts, to uncleanness; to dishonor[498] their own bodies among themselves, who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen." (Rom. i. 18-25.)

St. Paul evidently does not believe Sir John Lubbock's doctrine that the race began in "utter barbarism," and have been slowly working their way up to the heights of Christian civilization. He evidently ascribes the superstitions, and consequently the barbarism, of the heathen to apostasy. Sir John, of course, does not accept the authority of St. Paul; but, if he cannot prove St. Paul was wrong, he is debarred from asserting his own hypothesis, even as probable. If it is possible to explain the facts of the savage state on the ground of apostasy or gradual deterioration, the hypothesis of development, of self-evolution or natural and unaided progress, falls to the ground as wholly baseless. His hypothesis becomes probable only by proving that no other hypothesis is possible.

But all the known facts in the case are against our scientific baronet's hypothesis. Take Mohammedanism. It sprang up subsequently to both Moses and the Gospel. It is a compound of Judaism and Christianity, more Jewish than Christian, however, and is decidedly inferior to either. How explain this fact, if the several races of men never fall or retrograde, but are always advancing, marching through the ages onward and upward? Many of the ancestors of the present Mussulmans belonged to highly civilized races, and some of them were Christians, and not a few of them Jews. Yet there is always progress, never deterioration.

But we need not go back to the seventh century. There has been a modern apostasy, and we see right before our eyes the process of deterioration, of falling into barbarism, going on among those who have apostatized from Christianity. The author regards as an evidence of the lowest barbarism what he calls "communal marriage," that is, marriage in which the wife is common to all the males of her husband's family. We do not believe this sort of marriage was ever anything more than an exceptional fact, like polyandry; but suppose it was even common among the lowest savage tribes, how much lower or more barbarous is the state it indicates, than what the highly civilized Plato makes the magistrates prescribe in his imaginary Republic? How much in advance of such a practice is the free love advocated by Mary Wolstonecraft and Fanny Wright; the recommendation of Godwin to abolish marriage and the monopoly by one man of any one woman; than the denunciation of marriage by the late Robert Owen as one of the trinity of evils which have hitherto afflicted the race, and his proposal to replace it by a community of wives, as he proposed to replace private property by a community of goods; or, indeed, than we see actually adopted in practice by the Oneida Community? Sir John regards the gynocracy which prevails in some savage tribes as characteristic of a very low form of barbarism; but to what else tends the woman's-rights movement in his country and ours? If successful, not only would women be the rulers, but children would follow the mother's line, not the father's, for the obvious reason that, while the mother can be known, the father cannot be with any certainty. Does not free love, the mainspring of the movement, lead to this? And are not they who support it counted the advanced party[499] of the age, and we who resist denounced as old fogies or as the defenders of man's tyranny?

Sir John relates that some tribes are so low in their intelligence that they have no or only the vaguest conceptions of the divinity, and none at all of God as creator. He need not go amongst outlying barbarians to find persons whose intelligence is equally low. He will search in vain through all Gentile philosophy without finding the conception of a creative God. Nay, among our own contemporaries he can find more who consider it a proof of their superior intelligence and rare scientific attainments that they reject the fact of creation, relegate God into the unknown and the unknowable, and teach us that the universe is self-evolved, and man is only a monkey or gorilla developed.[129] These men regard themselves as the lights of their age, and are so regarded, too, by no inconsiderable portion of the public. Need we name Auguste Comte and Sir William Hamilton, among the dead; E. Littré, Herbert Spencer, J. Stuart Mill, Professor Huxley, Charles Darwin, not to say Sir John himself, among the living? If these men and their adherents have not lapsed into barbarism, their science, if accepted, would lead us to the ideas and practices which Sir John tells us belong to the lowest stage of barbarism. Sir John doubts if any savage tribe can be found that is absolutely destitute of all religious conceptions or sentiments, but, if we may believe their own statements, we have people enough among the apostate Christians of our day who have none, and glory in it as a proof of their superiority to the rest of mankind.

Sir John sees a characteristic of barbarism or of the early savage state in the belief in and the dread of evil spirits, or what he calls demonism. The Bible tells us all the gods of the heathens are devils or demons. Even this characteristic of barbarism is reproduced in our civilized communities by spiritism, which is of enlightened American origin. This spiritism, which is rapidly becoming a religion with large numbers of men and women in our midst, is nothing but demonism, the necromancy and witchcraft or familiar spirits of the ancient world. Men who reject Christianity, who have no belief in God, or at least do not hold it necessary to worship or pay him the least homage or respect, believe in the spirits, go to the medium, and consult her, as Saul in his desperation consulted the Witch of Endor. If we go back a few years to the last century, we shall find the most polished people on the globe abolishing religion, decreeing that death is an eternal sleep, and perpetrating, in the name of liberty, virtue, humanity, and brotherly love, crimes and cruelties unsurpassed if not unequalled in the history of the most savage tribes; and we see little improvement in our own century, more thoroughly filled with the horrors of unprincipled and needless wars than any other century of which we possess the history. Indeed, the scenes of 1792-3-4 are now in process of reproduction in Europe.

We must remember that all these deteriorations have taken place in or are taking place in the most highly civilized nations of the globe, whose ancestors were Christians, and with persons many of whom were brought up in the belief of Christianity. Take the men and women who hold, on marriage and on religion, what are called "advanced views"—free-lovers and free-religionists—remove them[500] from the restraints of the church and of the state, not yet up to their standard, and let them form a community by themselves in which their views shall be carried out in practice; would they not in two or three generations lapse into a state not above that of the most degraded and filthy savages? We see this deterioration going on in our midst and right before our eyes, as the effect of apostasy from our holy religion. This proves that apostasy is sufficient to explain the existence of the savage races, without supposing the human race began in "utter barbarism." If apostasy in modern times, as we see it does, leads to "utter barbarism," why should it not have done so in ancient times?

We might make the case still stronger against the author's hypothesis, if necessary, by referring to the great and renowned nations of antiquity, that in turn led the civilization of the world. Of the nations that apostatized or adhered to the great Gentile apostasy, not one has survived the lapse of time. To every one of them has succeeded barbarism, desolation, or a new people. The Egypt of antiquity fell before the Persian conqueror, and the Egypt of the Greeks was absorbed by Rome, and fell with her. Assyria leaves of her greatness only long since buried and forgotten ruins, while the savage Kurd and the predatory Arab roam at will over the desert that has succeeded to her once flourishing cities and richly cultivated fields. Syria, Tyre, Carthage, and the Greek cities of Europe and Asia have disappeared or dwindled into insignificance, and what remains of them they owe to the conservative power of the Christianity they adopted and have in some measure retained. So true is it, as the Psalmist says, "the wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God." How explain this fact, if these ancient nations could by their own inherent energy and power of self-development raise themselves from "utter barbarism" to the civilization they once possessed, that they could not preserve it; that, after having reached a certain point, they began to decline, grew corrupt, and at length fell by their own internal rottenness? If men and nations are naturally progressive, how happens it that we find so many individuals and nations decline and fall, through internal corruption?

Another fact is not less conclusive against Sir John's hypothesis, that in all the nations of the heathen world their least barbarous period known to us is their earliest after the apostasy and dispersion. The oldest of the sacred books of the Hindus are the profoundest and richest in thought, and the freest from superstition and puerilities so characteristic of the Hindu people to-day. The earliest religion of the Romans was far more spiritual, intellectual, than that which prevailed at the establishment of the empire and the introduction of Christianity. Indeed, wherever we have the means of tracing the religious history of the ancient heathen nations, we find it is a history of almost uninterrupted deterioration and corruption, becoming continually more cruel, impure, and debasing as time flows on. The mysteries, perhaps, retained something of the earlier doctrines, but they did little to arrest the downward tendency of the national religion; the philosophers, no doubt, retained some valuable traditions of the primitive religion, but so mixed up with gross error and absurd fables that they had no effect on the life or morals of the people. One of the last acts of Socrates was to require Crito[501] to sacrifice a cock to Esculapius. If Sir John's hypothesis were true, nothing of this could happen, and we should find the religion of every nation, as time goes on, becoming purer and more refined, less gross and puerile, more enlightened and intellectual, and more spiritual and elevating in its influence.

The traditions of some, perhaps of all heathen nations, refer their origin to savage and barbarian ancestors, and this may have been the fact with many of them. Horace would seem to go the full length of Sir John's theory. He tells us that the primitive men sprang like animals from the earth, a mute and filthy herd, fighting one another for an acorn or a den. Cicero speaks somewhat to the same purpose, only he does not say it was the state of the primeval man. Yet the traditions of the heathen nations do not in general favor the main point of Sir John's hypothesis, that men came out of barbarism by their own spontaneous development, natural progressiveness, or indigenous and unaided efforts. They rise, according to these traditions, to the civilized state only by the assistance of the gods, or by the aid of missionaries or colonies from nations already civilized. The goddess Ceres teaches them to plant corn and make bread; Bacchus teaches them to plant the vine and to make wine; Prometheus draws fire from heaven and teaches them its use; other divinities teach to keep bees, to tame and rear flocks and herds, and the several arts of peace and war. Athens attributed her civilization to Minerva and to Cecrops and his Egyptian colony; Thebes, hers to Orpheus and Cadmus, of Phœnician origin; Rome claimed to descend from a Trojan colony, and borrowed her laws from the Athenians—her literature, philosophy, her art and science, from the Greeks. The poets paint the primitive age as the age of gold, and the philosophers always speak of the race as deteriorating, and find the past superior to the present. What is best and truest in Plato he ascribes to the wisdom of the ancients, and even Homer speaks of the degeneracy of men in his days from what they were at the siege of Troy. We think the author will search in vain through all antiquity to find a tradition or a hint which assigns the civilization of any people to its own indigenous and unassisted efforts.

Sir John Lubbock describes the savages as incurious and little given to reflection. He says they never look beyond the phenomenon to its cause. They see the world in which they are placed, and never think of looking further, and asking who made it, or whence they themselves came or whither they go. They lack not only curiosity, but the power of abstraction and generalization, and even thought is a burden to them. This is no doubt in the main true; but it makes against their natural progressiveness, and explains why they are not, as we know they are not, progressive, but remain always stationary, if left to themselves. The chief characteristic of the savage state is in fact its immobility. The savage gyrates from age to age in the same narrow circle—never of himself advances beyond it. Whether a tribe sunk in what Sir John calls "utter barbarism," and which he holds was the original state of the human race, has ever been or ever can be elevated to a civilized state by any human efforts, even of others already civilized, is, perhaps, problematical. As far as experience goes, the tendency of such a tribe, brought in contact with a civilized race, is to retire the deeper into the forest, to waste away, and finally to become extinct. Certain[502] it is, no instance of its becoming a civilized people can be named.

In every known instance in which a savage or barbarous people has become civilized, it has been by the aid or influence of religion, or their relations with a people already civilized. The barbarians that overthrew the Roman Empire of the West, and seated themselves on its ruins, were more than half Romanized before the conquest by their relations with the Romans and service in the armies of the empire, and they rather continued the Roman order of civilization in the several kingdoms and states they founded than destroyed it. The Roman system of education, and even the imperial schools, if fewer in number and on a reduced scale, were continued all through the barbarous ages down to the founding of the universities of mediæval Europe. Their civilization was carried forward, far in advance of that of Greece or Rome, by the church, the great civilizer of the nations. The northern barbarians that remained at home, the Germans, the Scandinavians, the Sclaves, were civilized by the labors of Christian monks and missionaries from Rome and Constantinople, from Gaul, England, and Ireland. In no instance has their civilization been of indigenous origin and development.

Sir John Lubbock replies to this as he does to Archbishop Whately's assertion that no instance is on record of a savage people having risen to a civilized state by its own indigenous and unassisted efforts, that it is no objection, because we should not expect to find any record of any such an event, since it took place, if at all, before the invention of letters, and in "prehistoric times." We grant that the fact that there is no written record of it is not conclusive proof that no instance of the kind ever occurred; but if so important an event ever occurred, we should expect some trace of it in the traditions of civilized nations, or at least find some tendencies to it in the outlying savage nations of the present, from which it might be inferred as a thing not improbable in itself. But nothing of the sort is found. The author's appeal to our ignorance, and our ignorance, cannot serve his purpose. He arraigns the universal faith of Christendom, and he must make out his case by positive, not simply negative proofs. Till his hypothesis is proved by positive evidence, the faith of Christendom remains firm, and nothing can be concluded against it.

But how really stands the question? Sir John finds in the various outlying savage tribes numerous facts which he takes to be the original germs of civilization, and hence he concludes that the primitive condition of the human race was that of "utter barbarism," and the nations, or, as he says, the races, that have become civilized, "have become so by their indigenous and unaided efforts, by their own inherent energy and power of self-development or progress." But the facts he alleges may just as well be reminiscences of a past civilization as anticipations of a civilization not yet developed; and in our judgment—and it is not to-day that for the first we have studied the question—they are much better explained as reminiscences than as anticipations, nay, are not explicable in any other way. The facts appealed to, then, can at best count for nothing in favor of the hypothesis of natural progress or development. They do not prove it or render it probable.

He is able, and he confesses it, to produce no instance of the natural and unassisted progress of any race of men from barbarism to civilization, and even his own facts show[503] that barbarous or savage tribes are not naturally progressive, but stationary, struck with immobility. Where, then, are the proofs of his hypothesis? He has yet produced none. Now, on the other hand, we have shown him that, in all known instances, the passage from barbarism into civilization has been effected only by supernatural aid, or by the influence of a previously civilized race or people. We have shown him also that the Gentile apostasy, which the Bible records and our religion asserts, sufficiently explains the origin of barbarism. We have also shown him nations once civilized falling into barbarism, and, in addition, have shown him the tendency of an apostate people to lapse into barbarism existing and operating before our very eyes, in men whose ancestors were once civilized and even Christians. The chief elements of barbarism he describes exist and are encouraged and defended in our midst by men who are counted by themselves and their contemporaries as the great men, the great lights, the advanced party of this advanced age. Let the apostasy become more general, take away the church or deprive her of her influence, and eliminate from the laws, manners, and customs of modern states what they retain of Christian doctrine and morality, and it is plain to see that nations the loudest in their boast of their civilization would, if not supernaturally arrested in a very short space of time, sink to the level of any of the ancient or modern outlying savage tribes.

Such is the case, and so stands the argument. Sir John Lubbock brings forward a hypothesis, not original with him indeed, and the full bearing of which we would fain believe he does not see, for which he adduces and can adduce not a single well-authenticated fact, and which would not be favored for a moment by any one who understands it, were it not for its contradiction of the Biblical doctrine and Christian tradition. But while there is absolutely no proof of the hypothesis, all the known facts of history or of human nature, as well as all the principles of religion and philosophy, with one voice pronounce against it as untenable. Is not this enough? Nothing is more certain than Christian faith; no fact is or can be better authenticated than the fact of revelation; we might then allege that the hypothesis is disproved, nay, not to be entertained, because it is contrary to the Christian revelation, than which nothing can be more certain. We should have been perfectly justified in doing so, and so we should have done; but as the author appeals to science and progress to support himself on facts, we have thought it best, without prejudice to the authority of faith, to meet him on his own ground, to show him that science does not entertain his appeal, and that his theory of progress is but a baseless hypothesis, contradicted by all the known facts in the case and supported by none; and therefore no science at all.

Sir John's theory of progress is just now popular, and is put forth with great confidence in the respectable name of science, and the modern world, with sciolists, accept it, with great pomp and parade. Yet it is manifestly absurd. Nothing cannot make itself something, nor can anything make itself more than it is. The imperfect cannot of itself perfect itself, and no man can lift himself by his own waistbands. Even Archimedes required somewhere to stand outside of the world in order to be able to raise the world with his lever. Yet we deny not progress; we believe in it, and hold that man is progressive[504] even to the infinite; but not by his own unaided effort or by his own inherent energy and natural strength, nor without the supernatural aid of divine grace. But progress by nature alone, or self-evolution, though we tried to believe it when a child, we put away when we became a man, as we did other childish things.

Thus much we have thought it our duty to say in reply to the theory that makes the human race begin in utter barbarism, and civilization spring from natural development or evolution, so popular with our unchristian scientists or—but for respect to the public we would say—sciolists. We have in our reply repeated may things which we have said before in this magazine, and which have been said by others, and better said. But it will not do to let such a book as the one before us go unanswered in the present state of the public mind, debauched as it is by false science. If books will repeat the error, we can only repeat our answer.

PAU.

American tourists make a great mistake in not generally including the Pyrenees in their route of European travel. Unless ordered there by a physician to repair a wasted or broken-down constitution, they scarcely think of visiting the most beautiful country perhaps in the world. Paris is France, and, as the route from Paris to Spain lies direct, they pass through the Pyrenees, admire them casually, but rarely pause to examine their beauties and the curiosities of the quaint old towns embedded in their hills. Since chances of this nature alone led me to discover what since has remained in my memory an exquisite picture to be revivified at any moment, I cannot blame others for following the usual guide-book routes of Europe, and spending their money freely on places far less worthy their attention. After a severe typhoid fever of ten weeks in Paris, and still so feeble that I had to be almost carried to the depot, I set out on the 5th of January, 1869, accompanied by my nurse, to make the journey to the Pyrenees, if possible, in a day and a half. We left Paris at 10.45 A.M., by the Chemin de Fer d'Orléans. Resting for a few minutes at the historical old towns of Orléans, Tours, Poitiers, Angoulême, and Livourne, we arrived at Bordeaux at eleven P.M., where we remained for the night. The next morning at eight we pursued our journey, passing Dax, so celebrated for its warm mud-baths, said to be a remedy for rheumatic complaints, and a little after one P.M. I found my friends awaiting me at Pau. Entering one of the queer little half-omnibuses that hold six people and their luggage, I was carried through the oddest of small white streets to my lodging in the Jurançon, near the villa of my friend.

Never shall I forget my impressions while entering the room prepared for me, and leaning on the arm of the dear girl who with her mother and sister had done everything for[505] my comfort. It was the Epiphany, the day of light; and it seemed as if the soft sunlight that shone in that pretty room and rested on the fragrant flowers was to me the foreshadowing of a renewed life and happy future. The air was balmy as a June day, and from my window rose the glorious Pyrenees. Covered with their everlasting mantles of snow, they rose proudly to heaven, as if they defied the clouds above them. A second lower range, with its varied shades of green and the tropical luxuriance at its base, completed the picture. Exhausted with my journey, my eyes filled with tears of joy at all my sweet surroundings, I could have begged my God there and then to let me sleep for ever.

Day after day I walked my few steps in my balcony and took in this lovely picture. As yet I had not seen the town; my strength was insufficient, and I simply rested and recuperated. The climate seemed to me a strange one for invalids—a queer mixture, as I thought it, of flannels and sun-umbrellas. The mornings and evenings were cold and chilly with the air that blew down from the mountains, and the middle of the day, from eleven until three o'clock, so intensely hot that it was necessary to be well protected against sun-stroke. Still, it is the great resort of consumptives, and at almost every turn one encounters the muffled-up pale countenance of the poor invalid. But for this one sad feature, the exquisite scenery, the tropical foliage, the picturesque villas, and the town itself, of white limestone, rising around its great chateau to the very heavens, with the merry hum of voices, that greets you on every side, might well make you imagine you had at last found the fairy dreamland—a country that realized the fairy ideal of childhood.

This, too, is the land of the troubadour, and the quaint wild music chanted by the peasantry has a something about it irresistibly attractive, something one hears nowhere else; now dreamy, now bright, almost monotonous at times, then suddenly bursting into strains of sadness in which the whole depths of a life are portrayed. Then there is the ringing mountaineer song, too, with its clear and measured cadence, and a certain bravery in its tones which could easily foretell the difficult mastering of such a people, should it ever again be required.

The mixture of Spanish merchants and wanderers among the population gives to their parks and squares a pretty effect. They cross the Pyrenees with their showy wares, their strings of perfumed beads, bracelets, necklaces, rosaries, all made of the wood that grows at the foot of their mountains. Dressed in their own picturesque costumes, and carrying their merchandise of every imaginable color—red and bright yellow predominating—they accost you with a grace which renders them irresistible, and you find yourself rather poorer for the encounter.

I improved so rapidly in this climate, getting wholly rid of my cough and gaining twenty-five pounds in little over four weeks, that I concluded I was well enough to return to Paris, and thence, after another rest in England, home. I resolved, therefore, to see all that Pau offered to the sight-seer.

I drove with my kind friends several times to and around the varied and pretty villas: the primroses peeped at us from under the hedges, and here and there the rarest tropical trees and plants riveted our attention—and this in February, when the most of the world was ice-bound. The snow-capped mountains, however,[506] rising around us on every side, would not permit us to entirely forget winter. The town itself, of twenty-one thousand inhabitants, is almost a miniature Paris, some squares duplicating those of the great city, and the bridges separating Pau and the Jurançon, though crossing a much prettier river than the Seine, heightening the resemblance.

The churches are costly and beautiful; one built by the Society of Jesus, entirely of white marble, and lined with exquisite pictures and gifts of the wealthy strangers who pass the season at the different hotels, is a perfect gem in its way.

The hotels, the Place Royale with its music every Thursday—weather permitting, as say our friends of the Central Park—where crowds walk up and down and listen to but little, I imagine, are all attractions for the health or pleasure seeker.

Very odd old houses with gabled roofs, and reminding you of Dutch pictures, start out occasionally from among the more modern and fashionable ones, and seem to tell the story of change and decay.

Not unfrequently a merry peasant wedding party, in a whole line of carriages trumpeting vigorously and raising the dust, pass you with shouts, and compel your curiosity to recognize and salute the bride. It is said the strangers with their wealth and fashionable follies are gradually obliterating these good old Béarnais customs, through the spirit of emulation they excite in a hitherto perfectly happy peasantry. Women, however, still walk the streets with their distaffs, and men knit as they guide the plough. Something of primeval innocence still remains. Certainly no country was ever more paradisiacally formed to retain it.

My time was limited, however; I could not stay and study these people and their customs as I would have wished. I could not visit the great summer resort, the famed Eaux Bonnes, so beautifully nestled, they told me, among the higher Pyrenees, but must exert all the strength I had to see before I left the great monument of Pau, the grand old

CHATEAU OF HENRY IV.

The street ascends to it, and through an arcade by stone steps to its park, which is now the everyday public resort. The park extends all around the chateau, and, crossing a pretty bridge erected over the Rue Marca, it continues for some miles in an ornamented walk containing two principal avenues; one so shaded that it is cool all summer, and the other sunny enough at any time to welcome and warm the poor invalid who could not exist without his daily walk.

We do not find here the rich and varied architecture so attractive in other imperial parks, Versailles, for instance; the hand of man is displaced by that of nature, but the woods of rare trees on hills that give everywhere the exquisite panorama of the encircling Pyrenees are more than compensatory for any omissions of art.

The gate of St. Martin greets you as you enter. Built in 1586, it was formerly the main entrance to the chateau when the drawbridge was used. Now it leads to the Hôtel de la Monnaie, a dependence inhabited by the subalterns and furnishers of the palace. Here the money of Béarn was formerly made. Now we approach a hemicycle containing two large vases in Medici form of Swedish porphyry, and given to the chateau of Pau by King Bernadotte, who was born here. The statue of Gaston Phœbus in white marble, the[507] work of the Baron of Triquety, towers between them. He stands the guard perpetual of the chateau.

Much of the land belonging to the former park has been divided and sold, and is now the Place Napoléon. Vestiges, however, of ancient walls are still allowed to exist, and on the left may yet be seen the remains of the Hermitage of Notre Dame des Bris, attributed to William Raymond, ravaged during the religious wars, and entirely destroyed in 1793.

At the foot of the hill on the north side stood also the Castet Beziat (in Béarnais dialect, dearest castle). And here let me speak of this odd native patois. It is a mixture of French, Spanish, and Italian, and is understood only by strangers who know the three languages, yet it is euphonious and occasionally dignified. The better class of the peasantry speak both it and a pretty French. They prolong the syllables more than in Paris, which adds greatly to the sweetness of the sound. This Château Chère was built after the model of the Château de Madrid in the Bois de Boulogne, by Marguerite of Valois.

Jeanne d'Albret made it her favorite residence, and here occupied herself exclusively with the education of her children, Henry IV. and Catherine, who, after the death of her mother, made it the secret residence of the Count de Soissons, whom she passionately loved but could not marry. No trace of this Castet Beziat exists now. But let us enter the great chateau, and first consider somewhat its origin. Centule le Bieux was its founder toward the end of the year 982, and his successors continued the southern portion, but it was not finished until the time of Gaston Phœbus, who completed also the great square tower that bears his name, the ramparts and parapets, and the mill-tower, in order that he might make it his residence. This mill-tower gave entrance to the Place de la Basse Ville, or former field of battle, where hand to hand the armed knights decided their judiciary combats. About 1460, Gaston X., desirous to give his Béarnais people a truly royal residence, constructed the north and east portions of the edifice, laid out the park, and decided that the states of Béarn should be always represented in the halls of the castle.

In 1527, the Margaret of Margarets, the sister so dear to Francis I., becoming queen of Navarre by her marriage with Henry II., made it a true palace of the Renaissance, restoring it entirely and refurnishing it from top to bottom.

Abandoned later by Henry IV., become king of France, and despoiled of everything precious it possessed by him and Louis XIII., entirely neglected by their successors, it fell into the hands of governors, then was seized by the republicans, who, not contented to sell at the lowest price and piece by piece the lands of the royal domain, converted into a tavern and stables the palace that formerly was the cradle of the great king.

Not until the short reign of Louis XVIII. was any attempt made to restore the castle to its former condition, a work soon neglected and abandoned, but recommenced in 1838 by Louis Philippe, who ordered besides the complete refurnishing of the apartments pretty much as they are seen to-day.

Napoleon III., however, with his taste for the restoration of all fallen grandeur that may recall royalty or the Empire, has done all in his power to produce an almost magic transformation, a complete resurrection of the old chateau, and at the present time[508] the work continues under the supervision of the most able architects.

The beautiful exterior that presents itself so commandingly, the harmony that prevails in every part of the building surrounding the Court of Honor, the pretty windows opening on the chapel, the sculptures everywhere newly restored, the incessant labor on the southern portion, all denote the desire of Napoleon to preserve and embellish one of the most precious monuments of history.

The letters G-P in gold are placed in different parts of the building. To Gaston Phœbus is accorded the honor of its construction.

You enter the chateau from the town-side by a bridge of stone and brick, built by Louis XV. to replace the drawbridge that formerly occupied the site of the present chapel.

Pause on this bridge, and look around you. On either side is a deep ditch which once defended the entrance of the chateau, now a magnificent avenue planted with trees and covered with flower-beds. At your left is the chapel, whose date is 1840. The doors and windows are elaborately sculptured. In front, you will notice three arcades constructed in the style of the Renaissance, covered with a terrace and carved balustrade, which serves for the principal entrance.

On your left and under the portico is the porter's lodge. At the right in the new building are the bureaus of administration and service; on the first story, the apartments of the military commander; on the second, those of the register; and on the third and last, the housekeeper's rooms for linen, etc.

The Court of Honor arrests your attention by its original form, its deeply graven sculptures in the niches of the windows and doors representing the different Béarnais sovereigns, and the statue of Mars that faces the principal entrance. If these walls could speak, they would tell how often the Béarnais people have assembled here with shouts of respect or cries of vengeance, according as the qualities of their prince called forth the one or the other.

The towers of the chateau are six in number: at the left on entering, the Tower Gaston Phébus; at the right, the new Tower and Tower Montauzet; at the lower end, the northwest, the Tower Billères; and at the southwestern end, the two Towers Mazères.

The tower Gaston Phébus, or donjon, was called the tile tower, because it is built almost entirely of brick. It has a roof of slate which was carried off in a terrible storm in 1820.

A balcony faces the church of St. Martin, where the president of the states of Béarn took his place to proclaim the name of each newly elected sovereign.

Several illustrious personages have inhabited this tower. Among others, Clement Marot, the favorite and unfortunate adorer of the Queen Margaret, and Mademoiselle de Scudery, who passed the summer here of 1637.

Under the reign of Louis XIV. it was converted into a prison of state, and so continued until 1822.

Each story is now inhabited and richly furnished, and on the fifth is a terrace that commands a most imposing view of the surrounding country.

The tower Montauzet, in the Béarnais dialect, takes its name from the circumstance that only birds could reach the top; Montauzet meaning Mount Bird! In truth, it has no staircase, and history tells us that in case of a siege the garrison ascended it by ladders, which they drew up after them.

It had its dungeons, terrible wells[509] into which criminals were lowered. An iron statue armed with steel poniards received them, clasped them in its arms, and, by ingenious means that the legend does not explain, murdered them in unspeakable tortures. Henri d'Albret closed up the entrance to these dungeons, and they were forgotten until the reign of Louis XV. He caused them to be opened, and discovered skeletons and iron chains fastened to the walls.

The ground-floor of the tower Montauzet formerly contained a fine fountain. This will be replaced. The three stories above are occupied generally by the domestics of the great dignitaries of the crown.

The other towers have nothing of interest. They are named from the villages they face, and are simply advanced sentinels to defend the approach of an enemy from the Pyrenees.

As soon as a visitor arrives at the chateau, he is ushered into the waiting-room called Salle des Gardes, because during the presence of majesty the valets waited here under the supervision of an officer of the household. But little furniture is seen, a few old-fashioned chairs surmounted by lions and the arms of France and Navarre.

From this room we enter the dining-room of the officers of the service. There is nothing remarkable in its furniture, a long and very wide table occupying the centre, and comfortable chairs placed against the wall. Two statues, the one of Henry IV., the other of Tully, stand on either side of the door, and are singularly imposing.

We pass on to the dining-room of their majesties. This is far more elegant. Flemish tapestry adorns the walls, which was brought here from the Château de Madrid in the Bois de Boulogne. It represents the chase in the different months of June, September, November, and December. A clock of the time and style of Louis XIV., and a statue of Henry IV. in white marble, by Francheville, which is said to be older, and to represent the king more correctly than any other, are the principal ornaments.

The Staircase of Honor leads us to the first story. It is richly sculptured with astonishing beauty and skill. Doors lead from it to the kitchens below, and to the different towers.

We ascend and gain the waiting-room. During the presence of their majesties, the door-keepers remain here. When the emperor is alone, he chooses this for his slight repasts.

The most beautiful tapestry covers the walls. The subjects are of all kinds, mostly rural scenes, in which children or fairies predominate. The furniture is of oak, and covered with leather.

The reception-room, the largest and most elegant in the chateau, awaits us next. Here, by order and under the eyes of the cruel Montgomery, general of Jeanne d'Albret, ten Catholic noblemen were treacherously murdered. The sun shone in on us through the large bay-windows, and gilded the richly ornamented stone chimney, and threw the reflection of the mountain-tops across the floor. We stood, perhaps, on the very spot where these brave souls had met their death so many years before, though no trace remained of the horrors of that day. The guide told the story, and most of our party passed on to admire the tapestry and the costly vases that lend enchantment to what should be a chamber of mourning. With all its beauty, I was glad to escape to the family apartment.

Here, it is said, Queen Margaret[510] presided. Her picture, and those of Francis I., Henri d'Albret, and Henry IV., formerly graced the walls, but the hand of vandalism, in 1793, spared not even them. They were burned with all the other pictures of the chateau. A bronze statue of Henry IV., when a child, which graces a pretty bracket, and a table, the gift of Bernadotte, ornament the room.

The sleeping apartments of the emperor and empress follow, furnished tastefully with Sèvres china ornaments, on which are representations of Henry IV., Tully, and the Château de Pau, beautifully executed. The walls are hung with Flemish tapestry; but in the boudoir of the empress are to be seen six pieces of Gobelin tapestry, so finished that it was some time before it could be decided they were not oil-paintings. The subjects are: "Tully at the feet of Henry IV.;" "Henry IV. at the Miller Michaud's;" "The Parting of Henry IV. with Gabrielle;" "The Fainting of Gabrielle;" "Henry IV. meeting Tully Wounded;" "Henry IV. before Paris."

An odd Jerusalem chest, also in this room, is the admiration of strangers. It is made of walnut, inlaid with ivory, and was brought from Jerusalem, and purchased at Malta in 1838.

A bath-room of red marble of the Pyrenees is attached to these apartments, from which we ascend to the second story.

Here are large rooms much in the same style as the others, yet not quite so elaborate. In 1848, Abd-el-Kadir and his numerous family occupied this suite. An interesting model of the old chateau is here shown, executed by a poor man named Saget, who presented it to the Orleans family at a very low price, hoping, no doubt, another recompense, which he never received.

A room whose tapestry is devoted to Psyche leads us to a chamber which formed part of the apartment of Jeanne d'Albret, where it is said Henry IV. was born, and where his cradle is still preserved. The bed that Jeanne d'Albret occupied ordinarily is in the room adjoining, and a quainter piece of architecture cannot be imagined. It is of oak, richly carved, covered and mounted by a sleeping warrior and an owl, emblems of sleep and night. In the inner portion, towards the wall, is the Virgin, on one side, holding the infant Jesus, and an Evangelist on the other. Very rich cornices, with lion heads projecting and the framework of the arms of Béarn, complete the description. How, without steps, they ever got into those beds is a mystery; the upper berth of a steamer is easy of access in comparison, but there we have always steps or underberths that serve the same purpose.

The cradle of Henry IV. is a single tortoise-shell in its natural state. It must have been a good-sized tortoise that gave its back to the honor, but he must have been a very little baby to have slept in such a couch. The cradle hangs very gracefully, supported by six cords and flags embroidered in gold, with the arms of France and Navarre. Above is a crown of laurel, surmounted by a white plume of ostrich feathers, and underneath all a table covered with a blue velvet cloth.

The chapel and library are the only remaining objects of interest. The volumes of the library were presented by the emperor a short time ago, and they are well selected.

There were formerly two chapels, but the older one has been done away with. The present one was built in 1849, on the site of the old gate of[511] the drawbridge. The gate is still preserved, and on it a marble slab that formerly bore this inscription:

HENRICUS DEI GRATIA
CHRISTIANISSIMUS REX FRANCIÆ
NAVARRÆ TERTIUS
DOMINUS SUPREMUS BEARNI
1592.

The interior of the chapel has lately been restored and repainted. It is not remarkable for anything, however. The altar-piece is tawdry, and not in the usual good taste of the chateau.

We left this again for the beautiful park, roamed through it once more, and I took my last look at the imposing structure I had studied with so much interest.

I would advise all who visit Europe to see Pau and the Pyrenees. Those who do so will certainly say with me that, had they crossed the ocean for nothing else, they would have been more than compensated.

ST. MARY MAGDALEN.

MEMOIR OF FATHER JOHN DE BRÉBEUF, S.J.[130]

Among the foremost and most distinguished of the Catholic missionaries of America stands the name of Father John de Brébeuf, the founder of the Huron Mission. Normandy has the honor of giving him birth, and Canada was the field of his splendid and heroic labors; yet the mission of which he was the great promoter was the prelude to, and was intimately connected with, subsequent missions in our own country; and at the time of his glorious death, his heaven-directed gaze was eagerly and zealously turned towards the country of our own fierce Iroquois, the inhabitants of Northern New York, amongst whom he ardently longed to plant the cross of the Christian missions. His labors and those of his companions opened the northwestern portions of our country, and the great Valley of the Mississippi, to Christianity and civilization, and the discoveries and explorations which followed were partly the fruits of his and their exalted ministry and enlightened enterprise; for, as Bancroft says, "the history of their labors is connected with the origin of every celebrated town in the annals of French America; not a cape was turned, not a river entered, but a Jesuit led the way." His fame and achievements belong to all America, indeed, more truly, to all Christendom. Saint, hero, and martyr as he was, his merits are a part of the heritage of the universal church; and while his relics are venerated on earth, and even the enemies of our religion accord to him the most exalted praise, Catholics may, with the eye of faith, behold him in that glorious and noble band of martyrs in heaven, decked in resplendent garments of red, dyed in their own blood, passing and repassing eternally, in adoration and thanksgiving, before the throne of him who was the Prince of Martyrs.

While historians outside of the Catholic Church have marvelled at such extraordinary virtues and unparalleled achievements as have been displayed, not alone by a Xavier, but by the missionaries of our own land, and have extolled them as an honor to human nature, Catholics may be excused for regarding them as miracles of the faith, triumphs of the church, and martyrs of religion. It seems strange that the general historians of the church have bestowed so little notice upon the planting and propagation of the faith in America. The history of these events presents to our admiration characters the most noble, deeds the most heroic, virtues the most saintly, lives the most admirable, and deaths the most glorious. While the church of[513] America, in our day, counts her children by millions, what more inspiring lesson could she place before their eyes than the history of her early days, when her priests and missionaries were confessors and martyrs? Of these was the subject of the present memoir.

John de Brébeuf was born in the diocese of Bayeux, in Normandy, March 25, 1593, of a noble family, said to be the same that gave origin to the illustrious and truly Catholic house of the English Arundels. He resolved to dedicate himself to the service of God in the holy ministry, and, with this view, entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus, at Rouen, October 5, 1617. Having completed his noviceship, he entered upon his theological studies. He received subdeacon's orders at Lisseux, and those of deacon at Bayeux, in September, 1621; was ordained a priest during the Lent of 1622, and offered up the holy sacrifice of the Mass for the first time on Lady-day of the same year. He was, though of the youngest, one of the most zealous and devoted priests of his order, and, from the time that he consecrated himself to religion, was given to daily austerities and rigorous self-mortifications.

Catching the spirit of his divine Master, Father Brébeuf conceived an ardent thirst for the salvation of souls, and the foreign missions became the object of his most fervent desire. This chosen field was soon opened to his intrepid and heroic labors. When Father Le Caron, the Recollect missionary in Canada, asked for the assistance of the Jesuits in his arduous undertaking of conquering to Christ the savage tribes of North America, Fathers John de Brébeuf, Charles Lallemant, and Evremond Massé, themselves all eager for the task, were selected by their superiors for the mission. These apostolic men sailed from Dieppe, April 26, 1625, and reached Quebec after a prosperous voyage. The reception they at first met was enough to have appalled any hearts less resolute and inspired from above than were the hearts of Father Brébeuf and his companions. The Recollects, a branch of the Franciscan Order, who, through Father Le Caron, had invited them over, had received at their convent on the river St. Charles no tidings of their arrival; Champlain, ever friendly to the missionaries of the faith, was absent; Caen, the Calvinist, then at the head of the fur-trading monopoly of New France, refused them shelter in the fort; and the private traders at Quebec closed their doors against them. To perish in the wilderness, or to return to France from the inhospitable shores of the New World, was the only alternative before them. At this juncture the good Recollects, hearing of their arrival and destitution, hastened from their convent in their boat, and received the outcast sons of Loyola with every demonstration of joy and hospitality, and carried them to the convent. It is unaccountable how Parkman, in his Pioneers of France in the New World, in the face of these facts, related by himself in common with historians generally, should charge against the Recollects that they "entertained a lurking jealousy of these formidable fellow-laborers," as he calls the Jesuits; who, on the contrary, were the chosen companions of the Recollects, were invited to share their labors, and with whom they prosecuted with "one heart and one mind" the glorious work of the missions. The sons of St. Francis and St. Ignatius united at once in administering to the spiritual necessities of the French at Quebec, and[514] the latter, by their heroic labors and sacrifices, soon overcame the prejudice of their enemies.

From his transient home at Quebec, Father Brébeuf watched for an opportunity of advancing to the field of his mission among the Indians. The first opportunity that presented itself was the proposed descent of Father Viel to Three Rivers, in order to make a retreat, and attend to some necessary business of the mission. Father Brébeuf, accompanied by the Recollect Joseph de la Roche Dallion, lost no time in repairing to the trading post to meet the father, return with him and the expected annual flotilla of trading canoes from the Huron country, and commence his coveted work among the Wyandots. But he arrived only to hear that Father Viel had gained the crown of martyrdom, together with a little Christian boy, whom their Indian conductor, as his canoe shot across the last dangerous rapids in the river Des Prairies, behind Montreal, seized and threw into the foaming torrent together, by which they were swept immediately into the seething gulf below, never to rise again. Neither the death of Father Viel, nor his own ignorance of the Huron language, appalled the brave heart of Father Brébeuf, who, when the flotilla came down, begged to be taken back as a passenger to the Huron country; but the refusal of the Indians to receive him compelled him to return to Quebec. On the twentieth of July, 1625, he went among the Montagnais, with whom he wintered, and, for five months, suffered all the rigors of the climate, in a mere bark-cabin, in which he had to endure both smoke and filth, the inevitable penalties of accepting savage hospitality. Besides this, his encampment was shifted with the ever-varying chase, and it was only his zeal that enabled him, amid incessant changes and distractions, to learn much of the Indian language, for the acquisition of the various dialects of which, as well as for his aptitude in accommodating himself to Indian life and manners, he was singularly gifted. On the twenty-seventh of March following, he returned to Quebec, and resumed, in union with the Recollects, the care of the French settlers. The Jesuits and Recollects, moving together in perfect unison, went alternately from Quebec to the Recollect convent and Jesuit residence, on a small river called St. Charles, not far from the city.

The colony of the Jesuit fathers was soon increased by the arrival of Fathers Noirot and De la Nouë, with twenty laborers, and they were thus enabled to build a residence for themselves—the mother house and headquarters of these valiant soldiers of the cross in their long and eventful struggle with paganism and superstition among the Indians. Father Brébeuf and his companions now devoted their labors to the French at Quebec, then numbering only forty-three, hearing confessions, preaching, and studying the Indian languages. They also bestowed considerable attention on the cultivation of the soil. But these labors were but preparatory for others more arduous, but more attractive to them.

In 1626, the Huron mission was again attempted by Father Brébeuf. He, together with Father Joseph de la Roche Dallion and the Jesuit Anne de Nouë, was sent to Three Rivers, to attempt a passage to the Huron country. When the Indian flotilla arrived at Three Rivers, the Hurons were ready to receive Father de la Roche on board, but being unaccustomed to the Jesuit habit, and objecting, or pretending to object, to the portly frame of Father Brébeuf,[515] they refused a passage to him and his companion, Father Nouë. At last, some presents secured a place in the flotilla for the two Jesuits. The missionaries, after a painful voyage, arrived at St. Gabriel, or La Rochelle, in the Huron country, and took up the mission which the Recollects Le Caron and Viel had so nobly pioneered.

The Hurons, whose proper name was Wendat, or Wyandot, were a powerful tribe, numbering at least thirty thousand souls, living in eighteen villages scattered over a small strip of land on a peninsula in the southern extremity of the Georgian Bay. Other tribes, kindred to them, stretched through New York and into the continent as far south as the Carolinas. Their towns were well built and strongly defended, and they were good tillers of the soil, active traders, and brave warriors. They were, however, behind their neighbors in their domestic life and in their styles of dress, which for both sexes were exceedingly immodest. Their objects of worship were one supreme deity, called the Master of Life, to whom they offered human sacrifices, and an infinite number of inferior deities, or rather fiends, inhabiting rivers, cataracts, or other natural objects, riding on the storms, or living in some animal or plant, and whom they propitiated with tobacco. Father Brébeuf had acquired sufficient knowledge of their language to make himself understood by the natives, and he was greatly assisted by the instructions and manuscripts of Fathers Le Caron and Viel. Father Nouë, being unable to acquire the language, by reason of his great age and defective memory, returned to Quebec in 1627, and was followed the next year by Father de la Roche, who had made a brave but unsuccessful effort to plant the cross among the Attiarandaronk, or Neutrals. The undaunted Brébeuf was thus in 1629 left alone among the Hurons. He soon won their confidence and respect, and was adopted into the tribe by the name of Echon. Though few conversions rewarded his labors among them during his three years' residence, still he was amply compensated by his success in gaining their hearts, acquiring their language, and thoroughly understanding their character and manners. So completely had he gained the good-will of the Hurons, that, when he was about to return in 1629 to Quebec, whither his superior had recalled him, in consequence of the distress prevailing in the colony, the Indians crowded around him to prevent him from entering the canoes, and addressed him in this touching language; "What! Echon, dost thou leave us? Thou hast been here now three years, to learn our language, to teach us to know thy God, to adore and serve him, having come but for that end, as thou hast shown; and now, when thou knowest our language more perfectly than any other Frenchman, thou leavest us. If we do not know the God thou adorest, we shall call him to witness that it is not our fault, but thine, to leave us so." Deeply as he felt this appeal, the Jesuit could know no other voice when his superior spoke; and having given every encouragement to those who were well disposed toward the faith, and explained why he should go when his superior required it, he embarked on the flotilla of twelve canoes, and reached Quebec on the seventeenth of July, 1629. Three days after his arrival at Quebec, that port was captured by the English under the traitor Kirk, who bore the deepest hatred toward the Jesuits, whose residence he would have fired upon could he have brought his vessel near enough for his cannon to[516] bear upon it. He pillaged it, however, compelling the fathers to abandon it and fly for safety to Tadoussac. But Father Brébeuf and his companions were, together with Champlain, detained as prisoners. Amongst the followers of Kirk was one Michel, a bitter and relentless Huguenot, who was by his temperament and infirmities prone to violence, and who vented his rage especially against the Jesuits. He and the no less bigoted Kirk found in Father Brébeuf an intrepid defender of his order and of his companions against their foul calumnies, while at the same time his noble character showed how well it was trained to the practice of Christian humility and charity.

On the occasion here particularly alluded to, Kirk was conversing with the fathers, who were then his prisoners, and, with a malignant expression, said:

"Gentlemen, your business in Canada was to enjoy what belonged to M. de Caen, whom you dispossessed."

"Pardon me, sir," answered Father Brébeuf, "we came purely for the glory of God, and exposed ourselves to every kind of danger to convert the Indians."

Here Michel broke in: "Ay, ay, convert the Indians! You mean, convert the beaver!"

Father Brébeuf, conscious of his own and his companion's innocence, and deeming the occasion one which required at his hands a full and unqualified denial, solemnly and deliberately answered:

The infuriated Michel, raising his fist at his prisoner in a threatening manner, exclaimed:

"But for the respect I owe the general, I would strike you for giving me the lie."

Father Brébeuf, who possessed a powerful frame and commanding figure, stood unmoved and unruffled. But he did not rely upon these qualities of the man, though he knew no fear, but illustrated by his example on this as on every other occasion the virtues of a Christian and a minister of peace. With a humility and charity that showed how well the strong and naturally impulsive man had subdued his passions, he endeavored to appease the anger of his assailant by an apology, which, while it was justly calculated to remove all cause of offence, was accompanied with a solemn vindication of himself and companions from the unjust imputation just cast upon them. He said:

"You must excuse me. I did not mean to give you the lie. I should be very sorry to do so. The words I used are those we use in the schools when a doubtful question is advanced, and they mean no offence. Therefore, I ask you to pardon me."

"I knew it," replied Michel; "I should be content if I had struck that Jesuit who gave me the lie before my general."

The unfortunate Michel continued in this way unceasingly to rave over the pretended insult, which no apologies could obliterate. He died shortly afterward in one of his paroxysms of fury, and was interred under the rocks of Tadoussac. It was not permitted to him to execute his threatened vengeance on the Jesuit, whom he was the first to insult, and whom he never forgave, though himself forgiven.

Father Brébeuf, together with the truly great and Catholic Champlain, the governor of Quebec, and with the other missionaries, were carried prisoners to England, whence[517] they all made their way to France.

Sad at this interruption of their work of love among the benighted sons of the Western wilds, the missionaries did not despair, but only awaited the restoration of Canada to France in order to resume their labors. In the volume of his travels published by Champlain in 1632, is embraced the treatise on the Huron language which Father Brébeuf had prepared during his three years' residence with that tribe, and which, in our own times, has been republished in the Transactions of the American Antiquarian Society, as a most precious contribution to learning.

The English government disavowed the conduct of Kirk, and Canada was restored to France during the year 1632. As the conversion of the native tribes was ever one of the leading features in the policy of Catholic statesmen in the colonization of this continent, it was determined to renew the missions which we have seen interrupted. In selecting missionaries for this task, the choice fell not upon the Jesuits, nor the Recollects, as might have been expected, but upon the Capuchins; and it was only when these good fathers represented to Cardinal Richelieu that the Jesuits had already been laboring with fidelity and success in that vineyard, and requested that the missions might be again confided to them, that Fathers Paul Lejeune and Anne de Nouë, with a lay brother, were sent out in 1632. They arrived at Tadoussac on the twelfth of July. It soon became Father Brébeuf's great privilege and happiness to follow them. On the twenty-second of May, 1633, to the great joy of Quebec, Champlain returned to resume his sway in Canada, and Father Brébeuf accompanied him together with Fathers Massé, Daniel, and Devost. Though Father Brébeuf was not inactive about Quebec, still his heart longed for the Huron homes and council-fires, and still more for Huron souls. Shortly afterward, he had the consolation of beholding the faithful Louis Amantacha, a Christian Huron, arriving at Quebec, followed by the usual Indian flotilla of canoes. A council was held, sixty chiefs sat in a circle round the council-fire, and the noble Champlain, the intrepid Brébeuf, and the zealous Lallemant, stood in their midst. A treaty of friendship was concluded between the French and the Hurons, and, in confiding the missionaries to his new allies, Champlain thus addressed the latter: "These we consider as fathers, these are dearer to us than life. Think not that they have left France under pressure of want; no, they were there in high esteem: they come not to gather up your furs, but to open to you the doors of eternal life. If you love the French, as you say you love them, then love and honor these our fathers." This address was responded to by two of the chiefs, who were followed by Father Brébeuf in his broken Huron, "the assembly jerking in unison, from the bottom of their throats, repeated ejaculations of applause." The members of the council then crowded round him, each claiming the privilege of carrying him in his canoe. And the Indians from the different towns began now to contend among themselves for the honor of possessing Father Brébeuf for their respective settlements. The contest was soon decided in favor of Rochelle, the most populous of the Huron villages. On the eighth of August, the effects of Father Brébeuf and of his companions, Fathers Daniel and Devost, were already on board the canoes, when another more serious difficulty arose: an Indian murderer had been[518] arrested by order of Champlain, in consequence of which an enraged Algonquin chief declared that no Frenchman should enter the flotilla. The Hurons were ready and anxious to convey the fathers, but they feared the consequences of a rupture with the Algonquins. The fathers were thus constrained, to the common sorrow of themselves and their Hurons, to behold the flotilla depart without them. But the last scene in this separation was yet more touching. The faithful and pious Louis Amantacha, overwhelmed with sorrow at the loss of the fathers, lingered in their company to the last moment, humbly made his confession, and, for the last time for him, this Christian warrior received the holy communion from the hands of Father Brébeuf. Then, having rejoined his companions, the flotilla quickly glided from the view of those who would have laid down their lives to save the souls of those benighted and thoughtless voyagers.

Father Brébeuf and his companions returned to labor for a time longer among the French and Indians in and about Quebec, where their labors were full of zeal and not without success. It was here that Father Brébeuf baptized Sasousmat, the first adult upon whom he conferred that sacrament. While in health, Sasousmat had requested that he might be sent to France for instruction in the faith, but he was now overtaken by a dreadful illness, which deprived him of reason. Father Brébeuf visited him while in this state, and, returning from his couch to the altar, he offered up for his benefit the holy sacrifice of the Mass in honor of St. Joseph, the glorious patron of the country; his prayer of sacrifice was heard in heaven, and Sasousmat was restored to his mind. Father Brébeuf then instructed him, and the joyful neophyte ardently and touchingly entreated the father to baptize him. But the cautious and conscientious priest deferred the sacrament, to the astonishment of the Indians, whose habit was to refuse nothing to the sick. One of Sasousmat's Indian friends said to the father, with great impatience: "Thou hast no sense; pour a little water on him, and it is done." "No," replied the priest of God, "I would involve myself in ruin were I to baptize, without necessity, an infidel and unbeliever not fully instructed." The patient was afterwards removed to the residence of Notre Dame des Anges, where he continued to receive the instructions of the father, and where he grew desperately ill, and was finally in an hour of danger baptized. At the moment of his decease, a resplendent meteoric light illumined the death-room, and shone far around about the country. There was afterwards another adult, named Nassé, a steadfast friend of the missionaries, who fell dangerously ill, and was nursed by Father Brébeuf. He too made earnest entreaties to be baptized, but the father subjected the convert to long delays and probations, and finally only bestowed the sacrament when death was imminent. Instances are related in which baptism was refused to adults, even in extremis, where the requisite dispositions were wanting. Such examples, of which there are not a few recorded in the Jesuit Relations, besides exhibiting the zeal and self-sacrificing labors of the Catholic missionaries for the salvation of souls, furnish us with a complete refutation of the wanton calumny that those early missionary priests were in the habit of bestowing the sacrament upon entire multitudes of savages without previous instruction or probation—a calumny now fully refuted by the Relations and letters of the fathers themselves, who, while[519] they penned the humble story of their labors, to be transmitted to their superiors in Europe, knew not that the same would serve as evidence for their own vindication.

With the return of spring, the time again drew near for the appearance of the usual flotilla of Indian canoes at the trading post of Three Rivers. On the 1st of July, Fathers Brébeuf and Daniel repaired to Three Rivers, to procure a passage in the flotilla for the Huron country, and Father Devost joined them in a few days. But the canoes were slow in coming in; the Hurons had sustained a terrific defeat, losing two hundred braves, and the gallant Christian warrior Louis Amantacha was among the slain. No sooner, however, had a few canoes arrived, than Father Brébeuf pressed forward to secure a passage; but the hostile Algonquin and the cautious Huron discovered innumerable obstacles in the way of his going with them, and it seemed that he was again to be disappointed in his hopes of reaching his beloved mission. At length, by the influence of the French commanders, which was supported as usual by presents, it was arranged that a passage should be given to one missionary and two men, and even then Father Brébeuf was left out. He thus describes his difficulties: "Never did I see voyage so hampered and traversed by the common enemy of man. It was by a stroke of heaven that we advanced, and an effect of the power of the glorious St. Joseph, in whose honor God inspired me to promise twenty masses, in the despair of all things." At the moment that this vow was made, a Huron, who had agreed to carry one of the Frenchmen in his canoe, was suddenly inspired to take Father Brébeuf in his stead. Thus a passage was secured. But such were the hurry, confusion, and want of accommodation, that the missionaries were compelled to leave behind them all their effects, except such as were necessary for saying Mass. Too glad to be admitted into this vineyard which they had so long sought, they cheerfully made every sacrifice. With light and joyous hearts and ready hands, they plied the oar from morning till night; they recited the sacred office by the evening fire; they nursed all who fell sick on the voyage with so much charity and tenderness as to melt the hearts of those savage sons of the wilderness; at fifty different points, where the passage was dangerous or obstructed, they volunteered to carry the packages, and even the canoes, on their shoulders around the portages; and at one place Father Brébeuf barely escaped a watery grave at a rapid where his canoe was hurried over the impetuous current. At length, after much suffering, they reached the shores of the Huron country on the 5th of August, 1634.

The following description of this remarkable journey of the fathers is from the eloquent and graphic, but not always impartial, pages of Parkman's Jesuits in North America:

But Father Brébeuf's trials did not end here, for the ungrateful Indians, who lived twenty miles below Father Brébeuf's destination, forgetting all his kindness and sacrifices and despising his entreaties, abandoned him on this desolate shore. In this distress, he fell upon his knees and thanked God for all his favors, and especially for bringing him again into the country of the Hurons. Beseeching Providence to guide his steps, and saluting the guardian angel of the land with a dedication of himself to the conversion of those tribes, he took only such articles as he could in no event dispense with, and, concealing the rest, started forth in that vast wilderness, not knowing whither his steps might carry him. Providence guided those steps: he discovered the site of the former village, Toanché, in which he had resided three years, and even the blackened ruins of his cabin, in which, for the same time, he had offered up the Holy Sacrifice; but the village was destroyed and the encampment shifted to another place. Striking upon a trail, he advanced full of hope, and soon he suddenly stood in the midst of his Huron friends, in their new village of Ihonatiria. A shout of welcome from a hundred voices—"Echon! Echon!"—greeted the joyous messenger of salvation. He immediately threw himself upon the hospitality of the generous chief, Awandoay, from whom he obtained men to go for his packages; he retraced his weary steps with them, and it was one o'clock in the morning before all was safely lodged in the village of Ihonatiria. The other fathers, after suffering similar ill-treatment from the Indians of the flotilla in whose canoes they came, finally found their way also, one by one, to Ihonatiria, in great distress.

For some time they partook of the liberal hospitality of Awandoay; but, Father Brébeuf having decided to[521] make Ihonatiria the mission headquarters, they now constructed a residence for themselves, thirty-six by twenty-one feet, in which the centre was their hall, parlor, and business-room, leading, on the one side, to the chapel, and, on the other, to what was at the same time kitchen, refectory, and dormitory. This rude hut—indeed, everything about the missionaries—awakened the amazement of these simple sons of the forest. They came in crowds from all parts of the Huron country to see the wonderful things possessed by the fathers, the fame of which had spread through the land. There was the mill for grinding corn, which they viewed with admiration, and which they delighted to turn without ceasing. There were a prism and magnet, whose qualities struck them with surprise and pleasure. There was a magnifying-glass which, to their amazement, made a flea as large as a monster; and a multiplying lens which possessed the mysterious power of creating instantly eleven beads out of one. But the clock, which hung on the wall of the missionary cabin, was to these untutored savages the greatest miracle of all. The assembled warriors, with their wives and children, would sit in silence on the ground, waiting an entire hour for the clock to strike the time of the day. They listened to it ticking every second and marking every minute of the twenty-four hours; they thought it was a thing of life; inquired when, how, and upon what it fed. They called it sometimes the "Day Chief" and sometimes the "Captain," and expressed their awe of so mysterious and supernatural a being by the constant cry of "Ondaki! Ondaki!!" "What does the Captain say now?" was the repeated question. The fathers were obliged to establish certain regulations for visitors, whose presence would have left them no time for rest or devotion during the twenty-four hours, while, at the same time, they availed themselves of these curiosities for attracting the Indians to the mission cross before their door and to the first simple lessons in religion. They thus interpreted the strokes of the clock: "When he strikes twelve times, he says, 'Hang on the kettle,' and when he strikes four times, he says, 'Get up and go home.'" The Indians rigidly obeyed these commands of the little "Day Chief." The crowd was densest at the stroke of twelve, when the kettle was hung and the fathers' sagamite passed around; and at the stroke of four, all arose at once and departed, leaving their good entertainers to say their office and rosary, study and make notes on the Huron language, write letters to their superiors, and consult over the plans for conducting the mission. The fathers also gave some lessons to their Huron friends on the subject of self-defence and military engineering. The Hurons, living in constant dread of the Iroquois, were glad to learn a more perfect way of constructing their palisade forts, which they had been accustomed to make round, but which the Frenchmen now taught them to make rectangular, with small flanking towers at the corners for the arquebusmen. And, in case of actual attack, the aid of the four Frenchmen, armed with arquebuses, who had come with the missionaries from Three Rivers, was promised, to enable them to defend their wives, children, and homes from the unsparing attacks of their relentless enemies.

The Indian children were the especial objects of the solicitude of these untiring missionaries. They assembled these frequently at their house, on which occasions Father[522] Brébeuf, the more effectually to inspire respect, appeared in surplice and baretta. The Pater Noster was chanted in Huron rhyme, into which it had been translated by Father Daniel; and the Ave and Credo and Ten Commandments were recited. The children were examined in their past lessons, and instructed in new ones, and then dismissed joyously with presents of beads and dried fruits. Soon the village resounded with the rhymes of the Pater Noster, and the little catechumens vied with each other at home in making the sign of the cross and reciting the commandments.

To the adults the fathers earnestly announced Christ crucified, and endeavored to turn their admiration from the clock and other curiosities of the mission house, which, as they said, were but creatures, to the Creator, to heaven, and to the faith. The first-fruits of the mission were soon gathered; several infants, in danger of death, were baptized, and several adults were also admitted into the Christian church through the same regenerating waters.

But the enemies of religion and of truth were jealously watching these successes, and soon the fathers encountered the same opposition that always besets the introduction of Christianity into heathen nations; that is, the jealousy and hatred of the native priests, or officials entrusted with the matters of religion or the superstitious rites of the country. These, among our American tribes, were the medicine men. These wicked sorcerers accused Father Brébeuf and his companions of causing the drought, of blighting the crops, of introducing the plague, in fine, of every evil that afflicted the country or any of the people. The missionaries began to be insulted, the cross before their residence was turned into a target, and curses and imprecations greeted them on every side. But the prayers of the fathers, and especially a novena of masses in honor of St. Joseph, were soon followed by copious rains, and the medicine-men were confounded, while the fathers were received with honor and esteem. The old and young were instructed in the faith, catechetical classes were opened, and all ages and conditions took pleasure in contending for the pictures, medals, and other little rewards which were bestowed upon the studious. On Sundays, the Indians were assembled at Mass; but, in imitation of the custom which prevailed in the early church, Father Brébeuf dismissed them at the offertory, after reciting for them the prayers they had learned. In the afternoon, catechetical instructions were given, and all were examined on what they had learned during the week. In August, 1635, Fathers Pijart and Mercier, then recently arrived from France, came into the Huron country to join the little missionary band, who were, even after this increase of their force, kept constantly laboring.

In April, 1636, the missionaries attended the "feast of the dead," a great solemnity of the Indians, when the bones of their dead are taken down from their aerial tombs, and, being wrapped in the richest furs, and surrounded with various implements, are deposited in the common mound, amid the songs, games, and dancing of the living. Father Brébeuf, the courageous champion of the faith, seized upon this occasion to announce the saving word of truth in the very midst of the ancient and most cherished rites of a heathen superstition. He declared that such ceremonies were utterly vain and fruitless for souls which, like the souls of all in that mound, were lost for ever;[523] that souls on death went either to a realm of bliss or a world of woe; that the living alone could choose, and, if they preferred the former, he and the other fathers were there to show the way. This speech was accompanied with a present to the assembled chiefs, a means most effectual in gaining the good-will of the Indians. The latter offered no opposition to the baptism of their infants, and expressed themselves as if well disposed towards the faith preached by the fathers. In December, the mission among the Hurons was formally consecrated to the Immaculate Conception. Baptism was administered to nearly thirty of the tribe, amongst whom was one, a little girl, of singular interest, named Mary Conception. This little child was remarkable for her love of prayer and her fondness for the missionaries and whatever pertained to religion; she ran as gaily to catechism as the other children to their play, and took a singular pleasure in walking beside the missionary as he was reciting his office, making the sign of the cross and praying louder whenever he turned in his walk. In 1635, fourteen baptisms were reported by the fathers, and in July, 1636, eighty-six, amongst whom was the chief, who was sincerely converted to the faith. Father Brébeuf made many excursions to distant villages and families. In October, he visited the family of Louis de Sainte Foi, who, having been taken to France by the fathers, was baptized at Rouen, but was now grown cold in his religion. This visit, in which Father Brébeuf was accompanied by Father Pijart, rekindled the ardor of the chief, and was the occasion of announcing the commandments of God to all his family. Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, appealing as it does to the best natural feelings of the human heart, as well as to the highest and purest motives of religion, was easily received, especially among the Indian mothers, to whom she was proposed for imitation by Father Brébeuf. He composed for them, and in their own language, beautiful prayers of invocation to the Mother of God. So great was his proficiency in the Huron language, that he was able to attach to his relation of this year a treatise on the language and another on the customs of the Hurons, the former of which has been published in English.

It was about this time that a delegation of Algonquin braves came to solicit the alliance of the Hurons against the Iroquois. Failing to secure their point with the Hurons, the Algonquins next turned to the missionaries and endeavored to detach them from the Hurons, and offered, as an inducement to Father Brébeuf, to make him one of their great chiefs. Father Brébeuf, with a smile, replied, that he had left home and fortune to gain souls, not to become rich or to gain honors in war, and dismissed the negotiators as usual with a present.

The removal of the headquarters of the mission from Ihonatiria to Ossossané had been several times mooted; one day, as Father Brébeuf was travelling to visit a sick Christian, he was met by the chief of Ossossané, who so forcibly urged the change that Father Brébeuf was induced to promise them a compliance with what had been in fact his previous design. A promise was readily made on the other side that the villagers of Ossossané would the following year erect the necessary accommodations for the fathers. When the people of Ihonatiria heard this, their chief, at daybreak, from the top of his cabin summoned all his people out to rebuild the cabin of the black gown. Old and young now went forth to[524] obey the summons, and soon the work was completed. When the next season for the feast of the dead came round, a great change was observable in its celebration, a proof of the influence of Christian sentiments with the people. The accustomed magnificence was dispensed with, and those who died Christians were not reburied, even in a separate portion of the common tomb. The ceremony consisted in nothing more than a touching manifestation of the affection of the living for their deceased friends, and the missionaries were too prudent to interfere. In order to show how earnest our missionaries were for the conversion of these tribes, it is worth recording that they established a Huron seminary at Quebec, and during this year Fathers Daniel and Devost departed from Huronia for Quebec, with several young Hurons destined for students in this institution. It was also during this year that Fathers Garnier, Chastelain, and Jogues arrived from France, and entered this promising vineyard.

Shortly after these arrivals, a contagious fever broke out in the Huron country, and several of the missionaries were seized with the malady. It would be impossible, within the space allotted to this memoir, to detail all their sufferings and privations. The hardy Brébeuf and the others that were not taken down, became the faithful and constant nurses of their sick companions, and, when these were restored, the entire missionary band dedicated themselves to the nursing and spiritual succor of the afflicted people. Here, again, the fathers met with the usual obstacles and annoyances from the native sorcerers. The medicine-men, in whom the Indians had implicit confidence, especially in sickness, resorted to their usual tricks, and the villages resounded with horrid superstitious orgies. Many refused to let the fathers baptize their dying infants. Others, however, having seen the utter failure of their sorcerers to effect a single cure, and having observed how the Christian baptism was frequently followed by a restoration of the body also to health, had recourse to the missionaries. But in such cases their visits of mercy were obstructed by the insults, the threats, and ill-usage of the excited rabble. But, as Bancroft remarks, "the Jesuit never receded a foot." He pressed forward with love and courage, frequently forcing his way to the couch of the dying, and encountering threatened death to save a single soul. In order to propitiate the mercy of Heaven for this afflicted people, Father Brébeuf assembled a council of the chiefs of several villages, and succeeded so far as to induce them, in behalf of themselves and their people, to promise solemnly, in the presence of God, that they would renounce their superstitions, embrace the faith of Jesus Christ, conform their marriages to the Christian standard, and build chapels for the service of the one true God. With the solemnity of this scene, however, passed away also their good resolutions. The Indian, ever inconsistent, except in his attachment to his idols and his hunting-grounds, was soon again seen raving at the frenzied words and incantations of the sorcerer Tonnerananont, who professed himself to be a devil incarnate. The plague continued to rage; not even the frosts of winter arrested its destructive powers. Night and day Father Brébeuf and his companions were travelling and laboring for those miserable and inconstant savages. They went about over the country administering remedies for the maladies of the body as well as those of the soul. Besides relieving many by bleeding and other[525] simple remedies, their heroic labors were rewarded with other fruits far sweeter to them, the baptism of two hundred and fifty expiring infants and adults. The bold and fearless advances and the devoted services of the Jesuit fathers during this season of disease and death may well have called forth from Sparks the remark that "humanity can claim no higher honor than that such examples have existed." In the spring the pestilence abated, and the usual and regular duties and labors of the mission were resumed. His superior knowledge of the language devolved upon Father Brébeuf the greater burthen of instructing and catechising the natives. In May, he called a council of the chiefs of Ossossané, and reminded them of their promise to build a cabin for the fathers. The appeal was responded to, and, on the fifth of June, Father Pijart offered up the Mass of the Holy Trinity at Ossossané, in "our own House of the Immaculate Conception." On Trinity Sunday, another happiness was enjoyed by Father Brébeuf, in the baptism of the first adult at Ihonatiria. This was Tsiwendaentaha, a chief who had manifested great perseverance in his wish to become a Christian; he had repeatedly requested and entreated to be baptized, and had renounced all connection with the medicine-men for three years, and, what was remarkable among the natives, had only once during that time manifested any disposition towards a relapse. After prolonged probation and careful instruction, Father Brébeuf baptized him on Trinity Sunday, conferring upon him the Christian name of Peter. The ceremony was surrounded with as much magnificence as the infant church in that wilderness could bring, and in the presence of immense crowds of Hurons. The corner-stone of the new church was laid on the same occasion.

These consolations of the mission were soon succeeded by direful calamities. Sickness still lingered in the country. Having failed by their superstitious rites to ameliorate the condition of the people, the medicine-men now accused the fathers of being the cause of the pestilence, and even of having a design of destroying the country. A general outburst of indignation now assailed the holy men. Everything connected with them or their religion now became objects of suspicion—the pictures in the chapel, their mission flag flying from the top of a tree, the Mass in the morning, the evening litany, the walk of the missionaries by day, and especially the clock, were successively condemned as demons, and signals of pestilence and death. It was even rumored that the fathers concealed in their cabin a dead body, which they brought from France, and which was now supposed to be the origin of the infection. Goaded by their fears, and incited by their sorcerers, the Indians rushed into the missionary residence to seize the mysterious corpse. As superior, the principal weight of these persecutions fell upon Father Brébeuf, who endeavored in vain to dispel such vain fears. The fathers were insulted and threatened with death in their own house. A general council of chiefs and warriors was held, in which they were universally accused of causing all the evils of the country. The courageous Brébeuf stood in their midst to refute their calumnies and expose their follies. Nothing could appease them. They offered to spare Father Brébeuf's life if he would deliver up the fatal cloth in which he had wrapt the pestilence. He indignantly refused to countenance their superstitions by compliance, but told them[526] to search his cabin and burn every cloth if they thought proper. He told them, however, that since they had pressed him so far, he would give them his opinion as to the origin of their misfortunes, which he then went on to trace to natural causes and their own foolish method of treating the sick, and spoke to them of the power of God and his justice in rewarding the good and punishing the wicked. Father Brébeuf concluded his remarks amidst shouts and insults, but without losing his characteristic courage and calmness. Despite his unanswerable appeal, the assembly thirsted for the blood of at least one of the missionaries as an experiment, and at any moment one of those devoted men might have fallen dead under the hatchet of some enraged savage. Repeated councils were held, and the death of the strangers was resolved upon. The residence was burned, the stake prepared, and Father Brébeuf led forth. Having prepared himself for death, he now, in imitation of the Huron custom, gave the usual feast, in order to show that he did not shrink from giving his life in testimony of the faith he had preached to them. Just before the moment of his execution arrived, Father Brébeuf was summoned to a council, where, amid insult and interruption, he delivered another speech in advocacy of the faith, instead of explaining the plague, and, by one of those sudden changes of temper not unusual in Indian assemblies, he was acquitted and set free. As he passed from the wigwam of the council, he saw one of his greatest persecutors fall dead at his feet, under a stroke from the murderous tomahawk: supposing that, in the dim light of a far-spent day, the murderer had mistaken his victim, the future martyr asked: "Was not that blow meant for me?" "No," replied the warrior; "pass on: he was a sorcerer, thou art not." His companions were anxiously awaiting the result; and when he walked into their midst, they received him as the dead restored to life. They all united in returning thanks to God for the safety of the superior of the mission, and especially for the announcement which that apostolic man made to them, that they might yet hope to remain in that country, and labor for the salvation of their persecutors.

The firm and uncompromising character of Father Brébeuf is strikingly illustrated in contrast with the fickleness of the Indians, the difference between faith and superstition, by another circumstance which occurred during the prevalence of the pestilence. The Hurons, after repeated recourse to their medicine-men, whose vile practices they now saw to be barren of results, resolved to have recourse to the fathers, whom they invited to attend a council. "What must we do that your God may take pity on us?" they asked of the Christian priests. Father Brébeuf immediately answered: "Believe in him; keep his commandments; abjure your faith in dreams; take but one wife, and be true to her; give up your superstitious feasts; renounce your assemblies of debauchery; eat no human flesh; never give feasts to demons; and make a vow that, if God will deliver you from this pest, you will build a chapel to offer him thanksgiving and praise."

In the midst of their sufferings and the persecutions they sustained, these heroic missionaries ceased not a single moment their labors of mercy and salvation. Themselves outcast and friendless, they visited and nursed the sick; repulsed, they pressed forward to the bedside of the dying; reviled for their religion, they[527] still announced its saving truths; threatened with death, they bestowed the bread of life eternal upon others, even while the deadly tomahawk glistened over their heads. Such was the life the early Catholic missionaries led upon our borders; such, too, were the labors and sacrifices which preluded others, equally sublime and heroic, within the territory of our own republic.

Among the converts of Father Brébeuf at Ossossané was Joseph Chiwattenwha, a nephew on the maternal side to the head chief of the Hurons. From the time that he listened to Father Brébeuf's sermon at the "feast of the dead," he had been an earnest and regular catechumen. He rejected the prevailing superstitions of his race, and was remarkable for the purity of his morals, his freedom from the common Indian vice of gambling, and for his rare conjugal fidelity. Notwithstanding his virtues, and his repeated requests to be baptized, Father Brébeuf delayed the sacrament, to make sure of his thorough conversion, and, finally, only conferred it upon him in a moment of danger. The chief recovered from his illness, and, calling all his friends together at a grand banquet, he addressed them zealously in favor of the faith he had embraced. His faith and zeal were rewarded by the manifest protection of Heaven over himself and his family during the prevalence of the fever.

OUR LADY OF LOURDES.

BOOK EIGHTH.
I.

The appointment by the Bishop of a commission of examination, and the analysis of M. Filhol, deprived Baron Massy, M. Rouland, and M. Jacomet of all pretext for continuing violent measures, or for maintaining about the grotto strict prohibitions, barriers, and guards.

In justification of the restrictions previously made, it had been said: "Considering that it is very desirable, in the interest of religion, to put an end to the deplorable scenes now presented at the grotto of Massabielle." Now the Bishop, by declaring the matter to be of sufficient importance for his intervention, and by taking in hand the examination of those things which affected the interests of religion, had deprived the civil power of this motive which it had made so prominent.

In justification of the prohibition to go and drink at the spring which had gushed out under the hand of Bernadette, it had been urged "that the care of the local public health devolves upon the mayor," and that this water "is suspected on good grounds to contain mineral ingredients, making it prudent, before permitting its use, to wait for a scientific[528] analysis to determine the applications which may be made of it in medicine." Now, M. Filhol, by his decision that the water had no mineral properties, and that it could be drunk without inconvenience, had annihilated in the name of science and of medicine this plea of "the public health."

If, then, these considerations had been real reasons for the civil power, and not merely specious pretexts; if it had really been acting in the "interests of religion and the public health," instead of being under the sway of evil passions and intolerance; or if, in a word, it had been sincere instead of being hypocritical, it would now have had nothing to do but to remove its prohibitions and barriers; it would have only had to leave the people perfectly free to drink of this fountain, the perfect harmlessness of which had been attested by science, and to recognize their right to kneel at the foot of these mysterious rocks, where for the future the church was to be on the watch.

II.

But this was not the case. There was a great obstacle to this course, so clearly indicated by logic and conscience; namely, pride. Pride was the ruling spirit from one end of the scale to the other, from Jacomet up to Rouland, including Baron Massy and the philosophical coterie. It seemed hard to them to retreat and lay down their arms. Pride never surrenders. It prefers rather to take an illogical position than to bow to the authority of reason. Furious, beside itself, and absurd, it revolts against evidence. Like Satan, it says, "Non serviam." It resists, it refuses to bend, it stiffens its neck, till suddenly it is broken by some contemptuous and superior power.

III.

There remained for the official and officious foes of superstition one last weapon to use, one final struggle to make. Though the battle seemed to be certainly lost in the Pyrenees, perhaps the lost position might be regained in Paris, and the favor of public opinion secured throughout France and Europe, before the cosmopolitan assemblage of tourists and bathers, returning home, should pass their severe judgments on the other side. This was tried. A formidable attack was made by the irreligious press of Paris, the provinces, and other countries, upon the events at Lourdes and the Bishop's ordinance.

While the generals of the infidel army engaged in a decisive combat upon this vast scale, the duty of the Prefect of Hautes-Pyrenees, like that of Kellerman at Valmy, was to hold at all costs his line of operation, not to recede a single foot from it, and not to capitulate on any terms. The intrepidity of Baron Massy was well known, and it was understood that neither arguments nor the most surprising miracles would prevail over his invincible firmness. He would stand by his sinking ship to the last. The absurd had in him an excellent champion.

The Journal des Débats, Siècle, Presse, Indépendance Belge, and various foreign journals, also came manfully to the rescue. The smallest newspapers of the smallest countries considered it an honor to serve in this campaign against the supernatural. We find, in fact, among the combatants, a microscopic sheet called the Courant, published at Amsterdam.

Some, like the Presse, by the pen of M. Guéroult, or the Siècle, by those of MM. Bénard and Jourdan,[529] attacked the very idea of miracles, declaring that they had had their day, that the discussion of them was no longer admissible, and to examine into a question which had already been decided by the light of philosophy was beneath the dignity of free examen. "Miracles," said M. Guéroult, "belong to a state of civilization which is almost gone by. Though God does not change, the conception which men form of him changes from age to age, according to the prevailing standard of morality and intelligence. Ignorant nations who do not understand the harmony of the laws by which the universe is governed imagine that they see continual exceptions to these laws. They think that God appears and speaks to them, or sends them a message by his angels, almost daily. But as society becomes more intelligent and better informed, and as the sciences based on observation come in to counteract the vagaries of the imagination, all this mythology disappears. Man does not on that account become less religious, but more so, though in a different manner. He does not any longer see gods and goddesses, angels and demons, face to face; but he seeks to discover the divine will as manifested in the laws of the world. Miracles, which at certain periods have been necessary to faith and served to convey the most important truths, have become in our day the bugbear of all serious conviction." M. Guéroult declared that, if he should be told that the most remarkable miracle was occurring close by his house on the Place de la Concorde, he would not take a step out of his way to see it. "If such occurrences," added he, "can occupy a place for a time among the superstitious trumpery of the ignorant masses, they only excite a smile of contempt among enlightened men, among those whose opinion is sure to be ultimately adopted by all the world."[131]

Other papers valiantly set to work to distort the facts. Though also attacking miracles in principle, the Siècle, in spite of the enormous yield of twenty thousand and odd litres a day, still remained, in its capacity of an enlightened and advanced journal, at the old thesis of hallucination and infiltration. "It seems difficult to us," said M. Bénard, very gravely, "to see a miracle in the hallucination of a little girl of fourteen, or in the oozing out of some water in a cave."

As for the miraculous cures, they were easily disposed of as follows: "Hydropathic physicians also claim to effect the most extraordinary cures by means of pure water, but they have not as yet proclaimed upon the house-tops that these cures are miracles."[132]

But the most curious example of the good faith of the free-thinkers, or of their sagacity in examining this matter, is to be found in the Dutch newspaper which we have mentioned above, and whose weighty narrative was reproduced by the French journals. Let us see how this friend of enlightenment enlightened the world by his account of the matter:

"A new manifestation, designed to excite and promote the fervor of the faithful in the worship of the Blessed Virgin, was imminent. The deliberations of the bishops on this point had resulted in the preparation of the famous miracle of Lourdes. It is well known that the Bishop of Tarbes appointed a commission of inquiry. The so-called conclusions of the report of the commission, which is composed of ecclesiastics and persons in the pay of the clergy, were [530]prepared long before their first session. The pretended shepherdess Bernadette is not an innocent peasant, but a highly cultivated city girl of a very wily character, who has passed several months in a convent, where she was taught the part she was to play. There, before a small audience, rehearsals were made long before the public performance. As will be observed, nothing was wanting for the completeness of this comedy, not even the usual rehearsals. If at any time there is a scarcity of actors at Paris, the places can be admirably filled from the ranks of the superior clergy. However, the liberal press has made the matter thoroughly ridiculous, and it is not improbable that the clergy, in their own interest, will see the necessity of being prudent."[133] The information of the journals seems hardly to have been so accurate as that which secured the simple faith of His Excellency M. Rouland. The public, it is evident, were treated with no more respect than the minister. This is too often the way in which the opinion of those whom M. Guéroult called in his article "enlightened men," alluding, no doubt, to the torrent of light thrown upon them by the press, is formed.

Another point of attack besides the actual events and the possibility of miracles was the ordinance of the Bishop of Tarbes. Philosophy, in virtue of the infallibility of its dogmas, protested against examination, scientific study, and experiment. "When some crazy person sends a paper on perpetual motion or the squaring of the circle to the Academy of Science, the Academy passes to the order of the day without wasting time in criticising such lucubrations. And there is no more need of examination in the case of a supposed miracle. Philosophy, in the name of reason, passes to the order of the day. To examine the claims of the supernatural facts would be to admit their possibility and to deny its own principles. In such matters, proofs and testimony count for nothing. We do not discuss the impossible, but dismiss it with a shrug." Such was the central idea of the thousand varied forms assumed by the fiery and excited polemics of the irreligious press. Vainly did it persist in denial and perversion; it was afraid to examine. False theories prefer to remain in the fluctuation and fog of pure speculation. By some natural instinct of self-preservation, they fear broad daylight, and do not dare to descend with a steady foot upon the firm ground of the experimental method. They perceive that only defeat awaits them there.

In this desperate struggle against the evidence of facts and the rights of reason, the liberal mask of the Journal des Débats unfortunately fell off, and showed the depth of furious intolerance concealed under its philosophical exterior. The Journal des Débats, by the pen of M. Prévost-Paradol, was terrified in advance at the great weight which the report of the commission and the decision of the Bishop were sure to have, and accordingly appealed to the secular arm, beseeching Cæsar to put a stop to the whole thing. "It is evident," said he, "that a striking manifestation of divine power in favor of a religion makes strongly for its individual truth, for its superiority over others, and its incontestable right to govern souls. It is then an event of a nature to produce numerous conversions, both of dissenters and of infidels; in other words, it is an instrument of proselytism." He showed also the political importance of the result of the examination. "If this[531] decision is favorable to the miracle, it will have a tendency to dissolve in that part of France the equilibrium now existing between the religious and civil powers. The ministers of a religion in favor of which such prodigies are authentically asserted are quite different sort of people from those which the Concordat provides for. They have a very different sort of authority over the people, and in case of any collision they exert a very different kind of influence from that of the council of state and the prefect."

"We have sufficiently shown," said the writer in the Débats, "the importance which the decision of the episcopal commission at Tarbes must have in various points of view. Now, there is a truth here which should be remembered, and of which M. de Morny has just very properly reminded the council-general at Puy-de-Dôme; that is, that nothing of importance can legally be done in France without previous authority from the administration. If, as M. de Morny very justly remarks, one cannot move a rock or dig a well without the consent of the administration, still less can one without its consent authorize a miracle or establish a pilgrimage. Any one who is concerned with religious matters, and especially with the opening of churches or schools of dissenting bodies, knows that the administration has not merely one enactment, but twenty or thirty, which makes it all-powerful in such cases. The meeting of the commission of the diocese of Tarbes can be prevented or its session can be dissolved in a hundred different ways by the Concordat, by the penal code, by the law of 1824, by the decree of February, 1852, by the central authority, by the municipal authority, by all conceivable authorities. The decision of this commission can also be annulled by the legal opposition of the administrative authority to the erection of a chapel or to the distribution of the miraculous water. The same authority can prohibit and break up all meetings of the people, and prosecute the originators of such meetings, etc." Having arrived at this point, having notified Cæsar and cried "caveant consules," the able writer resumed, for form's sake, his garb of liberalism. "What is our object," said he hypocritically, "in establishing this preventive right of the administration? Is it to urge them to use it? God forbid." And thus he crept, by a sort of secret passage, into the ranks of the friends of liberty.

The provincial journals echoed the sentiments of those of Paris. The battle became universal. The sergeants, corporals, and privates of the literary army pressed forward on the steps of the marshals of free thought. The Ere Impériale of Tarbes charged its blunderbuss with arguments from Paris, and fired them off at the supernatural every other day. The little Lavedan, also, had picked up a few grains of powder, rather dampened, it must be owned, by the water of the grotto, and did its best, aided, according to report, by Jacomet, to make its weekly penny-pistol effective.

The Univers, the Union, and the greater part of the Catholic papers bravely met their universal attack. Powerful talents lent themselves to the service of the yet more powerful truth. The Christian press re-established the facts and demolished the miserable quibbles of philosophic fanaticism.

"Meeting with some unexplained facts to which the faith or the credulity of the multitude attributes a supernatural character, the civil authority," said M. Louis Veuillot, "has decided without information, but also without success, in the negative.[532] The spiritual authority comes in in its turn; it is its right and its duty to do so. But before making its judgment, it obtains information. It institutes a commission, an inquiry to examine the alleged facts, to study them, and determine their nature. If they have actually occurred, and are really supernatural, the commission will say so. If they have not occurred, or if they can be explained on natural principles, the commission will also acknowledge that such is the case. What more can our adversaries desire? Do they wish the Bishop to abstain from this examination, with a double danger before him, either of failing to recognize a signal favor which Almighty God would grant to his people, or of allowing a superstition to take root among them?

"The Bishop must necessarily have observed the strangeness of this conviction which had become so firm in the popular mind, upon the word of a poor and ignorant little girl; he must have asked also how these cures could be accounted for, obtained as they had been by means of a few drops of pure water, swallowed or externally applied.... And if there have been in fact no cures, it must be ascertained why the contrary has been believed. But, supposing that the water has no mineral ingredient, as is said by the chemists, and that, nevertheless, the cures are certain, as many sick people and several physicians attest, we do not see any difficulty in recognizing in the case something supernatural and miraculous, with all due respect to the explanations of the Siècle."

The vigorous champion contended with all his enemies at once. A touch of his pen sufficed to demolish the ridiculous idea of denying the possibility of miracles, and of refusing even an examination to these startling facts which a multitude had seen with their own eyes and attested on their knees. "If any one should tell M. Guéroult that a great miracle had been worked in the name of Christ upon the Place de la Concorde, he would not go, it seems, to see it. This is prudent in him certainly, for he is determined to remain incredulous; and in presence of such a spectacle he would not be so certain of finding a natural explanation which would dispense him from going to confession. But he would be still more prudent if he would witness the miracle and believe, yielding to the testimony which God in his mercy would thus give him. The people, however, will not care for his absence, and will not be at all disconcerted to hear that the thing is not at all extraordinary, and that they are the victims of delusion. Things would take the same course at Paris as at Lourdes; a miracle would be proclaimed, and, if there really had been one, it would have its effect; that is, many men who had not as yet 'sought to discover the divine will,' or who have not yet been successful in their search, would know and fulfil it; they would love God with their whole heart, soul, and mind, and their neighbors as themselves. Such is the object which God intends in working miracles; and it is so much the worse for those who refuse to profit by them.

"Those who reject the supernatural, said an ancient writer, destroy philosophy. They destroy it indeed, and especially since the advent of Christianity, because, wishing to take God out of the world, they have no longer any explanation for the world or for humanity. As to this God whom they exclude, some deny his existence, that they may get entirely rid of him; others make of him an inert and indifferent being, having nothing[533] to require and requiring nothing from men, whom he abandons to chance, having created them in a freak of his disdainful power. Some, denying him in their very affirmation, as if they wished to satiate their ingratitude by doing him a double injury, pretend to find him in all things, which theory dispenses them from recognizing and adoring him anywhere in particular. Meanwhile, around them and even in themselves, humanity confesses its God. They reply by sophisms which are far from contenting them, by sarcasms the weakness of which they can hardly conceal from themselves, and at last their science and reason, driven back to the absurd, deprive them of their eyes and ears. They destroy all philosophy.... God, taking compassion on the faith of the weak which these false teachers would pervert, shows himself by one of those unusual displays of his power, which is nevertheless one of the laws of the world. They deny it. Look! we do not wish to see!... David said of the sinner, 'He has promised himself in his heart to sin; he refuses to understand, that he may not be forced to do well.'

"Ah! no doubt," elsewhere exclaimed the indignant logician, "there is an unfortunate multitude on whom all these commonplaces can be palmed off without difficulty; but there are also at Lourdes and elsewhere some readers whose common-sense is aroused, and who ask what will become of history, evident facts, and reason in such a system, with such a determination to deny everything without examination?

"As to preventing the episcopal commission from acting, we doubt if there are any laws conferring such a power upon the government; if there are, it will probably wisely abstain from using its power. On one hand, nothing could be more favorable to superstition than to do so; the popular credulity would then go astray without restraint, for there is no law which can oblige the Bishop to pronounce upon a fact about which he has not been able, and has even been forbidden, to inform himself.... There is only one course for the enemies of superstition, that is, to appoint a commission themselves, to make a counter-examination, and publish its result, in case, of course, that the one appointed by the Bishop concludes in favor of the miracle. For if it concludes that the reports are false, or that there is some illusion, this will not be needed."

The Catholic press, with a reserve truly admirable in the midst of the excitement of the dispute, refused to decide as to the actual merits of the case. It did not wish to anticipate the verdict of the episcopal commission; but confined itself to refuting calumnies, absurd stories, and sophisms, to defending the historical thesis of the occurrence of supernatural events, and to claiming in the name of reason the right of examination and freedom to ascertain the truth. "The event at Lourdes," said the Univers, "is not as yet verified, nor is its nature determined. It may have been a miracle, it may have been an illusion. The decision of the Bishop will settle the question.

"For our own part, we believe that we have answered all that has been seriously or even speciously said about the events at Lourdes. We shall leave the matter here. It was not right that the press should be allowed to heap around these facts all the lies it could think of; but it would not be becoming to give an answer to the abundance of its scoffing words. Wise men will appreciate the wisdom and good faith of the church, and as usual, after all the[534] turmoil, truth will secure for itself in the world its little nucleus of adherents, 'pusillus grex,' which nevertheless is sufficient to maintain its ascendency in the world."[134]

It is obvious that, in the great polemical question regarding miracles which was being discussed on the occasion of the events at Lourdes, the two sides were acting on diametrically opposite plans.

On the one hand, the Catholics appealed to an impartial examination; on the other, the pseudo-philosophers feared the light. The former said, "Let us have an examination;" the latter cried, "Let us hear no more of this matter." The former had for their watchword liberty of conscience; the latter implored Cæsar to put a violent stop to this religious movement, and to stifle it, not by the power of arguments, but by brute force.

Every impartial mind, placed by its views or circumstances outside of the mêlée, could not help seeing with the greatest clearness that justice, truth, and reason were on the Catholic side. All that was necessary for this was, not to be blinded by the fury of the contest or by an immovable prejudice.

Although in the person of a commissary, a prefect, and a minister the administration had unfortunately taken a very decided part in this important affair, there still was a man of authority who had not had anything to do with it, and who was in the conditions of perfect impartiality, whatever his religious, philosophical, and political views might be. Whether there had been a manifestation of the supernatural or not at Lourdes made no difference in his calculations. Neither his ambition, self-love, doctrines, nor antecedents were concerned in this question. What mind is there which in such circumstances cannot be fair, and give justice and truth their rights? People do not violate justice or outrage truth except when they think it advantageous to do so, under some strong prompting of avarice, ambition, or pride.

The man of whom we speak was called Napoleon III., and was, as it happened, Emperor of the French.

Impassible as usual, silent as the granite sphinxes which watch at the gates of Thebes, he followed the discussion, observing the turns of the battle, and waiting for the public conscience to dictate, as it were, his decision.

IV.

While God was thus leaving his work to the disputes of men, he did not cease to grant visible graces to the humble and believing souls which came to the miraculous spring to implore the aid of the sovereign power of the Virgin Mother.

A child of the town of St. Justin, in the department of Gers, named Jean-Marie Tambourné, had been for some months entirely disabled in his right leg. The pains in it had been so severe that the limb had been twisted; and the foot, turned entirely outward in these crises of suffering, had come to form a right angle with the other one. His general health had rapidly deteriorated under this state of continual suffering, which robbed the poor boy of his sleep as well as of his appetite. He was in fact sinking into the grave. His parents, who were tolerably well off, had tried for his cure all the treatments which had been suggested by the physicians of the neighborhood, but without success.

They had also had recourse to the waters of Blousson and to medicated baths. The result had been almost complete failure. Any very slight and temporary alleviations which were obtained always resulted in a disastrous relapse.

The parents had at last lost all confidence in the remedies of science. Tired of medical treatment, they turned their hopes toward the Mother of God, who, it was said, had appeared at the Massabielle rocks. On the 23d of September, 1858, the little boy was taken by his mother to Lourdes, in the public coach. It was a long distance, more than thirty miles. Having reached the town, the mother hastened to the grotto, carrying her unfortunate child in her arms. She bathed him in the miraculous water, praying with fervor to her who has been pleased to be called in the Litany "Health of the Sick." The child meanwhile had fallen into a sort of ecstatic state. His eyes were wide open, his lips apart. He seemed to be gazing at some strange object.

The poor woman, at these words, felt a great commotion at her heart, and the sweat stood out upon her face.

"Mother," said he, "my trouble is gone. My feet do not ache now. I can walk, I know I can; I am as strong as ever I was."

Jean-Marie was right; he was indeed cured. He went to the village of Lourdes on foot, ate and slept there. At the same time that his pain and weakness ceased, his appetite and sleep returned. The next day his mother bathed him once more at the grotto, and had a mass of thanksgiving celebrated in the church at Lourdes. Then they set out for home; not in the coach this time, but on foot.

When, after spending one night on the road, they reached St. Justin, the child saw his father, who was on the watch, expecting no doubt that some carriage would bring back the pilgrims. Jean-Marie recognized him far off, and ran to him.

The father almost fainted. But his darling was already in his arms. "Papa," cried he, "the Blessed Virgin has cured me."

The news of this event spread quickly enough in the town, where everybody knew the child. They flocked from all sides to see him.[135]

The sister of a notary of Tarbes, Jeanne-Marie Massot-Bordenave, had become, after a long and serious illness, almost entirely crippled in her feet and hands. She walked only [536]with extreme difficulty. Her hands, habitually swollen, discolored, and aching, were almost entirely useless. Her fingers, bent back and stiff, could not be straightened, and were completely paralyzed. Having gone to see her brother at Tarbes, she was returning home to Arras, in the canton of Aucun. She was alone in the inside of the diligence. A flask of wine which her brother had given her having become uncorked and overturned, she could not set it up or cork it, so entirely powerless had her fingers become.

Lourdes was upon the road. She stopped there and went to the grotto. Hardly had she plunged her hands into the miraculous water, when she perceived that they were instantly coming back to life. Her fingers had straightened, and suddenly recovered their flexibility and strength. Successful perhaps beyond her expectations, she plunged her feet in the miraculous water, and they were healed like her hands. She fell upon her knees. What did she say to the Blessed Virgin? How did she thank her? Such prayers, such bursts of gratitude may be imagined, but not expressed in words.

A young girl was walking in the same direction, coming back from the woods with an enormous bundle of fagots on her head. It was warm, and the poor little peasant was bathed in perspiration. Exhausted, she sat down upon a stone at the side of the road, laying her too heavy burden at her feet. At this moment Jeanne-Marie Massot passed before her, returning quickly and joyfully from the fountain of grace. A good thought occurred to her. She went up to the child.

"My child," said she to her, "our Lord has just granted me a great favor. He has cured me; he has taken away my burden. And in my turn, I would like to aid and relieve you."

So saying, Marie Massot took up with her hands restored to life the heavy fagots which lay on the ground, put them on her head, and thus returned to Lourdes, whence, less than an hour before, she had gone out weak and paralyzed. The first-fruits of her recovered strength had been nobly used; they had been consecrated to charity. "Freely have you received, freely give," said our Redeemer to his disciples.[136]

A woman already advanced in age, Marie Capdevielle, of the village of Livron, in the neighborhood of Lourdes, had also been cured of a severe deafness which had troubled her for a long time. "I seem," said she, "to be in another world when I hear the church-bells, which I have not heard before for three years."

These cures, and many others, continue to attest irrefutably the [537]direct intervention of God. He showed his power in restoring health to the sick, and it was evident that, if he had permitted persecution, it was because it was necessary to the conduct of his designs. It rested with him to put a stop to it, and for that purpose to bend and use as it should please him the wills of the great ones of the earth.

Polemics on the subject of the grotto had become exhausted. In France and abroad, public opinion had passed judgment, not indeed on the reality of the supernatural events, but on the violent oppression to which all liberty of belief and right of examination were being subjected to in a corner of the empire. The miserable sophisms of anti-christian fanaticism and of pseudo-philosophic intolerance had not held their ground before the cogent logic of the Catholic journals. The Débats, the Siècle, the Presse, and the common herd of irreligious sheets kept silence, probably sorry that they had undertaken this unfortunate contest, and made so much noise about these extraordinary facts. They had only succeeded in propagating and spreading everywhere the renown of a host of miracles. From Italy, Germany, and even more distant lands, people were writing to Lourdes for some of the sacred water.

At the Bureau of Public Worship, M. Rouland persisted in putting himself in the way of the most holy of liberties, and in endeavoring to stop the march of events.

At the grotto, Jacomet and the guards continued to keep watch day and night, and to bring the faithful up before the courts. Judge Duprat kept on sentencing them.

Between such a minister to back him, and such agents to carry out his will, Baron Massy remained bravely in his desperately illogical situation, and consoled himself with the omnipotence of his arbitrary will. Continually more and more exasperated by seeing the vain pretexts of religion and public order with which he had at first wished to conceal his intolerance slipping through his fingers, he gave himself up gladly to the bitter satisfaction of practising pure tyranny. He remained deaf to the universal protest. To all reasoning, to undeniable evidence, he opposed his own will: "Such is my determination." It was sweet to him to be stronger single-handed than all the multitudes, stronger than the Bishop, stronger than common sense, than miracles, than the God who was manifested at the grotto.

It was at this juncture that two eminent personages, Mgr. de Salinis, Archbishop of Auch, and M. de Rességuier, formerly of the deputies, called on the Emperor, who was at the time at Biarritz. Napoleon III. was receiving at the same time from various quarters petitions demanding urgently, in virtue of the most sacred rights, the annulment of the arbitrary and violent measures of Baron Massy. "Sire," said one of these petitions, "we do not pretend to settle the question as to the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin, though almost all the people here, on account of the startling miracles which they claim to have personally witnessed, believe in the reality of these supernatural manifestations. But it is certain and indisputable that the fountain which appeared suddenly, and from which we are excluded, in spite of the scientific analysis which asserts its perfect harmlessness, has been hurtful to no one; on the other hand, it is undeniable that a great number of persons declare that they have there recovered their health. In[538] the name of the rights of conscience, which should be independent of all human power, permit the faithful to go and pray there if they choose. In the name of humanity, allow the sick to go there for their cure, if they entertain such a hope. In the name of free thought, suffer the minds which need information for their study and examination to go there to unmask error or to discover truth."

The Emperor, as we have said above, was disinterested in the question, or rather it was for his interest not to waste his power in fruitlessly opposing the course of events. It was for his interest to listen to the cry of souls asking for the liberty of their faith, the cry of minds demanding freedom to study and see for themselves. It was for his interest to be just, and not to crush, by an arbitrary act and an evident denial of justice, those who believed the evidence of their senses, as well as those who, though not yet believing, still claimed the right to examine publicly the mysterious occurrences which were occupying the attention of France.

It has been seen what wild romances the honest Minister Rouland had gravely accepted as incontestable truths. The information which his benevolent excellency must have given the Emperor could hardly have given the latter much light upon the subject. The newspaper discussions, although they had triumphantly brought to light the right of one party and the unjust intolerance of the other, could not have given him a perfectly clear idea of the situation. At Biarritz only did it appear to him in its fulness and complete details.

Napoleon III. was not a very demonstrative sovereign; his thoughts were seldom plainly indicated by his words; rather by actions. As he learned the absurd and violent proceedings by which the minister, the prefect, and their agents had been bringing authority into disgrace, his dull eye brightened, it is said, with a flash of anger; he shrugged his shoulders nervously, and a cloud of deep displeasure passed over his brow. He rang the bell impatiently.

It was a brief dispatch to the Prefect of Tarbes, ordering him, in the name of the Emperor, to rescind instantly the decree closing the grotto at Lourdes, and to leave the people free.

VI.

We are familiar with the discoveries of science with regard to the wonderful electric spark, which the network of wires covering the globe carries from one end of the earth to the other in an instant. The telegraph, as the savants tell us, is the same thing as the thunderbolt. On this occasion, Baron Massy was entirely of their opinion. The imperial despatch, falling suddenly upon them, stunned and bewildered him, as a sudden stroke of lightning would have done coming down upon his house. He could not believe in its reality. The more he thought of it, the more impossible it seemed for him to retrace his steps, to reverse his judgment, or to bear his retreat publicly. Nevertheless, he had to swallow this bitter draught, or hand in his resignation and put far away from his lips the sweet prefectoral cup. Fatal alternative! The heart of a public functionary is sometimes torn by fearful anguish.

When a sudden catastrophe comes upon us, we have at first some difficulty in accepting it as definitive, and we continue to struggle after all is lost. Baron Massy did not escape[539] this illusion. He hoped vaguely that the Emperor would revoke his decision. In this hope, he undertook to keep the dispatch secret for some days, and not to obey. He wrote to the Emperor, and also secured the intervention of Minister Rouland, who was less publicly but as completely affected as himself by the unexpected order from Biarritz.

Napoleon III. was as insensible to the protests of the minister as to the representations and entreaties of the prefect. The judgment which he had made had been based upon evidence, and was irrevocable. All these steps had no other result than to show him that the prefect had dared to set aside his orders and to postpone their execution. A second despatch left Biarritz. It was couched in terms which permitted no comment or delay.

Baron Massy had to choose between his pride and his prefecture. He made the grievous choice, and was humble enough to remain in his office.

The head of the department resigned himself to obedience. Nevertheless, in spite of the imperative orders of his master, he still tried, not to resist, which was evidently impossible, but to hide his retreat and not surrender publicly.

In consequence of some official indiscretions, and perhaps also by the account of the gentlemen who had waited on the Emperor, the purport of the orders from Biarritz was already vaguely known by the public. It was the topic of general conversation. The prefect neither confirmed nor denied the prevailing rumors. He instructed Jacomet and his agents to draw up no more procès-verbaux, and to discontinue the watch. Such a course, coming in connection with the current reports as to the instructions of the Emperor, ought to have sufficed (at least such was his hope) to put things in their normal state, and make the prohibitory decree a dead letter. It was even probable that the people, restored to liberty, would hasten themselves to root up and throw into the Gave the posts bearing the caution against entering upon the common land and within the barriers which enclosed the grotto.

M. Massy was, however, mistaken in his calculations, plausible as they may have been. In spite of the absence of the police, in spite of the reports which were circulating without official contradiction, the people feared some snare. They continued to pray on the wrong side of the Gave. The trespasses were as before, generally speaking, few and far between. No one touched the posts or the barriers. The status quo, instead of disappearing of its own accord, as the prefect had hoped, obstinately remained.

Considering the character of Napoleon III., and the clearness of the orders from Biarritz, the situation was dangerous for the prefect, and Baron Massy was too intelligent not to perceive it. Every moment it was to be feared that the Emperor would hear of the way in which he was trying to beat around the bush. He may well have dreaded continually that some terrible message would arrive setting him aside for ever, and turning him out in the cold, out from the luminous realms of functionarism into the exterior darkness in which the miserable unofficial world is involved.

It happened that, during these perplexities, M. Fould had occasion to make another visit to Tarbes, and even to go to Lourdes. Did he increase the alarm of the prefect by speaking of the sovereign, or did the Baron receive some new telegram[540] more crushing than the others? We do not know. But it is certain that, on the 3d of October, M. Massy, as if struck down by some unseen hand, became pliable as a broken reed, and that his arrogant stiffness was suddenly changed to a complete prostration.

The next day he issued, in the name of the Emperor, an order to the mayor of Lourdes to repeal the decree publicly, and to have Jacomet remove the posts and barriers.

VII.

M. Lacadé did not hesitate like M. Massy. This issue freed him at once from the heavy burden which the mingled desire of pleasing both the prefect and the people, both the heavenly and earthly powers, had imposed upon him. By an illusion very common with undecided people, he imagined that he had always been on the side which now prevailed, and in this spirit he drew up a proclamation to the following effect: "Citizens of Lourdes, the day which we have so earnestly desired has at last come; we have earned it by our wisdom, perseverance, faith, and courage." Such was the sense and style of his proclamation, the text of which is unfortunately not extant.[137]

The proclamation was read through the town, with an accompaniment of drums and trumpets. At the same time the following notice was posted on the walls:

At the same time, Jacomet and the sergents-de-ville repaired to the grotto to take away the barriers and posts.

A crowd had already collected there, and was increasing every moment. Some were praying on their knees, and, endeavoring not to be distracted by the hubbub around, were thanking God for having put a stop to the scandal and the persecutions. Others were standing up talking in a low voice, and awaiting with emotion what was about to take place. Many of the women were saying their beads. Some held bottles in their hands, which they wished to fill at the source of the fountain. Some were throwing flowers over the barriers into the interior of the grotto. But no one touched the barriers. It was necessary that those who had publicly placed them there in opposition to the power of God should come and remove them publicly in submission to the will of a man.

Jacomet arrived. Although, in spite of himself, he showed some embarrassment, and though from the paleness of his face his profound humiliation might have been suspected, still he had not, contrary to the general expectation, the dejected appearance of one who had been conquered. Escorted by his subordinates with their hatchets and pickaxes, he came forward with a bold face. With a seemingly strange affectation, he wore his full-dress costume. His large tricolor scarf was wrapped around him and rested upon his parade sword. A vague tumult, a dull murmur, with some distinct cries here and there, was heard from the crowd. The commissary took up his position upon a rock, and signed to the people that he wished to speak. Every one[541] listened. His words are said to have been to this effect: "My friends, these barriers which the municipality, to my great regret, has ordered to put up, are about to be removed. Who has suffered more than I from this obstacle raised against your piety? I also am a Christian, my friends; I share your faith. But the official, like the soldier, has only one duty; it is the duty, often a very painful one, of obedience. The responsibility does not rest upon him. Well, my friends, when I saw your admirable patience, your respect for authority, your persevering faith, I informed the higher authorities. I pleaded your cause. I said, 'Why prevent them from praying at the grotto, from drinking at the fountain? They will do no harm.' And thus, my friends, the prohibition has been removed, and the prefect and I have resolved to take down these barriers for ever, which were so displeasing to you and much more so to me."

The crowd maintained a cold silence. Some of the young people chuckled and laughed. Jacomet was evidently troubled by his want of success. He gave orders to his men to take away the fence, which was done without delay. The boards were piled up near the grotto, and the police came at nightfall to take them away.

There was great rejoicing at Lourdes. All the afternoon crowds were going and coming on the road to the grotto. Before the Massabielle rocks immense numbers of the faithful were kneeling. Canticles and litanies were sung: "Virgo potens, ora pro nobis." The people drank of the fountain. Faith was free. God had triumphed.

MR. FROUDE AND CALVINISM.

The Robert-Houdin of modern English writers, and author of that popular serial novel grimly entitled The History of England, appears to be only at home in an element of paradox, and in the clever accomplishment of some literary tour de force. Calvinism: An Address delivered at St. Andrews, March 17, 1871, by James Anthony Froude, M.A.,[138] is his latest performance.

Always liberal in his assumption of premises, no one need be surprised that the author should claim Calvinism to have been "accepted for two centuries in all Protestant countries as the final account of the relations between man and his Maker," and should represent that "the Catholics whom it overthrew" assail it, etc. It will be news to most Protestants, Lutherans and Anglicans in particular, that Calvinism was thus accepted, and the 'overthrown Catholics' will be not less surprised. Throughout the address, Mr. Froude industriously insists upon the false idea that Luther was a Calvinist. The statement refutes itself in its terms. No argument is needed to show that Luther's free-will doctrine and Calvin's predestination were simply irreconcilable. It was not skilful in Mr. Froude to smother in its very [542]birth his labored vindication of Calvinistic doctrine by such a presentation as this (p. 4):

As types of Calvinism and almost perfect human beings, as men of grandeur and nobility of character, upright life, commanding intellect, untainted selfishness, unalterably just, frank, true, cheerful, humorous, and as unlike sour fanatics as it is possible to imagine any one, Mr. Froude names William the Silent, Luther, John Knox, Andrew Melville, the Regent Murray, Coligny, Cromwell, Milton, and John Bunyan. The Calvinism of all the members of this remarkably assorted group is at least open to serious question. As to their supereminent goodness and almost angelic purity, it would be an easy but not a pleasant task to point out the refutation in their fatal shortcomings. It may be that Cromwell had "the tenderness of a woman" in his heart, but no testimony to support that assertion could possibly be procured in Ireland. It may be that Knox was not a sour fanatic, that William was all unselfishness, that Coligny was blameless, and that Milton's wife was mistaken in her estimate of her husband.

As to the Regent Murray, who was told to his face by John Knox that his religion was "for his own commoditie," and whom Aytoun [139] has incarcerated in the immortal amber of his verse as "the falsest villain ever Scotland bred"—

we are perfectly satisfied that Robespierre is an accomplished Christian gentleman beside him, for Robespierre at least never stole his sister's jewels nor took bribes from his country's enemies.

Then we are treated by the author to a promenade down the path of ages, amid the wrecks of empires and of systems, and to rhetorically embroidered sketches, with mention more or less extended of Olympus, Valhalla, Egyptian idolatry, Buddhism, in which "Zoroaster, like Moses, saw behind the physical forces into the deeper laws of right and wrong," Greek theology, the Stoics, "the Galilean fishermen [543]and the tentmaker of Tarsus," and—Islamism. Of all these, the last most decidedly brings out Mr. Froude's warmest enthusiasm, and we find ourselves querying if it is Mohammed's fatalism he so much admires, for the monotheism of the prophet could hardly be called Calvinistic, thus making the burning of Servetus a gratuitous waste of cord-wood. Here we feel bound in justice to say that, although the men of Galilee and of Tarsus do not appear to excite any very strong admiration in our author, he nevertheless makes the handsome concession that he is not "upholding Mohammed as if he had been a perfect man, or the Koran as a second Bible," and that "the detailed conception of man's duties was inferior, far inferior, to what St. Martin and St. Patrick, St. Columba and St. Augustine, were teaching or had taught in Western Europe."

The early Christian church being essentially Catholic, it does not draw very heavily on either Mr. Froude's enthusiasm or his admiration, and, in speaking of "the mystery called transubstantiation" in the twelfth century, he makes an attempt to sum up Catholicity in a vein partaking of the brutality with which, in his History of England, he has the cool insolence to speak of the Catholic religion—the religion of Copernicus, Sir Thomas More, Fénelon, and Dr. Newman—as "a Paphian idolatry."

The Reformation is, of course, introduced with flourish of trumpets. But the Reformation was essentially Lutheran, and not Calvinistic. Luther himself, who was, so Mr. Froude assures us, "one of the grandest men that ever lived on earth," than whom "none more loyal to the light that was in him—braver, truer, or wider-minded, in the noblest sense of the word"—this Luther, we say, was as sincere a believer as Saint Augustine in the real presence—in transubstantiation, as Mr. Froude has it—a doctrine which, on all occasions and as far as in him lies, our English writer seeks to drag in the mud. And yet this Luther, so believing, was, Mr. Froude seeks to persuade us, a Calvinist.

Calvinism, in practice, was a lovely thing, and Mr. Froude proves that it was by—John Knox, whom he thus cites: "Elsewhere," says Knox, speaking of Geneva, "the word of God is taught as purely; but never anywhere have I seen God obeyed as faithfully."

Mr. Froude is, moreover, surprised that Calvinism should have been called intolerant,[140] and sums up its vindication thus: "Intolerance of an enemy who is trying to kill you seems to me a pardonable state of mind."

In the face of this citation, it is almost unnecessary to state that the name of Servetus does not once occur in the forty-seven pages of the Address, nor is the slightest allusion made to him. And if the curious reader, unacquainted with the practical working of Calvinism in Geneva, where God was "obeyed so faithfully," should inquire how it was that this perfect Christian man, Calvin, wrote his laws in blood and enforced them with the aid of executioners and torturers; how it was that he persecuted some men and, under color of [544]law, assassinated others, he may be referred to these witnesses: First. Jerome Bolsec, exiled for proposing "an opinion false and contrary to the evangelical religion." Second. Peter Arneaux, who, for saying that Calvin was "a wicked man announcing false doctrine," was condemned to walk the streets of Geneva in his shirt, a lighted torch in his hand, bare-headed and bare-footed. Third. Henri de la Marc, exiled for saying that Peter Arneaux was a worthy man, and that, if Calvin had a spite against any one, he gratified it. Fourth. Jacques Gruet, who was beheaded and his head afterward nailed to a post, for the crime of being the author of placards accusing the Calvinists of persecution, and for proofs of impiety found in his private writings when his house was searched. Finally. Servetus, who, for being "a sower of heresies," was, by Calvin's authority, imprisoned, left there for two months to suffer by hunger and nakedness, and then brought out and, at the age of forty-four years, burned alive.

We cannot be certain that Mr. Froude has ever heard of any of these Protestants martyred for their opinions. If he has heard of them, we presume he means to vindicate Calvin, and to cover their cases by the crushing statement at page 43: "It is no easy matter to tolerate lies clearly convicted of being lies under any circumstances; specially it is not easy to tolerate lies which strut about in the name of religion."

The passage is characteristic of Mr. Froude's capacity for ambiguity and indirection, but he neglects to indicate the tribunal of truth at which these lies are "clearly convicted." It is a serious matter for a gentleman of no particular religious principle to say that this or the other theological conviction is a lie which struts about in the name of religion; for, in the eye of the theologically convicted, the most offensively disgusting of all struts is the strut of "no religion to speak of." Moreover, the author had better have left unpublished the last member of the sentence we have quoted, because, in his case, it irresistibly suggests this other phrase: "It is not easy to tolerate novels which strut about in the name of history."

Thus we know, as matter of record, that Norman Leslie proposed to Henry VIII. the assassination of Cardinal Beaton for a sum of money, that the negotiation, at first delayed, was finally closed and carried out. Leslie got his money, and the cardinal was murdered, because, as Mr. Froude touchingly relates it, Henry's position "obliged him to look at facts as they were rather than through conventional forms."

Mr. Froude presents the hired bravo of Henry VIII. thus: "Norman Leslie did not kill Cardinal Beaton down in the castle yonder because he was a Catholic, but because he was a murderer."

Mr. Froude does not appear by his writings to have an unvarying standard of morality. Apparently incapable of judging actions as they are, he measures them by his personal like or dislike of the actors. Always the advocate, never the philosophical historian, he presents but one side of a case. Certain personages in history are with him always right, certain others are always wrong. Even the crimes of the former are meritorious, or, at worse, indifferent, while the indifferent sayings and doings of the latter are sins of deepest die. We may see this tendency exemplified in the address before us which seeks to make Calvinism lovely.

The author says, in plain terms,[545] that it was not more criminal in a Calvinist to burn a witch than for any other person to invite a spirit-rapper to dinner.

Of course he expresses the opinion euphuistically and in mellifluous phrase, but, nevertheless, he does express it. And that our readers may fully understand that we do not even unintentionally misrepresent him, we give his words. At page 43, we read:

It is worth while to notice how deftly Mr. Froude handles his positive and comparative.

For Calvinists to burn people alive is innocent, and intercourse with spirit-rappers is not very much more innocent.

With such juggling as this of facts and phrases, the author of Calvinism has written his History of England, the delight of circulating library subscribers because it is "as interesting as a novel."

LOVE FOR ANIMALS.

In reading the lives of the saints, I have been particularly struck with their love for, and their power over, the animal world. They seemed to live nearer the heart of nature than other mortals, and perceived there diviner harmonies. Perhaps this sympathetic relation sprang from the belief that, as the whole natural, world participated in the fall of man, so it has its part in the fruit of our Saviour's Passion. At least, they believed that animals, in common with man, received life from God and exist through him. "All creatures," says Denis the Carthusian, "partake of the divine, eternal, and uncreated beauty." The saints respected in animals that divine wisdom which Albertus Magnus tells us, in his book on animals, is to be recognized in their instinct. Dr. Newman says: "Men of narrow reasoning may smile at the supposition that the woods and wild animals can fall into the scheme of theology and preach to the heart the all-pervading principles of religion; but they forget that God's works have a unity of design throughout, and that the author of nature and of revealed religion is one."

Dr. Faber saw throughout creation a threefold manifestation of God,[546] typifying his being, the generation of the Son, and the procession of the Spirit.

Sanctity seems to restore man to his primeval relation to nature, and give him back the power he possessed in Eden over the animal world. The Holy Scriptures tell us of beasts and birds sent to minister to the wants of man, and how the very lions reverenced the prophet Daniel. Animals were submissive to man before his fall, and they went obediently into the ark at the command of Noah. Such things are renewed and repeated in the lives of the Christian saints. It is not more wonderful that a raven should bring St. Paul the Hermit half a loaf every day for sixty years, and a whole one when visited by St. Anthony, than that one should feed the prophet. St. Gregory of Nazianzen relates that St. Basil's grandmother, St. Macrina, having taken refuge with her husband in the forests of Pontus during a persecution, was miraculously fed by stags. St. Bega, when a hermitess in a cave on the Cumberland coast, lived in supernatural familiarity with the sea-birds and the wolves of Copeland forest, and they in part supplied her with food. St. Roch is usually represented with the dog that used to accompany him in his pilgrimages. When St. Roch had the plague, the dog went daily into the city and returned with a loaf of bread for his master.

Among the old legends that embody the popular idea of the veneration of the animal world for holiness, is that of the Flight into Egypt. It is said the lions and leopards crept out of their lairs to lick the baby hands of the infant Jesus. When Christians, in the times of persecution under the Roman emperors, were thrown to the wild beasts in the amphitheatre, there are many examples of these usually ferocious animals refusing to touch the holy victims, as in the well-known instances of Andronicus and Tarchus.

St. Blaise is depicted surrounded by a variety of animals, such as the lion and the lamb, the leopard and the hind, who seem to have laid aside their animosity. This saint was obliged, in the persecution of the reign of Diocletian, to take refuge in a cave of the mountains. It was the haunt of wild beasts, whose ferocity he so disarmed that they came every morning, as if to ask his blessing, says the old legend. One day, he met an old woman in distress for the loss of her only earthly possession, a pig, which had been carried off by a wolf. Such power had St. Blaise over the animal world, that when he ordered the wolf to bring back the pig he obeyed.

Some time after, the woman killed her pig and took a part of it to St. Blaise, who had been thrown into prison and left without any food, thereby preventing him from starving.

St. Jerome is represented, in Christian art, with the lion he healed, and which remained with him. The legend tells us the saint made the lion guard the ass that brought his fagots from the forest. One day, the lion went to sleep in the woods, and the ass was stolen. The lion returned home with drooping head, as if ashamed. St. Jerome made him bring the fagots in place of the ass, which he did till he discovered his old friend in a caravan of merchants, whom he so terrified that they confessed their sin to St. Jerome and restored the ass.

There is a very similar legend of the Abbot Gerasimus, who lived near the river Jordan.

We are told, in the lives of the fathers of the desert, of one of them who was carrying provisions across[547] the desert to his brethren. Wearied with his burden and the long journey, he called to a wild ass he espied to come and aid him, for the love of Christ. The ass hastened to his assistance, and bore the father and his load to the cells of his brethren.

St. Aphraates dispersed the army of locusts that threatened the country around Antioch.

And we read how the wolf-hounds, hungry and fierce, that were kept for the chase, respected St. Walburga when she went, late at night, to visit the dying daughter of a neighboring baron.

It would almost seem as if these animals recognized, as an able writer says, the presence of Him who lulled the tempest with a word in the souls in whom he dwells.

Tradition records the fondness of one of the twelve apostles—the loved apostle John—for animals. Every one has heard of the tame partridge he took pleasure in feeding. He was seen tending his bird by a passing hunter, who expressed his surprise to see the apostle, so renowned for his age and sanctity, thus employing his time. St. John asked him if he always kept his bow bent. "That would soon render it useless," said the hunter. "So do I unbend my mind in this way for the same reason you unbend your bow—to prevent its becoming useless." Perhaps he derived his love for animals from his ancestress Rebecca, who showed the kindness of her nature in offering to water the camels of the stranger. Eliezer saw it, and began wooing her for his master's son.

There are numerous instances in which animals instinctively betook themselves to the saints for protection. A hind, pursued by dogs, took refuge with St. Giles in his cave near the mouth of the Rhone. The hunters, following on his track, found the wounded beast crouching beside the saint, who protected him. The hind remained with St. Giles, who fed on his milk. This saint is represented in paintings with the animal beside him. "Ane hind set up beside Sanct Geill," says Sir David Lindsay.

There is a similar legend about St. Procopius, a hermit, with whom a hunted hind took refuge.

As St. Anselm was riding to the Manor of Herse, a hare, pursued by hunters, sought shelter under the housings of his mule. St. Anselm wept, but the foresters laughed, and the hounds stood around at bay. The saint said: "This poor hare reminds me of the soul of a sinner beset by fiends eager to seize their prey." He ordered the hunters not to pursue the hare, which fled.

So a deer took refuge from hunters in the cell of St. Aventin, a hermit who lived on an island in the Seine. One night a bear attacked his hut with furious cries. The saint betook himself to prayer, and at dawn found the animal, subdued and gentle, lying at his door licking his paw. The saint saw it was pierced by a thorn, and drew it out, when the beast went quietly away into the forest. When a person, who lived for a time with St. Aventin, caught some fish, the saint threw them back into the river, saying: "Go, little creatures, return to your element and food and remain there at liberty: my element and food are Jesus Christ, to whom I wish to return, that in him I may live for ever."

St. Bartholomew, a hermit of Farne, was so gentle in his movements that the wild sea-birds were not afraid of him. He allowed no one to molest them. He tamed an eider-duck, which daily fed out of his hand. One day, as St. Bartholomew was[548] sitting on the sea-shore, a cormorant pulled the edge of his garment with its bill. He followed the bird, and found its young had fallen into a fissure in the rocks. He rescued them from danger.

St. Helier, a hermit in the isle of Jersey, lived for years on a barren crag overlooking the sea. Attention was called to the place of his retreat by the flight of the birds who shared the rock with him, and he was beheaded by his pagan discoverers.

The marine animals would fawn on St. Cuthbert while he was praying by night on the island of Farne. The eider-ducks are called by the islanders to this day "St. Cuthbert's ducks."

St. Serf, an old Scottish monk, had a pet ram which he had raised and used to follow him about. The laird of Tillicoultry stole the animal and "ate him up in pieces small." Being accused of the theft, the laird declared on oath that he had neither stolen nor eaten the ram. Whereupon, so runs the old legend, the ram "bleated in his wayme"! The saint predicted that no heir born to the estate of Tillicoultry should succeed to his patrimony, which prediction has been verified down to our own time. During the last two centuries Tillicoultry has been in the possession of thirteen different families, and in no case has the heir born to it become the owner. Lord Colville, a distinguished soldier of the time of James VI., retired to his estate of Tillicoultry to spend the rest of his life in retirement. Walking on the terrace one day, he slipped while looking up at an old hawthorn tree, and fell down the bank and was instantly killed. The estate was afterwards sold to the Earl of Stirling, at whose death it was sold to Sir Alexander Rollo, and so it has passed from one family to another down to our time. In 1837, it was bought by Mr. Stirling, who was accidentally killed. His brother, not the born heir, succeeded him, but sold it in 1842 to Mr. Anstruther, who in turn sold it to his brother, the present proprietor.

St. Richard, Bishop of Winchester, through excessive tenderness for the animal world, hardly ever ate any meat. When he saw any lamb or chicken on his table, he used to say: "We are the cause of your death, ye innocent ones. What have ye done worthy of death?" He thought as Frederick Schlegel, who remarks: "The sorrows of beasts are certainly a theme for the meditations of men, and I could not agree to the justice of regarding it as a subject unworthy of reflection, or of permitting sympathy with them to be banished from the human breast." St. Richard's love extended to the whole natural world. In the time of his troubles he used to retire to the parsonage of a country curate, not far from Winchester, to find solace in communion with nature. His friend loved to look at him walking in the garden watching the unfolding of the flower-buds or amusing himself by budding and grafting, forgetful of the wrath of the king and the number of his enemies. A graft which the owner regarded with great pride having died, Richard regrafted it. It lived and bore fruit.

Many stories are told of the love of St. Waltheof, Abbot of Melrose, for animals, and, in particular, of his affection for the old gray horse which he constantly rode, and used playfully to call Brother Grizzle (Frater Ferrandus). He was even known to[549] discipline himself for having killed an insect, saying he had taken away the life of one of God's creatures which he could not restore. His gray horse was well known in the valley of the Tweed. The humble abbot rode him, with his own luggage and that of his few attendants slung on before him, including the boots of his groom. He appeared before his kinsman, the King of Scotland, in this array. Waltheof's brother was ashamed of him, but the king was so edified that he knelt to ask the abbot's blessing, and granted him all his petitions, saying: "This man hath put all worldly things under his feet, but we are running after this fleeting world, losing soul and body in the pursuit."

Sophronius, writing in a more remote age, says: "Going to New Alexandria, we found Abbot John, who had spent eighty years in that monastery, so full of charity that he was pitiful also to brute animals. Early in the morning he used to give food to all the dogs that were in the monastery, and would even bring grain to the ants and the birds on the roof."

And, at a later day again, at Citeaux a great number of storks built their nests around the abbey, and, on going away for the winter, would hover over the monks working in the fields, as if to ask their blessing, which was given them.

We are told in the annals of Corby that the novices had an otter which they kept for a long time in the refectory. And the success of Friar Baddo in training a dog is spoken of.

There was a peculiar breed of black dogs in the Abbey of St. Hubert in the Ardennes, called the dogs of St. Hubert.

The birds of Croyland would feed from the hands of St. Guthlac, the hermit, and alight on his head and shoulders, and the fish would come up out of the water for the food he gave them.

So a white swan was for fifteen years in the habit of coming up from the marshes and flying around St. Hugh of Lincoln, and then alighting to eat from his hand, sometimes thrusting its bill into his bosom. This swan survived the saint many years, but, after his death, returned to its old wild habits, avoiding all human beings.

St. Columba used to feed the sea-beaten herons that alighted on the island of Iona.

And the birds would hover around the hermits of Montserrat and eat from their hands.

Hugo of St. Victor shows his familiarity with the habits of animals by his allusions to them in his instructions.

Digby relates that in 1507 there was a lamb in the convent of Muri that used to go to the choir at the sound of the bell and remain during the chanting of the divine office. When the matin bell rang, it would run around the corridors and knock its head against the door of each cell till it had roused the inmate, and, on going to the choir, if it saw one vacant stall, it would return to the dormitory and bleat for the missing one.

St. Philip Neri could not bear to witness the slightest cruelty to animals, and would caution the coachman not to run over one. And even wild animals would respond to his tenderness by their familiarity with him, and dogs would leave their masters to follow him. Seeing one of his congregation tread on a lizard as he was passing through the court, St. Philip said to him: "Cruel fellow, what has that poor little animal done to you?" He was greatly[550] agitated at seeing a butcher wound a dog with his knife. A boy having brought him a bird, St. Philip through pity ordered it to be let out at the window. Shortly after, he expressed regret for having given the bird its freedom, for fear it might die of hunger. Louis, one of his young penitents, had two little birds which he gave St. Philip. He accepted them on condition the giver would come every day to see after them, wishing to exert a good influence over the youth. One day Louis came and found the saint ill in bed, and one of the birds perched on his face. It then fluttered around his head, singing very sweetly. St. Philip asked Louis if he had accustomed the bird to do so. Louis replied in the negative. St. Philip tried in vain to drive the bird away, and finally had the cage brought, when it went in as if through obedience.

Father Pietro Consolini, of the Oratory, tells a curious story of a good brother who worked in the kitchen. In order to satisfy his devotion for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, he would put a cat upon the kitchen table, and order it to keep watch while he was absent. Then he would go off to church with a peculiar confidence in God. The cat, as if remembering the submission due to man in his primitive state of innocence, used to mount the table as desired, and remain there, as if on guard, till the good brother returned.

St. Anthony of Padua also was full of love for animals, as well as of nature in general, as he showed by constant allusions in his sermons. He was always dwelling with delight upon the whiteness and gentleness of the swans, the mutual charity of the storks, the purity and fragrance of the flowers of the fields, etc., etc. When preaching once to sinners who refused to listen to him, he suddenly turned away from them, and, appealing to the animal world, asked the fish of the water to hearken to him. The old legend tells how they lifted their heads in great numbers from the water to listen to his words.

St. Bernard would deliver the bird from the snare of the fowler, and the wild hare from the hounds.

St. Ignatius Loyola admired the beauty, wisdom, and power of the Creator in his creatures. He was often rapt in contemplation before an insect, a flower, or a blade of grass.

St. Francis de Sales so constantly manifests an extraordinary love of nature in his writings that they have been compared to the sacred veil of Isis, on which was embroidered all created things. Here is an extract taken at random from his writings, which lose their rare bouquet in translating:

"It had been snowing, and there was in the court, at least, a foot of snow. Jean swept a small space in the centre, and scattered grain on the ground for the pigeons to eat. They came in a flock to take their food there with wonderful peace and quietness, and I amused myself with looking at them. You cannot imagine how much these little creatures edified me. They did not utter a sound, and those who had finished their meal immediately made room for others, and flew a short distance to see them eat. When the place was partly vacated, a quantity of birdlings that had been surveying them came up, and the pigeons that were still eating drew up in one corner to leave the more space for the little birds, who forthwith began to eat. The pigeons did not molest them.

"I admired their charity, for the pigeons were so afraid of annoying the little birds that they crowded together[551] at one end of their table. I admired, too, the discretion of the little mendicants, who only asked alms when they saw the pigeons were nearly through their meal, and that there was enough left. Altogether, I could not help shedding tears to see the charitable simplicity of the doves, and the confidence of the little birds in their charity. I do not know that a sermon would have affected me so keenly. This little picture of kindness did me good the whole day."

And again, in writing to Madame de Chantal on the repose of the heart on the divine will, he says:

"I was thinking the other day of what I had read of the halcyon, a little bird that lays on the sea-shore. They make their nests perfectly round, and so compact that the water of the sea cannot penetrate them. Only on the top there is a little hole through which they can breathe. There they lodge their little ones, so if the sea rises suddenly, they can float upon the waves with no fear of being wet or submerged. The air which enters by the little hole serves as a counterpoise, and so balances these little cushions, these little barquettes, that they are never overturned."

There is in the Louvre a charming little picture by Giotto of St. Francis preaching to the birds. The saint's face, with an earnest, loving expression, is looking up at the birds, that, with outstretched necks and half-open beaks, appear to catch his words. The old legend which this painting illustrates with all the artist's vividness in presenting a story, is equally charming in its simplicity. It is as follows: As St. Francis was going toward Bivagno, he lifted up his eyes and saw a multitude of birds. He said to his companions: Wait for me here while I preach to my little sisters the birds. The birds all gathered around him, and he spoke to them somewhat as follows: "My little sisters the birds, you owe much to God your Creator, and ought to sing his praise at all times and in all places, because he has given you liberty, and the air to fly about in, and, though you neither spin nor sew, he has given you a covering for yourselves and your little ones. He sent two of your species into the ark with Noah that you might not be lost to the world. He feeds you, though you neither sow nor reap. He has given you fountains and rivers in which to quench your thirst, and trees in which to build your nests. Beware, my little sisters, of the sin of ingratitude, and study always to praise the Lord."

As he preached, the birds opened their beaks, and stretched out their necks, and flapped their wings, and bowed their heads toward the earth.

His sermon over, St. Francis made the sign of the cross, and the birds flew up into the air, singing sweetly their song of praise, and dispersed toward the four quarters of the world, as if to convey the words they had heard to all the world.

The sympathy of St. Francis of Assisi with nature, both animate and inanimate, is well known. He has been styled the Orpheus of the middle ages. Like the Psalmist, he called upon all nature to praise the Lord: "Praise the Lord from the earth, ye dragons and all ye deeps; fire, hail, snow, ice, stormy winds which fulfil his word, mountains and all hills, fruitful trees and all cedars, beasts and all cattle, serpents and all feathered fowls."

The very sight of a bird incited St. Francis to lift his soul to God on the wings of prayer. Crossing the lagunes of Venice on his way from Syria, he heard the birds singing, and[552] said to his companions: "Let us go and say the divine office in the midst of our brethren the birds, who are praising God." But finding they diverted his attention from his office, he said: "My brethren the birds, cease your song till we have fulfilled our obligations to God." The birds ceased their song till the saint gave them permission to resume it.

Preaching in the open air, in the environs of Alviano, St. Francis could not make himself heard on account of the number of swallows. He stopped and addressed them: "My sisters the swallows, you have spoken long enough. It is only right that I should have my turn. Listen to the word of God while I am preaching."

Meeting a young man who had caught a number of doves, he looked on them with eyes of pity, and said: "O good young man! I entreat thee to give me those harmless birds, the scriptural emblems of pure, humble, and faithful souls, so they may not fall into cruel hands and be put to death." The young man gave them to St. Francis, who put them in his bosom, and said to them in the sweetest of accents: "O my little sisters the doves! so simple, so innocent, and so chaste, why did you allow yourselves to be caught?" He made nests for them in the convent, where they laid and hatched their young, and became as tame as hens among the friars.

St. Francis was often seen employed in removing worms from the road that they might not be trampled on by travellers, remembering that our Divine Redeemer compared himself to a worm, and also having compassion on a creature of God.

He revered the very stones he trod on, so that he sometimes trembled in walking over them, recalling him who is the chief corner-stone of the spiritual edifice.

He wished the brothers when they cut wood in the forest to leave some shoots in memory of Him who wished to die for us upon the wood of the cross.

A flower reminded him of the rod of Jesse which budded and blossomed, and whose perfume is diffused throughout the world.

He sometimes wished he were one of the rulers of the land, that at Christmas he might scatter grain by the wayside and in the fields, that the birds also might have occasion to rejoice on that festival of joy.

Before his death, St. Francis made a great feast at Christmas, to which he invited the animals. He prepared a manger in the woods, in which there was straw, an ox, and an ass. A long procession of friars, followed by a crowd of people bearing torches and chanting hymns, descended the mountain. Mass was offered, and St. Francis preached on the birth of Christ, after which, filled with a holy joy, he went through the fields bursting forth into a hymn, calling upon the vines, the trees, the flowers of the field, the stars of heaven, and the sun, and all his brethren and sisters throughout nature, to rejoice with him, and to unite with him in blessing their Creator.

A wolf ravaged the environs of Agobio to the great terror of the people. St. Francis went forth armed with the sign of the cross, and commanded his brother the wolf, in the name of Christ, to do no more harm. The wolf, that was making furiously at the saint with distended jaws, stopped short, and lay down meek as a lamb at his feet. Then St. Francis laid before the wolf the enormity of his offence in devouring men made in the image of God, and promised that if he would henceforth abstain from his ravages he should be fed daily by the inhabitants. The wolf signified[553] his assent to the arrangement by placing his paw in that of St. Francis. Then the saint took the wolf to the market-place, and made known to the people the compact he had made. They ratified the agreement to feed the wolf daily till the end of his days, and for two years he went from door to door to get his food, harming no one, at the end of which time he died, greatly to the sorrow of all.

Frederick Ozanam says in this legend, which may provoke a smile: "The animal that preys upon the spoils and lives of men is the representative of the people of the middle ages, fierce and terrible when their passions were excited, but never despaired of by the church, who took their blood-stained hands in her divine ones, and gently led them on till she succeeded in inspiring them with a horror of rapine and violence."

St. Francis would salute in a friendly manner the cattle in the pastures. Once, seeing a lamb among the goats and cattle, he was filled with pity, and said to his brethren, "So was our sweet Saviour in the midst of the Pharisees and Sadducees." A merchant that happened along bought the lamb and gave it to St. Francis. It was confided to some nuns, who carefully tended it, and of its wool spun and wove a garment for the saint, who often kissed it tenderly and showed it to his friends. Going to Rome, St. Francis took the lamb with him and, when he left, gave it to a pious lady. The lamb followed her everywhere, even to church. If she did not rise early enough in the morning, he would strike his head against her bed till he roused her.

St. Francis would weep if he saw a lamb about to be killed, recalling Him who was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and would sell his very garments to save it from death.

He loved the ant less than any other insect, because it was so thoughtful for the morrow. Of the whole animal world, he cared the most for birds, who loved him too, and at his death joyfully sang his triumphant entry into heaven. The larks, in particular, assembled at an early hour on the roof of the cell where the dead saint lay, with songs of extraordinary sweetness that lasted for several hours.

An infinite number of such examples could yet be cited, but enough have been given to show how the animal world lays aside its ferocity in proportion as man returns to his primitive state of innocence. This is quite in accordance with our idea of the millennium: The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf, and the young lion, and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.

If, then, sanctity brings man back to his true relations to the Deity, and restores him to his primitive relations with nature, let us work our way back to Eden by our purity, fasts, vigils, and prayers.

CATHOLICITY AND PANTHEISM.
NO. XI.

RELATIONS BETWEEN THE SUBLIMATIVE MOMENT AND SUBSTANTIAL CREATION.

It will be the aim of this article to point out some consequences which result from the essence and properties of the supernatural term, considered respectively to the term of substantial creation. They go to establish the absolute supremacy of the supernatural term over substantial creation. We shall give them in as many propositions.

1st. In the general plan of the cosmos, the supernatural term in itself and in its application, forming that part of the cosmos which may be called the supernatural order, takes precedence of substantial creation, or the natural order.

This proposition is easily proven. The greater the intensity of perfection in a being, the nobler is the being; or, in other words, the greater amount of being a thing contains or exhibits, the higher is the place which it occupies in the ordinate location and harmony of the cosmos. The principle is too evident to need any proof, and we assume it as granted. Now, we have shown that the supernatural term in itself and in its application is by far more perfect than substantial creation; because it is a higher and more perfect similitude of Christ and of the Trinity; because it is the complement and the perfection of nature, and enables it to be joined with the Theanthropos, and through him to be ushered into the society of the three divine persons, communicating with their life, and thus arriving at the palingenesiacal state. Consequently, the supernatural in the cosmic plan must take precedence of substantial creation, and in the intention and design of the creator must precede nature.

2d. The supernatural is the end of substantial creation, and third end of the exterior action of the infinite.

In a series of means co-ordinate with each other, and depending one upon another in order to attain a primary object, that which in force of the excellence and perfection of its nature precedes others, is to be considered as end in respect to those means which follow next to it in dignity of nature; otherwise the means could have no relation whatever with each other, and the primary end could not be attained. In a series of means co-ordination implies dependence, and this dependence is established by the superiority of the one, and inferiority of the other. Hence the superior means in the series becomes end respectively to inferior means in the same series. Now, we have demonstrated that the supernatural term precedes nature in excellence and intensity of perfection; it becomes, therefore, in the harmony of the cosmic plan, the end of the substantial moment; as the Theanthropic moment is end in reference to the supernatural, and as God's manifestation of his infinite excellence and perfections is the end of the Theanthropos, and thus the primary end of the cosmic plan is obtained.

"All things are yours," said St. Paul of those in whom the supernatural term is realized: "you are Christ's; Christ is God's."

For it is the end which determines and shapes the nature of the means. The creative intelligence of the infinite, by contemplating the end which it has in view, and the essential laws of being residing in his nature, which is the Being, shapes and fashions mentally the nature and properties of the means. Hence it is evident that, the supernatural term being the end of substantial creation, it stands towards it as the exemplar and type to its copy.

4th. The supernatural term is the mediator between the Theanthropos and substantial creation.

This last proposition is a consequence of the preceding ones. For, if the supernatural term precedes substantial creation in excellence and perfection of being, if it is its end and its type, it is evident that, in the general order and harmony of the cosmos, its natural place is between the Theanthropos and substantial creation. Consequently, it is mediator between them. Of course, the intelligent reader will easily understand that this mediatorship is not one merely of place and location, but a mediatorship of action; since the terms here in question are all agents.

These four properties of the supernatural moment, which, we flatter ourselves, have been demonstrated and put beyond the possibility of doubt, will enable our readers to see the philosophy of various other truths held by Catholicity, and denied by rationalism, Pantheism, and Protestantism.

And, first, the possibility of miracles follows evidently from these principles.

A miracle is a sensible phenomenon superseding or contrary to the established laws of corporal creation. A body left to itself by the ordinary law of gravitation should fall to the ground. Suppose it should hover between heaven and earth without any support, it would present a phenomenon contrary to the natural law of bodies. It would be what is called miracle, from the word miror, to wonder or to be amazed, because our intellect is always astonished when it cannot see at once the cause of an effect.

The possibility of such phenomena contrary to the established laws of nature has been denied by Pantheists and rationalists, both for the same reason, though each draw that reason from a different source. The Pantheist, who admits that the cosmos is nothing but that primary indefinite something which is continually developing itself by a necessary interior movement, denies the possibility of miracles on the ground that the development of the infinite being necessary, and being performed according to the necessary laws of being, the development must necessarily be uniform, and the phenomena resulting from it always the same.

The rationalist, though not admitting the germinal primary activity of Pantheism, asserts the absolute immutability of the laws of creation, and consequently cannot concede the possibility of any contravention to the results of those laws, without supposing their total overthrow.

We hold that the possibility of miracles follows clearly from the properties of the supernatural moment; for, if the supernatural moment precedes nature in force of its intrinsic excellence and perfection of being, if it is the end and type of the natural order, it is perfectly evident that the whole natural order is dependent upon and subject to the supernatural order by the law of[556] hierarchy; and consequently it is evident that the laws governing the sensible order are also dependent upon and subject to the supernatural order, and must have been determined and fashioned in such a manner as to serve every purpose of that same order.

Hence, if the supernatural term, in order to assert itself before created spirits, to prove its own autonomy, its necessity, requires a phenomenon contrary to the established law of sensible creation, those laws must necessarily give way before their hierarchical superior, otherwise the whole order of the cosmos would be overthrown. This consequence is absolutely inevitable; and any one who has followed us in the demonstration of the intrinsic superiority of the supernatural term over substantial creation, cannot fail to perceive it. But to make it better understood we shall enter for a moment into the very heart of the question.

Let us take, as an example, the law of gravitation. Why do bodies left to themselves fall to the ground? The natural philosopher, with a look of profound wisdom, will answer at once, because of the law of gravitation. Now, if our philosopher claims to give no other answer but that which is within the sphere of his researches, the answer is correct; because his science of observation can carry him no further. But if by the word gravitation he should pretend to give a satisfactory ultimate reason of the phenomenon of the fall of bodies, his answer would make a metaphysician laugh. The law of gravitation! Indeed! But what is that law? Does it exist in the body, or in God? or has it an existence independent of both? If it exists in the body, how can it be a general law, when each body is an individuum? If it exist in God, how is it broken or altered, or destroyed, when the phenomenon of a miracle affects only a particular body? If it has an existence independent of both, what is it? Is it a god, or a Platonic idea, and, if so, whence does it derive the force to assert itself over God's creation?

These few questions, and many more which we could bring forward, show that to account for the fall of bodies by the law of gravitation, is to give no particular or satisfactory reason for the phenomenon.

We have already given one theory, the theory of the most profound metaphysicians of the world, that no finite beings can act without the aid of God; that God must really and effectively excite them to action, aid them during the action until it is accomplished; because he is necessarily the first and the universal cause. Therefore, bodies as well as higher beings are absolutely dependent upon God for their action; and that which natural philosophers call the law of gravitation, or any other law, such as attraction, repulsion, and so forth, in itself is nothing more than the action of God upon bodies. Now, God in acting in and upon bodies has certainly a plan and an order marked out in his mind, according to which he acts in and directs them. This order he has derived from the infinite laws of being, which are his very essence, and consequently, in this sense, that order is stable and immutable. But it must be borne in mind that this order marked out in the mind of God, according to which he acts in and directs bodies, is not the whole order of the cosmos. It is only a part, a moment, and the most inferior of all. Consequently, it is an order subject to and dependent upon the order of the other and higher moment, and upon the universal order of the cosmos. Hence the same divine essence, the eternal model and[557] type of everything, at the same time that it marks out the order for the acting in and directing of bodies, subjects it to the order of higher moments, and to the cosmological, universal order. In the application, therefore, of this eternal order marked out by his infinite essence, God acts in and directs bodies according to the stable and immutable order proper to this moment, until an exception is necessary. But when the order of higher moments and the universal order demand an exception, the order of the direction of bodies, being inferior, must necessarily yield to the superior, and the sensible order must, so to speak, be suspended for that occasion. We have said, so to speak, because even then the sensible order is not altered or broken, as rationalism imagines; it is the application of the general sensible order to a particular body which is suspended. It is not the objective order, but the subjective particular realization of it, which is superseded. Let us take as example the law so often mentioned. The general order established in the mind of God with regard to acting in bodies is to make them gravitate toward the centre of the earth. Suppose an exception of this law becomes necessary to assert the supernatural order. God, upon that particular occasion, does not apply the general law in a particular body, but acts in it contrary to that law. Is the law of gravitation broken or altered in consequence of that exception? If the law were an essential property of bodies, a natural consequence of their essence, it would be. But the law in its general and objective essence exists in God only; it does not exist in the body; and consequently it cannot be altered by a suspension of its application in a given case.

Were God to act otherwise than to admit such exceptions in the subjective application of the order of sensible creation, he would go against reason, and act contrary to his essence; for in that case he would prefer a particular and inferior order to the general and superior order of the whole cosmos. The true principles, then, in the present matter are the following:

1st. The laws according to which bodies act and are directed do not exist in bodies, but are an order marked out in the mind of God as derived from his infinite essence.

2d. This order is an element, and an inferior one, of the universal order of the whole cosmos, and consequently, by the law of hierarchy, is subject to that same universal order.

3d. This sensible order is always stable and permanent in itself and in its objective state, but in its application to particular bodies is subject to variation when this variation is demanded by a superior order, or by the universal order of the cosmos.

The reader will observe, after what we have said, how futile is the argument of rationalists that a miracle is impossible because the laws of bodies are immutable. Certainly, if the laws exist in the bodies. But the laws of bodies, as we have said, are nothing more than the order marked out in the mind of God, according to which he acts in and directs them, and, this order being universal and objective, is never changed or altered. Only its application in particular bodies on a particular occasion is not made, or made in a contrary sense, because such is the requirement of the universal order. If this be kept in view, every difficulty will vanish in reference to this matter; for this is exactly that which prevents rationalists, from understanding the possibility of miracles—their want of perception that it is God who acts in every single[558] body. They imagine a general principle, as if it were self-existing, which pervades all the bodies, which ought to be destroyed to permit the exception. Now, this is a mere phantom. It is God, we repeat it, who applies the order marked in his mind in every single body, which in his mind only is universal and objectively immutable, but subjectively, in its application, it need not be constant, except so long as no exception is required. Our natural philosophers of the rationalistic school imagine the law of bodies to be a sort of demigod, stern and immutable, particularly loth of and averse to being disturbed, and consequently cannot see the possibility of a miracle.

The second truth which follows from the attributes of the supernatural moment, is that prayer governs the universe.

Prayer, taken in its strictest acceptation, is the universal mode of action of spirits elevated to the supernatural moment. To understand this rightly, it is necessary to observe that every moment of the action of God, considered in its term, is possessed of a particular mode of action resulting from and befitting its essence and attributes. Thus, substantial creation, or the whole aggregate of being included in this moment, acts as it were by apprehension and volition. In spiritual beings, this manner of acting is strictly and properly so; in inferior beings, like the brutes, it is less so, but bears a great resemblance to it, for the animal has apprehensive faculties, though wanting in the power of generalization and abstraction, and confined within the concrete and in the individual; and he has also instincts and tendencies leading toward the object apprehended. The vegetable kingdom acts according to the same manner, though more materially; for it apprehends the elements required for its growth from the earth and the atmosphere, and, assimilating them to itself by an interior force, is able to develop itself. Every one is aware that the general laws of matter are those of attraction and repulsion, which bear a resemblance, though a faint one, to the law of apprehension and volition.

Now, the particular mode of acting in persons elevated to the supernatural moment is by prayer, which is composed of various elements according to various relations under which it is considered.

It may be considered in itself, its essence and nature, and in the persons to whom it has reference. The persons are the infinite and the finite. In itself, prayer is divided into two moments—a deprecatory moment, and a life-giving moment.

A deprecatory moment—because the effect of the prayer, resting absolutely on the free will of the infinite, cannot be claimed by the finite as a right, but as an effect of an infinite, goodness yielding to a supplication; and in this sense it implies the following elements on the part of the finite:

1st. An acknowledgment, theoretical and practical, of the infinite as being the absolute and universal source of all good; and of the absolute dependence of the finite upon the infinite in all things; this acknowledgment arising in the finite from the consciousness and feeling of its finiteness both in the natural and the supernatural order.

2d. A gravitation, natural and supernatural, on the part of this finite toward the infinite, as the origin and the preserver of the being in both orders, as the mover of its natural and supernatural faculties, and as the final complement of both.

4th. A firm and unshaken reliance of being satisfied in this aspiration, founded both on the intrinsic goodness and on the personal promises of the infinite.

These four elements on the part of the finite are absolutely necessary to constitute a prayer in its deprecatory sense; and they are either implicitly or explicitly to be found in every prayer. The spirit who bows before the infinite must acknowledge theoretically and practically that God is the Master and Lord of all things, the infinite eternal source of all being and all perfection; he must acknowledge and be conscious freely and deliberately that his being comes from God, and that that same divine action which created and elevated it must maintain it in existence, aid it in the development of its faculties, and bring it to its final completion. He must freely and deliberately yearn after all this, and have firm reliance that the infinite will maintain his being, aid it in its growth, and bring it to its full bloom in the palingenesia.

On the part of the infinite, prayer in this same deprecatory sense implies an action of God existing and aiding the finite in producing the aforesaid four acts necessary to constitute a prayer.

If we regard prayer in its life-giving moment, it implies two elements: one on the part of the infinite, the other on the part of the finite. On the part of the infinite, it implies a real actual and personal communication, a giving of himself by a personal intercourse to the finite; and, on the part of the latter, a personal apprehension of the infinite, and an assimilation of and transformation into the infinite. We cannot refrain here from quoting a beautiful page of a French writer in explanation of this last element: "When man's will, lifted by an ardent desire, succeeds in putting itself in contact with the supreme will, the miracle of the divine intervention is accomplished. Prayer, which renders God present to us,[141] is a kind of communion by which man feeds on grace, and assimilates to himself that celestial aliment of the soul. In that ineffable communication, the divine will penetrates our will, its action is mingled with our action to produce but one and the same indivisible work, which belongs whole and entire to both; wonderful union of grandeur and of lowliness, of a power eternally fecund, and of a created activity which is exhausted by its very duration, of an incorruptible and regenerating element with the infirm and corruptible elements of our being; union, which believed in invariably, though conceived in different manner by the savage tribes as well as by the most civilized nations, has been under different forms, and in spite of the errors which have obscured it, the immortal belief of humanity."[142]

Now, we maintain that prayer, understood in all its comprehension, besides the effect which it produces in its own natural sphere, is also the hierarchical superior of the action of the whole substantial creation; and that, consequently, the latter must yield to the former, whenever they should happen to come in conflict with each other; and thus, under this respect, it may be said that prayer governs the world.

This may be proven by two sorts of argument; one as it were exterior, the other intrinsic to the subject.

The first is drawn from the properties of the supernatural moment. For, if this moment is superior to [560]substantial creation, if it is the end and type of it, every one can see that the mode of acting of elevated spirits—spirits in whom the supernatural moment is realized and concreted—must necessarily precede and be superior to the mode of action of substantial creation, and that the latter must necessarily be subject to the former—unless we abolish and deny the universal law of hierarchy presiding and ruling over all the moments of the exterior action of God, and founded on the intrinsic and respective value of beings. Actio sequitur esse is the old axiom of ontology. If the being of the supernatural moment is superior to the being of substantial creation, the mode of action of the first must also, in force of that axiom, be superior to the mode of action of the latter. When, therefore, a natural law, a law of substantial creation, comes in opposition with a true prayer, a prayer made with all the conditions which its nature requires, the natural law must yield and give way to prayer.

The second argument is drawn from the essence of prayer as a life-giving agent. What is prayer in this sense? It is an actual communication of the finite with the infinite, an actual participation of the infinite and his attributes; it is a possession which the finite takes of the infinite, the appropriation, the assimilation of the infinite. It is the finite transported and transformed into the infinite. For in it the mind of the finite takes hold of the mind of the infinite, and is, as it were, transformed into it; the will and energy of the finite grasps the will and the almighty power of the infinite, and is changed, as it were, into it; the person of the finite is united to the person of the infinite, and is assimilated to him. Now, it is evident that prayer understood in this sense is no longer an act of the finite alone, but an act of both the finite and the infinite; it is the result of the energy of both. Its efficacy and energy therefore must be as superior to the energy of all substantial creation as the infinite is superior to the finite. Consequently, it is evident that when a natural law pregnant with finite energy comes in conflict with a prayer impregnated, so to speak, with infinite energy, the former must yield to the superior force of the latter.

Prayer governs the world also in a sense more general than the one we have hitherto indicated for it. The sum of all the actions of substantial creation has been so disposed, and is so ruled and governed, as to be always subject to the sum of all the actions of the supernatural moment, and this for the same reasons developed above.

Here it can be seen with how much reason those philosophers who call themselves rationalists sneer and wax indignant at the fact, constant in time and place, of the importance which mankind has attached to prayer for physical reasons, as for rain, for fair weather, for a good harvest, and the like. They show evidently how far they are from understanding the sublime hierarchical harmony of the cosmos, which the simple ones of the earth, who have faith in God, instinctively feel and acknowledge. For if God did not create the cosmos at random without a plan or design, he assuredly must have followed and maintained the necessary relations of things. Now, if substantial creation and its mode of action is hierarchically—that is, in comprehension of being—inferior to the supernatural term and its mode of action, if the latter is the end and type of the former, and if they are not to be kept apart, but to be brought together into unity and harmony, and must thus harmoniously[561] act, it is clear to the rudest understanding that the one mode of action must be subject to the other, and that consequently, when a prayer is in opposition with the realization of natural law, the natural law must yield, and the prayer must prevail.

Nor will it do to say that if such were the case the natural order would no longer enjoy any stability or permanence, because some prayer or other might come continually in opposition to it. For the whole series of actions of substantial creation is marked out eternally in the mind of the infinite. Likewise the whole series of actions of the supernatural moment is marked out in the same mind; they are brought together in beautiful harmony in the same divine intellect from all eternity. God has foreseen when and how a prayer would require the suspension of the natural law, and has willed and decreed it, so that no suspension of natural law, consequent upon a prayer, can take place which has not been foreseen and arranged harmoniously from all eternity; and if we could for a moment cast a glance into the mind of the infinite, we should see an infinite series of actions of substantial creation; an infinite series of actions of the supernatural moment; all intertwined in a most harmonious whole, and the different exceptions here and there only linking together the two orders, putting them in bolder relief, and enhancing the beauty and harmony of the whole cosmos. The theory which we have been vindicating explains also a phenomenon so frequent and so common in the history of the Catholic Church—the saint who works miracles, or the Thaumaturgus.

A saint is one in whom a certain fulness of the supernatural term resides, and hence a certain fulness of the particular mode of action belonging to that moment. A saint can pray well; therefore he can work miracles, and does oftentimes. Protestantism has not only denied most of the miracles not recorded in the Bible, but has gone so far as to deny the possibility of such miracles ever occurring after the establishment and propagation of Christianity, on the plea that they are no longer necessary. It was but a logical consequence of its doctrine of justification. If man is not really made holy in his justification, if he does not receive in his soul the term of the supernatural moment as really inherent in him, it is clear he cannot have or possess the mode of action of that moment, still less a certain fulness of it. Consequently, neither is he elevated above substantial creation, nor is his mode of action superior to the action of that same moment, and therefore he cannot exercise a power and an efficacy which he has not. In other words, a man justified according to the Protestant doctrine cannot be a saint intrinsically, and cannot consequently pray. And how could he work miracles? It was natural to deny such possibility.

But endow a man with the supernatural term in a certain fulness, and hence suppose him possessed of a fulness of its mode of action intrinsically superior in energy to the mode of action of substantial creation, and you may suppose he is likely to exercise it, and work miracles oftentimes.

As to the plea of necessity, it is absolutely futile. A miracle would be necessary even after the establishment of Christianity in all times and places, which, by the bye, has not been accomplished yet, if for no other reason, in order to assert and vindicate from time to time the existence and the supremacy of the supernatural over the natural.

The third truth emanating from the qualities of the supernatural moment is that those created persons in whom the term of that moment is realized are essentially mediators between the Theanthropos and substantial creation.

The principle follows evidently from the fourth quality essentially belonging to the supernatural term, that of being mediator between the other moments, the hypostatic and the substantial.

For if the term of that moment in intensity of being and perfection hold a place between the other two moments, it is evident that those in whom the moment is realized must hold the same middle place and be, consequently, mediators. Hence, it appears how the Catholic doctrine of the intercession, and, by logical consequence, of the invocation, of saints, is a cosmological law, as imperative as any other law of the cosmos. For what does the word mediator mean? Limiting the question to location or space, it signifies a thing placed or located between two others; in a hierarchical sense, confining the question to being and essence, it expresses a thing in essence and nature inferior to one and superior to another; in the same sense, confining the question to action and development, it exhibits a thing in its action and development inferior to the action and development of one and superior in the same to another. The person, therefore, in whom the supernatural term is realized is mediator in the sense of being in essence, nature, attributes, action, and development, superior to the same things of substantial creation, and inferior to those of the Theanthropos. Now, as the cosmos is not governed by the law of hierarchy alone, but also by the law of unity and communion, and as these laws imply a real and effective union and communication of being and action between the terms of the cosmos, it follows that the person in whom the supernatural term is concreted is in real and effective communication with the Theanthropos, as inferior, and in real and effective communication, as superior, with substantial creation; he is in communication with the former as subject and dependent, with the latter as superior, and with both as medium; that is, a recipient relatively to the Theanthropos, as transmitting what it receives from the Theanthropos relatively to substantial creation; both relations being exercised by the person elevated in every sense, either as receiving from the Theanthropos and transmitting to substantial creation, or as representative of substantial creation before the Theanthropos.

And as we are speaking of moral persons, that is, free, intelligent agents, in what can these relations consist but in this, that elevated persons, acting as mediums, may intercede and obtain favors for created persons from the Theanthropos, and these may invoke their intercession in their behalf?

The doctrine, therefore, of the intercession and the invocation of saints is a cosmological law, resulting from the law of hierarchy, unity, and communion, and governing the relation of purely created persons with those elevated to the supernatural moment.

It must be here remarked that the mediatorship of persons elevated is not confined only to persons in their mere natural state, but it extends also to persons elevated to the supernatural moment, because the supernatural term admits of variety of degree, some persons being endowed with a certain fulness of that moment, some with much less. Those in whom the fulness is realized are[563] hierarchically mediators between the Theanthropos and other elevated spirits possessing a less amount of that term, and can consequently intercede for the latter.

It must be remarked, in the second place, that the law governs the cosmos not only in its germinal state, but also in its state of completion and perfection; and we cannot possibly discover or imagine by what logical process Protestantism, which admits this law in the germinal and incipient state of the cosmos, denies it to exist between persons elevated to the state of palingenesia and those who are yet in the germinal state. This denial, so far as we can see, could be supported only by the supposition that as soon as an elevated person reaches its final development, every tie of union, every bond of intercourse, is immediately broken asunder between him and other persons living yet in the germinal state of the cosmos. But how false and absurd this supposition would be is evident to every one who at all understands the exterior works of God. The cosmos being measured by time, is essentially successive; in other words, all the elements of the cosmos cannot possibly reach their final completion at one and the same time, the law of variety and hierarchy necessarily forbidding it. It is absolutely necessary, then, that some elements should reach their final perfection first and some afterwards, in proportion as they come to take place in the cosmos successively. If, therefore, by one element of the cosmos reaching its final development all intercourse were to be broken between it and all other elements which have not reached so high a condition, it would follow that the cosmos would never be one, never in harmony, until all had reached their final completion and the creation of more elements entirely ceased. It would be a continual disorder and confusion until the end of the world. Now this is absurd, since unity and harmony must always govern and adorn God's works. Nor can we see any intrinsic reason why it should be broken. The only plea alleged by Protestants in support of this suspension of all communion between the spirits in palingenesia and those living on earth, is that there can be no possible means of communication between them. They express this idea commonly by saying that the saints in heaven cannot hear our prayers. How philosophical this plea is we leave it to the intelligent reader to determine. Suppose we had no direct answer to give to this plea, the absolute necessity of the cosmos being one and harmonious would make a true philosopher infer that the infinite must have found a means whereby to keep up this communication, though it might be unknown to us what that means actually is.

But the direct answer is at hand. The Word of God is essentially the life of the cosmos. He is the type of all the essences, of all the natures, of all the personalities, of all the acts composing the cosmos. The cosmos, in all these respects, is reflected in the Word. "All that was made in him was life." (St. John.)

Now, all elevated spirits are united to and live in the Incarnate Word. The spirits or persons in the germinal state are united to his person by the supernatural essence and the supernatural faculties of intelligence and of will. This forms the essential union between them and the Theanthropos. The spirits in the final state are united to him in the same substantial sense, with the exception that their supernatural essence has reached its utmost completion, their supernatural intelligence is changed[564] into intuition, and their supernatural will has immediate possession of God.

The consequence of these principles is that the spirits in the germinal state produce acts of invocation to the spirits in the final state, and these acts are reflected or reproduced in the Theanthropos as the type and the intelligible objective life of the cosmos.

The spirits in the final state see, by intuition, in the Theanthropos all those acts of invocation of the spirits in the germinal state, and thus come to know what the spirits on earth claim from them. As orator and audience, living in the same atmosphere, can hold intercourse with each other, because the words uttered by the orator are transmitted by the air to the ears of his audience, so the spirits on earth and the spirits in heaven hold intercourse with each other, because they live in the same medium.

The spirits on earth making acts of invocation to their brethren in heaven, these acts are reflected or reproduced in the Theanthropos, and from him reverberate and reach the eyes of the spirits in heaven living in him, and thus they come to the knowledge of the wants and prayers of their brethren on earth.

But why such interposition of persons when we could go directly to the Theanthropos? Does this not detract from the mediatorship of Christ?

Why, but because the cosmos must be one? Why, but because all the elements of the cosmos must communicate with each other? And how can this doctrine detract from the mediatorship of Christ when he is made the source, the origin, the end of everything? If Catholic doctrine claimed this intercourse independently of the Theanthropos, it would certainly detract from his mediatorship. But do we not establish and centre this mediatorship of the saint entirely in the Theanthropos?

The last truth which follows from the essence of the supernatural term is what is called the worship of saints. This truth is not only a cosmological law, but an ontological principle, since, considered in its simplest and most ultimate acceptation, it implies nothing more than the duty incumbent on every moral agent to acknowledge, theoretically and practically, the intrinsic value of being. Suppose a certain being is possessed of a hundred degrees of perfection, so to speak, I cannot, without a flat contradiction to my intelligence, which apprehends it, deny or ignore it; I cannot, without a flat contradiction to my expansive faculty or will, which is attracted by it, fail to appreciate it practically. Now, the worship of saints, against which Protestantism has written and said so much, is founded entirely on that ontological principle. The saint is possessed of a certain fulness of the supernatural term. The supernatural intelligence of other elevated spirits apprehends this fulness, and the supernatural will of the same spirits cannot fail to value it. This theoretical and practical appreciation is esteem, and when expressed outwardly is honor and praise. By the ontological principle of recognizing the value of being, therefore, it is evident that the Catholic theory of the worship of saints is not only theologically lawful, but eminently philosophical. Protestantism, in denying this worship, follows the same principle without being aware of it.

It starts from its own doctrine of justification, which consists, as we have seen, not in the interior cleansing of the soul from sin and in its elevation to the supernatural moment, but in an external application[565] to it of the merits of Christ. The example of the cloak is most appropriate. Suppose a man, all filthy and loathsome; cover him with a rich and splendid cloak, so as to hide the filth and loathsomeness, and you have an example of Protestant justification. It is all foreign, outward, unsubjective. Now, apply the ontological principle of the value of being to a saint of this calibre, and it is evident that you cannot esteem and value him because he is worth nothing subjectively, and hence the denial of the worship of saints is a logical consequence of the Protestant doctrine of justification, and an application, in a negative sense, of the ontological principle of the value of beings.

On the contrary, admit the Catholic doctrine of justification, whereby a man is not only cleansed from sin, but elevated to a supernatural moment, receiving as inherent in him a higher and nobler nature and higher and nobler faculties, and it is evident that you must acknowledge this, value, esteem, and honor it.

SAYINGS OF THE FATHERS OF THE DESERT.

So that there were in the mountain monasteries like tabernacles, full of divine choirs of men singing, reading, praying; and so great an ardor for fasting and watching had his (St. Antony's) words enkindled in the minds of all that they labored with an avidity of hope and with unceasing zeal in works of mutual charity, and in showing mercy to those who needed it, and they seemed to inhabit a sort of heavenly country, a city shut off from worldly conversation, full of piety and justice. Who, looking at such an army of monks—who, beholding that manly and concordant company, in which there was none to do harm, no whisper of detraction, but a multitude of abstinent men and an emulation of kind offices, would not immediately break forth into the words: How beautiful are thy tabernacles, O Jacob, and thy tents, O Israel! As woody valleys, as watered gardens near the rivers, as tabernacles which the Lord hath pitched, as cedars by the waterside (Num. xxiv. 5, 6)?

The disciple of an aged and famous monk was once assailed by temptation. And, when the old man saw him struggling, he said to him: Do you wish me to ask God to take away this trial from you? But he answered: I see and consider, father, that though I wrestle painfully, yet out of this labor I bear fruit. But ask this of God in thy prayers, that he may give me patience to endure. And his father said to him: Now I know, my son, that thou hast made great progress, and surpassest me.

Let no man, when he has despised the world, think that he has left anything great.—From the Life of blessed Abbot Antony, by St. Athanasius.

THE ITALIAN GUARANTEES AND THE SOVEREIGN PONTIFF.

After having been proposed by the government of Italy, recast by the Chamber of Deputies, amended by the Senate, adopted by the Chamber as amended, and approved and signed by the King and his ministers, the project of the guarantees for the Sovereign Pontiff's independence has become a part of the law of the land. We are perfectly willing to believe that his majesty, regarding this scheme as promising the fullest amount of freedom it was possible to obtain from his parliament for the Head of the Church, signed it with a feeling of relief; for if we are to credit the rumors, more or less well founded, one hears in Florence and in Rome, broken tables and furniture overturned bore witness to the unwillingness of the supreme authority in the state to permit the violation of the Papal territory or to accept the plébiscite of the so-called people of Rome. Not so, however, was it with the legislators of the kingdom. To them the Papacy has been and is a huge incubus, that disturbs their rest, frightens them in their dreams, and which can be got rid of in truth only by their waking up to a sense of what their real duty is. Their aim has been, in dealing with it, to yield up as little as possible of their ill-gotten power over the successor of St. Peter, and to secure themselves as effectually as possible against the only power they ever feared—his spiritual weapons. This is the criterion by which we should study these guarantees; by the light of it we propose to examine them, and to discuss their pretended advantages.

When the Italian government, hurried on by the spirit of revolution, seized upon Rome during the complications of last autumn that insured impunity for the moment to the act, they found themselves face to face with the spiritual ruler of the whole Catholic world, and with the fixed convictions or invincible prejudices of two hundred millions of men, who regarded the position in which the Sovereign Pontiff had been placed as not only against all law, but also hurtful to their best interests. How were they to deal with so delicate a question? The situation of Europe might for a time delay the solution, but eventually there must be an account given and satisfaction rendered to the Catholic world. The cabinet hit on the only means it could hope to use with any appearance of success, and the promises of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sig. Visconti Venosta, served as a decent pretext to liberal governments not to interfere actively in the accommodation of things in Italy. These promises are contained in the despatches sent to different governments during last winter, and published in the diplomatic documents laid before the various legislative bodies of Europe during the past six months. To do the minister justice, he has stood out successfully against the extreme radical party in parliament that opposed most violently any idea of concessions such as he had designed for the independence of the Sovereign Pontiff, and his appeal to the loyalty of Italy brought down the applause of the house, and effectually destroyed the influence of[567] his opponents. Still, even if we attribute to any other feeling than fear of foreign intervention the measures adopted, they are not for that reason intrinsically enhanced in value, nor are they anything more than the most the Italian government is capable or willing to do to protect the power of the Pope.

That power, be it well understood, is in the eyes of the rulers of Italy merely a spiritual power, for the temporal, they consider, was annihilated by the cannon that beat down the walls on the 20th of September, 1870, and by the plébiscite of the 2d of October following. How does this law of guarantees confirm the exercise of that power? We shall see by referring to several of the articles, not quoting the law at length, as it has already appeared in the public journals.

Article II. says in the last clause: "The discussion of religious questions is entirely free."

Article III. says that the Sovereign Pontiff may have his guards "without prejudice to the obligations and duties resulting from such guards, from the existing laws of the kingdom of Italy."

Article IV. contemplates the possibility of the government taking upon themselves the expenses of the museums and library of the Pontifical palaces.

Article V. says these museums, library, collections of art and of archæology, are "inalienable."

Article VIII. forbids sequestration of papers merely spiritual in their character.

Article XIII. declares that the ecclesiastical seminaries of Rome, and of the six suburban sees presided over by cardinals, are to continue subject to the Holy See, without any interference on the part of the scholastic authorities of the kingdom.

Article XVI. says: "The dispositions of the civil laws with regard to the creation and the manner of existence of ecclesiastical institutions, and the alienation of their property, remain in force."

Article XVII. The recognition of the juridical effects of the spiritual and disciplinary acts, as well as of any other act of the ecclesiastical authority, belongs to the civil jurisdiction. Such acts, however, are void of effect if contrary to the law of the state or to public order, or hurtful to the rights of private persons, and are subject to the penal laws if they constitute a crime.

Let us take a cursory glance at these cullings from the "guarantees," and see if they conflict at all with the spiritual power of the Pontiff. Before the twentieth of September, 1870, the whole of the city of Rome and the dependent provinces were presided over in spirituals by the Pope, and all of the inhabitants were Catholics, except a few Jews, treated with charity, though not allowed to make proselytes. By this decree the door is thrown open to every sect that chooses to come and try to proselytize the Roman people. They must see as clearly as we do that the last clause of Article II. deals the most powerful and insidious blow at the spiritual power of the Pope in spiritual matters, encouraging his people to spiritual defection, or at least lessening him in their esteem as a spiritual teacher. This is too evident to need further dwelling on, and we pass to the next indictment.

The Pope's guards are to protect him and execute his orders, but inasmuch as they are not on this account freed from the obligations of Italian citizens by the tenor of Article III., it is quite easy to understand how in the course of time elements of discord may arise; and[568] therefore, in the use of his guards the Pope must conform to the civil code of the kingdom of Italy, or take the consequences referred to further on.

Articles IV. and V. regard the library and museums of the Vatican and of other palaces. The original draught of the project declared these collections the property of the state. The criticism it excited on this account brought about the modifications we have here, which substitute inalienability for the asserted right of property, without adverting to the fact that such a modification implies dominion in the one making it, while there is contemplated a possible taking on themselves by the government of the expenses of these museums that certainly points to the same idea.

The VIIIth Article forbids the sequestration of papers and documents of the ecclesiastical authorities merely spiritual in their nature. The inference is that any other documents not merely spiritual may be sequestrated; and, as doubts may arise, who is to decide? Certainly not the church or the Pope, for he is the accused; there is no umpire; and a strong police force is at the beck of the Italian government, and the question will be solved readily.

The XIIIth Article, regarding the ecclesiastical seminaries and colleges, exempts them from the control of the scholastic authorities, but, with regard to their temporal concerns, we are told in the XVIth Article they must be subject to the civil jurisdiction. We leave it to our practical men of America to say whether or not the man who holds the purse-strings and manages the funds has any influence on the people he pays or are paid through him. In the case before us the Italian civil authorities are those who pay, having in many cases the full administration of the funds. We feel tempted to refer to the case of the Roman College, the funds of which have been withheld since the first of January, 1871.

The first draught of Article XVII. was too strong. It said openly: In case of conflict between the civil and ecclesiastical powers, the supreme civil tribunal of the kingdom was to decide. This was toned down to suit better rather tender susceptibilities. The result we have in the clause quoted above, which says the same thing in other words, and in stronger terms, if we look to the penal sanction referred to. Here is the whole pith of the matter. "As long as it is possible for us to get on without dispute," say the government, "all well; but the moment a question arises, we must solve it." Moreover, as the legislative authorities have made the law, they can amend or alter it if they think proper, and there is and can be no guarantee that they will not.

Such are the disadvantages created by the vexed project, which from the amount of discussion it has caused, deserves the title of the Pons Asinorum of the Italian parliament.

There are several points in this law which have some title to be looked on as advantages, relatively to the condition in which the Sovereign Pontiff has been placed since the overthrow of his temporal sovereignty. These are the inviolability of the person of the Sovereign Pontiff, the payment of the monthly sum of fifty thousand dollars, the protection of the Conclave as well as of the Pontiff in the discharge of duty, the immunity of ecclesiastics employed by him, the postal and telegraphic arrangements, and the abolition of the royal 'placet' and 'exequatur.' But it is to be remarked that, on the first[569] place, with regard to some the dignity of the Head of the Church will not permit him to avail himself of them; then with reference to others, they are imperatively wrung from the Italian government by the public opinion of foreign nations; while, lastly, respecting others, the government will always have it in their power to exercise a surveillance that renders the concessions more or less nugatory, and in nowise satisfactory to the people of Catholic and non-Catholic nations.

But independent of all the above reasons, there are intrinsic motives that make any code of guarantees worth little more than the paper on which they are indited. All are agreed that the Head of the Church must be independent; the Italian government acknowledges it, and Catholics and non-Catholics proclaim it throughout the world. In what does this necessary independence consist? It consists essentially in being free of undue influence from any source whatsoever. Now, such freedom can be obtained only by restoring the Pope to the condition in which he was prior to the year 1860. For we can imagine the several other conditions in which the Pope might be placed.

He may be the sovereign ruler of the city of Rome under the protection of the Italian government together with other governments throughout the world.

In the first place, we suppose him to be in the condition in which he is at the present moment. The reasons we have given above, the practical experience had of the protection given to the Pope and those attached to him, the seizure of the encyclical, and other acts of which his eminence the Cardinal Secretary of State has complained publicly, the subjection a salary paid by the Italian government would bring with it, and the general suspicion to which his acts are liable, from the influence of the powerful government under which he lives—all make it impossible that this state of things should continue.

Nor is it possible that the Sovereign Pontiff should be the privileged and protected member of a Roman republic. To tell the truth, the present state of things is preferable to that. Republics, and particularly a Roman republic, are too liable to commotion, a mob is too easily excited to violence, a demagogue is too likely to gain great influence over this city, to make it at all advisable that the Pontiff should have republicans for his neighbors. A prince has duties to his people, to his dynasty, and to other nations that check him, and make him keep order in his realm; whereas the common people are restrained by no such consideration, and a clamorous hostile demonstration, with a stoppage of supplies, would very probably be the answer to any act of the Sovereign Pontiff that did not meet with their approbation. The vicissitudes of the days of Cola di Rienzi are there to show how incompatible with the mobile masses of a republic is the necessarily unbending firmness of a moral ruler. Not much happier than the foregoing is the idea proposed by the able deputy of the Italian parliament, Signor Toscanelli, who would have Rome a free city under the sovereign control of the Sovereign Pontiff and protected by the Italian government. It would, practically speaking, be impossible to eliminate all influence on the part of the government protecting and closely[570] in material contact with the Roman Curia. Even supposing that the maintenance of the Pope and his dependents did not come from that government, it would not be advisable or satisfactory. In this case, the money for the support of the ecclesiastical authorities would have to come from foreign nations. Although this would save the Sovereign Pontiff from much of his subjection to the rulers of Italy, it would still leave him subject to influence of another kind very undesirable. The point is a delicate one, but we will treat it with all due consideration for those concerned. In legislating for mankind, you have no right to expect heroic actions, and this more particularly if those actions pertain to the supernatural order. This rule is to be applied to the Sovereign Pontiffs as to every one else. To their great honor, the Sovereign Pontiffs have stood nobly firm in the exercise of the duties of their exalted state; many a one has shed his blood for the faith, many a one has languished in chains for the good of his flock, many a one has braved the fury of crowned tyrants for the safety and well-being of the church of Christ. But above all praise as their conduct has often been, you have no right to put them in a position that requires the exercise of such heroic firmness. Now, what is the condition of a Pope dependent on the precarious contributions of foreign nations for his support? It is one in which an external influence is continually at work to check him in the free and impartial discharge of his duty; it is one in which he is continually forced to lay aside all human considerations of prudence and throw himself with fulness of faith on Divine Providence. The position is a sublime one, but for that very reason no man or body of men have any right to place him in it. If he sees fit to condemn some cherished opinion in a nation, the people cool in their devotion to him, and as the contributions of which we speak are voluntary, the disinclination to receive his decisions brings with it a disinclination to give spontaneously what had been so given before, and the direct consequence of every pontifical act unacceptable is very likely to be a diminution in the funds that come in for the support of the Pontiff; in fact, if we may be allowed the expression, these contributions may be looked on as a kind of spiritual thermometer, that by their rise or fall indicate the warmth or the coolness of feeling towards the Pope. In point of fact, it is well known that not a few prophesied, during the discussions of the question of the infallibility in the past year, that the passing of the decree would bring about a decided falling off in the Peter Pence. Notwithstanding this, the Sovereign Pontiff threw himself upon Providence, and his hope was not deceived. To the honor of Catholics throughout the world be it said, the contributions of the Peter Pence of to-day exceed those of all other epochs, and enable the Holy Father to administer to the most pressing wants of the flock over which he personally and directly presides. The hand of Providence is certainly here. Such manifestations of Providence, however, as we have said, no one has a right in legislating to look forward to, and therefore it is absolutely necessary that the Head of the Church should be the sovereign of a small state, large enough to save him from the necessity of tutelage, and yielding a yearly revenue sufficient to maintain him and those he must have around him with the decorum due to his condition. To this it may be objected, that his subjects will be deprived of many advantages enjoyed by free nations.[571] We are very sceptical about these advantages; the progress of Rome under Pius IX. has been solid and satisfactory; and, on the other hand, the Roman subjects of the Pontiff will have many advantages to which other nations are often strangers: the advantage of light taxation, the advantage of laws repressing immorality, the advantage of peace with its delightful arts, the advantage of an enlightened protection of science and of the fine arts, and then the great material advantage of seeing their city the resort of the cultivated and wealthy classes of all nations, who flock to Rome to see the successor of St. Peter, and to enjoy the gorgeous and imposing ceremonial of the church. For far less advantages than these we deprived the citizens of a portion of our country of the great privilege of their political franchise; of all nations we should be the last to find fault with the infliction of a similar disqualification, of much more apparent harm than real, and which is compensated for an hundredfold. And this we say all the more earnestly because, in the case of Rome, it is not the welfare of a collection of states that is provided for, but the peace and good order of all nations of the earth.

THE ROSE.

Is there any portion of mankind that has not inhaled the sweet perfume of this lovely flower? From Borneo to the ruins of the Parthenon; from Kamschatka to Bengal; from the neighborhood of Hudson's Bay to the mountains of Mexico; from Cairo to the Cape of Good Hope, it graces the palace and the chamber, lavishes itself full-leaved on the processions of Corpus Christi, and serves as a pretty plaything to the child, who cracks the swollen petals on his innocent forehead.

Of it the Hebrews made their crowns, and in their solemnities the high-priest wreathed it around his head.

When the Queen of Sheba visited Solomon, it is said, she tried every means to assure herself not only of his superior wisdom, but also of the quickness of his perception. She placed before him one day two roses, one artificial, but so well made that she defied the king to distinguish the false one from the real. He sent for a bee, which naturally alighted on the true one, and thus, without approaching either, was able to give his decision.

Among the Hebrews, the bridegroom as well as the bride wore a crown of roses, of myrtle, or of olive.

Mythology assigns to the rose the most illustrious origin. At the moment when Pallas came out of the brain of Jupiter, the earth produced the rose, that delight might follow in the wake of wisdom. White at first, the poets have not quite agreed to what it owed its many-purpled hues. We are told by some that the exquisite Adonis was mortally wounded by a boar, and that his flowing blood fell on the roses, and colored them for ever. According to others, Venus ran to protect him, and the thorns and briers tore her lovely skin, and the purple drops fell on a wild rose, dyed it, and consecrated it for ever in her honor. Such a[572] circumstance was scarcely necessary to make so perfect a flower sacred to the goddess of beauty. Some authors say that in the midst of an Olympian fête the goddess Hebe spilled the embalmed vermilion nectar, and that the white roses spread their petals to receive the perfume and the color.

Mythology also relates that Love presented to Harpocrates, the god of silence, the flower that no one had ever seen, and that consequently had never revealed anything. Hence came the custom of suspending a rose from the ceiling of the room where families assembled, in order that discretion, of which it was the symbol, might become the guarantee of the sacred security of all their conversations. Sub rosa (under the rose) was a proverb that signified: We can speak freely, without suspicion.

Venus and Cupid were represented crowned with roses; so, also, Flora, the goddess of flowers, and Comus, who presided at festivities.

Aglaë, the youngest of the Graces, carried the rosebud in her hand, the attribute of youth and beauty.

The Graces, the Muses, and Bacchus also received their homage in crowns of roses; their altars were hung with garlands, and those good old servants the Penates were sometimes decorated in like manner. Of all the flowers, the rose was dedicated to the greatest number of divinities, although nearly all of them had some plant especially sacred.

The opening hour of day sowed roses in Aurora's path, who at sight of her father the sun wept tears of joy over her favorite flowers. So the poets of antiquity explain the drops of dew that tremble and scintillate on the roses in the morning light. The rose designates the dawn; and, bathed with dew, it is the emblem of filial piety.

Peace is represented holding a rod of thorns with roses and olive branches, and the muse Erato, when presiding over lyric poetry, was always crowned with myrtle and the rose.

The appearance of Christianity gave to the rose another origin, and we cite the legend. Once, a holy virgin of Bethlehem, falsely accused and calumniated, was condemned to perish by fire. She prayed to our Lord, beseeching him to come to her aid, because he knew she was not guilty of what they reproached her with. The fire went out immediately; the burning fagots were transformed into red-rose bushes covered with flowers, and those that were not lit into white ones. These roses were the first ever seen, and became from that time the flower of the martyrs.

The rose appeared at a very distant epoch as the emblem of the Virgin; it was particularly recognized as such by St. Dominic, when he instituted the devotion of the rosary, in direct allusion to the life of holy Mary.

Prayer appears always to have been symbolized by roses. There is a story told of a servant who, having to carry an immense amount of treasure belonging to his master through a wood, was there awaited by a band of robbers. On entering the forest, he remembered that he had that morning omitted his Ave Marias, so he knelt down to say them. As he prayed, the Virgin placed a beautiful garland on his head, to which at each Ave she added a rose. The brilliancy around him became intense, and the whole wood was illuminated. The good man knew nothing of his beautiful crown of roses, but the robbers saw the vision and let him pass unharmed.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

This is a neat little book, translated, by a Russian, from the original Greek. The catechism contained in the front is so very ancient and Catholic that it will be a difficult task indeed for those members of the Protestant Episcopal Church in England and America who dream of union with the Greek schism, ever to reconcile it with the catechism that begins, "What is your name? N. or M."

There is a note at the bottom of page 79, to the effect that, when the priest signs the elements and says the words, "And make this bread to be thy Holy Body, and what is in this cup to be thy Holy Blood," it is supposed that the consecration takes place, or, as the translator says, transubstantiation. This is an error invented by the modern Greeks and introduced by one Nicholas Cabasilas, contrary to the Council of Florence and to all Catholic tradition. For it is the universal teaching and belief that the consecration or transubstantiation takes place when the priest does what Christ did, and says the very same words that Christ said: "This is my body; this is my blood." That is the form of the sacrament of the Eucharist. The ritualists object to the Roman vestments on the ground that they are not of the ancient shape. We would like them to look at page 18, and answer this question: Which is the more like the ancient vestment—the Roman or the Greek? Any candid man would answer that the former is. The Greek chasubles are cut away in front, the Roman at the sides. However, we hope that the day will soon come when these good people will learn that the essence of religion does not consist in the shape of a chasuble or the cut of a cope, but rather in a childlike obedience to that Infallible Authority which is able to regulate matters of discipline and worship as well as to define matters of faith and morals.

A delicious book for those who are favored with sensible devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, while, at the same time, it is so solid that those who are less favored will find much of it very profitable.

The contents of this series are as follows: "Tales of Catholic Artists;" "Honor O'More's Three Homes;" "Sir Ælfric, and other Tales;" "Select Tales for the Young;" "Tales for the Many;" and "Frederic Wilmot."

These are very far removed from those tales, selected at haphazard, too often to be met with in libraries for the young which are juvenile but in name, the compilers of which are apparently ignorant of the fact that as much depends on judicious selection as careful rejection. In external appearance, paper, typography, binding, and illustration, we have also displayed, in miniature, the distinguishing characteristic of the works issued by the Publication Society, liberality of expenditure limited only by the suggestions of good taste. But, while thus equal in every respect to the preceding sets, and coming, too, most opportunely just in time for the annual[574] distributions, there is to this series one great drawback which the reviewer may, but our boys and girls certainly cannot, overlook—it contains six volumes only; each of the preceding sets contained twelve.

The only "dead" on whose "state" this work throws any light are those who, like the author, are dead to the grace of humility. "Fathers, councils, creeds, and decrees," says he, "are of no account and of no authority in establishing the doctrines of divine truth"—(Preface, p. ix.) "We have ignored these," he adds, "and have deferred to no one" (sic). And so, forsooth, his own "ipse dixit," the complacent "we deny" with which he quashes an argument, are "of account and authority in establishing the doctrines of divine truth." "Divine truth," indeed! What can he know of that, entombed as he is in his own self-sufficiency?

This abridged edition of the life, sufferings, and execution of the celebrated Archbishop of Armagh, taken from the larger work of the same author published in Ireland some years ago, will be found, from its intrinsic merits and portable form, to be a favorite and popular book among the mass of American Catholics. Though relating, in a concise manner, the leading facts in the life of that persecuted primate, it is necessarily deficient in many of the features which made Monsignor Moran's original memoir so valuable an addition to the historical annals of the reign of the Second Charles of England. The voluminous correspondence of Dr. Plunket with the Internunzio at Brussels and the Secretary of the Propaganda; his reports on the condition of ecclesiastical affairs in Ireland from 1670 till within a short time of his death; and the decrees of the general and provincial synods convoked by him, all of which are very fully reproduced in the original book, are totally or partially omitted in the compendium before us. Still, we are glad to see an authentic account of the piety, learning, and heroism of the illustrious victim of Protestant intolerance placed within the reach of all who reverence his memory, and especially of those who feel proud in being able to call him their countryman.

The contest between Pope Gregory VII. and Henry IV. of Germany forms the groundwork of this delightful story, which abounds with interesting descriptions of feudal times, and gives us, with charming simplicity, the details of the daily religious life of the people of those "dark ages," so luminous with the light of faith.

The character of the intrepid, patient Hildebrand is drawn with a skilful hand, and reminds us that persecution has ever been the lot of the faithful Vicar of Christ.

The pleasing title of the book brings to our remembrance the fact that the church of God in those days sanctified to peace a portion of every week, beginning at sunset on Wednesday and continuing till Monday morning. All private warfare was forbidden during these days, under pain of excommunication.

This precept mingles with the thread of the story, which is both attractive and instructive, leaving upon the mind and heart a most agreeable impression.

The mechanical portion of the book is beautifully executed, and we are delighted to see that all the books got out this season by Mr. Murphy are in the same elegant style.

Every scholar knows how learned Germans write history. Dr. Curtius ranks with Mommsen as a historian, and his History of Greece, of which this volume is the first instalment, is to be classed with the History of Rome by the latter author. We believe that it has the advantage over it of being complete, and, moreover, its subject is even more interesting to students and men of letters. It is brought out in a style of excellence similar to that of Mommsen's History, leaving nothing in that respect to be desired. We hope that the demand for works of this kind may be sufficient to induce some one of our great publishing-houses to favor the public with a translation of Leo's Universal History, which is the masterpiece of German historical works.

This is a singular and a singularly interesting little volume. It is Anglican, as the title shows; yet, strange to say, it is made up of brief but well-written and affectionate memorials of More, Campion, Arundel, Plunket, and a number of other illustrious martyrs of the Catholic faith and the supremacy of the Roman Church in England and Ireland. It is a book which we can unhesitatingly recommend to Catholics as well as Protestants, and which we should rejoice to see extensively circulated. We cherish the most unbounded veneration for these heroic martyrs, and ardently long for the time when they may be solemnly canonized by the authority of that Holy See for whose rights they suffered torments and death. The author has our thanks for his pious tribute to the sacred and holy memory of these blessed victims of Protestant English cruelty. May it help to bring England to a penitent recognition of their merits, and bring a blessing from God to himself.

This volume of Appleton's Cyclopædia is certainly, at least considered as a register of current events, of unusual interest. No recent year has witnessed events in Europe of such importance as have occurred in 1870; and the accounts given of them are sufficiently full. Of course they have been carefully prepared, and are interesting from the nature of the case. So far as we have noticed, the proper scope of such a publication has been well observed, plain statements of facts being given without comment or apparent prejudice. The statement of the preface, however, that by the overthrow of the temporal sovereignty of the Pope, "liberalism and authority have been brought to a final issue before the world," is somewhat objectionable; as is also, and in a much higher degree, the introduction of a portrait of the wretched man who, unfortunately for himself as well as others, is the nominal head of the Italian kingdom, for a frontispiece. Portraits are also given of two really distinguished and remarkable men, Generals Von Moltke and Robert E. Lee.

The results of the United States census of 1870 are given, and full information as to the present condition and growth of each state. The scientific information is on the whole valuable and accurate. In the present intense activity of research in this field, it is of course impossible to admit into a work of this kind[576] everything of interest and importance, and nothing besides, and a better selection could hardly have been made. The volume is very creditable to its able and enterprising publishers.

We have so often spoken in praise of the volumes of this series, known as "The Library of Wonders," that it is with regret we are compelled, as in the case of the present volume, to condemn any of them. But such books as these need careful editing, and in the volume before us this has evidently been neglected; for on page 88 we find "the idolatries of the Catholic Church," as well as similar expressions elsewhere, that unfit it for circulation amongst our Catholic youth. We would most respectfully suggest to the publishers a little more care in future volumes, if they desire to have these books placed in Catholic libraries, or given as school and college premiums, for both of which they are, otherwise, admirably adapted.

The Catholic Publication Society has in press, and will soon publish: The Life of Mother Julia, foundress of the Sisters of Notre Dame. Familiar Instructions on Mortal Prayer. By the Abbé Courbon. Translated from the French, and edited by Rev. W. T. Gordon, of the Oratory, London. Light in Darkness: A Treatise on the Obscure Night of the Soul. By Rev. A. F. Hewit. The Illustrated Catholic Family Almanac for 1872. A Life of Mother Margaret Mary Hallahan, abridged. A new edition of Mylius's History of England, continued down to the present day and adapted for schools. Gahan's Church History, a new edition, continued down to the present time.

The Catholic Publication Society will also soon publish in one handsome volume The Pictorial Bible and Church History Stories, being a compendious narrative of sacred history, brought down to the present times of the church, by Rev. Henry Formby. It will be copiously illustrated from designs by the most eminent artists, and will be sold at a price so as to place it within the reach of every Catholic family in the United States.

We have just received from Messrs. Murphy & Co. an advance copy of Patron Saints, by Miss Starr.

INFALLIBILITY.

We propose to treat this topic in a manner somewhat different from the ordinary one, and which may seem indirect and circuitous. We hope to come to the point more securely in this way than by the more direct road, and to drive before us the whole body of outlying, straggling difficulties and objections. In particular, we intend to place in a clear, intelligible light the nature, purport, and ground of the recent definition of the Council of the Vatican, which has made the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff an article of faith. It is for this purpose that we have taken up the general topic of infallibility; and the reason for discussing this general topic rather than the exclusive question of Papal infallibility alone is, that the latter cannot be properly explained except in its relation to the former. The infallibility of the church is a more general and extensive idea than the infallibility of the Pope. In the order of time, it was prior to it in the minds of the great mass of the faithful as a certain truth of the divine revelation, and it was before it as an article of explicit Catholic faith. The precise point which many persons have not clearly understood has been, how it could have been less clearly known and less explicitly believed by a number of good Catholics before the Council of the Vatican than after it, especially considering its very great practical importance. They are puzzled to think that it was not an article of universal, explicit faith always, as much as the infallibility of the church. Or, in few and plain words, they do not understand how a council could define it as an article of faith which must be believed as a condition of Catholic communion, when it had not been always proposed as an article of faith, with the obligation of believing and professing it, to all the faithful everywhere. If it is a new dogma, how can it be a part of the old Catholic faith handed down from the apostles, and what authority has a council to create a new dogma? If it is an old dogma, how could the denial of its certain, infallible truth have been tolerated, and the judgment of a council make this denial now, for the first time, to become a heresy, to which the penalty [578]of an anathema is affixed? The answer to these questions is plain enough to any one who has a moderate knowledge of the elements of theology. No council can create a dogma which is new, in the sense of being a new doctrine, or a new revelation. The new definitions of the Council of the Vatican are definitions of old truths, old doctrines, revealed by Jesus Christ and the apostles, and contained in Scripture and tradition. But some of the truths proposed by these definitions, although old doctrines, and contained in the original deposit of faith, are new dogmas in this sense, that they are more explicit statements of truths implicitly contained in dogmas previously defined or declared, and that they are now newly proposed under this more precise and extended form to the faithful, as revealed doctrines, with the obligation of receiving them as articles of faith. The dogma of the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff was contained implicitly in the dogma of the infallibility of the church, and in the dogma, long since explicitly defined, of the Papal supremacy; in Scripture and tradition also; and in the general teaching of the schools of theology, in a more distinct and express form. Wherefore, as we have said, it is useful and important to show how it is contained in and related to the general principles of the essential constitution and infallibility of the church, as well as to make an exposition of the specific proofs of its truth as a distinct doctrine from the Scripture, the fathers, and the general teaching which has prevailed in the church. In this way, a Catholic, to whom new truths, or truths less clearly and certainly known than others, have been proposed as a part of the Catholic faith by the Council of the Vatican, will see that his ideas are not changed but enlarged, and enlarged not by an addition of extrinsic matter, but by the growth and development within his own mind of the faith which he already possessed in its integrity.

Let us begin by defining and clearly comprehending the term infallibility. It is a negative term in its literal meaning. Fallible means liable to err. Infallible means not liable to err; and infallibility is the exemption from liability to error. When we say that the church is infallible, we say, in strictness of meaning, that the church is not liable to err. Her infallibility is some kind of immunity from error, which is one of her essential notes. This immunity from error evidently implies some sort of unerring possession of truth, and therefore denotes a positive quality or prerogative, as is frequently the case with terms of a negative form. What it denotes in Catholic theology we will explain more fully as we proceed. The positive idea, in which the general notion of infallibility has its foundation, is one of the first principles not only of Catholic theology, but of all theology and philosophy. The unerring and certain possession of some eternal and universal truths is, and must be, affirmed by all who profess that man has or can have the knowledge of God and of the relation of his own soul to him, whether by reason or revelation; that is, by all except sceptics. With sceptics we wish to have nothing to do, for they are not entitled to be treated as rational beings. Every rational man will admit that there is such a thing as wisdom, and that the wise man possesses it, and therefore knows something in the order of rational truth. St. Augustine has proved this in a most subtle and conclusive manner[579] in his short treatise, Against the Academicians, the earliest of his published works, written while he was preparing for baptism. The wise man, he proves, cannot have the notion of probability or verisimilitude, unless he has the idea of truth. He knows, at least, that there is such a thing as truth, otherwise he could not affirm in a reasonable manner that anything is probably in conformity with truth, that is, appears to be true, or resembles truth, which is the meaning of verisimilitude. Moreover, every man is forced to admit the certain truth of a number of disjunctive propositions. "I am certain that the world is either one or not, and if not one, either a finite or an infinite number. Also, that this world has its order, from a merely physical law of nature, or some higher power; that it either is without beginning or end, or else has a beginning and no end, or had no beginning but will have an end, and numberless other things of the same kind."[144] In the same manner, we may say: Either the visible world is an illusion or real; either God exists or he does not exist; Christianity is either true or false; either Catholicity is genuine or counterfeit Christianity; either the existence of God, the truth of the Catholic religion, the infallibility of the Catholic Church, can be proved with certitude, or they cannot be proved. These disjunctive propositions can be multiplied indefinitely, and they are only different examples of that principle of logic called the principle of contradiction, which it is impossible for any one seriously and intelligently to deny or even to doubt. Reason, therefore, forces us to affirm that we know something with unerring certainty, that is, that the human intellect is at least to this limited extent exempt from liability to deception or error, and, so far, infallible. The only possible dispute in philosophy or theology relates to the subject and extent of infallibility. What truths are known or knowable with infallible certitude, and where is the infallibility seated which gives this certitude?

Every man who affirms that God obliges the human conscience to give a firm and undoubting assent to certain truths, and to obey certain moral rules, must admit that he also gives the means of knowing with unerring certainty these truths and moral rules. Even the probabilist cannot escape this. For he who would act safely on a probable conscience must have a reflex certainty that he does not sin in doing so. If we are bound to assent to truth, and to obey law, of which we have only probable evidence, and this obligation is certain, we must know with certainty that we are subjectively acting in a right manner in giving our assent and obedience. A philosopher who affirms that we have certain knowledge of this truth and this law is, of course, a more strict infallibilist than the other. Yet the principle is in common. When a man affirms that God has made a positive revelation, and that in his revelation he has disclosed truths and promulgated laws which he binds the conscience of every one to whom they are proposed to believe and obey, he extends the principle of infallibility much further. If I am to believe these truths, especially such as are above reason, with a firm, undoubting assent, and to be held bound to keep these laws, especially such as are hard to keep, the revelation must be made to my mind in such a manner as to give me certainty, without any fear of error. Whoever admits this must assent also to the following disjunctive proposition:[580] Either the revelation of God is made known to the individual mind through the medium of the Catholic Church, or in some other way. We are not concerned at present to prove the proposition that the revelation is made known through the church as a medium. Our argument is immediately directed to those who admit and believe it already. Therefore, leaving aside all discussion with those who are not Christians or not Catholics, we merely affirm, as a consequence from what has been proved, that the principle of infallibility, so far as Christian faith is concerned, is seated in the church as the medium of divine revelation. With us Catholics it is unquestioned that the church is that visible society whose supreme head is the Pope. Our only object of investigation is the nature, extent, and more precise seat of that infallibility which the church possesses as the depository of divine revelation, and the medium of communicating it to individual minds.

The church is infallible. To make more plain the meaning of this proposition, let us go back once more to the etymology of the term infallible. The Latin word from which it is derived is fallo, signifying deceive. Infallible signifies incapable of being deceived or deceiving. The church, as infallible, cannot be deceived or deceive, respecting that body of truth which has been deposited in her by the apostles, and which they received from Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. The positive and fundamental truth from which this negative statement of the inerrancy of the church is derived, and which it protects, is, that the church, as a visible, organized society, is the immediate recipient of a certain divine revelation, and the medium of its transmission and communication. This divine revelation must be accepted and believed with a firm assent, excluding all doubt, by each individual. It is a revelation of dogmas and doctrines, some of which are mysteries above reason, and of laws which are strictly obligatory. Each individual must receive the faith and law from the church, of which he is a member by baptism, with unquestioning submission and obedience of the intellect and will. But this entire, unreserved faith and obedience could not be justly exacted, unless the church were divinely enabled to impart pure, unmixed truth, and to prescribe pure, unmixed holiness to her members, and divinely secured from imparting or prescribing error or sin. Authority and obligation are correlative in nature and extent. As is the obligation, so is the authority. If the obligation is universal and without reserve, the authority is sovereign and supreme. If the obligation requires an absolute, undoubting assent of the mind, and a divine faith, the authority must be infallible. Whoever is bound to unconditional assent must be secured in immunity from error in believing. Whoever is authorized to command assent must be secured in immunity from error in teaching. Supreme and sovereign authority in teaching, and absolute obedience in receiving what is taught, require and exact, as a necessary condition, inerrancy in that society which is constituted on the principle of this authority and its correlative obedience. The fundamental idea of the Catholic Church, therefore, contains in it that passive and active infallibility which belongs to the hierarchy and the faithful as composing one body under their head, the Roman Pontiff. Wherever divine and Catholic faith, or certain knowledge derived from faith, and the obligation of unreserved, complete assent and obedience, are found, there is the passive infallibility[581] of the church. Wherever supreme teaching authority is found, commanding this obedience, declaring or defining this faith, or revealed doctrine, or certain truth derived from and depending on it, there is the church's active infallibility in exercise. The influence of those gifts of the Holy Ghost by which the church is rendered infallible pervades the whole body of the church, and manifests itself in the most multiform ways. The church is living and immortal. Her life is divine and supernatural, and its principle is faith. The faith is, therefore, the principle of an immortal life, and itself an immortal principle within the church. Like the principle of animal vitality, it is found in every part of the organization, but vitalizing each organ and member in a different way, according to its function. Brain, heart, lungs, and fingers are vitalized by the same principle, although each one fulfils a special office. So in the church, the supreme head, the hierarchy, the laity, are animated by the same divine principle of faith, and concur in the general functions of the great organic unit, but each in his own place and in a special office. The result of their combined and complex action is the perpetuation of the divine revelation in all times and places until the end of the world. We have to consider, therefore, a great many other constituent parts, organs, and members of the body of the church, as well as the head, in order to understand the relation which the head bears to them and they to it, and the manner in which its special function influences and is influenced by the other functions. We can do this only in a brief and imperfect manner in a short essay, but we will endeavor to touch upon some of the principal parts of this great and extensive subject in a manner sufficient for our purpose.

The revelation which proceeded from the Incarnate Word of God was diffused, in a great variety of ways, by the apostles, and committed to a great number of various channels for transmission through the coming ages. They gave it to the faithful by their preaching, they embodied it in the hierarchy, in the sacraments, in the creed, in the liturgy, in fasts and festivals, in rites, ceremonies, and worship. They taught it to their companions and successors in the episcopate in the most complete and thorough manner. They committed it to writing, in great part, in their inspired scriptures, and gave their sanction to other books written under divine inspiration by those who were not apostles. To use a figure, there are many great rivers by which the inspired and divine doctrines of the apostles flow through all parts of the world, and through all the succeeding periods of time. The great sources of these rivers are, nevertheless, but two: Scripture and tradition. The Holy Scripture is infallible, as well the Old Testament, which is proposed anew to Christians by the church, as the New Testament, in which the clearer and more complete revelation is contained. Apostolic tradition is infallible, and therefore Catholic tradition, which is an unerring transmission of it, is also infallible. The written and oral teaching of the apostles has come down to us by the numerous great rivers and the smaller numberless rivulets of Catholic tradition, irrigating the fields and gardens of the church, and opening the way to intellectual communion between different countries and centuries. These streams can be traced back to their sources by the student. The single doctrines of faith and theology[582] can be traced one by one, and the whole body of doctrines, as a complete system, can be followed up, through the expositions, meditations, and commentaries of saints, doctors, and fathers of the church, to the Holy Scripture. In the same way, the student can go back to the original tradition. He is not restricted to one line of argument or evidence, for there are many converging lines, each one more or less certain and sufficient by itself, and all, taken together, irresistibly and overwhelmingly conclusive and convincing. One who is not able to make an investigation of this kind may, nevertheless, be competent to understand the general and equally conclusive argument from prescription. He may know enough of history to be aware that the principal doctrines of the faith were universally held in the tenth century, still further back in the fifth, and before that, indefinitely, without any record of a change, or any adequate cause for such general consent, except the teaching of the apostles.

Not only are the Scriptures and apostolic tradition infallible sources of doctrine which is unerringly transmitted, but the general sense and belief of the faithful is also infallible. The faithful have received from the beginning the teaching of the divine revelation by a supernatural sense, a divine gift of faith, so that the revelation has not remained merely extrinsically proposed to them, but also received and appropriated by them, in a living manner, through the inward operation of the Holy Spirit in their minds. This sense of the faithful is even one of the motives of the definitions made by popes and councils. It was consulted by Pius IX. when he was preparing to make his decree respecting the Immaculate Conception, and it was recognized at the Council of the Vatican as expressed in the numerous petitions for the definition of papal infallibility. The body of the faithful cannot lose the faith, or any part of it, or embrace any heresy as belonging to faith. Their unanimous consent in doctrine is an infallible evidence of the true faith in itself, and a note of the true religion. The body of the church is immortal in the life of faith, and indefeasible in its supernatural existence, and therefore infallible, as well as the head. It cannot separate from its head in doctrine. The universal recognition of the Pope by the church makes it infallibly certain that he is the true and legitimate Pope, and the universal acceptance of a council as œcumenical makes it infallibly certain that it is a true council, although it be certain also, on other infallible motives, that Pope and council are legitimate. The want of this universal recognition caused for many years the legitimacy of certain popes to be doubtful in a large part of Christendom, and of course made the authority of their decrees doubtful, and would have made the authority of any council convoked by them as a general council also doubtful. It was the unanimous agreement of the whole church in recognizing Martin V. as the true successor of St. Peter, which gave to all the faithful certainty that he was their lawful head. If a Catholic had no other evidence that the dogmatic decree of Pius IX. declaring the Immaculate Conception a doctrine of faith, and the decrees of the Vatican Council defining the infallibility of the Pope, are valid and binding, except the universal profession of the faithful that they believe these doctrines with a divine and Catholic faith, that alone would be sufficient to give him infallible certainty.

The infallibility of the church in this general sense, which is an attribute of the whole body or visible society, includes and exacts the infallibility of the teaching and ruling hierarchy in a special and particular sense, which is also capable of an independent proof of its own. The faithful are subject to the hierarchy and dependent on it for the sacraments, for regulation, and for instruction. All that life which is diffused throughout the body must exist in a more immediate and intense action in its highest organs. An infallible church cannot be subject to a fallible teaching authority. The apostles were infallible witnesses, teachers, and judges, in respect to the faith and everything connected with it, as the original founders of the church under the Lord Jesus Christ, by whom they were immediately commissioned. The church was made infallible by participation with them, as they were made infallible by participation with Christ, who was himself infallible as the Son of God. The authority of officially declaring the testimony of the church, of teaching authoritatively its doctrine, of judging in all controversies, and of punishing all delinquents, was left by the apostles to their successors the bishops; and the special authority of St. Peter, as the Vicar of Christ, was transmitted by him to his successors in the See of Rome. In their prophetical office, as the immediate organs of the revelation of the Holy Spirit, they left no successors, for when the faith and law of Christ were once fully revealed, the necessity of this office ceased. But their official infallibility was, of necessity, perpetuated in that episcopal order which inherited the hierarchical dignity and authority of the Apostolic College. The church is infallible in teaching and judging, as well as in keeping and professing the deposit of faith, and accepting what is taught by lawful authority. Every Catholic knows this to be a fundamental doctrine of the faith. But it is the Ecclesia Docens, the church or assembly of prelates, which is meant in this proposition. There is no infallibility in fathers, doctors, theologians, priests, or the faithful generally, which is separate from or independent of the authority of the episcopate. Even bishops who separate from the unity of their order by revolting against its supreme chief, lose all their authority. No matter how many bishops, priests, and laymen separate from this unity, their whole number is of no more account than if there were but one, since they are totally cut off from the church. Tertullian, Apollinaris, Cranmer, Luther, the whole mass of Oriental schismatics and other seceders, count for nothing. Those who revolt from the unity of the church lose the grace of faith, and have no longer any share in the church's infallibility. The consent of fathers, doctors, theologians, and of the faithful is infallible, because it represents Catholic tradition, which is itself a reflection or image of the authoritative teaching of the apostles and their successors. There is no contradiction or dissension possible in truth, but only in error. In how may ways soever the truth infallibly manifests itself, these various manifestations must always agree with each other. In order that the official teaching and judgments of the episcopate may always agree with Scripture, tradition, with each other, with the teaching of fathers, theologians, doctors, and the consent of the faithful, they must be infallible. All alike being infallible, they must agree. No individual, or number of individuals, therefore, can be qualified to cite[584] either Scripture or tradition against the authority of the church, any more than to cite the authority of one apostle against that of another apostle. To do this, is merely to oppose private judgment, individual opinion, to public, official, and authoritative judgment, which is destructive of the very principle of authority and organization. The supreme teacher and judge must decide in all doubtful and disputed cases, without appeal, what is the doctrine and law, what is the sense of Scripture, the witness of tradition, the doctrine of the fathers, the common belief of the faithful.

From this final and decisive authority, and the correlative obligation of obedience, we derive another and most cogent proof, that wherever sovereignty in the order of ideas or doctrinal supremacy resides in the church, it must be there that the active infallibility of the church is principally seated. A supreme and final judgment or decree must be an infallible judgment. It is irretractible, irreformable, irreversible. The church is committed to it, and bound by it for ever, and that by the law of God. It must be, therefore, the absolute truth, and whatever tribunal is qualified to pronounce it to be so, and to exact unlimited assent and obedience from all the faithful, must be infallible.

We must be careful, however, not to limit the authority to teach, and to require outward obedience or even inward assent, or the obligation of submission to authority, to the sphere of infallible declarations and judgments. In the natural order itself, we are frequently bound in conscience to assent to things which are only probable, and to act on the supposition that they are true. Probability is the only and the sufficient guide of life in most things. Self-evident and demonstrable truths, and indubitable facts, are comparatively few in number. Without a basis of certitude, there would be no such thing as real versimilitude or probability. But with that basis we can construct a great edifice of beliefs, opinions, and practical rules, which have more or less of the firmness and stability of their foundation. The probability of these beliefs is to a great extent extrinsic—that is, derived from authority which in reason and conscience we are bound to respect. It is reasonable, and it is a duty, to receive the instruction of parents, teachers, masters, with docility; to respect the authority of learned and wise men, of tribunals, and of the common sense of society. In the supernatural order it is the same. The authority of the Holy Scripture is not restricted to that portion of its teaching which the mind perceives with an absolute certitude. There is a moral obligation on every student of the Scripture to give its probable sense and meaning that inward assent which corresponds to the degree of probability which his mind and conscience apprehend, and which may approach indefinitely near to certainty. It is the same with tradition, and with other sources of Catholic doctrine, such as the teaching of standard authors in dogmatic and moral theology, the official instructions of confessors, preachers, and pastors of the church, including those of councils and of the Sovereign Pontiff. Under this head are to be classed the decrees of the Roman Congregations, excepting those cases in which the Pope gives them a higher sanction than the one ordinarily given. There is, therefore, a wide sphere in which an authority is exercised within the order of ideas which is legitimate, and to which deference and obedience are due, but which is not guaranteed to have a[585] complete and perpetual immunity from all error. We cannot say, therefore, that there cannot be any exercise of teaching authority in the church which is fallible, but only that the church cannot be left without any authority except that which is fallible. To a certain extent, Scripture and tradition may be ambiguous, doubtful, capable of being interpreted differently; but we cannot be left altogether in doubt or uncertainty about their meaning. Catholic schools may have their differences about dogmatic or moral theology, but they cannot be altogether divided and dissentient. The common belief of the faithful may shade off insensibly, so that it is difficult or impossible to draw a precise line between what is in itself pertaining to faith and that which is only opinion, but it cannot be in all things indistinct and vague. The confessor, the pastor, the bishop, the theologian, the father of the church, may teach something which is erroneous, but this liability to error cannot be universal. The tribunals of the church, even, may be obliged to decide upon partial and incomplete evidence and knowledge of the cause, and afterwards to annul their decisions, as in the case of the heliocentric theory. But these tribunals cannot be always and altogether without a higher and more certain rule to guide them. There must be a supreme and sovereign authority in the church which is infallible, and which can guide, direct, restrain, and correct all inferior and fallible exercise of authority. This sovereign authority is only exercised in the declaration and definition of doctrine in an irreversible and irreformable manner, and with an obligation annexed of that assent which excludes even a hypothetical doubt, or a right of ever withdrawing or modifying assent. It is this authority which we say must be infallible. And, moreover, it is impossible to conceive of the real existence of an authority of this kind which is not infallible. The belief of the infallibility of the church was therefore contained, from the first, demonstrably, in the belief of the supreme authority of the church. Moreover, it has always been distinctly believed and taught, as well as acted on, in all ages, and has been explicitly declared by the Council of the Vatican, and, so far as the Pope is concerned, defined in express terms.

This infallible and perpetual magistracy of the church is exercised in its ordinary way by the official teaching of the Catholic episcopate, whose supreme head is the Pope, and of the priests commissioned by them to teach. It began before the New Testament was written, and continued for nearly three hundred years before any œcumenical council was held. It is a great mistake to fancy that either the Scripture, or the decrees of councils, created the faith. It existed before them, and was apprehended with a vividness and distinctness perhaps surpassing anything which has been witnessed in later periods.

The solemn and special exercise of this magistracy is through the judgments and definitions of the Holy See, either with or without the concurrence of œcumenical councils. These solemn acts have had for their first object to express in definite terms what was always taught and believed as of the Catholic faith, and to condemn all opposite errors. Their second object has been to declare and define revealed truths contained in Scripture and tradition, but not proposed by the church as of Catholic faith before their solemn definition. Their third object has been to define truths not revealed, but so connected[586] with or related to revealed truths, that they are necessary to the protection of the faith and law of the church. Many of the judgments belonging to the last two classes, also, are negative in their form, that is, condemnations of heretical, erroneous, or otherwise censurable tenets and opinions. The necessity for making these definitions has been so constant and frequent during the history of the church, that the principal doctrines of the faith, and a vast body of doctrine pertaining to or connected with it, are distinctly and explicitly taught in the collection of the acts of the Holy See and the œcumenical councils. It would be, however, a most grievous error to suppose that everything contained in Scripture and tradition, much less the whole body of truth which is capable of infallible definition, has been exhausted, or could be expressed in a certain definite number of propositions, to which no addition could ever be made. The fountain is inexhaustible. And, no matter how long time may last, the church can still proceed to make new and more explicit elucidations and definitions of that complete and Catholic body of truth which she has held and taught either explicitly or implicitly from the beginning. The notion that the church is a merely mechanical medium, for transmitting a definite and precise number of propositions of faith, is wholly false. It is the notion of a certain number of Anglicans, but wholly foreign to the true and Catholic idea. It is not only heterodox, but rationally untenable and ridiculous. Equally so is the common Protestant notion of a division among revealed truths into two classes, the fundamental and non-fundamental, in the sense in which those terms are used by Protestant theologians. Undoubtedly, there are mysteries and doctrines which are fundamental in the sense that they are at the basis of Christianity, and more necessary to be universally known and explicitly believed than any others. And, consequently, there are other truths which belong to the superstructure, to the minor and less principal parts of the system, or to its finish and ornamentation. But, in the sense to which we have reference, they are all equal. That is, there is the same obligation of believing any one revealed truth as any other, because the authority of God is equally sovereign and majestic in each single instance. We are bound to believe, implicitly, everything contained in the written and unwritten word of God. Whatever the church proposes as a revealed truth we are bound to believe explicitly as a part of the Catholic faith, as soon as we know it. Whatever else we know certainly to be contained in the word of God, we are bound to believe by divine faith. In regard to all that portion of revealed truth which is not thus clearly made known to us, we are bound to submit our minds unreservedly to the decisions and judgments which the church may hereafter make, and in the meantime to adhere to that which seems to be the truth. A Catholic must not only believe what the church now proposes to his belief, but be ready to believe whatever she may hereafter propose. And he must, therefore, be ready to give up any or all of his probable opinions so soon as they are condemned and proscribed by a competent authority. Moreover, he must believe what the church teaches, not simply or chiefly because he has convinced himself by his own investigations that her doctrines are really contained in the word of God, but because the infallible authority of the church proposes[587] them as revealed doctrines. The latest decisions of the church have, therefore, the same authority as the earliest. The Council of the Vatican is equally sacred with the Council of Trent, and the Council of Trent with the First Council of Nicæa.

It is not necessary to prove to any tolerably instructed Catholic that this is the only doctrine which has been recognized as orthodox, or taught with the sanction of the hierarchy, within the Catholic communion. It is found in all our catechisms and books of instruction, and preached by all pastors. It is an amazing fact that some ostensible converts to the church in England, who have lately renounced their sworn allegiance to her authority, have declared that they never understood this doctrine. This only shows the depth of the ignorance of Catholic doctrine which prevails among many of the most intelligent and educated Protestants, especially those of the Anglican sect. Priests educated in the faith from their childhood, cannot easily apprehend such ignorance in persons who apparently hold Catholic doctrines and are attracted by Catholic ceremonies. They may, therefore, in some cases presuppose in their catechumens an understanding of the fundamental Catholic principle which they have not, and pass them in with a superficial instruction which leaves them as much Protestants as they were before. It is to be hoped that greater precaution will be used hereafter in this important matter. It is also true that a number of nominal Catholics, and, sad to say, some priests, a few of whom had stood in high repute, have recently manifested to the world how utterly they had in their secret hearts thrown off the allegiance due to the authority of the church. But these examples prove nothing. It is as clear as the sun that the doctrine we have laid down is the doctrine of the Catholic Church. It is the doctrine of Bossuet as well as that of Bellarmine, of Waterworth as well as of Wiseman. No other doctrine has ever been tolerated in the church, and if any have held or taught any other, at any time, who have not been personally condemned and excommunicated, they were still only pretended but not real members of the Catholic communion. A most signal manifestation of the universal faith of the church in this doctrine was made in the year 1854. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which St. Thomas and many other Dominican writers had opposed without censure, and which the Holy See had strictly forbidden all theologians to call a dogma of Catholic faith before the definition, was then proclaimed as a dogma of faith by Pius IX. with the applause of the whole body of bishops, clergy, and faithful. Another one has been made within the last year by a number of bishops, priests, and other Catholics, who have given up their opinions respecting the infallibility of the Pope, and have received that doctrine as a doctrine of faith, simply upon the authority of the Council of the Vatican.

This remark brings us to a part, and a very important part, of our subject, which we promised at the beginning of this article to treat of at its close, and thus give a complete view of the doctrine of infallibility.

The definition of the Council of the Vatican, by virtue of the foregoing principles, furnishes every one of the faithful with an infallible motive for believing the infallibility of the Pope as a dogma of faith, and imposes the obligation of faith on his conscience. The teaching of the universal episcopate, in accordance[588] with that definition, furnishes another equally infallible motive. And so does the universal belief of the faithful, who receive and submit to that infallible definition of the council. There is, moreover, such an abundance of proof from the Scripture, and the most conspicuous monuments of tradition, of the doctrine in question, that any person of ordinary education is capable of understanding enough of the evidence in the case to make a reasonable judgment, and might have done so, even before the case was decided. The fact that a small number of theologians held a different opinion was really of no weight at any time, considering the vastly preponderating weight of the judgment of all the saints, the great majority of theologians, and almost the entire body of the bishops. Whatever seeming probability the opinion of this small minority might have had in the minds of some having been totally destroyed by the judgment of the council, the reasons from Scripture and tradition gain now their full force and are seen in their true light. But the purpose we have had in view, and which we stated at the outset, is not the exhibition of these specific proofs, but the exposition of the relation of the new definition to the supremacy itself and the general doctrine of infallibility; as well as an answer to the question, how the infallibility of the Pope could have remained so long without an express definition.

In the first place, as to the supremacy. The Pope is, by divine right, supreme ruler, supreme teacher, and supreme judge over the universal church, and over all its priests and members, individually and collectively. As supreme ruler, he must be infallible; not indeed in all his particular acts, but in his principles and rules of government. Otherwise, he might subvert the constitution of the church, destroy morality, oppress and depose the orthodox prelates, promote heretics to the highest places, and do in the Catholic Church what the schismatical Eastern patriarchs have done, and what Cranmer did in England. By the very supposition, there would be no authority in the church to control him, and all the prelates and faithful would be bound to obey him. For, if there is any authority in the church superior to the Papal authority, the supremacy is in that authority, and not in the Pope. As supreme teacher, he can instruct all Christian bishops, as well as laity, in regard to the doctrine which they must believe, and bind their consciences to submit to his teaching. It follows from our entire foregoing argument that infallibility is necessary to the possession and exercise of such a power. As supreme judge in questions of faith and morals, his decision must be final and irreversible; for there is no judge above him except our Lord Jesus Christ himself. But the final judgments which the whole Catholic Church is bound to accept must be infallible. Sovereignty, or the possession of the plenitude of power, when it extends over the realm of mind and conscience, exacts infallibility. And this has been most lucidly and conclusively proved, during the recent controversies, by Archbishop Dechamps, Dom Guéranger, and various other able writers.

The infallibility of the Pope is implicitly contained in and logically concluded from the infallibility of the church in general, and of the teaching hierarchy in particular, in substantially the same way as it is in the supremacy. The church is essentially constituted by its fundamental principle, which is that of organic unity under one visible head, the[589] successor of St. Peter. The vital force of this organic unity is faith, and, as the body is infallible in faith, and also governed by the head, the head must be infallible in a higher and more immediate sense; otherwise, the body of the church would be liable either to become corrupt in faith by remaining united to a corrupted head, or to cease to be a body by separating from its head. If we take the church as represented by another similitude, it is founded, as a building, on the Rock of Peter; that is, the Roman Church and the succession of Roman pontiffs. The foundation must be stable and immovable in faith, if the structure resting upon it has this immovable stability. So, also, the episcopal hierarchy, whether dispersed or congregated in a general council, must remain in communion of faith and doctrine with the Roman Church and Pontiff. The Pope must sanction their decrees, otherwise they are null and void. Those bishops who separate from the faith of the Roman Pontiff, no matter how numerous they may be, fall out of the communion of the church and forfeit their authority to teach. Evidently, therefore, if the teaching hierarchy is infallible, the rule and authority which directs and governs it must be infallible. If a pilot is placed on the flag-ship of a fleet which has to pass through a dangerous strait, and orders are given to every ship to follow in his wake, it is evident that the success of the passage depends on the unerring skill of the pilot. A fallible head to an infallible hierarchy, a fallible guide to an infallible church, a fallible supreme teacher, a fallible Vicar of Christ! What a contradiction in terms! Who can believe that our Lord Jesus Christ ever constituted his church upon such inconsistent principles? The supremacy of the Pope and the infallibility of the church plainly cannot coexist with each other in fact, or be united into a coherent whole in logic, without the infallibility of the Pope as the term of union. Yet these two doctrines have always been the constitutive principles of the Catholic Church.

It is, however, still requisite to answer the question, how any doctrine different from that defined by the Council of the Vatican could have existed and been tolerated so long among Catholics, and how the church could have postponed her definition to this late period. When we say it is requisite, we mean, merely, requisite in order to complete the explanation we promised to make. We have no right to ask reasons of the church, any more than of Almighty God, as a preliminary to our submission. We are to take with unquestioning docility whatever instruction the church gives us. Yet, we are permitted to make investigation of the truths of our religion, in order to understand them better, to confirm our belief, and to be ready to answer objections. Therefore, we reply to the question stated above, first, in general terms, that the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff has always been held, taught, and acted on by the supreme authority itself, and practically acknowledged by all good Catholics; and that its explicit definition was delayed until the necessity and expediency of such a definition was made clearly manifest, and the fitting occasion furnished by the providence of God.

The argument will be made more clear if we substitute the term irreformable in the place of infallible. All irreformable decrees are confessedly infallible, and the question of law and fact is therefore precisely this: whether the Roman Pontiffs[590] have ever suffered their dogmatic decrees to be judicially revised by the bishops, or to remain suspended as to their complete obligatory force, until the express or tacit assent of the bishops had been manifested; and whether the church has ever recognized any such right in the bishops. So far as the Popes are concerned, it is enough to refer to the unquestionable fact that they have expressly prohibited appeals from the judgment of the Holy See to an œcumenical council, from the time of Celestine I. in the fifth century. Martin V. and Pius II. in the fifteenth century, Julius II. and Paul V. in the sixteenth century, renewed this prohibition. Clement XI., in the eighteenth century, condemned the Jansenists, who had appealed from the Bull Unigenitus to a general council, and pronounced sentence of excommunication upon all who promoted the appeal, unless they abandoned it and subscribed to the Unigenitus. This sentence was a general one, including all appeals from the Holy See to an œcumenical council. It was accepted by the whole church, a small party of Jansenists only remaining contumacious, and has been incorporated into the canon law. Moreover, the Holy See has always required the bishops to receive and promulgate without any judicial examination, and without delay, all its dogmatic judgments; and they have submitted to this demand obediently, even those who, like Bossuet, have held Gallican opinions. The most illustrious and irrefragable proof of the doctrine of the universal episcopate on this point which could be given, was really given at the Council of the Vatican. The monition at the end of the constitution on faith, which plainly declares the obligation of entire submission to the doctrinal decrees of the Holy See, was approved by the unanimous vote of all the fathers, including those belonging to what was called the minority. The Popes have always claimed and exercised the office of supreme judges in matters of faith, the episcopate and the whole church consenting and submitting, and all dissidents being compelled to keep silence or incur excommunication.

The definition of the Council of the Vatican has not, therefore, conferred any new rights on the Sovereign Pontiff or enlarged their exercise. It has only made an explicit statement that the rights always possessed and exercised by him are declared in the divine revelation to belong to him jure divino, with the guarantee of infallibility in their exercise, and proposed this statement to all the faithful with the obligation of receiving it as a part of the Catholic faith.

It is not very difficult to give satisfactory reasons why this was not done before. The church does not make definitions without a positive reason. Ordinarily, she waits until the truth is denied or disputed. Before the Council of Constance, or rather the period which immediately preceded that council, the plenary authority of the Pope had not been called in question except by open schismatics and heretics. We have the authority of Gerson, the principal author of Gallicanism, for the assertion that any one who had advanced his doctrine of the subjection of the Pope to the council before that time, would have been universally condemned as a heretic. The Council of Constance was a very irregular, abnormal, and imperfect council, until the election of Martin V. near its close. It was rather a congress or states-general of Christendom than a council. The residence of the popes at Avignon and the subsequent division of Catholic Christendom into[591] three obediences, had put the pontifical authority in abeyance and diminished the moral force of the Holy See. The right and duty of putting an end to this state of things, and bringing the whole church under the jurisdiction of one certain and lawful head, had devolved by default upon the bishops, aided by the influence and authority of the princes, and the counsel of the principal theologians and priests of the time. Harrassed and distracted by the difficulties and dangers which beset the church, a number of leading men whose spirit and intention were good, and who were devoted to the preservation of Catholic unity, had fallen into the grievous mistake of seeking a remedy for existing and threatening disorders in a limitation of the sovereign authority of the Vicar of Christ. Martin V. obviously did the only thing prudent or even possible for the moment, in leaving the irregular and uncanonical decrees which they had passed to die of their own intrinsic weakness. His successor, Eugenius IV., had too many open and contumacious rebels and schismatics to deal with, to permit him to alienate those who had fallen into minor errors, unawares, by a formal condemnation. At the Council of Florence, the reconciliation of the Greeks and other Orientals to the Holy See was the object of paramount importance. At the Fifth Council of Lateran and at the Council of Trent, the fathers were absorbed by questions of far greater immediate necessity than that of Gallicanism. Yet the Council of Lateran came very near defining the Papal infallibility, and the result of the Council of Trent was to strengthen the pontifical authority immensely, as may be seen by reading the history of its final confirmation and promulgation, and examining the bull of confirmation itself, which effectually sweeps away every vestige of the irregular legislation of Constance. Between the Council of Trent and the Council of the Vatican, no other œcumenical council intervened. The Gallican controversy, as all know, chiefly raged during the reign of Louis XIV. The Pope refrained from any formal condemnation of the Gallican tenets, although urged even by that monarch himself to terminate the controversy by a final judgment; and, although these opinions were held and advocated by a certain number of Catholic prelates and theologians from that time until the Council of the Vatican, they were never branded by any note of censure by the Holy See. It may seem surprising that such a patient and cautious method of dealing with errors which have at length been condemned as heretical should have been pursued; but any one who knows the whole history of the matter must admire the supernatural wisdom of this course of conduct. One motive, doubtless, for it, was respect for Bossuet. But another and more powerful reason was that the Holy See desired to gain a victory by the means of discussion and argument, before reverting to the exercise of authority.

And again, it is obvious at first sight that a far greater moral weight has been given to the final definition, by the fact that the Sovereign Pontiffs have left the solemn and decisive deliberation and judgment of a matter which relates to their own highest and most sublime prerogative, to the bishops of the church assembled in a general council. It may appear strange to some that the church could tolerate an error even for a time. But there is a great difference between those errors which subvert the foundation and rule of faith, and[592] those which only shake them a little. The errors of the Jansenists, Febronians, and other rebels against the authority of the Holy See, were of the first class, and were never tolerated. But the Gallicans of the school of Bossuet recognized and practised the duty of obedience to the Holy See. Their error lay rather in an illogical, indistinct, and imperfect conception of the supreme authority of the Roman Pontiff, than in a denial of any of its attributes. They admitted the right of the Pope to issue dogmatic judgments, and the obligation of bishops and the faithful to receive them with interior assent and obedience. They acknowledged that these judgments became judgments of the Catholic Church, and were made irreformable as soon as the assent of a majority of the bishops was even tacitly given. As this assent has always been given, not tacitly alone, but by the most formal and express adhesion, there has never been any practical divergence in doctrine between orthodox Gallicans and the more consistent Ultramontanes. St. Augustine himself had said that it is sometimes the wisest course to tolerate for a time the errors of those who hold the faith firmly, and err only by an imperfect knowledge and a confused conception of the truth. The church has not hesitated or faltered in regard to her own principles, or failed to act on them with full and distinct consciousness. But it is not always necessary for her to propose them fully and completely as articles of divine and Catholic faith to her children. It is for the church, guided, illuminated, governed, and assisted by the Holy Spirit, to judge of the time and manner in which she will unfold and display in all their brilliant majesty the treasures of her doctrine. She has waited until the nineteenth century to encircle the brow of the Queen of Heaven with the coronet of her definition of the Immaculate Conception, and to place in the tiara of the Vicar of Christ a new jewel by defining his infallibility. From both these splendid acts, in which her divine authority, her irresistible power, her infallible wisdom, and her miraculous unity are manifested with the most radiant lustre, incalculable blessings will flow in abundance upon her faithful children. Christ is honored in his Mother and in his Vicar. The serpent's head is crushed anew. Faith triumphs in her new conquests. The kingdom of God is strengthened and consolidated, and the kingdom of Satan is shaken to its foundations. Like the cathedral of Cologne, the superb edifice of theology approaches to its completion, the new marble rises side by side with that which is dimmed by the dust of ages, and new pinnacles are placed upon ancient foundations. This temple is one whose builder and maker is not man but God, whose designs are formed in eternity, but realized gradually and successively in time. From the foundation to the top-stone, the massive solidity, the symmetry and unity of plan, the harmony of proportions, the perfection of beauty, which become more clearly evident with every century, disclose the idea in the infinite mind of the Supreme Architect. The Catholic Church has been designed and constructed by the same being who designed and constructed the universe. As the solar system is unerring and unfailing in its movements, prescribed to it by the immutable law of its Creator, so is the church unerring and unfailing by the law of its divine Founder. And as the sun can never cease to be the unfailing source of light and heat, and the immovable centre of revolution, while the solar[593] system endures, so the See of Peter must remain the centre and the source of truth, doctrine, law, unity, and perpetual movement to the Catholic Church, so long as time endures. It is this unerring stability of the Catholic Church in the law prescribed by its founder, Jesus Christ, which is properly termed infallibility; and, since this stability is communicated to all the distant and dependent churches under her obedience by the Roman Church, it is in the Roman Church that infallibility has its immovable seat and centre.

It is plain from the foregoing argument how false and flimsy is the pretence of Dr. Döllinger, M. Loyson, and the other rebels against the Council of the Vatican, that they have been excommunicated for adhering to the old Catholic faith which they have always held. All heretics have said the same thing, except those who have openly averred that they reject the authority of the Catholic Church. This is what the Arians said, and Arius knew how to play the injured, persecuted saint and prophet of God, even better than M. Loyson. The creed of Nice is a new creed, said the Arians and Semi-Arians. So said the rebels against the Councils of Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon. The little Jansenist sect in Holland calls itself the Old Catholic Church, and its members take the name of Old Catholics. The allegation is palpably and ridiculously false. The Gallican opinions were never a part of the Catholic doctrine. The highest claim that could ever be made for them by their advocates was, that they were probable opinions not condemned by the supreme authority. The best theologians have condemned them as erroneous and proximate to heresy. The Holy See has never shown them the slightest favor, but, on the contrary, has used all means, except that of express condemnation, to drive them out of seminaries, to destroy their credit, and to inculcate the true and sound doctrine. They were tolerated errors. While they were tolerated, it was possible for good Catholics, and even learned men, to hold them in good faith; since good and learned men, and even prelates, are fallible interpreters of both Scripture and tradition, and may err in reasoning and judgment. But their temporary toleration gave them no rights, not even those which belong to received opinions of Catholic schools of theology. There were good reasons for a purely passive toleration for a time. But none for the indefinite continuance of such toleration. The silence of an œcumenical council, viewing all the events which had occurred during the past two centuries, would have given the advocates of Gallicanism a plausible pretext to claim for it a positive toleration, a recognition of its real and solid probability. Moreover, it was reviving under a new and more dangerous form; numbers of good and loyal Catholics were beginning to go astray after a so-called Catholic liberalism, and a clique of secret traitors was plotting a revolt against the Holy See, disguised under the ambiguities and reservations of Gallicanism. Error, though it may lie dormant and not show its dangerous character for a time, sooner or later works out the conclusions contained in its premises. Gallicanism was an illogical doctrine, containing implicitly the denial of the papal supremacy. It was necessary, therefore, to condemn it, and to define the truth. Those who gave up their opinions in obedience to the decree of the Vatican acted like Catholics, and like reasonable and consistent men. As Catholics, they were[594] bound to obey a divine authority. As reasonable men, they were bound to abandon an opinion which they had embraced on merely probable grounds, as soon as the certain truth was made known to them.

Moreover, the malcontents were taught from their childhood, and some of them have themselves taught, as authors and professors, the infallibility of œcumenical councils as a doctrine of the Catholic faith. They have renounced, abjured, and trampled on that faith, by rebelling against the Council of the Vatican, and bidding defiance to the authority of their bishops and of the Pope. They are justly excommunicated. The anathema of the church has smitten them, and they are doomed to wither and die, and go into oblivion. As for the Catholic Church and her docile children, they have made a great act of faith which has had a most salutary effect already, in strengthening the habit of divine faith, and in illuminating the intellect with the knowledge of the truth. Its salutary effects in the future will be still greater. There was never a time when the continuous and immediate exercise of the supreme teaching authority of the Vicar of Christ was so necessary and so easy as the present critical, momentous period. Never a time when it was so necessary for all the faithful to place an absolute and boundless confidence in the chair of Peter. God has made known to all men, as a truth of his divine revelation, the infallibility of that chair, and of his august Vicar who sits in it. This truth is equally certain with the greatest mysteries of the faith, the Trinity and the Incarnation. This chair of Peter can neither be deceived nor deceive us, for its doctrine rests on the veracity of the Holy Spirit, the author of truth, and in believing and obeying it we believe and obey Almighty God.

THE TRUE HARP.

A PILGRIMAGE TO CAYLA.[145]

My dear Friend: In pressing my hand for the last time, when I left Quebec two months ago, you said, "Do not fail to visit Cayla." I made you the promise, and to-day I accomplish it. It is from the chamber itself of Eugénie de Guérin that I write.

You who have such an avowed admiration for the sister of Maurice, with what rapture you will enjoy the minute details which I have to communicate! How many times have we asked, after having read the admirable Journal of Eugénie, after having lived with her the life at Cayla, what had become of that domestic life which she described with such exquisite art, and which she caused us to love so much? Who are now the actual inmates of that antique château? If "Mimi," sweet "Mimi," is still living? etc. To all these questions I can to-day reply. On my return to Poitiers from a short visit to the little city of Airvault, the cradle of my ancestors, I turned my steps toward Toulouse, where I arrived this morning. The entire city was in a state of festivity, the streets were all decorated, and filled with pilgrims, flags waved in every direction, and the façades of the houses were hung with wreaths of flowers. They were celebrating the last day of the grand fêtes in honor of St. Germaine Cousin.

The railroad which runs from Toulouse to Alby stops at Gaillac, and there branches off to the station of Tessounières. Leaving Alby to the right, I came down to Cahuzac about two o'clock. The terminus is about half a league from the village. I was obliged to make this little trip on foot, in company with the mail-carrier, who also took charge of my valise.

The landscape is hilly and abrupt, and has a savage aspect. The road winds through the valley, rises and descends between the wooded mountains, whence peep out here and there some white rocks which indicate a sterile soil.

At a turn in the road, I perceived on an acclivity Cahuzac, whose name vibrates so pleasantly on the ears of Eugénie. From there a carriage conducted me in a few moments to Andillac, a village more than modest, which appeared on my left, with its poor little church, where repose the tombs of Maurice and Eugénie, where she came so often to pray, to weep, to hope, to implore with many tears the salvation of her brother.

Here the road turns off and climbs a hillside. The guide pointed with his finger across the trees on the other side of the ravine to the Château of Cayla, which rises isolated on a graceful eminence. 'Tis a spacious mansion of severe aspect. Nothing distinguishes it from ordinary structures, except a little tower built on one of its angles, which gives it a slightly feudal tinge. Notwithstanding the unobtrusiveness of this manor when seen in its landscape-framing, the effect is laughing and picturesque, thanks to the prestige of poetry, that fairy enchantress who has touched every object in this domain[596] with her golden ring. Here, though the fairy is an angel, it is Eugénie.

The carriage crossed the ravine, and followed the banks of the St. Usson, a little stream which turns the parish mill. It then began the steep ascent to Cayla, and finally stopped before the farm, in the midst of a crowd of chickens, who were cackling and disporting themselves, in the sun, on a litter of straw. A servant came up at that moment from the rabbit-warren on the north side, and politely invited me into the salon, a pretty enough room, opening on the terrace. Some furniture in modern style, white curtains, some wax fruit and flowers, a few paintings on the walls, a little picture of Cayla and its surroundings, on the table a handsome edition of the works of Eugénie and Maurice; this last the most beautiful ornament of this home.

The door opened, and a young lady with a distinguished air and dreamy expression entered. It was Caroline de Guérin, Eugénie's niece, that dear little "Caro" whom she used to rock on her knees, now married to M. Melchior Mâzuc, of a noble and wealthy family of Montpellier. She was soon followed by another person, much older but still sprightly, dressed very humbly, with an expression of extreme sweetness in her countenance, and a modesty yet more lovely, with marked features, lit up by her bright eyes, and a smile uniting extreme delicacy and benevolence.

I introduced myself as coming from America, from Canada, attracted to this remote corner of France by the fame of Eugénie.

"Has the reputation of our Eugénie reached that far?" exclaimed Marie de Guérin, for it was she.

From this moment the conversation did not languish, fed, as it was, by the thousand nothings around which the halo of poetry has been thrown by the author of the Journal.

Just as I rose to take my leave, M. Mâzuc entered, followed by Madame de Guérin, the widow of Erembert. They had summoned M. Mâzuc from the fields, where he had been superintending his vinedressers. He is a man in the strength of age, an old officer in the army of Algiers, with a manly face, energetic look, amiable and impulsive character.

"What!" exclaimed he. "You come all the way from America and as far as our mountains to visit us, and already talk of leaving? No, no; you must not think of such a thing. You have not seen anything yet; you must stay and visit the neighborhood, and we will give you Eugénie's room, and you will find it just as it was at the time of the Journal. Then, here is my brother Nérestan, who has just returned from Africa, where he filled the office of officer of colonization; he will entertain you about Algiers, and you can talk to him of Canada."

"Oh! very well," said M. Nérestan, shaking me cordially by the hand; "and I will begin at once by telling you that the best system of colonization that I know of, I found in a book printed in Canada which accidentally fell into my hands."

They all then urged me with so much politeness to stay that, conquered by their kind persuasions, I yielded to the pleasure of remaining.

While awaiting tea, Marie equipped herself without any ceremony in an old straw hat with a broad brim, and invited me to take a walk and visit the environs. We were already old acquaintances. We went out by the door that opens on the terrace, which rests on the crest of the ravine. Along the wall grew several[597] pomegranate-trees, and some jasmine in bloom, from which Maurice gathered a bouquet the day before his death. He walked down here, leaning on the arm of Eugénie, to warm in the bright sun his limbs already struck with the chill of death, to bathe his panting breast in the pure warm morning air, and to contemplate for the last time the beautiful sky of Cayla.

Some stone steps lead to the bottom of the ravine, where the little stream runs along, shaded by willows, whose rippling has so often caused that amiable recluse to dream and sing in her little chamber. Here is the fountain of Téoulé, that is to say, of the Tile, so-called from the huge tile which serves as a reservoir for the water from the rock. We crossed the Pontet which leads to the laundry, where, like the beautiful Nausicaa of old, Eugénie came sometimes to wash her robes; and which inspired these pretty reflections:

"A day passed in drying one's linen leaves but little to say. It is, however, pretty enough to spread out a nice white wash on the grass, or to see it waving from the lines. You can be, if you wish, either the Nausicaa of Homer, or one of the princesses of the Bible who washed the tunics of their brothers. We have a laundry that you have not seen, at the Moulinasse, large enough and full of water, which embellishes this recess, and attracts the birds, who love the coolness to sing in. I write you with clean hands, having just returned from washing a dress in the stream. 'Tis delightful to wash, and see the fish pass, the little waves, bits of grass, and fallen flowers, to follow this, that, and I know not what in the thread of the stream! So many things are seen by the laundress who knows how to look in the course of the stream! 'Tis the bathing-place of the birds, the mirror of heaven, the image of life, a hidden path, a baptismal reservoir."

A few steps in the meadow, a superb chestnut-tree, three or four centuries old, spreads its vast shade; old sentinel of the château, which has seen born and die the generations of De Guérins. The ridge of Sept-Fonds winds through the trees as far as the top of the hill; on the neighboring declivity is the little coppice of Buis, with its pretty little pathway, full of shade and mystery, and where Eugénie had her little dog buried.

"July 1st.—He is dead, my poor little dog. I am so sad, I have but little inclination to write.

"July 2d.—I have just put Bijou in the warren of the coppice, among the flowers and birds. I am going to plant a rose-bush there, and call it the dog-rose. I have kept his two little front paws, which so often rested on my hands, on my feet, on my knees. He was so nice, so graceful when he lay down, and in his caresses! In the morning he used to come to the foot of my bed, to lick my feet as I was getting up; then went to give papa the same greeting. We were his two favorites. All this comes back to me now. Past objects go to the heart. Papa regrets him as much as I do; he said he would have given ten sheep for this poor little dog. Alas! everything must leave us, or we must leave everything.

"A letter just received has caused me another pang. The affections of the heart differ like their objects. What a difference the grief for Bijou, and that for a soul being lost, or at least in danger of it! O my God! how frightful that is in the eyes of faith!"

Passing before the farm, we cast a glance at the other side of the valley. Facing us, this mass of green is[598] the Bois du Pigimbert, with the hamlet of Pausadon, where Vialarette lived, that poor woman whom Marie and her sister used to visit. More to the left, on the heights, is the village of Mérix, and below, toward the north, Leutin, where Eugénie went so frequently to hear Mass.

The road from the warren of the north skirts the base of the hill, which extends itself in the rear of the old castle. Here, as elsewhere, all is full of souvenirs.

Here Maurice played with his sisters among the branches of the Treilhon, that old vine-stalk which twines itself round the trunk of an oak-tree. "Mimi" smiled at the recollection of the slides they used to take down the side of the ravine. She pointed out a little underwood of maples; they were small trees about the thickness of one's arm, and which have nothing in common with the king of our forests.

A sudden storm coming up obliged us to seek shelter in the mansion. A few moments before, the sky was serene and blue; now all was obscured by clouds, the rain came down in torrents, and it began to thunder and lighten. This southern sky always reminds me of a great child, changing from smiles to tears with a wonderful facility.

At half-past seven, supper was announced, at which was served the excellent wine of Cayla. At the side of its father, was little Mâzuc de Guérin, a child of eighteen months. Oh! that Eugénie could have caressed this child of "Caro's."

The evening passed delightfully; anecdotes were told, reminiscences of Cayla, of America, of Algeria, and episodes related by M. Mâzuc of the wars in Africa, in the mountains of Kabylia. "Mimi" then brought us back to our present surroundings by relating some interesting details of the widow of Maurice. She returned from India after the death of her husband, and died at Bordeaux in 1861.

And the good M. Bories is still living, but struck with a cruel malady, and is but a mere wreck.

At bedtime I was conducted to my room. A spiral staircase ascends to the principal story, and leads into the great hall. This is the stately and solemn apartment of the manor. In it a vast fireplace, whose mantel is sustained by caryatides in stone; on either side are the figures of two cavaliers in their armor, rudely sketched. In former days these walls were covered with the armor of the seignors of this house; this inlaid floor, to-day so silent, resounded to the footsteps of armed knights, carrying on the points of their lances standards and pennons on which the ladies of the castle had embroidered the proud device of the sires of De Guérin. Omni exceptione majores. It was in this saloon, now so deserted, that they armed themselves to fight against the Moors and the ferocious Albigenses, or where they donned their richest armor, their brilliant helmets of finest steel, and their gilded breast-plates, to cross their lances in the tournament. At the time of Eugénie, all this antique splendor had long since passed away. Here as elsewhere, the Revolution had reaped its harvest of destruction, and the rich Seignors de Guérin "were now," said she, "only poor squires, striving to keep the wolf from the door."

On the right side of the hall is a door opening into the chamber of "Mimi;" on the left, one opening into that of Maurice. At the extreme end, away back, retired like a cell,[599] hidden like the nest of a bird, is the little room of Eugénie. It is in this room, and on her table, that I am now writing to you, surrounded by the same silence, and lit by the same modest light of her lamp. Before me is her little chapel in miniature, her crucifix, her étagère of books. Nothing besides this, neither ornaments nor luxury; nothing except the most commonplace. But these valueless nothings have become relics; this little room a chapel, this table an altar. 'Twas from this white and peaceful cage that the dove of Cayla flew away to the land of dreams, gathered the celestial flowers of poetry, conversed with the angels, and sang with her heart. It is here that she prayed, read, wrote her Journal, and those admirable letters to Louise de Bayne, Madame de Maistre, and Maurice; 'tis here that she wrote her heart's history, that she lived, that she died; from here that she went to rejoin Maurice.

I turned over the leaves of the Journal, and gave myself up to its fascinations, where the least object, an insect that flies, a bird that sings, a ray of light penetrating the blinds, inspired her with those charming thoughts, those poetical pages, like a harmony of Lamartine, fine and profound as a passage of La Rochefoucauld. Her thoughts take at times the most unexpected flights, sublime transports, like an elevation of Bossuet's.

Never perhaps has there been a more delicate organization, a more susceptible imagination. Her soul was like an Æolian harp which vibrates to the slightest breath.

Mlle. de Guérin wrote with a golden pen. I would compare her to Madame Sévigné, if Madame Sévigné was less frivolous. The latter amuses and dazzles, the former captivates and touches; the one is as bright as a lark, the other dreamy as a dove. The first has more genius, the second more soul. There is more sentimentality in Madame de Sévigné, in Eugénie de Guérin more sentiment. The writings of one skim over the surface of the soul, those of the other penetrate it. We can admire Madame de Sévigné, we love Eugénie de Guérin.

Before me, hanging to the framework of her library, is a picture of St. Thérèse de Gérard, a present to her from the Baroness de Rivières. I re-read the passage suggested by this little engraving, those aspirations toward contemplative life, which reveal such tender piety, such deep and true devotion. This pure heart turned naturally toward heaven, like the mariner's needle, which always points to the north. "She was of those souls," said Mgr. Mermillod, "who in the midst of our material cares hear the Sursum Corda of the Holy Church, and who delight in these noble and holy aspirations." "We can make a church everywhere," says she in some of her writings.

I open the window, and, like her, I contemplate the beautiful night—the country half-buried in shadows, the myriads of stars, which, like golden nails, sustain the blue tapestry of heaven. All is silence, meditation, mystery; a single murmur, that of the stream.

It sings for me, as it formerly did for Eugénie. In looking back into the past, I ask myself if I have ever spent a sweeter hour or experienced more vivid emotions.

... At five o'clock in the morning, I heard a knock at my door. I was already up. The previous evening[600] I had made an arrangement with Mlle. de Guérin to go to Andillac, where I wished to say Mass, and visit the graves of Maurice and Eugénie.

The cheerful aspect of nature seemed to echo the brightness of my thoughts. The heights of Mérix were bathed in the rosy hues of morning; in the sky appeared the first golden threads of the sun; in the plain the slight fragrance of the dew, perfumed breezes, and the warbling of the birds.

We saluted in passing the little cross where the brother and sister took such a tender adieu of each other, where Eugénie preserved so long the impression that the horse's foot made in the plastic soil. One Christmas Eve, going to midnight Mass, she gathered, in her simple piety, some branches covered with hoar-frost from the bushes which grow along this road, which she wished to place before the Blessed Sacrament—a scene which she described with so much freshness and charming grace:

"We all went to midnight Mass, papa in advance—the night was superb. Never had there been a more beautiful midnight, so much so that papa put his head out from his mantle several times to look at the firmament. The ground was covered with hoar-frost, but we did not feel the cold, and then the air was warmed in front of us by the torches which our servants carried to light the way. It was charming, I assure you, and I only wish you could have been with us, going to church along these roads bordered with little bushes, as white as if they were all in bloom. The hoar-frost makes beautiful flowers. We saw a branch so lovely that we wished to make a bouquet for the Blessed Sacrament, but it melted in our hand. All flowers are short-lived. I regretted my bouquet: it was sad to see it melt, and dissolve drop by drop."

Going along, Mlle. de Guérin told me of the last sickness and death of her sister. Two years before, her health became seriously affected; it was in vain that the physician sent her to the waters of Cauterets, to seek the strength which would never more return.

She felt her end approaching; but she did not tremble; in her complete resignation, there was no place for fear. As she watched the span of life gradually diminish, she seemed to fold within herself, like the sensitive plant; wrapped around her the mantle of holy recollection, in which great souls envelope themselves at the approach of that supreme contemplation which she foresaw. She talked but little, prayed much, and smiled rarely. Her little room had become the cell of a religious; she lived there cloistered, only leaving it to go to church. Prayer was her recreation, the Holy Eucharist her food.

"I wish to die after having received the holy communion," said she a short time before her death. They noticed that she looked often toward Andillac, where she was going so soon to dwell. The swallow is compelled to fly away on the eve of winter; the winter of death was approaching.

She took cold going to Mass on the Epiphany, and returned home with a fever, which increased rapidly. Inflammation of the lungs supervened, which hurried her to the portal of death in a few days. After having received the holy Viaticum, "I can die now," sighed she with a celestial smile. "Adieu, my dear Marie!" And as she felt the tears tremble in her eyes, at seeing her so overcome with grief, she embraced her, and said, while turning her head[601] away to conceal her emotion, "Ah! do not let us be sad!" as if she was afraid of weakening the generosity of her sacrifice.

Such was the appointed end of Mlle. Eugénie de Guérin. She died like a saint, "as the angels would die, if they were not immortals," said one of her friends.

"Mosou Ritou"—M. le Curé—"is he in the rectory?" asked Mlle. de Guérin in patois of the old servant, as she entered with the familiarity of an habituée.

M. l'Abbé Massol welcomed us cordially, and conversed with me about a project which he had had in view for some time of rebuilding the church of Andillac with the offerings of the admirers of Eugénie de Guérin. The encouraging sympathy which he had received led him to hope that he would very soon be able to accomplish his purpose, which will be the honor of the tomb of this pious young girl, and her aureola by choice: this was indeed the only glory that she desired.[146]

The actual church of Andillac is really nothing more than a ruin. Its tottering belfry, roof falling in from age, cracked and crumbling walls, present the picture of desolation. It is necessary to descend several steps in order to enter this other Bethlehem, whose sombre, decayed, and humid aspect sends a chill to the heart. Nothing less than the most ardent faith, or Eugénie's happy imagination, could enable a person to breathe in what seems more like a charnel-house than a church, or cause a ray of brightness and poetry to enter there.

I whispered to Mlle. Guérin that I was going to say Mass for the illustrious dead of her family; and I had the happiness of giving the holy communion to the sister of Eugénie. A quarter of an hour passed in thanksgiving on the prie-dieu where she used to kneel left an impression never to be forgotten; angel, she conversed here with the angels, with the Spouse of virgins; she unfolded here to the wind of eternity those wings of light which detached her every day more and more from the earth, and which have finally transported her to the bosom of our Lord.

On leaving the church, Mlle. de Guérin silently opened the gate of the cemetery. I was face to face with the beloved graves. The morning sunlight flooded this garden of the dead, as if to remind me of that other invisible light which illumines the other shore of life that never fades. A shaft of white marble, the only monument in the cemetery, marks the grave of Maurice. We read distinctly the mournful date, July 19, 1839. At the side to the right is a simple wooden cross, one of its arms supporting a crown of immortelles, with this inscription enclosed in a medallion: Eugénie de Guérin, May 31, 1848. In the rear were two iron crosses, one of them marking the grave of M. Joseph de Guérin, Eugénie's father, and the other that of Erembert. They died a year apart, 1850 and 1851.

I remained a long time on my knees beside the grave of Eugénie, in the same place where, overwhelmed by a nameless grief, she wept torrents of tears, where she probed that terrible mystery of death, fathomless[602] as her sorrow; and whence she rose at last, crushed for ever, but resigned, with this sublime cry of a Christian, "Let us throw our hearts into eternity!" She sleeps now by the side of that dear Maurice for whom she often wept, until the day when they will rise together never more to be separated.

Before leaving, Mlle. de Guérin gathered a bouquet of roses and immortelles from her sister's grave, placed it in my hands, and went out, without uttering a word.

Adieu, sweet and blessed Eugénie! The glory which you did not seek has sought you, but the aureola which shines over your mausoleum need not alarm your modesty or your humility. It is pure as your soul, sweet as your nature, religious as your thoughts, benevolent as your life. Already it has illumined more than one soul, and strengthened more than one heart. It will do more: it will rebuild this temple, whence will arise in your honor the hymn of gratitude. Pertransiit benefaciendo!

On my return to Cayla, I thanked my kind hosts for their gracious hospitality, commended myself to the prayers of Marie, the holy, and resumed the route to Toulouse.

I have brought you several souvenirs from Cayla, some drawings, one of Eugénie's autographs, a few flowers, and a bunch of immortelles, which will be relics for you.

Since my return to Canada, several pleasant little parcels have been sent me from Cayla, among them three different views of the château, a map of the parish of Andillac, a photograph of the church, and of the cemetery in which are the graves of Maurice and Eugénie, the likenesses of Maurice, Marie, and Caroline de Guérin.

The only picture which exists of Eugénie is a simple pen-and-ink sketch, scarcely outlined, which was sent me by the editor of Eugénie's works, M. Trébutien.

Among these precious souvenirs from Cayla, I must also mention an unpublished letter from Henry V., Count de Chambord, and another from Cardinal de Villecourt, without counting those addressed to me by Marie de Guérin, several of which would not do discredit to the collection of Eugénie's. I will only cite from one of them a short passage in which she alludes to our young Canadian Zouaves:

"I am so edified to see the devotion of the Canadians to our Holy Father the Pope. Your young men leave for Rome, as did the crusaders of old, for Palestine, at this word, God wills it. Let us hope that this plenitude of generosity will not be without a happy result. Already they have given an example at Mentana; if necessary they will repeat it...."—Letter dated January 30, 1868.

I recollect, mademoiselle, having[603] read several years ago, with much interest, some remarkable extracts from the works of M. Maurice de Guérin, a young writer cut down in the flower of his age and talents. I could not, then, fail to welcome with a peculiar satisfaction the book of Mlle. Eugénie de Guérin, faithful mirror in which is so constantly reflected the twofold affection that filled her life—the love of God and her tenderness for her brother, sweet lesson and touching example of that ardent, lively, and resigned faith which, in the midst of the sorrows of this world, only finds consolation in looking toward heaven, where those whom we love here below, separated from us in an instant by death, are united again never more to be parted. I must not defer any longer saying to you how much I appreciate this gift, and, above all, the pious motive which prompted it—as well as the expressions of devotion and attachment with which it was accompanied, in your name, as well as in that of your sister-in-law. To M. Trébutien and his daughter I beg you will also express my gratitude.

Accept for yourself, with many thanks, the assurance of my very sincere sentiments.

SONNET.
Italian "Unification" in 1861.

THE HOUSE OF YORKE.

CHAPTER IX.
TWO YEARS AFTER

A heavy heart is a wonderful assistant in acquiring repose of manner, it weighs so on the impulses and desires, and thus keeps them in order—fortunately for Mrs. Jane Rowan. On the whole, she behaved very well in her new situation, and did not fret herself nor the family too much. By the gentleman of the house and his daughter she was not treated as a hired servant, but as Mr. Williams's sister might have been treated, if he had had one to take charge of his establishment. With the sister-in-law, Mrs. Bond, and the servants, it was otherwise. The former was one of those persons who merit pity, from the fact that they can never feel the delight of a generous emotion. She worshipped the guinea's stamp, but the preciousness of fine gold she knew not: for her, the guinea might as well have been made of copper. If she had been born to a servile estate, she would have remained there, and adorned her position; but she had been associated with persons of respectability and even of eminence. The advantages of this association she showed in that the arrogance with which she treated her supposed inferiors was cold and quiet, and her subservience to her acknowledged superiors had an air of personal fondness.

This woman's greatest fear was lest some one should marry her brother-in-law, in consequence of which she labored incessantly to remove from him all dangerous acquaintances: her second source of terror was that her niece might be captivated by some ineligible person, and the result was that every hovering monsieur and professor who assisted in educating the young woman was watched as if he had been a pick-pocket. Helen Williams used to complain bitterly to the housekeeper of this espionage, and Mrs. Bond used as strenuously to invoke the aid of the housekeeper in watching; so that the unfortunate woman was between two fires, and scorched pro and con. But the great trial of her life was the servants. Over these potentates she was supposed to exercise some authority, and for some of their doings she was held responsible; but the fact was that they laughed her to scorn. As to commanding them, Mrs. Rowan would as soon have thought of commanding the lancers or the cadets, and indeed the lancers or the cadets would quite as soon have thought of obeying her. But through all these mean annoyances, thanks to sorrow, the quieter, she walked with a gentle patience which saved her from serious hurt.

Happily, the person on whom her fortunes most depended put her quite at ease in his regard. Mr. Williams was moderately kind, not expressively polite, and did not scruple to make her useful. He had also certain habits which soothed her sense of inferiority, since she did not consider them polite: he reached across the[605] table sometimes in a shocking manner to help himself, he bolted his food when he was in haste, he smoked a pipe in the sitting-room without asking leave, and, while smoking, habitually assumed a position contrary to the apparent intention of nature, by placing his feet higher than his head. There were times when the housekeeper dared to think that she was almost as much a lady as Mr. Williams was a gentleman. But she liked him all the better for his deficiencies. She liked him, too, for the interest he took in her son.

In the fall, Mr. Williams and Major Cleaveland had entered into partnership, and enlarged their shipping interests, and the former had said to Mrs. Rowan of Dick, "If the boy continues to do well, we must give him a ship."

The mother's heart beat high. In two years Dick would come back, and then perhaps Mr. Williams would remember his promise. That her son would deserve such favor she never doubted. Young Mr. Rowan had the power of inspiring every one who knew him with entire confidence. So the mother set herself to endure and count away the months to the coming home of her son. The winter melted, and spring came—six months nearer! The summer glowed, and grew chilly into autumn—only a year longer! A second winter wore itself away—but six months left! and what you can have back again in six months, you touch already. Six months is only twenty-four weeks; and, while you are counting them, the four have slipped away. What signifies five months? One sleeps through nearly a third of them, which leaves three months of conscious waiting. Hearts do not count fractions. Three months—and now they begin to drag. It is July, and that month has so many days, and the days have so many hours in them, and the hours are so long. You begin to fancy that heat dilates time as well as metals. You say that it is just your luck that the only time in the year when two months in succession have thirty-one days should be precisely this time. Good-by to July! I would have spoken you more courteously, O month of Cæsar! had you not stood between my friend and me. Not Cæsar's self may do that! Two months now; but much may happen in that time: kingdoms have been lost and won in less. Fade, O summer flowers! for ye can bloom again when love is dead. Hasten, O fruitful autumn! and bring the harvest long waited for. The weeks grow less, and only one is left; but you dare not rejoice; so much may happen in a week! Days roll round with an audible jar, as if you heard the earth buzz on her axis, and only one is left. O God! how much may happen in a day! The pendulum swings entangled in your heart-strings, the minutes march like armed men. Merciful Father! hearts have broken in a minute. Yes; but hearts that were sinking have grown glad in a minute, shall grow glad, Deo volente. The terrible if that held his skeleton finger up before the face of your hope, that drove sleep from your eyes, that weighed upon you ceaselessly, shall fade to a shadow, and the shadow shall disappear in sunshine—Deo volente!

The sea was smooth—perhaps the prayers of the mother had smoothed it; the sky was sunny—it may have been for that mother's sake; and one blessed tide that came running up the harbor, ripple after ripple falling on the shore like breathless messengers, brought a ship in from the East with a precious freight for the owners, and for Mrs. Rowan a freight more precious than if the ship had[606] been piled for her mast-high with gold.

A young man's handsome bronzed face looked eagerly through the rigging, and saw a carriage drawn up close to the wharf, a man standing beside the open door of it, and a woman's pale face leaning out. The pale face turned red as he looked, and his mother's hands were stretched toward him.

"Jump right in and go home with your mother," said Mr. Williams. "I want to see the captain."

And this reminds us that we are before our story. Several notable incidents had occurred in Mrs. Rowan's life before that happy day. One was that, on the first of September, just a month before, Mr. Williams had asked her to be his wife. The two were sitting together after tea, Helen having gone to a concert with her aunt. Mrs. Rowan was hemming handkerchiefs for Mr. Williams, and thinking of Dick, wondering where he was and what he might be doing just at that moment, and Mr. Williams was glancing over the Evening Post, and thinking of himself and his companion.

If the President of the United States, at that time General Taylor, had sent Daniel Webster as his ambassador to invite Mrs. Rowan to preside over the White House for him, she could not have been more astonished.

There was nothing amazing in the manner of the proposal, however. Mr. Williams had just been reading an editorial on the "Wilmot proviso," and, having finished it, took his pipe from his mouth, glanced across the table on which his elbow leaned, and said quietly, "I've been thinking that we may as well get married, as we shall probably always live together. Helen and Dick will some time build nests of their own, and they won't want either of us. I shall treat you as well as I always have, and I hope you will be satisfied with that, and I shall do something for Dick. I'm rather in love with the fellow. I really cannot see why you should object, though I give you credit for being surprised. If you had expected me to ask you, I should have disappointed you. Suppose we should be married before Dick gets home, for a pleasant surprise for him!"

Mrs. Rowan had dropped her work, and sat staring at Mr. Williams, to see if he were jesting.

"So I perceive," was the dry comment with which he put his pipe between his lips again. "Take time. Don't be in a hurry to answer; I am not a frantic lover of twenty."

Mrs. Rowan sat with her hands clasped on the pile of handkerchiefs in her lap, and tried to think. It would be good for Dick, it would be better for Dick, it would be best for Dick. On Dick's account, she could not dream of refusing; indeed, she would not have presumed to refuse, even had there been no Dick in the case. But, for all that, Mr. Williams's last sentence rang in her ears, and made her eyes fill. Once upon a time—so long ago!—she was young and pretty, and then there was somebody handsomer, better educated, more talented than this man, who was a frantic lover of twenty when he asked her to be his wife. If she had known better then, been more earnest and serious, that blossom day of her life had borne good fruit, perhaps, instead of an apple of Sodom, and her husband might have been still living.[607] If she had loved him less weakly, she might have saved him.

She started, and came back to the present. In the pain of the past she was momentarily strong. "I suppose you know best for yourself," she said quietly; "and I have no objection for Dick's sake."

Mr. Williams had been a little afraid of a scene, and her quiet and the tears in her eyes touched him. "I don't believe you will be sorry for it, Jane," he said kindly. "I have heard that you have had one sad experience, and I can promise you that you shall have nothing like that from me."

A slight shadow, almost a frown, passed over her face. "You are very kind," she said in a cold voice. "But as to the past, no one is to blame but me. I stand by the man I married when I was a young girl. I loved him then and always, and I hope to meet him again. He was too good for me."

"All right!" replied the merchant cheerfully, but with some surprise. He had not thought that the widow possessed so much spirit. "We need not disagree about him. We can enter into a partnership for the rest of our lives. As to the other world, I'll ask for no mortgages on that. If you run away with Mr. Rowan when we get there, I won't run after you. May be somebody else will be claiming me. I'm satisfied, if you are. We are too old for sentiment."

Too old for sentiment! She looked at him with eyes in which, for a moment, a high and shining wonder dilated. Why, if Richard had lived and prospered, and she had made him happy, she could have run to meet him with roses of joy in her cheeks, though she were half a century old. She could have been as watchful of his looks and tones, as quick to tune her own by them, as when she was a girl. Too old for sentiment! Well, it takes all sorts of people to make a world, she thought.

An hour of silence passed, the woman sewing, the man reading. At ten o'clock Mrs. Rowan rose to go to bed. Mr. Williams looked up. "Let's see, this is September first," he said. "Suppose we call in the parson about the tenth?"

"You know we need not bother about a bridal tour," he said. "And I think we may as well keep our own counsel. When it is all over, I'll introduce you to Mrs. Bond as a new sister-in-law. Don't be afraid: I will make her keep the peace. I am a justice, you know."

There was no more said that night; but the next morning Mr. Williams gave the widow a short lecture on the manner in which he wished her to conduct herself toward those about her. "You are too humble and yielding," he said. "Of course, I do not expect you to change your character; but, recollect, you have me to stand by you. If Sarah Bond should annoy you, stand your ground. If the servants are impudent, dismiss them. If anything whatever happens displeasing to you, tell me the minute I get home, and I will set the matter right."

An hour after, a carriage drew up at the door, and a woman came into the house, and asked to see Mrs. Rowan. She was a woman of middle age, and looked nervous and worried.

"I am Miss Bird, Miss Clinton's companion," she announced. "Miss Clinton wants to see you right away. She has sent the carriage for you."

The companion looked at her in astonishment. Not know who Miss Clinton was! But it must be true that she did not, or she would not have presumed to ask the other question. "Miss Clinton is one of the first ladies in Boston," Miss Bird said, with quite a grand air. "When you go to her, she will probably tell you what she wants."

This last piece of assumption was from the future Mrs. Williams, not from Mr. Williams's housekeeper.

"Why, what can you be thinking of?" the woman cried. "Miss Clinton must be eighty years old, if not ninety. I am not sure but she is a hundred."

Having ventured so much, after a slight pause, Miss Bird went on. "And she is like cider, the older she grows, the sourer she grows."

She did not hurry, however. She arrayed herself deliberately from head to foot, and came down to find Miss Bird pacing the entry in a fever of impatience.

"Dear me! do come!" exclaimed that frightened creature, and unceremoniously pulled Mrs. Rowan into the carriage. "Drive for your life!" she called out then to the coachman.

"Oh! bless us!" sighed the companion. "Something is always the matter with Miss Clinton when she has to wait."

They reached the house—a large, old-fashioned one in a most respectable locality—entered, and went up-stairs to a sunny parlor with windows looking into a garden. The four walls of this room were entirely covered with pictures, the central places being occupied by four portraits of a lady, the same lady, painted in different costumes, and at different ages. It was a handsome face, not without signs of talent. The original of these portraits sat in an arm-chair near one of the windows. The silvery curls of a wig clustered about her wrinkled face, a scarlet India shawl was wrapped around her tall, upright form, and her small hands glittered with rings. On a table at her elbow were her hand-bell, eye-glasses, scent-bottle, snuff-box, and bonbonnière.

As the two entered the room, the old lady snatched her glasses, and put them up with a shaking hand. "So you have got here at last!" she cried out. "Have you been taking Mr. What's-his-name's housekeeper a drive on the Mill-dam, Bird?"

"I came as soon as I was ready, ma'am," interposed Mrs. Rowan. "I did not want to take the trouble to come at all. If you have no business with me, I will go home again."

"I have business with you," she said in a sharp voice, after having looked the widow over deliberately. "Come here! Bird, bring a chair, and then go out of the room."

"I want to know about that Yorke girl," the old lady began, when they[609] were alone. "If you wish to befriend her, you had better tell me all you know. As for Amy Arnold, she deserves to be poor. I will not give her a dollar. She was always a sentimental simpleton, with her fine ideas. Not but fine ideas are good in their place: I always had them, but I had common sense too. I kept my sentiments, as I keep my rings and brooches, for ornament; that is the way sensible people do; but she must pave the common way with hers. Fancy a girl with absolute beauty, and money in expectation, if she behaved herself, marrying a poor artist because, forsooth, they had congenial souls! Congenial fiddlesticks! If I had had the power, I would have shut her up till she came to her senses. I am thankful to be able to say that I did box her ears soundly. Fortunately, the fellow died in a year, and Mr. Charles Yorke took pity on her. Charles Yorke is a respectable man, but I am not fond of him. I was fond of Robert till he treated Alice Mills so. Though, indeed, it was an escape for Alice; for he would have broken her heart. Robert didn't know enough to love a plain woman.

"The little Pole knew how to make him behave himself. I rather liked that girl, and I would have done something for them if Alice had not been my friend. What is the child like? Tell me all about her."

The door opened. "I won't see anybody!" Miss Clinton screamed, waving the servant away. Then, as he was going, she called him back. "Who is it? Alice Mills? The very one I want! Show her in!"

Mrs. Rowan looked with eager interest at this visitor, and saw a lady of medium size, graceful figure, and plain face. Was she plain, though? That was the first impression; but when she had taken Miss Clinton's hand, and kissed her cheek tenderly, putting her other hand on the other cheek, in a pretty, caressing way, and had asked sweetly of the old lady's health, Mrs. Rowan found her beautiful. So still and gentle, and yet so bright, was she, all harmony seemed to have entered the room with her. Even Miss Clinton's harsh face softened as she looked up at her with a gaze of fondness that had something imploring in it, and clung to her hand a moment.

"You have come in good time, my dear," she said then, in a voice far gentler than she had spoken with before. "This is the person who had charge of Robert Yorke's daughter."

The lady had seated herself close to Miss Clinton's side, with a hand still resting on the arm of her chair. At this announcement she turned rather quickly, but with instinctive courtesy, and looked searchingly at Mrs. Rowan. Then she went to take her hand. "I had a letter from Edith to-day," she said, "and she mentioned you very affectionately. I thought when I read it that I would go to see you."

"Ahem!" coughed Miss Clinton harshly. "Come here, Alice! I have sent for Mrs. What's-her-name to tell us all about the child, so you are saved the trouble of going to her."

Mrs. Rowan's impulse had been to kiss the gentle hand that touched hers, but this interruption checked her. Miss Mills went back to her seat, and the catechism began. It was not a pleasant one. More than once the widow thought that "one of the first ladies in Boston" was a very rude and impudent old woman; but for the sake of that sweet face, which seemed to entreat her forbearance, she answered civilly.

The questioning ended. "Now you may go," said Miss Clinton, and, turning her back on Mrs. Rowan, began to talk to her friend.

"O my friend! how can you?" exclaimed Miss Mills reproachfully. "You are so kind, Mrs. Rowan," rising to take leave of her. "I am glad to have seen you."

Mrs. Rowan's face was crimson. What would Dick say to see his mother so treated? and what would Mr. Williams say?

"Why, Alice, she is that John Williams's housekeeper," the old woman said, when Mrs. Rowan had gone.

"And what are you?" was the question which rose almost to the younger lady's indignant lips. But she suppressed it, and only showed her disapproval by sitting silent a moment.

"Did you expect me to get up and make a court courtesy?" pursued Miss Clinton. "Why, I wouldn't do that for you, my dear. And why should I not tell her to go? I had no more to say to her, and I dare say she was glad to get away. If people fell in love with me as they do with you, you soft creature! then I might be sweeter with them; but they hate me, and so I can afford to be sincere. It saves trouble, besides."

"If every one practised that sort of sincerity, we should soon lapse into barbarism," was the quiet reply.

"If you only came here to lecture and scold me, you had better have staid away," the old woman cried, beginning to tremble.

The other said nothing, only sat and looked steadily at her. With Alice Mills, charity was a virtue, not a weakness. She beheld with pain and terror this woman, whose whole life had been one of utter selfishness, who was going down to the grave with no love in her heart for God nor her neighbor. She knew that she was the only one who dared to speak the truth to Miss Clinton, and therefore she dared not be silent. She knew that she was the only one in whom the lonely old sinner believed, or whom she could be influenced by; and it was one of the prayerful studies of her life how best to use that power. To yield to pity, and refrain from reproof, would be to encourage faults which had become habitual; so, instead of coaxing and soothing, she only waited for submission, not to herself, but to right and justice. The time for Miss Clinton's conversion was so short, and the progress had been so slow, this friend was almost tempted to despair. "Final impenitence" seemed to be written in those hard old eyes, on that bitter old mouth.

Miss Clinton scolded, then complained, then bemoaned herself, finally submitted. "You know, Alice, I have got so in the habit of ordering people about, and most people are so slavish, I do not think," she said, wiping her eyes.

That was all her friend asked—a sense of having done wrong. Then came the time for soothing, and for bright and cheerful talk.

After such a regimen, it might reasonably be supposed that Miss Clinton would treat her next visitor with decent civility; and the immediate happy result of the lesson was that for that day Bird escaped further abuse.

When, a fortnight later, Miss Mills told the old lady that Mr. Williams and Mrs. Rowan were married, Miss Clinton was astounded. "That accounts for her turning so red when I told her to go," she said. "Well, well, I must be polite to Bird. For anything I know, she may be engaged to John C. Calhoun."

"Married his housekeeper!" she pursued dreamily. "What a potpourri society is becoming! Though now I think of it, John Williams came from nothing."

"We all came from nothing, dear," said the other softly, "and soon we shall return to nothing."

Yes, Mrs. Rowan was married, and quite at home in her new character. Mrs. Bond had been met in open field, challenged, engaged, and routed. At present she was at home nursing her wounds; but we may confidently expect that in time she will hand in her submission to the powers that be. They were quite willing to wait: their impatience was not devouring. Their minds were pleasantly occupied about this time by several things. Dick's return was the principal joyful event. Besides that, Major Cleaveland was visiting them. He had come up to superintend the refurnishing of his town-house for the reception of a bride. His marriage was to take place in a week or two at Seaton, and his partner, with his new wife and step-son, were invited to go down and be present at the ceremony. Mrs. Rowan-Williams had hesitated very much about accepting the invitation, but it was urged by the bridegroom-elect; Mr. Williams was disposed to go, Dick looked his desire to go, Edith had written a coaxing letter, and even Hester Yorke had sent a very pretty note, hoping that they would come. So it was decided that they should go.

Why should Hester Yorke's invitation be of special consequence, does any one ask? Having been put off as long as was possible, the truth must be told at last, though with great dissatisfaction. Miss Hester Yorke is to be the bride. Instead of fixing his affections on Melicent, who was twenty years his junior, or Clara, who was twenty two, nothing would satisfy this man but Hester, the youngest, and Hester he won.

But it was a good while before he won the father and mother. Mr. Yorke consented first, rather ungraciously, but Mrs. Yorke did not yield till the last minute, and then only to her husband's solicitations.

"If Hester is satisfied to marry a man old enough to be her father," he said, "we may as well consent. The age is the only objection."

"Hester is satisfied now," the mother said anxiously; "but she is only a child. We do not know how it will be ten years hence, when her character will be more developed. She will then be twenty-eight, and he fifty. "Oh! I have no patience with these ridiculous widowers!" And the lady wrung her hands.

"You misjudge Hester, my dear," the husband said. "She has developed all she ever will. She is no pomegranate in the bud, but a cherry fully ripened. Have you never observed that whatever is hers is always perfect in her eyes? She is ready now to maintain to the world that this is the most beautiful house that ever was built; that rat-holes are an advantage; that our furniture is the more desirable for being worn; that our roses are finer than any others, our vines more graceful, our birds more musical. Why, my dear, she thinks that I am a beauty!"

"That is because you look at me with such beautiful eyes," replied the gentleman gallantly. It was not often that his personal appearance was complimented. "But, to return: Hester will be the same to her husband. Once married to him, she[612] will be absolutely convinced that there is not to be found his equal. I have no fear but that, ten years hence, if Major Cleaveland should be placed by the side of the most magnificent man on earth, Hester would maintain boldly that her husband was the superior. No; I anticipate no trouble for a long while. The only disagreeable view I take is, that when Hester is fifty, the golden middle age for a healthy woman, she will be nursing a childish old man of seventy-four, instead of having an equal friend and companion."

"Dear me!" exclaimed the wife, "I cannot possibly weep over what may happen thirty-two years hence."

And so the matter was settled; and now the Major was doing his utmost in honor of the event. The house in Seaton had been already put in perfect order, and the house in town was now, as we see, being adorned. They were to come there immediately, after a quiet wedding at Hester's home.

When Major Cleaveland returned to Seaton, a week after the wedding, he carried two offerings from Mrs. Rowan, one for the bride-elect, the other for Edith. Hester's present was quite simple, a package of photographic views taken in the city of Peking, and, seen through a stereoscope, almost as good as a visit to that city. But Dick's offering to Edith was an extravagant one: it was a Maltese cross set with emeralds.

This gift created a warm discussion in the Yorke family, who were almost unanimous against Edith's accepting it. Carl was especially indignant. "Edith is almost a young lady," he said; "and the fellow is presuming in sending her such a present. If he does not know better, he should be taught." Even Mrs. Yorke was disposed to be strict. But when they had all spoken, it was found that Edith had a voice.

They were in the sitting-room with Major Cleaveland, who had just arrived, and Mrs. Yorke was in the centre of the group. She had opened the box, and held the cross up glittering against her white hand. Edith had not touched it. She stood beside her aunt's chair, and listened while the discussion went on. Her eyes were cast down, and she seemed perfectly quiet; but, while she listened, into her usually pale cheeks a color grew, deepening from pink to a glowing crimson.

"I shall not refuse Dick's present," she said decidedly, when they came to a pause; and as she spoke up went her eyelids. Finding that Dick had no other friend but her, that he had enemies, perhaps, that his feelings were not to be counted, instantly she came to the rescue. As her glance flashed swiftly around the circle, it was as though a blade had been swung before their eyes.

"But, my dearest Edith," began Melicent, and then went over the whole argument again in her most suave and convincing manner.

"I know it all," Edith replied firmly. "I know what people consider proper about presents; but this is not a common case. I would not take that cross from Carl, nor from any other gentleman. But Dick is like no one else to me, and he shall not be hurt nor offended. He took pains to get the present, and thought a good deal about it, and brought it over the ocean for me, and was in hopes that I would be pleased; and I will not disappoint him."

Mrs. Yorke took the girl's hand affectionately, the disputed jewel dropping in her lap. "I would not hurt his feelings for the world, my love," she said. "Leave it all to me.[613] I will explain to him so that he cannot be offended."

"Aunt Amy, no one in the world can explain between Dick Rowan and me," said Edith, withdrawing her hand. "You have been good to me, all of you, and I love you, and will obey you when it is right. But this isn't right: it is only what people who know nothing about it think proper. Dick was good to me first of all. Mamma used to have him take care of me when I was a tiny little girl; and, after mamma died, he did everything for me. If I wanted anything, he got it for me if he could; and if I broke his playthings and tore his books, he never scolded me. I remember once I hit him with a stick, and almost put his eye out; and when I cried, he kissed me and said, 'I know you didn't mean to, dear,' before his eye had stopped aching. That was the way he always did. And afterward, when the children laughed at me, because I was poor and queer, and they threw mud and stones at me here in the streets of Seaton, Dick fought them, he alone against the whole. And I never cried but he comforted me. I could not tell all that he did for me, though I should talk a week. I won't turn him off now. If he wanted to die for me, I'd let him; for it would be more than cruel to refuse. So, Aunt Amy, please to give me the cross. I am going to wear it always."

They were all silent at this first outbreak of her who had often won from Carl the greeting of Coriolanus to his wife, "My gracious silence, hail!" No one had the heart to refuse any longer, whatever might be the consequences of yielding.

Edith took the chain, and hung it about her neck, looking down on the cross a moment as it rested on her bosom. "Green means hope," she said.

Carl left the room. No one else said anything. Her address had struck too near home. They might forget the time when she had been poor and homeless, but she was not obliged to; and they could not in conscience quite disentangle her from her past.

"Dearest Aunt Amy, do smile again!" Edith entreated, putting her arms around Mrs. Yorke's neck. "You are not displeased with me! Don't you remember you told Dick that ingratitude is the vice of slaves?"

"Dear child, you do as you will with me," her aunt sighed; and so the dispute ended.

One day of the next week, as the steamer came ploughing up the Narrows into Seaton Bay, Mrs. Williams and her son sat in a corner of the deck by themselves. Mr. Williams, slightly sea-sick, was below. There were not many passengers that day, and no one seemed to have recognized these two. They sat leaning on the rail and looking off over the water. It could scarcely be expected that they would not feel some emotion on such a return to their native town after such a departure, and Dick held his mother's trembling hand tight in his, which, indeed, was scarcely steady.

A low, sandy island lay before them, and seemed to toss on the surface of the bay. "I wish I could go over there before we go home again," the mother whispered, looking up wistfully into her son's face.

"No!" he answered. "We shall be commented on and watched sufficiently as it is. Let the dead past bury its dead. It is a shame and disgrace. I cannot have it dragged up again."

He spoke firmly, and his mother was silenced. She feared her son in his rare moods of sternness. They awed her far more than his earlier[614] passions had. Those she had understood, and could soothe; but now he was growing out of her knowledge. Besides, she did not dream what an ordeal his meeting with Edith's family was to be to him. To her simplicity, Hester's invitation and Edith's allowed intercourse with them seemed an entire adoption; but he knew better. On the whole, it was a time above all when he least desired to be remembered of his father.

As they neared the wharf, they saw Major Cleaveland standing there, with a tall, slim girl beside him. She wore a black riding-cap and feather, and a glimpse of scarlet petticoat showed as she gathered up her riding-skirt. The disengaged hand was flung out with a quick welcoming gesture as she saw them, and a flush went over her face.

Mr. Rowan drew back to let Mr. and Mrs. Williams land first, and waited till his mother had received the first greeting. Then he took Edith's hand, and looked down at her as she looked up at him. Her eyes sparkled, and she breathed quickly with joy. There was not, he saw, a cloud over the delight with which she met him.

"Dick," she said ecstatically, after a minute, "I think that you are perfectly splendid!"

"But you have grown," she pursued, contemplating him with great admiration. "And have not I grown tall?"

He lifted her to the saddle, then stepped into the carriage, and she rode alongside. He looked at her, and every nerve in him vibrated with triumph. She wore his cross on her bosom! They had not thought how much he had dared to mean by that. "If they let her take the cross, they will let her take me," he had said. If the gift had been refused, he would never have seen Edith again.

"It is most beautiful," she said, catching his glance. "I got Father Rasle to bless it, and I wear it all the time."

Presently Edith began to take notice of Mrs. Williams; and as she looked, her wonder grew. Mrs. Rowan had possessed only a wisp of faded hair: Mrs. Williams had a profuse and shining chevelure. Mrs. Rowan's teeth had been few and far between: Mrs. Williams's smile disclosed two unbroken and immaculate rows of ivory. But for the lingering lines in the forehead, and the kind eyes, and the simple ways, Edith would scarcely have recognized her old friend.

It was time for an early dinner when they reached the house, and Edith was to stay all day, and be hostess. It had been agreed that, under the circumstances, no hospitable cares could be expected from their host. His visitors were to use his house as a hotel, and do quite as they pleased in it. But in the afternoon, Major Cleaveland insisted that Mr. Rowan should go with him and call upon Hester, who wished to thank him without delay for the pretty present he had sent her. Dick would much have preferred remaining where he was; but he went, and was received with the utmost cordiality by all but Carl, who was not visible.

But Carl came up in the evening to escort Edith home, and had then "the honor of making Mr. Rowan's acquaintance" in a remarkably cool and ceremonious fashion.

"Mother thought you had better come home early, Edith, because we must all be up early in the morning," he said, after a little very polite and very constrained talk. "Besides," he added, with a slight smile, "I believe Patrick does not allow his horse to be out after nine o'clock. He lent him to me very grudgingly."

The night was one of perfect silence as the two rode homeward under the stars, and they were not talkative. Scarcely a word was spoken till they had crossed the bridge, and were riding up North Street. Then Edith spoke in a low voice:

"I did not observe," he replied coolly. "I scarcely heard her speak. I do not doubt that she is pleasant to you."

Another silence. They had turned from the public road, and were being enclosed in the forest.

"How did you like Dick Rowan, Carl?" The question came with a faint sense of strain in the voice, and it was not answered immediately.

"I hope you will not expect me to be as fond of him as you are," he said presently. "He may be like a brother to you, but to me he is a stranger."

"He is very handsome," Carl said in a quiet tone, "and he looks like an honest fellow. I have no fault to find with him."

"What should trouble me, child?" he asked, with a touch of kindness in his voice.

"No, Edith," he said, "I have no reason to be vexed with any one but myself. Good-night, dear!"

She echoed the good-night, and went up-stairs, not nearly so happy as she had expected to be that night.

The next morning the marriage took place. For Hester's sake we will say that the bride was lovely, and the wedding a pretty one. But we will not further celebrate Major Cleaveland's anachronistic nuptials.

The Williamses were to leave town in the evening. They dined at the Yorkes', and went away immediately after dinner. Edith was to walk down to the hotel with him, and stay there till the stage-coach should come for him.

"And we will walk the very longest way, Dick," she said. "I have hardly had a chance to speak to you yet. We have plenty of time, for they have to go up after their valises."

While Edith ran up-stairs for her hat, Mr. Rowan took leave of the others, and Mrs. Yorke walked out into the portico with him. The lady seemed to find difficulty in uttering something which she wished to say. But when she heard her niece coming, she spoke hastily. "Mr. Rowan, Edith is but a child!"

His face blushed up. "I do not forget that, Mrs. Yorke," he said; "but also, I do not forget that she is a child I have many a time carried in my arms."

"A very headstrong young man!" thought Mrs. Yorke, as she watched the two go down the steps together.

They went up the road, to strike into East Street, instead of down; and as the road, after passing the house, ceased almost entirely, they soon found themselves in a narrow forest track. Over their heads hung the splendid crimson and gold canopy of maples and beeches mingled, and vines ran through every glowing tone from garnet-black up to rose-color, or hung in deep purple masses. The mountain-ash bent to offer its clusters of red berries, and there was no tiniest shrub nor leaf but had its gala autumn dress. A blue mist showed faintly through the long forest reaches, and rich earth-odors rose on the moist air.

The immense conversation which was to have been held seemed to be forgotten; scarcely a word was said till they came out into the eastern road. Then Edith pointed across the way, and said, "Is it not lovely?" and they stopped a moment to look.

There was a tract of low swampy land there silvered over with mist, that seemed scarcely to rise a foot above it. Through this mist showed a fine emerald-green thick with pink and purple blooms, and over it swam a yellow-bird, in smooth undulations, as if it floated on a tide.

The two stood there for some time in silence, till that picture was perfectly painted on the memory of each. Then they walked on into the village. In a few minutes after they reached the hotel, the coach came down from Major Cleaveland's with Mr. and Mrs. Williams in it, the fare-wells were said, and they were gone.

CHAPTER X.
A DESPAIRING CHAPTER.

After all, no person's story can be truly told without beginning at the creation of the world. Not that we would invoke Darwinian aid, or inquire into the family peculiarities of the sponge—"O philoprogenitive sponge!" Nor would we intimate that the soul is as passive to circumstances as a rudderless ship to wind and wave, but assert rather that it is like the steamer, the great struggling creature, with a will at heart. But circumstances are strong, even very old circumstances, and our ancestors have a word to say, not as to our final destination, but as to the road by which we shall reach it. Coarser natures get their bent after the manner commemorated by the Mohammedan legend: some Eblis of an ancestor spurned their clay with his foot when the angels had kneaded it, and the dent is long in filling out; but finer souls are strung like the wind-harp, and from the long line-gale of ghosts preceding them is stretched now and then a viewless finger, which sets vibrating some silent inherited chord. Is it a vanishing and perpetually recurring strain of a Gregorian chant, breaking awfully into the pauses of a godless life? Is it an airily riotous Bacchic wreathing the slow minims of a choral? Catch up the strain and repeat it as you will, all your life shall[617] be a palimpsest with Te Deum laudamus written largely over the fading errors; still the merit of good-will is not all your own. Or trip as your dutiful measure may, tangled in that wild song; the fault is not all yours. Many a Cassius may claim indulgence on the score of some rash inherited humor.

The truth is, Carl has disappointed us. We meant him to be an exquisite and heroic creation, perfect in every way; and we had a right to expect that our intentions would be realized; did not we make him ourself? But just as the clay model was finished, and we were complacently admiring it, into our atelier stepped the grand antique mother, Nature. She came with a sound of scornful sweet laughter, which seemed to roll cloud-wise under her feet, and curl up around the strong and supple form, and wreathe the wide slope of her shoulders. "Look you," she said, and pointed her finger, a little shaken with merriment, "that is not the way I make men. There are no muscles in those limbs, there is no sight under that brow, there is no live heart beating in that narrow chest. You have left no chance for a soul to get into your manikin." So saying, she stretched her finger yet further, and mockingly pushed it through the skull of our model; then disappeared, leaving all the air behind her tremulous with mirth.

Let us hurry over the present of this Carl with a hole in his head, out of which all his ideal perfections are escaping, but into which his true soul may some day enter. Outwardly he is studying law, inwardly he is studying chaos. What books Mr. Griffeth gave him to read, we know not; but we do know that the sentences were like smooth, strong fingers untying from him many of the restraints of his former education. With Theodore Parker, he could call the sacred Scriptures the "Hebrew mythology," and describe baptism as "being ecclesiastically sprinkled with water;" and having got so far—"What," said he, "is the use of Mr. Theodore Parker?" and so dropped him. The conversations Mr. Griffeth held with him we know little of, but may presume that they were not profitable. We only know that they were frequent. The two were constantly together, more constantly than suited Mr. Yorke, who lost faith in the minister. "He has no pity," he said. "He seems to have studied theology only to see how many sins he can commit without losing his soul." But this disapprobation of his step-father's had no effect on the young man, who was perfectly infatuated with his new friend. This quiet life of Carl's had produced a mental stagnation, from which arose all sorts of miasmata. He dimly knew them as such, but that did not prevent his breathing and poisoning himself with them. Perhaps he also suspected that Mr. Griffeth's wings would melt off if he were exposed to a strong and searching light; but the companionship was fascinating, and Carl fancied that he had found his like. It was not so; they were alike only as sharp six and flat seven are; they had identical moods; but Carl stooped to where his new friend rose.

One of the fine things the young man learned was the use of opium. "It makes you feel like a god while it lasts," says Mr. Griffeth, "puts you into a perfectly Olympian state. But I warn you," he added, with a tardy touch of conscience, "it does not last long, and from Olympia you sink to Hades."

"And then," says Carl, "you go about as Dante did, with your hands[618] folded under your mantle, and people stand aside, and whisper about you. I will take the dark with the bright."

So saying, he measured out the drops, and drank them with the invocation: "Come, winged enchantment, and bear me wherever thou wilt."

Reader, didst thou ever see one dear to thee made tipsy with liquor? and dost thou remember the mingled pain, and pity, and contempt with which thou didst look on his abasement? A man, a king of the earth, a brother of saints, a friend of the Crucified, a child of the Most High, grovelling thus!

One comfort, nature, and not we, made this man fall so. O better comfort! he is earning mountain-loads of self-contempt, which shall one day be paid with interest.

Only a few other items have we to record at this time. The young ladies had made their proposed literary venture—Melicent with signal failure, Clara with partial success. Publishers had twenty-five different reasons, each better than the last, why a volume of European travels would not be at that particular time a fortunate venture, and were unanimously unable to say at what future period the prospect would be brighter. Miss Yorke was not entirely blind. She perceived that her book was a failure, and withdrew it. Whether she contemplated any other work, her family did not know. She maintained a profound silence on the subject. They suspected, however, that she was studying out a novel. Clara's first story, read with great applause to the family at home, was modestly offered to a respectable second-class magazine, and accepted, with a request for more. So Miss Clara occupies the proud position of being independent in the matter of pocket-money, and an occasional benefactor to the others.

Of more consequence to us is the fact that Father Rasle is now settled in Seaton, and building a church there. Something else is also being built in Seaton—a "Native American" society, alias Know-nothing. This society excited much attention and enthusiasm, especially in Mr. Griffeth's congregation, and among their friends. All the young men joined it. It seemed precisely to suit the genius of Seaton.

Against this party Mr. Charles Yorke fought with all his strength. It was contrary to the spirit of the constitution, he persisted; it had nothing in common with the Declaration of Independence. The views and aims of the party were narrow and bigoted, and their leaders were ignorant demagogues.

But all that he gained by his denunciations was unpopularity, and the party prospered yet more. It had not only the young and the infidel for active members; it had a sly encouragement from Mr. Griffeth, a cool approval from Doctor Martin, and an earnest help from the Rev. Mr. Conway, the gentleman whom we left in a soiled state half-way from Bragon to Seaton. He had preached the next Sunday with acceptance to his congregation, and was now settled among them. We may remark that he has not yet forgiven Mr. Griffeth the mistake about the pulpit, nor will he be convinced that it was a mistake. In consequence of this obduracy, the two ministers live in a state of feud, in which their congregations take part, to the slight disedification of old-fashioned people.

THE SERIAL LITERATURE OF ENGLAND.

Considering the number of periodicals at present published in Great Britain, the extent of their aggregate circulation, and the range and variety of topics discussed in their pages, their effect on the public mind of that country for good or evil can scarcely be overestimated. A magazine holds a middle place between the legitimate literature of books and the ephemeral and generally ill-digested effusions of newspapers, and appeals, especially to the middle classes, as it were, in science, taste, and art. Business men who have not time to read long histories or elaborately compiled scientific works, and indolent ones who have not industry enough to do so, seek information or pleasure in perusing their periodicals, while the traveller as he is hurried along over the ocean or the railroad, and the overwrought student as he closes his ponderous folio or lays aside his pen, alike find recreation and relief in the lighter and more mirthful contributions which, judiciously dispersed, usually grace the pages of our monthly and semi-monthly press. Books, too, of late have accumulated to such a fearful extent that the bibliographer finds it impossible to read even a moiety of them to ascertain their value, and so is forced to form his opinion of them second-hand by accepting the dicta of the industrious reviewer, whose decision, when judiciously and intelligently given, thus becomes of the utmost benefit to authors and readers.

Of late years the number and variety of English magazines have greatly increased, and we presume the patronage bestowed on them has kept pace with their growth. We would be glad to be in a position to say that, in liberality of spirit, fairness and originality, the improvement is equally apparent; but such is not the case, and in this respect forms a marked contrast to the progress which distinguishes a similar class of publications in this and some European countries. Propriety of expression and artistic construction of sentences, which have always characterized the composition of English writers, even of second or third order of ability, remain, but much of the force, mental grasp, and wide range of view, as well as profound and exact knowledge, which once distinguished their criticisms and essays, are wanting. We are aware that the generation of able men whose genius once illuminated the columns of Blackwood, Fraser, Household Words, etc., has passed away; but why have they left us no literary heirs, no worthy successors, to fill their places and wield their trenchant pens? Has the English mind deteriorated, or is it that English public taste has become so corrupted by the unwholesome sweets of the Trollopes, the Braddons, and like sensationalists, that it rejects the salutary food presented it by more serious and natural writers? We can hardly believe that this latter is the efficient cause; for before the era of Griffin, Dickens, Thackeray, Lever, and many other favorite authors, several of whose admirable novels and essays first reached the public through the magazines, the taste of the masses was even more vitiated by the romances of the last century, hundreds[620] of which were sure to be found on the shelves of every circulating library in the country. Neither can we properly attribute this "dearth of fame" to a want of adequate pecuniary reward; for we are assured that encouragement in this respect is sufficiently ample, and, compared with that of a generation ago, might be called munificent. We are, therefore, forced to the conclusion that there is an actual present deficiency of mentality among the majority of English writers—another indication, perhaps, of that decay of the Anglo-Saxon race, so-called, in England which has been so long and so pertinaciously asserted by her rivals. It is certainly true that the spirit of money-getting is more and more engrossing the attention of the people; and, while other and younger nations, like Russia, Germany, and the United States, are rapidly growing into immense proportions, both artistic and literary as well as politically, England, wrapped up mentally in her own self-conceit, as she is geographically shackled by the four seas, is sinking into comparative provincialism.

The tone and temper of her writers when treating foreign subjects, we submit, amply prove this, were all other evidence wanting. Their views of the affairs of other nations lack fairness, amplitude, and, not unfrequently, truthfulness, and always seem like those of men who look upon the broad outer world through the wrong end of a spy-glass. Can anything be more unjust than the following passage, which we find en passant in an article on France in the May number of Blackwood?

Apart from the want of generosity exhibited by the writer above in thus ungraciously stigmatizing an unfortunate ally, his estimate of her condition is exceedingly unfair, and, as he professes in the article to have been a frequent visitor to her shores in bygone days, we must attribute his obliquity to something else than ignorance. In her recent struggle, France showed nothing like cowardice; but, on the contrary, her children, veterans and recruits, exhibited a courage and heroism worthy of her proudest days of military glory. Her signal and rapid overthrow was due to other causes than the want of bravery of her soldiers. Within the space of about two hundred days, her badly organized, poorly equipped, and generally indifferently commanded troops fought seventeen pitched battles and one hundred and sixty-five general engagements against three-quarters of a million of the best disciplined troops in Europe. Of the merits of the quarrel we have nothing to say, but we feel assured that the troops of Kaiser William would feel little complimented at being told that their splendid victories were gained over a demoralized and cowardly nation. As to France being destitute of morals, the contrary is the fact. It is true that Paris, like London and other large centres of population, contains much that is immoral and unholy; but Paris is no longer France, and those best acquainted with the whole country allege that religion was never more securely enthroned in the hearts of the people, nor her ministers so much respected, as at the present moment.

American questions are treated by[621] our transatlantic contemporaries in a manner somewhat different. Occasionally they speak of us in impartial and even complimentary terms, but generally in a vein of lofty patronage, such as an indulgent and much-enduring father might be supposed to use to his erring but not altogether godless offspring. If we exhibit a leaning toward Russia, we are forthwith admonished to beware of encouraging despotism; if we recall our ancient friendship with France, we are likely to be reminded that with England we are the same in language, blood, and religion; but, if there is a treaty favorable to the "mother-country" to be concocted, or a European coalition adverse to the interests of our mother aforesaid apprehended, Shakespeare, Milton, and Newton are resurrected and become our joint inheritance, and Great Britain and the United States are instantly declared to be two, and the only two, "free governments in the universe" having a common interest and a common destiny. Occasionally this maternal surveillance is varied by an allusion to our social or topographical peculiarities, really ludicrous from its very absurdity, while it shows, with all this assumption of superiority, how very inaccurate is the knowledge of our kind relations. In a late article on the destruction of the ancient forests, a writer in the Fortnightly Review gravely protests against "the further destruction of scenery unique in Great Britain, and, if represented in America at all, but imperfectly represented by the oak openings of Michigan." Now, if an American were to talk of the extensive prairies of Caermarthenshire or the picturesque mountains of Kent, his ignorance of the physical peculiarities of even those small subdivisions would be apt to evoke the severe censure of our London critics.

Again, in their reviews of American works, the English magazines, whether through design or from want of knowing better, usually fall into serious error in respect to the constituent elements of our population. They affect to regard the American mind simply as a mere emanation of that of England, weakened, it is true, by time and distance, but still worthy of some consideration. How such a patent fallacy can be tolerated in that country, our nearest European neighbor as we are her best customer, is incomprehensible. We have, it is true, generally adopted what was good in her civil polity at the time of the Revolution, and the majority of us speak her language as our native tongue; but we are no more English than we are German, Irish, French, or Spanish in our origin, temperament, habits of thought, or development of genius. We are all these combined, as well as something more which only the free spirit of a republic can call into being, and, if modesty would permit us, we could say with truthfulness that there is contained within that word "American" all the best elements of every European race. The latest instance of this self-deception we recently noticed in Saint Paul's Magazine, in what was otherwise a very excellent notice of Hawthorne's works.

But America has the advantage of the practical arguments of material prosperity and rapidly developing æsthetic tastes on her side, and is fast becoming indifferent to adverse criticism. With less fortunate countries, like Ireland, for instance, the case is altogether different. The English magazine writers, when at a loss for an illustration or "an awful example," never hesitate to draw on the history or pretended history of the sister kingdom for the required materials. We have before us some[622] dozen periodicals published in London and Edinburgh, the majority of the articles in which are either on Irish topics or contain allusions to the affairs of that unfortunate and misgoverned people, and that, too, as it may be supposed, in no very partial or eulogistic terms. This unrelenting hostility to a weak nation, while it may do very well for placemen and land-agents who live by the griefs and afflictions of others, is unworthy the chivalrous spirit which should distinguish the true knight of the quill. We fear, however, that Burke's saying with regard to the chivalry of the middle ages is equally applicable to our own times, and that the free lances of the English metropolis, who will fight in any and every cause, are more in demand than the earnest searchers after truth and the honest correctors of public morals.

We argue this from two facts: It is not unusual for the same person to be employed in writing for two or more publications altogether opposed in aim and character; and, secondly, from the total absence of anything like religious sentiment in nearly the entire periodical press, if we except those published in the direct interests of Protestantism, and in those it degenerates into absolute bigotry. We do not say that all the magazines are positively immoral, but they certainly are negatively so, and in this respect probably more dangerous to the well-being of society. Take their method of treating some late publications which have been much spoken of, for example. We find that Darwin's elaborately nonsensical theory of the origin of the human race is handled with as much delicacy and seriousness as if the reviewers had grave doubts in their own minds as to whether their ancestors had or had not been monkeys, or at least as if they considered it an open question not yet definitely settled; while the blasphemies of Renan, instead of eliciting condemnation and reproof, are carefully and quietly reproduced and laid before the reader with a gentle caution against their novelty. Still, the prevailing tone of the English magazines can scarcely be said to be actively anti-Catholic or unchristian. It partakes more of paganism in a modified form, which, while not openly violating the laws of society, practically ignores the interference of Providence in the affairs of men, like the Universalist preacher whose highest eulogy, as pronounced by a friend, was that he was perfectly neutral in politics and religion. The short prose fiction sketches in which the English periodicals abound and which in artistic merit far excel ours, are based on the same inamiable sentimentalism—a sort of polite indifferentism, by which the heroes and heroines are made to walk through life unconscious that there is a Being to whom the fall of a sparrow is not unknown, and who directs the destiny of nations as well as individuals. Fiction, if not the best, is certainly a very effective medium of communicating correct ideas and pure morality to the young, and, while it should be read sparingly, cannot in this age be altogether dispensed with; and therefore it is that too much care cannot be taken to see that it is not only free from grossness, but that it is actively and primarily permeated by the spirit of religion. Where this is not observed, as we regret to find in the case of the English magazines, mere style of composition, felicity of diction, and power of description count for nothing. They are simply evidences of the perversion of the gifts of God, which ought always and in all places to be used for the greater glory and honor of the Giver.

MEMOIR OF FATHER JOHN DE BRÉBEUF, S.J.

Well acquainted as was Father Brébeuf, from long study and intelligent observation, with the character and customs of the Hurons, he knew thoroughly how to propitiate their favor and regain their respect. His manly and courageous bearing during the prevalence of the fever, and his undaunted coolness and fearlessness of death in the midst of the late persecution, had won for him the admiration of all the nobler spirits in the tribe. In December, 1637, he gave a grand banquet, to which were invited the chiefs and warriors of the country. He there addressed his assembled guests on the necessity of embracing the true faith. In January of the next year, the head chief of the Hurons, or Aondecho, as he was called, returned the compliment by giving a similar banquet, to which Father Brébeuf was invited; when he came to the banquet, the chief presented him to the assembly, not as a guest, but as the host of the occasion, addressing them thus:

"Not I, but Echon, assembled you; the object of the deliberation I know not; but be it what it may, it must, I am convinced, be of great moment Let all then hearken attentively." The ever-ready and zealous missionary then addressed the assembly on the same subject—the true faith. He followed this up with another banquet in February, where his address was followed by the evident but silent conviction of his hearers. At its close, the Aondecho arose, and exhorted his warriors and subjects to yield themselves to the counsels of the fathers. The deep guttural expression of approval, ho! ho! ho! resounded on all sides, and the grateful missionaries made their joyful thanksgiving by chanting the hymn of the Holy Ghost. Then, with one acclaim, the chiefs and warriors adopted Father Brébeuf into their tribe, and created him one of the chiefs of the land—a dignity which invested him with the power of summoning assemblies of the people in his own cabin.

In the spring of 1638, the fever began to disappear from the country. Now, too, the first Christian marriage was solemnized. The wife of Joseph Chiwattenwha had been baptized in March, and the two were united together in holy matrimony by Father Brébeuf on St. Joseph's Day. Peter Tsiwendaentaha united with them in approaching the holy communion.

The public duties of the mission occupied the entire time of Father Brébeuf. The abandonment of Ihonitiria, in consequence of the recent scourge, caused Fathers le Mercier, Ragueneau, Garnier, Jogues, Pijart, and Chatelain to remove that mission to Teananstayaé, the residence of Louis de Sainte Foi. But they felt great fears about that place, since its chief had shortly before instigated the warriors to canvass the murder of the missionaries at Ossossané. But Father Brébeuf, with characteristic courage and zeal, went to the village, and as a chief of the nation summoned a council of the chiefs and warriors. The mission was formally announced on the spot, and we shall soon see the fathers offering up the Holy Mass at Teananstayaé. The year before, an Iroquois[624] prisoner had received baptism there from the hands of Father Brébeuf; and now nearly a hundred prisoners, condemned to death, were instructed and baptized by the missionaries on the eve of their execution. About this time an entire tribe, the Wenrohronons, abandoned by their allies, the Neutrals, came and threw themselves upon the hospitality of the Hurons. They were wasting away from the effects of the recent plague, and the fathers at Ossossané rushed to their relief. They nursed their sick, instructed and baptized their dying, many of whom expired with the waters of baptism fresh upon their brows. The Hurons themselves were moved in favor of a religion capable of producing such heroic examples; and on the 11th of November, St. Martin's Day, one entire family, and the heads of two others, were baptized in health. On the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, others were converted and baptized, numbering in all thirty; so that at Christmas there was assembled, around that rude but holy altar in the wilderness, a sincere and fervent little congregation of Christians, adoring and offering their gifts to the infant Saviour.

The missionaries were now distributed in sets of four, consisting of three of the earlier and one of the recently arrived fathers, at the various points through the country where missions were located. Many new missions were opened, and the flying visits to villages whose missions had been broken up by the persecution were renewed. Among the new missions now opened was the one already alluded to at Teananstayaé, or St. Joseph's, whose commencement on New Year's Day was cheered with fifty baptisms. The indefatigable Brébeuf was its founder, and with him were associated Father Jogues, whose Indian name was Ondesson, and Father Ragueneau. The most perfect system, both as regards the internal regulation of the affairs of the mission-house and its inmates, and the external labors of the fathers, was introduced by Father Brébeuf, which enabled them to perform an almost incredible amount of missionary labor. Among the natives, an aged chief named Ondehorrea, who was now a Christian, was of great assistance to them in their labors. He had once repulsed the fathers from his bed of illness, and, having called in the sorcerers, he then rejected them, and recalled the fathers, who were at once at his side. He was soon sufficiently instructed to be baptized, and at the moment that the saving waters touched his forehead, he arose suddenly in perfect health, to the amazement of all. He ever afterwards showed his sincerity as a Christian, and his gratitude to the fathers, by remaining their constant friend and faithful assistant.

A curious affair now arose, which will convey to us some idea of the trials with which those devoted missionaries had to contend. A woman living in a little village near Ossossané, as she was passing along one night, saw the moon fall upon her head, and immediately change into a beautiful female, holding a child in her arms. The apparition declared herself to be the sovereign of that country and all the nations dwelling therein, and required that her sovereign power should be acknowledged by each nation's making a present or offering. The apparition designated the offering which each nation should bring, not omitting the French, who were required to present blue blankets. The woman was taken ill, and demanded that the order of the divinity should be complied with for[625] her recovery. A council was accordingly held at Ossossané, to which the missionaries were invited. They attended, and were bold enough to oppose so wicked a homage to a false deity. But all was in vain, for the whole country was in a ferment of excitement. The most abominable orgies known to savage life were celebrated in honor of this new goddess, and men were hurrying in all directions to procure the required presents. Soon all the offerings were collected together, except the blue blankets of the French, and the missionaries were called upon to do homage in the manner required of them. They resolutely refused compliance with such a requisition, and, as may be well imagined, they immediately became the objects of general indignation. Amid threats and imprecations, and the glare of the uplifted tomahawk, those courageous priests refused to let a blanket go from their cabin, except upon condition of the immediate cessation of all that was going on, and the dismissal of the woman. These terms were rejected, the orgies were continued, and peril surrounded the fathers at every step; still they could not be induced to yield the points. Fortunately for the missionaries, however, the apparition paid the woman another visit, and released the French from the unholy tribute.

In September, 1639, new missionaries arrived. Unfortunately, an Indian in one of the canoes of their flotilla was infected with the small-pox, and that disease was thus introduced into the country. The malady began to spread with fearful rapidity, and, as usual, the origin of this evil, as of all others, was attributed to the missionaries. Persecution was at once renewed, the cross was violently dragged down from their houses, their cabins were invaded, their crucifixes torn from their persons, one of them was cruelly beaten, and all were threatened with death. So great was their peril at one time that they calmly prepared themselves for martyrdom. They were finally ordered peremptorily from the town. In the midst of these persecutions, the heart of Father Brébeuf was consoled with a vision: the Blessed Virgin, as the Mother of Sorrows, came to console her son and to confirm his courage; she appeared to him with her heart transfixed with swords. At once his resolution was taken; he remained at his post of danger and of care, and continued his missionary labors.

In consequence of these repeated persecutions, and the constant exposure of the fathers to the renewal of them by the malice of the medicine-men, it was determined to erect a missionary residence apart from the villages and their vicious population, which might prove a safe retreat for the fathers in time of trouble, and a convenient place for instructing the catechumens and others well disposed to receive the faith. During the years that Father Brébeuf was at Ossossané, displaying the most heroic zeal and disinterested charity, he had met with the blackest ingratitude from the persons whom he had fed by depriving himself of nourishment, and on one occasion he was ignominiously beaten in public. The other fathers had suffered similar indignities and maltreatment. While glorying, like the saints, in these sufferings for the sake of God and his church, he yet saw the necessity, for the sake of the mission, of a separate residence. It was this necessity that originated St. Mary's on the river Wye.

In the various missions whose establishments we have mentioned, there[626] had been baptized up to the summer of 1640 about one thousand persons: of these two hundred and sixty were infants, and though some of them were restored to health, by means apparently miraculous, most of them went in baptismal purity to swell the ranks of the church triumphant in heaven. It was about this time that Father Brébeuf ceased to be superior of the mission, and was succeeded by Father Jerome Lalemant. The Jesuit, ever true to his institute, passed from command to obedience with the gladness and alacrity known only to the humble soldiers of the cross. His career as superior, arduous and glorious, was also abundant in fruit to the church. He was indeed the father of the Huron mission. Our eloquent Bancroft, in speaking of his and his companions' labors to introduce Christianity among the aborigines of our continent, says that St. Joseph's chapel, wherein, "in the gaze of thronging crowds, vespers and matins began to be chanted, and the sacred bread was consecrated by solemn Mass, amazed the hereditary guardians of the council-fires of the Huron tribes. Beautiful testimony of the equality of the human race! the sacred wafer, emblem of the divinity in man, all that the church offered to the princes and nobles of the European world, was shared with the humblest of the savage neophytes. The hunter, as he returned from his wild roamings, was taught to hope for eternal rest; the braves, as they came from war, were warned of the wrath that kindles against sinners a never-dying fire, fiercer far than the fires of the Mohawks; and the idlers of the Indian villages were told the exciting tale of the Saviour's death for their redemption."

Father Brébeuf, already the founder of so many missions, now starts out with unabated ardor to open others. Accompanied by Father Chaumonot, he advanced into the country of the Neutrals, naming the first town he entered "All Saints." He pushed onward to the Niagara, to the residence of Tsoharissen, the chief whom all the Neuter towns obeyed. Hither the calumnies of some hostile Hurons had preceded him, and represented Echon as the most terrible of sorcerers. The two missionaries were repulsed on all sides, and in their retreat from place to place were pursued by the arrows of their enemies. Still they persevered, and they succeeded in visiting eighteen towns, preached the Gospel in ten of them, and announced for the first time the words of truth to at least three thousand souls. During these labors, the keen eye of Brébeuf saw the importance to New France of an occupation of the Niagara by missions and trading posts; the travels of the missionaries would be greatly shortened, the warlike Iroquois restrained, the Hurons saved from a war of extermination, and the whole interior continent opened to European civilization and the faith of Christ. The plan of Father Brébeuf received little attention at court: a neglect which decided the fate of empires. We cannot determine precisely how far Father Brébeuf advanced into the country; only one town received the missionaries, which they called St. Michael's. They, however, approached as far into the Iroquois country as was possible; still Bancroft says it is uncertain that he ever stood upon the territory of our republic.

But the hostile Hurons, not contented with the furious persecution they had raised against the fathers in their own country, pursued them into their new mission. Two Huron deputies soon arrived, and proclaimed a tempting reward for such as would[627] deliver the country from those devoted men. While the council was engaged in debating the question of his expulsion or death, Father Brébeuf was making his examen of conscience in the cabin where he lodged, and suddenly he beheld a fearful spectre: the figure held three darts, which were successively hurled against him and his companion, but were averted by an unseen hand. Presaging evil from the vision, the two fathers made their confessions to each other, and, thus prepared to die, they went to rest. They afterward learned from their post, who returned to the cabin late at night, that the session of the council was long and stormy; three times the young braves had insisted on butchering them on the spot, but were restrained by the sachems. But now, such was the state of the feeling aroused against them, that they could not advance a step in safety. Turned from every shelter, and encountering death at every step, they wandered as outcasts over the country. Believing that their longer continuance was only calculated to increase the savage hatred of the people against them, and retard the introduction of the faith, the fathers retreated to the Neuter town which they had named All Saints. Here they wintered and spent the time in instructing the people. In the spring, they advanced as far as Teotongniatou, or St. Williams, where a charitable woman gave them a shelter. While thus lingering, Father Brébeuf arranged his Huron dictionary to the Neuter dialect, in which he had made considerable progress in four months. No sooner had the ameliorating influences of spring rendered travelling just possible, even to such travellers as those who had been accustomed for years to brave every hardship, than Father Brébeuf and his companions started on one of the most extraordinary journeys on record. Already spent with fatigues and privations, and pursued by danger, Father Brébeuf had to remain six days in the woods, sleeping on the snow, and without a covering or shed over his head. The cold was so intense that the trees themselves did split with a noise like the crack of a rifle. A special Providence protected him, for he exhibited no evidence that he had been cold or exposed. Loaded with the provisions which he was compelled to carry, as there were no relays on the way, he travelled two days across a lake of ice; and while thus struggling onward, his heart and eyes lifted up to heaven, he fell upon the ice. His portly frame gave such violence to his fall that he was unable to rise from the ice. After a long time he was lifted up by one of his companions, and then found that his extremities were palsied, and he could not lift his feet from the ground. Besides, his collar-bone was broken. He bore the last in silence, as it was not apparent. This fact was only discovered two years later by the surgeon who attended him at Quebec. In vain his companions begged the privilege of drawing him the remaining thirty-six miles of the journey in a sled, and at other times to assist him on the way; he declined all their generous offers, and labored onward, scarcely able to drag one foot after the other. It was thus he crossed the level country, and when he came to the mountains, he crept up on his hands and feet, and allowed himself to slide down on the opposite side, retarding his too rapid descent with his bruised and aching hands. Thus he completed his journey, which for love of suffering, patience, and humility compares with some of the most heroic achievements recorded of the saints. His companions[628] went forward on other labors, but Father Brébeuf, while waiting for the next flotilla bound for Quebec, determined to take what he styled his "repose"—a repose busily spent in making important arrangements for the missions, which his superior knowledge of everything relating to them enabled him alone to effect.

On the passage to Three Rivers, Father Brébeuf was accompanied by Sondatsaa, an exemplary catechumen, and a party chiefly Christians or catechumens. They arrived at Three Rivers after a narrow escape from the murderous blades of the Mohawks, who were lying in wait for them. Finding it impossible for Fathers Ragueneau and Menard to reach their missions in Huronia without a strong guard, Father Brébeuf proceeded with Father Ragueneau and Sondatsaa to Sillery, in order to obtain succor for them. Here, moved by the entreaties of all, and especially of Sondatsaa himself, and having completed his instruction, Father Brébeuf consented to baptize that zealous convert. The ceremony was performed at Sillery, on the 27th of June, with great pomp, and in the presence of a concourse of Indians. The Chevalier de Montmagny was godfather to the convert, who received the Christian name of Charles. He now returned, a Christian, to his own country, bearing in his little flotilla the two fathers destined for the Huron mission. While Father Brébeuf was dwelling at Sillery, the next flotilla of Hurons that came bore its usual freight of calumnies against Echon. They now accused him of being colleagued with the Iroquois for the destruction of the Hurons. This renewal of calumny checked, for a time, his success; but he continued his preparations and arrangements for the Neuter mission and his endeavors to convert his persecutors to the faith. He endeavored to persuade some of these Hurons to remain and winter with him, in order to receive instructions. Two of them, who were left behind in the chase, were induced to remain, and Father Brébeuf, after the usual instruction and probation, had the consolation of receiving these into the one fold of the One Shepherd. He also succeeded in gaining a number of other Huron converts. Father Nimont, struck with the happy results of his labors, resolved to detain him another winter at Sillery. It was during this summer that Father Jogues came to Sillery for supplies. Here these future martyrs met in the prosecution of their noble labors; but soon the unconquerable Brébeuf saw his saintly companion set forth on his perilous mission over the country infested by the Iroquois, to carry relief to the Huron missionaries. Himself was soon to follow.

In the spring of 1643, Father Brébeuf proceeded to Three Rivers, where he was cheered by tidings of Father Jogues. That holy missionary, in returning from Sillery to bring succor to his companions in Huronia, had fallen a captive into the hands of the fierce Iroquois, and his fate was the object of intense anxiety. Father Brébeuf now learned that he was still living. The bold and generous Brébeuf arranged with a Huron, who was going out, to wait for letters to Father Jogues at Fort Richelieu; the father, bearing the letters, penetrated as far as the fort, but the courage of the Huron messenger failed; he had passed and was afraid to return, and the Jesuit was compelled to retrace his steps without succeeding in conveying a word of comfort and encouragement to his captive brother. In the spring of 1644, Father Bressani also, in endeavoring to reach Huronia, fell into[629] the hands of the Iroquois. But the Huron missionaries must be succored at every hazard, and Father Brébeuf was now chosen for this perilous enterprise. Setting out in the summer, with an escort of twenty soldiers given to him by the governor, he reached the Huron missions in safety on the 7^th of September. The Huron mission had ever been the dearest object of Father Brébeuf's heart. Restored now to his chosen vineyard, he devoted himself to the task of converting those tribes with a zeal and an energy worthy of his former glorious career. Year after year he continued his heroic labors; and, though our pen cannot follow him, step by step, through the trials, sacrifices, and exertions which his seraphic love inspired him to encounter, they were recorded in minutest detail by angelic pens in heaven. Success crowned the efforts of Father Brébeuf and his companions. Persecution ceased, and the whole country was becoming conquered to the faith. In August, 1646, Father Gabriel Lalemant, full of zeal and courage, was joined with Father Brébeuf in the mission of St. Ignatius, which embraced the town of St. Louis and some smaller villages. By this time, the horrid superstitions of the country had given way to the pure and holy rites of Catholic worship, and the cross, so lately despised, feared, and hated, had now become the object of love and veneration. Father Bressani writes: "The faith had now made the conquest of the entire country." "We might say they were now ripe for heaven; that naught was needed but the reaping-hook of death to lay the harvest up in the safe garner-house of paradise." "Religion seemed at last the peaceful mistress of the land."

Allusion has several times been made to the visions from on high which were mercifully sent to warn Father Brébeuf of danger impending, or to sustain him under the extraordinary afflictions, persecutions, and sufferings which at times seemed to exceed even his remarkable powers of endurance. Some of these have already been described. To the Protestant and non-Catholic mind, these miraculous communications to the saints are but the imaginings of morbid and diseased intellects. Parkman, in his Jesuits in North America, relates the following visions of Father Brébeuf only to classify them as psychological phenomena: "It is," he says, "scarcely necessary to add that signs and voices from another world, visitations from hell and visions from heaven, were incidents of no rare occurrence in the lives of these ardent apostles. To Brébeuf, whose deep nature, like a furnace white-hot, glowed with the still intensity of his enthusiasm, they were especially frequent. Demons, in troops, appeared before him, sometimes in the guise of men, sometimes as bears, wolves, or wild-cats. He called on God, and the apparitions vanished. Death, like a skeleton, sometimes menaced him; and once, as he faced it with an unquailing eye, it fell powerless at his feet. A demon, in the form of a woman, assailed him with the temptation which beset St. Benedict among the rocks of Subiaco; but Brébeuf signed the cross, and the infernal siren melted into air. He saw the vision of a vast and gorgeous palace, and a miraculous voice assured him that such was to be the reward of those who dwelt in savage hovels for the cause of God. Angels appeared to him, and more than once St. Joseph and the Virgin were visibly present before his sight. Once, when he was among the Neutral nation, in the winter of 1640, he beheld the ominous apparition of a great cross slowly approaching from the quarter where lay[630] the country of the Iroquois. He told the vision to his companions.

"To explain such phenomena is the province of psychology and not of history. Their occurrence is no matter of surprise, and it would be superfluous to doubt that they were recounted in good faith and with a full belief in their reality. In these enthusiasts we find striking examples of one of the morbid forces of human nature; yet, in candor, let us do honor to what was genuine in them—that principle of self-abnegation which is the life of true religion, and which is vital no less to the highest forms of heroism."

Bancroft, alluding to the same subject, and to the life, austerities, and self-sacrifice of Father Brébeuf, says: "The missionaries themselves possessed the weaknesses and the virtues of their order. For fifteen years enduring the infinite labors and perils of the Huron mission, and exhibiting, as it was said, 'an absolute pattern of every religious virtue,' Jean de Brébeuf, respecting even the nod of his distant superiors, bowed his mind and his judgment to obedience. Besides the assiduous fatigues of his office, each day, and sometimes twice in the day, he applied to himself the lash; beneath a bristling hair-shirt he wore an iron girdle, armed on all sides with projecting points; his fasts were frequent; almost always his pious vigils continued deep into the night. In vain did Asmodeus assume for him the forms of earthly beauty; his eye rested benignantly on visions of divine things. Once, imparadised in a trance, he beheld the Mother of him whose cross he bore, surrounded by a crowd of virgins, in the beatitudes of heaven. Once, as he himself has recorded, while engaged in penance, he saw Christ unfold his arms to embrace him with the utmost love, promising oblivion of his sins. Once, late at night, while praying in the silence, he had a vision of an infinite number of crosses, and, with mighty heart, he strove, again and again, to grasp them all. Often he saw the shapes of foul fiends, now appearing as madmen, now as raging beasts; and often he beheld the image of death, a bloodless form, by the side of the stake, struggling with bonds, and at last falling, as a harmless spectre, at his feet. Having vowed to seek out suffering for the greater glory of God, he renewed that vow every day, at the moment of tasting the sacred wafer; and as his cupidity for martyrdom grew into a passion, he exclaimed, 'What shall I render to thee, Jesus my Lord, for all thy benefits? I will accept thy cup, and invoke thy name: and in sight of the Eternal Father and the Holy Spirit, of the most holy Mother of Christ and St. Joseph, before angels, apostles, and martyrs, before St. Ignatius and Francis Xavier, he made a vow never to decline an opportunity of martyrdom, and never to receive the death-blow but with joy."

In the eye of Catholic faith, these visions and special revelations are but the fruits and blessings of a revealed and supernatural religion. While they do not fall to the lot of us ordinary Christians, nor are they necessary helps in the little we accomplish for God and his church, it is difficult to conceive how the saints and martyrs could have performed their sublime actions, or met their cruel and unjust deaths for God's sake with a smile—sacrifices so far above and even repugnant to our nature—without the aid of these supernatural supports. The dedication of himself to martyrdom, and the[631] heroic courage and joy with which he met his appalling fate, could only be achieved in the bosom of a church believing in miracles, and presenting to her children the crown of martyrdom as the highest reward attainable by man. The visions of Father Brébeuf, like other miracles, depend wholly upon the evidence and circumstances by which they are supported to entitle them to belief. It was not his habit to disclose them; it was only when commanded by his superiors that he committed them to writing. They thus rest upon his solemn written words, and upon their perfect agreement in many instances with contemporaneous facts transpiring beyond his sight and knowledge. To suppose him to have been deluded would be to contradict every quality of mind and character so universally attributed to him by all Protestant historians.

Father Brébeuf's aspirations for the crown of martyrdom were prophetic of his appointed and glorious end. But to him all historians have attributed the most practical views in relation to the Indian missions, and the coolest and wisest manner of dealing with them. There was no mere sentimentality in his nature. He addressed his powerful energies and resources to the actual conversion of the Indians to Christianity, and we have seen how great were the results he achieved. But now, alas! a dark cloud was seen gathering over the happy Christian republic of the Hurons. Already, during the winter of 1649, the fierce Iroquois hordes, numbering upwards of one thousand, had secretly passed over a space of six hundred miles of Huron forests, and on the sixteenth of March they appeared suddenly before the town of St. Ignatius, while the chiefs and warriors were absent on the chase, and the old men, women, and children were buried in sleep. Strongly as the place was fortified, this overwhelming force carried it by storm, and murdered its unsuspecting inhabitants. Three only escaped, half-naked, from the slaughter, and gave the alarm to the village of St. Louis, where the fathers were then laboring. Here preparations were at once made to offer a gallant but unequal resistance. The women and children were sent over forty miles of ice and snow to seek a shelter in the cabins of the Petuns. The chiefs exhorted the fathers also to fly, since they could not go to the war. But Father Brébeuf, with all the heroism of his great soul, answered that there was something more necessary than fire and steel in such a crisis; it was to have recourse to God and the sacraments, which none could administer but they—that he and his companion, the gentle Lalemant, would abandon them only in death. The two fathers, says Father Bressani, "now hurried from place to place, exhorting all to prayer, administering the sacraments of penance and baptism to the sick and the catechumens, in a word, confirming all in our holy faith. The enemy in fact remained at the first fork only long enough to provide for the safe keeping of the prisoners and the safety of those left as a garrison to guard them. After this they marched, or rather rushed, directly upon St. Louis. Here none were now left but the old and sick, the missionaries, and about a hundred braves to defend the place. They held out for some time, and even repulsed the enemy at the first assault, with the loss of about thirty killed, but the number of the assailants being incomparably greater, they overcame all resistance, and, cutting down with their axes the palisades which defended the besieged, were soon in possession of the town. Then[632] putting all to fire and steel, they consumed in their very town, in their very cabins, all the old, sick, and infirm who had been unable to save themselves by flight."

What contrasts the events of history present! While this relentless slaughter was at its height, and the worst passions of the fiercest of heathens were let loose, the scene of blood, fire, and death was relieved by the presence of Christian heroes the most gentle, merciful, and self-sacrificing. They stood in the breach to the last stroke of the enemy, encouraging the dying Christians to fortitude and hope, the wounded to patience, and the prisoners to courage and perseverance in the faith. The palisades of St. Louis finally were cut away. The infuriate Iroquois swept in, and the whole surviving garrison, warriors and priests, were all made prisoners together. The savages rejoiced especially at the capture of such a prisoner as Father Brébeuf, whom they immediately showed signs of torturing, when a generous Oneida chief, more magnanimous than the rest, purchased him from his captors for a large price in wampum. It seemed as though he was about to be deprived of his coveted crown; but no! the victors retracted their bargain, and Father Brébeuf was again seized by his enemies. He and Father Lalemant were stripped, bound fast, and cruelly beaten, and their nails were torn out. But lest some change in the tide of war should deprive them of their prisoners, the latter were all sent, closely bound and tightly secured, to St. Ignatius. Here, as they entered the town, they were beaten and bruised by the rabble with sticks and clubs. The large and conspicuous frame of Father Brébeuf attracted a double share of blows on his already bruised and lacerated head and body. In the midst of these cruelties, he was forgetful of himself, and anxious only that his Christian Hurons, who were now his fellow-prisoners, should be encouraged and consoled in their extreme danger. From the stake to which he had been tied, beholding them assembled for the torture, he lost sight completely of his own greater calamities and sufferings, and thus he addressed them: "My children, let us lift up our eyes to heaven in the worst of our torments; let us remember that God beholdeth all we suffer, and will soon be our reward exceeding great. Let us die in this faith, and hope from his goodness the accomplishment of his promises. I pity you more than myself, but support manfully the little torment that yet remains. It will end with our lives; the glory which follows will have no end." How great must have been his consolation when he heard their heroic answer, a convincing proof that Indians may be truly converted to Christianity, and possess the constancy to die in the faith. "'Tis well, Echon," they cried, "our souls will be in heaven, while our bodies suffer on earth; entreat God to show us mercy; we shall invoke him to our latest breath." Enraged at his exhortations and unflinching zeal, even in death, some Hurons adopted by the Iroquois rushed upon him and burned his flesh with a fire which they kindled near him, they cut off his hands, and while Father Lalemant's flesh was cut and punctured with awls and other sharp instruments, and hot irons placed under his armpits, they led him forth to torture and death before the eyes of Father Brébeuf, in order to add to the agonies of the latter. As Father Brébeuf continued to speak and to exhort his Christians, and to threaten the vengeance of heaven upon their persecutors, they[633] cut off his lower lip and nose, and thrust a red-hot iron down his throat. Even after this, when he saw his superior, the gentle Lalemant, led out to death, he called out to him with a broken voice in the words of St. Paul, "We are made a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men." Throwing himself at Father Brébeuf's feet, Father Lalemant was ruthlessly torn away, and in a few moments he was enveloped in flames at the stake, and his gentle soul preceded that of the intrepid Brébeuf to heaven. Turning next upon Father Brébeuf, they threw a collar of red-hot axes around his neck, which seethed and burned their way into his flesh; he stood, in the midst of such agonies, erect and motionless, apparently insensible to pain, intent only on vindicating the faith he had so long and faithfully announced. His tormentors were awed by his constancy, which seemed to them a proof that he was more than man. But they again taxed their ingenuity for new tortures. An apostate Huron, who had been a convert of Father Brébeuf in the Huron mission, and had since been adopted by the Iroquois, was the first to signalize the zeal of the renegade. He proposed to pour hot water on the head of Father Brébeuf, in return for the quantities of cold water he had poured on the heads of others in baptism. The suggestion was received with fiendish joy, and soon the kettle was swung. While the water was boiling, they added fresh cruelties to their victim's sufferings. They crushed his mouth and jaw with huge stones, thrust heated iron and stones into his wounds, and with his own eyes he beheld them devour the slices of flesh which they cut from his legs and arms. Let us not cut short the appalling story; for surely, what a martyr bore a Christian may have courage to Three.'and bringing the scalding water from the caldron, they poured it over his bruised head and lacerated body amidst shouts and imprecations, and, as they did so, the high-priests of the occasion mockingly said to him: "We baptize you that you may be happy in heaven; for nobody can be saved without a good baptism." By this time Father Brébeuf's mouth and tongue could no longer articulate, but even yet by his erect posture, the struggling and brave expression of his almost expiring eye, and even by his half-formed words, he encouraged the Christian captives to perseverance, and endeavored to deter the savages from torturing them by threats of heaven's vengeance. Again cutting slices from his body and devouring them before his eyes, they told him that his flesh was good. Some of the renegade Hurons, more fiendish than even the Iroquois, again mocked him by saying: "You told us that the more one suffers on earth, the happier he is in heaven. We wish to make you happy; we torment you, because we love you; and you ought to thank us for it." They next scalped him, and even after this they poured the boiling water over his head, repeating the torture three times; they cut off his feet, and splitting open his stalworth and generous chest, they crowded around and drank with exultation the warm blood of the expiring hero. His eye, firm and expressive to the last, was now dimmed in death, and at last a chief tore out his noble and brave heart, cut it into a thousand pieces, and distributed it to the savage cannibals that crowded around to receive a share of so exalted and unconquerable a victim. Thus perished of earth, while crowned of heaven, the illustrious Brébeuf, "the founder of the Huron mission—its truest hero, its greatest martyr."

The Iroquois, now glutted with[634] carnage, and apprehensive of the approach of a superior force, retired to their own country. The fathers from St. Mary's came to St. Ignatius to bestow the last honors upon the earthly remains of their martyred companions. It was with difficulty they discovered their burned and mangled bodies among the mass of slain the victorious Iroquois had left. Their precious remains were solemnly and sorrowfully carried to St. Mary's, and affectionately and religiously interred. A portion of Father Brébeuf's relics were subsequently carried to Quebec. A silver bust, containing the head of the martyr, was presented by his family to the Canadian mission, and is still reverently preserved by the convent of hospital nuns in that city. So great was his reputation for sanctity that it became a familiar and pious practice in Canada to invoke his intercession. There are well-attested cases recorded of the wonderful intervention of heaven in favor of those who invoked his aid as a saint in heaven.

Among the many virtues which adorned the life and character of Father Brébeuf may be particularly mentioned his ardent love of holy poverty and suffering, his purity of soul, his singleness of purpose, his profound obedience and humility, his zeal and courage, his love of prayer and penitential austerities, and his generous longing for the salvation of souls. "The character of Brébeuf," says Bancroft, "was firm beyond every trial: his virtue had been nursed in the familiar sight of death. Disciplined by twenty years' service in the wilderness work, he wept bitterly for the sufferings of his converts, but for himself he exulted in the prospect of martyrdom." "Thus," writes Mr. J. G. Shea in his History of the Catholic Missions, "about four o'clock in the afternoon, after three hours of frightful torture, expired John de Brébeuf, the real founder of the [Huron] mission, a man such as the Catholic Church alone can produce; as a missionary, unequalled for his zeal, ability, untiring exertion, and steady perseverance; as a servant of God, one whose virtues the Rota would pronounce heroic; patient in toil, hardship, suffering, and privation; a man of prayer, of deep and tender piety, of inflamed love of God, in whom and for whom he did and suffered all; as a martyr, one of the most glorious in our annals for the variety and atrocity of his torments." "He came of a noble race," says Parkman, "the same, it is said, from which sprang the English Earls of Arundel; but never had the mailed barons of his line confronted a fate so appalling with so prodigious a constancy. To the last he refused to flinch, and his death was the astonishment of his murderers."

Praise has become exhausted on such a subject. Would that we might hope for some national good from the sublime lesson he has taught us! The red men are our brothers. The most precious blood of a God-man was poured out for them as for us; and God's martyrs have joyfully given their noble lives for their salvation. Might not a Christian nation, in its power and goodness, yea, in its justice, save at least the poor remnant of them from further slaughter; and say to the ever-ready and zealous missionaries of the Catholic Church: "Go, christianize and save our brothers; we will not slay them more; there is land enough for us and for them; we confide them to your heroic charity. We will protect you and them in the peace and good-will of the Gospel. Go, save our brothers"?

THE ANCIENT LAWS OF IRELAND.

Next to written and well-authenticated historical annals, the clearest insight that can be afforded us of the civilization, polity, and social condition of the nations of antiquity is derived from the study of ancient laws and customs, when their authenticity is guaranteed by existing contemporary authorities, and they bear in themselves the intrinsic evidence of adaptability to time, place, and circumstance, so easily recognized by the antiquarian and the philologist. Were it possible to conceive the total destruction of this republic with all its material monuments and historical literature, nothing being left for posterity but our books of law, the philosophical student a thousand years hence would be able to form a pretty correct and comprehensive idea of the state of society at present existing and of the nature of the institutions under which we have the good fortune to live. From the large number of statutes regulating the intercourse of man and man, he would deduce the fact that we were a commercial and ingenious people; from our laws relating to real estate, he would necessarily argue that its ownership was general and its transmission from one to another a matter of everyday occurrence; and from the few restrictions imposed on its possession or sale, that the facilities for its acquisition were comparatively easy and unrestricted; while from the care that has been taken by our national and local legislatures to guard the life, liberty, and prosperity of the citizen, he would naturally conclude that our right to the enjoyment of these inalienable rights formed the corner-stone of the edifice of our government.

In the same manner, we of this century, looking back to a country so old as Ireland, one of the most antique of the family of European nations, by examining the laws framed in the early days of her dawning civilization, can picture to ourselves, even without the aid of history, the genius of her inhabitants, and form comparatively accurate opinions of how much or how little intelligence and natural sense of justice and the "eternal fitness of things" were exhibited by them in their efforts to regulate and organize society. Strange to say, we are partly indebted for this opportunity to the English government, never very generous in its patronage of Irish interests, though of course the principal credit is due to that noble band of Irish scholars, formerly headed by the late lamented O'Curry, Petrie, and O'Donovan, who by their antiquarian lore, profound knowledge of their vernacular, and untiring industry, have reconstructed from the scattered and almost illegible manuscripts deposited in various libraries the body of the laws of ancient Ireland, and have presented them to the world in the language in which they were originally written, with the elaborate glosses of after-years, accompanied by an accurate English translation. This long-desired work bears the appropriate and principal title of Senchus Mor, or great law, and contains all the laws that were enforced in Ireland from the fifth to the seventeenth[636] centuries, if we except a small portion of the island which was occupied by the Anglo-Norman colony from the invasion till the reign of James I. That it was admirably adapted to the wants and dispositions of the people, we can judge by the affection and tenacity with which the natives so long clung to it, in despite of all the efforts of the invaders to induce them by force or fraud to adopt that of the conquerors, and that it was more liberal and equitable than the harsh restrictions of the feudal system is proved from the alacrity of the Anglo-Norman lords who resided without the "pale" in conforming to it in preference to their own enactments.

Like most of her other blessings, Ireland owed the possession of this excellent and merciful code to the Catholic Church, for it was in the eighth or ninth year of the ministration of her great apostle and at his instance that it was framed as we at present find it, purified from all the grossness of paganism, and freed from the uncertainty and doubt which always attach to mere tradition. Up to his time, law in Ireland had been administered at the discretion of Brehons or judges, and, being preserved only in the poems of the bards and ollamhs (professors), was deficient in those essential qualities of all human legislation, exactness and uniformity. That there were learned and wise lawgivers in Ireland before the introduction of Christianity, we know from history and from the introduction to and the text of the Senchus itself, in which frequent mention is made of decisions and writings, but they were necessarily the exponents of that limited sense of justice which the human mind, unaided by religion, is capable of comprehending. The propagation of the faith in Europe created a complete and permanent revolution in the laws of each country successively visited with the light of the gospel, and while the darkness of paganism vanished before it, the municipal laws which upheld idolatry were either totally abrogated or modified so as to conform, as much as possible, to the benign spirit of the church. The immediate occasion of the revision of the Irish laws is stated to have been the deliberate murder of one of St. Patrick's servants by a relative of the reigning sovereign, but the real cause, no doubt, was the desire of the saint to root out of the judicature of the people all traces of paganism as effectually as he had erased it from their hearts.

Accordingly, by virtue of his high office, he summoned a convention of the learned men of the country, a few years after his arrival, and proceeded to execute his important reforms. His principal assistants, we are informed, were Laeghaire, monarch of all Ireland, Corc, and Dairi, two subordinate kings, whom we may suppose represented the temporal authority of the nation, and without whose countenance and support it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to enforce the new code; Rossa, Dubhtach, and Fergus, those poets and professors whose duty it had been to preserve and perpetuate the legal traditions of their race and the decisions of the Brehons; and two ecclesiastics, Saints Benen and Cairnech. The former of these bishops, afterward known by the name of Benignus, was one of St. Patrick's earliest and favorite converts, and eventually his successor in the primatial see of Armagh, and the latter, a Briton from Wales, was remarkable alike for his piety and extensive learning. Thus sustained by the civil arm, and assisted by the advice and knowledge of men well versed[637] in the common and canon law, the saint, in addition to his other apostolic labors, succeeded in leaving to the people he loved so well a harmonious and Christian code, the spirit of which, like that of all his teachings, sank deep in the popular heart, and defied the efforts of time and the ruthlessness of man to eradicate it.

While this code remained the rule of guidance for the mass of the people, it was sacredly preserved by the Brehons, who, though not empowered to alter it in any respect, added elaborate commentaries explanatory of its general or obscure provisions; but when the country was divided into counties by the conquerors, and their system took the place of the national one, the manuscripts of the ancient laws were scattered through the country, in England and on the Continent, whither they were brought by the exiles.

As early as 1783, Edmund Burke, ever mindful of the fame of his native country, suggested the propriety of collecting and publishing in English or Latin those remarkable remnants of former greatness and wisdom, but it was not till the year 1852 that the English government, at the repeated solicitation of several distinguished and influential Irish gentlemen, consented to lend its aid to the great work, which from its very magnitude was beyond the ability of any individual or voluntary association to accomplish. In that year, at the special instance of Doctors Todd and Greaves, both eminent Protestant clergymen, a commission was issued appointing them and several other well-known scholars "to direct, superintend, and carry into effect the transcription and translation of the ancient laws of Ireland, and the preparation of the same for publication," etc., with power to employ proper persons to execute the work. The persons selected by the commissioners were Dr. O'Donovan and Professor O'Curry, both thoroughly qualified to perform so momentous and laborious a labor, and whose conscientious discharge of the duties so assigned them ended only at their much lamented deaths. With the patience and zeal of true antiquarians, they set about transcribing the various MSS. relating to the old laws, deciphering the half-obliterated characters of the earlier centuries, and rendering the peculiar phraseology of the Gaelic into modern English. They were succeeded by W. N. Hancock, LL.D., professor of jurisprudence in Queen's College, Belfast, and the Rev. Thaddeus O'Mahony, professor of Irish in the Dublin University, under whose auspices the two volumes already in print were prepared for publication, having first received the sanction and approval of the commission. With such endorsement, we do not wonder that, speaking of the authenticity of the Senchus Mor, O'Curry should have said in one of his admirable lectures on Irish history, "I believe it will show that the recorded account of this great revision of the body of the laws of Erin is as fully entitled to confidence as any other well-authenticated fact in ancient history."

The principal materials used by the distinguished translators are thus described in the preface to the first volume:

Of the capacity of the gentlemen above-mentioned to faithfully transcribe and translate these valuable relics of past legislation there can be no doubt, nor of the genuineness and authenticity of the records themselves. They are not, of course, the originals as written in the fifth century, but are accurate copies, as far as they have been saved from destruction, made centuries ago by the Brehons and ollamhs, and handed down by them from father to son, for the Brehon order was hereditary, and from generation to generation, until the beginning of the seventeenth century. Besides this, by their peculiar wording and reference to contemporaneous events and opinions, they bear the undoubted impress of great antiquity, and of having been intended for the government of a primitive people, who had little or no intercourse with the outside world. We have thus before us for the first time a complete body of written fundamental laws, collected and perfected over fourteen hundred years ago by a segregated and peculiar race, occupying a remote part of Europe, the only part, in fact, of the civilized portion of that continent that never echoed to the tread of a Roman soldier, or bowed before the edicts of an imperial Cæsar. In reading over the laws of that unique and ancient people, so unlike all we know of the Roman and Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence, we find, not without some regret, we must confess, that the halo of exalted virtue and unsullied purity with which the poetic fancy of subsequent historians and poets led them to surround their pagan ancestors, vanishes like the mists of a summer morning, but we discover also that the epithets, barbarous, ignorant, and unlettered, so freely bestowed on them by the venal scribes of the dominant race, rest on no foundation whatever save on the malice or deficiency of knowledge of the Anglo-Norman authors. In truth, the Irish of the pagan era seem to have had nearly all the virtues and failings of their posterity of to-day, the former being brought more actively into play under the influence of Christianity, and the latter repressed by the unlimited authority of the Catholic Church and the judicious regulations of the Senchus.

We find this more particularly the case in studying the laws regulating the domestic relations of the family, which, being the unit of which society is but an aggregate, is the most vital and important part of all human enactments. Ample provision is made for the mutual protection of husband and wife, and the reciprocal rights and duties of parent and child are clearly and minutely defined; but we observe with regret that much of this portion of the code is occupied with provisions for the distribution of property on the disagreement or separation of married people, and for other domestic infelicities of a more criminal nature. The prohibition of an offence in a statute does not necessarily imply the frequency of the commission of the crime itself; but so much pains are taken to point out the rights and disabilities of persons cohabiting without the sanction of lawful wedlock that the conviction is forced upon us that they were not by any means unnecessary. As an offset to this, however, we find that a lawful wife was treated with the greatest indulgence, being in many ways the equal of her husband, and in this respect the Senchus presents a marked contrast to all the other European legislation of that time, by which woman was held little better[639] than a slave, and generally at the mercy of her father or husband, even in some instances to the taking of her life. We feel certain that our strong-minded sisterhood who are so manfully battling for social and political equality will be gratified to learn that a portion of their principles, at least, were fully recognized fourteen centuries ago, and for their edification we quote the following passage from the expressed wisdom of our ancestors:

In case of separation, adequate protection was thrown around the wife's rights of property. If her property were equal to that of her husband at the time of marriage, she took an equal moiety of the collective lands, goods, and chattels, and, in case of dairy produce and the proceeds of the loom, two-thirds. If the property had originally belonged wholly to the husband, the wife was entitled to one-third on her separation, and if it had been her own before marriage, to two-thirds. Whether these provisions extended to their mutual claims after death, we are not informed by the glossators, but it is not improbable that they were, thus creating estates not unlike the more modern dower and courtesy of the English law. This equality of married persons was still further extended in the right of each to the disposal or guardianship of their offspring, and in their authority to demand in return the assistance of their children in poverty or decrepitude.

The relations between parent and child were the subjects of careful and minute legislation. The father was obliged to see that his daughter was educated in a manner becoming her rank, and, when at a marriageable age, to procure her a husband of suitable means and family. In return, she was to give him one-third of her first marriage gift (coibhche), and a certain proportion of other gifts received after her nuptials. Should the father be dead, his son, succeeding him as heir, was also obliged to assume the same responsibility, and received from his sister a proper equivalent at her marriage. The mother's duty to her son was similar to that of the father to his daughter, he being required to assist her in her poverty or old age, and in conjunction with the daughter to provide, if necessary, for both his parents, an obligation imposed even on grandchildren. That the father should especially have care of the daughter and the mother of the son is something very contrary to the modern ideas of domestic discipline, but it doubtless, in a primitive state of society, had the advantage of equalizing the stronger and weaker elements of the family, giving to the woman the benefit of manly protection, and to the rougher masculine nature a gentler and more humanizing influence.

Fosterage, though not unknown in other countries, was so general in ancient and mediæval Ireland as to[640] give it a character almost peculiar to that island.

It is known to have been of very ancient origin, and to have originated in the natural relations that existed between the sept or tribe and its chief, which was one of mutual rights and duties; for, observes the Senchus, "every head defends its members, if it be a goodly head, of good deeds, of good morals, exempt, affluent, capable. The body of every head is his tribe, for there is no body without a head. The head of every tribe, according to the people, should be the man of the tribe who is most experienced, the most noble, the most wealthy, the wisest, the most learned, the most truly popular, the most powerful to oppose, the most steadfast to sue for profits and be sued for losses." It will thus be easily understood, particularly by the citizens of a republic, that the authority of a chief, thus qualified, depended to a great extent on the affection and good-will of his constituents; and, in order to create more close relations between himself and them, it was customary for him to send his children at an early age to be nursed and trained by some family of his sept. The children thus placed under tutelage were regarded with equal, if not greater, affection by the foster-parents than their own. The existence of this custom may still be traced in Ireland, and well-authenticated instances of the most self-sacrificing devotion on the part of the natural child of the foster-parent to his foster-brother or sister form the theme of many of our best Irish stories and historical romances. The foster-parent for the time being stood in the place of the actual parent, and was obliged to feed, clothe, and educate the foster-child for a certain number of years, males till they had attained the age of seventeen, and females fourteen years, and the children were expected in return to compensate, succor, and in some cases support their foster-parents, as if they were their actual progenitors.

The statutes regulating fosterage occupy a large portion of the Senchus, so far as published, and affords us a fuller and more accurate knowledge of the social habits and condition of the Gaelic people in and before the fifth century than any other portion of the collection, or even all the histories of Ireland extant which profess to treat of that remote epoch. Fosterage, we are told, was of two sorts, for affection and compensation. When the latter, the fosterage price was regulated according to the rank of the chief, and varied from three cows in the case of the son of an Og-Aire, or lowest chief, to thirty cows for the son of a king. The services to be rendered for their payments, being food, raiment, and education, were proportioned to the amount, and seem to have been the subject of much elaborate legislation, not easily reconcilable to our modern notions. For instance, in the matter of food, Dr. O'Donovan renders a very ancient commentary on the first clause of the law of fosterage as follows:

According to one authority, every[641] foster-child should be provided with two suits of clothing, in color and quality according to the rank of his father—blay, yellow, black, and white colored clothes for the inferior grades, red, green, and brown for the sons of chieftains, and purple and blue for princes. According to another, the distinction of rank was indicated in the following manner:

The course of instruction to be pursued by the foster-children was likewise regulated by the degree of the dignity of their parents. The sons of the "lower classes" were to be employed in "the herding of lambs, and calves, and kids, and pigs, and kiln-drying and combing, and wood-cutting," while the girls were expected to learn the use of the quern, or hand-mill for grinding grain, the useful household art of making bread, and winnowing corn, etc.; the young chieftains were to be taught horsemanship, shooting, swimming, and chess-playing, and their sisters, sewing, cutting-out, and embroidery. We have thus placed before us in all its simplicity, and upon the best authority, the modes of living prescribed for the youth of both sexes in Ireland at the time of its conversion to Christianity—a record valuable to the historian and the antiquarian, dissipating alike the poetic imaginings of too partial Celtic chroniclers and the voluntary misrepresentations of the Anglo-Norman writers. It may be objected that such limited views of education argued little for the civilization of the race who entertained them; but when we recall the condition of Western Europe at the time the Senchus was composed, we may well be surprised at the sound sense and practical wisdom so often found in its pages. Nor must it be supposed that the labors of the child ended with the performance of the tasks thus assigned him. There existed another and correlative species of tutelage called literary fosterage, which is thus defined in the "law of social connections":

In addition to this excellent and equitable plan of intellectual culture, we also find in the law of tenures that the sons of tenants holding church lands were entitled to receive instruction from the holders of the benefices, which, we may presume, were not necessarily altogether of a spiritual nature. We thus find that fosterage constituted one of the most important elements of society, and, though much condemned by subsequent and partial writers, contained within itself most of the duties and responsibilities which we now divide among corporations and individuals under different names. The importance which ancient Irish lawgivers[642] seemed to attach to this crude but not altogether unsuccessful attempt to define the relations of parent and child, employer and employed, master and scholar—questions still raised in this enlightened age—is shown in the number of the statutory enactments originally made, and the elaborate and critical glosses afterward appended to them, the whole not unworthy the notice of the modern legislator.

The land tenure has always been a subject of doubt and difficulty in Ireland, and the laws of the Senchus appear to us as little satisfactory and as hard to be understood as that recently passed in the British Parliament under the supervision of Mr. Gladstone. It seems to us, from the careful examination of the different statutes relating to it, that each chief held the whole of the land of his tribe in his own name, not, however, in his own right altogether, but partly as trustee of his tribe, and in this respect the Irish system differs materially from the feudal, which for centuries prevailed in all parts of Europe, except in the country of which we are writing. The tenants were divided into two classes, those who held by saerrath or daerrath, terms for which we can find no equivalents in the English language. The first class received from their chief, upon taking the land, and without security, sufficient cattle to stock the same, for which they were obliged to return an annual rental in kind, or, at the chief's option, its value in personal service and labor, such as working on his dun or rath, and following him in his wars. This species of tenure, except in the case of those who held immediately from the king, could at pleasure be turned into holding by daerrath, by which the tenant gave security for the stock received, and was exempt from personal and military service. The rents and their manner and time of payment varied according to circumstances, but always subject to the above restrictions, and were, of course, the exclusive property of the landlord or chief for the time being. The restrictions on the alienation of land, or rather of the good-will of it—for in fact the fee did not rest in the individual, but in the tribe as represented by its chief—were many and onerous, including forfeiture and other penalties, and were generally directed to the exclusion of members of neighboring or hostile tribes. The agrarian portion of the ancient code, in fact, while far superior in point of liberality to that of many of the then existing nations, resembled more the laws that govern our Indian reservations than those of any enlightened country of the present day. It was full of fatal and mischievous errors, and to its baleful operation have been ascribed many of the evils which centuries before and after the Anglo-Norman invasion afflicted Ireland. By jealously confining the occupancy of a certain district to one particular tribe or family, it engendered a feeling of faction, and what might be called parish patriotism, which unfortunately have outlived the cause that gave them birth, and, by persisting in considering the tribal land as indivisible, it destroyed that high sense of independence and spirit of enterprise which can only be felt and maintained by him who owns his own farm and calls no fellow-man master.

The laws relating to distress, or the form of collecting claims, such as debts, tributes, forfeitures, etc., are the least attractive and instructive portion of the work, and for dense obscurity and incomprehensibleness can only be compared to our own Code of procedure. We gather, however, from them that all[643] civil claims and damages for injuries were collectable by a short process of the seizure of the goods and chattels of the defendant, and the retention of the same on the premises of the plaintiff, or, as in the case of cattle, in the public pound. After the expiration of a certain number of days, if the defendant did not replevin his property or disprove his opponent's claim, the goods became the absolute property of the creditor. With a humanity, however, which many suppose to be the growth of our century, the plaintiff should exhaust first the property upon the possession of which the subsistence of the defendant's family did not immediately depend, and even some articles of primary necessity were altogether exempt from seizure. Imprisonment for debt, however, partially existed, and, when the debtor had no goods and did not belong to the class of freemen, he was arrested and compelled to labor for the creditor until the demands of the latter were fully satisfied.

Such, in brief, is a résumé of the laws contained in the two volumes of the Senchus Mor already published, and which we hope soon to hear of occupying a position on the shelves of every library of reference in the country. Much yet remains of the ancient Code of St. Patrick [148] to be given to the world before the entire work is completed, and we are assured that this will be done at an early day, and in as scholarly a manner as the portion before us. We shall look eagerly for its appearance, not for its practical value as a legal study, but as a picture of a remote but interesting era and race, and as an additional evidence of how much the world owes to the Catholic Church even in the civil and political affairs of life. The science of true government has been a plant of slow but sure growth, and, while we enjoy so many of its fruits in our favored land, we must not forget that the seeds were planted with so much suffering and labor by the apostolic men who have gone to their rest centuries ago.

THE STORY OF AN ALGERINE LOCKET.

In the sunshine of a May morning stood an old gray house, with a porch draped in woodbine and sweetbrier. A mass of wisteria climbed to the very chimneys, and on the lawn a bed of red and golden tulips swayed with the soft breeze. A wren was building in an acacia and singing, while a young girl watched his work and sang also, trying with her fresh soprano voice to catch his melody.

The old house was the homestead of Holly Farm, and the young girl was Sybil Vaughan, the heroine of a very short story.

"Sybil looks charming in white," thought Miss Mildred, sitting at the window of the green parlor with her mending-basket beside her; "and the locket is quite becoming."

It was before the day when every[644] one began to wear medallions, and the one that hung by a quaint twisted chain from Sybil's neck was a locket of rich enamel, brought to her from Algeria by a midshipman cousin, and quite unlike our gewgaw from the Palais Royal.

As we have said, Miss Mildred sat at the window of the green parlor, raising her eyes now and then from her work to watch her pretty niece, her adopted daughter. During the seventy years of her life, she had sat at that same window almost every morning since she was old enough to work a sampler, or to read a paper in the Spectator or a chapter of Evelina to her mother and younger sisters.

In her girlhood, Holly Farm had been a lonely place, remote from town and village. The trees, now rising luxuriantly around the house, were then, like her, in their youth, and revealed whatever might be passing in the lane below the lawn. At a period of life when young people gaze abroad in vague expectation of some wonderful arrival or event that shall alter the current of existence, Mildred Vaughan had turned longing eyes toward this lawn hour after hour, and she had thought her morning's watch well rewarded if the old doctor had trundled by in his high-topped chaise and nodded to her in friendly greeting.

With a capacity for painting that in these days of potichomania, decalcomania, and the rest would have passed for originality, if not genius, she had received one quarter's lessons in oil-painting, and by dint of studying a few beautiful family portraits had acquired a keenness of perception that made her hunger for the world of art. With an earnest love for books, she had been obliged to devote her time to the care of her younger brothers and sisters. And so, out of her monotonous life, she had brought into old age an exaggerated idea of the value of learning and luxury, with a belief in possibilities and a regret for what might have been generally supposed to belong exclusively to youth.

This sounds more melancholy than it really was. Miss Mildred had kept her ideal of happiness fresh and vivid, and that is in itself a source of keen enjoyment. And, being a devout and trusting soul, she had framed for herself a prayer out of the thwarted aspiration of her heart and mind: "I thank thee, Lord, that there are joys so beautiful on earth, and I thank thee that they are not for me. Thy will is dearer to me than the realization of any dream."

Every one loved to come to Miss Mildred for sympathy. She believed in the reality and the durability of their joy, in the depth and in the cause of their grief. She did not say to the mother who had lost her little baby, "He is saved from sorrow and sin." She did not say to the young widow, "You have had the best part of life; later come trial and vexation of spirit." She knew that in bereavement the balm often enters with the sting; that the stainless beauty of the thing we lose is our only earthly consolation for its loss.

A great change had come to Holly Farm since the time when the doctor's visit was an important event. The sweep of meadow-land west of the house now served as camping-ground for the —th Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteers, in which young Henry Vaughan held a second lieutenancy. Drumming and fifing, the arrival of carriages full of gayly dressed people to visit the camp, the music of the regimental band on moonlight evenings, such was the course of daily life on green slopes which cattle and sheep had once[645] possessed without dispute, nibbling the grass and drinking from the river in all contentment.

Indeed, Miss Mildred's standard of events had so naturally changed in that course of seventy years that, when the little white gate swung open, and a young man in uniform walked across the lawn, she merely said to herself: "That must be Captain Adair coming to see Harry. He walks better than any man I ever saw. The maid's hanging out clothes; I do hope Sybil will have sense enough to come and speak to him instead of letting him knock."

Sybil had the amount of sense requisite for the emergency. She led the way into the green parlor, and, leaving Captain Adair with her aunt, went to announce the arrival to her brother, who was trying on his new uniform, and blushed to be caught admiring the epaulettes before a mirror in the library. There was no need of apology. Sybil was in full sympathy with the occasion, and returned to the parlor feeling as proud of her brother's military outfit as he of the beauty of the sister leaning on his arm.

It was a pleasant meeting. Adair's frank and sympathetic manner had won its way through Miss Mildred's reserve; and his familiarity with the world and its ways secured him an easy victory over his young lieutenant. Sybil was less impressionable than the other two. Her manners were gentle and courteous to all, but it was not easy to penetrate her likes and dislikes, or to find out their cause. Just a trifle uninteresting, she was, poor Sybil, like many nicely poised young persons before they have enjoyed or suffered keenly. The very finish of her beauty, of her lovely manners, of her pleasant voice and accent, left nothing to be desired—no suggestion of anything beyond. But a soul so brave, so pure and honest as hers deserved to be developed, and the occasion for development came.

II.
ADAIR'S LETTERS TO HENRY ALLEYNE.

I had an adventure yesterday that should have fallen to your lot, my dear Alleyne, not to that of a prosaic dog like me.

Hearing that my second lieutenant lived near the camp, and that he could not enter upon his duties for a day or two, I took it into my head to go and see what stuff he was made of, for, Alleyne, I am awfully interested in Company B, and in every creature connected with it. How could I ever have lived in that bore of a city, or slept within four walls, or used a silver fork! "Going off at half-cock, as usual," you say? Well, perhaps that is better than never going off at all. But to return to my story.

I went through a shady lane, leading from the camp to Vaughan's house. (Vaughan is the second lieutenant and owner of the camping-ground.) As I drew near the gate, I heard a woman's voice singing. A little further on came a gap in the trees, and I took a reconnoissance—such another I can never hope for during my military career. A low-spreading stone house, covered with vines, stood among fine old trees. Great bunches of blue blossoms draped the walls, and on the velvety lawn were clusters of brilliant flowers. Beneath a tree, honor bright, Alleyne, if ever angels do appear in white gowns with broad rose-colored sashes, it was an angel that stood beneath that tree, answering a bird with a voice as[646] fresh, an expression as natural as his own. I stood there looking and listening—it was really very fascinating—until I suddenly remembered my errand. Then I pushed open the gate, and, walking across to the porch, lifted the bright brass knocker. But the rival of the wren, without letting me wait the coming of some creature of baser clay, came from among the trees, and asked if I wished to see Mr. Vaughan.

Now, I had wished to see Mr. Vaughan, and as it would not do to say on so short an acquaintance that my wishes were too completely satisfied by the vision before me to leave any want unfulfilled, I stoutly declared that I did wish to see Mr. Vaughan, and that I was Captain Adair.

And then she showed your too susceptible friend into a summer parlor, where the general effect was white and sea-green, and where there were hanging-baskets of flowers surrounded by vines and soft moss, and where an elderly lady in a lavender dress, with white lawn apron and kerchief, sat sewing, and where portraits of rosy-fingered dames and periwigged gentlemen gazed on us from the walls and read our destinies—mine must have been too plainly legible on my ingenuous countenance. And the old lady received me very courteously, and the maiden went to find her brother, and, when the brother came, he looked like his sister, and surely never before was lieutenant greeted by his superior officer with such ineffable tenderness. And we dined, so far as I could judge, off dishes of topaz and crystal, heaped high with ambrosia, and soon after dinner I returned to Camp Everett, and met the colonel going his rounds.

"You come from young Vaughan's, I see," he said. "What impression did he make upon you?"

"Charming, highly delightful, very promising," I replied, with a happy combination of diffidence and child-like openness of manner.

He gave me a look out of his shrewd old eyes. "So attractive a person will be an acquisition to the regiment," he remarked, and let me pass on to my tent.

Things go on grandly at the camp, and between ourselves the colonel has just said that Company B is better disciplined than any other in the regiment—a compliment I'm very proud of, coming, as it does, from an old West Point martinet.

And now for the second part of my idyl. Every afternoon, Vaughan and I go up to his place and smoke awhile in the orchard. Then, by accident—it is wonderful, the unerring accuracy of accident at times—we appear at the east window of the green parlor, and there are Miss Vaughan and her niece, sewing or drawing, and sometimes Miss Sybil sings, to the accompaniment of a charming Pleyel piano, canzonets of Haydn in a style as fine, as pure, as exquisite as the composition. She—Sybil, I mean—has never danced a German or heard Faust! Duly shielded by the presence of aunt or brother, she is sometimes taken to hear the Nozze di Figaro or to see Hamlet, or to some other unexceptionable afternoon entertainment. I smile sometimes to see her absolute ignorance of life, and wonder that, in a village not twenty miles distant from a city where the world runs riot, this being has sprung into womanhood, unconscious of the existence of anything less spotless than herself.

This guarded life has given to her manners a certain high breeding that[647] would keep one at a distance but for her kind, frank nature. No one can venture to fancy himself distinguished above others.

Do you know what this makes me feel? That hitherto, and I am nearly twenty-five years old, I have looked at women with a coxcomb's eyes. Any day, any hour, I feel ready to throw myself on her mercy, but an instinct tells me that her love must be won by something better than professions. When I have suffered in the cause she loves well enough to give her only brother to defend it, then I will speak.

Noblesse oblige—I see that in a certain lofty sense this is the motto of her life, and it shall be mine. Do you remember what our dear old philosopher used to say in the scientific school? "The better you begin, the harder is the work before you." And when we asked what he meant, he only said, "Noblesse oblige." It is true, whether the noblesse acts upon us in the form of intellectual strength or of spiritual gifts, or in the old material sense of inherited rank.

Except the hour spent at Vaughan's each day, and an occasional visit to my mother in town, I am wrapped up in the affairs of Company B. The life here is to me most fascinating. You would laugh to see me with a set of wooden soldiers before me on the little table in my tent, studying manœuvres, extricating my company from the most astounding and unheard-of perplexities. The progress of my lieutenants; the health, morals, and immorals of the company; the incapacity of our bugler to draw the faintest sound from his instrument—in short, everything that indicates growth or decay of discipline in Company B, seems to me a matter of national importance.

One word more about Miss Sybil Vaughan. My mother has seen her, and sympathizes with me. When she came to visit the camp, I took her to Vaughan's house to rest. As we left Holly Farm, she gave a sigh of relief, and said: "Robert, I feel as though I had stepped back half a century. When I was a girl, young ladies were like Miss Sybil Vaughan."

One more last word. In your letter you said, with an air of superior wisdom, plainly expressed in the tails of your letters: "You are in love."

III.

It was June still. The laburnum path was all aglow with blossoms, and the grape-walk, just beyond, made a shadowy retreat toward evening. Sybil was sitting there with her work lying on her lap. She had not sewed three stitches. Why had not Harry come as usual that afternoon to the east window to get his cup of black coffee? Why—O dear! there are so many whys in the case, and never an answer anywhere. Why was there an indefinite air of bustle in the camp as she looked down on it from her bower? Why was there an undefined sense of stir in everything?

She watched the sun drop nearer and nearer to the distant hills. The air was full of saffron light, and heavy with the perfume of flowers. Nature was so new and fresh in her June loveliness; and life was full of a promise of coming beauty, as it had never been before to Sybil in any other of her nineteen Junes. That sense of stir was in her own soul no less than in external nature.

There came the click of an iron heel upon the gravelled path. Sybil[648] half-rose from the bench, and then sank back again. Adair stood before her. "We are ordered off," he said. "We go in an hour. I've but one moment to stay, for I promised Harry to leave him time to come and say good-by."

But it had all been so hurried, she thought, when he was gone. Oh! for one of those minutes to return, that she might express to him a tenth part of the joy and pain, the hope and terror, that filled her heart. She could remember nothing clearly or in order, and yet she would have given all the other memories of her happy life to recall each word as it was spoken. He had asked her to give him something of her own, a ring, a glove, a ribbon, no matter what. And she had taken from her neck the medallion, and laid in it a little curl of her hair, and given it to him; and she had felt his hand upon her head, and heard him say, "God keep my sweet, innocent love!" And when she lifted her head he was gone, and she had told him nothing. It could not be a dream, for on her left hand was the ring he placed there—one that she had seen him wear, and thought too beautiful a jewel for a man to have, but now she felt so glad that he had worn it. He had said this was to be the guard of the wedding-ring that he would place there as soon as he could get a furlough to come home; and she had said—yes, thank God! she did remember saying that, at least—she had said that no one but himself should take off this ring or put another in its place; yes, thank God! she had said it.

Then Harry had come, too overjoyed at the news of her engagement to feel the pain of parting. That memory was full of turmoil; mixed, too, with self-reproach that all other emotion was so lost in her new joy or pain, whichever it might be called, that Harry's going gave her no uneasiness.

The sun dropped behind the hills; star after star pierced through the darkening blue. Stillness lay on the valley below, so lately full of tramping horses, and shouting men, and shifting lights.

At last she heard her aunt's voice calling her, and roused herself to go and tell her beautiful story, old as the human race, new as that very June evening. She wondered that Aunt Mildred understood it all so well. Short-sighted Sybil! it was you who were beginning to understand Miss Mildred.

One August day, when a sultry fog held the earth in bondage, and scarlet geraniums blazed like red pools among the wilted grass, Miss Mildred pushed open the little white gate, and, with that hurried step that in old age so poorly simulates speed, hastened across the lawn. She gave a quick glance into the two parlors which were vacant, and then went up-stairs, grasping nervously the low hand-rail. In the upper hall she stopped, and leaned against the balustrade to take breath, and courage, too. Then, opening the door of Sybil's room, she stopped on the threshold to see her lying on the floor with a newspaper crushed in her hand. A bulletin in the village post-office had told her all: "Found dead on the field, Captain Robert Adair, —th Regt. Mass. Vols." They lifted Sybil up and laid her on her bed. She did not "strive nor cry," but in that first grief it pleased God to measure her power of endurance.

It was not in victory that Adair had fallen, but in one of those engagements where, humanly speaking, life seems thrown away. But[649] such thoughts should not disturb the mourners cradled in the providence of God. He chooses the time and the occasion, and what is lost in the current of human events he gathers up and cherishes.

Weeks passed away. Letters came—precious in their recognition of Adair's high integrity, his courage, his compassion; letters, too, from his mother, far away in her summer home, acknowledging Sybil as one with her in love and bereavement. But she lay, white and listless, on her bed, taking little notice of anything except in the expression of gratitude. Harder than anything else for her aunt to bear was the pathos of Sybil's resignation.

There came a soft afternoon, early in September, when for the first time Sybil's easy-chair was placed in the open air, under a striped awning that made an out-door room on the west side of Holly Farmhouse. Here she could be sheltered from the direct rays of the sun, and yet enjoy the trees and flowers.

Great velvet bees hid their heads buzzing in the freshly-opened cups of the day-lilies; a hummingbird dipped his dainty beak into the sweet-peas, and then flashed away to hide himself among the nasturtiums pouring in a golden stream over a broken tree-trunk on the lawn.

Amid the glow of nature, Sybil looked very wan and frail. She had begun to think a little now, and her thoughts ran thus: "I am resigned to God's will. I've not the shadow of a doubt that this is all right. I am more than willing to die; I am willing to live, if only there is a thread to hold by—a stone, a stick, a straw to begin to build my life upon. Other women have borne this and lived. I've seen them going about among their fellow-creatures, talking, smiling, laughing, when others talked, and smiled, and laughed. I have no more sensibility than they. What I have lost was perfect; but what they had lost was perfect, perhaps, to them. I don't rebel, but I am dying of pain. It goes on, and on, and on; if it would stop but for ten minutes and let me take breath, I think I could catch hold of something on earth and begin to live again. There's that dear Aunt Mildred coming through the hall. Now, I will give her a free, happy smile, and lighten her burden if I cannot lighten my own."

Miss Mildred held in her two hands a great vase of spreading golden-rod, which she set down on the little garden-table. Just where she had placed it, against a background of dark-green leaves, it made so beautiful a picture that Sybil uttered an exclamation of surprise and pleasure. There was a delighted look on her aunt's sweet old face that made her think: "Here is something to hold on by; here is something to build on, if only I am generous enough to try."

Miss Mildred arranged the cushions in Sybil's chair, and then took her hand very gently.

"There is a man in the hall, dear, who brings you a little packet from Virginia. Can you see him?"

"Yes; at once, if you like. Please let him come out here. I can talk to him better in the open air."

He came—a shy, elderly man, whom Sybil remembered seeing once at the camp. He stood awkwardly, shifting his military hat from hand to hand, till she asked him to sit down near her, and said a few reassuring words. Then, seeing that he was struggling to conquer his emotion, she fixed her eyes on the vase of flowers, trying to keep down the impatience struggling within her.

"My name is Abel, lady," he said, at length. "May be you've heard the cap'n say as how I couldn't play the bugle, at the camp below there. The folks all said I couldn't learn, I was so old and dull; but he allus believed everybody was good for something, he did."

"I remember you," she said. "Oh! do go on. Tell me everything—every little thing about it all."

"Wall, you see, lady, my two boys they was all I had, and they jined the regiment, and I couldn't live without 'em; and I was hale and strong, and so I made bold for to jine, too. There was one place left in the regiment then—the bugler's place, in Company B—and I pled so hard, the cap'n he said I might try. And, lady, the plaguy thing used to seem to shut right up when I wanted to make it blow, and the men used to laugh at me, right out afore my boys. And Abner and John Henry they felt kind o' cheap, and they kept sayin' to me, 'Father,' they says, 'it makes us feel kind o' bad to hear you tryin' so hard and not learnin'; don't you think you'd better give it up?' And says I, 'No, boys,' says I, 'while there's breath in my body, I won't give it up till I've conquered that crittur.' And, lady, when the cap'n see me tryin' so hard and allus comin' to grief, what does he do but he takes hold himself, and he learns all them signals, and he teaches on 'em to me. And so I went to the war with my boys, and I nursed John Henry through a fever, and I kept Abner from fallin' into bad company; and, lady, if I could have saved the cap'n's life by givin' my skin inch by inch, I'd have done it; but I couldn't. So I just held his head against this old heart, and let him breathe his life away. And I laid him down on the sod as tender as if I'd been his mother."

"No, lady; he was gone before the surgeons came on to the field. He lay quite still, without a moan or sigh; and, now and then, he'd say a word to me. I was wounded, too, just below the knee. I dropped down about six feet off from him; and when the retreat came, and I saw as how I was left behind with the cap'n, didn't I praise the Lord!"

Abel took a little packet from his breast, and laid it in Sybil's hand. "He says to me, 'Abel,' says he, 'when you can get a furlough honorable,' says he—'for you mustn't go when the country needs you bad—you take this locket' (a-unhookin' it from his neck) 'to Miss Sybil Vaughan—her that lives in the stone farmhouse above our old camp at Holly Farm—and you tell her as how the poor thing tried to save my life; and she'll see it by the great dent in the gold made by a bullet. And you tell her as how she's to open it herself, and see what I put there. And you tell her '—I'm a Methodist, lady, but I'll tell you word for word what he said."

"'You tell her,' says he, 'how I pray that Christ and his Blessed Mother may be her comfort as they are mine; and tell her as how I've never let a thought enter my mind, since we parted, that she wouldn't have approved. And tell her,' says he, a-raisin' himself half-way up from the ground, 'you tell her I love her fond and true, and that we shall meet in heaven when she's done the work on earth she is so fit to do. And tell her to comfort[651] my mother. Poor mother!' And then he put his arm round my neck, and kind o' stroked my cheek, and he says, soft and low, a few words, and all I heard was, 'Receive my soul,' and then I kissed him, and laid him down on the turf, and his face was like as I think it will be in heaven at the great day. And now I'm goin' to leave you, lady, 'cos I know as how you want to be alone. And, with your leave, I'll come again, and tell you how we loved him, and how we cried like babies round the ambulance that brought him to the camp; and how there was scarce anything left to send home to his mother, 'cos he used to give his things away to the sick boys—blankets, and money, and shirts, and all."

Then Abel took Sybil's delicate hand reverently on his broad, brown palm, and kissed it.

"Lady," he said, "you're the only thing ever I see that was fit to mate with him."

"You will come again," she said. "As you have no daughter, and there must be many things needed to make you comfortable during your convalescence, you will let me see to all that. And you will let me replace the many things you must have lost or worn out during these hard three months?"

She spoke beseechingly, looking up into his face like a child pleading for a toy.

"You shall just wind me round your finger like he did," said Abel. "I allus thought I'd got grit in me till I seen him, and then it seemed as though I hadn't no will but his'n."

Sybil was alone with the little packet. With trembling fingers she untied the string and removed the wrappings of paper. There lay the medallion with its twisted chain. She passionately kissed the battered enamel that had stood between him and death. Then she opened the locket. With the silky, yellow curl lay a little lock of dark-brown hair. She was touching it tenderly, wondering when he had placed it there for her consolation—whether just before the skirmish or soon after he left her—when a turn of the locket in the level rays of the sun showed two words scratched on the inner side with some rude instrument. She looked closer, and read: "Noblesse Oblige."

When Miss Mildred came to lead her into the house, there was a change in her face that filled the gentle lady's heart with gratitude. It was the look of courage that comes to those who recognize the claim of their high birth as the children of God.

THE SPIRIT OF CATHOLIC ASSOCIATIONS.

All societies have aims, more or less remote, which they aspire to realize. Catholic societies have an object which they also strive to accomplish. Theirs is the victory of the church over the modern Islamism, the enemy of all religion and civilization, commonly called the Revolution. This monster, once obtaining control of the state, fills nations with ruins, and in its proud ferocity ever threatens new disorders and fresh streams of blood. Catholic associations, in order to be victorious, must pass over the dead body of this powerful enemy. There is no other way. The enterprise is difficult, requires great courage, absolute generosity, and endurance capable of every trial. But they will win the day; they will yet sing the hymn of triumph; for they march to the battle and fight it in the proper spirit: that is, the Catholic spirit. The victory will be theirs; but only on conditions.

Reason proves it. The labor of a society must be proportioned to the end proposed, as the force must be adequate to the effect intended. It is impossible that an army can win a battle if the necessary discipline, obedience to officers, and courage be wanting. So with Catholic associations. Their object, being a religious one, a crusade which purposes to assure the triumph of Catholic doctrines and institutions, it is impossible for them to act with vigor, to bear the fatigue, stand the brunt of their adversaries' onslaught, conquer their errors, and subdue their forces, unless they are moved, animated, and fortified by the spirit which is peculiar to Catholic associations. If they march to the combat with inadequate forces or lax discipline, they will only become objects of derision to their enemies.

What is the spirit of Catholic societies? It is the spirit of faith. Sacred phalanxes of a religion whose foundation is faith; restorers of principles that are derived from faith; protectors of institutions based on faith—how can they do battle if their minds be not animated with the spirit of faith, if their deliberations be not inspired with it; if their works be not its visible effects? Yes; the spirit of faith is the peculiar spirit of Catholic associations; it is their essence, their qualifying property, and the secret power which impels the Catholic onward to the heroism of virtue. Give us Catholic associations animated by a spirit of living, fervid faith, and great acts will not be slow in production. Examples of it may be seen in the immense and sublime temples erected when the spirit of faith burned in the breasts of our forefathers, to whom it was only necessary to propose the plan in order to have it carried out; and in those chivalrous bands of knights who armed themselves against Mohammedan fury, and fell pierced by numberless wounds on the ground given them to defend, but never yielding an inch to the foe.

Catholic associations imbued by a spirit like this need not fear the power of their adversaries, nor heed their numbers. Faith in the conflict is the[653] buckler which cannot be broken, the shield which cannot be pierced, the flag which counts as many victories as the battles fought under its folds. Let all the members of Catholic associations march to the contest clothed in this armor, and they will be invincible. St. Paul advised this to the Thessalonians and to the Ephesians. This also was the counsel of St. John.[149] What more do we want? Does not St. John tell us that faith and victory are synonymous terms? "For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory which overcometh the world, our faith."[150]

II.

It must be remembered, however, that this spirit of faith must not be a blind spirit, or march to battle with uncertain steps. Associations actuated by such a spirit prosper slowly; without purpose, and consequently without success. The reason is plain, for it is certain that the more thoroughly influenced is a human mind by a motive, the more earnestly will it strive to obtain an object. It is, therefore, evident that the spirit of Catholic associations must be an enlightened spirit, thoroughly knowing what it wants. The Revolution—great mistress in the arts of hypocrisy, great employer of every species of argument in its favor through the license of the press, great seducer by the advantages which it proposes—if it does not always succeed in catching real Catholics in its net, at least sows such prejudices in the minds of some as will make them less hostile to its work or less earnest in the defence of Catholicism, which is another name for truth and justice. This is the first danger to be shunned by Catholic associations. The Catholic societies must not let themselves be seduced by the seductive monsters of the revolution. The quality and natural goodness of the tree is not known so well by its leaves as by its fruit. It is, therefore, necessary to go deeper than the mere extrinsic forms to penetrate the substance of the work done by the revolution. Oh! how many motives to spur on to action would Catholics find in such an investigation! A rapid glance will convince them of this fact.

Observe the religious order. Let the Catholic associate consider, in this regard, a country in which the revolution has made progress. He witnesses the most impious and most lamentable scenes; the church deprived or curtailed of liberty, insulted in her ministers, attacked by literary barbarians, by trammelling laws, or infamous writings; her destruction sworn, Christ impugned in his doctrines, derided in his sacraments, his divinity denied; God excluded from laws, banished from the school; men grouped in hostility to him, shouting, in full daylight under the banner of the free-thinkers, like a horde of savages, "There is no God!"

Pass to the social order. Here a new spectacle of grief is presented. Every effort is used to take away from the community its common belief and to plunge individuals into the vortex of incredulity; a black cloud of practical errors, moving over the nations, abolishing the restraint of conscience, rendering the populace the slaves of the vilest and most truculent passions; the basis of all authority, human and divine, sapped; the most powerful governments crumbling to dust, and threatening to fall a prey either to perpetual anarchy or brutal tyranny.

Consider the nature of the means employed. What a sad view! Perpetual conspiracies, shameless treasons, frauds and deceptions, lies and calumnies, unmitigated oppression and violence. Furnished with these weapons, the revolutionary bands war on God, on Christ, and on his church. The revolution, like a shameless woman, blushes not at its crimes, but glories in its success.

Consider the results. Every religious conviction blotted out, the principles of morality annihilated or obscured, authority destroyed, and consequently a society springing up composed of men without certainty in regard to their end, without any immutable law to restrain them, without any bond of affection to unite them. Hence, we have the unrestrained indulgence of the passions, egotism the universal law, force and cunning the only arms, and mutual demolition the consequence. The old French revolution proves it; the modern one of Paris confirms it. The revolutionary Guéroult himself attests it in stating that the Parisian insurrection "is disorder, destruction, self-abandonment, the putrid decomposition of a society without belief, without compass Or ideal."[151] The results of the revolution may be summed up in one phrase: it makes men beasts, and society bestial.

A Catholic association which considers these effects of the revolution in the light of faith, appreciating the means employed and the sad results, cannot act remissly. It is not possible; it must rise in the name of the rights of God, of Christ, of the church; in the name of that religious belief which is attempted to be taken from the people, and the principles of moral reason; it must rise full of shame for society, which tolerates such horrible abuses and crimes. It will rise to repair these defects with gladness. The spirit of faith, strengthened by the motives proposed, will spur it on in its efforts. The Catholic associations of Germany are undoubtedly energetic; so are those of Austria; but the secret of their force is found in the fact that the men who lead them are men of strong faith and of great prudence and intelligence. This is evident from their congresses, in their speeches and newspapers. Catholic associations in other lands would do well to imitate them.

III.

The motives just proposed are powerful, but their source is disagreeable. There are others more pleasant to consider. Among these latter is the nobility of the end proposed by Catholic associations. This is not, as has been calumniously stated, to revenge the defeat of a certain political order, or to satisfy natural restlessness. Catholic associations, vivified by the true spirit of faith, do not stoop so low. They aim at things far higher. The name which they bear, the rules which they profess to follow, the works already accomplished where they have been established, attest it. Their particular object is to drag men, made slaves by the revolution, out of the mire of incredulity and immorality into which false principles have plunged them. They strive to re-establish society on the true bases of truth and justice, to restore tranquillity to peoples disturbed by the passions of party and the fury of false teachers. They aim to reclaim for God the obedience which is his due, the honor which belongs to Christ, the rights taken from the church; to give true liberty—the liberty of the Gospel—to all;[655] to draw men away from the carnal happiness proposed to them by the revolution; and to make them seek that beatitude which every rational Christian should desire. The revolution threatens everything—religion in society and among individuals; the Catholic associate declares himself their champion.

Such is the noble aim of Catholic associations; hence the nobleness of the conflict in which they are engaged. What is this conflict? It is the struggle of truth against error, of right against might, of civilization against barbarism, of duty to God, Christ, and his church against impiety, blasphemy, and injustice. The revolution means the renewal among men of the revolt of Lucifer and his angels; the Catholic associations are the faithful cohorts of God and his Christ. Their war-cry is that of St. Michael: Quis ut Deus et Christus ejus? Who is like to God and his Christ?

This war-cry has been explicitly recommended in the New Testament. The words are given by St. Matthew, St. Mark, St. Luke, and plainly referred to by St. Paul. "Whoever," says Christ, "confesses me in the midst of this sinful and adulterous race, whoever makes public profession of my doctrine, will be recognized by me before the angels, before the tribunal of my Father in heaven."[152] Does not the present generation publicly boast of making a divorce between itself and God and Christ? Giving loose rein to passion under the specious names of liberty of conscience and the preaching of licentious doctrines, modern society is plunging into the abyss of iniquity. Hence, the Catholic associates must rise courageously in the midst of this generation, confess Christ openly, publicly affirm his doctrines, and defend them in the face of his enemies. The Catholic associates must revive the praises of Christ; to them are his divine promises addressed, to them belong the irrevocable guarantees of being placed near the throne of his Father. Combating bravely and bearing themselves like true champions of the religion of Christ, their fate is not and cannot be doubtful.

Let the Catholic associations, therefore, advance courageously to the fight, bearing the banner of Christ against the standard of the revolution. Humanity, liberty, progress, light, are written on the adverse flag, but they are stolen words. In the mouths of the revolutionists they are lies. The flag of humanity is not that which destroys its rights, but that which defends them; nor of liberty, that which makes men slaves of their passions instead of freeing them; nor of progress, that which has no aim, but that which leads to something definite; nor of light, that which begets obscurity in the intellect, destroying its most obvious principles, but that which illuminates intelligence with divine revelation. This latter is the banner of Catholic associations, consequently it is the flag of humanity, of liberty, of progress, the standard of light.

IV.

The forces of Catholic associations must act in concert. It is not enough that their members be vigorous and animated with an ardent faith. There must be harmony of intelligence among them. Woe to the society whose members have different principles or contradictory plans! Like a machine whose wheels do not move harmoniously, ruin will result. There must be uniformity of principles and[656] thorough harmony of intelligence if the Catholic associates hope to obtain great successes.

Harmony in generalities is easy; but not so in particulars. If you ask a Catholic assembly what it wants, all the members will reply, "The propagation and triumph of Catholic principles." But if you descend to particular enquiries, you may meet difficulties that close the way to success; disputes about fixed principles must therefore be eliminated from Catholic associations.

These associations are in the first place essentially laic, therefore it is not their business to decide questions of principle. Their aim is a practical one, namely, to annul the efforts of the revolution, to introduce the principles of Catholicity where they do not exist, and strengthen them where they do. It is not of their competence to determine them. They are called Catholic, therefore, in case of doubt, they must recur to the teaching church and accept her decisions. We repeat: the Catholic associations must keep within the bounds imposed by their very nature and title, and then there will be no collision of views, no wasting of precious time in useless disputes, no schisms and separations; but, with all the force of a strong faith, they will advance with dignity, security, and success in their undertakings.

In confirmation of this, we quote an apposite passage from the discourse pronounced by his eminence, Cardinal Schwarzenberg, in the general congress of the Catholic associations held at Prague in 1860. "The object of Catholic associations," says the eminent prelate, "is to take measures to introduce and assist the teaching, the principles, the precepts, and the desires of the church in the schools, in the life of the citizen and of the family, among merchants and men of business. Their duty is to support the teaching church by counsel and co-operation. Their duty is also to acknowledge with joyful mind the doctrines of the church, to follow them, defend and sustain them."

Who does not admit the great good performed by the Catholic associations of Germany in the course of the few years during which they have been established? And if we study the reason of their success, we shall find it in the undisturbed harmony of their views. The spirit of "liberal Catholicism" tried to influence them, but in vain. Their associates, mindful of their title and of their duty to the pastors of the church, and especially to the Roman Pontiff, obey his instructions without subtle distinctions and commentaries, and employ their talents properly in securing their prosperity.

An instance of their Catholic zeal is found in the letter sent to the Pope by the assembly held at Innsbrück preparatory to the general congress of the German Catholic societies in 1867. In that letter we read as follows: "On the 9th, 10th, and 11th of September, with the consent and approval of the most reverend Bishop of Brixen, the Catholics of Innsbrück, the capital of the Tyrol, will be gathered together in order to defend courageously their religion as far as God and their strength will allow; and, the errors and lies of vain men being rejected, such errors as your holiness has pointed out and condemned with fulness of authority in your encyclical letters, in order also to take salutary counsel required by the character of the times and circumstances, so as to promote the growth of Catholic life and charity, under the patronage of the Blessed Virgin Mary. An immense war, as you, Holy Father, have expressed it, is waged against divine revelation, against the[657] Catholic Church, against the apostolic see, against good morals and Christian charity, the queen of all the virtues. While this war rages, every Catholic becomes a soldier of Christ; but we cannot carry on a good and just war if we do not cling with all the ardor of our soul to the apostolic see, fastened to that rock which God has placed in Rome; and if we are not helped and sustained by your supreme authority and your efficacious blessing; wherefore, we earnestly desire from our very inmost hearts to venerate, follow, and obey you, the Vicar of Christ, you, the chief pastor of the whole flock of the Lord, you, father of all the faithful. This is the unanimous feeling of all those who will be assembled in September at Innsbrück; this is the universal desire; and, all animated by this thought, God will defend the Christian doctrine and Christian charity."

Let these be the sentiments of all Catholic associations that may spring up; let this be their programme and the foundation of their constitution. The spirit of prompt submission to the teaching of the church should animate them. This is a simple consequence of the first element of Catholic life. Christ never said to any theologian, erudite man, learned historian, or particular society, "Be ye masters of the church, and let her hear you;" but he did say so to the bishops and to the pope in the person of the apostles and of Peter. Only one blinded by his own pride can deny this fundamental principle of the Catholic religion. The spirit of prompt obedience to lawful authority is the secret which alone will render Catholic societies capable of success.

But harmony of intelligence is not the only means by which Catholic associations can manifest their spirit. There must be unity of feeling and co-ordination of will, elements essential to every society.

A Catholic association which possesses the spirit of submission to the teaching church, and possesses harmony of intelligence, is on the right road, and may hope to prosper in its undertakings. But how often does it happen that a serious impediment, an insurmountable barrier, stops the progress of a brave legion and disappoints the well-founded hopes of victory! Here is a danger which the best-intentioned Catholic association may encounter; an obstruction, an invincible barrier, which may arise from the unexpected disagreement of wills. Agreement of wills is essential as well as harmony of intelligence.

It is evident that, in order to maintain this agreement, we must remove the causes which might disturb it. There are two sources of discord; one arising from the internal relations of a society. The intellects may agree on the principles to be sustained, and the wills consent as to the end proposed; but the task is for the members to choose the same means and put them in practice. Here may arise the discord. Some project or design is proposed. It is debated. The dispute waxes warm. Hard words are interchanged. The majority, of course, carry the project; but the minority may disagree and refuse to co-operate in its execution. Hence disaffection, schisms, and secessions in the association. What is the root of all these troubles? It is, in one word, pride, the root of all schisms. One thinks himself more learned, of greater rank or of more experience than the others, therefore he will not be led by their judgment but by his own self-conceit. The[658] trouble is small in the beginning, but it may produce disastrous results. What is the remedy? It is to bring to every discussion the true Catholic spirit of abnegation and of sacrifice. Whims and prejudices must be laid aside for the sake of harmony and the noble cause to be defended. Our God is a God of peace, not of commotion and disturbance. The best plan is not always that suggested by our weak judgment. Provided the plan of the majority be a good one, though it may not be the most perfect, still, for peace sake, let us adopt it, according to the advice of Xavier, that it is better to accept a unanimous plan, though not the best, rather than a perfect one which would cause dissensions among our brethren.

The second cause of dissensions may be in the external relations of the associates. This would be the more dangerous, because the occasion of it might be an apparent external good to be effected. The will of the bishop or of the pastor may not agree with the desire of the society. In a case of this kind, if the society should act in spite of the episcopal will or opposed to it publicly, a great scandal would happen in the diocese, and the society would fall to pieces. What is the remedy for such calamities? The associates must have filial reverence and obedience for the pastors of the church. Then all difficulties will cease. This is required by the very object of the association, which is to aid the bishops in religious matters; it is also required by the dignity of the bishops, since the Holy Ghost has called them to be rulers in the church. His holiness Pius IX. clearly teaches that this should be the bearing of Catholic societies toward their pastors, in his answer to the Catholics of Innsbrück.

Here we may quote what a bishop said in the general congress held to condemn the proceedings of the so-called German Catholic liberals. These gentlemen, under the appearance of doing good, had expressed their usual lamentations about the storms that threatened the church, the danger to her future freedom, unless the laity were allowed a greater influence in religious matters; to deny them this influence, as had been done so far, would be to render them inert and careless about church matters. Such were the complaints—complaints of the discontented son who is trying to deprive his mother of complete control of the house—subtle revolutionary complaints against the authority of the hierarchy. The Bishop of Brixen, answering them, said, "What kind of influence do laymen want in the church? To control dogma? They cannot. Discipline? They cannot. Influence of the laity is too vague a conception, and, besides, a useless one. In order that it should produce benefits, its limits should be determined, its conditions explained. But it is well known that the chief among them is faithful dependence on the teachings and authority of the church, since the words of the apostle suit individuals as well as the whole church: 'The just man lives by faith.' The life of the church requires nothing but what comes from faith. Hence, when the church finds a layman who manifests his faith in his words and actions, she honors him, salutes him with joy as a co-operator not having belied the words of the apostle of love: Let us be co-workers of truth, co-operators in propagating and strengthening it, and in assuring its triumph. In every age there have been many such men, like our modern Catholic associations, and for this reason we protect them, salute, esteem them; and the best proof of our love[659] for them is that we have hastened to come to this solemn congress of lay associations, assembled to defend Catholic interests." Thus spoke the learned prelate. In conclusion, a Catholic society must not touch on dogmatic subjects, nor interfere in affairs pertaining to ecclesiastical discipline: it should observe proper respect and obedience toward its bishops, and then the bishops will aid, bless and sustain it.

VI.

The parts of a machine, in order to act in concert, must be united according to mechanical laws: so associations must obey the laws of order. They must have co-ordination of forces. In this consists the peculiar advantage of association. Each one has its constitution and by-laws. Let it observe them, adapting them to the wants and peculiarities of each nation. The difficulty is really not in enacting laws for it, but to keep them in vigor.

The associates must have the spirit of order. Then the execution of laws will be easy. Such a spirit will make each member mind his own position; each officer act in his own sphere without infringing on the rights of others. The object of the association being to act with united forces, this purpose cannot be effected by a disorderly mass of individuals, acknowledging no obedience to a local or general superior. Each particular society will become jealous of its neighbor, unless all agree to obey implicitly a central committee. Private utility and individuality must be sacrificed to the public good; jealousy, self-love, personal advantage, these three causes that tend to disrupt the co-ordination of the common forces, must be sacrificed to the common welfare, and to the end for which the association was established, as it is an elementary rule of order that the private must be sacrificed for the public good. For this reason we consider that society best in which the strictest bonds are maintained between the members and the centre or head. Does not union make strength? A necessary consequence is that the force is proportioned to the union. Baron Stillfried, a name dear to Catholics by reason of his fervid zeal for religion, rendering an account of what the Confraternity of the Archangel St. Michael, founded in Vienna in 1860, had done, confessed that, owing to dissensions among the members, and the consequent lack of union of forces, the results had been relatively few. On the contrary, who does not admire the wonderful success obtained by the Catholic Casini of Austria in favor of the pontifical cause, owing to their unity of purpose and union of forces? They obliged the president of the council to receive their complaints; they obliged the chancellor of the empire to excuse himself; they moved all the Catholic populations to such a spirit of action in favor of religion, tied down by the iniquitous laws of the revolution, that all the journals of the secret societies bellowed and blasphemed like lunatics, fearing the destruction of their nefarious designs.

The multiplicity of Catholic interests gives rise to many associations differing according to the difference of their aims. Should this diversity have no common bond of union? By no means. Some have for object matters of essential importance, as, for instance, the freedom of the church, her right to educate, and the independence of her head. In regard to these subjects, all the associations should unite. Is it necessary to prove this? Is it not self-evident?[660] Associations that would act differently would resemble those Chinese troops which neglected the defence of the most important posts, contenting themselves with guarding places of secondary importance.

Catholic societies are not bands of conspirators, they do not excite rebellions, nor use violence or deceit to gain their purpose. These arts are left to the revolutionists. Catholics need no weapons but truth and justice. They must be ready to die for both. But they must act legally, they must not violate the civil order. Consequently, they should never undertake a work without first being satisfied of its lawfulness.

In this way success is certain; for in modern civil society public opinion rules. If Catholic societies defend religion, who can object? For public opinion must admit their right to do so, provided they violate no laws of the state.

VII.

But although legality is required for Catholic associations, they must not be timid or cowardly. They must be brave and magnanimous. Christ teaches us to be magnanimous, for he gave his blood and life for the love of truth and justice; the martyrs in millions died for the same cause. We must imitate them. No difficulty or obstacle must balk the zeal of a Catholic association. No fatigue or danger or sacrifice must be too great for the Catholic associate. The soldier of Christ must conquer difficulties. The present conflict, said Monsignor de Ketteler, in the congress of the Catholic associations of Trèves, needs champions who, for the love of Christ, dare expose themselves to the attacks of newspapers and demagogues, to calumny and terms of contempt in parliament and from the rostrum. The Catholic spirit must be a self-sacrificing and a magnanimous one. Every associate must be a Catholic before being a politician, a Catholic before being a man of letters, a Catholic above all things. He must never be discouraged, but persevere with generous constancy, in spite of the attacks of enemies, or the seeming want of success of many of his efforts. Let the Catholic associates remember that they are fighting under the very eyes of God; and that their struggles, even though not always successful, are a manifestation of their faith before men which will be rewarded in heaven.

VIII.

We say this on the supposition that the combined forces of the association should produce no result. But this supposition is unfounded. Let the Catholic association remain constant in its enterprise, and it will make a new step to victory every day. It may fail in this or that particular measure, but the general cause will prosper. We know that the heads of the secret societies speak in this way, but they do so to deceive. We do not, for our words are founded on solid reasons.

The first is drawn from the nature of the two causes in conflict. The revolution is the cause of error and injustice; Catholicism is the cause of truth and justice, consequently the cause of Catholicism is conformable to the nature of man, formed for the true and the good, while the cause of the revolution is in contradiction with man's nature. How can any nature remain long in a state of contradiction with itself? Passion or ignorance may obscure for a time the human intelligence,[661] but when the contradiction is felt and known, nature revolts against it with all its power, and frees itself. Now, as the associations in the interest of the Catholic faith are striving to enlighten our intellect with the light of truth, and to repress the force of passions by inculcating the love of virtue, the necessary effect of such labor must be that the cause of the revolution will daily lose ground as the light of truth, becoming more apparent, shows the falsity of certain principles. The more the Catholic associations combine in illuminating the human intelligence and correcting the dormant moral sense of society, the more will the Catholic cause hasten towards triumph.

Reason teaches this. But revelation offers other proofs, for it gives us the promises of Christ. These are expressed in those passages in which our Lord likens his doctrines to the little leaven which leavens the whole mass; and when he tells his apostles to trust in him, the conqueror of the world.[153] Let the Catholic associations, therefore, advance in their work with confidence. They have divine promises in their favor. The false and iniquitous doctrines of the revolution will fall to the ground. Its efforts will be in vain, its success only local or temporary; for the friends of truth and of human rights will finally conquer. The best instincts of human nature and the promises of faith are with them.

The Holy Ghost tells us by the pen of St. Paul that truth must conquer in the end, speaking of the saints "who triumphed over the powers of earth, closed the mouths of lions, were invincible in the combat, and conquered their enemies."[154] The children of the revolution, having a presentiment of their defeat by the new Catholic associations, have already cried To arms! and in a thousand ways manifested their fear. Yes, the victorious future belongs to the Catholic associations. Let them, therefore, arise with courage grounded on the principles of faith, strengthened by the noble motives of their enterprise. Harmony of intelligence, the spirit of submission to the church, agreement of wills, with the spirit of sacrifice, and of reverence for their pastors, will make them serried battalions, moving according to law, with magnanimity, constancy, and confidence in God, irresistible in their attacks. Let them fight on the battle-field of faith, and the world will soon know that the proud pomp of the revolution and its thousand war-cries are founded only on falsehood and deceit.

OUR LADY OF LOURDES.

PART NINTH.
I.

By reason of the events which we have narrated, M. Massy no longer felt at home in this part of the earth. The emperor did not fail to send him to the first prefecture which became vacant in the empire. By a remarkable coincidence, this prefecture proved to be that of Grenoble. Baron Massy left Our Lady of Lourdes only to meet Our Lady of La Salette.

Jacomet also left the department, and was appointed chief of police elsewhere. Re-established upon his chosen ground, he contributed with great sagacity to the detection of some dangerous criminals who had baffled the efforts of his predecessor and the active search of the police. The crime was a great robbery committed upon a railroad company, and amounting to several hundred thousand francs. This was the point of departure in his fortunes as a police agent, his true vocation. His remarkable ability, appreciated by his superiors, raised him to a higher place.

The procureur impérial, M. Dutour, was also speedily called to other functions. M. Lacadé still remained mayor, and his shadow will yet appear once or twice in the latter pages of our story.

II.

Although he had instituted the tribunal of examination towards the end of July, still, before permitting it to begin its work, Mgr. Laurence desired a more peaceful state of the public mind. "To wait," he thought, "will not compromise God's work, since he holds all time in his hands." The issue proved that he was right. For after the stormy discussions of the French press and the violent proceedings of Baron Massy, the grotto finally became free, and there was no longer fear of the scandal of seeing police agents arresting the episcopal commission on its way to the Massabielle rocks in order to fulfil its duty, and examine the traces of God's finger at the very place of the apparition.

On the 17th of November, the commission went to Lourdes. They examined the seer. "Bernadette," says the procès-verbal of the secretary, "presented herself before us with great modesty, and, nevertheless, with remarkable confidence. She appeared calm and unembarrassed in the midst of the numerous assembly, in presence of distinguished ecclesiastics, whom she had never seen, but of whose mission she had been made aware."

She described the apparitions, the words of the Blessed Virgin, the order given by Mary to build a chapel in her honor, the sudden breaking out of the fountain, the name, "Immaculate Conception," which the vision had given to itself. She set forth all that was personal to herself in this supernatural drama with the grave certainty of a witness fully convinced,[663] and the humble candor of a child. She answered every question, and left no obscurity in the mind of those who interrogated her, no longer in the name of man, as Jacomet had done, but in the name of the Catholic Church. Our readers are already aware of the substance of her testimony. We have, in former pages, narrated events in the order of their date. The commission visited the Massabielle rocks. It beheld the great volume of the miraculous fountain. It established, by the testimony of the neighboring inhabitants, that no spring existed there before the time when it broke forth in the presence of the multitudes under the hand of the ecstatic seer.

At Lourdes and in other places they made studious inquiry into the miraculous cures worked by the water of the grotto.

In this delicate task there were two parts, entirely distinct. Human testimony determined the facts themselves; but their natural or supernatural character depended, for the most part, on the verdict of medical science. The method followed by the tribunal was inspired by this twofold thought.

Throughout the dioceses of Lourdes, Auch, and Bayonne, the commission summoned before it the subjects of these singular cures. It cross-examined the minutest details of their sickness, and their sudden or gradual restoration to health. It brought in human science to put those technical questions of which theologians, perhaps, would not have thought. It summoned the relations, friends, neighbors, and other witnesses of the different phases of the event, to confirm evidence. Having once come to a certainty of all details, it submitted facts to the judgment of two eminent physicians admitted as colleagues. These physicians were Dr. Vergès, superintendent of the baths at Barèges, Fellow of the Medical Faculty of Montpellier, and Dr. Dozous, who had already, out of private interest, given his attention to several of these strange incidents. Each physician gave in his report his personal opinion regarding the nature of the cure, sometimes rejecting the miracle, and attributing the cessation of disease to certain natural causes; at other times declaring its utter inexplicability without the action of a supernatural power; and, lastly, sometimes not arriving at any conclusion, but remaining in doubt as to the true explanation. Thus prepared by the double knowledge of facts and the conclusion of science with respect to them, the commission deliberated, and finally pronounced its judgment to the bishop, and submitted the evidence.

The commission had not and could not have any preconceived opinions. Believing on principle in the supernatural, which is always to be met with in the history of the world, it knew, also, that nothing so tends to discredit the true miracles of God as false prodigies worked by men. Equally indisposed to deny or affirm anything prematurely, having no brief to sustain either for or against the miracle, it was confined strictly to the task of examination and sought only the truth. It appealed to every source of light and information, and acted in full view of the public.

It was as open to unbelievers as to those who believed. Resolved to discard remorselessly all that was vague or uncertain, and to accept only incontestable facts, it rejected every declaration based upon hearsay.

It imposed two conditions upon every witness: first, to testify only to what came under personal knowledge[664] and observation; secondly, to state under oath the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

With such precautions and an organization so prudent and wise, it would have been impossible for a false miracle to deceive the judgment of the commission. It would have been impossible, in the face of the hostile criticism of those who were bent upon combating and overthrowing every error and even the least exaggeration, to sustain any doubtful assertion or the miraculous character of any doubtful fact.

If, then, true miracles, imperfectly proved, failed in obtaining the sanction of the commission, it is absolutely certain that no false prodigy could stand before its searching examination.

Whoever had the means of contesting any one of the miracles—not by vague and general theories, but by facts and personal knowledge—was thereby summoned to appear against it. Not to do so was to give up the case, and acknowledge that no formal or intelligible counter-evidence could be sustained. When passions run high in the ardor of a long struggle, parties do not let judgment go by default. To refuse the combat is to accept defeat.

III.

During several months, the episcopal commission visited the houses of those whom public notoriety designated as objects of the miraculous cures subjected to its examination. It established the truth of many miracles. Several of them have already found a place in our history. Two were quite recent. They had taken place shortly after the prefect had withdrawn his prohibition and the grotto had been reopened. One was at Nay, the other at Tartas. Although the recipients of these heavenly favors were mutually unacquainted, a mysterious bond seemed to connect both events. Let us relate them in order as we have personally studied them, and written down what we have heard under the impressions produced by the living testimony.

IV.

In the town of Nay, where young Henry Busquet had been miraculously cured a few months before, a certain widow, named Madeleine Rizan, was at the point of death. Her life had for twenty-four or twenty-five years been an unbroken series of pain and sorrow. Having been attacked by the cholera in 1832, her left side had remained almost entirely paralyzed. She was quite lame, and could only move a few steps inside her house, and that only by supporting herself against the walls or furniture. Two or three times a year, in warm weather, she was able to go to Mass at the parish church of Nay, not far from her dwelling. She was unable, without assistance, either to kneel or to rise. One of her hands was totally palsied. Her general health had suffered no less than her limbs from this terrible scourge. She frequently vomited blood, and her stomach was unable to bear solid food.

Beef-tea, soup, and coffee had, however, sufficed to keep up the flame of life, ever flickering and unable to warm her feeble body. She often suffered from icy chills. The poor woman was always cold. Even in the heats of July and August, she always wished to see fire in the grate, and to have her arm-chair wheeled close to the hearth.

For the last sixteen or eighteen months, her state had been much[665] aggravated; the paralysis of the left side had become total. The same infirmity had begun to attack the right leg. Her paralyzed limbs were greatly swollen, as happens in the case of dropsy.

Madame Rizan left her chair to take to her bed. She could not move, such was her weakness, and they were obliged to turn her, from time to time, in her bed. She was almost an inert mass. Sensibility was gone as well as motion.

"Where are my legs?" she used to inquire, when any one came to move her. Her limbs were drawn together, and she lay continually on one side in the form of a Z.

Two physicians had successively attended her. Doctor Talamon had long since given her up as incurable, and, although he continued to visit her, it was only as a friend. He refused to prescribe any remedies, saying that drugs and medicines would prove fatal, or, at best, only enfeeble her system.

Doctor Subervielle, at the repeated instance of Madame Rizan, had prescribed some medicines, and, soon finding them utterly useless, had also given up all hope. Although her paralyzed limbs had become insensible, the sufferings which this unfortunate woman experienced from her stomach and head were terrible. Owing to her constantly cramped position, she was afflicted by two painful sores—one in the hollow of her chest, and the other on the back. On her side, in several places, her skin, chafed by the bed-clothes, exposed the flesh, naked and bleeding. Her death was at hand.

Madame Rizan had two children. Her daughter, Lubine, lived with and took care of her with the greatest devotion. Her son, Romain Rizan, had a situation in a business-house at Bordeaux.

When the last hope was gone, and Doctor Subervielle declared that she had only a few hours to live, they sent in haste for her son, Romain Rizan. He came, embraced his mother, and received her last blessing and farewell. Then, obliged to leave by a message peremptorily recalling him—torn by the cruel tyranny of business from his mother's death-bed—he left her with the bitter conviction that he should never see her more. The dying woman received extreme unction. Her agony went on amid excruciating sufferings.

"My God!" she often murmured, "I pray thee to end my torments. Grant me to be healed or to die."

She sent to ask the Sisters of the Cross, at Igon, where her own sister-in-law was superior, to make a novena to Our Lady for her cure or death. The sick woman also evinced a desire to drink some of the water of the grotto. One of her neighbors, Madame Nessans, who was going to Lourdes, promised to fetch some of the water when she returned. For some time past, she had been watched day and night. On Saturday, October 16, a violent crisis heralded the near approach of her last moment. She was continually spitting blood. A livid hue spread over her worn features; her eyes became glassy. She no longer spoke, except when forced by excessive pain.

"Her prayer will soon be granted," said Doctor Subervielle as he left her. "She will die to-night, or at least before the sun is fairly up. There is only a little oil left in the lamp!"

From time to time the door of her chamber opened. Friends, neighbors, and priests, the Abbé Dupont and the Abbé Sanareus, vicar of Nay,[666] entered and softly inquired if she were still alive.

Her friend and consoler, the Abbé Dupont, could not restrain his tears as he left her. "Before morning she will be dead, and I shall see her again only in paradise," he said.

Night fell, and solitude gradually took possession of the house. Kneeling before a statue of the Blessed Virgin, Lubine prayed without any earthly hope. The silence was profound, and broken only by the difficult breathing of the invalid.

"What do you wish, mother?" she asked, taking her hand. "My dear child," answered the dying mother, in a strange voice that seemed to come from a heavy dream, "go to our friend Madame Nessans, who was to have returned from Lourdes, this evening. Ask her for a glassful of the water from the grotto. This water will cure me. The Blessed Virgin wishes it."

"Dear mother," answered Lubine, "it is too late to go there. I cannot leave you alone. Besides, everybody is asleep at the house of Madame Nessans. But I will go early in the morning."

"Let us wait, then." The invalid relapsed into silence. The long night finally passed.

The joyous bells at last announced the day. The morning Angelus as it rose carried up to the Virgin Mother the prayers of earth, and celebrated the eternal memory of her all-powerful maternity. Lubine hastened to Madame Nessans's, and soon returned with a bottle of water from the grotto.

"Here, mother! Drink! and may the Blessed Virgin come to your help!" Madame Rizan raised the glass to her lips, and swallowed a few mouthfuls.

"O my daughter! my daughter! It is life that I am drinking! Here is life in this water! Bathe my face with it! Bathe my arms! Bathe my whole body with it!"

Trembling and almost beside herself, Lubine moistened a piece of linen with the miraculous water, and bathed her mother's face.

"I feel that I am cured!" she cried in a voice now clear and strong. "I feel that I am cured!"

Lubine meanwhile bathed with the wet linen the paralyzed and swollen limbs of the invalid. Trembling with mingled joy and terror, she saw the enormous swelling disappear under the rapid movement of her hand, and the stretched and shining skin reassume its natural appearance.

Suddenly, completely, and without transition, health and life revived beneath her touch.

"It seems to me as if burning pimples were breaking out all over me." It was, doubtless, the principle of disease leaving for ever under the influence of a superhuman will. All this was over in a moment. In a couple of minutes the body of Madame Rizan, apparently in her agony, bathed by her daughter, recovered the fulness of strength.

"I am cured! perfectly cured!" cried the happy woman. "Oh! how good the Blessed Virgin is! Oh! how powerful she is!"

After the first burst of gratitude toward heaven, the material appetites of earth made themselves keenly felt.

"Will you have some coffee, some wine, or some milk?" stammered her daughter, confused by the suddenness and astounding character of the miracle.

"I want to have meat and bread, my daughter. I have not tasted any for twenty-four years." There happened to be some cold meat and some wine near at hand; Madame Rizan partook of both. "And now," said she, "I want to get up."

"It is impossible, mother," said Lubine, hesitating to believe her eyes, and fancying, perhaps, that cures which come directly from God are subject, like other cures, to the degrees and dangers of convalescence. She feared to see the miracle vanish as suddenly as it had come.

Madame Rizan insisted and demanded her clothes. They had been for many months carefully folded and packed in the wardrobe never to be worn again. Lubine left the room to find them. Soon she re-entered. But as she crossed the threshold, she uttered a loud cry, and dropped the garment which she was bringing. Her mother had sprung out of bed, during her absence, and there she was, before the mantelpiece, where she kept a statue of the Blessed Virgin, with clasped hands returning thanks to her all-powerful deliverer.

Lubine, as frightened as if she had beheld one risen from the dead, was unable to help her mother to dress. The latter, however, put on her clothes in an instant without any assistance, and again knelt down before the sacred image.

It was about seven o'clock in the morning, and the people were going to the early Mass. Lubine's cry was heard in the street by the groups who were passing under the windows.

"Poor girl!" they said, "her mother is dead at last. It was impossible for her to survive the night." Several entered the house to console and support Lubine in this unspeakable affliction, among others two sisters of the Holy Cross.

"Ah! poor child, your good mother is dead! But you will certainly see her again in heaven!" They approached the young girl, whom they beheld leaning against the half-opened door, her face wearing a stupefied look. She could scarcely answer them.

"My mother is risen from the dead!" she answered, in a voice choked by strong emotion.

"She is raving," thought the sisters, as they passed by and entered the room, followed by some persons who had come up-stairs with them.

Lubine had spoken the truth. Madame Rizan had left her bed. There she was, dressed and prostrated before the image of Mary. She arose, and said: "I am cured! Let us all kneel down, and thank the Blessed Virgin."

The news of this extraordinary event spread like lightning through the city. All that day and the day after the house was full of people. The crowd, agitated and yet recollected, pressed to visit the room into which a ray of the all-powerful goodness of God had penetrated.

Everybody wished to see Madame Rizan, to touch the body restored to life, to convince his own eyes, and grave upon his memory the details of this supernatural drama.

Doctor Subervielle acknowledged, without hesitation, the supernatural and divine character of this cure.

At Bordeaux, meanwhile, Romain Rizan awaited in despair and anguish the fatal missive announcing his mother's death. It was a great shock to him when, one morning, the postman brought him a letter addressed in the well-known hand of Abbé Dupont.

"I have lost my poor mother!" he said to a friend who had just come to visit him. He burst into tears, and dared not break the seal.

"Rejoice, my dear friend. Your mother is cured—completely cured. The Blessed Virgin has restored her miraculously to health." The Abbé Dupont then went on to relate the divine manner in which Madame Rizan had found at the end of her agony life instead of death.

We may easily fancy the joy of the son and of his friend. The latter was employed in a printing-house at Bordeaux, where was published the Messager Catholique. "Give me that letter," said he to Romain. "The works of God ought to be made known, and Our Lady of Lourdes glorified."

Partly by force, and partly by entreaty, he obtained the letter. It was published a few days afterward in the Messager Catholique.

The happy son hastened to Nay at the earliest moment. As he arrived in the diligence, a woman was waiting to greet him. She ran swiftly to meet him, and, when he descended from the coach, threw herself into his arms, weeping with tenderness and joy. It was his mother.

A few years afterward, the author, while searching out the details of his history, went in person to verify the report of the episcopal commission. He visited Madame Rizan, whose perfect health and green old age excited his admiration. Although in her seventy-first year, she has none of the infirmities which that age usually brings. Of her illness and terrible sufferings there remains not a trace; and all who had formerly known her, and whose testimony we gathered, were yet stupefied at her extraordinary cure.[155] We wished to see Doctor Subervielle. He had been dead some years.

"But," we asked a clergyman of Nay, who acted as our guide, "the invalid was attended by another physician, Doctor Talamon, was she not?"

"He is a very distinguished man," replied our companion. "He was in the habit of visiting Madame Rizan, not professionally, but as a friend and neighbor. But after her miraculous cure he ceased his visits, and did not make his appearance for eight or ten months."

"Perhaps," we rejoined, "he wished to avoid being questioned on the subject, and being obliged to explain this extraordinary phenomenon, which would certainly have been out of accord with his principles of medical philosophy?"

Doctor Talamon is a tall and handsome old man, with an expressive and intelligent countenance. A remarkable forehead, a crown of white locks, a glance which betokens positive adherence to opinions, a mouth varied in expression, and on which a sceptical smile often plays—these are the features which strike one who approaches him.

"It is a long time," he answered, "since all that happened, and, at the distance of ten or twelve years, my memory supplies but a dim recollection of the matter about which you inquire; besides, I was not an eye-witness of it. I did not see Madame Rizan for several months, and, consequently, do not know by what conditions or agents, or with what degree of speed or slowness, her recovery was effected."

"But, doctor, did you not have curiosity enough to investigate such an extraordinary event, of which rumor must have instantly informed you, especially in this place?"

"The fact is," he answered, "I am an old physician. I know that the laws of nature are never reversed, and, to tell you the truth, I do not believe the least bit in miracles."

"Ah! doctor, you sin against the faith," cried the abbé who had accompanied me.

"And I, doctor, do not accuse you of sinning against faith, but I accuse you of sinning against the very principles of the science which you profess."

"Medicine is not a speculative, but an empirical science. Experience is its law. The observation of facts is its first and fundamental principle. If you had been told that Madame Rizan had cured herself by washing with a decoction from some plant recently discovered on yonder mountain, you would not have failed to ascertain the cure and to examine the plant, and put the discovery on record. It might have been as important as that of quinine in the last century. You would have done the same if the cure had been produced by some new sulphurous or alkaline substance. But, now, everybody is talking about a fountain of miraculous water, and you have never yet been to see it. Forgetting that you are a physician, that is to say, a humble observer of facts, you have refused to notice this, as did the scientific academies which rejected steam and proscribed quinine on some quack principles of their own. In medicine, when fact contradicts a principle, it means that the principle is wrong. Experience is the supreme judge. And here, doctor, allow me to say that, if you had not had some vague consciousness that what I am telling you is true, you would have rushed to find out the truth, and would have given yourself the pleasure of showing up the imposture of a miracle which was setting the whole neighborhood wild with excitement. But this would have exposed you to the danger of being forced to surrender; and you have acted like those party-slaves who will not listen to the arguments of their opponents. You have listened to your philosophical prejudices, and you have been false to the first law of medicine, which is to face the study of facts—no matter of what nature—in order to derive instruction from them. I speak freely, doctor, because I am aware of your great merits, and that your keen intellect is capable of hearing the truth. Many physicians have refused to certify to facts of this nature, for fear of having to brave the resentment of the faculty and the raillery of friends of their profession. With regard to yourself, doctor, although your philosophy may have deceived you, human respect has had nothing at all to do with your keeping aloof."

"Certainly not," he replied, "but, perhaps, if I had placed myself at the point of view which you have indicated, I might have done better by examining the matter."

Long before the occurrences at Lourdes, at an epoch when Bernadette was not yet in the world, in 1843, during the month of April, an honorable family of Tartas in the Landes was in a state of great anxiety. The year before, Mlle. Adèle de Chariton had been married to M. Moreau de Sazenay, and now approached the term of her pregnancy. The crisis of a first maternity is always alarming. The medical men, summoned in haste on the preliminary symptoms, declared that the birth would be very difficult, and did not conceal their fear of some danger. No one is ignorant of the cruel anxiety of such a juncture. The most poignant anguish is not for the poor wife who is prostrated upon her bed of pain, and entirely absorbed in her physical sufferings. It is the husband whose heart is now the prey of indescribable tortures. They are of the age of vivid impressions; they have entered upon a new life, and begun to taste the joys of a union which God seems to have blessed; they have passed a few months full of anticipations of the future. The young couple have set them down, so to speak, side by side in a fairy pleasure-boat. The river of life has carried them softly on amid banks of flowers. Suddenly, without warning, the shadow of death rises before them. The heart of the husband, expanded with hope for the child so soon to be born, is crushed by terror for his wife, who may be about to perish. He hears her accents of pain. How will the crisis end? Is it to be in joy or bereavement? What is about to issue from that chamber? Will it be life or death? What must we send for—a cradle or a coffin? Or—horrible contrast—will both be necessary? Or, worse still, shall two coffins be necessary? Human science is silent, and hesitates to pronounce.

This anguish is frightful, but especially for those who do not seek from God their strength and consolation. But M. Moreau was a Christian. He knew that the thread of our existence is in the hands of a supreme Master, to whom we can always appeal from the doctors of science. When man has passed sentence, the King of heaven, as well as other sovereigns, holds the right of pardon.

"The Blessed Virgin will, perhaps, vouchsafe to hear me," thought the afflicted husband. He addressed himself with confidence to the Mother of Christ.

The danger which had appeared so threatening disappeared as a cloud upon the horizon. A little girl had just been born.

Assuredly there was nothing extraordinary about this deliverance. However alarming the danger might have appeared to M. Moreau himself, the physicians had never given up hope. The favorable issue of the crisis may have been something purely natural.

The heart of the husband and father, however, felt itself penetrated with gratitude to the Blessed Virgin. His was not one of those rebellious souls which demands freedom from all doubt in order to escape acknowledging a favor.

"Marie? Why, that is the commonest name in the whole country. The children of the laboring people, the servants, are all named Marie. Besides, Marie Moreau is out of all euphony. The two m's and two r's would be intolerable!" A thousand[671] reasons of equal validity were urged against him. There was a general protest.

M. Moreau was very accessible, and easily moved by others; but in this instance he resisted all counsel and entreaty; he braved all discontent, and his tenacity was really extraordinary. He did not allow himself to forget that, in his distress, he had invoked this sacred name, or that it belonged to the Queen of heaven.

"She shall be called Marie, and I wish her to take the Blessed Virgin for a patroness. And I tell you the truth, this name will some day bring her a blessing."

Everybody was astonished at this apparent obstinacy, but it remained unshaken as that of Zachary when he gave his son the name John. Vainly did they apply every means of attack; there was no getting by this inflexible will. The first-born of the family, therefore, took the name of Marie. The father, moreover, desired that she should be vowed for three years to dress in white, the color of the Blessed Virgin. This, too, was done.

More than sixteen years had now passed since this episode. A second daughter had been born, she was called Marthe. Mlle. Marie Moreau was being educated at the Convent of the Sacred Heart at Bordeaux. About the commencement of January, 1858, she was attacked by a disease of the eyes, which shortly obliged her to give up her studies. She supposed at first that it was only a cold which would pass off as it had come; but her hopes were deceived, and her complaint assumed a most alarming character. The physician in attendance judged it necessary to consult a distinguished oculist of Bordeaux, M. Bermont. It was not a cold; it was amaurosis.

"Her case is a very serious one," said M. Bermont; "one of the eyes is entirely gone, and the other in a very dangerous condition."

The parents were immediately notified. Her mother hastened to Bordeaux, and brought back her daughter, in order that she might have at home that care, treatment, and perfect attention which the oculist had prescribed in order to save the eye which yet remained, and which was so gravely affected that it could perceive objects only as through a mist.

The medicines, baths, and all the prescriptions of science proved useless. Spring and autumn passed without any change for the better. Indeed, the deplorable condition of the invalid was daily aggravated. Total blindness was approaching. M. and Madame Moreau decided to take their child to Paris, in order to consult the great medical lights.

While engaged in hasty preparations for their journey, fearing lest it might be too slow to escape the danger which threatened their child, the postman brought them the weekly number of the Messager Catholique. It was about the first of November, and this number of the Messager Catholique happened to be precisely the one which contained the letter of Abbé Dupont, and the story of the miraculous cure of Madame Rizan, of Nay, by means of water from the grotto.

M. Moreau opened it mechanically, and his glance fell upon that divine history. He turned pale as he read, hope began to awaken in the heart of the desolate father, and that soul, or rather that heart, was touched by a gleam of light.

"There," said he—"there is the door at which we must knock. It is evident," he added, with a simplicity whose actual words we delight to repeat, "that, if the Blessed Virgin has[672] really appeared at Lourdes, she must be interested in working miraculous cures to prove the truth of her apparitions. And this is especially true at first before the event is not generally believed.... Let us be in a hurry, then, since in this case the first come are to be the first served. My dearest wife and daughter, we must address ourselves at once to Our Lady of Lourdes." Sixteen years had not worn out the faith of M. Moreau.

A novena was resolved upon, in which all the neighboring friends of the young girl were to be asked to join. By a providential circumstance, a priest of the city had in his possession a bottle of the water, so that the novena could be commenced at once.

The parents, in case of a cure, bound themselves to make a pilgrimage to Lourdes, and to devote their daughter for a year to the colors of white and blue, the colors of the Blessed Virgin, which she had already worn for three years during her infancy.

Must it be acknowledged? The invalid had but little faith. Her mother dared not hope. Her father alone had that tranquil faith which the kind powers of heaven never resist.

All said the prayers together in M. Moreau's room, before an image of the Blessed Virgin. The mother and her two daughters rose one after another to retire, but the father remained on his knees.

He thought he was alone, and his voice broke forth with a fervor which recalled his family, who have given us the account, and who never can forget that solemn moment without a tremor.

"Blessed Virgin!" said the father—"most blessed Virgin Mary! you must cure my child. Yes, indeed, you are bound to do it. It is an obligation which you cannot refuse to acknowledge. Remember, O Mary! how, in spite of everybody and against everybody, I chose you for her patron. Remember what struggles I had to give her your sacred name. Can you, Holy Virgin, forget all this? Can you forget how I defended your glory and power against the vain reasons with which they surrounded me? Can you forget that I publicly placed this child under your protection, telling everybody and repeating that your name would some day bring a blessing upon her? Can you be unmindful of all this? Are you not bound in honor—now that I am in misfortune, now when I pray you for our child and yours—to come to our help and heal her malady? Are you going to allow her to become blind, after the faith I have shown in you? No! no! impossible! You will cure her."

Such were the sentiments which escaped in loud tones from the unhappy father, as he appealed to the Blessed Virgin, and, as it were, presenting a claim against her, demanded payment.

The young girl, before retiring, dipped a linen bandage in the water of Lourdes, and, placing it upon her eyes, tied it behind her head.

Her soul was agitated. Without having her father's faith, she said to herself that, after all, the Blessed Virgin was perfectly able to cure her, and that, perhaps, at the end of the novena she might recover her sight. Then doubt returned, and it seemed as if a miracle ought not to be worked for her. With all these thoughts revolving in her mind, she could hardly lie still, and it was very late before she fell asleep.

When morning came, as soon as[673] she awoke, her first movement of hope and uneasy curiosity was to remove the bandage which covered her eyes. She uttered a loud cry.

The room about her was filled with the light of the rising day. She saw clearly, exactly, and distinctly. The diseased eye had recovered its health, and the eye which before was blind had been restored to sight.

Little Marthe, who slept in the same room, sprang out of bed and ran to her sister. She saw her eyes, stripped of their bloody veil, black and brilliant, and sparkling with life and strength. The little girl's heart at once turned toward her father and mother, who had not yet shared in this joy.

Marie opened the book, and read with perfect ease as freely as any one ever has read. The cure was complete, radical, absolute, and the Blessed Virgin had not left her work half-done.

How can we describe the scene which followed? Our readers can understand it, each for himself, by entering into his own imagination. The door of the house had not yet been opened. The windows were closed, and their transparent panes admitted only the early light of morning. Who, then, could have entered to join this family in the happiness of this sudden blessing? And yet these Christians felt instinctively that they were not alone, and that a powerful being was invisibly in the midst of them. The father and mother, and little Marthe, fell on their knees; Marie, who had not yet arisen, clasped her hands; and from these four breasts, oppressed with gratitude and emotion, went forth, as a prayer of thanks, the holy name of the Mother of God: "O holy Virgin Mary! Our Lady of Lourdes!"

What their other words were, we know not; but what their sentiments must have been, any one can imagine by placing himself before this miraculous event, which, like a flash from the power of God, had turned the affliction of a family into joy and happiness.

Is it necessary to add that, shortly afterward, Mlle. Marie Moreau went with her parents to thank Our Lady of Lourdes in the place of her apparition? She left her colored dresses upon the altar, and went away happy and proud of wearing the colors of the Queen of virgins.

M. Moreau, whose faith had formerly been so strong, was wholly stupefied. "I thought," said he, "that such favors were only granted to the saints; how is it, then, that they descend upon miserable sinners like us?"

These facts were witnessed by the entire population of Tartas, who shared in the affliction of one of their most respected families. Everybody in the city saw and can testify that the malady, which had been considered desperate, was completely healed at the beginning of the novena. The superior of the Convent of the Sacred Heart at Bordeaux, the one hundred and fifty pupils who were school-mates of Mlle. Marie Moreau, the physicians of that institution, have established her serious condition before the[674] events which we have related, and her total cure immediately afterward. She returned to Bordeaux, where she remained two years to complete her studies.

The oculist Bermont could not recover from his surprise at an event so entirely beyond his science. We have read his declaration certifying to the state of the invalid, and acknowledging the inability of medical treatment to produce such a cure, "which," he observes, "has persisted and still holds. As to the instantaneousness with which this cure has been wrought," he adds, "it is a fact which incomparably surpasses the power of medical science. In testimony of which I attach my signature. Bermont."

This declaration, dated February 8th, 1859, is preserved at the bishop's residence at Tarbes, together with a great number of letters and testimonials from citizens of Tartas, among others that of the mayor of that city, M. Desbord.

Mlle. Marie continued to wear the colors of the Blessed Virgin up to the day of her marriage, which took place after she had finished her studies and left the Sacred Heart. On that day she went to Lourdes and laid aside her maiden attire to put on her bridal robes. She wished to give this dress of blue and white to another young girl, also beloved by the Blessed Virgin, Bernadette.

This was the only present which Bernadette ever accepted. She wore for several years, indeed until it was worn out, this dress which recalled the loving power of the divine apparition at the grotto.

Eleven years have since elapsed. The favor accorded by the Blessed Virgin has not been withdrawn. Mlle. Moreau has always had most excellent and perfect sight; never any relapse, never the slightest indisposition.

Excepting by suicide, ingratitude, or abuse of grace, that which God has restored can never die. Resurgens jam non moritur.

Mlle. Marie Moreau is now called Madame d'Izaru de Villefort, and is the mother of three delightful children, who have the finest eyes in the world. Although they are boys, each bears in his baptismal name first the name of Mary.

VI.

Miraculous cures were counted by hundreds. It was impossible to verify them all. The episcopal commission submitted thirty of them to most rigorous scrutiny. The most severe strictness was shown in this examination, and nothing was admitted as supernatural, until it was absolutely impossible to call it anything else. All cures which had not been almost instantaneous, or which had been occupied by successive stages, all these were rejected; as also were all which had been obtained in conjunction with medical treatment, however unavailing the latter might have been. "Although the inefficacy of the remedies prescribed by science has been sufficiently demonstrated, we cannot in this case in an exclusive manner attribute the cure to a supernatural virtue in the water of the grotto which was used at the same time." So runs the report of the secretary of the commission.

Moreover, numerous spiritual favors, singular graces, unlooked-for conversions, had been reported to the commission. It is difficult to establish juridically events which have taken place in the closed recesses of the human soul and which escape the observation of all without. Although such facts, such changes, are often more wonderful than the restoration[675] of a member or the healing of a physical disease, the commission judged rightly when it decided that it ought not to include them in the solemn and public inquiry with which it had been charged by the bishop.

In the report to his grace, the committee, by agreement with the physicians, divided the cures which had been examined into three categories, with all the carefully gathered details and procès-verbaux, signed by the persons cured and by numerous witnesses.

The first category included those cures which, despite their striking and astonishing appearance, were susceptible of a natural explanation. These were six in number; namely, those of Jeanne-Marie Arqué, the widow Crozat, Blaise Maumus, a child of the Lasbareilles of Gez, Jeanne Crassus, Arcizan-Avant, Jeanne Pomiès of Loubajac.

The second list comprised cures which the commission felt inclined to attribute a supernatural character. Of this number were Jean-Pierre Malou, Jeanne-Marie Dauber, wife of a certain Vendôme, Bernarde Soubies and Pauline Bordeaux of Lourdes, Jean-Marie Amaré of Beaucens, Marcelle Peyregue of Agos, Jeanne-Marie Massot Bordenave of Arras, Jeanne Gezma and Auguste Bordes of Pontacq. "The greater number of these facts," says the medical report, "possess all the conditions to cause them be admitted as supernatural. It will, perhaps, be found that in excluding them we have acted with too much reserve and scrupulousness.

"But far from complaining of this reproach, we shall congratulate ourselves upon it, since in these matters we are convinced that prudence demands severity."

Under such circumstances, a natural explanation, although in itself utterly improbable, seemed rigorously possible, and this was sufficient to prevent the examiners from declaring a miracle.

The third class contained cures which presented an undeniable and evident supernatural character, fifteen in number. Those of: Blaisette Soupenne, Benoite Cazeaux, Jeanne Grassus married to Crozat, Louis Bourriette, little Justin Bouhohorts, Fabian and Suzanne Baron of Lourdes, Madame Rizanand, Henry Busquet of Nay, Catherine Latapie of Loubajac, Madame Lanou of Bordères, Marianne Garrot and Denys Bouchet of Lamarque, Jean-Marie Tambourné of St. Justin, Mlle. Marie Moreau de Sazenay of Tartas, Paschaline Abbadie of Rabasteins, all these were incontestably miraculous.

"The maladies to which those favored by such sudden and startling cures were subject were of entirely different natures"—we quote from the report of the commission. "They possessed the greatest variety of character. Some were the subjects of external, others of internal pathology. Nevertheless, these various diseases were all cured by a single simple element, used either as a lotion or drink, or sometimes in both ways.

"In the natural and scientific order, furthermore, each remedy is used in a fixed and regular manner; it has its special virtue proper to a given malady, but is either inefficacious or hurtful in other cases.

"It is not, then, by any property inherent in its composition that the Massabielle water has been able to produce such numerous, diverse, and extraordinary cures, and to extinguish at once diseases of different and opposite characters. Furthermore, science has authoritatively declared, after analysis, that this water has no mineral or therapeutic qualities,[676] and chemically does not differ from other pure waters. Medical science, having been consulted, after mature and conscientious examination, is not less decisive in its conclusions."

"In glancing at the general appearance of these cures," says the medical report, "one cannot fail to be struck by the ease, the promptitude, and instantaneous rapidity with which they spring from their producing cause; from the violation and overthrow of all therapeutic laws and methods which takes place in their accomplishment; from the contradictions offered by them to all the accepted axioms and cautions of science; from that kind of disdain which sports with the chronic nature and long resistance of the disease; from the concealed but real care with which all the circumstances are arranged and combined: everything, in short, shows that the cures wrought belong to an order apart from the habitual course of nature.

"Such phenomena surpass the limits of the human intellect. How, indeed, can it comprehend the opposition which exists:

"Between the short time employed in the use of this remedy and the lengthy treatment indicated by science?

"Between the sudden efficacy of the former and the long-acknowledged inutility of the latter?

"Between the chronic nature of the diseases and the instantaneous character of the cure?

"There is in all this a contingent force, superior to any that spring from natural causes, and, consequently, foreign to the water of which it has made use to show forth its power?"

In view of so many carefully-collected and publicly-certified facts, so striking in their nature; in view, moreover, of the conscientious and thorough inquiry made by the commission, together with the formal and united declarations of medicine and chemistry, the bishop could no longer remain unconvinced.

Nevertheless, on account of that spirit of extreme prudence which we have before remarked, Monseigneur Laurence, before giving the solemn episcopal verdict in this matter, demanded a still further guaranty of these miraculous cures—the proof of time. He allowed three years to pass. A second examination was then made. The miraculous cures still held good. No one appeared to retract former testimony or to contest any of the facts. The works of him who rules over eternity had nothing to fear from the test of time.

After this overwhelming series of proofs and certainty, Monseigneur Laurence at length pronounced the judgment which all had been awaiting. We give below its general features.

PÈRE JACQUES AND MADEMOISELLE ADRIENNE.
A SKETCH AFTER THE BLOCUS.

It was just five months since I had left it, the bright, proud Babylon, beautiful and brave and wicked, clothed in scarlet and feasting sumptuously. King Chanticleer, strutting on the Boulevards, was crowing loudly, and the myriad tribe of the Coq Gaulois, strutting up and down the city, crowed loud and shrill in responsive chorus—petits crévés, and petits mouchards, and petits gamins, and all that was petit in that grand, foolish cityful of humanity. Bedlam was abroad, singing and crowing and barking itself rabid, and scaring away from Babylon all that was not bedlam. But there were many in Babylon who were not afraid of the bedlam, who believed that crowing would by-and-by translate itself into action, into those seeds of desperate daring that none but madmen can accomplish, and that, when the bugle sounded, these bragging, swaggering maniacs would shoulder the musket, and, rushing to the fore, save France or die for her. No one saved her, but many did rush to the fore, and die for her. They were not lunatics, though, at least not many of them. The lunatics showed, as they have often done before, that there was method in their madness. They cheered on the sane, phlegmatic brethren to death and glory, while they stayed prudently at home to keep up the spirits of the capital; they were the spirit and soul of the defence, the others were but the bone and muscle of it. What is a body without a soul? The frail arm of the flesh without the nerve and strength of the spirit? Pshaw! If it were not for the crowing of King Chanticleer, there would have been no siege at all; the whole concern would have collapsed in its cradle.

The story of that Blocus has yet to be written. Of its outward and visible story, many volumes, and scores of volumes, good and bad, true and false, have been already written. But the inward story, the arcana of the defence, the exposition of that huge, blundering machine that, with its springs and levers, and wheels within wheels, snapped and broke and collapsed in the driver's hand, all this is still untold. The great Pourquoi? is still unanswered. History will solve the riddle some day, no doubt, as it solves most riddles, but before that time comes, other, grander problems of greater import to us will have been solved too, and we shall care but little for the true story of the Blocus.

"Yes, monsieur," said my concierge, when we met and talked over the events that had passed since the first of September, when I fled and left my goods and chattels to her care and the tender mercies of the Prussians and the Reds—"yes, monsieur, it is very wonderful that one doesn't hear of anybody having died of cold, though the winter was so terrible, and the fuel so scarce. It ran short almost from the beginning. We had nothing but green sticks that couldn't be persuaded to burn and do our best. I used to sit shivering in my[678] bed, while the petiots tried to warm themselves skipping in the porte-cochère, or running up and down from the cintième till their little legs were dead beat. O Mon Dieu! je me rapellerai de cette guerre en tous les sens, monsieur."

"Did many die from starvation," I asked—"many in this neighborhood that you knew?"

"Not one, monsieur! Not one of actual hunger, though my belief is, plenty of folks died of poison. The bread we ate was worse than the want of it. Such an abomination, made out of hay and bran and oats; why, monsieur, a chiffonier's dog wouldn't have touched it in Christian times. How it kept body and soul together for any of us is more than I can understand."

"Not that I heard of, monsieur; unless you count Père Jacques as dead from starvation. He disappeared one morning soon after he told Mlle. Adrienne, and nobody ever knew what became of him. They said in the quartier that he went over to the Prussians; but they said that of better men than Père Jacques, and besides, what would the Prussians do with a poor old toqué like Père Jacques, I ask it of monsieur?"

I was going to say that I fully agreed with her, when we were both startled by a sudden uproar in the street round the corner. We rushed out simultaneously from the porte-cochère, where we were holding our confabulation, to see what was the matter. A crowd was collected in the middle of the Rue Billault, and was vociferously cheering somebody or something. As a matter of course, the assembly being French, there were counter-cheers; hisses and cries of "renégat! Vendu aux Prussiens! drôle," etc., intermingling with more friendly exclamations.

"Bon Dieu! ce n'est done pas fini! Is the war going to begin again? Are we going to have a revolution?" demanded my concierge, throwing up her hands to heaven and then wringing them in despair. "Will the petiots never be able to eat their panade and build their little mud-pies in peace! Oh! monsieur, monsieur, you are happy not to be a Frenchman!"

Without in the least degree demurring to this last proposition, I suggested that before giving up France as an utterly hopeless case, we would do well to see what the row was about; if indeed it were a row, for the cheering, as the crowd grew, seemed to rise predominant above the hissing. Already reassured, I advanced boldly toward the centre of disturbance, my concierge following, and keeping a tight grip of the skirts of my coat for greater security.

"Vive Mlle. Adrienne! Donne la patte Mlle. Adrienne! Vive le Père Jacques!" The cries, capped by peals of laughter which were suddenly drowned in the uproarious braying of a donkey, reverberated through the street and deafened us as we drew near.

With a shout of laughter, my concierge dropped my skirts, and clapping her hands:

"Comment!" she cried, "she is alive, then! He did not eat her! He did not sell her! Vive le Père Jacques! Vive Mlle. Adrienne!"

Those of my readers who have lived any time in the quartier of the Champs Elysées will recognize Mlle. Adrienne as an old friend, and rejoice to learn that, thanks to the intelligent devotion of Père Jacques, she did not share the fate of her asinine sisterhood, but has actually gone through the horrors of the siege of[679] Paris and lived to tell the tale. Those who have not the pleasure of her acquaintance will perhaps be glad to make it, and to hear something of so remarkable a personage.

For years—I am afraid to say how many, but ten is certainly within the mark—Père Jacques's donkey has been a familiar object in the Rue Billault and the Rue de Berri, and that part of the Faubourg St. Honoré and the Champs Elysées which includes those streets. Why Père Jacques christened his ass Mlle. Adrienne nobody knows. Some say, out of vengeance against a certain blue-eyed Adrienne who won his heart and broke it; others say, only love for a faithful Adrienne who broke his heart by dying; but this is pure conjecture; Père Jacques himself is reticent on the subject, and, when questioned once by a curious, impertinent man, he refused to explain himself further than by remarking, "Que chacun avait son idée, et que son idée à lui, c'etait Mlle. Adrienne," and having said this he took a lump of sugar from his pocket and presented it affectionately to his idée, who munched it with evident satisfaction, and acknowledged her sense of the attention by a long and uproarious bray.

"Voyons, Mlle. Adrienne! Calmons-nous!" said Père Jacques in a tone of persuasive authority. "Calmons-nous, ma chérie!"—the braying grew louder and louder—"wilt thou be silent? Uplà, Mlle. Adrienne! Ah, les femmes, les femmes! Toujours bavardes! La-a-a-à, Mlle. Adrienne!"

This was the usual style of conversation between the two. Père Jacques presented lumps of sugar which were invariably recognized by a bray, or, more properly, a series of brays, such as no other donkey in France or Navarre but herself could send forth; and while it lasted Père Jacques kept up a running commentary of remonstrance.

"Voyons, Mlle. Adrienne! Sapristi, veux-tu te taire? A-t-on jamais vu! Lotte, veux-tu en fini-i-i-r!"

Though it was an old novelty in the quartier, it seemed never to have lost its savor, and as soon as Père Jacques and his little cart, full of apples, or oranges, or cauliflowers, as the case might be, were seen or heard at the further end of the street, the gamins left off marbles and pitch-and-toss to bully and chaff Père Jacques and greet his idée with a jocular "Bonjour, Mlle. Adrienne." The tradesmen looked up from their weights and measures, laughing, as the pair went by.

When provisions began to run short during the Blocus, Père Jacques grew uneasy, not for himself, but for Mlle. Adrienne. Hard-hearted jesters advised him to fatten her up for the market; ass-flesh was delicate and rarer than horse-flesh, and fetched six francs a pound; it was no small matter to turn six francs in these famine times, when there were no more apples or cauliflowers to sell; Mlle. Adrienne was a burden now instead of a help to her master; the little cart stood idle in the corner; there was nothing to trundle, and it was breaking his heart to see her growing thin for want of rations, and to watch her spirits drooping for want of exercise and lumps of sugar. For more than a fortnight Père Jacques deprived himself of a morsel of the favorite dainty, and doled out his last demikilog to her with miserly economy, hoping always that the gates would be opened before she came to the last lump.

"Voyons, ma fille!" Père Jacques would say, as she munched a bit half the usual size of the now precious bonbon. "Cheer up, ma bouriquette! Be reasonable, Mlle. Adrienne,[680] be reasonable, and bear thy trials like an ass, patiently and bravely, not like a man, grumbling and despairing. Paperlotte, Mlle. Adrienne! if it were not for thee I should be out on the ramparts, and send those coquins to the right-abouts myself. Les gredins! they are not content with drilling our soldiers and starving our citizens, but they must rob thee of thy bit of sugar, my pretty one. Mille tonnerres! if I had but their necks under my arm for one squeeze!"

And, entering into the grief and indignation of her master, Mlle. Adrienne would set up an agonized bray.

Thus comforting one another, the pair bore up through their trials. But at last came the days of eating mice and rats, and bread that a dog in good circumstances would have turned up its nose at a month ago, and then Père Jacques shook in his sabots. He dared not show himself abroad with Mlle. Adrienne, and not only that, but he lived in chronic terror of a raid being made on her at home. The mischievous urchins who had amused themselves at the expense of his paternal feelings in days of comparative plenty, gave him no peace or rest now that the wolf was really at the door. Requisitions were being made in private houses to see that no stores were hoarded up while the people outside were famishing. One rich family, who had prudently bought a couple of cows at the beginning of the Blocus, after vainly endeavoring to keep the fact a secret, and surrounding the precious beasts with as much mystery and care as ever Egyptian worshippers bestowed on the sacred Isis, were forced to give them up to the commonwealth. This caused a great sensation in the quartier. Père Jacques was the first to hear it, and the gamins improved the opportunity by declaring to him that the republic had issued a decree that all asses were to be seized next day, all such as could not speak, they added facetiously, and there was to be a general slaughter of them, a massacre des innocents, the little brutes called it, at the abattoir of the Rue Valois. The fact of its being at the Rue Valois was a small mercy for which they reminded Père Jacques to be duly grateful, inasmuch as, it being close at hand, he might accompany Mlle. Adrienne to the place of execution, give her a parting kiss, and hear her last bray of adieu. At this cynical climax, Père Jacques started up in a rage, and seizing his stick, set to vigorously belaboring the diabolical young torturers, who took to their heels, yelling and screaming like frightened guinea-pigs, while Mlle. Adrienne, who stood ruminating in a corner of the room, opened a rattling volley of brays on the fugitives.

All that night Père Jacques lay awake in terror. Every whistle of the wind, every creak in the door, every stir and sound, set his heart thumping violently against his ribs; every moment he was expecting the dreaded domiciliary visit. What was he to do? Where was he to fly? How was he to cheat the brigands and save Mlle. Adrienne? The night wore out, and the dawn broke, and the raid was still unaccomplished. As soon as it was light, Père Jacques rose and dressed himself, and sat down on a wooden stool close by Mlle. Adrienne, and pondered. Since her life had been in jeopardy, he had removed her from her out-house in the court to his own private room on the ground-floor close by.

"Que me conseilles-tu, Mlle. Adrienne?" murmured the distracted parent, speaking in a low tone, impelled by the instinct that drives human[681] beings to seek sympathy somewhere, from a cat or a dog if they have no fellow-creature to appeal to, Père Jacques had contracted a habit of talking out loud to his dumb companion when they were alone, and consulting her on any perplexing point. Suddenly a bright idea struck Père Jacques; he would go and consult Mère Richard.

Mère Richard lived in a neighboring court amidst a numerous family of birds of many species, bullfinches, canaries, and linnets. She had often suggested to Père Jacques to adopt a little songster by way of cheering his lonely den, and had once offered him a young German canary of her own bringing up.

"It's as good as a baby for tricks and company, and nothing so dear to keep," urged Mère Richard.

But Père Jacques had gratefully declined. "Mlle. Adrienne is company enough for me," he said, "and it might hurt her feelings if I took up with a bird now, thanks to you all the same, voisine."

To-day, as he neared the house, he looked in vain for the red and green cages that used to hang out au troisième on either side of Mère Richard's windows. The birds were gone. Where? Père Jacques felt a sympathetic thrill of horror, and with a heavy heart mounted the dark little stairs, no longer merry with the sound of chirping from the tidy little room au troisième. He refrained, through delicate consideration for Mère Richard's feelings, from asking questions, but, casting his eyes round the room, he beheld the empty cages ranged in a row behind the door.

But Mère Richard had a donkey. There was no comparison to be tolerated for a moment between it and Mlle. Adrienne, still their positions were identical, and Mère Richard, who was a wise woman, would help him in his present difficulty, and if she could not help him she would, at any rate, sympathize with him, which was the next best thing to helping him. But Mère Richard, to his surprise, had heard nothing of the impending raid on donkeys. When he explained to her how the case stood, instead of breaking out into lamentations, she burst into a chuckling laugh.

"Pas possible! Bouriquette good to be eaten, and the republic going to buy her, and pay me six francs a pound for her! Père Jaques, it's too good to be true," declared the unnatural old Harpagon.

Père Jacques was unable to contain his indignation. He vowed that rather than let her fall into the hands of the cannibals, he would destroy Mlle. Adrienne with his own hand; he would kill any man in the republic, from Favre to Gambetta, who dared to lay a finger on her; aye, that he would, if he were to swing for it the next hour!

"Père Jacques, you are an imbecile," observed Mère Richard, taking a pinch of snuff; "you remind me of a story my bonhomme used to tell of two camarades of his that he met on their way to be hanged; one of them didn't mind it, and walked on quietly, holding his tongue; but the other didn't like it at all, and kept howling and whining, and making a tapage de diable. At last the quiet one lost patience, and turning round on the other, 'Eh grand bétat,' he cried, 'si tu n'en veux pas, n'en dégoute pas les autres!'"

"What did you do with the birds?" he demanded sternly, as he was leaving the room.

"Sold four of them for three francs[682] apiece, and ate three of them, and uncommonly good they were," said the wretched woman, with unblushing heartlessness.

All that day he and Mlle. Adrienne stayed at home with their door and window barred and bolted; but night came, and the domiciliary visit was still a threat. Next day, however, the little door stood open as usual, and Père Jacques was to be seen hammering away at the dilapidated legs of a table that he was mending for a neighbor at the rate of twenty-five centimes a leg; but Mlle. Adrienne was not there. Had Père Jacques put an end to his agony by actually killing her, as he had threatened, and so saved her from the ignoble fate of the shambles? Or had he, haunted by the phantom of hunger which was now staring at him with its pale spectral eyes from the near background, yielded to the old man's love of life, and sold his friend to prolong it and escape himself from a ghastly death? Most people believed the latter alternative, but nobody knew for certain. When Mlle. Adrienne's name was mentioned, Père Jacques would frown, and give unmistakable signs of displeasure. If the subject was pressed, he would seize his stick, and, making a moulinet over his head with it, prepare an expletive that the boldest never waited to receive. One day he was caught crying bitterly in his now solitary home, and muttering to himself between the sobs, "Ma pauvre fille! Mlle. Adrienne! Je le suivrai bientôt—ah les coquins, les brigands, les monstres!" This was looked upon as conclusive. The monsters in question could only be the Shylocks of the abattoir who had tempted him with blood-money for Mlle. Adrienne. When curiosity was thus far satisfied, the gamins ceased to worry Père Jacques; the lonely old man became an object of pity to everybody, even to the gamins themselves; when they met him now they touched their caps, with "Bonjour, Père Jacques!" and spared him the cruel jeer that had been their customary salutation of late: "Mlle. Adrienne à la casserole! Bon appétit, Père Jacques!"

The days wore on, and the weeks, and the months. Paris, wan and pale and hunger-stricken, still held out. Winter had come, and thrown its icy pall upon the city, hiding her guilty front "under innocent snow;" the nights were long and cold, the dawn was desolate, the tepid noon brought no warmth to the perishing, fire-bound multitude. No sign of succor came to them from without. In vain they watched and waited, persecuting time with hope. The cannon kept up its sobbing recitative through the black silence of the night; through the white stillness of the day. Hunger gnawed into their vitals, till even hope, weary with disappointment, grew sick and died.

One morning, the neighbors noticed Père Jacques's door and window closed long after the hour when he was wont to be up and busy. They knocked, and, getting no answer, turned the handle of the door; it was neither locked nor barred, merely closed, as if the master were within; but he was not; the little room was tenantless, and almost entirely stripped; the mattress and the scanty store of bed-clothes were gone; the iron bedstead, a table, a stool, and two cane chairs, were the only sticks of furniture that remained; the shelves were bare of the bright pewter tankards and platters that used to adorn them; the gilt clock with its abortion of a Pegasus bestrid by a grenadier, which had been the glory of the chimney-piece, had disappeared.[683] What did it all mean? Had the enemy made a raid on Père Jacques and his property during the night, and carried away the lot in a balloon? Great was the consternation, and greater still the gossip of the little community, when the mysterious event became known through the quartier. What had become of Père Jacques? Had he been kidnapped, or had he been murdered, or had he taken flight of his own accord, and whither, and why? Nothing transpired to throw any light on the mystery, and the gossips, tired of guessing, soon ceased to think about it, and, like many another nine days' wonder, Père Jacques's disappearance died a natural death.

A day came at last when the mitrailleuse hushed its hideous shriek, the cannon left off booming, the wild beasts of war were silent. Paris cried, "Merci!" and the gates were opened. The city, like a sick man healed of a palsy, rose up, and shook herself and rubbed her eyes, and ate plentifully after her long fast. Many came back from the outposts who were wept over as dead. There were strange meetings in many quartiers during those first days that followed the capitulation. But no one brought any news of Père Jacques. There were too many interests nearer and dearer to think of, and, in the universal excitement of shame and vengeance and rare flashes of joy, he and Mlle. Adrienne were forgotten as if they had never been. But when, on the day of my return to Paris, my conversation with my concierge was interrupted by the cheering of the crowd in the Rue Billault, and when the cause of the hubbub was made known, the fact that both Père Jacques and his idée were well remembered and, as the newspapers put it, universally esteemed by a large circle of friends and admirers, was most emphatically attested. Nothing, indeed, could be more gratifying than the manner in which their resurrection was received. The pair looked very much the worse for their sojourn in the other world, wherever it was, to which they had emigrated. Mlle. Adrienne's appearance was particularly affecting. She was worn to skin and bone; and certainly, if Père Jacques, yielding to the pangs of hunger, had sacrificed his idée to his life, and taken her to the shambles, she would not have fetched more than a brace of good rats, or, at best, some ten francs, from the inhuman butchers of the Rue Valois. She dragged her legs, and shook and stumbled as if the weight of her attenuated person were too much for them. Even her old enemies, the gamins, were moved to pity, while Père Jacques, laughing and crying and apostrophizing Mlle. Adrienne in his old familiar way, cheered her on to their old home. How she ever got there is as great a marvel as how she lived to be led there to-day; for, what between physical exhaustion and mental anxiety—for the crowd kept overpowering her with questions and caresses—and what between the well-meant but injudicious attentions of sundry little boys who kept stuffing unintermitting bits of straw and lumps of sugar into her mouth, it is little short of a miracle that she did not choke and expire on the macadam of the Rue Billault.

Many an ass has been lionized before, and many a one will be so again. It is a common enough sight in these days, but never did hero or heroine of the tribe bear herself more becomingly on the trying occasion than Mlle. Adrienne. As to Père Jacques, he bore himself as well as he could, trying hard to look dignified and unconscious, while in his inmost heart he was bursting with pride. While[684] he and Mlle. Adrienne ambled on side by side, some facetious person remarked that Père Jacques looked quite beside himself. This, indeed, was a great day for him and his ass. Yet, notwithstanding that his heart was moved within him and softened towards all men—nay, towards all boys—he could not be induced to say a word as to where he had been, or what he had done, or how he and Mlle. Adrienne had fared in the wilderness, or what manner of wilderness it was, or anything that could furnish the remotest clue to their existence since the day when they had separately disappeared off the horizon of the Rue Billault. Provisions were still too dear, during the first fortnight after the capitulation, to allow of Père Jacques resuming his old trade of apples or cauliflowers; besides, Mademoiselle Adrienne wanted rest.

"Pauvre chérie! il faut qu'elle se remette un peu de la vache enragée," he remarked tenderly, when his friends condoled with him on her forced inactivity. He would not hear of hiring her out for work, as some of them proposed. Mère Richard came and offered a fabulous price for the loan of her for three days, with a view to a stroke of business at the railway station, where food was pouring in from London. Père Jacques shook his fist at the carnivorous old woman, and warned her never to show her unnatural old face in his house again, or it might be worse for her.

A PIE IX.

THE SECULAR NOT SUPREME.[156]

Dr. Bellows is the well-known pastor of All Souls' Church, and editor of the Liberal Christian in this city, a distinguished Unitarian minister, with some religious instincts and respectable literary pretensions. As a student in college and the Divinity School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, he was full of promise, and a great favorite of the late Hon. Edward Everett, himself originally a Unitarian minister and pastor of Brattle Street Church, Boston. The Hon. E. P. Hurlbut was formerly one of the judges of the Supreme Court of this state, a lawyer by profession, with a passably clear head and a logical mind, who knows, if not the truth, at least what he means, and neither fears nor hesitates to say it. His pamphlet, as far as it goes, expresses, we doubt not, his honest thought, but his thought is the thought of a secularist, who admits no order above the secular, and holds that no religion not subordinate to and under the control of the civil power, should be tolerated. Both he and Dr. Bellows are from instinct and education hearty haters of the Catholic Church; but while he is content to war against her from the point of view of pure secularism or no-religion, that is, atheism, the reverend doctor seeks to clothe his hatred in a Christian garb and to war against Christ in the name of Christ.

Dr. Bellows, as a Liberal Christian, and though a Protestant hardly allowed by his more rigid Protestant countrymen to bear the Christian name, has a double battle to fight: one, against the Evangelical movement, at the head of which is Mr. Justice Strong, of the Supreme Court, to amend the constitution of the United States so as to make orthodox Protestantism the official religion of the republic, which would exclude him and his Unitarian, Universalist, and Quaker brethren; and the other, against the admission of the equal rights of Catholics with Protestants before the American state. Catholics greatly trouble him, and he hardly knows what to do with them. According to the letter of the constitution of the Union and of the several states, unless New Hampshire be an exception, they are American citizens, standing in all respects on a footing of perfect equality with any other class of citizens, and have as much right to take part in public affairs, and to seek to manage them in the interests of their religion, as Protestants have to take part in them in the interests of Protestantism; but this is very wrong, and against the spirit of the constitution; for the nation is a Protestant nation, the country was originally settled by and belongs to Protestantism, and Catholics ought to understand that they are really here only by sufferance, that they do not in reality stand in relation to public questions on a footing of equality with Protestants, and have really no right to exert any influence in regard to the public policy of the country not in accordance with[686] the convictions of the Protestant majority. He tells us, in the discourse before us and more distinctly still in the columns of the Liberal Christian, not to aspire as citizens to equality with Protestants as if we had as much right to the government as they have, and warns us that if we do we shall be resisted even unto blood.

The occasion of his outpouring of wrath against Catholics is that they have protested against being taxed for the support of a system of sectarian or godless schools, to which they are forbidden in conscience to send their children, and have demanded as their right either that the tax be remitted, or that their proportion of the public schools be set off to them, to be, as to education and discipline, under Catholic control. Dr. Bellows allows that the Catholic demand is just, and that by making it a question at the polls they may finally obtain it; but this is not to his mind, for it would defeat the pet scheme of Protestants for preventing the growth of Catholicity in the country, by detaching, through the influence of the public schools, their children from the faith of their parents. Yet as long as any religion, even the reading of the Bible, is insisted on in the public schools, what solid argument can be urged against the demand of Catholics, or what is to prevent Catholic citizens from making it a political question and withholding their votes from the party that refuses to respect their rights of conscience and to do them justice? Dr. Bellows says that we cannot legally be prevented from doing so, but, if we do so, it will be the worse for us; for if we carry our religion to the polls the Protestant people will, as they should, rise up against us and overwhelm us by their immense majority, perhaps even exterminate us.

To prevent the possibility of collision, the reverend doctor proposes a complete divorce of church and state. He proposes to defeat the Evangelicals on the one hand, and the Catholics on the other, by separating totally religion and politics. Thus he says:

But this proposed remedy will prove worse than the disease. The state divorced from the church, wholly separated from religion, is separated from morality; and the state separated from morality, that is, from the moral order, from natural justice inseparable from religion, cannot stand, and ought not to stand, for it is incapable of performing a single one of its proper functions. The church, representing the spiritual, and therefore the superior, order, is by its own nature and constitution as independent of the state as the soul is of the body; and the state separated from the church, or from religion and morality, is like the body separated from the soul, dead, a putrid or putrefying corpse. Exclude your Protestant Bible and all direct and indirect religious instruction from your public schools, and you would not render them a whit less objectionable to us than they are now, for we object not less to purely secular schools than we do to sectarian schools. We hold that children should be trained up in the way they should go, so that when old they will not depart from it; and the way in which they should go is not the way of pure secularism, but the way enjoined by God our Maker through his church. God has in this life joined soul and body, the spiritual and the secular, together, and what God has joined together we dare not put asunder. There is only one of two things that can satisfy us: either cease to tax us for the support of the public schools, and leave the education of our children to us, or give us our proportion of the public schools in which to educate them in our own religion. We protest against the gross injustice of being taxed to educate the children of non-Catholics, and being obliged in addition to support schools for our own children at our own expense, or peril their souls.

We do not think Dr. Bellows is aware of what he demands when he demands the complete divorce of church and state, or the total separation of religion and politics. The state divorced from the church is a godless state, and politics totally separated from religion is simply political atheism, and political atheism is simply power without justice, force without law; for there is no law without God, the supreme and universal Lawgiver. Man has no original and underived legislative power, and one man has in and of himself no authority over another; for all men by the law of nature are equal, and have equal rights, and among equals no one has the right to govern. All governments based on political atheism, or the assumption that politics are independent of religion, rest on no foundation, are usurpations, tyrannies, without right, and can govern, if at all, only by might or sheer force. To declare the government divorced from religion is to declare it emancipated from the law of God, from all moral obligation, and free to do whatever it pleases. It has no duties, and under it there are and can be no rights; for rights and duties are in the moral order and inseparable from religion, since the law of God is the basis of all rights and duties, the foundation and guarantee of all morality. The state, divorced from religion, would be bound to recognize and protect no rights of God or man, not even those natural and inalienable rights of all men, "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." This is going[689] further in the direction of absolutism than go the doctor's dear friends the Turks, whom he so warmly eulogizes in his letters from the East, for even they hold the sultan is bound by the Koran, and forbidden to do anything it prohibits.

Dr. Bellows, doubtless, has no intention of divorcing the state from morality, and does not see that his proposition implies it. He probably holds that morality is separable from religion, for with him religion is simply sentiment or opinion; but in this he falls into the common mistake of all Liberal Christians, and of many Protestants who regard Liberal Christians as no Christians at all. Morality and religion are inseparable, for morality is only the practical application in the several departments of life of the principles of religion. Without religion morality has no foundation, nothing on which to rest, is a baseless fabric, an unreality. Deny God, and you deny the moral law and the whole moral order, all right, all duty, all human accountability. The separation of all political questions from all religious questions, which the reverend doctor demands, is their separation from all moral questions, and is the emancipation of the state from all right and all duty, or the assertion of its unrestricted power to do whatever it pleases, in total disregard of all moral and religious considerations. Is this the doctrine of a Christian?

This surely is not the relation of church and state in America, and derives no support from the American order of thought. With us, the state is instituted chiefly for the protection of the natural rights of man, as we call them, but really the rights of God, since they are anterior to civil society, are superior to it, and not derived or derivable from it. These rights it is the duty of civil society to protect and defend. Any acts of the political sovereign, be that sovereign king or kaiser, nobility or people, contrary to these antecedent and superior rights are tyrannical and unjust, are violences, not laws, and the common-law courts will not enforce them, because contrary to the law of justice and forbidden by it. The American state disclaims all authority over the religion of its citizens, but at the same time acknowledges its obligation to respect in its own action, and to protect and defend from external violence, the religion which its citizens or any class of its citizens choose to adopt or adhere to for themselves. It by no means asserts its independence of religion or its right to treat it with indifference, but acknowledges its obligation to protect its citizens in the free and peaceable possession and enjoyment of the religion they prefer. It goes further, and affords religion the protection and assistance of the law in the possession and management of her temporalities, her churches and temples, lands and tenements, funds and revenues for the support of public worship, and various charitable or eleemosynary institutions. All the protection and assistance the benefit of which every Protestant denomination fully enjoys, and even the Catholic Church in principle, though not always in fact, would be denied, if the divorce Dr. Bellows demands were granted, and religion, having no rights politicians are bound to respect, would become the prey of lawless and godless power, and religious liberty would be utterly annihilated, as well as civil liberty itself, which depends on it.

The chief pretence with Dr. Bellows for urging the complete divorce of church and state, is that Catholics demand and receive subsidies from the state and city for their schools and several charitable institutions.[690] Some such subsidies have been granted, we admit, but in far less proportion to Catholics than they to Protestants or non-Catholics. The public schools are supported at the public expense, by the school fund, and a public tax, of which Catholics pay their share, and these schools are simply sectarian or godless schools, for the sole benefit of non-Catholics. The subsidies conceded to a few of our schools do by no means place them on an equality with those of non-Catholics. We by no means receive our share of the subsidies conceded. The aids granted to our hospitals, orphan asylums, and reformatories are less liberal than those to similar non-Catholic institutions. So long as the state subsidizes any institutions of the sort, we claim to receive our proportion of them as our right. If the state grant none to non-Catholics, we shall demand none for ourselves. We demand equality, but we ask no special privileges or favors. The outcry of the sectarian and secular press against us on this score is wholly unauthorized, is cruel, false, and unjust. It is part and parcel of that general system of falsification by which it is hoped to inflame popular passion and prejudice against Catholics and their church.

Underlying the whole of the doctrine of this discourse is the assumption of the supremacy of the secular order, or that every American citizen is bound to subordinate his religion to his politics, or divest himself of it whenever he acts on a political question. This, which is assumed and partially disguised in Dr. Bellows, is openly and frankly asserted and boldly maintained in Judge Hurlbut's pamphlet. The judge talks much about theology, theocracy, etc., subjects of which he knows less than he supposes, and of course talks a great deal of nonsense, as unbelievers generally do; but he is quite clear and decided that the state should have the power to suppress any church or religious institution that is based on a theory or principle different from its own. The theory of the American government is democratic, and the government ought to have the power to suppress or exclude every church that is not democratically constituted. Religion should conform to politics, not politics to religion. The political law is above the religious, and, of course, man is above God. In order to be able to carry out this theory, the learned judge proposes an important amendment to the constitution of the United States, which shall on the one hand prohibit the several states from ever establishing any religion by law; and, on the other, shall authorize Congress to enact such laws as it may deem necessary to control or prevent the establishment or continuance of any foreign hierarchical power in this country founded on principles or dogmas antagonistic to republican institutions. He says:

This proposed amendment, like iniquity, lies unto itself, for while it prohibits Congress and the several states from making any law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, it gives to Congress full power to control or prevent the establishment or the continuance—that is, to prohibit—the free exercise by Catholics of their religion, under the flimsy pretence that it is a foreign hierarchy founded on anti-republican principles. The hierarchy is an essential part of our religion, and any denial of its freedom is the denial of the free exercise of his religion to every Catholic, and of the very principle of religious liberty itself, which the constitution guarantees.

We of course deny that the Catholic hierarchy is a foreign hierarchy or anti-republican, for what is Catholic is universal, and what is universal is never and nowhere a foreigner; but yet, because its Supreme Pontiff does not reside personally in America, and its power does not emanate from the American people, Protestants, Jews, and infidels will hold that it is a foreign power, and anti-republican. The carnal Jews held the Hebrew religion to be a national religion, and because the promised Messiah came as a spiritual, not as a temporal and national prince, they rejected him. Infidels believe in no spiritual order, and consequently in no Catholic principle or authority; Protestants believe in no Catholic hierarchy, and hold that all authority in religious matters comes from God, not through the hierarchy, but through the faithful or the people, and hence their ministers are called, not sent. It would be useless, therefore, to undertake to prove to one or another of these three classes that the Catholic hierarchy is at home here, in America, as much so as at Rome, and, since it holds not from the people, that it is not founded on anti-republican or anti-democratic principles. The only arguments we could use to prove it lie in an order of thought with which they are not familiar, do not even recognize, and to be appreciated demand a spiritual apprehension which, though not above natural reason, is quite too high for such confirmed secularists as ex-Judge Hurlbut and his rationalistic brethren, who have lost all conception, not only of the supernatural order, but of the supersensible, the intelligible, the universal reality above individual or particular existences.

For Catholics there are two orders, the secular and the spiritual. The secular is bound by the limitations and conditions of time and place; the spiritual is above and independent of all such conditions and limitations, and is universal, always and everywhere the same. The Catholic hierarchy represents in the secular and visible world, in the affairs of individuals and nations, this spiritual order, on which the whole secular order depends, and which, therefore, is an alien nowhere and at home everywhere. The Catholic hierarchy is supernatural, not natural, and, therefore, no more a foreigner in one nation than in another. But it is only the Catholic that can see and understand this; it is too high and too intellectual for non-Catholics, whose minds are turned earthward, and have lost the habit of looking upward, and to recover it must be touched by the quickening and elevating power of grace. We must expect them, therefore, to vote the Catholic hierarchy to be in this country a foreign hierarchy, although[692] it is nowhere national, and is no more foreign here than is God himself.

The Catholic hierarchy is not founded on democratic principles, we grant, but there is nothing in its principles or dogmas antagonistical to republican government, if government at all; but since it holds not from the people, nor in any sense depends on them for its authority, non-Catholics, who recognize no power above the people, will vote it anti-republican, undemocratic, antagonistical to the American system of government. It is of no use to try to persuade them to the contrary, or to allege that it is of the very essence and design of religion to assert the supremacy of an order which does not hold from the people, and is above them both individually and collectively, or to maintain in the direction and government of human affairs the supremacy of the law of God, which all men and nations, in both public and private matters, are bound to obey, and which none can disobey with impunity. They will only reply that this is repugnant to the democratic tendencies of the age, is contrary to the free and enlightened spirit of the nineteenth century, denies the original, absolute, and underived sovereignty of the people, and is manifestly a return to the theocratic principle which humanity rejects with horror. To an argument of this sort there, of course, is no available answer. The men who use it are impervious to logic or common sense, for they either believe in no God, or that God is altogether like one of themselves; therefore, in no respect above themselves.

It is very clear, then, if Judge Hurlbut's proposed amendment to the constitution were adopted, it would be interpreted as giving to Congress, as the Judge intends it should, the power to suppress, according to its discretion, the Catholic hierarchy, and, therefore, the Catholic Church in the United States, and that, too, notwithstanding the very amendment denies to Congress the power to prohibit to any one the free exercise of his religion! How true it is, as the Psalmist says, "Iniquity hath lied to itself." The enemies of the church, who are necessarily the enemies of God, and, therefore, of the truth, are not able to frame an argument or a law against the church that does not contradict or belie itself; yet are they, in their own estimation, the enlightened portion of mankind, and Catholics are weak, besotted, grovelling in ignorance and superstition.

There is little doubt that the amendment proposed by Judge Hurlbut would, if adopted, effect the object the Evangelical sects are conspiring with Jews and infidels to effect, so far as human power can effect it—that is, the suppression of the Catholic Church in the United States, and it is a bolder, more direct, and honester way of coming at it than the fair-seeming but insidious amendment proposed by Mr. Justice Strong, of the Supreme Court of the United States, and his Evangelical allies. It is now well understood by non-Catholic leaders that the growth of the church cannot be prevented or retarded by arguments drawn from Scripture or reason, for both Scripture and reason are found to be on her side, and dead against them. They see very clearly that if she is left free with "an open field and fair play," it is all over with her opponents. They must then contrive in some way, by some means or other, to suppress the religious freedom and equality now guaranteed by our constitution and laws, and bring the civil law or the physical power of the state to bear against the church[693] and the freedom of Catholics. That it is a settled design on the part of the leading Protestant sects to do this—and that they are aided by Unitarians and Universalists, because they know that Protestant orthodoxy would soon go by the board if the Catholic Church were suppressed; by the Jews, because they hate Christianity, and know well that Christianity and the Catholic Church stand or fall together; and by unbelievers and secularists, because they would abolish all religion, and they feel that they cannot effect their purpose if the Catholic Church stands in their way—no one can seriously doubt. We include the Jews in this conspiracy, for we have before us the report of a remarkable discourse delivered lately in the Hebrew synagogue at Washington, D. C., by the Rabbi Lilienthal, of Cincinnati, entitled "First the State, then the Church," which is directed almost wholly against the Catholic Church. We make an extract from this discourse, longer than we can well afford room for, but our readers will thank us for it:

This is very much to the purpose, and if it shows that the rabbi is no friend of Protestant Christianity, it shows that his principal hostility is to the Catholic Church, as the body and support of Christianity. He exults, as well he may, over the falling away from the church of the old Catholic governments of Europe, for one of the chief instruments in effecting that apostasy has been precisely his Hebrew brethren, the great supporters of the anti-Catholic revolution of modern times; and his slanders on the Catholic Church are in the very spirit of the Evangelical Alliance, even to the false charges he brings against distinguished individual Catholics. The assertion that "Father Hecker says, 'In fifteen years we will take this country and build our institutions over the grave of Protestantism,'" as that other assertion, "There is or ought to be a state religion in this country, and that state religion is to be Roman Catholic,'" Father Hecker himself assures us, is false. He never did, nor with his views ever could, say anything of the sort. Bishop O'Connor, late of Pittsburg, never did and never could have said, "Religious liberty is merely endured until the opposite can be carried into effect without peril to the Catholic world." We happen to know that his views were and are very different; and if[695] they were not, he is too shrewd to commit the blunder of saying anything like what is falsely attributed to him, or to disclose such an ulterior purpose. We may say as much of the sentiment attributed to the Archbishop of St. Louis. The archbishop never uttered or entertained it. Something like what is ascribed to him was said, many years ago, by Mr. Bakewell, in The Shepherd of the Valley, a paper published at St. Louis, but he was assailed by the Catholic press all over the country, and, if he did not retract it, at least endeavored to explain it away, and to show that he meant no such thing. The archbishop never said it, and was no more responsible for it than was the Rabbi Lilienthal himself. No Catholic prelate and no distinguished Catholic layman even has ever proposed any amendment to the constitution in regard to the relations of church and state in this country, or has expressed any wish to have the existing constitutional relations changed, or in any respect modified. The church is satisfied with them, and only asks that they be faithfully observed. She opposes the separation of church and state in the sense of releasing the state from all moral and religious obligations, for that would imply the subjection of the church to the state, and prove the grave of religious freedom and independence, which she always and everywhere asserts with all her energy against kings, emperors, nobilities, and peoples—against Jew, Pagan, Mussulman, schismatic, and heretic, and it is for this that they conspire against her and seek her destruction.

The rabbi says, "First the state, then the church," which is as absurd as to say, "First man, then God." The state represents simply a human authority, while the church, or the synagogue even, represents—the first for the Catholic, the second for the Jew—the sovereignty of God, or the divine authority in human affairs, and the rabbi in his doctrine is false alike to Moses and to Christ, and as little of an orthodox Jew as he is of a Christian believer. Yet he agrees perfectly with Judge Hurlbut and Dr. Bellows in asserting the supremacy of the state or secular order, and the subordination of the spiritual order. We do not know whether the rabbi means to approve or censure the assumption, by Peter the Great, of the headship of the Russian Church and his government of it by the sword; but Peter only acted on the principle, "First the state, then the church," and the slavery of the Russian Church to the state is only an inevitable consequence of that principle or maxim. The Russian Church, governed by the Holy Synod, itself governed by the Czar, presents a lively image of the abject position religion would be compelled to hold in every country if the doctrine of the total separation of church and state, and the independence and supremacy of the state, advocated by one or another of the three men we are criticising, were to prevail and to be embodied in the civil code.

But let this pass. It is clear that the rabbi, and therefore the Jews, so far as he represents them, are to be included in the great conspiracy against the liberty and equality of Catholics, or religious liberty recognized and guaranteed by the American states. Catholics are to be put down and their church suppressed by the strong arm of power. To prepare the American people for this proposed revolution in the American system, this suppression of religious liberty, a system of gross misrepresentation of Catholic faith and practice, of misstatements, calumnious[696] charges, and downright lying respecting the church, is resorted to and persisted in as it was by the reformers in the sixteenth century. "Lie, lie stoutly," Voltaire said, though it was said long before him; "something will stick." We do not like to say this, but truth will not permit us to soften our statement or to use milder terms. There is nothing too harsh or too false for the anti-Catholic press and the anti-Catholic preachers and lecturers to say of our holy religion, and nothing can be more unlike the Catholic Church than their pretended representations of her—too unlike, indeed, even to be called caricatures, for they catch not one of her features. Even when the anti-Catholic writers and speakers tell facts about Catholics or in the history of the church, they so tell them as to distort the truth and to produce the effect of falsehood, or draw inferences from them wholly unwarranted. We must, then, be excused if we sometimes call the systematic misrepresentation of our religion, our church, and ourselves by its true and expressive name, even though it may seem harsh and impolite. The batteries they discharge against the church are not to be silenced by bouquets of roses.

The public has become too well informed as to Catholic doctrines and usages to permit the repetition, with much effect, of many of the old charges and calumnies. Only the very ignorant can be made to believe that the church is the Babylonian sorceress who makes the nations drunk with the wine of her fornications; that she is "the mystery of iniquity"; that the Pope is "the man of sin," or Antichrist; that our nunneries are brothels, and their vaults are filled with the skeletons of murdered infants, of which Luther discoursed to his friends with so much unction in his Tischreden over his pot of beer. These things are a little out of date, and do not gain the ready credence they once did. The age is all for liberty, for progress, for enlightenment; so the anti-Catholic tactics change to suit the times. James I. of England, as did the politicians of France opposed to the Ligue, charged the church with being hostile to monarchy and the divine right of kings. The charge now is that she is opposed to republicanism, and denies the divine right of the people, or, more strictly, of the demagogues. She is said to be a spiritual despotism, the foster-mother of ignorance and superstition, the enemy of science and of progress, of intelligence and liberty, individual and social, civil and religious. Her religious houses are dens of cruelty and tyranny, and if she is permitted to continue and spread her peculiar institutions over this country, American democracy will be destroyed, and American liberty be but a memory, etc., etc.

The cry is not now, the truth is in danger, the Gospel is in danger, religion is in danger, but the republic is in danger, democracy is in danger, liberty is in danger. The church, the moment she gets the power, will, it is argued, abolish our political system, establish a monarchy, abolish religious liberty, and cut the throats of all heretics and infidels, or send them to the stake to be consumed in a fire of green wood, as Calvin did Michael Servetus. And there are not wanting fools enough to believe it or dishonest men enough to pretend to believe it when they do not, though it is evident that the republic is likely to pass away, if things go on in the political world as they are now going, and be succeeded by anarchy or a military despotism long before the majority of the people will cease to war against the church as anti-democratic.[697] But the point to be noted here is that all these charges assume the supremacy of the secular order, and allege not that the church is false, is not the church of God, but that she is hostile to democracy or democratic institutions; in other words, that she does not conform to popular opinion, for democracy is nothing but popular opinion erected into law. Now, as we do not believe that popular opinion, inconstant as the wind, is infallible, or that the secular order is supreme, we are not sure that it would be a fatal objection to the church even if what is alleged against her were well founded. The arguments against the church of this sort are drawn from too low a level to command any intelligent respect, and they are all based on a false assumption. Politics are not higher than religion; the state is not above the church; the secular order is not above the spiritual; and it is only atheism that can assert the contrary. To a terrible extent, the supremacy of the secular is the doctrine of our age and country; but Catholics hold it to be both false and dangerous, as incompatible with the liberty and independence of religion, with natural morality, and even with the existence of natural society, as it is with the sovereignty of God. It is the doctrine of the European revolutionists and communists, and is sapping the life and threatening the very existence of our American republicanism—has already reduced our government to be little else than an agency for promoting the private interests of business men, bankers, manufacturers, and railroad corporations. Our elections are becoming a wretched farce, for the monopolists govern the government, let what party may succeed at the polls. The State governments cannot control them, and the General Government just as little.

We will not so dishonor the church or insult religion as to undertake to refute these popular charges against her, and to prove that her authority is not incompatible with the existence and salutary working of republican government. The charges are addressed to ignorance and prejudice; we take higher ground, and maintain that civil society can no more dispense with the church, than the body with the soul. The secular is insufficient for itself, and needs the informing life and vigor of the spiritual. The political history of France since 1682, especially since 1789, proves it to all men who are capable of tracing effects to their causes. There is no form of government more in need of the church than the republican, founded on the modern doctrine of popular sovereignty, and the maxim, the majority must rule. The habit of regarding power as emanating from the mass, as derived from low to high, tends itself to debase the mind, to destroy that respect for law, and that reverence for authority, without which no government performs in a peaceable and orderly way its legitimate functions. The American people see nothing divine, nothing sacred and inviolable, in their government; they regard law as an emanation of their own will, as their own creation, and what creator can feel himself bound to reverence and obey his own creature? We need the church to consecrate the government, to give the law a spiritual sanction, to create in us habits of reverence, of submission, and docility, and to impress us with the conviction that civil obedience is a moral duty, and that we must be loyal to legitimate authority for conscience' sake. We need the church to teach us that in obeying the laws not repugnant to the divine law, we are obeying not men, which is slavery, but God, which[698] is freedom, and the very principle of all freedom. We need her to create in us high and holy aspirations, to produce in us those high and disinterested virtues, without which civil government is impotent for good, and powerful only for evil. No man who believes not in the sovereignty of truth, in the supremacy of right, and feels it not his duty to obey it at all hazards, has the temper demanded in a republic, and only the church can create it.

A government built on interest, however enlightened, on sentiment, however charming, or public opinion, however just, is a house built on the sand. It rests on nothing fixed and permanent, is without stability or efficiency, and tends always to fall and bury the people in its ruins. We see this in our own political history. It would be difficult to find a government more corrupt than ours, that taxes the people more heavily, or that does less for the public good, the advantages we had at the start being taken into the account. The good that has been done, the great things accomplished, have been accomplished by the people in spite of the government, and our record as a nation can hardly put that of Prussia or Russia to shame.

We do not choose to dwell on this aspect of the case, although much more might be said. We love our country, have been bred to love republicanism, and have the success of the American experiment at heart. The evils which the liberals charge to the union of church and state, and hold the church responsible for, spring, as every impartial and intelligent student of history knows, not from the union but from the separation of church and state, and the unremitting efforts of the civil power to usurp the functions of the spiritual power, and to make the church the accomplice of its policy. The terrible struggles of the pope and emperor in the middle ages had this cause and no other. The pope simply sought to maintain against the emperor the freedom and independence of the church, the kingdom of God on earth, that is, true religious liberty. It is to the partial, in some countries the complete, triumph of the secular over the spiritual, that we must attribute the unsettled, disorderly, and revolutionary state of contemporary society throughout the civilized world, the hatred or contempt of authority both divine and human, the depression of religion, the decline of intellectual greatness, the substitution of opinion for faith, a sickly sentimentalism for a manly and robust piety, free-loveism or divorce ad libitum for Christian marriage, and the general abasement of character.

The evils are very real, but the more perfect divorce of the state from the church would not cure or lessen, but only aggravate and intensify them; nay, would to all human foresight render them incurable. The state without religion or moral obligation is impotent to redress social evils or to elevate society, and Protestantism, which holds from the people, and depends for its very breath of life on popular opinion, is no less impotent than the state. Protestantism, having retained some elements of religion from the church, may, we readily concede, do something to retard the fall of a nation that accepts it, but when a Protestant nation has once fallen, become morally and politically corrupt, rotten to the core, it has no power to restore it; for it has no principle of life to infuse into it above and beyond that which it already has. Resting on human authority, holding from the nation or people, its life is only the national life itself; and, of course, when the national life grows weak,[699] its own life grows weak, and when the national life is extinct, its own life becomes extinct with it. Cut off from the church of God, and therefore from Him who is "the way, the truth, and the life," it cannot draw new supplies of life from the Fountain of Life itself, with which to revive and reinvigorate the fallen nation.

This is wherefore there is no hope for our republic under Protestantism. There has been a sad falling-off in the virtue, the honesty, the integrity, the chastity, and public spirit of our people in the last fifty years. The old habits formed under Catholic discipline and influences are wearing out, if not worn out; intellectual culture may be more general, though even that may be questioned, but it is less generous, thorough, and profound; meeting-houses may be increased in greater proportion than the population itself, but theology is less studied—is less intellectual, less scientific, and is more superficial; and religion has less hold on the conscience, and less influence on life, public, private, or domestic; and we may say, generally, that in all save what belongs to the material order, our republic has a downward tendency. Now, since Protestantism has nothing more or higher than the republic, and no recuperative power, how, then, can it possibly arrest this downward tendency and turn it upward, and save the nation? Archimedes wanted something whereon to stand outside of the world in order to move it. This Protestantism has not, for it rests on the world, and has nothing above the world or outside of it, and in fact is only the world itself. To every one who understands the great law of mechanic force, which has its analogue in the great principle of moral or spiritual dynamics, it is clear that the hope of the republic is not and cannot be in Protestantism, and there is just as little in the civil order, for that, divorced from the church and without any moral obligation, is precisely that which needs saving. The union of the various Protestant sects in one organic body, if it were possible, would avail nothing; for the whole would be only the sum of the parts, and the parts having no supermundane life, the whole could have none.

Hence we say that whatever hope there is for our republic is in the growth and predominance of the Catholic Church in the minds and hearts of the American people; and there is a well-grounded hope for it only in the prospect that she may before it is too late become the church of the great majority. The church has what Archimedes wanted, and Protestantism has not—the whereon to stand outside and above the world. She lives a life which is not derived from the life of the world, and is in communion with the Source of life itself, whence she may be constantly drawing fresh supplies, and infusing into the nation a life above the national life in its best estate, and which, infused into the nation, becomes for it a recuperative energy, and enables it to arrest its downward tendency, and to ascend to a new and higher life. It is not without a reason, then, founded in the nature of things, that we tell our countrymen that Protestantism may ruin the republic, but cannot save it, any more than it can the soul of the individual; and that, instead of crying out against the church like madmen, as hostile to the republic, they should rather turn their eyes toward her as their only source of help, and learn that she can and will save the republic, if they will only allow her to do it.

Yet we urge not this as the motive for accepting the teaching of the[700] church and submitting to her authority and discipline. Our Lord says to us, "Seek first the kingdom of God and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you," but he does not bid us or permit us to seek the kingdom of God and his justice for the sake of "these things," or the adjicienda; he forbids us to be solicitous for them, since it is for them that the heathen are solicitous. The only motive for a man to become a Catholic, to believe what she teaches and to do what she commands, is that she is the kingdom of God on earth, and that it is only in so doing that he can possess "his justice," please God, or attain to eternal life. Christ did not come, as a temporal prince, to found—as the carnal Jews, misinterpreting the prophecies, expected—an earthly kingdom, or to create an earthly paradise; but he came as a spiritual prince to establish the reign of his Father on earth in all human affairs, and over all men and nations, and whatever temporal good is secured is not the end or reason of his kingdom, but is simply incidental to it. It is no reason why I should or should not be a Catholic because the church favors or does not favor one or another particular theory or constitution of civil government, but the fact that she does not favor a particular form of civil polity, if it be a fact, is sufficient reason why I should not favor it, for it proves that such form is repugnant to the sovereignty of God and the supremacy of his law. As a matter of fact, however, the church has never condemned any particular form of civil polity or erected one form or another into a Catholic dogma, and a man may be a monarchist, a republican, or a democrat, as he pleases, and at the same time be a good and irreproachable Catholic, if he hold the political power subordinate to the divine sovereignty.

The church is necessary to sustain a republican form of government, but it is also necessary to sustain any other form, as a wise, just, and efficient civil government. The error of those we are combating is not in that they are democrats or anti-democrats, but in holding that the state or secular order is sufficient for itself, can stand of itself without the aid of religion or the church, has no need of the spiritual, and has in fact the right to brush religion aside as an impertinent intermeddler whenever it comes in its way, or seeks to dictate or influence its policy. This is a gross error, condemned by all religion, all philosophy, and all experience. It is the old epicurean error that excludes the divine authority from the direction or control of human affairs, and in its delirium sings,

It is at bottom pure atheism, nothing more, nothing less. It is a pure absurdity. Can the creation stand without the creator? Can the contingent subsist without the necessary? Can the body live and perform its functions without the soul which is its principle of life; the dependent without that on which it depends? In the whole history of the world, you will not find an instance of a purely atheistical state, or a state held to be completely divorced from the spiritual order. There is no instance in all history of a state without some sort of religion, even an established religion, or religion which the state recognizes as its supreme law, and does its best or worst to enforce. We here, as well as in England, as well as at any time in any European country, have an established religion which the law protects and enforces on all its citizens, only it is a mutilated religion, a religion without dogmas, and called morality.[701] If not so, whence is it the law punishes murder or arson, and forbids polygamy, or the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes? Even Jacobins erect their jacobinism into a religion, and make it obligatory on the state to persecute, to exterminate all who dare oppose it. Have we not seen it despoil the Holy See of its independence and possessions, confiscate the goods of the church, exile holy bishops from their sees and their country in Italy, and within a few weeks shoot down the Archbishop of Paris and a large number of priests and religious, suspend public worship, desecrate and plunder the churches, and banish all religion but their jacobinism from the schools? No state tolerates any religion hostile to its own established religion, and the most intolerant and cruel persecutors in the world are precisely those who clamor loudest for religious liberty.

There is no such thing as a complete divorce of church and state practicable in any country on earth. The only question is, Shall the state be informed and directed by the infallible and holy church of God, or by the synagogue of Satan? No man who is at all competent to pass a judgment on the question but agrees with the Syllabus in condemning not the distinction, but the separation of church and state; but the forms of the union of the two powers, whose harmonious action is necessary to the normal state of society, may vary according to circumstances. In countries where the state refuses to recognize frankly and fully the freedom and independence of the spiritual order, it may be necessary to regulate the relation of church and state by concordats; in others, where the state recognizes the independence of the spiritual order, and holds itself bound to protect the rights of the religion adopted by its citizens, as hitherto with us, no concordats are necessary, for the state does not claim any competence in spirituals. In this country the relation between the two powers has, with a few exceptions, been satisfactory, and the church has been free. But there is on foot a formidable conspiracy against her freedom, and it is beginning to be maintained pretty determinedly that the majority of the people, being Protestant, and the people being the state, have the right and the duty as the state to sustain Protestantism, and outlaw and suppress the church.

DRAMATIC MORALISTS IN SPANISH AMERICA.

The truth is slowly dawning, at least to curious minds, that the people of the southern half of our New World have tastes not dissimilar to our own. Indeed, they seek other arts than those of revolution, and, here and there, have other stages and actors than those which represent the pronunciamiento, with all its malicious bombast and insignificant "sound and fury." We can count poets, novelists, painters, sculptors, scientists in the ranks of the most distinguished men of our nearest sister republic. Cuba, too, rejoices in the genius of her philosophic scholar, Caballero de la Luz, and of her poets, Heredia and Gertrudiz de Avellañeda, with the same spirit which Mexico brings to her admiration of the scientific versatility of Siguenza, the quaint ideality of Sor Juana Inez, and the literary culture of Carpio and Pesado. Nevertheless, such facts as these have aided but little in forming the common estimate of Spanish-American peoples, who are to some of us scarcely more than a Bedouin rabble fighting problematic wild-beasts in the shape of pronouncers, and struggling through clouds of desert-dust and battle-smoke to the light of freedom. That great rude reserve of race, the Indians, without which the business of one-half the continent could not be carried on, seems to be swept out of our moral consideration as with a broom; yet we must think hopefully of a race which has produced an artist so extraordinary as Cabrera and a ruler so enduring and persistent as Juarez—hopefully, at all events, of their mere abilities, if mother church does not teach us to look with a shrewder and kindlier eye upon their moral capabilities. In more than one country of Spanish America we find Indians among presidents, judges, governors, congressmen, writers, artists; and this being the case, historically or actually, why should it be a matter of surprise that Spanish America, with whatever Old World culture she may possess in union with native aptitude, should have some claims upon our attention on the score of taste and intelligence? Part of these claims we propose to set forth.

The present writer has sat in the orderly theatres of Vera Cruz and Mexico, and seen performances substantially as good as those of our northern capitals. The Zarzuelas, or operettas, of Barbieri and Gatzambide were as pleasant in 1868-69 to their hearers in the southern republic as the French comic opera to New Yorkers, and nevertheless seemed decent and spirited; besides, the Mexicans had the good fortune to enjoy Gatzambide's personal direction of his Zarzuelas, and Gatzambide (now deceased) was one of the most popular musicians of Spain. Another celebrity the Mexicans honored in the person of José Valero, a gentlemanlike Spanish actor, whose superior in versatile genius as tragedian and comedian it would be difficult to find anywhere. Entertainments were plentiful in Moctezuma's city, though subsisting, so to speak, upon diminished rations. Round about all these flickering pleasures flowed the strange dark tide of Mexican life—its ragged multitude, its concealed miseries, its[703] settled and common melancholy, not to be dissipated by any class of illusions, not to be shaken off in a day, or a year, or any brief term of years. Nevertheless, the misfortunes of a war-worn people found as tasteful and respectable a solace as their theatres could afford. Their scholars were even encouraged to revive and celebrate some ancient glories of the Mexican stage; and at the opening of a season they crowned the bust of one of the fathers of the Spanish drama, whom with reason they regard as among the greatest of the small band of very eminent Mexicans. This laurelled bust was but one of a number to be seen in the various theatres, in several instances perpetuating the memory of Mexico's own dramatic authors. On the occasion referred to, poems by well-known poets—and, among the rest, if the writer remembers correctly, an eloquent composition by the highly-esteemed blind poet, Juan Valle—preluded the revival of that celebrated comedy, La Verdad Sospechosa, or, The Truth Suspected.

JUAN RUIZ DE ALARCON.

The author of this play was Alarcon, that thoughtful writer who, on the Spanish stage, ranks with Lope, Calderon, Moreto, and Tirso. Strange as it may appear to those who doubt whether any good can come out of Mexico, he was born and bred in that mysterious country. What his countrymen do not know of their great artist, Cabrera, they are able to tell of their chief literary glory—namely, the place and date of his baptism. Documents found in the royal university of Mexico established the several facts that Juan Ruiz de Alarcon y Mendoza was baptized in that city on the 2d day of October, 1572, and received the grade of licentiate or lawyer from the university. It was for some time asserted that he was born at Tasco (for whose church Cabrera is said to have painted extraordinary works); but Chalco, not far from the capital, has also laid claim to the honor of his birth. He is represented as short, ugly, and humpbacked. To improve his fortunes, he sought the literary life of Madrid, but his first efforts were deemed of little importance. By the year 1621 he had written eight acted comedies, of which Las Paredes Oyen (The Walls Hear) is esteemed the best, as also one of the finest in any language. In spite of his physical imperfections his genius won him admirers, socially as well as otherwise. In 1628, he became clerk to the Council of the Indies, and held his office till his death in 1639; so that it seems our author was a contemporary of Shakespeare, Webster, Jonson, and other great lights of the English drama. His comedies are lauded as forming a system of practical philosophy, inasmuch as they give a delightful verification of the proverbial wisdom of his time, and preach capital sermons from common texts. "Luck and Labor," "The World's Favors," "No Evil that does not come for Good," "Before you Marry see what you are about," "The Truth made Suspicious," are the suggestive titles of some of his dramas, which appear to have lost nothing of their peculiar excellence by pointing morals. It was Alarcon who said:

To give to comedy a conscience and a purpose is the distinguishing[704] design of Alarcon; but, while the public of Madrid never failed to perceive the moral of his humor, they could yet heartily laugh at the wit of his dialogues and the genuine comicality of his situations. In his plays cool reason walked hand in hand with sentiment and pleasantry, as they do in some of the most admired comedies of our own stage. The delight with which the Mexicans witnessed La Verdad Sospechosa proved that to Alarcon belonged not merely the ingenuity by which men are amused, but something of that magic by which their own wit and humor are excited. Alarcon could give logic to a whim, a fancy, or a passion. In the Prueba de las Promesas his lover expostulates:

An apology for woman made by a servant in Todo es Ventura (Luck is Everything) may be translated thus:

In Ganar Amigos (To Gain Friends) Don Fernando has killed the brother of Don Fadrique, and seeks and obtains refuge with the latter, who, however, does not know him. Don Fadrique, though at length made aware of the truth, faithfully keeps the pledge he has given the slayer of his brother. Seeing this, Don Fernando gratefully exclaims:

In the comedy of Mudarse por Mejorarse (To Change for the Better; or, more literally, to Change in order to Better One's Self), a certain Don Garcia, who was to marry Doña Clara, falls in love with her niece Leonor; whence this dialogue:

The discreet Leonor, compromised by the entangling suit of Don Garcia, is compelled to admit the attentions of a gallant and rich marquis, with whom at last she falls in love. The following passage explains the rest:

Here is the "retort courteous" in its most charming humor. The gallant grace and wit of these dialogues are evidence of the original art with which Alarcon could make his comedy a study of life, and compel his auditors to think somewhat after they ceased to laugh. This is the function of eminent high comedy, though we may not ask that it shall elaborate a severe or intrusive moral, and though we admit its possession, as in Shakespeare, of the liveliest poetic qualities. Another passage, this time from the famous Verdad Sospechosa, wherein Don Beltran reprimands his son, Don Garcia, for the vice of habitual lying, will further elucidate the method of Alarcon:

Who could preach with more wit a brief sermon like this than Alarcon? It is no small honor to the dramatist born in Mexico that the great Corneille, who, if we may credit the biographers of Alarcon, partly translated and partly imitated La Verdad Sospechosa in his famous Menteur, could avow that he would give two of his best plays to have invented the happy argument of the Spanish original. Molière and Voltaire were also among the admirers of the Spanish comedy, which Corneille at first judged to be the work of Lope de Vega. Of the general merits of Alarcon, the following estimate by his German critic, Schack, which we find in a Mexican notice of the dramatist, will doubtless suffice: "Happy in painting comic characters in order to chastise vice, as in the invention and development of heroes to make virtue adorable; rapid in action, sober in ornament; inferior to Lope in tender respect of feminine creations, to Moreto in liveliest comedy, to Firso in travesty, to Calderon in grandeur and stage effect, he excelled all of them in the variety and perfection of his figures, in the tact of managing them, in equality of style, in carefulness of versification, in correctness of language." To this large and discriminating praise we may add George Ticknor's comprehensive dictum: "On the whole, he is to be ranked[706] with the very best Spanish dramatists during the best period of the National Theatre."

SOR JUANA INEZ DE LA CRUZ.

It would not be proper to dismiss from the list of Spanish-American dramatic writers Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz, although the subjects to which this pious woman yielded her inventive imagination were mainly or wholly religious. She wrote, be it remembered, in that remarkable seventeenth century when a muse of religion walked through the scenes of the stage as well as through the gardens of the convent. Then were the patriarchs and apostles, the prophets and saints, the chief personages of a peculiar drama; and events and circumstances of the divine tragedy inspired such compositions as the Loas and Autos. It is upon one of these latter compositions that her merit as a dramatic writer rests; and we are glad to confirm in great part an opinion of her genius hitherto expressed by us, by here recalling the judgment of that eminent European critic of Spanish literature, Bouterwek, the more especially as our own Spanish scholar, Ticknor, seems to have inflicted such ungracious disparagement upon the subject of our notice: "Much as Inez de la Cruz was deficient in real cultivation," says Bouterwek, "her productions are eminently superior to the ordinary standard of female poetry.... The poems of Inez de la Cruz breathe a sort of masculine spirit. This poetic nun possessed more fancy and wit than sentimental enthusiasm, and whenever she began to invent her creations were on a bold and great scale. Her poems are of very unequal merit, and are all deficient in critical cultivation. But in facility of invention and versification Inez de la Cruz was not inferior to Lope de Vega; and yet she by no means courted literary fame.... In her dramatic works the vigor of her imagination is particularly conspicuous. The collection of her poems contains no comedies properly so-called, but it comprises a series of boldly conceived preludes (loas) full of allegorical invention, and it concludes with a long allegorical auto, which is superior to any of the similar productions of Lope de Vega. It is entitled El Divino Narciso, a name by which the author designates the heavenly bridegroom.... It would be impossible to give a brief and at the same time intelligible sketch of this extraordinary drama. With regard to composition, it is very unequal; in some respects offending by its bad taste, and in others charming by its boldness. Many of its scenes are so beautifully and romantically constructed that the reader is compelled to render homage to the genius of the poetess, while at the same time he cannot but regret the pitch of extravagance to which ideas really poetic are carried. There is one peculiarly fine scene, in which human nature, in the shape of a nymph, seeks her beloved, the real Narcissus, or the Christian Saviour." The pastoral passage, which in our notice of the writings of Sor Juana we laid before our readers, would seem to justify the best praises of our literary historian, Bouterwek. Ticknor, on the other hand, speaks of her as a remarkable woman, and not as a remarkable poetess; and, upon the whole, our thanks for the appreciative reburnishing of the ancient fame of an American genius—which, had it shone in Massachusetts three hundred years ago, would be deemed a very rare jewel among Northern scholars—are due rather to the European Bouterwek than the American[707] Ticknor. The latter observes that she was born at Guipuzcoa; her Mexican biographer says at San Miguel de Nepantla, not far from the city of Mexico, one of whose convents she seems to have directed latterly. Time, place, the inferior standard of feminine culture, and the prevalence of a false poetic school, may account for Sor Juana's defects; for the rest, the issue (a large one) is between Bouterwek and Ticknor.

EDWARD GOROSTIZA.

After Alarcon, the principal lights of the actual Mexican stage are Gorostiza, Calderon, and Galvan; and, indeed, whatever original triumph that stage has enjoyed is almost if not quite limited to these few excellent though not glorious names. We cannot with propriety name that extraordinary woman, Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz, in the list of Mexico's dramatists, although, along with other poetry, she wrote some religious pieces in dramatic form. Nevertheless, the credit which remains to the literature of the country, after its few phenomenal names are omitted, is not inappreciable. Concerning Gorostiza, Madame Calderon de la Barca wrote: "Don José Eduardo Gorostiza, a native of Vera Cruz, is the son of a Spanish officer, and when very young went to Spain, where he was known politically as a liberal. He was distinguished as a writer of theatrical pieces, which have been and still are very popular. One of his pieces which we saw the other evening at the theatre—Con Tigo Pan y Cebolla (With Thee, Bread and Onions)—is delightful." Let us add to Madame Calderon's brief notice that Gorostiza won the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the war against Napoleon; that in 1823, while an exile from Spain in London, he wrote for the Edinburgh Review; and that since then, as minister to England and to the United States, and as secretary of state and finance, he has been eminent in the politics of his native land. In 1836, he was made intendant-general of the army, and during the war between Mexico and the United States took an active and heroic part in the defence of Churubusco. His efforts as a director of the poor-house, as a friend of education, and as the founder of a house of correction, are also deemed worthy of record. He died in 1851, at the age of sixty-two.

The best known of Gorostiza's comedies are those called The Intimate Friend, Last Year's Fashions, Don Dieguito, and Pardon for All, the last being mentioned by his biographer as celebrated. In the play of Don Dieguito, which may serve as well as any other to exhibit the character of Gorostiza's plots, Don Anselmo, a rich uncle, sends his nephew and heir, Don Dieguito, to Madrid to complete his education. While there, Dieguito falls in love with Doña Adelaida, whose father, Don Cleto, is a lawyer. Don Anselmo goes to Madrid to attend the wedding of his nephew, but does not like the family of his son's fiancée, and, accordingly, he schemes to break off the match. The mother, Doña Maria, sees from a worldly point of view the great advantage of her daughter's marriage with Don Dieguito. But now Anselmo tells her that he intends to marry, which excites her fear that his nephew will inherit nothing from him. She, therefore, proposes to her husband that Doña Adelaida shall marry the uncle, Anselmo, instead of the nephew, Dieguito. Don Simplicio, a friend of Don Cleto, endeavors to effect a general reconciliation of interests, and bring about the marriage of the young couple; but, finding[708] that father and mother alike wish to break off the match, joins them in insulting the apparently hapless Dieguito. Don Anselmo at once perceives that his nephew has been fooled, and that the family of his betrothed would be glad to cast off Dieguito in order to capture his uncle's wealth. He concludes, therefore, to make his exit on the very day of the proposed marriage, taking with him his disenchanted nephew. When the day arrives, he announces that he has been ruined by the shipwreck of a vessel from Vera Cruz, and that he is compelled to return to his old business of selling pork, beans, chocolate, and sausages to make good his loss. Don Dieguito, though asked to return to his allegiance as a lover, declares that he is no fool, and prefers a wife who will not speculate at the expense of good faith, but will look after her children. As Don Anselmo has told the family of Doña Adelaida that his principal loss is in a cargo of chocolate, that spirited young lady vows she will not drink chocolate again; and the play ends in amusing recriminations.

FERNANDO CALDERON.

The next of our dramatists, Fernando Calderon, was born in 1809, and died at the age of thirty-six, having been a colonel, a state legislator, a magistrate, and the secretary of the government of Zacatecas, as well as an industrious writer. The most striking of his dramas are: The Tourney, Anne Boleyn, and The Return of the Crusader, which, says one of his admirers, are full of noble and chivalrous sentiments and spirited action. Calderon's talent was nothing if not dramatic; for even his lyrics, and especially his Soldier of Liberty, are characterized by a personal fire and animation. His plays, remarkable for warmth of sentiment, and his poems, chiefly lyrical, gained for him not only in Mexico, but in other Spanish-American republics, a degree of favor not often enjoyed by writers in the southern part of the New World. One of his most admired passages is the soliloquy of Isabella in The Tourney:

With good reason is this thoughtful and feeling soliloquy prized by Calderon's countrymen, whose vicissitudes have taught them peculiar sympathy with the tristful mood to which he lends expression. The tone and style of the passage are tragic in a most dignified sense, and reflect much credit upon Mexican literature. A supplement to the views of mortality and eternity set forth in The Tourney is contained in a fragment written by Calderon in 1825; and as it may interest a Northern public to know what a Mexican[709] poet thinks of the future state, we extract from it these hopeful lines:

RODRIGUEZ GALVAN.

More praiseworthy, in some respects, than any of the modern poets of Mexico, is Rodriguez Galvan, the last of our trio of dramatists. He died in 1842, in his twenty-sixth year, after having without social advantages acquired a high reputation as a lyrical and dramatic writer. "At eleven years," says his biographer, "he was placed under the care of his uncle, in a book-store at the capital," and there his nightly studies made up for the impediments of his daily occupation, and "his happy disposition and love for work supplied the want of masters and fortune." An epical fragment entitled "The Fallen Angel," and his poems, "The Tomb," and "The Girandole," together with his dramas, "Muñoz" and "The Viceroy's Favorite," are mentioned as the most noted of his productions. A specimen of his dramatic style is the following piece of satire on the modern stage, from El Angel de la Guarda:

It would require, perhaps, an intimate knowledge of the Mexican stage as it was thirty years ago to appreciate the special application of these lines; but it is plain that the young dramatist conceived a genuine contempt for a bloodthirsty and iniquitous drama. What, then, must a writer of his promise and aspirations have felt regarding that more bitter melodrama acted all round him?—what must any poet with a tolerable amount of contemplative wisdom have thought of that political madness of which Mexico has been so long the victim? Certainly, it robbed them, as it robbed others, of peace and recompense; but war respects the stage even when it destroys better institutions, and it is probable that the dramatic culture of Mexico is as well preserved as any of which it can boast. To Galvan is ascribed the first effective production on the Mexican stage of Mexican subjects. Whether the following fable bears a more than ordinary social meaning, we cannot say; but it is an instance of the poet's lively manner:

There is nothing in Galvan's story except his way of telling it, which is certainly vivacious; but we esteem it for some flashes of satirical meaning cast upon a state of society of whose animal life the "hungry dog" is so commonplace an object. Not, however, in his plays, which, if we may credit his Mexican critic, sometimes reveal a certain immaturity, did Galvan find his very happiest expression. He wrote the most touching and charming lyric which, after much search, we have been able to find in Mexican literature. It was, we are led to think, in 1842, when, as one of a "legation extraordinary" to South America, he sailed for Havana, there to die of fever, that he wrote the tender "Farewell to Mexico" which his countrymen love to repeat:

AVELLAÑEDA AND MILANES.

There is more of this excellent lyric, but we let it pass in order to bring to a moment's attention a few of the most distinguished Cuban and South American dramatic writers. We nowhere discern the evidence of a luxurious dramatic growth among our tropical contemporaries; but as, in the most advanced and varied circles of our own literature, the drama holds but an inferior modern regard, we cannot deem this fact as peculiarly indicative. Almost chief among the writers of Cuba is Doña Avellañeda, to whom we owe the novels of Sab, the Baroness of Youx, the American romance of Guatimozin, and the Undine of the Blue Lake. She wrote four dramas,[711] one of which, her tragedy of Alfonso Munio, is said to have made her famous. For one of her poems she received a crown of gold laurels from the lyceum of Madrid, and her Catholic devotion was signally manifested by her poem of the Cross and her Biblical drama of Saul. Surely, a most prolific, industrious, and vigorous writer was La Avellañeda, as her countrymen admiringly call her, notwithstanding her Isabellist attachments. To the name of Avellañeda let us add that of José Jacinto Milanes as among the ornaments of Cuban literature. His drama of Conde Alarcos, founded upon the celebrated Spanish tradition of the name, is noted by Ticknor for its passionate energy. Milanes seemed to delight in the themes and scenes of his own country; but his usefulness as a writer was cut short, we are informed, by a wasting infirmity.

SANSON, MAGARINOS, AND MARQUEZ.

Placido Sanson, Magarinos Cervantes, and Señor Marquez are among the most conspicuous South American dramatists we can now call to mind. Magarinos Cervantes was born in Montevideo in 1825, and, besides the novels of Caramuru and The Star of the South, has written the dramas of Vasco Nuñez and the Two Passions, besides the comedy of Percances Matrimoniales. He was one of the principal editors of an artistic and scientific cyclopædia printed in Madrid, and was once described as the youngest and most productive of well-known South American writers. Sanson, who was born in Santa Cruz de Teneriffe, 1815, has written ten or eleven dramas, among them Abenhamet and Herman Peraza, and has been an exceedingly industrious editor and translator. Señor Marquez, who was noticed fifteen years ago as a young poet of Lima, but twenty-three years of age, yet of exceeding promise, was known as the author of a drama which derived its title from the beautiful legend of The Flower of Abel.

This flower of dramatic poetry, as its warm admirers regard it, contains a charming and even what we might call a religious moral. One of the best known of its Peruvian critics described it as among the most spiritual creations of the day; a defense of innocence and charity in a heroic combat against the worldly selfishness which devours us; and Markham, to whose good taste we are indebted for information respecting the ancient and modern literature of Peru, affirms that its plot is original and ingenious, and that it is full of good passages. Abel, the first victim of selfishness, is described as "the mysterious messenger of celestial compassion," an angel of innocence. The innocent daughter of a proud and aged veteran becomes the possessor of the angel's flower of Abel—in other words, the blossom of innocence. This the heavenly visitor presents to her in a vision, warning her never to lose nor abandon it, nor let it leave its place in her bosom. But, eventually, the fair girl loses the flower, and wanders far and wide over the world in search of it, passing through many dangers, for she is unprotected and very beautiful. At length, she reaches her mother's grave, and, wearied and imploring, falls at the feet of an image of the Blessed Virgin, in whose hands she once more beholds her lost Flower of Abel. Prostrate before the altar of the Queen of Heaven, the spirit of Elena abandons the body, and is conducted to the skies by Abel, who recovers the mysterious flower and the pure soul of the maiden.

Reflecting that our own American dramatic literature can claim not[712] many successful writers, the portion of Spanish America, in respect to the dramatists we have described, cannot be deemed contemptible. We have much yet to learn of our sister republics, painful though their problem be to democratic thinkers; and we cannot look through a more necessary and suggestive medium than their literature to become acquainted with their moral capacities and possibilities.

ALBERTUS MAGNUS VINDICATED.

A most striking embellishment to the text of a literary article is a deep row of citations at the foot of the page. The effect may be likened to that of a broad trimming of lace to articles of dress. A lace of true point enhances the rich appearance of the costliest tissue, and a common stuff may be so set off by a Nottingham trimming as to attract the gaze of all who are passing. If unable to distinguish the true from the false, the gazer is astonished by the display.

Struck by the deep trimming of an article that appeared in a recent number of the American Journal of the Medical Sciences, we examined it thoroughly from the beginning to the end. After perusal, we laid it down with a warm recollection of the speech of the country member in the Wisconsin legislature, who, after listening to an eloquent oration filled with classical quotations, arose, and said: "Mr. Speaker, the honorable gentleman has roamed with Romulus, soaked with Socrates, ripped with Euripides, and canted with old Cantharides, but what has all that to do with the laws of Wisconsin?"

It would, however, be entirely out of place in us to call attention to this article, were it not for a most extraordinary sentence which it contains, and upon this we feel bound by many considerations, amongst which our reverence for truth and love of propriety, to make some observations. The sentence referred to is as follows:

"About the year 1240, at the solicitation of an inquisitive priest, Albertus Magnus, the Bishop of Ratisbon, wrote a very unepiscopal work on the Secrets of Women. It contains much prurient matter which will hardly bear translation, and yet was deemed worthy of a commentary by so devout an ecclesiastic as St. Thomas Aquinas."[157]

In this sentence, in which two great and good men are thus spoken of, we maintain that there are at least three glaring misstatements: the first, that the work De Secretis Mulierum was written by the Bishop of Ratisbon, Albertus Magnus, about the year 1240; the second, that Albertus Magnus wrote the work—positive affirmation of that fact, as if there were no doubt of its authenticity; and the third, that St. Thomas Aquinas ever wrote a commentary on it.

First Misstatement.—That the work was written about the year 1240, by Albertus Magnus, Bishop of Ratisbon, and therefore that it was the production [713]of a bishop, although very unepiscopal in its nature. We premise a short sketch of his life, compiled from the Protestant Cave (Historia Literaria, Sæculum Scholasticum, §1260): Albertus, surnamed the Great, a German, was born in the year 1205. He studied at Padua. In the year 1221, he joined the Friar Preachers. He was considered the greatest theologian, philosopher, and mathematician of his day. He excelled especially in mathematics. In the year 1236, on the death of the general of the order, he governed the same for two years as vicar. He afterward became provincial of his order in Germany, fixing his residence at Cologne, where also he taught with great applause. In the beginning of the year 1260, he was appointed Bishop of Ratisbon by Alexander IV., and was obliged, against his will, to undertake that responsibility. He held the same for only three years, when, wearied out by its duties, he resigned the dignity, and returned to his beloved monastery of Cologne, where he spent his old age in the delights of study. He died in the year 1280. Such is the substance of Cave's biography. Although there is some doubt as to the date of his birth, all agree that he was made bishop in the year 1260, and that during that time he had enough to do in the affairs of his diocese. The work in question, written about the year 1240, cannot, therefore, be rightly styled unepiscopal. Besides, all the editions that attribute the work to Albertus say that it was written by him whilst stopping in Paris. Thus, in the notes added by some unknown author to the editions of 1601 and 1637 these words are found: "Ego Albertus morans Parisiis"—"I, Albert, staying in Paris." The first words of the text are, "Dilecto sibi," etc. As a bishop, we have no record of his ever having been in Paris, much less stopping there for a time. As a very old man, it is said that he made the journey once more from Cologne. After resigning his episcopate, he always lived and taught at Cologne. We may therefore, with justice, put down the word unepiscopal as inaccurate.

Second Misstatement.—The positive affirmation of the fact that Albertus Magnus was the author of the work on the Secrets of Women. Admitting that our examination has not been as exhaustive as it might, owing to the want of facility in consulting many authorities we should have desired to, what we shall produce we hope will be sufficient to place beyond doubt this one fact, that, if the work is not wholly to be rejected as that of Albertus Magnus, it must at least be granted that it is very doubtful. Our opinion is that it is wholly supposititious. We have not found a single authority which does not admit that it is doubtful whether Albertus Magnus was the author of it; and the vast majority of critics and several intrinsic arguments prove that his name, as the famous one of the age, was affixed to it to give it notoriety. These propositions we will now substantiate by negative and positive arguments, some extrinsic and others intrinsic, drawn from the character of the author and of the writing in question.

All admit that the authenticity of the work is called in question. We have consulted at least eighteen distinct authorities in matters of bibliography, and have not found one making the positive affirmation of the fact; and some of our authorities, as, for instance, Cave and Fabricius, refer to every critic of note up to their time (Cave to no less than three hundred and seventy-two authors). Almost all positively deny[714] that the work belongs to Albertus Magnus. Some make no mention of it at all when speaking of his life and labors. Others say in general that many writings have been ascribed to Albertus, in order to give them notoriety, which, however, must be rejected as supposititious. Thus, the Encyclopædia Britannica, art. "Albert," vol. i., p. 171, says: "A detailed list of Albert's works, the genuineness of many of which it is impossible to determine, is to be found in the Scriptores Ord. Prædicatorum of Quétif and Echard." Moreri, in his grand Dictionnaire Historique, has nothing at all about the book, and yet he speaks at length of Albertus and his works. Appleton's American Encyclopædia makes no mention of it; neither does Hallam, who would not have passed by such a book, for he speaks expressly of Albertus's influence on medical studies. The Regensburg Universal Realen Encyclopedie, edition 1850, art. "Albertus Magnus," says: "Sehr viele Schrifter wurden ihm später fälschlich beigelegt"—"Very many works were at a later period falsely ascribed to him."

These authorities are, however, purely negative. We shall now bring forward the positive proofs for the same fact: a. Critics. b. Brunet. c. Encyclopædias. d. Historians. e. Biographies. f. Editions.

a. Critics.—It will be enough to bring forward Fabricius, Boyle, and Cave, all unexceptionable authorities. Fabricius, Lipsiensis Professor, Bibliotheca Latina mediæ et infimæ ætatis, after referring to all the subjects treated of in the twenty-one folio volumes of the Lyons edition, the only complete one ever published, speaks of the works which must be rejected, and among them he places "Liber de Secretis Secretorum, sive de Secretis Mulierum, sæpe editus sed suppositus Alberto, qui plus simplici vice in eo citatur"—"The book on the Secret of Secrets, or on the Secrets of Women, often published but fathered on Albertus, who is more than once quoted in it." Boyle certainly will not be accused of any partiality for the great Catholic doctors of scholasticism. In a long article on Albertus Magnus, he has these words: "I shall particularly mention some falsities that have been reported about him. It has been said that he delivered women, and it was taken very ill that a man of his profession should do the office of a midwife. The ground of this story is that there was a book under the name of Albertus Magnus, containing several instructions for midwives, and so much knowledge of their art that it seemed he could not have been so well skilled in that trade if he had not exercised it. But the apologists of Albertus maintained that he is not the author of that book, nor of that De Secretis Mulierum." He here refers to a note in which he explains as follows: "The book De Secretis Mulierum, wrongfully ascribed to Albertus, is the work of one of his disciples, who is called Henricus de Saxonia, with whose name it has been printed more than once. Here are Simler's words: 'Henricus de Saxonia, Alberti Magni discipuli, liber de Secretis Mulierum impressus Augustæ,' A.D. 1498, per Antonium Surg.; and in the Catalogue of Thuanus's Library you will find, 'Henrici de Saxonia, de Secretis Mulierum, de virtutibus herbarum, lapidum quorumdam animalium aliorumque, 12mo, Francof., 1615.' It is plain that Albertus's name, more famous than that of Henry, gave occasion to that supposition." Thus far Boyle.

Cave in his Historia Literaria makes no mention of the work as belonging to Albertus.

b. Brunet, the great authority on[715] books and editions, in his Manuel du Libraire, says: "De Secretis Mulierum, opus 1478, in 4^o, première édition de cet ouvrage, mal-à-propos attribué à Albert-le-grand"—"De Secretis Mulierum, 1478, 4to, first edition of this work, wrongfully attributed to Albert the Great."

c. Encyclopædias.—Edinburgh Encyclopædia, conducted by David Brewster, edition of 1832, art. "Albertus Magnus:" "The treatise De Secretis Mulierum, etc., generally ascribed to him, was written by one of his disciples, Henricus de Saxonia." Penny Encyclopædia, London, 1833: "There are also collections of supposed secrets which have erroneously been published under his name; among others, one De Secretis Mulierum et Naturæ, printed at Amsterdam, in 1655, which is believed to have been written by one of his disciples." Chambers's Encyclopædia rejects the work also as supposititious.

d. Historians.—Natalis Alexander, Hist. Ecc., Sæculum XIII., on "Albertus Magnus," concludes his notice thus: "Liber De Mirabilibus vanitate et superstitione refertus, Alberto Magno suppositus est, inquit Debrio, Disquisitionum Magicarum, cap. 3. Librum De Secretis Mulierum nec ipsius est nec docti cujuspiam esse censuerunt Medici Lovanienses, ut refert Molanus in Bibliotheca Sacra"—"The book De Mirabilibus, filled with nonsense and superstition, has been falsely ascribed to Albertus Magnus, says Debrio in his work Essays on Magic, cap. 3. The Medical Faculty of the University of Louvain gave as their opinion that the book De Secretis Mulierum is not his nor that of any learned man, as Molanus relates in his Bibliotheca Sacra."

Raynoldus, in his Cronaca, the great continuation of the Annals of Baronius, under the year 1260, paragraph 15th, says: "Hic vero lectorem diligenter monitum velim plura passim Alberti Magni nomine scripta circumferri, quæ ab ipso nunquam emanasse exploratum est; cum magica superstitione sint fœdata, sed ad conciliandum rei vel frivolæ vel scelestæ auctoritatem, piissimi et sapientis viri nomine subornati simplicibus obtruduntur"—"We wish here particularly to warn the reader that there are many writings extant attributed to Albertus Magnus, which, it is clear, never emanated from his pen; for they are filled with magical superstition; but to gain some authority for a trifling or wicked work, they are palmed off on the ignorant under the name of a most pious and learned man." Prof. Hefele, the German historian, in an article on Albertus Magnus in Wetzer and Welte's Kirchen-Lexicon, concludes thus: "Dem Albertus sind viele Bücher unterschoben worden, z. B. De Alchymia und De Secretis Mulierum, u. dgl."—"Many books have been fathered on Albert, e.g. De Alchymia and De Secretis Mulierum, etc." Cantri, the Italian historian, in his Universal History, expresses the same opinion in his chapter on the "Natural and Occult Sciences."

e. Biographies.—Feller, in his Biographie Universelle, says: "Enfin, on a lui attribué de ridicules recueils des Secrets, auquels il n'a pas eu la moindre part. On y trouve même des indécences et des recherches aussi vaines que peu dignes d'une religeux"—"Finally, a ridiculous collection of Secrets have been attributed to him, with which he had nothing to do. Even obscene things are found in this collection, and investigations as frivolous as they are unworthy of a religious." The French and German biographies consulted by us agree in this same opinion.

f. Editions.—Dr. Atkinson, in his Medical Biography, mentions all the[716] editions of the work from the first in 1478 to 1760. The first edition, 1478, is without the name of the place in which it was printed; and of it we have seen the judgment of Brunet. The editions of 1480 and 1481 are without the name of either printer or place. The edition of 1484, Augustæ, comes out with Henry of Saxony as its author. Those of 1488 and 1498 also. The earliest editions, therefore, cannot be quoted as making Albertus the author of the work. It was only the editions of 1600 and those which followed that ascribed the work to Albertus, and they were almost all printed in Germany or Holland. Does it not look as if party spirit had much to do with these editions? The only complete edition of the works of Albertus is that of the Rev. A. P. Peter Jammy, S.T.D., in twenty-one folio volumes, printed at Lyons, 1651. This edition contains no mention of the book.

In the authorities thus far quoted, we have studiously avoided bringing forward any but those which are universally admitted as standard. But even should the extrinsic testimony thus far given not have been all on our side, we think the intrinsic evidence would be quite sufficient to settle the question. To this point we will now briefly direct attention. These intrinsic arguments are drawn from the work itself and from the well-known character of Albertus Magnus. The book or document was written somewhere about the year 1240 or 1250, and was first printed in the year 1478. Its composition shows evidently that it was intended only for the person to whom it was directed; that it was merely a letter to a friend in answer to an obscure question proposed by him; in fine, that it was not a treatise intended for preservation, but merely a familiar correspondence on the part of the writer to satisfy, as far as he was able, the inquiries of his friend. Naudé, the critic, makes use of these two proofs to show that Albertus could not have written the work. First, Albertus did not name himself in the beginning of the work. He who commented upon it affirmed without any proof that Albertus was its author. The text begins with these words: "Delecto sibi in Christo socio et amico," etc.—"To his beloved companion and friend in Christ. In the notes added to the edition of 1601 and 1637 these words have been placed as a title: "Ego Albertus morans Parisiis"—"I, Albert, staying in Paris." The title has been affixed gratuitously and arbitrarily. The work is therefore anonymous. Second, Albertus could not have written it, for his own authority is often made use of. We must remember that the document in question was only a letter from one friend to another; and it certainly would be strange for a man to quote his own well-known works at any time, much less in a familiar correspondence. If he introduced them at all, it would be in some such form as this: "as you will find in my work on," etc. The author of this letter quotes Albertus's authority at least five times. We have verified the following in the edition of 1637, Argentorati: Page 49: "That this may be understood, we must note that there are four states of the moon, according to Albertus in his treatise De Statu Solis et Lunæ. Page 69, showing the impossibility of a universal deluge, the author says: "And we must know that these things are not imaginary, because Albertus, on the Action and Effect of Lightning, mentions," etc. Page 97, "For Albertus mentions just as," etc. Page 109, "As Albertus says in his book on," etc. We do not argue from the fact of the authority[717] of Albertus being used to prove that he could not have been the author, but from the manner in which that authority is introduced. The reader will judge for himself if our inference be correct. But to us the convincing proof of the falsity of the work is to be drawn from the character of Albertus himself and the subject matter of the work. The testimony of antiquity has brought him down to us as venerable for his piety and goodness as he was illustrious for learning. He was truly a good man. He was really an exceedingly learned man. The work ascribed to him could have been written by neither a good man nor even a moderately well-educated man. There are principles laid down in it which contradict the first ideas of morality and inculcate unbridled license. And shall the well-known works on morality of the great doctor not be allowed to cry out in his defence? Shall we say that he has not only glaringly contradicted himself, but become the open advocate of immorality? When the illustrious Protestant critic Cave tells us that Albertus was considered the greatest theologian, philosopher, and mathematician of his day, he does but re-echo the voice of each past generation; and shall we say that he could have written the work in question, so full of nonsense and superstition, and contrasting so strongly with his other writings? Is not the opinion of the Medical Faculty of the University of Louvain more just when they maintain that the work De Secretis Mulierum is neither that of Albertus nor indeed of any learned man at all? These few reflections should be enough to settle the matter. We could bring forward other and far more convincing reasons in vindication of this great doctor; but from what has been said, we think we are justified in placing the positive affirmation of the writer ascribing the work to Albertus Magnus as a glaring misstatement—as blot number two.

The third misstatement was that St. Thomas Aquinas wrote a commentary on it. We challenge the writer to bring a single authority to prove that fact. We never heard or saw anything about it before. None of the great standard critics ever hint at it; so, not to lose patience, we affirm that it is the most glaring misstatement made—blot number three, in almost as many lines.

The reader might here naturally ask, Where, then, did the writer obtain any information on which to base his so positive statements, so injurious to the characters of two justly celebrated benefactors of the human race? We have met with but one phrase which could have suggested the lines in question, and they are taken from a writer who should not be brought forward as authority in a matter of criticism; for the scurrilous, filthy, and flippant manner in which he speaks of authors and books renders him unworthy of an answer. This author is Dr. James Atkinson, who published a Medical Biography, one volume, A and B, London, 1834. After admitting that the authorship of the book De Secretis Mulierum is a contested matter, he has these words: "It may be a question whether the editions (of which I have one in Gothic characters) of this Libellus de Secretis Mulierum were not originally written by Albertus, and published with a commentary (which is annexed to it in my edition) by St. Thomas Aquinas (although usually 'non est inventus') or Henricus de Saxonia. Is it possible?" The character of the author Atkinson, as manifested in his work, and these words themselves, are a sufficient answer to any proof to be drawn from[718] his authority. We must say candidly that these are the only words we could find even to suggest the remarkable lines we have quoted in the beginning of this article; and we conclude that we might have hoped for the sincerity of Atkinson in one who shows that, if he has tried to read much, he has read neither wisely nor well.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

The merits of Dr. Hefele's great but still unfinished work are well known and universally appreciated. Certain portions of it rise to the excellence of a masterpiece, and really exhibit a genius almost, if not quite, equal to that which is shown in the Athanasius of Möhler and the History of the Arians by Dr. Newman. We refer especially to the parts treating of the Arian and semi-Arian controversies, and of the history of the Council of Constance, with the other synods preceding and connected with it. We cannot, however, consider the work of Dr. Hefele as faultless. In our opinion, he has signally failed in his treatment of the celebrated cases of Liberius and Honorius. In the present volume there are, as it appears to us, two manifest errors in regard both to fact and doctrine. The first one is found in the statement that confirmation by a schismatical or heretical bishop is invalid, and was judged to be so by Pope Stephen and the bishops of his time. The second is the assertion that the baptism of the Paulianists was rejected because of the heresy professed by them, and not because they had vitiated the baptismal formula. It is strange that so learned a professor could not see that, if baptism in the name of the Trinity was made invalid by the fact that the Paulianists understood by the terms Father, Son, and Holy Ghost something different from the true, Catholic sense of the church, the baptism of the Arians, and of all sorts of Unitarians, would be made invalid by the same reason. Almost all German authors have a tone and an air as if everything has to be proved from the beginning anew, and this proof sharply criticised by an infidel professor in the next room. Dr. Hefele has this air about him whenever he writes about the constitutive principles of the Catholic Church, and only loses it when he has fairly plunged into his subject and become carried away by it. There is, moreover, a perceptible, though not very deep, tinge of what we may call ante-Vatican theology in the introduction, although one passage has been corrected by the author since the council. The learned and illustrious author was always animated by an orthodox and pious spirit, which he has manifested by a truly apostolic exercise of his episcopal authority in sustaining and enforcing the decisions of the Council of the Vatican. Notwithstanding the accidental defects of his great work, it[719] is a monument not merely of ecclesiastical learning, but of sound Catholic doctrine, in which the supremacy of the Holy See, and the justice of its cause as against all heretics, schismatics, and rebels, are maintained with victorious logic and overwhelming evidence. Its critical character makes it especially valuable for those who are studying the history and constitution of the church, and we are, therefore, sincerely glad that one volume has been translated into English and published, and can only hope that the others may follow.

The translation has been made by a Protestant dignitary and published by a Protestant firm, as the title at the head of this notice has already informed our readers. This seems rather odd. We are glad to see a taste for works like this arising in the educated world, but can scarcely understand what could induce a Protestant, sincerely and firmly attached to his own doctrine, to promote their circulation. The author's motives are, however, his own affair, and the affair of his own ecclesiastical connection. We have only to criticise the manner in which he has done his work, and for that we are bound to accord him great praise. Most judiciously, and to our very great satisfaction, he has refrained from giving us his own opinions in prefaces or notes, and has left Bishop Hefele in the state in which he found him of pure, unadulterated text. The translation is undoubtedly substantially correct, and, so far as we have seen, exact and accurate in detail, while at the same time it is smooth, readable English. We have noticed only one mistranslation, and that is one which is wholly indefensible. This is the substitution of Roman Catholic for Catholic. We protest against this alteration of Bishop Hefele's language, and condemn it as contrary to literary honesty, and a real falsification of the text. The volume is admirably printed, and is for sale at The Catholic Publication House, and we most cordially recommend it to the attention of all students of ecclesiastical history who are unable to read the work in German or French.

Whoever has the happiness of knowing Canon Oakeley will think he sees him and hears him talking when he reads this book. Canon Oakeley was well known many years ago as a Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, and one of the most distinguished of the brilliant band of converts from that university. As a Catholic priest, he has been one of the most laborious and successful among the parochial clergy of London. His long experience and eminently practical mind make him unusually well fitted for writing a work like the present. It is full of admirable directions and suggestions, among which those on preaching especially attracted our attention. Canon Oakeley's very remarkable merits as a writer are too well known to need our commendation. The style of the present volume is well worthy of the venerable author's best days, and makes the book delightful reading. We think it is one which even the most experienced pastors will find useful and interesting, and which will be found to be of the highest value to young clergymen and ecclesiastical students.

Father Young's hymn-book, well known to many of our schools and confraternities for the past eight years, is now enlarged by the addition of twenty-four hymns to its[720] first edition. The best thing we can say of the collection is that, of the one hundred and thirty-one hymns which it contains, not more than half a dozen are beyond the capacity or unsuited to the tastes of the youth for whom it was designed. The majority of the melodies are original, and not to be found in any other book of the kind. Every season and festival of the year is represented by a choice selection of appropriate hymns, and the present edition is enriched with the popular congregational hymns sung in the church of the Paulists during Lent, and at the meetings of their Rosary and Christian Doctrine Societies. We have no hesitation in saying that it is the most complete and satisfactory hymn-book for our schools and sodalities that has been issued in the English language.

Precisely what it was that Mr. Weiss proposed to himself in writing the series of essays which he dignifies by the title of "American Religion," we do not find it easy to say. He is one of those more unhappy admirers of Mr. Emerson who, in paying him the ready tribute of a more or less perfect imitation of the style of his speech and the manner of his thought, have so far beggared themselves as to leave their readers in doubt as to what their own thinking and their own statement might have been, had they in fact retained that individuality the rights of which it seems now only a part of their imitation to assert. Mr. Emerson's style, which is the fit expression of the character of his mind, and in its way perfection, has the unfortunate peculiarity of being so mannered that the least of his disciples can successfully, and apparently unconsciously, travesty it. Just what it was, therefore, that Mr. Weiss had in his mind concerning the new religion which he desires to see adapted to the supposed needs of America, we do not know; but through the fog in which his readers are perforce doomed to flounder, it seems as if he believes that the three thousand miles of sea-water which lie between his native land and the Old World were a sufficient layer of regeneration for those born on the hither side of it. The sense of sin, the need of an atonement, the efficacy of prayer, are effete ideas which have served their purpose in the past, but which an American citizen is better without. Why should Yankee Doodle, who, as all the world knows, is the latest and fullest expression of what Mr. Weiss likes to call the "Divine Immanence," bewail sins which are after all either purely imaginary or the result of a defective organization for which he is not to blame; or think himself in need of a mediator with an offended God, when the real truth is that he has only to step up to the nearest square inch of looking-glass to behold the Divinity in himself and settle all outlying accounts by word of mouth? Perhaps we do Mr. Weiss an injustice, and, in the twelve essays which form this volume, he may have embodied more and better ideas than the only one which a tolerably attentive reading has enabled us to gather from them. But to us his book seems likely to be as barren of suggestion to those who would willingly agree with him as it is to ourselves. Its prevailing cloudiness is here and there broken in upon by a sort of inane audacity of expression when he refers to our Lord and his miracles; but otherwise it offers an unbroken uniformity of platitude. It betrays, too, an amusing ignorance of all modes of thought alien to either the orthodoxy or the rationalism of New England, the provincialism of which is in very pretty keeping with the significant title which Mr. Weiss has chosen for his work.

THE REFORMATION NOT CONSERVATIVE.[159]

Dr. Krauth is a man highly esteemed in his own denomination, and, though neither very original nor profound, is a man of more than ordinary ability and learning, well versed in Lutheran theology, and, we presume, a trustworthy representative of it as contained in the Lutheran symbolical books, and held by the more conservative members of the Lutheran Church—a church, or sect rather, of growing importance in our country, in consequence of the large migration hither from Germany and the north of Europe, and in some respects the most respectable of all the churches or sects born of the Protestant Reformation, or, rather, the Protestant revolt and rebellion against the church of God. Yet he will excuse us if we refuse to follow him step by step in his exposition of the Lutheran theology, for all that is true in it we have in the teaching of the Catholic Church, without the errors and falsehoods Luther mingled with it. It were a waste of time to study it, unless we were called upon to refute it in detail, which we are not.

That there is much that is true mingled with much more that is false in Lutheran theology, we do not dispute, and we readily admit that Dr. Krauth means to hold, and in his way does hold, most of the fundamental principles, if not dogmas, of Christianity; but this is no more than we might say of any other system of false theology, or of any heathen religion or superstition, ancient or modern, civilized or barbarous. There is no pagan religion, if we analyze it and trace it to its fountain, in which we cannot detect most, if not all, of the great primary truths of the Christian religion, or the great principles which underlie the dogmas and precepts of the Catholic Church, and which could have been obtained only from the revelation made by God himself to our first parents before [722]their expulsion from the garden. Yet what avails the truth false religion conceals, mingled as it is with the errors that turn it into a lie? It serves, whether with the lettered and polished Greek and Roman or the rude, outlying barbarian, only as the basis of barbarous superstitions, cruel, licentious, and idolatrous rites, and moral abominations. The fundamental ideas or principles of civilized society are retained in the memory of the most barbarous nations and tribes, yet are they none the less barbarous for that. They lack order, subordination; neither their intelligence nor their will is disciplined and subjected to law; and their appetites and passions, unrestrained and untamed, introduce disorder into every department of life, and compel intelligence and will, reason itself, to enter their ignoble service, and as abject slaves to do their bidding. Civilization introduces the element of order, establishes the reign of law in the individual, in the family, in the state, in society, which is not possible without a religion true enough to enlighten the intellect, and powerful enough over conscience to restrain the passions within their proper bounds, and to bend the will to submission.

All Protestant sects hold much of truth, but, like the heathen religions, they hold it in disorder, out of its normal relations and connections, out of its unity and catholicity, and consequently no one of them is strong enough to recover the element of order, and re-establish and maintain the reign of law in any of the several departments of life, spiritual or secular; for the very essence of both consists in rejecting catholicity, the only source of order. We therefore make no account of the principles, truths, or even Catholic dogmas retained by the various Protestant churches or sects from Catholic tradition. Held as they are out of unity, out of their normal relations, and mingled with all sorts of errors and fancies, they lose their virtue, become the basis of false religion and false morality, pervert instead of enlightening reason, and mislead, weaken, and finally destroy conscience. They are insufficient to preserve faith and the worship of God, and naturally tend to revive in a lettered nation the polished heathenism of Greece and Rome. Their impotence is seen in the prevailing disorder in the whole Protestant world, and especially in the singular delusion of modern society, that the loss of Catholic truth, Catholic authority, of spirituality, is a progress in light, liberty, religion, and civilization—a delusion which counts the revolutions, the civil commotions, the wars between the people and the government, between class and class, and capital and labor, the insurrections and terrible social disorders of the last century and the present, only as so many evidences of the marvellous advance of the modern world in freedom, intelligence, religion, and Christian morals. Is not this the delusion that goeth before and leadeth to destruction?

Dr. Krauth has not advanced so far, or rather descended so low, as have some of his Protestant brethren. He has strong conservative instincts, and still retains a conviction that order is necessary, and that without religious faith and conscience order is not possible. He has a dim perception of the truth, that unless there is something in religion fixed, permanent, and authoritative, even religion cannot meet the exigencies of society or the needs of the soul; but, a child of the Reformation, and jealous of the honor of his parentage, he thinks it necessary to maintain that, if religion must be fixed and permanent, it must at the same time be progressive; authoritative,[723] and yet subject to the faithful, who have the right to resist or alter it at will. Hence he tells us, page viii., "The church problem is to attain a Protestant Catholicity, or a Catholic Protestantism," and seeks to establish for Lutheranism the character of being a "conservative reformation." The learned doctor may be a very suitable professor of theology in a Lutheran theological seminary, or a proper professor of intellectual and moral philosophy in the University of Pennsylvania, but he seems either not to have mastered the categories or to have forgotten them. Contradictory predicates cannot be affirmed of the same subject. The Lutheran Reformation and conservatism belong to different categories. That only can be a conservative reform of the church that is effected by the church herself or by her authority, and which leaves her authority and constitution intact, by no means the case with the Lutheran Reformation, which was a total subversion of the constitution of the church and the denial of her authority. In the sense of the author, conservative reformation implies a contradiction in terms.

Logicians, at least those we have had for masters, tell us that of contradictories one must be false. If there were ever two terms each the contradictory of the other, they are Catholic and Protestant. One cannot be a Catholic without denying Protestantism, or a Protestant without denying Catholicity. "Protestant Catholicity" or "Catholic Protestantism" is as plainly a contradiction in terms as a square circle or a circular square. If Catholicity is true, Protestantism is false, for it is simply the denial of Catholicity; and if the Protestant denial of Catholicity is true or warranted, then is there nothing catholic, no catholicity, and consequently no catholic Protestantism. Dr. Krauth has, we doubt not, a truth floating before his mind's eye, but he fails to grasp it, or to consider to what it is applicable. "The history of Christianity," he says, page vii., "in common with all genuine history, moves under the influence of two generic ideas: the conservative, which desires to secure the present by fidelity to the results of the past; the progressive, which looks out in hope to a better future. Reformation is the great harmonizer of the true principles. Corresponding with conservatism, reformation, and progress, are the three generic types of Christianity; and under these genera all the species are but shades, modifications, or combinations, as all hues arise from three primary colors. Conservatism without progress produces the Romish and Greek type of the church; progress without conservatism runs into revolution, radicalism, and sectarianism; reformation is antithetical to both—to passive persistence in wrong or passive endurance of it, and to revolution as a mode of relieving wrong." That is, reformation preserves its subject while correcting its aberrations, and effects its progress without its destruction, which, if the subject is corruptible and reformable, and the reform is effected by the proper authorities and by the proper means, is no doubt true; and in this case reformation would stand opposed alike to immobility and revolution or destruction.

But is the learned and able professor aware of what he does when he assumes that Christianity is corruptible and reformable, that it is or can be the subject either of corruption or of reformation? Intentionally or not, by so assuming, he places it in the category of human institutions, or natural productions, left to the action of the natural laws or of second causes, and withdraws it[724] from the direct and immediate government and protection of God. Not otherwise could its history be subject to the laws that govern the movement of all genuine history, be either perfectible or corruptible, or ever stand in need of being reformed, or of intrinsically advancing. Christianity itself is a revelation from God, the expression of his eternal reason and will, and therefore his law, which like himself is perfect and unalterable. The terms the professor applies, can apply, then, only to men's views, theories, or judgments of Christianity, not to Christianity itself, either as a doctrine or an institution, either as the faith to be believed, or as the law to be obeyed—a fact which, in the judgment of some, Dr. Newman's theory of development overlooks Christianity embodied in the church is the kingdom of God on earth, founded immediately by the Incarnate Word to manifest the divine love and mercy in the redemption and salvation of souls, and to introduce and maintain the authority of God and the supremacy of his law in human affairs. It is not an abstraction, and did not come into the world as a "naked idea," as Guizot maintains, nor is it left to men's wisdom and virtue to embody it; but it came into the world embodied in an institution, concreted in the church, which the blessed apostle assures us is "the body of Christ," who is himself Christianity, since he says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." Neither as the end nor as the divine institution, neither as the law nor as the authority to keep, declare, and apply it, then is the church imperfect, therefore progressive or corruptible, and therefore reformable. This is the Catholic doctrine, which must be retained by Protestantism if Protestantism is to be Catholic.

The learned professor either overlooks or virtually denies the divine origin, character, and authority of the church, or else he supposes that the divine founder failed to adapt his means to his end, and left his work incomplete, imperfect, to be finished by men. From first to last, he treats the church not as the kingdom of God on earth, but as an institution formed by men to realize or embody their conceptions or views of his kingdom, its principles, laws, and authority. He thus makes it a human institution, subject to all the vicissitudes of time and space. As men can never embody in their institutions the entire kingdom of God, the church must be progressive; as whatever is defective may be corrupted by the errors and corruptions of the faithful, as what is subject to growth must also be subject to decay, the church may from time to time become corrupt, and men must be free, as she has need, to reform her. This manifestly supposes the church is not divine, but simply an attempt, as is every false religion of men, to realize or embody their variable conceptions of the divine. If this were not the professor's view, he could not talk of conservatism, progress, and reformation in connection with Christianity, nor the correspondence of these with "the three generic types of Christianity," for these terms are inapplicable to anything divine and perfect, and can be logically applied only to what is imperfect and human, to what is perfectible, corruptible, and reformable. As there is but one God, one Christ, the mediator of God and men, there can be but one Christianity, and that must be catholic, one and the same in all times and places. To suppose three generic types of Christianity is as absurd as to suppose three Christs or three Gods, generically distinguished one from another, that is—three[725] Christs or three Gods of three different types or genera.

Supposing the professor understands at all the meaning of the scholastic terms he uses, it is clear that he understands by Christianity the history of which moves under the influence of two generic ideas—nothing divine, nothing fixed, permanent, and immutable, the law alike for intellect and will, but the views and theories or judgments which men form of the works of God, his word, his law, or his kingdom. Christianity resolved into these may, we concede, not improperly be arranged under the three heads of conservatism, progress, and reformation, but never Christianity as the truth to be believed and obeyed. We do not, however, blame the Lutheran professor for his mistake; for, assuming his position as a Protestant to be at all tenable, he could not avoid it, since Protestants have no other Christianity. They have only their views or judgments of Christianity, not Christianity itself as the objective reality.

There is progress by Christianity; and that is one great purpose for which it is instituted; but none in Christianity, because it is divine and perfect from the beginning. There may be reformation in individuals, nations, and society, for these are all corruptible, but none of Christianity itself, either as the creed or as the body of Christ, for it is indefectible, above and independent of men and nations, and therefore neither corruptible nor reformable by them. Not being corruptible or capable of deterioration, the term conservative, however applicable it may be to states and empires in the natural order or to human institutions and laws subject to the natural laws, has no application to Christianity or the kingdom of Christ, which is supernatural, under the direct and immediate government and protection of God, an eternal and therefore an ever-present kingdom, universal and unalterable, and not subject to the natural laws of growth and decay. Dr. Krauth forgets the law of mechanics, that there is no motion without a mover at rest. The movable cannot originate motion, nor the progressive be the cause of progress, or corruption purify and reform itself. If Christianity or the church were itself movable, or in itself progressive, it could effect no progress in men or nations, individuals or society; and if it could ever become itself corrupt, it could be no principle of reform in the world, or in any department of life.

The office of Christianity is to maintain on earth amidst all the vicissitudes of this world the immutable divine order, to recover men from the effects of the fall, to elevate them above the world, above their natural powers, and to carry them forward, their will consenting and concurring, to a blissful and indissoluble union with God as their supreme good, as their last end or final cause. How could it fulfil this office and effect its divine purpose, if not itself free from all the changes, alterations, and accidents of time and space? Does not the learned professor of theology perceive that its very efficiency depends on its independence, immovableness, and immutability? Then the conceptions of conservatism, progress, and reformation cannot be applied to the church of God, any more than to God himself, and are applicable only to what is human connected with her. In applying these ideas to her, the professor, as every Protestant is obliged to do in principle at least, divests her of her divinity, of her supernatural origin and office, and places her in the natural and human order, and subjects her to the laws which govern[726] the history of all men and nations deprived of the supernatural and remaining under the ordinary providence of God manifested through second causes. The professor's doctrine places Christianity in the same category with all pagan and false religions, and subjects it to the same laws to which they are subjected.

This being the case, Dr. Krauth, who is a genuine Lutheran, has no right to call Luther's Reformation a conservative Reformation. It may or may not be conservative in relation to some other Protestant church or sect, but in relation to the church of God, or to Christianity as the word or the law of God, it is not conservative, but undeniably destructive; for it subverts the very idea and principle on which the church as the kingdom of God on earth is founded and sustained. The church on the principles of Luther's reformation is subject to the authority of men and nations, and, instead of teaching and governing them, is taught and governed by them, and instead of elevating and perfecting them, they perfect, corrupt, or reform it. This is manifestly a radical denial, a subversion of the church of God, of Christ's kingdom on earth if it means anything more than a temperance society or a social club. In this respect, the principle of the Lutheran reformation was the common principle of all the Protestant reformers, as we may see in the fact that Protestantism, under any or all of its multitudinous forms, wherever not restrained by influences foreign to itself, tends incessantly to eliminate the supernatural, and to run into pure rationalism or naturalism. How absurd, then, to talk of "Protestant Catholicity, or of Catholic Protestantism"! The two ideas are as mutually repellent as are Christ and Belial.

The church has, indeed, her human side, and on that side she may at times be corrupt and in need of reform, that is to say, the heavenly treasure is received in earthen vessels, and those earthen vessels, though unable to corrupt or sully the divine treasure itself, may be unclean and impure themselves. Churchmen may become relaxed in their virtue and neglect to maintain sound doctrine and necessary discipline, and leave the people to suffer for the want of proper spiritual nourishment and care, even to fall into errors and vices more in accordance with the heathenism of their ancestors than with the faith and sanctity of the Christian. Moreover, in a world where all changes under the very eye of the spectator, and new forms of error and vice are constantly springing up, the disciplinary canons of the church, and those which regulate the relations of secular society with the spiritual, good and adequate when first enacted, may become insufficient or impracticable in view of the changes always going on in everything human, and fail to repress the growing evil of the times and to maintain the necessary discipline both of clerics and laics, and therefore need amending, or to be aided by new and additional canons. In this legislative and administrative office of the church, not in her dogmas, precepts, constitution, or authority, which, as expressing the eternal reason and will of God, are unalterable, reforms are not only permissible but often necessary. The councils, general, national, provincial, and diocesan, have always had for their only object to assist the Papacy in suppressing errors against faith in enforcing discipline, maintaining Christian morality, and promoting the purity and sanctity of the Christian community.

We do not deny that reforms of this sort were needed at the epoch of the Protestant revolt and rebellion, and the Holy Council of Trent was convoked and held for the very purpose of effecting such as were needed, as well as for the purpose of condemning the doctrinal errors of the reformers; but we cannot concede that they were more especially needed at that epoch, than they had been at almost any time previous, since the conversion of the barbarians that overthrew the Roman empire, and of their pagan brethren that remained in the old homesteads. Long, severe, and continuous had been the struggle of the church to tame, humanize, and christianize these fierce and indocile barbarians, especially those who remained beyond the frontiers of the empire, and to whom the Roman name never ceased to be hateful, as it is even to this day with the bulk of the northern Germanic races. The evils which for eight centuries had grown out of the intractable and rebellious spirit of these races in their old homes, and their perpetual tendency to relapse into the paganism of their ancestors, and which had so tried the faith and patience of the church, had been in a great measure overcome before the opening of the sixteenth century, and their morals and manners brought into close conformity with the Christian ideal. The church, through her supreme pontiffs and saintly bishops, zealous and hard-working priests and religious, had struggled successfully against them; and was even getting the better of the polished Greek and Roman heathenism, partially revived in the so-called Revival of Letters, or the Renaissance, and was pursuing, never more steadily or more successfully, her work of evangelization and civilization; and we can point to no period in her history since the conversion of Clovis, king of the Franks, the missionary labors of St. Columbanus and his colonies of Irish monks in Eastern Gaul and Italy, and of St. Boniface and his Anglo-Saxon companions and successors in central Germany and the Netherlands, when reforms were less necessary, or the bonds of discipline were less relaxed, than at the epoch of the rise of Protestantism.

But, granting that reforms of this sort were especially needed in the sixteenth century, who had the right, on conservative and orderly principles, to propose or to effect them? Certainly not private individuals on their own authority, except so far as it concerned their own personal faith and morals, but to the ecclesiastical authorities of the time, as we see in the Holy Council of Trent. Reforms, even if needed and proper in themselves, if attempted by unauthorized individuals on their own responsibility, and carried out without, and especially in opposition to, the supreme authority of the church, are irregular, disorderly, and unlawful. A reform attempted and effected in church or state by unauthorized persons, and especially against the constituted authorities of either, is unquestionably an attempt at revolution, if words have any meaning. Now, was Luther's reformation effected by the church herself, or by persons authorized by her to institute and carry it on? Was it done by the existing authorities of the church in accordance with her constitution and laws, or was it done in opposition to her positive prohibition, and in most cases by violence and armed force against her?

There is no question as to the fact. Luther had no authority or commission from the church to attempt and carry out the reforms or changes he declared to be necessary; and, in[728] laboring to effect them, he proceeded not only without her authority, but against it, just as he does who conspires to overthrow the state or to subvert the constitution and laws of his country. Luther, then, was not a conservative reformer, but a decided revolutionist, a radical, a sectarian, a destructive, and Dr. Krauth counts too much on the ignorance or credulity of his readers in expecting them to accept Lutheranism as "conservative reformation." A conservative reformation, as distinguished from or opposed to revolution, is a legal, constitutional reformation, effected under the proper authorities and by constitutional and legal means. Dr. Krauth himself would despise us or laugh at us if we should concede that such was Luther's reformation. It was effected by persons unauthorized to reform the church, against her constitution and laws existing at the time, and to which they themselves owed strict fidelity and unreserved obedience. They were conspirators against lawful authority, against their spiritual sovereign, and their pretended reform was a revolt, a rebellion, and, as far as successful, a revolution. It is idle to deny it, or to attempt to defend Luther and his associates on legal and constitutional principles. The reform or movement he attempted was without and against law, against the constitution and canons of the church, and was condemned and prohibited by the supreme spiritual authority. This is undeniable, and Dr. Krauth knows it as well as we do, and yet he has the hardihood to call it a "conservative reformation"!

But the Protestant pretence is that Luther and his associates acted in obedience to a higher authority than that of popes and councils, and were justified in what they did by the written word of God and Christian antiquity. An appeal of this sort, on Protestant principles, from the decisions of a Protestant sect, might be entertained, but not on Catholic principles from the decision of the Catholic Church, for she is herself, at all times and places, the supreme authority for declaring the sense of the written as well as of the unwritten word, for declaring and applying the divine law, whether naturally or supernaturally promulgated, and for judging what is or is not according to Christian antiquity. Their appeal was irregular, revolutionary even, and absurd and not to be entertained for a moment. She authorized no appeal of the sort, and the appeal could have been only from her judgment to their own, which at the lowest is as high authority as theirs at the highest. Luther and his associates did not appeal to a higher law or authority against the popes and councils, but to a lower, as Döllinger has done in asking permission to appeal from the judgment of a general council, to that of a national or rather a provincial council. The appeal to Christian antiquity was equally unavailable, for it was only setting up their private judgment against the judgment of the supreme court. The church denied that she had departed from the primitive church, and her denial was sufficient to rebut their assertion. In no case, then, did they or could they appeal to or act on a higher law or authority than hers. They opposed and could oppose to her judgment, rendered by popes and councils, of the law or word of God, written or unwritten, or of Christian antiquity, only their own judgment, which at the best was no better than hers at the worst.

The simple fact is, there is no defence of the so-called Reformation on catholic, church, or conservative[729] principles. It sought to reform the faith, and to change the very constitution of the church, and wherever it was successful, it proved to be the subversion of the church, and the destruction of her faith, her authority, and her worship. Dr. Krauth says that this was not originally intended by the reformers, and that they had in the beginning no clear views, or fixed and determined plan of reform, but were carried forward by the logic of their principles and events to lengths which they did not foresee, and from which they would at first have recoiled. But this only proves that they were no divinely illumined and God-commissioned reformers, that they knew not what manner of spirit they were of, that they took a leap in the dark, and followed a blind impulse. If the spirit they obeyed, or the principle to which they yielded, led them or pushed them step by step in the way of destruction, to the total denial of the authority of the church, or to transfer it from the pope and hierarchy to Cæsar or the laity, which we know was universally the fact, it is clear proof that the spirit or principle of the Reformation was radical, revolutionary, destructive, not conservative.

That conservative men among Protestants abhor the radicalism and sectarianism which the whole history of the Protestant world proves to be the natural and inevitable result of the principles and tendencies of the so-called Reformation, we are far from denying; but whatever of resistance is offered in the Protestant world to these results is due not to Protestantism itself, but either to Catholic reminiscences and the natural good sense of individuals, to the control of religious matters assumed by the civil government, which really has no authority in spirituals, or to the presence and constant teaching of the Catholic Church. "What is bred in the bones will out in the flesh." Everywhere the Protestant spirit, the Protestant tendency, is to remove farther and farther from Catholicity, to eliminate more and more of Catholic dogma, Catholic tradition, Catholic precepts, and to approach nearer and nearer to no-churchism, to the rejection of all authority in spiritual matters, and the reduction of the whole supernatural order to the natural. Faith in the Protestant mind is only a probable opinion, sometimes fanatically held indeed, and enforced by power, but none the less a mere opinion for that. The conception of religion as a divine institution, of the church as a living organism, as a teaching and governing body, as the kingdom of God, placed in the world as the medium of divine grace and of the divine government in human affairs, is really entertained by no class of Protestants, but disdainfully rejected by all as spiritual despotism, Romish usurpation, or Popish superstition.

It is useless to say that this is a departure from or an abuse of the principle of the Protestant Reformation. It is no such thing; it is only the logical development of the radical and revolutionary principles which the reformers themselves avowed and acted on, and which carried them to lengths which, in the outset, they did not dream of, and from which Dr. Krauth says truly they would, had they foreseen them, have shrunk with horror. We do not find that Lutheranism, when left by the civil magistracy to itself, and suffered to follow unchecked its own inherent law, is any more conservative or less radical in its developments and tendency than Calvinism or Anglicanism, that prolific mother of sects, or any other form of Protestantism. Every revolution[730] must run its course and reach its goal, unless checked or restrained by a power or influences foreign to itself, and really antagonistic to it. The reformers rejected the idea of the church as a kingdom or governing body, or as a divine institution for the instruction and government of men, and substituted for it, in imitation of the Arabian impostor, a book which, without the authority of the church to declare its sense, is a dead book, save as quickened by the intelligence or understanding of its readers. Their followers discovered in the course of time that the book in itself is immobile and voiceless, and has no practical authority for the understanding or the will, and they cast it off, some, like George Fox and his followers, for a pretended interior or spiritual illumination, the reality of which they can prove neither to themselves nor to others; but the larger part, for natural reason, history, erudition, and the judgment of learned or soi-disant learned men. Their work has gone on till, with the more advanced party, all divine authority is rejected, and as man has and can have in his own right no authority over man, reason itself has given way, objective truth is denied, and truth and falsehood, right and wrong, it is gravely maintained, are only what each man for himself holds them to be. The utmost anarchy and confusion in the intellectual and moral world have been reached in individuals and sects said to have "advanced views."

Such have been the results of Dr. Krauth's "conservative reformation" in the spiritual order, in Christianity or the church. It introduced the revolutionary principle, the principle of individualism, of private judgment, and insubordination into the religious order, and, as a necessary consequence, it has introduced the same principle into the political and social order, which depends on religion, and cannot subsist without it. Hence, the great and damning charge against the church in our day is that by her unchangeableness, her immovable doctrines, her influence on the minds and hearts, and hold on the consciences of the faithful, she is the great supporter of law and order—despots and despotism, in the language of the liberal journals—and the chief obstacle to the enlightenment and progress of society, in the same language; but radicalism and revolution in ours. Hence, the whole movement party in our times, with which universal Protestantism sympathizes and is closely allied, is moved by hostility to the church, especially the Papacy. Hence, it and the Protestant journals of the Old World and the New are unable to restrain their rage at the declaration of the Papal supremacy and infallibility by the Council of the Vatican, or their exultation at the invasion of the States of the Church, their annexation to the Subalpine kingdom, and the spoliation of the Holy Father by the so-called King of Italy. Why do we see all this, but because the revolutionary principle, which the reformers asserted in the church, is identically the principle defended by the political radicals and revolutionists?

Having thrown off the law of God, rejected the authority of the church, and put the faithful in the place of the pope and hierarchy, what could hinder the movement party from applying the same subversive principle to the political and social order? The right to revolutionize the church, and to place the flock above the shepherd, involves the right to revolutionize the state, and the assertion of the right of the[731] governed to resist and depose their governors at will, or at the dictation of self-styled political and social reformers. Protestantism has never favored liberty, as it claims, and which it is impotent either to found or to sustain; but its claims to be the founder and chief supporter of modern liberalism, which results naturally and necessarily from the fundamental principle of the reformers, that of the right of the people to resist and depose the prelates placed over them, cannot be contested. If no man is bound, against his own judgment and will, to obey the law of God, how can any one be bound in conscience to obey the law of the state? and if the people may subvert the constitution of the church, and trample on her divine authority, why may they not subvert the constitution of the republic, and trample under foot the human authority of the civil magistrate, whether he be called king or president? It is to Protestantism we owe the liberalistic doctrine of "the sacred right of insurrection," or of "revolution" assumed to be inherent in and persistent in every people, or any section of any people, and which justifies Mazzini and the secret societies in laboring to bring about in every state of Europe an internal conflict and bloody war between the people and their governments. It deserves the full credit of having asserted and acted on the principle, and we hold it responsible for the consequences of its subversive application; for it is only the application in the political and social order of the principle on which the reformers acted, and all Protestants act, in the religious order against the church of God.

The principle of revolution, asserted and acted on as a Christian principle by the reformers, has not been inoperative, or remained barren of results, on being transferred to modern political and civil society. If the reformation, by drawing off men's attention and affections from the spiritual order, and fixing them on the material order, has promoted a marvellous progress in mechanical inventions and the applications of science to the industrial and productive arts, it has at the same time undermined the whole political order, shaken every civil government to its foundation, and, in fact, revolutionized nearly every modern state. It has loosened the bonds of society, destroyed the Christian family, erected disobedience into a principle, a virtue even, and reduced authority to an empty name. It has taught the people to be discontented with their lot, filled them with an insane desire for change, made them greedy of novelties, and stirred them up to a chronic war with their rulers. Everywhere we meet the revolutionary spirit, and there is not a government in Europe that has any strong hold on the consciences of the governed, or that can sustain itself except by its army. Even Russia, where the people are most attached to their emperor, is covered over with a network of secret societies, which are so many conspiracies against government, laboring night and day to revolutionize the empire. Prussia, which has just succeeded in absorbing the greater part of Germany, and is flushed with her recent triumph over the French empire and the improvised French republic, may seem to be strong and stable; but she has the affections of the people in no part of Germany, which she has recently annexed or confederated under her headship, and the new empire is pervaded in all directions by the revolutionary spirit to which it owes its existence, and which may be strong enough to resist its power, and reduce[732] the ill-compacted body to its original elements to-morrow.

We need not speak of Austria; she may become hereafter once more a power in Europe, but she is now nothing. Voltairianism, and the spirit generated by the Reformation, have prostrated her, and sunk her so low that no one deigns to do her reverence. In England the government itself seems penetrated with the revolutionary spirit, or at least believes that spirit is so strong in the people that it is unsafe to resist it, and that it is necessary to make large and continual concessions to it. It is a maxim with the liberals and most English and American statesmen, or politicians rather, for our age has no statesmen, that a government is strengthened by timely and large concessions to popular demands. The government is undoubtedly strengthened by just laws and wise administration, but in our times, when the old respect for authority has gone, and governments have little or no hold on consciences, there is no government existing strong enough to make concessions to popular demands, or to the clamors of the governed, without endangering its power, and even its existence. The Holy Father, Pius IX., in the beginning of his pontificate, tried the experiment, and was soon driven from his throne, and found safety only in flight and exile. Napoleon III. tried it in January of last year, was driven by his people into a war for which he was unprepared, met with disasters, was defeated and taken prisoner, declared deposed and his empire at an end by a Parisian mob, before the end of September of the same year. The policy of concession is a ruinous policy; one concession leads to the demand for another and a larger concession, and each concession strengthens the disaffected, and weakens the power of authority to resist. But England has adopted the policy, is fully committed to it, as she is to many false and ruinous maxims, and it will go hard but she yields to her democracy, and reaps in her own fields the fruits of the liberalism and revolutionism which she has, especially when under Whig influence, so industriously sown broadcast throughout Europe.

We need not speak of our own country. Everybody knows its intense devotion to popular sovereignty, its hatred of authority, and its warm sympathy—in words at least—with every insurrection or uprising of the people, or any portion of the people, to overthrow the established authority, whether in church or state, they can hear of, without any inquiry into the right or wrong of the case. The insurrection or revolutionary party, it is assumed, is always in the right. There is no more intensely Protestant people on the globe than the American, and none more deeply imbued with the revolutionary spirit, in which it is pretended our own institutions originated, and which nearly the whole American press mistake for the spirit of liberty, and cherish as the American spirit. What will come of it, time will not be slow in revealing.

But France, so long the leader of modern civilization, and which she has so long led in a false direction, shows better than any other nation the workings of the revolutionary spirit introduced by the Reformers. She, indeed, repelled, after some hesitation and a severe struggle, the Reformation in the religious order; but through the indomitable energy of the princely Guises and their brave Lorraine supporters, whom every French historian and publicist since takes delight in denouncing, she was retained in the communion[733] of the church; but with Henry IV. the parti politique came into power, and Protestantism was adopted and acted on in the political order. On more occasions than one, France became the diplomatic and even the armed defender of the Reformation against the Catholic sovereigns of Europe. She was the first Christian power to form an alliance with the Grand Turk, against whom Luther declared to be against the will of God for his followers to fight, even in defence of Christendom; she aided the Low Countries in their rebellion against Catholic Spain, Protestant Sweden, and Northern Germany in their effort to crush Catholic Austria, and protestantize all Germany; and saw, without an effort to save her, Catholic Poland struck from the list of nations. Twice has she with armed force dragged the Holy Father from his throne, and secularized and appropriated the States of the Church, and set the example which the Italian Liberals have but too faithfully followed. Rarely, if ever, has she since the sixteenth century, by her foreign policy, consulted the interests of the church any further than they happened to be coincident with her own. In an evil hour, she forgot the principles which made the glory of the French sovereigns, and on which Christendom was reconstructed after the downfall of the Roman Empire of the West, and severed her politics from her religion. At first asserting with the reformers and the Lutheran princes the independence of the secular order of the spiritual, afterwards the superiority of the secular power, and finally the sovereignty of the people or the governed in face of their governers, as the reformers asserted the sovereignty of the faithful in face of the pope and hierarchy, she made her world-famous revolution of 1789, inaugurated the mob, and has been weltering in anarchy and groaning under despotism ever since.

The accession of Henry IV., the beau ideal of a king with the French people, marks a compromise between Catholicity and Protestantism, by which it was tacitly agreed that France should in religion profess the Catholic faith and observe the Catholic worship, while in politics, both at home and abroad, she should be Protestant, and independent of the spiritual authority. It was hoped the compromise would secure her both worlds, but it has caused her to lose both, at least this world as every one may now see. It is worse than idle to attempt to deny the solidarity of the French revolution with Luther's rebellion; both rest on the same principle and tend to the same end; and it is the position and influence of France as the leader of the civilized world, that has given to the revolutionary principle its popularity, diffused it through all modern nations, and made it the Weltgeist, or spirit of the age. The socialistic insurrection in Paris, and which we fear is only "scotched, not killed," is only the logical development of '93, as '93 was of '89, and '89 of Luther's revolt against the church in the sixteenth century. Its success would be only the full realization in church and state, in religion and society, of what Dr. Krauth calls "the conservative reformation." The communists deny the right of property, indeed, but not more than did Protestants in despoiling the church and sacrilegiously confiscating the possessions of religious houses and the goods of the clergy. No more consistent and thoroughgoing Protestants has the world seen than these French socialists or communists, who treat property as theft and God as a despot.

We do not exult in the downfall of France, in which there are so many good Catholics and has always been so much to love and admire, any more than, had we lived then, we should have exulted in the downfall of the Roman Empire before the invasion of the barbarians. Like that downfall, it is the breaking up of Christendom, and leaves the Holy Father without a single Christian power to defend his rights or the liberty of the Holy See; but it deprives Protestantism of its most efficient supporter and its great popularizer, and all the more efficient because nominally Catholic. It is not Catholic but Protestant and liberal France that has fallen. The Bonapartes never represented Catholic France, but the principles of 1789—that is, the revolution which created them, and which they sought to use or retain as they judged expedient for their own interests. In the last Napoleon's defeat we see the defeat, we wish we could say the final defeat, of the revolution. Yet so terrible a disaster occurring so suddenly to so great a nation, we think must prove the turning-point in the life and tendencies of the nations of Europe, and pave the way for the reconstruction of Christendom on its old basis of the mutual concord and co-operation of the two powers. We think it must lead the nations to pause and reflect on the career civilization has for three centuries been running, and open their eyes to the folly and madness of attempting to found permanent political and social order, or authority and liberty, on the revolutionary principle of the Reformation or of 1789. We look for a powerful reaction at no distant date against the revolution in favor of the church and her divine authority. It is sometimes necessary to make men despair of the earth in order to turn their attention to heaven.

But to conclude: we have wished to show Dr. Krauth that the Reformation in any or all its phases, in its principle and in its effects, in church and state is decidedly revolutionary. He as a Protestant has not been able to see and set forth the truth; bound by his office and position to defend the Reformation, he has considered what it must have been if defensible, not what it actually was, and has given us his ideal of the Reformation, not the Reformation itself. If it does not, he reasons, maintain all Catholic principles and doctrines it is indefensible; but if it concedes that these principles and doctrines, were held in their purity and integrity in their unity and catholicity, by the church Luther warred against, what need was there of it? Our good doctor must then assume that they were not so held, that the church had erred both in faith and practice, and that the Reformation simply restored the faith, purified practice, re-established discipline, freed the mind from undue shackles, and opened the way for the free and orderly progress of the word. All very fine; only there does not happen to be a word of truth in it. Besides, if it were so, it would only prove that the church had failed, therefore that Christianity had failed, and that Christ was not equal to the work he undertook. If Christ is true, there must always be the true church somewhere, for she is indefectible as he is indefectible. If the church in communion with the See of Rome had become corrupt and false, as the reformers alleged, then some other existing body was the true church, and Luther and his associates, in order to be in the true church, should have ascertained and joined it—a thing which it is well known they did not do, for they joined no other church or organic body, but set furiously[735] at work to pull down the old church which had hitherto sheltered them and to build a new one for themselves on its ruins.

We grant the Reformation should have been conservative in order to be defensible, but it was not so, it was radical and subversive. It rejected the Papacy, the hierarchy, the church herself as a visible institution, as a teaching and governing body, and asserted the liberty of the faithful to teach and govern their prelates and pastors. It is the common principle of all Protestant denominations that the church is constituted by the faithful, holds from them, and the pastor is called not sent. This, we need not say, is the subversion of all church authority, of the kingdom of God founded by our Lord himself, and ruling from above instead of from below. It reduces religion from law to opinion or personal conviction, without light or authority for conscience. This principle, applied to politics, is the subversion of the state, overthrows all government, and leaves every man free to do "what is right in his own eyes." It transfers power from the governors to the governed, and allows the government no powers not held from their assent, which is simply to make it no government at all. It has been so applied, and the effect is seen especially in France, which, since her revolution of '89, has had no settled government, but has alternated, as she alternates to-day, between the mob and the despot, anarchy and military despotism.

We so apply it, theoretically, in this country; and in the recent civil war the North was able to fight for the preservation of the Union only by pocketing for a time its principles and forswearing its logic. The logic was on the side of the South; the force was on the side of the North; on which side was the right or the wrong, it is not our province to decide. We will only add that we do not agree at all with journals that speak of the issues which led to the war as being decided by it. War may make it inexpedient to revive them, but the only issue it ever does or can decide is, on which side is, for the time, the superior force. We deny not the right of the people to resist the prince who makes himself a tyrant, if declared to be such and judicially deposed by the competent authority, but we do deny their right, for any cause whatever, to conspire against or to resist the legitimate government in the legal exercise of its constitutional powers. We recognize the sovereignty of the people in the sense that, if a case occurs in which they are without any government, they have the right, in concert with the spiritual power, to institute or reconstitute government in such way and in such form as they judge wisest and best; but we utterly deny that they remain sovereign, otherwise than in the government, when once they have constituted it, or that the government, when constituted, holds from them and is responsible to their will outside of the constitution; for that would make the government a mere agent of the people and revocable at their will, which is tantamount to no government at all. The doctrine of the demagogues and their journals we are not able to accept; it deprives the people collectively of all government, and leaves individuals and minorities no government to protect and defend them from the ungoverned will and passions of the majority for the time.

We accept and maintain loyally, and to the best of our ability, the constitution of our country as originally understood and intended, not indeed as the best constitution for every people, but because it is the[736] best for us, and, above all, because it is for us the law. In itself considered, there is no necessary discord between it and Catholicity, but as it is interpreted by the liberal and sectarian journals, that are doing their best to revolutionize it, and is beginning to be interpreted by no small portion of the American people, or as interpreted by the Protestant principle, so widely diffused among us, and in the sense of European liberalism or Jacobinism, we do not accept it, or hold it to be any government at all, or as capable of performing any of the proper functions of government; and if it continues to be interpreted by the revolutionary principle of Protestantism, it is sure to fail—to lose itself either in the supremacy of the mob or in military despotism—and doom us, like unhappy France, to alternate between them, with the mob uppermost to-day, and the despot to-morrow. Protestantism, like the heathen barbarisms which Catholicity subdued, lacks the element of order, because it rejects authority, and is necessarily incompetent to maintain real liberty or civilized society. Hence it is we so often say, that if the American Republic is to be sustained and preserved at all, it must be by the rejection of the principle of the Reformation, and the acceptance of the Catholic principle by the American people. Protestantism can preserve neither liberty from running into license or lawlessness, nor authority from running into despotism.

If Dr. Krauth wants conservatism without immobility, and progress without revolution or radicalism, as it seems he does, he must cease to look for what he wants in the Lutheran, Calvinistic, Anglican, or any other Protestant reformation, and turn his thoughts and his hopes to that church which converted pagan Rome, christianized and civilized his own barbarian ancestors, founded the Christendom of the middle ages, and labored so assiduously, unweariedly, perseveringly, and successfully to save souls, and to advance civilization and the interests of human society, from the conversion of the pagan Franks in the fifth century down to the beginning of the sixteenth century, and which still survives and teaches and governs, in spite of all the effort of reformers, revolutionists, men, and devils to cover her with disgrace, to belie her character, and to sweep her from the face of the earth. She not only converted the pagan barbarians, but she recovered even the barbarian nations and tribes, as the Goths, Vandals, and Burgundians, that had fallen into the Arian heresy, which like all heresy is a compromise between Christianity and heathenism, and even reconverted the Alemanni, Frieslanders, and others who had once embraced the Gospel, but had subsequently returned to their idols and heathen superstitions. God is with her as of old, and lives, teaches, and governs in her as in the beginning; and she is as able to convert the heathen to-day, to reconvert the relapsed, and to recover the heretical, as she was in the days of St. Remi, St. Amand, St. Patrick, St. Austin, St. Columbanus, St. Willebrod, or St. Boniface. She is the kingdom of God, and like him she cannot grow old, decay, or die. Never had her Supreme Pontiff a stronger hold on the consciences, the love and affections of the faithful throughout the world, than he has at this moment, when despoiled of all his temporalities and abandoned by all earthly powers, nor ever were her pastors and prelates more submissive and devoted to their chief. Never did she more fully prove that she is under the protection[737] of God, as his immaculate spouse, than now when held up to the scorn and derision of a heretical and unbelieving world. Dead she is not, but living.

Let our learned Lutheran professor remove the film from his eyes, and look at her in her simple grandeur, her unadorned majesty, and see how mean and contemptible, compared with her, are all the so-called churches, sects, and combinations arrayed against her, spitting blasphemy at her, and in their satanic malice trying to sully her purity or dim the glory that crowns her. Say what you will, Protestantism is a petty affair, and it is one of the mysteries of this life how a man of the learning, intelligence, apparent sincerity, and good sense of Dr. Krauth can write an octavo volume of eight hundred closely printed pages in defence of the Protestant Reformation.

GENZANO AND FRASCATI.

What is interesting to visitors in Rome, and indeed in all Italy, is not merely their stay in certain known localities, or their sight-seeing within a certain beaten track; it is also the casual observation of less famous and more intimate scenes, and the residence in less crowded and more attractive, because more peculiar, neighborhoods.

The curious festival, more carnivalesque than religious, that takes place every Sunday in August in the Piazza Narona, in Rome, and during which pedestrians and carriage-goers wade and splash through a shallow, artificial lake, produced by the regulated overflowing of the centre-fountain, is a sight unfamiliar to strangers and tourists, yet none the less a very characteristic sport, and interesting especially to such as view Rome chiefly in a historic and antiquarian light. Again, the "Ottobrate," a species of christianized bacchanalia, an innocent merry-making answering in some sort to our dear old familiar gathering of "Harvest Home," is a thing more often heard of than witnessed by flying visitors to the Eternal City. In October, also, the Holy Father visits different convents, and a few ladies not unfrequently procure the privilege, through "friends at court," of following in his train, and thus gaining admittance to strictly enclosed nunneries, and being present at touching little ceremonies performed very simply by the Pope himself in the poor, plain chapels of these voluntary prisoners of love. Sometimes he says a few words of encouragement and advice; sometimes he gives benediction while the untutored choir of nuns sing some simple hymn; sometimes he assembles the community, and gives them his solemn blessing. There are the "Celestines" (so-called from their blue veil beneath the black one), whose convent is in a retired street not far from St. John Lateran, and whose enclosure does not necessitate a grating, but compels them to wear their veils down while speaking to strangers, and not to advance further than the threshold of the inner house-door, while their visitor stands without[738] the line, yet face to face with them. There are the Dominicanesses, near the Piazza Trajana, at "San Domenico e Sisto," whose profession is impressively accompanied by the heart-stirring ceremony of prostration beneath a funeral pall, while the choir sing the solemn dirge of the De Profundis. When these nuns take the habit and first become novices, they are asked, at a certain part of the service, whether they choose the crown of thorns or the wreath of roses, both of which lie before them on a table. Of course there is but one answer, but, the ceremony over, the rose, or bridal wreath, replaces for the day the coronal of thorns. There is a convent of a very severe order, called the "Sepolte-Vive," or "buried alive," whose rule is almost inhumanly severe, and has never received absolute confirmation from the Holy See, but only toleration, or permission, for such as feel themselves drawn to such appalling austerities. They dig their own graves, and wear fetters on the wrist, and, when in fault, no matter how slight, a placard on their backs indicating their peculiar failing. When news is brought to the superioress of the death of a parent or relation of any one of the sisters, the bereaved one is not told of her loss, but it is announced that "one among us has lost a member of her family;" and Masses are offered for the departed without any further mention of him or her. Again, there is a Carmelite convent in Rome, I forget where, in which a miraculous crucifix has been preserved for about fifty years—a strange image, which seems instinct with life and expression, seems to speak to and look at you, fascinates the gaze, and stirs the least impressionable heart. It is not much spoken of even in Rome, that city where marvels are no longer marvels, and where miracles are more credible than business negotiations elsewhere; but it is enough that in one of these Papal October visits to convents, two persons of calm judgment, both English, both converts, and one the sister of an eloquent and gifted Anglican divine, saw it, and declared that there was something about it far beyond the common run of even skilfully carved and elaborately chiselled masterpieces.

To pass from convents to hospitals, the sight during the evenings of Holy Week at the "Trinità de Pellegrini" is something not less interesting than the oft-recounted glories of the Sistine Chapel and the thrilling rubrics of the Pontifical High Mass at St. Peter's shrine. Rome is still, in this century, a real centre of pilgrimage; and what could be a greater proof of the truth of the faith she teaches than this apparently incredible fact—this anachronism in the eyes of our enlightened progressists? Men and women, chiefly from the rural and mountainous districts of Italy, but also from Hungary, and Germany, and faithful Poland, come begging their arduous way, in simple faith and fervent love, perfectly undisturbed by doubts they have never heard discussed, by the "spirit of the age" they have never dreamt of as being in antagonism with the spirit of the church, by the childish and wilful gropings after religious reconstruction which they, if they knew of them, would call madness, and pity as such. They come with their strange tattered costumes, all incrusted with dirt, and embroidered into perplexing patterns with accumulation of unheeded dust, and knock at the door of this gigantic hospital, where they find a real home and a ready welcome. Other men and women, chiefly of the higher classes, and, like the pilgrims, of divers[739] nationalities, come to tend them and offer them literally the same services Abraham offered to the voyager-angels when they stopped, travel-stained and foot-sore, at the entrance of his tent. In an upper hall are laid tables laden with abundant and wholesome food, of which a portion is reserved by each wanderer for the morrow's breakfast, and the disposition of which, from personal observation, I know to be as follows: a small loaf of bread sliced in the middle, and meat and sauce crammed as tight as possible between the two halves thus making a substantial but somewhat ungainly sandwich. In a large room on the lower floor are placed benches against the wall, with a foot-board running along them, on which are rows of basins, with the necessary adjuncts of soap and towels. The washing of the pilgrims' feet is by no means a sinecure, or a graceful make-believe at biblical courtesies. It is a very real and slightly unpalatable business; but the grievance is far more the short time allowed to each person than the washing itself. The unfortunate feet of the weary pilgrims are more refreshed than thoroughly cleaned by one layer of soap; and it is to be wished that the time allotted could be sufficiently extended to allow the work to be well done, since it is attempted at all. The self-denial of those who undertake this most praiseworthy and mediæval charity must be enhanced by the fact that many tourists come to see this done, as a part of their Holy Week programme, and, being mostly curious and carping critics of English or American origin, their comments are more sarcastic than encouraging. Here are wildernesses of dormitories, into which the pilgrims file in slow procession after supper, singing litanies and hymns. Let any other country point to such a palace of Christian charity, to such a freely supported and admirably managed institution, and then it may have claim to talk of progressive civilization! But instead of this, what do we see but poor-laws, that treat God's poor as animals, and the state in which God himself chose to be born, and live, and die, as a crime and a moral shame. "Till when, O Lord, till when?"

On Christmas night, another beautiful scene takes place in the female prison, on the "Piazza di Termini," opposite the baths of Aurelian, between the railway station and the church of the Cistercians, "Santa Maria degli Loyoli." Yet there is nothing to describe, no gorgeous ritual, no impressive assemblage, no pageant to take the eye and divide the attention. Four whitewashed walls, an orderly throng of uniformly dressed women, a few hymns, in which the voices of the nuns, in whose charge the prisoners are, lead and predominate; a plain altar, an unpretending "Presepio," or representation of the stable of Bethlehem, and that is all. Well! what is there to say about this? No correspondent could fill a column with these details; yet they fill the heart of God, and make the heart of his sinless Mother glad, as she looks down on the repentant woman whose welfare is so dear to her in whom there is found no spot nor stain of guilt. And this is very different, no doubt, from the splendidly illuminated altar in San Luigi de Francesi, where the lighted tapers are pyramidally ranged in dazzling tiers of shining amber brightness, and where the fragrance of incense struggles hard not to be overpowered by the sweetness of the hot-house plants blooming in clusters around the steps and communion rails. Very different, too, from the[740] artistic and elaborate "Presepio" at Sant' Andrea della Valle, where a veritable stage seems miraculously poised over the altar, and where all manner of wonderful details of Eastern scenery, somewhat mixed with prevailing Western conceptions and incongruities concerning the Orient, are displayed on a magnificent scale for the edification of the peasantry flocking into Rome from all sides. Very different, again, from the solemn ritual of "Santa Maria Maggiore" (though that has been for many years discontinued, on account of the abuses of which it was the unhappy occasion), the ceremonies that renewed most vividly the scene of the angels' announcement, and the pastoral welcome, on the moon-brightened plains round the stable of Bethlehem, the splendor of decoration gathered about the precious relic of the rude crib, whose straw, still preserved in this church, is now more glorious by far than conqueror's coat-of-mail or emperor's robe of ermine. But what of this difference, after all? Earth's costliness of display is earthly still, earth's poverty and nakedness is almost divine, because, whenever earth became the scene of any of God's choicest wonders, it was always in a state of destitution, which he ordained beforehand as a mystical preparation. God fashioned Adam out of common clay, and Eve from a bare rib; his own birth was in a stable, cold and forlorn, his life in an obscure artisan's shop, littered with common dust, filled with coarse tools; his death was on a common gibbet, on a bare mountain. Common animals, domestic drudges, and beasts of burden surrounded him at the dawn of his being; common criminals, rough men, coarse-minded gazers, were around him in his last hour. The only time he rode in any state, it was upon an ass, not a fancy war-steed with trappings of oriental magnificence, not even a stately mule, such as became later on a recognized and legitimate bearer of great dignitaries. The first men who welcomed him on earth were shepherds; the last who spoke to him were fishermen. But it is hardly necessary to say more on a theme so well known and so much canvassed; yet it is not unappropriate to the frame of mind which this picture of the midnight Mass in the prison induces and fosters. And just as it would be good for any Christian country to be able to show a hospital as well managed as the Pilgrim's Home we have glanced at, so would it be even better could any one of the nations of Europe point to prisons where repentance is taught by the rule of the Gospel and not by the regulations of a board of magistrates, and where confinement for one species of offence is not turned into a school of graduation for worse offences still.

The reader will forgive this roundabout introduction to the two beautiful reminiscences of which this paper is the subject, for these are both among the class of events described at the beginning as less famous, but more attractive because more peculiar.

One of them is of a private and purely personal nature, the other of a public sort, but rarer than reminiscences of Rome usually are.

There is a village about twenty miles from Rome, and two beyond Albano, the name of which is Genzano, and belongs, I believe, to the Chigi family, as does Laricia with its wild woods of chestnuts. It is an ordinary hamlet, with its church standing on a height to which two side straggling streets lead up, and the front of which is pretty well hidden by the block of irregular houses that divide the road-ways. For[741] many generations this village had been famous for its Corpus Christi procession, and the peculiar way in which the procession's track was more carpeted than strewn with flowers. Strangers used to flock to see the floral festival, and Hans Andersen, in his Improvisatore, once gave the most vivid and picturesque account of it. Perhaps every one has not read this description, and few in this country at least have seen the procession. In 1848, the custom was discontinued, owing to the unsettled state of the country, and the tendency of the Carbonari to make disturbances at any popular gathering or demonstration, especially of a religious kind. In 1864, things being somewhat more stable under the protection of French troops and the promise of non-intervention on the part of the King of Italy, the festival of the Infiorata, as it is called, was again announced, and all Rome hurried to see it.

It took place in the evening. No description can do it justice, especially as its beauty was enhanced by that most hopelessly indescribable of circumstances—the loveliness of a southern summer's day. Albano looked from its puny heights over the wide plain that stretches to Ostia and the sea, covered with dusky gray-green olive-yards; the blue hills, where the chestnuts grow and overshadow the ruddy wealth of wild mountain strawberries beneath, rose like cupolas in the evening sky, that was alive with summer lightnings; the bright red and blue costumes of the peasant women, with their little tents of spotless linen squarely poised upon their heads, and their massive chains of gold and coral vying with their wonderful sword-shaped hair-pins for quaintness and for richness, stood out in picturesque relief against the dark background of the common-looking dwellings; through the bustle and clatter of an Italian crowd, there could yet be discerned the hush and stillness so familiar to our Northern hearts, so congenial to our idea of Sabbaths and church festivals; the noise seemed a distant hum, the whole scene a vision; and over it all, the spirit of faith that made it what it was, not a mere idle show to awake idle people, but a living gathering of living and believing souls, offering nature's purest gifts in their virgin integrity to the God of love, to Gesù Sacramentato, as the Italians so ingeniously and touchingly say.

Both streets leading up to the church were paved with flowers, in thick layers, symmetrically portioned out with squares corresponding to the width of the houses on either side of the road. Patterns of great delicacy were produced by these flowers, scattered into petals as they were, and no leaves nor stems carelessly appearing anywhere. Here, on one large space, were pictured the arms of the Chigi family, there, the arms of the bishop of the diocese, further still, those of the Holy See. In the centre of one of the streets, the grand compartment was taken up by a colored representation of an altar with candles and a monstrance, and the white Host within. A little lower down was a tiny fountain, more like a squirt than anything else, concealed in a mound of soft flower-petals. Patterns of geometrical figures, of Persian carpets, of fanciful monograms, filled up the many squares, while all along the sides, and supported by stakes, ran a low festoon of box-wreaths, guarding the flower-carpet from the feet of the eager crowd.

From above, from the many balconies and terraces, and from the roofs of the tall, old-fashioned houses, the people look down and gaze[742] upon this wonderful tapestry, more elaborate and incomparably more beautiful than the choicest produce of the looms of Genoa, and Lyons, and the Gobelins—more precious and more fair than the silken hangings woven of old by the hands of queens and sovereign princesses.

And this is all for an hour! In a few moments, the procession and the following multitude will have passed over the floral tapestry, and every trace of its beauty will be gone. But why not? Its beauty is consecrated, and, when it has ministered to the greater glory of God, its mission will be over.

Every one knows the incident in the life of Sir Walter Raleigh, when, walking across a muddy road with his imperious and capricious sovereign, Elizabeth of England, the gallant courtier's velvet cloak, costly though it was, was not deemed too rich for a woman's footstool, and doubtless the graceful homage was considered as very little beyond an absolute necessity of courtesy. And shall this display of rarest loveliness and natural treasures, called the "Infiorata," be thought of otherwise than as a cloak thrown beneath the weary feet of the pilgrim Saviour?

Our Lord walks through many lands, and the way of men's hearts is very rugged here, very treacherous there, very uneven everywhere. Let him pause here for a moment, as he rests his feet on the carpet or cloak spread for him, and let him find in a few faithful hearts a path ready prepared for him, as fragrant and as beautiful as this floral "via sacra."

The procession leaves the church by one of the two diverging roads, and returns by the other. It is a regular Italian procession, somewhat grotesque in our eyes, unaccustomed to some little peculiarities, such as winged angels represented by children in scanty robes of tinselled muslin, and golden paper kites flying from their shoulders, but on the whole it is edifying in its very artlessness. There are many monks, walking two-and-two, and bearing lighted tapers; children in companies and sodalities with gaudy banners and streamers, priests in black and white, and cross-bearers and thurifers, and, lastly, the swaying canopy under which is borne the Lord of nature. While each person in the procession winds his way among the flower patterns, and carefully spares the perfection of the design as much as possible, the priest, on the contrary, carries the Blessed Sacrament right over in the centre of the broad path, and the crowd pour after him in heaving masses, leaving the track behind them strewn with remnants of box and olive borders and blended heaps of crushed flower-petals.

And so the sacred pageant is over. The sky is getting cloudy, and thunder-drops of almost tropic rain are falling noisily to the earth; people hurry home, but long before Albano is reached the storm is already furious, and bursts over the darkening plain. Many are detained at the inns of the white village whose gallerie of elm and ilex are so famous round Rome.

By the bye, these gallerie lead from Albano to the neighboring village of Frascati, an archiepiscopal see, and once the retreat of the Cardinal of York, the last of the Stuarts. He himself, with his unfortunate brother, is buried in St. Peter's; but in the village church of which he was titular archbishop is a tablet to his memory, recounting his many virtues, and the love and veneration in which his flock ever held him.

Frascati is the scene of the second reminiscence I have once before spoken[743] of; one more domestic and more intimate than the last, and very interesting as being the record of an unusual favor shown to a foreigner by the Holy Father, Pope Pius IX.

There are a great many villas around Frascati, and one of the prettiest as well as most historical is the Villa Falconieri, the whilom abode of Santa Juliana Falconieri, to whom a chapel is dedicated in the house. The grounds are, as in most Italian villas, very badly kept (according to Northern ideas), but in their wildness more beautiful than the trimmest garden of Old or New England. A winding, steep road, bordered with box, leads to the mansion, whose wide marble chambers re-echo the few footsteps they ever bear, and whose best preserved ornaments are some marble busts and old frescoes. To the front stretches a lawn dotted with Spanish chestnut-trees, and beyond lies an alley of hoary and gigantic cypresses that seem the enchanted genii of perpetual silence. There is a peculiar odor about cypress-trees which can never be forgotten by one who has been much among these groves of living columns; and it is a well-known fact that the charm inherent in a familiar odor is one of the strongest that exists. Not only in this alley, a mile long, leading up through a maze of thickets to the ruins of Tusculum, but also in a weird quadrangle planted round a stone-coped pond, do these trees stand in their stern and sad majesty. Here, again, is silence, reigning undisputed; the grand path is grassy with weeds; the little cones drop into it and are never swept away; the brown branches of the trees fall upon it in autumn, and remain there till they decay into the soil; the water is stagnant, and the artificial rock-work in the centre of the pond is neglected and overgrown with crops of worthless yet not unlovely weeds. A landscape gardener would form and draw out a new map of these mismanaged acres; a painter would shout for joy at this picturesque frame for a historical love-scene, and would transfer the whole to his canvas, adding only, according to his fancy, the pale moon silvering the mysterious trees, or the setting sun, in its amethyst radiance, throwing golden arrows through the glorious openings of the cypress grove.

This villa of Santa Juliana Falconieri was once let, now many, many years ago, to an Englishman, a recent convert, and a well-known and zealous defender of his newly adopted faith. He was not unfrequently a guest at the neighboring monastery of Camaldoli, a beautiful hermitage embosomed in the woods, and where the white-robed monks follow a strict and ascetic rule, very different from the lives of hypocritical holiness that Protestants and liberators would make us believe is the present type of monastic perfection. One day, when the temporary owner of the Villa Falconieri was dining at the Camaldolese convent, the Holy Father, whose summer residence is close by, at a little village called Castel Gandolfo, overlooking the classic Lake Nemi, came with his retinue to visit the monks. He also stayed to dinner, which in Italy and among religious is in the middle of the day, and, the visit over, he spontaneously proposed to his English friend to make another halt at his house. A message was sent down in haste to prepare the villa, and so few were the servants there that it was not before the cavalcade of the Pope was at the head of the cypress alley that the end nearest the house was swept and cleaned. The wife and little daughter were ready to welcome the Holy Father, as his host introduced him[744] into the pretty, picturesque dwelling. A throne had been temporarily arranged at the further end of the drawing-room, and a square of gold-edged velvet placed at the feet. The "Noble Guard," part of the Pontifical retinue, took their places around the room, seemingly a living wall, and other ecclesiastical attendants grouped themselves in various corners. This was an honor seldom bestowed on any but Roman princes, and then very sparingly, so that it was all the more a distinguished mark of personal friendship on the part of the good and fatherly Pope toward his English child. Not long before, those three, the father and mother and little daughter, had knelt before the Pope, and the parents had resolved and promised to embrace outwardly the religion they inwardly believed; the child had unknowingly played with its father's sword, and prattled, as unconscious little ones do, in the midst of these grave events.

Now, the child was not forgotten either, and the Holy Father kept it near his throne, and bestowed especial attention upon it, even while he conversed with the steadfast and happy parents. By-and-by, the Noble Guard were dismissed, and bivouacked outside the house, under the chestnut-trees, till it was dark. Then lanterns were hung on the branches and on the tall gates, and a regular illumination took place. When the Pope left, torches were carried around him and his cortége, all through the woods that cover the ground between Frascati and Castel Gandolfo. A tablet was put up in the vestibule or atrium of the villa, with the permission of the owner of the property, in commemoration of this signal honor conferred upon a stranger. These details are only a part of the many-sided recollections of this day, but, such as they are, they come from the lips of an eye-witness, and we are not conscious that they are in any degree exaggerated.

Nearly twelve years after this memorable visit, the villa was revisited by some of the persons who had been its temporary occupants during that occurrence, and it was found to be in exactly the same state as before; the dark cypress alley and the quadrangle, the chestnut-shaded lawn and deserted-looking house, showing no sign of the lapse of time. The former owner, however—a Cardinal Falconieri, I believe—was dead, and the property was disputed by two or three noble families. The chapel of Santa Juliana stood open to the terrace, accessible from the outside as well as from the narrow inner passage connecting it with the house; and on one side of its tiny walls was the picture of the saint's death-bed, representing the miraculous communion by way of viaticum, when the blessed sacrament sank into her breast because her sickness was of such a nature as to prevent her from receiving it into her mouth. Below the picture is a long explanation of this fact, and a sort of laudatory epitaph in the saint's honor.

The villa Aldobrandini occupies one of the most prominent positions in Frascati, and commands attention from its tiers of stone fountains, raised amphitheatre-like one over the other up the face of the hill, and arranged so as to let an artificial waterfall spring down the giant staircase.

Another notable building of this village is the white-walled Capuchin convent, a nest among the trees and rocks, where the little chapel is railed off by heavy gates from the poor vestibule, and where lived once a very good and eloquent monk, Padre Silvestro. He too, like the old cardinal, died within the years that followed the visit of the Pope to[745] the Villa Falconieri, but his kindness to little children and his well-known powers of language alike cause him to live for ever in the heart and memory of those whose happiness it was to know him.

He always seemed to the writer the very type of Manzoni's renowned "Padre Cristofaro," one of the noblest creatures of that author's world-famed romance, I Promessi Sposi.

And with this mention of him and his quiet convent—which is now, perhaps, a desecrated stable or barrack—let us close this little sketch of a well-remembered and beloved spot, endeared to us by many happy hours spent among its hills and woods, and by the memory of one of God's best and purest creatures, one worthy of more gratitude, more love, and more appreciation than our poor heart was ever able to render her. To her, once our guide on earth, now our guardian, we trust, in heaven, do we dedicate these few mementoes of our happy companionship in a land whose beauty she always taught us to look upon as the chosen appanage of the Vicar of Christ, and the Jerusalem of the new law.

SONNET.
St. Francis and St. Dominic.

THE HOUSE OF YORKE.

CHAPTER XI.
POLEMICS AND THE WEATHER.

It is trite to say that error is most dangerous when mingled with truth; but never was this saying more applicable than in the case of the Native American or Know-Nothing party. "America for Americans" was not all a cry of bigotry and exclusion: the hospitality and freedom of the nation had been abused, and a reform was needed. But, unfortunately, it was possible to make the question a religious one. The fact that the greater part of the crime in cities is committed by foreigners, and that the majority of foreigners in the country are at least nominally Catholic, could easily, by a lame syllogism, be turned against the church. But what matter how lame the syllogism, when prejudice props it on the one side and malice on the other?

Beside this, the masses of any people crave an occasional popular commotion to vary the monotony of a peaceful national existence, and nothing else offered at the time. The advent of this party was, therefore, à propos.

How it used its power, we all know. It was, indeed, less a party than an army, for its measures were violent, invasive, and illegal. Its street-preachers, from Gavazzi downward, its pulpit-preachers, who countenanced their brethren of the mob by more decent but not less malicious attacks, its floods of foul literature penetrating to every nook and corner of the land, duping and inflaming the ignorant while it filled the pockets of irresponsible writers, editors, and publishers—the "canaille de la littérature," as Voltaire called such—its mobs and riots, its churches destroyed and clergymen maltreated, its committee of Massachusetts legislators, senators, and volunteers invading and insulting a community of defenceless women, all are matter of history. The spectacle was a strange and revolting one, and it was one which the country is not likely to see repeated with the same results; for it is incredible that American Catholics would ever again submit to such a persecution. It is more probable that, should we once more find our liberties threatened and our sacred places desecrated, there will be

In this movement, the ambitious town of Seaton was not to be left behind; but certain circumstances conspired to check for a while any great demonstration. The utter peacefulness of Father Rasle, and the undeniably good influence he exercised over his flock, gave no pretext for overt attack, and the fact that he was prospering and had built a church could only be cited as dangerous indications. Besides, Edith Yorke was, quite unconsciously, a shield to the church in her native town. Her uncle's family assumed steadily that no person who hoped for any countenance from them would[747] say or do anything offensive to her. This assumption on the part of Mr. and Mrs. Yorke would not have had so much effect, but their children were more powerful. Carl was the idol and hero of the young ladies of the town, and not for worlds would one of them have seen directed to her that flashing gaze with which he regarded any person who even remotely reflected on his "cousin Edith." It did not take much to freeze that beautiful, laughing face of his when Edith was in question. Melicent also had a fair, and Clara a large, share of the gallantry of the town, and the former could disconcert by her haughtiness, the latter scathe by her passion, any offender against the family dignity. Major Cleaveland was also a powerful ally. Edith was to him an object of romantic admiration. He insisted that she ought to have a title, and used playfully to call her Milady and the Little Countess, and to say that, though he did not like the Catholic religion for himself or his family, he liked it for her.

"I naturally associate the thought of her," he said, "with incense, and lighted altars, and dim, rich aisles." And he quoted:

Evidently, Major Cleaveland would not countenance anything likely to insult the dignity or hurt the feelings of this "radiant maiden"; and Major Cleaveland's countenance was of consequence in the town of Seaton.

Edith and Edith's religion had yet another protector in Mr. Griffeth. This gentleman was by far the most popular minister in town, and drew to himself all the explosive elements there. His manner of speaking was lively and theatrical, the matter amusing. Those progressive spirits found it delightful to have a pastor who, when he did condescend to draw from the Bible, took piquant texts, such as, Ephraim is as a cake that is half-baked. It provoked a smile, and that was what they wanted. Mr. George MacDonald had not then been heard of; but Mr. Griffeth already amused his hearers by holding up for their derision "old granny judgment."

"Do not believe," he said, "that God gives all the pain, and the devil all the pleasure. Indeed, I do not insist on your believing that there is any devil whatever."

All this was charming to his hearers, so charming that they did not absolutely require him to abuse Catholicism. Once only a member of his congregation gave him a hint on the subject, but the minister's answer was ready:

"I do not like to say the same things which everybody else is saying. If you wish to hear anti-Catholic sermons, go to Brothers Martin and Conway: they will satisfy you. I do not suppose that my silence on the subject will be interpreted as a leaning toward the Church of Rome."

"No, sir!" the gentleman answered dryly. "It is more likely to be looked on as a leaning toward the house of Yorke."

Mr. Griffeth colored, but did not deny the "soft impeachment." It would have been useless to deny it, for his partiality to the family was evident, though to which member of it his especial regard was directed, was not so easy to say. Well for him that it was not, or he would not, perhaps, have been forgiven.

So Edith stood, surrounded by a[748] guard of devoted hearts, between the church and harm.

The physical and mental growth of this girl was fair to see. It was like the slow, sweet unfolding of a rose from the bud, with its baby lip pushed through the green to the rich and gracious beauty of the bursting flower. That morning look which belongs to the eyes of ingenuous youth still shed its calm, clear lustre over hers; her hair had darkened in tint, so as to be no longer a shadowed gold, but a gilded shadow; and she shot up like a young palm-tree, slender, but with the rounded, vigorous strength of an Atalanta. She had that perfect health which makes mere existence a delight, and she was perfectly happy, for all her wants were satisfied, and all her wishes were winged with hope. Friends she took as a matter of course. She did not think much about them, but loved them quietly, as people do who never wanted for friends. It is need or the fear of losing which develops intensity of affection.

What she did think of was: How does the wind blow and the sun shine? What are the names of those worlds in the sky, and how do they move? How does the seed sprout and grow, and what makes the flower unfold? Where do the birds go when they disappear in winter, and how do they know when to return? How does the snow-flake gather itself into a star-shape, and what shapes and colors the rainbow?

Her interest took in also another subject kindred to these: What distant people live on the earth? What do their eyes see? How do they live? How do they speak? Her mother's native land having been far away, made all far-away lands seem fair to her; and customs and speech different from those she had known did not repel, but attracted.

By some happy providence in her nature or her education, or in both, the girl's curiosity and love of the marvellous and beautiful took this direction, and therefore her delights did not wither like weeds when childhood passed: they grew for ever.

But what was best in Edith Yorke's growth was that she began to perceive the glories of the church of God, and, as her knowledge touched here and there at remote points, to guess at the grandeur, the symmetry, and the perfect finish of the whole structure. She had been ashamed of her religion, even while she clung to it, because all the professors of it whom she knew were poor and ignorant, and because she had seen it mocked by a higher class. She soon learned that all Catholics were not like those she saw, and that some of the noblest of earth, persons excelling in rank, wealth, learning, and virtue, had been devoted children of the church. It was a mean reason for being better satisfied with it, but it was better than no reason, and it led upward. What was it that these people found to love and reverence? She looked to see, and, seeing, she also loved and reverenced, not because the great did, not because any one else did, but because what she saw was worthy of such homage. Once attaining this elevation, it was easy for a nature like hers to be entirely and enthusiastically on the side of God, and to find a beauty and delight in the fact that had before repelled her, to rejoice that the poor and the ignorant, as well as the rich and the learned, had a place in the arms of this bountiful Mother, and that, while human science built a laborious track on which to crawl toward the heart of God, simple human love flew straight there, as the bird flies to its nest.

Father Rasle instructed her thoroughly,[749] particularly in controversy. She must be able not only to defend herself when attacked, but to attack, if necessary. As yet, of either attack or defence she had had no need to think. That there was strife in the world, she almost forgot. The memory of all that had been miserable in her past life became as a dream, or was only real enough to keep fresh her love and gratitude toward her early friends, and to bar all intercourse between her and the village people. She saw them only when they came to her uncle's house.

Her life was simple—books, music, and drawing, a little gardening, and a good deal of riding on horseback. Major Cleaveland had given her a beautiful saddle-horse, and Carl was her teacher and constant companion in these rides. Mrs. Yorke, gentle soul! would have fainted with terror had she seen the reckless manner in which these two flew over the ground when they were out of her sight.

"You have had no exercise till your cheeks grow red," Carl would say; and at that challenge Edith would chirrup to her prancing Thistledown, and they were off on the wings of the wind. Thus cloistered and fostered, she grew up strong, sweet, and happy, and with the glance of her clear eyes kept back yet a while many a shaft that would have been aimed at the church.

One marksman, however, was not dazzled by her. Mr. Conway cried aloud, sparing not. Denunciation was this man's forte, and he improved the occasion. It was about this time that Miss Clara Yorke commented on the astringent qualities of the gentleman's character.

"Why, mamma," Hester Cleaveland said, "he had even the impudence to come to my house, and exhort me, and to say that we were all in danger from the influence of Father Rasle and Edith. I got up at that, and said that, since he had taken the liberty to speak to me in such a manner of my own family, I should not scruple to excuse myself from any further conversation with him then or in future. And I made him one of my most splendid bows, and left him alone; didn't I, you beautiful creature?"

This question was addressed to a lovely, gray-eyed infant that lay in the speaker's lap, and was followed by a long and interesting conversation between the two, the young mother furnishing both questions and answers, and in that delightful intercourse quite forgetting Mr. Conway and his impudence. What were all the crabbed old ministers in the world in comparison to mamma's own baby? Nothing at all! "Come, Melicent, and see how intelligent his expression is when I speak to him. He looks right in my face."

"I do not see how he could well help it, if he looks anywhere, since your face is within an inch of his nose," remarks Melicent dryly.

Hester had at this time been a year married, and was triumphantly, we must own, a little selfishly happy. There was not in her nature a particle of malice, but she lacked that sensitive and delicate regard for the feelings of others less favored than herself, which makes unselfish persons cautious not to display too much their own superior advantages. As her father had predicted, Major Cleaveland was to her the most wonderful man in the world, and as to Major Cleaveland's youngest son, words could not express his perfections. Their house was, in some occult way, finer than any other house whatever, their furniture had a charm of its own, their horses had peculiar qualities which rendered them more valuable than you would think, their[750] very bread and butter had an uncommon flavor which distinguished it from the bread and butter of less fortunate mortals.

The Cleavelands remained in Seaton the first winter after this baby's birth, greatly to the joy of Hester's family. The winters passed rather heavily for them, and it was a pleasant break in their daily life to see Hester's horses turn into the avenue, with a great jingling of sleigh-bells, and Hester's pretty face smiling out from her furs behind them. Even Clara, absorbed as she was in the glorious work of putting the last finishing touches to her first novel—a novel actually accepted by a publisher, and to be brought out in the spring—even this inspired person would start up at that cheery sound, and run down-stairs to chat with her sister, and embrace her nephew, if he were of the party.

But there were times when no one could come to them, and they could not go out, but were as close prisoners as though walls of stone had been built up around them. One might as well have been in the Bastile as in a solitary country-house in one of those old-fashioned, down-east snow-storms. One could see them gather on winter days in a steady purple bank about the horizon, waiting there with leaden patience for a day or two, perhaps, till all their forces should come up, or till the air should moderate enough for a fall. There would be no visible clouds, but a gradual thickening of the air, the blue losing its brilliancy under the gray film, a flake sidling down now and then in so reluctant a manner that it seemed every moment on the point of going up again. Another follows, and another, they coquette with the earth, seem to talk the matter over in the air, finally, with a good deal of hesitation, one after another settles, and presently the storm comes on steadily, and what was a fairy star of whiteness becomes a thin white veil, then an inch-deep of swan's-down, then a pile that clogs the feet of men and beasts, and the wheels or runners of carriages, then an alabaster prison.

It is possible to be in a state of desolation under such circumstances, and it is possible not to be: that depends on the people, and on the mood they are in. Some groan over the trial; some, scarcely less agreeable, sit down and endure it with a most depressing patience; some shut the world out, and invent expedients to forget what sort of world it is; others, wider of mind and heart and clearer of sight, take the storm as it comes, and see all the enchantment of it. In that vast lily-flower that has curled down over them, and shut them in for a time, they find a honey that sparkles like wine. Lean out and catch a flake as it falls; it is a star, a flower, a fairy dumb-bell, a cross, a globe, always a wonder. Think, then, of the lavish millions of them!

One such snow in Seaton fell all day quietly, and all night, with a rising wind, and the next morning they woke in chaos. There was no up and down out of doors, but only a roundabout. There was a whirl, and a whiteness that dimmed off into grayness; there were no fences nor posts; a ghost of a pyramid stood where the barn had been; what had been trees were white giants coming toward them, apparently. They opened their windows to brush away the snow that piled up on the sill,[751] and were blinded and baffled; they opened their doors to go out, and a solid Parian barrier was laid across the step, knee-high; they tried to shovel a path, and an angry wind and a myriad of little hands filled it in again. Patrick and Carl made a desperate effort to reach the village, and, after struggling as far as the avenue gate, were glad to get back to the house without being suffocated. At the door they found Edith catching snow-flakes to look at the shapes of them, and watching with wonder and delight certain thin, sharp drifts that a breath would have shaken from their airy poise, but which the wild wind never stirred even to a tremor.

"If one could only see the shapes of the wind!" she said. "Or is it, Carl, that the shape of the snow is the shape of the wind?"

Clara shook the snow from her brother's coat, and slyly dropped a snow-ball down his back; even Melicent forgot her dignity so far as to sit down in a bank, which enthroned her very prettily. Carl thereupon called her Mrs. Odin, and Melicent smiled involuntarily at the idea of being Mrs. Anybody. The mother and father, standing side by side, watched them smilingly from the window, and remembered how they used to play in the snow when they were children, and felt young again for a brief moment.

"But the spectres of rheumatism and sore-throat stand between me and all that folderol now," Mr. Yorke says, with a half-sigh.

"Yes, dear; but it is pretty to look at," says the wife cheerfully. "And we elders have the fire, which is more beautiful yet."

They pile wood on the fire. It blazes up, and reddens all the dusky room, and presently Mrs. Yorke wraps a scarlet mantle about her, and goes, with a little shiver, almost to the door, and calls out in the sweetest little bird-call: "Come in, children, come in! You'll take cold."

They all come in with very red cheeks and bright eyes, Edith running to show her aunt a large star-flake before it melts. Mrs. Yorke, bending to examine it, breathes on it, and it changes instantly to a spot of water on Edith's dark-blue sleeve.

The two young Pattens, who have developed into clever scapegraces, are pushing each other into drifts at the back-door, and pretending not to hear Betsey's stern calls to them to come to their work. When she appears at the door with her hands all ready to administer summary chastisement, they elude her with the skill of practised gymnasts or of children used to dodging blows, run under her very elbows into the kitchen, and are busily and gravely employed by the time she has turned about and come back. Patrick sets his face resolutely toward the barn, where are certain quadrupeds to be cared for, and flounders as if he were himself a quadruped, and becomes a lessening speck, only the head visible, and finally, when they begin to think that he is lost, triumphantly pushes the barn-door open, and is greeted by a neigh from the horse, a shake of the head from the cow, and a welcoming cackle from the hens.

That evening they had music. Melicent played brilliantly, and Clara sang them an elfish old song:

When it came time for prayers, Mr. Yorke read that exquisite chapter in Job wherein God speaks of[752] the incomprehensible mysteries of power and wisdom hidden in the things that he has made.

Carl, finding himself bored, leaned back in his chair, and clasped his hands over the top of his head. The leaning back brought within his range of vision the fold of a dark-blue gown, the toe of a small shoe, and a pair of lovely folded hands. He turned his face a little, and looked at Edith, who had drawn her chair near his, and as he looked his face softened, and he unconsciously changed his careless position to one more respectful. He saw her profile, with the lustrous eyes steady as she listened, and so uplifted as to show their full size. The firelight played over her quiet face, and made shine a curve or two of the large braid of hair wound round her head.

When Mr. Yorke read: Hast thou entered into the store-houses of the snow, or hast thou beheld the treasures of the hail? etc., she glanced at Carl, and smiled. She had known that he was looking at her, and was pleased that he should. Carl had a particularly pleasant way of looking at his cousin which she felt as a flower may feel the sun. It was as though they were talking together without words, and he knew her thoughts without the trouble of speech.

When the reading was over, Edith said good-night to each one, kissed her aunt on both cheeks, and went up to her chamber. The last good-night was to Carl, who opened the door for her.

"He has beautiful manners," she said to herself as she went up-stairs. "He says so much without speaking a word. He seemed to say good-night, but he did not speak. I think that, when we go to heaven, we shall all talk in that silent way. How odd that Carl and I should begin now!"

She wrapped a shawl about her, and stood before her crucifix, looking at it, and recollecting herself before saying her prayers. "When I am going to speak to Carl or to Dick, or to any one, I think of him. If I were going to speak to a king, I should think of nothing else, and my heart would beat quickly. I am going to speak to the One who makes kings."

She bowed her head with a calm reverence. But that was not what she wanted. Her heart craved emotion. "I am going to speak to the Son of God. He was poor, he was despised and rejected. When I was the poorest, I had my little attic to sleep in, but he had not where to lay his head. O dear Lord! it was pitiful. I will never, never turn you out in the cold!"

When Melicent softly entered her room, next to Edith's, and stopped a moment, hesitating whether to speak to her cousin, she heard her breathe out as she laid her head upon the pillow, "In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I lie down to sleep!"

Melicent stole noiselessly away from the door. She could not address any trivial word, even any word of common affection, to one who had just lain down to sleep in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. It made sleep seem awful and sacred as well as sweet. It made guardian angels seem possible, even necessary. "How beautiful the Catholic religion is in some of its forms!" she thought, and, after a moment, knelt, and said a short prayer that she also might be guarded during the night, and that the Lord would not refuse to let her also rest in his name. She felt a sense of safety in having her cousin near, and the door of Edith's chamber seemed to her like the door of a shrine.

The next morning when they waked,[753] the windows were all of a glitter with sunshine, and wrought over by the artisans of frostland with samples of every landscape under the sun—cliffs with climbing spruce-trees, silvery-sanded deserts with palms, an infinite variety. The sky was a dazzling clearness. The earth was like a stormy sea that had suddenly been enchanted into a motionless and ineffable whiteness; the wave curled over, with the spray all ready to slide down its back; the hollows were arrested in their sinking, the ripples frozen in their dimpling.

Then when evening came there was a grand display of northern lights, that pitched their tents of shifting rose and gold, with flags flying, and armies marching, and stained the snow with airy blood.

Carl stood in the cupola with Edith and Clara clinging to him, both a little uneasy, and told them stories of Thor, Odin, the Bifrost bridge, and Valhalla. What they saw was the Scandinavian gods carousing, he said; or, no, it was a repetition of that fierce battle of olden time, when, at night, spectators saw the dead arise from the field, float up into the air, and fight their battle over again in the sky, that wild legend that Kaulbach painted on canvas.

"Carl," Edith said hesitatingly, "I think that the truth is more beautiful than any legend."

"But we do not know the truth about northern lights," he replied, taking a scientific view of the matter.

She hesitated a moment. She was not used to speaking of what came nearest to her heart. But Father Rasle had given her a charge: "Whenever you have a chance to say anything beautiful about God, say it. That is your duty."

"Oh! that spoils the poetry of it!" Carl exclaimed involuntarily. "Pardon me! but to speak of God is to remind me of long, sanctimonious faces and disagreeable ways, and of a frowning on everything graceful and grand and beautiful."

"It isn't right!" she said eagerly, forgetting herself; "for it is God who has made everything grand and beautiful and graceful. When you see a fine picture, or a piece of statuary, or read a good book, you think of the artist, and admire him. Reading a play, the other day, you said, 'What a soul Shakespeare had!' and I heard you say once that Michael Angelo was a god; and last night, when Melicent played a sonata you liked, you exclaimed, 'That glorious Beethoven!' Why not say, 'That great God!' when you see the northern lights? Besides, God made Beethoven, and Michael Angelo, and Shakespeare, and taught them everything they knew. I do really think, Carl, that the truth is more beautiful than any legend. Why isn't it as fine to say, 'The God of glory thundereth,' as to talk about Jove throwing thunderbolts? I don't see anything very admirable in Jove. And why isn't it as sublime for the sun to hang and shine, and the world to go whirling about it, because God told them to, as for Phœbus to drive the chariot of the sun up the East?"

She turned her face, rosy with earnestness and northern lights, and looked at him with her shining eyes.

She shook her head, and hung it a little bashfully. "No, I am not. But King David was a poet."

And so the matter dropped. But Edith had spoken her word for God, and may be it had not been entirely lost.

Perhaps we may be allowed here to say a word in defence of the[754] weather as a subject of conversation. The assertion that Americans, and especially New Englanders, commence all acquaintanceships and all social conversations with an atmospheric exordium, has become classical, and to mention that on any given occasion the weather was the subject of conversation is to intend to be facetious. But let us question the good sense of this mockery. Are not the countless phases of the many-sided weather as noble, as beautiful, as profitable, and as harmless topics of conversation as ninety-nine out of a hundred things which people do talk about? Is a dull or a wicked speech, a dull or a wicked book, a fashion, a horse, your neighbor's character, a caucus, a candidate, even a song, or a bit of weather on canvas, a finer topic?

Ah, the weather!—skies of infinite changes, inexhaustible palette in which the painter's imagination dips its brush; calms, nature holding her breath; winds, the nearest to spirit of any created thing; clouds, the aerial chemists of light; showers, overflowing spray from fountains suspended in air; rains, the asperges of the skies; fogs, filmy veils which all the king's men cannot tear aside; droughts, continents in a fever; cold, the horror of nature, at which the small streams stiffen and die, the mountains whiten to ghosts, and even iron shrinks; heat, nature's angel of the resurrection blowing through the golden sunshine, and calling the flowers out of their graves, and bringing the birds from afar—would that all the bad, the uncharitable, the silly, the cold, the complaining talk that on this earth vexes the ear of heaven could be changed to sweet and harmless talk of the infinitely-varying weather, and of him who planned its variety!

After this protest and aspiration, it can be said of the Yorkes, without any intention of reflecting on their intelligence, that the weather had a good deal to do with their entertainment, from the spring round through the circle of flowers and snows, till beside the melting drift they found the first May-flowers making their rosy act of faith in the coming summer.

CHAPTER XII.
CARL SEES HIMSELF IN A GLASS DARKLY.

The summer we are thinking of was 1851, and in the June of it Edith had her sixteenth birthday duly celebrated by the family, and Clara published her first book, an event of still greater consequence to them.

In the June of this year, also, the Hon. Mr. Blank came down to delight and instruct the voters of Seaton. Mr. Yorke was highly pleased by this announcement. He had known the gentleman in Boston, and thought him eloquent. It would be pleasant to see and hear a man of note once more. "Come to think of it, Amy," he said, "we have been buried here four years, seeing nobody outside of the town. It will be truly refreshing. We must have him here to dinner or tea, and we must all go to hear the address. It is to be in a tent on the fair-grounds."

Mr. Yorke was quite bright and interested. He had been living in seclusion long enough to appreciate the value of a little excitement. He called on Mr. Blank at his hotel, the evening of his arrival, and had a very cordial and agreeable half-hour, talking chiefly of personal matters,[755] and old friends. Two or three other gentlemen who were paying their respects to the senator withdrew after a few minutes, to Mr. Yorke's satisfaction. They were persons whom he did not at all like.

"I am worn out," Mr. Blank said, leaning back in his chair, and poising his heels on the back of another chair. "I have made forty speeches in thirty days. But it pays. The excitement is immense."

Mr. Yorke was rather ashamed to ask what particular issue created this excitement and palaver. The truth was, he was a little behind the times. His four years had been years of vegetation, and he scarcely knew what his old friends were about. He had been so much engaged in filling up the maw of his avenues, coaxing exotics to bloom for the first time in his gardens, and reading novels—actually reading novels—that he was politically in the position of a man who had had a four years' sleep. He was mortified and astonished to realize at this moment that he had been going over the Waverley novels again, when he should have been reading the papers and keeping the state of the nation in view.

His embarrassment was relieved by a loud shout that rose from a crowd collected in front of the hotel. The gentleman for whom this applause was intended took no notice of it, except by an impatient shake of the head. He sipped a little from a tumbler at his elbow, and calmly lighted a cigar.

The shouting ceased, and the Seaton band—not the cast-iron band this time—broke out in their finest style.

"Confound them!" ejaculated the senator. "Do they think I want to hear their noise? I am tired of Dodworth's and the Germanians; but this! Why, it's all trombones."

"They will have me out," groaned the hero of the hour. "I've a great mind to be taken sick. Couldn't you go out and say I'm sick?"

"Well, couldn't you go out and make a speech for me? You're about my build. It's easy. I could say it in my sleep. Honored—free and intelligent people—your beautiful town—glorious cause, etc. Fill it in as you like."

Mr. Yorke laughed. "I'm about half your build, and my voice is as much like yours as a crow's is like a nightingale's. Go along. When you've embarked in this sort of thing, you must take the consequences."

As another and still more imperative call came up, the honorable gentleman rose with a yawn, and the two stepped out into the balcony.

"My dear friends," began the speaker in silvery-clear tones, "words fail me to express the feelings which move my heart when I listen to this generous welcome." (Applause.)

"Your approval honors you more than it does me," resumed the senator. "For what am I but the mouthpiece by which you speak, as the thunder-cloud speaks by the lightning? The mass of the people gather the truth, and it is their fire which informs the leader, and incites him to utter it forth. They are the—" (Immense applause.)

"The idiots!" exclaimed the orator. "They have broken into my best paragraph where it can't be mended. I must wind up."

"The fame of your town has reached me," he went on. "I have heard of it as a place where freedom is not only loved, but adored, where[756] oppression is not only hated, but trampled on; and to-day, when I drove over the distant hills, and saw the white spires of your churches rising out of the forests, they seemed to me like warning fingers pointing heavenward, as though the genius of the place bade me remember that the angelic hosts were witnessing if I and if you were faithful to the sacred trust placed in our keeping." (Tempests of applause).

"That always takes," remarked the senator to his companion. "Spires are trumps."

"My friends, to-night I am but a voice to you, but to-morrow we shall meet face to face. Let not a man be missing. Seaton expects every voter to do his duty. Again I thank you for your kind welcome, and wish you one and all good-night."

"What do they think a man is made of when they call him out to speak in a fog thick enough to slice and butter?" grumbled the orator, getting into his chamber again, and dropping the curtain between him and a second burst of music from the band.

Mr. Yorke raised his eyebrows slightly, and pursed out his under-lip. "What glorious things have you heard of Seaton, and where?" he inquired. "I was not aware that it was famous."

The senator finished the contents of his tumbler, and wiped his moustache carefully. "I have heard that it is an infernally rowdyish little hole," he answered. "I didn't care about coming here, but it was in my stumping programme."

Mr. Yorke took leave, and went homeward very soberly. He was disappointed and depressed, and nature seemed to sympathize with his mood. The road was muddy, and in the thick fog and darkness he could scarcely see the path at the side of it. When he turned into the private way that led to his own house, the trees crowded about, dripping, uncomfortable, and threatening, as if they had met to impeach the clerk of the weather, and concert measures for the putting down of this Scotch mist that was presuming to befog a free, enlightened New England forest. When he reached the gate, Mr. Yorke leaned on it a moment. "Oh! for the laws of the Locrians!" he exclaimed.

"I was looking for you," Mrs. Yorke explained, taking her husband's arm. "I hate to have you come up this road alone."

Her thin dress was damp, her hands cold, her heart fluttering. She had been walking up and down the avenue for the last hour, listening for her husband's step. How did she know what might happen to him? The people were violent, and he was uncompromising and bold. Oh! why had she consented to return to that place where her youth had been blighted? No good had ever come to her there, nothing but sorrow.

"O woman, woman! how you do torment yourself!" Mr. Yorke ejaculated. "You will have it that we are in danger. You will have it that we are being hanged, drawn, and quartered, if we are ten minutes beyond the time."

"Would you rather we should care nothing about you?" his wife asked tremulously.

"No, dear," he answered; "for I know that your fears are in proportion to your loving."

The next day Mr. Yorke and his daughters went to hear the address. Edith remained at home with her aunt, who never went into a crowd.[757] The road, the tent, and all about it were full of people. The enthusiasm was immense. When the speaker appeared, the audience stood up, the men shouting, the women waving their handkerchiefs—what for it would be hard to say. Probably they did not know themselves, unless they meant to express thus their admiration for success. For this man was the very embodiment of worldly success. Wealth and honors had come to him, not unsought, but without toil, and with little deserving. Success showed forth from his smooth, handsome face with its bright eyes and ready smile, even from the plump white hand, at whose wave thousands of voters said yea or nay. His expression was one of pleasant excitement and self-complacency, such as a man like him may naturally feel in such circumstances. He was a fluent speaker, had a musical voice, and a graceful manner.

Mr. Yorke listened to his exordium with great and anxious interest, and, as from generalities the orator gradually became more specific, his face darkened. It was, in fact, nothing more than a Know-Nothing tirade, with the usual appeal to the passions instead of the reason, and the old hackneyed abuse of the clergy.

Mr. Yorke rose like a tiger. "Come, girls," he said quite audibly. "I can't listen to any more of this trash."

His daughters followed him quietly; but, their seats being prominent, they could not get out without exciting attention, and the first to see them was the speaker. He faltered a little in his speech, and a faint color rose to his face; but he recovered himself immediately, and waved his hand to stop the hisses that were beginning to rise. But he felt the defection. He knew well that he was a politician, not a statesman, and he would rather have had Mr. Yorke's countenance than that of any ten other men present.

Mr. Yorke did not dine with the senator that day as he had promised to. "When I made the engagement, I did not know that you had become a wire-puller," he wrote briefly, in making his excuse.

Mr. Blank's face paled slightly as he read the note, but he crushed it carelessly the moment after. "Charles Yorke was always a hunker," he remarked.

"Carl, I want you to print a leader from me, this week," Mr. Yorke said to his son that evening.

We have not said that Carl, having finished his law-studies, instead of practising, had undertaken the editorship of the Seaton Herald.

"I am afraid, sir," the young man replied, "that, if you print your leaders in the Herald, you will have to pay the expenses of the paper, and insure the office against fire and mobs. At present the circulation is very small, and I dare not say a word against the party in power."

This paper was not, indeed, a very prosperous sheet; for the editor could not lower himself to the majority of the people, and they could not raise themselves to him. His politics were too little violent, his tone too gentlemanly, his literary items and extracts too pure and high in tone.

Major Cleaveland and Hester were taking tea at the homestead, and, when after tea Edith went up-stairs to read a letter she had just received from Dick Rowan, there was quite a warm discussion of the events of the day.

"I'm not a Know-Nothing," Hester's[758] husband said; "but neither do I condemn them. Their charges are not all false. The Catholic party proclaim their theory, which is very fine, and say nothing about the abuses which creep into their practice; their enemies denounce the abuses, and give them no credit for their principles. I think that the gist of the trouble is this: neither party will distinguish between the church and the clergy. When the body of Catholics will check their priests the minute they step out of their province or abuse their power, and when non-Catholics learn not to condemn a religion for the sins of individual professors, then we shall have peace."

The ladies and Carl went out into the garden, and left the two gentlemen to their discussion.

"I often wonder, Carl, that you express no opinion on these subjects," his mother said. "You must have opinions. I almost wish, sometimes, that you would argue."

"Which side do you wish me to prove?" he inquired listlessly. "I can prove either."

He put his arm around her as they walked up and down the piazza. "My opinion is, little mother," he said, "that opinions are a bore. Who wants to be always listening to what other people think on subjects? Not one thought in a milliard is worth putting into words. I am sick of words, of gabble, of inanities."

"Yes, my son," she said gently. "But one expects a man to give his opinion once for all on religious questions."

"It is not a religious question, mother: it is a question of religions," the young man replied with a sort of impatience. "There is no greater bore than that same question. Why does not each person believe what suits him, and hold his tongue about it, and let every other do the same?"

Carl shrugged his shoulders. "Everybody thinks he has it shut up in his cranium."

"Not at all," he said. "They are so many spiritual gymnasiums where people exercise their souls. They are very pretty and amiable for women, and for men who need them; but there are those who do not need them."

"Carl, you break my heart!" his mother cried out, gazing through tears into her son's face. The boyish look had gone out of it. There were weariness and sadness in it, and hardness, too.

Carl was in a bitter mood that day, but he tried to soothe the pain he had given. "I'll do anything," he said laughingly. "I'll turn Catholic. I'll go to hear John Conway. I'll read the Dairyman's Daughter. I'll teach a Sunday-school class."

Edith came smiling out through the door. "Such a nice letter from Dick!" she said, giving it to her aunt. "And see, Carl, here is a little handful of sand from the Sahara, and here is an orange-blossom from Sorrento. It looks quite fresh."

Dick Rowan had that delightful way which so few letter-writing travellers know of making their descriptions more vivid by sending some illustrations of them. Writing from the south, he would say, "While you are in the midst of snow, there is a rose-tree in bloom outside my window. Here is one of the buds." He had emancipated himself from the letter-writers, and succeeded perfectly in his own way.

The next afternoon Mrs. Yorke sent for Mr. Griffeth, and saw him alone. "What have you done to Carl?" she exclaimed. "Are you making an infidel of him?"

The interview was not a pleasant one, and Mr. Griffeth was glad when it was over. He went out into the sitting-room where Melicent and Clara sat; but their constrained manners did not encourage him to stay long. They suspected the subject of the conversation he had been holding with their mother.

Edith sat on the piazza outside, studying. Her person was not in sight as he looked from the window, but a flutter of drapery on the breeze betrayed her presence. Mr. Griffeth merely bowed to the sisters in passing, and went out on to the piazza. Edith sat in a low chair with a book of German ballads on her knees. By her side were a grammar and dictionary. She was translating, watching thought after thought emerge from that imperfectly-known language, as stars emerge from the mists of heaven.

She glanced at the minister with a smile that was less for him than for the stanza she had just completed.

"I am translating a song from the German," Edith said. "Is not translating delightful? It is like digging for gold, and finding it. I have just got a thought out whole."

Edith was looking very lovely. The vines curtaining the end of the piazza where she sat shut her into a green nook to which only the finest sprinkle of sunshine could penetrate. The light, moving shadows flecked her white gown, and all the floor of the piazza about her,

and a flickering in her hair. Carl, who was always dressing her out in some fanciful way, had fastened a drooping bunch of white lilies in her braids, and the petals, lying against her neck and cheek, showed the difference between silver-white and rose-white. Her beaming face made a light in the place.

Mr. Griffeth, stooping to see the poem, laid his hand on the book she held, and she released it so suddenly that it had nearly fallen to the floor.

"It is beautiful," he said, reading it aloud. "Can you not fancy yourself that golden-haired lady, and that some warrior is coming home to lay his honors at your feet and claim his reward?"

Edith looked away quickly, and let the air take the brightness of her face. He gazed steadily at her, and wondered for whom the brightness was, or if it were only a girl's vague romance.

"I like soldiers," she said after a moment, and, though quiet, there seemed a slight stateliness in her manner. "My grandfather was a soldier all his life, and was as used to a sword as I am to a fan. Mamma said that one of his mottoes was, 'Never reckon the forces of an enemy till after the victory.' It was written in one of her letters to papa. If I were a man, I should wish to be a soldier."

"I also am a soldier; I fight the devil," the minister said, with a slight, bitter laugh.

"Do you conquer him?" she asked simply, but with the faintest little mocking smile.

Mr. Griffeth ignored the question. "You have golden hair, like the lady of the song," he said hastily. "If I[760] were a soldier, Edith, and came home to you from battle, would you welcome me as that lady did her lover?" He touched her hair with his hand as he spoke.

A bright crimson color swept over her face, and she stood up instantly, drawing away from him, her eyes sparkling. Edith Yorke's innocence was not of that kind which is divorced from dignity and delicacy, and smiles at freedoms from everybody.

"Pardon me!" the minister stammered, and at the same moment, to complete his discomfiture, perceived that the curtain to the window directly behind them had been drawn aside, and that Mrs. Yorke stood there, flushed and haughty, with a look in her eyes which he had never seen there before.

His case was desperate, he knew, but he made an effort to recover. "I forgot myself," he said; "but I assure you I meant no harm."

"You have probably made the mistake of supposing that the young ladies in my family are as free in their manners as those in some other families you may know. It is a mistake. I have taken care that their education shall second and confirm what is always the impulse of a refined nature: to regard such freedoms as offences when coming from any one but the one chosen to receive all favors."

Mr. Griffeth might apologize, and the apology be civilly received, but, when he walked away from that house, he felt that he would not be welcomed in it again. And so the church in Seaton lost a friend and found an enemy. The next Sunday the most bitter anti-Catholic sermon of the season was preached from the Universalist pulpit.

A few weeks after came a peremptory letter from Miss Clinton. She wanted Carl to come up to see her. What was he burying himself in the country for? Was he raising turnips? Was he going to marry some freckled dairy-maid? If he was, she did not wish to set eyes on him. What did they mean by leaving her to die alone, without a relative near her? It was unnatural! It was a shame! Let Carl come at once. If he pleased her, she would provide for him.

Miss Clinton's promises were not very trustworthy in this respect, for she had successively endowed and disinherited every one of her relatives and friends. But that was no reason why her request should be refused. She was a lonely old woman, and Carl must go to her.

He consented rather reluctantly, protesting that he would only stay a week. But, when he got there, it was not so easy to tear himself away.

"A newspaper to edit?" cried the old lady. "What signifies a newspaper in a little country town? Nobody ever reads it."

"No, not even then, Master Vanity," she replies. "Stay here, Carl. It is miserable to be left alone so. I sha'n't keep you very long. You shall have any room you choose, and money enough to be respectable, and you may smoke from morning to night. There is only one thing you may not do. I won't have a dog in this house, for two reasons: he might go mad, and he might worry my cat. Will you stay? Old people live longer when they have young ones about them; and, besides, I'm lonely. Bird torments me. She hints[761] religion, and reads the Bible when she thinks I don't see her. I know she is searching out texts that she thinks will fit my case. I am getting old, Carl, and I forget a little the arguments against all this superstition. They are true, but I forget them; and sometimes in the night, or when I feel nervous, the nonsensical religious stories I have heard come up and frighten me, and I have nothing to oppose to them. Alice torments me, too. She is so sure, she looks so much, she goes about with her religion just like a little child holding its mother's hand, while I am sure of nothing, and have nothing to lean on but this stick"—holding out a cane in her shaking hand.

"It must be comfortable to believe so," she went on, after two or three gasping breaths. "I envy the fools who can. But I can't. My head is too clear for that. And I want you here, Carl, to remind me of the arguments that I forget, and to talk to me when I am nervous. They tell me that you are a free-thinker, and I know that you are clever. Stay, for God's sake! I suppose there may be a God."

Carl shrank from the wild appeal in that frightened old face; shrank yet more from the horrible task assigned him. Unbelief, as he had contemplated it, looked gallant, noble, and aspiring; but this unbelief seemed like a glimpse into that perdition which he had denied. In this old scoffer he felt as if contemplating a distorted image of himself. It was as if he had been asked to commit a crime, a sacrilege. There was such a crime as sacrilege, he saw.

"Perhaps it would be better for us both to look for arguments against than for our theories," he said gravely.

Anything, so that he did not leave her, she insisted. Indeed, she wanted his masculine strength more than anything else. Every one about feared her, or was tenderly careful of her, but this young man had already more than once good-naturedly scouted her notions. He was one to be fearless and tell the truth, and she felt safe with him. Besides, he was a man, and clever, and it would not hurt her pride to be influenced by him. If her insensible and selfish heart felt no longer the necessity of loving, it still felt the equally feminine necessity of submission and sacrifice. Already in the bottom of her heart was a faint hope that Carl might insist on having a dog in the house, and that she might show her dawning fondness for him by consenting—a greater concession than she had ever yet made in her life.

CHAPTER XIII.
A RIVAL FOR EDITH.

Dick Rowan came home in the spring of '52 to begin a new life. In the first place, he was to have a ship of his own. Mr. Williams had a beautiful ship almost ready to launch, and he was to be the master of it. He was to name it, too, that had been promised him; but what name he meant to bestow was as yet a secret to all but himself. What could it be but the Edith Yorke? He had other matters to settle, too; he must become a Catholic. He had promised Edith that he would, if, on reading, he found he could do so conscientiously. He had read a good deal, more than he liked, indeed, and saw nothing to object to.[762] Besides, the fact that it was Edith's religion and the religion of his father's boyhood was a strong argument in its favor. There was one other affair to settle, the thought of which made the color drop out of his cheeks, and his heart rise in excited throbs. He had studied it over and over during this last voyage, and his mind was made up. Edith was almost seventeen years old, and he meant to speak to her. She must know now, if she ever would, whether she was willing to be his wife.

Perhaps something said to him by Captain Cary had hastened his decision. The captain had seen what his studies were, and been vexed by them.

"You are going too far, Dick," he expostulated. "A man never should change his religion for a girl's sake. She won't like you any the better for it. Besides, Dick, I can't help saying it, you are making a fool of yourself. She will marry Carl Yorke."

Dick stared, reddened, then grew pale. "I think not," he said decidedly. "Don't say that again, captain."

The first thing to be attended to, then, was his religion. He must be a Catholic when he met Edith. Besides, if religion gives strength, he would feel better prepared to put his fortune to the test. He went, therefore, to a clergyman immediately.

"I do not wish to read any more, sir," he said. "I do not like the way in which learned men prove their arguments to be true. It is too ingenious. It always seems to me that the other side could be just as well proved, if one were clever enough. I am willing to believe whatever is true. I cannot swear to any doctrine, except the existence of a God and the divinity of Christ. Those two truths I would stand by with my life. For the rest, I can only say that I place my mind and heart passively in the hands of God, and ask him to direct them. I can do no more, except to say that, if I do not believe, neither do I disbelieve anything that has been proposed to me. Perhaps my head isn't a very good one; I dare say it is not. I certainly do not like subtleties. It seems to me that all necessary truth may be known and believed by a very ordinary intellect with very moderate study. What I want in religion is what I find in the faces of some of the poor people whom I see here at Mass in the early morning, and I don't believe they got that out of books, or got it themselves in any way."

"You are right," the priest said. "What you saw in their faces was faith, a pure gift of God. But you believe baptism to be necessary to salvation?"

"I am inclined to think so, but not sure," was the reply. "If I were sure, then I should already have faith, which is what I come to ask for. If it is necessary, I wish for it."

The priest mused. This was not a very fervent penitent certainly; but he was a sincere one, and in his fine, earnest face the father read a latent fervor and power of strong conviction which would be all the more precious when aroused.

Dick mistook the father's silence for hesitation, and his real impatience broke out. "I am uneasy, sir," he said; "I wish to be one thing or another."

Dick paused a minute, resting his head on his hand, then raised his bright, clear eyes.

"Edith said that I should tell you everything," Dick muttered, half to himself, and for a moment his dreamy eyes seemed to contemplate the picture his mind held of her saying so. A smile just stirred his lips, and he went on. "I was born an outlaw, sir. The conventionalities which keep many people straight had nothing to do with me. Then I like adventure, and am hard to frighten. I have been about, and seen all sorts of people believing all sorts of things, and one sort was as good as another, as far as I could see. The effect of this is, of course, to make one liberal; but such a liberality, if a man has not a settled religious belief, unhinges the principles. There have been times when I have thought that it wasn't much matter what I did. I had half a mind to run away with Edith, and turn privateer."

"She is a little Catholic girl who was brought up with me, sir. I'm going to ask her to marry me, and I think she will. She is the only person in the world whom I depend on, or who has any influence over me. I believe in her. She is as true as steel. And she believes in me. I can't fail her, sir. That thought has kept me from harm so far."

"It is a poor reason for being a Catholic," the father said in a dissatisfied tone. "It is a weak hold on virtue when your motive is an affection like this."

"When we were at St. Michael's, last winter, there was a great storm, and a vessel was wrecked close to the coast. We went down to the shore to see, but nothing could be done. One man swam to or was washed to a little rock not far from the shore. There he lay clinging, with the waves breaking over him. He couldn't have held on long, and we could not get to him any way. But Captain Cary brought out a big bow and arrow of his that always reminded me of Ulysses', for no one but the captain, I believe, could bend it, and, in a lull of the wind, he shot a little cord over to the man, and the man drew it out. Hope revived his strength, I suppose, and it seemed as if the tempest waited for him. We tied a rope to the cord, and a larger rope to that, and he drew it out, and tied it to the rock, and we saved him."

The priest smiled. "Very true. We rise, we are saved sometimes by degrees, and this little hold may be tied to a stronger. Go out into the church, and make the prayer of the blind man, 'Lord, that I may receive my sight.' To-morrow morning I will baptize you. I find you sufficiently instructed."

That evening Dick made a request of the priest. "When men were to be knighted, in olden times," he said, "they used to keep a vigil in the church. Now, if by baptism I am to be made fit to enter heaven at once, changed from a child of the devil to a child of God, why, it is worth thinking about. It is a great thing to happen in a man's life, and it happens but once. I would like to keep a vigil in the church. I could think there better than anywhere else."

The priest hesitated. He hardly knew what to think of this mingled coldness and fervor.

"Besides," the young man added, "you say that Christ is there bodily. I would like to watch with him one night. It seems to me wrong to leave him alone there now, when he is to do so much for me to-morrow."

The priest consented. "But do not fancy that the Lord is alone, though his earthly children forsake him," he said. "Doubtless the place is crowded with angels and archangels."

"Then, perhaps," he began hesitatingly, but broke off there. "No, if he had preferred the company of angels, he would have remained in heaven," he said. "It will be no intrusion. He comes here to be with man."

Night came on, the church was locked, and all was dark save a small golden flame that burned suspended in air. A watcher sat far back in one of the seats, but after a while drew nearer, still sitting, not kneeling. The whole place was full of silence and a sense of waiting. In the shade, the stations hung unseen, but not unfelt. He had seen them that day, and they spoke through the dark, "Here he fell! Here he was struck! Here he was nailed to the cross!"

There was in this darkness and silence such a vacuum of the earthly, that the heavenly seemed to break through the thin wall of sense and flow around the soul.

When the priest came in at daybreak, he found his penitent prostrate before the altar. After Mass was over, the baptism took place.

The father was struck by the countenance of his convert. It wore a rapt and exalted expression, and he appeared to see nothing of what was visibly before his eyes.

"God bless you!" he said to Dick on going out of the church. "Come to see me. And for a while try to think of God entirely, and not of Miss Edith Yorke."

"Sir," said Dick quietly, "I have thought of Edith Yorke but once since I entered the church last night; and then it was as though the Blessed Virgin put her aside and stood in her place."

A PAGE OF THE PAST AND A SHADOW OF THE FUTURE.

It is, perhaps, hardly to be believed, in this new country whose mental geology grows and changes so quickly that one stratum of thought and of circumstances is gone even before one has had time to analyze it—it is, perhaps, hardly to be believed that the shadow of the penal laws in the mother-country should still cloud with lingering touches the reminiscences of a yet unfaded life. Young people whose ideas and education belong to this century can still remember one of those priests of old—one of those silent champions—whom the English law made outcasts from their kind, and fair game for their enemies.

Such a one was James Duckett, the pastor of a scattered flock that covered the plain of Gresham, of historic memory, to the fort of Edgehill, the last standpoint of the "lost cause" of the Stuarts.

The way in which his retreat was discovered, by a party of Catholics from one of the large country-houses of Gloucestershire, was very amusing as well as interesting.

They were returning from a picnic at a charming old Tudor manor-house, one of the seats of the Marquis of Northampton, by name Compton-Wyniatts, and where the family tradition asserts a portion of the Royalist army to have lain hidden the eve of the terrible battle of Edgehill. The house is full of holes and hiding-places, sliding-panels, and trap-doors, great ghostly chambers, and funereal beds, not to mention the vast cobwebbed garrets which the soldiers are alleged to have occupied. It has a very deserted appearance, and, indeed, its owner hardly ever lives there; but it is picturesque in inverse ratio of its desolation. Just outside the front courtyard is the lawn, shaded by chestnut-trees, and here the picnic took place.

Returning home, and passing through the hamlet of Brailes, two miles from Compton-Wyniatts, the party observed some curious things lying on the roadside hedges. Upon examination, they proved to be ecclesiastical vestments, and evidently genuine Catholic property, ritualism being as yet unknown in the country districts of England. It turned out that they belonged to Mr. Duckett, and the whole party repaired to Mr. Duckett's house. This was a cottage in a little garden, with a hay-field between it and the old parish church, Protestant now, but once the only home these costly vestments should have known. There was the old man, the priest of the past, in the homely peasant garb, now abandoned by the peasants themselves, in coarse blue woollen stockings and a snuff-colored coat, and leather garters at the knee. Huge-buckled shoes were on his feet, and a thickly-folded neckcloth was wound stiffly round his throat. I saw him myself, later on, when the existence of this living relic of the penal days was better known among the county circle. The lower room of his cottage, stone-flagged and bare, was a little school where a few children were taught catechism and reading; the upper rooms were reached by a steep wooden staircase outside the house. Here was a "large upper chamber, furnished," and this was the chapel. It was as cold, and bare, and poor as it could well be; the roughest workmanship was displayed in the altar, the rails, and the benches. The raftered and thatched roof that was immediately above was broken and untrustworthy, and the rain of the last thunder-shower had discolored both it and the floor below. The small sacristy, off the chapel, was in the same state of decay and dilapidation; hence the damage done to the vestments that had been put out in the sun to dry. Mr. Duckett had treasures here that many modern churches might, and with reason, have envied. The vestments—especially a white cope and a gold-embroidered chasuble—were very rich and beautiful, and such as must have been, no doubt, a gift from some persecuted Catholic family to the persecuted temple of God. But, better still, there was a small leaden chalice, said to have been used by many of the martyrs of Tyburn, by special permission given in consideration of the difficulty of obtaining gold and silver vessels for sacred purposes, and of the probable sacrilege and spoliation the known existence of such vessels would provoke. And, among other things, there was also a little bell, wide and round, like a low-crowned hat, and four little clappers inside, making a sweet chime when[766] the bell was shaken. This was afterwards copied by the modern artificers of Birmingham, but they could not transmit to their copy the mellow, time-harmonized tone of the original.

In Mr. Duckett's sitting-room, a small, unpretending, and homely nook, was the portrait of his revered and beloved patron, Bishop Bishop, in Mr. Duckett's youth the only and supreme ecclesiastical authority in England. The priest was an old man now, seventy-five or thereabouts, but his heart was true yet to his friend and patron, whose praises he was never tired of repeating. He told, also, how, although parishes had been formed around him and churches had grown up at his side, yet once his duties carried him on midnight rides and to distances of forty or fifty miles, for a sick-call or a promised and occasional Mass at some one of the many places that claimed his care. Broadway, a village at the foot of the Coteswold Hills, just at the edge of the fruitful plain or vale of Gresham, was one of these stations, and now, as for many long years past, there stands in its midst the Passionist Monastery of St. Saviour, the novitiate house for the province of Great Britain. Two hundred Catholics and a spacious church, model schools under government inspection, and confraternities of many kinds, have turned the far-off hamlet, where a few stray and hunted Catholics were hidden, into a very centre of religion for twenty miles around. Wordnorton, the hunting-box of the Duc d'Aumale, and Chipping-Campden, a thriving little mission on the opposite ridge of the Coteswold, are both served from the monastery at Broadway; and so great is the personal ascendency of the monks, and so universal their popularity, that they need not fear the letter of the law, and do often contravene it by walking abroad in their monastic habit.

Here is one of the changes that have occurred in the straggling field of Mr. Duckett's early labors; and, while all this is happening around him, the calm old man waits for his summons in the same homely and unobtrusive dress he has sanctified by his daily work in the vineyard of Christ.

It is said, and I believe with truth—at least, I hope so—that the monastic garb of all religious orders was originally modelled on the coarse habiliments of the poorest and simplest of mankind—the shepherds and husbandmen of the hard-working rural districts. If so, it suggests a very beautiful and a very happy thought, and brings before our eyes the many parables in which God's church is likened to a field, a vineyard, an orchard, a garden. Tillers of the soil and sowers of the grain, reapers of the harvest and fosterers of the vine, are priests and deacons, bishops and monks; and all through sacred history runs this touching parallel. Nowhere is religion without her crown of nature's weaving: the blossoming rod and the sceptre of Christ's jurisdiction are one.

And so, to return to our friend, the priest and pastor of a forgotten and happily buried age of persecution, God's voice called him in time, and among the many who daily wait in the temple's outer court he was chosen to blossom forth in a higher life, and to wear his robe of glory in a nobler place than that where he had clothed himself like the poor and the unnoticed, and only wore by stealth the sacred garments of his priesthood.

He died in the year 1866, if I mistake not, and his place was filled by a young man, newly ordained, as if to bear witness how suddenly one state of things had died away and another had come in its stead, but[767] also, perchance, to point out to us—too secure in our present safety—that as quickly as freedom had followed persecution, so we should be ever ready to see persecution follow freedom.

And in these days, surely, we dare not think such a past as that of English religious intolerance so far from us as that it should never draw near us again, and renew itself in many shapes of tyranny and horror. And this, not only in England, where religious persecution may suddenly emerge from the apparent extreme of religious indifference, and where it may be carried on, some day, on members of all Christian communities, no longer in the name of a state church or a general catechism, but in the name of rabid hatred to a Creator, God, and senseless chafing against any constituted authority—not only, I say, may this happen in England, but in other lands, Eastern and Western, old and new.

We see it to-day in red-handed France and Judas-tongued Italy; we may see it elsewhere to-morrow. Persecution is an instinct of the brute; what is not after its own kind, it has no desire to spare. The prevailing systems of philosophy—if we may so degrade the word whose first meaning is love of wisdom—tend to the apotheosis of the brute, and the negation and indignant repudiation of anything in man above the brute. When this task shall be completed, and man educated into the right usage of his newly-discovered nature, what are we to expect but persecution in one form or another from the new lords of the creation, the new monarchs of the system of materialistic supremacy?

There is a new and subtle alchemy running through the so-called moral world, the Areopagus of modern thinkers. Of old, all things might be resolved into component parts, of which gold was infallibly one; now, all men must be resolved into perishable parts, of which each one is stamped with the brand of the brute.

It is a sad contrast, and no doubt it would be needless to define which of the two is the more harmful theory. Let us pass now from the life of the hidden pastor of an obscure village to an incident, perhaps hardly better known, in the career of one of the apostles of a great and glorious city, the same whose comeliness has been so cruelly brought low, and whose desolation at this moment reminds one too forcibly of the plaint of the prophet Jeremiah over doomed Jerusalem.

The Père de Ravignan, whose name is a household word in France, and whose influence over the young men of his day was something all but miraculous, was summoned one night to attend a sick-call. A carriage was in attendance; the two men who had come for him represented the case as of the greatest urgency, but refused to take him with them unless he suffered himself to be blindfolded. After briefly hesitating, he complied with this strange request. The times were dangerous, revolution was hovering like a storm over the state, secret societies were in ever-watchful and almost infallibly secure fermentation. He himself was a well-known man, a representative man, one whose voice was ever raised uncompromisingly against the foes of law and order—one whose life was every day exposed, in consequence of his grand fearlessness of conscience, to the machinations of hidden and treacherous enemies. A less suspicious man might have feared a snare in this strange condition of blindfolding a priest called to a death-bed, but the blood of the old race of gentilhommes that was fast disappearing, added to[768] the courage of the consecrated line of God's ministers that never disappears, made the Jesuit strong in this hour of peril, and he forgot himself to think only of the sinking soul to whose aid he was summoned. He took the holy oils and the viaticum with him, and left the house in the Rue de Sèvres in the carriage that was waiting at the door.

They drove off rapidly; his companions pulled down the blinds, and effectually shut out any daylight that might straggle in. The motion of the vehicle, however, and the many sudden jerks it gave, indicated turnings and corners as being constantly doubled, and even suggested the not unlikely idea that this was done on purpose, with the object of confusing the priest's recollection. The two men preserved a dead silence all the time. At last the carriage stopped; the door was opened, the Père de Ravignan helped out, and conducted up a wide staircase; doors were opened and shut, and then the bandage was taken from his eyes, and he found himself in a large anteroom, handsomely and massively furnished.

"In the end room of this suite of apartments, you will find the person who requires your ministry," said one of his guides.

He passed room after room with the windows darkened, and rich furniture giving a sumptuous air to the large and airy saloons, but order reigned everywhere. He saw neither sign of confusion nor heard any sound of sorrow, nothing to indicate the presence of death or mortal sickness. He began to fear that in truth he had been snared by secret enemies, and that it was his own death he had to expect as the dénouement of this solemn masquerade. The last door was reached; a curtain hung across the entrance, and the chamber was darkened. One lamp burned in the furthest recess. He looked in vain for signs of sickness; there were none. The room was a drawing-room, and was furnished much like the rest. But soon a form rose to meet him, coming slowly from the luxurious lounge near the solitary lamp. It was that of a young man, very handsome, and fashionably dressed. He looked pale and anxious, and his hands trembled slightly as he moved. Yet sick to death he certainly was not. Was this his executioner, or some part of the ghastly pageant of his own coming doom? The priest paused, and the young stranger said, in eager, hollow tones:

"Mon père, it is for me that you are here. I am going to die. I shall be dead within twenty-four hours, but I obtained this favor that I might first make my peace with God."

"No; yet I shall not see to-morrow's sunset. I dare say no more. I must make my confession."

An hour went by; the solemn mysteries that pass unseen and undreamt-of by the careless world soothed and comforted the doomed man. We know nothing further, nor can we ever know aught concerning this dread interview on the very threshold of invisible death; but, the priest's duty done, the young man craved his blessing and his prayers, and took an agonizing farewell of the last human being who was to show him mercy and promise him forgiveness.

Reluctantly, sorrowfully, the priest parted from the victim, and wended his way through the splendid rooms, whose beauty now seemed so baleful, as though it were but the refinement and gloss of cruelty, the gay mask that hid the torture-chamber.

At the door of the anteroom, the same silent guides were watching his[769] return, and, again blindfolding him, led him out of the gates that closed on such strange mysteries, and hid from view such appalling possibilities of horror.

How many might there have been of these human holocausts, immolated in silence, perchance without the gracious respite allowed this one victim! How many might there have been, perhaps priests, beguiled by a lure such as he had thought his own carrying-off to be, and never allowed to go forth again, as he was being providentially helped to do! And what other crimes besides silent murder might have taken place in that mysterious and seemingly demon-guarded house!

These and other thoughts not unlike them must have pressed painfully on his overstrung mind, as with the same precautions, turnings, doublings, and joltings the Père de Ravignan was driven back to the house of his order, the sinister guides in whose hands his life had helplessly and inevitably lain for several hours preserving yet that impenetrable silence and seemingly respectful behavior, which in themselves were enough to shake the courage of most men.

The house was all astir. Every one had been anxious for the safe return of the superior from his mysterious and perilous errand; for perilous they had intuitively felt it to be, and had indeed once attempted at first to follow the carriage. This, however, had been cleverly frustrated by the well-instructed driver.

Search was made next day by the secret police for any house answering the only description the priest could imperfectly give; inquiries were instituted concerning the disappearance of any person answering the minute description given by the confessor of his young penitent; but although the police swore that they knew every house, and could put their finger upon every individual in Paris, yet not a single trace could be discovered of anything unusual having taken place in the city.

And there the mystery remained and was forgotten, and came to be related only as a tale of dread and wonder, and was only known to few. Even so the secret organization itself, for nothing but vagueness surrounded its palpable though ever-invisible existence, and some believed that the parti prêtre invented stories of its horrors, and others thought they exaggerated the importance of its influence.

Then came '48, with its wild volcanic outburst all over Europe, and under the name of freedom a modern Vehmgericht convulsed and tortured the civilized world. Those who had pooh-poohed its existence or underrated its strength were the first to crouch before its explosive power. Persecution began again, for we all know the story of revolutions, and how the final court of appeal was always death. What mattered it that the persecutors handled the axe, the guillotine, or the rifle, instead of the scourges, the fasces, the swords of the Roman lictors? Amphitheatres there were, and wild beasts to tear the Christians in pieces, although the former were called public squares, and streets, and gardens, and the wild beasts were hideous human forms. One Archbishop of Paris in '48 was shot down—perhaps by chance, but who can tell save only God?—on the barricades, as he was trying to quiet the infuriate rabble; another Archbishop of Paris followed him in '71, more foully murdered in shear demoniac wantonness, because order and authority were represented in his person, and because to be a child of God was a burning[770] reproach offered to the godless and soulless Commune.

Thus, two ages of persecution join hands within a short half-century, and in one life, yet in its prime, two figures are prominently and personally interwoven: the old peasant priest who almost dreaded to have the sanctuary lamps lighted for fear of attracting unwelcome notice, so imbued was he with the idea that before the law a Catholic must need be a criminal; and the intrepid Jesuit, having secret dangers in the fulfilment of his ministry, and knowing full well that, before the self-styled law of lawless liberty, to be a priest is to be nothing better than a dog.

Some talk lightly of these things that are passing as of mere ebullitions that cannot fail to be quelled; but where is the power to quell, the power to charm these serpents, to humanize these savages? Gone from the kings of the earth, who have abjured the aid of religion, who have expelled her from the schools and colleges, and repudiated her offices in the most solemn and tender relations of life. Gone from the philosophers of this century, who control the thoughts of millions by pandering freely to their passions, and whose first axiom is that everything that is natural is right. Gone from the timid politicians, whose precarious object is, not the happy and steady consolidation and progress of the state, but the maintenance of themselves and their creatures in office, and the increase of their hoarded fortunes. Gone, too, from the poets and artists, who should clothe truth and religion in dignified and attractive forms, but whose dearest aim is but to court popularity by encouraging vice. Gone, in a word, from all whose mission it is to raise and guide the people, simply because they find it more profitable to grovel with and follow them.

And religion stands this day as our divine Lord stood centuries ago in the Garden of Gethsemani, with lukewarm and timid disciples in numbers, and with a Judas striving with honeyed words to betray her. The sword she may not use, nor any earthly weapon; for, if God would have it so, could he not send her twelve legions of angels? But no; she stands as he stood, unarmed; and when she preached with the voice of princes and commanded through the mouth of statesmen, no one attacked her, even as the Jews did not apprehend Jesus when he taught openly in the synagogue. But when worldly power was taken away, when concordats were broken, when heresy rose up in her midst, the enemies of the church fell upon her, and in their onslaught tore up kingdoms by the root and trampled order in the dust. The crushed ones look to her—"they shall look upon him they have pierced"—imploringly, but they had tied her hands, they had crippled her in the days of their triumph, and the deluge breaks over them and annihilates them, while it tosses the church on its turbid waves, and at each angry toss only lifts the Ark of the Covenant safer and higher toward heaven.

We may be only at the beginning of a scathing trial: we may be almost at its end. We have seen the blood of the martyrs flow once more; we have seen '71 rival '93, and the Mazas Prison reflect the Massacre des Carmes; elsewhere we see the spectre of blood not yet let loose, but hiding impatiently behind the spirit of sacrilege and spoliation. Perhaps this is the hour before the dawn; perhaps only the first watch of the night. But let us not think that the nineteenth century bears a charmed life, and that[771] we dwellers in it have a prescriptive right to a safe and easy-going existence. We must be for the church, in her, with her of her; be hers in spirit and in truth, "not merely pause and hesitate at the threshold, or linger within the outer courts." This is the hour of conversions, for the next may be the hour of martyrdom. And above all, it is the hour for sound philosophy, that will lead us firmly by the hand into the haven of faith, and show us that, to be a good citizen, one has need to be a perfect Christian.

Truth is one; and just as water will rise to its own level, so all particles of truth will lead to the fountain of truth. The church has solved all problems, and fulfilled all yearnings, and realized all ideals long ago; and while men are seeking what they severally want, the church has offered it to thousands of their forefathers before they themselves were ever born to seek it.

SANCTA DEI GENITRIX.

LIQUEFACTION OF THE BLOOD OF ST. JANUARIUS.

On the nineteenth day of September, there will be gathered together from five to eight thousand persons in the grand cathedral of Naples, to witness again an occurrence which, though it has been witnessed thousands of times already, never fails to fill the beholder with astonishment and awe. Perhaps one-half of the crowd may be from the city of Naples itself. A large portion comes from other parts of Italy. Many are from Austria, Illyria, Hungary, Bavaria, and Prussia, Russia, England, France, and Spain. Some are from the Western hemisphere. And Moors, Egyptians, Arabs, and Turks, ever travelling along the shores of the Mediterranean, are here, too, raising their turbaned heads among these thousands in the cathedral, as intent and as filled with emotion as any around them.

The greater part of that crowd believe that they are witnesses of a deed done by the direct will and power of God—a miracle; and very naturally their hearts are filled with awe and devotion. Others, again, are in doubt what to believe on the point; but they have come to see, and to see exactly for themselves what really does occur. Others, again, are sure beforehand that it is all a trick. They will spare no pains to detect the fraud.

What is it they are all assembled to see? The large cathedral in which they stand fronts on a little square to the north. At the southern extremity is placed the grand sanctuary and high altar, with a large and rich basement chapel underneath. On either side of the church above, there are, as is usual in Italian churches, small side chapels and altars; but about the middle of the western side a large archway gives admission to a very large chapel—to-day the centre of attraction. We might call it a small church. The Neapolitans name it the Tesoro. It is cruciform, and a well-proportioned dome rises above the intersection of its nave and transept. Towards its western extremity, and opposite the crowded archway or entrance from the cathedral, stands its elevated high altar; six other altars occupy the transept and sides. The main altar stands about five feet forward, out from the solid stone wall of the building. Behind that altar, in the massive masonry of the wall, is a double closet, closed by strong metal doors, and secured by four locks. From this closet, at nine A.M., is first taken out a metal life-sized bust, held to contain what remains of the bones of the head of St. Januarius, bishop and martyr, who was put to death in the year 305. This bust is placed on the main altar, at the Gospel end. Next, an old and tarnished silver case is brought out from the other side of the same closet. All eyes scrutinize it. The front and the back of it, or, rather, both faces of it, for they are alike, are of heavy glass, securely fastened to the silver frame. Looking through these plates of glass, the interior of the case is seen to contain two antique Roman vials of glass, held securely in their places above and below by rude masses of soldering, black with age. The vials are of different patterns, both very common[773]
[774] in the museums of Roman antiquities. The smaller one is empty, save some patches of stain or pellicle adhering to the interior of its sides. The other one, which might hold a gill and a half, is seen to contain a dark-colored solid substance, occupying about four-fifths of the space within the vial. This substance is held to be a portion of the blood of the same martyred saint, gathered by the Christians when he was decapitated, and ever since carefully preserved. Ordinarily it is hard and solid, as it well may be fifteen hundred and sixty-odd years after being shed. The case, or reliquary, as it is properly called, is borne to the main altar, and a priest holds it midway between the middle of the altar and the bust, that is, about a foot from the latter. Prayers are said; hymns, psalms, and litanies are recited by the clergy kneeling near. Meanwhile, from time to time the priest moves the reliquary from side to side, that he may see whether the expected change of the substance within the vial has taken place or not; and he presents it to the bystanders crowded around him on the steps of the altar, that each one in succession may reverently kiss it and closely scrutinize its condition. At length, after a greater or smaller lapse of time, perhaps in a few minutes, perhaps only after several hours, perhaps after many hours, the solid mass within the vial becomes liquid—perhaps instantaneously, perhaps rapidly, at times more slowly and gradually, several hours elapsing before the change becomes complete. Sometimes only a portion of the mass becomes liquid, the remaining portion floating as a still hard lump in the liquid portion. This change is what is known as the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius, and is what these thousands have crowded the Tesoro chapel and the cathedral to witness.

It has occurred repeatedly each year for centuries back. It occurs in public under the eyes of thousands. Accounts of it were written by learned men and by travellers before the invention of printing. In these latter centuries, accounts of it have been published in Latin, in Italian, in Polish, in English, French, German, and Spanish—we presume, in every language of Europe. Some are written by devout believers in the miracle; some by candid but perplexed witnesses, who examined for themselves and are afraid to come to a conclusion; while others that we have seen are filled with such mistakes, both as to persons and events and to established regulations, that we felt the writers had themselves seen little or nothing. They had merely got a hint from one and a suggestion from another, and had filled out the remainder from the storehouse of their own imagination.

We are privileged to insert a full account, written by an American eye-witness in 1864. We are unwilling to abbreviate it too much, although the reader will find in it thoughts we have already expressed or may hereafter have to dwell on:

Our readers will not regret the length of this account of the liquefaction, so full and minute in the details. The letter from which we extract it was written immediately after the visit of the writer to Naples, from notes made at the time, and while the impressions left on his memory were still fresh.

It was not necessary, in a letter like that we have made use of, to enter on the discussion of mooted points of archæology. The writer simply sets forth the opinions which, after more or less of examination, he felt inclined to adopt. We say here that there is a difference among writers as to the year in which the body of St. Januarius was transferred from the original sepulchre to the church of San Gennaro extra muros, and there is still a graver difference as to the precise place of the original tomb. Some have held that the execution took place on a more elevated spot on the same hill which the letter mentions—about a quarter of a mile distant from the church of the Capuchins—and that this church marks not the site of the execution, as the letter holds with the Neapolitan[784] archæologists, but the site of the first temporary interment, from which the body was borne to Naples, twelve or fifteen years later than the year assigned above. These are minor points, on which we may let antiquaries argue at pleasure.

In another article, we purpose to examine the character of the fact of the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius, according to exact records of its history for several centuries back.

For the present, we close with the latest account of its occurrence which has fallen under our eye. The Pall Mall Budget, of May 26 last, has the following: "The blood of St. Januarius seems to have been lately in a more perturbed state, if possible, than ever. The Libertà Cattolica of Naples gives an account of some unusual appearances presented by this relic, on the 6th inst., one of the annual occasions on which the holy martyr is honored in the cathedral of Naples. On the day in question, Saturday, May 6, at a quarter-past four P.M., the reliquary being brought out of its tabernacle, where it had remained since the 16th of last December—the feast of the patronage—it was found partly liquid, as when laid up. It continued in the same state during the procession (from the cathedral to the church of St. Clara), and, after thirteen minutes of prayers, the sign of the miracle was given, the portion which had remained hard being perceptibly still more dissolved, so as to show that the miracle had taken place. Gradually, during the kissing of the reliquary by the congregation at St. Clara, it became entirely dissolved. On its return to the cathedral, contrary to what had taken place during the last few years, it was found to be completely hardened. When carried into the chapel of the Tesoro, it dissolved anew, and now entirely, yet remaining thick and glutinous; and in that state was laid up, about ten P.M."

LUCAS GARCIA.

Eastward from Jerez, in the direction of the Sierra de Ronda, which rises in a succession of terraces, as if to form a suitable pedestal for the rightly named San Cristóbal, lie the extensive Llanos de Caulina. A bare and uniform road drags itself for two leagues through the palmettoes, and makes a halt at the foot of the first elevation, where a lazy rivulet widens in the sun, and, stagnating in summer, changes its waters into mire.

On the right is seen the castle of Malgarejo, one of the few Moorish edifices that time and his faithful auxiliary in the work of destruction, ignorance, have left standing. Time makes ruins, groups them, crowns them with garlands, and adorns them with verdure, as if he desired to have them for places of recreation and rest; but the barbarian ignorance gives no quarter—his only delight is in dust; his place of repose, the desert waste; his end, nothingness.

The angles of the castle are flanked by four large towers. These, as well as the walls of the whole enclosure, are surmounted by well-formed turrets, perfect still, and without notch or break in their beautiful uniformity. The castle took its name of Malgarejo from a knight of Jerez, by whom its reduction was accomplished in a manner so curious, that we cannot resist the inclination to relate it, for the benefit of those who are unacquainted with the tales of partisan exploits that abound in the annals of Jerez.

In the beginning of the thirteenth century, a hundred and fifty Moors, with their families, occupied the castle. They went clothed in white, according to the custom of their nation, and mounted gray horses. Shut up as they were, they procured their subsistence by foraging the country at night, and carrying to their stronghold whatever booty they could seize.

Malgarejo resolved to get possession of this formidable place. It was surrounded, at that time, by a wide moat. This moat—opened by the Moors for their protection, and afterward serving them for a sepulchre—no longer exists.

The Christian cavalier had a slave that was a most accomplished horseman, and to him he promised liberty if he would swear to devote himself to the proposed undertaking. The slave, agreeing, was entrusted by his master with a mare of singular agility, and was directed to train her to leap a ditch, which was to be enlarged, by degrees, to the width of the one that surrounded the Saracen castle.

This being accomplished, Malgarejo called together his followers, disguised them as Moors, caused them to cover their horses with white cloths, and, one night, when the garrison[786] had sallied out upon a raid, approached the fortress. Those within, taking his host for the one they were expecting, viewed its approach without suspicion. When the Christians came nearer, they saw their mistake, and would have raised the bridge, but the slave of Malgarejo had already leaped the moat, and cut the cords, so that it could not be lifted; and the Jerezanos made themselves masters of the castle.

The sight of this stronghold, over which the destroyer Time has passed leaving as little trace as would the footstep of a bird, transports the beholder to the past with such vividness of illusion, that he is surprised not to see the pennon of the half-moon fluttering above its towers, and misses a snowy turban from behind every one of its turrets. No fitter place could be found for the representation of a fight or of a tournament between Moors and Christians.

The road to Arcos leaves on its left the sleeping stream and the dead fortress, within whose precinct, like ants in a skeleton, laborers plying the tools of peaceful husbandry are moving.

Ascending this first step of the mountain, the traveller crosses other plains, covered as far as the eye can see with rich harvests, and, finding no nearer inn or stopping-place, takes his siesta at the grange of La Peñuela, formerly the property of the Carthusian fathers—an order so pious, so severe, so worthy and respected, that the country folk still ask each other, "And was there indeed a power that could, and a hand that would dare to touch such men and such things?"

As the country rises, it covers itself with olive groves, as if it would shelter white and ancient Arcos in the pride with which she preserves her title of city, her venerable privileges, and her state parchments, in spite of decline, or, better said, in spite of her still life, in the midst of the progress that waits upon the march of time—a progress at once gentle, deliberate, and spontaneous.

True to the guerilla traits of her Moorish founders, Arcos appears to the traveller, wearied with the ascent, alternately advancing and retiring, until, passing between two high rocks, he enters unexpectedly into a city so beautiful for situation as to astonish and delight even those who are rarely moved by the charms of nature or the enchantments of the picturesque.

One afternoon, in the year 1840 or thereabout, a crowd of people might have been seen entering a poor-looking house in the barrier of San Francisco. From this house they had carried, on the previous day, the body of one who had been its mistress, and the neighbors were now uniting for the condolement required by the rigorous etiquette which is observed by the people, and which manifests the instinctive courtesy and dignity that distinguish them. For all etiquette and all ceremonial are founded upon these bases, and are not the ridiculous and superficial things, either in public or private life, that the revolutionary spirit of the age, and the anxiety to escape from every rein, material and moral, would make us believe. Ceremonial and etiquette, in the right acceptation of the words, are external conduct, disposed so as to give worship to things divine, consideration and respect to things human.

On entering the house, the women assembled in the parlor of the mourner's habitation.[160] Opposite this room was another, which had been lent by [787]a neighbor for the accommodation of the men.

Upon a mat in the middle of the apartment first mentioned was extended a handkerchief, into which each person, as he entered, threw one or two copper coins, destined for the stipend of the Mass of San Bernardino. This custom is observed not only among the poor, but also among those who are well-to-do, for this Mass must be owed to charity. Let sceptics and rationalists explain this as best suits them. We look upon it as an act of humility, joined to the desire of uniting many suffrages. And although we may be more impressed with terrestrial honors, such as a splendid funeral, a showy catafalque, and a proud mausoleum, the fervent petition of the heart, the coin given in charity, the prayers of the church, are better suffrages for heaven. In a corner of the room, upon a low chair, was the principal mourner, a little girl of eight years. Wearied with weeping for her mother, and with remaining so long in one position, she had leaned her head against the back of the chair, and fallen asleep—for sleep is a lover of children, and hastens to their relief whenever they suffer in body or spirit.

"Poor Lucia," said one of the mourners, a kinswoman of the deceased, glancing at the child, "how she will miss her mother!"

"This was the thorn that poor Ana carried to the grave fastened in her heart," observed a neighbor.

"Only the ground that covers her knows what ailed her," answered the relative, "for Ana did not complain. If she had not been so thin, you might have drunk her; as yellow as a waxen flower, and so weak that a shadow could have knocked her down, no one would have thought that she was on her way to Holyfield."

"She died of a broken heart!" exclaimed an energetic-looking young matron; "all the world knows it; and because we have an alcalde that is afraid to strap his breeches to the work and cast out of town with the devil's sling these trulls of strangers who come among us to set up drinking-houses, and chouse married men, to their perdition and the ruins of their families!"

"Yes, yes, the alcaldes have eyes of fishes for all these things," said the relative of the deceased, "just as they have owls' eyes for some others. But they'll get their pay, woman; for though God consents, 'tis not for ever!"

"Yes," answered the first—"consents to the death of the good, and lets the bad live, and crow on. God reserves the justice of heaven for himself. The rod of earthly justice he puts into the hands of men; and a fine account they'll have to give of the way they use it! I'd like to break the one our alcalde carries upon his shoulders!"

"Neighbor," said an old woman, "you are more hasty than a spark from the forge; you attack like the bulls, with eyes shut. Think whom you are speaking of; and bear in mind that 'evil wounds heal, but evil fame kills.' Poor Ana was never well after her last confinement. Death does not come without a pretext: the summer pulled her down, and September finished her; for 'from friar to friar,[161] God be our guard!'"

"Of course, Aunt Maria," retorted the young woman, "it's quite proper for you, because you are aunt to Juan Garcia, and cousin to the alcalde, [788]to say so; for 'with reason or without it, aid us God and our kin.' But I tell you that my José is not to set his foot inside of La Leona's[162] gin-shop; and I'll see that he don't! A man may be as honest as Job, but in 'the house of the soap-maker he that doesn't fall slips.' And say what you please, you who are a widow, with the coolness of age in your veins, I shall not go back of what I have said. 'He that jumps straight, falls on his feet,' and I say, and resay it: they ought to flay alive the good-for-nothing calamary of a she-sergeant, with her sentry-box figure, and face darker than an oil-skin, so full of pock-marks that it looks as if she had fallen into a bed of chick-peas, and more hair on her lip than a grenadier! Remember the proverb, 'Salute the bearded woman at a distance!'"

"And her children," said the mourner—"little imps that she keeps so greasy and neglected! They look like a nest of calamaries."

"Ya!" exclaimed the first who had spoken; "said the black beetle to her young ones, 'Come hither, my flowers!' and the owl calls hers 'drops of gold.' Who ever saw such a thing, sirs," she continued, growing excited—"who ever saw anything so wicked as to dupe a married man, the father of children, ruin him, pull down his house, and murder his wife by inches! And this is known and permitted! I tell you, such a thing sinks deep!"

"It is a scandal of the monstrous kind," proceeded the first. "Poor Ana, though I did not see much of her, I loved her well. Almond-paste is not milder than she was, and as meek and free from malice as a sheep in the hands of the butcher. O men! men! There is a curse on them that pull their clothes on over their feet; and that is the reason our dear Lord would not wear breeches, but always dressed in a tunic."

"Come, daughter," said Aunt Maria, "nothing is mended by malediction, nor by spitting out the quinine. Let us pray for the soul of the departed, for that is what will really benefit her."

These words were the signal for complete silence. Aunt Maria took her rosary, the rest following her example, and, after saying the act of contrition and a solemn credo, proceeded to recite the rosary of souls, repeating three times after the Paternoster, and instead of the Hail Mary,

Nothing was now heard in the mourning room of the women but the grave murmur of the prayers and suppressed sighs of pity and sorrow.

The other parlor presented a very different spectacle. The widower, serene as a glass of water, and cool as a fresh lettuce, now that the day of the burial had passed, considered himself dispensed from the attitude of mourning, and smoked, listening and talking to all, just as usual, as if death had entered his house and departed without leaving either trace or impression of his awful presence.

The indifferent ones followed his example, so that, had not all worn cloaks, no one would have supposed that this was a condolement, a tribute of love and respect to a life that[789] had ended, and of sympathy with an overwhelming sorrow. The only figure that appeared to be in harmony with the object of the reunion was that of a boy thirteen years old, the son of the deceased, who sat near his father with his elbows resting on his knees, and his face buried in his hands, weeping inconsolably.

"Patched; I think the rain is not far off. There was fog this morning, and 'fog is the rain's sponsor and the sun's neighbor.'"

"The wind will soon sweep the cobwebs from the sky," said a third, "for it blows from sunset side. The rain is shyer than sixpences."

"No matter," answered the first, "last year it did not rain till All Saints; and a better year, or another of the same piece, hasn't been seen since the creation. Laborers, farmers, and tenants all got tired of gathering, and had more than enough—the barley, in particular, grew so thick that you couldn't set a spade between the blades."

"The month of January is the key of the year. If the sky does not open in January, there will be no harvest."

"Hola! Uncle Bartolo!" all exclaimed, as a small, vigorous old man entered the apartment. "Where do you hail from? where have you been ever since we missed you from here?"

Uncle Bartolo, after offering to the mourner the usual condolences, seated himself, and, turning toward his interrogators, replied:

"Where do I come from? The district of Doñana, without varying from the most direct line. Since the French war ended, and I took the road, I have been water-carrier [163] to the You Sirs.[164] They have them there in Doñana of all complexions—legitimate, grafted, cross-breed, and supposititious, even English. Caballeros! Deliver us; but those Swiss of the French are the ones! Stout fellows; very white; very ruddy; very fair-haired, and very puffy. But as to spirit, they have no more than they drink; and grace, they have not any. They carry their arms like the sleeves of a capote, and set their feet down like pestles. Whenever I saw those feet that resembled jabeques,[165] I used to say to myself,

For talking, they make use of a kind of jargon that, in my opinion, they themselves don't understand. These parleys that I don't comprehend displease me, for I never know whether I am being bought or sold.

"There was one—the size of a tunny-fish—they called Don 'Turo.[166] He fell to me. To see him blowing and sweating over those sands made one pity him, for a league finishes them; the sun offends them; the heat makes them weak, and dissolves them entirely. That platter face would persist in doing everything contrariwise, as they do it in his country. Once he took it into his head to use my clasp-knife to eat with, and cut himself. With that he got out a medicine-chest as big as a surgeon's. 'Go along!' said I to myself, 'a spider bit me, and I bound the wound up in a sheet.' He was as hard-headed as a corner. Another time he made up his mind that he ought to shoot a partridge, and, [790]though I told him it was against the law to shoot partridges at that season, he fired, and would have fired if his father had stood before the mouth of his gun. He fired and killed an urraca.[167] 'Sir,' said I, 'what has your honor done?' Says he to me, 'Killed the partridge.' 'Why, sir, it isn't a partridge, it's an urraca.' 'It's all right,' said the big bungler, quite composedly. 'But it is not right,' answered I; 'the killing of urracas is prohibited.' 'And who prohibits it?' he asked, putting on his face of a lion. 'I have my license, that cost me three thousand reals.' 'But, sir, that is for large game—you understand? The urracas mustn't be killed. You comprehend?' Says he to me, 'In this country of Santísima María'—for, as I have told you already, he said everything reversed, as they do in his—'in this country there's no end of privileges, and do the very urracas have them?'

"That question was so foolish, or else meant to be ironical, that I didn't care to set him right; so I told him, 'Yes, privileges that were granted to them in very ancient times, by Doña Urraca herself.' He took out a blank-book and wrote that down. 'Let the ball roll,' said I in my jacket, 'it isn't my business to stop it.'"

"But, Uncle Bartolo, why may they not kill urracas in the district?" asked a young man.

"Because they are the ones that planted the pine woods," answered Uncle Bartolo.

"So I perceive, since his swallow for novelties was too big; and you—for a blockhead of those who believe only what they see—haven't any. Nevertheless, sir, that the urracas do plant the pines is a truth as evident as a house. They open the ripe cones, and pick out the seeds for food. Being very saving birds, they bury those that they can't eat; and, being very brainless ones, they forget all about it and never go back to look for them; and the seeds sprout. If it were not true, why would the dukes prohibit the killing of urracas, when they are thicker in the district than sparrows on a threshing-floor? Therefore, Alonso, no one may say, 'This camel can't enter the eye of my needle'; for, of two silly birds, the one that always keeps his bill shut is more silly than the one that has his always open. But you were a dunce from the beginning; and, as you grow older, you are gaining upon Blas, that ate horse-beans."

"And at night, uncle, what did those people do with themselves there in the province?" asked the listeners.

"The Englishmen ate and drank, for their honors are made hollow, in order that they may always be putting things into their mouths. That is the reason they are so fat and big. Platter-face told me one day—with an air as if God had just revealed it to him—that I was able to go so long without getting tired because I was lean; and that he would give a thousand dollars, or some such sum, to be as lean as I. I answered—shouting to make him understand better—'Your worship has only to eat gazpacho[168] to dry up your flesh, and raw onions and garlic to sharpen your senses."

"The Spaniards? Talking through the very stitches of their garments; bawling till you would have thought they were echoes: and quarrelling [791]about things of the government. For, nowadays, everybody wants to know everything himself, and to command: the very beetles set up their tails and complain of a cough. I tell you, sirs, there are no more such Spaniards as there were in the time of the French war. We were as one man then, and all of one mind. Now there are moderates and extremists. I, who am an extremist only when it concerns my gun, my wife, and my children, could wish the devil would fly away with so much gab. It made me want to say to them: 'Gentlemen, where there is less tongue, count on more judgment,' and 'so much grass chokes the wheat.'"

"One night, one of the You Sirs called me, and wanted to know if I was in the war against Napoleon. 'Yes, sir,' I answered, 'I was a guerilla.' 'Well, then,' said he, 'you just come here, for I am going to read you the will he made.'"

"What! did that man make a will, Uncle Bartolo?" asked some of the oldest of the listeners.

"'But, your worship,' I asked, 'what had that kingdom-thief to give away? Did they not then make him throw up everything he had taken?'

"The You Sir had an open book, and began to read. Gentlemen, that soccarron,[169] in his will, went on distributing everything, his goods, his arms, his body, and his heart. I was perplexed. 'Well, what do you think of it, uncle?' said his honor, when he had ended. 'Sir,' I answered, 'from what I can see, that unbeliever thought of everything; but neither in his life nor in his death did he remember his soul.'"

"What a question!" exclaimed the guerilla, looking at the one who had asked it, and weaving himself backwards and forwards with much composure.

"Yes, but this is a case of 'He that asks does not err, and I ask if they bury the dead with the deceased?'"

"What I mean is, when did you leave your house, and how did you happen to fall in with the partida?"[170]

"Ya! those are other questions, Lopez. Some French horsemen came here—they call them colaseros (cuirassiers)—my wife was more afraid of them than of a contagion, and every time she heard the clarionets, she would say to me, in a fright, 'They are sounding the charge.' 'No, wife,' I would tell her, 'they are sounding the premonition.' One day the cornet—they used to call him Trompi—came in tipsy, and insulted my wife. I, who was not afraid of any three that might come, and never stopped to think of consequences, said to him, 'Out of here, little soul of a pitcher, and Barabbas cut a slice from you!' With that he drew his sword, and would have cut me, but I snatched my knife, and finished him at once; and then, catching up mantle and blanket, took the wind for the mountains. I stopped in Benamahoma with the Padre Lovillo—and there you have it all."

"Yes, the Padre Lovillo. Candela! That was a man you could call a man! No talker—not he; but the words he used were few and good. [792]If any one wanted to brag of his doings, he would say, 'Let them be seen, not heard. You understand, cackler? Stabs with steel, not with the tongue; balls of lead, not of wind.' Sirs, that man was ready for everything, as you would have declared with two tongues if you had had them. When we were going to attack the French, he used to say, 'Listen, sons, our fathers died for their country, and we are not to be less than they.' Then, drawing his sword, he would shout, 'Now let us see who has pluck!' and charge like another Santiago,[171] and we after him, as if he had led us to Paris in France. We felt neither hunger nor weariness; it was a fight without drum or trumpet, but it made the Frenchmen shiver. They named us the 'Briganes[172] of the Black Mountain,' and were more afraid of us than of the trained soldiery.

"Don 'Turo, who knew that I had been a brigan, called me into the parlor one evening, and, when he had squeezed himself into a chair, told me to sit down. I began to wonder where all these Masses were going to end.[173] Surely, I thought, he cannot want me to clean his gun! But I waited for the mountain to bring forth, and presently he asked me to explain the trafica[174] of guerilla fighting. When I saw him come out with that ladder, I got angry, and told him, 'No;' that my pronouncing was very bad, and his understanding worse. But all the others insisted, and, not to seem disobliging, I repeated a very good and well-versed poem, that was going the rounds then."

"It relates a conversation between Malapart [175] and that Indian, Munrá, Duke of Ver."[176]

The following romance, which the old guerilla recited, was very popular at that time among the people. It owes its humor to the fact that neither its unlettered composer, nor those who recited it, had any suspicion that they were giving a caricature. They considered it a simple and probable account of what would take place between Napoleon and Murat when they saw their last troops vanquished. Even the conclusion is in no way inconsistent with their ideas of the antecedents and characters of the personages:

"He sweep chimneys!" exclaimed Uncle Bartolo. "Such people always fall into feather-beds! They carried him to St. Helena—beyond Gibraltar—where he had it quite comfortable till he died raving, after the devil had helped him to make that will."

Uncle Cohete was a simple, good old man, who acted the merry-andrew for the purpose of obtaining alms for a religious house of which he was demandante.[178] He could mimic to perfection the songs of all birds; the near and distant barking of the dog, the mewing of the cat; and so excelled in imitating the peculiar hiss and crackling of a kite in the air, as to have obtained the nickname of cohete (kite), by which he was known. He had, besides, a stock of [794]simple verses, ballads, riddles, and odd scraps of humor, which he would repeat with inimitable expression and drollery. The sources from which he drew his supplies could not be told. This, he had learned in a town on the Llanura; that, in a village of the Sierra; another at the fireside of the manse. But, in his mimicry of the birds, they themselves had been the teachers, aided by unusual flexibility of organs, and great patience and perseverance on the part of the disciple. For, in all branches—whether important or insignificant—perseverance yields great results.

It having been intimated to Uncle Cohete that the company wished him to tell something diverting, he began by saying The Commandments of the Rich Man and the Poor Man—a collection of ironical precepts, which enjoyed great popularity at that time—as follows:

"Uncle, did not the son of Roba-Santos[179] who is heaping money, give you an alms?" asked one.

"Next year, uncle, you will get a pile, for 'when the fields have, the saints have.'"

"Uncle Cohete, take these two coppers, and tell us The Commandments of the New Law," said the man who had called him in:

"Fifty ladies and five gallants: the fifty ask fowl; the five ask bread," said the old man, of whom nature, and the kind of life he led, had made the personification of ready and good-humored obedience.

At this moment they were interrupted by the ringing of the sunset bell, and, all rising, stood with uncovered heads.

Uncle Bartolo repeated the Angelus, adding a Paternoster for the deceased. And now the grief of the sobbing child in the corner broke forth in bitter crying.

"Stop that, Lucas!" said his father. "You have been going on in that way, hic! hic! like an old woman, for two days. You ought to have gone into the women's room. Let me hear you crying again! You understand?"

"Let me tell you, Juan Garcia," said Uncle Bartolo, "that you are the first man I ever heard rebuke the tears of a son for his mother! You see me, with my years, my beard, and my guerilla life; well, I remember mine, and weep for her still!

"But, uncle, 'frown, and frown again, of a bad son makes a good one.' Lucas here is a regular Marcia Fernandez,[180] brought up in the folds of his mother's skirts. I must teach him that men resist, and do not allow themselves to be overcome by tribulations."

Uncle Bartolo shook his head. "Time and not ointment will cure the patient. If you had died, his mother would not have been the one to rebuke your son for the tears he shed over you."

Juan Garcia continued his former life, abandoning himself with more liberty to the wicked woman of whom the friends of his dead wife had spoken at the condolement. She was called La Leona in allusion to her native island of Leon, where she had married a sergeant, who was afterward sent to serve in America. Like all bad women, La Leona was much worse than men of the same class, inasmuch as, in the subtle organization of woman, the delicacy that is given to her for good turns into a refinement of evil, and her instinctive penetration into malignant sagacity. Not satisfied with having attracted to herself Juan Garcia, who possessed a small patrimony, La Leona, impelled by the bitter envy which a lost woman feels toward one who is honest, undertook to render him indifferent to his wife, and succeeded not only in this, but also in causing him to ill-treat and abandon her. Juan Garcia was a weak man, easily subjugated by those who knew how to obtain an influence over him, and, by way of compensating himself for this complaisance, very obstinate and overbearing in his treatment of others. By degrees, it came to pass that his mistress would not receive him with favor unless he brought her, as an offering, the relation of some act of coldness or cruelty to the victim whose only crime was that of affording, by her right, and by her silent and prudent endurance, the most patent condemnation of the conduct of these two, a condemnation all the more ignominious because of the great purity of manners which prevails in country places. And in order to gain our assertion credit with those who are disposed to accuse us of partiality for the country people, we hasten to say that this purity may naturally be attributed to the wholesome influence of labor, which, in putting indolence to flight, puts to flight with it the vices it generates, and to the blessed poverty, which, being without the[796] means of satisfying them, hinders their birth. Having convinced utilitarians with these reasons, we will add to them others of our own; namely, the salutary ideas of morality and rooted principles of honor that many centuries of Catholicism have fixed in the hearts of these people—principles renewed, in each successive generation, by the unchanging zeal that is the property of religion, and that never wearies or grows lukewarm.

Like all other general rules, the above has its exceptions. Juan Garcia furnished one. His unkindness, united with the grief and shame his conduct caused her, had certainly hastened the death of poor Ana, whose last act of affection as a wife, and duty as a Christian, had been to forgive him. Alas! the soul of the husband was so deeply mired that even this saintly death could awaken in it neither pity nor remorse. Not that he was utterly perverse, but his eyes, like those of many another in this world of error, were covered by one of those veils which must fall on the day of God's judgment, when the light of truth will be the first punishment that awaits the willingly blind.

His boy and girl remained orphaned and neglected, and would have been entirely forsaken but for that active charity which makes women constitute themselves fervent protectors of the helpless and severe judges of the wrong-doer. The wives of Juan's neighbors took care of the children, and obliged him to feed and clothe them, freely casting in his face his evil conduct, while, with imperturbable coolness, they prescribed to him his obligations.

Ah charity!—some proclaim and others comprehend thee; some would guide thee, and thou guidest others! Why art thou not found in the palaces that philanthropy builds for thee? Why dost thou appear in all thy brightness in the dwellings of the poor, delighting thyself with the widow's farthing? It is because thou wilt be queen and not a slave!

The children could not be consoled for the death of their mother. Isolated as they were, all the sentiments of their hearts became converted into love for each other, and sorrow for their loss.

Lucas, however, who was five years older than his sister, did his best to enliven and distract her.

"Don't cry so, Lucia," he said to her one night, not long after the condolement. "Mother will not come back for crying, and you make me cry. What shall I do to amuse you?"

Lucia inclined her head in token of assent, and the boy sang in his clear, sweet voice the following ballad:

"And did she let her sister starve to death?" asked the child, her eyes refilling from her already surcharged heart.

"Yes, yes; she was a good-for-nothing; but don't cry, Lucia, a story isn't a thing that ever happened."

"If it had never happened, they would not have put it in the romance," said the little girl.

"They made it up," replied Lucas. "Don't you believe it, dear. When I am a man and can earn, the least piece of bread I may have, I must divide with my heart's little sister. You know that before mother died she put you in my care, and I made her a promise never to forsake you."

"And if you ever forget it, I am to sing you this romance, to put you in mind of what you say now."

"That is so; you must learn it." And the boy set himself to teach his sister the romance.

THE GOOD GERARD OF COLOGNE.

In the new cathedral at Magdeburg the bells were ringing for the first time. A large crowd gathered to witness the consecration of the church, founded and richly endowed by the Emperor Otto the Great. He went up the aisle before all the people, not, as was then the custom, to lay down gifts at the new altar of God, but, with erect brow, he stood, and thus he spoke: "There is no gift in my hand for thee, O[798] Lord; but when I lift up my eyes, whatever I behold around me is my gift to thee! This church I built for the glory of thy name, and I endowed it and made it so great that the sons of kings think it an honor to bow to its prince-bishop, and serve him. The heathen that troubled thy people, see I conquered them with my strong arm—the Wends, the Sarbs, and the Hungarians, they bowed their heads to my sword, and their knees to thy glory; and I made thy name great in all the pagan lands, and erected churches and bishoprics to thy honor. And now show me to-day, O my Lord, that thou hast seen my foot going in thy path, thou, who wilt give glory from heaven to him who spreads thy glory on earth." Thus the emperor spoke before all the people. And lo! a voice sounded from heaven as the voice of an angel in anger, and it spoke with a voice like thunder rolling in the mountains: "Otto, king on earth, see, the King in heaven had put a chair by his side for thee to sit upon it, and thou hast despised it in thy vanity; he had prepared for thee a crown of glory, and thou hast taken the crown of pride that made angels fall. He has heard with little pleasure the thoughts of thy heart, that asks for the highest place. Know, that place is for him who most serves God in humility and purity of heart; that is, for the good Gerard, the merchant in Cologne, whose name is written in the book of life. And now go and learn from him what is agreeable to God, and then confess that thy glory is vain and thy doing but little. But know, that not readily will he speak to thee; well would he lay down his life rather than let the fame of his righteousness sound up to God by words from his own mouth." When Otto had heard this, he bowed his head in shame and was humbled. He mounted his good horse, and with three of his knights rode over to Cologne. Among the citizens who came to greet their emperor in the vast hall, Otto saw one, a tall man with a long white beard and the step of a youth; and when he asked the bishop who sat by his side who that man was, he received in answer: "That is the good Gerard, the richest merchant in Cologne." Then the emperor spoke to all the assembled people: "I came here to ask your advice, as I am in great need of it. But I was counselled, and even commanded, not to speak but to one of you, and for that one I choose thee, O Gerard! Thou seemest to me rich in wisdom and experience." And Gerard answered, bowing before the emperor: "Shall I go alone to give my advice, while there are so many worthier ones here?" But all the people said: "O king! thy choice is good; there is no one in this hall his equal in wisdom." So the emperor took Gerard by the hand, and led him to a chamber near by, and locked the door after him, and they sat down on one couch, Gerard by Otto's side. Then Otto said: "Gerard, it was to see thee that I came here; pray tell me, how did it happen that the name 'Good' was given to thee? I would fain like to know." "O great king!" answered Gerard, "I do not know myself what that means; there are so many Gerards here; people only gave me that name to distinguish me from them." "Gerard, thou art deceiving me!" the emperor called out; but Gerard answered: "Oh! no, great king, I should deceive thee if I spoke otherwise. Never did I merit that name, and it was often a burden to me; because, while the world called me 'the Good,' it reminded me how seldom I did what pleased God. Often do I send the poor man away[799] with a mean gift, whilst God gives me riches; I give him sour beer and black bread, I give him an old gown, whilst many a new one I had, and would not have missed them. I always have liked to go to church where the service was shortest, and when I had once prayed with my whole soul, I thought that would do for half a year. Therefore, O king! do not ask me what I have done to deserve that high name." The emperor said: "Gerard, thou must give me a better answer, for I have sure knowledge that thou hast done a great deed for God's sake, and I came to hear the account of it from thy own mouth; therefore speak!" "Oh! spare me," called out the good man, "spare me, most gracious king!" But Otto replied: "No, no! thou only awakenest my impatience, and I tell thee thou must yield to me at the end, if even much against thy will!" Then prayed the good man in his heart: "O God! look at thy servant! My king is angry with me, and I cannot resist him any longer. So if I reckon with thee, O Lord! and praise myself for the little good I ever did, do not thou turn away thy grace from me, for what I say, I do it much against my will." And presently he threw himself at the emperor's feet, saying: "Ten thousand pounds of silver I have in my cellar, take it and spare me the answer!" "Gerard," said the rich emperor, "I thought thou wert wiser. Such a speech only excites my curiosity. And I will tell thee, thou canst reveal me everything, and it will be no sin to thee—so I swear before God." Then the good Gerard said, arising from his knees, and sitting down: "God knows my heart; he knows that, when I do now as my king commands me to do, my heart is full of grief, and vanity is far from it."

II.
THE GOOD GERARD'S STORY.

"When my father died, he left no small fortune to me, his only heir. But as I was a merchant, I thought to double and double again my possessions, and cause my son to be called 'the rich Gerard,' as his fathers had been called before him. So I left him such fortune as would be full enough for him, and took all the rest, fifty thousand pounds of silver, and carried it to my ship, together with food for three years' voyage. Experienced sailors were in my pay, and my clerk was with me, to write my accounts and read my prayers. So I went to Russia, where I found sables in profusion, and to Prussia's rich amber strand, and from there, by the Sea of the Middle, to the East, and there I took in exchange silk and woven goods from Damax and Ninive; and well I thought a threefold gain should be mine. Then my heart began to long for wife and child, and with great joy I told the mariners to turn the ship homeward. But a storm arose, and water and wind were fighting for twelve days and twelve nights, and threw my ship to an unknown land, where a beach gave us shelter. When the sun shone again, and the sky looked clear, I saw villages and hamlets and fertile fields as far as my eyes could reach, and near the sea a large city with pinnacles and high walls. We went to the port, and I found it full of merchandise, a rich and stately place, not unlike the old Cologne. I went on land, for I saw the governor of the city coming to view the goods in the port, and many a knight and vassal rode by his side; and I thought to go up to him and ask his protection. But when I came near[800] him, he approached me with a quick step, and, greeting me with his hand, he thus spake: 'Welcome the first one who comes to my market! Thou art my guest, stranger! I see thou comest from far off, perhaps from the land of the Christians, who seldom come here, in false fear that I would harm them. But be of good cheer! I do not harm the merchant, nor need I covet his goods, for my land is rich, and all the gold and precious stones that it has in its mountains are mine, and the pearls in the sea, and many a rich vessel that the storm throws on our coast.' Well was I astonished at such a greeting; but I accepted gladly; and the governor, Stranamur by name, gave me the best house, and took care of me that nothing might harm me. Again and again did he show me his love, and soon friendship and confidence reigned between us. Presently, he wanted me to show him the treasures of my ship, and I let it be done readily. I saw him wonder at their splendor, and with good cheer he said: 'Gerard, I tell thee, thou hast brought riches to this land so great that nobody can buy them. But I will show thee my treasure now, and then, if it so please thee, we will exchange; for in this land my treasure is of no value, while in the land of the Christians it might bring thee at least a twentyfold gain.' And I answered: 'To seek gain is the merchant's duty. I did show thee my treasure; now let me see thine.' Then my host led me by the hand to a hall, and as I entered with a cheerful mind, hoping to behold the riches of India, gold and spices, I found the place all empty of joy and filled with but misery. Twelve young knights were lying here in chains so heavy that their weight pulled them down to the low couches, and, though grief and want had disfigured their beauty, I saw they were of noble blood and sons of high lords, born to govern the world. Then my host beckoned me to the next hall, where I found again twelve knights in chains, but old and pale, with venerable figure, and hair and beard silver-white. Then my host led me away by the hand to the third hall, and said: 'Behold my most precious goods!' Well, I found there goods great in riches and beauty, for fifteen lovely maidens were what he called the precious merchandise. And my heart pained me as I beheld them, for their loveliness and gentle mind shone amid the prison walls like stars in the night; and I saw one like their queen, a moon among the stars. But Stranamur led me away and said: 'Thou didst behold my goods; shall we exchange? Thou mayest easily get a rich ransom for each of them, more than one hundred thousand pounds of silver. In England they were born; William, their king, sent them over to Norway to bring him home his bride, King Reinemund's daughter, Irene, whom thou hast seen. Coming home, a storm threw them on my coast, and so they were mine by right, for after the custom of this land the strand is mine. And I offer these knights to thee, together with the fifteen maidens, that thou mayest give me the treasures I saw on thy ship.' I had good reason to be astonished at such an offer, for I saw clearly it would be giving my goods for mere blanks, and so I asked the governor to let me please consider till the next morning. And when I came to my house I sat down thinking, and though my heart told me to help the prisoners in their misery, there was a voice in my mind saying: 'Do not give away the earnings of thy life for a mere idea'; and well would I have passed that night without coming to[801] an end, if God in his goodness and grace had not given his advice in my heart. For I fell asleep, and in my sleep I heard a voice of God's angel, who spoke to me these words: 'Awake, Gerard, God's anger is calling thee! Did he not say in his mercy, "What thou givest to the poorest of my brethren, thou givest unto me"? What thou givest to the needy ones, thou lendest to the Lord; and doubt in him is great sin to thee!' Then I awoke and fell on my knees, and thanked God that he had given me shame and repentance in my heart, and humbled me so as to save me from sin. The next morning my host met me at the gate, and with anxiety he asked what it was my wish to do. And I answered: 'I am willing to make exchange with thee, O Stranamur! if thou allowest me one thing: give back to the prisoners their ship and all they brought on it, and give them food and mariners, and whatever they need to go home.' And the governor answered: 'Dost thou think me a thief, O Gerard? I thought, friend, thou knewest me better. Not one penny's worth will I keep from the prisoners, and theirs shall be whatever is needed for a safe and speedy voyage.' After that he gave me his hand, and we changed thus mine and thine. Then the prisoners were told of what had happened, and they were clothed as became them, and refreshed, and when they beheld me, their thanks and tears were such that my eyes overflowed, even against my will. And I saw the women's great beauty, and Irene their queen, and though the earthly crown was taken from her, there was the crown of beauty and loveliness on her brow. Then my clerk read prayers, and we went to sea; the right wind blew in our sails, and bore us quickly outward. When we came near the coast of England, I spoke to the knights: 'Tell me, who of you were born in England, that they may go on their way home now.' And they answered: 'From Norway only came Queen Irene with two of her maidens; all the rest of us were born in England.' I said to the knights: 'Go home, then, with my blessings, noble lords! and if I did what pleased you, think of me with a friendly heart. Let King William know, and also Reinemund of Norway, that Queen Irene is in my house and under my protection, and that I am ready and willing to give her up whenever they claim her. When I send my messengers to you, pay them back, O knights! what I left for your sake in the strange land of the heathen, if it so is convenient to you. Then they thanked me so that I had to hide from their embraces; and we parted with many tears; and they went their way, I mine.

"Soon I was home again. My wife and son welcomed me gladly and with thanksgivings, and after I had told them all, they led Irene to my house. And Queen Irene lived in my house like one of us for many a month, and my wife loved her, and all the women of my household and friendship, and she taught them many a fine art, such as to embroider with gold and thread of silver and pearl. And God gave his blessing to my trade, and I prospered. But every day, Irene's loveliness grew more lovely, and when I saw her so gentle and smiling, I forgot my losses, and my joy was greater than seventy-fold gain would have made it. So passed a year, and no message came from Reinemund, nor from William, the King of England, and I beheld with sorrow that my queen's mind was grieved, though she hid her tears from our eyes. That I took to my heart, and said to myself, 'I bought our sweet queen free from great pain, and now I must see her[802] in greater grief. There is no one here kindred to her, and, when I am gone, who is there to be her friend and protector? King William is dead, and so is Reinemund, the King of Norway, and Irene, their queen, will die of grief for them! Therefore I spoke to her one day, and I asked her to listen graciously, and then I said thus: 'Thou must know, O queen! that there is nothing that gives me so much trouble than the thought what one day shall become of thee when I am no more. It is clear now, sorry as I am for it, that thy friends are dead, therefore, I think it our duty to counsel wisely what is best for thy future, O queen! As he is considered a wise man who tries to forget what fortune took from him, so I advise thee, O my daughter! to choose for a husband one from among my family, that is, my son, as whose wife honor and ample fortune will not be wanting to thee.' At that, Irene answered and spoke to me: 'O dear father! I know me no better adviser than thee in this world; so I will do whatever pleases thee. Only let me wait one year longer; if till then no tidings have come from any friends and kindred, thy wish shall be mine!' But the year was soon past, and no tidings had reached us, neither from England nor from Norway; and so Irene the queen was to be the merchant's wife. I ordered the wedding to be prepared with the greatest splendor, and my mind's only thought was to boast with my riches; and I asked to the feast many a rich merchant, and nobles and dukes, and our prince the bishop. So when Pentecost came, that was to be the day of the wedding, the bishop stood up before the altar, and eleven noble squires knelt down before him, and the twelfth one, who was Gerard my son, and the bishop blessed their swords, and they arose as noble lords and knights. My eye rested on him, and I saw he was happy; he broke his lance in honor of his bride; he watched for the bell that should call him again to the altar of God, there to receive Irene as his wife: what could there be to make his happiness greater and to hinder him from drinking the cup of bliss? But lo, I beheld one standing far aside, a stranger with a pale face and his eyes full of tears; he gazed at Irene, my daughter, and he shuddered, and his arm was around a column that he might not fall. He was a young man of great beauty, and his skin was fine and white, but his beard gray, and his dress that of a beggar. As I saw him so full of woe and tears, I went up to him, and I asked him the cause of his grief, that perhaps I might give help and make joy and happiness come back to his mind. But he would not speak. At last, as I pressed him very much, he said to me these words: 'Such as thou doest see me here with my hair gray before the time, I am William, King of England. I went to sea to meet my bride coming from Norway, where I had sent twelve maidens and twenty-four knights to escort her over to me. But a storm arose and threw my ship against the rocks while I was already in sight of them, the tempest carried me to the shore and I was thus saved, but not a word I ever heard of the knights, or the maidens, or of Irene my bride, the King of Norway's daughter. For years and years I have wandered about in search of her, with my heart full of despair and my hair and beard gray, till at last I found her to-day, the bride of another man. What shall I tell thee more? My soul and body are hers whom I love, and for her sake I will now give them up into death!' When I heard these words from my guest, him who destroyed all my joys, I said unto him: 'The[803] Lord has done great things; honor and fortune he might still give thee back; wait here awhile, and be of good cheer!' And I sent my valet to him, to attend to all his needs and wants, but I went to my prince the bishop and told him the wonder God had shown to us, and asked him to help me with my son Gerard and teach him a Christian's duty. So I called my son away from the side of his bride, and after he had heard the tale, so full of marvel, the bishop asked him: 'Wilt thou then separate, Gerard, what before God is united?' Then he answered us, and he said: 'What do you think of me? Shall I give up my love and happiness and rest and peace?' But the bishop spoke: 'Yes, my son, thou shalt!' And my child began to cry at these words, and I cried with him, and he put his arms around my neck and said, 'My father, then let it be so!' and my heart felt joy at these words. Shall I tell thee what my heart felt when I saw King William greet his bride? I am old as thou art, O emperor! but I know not without jealousy thou wouldst have beheld it. And in my heart I thanked the God of goodness who had given so wise counsel in my mind that my blessings now were greater than what gold or silver could ever have bought for me. After that I filled my ship and took them over to England, and great was the joy of the four-and-twenty knights on beholding their king and queen, and of the whole people, and great were their thanks to me, and only with great pain could I hinder them from bestowing all their riches on me, and making me a prince and a great man among them. But I will not repeat to thee all they meant to do to me, and the praises they gave me; for God knows, in all my life I cannot deserve them. And when I came home, the people made much of me, and called me 'the good'; though thou knowest now, as well as I do, that I am not good. It was only by the angel's voice that my doubts were taken, from me; I was full of fear to lose my goods, and weak. Besides, I am a sinner and am proud and vain, so that I have been praising myself before thee, O emperor! while, couldst thou see my heart, many a fault thou wouldst observe within."

III.

Before Gerard had finished speaking, the emperor's heart grew large within him and made his eyes overflow; for tears are a blessing which God sends from heaven. He felt shame and repentance, and these two re-created his heart, and his mind was healed from all false glory. And he said: "Gerard, I tell thee, better a good deal than silence is what thou hast made known to me; for my heart was sick with vainglory, and pride overgrew the good deed. I had built a great house to the Lord, and the thought of that poisoned my heart, so that it asked for reward. But what I asked has turned against me as a punishment, for no heart is pure that seeks for glory only. When I then praised myself at my good deed, God sent me to thee to learn true humility and charity. Truly thou art good; for thy heart was not moved by the praise of this world. Thou hast given thy goods for poor prisoners, thou hast taken the wife from thy son, and refused the riches of England in humility and charity, only for the sake of the Lord thy God. Well, my ride to thee has brought me benefit. But thou, O Gerard! pray the Lord to have mercy upon him that prides in vainglory; pray for thy emperor to our God in heaven."

EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION ACCORDING TO THE MOST RECENT DISCOVERIES.

The most striking fact respecting the Egyptian monarchy is its antiquity. "Forty centuries look down upon you from these pyramids," were the sublime words of Bonaparte; but they do not express enough. The progress of archæological science shows that the reign of the Pharaohs began more than three thousand years before Christ. M. Bunsen gives the date as 4245 B.C., and M. Mariette 5004, but with some qualifications that should be mentioned. "Egyptian chronology," says he, "presents difficulties which no one, as yet, has surmounted.... To all dates before the time of Psammetichus I. (665 B.C.), it is impossible to give anything but approximations, which become more and more uncertain as we recede.... This uncertainty increases in proportion as we go back from the present age; so that, according to the methods of computation, there may be two thousand years' difference in assigning the date of the Egyptian monarchy."[181]

While fully admitting the reasonable qualifications of the learned director of the Egyptian antiquities, it is no less certain, from the discoveries already made, that the reign of the Pharaohs extends back about thirty centuries before the Christian era.

Another characteristic of this ancient nation, which is no less remarkable, is that it manifests all the signs of civilization from the beginning. "It is a phenomenon worthy of the most serious attention," says Champollion-Figeac, "that Egypt possessed in those remote ages all the civil, religious, and military institutions indispensable to the prosperity of a great nation, and all the enjoyments resulting from the perfection of the arts, the advantages assured by the authority of the civil and religious laws, the culture of the sciences, and a profound sentiment of the dignity and destination of man."[182]

"Egyptian civilization manifests itself to us fully developed from the earliest ages, and succeeding ones, however numerous, taught it little more,"[183] says M. Mariette.

"What is most extraordinary about this mysterious civilization is that it had no infancy.... Egypt, in this respect as in so many others, is an exception to the laws to which the Indo-European and Semitic races have accustomed us. It does not begin [805]with myths, heroic exploits, and barbarism."[184] The author we have just quoted sought in vain, with all his mind and learning, for the cause of this strange phenomenon. "Egypt," says he, "is another China, mature and almost decrepit from its birth, and in its monuments and history there is something at once childlike and old."

This ingenious explanation excites a smile, but not conviction. Rather than admit revelation—that is to say, the intervention of the divine agency in the creation of man and the formation of primitive nations—many learned men of our day prefer to take refuge in the most singular and inadmissible theories. According to them, human society must "commence with myths and barbarism," and man himself with the savage nature of the brutes. But they are forced to acknowledge that Egypt is a decided exception to this theory.

"The gigantic labors of the Suez Canal in removing the immense accumulations of sand, so often amassed as if to preserve the past history of the world, have not revealed a single vestige of uncivilized men who, before the deluge, were scattered over the rest of the earth."[185]

To resolve the problem of ancient Egyptian civilization, we propose an explanation more conformable to the traditions and the dignity of the human race. It is true, this explanation is not new, for it was evident to the sages of pagan times a long time before it was fully unfolded by Christian philosophers. Socrates taught that "the ancients, better than we and nearer the gods, had transmitted by tradition the sublime knowledge they had received from them." Plato adds that "the earliest of mankind, issuing from the hands of the gods, must have known them as well as we know our own fathers, and that it is truly impossible not to believe the testimony of the children of the gods."

What the wise men of Greece perceived through the thick veil of paganism, we behold clearly by the light of Christianity and the Holy Scriptures. It seems to us a simple thing to believe that the Egyptian nation, the first founded, not many centuries after the deluge, must have been organized according to the principles of the national law of which the descendants of Noah had not yet lost the tradition. "If we believe in the truth of the Scriptural accounts," says an illustrious promoter of social reforms in England,[186] "we must also believe that when the families descended from Ham and Japheth began their long migrations, they bore with them the religious traditions they possessed in common with the children of Shem.

"As to those who will not accept the testimony of the book which, to give it the most unpretending of its august titles, is the most ancient and most venerable document of human history, we could reply that the reasoning still remains the same. The progress of ethnological and philological researches furnishes us with evident proofs of a continued migration of the Touranian and Aryan races towards the north and west from places necessarily undefined, but certainly from the vicinity of the nomad patriarchs. On the other hand, nothing shows that their traditions have a different source from that given in the Book of Genesis—the three divisions of Noah's family. If, then, [806]everything seems to demonstrate the intimate connection of these primitive races with the Semitic tribes, how could the descendants of Ham and Japheth have left behind the irreligious traditions when, for the first time, they left their brethren?"

The descendants of Ham, ancestors of the first Egyptians, doubtless preserved, with their religious traditions, the moral principles that guarantee the existence and perpetuity of domestic life, and the notions of the arts indispensable to its comfort. "With the human race," says Bossuet, "Noah preserved the arts; not only those necessary to life which man knew from the beginning, but those subsequently invented. The first arts which man learned, apparently from his Creator, were agriculture, the duties of pastoral life, the fabrication of clothing, and perhaps the construction of habitations. Therefore we do not see the rudiments of these arts in the East, in those regions whence the human race was dispersed. This is why everything springs from those lands, always inhabited, where the fundamental arts remained. The knowledge of God and memories of creation are there preserved."[187]

The ruins of the Tower of Babel still show to what a degree of advancement the art of building had arrived, and the details given us in the Bible about the construction of the ark display an amount of nautical knowledge which must have been transmitted to the skilful boatmen of the Nile and the bold navigators of ancient Phœnicia.

We will not extend these preliminary observations, which we think throw sufficient light on the origin of Egyptian civilization, the incontestable antiquity of which is as enigmatical as that of the Sphynx to the astonished eyes of the modern Œdipus. A truly learned man, who shows himself by his conférences in the Rue Bonaparte thoroughly conversant with the discoveries of contemporaneous Egyptology, and who is not ashamed to seek light from revelation as well as from science, has resolved the problem in the following terms: "There is not, in the first ages of the Egyptian monarchy, the least trace of the rude beginnings of a nation in its infancy. Indeed, we should not forget that this country never passed through the savage state, and that, if the truths revealed to the patriarchs were adulterated by the race of Ham, they still retained sufficient light not to remain satisfied with material enjoyments alone."[188]

Let us now endeavor to penetrate, by the light of these principles, as far as we can into the labyrinth of Egyptian antiquities.

BOOK FIRST.
THE SOCIAL ORGANIZATION.

I.
DOMESTIC REGULATIONS.

The institutions which are the safeguards of family life and of property are essential to society and the perpetuity of a nation, and these foundations of the social life seem to have been as firmly established among the ancient Egyptians as their own pyramids. The sacredness of the family tie was the result of unity of marriage and respect to parents, and its perpetuity was assured by the rights of primogeniture, which were universally admitted from the royal family down to that of the most humble laborer. This was the fundamental principle [807]of family life and of society. Therefore we see Pharaoh in the Holy Scriptures resist all the plagues God sent upon Egypt for the deliverance of the Israelites; but when the first-born of the Egyptians were smitten in one night, the king yielded at once, for the whole nation felt that a blow had been given to the very source of its existence.

The Egyptian monuments of every age prove that the paternal authority was universally regarded with great respect. On a great number of stelæ collected by M. Mariette in the museum of Boulak are these words:

"The religious laws of Egypt obliged families on certain days in the year to present offerings to deceased parents. One stela, consecrated to the memory of Entef, who lived at the beginning of the twelfth dynasty, is only a representation of one of these festivals. Entef is seated beside his wife. His sons and daughters present themselves before him. Some are saying the prescribed prayers; others bringing food and perfumes. The last scene depicted is interesting from the variety of representations. Besides parts of animals already sacrificed, the servants are bringing live animals."[189]

We may judge of the sentiments of the ancient Egyptians with regard to paternal authority by the following passages from an ancient document, the authenticity of which has never been contested:

"The son who receives his father's advice will live to be old. Beloved by God is obedience. Disobedience is hated by God. The obedience of a son to his father is a joy,... he is beloved by his father, and his renown is on the lips of the living who walk the earth. The rebellious son sees knowledge in ignorance, and virtue in vice; he daily commits all kinds of frauds with impunity, and lives thereby as if he were dead. What wise men consider death is his daily life. He keeps on his way laden with maledictions. A son docile in the service of God will be happy in consequence of his obedience...."[190]

We cannot help recognizing in this precious document the moral ideas of primitive times, the tradition of which is so faithfully preserved in the Bible. The fourth precept of the Decalogue is found here almost literally: "Honor thy father and thy mother, that thou mayest be long-lived upon the land."

Upon a mortuary stela described by M. Mariette in his Notice du Musée de Boulaq (No. 44, p. 72), Maï, the defunct, is seen receiving the homage of the members of his family. "One of the sons of Maï is called Men-Nefer. For some unknown reason, his name is erased from the list of the family, and, in fact, his whole image is hammered down. Another son likewise incurred this mark of infamy, which is only given to the proper name of the personage."

Respect to parents naturally leads to that for the aged. "The Egyptians have this custom in common with the Lacedæmonians," says Herodotus; "young men, when they meet their elders, turn aside for them to pass; at their approach they rise from their seats."

The obligations of parents towards their children were strictly enjoined [808]in ancient Egypt, as is evident from a curious passage from Diodorus, which, at the same time, shows how the manners and laws favored the fecundity of marriage, the only source of a robust and numerous population:

"Parents are obliged to rear all their offspring in order to increase the population, which is regarded as the chief source of the prosperity of a kingdom.... They provide for the support of their children at little expense, and with incredible frugality. They give them very simple food: the stems of the papyrus which can be roasted, roots and stems of palustrine plants, sometimes raw, sometimes boiled and roasted, and as all children go unshod in that temperate climate, the parents do not estimate the expense of a child before the age of puberty to be more than twenty drachmæ (a little less than twenty francs).

"The children of the common people are taught the trade of their parents, which they are to practise for life, as we have remarked. Those who are initiated into the arts are alone charged with teaching others to read."

So simple and natural a system of education must have singularly favored the fruitfulness of marriage among the masses, and the number of children was not less among the aristocracy. We see from the simplest monuments, where the funeral honors rendered to the head of a family by all his children are painted on a wood panel, or sculptured on a slab of calcareous stone, that their number, including both sexes, amounted to eight or a dozen, or even more, and the more elaborate monuments, indicating distinguished families and the upper classes, render the same testimony as to the large number of children in each family—as in the sculpture at Thebes, which gives a list of nine male children of Rameses Meiamoun, and a greater number of daughters. In this respect the ancient Egyptian nation differed from people of modern times.[191]

The inequality that weighed so heavily upon woman among ancient nations is not found in Egypt. "Women, on the contrary," says M. Mariette, "held a prominent position in a family. The rights they inherited were not absorbed in those of their husbands, and they were transmitted intact to their children. At certain epochs, the family monuments often named the mother to the exclusion of the father. In the inscriptions of the ancient empire, conjugal affection is frequently expressed in a delicate and touching manner." And it has been remarked, and with reason, that the women who played a great rôle in the history of the ancient dynasties enjoyed in private life a liberty of action quite foreign to the manners of most Oriental nations.[192]

"It is by the social position of woman," says M. de Bonald, "that we can always determine the nature of the political institutions of a people. In Egypt, where we find the type of the social organization, the law submitted the husband to his wife in honor of Isis, which means that this dependence was inspired by religion and morals, rather than commanded by law. Neither divorce nor polygamy was known there."[193]

The elevated condition of woman in Egypt is attested by the monuments, which show her sharing with her husband in the direction of the family.[194]

Champollion-Figeac has given us curious details respecting the private [809]customs of wealthy families, the garb and toilet of the women and children, and the peculiar characteristics of the Egyptian race:

"The head was habitually uncovered; the hair curled or plaited; a woollen mantle was sometimes worn over the tunic, and laid aside when they entered the temples. The women, besides the tunic, wore ample vestments of linen or cotton, with large sleeves, plain or striped, white, or of some uniform color. Their hair was artistically arranged. Their heads were ornamented with bandeaux, and their ears and hands with rings. A light slipper was worn on the feet. They went out with uncovered faces, accompanied by some of the numerous female servants of the house. Dressed also in ample robes of striped cloth, these servants had their hair braided and hanging down over the shoulders. They also wore a large apron, like their dress, with no jewels or other ornaments, and held themselves in a respectful posture in the presence of the lady of the house. Girls issuing from childhood were dressed like their mothers, with the exception of the ornaments of the head, and children of both sexes wore ear-rings as their only ornament (or dress) for the first five or six years.

"They were a fine race, tall in stature, generally somewhat slender, and long-lived, as is proved by the sepulchral inscriptions of those over eighty years of age. But exceptions to these general statements are found among the Egyptians as among other nations. We only make a general statement of the principal features of their physical nature, according to the monuments, in accord with historical accounts. Herodotus, who saw Egypt before its complete decadence, declares that, next to the Lybians, the Egyptians were the healthiest of people. The great number of mummies of men and women which have been opened corroborate this testimony."[195]

Bossuet, in his Discours sur l'Histoire universelle, gives a bold sketch of the physiognomy of the Egyptians, and shows the result of their manly training: "These wise Egyptians," says he, "studied the regimen that produces solid minds, robust bodies, fruitful women, and vigorous children. Consequently, the people increased in number and strength. The country was naturally healthy, but philosophy taught them that nature wishes to be aided. There is an art of forming the body as well as the mind.[196] This art, which we have lost through our indifference, was well known to the ancients, and Egypt acquired it. For this laudable end, the inhabitants had recourse to exercise and frugality.... Races on foot, horseback, and in chariots were practised with admirable skill in Egypt. There were not finer horsemen in the world than the Egyptians.

"When Diodorus tells us they rejected wrestling as giving a dangerous and factitious strength, he had reference to the excessive feats of the athletes, which Greece herself, though she crowned the victorious wrestler in her games, disapproved of as unsuitable for free persons; and Diodorus himself informs us that the Mercury of the Egyptians invented the rules as well as the art of forming the body.

"We must similarly modify the statement of the same author respecting music. That which the Egyptians despised, according to him, as tending to lessen courage, was doubtless soft, effeminate music, which only excites to pleasure and [810]false tenderness. For the Egyptians, so far from despising music of an elevated character, whose noble accords exalt the mind and heart, ascribed its invention, according to Diodorus himself, to their Mercury, as well as the gravest of musical instruments.[197]

"Among the varied exercises which formed a part of the military education, and are sculptured on the numerous monuments, are found complete gymnastic rules. Nothing could be more varied than the attitudes and positions of the wrestlers, attacking, defending themselves, receding and advancing by turns, bending down or turning over, rising up again, and triumphing over the opponents by dint of strength, art, and skill. In these exercises the wrestlers only wore a large girdle, that supported and favored their efforts."

A fortunate discovery by M. Mariette enables us to complete the portrait of the Egyptian race. A statue found in the Necropolis of Sakkarah, near Memphis, represents a person standing wearing a plain wig,[198] the arms close to the body. He is walking, with the left leg advanced. "This fine monument," says M. Mariette, "is at once a perfect model of the Fellah of the middle provinces of Egypt and a specimen of the works of art in the ancient kingdom. The person represented is tall and slender, with a small hand, the eyes wide open, the nose short and full, the lips somewhat thick, but pleasant in expression, and the cheeks plump. The breadth of the shoulders is remarkable. The breast is full, but, like the race itself, the hips are small, and the lean and muscular limbs seem formed for racing."

II.
THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE PEOPLE.

The Egyptians, the first to organize a truly civilized society, were divided into distinct classes, in which the occupations of the different families were hereditary. The two dominant classes were the sacerdotal and military. Inferior to them were the agriculturists, shepherds, merchants, artisans, and boatmen, on whom devolved the cultivation of the land, the care of the flocks, commerce, the trades, the means of communication and transportation on the Nile, and the canals that covered the land.[199]

To understand the strength and permanence of this organization, we must revert to its origin. The social institutions of ancient nations in the beginning depended essentially on the family—the foundation of all society. The children were naturally inclined to follow the occupations of their parents. The necessity of providing for their own livelihood as soon as they were able, and the facility of working under the direction of their fathers, induced them to embrace the occupation to which they had been accustomed from infancy. It was thus that not only agriculture, but all the arts, trades, and sciences, became hereditary in the family. Once having a means of subsistence, it was natural to endeavor to preserve it. Identity of interests drew together those who [811]followed the same trades, which led to the formation of corporations united by ties of blood and similarity of pursuits.

The Egyptians were probably the first nation to systematically apply these principles. "They were not allowed," says Bossuet, "to be useless to the country. The law assigned every one his employment, which was transmitted from father to son. They could not have two professions, or change the one they had; but then every employment was honored. There must be some pursuits and some people of a more elevated condition, as eyes are needed in the body, but their brilliancy does not make them despise the feet or the baser parts. Thus, among the Egyptians, the priests and warriors were particularly honored; but all trades, even the lowest, were esteemed. It was considered culpable to despise citizens whose labors, whatever they might be, contributed to the public welfare. By this means all the arts were brought to perfection. The honor which tended to develop them was everywhere manifested, and that was done better to which they had been accustomed and in which they had been experienced from childhood.

"But there was one pursuit common to all—the study of the civil laws and the requirements of religion. Ignorance of religion and of the regulations of the land was inexcusable in any rank. Each profession had its own district. No inconvenience resulted from this, as the country was not extensive, and with so much system the indolent had nowhere to hide themselves."[200]

We recognize the genius of Bossuet in the clear outlines he has drawn of the plan of organized labor, suited to the state of things, as well as the fundamental principles of all society. The respect for family life and tradition, the maintenance of social harmony and the grades of society, the protection of honored labor, are all remembered in this admirable sketch of the political economy of the ancient Egyptians.

But we must not, nevertheless, conclude that professions were rigorously hereditary and the castes unchangeable. Ampère proves the contrary by means of the sepulchral inscriptions discovered in the tombs contemporary with the ancient dynasties. They show, in fact, that a great number of marriages were contracted between persons of different classes. "What destroys the hypotheses of exclusive professions," says that learned academician, "to which each family, and consequently each caste, was supposed to be devoted, is, finding one member of a family in the sacerdotal state, another pursuing the military life, and the remainder engaged in some civil profession."[201]

It is true the monuments, a funereal distinction of the upper classes, never mention the laborer or the artisan; but it is reasonable to believe that, among a people so regularly [812]organized, the different classes were governed by the same laws and customs. In large families, like those of primitive times generally, liberty of vocation easily harmonized with hereditary professions. One alone—that of the swineherd—was rigorously hereditary. Those who pursued this employment were obliged to marry among themselves, on account of the invincible repugnance felt for the unclean animals they had charge of. Herodotus says the Egyptian swineherd alone, of all the nation, could not enter into any temple in the country. No one would marry their daughters or give their children to them in marriage. They could only marry among themselves.

III.
DIVISION OF LANDED PROPERTY.

The law concerning the landed property contributed no less than the hereditary professions to preserve a distinction of classes and the social gradations. "All the land," says Diodorus, speaking of the institutions of ancient Egypt, "is divided into three parts. The first and largest belongs to the priesthood, who are greatly respected by the native population on account of their religious functions as well as for their thorough education. Their revenues are expended for the sacrifices, the maintenance of their subordinates, and their own wants. The Egyptians think the religious ceremonies should not be changed, that they should always be performed by the same functionaries, and that these sovereign counsellors should be above want. In fact, the priests are the chief counsellors of the king, whom they aid by their labors, their advice, and their knowledge. By means of astrology and the inspection of the sacrificial victims, they foretell the future, and they relate useful examples of deeds taken from the sacred books. It is not here as in Greece, where a single man or woman has charge of the sacerdotal functions. In Egypt, those who are occupied in the sacrifices and conduct the worship of the gods are numerous, and they transmit their profession to their descendants. They are exempted from taxes, and they rank next to the king in position and privileges.

"The second part of the land belongs to the king, the revenues of which are employed for the expenses of war and the maintenance of the court. The king rewards merit from his own income, without having recourse to the purse of any private individual.

"The remaining portion of the land belongs to the soldiers and all those who are under command of the military leaders. Strongly attached to their country, on account of the wealth they possess, they brave all the dangers of war to defend it. It is, in fact, absurd to entrust the safety of a nation to men who have no interest in the common welfare. What is especially remarkable, the soldiers, living thus at their ease, increase the population to such a degree that the government is able to dispense with foreign troops. And the children, encouraged by the example of their fathers, eagerly embrace the military life, and are invincible by their bravery and experience."[202]

In addition to what Diodorus says of the military class, we will add the following extracts from Herodotus: "Twelve acres of excellent land were given, under the first kings, to each head of a family." (He is speaking of the same class.) And a little further on: "Each soldier possesses twelve acres of land, exempt from taxation."

This distribution of the landed property is similar to that in France in feudal times, and which still exists, to a degree, in England, where the clergy and aristocracy possess the greater part of the land.

The two first classes were exempt from taxation, but the priests were at all the expense of public worship, and, although the royal treasury provided for the expenses of war, the soldiers evidently had to provide, not only their own supplies, and equipment, but also for the expenses of military organization; and, like our ancient noblesse, they alone had the glorious privilege of paying a tribute of blood.

We have not a sufficiently clear knowledge of Egyptian civilization to state the law of succession with certainty, or how the preservation of the patrimony of each family was preserved.

Modern publicists, confounding stability with immovableness, have thought the power of bequeathing property did not exist under the ancient laws of the East. This opinion seems incompatible with the nature of the paternal authority, which was carried to a sovereign degree in the families of primitive times. Does not the Bible represent the patriarch Jacob on his death-bed disinheriting Reuben, the oldest of his twelve sons, and giving his inheritance to Judah? And this scene, so well related in Holy Scripture, took place in Egypt itself. It is true, the descendants of Abraham had preserved the traditions of the patriarchal life more perfectly than the Egyptians, but the latter, as we have seen, also professed great respect for the paternal authority, the rights of which must have harmonized with the requirements of the principle of hereditary professions. A passage from Diodorus seems to decide the question in this sense: "The legislator regarded property as belonging to those who had acquired it by their labor, by transmission, or by gift." However this may be, it is certain that all the land, according to Herodotus and Diodorus, belonged originally to the king, the priesthood, and the military class. This division of the landed property must have greatly contributed to the stability which is so distinctive a characteristic of the Egyptian nation. The hereditary transmission of the land in the sacerdotal and military classes effectually assured a solid basis for their preponderance, and at the same time guaranteed the independence and dignity of the aristocratic classes. They were thus fully enabled to second the king in the government, administration, and defence of the country.

IV.
ORGANIZATION OF LABOR.

Ancient Egypt, from an agricultural point of view, is in some respects worthy of attention. Certain[814] modern writers have supposed the members of the military class cultivated their own lands, as the legionaries of ancient Rome, but this supposition is irreconcilable with the testimony of the ancient historians who visited Egypt. Herodotus says they were "not allowed to practise any mechanical art, but were skilled in the art of war, which they transmit from father to son." This point is settled by the following passage from Diodorus: "The agriculturists pass their lives in cultivating the lands, which are leased them at a moderate price by the king, priests, and warriors."

As to the sacerdotal class, absorbed in the religious observances, the administration, the study of the laws and the sciences, it was impossible for its members to engage in the cultivation of the land, which, as we have seen, they leased. Notwithstanding great research, no information has been obtained about the economic condition of the agricultural class. We only know, from the extract quoted from Diodorus, that the land was leased at a moderate price. The stability which prevailed in Egypt, and the principle of hereditary professions, induce us to believe that private estates generally had a kind of entail, so the same family of husbandmen lived from generation to generation on the same land. This principle of stability was eminently favorable to the moral and material welfare of the family, as well as to the progress of agriculture. Reared from childhood amid rural occupations, they acquired more experience in them than any other nation. They perfectly understood the nature of the soil, the art of irrigation, and the time for sowing and harvesting, a knowledge they acquired partly from their ancestors and partly by their own experience. The same observation may be applied to the shepherds, who inherited the care of their flocks, and passed their whole lives in rearing them; thus perfecting the knowledge acquired from their fathers.

The other industrial classes were no less prosperous. They also inherited their occupations. A celebrated publicist states that "the Egyptian artisans held no property."[203]

To prove the truth of such an assertion, it must be shown that they were reduced to a state of slavery: which is formally contradicted by Diodorus, as we shall see presently, and it is not confirmed by any of the recently discovered monuments. It may be safely affirmed that the artisans of ancient Egypt, with the exception of those attached to the temples or public works, had a complete right over their trades and the fruit of their labors. The possession of land was denied them, but there is reason to believe they could own their dwellings and the little gardens that surrounded them.

Champollion-Figeac, who rivalled his brother in the sciences and the profound knowledge of the arts and pursuits of ancient Egypt, represents the people of that country with their "plates of glazed earthenware, their rush-baskets, and their shoes of papyrus." "The lower classes," says he in another place, "generally wore a short linen tunic called a calasiris, confined by a girdle around the hips, and sometimes with short sleeves trimmed with fringe at the end."

V.
SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE LABORING CLASSES.

Notwithstanding the light which the wonderful discoveries of modern science have thrown on the history [815]of ancient Egypt, we still lack precise information respecting the internal organization of the corporations occupied in manual labor. We only know from Diodorus that they belonged to the class of citizens—that is, they were free men. "There are in the kingdom," says he, after having spoken of the two dominant classes, "three classes of citizens: shepherds, husbandmen, and artisans."

Labor among the ancients was not always a mark of servitude. In retracing the origin of the ancient nations, as far as the light of history diffuses its rays, we find agriculture and the industrial pursuits carried on everywhere by free labor.

The monarchical and aristocratical government contributed not a little to the maintenance of stability in the artisan families, by preserving them from the fruitless agitations into which the working-classes are fatally drawn under democratic governments. Diodorus shows this admirably in the following passage, to which we invite the attention of the reader:

"It must be considered that the arts have greatly developed among the Egyptians, and arrived at a high degree of perfection. It is the only country in which a workman is not permitted to fill any public office, or employ himself in any other way than that assigned him by law or by inheritance. By this restriction, the workman is not diverted from his occupations either by the jealousy of his masters [204] or by political affairs. Among other nations, on the contrary, the artisan is almost wholly absorbed in the idea of making a fortune, some by agriculture, others through commerce, and some carry on several trades at once. And in democratic countries, most of them frequent the popular assemblies and increase disorder by selling their votes, whereas an Egyptian artisan who should take a part in public affairs, or worked at several trades at once, would incur a large fine. Such are the social divisions and political constitutions the ancient Egyptians transmitted from father to son."

What a contrast between the artisan of the old Greek republics, "frequenting public assemblies and extending disorder by selling their votes," and the workman of the Egyptian monarchy, peacefully pursuing the occupation of his fathers, happy and contented amid political agitations which must have been very rare under a régime in which traditional customs were religiously observed! Thus, with the exception of enforced labor on the public works, we are not unwilling to admit the fidelity of the picture Champollion-Figeac has drawn of the condition of the laboring classes in ancient Egypt: "The extraordinary fertility of the soil, the beneficent climate, the wise laws perfected by experience and sanctioned by time, the active and benevolent administration, constantly occupied in promoting and sustaining public order in the country as well as the city, the inevitable influence of religion upon a people naturally religious and impressionable—the most religious of men, according to Herodotus—allow us to believe that the masses in ancient Egypt were happy, and that, occupied and laborious, modest in their manners and wishes, they found in labor a source of durable pleasure."

By this wise social organization, which kept each one in his place, the artisan remained faithfully devoted to his pursuits, as the husbandman to his labor. They both fully enjoyed the stability so necessary to success. But, as we shall[816] see, the liberty and well-being of the workmen of all classes were affected by the frightful labors imposed on them in the public works.

BOOK SECOND.
THE POLITICAL, LEGAL, AND ADMINISTRATIVE INSTITUTIONS.

I.
ROYALTY.

The keystone of the social edifice in the ancient kingdom of Egypt may be regarded as royalty. The crown was hereditary in the male line in the order of primogeniture—brother succeeding to brother without surviving children. In case of no son, the daughter succeeded her father, and he whom she espoused was the queen's husband, but not the king.

The king, through the different members of his family, presided in all the branches of the government and public administration, thus giving perfect unity and complete monarchical power. "In fact," says Champollion, "the dignities of the different orders were reserved for the king's sons by the laws of the country. The oldest son of Sesostris bore the titles of Fan-bearer of the king's left hand, Royal Secretary, Basilico-grammatist, and Commander-in-chief of the Army. The second son was also Fan-bearer of the king's left hand, Royal Secretary, and Commander-in-chief of the Royal Guard. The third son added to the two first titles that of Commander-in-chief of the Cavalry. The same qualifications were also given to other princes, and seem to have belonged to all the royal generations, as well as several sacerdotal and civil titles, such as prophets (a class of priests) of different gods, high-priest of Ammon, and supreme head of different civil functions." Thus the king concentrated in his family the most important offices in the army, the civil administration, and the priesthood.

Finally, the better to consecrate the principle that all power and dignity had their source in the throne, the principal leaders in the army and administration received the title of the king's cousin, relative, or friend.[205]

"The Egyptians were generally considered the most grateful of men toward their benefactors. They considered the best guarantee of society to be a reciprocal interchange of services and gratitude. It is true, men are more inclined to be useful to others when a real benefit is to be derived from the gratitude of the obliged. It was from these motives the Egyptians respected and adored their kings as if they were gods. The sovereign authority, divinely conferred, according to their belief, with will and power to diffuse benefits, was to them a godlike attribute."[206]

While giving the consecration of a divine character to the royal authority, the wise legislators of old Egypt did not the less take the precautions, suggested by a profound knowledge of human nature, of restricting the monarchical power within just limits, of inspiring the king with virtuous inclinations, and of preventing him from evil-doing. "In the first place, the kings of Egypt did not lead as free and independent a life as the kings of other nations. They could not act according to their own will. Everything was regulated by law, not only their public, but their daily private life. They were served, not by [817]bondsmen or slaves, but by the sons of the chief priests, reared with the greatest care, and more than twenty years of age. The king, thus served day and night by real models of virtue, would never be countenanced in any blamable action. For a sovereign would not be worse than any other man if he had not around him those who flattered his desires. The precise duties of the king for every hour of the day and night were fixed by law, and not left to his own inclinations. His first act in the morning was to read the letters sent from every direction, that he might be thoroughly informed of all that had occurred in the kingdom, and act in consequence. Then, after bathing, putting on magnificent garments, and assuming the insignia of royalty, he offered a sacrifice to the gods. The victims were led to the altar; the high-priest, according to custom, stood near the king, and, in presence of the people, prayed the gods aloud to preserve the king in health and all other blessings as long as he fulfilled the laws. At the same time, the high-priest was obliged to enumerate the virtues of the king, and dwell on his piety towards the gods and his meekness towards man, representing him as temperate, just, magnanimous, opposed to lying, loving to do good, the complete master of his passions, inflicting on the guilty the least punishment merited, and recompensing good actions beyond their value. After the addition of similar praises, the priest ended by an imprecation against all faults committed through ignorance; for the king, being irresponsible, imputed all his faults to his ministers and counsellors, on whom was invoked the merited chastisement. The high-priest acted thus in order to inspire the king with a fear of the gods, and habituate him to a pious and exemplary life, not by a bitter exhortation, but by attractive praises of the practice of virtue. Finally, the king inspected the entrails of the victim, and declared the favorable auspices. The hierogrammatist read some sentences and useful accounts of celebrated men from the sacred books, that the sovereign might select an example by which to regulate his actions. There was a fixed time not only for audiences, but for exercise, the bath, and, in short, for every act of life. The king was accustomed to live on simple food. He was allowed veal and goose for meat. He could only drink a certain quantity of wine that would neither produce repletion nor intoxication. In a word, the prescribed regimen was so regular that it might be supposed ordained not by legislators, but by the best physicians, aiming only at the preservation of health.

"It seems strange for a king not to be at liberty to choose his daily food, and still more so that he could not pronounce a judgment or take a decision, or punish any one through passion or caprice, or any other unjust reason, but be forced to act according to the laws fixed for each particular case. As it was an established custom, the king could not take offence, and he was not discontented with his lot. On the contrary, he considered his a very happy life, while other men, abandoned without restraint to their natural passions, were exposed to many inconveniences and dangers. He thought himself fortunate in often seeing other men violate their consciences by persisting in bad designs, influenced by love, hatred, or some other passion, while he himself, emulous of living after the example of the wisest of men, could only fall into venial errors. Animated with such just sentiments, the king conciliated the[818] affection of his people as that of his family. Not only the priesthood, but all the Egyptian nation were less solicitous about their own families and possessions than about the safety of the king.[207] All the kings mentioned followed this political régime for a long time, and led a happy life under these laws. Besides, they conquered many nations, acquired great wealth, adorned the country with wonderful works and monuments, and the cities with rich and varied ornaments."[208]

We have thought proper to quote this long passage from Diodorus, because it clearly shows how the Egyptians regarded the duties and attributes of royalty. A limited knowledge of their sentiments makes us feel that Diodorus must have faithfully described the regulations maintained by the priests from the beginning of this ancient monarchy. Until the latest times, that is, till the Roman conquest, the prince, called to the throne by his birth, was enthroned and consecrated in a general assembly of the priesthood convoked at Memphis, "in order to observe the legal ceremonies prescribed for the coronation."[209]

When we examine the sacerdotal order, the influence it exercised over the king, in keeping him within the limits of moderation and justice, will be perceived.

The veneration of the Egyptians for their kings led them from the first to render them divine honors. "Egypt," says M. Mariette, "had a genuine worship for its kings, whom they styled beneficent gods, and regarded as the 'Sons of the Sun.'"

"The ureus (the asp) ornamented the brows of all the kings. It is also found adorning the foreheads of some of the gods. 'The asp does not grow old,' says Plutarch (Isis and Osiris), 'and, though without organs of locomotion, it moves with great facility.' The Egyptians considered it as the emblem of the eternal youth of the sun and its course in the heavens."

The sentiment of loyalty was carried so far among the Egyptians that it was considered a duty to obey their kings even in the caprices of their fantasy and pride. They respected those who were bad while they lived, reserving the right of judging them after their death.

"What took place at the death of their kings was not one of the least proofs of their attachment to them, for the honors rendered to the dead are an incontestable proof of sincerity of affection. When one of the kings died, all the inhabitants mourned, rent their garments, closed the temples, abstained from sacrifices, and celebrated no festivals for seventy-two days. Every one passed the prescribed number of days in affliction and mourning, as for the death of a cherished child. During this time preparations were made for a magnificent funeral, and on the last day they placed the chest containing the body of the deceased at the entrance of the tomb. They then proceeded, according to the law, to pass judgment on all the king had done during his life. Every one had the right of making his accusation. The priests pronounced a panegyric, relating the praiseworthy deeds of the king. Thousands of auditors applauded it if the king's life had been without reproach; if otherwise, they expressed their disapproval by murmurs. Many kings, through the opposition of the people, were deprived of suitable[819] burial. This led their successors to deal justly, not only for reasons already mentioned, but for fear their bodies might be treated ignominiously after death, and their memory be for ever cursed."[210]

"There are still to be seen in Egypt," says Champollion-Figeac, "testimonies significant of this custom. The names of some sovereigns are carefully effaced from the monuments they had erected during their reign. They are carefully hammered down even on their tombs." Among the names of the kings thus condemned after death, Champollion mentions that of Pharaoh Mandouéi, of the eighteenth dynasty. Wherever this name stood, on all representations of the king, or on the edifices he had erected, it is carefully effaced and hammered, though expressed by the image of the god Mandou, whose name he bore. The systematic suppression of this king's name on all the public monuments can only be explained as the result of one of those severe judgments passed by the Egyptian nation upon wicked kings after their death.[211]

"There was in Egypt," says Bossuet, "a kind of judgment, quite extraordinary, which no one escaped.... This custom of judging kings after their death appeared so sacred to the people of God, that they always practised it. We see in the Scriptures that wicked kings were deprived of burial among their ancestors, and we learn from Josephus that this custom was still kept up in the time of the Asmoneans. It led kings to remember that, if above human judgment during their lives, they must be subjected thereto when death reduced them to the level of ordinary mortals."[212]

Notwithstanding so many wise precautions, the kings of Egypt did not always pursue the course so clearly marked out by the national traditions and the interests of the nation. More than one Pharaoh, intoxicated by sovereign authority, made his subjects experience the heavy hand of tyranny. The numerous changes of dynasties (thirty-one are reckoned before the conquest by Alexander the Great) also show that the nation more than once succeeded in overthrowing the despotic government of those that abused their power. But, through all changes of dynasties, and in spite of the struggles of rival families, the Egyptians always remained faithful to the monarchical principle, indissolubly attached to its institutions, customs, and manners. "At no time," says Herodotus, "have the Egyptians been able to live without kings."

MR. CARLYLE AND PÈRE BOUHOURS.

Crying injustice and endless heartburnings are caused in social life by the falsehoods which malicious or foolish people shelter under the familiar quotation rubric, "said he" or "said she." For these we may charitably and to some extent allow uncertainty of human memory to go in extenuation.

Rising above the circle of cackling gossip, we know that, out of a dozen witnesses solemnly adjured to testify as to words spoken in simultaneous hearing of all the twelve, it is rare to find any three of them agreeing as to the precise form of locution used, even where they accord as to meaning and signification of the phrase they report.

We pass from the spoken to the written word, and are struck with the fact that, even in literature and in history, the too common neglect of conscientious accuracy of citations, in accepting them at second hand or from a questionable source, is the fruitful cause of wrong judgment of events, false estimate of men, and uncharitableness without end.

If it is sought to hold a man responsible for opinions which he has deliberately written and printed, he is in justice to be held answerable solely by his own record, neither more nor less. No occasion is there here for conflicting testimony. If arraigned for those opinions, let the accusation run—ipsissimis verbis—with what he has written. Otherwise, flaw fatal will be found, and indictment sternly quashed. Scripta manent—his opinions are recorded, and no subsequent version may be heard from him to vary the obligation therein assumed. Neither, therefore, in justice, shall you admit adverse parol testimony in guise of unfriendly gloss or explanation to hold him responsible for more than he has advanced or assumed.

With swift instinct, we all mistrust reported verbal utterances made by a man whose prejudice or whose passion evidently colors his memory and stimulates his imagination. And, although the excuse of mistake or misunderstanding is not admissible where the repetition or citation of printed words is concerned, yet, when a writer is quoted in the spirit of ridicule, blame, or sarcasm, it should suffice to put the reader on inquiry. Before he adopts and thereby vouches for the attributed phrase, let him look well to it that the text is not tampered with, and that the passage, as given, be not modified—not to say changed—by omission or addition. A mere comma too much or too little, as we well know, may make sad havoc with a sentence, and turn truth into falsehood.

Old authors, and even some few careful writers down to the present day, show their appreciation of this responsibility in quotation by intrenching themselves behind an apud in cases where, from any cause, they are unable to verify the correctness of the passage cited; thus throwing the burden of proof on the reporter named by them.

A remarkable instance of the neglect of some such precautions as are here mentioned may be found in a somewhat familiar citation made—and,[821] we may add, made celebrated—by no less a literary authority than Mr. Carlyle.

It occurs in one of his most admirable productions, entitled The State of German Literature.

This essay, which originally appeared, in 1827, as an article in the Edinburgh Review, is rich in literary research and vigorous thought.

It is valuable not only for what it says concerning German literature, but concerning all literature, and is most generally enjoyed and best remembered by reason of its eloquent pillorying and remorseless flagellation of one Père Bouhours, who, as Mr. Carlyle informs us, propounded to himself the pregnant question: Si un Allemand peut avoir de l'esprit? Indignantly the great Scotch essayist thus bursts out upon the unfortunate Frenchman: "Had the Père Bouhours bethought him of what country Kepler and Leibnitz were born, or who it was that gave to mankind the three great elements of modern civilization, gunpowder, printing, and the Protestant religion, it might have thrown light on his inquiry. Had he known the Niebelungen-Lied, and where Reinecke-Fuchs, and Faust, and the Ship of Fools, and four-fifths of all the popular mythology, humor, and romance to be found in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, took its rise; had he read a page or two of Ulrich Hutten, Opitz, Paul Flemming, Logan, or even Lobenstein and Hoffmanswaldau, all of whom had already lived and written even in his day; had the Père Bouhours taken this trouble, who knows but he might have found, with whatever amazement, that a German could actually have a little esprit, or, perhaps, even something better? No such trouble was requisite for the Père Bouhours. Motion in vacuo is well known to be speedier and surer than through a resisting medium, especially to imponderable bodies; and so the light Jesuit, unimpeded by facts or principles of any kind, failed not to reach his conclusions; and, in a comfortable frame of mind, to decide negatively that a German could not have any literary talent."

Now, if Père Bouhours really said what is here attributed to him, this fulmination, all obvious as it is, cannot be looked upon as unprovoked, and we may listen with sense of satisfied justice to the dreadful sentence pronounced upon him, which is substantially that, incarcerated in the immortal amber of this one untimely joke, the helpless Jesuit be doomed therein to live; "for the blessing of full oblivion is denied him, and so he hangs suspended to his own noose, over the dusky pool which he struggles toward, but for a great while will not reach." To these remarks Mr. Carlyle adds the very sensible reflection: "For surely the pleasure of despising, at all times and in itself a dangerous luxury, is much safer after the toil of examining than before it."

This condemnation and sentence are based on a detached phrase separated from its contexts, and Mr. Carlyle fails to tell us in what connection or in what work was made the unfortunate speech for which the French writer is thus beaten with many stripes.

Might it not be that, read in its proper relation, his words signify something very different from the interpretation placed upon them as here severed? So true is this that what Père Bouhours really wrote has a very different signification. Investigation demonstrates this and more, and shows that Père Bouhours not only did not mean to express what is here attributed to him, but that[822] he did not even use the words thus thrust upon him as his own.

Indeed, the ill-used Bouhours is introduced and dispatched so very summarily, that the reader of the Edinburgh essay scarcely obtains more than a glance of a literary criminal rapidly judged and sent to swift execution.

Let us see for a moment what manner of man this Bouhours appeared to the people of his day and generation. As then known, he was a writer of high reputation (hors ligne) and the author of several works, some of which are still read and republished. We find certain of his books on the shelves of our largest American libraries, and a few days since, in looking casually through a catalogue of publications made (1869) at the Armenian convent in Venice, an interesting spot well known to American travellers, we noted two editions of Bouhours's Christian Meditations, one in French and one in a Turkish translation.

Bouhours is also the author of a French translation of the entire New Testament, which is remarkable for its fidelity and its purity of diction.

It is the version adopted by Lallemant in his Reflections on the New Testament. He also wrote Remarks and Doubts concerning the French Language, and Ingenious Thoughts of the Fathers. His Manière de bien Penser is held by the best critics to contain much that evinces acuteness and delicacy of discrimination. Bouhours was always quoted and referred to by his contemporaries with deference.

His Life of St. Francis Xavier was found worthy of an English translation by no less a celebrity than the English poet Dryden; and La Harpe, who is openly unfriendly to Bouhours, says of him, "C'était un homme lettré qui savait l'Italien et l'Espagnol."

The passage incorrectly cited by Mr. Carlyle occurs in Les Entretiens a'Ariste et d'Eugène, a small duodecimo volume published in 1671.

These Entretiens or conversations are supposed to be held by two gentlemen of literary taste, who discuss a variety of subjects pertaining to polite literature.

One of these topics is the French language, which is assumed to be the best of all modern languages, possessing, as it does, the secret of uniting conciseness with clearness, and purity with politeness. On this question of his native tongue, the patriotism of Père Bouhours hurries him into terms of excessive praise. The French language, in his opinion, combines every excellence. The Spanish he characterizes as a noisy torrent flooding its banks and overspreading the country; the Italian, as a gentle rivulet; the French, a majestic stream that never quits its level.

The Spanish, again, he compares to a proud beauty, bold in demeanor and splendid in attire; the Italian, to a painted coquette, ever ornamented for effect; the French, to a modest, agreeable lady, who, if apparently prudish, is neither uncivil nor repulsive. Then, he adds, our own pronunciation is the most natural and pleasing.

Patriotism of so warm a character as this, after elevating French language and literature so freely at the expense of the Spanish and Italian, would hardly be likely to rate the German very high.

Accordingly, in view of the great preponderance of heavy though learned disquisition over that branch of German literature which might be classed as polished and witty, Père Bouhours did really propose the question,

—a proposition very far from identical with that which is attributed to him by Mr. Carlyle, namely:

The variation simply being that Bouhours did not, as here alleged, decide negatively that a German could not have any literary talent, but queried if a German could be a wit.

Hallam, seldom incorrect in such matters, presents the matter fairly in stating that the Père Bouhours "proposed the question whether a German can by the nature of things possess any wit."

The misrepresentation made is a serious one, and the citation as corrected deprives Mr. Carlyle's thunder of its noise, and extracts from his sarcasm all its sting.

We believe it was Thackeray who said that, notwithstanding his profound respect and deep veneration for the twelve apostles, they really were not the sort of persons he should care to invite to a festive dinner party.

Père Bouhours would doubtless, as readily as Mr. Carlyle, concede to Kepler and Leibnitz all the merit the most enthusiastic German could claim for these great men as shining lights of science, but would hardly credit them with the ability to write the Xenien or edit the Kladderadatsch.

When Bouhours published his Entretiens, it is very certain that, if German literature shone in wit, the fact was not known west of the Rhine. Indeed, Mr. Carlyle himself, a few paragraphs further on, unconsciously records the fullest vindication of Père Bouhours. With a patriotism quite as fervent as that of his victim, he informs us that "centuries ago translations from the German were comparatively frequent in England," but to support this statement can only cite Luther's Table Talk and Jacob Boehme. Enumeration most scant and melancholy! The essayist then goes on to say: "In the next century, indeed, translation ceased; but then it was, in a great measure, because there was little worth translating. The horrors of the Thirty Years' War had desolated the country; French influence, extending from the courts of princes to the closets of the learned, lay like a baleful incubus over the far nobler ruins of Germany; and all free nationality vanished from its literature, or was heard only in faint tones, which lived in the hearts of the people, but could not reach with any effect to the ears of foreigners."

But as though not satisfied with a general statement which should justify Père Bouhours, Mr. Carlyle continues until he makes the justification clear in terms and specific by dates, telling us: "From the time of Opitz and Flemming to that of Klopstock and Lessing, that is, from the early part of the seventeenth to the middle of the eighteenth century, they [the Germans] had scarcely any literature known abroad, or deserving to be known."

Now, Dominic Bouhours, born in Paris, 1628, asked the famous question, Si un Allemand peut être bel esprit? in 1671, and died in 1702. Thus his earthly career was comprised precisely within the period specified by Mr. Carlyle as that during which the Germans were without not only belles-lettres, but any literature whatever deserving to be known.

But, going back to the middle[824] ages, Mr. Carlyle, strangely enough holds Bouhours responsible, because of his want of familiarity with the Niebelungen-Lied, Reinecke-Fuchs, and other monuments of early German literature. "Had he known the Niebelungen-Lied" is asked mockingly. This is hardly just, when we reflect that no one better than Mr. Carlyle knows that Germany of the Bouhours period was itself, in the main, ignorant of and profoundly indifferent to the merits of these remarkable productions. Only long years afterward, following on ages of oblivion as to their very existence in their own country, were they brought to light, and it is principally owing to the exertions of the comparatively new Romantic school that modern Germany has been made acquainted with the Niebelungen-Lied and other great middle-age poems.

It is true that Bodmer in Switzerland first put a portion of the Niebelungen ("Chrimhilde's Revenge") in print, in 1757; but, as Mr. Carlyle has elsewhere informed us, it was August Wilhelm Schlegel who "succeeded in awakening something like a universal popular feeling on the subject," and he refers to this and the like poems as "manuscripts that for ages have lain dormant," and now come "from their archives into public view," "a phenomenon unexpected till of late"—stating that "the Niebelungen is welcomed as a precious national possession—recovered after six centuries of neglect." From which it would appear that, at his peril, Bouhours, in 1671, must be familiar with "a precious national possession" of the Germans, which they themselves, before and after that period, treated with "centuries of neglect." Being a Jesuit, it is, of course, eminently proper, according to a time-honored custom in English literature, that he should be made responsible for everything—the Spanish Inquisition and Original Sin included.

Mr. Carlyle patriotically closes his eyes to English ignorance and indifference touching German literature, even when claiming for Great Britain only a lesser density of ignorance concerning it than afflicted France.

Writing as late as 1827, he fairly admits that the literature and character of Germany "are still very generally unknown to us, or, what is worse, misknown," that its "false and tawdry ware" reached England before "the chaste and truly excellent," and that "Kotzebue's insanity spread faster by some fifty years than Lessing's wisdom." And the British ignorance, it is admitted, is not confined to German literature. "For what more do we know"—thus Mr. Carlyle clinches the question—"of recent Spanish or Italian literature than of German; of Grossi and Manzoni, of Campomanos or Jovellanos, than of Tieck and Richter?"

Really, when we contemplate the enlightened Englishman of 1827 thus held up to our gaze, how can we withhold from the abused Frenchman of 1671 our profound admiration?

Now, if, on reflection, Mr. Carlyle estimates the imputation on German literature of a lack of wit and humor as a serious offence—if he considers actionable and punishable Father Bouhours's query,

he need not go back two centuries for a criminal of whom to make an example. We have in custody for him one of this century—of this decade—nay, of this very year. He is a living culprit, and, moreover, a distinguished one. Here is a copy[825] of the words in which he offends, and, if we are not mistaken, he may be found in Mr. Carlyle's bailiwick: "There is, perhaps, no nation where the general standard of wit and humor is so low as with the Germans—no other people at least are so easily entertained with indifferent jokes" (Saturday Review, London, March 18, 1871).

OUR LADY OF LOURDES.

PART IX.
VII.

Here the bishop gives a summary of the apparitions. The reader is [826]aware of them already. Mgr. Laurence then proceeds to discuss the facts:

Our readers have not forgotten the breaking forth of the spring, at which Bernadette drank and washed, before the assembled crowds. It will be superfluous to repeat these details. The bishop continues:

VIII.

In the name of his see, or, rather, in that of the church, Mgr. Laurence purchased from the town of Lourdes the grotto and the surrounding lands, and the whole group of Massabielle rocks. M. Lacadé was still mayor. He it was who proposed to the municipal council to cede to the church, the bride of Christ, those places which had been consecrated for ever by the appearance of his heavenly Mother. He, also, signed the deed of transfer.

M. Rouland authorized the sale, and also the erection of a church in perpetual memory of the apparition of the Blessed Virgin to Bernadette Soubirous, in memory of the fountain and the numberless miracles which had attested the heavenly visions.

While the vast temple dedicated to the Immaculate Conception was slowly rising, stone upon stone, Our Lady of Lourdes continued to shower blessings and graces upon her clients. At Paris and Bordeaux, in Perigord, Brittany, and Anjou, amid solitary and rural scenes and in the heart of popular cities, Our Lady of Lourdes was invoked, and answered with unquestionable signs of her power and goodness.

Before closing our recital and presenting the picture of things as they now exist, let us narrate two of these divine histories. One of them forms an episode in the life of the writer of these pages which nothing can ever efface from his memory. We give it as we wrote it down nearly seven years ago.

PART X.
I.

During my whole life, I had always enjoyed the blessing of good sight. I was able to distinguish objects at a great distance, and also to read with ease when my book was close to my eyes. I never suffered the least weakness of sight after whole nights passed in study. I often wondered and rejoiced at the strength and clearness of my vision. Thus, it was[830] a great surprise and a cruel disenchantment when in June and July, 1862, I felt my eyesight becoming gradually weak, unable to work at night, and, finally, incapable of any use, so that I was obliged to give up altogether reading and writing. If I chanced to pick up a book, after reading three or four lines, sometimes at the first glance, I felt such weakness in the upper part of my eyes as to render it impossible to continue. I consulted several physicians, and principally the two famous oculists, Desmares and Giraud-Teulon.

The remedies prescribed by them were of little or no avail. After a slight rest, and a treatment principally composed of iron, I had a slight respite, and once read during a considerable portion of the afternoon. But, the following day, I relapsed into my former condition. Then I began to try local remedies, applications of cold water on the ball of the eye, cupping on the neck, a general hydropathic treatment, and alcoholic lotions around the eyes. Sometimes I experienced a slight relief from the weariness which generally oppressed them, but this was only for a moment. In short, my disease assumed all the appearances of a chronic and incurable malady.

According to advice, I condemned my eyes to absolute repose. Not content with putting on blue eye-glasses, I had left Paris, and was living in the country with my mother, at Coux, on the banks of the Dordogne. I had taken with me a young person, who acted as my secretary, writing at my dictation, and who read to me the books which I wished to consult.

September had arrived. This state had lasted for three months. I began to be seriously alarmed. I felt a gloomy foreboding which I dared not communicate to any one. My family shared the same apprehensions, but likewise shrank from manifesting them. We were both convinced that my sight was gone, but both sought to reassure one another, and to conceal our mutual anxiety.

I had a most intimate friend, in whom I had confided from boyhood all my joys and sorrows. I dictated to my secretary a letter to him, in which I described my sad condition, and the fears which I had for the future. The friend of whom I speak is a Protestant, as is also his wife. This twofold circumstance requires to be mentioned. Grave reasons prevent me from giving his name. We shall call him M. de ——.

He answered my letter a few days afterward. His letter reached me on the fifteenth of September, and surprised me greatly. I transcribe it here, without changing a word:

"My Dear Friend: Your few lines gave me great pleasure; but, as I have told you before, I long to hear from you in your own handwriting. A few days ago, as I returned from Cauterets, I passed through Lourdes (in the neighborhood of Tarbes). I visited the famous grotto, and heard about the extraordinary things that have been taking place there, and the cures produced by the waters in cases of diseased eyes. I earnestly recommend you to try it. If I were like you, a believing Catholic, and laboring under any illness, I would certainly try this chance. If it be true that invalids have been suddenly cured, perhaps your name may swell the number. If it be not true, where is the risk? I may add that I am personally interested in this matter. If the experiment succeeds, what an important fact for me to face! I would be in the presence of a miraculous event, or, at any rate, an event[831] whose principal witness would be above all suspicion."

"It appears," he added in post-script, "that it is not necessary to go to Lourdes itself to take the water there, since you can have it sent. It is only necessary to ask the curé of Lourdes; he will forward it without delay. Certain conditions have to be fulfilled of which I am not perfectly informed, but of which the curé of Lourdes will tell you. Ask him also to send you the little pamphlet by the vicar-general of Tarbes, which gives an account of the miracles that have been most thoroughly proved."

This letter of my friend was well calculated to fill me with astonishment. His was an exact, positive, and at the same time a lofty mind, not at all liable to the illusions of enthusiasm, and, besides, he was a Protestant. Such a piece of advice coming from him, in such an urgent manner, filled me with amazement. However, I resolved not to follow it.

"It seems to me," I replied, "that I am to-day a little better. If this improvement continues, I shall not have need of your proposed and extraordinary remedy, for which, besides, I have not, perhaps, the necessary faith."

And here, I must confess, not without a blush, the secret motives of my resistance.

Whatever I may have said, it was not faith which was lacking; and, although ignorant of particulars concerning the water of Lourdes, except through the impertinent remarks of certain ill-disposed journals, I was certain that the power of God could be manifested by cures here as well as elsewhere. I will say more: I had a secret presentiment that if I tried this water, springing, as some said, in consequence of an apparition of the Blessed Virgin, I should be cured. But, to tell the simple truth, I feared the responsibility of such a favor. "If the doctor cures you," I said to myself, "every account is squared as soon as you have handed him his fee. You will be in the same condition as everybody else. But if God cures you by a special act of his providence, it will be quite another affair, and you will have to amend your life and become a saint. If God gives you back those eyes of yours with his own hands, how can you ever let them rest upon objects which draw you away from him? God will demand his fee; and it will amount to more than the doctor's. You must give up this and that bad habit, you must acquire such and such virtues, and others that you know nothing of. How will you do all this? Ah! this is too hard!" And my miserable heart, fearing its own weakness, nevertheless resisted the grace of God.

Thus it was I rebelled against the counsel given me to have recourse to this miraculous intervention—against that counsel which Providence, ever hidden in its ways, sent me by two Protestants, two heretics, outside the church. But my struggles and resistance were vain. An interior voice told me that the hand of man was powerless to cure me, and that the Master whom I had offended would return me my sight, and lead me to a new life, if I would make up my mind to use it well.

In the early part of October, I was obliged to go to Paris. By an unlooked-for chance, M. de —— and his wife were there at the same time. My first visit was to them. My friend was staying at his sister's, Madame P——, who lived, together with her husband, in Paris.

"And how are your eyes?" asked[832] Madame de —— as soon as I had entered the parlor.

"But why have you not tried the remedy that I proposed? I have a strange hope that you will be cured."

"Pshaw!" I replied; "I confess that, without precisely denying or showing myself hostile, I have but little faith in this water and apparition. It is perfectly possible, I admit; but as I have not examined the matter, I neither assert nor contest; I wash my hands of the whole affair, and do not intend to have anything to do with it."

"You have no valid objections," he answered. "According to your religious principles, you are bound to believe at least the possibility of such things. Very well, then, what is to prevent you from making a trial? What is it going to cost you? It can't do you any harm, for it is nothing but natural water. Now, since you believe in miracles and in your religion, it seems to me that you ought to be moved by two Protestants; and I frankly confess that, if you are cured, it will be a terrible argument against me." Madame de —— joined her entreaties to those of her husband. M. and Madame P——, who are Catholics, insisted as warmly. I was driven to my last entrenchments.

"Well," said I at last, "let me tell you the whole truth. I do not lack faith, but I am full of weaknesses, faults, and a thousand miseries which are entwined with the most sensitive fibres of my nature. Now, a miracle would lay upon me the obligation of giving up everything and trying to become a saint; and I do not feel equal to the responsibility. If God cures me, how do I know what he will ask of me? But if the doctor succeeds, we can settle the matter with money. You think this is disgraceful, I know; but it is nothing but the truth. You have supposed that my faith has been wavering. You have thought that I feared lest the miracle should not succeed. It is not so. I should be only afraid that it might succeed."

My friends vainly tried to convince me that I was exaggerating the responsibility of which I spoke.

"You are none the less obliged to seek after virtue now than if the miracle had been already worked," said M. de ——. "Besides, supposing the physician does cure you, it will be none the less a favor from God; and you will have just the same reasons for struggling against your faults and passions."

This did not seem to me perfectly true; and the logical mind of M. de —— probably admitted as much to itself; but he was bent upon calming my apprehensions and inducing me to follow his advice.

Vainly did I endeavor to combat the pressing earnestness of my host and his wife, and my friends. I ended by promising to do whatever they desired.

"As soon as I get a secretary, I will write to Lourdes; but it is too late at this hour of the day."

"Very well," said I, "come and breakfast with me to-morrow at the Café de Foy. I will dictate the letter after breakfast."

Paper and ink were at hand. I dictated a letter to the curé of Lourdes. It was posted that evening.

The next day, M. de —— came to see me. "My dear friend," he said, "since the die is cast, and you[833] are going to try this experiment, you ought to go seriously to work, and fulfil the conditions which are required in order to make a success. You must pray. You will have to go to confession, and put your mind in the proper state. You know that all this is a prime necessity."

"You are right," I replied; "I will do as you say. But you must acknowledge that you are a queer Protestant. The tables are turned; to-day you are preaching to me my own faith and religion, and I own the contrast is not much to my advantage."

"I am a man of science," he answered. "It is perfectly natural that I should wish to see all the conditions carried out, since we have agreed to try an experiment. I should act in this manner if we were dealing with physics or chemistry."

I confess, to my shame, I did not prepare myself as my friend had so wisely advised me. I was in a very poor spiritual condition; my soul was distracted and turned to evil. I recognized the necessity of throwing myself at the feet of God; but, as I had not been guilty of gross and brutal sins, against which nature reacts with such violence, I delayed from day to day. Man is more rebellious against the sacrament of penance while he is being tempted, than after he has been crushed and humbled by the sight of his crime. It is more difficult to combat and resist than to ask for mercy after defeat. Who does not know this?

A week passed in this manner. M. and Mme. de —— inquired daily if I had heard any news of the miraculous water, or any word from the curé of Lourdes. Finally, I received a note from him to the effect that the water had been forwarded by rail, and would shortly reach me.

We awaited its arrival with great eagerness; but, strange to say, my Protestant friends were much more impatient than I. The state of my eyes continued the same. It was absolutely impossible for me to read or write.

One morning, Friday, October 10, 1862, I was waiting for M. de —— in the Orleans Gallery at the Palais Royal. We breakfasted together. As I had come to the place of meeting some time in advance of him, I employed myself in looking about the shops and reading the list of new books in front of Dentu's library. This was enough to weary my eyes. They had become so weak that I could not let them rest upon the largest signs without feeling them overpowered by lassitude. This little circumstance made me quite sad, as it showed me the extent of my malady.

In the afternoon I dictated three letters to De ——, and, at four o'clock, having left him, returned to my lodgings. As I was going up-stairs, the porter called to me.

"A little box has come for you from the railroad." I entered his store-room eagerly. There was a small pine box, bearing my name and address on one end, and on the other these words, doubtless intended for the custom-house officials, "Natural Water."

"Very well," said I to the porter, "I will take it in a few moments; I will return shortly." I stepped out again into the street.

"This matter is becoming serious," I said to myself. "De —— is right; I must prepare myself. In my present state, I have no right to ask God to work a miracle. I must set to work to heal my own soul before I can ask him to heal my body."

Reflecting on these considerations, I directed my steps toward the house of my confessor, the Abbé Ferrand de Missol, who lived quite near me. I felt certain of finding him in, for it was Friday, and he is always at home on that day. So indeed he was upon this occasion.

But several persons were waiting to see him, whose turn would naturally come before mine. Some member of his family had just arrived on an unexpected visit. His servant informed me of all this, and asked me to call again in the evening about seven o'clock.

As I came to the street-door, I paused for an instant. I wavered between the desire of paying a visit which I had greatly at heart and the thought of returning home to pray. I was very much inclined to the distraction, but finally the good inspiration carried the day, and I returned toward the Rue Seine.

I took from the porter the little box, to which was attached a notice of the apparition at Lourdes, and, with both in my hand, I hastened up-stairs. On reaching my room, I knelt down at my bedside and prayed, all unworthy as I was to turn my eyes toward heaven. Then I arose. On entering, I had placed the little box and the pamphlet upon the mantelpiece. I gazed a moment upon the little case which contained the mysterious water, and it seemed to me that some great event was about to transpire in this lonely chamber. I feared to touch with impure hands the wood which contained this hallowed water, and yet, on the other hand, I felt a lively desire to open it at once, and not wait until after I had been to confession. This indecision lasted for a few moments, and ended with this prayer:

"O my God! I am a wretched sinner, unworthy of raising my voice to you, or of touching that which you have blessed. But this very excess of misery ought to excite your compassion. My God, I come to you and to the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, full of faith and reliance upon you, and from the depths I cry to you. This evening I will confess my sins to your minister, but my faith will not suffer me to wait. Pardon me, Lord, and heal me. And you, O Mother of Mercy! come to the help of your unhappy child!"

And, feeling strengthened by my prayer, I opened the box. It contained a bottle of pure water. I uncorked it, poured some of the water into a glass, and took a napkin from the drawer.

These commonplace preparations, which I made with care, were accompanied by a secret solemnity, the memory of which still haunts me. In that room I was not alone. God was there certainly; and the Blessed Virgin, whom I had invoked, was also there.

Ardent faith inflamed my soul. When all was ready, I knelt down again. "O Blessed Virgin Mary!" I cried in a loud voice, "heal my physical and spiritual blindness." Saying these words, with a heart full of confidence, I bathed successively both eyes and my forehead with the napkin which I had dipped in the water. This did not occupy more than half a minute.

Judge of my astonishment—I had almost said my terror! Scarcely had I touched my eyes and forehead with the miraculous water than I felt myself cured, at once, without transition, with a suddenness which I can compare only to lightning.

Strange contradiction of human nature! A moment before I had trusted my faith, which promised me a cure; now, I could not believe my[835] senses, which assured me that the cure had been worked.

No! I did not believe my senses. In spite of the startling effect which had been wrought upon me, I committed the fault of which Moses was guilty, and struck the rock twice. I continued to bathe my eyes and forehead, not daring to open them, not daring to verify my cure. At the end of ten minutes, however, the strength which I felt in my eyes, and the absence of all heaviness, left no chance for doubt. "I am cured!"

So saying, I snatched up a book. "No," said I, "that is not the book for me to be reading at this moment." Then I took from the mantelpiece the Account of the Apparitions at Lourdes. I read a hundred and four pages without stopping or feeling the least fatigue. Twenty minutes before, I could not have read three lines. Indeed, if I stopped at the hundred-and-fourth page, it was only because it was thirty-five minutes past five o'clock, and at this hour in October it is almost dark in Paris. When I laid aside my book, the gas was being lighted in the shops of the street in which I lived.

That evening, I made my confession to the Abbé Ferrand, and acquainted him with the great gift which I had received from the Blessed Virgin. Although in no degree prepared, he wished me to go to communion the next day, to thank God for such an extraordinary favor, and to strengthen the good resolutions which it had caused to spring up in my soul.

M. and Mme. de —— were, as one may imagine, greatly moved by this event, in which Providence had assigned them so direct a part. What did they think of it? What reflections were suggested to their minds? What took place in the depth of their hearts? That secret belongs only to them and to God. What little I have been able to make out, I am not at liberty to publish.

Be this as it may, I know my friend's nature. I left him to his own thoughts, without urging him to the conclusion. I knew, and still know, that God has his own time and his own ways. His action was so manifest throughout the whole affair that I did not wish to interfere, although my friends have never been ignorant of my desire to see them enter the only church which contains God in his fulness.

I regret not being able to consider these two beings—so dear to me—as receiving from the reaction of the miracle of which I had been the object the first shocks which truth gives to those whom it seeks to conquer.

Seven years have now passed since my miraculous cure. My sight is excellent. Neither reading nor hard work, even when kept up late at night, wearies my eyes. God grant me never to use them save in the cause of right.

AMERICA'S OBLIGATIONS TO FRANCE.

The woes and crimes of unhappy France have attracted the mixed regards of the world; it has become an agreeable and timely diversion to look away from the distressing picture, to find whatever there is of compensation in the glories and virtues of her past; and the occasion is thus created to review our own obligations as a nation to this now stricken and humbled European power, and to determine how much we are indebted to France for our own independence and liberty. Another interest is added to the occasion in the fact that this part of our history has been but scantily told, and that, as the writer is persuaded, our national vanity, notoriously accumulated as it is about everything belonging to the Revolutionary period, has hitherto prevented a fair and full confession of the obligations referred to—has diminished the story, if not actually misrepresented it. But it is a mistaken vanity, the very opposite of a manly pride. A sentiment of the illustrious Lafayette fits in here. A citizen of both France and America, he stood between the two, and spoke happily for each, saying: "Comme un Français, dont le cœur brûle de patriotisme, je me réjouis du rôle que la France a joué, et de l'alliance qu'elle a fait. Comme Americain, je reconnais l'obligation, et je crois qu'en cela consiste la vraie dignité."

The severe truth of history and the constraints of true dignity alike compel the statement, that but for the French interposition the cause of the American colonists was likely to be lost; at least, that our independence would not have been obtained when it was, and as completely as it was, but for the succors of France. And this proposition, the writer thinks, may be made out from a summary view of the history of the period, yet calling attention to some facts that do not appear hitherto to have been calculated.

Accustomed as we are, in looking back upon the history of our Revolutionary struggle, to dwell upon its last signal triumphs, and naturally disposed to measure the preceding events by the conclusion, it is difficult for us of this day to realize how narrowly it avoided defeat, and in what extremity it at one time hesitated. In the winter of 1780, and at a time when the aid of France was most urgently implored, the American cause was almost at its last gasp. Many of its leaders had secretly despaired of it, and found it difficult to impose upon the public the countenance of hope. In a private letter, Mr. Madison wrote: "How a total dissolution of the army can be prevented in the course of the winter" [1780-1781] "is, for any resources now in prospect, utterly inexplicable." There was no money to pay the troops; and the fact was that the war was no longer kept up but by ill-digested and dilatory expedients. Meanwhile, the fate of arms accumulated against the colonists, and the fortunes of the field were as bad as the embarrassments of the interior administration. The more Southern States appeared to be already lost by[837] the irruptions of the enemy upon an indefensible coast; and the whole army of General Greene was soon to be in full retreat before Lord Cornwallis through the State of North Carolina.

The two great wants of the colonists, and which had become vital, were money and a fleet. "The sinews of war" were nearly spent. The paper money of Congress was fast becoming worthless; the resource to specific requisitions was a mere indirection as long as the states supplied them by paper emissions of their own; and of this resource it was prophesied in Congress that "what was intended for our relief will only hasten our destruction."

The want of a counterpoise to the naval power of England was the main point of the military situation. Here was a fatal weakness; and events had progressed far enough to show that the hope of a decisive field anywhere in the colonies depended upon their maintaining a naval superiority in the American seas. In weighing the chances of the war, the configuration of the American territory is to be studied; and how vulnerable it was from the water had already been proved by the events of the war. At the time of the Revolution, the breadth of the American settlements from the Penobscot to the Altamaha did not average more than a hundred miles from the sea-line. This jagged strip of territory, traversed by estuaries and navigable streams, was so accessible to the enemy's vessels, that his navy might be considered as constantly equivalent to a second army operating on the flank of that engaged on shore. Wherever Washington might move, this apparition would cling to him—his flank constantly threatened, and every movement he made on land compelled to calculate the possibility of a counter-movement by the English fleet that hovered on the coast, and might develop an attack with greater expedition than he could change his front to meet it. It was the thorn in his side. When the baffled American commander spoke of retiring into the mountains of Virginia for a last desperate stand, it was not a rhetorical flourish, as it has generally been accounted, but a true military appreciation of the situation—the necessity of a barrier against the naval power of the enemy. If that barrier could be made on the water by the interposition of a fleet, then he would be (what he had not hitherto been) free to operate on the land, and make there a field that might be decisive. But the element of any such strategic combination was naval supremacy, and, until that was obtained, he could only hope at best for a desultory warfare, with constant exposure to a risk that he could neither meet nor avoid.

Now, the two vital wants of America—a foreign loan and a naval armament—were those which were precisely supplied by France. A foreign loan of specie, to the amount of twenty-five millions of livres, was asked of his Most Christian Majesty; and Franklin, reinforced by Col. Laurens, was instructed to impress the French king and his ministers with the especial need of a demonstration against the naval power of England. The succors were granted, and were beyond the expectations of the colonists. In July, 1780, the first French expedition, under the command of the Count Rochambeau, landed at Newport. And from that moment a new hope commenced for America, and a new inspiration was to bring to sudden buoyancy a sinking cause. The French force, however, was held inoperative for some time for the want of a sufficient navy to co-operate;[838] and to this end the supplications of Congress to the French monarch had been redoubled. The expedition of Rochambeau consisted of five thousand men. It was to be reinforced by a fleet from the West Indies; but the orders had miscarried; and it was more than a year later when the second instalment of French aid was made available, and the conditions realized which fixed the last field of the war, and secured that final victory to which the French aids, by land and by water, were each indispensable. To this second aid reference will be made in its order.

Usually, a foreign contingent is not the best of the military material which a country may afford. The hireling and the adventurer enter largely into its composition, and its standard of service is low and suspicious. But this common imputation could not be cast on the expeditionary corps under Rochambeau. It was of the flower of the French army, and nobility did not disdain the service of the infant Republic. The illustrious Lafayette stood by himself, being a volunteer, and independent of the action of the royal forces. "The Marquis," as Washington never failed to punctiliously call him, won all hearts in America; and, though accused by Thomas Jefferson, who, however, was habitually envious, of having "a canine thirst for popularity," there is good reason to believe that he was actuated by a solid attachment to liberty and inspired by generous motives. Anyhow, he was destined, as we shall see, to perform one of the most brilliant and critical services of the Revolution. The Count Rochambeau was never popular in America; his manners were haughty, and he had a military exclusiveness; but he was an excellent soldier, and at one time he gave a striking example of his deference to republican principles in submitting to be arrested, in a group of his officers, at the hands of a petty county constable, on the complaint of a New England farmer for some acts of petty "trespass" on his fields! In his command, landed at Newport, there were names already illustrious in France, or destined to become so. Of such names were the Chevalier de Chastellux, performing the duties of major-general in the expeditionary corps, an encyclopædist and the friend of Voltaire; Berthier, afterwards risen from the rank of an under-officer to be a marshal of France and minister of war; the Count de Ségur, celebrated in literary as well as military life; the Duke de Lauzun, afterwards a general of the French Republic; the Count de Dillon, who, a few years later, met a tragic fate at the hands of the Revolutionary party in France; Pichegru, then a private in the ranks of the artillery; Matthieu Dumas, subsequently a peer of France; Aubert-Dubayet, afterwards minister of war under the French Republic; the Prince de Broglie, afterwards field-marshal, and one of the victims of the Revolutionary tribunal of 1794, etc.

Of the character of the soldiers we have some pleasant and vivid contemporary testimony. The idea which the sturdy American colonist, the backwoodsman with his Tower musket, had formed in advance of the French soldier, was not altogether a complimentary one. It was generally a caricature, popular at that day, of a dapper, ill-contrived individual who made ridiculous mistakes in the English language, ate frogs, memorable in the lampoon of Hogarth as toasting one of the amphibious at the end of a rapier, and had but the one virtue to make amends for his eccentricities—a courage that was unquestionable, though grotesque and physically[839] inefficient. The picture was dispelled at the sight of Rochambeau's veterans—men who equalled in stature and in strength the best that England could display, who were inured to hardship and fatigue such as were scarcely supported by the green backwoodsman, and who marched hundreds of miles with an order and steadiness that never failed to be admirable. Mr. Madison, who saw these troops file through Philadelphia, after the fatigues of a march from the banks of the Hudson River, thus testifies his impressions of the spectacle: "Nothing can exceed the appearance of this specimen which our ally has sent us of his army, whether we regard the figure of the men or the exactness of their discipline."

Such was the brilliancy and the solid worth of the first contributions of France to her feeble ally. To estimate the motives and spirit of such aids, what influences ranged an old and brilliant monarchy by the side of an infant Republic branded with "rebellion," and intertwined flags so opposite, it will be well to review the relations of the parties to an alliance so strange and exceptional.

France had no interests to cultivate in America, no objects of ambition to secure in a quarter of the world from which she had deliberately withdrawn. Her flag had not appeared there since the Treaty of Paris in 1756, and her subsequent cession to Spain of her possessions on the Mississippi left her, for the present, disembarrassed of all territorial claims and interests in America. She had no reason for any affection for the English colonists now asserting their independence; they were the sons of those who had fought against her; the traditions of the colonial wars in America were yet fresh. On the side of the rebel colonists themselves, there was a suspicion of France—at least, no disposition to expect any generosity from her in the struggle that was to ensue. So little was that part expected which she did eventually take in the American Revolution, that Patrick Henry (incredible as the fact may appear to those who have read only eulogiums on this person) actually retreated at the last from the Declaration of Independence, from fear of France and her co-operation to subdue the colonies. In a letter to John Adams, written five days after the Virginia Convention had adopted the famous resolution of the 15th May, 1776, for independence, he dwells upon the apprehension that France might be seduced to take sides against the colonies by an offer from England to divide the territories of America between them. It was an unworthy suspicion; but Mr. Henry, who had but little originality, and was a characteristic retailer of popular impressions, was probably in this imputation upon France the echo of a thought common at the time.

No grounds of sympathy were yet apparent between France and the struggling colonists; nothing, as far as the men of 1776 should see, but recollections of old animosity and present causes for distrust. Even the sympathy of religion, which has proved such a fruitful source of international friendships and alliances, where there have been no other points of coincidence, was wanting; instead of it, a sharp antagonism was the fact. Protestant America, many parts of it yet fresh with the persecution of Catholics, had no reason to expect favors from Catholic France. Indeed, when those favors were given, there was some discontented and ungrateful outcry that it was a design upon the religion of the colonists; so deeply sown was the distrust of France. There were those to object that Congress had attended a Mass,[840] and that the municipal authorities of Boston had, on some occasion, walked in a Catholic procession. The traitor, Benedict Arnold, in casting about for reasons to defend his treason, could find none more plausible, or, in his estimation, more likely to be received, than that the French alliance was about to betray the religion of the colonists, and that he, therefore, had determined to take refuge in Protestant England! Such an appeal to popular prejudice was doubtless extravagant, even more so than that of Patrick Henry accusing France; but both show the extent of estrangement and suspicion which France had to overcome before she could convince America of her friendship and generosity. And, unfortunately, as we shall presently painfully see, such suspicion was never entirely overcome, but was to remain to disfigure the last page of the history of the Revolution, and to attach to it a story of permanent disgrace to America.

When the colonies implored the aid of France, through an address of Congress in November, 1780, the appeal showed an extremity and temper of the colonists which suggested that almost any price would be paid for the necessary succors. How far the French monarch might have availed himself of the necessities of his suppliant ally, had he been selfish enough to make these the measure of his demands, is a conjecture almost illimitable. To purchase the aid of Spain, the American Congress had been willing to retract former resolutions, and to offer the almost priceless boon of the exclusive navigation of the Mississippi; and it was only the fatuity and blindness of that power that had prevented the fatal concession. Was the aid of France worth less? and was the temper of concession not to be practised upon by herself?

It has been usual to give a very summary and cold explanation of the aids which France furnished the American cause, by pointing out its effect to cripple her powerful and hereditary foe, England; thus detracting from the generosity of the contribution, and representing it as a mere move on the diplomatic chess-board which the French monarch could not do otherwise than make. But this detraction does not hold good. Admitting the full force of the reasons which it imputes to France, there is much in her alliance with America that is yet left unexplained; and there are circumstances which make it one of the most peculiar and unique examples of generosity recorded in history. It has not been unusual for powerful nations to assist the weak on no other ground of sympathy than having a foe in common; but it has seldom been the case that such aid has been rendered without the powerful ally exacting terms for her own contribution, and turning to her own advantage the necessities she has been called upon to aid. England herself had afforded a precedent for the price of such concessions. She had asked of the United Provinces, for the price of her support against Spain, that all her expenses should be repaid, and that the towns and fortresses of Holland should be held by her as pledges for the conditions of the alliance. France would have been sustained by historical example, and by moral right, in exacting very important concessions for her aid of the American cause in circumstances in which that aid was deemed vital for the success of a struggle that already bordered on despair. She asked nothing. She gave an army and a fleet, and bore all the expenses of both armaments. She advanced money and replenished the almost empty treasury of her ally.[841] And she yet enlarged the generosity of her alliance by devoting her arms, not only to a common operation, but pledging at the outset the indispensable conclusion of her exertions in the independence of America and the territorial integrity of the States. In the Treaty of 1778, "the direct and essential end" of the alliance was declared to be "the liberty, sovereignty, and independence, absolute and unlimited, of the United States."

The arms of France were thus given directly to a cause of republican liberty rather than merely involved in a diplomatic complication. What reasons could have induced this apparent excess of generosity, this singular spectacle of the ancient monarchy of the Franks taking sides with the infant republic of the Anglo-Saxon colonists of America?

The explanation is that the French aid was a contribution of the people of France rather than that of its crown. It sprung out of the popular heart rather than the grace of a kind and munificent monarch; and it has this circumstance of a tender and imperishable souvenir to the American people. It was a free love-offering, the first dedication of their cause in the sympathies of the world. That republican sentiment which a few years later in France sprang into such fierce life, was already deeply harbored in the hearts of her people; and the movement of the American colonists gave it an opportunity of comparatively safe expression; while all the romance of such a sentiment found abundant material in the circumstances of the struggle, the distance of the theatre, its scenery bordered by savage life, the novelty of a people whose history was entirely unique, and whose simplicity of manners suggested comparisons with classical antiquity. The enthusiasm of the French mind seized every attractive circumstance of the occasion. It was entitled "the crusade of the eighteenth century." Again, it was adorned with recollections more antique, and it was said that "the Republic of Plato" had at last found realization in the midst of a people whose exclusive situation had been a school for virtues hitherto unknown, and was to afford an experiment that had until then lingered in the speculations of philosophy and the dreams of poetry. The simplicity of American manners was taken as a charming contrast to the court splendors of Paris and Versailles. It was not only Franklin's cotton stockings, but every peculiarity of the American citizen became a picturesque study and the symbol of a new political life. The memoirs of the Count de Ségur are among the contemporary testimonies of the rage in the French capital for everything American; and we are specially told of "cet air antique qui semblant transporter tout-a-coup dans nos murs, au milieu de la civilisation amollie et servile au dix-huitième siècle, quelques sages contemporans de Platon, on des republicains du temps de Caton et de Fabius!"

Of the operations of the allied arms, our space only affords such a sketch as may give some general idea of the extent and value of the French aid. Washington had at first proposed, on the arrival of Rochambeau, to attempt the repossession of New York City, and to crush there the main body of the British army. But the failure to arrive of the naval forces expected from Brest and the West Indies disconcerted the plan; and events were preparing another theatre for the final catastrophe. The British post and army in Virginia became the objective point of the allied arms. The long-expected French fleet was at last assured; it[842] was to make its appearance in the Chesapeake; and Washington prepared to move his army from the banks of the Hudson to the distant scene of co-operation. From a temporary observatory on the heights near Newburg, the anxious commander watched his army crossing the blue stream; and as he mounted his horse, to put himself at the head of a march that was to toil over many hundreds of miles to find a last and effulgent field, far away in Virginia, he wrung the hand of a French officer who stood in the group around him, as expressing the new hope that had dawned in his face, and repledging the alliance that was to win its realization. And now ensued a combination of circumstances, in each one of which the French arms determined a crisis, and displayed a dramatic spectacle.

Lafayette, "the boy" in Cornwallis's estimation, "the tutelary genius of American independence," as he has been designated by a Virginian historian and statesman (William C. Rives), was sent forward to Virginia, to hold in check there the haughty enemy. Washington had given to this young Frenchman supreme command of the operations in Virginia. He justified a trust which the pride of the state might possibly resent, in his own estimate of the qualities of the noble foreigner. In a private letter to a Congressman of Virginia (Jones) he wrote: "The Marquis possesses uncommon military talents; is of a quick and sound judgment; persevering and enterprising without rashness; and, besides these, he is of a very conciliating temper, and perfectly sober—which are qualities that rarely combine in the same person. And were I to add that some men will gain as much experience in the course of three or four years as some others will in ten or a dozen, you cannot deny the fact, and attack me upon that ground." Lafayette was elevated over the heads of both General Wayne and the Baron de Steuben.

When the Frenchman came to the defence of Virginia, she was well-nigh conquered. She was open in every direction to the enterprise of the invader. Her public men were recreant, and under the suspicion of cowardice. One of her most faithful censors has recorded the delinquency of the times. In a letter dated the 6th November, 1780, Judge Pendleton wrote: "We had no House of Delegates on Saturday last, which, with our empty treasury, are circumstances unfavorable at this juncture. Mr. Henry has resigned his seat in Congress; and I hear Mr. Jones intends it. It is also said the governor intends to resign. It is a little cowardly to quit our posts in a bustling time." The city of Richmond, for which was to be reserved in history stains beyond any other American city, was ready to submit tamely to another occupation. The fact is, painful as the confession may be to the Virginian of to-day—offending the pride of a state that has almost invidiously claimed her part in the Revolution—Virginia had grown reluctant in the war, and disposed to have recourse to unworthy expedients. She had been prominent in Congress to recommend the surrender of the navigation of the Mississippi in order to buy the alliance of Spain. She had twice proposed a dictatorship; and now, when Cornwallis was advancing, and Mr. Jefferson was resigning the governorship, and suspicion, as we have seen, had fallen on other leaders in the "bustling times," no less a person than Richard Henry Lee, then in retirement at Westmoreland, was willing to surrender the liberties of Virginia to a dictator as the only resource of safety! Now,[843] the state had nothing between her and the public enemy than the twelve hundred bayonets of Lafayette. The address and skill of the young Frenchman saved the Old Dominion from a subjection that would, otherwise, have been complete, as far as the swift arms of Cornwallis could have overrun the state.

Lafayette had retired to the Rapidan as the imposing and triumphant army of Cornwallis advanced on Richmond. Here, joined by the Pennsylvania troops under General Wayne and a body of riflemen from the western part of Virginia, he was able to retrace his steps, and to press Cornwallis's retreat towards the Chesapeake. Extricating himself from an unequal engagement at Jamestown, he moved up the river, and reposed at Malvern Hill—since celebrated as a refuge in a greater contest of arms. Subsequently, at Williamsburg, he was joined by the allied forces under Washington and Rochambeau—and then commenced the combination that was to compass Cornwallis, and to constitute the last splendid scene of the war.

It was a broad scene. On the 30th of August, 1781, twenty-eight line-of-battle ships, bearing the flag of France, rode on the beautiful expanse of the Chesapeake. They had come from the West Indies. Eight other ships suddenly appeared from the opposite point of the compass: the French squadron from Rhode Island, which had entered the Chesapeake, in spite of the efforts of the English admirals to intercept it. The Ville de Paris, the flag-ship of the French admiral, had held in council the great actors of the drama—Washington, Rochambeau, and the Count de Grasse; and it only remained to draw the lines, by sea and land, around the despairing enemy. The splendid fleet of France was the barrier between Cornwallis and the succors that Sir Henry Clinton had promised from New York. It was the element of victory—the apparition of a new hope risen from the seas. On the other wing of the scene floated the flags of Washington and Rochambeau. On the land were the splendid armies of France side by side with the militia of the young republic, and almost as numerous as the soldiers, a vast concourse of country people, watching the sublime wonders of a bombardment that laced the night skies, and enchanted by the music of the French timbrel, an instrument then unknown in America. Three French commands, those of the Count Rochambeau, the Marquis de Lafayette, and the Marquis de Saint-Simon, stood on the field of Yorktown.

In this circle, made possible only by the links of the French aid, went down the flag of Cornwallis and the hopes of England. It was a memorable scene, and one which brought into strong relief the assistance of our ally. In a letter to General Washington from Mr. Jefferson, who had just retired from the gubernatorial chair of Virginia, the distinguished patriot, after offering his congratulations, justly wrote: "If in the minds of any, the motives of gratitude to our good allies were not sufficiently apparent, the part they have borne in this action must amply evince them." At the height of its emotions of joy and gratitude, Congress promised a monument for the scene. It was resolved that it would "cause to be erected at York, in Virginia, a marble column, adorned with emblems of the alliance between the United States and his Most Christian Majesty, and inscribed with a succinct narrative." The pledge to this day remains unfulfilled; and no monument testifies our early and imperishable[844] obligations to France, except such as may yet exist in the hearts of our people.

Here, with the illumination of Yorktown, we would willingly conclude the history of the Franco-American alliance. But there is a sequel not to be omitted—a painful story that belongs yet to the justice of history.

In the negotiations for peace that followed Yorktown, the American Congress, new and timorous in diplomacy, betook itself to a refuge, the shallowness of which is especially conspicuous in diplomacy—that of supposing wisdom in a multitude of counsellors. It constituted no less than five commissioners to treat at Paris. The selections were ill; and in some instances the worst that could have been made. Of the five, Mr. Jefferson did not attend. Mr. Adams was personally distasteful to the French government. How far Mr. Henry Laurens might be suspected of undue deference to England might have been judged from his famous Tower letter, the cringing humiliations of which had opened the doors of his prison; and it is said that when this letter was divulged to Congress it would have recalled his commission, had there not been doubts of the authenticity of the document, so extraordinary was its tone. But it is justice to add that the subsequent conduct of Mr. Laurens repelled the charge of partiality for England; however, the French Government may have had reason to be displeased at his antecedents. Mr. Jay was of a suspicious temper, an intrigant rather than a diplomatist; illustrating precisely that lowest notion of diplomacy, that it is essentially a game of deceptions—a part that can be performed only with a false face. Happily, the world has outlived this degrading idea of a really august office, and has come to question why deception should be considered more necessary in diplomacy than in any other branch of public service. Indeed, there is room in diplomacy for the exercise of the highest abilities, an arena for the busiest and most exacting competitions of intellectual skill, without calling into requisition the weapons of chicanery and fraud. There is no political service that more strongly than the office of the diplomatist tests that sum of powers which the world calls character: the clear, strong purpose, with its quick and happy selection of opportunities, the instinct, the tact, and the decisiveness which hold the secret of what is greatness in history, rather than any amount of learned accomplishments or any training of the intellectual closet. The diplomatist must be quick, yet strong and unremitting; he must have unbounded confidence in himself, without the weakness of vanity; he must be patient, yet not dilatory; thoroughly imbued with the true spirit of the French proverb, that "he who learns to wait is master of his fortune." He must have the faculty of putting things in the strongest possible light—that best and rarest of rhetorical talents, the power of statement. He must have a nice sense of opportunities; the delicate touch with the iron will; he must practise what Byron numbered among the cardinal virtues, "tact"; of all men he must wear that excellent motto, suaviter in modo, fortiter in re. Here, surely, is a theatre for many virtues and abilities, without calling to aid the mask and sinister weapons of professional deceit. The greatest diplomatist of modern times, the unequalled Bismarck, is said to be remarkable for the bluntness and directness that have overcome by the very surprises of openness the chicanery of his opponents. The robustness of his dealings with the finesse[845] of the old traditional school of European diplomacy reminds one of the duel in "Peter Simple." A sturdy Englishman engages a master of fence, and while the latter practises the most scientific attitude and has his rapier poised according to the figures of the science, he is infinitely surprised to have it seized in mid-air by the naked hand of his antagonist, and himself run through the body. Not secundum artum, but a most efficient way of concluding the combat. Of the open and best school of diplomacy, Franklin at the French court was a fair representative, the very opposite of Jay. The philosopher of Pennsylvania has never been justly measured as a diplomatist; he had been successful beyond all other American envoys; he was now the Bismarck of the diplomatic collection at Paris, although he unhappily gave way to the leadership of Jay.

In the negotiations for peace that ensued, Mr. Jay, leading more or less willingly the other commissioners, was soon over head and ears in an intrigue with the English ministry; acting on that lowest supposition of tyroism in diplomacy—that the other party must necessarily design a fraud, and that a counter-fraud must be prepared to meet it. Congress had instructed that there should be made "the most candid and confidential communications upon all subjects to the ministers of our generous ally, the King of France"; and it took occasion to give a remarkable expression of gratitude to France, its resolutions declaring "how much we rely on his majesty's influence for effectual support in everything that may be necessary to the present security or future prosperity of the United States of America." Mr. Jay, who had taken the lead in the negotiations, willingly followed by Adams, "dragging in Franklin," and resisted to some extent by Laurens proceeded deliberately to violate these instructions. He had conceived the suspicion that France was secretly hostile to an early acknowledgment of the independence of America, and wished to postpone it until she had extorted objects of her own from the dependence of her ally. It is now known that this suspicion was wholly imaginary. But Mr. Jay and his colleagues acted upon it, and were twisted around the fingers of the English ministry to the extent of treating with them, without giving the French government knowledge of the steps and progress of the negotiation, thus contributing to the adroit purpose of England to sow distrust in the alliance that had humbled her. While the American commissioners were professing to the French minister that negotiations were yet at a distance, they had actually signed the provisional articles of a treaty of peace with the crown of Great Britain. Worse than this, they had agreed to a secret article, which stipulated a more favorable northern boundary for Florida, in the event of its conquest by the arms of Great Britain, than if it should remain in the possession of Spain at the termination of the war. Spain was at that time an ally of France; and so it may be imagined how the latter would be embarrassed by this secret article, and how England might meditate in it an advantage in disturbing the understanding of France and America.

Mr. Jay, unconscious that he had been made a catspaw of British diplomacy, felicitated himself that he had made an excellent bargain and done an acute thing; possessed as he was with that fatuity of all deceivers, that omits to calculate the time when the deception must necessarily[846] become known. When the game that had been played upon its ally became known to Congress, it plunged that body into the most painful embarrassment. Mr. Madison, in his diary of the proceedings of Congress, thus records its impressions: "The separate and secret manner in which our ministers had proceeded with respect to France, and the confidential manner with respect to the British ministers, affected different members of Congress differently. Many of the most judicious members thought they had all been in some measure ensnared by the dexterity of the British minister, and particularly disapproved of the conduct of Mr. Jay in submitting to the enemy his jealousy of the French, without even the knowledge of Dr. Franklin, and of the unguarded manner in which he, Mr. Adams, and Dr. Franklin had given, in writing, sentiments unfriendly to our ally, and serving as weapons for the insidious policy of the enemy. The separate article was most offensive, being considered as obtained by Great Britain, not for the sake of the territory ceded to her, but as a means of disuniting the United States and France, as inconsistent with the spirit of the alliance, and as a dishonorable departure from the candor, rectitude, and plain dealing professed by Congress."

Congress did not extricate itself from the dilemma; it could not do it. Suppression of what had been done could not be continued; still less was it possible to make explanations to France; the only thing to do was to say nothing, and to let the painful exposure work itself out. The King of France had acted with an openness and an attention to his allies, the contrasts of which made the exposure one of great bitterness and shame. The Count de Vergennes had assured the American commissioners: "The king has been resolved that all his allies should be satisfied, being determined to continue the war, whatever advantages may be offered to him, if England is disposed to wrong any of them." Now, when the articles were brought into council to be signed, the French monarch could not be other than surprised and indignant. He put royal restraint upon his speech; but he could not forbear saying, with a bluntness that must have bruised American pride, and staggered the self-felicitations of Mr. Jay, that "he did not think he had such allies to deal with."

The court of France sustained the insult with dignity, and yet with evidence of a deep sense of wrong. When inquiry was made whether expostulations would be made to the American Congress, the reply of M. Marbois was heroic: "A great nation," he answered, "does not complain; but it feels and remembers."

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN GENEVA.

In order to understand the events which have lately taken place in Geneva, and those that are preparing there, it is necessary to cast a general glance over the past and present state of the Catholic religion in that little commonwealth.

Most people know what Geneva was prior to the French Revolution: an independent state, separate from the Swiss Cantons, reduced by Calvinism to an aristocratic theocracy, and shorn of those ancient democratic franchises which it had enjoyed before breaking away from Rome. The dominant principle in its customs and legislation was fear and hatred of the proscribed worship. A minute and jealous care was taken to repress the expansion of Catholicism—one exhibition of which was seen in the strict closing of the city gates on the grand festivals of the church, and the fine of ten crowns imposed on those who held intercourse with the Bishop of Annecy on the occasion of his pastoral visits. Under these circumstances, only a small number of Catholics clung with heroic constancy to the ancient faith, and secretly practised their religious duties in the recesses of their houses. There were in 1759 but two hundred and twenty-seven Catholics in Geneva—and in this number even Voltaire and his hangers-on were included.

It was the French Revolution that forced open the gates, up to that period so carefully closed, of this Protestant Rome. Geneva became under the Empire a French department, and the Catholic religion in the persons of the imperial functionaries was officially recognized. Permission to erect a church was granted; but this first move toward a less hostile attitude was not taken without the bitterest opposition from the old Protestant party. In the remodelling of Europe, after Napoleon's downfall, it was found desirable to provide against the absorption of Geneva by uniting it to the Swiss Confederation; but in order to overcome the difficulties of geographical position, and make such an acquisition of territory acceptable to Berne, it became necessary to join to Geneva certain strips of land from the Catholic districts of Gex and Savoy. The Genevans, who looked with dread upon this annexation, strove to assure in any case their own supremacy, but the Catholics found defenders in diplomatic circles, and their cause was protected by the several treaties of Paris, Vienna, and Turin (1814-1816). In virtue of these, all civil and political rights were guaranteed to the new citizens, the Catholic religion was recognized, its exercise in Geneva permitted, religious freedom solemnly pledged to the annexed populations, and the expenses of their public worship assumed by the state.

At this period the Catholics were not over a third of the whole canton; but they rapidly increased, less, indeed, through conversions than by immigration. In 1834, there were 25,000 Protestants and 18,000 Catholics. What was the attitude of the Genevan government then? Power was still in the hands of the old[848] Protestant aristocracy—the strongest and only organized party, and a singular admixture of good qualities and defects. The patrician of Geneva was, indeed, a strange and now fast-disappearing type. Living in his old town surrounded by ramparts, and in his old society even more stringently closed, clad in sombre colors, speaking little and laughing less, vain, stiff in his manners, with a stony cast of countenance, he was devoid of generous sympathy and largeness of heart, without, however, being altogether incapable of a certain pecuniary liberality; benign to his clients, implacable to rivals, marking out in everything a conventional line, and merciless to the one who should cross it; a man of letters, but an enemy to literary liberty, the friend of order, respecting traditions, an ardent patriot, but of a narrow and exclusive patriotism, he was attached more to his caste and party than to his country. Often sincerely pious, this Genevan gentleman of the old school was sometimes a hypocrite and Pharisee; a formalist himself, he was quick to cast the first stone at the transgressors of the law. But what was strongest in this class of men was the Protestant sentiment in its most odious and intolerant shape. Having seen with displeasure the annexation of the Catholic districts, and agreed very unwillingly to the religious liberty insured by treaty, this party found it hard to extinguish its traditional spirit of bigotry. Every movement of vitality on the part of Catholics excited distrust, and looked like a revolt; and proceeding to open acts, it struck successively at the liberty of instruction, the freedom of the pulpit, and the right of endowment. The attempt to enforce civil marriage failed only when Sardinia threatened to intervene. Catholics were eyed with disfavor, and of the thousand servants of the government, only fifty-nine belonged to their creed. Finally, if Protestants were obliged to endure the official existence of the Roman Church, it seemed to them quite proper to try and make it a state affair. They obtained from the Pope in 1819 the transfer of jurisdiction over Geneva from the Archbishop of Chambéry to the Bishop of Lausanne—their secret object being to subject the Catholic clergy to the direct influence of government, through the dependence on the state to which the bishops of Switzerland had long been accustomed, and in particular by using the conciliatory and somewhat weak character of Monseigneur de Lausanne.

In fact, an agreement was drawn up with the bishop, by which the civil power was permitted to interfere in the nomination of pastors, exact from them an oath, publish and circulate episcopal charges. Soon after, a law made the placet obligatory for all documents emanating from the diocesan or papal authorities. A few official honors and some pecuniary advantages were the only compensation made to Catholics for the prejudice done their liberty. These, however, struggled perseveringly against all exertions to enthrall them, and continued in spite of every difficulty to increase and gain strength. This success they owed chiefly to their courageous pastor, the Abbé Vuarin, "an admirable man for a conflict," as his friend Lamennais used to say of him: one whose indefatigable industry, fearlessness, and devotion to duty made every sacrifice light. He travelled Europe in the interests of his flock, and Turin, Berne, Paris, Munich, Rome, heard him defend their cause. He had friends in all places, and corresponded with popes, kings, and the great men of his day; and, during the continual hostilities[849] which he carried on against Protestants, wrote some severe things, for the most part anonymously, but other times under his own name, wherein the only subject of regret is too great fieriness and irony. He used to watch the ballot-boxes while reciting his breviary, which drew from M. de Maistre the remark, "When I see his way of working, it recalls the success of the apostles." M. Vuarin had said, "A priest who is named pastor at Geneva should go, should remain, and should end there"; and, true to his own word, he died there, parish priest, in 1843, having been appointed under the Empire. Before his time, it was only now and then that a cassock ventured to appear in Geneva: at his funeral, two bishops, two hundred priests, and thousands of Catholic laymen defiled through the streets of the old Protestant city.

It turned out, however, that Catholic progress only irritated the intolerant spirit of opposition, and at the centennial jubilee of the Reformation, in 1835, the inflamed passions of the multitude broke out in insults and deeds of violence against the faith of the minority. The Protestant Union, a sort of secret society, was formed to sustain and encourage exclusivism and anti-Catholic feelings; and when a collective address, signed by the clergy of Geneva, denounced the movement to the bishop, the council of state, in retaliation, refused to admit the nomination of any priest who should not have expressed regret for appending his name to the paper. At M. Vuarin's death, Geneva was for several years deprived of the ministrations of his successor, M. Marilley, who had been arrested by the public officers and conducted to the frontier. Such, in 1846, was the position of the church: misunderstood in her spirit, the full measure of her rights withheld, strong only in the energy of her defenders. Then a political change took place, which considerably modified the situation.

In the plain on the other side of the Rhone, facing the steep hill whereon are the dwellings of the Genevan aristocracy, along which are drawn out the narrow streets of the old town, and on the summit of which rise the city hall and St. Peter's church—that Acropolis of Calvinism—extends the democratic and laboring suburb of Saint Gervais. Here for several years a work had been going on whose gravity the ruling class of Geneva did not comprehend. A radical and demagogical party, intimately connected with the revolutionists of other countries, was being organized. Its newspapers, pamphlets, and the affair of "Young Italy" in 1836 revealed its boldness and vigorous action. On the occasion of the Sonderbund disturbances in 1846, the radicals got excited, the Faubourg St. Gervais rose in tumult, and after a sanguinary struggle the conservatives were put down, the old town was occupied by the victorious workmen, and the power of the state passed into the hands of the leaders of the insurrection—M. Fazy and his friends. The extinction of the ancient oligarchy was known to be their object. Catholics had kept aloof from this conflict, feeling little sympathy with the revolutionary passions of the radicals, whose pretext, moreover, for rising had been the aid extended by the Genevan government to their co-religionists of the Sonderbund. But when once in power, the new party, more astute than its predecessor, understood the importance of the Catholic element when it came to a question of votes.

M. Fazy, although ultra in politics,[850] had no religious prejudices, and, neither Catholic nor Protestant, all he cared for was to bring about the ruin of the Calvinist aristocracy. In so much (as the Bishop of Lausanne observed in 1849), he was acting to the advantage of Catholics. After the radicals had destroyed the ramparts of the old town, Geneva began rapidly to change appearance: entirely new quarters were soon laid out, strangers came in large numbers, and the Catholic population visibly increased with the immigration. In 1850, the canton counted 34,212 Protestants and 29,764 Catholics; ten years later, the figures stood 42,099 of the latter to 40,069 of the former.

The radicals had the good sense also to respect the liberty of Catholics; they gave them ground to build another church on, and in the central part of the new districts, hard by the railway-station, a Gothic edifice, which people used to call the cathedral-citadel—the temple of liberty—was erected. Thus little by little the two classes were drawn together, despite so many profound differences. The conservatives themselves contributed to this, for the concessions to Catholics were their chief point of opposition; and in the next electoral campaign they took for rallying-cry, "Fazy sold to the papists." Thereupon it became a necessity, if Catholics would keep their rights, to vote with the radicals; they did so in 1855, and the conservatives were utterly defeated. Things remained in this state until 1860, the government continuing to respect Catholic liberty; the bishop also was allowed to return to Geneva, and Fazy ably defended him against the narrow prejudices of a few friends. When the church of Our Lady was finished, the consecration sermon was preached by the eloquent mouth of the man who to-day exercises over the faithful of Geneva, although with different qualities, the influence that M. Vuarin once had. This was the Abbé Mermillod. Untrammelled by attachments either to person or party, clever, firm, yet pacific, uniting to the authority of virtue all the charms of talent and character, his liberal ideas no one could gainsay, and his devotion to the church the Holy Father has on more than one occasion publicly recognized. Nevertheless, if the rule of the radicals was in some respects profitable to Catholics, it was baneful to them on more than one account. The sources of moral and intellectual corruption were multiplied in the canton; freemasonry received the same concessions as religion; the professorships in the academy were bestowed upon the enemies of every form of Christianity; and all the while an active proselytism was spreading immoral sentiments and infidelity among the people. In this state of affairs, the opposition daily waxed stronger, and after fifteen years of administration, the radicals were defeated (1861) by the conservatives, rejuvenated and transformed into an independent party.

II.

The party that now came in was no longer the same old purely aristocratic one of former times; it had allies among the democrats. A popular society, known as The String, established in the very centre of the working Quartier de Saint Gervais, furnished it with brawny arms and clubs to repel at the polls the violence which the radicals had initiated. From 1861 to 1864, the independents gained ground rapidly, and the bloody riots that disturbed Geneva in the last-named year only served[851] to assure their success. It may be asked, What did the Catholics do during this political change? They could not aspire to rule: they were forced to choose between the Protestant haters of their faith and the radical indifferentists who treated all religions alike—one might say with equal contempt—but which had at least the merit of respecting liberty of conscience. A handful of Catholics, disgusted with the subversive doctrines of the radicals, sought alliance with the independents; but the mass remained liege to their first protectors. Some of the leaders, too, of that party belonged to Catholic families, and were, nominally, Catholics themselves; whereas all the chief men of the independents were Protestants.

At this period, a great event in the Catholic life of Geneva took place. Pius IX. in 1864 raised the Abbé Mermillod to the episcopal dignity; only by a prudent reserve he did not immediately confer upon him the title of bishop of that city, but of Hebron in partibus infidelium. In order not to encounter too many obstacles at the outset, the authorities of the canton were not officially notified of the fact, which was brought to their knowledge indirectly. The independents affected to ignore the new arrangement, and consider Mgr. Mermillod as only the vicar-general of Bishop Marilley. Whenever he spoke as a prelate, they showed themselves surprised and angry. The radicals, on their part, saw the establishment of an episcopal see with the same unconcern as they had witnessed the erection of the cathedral. And yet a few were provoked; they were principally leaders from the Catholic ranks, who foresaw the blow their influence would receive from such a quarter. On the other hand, Mgr. Mermillod's European reputation flattered the self-love of the Genevans, thus lessening political and religious repugnances; while his amenity, conciliatory spirit, the irresistible seduction of his ways, his political prudence, which caused him to avoid the entanglements of party strife, helped to surmount many obstacles.

A question of great importance to Catholics soon came up. In 1815, when parts of Savoy and the Pays-de-Gex were annexed, although the religious liberty of the new-comers had been diplomatically secured, Geneva reserved to her own sons, under the modest designation "rights of property, burghership, and district residence," the enjoyment of considerable wealth coming from old foundations, and destined particularly for hospitals and other charitable institutions. The new-comers had no share in the distribution of these funds: hence arose the distinction in the community of elder and younger brothers. About the year 1866, a motion was put forward to abolish this privilege of the ancient citizens, and to induce the new ones to renounce the treaty stipulations in their favor and come under the common law. The project fell through at the time, but was finally adopted in 1868. The Catholics took a liberal and generous stand. They might regret the international engagements to respect their religious liberty; they could loudly complain that by a provision of the bill the independents endowed the Protestant Church with a part of this appropriation, consequently securing it against loss in the event of a separation between church and state, whereas nothing was set apart to defray the expenses of Catholic worship; nevertheless, the great majority voted to let it pass. God grant that they may not have been deceived![852] If they had been organized into a political party, they could and they should have had inserted some similar allowance in their favor. For all this, the Catholics, while they continued to make rapid progress, assumed an attitude of moderation and straightforward liberality. Mgr. Mermillod openly declared, "The Catholics have not the preponderance, or the means of obtaining it; they do not think of it, they cannot have it, they do not desire it. They have no privileges to petition for, but all more than ever must love our native Switzerland, which turns now her eyes upon us, and must cling to our institutions and to that liberty which they secure us." The bishop's adversaries could not find fault with him, and the Revue des Deux Mondes was obliged, however unwillingly and tardily, to acknowledge his liberal tone. And yet this attitude of Catholics and their progress only excited greater distrust and hatred. The society of The String raised in its manifestoes the phantom of ultramontanism, the press insulted them, and they were threatened in their rights of association, of burial, of instruction, and of preaching. It is principally at Carouge that they have had to suffer. This place is under the influence of certain so-called Catholic radicals, who in truth are more anti-Catholic than the Protestants themselves. When these people attack the church, the independents support them; sometimes, however, the latter have known how to maintain an at least apparent neutrality.

It is chiefly in view of the eventual re-establishment of the bishopric of Geneva that anti-Catholic prejudices are manifested. The Protestants understand that Hebron is only a first step, and they recoil at the idea of having at Geneva itself a Bishop of Geneva. Several times already the question has been discussed in the council of state, and the opponents of the church seek in Gallican and Josephine traditions, in the text of treaties, everywhere, for reasons to deny to Catholics the right of having a bishop. Common sense, equity, treaties, all is against them, but prejudice prevails. The Catholics on their side are determined that they shall have their own bishop, and this to-day is the great dispute between them and the Protestants. Mgr. Mermillod acts in all these troubles more like an apostle than a politician. He is right. He believes in his mission; and, without being able exactly to point out the course which Providence will keep, he is convinced that the church will prosper in Geneva. May his hope be realized! At any rate, the Genevan Catholics are fortunate to have such a bishop. To conclude, their present situation is a critical one. It is fraught with dangers and yet full of hope.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

This is an uncommonly interesting and readable book. Lives of saints, especially of such as those who form its subject, ought, of course, always to be interesting to Catholics, and even to others; but, unfortunately, the abundance of facts which are often put in a small space, and the dry and sometimes unsystematic way in which they are presented, make them usually, perhaps, unattractive to any except those who wish to make what is called spiritual reading, and put them, if not entirely beyond the reach of children, at least much less useful to them than they might be made, and than they have been made in the present work. The aim of the author has been to bring out the lives of the servants of God in their true light, as something more wonderful than any fairy tales or fictions, as, indeed, they are; to satisfy the natural desire of the young for the marvellous with what is not only wonderful but admirable, and to supply the place of fiction—to some extent, at least—with truth. And in order that they may answer this end, they are told in an attractive and conversational way, with occasional digressions and episodes, and the style is such that, instead of searching about for the most interesting of the lives to begin with, one begins at once wherever he may happen to open, and keeps on till it is more than time to leave off. For, though these sketches seem to have been intended principally for children and young people, there can be no one who will not be pleased with them or who is too far advanced and well informed to profit by them. There are twelve illustrations. The book is well printed and elegantly bound.

Details of the self-denying lives of those who devote themselves to works of charity, under the rules of a religious order, are always interesting to the earnest Catholic. In this attractive volume, we have a touching record of the devoted lives of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, woven with the story of one who came to them dead in sin, but was brought to life, faith, and peace, by the blessing of God on their unfailing efforts. There is no charity that calls more urgently in these times for the countenance and help of pious souls living in the world than this twofold task undertaken by these good sisters—the raising of fallen women to lives of purity, and providing a place of refuge from temptation for destitute young girls. All other efforts to reform abandoned women seem to bring forth but little fruit, while the nuns of the "Good Shepherd," both in this country and abroad, have been instrumental in rescuing a vast number from lives of infamy, and bringing them to true penance. This volume is interesting and instructive, and cannot fail to impress the reader with its truthfulness. May our dear Lord, through its pages, excite in many souls asking for work in his vineyard, the desire to assist in bringing back these lost sheep to his fold!

"This compilation is intended," says the author, in his preface, "to assist our children in acquiring a better knowledge of Holy Scripture." But it will also prove useful and suggestive to those who have to teach children, even should the latter not use it themselves. Its plan is very simple and good, the most appropriate passages of Scripture being selected in illustration of the successive questions and answers of the catechism, and appended to them, the text being in one column and the illustrations in a parallel one. Such a plan is, of course, very difficult to carry out with perfect success, and the author does not claim to have always made absolutely the most appropriate selection; but one would be very foolish not to duly appreciate what is good where perfection is evidently next to impossible. An appendix is added, with references to the principal texts quoted, which can be used independently.

This is a beautiful little book, and contains a great deal in a very small space. Its purpose is sufficiently explained by its title: to make Christians practically familiar with, and constantly attentive to, the presence of God, surely one of the greatest of all means of sanctification, and one specially necessary in this age and country, in which there is such a tendency to distraction and useless occupation of mind. The translation is good, and the type clear.

Truly this is a world of disappointments. When this book, handsomely bound and printed in bold type on delicately tinted paper, was placed before us, and upon reading the numerous titles of honor which the author, with more frankness than modesty, had appended to his name, we hastily came to the conclusion that the Catholic Church on Long Island had at last found a worthy and erudite historian. Alas for the vanity of human hopes! Ere we had perused a dozen of its hundred and thirty pages, we discovered that the brilliant and costly setting, which we fondly hoped contained a literary gem beyond price, enclosed nothing but a paltry imitation in paste. Our chagrin was the greater on account of the importance of the subject, affording, as it does, many salient points of interest that deserve to be perpetuated in something like good language and in proper method; but candor compels us to say that this book seems more like a scrap-book, made up of slip-shod newspaper paragraphs unartistically retouched and strung together. And then the reckless scattering of polyglot adjectives, the continuous recurrence of the same words and forms of expression, the forgetfulness of facts within the knowledge of most of the school children of Brooklyn, and the inexcusable ignoring of the simplest rules of grammar, which characterize this production, are, we venture to affirm, unparalleled in the history of modern book-making. The last chapter, however, surpasses all the others in verbosity. In thus coming before[855] the public as the historian of the Catholics of Long Island, the author seems to have forgotten that the art of book-writing can only be learned by years of patient study, and that the high-sounding phrases which would do well enough for a class of young students are altogether out of place in the pages of a book intended to be placed in the libraries of our most intelligent citizens. Literary vanity is generally a harmless and sometimes an amusing weakness, but, when gratified at the expense of serious subjects, it deserves neither encouragement nor the charity of our silence.

This work, compiled for the use of schools, has many merits and some grave defects. The task of culling from the best writers choice passages descriptive of striking historical incidents is one that requires much judgment and experience for its proper performance; while the difficulty of avoiding even the appearance of national prejudice or religious bias is almost insurmountable. Most of us have our favorite authors, whose merits we are apt to exaggerate, and whose peculiar views we too often accept without much investigation. Professor Anderson is not free from this weakness, though, as a rule, his selections are made with discretion and fairness. Milton's eulogy on Cromwell is one of the exceptions, for we hold it not good that our children should be taught to reverence the memory of that monstrosity whose hands were so repeatedly imbrued in innocent blood. Froude's "Coronation of Anne Boleyn" is another, for, as the readers of The Catholic World well know, very little dependence can be placed on the historical veracity of that gentleman. But the most serious mistake of the compiler lies in the fact that only American, English, Scotch, and French history, with a few passages from ancient authors, is presented; Ireland, Spain, Germany, and other European countries being completely ignored. Taking into account the vast number of children Of German and Irish descent in our public and private schools, who ought, we think, to be taught something of the history of their ancestors, we should expect that at least one-half of this book would be devoted to extracts from the historians of these races, whose writings are now as accessible to compilers of history as those of any other nationality. Of Spain, the discoverer and first colonizer of the New World, we have not a word; and Italy, the birthplace of Christopher Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci, the cradle of modern art and poetry, is altogether overlooked. In this respect, therefore, The Historical Reader is sadly deficient in universality and completeness. The Vocabulary attached will be found useful, and the Biographical Index would be more interesting if the writer had used his adjectives less generously, and more reliable if he had not insisted on calling Burke a British statesman and Goldsmith an "English" writer.

This latest contribution to the historical literature of Ireland is in every respect worthy the genius and industry of the accomplished author of The Illustrated History of Ireland, and other works of an historical and biographical character. Hitherto the remote county of Kerry has been known to tourists and artists for the beautiful scenery of the Killarney Lakes, and to the general reader only as the home of the great[856] orator and politician O'Connell; for the meagre and antiquated history of the county by Smith has long since passed into oblivion, and can scarcely be found in any of those receptacles for worn-out authors, called second-hand book stores. It remained for Miss Cusack (Sister Mary Frances Clare), who, of all contemporary Irish writers, seems most imbued with a passionate desire to produce and reproduce incidents illustrative of the past glories and sufferings of her native country, to undertake the task of writing a history of this, in many respects, the most interesting of the thirty-two counties of Ireland, and it must be confessed that, considering the unpromising and limited nature of the subject, she has performed it with wonderful accuracy and success. The large and handsome volume before us, as a local history, may be considered a complete narrative of every event connected with Kerry, from the very earliest period of the traditional epoch down to the close of the seventeenth century, with occasional glances at the affairs of adjacent counties, when necessarily connected with those of her favorite locality. Several, and not the least attractive of the chapters to a scientific student, are devoted to the geology, topography, and archæology of Kerry and other kindred topics, in the preparation of which the author has been assisted by some of the best scholars in Ireland, whose readiness in thus contributing the result of long years of study and experience not only does credit to their generosity and gallantry, but demonstrates that Miss Cusack's patriotic and charitable efforts are fully appreciated by those who know her well and are best fitted to appreciate the value of her labors. The appendix, which is very full, will be found particularly interesting to such of our readers as derive their descent from the ancient Kerry families, containing, as it does, a minute and doubtless correct pedigrees of the O'Connors, O'Donoghues, O'Connells, O'Mahonys, McCarthys, and other septs whose names are indelibly associated with the history and topography of the county.

The illustrations of local scenery are passable, we have seen better, but the letterpress is excellent, and the whole mechanical execution of the work is worthy of the subject, and very creditable to the taste and enterprise of the publishers.

"We leave it to the reader," says Father Sestini in his preface, which, by the way, corresponds to the book in shortness, "to judge whether, without detriment to lucidity, our efforts to combine comprehensiveness with brevity and exactness have been successful." It seems to us that they have. It is impossible to understand analytical geometry and the calculus, the principles of which are developed in this work, without patient thought and application of mind; diffuse explanations may be written, no doubt, which will enable an ordinary student to master the actual text of his lesson, but they will not be likely to set his mind to working on its own account; and the discovery of the meaning of a sentence which seems obscure, but is only so from the student's want of mental exercise in these matters, is of more real service, and at the same time gives more pleasure, than the most copious elucidations. To use these is like taking a light into a dark place; it shows clearly what is immediately around, but does not allow the pupils of the eyes to expand.[857] And without a similar development of the mathematical faculty, which is probably really more common than is generally supposed, needing only proper exercise to bring it out, the study of the science will be comparatively fruitless, and a mere labor instead of a pleasure.

It is, of course, possible to carry this principle too far, and make a book which will be incomprehensible without profuse oral explanations, which will equally prevent a profitable exercise of the mind. The author seems to have carried it just far enough. No one to whom the study of the higher mathematics will be profitable at all can find a better work to set him upon the track and give him a grasp of the subject than F. Sestini's manual. The expert also, as well as the student, will be pleased with the neatness of its execution, both in the mathematical and in the ordinary sense.

New England is the home of American local history, for, of the works devoted to the annals of cities, counties, and towns, there are more relating to New England than to all other parts of the United States; and outside of New England limits the cultivation of local history is, in many cases, due to natives of that division.

Miss Hemenway has done good service by her gazetteer, which is really a general local history of the Green Mountain State. Known favorably already, she has succeeded in obtaining the hearty co-operation of gentlemen and ladies in all parts of the state, and she thus gives the history of each county in turn. The history of each church is given by some one connected with it, and full justice done to all. In some local histories, the prejudice of the author sometimes leads him to ignore all but his own church, or give only such notices as he cannot avoid. We have in our eye a History of Elizabeth, New Jersey, by the Rev. Mr. Hatfield, in which other denominations than his own are very slightingly treated. There are three Catholic churches, a Benedictine convent, a House of Sisters of Charity, and an orphan asylum in the place, yet the reverend author sums up their history in five lines, and quotes as his authority for their annals the City Directory.

If any institution, church, or author fails to receive due space in the Vermont Historical Gazetteer, it is not the fault of Miss Hemenway, who has labored most indefatigably to extract their history, and given them wherein to lay it before the world, impartially allowing each to give their own version of affairs. Her work is, of course, not of equal merit; but it contains many articles of far more than local interest and value. Her state owes her a debt of thanks; and in her plan and scheme of the work, as well as in her untiring industry, she sets an example that may well be imitated in other states.

Mr. Fairbanks is not unknown as an author, and this little volume, handsomely issued by an eminent publishing-house, would seem to be a welcome addition, as furnishing, in a compendious form, the romantic annals of the oldest settled, though not the oldest, state in the[858] Union. We regret to say that we regret the appearance of the work. There is such abundance of material accessible to the ordinary student, even without entering upon the vast manuscript material which the late Buckingham Smith spent his life in delving, that exactness is of the utmost necessity.

Mr. Fairbanks evidently quotes his Spanish authors at second-hand, and must be unfamiliar with the Spanish language. No one at all conversant with it would quote Cabeza de Vaca, as he repeatedly does, under the name of De Vaca. Cabeza de Vaca is the family name, meaning Head of Cow—an odd name, but with its analogy in our Whitehead, Mulford (mule-ford), Armstrong, etc. To quote him as "Of Cow" is like citing one of the English names as Head, Ford, or Strong. Quoting Garcelasso as L'Inca also betrays ignorance. The Spanish article is El, while the elevation of Menendez Marques to the Marquis de Menendez is equal to Puss in Boots, who made marquises offhand.

It is not surprising, then, to find the period from 1568 to 1722 embraced in 34 pages, and in those only four references to Barcia, and these not all correct, though in the 228 pages given by the Spanish historian of Florida to that period much interesting matter might have been found.

Nor is his acquaintance with the works that have appeared in English such as we should expect.

The later portion of the history seems more within his grasp; but without entering into too great detail, we miss any reference to Farmer's account of the siege of Pensacola.

Much of the space in the earlier portion is devoted to the French colony and its bloody extinction by Menendez, and to Gourgues's attack. In this matter he does not treat the matter as Sparks did years ago, or Parkman recently. By all these writers, moreover, some points are overlooked. The piratical character of the French cruisers, who, after the Reformation, made religion a cloak for their murders and piracy; the object in selecting Florida, which was to form a base for operations against Spanish commerce; the long-settled determination of the Spanish crown to root out any colony planted in Florida, upon the most plausible pretext the occasion would give; the overt acts of piracy of the new French colony in Florida; and, finally, the critical position of both parties, neither of whom, in case of victory, would have dared to keep any of the enemy as prisoners.

He takes the De Gourgues account as the French give it, and, with them, multiplies forts at San Mateo; but we must confess that there are discrepancies in it which have always excited our distrust, although the story is accepted generally by French Catholic writers.

Mrs. Stowe has given us in this volume, with her usual distinctness of purpose, a true picture, not overdrawn, of fashionable life as displayed at our popular watering-places and in many of our fashionable homes. The author's "views," so pronounced on all subjects, are generally given with characteristic energy and earnestness, if not always with discrimination. So graphic are her descriptions that the reader can see the places she describes, and has a clear insight into the hearts of her characters.

It is well that one whose writings are always so extensively read should show up the corrupt condition of manners and morals that prevail in what is technically called "high life," and in this book Mrs. Stowe has given an interesting and[859] lifelike picture of the everyday well-known scandals that are sapping the very foundation of our existence as a nation.

It is hardly just, however, to put all the folly, all the extravagance, and all the sin of our demoralized belles and beauty to the credit of France; poor France has enough of her own to bear. French morals, French manners, French novels, French literature, and even the French language are put down in this volume as the source of all in the morals of this country that is not pure and elevating. The root of the trouble lies nearer home, and spreads far back to the childhood of these vain men and women, when they were taught that to enjoy themselves was the great end for which they were made. "Have a jolly time in life, honestly if you can, but have the jolly time any way," is the chief lesson given to the children and young persons belonging to the world of to-day; and this peoples our places of public resort with the "fast" and the shameless.

A poetic picture of New England life is Mrs. Stowe's specialty, and refined, cultivated, quiet Springdale is refreshing after the flirtations and assignations of the watering-places.

We find in these pages a just and charming tribute to the Irish character as wife and mother; while the author's views of marriage are in accordance with the teachings of the Catholic Church, and it is no small merit in the book that it strongly advocates the doctrine, "one with one exclusively, and for ever."

This is another of the "Kenmare series of books for spiritual reading." It needs no other recommendation. The profit to be derived from a devout reading of the revelations of this great saint is inestimable. They cannot fail to have a lasting influence on the mind that opens itself to their teaching. If some may object that such a book as this is too mediæval for the nineteenth century, we answer that there are plenty of chosen souls who look back to the middle ages as the millennium of the Church, when earth was nearest heaven.

This work, partly drawn from the Commentary on the Prerogatives of St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles, of Passaglia, and partly the composition of the learned author, was first published in 1852, and elicited the highest encomiums from the most learned portion of the Christian world. Its republication at this time, when so much is said, and so little is actually known, by persons not Catholics, of the apostolic succession, and the divine power vested in the visible head of the church, is exceedingly well timed. The book, though small in compass, contains not only all the leading incidents of St. Peter's life, but irrefutable proofs of his holy mission and supremacy in the church. Those who have any doubts of the primacy of the See of Rome, or who wish to satisfy themselves as to the extent of the power delegated to our Holy Father, should give Mr. Allies's book a careful and serious perusal.

This beautifully printed little book[860] is, as the author candidly confesses, made up mainly from selections made from the writings of the celebrated Thomas à Kempis. To say this is to pronounce the highest eulogy that can be expressed, for we believe there is no person who claims to be Christian, and who has read The Following of Christ, but admits that, of all the uninspired writers, its author is foremost in wisdom, piety, and practical illustration. Though in large, clear type, this work is so judiciously condensed that any person can carry it in his pocket, and thus have it at all times for reference and edification.

The Catholic Publication Society has just published new editions of Gahan's History of the Catholic Church and Mylius's History of England. Both works are continued down to the present time. The Society also publishes a new and improved edition of Fleury's Historical Catechism, revised, corrected, and edited by Rev. Henry Formby. This excellent work is intended as a class-book for schools, and, if ordered in quantities, the Society is prepared to furnish it at an extraordinarily low price. The Society has also in the hands of the binder Fr. Formby's Pictorial Bible and Church History Stories. This work ought to be introduced into our schools.

Mr. P. F. Cunningham, Philadelphia, has in press Cineas, a story of the time of Nero, the burning of Rome by that tyrant, and the destruction of Jerusalem. Mr. Donahoe, Boston, announces as in press a Compendium of Irish History, Ned Rusheen, and The Spouse of Christ—all by Sister Mary Francis Clare; also, The Monks of the West, by Montalembert; a Life of Pius IX., and Ballads of Irish Chivalry, etc., by R. D. Joyce. Messrs. Kelly, Piet & Co., Baltimore, announce as in press Mary Benedicta and the Pearl of Antioch. Messrs. Murphy & Co., Baltimore, have just completed their Church Registers, comprising Baptism, Matrimony, Confirmation, Interments, etc.—in all, three Latin Registers and four Church Records, uniformly bound and put up in neat boxes.

A Mistake Corrected.—Mr. Robert A. Bakewell desires us to correct a statement which was made in our last number, in the article "The Secular not Supreme," respecting the views formerly expressed by that gentleman in The Shepherd of the Valley, on the subject discussed in the aforesaid article. Mr. Bakewell has frequently contradicted a misquotation and misinterpretation of his language by secular and sectarian papers, which has made him say that Catholics, if they ever became a large majority of the people of this country, would suppress religious liberty. What he really did say was that, in the event supposed, they would, in accordance with Catholic principles, restrain by law the teaching of those errors which are subversive of natural religion and morality. Mr. Bakewell states, also, that he has never retracted the views which he expressed in his published writings on this subject, and says that they were impugned by two only of the Catholic newspapers at the time.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by Rev. I. T. Hecker, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.

[2] New Departure of the Republican Party. By Henry Wilson. The Atlantic Monthly, Boston, January, 1871.

[3] If any one should feel astonished at our insisting not only upon the exact day, but the very hour, when certain things occurred, let him or her remember that the calculation of eclipses, passing backward from one to another (as though ascending the steps of a staircase), reaches and fixes the date—yes, the precise minute of day—when incidents took place between which and us the broad haze of twice a thousand years is interposed.

[4] For the rest, in support of the matters we have too briefly to recount, we could burden these pages with voluminous, and some of them most interesting and beautiful, extracts from both heathen and Christian works of classic fame and standard authority; with passages of direct and indirect evidence from Josephus, Phlegon, Plutarch, Saint Dionysius (our own true hero, the Areopagite of Greece, the St. Denis of France) [ad Apollophanem, epis. xi., and ad Polycarpum Antistidem, vii.]; Tertullian (Cont. Jud., c. 8); St. Augustine (Civ. Dei, lib. 14); St. Chrysostom (Hom. de Joanne Baptista); the Bollandists, Baronius, Eusebius, Tillemont, Huet, and a host of others.... But our statements will not need such detailed "stabilitation," because the facts, being notorious among scholars, will be impugned by no really educated man or thoroughly competent critic.

[5] The Roman Breviary thus speaks of St. Dionysius:

"Dionysius of Athens, one of the judges of the Areopagus, was versed in every kind of learning. It is said that, while yet in the errors of paganism, having noticed on the day on which Christ the Lord was crucified that the sun was eclipsed out of the regular course, he exclaimed: 'Either the God of nature is suffering, or the universe is on the point of dissolution.' When afterward the Apostle Paul came to Athens, and, being led to the Areopagus, explained the doctrine which he preached, teaching that Christ the Lord had risen, and that the dead would all return to life, Dionysius believed with many others. He was then baptized by the apostle and placed over the church in Athens. He afterward came to Rome, whence he was sent to Gaul by Pope Clement to preach the Gospel. Rusticus, a priest, and Eleutherius, a deacon, followed him to Paris. Here he was scourged, together with his companions, by the Prefect Fescennius, because he had converted many to Christianity; and, as he continued with the greatest constancy to preach the faith, he was afterward stretched upon a gridiron over a fire, and tortured in many other ways; as were likewise his companions. After bearing all these sufferings courageously and gladly, on the ninth of October, Dionysius, now more than a hundred years of age, together with the others, was beheaded. There is a tradition that he took up his head after it had been cut off, and walked with it in his hands a distance of two Roman miles. He wrote admirable and most beautiful books on the divine names, on the heavenly and ecclesiastical hierarchy, on mystical theology; and a number of others."

The Abbé Darras has published a work on the question of the identity of Dionysius of Athens with Dionysius, first Bishop of Paris, sustaining, with great strength and cogency of argument, the affirmative side. The authenticity of the works which pass under his name, although denied by nearly all modern critics, has been defended by Mgr. Darboy, Archbishop of Paris.—Ed. C. W.

[6] "The art of governing men does not consist in giving them license to do evil."—Père Lacordaire.

[7] The Life and Times of the Right Rev. John Timon, D.D., First Roman Catholic Bishop of Buffalo. By Charles G. Deuther. Buffalo: published by the Author.

[8] Mr. Deuther incorrectly calls this Conevago.

[9] We think it well to say that no one of these cures, except that of Denys Bouchet, whom the physicians had pronounced absolutely and constitutionally incurable, was declared to be miraculous by the episcopal commission which will be mentioned further on. For these cures, the 10th, 11th, and 16th procès verbaux of the commission may be consulted. Whatever the probability of divine intervention may be in such cases, the church before proclaiming a miracle requires that no natural explanation of the fact should be possible, and sets aside, without affirming or denying, every case in which this condition is not found. She is content to say Nescio.

We shall hereafter have occasion to speak of the work of the commission.

[10 The patient was, in fact, entirely cured at the second visit to Lourdes.

[11 The presence of chloride of sodium (common salt), to say nothing of the others, in abundance, without a decided taste in the water, is a little mysterious. The original reads: "Chlorures de soude, de chaux et de magnésie: abondants."—Note by Translator.

[12 The reader will perhaps like to see the reports of the episcopal commission on this case:

"Hardly had Catherine Latapie-Chouat plunged her hand into the water, than she felt herself to be entirely cured; her fingers recovered their natural suppleness and elasticity, so that she could quickly open and shut them, and use them with as much ease as before the accident of October, 1856.

"From that time she has had no more trouble with them.

"The deformity of the hand of Catherine Latapie, and the impossibility of using it, being due to an anchylosis of the joints of the fingers, and to a complete lesion of the nerves or the flexor tendons, it is certain that the case was a very serious one; as also by the uselessness of all the means of cure used during eighteen months, and by the avowal of the physician, who had declared to this woman that her condition was irremediable.

"Nevertheless, in spite of the failure of such long and repeated attempts, the employment of various active healing agents, and the statement of the physician, this severe lesion disappeared immediately. Now, this sudden disappearance of the infirmity, and restoration of the fingers to their original state, is evidently beyond and above the usual course of nature, and of the laws which govern the efficacy of its agents.

"The means by which this result has been brought about leave no doubt in this respect, and establish this conclusion incontestably. In fact, it has been averred(a) that the Massabielle water is of an ordinary character, without the least curative properties. It cannot, then, by its natural action, have straightened the fingers of Catherine Latapie and restored their suppleness and agility, which had not been accomplished by the scientific remedies which were so various and used for so long a time. The wonderful result, then, which the mere touch of this water immediately produced, cannot be ascribed to it, but we must rise to a superior cause, and do homage for it to a supernatural power, of which the water of Massabielle has been, as it were, the veil and inert instrument.

"Besides, if ordinary water had been possessed of such a prodigious power, Catherine Latapie would have experienced its effect long before by the daily use which she made of it in washing herself and her children; for she had daily employed for this purpose water exactly similar to that at the grotto."—Extract from the 15th procès-verbal of the commission.

(a): This was, in fact, authentically averred, the administrative analysis to the contrary notwithstanding, at the time of the procès-verbaux of the commission.

[13] We will also give the conclusions of the commission on this point.

"An eruptive affection of this sort might not of itself have a very grave character, nor threaten serious danger or disastrous consequences. Still, that from which Marianne Garrot had suffered would indicate by its duration, by its resistance to the treatment which had been prescribed and faithfully followed, and by its continual and progressive spreading, a very decidedly malignant character, the inoculation, so to speak, of a deeply seated virus, to expel which would require long and persevering attention, with a patient continuance of the treatment already adopted or of some other more appropriate and effectual one.

"The rapid though not instantaneous disappearance of the white eruption from the face of the patient is very different from the usual effect of chemical preparations; for the first lotion produced a perceptible improvement or partial cure instantaneously, which was advanced by the second, made four days afterward; and without the aid of any other remedy, these two lotions accomplished a complete restoration in a few days by a gradual and rapid progress.

"Now, the liquid the employment of which produced this speedy effect was nothing but water, without any special properties, and without any relation or appropriateness to the disease which it overcame; and which, besides, if it had possessed any such qualities, would long before have produced the effect through the daily use which the patient made of it for drinking and washing.

"This cure cannot, then, be ascribed to the natural efficacy of the Massabielle water, and all the circumstances, as it would seem—namely, the tenacity and activity of the eruption, the rapidity of the cure, and the inappropriateness of the element which brought it about—concur to show in it a cause foreign and superior to natural agents."—Extract from the 15th procès-verbal of the commission.

[14] Ninth procès-verbal of the commission.

[15] Prof. Seeley advocates the plan of devoting a part of the time during the last two years at English schools to Latin. The proper study of English must also include in it an analysis of the Latin element, and an explanation of the derivation of words of Latin origin.

[16] Madame Fortune and Sir Money.

[17] The Bank of Madrid.

[18] Less than a farthing.

[19] A gold piece valued at sixteen dollars.

[20] Was becoming angry.

[21] Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by Rev. I. T. Hecker, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.

[22] The Vatican Council and its Definitions. A Pastoral Letter to the Clergy. By Henry Edward, Archbishop of Westminster. New York: D. & J. Sadlier. 1871. 12mo, pp. 252.

[23] Old and New School united.

[24] Incomplete.

[25] Southern States not reported.

[26] Separation of South in 1845.

[27] Centenary year.

[28] He stole, killed, and ate the whole of Apollo's herd, before he was a day old! See Homer's Hymn to Mercury.

[29] A French child's word for hurt.

[30] The Lives of the Lord Chancellors and the Keepers of the Great Seal of Ireland, from the Earliest Times to the Reign of Queen Victoria. By J. Roderick O'Flanagan, M.R.I.A. Two vols. pp. 555, 621. London: Longmans Green & Co. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.

[31] Com. on the Laws of England, p. 429 et seq.

[32] Between 1172 and 1200, Ireland had no fewer than seventeen chief governors. In the thirteenth century, they numbered forty-six; in the fourteenth, ninety-three; in the fifteenth, eighty-five; in the sixteenth, seventy-six; in the seventeenth, seventy-nine; and in the eighteenth, ninety-four.—O'Flanagan, vol. i. p. 293.

[33] O'Flanagan, vol. i. p. 130.

[34] Life and Death of the Irish Parliament. By the Right Hon. James Whiteside, C.J.

[35] Gilbert's Viceroys of Ireland.

[36] State Papers, temp. Henry VIII.

[37] Ware's Life of Browne.

[38] State Papers, vol. iii. p. 108.

[39] Morrin's Cal. vol. i. p. 55.

[40] John O'Hagan, the present Lord High Chancellor of Ireland.

[41] The Little Wanderer's Friend, January, 1871.

[42] Thom's Directory of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, for 1870, pp. 713-721.

[43] See Catholic World for April, September, and October, 1869, and April, 1870.

[44] This letter of M. Rouland, the text of which, in spite of all our efforts, we have not been able to procure, was communicated to several persons, and all the correspondence before us mentions it, giving it in the same terms which we have just used.

[45] Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by Rev. I. T. Hecker, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.

[46] 1. The Unity of Italy. The American Celebration of the Unity of Italy, at the Academy of Music, New York, Jan. 12, 1871; with the Addresses, Letters, and Comments of the Press. New York: Putnam & Sons. 1871. Imp. 8vo, pp. 197.

2. Programma Associazione dei Libri Pensatori in Roma. La Commissione. Roma, Febbraio, 1871. Fly-sheet.

[47] The question, Mr. Dana really argues, is, whether Catholics in other than the Roman state have, under the law of nations, a right to insist that by virtue of their donations, or what the law treats as eleemosynary gifts, they shall continue to be vested in the Holy See? The answer must be founded on the acknowledged principle of law, that all gifts of the sort must be invested and appropriated according to the will of the donors; and in the interest of all Catholics in the Holy See, as the mistress and mother of all the churches, Catholics throughout the world have an ethical right that their gifts shall be invested and appropriated to the purposes for which they are given; but we doubt if their right can be juridically asserted, under international law, in the courts of the usurping state, or of any other state, since the state of the church is suppressed. But there can be no doubt, from the relation of all Catholics to the Holy See, the invasion of her rights and despoiling her of possessions, whether absolute or only fiduciary, gives to all Catholic powers the right of war against the invader and despoiler. At the order of the Holy Father, Catholics throughout the world would have the right, even without the license of their temporal sovereigns, to arm for the recovery and restoration to the Holy See of the possessions or trusts of which she may be despoiled, because these possessions and trusts belong to the spirituality, and the Holy Father has plenary authority in spirituals, and is the spiritual sovereign, not the temporal sovereign, of all Catholics. If Italian Catholics had understood that the Roman state belonged to the Holy See, and therefore to the spirituality, they would have understood that no order of their king could bind them to obey him in despoiling the Roman state, or in entering it against the order of the Pope, for in spirituals the spiritual sovereign overrides the temporal sovereign.

[48] Le religioni dette rivelate sono state sempre il più grande nemico della umanità, poichè facendo del vero, patrimonio di tutti, il privilegio di pochi, si opposero allo sviluppo progressivo della scienza e della libertà, le sole capaci di risolvere i più gravi problemi sociali, attorno a cui da secoli si agitano intere generazioni.

Il sacerdote ha inventato degli esseri sopran-naturali, e fattosi mediatore fra questi e gli uomini va predicando ancora uda fede, che sostituisce l'autorità alla ragione, la schiavitù alla libertà, il bruto all'uomo.

Però la tenebra si è diradata, ed il progresso abbatte gl'idoli e svincola l'umana coscienza dalle catene, di cui i sacerdoti l'aveano cinta.

Accanita ferve la lotta fra il dogma ed i postulati della scienza, tra la libertà e la tirannide, fra la scienza e l'errore.

La voce della giustizia, fatta tacere nel sangue da re e preti assieme congiurati, è risorta onnipotente dai penetrali della inquisizione, dalle ceneri dei roghi, da ogni pietra sanctificata dal sangue degli apostoli della verità. Si credeva durasse eterno il regno del male, però l'alba è diventata giorno, la favilla si è fatta incendio. Ora Roma del prete diviene Roma del popolo, la città santa città umana. Non più si presti fede a credenze ipocrite, che sostituendo la forma alla sostanza suscitarono odi tra popoli e popoli, sol perchè gli uni adoravano un dio nella sinagoga e gli altri nella pagoda.

L'associazione dei liberi pensatori si stabilisce qui opportunamente per dare l'ultimo colpo al crollante edificio sacerdotale, fondato nella ignoranza dei molti e per l'astuzia dei pochi. Le verità provate dalla scienza costituiscono la nostra sola fede, il rispetto al diritto proprio nel rispettare il diritto altrui, la nostra morale.

E d'uopo guardare arditamente in faccia quel mostro secolare, che della terra ha fatto un campo di battaglia, sfidarlo all'aperto ed alla luce del giorno. Saremo così fedeli al programma della civiltà, in nome della quale il mondo ha applaudito alla liberazione di Roma dal Papa.

Noi facciamo appello a quanti amano davvero l'indipendenza morale della famiglia, prostituita e fatta schiava dal prete—a quanti vogliono una patria grande e rispettata—a quanti credono alla umana perfettibilità—uniamoci tutti sotto la bandiera della scienza e della giustizia.

A Roma è riservata una gran gloria—quella d'iniziare la terza e più splendida epoca dell'incivilimento umano.

Roma libera deve riparare ai danni arrecati al mondo dalla Roma sacerdotale. Essa può far lo, essa deve farlo. I veri amici della libertà si associino, e non iscendano a patti sol nemico più terribile che abbia avuto l'umana famiglia.

Roma, Febbraio, 1871. La Commissione.

[49] Diod. ii. 13

[50] Sir W. Jones.

[51] "It is a sin to think of the future."

[52] Mr. Vambéry's Central Asia.

[53] Olivier de Sèvres. Introduction to edition of 1804.

[54] See translation by Sir W. Jones. London edition, 13 vols.

[55] Niebuhr's Arabia, vol. ii.

[56] Translation of Sir W. Jones.

[57] Anthon's Anc. and Mediæval, p. 735.

[58] See illus. Lond. ed. of Sir T. G. Wilkinson's Anc. Egyp.

[59] Vide 131, Nov. Justinian.

[60] Doctor Harris's translation, p. 49. London, 1814.

[61] Lib. ii. tit. 35.

[62] According to some authorities, a copy of the Pandects was discovered at Amalphi, in the middle of the twelfth century, and was first given to the world by two Italian lawyers. D'Israeli, in his Curiosities of Literature, says: "The original MS. of Justinian's Code was discovered by the Pisans accidentally when they took a city in Calabria. That vast code of laws had been in a manner unknown from the time of that Emperor. This curious book was brought to Pisa, and, when Pisa was taken by the Florentines, transferred to Florence, where it is still preserved." The Code, Pandects, and Institutes are still received as common law in Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, Poland, and Scotland in their entirety, and partly so in France, Spain, and Italy.

[63] Middle Ages, vol. ii. p. 201.

[64] Encyclopædia Metropolitana. London, 1846

[65] Middle Ages, vol. ii. p. 146.

[66] Nov. Just. 123, c. 21-23.

[67] Middle Ages, vol. ii. p. 149.

[68] Sir William Jones, a learned scholar and able jurist, was of opinion that the invention of trial by jury could be traced to the ancient Greeks, while Blackstone pretends that the credit of it is due to the Saxons who brought the custom with them to England; but Hallam and other superior authorities maintain that the canon quoted in the text is the first germ on record of this great distinguished feature of English common law, and that it was not till long after the advent of the Normans that it assumed its present systematic form.

[69] Wilkins, p. 100.

[70] P. 415.

[71] Ingulph, p. 36. Nicholl's Lit. Anec. vol. i. p. 28.

[72] Peter of Blois, Epist. vol. i. 3. Paris, 1519.

[73] Middle Ages, p. 150.

[74] The continued encroachments of the crown on the rights of the barons and their tenants led to an armed league against John I., the leading spirit of which was the intrepid Archbishop of Canterbury and the General, Robert Fitzwalter, who took the title of "Marshal of the Army of God and of Holy Church." The result was a timely concession of the king, which was granted in the form of a Great Charter. The importance of many of the liberal guarantees set forth in that instrument has departed with the special evils that gave rise to them, but many of a more general nature and such as related to cheap, speedy, and impartial justice, have become integral parts of the British Constitution. As to the document itself, D'Israeli relates the following curious circumstance: "Sir Thomas Cotton one day at his tailor's discovered that the man was holding in his hand, ready to cut up for measures, an original magna charta, with all its appendages of seals and signatures. He bought the curiosity for a trifle, and recovered in this manner what had been given over for lost. This anecdote is told by Colomies, who long resided and died in this country. An original magna charta is preserved in the Cottonian Library; it exhibits marks of dilapidation, but whether from the invisible scythe of time or the humble scissors of a tailor I leave to archæological inquiry."

[75] Enc. Brit., art. "Law," p. 413.

[76] Institutes, b. 1, tit. 1, § 14.

[77] Thoughts suggested by reading, in Nature, an account of the solar eclipse of December, 1870.

[78] "The Souls"—generally said of souls in purgatory.

[79] Diminutive for Sebastiana.

[80]

"El Marques de Montegordo
Que se quedó mudo ciego y sordo."

Said of those who do not wish to speak, see, or hear.

[81] Very obstinate.

[82] Tiene las luces espabiladas. He has his lights snuffed, i.e., wits brightened—a common expression.

[83] Ha entrado en la casaca pero la casaca no ha entrado en él. Though he has put on soldier clothes, he hasn't gained wit by a soldier's experience.

[84] Dejarse ir, rule of rustic grammar, literally equivalent to "don't commit yourself."

[85] The Tarasca, or mammoth snake—an immense frame covered with canvas, and painted to resemble a snake—which is carried in front of the procession on the feast of Corpus Christi.

[86] Saint Thomas is the patron of smokers.

[87] A little more than a farthing, as if he had said, "Without the farthing, you can't make the fip."

[88] Pan perdido.

[89] Oveja que bala bocado pierde. The sheep that baas misses a mouthful.

[90] Without saying chuz or muz—without saying anything.

[91] Sodality of the Blessed Sacrament.

[92] Field hired of the town.

[93] The materials for this article are found in the learned work of Gregorovius (Geschichte der Stadt Rom), the publication of which, commenced at Stuttgardt in 1859, is not yet fully completed; in Baron Hübner's Life of Sixtus V.; Burckhardt's Cicerone in Italy; and Von Reumont's classical work on Middle Ages Rome.

[94]

Even as the Romans, for the mighty host,
The year of jubilee, upon the bridge,
Have chosen a mode to pass the people over.

For all upon one side towards the castle
Their faces have and go into St. Peter's;
On the other side they go towards the mountain.

Longfellow's Translation

[95] The reader will, of course, remember that these were races of horses without riders.

[96] Particularités de la Vie de la Princesse Amelie Galitzin. Par Theod. Katerkamp Münster. 1828.

La Princesse Galitzin et les Amis. Schücking: Cologne. 1840.

[97] "God became man that man might become God."—St. Augustine.

[98] Col. i. 18.

[99] Rom. vi. 4.

[100] We find in a letter of Dr. Dozous, who had followed closely the course of events, a list of the various chronic maladies of which he testifies the extraordinary cure by the water of the grotto.

"Continual headache; weakness of sight; amaurosis; chronic neuralgia; partial and general paralysis; chronic rheumatism; partial or general debility of the system; debility of early childhood. In these cases the healing action was so sudden, that many who had not previously believed in the reality of such cures were forced to accept them as real and incontestable.

"Diseases of the spine; leucorrhea, and other diseases of women; chronic maladies of the digestive organs; obstructions of the liver, and bile.

"Sore-throat; deafness from feebleness of the auricular nerves," etc., etc.

[101] Every one will understand the reserve which prevents the bishop from mentioning the universal suspicion at Lourdes, Cauterets, Barèges, and Tarbes, of the secret action of the police in the affair of the visionaries.

It would have been somewhat difficult for the prelate to say to the minister: "The pretended scandal, which you lament and magnify out of all natural proportion to the point of making it a pure romance, is nothing more nor less than yourself in the persons of your agents."

[102] Letter from M. Filhol to the Mayor of Lourdes, transmitting his analysis.

[103] We give complete details of the analysis contained in the report of M. Filhol. The eminent chemist continues:

I certify to having obtained the following results:

PHYSICAL AND ORGANOLEPTIC PROPERTIES OF THIS WATER.

It is clear, colorless, odorless: it has no decided taste. Its density is scarcely greater than that of distilled water.

CHEMICAL PROPERTIES.

The water of the grotto of Lourdes acts as follows, with reagents:

With Red Tincture of Turnsol.—It becomes blue.

Lime-water.—The mixture becomes milky; an excess of the water of grotto redissolves the precipitate first formed.

Soapsuds.—It becomes very cloudy.

Chloride of Barium.—No apparent action.

Nitrate of Silver.—Slight white precipitate, which partly dissolves in nitric acid.

Oxalate of Ammonia.—Scarcely any sensible action.

Submitted to the action of heat in a glass retort communicating with a receiver, the water yielded a gas partly absorbed by potassa. The portion thus left undissolved was partly absorbed by phosphorus; finally, there remained a gaseous residuum possessing all the properties of nitrogen. At the same time that this gas was disengaged, the water was slightly clouded and precipitated a white deposit, slightly tinged with red. Treated with hydrochloric acid, this deposit was dissolved, producing a lively effervescence.

I saturated the acid solution with an excess of ammonia; this reagent caused the precipitation of several light flakes of a reddish color, which I carefully separated. These flakes washed with distilled water I treated with caustic potash, which took nothing from them. I washed the flakes again, and dissolved them in chlorhydric acid; then I further diluted the solution with water, and submitted it to the action of several reagents, whose effects I will proceed to indicate:

Yellow Cyanide of Potassium and Iron.—Blue precipitate.

Ammonia.—Reddish brown precipitate.

Tannin.—Principally black.

Sulpho-Cyanide of Potassium.—Blood-red color.

The liquid, separated from the flaky deposit, gave with oxalate of ammonia an abundant white precipitate. Having separated this precipitate by a filter, I threw phosphate of ammonia into the clear liquid; this reagent determined the formation of a new white precipitate.

I evaporated to dryness five litres of the water, and treated the dry residuum with a small quantity of distilled water in order to dissolve the soluble salts. The solution thus obtained was turned blue by red tincture of turnsol. I again evaporated the solution thus obtained, and poured alcohol over the dry residuum; this being set on fire, gave a pale yellow flame, such as is produced by salts of soda. I again dissolved the residuum in a few drops of distilled water, and mixed the solution with chloride of platina; a slight canary-colored precipitate was formed in the mixture.

Having acidulated two litres of the water of the grotto of Lourdes with chlorhydric acid, I evaporated it to dryness, and found the residuum taken by the acidulated water to be but partly dissolved. The insoluble part presented all the appearance of silica.

I submitted to evaporation ten litres of the water of the grotto of Lourdes, in which I found a very pure carbonate of potassa had been previously dissolved. The result of the evaporation was moistened with boiling alcohol, and, again evaporated to dryness, the residuum was heated to a dull red.

The product of this operation was dissolved, after cooling, in a few drops of distilled water, and mixed with a little starch paste. Carefully treating this mixture with weakly chlorated water, I saw the liquid take a blue tint.

Submitted to distillation, the water of the grotto of Lourdes gives a slightly alkaline distilled product.

From these facts it follows that the water of the grotto of Lourdes holds in solution:

1. Oxygen.

2. Nitrogen.

3. Carbonic acid.

4. Carbonates of lime, of magnesia, and a trace of carbonate of iron.

5. An alkaline carbonate or silicate, chlorides of potassium and sodium.

6. Traces of sulphates of potassa and soda.

7. Traces of ammonia.

8. Traces of iodine.

The quantitative analysis of this water, made according to the ordinary methods, gives the following results:

Water 1 kilogramme.

Centig.

Carbonic acid 8

Oxygen 5

Nitrogen 17

Ammonia traces.

Gr. millig.

Carbonate of Lime .096

Carbonate of Magnesia 0.012

Carbonate of Iron traces.

Carbonate of Soda traces.

Chloride of Sodium 0.008

Chloride of Potassium traces.

Silicate of Soda, and traces of Silicate of Potassa 0.018

Sulphates of Potassa and Soda traces.

Iodine traces.

0.134

[104] According to the old Irish chronicles, Cormac, King of all Ireland, renounced the worship of idols about two centuries before the arrival of St. Patrick, having received in a vision the promise of the true faith.

[105] See the second volume of this periodical for 1861, and also the number for March, 1870.

[106] Thus I will, thus I command: let my will stand for a reason.

[107] Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by Rev. I. T. Hecker, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.

[108] Marangoni: Life of the Servant of God, Father Buonsignore Cacciaguerra.

[109] In his Speculum Historiale, lib. iv., chap. 22.

[110] See the notes of Jacques Laderchi in the life of St. Cecilia published by him, and the long list of memorials which he has collected in her honor. Sanctæ Ceciliæ, V. et M., acta: edidet Jacobius Laderchius. 2 vols. in 4to, Rome, 1723. The work is very rare, but may be found in the Imperial Library, Paris.

[111] Justice and gratitude oblige us to acknowledge the great advantage we have received from Dom Guéranger's book. As well written as it is learned, it is still the best history of St. Cecilia. But the learned Benedictine has only touched slightly on the influence of St. Cecilia on the fine arts, and we have been obliged to fill out these notes by personal research and observations made in a recent journey to Italy.

[112] Died 1593.

[113] See Laderchi, op. cit. t. ii., pp. 438-450.

[114] See Select Works of Alexander Pope. One vol. in 12mo, Leipsic, 1848, Tauchnitz edition. "Ode for Music on St. Cecilia's Day."

[115] He was decorated by the "Académie Française" (Nov., 1869).

[116] St. Cecilia, a tragic poem. By Count Anatole de Ségur. One volume folio, at Amb. Bray's, Paris, 1868.

[117] This is not an arbitrary philosophic division. It corresponds to the three worlds recognized by the greatest geniuses of antiquity or of modern times—Plato, Aristotle, Bossuet, and Malebranche—the world of the senses, the world of human thought, and the divine world.

[118] So in Raphael's famous picture, the pearl of the gallery at Bologna; while its exacted symbolism and heavenly sentiment tempt us to class it among the masterpieces of the mystic school, it must be confessed that St. Magdalen has a very earthly look. We know, alas, how this noble form has been profaned by some artists; the victim, even after her penitence, of the sensual tastes of the Renaissance, she remained a courtesan in the eyes of Titian and Correggio; and the pagans of the sixteenth century have turned our saint into a nymph lying in a grotto, or standing veiled only by the masses of her long hair.

[119] The frescoes of St. Louis have been engraved by Landon in his great book on the life and works of celebrated painters. See Works of Domenichino. 3 vols. in 4to, Paris, 1803.

[120] There are two more pictures of St. Cecilia by Domenichino. One is in the Rospigliosi Palace at Rome; the other was in England at the beginning of this century. See the engravings already mentioned in Landon.

[121] In this second school may be classed the pictures of Paul Veronese and of Garofolo in the Dresden Museum. As for Carlo Dolce's St. Cecilia, it is far sweeter, and forms the connecting link between the rationalistic and mystic schools. We have not seen the picture, which is in the Museum at Dresden, but it has become well-known through engravings, and has been published by Schulger at Paris.

[122] Raphael has also represented St. Cecilia bearing witness to Christ at the tomb. This may be seen at the Museum at Naples. Dom Guéranger considers the type of this picture far higher than any of the others.—C. F. Vasari, t. iii. p. 166.

[123] Raphael d'Urbin, t. ii., p. 277.

[124] His name was M. Bottu de Toulmont, it appears.

[125] Dictionary of Plain Chant, in the Theological Encyclopedia at Migne, 256.

[126] At Brussels this mass is sung in St. Gudule.

[127] Though the above lines were written before the disestablishment of the State Church in Ireland, their author's indignation has been little appeased by that extorted act of justice. The measure was unaccompanied by any attempt at reparation for the past. At the very least, the old Catholic churches might have been returned to their lawful owners. And is there any sign to-day of full justice ever being done or half-done? None—except in the event of divine vengeance forcing England to kneel to her generous victim and "sue to be forgiven." Fiat, fiat.

[128] The Origin of Civilization and the Primitive Condition of Man: Mental and Social Condition of Savages. By Sir John Lubbock, Bart., M.P., F.R.S., etc. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1871. 16mo, pp. 380.

[129] See The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, by Charles Darwin.

[130] Authorities: The Jesuit Relations; History of the Catholic Missions, by John G. Shea; The Pioneers of France in the New World, and The Jesuits in North America, by Francis Parkman; Bancroft's History of the United States, etc., etc.

[131] Presse, Aug. 31, 1858.

[132] Siècle, Aug. 30, 1858.

[133] Amsterdaamsche Courant, Sept. 9, 1858.

[134] The above extracts are from the Univers, on various dates in August and September, 1858.

[135] Twenty-eighth procès-verbal of the episcopal commission.

The following is the report of one of the physicians appointed to examine this cure:

"The boy Tambourné, at five years of age, showed the symptoms of hip disease in the first stage; very sharp pains in the knee, duller at the hip, a turning out of the foot, lameness at first, afterwards inability to walk without great suffering. The digestive functions became impaired. He had a repugnance to food, and became very much reduced. The disease, going through its first period very rapidly, was threatening sooner or later to put an end to the child's life, when the idea was formed of taking him to the grotto of Lourdes, where his cure was effected instantly.

"The complaint of young Tambourné was of the same class as that of Busquet, but it was more severe, having affected one of the principal joints. Its indications were already most distressing to the eyes of the physician who is able to see what the future has in store.

"It is, no doubt, possible to cure hip-disease, by the means and processes employed by science. Natural sulphurous waters can remove it; but in no case is it possible for them to operate with the rapidity of lightning.

"Instantaneousness of action is so much beyond the healing power by means of which such waters operate, that it may be asserted that there is a fact in the supernatural order in all the cases of immediate cure in which a material lesion has been involved. It hardly needs to be stated that young Tambourné came to the grotto carried by his mother, and that a few moments afterwards he climbed a steep slope, walked and ran the rest of the day, without feeling the least pain, and with as much ease as before the coming on of the disease, etc."

[136] We give in this note the report of the physicians entrusted with the examination of this case by the episcopal commission. It is remarkable for its circumspection. It does not dare to pronounce in favor of a miracle; but such a reserve in so striking a case gives to the reports in which miraculous power is recognized an authority yet more incontestable and conclusive.

"Mlle. Massot-Bordenave, of Arras, aged fifty-three, was afflicted in the month of May, 1858, with a malady which deprived her feet and hands of part of their power and mobility. Her fingers were much bent.... Her bread had to be cut for her. She went on foot to the grotto, bathed her hands and feet, and went away cured.

"It cannot be denied that all the prima facie indications in this case are in favor of the intervention of some supernatural cause; but examining it with attention, we shall see that this view is opposed by several well-founded objections. Thus, the beginning of the trouble was hardly four months before; its character was not alarming, being a weakness of convalescence, a diminution of energy in the extensor and flexor muscles of the fingers and toes. Let the nervous power flow into these muscles, under the influence of a strong moral stimulus, and they would resume their functions immediately. Now, may we not admit in this case that the imagination may have become exalted by the religious sentiment, and by the hope of becoming the recipient of a favor from heaven?"

[137] A great part of the papers relating to the grotto of Lourdes were kept by the Lacadé family instead of being left in the archives of the mayoralty. We endeavored in vain to get at these precious documents. The Lacadé family say that they have been burned.

[138] New York: Charles Scribner & Co.

[139] Author of Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers.

[140] Mr. Froude's memory is not always good. In his History of England, vol. ix., p. 307, he tells us: "The guidance of the great movement was snatched from the control of reason to be made over to Calvinism; and Calvinism, could it have had the world under its feet, would have been as merciless as the Inquisition itself. The Huguenots and the Puritans, the Bible in one hand, the sword in the other, were ready to make war with steel and fire against all which Europe for ten centuries had held sacred. Fury encountered fury, fanaticism fanaticism; and wherever Calvin's spirit penetrated, the Christian world was divided into two armies, who abhorred each other with a bitterness exceeding the utmost malignity of mere human nature."

[141] Orig. De Orat.

[142] Gerbet, Le Dogme Générateur de la Piété Catholique.

[143] Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by Rev. I. T. Hecker, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.

[144] Contra Academicos, lib. iii. § 23.

[145] These letters, from the pen of the well-known Canadian writer, M. l'Abbé Casgrain, have been translated for The Catholic World, with the permission of the author.—Translator's Note.

[146] On my return to Canada, a small collection was taken up among the admirers of Eugénie, which amounted to five hundred francs, and which has been sent to Mlle. de Guérin.

His Holiness Pius IX., whom we count among the admirers of the virgin of Cayla, and designated by him in a letter as the blessed Eugénie, has deigned to accord his apostolic benediction, and a plenary indulgence, to all the benefactors of Andillac. Their names are inscribed in the archives of the parish, and the holy sacrifice of the Mass is offered for them four times a year.

[147] Napoleon got Nice and Savoy; Victor Emanuel, the Papal States. Every wise and religious man must desire that Italy should be free. The greatest enemy to true and permanent freedom is that false freedom which divorces itself from justice that it may wed itself to fortune.

[148] The Senchus Mor was sometimes known as Cain Patraic, or Patrick's Law.

[149] 1 Thess. v. 8; Ephes. vi. 11, 17.

[150] 1 John v. 4.

[151] Bien Public, n. 82.

[152] Matt. x. 32, 33; Mark viii. 38; Luke xii. 8; Tim. ii. 12.

[153] John xvi. 33; Matt. xiii. 33; John xvii. 20-23.

[154] Heb. xi. 33, 34.

[155] "All the circumstances connected with this fact," says the report of the physicians, "stamp it with a supernatural character. It is impossible to escape from this conviction, if one considers, on one hand, the chronic nature of the complaint which began in 1834; the force of its engendering cause, namely, the cholera; the permanence of some of its symptoms in a most important organ of life, the stomach; the fruitlessness of remedies applied by a competent physician, M. Subervielle, the gradual prostration of strength, followed inevitably by dyspepsia, and the enervation resulting from continual pain; and, on the other hand, if one will couple with these circumstances the effect produced by natural water, only once applied, and the instantaneous character of the result."

[156] 1. Church and State in America. A Discourse given at Washington, D. C., at the installation of Rev. Frederic Hinckley as Pastor of the Unitarian Church, January 25, 1871. By Rev. Henry W. Bellows, D.D. Washington, D. C.: Philp & Solomons. 1871. 8vo, pp. 22.

2. A Secular View of Religion in the State, and of the Bible in the Public Schools. By E. P. Hurlbut. Albany: Munsell. 1870. 8vo, pp. 55.

[157] The citation is from Medical Bibliography. By James Atkinson. London. 1854.

[158] Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by Rev. I. T. Hecker, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.

[159] The Conservative Reformation and its Theology; as Represented in the Augsburg Confession, and in the History and Literature of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. By Charles V. Krauth, D.D., Norton Professor of Theology in the Evangelical Lutheran Theological Seminary, and Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy in the University of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1871. 8vo, pp. 800.

[160] A house sometimes contains two or three suites of apartments for distinct families. Each one forms a habitation.

[161] 28th of August, St. Augustine; 4th of October, St. Francis.

[162] La Leona, the lioness.

[163] Azacan, water-carrier, said of a servant or very laborious person.

[164] Los Usias, the You Sirs. That is to say, grand folks that must be treated to the Usted (you), instead of the tu (thou) of common people.

[165] Jabeque, a clumsy three-masted vessel used in the Mediterranean.

[166] Arturo.

[167] Magpie.

[168] A common dish on the tables of the country people.

[169] Offscouring.

[170] Partisans, or party.

[171] The patron of Spain.

[172] Brigands.

[173] To have misgivings as to the result of anything.

[174] Tactica, tactics.

[175] Mala, bad; parte, part; name given by the Spanish soldiers to Bonaparte.

[176] Murat, Duke of Berg.

[177] Funesto. Nickname given by the Spanish soldiers to Junot.

[178] One who asks alms for charitable purposes.

[179] Rob the saints.

[180] A girl-boy.

[181] Mariette, Notice des principaux Monuments exposés dans les Galeries provisoires du Musée d'Antiquités Egyptiennes de S. A. le Vice-Roi, à Boulaq. Alexandrie. 1864. It may be well to remark here that the antiquity of the Egyptian nation is by no means irreconcilable with the Septuagint, as Mgr. Meignan shows in his learned work on Le Monde primitif, pp. 164 and 151. Paris. 1869. Palmé.

[182] Egypt ancienne, by Champollion-Figeac. Paris. 1859.

[183] Aperçu de l'Histoire d'Egypte depuis les Temps les plus reculés jusqu'à la Conquête Musulmane. By Auguste Mariette-Bey, Director of the Company for the Preservation of Egyptian Antiquities. Alexandria. 1864.

[184] E. Renan. Les Antiquités et les Fouilles d'Egypte (Revue des Deux Mondes, for April 1, 1865).

[185] H. Dufresne, Moniteur Officiel for July 2, 1867.

[186] Gladstone.

[187] Bossuet, Discours sur l'Histoire universelle.

[188] Robiau, Histoire ancienne du Peuple de l'Orient, p. 83.

[189] Mariette, Notice des principaux Monuments du Musée d'Antiquités Egyptiennes à Boulaq, P. 75.

[190] Little moral treatise by Phtah-Hotep, who lived in the reign of Assa-Tatkera, the last king but one of the fifth dynasty—partly translated by M. Chabas in the Revue Archéol., xxix., first series.

[191] Champollion-Figeac, Egypte ancienne, 173.

[192] Robiau, Histoire anc. des Peuples de l'Orient.

[193] De Bonald, Thêorie du Pouvoir, vol. i. p. 253.

[194] Champollion-Figeac.

[195] Champollion-Figeac, Egypte ancienne, p. 173.

[196] Diodorus.

[197] Bossuet, Discours sur l'Histoire univ. The passage from Diodorus which inspired the sagacious reflections of the illustrious Bishop of Meaux is this: "Wrestling and music are not allowed to be taught, for, according to the Egyptian belief, the daily exercise of the body gives young men not health, but a transient strength which is prejudicial. As to music, it is considered not only useless, but injurious, as rendering the mind of man effeminate."

[198] The large wigs so often found on the monuments of the ancient monarchy, worn by both sexes, like the turban, were a preservative against the ardor of the sun's rays.

[199] Herodotus; Diodorus Siculus.

[200] Bossuet, Histoire universelle.

[201] Des Castes et de la Transmission héréditaire des Professions dans l'ancienne Egypte: a memoir published in the Journal général de l'Instruction publique, and in Vol. X. of the Revue Archéologique. Ampère proves by this learned étude that "there were no castes among the ancient Egyptians in the strict sense of that word, as it is used in India, for example." He very satisfactorily explains how a slight inexactness in the histories of Herodotus and Diodorus respecting hereditary transmission in the class of priests and warriors, "sufficed to found on this inheritance of pursuits and the separation of classes in Egypt, a theory that ended by becoming completely erroneous." M. Egger, in speaking of hereditary professions, says: "It is known that every degree of the social scale in ancient Egypt rested on this foundation. It was for a long time believed, according to Herodotus and Diodorus, that the Egyptian castes were absolutely exclusive; but an interesting memoir by J. J. Ampère (1848) proves the contrary, and scientific discoveries daily confirm the truth of his observations." (Bulletin de la Société d' Economie Sociale, June, 1868.)

[202] Diodorus. With the exception of certain fabulous relations, easily recognized by their mythological character, we consider as perfectly credible the interesting details Diodorus has left concerning the manners, laws, and institutions of ancient Egypt. He had visited that country himself, and did not depend on the testimony of others. "We give," says he, "the facts we have carefully examined, which are preserved in the records of the Egyptian priesthood." After stating that he visited that country under Ptolemy, son of Lagus, during the 180th Olympiad, he adds: "During our travels in Egypt we had intercourse with many priests, and conversed with a great number of Ethiopian envoys. After carefully collecting all the information we could find on the subject, and examining the accounts of historians, we have only admitted into our narration facts generally received." Lib. iii.

[203] M. Troplong.

[204] Probably superintendents is meant.

[205] Champollion-Figeac.

[206] Diodorus.

[207] The ritual of the dead puts the following beautiful words into the mouth of the deceased, when he justifies himself before the tribunal of Osiris: "I have spoken ill neither of the king nor my own father."

[208] Diodorus.

[209] Decree of 196 B.C., found on the Rosetta Stone.

[210] Diodorus.

[211] It could also be explained as the effect of a reaction which often accompanies a change of dynasty. M. F. Lenormant regards this judgment of kings as a mere fable. "The king when dead," says he, "was as much of a god as when living." Doubtless, but the Cæsars were also during their lives raised to the rank of divinities, which did not prevent the Romans from killing several. We see no difficulty in admitting the explicit testimony of Diodorus, corroborated by the opinion of Champollion the Younger as well as his brother.

[212] Bossuet, Histoire univ., ii. 177. The Israelites probably borrowed this custom from the Egyptians.

[213] Notre Dame de Garaison.

	Ministers.	Churches.	Members.
1823	175	900	40,000
1833	240	1,000	60,000
1841	418	1,371	145,408
1842	424	1,371	166,300
1850	663	1,604	163,000
1859	1,134	2,017	203,662
1862	1,419	2,672	284,000
1863	1,418	2,533	269,985
1864	1,543	2,765	292,723
1865	1,627	2,856	312,415
1866	1,644	2,915	323,825
1867	1,750	3,112	332,155
1868	1,792	3,182	350,088
1869	2,016	3,330	376,567
1870	2,211	3,537	392,721

	Ministers.	Churches.	Members.
In 44 years	36	50	6,640
In 26 years	51	67	7,182
In 8 years	77	124	16,061

	Ministers.	Churches.	Members.
In 47 years	9	16	2,043
In 7 years	14	15	2,532

	Ministers.	Societies.	Members.
In 25 years	13	66	1,319

	Ministers.	Churches.	Members.
In 47 years	8½	7	1,039
In 7 years	10	10	1,060

	Ministers.	Members.
1843	250	15,000
1859	—	33,000
1862	—	46,000
1863	386	47,388
1365	405	50,000
1866	473	54,875
1867	478	58,002

	Synods.	Presby.	Min.	Conversions.
1822	1	—	46	2,718
1826	1	—	80	3,305
1827	1	—	114	4,006
1833	6	32	—	5,977
1843	13	57	—	—

	Ministers.	Churches.	Communicants.
1842	6,000	9,000	750,000
1859	7,150	11,606	925,000
1862	—	—	966,000
1863	7,952	12,551	1,039,400
1865	7,867	12,702	1,040,303
1866	—	12,675	1,043,641
1868	8,346	12,955	1,094,806
1869	8,695	12,011	1,121,988
1870	8,787	—	1,221,349

	Preachers.	Members.
1773	10	1,160
1783	83	13,740
1793	269	67,643
1803	393	86,734
1813	700	214,307
1823	1,226	312,540
1833	2,400	599,736
1843	4,286	1,068,525
1850	3,716	629,660 [26]
1859	6,502	971,498
1862	—	942,906
1863	5,885	923,394
1864	—	928,320
1865	6,121	925,285
1866	6,287	1,032,184 [27]
1867	8,004	1,146,081
1868	8,481	1,255,115
1869	8,830	1,298,938

	Travelling preachers.	Members.
1830	83	5,000
1842	—	53,875
1850	740	64,219
1854	—	70,018
1858	2,000	90,000

	Church Members in 1867.	Average Annual Increase in 25 y'rs.
1. Lutherans	332,155	7,182
2. German Reformed	110,408	3,431
3. United Brethren	97,983	1,319
4. Moravians	6,655	26
5. Dutch Reformed	57,846	1,261
6. Mennonites	39,110	380
7. Reformed Mennonites	11,000	200
8. Evangelical Association	58,002	1,791
9. Christian Connection	500,000	7,954
10. Church of God	32,000	960
11. O. S. Presbyterians	246,350	6,958
12. N. S. Presbyterians	161,538	2,167
13. Reformed Presbyterians (General Synod)	8,324	153
14. Synod of Reformed Presbyterians	6,000	—
15. Associate and United Presbyterians	63,489	1,000
16. Associate Reformed Presbyterians	3,909	80
17. Free Presbyterians	1,000	—
18. Cumberland Presbytr'ns.	100,000	1,819
19. Baptists	1,094,806	13,796
20. Free-Will Baptists	59,111	204
21. Seventh-Day Baptists	7,038	41
22. Dunkers	20,000	500
23. German Seventh-Day Baptists	1,800	30
24. Free-Commun. Baptists	104	—
25. Anti-Mission Baptists	105,000	6,143
26. Six-Principle Baptists	3,000	—
27. River Brethren	7,000	80
28. Disciples (Campbellites)	300,000	4,762
29. Congregationalists	278,362	4,734
30. Unitarians	30,000	300
31. Universalists	80,000	1,000
32. Protestant Episcopal	194,692	6,536
33. Methodist Episcopal	1,146,081	30,377
34. Methodist Protestant	50,000	—
35. Methodist Church	50,000	2,000
36. True Wesleyan	25,000	200
37. African Methodist	200,000	7,500
38. Zion African Methodist	60,000	2,008
39. Methodist Epis. (South)	535,040	4,087
40. Free Methodist	4,880	617
41. Western Primitive Methodist	2,000	40
42. Independent Methodists	800	—
43. Friends, or Quakers	100,000	1,000
44. Hicksites	40,000	400
45. Shakers	4,713	60
46. Adventists	30,000	1,500
47. Swedenborgians	5,000	186
48. Spiritualism	165,000	8,000
49. Mormon Church	60,000	2,000
50. Christian Perfectionists	255	10
51. Catholic Apost. Church	250	10
Total	6,396,110	134,802

1840	17,069,453
1850	23,191,876
1860	31,443,322
1867	36,743,198
1870 incomplete officially.

Water	1 kilogramme.

	Centig.
Carbonic acid	8
Oxygen	5
Nitrogen	17
Ammonia	traces.

	Gr. millig.
Carbonate of Lime	.096
Carbonate of Magnesia	0.012
Carbonate of Iron	traces.
Carbonate of Soda	traces.
Chloride of Sodium	0.008
Chloride of Potassium	traces.
Silicate of Soda, and traces of Silicate of Potassa	0.018
Sulphates of Potassa and Soda	traces.
Iodine	traces.
	0.134

	Ministers.	Churches.	Members.
1820	68	389	14,400
1830	84	353	17,189
1840	123	416	17,760
1850	231	786	58,799
1860	391	1,045	92,684
1862	421	1,122	100,691
1864	460	1,134	107,394
1866	475	1,162	109,258
1867	491	1,152	110,408
1868	505	1,181	115,483
1869	521	—	117,910

	Ministers.	Societies.	Members.
1842	500	1,800	65,000
1866	789	3,297	91,570
1867	837	3,445	98,983
1868	864	3,663	108,122

	Ministers.	Churches.	Members.
1820	71	105	9,023
1830	132	197	15,579
1840	230	245	23,782
1850	293	292	33,553
1860	387	370	50,427
1862	419	429	—
1863	446	422	53,007
1865	436	427	54,286
1866	447	434	55,917
1867	461	444	57,846
1868	469	—	59,508
1869	493	464	61,444

	Ministers.	Churches.	Members.
1843	1,434	2,092	159,137
1850	1,860	2,512	200,830
1860	2,577	3,487	279,630
1861	2,767	3,684	300,874
1863	2,205	2,541	227,575
1865	2,201	2,629	232,450
1866	2,294	2,608	239,306
1867	2,302	2,622	246,330
1868	2,330	2,737	252,555
1869	2,381	2,740	258,903
1870 [23]	4,234	—	446,561

THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

UNIFICATION AND EDUCATION.[2]

THE CROSS.

THE HOUSE OF YORKE.

CHAPTER I. GENEALOGIES.

CHAPTER II. WIPING OUT, AND BEGINNING ANEW.

SAUNTERING.

SOR JUANA INES DE LA CRUZ.

DION AND THE SIBYLS. A CLASSIC, CHRISTIAN NOVEL.

CHAPTER XXIV.

CHAPTER XXV.

CHAPTER XXVI.

CHAPTER XXVII.

EUROPE'S FUTURE.

I. THE RACE THEORY.

II. LIBERALISM.

III. SOCIALISM.

IV. THE INTERNATIONAL POLICY OF EUROPEAN STATES SINCE 1789.

V. THE INTERNAL POLICY OF THE EUROPEAN STATES SINCE 1789.

VI. THE POSITION OF THE CHURCH UNDER THE LIBERAL SYSTEM.

VII. EUROPE'S FUTURE.

BISHOP TIMON.[7]

GUALBERTO'S VICTORY.

OUR LADY OF LOURDES.

PART SIXTH. I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

OUR NORTHERN NEIGHBORS.

ON THE HIGHER EDUCATION. SECOND ARTICLE.

THE WARNING.

WRITING MATERIALS OF THE ANCIENTS.

DOÑA FORTUNA AND DON DINERO.[16]

ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI.

LETTER FROM ROME.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

THE CHURCH ACCREDITS HERSELF[22]

BORDEAUX.

THE "AMEN" OF THE STONES.

THE HOUSE OF YORKE.

CHAPTER III. DIEU DISPOSE.

CHAPTER IV. THE OLD HOME.

OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE.

STATISTICS OF PROTESTANTISM IN THE UNITED STATES.

ON A GREAT PLAGIARIST.

MARY BENEDICTA.

THE LORD CHANCELLORS OF IRELAND[30]

GOTTFRIED VON STRASSBURG'S GREAT HYMN TO THE VIRGIN.

A WORD TO THE INDEPENDENT.

OUR LADY OF LOURDES.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

THE SHAMROCK GONE WEST.

SAYINGS OF THE FATHERS OF THE DESERT.

VESPERS.

THE LEGEND OF SANTA RESTITUTA.

A LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT OF A COLLEGE.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

SARDINIA AND THE HOLY FATHER.[46]

FLOWERS.

I.

II.

THE HOUSE OF YORKE.

CHAPTER V. NEW FRIENDS

CHAPTER VI. BOADICEA.

MEXICAN ART AND ITS MICHAEL ANGELO.

"THE SERIOUS, TOO, HAVE THEIR 'VIVE LA BAGATELLE.'"

WHAT OUR MUNICIPAL LAW OWES TO THE CHURCH.

TO THE CRUCIFIED.[77]

LAS ANIMAS[78]

SAINT JOHN DWARF.

HOW ROME LOOKED THREE CENTURIES AGO.[93]

THE BEAR,

THE CORSO,

THE PINCIAN HILL,

ROME IN 1400.

AN ARCHITECTURAL RETROSPECT.

THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.

CHAPTER I.
GENEALOGIES.

CHAPTER II.
WIPING OUT, AND BEGINNING ANEW.

DION AND THE SIBYLS.
A CLASSIC, CHRISTIAN NOVEL.

I.
THE RACE THEORY.

II.
LIBERALISM.

III.
SOCIALISM.

IV.
THE INTERNATIONAL POLICY OF EUROPEAN STATES SINCE 1789.

V.
THE INTERNAL POLICY OF THE EUROPEAN STATES SINCE 1789.

VI.
THE POSITION OF THE CHURCH UNDER THE LIBERAL SYSTEM.

VII.
EUROPE'S FUTURE.

PART SIXTH.
I.

ON THE HIGHER EDUCATION.
SECOND ARTICLE.

THE CHURCH ACCREDITS HERSELF [22]

CHAPTER III.
DIEU DISPOSE.

CHAPTER IV.
THE OLD HOME.

THE LORD CHANCELLORS OF IRELAND [30]

CHAPTER V.
NEW FRIENDS

CHAPTER VI.
BOADICEA.

LAS ANIMAS [78]

PART VII.
I.

CHAPTER VII.
DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.

CHAPTER VIII.
FATHER RASLE.

SAINT CECILIA.
HER INFLUENCE ON LITERATURE AND THE ARTS.

BOOK EIGHTH.
I.

CATHOLICITY AND PANTHEISM.
NO. XI.

SONNET.
Italian "Unification" in 1861.

CHAPTER IX.
TWO YEARS AFTER

CHAPTER X.
A DESPAIRING CHAPTER.