THE CATHOLIC WORLD.— Vol. VI. October, 1867, to March, 1868.

[Transcriber's note: This text is derived from archive.org/stream/catholicworld06pauluoft/catholicworld06pauluoft_djvu.txt Page numbers are shown in curly braces, such as {123}. They have been moved to the nearest sentence break.]

The Catholic World.

A Monthly Magazine

of

General Literature And Science

VOL. VI.

October, 1867, To March, 1868.

New York:
The Catholic Publication House,
126 Nassau Street.
1868.

John A. Gray & Green,

Printers,

16 And 18 Jacob Street, New York.

Contents.

Poetry.

New Publications.

The Catholic World

Vol. VI., No. 31.—October, 1867.

Rome And The World.

Under the head Rome or Reason we showed in THE CATHOLIC WORLD for last month that Catholicity is based on reality, and is the synthesis, so to speak, of Creator and creature, of God and man, of heaven and earth, nature and grace, faith and reason, authority and liberty, revelation and science, and that there is in the real order no antagonism between the two terms or categories. The supposed antagonism results from not understanding the real nexus that unites them in one dialectic whole, and forms the ground of their mutual conciliation and peace, expressed in the old sense of the word "atonement."

Christianity is supernatural, indeed, but it is not an after-thought, or an anomaly in the original plan of creation. Our Lord was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world; the Incarnation is included in creation as its completion or fulfilment; and hence many theologians hold that, even if man had not sinned, God would have become incarnate, not, indeed, to redeem man from sin and death which comes by sin, but to ennoble his nature, and to enable him to attain to that supernatural union with God in which alone he finds or can find his supreme good or perfect beatitude. Christianity, whether this be so or not, must always be regarded as teleological, the religion of the end—not accidentally so, but made so in the original plan of the Creator. It enters dialectically, not arbitrarily, into that plan, and really completes it. In this view of the case the Creator's works from first to last are dialectical, and there is and can be no contradiction in them; no discrepancy between the natural and supernatural, between faith and reason, nature and grace, the beginning, medium, and end, but all form integral parts of one indissoluble whole.

But, if there is and can be no antagonism between Rome and Reason, there certainly is an antagonism between Rome and the World, which must not be overlooked or counted for nothing, and which will, in some form, most likely, subsist as long as the world stands. Rome symbolizes for us the catholic religion, or the divine order, which is the law of life. {2} The Catholic Church in its present state dates only from the Incarnation, out of which it grows, and of which it is in some sort the visible continuation; but the Catholic religion, as the faith, as the law of life, dates from the beginning. The just before the coming of Christ were just on the same principles, by the same faith, and by obedience to the same divine law, or conformity to the same divine order, that they are now, and will be to the end; and hence the deist Tindal expressed a truth which he was far from comprehending when he asserted that "Christianity is as old as the world." Tindal's great error was in understanding by Christianity only the natural law promulgated through natural reason, and in denying the supernatural. Christianity is that and more too. It includes, and from the first has included, in their synthesis, both the natural and the supernatural. The human race has never had but one true or real religion, but one revelation, which, as St. Thomas teaches, was made in substance to our first parents in the garden. Times change, says St. Augustine, but faith changes not. As believed the fathers—the patriarchs—so believe we, only they believed in a Christ to come, and we in a Christ that has come. Prior to the actual coming of Christ the Church existed, but in a state of promise, and needed his actual coming to be perfected, or fulfilled, as St. Paul teaches us in his epistle to the Hebrews; and hence none who died before the Incarnation actually entered heaven till after the passion of our Lord.

Now, to this divine order, this divine law, this catholic faith and worship symbolized to us by Rome, the visible centre of its unity and authority, stands opposed another order, not of life, but of death, called the world, originating with our first parents, and in their disobedience to the divine law, or violation of the divine order established by the Creator, conformity to which was essential to the moral life and perfection of the creature, or fulfilment of the promise given man in creation. The order violated was founded in the eternal wisdom and goodness of the Creator, and the relations which necessarily subsist between God as creator and man as his creature, the work of his hands. There is and can be for man no other law of life; even God himself can establish no other. By obedience to the law given or conformity to the order established man is normally developed, lives a true normal life, and attains to his appointed end, which is the completion of his being in God, his beatitude or supreme good. But Satan tempted our first parents to depart from this order and to transgress the divine law, and in their transgression of the law they fell into sin, and founded what we call the world—not on the law of life, but on what is necessarily the law of death.

The principle of the world may be collected from the words of the Tempter to Eve: "Ye shall not surely die, but shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." These words deny the law of God, declare it false, and promise to men independence of their Creator, and the ability to be their own masters, their own teachers and guides. "Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil;" that is, determining for yourselves, independently of any superior, what is right or wrong, good or evil, or what is or is not fitting for you to do. You shall suffice for yourselves, and be your own law. Hence, as the basis of Rome is the assertion of the divine law, conformity to the divine order, or submission to the divine reason and will, that is, humility, the basis of the world is the denial of the divine order, the rejection of the law of life and the assertion of the sufficiency of man for himself, that is, simply, pride. {3} Rome is based on humility, the world on pride; the spirit of Rome is loyalty and obedience, the spirit of the world is disloyalty and disobedience, always and everywhere the spirit of revolt or rebellion. Between these two spirits there is necessarily an indestructible antagonism, and no possible reconciliation.

The radical difference between Rome and the world is the radical difference between the humility of the Christian and the pride of the Stoic. All Christian piety and virtue are based on humility; the piety and virtue of the stoic are based on pride. The Christian is always deeply impressed with the greatness and goodness of God; the stoic with the greatness and strength of himself. The Christian submits to crosses and disappointments, to the sufferings and afflictions of life, because he loves God, and is willing to suffer anything for his sake; the stoic endures them without a murmur, because he disdains to complain, and holds that he is, and should be, superior to all the vicissitudes and calamities of life. The Christian weeps as his Master wept at the grave of Lazarus, and finds relief in his tears; the stoic is too proud to weep; he wraps himself in his own dignity and self-importance, and, when his calamities are greater than he can bear, he seeks relief, like Cato, in suicide, thus proving his weakness by the very means he takes to conceal it. The Christian throws his burden on the Lord, and rises above it; the stoic insists on bearing it himself, and at last sinks under it. The world despises humility, and tramples on the humble. To it the Christian is tame, passive, mean-spirited, contemptible. It has no sympathy with the beatitudes, such as, Blessed are the poor in spirit; blessed are the pure in heart; blessed are the meek; blessed are the peacemakers. It understands nothing of true Christian heroism, or of the greatness of repose. It sees strength only in effort, which is always a proof of weakness, and the harder one strains and tugs to raise a weight, the stronger it holds him. We may see it in the popular literature of the day, and in nearly all recent art. The ancients had a much truer thought when they sculptured their gods asleep, and spread over their countenance an air of ineffable repose. The Scriptures speak of the mighty works of God, but represent them as the hiding of his power. All the great operations of nature are performed in silence, and the world notes them not. The Christian's greatness is concealed by the veil of humility, and his strength is hidden with God. He works in silence, but with effect, because he works with the power of Him to whom is given all power in heaven and in earth.

Mr. Gladstone thinks he finds in Homer the whole body of the patriarchal religion, or the primitive tradition of the race, and he probably is not much mistaken; but no one can study Homer's heroes without being struck with the contrast they offer to the heroes of the Old Testament. The Old Testament heroes are as brave, as daring, and as effective as those of Homer; but they conceal their own personality, they go forth to battle in submission to the divine command, not seeking to display their own skill or prowess, and the glory of their achievements they ascribe to God, who goes with them, assists them, fights for them, and gives the victory. What is manifest is the presence and greatness of God, not the greatness and strength of the hero, who is nothing in himself. In Homer the case is reversed, and what strikes the reader is the littleness of God and the greatness of men. {4} The gods and goddesses take part in the fray, it is true, but they are hardly the equals of the human warriors themselves. A human spear wounds Venus, and sends Mars howling from the field. It is human greatness and strength, human prowess and heroism, without any reference to God, to whom belongs the glory, that the poet sings, the creature regarded as independent of the Creator. In reading the Old Testament, you lose sight of the glory of men in the glory of God; in reading Homer, you lose sight of the glory of God in the glory of men. Abraham, Joshua, Gideon, Jephtha, David, the Maccabees fight as the servants of the Most High; Agamemnon, Ajax, Diomed, Achilles, even Hector, to display their own power, and to prove the stuff that is in them.

Perhaps no author, ancient or modern, has so completely embodied in his writings, the spirit of the world, the Welt-Geist, as the Germans say, as Thomas Carlyle. This writer may have done some service to society in exposing many cants, in demolishing numerous shams, and in calling attention to the eternal verities, of which few men are more ignorant; but he has deified force, and consecrated the worship of might in the place of right. Indeed, for him, right is cant, and there is no right but might. He spurns humility, submission, obedience, and recognizes God only in human ability. His hero-worship is the worship of the strong and the successful. Ability, however directed or wherever displayed, is his divinity. His heroes are Woden and Thor, Cromwell, Frederick the Great, Mirabeau, Danton, Napoleon Bonaparte. The men who go straight to their object, whether good or bad, and use the means necessary to gain it, whether right or wrong, are for him the divine men, and the only thing he censures is weakness, whether caused by indecision or scruples of conscience. His hero is an elemental force, who acts as the lightning that rives the oak, or the winds that fill the sails and drive the ship to its port. Old-fashioned morality, which requires a man to seek just ends by just means, is with him a cant, a sham, an unreality, and the true hero makes away with it, and is his own end, his own law, his own means. He is not governed, he governs, and is the real being, the real God; all else belong to the unveracities, are mere simulacra, whose end is to vanish in thin air, to disappear in the inane. The man who recognizes a power above him, a right independent of him, and in submission to the divine law, and from love of truth and justice, weds himself to what is commanded, espouses the right and adheres to it through good report and evil report, takes up the cause of the oppressed, the wronged and outraged, the poor, the friendless, and the down-trodden, and works for it, gives his soul to it, and sacrifices his time, his labor, and his very life to advance it, when he has no man with him, and all the world unheeds, jeers, or thwarts him, is unheroic, and has no moral grandeur in him, has no virtue—unless he succeeds. He is a hero only when he carries the world with him, bends the multitude to his purpose, and comes out triumphant. The unsuccessful are always wrong; lost causes are always bad causes; and the unfortunate are unveracious, and deserve their fate. The good man struggling with fate, and holding fast to his integrity in the midst of the sorest trials and temptations, and overborne in all things save his unconquerable devotion to duty, is no hero, and deserves no honor, though even the ancients thought such a man worthy of the admiration of gods and men. {5} Carlyle forgets that there is an hereafter, and that what to our dim vision may seem to be failure here may there be seen to have been the most eminent success. The Christians conquered the world, not by slaying, but by being slain, and the race has been redeemed by the Cross. Indeed, pride is always a proof of meanness and weakness, is an unveracity; for it is born of a lie, and rests on a lie: all real magnanimity and strength for men spring from humility, which is not a falsehood, but a veracity; for it is conformity to the truth of things.

The principle of opposition to the church is always and everywhere the same, invariable in time and place as the church herself, and has a certain consistency, a certain logic of its own; but it varies its form from age to age and from nation to nation, and is enraged at the church because she does not vary with it. It is always at bottom, whatever its form, the assumption that the creature does or may suffice for itself: "Ye shall not surely die, but shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." This primitive falsehood, this satanic lie, underlies all the hostility of the world to the church, or of the world to Rome. Analyze what is called the world, and you will find that it is only a perpetual effort or series of efforts to realize the promise made by the serpent to Eve in the garden, when coiled round the tree of knowledge. The world labors to exalt the dignity and glory of man, not as a creature dependent for his existence, for all he is or can be, on the Creator, which would be just and proper, but as an independent, self-acting, and self-determining being, accountable, individually or socially, only to himself for his thoughts, words, and deeds—subject to no law but his own will, appetites, passions, natural propensities, and tendencies. He is himself his own law, his own master, and should be free from all restraint and all control not in himself.

It is easy, therefore, to understand why, with the world and with men filled with the spirit of the world, Rome is held to be the symbol of despotism, and the church to be inherently and necessarily hostile to the freedom of thought and to all civil and religious liberty. The world understands by liberty independence of action, and therefore exemption from all obligation of obedience, or subjection to any law, not self-imposed. It holds the free man to be one who is under no control, subject to no restraint, and responsible to no will but his own. This is its view of liberty, and consequently whatever restricts liberty in this sense, and places man under a law which he is bound to recognize and obey, is in its vocabulary despotism, opposed to the rights of man, the rights of the mind, the rights of society, or the freedom and independence of the secular order. Liberty in this broad and universal sense obviously cannot be the right or prerogative of any creature, for the creature necessarily depends for all he is or has on the creator. Hence M. Proudhon, who maintained that property is robbery, with a rigid logic that has hardly been appreciated, asserts that the existence of God is incompatible with the assertion of the liberty of man. Admit, he says, the existence of God, and you must concede all the authority claimed by the Catholic Church. The foundation of all despotism is in the belief in the existence of God, and you must deny, obliterate that belief, before you can assert and maintain liberty. He was right, if we take liberty as the world takes it. Liberty, as the world understands it, is the liberty of a god, not of a creature. {6} Rome asserts and maintains full liberty of man as a creature; but she does and must oppose liberty in the broad, universal sense of the world; for her very mission is to assert and maintain the supremacy of the divine order, the authority of God over all the works of his hands, and alike over men as individuals and as nations. She asserts indeed, liberty in its true sense; but she, does and must oppose the liberty the world demands, the liberty promised by Satan to our first parents, and which, in truth, should be called license, not liberty, and also those who strive for it as disloyal to God, as rebels to their rightful sovereign, children of disobedience, warring against, as Carlyle would say, the veracities, the eternal verities, the truth of things, or divine reality. There is no help for it. The church must do so, or be false to her trust, false to her God, false to the divine order; for, let the world say what it will, man is not God, but God's creature, and God is sovereign Lord and proprietor of the universe, since he has made it, and the maker has the sovereign right to the thing made. Here is no room for compromise, and the struggle must continue till the world abandons its false notion of liberty, and submits to the divine government. Till then the church is and must be the church militant, and carry on the war against the world, whatever shape it may assume.

With the ancient Gentiles the world rather perverted and corrupted the truth than absolutely rejected it, and fell into idolatry and superstition rather than into absolute atheism. The Epicureans were, indeed, virtually atheists, but they never constituted the great body of any Gentile nation. The heathen generally retained a dim and shadowy belief in the divinity, even in the unity of God; but they lost the conception of him as creator, and consequently of man and the universe as his creature. By substituting in their philosophy generation, emanation, or formation for creation, they obscured the sense of man's dependence on God as creator, and consequently destroyed the necessary relation between religion and morality. No moral ideas entered into their worship, and they worshipped the gods to whom they erected temples and made offerings, not from a sense of duty or from the moral obligation of the creature to adore his Creator and give himself to him, but from motives of interest, to avert their displeasure, appease their wrath, or to render them propitious to their undertakings, whether private enterprises or public war and conquest. They asserted for man and society independence of the divine order as a moral order. Severed from all moral conceptions, their religion became a degraded and degrading superstition, an intolerable burden to the soul, and their worship the embodiment of impurity and corruption. Such was the effect of the great Gentile apostasy, or Gentile attempt to realize the freedom and independence promised by Satan. The promise proved a lie.

When the church in her present state was established, the world opposed her in the name of the liberty or independence of the temporal order, which implies as its basis the independence of the creature of the creator, and therefore resting on the same satanic promise, "Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." When our Lord was brought before Pontius Pilate, and Pilate was about to dismiss the charges against him and to let him go, the Jews changed his purpose by telling him, "If you let this man go, you are no friend to Caesar." {7} The heathen persecutions of the Christians were principally on the ground that they were disloyal to the empire, inasmuch as they rejected its worship, and asserted the immediate divine authority of their religion and its independence of the state or civil society, holding firmly always and everywhere the maxim, "We must obey God rather than men." All down through the barbarous ages that followed the downfall of the Roman empire of the West, through the feudal ages, and down even to our own times, the state has claimed supreme authority over the church in regard to her temporal goods and her government, and has constantly sought to subject her to the civil authority, which in principle is the same with subjecting God to man. The world represented by Caesar has constantly struggled to subvert the independence of religion, and to exalt the human above the divine. This is the meaning of the mediaeval contests between the pope and the emperor, as we have heretofore shown. There is not at this day, unless Belgium be an exception, a single state in Europe where the temporal power leaves religion free and independent, or where the church has not to struggle against the government to maintain the independence of the divine order she represents. Fidelity to God is held to be treason to the state, and hence Elizabeth of England executes Catholics at Tyburn as traitors.

The age boasts of progress, and calls through all its thousands of organs upon us to admire the marvellous progress it has made, and is every hour making. It is right, if what it means by progress really be progress. It has certainly gone further than any preceding age in emancipating itself from the supremacy of the law of God, in trampling on the divine order, and asserting the supremacy of man. It has drawn the last logical consequences contained in the lying promise of Satan, "Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." There is no use in denying or seeking to disguise it. The world as opposed to Rome, ceases entirely to regard man as a creature, and boldly and unblushingly puts him in all respects in the place of God. God, when not openly denied to exist, is denied as creator: he is at most natura naturans, and identical with what are called the laws of nature. Hundreds of savans are busy with the effort to explain the universe without recognizing a creator, and to prove that effects may be obtained without causes. Science stops at second causes, or, rather, with the investigation and classification of phenomena, laughs at final causes, and, if it does not absolutely deny a first cause, relegates it to the region of the unknowable, and treats it as if it were not. The advanced philosophers of the age see no difference between moral laws and physical laws, between gratitude and gravitation. The heart secretes virtue as the liver secretes bile, and virtue itself consists not in a voluntary act of obedience, or in deliberately acting for a prescribed end, but in force of nature, in following one's instincts, and acting out one's self, heedless of consequences, and without any consideration of moral obligation. Truth is a variable quantity, and is one thing with me and another with my neighbor. There is no providence, or providence is fate, and God is the theological name given to the forces of nature, especially human nature; there is no divinity but man; all worship except that of humanity is idolatry or superstition; the race is immortal, but individuals, are mortal, and there is no resurrection of the dead. {8} Some, like Fourier and Auguste Comte, even deny that the race is immortal, and suppose that in time it will disappear in the inane.

But, without going any further into detail, we may say generally the age asserts the complete emancipation of man and his institutions from all intellectual, moral, and spiritual control or restraint, and under the name of liberty asserts the complete and absolute independence of man both individually and collectively, and under pretence of democratic freedom wars against all authority and all government, whether political or ecclesiastical. It does not like to concede even the axioms of the mathematician or the definitions of the geometrician, and sees in them a certain limitation of intellectual freedom. To ask it to conform to fixed and invariable principles, or to insist that there are principles independent of the human mind, or to maintain that truth is independent of opinion, and that opinions are true or false as they do or do not conform to it, is to seek to trammel free and independent thought, and to outrage what is most sacred and divine in man. The mind must be free, and to be free it must be free from all obligation to seek, to recognize, or to conform to truth. Indeed, there is no truth but what the mind conceives to be such, and the mind is free to abide by its own conceptions, for they are the truth for it. Rome, in asserting that truth is independent of the human will, human passions and conceptions, one and universal, and always and everywhere the same, and in condemning as error whatever denies it or does not conform to it, is a spiritual despotism, which every just and noble principle of human nature, the irrepressible instincts of humanity itself, wars against, and resists by every means in its power.

We have shown that the world, as opposed to Rome, rests on the satanic falsehood, and this conception of liberty, which Rome rejects and wars against, has no other basis than the satanic promise, "Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil," or be your own masters as God is his own master, and suffice for yourselves as he suffices for himself. The world is not wrong in asserting liberty, but wrong in its definition of liberty, or in demanding for man not the proper liberty of the creature, but the liberty which can exist only for the Creator. By claiming for man a liberty not possible for a dependent creature, the world loses the liberty to which it has, under God, the right, and falls under the worst of all tyrannies. Liberty is a right, but, if there is no right, how can you defend liberty as a right? If liberty is not a right, no wrong is done in violating it, and tyranny is as lawful as freedom. Here is a difficulty in the very outset that the world cannot get over. It must assert right, therefore the order of justice, before it can assert its liberty against Rome; and, if it does assert such order, it concedes what Rome maintains, that liberty is founded in the order of justice, and cannot transcend what is true and just. The world does not see that, in denying the spiritual order represented by Rome, it denies the very basis of liberty, and all difference between liberty and despotism, because it is only on the supposition of such order that liberty can be defended as a right, or despotism condemned as a wrong.

It is alleged against Rome that she opposes modern civilization. This is so or not so, according to what we understand by modern civilization. {9} If we understand by modern civilization the rejection of the divine order, the supremacy of spiritual truth, and the assertion of the divinity and independence of man, Rome undoubtedly opposes it, and must oppose it; but, if we understand by modern civilization the melioration of the laws, the development of humane sentiments, the power acquired by the people in the management of their temporal affairs, and the material progress effected by the application of the truths of science to the industrial arts, the invention of the steam-engine, the steamboat, the railway and locomotive, and the lightning telegraph, the extension of commerce and increased facilities of international communication, though probably a greater value is attached to these things than truth warrants, she by no means opposes or discourages modern civilization. Undoubtedly she places heaven above earth, and is more intent on training men for eternal beatitude than on promoting temporal prosperity of this life. The earth is not our end, and riches are not the supreme good. She asserts a higher than worldly wisdom, and holds that the beggar has at least as good a chance of heaven as the rich man clothed in fine linen and faring sumptuously every day. She would rather see men intent on saving their souls than engrossed with money-making. The experience of modern society proves that in this she is right. We live in an industrial age, and never in any age of the world did people labor longer or harder than they do now to obtain the means of subsistence, and never was the honest poor man less esteemed, wealth more highly honored, or mammon more devoutly worshipped; yet the church never opposes earthly well-being, and regards it with favor when made subsidiary to the ultimate end of man.

Yet certain words have become sacramental for the world, and are adopted by men who would shrink from the sense given them by the more advanced liberals of the day; and these men regard Rome, when condemning them in that extreme sense, as condemning modern civilization itself. We take the Encyclical of the Holy Father, issued December 8, 1864. The whole non-Catholic world, and even some Catholics, poorly informed as to their own religion or as to the meaning of the errors condemned, regarded that Encyclical as a fulmination against liberty and all modern civilization. Nobody can forget the outcry raised everywhere by the secular press against the Holy Father, and what are called the retrograde tendencies of the Catholic Church. The pope, it was said, has condemned all free thought and both civil and religious liberty, the development of modern society, and all modern progress. Yet it is very likely that four fifths of those who joined in the outcry, had they been able to discriminate between what they themselves really mean to defend under the names of liberty, progress, and civilization, and what the more advanced liberals hold and seek to propagate, would have seen that the pope in reality condemned only the errors which they themselves condemn, and asserted only what they themselves really hold. He condemned nothing which is not a simple logical deduction from the words of the arch-tempter, the liar from the beginning and the father of lies, addressed to our first parents. All the errors condemned in the Syllabus are errors which tend to deny or obscure the divine existence, the fact of creation, the authority of the Creator, the supremacy of the divine or spiritual order, to undermine all religion and morality, all civil government, and even society itself; and to render all science, all liberty, all progress, and all civilization impossible, as we have shown over and over again in the pages of this Magazine.

The numbers who embrace in their fullest extent the extreme views we have set forth, though greater than it is pleasant to believe, are yet not great enough to give of themselves any serious alarm, and hence many able and well-meaning men who have not the least sympathy with them attach no great importance to them, and treat them with superb contempt; but they are in reality only the advance-guard of a much larger and more formidable body, who march under the same drapeau and adopt the same counter-sign. The Archbishop of Westminster, than whom we can hardly name an abler or more enlightened prelate in the church, has said truly in a late Pastoral,

"That the age of heresies is past. No one now dreams of revising the teaching of the church, or of making a new form of Christianity. For this the age is too resolute and consistent. Faith or unbelief is an intelligible alternative; but between variations and fragments of Christianity men have no care to choose. All or none is clear and consistent; but more or less is halting and undecided. Revelation is a perfect whole, pervaded throughout by the veracity and authority of God, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. To reject any of it is to reject the whole law of divine faith; to criticise it and to remodel it is to erect the human reason as judge and measure of the divine. And such is heresy; an intellectual aberration which in these last ages has been carried to its final analysis, and exposed not only by the theology of the church but by the common sense of rationalism. We may look for prolific and antichristian errors in abundance, but heresies in Christianity are out of date."

The great body of those outside of the Catholic communion, as well as some nominally in it, but not of it, who are still attached to the Christian name, adopt the watchwords of the extreme party, and are tending in the same direction. Mazzini and Garibaldi are heroes with the mass of Englishmen and Americans, who wish them success in their anti-religious and anti-social movements. The universal secular press, the great power in modern society, with the whole sectarian press, has applauded the nefarious measures of intriguing Italian statesmen, demagogues, and apostates by which the Holy Father has been stripped of the greater part of his temporal possessions, the church despoiled of her goods, religious houses suppressed, and the freedom and independence of religion abolished throughout the Italian peninsula. The only non-Catholic voice we have heard raised in sympathy with the pope is that of Guizot, the ex-premier of Louis Philippe. Guizot, though a Protestant, sees that the papacy is essential to the Catholic Church, and that the Catholic Church is essential to the preservation of Christian civilization, the maintenance of society and social order. Our own secular press, so loud in its praise of religious liberty, applauds the Mexican Juarez for his confiscation of the goods of the church in the poor, distracted republic of Mexico. The sympathy of the world, of the age, is with every movement that tends to weaken the power of the church, the authority of religion, and even the authority of the state. The tendency with great masses who believe themselves Christians, a blind tendency it may be, is to no-religion or infidelity, and to no-governmentism. It is this fact that constitutes the danger to be combated.

The difficulty of combating it is very great. The mass of the people are caught by words without taking note of the meaning attached to them. {11} Where they find the consecrated terms of faith and piety, they naturally conclude that faith and piety are there. But to a great extent the enemies of Christianity oppose Christianity under Christian names. It is characteristic of this age that infidelity disguises itself in a Christian garb, and utters its blasphemy in Christian phraseology, its falsehoods in the language of truth. Satan disguises himself as an angel of light, comes as a philanthropist, talks of humanity, professes to be the champion of science, intelligence, education, liberty, progress, social amelioration, and the moral, intellectual, and physical elevation of the poorer and more numerous classes—all good things, when rightly understood, and in their time and place. We cannot oppose him without seeming to many to oppose what is a Christian duty. If we oppose false intelligence, we are immediately accused of being opposed to intelligence; if we oppose a corrupt and baneful education, we are accused of being in favor of popular ignorance, and lovers of darkness; if we oppose false liberty, or license presented under the name of liberty, we are charged with being the enemies of true freedom; if we assert authority, however legitimate or necessary, then we are despots and the advocates of despotism. The press opens its cry against us, and the age votes us mediaeval dreamers, behind the times, relics of the past, with our eyes on the backside of our heads, and the truth is drowned in the floods of indignation or ridicule poured out against us. Our success would be hopeless, if we could not rely on the support of Him whose cause we seek to the best of our ability to defend, and who after all reigneth in the heavens, and is able to make the wrath of man praise him, and can overrule evil for good.

It is alleged that the church opposes democracy, and is leagued with the despots against the people. The church herself leagues neither with democracy nor with monarchy. She leaves the people free to adopt the form of government they prefer. She opposes movements pretendedly in favor of democracy only when they are in violation of social order and opposed to legitimate authority, and she supports monarchy only where monarchy is the law, and it is necessary to uphold it as the condition of maintaining social order, and saving civilization from the barbarism that threatens to invade it. In the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth century the contrary charge was preferred, and the Church was condemned by the world on the ground of being hostile to kingly government; for public opinion then favored absolute monarchy, as it does now absolute democracy. We believe our own form of government the best for us, but we dare not say that other forms of government are not the best for other nations. Despotism is never legitimate; but we know no law of God or nature that makes democracy obligatory upon every people, and no reason for supposing that real liberty keeps pace with the progress of democracy. Democracy did not save France from the Reign of Terror and the most odious tyranny, and it certainly has not secured liberty and good order in Mexico. With us it is yet an experiment and we can pronounce nothing with certainty till we have seen the result of the crisis we are now passing through. We owe to it a fearful civil war and the suppression of a formidable rebellion, but the end is not yet. Still, there is nothing in our form of government in discord with the Catholic Church, and we firmly believe that, if maintained in its purity and integrity, she would find under it a freer field for her exertions than has ever yet been afforded her in the Old World. {12} At any rate, there is no room for doubt that the country needs the church to sustain our political institutions, and to secure their free and beneficial workings.

But the world does not gain what it seeks. It does not gain inward freedom, freedom of soul and of thought. It is difficult to conceive a worse bondage than he endures who feels that for truth and goodness he has no dependence but himself. One wants something on which to rest, something firm and immovable, and no bondage is more painful than the feeling that we stand on an insecure foundation, ready to give way under us if we seek to rest our whole weight on it, and that our constructions, however ingenious, can stand only as we uphold them with might and main. The man with only himself for support, is Atlas bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders in a treadmill. He is a man, as we know by experience, crossing a deep and broad river on floating cakes of ice, each too small to bear his weight, and sinking as soon as he strikes it. He must constantly keep springing from one to another to save his life, and yet, however rapidly he springs, gains nothing more solid or less movable. The world in its wisdom is just agoing to get on to something on which it can stand and rest, but it never does. Its castles are built in the air, and it spends all its labor for naught. All its efforts defeat themselves. Its philanthropy aggravates the evils it would redress, or creates others that are greater and less easily cured. In seeking mental freedom, it takes from the mind the light without which it cannot operate; in seeking freedom from the king, it falls under the tyranny of the mob; and, to get rid of the tyranny of the mob falls under that of the military despot; disdaining heaven, it loses the earth; refusing to obey God, it loses man.

All history, all experience proves it. Having rejected the sacredness and inviolability of authority in both religion and politics, and asserted "the sacred right of insurrection," the world finds itself without religion, without faith, without social order, in the midst of perpetual revolutions, checked or suppressed only by large standing armies, while each nation is overwhelmed with a public debt that is frightful to contemplate. This need not surprise us. It is the truth that liberates or makes free, and when truth is denied, or resolved into each one's own opinion or mental conception, there is nothing to liberate the mind from its illusions and to sustain its freedom. The mind pines away and dies without truth, as the body without food. It was said by one who spake as never man spake, that he who would save his life shall lose it, and experience proves that they who seek this world never gain it. "Ye shall not eat thereof, nor touch it, lest ye die." This command, which Satan contradicts, is true and good, and obedience to it is the only condition of life, or real success in life. In seeking to be God, man becomes less than man, because he denies the truth and reality of things. It is very pleasant, says Heinrich Heine, to think one's self a god, but it costs too much to keep up the dignity and majesty of one's godship. Our resources are not equal to it, and purse and health give way under the effort. Falsehood yields nothing, because it is itself nothing, and is infinitely more expensive than truth. Falsehood has no support, and can give none; whoever leans on it must fall through. And if ever there was a falsehood, it is that man is God, or independent of God.

The whole question between Rome and the world, turn it as we will, comes back always to this: Is man God, or the creature of God? He certainly is not God: then he is a creature, and God has created him and owns him, is his Lord and Master. He, then, is not independent of God, for the creative act of God is as necessary to continue him in existence and to enable him to act, to fulfil his destiny, or to attain his end or supreme good, as it was to call him from nothing into existence. God is the principle, medium, and end of our existence. Separation from God, or independence of him, is death; for we live, and move, and have our being in him, not in ourselves. The universe, when once created, does not go ahead on its own hook or of itself without further creative intervention; for the creative act is not completed in relation to the creature, till the creature has fulfilled its destiny or reached its end. God creates me and at each moment of my existence as much and as truly as he did Adam, and the suspension of his creative act for a single instant would be my annihilation. So of the universe. He creates me, indeed, a second cause and a free moral agent; but even in my own acts or causation I depend on him as my first cause, as the cause of me as a second cause, and in my own sphere I can cause or act only by virtue of his active presence and concurrence. When I attempt to act without him, as if I were independent of him, as our first parents did in following the suggestions of Satan, I do not cease to exist physically, but I die morally and spiritually, lose my moral life, fall into abnormal relations with my Creator, and am spiritually dead; for my moral and spiritual life depends on my voluntary obedience to the law of all created life: "Ye shall not eat thereof, or touch it, lest ye die."

Here is the basis of the divine dominion. God is sovereign lord and proprietor because he is creator, and man and nature are the work of his hands. Hence the Mosaic books insist not only on the unity of God, but even with more emphasis, if possible, on God as creator. The first verse of Genesis asserts creation in opposition to emanation, generation, or formation: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." All through the Old Testament, especially in the hagiographical books and the prophets, there is a perpetual recurrence to God as creator, to the fact that he has made the world and all things therein, and hence the call upon all creatures to sing his praise, so often repeated in the Psalms. Indeed, it was not so much by belief in the unity of God as in the fact that God is sole and universal creator, that the Jews were distinguished from the Gentiles. It may be doubted if the Gentiles ever wholly lost the belief in the existence of one God. We think we find in all heathen mythologies traces of a recognition of one God hovering, so to speak, over their manifold gods and goddesses, who were held to be tutelar divinities, never the divinity itself. But the Gentiles, as we have already said, had lost, and did in no sense admit, the fact of creation. We find no recognition of God as creator in any Gentile philosophy, Indian, Persian, Chaldean, Egyptian, Chinese, Greek, or Roman. The Gentiles were not generally atheists, we suspect not atheists at all; but they were invariably pantheists. Pantheism is the denial of the proper creative act of God, or, strictly speaking, that God creates substances or existences capable of acting from their own centre and producing effects as second causes. {14} The Jews were the only people, after the great Gentile apostasy, that preserved the tradition of creation. God as creator is the basis of all science, all faith, all religion; hence the first article of the Creed: "I believe in one God, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible." In this fact is founded the inviolable right of the Almighty to govern all his works, man among the rest, as seems to him good. We cannot deny this if we once admit the fact of creation; and if we deny the fact of creation, we deny our own existence and that of the entire universe.

But the right to govern implies the correlative duty of obedience. If God has the right to govern us, then we are bound to obey him and do his bidding, whatever it may be. There is nothing arbitrary in this, it is founded in the relation of creator and creature, and God himself could not make it otherwise without annihilating all creatures and ceasing to be creator. God could not create existences without giving them a law, because their very relation to him as his creatures imposes on them an inflexible and invariable law, which, if created free agents, they may, indeed, refuse to obey, but not and live. Here is the whole philosophy of authority and obedience. We must not confound the symbols employed in Genesis with the meaning they symbolize. The command given to our first parents was simply the law under which they were placed by the fact that they were creatures, that God had made them, and they belonged to him, owed him obedience, and could not disobey him without violating the very law of their existence. They cannot but die, because they depart from the truth of things, deny their real relation to God, and go against the divine order, conformity to which is in the nature of the case their only condition of life. So Rome teaches in accordance with our highest and best reason. The world, listening to the flattering words of Satan and the allurements of the flesh, denies it, and says, "Ye shall not surely die;" you may sin and live, may become free and independent, be as gods yourselves, your own master, teacher, and guide. Hence the inevitable war between Rome and the world, she striving to secure the obedience of men and nations to the law of God, and it striving to maintain their independence of the law, and to make them believe that they can live a life of their own, which in the nature of the case is not life, but death.

Other considerations, no doubt enter into the worship of God beside the simple fact that he is our Creator, but that fact is the basis of our moral obligation to obey him. This obligation is obscured when we seek for it another basis, as in the intrinsic worth, goodness, or excellence of God. No doubt, God deserves to be adored for his own sake, to be loved and obeyed for what he is in and of himself, but it is not easy to prove to men of the world that they are morally bound to love and obey goodness. These higher views of God which convert obedience into love, and would enable us to love God even if he did not command it, and to desire him for his own sake without reference to what he is to us, may in some sense be attained to, and are so by the saints, but there are few of us perfect enough for that. The law certainly is an expression of the goodness and love of the Creator, as is creation itself, but this is not precisely the reason why it is obligatory. {15} It is a good reason why we should love the law and delight in it, but not the reason why we are bound to obey it. We are bound to obey it because it is the law of our Creator, who has the sovereign right to command us, and hence religion cannot be severed from morality. No act of religion is of any real worth that is not an act of obedience, of submission of our will to the divine will, or which is not a frank acknowledgment of the divine sovereignty and the supremacy of the moral law. There must be in it an act of self-denial, of self-immolation, or it is not a true act of obedience, and obedience is better than any external offerings we can bring to the altar.

Here is where the world again errs. It is ready to offer sacrifices to God, to load his altars with its offerings of the firstlings of flocks and herds, and the fruits of the earth, but it revolts at any act of obedience, and will not remember that the sacrifices pleasing to God are an humble and contrite heart. It would serve God from love, not duty, forgetting that there is no love where there is no obedience. The obedience is the chief element of the love: "If ye love me, keep my commandments." We show our love to the Father by doing the will of the Father. There is no way of escaping the act of submission, and walking into heaven with our heads erect, in our own pride and strength, and claiming our beatitude as our right, without ever having humbled ourselves before God. We may show that the law is good, the source of light and life; we may show its reasonableness and justness, and that there is nothing degrading or humiliating in obeying it; but, whatever we do in this respect, nothing will avail if the act of obedience be withheld. Till the world does this, submits to the law, no matter what fine speeches it may make, what noble sentiments it may indulge, what just convictions it may entertain, or what rich offerings it may bring to the altar, it is at enmity with God, and peace between it and Rome is impossible.

God is in Christ reconciling the world to himself, but there can be no reconciliation without submission. God cannot change, and the world must. No humiliating conditions are imposed on it, but it must acknowledge that it has been wrong, and that the law it has resisted is just and right, and, above all, obligatory. This is the hardship the world complains of. But what reason has it to complain? What is demanded of it not for its good, or that is not demanded by the very law of life itself? The world demands liberty, but what avails a false and impracticable liberty? True liberty is founded in justice, is a right, and supported by law. We have shown, time and again, that the church suppresses no real liberty, and asserts and maintains for all men all the liberty that can fall to the lot of any created being. It demands the free exercise of human reason. In what respect does the church restrain freedom of thought? Can reason operate freely without principles, without data, without light, without any support, or anything on which to rest? What is the mind without truth, or intelligence in which nothing real is grasped? We know only so far as we know truth, and our opinions and convictions are worth nothing in so far as they are false, or not in accordance with the truth that we neither make nor can unmake, which is independent of us, independent of all men, and of all created intellects. What harm, then, does the church do us when she presents us infallibly that truth which the mind needs for its support? {16} Society needs law, and how does the church harm it by teaching the law of God, without which it cannot subsist? Men need government. What harm does the church do in declaring the supreme law of God, from which all human laws derive their force as laws, and which defines and guarantees both authority and liberty, protects the prince from the turbulence of the mob, and the people from the tyranny of the prince?

As sure as that man is God's creature and bound to obey God, there is for him no good independent of obedience to the law of God; and equally sure is it that obedience to that law secures to him all the good compatible with his condition as a created existence. The mystery of the Incarnation, in which God assumes human nature to be his own nature, gives him the promise of even participating in the happiness of God himself. This happiness or beatitude with God in eternity is the end for which man was created, and is included in the creative act of which it is the completion or fulfilment. In estimating the good which is sure to us by conformity to the divine order and obedience to the divine law, we must take into the account our whole existence from its inception to its completion in Christ in glory, and include in that good not only the joys and consolations of this life, but that eternal beatitude which God through his superabundant goodness has provided for us, and remember that all this we forfeit by obeying the law of death rather than the law of life. We can fulfil our destiny, attain to the stature of full-grown men, or complete our existence only by conforming to the divine order, by adhering to the truth, and obeying the law of life. Instead, then, of regarding the church as our enemy, as opposed to our real good, we should regard her as our true friend, and see in her a most striking proof of the loving-kindness of our God. In her he gives us precisely what we need to teach us his will, to make known to us the truth as it is in him, and to declare to us in all the vicissitudes and complexities of life the requirements of the law, and to be the medium of the gracious assistance we need to fulfil them.

No good thing will God withhold from them that love him. And he gives us all good in giving us, as he does, himself. Nor does he give us only the goods of the soul. He that will lose his life in God shall find it. "Seek first the kingdom of God and his justice, and all these things"—the things which the Gentiles seek after—"shall be added to you." They who lay up the most abundant treasures in heaven have the most abundant treasures on earth. The true principle of political economy, which the old French Economists and Adam Smith never knew, is self-denial, is in living for God and not for the world, as a Louvain professor has amply proved with a depth of thought, a profound philosophy, and a knowledge of the laws of production, distribution, and consumption seldom equalled. "I have been young, and now I am old, but never have I seen the righteous forsaken, or his seed begging bread." No people are more industrious or more bent on accumulating wealth, than our own, but so little is their self-denial and so great is their extravagance that the mass of them are, notwithstanding appearances, really poor. The realized capital of the country is not sufficient to pay its debts. We have expended the surplus earnings of the country for half a century or more, and the wealth of the nation is rapidly passing into the hands of a few money-lenders and soulless mammoth corporations, already too strong to be controlled by the government, whether State or General. {17} If it had not been for the vast quantities of cheap unoccupied lands easy of access, we should have seen a poverty and distress in this country to be found in no other. The mercantile and industrial system inaugurated by the Peace of Utrecht in 1713, and which is regarded as the crowning glory of the modern world, has added nothing to the real wealth of nations. But this is a theme foreign to our present purpose, and has already carried us too far. We will only add that the true Christian has the promise of this life and of that which is to come.

Now, no one can estimate the advantage to men and nations that must have been derived and continue to be derived from the church placed in the world to assert at every point the divine sovereignty, and to proclaim constantly in a clear and ringing voice that the Lord God omnipotent reigneth, and his law is the law of life, of progress, and of happiness both here and hereafter, the great truth which the world is ever prone to forget or to deny. We ought, therefore, to regard her existence with the most profound gratitude. She has done this work from the first, and continues to do it with unabated strength, in spite of so many sad defections and the opposition of kings and peoples. Never has she had more numerous, more violent, more subtle, or more powerful enemies than during the pontificate of our present Holy Father, Pius the Ninth. Never have her enemies seemed nearer obtaining a final triumph over her, and they have felt that at last she is prostrate, helpless, in her agony. Yet do they reckon without their host. The magnificent spectacle at Rome on the 29th of last June of more than five hundred bishops, and thousands of priests from all parts of the world, from every tongue and nation on the earth, gathered round their chief, and joining with him in celebrating the eighteen hundredth anniversary of the glorious martyrdom of Peter, the prince of the apostles, whose succession in the government of the church has never failed, proves that their exultation is premature, that her veins are still full of life, and that she is as fresh and vigorous as when she first went forth from Jerusalem on her divine mission to win the world to her Lord. The indication by the Holy Father of his resolve at a near day to convoke a universal council, a grand assembly of the princes of the church, proves also that she is still a fact, a living power on the earth, though not of it, with whom the princes of this world must count. Before her united voice, assisted by the Holy Ghost, her enemies will be struck dumb, and to it the nations must listen with awe and conviction, and most of the errors we have spoken of will shrink back from the face of day into darkness and silence. Faith will be reinvigorated, the hearts of the faithful made glad, and civilization resume its march, so long and so painfully interrupted by heresy, infidelity, and the almost constant revolutions of states and empires. We venture to predict for the church new and brilliant victories over the world.

Heresy has well-nigh run its course. It is inherently sophistical, and is too much for infidelity and too little for religion. In no country has it ever been able to stand alone, and it acquires no strength by age. The thinking men of all civilized nations have come, or are rapidly coining, to the conclusion that the alternative is either Rome or no religion, or, as they express it, "Rome or Reason," which we showed last month is by no means the true formula. The real formula of the age is, Rome or no religion, God or Satan. {18} The attempt to support anything worthy of the name of religion on human authority, whether of the individual or of the state, of private judgment or of the Scriptures interpreted by the private judgment of the learned, has notoriously, we might say confessedly, failed. Old-established heresies will no doubt linger yet longer, and offer their opposition to Rome; but their days are numbered, and, save as they may be placed in the forefront of the battle with the church, the active non-Catholic thought of the age makes no account of them, and respects them far less than it does Rome herself. They live only a galvanic life. We are far from regarding the battle that must be fought with the scientific no-religion or dry and cold unbelief of the age as a light affair. In many respects the world is a more formidable enemy than heresy, and the Gentilism of the nineteenth century is less manageable than that of the first, for it retains fewer elements of truth, and far less respect for authority and law. It has carried the spirit of revolt further, and holds nothing as sacred and inviolable. But it is always some gain when the issue is fairly presented, and the real question is fairly and distinctly stated in its appropriate terms; when there is no longer any disguise or subterfuge possible; and when the respective forces are fairly arrayed against each other, each under its own flag, and shouting its own war-cry. The battle will be long and arduous, for every article in the creed, from "Patrem omnipotentem" to "vitam aeternam," has been successively denied; but we cannot doubt to which side victory will finally incline.

Tertullian say, "the human heart is naturally Christian," and men can not be contented to remain long in mere vegetable existence without some sort of religion. They will, when they have nothing else to worship, evoke the spirits of the dead, and institute an illusory demon-worship, as we see in modern spiritism. The Christian religion as presented by Rome, though it flatters not human pride, and is offensive to depraved appetite or passion, is yet adapted to the needs of human nature, and satisfies the purer and noble aspirations of the soul. There is, as we have more than once shown, a natural want in man which it only can meet, and, we may almost say, a natural aptitude to receive it. Hence, we conclude that, when men see before them no alternative but Rome or no religion, downright naturalism able to satisfy nobody, they will, after some hesitation, submit to Rome and rejoice in Catholicity. Nature is very well; we have not a word to say against it when normally developed; but this world is too bleak and wintry for men to walk about in the nakedness of nature; they must have clothing of some sort, and, when they are fully convinced that they can find proper garments only in the wardrobe of the church, they cannot, it seems to us, long hold out against Rome or refuse submission to the law of life.

We here close our very inadequate discussion of the great subject we have opened. Our remarks are only supplementary to the article on Rome or Reason in THE CATHOLIC WORLD for September last, and are intended to guard against any false inferences that some might be disposed to draw from the doctrine we there set forth. We hold, as a Catholic, the dogma of original sin, and that our nature has been disordered by the fall and averted from God. We have not wished this fact to be overlooked, or ourselves to be understood as if we recognized no antagonism between this fallen or averted nature and Rome. {19} Our nature is not totally depraved. Understanding and will, if the former has been darkened and the latter attenuated by the fall, yet remain, and retain their essential character; but disorder has been introduced into our nature, and the flesh inclines to sin; its face is turned away from God, and it stands in need of being converted or turned to him. The church brings to this disordered and averted nature whatever is needed to convert it, heal its wounds, and elevate it to the plane of its destiny. But after conversion, after regeneration, the flesh, "the carnal mind," remains, as the Council of Trent teaches, and, as long as it remains, there must be a combat, a warfare. This combat, or warfare, is not, indeed, between reason and faith, revelation and science, nor between nature and grace, but between the law of God accepted and served by the judgment and will, by the inner man, and the law of sin in our members, the struggle between holiness and sin, an internal struggle, of which every one is conscious who attempts to lead a holy life. We have not only wished to recognize the fact of this struggle as an interior struggle in the individual, but also as passing from the individual to society, and manifesting itself in the perpetual struggle between Rome and the world, which ceases, and can cease, only in proportion as men and society become converted to God, and voluntarily submissive to his law.

With Christ.

    "Having a desire to be dissolved and be with Christ—
    a thing by far the better."

  To die and be with Christ! far better 'tis
    Than all this world of sin and strife can give,
    Whose highest boon to those who easiest live
  Compares not with one moment of heaven's bliss!
  And to earth's suffering ones, whose hearts are torn
    With anguish, while their bodies writhe in pain,
    What joyous sounds are these: "To die is gain!"
  To leave a world where weary souls forlorn
  In sinful murmuring wish they ne'er were born.
  To be with Christ! O words of solemn power
    To hush the heart-cry! let me hold them fast.
    If haply I may reach thee, Lord, at last,
    And, this strange world with all its sorrows past,
  May learn the meaning deep of each sad, suffering hour!

The Managers Dilemma.

The speaker was the fat hostess of a hotel in one of the principal streets of Naples; the time was the summer of 1812. The lady waddled back and forward with an air of importance, her hands on her hips. The person she addressed was a lad apparently sixteen years of age, and very tall and stout for his years. His beardless chin and boyish features, combined with a shuffling bashfulness in his deportment, did not tend to inspire confidence in any great achievement to be expected from him.

"I am a judge!" persisted the hostess. "Master Benevolo shall find you a treasure, and the jewel of his company! Such a company! The princess is magnificent! Did not the Duke of Anhalt—swear she was ravishing in beauty as in acting, with eyes like diamonds, and a figure majestic as Juno's?"

"And such an admirable comic actor; a figure that is one laugh, and a wit like Sancho Panza's; a genius, too, for the pathetic; he weeps to enchantment, and will bring tears to your eyes after a convulsion of mirth. An unrivalled troupe! a coronet of gems—wanting only an actor of tragedy!"

"And you must travel," pleaded the landlady. "You are not safe here in Naples. You may be taken, and carried back to the conservatorio."

"Back to school, to be punished for a runaway—when you might do such wonders! Come, you are ready, I see. There is no time to be lost."

She took the boy by the hand and led him into the grand salon of the hotel. Here sat the manager of an Italian theatrical company, in absolute despair. He and his troupe were to leave Naples in an hour. For three days he had staid beyond his time, seeking what the city did not afford—an actor of tragedy; and he was now bitterly lamenting to his landlord the ill luck that would compel him to depart for Salerno destitute of so important an adjunct.

"What shall I do?" cried the impresario, wringing his hands, "without a Geronimo or a Falerio?"

"He must drop, then, from the clouds, and at once! My friends at Salerno have twice put off the performance, waiting for me. Saint An

tonio! to think of losing so much money!" The corpulent hostess had entered the room, the bashful youth a few paces behind her.

"I have found you a tragedian, Master Benevolo," she cried; "a capital fellow. You have fatigued yourself running over Naples in search of one—and he has been waiting for you here since last evening."

"You shall have your tragedian. All the rest is my secret. Oh! he is a great genius! If you had heard him last night! All the maids were in tears. Had he a robe and poniard, he would have been terrific. He sang droll songs, too, and made us laugh till my sides ached. I should have told you of him before, but you went out so early."

"He has never been on the stage; but he will make his way. Such genius—such passion! He has left home to embrace the profession."

The landlady took the lad by the hand and pulled him forward. He stood with eyes cast down, in the most awkward attitude.

"A mere boy!" exclaimed the disappointed director. "He—fit for an actor!" And with a look of contempt he surveyed the youth who aspired to represent the emperors of Rome and the tyrants of Italian republics.

"Everything has a beginning!" persisted the dame. "Louis, come forward, and show the maestro what you can do."

The overgrown lad hung his head bashfully; but, on further urging, advanced a pace or two, flung over his arms the frayed skirt of his coat to serve as a drapery, and recited some tragic verses of Dante.

"Louis only for the present," interposed the hostess, with an air of mystery. "You are not to know his family name. You see—he left home—"

Louis, encouraged, recited a brilliant tragic scene. The manager followed his gestures with hands and head, and, when he had ended, applauded loudly, with flashing eyes.

"Bravo! bravo!" he cried, rubbing his hands. "That is what I want! You will make a capital Moor, set in shape a little! I engage you at once, at fifteen ducats a month: and here is the first month's pay in advance for your outfit—a suit of clothes to make you look like a gentleman. Go, buy them, pack up to go with us; and I will have a mule ready for you."

While the impresario made his preparations for departure, the delighted hostess assisted Louis in his. He had spent two or three days roaming about Naples before he came to the hotel, and had some debts to pay. These liquidated, his bill paid at the hotel, and a new suit purchased, nothing remained of his fifteen ducats. In less than two hours the troupe was on its way out of Naples.

At Salerno the manager had advertisements struck off, announcing the début of a new tragic actor—a wonderful genius—presented to the public as a phenomenon—in a popular part. Curiosity was soon excited to see him. In the evening the theatre was crowded. The director walked about, rubbing his hands in ecstasy, and counting the piles of gold as they accumulated. Louis, arrayed in an emperor's costume of the middle ages, was practising behind the scenes how to sustain the part of a sovereign. A pretty young girl—one of the chorus—who may be called Rosina, stood watching him, and commenting freely on his performance.

"Oh! that will not do at all, your majesty!" she cried, as he made an awkward movement. "What an emperor! This is your style!" And she began mimicking his gestures so provokiagly that Louis declared he would have his revenge in a kiss. He was presently chasing her around the scenes, to the disorder of his imperial robes.

The sound of voices and an unusual bustle startled him; he fancied the curtain was going to rise, and called lustily for his sword. But the noise was outside the private door of the theatre. It was flung open, and the lad's consternation may be imagined when he saw advancing toward him the vice-rector of his school, followed by six sbirri. The manager was there, too, wringing his hands with gestures of grief and despair. Louis stood petrified, till the officer, laying a hand on his shoulder, arrested him by an order from the King of Naples. The whole company had rushed together, and were astonished to hear that their tragedian was forthwith to be taken back to the "Conservatorio clella Pieta dei Turchini," to be remanded to his musical studies under the great master Marcello Perrino.

The emperor in petto forgot his dignity, and burst into tears; Rosina cried for sympathy, and there was a general murmur of dissatisfaction.

The manager strove to remonstrate. "Such a genius—tragedy is his vocation!" he pleaded.

"Has not the graceless boy been robbing his majesty, who was pleased to place him in the conservatorio after his father's death?"

"You were wrong to engage a raw lad whom you knew to be a runaway from his guardians. Come, Louis!"

The sbirri roughly removed the imperial robes from the blubbering lad. The impresario was in an agony, for the assembled audience began to give signs of impatience.

"Away with him!" answered the vice-rector. Louis wiped away his tears. "Dear Master Benevolo," he said, "I will yet be revenged. I will be a tragedian in spite of them!"

"I will make them up, I promise you." The vice-rector laughed scornfully, and the men forced the lad away. Rosina ran after him, "Stay, Louis!" she cried, putting her handkerchief into his hands, "You forgot this." Louis thanked her with a tender glance, and put the keepsake in his bosom.

When the party had disappeared, the manager went to pacify his impatient audience. He was consoled by the reflection that the vagabond had left his trunk behind. It was very large and heavy, and, before causing the lock to be broken next morning, Signor Benevolo called some of his friends to make an inventory of its contents. It was found filled with sand! The young débutant had resorted to this trick, that the servants at the inns where they stopped might believe the trunk contained gold and treat him with respect accordingly.

The impresario was in a towering passion. He railed at Louis, showering on him abusive epithets as a cheat and an impostor. He could only retaliate for the loss of his fifteen ducats by writing him a letter full of furious invectives, assuring him that so base a thief need never aspire to the honors of tragedy! The letter was read quietly by Louis, who made no answer, but applied himself diligently to his musical studies. {23} His progress was so rapid that his masters declared he bade fair to rival Bohrer on the violoncello and Tulon on the flute. As a reward for his efforts, a hall in the conservatorio was arranged for the private representations of the pupils.

In the autumn of 1830, Ex-Manager Benevolo chanced to be in Paris. The beautiful Rosina was then noted as an admired singer. She had many conversations with the Italian, who was disgusted with the French actors, and declared that the best days of tragic art were past.

One day there was no small excitement at the announcement of the tragic opera of Otello. It was given out that a new artist of great reputation would appear at the Théâtre Italien. His progress through the Italian cities had been a continued triumph. On his first appearance in Paris the connoisseurs had been determined to show him no favor. As he came on the stage, his grand, imposing figure and good-humored countenance were pre-possessing; but, when his magnificent voice rose swelling above the orchestra, there was a burst of rapturous applause. Powerful and thrilling, penetrating to the depths of pathos, that voice carried all before it; and he was voted by acclamation the first basse-taille of the age.

"You must hear him!" said Rosina, as the ex-manager protested that he did not care for it. He would be sure to condemn what pleased those fantastical Parisians.

"You must hear him in Otello!" persisted the fair singer. "Here is an invitation for you, written by himself."

"As a friend of mine," replied the singer, "he wished to show you attention. You will go with me."

In the evening they went to the theatre. There was a thunderburst of applause as the colossal form of the actor moved across the stage. "A noble figure for tragedy!" exclaimed Benevolo. "Ha! I should like him for the tyrant in Anna Bolena!" When the superb tones of his voice, full of power, yet exquisite in melody, filled the house with the rich volume of sound, the Italian gave up his prejudices. In the deeper passion of the part he was carried away by enthusiasm like the audience. "Stupendo! Tragico!" he exclaimed, wiping his eyes, while the curtain descended.

"You must speak with him!" insisted Rosina. And she drew Benevolo through the door leading behind the scenes. The great artist came to meet them. Benevolo gazed upon him in awe and astonishment; then, recovering himself, faltered forth the expression of his surprise and delight. It was "the king of tragedy" whom he had the honor of greeting!

"I am rejoiced to see you at last, my good master Benevolo!" cried the artist. "Tell me if you have really been pleased. Shall I ever make a tragic actor?"

"You are wonderful—the first in the world!" cried the enraptured ex-manager. "And Rosina says you are an Italian! I am proud of my countryman!"

"Ah! mio fratello! but you had once not so good an opinion of me! Do you not recognize your old acquaintance—the runaway Louis?"

"I have grown somewhat since the affair at Salerno," said the artist, laughing, and clapping his stout sides. "Ah! I forgot; you had good reason for being displeased with me. {24} The fifteen ducats—and that heavy trunk of mine—that gave you trouble for nothing! It ought to have been ransomed long ago; but I waited to do it with my pay as a tragedian. I wanted to prove your prediction untrue! He drew out a paper from his pocket-book, and presented it.

"Take it, friend. It is your just due! Principal and interest you know. My fortune has grown apace with my embonpoint."

"You are a noble fellow!" cried the ex-manager, grasping his hand. "Now, do me another favor, and tell me your real name. The one you act under is assumed, of course!"

"My father was a Frenchman: he fled from Marseilles at the time of the revolution. I was born in Naples. Are you satisfied?"

"I thought from the beginning," said Benevolo, "you were a nobleman in disguise. I know you, now, for a monarch in art."

Lablache thanked him cordially. "Now you must come home and sup with me, in the Rue Richelieu," he said. "I have invited a few friends to meet you, and they will be waiting for us."

Translated from Le Correspondant.

Learned Women And Studious Women.

By Monseigneur Dupanloup.

[The following treatise by Monseigneur Dupanloup is given entire, notwithstanding that some portions of it bear a more direct application to French civilization than to our own. The attentive reader will see that the fundamental principle on which the argument rests applies to incomplete mental development in every country; and those who take an interest in foreign habits and manners will enjoy the lifelike pictures of French society, so graphic, shrewd, and free from exaggeration.—Trans.]

Dear Friend: Several months ago, in a volume [Footnote 1] of letters addressed to men of the world concerning studies adapted to their leisure hours, I published a few pages offering suggestions also to Christian women living in the world upon intellectual labor suitable for them. This advice I tried to adapt and proportion especially to the exigencies of their mode of life.

[Footnote 1: Letters to Men of the World concerning Studies suitable for them and Advice to Christian Women, Paris: Douniol.]

I endeavored to show how necessary it is for a woman to acquire habits of serious thought; all the more so because modern education seldom inculcates them; and I maintained that such habits could easily find a place in the life of women of the world.

I next indicated grave and noble studies, solid and interesting courses of reading, historical, artistic, even philosophical, but, above all, religious, to which they could devote themselves.

Then followed a few practical details concerning the method and conditions of good study, useful reading, and serious composition.

Various observations were addressed to me à propos of this publication; eager contradictions coming side by side with the most favorable expressions of approbation. This did not surprise me. In an age like ours, such counsel could hardly be given with impunity. In the land of Molière an appeal to women to study, to educate themselves, to cultivate letters and the fine arts, could not be allowed to pass unreproved.

Allow me, then, to have recourse to the Correspondant, that my various opponents may be answered at one stroke. The most considerate and the most serious among them supported themselves, not upon Molière, but, strange to say, upon M. de Maistre. It is M. de Maistre, then, with the quotations made from his works and the objections raised in his name, who demands my first consideration.

I.

M. De Maistre's Opinion.

Some of M. de Maistre's letters to his daughters form a veritable treatise upon the humble destiny of woman here below, and the sumptuary laws that should regulate her acquirements and education.

"A woman's great defect," he writes, "is being like a man, and to wish for learning is to wish to be a man. Enough if a woman be aware that Pekin is not in Europe, and that Alexander the Great did not demand a niece of Louis XIV. in marriage."

Also M. de Maistre allows her in scientific matters to follow and "understand the doings of men." This is her most perfect accomplishment, her chef-d'oeuvre.

He permits women, moreover, to love and admire the beautiful; but what he does not permit is, that they should themselves seek to give it expression. When his eldest daughter, Mademoiselle Adele de Maistre, avowed a taste for painting, and when the youngest, Mademoiselle Constance, confided to her father her ardent love for literary pursuits, M. de Maistre, in, alarm, taking shelter behind the triple authority of Solomon, Fénélon and Molière, declared that women should not devote themselves to pursuits opposed to their duties; that a woman's merit lies in rendering her husband happy, in educating children, and in making men; that, from the moment she emulates man, she becomes an ape; that women have never achieved a chef-d'oeuvre of any kind; that a young girl is insane to undertake oil-painting, and should content herself with pencil-sketches: that, moreover, science is of all things the most dangerous for women; that no woman must occupy herself with science under pain of being ridiculous and unhappy; and, finally, that a coquette is far easier to marry than a scholar. In virtue of this last argument, which embraces the preceding ones, M. de Maistre recommends them all to return to their work-baskets, conceding, however, the consecration of a few hours to study by way of distraction.

But let them beware of wishing to enlarge their intelligence and undertake great things. They would be nicknamed Dame barbue.

Moreover, "it is not in the mediocrity of education that their weakness lies:" it is their weakness that makes "mediocrity of education" inevitable. In one word, they are radically incapable of anything great or serious in the way of culture.

Perhaps it would be presumption to contest assertions so firm and uncompromising. I shall not attempt it. I shall beg leave to inquire—for this is the most important point now—whether or not these principles lead us logically and imperiously to the conclusion of M. de Maistre; if a woman, "who would make her husband happy, educate her children well, and not transform herself into an ape in order to emulate man," must therefore renounce not only the exercise of all creative faculty in art and literature, but also of serious self-culture, and turn to her work-basket with no better consolation than the assurance that "Pekin is not in Europe, and that Alexander did not ask in marriage the hand of a niece of Louis XIV."

II.

The Question Fairly Stated.

Let us set aside the name of learned women, so strangely misused since the days of Molière. We Frenchmen are too apt to settle great questions with a jest; sending silly prejudices down to posterity to be nourished and perpetuated for centuries with idle railleries. In the first place, is there not a just distinction to be made, lest we commit the error of confounding in the same anathema studious women with learned women, cultivated women with absurd women, women of sense, reflection, and serious habits of application with pedants?

Is it not evident that Molière, in his Femmes Savantes, attacked neither study nor education, but pedantry, as in his Tartuffe he attacked hypocrisy, not genuine devotion?

With these preliminary words, I enter on the question. The whole theory of M. de Maistre is reduced to this assertion: that women should confine themselves to their own domain and not invade that of men. Agreed! but let us see what is man's peculiar domain. Is man by divine right the sole proprietor of the domain of intelligence? God has reserved to him physical force, and I agree with M. de Maistre that, notwithstanding Judith and Joan of Arc, women should not presume to bear arms or to lead armies. But is intelligence measured out to them in the same exact proportions and with the same limitations as physical strength? I have never thought so. The pen seems to me as well placed in the hand of St. Theresa as in that of M. de Maistre; and I select her name with the intention of citing many more in the following pages, because the name of St. Theresa alone suffices to refute the argument that women should not write for the reason that they have never shown superior ability in writing. St. Theresa is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, prose-writer of Spain, and she even cultivated poetry occasionally.

Beyond discussion, a woman's great merit, her incomparable honor, lies in rearing her children wisely and in making men; as her dearest privilege and her first duty lies in making her husband happy. But precisely in order to make men, and to ensure the virtue and happiness of her husband and children, a woman must be strong in intelligence, strong in judgment and character, assiduous, industrious, and attentive. {27} In the words of Scripture, that look, that beauty, that goodness, which adorn and embellish a whole household, must be illumined from on high; (sicut sol oriens mundo, sic mulier?? [Transcriber's note: Illegible] bona species in ornamentum domus ejus.) The hand that holds the distaff and manages household matters should be guided by a head capable of conceiving and of governing. The portrait sketched by Solomon is not that of a woman engrossed solely with material life; it is that of an able woman; and, if her children rise up and call her glorious and blessed, it is because she has an elevated sense of the affairs of life, a provident care for the future, and a solicitude for souls; because she stands on a level with the noblest duties and the most serious thoughts; in one word, because she is an intelligent companion worthy of a spouse who sits at the gates of the city upon the most exalted bench of justice.

I could quote other passages from Holy Scripture proving that natural science, art, sacred literature, poetry, and eloquence were not foreign to the education of Israelitish maidens or to the career of Jewish women. Was it not the mother of Samuel who proclaimed God the Lord of knowledge and the Giver of understanding? Was it not Miriam, the sister of Moses, who taught music and sacred canticles to the young Israelites?

But it is especially since the enunciation of the gospel that the intellectual and moral dignity of woman has been elevated, and that Christian women have taken so noble a place in human society. What I demand is, that absurd prejudices, coarse names, and worn-out jests should not drag them down from the exalted rank assigned to them by the gospel into frivolity and materialism.

Let me be clearly understood. I desire, above all, not femmes savantes, but, for the sake of husbands, children, and households, intelligent, attentive, and judicious women, well-instructed in all things necessary and useful for them to know as mothers, heads of households, and women of the world; never disdainful of practical duties, but knowing how to occupy not only their fingers, but their minds, understanding the cultivation of the whole soul. And I add that we ought to dread as disastrous evils those frivolous, giddy, self-indulgent women who, in idleness, ignorance, and dissipation, seek for pleasure and amusement; who are hostile to exertion and to almost every duty, incapable of study or of continuous mental effort, and therefore unfitted to exercise any important influence over the education of their children, or over the affairs of their household or of their husbands.

III.

On these conditions I willingly resign the name of learned woman, claiming it for no one. And yet before laying it aside, I would remark that ages more Christian than our own were far from disdaining it. The disciple and biographer of the illustrious St. Boniface plainly tells us that St. Boniface loved St. Lioba for her solid erudition, eruditionis sapientia. This admirable virgin, in whom the light of the Holy Ghost enhanced an enlightenment laboriously acquired from study, united to purity and humility (those virtues which preserve all things in a heart) a knowledge of theology and canon law that became one of the glories of the new-born German church. And, moreover, St. Boniface, far from despising his spiritual daughter's efforts to rise to intellectual pursuits, sometimes robbed the apostolate of hours which he deemed well spent in correcting the literary compositions and Latin verses of Lioba, and in answering her in a similar style; poetic messages carried across seas by confessors and martyrs.

And if, going back to earlier ages, we closely examine the records of history, we find that, after the establishment of Christianity, feminine names are constantly met with on the literary monuments most revered by posterity; as, for instance, the celebrated Hypatia, who had Clement of Alexandria for a disciple; the illustrious St. Catharine, teacher of Christian philosophy; and, again, St. Perpetua, who wrote the acts of her own martyrdom and recorded the glory of her companions.

When peace was restored to the church, and the age of doctors commenced, succeeding the age of martyrs, who were more celebrated for the gravity of their minds and the extent of their knowledge than the Paulas, the Marcellas, Melanias, and Eustochiums, with many other saints and noble Christian women? Remember St. Marcella, in whom St. Jerome found so powerful an auxiliary against heresy; and St. Paula, who inspired St. Jerome to undertake his noblest and most important works, the Latin translation of the Bible from the Hebrew text, and a complete series of commentaries upon the prophets.

Nothing is finer than St. Paula's letter to St. Marcella. There we see all that Marcella had done to elevate the souls and the intelligence of women and maidens who called her their mother; there we comprehend the intelligence and the eloquence of St. Paula. [Footnote 2]

[Footnote 2: We read with great interest in The History of St. Paula, just published by M. l'Abbé F. Lagrange, those chapters devoted to the studies in Holy Scripture of Roman ladies in St. Jerome's school, and to those of St. Paula made at Bethlehem, under the direction of the same saint.]

Who does not know what Theresa was in the following century to St. Paulinus, whose reputation is as much the glory of Aquitaine as the name of Ausonius? Who does not know that Elpicia (the wife of Boëthius) composed hymns adopted by the Roman liturgy?

In the midst of barbarism education was one of the first conditions imposed on Christian virgins. Those who evinced an aptitude for literary pursuits were dispensed from manual labor, according to the precept of St. Cesarius, that they might devote themselves exclusively to intellectual work. In most monasteries we hear of them engrossed in study, writing, translating, copying, or deciphering without interruption.

St. Radegonde, not content with attracting to Poitiers one of the last Roman poets, induced him to give so complete a training to her nuns as to form among them writers who soon eclipsed their master. Classic elegance and purity are revived in the writings of Bandonovia. All the charm of Christian inspiration is revealed in the hymn improvised by a nun of Poitiers at the moment of Radegonde's death, and one of the earliest flowers of the new poetic era blooms over the grave of this holy queen who so loved letters.

The monasteries of England, Ireland, and France were nurseries for erudite and devout women.

"It is proved beyond dispute by numerous and well-authenticated witnesses," says M. de Montalembert, "that literary studies were cultivated in female monasteries in England during the seventh and eighth centuries, with no less assiduity and perseverance than in communities of men; perhaps with even more enthusiasm. Anglo-Saxon nuns did not neglect the occupations proper for their sex. But manual labor was far from satisfying them. {29} They willingly left distaff and needle, not only to transcribe manuscripts and adorn miniatures according to the taste of the day, but still oftener to read and study holy books, the fathers of the church, or even classic authors." [Footnote 3]

[Footnote 3: Monks of the West, vol. v. This fifth volume, and the two preceding ones, written during a cruel and persistent malady, astonish us by the powerful impulse, the tenderness and loftiness of sentiment which they breathe; showing how steadily a valiant, Christian soul can hold itself erect amid the most grievous physical and moral trials. These are books that I would gladly see in the hands of everyone; today especially, when we are overwhelmed with a malaria-tainted literature.]

St. Gertrude, under Dagobert's guidance, learned the Holy Scriptures entirely by heart and translated them from the Greek. She sent beyond seas to Ireland for masters to teach music, poetry, and Greek to the cloistered virgins of Nivelle. From all these glowing centres issued shining lights; as, for instance, Lioba, foundress of the abbey of Richofsheim; Roswitha, and St. Bridget. It was by St. Edwiga that the study of Greek was introduced into the monastery of St. Gall. And the enlightenment of the learned Hilda was so highly esteemed in the Anglo-Saxon church that more than once the holy abbess, screened behind a veil, was present at the deliberations of bishops assembled in synod or council, who craved the advice of one whom they regarded as especially illumined by the Holy Ghost.

It would make a list too long to record the examples of all the women in whom sanctity was accompanied by a gift of luminous science.

We may name here a daughter of William the Conqueror, Cecilia, abbess of a monastery at Caen; the illustrious Emma, abbess of St. Amand; and, above all, Herrade, who astonished her contemporaries by learned cosmological works, comprising all the science of her day.

In the twelfth century, St. Hildegarde received revelations concerning the physical constitution of our globe, and wrote treatises upon the laws of nature, anticipating modern science. Nothing surpasses the elevation and nobility of intellect revealed in the various works of this illustrious woman.

It was St. Elizabeth, of Thenawge, who wrote the admirable page quoted in the logic of Père Gratry. St. Hildegarde and St. Elizabeth both lived in monasteries on the banks of the Rhine, where women wrote, painted, and worked; where they did wonderful things, says Père Gratry.

"What can we say of St. Catharine of Siena, who shares the glory of the great writers?" asks Ozanam.

M. de Maistre maintains that a young girl is insane to think of painting. And yet saints have had this mania. St. Catharine of Bologna was a celebrated miniaturist. She wrote learned treatises and painted chef-d'oeuvres; she composed sacred music and perfected musical instruments; even on her death-bed she played on instruments whose conception and execution belong to her. It is for this reason that she is represented over altars holding the lyre or viola invented by herself.

Following all these names claimed by the arts as well as by literature comes that of St. Theresa, already cited above. Here M. de Maistre is vanquished. Yes, genius has descended upon a feminine intellect, endowing it with a gift as brilliant as any that can be cited. One might dread the guilt of profanation in using the words chef-d'oeuvre and human genius in speaking of those sublime pages penetrated with a divine light, those marvellous echoes of heaven that stir our souls even on earth. But where can we find the beautiful realized with more vividness, more simplicity, more nature and grandeur?

If all these names have been the names of saints whose aim and supreme inspiration was religion, why wonder? I have already said that women had been elevated by Christianity, heart, soul, and understanding. They owed to Christianity the homage of all the gifts it had bestowed upon them, and that homage they rendered.

To complete this hasty outline of the history, not so much of learned as of intelligent women, women of mind and heart, of faith and Christian virtue, I will mention that, in times more nearly approaching our own, Christina Pisani wrote admirable memoirs of Charles V., in which we find great moral elevation as well as a charming style.

Let me name, also, Elizabeth of Valois and Mary Stuart, who carried on a Latin correspondence for several years concerning the advantages of literary studies. Elizabeth Sarani, one of the most religious painters of the Bolognese school in the seventeenth century; Helena Cornaro, in the sixteenth century, was made doctor at Milan, and died in the odor of sanctity. And then what a charming writer was the Mère de Chaugy in the beginning of the seventeenth century!

In conclusion, I will mention Mademoiselle de Légardière, who wrote a work esteemed by M. Guizot as "the most instructive now extant upon ancient French law." It was a woman, then, who consecrated a life, in which severe labor and charitable actions alone found place, to the execution of the first work that opened the way to new discoveries of modern science, a work of prodigious erudition, The Political Theory of French Laws. This savante, for so we must call her, lived in an isolated chateau, where her piety was an example to all who knew her, and left a memory venerated by her countrywomen.

Many other examples could be cited to reestablish the epithet learned woman; but I promised to resign it, and resign it I do quite willingly.

M. de Maistre concludes his dissertation by saying: "Women have never created masterpieces!" Does he mean to assert that their intellectual efforts have been, and that they always will be, sterile? We have seen, and history proves, to what point the exertions and the acquirements of women have contributed to the preservation of ancient literature. It is a hard measure to expel them from the ship they have helped to rescue from the storms of barbarism. Moreover, one need not create masterpieces to prove the possession of talent. God sends dew to little flowers as well as to great trees. Humble works may receive the fecundity of a good action. The success of our adversaries must be our encouragement. If women of talent have done so much mischief, then Christian women must struggle on the same ground. There are a great many books, and one book more is but a drop in the ocean—true! All are not destined to distinction and immortality. Some must console a few souls only, and, like daily bread, meet the day's requirements, without enduring until the morrow.

"If you work for God and for yourself," says St. Augustine, "the better to heed the utterance of the Word within you, there will always be a few beings who will understand you."

These words are an encouragement for all humble works, for all faithful efforts, that, while developing the faculties received from God, know not to what purpose they are destined. Let each one cultivate her natural faculties. Intelligence is one of the noblest of gifts, and in the field of the father of the family no laborer must stand unoccupied, useless, without toil and without recompense.

But, it may be argued, most of the examples brought forward prove only that women are especially fitted for Christian learning. I recognize the fact. Inspiration, descending into their souls, rises again more directly toward God. Their talents must be intimately allied with virtue, and shine forth like those pure rays that are filled with the light and warmth of the centre whence they emanate.

But, alas! one must recognize also the fact that women born with talents and for works of the first order have too often never found this supreme source. M. de Maistre, after discharging his unjust spleen against Madame de Staël, calling her discourteously "Science in petticoats, and an impertinent femmelette" whose works he qualifies as "gorgeous rags," confesses, finally, in one of those impetuous contradictions so familiar to him, that Madame de Staël needed only the torch of truth to raise her "immense abilities" to the highest grade. "If she had been a Catholic," he says later, "she would have been adorable instead of being famous." What would he have said of the female writers of our own day?

What intellectual ruins! What grief it is that talents like those of Madame de —— and Madame —— should be lost to the good cause!—souls that in their fall bear still the impress of the divine ray; crumbling temples that seem to be struggling to rise from their ruins, uttering from the depths of their desolation plaints like these:

"O my greatness! O my strength! you have passed like a storm-cloud; you have fallen upon the earth to ravage it like a thunderbolt. You have smitten with barrenness and death all the fruits and all the blossoms of my field. You have made of it a desolate arena, where I sit solitary in the midst of my ruins. O my greatness! O my strength! were you good or evil angels?

"O my pride! O my knowledge! you rose up like burning whirlwinds scattered by the simoom through the desert; like gravel, like dust you have buried the palm-trees, you have troubled and exhausted the water-springs. And I sought the stream to quench my thirst, and I found it not; for the insensate who would cut his way over the proud peaks of Horeb forgets the lowly path that leads to the shadowy fountain. O my pride! O my knowledge! were you the envoys of the Lord? were you spirits of darkness?

"O my religion! O my hope! you have swept me like a fragile and wavering bark over shoreless seas, through bewildering fogs, vague illusions, dimmest images of an unknown country; and when, weary with struggling against the winds, and, groaning, bowed down beneath the tempest, I asked you whither you led me, you lighted beacons upon the rocks to show me what to avoid, not where to find safety. O my religion! O my hope! were you a dream of madness, or the voice of the living God?"

No; these impulses toward heaven, this need of God, this strength, this pride, this greatness, were not bad angels; they were great and noble faculties, sublime gifts. But they should not have been deluded! They should not have been misled into vanity and falsehood! They should have been employed for good ends, and not turned into spirits of darkness.

IV.

Duty.

The rights of women to intellectual culture are not merely rights, they are also duties. This is what makes them inalienable. If they were only rights, women could sacrifice them; but they are duties. The sacrifice is either impossible or ruinous.

This is the point of departure for all I have to say. I declare unhesitatingly that it is a woman's duty to study and educate herself, and that intellectual labor should have a place reserved among her special occupations and among her most important obligations.

The primordial reasons of this obligation are grave, of divine origin, and absolutely unanswerable; namely:

In the first place, God has conferred no useless gifts; for all the things he has made there is a reason and an aim. If the companion of man is a reasonable creature; if, like man, she is made in the image and likeness of God; if she, too, has received from her Creator the sublimest of gifts, understanding, she ought to make use of it.

These gifts, received from God for an especial purpose, must be cultivated. Scripture tells us that souls left to waste, like fallow ground, bring forth only wild fruits, spines et tribulos. And God did not make the souls of women, any more than the souls of men, to be shifting, barren, or unhealthy soil.

Moreover, every reasonable creature is to render to God an account of his gifts. Each one in the judgment day will be dealt with according to the gifts he has received and the use he has made of them.

God has given us all hands, (which, according to the interpreters, signify prompt and intelligent action,) but on condition that we do not bring them to him empty. Again, he has categorically explained his intentions in the parable of the talents, where he declares that a strict account must be rendered to him, talent by talent. I do not know a father of the church or any moralist who has ever asserted that this parable did not concern women as well as men. There is no serious distinction to be made. Each must give an account of what he has received; and good human sense, like good divine sense, plainly indicates that one sex has no more right than the other to bury or to waste the possessions granted by Heaven to be employed and increased.

In short, I say with St. Augustine, no creature to whom God has confided the lamp of intelligence has a right to behave like a foolish virgin, letting the oil become exhausted because she has neglected to renew it; letting that light die out that was to have enlightened her path and that of others too, if only, as in the case of some wives and mothers, that of her husband and children.

The generality of books relating to the merits, the destinies, and the virtues of woman, far from considering her as a being created in the image of God, intelligent, free, and responsible to her Creator for her actions, treat of her as a possession of man, made solely for him, and whose end he is. In all these books, a woman is only a blooming creature meant to be adored, but not respected—a being essentially inferior whose existence has no other aim than to secure the happiness of man, or bend to his most frivolous purposes; dependent, above all, upon man, who alone is her master, her legislator, and her judge—absolutely, as if she had no soul, no conscience, no moral liberty; as if God were nothing to her; as if he had not endowed her soul with cravings, faculties, aspirations, in one word, with rights that are at the same time duties.

The world declaims, and with reason, against the futility of women, against their love of approbation, and what is called their coquetry. But is not this futility produced and propagated by the fear of making them learned, of too fully developing their intelligence?—as if such a thing were possible, as if that true development through which one better understands duty, and learns to calculate consequences, could be injurious. Are not women who have serious tastes obliged to hide them or make excuses for them by every means in their power, as if they were concealing a fault?

Or if, indeed, a woman is allowed to educate herself, it is only within very restricted limits, and merely, according to the wishes of M. de Maistre, that she may understand the conversation of men, or that she may be more amusing, and set off her trilling talk in a more piquant fashion by mingling it with odds and ends of wisdom. With such a dread does the learned woman inspire idle and frivolous men who will neither work themselves nor let any one else work.

In plainer terms still: does not the present system of education create and foster coquetry and a love of admiration, by making man the only end of woman's destiny? It is vain to tell her that she is destined for one alone, and that all others should be to her as if they existed not. This is perfectly true from a Christian point of view, which embraces at once all rights and all duties; but apart from Christian virtue, when that one proves tedious, vicious, and absolutely unworthy of affection, and when temptation presents itself under the traits of another, a superior being, (or one who seems to be superior,) for whom alone she believes herself created, how, I ask, can you persuade her to fly from the latter and live only for the former? Imprudent and fatal guide that you are, you have taught her that she is an incomplete being, who cannot suffice to herself, who must lean upon the superiority of another; and then you complain because, when she meets this support, this other and truer half of herself, she clings to it, and cannot fly from the fatal attraction! Undeniably she violates the holiest of obligations; but have you not yourselves been blind and guilty? Are you not so still?

I have no hesitation in asserting that only Christian morality can teach a woman with absolute and decisive authority her true rights and her true duties in their necessary correlation.

Until you have persuaded a woman that she is first created for God, for herself, for her own soul, and in the second place for her husband and children, to value them next to God, with God, and for God, you will have done nothing either for the happiness or the honor of families.

Of course, husband and wife are two in one, and their children are one in them. But, if God is not the foundation of this providential union, Providence will be avenged, and the union dissolved. This is the misfortune, almost always irreparable, that so often meets our eyes. [Footnote 4]

[Footnote 4: Does the reader believe these warnings uncalled for in American society? We once explained to a Frenchman the system in vogue in many of our States, of divorce followed by a second marriage. "Ah!" said he, "in France we call that a liaison" Trans.]

This excessive absorption of the personality of a wife into her husband's existence was useful, perhaps, for the preservation of the antique matron. Such moral and intellectual restrictions were reasonable, perhaps, at a period when duty had no sanction sufficiently strong. The seclusion of the gynaeceum may have served to preserve the domestic circle from frightful disorder. {34} But a Christian woman is conscious of a different destiny. For her gynaeceum and harem are useless. She loves the being to whom God has united her with a tenderness and devotion rarely met with in pagan times, if one may judge by the eulogiums lavished on those who approached most nearly the standard we see realized every day. The Christian woman regards herself as her husband's companion, as his assistant in earthly as in heavenly things, socia, adjutorinm; as bound to console him and make his happiness; but she thinks, too, that they should help each other to become better, and that, after having educated together new elect, they should share felicity together through all eternity. For such destinies, a woman's education cannot be too unremitting, too earnest, or too strong.

The contrary system rests upon a pagan appreciation of her destiny, or, as has been said with reason, upon the idleness of men who wish to preserve their own superiority at small expense. The pagan conception consists in believing women to be merely charming creatures, passive, inferior, and made only for man's pleasure and amusement. But, as I have already said, Christianity thinks differently. In Christianity a woman's virtue, like a man's, must be intelligent, voluntary, and active. She must understand the full extent of her duties, and know how to draw conclusions from divine teaching for herself, her husband, and her children.

This prejudice against the intellectual development of women is one of the most culpable inventions of the eighteenth century, that age of profligacy and impiety. The Regent and Louis XV. have fostered it more than Molière, as they have created more prejudices against religion than Tartuffe. It was useful to all unprincipled husbands to have wives as worthless as themselves, who should be incapable of controlling their disorderly lives.

A superior woman obliges her husband to depend upon her. He is forced to submit to the control of an intelligent spirit, and does not feel free to follow his own caprices. This is why vicious husbands need ignorant wives.

Molière struck a blow as severe at frivolity, in the Précieuses Ridicules, [Footnote 5] as at pedantry in the Femmes Savantes. The eighteenth century retained merely a prejudice convenient to itself, which the regency established as a law, and finally licentious men surrendered the honor of their familie rather than find in a wife an inconvenient judge, a living conscience, an ever-present reproach. They preferred to have wives as vain and frivolous as themselves, and to make of marriage a contract in which fortunes and titles only were considered, and where affection on either side went for nothing. The world saw with affright the corruption that speedily engulfed French society.

[Footnote 5: It is also to be observed that Molière's learned women had only the affectation and not the reality of science, just as the précieuses merely affected the fine language and manners of the court. The former were ignorant women playing the part of savantes the latter provincial women aping Paris fashions.]

Why did not M. de Maistre, who saw the remains of this corruption and the chastisements it had merited, understand that the degraded position assigned to women was one of its causes, and that prejudice against the intellectual elevation of women was the work of vice?

V.

The Dangers of Repression.

The very nature of things speaks plainly enough. Human nature in all its faculties demands instruction, enlargement, enlightenment, elevation. {35} From my own observation I must assert that nothing is more dangerous than smothered faculties, unanswered cravings, unsatisfied hunger and thirst. Thence comes the perversion of passions, created for noble ends, but turned against truth and virtue. Thence issue those distorted, crooked, and perverse ways into which we are drawn by an ignorance incapable of choice, judgment, or self-restraint: conversi dirumpent vos, says the sacred writer. There lies the secret of many falls, many scandals, or, at least, of much wretched levity among women! If these rich and ardent powers had been cultivated, we need not now deplore their ruin; we should not have to sigh over the pitifully incorrect intellectual standard, the mental weakness of so many women of distinguished nature, called to be ornaments to the world and to do honor to their families, but of whom education, checked in its development, has made elegant women perhaps, at thirty years of age, but frivolous, commonplace and useless. Surely no one can seriously contradict me in these assertions.

M. de Maistre would make a woman humble and virtuous in the aridity of her occupations, without anything to raise and console her beyond the knowledge "that Pekin is not in Europe," and so on.

This is impossible. She will not remain in this humble sphere. If we do not give her intellectual interests to recreate her from the material duties, often overwhelming, that weigh her down, she will reject these very duties, which humiliate her when they come alone, and seek relief from ennui in frivolity. Do not we see this every day? Let us not deceive ourselves.

The duties of the mistress of a household, ever recurring with a thousand matter-of-fact details—the responsibilities of domestic life are often wearisome and excessively wearisome. Where shall a woman find consolation? who will give a legitimate impulse to her sometimes over-excited imagination? Who will offer to her intelligence the rightful satisfaction it demands, and prevent her from feeling that she is a mere domestic drudge?

I have no hesitation in saying—and how many experiences have contributed to fortify my conviction!—that there are times when piety itself does not suffice! Work, and sometimes very serious intellectual work, is required. Drawing and painting are not enough, unless the painting be of a very elevated character. What the hour calls for is a strong and firm application of the understanding to some serious work, literary, philosophical, or religious. Then will calmness, peace, serenity be restored. Let us acknowledge the truth. Rigid principles and empty occupations, devotion combined with a purely material or worldly life, make women destitute of resources in themselves, and sometimes insupportable to their husbands and children.

But allow a woman two hours of hard study every day, during which the faculties of her soul can recover their balance, perplexities assume their true proportions, good sense and judgment resume their sway, excitement subside, and peace reenter the soul: then she will lift up her head once more; she will see that the intellectual life to which she aspires, in accordance with a craving implanted in her being by God himself, is not denied to her. Then she will be able to fall on her knees and accept life with its duties, and bless the divine will.

This is the fruit of genuine work performed in the presence of God. It renders her soul submissive, sometimes more so than prayer itself. It restores her to order and good sense, satisfying within her a just and noble desire.

I have sometimes heard mothers say that they dreaded for their children faculties overstepping ordinary proportions, and that they should endeavor to repress them. "What use are they?" it is said: "How can a place be found for these great abilities in that real life, with its narrow, cramped limits, which begins for women at the close of their earliest youth?" These remarks have secretly shocked me. What! would you check the expansion of that fairest of divine works, a soul where God has implanted a germ of ideal life? You respect this gift in men, provided that it be employed in practical life, and that it serve to make money or create a social position. But, since the utility of great gifts is less lucrative among women, they had better be repressed! Then lop off the branches of the plant that craves too much air and room and sunlight; check the redundant sap. But the plant was intended to be a great tree, and you will make of it a stunted shrub. Take care lest the mutilation do not kill it utterly while torturing it. To extinguish a soul designed by God to shine is to bury therein the seed of an interior anguish that you will never cure, and which may exhaust the soul with vague, exaggerated aspirations. There is no torture comparable to the sense of the beautiful when it cannot find utterance, to the interior agony of a soul which, perhaps unconsciously, has missed its vocation. That word, expressive of a call from on high, of a solemn and irresistible claim, applies to women as well as to men, to the ideal life as much as to the external life. The soul is a thought of God, it has been said. There is a divine plan with regard to it, and our exertions or our languor advance or retard the execution of that plan, which exists none the less in God's wisdom and goodness, and must appear one day as our accuser if we fail to execute it.

And to secure its accomplishment, the development of the whole soul, mind, and heart is necessary.

It is difficult to discover in advance to what God destines his gifts; but none the less true is it that he destines them to an especial end, and that this providential vocation, faithfully answered, turns aside the dangers we dread to meet in its fulfilment.

Individual natures should be consulted, that we may develop them according to their capacities. I would not create factitious talents by a culture which nature does not demand, but neither would I leave uncultivated those she has bestowed. Nothing is more dangerous for a woman than incomplete development, half-knowledge, a half-talent that shows her glimpses of broader horizons without giving force to reach them, makes her think she knows what she does not know, and fills her soul with trouble and bewilderment, combined with a pride that often betrays itself in sad misconduct. When equilibrium is not established between aspiration and the power to realize it, the soul, after making fruitless struggles to attain its ideal, becomes discontented with common life, and, craving some excitement of mind and imagination, seeks it in emotions and pleasures always dangerous and often culpable.

If you do not direct the flame upward, it will feed upon the coarsest earthly aliment. A superior person once said to me: "In art, mediocrity is to be above all things feared. A great talent escapes many dangers. The impetus once given, one must reach the goal; otherwise, who can say how low one may fall?"

Terrible examples of this I have seen, showing me what becomes of smothered faculties and of a rich nature rendered abortive. [Footnote 6]

[Footnote 6: I know a woman endowed with a creative faculty which her education has tended to crush. One feels in her incomplete and suffering nature a sort of interior discord. Ill at ease with herself, she seeks excitement in dress and in frivolous distractions. People attribute these defects to her artistic nature. On the contrary, she would not suffer if she possessed the plenitude of her faculties. She has not been allowed to cultivate fully the talent bestowed by God; she has never arrived at the genuine power of production or reached the repose of legitimate interior satisfaction.]

VI.

Fatal Results of Ignorance and Levity in Women.

We complain of the vanity of women, of their luxury and coquetry; but for what else do we prepare them, what else do we inculcate in their education? We leave them no other resource on earth. Far from elevating, developing, strengthening, and ennobling them, we dissipate, enervate, and debase them; nor am I speaking of the most fatal kind of debasement. Far from forming in them a taste for serious things or even for subjects worthy of interest, we teach them to ridicule those who have such tastes. We reduce them to coquetry, gossip, every kind of mediocrity and ennui. The world is positively irritated against those who sometimes remind women what they are in the estimation of God, what they are capable of doing, what they owe to God, to society, to France, to their husbands and sons, and to themselves; against those who dare to assert that it is for them, daughters of that Eve to whom humanity owes the chastisement of toil, to accept and make others accept this fruit, which, though perhaps a little bitter, is expiatory, honorable, and salutary; that it is for them to follow its holy practices from infancy, and, later, to inspire in others a taste for it, or, at least, courage to endure it; that it is for them to speak that noble language of reason and of faith which calls labor the primordial law of humanity, at once a dominion and a reward.

The world is angry with those who teach women that they should use the gift of influence with which they are endowed, not to become queens of the ball-room, and shine beneath the candelabra of a drawing-room or behind foot-lights, but to become in their own homes skilful and patient advocates of everything noble, just, intellectual, and generous; not to futilize, if I may so express myself, the spirits of men, already too inclined to futility, but to remind them constantly that life is composed of duties, that duty is serious, and that happiness is only found in the performance of duty.

Instead of this, what are they? Stars of a day, meteors too often fatal to the repose, the fortune, and the honor of families. We may say that these women who have the brilliancy and the passing influence of comets exercise also their sinister power. Instead of enervating them with nonsense, tell them that they will not always remain twenty years old, and that they will soon need other resources than their own beauty and caprices. Tell them that, even supposing they can always rule their husbands so easily, this sophistical authority will never gain a hold upon their children; and yet it is a woman's true aim, her first duty, often, alas! her sole happiness, to possess influence over her children and especially over her sons. But to obtain that, she needs not only goodness, tenderness, and patience, but reason, reflection, good sense, and enlightenment. To obtain these, real instruction, attentive study, serious education are necessary.

But there are few women who are capable of rendering solid service to their husbands and children.

"As a usual thing," wrote to me a woman of the world, of very general interests, but exceedingly intelligent—"as a usual thing we know nothing, absolutely nothing. We can talk only about dress, fashions, or steeple-chases—nonsense all of them! A woman knows who are the famous actors and horses of the day; she knows by heart the personnel of the opera and the Variétés; the stud-book is more familiar to her than the Imitation; last year she voted for La Tonque, this year for Vermouth, and gravely assures us that Bois-Roussel is full of promise; the grand Derby drives her wild, and the triumph of Fille de l'Air seems to her a national victory. She can tell who are the best dressmakers, what saddler is most in vogue, what shop is most frequented. She can weigh the respective merits of the equipages of Comte de la Grange, Duc de Morny, and M. Delamarre. But, alas! turn the conversation to a matter of history or geography; speak of the middle ages, the crusades, the institutions of Charlemagne or St. Louis; compare Bossuet with Corneille, Racine with Fênélon; utter the names of Camoëns or Dante, of Royer-Collard, Frédéric Ozanam, Comte de Montalembert, or Père Gratry; the poor thing is struck dumb. She can only amuse young women and frivolous young men; incapable of talking of business, art, politics, agriculture, or science, she cannot converse with her father-in-law, with the curé, or any other sensible man. And yet it is a woman's first talent to be able to converse with every one. If her mother-in-law visits schools and poor people, and wishes to enroll her in charitable associations, she understands neither their aim nor their importance, for compassion and kindness of heart do not suffice in a certain class for the execution of good works. To acquire influence and give to a benefit its true worth, its whole moral significance, one needs an intelligence only to be acquired by study and attentive reflection."

And, now, I must go further, and indicate the fatal results of the present condition of things to domestic life, to society, and to religion; and I will tell the entire truth.

I know, I have seen, and thanked God in seeing, the sway exercised in her family by a Christian wife and mother; the pursuits introduced under her guidance; the ideas, at first indignantly rejected, adopted to please her; thoughts of religion, of charity, of devotion, resignation, and forgiveness; but more rarely, I must confess, principles of industry.

It is a painful fact that education, not excepting religious education, rarely gives a serious taste for study to young girls or young women. Envoys from God to the domestic hearth, guardians of the holy traditions of faith, honor, and loyalty, women, even devout Christian women, seem to be the adversaries of work whether for their husbands or their children, but especially for their sons. I have seen women who found it difficult not to regard the time given to study as stolen from them. Is this for want of intelligence or aptitude? I think not. I attribute this prejudice, first, to the education we give them, light, frivolous, and superficial, if not absolutely false; and, secondly, to the part assigned to them in the world, and the place reserved for them in families, and even in some Christian families.

We do not wish women to study; they do not wish those about them to study. We do not like to see them employed; they do not like to see others employed, and they succeed only too well in preventing their husbands and children from working. This is an immense misfortune, a most fatal influence. It is useless to say to men, "Work, accept offices, occupy your time." While women seek to destroy the effect of our advice, it will never produce results. So long as mothers advise their daughters not to marry men in office; so long as the young wife uses her whole art to disgust her husband with employment, and the young mother fails to inculcate in her children the necessity of self-culture, of training the mind and talents as one cultivates a precious plant, so long will the law of labor remain, with rare exceptions, unobserved.

In the present stage of customs and manners, home life being what it is, women only can effectively protect a spirit of industry; make it habitual; inculcate, foster, facilitate, and even enforce it upon those around them; early preparing the way for it, rendering it possible and easy, according to it esteem, encouragement, and admiration.

Now, on the contrary, children are placed as soon as possible en pension; that is the word; or for the boys a tutor is appointed, for the girls a governess. The mother, out of love of amusement, deprives herself as early as possible of the supreme happiness of bestowing upon her children the first gleam of intellectual and spiritual life—she who gave them corporeal existence. The children then go to college or to a convent, and what becomes the mother's chief care? That they should not work too hard! If there is a tutor or governess, the case is far worse. The mother often appears to be the born adversary of both, bent upon finding fault, upon alienating her children from them, and extorting privileges, walks, exemptions, and incessant interruptions. The only dream of this weak and blind mother, her only idea of occupation for her son, is to plan hunting parties for him, gatherings of young people, hippodromes, plays, watering-places, and balls, where she follows him with her eyes, enchanted with his triumphs in society, which should perhaps rather make her sigh. No longer daring to be vain for herself, she is vain for him. What defects does she blame? An ungraceful gesture, an unrefined expression, or the omission of some courtesy. She never says to him: "Aim at higher things; cultivate your mind; learn to think, to know men, things, yourself; become a distinguished man; serve your country; make for yourself a name, unless you have one already, and in that case be worthy to bear it."

Few mothers give such counsel to their children—still less, young wives to their husbands. They seem to marry in order to run about in search of amusement or of the principle of perpetual motion. Country places, city life, baths, watering-places, the turf, balls, concerts, and morning calls leave not a moment's rest for them day or night. Willingly or unwillingly, the husband must share this restlessness. He yawns frequently, scolds sometimes, but no matter for that; he must yield, longing for the blessed moment when he can shake off the yoke and take refuge at his club. The young wife employs every gift of art and nature, everything that God bestowed upon her for better purposes, grace, beauty, sweetness, address, fascination, to make him yield. Oh! that she would employ half these providential resources to prove to her husband that she would be proud to be the wife of a distinguished man; that she longs to see him cultivated, clever, worthy of his name, worthy one day to be held up as an example to his son; to persuade him either to take some office, or to live upon his estates and exercise a righteous influence, protecting elective places, gaining the confidence and esteem of his fellow-citizens, setting a noble example, and thus serving God and society!

But far from behaving thus, if the poor husband ventures to take up a book and seek repose from the whirlwind he is condemned to live in, madam makes a little face, (considered bewitching at twenty, but one day to be pronounced insufferable;) she flutters about the literary man, the rhetorician, the scholar, retires to put on her hat, comes back, seats herself, springs up again, flits back and forth before the mirror, takes her gloves, and finally bursts out into execrations against books and reading, which are good for nothing except to making a man stupid and preoccupied. For the sake of peace the husband throws down his book, loses the habit of reading, suffers gradual annihilation by a conjugal process, and, having failed to raise his companion to his own level, sinks to hers.

Here we have a deplorable vicious circle. So long as women know nothing, they will prefer unoccupied men; and so long as men remain idle, they will prefer ignorant and frivolous women. Men in office are no less persecuted than others. Many women torment a magistrate, a lawyer, a notary, making them fail in exactitude and in application to business, instead of encouraging a strict and complete fulfilment of duty. They consider punctuality a bore and assiduity insufferable. When they succeed in accomplishing the neglect of an appointment or of some important occupation, one would think they had achieved a victory. The case is worse still for certain careers generally adopted by rich men or by those whose families were formerly wealthy, such as the army and navy. An officer must remain unmarried, or marry a girl without fortune. Otherwise, in discussing the marriage, the first thing demanded is a resignation. Every young lady of independent fortune wishes her husband to do nothing. In view of this ignorant prejudice, this conjugal ostracism, even sensible mothers hesitate about recommending their sons to adopt careers which will make marriage possible to them only at the expense of a noble fortune; or else they say in words too often heard: "My son will serve for a few years, and then resign. A married man cannot pursue a career."

And young men are asked to work with this perspective before them! How can one love a position which is to be abandoned on such or such a day in accordance with a caprice? What zeal, what emulation, what ambition can a man have who is to leave the service at twenty-five or twenty-eight years of age, when he is perhaps captain of artillery or lieutenant of a ship, that is to say, when he has worked his way through the difficulties that beset every career at its outset?

I have known mothers fairly reduced to despair at seeing a son, just on the point of attaining an elevated position, forced to renounce the thought merely in accordance with the exigence of a young girl and the blindness of her mother, who ought to foresee and dread the inevitable regrets and inconveniences of idleness succeeding to the charm of an occupied life, of the monotony of a tête-à-tête coming after the excitements of Solferino, or the perpetual qui vive of our Algerian garrisons, or the adventurous and almost constantly heroic life of the navy.

It is the duty of an intelligent Christian wife or mother to point out the dangers of idleness and stultification; the social and intellectual suicide resulting from standing aloof from every office and all occupation; the political and religious necessity of occupying responsible places, distinguishing one's self in them, and holding them permanently in order to exercise one's influence in favor of morals and religion. This is a vital matter which will never be understood until mothers teach it with the catechism to their little children. This is the commentary which every mother and every catechist must give, in explaining the important chapter on sloth, one of the seven deadly sins. And the same ideas must be inculcated in instructing their daughters until they are twenty years old; teaching them to be reasonable and capable, showing them the evil consequences of idleness in a young husband, the difficulty of amusing him all day long, of pleasing without wearying him, of averting ennui, ill-humor, and monotony. And let the teacher never fail to add the truth so often proved that it is impossible to induce a son to work after having dissuaded his father from working. Of course, there are moments of pain in an occupied life. It is hard to see a husband embark for two or three years, going perhaps to Sebastopol or to Kabylia. But it is sadder still to see a husband bored to death, and thinking his wife tedious, his home unbearable, his affairs drudgery; and this is not uncommon. I have heard wives who had consented to necessary separations say that the trial had its compensations; that the consciousness of duty fulfilled was a source of inestimable satisfaction; that the agony was followed by a joy that obliterated the memory of suffering; that as the time of return drew near, as the regiment or the ship appeared in sight, they experienced a happiness unknown to other women. It must be so; God leaves nothing unrewarded; every sacrifice has its compensation, every wound its balm. I am told that the most admirable households are to be found in our seaport towns, our great manufacturing centres, and even in our large garrison towns in spite of the bustle, agitation, and dissipation reigning there. I can easily believe this—every one is busy in such places. A husband who has spent the day in barrack or factory (still more, one who has been at sea a long time) thirsts for home, longs to be again by his own hearth, enjoying domestic life. The wife on her side, separated for several hours from her husband, reserves for him her most cheerful mood and her pleasantest smile. She saves him from the thousand annoyances of the day, the household perplexities, the little embarrassments of life, the children's romping. The little ones run to meet their father, and recreate him after his work with caresses and prattle. This is the way in which men enjoy children; as a necessity of every day and all day, they dread them.

But without rising so high, I ask simply what can be more agreeable, even for a husband who spends his life in hunting or anywhere else out of his own house, than to find on coming home his wife cheerful and good-tempered, because after getting him a good dinner she has amused herself with painting a pretty picture, or studying with genuine interest a little natural history, or trying some experiment in domestic chemistry, or even solving a problem in géométrie agricole, instead of finding her languid and melancholy, a femme incomprise, with some novel or another in her hand.

If I persist in preaching industry to men and women, it is for very urgent reasons, not only domestic and political, but social. Who does not see that we verge on socialism at present? The masses will not work, they detest labor. Salaries have been raised again and again; for many trades they go beyond necessity, and so the workman, instead of giving six days in the week to his trade, gives but four, three, or even two days. It is for the higher classes who are supposed to understand their duties and to feel the import of their responsibilities, it is for them to reinstate labor in popular estimation. In this as in all other things, example must come from above; for here, as in religion and morals, the higher classes owe to society and to their country some expiation. The eighteenth century, with its corruptions, its scandals, and its irreligion, hangs upon us with the weight of a satanic heritage. Like original sin, these errors have been washed in blood; it is the history of all great errors. It remains for us to expiate the idleness, the inaction, inutility, annihilation to which we have hitherto surrendered ourselves, setting a fatal example to those around us.

Our generation must be steeped in labor. There and only there is to be found our safety, and mothers must be convinced of this truth. The mother is the centre of home, everything radiates from her—on one condition, that she is a mother worthy of the name and mission—and such mothers are rare.

We know what is in general the education of women. Add to it the indulgence and weakness of parents, the species of idolatry they have for their daughters, the premature pleasures lavished upon young girls, the pains taken to praise them, to adorn them from their earliest infancy, and afterward to show them off and make them shine in a sort of matrimonial exhibition. How can we hope to find earnest mothers of families among those whose youth has been spent in balls, fetes, and morning visits? Alas! it is not possible. Reasonable ideas rarely come to them until age or misfortune has withdrawn their surest means of influence.

And the greatest sufferers from this calamity are society and religion; it cannot be otherwise. A little drawing, a little more music, enough grammar and orthography to pass muster, sufficient history and geography to know Gibraltar from the Himalaya and to recognize Cyrus as King of Persia, but not enough to avenge noble memories outraged or to rectify erroneous estimates; of foreign languages a slight smattering, enough to enable one to read English and German novels, but not to appreciate the glorious pages of Shakespeare, Milton, or Klopstock; no literature, nothing of our great authors, unless a few fables of La Fontaine and perhaps a chorus out of Esther learned in childhood; of religious knowledge a sufficiency to allow of being admitted to first communion, not enough to answer the most vulgar objections, the most notorious calumnies, not enough to understand one's position and duties, to impose silence on the detractors of religion, or the adversaries of reason and Christian evidence, to refute the grossest sophistry, to lead back to faith and holy practices a young husband or perhaps an aged father; with such an education what influence can a young woman exercise?

If the poor young creature so insufficiently prepared by education never reads, or reads only romances, where will she find arms to defend her against error and blasphemy? In spite of sincere piety, she must, useless and timid soldier that she is, desert the holy cause of God and truth for fear of compromising it by an ignorant defence. {43} And yet it is a noble cause, and one that belongs especially to her, for it is the cause of the weak and defenceless, and only asks in its service a sincere conviction, a devout heart, and a little knowledge. But the knowledge is wanting. Because she has acquired neither a habit of reflection nor of seeking in good books necessary information, she must be silent, and, while God and his faith are outraged in her presence with impunity, drop her eyes upon her worsted work and sigh.

Yes, sigh—that is right; and sigh not only for the poor men who read such wretched books and intoxicate themselves with vile poisons, but also for the fact that there is no one to open their eyes, to lead these misled hearts back into the right path, or, at least, to excite a doubt in their perverted minds and warped consciences; no mother, sister, daughter, wife, no intelligent, enlightened, educated woman to fulfil woman's essential mission. No one else can do the work. If women are not the first apostles of the home circle, no one else can penetrate it. But they must render themselves thoroughly capable of fulfilling their apostleship. Nowadays, when all the world reasons or rather cavils, when everything is discussed and proved, when even light and life must be demonstrated, it is necessary that women should participate in the general movement. To speak without reserve—in the face of a masculine generation who graft on to the hauteurs which especially belong to them feminine indifference, affectation, idleness, frivolity, and weakness—women must show themselves serious, thoughtful, firm, and courageous. When men copy their defects, it behooves them to borrow a few manly virtues. "It is time," nobly says M. Caro, "that minds possessed of any intellectual claims awoke to full vitality. Let every being endowed with reason learn to protect himself against literary evil-doers and to repulse their attacks upon God, soul, virtue, purity, and faith."

                In Memoriam.

  When souls like thine rise up and leave
    This Earth's dark prison-place,
      'Tis foolishness to grieve:
  Or think thou dost thy life regret,
  And would return if God would let
    Thy feet their steps retrace.

  'Tis he who ends thy banishment,
  And by an angel's hand has sent
      A merciful reprieve.

The Early Christian Schools and Scholars. [Footnote 7]

[Footnote 7: Christian Schools and Scholars; or, Sketches of Education from the Christian Era to the Council of Trent. By the author of The Three Chancellors, etc. Two vol. London: Longmans, Green & Co.]

The history of the schools and scholars of the early ages of the church is not only interesting as forming an important chapter in the history of the church itself, but is full of most remarkable facts and valuable suggestions bearing on the as yet apparently unsolved problem of education. It is replete with matter well worthy the profound attention of all who consider the proper training of youth one of the gravest and most important of public questions; and one which, in this age of advanced enlightenment, still remains the subject of many crude and conflicting opinions. Not only do we recommend its perusal to the Catholic teacher, who is manfully overcoming the peculiar obstacles presented in our unsettled community, as a source of consolation and encouragement; but we call it to the notice of those gentlemen who spend so much of their time during summer vacations debating on the quantity and quality of discipline necessary to enforce the time-honored authority of the teacher, and in endeavoring to define the exact minimum of moral training required to be administered to the secular student to fit him for the proper discharge of the duties of life. We do this in all sincerity; for with this latter class of persons we are not inclined to find too much fault. Many of them are men of intelligence and good intentions; but, groping as they are in utter darkness, and bringing to their deliberations a lamentable ignorance of the essential principles of Christian education, it is not wonderful that their counsels should be divided, and their labors as unprofitable as that of Sisyphus. Disguise it as we may, it cannot be doubted that the state colleges and schools of our country, after a very fair trial, have not answered the expectations of even those who profess themselves their warmest admirers. There is a feeling in the public mind, as yet partially expressed, that there is something lacking in our method of dealing with the ever-constant flood of young hearts and minds which is daily looking to us for direction and guidance. It is becoming more and more painfully apparent that the mere intellect of the children who attend our public institutions is stimulated into unnatural and unhealthy activity, while their moral nature is left wholly uncultivated and undeveloped. Conducted, as such institutions must necessarily be, by persons unqualified or unauthorized to administer moral instruction, it cannot, of course, be expected that the souls for a time entrusted to their care can be fortified by wise counsels and that moral discipline which was considered in past ages and in all nations as the fundamental basis of all Christian education.

Even in a worldly sense, it ought to be a source of our greatest solicitude that the generation which is to hold the honor and integrity of the nation in its keeping should be schooled in the principles of justice and rectitude upon which all true individual and national greatness must depend. If, then, we have exhausted the wisdom of the present, with all its examples before our eyes, to no good purpose, let us turn reverently to the experience of the past, and see if we cannot find something fit for meditation in the varied pages of the history of the Christian church, in her struggles against ignorance and false philosophy.

From the very beginning the church had to contend against three distinct elements, positively or negatively, opposed to her teachings. In the East, as then known, what was called the Greek civilization, superimposed on the Roman, denied all particular gods while worshipping many, and culminated either in refined atheism or the deification of man himself: proud of its disputants, its arts and literature, it affected to feel, and perhaps actually felt, a contempt for the simple doctrines of Christianity, accompanied, as they were, by self-denial, poverty, and lowliness. Over continental Europe and many of its islands the wave of Roman conquest had swept irresistibly and receded reluctantly, leaving behind it the sediment of an intelligence which served only to nourish the latent weeds of ignorance and paganism; while in the far West existed a people with a peculiar and, in its way, a high order of civilization, untouched, it is true, by Roman or Greek pantheism, but completely shut out from the light of the gospel.

To overcome the scattered and diversified opposition thus presented, to overturn false gods and uproot false opinions, to bend the stubborn neck of the barbarian beneath the yoke of Christian meekness, and to mould whatever was brilliant and intellectual in mankind to the service of the true God, was the task assumed by the church through the means of education.

During the first three centuries of our era schools were established at Alexandria, Jerusalem, Edessa, Antioch, and other centres of Eastern wealth and learning; of these, that at Alexandria, founded by St. Mark, A.D. 60, was the most celebrated, and had for its teachers and scholars some of the most learned men of the period. They were catechetical in their nature, and at first were confined to oral instructions on the chief articles of the faith and the nature of the sacraments; but in process of time their sphere of usefulness was greatly enlarged, and the character of the studies pursued in them assumed a wider and higher tone, till not only dogmatic theology and Christian ethics, but human sciences and profane literature, were freely taught. Thus we read that, toward the close of the second century, St. Pantaeus, a converted Stoic of great erudition, and Clement of Alexandria, who is said to have "visited all lands and studied in all schools in search of truth," taught in the school of St. Mark, with an eloquence so convincing, and a knowledge of Grecian philosophy so thorough, that multitudes of Gentiles flocked to hear them, astonished to find the doctrines of the new faith expounded in the polished language of Cicero, and the very logic of Aristotle turned against the pantheistic philosophy of Greece. Their successor, the celebrated Origen, whose reputation has outlived all the attacks of time, in a letter to his friend St. Gregory, gives us some idea of the course of instruction pursued in his time, in this school, in regard to the study of the human sciences. "They are to be used," he writes, "so that they may contribute to the understanding of the Scriptures; for just as philosophers are accustomed to say that geometry, music, grammar, rhetoric, and astronomy, all dispose us to the study of philosophy, so we may say that philosophy, rightly studied, disposes us to the study of Christianity. {46} We are permitted, when we go out of Egypt, to carry with us the riches of the Egyptians wherewith to adorn the tabernacle; only let us beware how we reverse the process, and leave Israel to go down into Egypt and seek for treasure; that is what Jeroboam did in olden time, and what heretics do in our own." Here we find expressed, at so early a day, the beautiful idea of the church respecting education; that enduring pyramid which she would build up, whose base is human science, and whose apex is the knowledge of God.

The episcopal seminaries, intended exclusively for the training of ecclesiastics, were coeval with, if not anterior to, the catechetical schools, for we find the germ of the system in the very earliest apostolic times. They originally formed but part of the bishops' households; and the students were taught by him personally, or by his deputy. When the community life became more general and the number of ecclesiastical pupils increased, the seminaries assumed more extensive proportions, the school being held in the church attached to the bishop's house, but the scholars still living under his roof. Great care was always manifested by the early fathers of the church in the moral and intellectual training of ecclesiastical students. Thus, Pope St. Siricius, in his decretal, A.D. 385, to the Bishop of Tarragona, lays down the following rules to be observed in preparing candidates for the priesthood. He orders that they shall be selected principally from those who have been devoted to the service of the church from childhood. At thirty years of age they are to be advanced through inferior orders to subdiaconate and diaconate, and after five years thus spent they may be ordained priests. In several provincial councils held in the early centuries we find the greatest stress laid on the importance of the careful culture of seminarians, and the second council of Toledo, A.D. 531, fixes the ordination of subdeacons at twenty, and of deacons at twenty-five years of age. As to the course of studies pursued, besides the reading of the Scriptures, the Psalter, and a knowledge of the duties of the holy offices, Latin, Greek, and generally Hebrew were taught, together with the liberal sciences, and sometimes even law and medicine.

Thus did the church gradually but firmly lay the foundation of her system. First, by giving to the adult neophyte such instruction as befitted his age and condition, to enable him to become a worthy member of her fold; and next, by providing, under the direct inspection of each bishop, a school where children, disciplined in his household, taught from his mouth and by his example lessons of piety, humility and self-control, and armed with all the resources of sacred and profane learning, were at mature years sent forth to convert a gentile world, and in turn become teachers of men.

While the catechetical schools were flourishing in the East and the episcopal seminaries assuming form in Spain and Gaul, the bloody persecutions which prevailed intermittingly at Rome retarded for a long time education in that city. Many of her first citizens, it is true, regardless alike of family considerations and imperial edicts, were to be daily found by the side of her humblest bondmen, listening, through the gloom of the catacombs, to the teachings of the gospel; and to this day their places can be pointed out beside the rough hewn seat of their teachers. The Roman pontiffs also labored in their own dwellings to educate their young priests, many of whom, like St. Felicitanus, passed only from their care to testify their devotion to the faith by a glorious martyrdom. {47} When the Emperor Constantine was converted, the palace of the Laterni became the residence of the popes, and here was established the Patriarchium, or seminary, which for several centuries gave so many distinguished occupants to the chair of Peter. The schools of the empire were also thrown open to the Christians, who largely availed themselves of their superior advantages to become acquainted with the old authors. But the professors of the imperial academies were but semi-christianized, and, though conforming outwardly to the new order of things, they retained not a little of their old ideas and customs. Hence, we find a variety of opinions entertained by contemporary authorities as to the propriety of Christians studying in them. In most cases, however, where the danger of contamination was not imminent, or where, as in the case of Victorinus, the academicians were bona-fidè Christians, the practice was permitted, so eager were the fathers to encourage learning.

Tertullian was of opinion that, while Christians could not lawfully teach in the schools with pagans, they might be listeners, without, however, taking part in idolatrous ceremonies. St. Basil, who studied for a time in them, and who was a devoted lover of classical learning, entertained much the same views, comparing the student to a bee who sucks honey out of the poisoned flower. St. Chrysostom, who cannot be accused of any antipathy to education in all its most elegant branches, but who had in his own person experienced the dangers which beset the young Christian in the academies, after great deliberation, and with evident reluctance, decided against the public schools as then conducted. His words have a significant sound, even in these days. He writes:

"If you have masters among you who can answer for the virtue of your children, I should be very far from advocating your sending them to a monastery. On the contrary, I should strongly insist on them remaining where they are. But, if no one can give such a guarantee, we ought not to send our children to schools where they will learn vice before they learn science, and where, in acquiring learning of relatively small value, they will lose what is far more precious, their integrity of soul. … 'Are we, then, to give up literature?' you will exclaim. I do not say that; but I do say that we must not kill souls. … When the foundations of a building are sapped, we should seek rather for architects to reconstruct the whole edifice, than for artists to adorn the walls. In fact, the choice lies between two alternatives a liberal education, which you may get by sending your children to the public schools, or the salvation of their souls, which you secure by sending them to the monks. Which is to gain the day, science or the soul? If you can unite both advantages, do so, by all means; but, if not, choose the most precious."

The character of the academies must have soon changed for the better; for, when Julian some time after closed them to the Christians, ostensibly with a view to the purity of morals, but actually to deprive Christian students of the benefit of any education, St. Gregory, who quickly saw through the Apostate's designs, protested in the strongest terms against the injustice. "For my part," he says, "I trust that every one who cares for learning will take part in my indignation. I leave to others fortune, birth, and every other fancied good which can flatter the imagination of man. {48} I value only science and letters, and regret no labor that I have spent in their acquisition. I have preferred, and ever shall prefer, learning to all earthly riches, and hold nothing dearer on earth next to the joys of heaven and the hopes of eternity." The decree was afterward revoked by the Emperor Valentinian at the request of St. Ambrose, and the academies gradually fell into decay; and, growing dim in the light of the new Christian foundations of other countries, finally ceased to be objects of discussion.

Perhaps the greatest good that resulted from the evils complained of by St. Chrysostom was the establishment of the Benedictine order; an organization destined to exercise for centuries a controlling influence over the educational system of Christendom. In the year A.D. 522, a poor solitary named Benedict, while engaged at his devotions in the grotto of Subiaco, was visited by two Roman senators, who desired him to take charge of the education of their sons, Maurus and Placidus. He consented, and other children of the same rank, whose parents feared the contagion of the imperial schools, were soon after placed in his care. For their government he established a rule, and from this apparently slight foundation sprang the numberless monasteries which were the custodians and dispensaries of learning in the middle ages. In 543, St. Maurus carried the Benedictine rule into Gaul, where under his charge and that of his successors monasteries multiplied with great rapidity. We have seen that at first this illustrious order was designed only for the education of the children of the rich, who were to be instructed "non solum in Scripturis divinas, sed etiam in secularibus litteris;" but so great did its reputation become that, in a short time, we find the doors of its schools thrown open to all classes.

It was not, however, in the polished circles of the cities of Greece and her colonies, nor even in the future centre of Christendom, that the church was destined to achieve her most substantial triumphs. The civilization of the East, long in a state of decay, waned with the decline of the Empire, and its opulent cities and elaborate literature became part of the débris of the colossal ruins of that once stupendous power. The soil in which the seeds of education had been planted by St. Mark and St. Basil, Origen and Cassian, was already exhausted, and incapable of producing those hardy plants and gigantic trees which defy time and corruption. We must, therefore, look to Western Europe as the proper field wherein were to be sown the germs of a more enduring growth.

The monastic system, more or less defined, was introduced into Gaul long before the advent of St. Maurus, and the education, not only of monks, was attended to with care, but of the laity also. From the earliest times we find traces of the exterior schools attached to the monasteries for the training of children not intended for a clerical life. The rules of Saints Pachominus and Basil, then generally followed, were careful to provide that children should be taught to read and write, and instructed in psalmody and such portions of the Holy Scriptures as were suited to their comprehension. They were to live in the monastery and be allowed to sit at table with the monks, who were strictly cautioned not to do or say anything that could disedify their young minds. With a tenderness truly paternal, the young scholars were allowed a separate part of the building for themselves, and plenty of time for amusement. {49} On the subject of punishment, we recommend the following advice of St. Basil to modern teachers, believing that juvenile human nature is much the same now as it was sixteen or seventeen centuries ago. "Let every fault have its own remedy," says this experienced teacher, "so that, while the offence is punished, the soul may be exercised to conquer its passions. For example: Has a child been angry with his companion? Oblige him to beg pardon of the other and to do him some humble service; for it is by accustoming him to humility that you will eradicate anger, which is always the offspring of pride. Has he eaten out of meals? Let him remain fasting for a good part of the day. Has he eaten to excess and in an unbecoming manner? At the hour of repast, let him, without eating himself, watch others taking their food in a modest manner, and so he will be learning how to behave at the same time that he is being punished by his abstinence. And if he has offended by idle words, by rudeness, or by telling lies, let him be corrected by diet and silence."

The early Gallican bishops showed as great a desire to encourage learning among their clergy as did those of Spain, and were never tired of enforcing the necessity of the attentive study of the Scriptures and the cultivation of letters, even in religious houses occupied by women. The result of this zealous spirit is to be found in the establishment of the schools of Tours and Lyons, Grinni and Vienne, the abbey of Marmontier and the more famous one of Lerins, which produced thousands of missionaries, and such scholars as Apollinaris of Lyons, Maumertius, the author of The Nature of the Soul, and the poets, Saints Prosper and Avitus. The "Academy of Toulouse," of disputatious memory, is claimed to have had a very ancient origin, but was probably not in existence until the sixth century.

But the first period of literary culture on the continent of Europe was fast drawing to a close. At the end of the fifth century heresy and schism; the converted Ostrogoths of Northern Italy were subdued by the semi-paganized Lombards; the Roman empire existed but in name; and civil war broke out in Gaul, desolating her fields and laying in ruins her churches and schools. Darkness succeeded light, and anarchy and barbarism prevailed on both sides of the Alps. But the cause of Christian learning was not lost. Driven from the mainland, the Christian scholars had already taken refuge in the adjacent islands, where they rekindled their torches, and kept them burning with an effulgence unknown in the palaces of kings or the schools of the empire. The providence of God, which permitted the ravages of war and heresy to prevail for a time in Gaul, Spain, and Italy, ordained that a newer and more secure asylum should be provided for the handmaid of the faith, whence were to issue, when the storm passed over, of hosts of zealous and learned men to reconquer for the church her desolated and darkened dominions.

Ireland and England were destined to be this asylum, and, even humanly speaking, no choice could have been more propitious. The qualities which distinguished the people of these islands, and which characterize them even at this day, admirably adapted them for missionary life. The Anglo-Saxon genius, mollified by contact with the more imaginative mind of the Briton, developed a strong, unconquerable will, great tenacity of purpose, vast powers of cooperation, and a capacity for solid attainments; while the Celts of the sister island, who had never known a conqueror, exhibited the indomitable zeal of a free-born people united to an insatiable love of learning and fine arts, and a subtility of mind which easily grasped the most beautiful and abstruse dogmas of Christian philosophy.

The earliest monastic schools of England were destroyed by the Saxon invaders about the middle of the fifth century, and what remained of their teachers were driven with the remnant of the Britons into the mountains of Wales. Yet even before the invasion many of her youth found their way to the continent, and there obtaining an education, returned to their native country to teach their compatriots. Thus St. Ninian, who had studied at Rome under Pope St. Siricius and had visited Tours, established his episcopal seminary and a school for the neighboring children at Witherne, in Galloway, about the beginning of that century. He was, says his biographer, St. Aelred, "assiduous in reading." St. Germanus of Auxerre and St. Lupus of Troyes followed in 429, and established at Caerleon, the capital of the Britons, seminaries and schools, in which they lectured on the Scriptures and the liberal arts. Stimulated by their example, monastic schools sprang rapidly into existence, the most successful of which were those at Hentland; Laudwit, among whose first scholars was the historian Gildas; Bangor on the Dee, in which, according to Bede, there were over two thousand students; Whitland, where St. David studied; and Llancarvan, founded by St. Cadoc. This latter saint was educated by an Irish recluse named Fathai, who was induced to leave his hermitage in the mountains to take charge of the school of Gwent, in Monmouthshire.

We must not be surprised to find an Irish teacher at that early period in Wales; for already the wonderful exodus of Irish missionaries and teachers had commenced. The twenty years' missionary labors of St. Patrick and his disciples had literally converted the entire people of Ireland, and, following the lessons taught him at Tours, Rome, and Lerins, that saint studded the island with seminaries and monastic schools. His own, at Armagh, founded A.D. 455, doubtless formed the model upon which the others were built. "Within a century after the death of St. Patrick," says Bishop Nicholson, "the Irish seminaries had so increased that most parts of Europe sent their children to be educated there, and drew thence their bishops and teachers." So numerous, indeed, were the schools of Ireland founded by the successors of St. Patrick that it is impossible even to enumerate their names in the limits of an article. The most celebrated were those of Armagh, which at one time furnished education to seven thousand pupils; Lismore; Cashel; Aran, "the Holy;" Clonard, the alma mater of Columba the Great; Conmacnois; Benchor, of which St. Bernard speaks in such terms of admiration; and Clonfert, founded by St. Brendan the navigator. When we remember the disturbed condition of the continent during the sixth and seventh centuries, and the almost profound peace which prevailed in Ireland during that time, we cease to be astonished at the influx of foreigners which thronged her schools. St. AEngus mentions the names of Gauls, Romans, Germans, and even Egyptians who visited her shore; and St. Aldhelm of Westminster, in the seventh century, rather petulantly complains of his countrymen neglecting their own schools for those of Ireland. "Nowadays," he remarks, "the renown of the Irish is so great that one sees them daily going or returning; and crowds flock over to their island to gather up, not merely the liberal arts and physical sciences, but also the four senses of Holy Scripture and the allegorical and tropological interpretation of its sacred oracles."

As to the course of study pursued in the Irish monastic schools, there is reason to believe that not only were theology, grammar, that is, languages, and the physical sciences taught, but poetry and music also received special attention. The bardic order were the first to embrace Christianity, and their love for those two beautiful arts was proverbial. Latin and Hebrew were studied, but the sonorous language of Homer and Cicero seems to have been most in favor, probably on account of its remarkable resemblance, in euphony at least, to the vernacular Gaelic. Mathematics and astronomy ranked first on the list of the sciences, and geography, as far as then known, must have been familiar to St. Brendan and his adventurous companions.

But, as we have said, the missionary labors of the Irish had already commenced. Obedient to a law beyond human control, the pent-up zeal of the people had burst its boundaries and overflowed Europe. Of the devoted men destined to roll back the tide of paganism, the first in point of greatness, if not in time, was St. Columba, the founder of the schools of Iona, A.D. 563. Amid all the Irish missionaries, this saint stands out in the boldest relief. Of proud lineage and dauntless spirit, passionately fond of books, yet sharing willingly with his monks the toils of the field, we fancy we can almost see his tall, austere figure stalking amid the unknown and unheeded perils of the barbarous Hebrides and the mountains of North Britain, with his staff and book, overawing hostile chiefs and princes by his very presence, and winning the hearts of the humble shepherds by his sweet voice and gentle demeanor. "He suffered no space of time," says Adamnan, "no, not an hour to pass, in which he was not employed either in prayer, or in reading or writing, or manual work."

Leaving Ireland forging the weapons of spiritual and intellectual combat, and the Albanian Scots to the care of Columba and his monks, we turn again to England, which, with the exception of Wales, was up to the end of the sixth century sunk in the grossest paganism. In the year 596, when, to use the words of Pope Gregory, "all Europe was in the hands of the barbarians," that pontiff conceived the idea of converting the Saxons of England. He accordingly despatched St. Augustine and some monks from Monte Cassino, lately reduced to ruins. St. Augustine brought with him a Bible, a psalter, the gospels, an apocryphal lives of the apostles, a martyrology, and the exposition of certain epistles and gospels, besides sacred vessels, vestments, church ornaments, and holy relics. He forthwith established a seminary and school at Canterbury, which afterward attained great celebrity. But the schools of Lindisfarne, founded by St. Aiden, A.D. 635, eclipsed all lesser luminaries. Aiden was a worthy descendant of Columba, and brought to his task all the learning and discipline of Iona. "All who bore company with Aiden," says the Venerable Bede, "whether monks or laymen, were employed either in studying the Scriptures or in singing psalms. This was his own daily employment wherever he went." In the south of England, Maidulf, also an Irish missionary, founded the schools of Malmsbury; Wilfred, a student of Lindisfarne, the abbey and school of Ripon, introducing the Benedictine rule into England; while Archbishop Theodore, a native of Tarsis, and Adrian, described as a "fountain of letters and a river of arts,"' gave a wonderful impetus to the study of letters in Canterbury. {52} These latter added to St. Augustine's library the works of St. Chrysostom, the history of Josephus, and a copy of Homer. The studies pursued at Canterbury consisted of theology, Latin and Greek, geometry, arithmetic, music, mechanics, astronomy, and astrology. The most illustrious pupil of the early schools of Canterbury were St. Aldhelm, who was thoroughly familiar with the classical authors, himself a writer of no mean order, and who afterward became teacher at Malmsbury; St. Bennet Biscop, who founded schools at Monk Wearmouth, Yarrow, and various other places, endowing them with valuable books which he had collected on the continent. He first introduced the use of glass in England.

In the school at Yarrow, Bede commenced his studies. This extraordinary man, besides attending to his duties as a missionary and teacher, found time to compose forty-five books on the most diverse subjects, including commentaries on the Holy Scriptures, works on grammar, astronomy, the logic of Aristotle, music, geography, arithmetic, orthography, versification, the computum or method of calculating Easter, and natural philosophy, besides his Ecclesiastical History and Lives of the Saints. He was well versed in the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew languages, and, for his success in reducing the barbarous Anglo-Saxon tongue to something like grammatical rules, he has been justly styled the father of the English language. For the immense knowledge which he displayed in his various writings, he was indebted, doubtless, to the valuable libraries collected by St. Bennet, who, like a true son of Iona, seized upon a book whenever or wherever an opportunity was afforded. At the beginning of the eighth century, the schools of York attained general notoriety under the management of Egbert, who taught the seven liberal sciences, chronology, natural history, mathematics, and jurisprudence. Here Alcuin, the adviser and friend of Charlemagne, received his first lessons.

Nor are we to suppose that the great schools above mentioned occupied the entire attention of the hierarchy of England. On the contrary, every bishop had his own seminary; and every monastery, of which there were hundreds in the seventh and eighth centuries, had its interior or claustral, and its exterior school for the education of the children of its neighborhood. In England, as elsewhere, wherever a monastery was built, no matter how remote the situation or how barren the soil, people flocked round it not only to hear the gospel preached, but to learn the mechanical arts and the laws of agriculture. Besides this, parish priests, or, as they were called in the Anglo-Saxon, "mass priests," were obliged to open and sustain parochial free schools for the children of the peasantry and serfs.

It is acknowledged by all writers, no matter how sceptical they may be on other points, that the church was the first to raise woman to her true place in society. In pagan times woman was treated much the same as she now is in Mohammedan countries, and only the very vilest of the sex enjoyed any freedom of speech or action; but Christianity not only threw its aegis around her, but provided for her education with a care only second, if indeed not fully equal, to that bestowed on ecclesiastics. {53} We find by the correspondence between St. Boniface and his relative Lioba, that the nuns of England at that time understood and could write the Latin language, and were well versed in the Scriptures and the writings of the fathers. Nunneries were, in fact, in the middle ages almost as numerous as monasteries, and in their sphere as powerful agents in the advancement of religion and education.

By the close of the eighth century England had reached the zenith of her first period of literary glory. Not only were her people thoroughly instructed according to their degree and rank, but the island abounded in saints and scholars, many of whom, like those of Ireland, went forth, from time to time, to repay to benighted Europe a portion of the debt contracted two centuries earlier.

It were an interesting study, if space permitted, to trace the divergent paths pursued by Irish and English scholars on the continent, in what may be called their initial campaigns against ignorance. We find the Irish invading France, Switzerland, Italy, and even Spain, while the Anglo-Saxons, with a like affinity for race and habits, preferred the northern part of Europe, the cradle of their ancestors. St. Columbanus, whose rule, next to that of St. Benedict, was the most generally adopted in the continental monasteries, founded the schools of Luxeuil in Burgundy and of Bobbio in Italy; St. Gall, one of his companions, laid the foundation of the famous schools of that name in Switzerland; St. Cathal of Lismore became the patron saint of Tarentum, and Donatus and Frigidan were bishops of Fiesole in Tuscany and Lucca.

St. Winifred, or, as he was afterward called, Boniface, the first great English missionary to the continent, achieved great successes in the north about 723, and, being desirous of training up a native priesthood to perpetuate his works, invited several of his countrymen to Germany to take charge of the seminaries of the different bishoprics he had founded. Among those who accepted the invitation were his two nephews, one of whom, Willibald, established a college at Ordorp. The seminary of Utrecht owes its origin to one of his earliest pupils, Luidger, a direct descendant of Dagobert II., who also built several seminaries and monastic schools in Saxony. Another of St. Boniface's students, Strum, laid the foundation of the celebrated abbey and school of Fulda in 744; and, to complete the work of regeneration, thirty nuns were brought over from England, who established religious houses innumerable, and introduced among the rude Germans the learning and refinement which marked the nunneries of their native land. St. Boniface, having been appointed papal legate and vicar with jurisdiction over the bishops of Gaul and Germany, applied several years of his life to the reformation of abuses and the establishment of strict rules of life among the clergy of both countries. To this end we are told that in every place where he planted a monastery he added a school, not only for the benefit of young monks, "but in order that the rude population by whom they were surrounded might be trained in holy discipline, and that their uncivilized manners might be softened by the influence of humane learning." His grand work having been accomplished, he resigned his delegated powers, resumed his missionary life, and, with nothing but his "books and shroud," proceeded to Friesland, the scene of his first labors, where he suffered martyrdom in 755. This saint was a devoted friend to education, and that portion of the decrees of the council of Cloveshoe, held in 747, in which the subject of learning is treated, is ascribed to his pen. {54} The council ordered that "bishops, abbots, and abbesses do by all means diligently provide that all their people incessantly apply their minds to reading; that boys be brought up in the ecclesiastical schools, so as to be useful to the church of God; and that their masters do not employ them in bodily labor on Sundays."

While Germany was being reclaimed from its primitive barbarism, Gaul, which had given so many missionaries to the Western Islands, was not neglected. For more than two hundred years this country, once so fertile in pious men and learned institutions, was the theatre of the most frightful disorders, consequent on domestic wars and foreign invasions. There were but few monasteries surviving, but even these were true to the design of their founders, and in them learning, to use the eloquent remark of the Protestant historian, Guizot, "proscribed and beaten down by the tempest that raged around, took refuge under the shelter of the altar, till happier times should suffer it to appear in the world." But a memorable epoch had arrived in the history of France. In 771 Charlemagne became monarch of all the Franks, and by his extraordinary military successes and political wisdom soon made himself master of the entire continent north of the Pyrenees. But great as were his conquests in the field, his victories in the cause of letters in France were more splendid and far more durable. Under his long and brilliant sway the evils of previous centuries were swept away; churches were restored, monasteries rebuilt, seminaries and schools everywhere opened. Like all great practical men, the Frankish monarch knew admirably well how to choose his assistants when grand ends were to be reached, and in this instance he selected Alcuin of York as his agent in restoring to his dominions religious harmony and Christian education. The result showed the wisdom of his choice, for to no man of that day could so herculean a task be assigned with better hope of its execution. Trained in the schools of York, then among the best in England, he united to a solid judgment profound learning and an energy of mind as untiring as that even of his royal patron. The Palatine school, though in existence previous to the reign of Charlemagne, was placed under the charge of Alcuin, and the emperor and various members of his family became his first and most attentive pupils. It consisted of two distinct parts: one, composed of the royal family and the courtiers, followed the emperor's person; the other necessarily stationary, in which were educated young laymen as well as those intended for the cloister; Charlemagne, himself setting the example of diligent study, managed to acquire, amid the turmoil of war and the labors of the cabinet, a considerable knowledge of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, the liberal sciences and astronomy, of the latter of which he seems to have been particularly fond.

The first step taken by Alcuin was the correction of the copies of the Holy Scriptures, which had become almost unintelligible from the accumulated errors of former transcribers. This he succeeded in doing about the year 800. He next turned his attention to the multiplication and replenishing of libraries. "A staff of skilful copyists was gradually formed, and so soon as any work had been revised by Alcuin and his fellow-laborers, it was delivered over to the hands of the monastic scribes."

The capitulars of Charlemagne in relation to civil affairs and municipal laws mark him as one of the ablest statesmen of any age, and are peculiarly his own; but those on education are so comprehensive, and of so elaborate a nature, that we cannot help thinking them the fruits of Alcuin's suggestions, embodying, as they do, in an official form the precise views so often expressed by him in letters and lectures. By these decrees monastic schools were divided into minor and major schools, and public schools, which answered to the free parochial schools of England. In the minor schools, which were to be attached to all monasteries, were to be taught the "Catholic faith and prayers, grammar, church music, the psalter, and computum;" in the major schools, the sciences and liberal arts were added; while in the public schools, the children of all, free and servile, were to receive gratis such instruction as was suitable to their condition and comprehension. Those monks who, either from neglect or want of opportunity, had not acquired sufficient education to enable them to teach in their own monasteries, were allowed to study in others in order to become duly qualified for the duty imposed on them. A more complete system of general education could not well be devised nor more rigidly carried out.

Alcuin ended his well-spent life in 804, and Charlemagne ten years later; but their reforms lived after them, and were perpetuated in succeeding reigns with equal vigor, if not with equal munificence. Theodulph, Bishop of Orleans, not only established schools in every part of his large diocese, but compiled class-books for the use of their pupils; the diocese of Verdun was similarly supplied by the Abbot Smaragdus; Benedict of Anian, reformed the Benedictine order, and like Leidrade, was a zealous teacher and a great collector of books; and Adalhard, the emperor's cousin, became, as it were, the second founder of Old Corby.

During the ninth and tenth centuries, so fruitful of scholars in every part of Europe, the monastic schools may be said to have reached their highest development. Of those north of the Alps we may mention Fulda, Old and New Corby, Richneau, and St. Gall, though there were a great many others of nearly equal extent and reputation.

Fulda, as we have seen, was founded by Strum, a pupil of St. Boniface, who adopted the Benedictine rule. After its founder, its greatest teacher was Rabanus, a pupil of Alcuin, who assumed the charge of the school about 813. His success in teaching was so great that it is said that all the German nobles sent their sons to be educated by him, and that the abbots of the surrounding monasteries were eager to have his students for professors. He taught grammar so thoroughly that he is mentioned by Trithemius as being the first who indoctrinated the Germans in the proper articulation of Latin and Greek. His course embraced all sacred and profane literature, science, and art; yet he still found time to compose, and afterward, when Archbishop of Mentz, to publish his treatise De Institutione Clericorum. Among his pupils were Strabo, author of the Commentaries on the Text of Scripture; Otfried, called the father of the Tudesque, or German literature; Lupus, author of Roman History; Heinie, author of the Life of St. Germanus; Regimus, of Auxerre; and Ado, compiler of the Martyrology. While those great scholars were teaching and writing, it is worth our while to inquire what the lesser lights of the monastery were doing. Here is the picture:

"Every variety of useful occupation was embraced by the monks; while some were at work hewing down the old forest which a few years before had given shelter to the mysteries of pagan worship, or tilling the soil on those numerous farms which to this day perpetuate the memory of the great abbey in the names of the towns and villages which have sprung up on their site, other kinds of industry were kept up within doors, where the visitor might have beheld a huge range of workshops, in which cunning hands were kept constantly busy on every description of useful and ornamental work, in wood, stone, and metal. It was a scene not of artistic dilettanteism, but of earnest, honest labor, and the treasurer of the abbey was charged to take care that the sculptors, engravers, and carvers in wood were always furnished with plenty to do. Passing on to the interior of the building, the stranger would have been introduced to the scriptorium, over the door of which was an inscription warning copyists to abstain from idle words, to be diligent in copying books, and to take care not to alter the text by careless mistakes. Twelve monks always sat here, employed in the labor of transcribing, as was the custom at Hirsauge, a colony sent out from Fulda in 830, and the huge library which was thus gradually formed, survived till the beginning of the seventeenth century, when it was destroyed in the troubles of the Thirty Years' War. Not far from the scriptorium was the interior school, where studies were carried on with an ardor and a largeness of views which might have been little expected from an academy of the ninth century. Our visitor, were he from the more civilized south, might well have stood in mute surprise in the midst of these fancied barbarians, whom he would have found engaged in pursuits not unworthy of the schools of Rome. The monk Probus is perhaps lecturing on Virgil and Cicero, and that with such hearty enthusiasm that his brother professors accuse him, in good-natured jesting, of ranking them with the saints. Elsewhere disputations are being carried on over the Categories of Aristotle, and an attentive ear will discover that the controversy which made such a noise in the twelfth century, and divided the philosophers of Europe into the rival sects of the nominalists and realists, is perfectly well understood at Fulda, though it does not seem to have disturbed the peace of the school. To your delight, if you be not altogether wedded to the dead languages, you may find some engaged on the uncouth language of their fatherland, and, looking over their shoulders, you may smile to see the barbarous words which they are cataloguing in their glossaries; words, nevertheless, destined to reappear centuries hence in the most philosophical literature of Europe." [Footnote 8]

The school of Old Corby owed its reputation not only to its royal abbot, but also to its master, Pachasius Radpert, who, like Strabo, was of humble origin, and was indebted to the nuns of Soissons for an education. He was one of the most remarkable scholars of the age, and the author of several books in prose and verse. His most famous pupil was Anscharius, the first teacher at New Corby, in Saxony, founded by monks of the parent house in 822, and afterward a missionary to Denmark and Archbishop of Hamburg. The two Corbys, founded on the same plan, long vied with each other in the erudition of their masters, the multitude of their students, and the rarity and number of their books.

But the monastery and schools of St. Gall surpassed in extent and variety of studies all their contemporaries. For the benefit of those who affect to believe that the monasteries of the middle ages were nests of slothfulness and ignorance, as well as for the beauty of the sketch itself, we transcribe the following description from the author before us, premising that it is a faithful condensation of Ekkehard's account of this celebrated house, of which he was one of the inmates:

"The first foundation of St. Gall's belongs, indeed, to a date far earlier than that of which we are now treating: it owed its origin to St. Gall, the Irish disciple of St. Columbanus, who, in the seventh century, penetrated into the recesses of the Helvetian mountains and there fixed his abode in the midst of a pagan population. Under the famous abbot, St. Othmar, who flourished in the time of Pepin, the monks received the Benedictine rule, and from that time the monastery rapidly grew in fame and prosperity, so that, in the ninth century, it was regarded as the first religious house north of the Alps. {57} It is with a sigh of irrepressible regret, called forth by the remembrance of a form of beauty that is dead and gone forever, that the monastic historian hangs over the early chronicles of St. Gall. It lay in the midst of the savage Helvetian wilderness, an oasis of piety and civilization. Looking down from the craggy mountains, the passes of which open to the southern extremity of the lake of Constance, the traveller would have stood amazed at the sudden apparition of that vast range of stately buildings which almost filled up the valley at his feet. Churches and cloisters, the offices of a great abbey, buildings set apart for students and guests, workshops of every description, the forge, the bakehouse, and the mill, or, rather, mills, for there were ten of them, all in such active operation that they every year required ten new millstones; and then the houses occupied by the vast numbers of artisans and workmen attached to the monastery; gardens, too, and vineyards creeping up the mountain slopes, and beyond them fields of waving corn, and sheep specking the green meadows, and, far away, boats busily plying on the lake and carrying goods and passengers—what a world it was of life and activity; yet how unlike the activity of a town! It was, in fact, not a town, but a house—a family presided over by a father, whose members were all knit together in the bonds of common fraternity. I know not whether the spiritual or social side of such a religious colony were most fitted to rivet the attention. Descend into the valley, and visit all the nurseries of useful foil, see the crowds of rude peasants transformed into intelligent artisans, and you will carry away the impression that the monks of St. Gall had found out the secret of creating a world of happy Christian factories. Enter their church and listen to the exquisite modulations of those chants and sequences, peculiar to the abbey, which boasted of possessing the most scientific school of music in all Europe; visit their scriptorium, their library, and their school, or the workshop where the monk Tutilo is putting the finishing touch to his wonderful copper images and his fine altar-frontals of gold and jewels, and you will think yourself in some intellectual and artistic academy. But look into the choir, and behold the hundred monks who form the community at their midnight office, and you will forget everything save the saintly aspect of those servants of God, who shed abroad over the desert around them the good odor of Christ, and are the apostles of the provinces which own their gentle sway. You may quit the circuit of the abbey, and plunge once more into the mountain region which rises beyond the reach of its softening, humanizing influence. Here are distant cells and hermitages with their chapels, where the shepherds come for early mass; or it may be that there meets you, winding over the mountain paths of which they sing so sweetly, going up and down among the hills, into the thick forests and the rocky hollows, a procession of the monks, carrying their relics, and followed by a peasant crowd. In the schools you may have been listening to lectures in the learned and even in the Eastern tongues; but in the churches, and here among the mountains, you will hear those fine classical scholars preaching plain truths in barbarous idioms to a rude race, who, before the monks came among them, sacrificed to the evil one, and worshipped stocks and stones.

"Yet, hidden away as it was among its crags and deserts, the abbey of St. Gall's was almost as much a place of resort as Rome or Athens, at least to the learned world of the ninth century. Her schools were a kind of university, frequented by men of all nations, who came hither to fit themselves for all professions. You would have found here not monks alone, and future scholastics, but courtiers, soldiers, and the sons of kings. The education given was very far from being exclusively intended for those aspiring to the ecclesiastical state; it had a large admixture of the secular element, at any rate, in the exterior school. Not only were the sacred sciences taught with the utmost care, but the classic authors were likewise explained: Cicero, Horace, Virgil, Lucan, and Terence were read by the scholars, and none but very little boys presumed to speak in anything but Latin. The subjects for their original compositions were mostly taken from Scripture and church history, and, having written their exercises, they were expected to recite them, the proper tones being indicated by musical notes. Many of the monks excelled as poets, others cultivated painting and sculpture, and other exquisite and cloistral arts; all diligently applied to the grammatical formation of the Tudesque dialect and rendered it capable of producing a literature of its own. Their library in the eighth century was only in its infancy, but gradually became one of the richest in the world. They were in correspondence with all the learned monastic houses of France and Italy, from whom they received the precious codex now of a Virgil or a Livy, now of the sacred books, and sometimes of some rare treatise on medicine or astronomy. {58} They were Greek students, moreover, and those most addicted to the cultivation of the Cecropian muse were denominated the 'Fratres Ellencini.' The beauty of their native manuscripts is praised by all authors, and the names of their best transcribers find honorable mention in their annals. They manufactured their own parchment out of the hides of the wild beasts that roamed through the mountains and forests around them, and prepared it with such skill that it acquired a peculiar delicacy. Many hands were employed on a single manuscript. Some made the parchment, others drew the fair red lines, others wrote on the pages thus prepared; more skilful hands put in the gold and the initial letters, and more learned heads compared the copy with the original text—this duty being generally discharged during the interval between matins and lauds, the daylight hours being reserved for actual transcription. Erasure, when necessary, was rarely made with the knife, but an erroneous word was delicately drawn through by the pen, so as not to spoil the beauty of the codex. Lastly came the binders, who enclosed the whole in boards of wood, cramped with ivory or iron, the sacred volumes being covered with plates of gold and adorned with jewels."

The English missionary scholars of the eighth century were followed in the ninth by their Irish brethren in even greater numbers. St. Bernard, in his Life of St. Malachi, notices this learned invasion, and Henry of Auxerre declares that it appeared as if the whole of Ireland were about to pass into Gaul. Virgil, Bishop of Saltzburg, was not only a learned man, but an ardent promoter of education. Clement, who succeeded Alcuin as scholasticus of the Palatine school, was an excellent Greek linguist. Dungal, his companion, opened an academy at Pavia, and finally died at Bobbio, to which he bequeathed his valuable classical library. Marx and his nephew Moengall settled at St. Gall in 840, where the latter became master of the interior school, and introduced the study of Greek; and finally Scotus Erigena appeared in the literary firmament, like a comet in brilliancy, and as portentous of dire strifes and contests. Erigena, who first came into notoriety by his translation of Dionysius the Areopagite, was unquestionably the most erudite man of his time, powerful in argument and exceedingly subtle in discussion, with a perfect knowledge of the learned languages, science, and the profane literature of both ancients and moderns. His great gifts, however, were sadly marred by extravagant vanity and a pugnacity which brought him into collision with nearly every contemporary of note. He wrote many books, in which he advanced opinions more remarkable for their boldness and originality than for soundness; and finally, his writings having been condemned by several provincial councils, he was obliged to retire from the Palatine school, of which he had enjoyed the direction for many years under Charles the Bald.

Let us now return to the country of St. Boniface and of Alcuin, which we left at the beginning of the ninth century, in the plenitude of its intellectual greatness. What a change has taken place in seventy-five years! Churches, monasteries, and schools in utter ruin; the weeds growing rank over broken altars; the reptile crawling undisturbed where worked the busy hands of a thousand monks; and the solitude of the once noisy school disturbed only by the flutter of the bat or the screech of the night owl. The fierce Northmen, the barbaric executors of the Huns and Vandals, had been over the land, and desolation everywhere marked their foot-prints. "The Anglo-Saxon Church," says Lingard, "presented a melancholy spectacle; the laity had resumed the ferocious manners of their pagan forefathers; the clergy had grown indolent, dissolute, and illiterate; the monastic order was apparently annihilated." {59} When Alfred had crushed the Danish power at the battle of Ethandun in 873, and, like a wise prince, proposed to revive learning in his kingdom, he could not find one ecclesiastic south of the Thames who understood the divine service, or who knew how to translate Latin into English. Nevertheless, this king, justly surnamed the Great, resolutely set himself to work, and, with the help of the West British scholar, Asser, Grimbald of Rheims, John of Old Saxony, and other foreign monks, effected many useful reforms, and to a limited extent provided the means of education for his benighted subjects, setting the example himself by diligent and persevering study. He commenced to learn Latin at thirty-six, and left after him several works, principally translations from that language.

The grand designs of Alfred were not carried out in his lifetime. Their execution was reserved for St. Dunstan, a pupil of some poor Irish monks who had settled in the ruins of the old abbey of his native town, Glastonbury, and supported themselves by teaching the children of the neighboring peasantry. How strange a coincidence that the countrymen of Columba and Aidan were again to be the instruments, under Providence, of bringing back to England the light of the gospel, and all that adorns and beautifies life. St. Dunstan's reforms were of the most sweeping nature; he introduced the Benedictine rule in all its strictness, not only at Glastonbury, but in every monastery he restored or established; and, despairing of effecting any good through the medium of the secular clergy, he unhesitatingly turned them adrift, and proceeded to create a new and more intelligent body out of the young men who surrounded him: an exercise of authority the right to which he derived from his position as primate and apostolic legate. Of the assistants of St. Dunstan in his work of reorganization, the most active were St. Ethelwold, a close student not only of classics, but of Anglo-Saxon, in which language he composed several poems; AElfric, author of several school-books in Latin and Anglo-Saxon, and translator of Latin, German, and French; Abbo of Fleury came to England and taught for him in the school of Ramsey; and the monks of Corby, mindful, no doubt, of their ancient origin, sent him some of their best students, well versed in monastic discipline. From this time forth England, despite the occasional inroads of the Danes and the Norman conquest, advanced steadily in educational progress until the blight of the "Reformation" long after threw her back into ignorance and unbelief.

Britain was not the only country which suffered from the greedy and ubiquitous sea-kings. Ireland, France, Italy, even to the suburbs of Rome, were ravished by those barbarians during the tenth century. In some countries, as in Italy and Ireland, they were eventually expelled or subdued; in others, like France, they made a permanent lodgment, and were strong enough to dictate terms to kings. Wherever they appeared, they seem to have been actuated by the same diabolical lust of plunder and murder, the monasteries and schools being special objects of hatred, and favorite places where their ferocity could be gratified at little risk of opposition. Even the Saracens, taking courage from the distractions of the times, took possession of accessible points on the French coast, and added to the general disorder. {60} It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that the tenth century is generally considered the darkest intellectual epoch in our era. Germany perhaps was the only country comparatively free from those disturbing causes, and, under the protection of a line of sagacious kings, the cause of learning, if it did not advance with rapid strides, certainly did not retrograde. That country continued to produce great teachers like Adelberon, Bennon, Notker, and Gerbert, afterward Pope Sylvester II., and to sustain such schools as St. Gall's, Richneau, and Gorze.

With the opening of the eleventh century we begin to perceive the gradual decay of the monastic schools, the rise of scholasticism and the university system, and the consequent evils resulting from the teachings of irresponsible and sceptical professors. Heretofore Christian education went hand in hand with religion; the priest who celebrated the divine mysteries in the morning taught his assembled pupils during the day; religion became more beautiful, clothed, as she was, in the garments of science and art; and education was ennobled by losing its selfishness and pride in its contact with the faith; humility, order, and obedience marked the scholar, and disinterestedness and a deep sense of the greatness of his calling distinguished the master. Teaching with the monks was a sacred duty, a means by which they might gain salvation and "shine like stars for all eternity;" with the scholastics of the eleventh and succeeding centuries it became a profession like that of law or medicine, in the exercise of which money and notoriety could be gained, opponents silenced, and, as was too often the case, vanity gratified and senseless applause won from the unthinking multitude. The school ceased to be a holy retreat, and the professor's chair was converted into a rostrum from which the most absurd and illogical dogmas were fulminated, alike dangerous to religion, morals, and good government. In the statement of abuses presented to the Council of Trent in 1537-63 by the commission appointed by Paul III., it is declared that "it is a great and pernicious abuse that, in the public schools, especially in Italy, many philosophers teach impiety;" and it is a well-recognized fact in history that, from the time the universities adopted the study of the Roman civil law, to the exclusion almost of ecclesiastical and common law, they became the strongest bulwarks of despotic power, and the pliant tools of absolute princes.

It is true that the change was gradual and almost imperceptible to its friends and enemies; but, when we come to compare the wild vagaries of Berengarius, the eloquent but empty harangues of Abelard, the scepticism of Erasmus, and the revelries which disgraced such universities as Oxford and Paris, with the moral spirit and peaceful calm that brooded over the monasteries of St. Gall, Fulda, and Glastenbury, we can at once perceive to what monstrous excesses the mind of man is prone when unrestrained by religion. Many of the old-established monastic schools continued to flourish, and new ones, like that of Bec and the college of St. Victor's at Paris, became celebrated. Men distinguished for piety and learning were numerous during the middle ages, notwithstanding the growing tendency toward irreligion and heresy; among whom may be mentioned such theologians as St. Thomas and Anselm, scholars like Lanfranc and Thomas à Kempis, great doctors like St. Bernard and John Duns Scotus, devotees of science such as Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon, authors of the calibre of William of Malmsbury, and the almost inspired writer of the Following of Christ, St. Bonaventure, and Peter the Venerable.

But the schools of Europe, notwithstanding the examples and exhortations of those illustrious divines, continued in their downward tendency toward materialism. The introduction of Eastern books of philosophy, due to the returned crusaders, the Arabic symbolism and pretended magic of some of the Spanish schools, and, finally, the fall of Constantinople and the dispersion of Greek scholars over Europe: all had their peculiar and decided influence on the manners and views of the generations which immediately preceded the Council of Trent. Seminaries had entirely disappeared, so that ecclesiastical education could only be obtained in the dissolute and noisy universities, and it became the fashion with the dilettanti of the great cities to ridicule and underrate the quiet teachings of the country monasteries.

The Council of Trent, mindful of the welfare of the children of the church, took the first great step toward the correction of those abuses. By its eighteenth chapter, twenty-seventh sessions, it reestablished the seminaries in every diocese in Christendom, giving to each bishop authority over the professors, and making the expense of educating ecclesiastics a charge on the faithful. In accordance with this decree, an unwonted degree of activity was observable in Europe. Provincial councils took steps to enforce it in their special localities; saints, like Charles of Borromeo, became champions of genuine Christian education, and the Dominicans, the Franciscans, and the illustrious order of the Jesuits vied with each other in their devotion to its interests, and became the inheritors of the glories of the monks of Saints Benedict and Columbanus.

In looking back for fifteen centuries, and perusing the long and brilliant catalogue of those holy teachers who, through danger, degradation, and defeat, never allowed their minds to swerve from the even tenor of their way; who cared as tenderly for the soul and intellect of the poor young barbarian as for the nursling of a palace; who despised death, and braved alike the fury of the savage and the wrath of princes, that they might win souls to God and develop the God-given gift of human genius; we are lost in astonishment at the ignorance or mendacity, or both, of some modern writers who unblushingly repeat and exaggerate the slander of the post-"Reformation" writers against the monks of the middle ages. With a history like that of the Christian Schools and Scholars before us, so fruitful in incidents and so suggestive of moral lessons, we are equally at a loss to account for the tenacity with which people, otherwise sensible, cling to the idea of education divorced from moral instruction. Whatever is great in the past, personally or nationally considered—whatever was pure, unselfish, and heroic, is due, and only due, to the monk-teachers of the Christian church. They were not only the custodians of the books which we now prize so much, but they were the conservators of arts, science, and literature, and the originators and discoverers of most of the useful inventions which now adorn life and make men more civilized, and bring them nearer to their Creator. They were not only all this, but they were, as soldiers of the church, the guardians of civilization itself, and without them the darkness that enshrouded the world would have been as perpetual as the causes which produced it were active, and, against any other power, irresistible.

Our Lady.

              "Ancilla Domini."


  The Crown of creatures, first in place,
    Was most a creature; is such still:
  Naught, naught by nature—all by grace—
    The Elect one of the Eternal Will.

  She was a Nothing that in Him
    A creature's sole perfection found;
  She was the great Rock's shadow dim;
    She was the Silence, not the Sound.

  She was the Hand of Earth forthheld
    In adoration's self-less suit;
  A hushed Dependence, tranced and spelled,
    Still yearning toward the Absolute.

  Before the Power Eternal bowed
    She hung, a soft Subjection mute,
  As when a rainbow breasts the cloud
    That mists some mountain cataract's foot.

  She was a sea-shell from the deep
    Of God—her function this alone—
  Of Him to whisper, as in sleep,
    In everlasting undertone.

  This hour her eyes on Him are set:
    And they who tread the earth she trod
  With nearest heart to hers, forget
    Themselves in her, and her in God.


                  II.

             MATER FILII.


  He was no Conqueror, borne abroad
    On all the fiery winds of fame,
  That overstrides a world o'erawed
    To write in desert sands his name.

  No act triumphant, no conquering blow
    Redeemed mankind from Satan's thrall:
  By suffering He prevailed, that so
    His Father might be all in all.

{63}

  His Godhead, veiled from mortal eye,
    Showed forth that Father's Godhead still,
  As calm seas mirror starry skies
    Because themselves invisible.

  Thus Mary in "the Son" was hid:
    Her motherhood her only boast,
  She nothing said, she nothing did:
    Her light in His was merged and lost.


                   III.

    Nazareth; or, The Hidden Greatness


  Ever before his eyes unsealed
    The Beatific Vision stood:
  If God from her that splendor veiled
    Awhile, in Him she looked on God.

  The Eternal Spirit o'er them hung
    Like air: like leaves on Eden trees
  Around them thrilled the viewless throng
    Of archangelic Hierarchies.

  Yet neither He Who said of yore,
    "Let there be light!" and all was Day,
  Nor she that, still a creature, wore
    Creation's Crown, and wears for aye,

  To mortal insight wondrous seemed:
    The wanderer smote their lowly door,
  Partook their broken bread, and deemed
    The donors kindly—nothing more.

  In Eden thus that primal Pair
    (Undimmed as yet their first estate)
  Sat, side by side, in silent prayer—
    Their first of sunsets fronting, sat.

  And now the lion, now the pard,
    Piercing the Cassia bowers, drew nigh,
  Fixed on the Pair a mute regard,
    Half-pleased, half-vacant; then passed by.


    Aubrey De Vere.
    Feast Of The Assumption, 1867.

Our Boy-Organist.

What He Saw, And What Came Of It.

Well, I suppose I had better tell you the whole story. It may interest you. Just twenty years ago, on a bright Sunday morning, I was hurrying along the road home to Tinton, hoping to be in time to hear the sermon at church. My watch told me that I should be too late for the morning prayer. Happening to look across the fields, I was surprised to see little Ally Dutton, our boy-organist, running very fast over the meadows, leaping the fences at a bound, and finally disappear in the woods. "What could possibly take our organist away during church time? Surely," thought I, "the minister must be sick. And, being the village doctor, I hurried still faster.

"But what could take our boy-organist in that out-of-the-way direction at such an hour, and in such haste? Is it mischief?" I asked myself. But I banished that thought immediately, for Ally had no such reputation. "There must be something wrong, however; for he ran so fast, and Ally is such a quiet, old-fashioned lad. The minister is ill, at any rate," said I to myself, "or Ally would not be absent." Contrary to my expectations, I found the minister preaching as usual. I do not recollect any thing of the sermon now except the text. Rev. Mr. Billups, our minister, had a fashion of repeating his texts very often, sometimes very appropriately, and sometimes not. It was Pilate's question to our Lord: "What is truth?" You will see, after what happened subsequently, that I had another reason for remembering it besides its frequent repetition. The sermon ended, the hymn was sung, but the organ was silent. The silence seemed ominous. I cannot explain why; perhaps it was one of those strange presentiments of disaster, but I fancied our boy-organist dead. I loved Ally very much, and my heart sank within me as I looked up through the drawn choir-curtains, and missed his slight little form, perched up as he was wont to be, on a pile of books so as to bring his hands on a level with the key-board, trolling forth his gay little voluntary as the congregation dispersed after service. I missed his voice in the hymn, too; those clear, ringing tones which were far sweeter to me than any notes that musical instrument ever breathed. I was so filled with this presentiment of coming evil that I did not dare to ask any one the cause of his absence. "Pooh!" said I to myself, "there is nothing in it. I saw him but just now alive, and well enough, if I may judge from the way he cleared those fences and the swiftness of his footsteps as he ran across the meadows." I thought no more of it until a messenger came two or three days afterward to my office and said:

"I will come immediately," said I to the messenger. "We shall lose our boy-organist," said I to myself. And so we did; but not as you suppose. Ally became—but I must not anticipate.

I found our much loved boy-organist in a high fever. "He has been constantly raving all night," said his mother, in answer to my inquiries, "about what he has seen. There has been something preying on his mind lately," she continued. "He has been very sad and nervous, and I fear it has helped to make him ill."

In a tone of command, which I find will often elicit a direct answer from patients whose minds are wandering, I said to him: "Ally, answer me directly, sir; what did you see?"

With his eyes still staring at the ceiling he answered in a wondering manner, "God!"

I was sorely perplexed what further question to ask, but, thinking to lead him on gradually to some more reasonable answer, as I thought, I asked, "Where?"

"The kneeling people and the priest," he replied dreamily. "And Jesus said, Neither do I condemn thee." And here he burst into tears. Then the remembrance of the last Sunday morning came back to my mind, and I knew what had taken Ally across the fields, and what he had seen. He was so faint and weak, his pulse fluttered so unsteadily, that I feared the worst, and the anxious, searching look of the mother read my tell-tale countenance. She began to weep violently.

"That is a strange remark," thought I, "for a boy like him to make. What can he mean?"

"My darling Ally," said the widow, "you do know what is true. You always say what is true."

"What isn't true, my dear?" "God!" answered the boy, turning his eyes upward to the ceiling again, and looking, as it were, at some object miles away, "and the kneeling people, and the priest. It's true, and no lie. This is my body, this is my blood." And he joined his hot and feverish little hands together as if in prayer.

"Don't trouble about this," said I to the weeping mother. "I know what it is. He has been down to Mike Maloney's, in the Brook woods, and seen the Catholic Mass. Don't refer to it again just now. I will give him some composing medicine. But I wish," I added, "that this had not happened. It only tends to weaken him."

Presently I noticed him playing with his fingers on the coverlet as if he were playing the organ. I thought to take advantage of this, and said:

"Ally, my boy, get well soon, now, and let us have a grand voluntary on the organ—one of your very best."

"O doctor! it seems everything to me. I never can forget it. How could anybody ever forget they had seen Mass. Could you?"

"Well—I saw it—one Sunday, anyway," answered Ally, with the air of one who had never been anywhere else all his life.

"Angels!" said I contemptuously. "Pretty place to find angels, in Mike Maloney's shanty! Why, it's like a stable."

Again Ally's eyes went up to the ceiling, and, while his fingers nervously played an invisible organ on the coverlet, he began to sing, so plaintively and sadly that it quite unmanned me:

  "He came down to earth from heaven,
    Who is God and Lord of all,
  And his shelter was a stable,
    And his cradle was a stall.
  With the poor, and mean, and lowly,
    Lived on earth our Saviour holy."

The widow and I stood watching and listening long after he had ceased singing. In a few moments a lucid interval occurred, and, noticing me, he said:

"Doctor, why can't we have Mass in our church? Oh! wouldn't I like to play the organ for it always till I died!"

"We couldn't have Mass, Ally," I replied, "because it is only Catholic priests who can say Mass."

"Is it? I know I'd like to play the organ forever and ever for the Mass; but I'd rather be a priest. Oh! a thousand, thousand times rather!" And his pale, sad face lighted up with an unearthly glow.

Seeing I could not divert his mind from the subject, and fearing to continue a conversation which excited him so much, I quietly gave directions to his mother, and left. I had little hopes of Ally's recovery, but his words made a deep impression on my mind: "God will not let me die till I know what is true, first." "What truth can he mean?" thought I. "Can he have imagined he does not know the true religion? What can have made him think that our Episcopal Church is not true? What strange fancies will get into some children's heads! I should be sorry to lose Ally, but I'd rather see him die, I think, than grow up to be a Roman Catholic. Ugh! and a priest too, perhaps, who knows? God forbid!" Revolving these disagreeable thoughts in my head as I went down the street, I met Mr. Billups, our minister. We shook hands, or rather I shook Mr. Billups's hand while he shook his head, a manner of his that gave him a general doubting air, somewhat puzzling to strangers.

"No, I did not hear it," he replied, emphasizing the word did, as much as to say, "But I hear it now." Although the negative accompaniment with his head would seem to imply that he did not quite believe it.

"Yes, and very ill too," I added. "If his mind becomes calmer than it is, I think it might do good just to drop in and see him. I fear he has been under some bad influences lately."

"You astonish me, not to say grieve me," rejoined Mr. Billups. "Ally was always a good, pious boy, and one of our head boys, as you are aware, in the Sunday-school."

"I mean," said I, "that he has been reading or hearing something about Catholics and their Mass, and other things; and it really has made a deep impression on his mind, which ought to be effaced; that is," I added, "in case he recovers, which I fear is doubtful."

"Of course, of course, which ought to be effaced," repeated he. "Not a doubt of it. I remember, now, Mrs. White, his Sunday-school teacher, telling me that he had asked her in class what the sixth chapter of St. John meant. I hope he has not been reading that chapter of the Bible too attentively, for it is calculated, I am sorry to say, to make a deep, very deep, not to say, in regard to the popish Mass doctrine, a most alarming impression upon the mind, especially of a boy like Ally."

"Well, if you see him," said I, not much relishing this opinion about the Bible being in favor of Catholic doctrines, "you can manage to bring the subject up, and easily explain its true meaning to him."

"Yes, oh! yes! easily explain its true meaning to him," again repeated Mr. Billups after me, yet looking rather puzzled, as I thought, and doubtful of success; but perhaps it was only his manner that gave me that impression. "Would to-morrow, think you, do, doctor?" he continued, after a pause, "I am quite busy, just now."

"Better," I replied, "much better; Ally is very low at this moment." I do not know what made me say it, but Ally's words came suddenly to my mind again, and I added confidently: "He will not die just yet. He will surely be better to-morrow."

I bade Mr. Billups good-morning, not at all satisfied. "The sixth chapter of St. John! the sixth chapter of St. John!" I went on repeating to myself. Strange! I have never read that chapter with any thought of the doctrine of Catholics. And yet, to judge from what the minister said, it might trouble the mind, even of a child. As I waited in the parlor of a sick lady whom I went to visit before returning home, I could not refrain from turning over the leaves of a large family Bible on the centre-table, and finding the chapter in question. I had not time, however, to read many verses before I was summoned to the sick-chamber. Attention to my professional duties drove the subject from my mind during the rest of the day, and I retired to rest considerably exhausted and fatigued.

"Now for a good sleep," said I to myself, "and a quick one, for I shouldn't wonder if I were called up to Ally again before morning." But I could not sleep. Tossing to and fro in the bed, I began to question myself about the cause of my sleeplessness; I soon found it. The thought of Ally had revived the memory of that sixth chapter of St. John. "Well," said I, "I will remove the cause by just getting up and reading it, and there will be an end of it. Then I shall sleep." So I rose and lit my lamp, got out my Bible, and there, half-dressed, read the troublesome chapter. As I reflected upon what I was doing, I felt more like a thief, a midnight robber, or some designing villain laying plans for murder or housebreaking, than as an honest Christian reading his Bible; for was I not allowing myself to do what was calculated to make a deep, not to say an alarming impression on my mind, that the Catholic religion was true, and the Protestant religion false?

Now, without vanity I say it, few people know their Bibles better than I did, and, although I must have read that identical chapter many times, it seemed to me that I had never read it before. I thank God for that midnight perusal of my Bible.

One thing I then and there determined, for private reasons of my own, which was, to be on hand at Mrs. Button's when the minister called; and there I was. Ally was a good deal better and brighter. After some commonplace remarks, Mr. Billups said to Ally:

"You are fond of reading your Bible, are you not, my dear child; and would you not like me to read a little of the Word to you?"

"I will read for you, then," continued Mr. Billups, producing a Bible from his pocket, "a most beautiful and instructive passage from St. John's gospel, commencing at the sixth chapter." {68} He said this in such a church-reading tone that Mrs. Dutton instinctively responded as far as "Glory be"—but, discovering her mistake, covered it up with a very loud cough. Mr. Billups read the chapter, but quite differently from the manner in which I had read it; slowly and distinctly where I had read rather quickly, that is, from the beginning to the fiftieth verse; and quickly where I had read slowly, from that verse to the end.

"That's very beautiful, and very strange," said Ally pensively, as the minister paused at the end of the chapter. "But, Mr. Billups, is it all true?"

"Yes, my child," answered Mr. Billups, "he certainly made all his promises good."

"I wish I knew where," said Ally inquiringly. "I asked Mrs. White, and she said she didn't know, and that I asked too many questions."

"When he died on the cross, and shed his blood for our salvation," said the minister solemnly, closing the Bible, and looking at me as if he would say: "There's an end of the whole matter: you see how easily I have explained it to him." Ally did not, however, seem so easily satisfied.

"But where can we get it to eat and drink?" asked he. "Jesus said we must eat and drink it."

Mr. Billups again glanced at me with a look which I interpreted to mean, "I fear he has been reading this too attentively," and then said:

"I must believe I eat it, and don't eat it after all," said Ally explanatorily.

"Yes—no—not precisely," replied Mr. Billups, with some confusion of manner, and coughing two or three short little coughs in his hand. "We eat the communion bread, and drink the communion wine, and then we believe we partake, by faith, of the body and blood of the Saviour."

"But, then," asked Ally, pushing the difficulty, "don't we eat and drink what we believe we eat and drink?"

"H'm, h'm," coughed the minister, shifting uneasily in his seat. "We believe—we think—in short, as I was about to remark, we have faith in Jesus Christ as our blessed Saviour."

"Then I can't see what the Bible means," said Ally, scratching his head in a disappointed manner: "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood, ye cannot have life in you."

"My dear, de-ar child," cried Mr. Billups, quite distractedly, "what can you have been reading to put this in your head?"

"Only the Bible, sir," replied Ally simply, "what you have read just now, sir, and the story of the Last Supper; and I heard Pompey Simpson say it was all true."

"Pompey Simpson," returned Mr. Billups, "is a negro, and I am sorry," he continued, turning to me, "I should say both grieved and shocked, to add, doctor, one of those misguided beings groping in the darkness of Roman idolatry, whose numbers are increasing to an alarming extent in our country. Have nothing to do with Pompey Simpson, my dear," again addressing Ally, "or who knows you might be led away to become a Romanist?" {69} An event which Mr. Billups's head intimated at that moment to be too deplorable to be expressed. "Yes, one of those emissaries of giant Pope, described so truthfully in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, as you remember. Do not go near them, Ally, for my sake, for your mother's sake, for the sake of the church of your baptism, or they will make you like unto them, an idolatrous worshipper of the host; which, as you have never seen it, I will tell you, is only a piece of bread. You see what ignorant, deluded people these Catholics must be. Just to think of it—to worship a piece of bread!"

"But the Catholic is the old church and the first one, Pompey said," rejoined Ally, "and the old church ought to know. Besides, I—I—saw it myself."

"Saw it yourself!" exclaimed Mr. Billups, his hair fairly standing upright with horror. "My organist dare to enter a popish Mass-house!" And he frowned very severely at the widow.

"It was only Mike Maloney's," said Ally deprecatingly. "And the priest in his beautiful robes, and the people all kneeling around, didn't look mistaken, sir; and I felt so sure that God was there," continued Ally, trembling, "that I'm all the time thinking about it. Somehow I can't drive it out of my mind."

"Your son, madam," said the minister, turning to Ally's mother, "must drive this out of his mind. It would be a fearful calamity, madam, to have a child whom you have reared, and, I may add in behalf of the vestry of our church, an organist, whose salary we have paid, fall into the toils of the man of sin. It would be well to curb the inquiring mind of your son, madam, and restrain his wandering footsteps; because, if he is permitted to worship at a foreign altar, he can no longer exercise the position of—in short—perform on the organ of our church. Good-morning." And he rose abruptly, and left the house.

All this nettled me. I had hoped he could easily explain the doubts in the boy's mind, not to mention my own, and it exasperated me to see him have recourse to such base means to silence these doubts, instead of using kindly Christian counsel and teaching. To deprive Ally of his situation, and the widow of the support which his salary gave, would be, I knew, to inflict a heavy loss upon them. Unwilling to depart and leave the widow and son without some comfort, and yet not knowing what to say, I went to the window and looked out, flattening my nose against the glass in a most uncomfortable state of mind, and presenting a spectacle to the passers-by which must have impressed them with the conviction of my being subject to temporary fits of derangement. As I stood there, I heard Ally say to his mother:

"Don't cry, mother. I won't be a Catholic if it isn't true. But it's better to know what's true than to play the organ or get any salary, if it's ever so big. Isn't it, mother?"

I assented to this sentiment so strongly with my head that I nearly put my nose through the window-pane, an action that elicited a strong stare for my supposed impudence from the two Misses Stocksup, daughters of the Honorable Washington Stocksup, who happened to be passing the house at that moment.

"So it is, my dear," answered the widow. "But I'm afraid, my darling, you are only fancying something to be true that is not true."

Poor Ally! He could little comprehend how much it would cost him or me to say we believed it to be true. Excusing myself with all sorts of bungling remarks, I left the house, my mind torn by many conflicting doubts and emotions. Ally slowly, very slowly recovered. In the mean time a new organist, a poor man with a dreadful asthma, as I recollect, had taken his place. Deprived of the aid which his salary afforded them, the widow and Ally found it hard to live.

The minister, it seems, related to his wife what had taken place at Ally's sick-bed, and it soon got bruited about that both Ally and his mother were going to turn Catholics. They soon left the village, and I did not hear of them until several years after. As for myself, it was not long before I took Ally's way across the fields to Mike Maloney's shanty, and now you know how I first came to think about it.

Well, I'll tell you. One day I happened to be in the city of Newark. It was the festival of Corpus Christi, and crowds were flocking to St. Patrick's cathedral to assist at the grand ceremonies that were to take place. At the gospel the preacher ascended the pulpit, and what was my surprise to recognize in the person of the youthful priest my dear boy-organist, Ally Dutton. He took for his text these words, "This is my body, this is my blood," and preached a powerful and eloquent sermon. After the services were concluded I went to the presbytery to call upon him, but he did not recognize me; so I said:

"Allow me, reverend sir, to thank you for your beautiful sermon. This doctrine of the real presence which you Catholics hold is a wonderful and a very consoling doctrine; and what is more, I am rather afraid it is true."

"Afraid!" answered Ally, smiling. "That reminds me of a dear old friend of mine who once said the same thing, but he was not long overcoming his fears."

"And the dear old friend is sorry now," added I, looking at him closely, "that it was even so long as it was."

As I knelt to crave the blessing of our quondam boy-organist, now a priest of the holy Catholic church, he caught me in his arms and folded me in a warm embrace.

Translated from les Etudes Religieuses, etc., etc.

The Martyrs of Gorcum.

We hear it sometimes asked, "Why does the Catholic Church have so many canonizations, jubilees, and religious displays?" We pity those who speak in this way, for they do not seem to understand the destiny of the church. If the church, connected as she is with the advance of the human race, has her interests to look after in the revolutions which agitate the world; if, in order to defend her rights which are attacked or are not recognized, she is obliged occasionally to interfere in the struggles which arise between men, this is but one aspect of her history, though it seems to be the only one which impresses superficial and unthinking minds. At the same time that she shows this exterior action of catholicity, there is wrought in her heart a mysterious work, which reveals the divine illuminations of the faith. It is an admirable exchange, a divine intercourse between heaven and earth—the world offering to heaven its supplications, its atonements, the heroic virtues of its saints, and the merits of its martyrs; heaven bestowing upon the world its aid for the combat, its abundant graces, the seeds of sanctity. At certain eventful periods, when greater perils call forth more generous sacrifices and more earnest appeals to heaven, the mystery of this inward life of the church shines forth in marvellous events, which overturn all preconceived human opinion, and confound the wisdom of the world. We see, then, a throne, which remains firm without any apparent support, and on this throne an old, helpless man, who holds all the powers of revolution in check; we see a society, against which are unchained all anarchical passions, face the storm which threatens to overwhelm it, proclaim its proscribed doctrines without fear, lead nations which had wandered into the paths of naturalism back to the fold of the church, and maintain its independence against the coalition of tyrannies.

Has a pontificate ever shown this divine spectacle of the struggle of spiritual forces with the powers of materialism better than that of Pius IX.? To the increasing oppression of vice the pope does not cease to oppose the miracles of virtue and the fruits of grace which distinguish the elect of God. To the insolent cries of error he replies by the calm affirmation of eternal truth. The assaults of impiety he resists only by the prayers of pure souls, by the intercession of those saints to whom he has granted the honors of veneration, and by the aid of the Blessed Virgin, whose conception he has proclaimed immaculate. So, when a voice, disturbing the harmony of our love and gratitude, was lately heard to ask the ill-timed question, "Why so many saints?" what was the reply of the pontiff, in whom his faithful children venerate the wise man of the gospel, drawing from his treasure in opportune time the old good and the new? "They reproach me," said he, with his accustomed sweetness, "for making too many saints, but I cannot promise to correct this fault. Have we not more need than ever of intercessors in heaven, and models of religious virtue in the world?"

In 1852, a distinguished prelate, who has since entered into the repose of the Lord, Mgr. de Salinis, pointed out to the faithful of the diocese of Amiens, in announcing a jubilee, the supernatural character which distinguishes the acts of Pius IX. "You do not ask," he wrote, "the reason of the munificence which lavishes upon you favors which at other times go forth but rarely from the treasure of the church. It suffices for us to know that the Vicar of Jesus Christ receives light from above which is given only to him. He who holds the keys of the kingdom of heaven can alone tell the time when it is good to spread over the earth the waves of divine mercy. He who directs the bark of the church through the storms of this world can question the winds, and discover in the horizon the signs which warn him to urge on the journey of the ship. He who is the common father of all Christians alone knows the needs of his immense family. His glance, which watches over every place that the sun shines upon—his solicitude, which embraces all evil and all virtue—his heart, which feels all the sorrows of the Spouse of Christ—his prayers, in which are summed up all the prayers of the church, the particular inspiration which God reserves for him who holds his place on earth—all these reveal to him, so far as is necessary, the proportion which should exist between grace and misery." [Footnote 9]

[Footnote 9: Charges, Pastoral Instructions, and Various Discourses of Mgr. de Salinis. Paris, Vaton. 1856.]

This is the reply that should be made to these petite génies who presume to criticise the holy see, and put the counsels of their mean diplomacy in the place of the inspirations of God. Do these men, whose minds are so enlightened, not see that they are in the presence of an administration of supernatural power? Do they not suspect the strength of the church militant ranged about its chief, and praying with him for the assistance of the church triumphant? Do they not witness the pious eagerness of the people to venerate, to invoke, and to imitate the new patrons which are given them?

The eyes of all the obedient children of the church are now turned toward Rome. The Catholic world, in a rapture of faith and piety, is united to the pilgrims of the holy city, to the bishops, and to the bishop of bishops, celebrating the triumph of Peter, always living and reigning in his successor, applauding the glory of the legion of the blessed, that the churches of Poland, of Spain, of the Netherlands, of Italy, of France, and of Japan have given to the church of Rome, their common mother, and to the church of heaven, the lasting city of the elect.

We should have liked, if our space and time allowed, to say something of the many beautiful subjects that this happy time suggests; the coming, the episcopate, and the martyrdom of St. Peter at Rome, the lives and virtues of the saints proposed for our veneration. We should have taken pleasure in retracing the sweet picture of that humble child of the people who represents France in this illustrious group of the Blessed; of that little shepherdess of Pibrac, whose name will henceforth be popular in the fatherland of Genevieve and Joan of Arc. [Footnote 10] But who among us has not heard of Germaine Cousin, her poor and suffering life, her angelic virtues, the marvellous favors due to her intercession? And who can add to the glory of this young saint, who, in addition to the honor of being placed upon our altars, has had such a historian as M. Louis Veuillot and such a panegyrist as the Bishop of Poitiers?

[Footnote 10: Vie, Vertus et Miracles de la B. Germaine Cousin, bergère. Par M. Louis Veuillot. Paris, Palmé. OEuvres de M. l'Eveque de Poitiers, t. ii. p. 109.]

We propose, then, to follow those saints who are at present less known among us, but which in the future must not be strangers. It is a page in the history of the church which should be made prominent, and in devoting our time to it we are sure of obtaining the approbation of him whom God has given us to be at once our Father and our Master.

II.

We are aware that even the name of the martyrs of Gorcum was until recently quite unknown to the greater part of the learned. Modern historians are not accustomed to eulogize the merits of the victims of schism and heresy. But the church never forgets her children who have perished in the cause of God; and God himself takes care of his servants by multiplying miracles over their tombs. These nineteen martyrs of Gorcum, who suffered for the faith on the 9th of July, 1572, were placed in the ranks of the blessed by Clement X. in 1675, and since that time they have always been held in the greatest veneration in Belgium and Holland. It is now almost three years since our Holy Father, yielding to one of those inspirations of which his life is full, felt the desire that the supreme honors of the church should be paid to these noble champions of Jesus Christ; and January 6th, 1865, the day of the Epiphany, his holiness caused a decree to be read in his presence, ordering the proceedings to be instituted for their solemn canonization. The preamble of the decree deserves notice, it says: "Born of the blood of Jesus Christ and nourished with the blood of martyrs, the Catholic Church will be exposed to bloody persecutions until the end of the world. And it is not without a marvellous design of divine Providence that the cause of these illustrious victims of the Calvinistic heresy of the sixteenth century is taken up and completed in these unhappy days, when heretics and false brothers are recommencing a war, an implacable war, against Jesus Christ, against his holy church, and against this holy apostolic see." The Holy Father expressed the same thought in a discourse which followed the promulgation of the decree. "The Most High," said he, "has reserved for this time the glorification of these Holland martyrs, to prove to our century, full of scorn or indifference for the revealed faith and plunged in the grossest materialism, that the memory of the martyr is never forgotten in the church of Jesus Christ, that there are always men ready to shed their blood for that faith, and a supreme authority which is always ready to recognize their merits."

The object of the sovereign pontiff is not uncertain; it is to call the attention of the world to the fact of the continual recurrence of martyrs in the church; to cite these heroes, who have sealed the faith with their blood, as an example and a witness; such has been the special aim in canonizing the martyrs of Gorcum. Far be it from the holy church to stifle the voice of blood which has flowed from the veins of her children for nineteen centuries! This blood, shed in every land from the most barbarous to the most cultivated, bears witness everywhere that the mother of martyrs is also the faithful spouse of Jesus Christ. {74} The Catholic Church is peculiarly a witness, while the sects about us are founded on negation and doubt. Our blessed Lord was the first witness, and the truth of his testimony he has sealed on the cross and in his cruel passion; the apostles were witnesses to him who had sent them and the doctrine they were bidden to teach; they have gone to give their testimony to the Good Master; and now their faith and prayers sustain their children even to the extremities of the earth, making them gladly choose to die sooner than deny that faith which cost the Son of God his life. This illustrious testimony of blood has never ceased from the day of Calvary up to the present nineteenth century; the succession of martyrs is like the church herself, for it knows no limits of time or space; they are dying today in Cochin-China and Corea, as they have died in Japan in former years, as they have died in Europe, when Protestantism swept over that fair portion of the flock of Christ, and as millions died in the Roman Empire under the pagan Caesars. Look at what Rome offers to-day to the world: a noble army of martyrs gathered about Saints Peter and Paul, the victims of Nero, the valiant soldiers of such fearless chiefs; the B. Josophat, Archbishop of Polotsk, slain by followers of the Moscovite schism; B. Peter of Arbues, murdered by Jews in the church of Saragossa; our nineteen martyrs of Gorcum, the victims of the assassins of Calvinism; and two hundred and five who sweetly yielded up their lives for the faith in Japan.

Schism and heresy are always ready to conceal the blood which stains so many pages of their annals, and to hide the crimes which dishonor their ancestors. But, if the living are silent, the dead are now speaking to us from their tombs; the victims of Protestantism have risen from their graves to bear witness to the truth. We cannot thank Pius IX. too much for proposing for the veneration of the church these champions of the faith, who have fallen so gloriously in the struggles of modern society, and on the same battle-field, as it were, where we continue to engage the foes of our holy mother, the church. Nor can we praise the historians enough who have consecrated their talent to the sacred work of writing the account of these persecutions, and showing forth to Catholic and Protestant the glorious record of these martyrs of the sixteenth century. The time has now come to count our slain, that the remembrance of their fortitude may awake Christian faith and zeal in our souls.

The three centuries that have passed since the impious Luther first dared to raise the standard of revolt against the holy church bear a resemblance to the first centuries of the Christian era. To-day Protestantism is ready to fall to pieces; it is the "sick man" among the religions of the world, as Turkey is among the nations; it is the time to present the well-meaning souls that its myriad sects embrace with a clear view of its origin, and of what it now teaches in its closing years. The reestablishment of the hierarchy in England and Holland, the restoration of the episcopal see of Geneva, the beatification of F. Canisius, the third centennial anniversary of the council of Trent, and several other acts of the holy see show us the unity of the Catholic Church compared with the disorganization of the Protestant sects, which are now, we can truly say, without faith or law. We should take care that those who have been misguided should know the violent means the so-called reformers used to establish their opinions. {75} Their origin was stained with the blood of the faithful, and they have completed their course by adopting atheism. Such has been the sad story of Protestantism; a destiny that must ever be the fate of those who oppose the teaching of the church that our Lord has bidden to convert the nations.

Vainly do Protestants attempt to evade the shameful acts of the first "reformers" by showing its own scars and framing a list of martyrs. No wounds are glorious while the cause they sustain is an iniquity; and heresy can never be justified in its rebellion against the church of Christ. If its apologists tell us that revolution is necessary in order to get liberty, we deny this theory of the end sanctifying the means, of a bad end sanctified by unjust means. Let heretics not speak of their martyrs. A martyr is one who witnesses, not one who protests; a man who dies, not to sustain a passionate and obstinate denial, nor in defence of speculative opinions and personal ideas, but as a witness to seal the traditional teaching, to confirm the faith which is sustained by unexceptionable evidence. A martyr is not a conspirator, an instigator, and upholder of civil war; he lives without reproach, defends the truth without fanaticism, suffers without vain exaltation, and dies without anger; his memory is irreproachable before God and man. Would that heresy could point to such heroes! We are only too proud and happy in presenting to our friends and foes the picture of such men, in whose holy hands the church has put the palm of martyrdom.

III.

In the Low Countries more than elsewhere, Protestantism has concealed from its posterity its sanguinary and tyrannical instincts. It has perfidiously taken advantage of the national sentiment and appears clothed in the cloak of liberty. How many consider Philip II. a monster, the Duke d'Alba an executioner, and that they are solely responsible for all the blood shed in the Low Countries? But the time has come when we should no longer allow ourselves to be duped by hypocritical declamations against Catholic reprisals. They who have first taken arms and begun the war are held responsible for the blood that is shed.

One of the most learned students of modern history, Baron deGerlache, said, in opening the congress of Malines, on August 24th, 1864: "The history of the sixteenth century, written by Protestants and copied by Catholics, needs to be rewritten from beginning to end, from the real statement of the facts, which are contained in the archives of the church. Then Protestants will appear as they really are, such as they are now in Ireland and elsewhere, aggressive, violent, intolerant, inaugurating persecution when they are powerful enough, and demanding liberty when they are weak." These words sum up the history of the pretended reform, acting its double part, the farce of liberty and the tragedy of blood, according to the number of its partisans.

The seventeen provinces had unfortunately prepared their country for the introduction of Protestantism; their nobility was immoral and their people poorly instructed in their religion, strongly attached to worldly goods, impatient of the control of the church, while continual wars kept the people in a state of excitement, and even the very geographical position of the country and its commercial relations contributed to open the way to the new and, as yet, unknown religion. {76} The church could not oppose the rapid growth of heresy; there were but four episcopal sees in the whole territory; and, although the colleges and abbeys were rich and numerous, they were subservient to the civil power. The church could neither guard them from the error, nor act with energy when it had obtained a foothold in the land. Charles V., who was aware of the seditious and anarchical character of the "reform," put forth in vain all the severities of the law against its preachers; he could not check the torrent. Error can scarcely be repressed by force when it meets no opposition in the conscience, and when it has already gained a part of a people.

The severity of Charles V., while it did not prevent the increase of the heresy, at least kept the dissenters from forming a sect powerful enough to menace the church or the state. Philip II. added nothing to the edicts of his father. And this despot, this tyrant, even made concessions to them that are to be regretted. Three thousand Spanish troops were in the Netherlands at that time, and they were sufficient to hold the rebels in check; but, when they protested against the presence of these soldiers, Philip recalled them to Spain. Cardinal Granvelle aided the regent, Margaret of Parma, with his counsel: they protested against this able and worthy minister, and Philip gave him his dismissal. Everything served as a pretext for the disturbers; the hypocritical and ambitious Prince of Orange, William of Nassau, the chief of the leaders who had taken the name of Gueux, [Footnote 11] spread discontent and insurrection on every side.

[Footnote 11: Gueux, beggars. The origin of the word is as follows: Three hundred Calvinistic deputies were sent to Margaret of Parma to protest against the measures of the government. She became much alarmed at this demonstration, when Count Barleymont said, "Ce ne sont que gueux," (they are only beggars,) alluding to the meanness of their appearance. This imprudent remark was overheard and at once adopted by the insurgents as their title. See Bouillet's Dictionnaire Universel d'Histoire et de Geographie, article Gueux.]

He found fault with all the measures that the government took and all that he accused it of wishing to take. The creation of fourteen new bishoprics by the king with the consent of the pope was looked upon as an outrageous act of tyranny. At last the government was unarmed, the victims had been sufficiently worked upon by their leaders, and the Catholics were completely intimidated: the rage of the sects was now let loose to pervert and destroy the fair fabric that God had raised in the land. We shall not attempt to describe the hideous saturnalias of the "reform;" we leave that to Protestant authors, to Schiller, to Schoel, to Prescott. We cite from the latter a few lines to give our readers an idea of what learned Protestants say of their ancestors: "The work of pillage and devastation was carried on throughout the country. Cathedrals and chapels, convents and monasteries, whatever was a religious house, even the hospitals, were given up to the merciless reformers. Neither monk nor religious dared to appear in their habit. From time to time, priests were seen fleeing with some relic or sacred object that they desired to preserve from pillage. To the violence they did, they added every outrage that could express their scorn for the faith. In Flanders, four hundred churches were sacked. The ruin of the cathedral of Anvers could not be repaired for less than four hundred thousand ducats. … One becomes sad in seeing that the first efforts of the reformers were always directed against these monuments of genius, erected and made perfect under the generous protection of Catholicism; but, if the first steps of the reform have been made on the ruins of art, the good it has produced in compensation cannot be denied, in breaking the chains that bound the human mind and opening to it the domains of science, to which until then all access had been refused." The readers know how much this compensation is worth.

And now may we ask, if it be true that Philip took too severe a vengeance for these outrages, if the Duke of Alva followed the rebels with an unreasonable severity, if all that is said of them be multiplied a hundred times, is there a single argument in favor of that liberty of conscience which makes its way at the sword's point? Catholicism has never hesitated to disavow and condemn all violence, and every coup d'état done in her name; she has always separated from politicians who pretend to defend her in any other way than she demands; no "compensation" can disarm her justice against criminal abuses which are excused for "state reasons." The "reform" which does not feel itself innocent ventures to proclaim an anathema which falls upon its own doctrines and disciples. It is more easy for their historians to turn the anger of posterity upon "the sallow tyrant before whom the people were filled with terror," or upon the executor of his vengeance, "the ogre thirsting for human flesh." Such authors as M. Quinet find material here for their eloquence, (?) and subjects for such articles as suit the Revue des Deux Mondes. But history will pay but little attention to these melodramatic effusions. What esteem can scholars demand when they deliberately calumniate governments and nations in order to conceal the heinous crimes perpetrated in the name of free thought; or pamphlet-writers who industriously circulate the silly stories of the inquisition, and have not a word, a single word of blame for the sectarians who have covered Europe with blood and ruins?

To those who desire to know, without seeking far, the judgment of history upon these facts and persons, we counsel the reading of Feller, whose opinions always bear the stamp of truth. "The severity of the Duke of Alva—or, if you wish, his hardness, or even his inhumanity—was legal, and conformed most scrupulously to judicial proceeding, and forms a striking contrast with the chiefs of the rebellion and their tools, whose cruelties had no other rule than fanaticism and caprice. William of Marck, for example, the des Adrets of the Low Countries, murdered in a single year (1572) more peaceable citizens and Catholic priests than the Duke of Alva executed rebels in the whole course of his administration." [Footnote 12] To support his statements, Feller quotes three or four works which recount the atrocities of the Protestants. We shall content ourselves with a statement of the death of our nineteen martyrs, which happened in this same sad year, 1572, and by the orders of this same William of Marck, one of the most abominable of the wretches who figured in the revolution of the sixteenth century. In this single example we shall see the barbarous fanaticism of the "reform," and the sublime virtues which distinguished these martyrs of the Catholic faith: error will show its power as a persecutor; truth, the divine fortitude with which it vests its faithful champions.

[Footnote 12: Dictionnaire Historique, article Tolède, Ferdinand Alvarez du, duc d'Albe.]

IV.

The Duke of Alva had quelled the revolt: he had not rooted it out of the land, for its numerous and powerful ramifications were only waiting to begin a new life. The Prince of Orange, who had taken care to avoid the punishment due to his treason by a voluntary exile, was raising troops, conspiring and intriguing with the great Iconoclastic sect of Calvin and with the court of France, then under the influence of the Huguenots. The Admiral de Coligny advised him to build a fleet and attack the northern provinces, where the "reformers" were in greater numbers. There had been Beggars on land, and now there were to be Beggars at sea; they rivalled each other in massacre and sacrilege, to the great honor of the "reform" and the "reformers," who by these means had obtained a partial triumph. We are aware that political prejudices are complicated with this religious war; but facts prove beyond doubt that these people were urged on by a deep hatred of the Catholic faith.

A fleet of about forty sail had been fitted out in the ports of England, and from thence, under the direction of the ferocious William of Marck, the Beggars made their course across the North Sea and along the coast of Flanders. The Duke of Alva complained to Elizabeth, Queen of England, and as she did not wish at this time to break with Spain, she gave the corsairs orders to leave the kingdom. This was in the spring of 1572. An adverse wind drove them on the isle of Voom, at the mouth of the Meuse; the neighboring port of Briel was without defenders, and was captured by these Calvinists on April 1st, 1572. "They pillaged the convents and churches about the city, broke images, and destroyed all that bore marks of the Roman Church." [Footnote 13]

[Footnote 13: The Delights of the Netherlands. A General History of the Seventeen Provinces. New Edition 1743, t iv. p. 121.]

This town was fortified by the pirates, for whom it was a place of refuge, and afterward the nucleus for insurrection. Three months after its occupation, Brandt, a captain, ascended the Meuse as far as Gorcum. As soon as the people saw his vessels, they sought shelter in the citadel; religious and priests hurriedly transported the sacred vessels and objects of veneration to this place of safety. However, the town council and the body of magistrates began a parley with Brandt, who assured them that he only desired religious liberty, and that no outrage would be committed by his followers. They opened the gates. The band was increased by several of the inhabitants of the town, who were partisans of this Calvinistic rebellion, and they then required all the citizens to take an oath of allegiance to William of Nassau, Prince of Orange, governor royal of the Holland provinces. During this time that the revolutionary troops had possession of the city, the commander of the palace still held out, but was eventually compelled to capitulate because of the failure of hoped for supplies. Brandt solemnly promised to spare their lives and give them their liberty; but, scarcely had they taken possession of the place, when, forgetting their oaths, they confined their victims as prisoners. The laymen were finally released in consideration of large sums of money, except a few who were put to death as firm Catholics and royalists; the priests and religious, nineteen in number, remained: they could hope for no deliverance but that of martyrdom.

Then the scenes that are ever recurring in the church, the scenes of the passion of our Lord, were reenacted. As our divine Saviour had to undergo the outrages of a brutal soldiery, so did these heroes of Gorcum; they, like him, were forced through crowds of infuriated people, who greeted them with scornful questions, with blows, and scourges, and mockery, and imprecations, and, last of all, with the gibbet. In the midst of this display of rage and hate, our heroes were entirely tranquil, blessing God, praying for their executioners, encouraging each other to bear their sufferings with patience, gladly offering their lives as a testimony to their sincerity in professing the dogmas denied by the heretics; in one word, they bore themselves as true witnesses of our Lord should.

The facts of their martyrdom have been told by well-informed historians. God, who leaves nothing hidden in the lives of those whom he has determined to honor, raised witnesses to testify to the merits of those who were such faithful witnesses of his Son. History celebrated their triumph while waiting for the church to crown them. One of the most intrepid of the martyrs, Nicholas Pieck, superior of the Franciscans, had a nephew living at Gorcum, who was a witness to these events, and who is now known as the celebrated William Estius, chancellor of the university of Douai. He collected all the facts that were known, and then wrote a complete history of their martyrdom, which reflects so much credit upon his country and family. A young Franciscan novice, who begged for mercy when he was to be executed, lived to tell of the firmness of these confessors of the faith; a canon, Pontus Heuterus, who was also unfaithful to the grace of martyrdom, wrote the story in Holland verse. It is useless, however, to detail a list of our authorities; for there are no pages in the annals of the church more luminous than the acts of these nineteen martyrs. Surely God has wished to erect from their heroic virtue a monument to the sanctity of the church and to the satanic character of this heresy. [Footnote 14]

[Footnote 14: The work of Estius, Historic Martyrum Gorcomiensium Libri Quatuor, was first printed in Douai in 1603. It was afterward republished, with notes and a supplement, by M. Reussen, professor in the university of Louvain. A French translation of Estius appeared at Douai in 1606, under the title, Histoire Véritable des Martyrs de Gorcum en Hollande, etc. Acta Sanctorum, t. xxvii. ad 9 Julii, fol. 736-847. Esquisses Historiques des Troubles des Pays-Bas an XVII. Siècle. Par E. H. de Cavrines. Deuxième édit. Bruxelles, Vromant. 1865.]

As we have already said, there was but one way to please these Calvinistic executioners, and that was to renounce the faith; but their victims chose rather to endure all the suffering that their malignant ingenuity could suggest. The martyrs affirmed successively the right of the church to impose laws in the name of God, the divine maternity of the Blessed Virgin, and the veneration which is due to the real presence of Jesus Christ in the sacrament of the altar and the primacy of the pope.

The first day of their captivity (June 27th) was a Friday. They had no food offered them but meat, from which they cheerfully abstained, rather than put in doubt their fidelity to the precepts of the church. There was but one who thought it necessary for him to take some nourishment, and he was one of those who did not persevere to the end.

In the following night, a band of Protestants rushed into their cell and pretended that they had come to execute them immediately. "Behold me," said Léonard Vechel, the aged pastor of Gorcum, "I am ready." His assistant, Nicholas Van Poppel, was dared to repeat what he had so often preached in the pulpit. "Willingly," he answered, "and at the price of every drop of my blood, I confess the Catholic faith; above all, the dogma of the real presence of Jesus Christ in the holy eucharist." {80} They then threw a rope about his neck and began to strangle him; the superior of the Franciscans was treated in the same way; they were both choked until they fainted, when the ruffians held their torches to the faces of their victims, recalling their lives in this gentle way! "After all," said one of the monsters, "they are only monks. Of what account are they? Who will trouble themselves about them?"

On July 2d, the feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin, Father Leonard was released for a short time, as his friends had purchased permission for him to say Mass. The courageous pastor, in an address to his flock, extolled the virtues of our blessed Lady, and when concluding urged them to remain firm in the faith of their fathers. This purchased for him increased tortures on his return to the prison.

John Van Omal, the apostate canon of Liège, was the hero of another of these pretended executions. He was more than a Judas, for he was not only a traitor, but it was through his efforts that the execution finally took place. Enraged at having been foiled in his attack on Bommel, (July 3d,) he determined to revenge himself on the priests and religious of Gorcum. At that time the liberation of the captives was spoken of, as some members of the town council had been sent to the Prince of Orange to beg him to release them. The apostate, after reflecting upon the possibility of their release, concluded that he had better take them to the Count of Marck, who was at his headquarters in Briel. In the middle of the night of the 5th, they were hurried, scarcely clothed and without food, on board of a vessel, which rapidly descended the Meuse. They reached Dordrecht at nine o'clock, and Van Omal had an opportunity to satisfy his malice by exposing the venerable band to the idle curiosity and unfeeling taunts of a Calvinistic mob. They arrived at Briel in the evening, but were detained on board the vessel all night, so that the news of their coining might be well known and their foes properly prepared to torture them. On the morning of the 7th, the count, who esteemed himself particularly fortunate in having these poor monks and religious to torment, ordered them to march in procession through the town; he chose for himself a most unenviable position, that of riding behind his unfortunate prisoners, with a huge whip, and unfeelingly beating them as they made their way through the throngs of infuriated people. That nothing should be wanting to this humiliating scene, he commanded the martyrs to sing: a Te Deum was first intoned, and then a Salve Regina. He sought to turn them into ridicule; but their heroism made them sublime.

The afternoon of the 7th and the following morning were taken up by discussions with the ministers in the presence of the count. The generous soldiers of Christ sustained their belief firmly and with dignity; they bore witness particularly to the dogma of the eucharist, and to the supremacy of the Roman pontiff. "Renounce the pope," said they to Father Leonard, "or you will hang." "How," answered he, "how can you contradict yourselves in this way? You are always proclaiming that you wish for religious liberty, and that no one has the right to prevent the exercise of your worship. And now you desire to force me to deny my faith! It is better for me to die than to be untrue to my conscience."

However, a letter came from Gorcum, in which William of Nassau ordered the clauses of the convention of June 26th to be strictly observed in regard to the prisoners. This, of course, only exasperated the Count of Marck, who saw that his prey might escape him. As he was going to bed, after one of the orgies which were habitual with him, he cast his eyes again over the note of the Prince of Orange. He then for the first time perceived that Brandt had sent him only a copy of the order, and had preserved the original. This served as a pretext for a display of his amiable temper, and he declared that he was master of the place, and that it was high time for it to be known; an order was issued at once to take the prisoners and conduct them to Ten Rugge, [Footnote 15] a convent which he had sacked when he first captured Briel. The torture began at about two o'clock in the morning of Wednesday, the 9th of July; it was accompanied by shameful outrages which we prefer to pass over in silence. Their captivity had lasted twelve days, of which nine were passed at Gorcum.

[Footnote 15: The Catholics of Holland have recently repurchased this stolen convent for 16,000 florins. It will soon be a place of pilgrimage for the pious people of Holland and Belgium.]

Of the nineteen prisoners who were taken from that city, only sixteen suffered death. Three priests and religious filled the gaps in their noble band. "A mysterious judgment of Providence, of which there is more than one example in the history of the martyrs. There were nineteen called to martyrdom, and the defection of some did not prevent the number being preserved to the end." (R. F. Cahier, SJ.) We have mentioned two of these unhappy deserters, whom God deigned to lead back to himself; the third entered the service of the Count of Marck, and was hung three months after for stealing. But apostasy did not always preserve life, for we read that the curé of Maasdam was put to death eight days after the martyrs, although he had renounced the papacy.

William of Marck at last received his reward from a just Providence; he was bitten by one of his dogs, and died in the most horrible agony, amid shrieks of rage and despair. It is a general law; the Neros are plunged in the depths of shame and despair, while martyrs ascend to their eternal glory. Eighteen centuries after his crucifixion, Peter receives the honors of a triumph such as kings have never had; three centuries after their torment, the nineteen martyrs of Gorcum are venerated in every corner of the earth where Christianity is known.

We present to our readers the names of these martyrs: Fathers Nicholas Pieck, superior of the Franciscans; Jerome Werdt; Thierry Van Emden; N. Janssen; Willehad Danus, a venerable old man of ninety years who did not cease repeating Deo Gratias during the twelve days of his confinement; Antony Werdt; Godfrey Mervel; Antony Hoornaer; Francis de Roye, who was scarcely twenty-four years of age, being the youngest of the martyrs; Cornelius Wyk, and Peter Assche. The foregoing were all Friars Minor. The Dominicans had a representative in the person of Father John, of the province of Cologne, who was captured while going to baptize an infant. Father Adrian Beek and his curate, F. James Lacops, were seized on the night of the seventh or morning of the eighth of July and sent to Briel, where they joined those who had come from Gorcum; they were both Premonstrants. There was a canon of St. Augustine, John Oosterwyk, who was directing a convent of the order at Gorcum. {82} When he heard that his own convent (that of Ten Rugge, the place of martyrdom) was sacked and the religious put to death, he exclaimed, "Oh may our Lord deign to grant that I may die as they have!" How exactly was his prayer granted! The following were seculars: Leonard Vechel; Nicholas Van Peppel; Godfrey Van Duynen, a doctor of theology and formerly rector of the university of Paris; he had merited by his pure life the crown of martyrdom that he received when more than seventy years of age; and, lastly, Andrew Wouters, who was taken near Dordrecht, and who was the third substitute for those who shrank from the trying ordeal.

We are not astonished that God by miracles, and the holy church by her veneration, has made this episode of the religious persecution of the Netherlands so prominent. If we will but reflect, it offers to us the most precious teaching; it presents one of those striking proofs which are sure to convince the good sense of the people. A cause which succeeds by such crimes as this is already judged; we are not called upon to condemn it. And if this is the cause of a "reformed religion," what need has any honest man of any further arguments to convince him of its error? Was Christianity established in the Roman empire by overturning the government and giving up its inoffensive citizens to pillage, to outrage, and to murder? Does the "liberty of conscience" preached by the "reform" resemble the liberty that the church asked of the Caesars, and which she is asking of Protestant governments today? The champions of this modern "liberty" imposed their doctrines upon unwilling people at the point of the sword, while its opponents gave their blood in defence of their religious rights. In countries where Protestantism did not maintain itself by an unrelenting despotism, the people eagerly returned to the faith of their fathers, the very violence of the sects causing a healthful reaction. [Footnote 16] And this was also the case with the greater part of the provinces of the Netherlands, which gladly threw off the yoke of William of Orange and returned to their former allegiance—an example of a wavering faith being revived by the lawlessness of its opponents. The sectaries retained only seven of the seventeen provinces, now known as Holland, and which were inundated with the blood of faithful Catholic priests. The martyrs of Gorcum were only a little band of this vast army of Jesus Christ. In the year 1572, there were more martyrs in the Low Countries than in all the preceding centuries together: the cradle of the republic of Holland floated in a sea of Catholic blood.

[Footnote 16: "France," says a Protestant historian, "after having been almost reformed, found herself, in the result, Roman Catholic. The sword of her princes, cast into the scale, caused it to incline in favor of Rome. Alas I another sword, that of the reformers themselves, insured the failure of the Reformation." (D'Aubigné, History of the Reformation, vol. i. p. 86.)]

We wonder what learned and sincere Protestants, such as M. Guizot, think in their hearts of these bloody pages of their ancestors? Do they believe in the "compensation" that Mr. Prescott talks about, and that such dreadful crimes were necessary to purchase freedom of conscience, which, after all, is only permission to believe nothing? "Notwithstanding the disorders it caused," says M. Guizot, "and the faults it committed, the reform of the sixteenth century has rendered to modern times two great services." M. Guizot tells the truth; it has. {83} It has given to the Catholic Church a noble army of martyrs, and confirmed the promise of our Lord to Peter, when he declared "the gates of hell shall not prevail against the church." "It (the reform) reanimated, even among its adversaries, the Christian faith." [Footnote 17] "It has imprinted upon European society a decisive movement toward liberty." [Footnote 18] Liberty for whom and liberty for what? For Calvinistic Holland, it was the liberty of civil war, the liberty to rob unprotected convents, the liberty to circulate immoral books, the liberty to follow licentious desires, to desecrate the churches, and, above all, the liberty to persecute the adherents of Catholicism.

[Footnote 17: We are at a loss to discover M. Guizot's authority for this assertion. Erasmus, one of the most learned men of the sixteenth century, says: "Those whom I had known to be pure, full of candor and simplicity, these same persons have I seen afterward, when they had gone over to the gospellers, become the most vindictive, impatient, and frivolous; changed, in fact, from men to vipers. . . . Luxury, avarice, and lewdness prevail more among them than among those whom they detest. … I have seen none who have not been made worse by their gospel." (Epist. Tractibus Germaniae Inferioris.) "Our evangelists," says Luther, "are now sevenfold more wicked than they were before the Reformation. In proportion as we hear the gospel, we steal, lie, cheat, gorge, swill, and commit every crime. … The people have learned to despise the word of God." (Luther, Werke, ed. alt. tom. iii. p. 519.)]

[Footnote 18: L'Eglise et la Société Chrétiennes en 1861. Deuxieme édit. p. 8.]

Error must necessarily persecute, for this is the only way in which it can predominate; it never feels sufficiently protected against the truth over which it has obtained a temporary triumph. It is first the tyranny of the sword, and then the tyranny of the law. Public opinion has long been imposed upon by followers of the "reform," for they have cried so lustily for religious freedom and liberty of conscience that few have taken the trouble to ascertain the fact that their acts have invariably belied their words. But history, which has been made an accomplice to this delusion, is now effectually unmasking it. If we attribute the introduction of religious toleration to Protestantism, it is not because it has practised it, but because it has made it necessary. Truth has tolerated error, while error has continually sought to exterminate the truth. The principle of religious toleration was introduced by Catholic governments, where heresy triumphed; as in England, Sweden, and Holland, the most severe laws were enacted against the former faith, laws so cruel that we can say they were written in blood, and that the church has been for the past three centuries in a state of martyrdom in those countries. We shall notice briefly some of the enactments of Holland; but, before we do so, we will briefly refute a sophism by which the Protestants attempt to palliate their atrocities. The history of Protestantism is so constituted that, before any question can be discussed, it is necessary to remove a number of objections due either to ignorance or prejudice.

Religious intolerance, say they, was a characteristic feature of the people of the middle ages. The church held its authority to be a fundamental principle, and, seeing this put in danger, it forgot the rights of liberty and used force and the arm of civil power to enforce it dogmas. On the other hand, after liberty conquered its rights, it unfortunately went beyond its doctrines, and even embraced the opposite principle. Thus Christians persecuted each other, until the progress of society led them to mutual respect. But the illogical position of Protestantism is apparent: it begins a war in the name of religious liberty, and finishes by putting the church in a state of siege! The church was, at least, consistent, for she never said that men were free to deny their Maker and adopt a religion of their own brain or that they possessed an imprescriptible right to preach and disseminate false doctrine. {84} An illustrious bishop who lives now among the children of the reformation, lately showed them on the forehead of their mother this sign of contradiction, and defended the honorable consistency which exists between the doctrines and the acts of the church. "The church distinctly holds that society, as well as the family, has its duties to Jesus Christ, and that God is equally the Master and Lord of man, regarded as an isolated individual, as of man in social relations with his fellows. She looks back with joy upon the times when, seeing her liberty protected, she became the inspirer of the Christian republic. … But, if she has thankfully received the protection of the sword which vindicated her justice, and shielded her weakness when she was forced upon the defensive, she has never wished it to be used to impose doctrine; faith is not a forced belief, but a free adhesion of both mind and heart to revealed truth. Liberty of conscience, in its proper sense, far from being scouted and condemned by the church, is the essential condition of her spiritual sovereignty."

It was not enough to attempt to overturn the secular throne of the spouse of Christ, the queen of European civilization; it must be put in chains and confined in dungeons. Let us cite some of the proscriptions of the Protestants in Holland:

"1596.—The Jesuits are forbidden to enter the country. Whoever attends their seminaries or universities shall be banished from the country."

"1602.—1st. The police are ordered to arrest any Jesuit, monk, or priest of the papist religion.

"2d. The people are forbidden to take any oath or make any promise to maintain the power of the Pope of Rome. Public or private meetings, sermons, or collections in favor of the papal superstition are prohibited."

Another placard decrees "that every person in holy orders shall leave the country in less than six days, under pain of arrest and being punished as an enemy to the country." It was also forbidden Catholic teachers to instruct their pupils, if either of the parents had been of the reformed religion; and to will any money to any priest, religious, or for any hospital or religious edifice.

This will be sufficient to give our Protestant readers an idea of the liberty of conscience which flourished in Holland. Many endeavor in these times to hide the accusing witness of these acts, and to conceal entirely the manner in which the religion of our forefathers has been overcome; but the day is breaking, the shadows of heresy are fast fading away, and they will not be able to bring them back again. Pius IX., in an allocution in consistory on March 7th, 1853, alluded to the lamentable calamities the church had suffered in the Netherlands. The court of Holland, as it did not desire to acknowledge the odious acts of its former government, sent a letter to the Roman court protesting against these historical allusions. The able minister of the holy see replied to this effrontery in the following language: "The pontifical document only pointed out, in passing, something that is fully told not only by Catholic, but also by Protestant historians, who are interested in giving impartially the true history of the facts." [Footnote 19]

[Footnote 19: Note of his eminence, Cardinal Antonelli. "Ami de la Religion" t. clxi. No. 5552, July 11, 1853.]

There is but one resource for Protestant powers who blush at the intolerance of those who have preceded them, and this is to strike from their laws the unjust proscriptions they have levelled against Catholicism. We owe it to justice to say that, while several Protestant countries, Sweden, for example, retain these unjust enactments, Holland is steadily giving up its former fanaticism, and has fairly entered into the way of religious liberty.

VI.

The persecution of the sword and the law have demonstrated the cruel and hypocritical character of this heresy, at the same time it has proved the vigor and stability of the church.

More than once in these nineteen centuries, it has been attempted to extirpate Catholicism from the heart of a nation, as Russia is trying to do now: We do not know that they have ever succeeded. Even under Mohammedan rule, the church has maintained its existence for more than twelve centuries in Turkey and in Northern Africa; and though it has suffered one continual persecution, and lost innumerable multitudes through martyrdom, it counts to-day in these very countries more than three millions of faithful children. [Footnote 20] In Japan, where missionaries had scarcely time to sow the seeds of Catholic truth before a savage war was waged upon it, its roots are still living, and show after two centuries an unwavering fidelity to the faith. [Footnote 21]

[Footnote 20: See Marcy's Christianity and its Conflicts, p. 405, and Marshall's Christian Missions, vol. ii. p. 24, for a more complete statement of the church in those countries.—ED. C. W. The Bibliothèque de l'Ecole des Chartes for May to June, 1866, contains an interesting analysis of some curious documents on the relations of Popes Gregory VII., Gregory IX., Innocent IV., and Nicholas IV., with the Christians of Africa.]

[Footnote 21: "When some Japanese martyrs were added to the catalogue of saints a few years ago, there were found to be in Japan some thousands of Christians who had preserved their faith without any human ministry solely by the aid of their good guardian angels."—Discourse pronounced by the Holy Father on the Promulgation of the Decree relative to the Beatification, of the 205 Martyrs of Japan, April 30, 1867.]

Heresy, inspired with the same fury as paganism and Islamism, has exhausted every resource to destroy the ancient faith: the young and flourishing churches of England and Holland proclaim its failure. The Catholics have vanquished by faith those who overcame them by force; the blood of martyrs is always the seed of its liberty and life. Three centuries have passed, and God, through his vicar, pronounces the word of resurrection: Puella, tibi dico, surge. And she has risen, weak, but glorious and full of hope; her fair countenance again shines over the land of St. Boniface and St. Willibrord, making even heretics tremble at her marvellous life. Poor fanatics! You said formerly, "Renounce the pope, or you will be hung;" but how has God and the children of those martyrs revenged your cruelty! The pope yet rules at Rome; he appoints bishops in your cities to govern your sees; he places your victims on the altar; your fellow-citizens venerate these victims. The hour of the complete return of Holland to Christianity cannot be much longer delayed. The canonization of the martyrs of Gorcum is an additional element of strength for Catholics, while it must cause the most bigoted of its opponents to reflect upon the failure of Protestantism to overthrow "the abominations of popery." "When Rome," says the great bishop of Poitiers—"when Rome glorifies the saints of heaven, she never fails to multiply the saints of earth."

Carlyle's Shooting Niagara.

Of the many expressive words with which the English language has been endowed few are more forcible than the little term "bosh." For a long time we have in vain tried to discover a synonym with which to relieve it from too frequent use, and we think that Carlyle's last "essay" has gratified our patience. Thomas Carlyle is what the world sometimes calls a philosopher. No one can deny that he is a man of excellent abilities. Having been an extraordinarily close observer of men and things from his earliest childhood—and he is now seventy-two years old—and having, from his first appearance in Brewster's Encyclopaedia, gone through a literary career of forty-four years with extraordinary success, the world is naturally interested in any criticism he may see fit to pronounce upon it. He will be judged, however, as severely as he judges, by those who have placed him upon the little pedestal from which he looks down. People are anxious to know whether in his old age he ought to be dethroned. Naturally of a serious and taciturn mind, having been buried from his youth amid the works of the most sombre and gloomy of Germany's theorizers, and given ever to solitude and meditation, it was not surprising that his writings ever displayed excessive bitterness, and a distrust of human nature more than Calvinistic; but, when we heard that, in the good old age to which Providence had brought him, he had written his ideas upon the present state of society, we expected to find a little more of kindness and of love of truth than had been displayed by Diogenes Teufelsdröckh, the "Great Censor of the Age." We must regard Shooting Niagara as the résumé of the thoughts of Carlyle's life. Coming out of his solitude, as he tells us, to grapple with the problem of whither democracy is drifting, and realizing, as he does, "that it is not always the part of the infinitesimally small minority of wise men and good citizens to be, silent," we expected, in spite of his modesty, to meet something interesting and profitable. Interested we have been, and so would we be at seeing the convulsions of a shark brought to grief upon the strand. The only profit we have received is the knowledge of how miserably small prejudice can make a great mind. In the present paper Carlyle has used to perfection (?) that curious style for which he has enjoyed celebrity among many—a celebrity obtained pretty much like that of certain metaphysicians, whose obscurity makes some give them credit for profundity. As of two opinions Carlyle always chooses the more uncharitable, so, of two ways of expressing an idea, he invariably adopts the more obscure, intricate, and verbose. In our endeavor to illustrate his position, we have been obliged to select his more plain and simple passages, with a sacrifice very often to the strength of our own opinions, which would have been materially increased had we wished to try the patience of our readers.

Paragraph No. 1 is devoted to a kind of clouding over of the subject matter, in anticipation of the Carlylian thunder to follow. We can see, however, that there are "three altogether new and very considerable achievements lying ahead of us;" and the first is, that Democracy is to complete itself, and run on till each man is "free to follow his own nose, by way of guide-post, in this intricate world." If the length of a man's nose indicates correct perception, and an ordinary power of separating wheat from chaff, then, though Mr. Carlyle's nose may be a post, it must be a very small one. The second "achievement" is the deliquescence and final evaporation of all religions. Such an "achievement" would be wonderful, but how it can be terrible to Mr. Carlyle we do not know; for he can have no concern about future damnation, having been born, it would seem, without a soul. The third "achievement" is, that "everybody shall start free, and everywhere under enlightened popular suffrage. The race shall be to the swift, and the high office shall fall to him who is ablest, if not to do it, at least to get elected for doing it."

This is the "achievement." Of all the cuts which the prescient genius of Carlyle has dealt his gushing heart, this is the "unkindest cut of all." Hinc those tears, hinc those thunders, hinc all that follows. With the exception of a few hundred unimportant digressions, the slashing of these "achievements" is the object of Carlyle's endeavor.

The commencement of paragraph two is characteristic of Mr. Carlyle, who never omits a chance of showing a knowledge of classic lore. He flings at once into your face the terrible Antoninus with the cry, "Who shall change the opinion of these people?" The quoted prophecy was certainly Greek to Mr. Carlyle, as he thinks it proves that what, individually taken, is the human face divine becomes, when collectively regarded, a cheese; and that, when the human head is regarded in the masses, it has about as much intellect as a cocoanut. In some of his paragraphs he tries to prove a point or so, but in this one he plainly shows that he cannot change the opinion of the masses, erroneous though it be. He asserts that delusions seize whole communities without any basis for their notions; he will not admit the possibility of there being even a false one. He asserts that the world reverberates with ideas eagerly made his own by each individual, and affects to believe that the original propagator had no arguments to enforce their adoption; nay, he seems to ignore the existence of the first propounder, and to admit that thoughts are, like cholera or any other pest, inhaled with the air. To be sure, as though he felt the absurdity of his position, he invents a swarmery theory, in which he contends that ideas get into the masses by means of some "commonplace, stupid bee," who gets "inflated into bulk," and forms a swarm merely on account of his bulk. But he forgets that the "bulk" of his specimen-bees, Cleon the Tanner and John of Leyden, was, in the first case, the flattery poured upon the people, and, in the second, a religious fanaticism based upon well-defined though erroneous grounds. Two better specimen-bees for a swarmery theory could not have been selected than the Athenian general and the fierce anabaptist; but in neither case did the people swarm unless for what they regarded as honey. To say the people may err is to say they are not God; but to contend that they are insensible to argument is worse than foolish. Were the laboring classes of England whom Carlyle so severely berates but so many swarmeries, he would be drowned in a horse-pond; but as his theory is false, he will live a little longer—a specimen of prostituted intellect and self-crushed humanity such as many of his school have already presented for the firmer conviction of their opponents. {88} Mr. Carlyle thinks our late war was "the notablest result of swarmery." He calls "the nigger question one of the smallest essentially," and says that "the Almighty Maker has made him (the negro) a servant." With regard to the first of these two opinions, the mass of humanity disagree with the perceptive Thomas; as for the second, not having been present when the ordinance was promulgated, we cannot deny that possibly Mr. Carlyle knows more of the matter than we do. But, when we are told that, "under penalty of Heaven's curse, neither party to this preappointment shall neglect or misdo his duties therein—and it is certain that servantship on the nomadic principle, at the rate of so many shillings a day, cannot be other than misdone"—we thank Providence that all armed men are not Carlyles. Take away the right of the laborer to leave his master when he feels he can better himself, and the earth would become a pandemonium. Lest his position may be mistaken Mr. Carlyle tells us that the relation between master and servant must become like wedlock, which was once nomadic, but is now permanent. To refute such "philosophy" would be to notice the ravings of a madman. In commenting upon the Reform movement, Mr. Carlyle kindly devotes a long passage to prove for us that freedom does not mean liberty to sin, and then informs the English nation that each privilege it has wrung from the monarchy, each extension of the suffrage, was a strap untied from the body of the devil, so that the devil is now an "emancipated gentleman." Having thus shown that to really tie up his satanic majesty for the advent of the millennium we must go back to the good, innocent days of Assuerus and Nabuchodonosor, or, at least, to the pure times of Caligula, Mr. Carlyle opens his third paragraph.

We meet with something refreshing here. Although the extension of the franchise is so evidently nothing but "a calling in of new supplies of blockheadism, gullibility," etc., that Mr. Carlyle thinks his opponents to be men of "finished off and shut up intellect, with whom he would not argue," he feels a "malicious and justice-joy" in the fact of England's being about to take the Niagara-leap, and, after some ferocious experience of the horrors of democracy, having a chance to come up washed of her hypocrisy, "the devil's pickle in which she has been steeped for two hundred years," and thus to show herself regenerated and ready for heaven. The desperate philosopher must have been reminded at this point that most who "shoot" Niagara get smashed, and don't come up regenerated or unregenerated; for he runs out of his way to give a howl at her majesty's ministry for not having rewarded Governor Eyre, and then stops to dabble a little more in England's "hypocrisy," which he calls "the devil's choicest elixir." We fear you misname that curious brine, Mr. Carlyle. You have been drinking of it, and your language is unchoice and simply disgusting. Having taken a lesson in descriptive geography, Mr. Carlyle now opens his fourth paragraph, ready for the consequences of a trip over the falls.

"From plebs to princeps there is no class intrinsically so valuable and recommendable as aristocracy;" and it is to "this body of brave men and beautiful polite women" that Mr. Carlyle looks with imploring, half-despairing eyes for the creation of a new and better England after the inevitable "immortal smash" of the present. {89} He thinks that, in the smash-up of all things English, this class will be alone unsmashed, because no other class dislikes it: "they are looked up to with a vulgarly human admiration, and a spontaneous recognition of their good qualities and good fortune." We are glad to have found one idea upon which we can agree with Mr. Carlyle. We believe that, of all the peoples of Europe, the English will be the last to assert the principle of political equality. Great and influential men are contending for its actuation, and powerful journals are lending it their aid, but their influence is in reality felt more upon the Continent than in England herself. It may be owing to the degrading ignorance to which the masses have been reduced, and it may not; but, with regard to their love of aristocracy, the same may be said as Mr. Carlyle says, though unjustly, perhaps, of England's hypocrisy, "they are saturated with it to the bone." Mr. Carlyle accuses, in most virulent terms, the varnishing proclivities of his countrymen, who, in spite of the agitation of centuries, he thinks, never really rebuild or even repair. But his going to the root of the evil would be somewhat averse to our poor ideas of propriety, if we may judge by his "devil's strap" theory. Yet no one can deny that English politicians, whether tory or liberal, are almost universally varnishers. In the various struggles for ascendency for which reform has been the pretext, very often the conquering power has gone back of its former principles, and been utterly averse to any extension of the rights of the masses. In those cases where through intimidation, such as in the present reform bill, an extension of the franchise has been granted, it has been merely a diminution of the amount of property necessary as qualification. Tories and liberals alike recognize the principle of distinction; they berate each other merely as to its extent. It is not unlikely that, after a few more reform bills have passed, there will be one put through, making twopence the price of the "privilege" of voting; nor is it at all probable that the few friends of manhood suffrage will ever in their lifetime see their theory in practice on English soil. Though we agree, however, with Mr. Carlyle in this one fact, we cannot believe with him that to the aristocracy of England or that of any other land is exclusively confided by God and by reason a country-saving mission. If the selling of one's country to the foreigners, or the betrayal and robbery of one's vassals, constitute, such a mission, then the almost constant history of Italy, Ireland, and Poland will yet set up a new choir of celestial spirits crême de la crême. When Bulwer invented, in his Strange Story, a man composed of body and mind, without soul, people laughed—even those who admired Chateaubriand's idea of man's being constituted of body, soul, and bête. They were wrong, for Bulwer has talked with Carlyle. But, though Mr. Carlyle may have no soul, he has not entirely lost his reason, little though there seems to be of it exercised by him. As if he realized that his blind and unscrupulous devotion to titled aristocracy would be ridiculed by all outside of his ipse dixit crowd of philosophical pigmies, he beats a half-retreat with the dismal "and what if the titled Aristocracy fail us?" But charge again, Carlyle! About face we have him as quick as lightning. To be sure, the masses, "with whatever cry of 'liberty' in their mouths, are inexorably marked by destiny as slaves;" but to save England after her "immortal smash," when titles fail, she will yet rely upon "the unclassed aristocracy by nature, not inconsiderable in numbers, and supreme in faculty, in wisdom, human talent, nobleness, and courage, 'who derive their patent of nobility direct from Almighty God.'"

Forgive us, sweet Thomas! 'Tis true that this sounds, after your last few remarks, like the declaration of one who, on finding it impossible to cross the Atlantic upon a donkey cries out that he'll try a steamship; but yet forgive us for the past—there is about this latter speech a ring of genuine metal. 'Tis ability and courage, and not blood and rank, you depend upon? Alas! our hopes have vanished. The man of ability, of innate worth, is of some avail, but he is not fit to rule until the blood comes in. He must become absorbed into the good old stock; Orson must be Valentinized. Still the cry, "Blood is blood." Of the "industrial hero," Carlyle's aristocrat by nature, a transmogrification must take place ere he can wear the crown or wield the baton, and the change is—new blood for his children, and for himself a new alliance. "If his chivalry is still somewhat in the Orson form, he is already, by intermarriage and otherwise, coming into contact with the aristocracy by title; and by degrees will acquire the fit Valentinism, and other more important advantages there. He cannot do better than unite with this naturally noble aristocracy by title; the industrial noble and this one are brothers born, called and impelled to cooperate and go together." The state cannot be saved unless by aristocracy of blood. Even when it condescends to avail itself of the energies of the plebeian, it must take that plebeian out from the throng of "brutish hobnails," and make of him a titled aristocrat. Only this and nothing more is Carlyle's idea. Even though the collection of titled rulers become emasculated for all good, and for existence are forced to recruit their ranks from the vulgar crowd, each conscript Orson must not only come under the polite influence of Valentine, but must acquire the "other more important advantages" found in his society. If Valentinism is necessary, and the titled gentry are already possessed of the "more important advantages," why not use a born Valentine? The truth is, that Mr. Carlyle regards aristocracy very much as we would a man, and the vulgus very much as we would meat or turnips. Man stands first in the order of mundane creation; but he requires nutriment, and so eats meat and turnips, absorbs them into his blood, becomes stronger, but remains still a man, lord of creation, meat and turnips included. As meat and turnips play their allotted part in relation to man, so has the plebs its task assigned precisely for the benefit of aristocracy. Heaven has placed the irrevocable seal of slavery upon the "nigger," and whoever interferes to remove that seal is as guilty of sacrilege as though he robbed the altar of its victim. As for the white "nigger," the system of "nomadic" servantship by means of which he is not a real "Nigger" is a "misdeed," and—oh! listen, history! "never was, and never will be possible, except for brief periods, among human creatures." To the establishment of these canons of his social system, Mr. Carlyle devotes the greater part of his essay—his fourth, fifth, and sixth paragraphs, and part of the seventh. When England shall have shot Niagara, therefore, her titled aristocracy is to recreate her, and the process is to be the rendering "permanent" the relation between master and servant; then will the devil be again tied up, and then will come the millennium. {91} Well does Mr. Carlyle observe, however, that it will be a long time "before the fool of a world opens its eyes to the tap-root" of its evils, and that, when it "has discovered it, what a puddling, and scolding, and jargoning there will be before the first real step toward remedy is taken!"

Mr. Carlyle's seventh paragraph is taken up with some pretty sound advice upon domestic economy, especially upon the "cheap and nasty" tendency of the times, which leads us to be too often contented with appearances instead of realities. His remarks upon the inferiority of the London brick of modern make are practical, but the moral he draws about the necessity of rebuilding England at once and properly is much more so. It is well, however, for humanity that those Englishmen who wish to rebuild her have a different system of philosophy from that Mr. Carlyle advocates at present. It is well, also, for humanity that, while it is not impossible that an experienced "drill-sergeant," such as he presents in his concluding paragraph as a remedy for our insubordination in all matters, would be a blessing, it is well that heaven has not given him the baton. Mr. Carlyle gave to the world in 1840 his entire political system in his Hero Worship, and it is the same substantially in his present essay. Then he told us that to heroes alone belonged the right to govern society, and that the duty of society was to discover these providential beings and to blindly obey them. Cromwell and Napoleon he presented as types of this heroism. By his many allusions to "Oliver" in his present essay and his two entire paragraphs upon his Industrial and his Practical Hero, we see that he has not yet realized that the very necessity of making and following heroes proves the still greater necessity of raising people to a higher appreciation of the dignity of their manhood. Could the "devil's strap" theory be actuated, there would be in the state a hero, but he would only be great because his people were contemptible. Although Mr. Carlyle promised to say something about the second "achievement" of democracy, namely, the gradual deliquescence and final evaporation of all religions under its baneful influence, he says nothing whatever about God or religion. His illiberality, bitterness, and love of tyranny make us suspect that in his heart there dwells but little love for that which cannot but be liberal, kind, and respectful to the rights of man. Indeed, one finds in this essay an undercurrent of the same nature as the spirit shown in Carlyle's works of middle-life, especially in his Latter-day Pamphlets, namely, individualism, raised to the dignity of a principle of morality and of a one only rule for the safety of mankind.

Most men have an ideal of their own of the beautiful in both the aesthetic and the ethical order. Many men of thought have formed to themselves an ideal of a happy and prosperous country, of a wise and beneficent government, and so has Mr. Carlyle. An ideal is always a key to the workings of the brain and to the aspirations of the heart. Mr. Carlyle's accords precisely with what we can gather of both in his present as well as most all his other writings. In giving it to the public, he puts his seal upon all his philosophical speculations, and shows his opponents that he is game to the end. It is his "La garde meurt, mais ne se rend pas." For the establishment of his Utopia, he sails to the West Indies in company with a "younger son of a duke, of an earl, or of the queen herself." He keeps shy of Jamaica, (and well he may,) and goes to Dominica, an island which is "a sight to kindle a heroic young heart." {92} He gets grandly pathetic, and describes Dominica as "inverted wash-bowl;" its rim for twenty miles up from the sea is fine alluvium, though unwholesome for all except "niggers kept steadily at work;" its upper portion "is salubrious for the Europeans," of whom he puts to dwell 100,000, who are "to keep steadily at their work a million niggers on the lower ranges." He pulls up the cannon which are now going to honeycomb and oxide of iron in the jungle, and plants them firmly on the upper land to guard his niggers and keep off the sacrilegious invader. With tears of mingled joy and regret he cries, "What a kingdom my poor Frederick William, followed by his Frederick, would have made of this inverted wash-bowl; clasped round and lovingly kissed and laved by the beautifulest seas in the world, and beshone by the grandest sun and sky!" This, then, is the end for which Carlyle has lived seventy-two years; this is what he has learned by fifty years' study of history and political economy! Three wise men of Gotham once went to sea in a tub and came to grief therein. Carlyle might imitate their example, and, bidding adieu to the "brutish hobnails" whom he is powerless to regenerate, go out as far as he would: he could never be so much at sea as he was when he penned this remarkable essay.

Sayings Of The Fathers Of The Desert.

Abbot Alois said: "Unless a man say in his heart, 'Only God and I are in this world,' he will not find rest."

Abbot Hyperchius said: "He is really wise who teaches others by his deeds, and not by his words."

Abbot Moses said: "When the hand of the Lord slew the first-born of Egypt, there was no house in that land in which there lay not one dead."

The father answered: "If we look at our own sins, we will not see the sins of others. It is foolishness for a man having a corpse in his own house to leave it and go to weep over that of his neighbor."

An Old Guide to Good Manners.

In the first number of The Catholic World we gave our readers some account of the great Christian school of Alexandria in the time of St. Clement, the philosopher. The article, borrowed from The Dublin Review, sketched the corrupt, luxurious, and effeminate society of the Egyptian metropolis—that gay, bustling, frivolous city which was to the old Eastern world what Paris now is to the continent of Europe—and showed how St. Clement thought it well worth his while to spare an occasional hour from the discussions of philosophy and dogma, and the definition of a code of Christian ethics, to rebuke the scandalous luxury of dandies and gourmands, and the follies of fashionable ladies. It would have been but a meagre code of ethics, indeed, which had overlooked the busy trifles that made up so much of the life of Alexandrian gentlefolks. The teacher who would form a better school of morality could not confine himself to the church and the market-place. He must enter the bath and the banquet-hall, the shops of the silk merchant, the jeweller, and the perfumer. He must touch with sharp hand little things which are only foolishness to us, but, to the pagan society of Egypt, made up a large part of the sum of human existence. All this St. Clement did, and the substance, if not the words, of his directions to the flock has come down to us in the pages of his Instructor.

It is a curious picture which he gives us of Alexandrian manners; but we question, after all, if much of what he says will not apply pretty well to our own day. He begins with the diet. This, he remarks, ought to be "simple, truly plain, suiting precisely simple and artless children." He had no faith in the fattening of men as one fattens hogs and turkeys. If he had lived in the days of prize-fights and rowing-matches, he would have inveighed against the processes of "training," and looked with no favor upon a bruiser or a boatman getting himself into condition with raw beef-steaks and profuse sweating. Growth, and health, and right strength, says the venerable father, come of lightness of body and a good digestion; he will have none of the "strength that is wrong or dangerous, and wretched, as is that of athletes, produced by compulsory feeding." Cookery is an "unhappy art," and that of making pastry is a "useless" one. He points the finger of scorn at the gluttons who "are not ashamed to sing the praises of their delicacies," and in, their greed and solicitude seem absolutely to sweep the world with a drag-net to gratify their luxurious tastes. They give themselves "great trouble to get lampreys in the straits of Sicily, the eels of the Meander, and the kids found in Melos, and the mullets in Sciathus, and the muscles of Pelorus, the oysters of Abydos, not omitting the sprats found in Lipara, and the Mantinican turnip; and, furthermore, the beet-root that grows among the Ascraeans; they seek out the cockles of Methymna, the turbots of Attica, and the thrushes of Daphnis, and the reddish-brown dried figs, on account of which the ill-starred Persian marched into Greece with five hundred thousand men. {94} Besides these they purchase birds from Phasis, the Egyptian snipes, and the Median pea-fowl. Altering these by means of condiments, the gluttons gape for the sauces; and they wear away their whole life at the pestle and mortar, surrounded with the sound of hissing frying-pans." Do we not feel a little ashamed at reading this? Are we so much better than the gluttons of Egypt? They sent to Abydos for their oysters, and we export the shell-fish of Norfolk and Saddle Rock to all parts of the country. If they yearned for snipe, so do we. If they had a hankering after eel pot-pies, pray, is the taste unknown to ourselves? Was the Median pea-fowl, we wonder, a more costly luxury than woodcock, or the Sicilian lamprey worse than Spanish mackerel? Perhaps we do not quite "sweep the world with a drag-net;" but that is only because we should gain nothing by it. We may not ransack the four quarters of the globe for unknown viands; but we lay distant climes and far-off years, under contribution to furnish us with rare and luscious wines. The good saint, had he lived in the nineteenth century, would have delighted in Graham bread; for he blames his countrymen for "emasculating their bread by straining off the nourishing part of the grain." He inveighs against "sweetmeats, and honey-cakes, and sugar-plums," and a multitude of desserts, and suppers where there is naught but "pots and pouring of sauce, and drink, and delicacies, and smoke" The smoke to which he alludes is undoubtedly the fume of the "hissing frying-pans," but it almost seems as if he were describing a modern carouse with punch and tobacco. The properest articles of food are those which are fit for immediate use without fire. The apostle Matthew ate "seeds, and nuts, and vegetables, without flesh;" and St. John the Baptist, "who carried temperance to the extreme, ate locusts and wild honey." St. Clement does not give us his authority for the statement regarding St. Matthew's diet; nor, it may be objected, is there any evidence that the Baptist did not cook his locusts before he fed upon them. In some parts of the East, where locusts are still regarded as a delicacy, they are prepared for the table by pulling off the legs and wings, and frying the bodies in oil. But Clement's object was not so much to prescribe a bill of fare as to teach men of gluttonous proclivities how to emancipate themselves from the thraldom of that "most lickerish demon," whom he calls "the Belly-demon, and the worst and most abandoned of demons." First of all, we must guard against "those articles of food which persuade us to eat when we are not hungry, bewitching the appetite." (How he would have shuddered at a modern grand dinner, with sherry-and-bitters first to whet the palate; then three or four raw oysters, just to give a relish to the soup, the fish, and the entrées; and in the middle of the repast a sherbet, or a Roman punch, to wipe out the taste of all that had gone before, and give strength for a few more courses of meat!) Then, being naturally hungry, he says; let us eat the simplest kind of food; bulbs, (we hope he does not mean onions,) olives, certain herbs, milk, cheese, fruits, all kinds of cooked food without sauces, and, if we must have flesh, let it be roast rather than boiled.

Wine, of course, ought to be taken in moderation, if it is taken at all; and it is well to mix it always with water, and not to drink it during the heat of the day, when the blood is already warm enough, but to wait until the cool of the evening. {95} Even water, however, must be drunk sparingly, "so that the food may not be drowned, but ground down in order to digestion." What a disgusting picture the holy philosopher draws of those "miserable wretches whose life is nothing but revel, debauchery, bath, excess, idleness, drink!" "You may see some of them, half-drunk, staggering, with crowns round their necks like wine-jars, vomiting drink on one another in the name of good-fellowship; and others, full of the effects of their debauch, dirty, pale in the face, and still, above yesterday's bout, pouring another bout to last till next morning." Moreover, he entirely disapproves of importing wines. If one must drink, the product of one's native vines ought to suffice. "There are the fragrant Thasian wine, and the pleasant-breathing Lesbian, and a sweet Cretan wine, and sweet Syracusan wine, and Medusian and Egyptian wine, and the insular Naxian, the highly perfumed and flavored, another wine of the land of Italy. These are many names, but for the temperate drinker one wine suffices."

St. Clement concerns himself not only with what people ought to eat and drink, but with how they ought to eat and drink it. The chief thing necessary at table is temperance; the next is good manners. We remember to have had the pleasure and profit of reading once a modern hand-book of etiquette which abounded in the most amazing instructions for gentlemen and ladies at their meals. When you go to a dinner party, it said, do not pick your teeth much at table. Do not breathe hard over your beef. Don't snort while you are eating. Don't make a disgusting noise with your lips while taking in soup. And don't do twenty other horrible things which no gentleman or lady would any more have thought of doing than of standing up on their chairs or jumping upon the table. But St. Clement's directions for polite behavior show that worse things than these were in vogue in those beastly old days. He pours out words of indignation and contempt upon those 'gluttonous feasters who raise themselves from the couches on which the ancients used to recline at their banquets, stretch out their necks, and all but pitch their faces into the dishes "that they may catch the wandering steam by breathing in it." They grab every minute at the sauce; they besmear their hands with condiments; they cram themselves ravenously—in such a hurry that both jaws are stuffed out at once, the veins about the face are raised, and the perspiration runs all over as they pant and are tightened with their insatiable greed.

Then about drinking. In this, too, the old Alexandrians must have had some queer ways. "We are to drink without contortions of the face," says the saint, "not greedily grasping the cup, nor, before drinking, making the eyes roll with unseemly motion; nor from intemperance are we to drain the cup at a draught; nor besprinkle the chin, nor splash the garments while gulping down all the liquor at once—our face all but filling the bowl, and drowned in it. For the gurgling occasioned by the drink rushing with violence, and by its being drawn in with a great deal of breath, as if it were being poured into an earthenware vessel, while the throat makes a noise through the rapidity of ingurgitation, is a shameful and unseemly spectacle of intemperance. … Do not haste to mischief, my friend. Your drink is not being taken from you. Be not eager to burst by draining it down with gaping throat." {96} Sad to say, even the women were addicted to "revelling in luxurious riot," and "drawing hiccups like men." It used to be the fashion for ladies to drink out of alabaster vessels with narrow mouths—quite too narrow, Clement complains and, to get at the liquor, they had to throw their heads back so far as to bare their necks in a very unseemly manner to their male boon companions, and so pour the wine down their throats. This custom the saint strenuously condemns. It was adopted because the women were afraid of widening their mouths and so spoiling their beauty, if they rent their lips apart by stretching them on broad drinking-cups.

These drinking-cups themselves, and much other furniture of the table, were causes of offence in the good father's eyes, and he thunders against them with indignant eloquence, as marks of the shameless luxury and extravagance which pervaded the daily life of the richer classes. The use of cups made of silver and gold, and of others inlaid with precious stones, is out of place, he declares, being only a deception of the vision. For, if you pour any warm liquid into them, they become so hot that you cannot touch them, and, if you pour in anything cold, the material changes its quality, injuring the mixture. St. Clement was right. Of jewelled drinking-vessels we freely confess that we have no personal knowledge; but we have a very distinct and painful recollection of certain silver mugs and silver-gilt goblets which used always to be given to children by their god-parents, and from which the unfortunate youngsters were forced to drink until, say, they were old enough to leave boarding-school. How many a time have we not longed in our boyhood to exchange the uneasy gentility of a chased silver cup for the plain comfort of a good, honest tumbler of greenish pressed glass! How hot those dreadful cups used to be when filled with a vile, weak compound known in the nursery as tea! How they used to hide the refreshing sparkle of the clear, cold water in summer, and the beautiful color of the harmless decoctions, flavored with currant jelly or other delicacies, which were allowed us on rare occasions of festivity! St. Clement was right; they were out of place and a deception of the vision. But there was many a vessel on the Alexandrian tables, besides the drinking-cups of silver, and gold, and alabaster, which shocked this fearless censor of manners and morals. Away, he cries, with Theracleian cups and Antigonides, and Canthari, and goblets, and limpet-shaped cups, and the endless forms of drinking-vessels, and wine-coolers and wine-pourers also. Away with the elaborate vanity of chased glass vessels, more liable to break on account of the art, and teaching us to fear while we drink. Ah! had he seen a Christian dinner-party in the nineteenth century, with the delicately cut wine-glasses, slim of stem, fragile as an eggshell, scarcely safe to touch; the claret-jugs of Bohemian ware, elaborately ornamented and hardly less costly than gold; the curiously contrived pitchers for icing champagne; the decanters, the water-flagons, the decorated goblets, and all the other glass and china ware, what would good St. Clement have said? Many other things are there which he reprehends among the apparatus of the banquet, and of these some we have assuredly copied or retained, while of others we can only conjecture the nature and uses. {97} There were silver couches, and pans and vinegar saucers, and trenchers and bowls, and vessels of silver, and gold, and easily cleft cedar, and thyme-wood, and ebony, and tripods fashioned of ivory, and couches with silver feet and inlaid with ivory, and folding-doors of beds studded with gold and variegated with tortoise-shell, and bedclothes of purple and other colors difficult to produce. And let no one wonder that he should enumerate bedclothes among the objectionable furniture of a dining-room. It must be remembered that in those gluttonous old times people took their meals not sitting on chairs, but reclining on couches, so that it would hardly be out of the way to say that they breakfasted, and dined, and supped in bed. They used to eat and drink so much that this attitude was perhaps, on the whole, the most convenient for them. Among the other blamable luxuries which he enumerates are ivory-handled knives. The basins in which it was customary to wash the feet and hands before meals ought to be of no better material than common potter's ware. You can get off the dirt just as well in a cheap earthen washbowl, says the saint, as in one of price; the Lord did not bring down a silver foot-bath from heaven.

Music at feasts is an abomination to be carefully shunned, and a comic song is unworthy of a Christian gentleman, for "burlesque singing is the boon companion of drunkenness." If people occupy their time with "pipes and psalteries, and Egyptian clapping of hands," they become, by degrees, quite intractable, and even descend so low as to "beat on cymbals and drums, and make a noise on the instruments of delusion." We must be on our guard against whatever pleasure effeminates the soul by tickling the eye or the ear, and so must shun "the licentious and mischievous art of music," which disturbs the mind and corrupts the morals. Grave, temperate, and modest music may, indeed, be permitted, but "liquid" strains and "chromatic harmonies" are only for immodest revels. All which shows that in Clement's time there must have been a wickedness associated with music which that glorious art has now happily lost. The psalmist, it is true, exhorts us to praise the Lord in the sound of the trumpet, with the psaltery, the lyre, the timbrel and dance, the chords, and the organ, and the clashing cymbals; but the Alexandrian philosopher interprets all this passage symbolically. The trumpet to which King David refers is the blast which shall wake the dead on the last day. The lyre is the mouth struck by the spirit. The timbrel and dance are the church "meditating on the resurrection of the dead in the resounding skin." Our body is the organ; its nerves are the strings by which it has received harmonious tension; and the clashing cymbal is the tongue, resounding with the pulsations of the mouth. Reading St. Clement's instructions, with no light by which to interpret them, except the bare words of the text itself, it would seem to be but a solemn and joyless life which he inculcated a perpetual Puritan Sunday—than, which, probably, nothing more doleful was ever imagined of man. But we must remember that he lived in an age of ineffable vileness. Amusements, the most innocent in themselves, were the recognized cloaks or accompaniments of horrible deeds of licentiousness. The employment of certain kinds of music at banquets naturally suggested the criminal excesses with which such music was ordinarily associated. It was like meats offered to idols. Christians were bound to shun it, not because it was bad, but because it had been dedicated to bad uses. So was it also with burlesque singing. {98} The songs were not only comical, but wicked. And it is in pretty much the same sense that we must understand the saint's curious chapter on laughing, in which he rebukes ludicrous remarks, buffoonery, and "waggery," and declares that "imitators of ludicrous sensations" (mimics) ought to be driven out of good society. It is disgraceful to travesty speech, which is the most precious of human endowments, though pleasantry is allowable, provided laughter be kept within bounds. But we ought not to laugh in the presence of elderly persons or others to whom we owe respect, unless they indulge in pleasantries for our amusement; and women and children ought to be especially careful not to laugh too much, lest they slip into scandal. It is best to confine ourselves to a gentle smile, which our author describes as the seemly relaxation of the countenance in a harmonious manner, like the relaxation of a musical instrument. "But the discordant relaxation of the countenance in the case of women is called a giggle, and is meretricious laughter; in the case of men a guffaw, and is savage and insulting laughter." Of all such as this, it is needless to say, St. Clement disapproves.

Young men and young women ought never to be seen at banquets, and it is especially disgraceful for an unmarried woman to sit at a feast of men. When you go to a banquet, you ought to keep your eyes downcast, and recline upon your elbow without moving; or, if you sit, don't cross your legs or rest your chin upon your hand. It is vulgar not to bear one's self without support, and a sign of frivolousness to be perpetually shifting the position. Then, when the food is placed upon the table, don't grab at it. What if you are hungry? Curb your appetite: hold back your hand for a moment; take but little at a time; and leave off early, so as to appear, indifferent to what is set before you. If you are an old man, you may now and then, but very rarely, joke and play with the young; but let your jokes have some useful end in view. For instance, suppose you had a very bashful and silent son with you; it would be a most proper and notable good joke to say, "This son of mine is perpetually talking." That would not only be very funny, but it would be an indirect encomium upon the young man's modesty. Old men may talk at table, provided they talk sense. The young should speak briefly and with hesitation when they are called upon; but they ought to wait until they are called at least twice. Don't whistle at table. Don't chirrup. Don't call the waiter by blowing through your fingers. Don't spit often, or clear your throat, or blow your nose. If you have to sneeze or hiccup, don't startle your neighbors with a loud explosion, but do it gently. Don't scrape your teeth till the gums bleed, and don't scratch your ear!

They had a very silly and preposterous custom, those disgusting old pagans, of crowning themselves with flowers, and anointing their head and feet with perfumed ointments, especially on occasion of grand banquets and drinking bouts. St. Clement had no patience with this. Oils may be good, he says, for medicinal and certain other purposes. Flowers are not only pretty, but useful in their proper place. But what is the sense of sticking a chaplet of roses on the top of your head where you can neither see it nor smell it? It is pleasant in spring-time to while away the hours in the blooming meads, surrounded by the perfume of roses and violets and lilies; but no crowns of flowers for my head, if you please! {99} They are too cold; they are too moist. The brain is naturally cold: to add coolness to it is plainly against nature. Then he enumerates the various kinds of ointments made from plants and flowers and other substances. Leave these, he says, to the physicians. To smear the body with them out of pure wanton luxury is disgraceful.

After supper, first thank God: then go to bed. No magnificent bedclothes, no gold-embroidered carpets, no rich purple sleeping-robes, or cloaks of fleece, or thick mantles, or couches softer than sleep itself; no silver-footed couches, savoring of ostentation; none of those lazy contrivances for producing sleep. Neither, on the other hand, is it necessary to imitate Ulysses, who rectified the unevenness of his couch with a stone; or Diomede, who reposed stretched on a wild bull's hide; or Jacob, who slept on the ground with a stone for his pillow. St. Clement was not too severe in his instructions. He taught moderation to all men, leaving the difficulties of asceticism to the few who were called to encounter them. He never forbade comfort, but only rebuked luxury. Our beds, he says, ought to be simple and frugal, but they ought to keep us cool in summer and warm in winter. Those abominable inventions called feather-beds, which let the body "fall down as into a yawning hollow," he stigmatizes with deserved contempt. "For they are not convenient for sleepers turning in them, on account of the bed rising into a hill on either side of the body. Nor are they suitable for the digestion of the food, but rather for burning it up, and so destroying the nutriment." Who that has groaned through a restless night on one of those vile things—we were going to say, tossed through the night, but one can't toss in a feather-bed—has been half-suffocated by the stuffy smell of the feathers, and oppressed in his dreams by the surging hills of bedding which threaten to engulf him on either hand like the billows of some horrible sea, will not thank good, sensible St. Clement for setting his face against them, and wonder how they have survived to the present time? The Alexandrian philosopher knew how to make a good bed as well as the most fashionable of modern upholsterers. It ought to be moderately soft, yet not receive too readily the impress of the body. It ought to be smooth and level, so that one can turn over easily. But the reason he gives for this direction is rather comical: the bed is a sort of nocturnal gymnasium, on which the sleeper may digest his food by frequent rollings and tumblings in his dreams.

The couch ought not to be elaborately carved, and the feet of it ought to be smooth and plain. The reason for this is not only the avoidance of luxury; but "elaborate turnings form occasionally paths for creeping things, which twine themselves about the mouldings and do not slip off."

In speaking of dress, St. Clement gives free rein to his indignation at the folly and extravagance of both men and women, and points his remarks with many a shaft of keen wit and sallies of dry humor. Of course, he says, we must have clothes, but we require them as a protection for the body, not as mere ornaments to attract notice and inflame greedy eyes. Nor is there any good reason why the garments of women should differ from those of men. At the utmost, women may be permitted the use of softer textures, provided they wear them not too thin and curiously woven. {100} A silk dress is the mark of a weak mind. Dyed garments are silly and extravagant; and are they not, after all, offences against truth? Sardian, olive, rose-colored, green, scarlet, and ten thousand other dyes—pray, of what use are they? Does the color make any difference in the warmth of the robe? And, besides, the dye rots the stuff, and makes it wear out sooner. A good Christian who is pure within ought to be clad in spotless white. Flowered and embroidered clothing, cunningly wrought with gold, and figures of beasts, and elaborate tracery, "and that saffron-colored robe dipped in ointment, and these costly and many-colored garments of flaring membranes," are not for the children of the church. Let us weave for ourselves the fleece of the sheep which God created for us, but let us not be as silly as sheep. Beauty of character shows itself best when it is not enveloped in ostentatious fooleries. When St. Clement comes to particulars, especially in speaking of the dress of women, it almost seems as if he were pointing at the fashions of the nineteenth century. The modern fondness for mauve, and the various other shades of purple, is nothing new. The same colors seem to have been "the style" in the year 200. "Would it were possible," exclaims the saint, "to abolish purple in dress! The women will wear nothing else; and in truth, so crazy have they gone over these stupid and luxurious purples, that, in the language of the poet, purple death has seized them!" So we see that the good father was not above making a pun. He enumerates some of the articles of apparel—tunics, cloaks, and garments, with long and obscure names, about which the fine ladies of Alexandria were perpetually "in a flutter;" and it is rather startling to encounter in the list—what think you? Why, nothing less than the peplum, so dear to the hearts of women in 1867. Female extravagance in coverings for the feet also seems to have been as rife in ancient Egypt as it is in modern Paris or New-York. He condemns the use of sandals decorated with gold, and curiously studded on the soles with "winding rows" of nails, or ornamented with amorous carvings and jewelled devices. Attic and Sicyonian half-boots, and Persian and Tyrrhenian buskins, are also to be avoided. Men had better go barefoot unless necessity prevents, but it is not suitable for a woman to show her naked foot; "besides, woman is a tender thing, easily hurt." She ought to wear simple white shoes, except on a journey, and then her shoes should be greased.

Our saintly censor devotes an indignant chapter to "the stones which silly women wear fastened to chains and set in necklaces;" and he compares the eagerness with which they rush after glittering jewelry to the senseless attraction which draws children to a blazing fire. He quotes from Aristophanes a whole catalogue of female ornaments:

  "Snoods, fillets, natron, and steel;
   Pumice-stone, band, back-band,
   Back-veil, paint, necklaces,
   Paints for the eyes, soft garment, hair-net, [Footnote 22]
   Girdle, shawl, fine purple border,
   Long robe, tunic, Barathrum, round tunic,
   Ear-pendants, jewelry, ear-rings,
   Mallow-colored cluster-shaped anklets,
   Buckles, clasps, necklets,
   Fetters, seals, chains, rings, powders,
   Bosses, bands, Sardian stones,
   Fans, helicters."

And he cries out, wearied with the enumeration: "I wonder how those who bear such a burden are not worried to death. O foolish trouble! O silly craze for display!" And of what use is it all? It is nothing but art contending against nature, falsehood struggling against truth. If a woman is ugly, she only makes her ugliness more conspicuous by decking herself out with meretricious ornaments. {101} Besides, the custom of "applying things unsuitable to the body as if they were suitable, begets a practice of lying and a habit of falsehood." The sight of an over-dressed woman seems to have affected St. Clement very much as a worthless picture in an elegant frame. "The body of one of these ladies," he exclaims, "would never fetch more than one hundred and fifty dollars; but you may see her wearing a dress that cost two hundred and fifty thousand." We complain of the extravagance of modern belles; but, do they ever spend such enormous sums as that on a single dress? Alexandria, we imagine, must bear away the palm from Newport and Saratoga.

There were particular fashions in jewelry and ornament toward which the saint had a special dislike. Bracelets in the form of a serpent, he calls the manifest badges of the evil one. Golden chains and necklaces are nothing better than fetters. Earrings and ear-drops he forbids as contrary to nature, and he beseeches his female hearers not to have their ears pierced. If you pierce your ears, he says, why not have rings in your noses also? A signet-ring may be worn on the finger, because it is useful for sealing; but no good Christian ought to wear rings for mere ornament. Yet he makes one curious exception to this rule. If a woman have, unfortunately, a dissipated husband, she may adorn herself as much as she can, for the purpose of keeping him at home.

How bitter is the contempt which the philosopher pours out upon the fashionable ladies of the time, who spend their days in the mysterious rites of the toilet, curling their locks, anointing their cheeks, painting their eyes, "mangling, racking, and plastering themselves over with certain compositions, chilling the skin and furrowing the flesh with poisonous cosmetics;" and then in the evening "creeping out to candle-light as out of a hole." Love of display is not the characteristic of a true lady. The woman who gives herself up to finery is worse than one who is addicted to the pleasures of the table and the bottle! She is a lazy housekeeper, sitting like a painted thing to be looked at, not as if made for domestic economy, and she cares a great deal more about getting at her husband's purse-strings than about staying at home with him. And how preposterous is her behavior when she goes abroad. Is she short? she wears cork-soles. Is she tall? she carries her head down on her shoulder. Has she fine teeth? she is always laughing. Has she no flanks? she has something sewed on to her, so that the spectators may exclaim on her fine shape. A little while ago, a mania for yellow hair broke out in Paris, and fashionable ladies had their locks dyed of the popular hue. Well, it appears from St. Clement's discourses that this folly is over sixteen hundred years old. He upbraids the Alexandrian ladies for following the same absurd custom, and asks, in the words of Aristophanes, "What can women do wise or brilliant who sit with hair dyed yellow?" Nor is this the only modern fashion about the hair which was known and condemned in his time. Read this, young ladies: "Additions of other people's hair are entirely to be rejected, and it is a most sacrilegious thing for spurious hair to shade the head, covering the skull with dead locks. For on whom does the priest lay his hand? Whom does he bless? {102} Not the woman decked out, but another's hairs, and through them another head." Chignons, braids, tresses, and all the other wonderful paraphernalia of the hair-dresser's art are condemned as no better than lies, and a shameful defamation of the human head, which, says St. Clement, is truly beautiful. Neither is it allowable to dye gray hairs, or in any other way to conceal the approach of old age. "It is enough for women to protect their locks and bind up their hair simply along the neck with a plain hair-pin, nourishing chaste locks with simple care to true beauty." And then he draws a comical picture of a lady with her hair so elaborately "done up," that she is afraid to touch her head, and dares not go to sleep for fear of pulling down the whole structure.

A man ought to shave his crown, (unless he has curly hair,) but not his chin, because the beard gives "dignity and paternal terror" to the face. The mustache, however, "which is dirtied in eating, is to be cut round, not by the razor, for that were ungenteel, but by a pair of cropping scissors." The practice of shaving was a mark of effeminacy in those days, and it was thought disgraceful for a man to rob himself of the "hairiness" which distinguishes his sex, even as the lion is known by his shaggy mane. So St. Clement is unsparing in his denunciations of the unmanly creatures who "comb themselves and shave themselves with a razor for the sake of fine effect, and arrange their hair at the looking-glass." Manly sports, provided they be pursued for health's sake and not for vainglory, he warmly approves. A sparing use of the gymnasium and an occasional bout at wrestling will do no harm, but rather good; yet, when you wrestle, says the saint, be sure you stand squarely up to your adversary, and try to throw him by main strength, not by trickery and finesse. A game of ball he especially recommends, (who knows but there may have been base-ball clubs in Egypt?) and he mildly suggests that, if a man were to handle the hoe now and then, the labor would not be "ungentlemanly." Pittacus, King of Miletus, set a good example to mankind by grinding at the mill with his own hand; and, if St. Clement were alive now, he might add that Charles V. employed himself in constructing time-pieces, and that notorious savage, Theodoras, Emperor of Abyssinia, passes most of his days making umbrellas. Fishing is a commendable pastime, for it has the example of the apostles in its favor. Another capital exercise for a gentleman is chopping wood. This, we may remark, is said to be the favorite athletic pursuit of the Honorable Horace Greeley.

The daily occupations of women must not be too sedentary, yet neither, on the other hand, ought the gentler sex to be "encouraged in wrestling or running!" Instead of dawdling about the shops of the silk merchant, the goldsmith, and the perfumer, or riding aimlessly about town in litters, just to be admired, the true lady will employ herself in spinning and weaving, and, if necessary, will superintend the cooking. She must not be above turning the mill, or getting her husband a good dinner. She must shake up the beds, reach drink to her husband when he is thirsty, set the table as neatly as possible, and when anything is wanted from the store, let her go for it and fetch it home herself. We fear it is not the fashion, even yet, to follow St. Clement's advice. She ought to keep her face clean, and her glances cast down, and to beware of languishing looks, and "ogling, which is to wink with the eyes," and of a mincing gait.

A gentleman in the street should never walk furiously, nor swagger, nor try to stare people out of countenance; neither when going up-hill ought he to be shoved up by his domestics! He ought not to waste his time in barbers' shops and taverns, babbling nonsense; nor to watch the women who pass by; nor to gamble. He must not kiss his wife in the presence of his servants. If he is a merchant, he must not have two prices for his goods. He must be his own valet. He must wash his own feet, and put on his own shoes.

And so the holy man goes on with much more sage counsel and Christian direction, teaching his flock not only how to be faithful children of the church, but how to be true gentlemen and gentlewomen. The etiquette which he lays down is not based upon the arbitrary and changeable rules of fashion, but upon the fixed principles of morality and good fellowship. We have thought it not amiss to give our readers a specimen of them, partly, indeed, because they show us in such an interesting manner what kind of lives people used to lead in his day, but also because they are full of good lessons and wholesome rebukes for ourselves, and because many of the follies which St. Clement condemned are still flourishing, just as they flourished then, or are newly springing into life after they have been for so many centuries forgotten. Of course, there are many of his rules which are not applicable to us. Many things which he forbade because they were indications or accompaniments of certain sinful practices are no longer wrong, because they have been completely dissevered from their evil associations. But upon the whole, we doubt not that a new edition of St. Clement's Paedagogus, or as we might translate it, "Complete Guide to Politeness," would be vastly more beneficial to the public than any of the hand-books of etiquette which are multiplied by the modern press.

Ran away to Sea.

  A treacherous spirit came up from the sea,
  And passing inland found a boy where he
  Lay underneath the green roof of a tree,
      In the golden summer weather.

  And to the boy it whispered soft and low—
  Come! let us leave this weary land, and go
  Over the seas where the free breezes blow,
      In the golden summer weather.
{104}
  I know green isles in far-off sunny seas,
  Where grow great cocoa-palms and orange-trees,
  And spicy odors perfume every breeze,
      In the golden summer weather.

  There, underneath the ever-glowing skies,
  Gay parrokeets and birds of paradise,
  Make bright the woods with plumes of gorgeous dyes,
      In the golden summer weather.

  And in that land a happy people stay:
  No hateful books perplex them night nor day;
  No cares of business fret their lives away,
      In the golden summer weather.

  But all day long they wander where they please,
  Plucking delicious fruits, that on the trees
  Hang all the year and never know decrease,
      In the golden summer weather.

  Or over flower-enamelled vale and slope
  They chase the silv'ry-footed antelope;
  Or with the pard in manly conflict cope
      In the golden summer weather.

  And in those islands troops of maidens are,
  Whose lovely shapes no foolish fashions mar;
  Eyes black as Night, and brighter than her stars
      In the golden summer weather.

  Earth hath no maidens like them otherwhere;
  With teeth like pearls and wreaths of jetty hair,
  And lips more sweet than tinted syrups are,
      In the golden summer weather.

  Ah! what a life it were to live with them!
  'Twould pass by sweetly as a happy dream:
  The years like days, the days like minutes seem,
      In the golden summer weather.

  Come! let us go! the wind blows fair and free;
  The clouds sail seaward, and to-morrow we
  May see the billows dancing on the sea,
      In the golden summer weather.

  The heavens were bright, the earth was fair to see,
  A thousand birds sang round the boy, but he
  Heard nothing but that spirit from the sea,
      In the golden summer weather.
{105}
  All night, as sleepless on his bed he lay,
  He seemed to hear that treacherous spirit say,
  Come, let us seek those islands far away,
      In the golden summer weather.

  So ere the morning in the east grew red,
  He stole adown the stairs with barefoot tread,
  Unbarred the door with trembling hands, and fled
      In the golden summer weather.

  In the last hour of night the city slept;
  Upon his beat the drowsy watchman stept;
  When like a thief along the streets he crept,
      In the golden summer weather.

  And when the sun brought in the busy day,
  His father's home afar behind him lay,
  And he stood 'mongst the sailors on the quay,
      In the golden summer weather.

  Like sleeping swans, with white wings folded, ride
  The great ships at their moorings, side by side;
  Moving but with the pulses of the tide,
      In the golden summer weather.

  And one is slowly ruffling out her wings
  For flight, as seaward round her bowsprit swings;
  Whilst at the capstan-bars the sailor sings
      In the golden summer weather.

  He is aboard. The wind blows fresh abeam:
  The ship drifts slowly seaward with the stream;
  And soon the land fades from him like a dream,
      In the golden summer weather.

  And if he found those islands far away,
  Or those fair maidens, there is none can say:
  For ship or boy returned not since that day,
      In the golden summer weather.

                                E. YOUNG.

A Royal Nun.

Among the pleasant alleys of Versailles, or under the stately groves of St. Cloud, or in the grand corridors of the Tuileries, might often have been seen, about the year 1773, pacing up and down together in tender and confidential converse, two young maidens in the early bloom of youth, and often by their side would sport a careless, wilful, but engaging child some eight or nine years old. These three young girls were all of royal birth, and bound together by the ties of close relationship; they were the sisters and cousin of a great king; their lineage one of the proudest of the earth; they were all fair to look upon, and all endowed with mental gifts of no mean order. How bright looked their future! Monarchs often sought their hands in marriage, and men speculated on their fate, and wondered which should form the most brilliant alliance. Could the angels who guarded their footsteps have revealed their future, how the wise men of this world would have laughed the prophecy to scorn! Yet above those fair young heads hangs a strange destiny. For one the martyr's palm; the name of another was to echo within the walls of St. Peter, as of her whom the church delighteth to honor; the third was to wear the veil of the religious through dangers and under vicissitudes such as seldom fall to the lot of any woman. Those of whom we speak were these: Clotilde and Elizabeth of France, sisters of Louis XVI., and Louise de Bourbon Condé, their cousin. Louise and Clotilde, almost of the same age, were bound together in close intimacy. We may wonder, now, on what topics their conversation would run. Did they speak of the gayeties of the court; of the round of the giddy dissipation which had, perhaps, reached its culminating point about this period? or were they talking of the last sermon of Père Beauregard, when, with unsparing and apostolic severity, he condemned the fashionable vices of the age? or were they speaking of the cases of distress among the poor who day by day trooped to the house of Mademoiselle, as Louise de Condé was called, and were there succored by her own hands? On some such theme as these latter we may be almost sure that their converse ran. The heart of Clotilde was never given to the world; from her childhood she had yearned for a cloister, and would fain have found herself at the side of her aunt, Madame Louise, who was then prioress of the Carmelites of St. Denis. To the grille of this convent Clotilde, Louise, and Elizabeth would often go; and no doubt it was partly owing to the conversation and example of the holy Carmelite princess that the three girls, placed, as they all were, in most dangerous and difficult positions, not only threaded their way through the maze safely, but became examples of eminent piety and virtue.

The elder of the three friends was Louise, only daughter of Louis Joseph de Bourbon Condé, great-great-grandson of the Great Condé, and son of the Duke de Bourbon, for some time prime minister to Louis XV. He had early chosen the army as his career, and as early won laurels for himself in the Seven Years' War. On one occasion he was entreated by his attendants to withdraw from the heat of the battle. {107} "I never heard," said he, "of such precautions being taken by the Great Condé." His admiration for his glorious ancestor was, indeed, intense, and he devoted himself to the task of writing a history of this great man; for, though an ardent soldier, he was well educated. Men of science and genius gathered round him in his chateau of Chantilly, whither he would retire in the brief intervals of peace. At a very early age the Prince de Condé married Charlotte de Rohan Soubise, a maiden as noble in her character as her birth. She was merciful to the poor, gentle and charitable to all who surrounded her. The marriage was a happy one, but was not destined to last long. The princess died in 1760, leaving behind her a son, the Duke de Bourbon, and Louise Adelaide, of whom we have been speaking.

The little girl, thus left motherless at the age of five years, was consigned to the care of her great-aunt, the abbess of Beaumont les Tours, about sixty leagues from Paris. All the religious assembled to receive the little princess on the day of her arrival, and everything was done to please her. After showing her all the interior of the convent, she was asked where she would like to go. "Oh! take me," cried she, "where there is the most noise." Poor child! she was destined to find her after-life a little too noisy. She next chose to go into the choir while the nuns chanted compline; but before the end of the first psalm whispered to her attendant, "I have had enough." In these peaceful walls her childhood passed away. She grew fond of the convent, and gave every mark of external piety. She was wont to declare afterward that the grace of God had made little interior progress in her heart; nevertheless, a solid foundation of good instruction had been laid, which was hereafter to bear fruit. At twelve years of age she made her first communion, and then returned to Paris to finish her education in a convent there, "to prepare her for the world."

Years fled on, Louise attained womanhood, her brother married one of the Orleans princesses, and a marriage was projected for Louise with the Count d'Artois, afterward Charles X., but political differences caused the match to be broken off. Louise was not destined ever to become Queen of France. The tender friendship which subsisted between her and the Princess Clotilde was now to be broken, in one sense, by their total separation. Clotilde's heart's desire for the religious life was rudely crossed; the daughters of royal houses had less control over their fates then (and perhaps even now) than the meanest peasant in the land. A marriage was "arranged" for Madame Clotilde with the Prince of Piedmont, heir-apparent to the throne of Sardinia. She was but sixteen years of age when she had to leave France and all she loved and clung to, and set out to meet her unknown husband; for she was married by proxy only in Paris, and was received by the Prince of Piedmont at Turin. She was very beautiful, but unfortunately excessively stout, to such a degree that it injured not only her appearance, but her health. At Turin she was welcomed by a vast crowd, but cries of "Che grossa!" ("How fat she is!") struck unpleasantly on her ear. "Be consoled," said the Queen of Sardinia; "when I entered the city, the people cried, 'Che brutta!'" ("How plain she is!") "You find me very stout?" questioned Clotilde, anxiously looking into her husband's face. "I find you adorable," was the graceful and affectionate reply.

Years flew by. Mademoiselle, as Louise was now called, had her own establishment, and presided at royal fêtes given by her father at Chantilly. Thither came once to partake of his hospitality the heir of the throne of all the Russias, travelling, together with his wife, under the incognito of the Comte du Nord. A friendship sprang up between them and Louise de Condé, hereafter to be put to the proof in extraordinary and unforeseen circumstances. Little did they think as they parted within the splendid halls of Chantilly where their next meeting should be.

The license of manners that preceded the Revolution, as the gathering clouds foretell a storm, was principally to be observed in the grossness of the theatre and the corruption of literature. The theatre was a favorite amusement with Louise de Condé, and she took great delight in private theatricals, and frequently played a part. She heard Père Beauregard preach on the subject, and her resolution was instantly taken. A comedy was to be acted next day at Chantilly, but the princess renounced her part. It cost her not a little thus to throw out the arrangements for the fête; but she vanquished all human respect, and thus took the part of God against the world.

It was a turning-point in her life. It may seem to us that it was but a small sacrifice to make; but one grace corresponded to lead on to others, and from that resolution to give up theatrical entertainments Louise dated the commencement of the great spiritual graces and benefits of her after-life. That she was endowed with the courage of her race may be known from the fact that, having sustained by a fall a severe fracture of her leg, she sent for her Italian master to give her a lesson while waiting for the surgeon. This broken leg was destined in her case, as in that of St. Ignatius, to become one of her greatest blessings. She rose up from her bed determined to give herself more entirely to God's service. Naturally of a deeply affectionate disposition, Louise loved her family tenderly, but in an especial manner her only nephew, the Duc d'Enghien, then in his early youth. Day by day did Louise bring the name of this beloved boy before the Mother of Good Counsel, begging her, in her own simple words, to become his mother and protectress, and "never to suffer his faith to perish." We shall see a little later on how this prayer was answered. And now time had passed on, and the Revolution was at hand, and had even begun. After the taking of the Bastile, the Prince de Condé quitted France with all his family, and immediately set himself to organize an army for the defence of Louis XVI. Ordered by the Directory to return to France, he disobeyed, and was instantly stripped of all his vast property. The prince sold all his jewels, and bore his altered fortunes with patience and courage. Meanwhile, the Princess Louise accompanied her father and acted as his secretary. They moved about from place to place, and at Turin she was able to renew the friendship of her youth with Clotilde, who was now Queen of Sardinia, and displayed on her throne a pattern of womanly and saintly virtues. Near the Queen of Sardinia flattery could not subsist. It is recorded of her that she never pronounced a doubtful word, far less the smallest falsehood. Intercourse with this dear friend strengthened in the heart of Louise the earnest desire she had of belonging entirely to God. "I am obliged to take time for prayer from my sleep," she writes to her director. "I cannot do without it. {109} When at table, surrounded with officers, all talking, I pray inwardly." The crime of the 21st of January, 1793, fell like a thunderbolt on the army of Condé; but, rising from his grief, the brave general instantly proclaimed Louis XVII., although that little king, whose piteous story history surely can never outdo, was still being tortured by his savage subjects. The Archbishop of Turin was deputed to escort the terrible news to Queen Clotilde. "Madam," said he, "will your majesty pray for your illustrious brother, especially for his soul?" The terrible truth flashed at once upon her, and, falling on her knees, she exclaimed: "Let us do better still—let us pray for his murderers!" Surely, in the annals of the saints, few words more truly heroic can have been recorded than this impulsive utterance of Clotilde de Bourbon. The active operations of the army commanded by the Prince de Condé made it impossible for the princess to remain any longer at her father's side; she accordingly repaired to Fribourg, a favorite place of refuge for French emigrants. No less than three hundred French priests had found a temporary asylum within its walls, and the services of the church were performed with every possible care and frequency. Among these priests the princess met one, supposed to be one of the exiled French bishops, to whom she was able to give her entire confidence, and from whom she received wise and spiritual advice. The idea of a religious vocation now began to take firm hold of her mind but her director would not let her take any step for two years, wishing in every possible way to test the reality of this call from God. No ordinary obstacles stood in the way of the royal postulant. Times had changed since those when the entrance of Madame Louise, of France, into the Carmelites had been hailed as an especial mark of God's providence over a poor community. Every convent in Europe was now trembling for its safety, and few were willing to open their doors to one bearing the now unfortunate name of Bourbon. About this time, it would seem, the princess was in communication with the Père de Tournely, founder of that Society of the Sacred Heart which was afterward absorbed into the Society of Jesus, and who was earnestly seeking to found a new order for women, and especially at this moment to gather together a community of emigrant French ladies, some of whom had been driven from their convents. The idea naturally presented itself of placing the Princess Louise at the head of such a community, but she shrank from the task. "I should fear," she said, "from the force of custom, the deference that would be paid to what the world calls my rank. The place that I am ambitious of is the last of all. What are the thrones of the universe compared to that last place?" God had other designs for her, and for the projected order an humbler instrument was to be chosen for the foundation-stone of the order of the Sacred Heart; and at this moment the foundress, all unconscious of her fate, was as yet "playing with her dolls." Louise de Condé, determined to enter a poor, obscure convent of Capuchinesses, or religious, following the rule of St. Clare, in Turin, a city which it was then hoped was likely to remain in tranquillity. Before doing so she had obtained her father's consent, and also that of Louis XVIII, whom the emigrant French had proclaimed as their king when the prison-house of the little Louis XVII. had been mercifully opened by death. {110} The emigrants were careful to keep up with their exiled monarch all the forms and traditions which would have surrounded him had he been peaceably sitting on the throne of his fathers. It is worth while to give the princess's own words:

"Sire: It is not at the moment when I am about to have the happiness of consecrating myself to God that I could forget for the first time what I owe to my king. I have for long past felt myself called to the religious state, and I have come to Turin, where the kindness and friendship of the Queen of Sardinia has given me the means to execute my design—a design which has been well examined and reflected upon; but, before its final accomplishment, I supplicate your majesty to deign to give your consent to it. I ask it with the more confidence because I am certain it will not be refused, and that your piety, sire, will cause you to find consolation in seeing a princess of your blood invested with the livery of Jesus Christ. May God, whose infinite mercy I have so wonderfully experienced, hear the prayers I shall constantly make for the reestablishment of the altar and the throne in my unfortunate country. They will be as earnest as the efforts of my relatives for the same object. The desire for the personal happiness of your majesty is equally in my heart. I implore him to be persuaded of it. I am, etc.,

There could be no doubt of the devotion of Louise's family to the cause of Louis XVIII. Her father, brother, and nephew were all under arms for the restoration of his crown, and Delille celebrated the incident in verse:

"You have deeply reflected, my dear cousin, on the step which you have taken. Your father has given his consent. I give mine also, or rather, I give you up to Providence, who requires this sacrifice from me. I will not conceal from you that it is a great one, and it is with deep regret that I give up the hope of seeing you by your virtues become one day an example to my court, and an edification to all my subjects. I have but one consolation, and it is that of thinking that, while the courage and talents of your nearest relations are aiding me to recover the throne of St. Louis, your prayers will draw down the benedictions of the Most High on my cause, and afterward on all my reign. I recommend it to you, and I pray you, my dear cousin, to be well persuaded of my friendship for you.

On the 26th of November, 1798, the Queen of Sardinia took her cousin to the convent, and saw her enter on the mode of life she had so ardently desired for herself, but from which she had been severed. And here Louise began to lead at once a life of hardship and austerity. Earnest in all things by character, she threw herself into the practice of her rule, and became a model to all the novitiates. She counted the months as they passed which should bring her to her profession day; but it was not to be. God saw fit to purify her by many sufferings, by long anxieties, before she should find rest in his house. She was to be the instrument for a great work for his glory, and by many vicissitudes she was to be trained and fitted for it. {111} The French Directory had declared war against Piedmont, the princess's presence endangered the whole of her community, and she hastened to quit their roof and take refuge temporarily at the convent of the Annonciades, from whence, as she was only a boarder, she could fly at any moment; but before leaving her convent she cut off her hair. As a witness to herself, she wrote of the firm resolution she had taken of living for God only. No one but God, she said long afterward, could tell what her sufferings were at having to leave her convent; but she adds: "The graces that God poured upon me in that holy house gave the necessary strength to my soul to bear the long trials which I had to pass through for so many years!" Few recitals are more touching than the sufferings of this poor novice, thus roughly torn away from her beloved convent. Shortly after she took up her abode with the Annonciades, a profession of one of their novices took place, and the ceremony made the poor princess feel her disappointment more bitterly. According to the custom of the order, the novice wore a crown of flowers, and her cell and her bed were both decked with them, and the sight moved Louise de Condé to tears, and, when the novice pronounced her vows, her sobs almost stifled her. She said to herself that she was unworthy to become the spouse of Christ, and therefore these obstacles had arisen; and, humbling herself at the feet of her Lord, she bewailed the follies of her life in the world, of which she took a far harsher view than those did who knew how it had been passed, and she implored him to have mercy on her and others, to attain a perfect resignation to his will.

She had not left her convent too soon. The rapid approach of the French army on Turin obliged her to quit the city and direct her steps toward Switzerland. There she hoped to find a convent of Trappist nuns who would venture to receive her; but, when she had passed Mount St. Bernard, she found that the community had not yet been able to find a resting-place in Switzerland. She travelled on to Bavaria, and was told that no French emigrant could remain in the country. Verily, it seemed as if she were destined to have nowhere to lay her head. She did not know where to turn; for war was ruling in all directions, and her name was dreaded by all who desired to keep a neutral part in the conflict. She was driven to seek refuge at Vienna, and went to board with a convent of Visitation nuns; for this order she did not feel any attraction, and she cherished the hope that the Trappist nuns, of whom she had heard would be able to find a place of refuge and receive her among their number. While thus waiting, she took, by the advice of her confessor, the three vows privately, thus binding herself as closely as possible to her crucified Lord. Her description of this action of her life gives a great insight into the beauty of her soul. Deep humility, a fervent love of God, and a child-like simplicity were her eminent characteristics. She made these vows at communion, unknown to all save God, his angels, and her spiritual guide. Then she said the Te Deum and Magnificat, which would have been sung so joyfully by her sisters had she been suffered to remain among them. "I neglected not in spirit," she adds, "the ceremony of the funeral pall, begging from God the grace to die to all, so as to live only in God and for God."

This private act of consecration was an immense comfort to her; but it by no means prevented her longing and striving to reenter a convent, and all her hopes continued to be fixed on La Trappe.

At this period an affecting meeting took place between her and Madame Royale, the only survivor of the royal victims of the Temple, the young girl born to one of the highest destinies in this world, and whose youth had been overshadowed by a tragedy so prolonged and so frightful that history can scarce furnish a parallel case. It is only extraordinary that reason had survived such awful suffering, falling on one so young and so tenderly nurtured. Is it any wonder that a shade was cast over the rest of her life, and that she was never among the light-hearted or the gay? From Vienna she wrote to Queen Clotilde: "I have had a great pleasure here in finding that the virtues of my aunt Elizabeth were well known, and she is spoken of with veneration. I hope that one day the pope will place my relation in the list of saints." It was, no doubt, a great comfort to her to speak freely with Louise of the aunt and cousin both had so fondly loved. Louise could tell Madame Royale many anecdotes of the youth of one whose end had been so saintly. We must now say a few words about the convent which the princess wished to enter.

When the order of La Trappe was suppressed in France, in common with those of other religious in 1790, the Abbé L'Estrange, called in religion Dom Augustin, was master of novices, and he conceived the idea of removing the whole community from France instead of dispersing it.

After many difficulties this was accomplished, and the monastery was founded at Val-Sainte, near Fribourg. The abbé now conceived the idea of founding a convent of Trappist nuns, to be composed chiefly of those religious who had been driven from their own convents, and of fresh novices. The director of Madame Louise had many doubts as to the advisability of her entering this community; but her desire for it was so ardent, and continued so long, that he withdrew his opposition; and when the community had really taken root, near that of the Trappist monks, under the title of the Monastery of the Will of God, Louise de Condé set out from Vienna and entered it. None but the superiors knew who she was—such was the simplicity of her dress, so retiring her manners, so humble were all her ways; but instead of a princess many of the religious thought her to be of lowly extraction, and wondered that Dom Augustin gave her so much of his time. With great delight she received the holy habit and began to practise the rule. The life was a hard one; the house was a great deal too small for the number of religious who occupied it; there was a great want of fresh air; and the rule and austerities were most trying. In a very few months the torrent of European war was about to pour down on Switzerland, and the whole community were obliged to take a hasty departure. Dom Augustin could see no other place of refuge for his flock than the shores of Russia, and he bade Louise de Condé use her influence with the emperor to allow them to take up their abode in his kingdom. The Emperor Paul was the same who, as archduke and under the title of Comte du Nord, had sat by the princess's side at the brilliant banquets and festivities of Chantilly. Louise wrote to him with all the grace of a French woman: "I beg the amiable Comte du Nord to become my interpreter with the Emperor Paul." The advance of the republican army was so rapid that there was no time to wait for a reply. {113} The community were divided into different bands, and started at different times and by different routes, all agreeing to reunite their forces in Bavaria. The vicissitudes of this one journey would be enough for a good-sized volume could we go into its details. At one place she is received by the bishop of the diocese as a princess, only to be driven out by the civil authorities; at another she was lodged in a bake-house, full of dirt and smoke. She observed only it was quite good enough for her, and that she was very happy. At another time the cook neglects to cleanse the copper cooking-vessels, and the whole community are all but poisoned. When the answer came from the Emperor Paul, it was found that he consented to receive thirty of the religious only, to whom he promised support as well as protection. It was necessary, therefore, to find some place for the others, and Louise accompanied some of her sisters and the monks to Vienna, where her former friends, the good Visitation nuns, gave a refuge to another band of the Trappists. Notwithstanding all these changes, Louise as strictly as possible observed the rule of her order and the exercises of her novitiate. Being desired by her superiors to write down her thoughts on the religious life, she instantly complied, though she said afterward it was difficult to do so in the midst of fourteen persons, crowded together in a very small room, and all at different occupations. It was true they kept silent, but they had to ask necessary questions of the prioress, and among so many this necessity was very frequent.

She was now desired to set out for Russia, and thus undertake another long journey of discomfort and fatigue. People urged her to leave the order, saying that the weakness of her knee, which had never wholly recovered from the fall she had had many years before, would render it impossible for her to be useful. She replied that, if she were only allowed to keep the lamp burning before the blessed sacrament, she would be contented. So she set out for Orcha, the town named by the emperor for their reception. It proved a really terrible journey; sometimes the religious had to sleep under the open sky; they had the roughest food, and more than once were without any for twenty-four hours. But never once did the patience, sweetness, and perfect content of Louise de Condé fail; her face was always bright, for her whole soul was filled with the one thought—a desire of doing penance. The arrival in Russia did not put an end to the difficulties of either Madame Louise or her order. It was necessary to make some arrangement for the rest of the community left in Germany. The Emperor Paul finally agreed to receive fifty. Dom Augustin accordingly went to fetch them. During his absence no communication could be held with him, while various offers of help, which had to be accepted or refused, were brought to the princess, embarrassing her greatly.

After ten months of this suspense Dom Augustin returned, having made up his mind to go to America. This was a severe blow to Madame Louise; for, being still a novice, it became a grave question whether she would, in such circumstances, be right in accompanying them, and after much prayer and thought she, by the counsel of her director, decided to leave. Once more was she to be driven out into the cold world; once more her heart's desire crossed, her hopes delayed indefinitely. "I thought that God willed in his justice to break my heart, and thus arrest its impetuous ardor. {114} I had once more to strip myself of the livery of the Lord, which had been my glory and my happiness. I did it, and did not die, that is all I can say." Before her departure she implored the emperor, and all over whom she had any personal influence, to continue their kindness to the order. In reality, it was a good thing for the order that Madame Louise quitted it, as events afterward proved. One of the very first communities allowed by Bonaparte to reenter France was this very one, and he certainly would not have done so had a Bourbon been in its ranks. It is true his favor was but short-lived, and the Trappists had again to fly to America, but their return to France had been in many ways a benefit; and in 1815 they came back again, and established themselves at Belle Fontaine and at Meillerage. The latter house has long since become celebrated. Dom Augustin reached Rome, and received many marks of approval from the pope for his long and earnest struggle in the cause of his order. He died at Lyons in 1827.

And now where was the exile to go? Where should she rest her weary head? Where and how begin life again under a new aspect? Her father, brother, and nephew were either engaged in warfare, or themselves begging shelter from distant countries; her friends were scattered, her resources scanty. A Benedictine nun who had joined the Trappist community quitted it, accompanied her, and Louise endeavored to follow under her a kind of novitiate. They took refuge at last in a Benedictine convent in Lithuania, but where the rule was not kept in its strict observance. Here she remained for two years, making all possible inquiries for a convent in which she might be received; but the greater part were destroyed, and obstacles stood in the way of entering any of those she heard of. She wished, of course, to be more than ever careful in this her third choice. Moreover, her means of acquiring information were but small; there was little communication with other countries, and few of the inhabitants spoke French. While in Lithuania Louise adopted an orphan of four years old, a child of good family reduced to beggary; she was named Eléonore Dombrousha. At last she heard of a convent at Warsaw, which seemed as if it would fulfil all her desires; and now, indeed, she had reached the place God had destined her for. Here she was to lay the foundation of the great work for which, by many sorrows, by much disappointment, he had been preparing her.

A foundation of Benedictines of the Blessed Sacrament had come from Paris to Warsaw many years before, and were still existing: they kept the Benedictine rule strictly, adding to it the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. Madame Louise asked and received permission of the King of Prussia to enter his dominions. He afterward wrote as follows:

"Frederick William, by the Grace Of God King Of Prussia: As we have permitted Madame la Princesse Louise Adelaide de Bourbon Condé and Madame de la Brosièree, who arrived at Warsaw the 18th of June, to remain in the convent of the Holy Sacrament, where they seem to wish to end their days, we have in consequence given all necessary orders to the officials.

A striking circumstance occurred while on her road to Warsaw, one of those many incidents of the time which has made the history of the French Revolution read like a romance. Having to descend from her carriage at Thorn, her eyes fell on a woman poorly clad in the street, evidently seeking employment; the expression of her face was that of suffering, but of great sanctity. The princess was so struck by it that she went up to her, and said by impulse, "Madam, were you not a religious?" "Yes," she replied, impelled to confidence by the sweet face of her who addressed her. And then Louise learnt that the lady was an exiled member of the French Sisters of Calvary, driven into exile; that her slender means had come to an end; and that very day she had come out to seek work or to beg, neither dismayed nor yet afraid, but putting her full trust in Divine Providence.

Her wants were supplied, and she would have entered the same convent as Madame Louise, but that she hoped to rejoin her own community when they should reassemble. This shortly afterward took place, and the generosity of Madame Louise furnished the means for her journey home, and she lived many years in her convent, leading a holy life, and died there in peace.

At last Madame Louise commenced her third novitiate, and found in her new order all that could perfectly satisfy her heart. She took the habit in September, 1801, and all the royal family of Prussia were present at the ceremony; the Bishop of Warsaw preached the sermon, and bade her glorify her convent for ever, not by the éclat of her name and of her royal birth, but by her religious virtues. The habit which she had taken, added he, and which she had preferred to all the pomps of the world, was but the exterior mark of a consecration and a sacrifice that her heart had long since made. As a novice Madame Louise redoubled her fervor and exactness in religious life, with many anxious hopes and prayers that this time the day of her profession would really come. A sorrow came upon her in the news of the death of her early and loved friend, Clotilde of Sardinia, whose soul passed to God in March, 1802, while her whole people, anticipating only the voice of the church, called her a saint. On the 21st of September, 1802, Louise made her solemn profession. "I pronounced my vows publicly," she said, "but with such feelings that I can truly say my heart pronounced them with a thousand times greater strength than my mouth." She now retook her religious name, which she had chosen twice before, Soeur Marie Joseph de la Miséricorde. The life of an ordinary good religious would have seemed sufficiently difficult for a princess, but Louise would do nothing by halves. She practised the highest virtues of her state, bearing undeserved blame without a word of excuse; she never murmured under labors; she was obedient, gentle, and humble. So anxious was she to prevent her rank being an occasion for raising her to offices of authority that she wrote to the pope these words:

"Most Holy Father:
Louise Adélaide de Bourbon Condé, now Marie Joseph de la Miséricorde, professed religious of the convent of the Perpetual Adoration of the Most Holy Sacrament, order of Saint Benedict, at Warsaw, supplicates your holiness that you deign, for the repose and tranquillity of the soul of the suppliant, to declare her deprived of active and passive voice, and to dispense her from all the principal offices of the community."

The holy father saw fit to grant the request, and sent a brief on the subject to her.

"The efforts that you make to attain Christian perfection in these unhappy days," wrote Pius VII., "have filled us with joy, and make us hope that the Divine Spouse to whom you have made the laudable sacrifice of yourself will not fail to grant you his grace, in order that, by the exact and religious observation of the rules of the institute which you have chosen, you will attain the end that you proposed to yourself in embracing with so much joy this state of life. … We send you the letters of dispensation that you say are necessary for the perfect tranquillity of your mind, desiring nothing more than to remove the obstacles which could destroy your peace; and further, we give you with our whole heart the apostolical benediction, as a proof of our paternal friendship."

And now one of the sharpest sorrows of Louise de Condé's life was at hand. An event which was, even in that age of cruelties, to strike Europe with horror was to fall with bitterest force on the heart of the princess. Religious life does not extinguish the affections of the heart; it but regulates, ennobles, and purifies them; and the Duc d'Enghien was as tenderly loved by the aunt who had not seen him for many years, spent in devotion to God, as when, in the halls of Chantilly, she had watched his childish gambols. The prayer she had offered up in his childhood was continued more fervently, more constantly, as the dangers to his body and soul increased. She followed him in commiseration through the busy scenes in which his lot was cast, and she saw him brave, loyal, and honorable, a good son and a good husband. When Louis XVIII. consulted him, in 1803, in common with the other French princes, as to the answer he should return to the proposal of Bonaparte that he should renounce the throne of France, the duke wrote: "Your majesty knows too well the blood which runs in my veins to have had the least doubt as to the answer which you demand from me. I am a Frenchman, sire; and a Frenchman who is faithful to his God, to his king, and to his vows of honor." We have no space to dwell on the treachery and the cruelty of the capture and death of this young prince, one of the fairest hopes of the house of Bourbon. In vain did he even ask for a priest; but that ungranted request must have carried consolation to the heart of Madame Louise. As we read of his cutting off his hair to send to his "Charlotte," we are forcibly reminded of another prince, who was treacherously slain, sending a last adieu to another unhappy princess of the same name. To the doors of the convent at Warsaw, bearing the news, came the Abbé Edgeworth, whose mission it was to console and help the unfortunate house of Bourbon. He had attended the last moments of Louis XVI.; he had stood by him on the scaffold, undaunted by the crowd, and bade the "son of St. Louis ascend to heaven;" he had been the director of Madame Elizabeth; he had joined the hands of Madame Royale and the Duc d'Angoulême in marriage; and now he came to break the news of the last great sorrow to Madame Louise. The Mère Sainte Rose brought a crucifix to the princess, and her countenance told her the rest. Louise fell on her face on the earth, crying out, "Mercy, my God! have mercy on him!" Then she rose, and, going to the chapel, poured out her soul before Him who alone could comfort her. {117} "Pardon the faults of his youth, O Lord!" she cried, "and remember how cruelly his blood has been shed. Glory and misfortune have attended him through life; but what we call glory—has it any merit in thy eyes? Mercy, my God! mercy!" But her prayers did not end here. From that time forward there rose up before the throne of God a constant cry for mercy for the soul of Napoleon Bonaparte, from the lips of her whose dearest earthly hopes he had destroyed. She never made a retreat afterward without devoting much prayer and penance for the redemption of the enemy of her name and race. Forgiveness of injuries was an especial characteristic of the Bourbon family, and none excelled in it more than Madame Louise.

And now another change awaited the poor princess: thick, indeed, upon her head came trial after trial. Nothing could, indeed, take from her now the happiness of being a professed Benedictine; but that she should remain peaceably in one convent for a long time was hardly to be hoped for at this period. The Lutheran Prussian government began to interfere with the government of the convent, to have a voice in the election of superiors, and, of course, to interfere, at least indirectly, with the rule. Probably the presence of Madame Louise made them take more notice of that convent than they would otherwise have done. Before quitting it, however, as this was a serious step to be taken voluntarily by a religious who has made a vow of enclosure, she wrote for counsel to the three French bishops of Léon, Vannes, and Nantes, who were then all living in London. Their united opinion was, that "the reasons were well grounded and very solid, and that the repose of her conscience and her advancement in the perfection of her state, exact this change." Having received permission from the bishop of the diocese, and the full consent of her prioress, who bitterly mourned over the thraldom in which the community were held, Louise de Condé once more went out into exile, and this time directed her steps toward England. She landed at Gravesend, and was, we suppose, the first nun since the Reformation who was received with public honors by the British authorities. In London she met her father and brother, whom she had not seen since the year 1795, and who had since that time endured so much, and who were still suffering so acutely under their recent sorrow in the execution of the Duc d'Enghien. There must have been a strangely mingled feeling of pain and pleasure in this sad meeting. After remaining a few days in London, her father and brother escorted her to a Benedictine convent at Rodney Hall, Norfolk, where a refuge had been offered to her. This community followed the mitigated rule of St. Benedict, but Louise was allowed to observe the fasts and other points to which she had bound herself by her profession of the rule in its strict observance.

In this house there were fifty choir nuns, eight lay sisters, and a large school of young ladies. Wherever Madame Louise went, she was accompanied by the Mère Sainte Rose and the little Eléonore Dombrousha, the child of her adoption. In this community Louise was greatly beloved. There was about her a sweetness and a simplicity, a self-forgetfulness and charity for others which gave her an inexpressible charm. She was truly noble in character as well as in birth. She gave that example which God intends those highly born (as we call it) to give—that of more closely resembling Him whose birth was indeed a royal and noble one. {118} During her stay in Norfolk, the Princess Louise suffered greatly from bad health. The trials she had undergone, the anxiety of mind, her long journeys, and the severity of the observances to which she had bound herself had their effect upon her frame. More than once there was such cause for serious alarm that the Prince de Condé and Duc de Bourbon came to see her. It is probable, too, that the English climate, and especially the part of the country in which she was living, might not have agreed with her; the convent, besides, was not sufficiently large, and it was a favorable change in all respects when the community removed to Heath. Here Madame Louise met with one whose acquaintance she conceived to be one of the greatest blessings of her life.

The Society of Jesus was not as yet restored to the church; but many of its ancient members were living, and showed by their lives what had been the heavenly spirit in which they had been trained. Preeminently among these was the Père de la Fontaine, and it was to this holy man Louise became known while in England. He often said Mass at the convent, and frequently saw the princess. Under his direction, the soul of Louise made rapid progress toward perfection. He understood what God required from her, and taught her how to correspond with God. Among other valuable advice which he gave her, and which she committed to paper, the following is remarkable: "A spouse of Jesus Christ ought absolutely to avoid all communication with Protestant society. Their want of delicacy, in general, on those points which wound a heart consecrated to God in all purity, and their unbelief, often amounting to aversion, for the great sacrament of the love of Jesus Christ, are two powerful reasons for keeping at a distance from them. A truly religious soul has reason to fear presumption and all its attendant evils, if she allows herself, without real necessity, to be drawn into such dangerous intercourse."

And so the years again passed on and other changes were at hand. Prayers, penances, and sufferings such as Louise de Condé had endured, and sufferings which had been borne also in various other ways by so many holy souls among the French emigrants, had brought down mercy from God on their unhappy country and on Europe. The long war was at an end, the muskets had fallen from the soldiers' hands, and Napoleon was a captive. Louis XVIII. sat once more on the throne of his father. The fleur de lis again floated from the tower of the Louvre. Madame Royale, who had been sent out of France as a prisoner, ransomed by treaty, came back to hold the court over which her mother had once presided; the princes of the blood-royal hastened back to their places, and there was a general wish that Louise de Condé should be once more on her native soil. Ah! what a lifetime of sorrow had she passed through since she left Chantilly and her house in the Rue Monsieur, and even now she would not return to them.

No, never again could she come back to be the princess. If she returned to France, it must be as the religious to reestablish a convent of her order, and thus aid in bringing back religious life to France. It must be confessed that rarely was a person more fitted for the task. None should rule, says a proverb, but those who have learned to obey, and obedience had been a task which the princess had well studied. {119} She had passed through three novitiates, and she had in her lifetime seen the management of eight different convents, and she had known well how to profit by the knowledge she gained. Accordingly she quitted the convent at Heath the 16th of August, 1814, and arrived in Paris just as all were preparing to keep the fête of St. Louis for the first time for many years. She resided for a time in the house of her brother, the Duc de Bourbon; but she never quitted the apartments allotted to her, and lived in the utmost retirement, waiting there only till a suitable convent could be assigned to her.

The papers of the day, after mentioning her arrival in Paris, added: "It was the on dit that his majesty proposed to revive a royal foundation in her favor, and to establish her with her sisters in a magnificent monastery which would be restored to its primitive destination. Already it was sad to think that the church of this abbey had been used for profane purposes, and the friends of religion and of art would joyfully see this edifice restored. It would be purified by establishing there the perpetual adoration, and by placing there a shining example of piety in the person of a princess devoted in an especial manner to God's service."

This edifice was the grand church and monastery of Val du Grâce, one of the chief monuments of the piety of Anne of Austria. It was then a hospital; but, as the paper went on to remark, the superb church was not of any especial use to the sick, and would be a noble one for cultured religious. However, the idea of giving Val du Grâce to Madame Louise fell to the ground. It remained a military hospital, and so continues to this day; but the sick are attended day and night by the sisters of charity of St. Vincent de Paul. And as their forms flit through the corridors, intent on works of love, and as their earnest prayers rise up in the calm morning and close of evening to heaven, the founders and the former possessors of that splendid pile are, we think, contented Madame Louise had been so long absent that she knew not a single friend in Paris. She now entered into communication with the Abbé d'Astros, vicar-general of the diocese of Paris. At her very first interview with him she felt impelled to give him her full confidence, and this at once gave her a proof that it was really the will of God she should establish a convent in the diocese, since a full accord with ecclesiastical superiors is one of the most valuable helps a new foundation can have. Still, the place for the convent remained uncertain, and the privy council to whom it belonged to settle the affair did not deem it of much importance, and put it aside for other matters. A friend of Madame Louise, the Comtesse Marie de Courson, proposed to her that they should make a novena to Louis XVI. It is unusual to pray to those whom the church has not canonized, but it is not forbidden to do so privately; and it was hard to believe that the soul of the monarch upon whom had fallen the long and bitter punishment of the sins of his ancestors was not long since in the enjoyment of perfect happiness. The novena was commenced by a certain number of earnest and fervent souls.

On the seventh day, at the meeting of the council, although most pressing business was that day before its consideration, a member suddenly rose, and reminding his colleagues that the request of Madame Louise had not been granted, and as if moved by an irresistible impulse, proposed that the palace of the Temple should be given to her. {120} A sudden silence fell on the assembly, then came a movement of unanimous consent. What better spot for a convent of expiation than that consecrated by such memories—that in which such innocent victims had suffered? The heart of Louis XVIII. was deeply touched by the circumstance.

Truly, royal pomp and ceremony, gala and festivity, could never again enter those sorrowful halls. Most fitting would it be to consecrate them to God, and let an unceasing strain of prayer and praise ascend to heaven. Some doubted whether the task would not be too painful for the princess herself, and at the first announcement she did, in truth, shrink back. She had known them all so well, had loved Elizabeth so tenderly, had wept over their fates so bitterly, had prayed for them so earnestly, she missed them, now that she was once more at home; and how, then, could she bear to live for ever within those walls, which would be an eternal record of their fate.

But the first emotion passed away, and she began more fully to understand why she had been tried in the crucible of sufferings, why her vocation had been so often crossed, so hardly tried. It had been all to bring her to this, to let her found in Paris a convent of expiation. Without those trials, perhaps, she could never have borne the severity of the task, the sacrifice she must at once make on entering. She tenderly loved Madame Royale, or Madame la Dauphine, as she was now called, and it could not be expected or even wished that she should revisit a spot which must recall to her those terrible days whose memory already overshadowed her life too much; but this sacrifice Louise was ready to make, and the convent of the Temple was accepted.

Workmen were engaged to convert the old palace into a convent; the towers, in one of which the royal family had lived, were already demolished, but it was easy to perceive where they had stood. A Beautiful garden surrounded the buildings, partly in the French, partly in the English style. Water brought up from the Seine played in fountains surrounded by artificial rocks, among which a grotto was formed. This grotto was changed into an oratory to the Blessed Virgin, and another to St. Benedict and St. Scholastica. The Comte de Courson and the Abbé d'Astros directed the alterations, and all possible haste was being made, when, like wild-fire, the news ran through the world, Bonaparte had escaped from Elba, and was in France. The royal family fled, and once more the Princess Louise was to be an exile. She could not at once procure horses, so for a week, which happened to be holy week, she was hidden in the house of one of her former attendants. The Mère Sainte Rose was taken very ill, and then there was the serious difficulty of procuring passports. How little can those who live in London now, and who breakfast at home and sup in Paris, estimate the labor, the pain, the dread, which a timid person like Madame Louise would feel at having to take the weary journey to England, posting from Paris to Calais, and then a long, stormy passage, to say nothing of the dangers of being stopped on the route and taken to prison. She was obliged to set off on Easter-day. At the city gates they were stopped, and it was only by a heavy bribe that they were suffered to pass. On the way they found themselves in the midst of a popular tumult, and were obliged to leave their carriages and hide till it was over. {121} They had a very bad passage from Calais, but at Dover Madame Louise was received with every mark of respect and esteem.

She had not the comfort of returning to the convent at Heath, for it was thought better that she should await the course of events in London, and she went to a hotel. But a serious illness was the result of the sudden shock and journey, and after her recovery she went to the country-house of a friend. All through her after-life Madame Louise had a great affection for the English, who, to do them justice, were certainly generous toward the French emigrants. She was wont to say that their generosity would win for them the grace of reconciliation with the Catholic Church. Although Napoleon's second reign lasted but a hundred days, Madame Louise did not return to France for fourteen months, partly on account of health, partly because she wished to be fully convinced of the stability of the Bourbon dynasty before she commenced her arduous undertaking.

When she reached Paris, the Temple was not yet ready. She resided some time in the Rue St. Dominique with one of her early friends. There she made arrangements with various postulants, with whom she entered the new convent on the second of September, 1816. The Abbé d'Astros blessed the house and said the first Mass in the chapel. And now, at last, she had found a home; and though after her many vicissitudes, after the disappointments and the rapid changes she had seen, she could never have felt very secure, she never again quitted these walls. She entered most diligently on her duty as superioress and as mistress of novices; for, with the exception of the Mère Sainte Rose and one other Benedictine nun who joined her, (her own community having been lost in the Revolution,) she had none but young subjects to govern. Besides this she had to superintend a large school for young ladies, so that her duties were multiplied and heavy. The account of her religious life is most touching and beautiful. Knowing, as we do, how the distinctions of rank cling round our human nature; how constantly, ever since she had been a nun, she had been obliged to remind others not to make use of that very rank; knowing also the exaggerated prestige paid under the old régime to the Bourbon race, it is wonderful to see how utterly she forgot her birth or ignored it. She was sixty years of age; she was lame and in delicate health; yet she kept the rule rigidly; was gentle to others, severe to herself; would join in the recreations of her young novices, and could be seen making fun with them in cutting the wood for the fires. She would often take recreation with the lay sisters, and also carefully instruct them. In the infirmary she would perform the most menial offices for the sick, and, in short, she was a true mother at the head of her house. "Those who neglect little sacrifices," she would say, "are not likely to make great ones." At the appointed times she would not exempt herself from the penances which the rule permitted the religious to use. The first time that she prostrated herself at the refectory door, in order that all the religious should walk over her, many of them could not restrain their emotion. Afterward the princess reproved them severely, showing them that all distinctions of worldly rank were totally contrary to the religious spirit. If the sisters brought her better food than the others, they were reproved, and forbidden to do it again; or if they tried to make her straw mattress any softer, they met the same fate. In short, to the end of her days she was thorough, earnest, single-hearted in all things.

Sorrows did not fail to follow her into her peaceful retreat. The assassination of the Duc de Berri, her near relative, filled her with grief, recalling too vividly the horrors that had darkened her younger days. She was comforted, however, by a visit from the venerable Père de la Fontaine, who came to console her. "The Lord has covered him with the mantle of his mercy," said the old friend, and those simple words calmed her. Could there not, indeed, be hope for the soul of him whose first thought on receiving the death-blow was to say, "Pardon my murderer"? The Père de la Fontaine had returned to Paris after the peace; and when the Jesuits had been restored to their place in the church, and had communities in France, he often visited the Convent du Temple, and was by Madame Louise and many others esteemed a saint. The princess told her sisters that, being once in great spiritual perplexity and suffering, the father passed by her on his way to the altar, and as his shadow fell on her all her intense sufferings disappeared. In 1821, this holy man died, and at the request of Madame Louise the Jesuits sent her some account of his last hours. The writer described the strong emotion felt by all who were present when the old man, on his dying-bed, begged pardon for all his faults, for his breaches of the rule, and renewed his vows—vows which he had so faithfully kept in exile and solitude, when his beloved order had been suppressed. He had lived on in faith and in prayer, and God had allowed him to see the society restored to the church, so that, like Simeon, he could depart in peace.

Next came the illness of the princess's father, the Prince de Condé. She had always been tenderly attached to him, and the sorrows they had gone through together had naturally deepened the affection. He lay dying at Chantilly, and mutual friends begged Madame Louise to go to him. The ecclesiastical superiors would give her dispensation, they said; she was a princess, no ordinary nun. She firmly refused. "If our holy father the pope orders me to go, as a child of the church I will obey; but never will I ask for a dispensation which should give a precedent for breaking enclosure." Outwardly she was calm before her sisters, but her stall in the choir was bathed with tears, so deeply did she suffer for and with the father whom she loved. Her prayers went up unceasingly, and there is proof that they were heard.

The Prince de Condé died with dispositions of most humble penitence, and, when asked if he forgave his enemies, exclaimed: "I am sure of my salvation, if God will pardon me as freely as I pardon them." The last words on his lips were Credo in Deum. Perhaps the sacrifice made by his daughter in not assisting his dying hours had won for him the grace of a good death. The fortune which came to the princess on her father's death was devoted to the erection of a conventual church; the first stone was laid in May, 1821, in the name of Madame la Dauphine, by one of her ladies of honor. Mgr. de Guilen, then coadjutor of Paris was present, and Mgr. Trayssinous preached the sermon. "This place is holy ground," said he; "holy because of the extraordinary misfortunes and the heroic virtues which it witnessed in the time of our impious discords. Within these walls there wept and suffered barbarously those who should have been more worthy than all others of veneration and love. Within these walls most noble victims of the popular fury were delivered up to inexpressible anguish. {123} O days of blood and tears! O terrible and cruel scenes! O lamentable crime! which I dare not recall, which every heart in France would fain banish from his memory, and from the pages of our history. But no; we are all condemned eternally to bear the shame to posterity. Religion, at least, will have the glory of having done all that it could to expiate it, and to reconcile the people who were so unfortunately guilty with Heaven. Here day and night are crying at the foot of the altar consecrated virgins, innocent and voluntary victims of crimes which are not their own. Here prayers, fastings, vigils, and austerities, and the sighs of contrite and humble hearts, are perpetually ascending up to the throne of justice, but also of divine mercy, to draw down on the royal family, and on the whole of France, grace and mercy. Thus does religion avenge herself of her enemies, by expiating the past, sanctifying the present, and preparing the future. … And who will raise this building? She who, concealing the beautiful name of Condé under that of Soeur de la Miséricorde, has buried in this cloister all the éclat and grandeur of the world. In whose name has the first stone been laid? In the name of all that is most touching in suffering, in courage, in goodness, and dearest to France—in the name of the royal orphan of the Temple."

Another death awoke considerable emotion in the heart of Madame Louise. On the barren rock of St. Helena the proud heart of the great conqueror wore itself out. The hand and the brain that had worked such endless woe to her and hers were for ever still. Far from her all thought of triumph and rejoicing. Instantly she had Masses offered for him, and never omitted daily to supplicate in her private prayers that he who had given her no rest on earth might now have eternal rest given to him.

And now her long and troubled life was hastening to its close. She had been tossed about, indeed, on a troubled sea, seldom in port, yet happy and peaceful amid the conflict; and now eternal peace was at hand.

The bells of the new church were blessed in October, 1822, the King and Madame la Dauphine being godfather and godmother. The church was consecrated, in August, 1823, by the Archbishop of Paris. Louise, looking round, might have seen her work completed, the community established and flourishing, the church finished in which the adoration of the altar could be worthily carried out. The next day she made a false step, and fell down. Slight as was the accident, fainting fits constantly followed, and she was never well afterward. She suffered most from her head, but would not give up her ordinary duties, or lie by. Gradually her strength failed. On December 23d, she fainted on the stairs, was carried to bed, and was attacked by fever and sickness. Still she struggled on with her duties. On the last day of the year, she would hold the "chapter of peace"—a custom of her order to which she was much attached, when the religious ask mutual pardon of each other for any want of charity during the past year, and when the prioress has to address them on this beautiful subject; and she would not let her illness interfere with the feast of Holy Innocents, a gala-day in the convent, when the youngest novice becomes prioress for the day, and innocent mirth is in the ascendant; and she assisted at the clothing of two novices in January, 1824. {124} She showed by her manner on this last occasion that she believed it to be the last ceremony at which she should be present. She saw each of her sisters in private, and took leave of them with tender affection. She suddenly became worse, and lost the use of speech, but not consciousness. She received extreme unction from the Archbishop of Paris. The community, all in tears, surrounded her bed. The archbishop remarked, it was like the shower of rain which, at the prayer of St. Scholastica, came down to prevent St. Benedict from leaving her too soon. The dying nun understood the allusion, and smiled. He bade her bless her children, and her hand was raised for her, and placed on the head of one of her religious, for she could not move it herself.

A few days afterward she recovered her speech, and she received the viaticum, and answered the questions of the priest with a firm tone, "I believe with faith." Her death-agony was very long, and, when her brother came to see her, she could not speak. The desire of seeing her once more overcame the repugnance that Madame la Dauphine had to reenter the Temple, and she was about to set out thither when the king, fearing the consequences for her, forbade her to go. The last smile of Louise de Condé was given to a picture held before her of a dove bearing a cross and flying to heaven. Perhaps she said inwardly words which would have been very suitable: "I will flee away and take my rest." Shortly afterward she expired. She was in the sixty-seventh year of her age, and the twenty-second of her religious profession. And thus ended a life of which it may truly be said that it was "stranger than fiction."

Mr. Bashers Sacrifice, and why He made it.

Simply because Colonel Dolickem would feed himself with his knife at table. But what could the vulgar habit of the colonel have to do with such a sacrifice on the part of Mr. Basher? Nevertheless, it is true, and had it not been for that, Mr. Basher would never have made it. Colonel Dolickem cut his mouth and severed his hopes at one blow, as it were. Fact! And this is the way it came about.

Mr. Basher, as you are aware, was not what might be called a marrying man. Certainly not. I have heard him say, over and over again, in what might possibly be considered rather too strong language, that he would much prefer cutting his throat. Not that he had any aversion to such a state of life, or that he had made any vow of celibacy. By no means. Any young lady who might have liked to marry Mr. Basher could have done so any day, if Mr. Basher had been the lady, and the lady had been the man. As no young lady of his acquaintance would assume the masculine proprieties, such as popping the question, buying the ring, seeking the priest, putting up the banns and the like, to doing any or all of which Mr. Basher preferred cutting his throat, there were little expectations cherished by Mr. Basher's acquaintances of ever wishing joy to a Mrs. Basher. "I'd never come through it alive," he would say. But he did, as you shall hear.

There is one thing Mr. Basher could do, and do more perfectly than any man I ever knew, and that was to blush. Blushing Basher was the title we gave him the first evening he was introduced at our club. It may be said that blushing was his normal condition. "Do you know," said Healy, the great portrait-painter, to me one day, speaking of Basher as a subject, "that I never painted a man whose complexion was so difficult to determine as that of your friend Basher?" "He has a warm complexion," said I. "Warm!" rejoined the artist. "Warm does not express it, say, red-hot." Old ladies would offer him their fans in the street-cars, and mischievous young damsels with cherry-colored ribbons [attached] to their hats look first at him, and then toy with the dangling ends of their ribbons, as much as to say: "Just this shade." Newsboys, seeing him pass, hailed one another with the information that "your uncle had beets for dinner," and wily policemen dogged his steps under the impression that he was making off with something that lay heavy on his conscience.

But Mr. Basher's blushing face was nothing to his blushing heart, mind, or soul, or whatever it is that blushes inside of a man, and causes him to feel weak and faint, to get shaky at the knees, and bungling in speech. That he never finished a complete sentence is a fact too well known to need confirmation. Even on the day of his sacrifice, the charming Miss Criggles was obliged to come to his rescue; for, when he got as far as "Miss Criggles, will you have—" if that ready-witted young lady (thirty, if she was a day, you know) had not divined his purpose, and said what he just then lost the power of saying—"me, for your own," I do not think we would have seen a Mrs. Basher to this day.

He had no better success in his attempts to converse with children. I remember, as he sat one day in my parlor, twiddling his thumbs, breaking down in his remarks, and his color coming and going in rapid succession, my little daughter Dolly climbed upon his knee, and covered him with confusion by saying to him:

"I—I—I, sometimes; a—" blundered Mr. Basher in reply, his knees beginning to involuntarily dandle the child up and down.

"What does 'oo say?" persisted the little fairy, shaking her curls, and giving him an arch look. "I don't t'ink 'oo do."

Poor Basher could do nothing after that but stare vacantly at the wall, and smile a smile that is often seen on board a ship as soon as she reaches rough water. Certainly, in another sense little Dolly had put Mr. Basher completely at sea.

But I'm forgetting about the sacrifice. You know what a sensation the cards produced. The receivers whose eyes first fell upon that of Miss Rosina Criggles expected, of course, to read "Col. Washington Dolickem" on the other. That was a conclusion everybody had arrived at for more than six months previous; and if the bold, heavy card of Col. Dolickem did not accompany the delicately scented, somewhat thinner and smaller one of Miss Criggles, it would be, doubtless, the still heavier, manlier, bolder card of General Yinweeski, of the Russian Embassy, or Major Thwackemout, of the Ninth Fussyliers, as Tom Wagstaff used to call them. {126} That same farceur never spoke of the dwelling-place of Miss Criggles but as "Camp Criggles."

"None but your generals and your colonels and your majors ever get their feet under the mahogany at Camp Criggles," said Tom; "and a pretty mess they make of it." This was in allusion to the everlasting on dits about the duel, or the cowhiding, or some such other agreeable encounter which was daily expected to come off between the rival combatants for the hand, and, I may add, the five-twenties, of the charming Rosina.

"Has he? What, Basher! Not Blushing Basher! Look again. Some other Basher—some general, colonel, major, or turkey-cock-in-boots Basher. No? Our Basher? Then draw a pen across that line in the spelling-book, 'Faint heart never won fair lady,' for Basher of ours has done the deed, and none so faint as Basher."

Mr. Basher, you know, was an admirer of Miss Criggles. No, not surprising. It was his nature to admire; only he found it so difficult to give expression to his sentiments that his nature in this respect may be said to have always remained in an inchoate state. He was an exclamation-point minus the dot. How so pure a civilian ever got an invitation to dine at the Criggles mess-table is shrouded in mystery; and how he ever dared when there to brave the martial presence of General Yinweeski, of Colonel Dolickem, or of Major Thwackemout is no less mysterious. Dining at the Criggles table as he did—and if ever the Criggles family made a point of anything in this world it was the service of their table—he may be said to have gradually eaten his way into the affections of the charming Rosina. As he spoke less, he had more time, you see, than his martial rivals; and what was more to the purpose, he had a better manner than they. Men of war who are not mere "carpet valiants," but have smelt the straw above the mould in a gusty tent, may be pardoned for not having studied my book On the Bad Habits of Good Society. I pardon Colonel Dolickem for not having read it. The tactics of the knife and fork are good tactics to study, and practise too; but as long as your vis-à-vis at table will keep his knife out of the butter-plate, I would advise you to say nothing about his putting it into his mouth occasionally—especially if he wears a sword and you do not; for he might retort by putting that into you, and then you would find yourself quite as much at fault for want of the knowledge of a soldier's tactics, as Colonel Dolickem was in his ignorance of the tactics of a gentlemanly diner-out. Tom Wagstaff, the Beau Brummel of our club, and who, by the way, bought up an entire edition of my book for private circulation, heartily despised the colonel for his slovenly habit. "He had the misfortune to be brought up on a jack-knife, sir," said Tom, "as some babies are brought up on a bottle."

I said I would advise you not to say anything to a friend who mouths his knife, but I don't object to your looking at him when he does it. When he cuts the corners of his mouth, as he surely will, sooner or later, unless he has a practised hand, (and I have witnessed feats of dexterity of this kind which would surprise you quite as much as any ever performed by the Japanese jugglers,) you might call his attention to it, and playfully add: "So much, my dear fellow, for allowing yourself to be so distracted;" and then you can tell a good story to the company about another friend of yours—clever dog he was, too—to whom the accident which has just happened to your friend opposite happened so often, and from the same unfortunate habit of having distractions at table, that he was frequently seen to rise after dinner with both corners of his mouth gashed. {127} He was cured, however, not of his distractions, but of putting his knife in his mouth at such times, by telling a joke in his presence about another individual to whom a similar accident happened under similar circumstances, and who cut himself so severely that he was obliged to be fed out of a bottle for a week. I have myself tried this friendly ruse several times, and have never known it to fail.

There is another class of persons besides these who may chance to carry a longer sword than you do, about whom I would advise you, as a bit of a philosopher, not to be too meticulous; I mean those who carry a longer head than you. The pen is mightier than the sword, (quotation of school-boy memory, but good,) and cuts deeper. The writer who cut up my book so severely in the pages of The Square Table was not so far wrong. But he forgot that I wrote as a professor, not as a casuist. Literary men, as well as soldiers, may do certain things with impunity which some others may not. So that Bullhead, of the New York Sweeper, may gnaw on his finger-nails, by way of an appetizer, between the courses, and nobody minds it—in Bullhead. He might put both of his elbows on the table, smell of the fish to find out if it be fresh, feed himself with his knife, eat as if he were doing it for a wager, wipe the perspiration from his face with his napkin, and indulge in other little eccentricities, and nobody would mind him at all, bless you! Where Bullhead is concerned, I agree with my critic of The Square Table. I pretend to lay down only general laws: Bullhead is a law to himself.

As to Basher, he is the soul of politeness and good breeding. He has read my book, and admired it. His commendations were rather bungling in the manner of delivery, but unfeigned. I understood perfectly what he meant to say, that is enough. Tom Wagstaff, to whom I dedicated it, and who, as I told you, bought up an entire edition for private circulation, also admired it. "Chupper, my boy," said Tom, drawing on his yellow kids, "it's grand!" By the way, I quoted a few remarks of his, which were delivered by him one afternoon to a half-dozen of us as a mock lecture. I think I can recollect some of them. Speaking of soup, Tom remarked: "If you think the soup particularly good, be sure and say so, and ask for a second or a third plate. You will find that the host will be much affected by such little marks of your esteem—for the soup; and the company will understand that you do not often get it." Of being helped at table, Tom gave this rule: "Always point at whatever you wish, either with finger, knife, fork, or spoon. They are all equally good for the purpose." For the proper eating of fruit Tom gave us some laughable advice:

"If you are eating fruit, never, by any means, convey the stones or pits upon your plate in a quiet way, but spit them out boldly, and with considerable noise. This not only shows the height of good breeding, but of science also, for it is not every one who can perform it so perfectly as not to spit more than the fruit-stones into the plate. {128} A much more elegant way, although it requires considerable dexterity—and I would not advise you to try it without a little private practice—is to insert the blade of your knife into your mouth, and with great care get the stones balanced upon it; then convey them just outside of the edge of your plate upon the table-cloth, where you may amuse yourself by building up a very artistic little heap of any form your fancy may suggest or your good judgment devise. Cherry-stones, it is to be remarked, are always to be swallowed, and take care you let the company know it, as it is a highly suggestive piece of information. Cracking the stones of prunes with your teeth is the proper way of disposing of them, especially if you are seated opposite a nervous old gentleman. Use your tooth-pick, of course, at table, and open your mouth wide while operating. The best kind of tooth-pick is a large, stiff goose-quill, which makes a snapping noise and calls attention. The place to keep it is in your pantaloons' pocket. Many prefer, and I am among the number, to pick their teeth with their fork. It is quite a refined practice. You will find that your doing so will cause a marked sensation at the table."

Tom said a good many other things equally clever. The best of them are in my book. Read that. Tom had different individuals in his eye at the time. The goose-quill toothpick was a favorite one of Colonel Dolickem, and went by the name of "Dolickem's bayonet." Speaking of Dolickem reminds me of Basher and his heroic sacrifice, about which I was speaking, was I not?

It was the birthday of Miss Rosina Criggles. A large party was invited, and among the guests could be seen the tall, gaunt, savage-featured Colonel Dolickem; General Yinweeski's burly form, clothed in garments which fitted him so tightly that it is a wonder how he moved without splitting them on all sides; Major Thwackemout, moving his stiff little body about from right to left, and from left to right, with that mechanical precision which characterizes the wooden soldier so prized by patriotic youth; and the blushing face of Mr. Basher. You may think it odd, but birthday parties are very ingenious inventions to retard the advancing years of young ladies. When rumor speaks of your daughter as thirty or thereabouts, give her a birthday party, and she will start afresh from twenty-three to twenty-five, as you may please to have it hinted. Everybody believing she is thirty at least, no one will presume to say a word about it. Pleased with your entertainment, and flattered by your attention, people are disposed to be generous; and then, who among your guests will ever acknowledge that he or she has bowed, courtesied, danced, and dined at an old maid's birthday feast! I need not mention the names of all who crushed themselves together in the brilliantly lighted parlors of the Criggles mansion. Of course, the Doldrums and the Polittles were there, and the Boochers and the Coochers, the Tractors and the Factors, the De Pommes and the De Filets, the Van Bumbergs and the Van Humburgs, and all that set.

Most people believed that it was to be a preparatory rout to give éclat to the expected announcement of an engagement between Colonel Dolickem and the heiress of the house of Criggles. The colonel believed it also. He had waited for a suitable opportunity to ask the hand and five-twenties of Miss Rosina, and now that opportunity had come. {129} Few would have had the courage to cross the path of a rival of so belligerent a disposition as the colonel. So thought the colonel himself. He was sure of Miss Criggles. Never be too sure of anything. Now it happened that in the course of the evening, somewhere about 12.30 A.M., Mr. Basher, after vainly endeavoring to get off one of the many sentences he had prepared beforehand, and practised with assiduity in front of his own reflection in his mirror, and in face of his grandfather's portrait as lay figures, and finding it no go, quietly abandoned himself to a sweeping current which just then formed in the crowd, and was borne along toward the half-open doors of the conservatory. Feeling, as everybody else did, pretty warm, and his face standing at the red-hot point of color, as indeed it had been since he rang the bell two hours and a half previous, he concluded to saunter a few minutes in the cool conservatory, and refresh his heated brow and his memory at the same time. Glancing first on one side and then on another at the flowers, his eye fell upon a rose-bush on which bloomed one full-blown rose. The sight of it reminded him of a toast he had prepared for this occasion, and which he devoutly hoped to be able to give amid the enthusiastic applause of the company and the grateful acknowledgments of the Being, and the parents of that Being, at whose feet he wished to blushingly throw himself, and be blushingly accepted in return. For Mr. John Basher loved Miss Rosina Criggles. The toast was this:

"Miss Rosina, the Rose of the Garden of Criggles, and the Flower of the Conservatory of Fashion and Beauty. Happy the Hand that shall pluck it from the Parent Stem!"

Once he repeated it in a low voice, a second time somewhat louder, to be sure of giving the right accent at the right words. Perfectly satisfied at his second rehearsal, he added in an audible voice:

"If I dared, I would pluck that rose, (meaning the one on the bush before him,) in order to give—" Mr. Basher never did finish a sentence yet, but he might have accomplished this one had he not turned his head at a rustling sound, and seen approaching the Rose of the Garden of Criggles herself. Blushing his deepest, Mr. Basher stumbled out:

"Rose," added Miss Rosina, helping him out. "Beautiful, is it not, Mr. Basher?—and precious too. It is the only one left in the conservatory."

"The conservatory of fashion, and—" Mr. Basher stopped short. It would never do to spoil the originality of his toast in that way.

"What is that you are saying, you flatterer?" asked the charming Rosina, shaking her fan at him in a pleasingly threatening manner.

"I—I—I was saying, no, thinking—ah—of—now, positively, do you know—ah—of plucking—"

"What! thinking of plucking the only rose in the house! Would you be so cruel? O you naughty, naughty man!" And Miss Criggles gave a look at Mr. Basher that made his knees knock together, and his toes tingle in his patent-leather pumps.

"Oh! you men are so very daring. We poor ladies are so timid and so trusting, Mr. Basher. When people ask me for anything, do you know, I do not even dare to refuse them? Pa is always saying: Rosina, you should be more daring, more repelling. But I cannot, Mr. Basher. It's not in my nature."

"Then I ask you," exclaimed Mr. Basher, making a bold venture, and getting ready to drop on his knees at the end of his request, "to give me the—the—Rose of the Garden—" Mr. Basher stopped to take breath and muster courage.

"The only rose!" broke in Miss Criggles. "Think of it!" she continued, in a voice of tender complaint, addressed to the lilies and geraniums around, and which made Mr. Basher feel very uncomfortable, "he has the heart to ask me for my one precious rose. He knows, cruel man, that I have not the heart, that it is not in my timid, trusting nature to refuse him." And with that she broke the flower from its stem and handed it to Mr. Basher, who was a second time preparing to throw himself into an attitude and finish the sentence Miss Criggles had so hastily interrupted. It is possible that Mr. Basher would never have been called upon to make the sacrifice he did, had not the attention of both been arrested by a loud "Ahem!" Turning suddenly at the sound, they beheld the tall, gaunt figure of Colonel Dolickem standing bolt upright, sentry-wise, in the doorway of the conservatory. He had witnessed the plucking of the rose, and his soul was all aflame with anger. His astonishment at what he saw was so great that it made him speechless. Had he not come himself to the conservatory, as soon as he could disengage himself from that fat, voluble Mrs. Boggles, to meet Miss Criggles, whom he had seen entering there, and do what this birthday party was given on purpose for him to do? Of course. Had not Miss Criggles herself entered the conservatory for the same purpose, speaking to him, Colonel Dolickem, in passing, that his attention might be called to that fact? Of course, again. Was he brought there on purpose to be a witness to this rose-giving, this toying, and coying, and moying with a—with a—individual such as he now saw before him in the person of a—of a—Basher! Of course, once more. But, choking with rage, the colonel could not utter a word of these reflections, and, turning upon his heel, reentered the crowded parlor. Just then certain sounds came to the ears of Miss Criggles, which that lady rightly interpreted to mean supper. This interpretation being conveyed to the bewildered faculties of Mr. Basher, he hurriedly fixed the rose in his button-hole, with the words, "For ever," presented his arm, and was soon the object of commiseration on the part of the Misses Boocher, and the Misses Coocher, and all the rest, who whispered to one another: "How can Rosina Criggles go on so!"

One thing seemed a little strange to Mr. Basher when he arrived in the grand dining-hall. Miss Criggles had released her hold upon his arm, but when or where he could not say. He imagined he still felt the pressure of her light, tapering fingers, even when he stood behind his chair at table, where he found himself, he could hardly tell how. His surprise was not a little augmented to hear the loud voice of Papa Criggles crying out, "Colonel! colonel! this way, colonel, if you please!" and seeing a chair pointed out to his wrathful rival, directly opposite his, and Rosina—his Rosina, as he presumed to say to himself—standing beside him. The colonel cast a look at Mr. Basher, as he moved to the place appointed him, which was at once triumphant and defiant. {131} In fact, the colonel's hopes began to revive, in spite of the blushing rose in the button-hole of the deeper blushing Basher.

Now, I am not going to describe the dinner, or call it supper if you will. You have been to such terribly trying affairs as a party dinner, and it is quite enough to be obliged to go through with the ordeal without going over it again in retrospect.

The head of the Criggles house was in a glorious humor; General Yinweeski was jocose and told several of his best stories of the battle-field; Colonel Dolickem devoted himself with ardor to entertain the charming Rosina, and was freezingly polite and patronizing to Mr. Basher; Major Thwackemout, having been put off upon simpering Miss Boggles, lost his tongue, and became morose. In one of those alarming lulls which you have no doubt observed will take place in the tempest of talk common to a large assembly, and like sudden lulls in the wind often presage a heavy blow, the eye of Miss Boggles accidentally fell upon the rose yet blushing in the button-hole of Mr. Basher's waistcoat.

"Yes, miss," responded Basher, "it is both beautiful and—ah—" a look at Rosina—"and—ah—"

"Very red, you would say, Mr. Basher, would you not? True, it is," said the colonel, showing all his teeth, yet not smiling or laughing a whit.

"Oh! I beg a thousand pardons. Precious! You would not part with it now, Mr. Basher, would you, even for a lady's smile?" The colonel was evidently determined to spur Miss Boggles up to ask for it.

"Not for my heart's blood," fervently ejaculated Mr. Basher. Rosina's glance at him brought out that sentence unbroken, and for a moment left the colonel quite disconcerted. Returning, however, like a veteran to the charge, he rejoined with snapping eyes, (snapping is just the word, so don't interrupt me:)

"Yours, colonel?—ha—'pon my word—ha—Yes, if you'll engage to shed it—ha—"

Colonel Dolickem was confused and baffled. There's not a doubt of it. How could he say that he was not ready to shed the last drop of his blood to obtain possession of that rose, coming, as it did, from the hand of Rosina? Vainly beating his brains for an evasive reply, he could do nothing meanwhile but carry two or three mouthfuls from his plate to his mouth, after that ugly fashion of his, as you know, upon his knife, and snarl. Now, as a general rule, it is not the thing, as I have already said, to feed one's self with one's knife. As a particular and special rule, never attempt it when you are nervous or disturbed in mind. Don't, you'll cut yourself. That is why the colonel, his hand trembling with suppressed rage, cut himself. In vain he attempted to hide it; the blood trickled down upon his chin, and was quickly seen by that irrepressible Miss Boggles, who cried out in alarm:

"Done, done!" cried the general. "Chivalry, my dear colonel, had no knight like you! Blood is shed at the first blast of the trumpet, and, according to the most extraordinary terms of this fray, by your own hand. Basher, you're conquered. Sacrifice the rose!"

Poor Basher did as he was bidden, and slowly, with great reluctance, drew the flower from its place, and held it across the table for the colonel's acceptance, saying: "It is the greatest sacrifice—ha I—ha—ever—"

"Mr. Basher," said Rosina, with an approving smile, "you are the soul of honor."

But the colonel heeded not the outstretched arm of Mr. Basher, and the rose for which he bled, I am sorry to say, dropped from Mr. Basher's hand into a dish of tomatoes. What could the colonel do? Nothing, I think, but what he did—rise with a lofty and majestic air, look a black thunder-cloud of wrath at Mr. John Basher, say to Papa Criggles, with his handkerchief to his mouth, "Under the circumstances," and then get out of the house, and into a towering passion as he drove home. Next day he took the first train for Washington.

It was in the conservatory again, at about 2.20 A.M., that Mr. John Basher tried if the timid and trusting Rosina Criggles could refuse him. She couldn't, as I have already told you. He got as far as "Will you have—" and she added, "Me for your own," and there was an end of it.

A Few Thoughts About Protestants.

Faith, though a gift of God, depends for its actuality upon the acceptance of it by men, and its continuance upon their careful and constant adherence to it. We are at liberty to receive the Christian faith or to reject it in the first instance when it is proposed to us; and we are equally at liberty to misuse it, to change it, to garble it, and to make it so far of no effect as to retain nothing of true Christian religion but the name.

Heresy is possible, all must allow, since it is possible to deny a part of the whole truth; and, knowing to what extremes men will permit their pride and passions to carry them, the fact of heresies frequently occurring does not surprise us. The most lamentable fact about heresy is, that it does not ordinarily die with the first preachers of it; but succeeding generations rise up to an inheritance of falsehood, deprived of the entire truth, fancying themselves joined, to the body of Christ's church, nourishing a dead branch long separated from the tree of life, and prevented, as they too often are, by the pride of intellect and the natural stubbornness of the will, from recognizing their errors and amending the sins of their forefathers by a hearty return to the truth that has been abandoned.

Such is the condition—unhappy condition, as it appears to us—of American Protestant Christians. Deprived of one or another part of the truth by the heresy of the several founders of their various religions, they are called no longer the faithful people, no longer the well-beloved children of holy church, and they share not in those unspeakable mercies of predilection which make religion for a Catholic an unfailing treasure of comfort, and his church a paradise of joy.

To abandon the source of truth, or to live separated from it, is to cut one's self off from any reasonable hold upon the truth, and render the allegiance which one gives to a part of truth a matter rather of sentiment than of deep principle. A branch cut from the living tree may be indeed a branch, but its life is gone, though it seems to live by the suppleness of its twigs, the greenness of its leaves, and the fruit which yet hangs upon it. Death is in it, and it will wither. It will bear no more fruit of itself, for the source of the fruit cannot reach it in its separated state.

So the truths of religious faith, separated from the source of faith, lose their vitality; and to a reflecting man who asks himself why he believes them, they will soon appear no longer true, because he has no longer any faith in the original authority which is the witness of God for them before the world. For it should be self-evident to every one of the least intelligence, that religious truth concerning man's future destiny in an eternity which no man living has ever seen cannot possibly depend upon one's experience or study in this world, and that the mysterious doctrines of Christianity can only appear true to a man on sufficient authority, and that, too, a living, present authority, which is a witness to him as well as to his forefathers. Hence the necessity of an ever-present, living source of faith, and the equal necessity of an actual union with it, in order to have faith in the doctrines of Christianity at all.

But the present position of our American Protestant brethren seems to be at variance with this; for we see them having a good, sincere faith in many of the revealed doctrines of Christianity, and yet are cut off from the living source of faith, which we know to be the infallible and divine voice of the church. And not only cut off, but they reject that source altogether, deny its authority, and look upon it rather as the source of falsehood than of truth. But, when we examine the matter closely, we shall see that they do not deny that they have a real source of their faith, or that such source is the church of Christ—which they suppose their own to be—only that they are ignorant of the fact that the Catholic Church is the church of Christ, and that she is the true source of their faith, and, if that church was destroyed and its authority nullified, they could have no faith at all.

When they have lost all faith and obedience to a church which they regard as the church of Christ, and have not returned to Catholicity, they have lost at the same time all faith in the peculiar doctrines of Christianity.

It would be hardly worth while to consider the answer made by some that they believe in Christ on no church authority, but on the authority of the Bible alone, because it is plain that one must first know the Bible itself to be true on some authority and surely the authority of the type-setter, the printer, and the paper-maker would not be sufficient, and the only authority they have or can have of its truth is that of the Christian church, which sets its seal upon it, and declares it to be the Word of God.

There is no doubt that they are cut off from all real church authority, that their religion is a separated branch from the living tree: and the state of things is such as we would expect to happen; the branch will wither, they will lose faith in Christ and his doctrines, and they are deprived of all those inestimable blessings and privileges which can only be had in union with the true and living church.

We who know the history of their religious schism, and the course it has taken, know that it is more their misfortune than their fault. We know that they remain satisfied with their state of poverty, because they are ignorant of the riches of faith; but we bless God the day is approaching, and is even now at hand, when that ignorance is fast disappearing, the prejudices and false notions they have had of the Catholic Church are being rapidly dispelled. The pope and the priest are no longer bug-bears to frighten children with; the names of monk and nun are no longer synonymous with villainy and crime. Catholics are not generally regarded as ignorant idolaters, and even a Jesuit may pass in society as an honest man, a sincere Christian, and a gentleman.

Three things, then, may give us great hopes that this great and good American people, our brethren, our friends, and our fellow-citizens, are not far from the kingdom of heaven, the church of God—the spread of knowledge concerning her character and doctrines, the rapid increase of the church herself in every part of the country, and the fact that the separated branch is fast withering, and the people look to it no longer for the fruit which will nourish their souls unto eternal life.

There is no doubt but that until within a very few years the Catholic religion was a hidden faith to the mass of the American people. In the cities, the churches were few and small, and a Protestant could hardly get within sight or hearing of a Catholic preacher. In the country towns the scattered flock would get together once in a month to hear Mass in a miserable apology for a church in some dirty back-lane, or in a shanty in the woods. That is all changed. Our city churches and cathedrals are getting to be the largest and grandest buildings in the land, and in many places the same congregations which once huddled together in the shanty are now assembled in churches which rival all others in the same places for size and beauty. And all this has happened in so short a space of time that it looks like magic. Those who will not see the true reason imagine that the wealth of old Catholic countries has been lavishly poured out to bring it about. They cannot comprehend that this is the work, for the most part, of the faith of the Catholic mechanic and the Catholic servant-girl.

The time was—and we have seen it—when the priest took the dinner-table for an altar, upon which were placed the crucifix that ordinarily hung at the bedside in the corner of the same room, and two kitchen candlesticks for the ornaments. Those same congregations have now their own churches, furnished with everything needful for divine service. From what we know of the rapid multiplication of church buildings, we can conclude that, as far as regards the external appearance of her worship, and the crowds of worshippers who are seen thronging to her sanctuaries, the church is now fairly before the American people. They can no longer plead ignorance of her existence, or fancy her to be a petty sect diminishing in numbers and decaying in force. The existence and power of the church in other lands is also forcing itself upon their notice. {135} They cannot read a newspaper or a book without meeting many proofs that the Catholic Church is, as she always has been, the mightiest, most reverend Christian church in the world, which claims the homage and admiration of mankind, and holds the destiny of Christianity itself in her hands. Those who from interest are her enemies see this, and on every hand we hear from their pulpits and read in their religious newspapers the loudest laments over the "fearful growth of popery," as they are pleased to style it.

But the interior workings of the church, her doctrines, her moral teaching, are also being presented to them more clearly. In the common walks of life, in the parlor, in the street, in the halls of business, our Protestant brethren meet many who are able to give a reason for the faith that is in them, and whose lives they know. Sincere seekers for truth and souls in earnest about their salvation, hearing of the claims of Catholicity and seeing many whose religious character they have every reason to admire, will ask questions, and Americans (we say it not to their reproach) will ask questions, if it be only for curiosity's sake. Catholic books, magazines, newspapers, pamphlets, speeches, sermons, and other modes of diffusing a knowledge of Catholic faith and practice find many readers and hearers among Protestants who cannot fail to be impressed by them, who will be divested of their old prejudices, and learn our religion not as it has been taught to them by her enemies, but as she is. It would be of no use to tell an intelligent American Protestant now that Catholics are poor, ignorant idolaters who worship images, and who never heard of the Bible, because they know better; and if you told him, as you might have done twenty years ago and be believed, that the pope and the priests had secret designs against the liberties of this country, he would laugh in your face. Books with pictures representing the pope with his tiara on, holding up his hands in horror and turning away his face from an open Bible which a Protestant minister presents to his gaze, while the lightnings from heaven are depicted in the background descending in wrath upon St. Peter's, may possibly be found upon the table of some ignorant backwoodsman, but an intelligent Protestant would blush to know that such a book was under his roof.

People are great travellers nowadays, too, and they see enough in Catholic countries to make them at least think well of their religion.

They go to Rome, perhaps have an interview with the venerable head of the church, and invariably return penetrated with sentiments of profound respect, and often of the most attached affection for him.

They go to heathen countries, they see there the work of Catholic apostles. They find the only Christians there are Catholics, living such perfect lives as might put Christians of more enlightened nations to shame. In every corner of the world they find the Catholic Church doing her appointed work for the regeneration, civilization, and salvation of men, and numbers of them are not slow to draw the conclusion, "Truly this is the living church of the living God the pillar and ground of truth."

Let us look at the second reason we suggested, namely, the rapid increase of the church, and the character of it.

In the year 1800 we had only 1 bishop, 100 priests, and about 50,000 Catholics. Now we have 43 bishops, 2235 priests, and at least 5,000,000 Catholics. That this number is made up principally by immigration is true; but we do not forget that they bring the true faith in Jesus Christ with them, that the truth is spreading by their example and influence, and the American people cannot fail to feel the effects of it. {136} If all these immigrants were infidels, Mohammedans, or Mormons, they would naturally affect the religious character of the people amongst whom they are living. How much more may we look for mighty results from the true religion and the grace of God!

Catholicity is leavening the whole mass. Go where you will, you will find a Catholic in almost every family of note in the country. "Oh! I respect the Catholic religion very much," some one will say to you. "I have a father or mother, a sister or brother, an aunt or a cousin, who is a very good and very strict Catholic." From the very families of American Protestant bishops and ministers the church draws to herself one or another of the members, from whom new American Catholic families spring up, to give the church standing and influence in society, and compel a respectful hearing and a respectful treatment.

These considerations, encouraging as they are, might still lead us to suppose that it will be yet a long while before America shall be called, as she undoubtedly will be, one of the brightest jewels in the crown of the holy church, were it not for the third thought we have presented, which is, that their faith and trust in the sapless, separated branch of a church is failing. They have planted it anew, have watered it, have nursed it with every care, at boundless expense, with sincere heart's devotion, but all to no purpose. It will not grow, but withers in their hands. Now and then some have thought that the branch was too much like the old tree, and they cut off a twig, a blossom, or plucked a fruit from it, and planted that, and, with many earnest prayers and unceasing labors, they hoped their little plant would spring into life, but its untimely decay has disappointed them and disgusted them. Anon they endeavored to graft their withering branch on an older and apparently more healthy stock, such as the former and late attempts of the Episcopalians to form a union with the schismatical Greek Church; but the graft will not take, though they are willing to tie it on with every appliance and prune it after every fashion. Again, a few who style themselves Anglo-Catholics and high churchmen try to reason themselves into a belief that their particular little twig of the branch must be the true tree, because it is so much like in size and shape to the young sapling which the apostles first planted in the earth.

Slowly, however, they are beginning to ask themselves the question which they should have asked in the beginning, "How shall it grow without a root?" Those who take the trouble to examine the matter at bottom find out that the branch they cherish has no root, and now they lose all respect for it. These divide into two parties. Those who are sincere-minded souls, looking for true Christianity, and resting their eternal hopes upon it, seek for the living Christian tree, and find sweet repose beneath its grateful shade, and true nourishment of their souls from its never-failing fruit. Others, who are less sincere, cast aside the dead branch and all their faith in Christ with it, become discouraged and disgusted, and fall away into indifferentism and infidelity.

This loss of the old traditional reverence for Christianity, which a few years back was so strong that men felt it was something to be ashamed of, and to need apology, when forced to say, "I am no Christian," is now so marked that it is deplored on all sides. {137} References are not unfrequently made in the columns of our daily journals indicative of the popular temper, which hold up celebrated preachers, and with them often the whole clerical profession, to ridicule and contempt. Still the mass of the people of our country are both sincere and religious-minded, and the character of the conversions that are daily taking place is such as to make us not only hopeful, but sure of the final result. Surely, it is not to be said that the Catholic Church shall prove herself less powerful in a country of nominal Christians than she has shown herself to be in any or all the pagan nations whom she has not only converted, but also civilized and enlightened. Very few Protestants nowadays are compelled to unlearn their supposed Christianity to become Catholics. The false element which Calvinism introduced at the Reformation is being gradually eliminated from their systems, and all that they really adhere to is a part of Catholic truth. Many converts express themselves surprised to find that to enter the church they are called upon to renounce nothing whatever of what they already hold. They find, to their delight, that the faith as taught by the church is the completion, the realization, and also the explanation of their religious opinions.

The conversion of our beloved land is a work that should engage our most ardent aspirations, and kindle all the zeal of which we are capable. Both our hearts and our heads should be in it. We feel like preaching a little on this subject. That we may help it and hasten it by many things there is no doubt; by constant and earnest prayer, by good example, by instruction, by the distribution of good books and tracts, and such means; but it seems to us that when any one is deeply impressed with a conviction that a desired end will be accomplished, that it ought to be, and, as far as in one lies, it shall be, then the end is not far off. Aside from other things, there is in this matter a wide field for the exercise of our theological virtues.

Our faith: an unwavering faith in the power of truth, which must prevail. It is God's work; it is what the church is called upon to do; the people are fast progressing toward it; the good expect it, the wicked fear it; God's grace is never wanting to aid all men in their search after, and their acceptance of, the truth, and what, then, can hinder it? The question put to us a few years since, with a smile of mixed incredulity and pity, "Do you believe that this country will ever become Catholic?" is now, "How soon do you think it will come to pass?" "Soon, very soon," we reply, if your own statistics be true; for we see by one of your late writers that the rate of growth of the Catholic religion has been seventy-five per cent greater than the ratio of increase of population, while the rate of the decrease of Protestantism is eleven per cent less.

Our hope: We must have large hope in this, as in all things else, to bring about speedily what we desire: such an enthusiastic hope as makes us see the end already. It will, moreover, encourage them to do what we wish. Tell a sinner that you give him up and have no hopes of him, and you give him a fatal encouragement to go on in his wickedness. Your want of hope takes hope out of him; but, on the contrary, tell him cheerfully that you look for his conversion and amendment as a matter of course, and he will conclude at once that he ought to convert himself, and will begin to wish himself converted. {138} Then show him a picture of the happiness and peace of a good life, the joy of the forgiven sinner; his mind is made up, and the grace of God will do the rest. So it will be with our Protestant brethren. Let them feel that we are sure of their conversion to Catholicity, that we look for it as a certain event, and they will begin to think it very possible, and ask what it is to be a Catholic. Present them a picture of that unspeakable peace which one obtains in a sure and certain faith; tell them of the blessings in store for them, show them the treasures of God's house, and give them to understand that they are meant expressly for them, and that we are certain they will enjoy them; then it will be strange, indeed, if, with the truth before them, and the grace of God aiding and encouraging them, they should turn away and reject their own happiness. For the greater part of sincere Protestants there is absolutely nothing to keep them out of the church but the old worn-out prejudices they have against her. We know that it is thought that they have an insuperable fear and distrust of some of our practices—the confessional, for instance; but our experience convinces us that they find no difficulty in overcoming their fears as soon as they firmly believe in its necessity, and perceive its consoling and sanctifying influence upon the individual soul and upon society at large. Besides, this opinion is, in fact, groundless. As a good old French Jesuit father said to us one day: "I have noticed that when Americans have made up their mind to do anything, they never ask if it be difficult."

Our charity: Souls are won by love. We do not, and cannot, love the Protestant religion. It has little that is lovable in it; and besides, our own holy faith, all beautiful and good as it is, absorbs all the love our hearts can possibly hold. But could our Protestant brethren know how we Catholics love them—how we yearn over them as a mother yearns over her wayward child—how we long to welcome them home again; could they see how the "charity of Jesus Christ presseth us" to labor and pray for them; could they overhear us conversing with one another about them and learn our wishes and plans, our hopes and our wonderings at their continued absence, then we would win their souls. They could not stand all that. The power of divine charity would draw them sweetly on. Then they would ask themselves, What motive can these Catholics have to wish us so fervently to become as they are? Would that they might all be brought to ask that question!

When we, who stand upon the firm rock, see them stumbling over the bogs and marshes of a groundless and unstable faith, there is a strong temptation to laugh at their bewilderment, and mock at them as they go leaping about from one little hillock of opinion to another, and at last fall, sprawling, into the mire of religious doubt. Better pity them. Human nature, you know, has such a tendency to follow will-o'-the-wisps, even if it be only for the purpose of scientific investigation!

Whatever truth they have, after all, is Catholic truth. Their piety, their love of religion, their hatred of sin, their fear of hell and hopes of heaven, are all the results of the teachings of Jesus Christ, in whom they believe as far as they know, and through whom, in some vague sense, they hope for salvation. {139} They have been led away from the true fold, and are wandering sheep, who are getting further and further each day out of hearing of the voice of the true Shepherd. But the time is not far distant when they will return. God's hand is stretched out over this people. His Holy Spirit is moving their hearts, and the signs of the day of peace and unity of faith are already appearing.

Preachers usually begin with a text; we take the liberty of ending with one, very à propos, we think, to the subject of our thoughts: "I will call them my people, that were not my people: and her beloved, that was not beloved: and her, that had not obtained mercy, one that hath obtained mercy. And it shall be, in the place where it was said to them: you are not my people: there they shall be called the children of the living God."

New Publications.

The Clergy And The Pulpit In Their Relations To The People.
By M. l'Abbé Mullois, chaplain to the Emperor Napoleon III. and Missionary Apostolic.
Translated by George Percy Badger.
First American edition.
12mo, pp. 308. New York: The Catholic Publication Society, 126 Nassau Street. 1867.

This work of the learned and pious Abbé Mullois has attained an immense popularity in France, where it was issued a few years ago under the title of Cours d'Eloquence Sacrée Populaire; ou, Essai sur la Manière de parler au Peuple. It is the first of a series of essays which appeared subsequently, designed as hints to the clergy in their pastoral ministrations, especially in the pulpit.

It is one of the most noticeable books that have been issued by the Catholic press, and cannot fail of receiving as cordial a welcome with us as it has already received in France. Its remarkable characteristic is the apostolic simplicity of its style, and its bold, manly tone. The author's principal object is to direct the attention of the clergy to the necessity of cultivating a popular style of eloquence in their discourses and instructions to the masses. But, in order that the sermon be popular, and reach the hearts of the people, the preacher must himself be popular. He must be a man loved by the people, engaging both their admiration and reverence by his manner and his language when addressing them, and above all, by loving them. Hence, the author wisely treats of the preacher before he treats of the sermon. The first chapter is devoted to the elucidation of his great maxim: "To address men well, they must be loved much." Have many rules of eloquence if you will, but do not forget the first and most essential one: Love the people whom you would instruct, convert, reprove, sanctify, and lead to God. "The end of preaching is to reclaim the hearts of men to God, and nothing but love can find out the mysterious avenues which lead to the heart. We are always eloquent when we wish to save one whom we love; we are always listened to when we are loved. … If, then, you do not feel a fervent love and profound pity for humanity—if, in beholding its miseries and errors, you do not experience the throbbings, the holy thrillings of charity, be assured that the gift of Christian eloquence has been denied you," which is the good abbé's polite way (so truly French) of saying, "Don't preach."

He is not above indulging in a little bit of humor now and then when he wishes to say something a little severe, so as to take off the edge: "Just look at the young priest on his entrance upon the sacred ministry. He is armed cap-a-pie with arguments; he speaks only by syllogisms. His discourse bristles with now, therefore, consequently. He is dogmatic, peremptory. One might fancy him a nephew of one of those old bearded doctors of the middle ages, such as Petit Jean or Courte-Cuisse. He is disposed to transfix by his words every opponent, and give quarter to none. He thrusts, cuts, overturns relentlessly. My friend, lay aside a part of your heavy artillery. Take your young man's, your young priest's heart, and place it in the van before your audience, and after that you may resort to your batteries, if they are needed. Make yourself beloved—be a father. Preach affectionately, and your speech, instead of gliding over hearts hardened by pride, will pierce even to the dividing of the joints and marrow; and then that may come to be remarked of you which was said of another priest by a man of genius who had recently been reclaimed to a Christian life: 'I almost regret my restoration, so much would it have gratified me to have been converted by so affectionate a preacher.' … Apostolical eloquence is no longer well understood. It is now made to consist of I hardly know what; the utterance of truths without any order, in a happy-go-lucky fashion, extravagant self-excitement, bawling, and thumping on the pulpit. There is a tendency in this respect to follow the injunctions of an old divine of the sixteenth century to a young bachelor of arts. 'Percute cathedram fortiter; respice Crucifixum torvis oculis; nil dic ad propositum, et bene praedicabis.'"

It is certainly a great mistake, although a common one, that what is called popular preaching is relished only by the poor and illiterate, and, indeed, is only fit for them. The author's sentiments on this subject are so just and well timed that we venture to give them in the following extracts from the preface of his second volume.

"True popular preaching is not that which is addressed exclusively to the lower orders; but that which is addressed to all, and is understood by all. Such is the import of the word popular. When a man is said to be popular, it implies that he meets with sympathy on all sides; from among the upper, the lower, and the middle classes of society. When we say, charity is popular, we mean that it finds an echo in the breasts of all. The Gospel is essentially popular; hence Christian eloquence also should be popular at all times and in all places; as well in large cities as in small towns and country districts: unless an exceptional audience is addressed, and there is only one such in France, namely, that of Notre-Dame at Paris.

"This is what a sermon ought to be: A learned academician listening to it on one side, and a poor illiterate woman on the other, both should derive therefrom something to enlighten their minds and improve their hearts.

"We, the clergy, are debtors to all. How can we denounce injustice from the pulpit if we exhibit an example of it in our own persons? This is a matter involving a sacred trust, which has not met with adequate consideration; for how can we preach charity when we deprive the poor of that which is their due—the bread of knowledge? We should deem it an atrocity to retain the alms given to us for the needy; and does not our faith tell us that it would be a still greater crime to withhold from them the saving truths of the Gospel? … It is one of the great glories, one of the great powers of the ordinance of preaching, that the word preached should embrace all without any exception; and we are sadly to blame for having renounced that vantage-ground. Hence it is that our sermons nowadays are dry, meagre, artificial, inefficacious, and no longer exhibit that fulness and life, that broad effusion of thought, those throbbings of the heart and thrilling accents of the soul, which bespeak a double origin; indicating that what we utter is at once the voice of God and the voice of the people.

"I am going to speak without any reserve. Painful as the subject may be, it is desirable that the clergy should be made thoroughly aware of it. Go where you will in France, you meet with numbers of excellent and eminently intelligent men who say: 'I really cannot account for it; but I can no longer bear listening to sermons, for they weary me dreadfully. The phraseology generally used is humdrum and threadbare, and the matter consists of an incoherent mixture of rhetoric and philosophy, art and mysticism, of which nobody understands any thing. {141} Then, again, their monotonous uniformity throughout is enough to send even those into a doze who have lost the habit of sleeping. I sincerely believe that I should do better by abstaining; but for the sake of example, I resign myself to enduring them.' And be it remembered, that these are the remarks, not of the ill-disposed, but of devoutly religious men; proving the necessity of some large reform, since it would be idle to suppose that such concurrent testimony from all parts of France is unfounded. The same men, be it remarked, after listening to a genial, diversified, popular, and sterling discourse, will readily exclaim: 'That's the thing that I want! That's what does me good! That's what I like!'

"We must revert, therefore, to the genuine style of evangelical preaching, which is that of a father addressing his numerous family, and who wishes to be understood by all his children from the eldest to the youngest.

"But we must not be deluded into thinking that such popular preaching is easy: on the contrary, it is very difficult of attainment; for it involves no less a task than that of speaking a language which shall be level to the comprehension of the masses, and at the same time adapted to educated minds. Would you master that task? Study much, study every thing: theology, literature, the Holy Scriptures, more especially the Gospel; acquire a deep insight into the human heart; and, withal, cultivate your own mind till it can digest all knowledge. Then write and speak like one who has really drawn what he utters out of the good treasures of the heart, and in such a way that all who hear you may be ready to say: 'Really, what he states is very simple; it is sound sense; it is right. It is just what I would have said myself under similar circumstances.' Let us recall what has already been remarked elsewhere—that a little study withdraws us from the natural, whereas much study leads us to it. Reveal your heart, your soul; for, after all, the soul of man, that masterpiece of God's hand, will always carry more weight than all the embellishments of philosophy or rhetoric."

Let this zealous author speak of what he will, he invariably comes back to his first principle: "Love the people, if you would have any influence with them for good." Each chapter reveals the fact that this thought is the one which is uppermost in the writer's mind, and, therefore, the one he desires to impress the more deeply upon the minds of his readers. He knows how to tell plain, homely truths without offence, and criticise severely the faults of his brethren without acerbity or presumption.

It is a book that will do good, a great deal of good, and we commend it most heartily to all our readers, who will assuredly derive much pleasure and no little profit from its perusal.

The translation has been made by a finished scholar, and leaves nothing to be desired for purity of style or fidelity to the original. The volume is published in a finished and elegant style.

Essays On Religion And Literature.
By Various Writers.
Edited by Archbishop Manning.
Second Series. London: Longmans, Green & Co.
New York: For sale by The Catholic Publication Society.

The titles of these essays and the names of their authors will give our readers a good idea of the character and value of this volume:

Inaugural Address, Session 1866-7, the Most Rev. Archbishop Manning, D.D.;

On Intellectual Power and Man's Perfection—Dangers of Uncontrolled Intellect, W. G. Ward, Ph.D.;

On the Mission and Prospects of the Catholic Church in England, F. Oakley, M.A.;

Christianity in Relation to Civil Society, Edward Lucas;

On the Philosophy of Christianity, Albany J. Christie, M.A., S J.;

On some Events Preparatory to the English Reformation, H. W. Wilberforce, M.A.;

On the Inspiration of Scripture, Most Rev. Archbishop Manning, D.D.;

Church and State, Edmund Sheridan Purcell;

Certain Sacrificial Words used by Saint Paul, Monsignor Patterson, M.A.

It is impossible for us to enter here into an extended review of all these very remarkable essays. They were read at different meetings of the English Catholic Academia, founded six years ago by the present Archbishop of Westminster, and which has for its object, as the same illustrious prelate and scholar informs us in his present inaugural address, "the maintenance and defence of the Catholic religion, both positively and in its relation to all other truth, and polemically as against all forms of erroneous doctrines, principles, and thought." {142} This first address is a short but comprehensive sketch of the state of religion in England, in which the present condition and prospects of the faith are contrasted chiefly with what they were thirty years ago.

The second and third papers are designed to uphold the following thesis: The perfection of man consists exclusively in the perfection of his moral and spiritual nature, intellectual excellence forming no part of it whatever. We cannot help but think the author has taken a great deal of trouble to prove a truism; for his definition of perfection is closely restricted to moral and spiritual perfection. We do not imagine that the antagonists he summons up from the ranks of "muscular Christianity," and from the present atheistical school in England, would contend that pure intellect, in the sense used by the author, would afford more than a subordinate service to man's spiritual welfare, such as he himself proves in a second proposition. The greater part, if not the whole, of these antagonists to Catholic asceticism know nothing of what they are discussing. They suppose, and falsely so, that the Catholic Church teaches that the soul advances in spiritual perfection precisely at the expense of intellectual excellence; that the saint becomes the more holy as he becomes the more stupid; that the cultivation of the reasoning power is not only useless but a positive hindrance to spiritual perfection. It is not surprising that our opponents make the most of intellectual acquirements, of physical health and strength, and exalt the animal above the spiritual, because they deny in toto the moral state of man as Catholic theology, both moral and ascetic, supposes it to be. They contend that there is nothing wanting in man's moral nature, any more than in his purely intellectual nature. Both are weak, it is true, and should be strengthened and perfected, but the results of moral weakness, which we call sin and imperfection, are to be regarded in the same light as one would the results of ignorance in science. Sin is simply a mistake, culpable to the same degree as a false deduction in physics or mathematics would be for want of better information and scientific knowledge. Hence, it is easy to see how these philosophers neither value nor in fact comprehend the exercises of the spiritual life, and look upon all self-abnegation and mortification of the senses as degrading. "Purification of the soul" would be nonsense, because the soul does not need purification. It needs only advancement, enlightenment, and nurture, both in its spiritual and intellectual part. That a man should apply himself to the perfection of his spiritual nature without equal care to advance in worldly science, and keep his muscles well developed, his stomach full, and his body fashionably and comfortably clothed, is something which the worldly wise cannot understand. How should they when they rate the spiritual no higher than, if not below, the intellectual? Human greatness with them consists in physical and intellectual power; and they think the world is far more benefited by a regiment of soldiers and a board of trade than by a community of monks and an association of prayer.

But too much care cannot be taken when we attempt to argue for the thesis proposed in this essay. There is danger of giving our adversaries an impression that we are contending for the very things of which they accuse us. The intellect is not something evil which is to be crushed, else we should not look for a saint in a Chrysostom, an Augustine, a Thomas of Aquinas, a Bonaventura, or among those thousands of men and women of great genius and surpassing intellectual power, whose works are the glory of the world as they are of religion.

But one of the exercises of asceticism, say our opponents, is to mortify the intellect. Yes, just as I mortify my sight by restraining it from resting upon vain or immoral objects, my appetite from too full an indulgence, my love for music from dangerous display or vain gratification, or, what is at least as good a reason, because I really have not the time to give my intellect, my appetite, my love of the beautiful in art, poetry, and music all that they demand. {143} I have a far higher object in life, and that is, to make my soul pure and agreeable to God. These other and inferior objects are worthy in themselves of attention, but as for me I am too busy to spend either much thought or time upon them.

Those good people whose God is their belly, or whose highest aspiration in life is to see their name on the title-page of a book, doubt either the sanity or the sincerity of one who says that he loves to think about God a great deal better than he does about what he is going to have for dinner, and chooses rather to make a meditation than to read the morning newspaper. Such an one is perhaps just as hungry as another for both animal and mental food, but he puts away that anxious thought about dinner, he declines the invitation to hear Parepa, and smashes his violin, or consigns his mathematics to oblivion, because it happens that some or all of these things are found to have a tendency to take away his thoughts from God; and as to voluntary suffering, my philosopher, I am sure that it cost one of these "degraded ascetics" more pain to smash his violin than all the disciplines he ever took in his life. What need was there to smash it? Because it stood in his way, and because sacrifice is the sweetest and most nourishing food the soul can feed upon. And the same for his vanity, too, you say. Possibly. But do you acknowledge that there is such a thing as vainglory, which may arise in the heart and degrade it, thus placing a hindrance to its perfection? I know you do, for you are constantly accusing the Catholic saints of it. Well, then you must allow that mortification of such a tendency is necessary for man's perfection; and having once granted the necessity of mortification for one thing, you have given up the question. Let us hear no more of "degrading asceticism," or of the "unmanliness and superstition of bodily austerities."

The fault of this essay consists in the fact that the writer says he uses the word "intellect" in its popular sense, while his argument supposes it to be taken in its abstract, philosophical sense. In relation to the question at issue, the popular sense is not the philosophical one. The question of human perfection, as put by the enemies of the church and the railers at her ascetic principles and practices, is: Does not the Catholic Church teach that man perfects himself alone in the spiritual order, and that all human science is but vanity and vexation of spirit, and, therefore, better left aside? And is not this as a consequence a "degrading" standard to set before humanity, and one which tends to superstition, ignorance, mean-spiritedness, as well as criminal neglect of health and personal cleanliness? Is not intellectual ability a talent, and was not the servant of the gospel condemned for returning his to his lord unimproved? This question the writer of the present essay does not meet, as we had hoped he would. For ourselves, we judge, as the writer acknowledges in his second essay, if we read him aright, that there is such a thing as intellectual perfection, artistical, mechanical, and even muscular perfection, each in their own order, but inferior in character, aim, and end to the perfection of the spiritual nature, which latter perfection it is not only lawful but obligatory to cultivate, even at the expense of either of the former.

To advance in spiritual perfection is the first and highest duty of man. "Seek first the kingdom of God and his justice." If one can advance in any other perfection at the same time without detriment to the first, all well and good. There is no danger that the devil's Advocate will object to his canonization on the score of his great intellectual superiority, his wonderful mechanical genius, or the firmness and beautiful development of his muscles. But let any of these things prove detrimental to his spiritual perfection, as they without doubt frequently do, then he must shut up his books or smash his violin, as the case may be.

The essay by Mr. Wilberforce, On some Events Preparatory to the English Reformation, will be found an exceedingly interesting paper. That On the Inspiration of Scripture, by Archbishop Manning, presents a concise view of the teaching of the church, and the different opinions of Protestant and Catholic theologians on that subject. All the essays are, in fact, literary productions of a high order, and merit the perusal of every scholar of English Catholic literature.

Lacordaire's Letters To Young Men.
Edited by the Count de Montalembert.
Translated by the Rev. James Trenor.
Baltimore: Kelly & Piet. 1867.

This volume is composed of letters written to his young friends whilst the author was engaged in the most arduous and responsible duties. They are not studied productions of the great Dominican's literary genius, but rather simple outpourings of paternal love and solicitude toward those young men for whose spiritual direction he was at once so wise a guide, so zealous a pastor, and so warm a friend. They reveal the wealth of affection which enriched his own heart, and the consecration of that affection to the highest and noblest purpose of life—the perfection and salvation of souls. These letters have been published that other young men may also listen to his wise counsels, and receive that direction and encouragement which the writer was so eminently qualified to bestow.

Those which refer to the painful steps that fidelity to the truth and loyalty to the church led him to take in reference to M. de la Mennais will be found exceedingly interesting. There is no book that we could wish to see more extensively circulated among and read by the young men of our day than this collection of letters. The perusal of them will do much toward strengthening that bond of holy friendship and mutual confidence which exists between youth and the priesthood, so truly beneficial to the one and full of consolation to the other.

Extracts From The Fathers And Church Historians.
W. B. Kelly,
8 Grafton Street, Dublin.
For sale by the Catholic Publication Society,
126 Nassau Street, New-York.

This volume contains choice selections from the fathers, faithfully translated into English.

Modern History; from the coming of Christ and change of the Roman Republic into an Empire, to the year of our Lord 1867, with questions for the use of schools.
By Peter Fredet, D.D.
22d edition, revised, etc.
1 vol. 12mo, pp. 566 and 38.
Baltimore: John Murphy & Co. 1867.

A Compendium Of Ancient And Modern History—with questions, adapted to the use of schools, with an appendix, etc.—from the Creation to the year 1867.
By M. J. Kerney, A.M.
1 vol. 12mo, pp. 431.
Baltimore: John Murphy & Co. 1867.

These works are excellent epitomes of history, and are very popular in the Catholic schools of the United States and the Canadas. The first of them, Fredet's History, is a useful volume, and gives the reader a clear and correct idea of modern history, especially if he has not time to read the more voluminous histories of the various countries of the world. The present edition of both these volumes is brought down to the year 1867, and the account of our late terrible war is written with candor and without bias, the bare facts and dates of battles being given. They are gotten up in good, serviceable style for schools.

The Bohemians Of The Fifteenth Century.
Translated from the French of Henri Guenot,
by Mrs. J. Sadlier. New-York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co.

This is a very correct translation of a beautiful little tale by M. Guenot, illustrating the peculiar habits and manner of living of that strange people, generally called Gipsies, who appeared in Europe about the time selected by the author for his illustration. The story is well told in the original, with an attention to time and place characteristic of the best French writers of fiction, and in the English version before us it loses nothing in accuracy or even in vivacity of style. It is an excellent book for young readers, and will doubtless find a large circulation among that class.

The Catholic World.
Vol. VI., No. 32.—November, 1867.

Unpublished Letters Of General Washington.

Two years ago, Count Henri de Chastellux gave to the world, through the pages of Le Correspondent of Paris, a translation of thirteen letters of Washington's never before printed. They were addressed to the Marquis de Chastellux, that gallant and accomplished French nobleman who fought with the patriot army during our revolutionary war, serving as major-general under Rochambeau, and of whose subsequent travels in America we gave some account in an early number of THE CATHOLIC WORLD. Washington seems to have entertained a sincere regard for this distinguished soldier and man of letters, who, besides being in complete harmony with the founder of the American republic in his views of philosophy and politics, was a gentleman of most amiable private character, agreeable manners, and extensive information. After his return to France he kept up a correspondence with Washington as long as he lived, the last letter in the present collection bearing date only six months before the marquis's death. Although it cannot be said that Washington's letters reveal any facts of importance not already known, they are not devoid of historical interest, apart from the value which all confidential communications from his pen must possess in the eyes of patriotic Americans. We are indebted to the efforts of the Abbé Cazali in procuring copies of the original from the Count Henri de Chastellux, who was kind enough to copy them himself. To both of these gentlemen we return our most sincere thanks. The first is dated at New-Windsor, January 28th, 1781. Count de Chastellux had just arrived at Newport, where the French army was then quartered.

My Dear Sir: I congratulate you on your safe arrival in good health at Newport, after travelling through so large an extent of the theatre of war in America. Receive my thanks for your courtesy in informing me of the same, and also for making me acquainted with the Comte de Charlus. His prepossessing appearance is a sufficient indication of the amiable qualities of his mind, and fails not to produce at first view a favorable impression upon all who see him.

After spending several days with us at headquarters, he has gone to Philadelphia, accompanied by Count Dillon.

I left them at Ringwood, whither I went to repress a partial revolt at Pompton among the New-Jersey troops, who, after the example of those of Pennsylvania, mutinied and refused to obey their officers. The affair happily ended without bloodshed. Two of the ringleaders were executed on the spot, and order had been completely restored before I left.

I am at a loss for words to express my appreciation of your approval and friendship, and the value I attach to them. It shall be the desire and happiness of my life to merit their continuance, and to assure you on every occasion of my admiration for your character and virtues. I am, dear sir, your most obedient servant,

II.

Dear Sir: Permit me, on this occasion of writing to you, to begin my letter with congratulations on your recovered health, and I offer them sincerely.

Colonel Menoville put into my hands two days since your favor of the 29th ultimo. If my inclination was seconded by the means, I should not fail to meet this gentleman as the friend of my friend; and if it is not in my power to comply with his wishes on the score of provisions, I will deal with him candidly by communicating the causes.

I am impressed with too high a sense of the abilities and candor of the Chevalier Chastellux to conceive that he is capable of creating false hopes. His communication, therefore, of the West Indies intelligence comes with merited force, and I would to God it were in my power to take the proper advantage of it! But if you can recollect a private conversation which I had with you in the Count de Rochambeau's chamber, you will be persuaded it is not; especially when I add, that the want of which I then complained exists in much greater force than it did at that moment; but such preparations as can be made, I will make for the events you allude to. The candid world and well-informed officer will expect no more.

May you participate in those blessings you have invoked hereon for me, and may you live to see a happy termination of a struggle which was begun, and has been continued, for the purpose of rescuing America from impending slavery, and securing to its inhabitants their indubitable rights, in which you bear a conspicuous part, is the ardent wish of, dear sir, your most obedient and most affectionate servant,

III.

My Dear Chevalier: I fear, from the purport of the letter you did me the honor to write from Newport on the 9th, that my sentiments respecting the council of war held on board the Duke de Bourgogne, (the 31st of May,) have been misconceived, and I shall be very unhappy if they receive an interpretation different from the true intent and meaning of them. If this is the case, it can only be attributed to my not understanding the business of the Duke de Lauzun perfectly. I will rely, therefore, on your goodness and candor to explain and rectify the mistake, if any has happened.

My wishes perfectly coincided with the determination of the board of war to continue the fleet at Rhode Island, provided it could remain there in safety with the force required, and did not impede the march of the army toward the North river; but, when Duke Lauzun informed me that my opinion of the propriety and safety of this measure was required by the board, and that he came hither at the particular request of the Counts Rochambeau and de Barras to obtain it, I was reduced to the painful necessity of delivering a sentiment different from that of a most respectable board, or of forfeiting all pretensions to candor by the concealment of it.

Upon this ground it was I wrote to the generals to the effect I did, and not because I was dissatisfied at the alteration of the plan agreed to at Wethersfield. My fears for the safety of the fleet, which I am now persuaded were carried too far, were productive of a belief that the generals, when separated, might feel uneasy at every mysterious preparation of the enemy, and occasion a fresh call for militia. This had some weight in my determination to give Boston (where I was sure no danger could be encountered but that of a blockade) a preference to Newport, where, under some circumstances, though not such as were likely to happen, something might be enterprised.

The fleet being at Rhode Island is attended certainly with many advantages in the operation proposed, and I entreat that you, and the gentlemen who were of opinion that it ought to be risked there for these purposes, will be assured that I have a high sense of the obligation you mean to confer on America by that resolve, and that your zeal to promote the common cause, and my anxiety for the safety of so valuable a fleet, were the only motives which gave birth to the apparent difference in our opinions.

I set that value upon your friendship and candor, and have that implicit belief in your attachment to America, that they are only to be equalled by the sincerity with which I have the honor to be, dear sir, your most obedient, and obliged, and faithful servant,

IV.

My Dear Chevalier: I cannot suffer your old acquaintance, Mrs. Carter, to proceed to Williamsburg without taking with her a remembrance of my friendship for you.

I have been detained here by Congress to assist in making the necessary arrangements for next campaign, and am happy to find so favorable a disposition in that body to prepare vigorously for it. They have resolved to keep up the same number of regiments as constituted the army of last year, and have called upon the States in a pressing manner to complete them. Requisitions of money are also made; but how far the abilities and inclinations of the States individually will coincide with the demands is more than I am able, at this early period, to inform you. A further pecuniary aid from your generous nation, and a decisive naval force upon this coast in the latter end of May or beginning of June, unlimited in its stay and operations, would, unless the resources of Great Britain are inexhaustible, or she can form powerful alliances, bid fair to finish the war in the course of next campaign, (if she mean to prosecute it,) with the ruin of that people.

The first, that is, an aid of money, would enable our financier to support the expenses of the war with ease and credit, without anticipating a change in those funds which Congress are endeavoring to establish, and which will be productive in the operation.

The second, a naval superiority, would compel the enemy to draw their whole force to a point, which would not only be a disgrace to their arms by the relinquishment of posts, and the States which they affect to have conquered, but might eventually be fatal to their army, or, by attempting to hold these, be cut off in detail. So that in either case the most important good consequences would result from the measure.

As you will have received in a more direct channel than from me the news of the surprise and recapture of St. Eustatia by the arms of France, I shall only congratulate you on the event, and add that it marks, in a striking point of view, the genius of the Marquis de Bouillé for enterprise, and for intrepidity and resources in difficult circumstances. His conduct upon this occasion does him infinite honor.

Amid the numerous friends who would rejoice to see you at this place, none (while I stay here) could give you a more sincere and cordial welcome than I should. Shall I entreat you to present me to the circle of your friends in the army around you, with all that warmth and attachment I am sensible of, and to believe that with sentiments of the purest friendship and regard I have the honor to be, etc.,

My Dear Chevalier: I love and thank you for the sentiments contained in your letter of the 5th. I look forward with pleasure to the epoch which will place us as conveniently in one camp as we are congenial in our sentiments. I shall embrace you when it happens with the warmth of perfect friendship.

My time, during my winter residence in Philadelphia, was unusually (for me) divided between parties of pleasure and parties of business. The first, nearly of a sameness at all times and places in this infant country, is easily conceived; at least, is too unimportant for description. The second was only diversified by perplexities, and could afford no entertainment. Convinced of these things myself, and knowing that your intelligence with respect to foreign affairs was better and more interesting than mine, I had no subject to address you upon; thus, then, do I account for my silence.

My time since I joined the army in this quarter has been occupied principally in providing for, disciplining, and preparing, under many embarrassments, the troops for the field. Cramped as we have been and still are for the want of money, everything moves slowly, but, as this is no new case, I am not discouraged by it.

The enemy talk loudly and very confidently of peace; but whether they are in earnest, or whether it is to amuse and while away the time till they can prepare for a more vigorous prosecution of the war, time will evince. Certain it is, the refugees at New York are violently convulsed by a letter which ere this you will have seen published, from Sir Guy Carleton and Admiral Digby to me, upon the subject of a general pacification and acknowledgment of the independency of this country.

Adieu, my dear Chevalier. A sincere esteem and regard bids me assure you that, with sentiments of pure affection, etc.,

VI.

My Dear Chevalier: I felt too much to express anything the day I parted with you. A sense of your public services to this country and gratitude for your private friendship quite overcame me at the moment of our separation. But I should be wanting to the feelings of my heart, and do violence to my inclination, were I to suffer you to leave this country without the warmest assurances of an affectionate regard for your person and character.

Our good friend, the Marquis de Lafayette, prepared me (long before I had the honor to see you) for those impressions of esteem which opportunities and your own benevolent mind have since improved into a deep and lasting friendship—a friendship which neither time, nor distance can ever eradicate.

I can truly say that never in my life did I part with a man to whom my soul clave more sincerely than it did to you. My warmest wishes will attend you in your voyage across the Atlantic, to the rewards of a generous prince—the arms of affectionate friends—and be assured that it will be one of my highest gratifications to keep a regular intercourse with you by letter.

I regret exceedingly that circumstances should withdraw you from this country before the final accomplishment of that independence and peace which the arms of our good ally has assisted in placing before us in such an agreeable point of view. Nothing would give me more pleasure than to accompany you after the war in a tour through the great continent of North America, in search of the natural curiosities with which it abounds, and to view at the same time the foundation of a rising empire. I have the honor, etc.,

P.S.—Permit me to trouble you with the inclosed letter to the Marquis de Lafayette.

VII.

My Dear Chevalier: The affectionate expressions in your farewell letter of the 8th of June from Annapolis gave a new spring to the pleasing remembrance of our past intimacy, and your letter of the 4th of March from Paris has convinced me that time nor distance can eradicate the seeds of friendship when they have taken root in a good soil and are nurtured by philanthropy and benevolence. That I value your esteem, and wish to retain a place in your affections, are truths of which I hope you are convinced, as I wish you to be of my sincerity when I assure you that it is among the first wishes of my heart to pay the tribute of respect to your nation, to which I am prompted by motives of public consideration and private friendships; but how far it may be in my power to yield a prompt obedience to my inclination is more than I can decide upon at present.

You have, my dear Chevalier, placed before my eyes the exposed situation of my seat on the Potomack, and warned me of the danger which is to be apprehended from a surprise; but as I have an entire confidence in it, and an affection for your countrymen, I shall bid defiance to the enterprise, under a full persuasion that, if success should attend it and I cannot make terms for my releasement, I shall be generously treated by my captors, and there is such a thing as a pleasing captivity.

At present both armies remain in the situation you left them, except that all acts of hostilities have ceased in this quarter and things have put on a more tranquil appearance than heretofore. {150} We look forward with anxious expectation for the definitive treaty to remove the doubts and difficulties which prevail at present, and our country of our newly acquired friends in New York, and other places within these States, of whose company we are heartily tired. Sir Guy, with whom I have had a meeting at Dobb's Ferry for the purpose of ascertaining the epoch of this event, could give me no definitive answer, but general assurances that he was taking every preparatory measure for it; one of which was, that, a few days previous to the interview, he had shipped off for Nova Scotia upward of 6000 refugees or loyalists, who, apprehending they would not be received as citizens of these United States, he thought it his duty to remove previous to the evacuation of the city by the king's troops.

The Indians have recommenced hostilities on the frontiers of Pennsylvania and Virginia, killing and scalping whole families who had just returned to the habitations, from which they had fled, in expectation of enjoying them in peace. These people will be troublesome neighbors to us, unless they can be removed to a much greater distance, and this is only to be done by purchase or conquest. Which of the two will be adopted by Congress, I know not. The first, I believe, would be cheapest and perhaps most consistent with justice. The latter most effectual.

Mrs. Washington is very sensible of your kind remembrance of her, and presents her best respects to you, in which all the gentleman of my family who are with me cordially and sincerely join. Tilghman, I expect, has before this entered into the matrimonial state with a cousin of his whom you may have seen at Mr. Carroll's near Baltimore. My best wishes attend Baron Montesquieu, and such other gentlemen within your circle as I have the honor to be acquainted with. I can only repeat to you assurances of the most perfect friendship and attachment, etc.

VIII.

My Dear Chevalier: I have not had the honor of a letter from you since the 4th of March last, but I will ascribe my disappointment to any cause rather than to a decay of your friendship.

Having the appearances, and indeed the enjoyment of peace, without the final declaration of it, I, who am only waiting for the ceremonials, or till the British forces shall have taken their leave of New York, am held in an awkward and disagreeable situation; being anxiously desirous to quit the walks of public life, and, under my own vine and my own fig-tree, to seek those enjoyments and that relaxation which a mind that has been constantly upon the stretch for more than eight years stands so much in want of.

I have fixed this epoch to the arrival of the definitive treaty, or to the evacuation of my country by our newly acquired friends. In the mean while, at the request of Congress, I spend my time with them at this place; where they came in consequence of the riots at Philadelphia, of which, doubtless, you have been fully informed, for it is not a very recent transaction.

They have lately determined to fix the permanent residence of Congress near the falls of Delaware, but where they will hold their session till they can be properly established at that place is yet undecided.

I have lately made a tour through the Lakes George and Champlain as far as Crown Point; then, returning to Schenectady, I proceeded up the Mohawk river to Fort Schuyler, (formerly Fort Stanwix,) crossed over to the Wood creek, which empties into the Oneida Lake and affords the water communication with Ontario; I then traversed the country to the head of the eastern branch of the Susquehanna, and arrived at the Lake Otsego, and the portage between that lake and the Mohawk river at Canajoharie.

Prompted by these actual observations, I could not help taking a more contemplative and extensive view of the vast inland navigation of these United States from maps, and the information of others, and could not but be struck with the immense diffusion and importance of it, and with the goodness of that Providence which has dealt her favors to us with so profuse a hand. Would to God we may have wisdom enough to make a good use of them. I shall not rest contented till I have explored the western part of this country, and traversed these lines (or great part of them) which have given bounds to a new empire. But when it may, if it ever should, happen, I dare not say, as my first attention must be given to the deranged situation of my private concerns, which are not a little injured by almost nine years absence and total disregard of them.

With every wish for your health and happiness, and with the most sincere and affectionate regard, etc.,

IX.

My Dear Chevalier: I have had the honor to receive your favor of the 23d of August from L'Orient, and hope this letter will find you in the circle of your friends at Paris, well recovered from the fatigues of your long inspection on the frontiers of the kingdom.

I am, at length, become a private citizen on the banks of the Potomack, where, under my own vine and my own fig-tree, free from the bustle of a camp and the intrigues of a court, I shall view the busy world with calm indifference, and with that serenity of mind which the soldier in pursuit of glory and the statesman of a name have not leisure to enjoy. I am not only retired from all public employments, but am retiring within myself, and shall lead the private walks of life with heartfelt satisfaction. After seeing New York evacuated by the British forces on the 25th of November, and civil government established in the city, I repaired to Congress and surrendered all my powers, with my commission, into their hands on the 23d of December, and arrived at this cottage the day before Christmas, where I have been close locked in frost and snow ever since. Mrs. Washington thanks you for your kind remembrance of her, and prays you to accept her best wishes in return. With sentiments, etc.,

My Dear Sir: I had the honor to receive a short letter from you by Major l'Enfant. My official letters to the Counts d'Estaing and Rochambeau (which, I expect, will be submitted to the members of the Cincinnatis in France) will inform you of the proceedings of the General Meeting, held at Philadelphia, on the 3d ult., of the reasons which induced a departure from some of the original principles and rules of the society. {152} As these have been detailed, I will not repeat them, and as we have no occurrences out of the common course, except the establishment of ten new States in the western territory, and the appointment of Mr. Jefferson (whose talents and worth are well known to you) as one of the commissioners for forming commercial treaties in Europe, I will only repeat to you the assurances of my friendship, and express to you a wish that I could see you in the shade of those trees which my hands have planted, and which by their rapid growth at once indicate a knowledge of my declination and their willingness to spread their mantles over me before I go home to return no more. For this their gratitude I will nurture them while I stay.

Before I conclude, permit me to recommend Colonel Humphreys, who is appointed secretary to the commission, to your countenance and civilities whilst he remains in France. He possesses an excellent heart and a good understanding. With every, etc.,

XI.

My Dear Sir: I am your debtor for two letters, one of the 12th of December, the other of the 8th of April. Since the receipt of the first I have paid my respects to you in a line or two by a Major Swan, but, as it was introductory only of him, it requires an apology rather than entitles me to a credit in our epistolary correspondence.

If I had as good a knack, my dear Marquis, [Footnote 23] as you have at saying handsome things, I would endeavor to pay you in kind for the many flattering expressions of your letters, having an ample field to work in; but as I am a clumsy laborer in the manufactory of compliments, I must first profess my unworthiness of those which you have bestowed on me, and then, conscious of my inability of meeting you upon that ground, confess that it is better for me not to enter the list, than to retreat from it in disgrace.

[Footnote 23: By the death of his brother, Philippe Louis of Chastellux, on the 26th January, 1784, the Chevalier had taken this title. ED. C. W.]

It gives me great pleasure to find by my last letters from France that the dark clouds which overspread your hemisphere are yielding to the sunshine of peace. My first wish is to see the blessings of it diffused through all countries, and among all ranks in every country, and that we should consider ourselves as the children of a common Parent, and be disposed to acts of brotherly kindness toward one another. In that case restrictions of trade would vanish: we should take your wines, your fruits, and surplusage of such articles as our necessities or convenience might require and in return give you our fish, our oil, our tobacco, our naval stores, etc.; and in like manner should exchange produce with other countries, to the reciprocal advantage of each. And as the globe is large, why need we wrangle for a small spot of it? If one country cannot contain us, another should open its arms to us. But these halcyon days (if they ever did exist) are now no more. A wise Providence, I presume, has decreed it otherwise, and we shall be obliged to go on in the old way, disputing and now and then fighting, until the great globe itself dissolves.

I rarely go from home, but my friends in and out of Congress sometimes inform me of what is on the carpet. To hand it to you afterward would be circuitous and idle, as I am persuaded you have correspondents at New York, who give them to you at first hand, and can relate them with more clearness and precision. {153} I give the chief of my time to rural amusements; but I have lately been active in instituting a plan which, if success attends it, and of which I have no doubt, may be productive of great political as well as commercial advantages to the States on the Atlantic, especially the Middle ones. It is the improving and extending the land navigations of the rivers Potomack and James, and communicating them with the western waters by the shortest and easiest portages and good roads. Acts have passed the assemblies of Virginia and Maryland authorizing private adventurers to undertake the work. Companies, in consequence, are incorporated, and that on this river is begun. But when we come to the difficult parts of it, we shall require an engineer of skill and practical knowledge in this branch of business, and from that country where these kinds of improvements have been conducted with the greatest success. With very, etc.,

XI.

My Dear Marquis: I cannot omit to seize the earliest occasion to acknowledge the receipt of the very affectionate letter you did me the honor of writing to me on the 22d of May, as well as to thank you for the present of your Travels in America, and the translation of Colonel Humphreys's poem, all which came safely to hand by the same conveyance.

Knowing as I did the candor, liberality, and philanthropy of the Marquis de Chastellux, I was prepared to disbelieve any imputations that might militate against those amiable qualities, for characters and habits are not easily taken up or suddenly laid aside. Nor does that mild species of philosophy which aims at promoting human happiness ever belie itself by deviating from the generous and godlike pursuit. Having, notwithstanding, understood that some misrepresentations of the work in question had been circulated, I was happy to learn that you had taken the most effectual method to put a stop to their circulation by publishing a more ample and correct edition. Colonel Humphreys (who spent some weeks at Mount Vernon) confirmed me in the sentiment by giving a most flattering account of the whole performance. He has also put into my hands the translation of that part in which you say such and so many handsome things, that (although no sceptic on ordinary occasions) I may, perhaps, be allowed to doubt whether your friendship and partiality have not, in this one instance, acquired an ascendency over your cooler judgment.

Having been thus unwarily, and I may be permitted to add, almost unavoidably betrayed into a kind of necessity to speak of myself, and not wishing to resume that subject, I choose to close it for ever by observing, that as, on the one hand, I consider it an indubitable mark of meanspiritedness and pitiful vanity to court applause from the pen or tongue of man, so on the other, I believe it to be a proof of false modesty or an unworthy affectation of humility to appear altogether insensible to the commendations of the virtuous and enlightened part of our species. Perhaps nothing can excite more perfect harmony in the soul than to have this string vibrate in unison with the internal consciousness of rectitude in our intentions and an humble hope of approbation from the supreme Disposer of all things.

I have communicated to Colonel Humphreys that paragraph in your letter which announces the very favorable reception his poem has met with in France. Upon the principles indifferent to the applause of so enlightened a nation, nor to the suffrage of the king and queen, who have pleased to honor it with their royal approbation.

We have no news this side the Atlantic worth the pains of sending across it. The country is recovering rapidly from the ravages of war. The seeds of population are scattered far in the wilderness; agriculture is prosecuted with industry. The works of peace, such as opening rivers, building bridges, are carried on with spirit. Trade is not so successful as we could wish. Our State governments are well administered. Some objects in our federal system might probably be altered for better. I rely much on the good sense of my countrymen, and trust that a superintending Providence will disappoint the hopes of our enemies. With sentiments, etc.,

XIII.

My Dear Marquis: In reading your very friendly and acceptable letter of the 21st of December, 1787, which came to hand by the last mail, I was, as you may well suppose, not less delighted than surprised to come across that plain American word, my wife! A wife! Well, my dear Marquis, I can hardly refrain from smiling to find you are caught at last. I saw, by the eulogium you often made on the happiness of domestic life in America, that you had swallowed the bait, and that you would as surely be taken (one day or another) as you were a philosopher and a soldier. So your day has at length come. I am glad of it with all my heart and soul. It is quite good enough for you. Now you are well served for coming to fight in favor of the American rebels, all the way across the Atlantic ocean, by catching that terrible contagion, domestic felicity, which, like the small-pox or the plague, a man can have only once in his life, because it commonly lasts him (at least with us in America—I don't know how you manage these matters in France) for his whole lifetime. And yet, after all the maledictions you so richly merit on the subject, the worst wish which I can find it in my heart to make against Madame de Chastellux and yourself is, that you may neither of you ever get the better of this same domestic felicity during the entire course of your mortal existence.

If so wonderful an event should have occasioned me, my dear Marquis, to have written in a strange style, you will understand me as clearly as if I had said, (the simple truth in plain English,) Do me the justice to believe that I take a heart-felt interest in whatsoever concerns your happiness. And in this view I sincerely congratulate you on your auspicious matrimonial connection. I am happy to find that Madame de Chastellux is so intimately connected with the Duchess of Orleans, as I have always understood this noble lady was an illustrious pattern of connubial love, as well as an excellent model of virtue in general.

While you have been making love under the banner of Hymen, the great personages of the North have been making war under the inspiration, or rather the infatuation, of Mars. {155} Now, for my part, I humbly conceive you have had much the best and wisest of the bargain. For certainly it is more consonant to all the principles of reason and religion (natural and revealed) to replenish the earth with inhabitants, rather than to depopulate it by killing those already in existence. Besides, it is time for the age of knight-errantry and mad heroism to be at an end. Your young military men, who want to reap the harvest of laurels, don't care (I suppose) how many seeds of war are sown. But for the sake of humanity it is devoutly to be wished that the manly employment of agriculture, and the humanizing benefits of commerce, would supersede the waste of war and the rage of conquest. That the swords might be turned into ploughshares, the spears into pruning-hooks, and, as the Scripture expresses it, the nations learn war no more.

I will now give you a little news from this side of the water, and then finish. As for us, we are plodding on in the dull road of peace and politics. We, who live at these ends of the earth, only hear of the rumors of war, like the roar of distant thunder. It is to be hoped our remote local situation will prevent us from being swept into its vortex.

The constitution which was proposed by the federal convention has been adopted by the States of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Georgia. No State has rejected it. The convention of Maryland is now sitting and will probably adopt it; as that of South Carolina is expected to do in May. The other conventions will assemble early in the summer. Hitherto there has been much greater unanimity in favor of the proposed government than could have been reasonably expected. Should it be adopted, (and I think it will be,) America will lift up her head again, and in a few years become respectable among the nations. It is a flattering and consoling reflection that our rising republic has the good wishes of all the philosophers, patriots, and virtuous men in all nations, and that they look upon it as a kind of asylum for mankind. God grant that we may not disappoint their honest expectations by our folly or perverseness! With sentiments, etc.,

P.S.—If the Duke de Lauzun is still with you, I beg you will thank him, in my name, for his kind remembrance of me, and make my compliments to him.

May 1st.—Since writing the above, I have been favored with a duplicate of your letter in the handwriting of a lady, and cannot close this without acknowledging my obligations for the flattering postscript of the fair transcriber. In effect, my dear Marquis, the characters of this interpreter of your sentiments are so much fairer than those through which I have been accustomed to decipher them, that I already consider myself as no small gainer by your matrimonial connection. Especially as I hope your amiable amanuensis will not forget at the same time to add a few annotations of her own to your original text.

I have just received information that the convention of Maryland has ratified the proposed constitution by a majority of 63 to 11.

Aimée's Sacrifice.

A Tale.

Chapter I.

The sun was sinking in the horizon, and the sky was overspread with a glorious array of many-colored clouds—those hues which artists so vainly try to reproduce on canvas, and which it is still more impossible to describe in words. It was a soft, balmy summer evening, the 14th of August, and nature seemed as if ready to join with faithful hearts in keeping the coming feast and to give them a faint shadow of the glories of heaven. Very fair was the landscape which lay outspread before the spectator's eye from the churchyard of the little village of St. Victor, raised as it was on a slight eminence above the rest of the village. Beech-woods, softly undulating hills, fertile dales, cottages scattered here and there, and the sea shining like silver in the far distance, formed the delightful prospect; and the old curé, as he traversed the churchyard which alone separated the modest presbytery from the church, could never prevent himself from pausing to admire the wonderful beauty of the scene. On this evening particularly, he stood looking up into the gorgeous sky with the earnest, wistful gaze of one who would fain pierce through "each tissued fold" of that marvellous curtain of blue and gold.

The little church of St. Victor did not boast much architectural beauty, and the churchyard was filled with simple green mounds and wooden crosses, with here and there a few shrubs and wild flowers, showing that it was the resting-place for the poor and the lowly. The village itself was very small, but there were many outlying hamlets, so that on Sundays a goodly congregation filled the church. While the curé was still standing absorbed in thought, a side-door of the church gently opened, and a young girl, about eighteen, very simply-dressed, but with a grace in her appearance and movements which showed her to be above the peasant rank, came out. The face which she raised as she approached the curé was radiant with beauty and with innocence; the lines of care had not yet marked their furrows on the smooth brow or cheeks; but there was a shade, as if cast by coming sorrow, over the countenance, and on the long, dark eyelashes tears were still trembling.

"Yes, father," she replied; "I have finished everything, and I do think Our Lady's altar looks beautiful. The ferns make such a good background and show all the flowers to advantage. Oh! I think it will look lovely at benediction to-morrow, and we will take such pains with the music! O father!" she continued, "if mamma could but come and see it and hear Mass! I did so hope she would be well enough. I have prayed so often for it." And her eyes filled with tears.

"Ah! Aimée," said the curé, "sometimes our prayers are very blind ones, and, like the apostles of old, we know not what we ask. I have just been to see your mother—"

"And how did you find her? what do you think of her, father?" said Aimée eagerly. "I do think she is a little better—just a trifle, you know!"

The priest made no answer for a moment, then he said: "Aimée, I do not think she is better, and she has asked me to speak to you. She would not have sorrow come on you too suddenly. My child, my poor child, your mother is going fast where she will no longer need an earthly altar, and where she may gather flowers in the gardens of eternal bliss. You have loved her well, my poor Aimée; will you not give her up to His keeping who hath loved her best of all?"

Aimée had clasped her hands tightly together, and the color had faded from her cheek. She raised her eyes to the sky above, still radiant with its glorious hues. Within those masses of golden clouds she fancied she could see the pathway which should lead to the paradise of God. She turned her eyes to earth again, and, bowing her head, she said, "Fiat voluntas tua. Father," she continued, "I have all but known this for weeks past. I have seen it in the doctor's face, in yours, but I strove to hide it from myself."

"I have hesitated to speak sooner," said the priest, "but this day a letter has come from your uncle in England for your mother, enclosed to me. I took it to her; and its contents are such that it made us feel the time has come when you must face the truth with her and listen to her counsels for the future."

Aimée closed her eyes in sudden anguish, while a sharp pain shot through her heart. "The future, father," she said—"the future without her?"

"Courage, dear child," answered he. "Life is not long. When we look back on the years, they seem but as a day. Even for the young, who knows what its length maybe?" And Aimée knew from the tone of his voice that he was thinking of the fair young sisters, of the merry brothers, one week laughing gayly in the old Chateau de Clareau and planning their future; the next, standing on the scaffold, already wet with the blood of their father and mother. This scene he had witnessed as a young man, escaping by miracle from a similar fate. And it is not to be wondered that from henceforth life had seemed to him but a troubled and rapidly passing dream.

"I must go to the church, now," said the curé, after a moment's pause. Aimée followed him, and, entering in, sank on her knees at the foot of Our Lady's altar, so recently decked by her own nimble fingers. The church was silent, and the last rays of the setting sun came through the west window, made lines of golden light upon the pavement, and cast a halo around the head of the young girl who knelt there absorbed in prayer. Never had Aimée prayed before as she prayed now. It is not till sorrow is fairly upon us, till we realize that our individual battle is begun, that the bitterness which only our own heart knows is really at our lips—that we pray with intensity. Aimée poured out her whole heart, and offered herself to do the will of God in all things. She asked that his will might be done in her and by her; she renounced the happiness of life, if it were necessary for its accomplishment.

In after years, Aimée looked back upon that prayer, and felt that her offering on the threshold of her life had indeed been accepted.

The sunset had faded; at last twilight had settled on the earth, when Aimée left the church and hastened home.

Chapter II.

Before we follow her footsteps, we must pause for a few instants to tell the past history of Aimée's mother. Marie Angelique de Brissac was, like the curé, the sole survivor of a numerous family, who all perished in the Revolution. She, then a mere child, escaped in the arms of her foster-mother, who conveyed her to England, and devoted her whole life to bringing up the little girl and procuring for her a good education. When Marie was about seventeen, she insisted on sharing her old nurse's burdens, and procured daily pupils. She taught the children of a surgeon in the small country town where the old French woman had taken up her abode. And it so happened that Captain George Morton, of her majesty's ——th cavalry, was thrown from his horse and broke his leg at the very door of Mr. Grant's house. His recovery was tedious, and he chafed exceedingly at the confinement, and became at last so irritable and peevish that poor Mrs. Grant, unable to please him, delegated the task to her young French governess. The result may be easily foreseen. George Morton loved Marie passionately, and was beloved in return. They were speedily married; and as George Morton knew it would be useless to ask his father's consent, he did without it, and then wrote to announce his marriage to the old man, and ask leave to bring his bride to the paternal mansion in Russell Square, London. The spoilt and favorite son of a rich merchant, indulged in every whim he could recollect, George was little prepared for the storm of anger that burst upon him for the step he had taken. Mr. Morton had lost his wife many years before, and devoted himself—heart and soul, body and mind—to the acquisition of wealth, in which pursuit he was warmly aided by his eldest son, Ralph. But the whole hearts of the two silent, cold, apparently sordid-minded men were set on George, the handsome, careless, liberal, merry younger son. George was to make a great match, to sit in parliament, and in time attain a peerage; and as, according to rumor, Lady Adelaide Oswald was only too willing to enable him to take the first step in the programme, the news of George's marriage to a penniless French governess was more than the concentrated pride of the two natures could bear. George was forbidden ever to communicate with his family again, and his handsome allowance was cut off. George laughed heartily, told his wife the cloud would soon pass, thanked Heaven he was not in debt, and declared it would be an agreeable novelty to have to live on his pay and the interest of the few thousands he had inherited from his mother. In less than two years after his marriage he was again thrown from his horse, and met this time with such mortal injuries that he never spoke again, and expired in a few hours. His fellow-officers did all they could for the young, broken-hearted widow and his infant daughter. The commanding officer wrote to Mr. Morton to implore help, but the appeal was in vain. It was then thought better to purchase a small annuity for Mrs. Morton with the little funds George had died possessed of; and as she had heard that one of the early friends of her family had been appointed curé to the little village of St. Victor, she determined upon going there, at least for a time. There her old nurse, who followed her everywhere, died, and there she continued to live and educate her child. Time had softened her great sorrows, and her existence had been for many years a happy and tranquil one. {159} Her child grew up in beauty and grace, and possessing every disposition of heart and mind a mother could desire. If she had a fear, it was that her nature was too gentle, too pliant, too ready to forget herself for others, to enable her to battle alone with a hard and cruel world. Aimée Morton was one of those beings whom nature seems to intend should be always safely sheltered from the struggles of life. They should lean on some nature stronger than their own, like the tendrils which wind themselves round a tree. But when Mrs. Morton spoke of this fear of hers to the curé, he only smiled, and bade her remember that it is the meek who inherit the earth. When, however, Mrs. Morton perceived that consumption was making rapid strides in her constitution, a pang of mortal agony shot through her when she thought of what was to be Aimée's fate, left alone in a pitiless world. The curé was an old man, and she could not, therefore, hope that he could long watch over and protect her darling child. Besides, Mrs. Morton's annuity ceased with her life, and there were no means at St. Victor for Aimée to earn her bread. She was well educated; her mother had taken great pains in teaching her, and the curé had made it his delight to increase her stock of knowledge. George Morton's father had long since been dead, and Ralph had succeeded to the full enjoyment of the old man's wealth. No sign of relenting had come from that death-bed to the unoffending widow and orphan of his once loved son. And now, emboldened by the approach of death, which so levels the distinction of earth in the eyes of those just hovering on eternity, Mrs. Morton wrote to Ralph, telling him she was on the brink of the grave, and imploring his help for the child she would leave behind her. She enclosed her letter in one from the curé and doctor confirming her statement.

Aimée and her mother lived in a little cottage close by the presbytery. It had originally been but a peasant's cottage, and it did, in fact, contain but four small rooms; but Mrs. Morton had gradually transformed it into a most graceful little home. Creepers twined round the white walls, and roses peeped in at the window. A pretty garden surrounded the house; while inside, the furniture, though simple, was gracefully arranged; flowers, books, and pictures adorned the little sitting-room, and an air of refinement pervaded the dwelling. In that sitting-room, reclining in an easy-chair, propped up with pillows, lay Mrs. Morton. A stranger would have been astonished to find that Aimée could possibly have been in ignorance as to her mother's state; but the change had come so gradually that it was not to be wondered at that the poor child had fondly hoped on even to the last. But to other eyes the emaciated form, the sunken eyes, the hectic glow, the short, dry cough, told their own tale. Aimée hastened to her mother, and was clasped in her arms in a long, close embrace.

"Yes, sweet mother, the curé has spoken." And Aimée resolutely steadied her voice and drove back the rising tears. "Be at peace about me, mother dear. God has given you to me for a long time: I must not grudge you to him, if he wants you now."

"My own child!" said Mrs. Morton. And she fondly kissed the bright, soft brown hair of the head lying on her shoulder. "God guard thee ever, and he will guard thee. He is the Father of the orphan. Aimée, I will trust him about you."

"And may be it won't be very long, you know, mother," said Aimée. "You are going home before me: you will be waiting for me on the other side."

"Yes, dearest, here it is." And a letter in a thick, blue envelope, with a large, red, official-looking seal, was put into her hands. Its contents were brief, and might have been supposed rather to refer to an assignment of goods than the future fate of an orphan niece.

Mr. Ralph Morton stated that, in the event of Mrs. George Morton's death, he was willing to adopt her daughter Aimée, to provide for her during his life, and to leave her a sufficiency at his death, provided her conduct was such as he should approve of; that before her arrival in England he should require copies of his brother's marriage certificate and the child's baptismal register; that he should be willing to pay all expenses of her journey to England so soon as he should receive intimation of her readiness for departure; but that he wished it to be distinctly understood that he would have nothing to do with his niece during Mrs. Morton's lifetime, nor would he pay any debts contracted by that lady, or hold any further communication with her. The blood rushed to Aimée's cheek and brow as she read the last sentences. "Even on the threshold of the grave, could not that last insult have been spared?" thought she. She gave a glance at her mother's peaceful face, and realized that it is precisely on that threshold that insult loses its sting. Mr. Morton's taunt had no power to move the heart so soon to be done with earth.

From this day the mother and daughter often spoke together of the time when they should be separated, and Aimée received many a wise counsel from her mother's lips, to be treasured up for days to come. Mrs. Morton told her all she knew of the character of the uncle who would soon be her only relative. Very early in life he had been disappointed in his affections and treated with great treachery. From that hour he grew hard, morose, and unfeeling, and threw himself with all the strength of his iron nature into the acquisition of wealth. Still, however, his strong affection for his brother George had survived the wreck of his better nature, and George had always firmly believed that Ralph's anger would in the event of his death be ended, and that he would extend protection to his wife and child.

"And therefore, my child," said Mrs. Morton, "I felt compelled to write once more to your uncle, believing that in doing so I was fulfilling what would have been my husband's will; and it will comfort you to feel, when you are with him, that you are doing what your father would have wished." Mr. Morton was, Mrs. Morton believed, a man totally without religion. She counselled Aimée to bear the trials of her lot patiently, to do all she could to conciliate her uncle, and to draw him to a better life; but, if she found her life in his house was more than her strength could bear, or if any principle were in danger, she was to try and seek employment as a governess. The curé was going to furnish her with a letter of introduction to a French priest in London, who would in that case advise her how to act.

And so the days went on. September, which happened to be that year a warm, radiant summer month, flew by without any perceptible change in the invalid; but early in October came cold north winds, rain, and mists. Mrs. Morton was taken suddenly worse, and the last sacraments were administered. After receiving them, she rallied and was able to be lifted from her bed to a sofa placed near the window. Aimée hardly left her for an instant; she grudged that any one else but herself should render any service to the being so soon to leave her. One night Mrs. Morton awoke from an uneasy sleep; the day was beginning to break, and, as the feeling of suffocation which she often experienced in bed came on, Aimée assisted her to the sofa, and then kneeling by her side, they both watched the sun arise in his glory, just purpling the day above, then making the heavens glorious with his presence. Mrs. Morton opened her eyes and took one long gaze on the earth which looked so fair, and on the beautiful sky. Then she turned to her daughter, and she laid her head on that loving breast.

"I am going from you, my Aimée," she said; "but remember always, I am not gone to a Stranger."

Aimée pressed her lips softly, and Mrs. Morton seemed to sleep. In that attitude the old servant Marthe found them when she entered the room an hour later. And then only did Aimée wake to the consciousness that her mother had slept into death, and that she had heard her last words. Those words rang in Aimée's ears as she performed the last sacred offices to the dead. Solemnly she fulfilled her task; there were no tears in the large, soft eyes or on the pale cheek; she compassed those dear limbs in their shroud; she crossed the wasted hands upon the breast, and laid the crucifix, so loved in life, between the fingers; then, when the curé entered the room, she turned to him and said: "Father, she is not gone to a Stranger." [Footnote 24]

"No," he answered; "to her Friend and Brother, and who is also yours and mine, my child. Leave, then, this poor, earthly tabernacle, Aimée, for a while, and come and meet her at his feet." And Aimée went with him to Mass.

Chapter III.

It was all over: the wasted form of Marie Angelique de Brissac Morton was laid in the quiet grave, where the rays of the rising sun would play upon the grass; where the shadow of the sanctuary wall would shelter it; where wild roses and sweet-brier would scent the air; where the curé would come daily to say a De Profundis; and which the faithful villagers, who had loved the sleeper well, would always reverently tend. There Aimée left her there she shed her last tears in the early morning before she began her journey; there she knelt at the curé's feet for his last blessing, and the old man's voice faltered as he pronounced the words. Mrs. Morton's death and Aimée's departure had robbed his life of the little sunshine that it had possessed; but he murmured not, and rather rejoiced that tie after tie was cut which should bind him to the love of earth. With far more calmness than could have been expected, Aimée bade farewell to the only home and friends she had ever known, and set out to meet her new and untried future. {162} She had never been further than to the country town nearest her village, and the journey astonished and bewildered her. More than one compassionate and admiring glance was cast on the slight, lovely girl, attired in such deep mourning, and whose eyes were so dim with unshed tears. A trusty farmer of St. Victor, saw her to the sea-coast, and put her into the charge of the captain of the vessel in which she was to reach England. He in his turn consigned her to the guard of the train. At length, Aimée found herself standing in the great wilderness of a London railway station, with people jostling, pushing, vociferating, swearing around her, each intent on his own business, and all unmindful of others. A footman at last came up to ask her name, and, finding she was Miss Morton, told her he was sent for her. He showed her to a fly, which was waiting, and having found her luggage, she was soon rolling through the streets. At those long, dreary, interminable streets Aimée looked with a kind of awe and oppression. She was thankful when the carriage stopped at the door of one of the large, gloomy-looking mansions to be found in Russell Square. Another footman opened the door, and she entered. No voice welcomed her, no hand was stretched out to meet hers, no smile greeted her. A housemaid appeared to lead her up-stairs. She found herself in possession of a large room, furnished in the heavy style in fashion forty years ago. A luxurious four-post mahogany bedstead half-filled the apartment, hung with dark-brown damask; the window-curtains were of the same hue. There was a massive wardrobe, chairs which could hardly be moved, and an empty fireplace. Aimée shuddered, but not with cold; and, when the door closed behind the servant, she threw herself into a chair and wept bitterly. Presently she rose, weeping still, but it was to cast herself on her knees and press her crucifix to her lips. She soon grew calm; the sense of loneliness passed away. She had a Friend who never left her, in whose company the dreariest room was bright; and Aimée rose comforted and at peace. She went to the window and looked out. Below her was a small paved court, and beyond the house a vista of other houses and lanes; not a speck of green or a flower met her eye; but she looked higher still, and she saw the sky, very cloudy at that moment certainly; "but then," thought she, "it will be often blue, and I can always look at it." And so she tried to enliven the prospect. A knock at the door interrupted her musings, and there entered a cheerful, elderly woman, who courtesied respectfully, and announced she was Mrs. Connell, the housekeeper. As her eyes travelled over Aimée's sad, wan face and deep black, an expression of compassion and interest came into her countenance. "Do you want anything, miss?" she asked. "Sure, it was only this morning that Mr. Morton told me you were coming, and so things are hardly straight for you. Will you take some tea, ma'am? Dinner won't be served for an hour."

"No, miss, and will not be for half an hour; then he goes to dress, and then dinner is served. Why, Miss Morton," said the good woman, brightening as she saw Aimée's crucifix on the table, "you're a Catholic! To be sure, I never thought of that, though I knew Mr. George had married a French lady."

"To be sure, miss. I am an Irish woman, as perhaps you may know." But as Aimée had never heard English save from her mother and the curé, Mrs. Connell's accent was quite lost upon her. She felt, however, she had found a friend; and she gladly accepted Mrs. Connell's help in unpacking and getting ready for the formidable interview with her uncle. They met in the drawing-room a few moments before dinner. Mr. Morton put out two of his fingers with an icy, "How are you?" after which he relapsed into silence. When dinner was announced, he gave her his arm, and they went into the dining-room. Two footmen and a butler waited. The plate was magnificent, the dinner very fine; but not one word was addressed to the poor, lonely girl, too terrified to eat. Once or twice she made a desperate effort to break the ice of her own accord, but she found evidently that this was disliked, and she gave it up. And so day succeeded day, and there was no alteration in her uncle's behavior. He might have been deaf and dumb as far as intercourse with him was concerned. His orders about her—few, brief, and decisive—were given to Mrs. Council. She was to furnish herself with clothes from certain shops which he named, and whose bills were to be sent to him. As soon as possible, she was to leave off her heavy mourning. She was never to go out alone; and as for exercise, the Square Gardens would suffice. And having delivered himself of these sentiments, Mr. Morton apparently considered his duty to his orphan niece was done. He provided her with neither employment nor amusement; he gave her no pocket money; and she had nothing but a small sum which remained to her when all the expenses at St. Victor were paid. The young girl, brought up, as she had been, in the open country, accustomed to sea and mountain air, to work in her garden, and take long, rambling walks to the hamlets round the village, felt like a caged bird pacing up and down the gravel paths of Russell Square, and watching the London blacks settle on the leafless trees. She enjoyed one comfort, that of the daily walk to Mass with Mrs. Connell; and be the weather what it might, the two figures of the old woman and young girl might be seen flitting through the dusk to the nearest Catholic church. Still it was almost impossible to avoid losing both health and spirits in such an atmosphere. She was very courageous, and she struggled resolutely against depression and ennui, a word of which she for the first time began to understand the meaning. She wrote long letters to the curé, and his answers, containing every scrap of village news, were eagerly devoured, as well as some beautiful thoughts on higher themes which he never failed to give her. She pulled down the long disused books in her uncle's library, and, guided by a list the curé had given her—for in the days of exile he had attained a good knowledge of English literature—she read a good deal. She practised on the old, long-disused piano in the drawing-room, much to Mrs. Connell's delight. She tried to teach herself Italian; and, as visiting the poor was strictly forbidden by her uncle, she spent some of her own money in buying materials, and made clothes for them. Then, in the Square Gardens, she made friends with the children who with their nurse-maids overspread the place. She soon became their friend, favorite, and slave, was alternately a horse for Master Walter and a lady in waiting for Miss Beatrice, or a perpetual fountain of story-telling to the whole tribe. Society she saw literally none; one guest only ever sat at Mr. Morton's table, and his appearance Aimée soon learnt to dread rather than desire. {164} Mr. Hulme was Mr. Morton's partner, a little wiry man with sharp ferret eyes, and his harsh cynical conversation was far worse to Aimée than her uncle's silence. He took little notice of her; but it was deeply painful to the poor girl to have all that she held most sacred treated as a fit subject for scorn and ridicule, to hear honor and faith and nobility and truth scoffed at as impossibilities. Many natures might have been warped by hearing such sentiments; but Aimée's childlike faith and innocence were a secure shield, and not one of Mr. Hulme's coarse remarks ever clung to her memory.

Chapter IV.

Every now and again Aimée understood that she, though not directly named, formed the subject of conversation between the two partners. She was in some way connected with the return of "Robert," though who Robert was, or where he was coming from, she had not the slightest conception, and she felt too weary at heart to indulge much curiosity. Christmas came, and poor Aimée's heart was sore indeed. At such a period the happiest family has some sad memories—there are some vacant places at the board, some voices whose tone we listen for in vain; but with Aimée what a change since last year! She could not but think of the midnight Mass, the gathering of the villagers, the sky radiant with stars, her mother's kiss, the curé's blessing; how, later in the day, she had waited on the poor and gladdened many a heart, and how she had trimmed the church's arches with holly, and how she had dressed the crèche. Now there were no such delights for her; still she drove back her tears. She thought of her mother's Christmas in heaven, really singing the angelic song. And in the dingy London chapel a few holly-berries were glistening, and upon the altar was the same Lord, the same Friend and Comforter; and Aimée, as she walked home through the streets, when a fog was beginning to turn to rain, and when every object looked a dirty brown color, felt in her heart that she possessed the greatest blessing the festival could bring—peace of heart.

She dreaded the dinner because she feared Mr. Hulme would be present; but on entering the drawing-room she found, to her surprise, a gentleman whom she had never seen before. He was lying back in one of the easy-chairs, a newspaper in his hand, as if quite at home. On her entrance he sprang to his feet, and Aimée saw he was a young man about five-and-twenty, with a fair, open countenance beaming with good humor and cheerfulness.

"Miss Morton, I presume. Allow me to introduce myself, as there is no one at hand to perform the ceremony. I am Robert Claydon, at your service, nephew to the redoubtable Mr. Hulme. I am not vain enough to suppose he has talked of me in my absence."

"I have been in Holland these three months," he replied, "on business of the firm, and only returned last night."

The entrance of Mr. Morton and Mr. Hulme put a stop to the conversation; but Aimée soon found that dinner was a very different matter in presence of the new guest.

Mr. Hulme was in the highest good humor, Mr. Morton less icy than usual, while Robert's flow of spirits seemed inexhaustible. All the little incidents of an ordinary journey from Hamburg to London were told in such a manner as to make them amusing; and when Aimée went to bed that night, she felt as if a ray of sunshine had suddenly lightened her life. Sunshine, indeed, was the word that could best express the effect produced by Robert Claydon's presence. There was sunshine in his laughing blue eyes, in his merry smile, in his joyous voice. Having learned the secret of personal happiness, his one desire was to make others happy, and morose indeed were the natures he did not gladden; and Aimée soon found that he was not only bright and genial, but noble in character and heart.

Mr. Hulme had long intended to make Robert his heir, and since the arrival of Aimée, the partners had formed the scheme of marrying her to Robert, and thus keeping the property of the firm intact. Her wishes in the matter the old men little thought of, nor were Robert's much considered, except that they each knew too well Robert would not be dictated to in so important a matter as the choice of a wife.

It was, however, not long after his return to England that the "firm" intimated the purport of their august will to Robert.

"The course of true love never did run smooth," was his smiling answer. "This little Aimée is, I believe, the very ideal I have imagined to myself for a wife, and by all laws of romance, you, our respected uncles, ought to forbid the match, or cut us off with a shilling, instead of actually urging us on; but now, remember," added he, "a fair field, or I am off the bargain. No using of commands to the poor little maiden. I will win her on my own merits and after my own fashion, or not at all." And so the weeks passed on, and Robert began seriously to doubt whether he had really made progress. Aimée was always pleased to see him; she had lost all shyness and embarrassment in his presence. There is no self-possession so perfect as that given by simplicity, and Aimée, who rarely thought about herself, was always at her ease. She trusted Robert implicitly, and had learned to tell him about her home, her former pursuits, and even of her darling mother. She never tried to analyze her feelings; she only knew that her whole life was changed since that Christmas-day by the constant intercourse with this new friend; and Robert, whose whole heart was given to her, feared that she only regarded him with sisterly affection, and he feared to speak the words which might, instead of crowning his hopes, banish him from her side.

One evening in the early spring, Aimée was sitting at the piano trying some new music Robert had given her. Robert was not far off, and Mr. Hulme and Mr. Morton were lingering, according to their custom, in the dining-room. A servant entered with letters.

"Are there any for me?" said Aimée, turning round eagerly. "The French letters often come by this post, and it is so long since I heard from St. Victor."

"Yes," said Robert, bringing the letter to her, "here it is, post-mark, foreign stamp, and all."

"But not his handwriting?" said Aimée in a surprised tone, and she tore the letter open. A sudden paleness overspread her face, and the letter fell from her hands, and she looked up into Robert's face with an expression of mute agony.

"My poor child!" said Robert, in a tone so gentle, so full of sympathy, that Aimée broke down.

"Nay, not so," cried Robert; "I would give my life for you, my Aimée—my love—my love! O darling! can you care for me; can you give me your heart for mine?"

She gave one look only from her innocent eyes, still full of tears, but that one glance sufficed; it removed all doubt from Robert's mind. He felt that he was indeed beloved with a woman's first and ardent attachment; and gathering her into his arms, he bade her weep out her sorrows on his breast, henceforth to be her refuge. Henceforth their joys and their sorrows were to be in common. After a time they read the letter together. It was from the doctor of St. Victor, and told how the old curé had died suddenly while kneeling before the altar in silent prayer—a frequent custom of his throughout the day. He had fallen sideways, his head resting on the altar-step, a smile of childlike sweetness on his lips, his rosary twined about his hands, his breviary by his side—a soldier with his armor on, he had been called by his Master to join the church triumphant. For such a loss there could be no bitterness, and Aimée's sorrow was calm and gentle. And round her life now there hung a halo such as had never brightened it before. She had been happy with her mother, and in her village, with the springtide joy of childhood and early youth; but now the rich, full summer of her life was come. True it was, no voice, save poor Mrs. Connell's, wished her joy. She had no mother or sister or even friend to tell out the many new thoughts that her position brought to her mind; but, to make up for this, she found she had won a heart such as rarely falls to the lot of mortal.

To the lonely girl Robert was literally all—mother, and brother, and lover in one. Her happiness, not his own gratification, was the pervading thought of his life. She was not only loved, but watched over tenderly and cared for with exceeding thoughtfulness. There was, of course, nothing to wait for; and as soon as the settlements were drawn up, Easter would have come, and then the marriage would take place. Knowing Aimée's love for the country, Robert took a cottage in one of the pretty villages that surround London, and there, as he planned, they could garden together in the summer evenings and sometimes take a row upon the Thames.

Meanwhile, Robert took Aimée away as much as possible from the gloomy atmosphere of Russell Square. They went together to the Parks and to Kensington Gardens, where the trees were fast beginning to put on their first, fresh green; and they went together to the different Catholic churches, for the beautiful services which abound in such variety during Lent; and during their walks to and fro Aimée learned more and more of the nobility of the mind that was hereafter to guide and govern her own. They were no ordinary lovers, these two; their affection was too pure, too deep, too real to need much outward demonstration, or many expressions of its warmth. They knew each possessed the other's heart, and that was enough. Their conversation often ran on grave subjects; and often, leaving the things of earth, they mounted to the thoughts of a higher and better life—and Aimée found, to her astonishment, that the young merchant, active in business, the laughing, merry Robert in society, was in reality leading in secret a life of strict Christian holiness, and that the secret of the perpetual sunshine of his nature proceeded from his having found out where alone the heart of man can find it. {167} Deep as was his love for her, Aimée knew it was second only to his love for his Creator; and at the call of duty he would not hesitate to sacrifice the dearest hopes of his life. Here, she felt, she could not follow him; her love for him very nearly approached idolatry. The thought was painful, and she banished it from her mind, and gave herself up to the full enjoyment of her first perfect dream of bliss.

It was a late Easter, and the feast came in a glorious burst of spring, Only a brief ten days now intervened between Aimée's marriage-day. Already the simple bridal attire was ready; "for," as Mrs. Connell observed, "there was nothing like being in time;" and the orange-flowers and the veil were already in the good housekeeper's charge, and she looked forward with no little pleasure to the novel sight of a wedding from her master's gloomy abode. Robert wished Aimée to see the house he had taken for their future home; and early in Easter week Mrs. Connell accompanied them thither, to give her sage advice as to the finishing touches of furniture and house-linen. It really was a little gem of a house, surrounded with fairy-like gardens, with tall trees shading it on one side, and the silver Thames shining in the foreground; and as Aimée stood, silent with delight, before the open French window of her drawing-room, Robert showed her a little steeple peeping through the trees, and told her the pretty new Catholic church was not five minutes' walk from their abode. "And this tiny room, dearest," said he, opening a miniature window adjoining the drawing-room, "I thought we would make into a little oratory, and hang up those pictures and crucifix which belonged to your dead mother."

Aimée's head fell on his shoulder. "Robert, I feel as if it were much too bright for earth. The curé always seemed to be trying to prepare me for a life of suffering, for a sad future, for a heavy cross. Long before mamma's death, he used to speak so much in the confessional of the love of suffering, of enduring life—and I always believed he had some strange insight into the future. But where is the suffering in my lot now, Robert, I ask myself sometimes, where is the cross?"

"It will come, my dear one," answered he with his bright smile; "never fear, God gives us sunshine sometimes, and we must be ready for the clouds when they come, but we need not be looking out for them. We may have some great trials together—who knows? But now come and look at the way I am going to lay out my garden." Aimée followed him without answering, but in her heart there swelled the thought that, with him, no trial could be really great.

On returning to town, Robert took leave of Aimée at the station and put her and Mrs. Connell into a car, and promised to return to Russell Square for dinner. As the car rolled through the streets, now bright and cheerful in the sunlight, Aimée thought of her first journey through them six months before, and how her life, then so sad, had so strangely brightened; and it was with a radiant face that she entered the gloomy portal of her uncle's house.

The footman stopped Mrs. Connell as she followed her young mistress. "My master has come home," he said, "and asked for you, and precious cross he was because you wasn't in; he seems ill like, for he sent for a cup of tea."

"Master at home! a cup of tea!" ejaculated Mrs. Connell in dismay, and she hastened to the study to find Mr. Morton shivering over the fire, and so testy and irritable it was difficult to know what to do for him. He was evidently ill, but would not hear of sending for a doctor. "Nonsense, he was never ill; he should dine as usual," he exclaimed sharply; but when dinner-time came, he was unable to partake of it, and his illness was so evidently gaining on him that he yielded to Robert's persuasion, and Dr. Bruce was summoned. The doctor ordered his patient to bed, looked serious, and promised to come again in the morning. By that time Mr. Morton was delirious, and it was with no surprise that the household learnt the illness was a low typhus fever. A nurse was sent for to assist Mrs. Connell. Aimée was forbidden to approach the bedroom, and the wedding was postponed.

Chapter V.

Robert's first wish had been to send Aimée away, but she shrank from the idea, and as Dr. Bruce considered the risk of infection had already been run, he did not press the point. He was careful to take her out as much as possible into the open air, and to prevent the silence and gloom of the house from depressing her. Mr. Morton's life was in the utmost danger, and therefore, do what they would, they could not be so cheerful as before. Hitherto the lovers had, by a tacit consent, avoided the mention of Aimée's uncle; for the six months that had elapsed since she had entered his doors had made no difference apparently in Mr. Morton's feelings toward her. He was as icy as ever; and when her engagement was announced, he never wished her joy or seemed glad of it for her sake. Cold and hard he naturally was, but Aimée could not but feel that he had an actual dislike to her; for he would smile now and then at Mr. Hulme's jokes, and his manner to Robert often verged on cordiality. With her only he was invariably silent, stern, and freezing; and poor Aimée's heart, so full of affection, so ready to be grateful for the little he did for her, felt deeply pained. But now Robert and she spoke anxiously of that soul which was hanging in the balance between life and death. He had lived without God, in open defiance of his laws, in avowed disbelief of the very existence of his Maker, and now was he, without an hour's consciousness, without any space for repentance, to be hurried into the presence of his Judge? They shrank in horror from the thought; and many were their prayers, many were the Masses offered up that God in his mercy would not cut off this man in his sins. Their prayers were granted; he did not die, and after three weeks of intense anxiety, the crisis passed, and he began to mend. Mental improvement was not to be perceived with returning health. No expression of gratitude for having escaped death crossed his lips—apparently the shadow of death had not terrified him—he rose up from his sick-bed as hard, as cynical, as icy as before. And Aimée's fond hope that at last he would thaw to her was disappointed. As soon as Mr. Morton could leave his room, Dr. Bruce prescribed change of air; and it was arranged that Robert and Aimée should accompany him. Mrs. Connell was so thoroughly used up with nursing that she was to be sent to take a holiday among her friends in Ireland.

It was hard work to persuade Mr. Morton to go at all, still harder to find a place to suit him; he moved from spot to spot, till at last, to his companions' surprise, he seemed to take a fancy for a wild spot on the North Devon coast, and there settled down for some weeks. It was a most out-of-the-way spot, and the only place in which they could reside was a homely village inn. It pleased him, however, and day by day he rapidly regained his strength. Robert and Aimée were well contented; the beauty and quiet of the place were delightful, and not a mile from it was a Catholic church, which happened to be served by a priest who had known Robert in his boyhood. Great was Aimée's pleasure in listening to their laughing reminiscences of bygone years, and greater still was her happiness when she chanced to be left alone with Father Dunne, and he spoke of Robert, of his innocent childhood, his holy life, the bright example he set in his position, and assured her that few women had won such a prize as she had for life. Then Aimée's heart swelled with joy and pride. On one lovely day in June, Aimée was specially happy; for her uncle's improvement was so marked, Robert had been asking her to fix an early day in July for their wedding. Mr. Hulme and Mrs. Connell could join them, and they could be married at this little church, which had become dear to them, and Father Dunne could pronounce the nuptial benediction. Aimée greatly preferred this to being married in London, and her heart was very light. That morning she had knelt by Robert's side at communion. She could not help observing the rapt, almost celestial expression of his face afterward. It was the Feast of the Sacred Heart, and Father Dunne had Benediction early in the afternoon.

As they walked to church together, their conversation turned on religious subjects, and Robert spoke in a more unreserved way than he had ever done before. He spoke of Heaven, the rest it would be after earth's toils, of the sweetness of sacrifice, of the joy of God's service. Aimée was silent. He looked down into her face.

"O Robert!" she cried, "your love is heaven to me now! Is not, oh! is not mine so to you?"

"No, my Aimée," he answered, gravely yet sweetly; "my heart's darling, God first, then you."

"You will soon, darling, never fear. I prayed this morning that our love might be sanctified, might draw us closer to God—and I feel it will be so. Pray with me for it at Benediction."

So they went and knelt before the altar, and their Lord blessed them as they bent before him. Passing out of church, Father Dunne joined them, and remarked on the beauty of the evening.

"And perhaps I shall meet you there," answered the priest, "for I have a sick call from which I can return in that direction." So saying, he turned into another road.

Mr. Morton was ready when they returned to the inn, and the three passed up on the cliff and wandered on far beyond their usual distance. They came to a part where the cliff was one sheer sheet of rock descending to the beach, save one large crag which jutted out, and on one side obscured the view. {170} Aimée had a great horror of looking down any steep place, and shrank back from the cliff, while Mr. Morton, who despised her weakness, always chose to walk at the very edge.

"See here, little one," said Robert, "here is a safe place for you." An iron stanchion had been thrust into the ground, and a thick rope was carelessly coiled round it. "It must be used for throwing signals to the boats below," said Robert, "but you can lean against it, Aimée."

"I think I shall step on that crag, Robert," said Mr. Morton, "if you will lend me an arm. I want to catch the whole view at once."

"Do you think it is very prudent, sir?" remarked Robert. "It is none too wide to stand on."

"Oh! very well," said Mr. Morton testily, "if you are afraid, I shall go by myself." Robert's merry laugh was the only answer, and, giving his arm to Mr. Morton, they both descended.

Aimée hid her face, sick with terror. She heard their voices for a minute, then, O horror! what was that? A crash, a rush, a sudden shout of pain! She rushed to the edge to see the crag detach itself from the rock, and the two figures falling. She saw both clutching for some support—she saw both catch hold of different bits of rock jutting out—she knew, for her senses were sharpened by fear, that they could not long sustain their weight. She thought of the rope, rushed for it, uncoiled it, and ran back. All was the work of one moment. An unnatural activity seemed to possess her. She was like one in a dream. She saw the rope would not reach both; she must choose between them; and Another could see her! But on the still evening air, with her ears quickened unnaturally, she heard oaths from one; from the other, "Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit."

Aimée threw the rope to Mr. Morton, and saw him catch it. The next instant she heard another crash—a dull thud, as of something falling—and nature could bear no more. Aimée fell on the ground insensible just as Father Dunne, and some laborers alarmed by the shout in the distance, came running to the spot.

When Aimée woke to consciousness, she was in her own bed at the inn. Her first thought was, that she had been dreaming; but she started back, the landlady was walking by her, and now came forward, trying to put on an appearance of composure.

Aimée gave one searching look into Mrs. Barton's face, and sank back on her pillow. In another moment the door opened, Mrs. Barton disappeared, and Father Dunne stood by her side. The silent look at him was all she gave.

"Yes, my child," he said, "your sacrifice has been accepted, and Robert is with those who follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth." And then, sitting down beside her, the priest drew out the truth which, by a sudden instinct, he had all but guessed. No one but he ever knew it; it was generally believed that Robert had failed to catch the rope when thrown to him—he had fallen on the beach, and was dashed to pieces. Aimée could not look upon his form or kiss for the last time the pale, cold face. He had passed in one brief instant from her sight for aye. In the heat of noonday her sun had gone down.

From this fresh shock to his constitution Mr. Morton could not rally; he was fearfully shaken and bruised, but he lingered many weeks, and Aimée waited on him with a daughter's care. And at last the stern heart was softened, and Mr. Morton implored mercy from the God he had so long offended. He died a sincere penitent; and the grief for Robert's death caused a salutary change in Mr. Hulme also. Aimée had now become a great heiress, but money cannot heal a broken heart. She would fain have remained in the little village where the tragedy of her life had been worked out, and devote herself to the poor; but Father Dunne would not allow it, and to him she now looked for guidance and help. He made her go to Italy and Rome in company with some quiet friends of his own for two years; and time and the sight of the woes of others gradually softened Aimée's grief. And by degrees a great peace stole over her spirit; a love deeper than hers for Robert took possession of her heart; and the hour came when she acknowledged that in sacrifice lay much sweetness. She did not live many years; she distributed her large fortune among various good works. A fair church replaces the humble building in which Robert and she for the last time prayed together, and a convent stands near the spot where he breathed out his last sigh to God. And when her work was done, death came to Aimée; and, with a smile on her lips, and joy in her eyes, she went to meet again those fondly loved, so strangely lost on earth.

Sayings Of The Fathers Of The Desert.

Abbot Pambo once asked Abbot Antony what he should do. The venerable man replied: Do not rely too much upon your own sanctity; never have useless regrets for what has passed, and always be watchful over your tongue and your appetite.

Saint Gregory used to say: God requires these three things of every man who has been baptized; strong and living faith, moderation in speech, and chastity of body.

Abbot Joseph the Theban said: There are three classes of men who are pleasing in the sight of the Lord. The first are those who, though weak, accept temptations with a thankful heart. The second are those who perform all their actions before God with purity of heart and without human motives. The third are those who subject themselves to the commands of their spiritual Father and entirely renounce their own will.

Abbot Cassian narrates of Abbot John that, when he was on his deathbed and preparing to depart with joyful soul, his brethren stood around him and earnestly besought that he would leave them as an heritage a compendium, as it were, of sanctity, by means of which they might rise to that perfection which is in Christ. Then he with sighs replied: I have never done my own will, nor have I ever taught any one anything which I have not previously done myself.

Abbot Pastor said: To be watchful, to examine one's self, to be discreet, are the three great duties of the soul.

They tell of Abbot Pambo that, when about to die, he said to those holy men who stood near: From the time when I first came to this place and built my cell and dwelt therein, I do not remember to have eaten bread that I did not gain by the labor of my hands, nor have I ever repented of any thing that I have said up to this very hour. And thus I go to the Lord, I who have not even begun to serve God.

Abbot Sisois said: Be abject and cast pleasures away; be free and secure from the cares of the world, and you shall have rest.

A brother once asked a father how one may acquire a fear of the Lord. And he replied: If a man practise humility and poverty, and judge not another, he shall surely fear the Lord.

A certain father used to say: If thou hate one who speaks ill of thee, speak ill of no one; if thou hate him who calumniates thee, do not calumniate anyone; if thou hate him who injures thee or takes away what is thine, or does any thing of a like nature, do none of these things to any one. He who can observe this rule shall be saved.

All Souls' Day.

1866.

  On every cross or slab, a wreath—on some,
    Two, three, or more—of radiant autumn leaves,
  Mingled with gold and white chrysanthemum;
    Even the nameless, unmarked grave receives
      Some pledge from mortal love
  Unto peace-parted souls, we trust, with God above.

  The choral chaunt is hushed, the Mass is said:
    Noon, but already the last pilgrim gone:
  Brief visits pay the living to the dead,
    But once a year we meet o'er those we mourn.
      I wait unwatched, alone,
  To muse o'er some once loved, o'er many more unknown.
{173}
  That cross of marble, with its sculptured base,
    Guards the blest ashes of a friend whose form
  Was half my boyhood; his arch, laughing face—
    The last you'd take to front a coming storm,
      Or dare what none else durst:
  Read how he fell, of all the best and bravest, first!

  Another pastor near him lies asleep,
    Fresh wreaths, love-woven, mark the newer sod;
  Each lettered white cross bids me pause to weep
    Some lost companion or some man of God.
      Beneath this sacred ground,
  More friends I number than in all the world around.

  There, side by side, far from the forfeit home
    For which they vainly bled, three soldiers rest,
  In sight of the round peak, whose bannered dome
    Crowns the defiles wherein the fiery crest
      Of a dead nation paled
  Before the heights, where erst the great Virginian failed.

  Westward, a little higher up the steep,
    Rests a young mother—on her cross, a bar
  Of golden music: since she fell asleep
    The world she left has somehow seemed ajar;
      Those patient, peaceful eyes,
  With which she watched the world, diffused sweet harmonies.

  For she was pure—pure as the snows of Yule
    That hailed her birth: pure as the autumnal snow
  That flecked her coffin: she was beautiful,
    Heroic, gentle: none could ever know
      That face and then forget:
  Though vanished years ago, her smile seems living yet.

  And near her, happy in that nearness, lies
    The world-worn consul by his best-loved child—
  The first rest of a life of sacrifice:
    The native stars, that on his labors smiled
      So rarely, o'er the wave
  Beckoned him to the peace of home—and of the grave.

  Here, too, a relic of primeval ways
    And statelier manners, mingled with the grace
  Of Israel: in the evening of her days,
    Baptized at fourscore—strongest of her race,
      Yet twice a child—that rain
  Supernal leaving all those years without a stain.
{174}
  And thou, young soldier, teach me how to turn
    From earth to heaven, as in the solemn hour
  Thy soul was turned. Ah! well for thee to learn
    So soon that festal board and bridal flower
      May foil the out-stretched hand:
  That life's best conquest is the holy afterland.

  Holding the very summit of the slope,
    A pointed chapel, girt with evergreen
  And frailer summer foliage—still as hope—
    Watches the east for morning's earliest sheen:
      Beneath it slumbers one
  For whom the tears of unextinguished grief still run.

  A twelve-month mourned, yet deeper now the loss
    Than when first fell the slowly sudden doom,
  And on her pale breast lay the unmoving cross:
    Lone tenant of that solitary tomb,
      Love's daily widowed prayer
  Still craves reunion in thy chambered sepulchre.

  The sunset shadow of this chapel falls
    Upon a classmate's grave: a rare delight
  Laughed in his youth: but, one by one, the halls
    Of life were darkened, till, amid the night,
      A single star remained—
  Bright herald of the paradise by tears regained.

  High in the bending trees the north wind sings,
    The shining chestnut to my feet is rolled
  The shivering mountains, bare as bankrupt kings,
    Sit beggared of their purple and their gold:
      The naked plain below
  Sighs to the clouds, impatient of its robe of snow.

  Death is in all things: yet how small it seems,
    God's chosen acre on this mountain-side:
  A speck, a mote: while yonder cornland gleams
    With hoarded plenty, stretching far and wide.
      A hundred acres there
  Content not one: one acre serves a thousand here.

  Ah! we forget them in our changing lot—
    Forget the past in present weal or woe;
  But yet, perchance, more angels guard this spot
    Than wander in the living fields below:
      And, as I pass the gate,
  The world without seems strangely void and desolate.

The Function of the Subjective in Religion. [Footnote 25]

[Footnote 25: This Paper was read before the Academia of the Catholic Religion, in London, June 11, 1867, by Very Rev. W. H. Anderdon, D.D., M.A. Oxon.]

Any one not a Catholic, but fairly acquainted with the church's past and present, if he had to define by a term her prevailing character, would use some such word as unchangeable. He might use it with admiration, as historians have done; or with vexation and anger, as controversialists do. He might regard it as a quality that raised the church above, or kept it behind the age; made it venerable and noble, or deprived it of all progressive and free spirit. But, with evil report or good report, and in whatever contrast with the communions around it, which rise and fall, are modified and melt away, he would confess the church to be unchangeable.

The Catholic accepts this statement, and completes it by adding the cause of the church's preternatural sameness. He calls it "the pillar and ground of the truth;" the perpetual home and impregnable fortress of the divine revelation. The characteristics of the one faith, he says, follow those of the one Lord, as the shadow attends the substance which projects it. The mystical spouse is immutable in faith and morality, because with her divine Lord there is "no change nor shadow of vicissitude." The passage of centuries, phases of human society, rise, progress, and dissolution of theories and religious opinions leave her where they found her; because "Jesus Christ is yesterday and to-day, and the same forever." "Tempus non occurrit Ecclesiae;" because He is "Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end," "who inhabiteth eternity."

This is but to say that religion is essentially objective. Religion, if true, is divine; if divine, above the recipient; if above him, authoritative; if authoritative, over him, uninfluenced by him. It is the mould and matrix in which he is to be cast and receive shape; not the material on which his mind is to work by process of individual judgment. This objective character enters so completely into the idea of revelation, that the wonder is, how the term "private judgment" should have found place in the language of professing Christians. When did it arise? Who was its author? Was it pre-Lutheran? May we not rather say, it was pre-Adamite? He who led our parents astray in Paradise, by a suggestion of private judgment, had already inaugurated what he has since taught men to call the "right" of exercising it, when he revolted against the foresight given to him of his Maker's future incarnation. And the apostle, more closely to our point, condemns all subjective religious opinions when he says, "If thou judge the law, thou art not a doer of the law, but a judge." To judge implies superiority of intelligence, better means of knowing, and the capacity of a teacher: to learn is the acknowledgment of inferiority, and the submission of desiring to receive. But if revelation could be modified by the mind of the receiver, that is, if faith could be subjective, the disciple would be exalted into a critic, and private judgment would occupy the position of faith. The "doer of the law" and the "judge" would change places. This breaks up the whole tribunal, and implies a revolt against the primary authority of revelation.

Hence, nothing is more common with us than to say, that the revelation which comes from God, and is proposed by the church, admits of no criticism short of absolute rejection. To one, indeed, who has never yet received this full revelation, to criticise is a necessary act, and lies on the way toward accepting. The case of the Bereans is here in point, and of those Athenians who believed when St. Paul preached on Mars' Hill. Dionysius the Areopagite and Damaris criticised equally with the Epicureans and Stoics, to show the apostle was a "babbler;" though with a different result. But to one who has inherited the faith, or has been brought by private judgment, guided by the notes of the church, which are preambula fidei, up to the threshold, and then by an act of supernatural belief has passed within, every after-criticism means rejection. True religion must ever refuse to be treated by its disciples as opinion. If faith, it is not opinion; if it were opinion, it would cease to be faith. The choice as to revelation is a simple alternative: accept the whole and believe; reject the whole and disbelieve. Ou Catholique, ou Déiste, as Fénélon said long ago.

No one, then, can retain his Catholic sense, and speak of accommodating faith, or subjective religion. We have lately heard one voice from out of doors uttering incoherent words about a "maximum" and a "minimum," which are supposed to have some undefined point of junction and cohesion. [Footnote 26] But such invitations and embassies of peace sound to us like the uncouth attempts of the Thracian ambassador, in the ancient comedy, to explain in something like Greek a message into which his native tongue largely enters. It is hard to make such a foreign dialect intelligible to those who are accustomed to the pure Attic of the church's voice.

[Footnote 26: Dr. Pusey lately, in a letter to one of the public newspapers, reported a conversation which he had held with a foreign layman, who expressed his opinion that the Anglican maximum and the Catholic minimum might be found to coincide sufficiently to form the basis of some kind of union. In his Eirenicon, also, pp. 17, 18, he quotes some words from Du Pin, Dr. Doyle, an another, in proof of what he calls "the large-hearted statements of Roman Catholics of other days."]

So far we have advanced by negation. There can be nothing subjective in a revelation propounded by omniscience, and through an infallible organ. To suppose criticism or modification of dogma in the mind of the recipient, is like supposing motion during a process of photography, or of crystallization. It implies free agency indeed; but it destroys the truth and accuracy of the whole process. "Be still, and see that I am God." In this stillness, which is passiveness in one sense, and this intuitive gaze upon truths revealed, consists the high prerogative of faith. This forms its noble attribute, and lifts it to a sovereignty over all other acts of the human intelligence.

On the other hand, what place is to be found in true religion for the subjective principle? In what department does or can the Catholic system adapt itself to the manifold diversities between men, enter into their idiosyncrasies, and speak to them individually? Can it become to each of us the personal and intimate thing, which may converse with us as a friend while we submit to it as an authoritative guide? Does it take account of me, with my turn of character and peculiar needs, while it promulgates canons and definitions for my acceptance, in common with the two hundred millions who own its sway? Granted that Catholicity is objective in its essence, is it subjective in any of its qualities or manifestations?

To see the breadth of this question, it should be viewed in connection with the acknowledged needs of human nature. The first requisite to a soul is truth; and it may be said, its first act is an act of desire after truth, even abstract. But as primary, too, is man's need of some one above himself to inspire a reverential and a personal love. In order to love, indeed, he must first know; for neither will nor affections can go forth toward the utterly unknown. Still, in religious truth, love is the perfection of knowledge. "The end of the commandment is charity, from a pure heart, and a good conscience, and an unfeigned faith." We are created, not like the heavenly bodies, to move by unerring laws; nor like plants, to receive form and tincture undistinguishably, specimen from specimen; nor like the inferior orders of animal life, that build, migrate, seek their prey, by an instinct inherited and invariable. Man is a creature of idiosyncrasies. His thoughts, tastes, and bent, his mode of apprehending truths recognized and believed, assimilating them into himself, and developing them in action, constitute each individual a being diverse, in all that can be subjective, from his brother and nearest friend. In all that can be subjective: for the very turn of these remarks will show that I would carefully guard myself within the limits of that expression. Now, the true religion appeals to man as man; and is herein distinguished from every other, which addresses a side or a section only of the human character and needs. The spirit of true religion is neither the pseudo-enthusiasm of the non-conformist, nor the surface-uniformity of the establishment, nor the false mysticism of the Society of Friends. Her appeal, like herself, is Catholic: to the four quarters of the globe, to the race that peoples earth and occupies ages, and for whom Christ died.

While, therefore, religion exacts the unquestioning assent of all, whatever their antecedent systems, modes of thought, or training, we might expect even beforehand that she would come with some adaptive power that would appeal to each. Objective to the intelligence and faith, we are permitted to desire that she should also manifest herself as subjective to the spiritual affections. For her mission is neither to reduce the individual to a machine nor to fuse her multitudes into one uniform, undistinguishable mass. She claims their unreserved and interior assent to dogma; for she is the embassadress of the Most High, sent into all the world, to preach the gospel to every creature. "There are no speeches nor languages" where that voice is not heard: nor any where it falters or gives an uncertain sound. But she wins the objects of her mission, meanwhile, one by one, to devotion, by adapting herself to the characters and specialties of her millions and races. The church knows how to modulate her authoritative tone, till it sinks into the whisper of a mother teaching her child to lisp its first prayer.

We seem now to have arrived at the distinction of which we are in search. It is surely no play of words nor mere subtlety to say that true religion must possess both the characteristics we have named: it must be objective and subjective together. Man, let us repeat, finds in himself a twofold desire to know and to love. His great desire after truth was the first and prevailing temptation under which he fell: "You shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." {178} Having in his fall grasped at the shadow and let go the substance, he lost his perception of the true light and his hold upon the true love. Ignorance and concupiscence came in together. But he retained his yearning after the two-fold inheritance he had thus forfeited: an attraction to truth and a need of love. Hence the various and contradictory systems of mythology which overran the heathen world, under their double aspect (if we may so use the terms) of doctrine and devotion. Out of the depths of their debasement, and amid all their extravagance, they witnessed to the agonized desire after truth in which, says the apostle, the whole creation groaned and travailed in pain together.

Now, what was lost in the first Adam has been abundantly restored in the second. The "grace and truth" which "came by Jesus Christ" is the divine remedy for this twofold loss by the original fall: it restores light to man, the light of revelation; and love, the supernatural love of Divine Goodness. It is "faith that worketh by charity." And let us observe, between light and love there is an obvious difference: light may be described as objective, love as subjective; light is universal, love is personal; light is received upon the eye, whereas love springs up in the heart; and while light is diffused indiscriminately, love varies with the individual. In the future perfection of the glorified soul, light and love will be commensurate. "When he shall appear," says the apostle, "we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is." Here, in pilgrimage and imperfection, the members of the church militant possess three gifts in unequal degrees. Light is perpetually outstripping love, and we know more than we practise. Still, the efforts of the church are ever exerted to preserve to her children each of these great gifts, light and love; to perpetuate and extend the one, to heighten and intensify the other. She is "the light of the world." By her creeds, canons, definitions of doctrine, by her schools of theology, her doctorate and censorship, by the vigilance of the sacred office, by the perpetual exercise of that instinct of truth which is her attribute and inheritance, she preserves, whole and undefiled, "the faith once delivered to the saints." Her multiplied prayers, each enriched with its special indulgence, various, yet blending in one harmony and one whole like the chords of a lute or the flowers in a parterre, provide abundantly not for the mere and absolute needs of her children's souls, but, moreover, for what may be called their religious tastes and special turn of devotion. For example, the faithful laity are invited, if they have an attraction for it, to unite with her clergy and religious in reciting the canonical hours, which form her chief prayer. This is their "common prayer-book," if you will; but common only to those who prefer to communicate in it. To others of a different attraction, there is still supply for the demand.

We need only transport ourselves into the heart of some great Catholic city, to see with what unrestrained variety our brethren of the one communion unite in prayer. Let us go to Rome, "the mother of us all," the heart and centre of Christendom. In that great seat and organ of life, of vital functions and warmth, whose pulsations thrill to the extremities of the mystical body, what is practically going on? what meets the eye and ear? You pass under the walls of some monastic choir, from which the deep voices of a score of monks or the slenderer tones of cloistered nuns arrest you. {179} They have been trained, not by art, but simply by long practice of united prayer, to recite the divine office, as if theirs were not several voices blending, nor several intelligences and souls woven, in a devotion, but, like the early church, "one heart and one soul." You enter; it is not in the retrochoir alone, nor behind the grate, that the work of prayer and praise is going on. The church is more or less filled for vespers; it is a feastday; and a certain proportion, with their vesper-books in the ancient language or in their own familiar tongue, follow the words. A secular priest has turned in at the open door, on his way to some avocation, and is whispering another portion of his breviary. Near him kneels a child saying the penance for its last confession, or an old woman with her beads. Others examine their consciences and make their acts of contrition, for the confessionals will be occupied when vespers are over. Throughout the nave move three or four, quietly following the stations of the cross. On this side is an altar to the sacred heart; a member of the confraternity kneels before it: he is saying some of the prayers indulgenced for that devotion. A childless mother with slow steps passes on to pray for her dead child at the altar for the souls in purgatory. She does not distract others there, who are praying for their parents, or for the poor souls in general, or the most abandoned, the most rich in merits, or the nearest to its release. Her next neighbor offers up her own sick child to an image of the Mother of Compassion. You make way for a small tradesman leaving the church for his evening meal; he will then hasten to take his hours of night-watching and prayer in some closed sanctuary, before the Most Holy, exposed day and night for the Quarant' ore. By his side, sharing his night-watch, will kneel a nobleman of ancestral name, whose family has furnished popes to the Christian world. These two men are members together of the association for perpetually adoring the Blessed Sacrament; and they meet there before the Supreme, in the true "liberty, equality, fraternity" which the world aims at and the church alone produces. What is that sound of hymns coming down the street? A procession headed by a cardinal bearing a large and rude cross: he is followed by the brothers of another distinct confraternity, "the lovers of Jesus and Mary," and a miscellany of devout people. They are on their way to the Colosseum, where they, too, will make the stations of the cross, and chant their hearty and almost passionate strophes of contrition in the old consecrated amphitheatre. All is movement, all is affectionate liberty, warmth, and ease. You turn into any church that occurs, and transport your chair from part to part of the building; for you are free of the whole by the birthright of your baptism into the one body. Go from this altar to that; range, as it were, up and down the creed, now in meditation, now in vocal prayer, now alone with God, now cheered on and animated by the presence of those who pray with you. Now it is latria, now hyperdulia; now again dulia, then back again to latria; then contemplation, then any of the former resumed. Your guardian angel is at your side; you recognize it and address him. Your patron saint, the patrons of your friends for whom you are anxious, St. Peter, St. Joseph, our Lady; and the Divine Guest in the tabernacle; all are there, each (if I may say it) awaiting you in turn. {180} Whatever the feeling of the moment, or your bent of character, or special needs, there is your yearning met, and your soul's food and remedy supplied. "Thou didst feed thy people with the food of angels, and gavest them bread from heaven, prepared without labor; having in it all that is delicious, and the sweetness of every taste. For thy sustenance showed thy sweetness to thy children, and, serving every man's will, it was turned to what every man liked." [Footnote 27] And this unity in variety, this elasticity and freedom, change, and appropriation, and trustful individuality, is it or is it not the [Greek text]

which the apostle recommends?

Rising, again, from the manifold devotions pursued by the faithful for themselves to that in which the priest stands for them all in the most holy place, the central devotion round which all others revolve, the adorable sacrifice of Mass, we see the same unity in the same variety. There is still a subjective action of the individual heart, grounded on an objective dogma embraced by all. Faith and love are coincident; we adore in our own way what is independent of our adoration, though presented to it. The words I am about to quote are put in the lips of one who is defending the faith, newly found by him, against the objection of some of his former friends that the Mass is a formal, unreasonable service.

"To me," he answers, "nothing is so consoling, so piercing, so thrilling, so overcoming, as the Mass, said as it is among us. I could attend Masses for ever and not be tired. It is not a mere form of words—it is a great action, the greatest action that can be on earth. It is not the invocation merely, but, if I dare use the word, the evocation of the Eternal. He becomes present on the altar in flesh and blood, before whom angels bow and devils tremble. This is that awful event which is the scope and the interpretation of every part of the solemnity. Words are necessary, but as means, not as ends. They are not mere addresses to the throne of grace; they are instruments of what is far higher, of consecration, of sacrifice. They hurry on, as if impatient to fulfil their mission. Quickly they go: the whole is quick; for they are parts of one integral action. Quickly they go; for they are awful words of sacrifice: they are a work too great to delay upon. Quickly they pass; because, as the lightning which shineth from one part of the heaven to the other, so is the coming of the Son of Man. … As Moses on the mountain, so we too 'make haste and bow our heads to the earth, and adore.' So we, all around, each in his place, look out for the great advent, 'waiting for the moving of the water.' Each in his place, with his own heart, with his own wants, with his own thoughts, with his own intention, with his own prayers, separate but concordant, watching what is going on, watching its progress, uniting in its consummation; not painfully and hopelessly following a hard form of prayer from beginning to end, but, like a concert of musical instruments, each different, but concurring in a sweet harmony, we take our part with God's priest, supporting him, and yet guided by him. There are little children there, and old men, and simple laborers, and students in seminaries, priests preparing for Mass, priests making their thanksgiving; there are innocent maidens, and there are penitent sinners; but out of these many minds rises one eucharistic hymn, and the great action is the measure and the scope of it." [Footnote 28]

This union of a changeless creed with an adaptive devotional system, of dogmatic authority with elasticity and play, and of unquestioning submission with the freest choice, has one obvious consequence. It renders the church unintelligible to the world, and to all professors of the world's many religions. A casual observer, looking on the Catholic system from without its pale, is at a loss to reconcile attributes which to him appear inconsistent. Why, he asks, should the church be so unswerving under one aspect, yet so pliant under another? If she will not yield one jot or tittle of doctrine, why allow so large an oscillation in forms of devotion? or, if she aims at accommodating and condescending in the latter, why remain inflexible in the former? He would perhaps add: The Catholic system has advantages over others in virtue of this her spirit of adaptation, so far as it reaches. But it is partial! The same economy and consultation for individual minds should extend into the sphere of its dogma; then the character of the church would be consistent, its response to the demands of the age would be satisfactory, and its triumph might be complete.

We are here only concerned with one side of this supposed theorist's difficulty. The answer is surely as follows:

1. On one hand, the church is objective, or what he would call unaccommodating in her teaching, because she is the guardian and depository of supernatural truth. All truth is objective, because it is the reflection of the mind of God, and the subject-matter of his revelation. Hence, in spite of the infidel's sarcasm that between Homoousion and Homoiousion there is but an iota, and an iota (he adds) that divides the Christian world, the church will neither add to nor take from the "form of sound words" committed to her by that one small letter. That jot, that tittle stands against the return and salvation of countless souls till they shall themselves erase it; for the question involved is nothing less than the fulness of the truth and revelation of God. Human statements in religion aim at a compromise; the church, like Job under trial, "still continues in her simplicity." They would avoid extremes; she is zealous for the full and explicit enunciation of the whole deposit of faith. Whatever portions of dogmatic teaching can still be retained, apart from the faith, are in constant process of disintegration and fusion: diminutae sunt veritates a filiis hominum. But, on the other hand, if there can be degrees and measures where all is essential truth, the church may be said to become more dogmatic, and so, if possible, more objective, as her life proceeds. This, it is plain, is a simple result from her office of perpetual teacher; it is the fulfilment of the primary commission, [Greek text]

She must expand her teachings to the needs of the day, and meet emergent heresies by fresh definitions. Hence, to take some salient points history presents to us, the objectivity of Homoousion against Arius, of Theotokos against Nestorius, of Filioque against the heresies of the East, of Transubstantiation against Luther and others, of the Immaculate Conception in our own day.

2. All this being so, and being one great ground of objection against the church, why is her system so subjective, all the while, in other departments? She seems to men to err as much on the other side by overcondescension and adaptation. We need not linger over such charges as that of Macaulay, who, following perhaps in the steps of the Provincial Letters, accuses certain theologians of accommodating even the moral law to retain men within the Catholic unity; as thinking, unless I misquote him, "that, if a man must needs be a libertine, that was no reason for his being a heretic besides." An impression less hurtful certainly, and less gratuitous, though equally false, pervades much that we find in other non-Catholic writers. The church seems to them to lay herself out in her devotional functions, to captivate the senses and the imagination. We might adduce a catena of passages to prove this impression of theirs, from controversialists assuming the fact and reasoning upon it, down to tourists recording their personal experiences of the Continent. A leading article in a prominent journal on some recent celebrations at Boulogne, and, with a deeper personal impression, the descriptions of newspaper correspondents on the late centenary and canonizations in Rome, contribute their quota to swell this great tradition or popular belief. The church, according to such theorists, is wide enough to compensate for the inflexibility of her dogma by pliancy, adaptation, and attractiveness in all besides. Like the old Roman tyrants, they would say, whose home and whose spirit she has inherited, she is prodigal to her subjects of the Panem et Circenses, that take off their attention from the thraldom in which they are held. There is a story of Bolingbroke being present at high Mass in the Chapel Royal, in Paris. Struck with the majesty of the function, he turns to a friend and whispers, "If I were king of France, I would allow no one to perform this but myself." The anecdote is no unfair sample of the popular impression made by Catholic ceremonies on those who misunderstand them, because they disbelieve the truths which they clothe. They are taken to be the result of a design and deliberation to arrest the imaginative faculty, and thus to maintain supremacy over the will. That the will owns the church's supremacy is a patent fact; the supposed captivity of the imagination through eye and ear is, to such thinkers, one chief rationale of it. She leads captive, they say, the intellect of her votaries, but she has the art to gild their chains by the richness and beauty of her ceremonial.

To consider this assertion for a moment. May we not advance the direct contrary? May it not be said that, if, apart from experience, we were to speculate on the probable ceremonies with which the church would surround the adorable sacrifice, and the solemn administration of her sacraments, our anticipations would outrun what she actually has decreed? Let us instance the ceremonies of the Mass. What is here that does more than carry, so to say, the great mystery round which they cluster? Give it as a problem to a political theorist, to a Bolingbroke, or to a minister of public worship, to invent and combine certain ceremonies, in order to express the highest act of a nation's worship. The function is to be one that shall symbolize such a belief as the Catholic belief in the adorable sacrifice. I think it may safely be said, the result produced would be something of more outward show, more complicated, and more arresting to the eye and the imagination, than is seen in the ceremonies of solemn high Mass.

To meet more broadly the assertion that the devotional system of the church is unduly subjective, that is, overpliant to the varieties of her children. She condescends, she adapts herself, she seems to mere spectators to be one great economy. We accept the charge, not in their sense. Why should the church not be so? The changelessness of the faith being first secured, her problem then is, the greatest devotion of the greatest number. "I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some." This is her mission: to attract souls, to win them, and to save them. She would not attract them, were she not beautiful; nor gather them in, were she not all-sided; nor save the mass of them, were she not elastic. There is no stiffness about the church, or she would not work with breadth and freedom. It is St. Peter's net, and is drawn, as the prophet says, "with cords of Adam." She is not antiquarian, or she would only affect the mind of each age as a venerable record or curious relic of the past. The church is not primitive, mediaeval, or modern; not Celtic, Teutonic, southern, classical, barbarian, Scythian, bond, or free, in any exclusive sense. She is simply Catholic; that one title interprets all. And being the church of the "great multitude which no man can number, of all nations, and languages, and peoples, and tongues," she authorizes their popular devotions by sanction and permission.

When we grant or assert that the church in her devotional aspect is adaptive, elastic, or (to return to our term) subjective, what is this but to say that she has life? Life as distinct from machinery, stereotype, or routine. It is saying that she has a living intelligence, spiritual instinct, a faculty to discriminate between essentials and non-essentials in her worship, and a versatility and a resource to apply, to modify, to expand the non-sacramental and therefore accidental channels of grace to her children. Because she is thus alive with the indwelling life of the Paraclete who abides with her for ever, and thus animated with a supernatural wisdom and maternal charity, she is prompt to seize occasions, and to extemporize combinations to the greater glory of God. Hers is an ever quick and energizing power, exerted over man as man, and over all men indifferently. In the inspired words of the wise man: "Being but one, she can do all things; and remaining in herself the same, she reneweth all things, and through nations conveyeth herself into holy souls." Wisd. vii. 27. What the philosopher claimed as being man, she claims as being the church of men: Nihil humanum a me alienum puto. She raises no question on the form of government or previous training, any more than on the clime or color of the "Trojans or Tyrians" within her realm. She translates her prayers, and imparts her indulgences in as many tongues as were found in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. In the political sphere she will bless the banners and chant a Te Deum on the triumphs of every righteous cause, whether the tricolor and stripes of a republic or the blazonings of an ancient monarchy. And so in her devotional element, finding more stability of character in some provinces of her kingdom, more versatility and impulse in others, some of her children more given to contemplation, some to a larger amount of vocal prayer, she accepts these differing conditions without disturbance or hesitation. Wise householder and faithful stewardess, as the gospel declares her to be, the church brings out from her treasury things new and old. {184} She adopts and sanctions every new devotion that has been inspired into her saints: the rosary of St. Dominic, the scapular of St. Simon Stock, the discipline of St. Peter Damian, the meditations of St. Benedict, the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius and his systematized methods of prayer. Nothing is a dangerous novelty, while she has inerrancy of judgment. No dubious expression or practice can spread, or even live, while in her hand is the sword of the Spirit, [Greek text]

No fervor can lead to ill-regulated enthusiasm while she exercises the twofold office, to animate and to control.

In direct contrast with this divine adjustment and harmony stand the arrangements of that communion in the midst of us which has so long claimed the title of a church. England, as represented by her rulers, three hundred years ago, breaking from the centre of unity, and disowning every link with St. Peter's chair, isolated thenceforward and self-contained, had before her a three-fold task. She was to extemporize at once doctrine, discipline, and devotion. The process was in many ways remarkable. But its chief feature for our present purpose is one especial travesty and reversal of the due order of things which was then exhibited. While doctrine, by the necessity of the case, became subjective, the formularies or "common prayer" were stereotyped or frozen into a form that was well named uniformity, and might in a kind of perverse sense be called objective. The Anglican communion is the reed where the Catholic Church is the oak; but en revanche, she is stiff and wooden where the church is pliant and tender. She has bent to every breath of doctrine: then, as if in tribute to the principle of stability, has bound down her children to pray, at least, by rule. She does not pipe to them that they may dance, and mourn to them that they may lament. There is no modulation in her pastoral reed; no change of expression in her fixed uniformity of demeanor. An exception must here be made for the ritualist exhibitions of these later years; but it is an exception which proves the rule. Ritualism is a protest against the cold negations of the Establishment. It is in turn protested against with more energy by the indignant good sense of the country, and, so far as they venture, by the country's bishops. The clergy appear in colored stoles, and are met by a mandate to "take off those ribbons." Decorations must be removed from the communion-table before consecration of the church can take place. Each opening flower is nipped by the breath of episcopal authority,

                "'Et mox
    Bruma recurrit iners."

Not to speak, then, of ritualism, but of the genuine spirit of the establishment. This holds the even tenor of its way, undisturbed by signs and seasons, and days and years. The established church does not quench her tapers on Good Friday because she does not light them on Easter morning; has no rubric for stripping her altars, and gives no encouragement for their decoration. She sprinkles no ashes on Ash-Wednesday, sings no alleluias for the Resurrection, lights no candles, says no Mass on Candelmas. Like something learned by rote and spoken by a machine, her ministers address their flocks in the self-same language, whether the morning usher in the annual solemn fast or the queen of festivals. Their form most truly styles itself, "The Order for Morning and Evening Prayer, daily to be said and used throughout the year." {185} This is the objectivity of the established church, as "authorized by act of Parliament, holden in the fifth and sixth years of our said late sovereign lord, King Edward the Sixth, … with the alterations and additions therein added and appointed by this statute," "Primo Elizabethae."

Nor was this stereotyped, unelastic method optional with them. It was a necessity of the position of the establishment from its beginning. Having torn down the altar and set up the reading-desk, abolished the daily sacrifice, and made the lion and unicorn stand in the holy place, converted the priest into a minister, and succeeded, under the hydraulic pressure of royal mandates, in forcing two sets of doctrines to coexist within the space of one communion, the framers of the new order of things had, as a chief part of it, to invent a form of prayer. This form must be comprehensive as to doctrine, uniform as to expression; subjective in the first, quasi-objective in the latter. It was to provide for Catholics in heart who had not fortitude for martyrdom, and for honest sacramentarians kneeling with them at the same communion-rail. After several alterations, therefore, in which the presence of the Most High was affirmed or denied, and, as far as man could affect it, was restored or taken away, as now a higher, now a lower school prevailed, the new religion welded together two forms of administration—the Catholic and the Zwinglian—and simply left the choice of doctrine to the receiver. It was a process that brings to mind the ancient punishment of chaining the living prisoner to the corpse of his dead comrade; and the language ever since of those in the Anglican communion who have aspired after something nearer to God than a memorial rite has been: "Unhappy man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"

Want of space prevents our drawing out a contrast which here naturally presents itself. It would be, on one side, the solemn and heart-stirring functions of the church during her round of fast and festival: the day that ushers in her Lent, the Gloria hushed, organ and alleluias silent, the wailing Tenebrae, the strange, disjointed Mass of the pre-sanctified on Good Friday, which is Calvary, with the rocks rent and the sun hidden; then the burst of Easter morning, when all is light and triumph; or again, the three Masses of Christmas, symbols of our Lord's triple nativity. These, and much that might be added, would form an epitome of Durandus, and writers who have followed him, on the symbolism of the church's functions. What would appear on the other side? Silence is perhaps its best description, lest a thing in its own nature so fearful to contemplate as man's attempts to create in opposition to his Creator should present too forcibly its ludicrous aspect. It does not appear to have been very attractive, even in its cradle, to judge from the act, which sets forth that "all and every person and persons … shall diligently and faithfully … endeavor themselves to resort to their parish church, … where common prayer and such service shall be used, … and then and there to abide orderly and soberly during the time of common prayer, preachings, or other service of God there to be used and ministered, upon pain of punishment by the censures of the church, and also upon pain that every person so offending shall forfeit for every such offence twelve pence, to be levied by the church-wardens of the parish where such offence shall be done, … of the goods, lands, and tenements of such offender, by way of distress."

No wonder they who love the established church should fix their special admiration on the feature of her simplicity. The act of uniformity enforced by Procrustes was as simple a process, and with as simple a result. In both cases, it was a cutting down, paring away, shortening, disjointing, dislocating. Only, as they who decreed the form and measurements of the new religion, unlike Procrustes, had to reconstruct as well as simply to wrench and amputate, they added that other process to their labor; and under difficulties which have excited the compassion of their disciples in all later time for a system of theology and theological devotion is as complex and delicate, to say the least, as the human frame: you cannot give back the sinews and organs you have removed, nor restore action to the joints you have sundered. We have lived to see the result of such simplifying as went on in the sixteenth century. After a career which has given time for irreconcilable schools to exhibit their full divergence, the communion so arranged seems likely to fall to pieces on the very question of ritualism. "We never, sir," says a popular clerical writer to the Times newspaper, "we never shall have peace again in the church until some plain order of conducting the service is made more or less imperative, confused rubrics relaid down in clear language, and some court established, easy of access, cheap, and speedy in process, by which it may be adjudged, as well in the case of clergy as of bishops, whether the parties accused of false teaching or false practice are guilty according to a rational, legal interpretation of our formularies in the spirit in which for three centuries they have been conducted." [Footnote 29]

The simplicity of the church of England has steered too precise a mean between the symbolism and suggestive ceremonies of the church that believes, and the absence of all form on the part of those who do not. Her preamble, "of ceremonies, why some be abolished and some retained," like other compromises, aims at pleasing everybody and ends in pleasing no one. With one party, as Milton says in an expressive line,

With the other, the minister must be a priest, the communion, Mass, and the Catholic service restored. This comes of inventing a religion in a hurry, patching up a provisional government by rebels who have disowned a time-honored throne. This comes of arraying one's self in the shreds of what one's self has rent from the seamless garment. So much for aiming at what a prelate of that communion has recently called "a satisfying amount of ritual," which is to clothe no idea, stand for nothing beyond itself, and soothe the senses without appealing to the faith. So much for the arrogance of deciding that the "godly and decent order of the ancient fathers had been altered, broken, and neglected, by planting in uncertain stories and legends, with a multitude of responds, verses, vain repetitions, commemorations, and synodals;" not to speak of the "hardness of the rules called the Pie, and the manifold changings of the service."

We shall wait to see the result of that "satisfying amount of ritual" in which it is proposed to invest a service purely Protestant; whereabout on the scale the satisfaction is to be placed, and so, whom it is intended to satisfy. One ritual system alone has a gift from heaven to answer and fulfil the yearnings of the soul. {187} One act of uniformity alone is worthy of a thought to the worshipper. The creed rehearses it: "I profess that there are truly and properly seven sacraments of the new law instituted by our Lord, and necessary for the salvation of mankind." Then, "I also receive and admit the received and approved ceremonies of the Catholic Church in the solemn administration of the aforesaid sacraments." It is to express the invisible, and to fence round what is all sacred, and to respond by the tribute of man to the gift of God, that the church has ordained these details of beauty and solemnity. It is essentially as an homage and a reverence to her Lord. This does not contradict what has been said above either of the variety or of the adaptive character of Catholic devotions. For we are here speaking not of devotions as voices of human expression toward God, but of sacraments, the channels of his communications with man.

Let me now only mention two other chief instances of the subjectivity of the church's dealings with her children. The whole theory, then, of intentions in prayer is a proof of the adaptive character of Catholic devotion. The Pater, Ave, Gloria, Credo, the Veni Creator, Miserere, Memorare, these are, as it were, so many notes in the church's scale. Let me here adopt, though I should also modify, the words of a great writer on a kindred subject. They apply, partly at least, to that on which our thoughts are turned:

"There are seven notes in the scale; make them thirteen, yet what a slender outfit for so vast an enterprise! What science brings so much out of so little? Out of what poor elements does some great master in it create his new world! Shall we say that all this exuberant inventiveness is a mere ingenuity or trick of art, like some game or fashion of the day, without reality, without meaning? We may do so; and then, perhaps, we shall also account the science of theology to be a matter of words; yet, as there is a divinity in the theology of the church which those who feel cannot communicate, so is there also in the wonderful creation of sublimity and beauty of which I am speaking. … Is it possible that that inexhaustible evolution and disposition of notes, so rich yet so simple, so intricate yet so regulated, so various yet so majestic, should be a mere sound, which is gone and perishes? Can it be that those mysterious stirrings of heart, and keen emotions, and strange yearnings after we know not what, and awful impressions from we know not whence, should be wrought in us by what is unsubstantial, and comes and goes, and begins and ends in itself? … No; they have escaped from some higher sphere; … they are echoes from our home; they are the voice of angels, or the Magnificat of saints, or the living laws of divine governance, or the divine attributes; something are they besides themselves, which we cannot compass, which we cannot utter." [Footnote 30]

[Footnote 30: Newman's Sermons before the University of Oxford. 2d edition, pp. 349, 350.]

The beauty of this extract, from perhaps one of the greatest passages of its eminent author, may be my apology for its length. What Dr. Newman here says of the evolution of musical harmony from simple elements may be applied to the vast fabric of intentions, reaching to no less than three worlds, the church militant, triumphant, and purifying, which we are taught to build out of such few brief prayers as a child might utter.

Once more: the variety of the religious orders, congregations, institutes, existing in the church, and marked by her approval, afford a further proof of her adaptation to the various needs and characters of men. The system which recognizes the sanctity of marriage by elevating it to the rank of a sacrament proclaims also the superiority of the "best part" chosen by Mary, "which shall not be taken from her;" and, within this first great principle of classification among the church's children, separating between the secular and the religious life, and strictly subjective in the sense in which the word has here been used, we find an almost endless diversity of what are technically called "religions." The cloistered and the uncloistered; and among the former, the eremitic and the conventual, with their subdivisions; among the latter, a devotion special and concentrated upon every malady to which man is heir. Brothers of the hospitals, brothers of Christian doctrine, communities devoted to the leper, the lunatic, the ordinary sick, the hopelessly diseased, the poor as such, the young, the orphan, the ignorant, the upper classes, the middle rank, the homeless pauper, the pilgrim, the penitent, the convict, the galley-slave, the felon condemned to die.

This very glory of the King's daughter, her beauty in the variety with which she is surrounded, the subjective provisions she makes for each of her children called to religion, has been made by writers of more than common shallowness an argument against her unity. It is difficult to treat with gravity a distortion of the truth so perverse. "Look," says a platform orator—"look at the divisions of the Church of Rome. She taunts us with our dissensions. It is true, we have our high church, and our low, and our broad; there are those amongst us who hold the sacramental principle, and those who deny it. But Rome, too, has her divisions, as deep and as fundamental. Has she not her Franciscans and her Dominicans, her Benedictines and her Seculars, her Jesuits, and I know not who besides? Have not her religious orders and her secular canons, in times past, carved grotesque caricatures of each other in the gargoyles and misereres of their respective churches? And yet, with her characteristic effrontery, she dares to tell us that she is one!"

It was well answered. You might with equal reason argue that an army was not one, not one in its operations and campaign, nor moving at the nod of one commander, because it had its several branches and "arms" of the service; its light horse, troops of the line, skirmishers, cavalry for the charge, heavy artillery. Rather, the essential unity of the whole is all the more demonstrated by the distinct lines and modes of operation belonging to each department. Herodotus is at much pains to detail the different nationalities and customs of warfare in the army of Xerxes before he proceeds to narrate their combined descent upon Greece. And to return to our thesis: the objective unity of the religious orders throughout the church's long life, in all that ever concerned her faith and essential teaching, has been enhanced, made conspicuous, and shown to be supernatural, by their acknowledged subjective diversity in much beside.

But we are not here in need of a Catholic apologist. A vivid and popular writer, if not of history, yet of widely accepted historical romance, had the intelligence to perceive this very characteristic of the church. {189} He has thrown no little power into developing the truth, that the Catholic system is thus universally subjective, has a place for every one, rejects none of earth's children, and can retain them, find them employment, and communicate to them happiness, within the ample breadth of her unity.

He describes the merely local characters of the Church of England, and her consequent inability to make way in foreign missions. He has a fling at what he calls the polity of the Church of Rome as the very masterpiece of human wisdom. It is, he says, a system of tactics to be regarded with reluctant admiration. Then more particularly: "She thoroughly understands, what no other church has ever understood, how to deal with enthusiasts. In some sects, particularly in infant sects, enthusiasm is suffered to be rampant. In other sects, particularly in sects long established and richly endowed, it is regarded with aversion. The Catholic Church neither submits to enthusiasm nor proscribes it, but uses it. She considers it as a great moving force, which in itself, like the muscular powers of a fine horse, is neither good nor evil, but which may be so directed as to produce great good or great evil, and she assumes the direction to herself. … She knows that, where religious feelings have obtained the complete empire of the mind, they impart a strange energy, that they raise man above the dominion of pain and pleasure, that obloquy becomes glory. She knows that a person in this state of enthusiasm is no object of contempt. He may be vulgar, ignorant, visionary, extravagant; but he will do and suffer things which it is for her interest that somebody should do and suffer. She accordingly enlists him in her service, assigns to him some forlorn hope, and sends him forth with her benedictions and her applause."

Then, after showing how the Anglican system expels from itself the enthusiasm it can neither wield nor control, he proceeds to draw his contrast:

"Far different is the policy of Rome. The ignorant enthusiast whom the Anglican Church makes an enemy, and, whatever the polite and learned may think, a most dangerous enemy, the Catholic Church makes a champion. She bids him nurse his beard, covers him with a gown and hood of coarse, dark stuff, ties a rope round his waist, and sends him forth to teach in her name. He costs her nothing. He takes not a ducat away from the resources of her beneficed clergy. He lives by the alms of those who respect his spiritual character and are grateful for his instructions. He preaches not exactly in the style of Massillon, but in a way which moves the passions of uneducated hearers; and all his influence is employed to strengthen the church of which he is a minister. To that church he becomes as strongly attached as any of the cardinals whose scarlet carriages and liveries crowd the entrance of the palace on the Quirinal. In this way the Church of Rome unites in herself all the strength of establishment, and all the strength of dissent. With the utmost pomp of a dominant hierarchy above, she has all the energy of the voluntary system below. It would be easy to mention very recent instances in which the hearts of hundreds of thousands, estranged from her by the selfishness, sloth, and cowardice of the beneficed clergy, have been brought back by the zeal of the begging friars. At Rome the Countess of Huntingdon would have a place in the calendar as St. Sabina, and Mrs. Fry would be foundress and first superior of the blessed order of Sisters of the Gaols. {190} Place Ignatius Loyola at Oxford: he is certain to become the head of a formidable secession. Place John Wesley at Rome: he is certain to be the first general of a new society devoted to the interests and honor of the church. Place Johanna Southcote at Rome: she founds an order of barefooted Carmelites, every one of whom is ready to suffer martyrdom for the church; a solemn service is consecrated to her memory; and her statue, placed over the holy water, strikes the eye of every stranger who enters St. Peter's."

Such thoughts as I have endeavored to suggest will not be vain, if they lead us to recognize the attributes and credentials of the church in her mission to the world, not less in the comparison of part with part among her manifestations, than in the harmony of the whole. She is as divine, as Catholic, as faithful to her trust, and as unerring in her functions, in the subjective character of her devotions, as in the objectivity of her teaching. Nothing surely can be more attractive to the imagination, more winning to the heart, or more persuasive to the will than the condescension and personal care of that which is all the while lofty in its attributes and authoritative in its claims and power. The church is a mother while she is a queen, and we her children no less than her subjects and disciples. She teaches us to pray while she commands us to believe; and gives a personal experience of her science in the one, while affording abundant proof of her embassy and her inerrancy in the other. Thus, while I am enlightened by her truth, I am fostered by her charity. The need of which I am conscious in myself, das Ich, for something on which to feed the faculty within me for supernatural love and personal devotion, is as completely met and fulfilled as any craving for a truth above myself, das nicht Ich, which comes down to me from heaven that it may raise me thither. "Descendit" says St. Augustine, "misericordia, ut ascendat miseria."

Imogen.

  She was all compact of beauty,
      Like the sunlight and the flowers;
  One of those radiant beings
      That prove this world of ours
  Not utterly forsaken
      By the angel host of God,
  Since now and then its valleys
      By their holy feet are trod.
  If her hair was black and glossy
      Or golden-hued and bright,
  Or if her eyes were azure,
      Or dark and deep as night,
  I know not—this truth only
      Do I know or care to know;
  Never a lovelier maiden
      Blest this weary world below.
  In the castle ruled her father,
      And his lands stretched miles away
  Mine toiled down in the hamlet
      For his daily bread each day;
  Too far apart were we.
      Too high wert thou for me,
          O Lady Imogen!
{191}
  When the meadow was all golden
      With the cowslips' May-day bells,
  And the sweet breath of the primrose
      Came up from fragrant dells;
  When the blackbird and the throstle
      Whistled cheerly in the morn,
  And the skylark, quivering upward,
      Rose singing from the corn;
  Then when the blessed spring-time
      Filled with beauty all the earth,
  From her father's lordly castle
      Would this maiden wander forth,
  Where the violets were blooming
      In unfrequented dells;
  O'er the mead where zephyrs pilfered
      Fragrance from the cowslips' bells.
  Wheresoever beauty lingered,
      There this radiant maiden strayed,
  And beauty by her presence
      More beautiful was made;
  The sunshine looked more golden
      As it gleamed around her head;
  And the grass more green and living
      Rose up beneath her tread;
  And the flowers more bright and fragrant
      To greet her coming grew;
  And mad with love and music
      The birds about her flew.
  Oh! she was the loveliest maiden
      That ever eye did see;
  She was sunshine, she was music,
      She was all the world to me.
  But she never knew the passion
      That set my soul aflame;
  That hid me by the hedge-row
      To watch whene'er she came,
  To see her glorious beauty,
      Like a star from heaven, go by.
  Oh! to see her but one moment
      God knows that I would die,
          O peerless Imogen!
{192}
  They bore her to the abbey
      With the pomp of princely woe,
  With steeds and hearse and snowy pall,
      And white plumes drooping low:
  And high, proud heads were bending
      In her funereal train,
  And princely eyes were weeping
      Heavy tears like summer rain.
  I far off followed slowly,
      No tears were in mine eye;
  'Twas not for one so lowly
      To weep for one so high;
  But, oh! since she hath vanished,
      With her have seemed to go
  All the beauty, all the music,
      Of this weary world below!
          Dead, dead, and buried, Imogen!

                                    E. Young.

The Jesuits In North America. [Footnote 31]

[Footnote 31: The Jesuits in North America, in the Seventeenth Century.
By Francis Parkman. Boston:
Little, Brown & Co. 1867.

History and General Description of New France,
By the Rev. P. F. X. de Charlevoix, S.J.
Translated with notes, by John Gilmary Shea.
In six vols. Vols. i. and ii.
New York: John Gilmary Shea. 1866

History of the Catholic Missions among the Indian Tribes of the United States
By John Gilmary Shea.
New York: Edward Dunigan & Brother. 1855.]

The illustrious Society of Jesus, which has sanctified by its martyrs every corner of the earth, has reaped more glory probably in North America than any other missionary order, though it was not the first to enter the field. The Franciscans, the Dominicans, and other devoted soldiers of the cross who followed in the footsteps of the Spanish adventurers in the south, established flourishing missions, some of which have lasted to this day. They labored with a zeal and singleness of purpose which could not be surpassed, and a large proportion of them gave up their lives for the faith; but unfortunately the crimes of their countrymen have been permitted, by the prejudice of modern writers, to tarnish the renown of these heroic preachers, and the cruelties of a Cortez are better remembered than the virtues of the Spanish Dominicans. The Jesuits in the northern parts of the continent have received more justice in history. About their character and achievements there is only one voice. Oppression and outrage have fortunately kept away from their path. {193} It was, moreover, their practice to live almost wholly aloof from their own countrymen, and to compose their Christian settlements entirely of Indian converts. They may not have surpassed their brethren of other orders in devotedness or in perseverance; but they have a renown in modern Protestant literature which has no equal except in the glorious record of the early Christian persecutions.

When the Jesuits first came to Canada, the Franciscans had been before them, but there was little trace left of the Christianity which they had planted. The capture of Quebec by the English, in 1629, almost wholly obliterated the mission, and it was not until the colony was restored to France, in 1632, that the history of missionary enterprise in that part of America really begins. One of the first steps of the French government then was to secure a body of priests, to labor in their recovered possessions. The work was offered to the Capuchins, but they declined it. It was then given to the Jesuits, and on the 18th of April, 1632, two priests, Le Jeune and De Nouë, with a lay-brother named Gilbert, set sail from Havre for Quebec. It was but a cheerless home in which, after a three months' tempestuous voyage, they set about installing themselves. Their predecessors had left on the outskirts of the settlement two wretched wooden buildings, thatched with long grass and plastered with mud. One of them had been half-burned by the English, and was still in ruins. Here the three missionaries fixed their home, and prepared for the reception of the brethren who were soon to follow them. One of the buildings was converted into a store-house, stable, work-shop, and bakery. The other contained four principal rooms. One was fitted up as a rude chapel, one as a refectory, one as a kitchen, and the fourth as a sleeping-room for workmen. Four small rooms, the largest eight feet square, opened off the refectory, and here, when the rest of the little band arrived, six priests were lodged, while two lay-brothers found shelter in the garret. The whole establishment was surrounded by a palisade. About the end of May, Champlain arrived, to resume the command of Quebec, and with him came four more Jesuits—Brébeuf, Masse, Daniel, and Davost. The superior of the little community was Father Le Jeune. Of the others, Masse, whom by reason of his useful qualities they nicknamed "Le Père Utile," had been in America before. His special duty was to take care of the pigs and cows, upon which the missionaries relied for a great part of their sustenance. De Nouë had charge of the eight or ten laborers employed about the "residence." All the fathers, in the intervals of leisure left from their duties of preaching, saying mass and vespers, hearing confessions at the fort of Quebec, catechising a few Indians, and striving to master the enormous difficulties of the Algonquin and Huron languages, worked with the men, spade in hand.

To learn the language was at first the greatest of all their troubles. There were French interpreters in the colony, fur traders who had spent years among the tribes, and were almost as savage as the Indians themselves. But these men were no friends to the Jesuits, and one and all refused their assistance. Father Le Jeune gives an amusing description of his perplexity, as he sat with an Indian child on one side, and a little negro boy left by the English on the other, neither of the three able to understand the language of the others. {194} Convinced that there was little to be taught and little to be learned in that way, he set off one morning to visit a band of Indians who were fishing on the St. Lawrence. He found their bark lodges set up by the brink of the river, and a boy led him into the hut of an old squaw, his grandmother, who hastened to give him four smoked eels on a piece of birch bark. There were several other women in the lodge, and while they showed him how to roast his eels on a forked stick, or squatted around the fire, eating their rude meal, and using their dogs as napkins, the good father made strenuous attempts to talk a little broken Algonquin, eking out his defect of words with such pantomime as he could invent. All, however, was in vain. If he trusted to what he could pick up from straggling fishing parties, it might be years before he could fairly begin to preach the gospel to these poor tribes of the wilderness. In his difficulty he had recourse to the saints. It was not long before what he deemed the direct interposition of Providence came to his aid. Several years before an Indian who had been converted by the Recollects, and baptized by the name of Pierre, had been taken to France and partially educated. He had lately returned to Canada, and not only relapsed into his old savage way of life, but apostatized from the faith. Nothing was left of his French education save a few French vices and a knowledge of the French language. He often came to the fort begging drink and tobacco, but he shunned the Jesuits, of whose rigid virtue he stood in horror. But one day, about this time, Pierre incurred the displeasure of the French commandant, and the fort was closed against him. Repulsed by a young squaw whom he wanted to make his wife, and unfitted by his French education for the hard and precarious life of a hunter, he went to the priests for food and shelter. Le Jeune hailed him as a gift from heaven in answer to his prayers. He installed the poor wretch in the mission-house, begged for him at the fort a suit of cast-off clothes, and set zealously to work to learn from him the mysteries of the Algonquin language. "How thankful I am," wrote Le Jeune, "to those who gave me tobacco last year! At every difficulty I give my master a piece of it to make him more attentive."

The terribly severe winter was passed in studies such as these, in practising with snow-shoes, and teaching Indian children. Bands of savages often encamped near the mission-house in the course of their hunting journeys, and Le Jeune, whenever they appeared, would take his stand at the door and ring a bell. The children would gather round him, and leading them into the refectory, which also served as a school-room, he would teach them the Pater, Ave, and Credo, with an Indian prayer which he had composed with the assistance of Pierre, show them how to make the sign of the cross, and explain portions of the catechism. The exercises closed with the singing of the Lord's prayer in Algonquin rhymes, and after that each pupil was rewarded with a porringer of peas. As spring approached, Pierre began to bethink himself of the fasting and prayers of Lent, and ran off one day to a party of Englishmen, at Tadoussac, where he drowned in liquor the small remnant of his Christianity. Then he joined his two brothers, one a famous hunter named Mestigoit, the other the most noted sorcerer or "medicine-man" of the tribe.

The next autumn Father Le Jeune was invited by the Indians to join a hunting party, in which these three brothers were included; not that they valued the good missionary's company, but they were shrewd enough to suspect that, if he went with them, he would be well supplied with provisions. Father de Nouë had gone on a similar expedition in the winter, and returned nearly dead; but Le Jeune resolved to risk it, and in the latter part of October, with twenty Indians, embarked in canoes on the St. Lawrence. Landing after a while, and being joined by two other bands, they spent five months trudging through the trackless and snow-covered wilderness; sleeping by night in the stifling huts which they made by digging holes in the snow and building over them a covering of poles and birch bark; hunting by day the beaver, the moose, and the caribou; often half-starved when game failed, and holding the most disgusting orgies of gluttony when it was plenty. Somebody had unfortunately put among the priest's stores a small keg of wine. Pierre stole it and got drunk, and when Mestigoit had sobered him by a liberal application of scalding water, which took all the skin off his face and breast, the apostate (as Le Jeune always calls him) vowed to revenge himself by killing the missionary whose strong drink had brought him into trouble. The poor father fled to the woods until Pierre's frenzy had passed away, and there, he says, "though my bed had not been made up since the creation of the world, it was not hard enough to prevent me from sleeping." We have no space to follow the narrative of this hard winter. The days were spent in hunger and exhausting toil, the nights in frightful discomfort. The huts, in a space some thirteen feet square, were made to accommodate nineteen savages, men, women, and children, not to speak of a number of wild and hungry dogs. A fire of pine-knots in the centre filled the place with a blinding, acrid smoke, and at times they could breathe only by lying flat on their faces with their mouths to the cold ground. In this horrible den, the dogs fought for his food, and the savages, instigated by the sorcerer, loaded him with insults and shocked his ears with their filthy conversation. The sorcerer, whose pretensions he ridiculed, and whose influence he lost no opportunity of undermining, hated him with an especially malignant animosity. Under pretence of teaching him Algonquin, he palmed off upon the priest the foulest words in the Indian language, so that poor Father Le Jeune's attempts to explain the mysteries of the faith were often interrupted by shouts of laughter. On Christmas day there had been a great scarcity of game, and the party were in danger of famishing. The incantations of the medicine man had failed. In despair the savages came to Le Jeune, and begged him to try his God. The sorcerer showed some gleam of faith. Even Pierre gave signs of repentance. The missionary was filled with hope. He wrote out two prayers in Algonquin. He hung against the side of the hut a crucifix and a reliquary, and bade the Indians kneel before them and repeat the prayers, promising to renounce their superstitions and obey Christ if he would save them from perishing of hunger. Then he dismissed the hunters with his blessing. At night they came back successful. A feast was ordered. In the midst of the repast, Le Jeune arose to remind them of their promise; but Pierre, who had killed nothing, was sulky and incredulous. He said, with a laugh, that it was not the crucifix and prayers which had brought them luck. {196} The sorcerer cried out to the missionary, "Hold your tongue! you have no sense!" And the multitude, whose good disposition had vanished with their hunger, took their cue from him, as usual.

All this was discouraging enough, nor was it the worst; and when Father Le Jeune, at three o'clock one April morning, knocked at the door of his humble mission-house, and was received in the arms of his brother apostles, it was with the melancholy reflection that his painful and perilous journey had been, except as a tour of observation, little more than a failure. An absolute failure, however, it certainly was not. Careful reconnoissances must always precede great campaigns. It was only by pushing out into the heart of the pagan realm which they had come to conquer, that the soldiers of Christ could determine where they might best make their main assault and in what quarter a victory ensured the most glorious results. The missionaries were but a handful; the field before them was immense; they could only cultivate such portions of it as promised the richest harvest. They had now learned that the Algonquins were comparatively few in number, and of little influence or importance among the North American tribes. Wandering to and fro as they did from year's end to year's end, it was impossible to establish among them the sort of Christian settlements or missions which the Jesuits proposed founding as centres from which the light of truth might radiate through the wilderness. But further westward, on the shores of the great lakes, dwelt numerous stationary tribes, among whom strongholds of the faith might be erected. The conversion of any considerable part of these people would affect many kindred tribes, and so it might be possible to found in the heart of the forest a great Christian empire. As the first basis for their operations, they chose the Hurons, on the lake which bears their name. These people, they learned, had populous villages, knew how to till the ground, and carried on some trade with neighboring nations. Their ferocity exceeded that of the Algonquins. A prisoner who bore the torture bravely was cooked and eaten, that his captors might increase their own courage; and the missionaries spoke of the Huron country as the chief fortress and donjon-keep of the demon, "une des principales forteresses et comme un donjon des démons." The distance to be traversed, by the only route it was possible to follow, was about nine hundred miles. The way was dangerous and painful. The goal to be reached was possibly martyrdom—certainly continuous suffering of body and mind. Three missionaries, Brébeuf, Daniel, and Davost, offered themselves for the enterprise. Le Jeune's duties as superior obliged him to confine his labors to the neighboring Algonquins. It was not easy, however, for the little band of apostles to carry their heroic purpose into execution. Every year a company of several hundred Hurons used to visit Quebec, to barter their furs and tobacco for kettles, hatchets, knives, cloth, beads, and other commodities. It was resolved that the priests should return with them when they made their next annual journey. The Hurons came in July, 1633, six or seven hundred of them, with a hundred and forty canoes. They staid four days, trading, gambling, feasting, and holding a council with the French officers at the fort. Champlain introduced the three missionaries, and commended them to the care and friendship of the Indians. {197} They were received at first with acclamations of delight, and the chiefs of different villages disputed for the honor of entertaining them. But before the hour of departure came, they changed their minds. The Indians went away and the priests returned to the mission-house. Here they spent a year studying the Huron language. At the end of a twelvemonth, the Indians came again. A second time they were besought to take the Jesuits back with them. They consented, wavered, refused, hesitated, the missionaries begging to be received, as if the hardships they would have to suffer were the greatest of privileges. At last Father Brébeuf made a vow to St. Joseph. At once, he says, the Indians became tractable, and the whole party embarked in the frail canoes for the shores of Lake Huron. Their route was up the Ottawa river, through Lake Nipissing, down French river, and along the shores of the great Georgian Bay of Lake Huron. The voyage occupied thirty days. The three missionaries were in separate canoes, barefoot, lest their shoes should injure the vessel, toiling laboriously at the paddle, wading often through the rapids and pushing or pulling up their barks, and doing their share of the burden of transportation at the long and frequent portages. They had no food but a little corn crushed between two stones and moistened with water. The Indians treated them with great harshness, stole or threw away a part of their baggage, including most of their books and writing materials, and finally deserted Father Daniel and Father Davost on the way. When Brébeuf reached the end of the voyage, on the shores of Georgian Bay, his Indian companions threw his baggage on the ground, left him to his own resources, and trudged off to their villages, some twenty miles distant. Brébeuf, however, was not disheartened. He threw himself upon his knees and thanked God who had preserved him so far. Then he proceeded to examine the country. He knew the spot well, for before the suspension of the Canada missions which followed the capture of Quebec, he had passed three years among the Hurons of this region, at an Indian town which had since been burned. Hiding his baggage and the sacred vessels in the woods, he set off in search of the new town, which he knew had been built a few miles from the site of the old one. It was evening when he reached it. A crowd who recognized his tall, soldier-like figure and black robes ran out to meet him, shouting for joy at his return. They took him to the lodge of one Awandoay, the richest and most hospitable of the Hurons. After many days his two lost brethren rejoined him. Daniel had been picked up by another party of Indians. Davost had been left among the Algonquins on Allumette Island, and now appeared half-dead with famine and fatigue. With them came four French laymen from Quebec. Awandoay received them all, and as soon as they had determined to make this village, which the natives called Ihonatiria, the headquarters of their mission, all the inhabitants of the place, as well as the people of the neighboring town of Wenrio, fell to and built them a house. It was a structure of sapling poles and sheets of bark, thirty-six feet long, and about twenty feet wide, built after the Huron fashion; but the priests, with the aid of their tools, made several improvements of the interior, which were to the savages a never-failing source of wonder and admiration. They divided their dwelling into three rooms. The first was a store-house; the second, a sleeping chamber, kitchen, workshop, refectory, and school-room, all in one; the third was the chapel.

Thus the Huron mission, which had been founded several years previously, and broken up before it was thoroughly established, was opened anew. Other priests soon came out from France to join it. Garnier, Chaumonot, Chabanel, and the illustrious martyr Isaac Jogues were among the Jesuits who gathered around this lodge in the wilderness in the course of the next few years. In the summer-time, when most of the Indians were away on their hunting or trading excursions, and the villages were quiet, the missionaries renewed their strength for labor and suffering by the exercise of the annual retreat according to the instructions of St. Ignatius. It was in winter that their hardships were the greatest. By day they trudged long, weary miles through the snow and wet to visit neighboring villages; by night their short rest was disturbed and their ears shocked by the horrible orgies, incantations, and superstitious rites in which the Hurons used to pass their winter leisure. There were the hideous ceremonies by which their sorcerers pretended to cure the sick; the licentious practices by which they sought to propitiate the demons of pestilence and famine; sometimes the awful tortures of captives taken in war, and their agonizing deaths, in which the good fathers, though every nerve shuddered with horror at the dreadful sight, sometimes found consolation in making a convert of the dying wretch, and washing out his sins at the last moment in the saving waters of baptism. At every opportunity they collected the children of the village at their house; and Brébeuf, vested in surplice and cap, led them in chanting the Pater Noster, translated into Indian rhymes, taught them the Hail Mary, the Creed, and the Commandments, taught them to make the sign of the cross, and gave a few simple instructions. A present of two or three beads, or raisins, or prunes sent them away happy and ensured their coming again. Once in a while the adults were induced to listen to instruction, and invited to discuss the principal points of religious doctrine. They grunted "Good" or "That is true" at every proposition, but for a long, long time very few were willing to embrace the faith to which they gave so ready an assent. Like the fishes who listened to St. Anthony's sermon,

    "Much delighted were they,
     But preferred the old way."

Still, they were ready enough to visit the hut of the missionaries, and examine their marvels of ingenuity and skill, the fame of which had gone abroad throughout the whole Huron nation. They would sit on the ground by the hour, watching the clock and waiting for it to strike. They thought it was alive, and dignified it with the title of "Captain." "What does the Captain say?" they would often ask.

"When he strikes twelve times," the Jesuits answered, "he says, 'Hang on the kettle;' and when he strikes four times he says, 'Get up and go home.'"

So at noon visitors were never wanting to share the Captain's hospitality; but at the stroke of four they all departed, and the missionaries gathered round the fire and discussed the intricacies of the Huron language. Among the other wonders of the lodge there was a hand-mill which the savages were never tired of turning. A magnet proved a great puzzle to them; and there was a magnifying-glass which transformed a flea into a frightful monster, and, we may suppose, filled them with alarm. {199} They conceived an overpowering respect for the wisdom and supernatural powers of the black-gowns, and had for them also, upon the whole, a genuine good will; but there were moments when their influence, and even their safety, were endangered by the violence of the Indian superstitions. Once in a season of drought a "rain-maker" persuaded the Hurons that the red color of the cross which stood before the Jesuits' dwelling frightened away the bird of thunder. It was about to be cut down. The priests begged them to paint it white, and see if the thunder would come. It was done, but rain still kept aloof.

"Your spirits cannot help you," said the fathers; "ask the aid of him who made the world, and perhaps he will hear your prayers."

The Indians were induced to promise obedience to the true God. Nine masses were offered in honor of St. Joseph, and every day there were solemn processions and prayers. In a few days there were heavy falls of rain, and the Hurons conceived an exalted idea of the power of French "medicine." But alas for their promises! They were soon forgotten.

In the autumn and winter of 1636, the Huron towns were swept by a contagious fever, accompanied by the small-pox. Three of the Jesuits—Jogues, Garnier, and Chatelain—were seized with the fever, but the protection of Providence raised them up for the relief of their poor red-skinned brethren. In the depth of winter the missionaries went from village to village, visiting every hut, tending the sick, bringing them such few delicacies as their scanty stores afforded, and pressing their religious instructions at every available occasion. But it was hard to make an impression on the stolid hearts of the savages. They comprehended the pains and fires of hell, but they could not understand the happiness of heaven. They had no wish to go after death to a place where there would be neither war nor hunting, and where, they feared, the French would give them nothing to eat. Nor, when the Huron had at last been persuaded that heaven was good for Indians as well as Frenchmen, was it easy to produce in him the proper dispositions for baptism. He felt no contrition, for he believed that he had never committed sin. "Why did you baptize that Iroquois?" asked a dying neophyte; "he will get to heaven before us, and when he sees us coming he will drive us out." This was disheartening; but once for a few days there was a gleam of consolation. The whole village of Ossossané resolved to embrace the faith of the black-robes, to give up their superstitions, and to reform their manners. One of their principal sorcerers proclaimed in a loud voice, through the streets of the town, that the God of the French was henceforth their Master. Nine days afterward a noted sorcerer came to Ossossané, and the Indians held a grand medicine feast, hoping to secure the aid of God and the devil at once. The superstitious rites were all renewed; the nights grew hideous with yells of incantation, and magic figures to drive away the demon of pestilence were put up on every house. The danger to the missionaries now became imminent. When they left their hut in the morning, it was with a well-grounded doubt whether they should ever return. The sacrament of baptism, which it was a part of their daily labor to administer to dying children, came to be looked upon as a pestiferous charm. {200} They could only give it by stealth, sometimes letting fall a drop from a spoonful of sugared water, with which they pretended to cool the patient's parched lips, or else touching the skin with a moist finger or the corner of a wet handkerchief. The mysterious black-robed magicians were now regarded as the cause of the pestilence; and had it not been for the awe in which they were held by the savages, their lives would quickly have been at an end. As it was, they were everywhere repulsed and insulted. Children pelted them from behind huts, friends looked at them askance, and the more violent of their enemies clamored for their death. The picture of the last judgment which hung in their chapel was taken to be a charm of direful power. The litanies which they chanted together were incantations pregnant with plague and famine. The clock was a malignant demon, and the poor "Captain" had to be stopped. In August, 1637, a great council of the Hurons, including deputations from four nations, was held to deliberate upon the affairs of the confederation. The chief, whose office it was to preside over the feast of the dead, arose, and in a set speech accused the Jesuits of being the cause of the calamities that afflicted them. One accuser followed another, Brébeuf replying to their charges with ingenuity and boldness. The debate continued through the night. Many of the Indians fell asleep, and others went away. One old chief as he passed out said to Brébeuf, "If some young man should split your head open, we should have nothing to say." "What sort of men are these?" cried out another impatiently, as the Jesuit went on with his harangue; "they are always saying the same thing, and repeating the same words a hundred times." Another council was called to pronounce the sentence of death. The priests appeared before it with such unflinching courage that their judges, struck with admiration, deferred the decree. Still it seemed as if their fate could not be long deferred. They wrote a farewell letter to their superior, Father Le Jeune, and committed to the care of an Indian convert the most precious properties of the mission, the sacred furniture of the altar, and the vocabulary which they had compiled of the Huron language. Then they gave a parting feast, after the Indian custom of those who were about to die. The intrepidity manifested by this proceeding was not without its effect. The animosity of the savages became less intense, and though the persecution continued, and the lives of individual members of the little band were more than once attempted, the project of a massacre was for the present abandoned.

By the end of the year 1638, the mission had seven priests who spoke Huron, and three more who were learning it. There were about sixty converts, and at Ossossané a commodious chapel of wood had been built by the labor of artisans sent for the purpose from Quebec. The original intention of the Jesuits was to form permanent missions in each of the principal Huron towns. This, however, proved impracticable, and a spot was chosen on the little river Wye, near Matchedash Bay of Lake Huron, for a great central station, to which they gave the name of Sainte Marie. The Huron towns were now apportioned into districts, and a certain number of priests assigned to each. Father Garnier and Father Jogues made an ineffectual attempt to establish a mission among the Tobacco nation, two days' journey to the south-west. {201} But their evil reputation had preceded them. The children cried out, when they saw them approach, that famine and pest were coming. Every door was closed against them; and when in despair they left the town, a band of young braves followed them, hatchet in hand, to put them to death. Under cover of the darkness they made their escape, and Father Jogues, with Father Raymbault, afterward passed around the northern shore of Lake Huron, and preached the faith among the Ojibwas, as far as Sault Sainte Marie, at the outlet of Lake Superior. In the mean time Brébeuf and Chaumonot went on a mission to the powerful and ferocious Neutral nation which inhabited the country between lakes Erie and Ontario, on both sides of the Niagara river. They visited eighteen of the Neutral towns. In all they were received with a storm of insults, blows, and maledictions. The Hurons had been afraid to kill them, dreading the vengeance of the French at Quebec; but they had sent secret emissaries to incite the Neutrals against them, and had promised nine French hatchets to the tribe which should be their executioners. Brébeuf was the object of their special hatred. This glorious man, whom Parkman calls the truest hero and the greatest martyr of the Huron mission, was feared with an intensity which none of his companions inspired. But in the midst of his persecutions God consoled him with heavenly favors. Celestial visions comforted him in his toilsome journeys through the forest. He saw the image of a vast and gorgeous palace, and a voice assured him that such was to be the reward of those who dwell in hovels for the cause of God. Angels appeared to him, and more than once the Blessed Virgin and his dear patron, St. Joseph, were revealed to his sight. Now, when the Neutral nation shut him out of their lodges, half famished and nearly frozen, the apparition of a great cross—"large enough," he said to his brethren, "to crucify us all"—came slowly up from the country of the Iroquois. It seems like a warning of the glorious fate which awaited him, and to those heroic souls who longed for martyrdom as the bright crown of their labor, we cannot doubt that it was also a sweet consolation.

The day of persecution, however, was only dawning. The sufferings of the past few years were as nothing in comparison with the torments that were to follow. In the summer of 1642, the mission had been reduced to great destitution, and Father Jogues was sent to Quebec to obtain clothing, writing materials, wine for the altar, and other necessary stores. He returned with the annual fleet of Huron canoes, having with him two young French laymen, René Goupil and Guillaume Couture, who had attached themselves without pay to the mission, and a few Indian converts. They were passing the Lake of St. Peter, in the St. Lawrence river, when they were suddenly attacked by a war-party of Mohawks. The greater part of the Hurons leaped ashore and took to the woods. The French and their converts made fight for a while, but were soon overpowered. Father Jogues sprang into a clump of bulrushes and might have escaped, but, seeing Goupil in the hands of the savages, he came forward, resolved to share his fate. Couture, too, got away, but came back to join his companions. In his excitement he shot dead one of a band of Mohawks who sprang upon him. The others rushed upon him, tore away his finger-nails with their teeth, gnawed at his fingers like wild beasts, and thrust a sword through one of his hands. {202} The Jesuit threw his arms about his friend's neck, but the Indians dragged him away, beat him till he was senseless, and when he revived lacerated his fingers as they had done those of Couture. Goupil was then treated in the same manner. They set off with their prisoners for the Mohawk towns, rowing across Lake Champlain and Lake George. Thirteen days of horrible suffering were passed on the journey. At last they reached a palisaded village, built upon a hill on the banks of the Mohawk river. At the entrance the prisoners were forced to run the gauntlet. Then they were placed on a high platform, disfigured, livid, and streaming with blood, and the crowd proceeded to "caress" them. A Christian Algonquin woman, a prisoner among them, was compelled to cut off the priest's left thumb with a clam-shell. Goupil was mutilated in the same manner. The torture lasted all day. At night the captives were stretched on their backs with limbs extended, and their wrists and ankles fastened to stakes. The children now amused themselves by placing live coals on their naked bodies. For three days more they were exposed on the scaffold; then they were led to two other Mohawk towns in turn, and at each the tortures were repeated. Once some Huron prisoners were placed on the same platform with them, and Father Jogues found an opportunity to convert them in the midst of the torture, and to baptize them with a few rain-drops from an ear of corn that had been thrown to him for food. Couture, having won the respect of the savages by his intrepid bearing, was adopted into one of their families, and gained in time great influence over them. Goupil was one day detected making the sign of the cross on the forehead of a child, and for this was killed by a blow from a hatchet, falling at the feet of Father Jogues, who gave him absolution before he expired. The priest himself, warned every hour that his death was near, and hated by his captors, who thought he brought bad luck to their hunting parties, was dragged around from place to place, now following the hunters through the forest, now laboring in the villages to convert the old men and squaws, or baptize dying children. He brought firewood for his masters, did their bidding without a murmur, was silent under their abuse; but, when they reviled his faith, he rose with a majestic air, and rebuked them as one having authority.

He had been nearly a year in slavery when the Indians took him with them on a trading visit to the Dutch at Fort Orange, (Albany.) We can imagine how his heart must have beat at the sight of a white face after his long banishment but he had no thought of turning back after his hand had once been put to the plough, and no plans of escape entered his mind. While here, however, he learned that the Indians of the village had at last resolved to kill him as soon as he returned. He had found means to warn the French at Three Rivers of intended treachery on the part of some Mohawk visitors, and the savages had determined to be revenged. To trust himself longer in their hands would not be heroism, but foolhardiness. A Dutch settler named Van Curler offered him a passage, in a little vessel then lying in the Hudson, either to Bordeaux or Rochelle. The Jesuit spent a night in prayer, and then resolved to accept the proposal. With the assistance of his Dutch friends, and after several narrow escapes from detection, he got away from his savage masters by night, rowed to the vessel in a boat which the settlers left for his use on the shore, and was kindly received by the sailors and stowed away in the hold. {203} There he remained half-stifled for two days and a half, while the enraged Mohawks ransacked the settlement and searched the vessel. For better security until the day of sailing, he was then concealed in the garret of a house on shore, where his host stole the provisions that the kind-hearted Dutchmen sent for his use. The Dutch dominie, Megapolensis, visited him here, and did all he could for his comfort. At last, an order came from Manhattan that he should be sent down to the Director-General Kieft, who exchanged his squalid Indian dress for a suit of Dutch cloth, and gave him passage in a small vessel to Falmouth. After various adventures, having fallen into the hands of robbers in the English port, and made his way to France in a coal-vessel, he presented himself, on the morning of the 5th of January, 1644, clad in tatters, at the door of the Jesuit college in Rennes. He asked for the father rector, but was told that he was busy and could not be seen. "Tell him, if you please," said Father Jogues, "that a man from Canada would speak a few words with him." The Canada mission was an object of deep interest at this time all through the society, and the father rector, though he was about vesting for mass, ordered the man to be admitted. He asked many questions about the affairs of Canada, and at last inquired if the stranger knew Father Jogues.

"No," answered the missionary, "he is alive and at liberty. I am he." Then he fell on his knees and asked the rector's blessing.

His arrival was celebrated, as we might well suppose, with great rejoicing. He was summoned to Paris, where the queen kissed his mutilated hands and the whole court strove to honor him. The blandishments of the great, however, gave no pleasure to this scarred veteran of Christ's army. He longed to be again in the field, and in two or three months he sailed once more for Canada.

In the mean time the missions had fared ill. Violent warfare raged between the Iroquois confederation (of which the Mohawks formed a part) and the Hurons and Algonquins. In one respect and for a short time this was of some benefit to the faith, for the Algonquins, threatened with destruction by their more powerful enemies, became docile, and listened more readily to the exhortations of the French priests. Yet they were rapidly approaching extermination. Whole villages were destroyed in the periodical incursions of the Iroquois. The neophytes were massacred. The missionaries were intercepted on their journeys. Father Joseph Bressani was captured on his way to the Huron country in the spring of 1644. One of his Indian companions was roasted and eaten before his eyes. The father himself was beaten with sticks until he was covered with blood. His hands were fearfully mutilated. His fingers were slit; one day a nail would be burned off; the next, a joint. He was made to walk on hot cinders. He was given up to the children to be tortured. He was hanged by the feet with chains. He was tied to the ground, and food was placed upon his naked body that the dogs might lacerate him as they ate. Ten weeks afterward he wrote to the father-general at Rome: "I do not know if your paternity will recognize the handwriting of one whom you once knew very well. {204} The letter is soiled and ill-written; because the writer has only one finger of his right hand left entire, and cannot prevent the blood from his wounds, which are still open, from staining the paper. His ink is gunpowder mixed with water, and his table is the earth." He survived and was carried to Fort Orange, where the Dutch ransomed him and sent him back to France. The next spring he too returned and succeeded in reaching the Hurons. Father de Nouë, whom we have mentioned as one of the first companions of Le Jeune, perished in the snow in February, 1646, on the way from Quebec to a French port at the mouth of the river Richelieu, where he was to hear confessions. A peace had indeed been concluded with the Mohawks just before Jogues' return, but a peace with them could be no better than a precarious truce. Couture, who had been with Father Jogues in his captivity, and become a person of consideration with the tribe, had rendered good service in the negotiation, and would continue to serve his countrymen to the utmost of his power; yet it was felt that to keep the Indians to their engagements an agent of still higher personal character was required, and Father Jogues was assigned to the duty. "I shall go," he wrote to a friend, "but I shall not return."

His mission was partly political, but mainly, of course, religious. By the advice of an Algonquin convert, he exchanged his cassock for a civilian's doublet, not wishing to irritate the savages by a premature declaration of his heavenly message. He held a council with the head men of the Mohawks, presented the gifts of the Canadian government, and then set about founding a new mission, to be called the Mission of the Martyrs. There were three principal clans among the Mohawks—those of the Bear, the Tortoise, and the Wolf. The first were bitter foes of the French, and eager for war; the others stood out resolutely for peace. Many were the fierce debates around their council-fires whether the missionary should be killed or not. At last, one day, a band of warriors of the Bear clan met the priest and a young lay companion of his, named Lalande, in the woods, stripped them, and led them in triumph to the town. There they were beaten with sticks, and strips of flesh were cut from Father Jogues' back and arms. In the evening, the priest was sitting in one of the lodges, when an Indian entered and invited him to a feast. To refuse would have been an insult. He arose and followed the messenger to the cabin of the chief of the Bears. As he bent his head to enter, a savage, concealed within, clove his skull with a hatchet, the weapon cutting through the arm of an Indian who tried to avert the blow. The martyr sank at the feet of his murderer. His head was instantly cut off, and stuck upon the palisade which enclosed the town, and his body was thrown into the river. The next day Lalande was killed, and his remains received the same treatment.

The murder of Father Jogues was the signal for a reopening of the war with the colonists and their allies, and among the first victims were the Algonquin converts. We have no space to relate the story of the surprise of their villages, the shocking torture of the captives, or the massacre of the children, the old, and the infirm. But some of the prisoners escaped, and the adventures of one of them were so interesting that we cannot resist the temptation to copy them from the animated narrative of Parkman. {205} This was an Algonquin woman named Marie, whose husband had been burned with other captives. One night, while the savages were dancing and shrieking round the flames in which one of her countrymen was being consumed, she stole away into the forest. The ground was covered with snow, so, lest her footsteps should betray her, she retraced the beaten path in which the Indians had already travelled until she came near a village of the Onondagas. There she hid herself in a thicket, and at night crept forth to grope in the snow for a few grains of corn left from the last year's harvest. She saw many Indians from her lurking-place, and once a tall savage with an axe came directly toward her, but she murmured a prayer and he turned away. Certain of death if discovered, and disheartened at the prospect of the long and terrible journey through the frozen wilderness to Canada, she tried to commit suicide by hanging herself with her girdle, but it broke twice, and she plucked up heart. With no clothing but a thin tunic, she travelled on, directing her course by the sun, and living upon roots and the inner bark of trees, and now and then catching tortoises in the brooks. At night she kindled a fire by the friction of two sticks in some deep nook of the forest, warmed herself, cooked her food, if she had any, and said her rosary. Once she discovered a party of Iroquois warriors, but she lay concealed and they passed without observing her. Following their trail, she found their bark canoe by the bank of a river. It was too large for her to manage alone, but with a hatchet which she had picked up in a deserted camp she reduced it to a convenient size, and floated down the stream to the St. Lawrence. Her journey was now much easier. There were eggs of wild fowl to be found along the shore, and fish in the river, which she speared with a sharp pole. She even killed deer by driving them into the water, chasing them in her canoe, and striking them on the head with her hatchet. At the end of two months she reached Montreal, after hardships which no woman but an Indian could have supported.

The central mission of Sainte Marie was meanwhile in the flush of prosperity. The buildings included a church, a kitchen, a refectory, large rooms for spiritual instruction and the exercises of retreat, and lodgings for at least sixty persons. Around these principal houses ran a fortified line of palisades and masonry, outside which was a hospital and a large bark hut for the reception of wandering Indians. Here every alternate week the converts from all the Huron villages gathered in immense crowds to attend divine service, celebrated with all the pomp which the resources of the mission allowed, and to partake for three days of the bounteous hospitality of the good fathers. In times of pestilence and famine they flocked hither for relief, and at one time, in a year of scarcity, as many as three thousand received food and shelter at Sainte Marie. Hither, also, two or three times every year, the Jesuits—now twenty-two in number, including four lay-brothers—came together from their outlying missions, to refresh their souls by mutual counsel, and gather strength in prayer and meditation for the work of the next twelve months. To assist in the manual labor of the establishment there were seven hired men and four boys, and as a defence against the dreaded Iroquois the commandant of Quebec had sent them a guard of eight soldiers. {206} They received also much valuable help from the donnés, or "given men"—French laymen, who from pure zeal devoted themselves to the service of the mission, travelling with the fathers on their dangerous journeys, and sometimes sharing—like Goupil, called "the good Réné"—in the glories of their martyrdom. These pious men—"seculars in garb," Father Gamier called them, "but religious in heart"—received no pay except a bare maintenance. There were eleven smaller missions dependent upon Sainte Marie, eight among the Hurons and three among the Algonquins. At several of them there was a church where every morning a bell summoned the dusky converts to Mass, and every evening they met again for prayer. Despite the enormous difficulties of transportation through that tangled wilderness, the fathers had found means to carry with them from place to place large colored pictures, gay draperies, and many a showy ornament for the altar or the walls, which they well knew would invest their rude chapels with an almost irresistible attraction for the savage mind. In many villages the Christians, by the year 1649, outnumbered the pagans. Sundays and feast-days were almost wholly devoted to religious exercises; and if the Indians had not wholly abandoned their barbarous and cruel practices, it is certain that the ferocity even of those who refused to become Christians was sensibly tamed.

But the season of good fortune which followed the martyrdom of Goupil and Jogues was destined to be but short. The increasing hostility of the Iroquois was to be the destruction at once of the Huron nation and of the high hopes which had been built upon that people. Yet it may be questioned whether the Jesuits would have long been left at peace even had these terrible foes kept within the range of their own villages. Even among the Hurons the murmurs of suspicion and dislike had begun to be heard again. The French ceremony of "prayer," said the savages, had blighted the crops, and the mystic rites of the priests had brought famine and desolation upon the nation. There was even a story, widely believed in the Huron lodges, that an Indian girl, baptized before her death, had been to the French heaven, and, after suffering horrible torments there from the pale faces, had made her escape back to earth to deter her countrymen from rushing to the same fate. A young Frenchman in the service of the mission had been treacherously murdered; and though the missionaries by a wise show of resolution had compelled the nation to make satisfaction for the outrage by the ceremonious offering of numerous strings of wampum, and had thus restored their waning influence, it was clear that their position at the best was extremely precarious, and that persecution, if it came not from abroad, would pretty surely be commenced at home. The catastrophe, therefore, when it came, found the priests not unprepared. For years they had carried their lives in their hands, ready to cast them down at any moment. For years they had walked through the valley of the shadow of death, and in the midst of the dark river and in the bitter waters they knew that the almighty Arm was stretched forth to hold them up.

The final act opened at the village of Teanaustayé, or St. Joseph, on the south-eastern frontier of the Huron country. {207} On the 4th of July, 1648, Father Daniel, fresh from his annual retreat at Sainte Marie, had just finished Mass, and his congregation were still kneeling in the church, when the Iroquois burst upon the town and attacked the palisade which surrounded it. The priest, after rallying the warriors to defend their homes, ran from house to house urging unbelievers to repent. A panic-stricken crowd fell at his knees and declared themselves Christians, and he baptized them with water sprinkled from a wet handkerchief, for there was no time to do more. When the palisade was broken down, he showed his flock how to escape at the other end of the town. "I will stay here," said he. "We shall meet again in heaven." He would not fly while there was a soul to be saved in the village. In his priestly vestments he went out to the church-door to meet the Iroquois. For a moment they paused in amazement. Then, pierced with scores of arrows and a musket-ball through the heart, he fell, gasping the name of Jesus. The savages hacked his lifeless body, bathed their faces in his blood to make them brave, and consumed in one great conflagration the village, the church, and the sacred remains.

The following March the missions of St. Louis and St. Ignace were burned by the same terrible enemy. At the latter were two of the Jesuits; Brébeuf, sturdy offspring of a warrior race, with all the soldierly characteristics of his Norman ancestors; and Lalemant, delicate in body and in spirit, yet in the glorious cause no whit less courageous and resolute than his stronger companion. They were seized by their captors, and Brébeuf was bound to a stake, and, as he ceased not to exhort and encourage the convert prisoners, the Iroquois scorched him from head to foot to silence him. That failing, they cut away his lower lip, and thrust a red-hot iron down his throat, yet still he held himself erect without uttering a groan. Lalemant, led out to be burned, with strips of bark smeared with pitch tied about his naked body, broke loose from his guards and cast himself at the hero's feet, crying out in a broken voice: "We are made a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men." He was immediately seized and made fast to a post, and as the flames enveloped him he threw up his arms to heaven with a shriek of agony. Brébeuf, with a collar of red-hot hatchets round his neck and with his hands and nose cut off, had to witness the tortures of his friend and could not even utter a word of comfort. An apostate Indian in the crowd cried out, "Baptize them! baptize them!" Instantly kettles were placed upon the fire, the priests' scalps were torn away, and scalding water was poured slowly over their bleeding heads. Brébeuf's feet were next cut off, strips of flesh were sliced from his limbs and eaten before his eyes, and at last, when life was nearly extinct, the savages laid open his breast, tore out his heart and devoured it, and thronged around the mangled corpse to drink the blood of so magnificent and indomitable a hero. His torments had lasted four hours. Father Lalemant, though a man of extreme feebleness of constitution, survived the torture seventeen hours, writhing through the night in the most excruciating sufferings, until an Iroquois, surfeited with the long entertainment, killed him with a hatchet.

This massacre was the death-knell of the Huron mission—of the mission, that is to say, in the form and extent in which the society had originally designed it. {208} Other villages were burned; two other missionaries, Gamier and Chabanel, were martyred; the entire establishment was withdrawn from Sainte Marie; and the miserable remnant of the Hurons was scattered far and wide. A portion of them, after a winter of starvation, embarked with the surviving missionaries for Quebec, and near that city founded a settlement, in which the Christian faith was preserved and is cherished to this day. Others voluntarily abandoned their nationality and were adopted into the Seneca tribe of the Iroquois, where eighteen years afterward many of them were found to be still good Catholics.

The story which we have briefly traced in its most striking outlines is but one chapter in the long history of the labors, the sufferings, and the glorious achievements of the Jesuits in North America. We would gladly have followed them further in their journeys through the wilderness, traced them with a Huron remnant in the far west, and lingered for a while about their headquarters at Quebec watching the growth of the central establishment which sent forth its apostles to the great lakes on the one hand, and through the forests of Maine to the sea-coast on the other. But we must bring our story to a close. The record of their work has been well preserved in the three books whose titles we have placed at the head of this article. The history by Mr. John G. Shea, to whom Catholics in general and American Catholics especially are under the deepest obligations for his careful and successful researches, is the fullest and, we doubt not, the most correct. The narrative of Mr. Parkman, which we have followed closely, giving in some parts of our article merely an abstract of what he has told in picturesque detail, is written in a charming style, and is valuable as testimony to the exalted character of the missionaries from one who has no sympathy with their faith and is unable to appreciate their piety.

The Iroquois, in destroying the Huron nation, and with it the Algonquins, to whom the Hurons had hitherto served as a bulwark, had destroyed the Jesuit scheme of a Christian Indian empire; but the labor of the missionaries had not been in vain. The seed which they had planted was not allowed to die. The exiles carried the sacred deposit of faith with them in their wanderings, as the Israelites in the wilderness bore the ark of the covenant. Years afterward, when Father Grelon, one of those who escaped from the Iroquois massacre, was travelling in the heart of Tartary, he met a Huron woman who had learned the truth from him in the little chapel at Sainte Marie, and after the final catastrophe had been sold from tribe to tribe until she reached the interior of Asia. She knelt at his feet, and in her native tongue, which she had not spoken nor the priest heard for years, she made her confession. Nor was it only in the fidelity of individuals that the missionaries reaped their harvest. When, after the ruin of their enterprise on the shores of the Georgian Bay, they sent their undaunted preachers among that terrible people who had wrought such havoc, how can we doubt that the blood of Brébeuf and his brethren was permitted to fructify their labors, and that the saintly men who gave their sufferings for the poor savage during so many years pleaded and prevailed in the same great cause after they had entered into their reward?

Translated from Le Correspondant.

Learned Women and Studious Women.

By Monseigneur Dupanloup.

(Concluded.)

VII.
Advantages of Intellectual Labor.

I do not recommend self-culture merely for the personal satisfaction of women, or in order that they may have mental gratification. Study is evidently useful and important for the accomplishment of important duties. Is it not a convenience, in se a teacher or governess, for one's daughters to understand what is called le fond du métier better than they do, so that one may superintend and direct them, and even if necessary, supply their place? Should a mother give her children life and then leave the duties of maternity in the hands of mercenaries, no matter how conscientious and devoted they may be?

But it is in relation to sons that maternal ignorance has the most fatal results. Not only is a wife not consulted about her boys, but, if she makes any objection to an irreligious school, the husband answers: "I wish my son to have a career. I shall place him where he will be prepared for it. You do not know even the names of the sciences he must acquire—leave the direction of his education to me." And when the little individual leaves school, puffed up with conceit rather than with knowledge, and the mother's Christian heart shows her the sophistry with which her son's mind has been filled, she must keep silence for want of one single fact, one precise datum in her memory to oppose to perilous errors.

Often a father, engaged in some especial career, loses sight of the literary or artistic movement which interests his son in early manhood. Then is the time when an intelligent, well-informed mother could initiate him in pursuits which she has loved and cultivated all her life. She could point out to him good authors and books worth reading, read with him, teach him to reject dangerous writers and bad books, and stimulate his taste for study, by directing it to noble objects.

Surely a mother is bound to cherish the body and the soul of her child. Indeed, her place may be more easily filled with respect to the details of physical education, than to those of intellectual and moral training. Many persons can assist her in the former; with regard to the latter, she often stands alone, and sometimes surrounded by obstacles.

To follow a young man's mental development and course of study, to watch over him and guide him with the authority belonging to a rectitude of judgment which carries conviction along with it, and to an enlightened understanding which unites with goodness in inspiring admiration and confidence—all this presupposes a rare combination of mental qualities. {210} How many mothers there are who lose their hold upon a son's soul because they have not borne, nursed, reared, and nourished his understanding as well as his physical being. To be a mother, a mother in all the elevation, extent, and depth of that great name! This aim alone justifies a woman's noblest efforts to acquire the highest intellectual culture.

But if you agree to favor the men development of women, for the sake even of domestic usefulness, accept this development in its completeness; do not impose upon it arbitrary limits. There are minds that cannot unfold in mutilation or inaction, which need expansion, as St. Augustine says, to become strong.

A woman who, from a sentiment for art or literature, has developed talent, does not lose, by becoming skilful, the advantages that mediocre faculties would have given her. We may feel sure that gifts of this nature answer to duties, and find themselves in harmony with the providential destiny of their possessors.

I do not believe, with M. de Maistre, that science in petticoats, as he calls it, or talent of any description whatsoever, makes a woman less excellent as a wife or mother.

Study renders a wife worthy of her husband if he is intelligent. Union can hardly be preserved in a household unless community of intellect completes that of affection. As a woman loses her youthful charms, the worth of her mind must increase in her husband's eyes, and esteem perpetuate affection. By that time the husband, if he has ability, is entering upon the period of his greatest activity, while too often the wife, brought up in the severest principles and in habits of empty occupations, bores him with her mechanical piety, her music, and her worsted work. A crowd of engrossing duties gain ever stronger possession of the husband, forming a circle which the unoccupied wife cannot penetrate, and thus is brought about between them what one may call a mental separation.

On the other hand, a studious woman shares her husband's preoccupation, and sustains him in his labors and struggles. She follows her husband and precedes her son, occupying in the home circle a lofty position that makes her an aid and adviser to its master. She feels that he is proud of her, and needs her, but this does not make her presumptuous. She leans securely on her happiness, feeling confident that nothing can shake a union formed upon a principle of perfect community of two souls and two intelligences, feeling sure that her love will last as long as the souls it unites. To a woman who is superior to her husband, study gives an intellectual aliment without which she would feel rebellious, and in such a household there may be great happiness and tranquillity. Even in the case of a husband who is unworthy of his wife, he is forced to respect her for the superiority of her intellect. The standing which she earns for herself in the world by her talent and virtue, wins his regard, and she at least holds the honor of her family in her own hands.

Woman, in becoming Christian, has become man's companion, socia, and moreover an aid, assistant, support, and adviser, adjutorium. Religion, while elevating her soul and heart, has also rendered her mind capable of comprehending, sometimes of equalling, but most especially of assisting the intelligence of man. While leaving her physically weak, God has implanted in her the germs of every greatness and every moral power. {211} There has never been a noble work in which women have not assisted; as the teachers of men, as their inspirers, and often as the companions of their labor, the world has seen women devote intellect and life to those whom they loved, dwelling on a level with thoughts which, being confided first to them, had drawn a swift and strong development from the double influence. Woman owes to education the union of her intellectual life to that of man. She has worked for him, she has worked like him for God, and man has drawn a subtile growth from the frail creature entrusted to his protection.

I know nothing more generous than an intimacy that does not stop at a conjugal union of interests or even of affections, but passes on to the domain of thought. I have seen such unions. I know too more than one father, who, notwithstanding his rare intelligence, must have left the work of a lifetime unfinished but for the aid of a mind placed at the service of his age and infirmity by filial devotion.

I believe that a woman's acquirements help her to fulfil great duties toward her husband, and I know many men (no offence to M. de Maistre) who could get along better with a savante than with a coquette.

So far I have spoken of domestic life. Let us now examine the question with regard to society, taking the following theses to argue.

I maintain that, if the world were more indulgent and refrained from launching stupid anathemas at studious women, those who have such tastes would indulge them without fancying themselves to be extraordinary persons; and that they would infuse a certain life into society, even if their number were limited. Perhaps the standard of conversation, occupations, and ideas would rise, and elevated subjects inspire more interest. Who would complain of such a change?

Instead of ending their education on a certain fixed day, and throwing themselves heart and soul into society, young women would preserve the habits of intellectual training; they would carry on and complete for themselves, their husband and their children the education already commenced; some cultivating art, others writing or studying, others reading. Thus they would become acquainted with the interests of religion and society; with opinions and books and ideas in general circulation. Would they not exercise a new and salutary influence at home and in the world?

But it is especially in the provinces that such aspirations are severely criticised. Those women have small liberty to learn, and still less to make use of their acquirements. The most tolerant say, "Study on condition that you conceal what you learn. Your whole inner life claims expansion and sympathy? Never mind that!"

But if you forbid women to write or speak of the things that interest them, how can you suppose they will have the courage to work for the acquirement of knowledge that is to be buried for ever in their own minds?

And I repeat, if the standard of conversation could be raised a little, drawn out of the monotonous circle in which it moves, where would be the harm? Instead of seeking in society a sterile distraction, and often finding ennui, if some intercourse of mind at least, if not of heart and soul, could be established, replacing town-gossip and dissertations on the fashions by interesting and instructive conversations from which one could derive the advantage that always results from effort made in common to arrive at an appreciation of the beautiful, and of noble ideas and interests, would not the change betoken genuine progress?

This is to be found in some salons. There are homes where young girls are not excluded from general conversation. They are not, as elsewhere, banished to a corner of the drawing-room to enjoy the privilege and habit of discussing together every sort of nonsense, but are allowed to listen to anything that interests them, and even to talk agreeably without being thought conspicuous. This was the habit at M.——'s, where his two daughters joined the most serious réunions, mingling in very interesting conversations, or at least listening, and all quite naturally, without pretension or pedantry. Those two young girls have become very superior women. How many, on the other hand, suffer from ennui or become deteriorated, because their active minds receive no nourishment!

Is it then so difficult to prove that the intellectual development of women through literature and the fine arts, far from introducing a foreign element into their lives, or creating necessities and interfering with duty, is, on the contrary, a source of daily advantage to domestic life and to society?

In the domestic circle, whose moral atmosphere they create as it were, elevating or debasing by their influence, sentiments, occupations, and ideas; and in society, where a well-directed employment of their talents and cultivation would substitute solidity for the hollow frivolity of the reunions of the present day. "For three years I have seen society in the provinces," writes to me a young woman. "It differs little from that of other (provincial) places, I suppose. Ah me! sometimes at the end of the day I sum up six or seven hours spent, with or against my will, in gossip about my neighbors that, while compromising charity, has exhausted the mind and narrowed the already narrow horizon."

Is there no middle course for women between the folly of dangerous and frivolous amusements, such as balls and theatres, and the insupportable bore of parties where long evening hours are spent in the smallest of small talk? Efforts in a different direction meet with success. Last winter, an intelligent and religious woman, who likes society but does not dance, tried the experiment in a provincial town. She conceived the idea of having really good music in her drawing-room. Quartettes of Mozart and Beethoven were played. The admiration aroused by these chef-d'oeuvres naturally lifted the mind above the level of those common preoccupations that find their echo in society. Conversation felt the influence; every one was delighted, and brought away something from these soirées, where the sense of beauty, while reasserting itself, awoke good thoughts and strengthened noble sentiments.

I think that, if women took thus the initiative, giving an upward direction to that craving for recreation which we seek to satisfy in society; if men found other ways of pleasing women, more acceptable than insipidity and frivolity; perhaps worthless young men would feel themselves less masters of the world, and clubs would be less generally the refuge of gentlemen who find themselves bored in drawing-rooms.

If we could conquer the terrible prejudice that forbids a woman to be well educated, to talk of or even appear interested in serious things, there would be a goodly number who would take a nobler aim and find pleasure in something better than dress. Then, an intelligent woman would be no greater exception than one who plays on the piano, and would not have those temptations to pride, which are said to assail her in her position of phenomenon.

We cannot destroy the world, but we can ameliorate it, by giving it other attractions than those of idle or intoxicating pleasure. Would not intellectual progress pave the way for moral progress? I know salons where, thanks to the dignity and intelligence of the thoughtful, amiable hostess, great events, noble ideas, and good works ever find an echo; where solid conversation stimulates ardor for study, by opening broader intellectual horizons, and where pure artistic emotions develop a love of the beautiful. If a little more artistic and intellectual life were introduced into Christian society, one would not feel obliged to go to the theatre to catch a few reflets, as I have heard said, even in families where religion was in other respects quite faithfully practised.

No doubt—and here I sum up the whole matter under discussion—no doubt, intellectual culture may present three perils, but perils easily guarded against.

1st. A neglect of practical duties. This danger must be met by fortifying practical education, by giving young girls habits of order and of regularity, which double time and assign a place in life to every duty; and above all, habits of practical and solid piety, which means nothing else than a courageous fulfilment of duty.

2d. An exaltation of imagination, leading one to crave intellectual enjoyments that cannot always be granted.

Here again piety alone can preserve equilibrium. The important point is, to make education respond to the gifts of God without overloading or smothering them, for they usually bring with them counterbalancing perils. Excessive culture is dangerous, insufficient culture perhaps more so.

3d. Pride. This must be prevented by good sense cultivated in a Christian manner. It is to be remarked that, if mental culture, like personal charms, can excite pride, study has at least a counterpoise. It gives an enlightened seriousness to the mind, while successes due to beauty and dress cannot but be frivolous and mischievous.

Pride, I acknowledge, affords a specious plea for the maintenance of systems restricting feminine education. We would preserve to them that modesty which is said to be their brightest ornament. I agree that modesty is not only a virtue, but a great charm; but I am by no means sure that ignorance is its best guardian. Nay, taken in a certain sense, it is a pagan virtue, that is to say, a false or very imperfect quality. Give to a woman, as you would to a man, all the knowledge, capacity, development of which she is susceptible; give her at the same time Christian humility, and she will be adorned with a modest simplicity, truer and more charming than that of the poor Hindoo woman who believes herself to be an animal, rather superior to the creatures in her poultry-yard, but very inferior in nature to her husband. This enlightened humility is a genuine virtue, the mother of many other virtues, the inspirer of a high degree of perfection. For humility does not prevent our recognizing the progress we have made. By opening our eyes to the merits of others, it shows us our own defects; and if we were to attain the summit of human ability, it would hold up an ideal superiority that should stimulate effort without arousing either pride or discouragement.

We may be sure that a cultivated mind is of all others the best fitted to a comprehension of duty. It is intelligent humilty, that is to say, true modesty, which preserves us from pedantry.

Vanity! That is the great danger, it is said. But the reputation that a woman acquires by literary or artistic talent is not the rock most to be dreaded. I say again that self-conscious beauty and worldly triumphs fill the heart with a vanity that has no corrective in the cause that produced it.

Study and art, by elevating the soul, serve as a counterpoise to the sentiments of vanity they may excite. I see no such safeguard in successes won by advantages of another sort.

All is summed up in saying that great gifts bring with them a danger against which the mind must be fortified in advance by education. Education must adapt itself to different natures: it must, while developing the germs planted by God, direct this development with firmness, averting perils and avoiding mistakes. It must make the moral development keep pace with the mental; preserving equilibrium between the ideal and the practical life, which interfere with each other less than is supposed, and accordance of which alone constitutes the dignity of existence.

I confess that education is a more difficult and critical affair when applied to a richly endowed nature; but it is also more beautiful and consoling.

VIII.

The Third Stage.

I crave pardon of the ladies of the so-called grand monde for a truth, a painful truth intended solely for them.

It is in the fashionable world that studious women are rarely found, and that they are obliged to hide their worth. Strange tyranny of fortune! It gives women leisure, and deprives them of the right to use it for the development of intellect. It is to you, fashionable women, that industry must be preached. Women less wealthy do not generally need the exhortation. In modest careers, where toil is the necessary condition of domestic well-being, cultivated women are numerous. It is in the homes of artists, scholars, physicians, lawyers, judges, professors, that we most frequently find clever and studious women, conversant with matters of art, possessed of real talent, highly educated, but nicknamed by no one femmes savantes, because they are the pride and treasure of home, and ensure by their intelligence, domestic ease and comfort, nay, even a certain delicate luxury that has nothing to do with riches, and can be purchased only by feminine taste. The furniture is pretty in form, and gracefully arranged; engravings recall favorite works of art, and reveal the tastes and preferences of the household. Flowers, pictures, books, music, and pretty work, all show the home to be one much lived in, seldom left, where happiness is to be found. These are not empty and magnificent establishments whose masters are always absent, pursuing pleasure with a feverish activity, and flying from the ennui of their home except when the excitement of refurnishing it attracts them, only to be driven away again when the gilded ottomans are all in place. In these modest lodgings on the third story the mother is surrounded by her children. She brings them up herself. Thank God! she must do so, and great is her reward. She reigns over her children, and they understand her merits and sacrifices, and love their mother tenderly. They soon know the blessing of being born in a rank of life where mothers cannot afford to pay servants, governesses, and tutors to usurp their place. {215} What a difference there is between the two systems of education! The sons rank first at college and at school; the daughters receive superior educations that I would gladly propose as a model to fashionable young ladies. They wish to equal the mother who studies with them, directing and following their work with sympathizing interest. The law of labor weighs more stringently upon a mother than upon any other creature; the soul of her children is the field that she must till by the sweat of her brow; no other persons have received graces to enable them to take her place, and if the most complete educations are to be found in modest households such as I have described, it is owing to maternal industry. How many young people acquire a coarse taste for horses and dogs from the mercenaries who educate them! A mother, in teaching her children, inculcates other tastes and ambitions. Sometimes anxiety takes possession of her soul as she asks herself whether she can arm their consciences with faith and honor sufficient to give them courage to bear in their turn a retired life and never consent to win fortune by a base action. Then she redoubles her care of their education, knowing it is to be their only dower, and becomes ever more attentive, virtuous, courageous, in order to transmit to them her own admirable dignity of soul, and merit for them this heavenly favor.

And children who see their mother work, are secretly anxious to comfort and reward her. A desire to do good is more vivid in these abodes of modest happiness than elsewhere, and the joy of duty fulfilled makes each one contented with his lot and at peace with God. The whole day is one of activity; the father is at work, the mother attends to her household duties or takes the children to school or to catechism; and when evening comes, every one is tired with the day's work and glad to stay at home. Then comes the time for repose, children's games, talking, reading, music, intimacy, and gayety; and the day closes peaceably without that worldly bustle and excitement which put to a severe test the virtue of even the most Christian women.

A mother, thus occupied, never thinks of devoting herself to matters connected with her personal interests. She has not the time. Her girlhood, her early womanhood were spent in study. Now she is given up to the service of others. But this disinterested devotion, at once toil and sacrifice, is more elevating to both soul and understanding than any other employment could be. No danger of vanity or pedantry for her! and yet the instruction of her children is a great work. One marvels at the physical power that maternal love can give to a mother bent on carrying out her duties completely. Never wonder to find her capable, elevated, active, intelligent, indifferent to idle trifling and worldly coquetry.

In these modest households again, I find model servants. It is a saying, nowadays, that there are no good domestics to be had. People talk of the servants in old times. Read Molière and the police regulations of the days of Louis XIV., and you will find that the grands seigneurs had worse attendants than we have now. Old-fashioned servants have no more disappeared than old-fashioned virtues. The virtues reign in simple, industrious homes, and there too we must look for devoted domestics. Do not expect hard work in the abodes of magnificent idleness. The servants of the unoccupied soon become unoccupied themselves; instinctively they imitate from a distance their master's example, catch the tone of the establishment, and assume irreproachable manners and lazy habits. {216} A servant knows very well when he is assisting in an ostentatious parade. He is quick to abuse opportunities, and needs often, in order to avenge himself for the inferiority of his position, merely imitate his master, even with no intention of ridiculing him. But a devoted and courageous woman who is the first to take hold of work, transforms the souls of her domestics and raises their service to the dignity of devotion. Of course, the etiquette and perfect discipline that one admires in some establishments are not to be found here. No! Good servants who are not held in immeasurable distance from their masters, assume another sort of livery, the livery of the virtues they see and study closely. They breathe a healthy, strengthening air, and in this atmosphere of industry, honesty, and confidence both masters and servants are happy. Ah! I could mention splendid mansions that are inhabited by ennui, (not to speak of discord,) and I could tell of the happiness and dignity I have often witnessed in the third story.

But in justice it must be added that I have not always met these virtues in the third story, nor ennui and idleness in grand establishments. There, too, when industry reigns, I have seen great virtues. It must be said that all depends upon education and habits.

IX.

Bad Habits and Prejudices.

But does education as it is bestowed to-day often accomplish great things? I answer regretfully, No; too often the education of the present day offers no such advantages. It cannot resist worldly dissipation or the idle mockery lavished by empty ignorance on studious women. Connected study and attentive reflection are most of all wanting in the training of girls and the mode of life adopted by young women.

As Ozanam has said, a treatise upon instruction for girls and young women is still to be written. The subject is in no respect rightly understood; no durable fruit has yet appeared.

I know young girls whose education in music and drawing had cost twenty or thirty francs a lesson, cease cultivating these expensive talents on the first day of freedom.

I take a single instance. Most young ladies for seven or eight years of their lives spend two and sometimes three and four hours a day at the piano. But this study to which so much time is given, and which opens glorious horizons to mind and soul, generally ends in one of those soulless talents spoken of by Topffer, which borrow life from vanity only, talents useless for any practical purpose, taking no root in the mind, and seldom destined to survive the wedding-day.

This charming author, rising up in indignation against the use made in educating young people in the fine arts and of what are popularly termed talents d'agrément, exclaims: "How much I have seen of these charming talents and how little of their charm! Young girls are interested in nothing, understand little, feel not at all. I believe, however, that they might seek in artistic pursuits, instead of mere amusing recreation, exercise for the mind, expansion for the heart, development for the imagination, and find in these faculties which are usually destroyed or left idle by feminine occupations, a perfection that would, as it were, clothe and adorn the soul."

But, as matters stand, music is a study, more or less mechanical, that never reaches the soul, and seldom arrives at the commonest comprehension of art. How many girls who pass their days at the piano have neither sense nor appreciation of what they are doing! "We had music," says P. Gratry, "a brilliant tinkling that did not even rest one's nerves." Teachers are eager to impart a facile execution, but there are few who seek to form a good style, to make their pupils understand and appreciate composers, or grasp the chain of musical ideas.

People play on the piano without any comprehension of what they are expressing; as one might recite poems by heart in a language that one did not understand. In Germany, where music claims a large share in the education of girls, it is treated more seriously. Through the study of harmony they rise from mechanism to art.

Drawing is often equally misused. I have seen persons who drew with exactitude and even with facility, and yet could not distinguish good pictures from bad, or remember whether Raphael was the master or the pupil of Perugino. Even talent had not developed in them a sense of beauty.

The world leaves the domain of music free to young girls on condition that they shall derive no spiritual elevation from it and merely waste a great deal of time. As to the plastic arts, even a taste for painting arouses criticism, and M. de Maistre shudders to see his daughter painting in oil. In one word, the arts must be restricted to accomplishments, and sumptuary laws even more severe enforced with regard to literary pursuits.

Excepting in music and drawing a girl's education must be finished at a certain age. "Ever since my eighteenth year," writes a young friend, to whom I had recommended study, "if I expressed a wish to study, I have been asked if my education was not finished." Finish one's education! that means throwing aside books, writing, embroidery, and accomplishments if one has any.

But, we are told, young ladies learn a great variety of things during the time of education. Quite true, and the very subject of my complaint. They are not destined to pass examination for a bachelor's degree, and their whole training tends to give them general notions as shallow as they are widely diffused. Nothing serious, nothing grave, nothing profound—a little of every thing. In the words of an intelligent minister, "Who does not know that what we gain in surface we lose in depth!"

Beyond dispute the plan is comprehensive. I see many young girls who, in addition to common studies, geography, history, rhetoric, begin to learn one or two languages, play on the piano, take singing lessons, draw and paint, and learn to do all sorts of fancy work, as they succeed each other in the caprice of fashion polychromania, leather flowers, etc., etc. Of course, a life of efforts so scattered and diffused, can lead to no good result; and I have heard wise instructors sigh over the obligation imposed upon them of fulfilling such programmes. A little of everything is studied and nothing properly learned; not one talent or faculty developed, not one earnest taste acquired for anything whatsoever. Such half talents and superficial tastes achieve nothing.

If there be a danger in the study of art and literature, it is to be found in stopping precisely at the point indicated by M. de Maistre; at general notions, not solid acquirements; accomplishments, not earnest talents; a lack of something to elevate the soul and nourish the mind. Such smattering helps one to make a momentary show, but not to accomplish anything or to be any one. It indicates that nothing more will be acquired from the moment of leaving the convent.

Precisely the contrary is needed if one would train earnest and assiduous women who may one day prove useful to their husbands and children.

It is difficult to explain why indulgence is shown or exception taken by men of the world. They approve, and very properly, of a girl's speaking two or three living languages. But if, in accordance with Fénélon's advice, you learn a little Latin, hide it as a sin, or be accounted a blue-stocking. You will hardly obtain pardon for a taste for solid reading or historical studies. I have heard of a young woman who drew upon herself that sort of admiration that implies blame, from intelligent people, because she was said to read Le Correspondent. The same persons, on learning that she reserved the morning hours for study, testified immense astonishment and treated her as a savante.

What may be called study—making abstracts or taking notes of what one has read—is not considered proper for women, especially in country towns. Reading is hardly permissible and only within restricted limits. A lady of my acquaintance incurred general censure because, during the first year of her married life, she did not receive or make visits before four o'clock, that she might reserve a few hours for study, in accordance, moreover, with her husband's wishes.

Young girls should regard the close of their first studies as the commencement of a life-long work. Young women should, in the very beginning of married life, establish study as one of the duties of existence. Later, they are engrossed with the education of their children, and can no longer work to please themselves. But even then, the precious habit will cling to them as an inestimable consolation to be enjoyed in every leisure hour. Above all, it remains to fill the void that becomes so irksome when children escape from the mother's guidance, and she once more has freedom and leisure without youth, its joys or its energy.

Labor is a faithful friend that adapts itself to the age and disposition of every being who takes it as a companion for life.

That women may learn to value habits of industry, it is incumbent on us to convince young girls that their education does not end at eighteen, and that their first ball-dress has not, like a bachelor's degree, the virtue of giving to learning its perfect consummation. At that age they have barely information enough to enable them to study alone. Leading-strings are no longer needed in their education, and that is all. They are simply capable of continuing their studies, and of enjoying the pleasure of individual exertion. If a girl could be made to believe this, a serious and earnest future would be secured to her. But the present custom demands that she should study French and history until she is fifteen, and from fifteen to eighteen, piano-playing and drawing. Then comes a pink dress, the crowning glory of her education, the great day so often dreamed of. She goes into society and marries, determined to leave work behind her in accordance with universal practice. {219} This is one of the joys of marriage—to do nothing—and so she wastes a period most precious in a woman's life, a period when she has leisure, and that flame that youth and happiness alone can kindle; expansion of soul, the illumined eyes of the heart, illuminates oculos cordis, as St. Paul says, giving to toil facility, impetus, horizon, power. But so it is; all must be lost, squandered, sunk in those early years, even happiness! Study would have a secret power to draw this young creature from the whirl of life, and give her the calmness and recollection she so much needs, if merely to enjoy her blessings; but no, everything must be frittered away and destroyed.

Then follow years when the excitement of youth dies out, a void is left, beauty vanishes, ennui comes to take possession, and there is nothing to dispute its sway. The children are in the midst of their education, and need no looking after. A mother who knows not the value of industry, is ever ready to excuse idleness in her children, and notwithstanding this indulgence, her sons think very little of their mother when they grow up, and soon regard her as beneath them.

X.

Practice.

But to come to practical results, what are the faculties to be cultivated in women? The same as in men? Must they study the exact sciences, politics, the secret of government, military art? Are they to emulate Judith, Joan of Arc, Jeanne Hachette, Hormengarde, foundress and regent of the second kingdom of Burgundy, Marguerite d'Albon, Isabella of Castile, Maria Theresa?

Certainly not. Women are to be enumerated who could be and have been all this. Providence creates these extraordinary beings. But though we recognize occasional vocations of genius, courage, and virtue, it would be folly to educate women for careers so exceptional.

Women are physically weak, but their intelligence must not be undervalued. They often have a great deal of mind and always a fund of good sense, demanding nothing but use. Why wonder at all I have implied? They acquire with remarkable ease. Who can fail to recognize the keenness and delicacy of sensibility bestowed on them by heaven, or the natural bent with which their souls turn to the vivifying rays of beauty?

I do not agree with a lady who wrote to me: "We skim over things and seem to know them; we open a book, run through a few pages, and are prepared to discuss it, to give praise or blame, recommendation or warning." I do not grant this. But beyond dispute, they have great facility for everything. It costs them little to assimilate to themselves required information, to make something out of nothing, and a great deal out of scant material. God, not destining them to long and abstract studies, has endowed them with marvellous perspicacity and intuition. They rarely speak of business because it fatigues and bores them; yet if circumstances demand their participation, how useful and sensible they almost invariably prove themselves! Generally, the restoration of family property is due to them; when left widows, they rebuild the fortunes of their children.

It is to be understood that in this vindication, as it were, of woman's right to intellectual culture, I give to study only its due share in the occupations of life. Clearly, household cares and home duties have a superior claim; husband, children, domestics, must be the first interest of a woman who understands the hierarchy of her duties. {220} My advice, if it must be precisely defined, would be, that she reserve at least two hours—if possible, three hours—of each day, for life, for intellectual culture.

So long as women content themselves with reading, looking, and listening, no great opposition is made, and men willingly grant them a place among their auditors. But if the profound emotions of the interior life seek a fuller development; if they seek in the absorption of pursuits answering to their spiritual aspirations an echo that the soul misses in the external world, then society rises up in judgment.

Some women are born artists, that is to say, they are possessed by a craving to give form to thought, to a feeling for beauty which penetrates them, and that too under conditions suitable for the development of this side of their nature. But it is precisely this exercise of the creative faculty which is denied them, and which I wonder to see withheld, since the gift comes from God himself.

Vainly does M. de Maistre maintain that "women have never produced a masterpiece, and that in wishing to emulate men, they become apes." Vainly does he add with unbecoming impertinence, "I have always thought them incomparably handsomer, more attractive, and more useful than apes. I only say and repeat, that women who would make men of themselves are nothing but apes." Or again, "A woman's chef d'oeuvre in science is to understand the works of men."

But soon M. de Maistre contradicts and refutes himself: "We must exaggerate nothing," he says, "belles lettres, moralists, great orators, etc., suffice to give women all the culture they need."

A little later, he congratulates himself on having a daughter, who reads and appreciates St. Augustine, and who "passionately loves beauty of every kind; recites equally well Racine and Tasso; draws, plays, sings very prettily; and, as in her voice there are low chords that pass beyond the feminine range of tone, so are there in her character certain grave fundamental qualities, that belong especially to our sex, and which dominate the rest of her nature."

This is enough; my discussion with M. de Maistre is ended. We entertain, in fact, the same views, and I now address myself merely to worldly prejudice.

We have then, even in M. de Maistre's estimation, as studies possible for women:

1st. Belles lettres, literature both light and serious, a wide field and one as attractive as it is extensive. The range of history alone is immense. There is a philosophy, too, which the feminine mind is fully capable of grasping, and whose essential ideas are necessary to fix its natural mobility and insure to it correctness of thought. Teach a woman to reason justly, and consequently to give precedence to duty in all things, and you have secured the essential part of education as it is needed in every class and condition of life.

2d. The arts—so admirably suited to their imagination, to the delicate grace of their nature. And here I must remark that we unhesitatingly leave open to female competition the most perilous of the fine arts, the one least compatible with their duties and vocation, while shutting them out from the pure and lofty regions of the intellect. Many detractors of women, who cultivate or criticise art, would on no account suppress public singers or actresses.

But, you will tell me, that it is precisely because female artistes are more or less degraded that virtuous women should not become artistes. I think as you do, and more strongly than you, yet I cannot help seeing that you recognize the fact of women's capacity to rise in art, since a few among them have received the gift of inspiration. If they have received this gift, it must be used; honestly and nobly of course, but used. The fact you advance brings its own application.

3d. If a woman can express the beautiful, she can do so through all the languages of the beautiful. Art is identical in principle, whatever be the mode of its expression. Painting, music, poetry, eloquence, the expression of beauty through an exquisite style, or through the accent of an inspired voice, is always beauty bound within the limits of a sensible form to render it perceptible to the soul through the medium of the senses. Each one must clothe it in a form not self-chosen. If you open to woman the most dangerous and frivolous of all the arts, why close to her the others? Because she sinks with the art that ministers to your pleasure, is it impossible for her to rise with noble, true, serious art? If a woman can be a cantatrice, she can be a musician in the elevated sense of the word, a writer or a painter.

Many men affirm authoritatively that women cannot and should not write. It is surprising that a question so easily settled for some persons should be so often discussed. Equal pains have not been taken to prove that women cannot be generals or ministers, yet I am not aware that the example of female warriors has been often claimed by their peers.

The present day is an ill chosen time to contest women's right to authorship, when the three works most generally read are Le Récit d'une Soeur, the writings of Eugénie de Guérin, and Madame Swetchine's Letters.

In becoming writers women do not infringe on the rights of men. "They do not seek to emulate man;" and when all is said, what is it, that M. de Maistre calls "emulating man"? Is it desiring to do all that he does? Of course not. Certain pursuits exclusively belong to him, and are not to be cultivated by women. But if there are points of separation, there is also a common domain where all souls may work together. The most natural is that of art and literature. Even here it may be that woman's field is more restricted than that of man; but she will find her place, and perhaps a place that men could not so well fill.

There are differences between the masculine and the feminine intellect; and it is on this fact that M. de Maistre founds his assertion that because one sex can write the other cannot. We may found upon it a different conclusion, that, bringing another kind of genius into intellectual regions, women will cultivate them after a fashion of their own, adapting their talents in preference to more delicate subjects. In a concert all dissimilar voices must be moulded together: why should not women bear their part in the great harmony of human thought expressed through art? There are notes they only can reach. Silvio Pellico says something similar when, after vainly trying to give women a pendent to the Treatise on the Duties of Men, he exclaims! "Only a woman could write such a book." In a woman's writing there is always a certain touch that reveals her sex. A female author must ever remain a woman. Thus may we reassure the susceptibilities of M. de Maistre and quiet our own fears as to the result of wishing to emulate man.

"Woman is a weak creature, ignorant, timid, and indolent," says Mme. de ——; "possessed of violent passions and petty ideas, a being full of inconsistency and caprice. … Capable of displaying charming defects every day of her life; a treasure of cruelty and of hope." Then mourning over the almost complete disappearance of this type, she seeks an explanation of the fact: "Women have lost in attractions what they have gained in virtues. … Woman was not made to share men's toils, but to afford them recreation." And, finally, summing up in one word the errors that have ruined her sex, she exclaims indignantly, "Woman has aspired to be the companion of man."

Thus, to be a companion instead of a plaything, a Christian rather than a pagan, a being to be respected, trusted, relied upon, rather than one who holds you by a passing attraction, amusing you by her frivolity, and distracting you from graver thoughts—this is a culpable mistake of judgment, and moreover, it is a woman who dares to bring forward such a doctrine.

4th. In my first letters I gave it as my opinion that, in a measure, a woman could occupy herself with sciences, and even with agriculture. The latter assertion provoked some surprise. Let me answer them by a few fragments of a letter written to me upon the subject, by a very sensible and distinguished woman:

"How wisely, monseigneur, you have advised women to interest themselves in business matters and other serious subjects, even studying agriculture. My own observation confirms your opinion. At present, while my son is in the service, and I am separated from all my family, living in the country, and almost always in tête-à-tête, what would become of me if my mother had not given me the habit, from childhood, of interesting myself in every thing about me? Agriculture, with its obstacles and its progress, affords an inexhaustible source of conversation with one's husband, with cures, village notaries, farmers, country neighbors, and petits bourgeois. It is a less inflammatory subject than politics, and one that adapts itself to every understanding. My husband does not disdain to discuss crops and manuring with me—I have my own theories upon drainage, beets, [Footnote 32] and cabbages, [Footnote 33] and he finds me very progressive in my ideas, perhaps too much so; he, however, never builds a stable without consulting me, and before a lease is signed, I must hear it read several times. I believe it to be very important to themselves and to their children that women should understand business, the investment of funds, the management of property. They should not decide, but listen and advise. Husbands, generally, ask nothing better than to talk openly of these things, because such subjects interest them more than any others; but usually no one listens. When a man meets with yawning inattention, all is over; he has recourse to silence, adopts the habit of managing everything for himself, of following his own bent. In the beginning, a young husband is full of confiding openness; later, he becomes more suspicious of control which wounds him in proportion as it is needed. Capacity and earnestness are indispensable to a woman."

[Footnote 32: La bette rave, the kind of beet from which sugar is made, and therefore an important subject to theorize upon. Berthollet is said to have lost his place by failing to answer satisfactorily a question suddenly put to him by Napoleon, concerning la bette rave.]

[Footnote 33: Colza, a cabbage used for making oil, and a topic almost as engrossing as beets.]

I ask that women should be allowed to cultivate any art or science they may choose, and even aim at some eminence in its acquirement, without being annoyed in their honorable pursuit by the terrible anathema which the world launches against (for once we will use the coarse expression) blue-stockings. [Footnote 34] If there are women who, while attending thoroughly and seriously to their household affairs, rise above material life by a love and appreciation of the beautiful, seeking therein a delicate pleasure and pure emotions, enjoying the cultivation of the soul, and listening attentively to the claims of truth and goodness, it is a shame to cast reproach upon them.

[Footnote 34: In the language of unreflecting persons who instinctively love to attack every thing elevated, perhaps in order to drag others down to their own level, the word "blue-stocking" signifies a woman who reads, and greatest of all offences converses.]

5th. Above all things should rank the earnest study of religion. I dwelt long upon this subject in my "Letters to Men and Women of the World;" I will therefore simply say that it is above all in the higher classes, where fortune authorizes a free use of the luxury of education, that religious instruction should be pushed as far as the individual capacity of man and women allows; doctrine, proofs of religion, explanation of ceremonies, church history, selected works of the fathers, great pulpit orators, lives of the saints, etc., etc. all this I have explained and taught in detail. In a course of education there should be an appropriate progressive study of all that concerns religion. Religious facts are so intimately connected with those of modern history, that one can sometimes have a true idea of the latter only by becoming acquainted with the former.

The objection of want of time, the grand objection so often brought forward, remains to be examined. Have women the time to devote to intellectual pursuits? Let us be honest and confess that there are two obstacles to the leisure required: talking and dress.

Yes, the great misfortune of women is, that they indulge in long hours of conversation among themselves, and about what, if not dress, gossip, and housekeeping?

Now, nothing lowers the mind and soul like talking about trifles for hours, and there is but one method of remedying the evil; increase the time devoted to study, thus shortening in an equal degree the hours frittered away in conversation, and supplying mental food far superior to the vulgar subjects that now exhaust so many minds and souls.

As for dress, too much cannot be said against it, not only as a cause of ruin to women of the world, but as a dissolvent of all earnestness even among virtuous Christian women.

Dress! That is what wastes the time and exhausts the spirit of women; that is what takes them from their domestic duties, and not these poor calumniated books. Every attentive observer will recognize, as I do, that it is a taste for the world and for dress that detaches them from home interests far more than a taste for study.

For my own part, I can assert that the truly superior women I have known, those whose superiority was genuine and not a pretence or an affectation, were models of practical wisdom.

There are, on the other hand, certain households admirable in every respect but one—that on an average they discuss dress four or five hours a day. The mother of the family is a woman of great merit and virtue; she dresses with great simplicity; and yet there are no preoccupations so serious, no anxieties or sufferings so pressing, that they cannot be dissipated at least for the moment by the interest of ordering a new gown or bonnet.

These affairs are of vast importance; life slips away while the mind is wasting itself in their service.

Mothers of great merit teach their daughters to consider dress as one of their interests and principal duties, discussing and letting them discuss toilette for hours every day, and judging every earthly thing from the standpoint of toilette. The business of dressing, shopping, choosing materials, talking with shopkeepers and dressmakers, and the time passed by young girls, and even young women, with lady's maids in more confidential intercourse than is becoming; these are in truth the great obstacles to habits of industry.

But leaving the subject of frivolous persons and unoccupied lives, how, you will ask, can a mother who owes all her time to her family find leisure to study?

It is hardly necessary to remark that I am speaking of women in easy circumstances, for the reason that they especially have the means of putting in practice these suggestions. Poor women who earn their bread by the sweat of their brow, are not less precious in the eyes of God or in our own than the favorites of fortune; but daily toil can hardly leave them opportunity to cultivate their minds. And yet even among them there are many not called upon to support their families who, without being rich, keep one domestic, or do the housework themselves with ease and quickness, and thus have nearly as much leisure as women of wealth. How many women there are in business, shop-girls, for instance, or bookkeepers, who surely have time for reading, since they do read—and read—what?

It is well known that a taste for reading is now penetrating even into country villages, affording a means of spending pleasantly the long winter evenings. There are useful directions, an elevated impulse to be given to the class of women of whom we have just spoken; but however worthy of interest such a subject may be, it is not our present theme. Perhaps we may enter on it at some future day.

We address ourselves then to women in easy circumstances. Can the head of a grand establishment, a wife, a mother, find time to study.

Beyond a doubt, yes! To begin with, she can devote to study the time that other women give to worldly entertainments that consume their nights, and to personal adornments that devour their fortunes. They can lay aside all the pursuits that, while absorbing them without offering any advantage, prepare them ill for the duties toward their children that belong to them as mothers of immortal souls.

Does not the secret of living lie in the reconciliation of apparent difficulties? Do not duties, tastes, affections often appear to contradict each other? I have often seen that habits of orderly activity combined with a simplicity that suppresses useless exactions multiply an industrious woman's hours and make it possible to meet every demand. It is a woman's science to understand how to give herself and yet reserve herself: a science composed of gentleness and activity, of devotion and firmness, whose first result is the retrenching of idle indulgences, and the keeping within due bounds the tribute to be paid to the claims of society.

In preceding writings I have shown in detail that there are more empty hours, even in a busy woman's life, than is supposed. When once her children are grown up, she has often too much liberty on her hands. I once knew a lady who had six children. Her two elder sons were at a boarding-school; her three daughters passed the whole day with their governess; even the youngest had his lesson hours. This lonely mother said to me mournfully on one occasion, "I pass the whole day alone with my sewing, and poor company it is;" and she was reduced, poor lady, to seeking outside distractions, innocent but futile. If she had had a taste for study and habits of industry, she would not have been driven from home. Study makes women love their homes, the attraction of work commenced always drawing them thither. How little need of visits and society such persons feel! It is a joy to steal off to one's room and continue one's reading or drawing. It is with a light step that one turns toward home when heart and life are filled with a love of study instead of with an immoderate, ruinous taste for dress and luxury.

Much firmness, sweetness, and perseverance are necessary to secure one's liberty in a household, to make one's working hours respected, without failing in any other duty; in one word, to give and reserve one's self discreetly. It is a question of degree, like most other questions of conduct. But, in order to acquire courage for the struggle, women must be very sure that the right is on their side. They are too apt to mistake for a mere personal taste the duty of cultivating their mental faculties.

I have given strong and unanswerable arguments for the necessity of a rule of life. But in this, as in every human affair, temperament must be consulted. Though it may easily be made an illusion and a convenient pretext to cover self-indulgence, yet one can easily believe that some women, with the best will in the world, must plead the impossibility of having a rule of life, or must submit to see it violated so often as to become a dead letter.

The mistress of a household rises in the morning, she feels unwell, or her husband comes in to discuss plans, business, no matter what; work-people, children little and big, invade her room: the mother of a family has not an hour when she can shut herself up and forbid intrusion. There are women and even girls whose lives slip away under the oppression of these absolutely tyrannical customs, from which it is the more difficult to escape because they assert themselves in the name of devotion and domestic virtue.

If we tell these young people, "crushed and flattened out," as M. de Maistre expresses it, "under the enormous weight of nothing," to create an individual life for themselves, and seek occasional retirement, they answer: "But I cannot; I have not one moment absolutely my own. If I leave the parlor, my room is invaded; somebody wants to speak to me, and so somebody stands about for a quarter of an hour and then sits down. Then some one else comes, and so the time is devoured. With all the efforts in the world to keep my patience, I cannot conceal the annoyance this is to me skilfully enough to avoid being voted a strong-minded woman," [Footnote 35] the correlative term of blue-stocking.

Very well, I say, for want of regular hours let a woman devote odd minutes to study. There are always some in the busiest lives; moments that occur between the various occupations of the day; and she must learn to work by fits and starts, in a desultory fashion. There is a wide difference between the woman who reads sometimes and the woman who never reads.

If the desire to reserve a short time for study led to nothing more than the acquisition of the science of odd minutes, the result would be very important. The science of odd minutes! It multiplies and fertilizes time, but books cannot impart it. It gives habits of order, attention, and precision that react from the external upon the moral life. The most cheerful women, the most equable, serviceable, and, I may add, the healthiest women, are those who are intelligent and industrious, and who, through the medium of a well-ordered activity, have discovered the secret of reconciling the duties they owe to God, to their families, and to themselves.

Between the spiritual and the material life, which answer to two orders of duty, the intellectual life must have its place; a place at present usurped by frivolity.

The intellectual life should be the porch of the spiritual life, material existence the support and instrument of the other two. But alas! it is far otherwise. Material existence usurps, suffocates, extinguishes the light of mind and soul. Art and literature elevate the heart, excite a distaste for gross enjoyments, and spiritualize life. They afford nourishment to mental activity, which is now the prey of levity, especially among women, seducing them to vain and dangerous pleasures. All grand and beautiful things, so worthy of the human intellect, betray the emptiness of material enjoyments, ennoble the soul and lead it to heights that approach heaven.

The culture of art and letters would occupy the feminine imagination profitably. It would create, or rather reveal to women admirable resources conducive to happiness, virtue, in short to a complete existence; whether in society, where woman's influence can elevate or debase ideas, occupations, interests, and sentiments; or at home, where talents and information, while conferring a great charm, would render her more skilful in the direction of children and in the exercise of salutary influence as a wife.

Thus the intellectual and the spiritual life would be united under the blessing of God; thus we should find in the various classes of society, intelligent Christian women, elevated above frivolity, capable of sustaining and inspiring every noble idea, every useful effort, every productive life; women who at home and in the world would be more enlightened, energetic, influential, estimable, forceful than the women of the present day.

Baby.

I've got a baby, you know. There! if you laugh, I'll not tell you a single word about it. You won't laugh any more? Very well; then don't. My dear old toad—husband, I mean—Dan, who is the born image of baby—oh! yes, a very pretty ruse, indeed, pretending to blow your nose. Can't I see you laughing behind your handkerchief? I've got sharp eyes! Of course I have. All mothers have. Now, be good, and sit up like a man, and—there—don't be putting your hand up that way over your face, because I can see clean through it. What do you say? Good gracious! That remark is not appropriate. However, I forgive you, for it might be if you knew what I'm going to tell you. My dear old toa—husband—is so fond of baby that I don't think I am fonder of him myself; and that is saying all I can say, and all I could wish to say, because baby's me, and I'm baby, as I love to imagine sometimes when I ask myself how much I want Dan to love his foolish little wife and Our Baby. Really, please don't hold your breath in that style; I'm always dreadfully frightened when baby does it.

Now, husband loving baby and me as he does, there's not the least doubt in the world that I am the happiest little woman, and the most contented little wife, that the world ever saw. Perhaps I may exaggerate, but ask dear Dan. If his opinion differs from mine, I'll modify it; for I think he has the best judgment of any man I ever saw. "Tot," he often says, (the dear old toad always calls me Tot, because I'm small,) "my opinion coincides precisely with yours, and, if I have any amendment to make, I feel sure that you yourself would have made it under the circumstances." Of course, I ask if any amendment occurs to his mind. Then he tells me, and, in fact, I see that it is just such an amendment as I would make under the circumstances. Oh! he has the most perfect judgment, has my husband. He not only knows what is best, but he knows just what I would think best. For instance, about what name baby should be christened. If it was to be a boy, I settled at once in my mind that he should be called Daniel, after his papa, to be sure. To think of any other name would be sheer nonsense. But now see the judgment of my old toad. "I was thinking just the same as you, Tot," said he, "and your choice of my own name for the little stranger is the very one I had hoped you would choose; but, knowing how much you and I loved poor brother Alf—who was drowned at sea—I determined to renounce my name in his favor, and so dear brother Alf with his sunny face would live again in our child. If little Tot thinks of that, she will be sure to agree with me." Did I agree with him? Of course I did. What foolish questions you men will ask. I'd no more think of calling him Daniel after that, than of calling him, well—Nebuchodonosor—or some other such heathen name. So the priest christened him Alfred.

Oh! we had such fun at the party. Old Mr. Pillikins—the old gentleman, you recollect, you met here last winter, with the gold spectacles and shiny bald head—was so droll. {228} He wanted to drink baby's health, but somehow he had not heard his name, so looking over to me he says:

"Begins with an A," he says after me. "Good, very good. First letter of the alphabet, where all good children ought to begin,

"L! what else could it be?" Mr. Pillikins accented the word else, and then, after he had explained it to us, we had such a good laugh. Wasn't it an excellent pun? Then he thought he had it. So, taking up his glass in his right hand and putting the thumb of his left hand in the armhole of his waistcoat, he says;

"Not Alexander! True," says he, putting his glass down again. "I was about to add that Alexander had an A and an L, but did not have an—"

"Madam, you are quite right," replied Mr. Pillikins, bowing. "It has not an F after it, as the baby's name undoubtedly has, and the effect is certainly, more inefable on account of it. Ha, ha! you understand?" Never was there such a punster as the old gentleman. "And then follows a—"

"All the rest," said I, "is just what you did with your Herald this morning, Mr. Pillikins. What was that?"

"Madam, I dried it before the grate. The newspapers nowadays come so damp to one that it is enough to give one the gout in the fingers to hold them."

"O you tease!" said I, "you didn't do anything of the kind. You read it. There!"

"Well, there's the baby's name, then," I exclaimed, almost losing my patience. "Don't you see?"

"Positively, madam, I did not. It is not the fashion to record births nowadays. Only the marriages and deaths."

"Well," said I, after the laugh this raised had somewhat subsided, "It might have been recorded there, for all I care. It would have been a happy piece of information, and giving a good example—" Now what are you laughing at?—"A happy piece of information," says I, "and that's more than can be said of many other items to be found in its columns."

Having got at the name, at last, Mr. Pillikins made a very pretty speech, at which everybody clapped their hands and smiled, and everything went off pleasantly, except Mr. Gowsky's son, Peter, who broke his wine-glass by hammering it on the table, and then fell backward, sprawling on the floor, from a bad habit he has of tilting his chair up. He scared baby so, that, to tell the truth, I had no pity for him in his confusion, and rather enjoyed his blushes, which never left him all the rest of the evening.

I am malicious? Not I; but a poor, dear baby that cannot protect itself must not be abused with impunity. I was near fainting with fright, too, when I heard the sound; for I thought it must be the baby that had fallen out of its nurse's arms. {229} First thought always about baby? To be sure, bless his little heart, and the last too! You can sit there twiddling your thumbs as if you did not agree with me; but I don't mind you; for what do you know about babies? Dan says, and very truly, that a mother whose first and last thought is not about her baby is not likely to give much thought at all, either first or last, to her husband. I can't understand it; but Dan tells me that nowadays Protestant wives have a horror of babies. I never thought of it before; but there is Mrs. Johnson, she has only one child; and there is Mrs. Thompson, who has but two; and Mrs. Simpson, who is married now six years, and has no children at all. It is so all through the Protestant community, Dan says; and that there are actually more Protestants die than are born. It must be their religion, I suppose, but I cannot imagine how a woman, if she had no religion at all—and the Protestants have got some kind of one or other—could hate babies.

As for me, I can hardly tell you how much I love baby, and how proud I am of him; and well I may be. Dinah Jenkins, his nurse, says that she has nursed a good many babies, but such a baby as Our Baby she never yet saw.

"Hi, missus," said she one day, "dis colored woman t'ought she knowed all kinds o' babies as ever war or ever could be. G'way, Dinah, says I, soon as I luff my eyes on to dis child," (that's Our Baby,) "dis baby ain't no mo' like de babies you's nussed, an' I'se nussed a heap on 'em in my time, dan—dan—stick yer head in de fire!" And as I often say to dear Dan, she is the most truthful woman I ever met.

Have I a black woman for a wet-nurse? No, I have'nt a black woman for a wet-nurse, nor a white woman either. Oh! you are such a stupid!

I am the child's mother, am I not? That's enough. I hope I shall never be reduced to such an extremity as that. I pity poor mothers who are. If you were a mother, you would say the same. People have wet-nurses? Yes, just as they have the cholera or the typhoid fever, I suppose, because they cannot help it. As to any woman, any mother, choosing to have one, I should say that is the sheerest nonsense ever dreamed of. Great people have them, queens and empresses, and I needn't be above them? Thank Heaven, I am neither a queen nor an empress, but the devoted wife of my dear old toad of a husband, Dan Gaylark, and the mother of Our Baby!

What is that you are saying to relieve your mind? Good gracious! You have made that remark once before, and equally to the point, as it seems to me. I was going to tell you all about the baby, but you are such a tease, Ned, and interrupt one so often with your exceedingly strange remarks, that I feel very much as one might suppose the "skirmishun" train feels in being "generally switched off into a sidin'." But, when I'm not switched off, I am good as the "skirmishun" at any rate. I "doos all as lays in my power" to get on. I suppose you call yourself the express train that is too proud even to whistle a salute in passing a poor, heavy-laden freight train, and utterly despises a modest country station as it goes thundering by, as if that was no place fit for its majesty to "stop at and blow at," as Professor Haman says in his Cavalry Tactics. I study military tactics? Yes, infantry tactics, you rogue, under Mrs. Professor Dinah Jenkins; but I read that in a book of Dan's one day. Dan has a great fancy for horses and dogs. Which of course, I'm jealous of? Not the least. It only makes me love horses and dogs more than I otherwise would. {230} Simply because Dan loves them? Simply because Dan loves them; and if that is not good enough reason, I don't know what is. Ah! smile away as you please. What do you know about it, you wretched old bachelor!

Here! Dixie! Dixie! Dixie! Come here, you good-for-nothing old black —— There, then, that's enough now. Say "How d'ye" to Mr. Ned. Oh! you needn't be afraid of him. He barks loud, I know, but he won't bite. And he is so knowing. I sometimes wish he did not know quite so much. And so affectionate. He takes a great fancy for everything he sees that Dan and I are fond of. I do think he would die for baby any day. Yes, you would, wouldn't you, you dear old fellow? There, you see, he says yes; he always grins and wags his tail that way when he wants to say yes.

It was about Dixie and baby I was going to tell you. He was so fond of baby that he wanted to take him out to walk and play with him on the Palisades. Ah! I shudder when I think of it.

You recollect that hot Thursday in July? The very air seemed to be holding its own breath. I felt so oppressed with the heat and the closeness of the atmosphere that I could bear the inside of the house no longer, and after taking a look—and a kiss?—yes, and a kiss of baby, who was sleeping soundly in his cradle, I went out to saunter down the shady lane that leads to the Palisades. I noticed that Dinah was asleep in a chair, too, beside the window, and thought that, if she could sleep in such weather, it was a mercy, and so I left her undisturbed. As I went out of the room, I left the door open, so that, if any little breeze might spring up, it would refresh baby in his sleep. I'm sorry enough now that I did.

You know what curious notions presentiments, or whatever you choose to call them, will come into people's heads without their being able to give any reason for them? So it was with me then. I had no sooner got out of the house than I thought about my leaving the door open, and half-determined to go back and close it. The same thought came to me again as I was turning the lane; and when I was once upon the green sward under the pine-trees, looking down the dizzy height from the top of the Palisades upon the river, I would most assuredly have returned and closed the door, had it not been for the intense heat, and I may say the cool and refreshing appearance the water had at that time. You don't believe in presentiments? Well, I acknowledge that it savors a little of the fanciful and the romantic—reason enough, I suppose, for you to reject any such notion, you matter-of-fact old stick. But we women cannot take life as you men do, or, at least, as some men do. What! you are very glad we cannot? Pray, what do you mean by that? Oh! I see, you incorrigible old bachelor, our different habits, idiosyncrasies, and tastes lead us to avoid (not your company, you know better) but your own pet schemes and fancies. I, for one, don't ask either to meddle with them or to share them. But you are very fond of getting our approbation of them, nevertheless. Dan says that there is not an orator in the country who would not prefer the waving of a lady's handkerchief to all that abominable rat-a-tat-tat you men make with your heels and canes. The more silent the sign of one's appreciation is, the better. Sincerity, Ned, is seldom noisy. True love is dumb as well as blind. But this is hardly à propos of Dixie and the baby. Where was I? Oh! the Palisades, yes. {231} If you were anything of a listener, I might take the trouble to give you a nice little bit of description of the sunny afternoon and the beautiful scene which the river presented to my gaze; but I won't, because I see you are gaping.

I had been seated on the grass about half an hour, watching the boats lolling about in the water as if they were too lazy to move in such hot weather, when not a breath of air was stirring, and I had been thinking how happy my life had been, and what a still happier future might yet be in store for me; and, as I looked up at the bright, cloudless sky, I said to myself, "Thus has God blessed my life, for not a cloud can I see in the firmament of my soul," when my reverie was interrupted by the noise of footsteps behind me. Thinking it was some children, I turned my head, smiling at the same time, that they might see they were welcome. Imagine my surprise. It was Dixie and baby. He had caught baby up in his mouth by the waist, and was bringing him along just as he is accustomed to carry cook's basket to market, wagging his tail and curveting about in the highest state of delight. My first thought was that, the baby was dead—an awful thought that went through my mind, and felt like an electric shock—either that Dixie had bitten him to death, or had struck his poor, dear little head against the trees, or the fences, or the stones, or something else; but a second glance assured me that he was yet unhurt, for he was doubling up his fat little fists, and—will you believe it?—actually pummelling Dixie on his black nose.

Instead of coming up to me as I hoped he would, Dixie no sooner caught sight of me than he dashed off, running round and round on the green grassy bank, stopping suddenly, and looking at me as if he would entice me to chase him.

You know that pretty spot at the end of the lane, how smooth the sward is, and how gently the ground slopes down to the sudden brink of the Palisades? The circles Dixie described in his gambols began to grow larger and larger, and to my horror I saw him run nearer and nearer to the edge of the dreadful precipice each time he came around. You know the edge there is just as sharp as if it had been cut away with a knife, and that, with the exception of a narrow line of jagged rocky ledges, the whole front of the Palisades is a smooth, perpendicular height of a hundred and fifty feet at least. What if the dog should lose his footing and slip off in one of those rapid courses he made! Now, I'm sure you cannot tell me what I did. I sprang up and ran after him? I knew you would think so. You are mistaken. I never moved a muscle. I sat as still as a statue, and as silent too. Dan said that was mother's wisdom, and wished that he had never missed baby out of his cradle when he came home; for, when Dixie had had his play out, I would have obtained quiet possession of baby, and all the fearful consequences of his appearance on the bank would have been spared. As it was, he no sooner saw the empty cradle and the little white coverlet lying on the floor all marked with Dixie's dirty paws, than he suspected the truth instantly. Cook told him, besides, that she had seen me going off to walk down the lane, and that she was sure I had not carried baby with me. Dinah had fallen so fast asleep that she had heard nothing.

I heard his footsteps as he came running down the lane, and knew it was he, but did not turn my head to look. By this time Dixie seemed to take delight in running straight down the bank, as if he were about to jump over the Palisades with baby in his mouth, but would wheel about sharply as he came to the edge. {232} It was horrible. My eyes followed his every movement, and they ached with pain. I did not dare to close them long enough even to wink. You think my heart was beating fast? No. It beat slowly, very slowly. I could feel its dull, heavy strokes like a sexton slapping the earth as he heaps it over a newly filled grave. Dan said I was not only as still and as silent as a statue, but as white too. I do not think I shall suffer more when I come to die.

No sooner had Dixie espied my husband running toward him than he bounded off to the extremity of the sward, just where that narrow line of ragged rocks runs down the front of the Palisades. He saw that his master had anger in his face, and began to slink off to escape punishment. It is a wonder he did not drop the baby on the ground; but, do you know, I fancy that he thought the baby was going to get whipped too, and wanted to get him to a place of safety. Nothing else will explain why, finding himself nearly overtaken, he looked first on one side and then on another for a way to escape, and not seeing any, he went straight to the dizzy edge, and, gathering up his feet, sprang over the precipice. I saw them both disappear, and heard that most heart-rending of sounds, a man's cry of anguish; the very ground seemed whirling around me and the sky coming down upon me, and crushing me; but I did not faint. "You are a brave little woman, Tot," Dan has said to me many a time since, "and worth a whole regiment of soldiers." I rose from the ground, and staggered toward Dan, who ran to me and threw his arms about me and pressed my head to his breast. O moment of agony untold, and of the supremest comfort! He uttered only one word, speaking the two syllables separately, as though he loved to dwell upon every letter, and in a tone of mingled horror, grief, tenderest love, and sublime resignation—

I thought I had loved dear Dan before that with all the love my poor little woman's heart could hold. No. The deepest love is only born of the deepest suffering. There are chords of love whose music joy can never waken. Since then Dan is to me more than he ever was, more than he ever could have been, had not our souls passed together that moment of agony.

I do not know how long we stood thus, neither daring to go to the brink of the precipice and look over. Baby and Dixie must be both lying dead on the rocks below. At last Dan mustered up courage enough to say to me,

"For us to bear, Tot, for us to bear; but not for him to give—no, not for him to give."

He seemed to wring the words from his noble Christian heart, as if he tore away his very life and offered it to God.

"Stay here, Tot," said he, "I am strong enough now." But his whole body trembled from head to foot, and his voice was hoarse and broken. "I will go and look."

I feared to let him go. Yet why should I detain him? But I could not watch him. Throwing myself upon the ground, I buried my face in my hands, and gave way to floods of bitter, bitter tears.

I had not lain thus a moment, when I heard a sharp, piercing cry. Raising my head in alarm, to my unutterable surprise and horror, I saw Dan spring over the edge of the Palisades and disappear. Again I heard him cry as before, "Ba—by!" but there was now a tone of joy mingled with that of fear, which told me that the child was not dead. {233} It was a brief instant that I was on my knees, it is true, it was nothing more than a look of gratitude I gave to God; but he knows that not all the language ever expressed by man could fully tell all that thought of thanksgiving which my soul sent up to him, as I raised my clasped hands to the cloudless sky.

In a moment I was at the edge of the Palisades, just where that ragged, rocky line runs down its front, jutting out here and there in rough ledges. There was a story of a man who, being pursued by the officers of justice, had clambered down there and escaped. Few people who saw the place believed it. The very first rock that jutted out was ten feet from the top, and that did not present more than two or three feet of surface. A little to the right of this, and about three feet lower, was another, on which a man might easily stand, but not for any length of time, as its surface shelved outward, and the rock overhanging it above would not allow him to stand perfectly upright. Any one who had gotten thus far must perforce take his chances of clambering down the rest or be precipitated head foremost below, to certain death.

On this second ledge, I saw Dan holding the baby by his mouth, just as Dixie had held him before. Dixie himself was crouched up beside him. Poor Dan could not hold his place long there. As it was, he was forced to grasp little, sharp edges of rock with both hands to prevent himself falling off. He saw at once that there was no time to send for help from above, and that he must try the perilous descent. As he told me afterward, he had not calculated upon this when he leapt from above. The first glance he caught of the dog told him that, if he released his hold upon the child's dress and opened his mouth, were it but for an instant, baby would roll over the edge and be dashed to pieces. Dan says now that he shall never regret taking one hasty step in his life. He makes that an exception, you see, for he is always saying to me, "Now, darling Tot, let us see the pros and the cons; for it is my principle never to leap before I think, but to let my mind jump before my feet."

Holding on, as I told you, to baby by his teeth, Dan went clambering down the line of rocks. He had managed to wave his hand backward to me as he left the ledge where Dixie was. I knew what that meant—"Don't look." There was little or no hope of his ever reaching the bottom safely, and he wished to spare me the awful sight of his headlong fall, which might take place at any step of the way. But I could not stir; my feet were riveted to the ground. Besides, could I not help him? It seemed to me that, as he went down, almost falling from one sharp rock to another, I held him up with my eyes. When I told Dan my fancy afterward, he laughed and said:

It did not last long, but it appeared to my mind, wrought up to such a state of excitement, as if it had been going on and was going on forever. It is stamped on my mind to-day as a memory of years. As for dear Dan, it cost him, he said, the strength of many days. He was no sooner at the bottom than he turned and lifted up the baby in one hand, and, looking up to me, waved the other as a sign of safety. Ah! his hands, his poor hands, you should have seen them, all cut and gashed by the rocks. Those hands seem to have something sacred about them ever since that day. {234} I saw him on his knees, and then off I scampered to the house to get the carriage. It is two miles around by the road to the bottom of the Palisades, and it took us a long while to get to him. When we did, he was still so weak that Mike, the coachman, and I had to lift him up into the carriage. Dinah went down to the place I had left, to make signs to him that he should remain. Poor dear, there was no need of it. So we came home in more joy than I can tell you—Dan, baby, and I. Mike rescued Dixie afterward, by getting himself let down from above with a rope, to where the patient old dog still was, wondering, who knows? how he ever came to be there.

What is that you say? Good gracious? Well, I don't mind your saying it now, after what I have told you. But don't you think, now, Mr. Ned, that I ought to be very proud of Our Baby after that? What? Ought to be very careful of him? The idea! An old bachelor telling a mother to be careful of her baby!

The Cartesian Doubt. [Footnote 36]

The Churchman, an Episcopalian weekly periodical, contains an article of no little philosophic pretension, entitled Science and God, which we propose to make the occasion of a brief discussion of what is known in the philosophic world as the Cartesian Doubt, or Method of Philosophizing. The Churchman begins by saying:

"A distinction is frequently and very justly taken between philosophic and religious scepticism. When Descartes, in order to find firm ground for his philosophical system, declared that he doubted the truth of every thing, even of the existence of the sensible world and the being of God, he did it in the interest of science. He wished to stand upon a principle which could not be denied, to find a first truth which no one could question. And this philosophic scepticism is an essential element in all investigations of truth. It says to every accredited opinion, Have you any right to exist? are you a reality or a sham? By thus exploring the foundation of current beliefs, we come to distinguish those which have real vitality in them, and stand on the rock and not on the sand; and by gathering up the living (true) and casting away the dead, (false,) science goes step by step toward its goal."

Whether Descartes recommended a real or only a feigned doubt, as the first step in the scientific process he defended, has been and still is a disputed point. If it is only a feigned or pretended doubt, it is no real doubt at all, and he who affects it is a real believer all the time. It is a sham doubt, and we have never seen any good in science or in anything else come from shams or shamming. If the doubt is real, and is extended to all things, even to the being of God and our own existence, as Descartes recommends, we are at a loss to understand any process by which it can be scientifically removed. To him who really doubts of everything, even for a moment, nothing can be proved, for he doubts the proofs as well as the propositions to be proved. All proofs must be drawn either from facts or from principles, and none can avail anything with one who holds all facts and principles doubtful. The man who really doubts everything is out of the condition of ever knowing or believing anything. There is no way of refuting a sceptic but by directing his attention to something which he does not and cannot doubt; and if there is nothing of the sort, his refutation is impossible.

Descartes, according to The Churchman, when he declared he doubted the truth of everything, even of the existence of the sensible world and the being of God, did it in the interest of science, in order to find firm ground for his philosophical system. Doubt is ignorance, for no man doubts where he knows. So Descartes sought a firm ground for his philosophical system in universal ignorance! "He wished to stand upon (on) a principle which could not be denied, a first truth which no one could question." If he held there is such a principle, such a first truth, or anything which cannot be denied, he certainly did not and could not doubt of everything. If he doubted the being of God, how could he expect to find such a principle or such a first truth? The Churchman seems to approve of the Cartesian doubt, and says, "This philosophical scepticism is an essential element in all investigations of truth." If this real or feigned scepticism were possible, no investigations could end in anything but doubt, for it would always be possible, whatever the conclusions arrived at, to doubt them. But why can I not investigate the truth I do not doubt or deny?

Moreover, is it lawful, even provisionally, in the interest of science, to doubt, that is, to deny, the being of God? No man has the right to make himself an atheist even for a moment. The obligation to believe in God, to love, serve, and obey him, is a universal moral obligation, and binds every one from the first dawn of reason. To doubt the being of God is to doubt the whole moral order, all the mysteries of faith, the entire Christian religion. And does The Churchman pretend that any man in the interest of science or any other interest has the right voluntarily to do that?

Undoubtedly, every man has the right to interrogate "every accredited opinion" and to demand of it, "Have you any right to exist? are you a reality or a sham?" But the right to question "accredited opinions" is one thing, and the right to question the first principles either of science or of faith is another. A man has no more right voluntarily to deny the truth than he has to lie or steal. The Churchman will not deny this. Then either it holds that all science as all faith is simply opinion, or it deceives itself in supposing that it accepts the Cartesian doubt or adopts his philosophical scepticism. Doubt in the region of simple opinion is very proper. It would be perfectly right for The Churchman to doubt the opinion accredited among Protestants that Rome is a despotism, the papacy a usurpation, the Catholic religion a superstition, or that the church has lost, falsified, corrupted, or overlaid the pure Christian faith, and demand of that opinion, "Have you any right to exist? are you a reality or a sham?" And we have little doubt, if it would do so, that it would find itself exchanging its present opinion for the faith "once delivered to the saints." It is clear enough from the extract we have made that The Churchman means to justify scepticism only in matters of opinion, and that it is far enough from doubting of everything, or supposing that there is nothing real which no man can doubt.

But, if we examine a little more closely this Cartesian method which bids us doubt of everything till we have proved it, we shall find more than one reason for rejecting it. The doubt must be either real or feigned. If the doubt is only feigned for the purpose of investigation, it amounts to nothing, serves no purpose whatever; for every man carries himself with him wherever he goes, and enters into his thought as he is, with all the faith or science he really has. {236} No man ever does or can divest himself of himself. Hence the difficulty we find even in imagining ourselves dead, for even in imagination we think, and in all thinking we think ourselves living, are conscious that we are not dead. In every thought, whatever else we affirm, we affirm our own existence, and this affirmation of our own existence is an essential and inseparable element of every thought. When I attempt to think myself dead, I necessarily think myself as surviving my own death, and as hovering over my own grave. No one ever thinks his own death as the total extinction of his existence, and hence we always think of the grave as dark, lonely, cold, as if something of life or feeling remained in the body buried in it. Men ask for proofs that the soul survives the dissolution of the body, but what they really need is proof that the soul dies. Life we know; but death, in the sense of total extinction of life, we know not; it is no fact of our experience. Life we can conceive, death we cannot. I am always living in my conceptions, and that I die with my body I am utterly unable to think, because I can think myself only as living.

The thinker, then, enters as an indestructible element into every one of his thoughts. Then he must enter as he is and for what he is. His real faith or science enters with him, and no doubt can enter that is not a real doubt. A feigned or factitious doubt, being unreal, does not and cannot enter with him. He is always conscious that he does not entertain it, and therefore can never think as he would if he did. The Christian, firm in his Christian faith, whose soul is clothed with Christian habits, cannot think as an infidel, or even in thought put himself in the infidel's position. Hence one reason why so many defences of Christianity, perfectly conclusive to the believer, fail of their purpose with the unbeliever. Even the unbeliever trained in a Christian community or bred and born under Christian civilization cannot think as one bred and born under paganism. What we assert is, that every man thinks as he is, and cannot think otherwise; simply what all the world means when it says of a writer, "Whatever else he writes, he always writes himself." Men may mimic one another, but always each in his own way. The same words from different writers produce not the same impression upon the reader. Something of himself enters into whatever a man thinks or does, and no translator has ever yet been able to translate an author from one language to another without giving something of himself in his translation. The Cartesian doubt, then, if feigned, factitious, or merely methodical, is impracticable, is unreal, and counts for nothing; for all along the investigator thinks with whatever faith and knowledge he really has; or simply, we cannot feign a doubt we do not feel.

It will be no better if we assume that the doubt recommended is real. No man really doubts what he does not doubt, and no man does or can doubt of everything; for even in doubt the existence of the doubter is affirmed. But suppose a man really does doubt of everything, the Cartesian method will never help him to resolve his doubts. From doubt you can get only doubt. To propose doubt as a method of philosophizing is simply absurd, as absurd as it would be to call scepticism philosophy, faith, or science. The mind that doubts of everything, if such a mind can be supposed, is a perfect blank, and, when the mind is a perfect blank, is totally ignorant of everything, how is it to understand, discover, or know that anything is or exists? {237} There have indeed been men, sometimes men called philosophers, who tell us that the mind is at first a tabula rasa, or blank sheet, and exists without a single character written on it. If so, if it can exist in a state of blank ignorance, how can it, we should like to know, ever become an intelligent mind, or ever know anything more than the sheet of paper on which we are now writing? Intelligence can speak only to intelligence, and no mind absolutely unintelligent can ever be taught or ever come to know anything? But if we assume that the mind is in any degree intelligent, we deny that it can doubt of everything; for there is no intelligence where nothing is known, and what the mind knows it does not and cannot doubt. Either, then, this blank ignorance is impossible, or no intelligence is possible.

But, as we have already said, no man does or can doubt of everything, and hence the Cartesian method is an impossible method. Descartes most likely meant that we should doubt of everything, the external world, and even the being of God, and accept nothing till we have found a principle that cannot be denied, or a first truth that cannot be doubted, from which all that is true or real may be deduced after the manner of the geometricians. He did not mean to deny that there is such first truth or principle, but to maintain that the philosopher should doubt till he has found or obtained it. His error is in taking up the question of method before that of principles or first truths—an error common to nearly all philosophers who have succeeded him, but which we never encounter in the great Gentile philosophers, far less in the great fathers and mediaeval doctors of the church. These always begin with principles, and their principles determine their method. Descartes begins with method, and, as Cousin has justly said, all his philosophy is in his method. But, unhappily, his method, based on doubt, recognizes and conducts to no principles, therefore to no philosophy, to no science, and necessarily leaves the mind in the doubt in which it is held to begin. The discussion of method before discussing principles assumes that the mind is at the outset without principles, or, at least, totally ignorant of principles; and that, being without principles or totally ignorant of them, it is obliged to go forth and seek them, and, if possible, find or obtain them by its own active efforts. But here comes the difficulty, too often overlooked by our modern philosophers. The mind can neither exist nor operate without principles, or what some philosophers call first truths. The mind is constituted mind by the principles, and without them it is nothing and can do nothing. The supposed tabula rasa is simply no mind at all. Principles must be given, not found or obtained. We cannot even doubt without them, for doubt itself is a mental act, and therefore the principles themselves, without which no doubt or denial is possible, are not and cannot be denied or doubted; for even in denying or doubting the mind affirms them. Principles, again, cannot be given the mind without its possessing them, and for the mind to possess a thing is to know it. As the principles create or constitute the mind, the mind always knows them, and what it knows it does not and cannot doubt. The philosopher, as distinguished from the sophist, does not start from doubt, and doubt of everything till he has found something which he cannot doubt; but he starts from the principles themselves, which, being given, are nota per se, or self-evident, and therefore need no proof—in fact, are provable only from the absurd consequences which would follow their denial.

Having begun with a false method, Descartes fails in regard to principles, and takes as the first truth which cannot be doubted what, either in the order of being or knowing, is no first truth or ultimate principle at all. He takes as a principle what is simply a fact—the fact of his own personal existence, or of an internal personal sentiment: Cogito, ergo sum, I think, therefore I exist. Regarded as an argument to prove his existence, as Descartes evidently at first regarded it, this enthymem is a sheer paralogism, and proves nothing; for the consequence only repeats the antecedent; sum is already in cogito. I affirm that I exist in affirming that I think. But pass over this, and give Descartes the benefit of an explanation, which he gives in one of his letters when hard pressed by his acute Jesuit opponent, that he does not pretend to offer it as an argument to prove that he exists, but presents it simply as the fact in which he finds or becomes conscious of his existence. There is no doubt that in the act of thinking I become conscious that I exist; for, as we have already shown, the subject enters into every thought as one of its integral and indestructible elements; but this does not relieve him. He "wished," as says The Churchman, "to stand upon (on) a principle which could not be denied, to find a first truth which no one could question." This principle or first truth he pretends is his own personal existence, expressed in the sophism, I think, therefore I exist, Cogito, ergo sum. We agree, indeed have already proved, that no one can deny or doubt his own personal existence, although it is possible for a man to set forth propositions which, in their logical development, would deny it. But the method Descartes defends permits him to assert nothing which cannot be deduced, after the manner of the geometricians, from the principle or first truth on which he takes his stand; and unless he can so deduce God and the universe, he must deny them.

But from the fact that I exist, that is, from my own personal existence, nothing but myself and what is in me and dependent on me can be deduced. Geometrical or mathematical deduction is nothing but analysis, and analysis can give nothing but the subject analyzed. Now, it so happens that I do not contain God and the external universe in myself. Following the Cartesian method, I can attain, then, to no existence but myself, my own personal phenomena. I can deduce no existence but my own, and am forced, if logical, to doubt or deny all other existence, that is, all existence but my personal existence, and my own interior sentiments and affections. I am the only existence; I am all that is or exists, and hence either I am God or God is not. What is this but the absolute egoism of Fichte?

Descartes himself seems to have felt the difficulty, and to have seen that God cannot, after all, be deduced from the fact of personal existence; he therefore asserts God as an innate idea, and concludes his real and independent being from the idea innate in his own mind. Analysis of his own mind discloses the idea, and from the idea he concludes, after the manner of St. Anselm, that God is. But when I am given as the principle or first truth, how conclude from my idea, which is simply a fact of my interior life, that there is anything independent of me to correspond to it? {239} Here Descartes was forced to depart from his own method, and make what on his system is a most unwarrantable assumption, namely, that the idea, being innate, is deposited by God in the mind, and, as God cannot lie, the idea must be true, and therefore God is. That is, he takes the idea to prove the being of God, and the veracity of God to prove the trustworthiness of the idea! But he was to doubt the being of God till he had geometrically demonstrated it; he therefore must prove that God is before he can appeal to his veracity. His method involved him in a maze of sophistries from which he was never able to escape. God concluded from my idea, innate or otherwise, is only my idea, without any reality independent of me. The argument of St. Anselm is valid only when idea is taken objectively, not subjectively, as Descartes takes it.

What Descartes really meant by innate ideas we do not know, and we are not certain that he knew himself; but he says, somewhere in his correspondence, that, when he calls the idea of God innate, he only means that we have the innate faculty of thinking God. His argument is, "I think God, and therefore God is." Still the difficulty according to his own method remains unsolved.

Given my own personal existence alone as the principle or first truth, it follows that, at least in science, I am sufficient for myself. Then nothing distinguishable from myself is necessary to my thought, and there is no need of my going out of myself to think. How, then, conclude that what in thought seems to be object is really anything distinguishable from myself? I think God, but how conclude from this that God is distinct from and independent of me, or that he is anything but a mode or affection of my own personal existence? The fact is, when we take our own personal existence alone as the principle from which all objects of faith or science are to be deduced, we can never attain to any reality not contained in our existence as the part in the whole, the effect in the cause, or the property in the essence. Exclusive psychology, as has been shown over and over again, can give us only the subjectivism of Kant, or the egoism of Fichte, resulting necessarily in the nihilism, or identity of being and not-being, of Hegel.

The psychologists generally do not, we are aware, concede this; but they are not in fact, whatever they are in theory, exclusive psychologists, and their inductions of God and an external universe are made from ontological as well as from psychological data. They begin their process, indeed, by analyzing the mind, what they call the facts of consciousness, but they always include in their premises non-psychological elements. Their inductions all suppose man and the universe are contingent existences, and as the contingent is inconceivable as contingent without the necessary, they conclude, since the contingent exists, very logically, that there really is also the necessary, or necessary being, which is God. But the necessary, without which their conclusion would and could have no validity, is not a psychological fact or element; otherwise the soul itself would be necessary being, would be itself God. The mistake arises from regarding what philosophers call necessary ideas, such as the idea of the necessary, the universal, the immutable, the eternal, etc., because held by the mind, as psychological, instead of being, as they really are, ontological. Being ontological, real being, the inductions of the psychologists, as they call themselves, do really carry us out of the psychological order, out of the subjective into the objective. {240} But, if their inductions were, as they pretend, from exclusively psychological data, they would have no value beyond the soul itself, and the God concluded would be only a psychological abstraction. Indeed, most psychologists assert more truth than their method allows, are better than their systems. Especially is this the case with Descartes. On his own system, logically developed, he could assert no reality but his own individual soul or personal existence; yet, in point of fact, he asserts nearly all that the Catholic theologian asserts, but he does it inconsistently, illogically, unscientifically, and thus leads his followers to deny everything not assertable by his method.

But, as we have said, Descartes does not attain by his method to a first principle. Not only cannot the being of God and the existence of the external universe be deduced from our own personal existence, but, by his method, our personal existence itself cannot be logically asserted. It is not ultimate, a first principle, or a first truth. Our personal existence cannot stand by itself alone. It is true Descartes says, Cogito, ergo SUM; but I cannot even think by myself alone, and even he does not venture to take sum in the absolute sense of am, as in the incommunicable name by which God reveals himself to Moses, I AM WHO AM, or I AM THAT AM. Even he takes it in the sense of exist, Cogito, ergo sum, I think, therefore I exist. He never dared assert his own personal existence as absolute, underived, eternal, and necessary being; it remained for a Fichte, adopting the Cartesian method, to do that. Between being and existence, essentia and existentia, there is a difference which our philosophers are not always careful to note. Existence is from exstare, and strictly taken, means standing from another, or a derivative and dependent, therefore a contingent existence, or creature, whose being is in another, not in itself. We speak, indeed, of human beings, but men are beings only in a derivative sense, not in the primary or absolute sense. Hence the apostle to the Gentiles says, "In him (God) we live, and move, and are," or have our being. In ourselves we have no being, and are something only as created and upheld by Him who is being itself, or, to speak à la Plato, being in himself. Evidently, then, our personal existence is not ultimate, therefore not the first principle, nor the first truth. The ultimate, at least in the order of being, is not the soul, a contingent existence, but, real being, that is, God himself.

But as we have and can have no personal existence except from God, it is evident that we cannot assert our personal existence by itself alone; and to be able to assert it at all, we must be able to assert the being of God. Now, Descartes tells us that we must doubt the being of God till we can prove it after the manner of the geometricians. But how are we to do this? We cannot, as we have seen, deduce his being from our own personal existence; and what is still more to the purpose, while we deny or doubt his being, we cannot assert or even conceive of our own, because our existence, being derivative, dependent, having not its being in itself, is not intelligible or conceivable in or by itself alone. The contingent is not conceivable without the necessary. They are correlatives, and correlatives connote each other. Now, if we deny or doubt the being of God, we necessarily deny or doubt our own personal existence, impossible and inconceivable without God. {241} With God disappears the existence of the external universe and our own. If, then, it were possible to doubt of the being of God, we should doubt of all things, and should have nothing left with which to prove that God is. God is the first principle in being and in knowing, and if he is denied, all is denied. Atheism is nihilism.

Descartes evidently assumes that it is both possible and lawful to doubt the being of God, nay, that we ought to do so, till we have geometrically demonstrated that he is, and The Churchman tells us that this "scepticism is an essential element in the investigation of truth." We cannot bring ourselves to believe it. God, the theologians tell us, is real and necessary being, the contrary of which cannot be thought, and it is the fool, the Scriptures tell us, that says "in his heart, God is not." The evidence of this is in the fact that we do in every thought think our own existence, and cannot deny it if we would; and in the farther fact that we always do think our own existence as contingent, not as necessary being; and that we cannot think the contingent without at the same time thinking the necessary, as was sufficiently shown in the papers on The Problems of the Age, published sometime since in this Magazine. As there can without God be nothing to be known, we must dissent from The Churchman, as from Descartes himself, that a philosophical scepticism which extends even to the being of God "is an essential element in the investigation of truth." It seems to us the worst way possible to truth, that of beginning by denying all truth, and even the possibility of truth. The man who does so, humanly speaking, puts himself out of the condition of discovering or receiving truth of any sort. He who seeks for the truth should do so with an open mind and heart, and with the conviction that it is. We must open our eyes to the light, if we would behold it, and our hearts to the entrance of truth, if we would have it warm and vivify us. Those men who shut their eyes, compress their lips, and close the aperture of their minds are the last men in the world to discover or to receive the truth, and they must expect to walk in darkness and doubt all their lives. Scepticism is a worse preparation for investigating truth than even credulity, though scepticism and credulity are blood relations, and usually walk hand in hand.

If it were possible to doubt the being of God, or to think a single thought without thinking him, we should prove ourselves independent of him, and therefore deprive ourselves of all possible means of proving that he is. If, for instance, we could think our own existence, as is assumed in the Cartesian enthymem, Cogito, ergo sum, without in the same indissoluble thought thinking God, there would be no necessity of asserting God, and no possible argument by which we could prove his being, or data from which he could be concluded. Man can no more exist and act in the intellectual order, without God, than in the physical order. If you suppose men capable of thinking and reasoning without the intellectual apprehension of the Divine Being, as must be the man who really doubts the being of God, there is no possible reason for asserting God, and it is a matter of no practical moment in the conduct of life whether we believe in God or not. The fact is, no man can doubt the being of God any more than he can his own personal existence. The Cartesian method, if followed strictly, would lead logically to universal nihilism; for he who doubts the being of God must, if logical, doubt of everything, and he who doubts of everything can be convinced of nothing.

We say not only that atheism is absurd, but that it is impossible; and they who with the fool say there is no God, if sincere, deceive themselves, or are deceived by the false methods and theories of philosophers, or sophists rather. No man can think a single thought without thinking both God and himself. The man may not advert, as St. Augustine says, to the fact that he thinks God, but he certainly thinks, as we showed in our article last May, on An Old Quarrel, that which is God. No man ever thinks the imperfect without thinking the perfect, the particular without the universal, the mutable without the immutable, the temporal without the eternal, the contingent without the necessary. The perfect, the universal, the immutable, the eternal, the necessary are not abstract ideas, for there are no abstractions in nature. Abstractions are nullities, and cannot be thought. The ideas must be real, and therefore being; and what is perfect, universal, immutable, eternal, real and necessary being but God? That which is God enters into every one of our thoughts, and can no more be denied or doubted than our own existence. Those poor people who regard themselves as atheists so regard themselves because they do not understand that the so-called abstract or necessary ideas are not simply ideas in the mind or psychological phenomena, but are objective, real being, the eternal, immutable, self-existent God, in whom we live, and move, and have our being. No doubt we need instruction and reflection to understand this, but this instruction is within the reach of all men, and every mind of ordinary capacity is adequate to the necessary reflection. In point of fact, it is the philosophers that make atheists, and the atheism is always theoretical, never real.

There is no doubt that a little ingenuity may deduce something like this doctrine from Descartes's assertion of innate ideas, but not in the sense Descartes himself understood the word idea. With Descartes the word idea never means the objective reality, but its image in the mind; never being itself, but its mental representation, leaving it necessary, after having ascertained that we have the idea, to prove that it represents an objective reality—a thing which no man has ever done or ever can do. His subsequent explanation that he meant, by asserting that the idea of God is innate, simply the innate faculty of thinking God, was a nearer approach to the truth perhaps, but did not reach it, because it assumed that the intuition of that which really is God follows the exercise of the faculty of thinking, instead of preceding and constituting it, and is not an à priori but an empirical intuition. If we could suppose the faculty constituted, existing, and operative, without the intuition of real and necessary being, and that the idea is obtained by our thinking, there would still remain the question as to the objective validity of the thought. If Descartes had identified the idea with being regarded as intelligible to us, and represented it as creating or constituting the faculty of thinking, he would have reached the truth; but this he could not do by his method, which required him to recognize as his principle only his own personal existence, and to deduce from it, after the manner of the geometricians, whatever he recognized as true. God, or what is God, could be obtained or presented only by the exercise of our faculty of thinking, and not by the creative act of God affirming himself as the first principle alike of thought and the faculty of thinking.

If Descartes had properly analyzed thought and ascertained its essential and indestructible elements, he would have avoided the error of resolving the thinker into thought, la pensée, which denied the substantive character of the soul and made it purely phenomenal, and have ascertained that, beside the subject or our personal existence, but simultaneously with it, there is affirmed what in the order of reality precedes it,—God himself, under the form, if I may so speak, of real, necessary, universal, eternal, and independent idea or being. There is given in every thought, as its primary and essential element, a real ontological element, without which no thought is possible. This, not our personal existence, is the first truth or principle which every philosopher must recognize, if he would build on a solid foundation and not in the air, and this principle can no more be denied or doubted than our personal existence itself, for without it we could not think our personal existence, nay, could not exist at all, as capable of thought.

But even if, by a just analysis, Descartes had found that this ontological element is a necessary and indestructible element of thought, he would have still greatly, fatally erred if he had taken it as his first principle and refused to admit any existence not logically deducible from it, that is, deducible from it "after the manner of the geometricians," as required by his method. Father Rothenflue, Father Fournier, and the Louvain professors reject the Cartesian psychology, and assume Ens, or being, which they very properly identify with God, as the first principle in science. This is proper. But how do they pass from being to existences, from the necessary to the contingent, from God to creation? We cannot deduce logically existences from being, because logic can deduce from being only what is necessarily contained in being, that is, only being. If we say, given being existences logically follow, we assume with Cousin that God cannot but create, that creation is a necessity of his own nature, and therefore necessary, as necessary as God himself, which denies the contingency of creatures, and identifies them with necessary being. This is precisely what Descartes himself does after he has once got possession, as he supposes, of the idea of God, or proved that God is. Creation on his system is the necessary, not the free act of the Creator.

There are, as has often been remarked, two systems in Descartes, the one psychological and the other ontological; as there are in his great admirer and follower, Victor Cousin. The two systems are found in juxtaposition indeed, but without any logical or genetic relation. Descartes proceeds from his personal existence as his principle, which gives him nothing but his personal existence; then finding that he has the idea of God, for we presume he had been taught his catechism, he takes the idea as his principle, and erects on it a system of ontology. In this last he was followed by Malebranche, a far greater man than himself. Malebranche perceived, what we have shown, that we have direct and immediate intelligence of God, that he, as idea, is the immediate object of the understanding, and that we see all things in him. Hence his well-known Visio in Deo, or Vision in God, which would be true enough if we had the vision of the blest, and could see God as he is in himself; for God sees or knows all things in himself, and has no need to go out of himself to know anything he has made. {244} But this is not the case with us. We do not see things themselves in God, but only their idea or possibility. From the idea of God we may deduce his ability to create, and that the type of all creatable things must be in him; but as creation is on his part a free, not a necessary act, we can, as Malebranche was told at the time, see a possible, but not an actual universe in God; hence, by his vision in God, he attained only to a pure idealism, in which nothing actually distinguishable from God was apprehended or asserted.

Spinoza, greater still than Malebranche, followed also Descartes in his ontological system, and took being, which he calls substance, as his principle. Substance, he said, is one and ultimate, and nothing is to be admitted not obtainable from it by way of logical deduction. Spinoza was too good a logician to suppose that the idea of creation is deducible from the idea of God, for a necessary creation is no creation at all, but the simple evolution of necessary being or substance. Hence nothing is or exists except the one only substance and its modes and attributes. His attributes are infinite, since he is infinite substance; but we know only two, thought and extension. The so-called German ontologists in the main follow Spinoza, and like him admit only being or substance, or its attributes or modes. This system makes what are called creatures, men and things, modes of the Divine Being, in which he manifests his attributes, thought and extension; hence it is justly called pantheism, which, under some of its forms, no one can escape who admits nothing not logically deducible from the idea of substance, being, or God; for deduction, we have said, is simply analysis, and analysis can give only the subject analyzed. As the analysis of my personal existence or the soul can give only me and my attributes, modes, and affections, and therefore the egoism of Fichte, which underlies every purely psychological system, so the analysis of the idea of being can give only being and its modes or attributes, or the pantheism of Spinoza, which underlies the ontology of Descartes, and every system of exclusive ontology.

No philosopher is ever able to develop his whole system, and present it in all its parts, or foresee all its logical consequences. It is only time that can do this, and the vices of a method or a system can be collected fully only from its historical developments. The disciples of Descartes, who in France started with his psychological principle, ended in the pure sensism, or sensation transformed, of Condillac, and those who in Germany started with the same principle, ended in the absolute egoism of Fichte, who completed the subjectivism of Kant, and reached the point where egoism and pantheism become identical. Those, again, who in any country have started with the ontological principle of Descartes and followed his method, have, however they may have attempted to disguise their conclusions, ended in denying creation and asserting some form of pantheism. The materialism which prevailed in the last century, and obtains to a great extent even in the present, is not a historical development of Cartesianism, so much as of the English school founded by Bacon, and developed by Hobbes and Locke, and completed by the French idealogists of Autueil, who were noted for their Anglomania. {245} Cartesianism led rather to what is improperly termed idealism, to the denial of the material universe, or its resolution into pure sensation.

Yet it is instructive to observe that the historical development of the psychological principle represented by Fichte and that of the ontological principle represented by Spinoza terminate in identity. Fichte saw he could not make the soul the first principle without taking it as ultimate and denying its contingency, or that he could not make the soul that from which all that exists proceeds without assuming that the soul, the ego, is God. Hence his twofold ego, the one absolute and the other phenomenal or modal. He thus identifies the soul with God, and concludes that nothing except me and my phenomen, or attributes and modes, is or exists: I am all. Spinoza, starting from the opposite pole, the ontological, finds that he can logically deduce from being only being; and calling being substance, and substance God, he concludes with an invincible logic nothing is or exists, except God and his modes or attributes. The form may differ, but the conclusion is identical with the last conclusion of egoism, and it is noteworthy that even Fichte, in the last transformation of his doctrine, substituted God for the soul, and made God the absolute, and the soul relative and phenomenal, or a mode of the Divine Being.

Whether, then, we start with the soul as first principle or with God, we can never by logical deduction arrive at creation, or be able to assert any existence as distinguishable from the Divine Being. Neither can be taken exclusively as the primum philosophicum, and exclusive ontology is as faulty and as fatal in its consequences as exclusive psychology. The fact is, we can neither doubt the being of God nor our own personal existence; for both are equally essential and indestructible elements of thought, given in the primitive intuition, though being is logically prior to existence, and our primum philosophicum must include both.

But the soul is given in the intuition as contingent, and being is given as necessary. The contingent cannot exist any more than it can be thought without the necessary. It then depends on the necessary, and can exist only as created and upheld by it. The real principle, or primum philosophicum, is then, as has been amply shown in the essays on The Problems of the Age, the ideal formula, Ens creat existentias, or Being creates existences. This presents the ontological principle and the psychological not in juxtaposition merely, but in their real and true relation. This formula enables us to avoid alike pantheism, atheism, idealism, and materialism, and to conform in principle our philosophy to the real order of things and the Catholic faith. But it is only in principle, for Gioberti himself calls the formula ideal. It does not, after all, give us any science of actual existences, or itself furnish its own scientific explication and application. Apply to it the method of Descartes, and lay it down that everything is to be doubted till proved, and we are not much in advance of Cartesianism. We know God is, we know things exist, and God has created or creates them; but we do not know by knowing the formula what God is, what things do or do not exist. It gives us the principles of science, but not the sciences; the law which governs the explication of facts, not the facts themselves. We cannot deduce, after the manner of the geometricians, any actual existence or fact from the formula, nor any of the sciences. {246} There is an empirical element in all the sciences, and none of them can be constructed by logical deduction even from a true ideal formula, and to deny everything not logically deducible from it would leave us in the purely ideal, and practically very little better off than Descartes himself left us. The Cartesian method based on doubt, then, whether we start with an incomplete or a complete ideal formula, can never answer the purpose of the philosopher, or enable us to construct a concrete philosophy that includes the whole body of truth and all the scientific facts of the universe.

We do not pretend that philosophy must embrace all the knowable, omne scibile, in detail; it suffices that it does so in principle. No doubt the ideal formula does this, as in fact always has done the philosophy that has obtained in the Catholic schools. But though the ideas expressed in the ideal formula are intuitive, the constitution of the mind, and basis of all intelligence, and are really asserted in every thought, we very much doubt if they could ever have been reduced to the formula given by Gioberti if men had never received a divine revelation from God, or if they had been left without any positive instruction from their Creator. We are as far as any one can be from building science on faith; but we so far agree with the traditionalists as to hold that revelation is necessary to the full development of reason and its perfect mastery of itself. One great objection to the Cartesian doubt or method is, that it detaches philosophy from theology, and assumes that it can be erected into an independent science sufficient for itself without any aid from supernatural revelation, and free from all allegiance to it. This had never been done nor attempted by any Christian school or even non-Christian school prior to Descartes, unless the pretension of Pomponatius and some others, that things may be theologically true yet philosophically false, and who were promptly condemned by Leo X., be understood as an attempt in that direction. The great fathers of the church and the mediaeval doctors always recognized the synthesis of reason and revelation; and, while they gave to each its part, they seem never to have dreamed of separating them, and of cultivating either as independent of the other; yet they have given us a philosophy which, if not free from all defects, is superior, under the point of view of reason alone, to anything that has elsewhere ever been given under that name. He who would construct a philosophy that can stand the test even of reason must borrow largely from St. Athanasius, St. Augustine, St. Gregory the Great, St. Thomas, St. Buonaventura, and the later scholastics.

It is also an objection to the Cartesian doubt that it is not only a complete rupture with revealed theology, but also with tradition, and is an attempt to break the continuity of the life of the race, and to sever the future of humanity from its past. We are among those who regard the catholic beliefs and traditions of mankind as integral elements in the life of the race itself, and indispensable to its continuous progress. The future always has its germ in the past, and a beginning de novo for the individual as for society is alike impossible and undesirable. The Cartesian doubt overlooks this, and requires the individual to disgarnish his mind of every relic and memorial of the past, of everything furnished by his parents and teachers, or the wisdom of ages, and after having become absolutely naked and empty, and made himself as ignorant and impotent as the new-born babe, to receive nothing till he, without experience, without instruction, has by his own unaided powers tested its truth. {247} As reasonable would it be for the new-born infant to refuse the milk from its mother's breast, till it had by the exercise of its faculties settled the question of its wholesomeness.

We object, finally, that it tends to destroy all respect for authority, all reverence for tradition, all regard for the learning and science of other ages and other men, and to puff up the individual with an overweening self-conceit, and sense of his own sufficiency for himself. It renders all education and instruction useless and an impertinence. It tends to crush the social element of our nature, and to create a pure individualism, no less repugnant to government and society than to religion and the divine order, according to which all men are made mutually dependent, one on another. Doubtless, Descartes only developed and gave expression to tendencies which were in his time beginning to be active and strong; but the experience of the civilized world only historically verifies their destructive, anti-philosophical, anti-religious, and anti-social character. Yet his method is still, in substance if not in form, very extensively accepted and followed, as the example of The Churchman itself proves.

We do not by any means believe that Descartes had any suspicion of the real character of his philosophic enterprise. We are far from agreeing with Gioberti that he was a disguised Protestant designedly laboring to complete the work undertaken by Luther. We doubt not that he really accepted the church, as he always professed to do, though most likely he was far enough from being a fervent Catholic; but he was bred a soldier, not a philosopher or a theologian; and though he may have been, and we believe he was for his time, a great mathematician and a respectable physicist, he was always a poor theologian, and a still poorer metaphysician. His natural ability was no doubt worthy of admiration, but he had no genius for metaphysics, and his ignorance of the profounder philosophy of antiquity and of the mediaeval doctors was almost marvellous. He owed in his own day his popularity to the fact that he discoursed on philosophy in the language of the world, free from the stiff formulas, the barbarous locutions, and the dry technicalities of the schools. He owed much to the merits of his style, but still more to the fact that he wrote in the vernacular instead of the Latin tongue, then unusual with writers of philosophical treatises, and non-professional men and court-bred ladies could read him and fancy they understood philosophy. His works were "philosophy-made-easy," and he soon became the vogue in France, and France gives the fashion to the world. But it would be difficult to name a writer who has exerted in almost every direction an equally disastrous influence on modern thought and civilization; not that his intentions were bad, but that his ignorance and presumption were great.

The Cartesian method has no doubt favored that lawless and independent spirit which we see throughout modern society, and which is manifested in those Jacobin revolutions which have struck alike at ecclesiastical and political authority, and at times threatened the civilized world with a new barbarian invasion; but the evil resulting from that method which is now the most to be deplored is the arrogant and independent tone assumed by modern science, and its insolence toward the sacred dogmas of faith. Descartes detached philosophy, and with it all the sciences, from faith, and declared them independent of revelation. {248} It is especially for this that Cousin praises him. But modern so-called science is not contented even with independence; it aspires to dominate and subject faith to itself, or to set up its own conclusions as the infallible test of truth. It makes certain inductions from a very partial survey of facts, concocts certain geological, physiological, ethnological, and philological theories at war with the dogmas of faith, and says with sublime insolence that therefore faith must give way, for science has demonstrated its falsity! If the church condemns its unsupported conclusions, there is forthwith a deafening clamor raised that the church is hostile to science, and denies the freedom of thought and the inalienable rights of the mind! The Churchman sees this, and has written the very article from which we have made our extract to show its injustice; but with what success can it hope to do it, after beginning by approving the Cartesian method and conceding modern science, in principle, all it asks?

We have said and shown over and over again that the church does not condemn science. Facts, no matter of what order, if facts, never do and never can come in collision with her teaching, nor can their real scientific explanations ever conflict with revelation or her dogmas. The church interferes not with the speculations or the theories of the so-called savans, however crude, extravagant, or absurd they may be, unless they put forth conclusions under the name of science which militate against the Christian faith. If they do that, she condemns their conclusions so far as repugnant to that faith. This supervision of the labors of savans she claims and exercises for the protection of her children, and it is as much in the interest of science as of faith that she should do so. If we were to believe what men counted eminent in science tell us, there is not a single Christian dogma which science has not exploded; yet, though modern investigations and discoveries may have exploded several scientific theories once taught in the schools and accepted by Catholics, we speak advisedly when we say science has not exploded a single dogma of the church, or a single proposition of faith she has ever taught. No doubt, many pretendedly scientific conclusions have been drawn and are drawn daily that impugn the faith; but science has not yet confirmed one of them, and we want no better proof that it never will confirm them than the bare fact that they contradict the faith the church believes and teaches. They can all be scientifically refuted, and probably one day will be, but not by the people at large, the simple and unlettered; and therefore it is necessary that the church from time to time should exert her authority to condemn them, and put the faithful on their guard against them. This is no assumption to the injury of science, for in condemning them she seeks only to save the revealed truth which they impugn. It is necessary, also, that men should understand that in science as well as in faith they are not independent of God, and are bound by his word wherever or whatever it speaks. Descartes taught the world to deny this and even God himself till scientifically proved, and hence the pains we have taken to refute his method, to show its unscientific character, and to indicate some of the fatal consequences of adopting it.

We know very well that Bossuet and Fdénélon are frequently classed with the disciples of Descartes, but these men were learned men and great theologians, and they followed Descartes only where he coincided with the general current of Catholic philosophy. {249} Either was a far profounder philosopher than Descartes ever could have been, and neither adopted his method. The same may be said of other eminent men, sometimes called Cartesians. The French place a certain national pride in upholding Descartes, and pardon much to the sophist in consideration of the Frenchman; but this consideration cannot weigh with us any more than it did with the Italian Jesuit, the eminent Father Tapparelli, we believe, who a few years since, in some remarkable papers in La Civiltá Cattolica, gave a most masterly refutation of Descartes's psychological method. Truth is of no nation, and a national philosophy is no more commendable than a national theology, or a national church. It is no doubt to the credit of a nation to have produced a really great philosopher, but it adds nothing to its glory to attempt to make pass for a great philosopher a man who was in reality only a shallow sophist. It was one of the objectionable features in the late M. Cousin that he sought to avail himself of the national prejudices of his countrymen, and to make his system pass for French or the product of French genius. The English are in this respect not less national than the French, and Bacon owes his principal credit with them to the fact that he was a true Englishman. All real philosophy, like all truth, is catholic, not national.

In regard to the scepticism The Churchman deems so essential in the investigation of truth, we have already remarked that a sceptical disposition is the worst possible preparation for that investigation. He who would find truth must open his heart to it, as the sunflower opens her bosom to the sun, and turns her face toward it in whatever quarter of the heavens it may be. Those who, like The Churchman, know not the truth in its unity and catholicity, and substitute opinion for faith, will do well so far to doubt their opinions as to be able thoroughly to investigate them, and ascertain if they have any solid foundation. There are reasons enough why they should distrust their own opinions, and see if the truth is not really where the great majority of the civilized world for ages has told them it is to be found. They ought to doubt, for they have reason to doubt, not of every thing, not of God, not of truth, but of their own opinions, which they know are not science nor faith, and therefore may be false. Scientific men should doubt not science, nor the possibility of science, but their theories, hypotheses, and conjectures till they have proved them; and this all the same whether their theories, hypotheses, and conjectures are taken from the schools or are of their own concoction. But this is something very different from presenting to the world or to one's self the being of God, the creation, the immortality of the soul, and the mysteries of faith as opinions or as theories to be doubted till proven after the manner of geometricians. These are great truths which cannot be reasonably doubted; and, if we find people doubting them, we must, in the best way we can, convince them that their doubts are unreasonable. The believer need not doubt or deny them in order to investigate the grounds of his faith, and to be able to give a reason for the hope that is in him. We advance in the knowledge of truth by means of the truth we have; and the believer is much better fitted for the investigation of truth than the unbeliever, for he knows much better the points that need to be proved, and has his mind and heart in a more normal condition, more in harmony with the real order of things, and is more able to see and recognize truth. {250} But this investigation is not necessary to justify faith in the believer. It is necessary only that the believer may the better comprehend faith in its relations with the general system of things, of which he forms a part, and the more readily meet the objections, doubts, and difficulties of unbelievers. But all cannot enter into this investigation, and master the whole field of theology, philosophy, and the sciences, and those who have not the leisure, the opportunity, and ability to do it, ought not to attempt it. The worst possible service we can render mankind is to teach them that their faith is unreasonable, or that they should hold themselves in suspense till they have done it, each for himself. They who can make the investigation for themselves are comparatively few; and shall no man venture to believe in God and immortality till he has made it? What, then, would become of the great body of the people, the poorer and more numerous classes, who must be almost wholly occupied with procuring the means of subsistence? If the tender mercies of God were no greater than those of the Cartesian philosophers and our Episcopalian Churchman, the poor, the unlettered, the simple, the feeble of intellect would be obliged to live without any rule of duty, without God in the world, or hope in the world to come. For them the guidance and consolations of religion would alike be wanting.

We may see here why the church visits with her censures whatever tends to unsettle or disturb the faith of the people, for which an unbelieving and unreasoning world charges her with denying reason, and being hostile to freedom of thought and scientific investigation. We do not hope to convince the world that it is unjust. The church is willing that every man who can and will think for himself should do so; but the difficulty is, that only here and there one, even at best, does or can so think. It is not that she is unwilling that men should reason, if they will really reason, on the grounds of faith, but that most persons who attempt to do so only reason a little way, just far enough to raise doubts in their minds, doubts which a little more knowledge would solve, and then stop, and refuse or are unable to reason any farther. It is the half-reason, the half-learning, the half-science that does the mischief; as Pope sings:

  "A little learning is a dangerous thing:
   Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring;
   There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
   But drinking largely sobers us again."

Many may take "shallow draughts," but very few can "drink deep," and those shallow draughts, which are all that except the very few can take, are more hurtful to both intellectual and moral health than none at all. The church certainly does not encourage those to reason on sacred subjects who can or will reason only far enough to doubt, and to puff themselves up with pride and conceit She, however, teaches all the faith, and gives to every one who will listen to her voice as solid reasons for it as the wisest and most learned and scientific have or can have. In this, however the world may blame or vituperate her, she only pursues the course which experience and common sense approve and pronounce wise and just.

The attempt to educate the mass of the people up to the point of making each individual able to understand and solve all the difficulties in the way of faith has never succeeded, and can never succeed. {251} The mass of the people need and always will have teachers of some sort whom they do and must trust. We see it in politics. In the most democratic state the mass of the people follow like sheep a few leaders, wise and prudent men sometimes, perhaps oftener ignorant but cunning and unscrupulous demagogues. All may be made to understand that in matters of faith the teachers are commissioned by the church, and that the church is commissioned by God himself, who teaches in and through her, and no one has or can have any better reason for believing anything, for none better is conceivable. It is the assumption that the people are to judge for themselves without instructors or instruction that causes so much unbelief in the modern world; but as they have been very extensively told that it is their right to do so, and made to believe it, the church, of course, must meet their factitious wants the best way she can, and educate them up to the highest point possible, and give them all the instruction, not only in the faith, but on its grounds and reasons, they are or can be made capable of receiving. She must do this, not because the people believe or are already enlightened, but because they have learned only just enough to doubt and rebel.

Abridged from the German.

The Composer's Difficulty.

The good old custom in London, in 1741, was for the members of the —— Club to assemble in the parlor of a noted tavern in Fleet street, kept by Master Farren, who had a sharp-tongued wife and a young and lovely daughter. This young girl had been setting the large room in order, and putting fresh flowers in the vase, in preparation for the expected guests, when the door opened softly, and a young man came in. Ellen did not look up till he was close to her, then she started and blushed crimson, while he took her hand and kissed it with the air of a cavalier.

"I can stay but a moment," said the young student of music, "for they will all be here presently. I came to tell you to come to the garden without fail this evening; I want to give you a first lesson, in a new part."

Ellen's face brightened. Just then a shrill voice called her name, and she knew her mother would be angry if she saw her with the German, Joseph Wach.

"I will come!" she answered quickly. "Now I must leave you." And she ran out at a repetition of the shrewish call. Joseph did not attempt to detain her; though the two loved each other well he knew that Dame Farren regarded him with good will no longer, now that Master Handel, his teacher and patron, no longer stood high in the king's favor, and went no more to Carlton House. The father, old John Farren, was still the friend of the young man.

An hour later, and the round table, on which stood mugs of porter and glasses, was surrounded by men, members of the musical club, conversing on a subject deeply interesting to them all. One of them—a very tall man, with large, flashing eyes and a noble and expressive countenance—was addressed as "Master Handel;" another, simple in his dress and plain in his exterior, with a world of shrewdness and waggery in his laughing eyes, was William Hogarth, the painter.

They were talking about the composer's great work, The Messiah, which Handel had not as yet been able to get properly represented. Hogarth was urging an application to the Duke of Bedford. Handel, disgusted at his want of success hitherto, was reluctant to sue for the favor of any patron to have his best work brought before the public.

"If his grace only comprehended a note of it!" he exclaimed petulantly; "but he knows no more of music than that lout of a linen-weaver in Yorkshire."

"Whom you corrected with your fist, when he blundered with your Saul!" cried the painter. "You should have learned better policy, my good master, from your eight-and-twenty years in England! A stupid, great nobleman can do no harm to a work of art! If I dealt only with those who understood my work, my wife and children might starve."

Handel was leaning on the table, his face buried in his hands. His thoughts were wandering toward Germany. When he spoke, it was to express his bitter regret that he had left his fatherland just as new life in art began to be stirring. While the Germans achieved greatness in music, he had been tormenting himself in vain with dolts of singers and musicians in England, whose hard heads could not take in a notion of music! "I will return to Germany!" he concluded. "Better a cowherd there than here director of the Haymarket Theatre, or chapelmaster to his majesty, who, with his court rabble, takes such delight in the warblings of that foppish Italian—Farinelli."

Some other members came in to join them, among them the young German, Joseph Wach. Handel nodded kindly to him, and asked how he was getting on with his part.

"I am very industrious, Master Handel, and will do my best," replied Joseph. "You shall hear me soon."

The conversation about the new work was resumed. The Abbé Dubos described how the chorus, "The glory of the Lord shall be revealed," had sounded all night in his ears. "Your glory, Master Handel, will be revealed through your Messiah when once you can get it brought out. I understand the lord archbishop is against it!"

The flush of anger rushed to Handel's brow. "The lord archbishop!" he repeated scornfully. "He offered to compose me a text for the Messiah, and when I asked if he thought I knew nothing of the Bible, or if he expected to improve the Holy Scriptures, he turned his back on me, and represented me to the court as a rude, thankless boor."

Master Tyers, the lessee of Vauxhall, remarked that it was not politic to speak one's mind too openly, especially with the great. Dr. Hualdy tried to soothe the irritated composer by speaking of the admiration he had already won, after a long struggle with ignorance and intrigue.

There were many to give the "soft answer" which "turneth away wrath," and to deprecate too severe a judgment of the English people because they had accomplished little in the glorious art and failed at once to recognize the best. "Admitting," added the abbé, "that the court and nobles have done you injustice; that we have no such musicians and singers as in Germany; that we cannot grasp all the grand spirit of your works, are you not, nevertheless, idolized by the people of Britain? Lives not the name of Handel in the mouth of honest John Bull, cherished as the names of his proudest statesmen! Give him, then, a little indulgence! Let us have a chance to hear your Messiah; condescend to ask the aid you need in bringing it out; your honor will not suffer, and the good you will do will be your reward!"

"That is just what I have told him!" exclaimed Hogarth. And the others chimed in their eager assent. Even the burly host coaxed him, and, by way of argument, said: "You know, Master Handel, how often I have to bend to my good woman; yet it is no detriment to my authority as master of the house."

Handel sat silent for a time, looking gloomily around the circle. Then suddenly he burst into a laugh. "By my halidome, old fellow," he cried, "you are right! To-morrow I will go to the Duke of Bedford. You shall hear the Messiah, were all the rascals in the three kingdoms against it!"

There was a burst of delighted applause from all the company. The fat landlord gave a leap of joy, and Joseph clasped his hands; for he knew Handel's success would be the making of his own and Ellen's fortune.

Handel waited on the Duke of Bedford, who happened to be giving a grand breakfast. The duke prized the reputation of a patron of the arts, and knew well that Handel's absence from court and the circles of the nobility was owing more to his disregard of the forms and ceremonies held indispensable than to any want of esteem for the composer. His oratorio of Saul had won him proud distinction. When informed that Handel had called on him, the duke himself came out to welcome him and lead him into the drawing-rooms. But the composer drew back, saying he had come to solicit a favor. The duke then took him into his cabinet, and listened graciously to his petition that he "would be pleased to set right the heads of the Lord Mayor and the Archbishop of London, so that they should cease laying hindrances in the way of the representation of the Messiah."

The duke not only listened, but promised to use all his means and influence to remove the obstacles. Handel knew he could depend on the promise. He accepted the invitation to join the company with joy, when he heard that his celebrated countryman, Kellermann, was there and engaged in the duke's service.

His grace led in and introduced his distinguished guest. The sight of the great composer produced a sensation. Handel cared nothing for the noble company, but greeted his old friend Kellermann with all the warmth of his nature. They had a cordial talk together, while the idol of the London fashionables, Signor Farinelli, hemmed and cleared his throat over the piano, in token that he was about to sing, and wanted Kellermann to accompany him. {254} The musician at length noticed his uneasiness, pressed his friend's hand, returned to his place, and took up his flute, while Farinelli began a melting air in his sweet, clear voice.

Handel, a powerful man, austere and vigorous in nature, abhorred the singing of such effeminate creatures, and despised the luxurious ornamentation of the Italian's style. Farinelli's soft trilling was accompanied by Kellermann on the flute with dexterous imitation. Handel laughed inwardly to see the effect on the company. The ladies were in raptures; and, when Farinelli ceased, the most eager applause rewarded him.

The duke introduced the Italian to Handel. Farinelli complimented him in broken English, said he had heard that "Signor AEndel had composed una opera—il Messia," and begged to know, with a complacent smile, if there would be a part in the opera for "il famous musico Farinelli?"

Handel surveyed the ornamented little figure from head to foot, and answered in his deepest bass tone, "No, signora."

There was suppressed laughter, and the ladies covered their faces. Not long afterward Handel took his leave, with his friend Hogarth, who was a guest.

The Messiah was announced for representation. But an unexpected difficulty presented itself. The lady who had been engaged to sing the first soprano part sent word that she was ill and could not sing; and the oratorio had to be postponed.

Handel knew it was mere caprice on the part of the spoiled prima-donna, and was excessively indignant. When he heard from the leader of the orchestra that a second postponement might be necessary, he roundly declared it should not be. "It shall take place!" he exclaimed, and set off to call upon the signora himself.

Signora Lucia, the Italian vocalist, that morning held a levée of her admirers. Their conversation, as she reclined on a couch in a graceful déshabillé, was of "il barbaro Tedesco," his unreasonable expectations, and the pleasure the beautiful singer took in disappointing him. "He dared to order me about at rehearsal!" she cried. "For that, he shall not have his troublesome oratorio performed at all!" The gentlemen applauded her spirit. Then it was related how the fair singer Cuzzoni had refused to sing some music in Handel's opera, and he had gone to her room, seized her, and, rushing to the open window, had held her out at arms' length, threatening to drop her unless she promised to sustain her part.

"He shall find me harder to deal with," said the beauty languidly. Just then the name of the great composer was announced, and Handel's heavy step was heard in the hall. The gentlemen visitors huddled themselves off in such confusion, they could only retreat behind the couch, drawing the damask curtain over the recess so as to conceal them.

Lucia was uneasy, but maintained her composure. Handel, however, had not come, as she expected, to entreat her to sing. He stood near the door, and, vouchsafing no salutation, haughtily demanded her part.

The singer made no answer, and Handel strode forward. Lucia sprang up, seized the bell, and rang it violently, but not one of her admirers answered the call. Handel advanced, and coolly lifted the curtain behind the sofa, revealing the group of terrified Italians. He laughed scornfully, and again demanded her part of the signora.

In unutterable passion, she snatched up a roll of music from the table and flung it at the composer. He picked it up, bowed ironically, and walked out of the room. The anger of Lucia with her cowardly friends who had not interfered to avenge this insult, and their confusion, may be imagined.

Handel had punished the capricious singer, but he could find no one to take her place. His friends sympathized in his distress, but could offer no aid nor consolation. Hogarth thought he underrated the Italians, and was too conceited. "You remember," he said, "when Correggio's Leda was sold in London at auction for ten thousand guineas, I said, 'I will paint something as good for such a sum.' Lord Grosvenor took me at my word, I painted my picture, and he called his friends together to look at it. They all laughed at me, and I had to take back my picture."

Handel replied that the old Italian painters were worthy of all respect, and so were the old Italian church composers. The modern ones he thought, in their way, more or less like Signor Farinelli.

The day before the oratorio was to be produced Handel sat in his study reviewing the work. Now he would smile over a passage, now pause over something that did not satisfy him, pondering, striking out, and altering to suit his judgment. At length his eyes rested on the last "Amen," long, long, till a tear fell on the leaf.

"This work," he said solemnly, and looking upwards, "is my best! Receive my best thanks, O benevolent Father! Thou, Lord! hast given it me; and what comes forth from thee, that endureth, though all things earthly perish. Amen."

He laid aside the notes, and walked a few times up and down the room, then seated himself in his easy-chair. His pupil, Joseph, opened the door softly and came in. Handel started from his reverie, and asked what he wanted. The young man, with an air of mystery, begged the master to come with him.

In a few moments they were in a room in the upper story of Master Farren's tavern, a room where Joseph practised his music. There, to Handel's no small astonishment, he saw the host's pretty daughter, Ellen.

"What may all this mean?" he asked, while his brow darkened. "What do you here, Miss Ellen, in this young man's study?"

"He may tell you that himself, Master Handel," answered the damsel, turning away her blushing face.

"You have done much for me, dear master," said Joseph with emotion. "When I came a stranger and penniless, you put me in the way of earning a support. You gave me instruction in music and singing, spending hours you might have given to doing something great."

"And does the fool think making a good singer was not doing something great—eh?"

"And I have tried to make a singer for you!" said the young man. "Will you hear her?" And he pointed to Ellen.

"Yes—Ellen!" she repeated, coming close to him, and lifting her clear, hazel eyes to his face. "Now you know, Master Handel, what Joseph and I have been about, and for what I am here in his study."

"We wanted to be of service in your dilemma," said Joseph. "Shall Ellen sing before you, Master Handel?"

Handel seated himself: "I am curious to see how your teaching has succeeded," he said. "Come, let her begin."

The part she took was that of the first soprano, the one taken from Signora Lucia. Handel started as the young girl's voice rose, clear, silvery, floating—a voice of the purest quality! How he listened when he heard the most splendid portion of his forthcoming work—the glorious air, "I know that my Redeemer liveth"—and how Ellen sang it may be conjectured when, after she had ceased, the composer sat motionless, a happy smile on his lips, his eyes full of tears. At length he drew a deep breath, arose, kissed the maiden's forehead, kissed her eyes, in which also bright drops were glancing, and said with profound feeling: "Ellen, my good—good child—you will sing this part to-morrow at the representation?"

"Master Handel! Father Handel cried the maiden, and threw herself, sobbing, on his neck. Joseph rattled off a jovial air to cover his emotion.

"Amen!" resounded through the arches of the church, and died away in whispered melody in its remotest aisles. "Amen!" responded Handel, while he slowly let fall the staff with which he had kept time. His immortal masterpiece had produced an immense impression: his fame was established for all time.

When the great composer descended the church steps, he was informed that his majesty had sent for him, and that a carriage was waiting, by the royal command, to convey him to Carlton House.

George the Second received the artist with a gracious welcome, and he read his triumph in the faces of the court nobles.

"You have made us a noble present in your Messiah, Master Handel," said the monarch. "It is a brave piece of work!"

"If your majesty," answered Handel, "will give a place to the young man who sang the tenor solo part, I shall be grateful. Joseph Wach is my pupil, and he has a pupil too, Master Farren's daughter; but they cannot marry till Joseph finds a place. The old dame will not consent, and your majesty knows the women bear rule."

The king's smile was a forced one, for a sore point in his experience was touched. "I know nothing of the sort," he said. "But your pupil shall have a place as first tenor in our chapel."

Handel thanked his majesty with sincere pleasure. The king seemed to expect him to ask more.

"Have you nothing," at length he said, "to ask for yourself? We would thank you, in your own person, for the fair entertainment provided in your Messiah."

Handel crimsoned as he heard this, and he answered in a tone of disappointment: "Sire, I have endeavored not to entertain you, but to make you better."

All the courtly company looked their astonishment. Even King George was surprised. Then, bursting into a hearty fit of laughter, he walked up to the composer and slapped him good-naturedly on the shoulder. "You are, and ever will be, a rough old fellow, Handel," said he; "but a good fellow withal! Do as you will, we shall always be the best friends in the world!"

Handel retired from the audience, and was glad to escape to his favorite haunt, Master Farren's tavern. Joseph and Ellen were there, awaiting his return. His news brought them great joy.

In the last years of Handel's life, when his sight failed him, it was Ellen who nursed him faithfully as if she had been his own child, while her husband wrote down his last compositions.

Translated from Les Études Religieuses, etc.

The Title Of The Kings Of England

Defensor Fidei:
Its Signification And Its Origin.

If an Englishman will take a pound sterling of the present year, he will find around the effigy of Queen Victoria the words, Defensor Fidei, a title which the sovereigns of Great Britain have been proud to bear for more than three centuries.

From whom did they receive it? Why was it given to them? What did it originally mean, and what does it mean now?

Henry VIII. received this title from the pope as a personal privilege, and one that he had ardently desired and solicited for a long time. It was conferred by a bull of Leo X., confirmed by Clement VII. No one is ignorant on what occasion. Luther had left the church. He was sowing his heresy in Germany, declaring that the pope was Antichrist, and declaiming with furious rage against Rome in his impious work, The Captivity of Babylon. Henry VIII., indignant at the effort to mislead the people, replied in a book called Assertio septem sacramentorum adversus Martinum Lutherum. We regret that the space to which we are limited prevents us making copious citations from it; for our readers would then see that it would be impossible for any one to proclaim a more devoted attachment to the holy see than did Henry VIII. at that time. These pages are more than three centuries old; but to-day, when war against the papacy is more bitter than ever, we know of none among the contemporary works which defend the church more filially and more warmly.

If at the time when Henry VIII., full of joy, received the bull of Leo X., amid the hearty congratulations of his people, a man had stood before him and said: Sire, in less than fourteen years you will belie all your protestations of filial devotedness and submission to the Vicar of Jesus Christ; you will rebel against the Roman Church in just as striking a way as Martin Luther has done; you will proclaim yourself the head of the Church of England; you will be the author of a schism which will make blood flow in torrents and will desolate England, Scotland, and Ireland for more than three centuries; you, the victorious Henry VIII., who would be the delight of your people if you were the master of your passions instead of being their slave; you will become the Nero of England: had such words been spoken, their author would have been looked upon as insane. The proud and passionate Tudor would have exhausted his ingenuity in inventing means to torture a traitor like this. But, at the end of 1534, he who would venture to print this book, which had purchased for Henry VIII. the title which the sovereigns of England are so proud to use even to-day, would have been declared guilty of high treason.

Thus, God has wished that the very coins of his country shall become for the Englishman who reflects and studies a precious and lasting historical monument of the ancient faith of the country, the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman faith, the faith of France, of Spain, of Italy, of Austria, and of all Christianity. The title Defensor Fidei signified at that time defender of the Roman Faith. What does it mean now? After 1534, Henry VIII. pretended to defend the Catholic faith, by refusing obedience to the pope and submitting to his own spiritual supremacy, a new star in the firmament of the church.

Under the reign of Edward VI., or rather under that of the two successive protectors, the Dukes of Somerset and Northumberland, the faith was defended in the shape of the Forty-two Articles. It was no longer the Catholic faith in its purity.

Under the reign of Elizabeth, the governess of the Church of England, the creed of Edward VI. was modified, and the faith was now declared to consist in the Thirty-nine Articles.

Since Elizabeth these Thirty-Nine Articles have continued to be the official creed of the established church. In a country where custom holds such sway, all the members of the Anglican clergy are obliged to profess their faith in these articles under oath; but do we see that the queen and her privy council exact the performance of this oath? It would be answered that such a thing has become impracticable, and that no one is held to the performance of the impossible. We cheerfully agree to this, for we are not in the habit of contesting what is plainly evident.

The striking and multiplied facts of contemporaneous history will at last compel every serious-minded man to ask himself this question: Is not the title Defensor Fidei very much like that of King of France which the sovereign of England renounced in the beginning of this century, without really losing anything? To tell the truth, they are "defenders of the faith" in much the same manner as Victor Emmanuel is King of Cyprus and Jerusalem.

If we were English, we would delight in publishing a truly apostolic book, which would contain little of our own intellectual labor, except, perhaps, the choice of materials and the manner of arranging them; nor would it be a controversial work, for controversy only embitters an opponent; and, if our readers will permit a playful but striking comparison, we would make our adversaries appear like two inimical squirrels, who will continually run about in a circle, with fiery looks and lively motions, yet never getting one step nearer to each other. {259} We should make the calm and impartial voice of history speak, and our publication would be called Historical Documents on the Title of the Kings of England, Defensor Fidei.

Large books find few readers nowadays, and so we would make ours very brief; its contents these: The affirmation of the seven sacraments against Martin Luther by Henry VIII., with the defence of his book by John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester; the bull of Leo X., which gave Henry VIII. the title of Defensor Fidei; the act of parliament which declared Henry VIII. supreme head of the Church of England; the Forty-two Articles of Anglican faith under the reign of Elizabeth and her successors; the profession of faith in the Thirty-nine Articles exacted officially of the Anglican clergy; and, finally, the profession of faith of Pius IV., which contains the whole doctrine of the Holy Council of Trent. We would give the Latin text of all those documents and a good English translation, so that the exactness of the translation could be verified. We would crown our work with a little complementary appendix, which would give our readers an insight of the privy council of the queen in ecclesiastical matters—Optima legum interpres consuetudo. Showing on one side an abstract of the condemnations inflicted upon the Puseyites for having professed Catholic doctrines denied by the Anglican Church; and, on the other, the recapitulation of the principal acts, which have favored so-called evangelical and even rationalistic tendencies in the very heart of the establishment, and which are recalled by the names, now become so famous, of Gorham, Hampden, and Colenso. Nor should we omit the nomination of a bishop of Jerusalem, made with such touching concord by England and her Protestant sister, Prussia. This characteristic fact impresses the seal of worldly policy on the forehead of the Anglican Church.

What can make a book more attractive than fine engravings? And so our manual would contain the portraits of all the kings and queens of England who have born the title of Defensor Fidei; and, in this gallery of sovereigns, would figure in his place the sombre protector Cromwell, who was a defender of the faith in a manner peculiarly his own. Facing the rulers of England, we would place the popes of Rome. We should strictly deny ourselves the pleasure of making any commentaries. We should content ourselves with a single exposition of authentic facts, and look for the fruit of our book from the grace of God, who enlightens the mind and touches the heart in his own good time, and from the good sense, the integrity, and well-known straightforward spirit of the English nation.

Our reader has no need for us to tell him what the subject of this work would be. He sees clearly that this book of Henry VIII. against Luther, and its defence by John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester—a book now extremely rare, buried, as it were, in the dust of a few libraries as an archaeological curiosity, or at most only quoted to show the monstrous self-contradictions that Henry VIII. exhibited—that this book, we say, is the most authentic and precious monument of the ancient and Catholic faith in England, and, at the same time, a refutation in advance of the Anglican schism, of all the Anglican heresies, and of the Lutheran diatribes of Anglicanism against the pope as Antichrist, and Rome as a new Babylon.

Is there not a sign in this very work of wondrous divine predilection for England, and a distant preparation for a future, such as we see with so much joy, springing from the seed sown then, centuries ago?

In religious and wise England many souls are eagerly seeking the unity and antiquity of the Christian faith; like others, who have preceded them in finding the fold of Christ, they are ready to make the most heroic sacrifices as soon as they have discovered the pearl without price. These brothers are already Catholic by the aspirations of their hearts. Perhaps many belong already, without their own knowledge and without ours, to the soul of the only true church, because they have validly received holy baptism, which has made them members of Jesus Christ and children of the church; because they are only material heretics; and because they walk in humility in the way that he who is the only Mediator attracts them by his grace. They always take a step in the true faith at each new light that they receive from heaven. These Christians whom we respect and love, and who love us, honor their country more than we can readily express. We cannot think of them without the deepest interest and sympathetic veneration.

With the exception of the trials of Pius IX., the father of the Christian universe, the most venerable and the most magnanimous of all the oppressed, except this holy, old man, this pontiff king, surrounded by his legion of Machabees, crowned with his gray locks, his virtues, and his misfortunes, we know of nothing so beautiful as the devotion of our Catholic brothers of England, Scotland, and Ireland to God and his church, and the divine assistance which continually rallies new neophytes about them when God calls them. It is a flood destined to overspread the land. "Wonderful are the surges of the sea." [Footnote 37]

A religious of one of the missionary orders recently wrote from India concerning a Protestant lady whom he had met, and said, "Her conversation made me think that she was only a Protestant by mistake." How many Englishmen to-day are only Anglicans by mistake!

While the Episcopal Church is falling to pieces under the disintegrating influence of Protestantism, which is its essence, and of rationalism, which has invaded it, as the lamented Robert Wilberforce has clearly shown, [Footnote 38] many Christians born within its communion, but animated by a different spirit which urges them to the divine centre of Catholicity, are no longer willing to build their faith on the shifting sand of human opinions, and cement a religious society by the dissolving principle of private judgment. For them the authority and the common faith of the universal church are necessary: they demand the integrity of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the sacred guardian of apostolic traditions. For such as these, the book of Henry VIII. and John Fisher is a most striking monument of the unity and antiquity of the faith, a sort of beacon to show all in the great impending shipwreck of religion in England what direction they must take in order to find safety.

You who seek the unity of the faith, then, "one heart and one soul," [Footnote 39] see in what splendor she shines here.

It is the King of England, and with him the most pious and learned English bishop of the sixteenth century, who makes his profession of faith, who glories in his submission to the authority of the pope, who defends the seven sacraments. Does a single bishop protest? Are Oxford and Cambridge silent? Do the secular and regular clergy, the parliament, the laymen of every condition of life, all acquiesce? Does not a single Englishman present this respectful remonstrance: "Sire, you are sacrificing the rights and prerogatives of your crown! A King of England submit to the pope! Is not one king the supreme head of the church? You defend seven sacraments: how so when there are only two?"

It was, then, evidently the faith of England that Henry VIII. and John Fisher defended; and this monument, reared before the schism and different creeds that it has created, shows us that those who would dare to deny the doctrines there put forth would be considered innovators, which, in the church of Jesus Christ, has always been considered synonymous with heretics.

But if this book is the monument of the faith of England in the sixteenth century, before 1534, it is at the same time a monument of the Roman faith, that is to say, of the faith of the Catholic Church. At that time, when the pontiffs were more than usually vigilant on account of the heresies which were springing up in the various countries of Europe, two popes, Leo X. and Clement VII., were not content with sanctioning the work of Henry VIII., but gave and confirmed to him the title of the "Defender of the Faith." England declared her belief; Rome, and through her the Catholic Church, answered: "Your faith is ours; we congratulate you on your able defence of it." Here was indeed unity and unanimity.

Is this all the light that we can gather from this source? This monument was erected in the midst of the religious life of England, between its Roman Catholic past, of more than a thousand years from the birth of the Anglo-Saxon Church, and its schismatic future, which would count more than three hundred years. Nowhere can one better stand to see the different policies and course travelled by England than here: once as the cherished daughter of the Roman Church, the sister of Catholic nations; and then how she has changed since she rebelled against Rome, and has gone on in her isolation, sufficient for herself, Christian in her own way, even while an oecumenical council was assembled.

The Roman Catholic past of England is known by the certain evidence of history; and from the monument of Henry VIII., which can well be considered its terminus, we propose to cast a hasty glance at its most distant events; and of these by far the most interesting are the glorious acts of the pontificate of Pope St. Gregory the Great, who sent missionaries to convert his dear English, although yet idolaters, and who chose their first bishop from the Benedictine monks of his convent at Rome. What unity, what unanimity between Rome and England in the time of the monk St. Augustine! It was the union of a daughter and mother: it was precisely the same union, the same faith, in the sixth as in the sixteenth century, until 1534.

The sixth century makes us go far back in the history of the church; but, in admiring the apostolic works of St. Augustine and his companion, we find about them precious and striking witnesses of a past yet more distant. {262} St. Augustine convokes the bishops of the Britons to beg them to aid him in converting the Saxons to Christianity. He acknowledged, then, that the Britons were in the same communion, and professed the same Roman Catholic faith. Indeed, if the Britons were wrong in refusing their help, it was only because of their hatred against their oppressors, for the ancient British Church was never separated from the communion of the Roman Church, never lost the purity of the Catholic faith. [Footnote 40]

Pelagius, it is true, was a Briton, and his heresy, which he first sowed at Rome, was not long in reaching Great Britain, yet it never took deep root there. The British Catholics sent a deputation to the bishops of Gaul, urging them to send a number of missionaries to them. Pope Celestine, warned of the danger to the faith, sent St. Germain of Auxerre; the bishops of Gaul, assembled for this purpose, added St. Loup of Troyes. These two great bishops left their peaceful flocks in all haste to come to the rescue of the invaded folds; and while they were working so faithfully for the glory of God and of his holy church, all Catholic Gaul was praying most fervently for its sister, Great Britain. Pelagianism was vanquished and found no home in the land of Pelagius; it was in another land that it made its most deplorable ravages.

Thus it was in Great Britain that the bishops, who are established by the Holy Spirit to govern the church, [Footnote 41] triumphed over this sad and insidious heresy, when they were free to exercise their divine mission in that country, and when they were closely united to the centre of unity.

There was something like it in the fourteenth century, when the heresy of Wickliff arose. He was condemned by the council of London, (1382,) although an Englishman, and one who had studied at Oxford, and who had been the principal of the College of Canterbury, at once the flatterer and the favorite of his sovereigns. His doctrine, which contained the germ of all the Anglicanism of the time of Elizabeth, caused considerable trouble in England; but, thanks to the firmness of the episcopate, these troubles are not to be compared with those from which Bohemia suffered, where John Huss taught the same heresy.

Before the Anglican "reform," which has created a system before unheard of, and which unites calumny with historical delusions, every Englishman was proud to claim for his country the honor of having preserved the faith always in its purity from the time that the gospel had first been preached there. [Footnote 42]

[Footnote 42: According to the Venerable Bede, Catholic missionaries were sent there in the second century of our era, by Pope Eleutherius.]

Was England, then, in error? If so, she has deceived herself and all Christendom; and this universal error has lasted from the pontificate of Pope St. Eleutherius, to that of Pope Clement VII., a period of more than thirteen hundred and fifty years! We must say that anyone who looks upon this fact as of slight importance would greatly astonish us. Where do they think that the true church of Jesus Christ was during these long centuries, that church against which the gates of hell shall not prevail? [Footnote 43] Did it disappear, this city of God, which was to be placed on the mountain and seen by all people? [Footnote 44] Surely the spirit of delusion and darkness must be very potent when it can make a pious Englishman declare that the glory of the English Church was reduced to nothing before the sixteenth century, and that then Henry VIII. and Cranmer, an infamous libertine and his servile courtier, were raised up to open a new career to her.

Yet England, notwithstanding its modern religious state, is not revolutionary. She loves order as warmly as she does liberty. Even in religion, she desires by subordination the only means of preserving it.

How much light for Anglicans of good faith (and they are numerous) shines in the violent and even indecent attacks made by their preachers and historians upon the greatest names of Catholic England—names that England revered in former times with the whole Christian world—names still dear to the Catholic Church, albeit they are now almost unknown in England. To efface so much glory, it was needful that a new kind of glory should appear and dazzle by its very contrast.

At the end of 1534, and still more definitively in 1559, at the commencement of the reign of Elizabeth, the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Church were violently separated; they no more profess the same creed, they have no longer the same worship, their hierarchies are strangers, they mutually reproach each with not being the true church of Jesus Christ. It is from the monument of Henry VIII. and John Fisher that we can see the different paths they followed and the daily increasing difference which has separated them.

For the Roman Church this epoch was one of those glorious epiphanies which our Lord Jesus Christ prepares for it in different times, and of which the joys are sown in tears. After a sterile and desolate winter a spring appeared for the divine tree, full of sap, and perfumed with celestial blossoms, followed by a summer and autumn, rich in precious fruits of sanctity, of knowledge, and charity. The Council of Trent was convoked in 1542 by Paul III. for the spread and exaltation of the Christian faith, for the extirpation of heresies, the peace and union of the church, for the reformation of the clergy and the Christian people, for the repression and extinction of the enemies of the Christian name. The evils that existed were fearful. The holy council, with the divine assistance, acquitted itself of its task in a manner which would bring a speedy and certain remedy to all the prevalent abuses. God, the supreme King of kings, recompensed so many generous efforts on the part of his faithful people by according to them, before the end of the sixteenth century, under the glorious pontificate of St. Pius V., that memorable victory of Lepanto, which crowned the work of the crusades and shattered for ever the power of the Mussulman.

But what avail the laws the most salutary in the bosom of nations profoundly ignorant and deeply corrupt, if there do not rise in their midst men powerful in word and work to instruct them, and, above all, to regenerate them by the irresistible attraction of the most heroic virtue? It was then God raised up in Italy, in France, in Spain, in Germany, true reformers, who, after the example of their divine Master, began to act before they began to teach. Their names are too well known to need mention here. They compelled men to acknowledge the divine tree by its fruits. They professed the faith proclaimed by the Council of Trent, which was nothing else than the faith of Nice in its legitimate development. The faith of Nice was the faith of the apostles. This faith of the apostles, of Nice, of all the oecumenical councils, is the faith to-day of the Roman Church in the solemn profession of faith of Pius. IV., which is a résumé of all the doctrine of the holy Council of Trent.

As for England, in separating from the Roman Church she commenced the history of her variations: she entered upon that downward path of religious decline which naturally ends in a sudden descent into the gulf of scepticism. With a creed subject to the changing will of man, she was Anglican after one fashion under Henry VIII., after another fashion under Edward VI., after a third under Elizabeth, and now, to the inexpressible confusion and grief of those pious Christians born and nurtured in the bosom of the established church, she has arrived, step by step, at a point where she offers the spectacle of a chaos of incoherent doctrines, some true, some false, some orthodox, others heretical, some pious, others monstrously wicked, but all tolerated out of respect for the genius of the individuals who took the pains to invent them; all publicly and peaceably taught beneath the standard of the Thirty-nine Articles. Le pavilion couvre la marchandise.

While so many great servants of God and his poor, venerated and blessed throughout the rest of Christendom, adorned the Roman Church, unfortunate England, shut up in its island and still closer imprisoned by an atrocious religious persecution, saw generations of her children grow up in hate, contempt, and horror of popery and papists. Every source of education, all the pulpits of the Anglican Church, all books allowed to be published, helped to keep up this spirit of ignorant and bigoted hate against the church of God.

While St. Vincent de Paul, that great reformer of the clergy and saintly founder of world-wide works of charity, prepared, together with so many other apostolic men, the glory and prosperity of our present great age; in sanctifying the family, divinely instituted as the practical school of social virtues; in arousing a spirit of generous devotion and sacrifice which led men to comfort all forms of misery and reconcile rich and poor—those brethren so easily made enemies—England was deprived of all her religious orders, consecrated in former times to the service of the poor and the sick, to the education of youth, to the stubborn labors of science, to the contemplation of divine things, to the crucified life, the life of prayer, the life of the soul, against which the world blasphemes because it cannot comprehend it. She lost the blessings of a celibate clergy: she was despoiled of the sacred patrimony of the poor by her king and lords, who distributed it among themselves, together with the greater part of the wealth of the church, as the enemy's spoils are divided and shared after a victory. (We intend to be polite.) England beheld the wound of pauperism open wider each day, and found herself forced to have recourse to the poor-tax, unheard of in old Catholic times. Within her boundaries will be found to-day an excessive wealth in face of poverty unknown elsewhere. By the constant progress of science and industry, machine labor tends to replace the labor of the individual, and self-aggrandizement diminishes wages in proportion as it augments the daily task of the workman. What a harvest would be offered to the works of Catholic charity if her divine activity were only there to replace the horrible workhouses where souls are withering and dying! We yet have in France and elsewhere the money of St. Vincent de Paul in an innumerable number of works of charity truly Christian, and that enables us to live without taxing the poor.

Such are the different paths which the Roman and Anglican Church have followed since the deplorable schism of Henry VIII., renewed and aggravated under Elizabeth. If before his death Henry VIII. had repented of his wicked attack upon the church, what would he have been obliged to do to reconcile himself with Rome? He would have needed only to return to that profession of faith which he made in his book against Luther. Since the beginning of the Anglican schism, and at any point of its successive variations, any Englishman, to return to the bosom of the Catholic Church, would have nothing to do but to return to that same profession, conformable in every point to the profession of faith of Pius IV. This is what has been done in our own day by Father Spencer, Archbishop Manning, Fathers Newman and Faber, Palmer and Wilberforce, and a host of others, eminent for their virtues, their knowledge, their public and private character, whom no Englishman capable of appreciating the merit of sacrifices made for God and in fidelity to conscience can name without respect and pride.

But possibly some of our readers may be astonished that we insist so strongly upon the book written by Henry VIII., for it might seem that the shameful life of the author reflects discredit upon the work. Let us not be mistaken. In the first place, when Henry VIII. wrote against Luther, he was very far from being the monster of iniquity which he became afterward, and whose history I leave to the severe judgment of a Christian Tacitus. Again, it is important to understand that Henry VIII. was not the sole author of this monument of his former faith reared by his hand fourteen years before his apostasy. The universal judgment of critics has always attributed the more solid part of the work, at least, to John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, who assumed ostensibly all the responsibility of it in the public defence he made of it.

Thus we see, on the one hand, Henry VIII., who, after putting forth his work with so much ostentation, belied it without shame and strove to mutilate it; and, on the other, John Fisher, who plants it upon the immovable rock where he had taken his place, and with glorious magnanimity sacrifices his life to defend it This is the choice offered. He who returns to the ancient faith of Henry VIII. separates himself from the tyrant and the murderer, and joins himself to the company of his victim. He ranks himself beside the glorious martyr who, during the second half of King Henry's reign, was, of all the episcopate of England, the only guardian left of English honor, and the last champion of the liberty of conscience.

An unwelcome truth, but a hard fact. In 1521, at the time of the publication of the king's book against Luther, the whole English episcopate most undoubtedly believed in the primacy of the pope with Fisher, with Henry VIII., with all the Catholic Church, and in no sense believed in the spiritual supremacy of the king. Then there was unity and unanimity, and the present and past of England were in harmony. But in 1534 the king changes his doctrine, and with him the whole episcopate and parliament. One English bishop only was found to display the firmness of a Basil, a Hilary, an Athanasius, an Ambrose, a Chrysostom, a Lanfranc, an Anselm, an Edward, a Thomas of Canterbury. The number of the cowards does but make the immortal beauty of the contrast shine out with the greater splendor. How many rough stones are not thrown together pell-mell in their shapelessness and obscurity, to form the foundation of the pedestal of one chosen stone, carved with the sublime inspiration of genius by the chisel of a Michael Angelo, to become the statue of a great man!

If John Fisher, like the heroic Thomas More, had not the support of his own nation, he had that of all Christendom. Yes, the monument of John Fisher is worthy to become the rallying point of every generous-hearted Christian Englishman, who ardently looks for the realization of the promise and dearest wish of our common Redeemer and Saviour, Jesus Christ—There shall be one flock and one Shepherd.

With what indescribable emotion the heart of an Englishman must beat when, after a long interior combat with so many prejudices in which he has been nurtured, he at last breaks the chains of his slavery, and when, feeling himself free with that liberty which only a Catholic can feel, he cries out: "I'll do it: I abjure the schism of Henry VIII., the creed of Cranmer and Parker; I will go back to the faith of John Fisher!"

Such, doubtless, were the sentiments of the pious and learned Robert Wilberforce when he returned to the bosom of the holy Catholic Church. His words, so serious, so marked by the ardent love of truth, so touching in their tone of respect and fraternal charity for his adversaries, fall upon our ears in accents of majestic solemnity as they echo back to us from the depths of the tomb. This is what his hand has written whose memory is enshrined in the noblest hearts:

"When national distinctions cease to exist, and mankind, small and great, are assembled before God, it will be seen whether it was wiser, like Henry VIII. and his minion Cromwell, to break up the Church Catholic for the sake of ruling it, or, like More and Fisher, to die for its unity."

Seventy-three.

  Be merry as May,
    If you want to be
  As merry and gay,
    At seventy-three.

  To be merry and gay
    Though, at seventy-three,
  Argues Life's primal May
    Spent virtuously.

      T. K.

A Winged Word.

    "O power of life and death
     In the tongue! as the preacher saith."

Mr. Basil Andrew paused in writing and held his pen suspended, his breath also slightly in suspense, as he contemplated his subject anew. He had been reviewing a theological work just published; but his thoughts had developed as he dwelt on them, and were no longer a plan, but the torso of a plan.

He sat like one in a trance while the new idea grew; grew slowly, almost painfully, seeming to find scant room in his brain, albeit his brows were wide. Touches from the utmost limits of his nature and his experience shaped and modified it: the swell of feeling with the ray of intellect that ruled its tide; vague emotions and vaguer speculations, in whose mists sparks of truth were dissipated, from whose sudden meeting had sometimes sprung the electric flash of intelligence; aspirations that had climbed their Jacob's ladder, reason fixing the rounds till the climbers took wings, and dazzled her with their transfigured faces; fragments of knowledge hard and sharp-edged; stray conclusions finding their premises, and stray premises their conclusions—mallet and handle for blows—all working the shape till there it stood in his brain, the perfect form of a truth.

One instant he contemplated it with rapture, while it glowed alive under his gaze; the next, he looked outward and perceived its relations with the world. As he did so, a wave of color swept over his face; and, heart failing, that form was no longer to him a living truth, but the statue of a truth.

"I might have known," he muttered, flinging his pen aside, "for me, at least, 'all roads lead to Rome.' I believe I am bewitched."

With that flush still upon his face, he rolled up the unfinished manuscript, and deliberately laid it on the coals that burned redly in the grate, where it quivered like a sentient thing. One might fancy that the thoughts just warm from his brain still retained some clinging sensation, telling where their rest had been, as, stepping ashore, for a while we continue to feel the motion of the sea on which we have been tossing. Then the edges of the leaves blackened, slender fingers of flame stole over them, opened them out, drew rustling leaf from leaf, scorching them, till one sentence started out vivid as lightning on a cloud, that sentence on which he had paused, finding it not a conclusion, but an indication. Then a strong draught caught the yet quivering cinders and carried them up the chimney.

"There they go in a swirl, like Dante's ghosts," he thought; and turned away to look out into the north-eastern storm that, having brushed the bloom from a crimson sunrising, was now, at afternoon, rushing in power over the city. The air was thick with snow, through which, far aloft, dark objects occasionally sailed with the wind-witches, probably. Passers struggled in wind and drift, and the houses seemed not sure of their footing, and had a forlorn and smothered aspect. But Mr. Andrew perceived with satisfaction that the mansion in which he dwelt maintained its dignified dowager port, and that, if ever a feathery drift presumed to alight on the doorsteps, an obsequious little flirt of wind darted round a corner of the house and whisked it off.

While the gentleman stood there, the door of the room opened for the first time in three hours, and Miss Madeleine, Mrs. Hayward's niece, came in with a book in her hand. He watched her as she crossed the room without noticing him, and, when she had seated herself at another window, he breathed out, "How sweet is solitude!" speaking in one of those cloudy, golden voices, such a voice as might have swept over the chords of David's harp when David sang.

The lady looked up, brightening for an instant as though shone upon. Then she opened her book, and Mr. Andrew returned to his table and read also. And there was silence for another hour.

Mr. Basil Andrew was in person rather superb, tall till he bent slightly with a languid grace, which also hung about his motions and his speech. But when he was excited, these mists were scorched up. Then he grew erect as a palm-tree, the not large but beautifully shaped eyes flashed out their crystalline blue, and delicate lines trembled or hardened in mouth and nostril. Then, too, it appeared that those tones of his could ring as well as melt. If it be true that "soul is the form, and doth the body make," the philosophical reader may be able to guess the shape of his nose and chin. Lavater would have pronounced favorably concerning his intellect from seeing only that significant inch across the brows. In color he was white and flaxen-haired, but had some indefinable glow about him, like a pale object seen in a warm light.

Mr. Andrew at thirty-five years of age found himself in that pause of life which, in natures too well poised for violent reaction, comes between the disgust of unsatisfying pursuit and the adoption of higher aims, or the disdainful and half-despairing resumption of the former life. He awaited the inspiring circumstance which should waft him hither or thither, or perhaps for his soul to gather itself and make its own will the wind's will, whichever might be more potential. Pending this afflatus, interior or exterior, he rested upon life

  "As idle as a painted ship
   Upon a painted ocean."

Miss Madeleine was a well enough young woman, baptized into the church, but from an early age subjected to Protestant influences; oscillating between the two, never very conspicuously Catholic except when the faith was assailed, then plus Arabe que l'Arabie; at other times following out Protestantism to its ultimate pantheism. She had a dimly remembered father and mother somewhere in church suffering or triumphant, and occasionally, when life seemed to her unstable, she sent out a little prayer for or to them, a prayer too weak to find olive-leaves. This young woman was not without power, but it escaped in reverie and dreaming; what she meant to do so vividly imagined that she rested there as on accomplished work. Too impetuous and flimsily ambitious to think with profit, her mind was encumbered with fragments of thought, often with a sparkle in them, like the broken snow-crystals she now dropped her book to watch. In fine, her outer life was a purposeless stupor, her inner life one of Carlyle's "enchanted nightmares" in miniature.

As the clock struck four, Mr. Andrew closed his book and approached his companion.

"I have been reading Thoreau's description of autumn woods," she said, "and I feel all colored. I am steeped in crimson, and purple, and amber, and rich tawny browns. My eyes are violet, and my hair is golden."

"Your hair is brown, and your eyes are gray," was the matter-of-fact reply, it being Mr. Andrew's opinion that the girl's mind needed ballast.

"Oh!" just aware he still held it, "it is Father de Ravignan's Society and Institute of the Jesuits—very good if one desires information on the subject. Moreover, one is charmed to learn that Père de Ravignan, though himself a Jesuit, has been a magistrate and a man of his time; also that he is still a man, and, par excellence, a Frenchman. The good father becomes a little Hugoish and staccato when he refers to himself."

Since she still waited, watching him with eager, imperative eyes, he went on. "You know the story of the Florentine and Genoese who wished to compliment each other: 'If I were not a Genoese, I should wish to be a Florentine,' said one. 'And I,' said the other, 'if I were not a Florentine, should wish to be—' 'A Genoese!' suggested the other. 'No, a Florentine!' So I, if I were not a free-thinker, would wish to be—"

"A Catholic!" the girl broke in. "Don't deny. You already tire of your Theodore Parker, whose intellect was to him what astronomers call a crown of aberration. You have but to look at the church, and faith is easy! How beautiful are thy steps, O prince's daughter!"

"Very pretty, but not very conclusive," was the cool comment. "You once said to me, 'Epithets are not arguments.' Allow me to retort that apostrophes are not arguments. By the way, how impossible it is to calculate on where you may be found, except that it is sure to be 'in issimo.' The arc of your motion takes in both poles."

Miss Madeleine relapsed again immediately, and with a somewhat weary expression.

At the same moment the door opened wide, and Mrs. Hayward entered, producing the effect of being preceded by a band of music. This lady of fifty was ample, rustling, and complacent, and, being lymphatic, was called dignified. If, on being left a widow in straitened circumstances, and finding herself obliged to take a few boarders, Mrs. Hayward had felt any sense of diminished social lustre, no one had perceived it. "They pay my housekeeping expenses," she said serenely; and immediately that seemed the end of their being.

There is something imposing in the suave conceit of such persons. Possessing themselves so completely, they also possess those who approach them, abashing larger and more slowly ripening natures. Names respectfully pronounced by them become at once names of consequence, and trivial incidents by them related swell into significant events. If they are something, then I am nothing, is the thought with which we approach them; and the fact that they are something seems so clear that the mortifying conclusion is inevitable.

After this lady followed Mrs. Blake, obviously the wife of Mr. Blake, also the mother of an uproarious boy of six years who accompanied her, and who was at this moment quieted by the possession of an enormous cake which he was devouring.

"O the cherub!" cried Miss Madeleine wickedly. "That child has genius. See, he eats his cake in the epical manner, beginning in the middle. Little pocket edition of his papa! Only," in an aside to her aunt, "I hope they haven't stereotyped him. And here comes his papa now."

  'It is not that my lot is low,
  That bids the silent tear to flow;'

it is the cold. No, my son; no kiss now. Sydney Smith says that there is no affection beyond seventy or below twenty degrees Fahrenheit. Wait till I rise to the paternal temperature."

Mr. Blake was assistant editor of a second-class magazine, considered himself literary, and had a way of saying "we scribblers" to Mr. Andrew, which made that gentleman stiffen slightly. While the one entertained the ladies with an account of the immense amount of literary labor performed by him since breakfast, the other looked from the window and absently watched the wild wind curl itself to edge off the crest of a drift, curling it over like the petal of a tuberose, but more thinly, hanging, wavering, flake to flake, daintily and airily touching the frail crystals.

"Oh! there's to be a great Christmas at your cathedral to-morrow," Mr. Blake said to Madeleine, as they went out to dinner. "Bassoon's going to sing, and Kohn's orchestra to play. It will be worth seeing and hearing, especially at five o'clock. I mean to go if I can wake. And you?"

"Yes," Madeleine said, glancing at Mr. Andrews, who flushed a little as he nodded acquiescence.

"They really do things of that sort well at the cathedral," said Mrs. Hayward patronizingly, seeming to pat a personified cathedral on the head as she softly touched the table with her plump white hand.

"Mr. Andrew," she said, "what should put me in mind of the frog that tried to swell to the size of an ox?"

"But wouldn't it have been odd," she pursued, with the air of a philosophical child, "if the frog had succeeded, and had swelled to the size of an ox?"

"But," she concluded, with an air of infantile naiveté, "it wouldn't have been anything but a great frog, would it?"

A little raising of three pairs of eyebrows fanned the flame. This young woman had a tongue of her own, and while the others dined she entertained them with a theological discourse, which, if not always logical, had some telling points, and which certainly did not assist the digestion of her hearers. They sat with very red faces, choking a little, but trying to appear indifferent.

"Do people take bitters with their dinner?" asked Mr. Andrew, at length. "I should think it would spoil the taste."

"I must say, Madeleine," Mrs. Hayward interposed, "that, considering you address Protestants, and that we are all friends of yours, you show very little regard for our feelings."

"O auntie!" she cried penitently, "'it is not that I love Caesar less, but Rome more.' I own that it is you who have shown the Christian spirit, and reminded me that centuries ago to-night the angels sang 'Peace on earth.' I'm going to banish myself in disgrace to the parlor. Rest you merry."

Going, into the parlor, she saw all out-doors suffused with a soft rose-color, a blush so tender and evanescent that it seemed everywhere but where the eye rested. "The sky side of this storm is all a sea of fire," she thought, throwing up the window, and drawing in a delicious breath of mingled sunshine, west wind, and frost. "How the clouds melt! And the winds and sunbeams, with their convex gleams, build up the blue dome of the air."

Coming in later, the others found her sitting at the piano in the amethystine twilight, and singing a faint and far-away sounding Gloria.

"Hush!" said Mr. Blake, pausing on the threshold, "the evening stars have begun, that the morning stars may know. See them all of a tremor on that sky!"

Listening to those strains of threaded silver, Mr. Andrew sat looking into the twilight through which the grander constellations burned with outlines unblurred by the lesser stars. There was Orion, erect, with his girdle of worlds; Taurus, with starred horns lowered; the Dogs, witnessed to by the liquid brilliance of Sirius, matchless in shifting hues; the Lion, just coming out of the East, his great paw resting on the ecliptic; all those hieroglyphs of fire in which God has written his autograph upon the heavens.

"What a pretty myth it was," he thought, "that of the morning-stars singing together. And that other of the star of Bethlehem!" He half-wished he could believe those things, they saved so much weary thought, so much maddening speculation. Sometimes, while straining to grasp at extraordinary knowledge, he had felt as though falling from a giddy height into an outer darkness, and had drawn back shuddering, eager to catch at some homely fact for support. He smiled now mockingly to himself. "Perhaps the stars did sing. Like a child, I'm going to make believe they did, and that one 'handmaid lamp' did attend the birth of Jesus." It was easier to believe anything while he listened to that Gloria. For, disregarded as Miss Madeleine might be at other times, when she sang she was regnant. Her voice was magnetic enough to draw the links from any man's logic.

Ceasing, she called Mr. and Mrs. Blake to the piano, and the three voices sang Milton's Hymn on the Nativity.

It is astonishing how magnificently some small-souled persons do contrive to sing, expressing sentiments which they must be totally incapable of experiencing. Mrs. Blake sang a superb contralto, and the three perfect voices struck fire from one listener's heart as they beat the emphatic rhythm of that majestical measure.

All but Miss Madeleine went to bed early. She kept vigil, and was to call them. They seemed scarcely to have slept when they heard her voice ring up the stairs in the muezzin which she christianized for the occasion, being in no mood to call Mohammed a prophet:

  "Great is the Lord! Great is the Lord!
   I bear witness that there is no God but the Lord!
   I bear witness that Jesus is the Son of God!
   Come unto prayer—come unto happiness—
   Great is the Lord! Great is the Lord!
   There is no God but the Lord!
   Prayer is better than sleep—prayer is better than sleep!"

As the last word died upon the air, every foot touched the floor, and in half an hour the party had gathered as wild as witches.

Mr. Andrew came down late and grumbling. "Cannot we hear music and see candles without getting out of bed for the purpose at such unearthly hours? I had just gone to sleep, and was in Elysium. Miss Madeleine, why should you say that prayer is better than sleep? We are not going to pray; we are going to hear demi-semi-quavers, and Mr. Bassoon's C in the deeps. I'll go to bed again."

"Possibly we may pray, Mr. Andrew," she said in a low tone. "I have been thinking to-night, and it seems to me that God had a Son, and that he will come down this morning and stand in the midst of the candles."

A Catholic, unless a convert, can scarcely understand the emotions of a stranger who enters a church for the first time on one of our great festivals. That "cool, silver shock" must be taken from another element. Our party stepped from the dim and frosty starlight into an illumination more dazzling than daylight, into a warmth that was fragrant with flowers, into a crowd where every face had a smile dissolved in it. And over all waved a sparkling tissue of violin music from the orchestra.

"Turns up the mastodon strata in them," whispered Mr. Andrew to the lady on his arm.

They were shown to seats, and sat watching the steadily increasing crowd, and the altar that was a pyramid of fire. The worshippers were, of course, various: ragged Irish women, whose faith invested them with better than cloth of gold; rich ladies, sweeping in velvets and sables, but with thoughts of better things in their faces; ambitious working-girls, finer than their mistresses. A pretty young woman came into the slip in front of our party, her face beautifully arranged to represent modesty and sweetness. She cast a glance behind at her audience, then sank upon her knees and beat her breast with one hand, while she arranged her bonnet-strings with the other. This performance at an end, she faced about and closely scanned the gallery, turning again and again till those behind her began to feel annoyed.

"He has come," whispered Mr. Andrew, as the young woman suddenly returned toward the altar, and began a series of languishing attitudes and prostrations, all her repertoire of theatrical devotion.

A grand-looking man next attracted their attention, walking past with the unmistakable sailor roll. His head was erect, and his massive shoulders looked fit for Atlas burdens; but the clear, blue eyes were gentle, and his face was full of a beautiful solemnity and reverence. As he walked, the long, tawny beard flowing down his breast waved slightly.

Fancy him on the ship's deck, in mid-ocean, in darkness and storm, beaten by the wind, drenched with spray, the lightnings blazing and the thunders crashing about him, shouting to the men to cut the mast away!"

Here the organ and choir broke forth in glad acclaim, and the procession came winding in from the sacristy. Cloth of gold and cloth of silver, lace and fine linen, and crimson and purple, all combined, gave the effect of a many-jewelled band coiled about the sanctuary.

Attending alternately to the altar and the choir, Mr. Andrew tried to believe it all a vain pageant; but thoughts will enter, though the doors be shut. What a stupendous thing, he thought, if the Real Presence were true; if, as this girl said, God had a Son, and he should come down this morning and stand in the midst of the candles!

For one instant he was dazzled and confounded by the possibility; the next, he recoiled from it.

"Gloria in excelsis" sang the choir with organ and orchestra in many an involved and thrilling strain, a pure melody springing up here and there from the midst, voice and instrument meeting and parting, catching the tone from each other, swelling till the vaulted roof of the cathedral rang, fading again, dropping away one after another, till there was left but a many-toned sigh of instruments, and one voice hanging far aloft, with a silvery flutter, upon a trill, like a humming-bird sucking the sweetness from that flower of sound. A pause of palpitating silence, then an amen that set swinging the myrtle vines hanging over the St. Cecilia in front of the organ, and made the pennons of blue and scarlet that hung about the altar wave on their standards.

Contrary to custom, there was to be a sermon at that Mass, and, as the preacher ascended the pulpit, Mr. Andrew said to himself: "If Christ was the Son of God, he is on that altar; and if there, I wish he would speak to me by this man."

He hoped to hear an argument to prove the divinity of Christ, not aware that his reason had already been pampered with such until it had grown insolent. The speaker, however, handled his subject quite otherwise. Assuming that divinity, he took for his theme, "what thoughts should fill the mind, what sentiments dilate the heart," on the feast of the Nativity. Calling up before them then, in a few words, a picture of that scene at once so humble and so marvellous, and pointing to the mysterious babe, he boldly announced on the threshold of his discourse the difficulties connected with the dogma for which he demanded their homage:

"This babe is a creature as you and I: this babe is the Creator of all contingent being. This babe is just born; this babe is from all eternity. This babe is contained in the manger; this babe pervades all space. It suffers: hear its cries! It enjoys bliss beyond power of augmentation. It is poor: see the swaddling-clothes! To it belong the treasures of the universe. Here present are husband and wife; yet I am required to believe that her the Holy Spirit overshadowed, a virgin conceived, a virgin bore a Son."

Not Ulysses' arrow flew through the rings with surer, swifter aim than these words through the winding doubts that had bound that listener's heart. It was too sublime not to be true! Almost the triumphant paradox—I believe, because it is impossible—broke from his lips. The human mind was incapable of inventing a falsity so glorious.

In that tumult of feeling he lost what came next; but, listening again, heard: "If I must bow down and worship, I elect him as the object of my adoration whose dwelling is in light inaccessible, who is inscrutable in his nature, and incomprehensible in his works."

"A virgin conceived, a virgin bore a Son," repeated itself again and again in his thought. All the singing of voices and the playing of instruments were because of that; all the splendor of the festival, the gathering of the crowd in the midst of the winter night, were for that. "O sweetest and most glorious mother in all the universe!" he thought, bowing where it is, perhaps, most difficult for a convert to render homage.

Clouds are unsubstantial things for anything but rainbows to stand on, and even they find but vanishing foothold. Had that delight in Basil Andrews's heart warmed only his imagination, it would have faded with the moment; but thought and study had done their part, and that uprising of the heart was Pygmalion's kiss to his statue. The feeling with which he turned to leave the cathedral was one of thankful content with perfected work.

Pausing in the vestibule for the crowd to pass, he looked back with a tender fear toward the altar.

Poor Madeleine's religion was iris and the cloud. She had known well what was going on in her companion's mind, and, as she stood waiting with him, a text went sighing through her memory like a sighing wind. "I say unto you that the kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and shall be given to a nation yielding the fruits thereof." While she, a child of the church, had given it a fitful obedience more insulting than a consistent disregard, this man had toiled every step of the way from a far-off heresy, and, passing by her as she loitered outside, had walked into the very penetralia.

She stood looking gloomily out into the morning that was one cloudless glow of pale gold.

"The air has crystallized since we came in," she said, "and we are shut inside a great gem, like flies in amber. We will have to stay here for ever."

He bent a smiling face toward her as they went out into the morning, and said softly: "How beautiful are thy steps, O Prince's daughter! You were right, Madeleine!"

A fortnight from that day Madeleine Hayward stood on the steps of her aunt's house, saying good-by to its inmates. A Southern girl, the cold skies of the North froze her. She wanted to get into a warmer sunshine, and, being prompt and determined, obstacles vanished before her.

"Mr. Andrew," she said, as he gave her his arm to the carriage, "I am sorry I can't stay to be your god-mother."

Madeleine took her seat in the carriage, gave a smiling nod toward the group in the door, then held a cold hand out to her companion.

"When you are a priest, and when you hear that I am dead, say a Mass for me," she said faintly, then turned her face resolutely away.

The violent color that had risen to the gentleman's face at her words faded into a paleness as he went up the steps. By what power did that girl sometimes divine the thoughts which he had not yet owned to himself?

Translated from the French of L. Vitet.

The Present Condition of Christianity in France

Some time ago M. Guizot published the second series of his Meditations on the Christian Religion. He is now prosecuting right valiantly, and will ere long have completed, the noble task that won for him two years since so novel a triumph among his many victories, and crowned his illustrious life with what may be considered its brightest glory. That calmest and most serene of creeds, a lucid definition and summary of the fundamental dogmas of Christianity, viewed from the highest stand-point, in all their native simplicity and grandeur, was greeted, it will be remembered, with gratitude by some who looked upon it as furnishing most timely aid, and with respect and partial embarrassment by others; and so marked was its effect that the most exciting religious polemics were for the time being quieted. The first series referred to the very essence of the Christian religion; what is the subject of the second?

The author, in his preface, had thus drawn the general plan of the work: First, the essence of Christianity, next its history, then its present condition, and, finally, its future. Thus a complete history of Christianity was really promised us. The plan determined upon had, perhaps, some advantages. The history of Christianity is nowadays the point that anti-christian critics would show to be vulnerable, and the portion of the armor they seek to penetrate. The public, however, after a moment's surprise, has of itself meted out partial justice to this manner of attack; or at all events, new attempts, as skilfully devised as the first, have been received with a coolness of good augury that weakens vastly the importance of previously achieved successes. Was it not most opportune, then, to enlighten still more and at once a public whose furore had but just died away? was it not most important not to adjourn, even by a brief delay, a decisive refutation? As for ourselves, we yearned to behold, striving with the new-comers of criticism and history—who claim to be their masters and almost their inventors—him who, nearly half a century since, founded in our land modern historical criticism. By setting face to face with their rash assertions the true and severe laws of historic certainty; by taking down, piece by piece, their most cleverly contrived scaffolding; by reducing to naught their credit, was not the writer rendering to Christianity a most great and needed service?

M. Guizot has thought that there was something still more urgent to be accomplished; without abandoning his original idea, involving the four series, he has inverted their order of sequence; he now dwells upon the present state of Christian beliefs. At a later day he proposes to resume the discussion of historical questions, dilate upon the authority of holy books, continue his commentary on the concord of the Scriptures, and his arguments concerning technicalities and minor details; subsequently he will try to look into the future. {276} At present, he has but one care, one thought: he wishes to know what is occurring, or rather what men are believing, around him. To place in the strongest light the present state of Christianity; to enumerate its armies and those of its opponents, and establish a comparison between the strength of both; thus to summon all Christians to awaken to a sense of the events concerning the common safety; to teach them not to be deceived either as to their might or as to the magnitude of the perils besetting them, and to guard against a feeling of treacherous security as against cowardly discouragement; this it is that engrosses his attention, and, forming the subject of all his thoughts, indicates to him that which he is to consider his first duty. As he says himself, he supplies the most pressing emergency, and, hurrying to the spot where the struggle is commencing, rushes into the thick of the fight.

We can readily understand his impatience. All other questions become unimportant when compared with such a problem. No eagerness can be more legitimate than that of M. Guizot, and the investigation which it is necessary to make is surely the most serious and interesting that could be prosecuted. Let us add that few inquiries are as intricate and as difficult.

It is not, in fact, the mere exterior and apparent state of Christianity that it is necessary to depict; but its life, its action, its power, which simple statistics can by no means describe. Figures may set forth how many churches there are in France; how many priests, congregations, and convents; how many children are baptized, and couples married; how many dying mortals receive spiritual succor; but after these computations are completed, are they of any genuine value? Though the civil code is not compulsory as to the choice of a religion, and though each one be free to elect his own belief, does it follow that the conclusion arrived at is always the result of proper reflection? Are all those who, either from early childhood, through the medium of their parents, or in after life and by their own free will, on certain solemn days, publicly proclaim their adherence to Christianity, real and true Christians? How many can you designate who knew what they were doing, who did not simply conform with a custom, and for whom the sacred contract did not become at once a dead letter? To arrive at a correct estimate as to the actual strength of Christianity, we must not consult registers, but make researches in the bosoms of families, and descend into the depths of consciences. Thus should we make our soundings to ascertain the state of Christian belief. We admit that such a mode of investigation would be impracticable; we must be content, therefore, with less precise data, and pass judgment upon apparent events. Draw a parallel, then, between Christianity as it was in the early part of the century and Christianity as it is, criticise the two periods in accordance with the same rules, make allowances for deceptive appearances on both sides, and exclude from your calculation the apocryphal believers who are only Christians in name; however numerous the false men and things at present, you will, nevertheless, be compelled to concede that in our country, during the past sixty years, Christianity has at least taken root again in the soil, that it has recovered its life, and that its progress has been undeniable.

M. Guizot describes the phases of the resurrection or rather the awakening of Christianity; the comprehensiveness of his views and the choiceness of his expressions render this largely developed portion of his work of absorbing interest. We have, however, no intention to attempt its analysis. In these later meditations, as in those that precede them, one would in vain seek to follow the author step by step. His work alone can speak for its contents; a person must peruse it, or abandon the idea of becoming acquainted with it. Let us only point out the plan the writer has drawn, and notice the succession of his thoughts. From its commencement, by a natural division, the volume to which we allude forms two parts: one relates to Christianity, the other to its adversaries. What do we see in the first? The narrative of the Christian awakening, or rather an exposé of the religious beliefs in France since the year 1800. This is a composition in which the incidents follow each other in natural sequence, an historical painting as well as a picture-gallery, comprising none but portraits from nature, such as M. Guizot, with that firmness and concision that characterize in few words ideas as well as men, can produce; portraits full of expression and life, though always of a sober coloring and subdued effect. M. Guizot had abundant opportunities for word-painting, for sitters were not scarce. Evidently Providence was resolved, from the beginning of the century, to repair by almost perceptible progress the effects of the great disaster of Christianity, and the damage caused by the cataclysm into which it seemed to have sunken. How numerous the men who suddenly came into existence, each worthy of the mission to be entrusted to him! How marked the contrast with the days gone by, when there was none to shiver a lance for that ancient religion still replete with honors, wealth, and apparent life, but without credit, without influence upon souls, without new adepts, and gradually forsaken, like unto those tottering edifices whose abandonment ere their fall is decreed by a prophetic instinct! The scaffold was needed to restore it to life. The first symptom of regeneration was observed when humble priests and monks, who, a day previous, were heedless of their duty, arose as intrepid and as ready for martyrdom as if theirs had been austere lives, passed in the desert or in the darkness of the catacombs. Then a brighter signal and one more easily understood was to be given by two men, who, each in his sphere and within the limits of his power, were really the earliest promoters of the Christian awakening. We refer to a great politician and to a great writer—to the First Consul and to M. de Chateaubriand, to the Concordat and to the Genius of Christianity. There is nothing artificial nor strained in this connection; for these two men and these two works, at the commencement of this century, played the most important part in the work of resurrecting the traditions of Christianity. M. Guizot speaks of Bonaparte and Chateaubriand in a rare spirit of justice and impartiality. Though possessed of little sympathy for them, and aware that their works have become antiquated and, so to say, somewhat out of fashion, he asserts quite warmly that the Genius of Christianity, despite its imperfections, is a great and powerful work, such as only appears at long intervals—one of those productions that, having deeply moved men's souls, leave behind them traces never to be effaced. And as for the Concordat, albeit the sincerest friends of Christian beliefs point out nowadays with sadness, if not with bitterness, its defects and dangers, M. Guizot concedes that, in 1802, its promulgation was, on the part of the First Consul, an act of superior intelligence rather than of despotism, and, for the sake of religion, the most opportune and necessary of events, the sine qua non condition of the existence of Christianity. {278} He thinks that, after ten years of revolutionary orgies, a solemn recognition of religion by the state was needed to endow it with that influence, dignity, and stability which it had totally lost.

In this respect, we share M. Guizot's opinion, certain reservations, however, being made. The Concordat was a welcome gift; neither its timely advent nor the necessity for it can be disputed. Why? Because two years previous the national movement of 1789 was suddenly transformed into an abdication, by which one man benefited. If, instead of submitting to this saviour, half out of lassitude and half out of enthusiasm, France had had the energy, by making a supreme effort, and, perhaps, at the cost of new calamities, to see to her own safety and remain mistress of her fate, the Concordat would have been an unneeded blessing. Christianity would have had more labor and expended more time in regaining the lost ground; it would not have obtained possession at once, by the scratch of a pen, and between sunrise and sunset, of all its presbyteries and churches; it would have recovered them little by little, after having conquered men's souls. Had it had no other staff of support but its flock, it would have neglected nothing to strengthen it and increase its numbers; it would have won the confidence of the people and obtained their acceptance of it as a counsellor, a father, a friend, and would not have been looked upon as an emigrant, amnestied and recalled by tolerance, favor, and an act of authority, and thus placed under obligations to one man, and made the vassal of his power. It is not sufficient that one should be cured of a fatal disease; the remedy, in destroying the evil, must not leave the patient with an altered constitution or impaired vitality. The Concordat undoubtedly delivered us from a great affliction for a nation, and saved us from a complete divorce from God; it restored Christianity to France, but restored it less robust and less prepared for the strife, less life-like and less popular, and in a less fit condition to face the danger than if the old beliefs had been compelled, when born anew, to clear their own pathways. In religion, as in politics, France still feels, and will probably ever experience, the effects of having been saved by the events of the 18th of Brumaire.

That which we must admit with M. Guizot is that, when, in these later days, we criticise the work of our fathers, written upward of sixty years ago, we can speak of them with wondrous facility. Their doubts are at hand to enlighten us. But we must carry ourselves back to 1802, and behold flocks without shepherds, tombs without prayers, and cradles without baptismal fonts! Where is the proud and far-seeing Christian who would then have refused, as a destructive present, in the name of his belief and for the sake of his faith, a régime that did the work of Christian restoration, and by the touch of a magic wand repaired all the evils that bore it down? No one then would have even dreamed of such a paradox. Let us, therefore, blame with indulgence, and to a certain degree only, the men who invented the compromise, although the consequential events subsist, and when we examine the present state of Christian belief, we cannot avoid meeting at every step the still evident traces of defective origin, and its resurrection by process of law. {279} Even as the government of the Restoration, despite its sincerest efforts and never-failing good-will, was never absolved by France from the reproach that attached to its self-commitment by friendship with the Emperor Alexander and Lord Wellington, even so Christianity in this land, during the past sixty years, is partly indebted for its weakness, and for the prejudices that maintain it in a state of excitement, to the honor of having had for a godfather the Emperor Napoleon. Sheltered and warmed under the purple, and having become an imperial pensioner, Christianity acquired, against its will, a certain need of protection and certain habits of submission and almost of complaisance, which having rendered it under some régimes a party to the acts of the government, has caused it to be called upon to share the responsibility of many errors, and exposed it to the perils of unpopularity.

Within the sixty years gone by, have we not seen by a transient example how much religion would have gained by remaining on less compromising terms with the heads of the nation and boldly dispensing with their favors? There was once a government whose members were imbued with profound respect for the religious interests of the country, and who were always ready to render unto its ministers the most kindly offices; this same government, however, from its earliest days, was viewed with coldness and hostility by a certain number of Catholics and a great portion of the clergy; is it not known how favorable that attitude proved to Catholicism itself? For eighteen years it was looked upon as possessed of no credit, and, for that very reason, each day acquired more and more power, not, indeed, in public places and in ante-chambers, but in men's consciences. It may be boldly asserted that the greatest and most definite progress which the Christian religion can justly claim for itself since the commencement of the present century was made during that period. We do not deduce from this fact that systematic hostility to the ruling powers is necessary for the propagation of religious ideas, for intestine strifes are evils and not to be fomented; but that the sacred ministry, to have influence upon rulers, must possess a degree of independence carried even to the extent of pride, and bringing into prominence its abandonment of all things earthly, and its absolute indifference to worldly interests.

From 1830 to 1851, whatever may have been the true motives of its estrangement and indifference, the Catholic clergy was benefited by the situation. It had prospered and increased in numbers, it had won for itself, to the great advantage of Christian belief, the esteem, the respect, and even the minds of persons who, until then, had been rebellious and inclined to disparage it. Was it aware of the cause of this unusual kindliness of feeling? Did it comprehend how much this was to be preferred, for the cause of religion and for its own sake, to former courtly favors? Has it since guarded against the temptations which have surrounded it? Has it persevered in burning incense before God only, in adoring none but him? Have not more earthly and apparently less disinterested bursts of enthusiasm caused it to lose a goodly portion of the conquered ground? These are questions which it may be well not to look into too deeply; but enough is known concerning them to enable us to understand how it came that, during the fifteen years that have just elapsed, the radical vice of the Concordat, the spirit in which it was framed, the danger of establishing between Christianity and the absolute power a so-called natural alliance, a kind of necessary complicity, have awakened in the hearts of some Christians objections, fears, and antipathies now more active and potent than ever.

We next behold one of the great incidents of the Christian awakening whose history M. Guizot recounts. The First Consul, by raising the altar from the dust, partly obeying the great views of his genius, and partly yielding to his despotic instincts; M. de Chateaubriand, by moving and delighting French society by the revelation of the treasures of Christian poetry, of the existence of which it was unaware; M. de Bonald, by honoring the governmental traditions of the old régime by translating them into metaphysical theories; M. de Maistre, by outpouring, in floods of fiery eloquence, overwhelming invective against the revolutionary spirit; all these but paid homage to noble ruins, and, hurling indignation at the destroyers, made a generous attempt to rehabilitate the past, to glorify it, and to give it renewed life. The important questions, the questions of the future, are not yet propounded. It is not sufficient that Christianity should be restored; it must be given health, and taught to live in peace and friendship with a power henceforward beyond all estimate, with an irresistible force—that of modern civilization. How could the Christian, and more especially the Catholic Church, be led to acknowledge the liberty of civil society as constituted by the French revolution? How could that society be brought to respect the just rights of the church? Such was the problem that could not fail to speedily appear.

Until the year 1830, the question was only foreshadowed; its solution was by no means urgent. As Catholicism had recovered under the government of the Restoration its former privilege as a state religion, reconciliation, or a reciprocal tolerance between itself and society, was no longer in discussion. It was understood that its portion was to be secured by an actual struggle, and the secular power was at its disposal—without violence, with due moderation, but not without injury to its authority and detriment to its influence upon men's souls. The Catholic religion had to assume the responsibility as well as accept the profits of its privileged situation. Subsequent to 1830, circumstances changed. Inasmuch as the words "state religion" had been erased from the constitutional compact, no one religion could lay claim to special immunities or occupy an exceptionally exalted position. All enjoyed equal rights. Whatever the number of their adherents, as soon as they were recognized by and receiving a subsidy from the state, the law held them to be equally sacred and deserving of respect. The neutral attitude of the government excited the anger of some Catholics. In their opinion, privilege was the very essence, the normal and vital condition of their belief. The powers of the day, by reducing them to the slender diet of equality and common rights, was guilty not only of indifference and culpable abandonment, but of spoliation and persecution. Their complaints were loudest because their adversaries feigned to have won a most brilliant triumph. Extremes meet: on both sides a firm belief prevailed that, without special support, without the favors of the magistracy and the soldiery, Catholicism had no chance of life, and that, both armies being provided with equally effective weapons, it could never withstand the onslaughts of the foe. {281} The conduct of the persons interested, however, differed; for some wished to be regarded as martyrs, and cursed the atheism of the government, charging it with bringing about the inevitable ruin of the faith; whilst others reproached the same government for its supposed weakness toward the once privileged religion, and accused it of prolonging its existence by secretly favoring it.

During the progress of this conflict there was gradually formed a group of Catholics who contemplated events in an entirely new light. They were all young in years and men of the age; their hearts throbbed with the noble thoughts of liberty and independence that were maddening France for the second time, and, seemingly, carrying the nation back to the dawn of 1789. What did these fervent and sincere Christians, animated by a firm resolve, propose to do? Were they to sacrifice to their religious faith that political faith just born within them? To what end? What was to prevent them from being both Catholic and liberals? In what respect were the principles of the evangels and those of a free government incompatible with each other? Was not the government of the church, in the early ages, the result of the free choice of the faithful? Were not respect for human liberty, love of justice, and opposition to tyranny and barbarity, the glory and actual essence of Christian belief? Had not they who for three centuries had linked religion to the fortunes and precepts of the old monarchy, and identified it with them, really deformed Catholicism?

When these men had become thoroughly convinced not only that their views and their faith were, by no means irreconcilable, but also that it was their duty as Christians to render the church the greatest of all services by checking its retrogressive tendency and reconciling it with the world and with modern ideas, they inaugurated the campaign, unfurled their flag, organized a committee, and commenced the publication of a journal, neglecting none of the means by which to disseminate their ideas and gain accessions to their ranks. Had they been so fortunate as to choose, not a more eloquent, but a less rash and more unimpassioned chief than the Abbé de Lamennais; had the noble minds, the brave hearts, the wondrous talent centred in those grouped around him belonged to men of riper years; had his adherents been less fiery and impatient, and less prejudiced against a new power which was still insecure on its foundation, but was imbued with the spirit of true liberty to such a degree that it imperilled its own existence every day to avoid attacking the rights of its adversaries, and thus overstep the limits of the law; had they understood what service their cause could have expected of that government on the sole condition of not demanding impossibilities, of not harassing and chiding it on all occasions, and of not aiding and abetting its destroyers; in a word, had the same talent, ardor, sincerity, and devotedness been coupled with greater experience, prudence, and practicability, perhaps, after thirty years had gone by, the great work of effecting a reconciliation between the church and the spirit of the age would be more thoroughly comprehended and approved than it is at present. The boldness of the opinions professed from the commencement by liberal Catholics increased the difficulty and rendered the problem more complicated. {282} Their enterprise would certainly not have been one of easy achievement had it even been reduced to the simplest form. Was it not enough to ensure the acceptance, by a majority of the clergy and of the faithful, of the definite results of the revolution, the for ever acquired rights of civil society the blessings of liberty as understood by the July government and by all truly free governments; of liberty based upon the sovereignty of the law, a respect for the rights of all, for the rights of the power as for those of the poorest citizen? By preaching to Catholics extreme liberalism, without either limits or guarantee, Utopian, absolute, aggressive, and revolutionary liberalism, such as was advocated by l'Avenir, the organ of the Abbé de Lamennais and his young friends, they compromised everything, put an end to all attempts at encouragement, terrified those whom they sought to convert, and furnished a pretext to the faithful, in the event of an opportunity being offered them, to throw themselves, out of prudential considerations, into the arms of the absolute power.

The same ardor that carried them, in politics, even to the practice of liberty unrestrained, led them, in religion, to the recognition of the principles of excessive obedience. They never dared dispense with the explicit approval of Rome; her silent consent was deemed insufficient. They ever sought to elicit a reply, notwithstanding the expectant reserve usually and most prudently maintained by the Holy See previous to passing judgment upon any new enterprise. They required a notice or a formal decision. With this object in view, they never hesitated to risk their all; they ceased not their endeavors until the Holy Father had sanctioned or disapproved their action. Then, after the sentence had gone forth, after such words of censure, as might have been anticipated, had been uttered, they were compelled, under pain of rendering themselves amenable to a charge of revolt, to submit, to bow their heads and abandon the field, to the great detriment of the cause in which they labored. Not only had they lost their authority over the minds of a certain portion of the faithful, as was seen when, a few years later, weary of inaction, they reentered the arena, but they had brought about another and greater misfortune: they had made the court of Rome enter, before the time had come, and without the slightest necessity for such a proceeding, upon the course that she now follows, kept to it by her own words. Is it not possible that, had she been questioned at a later day, in other terms and under other circumstances, her reply might have been different?

But it happens that we cannot but admit that, though since the beginning of this century Christianity has achieved in France great and true progress; though valiant adherents and illustrious champions have arisen; though it has recovered little by little a portion of its domains; though it has in certain respects extended the field of its conquests, one success is wanting, one victory has not been achieved, the work commenced in 1830 is still unfinished, the question is no nearer its solution, the entente cordiale is not yet established, and the treaty of peace between Christianity and the spirit of the times has not yet been concluded.

Some persons find consolation for this state of affairs: the attempt to remedy it has borne in their eyes a chimerical appearance, and they look upon the discord which most men would quell as most natural. {283} Has not this manner of war, they say, ever raged between the lay spirit and the religious spirit? Has not Christianity, since its infancy, been destined to blame and combat, century after century, the prevailing ideas and tastes; has not this been its part, its mission, and, it may be said, its glory? Why seek to change that which has always been? Christian faith is now, as ever, quite intolerant toward the age in which it thrives: do not interfere with events; it must be so. To these arguments we would answer by stating that, not to discriminate between two objects as distinct from each other as the spirit of the age which, to speak in general terms, is the worldly spirit, that train of never-changing passions and vices reappearing at all periods under slightly different forms—and the spirit of each age taken separately—that is to say, the uniformity of ideas, manners, and institutions which give to the society of each century its peculiar traits—is to quibble as to the significance of words and deal in mere equivocation. That Christianity is the natural, permanent, and necessary adversary of the worldly spirit and of the vices and passions of men; that it is such at all times, in all places, in the present as in the past; to assert that to give its followers a word of advice as to the adoption of innovations under any of these heads would be to mistake and forget its real reason to exist, is incontestable: but to affirm that its very character renders it incapable of adaptation to the spirit of such and such an epoch, and that it can only blame and oppose the ideas, tendencies, and laws of the days in which it lives, is to give to the testimony of history, to the most self-evident and authentic facts, a singular denial. Compare the latter centuries of the empire of the West and the first of the feudal ages: was the state of society, were the manners, customs, and institutions of those days the same? Could aught have been more dissimilar and contradictory? Yet, did not Christianity first uphold the empire until it crumbled into the dust, and subsequently aid most cheerfully and efficaciously in the establishment of the feudal power? Again, when the monarchical system gradually regained the ascendency and triumphed over feudal anarchy, did Christianity prove an obstacle to the movement? Did it offer any opposition to the change? Did it not submit to it with a good will? Did it not share the ideas, principles, and even the good fortune and greatness of royalty? What we now demand of it is, to do once more that which it has always done, to recognize without regret and without hostility a necessary and irrevocable change—a change in conformity with the nature of circumstances, and therefore legitimate; in a word, we call upon it to treat the modern spirit of the day as it has treated all other modern spirits that have successively appeared.

Why should a reconciliation be at present peculiarly difficult and embarrassing? Are thoughts of liberty foreign and unknown to Christianity? Has Christianity never acted in accordance with them? Have not those thoughts watched, rather, over the cradle of religion? Has not that system of elections, discussion, and censure which honors our modern spirit come forth from the very womb of the church? To make peace with liberty, to become suited to its rule, to understand and bless its gifts, does not imply the necessity of absolving it from its errors, approving its crimes, or making the slightest concession to disorder and anarchy. {284} Never mind, it will be said, do not mingle religion and party questions, do not inspire it with any interest in wrangles of such a kind. The more persistently Christianity stands aloof from the affairs of this world, the more solid will be the foundation of its power. With these views we cordially agree, and but recently dwelt upon their importance; but of however little moment politics or worldly affairs be to them, however deeply engrossed by prayer and good works, can the most religious mind and the clergy itself live on this earth in utter ignorance of events? To attack the vices, meannesses, and misdeeds of the time, must they not know them, and by their own knowledge? We ask of those pious souls who are most terrified by the coupling of the words liberalism and religion, do they complain because eloquent speakers denounce and stigmatize from the pulpit the wanderings of the spirit of modern times and the revolutionary delirium, those impious doctrines, the curse of families and society? If religion is to wage war upon civil liberty, ought it not to be authorized to allude to beneficial freedom? Ought it not to be encouraged to speak of it in kindly terms, to place it in the brightest light, to make us understand and cherish it? If not, what is Christianity, and what fate have you in store for it? Would you make of it but a puny doctrine, a privilege to be enjoyed by a few chosen ones only, the tardy and solitary consolation of those whom old age and grief separate from the world? If you seek nothing else of it, if it be sufficient for you to have it live just enough to prevent the recording of its death, like a ruin guarded by archaeology, and preserved and respected in its tottering condition, then keep it apart from the rising generation, from the flood of democracy; let it be isolated and grow old; let it seek a place of concealment, and there, contenting itself with the praises of the past, dwell in disdain of the present, lacking indulgence for all persons and things—chagrin, morose, and unpopular. But if, with a better understanding of its true destiny, you desire it to exercise a salutary influence not only upon yourselves and your friends, but upon all humanity; if you wish it to enter into the hearts of all your brothers, young and old, small and great—to inspire men with the spirit of justice and truth—to transform, purify, and regenerate them, let it speak to them in their own language; let it become interested in their ideas; let it suit itself to their peculiarities—not like a weak flatterer, but as a loving father, who takes unto himself his children and becomes a child for their sake, by sharing their tastes while correcting their errors, guarding them from the perils of life, and pointing out to them the narrow and straight paths of wisdom and truth.

New Publications.

Kathrina, Her Life And Mine, In A Poem.
By J. G. Holland. New York:
Charles Scribner & Co. 1867.

There can be little doubt that this is more than a commonplace poem. The narrative has a charming simplicity about it, and is happily told; the rhythm is smooth and graceful; and the language, with the exception of a rather too free use of words tortured into English from the Latin and German, both choice and appropriate. In a first perusal of it, which will not be our last, (for it is a book which will bear more than one reading,) two points in the narrative impressed us disagreeably—the revelation of his future career to the hero when but a child rambling over the mountains, and the suicide of his mother. These incidents were a part of the author's plan, and had to be told; but they are both forced and unnatural, the more apparently so because all other threads of romance which run through the story are closely woven in harmony with real life. Very many passages are marked by the truest pathos, with here and there touches of quiet humor worthy of a Dickens. There is a deeper moral lesson inculcated in this poem than we think will be appreciated or even perceived by the mass of Dr. Holland's readers; and we venture to predict that it will be either entirely overlooked, or made the subject of ridicule by the majority of the Protestant or rationalistic journals and reviews which may notice the volume. We say this boldly, because we know that it elucidates a doctrine entirely foreign to their experience, and is based upon principles of life asserted only by the Catholic religion. What the author has endeavored to bring out is nothing new in Catholic ascetic theology. It is the old cry of St. Augustine: "Inquietum est cor nostrum, Deus, donec requiescat in te." God is the supreme illumination of the soul, and the object of its highest aspirations. Life without God is a life of disquietude, of disgust, and disappointment. The hero is made to learn this truth through years of self-worship, of creature-worship, and of world-worship. His mind passes from ignorance to indifference, from that to scepticism, infidelity, despair. A true and sad picture of many noble souls who, in our age and country, grow up under the sterile influence of the spirit of naturalism, the revolt of reason without the guidance of faith against Protestantism. There is more than one who will read the story of his own life depicted in Dr. Holland's poem. Such will read it with more than an ordinary interest, and find, we trust, some glimpses of that hidden truth whose clear statement can only be found in the teachings of that religion which shows man his true destiny and has the mission to guide him to it.

We do not think the author is himself wholly aware of the ultimate logical consequences of the principles of life he has here developed. A study of Catholic ascetic theology, the perusal of a few books like the Imitation of Christ, Henry Suso's Eternal Wisdom, or Father Baker's Sancta Sophia would be, if we mistake not, a revelation to him. In conclusion, we cannot refrain from quoting one of those passages which confirm the truth of the impressions we have received and the reflections we have made. The hero, chagrined with the disappointments of his career, finding the idols he has worshipped turned to clay, deprived of all human consolation, disgusted with the hollowness and unreality of his sceptical life, at last turns to Him whom he had shunned, and yields his soul to that higher will whose inspirations he had all his life long so vainly rebelled against.

        "Then the impulse came,
  And I poured out like water all my heart.
  'O God!' I said, 'be merciful to me
  A reprobate! I have blasphemed thy name,
  Abused thy patient love, and held from thee
  My heart and life; and now, in my extreme
  Of need and of despair, I come to thee.
  Oh! cast me not away, for here, at last,
  After a life of selfishness and sin,
  I yield my will to thine, and pledge my soul—
  All that I am, all I can ever be—
  Supremely to thy service. I renounce
  All worldly aims, all selfish enterprise,
  And dedicate the remnant of my power
  To thee and those thou lovest. Comfort me!
  Oh! come and comfort me, for I despair!
  Give me thy peace, for I am rent and tossed!
  Feed me with love, else I shall die of want!
  Behold! I empty out my worthlessness,
  And beg thee to come in, and fill my soul
  With thy rich presence. I adore thy love;
  I seek for thy approval; I bow down
  And worship thee, the Excellence Supreme.
  I've tasted of the sweetest that the world
  Can give to me; and human love and praise,
  And all of excellence within the scope
  Of my conception, and my power to reach
  And realize in highest forms of art,
  Have left me hungry, thirsty for thyself.
  Oh! feed and fire me! Fill and furnish me!
  And, if thou hast for me some humble task—
  Some service for thyself, or for thy own—
  Reveal it to thy sad, repentant child,
  Or use him as thy willing instrument.
  I ask it for the sake of Jesus Christ,
  Henceforth my Master!'"

This beautiful prayer is the true climax of the poem. There is not a word in it we could wish to see suppressed or a sentiment altered. There are deep truths written in those few lines, well put and timely uttered in a worldly-minded age like ours.

We observe the work placarded about the city as "Timothy Titcomb's last poem." We are glad to see that this paltry nom de plume does not deface the title-page of the publication.

The Votary. A Narrative Poem.
By James D. Hewett.
New York: G. W. Carleton & Co. 1867.

"Great wits jump." This poem of Mr. Hewett is like Dr. Holland's Kathrina—the story of a false and disappointed ambition. The hero, Rudiger, loves Sybilla, goes forth to seek a famous name, sacrifices his honor to the greed of ambition by forgetting his first vows, and espousing Adelaide, the daughter of an influential and rich politician. His wife, discovering his infidelity to Sybilla and his subsequent remorse, becomes jealous, charges him with having buried his heart in the grave, (for Sybilla died of grief,) but offers to receive him back to her affections if he can say his love is now wholly hers. This, unfortunately, he cannot honestly do, and flies from his home for ever, betaking himself to some religious brotherhood, there to do penance, and labor, preach, and pray for a purpose which, to judge from the sensual character of the entire poem, is too vaguely described to allow us to be quite sure what is meant:

"He fathomed now the mighty truth that Love— Love, the sole axis on which earth is swung— Is the prime essence of the Deity, And Intellect subservient to Love: And that true glory is to serve, and bleed, If need be, in Love's blessed cause."

  "To teach all men the everlasting truth,
   The blest, eternal truth of perfect Love,
   I will go forth. I'll preach it far and wide.
   To earth's last threshold will I pierce my way,
   And speak to all the dwellers there of Love."

  "Henceforth to Love my life I dedicate—
   God's love, including every human phase."

This would do if we were not so painfully impressed by the perusal of the whole poem, that the author's highest idea of love is a sort of deification of the sensual. Being false to his troth to Sybilla he calls "losing love's divine repast," in the very line preceding our last quotation above. We do not like the book. Its moral tone is not healthy. The poem is, however, full of rich imagery, and evidences no little dramatic power; but the rhythm is not always faultless, such words as "of" and "the" frequently forming the last syllable of the verse, and couplets like the following are not uncommon:

  "With fitful step, across a verdurous lawn
   Close venueing a dwelling, paced a youth."

Happily, we think, for the strength of our language, we are becoming every day less and less tolerant of these attempts to foist foreign words upon it.

Uberto; or, The Errors of the Heart.
A Drama in Five Acts.
By Frank Middleton. New York. 1867.

The writing of a drama is reckoned a bold project, for there is scarce any sort of literary production apt to meet with severer treatment at the hands of critics. The present one, however, possesses merit enough to command their respect, if it does not win their praise. The plot is well conceived, and the characters sustained and combined with more than ordinary ability. The speeches are, however, rather too lengthy, and become in many places prosy. The little comedy introduced, of the loves of Bellamori and Bonita, detracts considerably from the merit of the tragedy, and is forced upon our notice, most unseasonably, in the preparation for the final tableau.

History Of Blessed Margaret Mary, a Religious of the Visitation of St. Mary; and of the Origin of Devotion to the Heart of Jesus.

By Father Ch. Daniel, SJ.
Translated by the authoress of the Life of Catharine McAuley.
New York: P. O'Shea.

The subject of this memoir is celebrated in church history and in Catholic theology. In church history she was the instrument chosen by God to introduce a new feast, to render public and obligatory in worship what had been merely a matter of private and voluntary devotion, and against which for years all the learning and determination of Jansenism unsuccessfully battled. In Catholic theology she was the means developing another branch of divine truth and asceticism. She popularized the Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, made devotion to it the characteristic of one religious order of women; and its name become the title of another. Margaret Mary Alacoque is the apostle of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

She was a young girl, who, led by the power of grace, entered the Visitation Order, sanctified her soul, fulfilled the mission appointed for her by God, died a saint, and after death was beatified by the church.

The history before us tells admirably the story of her life. It is an agreeable narrative, full of edification, of pleasant anecdotes, and interesting details.

The best biographies in the world are those of the saints. They not only give us information, but they make us better It is impossible to read the life of one devoted to God's service, full of the spirit of Christian love and sacrifice, without being stirred up to imitate, in some degree, the example set before us. The world has its heroes, it is true, and makes the most of them; but religion has hers also, and it is not surprising if she does the same; the less so, as those whom she exalts and honors are in every respect so much the more worthy of our admiration and reverence.

He does a positive good to humanity, therefore, who calls attention to the life and deeds of the Christian hero. That was a good answer of the holy father. "I am complained of," said he, "for canonizing so many saints; but it is a fault I cannot promise to amend. Have we not more need than ever of intercessors in heaven, and models of religious virtue in the world?"

The style of the translation of the present memoir does not please us. It bears signs of haste and literary carelessness. Whatever may be the character of the original French of Father Daniel, the English of this is verbose, weak, and tiresome. It makes the book larger, it is true, to use twice as many words as are needful, and to select the longest words of the dictionary to say what one wants to say; and we may add, it makes it heavier, too. It is a common fault of religious biographies. Neither is the style of the publication praiseworthy. Its typography is close and heavy, and presents anything but an inviting page. If this book were read to us, we should go to sleep; and if we were to read it through ourselves without giving our eyes frequent repose, we should seriously damage our eye-sight.

Nevertheless, it is a good book; it is written on a good subject, and will do good; and as such our thanks are due to both translator and publisher, whose efforts toward the formation of a Catholic literature and the fostering of Catholic piety in the reproduction of works like the present will not fail of earning a higher reward than any amount of commendation on our part is worth.

The Battle-fields of Ireland, From 1688 to 1691, including Limerick and Athlone, Aughrim, and the Boyne. Being an outline of the History of the Jacobite Wars in Ireland and the Causes which led to it. 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 323. New York: Robert Coddington. 1867.

Those who wish to read that portion of the sad record of Ireland's checkered history which led to its subjugation to the Prince of Orange will find this volume sadly interesting. Like all of Ireland's history since the advent of Strongbow and his robbers, it presents the usual amount of blunders, mistakes, jealousies, and treachery on the part of those who should have been faithful to their country. This epoch in Ireland's history has been familiar to us since boyhood, and we think the author has done his part of the work faithfully and honestly. His description of the battles of the Boyne and of Aughrim are concise and in the main correct; but we think he overestimates William's army in the first-mentioned battle. His assertion, in a note on page 304, that the doggerel, known as the "Battle of Aughrim," was written by Garrick, is an error. It was the production of Richard Ashton, an Englishman.

The Life Of St. Aloysius Gonzaga, of the Company of Jesus. Philadelphia: Peter F. Cunningham. 1867.

The republication of the English edition of this life will meet, we are sure, with universal and hearty commendation. Such a book as this is one for all Catholic parents to present to their children, that they may learn how one may become a saint even in youth. Reading the lives of such holy young men as a St. Aloysius or a St. Stanislaus Kostka, our memory goes back to the friends of our own youth, when they with ourself thought it necessary to wait until we grew to be men before we could "get religion." We advise our readers to do what we would wish to do ourself—give a copy of this book to every Protestant young man of their acquaintance. The perusal of it will show them how a Catholic boy gets religion when he is baptized a Christian, and may possess religion in its perfection and be a saint at an age when a Protestant boy is not expected to have any religion at all.

Little Pet Books.
By Aunt Fanny.
Containing Books 1, 2, and 3.
New York: James O'Kane, 484 Broadway.

These little books are the best ones with which we are acquainted for children. They contain pleasing stories, written in plain, small words, not more than five letters to each word—a difficult task, but one which the gifted authoress has accomplished in a most satisfactory manner. The illustrations are good, and the books are printed on good paper, bound in good style, and put up in a neat box, making the set one of the best presents that one could give, of this kind of books, to a child.

Life of Lafayette, written for children,
by E. Cecil, 218 pages, 12mo.

The Bears of Angustenburg, an Episode in Saxon History,
by Gustave Nieritz;
translated by Trauermantel;
251 pages, 12mo.

Hurrah for the Holidays,
or The Pleasures and Pains of Freedom;
translated from the German;
220 pages, 12mo.

Nannie's Jewel Case, or True Stories and False;
Tales translated from the German by Trauermantel;
223 pages, 12mo.

Well Begun is Half Done,
or The Young Painter and Fiddlehanns;
Tales translated from the German of
Richard Baron and Dr. C. Deutsch;
246 pages, 12mo. Price, $1.25 each.

The Book of Oratory, compiled for the use of Colleges, Academies, and the High Classes of Select Schools.
By a member of the Order of the Holy Cross,
1 vol. 12mo, pp. 648.

An Essay on Man, by Alexander Pope, and The Gospel among the Animals,
by Samuel Osgood, D.D. Paper.

The Catholic World.

Vol. VI., No. 33.—December, 1867.

The Third Catholic Congress Of Malines.

The ancient city of Malines, which has once more been the seat of one of those remarkable Catholic congresses already described in our pages, is well worthy of the distinguished honor conferred upon it by these illustrious assemblages. A few words of description will not, therefore, be amiss, as introductory to our sketch of the proceedings of the congress of last September.

The province of South Brabant, in which the city of Malines, or, as it is called in Flemish, Mechelen, is situated, has had a most varied and eventful history. Having originally formed a part of the province of Belgic Gaul, under the Roman empire, it was successively included in the domains of the Frankish and Austrasian kingdoms, and of the duchy of Lorraine. In the year 1005, Brabant, including North Brabant which is now a province of Holland as well as the Belgian province of South Brabant, was erected into a duchy. Godfrey of Bouillon was one of its dukes. Its independence ceased in 1429, when it was annexed to Burgundy. In 1484 it passed under the dominion of the emperor of Germany, at the death of Charles V. was transferred to Spain, again reverted to Germany at the beginning of the eighteenth century, was annexed by conquest to France in 1794, taken from France and annexed to Holland by the Congress of Vienna, and finally, by the revolution of 1830, became a portion of the new kingdom of Belgium, to which we wish perpetuity and prosperity with our whole heart.

South Brabant covers an area of 1269 square miles, containing a population of about 750,000. It is a flat, well-wooded country, crowded with beautiful towns and villages, intersected by several rivers and canals, cultivated throughout like a garden, and alive with thrift and industry. The city of Malines is at the point of intersection of the principal Belgian railways, about fifteen miles from Brussels, and at the same distance from Antwerp and Louvain. The river Dyle partly encircles and partly intersects the city, affording pleasant walks, well shaded, on the outskirts, and creating some most picturesque scenes within the town, by winding among some of the streets, whose residences and warehouses front upon the river. {290} The railway depots have been kept, by the city authorities, on a remote outskirt of the town, so that its quiet and antique streets are not disturbed by the noise and bustle of the trains. Nor are they disturbed by any other kind of noise or bustle. Whatever business is done there seems to be out of sight and hearing. It is the most quiet, tranquil, and clean city that can possibly be imagined. In the centre is a great public square, upon which are situated the cathedral, the headquarters of administration, the military barracks, located in a very antique and picturesque building, the museum, and two hotels, as well as numerous shops and houses. In the centre of the square stands a statue of Margaret of Austria. The city contains a population of 33,000. The streets are wide and regular, but winding. Nearly all the buildings are white, being either constructed of white stone, or covered with a very fine and durable white stucco. Among them are numerous residences of great comfort and elegance, some of them really palatial, although their exterior surface is perfectly plain and simple, without porches, balconies, or grand entrances, to relieve their monotonous smoothness, or break up the continuity of white wall which gives Malines the appearance of a city of mural monuments. The great metropolitan cathedral of St. Rumbold, in the Grand Place, presents, however, a striking contrast to this general effect of uniform and brilliant whiteness, by its vast mass of dark stone and its immense unfinished tower, 340 feet high, which domineers in dark, sombre grandeur over the city. Returning on the Saturday night before the congress to Malines, from Ostend, in company with a friend who has travelled throughout all Europe and seen all its finest churches, we were particularly impressed by the great beauty of the picture presented by the Grand Place and the cathedral in a very clear moonlight and our friend remarked that he never saw anything more grand than the view of the vast, dark cathedral, overshadowing the white walls of the adjacent buildings, and towering above them in strong relief against their moon-bright surfaces. Notwithstanding the sneers of M. Baedeker, the cathedral of Malines is a truly grand and imposing church. It was commenced in the twelfth and completed in the fifteenth century; the tower, which is slowly growing upward toward its proposed height of 480 feet, was commenced in 1452, with the aid of contributions from the pilgrims who resorted there to gain the indulgences of the crusade, granted by Nicholas V. The patron saint of the cathedral, called in French St. Rombaut, in Flemish St. Rumbold, and in English St. Rumold, was the first apostle of Brabant. He is supposed by many writers to have been an Irishman, although others think that he was an Englishman. Not being able to form any opinion of our own on this point, we will take leave to quote what Alban Butler says on the subject:

"The place of St. Rumold's birth is contested. According to certain Belgic and other martyrologies, he was of the blood royal of Scotland (as Ireland was then called) and Bishop of Dublin. This opinion is ably supported by F. Hugh Ward, an Irish Franciscan, a man well skilled in the antiquities of his country, in a work entitled Dissertatio Historica de vitâ et patriâ, S. Rumoldi, Archiepiscopi Dubliniensis, published at Louvain, in 1662, in 4to. The learned Pope Benedict XIV. seems to adjudge St. Rumold to Ireland, in his letters to the prelates of that kingdom, dated the 1st of August, 1741, wherein are the following words: 'If we were disposed to recount those most holy men, Columbanus, Kilianus, Virgilius, Rumoldus, Gallus, and many others who brought the Catholic faith out of Ireland into other provinces, or illustrated by shedding the blood of martyrdom.' (Hib. Dom. Suppl. p. 831.) On the other hand, Janning, the Bollandist, undertakes to prove that St. Rumold was an English Saxon." [Footnote 45]

Whether St. Rumold was Irish or English, at all events his reputation as an Irish saint obtained for us the pleasure of having two very agreeable priests from Ireland to dine with us one Sunday afternoon, who had stopped en route for Aix-la-Chapelle in order to visit the cathedral.

St. Rumold, after spending the earlier part of his life in a monastery, went to Rome in order to receive the apostolic blessing of the pope and authority to preach the faith in the then heathen country of Lower Germany. He was consecrated bishop at some period of his missionary life, when we are not informed, and converted a great number of the people of Brabant. He was assassinated by some wicked men whose crimes he had reproved, on the 24th of June, 775, and is therefore honored as a martyr. A church was built to honor his memory and receive his relics at Malines, and these are still preserved and venerated in the present cathedral, the successor of the original church of St. Rumbold. The church of Malines was made a metropolitan see by Paul IV., and is now the primatial see of Belgium, including Brussels within its diocesan limits. In more recent times, the archbishops have usually been raised to the dignity of cardinals. The Cardinal de Frankenberg, who governed the see in the reign of Joseph II., distinguished himself by his firm opposition to the anti-catholic policy of that emperor. Cardinal de Mean, who died in 1831, and has a beautiful monument in the cathedral, has left behind him the reputation of an intrepid and valiant defender of the rights of the church in most difficult and dangerous times. Cardinal de Sterckx is the present Archbishop of Malines, a prelate advanced in years, but still retaining the full vigor of mind and body, and universally beloved for his patriarchal benignity and mildness of character, as was evident by the genuine and heartfelt warmth of the expressions of attachment which greeted his presence at the congress.

The chapter consists of twenty-two resident canons, who chant the entire office with great solemnity every day. The interior of the cathedral is imposing, and contains some fine pictures, especially a Crucifixion by Vandyke, a Last Supper by Wouters, and other paintings by Flemish masters. The chimes of the cathedral tower, which are unusually melodious and joyous in their tone, ring at the striking of the hours and half-hours, and on many other occasions, especially on festivals and their eves, when they are rung almost without cessation during the greater part of the day, with a very festive and enlivening effect.

There are eight or ten other churches, some of them very large and of imposing architecture, the most remarkable of which is the church of Notre Dame d'Hanswyck, on the outskirts of the city, containing a picture by Rubens of the miraculous draught of fishes. St. John's church has a picture of the Adoration of the Magi, and several smaller pictures, all by Rubens, forming an altar-piece with wings on the high altar. {292} St. Peter's was formerly the Jesuits' church, and some adjacent buildings were once used as a novitiate. Here the B. John Berchmans, whose picture is in the church, lived for a time; and here are still memorials of the noble order so unjustly expelled from their peaceful home, in a beautiful marble statue of St. Francis Xavier placed in a recumbent position under the high altar, and in a series of large paintings on the side walls representing scenes in the life of the saint. The carved work of the pulpit and the confessionals in this church is remarkably fine, and in general this is the case throughout Belgium.

There is a large and commodious grand seminary at Malines, a little seminary, which is on a corresponding scale of completeness and extent, and a college. There are several religious communities of men and women, and, under the care of one of the latter, a very extensive and well-built hospital of recent construction.

The motto of the city, In fide constans, was conferred upon it two centuries and a half ago by one of the emperors of Germany, and is still appropriate, notwithstanding the strenuous and in part successful efforts of the anti-catholic party to seduce the population from their fidelity to the church. Malines is still one of the most thoroughly and openly Catholic cities of Europe. It would be impossible to find more intelligent, courageous, warm-hearted, or devout Catholics than are found in great numbers among the nobility and higher classes. A large proportion of the people are also, as indeed throughout Belgium, especially in the country places, sincerely attached to their religion and in the habit of complying with its duties. Nevertheless, even in Malines that infidel clique calling itself the liberal party, which has the control of the administration, is able to influence a sufficiently large number of the voters to carry all the elections. We were informed by intelligent gentlemen of Malines that this is due in great measure to the official patronage in connection with the railway system, which is a state affair, and places a great number of appointments in the hands of the government. A large class are also excluded from voting in Belgium by the peculiar law of property qualification. The keepers of estaminets, as the drinking-shops are called, are also there as here a very numerous class, and possessed of great influence in politics, all of which is on the side of the pseudo-liberals.

The liberal party is undoubtedly thoroughly anti-catholic and infidel in its principles and aims. Nevertheless, as the devil knows better than to send up his carte-de-visite with his name and likeness on it, the leaders of that party are adroit and plausible enough to carry with them not only the portion of the people which is corrupt, but also a number of good and well-meaning Catholics, as well as a large number of those who are apathetic and indifferent. All the bad Catholics are liberals, we were told, but not all the liberals are bad Catholics. It is a great disgrace, however, to such an ancient and Catholic city as Malines, that the anti-catholic party should rule it, and we hope the stain on its escutcheon may ere long be wiped off.

On the Sunday morning before the opening of the congress, it was difficult to imagine that anything of the sort was at hand. Everything looked as quiet as usual, and there were no visible signs of any great influx of strangers. All at once, however, the congress came, like the sun bursting suddenly in its full splendor out of a cloud. {293} The preparations had been made quietly but efficiently, and during the latter part of Sunday afternoon one became aware all at once of something going on. The city appeared to become full at once, as if by magic, of a thousand or more of clergymen and lay gentlemen from various parts of Belgium, France, and other countries of the world, and even a few adventurous ladies made their appearance at the tables d' hôte of the hotels. The central bureau of the congress held its preliminary session on Sunday afternoon, and during the ceremony of tea, at our hotel on the Grand Place, M. Ducpetiaux, the founder, the prime mover, and the secretary-general of the congress, made his appearance, with various red and blue tickets and printed programmes in his pockets, which indicated that the ball was about to open.

Under the guidance of this experienced pilot, we put out into the hitherto unknown sea of congressional life, by crossing the Grand Place toward the cathedral, to take part in a reunion given by an association of young men, called "The Circle of Loyalty." As we approached the place of meeting, the first object which greeted our eyes was a brilliant, semicircular jet of gas over the arched entrance to a garden enclosed by a high wall, forming the words, "Cercle Catholique." A crowd of juvenile Flamanders with their broad backs and good-humored countenances, watched, and chatted, and peeped about the outside, as is always the case with the boys of all countries whenever there are great doings going on from which they are excluded. Inside the gate, which was vigilantly guarded by well-dressed young men clothed with the usual badges of office, we found ourselves in the midst of a garden filled with a gay and talkative crowd of priests in various sorts of ecclesiastical costumes, and of gentlemen of all ages and many countries, all making themselves as social and happy as possible. Passing through the garden, we were ushered into the large and commodious building which forms the hall of the association, and which was also filled with the members of the circle and of the congress from top to bottom. In the first room we entered, we found the president of the circle, M. Cannart d'Hamalle, one of the principal gentlemen of Malines, and a member of the Belgian senate, in full evening dress, receiving the members as they arrived, with that courtly and at the same time cordial politeness in which the Belgians excel all others. From the lower apartments of the hall we were soon summoned to the audience-room above, where speeches were made and applauded con amore, and a musical entertainment given by a choir and orchestra, consisting of Belgian national hymns, the hymn of Pius IX., and concluding with an exquisite morceau on the violoncello by a young artist of merit, which was vehemently applauded. These social reunions were continued without the formalities every evening during the week.

The congress was opened on the next morning. The place of meeting was the little seminary, situated on the outskirts of the city, near the boulevard which skirts the banks of the river Dyle. The grounds and buildings of the seminary are extremely convenient for the purpose. The buildings are extensive, and, together with the high wall connecting them, enclose a large, quadrangular space. Within this space the members of the congress assembled at an early hour on Monday. {294} The entrances were guarded by young men of the Circle of Loyalty, who formed a body of volunteer police and commissariat during the sessions of the congress, performing their duties in such a manner as to receive well-merited eulogiums approved by the entire assembly, the most eloquent and delicate of which came from the lips of the Count de Falloux. The illustrious statesman and orator, with that felicity and charming grace of manner and expression which are his peculiar characteristics, uttered the sentiment, during one of his speeches, that the array of Catholic youth in attendance upon the congress was its most beautiful and attractive feature, and seemed, as it were, like a little legion of Stanislas Kostkas.

In the enclosure of the seminary, everything was arranged which could facilitate the business of the congress or promote the comfort and convenience of its members. A post-office, booths for the sale of newspapers and for writing letters, a restaurant where refreshments could be obtained at all hours, and where a dinner was provided every day, with other similar conveniences, were established on the premises. The assembly-room was a large exhibition hall, tastefully decorated with the busts of the pope and king, the flags of various nations, and appropriate mottoes. All the members of the congress were furnished with a ticket of membership; no other persons being admitted within the enclosure, except a few ladies, for whom seats were reserved. Special tickets for reserved places and the platform were given to the foreign members and others specially privileged. The number of members in attendance during the week was about three thousand, a large proportion of whom were assembled at the place of rendezvous on Monday morning, the majority being clergymen dressed in the various ecclesiastical costumes of Belgium, France, and Germany, with a sprinkling of the picturesque habits of the old religious orders. At the appointed hour, all moved in a procession, not remarkably well ordered, but very dignified and respectable in appearance, to the cathedral, through a double hedge of citizens lining the streets, by a pretty long route, along which many of the houses and shops were decorated with banners, armorial bearings, and other ornaments of a festal and welcoming nature. After the arrival of the procession, pontifical Mass was celebrated by the cardinal, a number of Belgian and foreign bishops and prelates assisting, and the procession returned once more to the seminary, where the opening session was held.

The cardinal, who is always the honorary president of the congress, on his arrival at the hall of assemblage, assumed the chair amid loud cheers and vivas, and, after pronouncing a short prayer, delivered a brief and paternal allocution. At the close of his allocution, he descended from the platform to a chair in front of it, near which were placed chairs for the prelates. Among the foreign bishops assisting at the congress were the Patriarch of Antioch, the Archbishop of Bosra, Vicar-Apostolic of Bengal, the Vicar-Apostolic of Alexandria, the Archbishop of Rio Grande in Brazil, the Bishop of Vancouver, the Bishops of Natchez and Charleston, U. S., and Chatham, N. S.; Mgr. de Merode was also present during the early part of the session. Mgr. Dupanloup, Père Hyacinthe, and the Count de Falloux came by special invitation as the great orators of the congress. A few clergymen and gentlemen from Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Holland, and America, a moderately large number from France, and some scattering individuals from almost everywhere, representing, it was said, eighteen different nations, made up the foreign element of the congress. {295} Among the more distinguished foreign members of the congress, were Mgr. Kubinski, rector of the seminary of Pesth, in Hungary; Mgr. Woodlock, rector of the Catholic university of Dublin; F. Formby, of England; Mgr. Sacré, rector of the Belgian College in Rome; Baron de Bach, formerly Austrian ambassador at Rome; Chevalier Alberi of Florence; Viscount de la Fuente, professor of canon law in the University of Madrid; Don Manè y Flaquer, an eminent Spanish publicist; Count Cieszkowski, of Poland; the Abbé Brouwers, editor of the Tyd, of Amsterdam, etc. The strangers were treated with marked distinction and the most cordial kindness by their Belgian confrères. Nevertheless, apart from the brilliant orators from abroad, whose eloquence was chiefly directed to an object identical with the special and local purposes of the active members of the congress, the international character of the assembly was much less marked than in former years. England had but one representative, F. Formby, and other European countries were not strongly represented, with the single exception of France. Germany had its own congress a week after the one at Malines; and it appears probable that the Catholic congresses will become hereafter more and more exclusively national, occupied with local affairs of practical necessity, and having less of the character of international réunions. The Baron della Faille, in an article published in La Revue Generale, seems, however, to regret this tendency, and to desire that the congress should become more of an international reunion. The late congress was especially marked by this practical and business-like character, and, if it fell behind the former ones somewhat in numbers and éclat, was probably increased in practical utility by this very circumstance. This is precisely the view taken in the Compte-Rendu of the congress published in Le Catholique of Brussels:

"Its labors went more directly to their object, had something about them stronger and better developed, and a more practical character. The accessory aspects occupied a smaller space. Eloquence, even—we speak of the eloquence of words, not of realities—played a lesser rôle. We may say that rhetorical display scarcely appeared at all, and that there was a decided preference for the reality of ideas and facts. Read the details of the general sessions and of the sections. You will see there fewer speeches for effect, but more that give information and instruction. The congress meddled little with speculations, properly so-called; it did not set forth any religious or political metaphysics; it proceeded to its end by the shortest and surest routes. The rights of the church, its necessities, the liberty which it needs, its perils and trials in various countries, the organization and results of pious undertakings, the means of propagating them, the precise and urgent duties of Catholics in respect to religion, such were the matters principally discussed."

It may be well to state also, in this connection, that purely political discussions were prohibited in the congress, and strictly excluded from its deliberations.

The Cardinal Archbishop of Malines, as we have said, is always the honorary president of the congress, and it is by him that the sessions are solemnly opened and closed. The active presidency is confided to some distinguished Belgian nobleman, and this high office has been hitherto filled by the Baron de Gerlache, a statesman and patriot of one of the most illustrious families of the kingdom, who was the president of the national congress by which the constitution was established, and until of late the chief judge of the court of cassation. {296} The Baron de Gerlache having resigned the office of president of the Catholic congress on account of his advanced age and infirmities, he was associated with the cardinal as honorary president, in order to testify the gratitude and veneration of the Catholics of Belgium for his illustrious career of public service; and the office of active president was left vacant. Its duties were performed with great dignity and ability by the first vice-president, Baron Hippolyte della Faille, a senator and leading Catholic statesman. The other vice-presidents were Viscount Kerckhove, Mgr. Laforet, rector magnificus of the University of Louvain, Viscount Dubus de Gisignies, senator, and Count de Theux, honorary vice-president, to whom were added as honorary vice-presidents the Count de Falloux and a number of the other foreigners present. The central bureau, which is a supreme council of management, was composed of the active vice-presidents, M. Ducpetiaux, secretary-general, with four other secretaries and a treasurer, and ten other gentlemen of distinguished rank and character, three of whom are clergymen and seven laymen. The presidents of the sections were Count Legrelle, Canon de Haerne, Mgr. Laforet, Viscount Dubus de Gisignies, and M. Dechamps, with a number of vice-presidents and secretaries. About fifty or sixty clergymen and lay-gentlemen of rank are thus placed at the head of the congress as members of the central and subordinate bureaux, constituting really the working congress. The great mass of the members, the majority of whom are clergymen of Belgium, constitute the audience, and cooperate chiefly by their presence and sympathy, although any member is at liberty to attend any section and gain a hearing for himself, if he has anything to propose to the attention of his colleagues. The measures to be proposed are initiated by the central bureau, sent down to the appropriate section for discussion and preparation, and, after approbation by the central bureau, laid before the congress for their ratification, which is usually given without further discussion, either by acclamation or by a formal vote. The real business meetings are consequently those of the bureaux and sections, the general sessions being devoted to hearing speeches, addresses, and reports. The sections meet during the morning, the members attending any of them they may choose. They are five in number. The first section is occupied with works of Catholic piety, the second with social science and works of general public improvement, the third with education, the fourth with Christian art, and the fifth with the Catholic press.

The general sessions are held during the afternoon, and at the last congress one of the evenings was devoted to a musical entertainment; another to a fête, given by the city, in the Botanical Garden; and the others were spent, by many of the members, in social conversation at the Catholic circle.

Before we give a résumé of the proceedings of these sectional and general sessions of the late congress, it may be well to state the reasons, objects, and guiding principles in view of which the assemblage of these congresses at Malines has been inaugurated and carried on. A great deal has been already published in our former numbers upon this topic; but as our readers may have forgotten it, and not care to look it up afresh, we think it will enable them to appreciate the proceedings of the congress we are describing more thoroughly, if we furnish them the substance anew in a brief and summary manner. {297} In making this explanation, we shall be guided by the published and official statements of His Eminence the Cardinal de Sterckx, the Baron de Gerlache, and M. Ducpetiaux, which are to be found in the authentic documents of the first congress.

The necessity of the times which induced the leading Catholics of Belgium to conceive and execute the plan of convoking a general assembly of the clergy and laity of the kingdom, under the auspices of their primate and bishops, was the peculiar condition of the Catholic Church in relation to the civil administration of the state. The revolution of 1830, which severed Belgium from Holland and made it an independent kingdom, was accomplished by the concurrence of the Catholic majority of the nobility and people with the smaller but more active and enterprising liberal party who were the originators of the movement. By a similar concurrence and compromise between these two totally different elements, a constitution was formed on principles of very enlarged civil and religious liberty, and a Protestant prince, Leopold I., was called to the throne. The late king is usually spoken of by Catholics as a monarch of honorable and upright character, who endeavored to fulfil the duties entrusted to him in a just and impartial manner. Nevertheless, it is quite true that the position of affairs with a Protestant sovereign at the head of a Catholic people was an anomalous one, most unfavorable to the interests of the church and affording the greatest facilities to the so-called liberals to obtain a predominant influence in the state. The Catholic nobility and gentry, whose position, intelligence, and wealth made them the most capable of taking the principal part in directing political affairs, seem to have been too apathetic, and to have confided too much in the sincerity, loyalty, and good faith of the opposite party. The consequence was, that this party was allowed to get the control into its own hands, and enabled to secure an amount of influence over the people, who are fundamentally good, but too apathetic to their own highest interests, which has proved very dangerous, and has threatened to prove very disastrous, to religion. The accusation publicly made against this party by the gravest and most high-minded statesmen of Belgium is, that it has pursued an unremittingly perfidious policy in direct violation of the constitution, the end of which is to deprive the Catholic Church of that liberty and those rights solemnly guaranteed to it by the fundamental law of the realm, and, as far as possible, to decatholicize and unchristianize the people. The Catholic congress was called together and organized in order to unite the most influential laymen of the kingdom with the leading members of the clerical order, to take counsel together and adopt measures for counteracting this anti-catholic, infidel policy of the pseudo-liberal party. The honor of originating this glorious and happy enterprise, and of doing more than any other individual to promote its success, is ascribed by unanimous consent to M. Edouard Ducpetiaux, of Brussels, a gentleman whose name deserves to be enrolled with those of the most illustrious benefactors of his country. {298} M. Ducpetiaux is a gentleman of wealth and high education, the author of some valuable works on social science, a corresponding member of the French Institute, and was formerly inspector-general of the prisons and public charitable institutions of Belgium. It is impossible to find in the world a man more genial, kind-hearted, unassuming, and energetic in prosecuting every benevolent work or one more enthusiastically beloved by those who are associated with him in the noble cause of promoting the Catholic faith in Belgium and Europe. Happily for the interests of religion in this ancient Catholic country, a number of other gentlemen of the highest standing and the most thorough Catholic loyalty cooperated with him in his great undertaking. The wise, generous, and unfaltering patronage and support of the venerable primate of Belgium, the Cardinal Archbishop of Malines, crowned it with that sanction and imparted to it that spirit of union with the Holy Roman Church and the hierarchy, which are the guarantee of its genuine Catholicity and the vital principle of its activity. The congress was intended to serve as an instrument for thwarting the destructive policy of the infidel party by combining together those zealous and loyal Catholics who, in their isolation and separation, were in danger of losing courage; revealing to them their real strength, animating their faith and ardor by able and eloquent addresses from the most illustrious champions of the church, concerting and taking means to carry out all kinds of measures for preserving and extending a Catholic spirit among the people. The more precise and definite objects to be aimed at were, to win for the church the full and perfect possession of her liberty and other divine rights, to promote the cause of Catholic education, to make known and give new impetus to all kinds of religious and charitable works and associations already existing, as well as to found new ones; to provide for the publication of books, tracts, magazines, and newspapers devoted to the sound and wholesome instruction of the people; to preserve, restore, and augment the treasures of religious art; and to work for social reform by alleviating the burdens, miseries, and privations of the laboring classes. The special reason for calling a congress for these purposes was, in order that the nobility and other influential classes of the laity might be brought into direct and immediate cooperation with the clergy for promoting and defending the sacred cause of religion. The words of the Most Eminent Cardinal de Sterckx carry with them such a weight of authority and wisdom on this head, not only on account of his position as primate of the Belgian hierarchy, but also from the still higher rank which he holds as a prince of the Roman Church, and from the fact that he has spoken and acted throughout after seeking counsel and direction from the Holy Father, as well as from his own high personal character, that we will make a citation of them from his allocution at the opening of the first congress:

"It is true, gentlemen, that the government of the church belongs to the clergy; it is true that it is to the sovereign pontiff, to the bishops, and to the priests that the deposit of faith and the care of souls has been confided. It is to them that the divine Founder of the church has said: 'Go, teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.' It is to them that He has said: 'You are the light of the world, you are the salt of the earth.' Nevertheless, the Christian laity are also called to contribute to the propagation of the gospel, to sustain and defend the church of God. {299} By baptism they have become the children of the church, and they are bound to take to heart the interests of their mother; by confirmation they have become soldiers of the church, and they are bound to defend her against the attacks of her enemies. It is, moreover, by the practice of good works that we are all obliged, both ecclesiastics and laymen, to secure our salvation. 'Strive,' says the prince of apostles to all Christians without distinction, 'strive to secure your vocation and election by the practice of good works.'

"But, if such is the duty of the laity, they ought to concert together in order to fulfil it with zeal and perseverance; they ought to combine and form associations; they ought to confer together, in order to plan the means of doing with more certainty and success that which they could only do in a very incomplete manner if they were abandoned to their own individual capacities."

We add one more sentence from the same allocution, which manifests the genuine and large-minded liberality of sentiment so conspicuous in this wise and venerable prelate and in the body of eminent men who have had the principal direction of the congress:

"All honest opinions may be expressed, all measures proper for promoting that which is good may be proposed. Both the one and the other may be defended, discussed, and combated with the greatest liberty; but you will also be all ready to abandon, if necessary, your sentiments and your projects, in order to rally to the support of those measures which shall be judged to be the best. In this way you will arrive at that perfect union which the Saviour demanded for his disciples: You will all have but one heart and one soul, and the success of your labors will be secured."

There can be no doubt that the congress of Malines has accomplished a great deal of the good contemplated by its eminent and excellent promoters. The mere assemblage of so many fervent Catholics together, and the enunciation of their common sentiments, wishes, and purposes, have had a great influence in giving increased courage, confidence, and zeal to the faithful adherents of the church in Belgium. Moreover, many works of great practical utility have either been inaugurated or have received additional extent and vigor. Among them may be mentioned the support given to the Catholic University of Louvain, the formation of a society among the alumni of the university, the establishment of Catholic circles of young men in the towns, the formation of libraries, the establishment of lectures and conferences, the formation of charitable and religious associations, the foundation of a Catholic publication house, the multiplication of books, tracts, and newspapers, the care given to the preservation, repair, and increase of churches, the cultivation of the fine arts in connection with religion, the efforts made for the sanctification of the Sunday and for the amelioration of the condition of the laboring classes. It is impossible to enumerate all that has been done, and would require a more minute knowledge of the state of things in Belgium than we possess—such a knowledge as is possessed only by those who have been engaged permanently in the work of the congress from the beginning.

In regard to the work of the congress lately held, our information is also much restricted and very general, as we are obliged to rely on the succinct reports already published. The meetings of the sections being held simultaneously in different rooms, and their proceedings being a continuation of those of preceding congresses as well as of a great number of various branches of active effort carried on perpetually by those engaged in them, we cannot pretend to give any complete and detailed statement of practical results, but merely an indication of the general topics discussed and the general objects had in view in the measures adopted.

In the first section, the topics discussed related to the Christian burial of the poor, the sanctification of the Sunday, the work of St. Francis Xavier for the instruction of laboring men, which has forty thousand members from this class in the cities of Belgium, the work of St. Francis Regis for legitimating illicit unions and facilitating marriages among the poor, and the contribution in aid of the pope called St. Peter's pence.

The second section was exclusively occupied with considering the interest of the laboring class and the relation of capital to labor, the terrible and at present insoluble European question ouvrière. The discussions in this section were more lively and the interest excited more general than in any other section.

1. The attitude which Catholics ought to take in view of the war declared against the law of 1842, and in the eventuality of its abrogation.

2. The means of protecting the schools of the middle class against the incursions of official bureaucracy.

3. The improvement to be introduced in the Catholic system of instruction, under which head the improvement of historical text-books was especially considered.

The fourth section discussed the subject of instruction and improvement in religious art, the permanent exposition of fine paintings and statuary in churches, the means of developing and propagating religious art, and literary works imbued with a Christian spirit. M. Bordeaux, an eminent French archaeologist, was present, and spoke with ability in this section, giving interesting details of the progress of sacred archaeology in France. Among other recommendations, we were happy to find one relative to the removal of the ridiculous images which disfigure some fine churches, and the abolition of the unpleasant custom of paying a franc to the sacristan for removing the curtains before certain pictures. Desires were expressed for the publication of a manual of sacred archaeology and architecture as a guide to priests and architects.

The fifth section had a great number of important questions before it relating to the Catholic press, Catholic circles, popular lectures, secret societies, judicial oaths, etc., which it appears were not so well prepared beforehand or dealt with in so thorough a manner as the questions laid before the other sections. The most important resolution arrived at by this section was that of effecting a union of the Catholic circles for young men by means of a central organization. The formation of similar circles for the benefit of the industrial classes, and the giving of popular lectures on a more extensive scale, were also recommended.

Such is an imperfect and meagre outline of the work accomplished in the morning sessions of the several congressional sections. These sessions were opened at eight or nine o'clock, and continued until twelve or later. {301} At three o'clock the general sessions of the congress were opened, continuing until six or seven in the evening; and we will now attempt to give a sketch of their proceedings.

The opening of the congress by the cardinal has already been noticed. After His Eminence had left the president's chair, the nominations of the central and sectional bureaux made by the committee of delegates were proposed and ratified by the assembly, and the chair was taken by the Baron della Faille, who immediately pronounced a long, elaborately written, and extremely able opening discourse. The baron is a gentleman of plain but impressive dignity, whose entire bearing and language bear the stamp of solid sense, elevated principles, thorough conscientiousness, and quiet but indomitable courage. A tone of profound and deeply meditative Christian thought and fervent Catholic piety predominates in his discourses, with a little shadow of sadness, as if he felt the great interests of the church and society to be in great danger; together with an undercurrent of suppressed emotion, as of a just and high-minded man indignant at the baseness of those who are faithless to their duty toward God and their fellow-men; as well as deeply resolved to be faithful to the death himself, at whatever cost of selfish interests.

At the outset of his discourse, the distinguished vice-president laid down the proposition that a state of conflict is the perpetual condition of the church, and proceeded to develop his views concerning the radical causes of the hostility which Christianity perpetually excites in the human bosom against its principles, its precepts, and its claim of authority over reason, conscience, and human activity. This part of his discourse was profoundly theological, the views and reasonings presented being all derived from the doctrine that man, in consequence of the original sin into which he fell from his primitive state of integrity, finds a perpetual repugnance and struggle in his own bosom of selfish passion against the supernatural law. This repugnance and resistance tends to produce itself in society even after it has been christianized and civilized, in the form of a retrograde movement toward irreligion and barbarism.

The orator proceeded then to examine the question whether this conflict could be terminated, so far as its disturbing influence on political tranquillity and the peace of society is concerned, by a reformation or reconstruction of the relations between the two orders, spiritual and temporal, religion and society, the church and the state. To this question he addressed himself to give a historical solution, arguing from the facts of the past as to what might be expected in the future. "When the irreconcilable adversaries of the truth," said the orator, with energy and emotion, "tear the state away from the church, reject Christ, ah! gentlemen, it is not in order to create for us a more peaceful condition; it is, on the contrary, in order to attack us more freely. If the civil power forces itself to be impartial, guided by reason alone, it is not secure from error; it will often be deceived, and the Catholic religion, being incapable of submitting to the manipulations of the temporal authority, will always be the first thing menaced. But what if this same power is malevolent? what if it has fallen into the hands of our enemies?" The orator then went on to sustain the position thus laid down by a reference to the actual policy of the so-called liberal governments of Europe toward the Catholic Church. {302} He demanded that a single European state should be indicated, where liberalism is in power, which has not persecuted the church. After reproaching the blindness and apathy of a great number of Catholics who hang loose from an active part in the conflict against infidelity, he set forth, in very forcible language, the common duty of all to maintain, or rather to make a conquest of, the liberties of the church. This, he said, could only be accomplished by an obstinate conflict with the enemies of the church, in which there could be ni paix ni trêve. Touching then upon Belgium in particular, the country which liberty has made so famous, he asked the question, What is the condition of things there now? Without disparaging the amount of liberty still left to them, he declared that they had already lost enough to awaken just regret in their own minds, and to suggest the caution to their too confident friends: "Do not exaggerate the authority of this example, and take care for yourselves." He then went on to affirm that the church in Belgium is combated in its religious and charitable works—in the exercise of worship, where it has new assaults to expect, without any respect for the conditions which have been affixed to charitable institutions, or to the solemn engagements of the state. Such, he exclaimed, is our situation, in spite of our legislation which was favorable to us, in spite of promises the most formal, compacts the most solemn. Elsewhere, he asked, is the situation more favorable? The orator then deduced the conclusion which was the final object aimed at throughout his closely reasoned discourse, that the Catholics of Europe must rely on themselves alone, and prepare for a combat which must be sustained with courage, constancy, and union. In this part of his discourse, the baron proved how legitimate is the title he has received from his warlike ancestors, and we were reminded of the old days and old scenes of the chivalrous, warlike Netherlands, when the fathers of the peaceable gentlemen in the costume of civilians, who sat upon the platform or on the floor of the congress, rode forth with their pennons flying, clad in steel armor and coat of mail, to fight against the paynim for the cross and sepulchre. "We are the children of the Crusaders!" he exclaimed. "To a threatening infidelity let us oppose a new crusade, and let us each one bring his own arms with him."

On the conclusion of the discourse, which had been frequently interrupted by applause, the assembly gave loud and long-continued expression to the universal sentiment of admiration with which this introductory discourse of the illustrious Belgian statesman was received.

An address to the Holy Father was then voted by the assembly; the address was intrusted to Mgr. de Merode, to be presented by him to His Holiness on his return to Rome. Information of the vote was transmitted to Rome by telegraph, and in response to it the Holy Father sent his benediction on the opening of the congress, and subsequently another benediction on its close. After some communications from the secretary, the first public session of the congress was adjourned.

At the second session, on Tuesday afternoon, the hall was still more crowded than on the day previous. A few moments before it was opened, the Count de Falloux entered, leaning on the arm of Mgr. Laforet, amid prolonged and enthusiastic acclamations.

At the opening of the session an address to the cardinal was proposed and voted. M. de Falloux was nominated honorary vice-president, and a large number of the foreign members were honored with the same mark of distinction.

The favorite demonstration of cheering accompanied all these courteous formalities, and no sooner had it subsided than it was awakened to new and increased vigor by the arrival of the cardinal with the accompanying prelates, conducting the illustrious Bishop of Orleans, Mgr. Dupanloup, together with the celebrated orator of the Carmelite order, Father Hyacinthe. Long, loud, and often renewed were the acclamations with which the assembly greeted the heroic, veteran champion of the Catholic cause, "the Lamoricière of the episcopate," as he was happily designated by one of the orators of the congress. The president succeeded in silencing the thunders of congratulation long enough to allow him to address a few words of salutation to Mgr. Dupanloup in the name of the assembly, when they again burst forth with irrepressible energy, and could not be appeased until the illustrious orator, reluctantly yielding to the irresistible demand of three thousand voices, ascended the tribune to pronounce a short but fervid allocution.

Mgr. Dupanloup presents much more the exterior aspect of a hard-working apostolic missionary, or of an austere and self-denying religious, than of a stately dignitary of the church; and his style of address is in accordance with his personal appearance, having more of the unstudied energy, the spontaneous fire, of an earnest, popular preacher, than of the polished, artistic eloquence of a French academician.

His dress was a simple black cassock, with the slightest possible amount of purple trimming, and a cloak of the same color, just enough to indicate his episcopal rank, but still more significant of his profound indifference for its decorations. Everything else about his person and manner wore the same air of unstudied negligé and inattention to the ceremonial of exterior elegance and polish. As he appeared in full view of the audience upon the platform, an expression used by Rufus Choate of Napoleon the First could be applied to him, as giving with terse completeness a designation to the impression we received of the physical, intellectual, and moral tout ensemble of the man—"the worn child of a thousand battles." The same idea is conveyed by the title given him by general acclamation at the congress, "the Lamoricière of the episcopate." The bishop is somewhat over sixty years of age, his hair is gray, his movements somewhat indicative of failing bodily strength, his countenance vivid, lighting up as if from the flame of an internal, ever-burning furnace which is consuming his physical frame, his manner natural, easy, familiar, yet kindling at intervals into a startling, vibrating eloquence that thrills through the nerves like an electric shock. Mgr. Dupanloup had not preached in his diocese for the last two years on account of weakness in the throat, and, on taking the tribune at Malines, he apologized for himself on the ground that his voice was weakened by long and laborious use. In point of fact, his excuses seemed to be well-grounded; yet, as he caught the expression of the eyes and faces of his sympathetic audience, the electrical influence of the atmosphere of the place, surcharged with the enthusiasm of the Catholic faith, seemed to reanimate all his ancient fire, and he sent forth, like a flash of lightning, with a tone that vibrated through every heart in that august assembly, the eloquent exclamation, "Nous savions que le feu sacré est immortel dans l'Eglise; mais ICI ON EN VOIT LA FLAMME!" {304} The bishop spoke but a few minutes, seizing the opportunity of the renewed applause which broke out on his uttering these words to descend hastily from the tribune, having produced an effect by this sudden coup de main of eloquence which it would be impossible to describe in any language we have at command.

The acclamations caused by Mgr. Dupanloup's début in the assembly having subsided, a short and amusing conflict arose between the amiable pertinacity of M. Ducpetiaux in insisting upon an immediate address from the Count de Falloux, and the reluctance of that gentleman to yield to the demand; in which the latter was obliged to succumb. Indeed, the audience came at once to the support of their secretary in such overwhelming force that resistance was impossible, and the illustrious French statesman was borne up to the tribune just vacated by the illustrious French bishop, as it were by a great wave of applause.

The Count de Falloux is a finished specimen of the most graceful and polished type of French gentlemen, orators, and men of polite letters. The paleness of his countenance, together with an expression of subdued languor in his eye and movements, bore witness to the truth of his avowal, that a pitiable state of health had prevented him from making any preparation for addressing the congress. In consequence of this, the count made no long or elaborate discourses. In his discourse of Tuesday, which was the longest, he spoke but half an hour. Nevertheless, this brief discourse, although apparently an unstudied, impromptu utterance of thoughts and sentiments occurring at the moment; delivered, without any effort at oratory, in a simple, almost conversational manner; was a specimen of the most consummate, captivating, and classical eloquence; as our readers will see for themselves, we hope, so far as a translation can enable them to do so, when the text of the discourse is published in full in our pages, as we intend it shall be; together with those of Mgr. Dupanloup and Father Hyacinthe. The expression of M. de Falloux's countenance, the tones of his voice, and his entire manner of address bear an impress of gentleness, of graceful, charming persuasiveness, through which he wins the hearts of his audience at once, and gains an easy, almost imperceptible dominion over their minds. With exquisite grace and delicacy, he complimented all the most distinguished persons present, the congress, and the Belgian nation; thanking the latter especially for the honor and kindness shown to his illustrious and suffering friend Montalembert, then confined to his chamber by sickness at his villa of Brixensart, near Brussels. The genuine, affectionate tenderness and emotion with which he spoke of Montalembert communicated itself at once to his sympathetic audience, and called out the most energetic, enthusiastic acclamations of the name so dear to the Belgian Catholics. "It is to you," said the orator, "that Montalembert owes the motto expressive of that sacred cause to which his life has been devoted, Liberty as in Belgium." The theme thus introduced with such consummate skill and effect occupied the remainder of the discourse, which was in its drift and aim a modest, reserved, courteous, but not the less powerful apology and defence of the nineteenth century and the cause of liberty against the charge of being essentially anti-catholic and irreligious.

The name of Montalembert was, in every instance when it was mentioned, greeted with the same hearty applause during all the sessions of the congress; a circumstance which elicited from him a letter of thanks and sympathy, afterward publicly read by the Count de Falloux, and received with acclamations of the most energetic character by the assembly.

We do not feel ourselves competent to express an opinion on the question how far the applause given by the congress to these two illustrious Catholic statesmen of France indicated an approbation of the principles in regard to the alliance of religion and liberty which they advocate. There is, no doubt, a great difference regarding this very important, delicate, and complicated question, in Belgium as well as throughout Europe; a difference existing, consequently, among the members of the Congress of Malines. The Count de Falloux's speech has been courteously but searchingly criticised by some of the most prominent writers for the Catholic press in Belgium, and still more severely by another writer in one of the English papers; while, as is natural, it is sustained with equal courtesy as well as with equal decision by Le Correspondant of France. All the members of the congress, as well as all other firm adherents of the Catholic cause in Europe and the world, are of one mind and one heart, in filial devotion to the Pope, loyalty to the Holy See and the Catholic Church, determination to fight against anti-catholic, infidel pseudo-liberalism in both its phases of despotism and radical demagogueism for the perfect liberation, the complete liberty of the Catholic Church from the tyranny, both of governments and of revolutions. In regard to the basis of settlement between the church and civil, political society, or the state, through which this liberty can be most effectually gained, most durably established, there is a divergence which sometimes threatens to become a sharp contest, involving in its issues other questions more directly ecclesiastical or theological. The most admirable feature of the Congress of Malines was, that this difference of opinion was neither violently smothered nor permitted to burst into a flame of discord, but subdued by the dominant power of mutual charity, respect, and courtesy. The Catholics of Belgium, we may also add those of France also, give a good example in this respect worthy to be imitated by all, but especially needing to be imitated by the Catholics of England and our own country. The Belgian Catholics are too deeply sensible of the imminent duties and perils of the Catholic cause in front of the deadly enemy of all religion, to tolerate the excesses of party spirit or internal dissension among themselves, to allow the tyranny of theological opinion the right of branding all dissidents as disloyal to the church, to tolerate the secret undermining or open detraction of the reputation of eminent, meritorious advocates of the Catholic cause, much less to permit the violation of the rules of Christian charity and courtesy by those who write for the press. They have felt the necessity of shunning personal or party disputes, rising above the spirit of clique or sectional interest, throwing off indifference and apathy toward measures or enterprises set on foot by men of zeal and courage for the common good, and combining together in a spirit of disinterested, self-sacrificing effort, strong enough to sweep away and drown all petty interests, for the common, the sacred, the glorious, but deeply endangered cause of God, religion, and true philanthropy. {306} If we are so fortunate as to have a Catholic congress in the United States, we trust it will be animated by the same spirit which prevailed in the Congress of Malines, and that its influence will promote powerfully this truly Catholic spirit wherever it is felt.

To return from this digression; when the Count de Falloux had finished his speech, a very pleasing interlude occurred in the presentation of a magnificent vase of gold, on the part of the central bureau, to M. Ducpetiaux, by the Viscount Kerckhove, who made a graceful and appropriate speech on the occasion, embracing affectionately the amiable secretary at its conclusion, to the unbounded delight of the audience. Several other addresses were then read, some compliments were passed between the congress and the representatives of the city of Malines, an excellent report was read by Mgr. Nameche, vice-rector of the University of Louvain, from a committee appointed to give a premium to the best treatise on the education of young ladies, an animated speech was made by one of the juvenile members of the congress, and the session was adjourned.

The general session of Wednesday was addressed, after a few preliminary proceedings, by Lieutenant-General de Lannoy, a veteran warrior of the Belgian army, in a brief but exceedingly eloquent speech, commending the charitable heroism of the pontifical Zouaves during the visitation of Rome and Albano by the cholera. It was resolved to send an expression of the sentiment of the assembly to the secretary of war at Rome, and two young Belgian Zouaves present in the audience were invited to a seat on the platform. Father Tondini, an Italian Barnabite, then read a paper relating to a work in which he is engaged, for promoting the return of Russia to the unity of the church. He was followed by the celebrated Mgr. Dechamps, formerly a Redemptorist missionary, now the Bishop of Namur, who pronounced an able and eloquent discourse on the subject of Catholic unity. After this eloquent prelate had left the tribune, it was taken by the Bishop of Charleston, who employed the remaining time of the session, the hour of adjournment having been fixed at five P.M., on account of the oratorio in the evening, in a discourse on the state of the Catholic religion in the United States, but principally in his own diocese. The learned bishop, whose presence did so much honor to the hierarchy and the Catholic body of our own country at the Congress of Malines, exposed the sad state of the Catholic people of South Carolina, as well as of the whole population, but more especially of the colored race, in consequence of the late war. He communicated a project of his own for establishing a community of monks upon an island on the coast of South Carolina, as the nucleus of a great work for converting and civilizing the colored population. The address of Bishop Lynch produced a most profound impression upon the assembly; and we are happy to state that some of the wealthy members of the congress gave handsome contributions toward his benevolent undertaking.

On Thursday the great event of the session was the discourse of Mgr. Dupanloup, of which we give no analysis here, as the text of the discourse is to appear in our pages. It was throughout a scathing denunciation of the principle of the pseudo-liberals, the liberâtres, as he designated them, the liberticides, as we would propose to call them in English. {307} Near the close of his discourse he gave utterance to a sentence which has aroused the attention of all Europe, and bids fair to make its echo heard for a long time to come. It was à propos of a plan, proposed, we believe, by the editor of the Paris Siède, for erecting a statue to Voltaire.

"Shall I remind you of Voltaire, the inventor of the title The Infamous, by which he designated the church? And he, what name did he give himself? He called himself philosopher. Ah! well, gentlemen, no one shall ever bring me to give the name of philosophers to a d'Holbach, to a Lamettrie, or the rest of the impious men who conspired with their master to crush the Infamous. But what do I hear? People say that they desire to erect a statue to the man who gave this name to Christianity. Indeed! and I, on my part, say that they will have raised a statue to INFAMY PERSONIFIED. (Prolonged bravos.) I should like to encounter here a man who would contradict me! I would promise to give him, as soon as he pleased, proofs with which all Europe would resound. This violence done to good sense, to rectitude, to French honor, revolts me. I repeat it, they will raise a statue to INFAMY PERSONIFIED. The Bishop of the Orleans of Joan of Arc could not have or express a more worthy sentiment." (Prolonged acclamations.)

The editor of the Siède has offered to take up the glove thus thrown at him, and a short but spicy correspondence has been interchanged between himself and the bishop, who is preparing to redeem his pledge in a pamphlet containing the proofs of his assertion.

We cannot refrain from noticing one more passage in this remarkable discourse, one which came like a flash of lightning from the bishop's mouth, striking the assembly with an irresistible force, but especially kindling every heart of a Belgian there present into aflame of patriotic enthusiasm. The effect was indeed indescribable. We add our fervent hope that it may be ineffaceable, especially upon the hearts of the Belgian youth there present, to whom their country looks with such fond hope for the future.

"O patriotism! it is not to you that I have to preach it; but I say to you simply, You HAVE A COUNTRY, KNOW HOW TO KEEP IT!" Words apparently simple and commonplace as written down on paper to be read by those who are remote from the scene of their utterance, strangers to the memories, the associations, the hopes and fears whose key-note they struck, and unable to represent to themselves the attitude, the tone, the expression of the orator who gave them utterance. But words which, as Dupanloup uttered them, with a sudden élan, in which his whole soul of fire seemed to blaze forth before the eyes of his audience, "VOUS AVEZ UNE PATRIE, SACHEZ LA CARDER!" Were sufficient to set a whole nation on fire.

The castigation given to infidelity by the intrepid Bishop of Orleans caused the party suffering from his well-applied lash to give utterance to its smarting sensations by an outcry in the Independence Belge, repeated by the London Times, and echoed by some of its feeble imitators in America. The burden of the complaint against Mgr. Dupanloup is, that he did not treat the soi-disant liberal party with sufficient courtesy or respect. For our own part, we did not find anything in his discourse, nor have we ever seen anything in any of his writings, in the slightest decree contrary to the charity of a Christian or the dignity of a bishop. {308} In speaking of the party called by the extremely vague, general name of liberal, we must distinguish. We assent to the opinion of the amiable writer who furnished the sketch of the late congress in Le Correspondant, that it is incumbent on the champion of the Catholic cause to combat for it with courteous arms. We allow that a very large proportion of those who would class themselves under the general head of liberals, whether they call themselves liberal Christians or liberal philosophers, are entitled to courtesy. But, when it is question of such men as Voltaire and his modern disciples, who are engaged in the nefarious work of destroying all Christian faith in the hearts of the Catholic people, as well as poisoning the very well-spring of all political and social life, we deny that, apart from courtesies of private life, and in the public arena of discussion, they are entitled to any courtesy at the hands of a loyal defender of Christian faith and civilization, beyond that which his own self-respect and Christian charity require him to show to the deadliest enemies of the human race. We trust the time has not yet come in England or America when the name of Voltaire must be mentioned with respect. Whatever courtesy any man of that class deserves can only be given on the same principle that the poor woman addressed the executioner during the French reign of terror, with a plea to spare the lives of herself and her children, in the words, "Ayez pitie, M. le Bourreau." We hope it is through ignorance only that so many in England and America, calling themselves by the Christian name, extend their sympathy to a class of men who are laboring for the destruction of all religion and all social order; if it be through ignorance, their eyes will be opened in due time, perhaps in a somewhat startling manner.

When the thunders of acclamation, in the midst of which the Bishop of Orleans descended from the tribune, had subsided, the audience felt as if they had been swept up, by the hurricane of his eloquence, to a height from which it was difficult as well as unpleasant to descend on terra firma. His discourse was well styled in the Bulletin of the next morning, "ce discours monument" and, in our own mind, it is like some of these chefs d'oeuvre of Raffaelle in the Louvre, whose excellence is more vividly appreciated in the reminiscence than in the actual moment of viewing them.

The remainder of the session was occupied by an interesting memoir on the state of Italy, by the Chevalier Alberi of Florence, and an address on North American missions, by the Bishop of Vancouver.

The great speech of the Friday session was that of Father Hyacinthe. It was preceded by a short though brilliant address from the eminent statesman M. Adrian Dechamps, and another short address from the Count de Falloux, who read a letter from M. de Montalembert, which will be published hereafter.

Father Hyacinthe, dressed in the picturesque, impressive habit of the Carmelites, presented a striking contrast in appearance, as well as in the style of his eloquence, to the two great French orators who had preceded him. He is still in the full vigor of the prime of manhood, untouched by any token of decline; on the contrary, hardly more than just arrived at the full efflorescence of physical and intellectual maturity. The poetic sentiment seems to predominate in him, with an exuberance of the tender and expansive emotions of the heart, the pleasing, radiant creations of the imagination, yet not without the power of descending to the deeper region of tragic sentiment, or striking out more bold and sublime conceptions. {309} His ordinary manner and expression are gentle and winning, his eye and countenance full of benevolence, his voice sweet, musical, somewhat feminine. When the spirit of oratorical inspiration carries him away, his countenance changes to a more earnest, impassioned expression, his gestures are rapid and vehement, his voice alternately sinks to a deep, low, organ-like tone, or rings out clearly like a trumpet, and the whole mind and body are roused into an action in which every cord and nerve has the tension of a ship's cordage under full sail. After the discourse, which was two hours long, and held the audience in a breathless attention interrupted only by their applauses, the eloquent father was completely exhausted and obliged to return home to his lodgings at once for a period of perfect quiet and repose. Of the discourse, which was on the question ouvrière, we will not speak, leaving our readers to peruse it in the translation which will be given in our pages hereafter.

A short address was made by Mgr. Rogers, Bishop of Chatham, N. S., thanking the Catholics of Europe for their charitable assistance to the missions of America, and giving some naive details of the primitive manners of the Acadians. Canon Rousseau then gave an analysis of the memoir presented by Father Hecker in a French translation for publication among the congressional documents, relating to the progress of the Catholic religion in the United States. Finally, M. l'Abbé Brouwers, a young priest of Amsterdam, succeeded in gaining the attention of the audience, already fatigued and impatient, to an address on the religious condition of Holland. This young priest exhibited proofs in his speech, of possessing the gift of sacred eloquence in no common degree. Another thing about him that pleased every one was, that he gave a bright, cheerful picture of the state of things in his own country. Everything was going on well, and promised to go on still better in the future—a circumstance quite creditable to the contented disposition of the compatriots of our first settlers in New York.

The closing service on Saturday morning was devoted to the reading of the reports of the sections and voting their conclusions. This work had been commenced at an extraordinary general session on Friday morning. The president gave a short concluding discourse, and after some usual formalities the members of the congress repaired to the cathedral, where a sermon was preached by Father Hyacinthe, the Te Deum was chanted, and the cardinal gave his benediction on the close of the congress. A general communion of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul had already been made on Friday morning in the church of Notre Dame d'Hanswyck. We may add here that a bulletin of the acts of the congress was published every morning, and also that there is an association called the Catholic Union, which is a sort of permanent standing committee of the congress during the intervals of its assemblages.

An elegant and recherché banquet, at which about three hundred gentlemen were present, concluded the Catholic réunion at Malines in a very pleasant manner, and before nightfall we had bidden adieu to Malines and were on our way to Brussels, preparatory to a return to Paris, and thence to America.

In conclusion, we beg leave to thank, in the name of the entire American delegation, the Cardinal Archbishop of Malines, and the other distinguished gentlemen of Belgium who are the chief directors of the congress, especially the noble-hearted and amiable secretary, M. Ducpetiaux, for the hospitality and consideration so kindly extended by them during our stay at Malines; and we trust that it may be in our power at a future day to return this hospitality in an equally cordial manner to some of their number as guests of the Catholics of the United States of America. Vive la Belgique! Vive le Congrès Catholique de Malines!

Translated From The French.

The Story Of A Conscript.

Those who have not seen the glory of the Emperor Napoleon, during the years 1810, 1811, and 1812, can never conceive what a pitch of power one man may reach.

When he passed through Champagne, or Lorraine, or Alsace, people gathering the harvest or the vintage would leave everything to run and see him; women, children, and old men would come a distance of eight or ten leagues to line his route, and cheer and cry, "Vive l'Empereur! Vive l'Empereur!" One would think that he was a god, that mankind owed its life to him, and that, if he died, the world would crumble and be no more. A few old republicans might shake their heads and mutter over their wine that the emperor might yet fall, but they passed for fools.

I was in my apprenticeship since 1804, with an old watchmaker, Melchior Goulden, at Phalsbourg. As I seemed weak and was a little lame, my mother wished me to learn an easier trade than those of our village, for at Dagsberg there were only wood-cutters and charcoal-burners. Monsieur Goulden liked me very much. We lived on the first story of a large house opposite the "Red Ox" inn, and near the French gate.

That was the place to see princes, ambassadors, and generals come and go, some on foot, and some in carriages drawn by two or four horses; there they passed in embroidered uniforms, with waving plumes and decorations from every country under the sun. And in the highway what couriers, what baggage-wagons, what powder-trains, cannon, caissons, cavalry, and infantry did we see! Those were stirring times!

In five or six years the innkeeper, George, had made a fortune. He had fields, orchards, houses, and money in abundance; for all these people, coming from Germany, Switzerland, Russia, Poland, or elsewhere, cared little for a few handfuls of gold scattered upon their road; they were all nobles who took a pride in showing their prodigality.

From morning until night, and even during the night, the "Red Ox" kept its tables in readiness. Through the long windows on the first story nothing was to be seen but great white table-cloths, glittering with silver and covered with game, fish, and other rare viands, around which the travellers sat side by side. {311} In the yard behind, horses neighed, postilions shouted, maid-servants laughed, coaches rattled.

Sometimes, too, people of the city stopped there, who in other times were known to gather sticks in the forest or work on the highway. But now they were commandants, colonels, generals, and had won their grades by fighting in every land on earth.

Old Melchior, with his black silk cap pulled over his ears, his weak eyelids, his nose pinched between great horn spectacles, and his lips tightly pressed together, could not sometimes avoid putting his magnifying-glass and punch upon the work-bench, and throwing a glance toward the inn, especially when the cracking of the whips of the postilions awoke the echoes of the ramparts and announced a new arrival. Then he became all attention, and from time to time would exclaim:

"Hold! It is the son of Jacob, the slater," or of "the old scold, Mary Ann," or of "the cooper, Franz Lépel! He has made his way in the world; there he is, colonel and baron of the empire into the bargain. Why don't he stop at the house of his father who lives yonder in the Rue des Capucins?"

But, when he saw them shaking hands right and left in the street with those who recognized them, his tone changed; he wiped his eyes with his great spotted handkerchief, and murmured:

"How pleased poor old Annette will be! Good! good! He is not proud; he is a man. God preserve him from cannon-balls!"

Others passed as if ashamed to recognize their birthplace; others went gayly to see their sisters or cousins, and everybody spoke of them. One would imagine that all Phalsbourg wore their crosses and their epaulettes; while the arrogant were despised even more than when they swept the roads.

Nearly every month Te Deums were chanted, and the cannon at the arsenal fired their salutes of twenty-one rounds for some new victory. During the week following every family was uneasy; poor mothers especially waited for letters, and the first that came all the city knew of; the rumor spread like wildfire that such an one had received a letter from Jacques or Claude, and all ran to see if it spoke of their Joseph or their Jean-Baptiste. I do not speak of promotions or the official reports of deaths; as for the first, every one knew that the killed must be replaced; and as for the reports of deaths, parents awaited them weeping, for they did not come immediately; sometimes they never came, and the poor father and mother hoped on, saying, "Perhaps our boy is a prisoner. When they make peace, he will return. How many have returned whom we thought dead!"

But they never made peace. When one war was finished, another was begun. We always needed something, either from Russia or from Spain, or some other country. The emperor was never satisfied.

Often when regiments passed through the city, with their great-coats pulled back, their knapsacks on their backs, their great gaiters reaching to the knee, and muskets carried at will; often when they passed covered with mud or white with dust, would Father Melchior, after gazing upon them, ask me dreamily:

"I cannot say, Monsieur Goulden," I would reply', "at least four or five hundred thousand."

Then I understood his meaning, and answered: "Perhaps they return by Mayence or some other route. It cannot be possible otherwise!"

But he only shook his head, and said: "Those whom you have not seen return are dead, as hundreds and hundreds of thousands more will die, if the good God does not take pity on us, for the emperor loves only war. He has already spilt more blood to give his brothers crowns than our Revolution cost to win the rights of man."

Then we set about our work again; but the reflections of Monsieur Goulden gave me some terrible subjects for thought.

It was true that I was a little lame in the left leg; but how many others with defects of body had received their orders to march notwithstanding!

These ideas kept running through my head, and when I thought long over them, I grew very melancholy. They seemed terrible to me, not only because I had no love for war, but because I was going to marry Catharine of Quatre-Vents. We had been in some sort reared together. Nowhere could be found a girl so fresh and laughing. She was fair-haired, with beautiful blue eyes, rosy cheeks, and teeth white as milk. She was approaching eighteen; I was nineteen, and Aunt Margrédel seemed pleased to see me coming early every Sunday morning to breakfast and dine with them.

It was I who took her to high Mass and vespers; and on holidays she never left my arm, and refused to dance with the other youths of the village. Everybody knew that we would some day be married; but, if I should be so unfortunate as to be drawn in the conscription, there was an end of matters. I wished that I was a thousand times more lame; for at the time of which I speak they had first taken the unmarried men, then the married men who had no children, then those with one child; and I constantly asked myself, "Are lame fellows of more consequence than fathers of families? Could they not put me in the cavalry?" The idea made me so unhappy that I already thought of fleeing.

But in 1812, at the beginning of the Russian war, my fear increased. From February until the end of May, every day we saw pass regiments after regiments—dragoons, cuirassiers, carbineers, hussars, lancers of all colors, artillery, caissons, ambulances, wagons, provisions, rolling on for ever, like the waters of a river. All flowed through the French gate, crossed the Place d'Armes, and streamed out at the German gate.

At last, on the 10th of May, in the year 1812, in the early morning, the guns of the arsenal announced the coming of the master of all. I was yet sleeping when the first shot shook the little panes of my window till they rattled like a drum, and Monsieur Goulden, with a lighted candle, opened my door, saying, "Rise up, he is here!"

We opened the window. Through the night I saw a hundred dragoons, of whom many bore torches, entering at a gallop; they shook the earth as they passed; their lights glanced along the house-fronts like dancing flames, and from every window we heard the shouts of "Vive l'Empereur!"

I was gazing at the carriage, when a horse crashed against the post to which the butcher Klein was accustomed to fasten his cattle. The dragoon was thrown to the pavement, his helmet rolled in the gutter, and a head leaned out of the carriage to see what had happened—a large head, pale and fat, with a tuft of hair on the forehead: it was Napoleon; he held his hand up as if about taking a pinch of snuff, and said a few words roughly. The officer galloping by the side of the coach bent down to reply; and his master took his snuff and turned the corner, while the shouts redoubled and the cannons roared louder than ever.

The emperor did not stop at Phalsbourg, and, when he was on the road to Saverne, the guns fired their last shot, and silence reigned once more. The guards at the French gate raised the drawbridge, and the old watchmaker said:

"Well," he continued, "that man holds all our lives in his hand; he need but breathe upon us and we are gone. Let us bless Heaven that he is not evil-minded; for if he were, the world would see again the horrors of the days of the barbarian kings and the Turks."

He returned to his room, and I to my bed. The deep silence without seemed strange after such a tumult, and until daybreak I never ceased dreaming of the emperor. I dreamed, too, of the dragoon, and wanted to know if he were killed. The next day we learned that he was carried to the hospital and would recover.

From that day until the month of September they often sang the Te Deum, and fired twenty-one guns for new victories. It was nearly always in the morning, and Monsieur Goulden cried:

"Eh, Joseph! Another battle won! Fifty thousand men lost! Twenty-five standards, a hundred guns won. All goes well, all goes well. It only remains now to order a new levy to replace the dead!"

He pushed open my door, and I saw him bald, in his shirt-sleeves, with his neck bare, washing his face in the wash-bowl.

"Do you think, Monsieur Goulden," I asked, in great trouble, "that they will take the lame?"

"No, no," he said kindly; "fear nothing, my child, you could not serve. We will fix that. Only work well, and never mind the rest."

He saw my anxiety, and it pained him. I never met a better man. Then he dressed himself to go to wind up the city clocks—those of Monsieur the Commandant of the place, of Monsieur the Mayor, and other notable personages. I remained at home. Monsieur Goulden did not return until after the Te Deum. He took off his great brown coat, put his peruke back in its box, and again pulling his silk cap over his ears, said:

"The army is at Wilna or at Smolensk, as I learn from Monsieur the Commandant. God grant that we may succeed this time and make peace, and the sooner the better, for war is a terrible thing."

I thought, too, that, if we had peace, so many men would not be needed, and that I could marry Catharine. Any one can imagine the wishes I formed for the emperor's glory.

II.

It was on the 15th of September, 1812, that the news came of the great victory of the Moskowa. Every one was full of joy, and all cried, "Now we will have peace! now the war is ended!"

Some discontented folks might say that China yet remained to be conquered; such mar-joys are always to be found.

A week after, we learned that our forces were in Moscow, the largest and richest city in Russia, and then everybody figured to himself the booty we would capture, and the reduction it would make in the taxes. But soon came the rumor that the Russians had set fire to their capital, and that it was necessary to retreat on Poland or to die of hunger. Nothing else was spoken of in the inns, the breweries, or the market; no one could meet his neighbor without saying, "Well, well, things go badly; the retreat has commenced."

People grew pale, and hundreds of peasants waited morning and night at the post-office, but no letters came now. I passed and repassed through the crowd without paying much attention to it, for I had seen so much of the same thing. And besides, I had a thought in my mind which gladdened my heart, and made everything seem rosy to me.

You must know that for six months past I had wished to make Catharine a magnificent present for her fête day, which fell on the 18th of December. Among the watches which hung in Monsieur Goulden's window was one little one, of the prettiest kind, with a silver case full of little circles, which made it shine like a star. Around the face, under the glass, was a thread of copper, and on the face were painted two lovers, the youth evidently declaring his love, and giving to his sweetheart a large bouquet of roses, while she modestly lowered her eyes and held out her hand.

The first time I saw the watch, I said to myself: "You will not let that escape; that watch is for Catharine, and, although you must work every day till midnight for it, she must have it." Monsieur Goulden, after seven in the evening, allowed me to work on my own account. He had old watches to clean and regulate; and, as this work was often very troublesome, old father Melchior paid me reasonably for it. But the little watch was thirty-five francs, and one can imagine how many hours at night I would have to work for it. I am sure that, if Monsieur Goulden knew that I wanted it, he would have given it me for a present, but I would not have let him take a farthing less for it; I would have regarded doing so something shameful. I kept saying, "You must earn it; no one else must have any claim upon it." Only for fear somebody else might take a fancy to buy it, I put it aside in a box, telling father Melchior that I knew a purchaser.

Under these circumstances, every one can readily understand how it was that all these stories of war went in at one ear and out at the other with me. While I worked I imagined Catharine's joy, and for five months that was all I had before my eyes. I thought how pleased she would look, and asked myself what she would say. Sometimes I imagined she would cry out, "O Joseph what are you thinking of? It is much too beautiful for me. No, no; I cannot take so fine a watch from you!" Then I thought I would force it upon her; I would slip it into her apron-pocket, saying, "Come, come, Catharine! Do you wish to give me pain?" I could see how she wanted it, and that she spoke so only to seem to refuse it. Then I imagined her blushing, with her hands raised, saying, "Joseph, now I know indeed that you love me!" And she would embrace me with tears in her eyes. I felt very happy. Aunt Grédel approved of all. {315} In a word, a thousand such scenes passed through my mind, and when I retired at night I said: "There is no one as happy as you, Joseph. See what a present you can make Catharine by your toil; and she surely is preparing something for your fête, for she thinks only of you; you are both very happy, and, when you are married, all will go well."

While I was thus working on, thinking only of happiness, the winter began, earlier than usual, toward the commencement of November. It did not begin with snow, but with dry, cold weather and strong frosts. In a few days all the leaves had fallen and the earth was hard as ice and all covered with hoar-frost; tiles, pavement, and window-panes glittered with it. Fires had to be made to keep the cold out, and, when the doors were opened for a moment, the heat seemed to disappear at once. The wood crackled in the stoves and burnt away like straw in the fierce draught of the chimneys.

Every morning I hastened to wash the panes of the shop-window with warm water, and I scarcely closed it when a frosty sheen covered it. Without, people ran puffing with their coat-collars over their ears and their hands in their pockets. No one stood still, and, when doors opened, they soon closed.

I don't know what became of the sparrows, whether they were dead or living, but not one twittered in the chimneys, and, save the reveille and retreat sounded in the barracks, no sound broke the silence.

Often when the fire crackled merrily did Monsieur Goulden stop his work, and, gazing on the frost-covered panes, exclaim:

"But, Monsieur Goulden, they ought now to be in Poland in good barracks; for to suppose that human beings could endure a cold like this, it is impossible."

"Such a cold as this," he said; "yes, here it is cold, very cold, from the winds from the mountains; but what is this frost to that of the north, of Russia and of Poland? God grant that they started early enough. My God! my God! the leaders of men have a heavy weight to bear."

After the frosts so much snow fell that the couriers were stopped on the road toward Quatre-Vents. I feared that I could not go to see Catharine on her fête day; but two companies of infantry set out with pickaxes, and dug through the frozen snow a way for carriages, and that road remained open until the commencement of the month of April, 1813.

Nevertheless, Catharine's fête approached day by day, and my happiness increased in proportion. I had already the thirty-five francs, but I did not know how to tell Monsieur Goulden that I wished to buy the watch; I wanted to keep the whole matter secret; and it annoyed me greatly to talk about it.

At length, on the eve of the eventful day, between six and seven in the evening, while we were working in silence, the lamp between us, suddenly I took my resolution, and said:

"You know, Monsieur Goulden, that I spoke to you of a purchaser for the little silver watch."

Then he looked up in astonishment. I took out the thirty-five francs and laid them on the work-bench. He stared at me.

"But," he said, "it is not such a watch as that you want, Joseph; you want one that will fill your pocket and mark the seconds. Those little watches are only for women."

"Ah!" he exclaimed; "good! good! I understand now; to-morrow is Catharine's fête. Now I know why you worked day and night. Hold! take back this money; I do not want it."

"Monsieur Goulden, I thank you," I replied; "but this watch is for Catharine, and I wish to have earned it. You will pain me if you refuse the money; I would as lief not take the watch."

He said nothing more, but took the thirty-five francs; then he opened his drawer, and chose a pretty steel chain, with two little keys of silver-gilt, which he fastened to the watch. Then he put all together in a box with a rose-colored favor. He did all this slowly, as if affected; then he gave me the box.

"It is a pretty present, Joseph," said he. "Catharine ought to deem herself happy in having such a lover as you. She is a good girl. Now we can take our supper. Set the table."

The table was arranged, and then Monsieur Goulden took from a closet a bottle of his Metz wine, which he kept for great occasions, and we supped like old friends rather than as master and apprentice; all the evening he never stopped speaking of the merry days of his youth; telling me how he once had a sweetheart, but that, in 1792, he left home in the levée en masse at the time of the Prussian invasion, and that on his return to Fénétrange, he found her married—a very natural thing, since he had never mustered courage enough to declare his love. However, this did not prevent his remaining faithful to the tender remembrance, and when he spoke of it he seemed sad indeed. I recounted all this in imagination to Catharine, and it was not until the stroke of ten, at the passage of the rounds, which relieved the sentries on post every twenty minutes on account of the great cold, that we put two good logs in the fire, and at length went to bed.

III.

The next day, the 18th of December, I arose about six in the morning. It was terribly cold; my little window was covered with a sheet of frost.

I had taken care the night before to lay out on the back of a chair my sky-blue coat, my trousers, my goat-skin vest, and my fine black silk cravat. Everything was ready; my well-polished shoes lay at the foot of the bed; I had only to dress myself; but the cold I felt upon my face, the sight of those window-panes, and the deep silence without made me shiver in advance. If it were not Catharine's fête, I would have remained in bed until midday; but suddenly that recollection made me rush to the great delf stove, where some embers of the preceding night almost always remained among the cinders. I found two or three, and hastened to collect and put them under some split wood and two large logs, after which I ran back to my bed.

Monsieur Goulden, under the huge curtains, with the coverings pulled up to his nose and his cotton night-cap over his eyes, woke up, and cried out:

"Joseph, we have not had such cold for forty years. I never felt it so. What a winter we shall have!"

I did not answer, but looked out to see if the fire was lighting; the embers burnt well; I heard the chimney draw, and at once all blazed up. The sound of the flames was merry enough, but it required a good half-hour to feel the air any warmer.

At last I arose and dressed myself. Monsieur Goulden kept on chatting, but I thought only of Catharine, and when at length, toward eight o'clock, I started out, he exclaimed:

"Joseph, what are you thinking of? Are you going to Quatre-Vents in that little coat? You would be dead before you accomplished half the journey. Go into my closet, and take my great cloak, and the mittens, and the double-soled shoes lined with flannel."

I was so smart in my fine clothes that I reflected whether it would be better to follow his advice, and he, seeing my hesitation, said:

"Listen! a man was found frozen yesterday on the way to Wecham. Doctor Steinbrenner said that he sounded like a piece of dry wood when they tapped him. He was a soldier, and had left the village between six and seven o'clock, and at eight they found him; so that the frost did not take long to do its work. If you want your nose and ears frozen, you have only to go out as you are."

I knew, then, that he was right; so I put on the thick shoes, and passed the cord of the mittens over my shoulders, and put the cloak over all. Thus accoutred, I sallied forth, after thanking Monsieur Goulden, who warned me not to stay too late, for the cold increased toward night, and great numbers of wolves were crossing the Rhine on the ice.

I had not gone as far as the church when I turned up the fox-skin collar of the cloak to shield my ears. The cold was so keen that it seemed as though the air were filled with needles, and one's body shrank involuntarily from head to foot.

Under the German gate, I saw the soldier on guard, in his great gray mantle, standing back in his box like a saint in his niche; he had his sleeve wrapped about his musket where he held it, to keep his fingers from the iron, and two long icicles hung from his mustaches. No one was on the bridge, but, a little further on, I saw three carts in the middle of the road with their canvas-tops all covered with frost; they were unharnessed and abandoned. Everything in the distance seemed dead; all living things had hidden themselves from the cold; and I could hear nothing but the snow crunching under my feet. On each side were walls of ice, as I ran along the trench the soldiers had dug in the snow; in some places swept by the wind, I could see the oak forest and the bluish mountain, both seeming much nearer than they were, on account of the clearness of the air. Not a dog barked in a farm-yard; it was even too cold for that.

But the thought of Catharine warmed my heart, and soon I descried the first houses of Quatre-Vents. The chimneys and the thatched roofs, to the right and left of the road, were scarcely higher than the mountains of snow, and the villagers had dug trenches along the walls, so that they could pass to each other's houses. But that day every family kept around its hearth, and the little round window-panes seemed painted red, from the great fires burning within. Before each door was a truss of straw to keep the cold from entering beneath it.

At the fifth door to the right I stopped to take off my mittens; then I opened and closed it very quickly. I was at the house of Grédel Bauer, the widow of Matthias Bauer and Catharine's mother.

As I entered, and while Aunt Grédel, astonished at my fox-skin collar, was yet turning her gray head, Catharine, in her Sunday dress—a pretty striped petticoat, a kerchief with long fringe folded across her bosom, a red apron fastened around her slender waist, a pretty cap of blue silk with black velvet bands setting off her rosy and white face, soft eyes, and slightly retroussé nose—Catharine, I say, exclaimed:

I was so happy that I could not speak. I took off my cloak, which I hung upon a nail on the wall, with my mittens; I took off Monsieur Goulden's great shoes, and felt myself pale with joy.

She ran to the table. Aunt Grédel also came to see the present. Catharine untied the cord and opened the box. I was behind them, my heart bounding—I feared that the watch was not pretty enough. But in an instant, Catharine, clasping her hands, said in a low voice:

"Yes," said Aunt Grédel; "it is beautiful; I never saw so fine a one. One would think it was silver."

"Do you think, Aunt Grédel, that I would be capable of giving a gilt watch to one whom I love better than my own life? If I could do such a thing, I would despise myself more than the dirt of my shoes."

"That painting, Aunt Grédel," said I, "represents two lovers who love each other more than they can tell: Joseph Bertha and Catharine Bauer; Joseph is offering a bouquet of roses to his sweetheart, who is stretching out her hand to take them."

"Come until I kiss you, Joseph. I see very well that you must have economized very much and worked hard for this watch, and I think it is very pretty, and that you are a good workman, and will do us no discredit."

From then until midday we were happy as birds. Aunt Grédel bustled about to prepare a large pancake with dried prunes, and wine, and cinnamon and other good things in it; but we paid no attention to her, and it was only when she put on her red jacket and black sabots, and called, "Come, my children; to table!" that we saw the fine table-cloth, the great porringer, the pitcher of wine, and the large round, golden pancake on a plate in the middle. The sight rejoiced us not a little, and Catharine said:

"Sit there, Joseph, opposite the window, that I may look at you. But you must fix my watch, for I do not know where to put it."

I passed the chain around her neck, and then, seating ourselves, we ate gayly. Without, not a sound was heard; within the fire crackled merrily upon the hearth. It was very pleasant in the large kitchen, and the gray cat, a little wild, gazed at us through the balusters of the stairs without daring to come down.

Catharine, after dinner, sang Der liebe Gott. She had a sweet, clear voice, and it seemed to float to heaven. I sang low, merely to sustain her. Aunt Grédel, who could never rest doing nothing, began spinning; the hum of her wheel filled up the silences, and we all felt happy. When one air was ended, we began another. At three o'clock, Aunt Grédel served up the pancake, and as we ate it, laughing, she would exclaim:

She pretended to be angry, but we could see in her eyes that she was happy from the bottom of her heart. This lasted until four o'clock, when night began to come on apace; the darkness seemed to enter by the little windows, and, knowing that we must soon part, we sat sadly around the hearth on which the red flames were dancing. I would almost have given my life to remain longer. Another half-hour passed, when Aunt Grédel cried:

"Listen, Joseph! It is time for you to go; the moon does not rise till after midnight, and it will soon be dark as a kiln outside, and an accident happens so easily in these great frosts."

These words seemed to fall like a bolt of ice, and I felt Catharine's clasp tighten on my hand. But Aunt Grédel was right.

"Come," said she, rising and taking down the cloak from the wall; "you will come again Sunday."

I had to put on the heavy shoes, the mittens, and the cloak of Monsieur Goulden, and would have wished that I were a hundred years doing so, but, unfortunately, Aunt Grédel assisted me. When I had the great collar drawn up to my ears, she said:

Catharine remained silent. I opened the door, and the terrible cold, entering, admonished me not to wait.

"Good-night, Joseph, good-night!" cried Catharine, "and do not forget to come Sunday."

I turned around to wave my hand; then I ran on without raising my head, for the cold was so intense that it brought tears to my eyes even behind the great collar.

I ran on thus some twenty minutes, scarcely daring to breathe, when a drunken voice called out:

I looked through the dim night, and saw, fifty paces before me, Pinacle, the pedler, with his huge basket, his otter-skin cap, woollen gloves, and iron-pointed staff. The lantern, hanging from the strap of his basket lit up his debauched face, his chin bristling with yellow beard, and his great nose shaped like an extinguisher. He glared with his little eyes like a wolf, and repeated, "Who goes there?"

This Pinacle was the greatest rogue in the country. He had, the year before, a difficulty with Monsieur Goulden, who demanded of him the price of a watch which he undertook to deliver to Monsieur Anstett, the curate of Homert, and the money for which he put into his pocket, saying he had paid it to me. But, although the villain made oath before the justice of the peace, Monsieur Goulden knew the contrary, for on the day in question neither he nor I had left the house. Besides, Pinacle wanted to dance with Catharine at a festival at Quatre-Vents, and she refused because she knew the story of the watch, and was, besides, unwilling to leave me.

The sight, then, of this rogue with his iron-shod stick in the middle of the road did not tend to rejoice my heart. Happily a little path which wound around the cemetery was at my left, and, without replying, I dashed through it, although the snow reached my waist.

"Aha! it is the little lame fellow! Halt! halt! I want to bid you good-evening. You came from Catharine's, you watch-stealer."

But I sprang like a hare through the heaps of snow; he at first tried to follow me, but his pack hindered him, and, when I gained the ground again, he put his hands around his mouth, and shrieked:

"Never mind, cripple, never mind! Your reckoning is coming all the same; the conscription is coming—the grand conscription of the one-eyed, the lame, and the hunch-backed. You will have to go, and you will find a place under ground like the others."

He continued his way, laughing like the sot he was, and I, scarcely able to breathe, kept on, thanking Heaven that the little alley was so near me; for Pinacle, who was known always to draw his knife in a fight, might have done me an ill turn.

In spite of my exertion, my feet, even in the thick shoes, were intensely cold, and I again began running.

That night the water froze in the cisterns of Phalsbourg and the wines in the cellars—things that had not happened before for sixty years.

On the bridge and under the German gate the silence seemed yet deeper than in the morning, and the night made it seem terrible. A few stars shone between the masses of white cloud that hung over the city. All along the street I met not a soul, and when I reached home, after shutting the door of our lower passage, it seemed warm to me, although the little stream that ran from the yard along the wall was frozen. I stopped a moment to take breath; then I ascended in the dark, my hand on the baluster.

When I opened the door of my room, the cheerful warmth of the stove was grateful indeed. Monsieur Goulden was seated in his arm-chair before the fire, his cap of black silk pulled over his ears, and his hands resting upon his knees.

"It is," I answered. "How pleasant it is here, and how cold out of doors! We never had such a winter."

I went into the closet and hung the cloak and mittens in their places, and was about relating my adventure with Pinacle, when he resumed:

"I have had, indeed. Aunt Grédel and Catharine wished me to make you their compliments."

"Very good, very good," said he; "the young are right to amuse themselves, for when we grow old, and suffer, and see so much of injustice, selfishness, and misfortune, everything is spoiled in advance."

He spoke as if talking to himself, gazing at the fire. I had never seen him so sad, and I asked:

He shook his head and bent over gloomily, his heavy gray brows contracted in a frown.

"At this moment, Joseph, there are four hundred thousand families weeping in France; the grand army has perished in the snows off Russia; all those stout young men whom for two months we saw passing our gates are buried beneath them. The news came this afternoon. Oh! it is horrible! horrible!"

I was silent. Now I saw clearly that we must have another conscription, as after all campaigns, and this time the lame would most probably be called. I grew pale, and Pinacle's prophecy made my hair stand on end.

"Go to bed, Joseph; rest easy," said Monsieur Goulden. "I am not sleepy; I will stay here; all this upsets me. Did you remark anything in the city?"

I went to my room and to bed. For a long time I could not close my eyes, thinking of the conscription, of Catharine, and of so many thousands of men buried in the snow, and then I plotted flight to Switzerland.

About three o'clock Monsieur Goulden retired, and a few minutes after, through God's grace, I fell asleep.

IV.

When I arose in the morning, about seven, I went to Monsieur Goulden's room to begin work; but he was still in bed, looking weary and sick.

"Joseph," said he, "I am not well. This horrible news has made me sick, and I have not slept at all. I will get up by and by. But this is the day to regulate the city clocks; I cannot go; for to see so many good people—people I have known for thirty years—in misery, would kill me. Listen, Joseph; take those keys hanging behind the door, and go. I will try to sleep a little. If I could sleep an hour or two, it would do me good."

After putting more wood in the stove, I took the cloak and mittens, drew Monsieur Goulden's bed-curtains, and went out, the bunch of keys in my pocket. The illness of Father Melchior grieved me very much for a while, but a thought came to console me, and I said to myself: "You can climb up the city clock-tower, and see the house of Catharine and Aunt Grédel." Thinking thus, I arrived at the house of Brainstein, the bell-ringer, who lived at the corner of the little court, in an old, tumble-down barrack. His two sons were weavers, and in their old home the noise of the loom and the whistle of the shuttle was heard from morning till night. The grand-mother, old and blind, slept in an arm-chair, on the back of which perched a magpie. Father Brainstein, when he did not have to ring the bells for a christening, a funeral, or a marriage, kept reading his almanac behind the small round panes of his window.

He took up his staff and put on his woollen cap, driving away the cat that was sleeping upon it; then he took the great key of the steeple from a drawer, and we went out together, I [was] glad to find myself again in the open air, despite the cold; for their miserable room was gray with vapor, and as hard to breathe in as a kettle; I could never understand how people could live in such a way.

"Ah!" said he, "there will be many a Mass said in the churches; every one will weep and pray for their children, the more that they are dead in a heathen land."

We crossed the court, and in front of the tower-hall, opposite the guard-house, many peasants and city people were already standing, reading a placard. We went up the steps and entered the church, where more than twenty women, young and old, were kneeling on the pavement, in spite of the terrible cold.

"Is it not as I said?" said Brainstein. "They are coming already to pray, and half of them have been here since five o'clock."

He opened the little door of the steeple leading to the organ, and we began climbing up in the dark. Once in the organ-loft, we turned to the left of the bellows, and went up to the bells.

I was glad to see the blue sky and breathe the free air again, for the bad odor of the bats which inhabited the tower almost suffocated me, But how terrible the cold was in that cage, open to every wind, and how dazzlingly the snow shone over twenty leagues of country! All the little city of Phalsbourg, with its six bastions, three demilunes, two advanced works; its barracks, magazines, bridges, glacis, ramparts; its great parade-ground, and little, well-aligned houses, were beneath me, as if drawn on white paper. I was not yet accustomed to the height, and I held fast on the middle of the platform for fear I might jump off, for I had read of people having their heads turned by great heights. I did not dare go to the clock, and, if Brainstein had not set me the example, I would have remained there, pressed against the beam from which the bells hung; but he said:

Then I took out Monsieur Goulden's large watch which marked seconds, and I saw that the clock was considerably slow. Brainstein helped me to wind it up, and we regulated it.

After becoming somewhat accustomed to the elevation, I began to look around. There were the oak-wood barracks, the upper barracks, Bigelberg, and lastly, opposite me, Quatre-Vents, and the house of Aunt Grédel, from the chimney of which a thread of blue smoke rose toward the sky. And I saw the kitchen, and imagined Catharine, in sabots and woollen skirt, spinning at the corner of the hearth and thinking of me. I no longer felt the cold; I could not take my eyes from their cottage.

Father Brainstein, who did not know what I was looking at, said: "Yes, yes, Monsieur Joseph; now all the roads are covered with people in spite of the snow. The news has already spread, and every one wants to know the extent of his loss."

He was right; every road and path was covered with people coming to the city; and, looking in the court, I saw the crowd increasing every moment before the guard-house, and the mairie, and the post-office. A deep horror arose from the mass.

At length, after a last, long look at Catharine's house, I had to descend, and we went down the dark, winding stairs, as if descending into a well. Once in the organ-loft, we saw that the crowd had greatly increased in the church; all the mothers, the sisters, the old grandmothers, the rich, and the poor, were kneeling on the benches in the midst of the deepest silence; they prayed for the absent, offering all only to see them once again.

At first I did not realize all this; but suddenly the thought that, if I had gone the year before, Catharine would be there praying and asking me of God, fell like a bolt on my heart, and I felt all my body tremble.

We descended the stairs under the great gate, and I went across the court to the house of Monsieur the Commandant Meunier, while Brainstein took the way to his house.

At the corner of the Hotel de Ville, I saw a sight which I shall remember all my life. There, around a placard, were more than five hundred people, men and women crowded against each other, all pale and with necks outstretched, gazing at it as at some horrible apparition. They could not read it, and from time to time one would say in German or French:

At length, Harmautier, the sergent-de-ville, came out of the guard-house, and stood at the top of the steps, with another placard like the first; a few soldiers followed him. Then a rush was made toward him, but the soldiers kept off the crowd, and old Harmautier began to read the placard, which he called the twenty-ninth bulletin, and in which the emperor informed them that during the retreat the horses perished every night by thousands. He said nothing of the men!

The sergent-de-ville read slowly; not a breath was heard in the crowd; even the old woman, who did not understand French, listened like the others. The buzz of a fly could have been heard. But when he came to this passage, "Our cavalry was dismounted to such an extent that we were forced to collect the officers who yet owned horses to form four companies of one hundred and fifty men each. Generals rated as captains, and colonels as under-officers"—when he read this passage, which told more of the misery of the grand army than all the rest, cries and groans arose on all sides; two or three women fell and were carried away.

It is true that the bulletin added, "The health of his majesty was never better," and that was a great consolation. Unfortunately it could not restore life to three hundred thousand men buried in the snow; and so the people went away very sad. Others came by dozens who had not heard the news read, and from time to time Harmautier came out to read the bulletin.

I went to Monsieur the Commandant's. Entering a parlor, I saw him at breakfast. He was an old man, but hale, with a red face and good appetite.

"Bah! tell Monsieur Goulden that we will have our revenge. We cannot always have the upper hand. For fifteen years we have kept the drums beating over them, and it is only right to let them have this little morsel of consolation. And then our honor is safe; we were not beaten fighting; without the cold and the snow, those poor Cossacks would have had a hard time of it. But patience; the skeletons of our regiments will soon be filled, and then let them beware."

I wound up the clock; he rose and came to look at it, for he was a great amateur in clock-making. He pinched my ear in a merry mood; and then, as I was going away, he cried as he buttoned up his overcoat, which he had opened before beginning breakfast:

"Tell Father Goulden to rest easy, the dance will begin again in the spring; the Kalmucks will not always have winter fighting for them. Tell him that."

His burly figure and air of good humor comforted me a little; but in all the other houses I went to, at the Horwiches, the Frantz-Tonis, the Durlachs, everywhere I heard only lamentations. The women especially were in misery; the men said nothing, but walked about with heads hanging down, and without even looking to see what I was doing.

Toward ten o'clock there only remained two persons for me to see: Monsieur de la Vablerie-Chamberlin, one of the ancient nobility, who lived at the end of the main street, with Madame Chamberlin-d'Ecof and Mademoiselle Jeanne, their daughter, They were émigrés, and had returned about three or four years before. They saw no one in the city, and only three or four old priests in the environs. Monsieur de la Vablerie-Chamberlin loved only the chase. He had six dogs at the end of the yard, and a two-horse carriage; Father Robert, of the Rue des Capucins, served them as coachman, groom, footman, and huntsman. Monsieur de la Vablerie-Chamberlin always wore a hunting vest, a leathern cap, and boots and spurs. All the town called him the hunter, but they said nothing of Madame nor of Mademoiselle de Chamberlin.

I was very sad when I pushed open the heavy door, which closed with a pulley whose creaking echoed through the vestibule. What was then my surprise to hear, in the midst of general mourning, the tones of a song and harpsichord! Monsieur de la Vablerie was singing, and Mademoiselle Jeanne accompanying him. I knew not, in those days, that the misfortune of one was often the joy of others, and I said to myself, with my hand on the latch: "They have not heard the news from Russia."

But while I stood thus, the door of the kitchen opened, and Mademoiselle Louise, their servant, putting out her head, asked:

They had their clock in a large parlor which they rarely entered; the high windows, with blinds, remained closed; but there was light enough for what I had to do. I passed then through the kitchen and regulated the antique clock, which was a magnificent piece of work of white marble. Mademoiselle Louise looked on.

"Ah! yes," she said; "and it is for the first time in years; I don't know what is the matter."

My work done, I left the house, meditating on these occurrences, which seemed to me strange. The idea never entered my mind that they were rejoicing at our defeat.

Then I turned the corner of the street to go to Father Féral's, who was called the "Standard-Bearer," because, at the age of forty-five, he, a blacksmith, and for many years the father of a family, had carried the colors of the volunteers of Phalsbourg in '92, and only returned after the Zurich campaign. He had his three sons in the army of Russia, Jean, Louis, and George Féral. George was commandant of dragoons; the two others, officers of infantry.

I imagined the grief of Father Féral while I was going, but it was nothing to what I saw when I entered his room. The poor old man, blind and bald, was sitting in an arm-chair behind the stove, his head bowed upon his breast, and his sightless eyes open, and staring as if he saw his three sons stretched at his feet. He did not speak, but great drops of sweat rolled down his forehead on his long, thin cheeks, while his face was pale as that of a corpse. Four or five of his old comrades of the times of the republic—Father Demarets, Father Nivoi, old Paradis, and tall old Froissard—had come to console him. They sat around him in silence, smoking their pipes, and looking as if they themselves needed comfort.

"Come, come, Féral! are we no longer veterans of the army of the Sambre and Meuse?"

But he did not reply; every minute he sighed, and the old friends made signs to each other, shaking their heads, as if to say:

I hastened to regulate the clock and depart, for to see the poor old man in such a plight made my heart bleed.

He arose. I set the table, and, whilst we were dining in silence, the bells of the steeples began to ring.

"Yes, near an hour ago. Father Demarets and several others tried to comfort him; at last, he asked them to read to him the last letter of his son George, the commandant of dragoons, in which he says that next spring he hoped to embrace his father with a colonel's epaulettes. As the old man heard this, he tried to rise, but fell back with his head upon his knees. That letter had broken his heart."

"Here is your watch, Monsieur Rose," said he, handing it back to the rabbi; "it is twelve sous."

On the eighth of January, a huge placard was posted on the town-hall, stating that the emperor would levy, after a senatus-consultus, as they said in those days, in the first place, one hundred and fifty thousand conscripts of 1813; then one hundred cohortes of the first call of 1812, who thought they had already escaped; then one hundred thousand conscripts of from 1809 to 1812, and so on to the end; so that every loophole was closed, and we would have a larger army than before the Russian expedition.

When Father Fouze, the glazier, came to us with this news, one morning, I almost fell through faintness, for I thought:

Monsieur Goulden poured some water on my neck; my arms hung useless by my side; I was pale as a corpse.

But I was not the only one upon whom the placard had such an effect: that year many young men refused to go; some broke their teeth off, so as not to be able to tear the cartridge; others blew off their thumbs with pistols, so as not to be able to hold a musket; others, again, fled to the woods; they proclaimed them "refractories," but they had not gens d'armes enough to capture them.

The mothers of families took courage to revolt after a manner, and to encourage their sons not to obey the gens d'armes. They aided them in every way; they cried out against the emperor, and the clergy of all denominations sustained them in so doing. The cup was at last full!

The very day of the proclamation I went to Quatre-Vents; but it was not now in the joy of my heart; it was as the most miserable of unhappy wretches, about to be bereft of love and life. I could scarcely walk, and when I reached there I did not know how to announce the evil tidings; but I saw at a glance that they knew all, for Catharine was weeping bitterly, and Aunt Grédel was pale with indignation.

"You shall not go," she cried. "What have we to do with wars? The priest himself told us it was at last too much, and that we ought to have peace! You shall not go! Do not cry, Catharine; I say he shall not go!"

"This carnage," she continued, "has lasted long enough. Our two poor cousins, Kasper and Yokel, are already going to lose their lives in Spain for this emperor, and now he comes to ask us for the younger ones. He is not satisfied to have slain three hundred thousand in Russia. Instead of thinking of peace, like a man of sense, he thinks only of massacring the few who remain. We will see! We will see!"

"In the name of Heaven! Aunt Grédel, be quiet; speak lower," said I, looking at the window. "If they hear you, we are lost."

"I speak for them to hear me," she replied. "Your Napoleon does not frighten me. He commenced by closing our mouths, so that he might do as he pleased; but the end approaches. Four young women are losing their husbands in our village alone, and ten poor young men are forced to abandon everything, despite father, mother, religion, justice, God! Is not this horrible?"

Then Aunt Grédel became silent. Instead of giving us an ordinary dinner, she gave us a better one than on Catharine's fête day, and said, with the air of one who has taken a resolution:

I returned about four in the evening to Phalsbourg, somewhat more calm than when I set out. But as I went up the Rue de la Munitionnaire, I heard at the corner of the college the drum of the sergent-de-ville, Harmautier, and I saw a throng gathered around him. I ran to hear what was going on, and I arrived just as he began reading a proclamation.

Harmautier read that, by the senatus-consultus of the 3d, the drawing for the conscription would take place on the 15th.

The crowd dispersed in the deepest silence. I went home sad enough, and said to Monsieur Goulden:

It is easy to imagine my grief that day and the days following. I could scarcely stand; I constantly saw myself on the point of leaving home. I saw myself flying to the woods, the gens d'armes at my heels, crying, "Halt! halt!" Then I thought of the misery of Catharine, of Aunt Grédel, of Monsieur Goulden. Then I imagined myself marching in the ranks with a number of other wretches, to whom they were crying out, "Forward! charge bayonets!" while whole files were being swept away. I heard bullets whistle and shells shriek; in a word, I was in a pitiable state.

"Be calm, Joseph," said Monsieur Goulden; "do not torment yourself thus. I think that of all who may be drawn there are probably not ten who can give as good reasons as you for staying at home. The surgeon must be blind to receive you. Besides, I will see Monsieur the Commandant. Calm yourself."

Thus I passed an entire week almost in a trance, and when the day of the drawing arrived, Thursday morning, I was so pale, so sick-looking, that the parents of conscripts envied, so to speak, my appearance for their sons. "That fellow," they said, "has a chance; he would drop the first mile. Some people are born under a lucky star!"

"Per Liquidum AEthera Vates."

  Oh! to chant the grander story,
    And to muse the melting tale!
  Oh! to rouse the soul of glory,
    And to charm the happy vale!

  I should love to make the nations
    Bow before my lofty song,
  While my fancy's fair creations
    Endless pleasures should prolong.

  I should love to have my pages
    Eager sought by wise and old,
  While throughout the countless ages
    Fair and young my numbers told.


                II.

  Ever thus gay Hope will wander
    Up the shining mount of fame;
  Ere you follow, pause and ponder,
    While she waves her luring flame.

  Souls are blest that dwell more lowly,
    Braving not the gaze of earth,
  Where they lead a life all holy,
    And the gentler joys have birth.

  You may guide your kindred kindly
    Through the rosy ways of life,
  While the world shall trample blindly
    Down the thorny paths of strife.

  You may seek the 'feast of reason,'
    And enjoy the 'flow of soul,'
  Dearest friends in every season,
    Peaceful age the blessed goal.

  Nature spreads her rich attractions
    On the earth, and sea, and sky;
  Art, religion, man's great actions
    Food for mind and soul supply.

  God in heaven giveth vision
    Of the better land beyond:
  Good on earth, and joys elysian,
    These shall sate thy yearnings fond.
{329}

                III.

  But to wake the hills and valleys
    With the poet's sounding lyre!
  Glory yet my spirit rallies,
    I would breathe the sacred fire.

  Nature, art, and holy friendship,
    Books and men shall give me aid;
  Even Heaven will grant me kinship,
    I would tell what God hath made.

  I will dwell apart with heroes,
    I will mate with saintly men;
  God and nature ever near us,
    I shall be more blessed then.

  Humbled, chaste, my soul shall listen
    To the chiming of the spheres,
  Where, on high, His glories glisten,
    As His throne the spirit nears.


                IV.

  Yes, ye bands of bright immortals,
    Free throughout all earth and time,
  I would ope the grand old portals
    Leading to your realms sublime;

  Suns and starry worlds beneath you,
    Lords of wisdom, light, and air,
  I would sip rare nectar with you,
    I would taste ambrosia there;

  There to feel exultant powers
    Lift me up the ethereal tide,
  O'er your bright and airy towers,
    Where the boldest plume is tried.


                V.

  Holiest helpers, lend assistance,
    That I fail not in the flight!
  Pride, away! in that grand distance
    Thou art black as shades of night.

  Faithful, pure, and single-hearted,
    I may soar on tireless wing,
  Till the folds of light are parted
    Where the heavenly muses sing.


                            Whitmore.

Faith and the Sciences.

In the last half of the seventeenth century and the first half of the eighteenth, the so-called free-thinkers defended their rejection of the Christian mysteries on the alleged ground that the mathematicians had exploded them. Thus Dr. Garth, in his last illness, resisted the efforts of Addison to persuade him to die as a Christian, by saying, "Surely, Mr. Addison, I have good reason not to believe those trifles, since my friend, Dr. Halley, who has dealt much in demonstration, has assured me that the doctrines of Christianity are incomprehensible, and the religion itself an imposture."

In this assurance of Dr. Halley, we see a trace of Cartesianism which places certainty in clearness of ideas, and assumes that what is incomprehensible, or what cannot be clearly apprehended by the mind, is false; as if the human mind were the measure of the true, and as if there were not truths too large for it to comprehend! But since Berkeley, the Protestant Bishop of Cloyne, exposed in his Analyst, and Letters in its defence, the confused and false reasoning of mathematicians, especially in fluxions or the differential calculus, in which, though their conclusions are true, they are not obtained from their premises, the free-thinkers have abandoned the authority of mathematicians, and now seek to justify their infidelity by that of the so-called physicists. They appeal now to the natural sciences, chiefly to geology, zoology, and philology, and tell us that the progress made in these sciences has destroyed the authority of the Holy Scriptures and exploded the Christian dogmas. Geology, we are told, has disproved the chronology of the Bible, zoology has disproved the dogma of creation, and ethnology and philology have disproved the unity of the species; consequently the dogma of original sin, and all the dogmas that presuppose it. Hence our scientific chiefs, whom the age delights to honor, look down on us, poor, benighted Christian believers, with deep pity or supreme contempt, and despatch our faith by pronouncing the word "credulity" or "superstition" with an air that anticipates or admits no contradiction. It is true, here and there a man, not without scientific distinction, utters a feeble protest, and timidly attempts to show that there is no discrepancy between the Christian faith and the facts really discovered and classified by the sciences; but there is no denying that the predominant tendency of the modern scientific world is decidedly unchristian, even when not decidedly anti-christian.

The most learned men and profoundest thinkers of our age, as of every age, are, no doubt, believers, sincere and earnest Christians; but they are not the men who represent the age, and give tone to its literature and science. They are not the popular men of their times, and their voice is drowned in the din of the multitude. There is nothing novel or sensational in what they have to tell us, and there is no evidence of originality or independence of thought or character in following them. In following them we have no opportunity of separating ourselves from the past, breaking with tradition, and boldly defying both heaven and earth. {331} There is no chance for war against authority, of creating a revolution, or enjoying the excitement of a battle; so the multitude of little men go not with them. And they who would deem it gross intellectual weakness to rely on the authority of St. Paul, or even of our Lord himself, have followed blindly and with full confidence an Agassiz, a Huxley, a Lyell, or any other second or third-rate physicist, who is understood to defend theories that undermine the authority of the church and the Bible.

We are not, we frankly confess, learned in the sciences. They have changed so rapidly and so essentially since our younger days, when we did take some pains to master them, that we do not know what they are to-day any more than we do what they will be to-morrow. We have not, in our slowness, been able to keep pace with them, and we only know enough of them now to know that they are continually changing under the very eye of the spectator. But, if we do not know all the achievements of the sciences, we claim to know something of the science of sciences, the science which gives the law to them, and to which they must conform or cease to pretend to have any scientific character. If we know not what they have done, we know something which they have not done.

We said, in our article on the Cartesian Doubt, that the ideal formula does not give us the sciences; but we add now, what it did not comport with our purpose to add then, that, though it does not give them, it gives them their law and controls them. We do not deduce our physics from our metaphysics; but our metaphysics or philosophy gives the law to the inductive or empirical sciences, and prescribes the bounds beyond which they cannot pass without ceasing to be sciences. Knowing the ideal formula, we do not know all the sciences, but we do know what is not and cannot be science.

The ideal formula, being creates existences, which is only the first article of the creed, is indisputable, certain, and the principle alike of all the real and all the knowable, of all existence and of all science. This formula expresses the primitive intuition, and it is given us by God himself in creating us intelligent creatures, because without it our minds cannot exist, and, if it had not been given us in the very constitution of the mind, we never could have obtained it. It is the essential basis of the mind, the necessary condition of all thought, and we cannot even in thought deny it, or think at all without affirming it This we have heretofore amply shown; and we may add here that no one ever thinks without thinking something the contrary of which cannot be thought, as St. Anselm asserts.

As Berkeley says to the mathematicians, "Logic is logic, and the same to whatever subject it is applied." When, therefore, the cultivators of the inductive sciences allege a theory or hypothesis which contradicts in any respect the ideal formula, however firmly persuaded they may be that it is warranted by the facts observed and analyzed, we tell them at once, without any examination of their proofs or reasonings, that their hypothesis is unfounded, and their theory false, because it contradicts the first principle alike of the real and the knowable, and therefore cannot possibly be true. We deny no facts well ascertained to be facts, but no induction from any facts can be of as high authority as the ideal formula, for without it no induction is possible. Hence we have no need to examine details any more than we have to enter into proofs of the innocence or guilt of a man who confesses that he has openly, knowingly, and intentionally violated the law. {332} The case is one in which judgment à priori may be safely pronounced. No induction that denies all science and the conditions of science can be scientific.

The ideal formula does not put any one in possession of the sciences, but it enables us to control them. We can entertain no doctrine, even for examination, that denies any one of the three terms of the formula. If existences are denied, there are no facts or materials of science; if the creative act is denied, there are no facts or existences; and finally, if God is denied, the creative act itself is denied. God and creature are all that is or exists, and creatures can exist only by the creative act of God. Do you come and tell me that you are no creature? What are you, then? Between God and creature there is no middle term. If, then, you are not creature, you must be God or nothing. Well, are you God? God, if God at all, is independent, necessary, self-existent, immutable, and eternal being. Are you that, you who depend on other than yourself for every breath you draw, for every motion you make, for every morsel of food you eat, whom the cold chills, the fire burns, the water drenches? No? do you say you are not God? What are you, then, I ask once more? If you are neither God nor creature, then you are nothing. But nothing you are not, for you live, think, speak, and act, and even reason, though not always wisely or well. If something and not God, then you are creature, and are a living assertion of the ideal formula. Do you deny it, and say there is no God? Then still again, what are you who make the denial? If there is no God, there is no real, necessary, and eternal being—no being at all; if no being, then no existence, for all existence is from being, and if no existence, then what are you who deny God? Nothing? Then your denial is nothing, and worth nothing.

It is impossible to deny any one of the three terms of the formula, for every man, though he may believe himself an atheist or a pantheist, is a living assertion of each one of them, and in its real relation to the other two. We have the right, then, to assert the formula as the first principle in science, and oppose it as conclusive against any and every theory that denies creation, and asserts either atheism or pantheism. Do not think to divert attention from the intrinsic fallacy of such a theory by babbling about natural laws. Nature, no doubt, has her laws, according to which, or, if you please, by virtue of which, all natural phenomena or natural effects are produced, and it is the knowledge of these laws that constitutes natural science or the sciences. But these laws, whence come they? Are they superior to nature, or inferior? If inferior, how can they govern her operations? If superior, then they must have their origin in the supernatural, and a reality above nature must be admitted. Nature, then, is not the highest, is not ultimate, is not herself being, or has not her being in herself; is, therefore, contingent existence, and consequently creature, existing only by virtue of the creative act of real and necessary being, which brings us directly back to the ideal formula. God denied, nature and the laws of nature are denied.

The present tendency among naturalists is to deny creation and to assert development—to say with Topsy, in Uncle Tom's Cabin, only generalizing her doctrine, "Things didn't come; they growed." Things are not created; they are developed by virtue of natural laws. Developed from what? From nothing? Ex nihilo nihil fit. {333} From nothing nothing can be developed. A universe self-developed from nothing is somewhat more difficult to comprehend than the creation of the universe from nothing through the word of his power by One able to create and sustain it. You can develop a germ, but you cannot develop where there is nothing to be developed. Then the universe is not developed from nothing: then from something. What is that something? Whatever you assume it to be, it cannot be something created, for you deny all creation. Then it is eternal, self-existent being, being in itself, therefore being in its plenitude, independent, immutable, complete, perfect in itself, and therefore incapable of development. Development is possible only in that which is imperfect, incomplete, for it is simply the reduction of what in the thing developed is potential to act.

There is great lack of sound philosophy with our modern theorists. They seem not to be aware that the real must precede the possible, and that the possible is only the ability of the real. They assume the contrary, and place possible being before real being. Even Leibnitz says that St. Anselm's argument to prove the existence of God, drawn from the idea of the most perfect being, the contrary of which cannot be thought, is conclusive only on condition that most perfect being is first proved to be possible. Hegel makes the starting-point of all reality and all science to be naked being in the sense in which it and not-being are identical; that is, not real, but possible being, the abyssus of the Gnostics, and the void of the Buddhists, which Pierre Leroux labors hard, in his L'Humanité and in the article Le Ciel in his Encyclopédie Nouvelle, to prove is not nothing, though conceding it to be not something, as if there could be any medium between something and nothing. In itself, or as abstracted from the real, the possible is sheer nullity; nothing at all. The possibility of the universe is the ability of God to create it. If God were not himself real, no universe would be possible. The possibility of a creature may be understood either in relation to its creability on the part of God, or in relation to its own perfectibility. In relation to God every creature is complete the moment the Divine Mind has decreed its creation, and, therefore, incapable of development; but, in relation to itself, it has unrealized possibilities which can be only progressively fulfilled. Creatures, in this latter sense, can be developed because there are in them unrealized possibilities or capacities for becoming, by aid of the real, more than they actually are, that is, because they are created, in relation to themselves, not perfect, but perfectible. Hence, creatures, not the Creator, are progressive, or capable, each after its kind, of being progressively developed and completed according to the original design of the Creator.

Aristotle, whom it is the fashion just now to sneer at, avoided the error of our modern sophists; he did not place the possible before the real, for he knew that without the real there is no possible. The principium, or beginning, must be real being, and, therefore, he asserted God, not as possible, but real, most real, and called him actus purissimus, most pure act, which excludes all unactualized potentialities or unrealized possibilities, and implies that he is most pure, that is, most perfect being, being in its plenitude. God being eternally being in himself, being in its plenitude, as he must be if self-existent, and self-existent he must be if not created, he is incapable of development, because in him there are no possibilities not reduced to act. {334} The developmentists must, then, either admit the fact of creation, or deny the development they assert and attempt to maintain; for, if there is no creation, nothing distinguishable from the uncreated, nothing exists to be developed, and the uncreated, being either nothing, and therefore incapable of development, or self-existent, eternal, and immutable being, being in its plenitude, and therefore from the very fulness and perfection of its being also incapable of development. If the developmentists had a little philosophy or a little logic, they would see that, so far from being able to substitute development for creation, they must assert creation in order to be able to assert even the possibility of development. Is it on the authority of such sciolists, sophists, and sad blunderers as these developmentists that we are expected to reject the Holy Scriptures, and to abandon our faith in Christianity? We have a profound reverence for the sciences, and for all really scientific men; but really it is too much to expect us to listen, with the slightest respect, to such absurdities as most of our savans are in the habit of venting, when they leave their own proper sphere and attempt to enter the domain of philosophy or theology. In the investigation of the laws of nature and the observation and accumulation of facts they are respectable, and often render valuable service to mankind; but, when they undertake to determine by their inductions from facts of a secondary order what is true or false in philosophy or theology, they mistake their vocation and their aptitudes, and, if they do not render themselves ridiculous, it is because their speculations are too gravely injurious to permit us to feel toward them anything but grief or indignation.

None of the sciences are apodictic; they are all as special sciences empirical, and are simply formed by inductions from facts observed and classified. To their absolute certainty two things are necessary: First, that the observation of the facts of the natural world should be complete, leaving no class or order of facts unobserved and unanalyzed; and, second, that the inductions from them should be infallible, excluding all error, and all possibility of error. But we say only what every one knows, when we say that neither of these conditions is possible to any mortal man. Even Newton, it is said, compared himself to a child picking up shells on the beach; and after all the explorations that have been made it is but a small part of nature that is known. The inductive method, ignorantly supposed to be an invention of my Lord Bacon, but which is as old as the human mind itself, and was always adopted by philosophers in their investigations of nature, is the proper method in the sciences, and all we need to advance them is to follow it honestly and strictly. But, every day, facts not before analyzed or observed come under the observation of the investigator, and force new inductions, which necessarily modify more or less those previously made. Hence it is that the natural sciences are continually undergoing more or less important changes. Certain principles, indeed, remain the same; but set aside, if we must set aside, mathematics and mechanics, there is not a single one of the sciences that is now what it was in the youth of men not yet old. Some of them are almost the creations of yesterday. {335} Take chemistry, electricity, magnetism, geology, zoology, biology, physiology, philology, ethnology, to mention no more; they are no longer what they were in our own youth, and the treatises in which we studied them are now obsolete.

It is not likely that these sciences have even as yet reached perfection, that no new facts will be discovered, and no further changes and modifications be called for. We by no means complain of this, and are far from asking that investigation in any field should be arrested, and these sciences remain unchanged, as they now are. No: let the investigations go on, let all be discovered that is discoverable, and the sciences be rendered as complete as possible. But, then, is it not a little presumptuous, illogical even, to set up any one of these incomplete, inchoate sciences against the primitive intuitions of reason or the profound mysteries of the Christian faith? Your inductions to-day militate against the ideal formula and the Christian creed; but how know you that your inductions of to-morrow will not be essentially modified by a fuller or closer observation of facts? Your conclusions must be certain before we can on their authority reject any received dogma of faith or any alleged dictamen of reason.

We know á priori that investigation can disclose no fact or facts that can be incompatible with the ideal formula. No possible induction can overthrow any one of its three terms. It is madness to pretend that from the study of nature one can disprove the reality of necessary and eternal being, the fact of creation, or of contingent existences. The most that any one, not mad, does or can pretend is, that they cannot be proved by way of deduction or induction from facts of the natural world. The atheist Lalande went no further than to say, "I have never seen God at the end of my telescope." Be it so, what then? Because you have never seen God at the end of your telescope, can you logically conclude that there is no God? For ourselves, we do not pretend that God is, or can be asserted by way of deduction or induction from the facts of nature, though we hold that what he is, even his eternal power and divinity, may be clearly seen from them; but the fact that God cannot be proved in one way to be does not warrant the conclusion that he cannot in some other way be proved, far less that there is no God.

We do not deduce the dogmas of faith from the ideal formula, for that is in the domain of science; but they all accord with it, and presuppose it as the necessary preamble to faith. We have not the same kind of certainty for faith that we have for the scientific formula; but we have a certainty equally high and equally infallible. Consequently, the inductions or theories of naturalists are as impotent against it as against the formula itself. The authority of faith is superior, we say not to science, but to any logical inductions drawn from the facts of the natural world, or theories framed by natural philosophers, and those then, however plausible, can never override it. No doubt the evidences of our faith are drawn in part from history, and therefore from inductive science; but even as to that part the certainty is of the same kind with that of any of the sciences, rests on the analysis of facts and induction from them, and is at the very lowest equal to theirs at the highest.

But let us descend to matters of fact. We will take geology, which seems just now to be regarded as the most formidable weapon against the Christian religion. Well, what has geology done? It has by its researches proved an antiquity of the earth and of man on the earth which is far greater than is admissible by the chronology of the Holy Scriptures. It has thus disproved the chronology of the Bible; therefore it has disproved the divine inspiration of the Bible, and therefore, again, the truth of the Christian dogmas, which have no other authority than that inspiration. But have you, geologists, really proved what you pretend? You have discovered certain facts, fossils, etc., which, if some half a dozen possible suppositions are true, not one of which you have proved or in the nature of the case can prove, render it highly probable that the earth is somewhat more than six thousand years old, and that it is more than five thousand eight hundred and sixty-seven years since the creation of man. As to the antiquity of man, at least, you have not proved what you pretend. Your proofs, to be worth anything, must destroy all possible suppositions except the one you adopt, which they do not do, for we can suppose many other explanations of the undisputed facts besides the one you insist on our accepting. Moreover, the facts on which you rely, if fairly given by Sir Charles Lyell in his Antiquity of Man, by no means warrant his inductions. Suppose there is no mistake as to facts, which is more than we are willing to concede, especially as to the stone axes and knives, which, according to the drawings given of them, are exactly similar to hundreds which we have seen when a boy strewing the surface of the ground, the logic, by which the conclusion is obtained is puerile, and discreditable to any man who has had the slightest intellectual training.

But suppose you have proved the antiquity of the earth and of man on it to be as you pretend, what then? In the first place, you have not proved that the earth and man on it were not created, that God did not in the beginning create the heavens and the earth, and all things therein. You leave, then, intact both the formula and the dogma which presupposes and reasserts it as a truth of revelation as well as of science. But we have disproved the chronology of the Bible. Is it the chronology of the Bible or chronology as arranged by learned men that you have disproved? Say the chronology as it actually is in the Bible, though all learned men know that that chronology is exceedingly difficult if not impossible to make out, and we for ourselves have never been able to settle it at all to our entire satisfaction, is it certain that the Scriptures themselves even pretend that the date assigned to the creation of the world is given by divine revelation and is to be received as an article of faith? There is an important difference between the chronology given in the Hebrew Bible and that given in the Septuagint used by the apostles and Greek fathers, and still used by the united as well as by the non-united Greeks, and we are not aware that there has ever been an authoritative decision as to which or either of the two chronologies must be followed. The commonly received chronology certainly ought not to be departed from without strong and urgent reasons; but, if such reasons are adduced, we do not understand that it cannot be departed from without impairing the authority of either the Scriptures or the church. We know no Christian doctrine or dogma that could be affected by carrying the date of the creation of the world a few or even many centuries further back, if we recognize the fact of creation itself. {337} Our faith does not depend on a question of arithmetic, as seems to have been assumed by the Anglican Bishop Colenso. Numbers are easily changed in transcription, and no commentator has yet been able to reconcile all the numbers as we now have them in our Hebrew Bibles, or even in the Greek translation of the Seventy.

Supposing, then, that geologists and historians of civilization have found facts, not to be denied, which seem to require for the existence of the globe, and man on its face, a longer period than is allowed by the commonly received chronology, we do not see that this warrants any induction against any point of Christian faith or doctrine. We could, we confess, more easily explain some of the facts which we meet in the study of history, the political and social changes which have evidently taken place, if more time were allowed us between Noah and Moses than is admitted by Usher's chronology; it would enable us to account for many things which now embarrass our historical science; yet whether we are allowed more time or not, or whether we can account for the historical facts or not, our faith remains the same; for we have long since learned that, in the subjects with which science proposes to deal, as well as in revelation itself, there are many things which will be inexplicable even to the greatest, wisest, and holiest of men, and that the greatest folly which any man can entertain is that of expecting to explain everything, unless concluding a thing must needs be false because we know not its explanation is a still greater folly. True science as well as true virtue is modest, humble indeed, and always more depressed by what it sees that it cannot do than elated by what it may have done.

Science, it is further said, has exploded the Christian doctrine of the unity and the Adamic origin of the species, and therefore the doctrines of Original Sin, the Incarnation, the Redemption, indeed the whole of Christianity so far as it is a supernatural system, and not a system of bald and meagre rationalism. Some people perhaps believe it. But science is knowledge, either intuitive or discursive; and who dares say that he knows the dogma of the unity of the human species is false, or that all the kindreds and nations of men have not sprung from one and the same original pair? The most that can be said is that the sciences have not as yet proved it, and it must be taken, if at all, from, revelation.

Take the unity of the species. The naturalists have undoubtedly proved the existence of races or varieties of men, like the Caucasian, the Mongolian, the Malayan, the American, and the African, more or less distinctly marked, and separated from one another by greater or less distances; but have they proved that these several races or varieties are distinct species, or that they could not all have sprung from the same original pair? Physiologists, we are told, detect some structural differences between the negro and the white man. The black differs from the white in the greater length of the spine, in the shape of the head, leg, and foot and heel, in the facial angles, the size and convolutions of the brain. Be it so; but do these differences prove diversity of species, or, at most, only a distinct variety in the same species? May they not all be owing to accidental causes? The type of the physical structure of the African is undeniably the same with that of the Caucasian, and all that can be said is, that in the negro it is less perfectly realized, constituting a difference in degree, indeed, but not in kind.

But before settling the question whether the several races of men belong to one and the same species or not, and have or have not had the same origin, it is necessary to determine the characteristic or differentia of man. Naturalists treat man as simply an animal standing at the head of the class or order mammalia, and are therefore obliged to seek his differentia or characteristic in his physical structure; but if it be true, as some naturalists tell us, that the same type runs through the physical structure of all animals, unless insects, reptiles, and crustacea form an exception, it is difficult to find in man's physical structure his differentia. The schoolmen generally define man, a rational animal, animal rationale, and make the genus animal, and the differentia reason. The characteristic of the species, that which constitutes it, is reason or the rational mind, and certainly science can prove nothing to the contrary. Some animals may have a degree of intelligence, but none of them have reason, free will, moral perceptions, or are capable of acting from considerations of right and wrong. We assume, then, that the differentia of the species homo, or man, is reason, or the rational soul. If our naturalists had understood this, they might have spared the pains they have taken to assimilate man to the brute, and to prove that he is a monkey developed.

This point settled, the question of unity of the species is settled. There may be differences among individuals and races as to the degree of reason, but all have reason in some degree. Reason may be weaker in the African than in the European, whether owing to the lack of cultivation or to other accidental causes, but it is essentially the same in the one as in the other, and there is no difference except in degree; and even as to degree, it is not rare to find negroes that are, in point of reason, far superior to many white men. Negroes, supposed to stand lowest in the scale, have the same moral perception and the same capacity of distinguishing between right and wrong and of acting from free will, that white men have; and if there is any difference, it is simply a difference of degree, not a difference of kind or species.

But conceding the unity of the species, science has, at least, proved that the several races or varieties in the same species could not have all sprung from one and the same original pair. Where has science done this? It can do it only by way of induction from facts scientifically observed and analyzed. What facts has it observed and analyzed that warrant this conclusion against the Adamic origin of all men? There are, as we have just said, no anatomical, physiological, intellectual, or moral facts that warrant such conclusion, and no other facts are possible. Wherever men are found, they all have the essential characteristic of men as distinguished from the mere animal; they all have substantially the same physical structure; all have thought, speech, and reason, and, though some may be inferior to others, nothing proves that all may not have sprung from the same Adam and Eve. Do you say ethnology cannot trace all the kindreds and nations of men back to a common origin? That is nothing to the purpose; can it say they cannot have had a common origin? But men are found everywhere, and could they have reached from the plains of Shinar continents separated from Asia by a wide expanse of water, and been distributed over America, New Holland, and the remotest islands of the ocean, when they had no ships or were ignorant of navigation? {339} Do you know that they had, in what are to us antehistorical times, no ships and no knowledge of navigation, as we know they have had them both ever since the first dawn of history? No? Then you allege not your science against the Christian dogma, but your ignorance, which we submit is not sufficient to override faith. You must prove that men could not have been distributed from a common centre as we now find them before you can assert that they could not have had a common origin. Besides, are you able to say what changes of land and water have taken place since men first appeared on the face of the earth? Many changes, geologists assure us, have taken place, and more than they know may have occurred, and have left men where they are now found, and where they may have gone without crossing large bodies of water. So long as any other hypothesis is possible, you cannot assert your own as certain.

But the difference of complexion, language, and usage which we note between the several races of men proves that they could not have sprung from one and the same pair. Do you know they could not? Know it? No; not absolutely, perhaps; but how can you prove they could and have? That is not the question. Christianity is in possession, and must be held to be rightfully in possession till real science shows the contrary. I may not be able to explain the origin of the differences noted in accordance with the assertion of the common origin of all men in a single primitive pair; but my ignorance can avail you no more than your own. My nescience is not your science. Your business is by science to disprove faith; if your science does not do that, it does nothing, and you are silenced. We do not pretend to be able to account for the differences of the several races, any more than we pretend to be able to account for the well-known fact that children born of the same parents have different facial angles, different sized brains, different shaped mouths and noses, different temperaments, different intellectual powers, and different moral tendencies. We may have conjectures on the subject, but conjectures are not science. If necessary to the argument, we might, perhaps, suggest a not improbable hypothesis for explaining the difference of complexion between the white and the colored races. The colored races, the yellow, the olive, the red, the copper-colored, and the black, are inferior to the Caucasian, have departed farther from the norma of the species, and approached nearer to the animal, and therefore, like animals, have become more or less subject to the action of the elements. External nature, acting for ages on a race, enfeebled by over-civilization and refinement, and therefore having in a great measure lost the moral and intellectual power of resisting the elemental action of nature, may, perhaps, sufficiently explain the differences we note in the complexion of the several races. If the Europeans and their American descendants were to lose all tradition of the Christian religion, as they are rapidly doing, and to take up with spiritism or some other degrading superstition, as they seem disposed to do, and to devote themselves solely to the luxuries and refinements of the material civilization of which they are now so proud, and boast so much, it is by no means improbable that in time they would become as dark, as deformed, as imbecile as the despised African or the native New Hollander. {340} We might give very plausible reasons for regarding the negro as the degraded remnant of a once over-civilized and corrupted race; and perhaps, if recovered, Christianized, civilized, and restored to communication with the great central current of human life, he may in time lose his negro hue and features, and become once more a white man, a Caucasian. But be this as it may, we rest, as is our right, on the fact that the unity of the human species and its Adamic origin are in possession, and it is for those who deny either point to make good their denial.

But the Scriptures say mankind were originally of one speech, and we find that every species of animals has its peculiar song or cry, which is the same in every individual of the same species; yet this is not the case with the different kindred and nations of men; they speak different tongues, which the philologist is utterly unable to refer to a common original. Therefore there cannot be in men unity of species, and the assertion of the Scriptures of all being of one speech is untrue. If the song of the same species of birds or the cry of the same species of animals is the same in all the individuals of that species, it still requires no very nice ear to distinguish the song or the cry of one individual from that of another; and therefore the analogy relied on, even if admissible, which it is not, would not sustain the conclusion. Conceding, if you insist on it, that unity of species demands unity of speech, the facts adduced warrant no conclusion against the Scriptural assertion; for the language of all men is even now one and the same, and all really have one and the same speech. Take the elements of language as the sensible sign by which men communicate with one another, and there is even now, at least as far as known or conceivable, only one language. The essential elements of all dialects are the same. You have in all the subject, the predicate, and the copula, or the noun, adjective, and verb, to which all the other parts of speech are reducible. Hence the philologist speaks of universal grammar, and constructs a grammar applicable alike to all dialects. Some philologists also contend that the signs adopted by all dialects are radically the same, and that the differences encountered are only accidental. This has been actually proved in the case of what are called the Aryan or Indo-European dialects. That the Sanskrit, the Pehlvi or old Persic, the Keltic, the Teutonic, the Slavonic, the Greek, and the Latin, from which are derived the modern dialects of Europe, as Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, English, Dutch, German, Scanian, Turk, Polish, Russian, Welsh, Gaelic, and Irish, all except the Basque and Lettish or Finnish, have had a common origin, no philologist doubts. That the group of dialects called Semitic, including the Hebrew, Chaldaic, Syriac, Coptic, and Ethiopic, have had an origin identical with that of the Aryan group is, we believe, now hardly denied. All that can be said is, that philologists have not proved it, nor the same fact with regard to the so-called Turanian group, as the Chinese, the Turkish, the Basque, the Lettish or Finnish, the Tataric or Mongolian, etc., the dialects of the aboriginal tribes or nations of America and of Africa. But what conclusion is to be drawn from the fact that philology, a science confessedly in its infancy, and hardly a science at all, has not as yet established an identity of origin with these for the most part barbarous dialects? From the fact that philology has not ascertained it, we cannot conclude that the identity does not exist, or even that philology may not one day discover and establish it.

Philology may have also proceeded on false assumptions, which have retarded its progress and led it to false conclusions. It has proceeded on the assumption that the savage is the primitive man, and that his agglutinated dialect represents a primitive state of language instead of a degenerate state. A broader view of history and a juster induction from its facts would, perhaps, upset this assumption. The savage is the degenerate, not the primeval man; man in his second childhood, not in his first; and hence the reason why he has no growth, no inherent progressive power, and why, as Niebuhr asserts, there is no instance on record of a savage people having by its own indigenous efforts passed from the savage to the civilized state. The thing is as impossible as for the old man, decrepit by age, to renew the vigor and elasticity of his youth or early manhood. Instead of studying the dialects of savage tribes to obtain specimens of the primitive forms of speech, philologists should study them only to obtain specimens of worn-out or used up forms, or of language in its dotage. In all the savage dialects that we have any knowledge of, we detect or seem to detect traces of a culture, a civilization, of which they who now speak them have lost all memory and are no longer capable. This seems to us to bear witness to a fall, a loss. Perhaps, when the American and African dialects are better known, and are studied with reference to this view of the savage state, and we have better ascertained the influence of climate and habits of life on the organs of speech and therefore on pronunciation, especially of the consonants, we shall be able to discover indications of an identity of origin where now we can detect only traces of diversity. As long as philology has only partially explored the field of observation, it is idle to pretend that science has established anything against the scriptural doctrine of the unity of speech. The fact that philologists have not traced all the various dialects now spoken or extinct to a common original amounts to nothing against faith, unless it can be proved that no such original ever existed. It may have been lost and only the distinctions retained.

Naturalists point to the various species of plants and animals distributed over the whole surface of the globe, and ask us if we mean to say that each of these has also sprung from one original pair, or male and female, and if we maintain that the primogenitors of each species of animal were in the garden of Eden with Adam and Eve, or in the Ark with Noah. If so, how have they become distributed over the several continents of the earth and the islands of the ocean? Argumentum a specie ad speciem, non valet, as say the books on logic. And even if it were proved that in case of plants and animals God duplicates, triplicates, or quadriplicates the parents by direct creation, or that he creates anew the pair in each remote locality where the same species is found, as prominent naturalists maintain or are inclined to maintain, it would prove nothing in the case of man. For we cannot reason from animals to man, or from flora to fauna. Nearly all the arguments adduced from so-called science against the faith are drawn from supposed analogies of men and animals, and rest for their validity on the assumption that man is not only generically, but specifically, an animal, which is simply a begging the question.

Species again, it is said, may be developed by way of selection, as the florist proves in regard to flowers, and the shepherd or herdsman in regard to sheep and cattle. That new varieties in the lower orders of creation may be attained by some sort of development is not denied, but as yet it is not proved that any new species is ever so obtained. Moreover, facts would seem to establish that, at least in the case of domestic animals, horses, cattle, and sheep, the new varieties do not become species and are not self-perpetuating. Experiments in what is called crossing the breed have proved that, unless the crossing is frequently renewed, the variety in a very few generations runs out. There is a perpetual tendency of each original type to gain the ascendency, and of the stronger to eliminate the others. Cattle-breeders now do not rely on crossing, but seek to improve their stock by selecting the best breed they know, and improving it by improved care and nourishment. The different varieties of men may be, perhaps, improved in their physique by selection, as was attempted in the institutions of Lycurgus; but, as the moral and intellectual nature predominates in man and is his characteristic, all conclusions as to him drawn from the lower orders of creation, even in his physical constitution, are suspicious and always to be accepted with extreme caution. The church has defined what no physiologist has disproved, that anima est forma corporis. The soul is the informing or vital principle of the body, which modifies all its actions, and enables it to resist, at least to some extent, the chemical and other natural laws which act on animals, plants, and unorganized matter. The physiological and medical theories based on chemistry, which were for a time in vogue and are not yet wholly abandoned, contain at best only a modicum of truth, and can never be safely followed, for in the life of man there is at work a subtiler power than a chemical or any other physical agent. We do not deny that man is through his body related to the material world, or that many of the laws of that world, mineral, vegetable, and animal, are in some degree applicable to him; but, as far as science has yet proceeded, they are so only with many limitations and modifications which the physician—we use the word in its etymological as well as in its conventional sense—can seldom determine. The morale every physician knows has an immense power over the physique. The higher the morale, the greater the power of the physical system to resist physical laws, to endure fatigue, to bear up against and even to throw off disease. Physical disease is often generated by moral depression, and not seldom thrown off by moral exhilaration. What is called strength of will at times seems not only to subject disease to its control, but to hold death itself at bay. In armies the officer, with more care, more labor, more hardship, and less food and sleep, will survive the common soldier, vastly his superior as to his mere physical constitution. These facts and innumerable others like them justify a strong protest against the too common practice of applying to man without any reservation the laws which we observe in the lower orders of creation, and arguing from what is true of them what must be true of him. Tear off the claw of a lobster, and a new one will be pushed out; cut the polypus in pieces, and each piece becomes a perfect polypus, at least so we are told, for we have not ourselves made or seen the experiment. But nothing of the sort is true of man, nor even of the higher classes of animals in which organic life is more complex. {343} We place little confidence in conclusions drawn from the assumed analogies between man and animals, and even the development of species in them by selection or otherwise, if proved, would not prove to us the possibility of a like development in him. We must see a monkey by development grow into a man before we can believe it.

But why, even in the case of animals that can be propagated only by the union of male and female, we should suppose the necessity of duplicating the parents of the species is more than we are able to understand. The individuals of the species could go where man could go. Suppose we find a species of fish in a North American lake, and the same species in a European or Asiatic lake which has no water communication with it, can you say the two lakes have never been in communication, you who claim that the earth has existed for millions of ages? Much of what is now land was once covered with water, and much now covered with water it is probable was once land inhabited by plants, animals, and men. Facts even indicate that the part of the earth now under the Arctic and Antarctic circles once lay nearer to the Equator, if not under it, and that what are now mountains were once islands dotting the surface of the ocean. No inductions which exclude these probabilities or indications are scientific, or can be accepted as conclusive.

Take, then, all the facts on which the naturalists support their hypotheses, they establish nothing against faith. The facts really established either favor faith or are perfectly compatible with it; and if any are alleged that seem to militate against it, they are either not proved to be facts, or their true character is not fully ascertained, and no conclusion from them can be taken as really scientific. We do not pretend that the natural sciences, as such, tend to establish the truth of revelation, and we think some over-zealous apologists of the faith go further in this respect than they should. The sciences deal with facts and causes of the secondary order; and it is very certain that one may determine the quality of an acorn as food for swine without considering the first cause of the oak that bore it. A man may ascertain the properties of steam and apply it to impel various kinds of machinery, without giving any direct argument in favor of the unity and Adamic origin of the race. The atheist may be a good geometrician; but, if there were no God, there could be neither geometry nor an atheist to study it. All we contend is, that the facts with which science deals are none of them shown to contradict faith or to warrant any conclusions incompatible with it.

Hence it may be assumed that, while the sciences remain in their own order of facts, they neither aid faith nor impugn it, for faith deals with a higher order of facts, and moves in a superior plane. The order of facts with which the sciences deal no doubt depends on the order revealed by faith; and no doubt the particular sciences should be connected with science or the explanation and application of the ideal formula or first principles, what we call philosophy, as this formula in turn is connected with the faith; but it does not lie within the province of the particular sciences as such to show this dependence or this connection, and our savans invariably blunder whenever they attempt to do it, or to rise from the special to the general, the particular to the universal, or from the sciences to faith. Here is where they err. {344} What they allege that transcends the particular order of facts with which the sciences deal is only theory, hypothesis, conjecture, imagination, or fancy, and has not the slightest scientific value, and can warrant no conclusions either for or against faith. There is no logical ascent from the particular to the universal, unless there has been first a descent from the universal to the particular. Jacob saw, on the ladder reaching from heaven to earth, the angels of God descending and ascending, not ascending and descending. There must be a descent from the highest to the lowest before there can be an ascent from the lowest to the highest. God becomes man that man may become God. The sciences all deal with particulars and cannot of themselves rise above particulars, and from them universal science is not obtainable.

He who starts from revelation, which includes the principles of universal science, can, no doubt, find all nature harmonizing with faith, and all the sciences bearing witness to its truth, for he has the key to their real and higher sense; but he who starts with the particular only can never rise above the particular, and hence he finds in the particulars, or the nature to which he is restricted, no immaterial and immortal soul, and no God, creator, and upholder of the universe. His generalizations are only classifications of facts, with no intuition of their relation to an order above themselves; his universal is the particular, and he sees in the plane of his vision no steps by which to ascend to science, far less to faith. Saint-Simon and Auguste Comte both understood well the necessity of subordinating all the sciences to a general principle or law, and of integrating them in a universal science; but starting with the special sciences themselves, they could never attain to a universal science, or a science that accepted, generalized, and explained them all, and hence each ended in atheism, or, what is the same thing, the divinization of humanity. The positivists really recognize only particulars, and only particulars in the material order, the only order the sciences, distinguished from philosophy and revelation, do or can deal with. Alexander von Humboldt had, probably, no superior in the sciences, and he has given their résumé in his Cosmos; but, if we recollect aright, the word God does not once appear in that work, and yet, except when he ventures to theorize beyond the order of facts on which the sciences immediately rest, there is little in that work that an orthodox Christian need deny. Herbert Spencer, really a man of ability, who disclaims being a follower of Auguste Comte or a positivist, excludes from the knowable, principles and causes, all except sensible phenomena; and although wrong in view of a higher philosophy than can be obtained by induction from the sensible or particular facts, yet he is not wrong in contending that the sciences cannot of themselves rise above the particular and the phenomenal.

Hence we do not agree with those Christian apologists who tell us that the tendency of the sciences is to corroborate the doctrines of revelation. They no more tend of themselves to corroborate revelation than they do to impair it. They who press them into the cause of infidelity, and hence conclude that science explodes faith, mistake their reach, for we can no more conclude from them against faith than we can in favor of faith. The fact is, the sciences are not science, and lie quite below the sphere of both science and faith. When arrayed against either, their authority is null. {345} Hence we conclude, á priori, against them when they presume to impugn the principles of science as expressed in the ideal formula, or against faith which is, considered in itself objectively, no less certain than the formula itself; and we have shown, à posteriori, by descending to the particulars, that the sciences present no facts that impugn revelation or contradict the teachings of faith. The conclusions of the savans against the Christian dogmas are no logical deductions or inductions from any facts or particulars in their possession, and therefore, however they may carry away sciolists, or the half-learned, or little minds, greedy of novelties, they are really of no scientific account.

All that faith demands of the sciences as such is their silence. She does not demand their support, she only demands that they keep in their own order, that the cobbler should stick to his last, ne sutor ultra crepidam. Faith herself is in the supernatural order, and proceeds from the same source as nature herself; it presupposes science indeed, and elevates and confirms it, but no more depends upon it than the creator depends on the creature. The highest science needs faith to complete it, and in all probability never could have been attained to without revelation; but neither science nor the sciences, however they may need revelation, could ever, without revelation, have risen to the conception of a divine and supernatural revelation. It is idle, then, to suppose that without revelation we could find by the sciences the demonstration or evidence of revelation. Lalande was right when he said he had never seen God at the end of his telescope, and his assertion should weigh with all natural theologians, so-called, who attempt to prove the existence of God by way of induction from the facts which naturalists observe and analyze; but he was wrong and grossly illogical when he concluded from that fact, with the fool of the Bible, there is no God, as wrong as those chemists are who conclude against the real presence in holy eucharist, because by their profane analysis of the consecrated host they find in it the properties of bread. The most searching chemical analysis cannot go beyond the visible or sensible properties of the subject analyzed, and the sensible properties of the bread and wine nobody pretends are changed in transubstantiation. None of the revealed dogmas are either provable or disprovable by any empirical science, for they all lie in the supernatural order, above the reach of natural science, and while they control all the empirical sciences they can be controlled by none.

But when we have revelation and with it, consciously or unconsciously, the ideal formula, which gives us the principles of all science and of all things, and descend from the higher to the lower, the case is essentially different. We then find all the sciences so far as based on facts, and all the observable facts or phenomena of nature, moral, intellectual, or physical, both illustrating and confirming the truths of revelation and the mysteries of faith. We then approach nature from the point of view of the Creator, read nature by the divine light of revelation, and study it from above, not from below; we then follow the real order of things, proceed from principles to facts, from the cause to the effect, from the universal to the particular, and are, after having thus descended from heaven to earth, able to reascend from earth to heaven. In this way we can see all nature joining in one to show forth the being and glory of God, and to hymn his praise. {346} This method of studying nature from high to low by the light of first principles and of divine revelation enables us to press all the sciences into the service of faith, to unite them in a common principle, and do what the Saint-Simonians and positivists cannot do, integrate them in a general or universal science, bring the whole intellectual life of man, as we showed in our article on Rome or Reason, into unison with faith and the real life and order of things, leaving to rend our bosoms only that moral struggle symbolized by Rome and the World, of which we have heretofore treated at length.

But this can never be done by induction from the facts observed and analyzed by the several empirical or inductive sciences. We think we have shown that the pretension, that these sciences have set aside any of the doctrines of Christianity, or impaired the faith, except in feeble and uninstructed minds, is unfounded; we think we have also shown that they not only have not, but cannot do it, because they lie in a region too low to establish anything against revelation. Yet as the sciences are insufficient, while restricted to their proper sphere, to satisfy the demand of reason for apodictic principles, for unity and universality, there is a perpetual tendency in the men devoted exclusively to their culture to draw from them conclusions which are unwarranted, illogical, and antagonistic both to philosophy and to faith. Against this tendency, perhaps never more strongly manifested than at this moment, there is in natural science alone no sufficient safeguard, and consequently we need the supernatural light of revelation to protect both faith and science itself. With the loss of the light of revelation we lose, in fact, the ideal formula, or the light of philosophy; and with the light of philosophy, we lose both science and the sciences, and retain only dry facts which signify nothing, or baseless theories and wild conjectures, which, when substituted for real science, are far worse than nothing.

My Meadowbrook Adventure.

"No, no, Tom; that is out of the question. I can't afford to go away just now. I am getting into a fine practice; the courts open in ten days; and besides, I am in the midst of an essay on the Law of Contracts which I promised for the next number of a certain law magazine. Your prescription is a very pleasant one; but really I can't take it. You must give me a good dose of medicine instead."

"I tell you what it is, Franklin, I don't let my patients dictate to me in that style. You have been fool enough to throw yourself into a nervous fever by working in this nasty den all summer, instead of taking a vacation-run to the country as you ought to have done; and now, if you don't follow my directions, I swear I won't cure you! Go off to some quiet farm-house for a week or two, and, if your essay on contracts weighs upon your mind, take the stupid stuff with you. I'll risk your working much at it after you get within scent of the fields."

I could not stand out very long against the bluff orders of my friend and physician Tom Bowlder. I knew, too, that he was right. I had overtasked myself. I had been dangerously ill; and, eager as I was to get on with my work, I could not help feeling that rest and change were absolutely necessary for me. So I packed my portmanteau, not forgetting my precious essay and a liberal supply of writing-paper, and the next morning saw me on the way to Meadowbrook.

It was a quiet, sleepy little village, nestling at the foot of a beautifully wooded ridge, and looking out from its shelter, across a slope of green fields, to a little stream which ran purling over the stones a quarter of a mile distant. Majestic old elm-trees shaded the grassy roads and swung their branches over the roofs of the trim little cottages. There was only one house in the place which pretended to be anything better than a cottage, and that was a rather stately villa, a good hundred years old at least, which stood a little way out of the village, surrounded with trees, and shut in from the public gaze by an enormous hawthorn hedge which ran around the extensive grounds. Meadowbrook House, or "the house," as it was generally called by the villagers, was the property of an old maiden lady named Forsythe, the daughter of a retired merchant who long years ago had chosen this quiet spot as a retreat for his old age. Mr. Forsythe was a Catholic, and one of his first actions after removing to Meadowbrook was to build the pretty stone church in the main street of the village, and to pledge a certain sum annually from his ample income for the support of the priest. When, after a long life of usefulness, he died and was buried by the side of his wife, leaving all his property to his daughter, who had already long passed the period of youth, the generosity of Miss Forsythe continued to supply what the poor little Catholic congregation was unable to give, and the excellent spinster was still the mainstay of the church. Poor Father James, an old man now of nearly seventy, would have fared ill but for her assistance.

So much I learned in an after-supper chat with my landlady on the night of my arrival. I cannot say that I was much engrossed at the time by the good woman's garrulous narrative, but after-events were to give me a deep interest in Meadowbrook House and in everything connected with it. I had taken lodgings in the village inn, a neat, quiet, respectable establishment, where there were few guests except the villagers who used to drop in of an evening to enjoy a little gossip and a pipe, and with whom, after a days' ramble, I used often to sit and smoke my cigar. I led an idle but most delicious life during my ten day's holiday. I ranged through the woods, with my gun on my shoulder, bringing home now and then a bird or so, but caring in reality more for the walk than the shooting. I whipped the brook for trout. I searched the fields for botanical specimens. I wandered about with a volume of Tennyson or Buchanan in my pocket, stopping at times to lie down and read under the trees. I did almost everything, in fact, except work at my essay, which remained in the portfolio where I had originally packed it.

One sunny afternoon I was dozing on my back in the shade of an apple orchard, when a strain of music was borne to my ears, beginning like the distant hum of bees, and gradually swelling on the air with slow and majestic cadences. I had never heard such music in Meadowbrook before. {348} Curious to know whence it came, I followed the sound, and was not long in discovering that some practised hand was touching the wheezy little organ in the village church. Not the same hand which was accustomed painfully to struggle with the keys there on Sunday, and wring from them broken and doleful sounds to the distress of all nervous listeners. The person who was playing now had the touch of a master; and as the plaintive phrases of the Agnus Dei from Mozart's First Mass broke upon the solitude of the church, the rickety organ seemed infused with a new spirit. I could not have believed that so much pathos and such exquisite delicacy of tone could be drawn from the wretched instrument whose laborious whistling and puffing had set my teeth on edge the previous Sunday. I sat down in a pew under the gallery, and listened. It was not until twilight approached that the playing ceased. I heard the organ closed; the player was silent for a few moments; "He is saying a prayer," thought I; and then a soft step began to descend the stairs. Thinking it possible the performer might feel annoyed at perceiving a stranger in the church, I sat quietly in my place, confident that the growing darkness and the shelter of one of the pillars would screen me from observation. I could see very well, however, though I could not be seen, and my surprise was great when a slender female figure issued from the gallery staircase, and came within the light of the open street door. She was young—not more than eighteen, I should think—with a face of rare beauty, a pretty form, a light and graceful carriage, and the unmistakable air of a gentlewoman. Small, regular features, light brown eyes, cheeks like a peach, blooming with health, a profusion of dark hair, and an expression of remarkable simplicity and sweetness made up a picture of loveliness such as I had never seen before. She wore a fascinating little round hat, and when I first caught sight of her was just drawing on her gloves, and I could see that her hands were small and shapely. She bent her knee as she passed before the altar, and when she went out into the street the church seemed suddenly to have grown darker. My first impulse was to follow her; but I stopped, feeling that it would be an intrusion, and trusting that she would return the next day, if she supposed herself to be unobserved. So I kept still until she had been gone several minutes, and when I left the church she was nowhere to be seen.

I determined to ask my landlady about the fair musician, and that evening, when worthy Mrs. Brown brought me my supper, I detained her a few minutes in conversation—an amusement to which she was in noway adverse.

"It's been an elegant day, hasn't it, now, Mr. Franklin?" said the old woman, as she placed on the table the smoking rasher of ham and the pile of buttered toast; "and it's plain to see what a world of good this tramping about the country is doing you. I wouldn't say you were over-strong yet; but, Lord bless me! when you first came here, you were little better than a ghost. Well, well, sir, and I hope you won't find our little village too dull for you!"

"Dull! Mrs. Brown. Not a bit of it. I wish I could stay here a year. By the way, who is it plays the organ so beautifully in Meadowbrook church? I heard the music, and stopped awhile to listen."

"Plays the organ, sir? Well, you know there's Mr. Thrasher, the schoolmaster; he's the organist on Sundays, and very like you heard him practising—though why he should be out of school to-day, and this not a holiday—"

"Mr. Thrasher, Mrs. Brown, thumps on the organ as if he was thumping his pupils, and his singers scream as if they felt the blows. This was not Mr. Thrasher. It was a young lady!"

"Well, sir, I never knowed of no young lady playing the organ except it was Betty Cox, the butcher's daughter. They do say she has a wonderful talent for music, and Mr. Thrasher, he has been giving her lessons this last month, and I wouldn't wonder if it was her!"

Now, it had been my privilege to hear Miss Betty Cox finger the keys one day after Mass, and a more doleful performance I never had listened to. Even if I had not seen the performer, I should have been sure it was not Miss Betty; but, quite apart from her musical proficiency, I felt a little bit indignant that the beautiful girl who had made such an impression upon me should be mistaken for a Betty Cox. No, she was not one of the village damsels; that was clear. And unfortunately it was equally clear that Mrs. Brown knew no more about her than I did myself.

I fell asleep that night humming the Agnus Dei, and dreamed of angels with round hats and brown kid gloves, playing on rickety organs, and hurling legions of musty school-masters out of the clouds.

The next day I took my book to the church-yard, and chose a shady spot where I could hear the first notes of the organ. I waited a long while, reading little, for I could not fix my attention on the page. At last she came, as I had hoped. For more than an hour I listened to the exquisite tones which seemed to flow from her agile fingers. Then she went away without perceiving me.

I need hardly say that I made many another visit to the church, for the pursuit of the fair organist had now become a genuine passion with me. Sometimes I waited all the afternoon without seeing or hearing her. Then I used to go to my room and be moody and miserable all the evening. A rainy day would throw me into despair, and I watched the clouds with the eagerness of a schoolboy on a holiday. My readers will not need to be told that I was falling desperately in love. Once or twice I met her walking, and had an opportunity to notice more particularly the singular beauty of her form and countenance, and the refined and quiet air which pervaded her whole person. Once I met her by accident at the crossing of a brook. I gave her my hand to help her over, and she took it with the modest frankness of a true lady, saying, "Thank you, sir," in a voice which seemed to me as sweet as her face. Yes, I was certainly in love.

I might easily have found out all about her by asking a few questions in the village, where the shopkeepers, at all events, would hardly be as ill informed as my landlady; but since my conversation with Mrs. Brown I had become, I know not why, unwilling to speak of her. I had grown to look upon her as my secret, which I was disposed to guard pretty jealously. A bit of mystery, be it ever so little and unnecessary, is one of the most charming things in the world to a young lover, and I have always thought that Sheridan displayed great knowledge of human nature when he made Lydia Languish refuse to be married without an elopement. At some time in our lives almost all of us give way to more or less of the same sort of nonsense.

There came a sudden end at last to my mooning and dreaming, and it came in a way with which even Lydia Languish herself could not have quarrelled. I had been off one day on a long ramble among the hills, and, missing my way, did not get back to Meadowbrook until close upon evening. As I came near the village, I was made aware of some extraordinary commotion in the place. Men and women were hurrying through the streets, and voices were shouting in excited tones. I ran after the crowd, and as I turned into the main street a glance in the direction of the church revealed the cause of the disturbance. Flames were bursting through the gallery windows, and a dense smoke poured through the open door. Nearly the whole population of Meadowbrook had gathered around the scene of disaster. The men, and some of the women with them, had formed lines leading to one or two of the nearest wells, and were passing buckets with all the speed they could; but it was too evident with but little prospect of subduing the conflagration. I have already mentioned that the building was of stone, so there was little fear of the walls falling; but the woodwork of the interior was old, and burned almost like tinder. The organ-gallery was, of course, of wood, and inside the tower, which stood at the front of the edifice, there was a wooden staircase, forming the only means of access to the gallery. It was in the tower, I saw at once, that the flames were burning most fiercely. The rear of the church was as yet untouched. I need hardly tell what my first thought was when I saw the cruel glare that lighted up the approaching twilight. A sickening sensation crept over me. If the fair musician was in the gallery when the fire broke out, her escape seemed effectually cut off. I ran forward but there was little need to ask questions. The distressed expression on every face, the eager eyes fixed upon the windows of the gallery, the frantic but vain efforts of one or two of the boldest of the crowd to penetrate the doorway, out of which the smoke was rolling in great black clouds, told me that my worst fears were true.

"Ah! sir," said one of the men "it's a dreadful thing to see a pretty young creature like that burned to death before our very eyes. But we can't get to her!"

A cold perspiration broke out upon my forehead, and for a moment I reeled like a drunkard. "Good heavens!" I cried; "have you no ladders?"

"Yes, we have two; but look at the tower, sir. There's no window except in the belfry, and both the ladders together would not reach that."

"Take the ladders into the church by the back way," I cried, "and get up the front of the gallery! Here," I added, pulling out my purse, "this for the first man who reaches her."

"We wouldn't want your money, sir, if we could get at the young lady," answered one or two voices together; "but there's little use in trying. Three men have gone into the church already."

They were still speaking when there was a stir among the crowd at the side of the building, and the three men reappeared. Their clothes were scorched, and even their hair was slightly singed.

"Can't do it," said one; "the gallery front is burning like a furnace. We got the ladders up, but we could not climb them and hardly got them away again."

"No, and didn't hear a sound. If she has not been choked already by the smoke, she must have gone up into the tower."

It was a slight hope, yet there was something in it after all. Behind the organ there was, as I knew, a door opening into a sort of lumber-room in the tower, from which a rude flight of steps, terminating in a ladder, led up to the bell. It was possible that when she found the gallery staircase in flames, (I afterward learned that it was here the fire broke out; it was supposed to have been caused by a coal dropped on the stairs by a tinker who had been repairing the roof that afternoon)—it was just possible, I say, that she might have retreated up these steps in the hope of being rescued through the belfry window. For a moment or two after the failure to reach her through the interior, there was a pause of awful suspense. Whatever was to be done, however, must be done at once. The flames were making rapid headway, and in ten minutes nothing would be left of the tower but the bare stone shell. Already it was doubtful if any one could survive even in the upper portion of it. The men were still throwing bucketfuls of water into the burning porch with frantic speed; but this, of course, did little good, for the fire was spreading high above their reach. Others were running helplessly about with coils of rope. Suddenly a thought seized me. Just in front of the church, but on the opposite side of the road, stood an enormous elm-tree. Some of its upper branches reached within fifty feet of the top of the tower. Was it not possible to bridge across that chasm?

Two or three axes were thrust at me. I took one, and tied it round my waist with a long coil of rope. Then I chose out another coil, and, throwing it over one of the lower limbs of the elm-tree, clambered with some difficulty into the branches. It would have been very hard climbing without the rope; but as I could throw it from limb to limb where I could not reach, and as I was a sufficiently expert gymnast to pull myself up by it, a few seconds saw me on one of the upper branches which had caught my eye from below. There was a battlement around the top of the tower, and I thought if I could secure one end of the rope to one of the projections of this battlement, I might contrive, by tying the other to the tree, to work my way across. I made a large slip-noose, gathered up the line like a lasso, and cast it with all my strength. The first attempt failed. The crowd below saw my object now, and gave a tremendous cheer. I tried again, and this time the noose caught upon the battlement. I drew up the rope as tight as I could, tied it fast to the tree, and, clasping it with my legs and hands, began the most dangerous and difficult part of my enterprise. There was a breathless silence below as I pulled myself across the awful chasm. I could hear the roar and crackling of the flames, and the hot air and acrid smoke were driven into my face until I thought I should have fainted and fallen to the ground. At last I reached the battlement. With much trouble I clambered upon the roof, and while the excited villagers were screaming themselves hoarse and hurrahing like madmen—I hardly heard their cries at the time, but, with other incidents of that memorable afternoon, they came to me afterward—I plied my axe so vigorously that in a few minutes I had stripped off a section of the roofing, and made an opening two or three feet square. It was too dark now to distinguish anything in the interior, but I knew that the platform on which the bell rested must be some twelve or fifteen feet below me. {352} Fastening the second coil of rope to the battlement, I let myself down through the hole until I felt the solid planking under my feet. There was a suffocating odor of fire, but the air was still pure enough to be breathed without serious inconvenience, groped about in the dark until I found the ladder leading below, and, trembling with apprehension, hurried down as fast as I was able. I shouted, but there was no answer. I reached the landing-stage where the ladder stopped and the rough steps, already mentioned, began, and at this moment some barrier which had kept the flames confined below seemed to give way, and a flood of light streamed up the staircase. I hurried on with the energy of desperation. When I reached the lumber-room, the door-way leading into the gallery was wrapped in fire. Through it I could see the old organ blazing, the planks dropping off one by one, and the metal pipes melting under the intense heat. The lower staircase was nearly consumed, and the floor of the room itself had caught in several places. The dreadful glow reflected upon the rough stone walls and rugged beams showed me in a moment what I had come to seek. There, in a remote corner which the fire had not yet reached, was a female form stretched senseless on the floor. A round hat was lying beside her, and her rich brown hair fell in graceful waves over her neck. Her white arms, from which the sleeves had fallen back, were stretched out before her, and her fingers clasped a rosary, as if her last conscious act had been a prayer. I seized her by the waist, and, with a strength at which I even now wonder, rushed with my burden toward the steps which I had just descended. She was still living. I could feel the beating of her heart and the heaving of her breast, and my joy at this discovery gave me fresh energy. How I got her up the steps I never clearly knew; but in a short space of time I had reached the top of the ladder and burst open the single window which looked out from the bell-chamber. The cool air revived her almost instantly. I held her up for a moment by the window, and, as she opened her eyes with a bewildered stare, I tried to say a word to calm her. She gazed at me an instant and then burst into tears, and her head fell forward on my shoulder.

"Fear nothing, dear lady," said I, "you are safe now. Collect your strength as much as you can. I am going to let you down through this window."

"Oh! make yourself easy about me. I shall follow you by the same way. You have only to keep calm, and there is little real danger."

The rope by which I had descended from the roof was still hanging there. I whipped out my knife, and cut it off as high as I could, there was still enough left to reach within fifteen feet of the ground. I tied it around her waist, wrapping my coat about it, so that it might chafe her as little as possible, gave it two turns around the windlass of the bell to strengthen my hold, and then shouted to the crowd below to put up their longest ladder under the window. A cheer told me that I was understood, and, before the preparations for the descent were quite finished, I saw a ladder raised against the wall, and two or three stout fellows standing ready to receive my burden.

"Now," said I, "you have only to be careful to keep yourself clear of the stones with your feet; grasp the rope by this knot to diminish the strain on your waist, and trust me for the rest."

The window was so near the floor that there was little difficulty in her getting out. I braced my feet firmly against the windlass, and lowered away carefully, but as fast as I dared, for the increased roaring of the flames below warned me that I had not a second to lose. The openings I had made in the roof and window had, of course, created a strong draught in the tower, and the fire was now burning in it like a furnace. Her feet touched the topmost round of the ladder just as I had got within a yard of the end of the rope. A pair of brawny arms received her, and at that moment the floor of the lumber room and gallery fell in with an awful crash; there was a lull for an instant; then a dense mass of smoke, flame, and cinders burst forth, as if belched from a volcano, and in less than a minute the outside as well as the interior of the tower was wrapped in flame. Not soon enough, however, to touch what I had fought so hard to save. I thank God I had the presence of mind, when I heard the crash, to know what was coming; and, that no precious moments might be lost in unfastening the rope from her waist, I threw the other end out the window the instant I saw her foothold was secure, and the men hurried her down the ladder just in time. I heard her utter a cry of horror as I sacrificed my own means of escape, and, looking out, I saw her carried senseless away. Terrible as my danger was, I could not help noticing the awful grandeur of the scene. Twilight had given way to night, but the red glare illuminated the surrounding objects, and threw a flickering, unearthly light upon the upturned faces of the crowd. I saw women running to and fro, wringing their hands in despair, and men looking up at the window where I stood, with an expression of mingled fright and pity. But, if I had had a mile of rope, it would have been of little use to me now. The burning timbers had fallen outside the door of the tower, and I could not have let myself down without falling into the midst of them. I thought of the bell-rope; if I could get back to the roof with that, I might let myself down at the side. It would not be long enough to reach near the ground, but, if I escaped with a broken leg, that would be better anyhow than being burnt to death. I seized the rope where it was attached to the bell, and began to pull it up through the hole in the floor; a few feet of it only came away in my hand; the rest had been consumed. The smoke by this time was pouring through every crack, and the heat of the small chamber in which I stood was so intense that I knew that, too, must soon fall in. The roof was about twelve feet above me. My last hope was to reach it, and return by the same frightful bridge by which I had worked my way over. I shuddered to think of trusting myself again upon that dizzy crossing, with my hands already torn and bleeding, my brain reeling, and my eyes half-blinded. I sprang, however, upon the windlass, and made one desperate leap for the hole in the roof. I just grasped the rafters, and as I did so the planks upon which I had been standing gave way, and the bell and its platform sank into the ruins. I never can forget the horror of that moment when, as I made my leap, I felt the timbers crack and fall under my foot into the blazing abyss. For the present, however, I was safe. I had got a firm hold, and with much exertion, nerved by the strength of desperation, I succeeded in drawing myself up and getting upon the roof. The rope-bridge was still there. {354} I staggered toward it, and as I showed myself over the battlements a hearty cheer went up from the crowd, who had given me up for lost when the belfry fell in. I heard, yet hardly heeded them. In the act of climbing over the parapet, my eye fell upon the fragment of the second rope which I had cut away. Scarcely reflecting upon what I did, yet with a sort of providential instinct, I loosened it from the wall, tied one end around my body, and passed the other around the rope which had to support me across the dreadful chasm, making it fast with a noose which would slip easily as I pulled myself along. Thus the whole weight of my body would not have to be borne by my disabled hands. This precaution, I believe, was all that saved me. I made the crossing with great pain, dizzy from excitement and over-exertion, and suffering intensely from the smoke and flames which the wind was now driving upon me. Ten or twenty yards of the distance were yet to be passed, when I was dimly conscious of a sudden swaying of the crowd, a suppressed groan from many voices at once, then a quick slackening of the rope, a thundering crash as of falling walls, and a quick rush of air that took away my breath. Mechanically I tightened my grasp. Without seeing, I knew what had happened. The tower had fallen in. It has often been mentioned how in a moment of deadly peril the memories of years will rush across the mind with the speed of lightning. Now, in the instant while I was falling through the air, I had time to notice the excitement of the people, to comprehend what had taken place, to breathe a short prayer, and to calculate my chances of being dashed to pieces against either the trunk of the tree or some of the lower branches. But the same good Lord who had saved me before was again on my side. The rope swung free of obstructions; I was jerked once or twice back and forth; I lost my hold; there was a sharp pain as if some one had struck me a tremendous blow, and I knew no more.

When I came to my senses again, it was with a feeling of bewilderment inexpressibly painful. I recognized nothing about me; I remembered nothing that had happened. I was lying in bed in a large, cheerful room, so bright and pretty that it was comfort even to look at it. The sun was struggling through the closed blinds, two or three logs of wood blazed in the capacious fire-place, and two luxurious, great, chintz-covered armchairs stood before the hearth. The walls were hung with a neat flowered paper, and the mantel-shelf was decorated with curious old china vases and various knick-knacks. Everything was the perfection of cleanliness and order, yet nothing looked prim. The coverlid on the bed was of warm, harmonious tints; the linen was, beautifully soft and white; there was a table in the middle of the room, covered with a bright cloth, and bearing a number of books and a dish of luscious-looking fruit; and on a little stand by the bedside was a bouquet of rare hot-house flowers. Here was a pleasant scene to open one's eyes upon; but where was I? I threw myself back upon the pillow, and gradually the events I have narrated in the preceding pages shaped themselves in my memory. I felt very weak, but I was not long in satisfying myself that I had broken no bones. I looked at my wounded hands. They were covered with scars, but the wounds were healed. I knew then that I must have been lying there a pretty long time. I was still wondering, when the door opened softly, and a tidy-looking elderly woman, whose dress indicated that she was some sort of an upper servant, came into the room. {355} She uttered an exclamation of pleasure when she caught my eye, and came up to the bedside.

"Well, sir," said she, "it does my heart good to see you looking so much better. You've had a hard time of it, that's the truth; but we'll soon have you up, now."

"You're very kind," I answered; "anybody might get well in this room; but please tell me where I am."

"O sir! you're at Meadowbrook House. Miss Forsythe had you fetched here right after the fire." "How long ago was that?" "About two weeks." "So long! I must have been very sick. You are very good."

I thought she seemed a little surprised at the fervor of my gratitude; but I took no notice of it, and was going on to ask her further questions when she very peremptorily shut me up.

"Now, that will do," said she; "don't say another word. You must keep quiet for a while; if you talk, I'll go away and not come near you again."

"Well, if you must know, Miss Forsythe herself. She brings them every day. I suppose she'd scold if she knew I told you. But now, keep quiet till the doctor comes, and, if he is willing, I'll chat with you as much as you please."

So saying, the good-natured nurse to ensure my silence, left the room. But, indeed, I felt little desire to talk any more just then. I had asked about the flowers with a vague hope that they might have been culled by the hand which I had learned to prize so dear, and I am ashamed to say that, when the name of the excellent old lady, whose hospitality I was receiving was mentioned, I turned my head with a sigh of disappointment. I fell to worrying about the fair organist; wondering whether she had suffered any harm from the perilous occurrences of that memorable night; whether I should ever meet her again, and how we should meet; how I could approach her without seeming to presume upon the service I had rendered; and, finally, why Miss Forsythe should have lavished so much care and kindness on a total stranger. I was in the midst of such reveries when my nurse returned and ushered in the doctor.

"Well, Franklin, old fellow! Got your wits again, have you?" exclaimed a cheery and familiar voice. "That's right; now we'll soon get you on your legs."

The doctor was no other than my old friend Tom Bowlder. He had heard of my accident, hurried down to Meadowbrook, taken entire control of me, established a close friendship with the lady of the mansion, put himself on the best of terms with the housekeeper, Mrs. Benson, and installed her as nurse, and, thanks to his skill and tenderness, I had passed safely through a dangerous crisis. After putting a few professional questions, he sat down by the bedside, and indulged me with a little conversation.

"Well, old boy," said he, "I suppose you want to be told first about yourself." (I did not; but I let him go on.) "You've had an ugly time of it—brain fever and that sort of thing, you know—and it's a wonder you weren't killed outright. But you are all right now, and you can have the satisfaction of knowing that you saved one of the prettiest girls that ever breathed, and I do believe one of the best."

In spite of my previous perplexity how I should conduct myself if I ever met her again, I was now so eager for the meeting that, weak as I was, I wanted to get up at once. But to this, of course, Doctor Tom would not listen.

"Yes; but, Tom, you mustn't keep me here for ever. I want to—to see"—I stammered and broke down—"to see Miss Forsythe, you know, and thank her for taking care of me."

"All in good time, Franklin. I don't mean to keep you in bed much longer; and the moment you are able to leave the room, I promise you shall see her, and make as many acknowledgments as you want to. For the rest of the afternoon, however, you must keep quiet. There, now, you have talked enough for one day. Good-by." And so saying, Tom left me to myself.

Mrs. Benson soon came back, bringing a tray covered with a snow-white napkin, a bowl of gruel, and a glass of wine. Tom had evidently given her instructions; for I could not draw her into conversation, and, as soon as she had seen me comfortably fixed, she went away again.

The next morning, Tom paid me an early visit, and doled out a few more scraps of information. I learned that Miss Forsythe had caused all my luggage to be brought from the inn, and that, as long as I could be persuaded to remain in Meadowbrook, I was to make her house my home. "You need not look surprised," added Bowlder. "I satisfied her that you were a very respectable person; and, indeed, I believe the old lady knows some of your family."

"Talk! I should think you did! Chattered like a magpie; raved about round hats and little brown gloves, talked a good deal of lovers' nonsense, and sometimes hummed a few bars of music—Miss Forsythe said it was a bit out of one of Mozart's Masses. One day you grabbed a hold of me, and asked if I knew you had been listening under the gallery, and 'if she knew about your loving her.' Miss Forsythe blushed like a rose, and went out of the room."

"Did she?" said I, blushing now in my turn. "I don't see what difference that ought to make to her."

"Well," said he, "I thought it might make a good deal of difference; but I suppose you two know best. Now I must be off. Old Doctor Jalap, who physics the villagers, has fallen sick himself, and I have to take care of him and his patients, too. I mean to let you get up tomorrow, though I would not advise you to go into the streets till you have got all your old strength, and some to spare. The people down here have got the preposterous idea that you're a sort of a hero, and whenever you show yourself, they'll shake you to death with congratulations."

When Tom had gone, I thought a great deal over his remark about Miss Forsythe, but I could not comprehend it. The old lady had certainly been very kind to me; but, even if she did know my family, it was unreasonable to suppose that she should take a very warm interest in my love affairs. And what did Tom mean by saying that "we two knew best?" {357} The more I reflected, the more I got puzzled. Possibly, said I, Miss Forsythe knows this young lady. At any rate, I'll lose no time in seeing her. I can't lie here, muddling my brains, any longer. So I got up, found my clothes, dressed, and made my way down-stairs. Mrs. Benson met me in the hall, and, of course, began to scold; but she had to admit that I seemed stronger, after all, than anybody suspected me to be, and, now that the mischief was done, I might as well see Miss Forsythe. "You'll find her in the parlor, sir; she's just come in from the garden."

There was no one in the parlor when I entered it, but at the further end of the room was an open door leading to a conservatory, and there I caught a glimpse of somebody moving among the flowers. I went forward, and saw a lady, whose back was toward me, in the act of plucking a flower to add to a bunch in her hand. She did not hear me until I spoke:

I stopped in amazement, for, as she turned, I beheld not the good old spinster, but that sweet, innocent young face which had so long haunted me. She started at my voice. A deep blush suffused her features. She hesitated a moment; she cast down her eyes; and then, with a frankness which was even more charming than her maiden modesty, she sprang forward to meet me, and placed both her little hands in mine.

I have no purpose of repeating all the foolish things we said in the next half hour. This was the Miss Forsythe who had watched over my sick-room, and had run away when I raved about her in my delirium. It never occurred to me, when Tom Bowlder made his last puzzling remarks, that there could be any other Miss Forsythe than the mistress of Meadowbrook House. My Miss Forsythe was the niece of that good lady, and, when I first met her, had just arrived in Meadowbrook on a visit for the first time in her life. The aunt came into the room, after a while, and I then had an opportunity of making my interrupted acknowledgments in the right quarter, and beginning a friendship with her which I look upon as one of the blessings of my life. Tom came back, too, before long, and, though he pretended, at first, to scold me for breaking out of bounds before I had been regularly discharged by my physician, he must have seen, by the sparkle in my eyes and the elasticity which happiness imparted to my whole frame, that my rashness had been of a vast deal of service to me.

"Doctor," said the old lady, "I think you and I must let him alone. Mr. Franklin seems to have changed his physician, and I dare say Mary, there, will do him more good now than all the medicines in the world."

"Upon my word, Miss Forsythe, I believe you're right; and, if Miss Mary will take care not to lead her patient through any more fiery furnaces, I'll trust the case to her hands."

I have only to add to my story that the essay on the Law of Contracts was never finished, business of a very engrossing nature (including a contract of a peculiarly interesting kind) absorbing all my spare moments during the next few months. By the liberality of the elder Miss Forsythe the little church was soon restored, and the asthmatic organ which had played such a memorable part in my life was replaced by a new and excellent instrument. {358} The flames, fortunately, had spared the sanctuary and all the rear portion of the building. As soon as the repairs were finished, there was a merry wedding at Meadowbrook, and Father James gave us his blessing as we knelt together in the sacred place where we had so narrowly escaped together from a horrible death. The little side-altar, which has since been put up in the church, was built by my wife and me to commemorate our deliverance. Once or twice a year we make a visit of a week or so to dear Aunt Forsythe at Meadowbrook. Mary and I never fail at such times to say a prayer of thanksgiving in the church. Then we stray together into the organ gallery, and, while the old familiar strains flow from her touch, I sit by her side, and thank God in my heart for blessing me with so sweet a wife.

Joy In Grief.

From The French Of Marie Jenna.

   "Blessed are they that mourn:
    for they shall be comforted."

  Friend! in vain thy bosom hides the sharp and cruel sword that wounds it.
  I have understood thy silence, and my prayer hath still been for thee.
  Cast away the foolish pride that shuts thy heart against my friendship;
      Come, and weep before me.

  Well I know that there are days of heavy grief and lonely suffering,
  When the soul doth find in solitude a grim and bitter pleasure;
  And the thoughtless world beholds its shrouded majesty pass by it
      Pale, and wrapped in silence.

  Then the friendly hand, uncertain, stops and hesitates before it,
  Fearing lest too rudely it may draw aside the veil of mourning:
  There are griefs so great and sacred that all human thought and language
      Dies upon the threshold.

  Now, however, days are past; and it is time I came and sought thee.
  Oh! permit a friend to share the heavy burden of thy sorrow.
  Put thy hand in mine, thy weary head upon my heart, and rest thee:
      I have suffered also.

  I will not approach thee with those vain and heartless words of fashion,
  Words which grief receives and spurns as mocking echoes of its wailing;
  No, I have a word to whisper that will bring a holy comfort:
      'Tis a heavenly secret.
{359}
  If I might, as from an urn, before thy feet pour out my treasures,
  Hope and peace would fill thy soul now groping in despairing darkness.
  Light would shine upon thy pathway; sweet repose would mark thy slumbers,
      Dreams of happy moments.

  There are pure and lofty summits where the soul of man reposes.
  'Tis the sword which cleaves our hearts asunder opens up the pathway.
  Friend of mine, believe me that the loss of all things counts as nothing
      If those heights be mastered.

  Silly bees, we flit from flower to flower in this world's pleasure-garden;
  Drinking in their rich perfumes and tasting of their honeyed sweetness.
  Resting there, and living on its passing charms as if its beauty
      Were enough for ever.

  There we dream away our life, and precious moments pass unheeded;
  Placing all our joys in pleasures fleeting as the summer sunshine,
  Joys that vanish when the evening casts its shadows o'er the garden
      Gone before the moonlight.

  'Tis when robbed of human love; when seated desolate and lonely
  On the wide and arid desert, with no kindly eye to greet us;
  When the howling tempest rages, and the frightful darkness thickens,
      Comfort has a meaning.

  Then the brow defeat has humbled, and the heart grown sick with sorrow,
  Find an arm and hand divine to lean upon and bear its burden:
  And the spirit wrung with anguish, crushed by cruel disappointment,
      Sings a hymn unspoken.

  When before the lost one's footsteps opens an abyss of horror,
  Then appears a bridge of safety stretching o'er the gulf's dark passage:
  There, where danger threatens most, and death menaces, God is standing
      Open-armed to meet him.

  When the fitful joys of human passion are consumed within us,
  Other joys begin their reign of which the soul as yet knew nothing.
  Ah! what matter, when a brilliant star appears in heaven above us,
      If the lamp burn dimly?

  O thou mystery of suffering, deep abyss for human wonder!
  Since that day when on a shameful cross love gained its greatest triumph,
  We begin to sound thy awful depths, and catch at least faint glimpses
      Of thy hidden meaning!

  Come, for there the lesson may be learned which only He, the Master, teaches
  From his throne of truth and wisdom. At the feet of Jesus seated,
  Words will fall upon our ears that human lips have never spoken
      Words of heaven's language.
{360}
  Sword of sorrow, minister of peace, I bless thee for thy wounding!
  Pleasing is the pain of sacrifice, and sweet the tears of martyrs
  Shed for too much joy when from the eyes all earthly sights are fading
      In the light of heaven.

  Of those melodies divine, those flames of love and joy celestial,
  Of those floods of rapture springing from the lonely plains of sorrow,
  Ye, poor, thoughtless souls, know nothing, nor have ever dreamed their presence,
      Ye who ne'er have suffered.

  Man of sorrows! he who never trod the road of desolation,
  He who hath not borne a cross and followed thee to crucifixion,
  He who hath not passed through death unto the day of resurrection—
      He hath never known thee.

  Blessed are the mourners! From the mouth of Truth these words have fallen.
  Blessed! Yes, it must be true indeed, my God, when thou hast spoken.
  Welcome, then, be suffering, welcome! Happy they above all measure
      Who in thee find comfort!

Translated from the French of L. Vitet.

The Present Condition Of Christianity In France.

That the men for whom the Christian faith is but an ordinary belief, a purely human work, and therefore mortal and perishable, should consider that their object is to be best attained by separating it from the living portion of our society and keeping it sequestered, so to speak, within the circle of retrogressive ideas; that such should be sarcastic at the expense of liberal Catholicism, and, looking upon its plans as chimerical, should triumph on learning of its defeats, nothing can be more natural: in so doing, they but carry out their policy and sustain their cause. But that true Christians and sincere believers should form an alliance with them or follow the same rut; that they should strive to attain the same end by opposing harmony and reconciliation with the spirit of the age, jesting at peace-makers, and objecting to their endeavors, not only on the plea of the impracticability of the schemes, but on the ground that the attempts made are culpable, impious, and sacrilegious; this is worse than an error, worse than blindness, and constitutes for the future of Christian beliefs a grave and alarming symptom.

There would be little cause for anxiety if a small portion of the faithful, a few chagrined beings, a few morose old men were the only obstinate adherents to these views, for time would be the best remedy in such a case; but do not be deceived, the masses are inclined to the adoption of similar opinions. {361} Conciliatory ideas are as yet only within the reach of a certain élite. The group in whose midst they were born upward of thirty years since is scarcely more numerous now than then, and is, perhaps, less favorably thought of and less sustained by the public. Yet how many reasons are there for its more general recognition! Is not the party under a better guidance than in earlier days? Whom can it terrify by its temerity? In politics it only aspires to the possession of the most harmless liberty; in religion its tendencies are ultramontane only to the extent prescribed by faith. What, then, does it lack? Is its cause obscure, badly defined, ill-defended? Never were its traits given more brilliant prominence. God has bestowed upon it defenders of wondrous might. When an idea is fathered by the indefatigable energy and overwhelming eloquence of the Bishop of Orleans, by such masters of speech as M. de Montalembert and Father Lacordaire, by writers such as M. Albert de Broglie and Father Gratry; when young and valiant champions, such as Charles Lenormant, Frédéric Ozanam, and Henri Perreyve have died in its service; if it attract not; if it make not great and speedy conquests; if it secure not at once the approval of the competent, and obtain from the people naught but sterile applause, there can be no misunderstanding, its time is not come, and men's minds are not prepared for its reception. But does it follow that opinion has espoused the opposing cause, and that hostility and warfare against modern laws and ideas are generally favored? that all other Christians accept unreservedly the doctrines of certain violently retrogressive journals that do religion the injury of being regarded as its confidants? No; the masses, by their own instinct, escape the contagion of extremists' opinions; but, without breaking off entirely from modern ideas, the great majority of the faithful hold them to be dangerous and avoid their contact. Between civil and religious society there is a marked coldness and restraint; there is a want of confidence and sympathy; the least that can be said is, that they live in two separate camps.

This should not be. We cannot calculate upon a new uprising or upon a complete awakening of Christian belief, unless sincere concord between the church and society be reestablished. The present disagreement, if prolonged, would seem to indicate a decline of Christianity; it might be said that religion was losing, for the first time, the knowledge of the needs of the epoch, as well as that power of rejuvenation that for eighteen centuries has endowed it with such unexampled longevity. That the prediction that preceded its birth may be realized, that it may live as long as this earth, upon which nothing lives and endures without change or modification, must it not submit to the common law, and, while remaining fundamentally the same, be transformed and renewed, superficially at least? To sentence it to immovability lest some change take place in its elements; to petrify it that its purity may be greater, is to proclaim its ruin and announce its death. A cessation of life and a life of lethargy are about the same.

How comes it, then, that, despite so many causes of alarm, in the depth of our soul we are calm, and our fears are mingled with so much hope? Do faith without reasoning and pure instinct comfort us? No; it is Christianity itself, and Christianity of today, that reassures us by its acts. {362} Notwithstanding the disagreement with the age that hinders its progress, notwithstanding the wounds from which it suffers, the coldness with which it is treated, the hearts that are closed to it, whithersoever it penetrates it is still so brimming with life and light, so lavish of compassion and love, it still causes one to shed freely such soothing tears, and gives birth to so many deeds of self-devotion, that it is most evident that its vigor is unsubdued. The tree about to die does not put forth such boughs and fruits. The sap flows, the roots spread; an eternal youth betrays itself by unmistakable signs. Seek not these consoling symptoms elsewhere but by the domestic fireside, or under the shadow of the altar, in the retirement of the house of God. Ask not for an official and public explanation; neither institutions, nor laws, no monuments, nor outward indices would assert it. In this respect, the contrast between the days we live in and the centuries gone by is most striking. Eighty years since, while Christians, isolated and apart from each other, estranged themselves more and more from God, whilst the belief in Voltaire reigned at the bottom of all hearts, society remained outwardly Christian, religion presided over all the acts of every-day life, and hallowed them by its presence and its blessings; everything was done in its name, and its sovereign authority was proclaimed everywhere. Now, it is only at distant intervals and in certain ceremonies in which, out of mere force of habit and for purposes of adornment, it is made to figure, that some shadow of its former prestige is allowed it; for the remainder of the time no allusion is made to it, it is set aside as a superfluity and avoided as a hinderance to action. Judging by this, you would think, perhaps, that it has fallen into oblivion, that it is forsaken, lifeless, and unhonored. But it is only dead in appearance: look more closely, uplift the veil, and you will behold a wholly different condition of Christianity. While the outer world escapes its dominion, the world of men's consciences is being regained. That which institutions refuse to yield to it, souls commence to accord. How numerous the rebellious or perplexed spirits that gradually bow to it and bravely summon its aid! How many tired hearts are indebted to it for rest! Do you not see whole families, hitherto all but ignorant of the blessings of faith, almost transformed by a new baptism? It is most generally to the influence of children that these metamorphoses are due. The Christian education which through their medium obtains access to the fireside instills itself into the minds of their parents. The mother learns the truths that are explained to her daughters, and becomes attached to them in understanding them more thoroughly and acting in accordance with their precepts, the better to inculcate them; even the father feels the necessity of not interfering with the belief of his sons by the contradiction of his own example, and, having become a Christian from a sense of duty, remains a Christian out of affection.

Thus, without noise or éclat, by a latent process whose results alone are discernible, faith diffuses and propagates itself. Certain it must be that its ranks are swelling, and that the rising generations, in furnishing their respective contingents, more than fill the vacancies caused by death, for almost all churches in large cities are becoming too small for the assembled worshippers. Without speaking of the holydays, of the solemn occasions, the spectacular character of which attracts perhaps as many idlers as they do believers, and confining ourselves to the consideration of the gatherings at ordinary services, can you deny that year after year the attendances are larger and that the attention paid is more zealous? {363} Do you not observe, also, how many men mingle with the women? At the commencement of this century the appearance of a man in church was an event. Now it is not even a subject of astonishment; and certainly we note no mediocre triumph of faith over human respect when we record the return of men to the asylum of prayer. Many other novel incidents of similar purport seem no less extraordinary, such as students in our schools and soldiers in our camps publicly asserting their faith; practical Christians having a majority in the councils of large cities and in faculties of physicians, this latter instance being a most exceptional occurrence. If there were aught to be gained nowadays by passing for a Christian, if men were living in the age of the Restoration and had some chance of bringing themselves into notice, and being of good service to their family by proclaiming their piety, we might not take into account either this increase of apparent fervor, or the crowded houses of worship, or the numerous communions. Such, however, is not the case; and is it not now a better policy, if one wish to obtain advancement, to become a Free-Mason, in preference to committing one's self by figuring in some conference of a St. Vincent de Paul's Society? That there are still hypocrites and false devotees, we all are agreed. Such there always will be; but hypocrisy and feigned piety are not fashionable vices. In our time, to enter a church one must really experience a desire to pray. We challenge the most sceptical, giving them the privilege of broadly criticising and pruning as they please, not to recognize as genuine the progress, limited no doubt, but, nevertheless, incontrovertible, of modern Christianity. Besides, there can be applied a test that will dispel all doubts on the subject: of the three divine virtues, the most difficult of imitation is that which depletes our purse and compels us to be generous. Inquire of the clergy, the treasurers of the poor, what charity is at present; ask if it slumber or decay; or rather, if day after day it gain not new powers of existence in proportion as, in certain classes of society, Christian sentiments are awakening. Ask of the clergy if these tokens of largesse are only entrusted to it for reasons of vanity, and if the most modest are not those who give most liberally, an evident sign that the source whence the gifts come is a Christian one. No doubt, men can bestow much in charity without believing—the former act is easier of performance than the latter; but true charity is, as it were, inseparable from the two virtues whose sister it is: he who gives liberally, hopes and believes.

Be ye, then, reassured, for Christian faith still endures. It lives, labors, and wins over souls; it has not forgotten its old secrets, and can once again become youthful and associate itself with the destinies of the world. All that is needed is to give it time. If there be hesitation on its part to accept modern ideas, it is not owing to lack or indolence of spirit. The fault is first to be ascribed to the age itself, whose explanations are so obscure and whose aspirations are so unintelligibly expressed. "The principles of 1789" are most elastic words. What sense can be given them? How can they be applied? Does the century intend to belong to liberty and its severe duties, to the caprices of demagogues, or would it be fired by the military spirit? The second day of December, that period of inaction in our apprenticeship to free institutions, complicated events and added to the perplexity and uncertainty of religious minds. {364} What were the intentions of the new empire? Was it to follow the example set by its predecessor, and was the world to behold for the second time the papacy closely guarded by gens d'armes? Was it not rather the traditions of Charlemagne it proposed to conform with, and was it not to prove a veritable Eldorado for Christian beliefs? This latter intention had been so definitely announced, that most men were deceived by the promise. But the horizon is now becoming clearer; there is neither hope nor gratitude to burden the faithful and render them incredulous as to the blessings of liberty. Awhile longer and there will be light. If, as we must believe, the true destiny of the age, made apparent to all, be conciliated with the great principles constituting Christianity; if it mark new progress in the advance of humanity, fear not. Christianity will not rebel, but will promote the movement. If it still live, and otherwise but nominally—and we have had proof that life was not wanting—it will not lack intelligence.

Know you the true cause of alarm, the true peril? It is that Christianity does not progress alone. It certainly marches on and labors; its advance is apparent; and more apparent, perhaps, are the conquests, the ardor, and the faith of those who struggle. By a strange contradiction, visible in the case of the two opposing forces, when one should gain what the other loses, the strength of neither is affected. On both sides the numbers increase and the armies proceed onward. Which shall win the victory? whose gains are the most genuine? Despite this seeming equality, we do not entertain the slightest doubt but that the Christians, if they will, are the masters of the future. But how are they to secure their triumph? Concerning that we must speak candidly.

Ere we come to this, however, let us, with M. Guizot, enter the anti-christian camp, estimate the forces of the enemy, and examine the formidable host we are called upon to defeat.

The distinctive trait nowadays of the war waged against Christianity is the number and the diversity of the opposing doctrines. Formerly its adversaries confined themselves to seeking to destroy it: now they are more ambitious; they attempt to provide for it a substitute. Hence the multitude of systems, each of which, in more or less vague or contradictory terms, is intended to elucidate the great natural problems that humanity, since its birth, has evolved, and that Christianity has explained with such simplicity, completeness, and clearness. These systems do not claim to be religious; they merely flatter themselves that they will become satisfactory guides for man; that they will read to him the enigma of this world, and supply all the wants of his heart and mind. As they exact neither sanction, practice, nor responsibility, as they are indulgent in the matter of human weaknesses, their popularity can be easily understood. They have believers, adepts, and, we may say, devotees of their own. One of the characteristics of modern incredulity is that it denies and affirms simultaneously. Nothing is rarer in these times than a true unbeliever, placing credence in literally nothing, combating the faith of others, and wholly devoid of faith himself. The unbelievers of the age all believe something: besides the antipathy they have sworn to entertain for Christianity—an antipathy constituting a common faith—each has a belief of his own; some acknowledge pantheism, others rationalism, positivism, materialism, or the countless ramifications of these principal doctrines, each of which has its faithful adherents. {365} We do not mean to advance that all antichristians have espoused the doctrines of philosophy, that each has a sect, a banner, or a credo of his own. We shall even be convinced very shortly that the most dangerous opponents are those who do not dabble in philosophy, and who stand up against the progress of holy truths by indifference and indolence; but the simultaneous birth of all these antichristian systems is nevertheless a strange fact, and one deserving of attention. Taken apart, they can pass by unheeded their fundamental principles are neither novel nor consistent! When seen together, however, theirs is a battle array of a rather imposing magnitude. We understand, therefore, all the more readily, that M. Guizot, wishing to estimate the strength of the antichristian forces, should have taken these systems one by one, and submitted each to a careful examination. We would, however, misconstrue, we apprehend, his most obvious intention, if we were to look upon his sketches as regular refutations and ex professo treatises. He has only proposed to give the measurement of their different systems by comparison with the measuring-rod of common sense. To enter into more thorough discussions would have been unnecessary; better work was left undone, and M. Guizot's preface has clearly expressed his views on that point. It matters little, after all, how these systems are criticised; the result is the same, whether one examine them superficially, master their secrets, or fathom their scientific mysteries. There can be little difference of opinion in regard to their value. It is to their advantage if they be only glanced at. The more searching the investigation, the more conclusive the proof as to the frailty of their formations and deficiencies, pettiness, impotence, and vanity. We repeat what we said, that we have little to dread on this score. A few minds may be won over, but the contagion, in this country, cannot spread. The darkness of pantheism, the dreams of idealism, the dryness of positivism, or the coarseness of materialism will never seduce the mass of French minds. The alarm is greater than the real danger; yet, when gathered together, these systems, however discordant among themselves, however much opposed to each other, constitute, from the very fact that all are equally hostile to Christianity, a power which must be taken into account. They form a fasces; theirs is a coalition, a league that belongs only to our age.

Is it to be supposed that we assert that Christianity has ever lacked enemies, and enemies acting in concert in their attacks? Without looking far back into its history, was not the concentration of all the wits of the age clustered under the leadership of Voltaire for the purpose of freeing the world from religious superstition, an anti-christian league, if ever there was one? Perhaps even the movement of the eighteenth century seemed, at first, more violently antichristian than that undertaken in our days. Its determination was more evident; it proceeded direct to the objective point. Its weapons were light, but they were ever in use, and there was no truce to the warfare. It was a sharp fire of irony, a shower of sarcasm; nothing could withstand it, no one could retort; the dread of ridicule silenced the boldest; the panic was followed by a general rout, and terror was engendered by laughter. And what sad results! what a disaster! {366} The altars were overthrown, religion was annihilated, the clergy scattered, hunted down, or put to death, a whole nation left without temples, without pastors, without any perceptible connecting link with heaven! Was not this enough? What more was desired?

There can certainly be extant no wish to do better; but it is intended that the work shall endure, that the invalid shall be finally disposed of, and that any chance of cure or resurrection shall be done away with. Even as after 1848 the fiery demagogues, who had thought an excellent opportunity had arrived to demolish society, found consolation for their failure by proclaiming aloud that, should a similar series of events ever occur, they would know better how to act, and would not again be unsuccessful in the accomplishment of their purpose, so the destroyers of religion take great care not to imitate the example of their fathers, whose work, they say, was only half done. Mockery and irony are worn-out weapons that wound but do not kill; they are useful in commencing a war, but other and more destructive engines are needed to end it. Besides, within the past sixty years the character and habits of the public have undergone a decided change. The community has become, by lessons taught it at its own expense, of a more reflective and sober turn of mind; it is less easy to provoke its laughter, and it does not always consider a jest an argument. Moreover, deriding all things excites its suspicion, and, in lieu of being won over, it often comes near being shocked. Its new mood must be complied with, the public's foibles must be consulted, and its present foible is, that it shall be treated as a man, and not as a child.

Science is the great agency! Science is the only guide, the only authority whose aid modern minds willingly accept. This can be readily comprehended; each day science works so many miracles, lavishes upon humanity such genuine gifts, opens to mankind so vast a future, and confirms in so incontestable a manner its right of sovereignty over this world, that men, in return, must bow to its decrees, and do it all honor without blushing at the homage rendered it. But, in the hands of those who would keep mankind separate from any other belief, who would prevent the recognition of any higher authority and of the invisible might of the Creator, how terrible a weapon is a faith in science! Therefore it is that nowadays to rank honorably with the adversaries of Christian belief, to play an important part, to act upon the minds and disturb consciences, it is not sufficient merely to possess some talent and a graceful and caustic style. It is necessary to be erudite, or, at least, to be held as such, the latter alternative being less difficult to achieve, less rare, and for that very reason, much more dangerous. For, if Christianity had to deal with truly learned and truly great men only, she and science would never be in absolute opposition to each other. The so-called contradictions, the irreconcilable facts 'disappear, when the disputants attain a certain height, as soon as words being no longer taken in their literal sense, their spirit is understood, and when analysis is brought to bear upon the starting-point of the misunderstanding. Science, when applied to such ends, is not only inoffensive to Christianity and the Scriptures, but comes to their aid and proffers testimony in their favor, sometimes giving to certain facts of fabulous appearance an almost historical character. {367} Thus it came that Cuvier confirmed by a most rigorous process of inductive reasoning based upon irrefutable facts, some Biblical narratives which believers only had, until then, accepted out of motives of pure obedience, and which indifferent persons viewed with suspicion, and the great doctors of the eighteenth century laughed to scorn. Evil fortune, however, wills it, that for every one of these conciliatory, because clairvoyant minds, for a Cuvier, a Kepler, a Leibnitz, and a Newton, there are thousands of men who see the outward semblance only, who stumble over inconsistencies, and who, often without ill-will, make use of their small share of knowledge in accomplishing the ruin of the holy truths. Indeed, they enjoy the credit of the masses as much as, and perhaps more than, the real masters; the public is continually brought into contact with them; they are numerous, ubiquitous, and have associates in all professions; the race of half-learned men is the foundation of humanity, without taking into account the more skilful persons who, seeking to win success at any cost, and even at the risk of scandal, borrow from science the varnish required to give popularity to their productions. These stratagems constitute a new fashion of checkmating Christianity, a method rejuvenating the traditions of Voltaire. Those whose intentions are worthiest are deceived by it; the lure thrown out is that which they need, a sensible lure; their reason alone is appealed to, and they fancy that they are surrendering to proven evidence. What would you have them do? They are not entertained with mere stories and epigrams, they are not made the objects of jests or hoaxes; the facts submitted to them are palpable. So much the worse for Christian beliefs if these facts annihilate them! Can the laws of science be denounced as forgeries? Is not science truth?

Such are modern tactics; neither mockery nor impatience, and great apparent impartiality; it is no longer a skirmish, a sudden attack, but a siege in accordance with all the rules of war; the citadel is surrounded, the enemy advances, with the authority and under the protection of science. This is not all. The experience of the past century has suggested other precautionary measures, other strategic movements. It is now recognized that our poor human nature has not made sufficient progress, not even in France, to feel happy and proud because of a belief in absolutely nothing. This is a weakness for which time will work a cure, but one which must be taken into due consideration. For instance, can it be brought about that most women's hearts will not yield to the necessity of praying and believing? Does not man himself, when bowed down by great affliction, feel that a woman's heart is being born and awakening within him? When death separates him from those he loves, when he survives and suffers, can it be that he will not seek, with eyes upturned to heaven, a little strength in hope? These inclinations and instincts may seem strange and absurd, if you will; but they are indestructible, and to think of doing away with them is a sheer loss of time. This is known in our age, and the skilful profit by their knowledge. To make havoc for a second time, to tear down the altars, and persecute the priests, would be to enact the parts and do the work of dupes! Such a course would prepare an inevitable reaction, and a certain resurrection of all it was proposed to destroy. There are none but a few madmen, a few lost children who would resort to such superannuated measures. {368} Instead of attacking openly the need for belief, better to conquer it by flattery and the tender of fascinating compromises. Why these onslaughts on Christianity? Why overtly batter its walls? To please the libertines? Is it not quite certain that they will side with the antichristians? It is urgent to please the simple-hearted Christians only.

Instead of exhibiting the slightest after-thought of opposition to Christianity, better to dwell upon its beauties, to draw an admirable portrait of its Founder, to recognize him as the model of all the virtues, as the type of all perfection, to speak of him in impassioned and eloquent tones, and in exchange for these gentle concessions to ask—what? A trifling sacrifice, a modest erratum to the text of the Evangels, a simple change of the value of a word, or rather the politic and reasonable yielding up of a valueless title, a worn-out parchment, a purely nominal letter of nobility, the so-called divinity of that admirable man? Why cling to that fiction? Renounce it, and we shall all be agreed. Reason will have nothing more to say on the subject. With yourselves we will do homage to that wonderful mortal, and, if you will, call him divine without attaching too much importance to the condescension. We will overlook the epithet if you concede us the dogma.

Thus, with skill and a certain commingling of philosophic scepticism, mystic reveries, and a feigned zeal for Christian ideas, men hope nowadays to undermine Christianity. The plan of action is by no means novel. In that very year during which Constantine, by his omnipotence, seemed to have ensured the peace and security of the church, in that very year one single man, with a few words, threw the church into far greater perils than were indicated by the lictors and executioners of its fiercest persecutors. He, too, pretended he only waged war against Jesus Christ out of love for his doctrine, and despoiled him of his divinity to guarantee his triumph, propagate his blessings, and, while rendering faith less difficult to acquire, to satisfy reason. The compromise was the same as that which is now put forward. And such is the power of these enervating doctrines that, even in the days when faith was still young and full of life, the world fell a victim to the deception. Scarcely half a century had gone by since the death of Arius and the contagion had extended throughout the Orient, spread over a part of the west, and reached, beyond the limits of the Roman empire of old, all the recently converted barbarian nations. Look back to that hour of crisis when the destiny of the world was at stake; seek to guess what was to happen. After a consultation of human laws, after a calculation of probabilities, did not Christianity appear doomed? Its adversary had won for himself Constantine's favor, the ardent adhesion of the emperor's son, the support of all the forces of the empire, all the powers that still governed the world. To preserve faith, to save from shipwreck the divinity of Jesus Christ, a miracle, a new revelation, another preaching of St. Paul were needed. The miracle was performed; what a man had done a man undid; Athanasius conquered Arius. But Christianity had, nevertheless, seemed about to perish, and modern Arianism can well flatter itself that it will now have better fortune, and that an Athanasius, a Basil, a Gregory, or a Jerome will not ever be at hand to crush its arguments and conquer the world for the benefit of truth. Its threats, its sinister predictions are not, then, mere boasts; the danger is genuine; modern heresy has auxiliary aids that double its might. {369} It no longer stands in the arena, face to face with orthodoxy, and uses purely theological weapons; the struggle is general; everybody participates in it; all weapons are effective. A formidable coalition attacks faith most persistently; the natural sciences when half understood, the metaphysical sciences conducted with pride, historic criticism skilfully romanticized, are forces that unite for the benefit of the new Arianism. Can it not be readily seen that the league is far more powerful and inflicts more serious wounds than the ironical frivolities brought into play in the last century? The progress made is not only evidenced in the tactics and armament; the ground of the struggle itself has changed, to the enemy's advantage. From a Christian stand-point, it may be said that Christianity is now dismantled. Of all the places of shelter, of all the positions which belonged to Christianity a hundred years ago, in the state, in the institutions and customs, of all the means of credit, influence, and legitimate resistance won for it by a right of ages, and of which its adversaries, while deriding its belief, had no thought of robbing it, nothing remains. The levelling power of the times has passed over them. The attack must now be withstood in an open field. If under such circumstances and in presence of such perils Christians opened not their eyes, if an instinct of self-preservation did not induce them to come to an understanding upon the essential points of their faith, if they sought to oppose so many joint efforts while divided and disagreeing, we say, without hyperbole, that we would have to bow our heads and consider this world at an end, and civilization, despite its apparent triumphs and proud hopes, stricken to the heart and menaced with a prompt decline. But have we reached that point? No, a hundred times no, if our will be against it, and if we understand the magnitude of the danger, its real novelty, and the novelty and youth needed to conquer it.

And at the outset let there be no misunderstanding between Christians. Do not believe that Catholicism is alone involved, and the sole excitant of anger and object of the warfare. It is Christianity itself, Christian faith in its entirety, and in every shape, that it is intended to annihilate. Any Protestant sect that accepts the Evangels, without reserve or restrictions, is at least as open to suspicion as pure Catholicism. Tolerance and amnesty are withheld, save from that Christianity which believes not in Jesus Christ, and in which certain pastors, from evangelical pulpits, now profess a belief. Enlightened and sincere Protestants entertain no longer any doubts on that point. They have progressed since the sixteenth century: without being less zealous or less ardent in their belief, they no longer proclaim that Antichrist and the Catholic Church are one and the same thing. In our age the Antichrist is the common foe; if you would resist its onslaughts, close up the ranks; this is no time for discord among brethren. The Protestants who are friendly to the Evangels, however numerous they may be in certain states of Europe, know what they lack as regards cohesion and unity; they feel that that powerful church so persistently attacked nowadays, will ever be the true rampart. While all the blows dealt fall upon her, they breathe freely, for she protects them; if her walls were overthrown, they would be left defenceless. {370} Hence arises among the more farseeing that solicitude which is felt for all Christian interests without distinction, and that defensive alliance which seems to be suggested in the minds of those whose convictions as to the essence of things are identical. Unfortunately, this wholly modern blessing, one of the few conquests which, in the moral order of affairs, might do honor to our age, is not yet very widely disseminated. Even in the opinion of the persons who are horror-stricken at the antichristian coalition, the idea of helping each other, of forming an alliance, of postponing intestine strife and lending a helping hand to each other, wakes but little headway. Habit, prejudices, and a sectarian spirit are so powerful! If some men cast off their yoke, if a chosen few who see events from a higher stand-point take delight in putting into practice these tolerant ideas, do the masses follow an their footsteps? and do the chosen few themselves always set generous examples only? If it were only among Catholics that the tendency to exclusion, the aversion to schism carried to a forgetfulness of the actual interests of faith, were observable, many persons would confess that they were less surprised than grieved; for excuse can ever be found for the Catholic, in whose defence it can be argued that, if he went too far in that direction, it was because he may have believed that, by holding aloof and avoiding the contact of error, he exhibited his obedience and rendered himself more acceptable unto God! But for the Protestant, what apology can be offered? He who asserts so boldly his right to believe what he thinks cannot take offence because his neighbor does likewise. The same intolerance that, in the one case saddens us without causing astonishment, shocks us in the other. Can you understand how it is that an educated, an erudite Protestant, good-hearted, endowed with sound sense, glorying in generous principles, and carrying to very energy his love and respect for right, as soon as it is suggested that he concede to Catholics that which he believes to be just and true for all humanity, the privilege to worship with the liberty and the surroundings their mode of worship requires, cries out in dismay, appeals to brute force, admits unhesitatingly that it decides all similar questions, and sanctions and renders legitimate in advance all sentences which maybe passed? Though his views are sensible on all other points, on this subject they are devoid of reason, and the man speaks of the Catholic Church in the nineteenth century as an inquisitor of the sixteenth would have spoken of heresy! What a strange spectacle, and how humiliating a lesson! Does there exist a more overwhelming proof of the poverty of our intellect?

Yet the part to be taken by a modern Protestant, who would serve Christianity and combat its true enemies, is a glorious one! All things unite to give him influence; everything is in readiness to bestow upon his words an increase, as it were, of authority. He would ignore and forget all petty passions and jealousy. He would seek to bring about the triumph of the divine word, to demonstrate its eternal truth, its transmission through centuries. Why attempt to wrest from the Catholic Church the rights to which she lays claim? Why beset her with invidious questions and excite captious quarrels? Instead of giving vitality to these endless suits, would it not be better to seek to ascertain on what points an agreement subsists, what dogmas have escaped all controversy and survived all strife? He would become attached to these same dogmas; in his eyes they would be the heart, the basis of a Christianity of peace and concord, which no true Christian can avoid defending, since necessarily he must profess allegiance to its doctrines. {371} Because there was alarm for the existence of the Reformation three centuries ago, because the Reformation was the spur which, to save faith, was to rouse the church from slumber, does it follow that now, the times having changed, actions should be the same? Must it be that, to preserve in the present that same Christian faith, a Christian, because he chances to be a Protestant, must espouse his fathers' hates, fight only against the men and ideas with which they strove, and remain idle when beholding the outbreak of the conflagration which threatens Christianity, for the sole reason that Catholicism appears to be especially imperilled by the flames? Let him repudiate that absurd inheritance, let him break with such routine views. Not only must he abstain from attacking, even indirectly, the Catholic Church, and feel no bitterness toward her, for the simple reason that he undertakes a campaign in cooperation with her, and because we must not fire upon one's allies; he owes her still more, more than respect, more than mere courtesies; he must do her full justice. His duty be it to give prominence with frankness and loyalty to the great features, the beauties, the splendor of the traditions from which he stands apart. Strictures and reservations will be mingled with his praises; better still, for his testimony will be all the more valuable. Whether he recall the services rendered or refute vigorously all calumny, by telling the unalloyed truth, even if it be attenuated, he will do more for Catholicism than a professional panegyrist.

This is not all: to keep the false philosopher spirit at bay, no position could be better than that which he holds. He has not to struggle against the antipathy engendered by a supposed obedience to the principle of authority; and when he confesses unreservedly his belief in supernatural facts, his words are fraught with far more importance than if he who uttered them were not trammelled in the matter of free investigation. How different, too, the case when to this superiority are added personal advantages, when the Protestant is a man of powerful mind, accustomed to deal with the most weighty matters, and retaining, in the autumn of life, besides the treasures garnered by experience and learning, the fecund ardor of youth. This explains the characteristic trait of M. Guizot's Meditations; it is not a religious work like so many others. The best priests, the most eloquent preachers, the profoundest theologians are afflicted with a disability for which there is no remedy; they are professional defenders of religion; the truths they affirm seem to constitute their patrimony, and, while pleading the holiest of suits, they seem to argue in their own behalf; while a historian, a philosopher, a statesman, and, above all, a free and independent mind, who, after ripe examination and prolonged reflection, and not without a struggle and an effort, has become a Christian, and who proves in broad daylight that neither his intellect nor his reasoning powers have suffered in the least, and that the thinker and Christian live within him in perfect concord, by his testimony gives courage to many men, dispels many doubts, and inspires the faltering with firmness; his example is the best of sermons and the most reliable mode of propagating faith.

Be assured, nevertheless, that remarks of disapproval will be heard amid the kindly greetings. There will be opposition manifested from the very first, and principally by the reformed worshippers. The broad views and extreme tolerance of the author will not be acceptable to all. The writer will be told, You forsake us; you are a Catholic in spirit and intention, why not be wholly a Catholic? A poor quarrel, indeed, a singular fashion of returning thanks for the most faithful devotedness and the most signal services! In the matter of ingratitude, the sectarian spirit stands in the foremost rank. There is, therefore, no cause for surprise that the Protestants of Paris, when occasionally gathered about the ballot-box, should not always care to express to M. Guizot, by a unanimous vote, their just and respectful pride at numbering him among their forces. But then, let us not forget that, if in the opinion of a few Protestants these Meditations are a trifle too Catholic, certain Catholics would have them still less Protestant. We do not assert that the Catholics, even the most exclusive, are not at heart filled with esteem and gratitude for a work of such evident usefulness to the cause of Christianity; the esteem and gratitude exhibited are, however, wrested from them. They praise aloud the intentions and courage of the author; as for the work itself, they do not restrict themselves to prudently leaving in obscurity the points in discussion, but involuntarily allow inopportune objections to arise. We venture to state that in doing this they do not appreciate the circumstances surrounding us, and the greatness of the need of alliance and concord forced upon Christianity by the formidable war waged against it. That in ordinary times, when the only struggle in progress concerns the form and not the foundation of things, believers should resolve only to accept and extol the productions resonant with the pure and faithful echo of their faith, nothing can be better; in such times each citizen of the Christian republic may be permitted to be watchful of the interests of his province rather than of those of his country; but, when an invasion is imminent, other emergencies are to be looked to: the common safety is the first law. Then is the time to welcome recruits, whoever they are, provided their reinforcement will be productive of good results. Do not deceive yourselves; the Christian community, even if united and agreed on all points, will only just be equal to the task: for its members must not only repel the assailants a merely defensive attitude would be equivalent to a partial defeat but must advance and invade, and subjugate souls. The world is to be reconquered, and a more giddy, frivolous, and somniferous world, perhaps, than the world of nineteen centuries ago. Again, we say that we have not to be alarmed at the antichristian war. Its horde of systems, its dreams and chimeras, its wily contrivances and philosophic disorder do not frighten us. The spectacle is a sad one, but it is not a state of slumber. Upon feverish activity you can bring to bear a healthful action; your very adversaries favor your cause and deaden the weight of the blows they would deal you. What timidity underlies their audacity! How they retreat before the most direct and inevitable consequences of their doctrines! How they complain of misrepresentation when shown a mirror reflecting the deformity of their doctrines! Let them continue to speak and write, they but call forth overwhelming replies; let them alter history and the Scriptures, for they but alter their own authority and credentials: they fall into the pit themselves have digged. {373} All things that agitate and startle men's minds, and awaken even in irritating them, aid the triumph of truth; indifference, torpor, the numbness of souls only are profitable to error, and constitute the true malady of the age. Let us not seek to conceal it, its ravages are too plainly discernible. While impiety, properly speaking, despite its apparent progress and the brazen boasts of its cynicism, makes but few proselytes in our midst, indifference increases, extends, and becomes acclimatized. It is a contagion; whosoever is affected leads a mere earthly life, and is engrossed by nothing save mundane cares, business, and pleasure; the great problems of our destiny, the wondrous mysteries constituting our torment and our honor, exist not for him; he only recognizes and cultivates his coarse and frivolous instincts; the divine portion of his being is in a state of utter lethargy. Here and there, among the indifferent, you meet a few agitated hearts and perplexed spirits. Perplexity is to indifference as twilight to darkness, an uncertain light that struggles with the gloom, sometimes conquering and sometimes conquered. Nothing can be less decisive than a victory won over such a spirit. The escape of perplexed minds is effected as quickly as was accomplished their capture. Never mind; would to God that even such a condition of souls were the greater evil! It is toward indifference, that is to say, toward nothingness and death, that all things incline our footsteps.

Inquiry was made, a short time since, as to the present condition of Christianity in France. Number those who occupy the two hostile camps in which a remnant of life still asserts itself, in one camp for the purpose of attacking, in the other for the purpose of defending, Christian faith; then, beyond the limits of the two, behold, what remains? There, are gathered crowds unnumbered, inert, inanimate, forming, as it were, a great desert, a Dead Sea uninhabited by any living thing. There lies the world to be reconquered; such are the men who are to be reclaimed. How act upon them? how move their hearts? how gain mastery over them? In these questions lies the secret of the future.

Seek, then, and try to ascertain the most reliable means of acting upon these thoughtless mortals. Is the work to be accomplished by practices of high piety and by productions intended for the edification of skilled believers? Think you that at once you will change them into thoroughly faithful Christians? that you will instantly inspire them with a holy fervor? Only to speak the language of pure devoutness, to keep in unison with the utterances of the vestry-room, is to waste time. Climb the heights, display the brilliancy of those universal truths in whose presence every being gifted with reason and accessible to reflection feels compelled to bend the knee. It is by exhibiting in all their grandeur, in all their primitive beauty, the bases of our faith, that souls can be attracted to seek them for shelter. The work to which we allude excels in this respect. M. Guizot's Meditations throw light upon the mysterious summits which, in the eyes of the torpid, appear overhung by thick and impenetrable fogs. They give these men a desire to examine them more closely. In a word, though the work may not satisfy simultaneously, in each communion, all who are possessed of a definite belief, it is endowed with a more precious virtue upon the excellence of which we can dwell the more conscientiously, as having viewed its effects: it moves the indifferent.

More than this, however, must be done. However powerful in style and thought a book may be, it can only, in the present crisis, clear the road. To make greater headway, to effect a more decisive advance, to act upon the masses and rouse them from their slumber, other agencies than books are necessary, and deeds, examples, striking evidence, and incontestable proofs of abnegation, devotedness, charity, and sacrifices are required. These are the sermons that awaken souls; these the weapons that triumph over the world, however careless, frivolous, and hardened it may be. In days by-gone, they conquered the men who wore the Roman toga and the rough habits of the barbarians; in this century, they are still the only means of conquest.—What do we ask? What are we thinking of? Preaching by deeds! The apostleship of the early ages! Real apostles, heroic confessors, if needed, martyrs! In our times! Is it possible?—Why not? What contradiction and surprise but can be looked for nowadays? Is it not the destiny of the age to carry everything to extremes, to be zealous for evil and even for good, to be swayed in turn or simultaneously by all currents, and to subscribe to the most irreconcilable principles? Just because the world appears to have fallen almost to the lowest degree of depression, just because it sinks more deeply from day to day, there is a chance that a sublime and immediate reaction may occur. Was imperial Rome less corrupt, less effeminate, less docile while the avengers and restorers of human dignity, the future masters of the world, were at work beneath her foundations? Be reassured, even in these days of doubt and egotism, a true and great resurrection of Christianity in France is not a Utopian vision. Not only is such a miracle possible, but we may declare it necessary.

Either we must suppose that we are nearing the last phase of the development of humanity; that the now commencing decadence will be the last; that, unlike so many declines that have preceded it, this latest decline will have no place of stoppage, no new birth; that an unbroken slope is leading irresistibly to the ruin and debasement of our race, or we must without delay find means of restituting to the masses religious faith. What has democracy gained by triumphing and being about to become the sovereign mistress of the whole world, if it cannot maintain and hold sway over its conquest simply because it cannot rule and govern itself? Democracy, without the brake of religion, without other protection than that afforded by independent morality, is a swollen torrent, anarchy, despotism, and a return to barbarism. But when the brake is old and shattered, how replace it? No one can create a religious faith, it were folly to attempt it. Such chimerically created things could never be aught but impotent parodies. But why seek so far that which is near at hand? The new faith whose advent is awaited, and hoped, and called for with such eagerness is here; we possess it; it is Christianity itself, ever novel if we but know how to comprehend its eternal light, and if we know ourselves how to be novel. It is not the object of the belief that is to be remodelled, but the routine of believers. Christianity, in itself, is as youthful as at its birth; that which is superannuated is that which does not belong to it, that earthly rust with which it has been incrusted by its interpreters, its ministers, and its servants in all ages. Of this it must be rid; its original appearance and power must be restored. By what process? By using for its reestablishment the means which were formerly employed with success to lay its foundation. {375} The determination is a violent one, yet there must be no half measures; an attempt in any other direction would be illusory and vain. To proceed halfway, to spare abuses, flatter habit, and improve the surface of things only, would be to make Christianity one of those edifices which are kept standing by props and by cementing the cracks in the walls: it would be as well to let it totter and fall to the ground at once. To give it back true power, true stability, that it may defy the shocks of a long series of years, there is but one course to adopt: to begin the work anew.

Let the church, then, be courageous; let her begin again, even as she commenced, and with the same modesty and holiness; let her be chaste, austere, laborious, learned, intelligent, and free; without taste for honors, without care for wealth; lavish of her pains, her blood, and her tears; as independent toward the mighty as she is indulgent and tender for the weak. Let her advance, thus armed, step by step, approaching souls, and souls only, and the world will again be hers. There is no miscalculation to be feared, the same causes will have identical effects; but hasten, lose not an hour, the moment is a solemn one. Let the cry, "The church is beginning anew," be not a vain word, and let not its results be tardy. Think not of honoring God by raising to the heavens proud cupolas, and making for him a dwelling in palaces glittering with gold and marble; it is around the manger, in the grotto of Bethlehem, that the pastors should be convoked. Let all true Christians, all sons of the church, know and proclaim it: on them everything depends, through them all things are possible, upon them all things rest; in their hands lies not only the fate of their beloved and venerated belief, but the future of the civilized world.

Ritualism And Its True Meaning.

We have had the pleasure of reading an article on the subject of ritualism by the Rev. Dr. Dix, rector of Trinity church in this city. This article, which appeared in the July number of the Galaxy, suggested to our minds some very interesting and practical reflections. It is understood that the respected doctor who holds so important a position in his own church is one of the principal supporters of the movement in regard to which he writes. Although he does not yet introduce into Trinity church and its chapels the external observances of the ritualists which he commends, still it is his desire to do so at the first practicable moment. The weight of his character and influence is given to the restoration of those rites and ceremonies which were dropped at the Protestant Reformation through the undue force of Calvinism and what he calls religious radicalism. Whether he will succeed is a question which the ministers and influential laymen of his own church can better answer than we can. In examining his article carefully, we think there is a slight want of candor on one or two points, and some misunderstanding upon others. {376} For example, he disclaims the popular use of the word "ritualism," and says, "It has lost its respectability, and has become a slang expression. The unlucky word is bandied about till it must have lost all perception of its own identity. Hence, we respectfully decline the attempt to say what the word 'ritualism' means, as now lost and merged in the category of cant and slang." Now, as far as we are able to judge, we really believe that the majority of people call things by their right names, and that the public can have no end to gain by any other course. It may be that the Episcopalians are not forbearing enough toward those of their brethren who would innovate upon their established forms of worship; but they cannot be found fault with if they are surprised and offended at changes which are so radical. If they use harsh language in the controversy, they are not to be excused, for no good ever arises from acrimony, or the forgetfulness of the decencies of life. Yet can any honest man say that he does not know what they mean to attack, or that he cannot explain what "ritualism" is? The definition which the reverend doctor gives is hardly adequate, because it includes all mankind, since, according to his terms, there is no one who is not a ritualist. There is no necessity of proving that all religions have had their rites and ceremonies, for there is no one who will deny so well received a fact. We must take the word in its popular acceptation; and it simply refers to those who are now endeavoring to introduce great changes in the worship of the Protestant Episcopal Church, who are using vestments never known in their communion for at least three centuries, and who, in doctrine and outward observance, are approaching as nearly as possible the time-hallowed ceremonial of the Catholic Church. Whether they are in the right or in the wrong is another question; the name by which they are called may be appropriate or not, but it has a plain signification. Every one can understand it, and we do not see in it anything abusive or uncharitable.

After objecting to the term "ritualist," Dr. Dix proceeds to defend at some length the course of those who bear this name, and his view is easily summed up, and we hear it now for about the thousandth time in our life:

"The Christian dispensation is bounded, on the one side, by the magnificent ritualism of Israel, and, on the other, by the analogous and not less glowing ritualism of heaven. For fifteen hundred years (after Christ) there was no ritualistic controversy deserving the name. In general features, divine worship was the same throughout the world. But errors and abuses crept into the church, and these became symbolized in novel rites and practices, by which ritual became, in some respects, defiled and corrupted. Then came the Reformation in the sixteenth century. That movement did not affect the Eastern portions of Christendom; in Greece and Russia the old traditions may be traced, although under a load of useless ceremonies, back to the commencement of the Christian era. … Looking about the world, we see, in the Eastern part of Christendom, an ancient ritual in use, very ornate, very symbolical, and full of reminiscences of the old church of Israel; the mitre, the iconastasis, the veil, the lamps, the incense, are direct heirlooms from that venerable past. In the West, the Roman Catholic Christians exhibit in their ritual a system essentially modified by later ideas, and expressing the dogmas which by degrees have accumulated around their once pure creed."

Here the reverend doctor seems to labor under a strange misunderstanding, and evidently has taken no pains to examine for himself the oriental liturgies. There is no substantial difference whatever between the liturgies of the East and those of the West. All contain the same essential parts, and are probably of apostolic origin. {377} Whatever corruption belongs to the Roman rite, in the Protestant sense of the term, belongs likewise to the Eastern rites. As for the ceremonies now in use in regard to the sacraments and popular devotions, there may be some difference, but it is in favor of the West, even from the Protestant point of view. The Eastern churches pay as much honor to the Blessed Mother of God and to the saints as we do, and in their expressions are fully as fervent. The attempt, therefore, to make a distinction between the East and West, as if the oriental churches were more in sympathy with the reformed doctrines than the Catholic Church, is singularly futile, because not supported by the least shadow of fact. Besides, as we shall see in this article, the ritualists draw all their own rites and ceremonies from us, and recommend for the use of their own church the very words of the Roman Missal. If in their view we had become so corrupt, why have they taken for themselves the ritual which the doctor says is essentially modified by later ideas? We are convinced that the assertions we have quoted will never stand the test of examination or of honest common sense.

Again, Dr. Dix says that there was a perceptible variance of opinion between the English reformers and the Lutheran and Calvinistic communities. To use his own words: "The movement of the Reformation in England was in the most cautiously conservative channel. What they aimed at was, to retain all that was truly Catholic, and to reject only what was distinctively Roman." We do not believe that these assertions can be made good by the most ingenious interpretation of history. The English leaders of the reform were certainly in close connection with the continental teachers, and drew their inspiration from them. That in England more of the exterior of the ancient church was retained was, we think, owing to the pertinacity of the court, more than to the conservative views of Cranmer and his co-laborers. Henry VIII. was inexorable on many points during his singularly exemplary life. Edward VI. was pliant enough, but the church and parliament were not sufficiently advanced to follow all lengths in the wake of Luther and Calvin; and the truth, is that the English Church had nothing to do with the Reformation but to bear it, and by it to lose all its liberties. It is a patent fact that the voice of convocation, the only one which could speak for the ecclesiastical body, was hushed by Henry VIII., and that the reform was carried on by the king and his parliament. If the first prayer-book of Edward VI. was so perfect, why did not the "cautiously conservative" movement stop with "that most perfect specimen of a reformed Catholic liturgy"? why are the poor Calvinists to be blamed for following their own consciences, and for asking for a revision of the liturgy? That they were successful is a proof, at least, that they had great influence in the English Church, and that the Reformation was not so cautiously conservative.

As for the Protestant Episcopal Church, the doctor tells us that it is in an inchoate state, where all its component elements are in fusion. "Only eighty-two years have elapsed since the first American bishop was consecrated; these years have been formative; usages and customs have been undergoing continual changes, and men have been feeling their way, under circumstances in which, since the time of Constantine, no national branch of the Catholic Church has been placed." Is this really the case? Have Episcopalians no settled forms of worship, and no fixed creed? {378} We always were led to suppose that that conservative body of Christians were decidedly fixed in their hostility of heart to Romanism, and what may be called extreme Protestantism. Is it not so? Is the Book of Common Prayer no established rule for the order of divine worship? Are the Thirty-nine Articles, to which every minister effectually subscribes, no rule of faith whatever? Are all Episcopalians feeling their way to something settled in faith and worship? If such is the case, we have been strangely misinformed, and have singularly misinterpreted the decisions of bishops and conventions. The Episcopalian clergy and laity can settle this matter better than we can, and therefore we leave its solution to them. But, to Catholic eyes, these "formative years" seem only like the constant changes which are ever passing over all Protestant bodies, and which inhere in every merely human organization. And we must say that, as far as we know, though the faith of Episcopalians may differ very much, their external worship is plainly enough fixed by rubrics and canons whose meaning can hardly be misunderstood. We pay the highest tribute of respect to Rev. Dr. Dix and his friends, and we give thanks to God for the light and grace he has given them; but truth obliges us to say that their whole movement (if it be sincere, as we are bound to believe) is away from their own church with its rites and ceremonies, and toward the old faith and the old home of Christians. May the divine mercy perfect that which has been begun, and which gives such promise of conversion to the truth. We deeply sympathize with the ritualists, and pray for them continually, that they may not falter on the path they have begun to tread, that they may persevere amid all discouragements and temptations until they reach their Father's house, where the light of faith shines without a shadow.

Having made these preliminary remarks, we proceed to the object of this short essay, and shall endeavor to make manifest what ritualism is and what is its true meaning. We believe it to be a most important movement, which by God's grace will lead many souls to the full possession of the truth. We consider it as simply an honest and sincere attempt to introduce into the English Church and the Protestant Episcopal Church, the most essential doctrines of the Catholic religion, and to restore the worship which passed away at the Reformation with the rejection of the ancient faith. It does not seem to us that any candid person can long be a ritualist without becoming Catholic. Our purpose is, then, to make this evident to the public by the simple presentation of facts. It will be very interesting both to Catholics and Protestants to know the real doctrine and practices of the upholders of one of the most striking movements of our day. We will, for the sake of order and clearness, speak in detail of the sacrifice of the Mass and the blessed Eucharist, of auricular confession, of other sacramental observances, and of religious communities. Before proceeding to these subjects, however, we reproduce and affirm the five points of Rev. Dr. Dix, which we shall have in view as fixed principles:

"Second. There is the clearest argument from Holy Scripture and ecclesiastical history in favor of a beautiful and impressive ritualism, as a powerful agency on men for their good.

"Third. Such ritualism must be a teacher; it must symbolize something, and express as forcibly as possible what it symbolizes; a ritualism without a meaning, and representing no truth which the intellect can grasp, is but a piece of trifling and a sham.

"Fourth. Ritual must teach truth, pure and unadulterated truth; God's truth, which he has revealed to man.

"Fifth. People should try to discuss the subject with calmness. They should not look at it in a party light; they had better keep clear of the agitators, whose aim it is to excite vague fears, and affright the uninstructed with awful disclosures of conspiracy against the simplicity of their faith and the purity of their worship; and especially should they remember that there is superstition in defect as well as in excess."

1. Ritualists are believers in the sacrifice of the Mass and the real presence of our Lord in the holy Eucharist. The Communion service, instead, therefore, of being simply an affecting memorial of Christ's death, is transformed into a true and proper sacrifice, in which he is really present under the forms of bread and wine, and is offered for the living and the dead. The adaptation of the old forms of the prayer-book to a view so Catholic as this requires many alterations in rubrics and in the introduction of new matter. We shall quote from a book called the Notitia Liturgica, which is the received order of service, and contains, according to its title, "brief directions for the administration of the sacraments, and the celebration of the divine service according to the present use of the Church of England." The introductory note explains that the book was drawn up "in order to provide the clergy, sacristans, and others with a small pocket-manual, by which such accuracy, care, and reverence may be attained by those ministering at, or serving the altar, as has been so constantly recommended by such eminent standard divines of our national church, as the Venerable Bede, Archbishop Peckham, Bishop Wainflete, Cardinal Pole, Bishop Cosin, and Archbishop Laud." The Directorium Anglicanum contains more ample directions; but the present work, being briefer, is more suited for our purpose at this moment. It commences with the remark that, "in the interpretations of the Book of Common Prayer, the following cardinal maxim should never be lost sight of, namely, that what was not legally and formally abandoned at the Reformation by express law is now in full force, and should be carefully, judiciously, and firmly restored. This key unlocks many difficulties which would be otherwise both theoretically and practically insurmountable." Then follow the directions for the building and dressing of the altar, and for a "Low and High Celebration." We cannot do better than give them at length:

"The greatest care should be invariably bestowed upon the altar of the church. It should be well raised, of proper proportions, and of costly materials. In size it should never be less than seven feet long, and three feet and a half in height. It should always be raised on a substantial and solid platform of at least three steps. Behind it there should be a reredos of wood or stone, either carved or decorated, or else a hanging of cloth, velvet, satin, damask, or embroidery. Green is the best color for a hanging—unless the church is dedicated in honor of Our Lady, when blue may be used—which can be changed on high festivals for white. The carpet upon the sanctuary floor should invariably be green, as it is a good contrast to the altar vestments. The altar vestments should fit accurately, and not be allowed to hang loosely. On a shelf or ledge behind the altar—sometimes called a retable, and sometimes, but inaccurately, a super-altar—should be placed a metal cross or crucifix; or a painting of the crucifixion should be fixed over the centre of the altar, against the east wall. At least two large and handsome candlesticks for the Eucharistic celebration should be placed one on either side of the cross. Other branch candlesticks for tapers may be affixed to the east wall on each side of the altar, and standards for the same may be added on festivals. Flower vases may be also used for the adornment of the retable of the altar, and pots of flowers and shrubs for the sanctuary floor, which should be carefully but closely grouped against the north and south ends of the altar.

"The following order should be observed both in the use of the vestments of the clergy and of the altar:

"White.—From the evening of Christmas Eve to the Octave of Epiphany inclusive, (except on the two feasts of St. Stephen and the Holy Innocents;) at the celebration on Maunday Thursday, and on Easter Eve, from the evening of Easter Eve to the Vigil of Pentecost, on Trinity Sunday, on Corpus Christi Day and its Octave, on the feasts of the Purification, Conversion of St. Paul, Annunciation, St. John Baptist, St. Michael, All Saints, on all feasts of Our Lady, and of Saints and Virgins, not Martyrs, at weddings, and on the Anniversary Feast of the dedication of the church.

"Red. Vigil of Pentecost to the next Saturday, Holy Innocents, (if on a Sunday,) and all other feasts.

"Violet. From Septuagesima Sunday to Easter Eve, from Advent to Christmas Eve, Ember week in September, all vigils that are fasted, Holy Innocents, (unless on Sunday.)

Vestments for the Celebrant—Cassock, amice, alb, and girdle, with maniple, stole, and chasuble, of the color of the day.

"The altar candles being lighted, and the cruets of wine and water being on their stand upon the credence, as well as the altar breads, basin, and towel, the priest, bearing the sacred vessels, duly arranged and covered, preceded by the server, proceeds from the sacristy to the altar.

"Having bowed to the cross, and then spread the corporal and placed the chalice on the centre of the altar, he steps back to the foot of the altar, and begins by saying privately: '+ In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.'

"Then, going up to the altar, according to the Rubric, he says the 'Our Father' and collect at the 'north side' or gospel corner; after which, turning to the people, and standing in the middle of the altar, he recites the Ten Commandments, the server making the appointed responses.

"Then he turns to the gospel corner, as the Rubric directs, and says the prayer for the Queen, and the collect for the day.

"Then the server moves the book-rest to the epistle corner, where the priest reads the epistle; and then the server replaces it, as before, at the gospel corner, where the priest reads the gospel, at the commencement of which all present cross themselves on the forehead, mouth, and breast.

"Custom sanctions the responses, 'Glory be to Thee, O Lord,' and 'Praise be to Thee, O Christ,' before and after the Gospel: both of which are said by the server.

"The creed is said by the priest junctis manibus in the middle of the altar facing the cross. The server, therefore, should move the book toward the priest. From the words 'and was incarnate' to 'was made man,' the celebrant bows profoundly; and at the words 'life everlasting' makes the sign of the cross on his breast.

"The offertory sentence is read in the same position. The alms (if any) are presented standing. At the offering of the bread, the priest should use privately the following prayer from the Salisbury Missal:

"'Suscipe, Sancta Trinitas, hanc oblationem quam ego indignus offero in honore tuo et Beatae Mariae, et omnium sanctorum tuorum, pro peccatis et offensionibus meis; pro salute vivorum et requie omnium fidelium defunctorum. In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.'

"Offerimus tibi, Domine, calicem salutaris, tuam deprecantes clementiam, ut in conspectu divina majestatis tuae, pro nostra et totius mundi salute, cum odore suavitatis ascendat. Amen.'

"Here the server should bring from the credence-ewer, water, and towel for the priest to wash his hands. During this symbolical ceremony, the celebrant will say Psalm xxvi., which may be learnt by heart.

"At the 'Ye that do truly,' which should also be learnt by heart, and said without the service-book, the priest turns to the people, still standing in the midst of the altar.

"The server, or 'minister,' as the Rubric terms him, says the confession in the name of the people, the priest standing facing eastward. At its conclusion, he turns round junctis manibus, and gives the absolution, which should also be said without the book, making the sign of the cross with his right hand at the words, 'pardon and deliver you,' etc.

"The preface, 'Lift up your hearts,' with its response, is said with hands extended and eyes uplifted. At the words, 'Let us give thanks,' etc., the priest joins his hands, and at 'It is very meet, right,' etc., he turns to the altar, bending down at the words, 'Holy, holy, holy.'

"The celebrant kneels in the midst of the altar at the prayer of humble access, 'We do not presume.'

"In the prayer of consecration, the priest reverently genuflects after the consecration of the bread, to worship Jesus Christ, truly present under a sacramental veil, and again after the consecration of the chalice.

"Here the following extract from the ancient Sarum Canon, to be said privately, may, according to the suggestion of Bishop Wilson, be profitably introduced:

"'Unde et me mores, Domine nos servi tui, sed et plebs tua sancta, ejusdem Christi Filii tui Domini Dei nostri tam beatae Passionis, necnon et ab inferis Resurrectionis, sed et in caelos gloriosae Ascensionis, offerimus praeclarae Majestati tuae de tuis donis ac datis Hostiam + puram, Hostiam sanctam + Hostiam, + immaculatam: Panem sanctum + vitae aeternae, et + caliccem salutis perpetuae.

"'Supra qua propitio ac sereno vultu respicere digneris: et accepta habere, siculi accepta habere dignatus es munera pueri tui justi Abel, et sacrificium patriarchs nostri Abrahae: et quod tibi obtulit summus sacerdos tuus Melchisedech, sanctum sacrificium, immaculatam Hostiam.

"'Supplices te rogamus omnipotens Deus; jube hac perferri per manus sancti angeli tui in sublime altre tuum, in conspectu Divinae Majestatis Tua: et quotquot ex hac altaris participatione, sacrosanctum Filii tui, + Corpus et + Sanguinem sumpserimus: omni + benedictione coelesti et gratia repleamur. Per eundem Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.

"'Memento etiam, Domine animarum famulorum famularumque tuarum (N. et N.) qui nos praecesserunt cum signo fidei, et dormiunt in somno pacis. Ipsis Domine et omnibus in Christo quiescentibus, locum refrigerii, lucis et pacis, ut indulgeas, deprecamur. Per eundem Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.

"'Nobis quoque peccatoribus famulis tuis de multitudine miserationum tuarum sperantibus, partem aliquam et societatem donare digneris cum tuis sanctis apostolis et martyribus; cum Joanne, Stephano, Matthia, Barnaba, Ignatio, Alexandro, Marcellino, Petro, Felicitate, Perpetua, Agatha. Lucia, Agnete, Caecilia, Anastasia, et cum omnibus sanctis tuis: intra quorum nos consortium, non estimator meriti, sed veniae, quaesumus, largitor admitte. Per Christum Dominum nostrum.

"'Per quem hac omnia Domine, semper bona creas, + sanctificas, + vivaficas, + benedicis, et praestas nobis. Per + ipsum et cum + ipso in + ipso est tibi Deo Patri + Omnipotenti, in unitate Spiritus Sancti omnis honor et gloria. Per omnia saecula saeculorum. Amen.'

[Transcriber's note: Some of these words are illegible and are guesses. The plus sign (+) indicates the sign of the cross is to be made.]

"The priest communicates himself standing. Genuflecting before receiving our Lord's Body, he may say:

"'Ave in aeternum sanctissima Caro Christi; mihi ante omnia et super omnia summa dulcede. Corpus Domini nostri Jesu Christi sit mihi peccatori via et vita + In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.'

"'Ave in aeternum Caelestis Potus, mihi ante omnis et super omnia summa dulcedo. Corpus et Sanguis Domini nostri Jesu Christi prosint mihi peccatori ad remedium sempiternum in vitam aeternam. Amen. + In nomine Patris,' etc.

"After all have communicated, the contents of the paten may be carefully placed into the chalice, the paten placed on the chalice, and the veil put over it.

"The 'Our Father' and the following prayer are said with hands extended, in the centre of the altar, facing eastward, as also the intonation of the 'Gloria in Excelsis.' At the words, 'we worship thee,' the celebrant will bow profoundly; at the words, 'To the glory of God the Father,' he signs himself with the sign of the cross.

"In giving the benediction, in which the sign of the cross should always be made with the right hand, care should be taken by the priest not to turn his back upon the blessed sacrament. The server will here kneel in the centre of the lower step.

"Immediately after this—before the priest uses any private devotions whatsoever and before the people attempt to go away— the consecrated species should be reverently consumed; and the ablutions (1) of wine, (2) of wine and water mixed, and (3) of water alone should be given to the priest by the server.

"The greatest possible care should be taken that no single particle remains on the paten; and it is always better that the priest himself should consume all that remains of both kinds. The officials of the church and members of the choir should be expressly taught never to rise from their knees until the ablutions have been taken and the priest is about to leave the altar.

"After the cleansing of the vessels, the corporal, purificator, chalice-cover, etc., should be carefully put in their places; and then, bowing to the cross, the priest should return to the sacristy, preceded by the server, and say, according to the Sarum rite, St. John's Gospel, cap. i. 1-14.

PLAIN DIRECTIONS FOR A HIGH CELEBRATION.

(BY A PRIEST WITH DEACON AND SUB-DEACON.)

Vestments for the Celebrant—Cassock, amice, alb, and girdle, with maniple, stole, and chasuble of the color of the day.

Vestments for the Deacon—Cassock, amice, alb, and girdle, with maniple, stole, and dalmatic of the color of the day.

Vestments for the Sub-Deacon—Cassock, amice, alb, and girdle, with maniple and tunicle of the color of the day.

Vestments for the Acolytes Cassocks, (black on ordinary days, but purple or scarlet on great festivals,) with either short surplices, girded albs, or rochets.

"The directions which have already been given in the case of a 'Low Celebration' are equally appropriate here, as far as regards the actual ceremonies of the Eucharist. Several additional points, however, need to be particularly insisted on:

"(a) The normal position of the deacon will be on the right hand side of the priest, standing on the first step from the footpace; and that of the sub-deacon on his left hand, standing on the second step.

"(b) Both deacon and sub-deacon stand when the celebrant stands, genuflect when he genuflects, and kneel when he kneels.

"(c) At the epistle, the deacon and subdeacon change places, the latter chanting the epistle on his own, the second step from the footpace, from a good-sized book, held by one of the acolytes on the epistle side, so that the sub-deacon may face the east.

"(d) At the gospel, the deacon chants the gospel from his step, near the gospel corner of the altar—the book of the Gospels being held by the sub-deacon, so that the deacon may face the north.

"(e) After the gospel, the celebrant, in the midst of the altar—with the deacon behind him on his own step, and the sub-deacon on his step, again behind the deacon—intones the first sentence of the Nicene Creed. When the choir take up the words, 'the Father Almighty,' the deacon and sub-deacon go up to the altar footpace, respectively to the right and left of the priest.

"(f) During the sermon, the priest, deacon, and sub-deacon occupy the sedilia, or seats placed for them on the south side of the sanctuary, facing the north.

"(g) At the offertory they return to the altar, and the sub-deacon brings the sacred vessels from the credence. The deacon, taking the corporal out of the burse, spreads the corporal, and arranges the sacred vessels. The chalice should be placed immediately behind the paten, in the centre of the corporal and of the altar.

"(h) The plate or box with the altar breads should be handed to the deacon by the sub-deacon, who will receive it from one of the acolytes, in order that the priest may be supplied with the elements required. The same will be observed as regards the cruets of wine and water, and also for the ceremony of washing the priest's fingers. The priest-celebrant should not leave his place at the altar, but should be carefully served by his assistant clergy and the acolytes.

"(i) The confession may be said in monotone, or with suitable inflections, by either the deacon or sub-deacon. During the preface and sanctus, the deacon and sub-deacon stand behind the priest, respectively a little to his right and left.

"(k) At the consecration, the deacon and sub-deacon, standing respectively at his right and left, will reverently genuflect when the priest genuflects, and bend themselves low during the communion of the celebrant.

"(l) At the Gloria in Excelsis, the celebrant—in the midst of the altar, with the deacon behind him on his own step, and the sub-deacon on his step, again behind the deacon—intones the first sentence. When the choir take up the words, 'And in earth peace,' the deacon and sub-deacon ascend to the altar footpace, respectively to the right and left of the priest.

"(m) After the Gloria in Excelsis, one, two, or three of the collects at the end of the communion service may be said—according to the number of the actual collects of the day—as a post-communion.

"(n) In giving the 'pax' and blessing, the celebrant should turn toward the people, being careful not to stand before the blessed sacrament, and, stretching out his arms during the first part of it—from the opening words to 'His Son Jesus Christ our Lord'—will kiss the pax which is presented to him by the deacon; and then, placing his left hand open on his breast, will raise his right hand and bless the people with the sacred sign of the cross.

"(o) The deacon and sub-deacon will immediately serve wine and water for the ablutions, and having rearranged the sacred vessels and their coverings, will place them on the credence, together with the pax and the service-book.

Such is the external rite recommended and practised as far as possible by the ritualists in what they do not hesitate to call the celebration of Mass. That it is conformed, as far as can be, to the Liturgy of the Catholic Church will be evident at first sight to any one acquainted with the Missal. The ceremonies and many of the integral parts are adopted without change from the Western rite, and not from the Eastern, which Dr. Dix thinks more pure. The vestments may be of the Greek pattern, but this is not a material matter. {383} The priest, having placed the chalice on the altar, steps back to the foot of the altar, and begins, according to the Catholic order, by making the sign of the cross, and saying the Psalm, "Judica me Deus." The epistle and gospel are read precisely as we read them; then the creed is said, "junctis manibus," in the middle of the altar, facing the cross. It is also said with the same reverences as our service prescribes, and ends with the sign of the cross. The offering of the bread is made in a Latin form, said to be taken from the Salisbury Missal. The oblation is made in the honor of the Holy Trinity and the Blessed Mary, for the salvation of the living and the rest of the faithful departed. At the offering of the chalice, the priest is directed to say the identical prayer used in our Liturgy. Then follows the washing of the hands, with the recitation of Psalm xxv., "Lavabo manus meas," as in the Catholic rite; and the extracts in Latin from our Missal are directed to be "written out, printed, or illuminated, and then framed and placed against the super-altar as altar cards." At the consecration, the priest reverently genuflects to worship Jesus Christ truly present, after which he is recommended to use privately the exact words of our canon in Latin. It seems that they coincide with the Sarum Canon, and that some years ago Bishop Wilson had the good thought to suggest their use. The remainder of the service will speak for itself; and we think any Episcopalian will find himself strangely puzzled should he undertake to follow with the rubrics of his Book of Common Prayer. He would, it seems to us, be as much at home in a Catholic church. The directions for a "high celebration" are all taken from our rubrics for a solemn Mass, with deacon and sub-deacon, and are conformed to them as much as possible. The saddest reflection which strikes us, is the thought that those who go through with such real and meaning ceremonies have no priestly character, and therefore no power to consecrate Christ's Body and Blood. Such is not only the verdict of the Catholic Church in regard to Anglican orders, but the opinion of every Eastern church which has retained the traditions of the apostolic succession. It is a fearful responsibility for any man to take, to make himself a priest on his own private judgment; for, after all, if the Catholic Church is good for rites and doctrines, she is good for everything.

So far the external observance of the ritualists is in favor of the sacrifice of the Mass, and the real presence of our Lord in the blessed Eucharist. We shall find that they do not hesitate to teach the doctrine which their ritual symbolizes, according to the principles of Dr. Dix. which exact that "ritual must teach truth, pure and unadulterated truth." We have before us several books which are recommended, and, as far as we have been able to learn, in constant use. The books for devotion before hearing Mass and receiving Holy Communion, such as The Altar Book, The Little Sacrament Book, The Supper of the Lord, contain the plainest expressions of belief in the real and true corporeal presence of Jesus Christ in the sacrament. We could quote many pages, but we shall only give a few passages from The Churchman's Guide to Faith and Piety, a work which is quite comprehensive, and is published with directions for all devotions, both in and out of the church. It bears a dedication, by permission, to the Rt. Rev. H. Potter, D.D., LL.D., D.C.L., the Bishop of New York, thus receiving the sanction of the highest Episcopalian authority. {384} The "Instruction on the Holy Eucharist" contains very plainly the doctrine of the Mass: "In this sacrament he (Jesus Christ) has bequeathed to us his Body and Blood under the forms of bread and wine, not only to be received by us for the food and nourishment of our souls, but as a means whereby the same oblation of himself which he offers before the Father in heaven might be offered also by his ministers on earth. They thus commemorate his one atoning sacrifice by a perpetual memorial, representing his death and passion before the Father. … In this sacrifice Christ himself is the real offerer, though he acts through his priests, whom he appointed as his representatives when he commanded his apostles, saying, 'Do this in remembrance of me.' … When, therefore, the priests of his church, in his name and according to his commands, rehearse the words of institution in the prayer of consecration, God the Holy Ghost comes down upon the creatures of bread and wine, and they become the Body and Blood of Christ. The priest offers, therefore, on God's altar a sacrifice commemorative of that perfect and sufficient sacrifice once offered on the cross, and at the same time Jesus Christ presents it before the Father, pleading his wounds, and the merits of his passion for the pardon and salvation of his people." During the communion many beautiful devotions are given, all of which speak fervently of Christ's real presence, and the Catholic hymn, "Ave Verum Corpus," is translated for use at that great moment:

"Hail! Christ's body, true and real, of the Virgin Mary born, Truly suffering, truly offered on the hill of scorn. Hail! for man's salvation pierced, gaping wounds and riven side, Whence outflowed with love unstinting, Blood and Water, mingled tide; Now upon that body feed we, now of that sweet fountain drink, Lest, when death relentless seize us, 'neath the Judge's search we sink."

"Devoutly I adore thee, Deity unseen, Why thy glory hidest 'neath these shadows mean? Taste and touch and vision in thee are deceived, But the hearing only, well may be believed."

The prayer "Anima Christi" is then recommended to be said with the inmost affections and desires of the soul. The manner of receiving is also worthy of notice: "Kneel reverently at the altar, with the body upright and the head slightly bowed." Say to yourself, 'Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof.' Make thy left hand a throne for the right, which is on the eve of receiving the King, and, having hollowed thy palm, receive the Body of Christ, and convey it carefully to thy mouth." The book called The Supper of the Lord gives the like directions: "When the priest gives you the sacrament, receive it in the open palm of the right hand, and so raise it reverently, lest any portion should fall to the ground; for St. Cyril observes, 'Whosoever loses any part of it had better lose part of himself.'" It is not necessary to quote any further passages, although the same doctrine is contained in the entire book. On page 86, vol. ii., there is the remark, "that the bread and wine are unchanged in their substance;" but we are inclined to think that this comes from inadvertence, prejudice, or bad philosophy. Two substances cannot coexist in the same space; and therefore, if the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ, they cannot still be simple bread and wine. And if the presence of Christ is only in them without changing them, it is a sin to adore them, since they are only creatures still. {385} To lose any part of them would, then, be no crime, as Episcopalians have always believed. The language of the hymns heretofore quoted would be strangely out of place. Lutherans have tried their theories of consubstantiation, and eminent Protestants have defended a kind of impanation; but all these matters may safely be left to the criterions of good common sense. We feel satisfied that any one who desires to hold consistently the doctrine of a real presence of Jesus Christ in the blessed Eucharist must approach the Catholic dogma, and admit a substantial change in the bread and wine.

2. Auricular confession is taught and practised by the ritualists. We say, auricular confession, because the term has been used by Protestants, though it may be considered expletive, since a confession heard by no one is hardly a confession in any proper sense. The books of devotion put forth by the ritualists, both in this country and in England, give the most plain and explicit directions for confession. The ministers who follow their views are always ready to hear their penitents, and, on account of the spiritual relation they hold to their children, call themselves, and love to be called, by the title of "Father," as is customary in the Catholic Church. The Chapter IV. of The Churchman's Guide, vol. ii., is entitled "Of Sacramental Confession." It gives the prayers and questions for self-examination such as may be found in our manuals. The form of confession is thus recommended:

"As soon as the priest is ready, begin your confession after this manner: In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen. I confess to God the Father Almighty, to His only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, and to God the Holy Ghost, before the whole company of heaven, and to you, my father, that I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word, and deed, by my fault, my own fault, my own grievous fault. Then confess the sins you have noted down as the result of your self-examination, taking them in the order of the commandments, or beginning with your besetting sins, and then proceeding to the lesser sins. Do so simply, sincerely, earnestly, unreservedly, in as plain a manner as possible, remembering that no sin which you have discovered should be held back, that any conscious omission will render the confession nothing worth, and the absolution null and void. In accusing yourself, be very careful not to mention another, unless it is necessary to the completeness of your confession. Answer any questions that the confessor may feel it necessary to ask truthfully and unhesitatingly. When you have completed your confession, say as follows: For these and all my other sins which I cannot at present remember, I humbly beg pardon of Almighty God, and of you, my spiritual father, penance, counsel, and absolution. Wherefore I pray God the Father Almighty, His only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ, and God the Holy Ghost to pity me and have mercy upon me, and you, my father, to pray for me. The priest will then remark upon the confession as he deems most fitting, giving such ghostly counsel as to dispose the soul for the receiving of the great gift. Listen to him with all reverence and care, receiving the advice which he gives you as the message of God to your soul, and determine punctually and exactly to fulfil the penance which he may assign to you. After such exhortation, the priest will pray with you and for you, and then lay his hands upon your head, and pronounce the words of absolution. Doubt not, but earnestly believe that, according to God's sure promise, the sins that are so loosed upon earth are loosed in heaven. After confession, spend, if possible, a quarter of an hour in church, or in private, using one or more of the following acts of devotion."

Then follow some beautiful and fervent prayers and thanksgivings. Catholics will see very little difference between this form and that to which they have been accustomed from their childhood. We have no means of judging how extensive is the practice of confession among Episcopalians in New-York, but we earnestly hope it will increase and become general. {386} Although there is no priestly character, no jurisdiction, and no absolution, still the habit of confessing leads to self-examination and strictness of life, and will in God's good time open the heart to the light of the true faith. We are not aware that confessionals have been erected in any Episcopal church in this country, and do not know whether confessions are heard in the church or at the houses of the ministers. English ritualists are far beyond their American brethren, and therefore we presume that everything will follow in due time.

3. The ritualists are also approaching to the doctrine of the church in regard to the sacraments, and certainly admit more than two sacraments. A sacrament is, according to our catechism, "an outward sign of inward grace, or a sacred and mysterious sign by which grace is communicated to our souls." We need not speak of baptism, in which regeneration is fully admitted, nor allude to the holy Eucharist, already sufficiently spoken of, but will simply mention penance, confirmation, and matrimony, which the Episcopal Church denies to be sacraments. What we have quoted in regard to "sacramental confession" will show that, to all intents and purposes, they believe in penance very much as we do. Confirmation is regarded as a rite having an external sign, and conveying the gift of the Holy Ghost. Special preparation for so great a gift is deemed necessary, and confession is recommended. "White is the color of the vestments of both clergy and altar at confirmation. At confession, the stole should be violet."

The Notitia Liturgica gives the following directions for holy matrimony: "The service for holy matrimony consists of three parts, namely, the address to the congregation, the betrothal, (both of which are to take place in the nave or body of the church) and the more sacramental part, imploring the graces needful for the married state, which is said at the altar. The ring is evidently ordered to be laid on the service-book for the purpose of being blessed. The following is a common form of benediction. (It is the Catholic form.) 'Sanctify, + O Lord, this ring which we bless + in thy name, that she who shall wear it, keeping inviolable fidelity to her spouse, may ever remain in peace and love; and live according to Thy law, through Christ, our Lord, Amen.' In pronouncing the first benediction, the priest should lay his hands upon the heads of the man and woman. White is the color for the vestments of both clergy and altar at the celebration of holy matrimony. The priest should wear cassock, surplice, and stole; and the assistants, clerks, or ministers, cassock and surplices. If the holy communion be celebrated, of course the clergyman will retire to the vestry to assume the proper vestments. Only the bride and bridegroom and their immediate friends should communicate." There can be very little doubt that in all this there is the open profession of belief in an inward sanctifying grace attached to the external rite.

In regard to holy orders, we have no direct evidence before us, because we have only seen books of devotion for the people; but we are quite persuaded that the ritualists believe in the sacramental character of ordination, and that a special grace attends the imposition of the bishop's hands when ministers and priests are solemnly set apart to their office. As for the sacrament of extreme unction, we are not aware that it is practised in England or among the Episcopalians in this country. But from all the advances they have made during the last few years, we have reason to think that it will ere long be introduced. {387} It was in use in the early days of the Reformation, and is very plainly taught in Holy Scripture. (St. James v. 14.)

4. The vast progress in Catholic ideas which has been made has also led to the establishment of religious communities. In England, there are, we are informed, quite a number of sisters, who live by rule and devote themselves to the works of charity. The Rev. Dr. Neale devoted his life and all his zeal to this most important movement. We have seen some beautiful sermons which were preached by him to the sisterhood of St. Margaret's, in East Grinsted. In them will be found not only the belief of the principal Catholic verities, but the most fervent descriptions of the religious life, and the plainest directions for maintaining its strictness. The movement has gone so far in England that it can afford to defy public prejudice. In the United States there has been a corresponding movement among Episcopalians, though somewhat behind the footsteps of their brethren in the mother country. The Rev. Dr. Muhlenberg was among the first in our city to establish a community of sisters; but we believe that his idea embraced more the relief of the sick and poor than the consecration to God of those who should devote themselves to this charity. Latterly, however, there has been established here a sisterhood on more Catholic principles, under the auspices of Rev. Dr. Dix, which contains now nine members, not counting postulants, who bear the title of "Sisters of St. Mary." This community was instituted three or four years ago, and placed under rules similar to those of the Catholic convents. Postulants to the community have a trial of six months, when they are received by the pastor. One year and a half from this time, that is, after two years of probation, they are set apart to their work by the bishop. The public will recollect the account, which appeared in the journals, of a consecration of sisters by Rt. Rev. Dr. Potter in one of the Episcopal churches. At this service, though we believe they take no vows, the sisters consider themselves set apart for life, and bound to the community, except in special exigencies, when dispensation can be obtained from the pastor or bishop. They have a religious dress of black, with a large black cape, a large white collar, and a white cap. They also wear a cross made of black work, with a white lily in silver set in it, which is hung around the neck. They live strictly, rise early, and work laboriously. They observe several of the canonical hours, and for this purpose use the book prepared and published by Dr. Dix. They have their hours of silence, of recreation, and of community observances. They seldom visit any one, but can go to their homes occasionally, by special permission. They are expected to go to confession and communion monthly, unless they obtain the privilege of going oftener. Rev. Dr. Dix is their spiritual director, although some are permitted to confess to one of the "fathers" at St. Alban's, or to any other Episcopal minister.

These sisters have charge of two houses, the "Sheltering Arms," at One Hundredth street, on the Bloomingdale road, and the "House of Mercy," in Eighty-sixth street, near the Hudson river. St. Barnabas's House, in Mulberry street, near Houston, was at one time under their care, but, as the managers were not sufficiently Catholic in their ideas, they were constrained to leave it. On Sundays and holydays, when there is no service in these private chapels, they attend the neighboring Episcopal churches. {388} Once a month they have an especial service in one of their houses, when their pastor is present, and the holy communion is celebrated. After this service the sisters hold a meeting, which is called a "chapter," in which the affairs of the community are discussed and arranged. They often attend St. Alban's church, where the holy communion is celebrated every Sunday, on all the saints' days, and each day on the octaves of Christmas, Easter, and Ascension. Here there is a "low celebration" on the week-days above mentioned, or "Low Mass," as it is sometimes called by them.

5. In regard to other practical devotions of Catholics, the ritualists have also made great progress. The "Way of the Cross" is used and recommended by them. A beautiful form of this devotion will be found in the book entitled The Supper of the Lord, and Holy Communion. The Churchman's Guide contains some pious litanies, and some devotions to the sacred wounds of our Lord, which are conceived entirely in the tone of Catholic piety. The "Lenten Fast" is also recommended to be strictly observed by abstinence from flesh meat, and even the rules of our own diocese are quoted with favor. We have seen a little book, called The Rosary of the Holy Name of Jesus, to which is added the "Rosary of the Passion of our Lord," set forth for the use of the faithful members of the English Church, with an introduction by Charles Walker, author of Three Months in an English Monastery. In the introduction, beads, adapted to these rosaries, are approved, but how far they are in use we have no means of knowing.

The invocation of the saints certainly is not very prominent in their books of devotion, but they have begun the good work. The first part of the "Hail, Mary" is used in the rosaries, and this is, at least, a step in the right direction. We have been informed that private prayers to the Blessed Virgin and the saints are in use by some; and, as this invocation is founded on the simple principle of intercession, it will undoubtedly, ere long, be generally practised. No objection can be found against it which does not exist against asking each other's prayers in this life. The work entitled Prayers for Children, by Rev. F. G. Lee, gives Faber's beautiful hymn to Our Lady, to be said on feasts of the Blessed Virgin Mary:

  "Mother of Mercy, day by day
    My love for thee grows more and more;
  Thy gifts are strewn upon my way,
    Like sands upon the great sea-shore.

  "Get me the grace to love thee more;
    Jesus will give if thou wilt plead;
  And, mother, when life's cares are o'er,
    Oh! I shall love thee then indeed."

  "Yes, when I pray, thou prayest too;
    Thy prayer is all for me;
  But when I sleep, thou sleepest not,
    But watchest patiently."

Prayer for the faithful departed may be found in nearly all the prayer-books of the ritualists, and the burial service is animated with that tender devotion which forms such a characteristic of the Catholic rite. The holy Eucharist is recommended to be celebrated at funerals, and directions for so doing are given in the Notitia Liturgica. The Introit is, "Grant them eternal rest, and let light perpetual shine upon them." The Dies Ires is to be divided and sung at different parts of the service, before the gospel, at the offertory, during the communion, and after the blessing.

The Book of Hours, by Rev. Dr. Dix, has a prayer for the faithful departed, and the "low celebration," already quoted, has the "Memento for the Dead," extracted from our Canon. {389} We give the following prayer from The Supper of the Lord. "O God! by whose mercy the souls of the faithful find rest, grant to all thy servants who have gone before us with the sign of faith, and who now slumber in the sleep of peace, a place of refreshment, light, and peace, through the same Jesus Christ our Lord." At a funeral the following is recommended: "O Lord, look graciously, we beseech thee, upon this sacrifice (the holy Eucharist) which we offer thee for the perfecting of the soul of thy servant N——, and grant that this medicine which Thou hast vouchsafed to provide for the healing of all the living may avail also for the departed, through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen."

The sacred sign of the cross, as has been observed, is used commonly, in the same manner as Catholics use it, both in private and in public.

The introduction of altar-boys took place some time ago, in this city, when it was said that it was according to the use of the English cathedrals and for the purpose of chanting the service. It appears, however, that they are only a part of an attempt to revive the "minor orders," as we have them in the Catholic Church. At the "high celebration" the priest is attended by a deacon and sub-deacon and by acolytes. We do not know if there be any form of ordaining sub-deacons and acolytes, but it seems that there is a form for the admission of choristers. How many of the boys serving in the Episcopal churches here have been received by this form, we have no means of ascertaining. It will be interesting, however, to Catholics, to see the progress which has been made, and therefore we give the whole form.

"¶ At a convenient time before morning or evening prayer, all the members of the choir assemble in the vestry, robed in their proper ecclesiastical habits: and range themselves on their respective sides, 'Decani' and 'Cantores,' except that the position of the officiating priest is at the upper end of the room and facing the choir. The boy to be admitted remains outside; all present kneeling down, the priest shall say:

"Prevent us, O Lord, in all our doings with thy most gracious favor, and further us with thy continual help; that in all our works begun, continued, and ended in thee, we may glorify thy holy name, and finally, by thy mercy, obtain everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

"¶ Then, as previously instructed, the two senior choristers go out, and bring in the probationer, who, vested in cassock, coming in, and guided by them, stands in front of the priest officiating.

"¶ And then, taking the boy by the right hand, the priest shall admit him, using this form, the boy kneeling:

"N. I admit thee to sing as a chorister in ——— In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

"¶ Then shall he pronounce this admonition, at the same time presenting him with the Prayer-Book, Psalter, and Hymnal he will use in the choir:

"See what thou singest with thy mouth thou believe in thine heart, and what thou believest in thine heart thou prove by thy works.

"I clothe thee in the white garment of the surplice, and see that thou so serve God, and sing his praises, that thou mayest hereafter be admitted into the ranks of those who have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb, and are before the throne of God, and serve him day and night continually.

"¶ Then, laying his hand upon the new chorister's head, the priest shall pronounce the benediction, the boy still kneeling:

"The Lord bless thee, and keep thee, and make his face to shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee; the Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace now and for ever. Amen."

We have thus completed the task proposed to ourselves, and have shown from the clearest testimonies what the true meaning of ritualism is. No honest mind will, it seems to us, reject the assertion which we made, when we defined it as a great and most important movement from the doctrines and worship of Protestants toward the ancient and unchangeable faith of the Catholic Church. In other words, it is a return to the dogmas and ceremonies which were cast away by the unsparing radicalism of the Reformation. As such a movement, we look upon it with the greatest interest, and earnestly pray God to bless it to the conversion of many souls. And we say to our ritualistic brethren, be firm and fervent in the profession and practice of what you believe to be true; shrink not from the consequences of any doctrine you hold, and follow on by prayer and perseverance until you reach the portals of that temple which the God-Man erected on earth, wherein there are no shadows. Catholics are your only friends; and when you find that you believe almost every truth which we hold, and that your own church repudiates nearly everything which is to you most sacred, then come home to your Father's house, and take the Bread of life for which your souls are famishing. May the infinite mercy which has done so much for you perfect and accomplish its gracious work. Here is all that you desire in its full proportions, the length and breadth of divine love, in that one mystical body which is the church of God, the fulness of him who filleth all and in all.

We have only one more remark to make. The view of ritualism which we have given is, without doubt, the view of every disinterested mind. The world is oftentimes harsh and sometimes unjust, but in the end it calls things by their right names. Why, then, try to stultify the common sense of mankind by talking of the corruptions of Romanism, when all the time you admit every substantial part of its creed? Why be so dishonest to yourselves as to refuse to see that which is quite evident to every one else? Why talk enigmas and profess devotion to the Eastern churches, as if there were anything there more palatable to Protestants than the undisguised creed of Rome? In this country, the ritualists have endeavored to enlist some of their bishops on their side. Would to God they could gain them all; but even this would not remove Calvinism, Lutheranism, and what Dr. Dix calls Radicalism from the prayer-book. Yet have they gained any? The approbation of The Churchman's Guide, by Right Rev. Dr. Potter, is the only quasi-Episcopal sanction which they have, and this is very cautiously given, and no one can say how far it goes. Several ministers some time ago addressed a letter to Right Rev. Dr. Hopkins, presiding bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church, asking for his opinions on the subject in question. We fancy the dismay of the advanced ritualists when he gives his opinion in favor of changes in vestments, the introduction of incense and other things of this kind, and then, with an unsparing bitterness, attacks their much cherished doctrines, the sacrifice of the Mass, and the real presence of our Lord in the blessed Eucharist. {391} While this has been done on one side, a large majority of the Episcopalian bishops on the other have delivered themselves of an open protest against the whole movement, condemning it as nothing less than an attempt to Romanize the Protestant Church of England. Is it really so, that the voice of the bishops is of no weight, that it neither declares the sense nor speaks the authority of the Episcopal Church? What thinks the world of the high Anglican position at the present day? The world has said harsh things enough of the Catholic Church, but yet has ever given us the credit of consistency. If it condemn us, it does not declare that we are illogical. On the contrary, there is not one honest writer, disinterested in the question, who does not say that the Anglican position is wholly untenable, that it is neither Protestantism nor Catholicity, and that it can never stand either the test of time or that of reason.

Translated From The Historisch-Politische Blaetter.

Peter Cornelius, The Master Of German Painting.

Peter Cornelius was born on the 24th of September, 1783, in art-renowned Düsseldorf. Here had been collected for some time, through the artistic taste of the nobles of the Palatinate, those paintings and copies of antique sculpture known by the name of the Düsseldorf Gallery, which was afterward transferred to the Royal Palace of Munich. In the last century a school of art was also connected with this gallery.

Aloysius Cornelius, father of Peter, was inspector of the gallery, and drawing-master in the art school. Thus the boy was born in an atmosphere of art. It is said that, when little Peter was attacked by fits of childish ill-humor and uneasiness, his mother could quiet him by carrying him in her arms into the hall of antique statuary, where the stern and striking forms of the heathen divinities calmed his cries and dried his tears. If it be not historically true, it is nevertheless a poetic fact recorded in verse by his uncle, Peter Cornelius, a distinguished musician, still in Munich, that the boy, on one occasion being offered his choice of a piece of gold and a crayon, took the latter from his mother's hand, and ran immediately to make figures on the wall. This is a characteristic anecdote, though it may not be true; for during his whole life the painter despised money. Mammon had no charms for him; while his pencil, the instrument of his art, and the art itself had for him irresistible attractions. Peter grew up in the pious, stern Catholic family of his parents, and preserved to the end of his life a simple, childlike belief in his religion. Little was then known among the families of Rhineland of opposition to the faith, or of the doubts and objections of the philosophers against it. Cornelius himself, later in life, confessed that he had never read a book of philosophy. Such works were distasteful to him on account of their abstract and unideal character.

His school education was short and simple. Peter Cornelius went only four years to the primary school of his native city, as his school-fellow, Clement Zimmerman, can still attest. He made little progress; he never learned to spell correctly. Singular phenomenon! Cornelius, who thought so profoundly, and wrote so sublimely, and spoke so eloquently without preparation, like Napoleon I., could never write without blunders! But perhaps freedom from school restraint only made the genius of the artist to take a wider scope. The very fact that he did not spend many years of his life on the school-bench, filling his mind with useless items of knowledge, allowed his nature to expand, and gave him that sound freshness of mind and body, that purity of imagination, that directness and rectitude of feeling and character which are the causes of the beautiful creations of his genius.

Of the mathematics, the favorite science of modern times, he knew almost nothing. He used to say, in his curt manner, of an artistic dunce, "The booby knows as much of art as I do of algebra!" His peculiar talent displayed itself even in the primary school. When the professor of Scripture history described the scenes and persons of the Old Testament, they became real to the eyes of the boy, and on arriving home he was wont to cut their forms out of black paper with a dexterity that astonished every one. He was much in the studio of his father, who painted altar-pieces and portraits; he cleaned the pencils, brought him the colors, and performed other minor services. Soon he became a pupil in his father's drawing academy. Here he rapidly acquired the principles of art, and his father gave him Volpato's engravings of Raphael's masterpieces as models. Hand and eye of the young artist were thus early accustomed to the immortal works of the prince artist of Urbino. At the same time, he visited frequently the gallery of paintings, where the expressive and lively colored pictures of Rubens captivated his fancy. Cornelius copied at a later period several of these. In the year 1805, before the transfer of the collection to Munich, besides others he made a copy of "Diana and the Nymphs in the Chase," which was so well executed that it was very difficult to distinguish it from the original.

Young Peter now passed to the Academy of Art. The Greek classic style ruled in it at that time; and a distinguished artist, Peter Langer, was its director. Here Cornelius prosecuted his studies with the greatest diligence. He made a special study of the antiques which were extant in the collection. Still it appears that even then he had more inclination for the awakening national Christian and romantic school of Germany than for the cold imitations of ancient art.

But this very circumstance threatened to give an unlucky turn to his life. His father, Aloysius Cornelius, died in the year 1809, leaving a wife, five daughters, and two sons, with little resources. The good mother despaired of being able to provide for the support and education of her large family. The director, Peter Langer, misunderstanding the genius of Peter, then advised her to apprentice him to a goldsmith, saying that he would earn his bread more quickly at a trade, for there were too many painters. Cornelius thus experienced the same misjudgment of his superiors as Carstens in Copenhagen, and Schwanthaler in Munich.

But the maternal eye was sharper than that of the learned director. The mother recognized the decided vocation of her son, and her maternal affection triumphed. She could not determine from worldly motives to tear her son away from his high call and so Cornelius was for ever wedded to his art. How grateful was the youth of eighteen years for this determination of his mother! Cornelius himself writes of it in his celebrated report to Count Raczynski, in which he quotes a saying of his father Aloysius, that, "if we try to make perfect everything that we do, we may learn a lesson from things the most trivial." This expression is like Raphael's: "No one becomes great in art who despises the smallest detail."

In this year, (1809,) Peter Cornelius was introduced into a new society, which exercised great influence on his development and history. He went frequently to the neighboring city of Cologne, the splendidly artistic and Christian mediaeval city of the Rhine. Here he became acquainted with the noble Canon Wallraf and the two brothers Boisserée, who, at this period of Vandalic ravage and destruction, saved all that was to be saved of ancient art, and formed those precious collections which render Cologne and Munich famous. By these means Cornelius obtained a knowledge of the world of old German works of art hitherto unknown to him. They appeared to him in all the simplicity, religiosity, and freshness of the German middle ages, and he found himself drawn toward them by a kindred feeling. He studied and copied them zealously, and with greater affection than he had shown toward the gorgeous masterpieces of Italy. His study of these German works obtained for him his first appointment of any consequence.

Wallraf, who was called by the mayor of Nyon to consult regarding the restoration of the interesting church in that town, recognized in Peter Cornelius, whom he loved, the man for monumental painting. He was commissioned, therefore, to ornament the cupola and choir of the church of Nyon with frescoes. Wallraf, the theologian, who, as practical painter, also possessed wondrous gifts, determined on the character of this circle of paintings.

Cornelius executed these pictures in 1806-1808 on a yellow ground, with water colors. They represented the choirs of angels in the semi-circle; then Moses and David of the Old Testament, Peter and Paul of the New Testament, in the cupola; pictures well expressed, living and characteristic, reminding one more of the Italian than of the German school. Unfortunately these paintings, spoiled by dampness, have been retouched by modern artists, so that they may be considered as entirely lost to view.

Besides the study of the old German masters, Cornelius missed no occasion of making himself familiar with the chefs-d'oeuvre of classic antiquity. He read with avidity Homer and Virgil, and endeavored to make use of the materials of art supplied from these sources. He contended for the prize at Weimar with works from ancient mythology, but without success. He was not fitted to paint the smooth, external attributes of the ancient forms. Hence came this criticism on his works. Through the influence of Goethe he received the following note: "Valuable, good talent, and excellent essays!"

We pass over those episodes in the lives of all men—the first love of Cornelius for Miss Linder, which was unsuccessful, and made him vow never to wed any other than the muse of his art—a vow which he did not keep; his friendship with the eldest son of the merchant Flemming at Nyon, pledged under a linden-tree, and lasting until death with a loyalty like that of David and Jonathan, Orestes and Pylades, Don Carlos and Posa.

In 1809, we find him in Frankfort, after Napoleon had annexed the Rhine provinces to France and the paintings at Düsseldorf had been removed to Munich. In this centre of Germany, Cornelius having read the Faust of Goethe, and, penetrated with its spirit, represented the creation of the poet's brain on the canvas, Goethe wrote him a letter, thanking him and full of appreciative compliments to his genius. The bookseller, Wenner, in Frankfort, undertook to publish the painter's sketches; and thus enabled him to realize a long-cherished desire of going to Italy, the land of the fine arts.

At this period, in Rome, there was a colony of German artists, like an oasis of peace in a desert of trouble, who devoted themselves to the unshackling of art from the chains of mannerism and French insipidity. Karstens, the Dane, enthusiastically partial to ancient art, may be considered the leader and pioneer of this effort. Thorwaldsen, Koch, Schick, Wächter, and Reinhard followed in his footsteps. Many an artist's noble heart was then also possessed with the love of the romantic school, and inspired with its spirit. Frederic Schlegel, Tieck, Novalis, and Wackenroder aided the movement by proclaiming and teaching that all Christian art was a symbol of the heavenly; that in it all was mysterious and ideal, whilst ancient art merely represented the external and real. They taught that severity, strength, and modesty were to be sought, for in the works of pre-Raphaelite masters, who alone were the true models of Christian art. In the year 1801, the standard of this school was borne by Frederic Overbeck, of Lübeck, who was joined by the two Schadows, Pforr, Louis Vogel, and later by Philip Veit, Wach, Charles Vogel of Vogelstein, I. Schnorr, both Eberhards of Munich, Rambour of Cologne, and others. The artist world of Rome was then divided into two groups, one of which absolutely followed the ancients, and the other revived the Christian and national ideal with the spirit of the Romantic school.

When Cornelius went to Rome, he was immediately introduced to his fellow-countrymen; and he became naturally attached to their school as the illustrator of Faust and Shakespeare. He formed a friendship for Overbeck which lasted unbroken till death, through a period of fifty years! Cornelius always expressed his gratitude to Overbeck, and loved him as a brother. King Louis I., of Bavaria, with his customary wit, likened the pair of artists to two of the apostles: Overbeck, the pious and sentimental, to John; Cornelius, the fervent conqueror of the world of art, to Paul. Overbeck with several companions had rented the old monastery of St. Isidore, behind Monte Pincio, and lived there like a recluse. Cornelius, who boarded near him, was a frequent visitor. They studied and worked together. They made drawings of nature and from the antique, sat side by side at the canvas, and communicated their future plans to each other. They copied and imitated the old Italian masters Giotto, Masaccio, Ghirlandajo, Lippo Lippi, Peter Perugino, and Fiesole. They made excursions to the neighboring mountains, and relieved their labors by many a pleasant evening or innocent conversation.

Cornelius, writing about this time of his life to Count Raczynski, says: "It is impossible for me to tell you in a short notice all the incidents of my happy sojourn in Rome. But I must say we wandered over the paths of ages; I speak not only for myself, but for our association of talent and character, who drew from everything that was holy, great, and beautiful in Germany or Italy the inspiration to oppose French tyranny and frivolity."

The noble band had their battles and their sufferings. Their means of sustenance, on the one hand, were limited. "For," said Overbeck, "the fire of the enthusiasm of art does not kindle a fire on the hearth." On the other hand, the Greco-German school never failed to treat them with contempt and haughtiness. They received the nickname of "Nazarenes," which has remained attached to them ever since. The name was given partly because of their innocent life, and partly because their pictures of saints after the old Italian models had a mortified and spiritual look, as the sect of the rigorous Nazarenes are represented among the Jews.

When the war of freedom had again been renewed in Germany, the artists in Rome were fully possessed with its spirit. Since all could not take part in it, they sent substitutes to fight for fatherland. Those who remained in Rome, or were too old to wield the sword, used pencil and brush in aid of the national cause.

Inflamed by patriotism, Cornelius painted in Rome his celebrated illustrations of the Niebelungen, which had just been published, and the reading of which did so much toward awakening German self-consciousness. He painted the great heroes of those Germans who for so many years had shamefully borne the yoke of the French; and represented those natural giants of the German race without fear or reproach, full of power, loyalty, modesty, simplicity, and honor, all aglow with passion, irresistible in love and hatred! Cornelius had, in his paintings for the Niebelungen, which was henceforth seldom printed without them, given personality to the heroes of the poem. His two queens, Hagen the fierce, Sigfried, and King Günther will live among Germans as long as the Niebelungen will continue to be read. Though the faces are harsh, rough, and ungracious, like the German heroes of that time, they are nevertheless thoroughly true, sound, and characteristic.

The whole work was dedicated to the new Prussian ambassador in Rome, the celebrated historian Niebuhr. For, after the fall of Napoleon, Pius VII. returned in triumph to Rome, March 14th, 1814; the masterpieces of art taken away by the French were being gradually restored; and the ambassadors of the European courts took their stations as usual. Niebuhr came to Rome in 1816. No sooner had he, who had such a love for art and science, recognized the geniality, freshness, and imaginative power of Cornelius, his fellow-countryman from Rhineland, than he became warmly attached to the artist. Niebuhr often visited him and his companions, called him friend, and divided his wonderful learning with Cornelius.

So far Cornelius had executed in Rome only a few drawings and oil paintings. Among the latter may be named the picture of "The Three Marys at the Sepulchre," "The Flight into Egypt," and "The Wise and Foolish Virgins." But, in spite of their expressiveness and excellence, these works show that the artist had not yet found the special field for the display of his genius. His powerful imagination was confined in these subjects, and could only feel at home on the broad, high walls of fresco-painting.

Through a singular accident, he had soon a chance for his art. The Prussian consul-general, Solomon Bartholdy, had rented the old house belonging to the family of the painter Zucheri, near Trinita di Monti, and wanted to ornament it with frescoes. Cornelius was asked to undertake the task. Aided by his friends, he agreed to paint the two rooms with frescoes. They asked no fees, only scaffolding, mason work, colors, and support. The noble offer of the poor artists—rich, however, in their love of art—was accepted; and this was the origin of those renowned frescoes almost universally known by copies and descriptions of them. Cornelius, Overbeck, Philip Veit, and W. Schadow were engaged in the work. On account of the Jewish religion of Bartholdy, the artists chose the interesting story of Joseph in Egypt as the subject of their art. Cornelius painted the explanation of the dreams of Pharao and the meeting of Joseph and his brethren; Veit painted the temptation of Potiphar's wife and the seven years of plenty; Schadow, the complaint of Jacob and Joseph in prison; and Overbeck, the seven years of famine. They are beautiful, imaginative, expressive, graceful pictures, and not surpassed in coloring by the later creations of the master. All Rome, which had seen no frescoes for fifty years and was taken with the Raphael taste, was astonished at the works of the young German painter, and even yet the amateur turns with reverence to this cradle of German monumental painting in Rome, and the rooms so adorned are still rented by strangers for a high price.

Thus for the first time had Cornelius found the means of letting out the flood of his genial thoughts. He had found his vocation in fresco-painting, to which he remained attached thenceforth to the end of his life. Soon he received a new commission for his art. The rich Marquis Massimi, who had seen the frescoes in Bartholdy's house, wished to have his villa at St. John Lateran's similarly ornamented by scenes from the great classic poets of Italy. Overbeck should select his subjects from Tasso, J. Schnorr from Ariosto, Cornelius out of Dante's Divine Comedy, a poem which, on account of its depth, grandeur, and mysteries, had been a life-study of our artist. Cornelius undertook the work with delight. He executed nine illustrations to the Paradise, which show a profound knowledge of the poet and history; faces of saints breathing piety and strikingly expressive. Unfortunately these projects were not executed. Koch obtained the substitution of his own rather coarse Dante pictures, in the stead of those of Cornelius; and the latter received two calls from his own German home.

The Crown-Prince Louis, of Bavaria, who had conceived generous plans for the spread of art in his own country, came to Rome in January, 1818. Informed by his attendant physician, Ringseis, who had seen the Niebelungen pictures of Cornelius in Berlin, the prince sought out the gifted artist. Louis saw the paintings at Bartholdy's, and immediately perceived that Cornelius was the man to make art flourish in Bavaria. The prince gave him two galleries of the museum of statuary in Munich, to ornament with frescoes taken from Greek mythology. A cry of joy passed through the circle of artists; they looked on the Crown-Prince Louis as the restorer of true art and the creator of a new era. When their high patron left Rome, they celebrated his departure by a glorious feast on the evening of April 29th, 1818. {397} Cornelius had ornamented the walls of the festival hall with symbols of the artistic calling of the prince. There were representations of Hercules cleaning out the Augean stable, and of Samson putting the Philistines to flight. Rückert, in the name of art and the artists, made the poetical address to the crown-prince. He, full of delight and gratitude, offered a toast to the German artists, and ended it, amidst loud applause, with the words, "That we may meet again in Germany!"

Cornelius now left everything else aside and devoted himself to the study of Homer and Hesiod, and continually made sketches from them. In order to have perfect leisure for this work, he spent the summer in Ariccia. In the fall, he travelled with Passavanti, the biographer of Raphael, to Naples, where he made several copies, among others the bust of a woman after Perugino, which is supposed to represent the mother of Raphael.

The time for his departure for Munich approached. Niebuhr, who became embittered against the artists and against everything Roman, endeavored to get him to remain in Prussia and to live in Düsseldorf. When Cornelius announced his departure for Munich, in order to paint the frescoes of the museum, Niebuhr wept in anger, and said, "Cornelius, why do you do this to me?" He conversed with him for a long time, and received the artist's promise to accept a call to Düsseldorf after the erection of the Academy of Arts in that town. The heart of Cornelius throbbed for Germany. He often felt homesick, and thought that, when a German artist forgets his fatherland, he loses more in character than he can gain in other respects.

Some have doubted the faith and piety of Cornelius. But they are wrong. Divisions sprang up among the German artists of Rome, and every day party spirit increased in violence. Whilst many of the romantic school in Germany looked on Christian truth, the life of the church and Catholicism, as things merely to influence the imagination and as helps to poetry, the majority of the Roman artists called "Nazarenes" were carried away by the grandeur and beauty of faith, and became fervent members of the Catholic Church. Several of those born Protestants became converts; as, for instance, Overbeck, the two Schadows, Veit, Vogel of Vogelstein, and others. A cry was immediately raised against them. Niebuhr became enraged, and sent for the works of Luther against the papacy, in order to counteract the Catholic tendencies of the artists.

The question now arises, what part Cornelius took in these quarrels. Some have called him a "free-thinker" and an enemy of Christianity. They were induced to do so from certain things that happened about this time. But it is certain that he was a firm believer in revelation and a fervent Catholic. All his friends attest the fact that he never failed to go to confession and make his Easter Communion. He had, indeed, a large heart, was very tolerant toward those who professed a different religion from his own. He never aimed at a high degree of perfection or a complete knowledge of theology. There are many degrees of the Christian life, as there are in nature. Every baptized person who simply believes the doctrines of the church and keeps the commandments is a member of the Catholic Church. But he must take a low place among her children if he does not aim at perfection, while other souls avoid the smallest sins, mortify themselves, follow the evangelical counsels, and perform acts of heroism. Cornelius belonged to the former class of Catholics. {398} He acknowledged himself that he had never attained to a high degree of perfection, and consoled himself by saying: "In God's heaven there are many dwellings; there will be one there for a poor artist."

Cornelius, like mostly all artists, was an idealist in politics as in his judgment of Christian life. As he saw in the actual condition of Rome and the church many things which he could not reconcile with his ideal of the church, he spoke his opinions candidly and openly, like a true Rhinelander, against every abuse. He spoke of the necessity of a general council, and told the pope his views in frequent audiences. His advice was kindly taken, and the pontiff answered him quietly by saying: "My son, circumstances are often more powerful than ourselves.' We cannot cast off all that weighs upon us through life." To accuse Cornelius of being a Protestant because sometimes he expressed in art or conversation very peculiar sentiments is ridiculous. On this plea, Peter Damica, St. Bernard, and many other saints who have spoken boldly against abuses in the church should be considered as unorthodox. They say of Cornelius that he was displeased at the conversion of his Protestant fellow-artists in Rome. He is reported to have said: "If another becomes Catholic, I shall turn Protestant." But this is a fiction. The whole character of Cornelius proves it to be such. He who always inculcated truth to his pupils, and despised all hollowness and hypocrisy in life or art, cannot be supposed to have blamed men for following out to the letter their religious convictions. It is impossible. We have, besides, a testimony to prove it. When his friend, Miss Linder, became a convert to Catholicism, in Munich, in the year 1843, he wrote her a letter which is still extant. In this he praises her instead of proposing objections to her. "In Rome the news reached me," he writes, "that you had at last taken courage to make the decisive step. I am not surprised. God bless you and keep you free from spiritual pride and rigorism, (in my eyes almost the only sins.)" He cannot, therefore, have been offended at the conversion of his Protestant friends, for we find him continuing his friendship with Overbeck after the latter's entrance into the church.

Finally, Niebuhr relates an anecdote which has given rise to a doubt of Cornelius's orthodoxy. There was a supper-party of artists and learned men, one evening, in the Casarelli Palace, on the Capitol. When much wine had been drunk by the party, they went out on the flat roof of the building, and beheld the planet Jupiter shining with unusual brilliancy. Then Cornelius said to Thorwaldsen, "Let us drink to the health of old Jupiter." "With all my heart," answered Thorwaldsen. And they drank the toast. This incident is adduced as a proof that Cornelius was then a free-thinker; for he showed by his act a rejection of Christianity and a belief in paganism. But this toast proves nothing. It was a mere impulse; a jest of men over-heated by wine. There is certainly in this anecdote nothing to show a deliberate protestation against the truth of revelation.

He was now no longer solitary. He had married a Roman lady, the daughter of a dealer in works of art. She was called the Signora Carolina, a noble and good maiden, simple and naive, like the Marguerite of Faust. {399} She bore him a daughter, and with this small family he was about to leave Rome and return to Germany.

In Munich, Cornelius became the director of a world-renowned academy, a centre of art, a friend of the king, esteemed and visited by all classes. But in Berlin he was a mere private individual, without position, thought little of, without occasion for the proper display of his artistic powers, working quietly in his studio. To use his own expression, he was "a solitary sparrow on the house-top." But this trial was necessary for the spiritual welfare and true greatness of the master. On the 12th of April, of the year 1841, Cornelius, with wife and children, had left Munich, where a farewell dinner was given him. In Dresden, he was honored by a torchlight procession of artists. On April 23d, he reached Berlin. All received him with honor and applause. He visited the celebrated men of the city, Humboldt, Grimm, Rauch, and Schinkel, who received him into their circle. Testimonials of esteem from abroad reached him. The Queen of Portugal wrote to request him to send artists to Portugal to introduce fresco-painting; and Lord Monson requested him to ornament his castle with frescoes. Cornelius travelled to England, but the sudden death of the lord and an ophthalmia of the artist necessitated his return to Berlin.

Now days of gloom began to dawn for him. The aristocratic society of the city did not suit him. He preferred his Bavarian beer to the insipid tea of the Berlin aristocracy. He could not flatter the affected connoisseurs of art. He was too independent to be a toady. "He does not approach us!" was the complaint, and men began to criticise himself and his works harshly.

Cornelius had executed a painting in oil for Count Raczynski in 1843. It was placed on exhibition. It represented the liberation of the souls in limbo by the Saviour. Though the coloring is heavy and disagreeable, still the grouping of the patriarchs and their countenances are highly characteristic and almost unsurpassable. But the cry was immediately raised by the whole crowd of art critics, "How can we call these bodiless, unnatural forms artistic, or those heavy colors painting?" They treated the artist with contempt and looked on him as a fallen man. A celebrated portrait-painter of Berlin gave expression to this sentiment: "If I found in the street a picture executed by Cornelius, I would not pick it up!" This opinion became general in Berlin. This was fortunate for the salvation of the master and for his art. He withdrew from the world, and became more recollected and devoted more exclusively to his art.

For some time he made little show. However, the king gave him an order for a work in which he had an opportunity of displaying his powers of imagination. It was the design of a shield which William IV. wished to present to the young Prince of Wales as a godfather's gift. Cornelius finished it in six weeks. It was a round shield, in the middle of which Christ is represented on the cross; in the corners appear the four evangelists, and over them the four cardinal virtues; in the four arms of the cross, baptism and the Last Supper, and their figures in the Old Testament, the gushing of the water from the rock, and the rain of manna. Round about the shield were carved the busts of the twelve apostles. On its rim were depicted scenes from the passion and triumph of Christ, from the entry into Jerusalem to the apostolic mission. {400} In order to show the connection of the ancient church with the present, one of the apostles is represented as landing with the distinguished guests from Prussia in order to administer baptism to the prince. This little work breathes the spirit of the artist; it is genial, severe, expressive, full of style; often quaint and singular, by the induction of modern personages, Queen Victoria, Wellington, and Humboldt.

King Frederick William IV. determined, at this time, to erect a church which should vie with that of St. Peter's in Rome and St. Paul's in London. Stüler made the plan. Cornelius was to ornament the walls with frescoes. He undertook this task in 1843. He felt again all his powers revive. Exultingly he wrote to the academy of Münster, which had given the great artist the diploma of a doctor in philosophy in recognition of his ability: "A great, holy field, campo santo, has been opened to me, through the favor of Providence and the grace of my illustrious king and sovereign, in order to execute upon it what God has put in my soul. May he enlighten my spirit and penetrate my heart with his love; open my eyes to the glory of his works, fill me with piety and truth, and guide every motion of my hand!"

In order to have the requisite quiet and leisure for this gigantic work, Cornelius made a second trip to Rome, that paradise of painters and head of Catholicity. From the spring of the year 1843 to May, 1844, and again from March, 1845 to 1846, he dwelt in the Eternal City.

After his return from Rome, he labored incessantly at Berlin to finish his great undertaking. In January, 1845, the first sketch was ended; in 1846, the glorious, unequalled cartoon of the horsemen in the apocalypse, which was exhibited in Rome, Berlin, Ghent, and Vienna, and at the feet of which the whole school of Belgian artists laid a laurel crown. The government also gave him a house on the royal square, in which to prosecute his undertaking. He finished the whole series of decorations in twenty-five years. He worked with inexpressible pleasure and joy, although none of those pictures really came to its destined place. He labored without desire of fame. He painted as the bird sings on the boughs. As none of his great works or frescoes were exposed publicly at Berlin, he remained almost unknown to the people; but he found his sole delight in the love of his art, and in application to its expression.

In the year 1833, he lost his first wife. He married again, in Rome, a lady named Gertrude, distinguished for beauty and virtue. She died in 1859. His daughter Marie also died at the same time, who had been espoused to the Marquis Marcelli. Thus he drank of a bitter chalice! When he went to Rome for the last time, on the 14th of April, 1861, although aged, he made a third' marriage in espousing Theresa of Urbino, whom he had met and admired in the house of his daughter! This wife attended the last years of his life, and stood by his death-bed.

The residence of Cornelius in Berlin had made him more and more attached to the Catholic Church. He wrote in 1851 to a friend in Munich: "The invisible church is the only one to be found among German Protestants. I have tried to find a church among them here, but so far my search has been in vain. In Rome, I am always a half-heretic, but here I am more Catholic everyday." {401} When he made his last voyage to Rome, he passed through Munich on his return, and paid a visit to his friend Schlotthauer, to whom he spoke thus: "Friend, I am now entirely of your way of thinking in religious matters. Berlin has made me entirely Catholic. Only now do I prize Catholicism sufficiently. If the King of Bavaria were here, I would seek him and say to him openly: 'Your majesty, Bavaria is still a Catholic country, and this is the cause of its strength and greatness. Try to keep it so. This is the best policy.'" To his friend Ringseis he made a similar statement, adding that he had travelled to Munich on purpose to inform them of his thorough conversion.

In another instance, also, the fervor of Cornelius's faith and charity displayed itself. He presented the committee who were engaged in erecting a Catholic hospital with a painting of St. Elizabeth surprised by her husband in the act of nursing a sick pauper in her own bed. The picture was sold, after having been lithographed, and realized a large sum for the intended purpose.

He was extremely hostile to the Life of Jesus, by Renan, and considered the attempt to take away the members of divinity from the head of Christ as highly injurious to Christian art. The gray-headed prince of painting, on this account, painted the "Resurrection," choosing for subject the very moment when the hitherto incredulous Thomas exclaims, "My God and my Lord!" He exhibited this picture with religious enthusiasm, and pointed it out to visitors, saying, "That is against Renan!" He wished to leave behind him a clear profession of his belief in the divinity of Jesus.

Cornelius spent the last six years of his life in Berlin, in a kind of hidden life, continually occupied, like Plato, in his old age, always lively, loquacious, and fond of society, so that he gathered around him a host of young artists and savans. The tranquillity of his life was only broken at this period by a few excursions. In the year 1862, he went to Düsseldorf; in 1863, to Trier on professional business. In 1864, he made his last visit to Munich, toward which his heart always yearned.

His visit to Munich shortened his life. The fatigues of the journey, and the visits which he received and was obliged to make, as well as the ovations tendered him, wore him out. He became ill, and returned sick to Berlin. A disease of the heart declared itself; in February, 1867, his case became hopeless. He called for a priest, and received all the sacraments of the church twenty-four hours before his death. He took leave of his beloved wife and friends, seized his crucifix, and breathed his last, uttering the words: "Pray! pray!" He died on the 6th of March, at ten A.M., on Ash-Wednesday. Over his remains was hung his own painting of Pentecost, as over those of Raphael the picture of the Resurrection. He was buried on the 6th of March, and all the nobility and talent of Berlin formed a part of his funeral cortége.

Death has taken from us this great master of German painting; but, to use the language of St. Bernard, it has only taken his cloak, for his spirit still lives! It lives in the heavenly Jerusalem. It lives in his works, in the history of art, and in the breasts of his pupils on earth, who bear aloft the standard of pure, ideal, religious art. All will bear testimony that Cornelius is the man who freed modern German painting from foreign mannerism, opened the way for generous monumental frescoes, which embraced with equal cordiality the three worlds of the classic German, national, and Christian manifestations; who portrayed the deepest thoughts in the most noble forms, and whose works are unrivalled in colossal proportions, richness of expression, and striking characterization, architectural proportions and dramatic life, by any masterpieces of antiquity; while, in the piety and sweetness of the countenances portrayed and the harmonious coloring of the whole, they exceed anything in modern art.

The news of his death brought sadness everywhere. In Munich, Mozart's solemn Requiem was sung for his soul. Professor Carriere pronounced a panegyric on him in the evening. A few days after, Professor Sepp pronounced another eulogium on him, calling him the Shakespeare of painting, whilst Overbeck he called the Calderon of the art.

In Stuttgart, when the news of his death was heard, the halls of the church, where a requiem was sung for his soul, were hung with copies of his own paintings. Lübke spoke on the occasion, and drew a parallel between Cornelius and Phidias and Michael Angelo. In Dresden, Hettner made the funeral discourse. Finally, in Rome, the Eternal City, from which Cornelius had gone forth to conquer a new world of art, and to which he had returned in order to draw inspiration from its associations and have a perfect intuition of the ideal, a solemn requiem was sung for him in the German national church of the "Anima," at which King Louis I., of Bavaria, who had opened the path of immortality to the artist, Overbeck, who had loved him for fifty-six years, and all the artists of Rome, assisted. A few days before, King Louis had written a letter to the widow of Cornelius, who lived in Berlin. In it occurred these words: "Be assured of my profound sympathy in your great loss; but not alone your loss, but our common loss. The sun of heaven became dark when he who was the sun of art was extinguished. But the sun will shine again in the heavens, but we shall hardly ever see another Cornelius!"

The whole world on both sides of the Alps have united in rendering homage to the genius of Cornelius, and laying crowns on his sepulchre at Berlin. But the last monument to his glory would be the ornamentation of the cathedral in that city with his wonderful compositions. That such an event should happen there was given to Cornelius the word of a king.

We who admired and loved the artist and his genius only pray that he may enjoy now an eternal, happy rest in the bosom of the Author of beauty, from whom he always drew the inspiration of his art.

What shall we do with the Indians?

The Commissioners whom our Government recently sent out to the Plains to negotiate treaties with the hostile Indians, have patched up a truce with some of the most dangerous of the tribes, and the people are congratulating themselves that the warfare is over. We might have been on good terms with the savages any time this last half-century, if we had been honestly so minded and had known how to govern ourselves and the red man too. Yet the record of our intercourse with the aborigines has been nothing but a history of long wars and short truces. Years of the most terrible hostilities have been followed by a few months of precarious quiet, and the Western pioneer has been almost invariably obliged, like his New-England ancestors, to till his acres with one hand on the plough and the other on his gun. He has never known a month of security. He has never left his log cabin in the morning without reasonable fear that he would find it in flames when he returned at night. He has learned to look upon the Indian as a noxious beast, whom no promises could bind, no good treatment could mollify; as a pest which every honest man was justified in conscience, if he was not bound in duty, to do his utmost to exterminate. A war of races between the red and the white has long been a cardinal doctrine in the creed of the prairie settler, and his chief social principle has been, War to the knife with the Indian, and no quarter.

Here is a dreadful state of things for a Christian people to contemplate; and the fault of it, to speak plain English, is all our own. Managed as we manage them, Indian affairs can be nothing else than a perpetual affliction. Treated as we treat them, the aborigines of the West cannot help being our cruel and implacable foes. The devil himself could hardly invent a wrong which we have not done to the primitive owners of our territory. They once stood in awe of us as superior beings; we have committed every conceivable baseness that could belittle us in their estimation. They had noble traits of character; we have done all we could to obliterate them. They had the common faults of uncivilized pagans; we have intensified them. They are proud; we insult them. They are revengeful; we aggravate them. They are covetous; we rob them. They have a natural tendency toward drunkenness; we keep them supplied with liquor. They are cruel; we tempt them to murder. The "noble savage" of the novel and the stage, we grant, is a fiction; but he is not more unreal than the irredeemable brute who is popularly depicted as the terror of the frontiersman and the western emigrant. The Indians, after all, are not so very different from other human beings. Like all mankind, they have great virtues and great faults; and if a fair balance could be struck, we are by no means certain that their credits would not exceed our own. There is many a vice which they never would have known if they had not learned it from us; but we can think of no species of crime which the Indians have taught to white men. It is an insane piece of wickedness to treat any race of human beings as vermin, whom it is a mercy to the rest of mankind to sweep out of existence. {404} God never made tribes of men to be slaughtered. All creatures with human souls are capable of moral and mental improvement; capable of a greater or less degree of civilization; capable of being brought under the rule of law, and being made useful to the rest of the world. If we have failed sensibly to improve the condition of the Indians, or to teach them anything more of civilization than some of its worst vices, the fault is our own.

We have to deal with two classes of Indians in the West, and our system with both is as bad as any system can be. As settlements have encroached upon the prairies and forests where the savages roamed in pursuit of game, we have, as a rule, gone through the form of buying the territory from the tribes which claimed it. These tribes have then been removed further westward, or have been assigned certain lands called reservations. The consideration for which the lands are bought is not a sum of money, paid to the savages in hand, but a fixed annuity, given to them in form of merchandise, clothing, blankets, implements of the chase and of husbandry, trinkets, and other goods chiefly prized by the red men; and to oversee the forwarding and distribution of these articles, as well as to look after the general interests of the tribes, to protect them from oppression on the part of the whites, and to check crimes and outrages, we send out into the Indian country a number of officers called Indian Agents and Superintendents. On the reservations, where some effort has been made to teach the savages the habits of civilized life, there are schools, farms, and workshops. The wandering tribes of the far West, however, subsist wholly by the chase, and preserve all their primitive wildness. The Indian Agent in their territory has little to do but distribute their annuities, and when they commit any outrage upon the settlers try to have them punished. Now, there is nothing very objectionable in our way of dealing with these two classes of Indians, provided the agents and superintendents are honest and competent men; but experience has proved that, as a rule, they are neither, though, of course, there are honorable exceptions. One unprincipled adventurer in power over these fierce tribes can raise a tumult which years of warfare cannot subdue. One swindling agent can upset a treaty which has cost the government hundred of lives and millions of dollars. How often has not this been done! It is notorious that most of the men who receive appointments in the Indian country are persons of no character, who demand an opportunity of enriching themselves at the red man's expense, as a reward for political services rendered to the party in power. It is probably a rare thing for any tribe of Indians to receive the whole amount of the annuity to which they are entitled, and for which the government pays. They are swindled first in the price which government pays for the goods, and then they are swindled again by the agents, who deliver just as many of the articles as they please, and no more, or by the teamsters who "lose" packages on the road. Worse still are the traders who sell the poor savages whisky and gunpowder, and collect their "debts" from the distributors of annuities. How many of these debts do our readers suppose are just? And when there is a corrupt understanding between the trader and the agent, what chance has the poor Indian for justice? {405} It is in this atrocious manner that the original owners of our soil have bartered away their birthright for a mess of pottage— sold their rich acres for a glass of rum. It is in this way that the treaties with the tribes are continually broken. The Indians gave up their lands for a certain annual consideration. The consideration is not paid them in full, and often is hardly paid at all. How are they to know whether we are all swindlers alike, or are only in the habit of appointing swindlers to positions of trust and responsibility?

These, however, are not the only wrongs of which the Indian has to complain. The testimony of missionaries and other trusty witnesses, is unanimous in saying that the frontier settlers as a general rule are perfectly unscrupulous and lawless in all their dealings with the tribes. Contact with the whites always means demoralization, drunkenness, and domestic infamy for the Indian. His property is appropriated, his cabin is invaded, his house is defiled, and if he resists he is murdered, and the murderer never is punished. He has no rights which the white man is bound to respect. He is nothing but a brute, to be hunted as men hunt the buffalo, or killed off like the wolves, with a price set upon his scalp. No wonder we have war; it is a wonder we ever have peace.

The commissioners who were recently sent out to the plains by the national government to investigate the troubles and try to devise a way out of them, are understood to favor the removal of all the Indian tribes to reservations where they will be out of the way of the great routes of travel across the continent, and where white men will have no excuse to interfere with them. That is to say, their plan consists merely of an enlargement of the superintendent system. Cut off from a great part of their hunting-grounds, the savages will become more than ever dependent upon the liberality of the United States government, and more than ever in the power of the agents and traders through whose hands the national largeness must pass. Moreover, it is evident that the boundaries of the reservations cannot be permanently fixed. As the white settlements expand, the Indian territories must contract. Nobody can for a moment suppose that the proprietary rights of the Indians will long be respected when the Yankee emigrant wants their lands. What will happen when the boundaries are broken through? Unless the Indians have learned by that time to support themselves by labor and to conform to a civilized mode of life, they will infallibly be crushed out of existence. There will be another horrible war which will have no end until the red men are virtually exterminated. Now, the serious duty of preparing these rude tribes for the changed conditions of life which must soon come upon them, and fitting them for a gradual and peaceable absorption into the rest of the community—which is their only hope of existence—must fall, if the plan of the commissioners be adopted, upon the Indian agents and superintendents. The power of these men for good or for mischief will be enormously increased. Hence, unless some effective measures be taken to fill these important offices with men of a better class than have hitherto secured them, our present evils will be correspondingly increased. The government swindler will come back to the savages with seven other devils more wicked than himself, and the last state of those poor wretches will be worse than the first.

Is there any reason to expect improvement? We see not the slightest so long as these offices are distributed on the same principle as other government appointments, and rated among the political spoils that belong to the party in power. An Indian agent ought to be a man of superior abilities; but men of superior abilities will not banish themselves to the desert except for one of two reasons: either they must be animated by disinterested charity, or they must expect to make a good deal of money out of the office over and above their trifling salaries. Charity is not one of the characteristics of political hacks. As for the other motive, we know pretty well how often it operates. To find capable persons to undertake this work; men of incorruptible integrity, of lofty purpose, and of moral force; men whom the Indians will respect and obey, and who will be likely to persevere in their arduous task, we must go outside the partisan ranks. Where shall we find them and how shall we recognize them?

There are such men, who have been at work in this very enterprise ever since the discovery of America, and there are numerous communities of Indians whom they have almost entirely reclaimed from savage life and made quiet and useful members of society. If they have not done more, it is because they have never been free from interference. The unruly settler has invariably broken in upon their work and brought into the communities which they were laboriously civilizing the fatal disturbances of drunkenness and license. If the missionaries could be left alone, they would soon not only Christianize the savages but reduce them to order. Scattered all over the West there are thriving little settlements where the dusky hunter has turned his spear into a ploughshare, and under the directions of the priest has learned more or less of industry and peaceful arts, and forgotten the fierce impulses which once made him a terror to the plains. In these quiet villages the school-house and the chapel are crowded with zealous learners, the fields and gardens bloom with the evidences of thrift. So long as the white man keeps away, there is quiet and prosperity. The great mission of St. Mary's, among the Pottawattomies in Eastern Kansas, is a notable example of what the missionaries can do toward civilizing the poor wretches whom we have so long been trying to tame with gunpowder. And the testimony of travellers, army officers, and government functionaries generally is unanimous as to the complete success of the Catholic priests in dealing with the great problem which perplexes our national legislature.

Why then should we not leave to these missionaries the task in which they have made such satisfactory progress? If we let them alone, their progress will be tenfold more rapid than it has ever been yet. Their conquests will soon be numbered not by villages but by nations. The mission of St. Mary's will be repeated in every corner of the West; and if the government can only devise some means of keeping away from these nurseries of Christianity the corrupting influence of white thieves, drunkards, and adventurers, the Indians in the course of a single generation will be ready for absorption into the rest of the population, will be fit to live side by side with us, to till the land as we do, and earn their bread by honest labor, and then all the trouble will be over. If this policy could be adopted, the reservation plan of the peace commissioners would be a very good one. {407} White men should be strictly forbidden to trespass upon the territory thus set apart, and the military might be employed to enforce the prohibition. Let the whole machinery of agencies, etc., be utterly abolished, as useless and demoralizing. Then let the money now spent in the purchase of beads and similar toys, which the Indians themselves are learning to despise, be devoted to the establishment, stocking, and support of schools, farms, and industrial establishments, under the charge of any authorized missionaries of good standing who are willing to serve without pay. Of course, we anticipate little success from any missionaries except Catholic priests; but we cannot expect a non-Catholic government to restrict its confidence to them, and we ask no more than to have the field thrown open to volunteers of all denominations on equal terms. We know well enough, if this be done, that the great majority of the laborers will be those of our own household. The purchase of annuity goods should be made in accordance with the recommendations of the superiors of the missions; but their distribution, lest there should be even a suspicion of unfair dealing, might be arranged through the nearest military commanders. We would not have clergymen mixed up with government money matters, and army officers would probably manage them honestly. Visitors should be appointed periodically by Congress to inspect and report upon the condition of the missions, and those which were not properly ordered should be put into other hands.

Under this arrangement the missionaries would ask nothing from the government but a free field and no interference. They would receive none of the public money. They would ask for no power except what the Indians chose to confer upon them. The domestic government of the tribes could be managed just as that of all other American settlements is managed, by the settlers themselves. The missionary would be merely their guide and teacher. He would desire no power over them beyond what he has already. The Catholic priest never fails to secure an ascendency over the savage mind by the legitimate influence of his personal character and of the message which he comes to preach. Of course it would be many years before the whole field could be occupied; but if the United States government would invite the cooperation of all religious denominations in the great work of civilization, we are persuaded that scores of zealous priests would offer themselves for the labor, that the Jesuits and other great missionary orders would be prodigal of their subjects, and that a generous and earnest spirit would be aroused among the Catholic people and would lead to the collection of an ample fund for the support of the enterprise.

We are not sanguine that the government will adopt this plan. There are too many opposing influences; it is too hard to do right; and it is so easy to oppress an inferior people when you can make money by doing it, and get public applause at the same time. But we see no other hope for the Indian except in the protection of the missionary, and no prospect of peace on the frontier until in our dealings with the aborigines we take as our motto, Justice and Benevolence.

Translated From The German.

Bellini's Romance.

I was a guest at a pleasant country festival at Eisenberg, a few hours' ride from Dresden, at the close of September, 1835. The post-boy brought me a letter that caused me to order my horse saddled immediately. It was a brief note from my friend J. P. Pixis, informing me that La Sonnambula was to be performed that evening; my favorite songstress, Francilla ———, in the part of Amina. I was more than half in love with that enchantress, and trembled with delight at the prospect of seeing her, while I took a hasty leave of my rural entertainers.

I arrived in time, but would not call upon Francilla till after the opera; not until the next morning, for I wished to see her alone. I was early at the door of her lodgings in Castle street. When she came into the drawing-room and advanced to greet me, I was startled to see her pale, with eyes red with weeping. I gazed anxiously on her face, pressing the hand she held out to me in silence, for my emotion was too great for speech. She asked quietly if I had witnessed the last evening's representation. I assured her I had, and endeavored to express my rapturous appreciation of her singing. But my praises were dashed with gloom as I saw her so sadly altered. "It is no wonder I am dejected," she replied to my questioning looks. "We have all cause to mourn."

I had not heard the fatal news. Bellini! the glorious composer of the noble work that had so delighted me a few hours before! So admirable an artist—so young—so much honored and beloved! I could have wept with Francilla.

After a few moments' silence, she wiped her eyes, then rose, and took a volume from the table. It was her album, for which I had sent her a drawing—a sketch of her fair self as Romeo, at the moment when Juliet calls on his name in the tomb, while he thinks it the voice of an angel from the skies.

We turned over the leaves of the album, lingering as we came to the different autographs. Francilla's soft, languishing eyes kindled with haughty fire as we noted the bold, rude characters traced by the hand of Judith Pasta; and when we came to the signature of Countess Rossi, her expressive features were lighted with a tender smile.

One letter was written by her Uncle Pixis in Prague. She stopped to give me an account of his family. Turning the leaves and talking rapidly, she paused of a sudden, and I saw two names recorded opposite each other—those of Vincenzo Bellini and Maria Malibran. Bellini had written a passage from the Capuletti.

Francilla signed for me to give her my pencil—it was one she had given me—and drew a large cross under Bellini's signature. Her look was intensely significant. Her silence was strangely prolonged. At last I asked, merely to say something: "Why is it, Francilla, that, in the last act of the Capuletti, you use Vaccai's music instead of Bellini's? Bellini's composition, as a whole, is superior, and the close far more touching. {409} I never could understand why a celebrated vocalist like yourself should prefer the tamer close of Vaccai."

Francilla looked earnestly in my face, but did not answer for some time. At length, fixing her eyes on the cross she had pencilled, she said, in a tone of deepest solemnity: "I will tell you a story, my friend, and you will see then how much our poor friend suffered. Neither Maria nor I could sing his last act; you shall know why."

She interrupted me with a gesture enjoining silence. "You know," she said, "though of fair complexion and blue eyes, Bellini was born at the foot of Etna. You have yourself described him to me as effeminate and a little foppish; but he was a genuine son of Sicily, and he glowed with the warmth of the south, notwithstanding his gentleness and weakness. That was a wonderful nature of his! It was not, like Sicily's volcano, spread over luxuriant meadows, through woods and snow-fields, across a lava waste to the brink of the fiery abyss; nor was it like the Hecla of your own land, where eternal fire burns under eternal ice. He reminded me of an English garden tastefully laid out, with smooth walks and quiet streams, delicate flowers and quaint shrubbery, fountains and fluted shafts; beneath which glowed an abyss of fire! That was Bellini; under his sentimental culture burned a quenchless flame—the love of art, fed by another love—for Malibran!"

"You amaze me, Francilla," I exclaimed. "His passion for art was one for Maria, too. How could he help it? Was it not she who inspired his wondrous creations with their irresistible charm? Was she not his soul of all other performers in the operas? 'What will Malibran say to it?' was Bellini's question concerning everything he composed. She was his queen of art, his muse, his ideal! Life without her was gloom. How can Malibran survive him? Your own imagination, Francilla," I said, "weaves this pretty romance. You know Malibran married M. Beriot."

"Do I not remember how the news of that marriage affected Vincenzo?" she retorted. "How pale he grew, how he trembled, and left the company in silence! Yet he could not have hoped to win Malibran; for she always treated him as a boy, though he was a year older than herself. But he could not have dreamed she would marry M. Beriot, who was at one time distracted for Madame Sontag."

With a pause she went on: "Bellini avoided both Maria and her husband after the marriage. If he saw M. Beriot, he went out of the way—very wisely; for in case of an encounter he might have been tempted—after the Sicilian fashion—you understand?" And with flashing eyes she swung her arm as one who gives a dagger-thrust.

"I understand the pantomime, my pretty Romeo! But your fancy carries the thing too far."

"No one knows what might have happened," she said, "in spite of Vincenzo's soft heart. It was well Malibran left Paris and went to Italy. Bellini never confided his secret to any one; but it became suspected among his friends. And Malibran must have heard of it; for she suddenly became reluctant to sang in any of Bellini's pieces. She continued, however, to represent Romeo; she could not give up that part. {410} When the last representation of the Capuletti was given in Milan, it happened that, in the final act, when Romeo takes the poison, such a death-like shuddering seized Maria's frame, it was with great difficulty she could go through with the part. After the performance was over, she was greatly exhausted; and with emotion she declared that no power on earth should compel her to sing again the Romeo of Bellini. She adopted the part as composed by Vaccai. But she was not satisfied with that; and afterward she returned to poor Bellini's music so far as to retain the first acts of the opera. The last act she always sang as Vaccai wrote it."

"When he heard of it, he fell into the deepest despondency. He would neither write nor think anything more; he seemed at times to forget himself, and smiled and talked like a man who had lost his reason. All his friends noticed and lamented the change.

"One day, Lablache came to see him. He found Bellini lying listless on the sofa, pale, depressed, miserable, his eyes half-closed, indifferent to every one. The giant singer went up to him, opened his big mouth, and roared out: 'Halloa, Bellini! what are you lying there for, like an idle lout of a lazzaroni on the Molo, weary of doing nothing! Get up and go to work! Paris, France, all Europe is full of expectation as to what you are to give the world after your Norma, which your adversaries silenced. Up, I say! Do you hear me, Bellini?'

"'Indeed, I do hear you, my dear Lablache,' replied the composer in a lachrymose voice. 'I have good ears, and, if I had not, your brazen base pierces like a trumpet! Leave me, caro; leave me to myself. I am good for nothing, unless it be the dolce far niente! I have lost interest in everything!'

"'The mischief you have!' exclaimed Lablache, striking his hands together, with a tone that caused the walls to vibrate. And you—Bellini—talk thus? You, who have ever pressed on to the goal, and reached it in spite of obstacles! Are you an artist? Are you a man? Amico mio! will you be checked midway in your glorious career? Will you lose the prize fame holds out? Will you spend your life whining out loverlike complaints, like some silly Damon of his cruel Doris or Phillis? Shame on you! Such womanish pinings are unworthy of you!'

"Bellini interrupted him very gently. 'My good Lablache,' he said, 'you do me injustice! I make no complaints; I am not pining—'

"'Silence!' roared Lablache. 'You are a fool! Do you think I do not know where the shoe pinches?'

"'Have you nothing to say, Bellini?' continued Lablache. 'Don't look so stupidly like an apprehended school-boy!'

"Vincenzo sighed piteously. 'If you know all,' he replied, 'you know that she will sing nothing of my music!'

"Lablache came closer, grasped the shoulders of the young composer in his powerful hands, lifted him from the cushions of the sofa to his feet, and gave him a good shaking! Then, as he released him, he said, with flashing eyes:

"'You shall hear me sing something of yours.' He began the allegro to the duet from I Puritani, "Suoni la tromba e intrepido." His stentorian voice rang like a clarion or a martial shout. The flush of enthusiasm rushed to Bellini's pale face; the tears sprang into his eyes; at length, he threw himself into Lablache's arms, and joined his voice in the splendid song. When it was ended, he thanked his friend, and pledged his word that he would finish the composition of the entire opera in a few weeks.

"The promise was kept. Bellini worked diligently, and in the stipulated time put the opera into the hands of Lablache, who undertook to see that it should be worthily represented.

"All Paris was delighted at the announcement of the representation. The opera was splendidly cast, and the rehearsals commenced. Bellini was present at the first rehearsal; at the second, he was absent, and word came that he was ill at his country-seat at Porteaux, near the capital. They hoped he would recover in time to attend the first performance of the opera.

"All went on successfully; and a large audience attended the opening representation. The famous duet Lablache had sung was repeated and encored amid thunders of applause. Just then a murmur went round the theatre, and the applause was silenced. The news was:

Francilla ceased. She closed the album, rose hastily, and went to the window. I was deeply affected, and was leaving the room quietly. But she turned round, and, bidding me stay, went and seated herself at the piano. The song was a melancholy one, sung with wonderful expression and feeling. It was a farewell to the dead.

My friend Pixis came into the room at its close, and asked what it was we were so mournful about.

I replied, "Francilla has been telling me of Bellini's unhappy love for Malibran."

"Do not believe a word of it!" cried Pixis, laughing. "She will get you up a fine romance on that chapter."

I had my doubts of its truth; yet the fact is indisputable that Bellini was always in love.

Here the pretty artist, Maschinka Schneider, came in, and the conversation was of the representation of the Capuletti, already announced. I gave advice as to improvements in the arrangement of the scenes.

I could not help remembering the sad tale my little friend had told me. I thought of it again when, a year afterward, I read in the newspapers that Malibran had died at Manchester, on the 23d of September, the same day on which Bellini had expired a year before.

Translated from the French of Souvestre.

The Inside of a Stage-Coach.

One of the last days of September the rain had fallen all day in torrents, but finally, having ceased, left the sky so enveloped in fog that, though scarcely four o'clock, night seemed already to have overspread the earth.

A heavy diligence, with its relay of horses, ascended with difficulty one of the hills which separate Belleville from Lyons, while the postilions walked on each side of the team, pausing about every fifty steps to breathe and recover themselves. The wearied passengers had descended by invitation of the conductor, and were trudging along in no amiable mood, scolding the horses, the rain, and the miserable roads. Two of them, who came last, stopped suddenly at the turning of the ascent One was a man nearly fifty years old, with a mild and smiling countenance; but the other, much younger, had an air of gloom and dissatisfaction. Throwing his eyes over the surrounding country, half enveloped in fog, he said to his companion:

"What weather and what a year, Cousin Grugel! The Saône has hardly entered its bed, and the valleys are again inundated."

"God preserve us, Gontran!" replied the man with the mild countenance; "the rainbow can appear any moment above the deluge."

"Yes," replied the other traveller, with slight irony; "I know your mania of hope, Jacques."

"Well, I am right when I examine how this world goes. Where do you see peace, order, or prosperity? I only hear of incendiaries, contagion, deluge, and murder. What man's wickedness spares, the wickedness of nature annihilates, for even brute matter seems to possess the instinct of destruction; and the elements, like kings, cannot remain neighbors without warring against each other."

"That is only one side of things, my cousin—the sad side; but of the other you never speak. Your eyes are riveted on the volcano which dims the horizon, but you cannot lower them to the fields of ripe corn undulating at your feet. There is happiness in the world, if you can make up your mind to believe it."

"True, Jacques, and yet I have not been able to find, in all the good accorded me, either peace or contentment."

"What have you to wish for? You are rich, honored, and have a family who love you."

"Yes," replied Gontran; "but this same fortune has cost me the lawsuit for which I have just made the third voyage to Macon; my good reputation has not deterred the opposing lawyer from slander; and as to my family—"

"Well! my sister, with whom I always lived so affectionately, has just quarrelled with me."

"No, no; I am tired of working without profit to establish order in her affairs. I have been too much annoyed by her want of system and reason."

"Oh! I know that you will always find a good reason for me to bear my sorrows patiently; you have a recipe for every wound of the soul, and if I press you a little, you will prove me in the wrong to complain, and that all is quite right here below."

"Pardon me," replied Grugel; "in the government of this world I find much to wound me, but I am not sure I am the best judge. Life is a great mystery, of which we comprehend so little. Must I own it to you, there are hours when I persuade myself that God has not afflicted men with so many scourges without intention. Happy and invulnerable, they could be endured; each one would count on his individual strength, delight in his own isolation, and refuse all sympathy to his fellow-being. But weakness has no such resource; on the contrary, it forces men to be friendly, to aid and love one another. Grief has become a bond of sympathy, and we owe to it our noblest and best sentiments, gratitude, devotion, and piety."

"Well done," said Darvon, smiling; "not being able to sustain the good in all things, you give me the bright side of evil."

"Perhaps so," said Grugel; "only be sure that evil itself is not absolute. Science borrows its remedies from the sap of venomous plants; why, then, may we not from passion, misfortune, or inequality draw much that is good? Believe me, Darvon, there is no human dross, however poor, without its particles of gold."

"In good faith, then, I would like to know what could be found in our travelling companions," cried Gontran. "Let us see, cousin; suppose we put to the test these curious patterns of our race, as we proclaim it so intelligent."

"Never mind, never mind," replied Darvon, whose misanthropy was niggardly in its character; "disengage the gold from the dross, as you say. But first, how many grains do you expect to find in this cattle-merchant before us?"

Grugel raised his head and saw, a few steps in advance, the traveller who had called him cousin. A coarse man in a blue blouse, following with heavy steps the side of the road, while finishing his well-picked chicken-bone.

"I declare, that is the seventh repast I have seen him make to-day," continued Darvon, "and the coach-pockets are still laden with his provisions. When he has eaten enough, he goes to sleep, then he eats again, then goes to sleep in order to recommence his programme. He is a mere digesting machine, too imbecile to draw from him either response or information."

"Our companion with the felt hat can sufficiently acquit himself in that respect."

"Ah! yes, let us consider him and try also to extract his gold. He joined our party only this morning, and already the conductor has sent him from the impériale to the travellers in the coupé, who again have sent him to the intérieur. We have had him but two hours, and he has already given us his own and his family history to the fifth degree. I know his name is Peter Lepré, that for twenty years he has been commissioner of colonial produce in the departments of the Saône and Loire, of Ain, Isère, and of the Rhone, and he has been married three times. {414} Then if you did not have to bear his questioning; but he is equally talkative and curious, and when his confession is finished, he awaits yours. If you are reflecting, he speaks to you; if you speak, he interrupts you. His voice is like a rattle in constant motion, the noise of which ends in making you nervous."

"He has one merit," replied Darvon, "that of annoying Mademoiselle Athénaïs de Locherais; for we almost forgot this amiable fellow-traveller, who, after recommending us all to get out to lighten the coach, remained in herself so as not to dampen her feet."

"You must forgive her," observed Jacques; "isolation has made her forget all ease of others; her heart is contracted."

"Contracted!" repeated Gontran, "you are deceived, cousin; Mademoiselle Athénaïs has a great deal of love for herself. The whole world seems to have been made for her special ease, and she can imagine nothing in it that does not bear upon her in some way or other. She is one of those sweet creatures who, hearing the cry of the midnight assassin, returns to her pillow complaining of having been awakened."

Grugel was going to reply, but they had arrived at the top of the hill. The conductor, calling the passengers, urged them to remount, as a courier had just appeared with an announcement, that, owing to the overflow of the Saône, the passage by Villefranche would be impossible, and that in order to reach Anse they would be obliged to turn more to the right, passing the Niseran higher up and taking another road. The coach which had just preceded them, not having taken this precaution, had been surprised by the waters, and some of the passengers were reported to be drowned. Happily this last intelligence was not communicated to the travellers, but they vociferated loudly when apprised of the by-road they were obliged to take.

"There is a malediction on us," said Gontran, already peevish with the length of the journey.

"I knew it would be so, sir," cried Pierre Lepré, with volubility. The two postilions had just escaped from him, so he fell back on his travelling companions. "I was told on my way that the Ardiere and Vauzarme had risen considerably; indeed, we cannot tell if we can pass to Anse, where we may encounter the waters of the Azergnes and the Brevanne. Where in the world are you taking us, conductor? Shall we pass the woods of Orrigt? Well, I know the mayor, a thin man, always smoking. But, speaking of this, can we not stop again before we come to Anse?"

"Impossible," replied the conductor brusquely; "I am now eight hours behind time."

"I declare, I wish I had some broth," interrupted Mademoiselle Athénaïs, in a shrill voice, with her head out of the coach door; "I always take my broth at five o'clock."

"Get in, gentlemen," called out the conductor; "one hour's delay may prevent us from reaching there. You can't joke with an overflow, and I don't want my coach drowned."

"Drowned!" cried Mademoiselle Athénaïs's. "Why, this is horrible. You shall be informed against, conductor! I demand that you leave the valley. Why don't you answer me, conductor? I will complain to your chief."

The diligence starting, cut the old lady's sentence in two, so she fell back in her corner with an exclamation of dissatisfaction.

Jacques Grugel felt himself obliged to tell her that the route they were taking would lead them away from the Saône and avoid the danger.

"We will not stop till we reach Anse," resumed Lepré; "the conductor has said so, and God only knows what kind of roads we will meet with. Roads of the department; that says everything. And then I know the engineer, a talented man; his son was married the same day as my eldest. But we won't arrive till to-morrow, mark my words."

There was a general cry from the passengers. They had eaten nothing since morning, calculating on the lunch usually obtained at Villefranche, and Gontran had already proposed, with his usual vivacity, to make a descent on the first village and force them to serve up a supper, when the cattle-merchant cried out:

"For everybody, citizen. I can offer you three courses, with your dessert, and something for a heeltap."

While speaking he drew from the pockets of the carriage a half-dozen packets, and, rolling his tongue around his mouth, proceeded to open them; they contained provisions of every kind, properly enveloped and tied with care.

"Won't we have a feast?" said Lepré, who had asked the cattle-merchant, in his inventory, "my friend, what is your name?"

"How can a man be at his ease," said the fat merchant, with a certain pride, "if he can't eat the best of everything? However, these gentlemen and mademoiselle can judge of my victuals."

"Truly," said he smiling, and in an under-voice, "here are the grains of gold you looked for."

"Grains of gold!" repeated Barnau, who did not understand him; "why, man, that's a sausage with truffles."

"And these gentlemen would have us believe grains of gold are good for famished people," resumed Pierre Lepré, laughing; "that is a figure of speech, Monsieur Barnau. I have a son who studied these figures in rhetoric. He explained it all to me; but, pardon me, let us first help mademoiselle."

They presented the food to Mademoiselle de Locherais, who returned each piece, but finally ended by choosing the most delicate, complaining, as she ate, of the privations of travellers. To console her, Barnau offered her some old brandy; but mademoiselle cried out with horror:

"I drink neither sherry nor brandy," cried Mademoiselle Athénaïs fiercely. "I take water only," she said, turning toward Grugel. "Did you ever hear anything like this rustic?" she murmured; "offer me cognac, as if the spices he has given us were not sufficient to burn one's blood. I shall surely be ill from it." {416} Finishing what she had to say, she arranged herself in her corner, so as to turn her back on the cattle-merchant, picked up a pillow she had with her, leaned her head on it, and fell asleep.

The diligence continued its tedious route. Though humid, the air was cold, and not a star was to be seen. Relieved by the repast which the gastronomical foresight of Barnau had permitted him to make, Lepré resumed his loquacity, and, although his fellow-travellers had long since ceased to answer him, he continued to talk on without being in the least concerned to know if he was listened to.

This noise of words, the slowness of their progress, the darkness, and the cold combined to render the passengers nervously impatient, and every few moments might be heard yawns, shudderings, or subdued complaints. Darvon, particularly, seemed more and more excitable; a prey to nervous irritation. He had already opened and shut for the tenth time the blind of the coach-door, leaned his head to the right, to the left, and back on the cushion, fixed his legs in every possible position that the narrow space of which he could dispose allowed him; and, finally, at the break of day, his patience was entirely exhausted.

"I would give ten of the days which remain of my life to be at the end of this journey," cried he.

"True, upon my word," said Lepré, who had been asleep an instant. "Hallo, conductor, how long do you remain here?"

The door was opened, and Barnau got down with Lepré to renew his provisions. Nearly at the same moment the clerk came forward to see if there were any vacant places.

"How!" cried Mademoiselle de Locherais, who had just awakened with a start; "would monsieur by any chance ask any one to come in here?"

"But it is quite impossible," resumed the old maid; "we are already frightfully crowded. Monsieur, your coaches are too small; I will complain to the administration."

"Ah! without doubt here is our new companion," said Grugel, who was looking out of the door. "M. Lepré has already seized upon him."

"Is it not their trade? Such people are never fatigued. These public conveyances do give you such disagreeable neighbors! …. The derangement of your usual habits, to have nothing warm, pass the night without any sleep, be crowded, choked! …. I don't see why one of these gentlemen don't get up in the imperial."

"Mademoiselle would be less incommoded," added Darvon ironically. "She had better make the proposition herself to our companion."

"What! I speak to a soldier!" said Mademoiselle Athénaïs fiercely; "I prefer being incommoded, sir!"

The non-commissioned officer had indeed just appeared before the door, followed by the clerk with whom he was quarrelling. He was a spruce, dapper-looking young man, but his bragging and soldierly manners disgusted Darvon at first sight. He complained of the delay of the coach, having waited for it since the night preceding, and with words abused the clerk of the office, whose responses were timid and embarrassed. At last, the conductor declaring they must start, he came to the coach-door and looked inside.

"Magnificent collection," murmured he, after having cast an impertinent look on the travellers; "I wonder if the coupé and the rotonde are as well furnished. Have you no women aboard, conductor?"

"Well," resumed the soldier, "one must not be too particular in the country." And he took his place.

Gontran leaned toward Grugel, and said, in a low voice, "This one completes our collection of absurdities."

"Bragging people inspire more disgust than fear," said he, "and this one certainly needs a lesson in politeness."

Meanwhile, Barnau returned without Lepré. After having looked for the latter at the inn, and waited for him some minutes, the diligence started without him, to the great joy of mademoiselle, who hoped to be more at her ease. But her joy was of short duration, for the non-commissioned officer, who had located himself at first on the other bench, got up and took the seat next to her. The angry old maid adjusted herself brusquely, and pulled down her veil.

"I quite understand the reason," resumed the soldier. "But she can calm her nerves. I can deprive myself of the pleasure." And as he noticed the movement of indignation of Mademoiselle de Locherais, continued, "I speak solely for the interest of her health; and to allow her to breathe with her face uncovered, as we want air in this box, I think I had better lower the window."

"I object to it," said mademoiselle quickly; "my doctor has forbidden any exposure to the morning air."

"And mine has forbidden me to smother," replied the young man, putting out his hand to open the sash.

But the old maid cried out. The window was on her side, she had a right to have it closed, and appealed to the other travellers.

However little disposed Darvon had been in favor of Mademoiselle de Locherais, he considered it right to defend her, and the result was a sharp discussion between him and the soldier, which would have ended in trouble had not Grugel ceded his place at the other window.

The soldier accepted it with a bad grace, preserving a strong feeling against Darvon.

Now, the reader has already perceived that Gontran's predominant qualities were neither resignation nor patience. The contrarieties of the journey had excited his sickly inability, therefore the disagreement which had already broken out between them was renewed several times, and only awaited a favorable opportunity to become a later quarrel.

Some of the smaller baggage had been placed by Darvon in a net suspended from the top of the diligence; the soldier pretended that it incommoded him, and wished it removed. Gontran refused to do it.

"You have decided it shall remain where it is?" cried the soldier, after a discussion in which he had grown more and more animated.

"Very well. I will get rid of it by the coach-door," replied the young man, while extending his hand toward the net.

Gontran seized the hand, and said, "Take care what you do, sir," in a changed voice. "Ever since you came in here, you have tried to make me lose my patience; your whole course has been one of abuse and tyranny, but you may as well understand I am not the man to put up with your tyranny."

"Is this a challenge?" asked the soldier, throwing on Gontran a disdainful look.

"By no means," interrupted Grugel, annoyed by the turn affairs had taken; "my cousin merely wished you to observe—"

At this word insolence the soldier shuddered, a deep redness suffused his features.

Jacques, alarmed, wished to interpose, but his cousin and the soldier spoke at the same time, and repeated they would terminate this affair at Lyons.

At the same instant great cries were heard, and the diligence was overtaken by a wagon entirely covered with mud. Mademoiselle de Locherais put her head out of the coach-door.

"O Lord! what a misfortune," said she; "Monsieur Pierre Lepré has overtaken us. Now we will be completely filled up."

As soon as they reached the public conveyance, the commissioner of colonial produce jumped out of the wagon, and presented himself at the coach-door, which the conductor had just opened.

"Is this the way you go off without waiting for the passengers?" cried he, furious.

"Six times is customary, sir, or even a dozen; you are very miserly with your words. Does it cost anything to speak? I could not leave the post-master while he was telling me what happened to the diligence yesterday; for you did not know, gentlemen, that the one that preceded this was drowned."

"Again, there was I trying to obtain these details, when they came to tell me you had gone on without me."

"Bless me," cried Lepré, who hastened to get up. "I have had enough of wagons; here I am, conductor, lift me up."

The commissioner of provisions was overwhelmed with questions, and he soon related all he had heard; then, interrupting himself, according to his usual habit, and recognizing the young officer, he cried out:

"Delighted to meet you again," said Lepré. "Whatever you may think of me, I am the born friend of all the military. I should have had to serve myself if they had not found a substitute for me."

He was interrupted by Mademoiselle Athénaïs, who just perceived that he was quite wet.

"It is this abominable fog," said he, while wiping the water off with his handkerchief.

"But people don't come into a carriage in such a condition," replied mademoiselle, in a discontented way. "When you are covered with fog, you might as well remain out."

"To dry one's self?" asked Lepré, laughing. "Great goodness, I had enough of it; then my coachman was drunk, and just missed turning the wagon over into the river."

"We would have been added to the diligence of yesterday, unless we had found some good soul brave enough to fish for us. But such things have been. Three years ago, after a great inundation, a workman alone saved five persons who were drowning near the Guillotière."

"We knew of him particularly," said Grugel, "as my cousin's best friend was one of the saved."

"Oh! all the details of that action were admirable," said Darvon, with great warmth; "the frightened horse had pulled the carriage into the strongest of the current; on the shore the crowd looked on, without daring to go to their relief; there seemed to be no hope for the five persons in the carriage."

"Bah!" interrupted the soldier, "perhaps some of them could swim, and have got nicely out of the scrape."

"The carriage commenced to sink," continued he, "when a workman appeared with a small boat, which with difficulty he guided into the midst of the Rhone. Three times it was on the point of upsetting. The people who looked on from the shore cried out, 'Do not go any further; come ashore; you are going to perish.' But he did not listen to them—still advancing toward the carriage, which by dint of skill and courage, he finally reached."

"Without doubt," replied Grugel, who remarked Gontran's movement of impatience, "but only good-hearted people find happiness in such acts."

"It was a beautiful incident," interrupted Mademoiselle de Locherais, "and one that should have benefited its author."

"Pardon me, madame," said Darvon. "The workman no doubt considered that the true recompense for any generous action is in ourselves; for, after having saved these people, he retired without wishing to receive either reward or praise."

"Louis Duroc, called the African; I asked him his name at Anse, while we were talking at the inn, and I have seen it, besides, on his portmanteau."

"The workman in question; yes, gentlemen. There would have been no use in telling it, but now there is no use in concealing it. I entered the service a week after the accident, and my regiment had to leave for Algeria, so that I never again met my friends of the carriage; however, I hope to see them again at Lyons."

"I will take you to them," said Darvon quickly, while offering his hand to the officer; "for I wish we may be friends, Monsieur Louis."

"Oh! please forget all that has passed," replied the latter; "I am ready, if necessary, to acknowledge I have been wrong—"

"No!" interrupted Duroc, "no, indeed; I was the wrong-headed one, and I regret it, I give you my word of honor. Bad habits of the regiment, you see. Because we have no fear, we like to show it on all occasions, and to each new-comer, and so play the bully, but at heart good children; so without malice, monsieur."

"Good!" cried he; "you are a true Frenchmen, and so is Monsieur. Between Frenchmen, people should always agree. I am delighted to have made your acquaintance, M. Louis Duroc. But, à propos, do you know it was a most happy coincidence that I obliged you to tell me your name, that you did not want to give me? Without me, no one would have known what you were worth."

"It is true," replied Grugel. "If this gentleman had talked less, this explanation would not have taken place, and my cousin would have mistaken the true character of Monsieur Louis. You see, chance seems to have taken the task of supporting my theory, and all the honor of the journey is mine."

The travellers found the diligence-yard crowded with relations or friends awaiting their arrival. The misfortune of the day before was known, and had awakened all possible anguish.

Darvon no sooner stepped down, than he heard his name pronounced, and, turning, saw his sister hastening to him with cries of joy. Her anxiety on his account had caused her to forget their quarrel.

They embraced over and over again; their eyes moistened with tears as they looked at each other, smiling. They were reconciled.

As they went together from the diligence-yard Gontran met his travelling companions. Barnau and Lepré saluted them; Louis Duroc renewed his promise to visit them; Mademoiselle Athénaïs de Locherais alone passed without any sign of recognition. She was too much occupied watching her baggage. Jacques Grugel turned then to Gontran.

"There is the only objection to my doctrine," said he, pointing to the old maid. "All our other companions have more or less redeemed themselves in our eyes: the gourmand procured us a supper; the babbler revealed a useful secret; the quarrelsome one gave proof of his generous bravery; but of what use has been to us the selfish egotism of Mademoiselle de Locherais?"

"To make me realize the value of true devotion and tenderness," replied Gontran, who pressed his sister's arm more closely to his heart. "Yes, from to-day, cousin, I will adopt your system. I firmly believe there is a good side to everything, and that it is only necessary to know where to look for the vein of gold."

Sayings Of The Fathers Of The Desert.

He who remains alone by himself, and maintains a state of tranquillity, is saved the waging of three wars; that is to say, the warfare of hearing, of speech, and of sight; and he will have but one to carry on, and that is the warfare of the heart.

Abbot Arsenius, while he still dwelt in a palace, prayed to the Lord one day, and said, "O Lord! point out to me the way to salvation." And a voice came to him saying, "Arsenius, avoid the society of men, and you shall be saved." Thereupon he went away to lead a monastic life, and it happened that he again made the same prayer. And he heard a voice saying unto him, "Arsenius, flee, remain silent, be tranquil."

Abbot Evagrius said: Cast from thee affection for many things, lest thy mind be full of trouble and lose its tranquillity.

A certain brother once went to Scythia, to ask advice of Abbot Moses. And the old man said to him, "Go sit in thy cell, and thy cell will teach thee all things."

Abbot Nilus said: He who loveth quiet shall be impenetrable to the darts of the enemy; but he who mingleth with the multitude shall receive many wounds.

A certain father told this story: Three persons who loved their souls became monks. One of them chose as his task the making up of quarrels, according as it is written, "Blessed are the peacemakers." (Matt, v.) The second determined to visit the sick. The third went away into the desert to remain in solitude. Now, the first, who busied himself about the quarrels of men, could not always succeed in bringing about a reconciliation. Sick at heart, he went to see how he fared who was visiting the sick, and found that he also was growing weary, and was quite unable to carry out his purpose. These two then went together to see the one who had gone into the desert, and told him all their troubles. And then they asked him to tell them how he himself had got along. After a short pause, he poured some water into a basin and said to them, "Look at the water." And it was troubled. After a little while he again said to them, "Now look at the water, and see how clear it has grown." And they, looking in the water, saw their faces reflected as from a mirror. {422} And then he said to them, "Thus it is with him who lives among men; for from the turbulence of his life he sees not his own sins; when, however, he is become tranquil, and especially when he lives in solitude, then he clearly perceives his faults."

Abbot Elias said: Three things I fear. One is, the separation of soul and body; the second, my meeting with God the third, the sentence which shall be pronounced upon me.

Abbot James said: As a light illuminateth a room, even so doth the fear of God, when it shall have entered the heart of man, illuminate and teach him every virtue and the precepts of God.

Syncletica, of holy memory, said: The wicked who are converted to God have to toil and struggle much, but afterward their joy is ineffable. For as those who wish to kindle a fire have first to bear the smoke, and are ofttimes forced to shed tears before they succeed for it is written, "Our God is a consuming fire"—so ought we also to kindle within us the divine flame amid toils and tears.

A father said: As we carry our shadow about with us everywhere, even so ought we always to weep and be contrite.

They tell of Abbot Agatho that he kept a pebble in his mouth three years, and thus acquired silence.

Abbot Agatho was once making a journey with his disciples, when one of them found a little bundle of green vetches lying on the roadside, and said to his master, "Father, if you wish it, I will take them." The old man looked at him in astonishment, and asked, "Didst thou place them there?" And the disciple said "No." And then the father replied, "Why, then, do you desire to take away what you have not placed there?"

Abbot Evagrius tells that a father once said: I deprive myself of carnal delights, in order that I may the more readily avoid occasions of anger. For I know that this passion always attacks and disturbs my mind and clouds my intellect according as I indulge in carnal delights.

Epiphanius, Bishop of Cyprus, once sent for Abbot Hilarion, that he might see him before he died. When they had met and were dining, a fowl was set on the table which the bishop offered Hilarion. And then Hilarion said, "Pardon me, father, for ever since I have worn this habit I have never eaten of anything slain." And then Epiphanius replied, "And I, since I have worn this habit, have never allowed any one to sleep who had anything against me, nor have I ever slept having aught against any one." "Pardon me," replied the old man, "your life is more perfect than mine."

They tell of Abbot Elladius that he lived in his cell twenty years without ever lifting his eyes to the ceiling.

Abbot John the Small said: If a king should wish to take a hostile city, he would first intercept supplies of water and provisions, and thus the enemy, being in danger of starvation, would fall into his hands. So it is with the inordinate desires of the stomach. If a man fast well, the enemies of his soul grow weak.

New Publications.

Language, And The Study Of Languages.
In Twelve Lectures on the Principles of Linguistic Science.
By William Dwight Whitney, Professor of Sanskrit and Modern Languages in Yale College.
New York: Scribner & Co. 1867. 12mo, pp. 489.

Professor Whitney, with a full knowledge of the chief results thus far obtained in linguistic science by philologists, appears to be passably free and independent in his judgments, and cautious and sober in his inductions. His book is, however, rather an introduction to the study of linguistics than a full statement and vindication of its principles as a science. Its chief merit is in its correction of the exaggerations of enthusiastic and hasty philologists, and in brushing away numerous false theories and hypotheses unsustained and unsustainable by the facts in the case.

For the most part, the principles laid down by the author are sound and incontrovertible; but in some instances his application of them, and the conclusions he draws, may be disputed. Even his definition of language, as the medium by which men communicate their thoughts to one another, maybe objected to as superficial and inadequate, and as really including only one of its functions. Language is better defined: the sensible sign or representation of the ideal or the intelligible, and is as indispensable to the formation of thought in one's own mind as to the communication of thought to the minds of others. For intuition, no matter of what sort, language indeed is not necessary; but intuition is the à priori condition of thought, as necessary to it as creation is to contingent existence, not thought itself. Without intuition there is no thought; but thought itself is the action of the mind on the intuition—an action not possible without the sensible sign which holds and represents—re-presents—the intuition. What could we do in algebra or the calculus without sensible signs; or in philosophy or theology, or anything that belongs to the noetic or intelligible order, without the words which hold and represent the noetic object? There is a more intimate connection of thought and the word than the professor admits—a deeper significance, a profounder philosophy, a more inscrutable mystery in language, than most philologists dream of, and he who masters its secret masters the secret of the universe. He who is no theologian, no philosopher, can at best be only a sorry philologist. The part can be fully understood only in its relation to the whole, nor the effect without its cause, and hence it is that man and the universe cannot be understood without the knowledge of God.

The author regards linguistics as a moral science, dependent wholly on moral causes, and denies that it is a physical science, or that physical causes have anything to do in producing the dialectic changes, modifications, or differences of language, which the science notes. Here he is too sweeping in both his assertion and his denial. Moral causes operate in the changes language undergoes; and so do physical causes, especially in its phonetic change. At any rate, linguistics is to be classed with the inductive sciences, and, therefore, is a subordinate science, and can never without foreign aid be raised to the dignity or certainty of science itself. None of the inductive sciences are complete in themselves, or sufficient for themselves, and they all do and must, consciously or unconsciously, borrow from philosophy or theology, which has been very properly called scientia scientiarum, the science of sciences. Facts are facts always and everywhere; but facts are the matter of science, not science itself. The science is in their explication, or their reduction to the principles from which they proceed, and the law of their procession or production. {424} The inductive philosophers seek to obtain the law by induction from the facts observed, and the principle by induction from the law, which is unscientific; for the principle determines the law, and the law the facts. Hence their inductions are never science, or anything more than empirical classifications. Till the law is referred to its principle, it is not a law, but simply a congeries of facts. The reason why the inductive philosophers fail to perceive this is in the fact that the mind is already in possession of the principle, and simply supplies or applies it to the facts observed; while they, finding they have it, take it for granted that they have obtained it by induction. But he who lacks intuition of the ideal or the universal can never from the observation and analysis of facts rise scientifically above the phenomenal. Here, under the point of view of science, is the defect of all the inductive sciences; and hence, the tendency of all inductive philosophy, as any one may see in the writings of the Positivists, Auguste Comte, E. Littré, J. Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, and Sir William Hamilton and his school, is to restrict all science to the phenomenal, and, therefore, to exclude principles and causes, and consequently laws.

We do not mean by these strictures to exclude the inductive sciences, so-called, to condemn the inductive method, or to maintain that the sciences are to be created by way of deduction or à priori. The inductive method is censurable only when it insists on being exclusive, and that it needs for its application only bare phenomena; and we value as highly as anybody does the inductive sciences when completed by the principles and laws which are neither obtained nor obtainable by induction. There is no way of constructing linguistics but by observation of facts and induction therefrom. The error as to principles and method of Professor Whitney is, that he forgets that all inductions of any value are made by virtue of a principle not obtained by induction, and, therefore, controllable by the science of sciences, that is, by faith, and universal science or philosophy.

The professor proves very satisfactorily that what are called dialects are the result of development, growth, or modifications of the original language, and, therefore, that the unity of the language precedes diversity of dialects. Hence, he maintains that the various languages of the Aryan, Indo-Germanic, or, as he prefers to say, Indo-European group, have all sprung from a common original now lost, but of which perhaps the Sanscrit is the best representative now remaining. Why not, then, conclude that all the languages of mankind, extinct or extant, have sprung from one common original? If we suppose the unity of the species, this must be so; and the professor says that, while linguistics is not and never will be able to confirm it, it cannot, by any means, deny it. The diversity of tongues, then, cannot be alleged as disproving the unity of the species; and as we know the species is one, and that all men have sprung from one original pair, we know that all the diverse tongues of men are but so many dialects of one and the same original language. This is not an induction from linguistic facts, nor can linguistics, in its present state, confirm it; but it is a scientific truth, and also a truth of faith which controls air linguistic inductions. The professor himself goes too far when he says linguistics will never be in a condition to confirm it. That it will not is possible, not certain. His whole work proves that as yet the science of linguistics is in its infancy, hardly a science at all, and that it is not safe to conclude what it may one day do, or not do.

The professor proceeds throughout on the assumption that language is conventional. We do not agree to this, for there can be no convention without language, and language, as he himself shows, is traditional. I speak English because I was born, brought up, and live in a community that speaks English, and because I have learned or been taught it. It is my mother tongue, the tongue of my mother, and taught me by her. Particular words, and particular senses of words already in use, may have been conventionally introduced, but not language itself. {425} These words, whether newly coined or borrowed from other tongues, do not make up the language or modify its laws; they add to its vocabulary, but are subjected to its regimen. We have borrowed largely from the Latin, but we cannot construct a sentence with words so borrowed till we have made them English words. Nobody can talk Latin in English, though we can talk English in words wholly of Latin origin. The vocabulary is of various origin, but the language is English, and has remained so through all the changes the vocabulary has undergone; and this English language defies all conventions, and the influence of both the learned and the unlearned.

Professor Whitney, who appears never to have understood the relation of the inductive sciences either to science or to faith, denies the divine and supernatural origin of language, supposes man to have commenced his career on this earth without language, and to have formed for himself voluntarily but irreflectively language, by attempting to imitate the various cries of animals and the more striking sounds of nature, among which there is not a single articulate sound, the distinguishing mark of human speech. He does not represent men as saying to one another, "Go to, now; let us construct a language, so that we can tell each other our thoughts;" but he represents them as listening to the growl, barking, and howling of dogs, the bleating of sheep, the mooing of cows, the chirping of birds, the crowing of the cock, the hissing of the serpent, the roaring and whistling of the winds, the rattling of the shower or pouring of the rain, the bellowing of the storm, and, by way of imitation, forming out of these inarticulate sounds language in which we praise God and communicate with men. He adopts the onomatopoetic or bow-wow theory, so contemptuously dismissed by Max Müller. There is no doubt that in all dialects there have been introduced vocables in which there is an attempt in the word itself to imitate the sound or cry of the object named; but, supposing men had no language and were unable to converse, how were they to agree on the meaning to be given to these imitated sounds, or construct these words into sentences composed of subject, predicate, and copula, inflected according to the demands of number, gender, case, mood, and tense? There may have also been vocables formed from interjections, and there may be some truth in the interjectional or pooh! pooh! theory; but how form them into words, and these words into language with its grammatical laws and inflections before any knowledge of grammar or language, and bring about a general understanding as to the sense they are to bear? The same objections may be urged against the ding-dong theory, or that man is so constructed that, when touched in a certain manner, he involuntarily emits a certain sound. These theories explain the origin of certain vocables, but not of language.

Professor Whitney is not willing, by any means, to admit the supernatural origin of language, for the inductive sciences recognize nothing above nature. But none of the facts treated by any one of the inductive sciences are explicable without God, and God is supernatural. Man has his origin in the supernatural, though the species is developed by natural generation. In like manner, language, though developed, modified, or changed structurally or phonetically by natural causes according to natural laws, has its origin in the supernatural, or the direct act of God infusing it along with the ideal truth it signifies into the first man. Its origin is divine, as is the origin of man. This is evident because it requires in man the possession of language to be able to invent language, as we have already seen. It is from God, because it can come from no other source; and immediately from God to the first man, though traditionally to us, because there is no natural medium through which its origination is possible; yet not the entire vocabulary of language, but language in the respect that it is the sensible sign or representation of the ideal or the intelligible, whence proceeds the sensible, which copies or imitates it.

I. Grammatical Synthesis:
The Art of English Composition.
By Henry N. Day.
New York: Scribner & Co. 1867.
12mo, pp. 356.

2. The Art Of Discourse:
A System of Rhetoric.
By Henry N. Day.
New York: Scribner & Co. 1867.
12mo, pp. 343.

We know Mr. Day only as the author of these two books, and these do not give us a very high opinion of him either as a master of English grammar or of English composition. His volumes are elaborate, and evidently have cost him much time and hard study; he has aimed to make them profound, logical, philosophical, attractive, and profitable to the student; but their depth is less than he believes, their logic is more pretentious than real, and their philosophy is borrowed from a bad school.

The first work purports to be a grammar of the English language, and aims, while teaching the art of composition or the construction of sentences, to make the study of grammar attractive by exercising the thought and reasoning faculty of the pupil. The aim is commendable, but is rarely successful. The author lacks simplicity, ease, and grace as a writer, and a thorough mastery of his subject; and his grammar, by its attempt at logic and philosophy, is better fitted to discourage than to quicken thought. As far as we can discover, the work is no improvement on Lindley Murray's well-known English grammar; it is less simple, and not a whit more logical or philosophical. It departs widely from the old grammatical technology, but with no advantage, that we can discover, to the pupil. What is gained by calling adjectives and adverbs modifiers, a name appropriate to adverbs only? Adjectives qualify; adverbs modify. Murray defines the verb, "A word that signifies to be, to do, or to suffer." What do we gain by rejecting this definition, and defining it to be the word in a sentence that asserts? The author makes a sentence, as a judgment, consist of three parts, subject, predicate, and copula, which is correct. He identifies the verb with the copula, which is also correct; but he makes its essence consist in assertion, which is not correct. There is, indeed, no assertion without the copula; but the copula alone does not make the assertion. The assertion is made by the whole sentence; and the three terms, subject, predicate, and copula, are each equally necessary to the assertion or judgment. The author is right in making the verb the copula, but not when he makes its essence consist in assertion. The verb, the author says, is the copula, and essentially the copula merely expresses the identity or non-identity of the subject and predicate; but the copula, in a judgment, distinguishes as well as unites the subject and predicate, and the predicate is never identical with the subject; for, if it were, it would be subject and not predicate. When an author attempts to make grammar, logic, and philosophy correspond, he can escape censure only by success. Murray's definition of the verb is sufficient for us and for all the purposes of grammar. As such, it is enough to say a verb is a word that signifies "to be, to do, or to suffer;" but, if you insist on running grammar into logic, and making the verb express the copula of the judgment, we insist that you shall make it represent, as it does philosophically, the creative act, the real copula between being and existence, in which case the predicate is connected by the copula to the subject as its product, as when we say, Two and two make four. The verb, then, while it expresses the union of the predicate with subject, distinguishes it from the subject, as the effect from the cause.

The details of the book are frequently objectionable. The author makes as, when it follows some, such, so, and as, a relative pronoun, and that, in the clause, "The last time that I saw him," a relative pronoun, and in other locutions, exactly similar, a conjunction. As is never a relative pronoun in any correct speaker, but an adverb or conjunction of comparison. We doubt if as ever properly follows same. "It is the same as a denial" is not good English, although sometimes met with; but, if so, the sentence is elliptical. "It is the same as a denial would be." Ordinarily, same requires that, which, or who after it; and where it will not take one or another of these terms, it requires with; for same expresses identity not comparison, and, therefore, can never be properly followed by as. {427} The same as seems to us no better than equal as. So, when it must be followed by a relative pronoun, demands that. "He went as far as the gate" is good English, but neither as is a relative pronoun. The phrase, "Such men as these" is elliptical for, "Such men as these men are," where as is clearly an adverb or conjunction of comparison, and no relative pronoun at all. Wherever as is used as a relative, the phrase or sentence is a vulgarism; as, in the phrase mentioned by Mrs. Trollope, "The lady as takes in washing over the way," though not a Yankee vulgarism.

The second work should, by its title, The Art of Discourse, be a work on logic, not on rhetoric. Discourse is from the Latin discursus, and means reasoning as distinguished from intuition, if taken etymologically, and it is only in a neological sense that it stands for an oration. We see no gain in exchanging the old term rhetoric for that of discourse, which in the sense used is a pure neologism. In the first work, the author to a great extent confuses grammar with rhetoric, and in this second work he confuses rhetoric with logic. The arts of grammar, rhetoric, and logic are undoubtedly three kindred arts, but yet distinguishable by well-defined lines of difference. Grammar treats of words and their formation into sentences; rhetoric, of the arrangement of sentences in an oration, essay, dissertation, or treatise; logic, of the construction, arrangement, and relation of propositions or judgments. Grammar teaches to speak and write correctly; rhetoric, to speak or write pleasingly and persuasively; logic teaches us to reason justly and conclusively. Grammar makes us acquainted with language; rhetoric addresses language to the affections, passions, and sentiments; logic addresses the reason and judgment. Though they must all three unite in forming what Mr. Day would call a perfect discourse, they should be taught separately. Sentences may be correctly formed, and yet the discourse be heavy and dull; the sentences may be rhetorically arranged so as to move the feelings, without instructing or convincing the understanding; but still, in teaching, each art should be kept distinct, and prevented from encroaching on the province of either of the others.

Mr. Day's treatise on rhetoric is not, in our judgment, superior, or, as a whole, equal to that of Campbell or even that of Blair. Yet it is not without value, though better adapted to private study than to colleges and academies. No man can treat the art of rhetoric well who does not understand well the science both of language and of logic. Mr. Day is well aware of this, and attempts to connect the art with the science of which it is the application. This is well and praiseworthy; but, unhappily, he understands the science neither of language nor of logic. He does not understand the relation of the word to thought any more than does Professor Whitney; and no one can understand the science of logic until he has mastered philosophical science, which Mr. Day is very far from having done. The science neither of language nor of logic can be mastered by one who holds Sir William Hamilton was a philosopher, whose pretended philosophy is substantially that of the Positivists. The school Sir William Hamilton founded, and of which Professor Ferrier and Mr. Mansel are distinguished disciples, avowedly maintains that philosophy cannot rise above the sensible, and that the supersensible as well as the superintelligible must be taken, if at all, on the authority of faith or revelation.

Mr. Day belongs to this school, and adopts, to a great extent, its manner of writing English, which is hardly more intelligible to us than Choctaw or the dialects of South Africa. His example, if not his precept, is likely to encourage the distortion, we may say corruption, of plain, simple, and nervous English, which we see coming into fashion with our English as well as Scottish writers. The present race of Englishmen, when treating philosophical or theological subjects, seem to mistake obscurity for depth, and darkness for sublimity. Undeniably Jeffrey is dead. We wish the authors of school-books would show that they know and love our real English tongue, and are aware that simplicity and clearness of style are merits that should be retained.

Short Studies On Great Subjects.
By James Anthony Froude, M.A., late Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford.
Crown 8vo, pp. 534.
New York: Charles Scribner & Co.

Mr. Froude is a very startling instance of the truth of a statement often made during the last few years—and made by men within the Church of England as well by men outside her pale—that the Anglican establishment is rapidly losing all hold upon the most thoughtful and best educated of those who profess to be her subjects. Time, which tries all things, is demonstrating beyond cavil the insufficiency of Anglicanism not only to content the soul but to satisfy the intellect. There are fashions of thought just as there are fashions of dress, and the church which Henry VIII. made to fit as well as he could the prevailing style of mental activity in his day has been getting more and more antiquated ever since, until now it will no more suit the intelligence of the present century than King Harry's hose and doublet would accord with a modern fine gentleman's idea of dress. In the sixteenth century, the mass of men knew very little; and so, when the king's clergy told them to believe this or to believe that, they were ready enough to obey, not because they heard the church as the voice of God, but because it was only the churchmen who had learning enough to know anything about it. Now all this is changed. The relative positions of the Protestant clergy and laity have been reversed. The education of the former is for the most part narrow and superficial. The best class of laymen, on the contrary, receive a broad and liberal schooling; they sound the remotest depths of science, and penetrate recesses of nature to which the clergy, as a general thing, never approach. Taking the average of all the educated classes, the laity know more than the churchmen. The obedience, therefore, which ignorance once paid to learning has vanished. What is there to substitute in its stead? The Anglican establishment claims no direct authority from heaven to teach and direct, or, if she does assert any such prerogative, she asserts it in so loose a manner, claiming and disclaiming in the same breath, that her disciples cannot help feeling themselves at perfect liberty to obey or not as they please.

What is the natural consequence of this state of things? Why, earnest, thinking men are driven away from the English establishment in constantly increasing numbers. In a few years, if matters go on as they are now going, the regular old humdrum Episcopalian or Anglican will be as great a curiosity as the last soldier of the Revolution. Some are taking refuge in ritualism, and trying to supplant their cold and cheerless establishment by a counterfeit Catholicism, which may, and we hope will, lead them ultimately to the one true faith, but which is at present only a pretty sham. Others, and among these is Mr. Froude, rush to the opposite extreme, and profess an extravagant rationalism which is nearly equivalent to no creed at all. Mr. Froude has been regarded as in some sense the champion of the English establishment. He is the admiring chronicler of its infancy, the apologist and biographer of its earliest apostles and prophets, Henry and Elizabeth, Cromwell and Cranmer. He has made the history of its foundation the study of his life, and has told that history in a strain of enthusiasm such as has inspired no other reputable writer. If there is any man from whom we might have expected a vigorous defence of the claims of Anglicanism, a recognition of its right to command our obedience, it is Mr. Froude. Yet he has given us just the reverse of this. His volume is at once a startling indication of the mental unrest which has kept thinking Anglicans disturbed of late years, and a strong protest against the right of the Church of England to seek to quiet that uneasiness by the exercise of ecclesiastical authority or the bold promulgation of clerical dogmas. In his "Plea for the Free Discussion of Theological Difficulties," reprinted in the present volume from Fraser's Magazine, he calls for a reopening of all the fundamental questions of religious belief, a subjection of every article of every creed to the most searching discussion. {429} The clergy, he says in effect, are not to be our instructors in matters of theology. We are quite as competent to judge as they are. Theological truth is not different from any other truth. The Holy Spirit does not guide the Church, and there is no tribunal but public opinion which is competent to decide disputed questions of religious belief. In a word, the great truths of theology are all to be declared open problems, and the world is to be turned into one great debating society for their free discussion.

This is not the place to show the tendency of Mr. Froude's principles, nor to Catholic readers is there much need of showing it. We only refer to them as a remarkable example of a state of feeling which prevails among a large party of the most intellectual members of the Church of England, and what the result of that state of feeling must be it is not difficult to tell.

Of the other essays in this volume we have little to say. The three lectures on "The Times of Erasmus and Luther" are not very pleasant reading for us, but they are counterbalanced by a paper on "The Philosophy of Catholicism," in which the writer pays an eloquent tribute to "the beautiful creed which for 1500 years tuned the heart and formed the mind of the noblest of mankind." His admiration, of course, stops short of its logical term, and is but a coldly intellectual sort of appreciation at best—not that emotional comprehension which must accompany the grace of faith; but, such as it is, we thank him for it.

Life And Letters Of Madame Swetchine.
By Count de Falloux, of the French Academy.
Translated by H. W. Preston,
1 vol. 12mo, pp. 369.
Boston: Roberts Brothers.
New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1867.

It can hardly be necessary to inform our readers who Madame Swetchine was, or what are the claims of her life and career to the interest and attention of the public. A sketch of her remarkable history has been already given in The Catholic World for July, 1865. Her biographer was one of her most intimate friends—a member of the distinguished coterie of French ecclesiastics and laymen with whose aims and aspirations she most deeply sympathized—a witness of her dying hours, and the executor of her last will and testament. He is the Count de Falloux, and that is more than any eulogium we could pronounce on his qualities as a writer. Mr. Alger, under whose auspices this life has been translated and published, has done a great service, and has added no little to the value of the book, in its English dress, by the short preface with which he introduces it to the American public. The following passage shows what has been the intention and the spirit with which he has been animated:

"It may seem strange that a work so eminently Catholic in its quality as this biography should be introduced to a Protestant people by a Protestant translator and Protestant publishers. But, on further consideration, will not this be found especially fit and serviceable? In this country, a traditional antipathy or bigoted repugnance to the Catholic Church prevails in an unjustifiable extreme. Whatever is repulsive in the Catholic dogmas or rule is fastened on with unwarrantable acrimony and exclusiveness. The interests alike of justice and of good feeling demand that the attention of Protestants shall, at least occasionally, be given to the best ingredients and workings of the Catholic system. In the present work, we have the forensic doctrine and authority of Catholicity in the background, its purest inner aims and life in the foreground. We here have a beautiful specimen of the style of character and experience which the most imposing organic Symbol of Christendom tends to produce, and has, in all the ages of its mighty reign, largely produced. If every bigoted disliker of the Roman Catholic Church within the English-speaking race could read this book, and, as a consequence, have his prejudices lessened, his sympathies enlarged, the result, so far from being deprecated, should be warmly welcomed. This is written by one who, while enthusiastically admiring the spiritual wealth of the Catholic Church, the ineffable tenderness and beauty of its moral and religious ministrations, is, as to its dogmatic fabric and secular sway, even more than a Protestant of the Protestants. Finally, this book is especially commended to women as a work of inestimable worth. The character and life of Madame Swetchine, her lonely studies and aspirations, her sublime personal attainments, her philanthropic labors, her literary productions, her sweet social charm and vast influence, her thrice-royal friendships with kings and geniuses and saints, the sober raptures of her religious faith and fruition, form an example whose exciting and edifying interest and value are scarcely surpassed in the annals of her sex."

The translation has been well done, and the typographical execution is unexceptionable. We desire for the book as wide a circulation as possible.

The Catholic Crusoe.
Adventures of Owen Evans, Esq., Surgeon's Mate, set Ashore with Five Companions on a Desolate Island in the Caribbean Sea, 1739.
Given from the original MS.
By Rev. W. H. Anderdon, M.A.
12mo, pp. 344.
London: Burns, Lambert & Gates.
New York: The Catholic Publication Society.

The name of Dr. Anderdon's interesting story is so well indicated by the title that we have only to add that it seems admirably adapted both to amuse and instruct young people, is full of incident, and is written in a pleasant and simple style. A supplement entitled "Don Manuel's Narrative," a marvellous relation purporting to have been picked up at sea, is a second story of a nature similar to the first. We commend the book to parents and teachers as a very acceptable present for lads of a somewhat advanced age.

Aner's Return; or,
The Migrations of a Soul. An Allegorical Tale.
By Alto S. Hoermann, O.S.B.
Translated from the Original German by Innocent A. Bergrath.
12mo, pp. 294. New York: P. O'Shea.

This is an allegory of human life, sin, repentance, and forgiveness, the idea of which seems to have been inspired by Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. The excellence of the author's intentions and the soundness of his theology must plead in excuse for a great many shortcomings, the most serious of which is that the book is not very readable. The ambitious style, we fear, will repel a great many readers from a story which displays considerable ingenuity, and, as we are assured by the translator, has proved very popular in Europe. It is very neatly printed and prettily bound, and will serve well as a holiday present or school premium.

Memoirs And Correspondence Of Madame Récamier.
Translated from the French, and edited by Isaphene M. Luyster.
12mo, pp. 408.
Boston: Roberts Brothers.

We published in an early number of The Catholic World a sketch of the remarkable and brilliant woman whose life forms the subject of this attractive little volume. The French work, from which Miss Luyster's translation is made, appeared in Paris in 1859. It was from the pen of Madame Lenormant, the adopted daughter of Madame Récamier, and niece of her husband. The lady seems, from all accounts, to have performed her task in a rather loose and confused manner, so that Miss Luyster's part has been not only to turn it into readable English, but to prune, condense, and arrange it in readable form; and this we judge she has done in a very satisfactory manner. The correspondence is strangely deficient in Madame Récamier's own letters; but the lack of these is well compensated for by numerous ones from Chateaubriand, Matthieu de Montmorency, and Ballanche, and a few from Madame de Staël, La Harpe Bernadotte, Louis Napoleon, Victor Hugo, and Béranger.

The Galin Method Of Musical Instruction.
By C. H. Farnham.
New York: American News Company. 1867.

Mr. Farnham gives us a very concise comparative view of the common system of musical notation and the new one known as the Galin Method, which has already received so much consideration in Europe, and must soon attract the attention of the musical world in this country. In France, many distinguished musicians have advocated the general adoption of the Galin method, and it is the only one now used at the Polytechnic and superior normal schools in Paris and in the government schools of Russia. It aims at simplifying the system of musical signs, now certainly somewhat complicated, by the substitution of a uniform series of figures for the old staff, with its different clefs and many-shaped notes.

It is claimed that by this method nine persons out of ten can be taught the whole theory of music in a few months, and learn at the same time to sing at sight and to write under dictation, independently of an instrument, music of ordinary difficulty. {431} We have very little doubt that this system possesses immense advantages over the old one for learning the theory of music and for the execution of a vocal score. But we are not quite sure that a page of instrumental music written according to the Galin method would be any less difficult to read than one written in the old style. We have already simplified matters a good deal by the abandonment of several of the clefs formerly in use, and we do not see why a still further reformation might not be made. We had the pleasure of assisting at one of Mr. Farnham's classes, given in this city, and can testify to the remarkable facility of reading and writing music according to this method, as exhibited by his pupils. Our musical readers will not fail to find much to interest them in a perusal of this essay.

St. Ignatius And The Society Of Jesus:
Their Influence on Civilization and Christianity.
A Sermon delivered in the Church of the Immaculate Conception, in Boston, on Sunday, August 4th, 1867. By Rev. G. F. Haskins, Rector of the Home of the Angel Guardian.
Boston: Bernard Carr, Printer, 5 Chatham Row. 1867.

Father Haskins is one of our most eloquent preachers and most graphic writers, although he seldom favors us with any published productions. His eloquence is that eloquence of realities which flies off like a glowing stream of sparks from the energetic action of a soul on fire with zeal, incessantly occupied in practical works of charity. The sermon before us is a panegyric pronounced in the church of the Jesuits in Boston, on the occasion of the celebration of the feast of St. Ignatius. It recounts in a succinct but forcible and thorough manner the services rendered to religion and humanity by the Society of Jesus. Although the language is glowing and the eulogium of the highest kind, yet, in point of fact, Father Haskins has not exaggerated the reality. History bears out all that he so warmly claims for this great religious order, which has equalled in its history the greatest orders of past ages, while far surpassing all others in modern times. The hatred and calumny which the Jesuits have encountered on the part of anti-Catholics were never more gratuitous and undeserved. The whole sum of the accusations which Catholic writers have been able to bring against them merely show that some portions of the society have at times degenerated from its true spirit; that individuals have erred in doctrine, or committed faults in administration; that a mistaken policy has sometimes been adopted; and that the order has not, any more than the other great orders, transcended that limited though elevated sphere to which every order is confined by the law of its being. The Jesuits were constituted as one of the corps d'élite of the church militant. As such they have rendered the most signal services, which will ever cover their names with imperishable glory; and we ascribe their success, in subordination to the grace of God and the unfailing vigor of the Catholic Church whose offspring they are, to the genius elevated by sanctity of their founder, and the admirable constitutions which he bequeathed to the institute.

Meditations Of St. Thomas, etc.
For a Retreat of Ten Days.
Followed by a Treatise on the Virtues, etc.
By Father Massoulie, O.P.
Translated from the French.
London: Richardson.
New York: The Catholic Publication Society.

These Meditations have been taken, as to their substance, from the writings of St. Thomas, but arranged and supplemented by the learned Dominican whose name is given in the title. Their great advantage lies in the fact that they embody the doctrine of one who was not only the most consummate theologian the world has ever seen, but also a contemplative saint of the highest order. This gives one who wishes to use them for his own profit a secure warrant that they will furnish his mind and heart with the most choice as well as wholesome nutriment they can possibly feed upon. The works of saints are always to be preferred to all others. {432} We recommend, therefore, this work, derived from the writings of a most illustrious saint, to all; especially to thoughtful and educated men who can relish, and who, therefore, desire and need, the most solid spiritual food to promote the growth of intelligent, solid piety and virtue in their souls.

The Heiress Of Killorgan;
or, Evenings With The Old Geraldines.
By Mrs. J. Sadlier.
New York; D. & J. Sadlier & Co.

The author of this very interesting novel has given to our literature a great number of works of various kinds, intended not only for our amusement but for our instruction; and the present volume is perhaps the very best specimen of her productions, combining, as it does, the interest of a romance with many genuine historical and personal reminiscences of the celebrated Anglo-Norman family of Fitzgerald, with which is associated so much of the history of Ireland from the English invasion until the present time. It cannot be said that there is any plot in the tale, being a simple narration of the incidents occurring in the household of a refined family reduced in fortune, but still retaining its native dignity and pride of ancestry; but the characters, though few, are clearly, gracefully, and vividly drawn. The heiress of the decayed house of Killorgan is admirably sketched with a pencil which aims less at personal description than at those delicate lines of thought and feeling which, after all, give us the truest idea of the excellence of the female character. The greatest merit, however, of the work rests in its historical descriptions, which, being taken from the best authorities, are thoroughly reliable and presented in a very attractive and concise form.

Affixes In Their Origin And Application.
Exhibiting the Etymological Structure of English Words.
By S. S. Haldeman, A.M.
Philadelphia: Butler & Co. 1865. 12mo, pp. 271.

Professor Haldeman has few if any superiors in the science of language, and he has also the modesty that always accompanies real merit. He pretends to no more knowledge than he really has, and he never undertakes to explain what in the present state of linguistic science is not explicable. His chief fault is his fear of saying on any point more than is necessary, which leaves him in his brevity sometimes obscure. We should find his work more easily understood if he allowed himself to enlarge a little more on the independent meaning of the prefixes and suffixes to English words. But perhaps he is full enough for others.

The importance of affixes in the construction of English words may be gathered from the fact that there are in English only about three thousand two hundred monosyllables, and that many of these even are not primitives, but have a prefix, a suffix, or both. It is evident that affixes must be concerned in the formation of by far the greatest part of the English vocabulary, and that an accurate knowledge of English words is to be obtained only "through a distinct appreciation of the modes used to vary them according to the exigencies of thought and speech." This appreciation in the case of our mother tongue becomes the more difficult because it is a composite tongue, and, unlike the Greek and Welsh, for instance, has not its chief etymological materials in itself, and its words cannot in general be analyzed independently of other languages. To have a scientific knowledge of our language we must know the languages from which its words are derived, and the derivation, meaning, and use of their affixes in those languages as well as in our own. Professor Haldeman has in this small but compact volume attempted to give us the derivation, meaning, and use of all the affixes, divided into prefixes and suffixes, in the English language, from whatever language taken, and he has done it in as satisfactory a manner as possible in the present state of comparative philology. No English scholar should fail to obtain and master it, if he wishes really to understand his own language.

The Catholic World.

Vol. Vi., No. 34.—January, 1868.

The Catholic Doctrine Of Justification.

The remarks we are about to make in this article grow out of the discussion of the philosophy of conversion between this magazine and the New-Englander. Nevertheless, those who expect a continuation of personal controversy on the topics suggested in our last article, and a formal rejoinder to the respected writer in the New-Englander who replied to it, will be disappointed. Our views on the subject matter of discussion were expressed, as we think, clearly enough to be understood, and as fully as our purpose required. We leave them, therefore, to the judgment of those of our readers who are really in earnest, that they may give them whatever weight their intrinsic value may demand in the court of conscience; and as for the opinion of others, we care nothing. Controversy upon minor topics and side issues is of its very nature interminable, as well as of little comparative utility. The controversy between the Catholic Church and Protestants on the great, fundamental principles and doctrines at issue, has been so ably and thoroughly argued out that there is little left to be done in that department of theology. For those who desire information, there are plenty of books to be had treating of every topic in a much more satisfactory manner than it is possible to treat them in the short compass of magazine articles. The great controversy of the day, in our opinion, and the one which interests us most deeply, is the one which is waging between Christianity and infidelity, in its various phases of rationalism, scepticism, and atheism. So far as Protestants of the more orthodox schools are concerned, the aspect of the question we feel most disposed to present to them is that which Guizot and others of their own number have seen with more or less distinctness—namely, that in the great conflict of the age their real interest is at stake in the success of the Catholic side; that, as Christians, they belong to us, and ought to make with us common cause against the enemy. That method of removing the difficulty in the way of their doing so which recommends itself to our judgment and feelings is one which brings into strong relief the grand, fundamental principles of Christianity in which we agree; and with these principles as a point of departure, endeavors to explain and develop the complete Catholic system in such a way as to remove misunderstandings and to show how the several, particular portions of revealed truth, held by our various bodies of separated brethren in a fragmentary state, are integrated in a grand, universal whole in this Catholic system. {434} In this line, as we conceive it, lie the richest and least worked-out fields, where new writers may enter in and follow up the labors of their predecessors. One special need, moreover, is to clothe thought in a language which is familiar to the persons we are addressing, and to translate or explain in their own idiom what may be strange or unintelligible in the forms of other ages, countries, and schools of philosophy and theology. What little the writer of this article is able to do he prefers to do in this line, and thinks it best to restrict himself to single and specific topics in the short essays which are the only suitable ones for a magazine. We have no wish to abjure general controversy in the abstract, or to lay down a rule of conduct in this matter for others. Nor would we seem to slight or treat with indifference what may be written on the other side. We desire to give due attention to all that candid and courteous opponents may have to say, and to keep it in view when we are arguing our own cause. It suits better, however, with the time and strength we have at our command, and our other avocations, to keep ourselves free from the obligations of formal controversy, and to be at liberty to take up such single topics as may be opportune according to circumstances. At present, we propose to touch a little more at length upon the topic of justification, one of those we have before now briefly remarked upon, dropping altogether the attitude and style of personal controversy.

The real objection against the Catholic doctrine of justification by fides formata, or faith informed by charity, as well as the reason for insisting that faith alone justifies, exclusively of the charity which accompanies it, is grounded in a notion that the former doctrine subverts the gratuitous character of salvation by the grace of God through the merits of Jesus Christ. We propose, therefore, to make a brief exposition of the Catholic doctrine, with a view of showing what it really teaches respecting the gratuitousness of grace, and the work of Christ as the meritorious cause of its being conferred.

Catholic theology teaches, what even sound philosophy demonstrates, that all created existence proceeds from a gratuitous act of the Creator. But it teaches, moreover, against the Pelagians, that the original state of supernatural justice and sanctity in which the angels and Adam were constituted was an additional gratuitous boon, or grace conferred by God. It is evident, then, that the Catholic doctrine excludes the possibility of holding that the first principle of the beatification and glorification of a creature is in the nature of the creature itself. This principle, as supernatural, is not due to nature, cannot be merited by any acts proceeding from the principles of nature, and must therefore be a pure, gratuitous grace. That is, the creature is justified by grace, and owes the capacity of attaining beatitude, consequently beatitude itself when attained, radically to a pure act of the divine goodness. It is plain, therefore, that the angels and Adam could not have merited their own justification. They were obliged either to receive it passively, or to accept it, as Billuart holds, by an active concurrence with grace. {435} The grace being given, constituting its subjects in the state of justice and sanctity, what was it? It was not a mere forensic and exterior modification of their relation to God, but an interior, sanctifying grace, making them subjectively, holy, like to God, affiliated to him, united to him in an inchoate union whose final term is beatitude. It is evident that this sanctifying grace, which in act was the love of God, made them fit and worthy to be the friends of God, and to be admitted to the fellowship of his glory. It is also certain that they were placed in probation. What was that probation? Was it not a trial of obedience, in which certain definite acts of free-will were prescribed as the conditions of being confirmed in grace and consummated in glory? Eternal life was therefore proposed to them as the reward of good works, as a premium of voluntary obedience, and as such is actually possessed by the holy angels in heaven. It is, therefore, true that the angels were justified by grace, justified by charity, justified by good works; that their salvation proceeds from the pure goodness of God, and has been obtained by their own good acts: nor is there the least contradiction in any of these statements.

There being no intrinsic, necessary contradiction between the two propositions, the creature is justified and beatified by the gratuitous grace of God; and, the creature is justified and beatified by his personal sanctity—there is no necessary logical deduction derivable from the premise that man in his present state is justified by gratuitous grace to the conclusion that he is not justified by his intrinsic sanctity. The redemption has repaired the fall, has restored the human race to the condition from which it fell by the sin of Adam. There is no reason, therefore, why man should not be justified now, in essentially the same manner as before; no reason why the order of grace, repaired by redemption, should not follow the same essential laws as before the fall. If a change has taken place, it must be proved that it is so. If this change was required by the fact that the restoration of man is due to the merits of Christ, the reason of it must be shown. It must be shown that the recovery of justification through the merits of Christ is incompatible with justification by intrinsic sanctity and glorification as the reward of good works done from the principle of charity. If this cannot be shown, no argument can be derived from the doctrine that the work of Christ is the meritorious cause of the justification of fallen man to prove that the formal cause of his justification is any other than the formal cause of the justification of the angels and of man in his original state.

The Catholic doctrine teaches that the sacrifice of himself which Jesus Christ offered up on the cross is the meritorious cause of justification through the expiation which it made of original and actual sin, and the new title which it obtained to the lost inheritance of everlasting life. This includes in itself the grant of all those graces which are necessary in order to the remission of sins, the sanctification of the soul, and its complete preparation for the state of beatitude and glory. Consequently, all Catholic theologians teach that the initial movement of the sinner to return to God, the faith which disposes him for justification, the sanctifying grace which makes him really just and the friend of God, the actual graces which enable him to perform salutary acts, the special aid which enables him to persevere, all proceed from the grace of God, which is gratuitous in reference to the original provision of a plan of redemption, gratuitous toward each individual who receives it so far as he is personally concerned, and due as a reward, under the title of justice, solely to Jesus Christ himself on account of his own personal merits. {436} It is, therefore, through the merits of Christ that a sinner receives the grace which justifies and sanctifies him in the first instance. Through the same merits he receives the remission of his sins, if he falls into any afterward. Through the same merits he receives all the actual graces which he obtains by prayer. And, finally, it is through the same merits that the kingdom of heaven has been prepared for him, as the ultimate term to which he is permitted to aspire. The effect of the merits of the death of Christ upon the cross is therefore to put fallen man back again, essentially, where he was before the trial in Paradise, and where the angels were when they were created. It does not affect the case at all whether the angels and Adam were placed in that state in view of the Incarnation, or by the mere goodness of God, without any reference to the Incarnation. If they were created and elevated to the divine filiation, intuitu Christi, they received a boon motived upon the extrinsic glory which God would receive from his deific humanity. If not, they received the same boon motived upon the glory which God would receive from their elevation to beatitude. The boon was equally gratuitous in either case, for the decree of the Incarnation, whether included in the decree of creation or in that of redemption—whether antecedent or subsequent to the foresight of redemption—was perfectly gratuitous. Nay, more: because it was gratuitous it was fitting and just that God should condition it with any terms that were possible and reasonable. He did actually condition it upon obedience to certain precepts, unknown to us as regards the angels, but known as regards Adam. The original grace conceded to them, therefore, merely placed them in a condition to obtain everlasting beatitude by corresponding to this grace with their free, voluntary acts, or by fidelity to the obligations of their probation. They were justified, that is, placed in the state of justification, by the act of God which gave them sanctifying grace. They were constituted just in act by this personal quality of sanctifying grace, which made them fit and worthy to be the sons of God; and they were commanded to retain the state of justice, to augment it, and to obtain confirmation in it, with the consummation of it in glory, as a premium of obedience to the divine precepts. The holy angels are now in heaven actually the object of the divine love of complacency on account of their inherent sanctity and in proportion to the degree of it which each one possesses. They enjoy heaven as a reward gained by the right exercise of their free-will; and yet, it is no less true that their state of glory is due to the gratuitous grace of God, nor is there any contradiction in supposing that the grace was given to them intuitu Christi.

The fact that man is now placed under an order of grace, based on the merits of Christ, cannot therefore be shown to be incompatible with the position that he is also placed in a state of probation essentially similar to that of angels and of Adam. He may be constituted just by sanctifying grace, as well as they; obliged, as well as they, to remain just, and to attain perpetual justice and its complement of glory by the right exercise of his free-will in producing acts which proceed from the principle of sanctity within him.

The Catholic doctrine teaches that man is actually placed in this state of probation under the law of grace established in Christ. This probation implies that the initial, inchoate principle of the divine everlasting life to which he is destined should be implanted within him, as the centre of the supernatural force giving him a movement toward his prefixed end. It implies, also, that a series of acts impelling him forward should proceed from this principle by the effort of his free-will. This principle can be nothing else than sanctifying grace, and sanctifying grace, in its essence, can be nothing else than the love of God. Love is the only principle capable of uniting the soul with God. Faith alone cannot do it. It is further evident that faith cannot be the essential principle which makes the soul just, for two reasons: First. That infants are capable of justification, which, we suppose, no one will deny, but are not capable of an act of faith. Second. That faith is a temporary virtue, ceasing in the beatified state, whereas the principle of justification is permanent and eternal.

Moreover, the sphere of probation is necessarily identical with the sphere of free-will, and the sphere of free-will is coextensive with all the precepts which God has given as the matter for free-will to exercise its choice upon, by selecting the good and rejecting the evil. The acts which must proceed from the principle of love, in order to bring the soul to God as its ultimate term, must, therefore, cover the whole ground of the divine law, and include the fulfilment of all its commandments. It is impossible, therefore, that faith alone should justify, unless probation, free-will, and the law of God are strictly confined to the sphere of faith. No one will pretend that they are. If they are not, it is impossible that a mere habit of faith, or the mere exercise of faith in act, should alone constitute a man just before God. God is not bound to place a creature on probation. He can justify, sanctify, and glorify him immediately, without leaving him any liberty of choice between good and evil. But he cannot elevate him to the high state of personal union and friendship with himself without giving him that love which fixes the will immovably in God as the supreme good, and includes in itself all virtue and sanctity. Union between the soul and God requires likeness. The soul must be made like to God in order that it may love God, and that God may love the soul. Although, therefore, God is not bound to place a creature on probation—that is, to require of him the particular exercise of love which consists in a voluntary obedience to certain precepts—yet he cannot dispense with love itself, which is the sole and indispensable requisite to a state of perfect justification; and although he is not bound to place a creature in a state of probation, yet if he does so, he cannot dispense with those acts of love which are suitable to such a state. The very notion of a state of probation requires that certain precepts should be given to a rational creature, who is free to keep them or violate them as he may choose, and who is to receive the favor of God during his probation and an eternal reward at the end of it if he keeps them, forfeiting both if he fails to do so. On any other supposition, the state of probation is entirely illusory and unreal. The attributes of God require him to carry out the terms of the probation to which he has subjected man. {438} When he imposes precepts, he must from his very nature withdraw his friendship from the transgressor. He may still regard him with the love of benevolence, and offer him forgiveness; but he cannot actually forgive him and look upon him again with the love of complacency until he has regained his lost sanctity and returned to the love of God. Sin of its own nature turns the soul away from God as its supreme good to some created object. It is, therefore, a contradiction in terms to say that a man can be in the state of sin and the state of justification at the same time; for it is equivalent to saying that he can at the same instant be turned toward God as his supreme good, and away from him. Love is therefore the conditio sine quâ non, at least, of justification. Faith alone cannot, therefore, formally justify. If it did, there would be no need of love in order to constitute a man just before God. A man might be completely justified while in the very act of the most grievous sin, as, for instance, blasphemy, murder, or suicide, and might die without having changed his will to commit those sins, yet pass immediately to heaven. These sins are not incompatible with faith, though they are with charity. If they are incompatible with faith, all mortal sins—that is, all those which, in the strict and proper sense, alienate the soul from God, and destroy charity—must be incompatible with faith. Why is this? Does faith, of its own nature, produce charity? If it does, it must contain within itself the radical principle of charity, and while it exists in the soul it must exclude all sins which are directly contrary to charity and incompatible with it. Then, one who has faith cannot commit a mortal sin. If faith is inamissible, and a man once justified can no more lose his justification, then, as soon as one has obtained faith, he has obtained also exemption from all mortal sins for the future. If faith is not inamissible, then every sin against charity, or every mortal sin, destroys faith and justification. Such a definition of faith, however, including love and sanctifying grace, makes faith to be the fides formata of Catholic theology.

If it is said that faith does not, of itself, produce charity, yet is always accompanied by charity, it must be, then, that faith gives one a title to sanctifying grace and charity, so that, whoever makes an act of faith, receives an additional gift which makes him holy. In that case, every one who was once justified would be exempt from mortal sin while his faith lasts. If the first act of faith justifies once for all, then the believer can never again commit a mortal sin. If it justifies only for the time being, then while it lasts it preserves the soul from sin, and whoever sins proves that he has already lost faith. This is contrary to reason and experience. It is certain that men who have had faith and grace have afterwards sinned mortally. Therefore, faith does not, by its first act, bring with it an inamissible gift of charity. It is also certain that men do not always lose faith when they sin, or sin against faith first before they sin against charity. Many a man who believes firmly in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the Saviour of men, and who hopes for salvation through his merits, commits mortal sin, and even lives for years in the habitual state of sin. It may be said that such persons have no saving faith, never did have it, or have lost it. But what is saving faith? What is the differentia of that faith which really justifies? {439} It is evident enough that a certain kind of habitual belief in Jesus Christ and his doctrines, accompanied by a desire and hope of being saved through his merits and mercy, does frequently exist in persons who are living in habitual sin. If this is not genuine faith, or saving faith, there must be in saving faith some additional quality which distinguishes it from that faith which produces no fruits of sanctity. Is it made saving by its quality of supernaturalness, or as proceeding from the grace of the Holy Spirit? This is the same as saying that supernatural faith, as such, or because it is a grace of the Holy Spirit, necessarily brings with it sanctification. This is not so. The Holy Spirit may and does give men a firm belief in revealed truths, and a hope of obtaining mercy from God through Christ before they are actually forgiven and justified. This remains in them, often, after they have lost sanctifying grace by sin, as a disposition which facilitates their return to God. It does not, however, per se, produce the fruits of sanctity, or implant the principle of love, from which these fruits proceed, which is the very principle of union with God, and, therefore, the formal cause of justification. That quality which faith must have, in order to render it justifying faith, cannot be, therefore, anything else but charity, or the love of God, which makes it fides formata.

We are convinced that a great number of Protestants substantially hold the doctrines we have laid down. They believe that man has free-will; is bound to believe and obey the doctrine and precepts of Jesus Christ; is made the friend of God by sanctifying grace brought into the active exercise of Christian virtue by his own voluntary cooperation; is placed here to work out his own salvation; will receive heaven as a reward if he serves God faithfully, and will be damned if he lives in sin. Even those who hold the Calvinistic tradition either modify its tenets or hold more sound and rational opinions in juxtaposition with them, which really control their sentiments and conduct. It would be easy to show this by a multitude of citations. So far as metaphysical opinions and technical statements are concerned, we judge every work and every formula of doctrine by its obvious, objective sense, and accept every individual writer's statements respecting his own opinions. But in regard to the real, genuine ideas which form the true intellectual and spiritual life of men, we take the liberty of judging them more by the language they use in common life, by their indirect statements, and by the general spirit and scope of what they say and write, when not immediately intent upon stating their technical formulas, than from their technical formulas themselves. We have heard it said of the illustrious President Dwight that his real sentiments and conduct toward his fellow-men indicated a belief in the goodness of all men, whereas he held theoretically that all men were totally depraved. We have no doubt that President Edwards always acted on the belief that his children possessed the self-determining power of the will, against which he wrote so acutely, or that Bishop Berkeley was persuaded of the reality of the external world. Therefore, we still think that a large number of non-Catholics are more Catholic in their belief than they are aware, and that their rejection of what they suppose to be Catholic doctrine is frequently only a rejection of opinions attributed by mistake to the Catholic Church. {440} In regard to this special question of justification, it is our opinion that the objection prevalent among the more orthodox Protestants is based on the supposition that the Catholic doctrine ascribes a justifying and saving efficacy to a mere intellectual submission to church-authority, and a mere external compliance with its precepts, without reference to the interior disposition of the soul toward God, or recognition of the merits of Christ as the source of all the supernatural excellence and value of good works. It is believed that the Catholic substitutes the merits of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the merits of the saints, and his own merits, as an independent ground of justification, in lieu of the merits of Christ. Also, that merit is ascribed to mere external works, such as fasting, hearing mass, and performing ceremonial rites or penitential labors, on account of the mere physical nature and extent of the works done, without reference to the motive from which they proceed. The vague and timorous pastoral of the late Synod of Lambeth is explicit and bold only on this one point, of condemning the substitution of the Virgin Mary as a mediator in the place of Christ. For this reason, we think that the simple statement of the genuine Catholic doctrine is the surest way to remove objections against it, and that most of these objections fall away of themselves as soon as the misapprehensions of the doctrine are removed. This is no private fancy of our own, but the judgment of some of the ablest theologians of the world, Protestant as well as Catholic. Leibnitz, the greatest philosopher among Protestants, found nothing to object to in the doctrines of the Council of Trent respecting justification. Dr. Pusey, one of the most learned men of the age in scriptural and patristic theology, has publicly expressed his adhesion to the same doctrine. It is easy to ridicule that movement in the Anglican church, of which he is the head; but it would be much more sensible for those who do it to study his elaborate and profound writings, and much more difficult to refute them. Protestantism has produced nothing, at least in the English language, which can approach the great works of the High-Church divines of England. These works contain the elements of all the theology of Catholic doctrine respecting the justification of man, in the ascetical, spiritual, and sacramental aspects of the question. All the life of Protestantism in England is centred in the Catholicizing movement. On the continent, that orthodox Protestantism which is derived from Luther and Calvin is a nullity. The real issue of the world, as we have repeatedly said, is about the fundamental principles of Christianity. The question between Catholics and those Protestants who hold with us these fundamental principles is not, as many of them suppose, respecting the first principles of the doctrine of Christ, but respecting the deductions to be derived from them and their due development. That God is revealed in Jesus Christ, as our sovereign teacher, our sovereign Lord, our sovereign redeemer and mediator, the sovereign author of our spiritual and everlasting life; that we are bound to render him the absolute homage of our faith and our obedience, is admitted by all. The only question is, by what method or means can we ascertain with certainty the exact and complete sense of the doctrine he has commanded us to believe and the law he has commanded us to keep. This is a question to be decided by evidence. The sooner the prohibentia in the way of examining carefully and candidly this evidence are removed the better. This is the only point we have been aiming at—the only result we desire to reach. {441} We have endeavored to remove some of the obstacles in the way of a fair hearing of the claims of the Catholic Church, arising from à priori conceptions of her doctrine, which are thought to authorize a foregone conclusion against them. We have also presented some of the reasons specially urgent at present, why the basis for unity which the Catholic Church offers should be carefully and studiously considered by all those who desire the union and welfare of Christendom, its victory over every form of anti-Christianity, and its universal extension in the world. The fides formata, or faith working by love, which we have set forth as the vital principle of spiritual life in the individual, must also be the principle of unity in the Christian society. Whoever has faith implicitly believes all those revealed doctrines which, without his own fault, he does not explicitly know to be revealed. Whoever has love has the principle of obedience to those laws whose existence he does not know. Therefore, we say that whoever has fides formata is justified, and, of course, spiritually united to the true church. But whoever remains culpably in error respecting essential doctrines and precepts, or refuses to believe and obey what is fairly presented to him as the revealed truth and will of Jesus Christ, cannot have fides formata. It is evident, therefore, that we are all bound to strive after as great a certitude as possible respecting the important question at issue between the Catholic Church and Protestants.

Translated From The French.

The Story Of A Conscript.

VI.

The mairie of Phalsbourg, that Thursday morning, January 15th, 1813, during the drawing for the conscription, was a sight to be seen. To-day it is bad enough to be drawn, to be forced to leave parents, friends, home, one's goods and one's fields, to go and learn—God knows where "One! two! one! two! halt! eyes left! eyes right! front! carry arms!" etc. etc. Yes, this is all bad enough, but there is a chance of returning. One can say, with something like confidence: "In seven years I will see my old nest again, and my parents, and perhaps my sweetheart. I shall have seen the world, and will perhaps have some title to be appointed forester or gend'arme." This is a comfort for reasonable people. But then, if you had the ill-luck to lose in the lottery, there was an end of you; often not one in a hundred returned. The idea that you were only going for a time never entered your head.

The enrolled of Harberg, of Garbourg, and of Quatre-Vents were to draw first; then those of the city, and lastly those of Wéehem and Mittlebronn.

I was up early in the morning, and with my elbows on the work-bench I watched the people pass by; young men in blouses, poor old men in cotton caps and short vests; old women in jackets and woolen skirts, bent almost double, with staff or umbrella under their arms. They arrived by families. Monsieur the Sous-Préfet of Larrebourg, with his silver collar, and his secretary, had stopped the day before at the "Red Ox," and they were also looking out of the window. Toward eight o'clock, Monsieur Goulden began work, after breakfasting. I ate nothing, but stared and stared until Monsieur the Mayor, Parmentier and his coadjutor, came for Monsieur the Sous-Préfet.

The drawing began at nine, and soon we heard the clarionet of Pfifer-Karl and the violin of great Andrès resounding through the streets. They were playing the "March of the Swedes," an air to which thousands of poor wretches had left old Alsace for ever. The conscripts danced, linked arms, shouted until their voices seemed to pierce the clouds, stamped on the ground, waved their hats, trying to seem joyful while death was at their hearts. Well, it was the fashion; and big Andrès, withered, stiff, and yellow as boxwood, and his short chubby comrade, with cheeks extended to their utmost tension, seemed like people who would lead you to the churchyard all the while chatting indifferently.

I had just put on my swallow-tailed coat and my beaver hat to go out, when Aunt Grédel and Catharine entered, saying:

Then I saw how Catharine had been crying. Her eyes were red, and she threw her arms around my neck, while her mother turned to me.

"Yes, Monsieur Goulden," answered Catharine, in a choking voice; "they have finished Harberg."

"Then it is time for you to go, Joseph," said he; "but do not grieve; do not be frightened. These drawings, you know, are only a matter of form. For a long while past none can escape; or if they escape one drawing, they are caught a year or two after. All the numbers are bad. When the council of exemption meets, we will see what is best to be done. To-day it is merely a sort of satisfaction they give people to draw in the lottery; but every one loses."

Then I sallied forth with Catharine and Aunt Grédel, and we went to the town place, where the crowd was. In all the shops, dozens of conscripts, purchasing ribbons, thronged around the counters, weeping and singing as if possessed. Others in the inns embraced, sobbing; but still they sang. Two or three musicians of the neighborhood—the Gipsy Walteufel, Rosselkasten, and George Adam—had arrived, and their pieces thundered in terrible and heart-rending strains.

Opposite the guard-house I saw the peddler Pinacle affar off, his pack opened on a little table, and beside it a long pole decked with ribbons which he was selling to the conscripts.

"Ha! Cripple! Halt! Come here; I have a fine ribbon for you; you must have a magnificent one—one to draw a prize by."

He waved a long black ribbon above his head, and I grew pale despite myself. But as we ascended the steps of the mairie, a conscript was just descending; it was Klipfel, the smith of the French gate; he had drawn number eight, and shouted:

His face was gloomy, but he laughed. His little brother Jean was crying behind him, and said:

I was better satisfied to see the black ribbon on his hat than on mine, and I slipped quickly through the crowd to avoid Pinacle.

We had great difficulty in getting into the mairie and in climbing the old oak stairs, where people where going up and down in swarms. In the great hall above, the gendarme Kelz walked about, maintaining order as well as he could, and in the council-chamber at the side, where there is a painting of Justice with her eyes blindfolded, we heard them calling off the numbers. From time to time a conscript came put with flushed face, fastening his number on his cap and passing with bowed head through the crowd, like a furious bull who cannot see clearly and who would seem to wish to break his horns against the walls. Others, on the contrary, passed pale as death. The windows of the mairie were open, and without were heard six or seven pieces playing together. It was horrible.

I pressed Catharine's hand, and we passed slowly through the crowd to the hall where Monsieur the Sous-Préfet, the Mayors, and the Secretaries were seated on their tribune, calling the numbers aloud as if pronouncing sentence of death in a court of justice; for all those numbers were really sentences of death.

It seemed as if there was no longer a drop of blood in my veins, when at last my name was called.

I advanced, seeing and hearing nothing; I put my hand in the box and drew a number.

Then I departed without speaking, Catharine and her mother behind me. We went out into the place, and, the air reviving me, I remembered that I had drawn number seventeen.

"And I put something into your pocket, too," said she; "but that rascal of a Pinacle gave you ill luck."

At the same time she drew from my coat-pocket the end of a cord. Great drops of sweat rolled down my forehead; Catharine was white as marble, and so we returned to Monsieur Goulden's.

"One is as good as another. All will go; the skeletons must be filled. But it don't matter for Joseph. I will go and see Monsieur the Mayor and Monsieur the Commandant. It will be telling no lie to say that Joseph is lame; all the town knows that; but among so many they may overlook him. That is why I go, so rest easy; do not be anxious."

These words of good Monsieur Goulden reassured Aunt Grédel and Catharine, who returned to Quatre-Vents full of hope; but they did not affect me, for from that moment I had not a moment of rest day or night.

The emperor had a good custom: he did not allow the conscripts to languish at home. Soon as the drawing was complete, the council of revision met, and a few days after came the orders to march. He did not do like those tooth-pullers who first show you their pincers and hooks and gaze for an hour into your mouth, so that you feel half dead before they make up their minds to begin work: he proceeded without loss of time.

A week after the drawing, the council of revision sat at the town hall, with all the mayors and a few notables of the country to give advice in case of need.

The day before Monsieur Goulden had put on his brown great-coat and his best wig to go to wind up Monsieur the Mayor's clock and that of the Commandant. He returned laughing and said:

"All goes well, Joseph. Monsieur the Mayor and Monsieur the Commandant know that you are lame; that is easy enough to be seen. They replied at once, Eh, Monsieur Goulden, the young man is lame; why speak of him? Do not be uneasy; we do not want the infirm; we want soldiers."

These words poured balm on my wounds, and that night I slept like one of the blessed. But the next day fear again assailed me; I remembered suddenly how many men full of defects had gone all the same, and how many others invented defects to deceive the council; for instance, swallowing injurious substances to make them pale; tying up their legs to give themselves swollen veins; or playing deaf, blind, or foolish. I had heard that vinegar would make one sick, and, without telling Monsieur Goulden, in my fear I swallowed all the vinegar in his bottle. Then I dressed myself, thinking that I looked like a dead man, for the vinegar was very strong; but when I entered Monsieur Goulden's room, he cried out:

And, looking at myself in the mirror, I saw that my face was red to my ears and to the very tip of my nose. I was frightened, but instead of growing pale I became redder yet, and I cried out in my distress:

"Now I am lost indeed! I will seem like a man without a single defect, and full of health. The vinegar is rushing to my head."

"That in your bottle. I drank it to make myself pale, as they say Mademoiselle Selapp, the organist, does. O Heavens! what a fool I was."

"That does not prevent your being lame," said Monsieur Goulden; "but you tried to deceive the council, which was dishonest. But it is half-past nine, and Werner is come to tell me you must be there at ten o'clock. So, hurry."

I had to go in that state; the heat of the vinegar seemed bursting from my cheeks, and when I met Catharine and her mother, who were waiting for me at the mairie, they scarcely knew me.

I would have fainted on hearing this if the vinegar had not sustained me in spite of myself. I went upstairs in terrible agony, without being able to move my tongue to reply, so great was the horror I felt at my folly.

Above, more than twenty-five conscripts who pretended to be infirm, had been examined and received, while twenty-five others, on a bench along the wall, sat with drooping heads awaiting their turn.

The old gendarme, Kelz, with his huge cocked hat, was walking about, and as soon as he saw me exclaimed: "At last! At last! Here is one, at all events, who will not be sorry to go; the love of glory is shining in his eyes. Very good, Joseph; I predict that at the end of the campaign you will be corporal."

"Lame!" repeated Kelz, winking and smiling; "lame! No matter. With such health as yours you can always hold your own."

He had scarcely ceased speaking when the door of the hall of the Council of Revision opened, and the other gendarme, Werner, putting out his head, called, "Joseph Bertha."

I entered, limping as much as I could, and Werner shut the door. The mayors of the canton were seated in a semi-circle, Monsieur the Sous-Préfet and the Mayor of Phalsbourg in the middle, in arm-chairs, and the Secretary Frélig at his table. A Harberg conscript was dressing himself, the gendarme Descarmes helping him. This conscript, with a mass of brown hair falling over his eyes, his neck bare, and his mouth open as he caught his breath, seemed like a man going to be hanged. Two surgeons—the Surgeon-in-Chief of the Hospital, with another in uniform—were conversing in the middle of the hall. They turned to me, saying, "Take off your coat."

The surgeons examined me, and the one from the hospital, to whom Monsieur the Commandant had doubtless spoken of me, said: "The left leg is a little short." "Bah!" said the other; "it is sound."

Then I, seeing that they would pass me if I remained silent, replied: "I have drank vinegar." "Ah!" said he; "that proves you have a good stomach; you like vinegar."

"Bah! don't grieve at that," he answered; "your leg is sound. I'll answer for it."

"But that," said Monsieur the Mayor, "does not prevent his being lame from birth; all Phalsbourg knows that."

"The leg is too short," said the surgeon from the hospital; "it is doubtless a case for exemption."

"Yes," said the Mayor; "I am sure that this young man could not endure a long march; he would drop on the road the second mile."

I thought myself saved, when Monsieur the Sous-Préfet asked: "You are really Joseph Bertha?"

He began to read the letter, which stated that, six months before, I had bet that I could go to Laverne and back quicker than Pinacle; that we had run the race, and I had won.

It was unhappily too true. The villain Pinacle had always taunted me with being a cripple, and in my anger I laid the wager. Every one knew of it. I could not deny it.

"That settles the question. Dress yourself." And, turning to the Secretary, he cried, "Good for service."

Werner called another. I no longer saw anything. Some one helped me to get my arms in my coat-sleeves. Then I found myself upon the stairs, and while Catharine asked me what had passed, I sobbed aloud and would have fallen from top to bottom if Aunt Grédel had not supported me.

We went out by the rear-way and crossed the little court. I wept like a child, and Catharine did too.

Monsieur Goulden knowing that Aunt Grédel and Catharine would come to dine with us the day of the revision, had had a stuffed goose and two bottles of good Alsace wine sent from the "Golden Sheep." He was sure that I would be exempted at once. What was his surprise, then, to see us enter together in such distress.

"What is the matter?" said he, raising his silk cap over his bald forehead, and staring at us with eyes wide open.

I had not strength enough to answer. I threw myself into the armchair and burst into tears. Catharine sat down beside me, and our sobs redoubled.

"It is not possible!" exclaimed Monsieur Goulden, letting fall his arms by his side.

"It shows their villainy," replied my aunt, and, growing more and more excited, she cried, "Will a revolution never come again? Shall those wretches always be our masters?"

"Calm yourself, Mother Grédel," said Monsieur Goulden. "In the name of Heaven don't cry so loud. Joseph, tell me how it happened. They are surely mistaken; it cannot be possible otherwise. Did Monsieur the Mayor and the hospital surgeon say nothing?"

I told the history of the letter, and Aunt Grédel, who until then knew nothing of it, again shrieked with her hands clenched.

"O the scoundrel! God grant that he may cross my threshold again. I will cleave his head with my hatchet."

He walked around the room; then sat down to wipe his spectacles, and Aunt Grédel exclaimed:

"Yes, but they shall not have him yet! Their wickedness shall yet go for nothing. This very evening Joseph shall be in the mountains on the way to Switzerland."

Monsieur Goulden hearing this, looked grave; he bent his brows, and replied in a few moments:

"It is a misfortune, a great misfortune, for Joseph is really lame. They will yet find it out, for he cannot march two days without falling behind and becoming sick. But you are wrong, Mother Grédel, to speak as you do and give him bad advice."

"No," he answered; "I do not love wars, especially where a hundred thousand men lose their lives for the glory of one. But wars of that kind are ended. It is not now for glory and to win new kingdoms that soldiers are levied, but to defend our country, which had been put in danger by tyranny and ambition. We would gladly have peace now. Unhappily, the Russians are advancing; the Prussians are joining them; and our friends, the Austrians, only await a good opportunity to fall upon our rear. If we do not go to meet them, they will come to our homes; for we are about to have Europe on our hands as we had in '93. It is now a different matter from our wars in Spain, in Russia, and in Germany; and I, old as I am, Mother Grédel, if the danger continues to increase and the veterans of the republic are needed, I would be ashamed to go and make clocks in Switzerland while others were pouring out their blood to defend my country. Besides, remember this well, that deserters are despised everywhere; after having committed such an act, they have no kindred or home anywhere. They have neither father, mother, church, nor country. They are incapable of fulfilling the first duty of man—to love and sustain their country, even though she be in the wrong."

"Let us eat," he exclaimed, after some minutes of silence. "Midday is striking. Mother Grédel and Catharine, seat yourselves there."

They sat down, and we began dinner. I meditated upon the words of Monsieur Goulden, which seemed right to me. Aunt Grédel compressed her lips, and from time to time gazed at me as if to read my thoughts. At length she said:

"I despise a country where they take fathers of families after carrying off the sons. If I were in Joseph's place, I would fly at once."

"Listen, Aunt Grédel," I replied; "you know that I love nothing so much as peace and quiet; but I would not, nevertheless, run away like a coward to another country. But, notwithstanding, I will do as Catharine says; if she wishes me to go to Switzerland, I will go."

"Well, then, I will do like the others," I cried; "and as those of Phalsbourg and Dagsberg are going to the wars, I will go."

"Every one is free to do as he pleases," said he, after a while; "but I am glad that Joseph thinks as I do."

Then there was silence, and toward two o'clock Aunt Grédel arose and took her basket. She seemed utterly cast down, and said:

"Joseph, you will not listen to me, but no matter. With God's grace, all will yet be well. You will return if he wills it, and Catharine will wait for you."

Catharine wept again, and I more than she; so that Monsieur Goulden himself could not help shedding tears.

At length Catharine and her mother descended the stairs, and Aunt Grédel called out from the bottom:

I could no longer stand. Never had I been so miserable, and even now, when I think of it, my heart chills.

VII.

From that day I could think of nothing but my misfortune. I tried to work, but my thoughts were far away, and Monsieur Goulden said:

"Joseph, lay labor aside. Profit by the little time you can remain among us; go to see Catharine and Mother Grédel. I still think they will exempt you, but who can tell? They need men so much that it may be a long time coming."

I went then every morning to Quatre-Vents, and passed my days with Catharine. We were very sorrowful, but very glad to see each other. We loved one another even more than before, if that were possible. Catharine sometimes tried to sing as in the good old times; but suddenly she would burst into tears. Then we wept together, and Aunt Grédel would rail at the wars which brought misery to every one. She said that the Council of Revision deserved to be hung; that they were all robbers, banded together to poison our lives. It solaced us a little to hear her talk thus, and we thought she was right.

I returned to the city about eight or nine o'clock in the evening. When they closed the gates, and as I passed, I saw the small inns full of conscripts and old returned soldiers drinking together. The conscripts always paid; the others, with dirty police-caps cocked over their ears, red noses, and horse-hair stocks in place of shirt-collars, twisted their mustaches and related with majestic air their battles, their marches, and their duels. One can imagine nothing viler than those holes, full of smoke, cobwebs hanging on the black beams, those old sworders and young men drinking, shouting, and beating the tables like crazy people; and behind in the shadow old Annette Schnaps or Marie Héring—her old wig stuck back on her head, her comb with only three teeth remaining, crosswise, in it—gazing on the scene, or emptying a mug to the health of the braves.

It was sad to see the sons of peasants, honest and laborious fellows, leading such an existence; but no one thought of working, and any one of them would have given his life for two farthings. Worn out with shouting, drinking, and internal grief, they ended by falling asleep over the table, while the old fellows emptied their cups, singing:

I saw these things, and I blessed heaven for having given me, in my wretchedness, kind hearts to keep up my courage and prevent my falling into such hands.

This state of affairs lasted until the twenty-fifth of January. For some days a great number of Italian conscripts—Piedmontese and Genoese—had been arriving in the city; some stout and fat as Savoyards fed upon chestnuts—their great cocked hats on their curly heads; their linsey-woolsey pantaloons dyed a dark green, and their short vests also of wool, but brick-red, fastened around their waists by a leather belt. They wore enormous shoes, and ate their cheese seated along the old marketplace. Others were dried up, lean, brown, shivering in their long cassocks, seeing nothing but snow upon the roofs and gazing with their large, black, mournful eyes upon the women who passed. They were exercised every day in marching, and were going to fill up the skeleton of the sixth regiment of the line at Mayence, and were then resting for a while in the infantry barracks.

The captain of the recruits, who was named Vidal, lodged over our room. He was a square-built, solid, very strong-looking man, and was, too, very kind and civil. He came to us to have his watch repaired, and when he learned that I was a conscript and was afraid I should never return, he encouraged me, saying that it was all habit; that at the end of five or six months one fights and marches as he eats his dinner; and that many so accustom themselves to shooting at people that they consider themselves unhappy when they are deprived of that amusement.

But his mode of reasoning was not to my taste; the more so as I saw five or six large grains of powder on one of his cheeks, which had entered deeply, and as he explained to me that they came from a shot which a Russian fired almost under his nose. Such a life disgusted me more and more, and as several days had already passed without news, I began to think they had forgotten me, as they did Jacob, of Chèvre-Hof, of whose extraordinary luck every one yet talks. Aunt Grédel herself said to me every time I went there, "Well, well! they will let us alone after all!" When on the morning of the twenty-fifth of January, as I was about starting for Quatre-Vents, Monsieur Goulden, who was working at his bench with a thoughtful air, turned to me with tears in his eyes and said:

"Listen, Joseph! I wanted to let you have one night more of quiet sleep; but you must know now, my child, that yesterday evening the brigadier of gendarmerie brought me your marching orders. You go with the Piedmontese and Genoese and five or six young men of the city—young Klipfel, young Loerig, Jean Léger, and Gaspard Zébédé. You go to Mayence."

I felt my knees give way as he spoke, and I sat down unable to speak. Monsieur Goulden took my marching orders, beautifully written, out of a drawer, and began to read them slowly. All that I remember is that Joseph Bertha, native of Dabo, Canton of Phalsbourg, Arrondissement of Sarrebourg, was incorporated in the sixth regiment of the line, and that he should join his corps the twenty-ninth of January at Mayence.

This letter produced as evil an effect on me as if I had known nothing of it before. It seemed something new, and I grew angry. Monsieur Goulden, after a moment's silence, added:

"Yes, Joseph, yes," said he, in a trembling voice. "I notified Mother Grédel and Catharine, and thus, my boy, they will come, and you can embrace them before leaving."

I saw his grief, and it made me sadder yet, so that I had a hard struggle to keep myself from bursting into tears.

"You need not be anxious about anything, Joseph. I have prepared all beforehand; and when you return, if it please God to keep me so long in this world, you will find me always the same. I am beginning to grow old, and my greatest happiness would be to keep you for a son, for I found you good-hearted and honest. I would have given you what I possess, and we would have been happy together. Catharine and you would have been my children. {450} But since it is otherwise, let us resign ourselves. It is only for a little while. You will be sent back, I am sure. They will soon see that you cannot make long marches."

At last he arose and took from a closet a soldier's knapsack of cowskin, which he placed upon the table. I looked at him, thinking of nothing but the pain of parting.

"Here is your knapsack," he added; "and I have put in it all that you require; two linen shirts, two flannel waistcoats, and all the rest. Well, well, that is all."

Without, we heard the Italians making ready to depart. Above us Captain Vidal was giving his orders. He had his horse at the barracks of the gendarmerie, and was telling his orderly to see that he was well rubbed and had received his hay.

All this bustle and movement produced a strange effect upon me, and I could not yet realize that I must quit the city. As I was thus in the greatest distress, the door opened and Catharine entered weeping, while Mother Grédel cried:

"I told you you should have fled to Switzerland; that these rogues would finish by carrying you off. I told you so, and you would not believe me."

"Mother Grédel," replied Monsieur Goulden, "to go to do his duty is not so great an evil as to be despised by honest people. Instead of all these cries and reproaches, which serve no good purpose, you would do better to comfort and encourage Joseph."

"Yes, yes," said I, in a low voice. "And you—you will always think of me; you will not love another?"

This lasted a quarter of an hour, when the door opened and Captain Vidal entered, his cloak rolled like a hunting-horn over his shoulder.

"Ah!" remarked the captain; "you are making yourself miserable. It is natural. I remember when I departed for the army. We have all a home."

"I see all," said he to Monsieur Goulden. "I can understand why he does not want to go."

"We have yet twenty minutes before starting," and, throwing a glance at me, "Do not fail to be at the first call, young man," said he, pressing Monsieur Goulden's hand.

The morning was overcast, and grief overwhelmed me. I could not leave Catharine.

Suddenly the roll beat. The drums were all collected in the Place. Monsieur Goulden, taking the knapsack by its straps, said in a grave voice:

I stood up, pale as ashes. He fastened the knapsack to my shoulders. Catharine sat sobbing, her face covered with her apron. Mother Grédel looked on with lips compressed.

"The call is about commencing," said Monsieur Goulden, embracing me. Then the fountains of his heart burst forth; tears sprang to his eyes; and, calling me his child, his son, he whispered, "Courage!"

Mother Grédel seated herself again, and as I bent toward her, taking my head between her hands, she sobbed:

"I always loved you, Joseph; ever since you were a baby. You never gave me cause of grief—and now you must go. O God! O God!"

When Aunt Grédel released me, I looked a moment at Catharine, who stood motionless. Then I turned quickly to go, when she cried, in heart-breaking tones:

I looked back. Her strength seemed to leave her, and I placed her in the arm-chair, and fled.

I was already on the Place, in the midst of the Italians and of a crowd of people crying for their sons or brothers. I saw nothing; I heard nothing.

When the roll of the drums recommenced, I looked around, and saw that I was between Klipfel and Furst, all three with our knapsacks on our backs. Their parents stood before us, weeping as if at their funeral. To the right, near the town-hall, Captain Vidal, on his little gray mare, was conversing with two infantry officers. The sergeants called the roll, and we answered. They called Furst, Klipfel, Bertha; we answered like the others. Then the captain gave the word, "March!" and we went, two abreast, toward the French gate.

At the corner of the baker Spitz, an old woman cried, in a choking voice, from a window:

It was Zébédé's grandmother. His lips trembled. He waved his hand, without replying, and passed on with downcast face.

I shuddered at the thought of passing my home. As we neared it, my knees trembled, and I heard some one call at the window; but I turned my head toward the "Red Ox," and the rattle of the drums drowned the voices.

Under the French gate, the men on guard, drawn up in line on each side, gazed on us as we passed at shoulder arms. We passed the outposts, and the drums ceased playing as we turned to the right. Nothing was heard but the plash of footsteps in the mud, for the snow was melting.

We had passed the farm-house of Gerberhoff, and were going to the great bridge, when I heard some one call me. It was the captain, who cried from his horse:

Hearing this, I could not help again bursting into tears, and the great Furst, too, wept, as we marched along; the others, pale as marble, said nothing. At the bridge, Zébédé took out his pipe to smoke. In front of us, the Italians talked and laughed among themselves; their three weeks of service had accustomed them to this life.

Once on the way to Metting, more than a league from the city, as we began to descend, Klipfel touched me on the shoulder, and whispered:

I looked, and saw Phalsbourg far beneath us; the barracks, the magazines, the steeple whence I had seen Catharine's home, six weeks before, with old Brainstein—all were in the gray distance, with the woods all around. I would have stopped a few moments, but the troop marched on, and I had to keep pace with them. We entered Metting.

VIII.

That same day we went as far as Bitche; the next, to Hornbach; then to Kaiserslantern. It began to snow again.

How often during that long march did I sigh for the thick cloak of Monsieur Goulden, and his double-soled shoes.

We passed through innumerable villages, sometimes on the mountains, sometimes in the plains. As we entered each little town, the drums began to beat, and we marched with heads erect, marking the step, trying to assume the mien of old soldiers. The people looked out of their little windows, or came to the doors, saying, "There go the conscripts!"

At night we halted, glad to rest our weary feet—I, especially. I cannot say that my leg hurt me, but my feet! I had never undergone such fatigue. With our billet for lodging we had the right to a corner of the fire, but our hosts also gave us a place at the table. We had nearly always buttermilk and potatoes, and often fresh lard on a dish of sauerkraut. The children came to look at us, and the old women asked us from what place we came, and what our business was before we left home. The young girls looked sorrowfully at us, thinking of their sweethearts, who had gone five, six, or seven months before. Then they would take us to the son's bed. With what pleasure I stretched out my tired limbs! How I wished to sleep all our twelve hours' halt! But early in the morning, at day-break, the rattling of the drums awoke me. I gazed at the brown rafters of the ceiling, the window-panes covered with frost, and asked myself where I was. Then my heart would grow cold, as I thought that I was at Bitche—at Kaiserslantern—that I was a conscript; and I had to dress fast as I could, catch up my knapsack, and answer the roll-call.

Yes! a good journey to you! They will not see you again, poor wretch! How many others have followed the same road!

I will never forget how at Kaiserslantern, the second day of our march, having unstrapped my knapsack to take out a white shirt, I discovered, beneath, a little pocket, and opening it I found fifty-four francs in six-livre pieces. On the paper wrapped around them were these words, written by Monsieur Goulden:

"While you are at the wars, be always good and honest. Think of your friends and of those for whom you would be willing to sacrifice your life, and treat the enemy with humanity that they may so treat our soldiers. May heaven guide you, and protect you in your dangers! You will find some money inclosed; for it is a good thing, when far from home and all who love you, to have a little of it. Write to us as often as you can. I embrace you, my child, and press you to my heart."

As I read this, the tears forced themselves to my eyes, and I thought, "Thou art not wholly abandoned, Joseph; fond hearts are yearning toward you. Never forget their kind counsels."

At last, on the fifth day, about five o'clock in the evening, we entered Mayence. As long as I live I will remember it. It was terribly cold. We had begun our march at early dawn, and, long before reaching the city, had passed through villages filled with soldiers—calvary, infantry, dragoons in their short jackets—some digging holes in the ice to get water for their horses, others dragging bundles of forage to the doors of the stables; powder-wagons, carts full of cannon-balls, all white with frost, stood on every side; couriers, detachments of artillery, pontoon-trains were coming and going over the white ground; and no more attention was paid to us than if we were not in existence.

Captain Vidal, to warm himself, had dismounted and marched with us on foot. The officers and sergeants hastened us on. Five or six Italians had fallen behind and remained in the villages, no longer able to advance. My feet were sore and burning, and at the last halt I could scarcely rise to resume the march. The others from Phalsbourg, however, kept bravely on.

Night had fallen; the sky sparkled with stars. Every one gazed forward, and said to his comrade, "We are nearing it! we are nearing it!" for along the horizon a dark line of seeming cloud, glittering here and there with flashing points, announced that a great city lay before us.

At last we entered the advanced works, and passed through the zig-zag earthen bastions. Then we dressed our ranks and marked the step, as we usually did when approaching a town. At the corner of a sort of demilune we saw the frozen fosse of the city, and the brick ramparts towering above, and opposite us an old, dark gate, with the draw-bridge raised. Above stood a sentinel, who, with his musket raised, cried out:

A silence ensued. Then the draw-bridge was lowered, and the guard turned out and examined us, one of them carrying a great torch. Captain Vidal, a few paces in advance of us, spoke to the commandant of the post, who called out at length:

Our drums began to beat, but the captain ordered them to cease, and we crossed a long bridge and passed through a second gate like the first. Then we were in the streets of the city, which were paved with smooth round stones. Every one tried his best to march steadily; for, although it was night, all the inns and shops along the way were open and their large windows were shining, and hundreds of people were passing to and fro as if it were broad day.

We turned five or six corners and soon arrived in a little open place before a high barrack, where we were ordered to halt.

There was a shed at the corner of the barrack, and in it a cantinière seated behind a small table, under a great tri-colored umbrella from which hung two lanterns.

Several officers arrived as soon as we halted; they were the Commandant Gémeau and some others whom I have since known. They pressed our captain's hand laughing, then looked at us and ordered the roll to be called. {454} After that, we each received a ration of bread and a billet for lodging. We were told that roll-call would take place the next morning at eight o'clock for the distribution of arms, and then we were ordered to break ranks, while the officers turned up a street to the left and went into a great coffee-house, the entrance to which was approached by a flight of fifteen steps.

But we, with our billets for lodging—what were we to do with them in the middle of such a city, and, above all, the Italians, who did not know a word either of German or French?

My first idea was to see the cantinière under her umbrella. She was an old Alsatian, round and chubby, and, when I asked for the Capougner-Strasse, she replied:

"Look just opposite there; if you turn the first corner to the right, you will find the Capougner-Strasse. Good evening, conscript."

Furst and Zébédé' were also billeted in the Capougner-Strasse and we set out, glad enough to be able to limp together through the strange city.

Furst first found his house, but it was shut; and while he was knocking at the door, I found mine, which had a light in two windows. I pushed at the door, it opened, and I entered a dark alley, whence came a smell of fresh bread, which was very welcome. Zébédé had to go further on.

I told her that I was billeted at her house. She came down-stairs, and, looking at my billet, told me in German to follow her.

I ascended the stairs. Passing an open door, I saw two men at work before an oven. I was, then, at a baker's, and this accounted for the old woman being up so late. She wore a cap with black ribbons; her arms were bare to the elbows; she, too, had been working, and seemed very sorrowful.

"We were marching all day," I replied, "and I am fainting with hunger and weariness."

She put the candle upon the table and went out. I took off my shoes. My feet were blistered and bleeding, and pained me horribly, and I felt for the moment as if it would almost be better to die at once than to continue in such suffering.

This thought had more than once arisen to my mind in the march, but now, before that good fire, I felt so worn, so miserable, that I would gladly have laid myself down to sleep for ever, notwithstanding Catharine, Aunt Grédel, and all who loved me. Truly, I needed God's assistance.

While these thoughts were running through my head, the door opened, and a tall, stout man, gray-haired, but yet strong and healthy, entered. He was one of those I had seen at work below, and held in his hands a bottle of wine and two glasses.

I looked up. The old woman was behind him. She was carrying a little wooden tub, which, she placed on the floor near my chair.

This kindness, on the part of a stranger, affected me more than I cared to show. I took off my stockings; my feet were bleeding, and the good old dame repeated, as she gazed at them:

The man asked me whence I came. I told him from Phalsbourg in Lorraine. Then he told his wife to bring some bread, adding that, after we had taken a glass of wine together, he would leave me to the repose I needed so much.

He pushed the table before me, as I sat with my feet in the bath, and we each drained a glass of good white wine. The old woman returned with some hot bread, over which she had spread fresh, half-melted butter. Then I knew how hungry I was. I was almost ill. The good people saw my eagerness for food; for the woman said:

She knelt down and dried my feet with her apron before I knew what she was about to do. I cried:

Her voice trembled as she spoke. I thought of Catharine and Aunt Grédel, and could not speak again. I ate and drank with a pleasure I never before felt in doing so. The two old people sat gazing kindly on me, and, when I had finished, the man said:

"Yes, we have a son in the army; he went to Russia last year, and we have not since heard from him. These wars are terrible!"

He spoke dreamily, as if to himself, all the while walking up and down the room, his hands crossed behind his back. My eyes began to close, when he said suddenly:

In a minute I was undressed, and, sinking on the bed, I was almost immediately buried in a deep sleep.

IX.

The next morning I awoke at about seven o'clock. A trumpet was sounding the recall at the corner of the street; horses, wagons, and men and women on foot, were hurrying past the house. My feet were yet somewhat sore, but nothing to what they had been; and when I had dressed, I felt like a new man, and thought to myself:

"Joseph, if this continues, you will soon be a soldier. It is only the first step that costs."

The baker's wife had put my shoes to dry before the fire, after filling them with hot ashes, to keep them from growing hard. They were well greased and shining.

Then I buckled on my knapsack, and hurried out, without having time to thank those good people—a duty I intended to fulfil after roll-call.

At the end of the street—on the Place—many of our Italians were already waiting, shivering around the fountain. Furst, Klipfel, and Zébédé arrived a moment after.

Cannon and their caissons covered one entire side of the Place. Horses were being brought to water, led by hussars and dragoons. Opposite us were cavalry barracks, high as the church at Phalsbourg, while around the other three sides rose old houses with sculptured gables, like those at Saverne, but much larger. {456} I had never seen anything like all this, and while I stood gazing around, the drums began to beat, and each man took his place in the ranks, and we were informed, first in Italian and then in French, that we were about to receive our arms, and each one was ordered to stand forth as his name was called.

The wagons containing the arms now came up, and the call began. Each received a cartouche box, a sabre, a bayonet, and a musket. We put them on as well as we could, over our blouses, coats, or great-coats, and we looked, with our hats, our caps, and our arms, like a veritable band of banditti. My musket was so long and heavy that I could scarcely carry it; and the Sergeant Pinto showed me how to buckle on the cartouche-box. He was a fine fellow, Pinto.

So many belts crossing my chest made me feel as if I could scarcely breathe, and I saw at once that my miseries had not yet ended.

After the arms, an ammunition-wagon advanced, and they distributed fifty rounds of cartridges to each man. This was no pleasant augury. Then, instead of ordering us to break ranks and return to our lodgings, Captain Vidal drew his sabre and shouted:

The drums began to beat. I was grieved at not being able to thank my hosts for their kindness, and thought that they would consider me ungrateful. But that did not prevent my following the line of march.

We passed through a long winding street, and soon found ourselves without the glacis, and near the frozen Rhine. Across the river high hills appeared, and on the hills, old, gray, ruined castles, like those of Haut-Bas and Geroldseck in the Vosges.

The battalion descended to the river-bank, and crossed upon the ice. The scene was magnificent—dazzling. We were not alone on the ice; five or six hundred paces before us was a baggage-train on the way to Frankfort. Crossing the river, we continued our march through the mountains. Sometimes we discovered villages in the defiles; and Zébédé, who was next to me, said:

"As we had to leave home, I would rather go as a soldier than otherwise. At least we shall see something new every day, and, if we are lucky enough ever to return, how much we will have to talk of!"

"Yes," said I; "but I would like better to have less to talk about, and to live quietly, toiling on my own account and not on account of others, who remain safe at home while we climb about here on the ice."

"Yes; the glory of fighting and losing our lives for others, and being called lazy idlers and drunkards when we get home again. I would rather have these friends of glory go fight themselves, and leave us to remain in peace at home."

"Well," he replied, "I think much as you do; but, as we are forced to fight, we may as well make the most of it. If we go about looking miserable, people will laugh at us."

Conversing thus, we reached a large river, which, the sergeant told us, was the Main, and near it, upon our road, was a little village. We did not know the name of the village, but there we halted.

We entered the houses, and those who could bought some brandy, wine, and bread. Those who had no money crunched their ration of biscuit, and gazed wistfully at their more fortunate comrades.

About six in the evening we arrived at Frankfort, which is a city yet older than Mayence, and full of Jews. They took us to the barracks of the Tenth Hussars, where our Captain, Florentin, and the two Lieutenants, Clavel and Bretonville, awaited us.

At Frankfort I began to learn a soldier's duty in earnest. Up to that time I had been but a simple conscript. I do not speak merely of drill—that is only an affair of a month or two, if a man really desires to learn; but I speak of discipline—of remembering that the corporal is always in the right when he speaks to a private soldier, the sergeant when he speaks to the corporal, the sergeant-major when speaking to the sergeant, the second lieutenant when he orders the sergeant-major, and so on to the Marshal of France—even if the superior asserts that two and two make five, or that the moon shines at midday.

This is very difficult to learn; but there is one thing that assists you immensely, and that is a sort of placard hung up in every room in the barracks, and which is from time to time read to you. This placard presupposes everything that a soldier might wish to do, as, for instance, to return home, to refuse to serve, to resist his officer, and always ends by speaking of death or at least five years with a ball and chain.

The day after our arrival at Frankfort I wrote to Monsieur Goulden, to Catharine, and to Aunt Grédel. I told them that I was in good health, for which I thanked God, and that I was even stronger than before I left home, and sent them a thousand remembrances. Our Phalsbourg conscripts, who saw me writing, made me add a few words for each of their families. I wrote also to Mayence, to the good couple of the Capougner-Strasse, who had been so kind to me, telling them how I was forced to march without being able to thank them, and asking their forgiveness for so doing.

That day, in the afternoon, we received our uniforms. Dozens of Jews made their appearance and bought our old clothes. The Italians had great difficulty in making these respectable merchants comprehend their wishes, but the Genoese were as cunning as the Jews, and their bargainings lasted until night. Our corporals received more than one glass of wine; it was policy to make friends of them, for morning and evening they taught us the drill in the snow-covered yard. The cantinière Christine was always at her post with a warming-pan under her feet. She took young men of good family into special favor, and the young men of good family were all those who spent their money freely. Poor fools! How many of them parted with their last sou in return for her miserable flattery! When that was gone, they were mere beggars; but vanity rules all, from conscripts to generals.

All this time recruits were constantly arriving from France, and ambulances full of wounded from Poland. Klipfel, Zébédé, Furst, and I often went to see these poor wretches, and never did we see men so miserably clad. Some wore jackets which once belonged to Cossacks, crushed shakos, women's dresses, and many had only handkerchiefs wound around their feet in lieu of shoes and stockings. They gave us a history of the retreat from Moscow, and then we knew that the twenty-ninth bulletin told only truth.

These stories enraged our men against the Russians, and we longed for the war to begin again. I was at times almost overcome with wrath after hearing some tale of horror; and even the thought that these Russians were defending their families, their homes, all that man holds most dear, could scarcely recall me to a right frame of mind. We hated them for defending themselves; we would have despised them had they not done so. But about this time an extraordinary event occurred.

You must know that my comrade, Zébédé', was the son of the gravedigger of Phalsbourg, and sometimes between ourselves we called him "Gravedigger." This he took in good part from us; but one evening after drill, as he was crossing the yard, a hussar cried out:

"My name is not Gravedigger, and you can drag in your own straw. Do you take me for a fool?"

Zébédé, with his great hooked nose, his gray eyes and thin lips, never bore too good a character for mildness. He went up to the hussar and asked:

"I tell you to take up those bundles of straw, and quickly, too. Do you hear, conscript?"

He was quite an old man, with mustaches and red, bushy whiskers. Zébédé seized one of the latter, but received two blows in the face. Nevertheless, a fist-full of the whisker remained in his grasp, and, as the dispute had attracted a crowd to the spot, the hussar shook his finger, saying:

"Very good," returned Zébédé; "we shall see. You will probably hear from me too, veteran."

He came immediately after to tell me all this, and I, knowing that he had never handled a weapon more warlike than a pickaxe, could not help trembling for him.

"Listen, Zébédé," I said; "all that there now remains for you to do, since you do not want to desert, is to ask pardon of this old fellow; for those veterans all know some fearful tricks of fence which they have brought from Egypt or Spain, or somewhere else. If you wish, I will lend you a crown to pay for a bottle of wine to make up the quarrel."

"Rather than beg his pardon," said he, "I would go and hang myself. I laugh him and his comrades to scorn. If he has tricks of fence, I have a long arm, that will drive my sabre through his bones as easily as his will penetrate my flesh."

The thought of the blows made him insensible to reason; and soon Chazy, the maitre d'armes, Corporal Fleury, Klipfel, Furst, and Leger arrived. They all said that Zébédé was in the right, and the maitre d'armes added that blood alone could wash out the stain of a blow; that the honor of the recruits required Zébédé to fight.

Zébédé answered proudly that the men of Phalsbourg had never feared the sight of a little blood, and that he was ready. Then the maitre d'armes went to see our Captain, Florentin, who was one of the most magnificent men imaginable—tall, well-formed, broad-shouldered, with regular features, and the Cross, which the Emperor had himself given him at Eylau. The captain even went further than the maitre d'armes; he thought it would set the conscripts a good example, and that if Zébédé refused to fight he would be unworthy to remain in the Third Battalion of the Sixth of the Line.

All that night I could not close my eyes. I heard the deep breathing of my poor comrade as he slept, and I thought: "Poor Zébédé! another day, and you will breathe no more." I shuddered to think how near I was to a man so near death. At last, as day broke, I fell asleep, when suddenly I felt a cold blast of wind strike me. I opened my eyes, and there I saw the old hussar. He had lifted up the coverlid of our bed, and said as I awoke:

"Up, sluggard! I will show you what manner of man you struck." Zébédé rose tranquilly, saying: "I was asleep, veteran; I was asleep."

The other, hearing himself thus mockingly called "veteran," would have fallen upon my comrade in his bed; but two tall fellows who served him as seconds held him back, and, besides, the Phalsbourg men were there.

But Zébédé dressed himself calmly, without any haste. After a moment's silence, he said:

"There is room enough for us in the yard," replied one of the hussars. Zébédé put on his great-coat, and, turning to me, said:

The whole party descended the stairs together. I thought Zébédé was lost, and thought it hard that not only must the Russians and Prussians seek our lives, but that we must seek each other's.

All the men in the room crowded to the windows. I alone remained behind, upon my bed. At the end of five minutes the clash of sabres made my heart almost cease to beat; the blood seemed no longer to flow through my veins.

Then I made my way—I know not how—to a window, and, looking over the heads of the others, saw the old hussar leaning against the wall, and Zébédé rising, his sabre all dripping with blood. He had fallen upon his knees during the fight, and, while the old man's sword pierced the air just above his shoulder, he plunged his blade into the hussar's breast. If he had not slipped, he himself would have been run through and through.

The hussar sank at the foot of the wall. His seconds lifted him in their arms, while Zébédé, pale as a corpse, gazed at his bloody sabre.

XI.

The events of the preceding chapter happened on the eighteenth of February. The same day we received orders to pack our knapsacks, and left Frankfort for Seligenstadt, where we remained until the eighth of March, by which time all the recruits were well instructed in the use of the musket and the school of the platoon. From Seligenstadt we went to Schweinheim, and on the twenty-fourth of March, 1813, joined the division at Aschaffenbourg, where Marshal Ney passed us in review.

The captain of the company was named Florentin; the lieutenant, Bretonville; the commandant of the battalion, Gemeau; the colonel, Zapfel, the general of brigade, Ladoucette; and the general of division, Sonham. These are things that every soldier should know.

The melting of the snows began about the middle of March, and on the day of the review the rain did not cease falling from ten in the morning until three in the afternoon. The water ran over our shoes, and every moment, to keep us brightened up, the order rang out:

The Marshal advanced slowly, surrounded by his staff. What consoled Zébédé was, that we were about to see "the bravest of the brave." I thought that if I could only get a place at the corner of a good fire, I would gladly forego that pleasure.

At last he arrived in front of us, and I can yet see him, with his chapeau dripping with rain, his blue coat covered with embroidery and decorations, and his great boots. He was a handsome, florid man, with a short nose and sparkling eyes. He did not seem at all haughty; for, as he passed our company, who presented arms, he turned suddenly in his saddle and said:

Then the captain stood erect, not knowing what to reply. It seemed that the Marshal and he had been simple soldiers together in the time of the republic. The captain at last answered:

"Ma foi, Florentin," said the Marshal, extending his arm toward Russia, "I am glad to see you again. I thought we had left you there."

I could not see why Zébédé should wish to spill his blood because the Marshal had spoken a few words to an old comrade.

At Schweinheim, our beef and mutton and bread were very good, as was also our wine. But many of our men pretended to find fault with everything, thinking thus to pass for people of consequence. They were mistaken; for more than once I heard the citizens say in German:

"Those fellows, in their own country, were only beggars. If they returned to France, they would find only potatoes to live upon."

And the bourgeois were quite right; and I always found that people so difficult to please abroad were but poor wretches at home. For my part, I was well content to meet such good fare. Two conscripts were billeted with me at the house of the village postmaster, when, on the evening of the fourth day, as we were finishing our supper, an old man in a black great-coat came in. His hair was white, and his mien and appearance neat and respectable. He saluted us, and then said to the master of the house, in German:

"Yes, Monsieur Stenger," replied the other; "we will never be rid of them. If I could poison them all, it would be a good deed."

"You are very imprudent in your speech, Monsieur Kalkreuth," said the old man; "if others beside this young man had understood you, you know what would happen."

"It is only my way of talking," replied the postmaster. "What can you expect? When everything is taken from you—when you are robbed, year after year—it is but natural that you should at last speak bitterly."

The old man, who was none other than the pastor of Schweinheim, then said to me:

"Monsieur, your manner of acting is that of an honest man; believe me that Monsieur Kalkreuth is incapable of such a deed—of doing evil even to our enemies."

"I do believe it, sir," I replied, "or I should not eat so heartily of these sausages."

The postmaster, hearing these words, began to laugh, and, in the excess of his joy, cried:

"I would never have thought that a Frenchman could have made me laugh;" and bringing out a bottle of wine, we drank it together. It was the last time we met; for while we chatted over our wine, the order to march came.

And now the whole army was moving, advancing on Erfurt. Our sergeants kept repeating, "We are nearing them! there will be hot work soon;" and we thought, "So much the better!" that those beggarly Prussians and Russians had drawn their fate upon themselves. If they had remained quiet, we would have been yet in France.

These thoughts embittered us all towards the enemy, and, as we meet everywhere people who seem to rejoice only in fighting, Klipfel and Zébédé talked only of the pleasure it would give them to meet the Prussians; and I, not to seem less courageous than they, adopted the same strain.

On the eighth of April, the battalion entered Erfurt, and I will never forget how, when we broke ranks before the barracks, a package of letters was handed to the sergeant of the company. Among the number was one for me, and I recognized, Catharine's writing at once. Zébédé took my musket, telling me to read it, for he, too, was glad to hear from home.

I put it in my pocket, and all our Phalsbourg men followed me to hear it, but I only commenced when I was quietly seated on my bed in the barracks, while they crowded around. Tears rolled down my cheeks as she told me how she remembered and prayed for the far-off conscript.

At the end of the letter, Monsieur Goulden added a few words, telling me that all our friends were well, and that I should take courage, for our troubles could not last for ever. He charged me to be sure to tell my comrades that their friends thought of them and complained of not having received a word from them.

This letter was a consolation to us all. We knew that before many days passed we must be on the field of battle, and it seemed a last farewell from home.

Bethlehem—A Pilgrimage.

Bethlehem, where was born the Redeemer of the world, is one of the holiest spots of earth, and to it the thoughts of the Christian turn with constant delight. The events in the life of our Lord which give to Jerusalem its supreme interest are mostly of a saddening character, bringing to recollection the sufferings of Jesus for the salvation of his people; and, wherever we turn in the city of the Great King, we are reminded of the Man of Sorrows, and the contradiction of sinners which he endured. But Bethlehem has other associations; and the pilgrim to the sacred shrines can here pour out his soul in joyful gratitude and love, for he is where God's infinite mercy was made evident to Jew and Gentile, and the Saviour of the world was first seen by those he came to redeem.

On the 30th of January, 1866, I reached Jerusalem in company with my friend the Reverend Father Wadhams, of Albany. We had brought letters from Rome to his excellency the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and to the reverendissimo superior of the Franciscans at the convent of San Salvador. The Franciscan monks have charge of all the sacred places in the Holy Land. We were most kindly received by the patriarch and the superior of the convent; and the latter not only offered us the hospitality of the Casa Nuova, (where all the Catholic pilgrims lodge,) but gave permission for one of the priests to be our companion and attendant every day. The company of this good father, with which we were constantly favored during our stay in Jerusalem, was of inestimable value. He knew all about the sacred localities, having been six years a resident in the Holy Land. He was from Ireland, and the only one in the community who spoke English, the others being Italians.

On Sexagesima Sunday, Father Wadhams, Father Luigi, and the writer of this sketch walked to Bethlehem, a distance of six miles. Leaving Jerusalem by the Jaffa gate, we turned southward. Having crossed the valley of Gihon, after a short distance the pathway was on level ground, over the plain of Rephaim, where King David gained his victory over the Philistines. Beyond this, in the middle of the road, is a well or cistern, having around it some large rough stones. There is a tradition that, as the wise men from the east were going from Jerusalem to Bethlehem in search of the new-born King of the Jews, the star which had guided them in the early part of their journey from home, but had disappeared as they drew near the former city, was seen reflected in the water at this spot. Certain it is that, either here or within a short distance, they were favored once more with the guidance of the star which led them to the place, and stood still over where the child Jesus was.

About half-way between Jerusalem and Bethlehem is the Greek monastery of the Prophet Elijah. It is said he once rested here. From this neighborhood we can see Jerusalem on the north and Bethlehem on the south; and thus the two holiest places in the world are visible to the pilgrim at once. Before we go on to the city of the Nativity, let us pause a few moments to recollect the history of the place and observe its appearance from a distance.

Bethlehem is one of the oldest cities in the world, having a history of more than three thousand six hundred years. The name signified the House of Bread; now its Arabic form, Beit Lahm, denotes the House of Flesh. Either name is suitable for the place in which the true bread of life, whose flesh is the food of immortality, was to be born. It is called Bethlehem-Judah, to distinguish it from another Bethlehem in the region of Zebulun; it is also called Bethlehem Ephratah, or the fruitful. The earliest mention of it is in the book of Genesis, (xxxv. 1 8,) in the description of the death and burial of Rachel. Six hundred years afterward occurred the events narrated in the book of Ruth. A century after the marriage of Boaz and Ruth, David was born here, who, at the age of seventeen years, was anointed king over Israel—and hence it obtained the name of the city of David, and is thus called in the holy Gospel.

For a thousand years the history of Bethlehem is obscure, until the place starts into prominence and immortal glory as the scene of the wondrous events attending the birth of Christ. With this narrative every Christian is familiar; and each year, under the guidance of the church, we renew, at Christmas and Epiphany, the joy which its telling brings. An edict of the Roman emperor required all the people of Judea to present themselves for enrolment in the cities where they belonged, even should they be residing in other and distant places. In obedience to this injunction, Joseph, the espoused husband of the Virgin Mary, accompanied by her, repaired to his own city, Bethlehem, he being of the house and lineage of David. A long journey of eighty miles from Nazareth in the north, where he lived, to Bethlehem in the south was thus imperative; for Roman rulers were strict in demanding obedience to their laws on the part of conquered peoples. By the time they reached Bethlehem, the town was already full, and there was no room for them in the inn or public place for the reception of travellers. They were thus compelled to do the best they could, and found shelter in a rude place where some cattle were kept. This was not only better than none, but was such as many travellers since that time have been obliged to content themselves with. Even now, it is sometimes found in the East that the house and stable are together, being the same apartment; a floor somewhat raised above the ground being the place for the people, while the other part is tenanted by cattle, sheep, or goats. There was no evidence that it was cruel indifference on the part of the Bethlehemites which led to the choice of this place by the holy ones who came there. That they were poor is more certainly known from the offering made in the temple in Jerusalem, when the Divine Infant was presented there, at the purification of his stainless mother.

It was in this cheerless place that Christ was born of the Holy Virgin, according to the prophecies of Isaias and Micheas. Now, indeed, was it true that "Thou, Bethlehem Ephrata, out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be the ruler in Israel; and his going forth is from the beginning, from the days of eternity." Shepherds were keeping watch over their flocks by night; and the angel of God appeared to them, and the brightness of God shone round about them; and while they feared, the angel said to them: "Fear not; for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy that shall be to all the people; for this day is born to you a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord, in the city of David. {464} And this shall be a sign unto you: you shall find the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, Glory be to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will." The shepherds went to Bethlehem, and found these things so, and they and others wondered thereat.

So was the Messiah made known to the Jews, as, in a few days afterwards, he was manifested to Gentiles in the persons of the magi, or wise men from the East.

Standing at the place where we have the first good view of Bethlehem, at the point midway between Jerusalem and the city of the Nativity, the eye ranges over an extensive region. Before us is the city to which our steps are directed. It is on very high ground, on a ridge projecting from the mountain range. The Church of the Nativity, a large building with the convents attached, is on the left of the view, the houses of the village being more to the right and three or four hundred yards from the church. From three sides there is a descent, in places very great, so that on the north, east, and south, there are deep valleys at the foot of the hill on which the buildings stand. All the land near the church and houses is cultivated, and the hill is completely terraced and covered with olive and fig trees, and vines, which are carefully tended. Every foot of available ground is thus brought into use; and the fine condition of the trees and vines shows that nothing is wanting to restore the ancient fertility of the region but security for labor—something miserably wanting throughout the East. The convents are built up against the church, and give it the appearance of an enormous castle. The houses of the town are grouped somewhat closely, and have a compact look. Like all edifices in this part of the world, they are built of a grayish limestone, the roofs being of stone, generally flat, but sometimes with a small dome. We are standing about three miles north of Bethlehem, and the eye ranges over a wide extent of hill country, especially to the left. The hills of Judea are near us, the mountains of Moab beyond and to the east. On the hither side of these last is the Dead Sea, filling the sunken basin where once stood the wicked cities of the plain. Under our feet, and all the way to Bethlehem, the ground is covered with immense numbers of stones about four inches in size, so that travelling, whether on foot or horseback, is neither easy nor pleasant.

Let us now go forward to the city. One mile this side of Bethlehem, at a short distance to the right of the path we follow, is the tomb of Rachel. This spot is one of the most interesting of its kind in the world. Rachel was the wife of the Patriarch Jacob, and she died and was buried here, "on the way to Ephrah which is Bethlehem." Her memory has always been held in respect by the Jews and Christians, and even now the former go there every Thursday, to pray and read the old, old history of this mother of their race. When leaving Bethlehem for the fourth and last time, after we had passed the tomb of Rachel, on our way to Jerusalem, Father Luigi and I met a hundred or more Jews on their weekly visit to the venerated spot. A small square building, with a dome, covers the grave of one whose name will never perish from the remembrance of the people of God.

As we stand at the tomb of Rachel, at our right is the village of Beitjala, Bethlehem being a mile or more to our left. Beitjala is a thriving place, having many beautiful olive-trees, the finest I ever saw. The Catholic Seminary for Priests of the Patriarch of Jerusalem is there, and a fine large church has just been completed. The Rector of the Seminary was consecrated Bishop of Beitjala in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre some weeks after our departure.

Entering Bethlehem to go to the convent, we pass through a large part of the city, the church being at the left of the ridge. There are about three thousand residents in the city, who are all, or nearly so, Christians. The streets are few, and, like all Eastern cities, narrow and dirty—very narrow and very dirty, indeed. Many of the people are out of doors. As we pass along, we see some small, rude shops or dens, in which various articles are exposed for sale. We look in other rooms, and find men at work sitting on the ground, turning beads for rosaries. The work is done rapidly, and great quantities of these are made. Also, crosses and medals are carved from the mother of pearl shell. As every one who goes to the Holy Land makes some purchases of these articles, there is quite a brisk trade at Easter time, when the pilgrims most resort to the shrines. These beads, medals, and crosses are taken to Jerusalem and blessed in the most Holy Sepulchre of our Lord, and are thus in just estimation among the holy things of earth. A cross made in Bethlehem, where Christ was born, and blessed in the most Holy Sepulchre where he was buried, and from which he rose triumphant over death, is surely a precious thing for any Christian to have. In going through some of the streets of Bethlehem, I have seen the scraps of pearl which were left in the manufacture of crosses and medals, and had been thrown out as refuse, sparkling and glistening in the bright sunshine, reminding one of the city above, whose gates are pearl. But the place where Christ was born is so holy that not even pearls are too precious to pave its streets.

The Latin convent is on the north side of the great church, and to the left, as one approaches the venerable pile. We knock at the iron door, which is opened quickly, and enter the reception-room of the house. This is a pleasant and comfortable place; and the pilgrim, fatigued by the long walk or ride, finds it a cheerful place of rest. The good fathers of the monastery are hospitable and kind, and give such welcome as the traveller would wish to receive at this holy place. The convent is old, and the walls are of great strength, being ten feet thick, which makes a deep recess at every window. A long table covered with a green cloth is in the middle of the room, and there are comfortable divans or cushioned seats along the wall by the windows. Portraits of a king and queen, who were benefactors of the convent many years ago, hang at the farther end of the apartment; while among the later decorations of the walls are good portraits of the present Emperor and Empress of Austria. Some photographs and engravings of religious subjects are also here; and there is a homelike and cheerful appearance which is most grateful to the weary traveller from other and distant lands.

Let us glance at the buildings and their history. The grotto or cave in which Christ was born is covered by the large church. Of this spot, as being the very place where the infant God was born, there never has been a doubt. {466} The identification of it goes back to the very next century after the Ascension of Christ. The church was built by Saint Helena, the mother of the first Christian Emperor, Constantine the Great, and it is the oldest place erected for Christian worship in the world. It was solidly and well built, and even now bids fair to last when many of the slight structures of modern times shall have fallen into ruin. It is fifteen hundred years old; in length one hundred and twenty feet, the breadth being one hundred and ten. There are four rows of large marble columns, taken, probably, from the porches of the temple in Jerusalem. Each row contains twelve columns, each one being of a single stone, twenty feet high and thirty inches in diameter; they are smooth, and have handsome capitals of the Corinthian order. The roof of the church was originally of the cedars of Lebanon, but was repaired about four hundred years ago with oak. The columns were once richly ornamented, and the walls were inlaid with mosaics; these are nearly all gone, and whitewash is in their stead. The Sanctuary was very beautiful, and yet retains much of the adornment of better days; but we can only see the top of the altar screen as we stand in the body of the church, for a large wall now runs entirely across the upper end of the nave, dividing it from the sanctuary. In consequence of this, the whole church looks desolate, empty, and cold. There are some cheap and mean glass lamps, a few ostrich eggs, and other trifling objects in the way of decoration, but the whole of this once beautiful and magnificent interior is desolate and neglected. Being common property of the Latins, Greeks, and Armenians, it receives care from none; or, rather, the jealousies of the Christians prevent any attempt at restoration. The stone pavement is broken and irregular. The main door of entrance from the village has been partly walled up, so that one can only enter by stooping low. This was done a long time since, to hinder the Turks from riding in on horses, mules, or camels; and the barrier against this sort of desecration is effectual enough.

The sanctuary of the church is directly over the spot where our Lord was born; and was once, as it should be, rich and gorgeous as loving devotion could make it—a brave sight in the day of its perfection. Raised six steps above the level of the floor of the body of the church, it is nearly square, and is large enough to accommodate the congregations who gather there. This sanctuary is in the possession of the Greeks and Armenians; for they, being richer than the Latins, have bought from the Turks the largest share in all the holy places in Bethlehem and Jerusalem.

The church, with its sanctuary described above, is over the crypt or grotto, which is the glory of Bethlehem, the place where Christ was born. Let us now go down to this most holy and blessed spot. It is reached by a flight of steps on each side of the great sanctuary, about thirteen in number, much worn by the thousands of feet which have pressed them. Language fails to convey the sentiments and emotions of the pilgrim as he descends these old steps. In a moment more he is to be there—there, where his Redeemer was born—there, where his heart has yearned to be thousands of times, through many long years, in the far distant land which is his home. Carefully he descends, and, when nearly at the bottom, he sees, at the right hand, a silver star fastened in the marble floor; over it a number of small lamps burning; three steps more—he kneels and flings himself prostrate—he is there! Blessed is the pilgrim to whom God has given this joy, the holiest and sweetest ever known on earth!

Doubtless we have all known, at some time or other, a gladness of heart whose power and intensity have caused it to be remembered in after-years, as marking the brightest day in our lives. With many it is that of the first communion; with others, something else has caused it. But the pilgrim to the holy places has a peculiar joy in addition to that shared with his brethren at home. And he will be forgiven if he say, as he feels, that there is no joy like that he has when he kneels where Christ was born. The superior of the convent at Jerusalem told me, on my first interview with him, "Jerusalem est locus crucis et spinarum." The superior of the convent at Bethlehem said, "Bethlehem est domus laetitiae." Both these excellent fathers spoke truly, and justly described the character of their respective cities. I subsequently found that Jerusalem was indeed the place of the cross and of thorns; but it needed only this day—only this hour—to prove to me, with all fulness of absolute certainty, that Bethlehem is indeed the house of joy. Think you that there is on earth another place so blessed and joyful as this? I know of none. Whoever has prayed at Bethlehem will say the same. The good tidings of great joy to all people from this place have been spread over the world.

Let us now look around and observe with carefulness the objects about us. We are in a grotto, apparently hewn in the rock, thirty-eight feet long, eleven feet wide, and nine feet high. The floor and walls are of large slabs of marble, once white, but grown dark by age and lamp-smoke and droppings of olive oil, for hundreds of years. The hangings are old, and in some places (especially the ceiling, which is covered with a blue stuff) dropping to pieces. Twenty-nine lamps, suspended from the roof, burn continually. The Holy Place is at the east end of the grotto; the two flights of stairs mentioned above land very near it. Imagine a semi-circular recess or apse, some four or five feet across, raised four inches above the floor. A marble slab, six inches in diameter, marks the spot where our Lord was born. Around this stone is a large silver star, which lies flat, as would a plate laid on the floor. The body of the star is cut out, so that it makes a rim around the stone in its centre. The star has fourteen rays or points, each about seven inches long, so that it is about twenty inches across the stone from one point to the opposite one. On the star is the inscription—the letters forming a circle around the marble centre—"Hic de Virgine Maria Jesus Christus natus est." Over the star hang sixteen silver lamps which ever burn; they are carefully tended day and night. There are eleven small and rude Greek pictures around the recess behind the lamps. Immediately over the star is an altar, used by the Greeks and Armenians, but not by the Latins; for the reason that Greek and Armenian gold has been largely given to the Turkish rulers for the privilege they possess. The Catholics are comparatively few in numbers and poor in money throughout the Holy Land; and to this circumstance is owing the melancholy fact that what ought to be our exclusive possession, is enjoyed by schismatics, or grudgingly shared with us by them. This altar is quite without decoration during the day. {468} When the Greeks say their mass, they dress it up, removing the things immediately afterward. The Armenians do the same.

Just at the foot of the stairs, as we came down to the shrine, at our left hand—the star being at our right—is a little recess two feet below the floor of the grotto, perhaps seven feet square, a spot of great interest, which happily belongs to the Catholics or Latins. A stone raised eight inches high above the floor of this little chapel marks the spot where the crib stood. Over and behind the stone is an excellent painting in a frame of silver. A screen of silver wire is in front of the painting and of the five silver lamps which hang over the stone. Opposite this, and in the same little chapel, is an altar standing in the spot where the wise men from the East offered their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the newborn King. It was my happiness to have said Mass three times on this altar. The painting over this altar is very good; and a screen of wire is put up at the end of Mass, to protect the painting and the top of the altar during the day. In this little sunken chapel there is only just room for the celebrant and for the brother who serves the Mass; but, as it opens into the grotto on two sides, many persons can assist at the divine mysteries. Of all the shrines in Bethlehem this is the most favorable to devotion. Only a very little daylight comes down the stairs. The grotto is dimly lighted by the lamps, which are all like sanctuary lamps, with a small flame. The eye is attracted to the place of the nativity. All is silent, disposing to recollection and meditation. There are no crowds as in Jerusalem, and no Turks are seen here.

Beside these objects of chief interest, there are several others adjoining the sacred grotto. A passage leads from the rear of the grotto, at the opposite end from the shrine, past the tombs of St. Eusebius, the tombs and altar of Santa Paula and Santa Eustachium, her daughter. Opposite is the tomb of St. Jerome, with a painting representing him resting on a lion. A short distance from this is a square vault, about twenty feet in length and breadth, and nine feet high, lighted from above by a window. A stone seat or dais is around the apartment. This was the study of the great St. Jerome. It is now a chapel, and over the altar is a painting representing the saint with a lion at his feet. For more than thirty years did this great Father live in this cell. Here he made the translation of the Holy Scriptures into Latin, which we yet use—the Latin Vulgate, as it is called. Here, also, he wrote his treatises, letters, and commentaries, which are of such value and estimation in the church. Here, also, he wrote those remarkable words concerning the day of judgment, which are sometimes appended to his picture: "Quoties diem illum considero, toto corpore contremisco; sive enim comedo, sive bibo, sive aliquid aliud facio, semper videtur illa tuba terribilis sonare in auribus meis: Surgite mortui, venite ad judicium." This is the reason why he is sometimes painted with a trumpet, illa tuba terribilis, blown by an angel over his head. He was one of the earliest and certainly the most illustrious of pilgrims from Europe to Bethlehem, and is justly honored as a doctor and father of the church. He died A.D. 420, and was buried here in his monastery; but his remains were subsequently removed to Rome, where they now are in the magnificent church of St. Mary Major.

In another place, some forty feet from the study of St. Jerome, is the tomb of the Holy Innocents, where were buried many of those so cruelly murdered by order of the wicked Herod, who hoped that in their number would be the new-born King of the Jews. With a single exception, the slaughter of the Holy Innocents is the only sad memory associated with Bethlehem. That exception is the poverty, fearful and extreme, in which some of the Catholics at this time live. Their desolation is great, and their appeals for assistance are urgent and painful to the traveller.

In Bethlehem, as in Jerusalem, there is a procession daily made to the sacred places in the church. The plan and idea of the office is the same in both places, that is, a hymn with antiphon and prayer at each station. There is a difference in the subject, of course. It was touching, when we came to the place where is the silver star, to listen to the words in the prayer, "Here Jesus Christ was born." Also, when we next went to the place where the wise men made their offerings, one of the acolytes stood at the corner of the altar and, pointing with his finger, chanted "Hic magi offerabant munera." Few things in life can equal in impressiveness this daily visit to the holy places.

At night I went up on the convent roof to see the stars shining on Bethlehem; to be in Bethlehem and see the stars look down on the spot where I stood. The sky was clear and pure. Countless thousands of the heavenly bodies were there, each in its brilliancy. Starlight is always beautiful; especially is it grateful to the eye which has been pained with the dazzling and blinding power of the Eastern sun. How often, at home, had I thought of Bethlehem and the stars, not alone that one which is so memorable in the gospel history, but also of those which may now be seen; for, ever in the future, Bethlehem and the starlight are intimately associated. I looked up with a thankful heart. Countless as these lights had been God's mercies to myself. Another was added in its being granted me to come to Bethlehem to see it, to pray there, to look up to the sky and recall the sacred events belonging to the place. That night I went to rest in joy.

The next morning, Monday, February 5th, I said mass at the altar of the Magi or Three Kings. In the afternoon, Father Wadhams, Father Luigi, and myself went out to visit a place of great interest, a mile or so from the convent. We passed through the village of the shepherds—yet retaining that name—where dwelt those who kept their flocks. Beyond this we walked over the plain and fields of Boaz and Ruth to the place where the shepherds were abiding, keeping watch over their flocks by night, and where the angel came upon them in glory, saying, "Fear not: for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day, in the city of David, a Saviour who is Christ the Lord." And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will."

We recalled this history with joy, and, taking off our hats, chanted the Gloria in Excelsis on the spot where those holy words were first heard by men. How often has not that grand and touching chant been sung throughout the world, melting the hardest hearts into penitence, and subduing the roughest natures into gentleness and love!

The place where the shepherds rested while watching their flocks was a grotto, of which there are very many throughout the Holy Land, and in it they would be sheltered from the night air, needing less protection in the day time, as the winter is not very cold. The grotto had long ago been converted into a chapel by the Greeks, and we went into it and prayed. The neighborhood—especially the place were the shepherds heard the angel's message—is planted with olive trees; and I broke a few leaves from the tree under which we stood while singing the Gloria to keep as a memorial of the place. A Catholic priest is now building a church in the village of the shepherds. Returning, we saw the place where Santa Paula lived and died; it is a mile or less from the Church of the Nativity toward Jerusalem. We came home in time to join the procession which is daily made.

Later in the evening, and when there was no one present but ourselves, we went into the sacred grotto. Perfect silence reigned. Prostrate on the marble floor, I passed an hour close to the very spot where our Lord was born. Over and over again did I pray for the good people of Nativity Church at home, and for all who were commended to my prayers. Then, in this unbroken silence, which not even our breathing disturbed, I meditated on all that had taken place here, and on the mercy from God of which the birth of the Divine Infant was the seal. Repeatedly I kissed the stone which marks the spot, and the silver star by which it is surrounded. God has often in time past been gracious to me; but I say it with a thankful heart, that this one hour was the most blessed and happy of my whole life.

I have thus attempted to describe the holy city of David, and the objects of interest within and near it. My fourth and last visit was made on the return from Hebron; and I had more difficulty in tearing myself away from Bethlehem than in leaving any other place in the Holy Land. At the Greek convent of Elijah, of which mention has been made, I turned to take my last look at the city where Christ was born. Gazing long and earnestly, the whole scene was stamped indelibly on memory, and I said "Good-bye, Bethlehem, dearest city of holy mercy, house of joy, good-bye. Peace be with thee, and peace with them who love thee!"

Lines on the Ceremonial Sandal of his Holiness.

    Preserved At Burton Manor, Staffordshire,
    The Seat Of Francis Whitgreave, Esq.

  "How beauteous on the hills the feet of him"
    ('Tis thus Isaias sings)
  "Who preaches heavenly peace, and brings to man
    Glad tidings of good things!"

  Christ first, his vicar now, to us fulfils
    This gracious work of God;
  No land by seas or mountains so concealed
    But Peter there hath trod.

  Hail, dearly-prized memorial, in late days
    By our loved Pius worn!
  Hail, emblem of the foot that walked the waves
    In our redemption's morn!

  Before the little cross embroided here
    Princes have bended low,
  And owned the presence of a greater power
    Than the proud world can show.

  Here love hath left a kiss; here guilt hath been.
    Nor dropped her tear in vain
  At his dear feet who can absolve all sins,
    Or, when he wills, retain!

  Here learning to the truthful Roman See
    Hath noble homage paid;
  Here to religion's lovelier majesty
    Beauty hath bowed her head.

  Oh! by this sacred relic here I swear,
    As all my life shall prove,
  To him who sits in Peter's holy chair
    True loyalty and love.

         E. Caswall.
         Oratory, Birmingham.

The Labor Question.

Translated From Le Correspondant.

I will not attempt to conceal from you the emotion which thrills me. I behold and am dismayed. I am abashed before this assembly, which will presently give me inspiration. I speak before a prince of the church, who is also a prince of wisdom and virtue; before this illustrious circle of bishops, my fathers in the faith; before these eminent statesmen, masters of science and of eloquence, and I find this tribunal still warm and palpitating from the hands which have touched it and the words which have made it tremulous. I speak before this grand assemblage, convened from the four quarters of the world to discuss, upon this little spot of free ground that we call Belgium, the religious interests of the Catholics of two worlds. Gentlemen, I was alarmed at first, but I will fear no longer. I feel that I am not a stranger here; I meet brothers. Your acclamations I accept, for they are not addressed to the individual, who is nothing, but to the cause, which is grand; I had almost said, which is every thing. This cause I can define in two words—the Catholic Church, and the Catholic Church in the nineteenth century.

On that day which no priest forgets—on that day when, lying upon the pavement of the temple, I took for my only and virginal spouse the Holy Church of Jesus Christ; my lips in the dust, my eyes in tears, my heart in ecstacy and in thrills of rapture—I vowed in silence to love her well, and, if I could, to serve her well, not only in her grand past, which is no more, and in her glorious future, which is not yet come, but in her present, so sorrowful and so grand also; in her present, which is the product of the past ages of her history, and, consequently, the work of God.

Those who undertake to serve the church in the nineteenth century have one especially profound and threatening question to encounter: I mean the Labor Question.

This question is one which transcends all fixed limits, but I will limit my treatment of it to one especial point of view—the education of the laboring classes. The hope of the harvest is in the seed, and Leibnitz was right in saying, "Give me the instruction of the youth during one century and I will change the face of the globe." This transformation cannot be accomplished until the working classes shall be educated under the conditions designed by the nature of man and the general harmony of the divine plan.

There are three degrees in this education—the primary education by the family, the professional education by the workshop, the religious education of the Sunday.

I.

Family Education.

I place the family in the first rank. It occupies it in the order of time; it ought to occupy it in the order of influences.

Among the many elevated minds occupied with the fate of the working classes, I am astonished that there are so few who comprehend their real wants. {473} The remedy for the evils which they suffer, the means of the progress that they wish to realize, are vainly sought for in new inventions and combinations, in specious theories, or even in private or public charitable institutions. They are in the family; that institution which is as ancient and universal as the world, and which has its roots in the inmost depths of the strength and tenderness of humanity; that institution which came from the hands of God himself, a vestige of the primal order of Eden, which Christ has empurpled with his blood, and raised to the dignity of a sacrament, making it one of the seven pillars destined to uphold for ever the edifice of regenerated human society. (Applause.)

It is, then, the family that embodies the strength to sustain or to restore in all classes of society; but above all in the working class of our cities. It is especially to the family that the first education of the child must be entrusted.

In primary education, there are two things which need especial consideration—the place and the agent. The place is the domestic hearth; the agent is the mother.

The domestic hearth! There it is that the cradle of the child ought to be, there that its first years ought to be passed. Has not Providence implanted this instinct in the heart of all his creation, even in the species inferior to ours? Does not the bird build its nest in the soft moss, under the shelter of the hedge and among the branches of the tree? Is there not in all the orders of nature a special place, a sacred spot, where the first hopes, the first joys, and the first sufferings of life should be experienced? Ah, well! among all these other cradles, the human race has a right to a sacred cradle, too; it has a right to a domestic hearth which shall be free from the infection of filth and disease, and whose atmosphere shall not be fatal to the life either of the body or of the soul of the child.

It is at this fireside that must first begin the education of this young soul, of its imagination and budding perceptions. These walls are not merely walls, this roof is not alone a collection of shingles and slate, this furniture is not merely collection of common objects: I say that all this speaks a deep language, that all this exercises a powerful influence in the moral order. Have not we Catholics, in our divine religion, sensible signs that are called sacraments, water, wine, bread, oil; in short, matter—but matter which reveals and communicates in different degrees invisible things! In the order of nature, and in what I will call the religion of the fireside, there is also a mysterious influence of places and of things—a secret communication of the habits, of the virtues, of the soul of the family by these material objects themselves. The child will see what its parents have seen; it will mingle its life with objects filled with recollections of them, and, so to speak, penetrated by their souls; he will receive some impress from it, and as an indelible character that he will carry through the errors of youth and even under the white hairs of the old man. If there be poetry in this, gentlemen, it is practical poetry; it germinates in facts; it has its roots in the nature of things. It makes us feel, besides, of what importance it is for the child to be reared with its father and mother, and not under a strange roof.

I have said that the mother is the principal agent in the fireside education. It is not that I disregard the part of the father; and if it were appropriate for me to say all I think, I should reproach some Catholic writers, who fail to make sufficient account of it. {474} We are in danger of forgetting the father in the presence of the mother—this type so pure, so gracious, so Christian.

But I cannot give here an exhaustive treatise upon family education, and I insist above all upon the importance of this primary education of which the care devolves almost exclusively upon the mother. At this period of life, the body and the heart of the child must be formed; reason will have its turn later, but it will only develop itself upon the double soil, physical and moral, a body and a heart worthily prepared. Now, the hands of the wife are alone capable of this divine field-culture, agricultura Dei; they alone are pure enough and tender enough to touch this virginal and suffering body that an imprudent touch might bruise or blight; they alone are powerful enough to awake in him that organ of the heart which is, according to science, the first to be born and the last to die, primum saliens et ultimum moriens, the power to love which remains so often stifled or corrupted in its germ. As the hands of the priest are consecrated to touch the body of Christ upon the altar—this body glorious but subjected to the fragile conditions of the sacrament—so the hands of the Christian woman, by the benediction of marriage and through the graces of maternity, are sanctified to touch worthily the body of the child, a body infirm but glorious, because it contains a soul; I had almost said because it contains a god. By baptism it has been made a living member of Jesus Christ. (Applause.)

The fireside and the mother! Where are they to-day for the people of our great cities? Ah! I touch two great, hideous sores of our contemporaneous society: the pitiable condition of the working part of the community, and the absence of the mother from the domestic hearth. Here is one of the most unrecognized and most active principles in the evil which we suffer; it is here, in this disorganization of the family, in this demoralization of the people, that are formed those black spots which finally rise in the atmosphere, and become there an ever-increasing cloud which at last bursts in a great tempest.

Is it a fireside or is it a den, this damp, dark, infected cellar from which the poor are absent all day, and in the evening return only to horrible poverty and disorder? Is this the dwelling of the living or the tomb of the dead, this narrow, suffocating garret, where, in order to extend himself upon his bed—I cite a fact recently come to my knowledge in Paris—the fatigued workman is obliged to open the garret window during the night and to put his feet upon the roof? I ask, are such dwellings tolerable for the free citizens of France or Belgium; for men redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ? (Applause.)

If at least the mother were there, her look and her smile would illumine the clouds, transform the ugliness, and make a joyous festival in the midst of this sadness. But labor, barbarous labor, has deprived her of performing the sacred duties of the mother, and has drawn her, weak and tottering, into the great workshop, full of the noise of work and the sound of blasphemy, whence she can not hear the cry of her son carried far from her to an indifferent or covetous stranger, who will restore him to her dead or at least blighted.

I do not exaggerate, gentlemen; these are but too common facts, and which are tending to become the law in these great industrial masses. Ah! well, it is the duty, the imperious duty of Catholics to unite among themselves and with the Christians of all churches and feeling men of all opinions, to make one supreme effort in favor of the working classes. Let us work to restore to them the family which has been taken away from them. Let us work to restore the fireside, modest and poor undoubtedly, but decent and pleasant, where the mother remains with her children and gives them those cares of the heart and the body in which no one in the world can replace her. (Applause.)

I do not wish to be a Utopian, and I have not the credulity to believe that these things can be accomplished in a day. Whatever assistance may be rendered, it will require years and still years before the family life, so deeply violated among the people of our cities, retakes its vigor and beauty. In the meantime, gentlemen, what shall we do? Charity has marvellous inventions. To those who are homeless, it has opened children's homes and asylums; to those who have no mother, it has prepared devoted hearts of teachers, whatever may be the dress and name they bear. It has prepared, above all, three centuries ago, through the heart of Vincent de Paul, that extraordinary woman whose mission was reserved especially for the nineteenth century, for the great crisis of the laboring classes, the helper of the workman as of the soldier, upon the field of battle, of labor, and of suffering—the sister of charity. If any one could replace the mother at the cradles of the people, it would be the sister of charity, (applause;) it would be this nun, unsecluded and unveiled, who, not being of the world, yet lives in the world, and who unites, in an unexampled combination, the heart of the virgin and the feelings of the mother. (Prolonged applause;) Let us leave the child to the sister of charity; we will leave it to the instructor and instructress who fill to it the place of parents, to the infant-asylum and school that supplies to it the place of home. Let us not permit that any hand, under any pretence, snatch it from this cradle-education, and give us that spectacle, which would be loathsome if it were not lamentable— the workman eight years of age. I feel the need of speaking the truth with regard to this grand industry, that has been flattered even to baseness by some, and disparaged even to abuse by others. I belong neither to the class of courtiers nor to that of traducers, and I estimate that the best homage one can render to a power of this world is to believe it great enough to hear the truth. I will say, then, to trade, that it has never a right to put its hand upon a child before the age denoted by nature and by religion. To do this is to commit a crime more odious than that which has so long stained America, and that she has been obliged to wash out in waves of blood. Among those men who owned other men there were those who were just and good, who were more the benefactors of their slaves than their masters. But there were also those who were without conscience and without feeling. They saw in the negro only an instrument, and they required of him unmeasured labor without repose. This was the oppression of the body. But all oppression, as all liberty, passes from that of the body to that of the soul. If the truth could come in them, the truth would deliver them! No communication, then, with those who possess science, with men who speak too high, nor with books that teach too thoroughly. And, finally, to intellectual oppression, these cautious and cruel tyrants added moral oppression. {476} They were doubly right, for, of all the accessories of liberty, the most dangerous is not science but virtue. No virtue, then, for the slave! He has been deprived of the gospel; he must also be deprived of nature! And because in the absence of the gospel, and even in the ruins of human nature, when this nature has not entirely perished, there yet dwell two noble sentiments, two powerful roots, whence all can spring up again and flourish—conjugal love and paternal love—family life was rendered impossible, and in these horrible cases men could no longer embrace, in honor as in tenderness, the companion of their misfortunes and the fruit of their love.

You shudder, gentlemen, and you are right. But nothing which has been lost, however great may be the evil, is ever entirely without remedy. This negro is an adult, a man grown; and if, in a childhood more happy than his maturity, he has been warmed upon the bosom of a black but Christian mother, nigra sed formosa, and has drawn the chaste and healthful milk of virtue; if he has known the gospel, and if he has loved Jesus Christ, he holds in his innermost life concealed resources; he will feel the sudden and powerful awakenings of an honest conscience and of Christian truth, and against the triple tyranny of the body, of the intelligence, and of the heart there will be victorious rebellions.

Gentlemen, the being most effectually oppressed, the victim irremediably crushed, is not the man; it is the child. It is the little white slave of our Europe, who has known neither his cradle nor his mother, and who has awakened to life in the dark workshop, a kind of hell on earth, of which we may write—

His active lungs breathe in full draughts of air which are simply draughts of poison; his little limbs, bent under the work before being formed, are dedicated from infancy to decrepitude. His intelligence, too, arrested in its early budding, is sadly locked in darkness. It is in vain that, later, in fruitless remorse, we would attempt to imbue him with some truths. The negro will recollect himself after years of brutishness; the child will learn no more after a few months of this odious system. He will never hold in his hand the three keys, at once common and sublime, which open so many things in life and in the soul—reading, writing, and arithmetic. He will never possess those rudiments of science which ought to be the portion of all—something of the form and life of this globe that he inhabits, and much of the glory and destinies of that country which he ought to love and to serve. Never, above all, will he have the clear and strong revelation of his own soul and of God. His soul and God! it is not only ignorance which steals them from him, it is vice. What has taken place in this dark workshop, in this hell, precocious but not the less hopeless? I will not attempt to speak it, but will listen to the words of a poet [Footnote 46] of our age, eloquent interpreter of the frenzies and anguishes of evil in the depths of the human soul:

  "The heart of man, unspotted, is a vase profound;
   If the first water poured into it be impure,
   The sea may pass over without washing away the stain,
   For the abyss is unfathomable and the spot in its depths."

(Applause.) O hands that have abused the child! you will be cursed in spite of all your splendor, in spite of all your science, and in spite of your riches! Hands of a relentless industry, you will remain dry and withered as the hand of the tyrant of Israel under the malediction of the prophet of Judos, "The hand of Jeroboam withered and he was not able to draw it back again to him, because the Lord had cursed it." You have committed the most cowardly, the most revolting, and the most irreparable of crimes. (Prolonged applause.)

II.

The Education Of The Workshop.

I have been too diffuse upon the primary education of man. The fault, gentlemen, is in your attention and sympathy; and then in the empty cradle, the absent mother, this gloomy fireside, where I had need to weep and hope with you.

The home education is concluded by that grand religious ceremony, the first communion, which serves as the first emancipation of the child. More precocious in that than the sons of the rich, the sons of the workman enter from there a sort of public life; from the family, they pass to the workshop. Am I mistaken, gentlemen; is there not a school between the family and the workshop, the primary school first and the professional school afterward? No; the school is not between the family and the workshop, it is beside them. It does not form, in connection with them, a third degree in the popular education. In a word, its part is not principal and independent, but secondary and subordinate. I am full of sympathy and respect for those modest and courageous teachers of the people, to whatever corps of instructors they may belong, whether they wear the religious or the layman's dress, provided they remain at the height of their profession. I will never associate myself with the gross and unmerited injuries of which they are the objects, in different senses, on the part of all extreme parties. But grand as is their mission, I repeat it, it is secondary; and practical reason fails to see in the school what a large number of our contemporaries see in it—the most efficacious instrument for the elevation of the laboring classes. Permit me, gentlemen, to cite the words of an economist, a patient, impartial, and wise observer, whose name and works I would wish to popularize among Catholics. "With a free and prosperous people," says M. Le Play, "the instructor occupies only a subordinate position. The true education is given by the family, aided by the priest; it is completed by apprenticeship to a profession, and by the observance of social duties." [Footnote 47]

[Footnote 47: Social Reform in France, by M. Le Play, author of European Laborers, Commissioner-General to the Universal Exhibitions of 1855, '62, and '67. 3d edition, vol. ii. p. 369.]

The workshop is, then, after the family, the second centre, the second home, for the education of the people. But what is a well-planned and well-organized workshop? It is one where the dignity and rights of personal being are recognized in the workmen, and especially in the child. A personal being is always an end, never a means; it cannot be used as an animal without reason, nor as an instrument without consciousness. If one expect services of it, and receive profit from it, it is necessary to dispose of it, as God does of us, with a great respect; cum magna reverentia disponis nos. What is a well-appointed workshop? It is one which has at its head a patron who is an honorable man, a patron truly worthy of the name he bears. Some have seen something ridiculous and disagreeable in this name; but, for my part, I find it very grand, very elevated, and, above all, very Christian. {478} I see in it the idea of paternity, and in this very idea the practical solution of our problem, by the relations of mutual affection in a free but, nevertheless, close and durable association between the masters and the workmen. In such a workshop, under this father of the laborer, an immediate gain will be sacrificed, however great it may be, to the formation of intelligent and virtuous apprentices. It is not proposed to produce only much and quickly; it is desired that trade may be grand by its workmen as well as by its works; from its moral as well as its material side. The kingdom of God and his righteousness is sought first; and all the rest is added, for righteousness and utility have more bonds between them than we think, and science has recently stated that in the products of labor not only the degree of intelligence, but also the degree of morality of the workmen, may be recognized.

Aided by devoted and qualified foremen, such a patron will make the workshop he directs the best of professional schools. The good workman is made, like the good soldier, less by precept than by example, less by general and theoretical knowledge than by a practical struggle with the realities of his trade.

Come, then, young conscript of labor! I would have many more of this kind and many fewer of the other. (Applause.) Yes, the conscripts of agriculture, in these vast open workshops that we call the fields, and the conscripts of trade, in the more confined but not less fruitful workshops of our cities—the great, peaceful army which forms the true power and superior influence of a nation. (Renewed applause.) Come, conscript of labor! Enter upon the field of battle of the workshop! Fight those combats which are not always without dangers, never without courage and glory! And you, inured foreman, captain of this noble militia, follow it, guide it, exercise it by look, and word, and gesture! See how it avenges its first defeats by valiant exploits; how it puts its victorious hand upon this wild beast, this matter, revolted against man. It seizes it, it twists its mane, and finally curbs it, subdued, pliant, and docile, to carry on the inventions of science and the creations of genius. (Applause.)

Gentlemen, yet a word with regard to the workshop. It is a place which ought to complete the formation of the moral and religious character, at the same time that it perfects the intelligent and qualified workman. It is not alone the school of excellence in the profession; it is also the school of life. The family, with its auxiliaries, the school and the catechism, has provided the theory of life more than it has given the practice. The good precepts have fallen upon the consciousness of the child in the form of a mysterious revelation, of which he has felt the power and the beauty, but of which he has not been able to seize all the significance. Every theory, so far as it remains abstract, differs more or less from the reality; it is essential that it descend into the region of facts, and that it enter into a contact with them which, far from destroying, confirms, but at the same time modifies and fructifies, it. This is the true tendency of practical life.

When, then, the mother and the priest have grounded this sublime, true, and eternal theory of religion and of virtue, it belongs to the workshop to submit it to its necessary and decisive proof, to give or refuse it citizenship in practical existence. {479} If, finally, everything in this new school says to the young apprentice, Your teachers have deceived you or are themselves deceived; the great movement of men and things is not, and cannot be, what they have told you; if this contradiction of the faith of his childhood penetrate his mind and heart through the constant teachings of word and example, by all the influences of these moral mediums, which act upon us with far greater force than physical mediums, it will come to pass that he will abandon the principles of his parents and instructors as a weak support, and will allow himself to glide down the seductive declivities of doubt and pleasure. But if, on the contrary, he find one of these workshops too rare to-day, which are the continuation of the school and fireside experience; if he hear and see the practical commentary on all he has believed and loved; if he breathe the pure air of healthful souls which refreshes and fortifies the conscience and the heart; you will soon see developed to manly stature those virtues of childhood instilled in him by the sacred influence of home and of religion, warmed by the contact of those two hearts which are equal—I dare not say that one surpasses the other; God has clothed them with so nearly the same tenderness and the same piety, for the cradle of mankind—the heart of the mother and the heart of the priest. (Applause.)

III.

Education By Means Of The Sunday.

I have just compared the priest and the mother. And indeed, gentlemen, if I have spoken separately of the family and the workshop, I have not intended by that to separate them from religion. With these two primordial laws of love and of labor of which I have indicated the double home—the family and the workshop—is connected, and, as it were, interlaced, a third still grander law, which forms with them the divine net-work of human existence—prayer.

We cannot be the disciples of an independent morality, because we are not participators in an impersonal deity. We have a morality which comes from the living God and which returns to him, and in this golden chain which binds the earth to heaven all the links are not the duties of man in respect to man; and when one desires to be an honorable man in the fulness and holiness of this term, so often profaned, he must not disregard in his practical respect the most living and sacred of all personalities. Now, this intercourse of the living and personal soul with the living and personal God is what we call prayer, in the fullest and most comprehensive sense of the word. It is not sufficient to think of God; it is necessary to pray to him. When one habituates himself to reach him only by thought, he finishes by no longer believing in God; he vanishes, or at least he transforms himself into a mass of confused and icy clouds—evanuerunt in cogitationibus suis—and of the Being of beings there remains only a sublime but chimerical ideality. It is necessary to have a heart, to have the arts and movements of a soul which looks up with respect and tenderness to the God who makes it to live upon the earth, to the Father who awaits it in the heavens. Not even individual prayer suffices; collective prayer is necessary—the meeting and communion of souls in the same illumination and fervidness of love. This prayer has a sacred day and place—the Sunday and the temple. It is of this day and this place, gentlemen, that it remains to say to you that they are, after as before the first communion, the highest school of the child, of the youth, and of the man.

This is why the first and most essential of all popular liberties is the liberty of keeping the Sunday. There are men who do not comprehend this need of repose for the soul and for the body. They are usually those who direct work, but who do not perform it; who receive the profit without knowing the fatigue. They are those who have not pricked their hands on the hard asperities of labor, with the thorns and briers of the workshop, and who have not been bowed down during six days over the earth with their brows bathed in sweat and their souls exhausted with suffering. As for such, I can conceive of their objections to the law of repose. I can comprehend their repugnance to the liberty of the Sunday. But the laborer, whenever he is not under the pressure of material or moral violence, whenever he is left to his own instincts; he claims as his most dear and sacred right the enjoyment of this day which makes him truly free, truly husband and father, truly a child of God. The sentiment of human dignity requires it; it is the exigency of family life; it is the religious need of souls; it is the cry of all that is most noble and imperious in our nature.

I still recollect what I experienced in my childhood. Permit me this confession, which is yours as well, and which would be also that of our workmen. In the morning, when I awoke, I felt distinctly that it was Sunday! In the clump of trees near the window, the birds sang more sweetly; the church-bells pealed more joyously; the air was filled with more harmonies and perfumes; the sky was so beautiful, the sun so brilliant! I did not understand this mystery. I asked myself many times how nature thus became transformed on a fixed day. Later, I understood it. Child, still warm from the waters of thy baptism, throbbing from the caresses of thy mother, it is a reflection of thy religious soul which passes over nature and makes it more beautiful and more like thyself. (Applause.)

The child will arise transported. It will go into the temple, which is the house of God, but which is also the house of the people. The rich have their palaces; they can content themselves with a modest chapel. For the people we must have cathedrals, (applause,) and festivals such as are not given to the princes of the earth, such as religion alone can realize. The true popular festival—let me speak the word so much abused, the true democratic festival—is Sunday. In the vast basilica, all the arts, united around the altar, have mingled their enchantments into one supreme enchantment—architecture, statuary, painting, music, above all, eloquence. Yes, eloquence! However unpolished the words of the priest may sometimes be, by the nature of the truths he must announce, by the chords which he is sure to touch in the human heart, the priest is necessarily eloquent. (Applause.) The people enter, and they feel its grandeur. And the little children, as they cross the threshold, are welcomed like kings by the grand voice of the organ; they breathe the perfumes of incense and of flowers; they listen to those majestic and tender chants, those Latin words, which they do not comprehend, and which nevertheless say to them so many things—words of eternity dropped down into time, mysterious secrets of the fatherland, a glimpse caught in exile. Transported with faith, with hope, and with love, they come from the fireside to the altar; from the altar to the fireside they recarry to the mother the kiss of God, as they have carried to God the kiss of the mother.

This is the day of which their friends wish to deprive the people—false friends, who believe only in the body, who see in it only material needs, the work and the pleasures of the beast of burden! Courtiers of democracy, you who flatter the people and despise it, believe in its soul, crede animae, and by that begin to believe in your own. (Applause.)

Yes, this law of Sunday, so religiously democratic, is to-day everywhere unrecognized. Patriotism imposes upon me still greater consideration for my country when I speak upon soil which is not her own. I am mistaken; my country asks of me only equity, and I know that if much evil can be said of France as she is to-day, much good may also justly be said of her. I will speak, then, freely; I will complain of the violation of the Sunday in the great industrial cities of France. Sometimes I must pass through the streets in going to the church to speak the sacred word. I revolve in my heart the lessons of the Gospel and all along the way are visions of hell; heavy wagons, axle-trees that groan, pavements that reek, clouds of dust which hide from me the sun and the face of God. I cover my eyes with my hands and say, groaning, It is France that does this.

The answer comes, Undoubtedly; but this is liberty. Respect the liberty of France! Respect the conscience of your fellow-citizens! Ah! I have nothing to say against liberty. I speak of it with lips as much more sincere and fervent as they are more Christian and more Catholic. The hour is not yet come, gentlemen, but the hour will come, in which misapprehensions shall cease, and it will be said before the end of this century that the pontiff so great and so unappreciated, Pius IX., who has most valiantly combated against revolution, is the same who has opened the initiatives the most bold and most fruitful—yes, in spite of apparent reverses, I say the most fruitful for the liberty of Europe. Let us not do that with which St. Paul reproaches the Christians of Corinth. We will not depart from Christ; we will not divide ourselves from Pius IX., divisus est Christus! As for me, in all the extent of his glory I accept him; from his prosperity so pure to his misfortunes so touching; from the raising of the standard of reform and progress in his royal and priestly hand, previous to 1848, to the convocation of the ecumenical council which unites at this hour to the applause of Catholics the sympathy of Protestants and Rationalists.

No! we will not lessen liberty. We will not wound the interests of labor nor the exigencies of trade. What contemptible sophisms these are! Do you not see two great free nations, two great industrial nations, which are equal to yours, if they do not surpass you—England and the United States? I have had the happiness to visit London. I shall never forget the emotion which filled me at the sight of this city, similar to the ancient metropolis of the sea which the prophets paint; the woman who is seated upon the waters, mulier quae sedet super aquas. And in the deep waves I saw no abysses, but only an immense and solemn fluctuation, and as the majesty of an ever moving but firmly established throne. And the great queen of the seas was there, commanding the islands and the continents, reaching out in the distance over kings and peoples, no longer, as her predecessors, the rod of oppression, but the beneficent sceptre of her riches and her liberty. {482} And I heard the sound of her vast trade, and in the streets passed the living flood of men and chariots. Then one day broke as the days of my childhood; one day such as public life no longer shows me in my country; one day which did not resemble other days. No longer the noisy cars in the streets, no longer a crowd full of business; the gigantic machine which muttered and thundered the evening before had suddenly stopped, as before the vision of God. The grand movement of English trade was arrested, and I saw in the streets only those who went, collected and happy, to the place of prayer, and I heard only the sweet harmony of the Protestant bells, which remembered having been Catholic while waiting to become so again. (Applause.)

Let not any one say, England is an aristocratic and feudal power; its Sabbath-rest is one of the remnants of the middle ages which modern breath will soon have swept away. I look to the other side of the sea, and I find again this Anglo-Saxon race which can clothe the same grandeur under the most diverse forms; this time it is not the middle age and aristocracy; it is the most advanced prow of modern civilization, sailing across all glories and indiscretions toward an unknown future. This is, I love to think, the people chosen by God to renew things and to prepare for truths and institutions which can no longer do without newer and stronger vestments. Well, the United States observe the Sunday as England does, and send back to us across the ocean this same response of the silence of God to the blasphemies of men. (Applause.)

In praising these great countries, gentlemen, I do not intend to recommend to you a servile imitation, and I do not ask that what is not in our manners shall be inscribed in our laws. The law exists in France, it is true, but in the state of a dead letter. I do not desire to see it applied. I am persuaded that in such countries as France and Belgium great inconvenience would arise by this means. What I ask is not the obligation, it is the liberty of the Sunday; liberty by the Sunday and the Sunday by liberty. (Cries of Good. That is it.) Yes, I repeat, the liberty of the people by the Sunday and the observance of the Sunday by liberty. If I had the right to speak to governments, I should do it with that respect which is their due even in their faults. Even here, we have applauded the beautiful words of M. de Maistre on the subject of Russia: "I respect all that is respectable, the sovereigns and the people." I say, then, to them, Give your example, and I ask of you no other support for the cause that I defend. Let the public works scrupulously respect the Sunday, and the state force the individual to blush before it. (Applause.) And you, princes of trade, organizers, legislators, and monarchs of labor and of wealth, you can do more here than crowned heads; you have been powerful agents in suppressing the liberty of the Sunday; you will be more powerful in restoring it. (Applause.)

And now, gentlemen, before closing, suffer me to address one last and earnest appeal to your zeal in favor of these three great restorers in the bosom of the laboring classes—the family, the workshop, and the Sunday.

Yesterday, in language which belongs only to himself, but which interprets our feelings as well, M. Le Compte de Falloux said to the illustrious Bishop of Orleans, "My Lord, you have recommended us to arise early; but you have joined example to precept; you have ever been the standard-bearer in all good causes." {483} Well, what I could wish is, that each one of us could also be among the standard-bearers; that we could have the honor, we Catholics, of being in advance of others in the practical knowledge of what is preparing in the approximate future.

What is approaching? It is called by an illy-defined name, which awakens passions and dissensions—democracy. Two years ago I attempted to explain this word at Notre-Dame de Paris, [Footnote 48] and I have been blamed for it by some. I have since found a similar definition in the recent writings of the honored bishop whom I have just named. I retake it, then, with pride, and I say to all those who invoke this name, There are two democracies in the world. Which is yours? Is it radical revolution? Does social hierarchy, entirely prostrated before the force of numbers, constitute the grandeur of intelligence and virtue? Is it the brutal level which passes over all things to crush and to lower? If this be your democracy, it is the worst of barbarisms, and we will combat it, if necessary, even to the shedding of our blood. But if democracy be the gradual and peaceable elevation of the laboring and suffering masses, who are called peasants in the country and workmen in our cities; if it be their elevation to a more extended knowledge, to a more secure well-being, to a more efficient and refined morality, and by legitimate consequence to a more extensive social influence; we are with this democracy, not only because we are the sons of our century, but because we are the sons of the Gospel. [Footnote 49]

[Footnote 49: "If democracy be the rising of the common people, of the peasants and the laborers, to a higher standard of education, of well-being, of morality, of legitimate influence, the church is with democracy." —Atheism and Social Peril, by Monsignor the Bishop of Orleans. 1866. p. 166.]

I see it arise. I salute it in your name; this Christian democracy, having its deep and solid foundations in the homes, the workshops of trade, and in the sanctuary of our temples. It will change history, which, in the past, has only recorded the intrigues of the wily or the conquests of the strong, the powerlessness of policy, the too frequent corruption of riches and art. It will give to the sages a subject of meditation in the intelligent and faithful working out of the laws of private life, to which public life itself is subordinate when it is understood. It will cause a great people to spring up who will seek the practical welfare of their existence, as well as the inspiration of their literature and art, in family affection, the struggles and joys of labor, and in the chaste emotions of prayer and the splendid festivities of religion.

Undoubtedly, the crisis that we are passing through is one of the most important and terrible that our race has known. Let us raise our efforts, our courage, and our faith to the height of these solemn events, but never doubt the final issue. I can explain the ruins of pagan society; but the society which has touched Jesus Christ, the humanity which has possessed for centuries the spirit of the Gospel—in a word, Europe—she may suffer, she may be in the pangs of death, but she cannot die. (Prolonged applause.)

Mater Filii.

  Behind this vast and wondrous frame
    Of worlds whereof we nothing know
  Except their aspects, and their name,—
    Behind this blind, bewildering show

  Of shapes that on the darkness trace
    Transitions fair and fugitive,
  Lies hid that power upon whose face
    No child of man shall gaze and live.

  As one that in broad sunshine stands
    While minster organs near him roll,
  Screening his forehead with his hands,
    And following through the gulfs of soul

  Some memory that before him flies—
    Thus, power eternal and unknown,
  We muse on thine immensities,
    Yet find thee in thy Son alone.

  Immanuel—God with us—in him
    The lineaments divine are glassed
  Like mountain outlines, vague and dim
    Upon the mists of morning cast.

  The "Word made Flesh!" O power divine!
    Through him, through him, we guess at thee,
  And deepliest feel that he is thine
    When throned upon his mother's knee.

  "If I but touch his vesture's hem,
    I shall be healed, and strong, and free—"
  Thou wert his vesture, Mary;—them
    His virtue heals that cling to thee!

                        Aubrey De Vere.

The Sacrifice and the Ransom.

Introduction.

Among the various manifestations of Christian charity in the middle ages—charity sometimes ill-understood perhaps, but always sincere and enthusiastic—there are few that show more expressively to what a degree the love of our fellow-creature can suppress all egotistical instincts, than the Order of Mercy for the redemption of captives. Sustained and encouraged by holy charity, the Father of Mercy embarked each year at Marseilles, braving plague, martyrdom, and slavery. In the name of that heavenly King, of whom he considered himself the ambassador, he demanded from the astonished tyrant of Algiers the liberty of the Christian captives, until then apparently condemned never to see again their homes. The savage Dey, awed by the heroic confidence of the unarmed pilgrim—moved, perhaps, by some secret compassion, accepted the gold offered as ransom; and the obscure and humble father recrossed the sea, and returned again on foot to his distant monastery.

And what was the origin of this institution? No legislative assembly, no council of ministers is entitled to the honor of having conceived the idea of this pious enterprise. The loving heart of a man who had devoted himself from his childhood to the service of suffering humanity was the first to devise a plan of carrying relief and consolation to misfortunes which, until then, had seemed beyond the ordinary action of Christian charity. Peter Nolasque, the founder of the Order of Mercy, was born in 1189, near Castelnaudari, in Languedoc, France. His learning was as remarkable as his piety, so that at the age of twenty-five, the education of the son of Peter of Aragon was confided to him by the celebrated Simon of Montfort. It was while at the court of Barcelona, in this high and responsible position, that Peter Nolasque resolved to devote his life and fortune to the ransom of the Christian slaves who languished hopelessly, under the burning sun of Africa.

For this purpose he determined to establish a religious order for the deliverance of captives. Several noblemen contributed large sums of money toward the good work; the court of Rome gave its supreme approbation, and on St. Lawrence's day, 1223, Peter Nolasque was declared the first general of the new institution, and invested with the monastic habit. He lived far from courts during the rest of his life, travelling painfully on foot to carry consolation and freedom to the wretched beings he pitied so truly. More than four hundred Christians were delivered from the hands of the Mussulman by his efforts alone.

He died on Christmas-day, 1256, leaving behind him the memory of a pure and generous life, and an institution which soon numbered among its members many of the bravest and noblest chevaliers of France.

The Sacrifice.

It was in the year of our Lord 1363. The curfew bell had just been rung, the doors of the village houses were all fast shut, and within the castle wall the measured tread of the sentinel on the battlements was the only sound that met the ear. If, perchance, some belated traveller was still abroad, he hung his rosary around his neck, and hurried onward muttering pious ejaculations; for a heavy mist deepened the shades of night, and the sad wailings of the wind and the hootings of the owl mingling together, sounded ominously in his terrified ears.

The only light visible was in the chapel of the monastery, where the monks of the Order of Mercy were reciting their evening prayers. They had just ended the last and solemn petition for "all Christians, captive and suffering in the hands of the infidel," when the bell at the great gate of the holy house rang loudly, and the brother-porter, rising from his knees, hastened to reconnoitre by the wicket who it was demanded admittance at such an unusual hour.

Three persons were at the gate; one, a young man, wore a rich emblazoned coat of arms; his head was uncovered save by the long clustering curls of dark hair, now heavy with the night-damp, that descended to his shoulders; a youth, apparently his page, bore in his arms the knight's helmet. The third individual was an old man, who kept himself in the background, and who appeared by his plain steel cuirass to be an humble squire, grown gray in harness.

The page's youthful face was sad and timid; the elder man's showed the traces of violent passions in the deep lines that furrowed it, and his eyes even now seemed to flash in the light of the torch that the monk carried. The chevalier's noble countenance was pale and grave, and he stood leaning pensively on his sword. "What wish you, Messire?" asked the brother-porter of the knight, when, after a deep but sharp scrutiny, his doubts were removed as to the quality of the strangers.

"May it be as you desire, Messire. I will seek the reverend Father when you have entered with your followers."

The heavy iron-bound gate of the convent turned on its massive hinges, and closed the instant that the travellers were within.

The golden spurs of the chevalier resounded on the cloister's marble flags as he followed the monk, and he murmured to himself the words of the Psalm, "Haec requies mea in seculum seculi"—but his page and his squire knew no Latin, and his conductor heard him not.

They were introduced into a spacious ancient parlor lined with high black oaken wainscot; the brother placed the torch he carried in an iron claw that was fixed in the wall for that purpose, and invited the strangers to seat themselves on the bench that ran round the chamber, then bowing profoundly, left them.

The squire immediately drew nearer to his young lord who appeared to be absorbed in thought.

"How, my lord," cried he, "is it possible that you believe that these monks can forward your plans? Why thus retard our journey? A few days more and we should have reached our goal, and many a good man and true would have made your quarrel his own. The brave free companies would have served you as never a hooded priest in France!"

"Banish all such thoughts for the future, Michel," replied the knight, "it is better to pardon than to revenge."

"Good Saint Denis! do I hear the Lord of Montorgueil aright! My lord, pardon the frank speech of an old soldier, but never was the escutcheon of your house dimmed without being washed in blood—and would you be the first to let it lie soiled in the dust?"

"Alas! Michel, it is indeed true that too much blood has been shed in the quarrels of our house!"

"Holy Virgin! can it be possible that my liege lord has forgotten the duties of a valiant knight?"

"Friend," replied the young warrior sternly while his pale cheek reddened with the emotion awakened by the squire's reproach, "I have remembered that I was a Christian before I was made a knight!"

Michel drew back in silence, gazing on his master with a countenance in which astonishment and grief were nearly equally portrayed, while the Lord of Montorgueil silently proceeded to take off his shoulder-belt and untie his silken scarf.

The heavy oaken door at length opened and the venerable prior entered. Quick as thought, the knight threw the sword he held in his hands at the monk's feet; then, falling on his knees, exclaimed in a loud, firm voice, "Reverend Father, in the name of God and of the holy Virgin Mary, I, Raoul de Montorgueil, chevalier, pray and conjure you to admit me into the religious and devout observance of our Lady of Mercy, for the deliverance of captives!"

"My lord, my lord," cried Michel, "remember the Sire of Valeri! Proud will he be, and loud his boast that fear of him has moved you to this. You know his outre-cui-dance!"

"O my worshipful lord!" exclaimed the timid page, bursting into tears, "think of your lady-mother!"

"I think of the salvation of my soul more than of all else," replied the chevalier.

"Silence, good friend!" said the prior, as Michel appeared about to attempt another remonstrance; "and you, my son, seat yourself here by my side, and tell me what has induced you to seek this peaceful sanctuary."

The young knight arose and placed himself on the wooden bench by the monk; then, keeping his eyes steadfastly bent to the ground as if to avoid the sight of his two weeping retainers, "Reverend Father," he said, "most bitter is the remembrance of the past; for the last time will I recount the evil thoughts and deeds that once seemed so natural to me. For many a year all Brittany has resounded with the feuds of the Lords of Montorgueil and the Sires of Valeri; bitter has been the hatred and bloody the strife between these two proud houses; but I will not recall past outrages—let me relate only the last deadly wrong that filled my heart with unspeakable thirst of vengeance.

"Twelve days have not yet expired since the passage of arms at Rennes; the Sire of Valeri was there at the head of a numerous company of his partisans, and defied me to single combat, with many a vain and bragging word. I accepted his challenge, resolved to be the victor or die. The onslaught was terrible, for we were equal in strength and skill, and we long parried each other's thrusts. Forced at last to pause to take breath, the Sire of Valeri proposed a truce.

"'Let us meet a month hence,' he cried, 'with twenty good men each, and end our quarrel.'

"'Why should we adjourn till another day what can be so well ended now?' I replied; 'our swords will be no sharper and our hate no hotter. No, may my spurs be hacked off my heels by your basest varlet, ere I consent to sheathe again my sword before one of us fall!' Then again fast and furious fell our blows until the traitor knight making a feint, struck me before I had time to cover and I fell. 'Yield!' cried my exulting foe. 'Never! Never!' I replied. 'Then die the death!' and he raised his weapon.

"At that moment my young brother—alas! alas! why did my lady-mother bring him to those fatal lists!—my young brother leapt over the barriers and sprang to the rescue—the heavy blade descended on his fair head! Father, I saw the long hair of the noble child red with his young life's blood, and I saw no more. When I awoke from my deadly swoon, I found that my good squire and gentle page had carried me from the lists and were weeping over me while they swore vengeance on the enemy of our house.

"I, too, thirsted for vengeance, for vengeance on all the kith and kin of the house of Valeri, and I resolved to seek fifty lances and attack the miscreant in his stronghold. Vainly my lady-mother prayed me to lay aside my sword and live for her. 'Leave vengeance to heaven,' she said, 'I have seen too much blood—O my son! let me not weep over the mangled corpse of my last child!' Vainly she prayed; I left her, reverend father, to mourn over the grave of my brother, while I carried death to the homestead of our enemy.

"But as I journeyed toward the quarters of the Free Companions, followed by these, my squire and page, intending to enlist some good lances under my banner, the remembrance of my mother's grief returned again and again, and my heart softened each time that I thought of her, childless and alone in her sorrow. I was meditating sadly this very day, when the sound of a bell ringing the Angelus reminded me that it was the hour of prayer, and I alighted from my horse to repeat an Ave Maria. When I said, 'Pray for us in the hour of our death,' I asked myself for the first time, if in that supreme hour the remembrance of my revenge would be sweet to me, and if, when in the presence of him who is the suzerain of the lord as well as of the vassal, I should dare to vaunt me of the blood I had shed. Thus I continued to reflect as I resumed my journey, until at last I found myself before the gate of this holy house, and I heard echoing beneath the arched cloisters the strains of that sweet Salve Regina, that pilgrims say the angels sing at night beside the fountains.

"All the bitterness and anguish of my heart melted away as I listened; 'O Mother of Mercy!' I cried, 'it is then here that thou art awaiting me? Yes, I will henceforth be thy knight; it is better, I feel, to wipe tears away, than to cause them to flow.' I threw myself on my knees, and when again the holy strains repeated 'O clemens! O pia! O dulcis Virgo Maria!' my resolution was firmly taken, and I had vowed myself to the service of the blessed Virgin. Receive me then, Father, as her servant."

Raoul threw himself once more on his knees before the venerable priest, who raising his arms toward heaven, silently gave thanks for this miraculous conversion; then turning toward the knight, blessed him and gave him the kiss of peace. "How admirable are the ways of God, my son," said he; "how little did my brethren and I think while we were praying this night for all captives, that there was one so near us being freed at that moment from his bonds! Thou wast smitten on the road, my son, like Saint Paul; like him thou art, perhaps, destined to become a chosen vessel of grace. {489} In the name of God and of the blessed Virgin, I receive thee into our holy order, and admit thee to the ordeal of our novitiate."

The sobs of the two retainers had been the only sign of their presence that they had given while the knight was speaking; but now the old squire cast himself at his feet, and in broken accents besought him to have pity on his poor vassals, and not abandon them to the scoffs and outrages of the enemy of his house.

"My friends, weep not like women," replied their master, "I have thought of everything. God will comfort my lady-mother, and she will rejoice to have her son a knight of the holy Virgin. My kinsman Gaston will be your lord; he is worthy of the inheritance I leave him, for he has a noble and generous heart. He is young, it is true, but I will place him under the tutelage of Messire Bertrand du Guesclin, and foolhardy will he be who shall then attack our house or harm its vassals. Reverend Father, I crave your hospitality for my two retainers, and I entreat you to permit me now to seek peace and strength in prayer."

The prior took his hand and conducted him in silence to the chapel. A single lamp burnt before the sanctuary, and shed a faint, solemn light upon the image of our Lady of Mercy. Raoul prostrated himself at the foot of the altar and poured forth his ardent soul in supplication. When he arose, the marble steps were wet with tears.

"Father," he said to the prior, "I am strong now—the sacrifice is accomplished."

The young convert passed that night in writing. He addressed a long and loving letter to his mother, relating to her all his struggle—his burning wish for vengeance, his fear of shame, the tender mercy that had touched his heart: the parchment on which he wrote was stained with many a tear. "I could not remain in the secular world without revenging our injuries," said he in conclusion, "I have left it that I may pardon. Honored lady and dear mother, bless your son and pray for him."

To Messire Bertrand du Guesclin he gave a rapid sketch of the facts, and besought his protection for his young kinsman, now Lord of Montorgueil.

A third letter still remained to be written; how much it cost him to break this last link with the outward world, was revealed by the sobs that burst from his quivering lips, by the tears that dropped heavily on the oaken table on which he leaned. "No," cried he at last, "this tie cannot be broken," and taking his pen he traced some hurried words: they were addressed to his brother-in-arms, his friend, his playmate in happy childhood, his rival in his first feats of arms.

"Dear Aymar," were his concluding words, "my heart can never change toward you—oh! believe that it beats the same under the monk's frock as under the knight's armor! For love of me, Aymar, avenge not my quarrel."

The ancient squire, who had passed the night in lamentations, interrupted only by exclamations of indignant surprise at the peaceful slumbers of his young companion, looked very sad and weary when Raoul entered his chamber at break of day.

"Michel," said the knight, "spare me your reproaches and tears; they can avail nothing to change my purpose, but I have need of all my fortitude. Here are divers messages; be heedful of them, that they may reach their destination speedily."

He put into the squire's hands the letters he had prepared, each fastened with a silken string, and impressed with his seal.

"Give this rosary of golden beads to my lady mother," he continued, "she hung it on my neck when we parted; henceforth when she tells it, the remembrance of her Raoul will be mingled with every prayer. This ring, that I won in my first tournament, is for Aymar de Boncourt; beg him also to take my armor and my war-horse. And now farewell, Michel, the matin-bell is ringing, and I belong no longer to the world, but to God. Farewell, old friend, farewell; be as faithful to Gaston as you have been to me." He threw himself on the old man's breast and pressed him to his heart, then tearing himself from his arms, he gazed an instant tenderly on the still sleeping page. "Recommend this poor child to the new Lord of Montorgueil, Michel, and be ever his friend." He stooped and kissed the boy's smooth brow, then turned softly away—the door closed, and the squire and the page never looked on him again.

When the morning prayers were ended, the prior summoned the disconsolate retainers to his presence, and, after a discourse full of consolation and good counsel, dismissed them with a handsome largess from their beloved master. We will not follow them on their journey; suffice it to say that when the lady of Montorgueil received her son's unexpected letter, the first pang of sorrow and regret was excruciating, but the Christian mother was soon able to accept the sacrifice. She ceased to grieve, and in a few months retired to a convent, where she passed the rest of her peaceful and honored life.

Du Guesclin, whose noble heart was full of generous sympathy, loudly proclaimed his affection for Raoul, and his determination to protect the house of Montorgueil. This was sufficient to prevent all attempts of the Sire of Valeri against the vassals and lands of the new lord; and he contented himself with whispering accusations of cowardice against the knight who had left the death of his brother unavenged, and his own quarrel unvoided.

Aymar alone could not be comforted for the loss of his brother-in-arms, and it was long before he was seen to take his wonted place in the feasts and tournaments that formed the greater part of the occupations of the young chevaliers of his time and country.

Raoul meantime consummated his sacrifice; his long curls were cropped close, and the monk's white woolen robe replaced the knight's brocade and velvet. After a novitiate of a year and a day, he pronounced the three vows of his order in the Chapel of our Lady of Mercy, with an especial promise to give his life for the ransom of captives. From this time forward he was only known as the Brother Sainte Foi.

The Ransom.

Time passed away, and France was once more at peace with England for a brief space; at peace, but far from tranquil, for the Free Companies, which at first consisted only of nobles, younger sons of powerful lords, had been terribly augmented by the disbanded soldiers of both countries, who found inaction intolerable, and who now ravaged her defenceless provinces. In vain the outraged people cried for help and protection; the state, without money or men, was unable either to prevent or punish. {491} At length the brave du Guesclin imagined a means to employ these fiery spirits. He sought the formidable band, then encamped on the plains of Chalon, at the head of two hundred chevaliers, and addressed them: "Most of you," said he, "were once my companions-in-arms, you are all my friends. Your vocation is not to ravage and destroy, but to conquer and save. Necessity, only, I know, has forced you to such extremities. I come now to offer you the means of living honorably and of fighting gloriously. Spain groans beneath the yoke of the Saracen: would you not rather choose to be the deliverers of a great nation than the ruin of this fair country?"

At these words the Free Companions surrounded the chief, and with enthusiastic acclamations swore as one man to follow him whithersoever he should lead. The noblest of the French chivalry joined the enterprise, and Spain soon reechoed with the well-known war-cry of "Notre-Dame Guesclin!"

The Sire of Valeri and young Aymar of Boncourt were among the bravest of du Guesclin's gallant band, and their exploits soon became the favorite themes of the troubadours and trouvères of tuneful, glory-loving France. But when the chief and his victorious warriors returned to their native land, Aymar and the Sire of Valeri were not among them. Had they fallen in the last bloody encounter? Had they been traitorously ensnared and were they now languishing in some Moorish dungeon? Several of the adventurers affirmed that the two knights had embarked for France, but no vessel from Gallicia had reached a port of Brittany.

The Fathers of the Order of Mercy were soon aware of the rumors that circulated concerning the fate of the two bravest chevaliers of the age; their continual efforts to collect funds for the ransom of captives placed them in communication with all parts of Christendom, and the news of the disappearance of the Sire of Valeri quickly reached the ears of Brother Sainte Foi. The mysterious fate of him who was Raoul's enemy saddened him, but terrible indeed was the pang he felt when he learnt that his friend Aymar was also lost. All his fortitude, all his resignation, suddenly forsook him, and he wept bitterly.

"My son," said the prior reproachfully, "I thought thou wast dead to all earthly things."

"O reverend father!" replied he, "earthly things are perishable, but holy friendship comes from Heaven and dieth not. Let me weep for my friend. David wept for Jonathan; their souls were one; mine also was one with Aymar's."

From this time forward the young monk seemed to waste away, his cheek grew thinner and paler, his eyes were dim and tear-worn. In vain, hoping to arouse him, his superior sent him without, to seek funds for their work of charity; no change of scene could dispel the melancholy languor that had taken possession of him, and the whole fraternity deplored that so pious and ardent a spirit would, in all probability, be so soon taken from among them. After much anxious deliberation the chapter at last resolved to invest him with the title and functions of Redemptorist, and, on account of his youth and inexperience, to associate him with an aged monk who had been several times sent on the errand of love and mercy.

Brother Sainte Foi was accordingly summoned one day before the assembled fathers.

"Brother," said the prior, "don thy sandals, take thy staff, and be ready to depart."

"It is well, my son; depart, then, and may God be with thee! Go to the land of the infidel—go ransom the captives!"

Brother Sainte Foi, transported with joy, threw himself at the prior's feet, unable to speak his thanks, while his dim eyes flashed, and his faded cheek reddened; youth, and health and strength came back, as if by a miracle, and the good prior, delighted to see the effect he had produced, entered into full details for the guidance of the young Redemptorist during his mission. The whole community assembled to pray for the happy issue of his journey; and after receiving the blessing of the elders, he set forth laden with the rich alms destined to relieve so much misery.

A long and wearisome journey on foot brought the Redemptorist father to the port where he was to take ship for Algiers, and here he was joined by the venerable monk who had been appointed his guide and counsellor in the holy work. They embarked together on a Genoese vessel they found ready to sail, and a favorable wind soon carried them across the Mediterranean. The young father's heart beat hard when he heard the cry of "land!" and saw the cruel coast of Africa, where so many fellow-Christians were groaning hopelessly beneath the yoke of the bigot Mussulman.

"It is there that our brethren suffer. O father!" cried he to his companion, "but we are going to succor, we are going to save!"

And when, at last, the vessel entered the port of Algiers, the Redemptorist knight knelt and kissed the soil of the wished-for land, where he was about to make his first trial of arms in the holy lists of charity.

The two monks, whose errand was well known, were immediately surrounded by a crowd of slave-merchants, who scoffingly taunted them, "Have you plenty of gold, Christians? for we have plenty of slaves; you may have a shipload of them." Father Antoine had learned prudence and replied as guardedly and as briefly as he could to the miscreants that pressed upon him. He hastily directed his steps, followed by his companion, toward the hospital which the Order of Mercy had with much difficulty obtained permission to build at the entrance of the port. Arrived there, without tarrying to rest, he commenced ringing the great bell that never tolled but to announce the joyful tidings that charity, holy charity that suffereth long and is kind, that beareth all things, that believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things; charity that never faileth, had landed again on those burning sands, to bring hope and aid to the followers of the cross.

At that signal a crowd of disheveled, ragged men, many wearing chains at their wrists and ankles, were seen hurrying toward the chapel. Alas! who would have recognized in those emaciated, tear-worn spectres, the stalwart soldiers, the valiant chevaliers, whose deeds the silver-tongued minstrels of France were singing even then?

Sobs and joyous cries, prayers and ejaculations, burst from them as they threw themselves on their knees before their deliverers, and kissed their garments.

"Brethren," said the venerable father, his voice troubled and trembling, "we have come hither in the first place for the salvation of your souls: during eight days we shall be here waiting to listen to your confessions, and to give you ghostly consolation, to preach to you the word of life, and to bestow on you the sacraments of our holy mother church. In the second place, we have come to work for your deliverance from captivity. Pray for us, brethren, that we may worthily acquit ourselves of our sacred tasks."

The unhappy slaves, whose hopes and fears could be read in their agitated features, gave a great cry when the good father ceased speaking. It seemed as if despair was calling on heaven for mercy, and then slowly withdrew.

The next, and the following days, slaves and masters besieged the hospital gate, and the two monks knew not a moment's rest while daylight lasted. Each evening, when they were once more alone, Father Sainte Foi would enquire eagerly of his aged companion if he thought that they would be able to ransom all the captives.

"We shall be able to save them all, father, shall we not?" he would say with trembling anxiety; "I have so raised their hopes to-day that I could not leave one now to despair."

Father Antoine returned no answer to these enquiries; he seemed rather to avoid the pleading eyes that tried to read his thoughts. So passed the eight days allowed them by the infidel. At length, on the eve of that fixed for their departure, a little before the solemn hour, when all the slaves that the alms of the faithful had been able to ransom were to be surrendered into the hands of the Redemptorists, the old man sought his young coadjutor.

"There are two hundred and twenty, dear brother," cried he, with a radiant look of triumph; "and we have ransomed them all!"

"All, father! oh! thank God and our Lady;" and the monk cast himself on his knees, and prayed silently; then rising, clasped the good old father in his arms, in an ecstasy of joy.

That night Father Antoine repeated the evening prayer, as usual, with the captives, but his voice trembled, while Father Sainte Foi could scarcely restrain his tears. All hearts beat hard, and every face was pale and anxious. In the midst of the solemn silence that followed the repetition of the last supplication to the throne of grace, the priest arose slowly, and cast upon the woe-begone crowd a look so pitiful and so loving, that consolation seemed to fall like heavenly dew upon even the most despondent.

"Brethren," said he, "dear brethren! dear children! this is the twelfth time that the honored title of Redemptorist has been conferred on me; sometimes it has been the cause of much pain and disappointment to me, sometimes too of great joy."

Here the slaves stretched their trembling hands toward him, but their lips uttered no sound.

A cry, a terrible, unearthly cry escaped from every mouth, as, moved by one and the same impulse, the liberated slaves flung themselves on their knees.

"In the name of our omnipotent God and of the Mother of our Redeemer, the Blessed Lady of Mercy, I, an unworthy priest, and my companion here present, declare you to be all free! The alms of the faithful have been sufficient to ransom you all. All of you, Christian brethren, will see your native land again!"

Bursts of frantic joy, rapturous embraces again and again repeated, succeeded to the silent anguish with which they had awaited their doom. The venerable father endeavored to calm this exhausting excitement, and then left to go pay the Moors the sum stipulated. Father Sainte Foi remained behind to help remove the fetters whose iron verily entered into his soul.

"To-morrow!" he cried, as he knocked off the heavy chains, "to-morrow, we shall quit this land of slavery and death!"

"To-morrow!" echoed the pale victims, "to-morrow! Thanks, O Lord God! Thanks, O well-named Lady of Mercy! Thanks Redemptorist Fathers! We are going home to-morrow!"

"Retire now, dear brethren," said Father Antoine, returning, "the Moors are satisfied, and to-morrow at break of day we shall meet again!"

The now happy crowd left the chapel to seek repose in the dormitories of the hospital until the wished-for morning light, and the two monks prostrated themselves before the altar in humble, hearty thanksgiving.

At dawn, the next day, the ransomed slaves were already marshalled on the open space before the hospital gate, waiting the signal for embarking. Father Sainte Foi was in the midst of them, full of ardor and energy, and as impatient for the happy moment when they should quit the land of the infidel as the unfortunate men he had saved. Father Antoine was there also, but, more reserved in the expression of his joy, he could scarcely repress a smile as he remarked the excitement and triumph of his young companion.

"But I was also once young," said he, "nay, to-day I could almost fancy myself so again! And now, my son, see that all is ready, that no one is missing; it is time to begin our march to the ship."

At this moment a cry arose from the assembled Christians. "Slaves! more slaves! O God! they come too late—they have just arrived from the desert with their master—there are two of them—they are too late!"

"There are two of them," repeated Father Sainte Foi, and his cheek turned pale, "oh! if there had been but one!"

"Alas! they arrive too late," cried the good old priest, "our purse is empty. Go to them, my son. I cannot comfort them; promise them that next year—but oh! hide from them, if possible, the joy of the others!" Father Sainte Foi forced a passage through the assembled multitude, and found himself before the two unfortunate captives who had already learned their fate, and were bewailing it in heartrending accents. One, a man already past the prime of life, was wringing his hands and sobbing with a choking voice, "My children, my children, shall I then never see you again?" Overcome by his emotion he fell fainting to the ground; the father rushed to his assistance, but started back as he caught sight of his features. One moment, one single moment he hesitated, then cast himself on his knees by the side of the prostrate man, raised and supported the sinking head, and impressed a kiss on the pale brow. "Thus do I seal my pardon!" said he; "Sire of Valeri, you shall see your children again!"

The other slave whom he had not yet remarked, at this instant uttered a joyful cry, and threw himself into his arms, exclaiming, "Friend, brother, dear Raoul!"

"Aymar—Sire de Valeri—O Blessed Virgin!" stammered the monk, with a stifled voice as he fell back insensible.

The unconscious father was carried into the hospital chapel, Aymar supporting him in his arms, while tears of mingled joy and grief coursed down his thin cheeks. Father Antoine desired him to retire, but not until his friend gave signs of returning life would Aymar leave him, to await in silence at the other end of the chapel the effect of the aged monk's consolations and admonitions.

"Father Antoine," spoke the young priest at length, raising himself on the bench on which he had been laid, "you know the vow I made on the day of my profession? If gold I had none, to give my body for the ransom of Christian captives. That time is come, father, but I cannot choose between these two. One is—no, was my enemy, and the other is my dearest friend! O reverend father, I fear to fail in my duty toward God if I refuse to return good for evil, if I leave the Sire of Valeri in captivity. And yet—how can I prefer him to my dear Aymar?—to Aymar for whom I would gladly give my life! Venerable father, help me in this terrible struggle and choose for me!"

"Hold!" cried Aymar, coming forward; "there is no choice needful here! Can you believe, Raoul, that I will accept your sacrifice? What, you a slave in my place! I return again to France at the cost of your freedom! Raoul, Raoul, do you know me so little? If your noble heart prompts you to ransom the Sire of Valeri at such a cost, let it be so, but never will Aymar consent to it for himself!"

"Nay, Raoul, we have been brothers-in-arms, we will now be brothers-in-chains; it is but a change of harness!" The two friends threw themselves into each other's arms, and Father Antoine blessed them while he wept.

"I cannot prevent you from making this sacrifice, my son," said he, at length, "it is according to our holy rules; but if God grant me life, next spring will see me here again to deliver you both. And now go, tell the Sire of Valeri what your charity has inspired you to do for him."

"No, no, father; I must not see him again. He is too proud—I know him well—to receive a gift from the hands of Raoul de Montorgueil; he would rather die a slave than be delivered by me. Let him never learn, I entreat you, by what means he recovered his freedom."

Father Antoine hastened to the beach, where he found the Sire of Valeri recovered from his swoon. Without further explanation the good father told him simply that he was free, and invited the Mussulman, his master, to accompany him back to the hospital, where Father Sainte Foi, with a calm, clear voice, proposed to the astonished unbeliever to take him, a strong, young man and he showed his muscular, nervous arm—in exchange for the broken-down and aged slave on the strand.

The avaricious master willingly accepted an offer so advantageous to himself, and Father Sainte Foi put on with a smile of ineffable happiness, the chains that had weighed so heavily on the once stalwart limbs of the enemy of his name and race. Father Antoine pressed his lips reverentially to those chains, and then seizing his cross, hastened to take his place at the head of the long line of ransomed Christians. {496} But no chant of joy and triumph resounded as they bent their way toward the ship that was to bear them to their homes—they embarked silently, almost sadly—the sails spread, and the swift vessel was soon lost to sight.

The Moor took possession of his slaves. But we will pass over in silence their toils and their sufferings: his living faith sustained the Redemptorist father; hope was the life-spring of Aymar; their mutual friendship was the consolation of both. Aymar found his chains light to bear, since his friend was near him, and the monk feared that he had received his reward in this world, so sweet did their daily intercourse appear to him.

The young knight related to his younger brother-in-arms, how, on his return from du Guesclin's victorious expedition, the vessel in which he and the Sire of Valeri were embarked, had fallen into the hands of Moorish pirates, and how they had been sold together in the slave-market at Algiers. He loved, too, to recount to his sympathizing listener his feats of arms in Spain, until his friend, reproaching himself for giving ear to such worldly matters, would talk, in his turn, of heavenly things, of the peaceful joys and aspirations of his convent life, and would repeat the history of the Son of Man, who loved us so that he had willed to bear poverty, hunger, and death for us. When he told how he had not where to lay his head, "Oh! never more shall I complain," cried Aymar, "for mine rests on the bosom of a friend!"

Thus the long days of slavery passed over the two captives, and when at last the hour of deliverance arrived; when Father Antoine, true to his word, came with the first days of the next spring to unloose their chains, Aymar looked tenderly in his friend's face, while Father Sainte Foi endeavored to hide a tear.

"Can you believe that I will ever leave you again?" said Aymar, replying to his friend's thoughts. "No, death alone shall separate us henceforth! I will accompany you to your monastery. The world smiled on me, but gave me pain and slavery; Heaven has given me a true friend, and to Heaven I devote myself for ever!"

Then turning toward Father Antoine, "Father," said he, "receive me here, in the land of our cruel taskmasters, here, where we have suffered together, as a novice of the Order of Mercy!"

Father Antoine in answer threw his white mantle on the young knight's shoulders, and the two friends, hand in hand, climbed the side of the ship that was waiting to carry them back to France.

Here we will bid them farewell, in the full enjoyment of that perfect friendship; we will not seek to know if other vicissitudes came to try it; let us lose sight of them now, and believe, that, retired from the strife and noise of the world, they passed together the remainder of their quiet lives, busied in the acquirement of heavenly wisdom, and in the practice of those pure, simple, but sublime virtues which find in themselves their own reward and glory.

Can we doubt that Father Sainte Foi experienced that charity, like mercy, "is twice blessed,"

  "It blesseth him that gives,
  and him that takes"?

From The German Of Dr. J. B. Henry.

Joseph Görres.

The bells of Coblenz were tolling the Angelus at noon on January 25th, 1776, the feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, when John Joseph Görres was born, the son of a timber merchant, of an old Catholic family of the Rhineland. In this traditional land of valor, beauty, poetry, and art Görres spent his childhood. Here he made his first studies, devoting himself especially to history, geography, and the natural sciences, which had for him a peculiar attraction. This led him at the University of Bonn to choose medicine as a profession. But his studies were hardly begun than interrupted, so that Görres, who, later, had so many disciples himself, never sat for any length of time at the feet of a master.

The torrent of the French revolution broke over his home, and carried the youth along on its waves. At a period so exciting, when all order seemed to be destroyed, and when good and evil were so strongly marked, young Görres rose above his compeers, remarkable for his uncommon political talent, a powerful eloquence, and a determined, persevering character. Hardly twenty years old, he had already great weight in the clubs; and his influence became still more widely felt by the publication of a political paper called The Red Letter, which, suppressed by the republican directory, reappeared with the title of Puck in Blue; and a pamphlet called The Political Menagerie; all distinguished for their historical and philosophical depth of thought, as well as for a vigorous and glowing style.

At the age of twenty-four he was sent, at the head of a deputation, in November, 1799, to Paris, to obtain from the First Consul, in whom Görres already saw the future emperor and despot, the cessation of the oppressive occupation of the Rhine province. In a pamphlet entitled Result of my Embassy to Paris in Brumaire VIII., A.D. 1800, he gave a full account of his mission; but expressed a complete change in his political opinions, after he had clearly perceived the abyss in which the French revolution ended; and he never after this returned to the errors of his youth.

When, at a later date, Görres stood forth as the champion of the rights and freedom of the Catholic Church, his enemies reproached him with having proved a traitor to the cause of liberty, which he had defended in his youth, and tried to represent him sometimes as a revolutionist, and then again as a man of weak, inconsequent, and vacillating character. He was thus severely blamed for an enthusiastic aberration of youth, into which not only Schiller but even the grave and aged Klopstock, as well as many other distinguished Germans of the time, had fallen.

It was a time of such confusion that even the foundations of the earth quaked and the stars from heaven fell. The glorious edifice of the German empire, encircled with the halo of a thousand years of glory, had crumbled in a day; the emperor became a mere shadow; and the nobility, corrupted by despotism, became as immoral as in the days of Louis XIV. and Louis XV. Religious life was torpid; and religious indifference, through the influence of both the French and German press, through liberalism and the aid of the illuminati, had gained the mastery over not only the Protestant but the Catholic mind. Even an Emperor, Joseph II., had placed himself at the head of the most shallow liberals; the principal churchmen sought even to surpass him; in short, so great was the decay and blindness of those who should have been the mainstay of the old Christian order, that God could choose no gentler means of chastising the universal iniquity, than by letting the fires of the mad revolution have full scope. How can we be astonished, therefore, that a youth like Görres should have been carried away with the spirit of the age? But even then he displayed that straightforwardness and purity of character which always distinguished him. In the latter half of his revolutionary life, he had only sought to serve the welfare of the Rhine province, by his struggle against the oppressions of the French generals and officials who persecuted him as well as his country.

But Görres was certainly not blamed most for having doffed his bonnet to the spirit of the revolution; but because, as Paul was changed from a jealous Pharisee into an apostle, the young Jacobin became the great defender of the church and Christian ideas.

Görres gave up politics in the beginning of his twenty-fifth year, and devoted himself exclusively to science and art for a period of ten years. He occupied the chair of natural history and science, in a college at Coblenz, and published during this time many works, the product of his restless activity. Then came to light his Aphorisms on Art, (A.D. 1802;) Aphorisms on Organic Laws, (1803;) Exposition of Physiology, (1805;) Aphorisms on Organology, (1805;) and his book on Faith and Science, (1806;) writings composed under the influence of the Schelling natural philosophy. Görres had not yet reached a full and clear knowledge of Christian truth. In the year 1806 he went on vacation to Heidelberg, where he gave lectures on natural philosophy, metaphysics, and literature in the university. Here he was also led more deeply into a study that exercised great influence on his later development. He studied the Christian middle age of Germany from an aesthetic and poetic point of view. He was led in this direction by his personal acquaintance and friendship with two men, Clement Brentano and Achim von Arnim, who have deserved highly of their country for having awakened the muse of German romantic poetry from her slumbers.

The reformation separated one half of Germany from the past; and the rationalism of the eighteenth century completed the separation. The German people were accustomed to despise, as a period of darkness and barbarism, the most glorious age in their history, when they were the first nation of the earth; when Albert the Great taught divine philosophy, Wolfram of Eschenbach wrote poetry, and Ervinius of Steinbach built cathedrals. This entire schism of German consciousness from the past had much to do in causing that deplorable decay of national feeling and unity. The corruption had reached its height in the eighteenth century, and Germany became the spoil and the contempt of the foreigner. {499} In order that fatherland should be politically free, the German conscience must be aroused. Nothing could have more power, in this respect, than the revival of the hitherto despised Christian-German middle age and its glorious ballad poetry. For this purpose the Pilgrim, a journal, was started by Arnim, Brentano, and Görres. The undertaking failed for the want of cooperation; but produced fruit at a later period. Görres was more successful in obtaining his purpose in the year 1807 by his German Books for the People, in which he held up to the eyes of his contemporaries the mirror of the middle ages.

Plunging his mind more and more deeply into the Christian middle age, his comprehensive intellect turned its attention to another domain of history, namely, to the primeval times of the East. After his return to Coblenz, in 1808, appeared in two volumes, his Mythology of the Asiatic World, a work of great importance, which influenced considerably the ideas of both Creuzer and Schelling. At the same time he explained northern mythology, as contained in the Edda; cultivated the German mediaeval muse, and enriched the literature of the Nibelung Song, by hitherto undiscovered fragments.

While Görres was thus engaged, a great change had taken place in France. The absolutism and godlessness of the revolution naturally begot the unlimited despotism of Napoleon. His was not the tyranny of mere brute force, as in the barbaric times, but a despotism engendered by modern civilization and enlightened egotism. Napoleon made all the forces of the revolution subserve his will, and with them conquered all the degenerate nations of Europe; for the corruption and infidelity of the age of Louis XIV. and Louis XV., which caused the revolution, were more or less extended and felt in the neighboring nations in the eighteenth century. Hence, France was to be punished, first by her own hands, and, through her, the other peoples were to be chastised.

Since Christianity had destroyed the universal monarchy of Rome, God had never allowed another to arise and destroy the autonomy of nations, and with it the independence of the church; for both are inseparable. What was the empire Napoleon tried to found but the same work which the Hohenstaufens failed in accomplishing; what was it else but an attempt to revive the old Roman pagan sovereignty of the world? His work seemed completed; the outside power of all the states of the continent seemed broken; within, minds were enslaved, and, under the appearance of liberal forms, freedom was destroyed; the sciences, the whole instruction of youth moulded, on military principles, to aid the imperial power; religion even became the handmaid of worldly majesty, and a mere affair of policy; the pope himself, the last refuge of religious liberty, was in chains, for refusing to become the court chaplain of the new Caesar.

Thus stood matters, when the spirit of God, breathing over the earth, destroyed the enchanter who had chained victory to his car of triumph, and awaked the nations from the slumber of death. That was a grand period in history, when the nations arose, and above all Germany—Germany that had been the most enslaved and dishonored, because she had betrayed, disgraced, and sold herself. Peoples broke their gyves on the head of the conqueror. The man who, at this time above all his contemporaries, felt the chains of slavery in his very soul, and in whose heart the flames of patriotism burned most brightly; whose genius made him the spokesman, herald, and prophet of liberty against French despotism, was Joseph Görres. {500} In the year 1814 he left his retirement, and, conscious of his vocation by the spirit that quickened him, he spoke out for all in the name of God and fatherland. He edited the Mercury of the Rhine, a journal which has never been equalled since. As Menzel observes, he wrote it, not with ink, but with fire; and in a short time this newspaper, full of Görres' best essays, became universally received as the vehicle of public opinion. Napoleon himself felt the influence of this powerful journal, and called the man at Coblenz the fifth of the allied powers against him. It was in the Mercury of the Rhine that Görres wrote the "Proclamation to the Peoples of Europe," which he puts into the mouth of Napoleon after the escape from Elba. In this proclamation the character of the great soldier is personified with a creative power hardly surpassed by any production of Shakespeare's genius. [Footnote 50]

[Footnote 50: At the end of this fictitious proclamation Napoleon is made to express himself thus: "I have conquered the revolution, and then devoured and assimilated it to myself, and worked through it and by its forces. But now, tired out, I give it back to you uninjured, and spew it out upon you. And you will continue in the condition in which I found you; for my spirit rests upon you, though my body may be absent." After a period of fifty-three years these words seem still prophetic.]

It was not enough, then, to crush the Napoleonic tyranny; but it was also necessary to renovate the European states, especially Germany, with an infusion of Christian and national principles; and thus connect, in an enduring relation, the rights of princes and the nobility with the liberties of the people. It was then the conviction of many, and of the best men, that the unity, the freedom, and the greatness of Germany could be placed on a solid foundation only by a reinstallment of the old empire, under which Germany had existed and flourished for a thousand years. Of this conviction Görres wrote in the year 1819: "A glance at the history of the past shows us that Germany was the true guardian and refuge of Christianity, and a bulwark against internal and external enemies, only when its stirring, living variety was made unity under the direction of a sole emperor. It therefore becomes almost an instinct with many, that the stone which the builders rejected should become the head of the corner; that the old ideas should be revived, quickened with an infusion of young blood, and accommodated to the march of progress." Some of the ablest men agreed with Görres in favor of a revival of the old Roman empire, modified according to modern notions.

This was the ideal for the realization of which Görres strove with all the power of his genius and eloquence; while at the same time he attacked with vigor the egotism and meanness of selfish politics wherever he met them. On this account, as the most independent and yet the most conservative publicist of his time, he came into collision with both statesmen and governments. Hence the Mercury of the Rhine was suppressed; but Görres, in a pamphlet called the Future Condition of Germany, still argued for the reestablishment of the old empire. In 1817, during the famine, he went from Heidelberg to his own home, where he became president of a relief society, and thus was a benefactor of the Rhine province. At the same time he found leisure to publish Old German Ballads and Classic Poetry. Appointed director of public instruction by Justus Grüner, governor of the middle countries of the Rhine, he was soon removed from his position by the Prussian government and offered a large pension if he would agree to write nothing hostile to the existing order. {501} But money and personal interest never had the slightest influence over Görres. By an address to the city and province of Coblenz; and more especially by a pamphlet published in 1820, on Germany and the Revolution, he drew on himself the hatred of the prime minister Hardenberg, escaped imprisonment in a fortress only by flight, and not being able to succeed in obtaining a trial by the ordinary civil judges, he never more returned to his birthplace.

He spent almost a year in Strasburg, where he occupied his leisure, hours in translating from the Persian the epic poem of Shah Nameh of Ferdusi. It is called The Heroes of Ivan; and was published in two volumes in 1820. From Strasburg he went to Switzerland which he travelled on foot; and from the Alpine summits he studied and looked down upon the past and present of Europe, and saw with a prophet's eye the history of its future. He wrote in twenty-seven days the fruits of his meditations on European society, and printed them under the title of Europe and the Revolution. This was in 1821. Finding that all efforts to have the decree against him revoked by Hardenberg were vain, he wrote in 1822 his work on The Condition and Affairs of the Rhine Province; and gave a full account of his thoughts, hopes, and resignation in another work written on the eve of the Congress of Verona in 1822, entitled The Holy Alliance and the People in the Congress of Verona. After this he resided in Strasburg.

It cannot be denied that Görres had been carried away in his youth by the spirit of the French revolution; and that his faith, if not entirely destroyed, was then of a very uncertain and slippery character. Still, we never find in him that poisonous hate and contempt for religion and the church, which the spirit of sect is apt to infuse into its votaries, and which renders their minds almost impervious to truth. He was also saved by God from moral corruption. We even perceive in his early writings traces of that deep religious feeling which he had imbibed with his mother's milk, and of love for the religion of his race and fathers. In the Mercury of the Rhine he often raised his voice in defence of the rights and interests of the abused Catholic Church. When he began to study more closely the dogmas and history of Christianity, he learned to appreciate it better, and grew less confident in the reigning German philosophy, which had captivated his youth. It was not the triumph of his system, but of truth that he sought with all the love of his heart, and the force and clearness of his penetrating genius. When he found truth, no one could be a more ardent and able champion of it. There was no half-way in his character. He trampled on human respect. Undoubtedly it was at Strasburg that he became thoroughly catholicized. Maria Görres, the heiress of her father's talents, thus beautifully and appropriately writes of his religious life: "As in the legend of St. Christopher, he would obey only the strongest; so can it be truly said of my father that he was the slave of truth and of truth alone. With great rectitude of heart he strove ever to attain it, and came nearer to it as he increased in years; new prospects of it, and new insights into it, developing gradually before his mind's eye. Principles were not for him the limits of science, but secure foundations on which he could build further without fear or deceit. He never wanted to systematize truth; but rather to make systems subservient to it. {502} Hence he never thought that his own discoveries were absolute truths, or that dogmas were erroneous because they did not chime with the result of his investigations; but sought the fault in his own work, renewed his arduous studies until he found them agreeing with the received doctrines, and thus discovered where his error lay." [Footnote 51]

When Görres acknowledged the Catholic Church to be the church of the living God, it was in a state of slavery and abasement in Germany; where it was the object of a hateful and shallow persecution fomented by Vossius, especially since the conversion of Count Frederic Leopold Stolberg, and since the celebration of the Reformation Jubilee in 1817.

In the year 1820, two young professors in the episcopal seminary at Mayence, urged by an earnest faith and supernatural courage, started The Catholic, a magazine intended to defend the almost defenceless church from external attacks and internal dangers which were threatened by the introduction of false science into the Catholic mind. To escape the illiberal opposition and censure of Prussia, The Catholic was published for some time at Strasburg, where Görres, then in exile, wrote much for it in the year 1826. With his invincible humor and sarcasm he lashed the authors of the stories told about the formulas of excommunication in the church, exploded the Monita Secreta of the Jesuits, and scourged the contemptible prejudices and falsehoods brought to bear against catholicity. He raised the cry of freedom for the church; showed her influence on the hearts of the people; portrayed in striking colors the internal truth and moral rectitude of Catholic principles, and taught Catholics to respect themselves, to trust in their cause, to despise the hollow phrases of the sham liberals, and fight their adversaries with that security which truth alone can give to its champions.

In the mean time a favorable change took place in his external relations. King Louis of Bavaria, a prince of great talents, devoted to the church and fatherland, appointed Görres professor of history in the University of Munich, A.D. 1827. Here he became the centre of that group of distinguished Catholic thinkers whom the king had gathered together, in order to create a powerful and free development of the hitherto debased and despised spirit of Catholicism. The efforts of Görres and his friends and colaborers in Munich form a brilliant epoch in the history of the revival of catholic life in Germany. It was for him the glorious evening of an eventful life of battle.

The patriotic hopes and ideas of his early life were more and more baffled, and he at last saw that any mere political efforts are fruitless; for the decay of peoples and states is not caused so much by political degradation, as by religious and moral corruption. The more he dived into the history of mankind, the more clearly did he perceive that Christianity, which brings redemption to the individual and true freedom to the children of God, is the only source of a people's salvation. When living Christian faith becomes a stranger in the public and private life of citizens; when self-interest and worldly wisdom take the place of Christian charity and justice, then will the interest of the ruler and the subject, of the church and state, of private wealth and corporations, which should all conspire to the common weal, collide, become hostile, and engender confusion and revolution. {503} Görres learned by experience that, since religion had lost its authority, and the Gospel ceased to command respect, the civil power had also lost force, and the liberty of the people had become unstable and undefined, so that Europe wavered with feverish restlessness between despotism and anarchy, revolution and reaction. Men in this doubtful conflict b the egotism of princes and the egotism of subjects, become wrapped up in the natural and earthly, and supernatural.

Investigating the causes of this decline of Christianity, Görres discovered that the faith of Christ is not a dead letter, but a thing endowed with divine life; and as political and social life has stability and force only in the state, so Christian life is only in the church, the kingdom founded by Christ; and as a sound social system depends on the autonomy and freedom of the state, so religious life rests on the liberty of the church. Hence the chief cause of the decay of religion is in the dependence and subjection of the church to the state. The eighteenth century, that age of tyranny and unbelief, had enslaved the church; the revolution and Napoleon made the slavery complete. True, the animus of the war of freedom was a religious as well as a national one; the Holy Alliance, formed in the name of the Trinity, proclaimed Christianity as the groundwork of politics and popular rights; but this religious enthusiasm of 1813 and 1814, not resting on the solid basis of faith, being rather a vague feeling than a conviction, soon cooled off, and the Christian principles of the Holy Alliance were only written on paper, not on the hearts and minds of the high contracting parties. In reality, religion and church remained in the oppressed and debased condition in which Josephism and Napoleonism had placed them. Educated the school of the 18th century, and under Napoleonic influence, statesmen, even after the restoration, continued to mistrust the church, to keep her in the leading-strings of high policy, and repress every one of her free motions. To cap the climax of evil, the church herself, especially in Germany, was so poor and powerless, that she could make no valid opposition to the insulting guardianship of the state; and even churchmen were found weak and selfish enough to become the willing tools of the civil government in destroying their own rights. The curse and plague of the church has ever been cowardly or renegade churchmen. This enslavement of the church was most oppressive and dangerous in those districts of Germany which had been governed by catholic, and, as long as the empire lasted, by spiritual lords, but were now controlled by Protestant rulers. These, accustomed to Protestant teaching, which admitted an unlimited civil surveillance in ecclesiastical affairs, were only too willing to exercise their power over the Catholic Church. They wished and hoped to sever her connection with Rome; change her into a national church, and, uniting her with Lutherans and other sectaries, form one state church. Such a thought will not appear strange to us, if we consider that religious indifference reigned supreme, particularly among the educated classes. A fierce battle, not with the material sword, but with the weapons of faith and talent, was to be fought in order to free the church from the shackles of state control. The standard-bearer in this great conflict was, again, Joseph Görres.

The 11th of November, 1837, marks the turning-point of the career of the modern church in Germany. From that date it revived and began to be independent. To Clement Augustus von Dröste-Vischering, the great and pious Archbishop of Cologne, belongs the glory of opening the battle, and of bearing the first brunt of the onslaughts of the state. The civil government wished him, in contradiction to the laws of the church, to impart her blessing to mixed marriages; and also to give over the chairs of theology and the education of the young clergy to the Hermesians, whose coryphaeus, Hermes, had invented a half-way system between faith and rationalism. Clement Augustus, the Athanasius of our times, unarmed and alone, bravely entered the lists against the spirit of indifferentism and the whole power of the Prussian government. But Gregory XVI., in his memorable allocution of December 10th, 1837, made the cause of the archbishop his own; for it was the cause of religion, and the church. The Catholics of the Rhine province, awakened from their slumbers, rallied with unexpected ardor to the support of their chief pastor. But their cause needed the aid of the press, and Görres was the man to wield that power in their defence. He who had been standing so long on the watch-tower, observing and noting the signs of the times, saw that the moment had arrived to strike a blow for the liberty of the church. In January, 1838, appeared his Athanasius. It fell like a thunderbolt from an unclouded sky among all those who had expected, with the power of the state and an enlightened press, to make short work of the mediaeval archbishop. It came like a ray of divine light into the minds of the despised and intimidated Catholics, a ray that shone in their hearts, and enkindled in them faith and courage. There now arose in Germany a powerful catholic public opinion, which enforced respect from its adversaries. In vain did opponents swarm. Pietists, Hegelians, politicians, jurists, professors, and journalists wrote against Athanasius, which was spread over all Germany by four large editions. Görres answered the critics of Athanasius by another work, called Die Triarier, printed in 1838, and which achieved the spiritual victory of his first book.

The further history of this cause is known. The innocence of the archbishop and the right of the church were acknowledged; and the noble ruler, who then sat on the Prussian throne, confessed the justice of the principles which Görres had so ably explained and defended. The battle between Protestantism and Catholicity for the future should be on even footing; carried on no longer by force or cunning, but by spiritual weapons alone. This is all that truth requires to disarm her enemies—a fair field and no treachery. At the same time with the Athanasius of Görres, catholic public opinion found a vehicle in the Historisch-politische Blätter, edited at Munich. Görres was its chief of staff. His last article in this magazine, which exercised the greatest influence throughout Germany, and which still flourishes, appeared in the January number of 1848, shortly before his death.

Freedom of the church is the condition of its beneficent and working life, but not the life itself. Faith is the basis of religious and church life; faith in the supernatural ideas and facts of revelation, whose centre is Christ, the incarnate Son of God and Redeemer of the world. This faith seemed to have disappeared with the freedom of the church. Protestantism, which began by denying the church, logically ended with a denial of the existence of Christ. Strauss wrote his Life of Jesus with this intention. {505} Even among the Catholics, indifferentism, rationalism, and infidelity had made ravages, and men asked, Where was the faith of the Catholic populations? A striking answer to this question was the Pilgrimage to Trier; the extraordinary spectacle of over a million of free men attesting their living belief in Christ the Son of God; a proof that the Catholic people despised sham liberalism and sham enlightenment, set revolutions at defiance, and professed the same faith as in the days of their fathers. This was the meaning of that remarkable event, which Görres explains in his last published pamphlet, called the Pilgrimage to Trier.

Görres now ceased to be a publicist. He had written countless works; he had aided truth with word and work. No one had done more. No one had seen so clearly into the future. He had attacked selfishness in high and low. His enemies were countless. No man received so much abuse as he; no one was the object of greater hate and more fierce persecution. Yet you will seek in vain for one word of invective against his adversaries in any of his works. His blood boils; his words rush; his lips quiver; his pen runs nervously along the paper; his sentences glow and thrill in defence of truth; but he is never abusive or personal. He chastises wickedness, carves iniquity with the knife of satire, and scourges folly by his wit; but in the midst of the battle he has ever a friendly hand to stretch out to his opponent. Would that all our modern journalists might take a lesson from him in this respect!

Viewing things from the standpoint of divine providence, and having no desire but that of seeing the divine plans realized, he was always tranquil in the midst of storms and confusion. His writings as a publicist are consequently not merely ephemeral, or of passing importance but contain the most profound views on the relations of church and state, on the dogmas of religion, the principles of philosophy, politics, and history.

But the influence of Görres was not confined to mere journalism; he studied and developed science and art. Görres possessed immense knowledge; yet little of it was school learning. He had aided to free his fatherland and the church; he also helped to free science and art from their shackles. The learned almost despised the supernatural. The lives of the saints were looked on as so many myths; their miracles absurd; and everything that was not rational or natural was considered as the result of superstition and ignorance. In order to counteract this tendency of the age, and bring out boldly the belief in the supernatural, Görres wrote in 1826, his St. Francis, a Troubadour; in 1827, Emmanuel Swedenborg, his Visions, and Relation to the Church; an introduction to Diepenbrock's edition of the works of Blessed Henry Suso; and in 1842, his greatest work, in five volumes, entitled Christian Mysticism.

The foundation and source of all mystic theology is the incarnation of God, the union of the divine with the human, in order that the latter should be united with the divine. But what took place in Christ is not merely a passing event, but a living, enduring act of God; who continues the incarnation in the most holy sacrament of the altar, the mystery of mysteries; through which the wonderful life and works of Christ, according to his promise, are continued in the saints of his church. Hence come the supernatural phenomena of visions and ecstasies in the corporal and spiritual life of the saints.

Görres sought to give not a bare, dry history of those marvels, but to explain and prove them scientifically. But, as to the kingdom of the good, of grace, and of the celestial, there is opposed a kingdom of evil, which is controlled by the fallen angels; Görres has also endeavored in his Mystik to render intelligible this night-side of the supernatural.

"As the eyes of the Spaniards," he writes in the beginning of this wonderful book, "on crossing the ocean, whose dangers, unconquered for so many centuries, they had braved and escaped, were struck with admiration and astonishment at the spectacle of a new world, whose chains of mountains, mighty lakes, and rivers murmuring with strange voices, primeval forests, unaccustomed flowers, birds, beasts, and another race of men speaking a hitherto unheard language, greeted their arrival; so will it happen to the majority of those who cast a glance over the marvellous world, which is here exposed to their vision; and whose existence and comprehensibility have been unknown to them by their own fault, and through the neglect and calumny of others; just as the Atlantis of the ancients had been well-nigh forgotten through the inattention of mankind. I call it a world of marvels, and, as no one will contradict this assertion, I further ask, When has a book appeared in these later days, which, leaving higher considerations aside, has, in the interests of science alone, sought to explain such a variety of the most remarkable and important events; facts, acts, and experiences which give us an insight into the interior recesses of the soul; which lay open its most hidden nature, and throw the greatest light on metaphysiology and metapsychology? These materials have lain scattered about publicly, yet no one has thought it worth while to stoop down and collect them. In vain has the rich harvest presented its nodding ears, no one would take the trouble to apply the sickle. For the learned put their heads together and decided that the miraculous phenomena were all false, mere jugglery, or the hallucinations of superstitious imaginations; and that it would be ridiculous and contemptible in any one even to give them a thought."

Another remarkable writing of Görres is his introduction to the Life of Christ, composed against Strauss by Sepp. His historical works while occupying the chair of professor of history were few. In 1830, appeared his Basis, Connection, and Chronology of the History of the World; in 1844, he printed The Sons of Japhet and their Common Origin in Armenia, in which he tried to clear up the difficulties of the Mosaic account of the races of men; and in 1845, came forth from the press, The Three Roots of the Celtic Race in Gaul, and their Immigrations. He had conceived the idea of composing a universal history; but he never accomplished this intention.

Wolfgang Menzel, one of the ablest of German critics, in his History of Literature, p. 157, thus ably judges the character of Görres as a writer: "I know not what better expresses the character of his mind than to compare it to the Strasburg Minster or the Cathedral of Cologne. It is said that Winckelmann was an interior artist, and Tieck an internal tragedian; so Görres may be called an interior architect. At least all his writings, by their logical design and their gorgeous ornaments of imagination, remind us of the art of Ervinius. In all his works of natural philosophy, of mythology, politics, and history, we perceive the deep feeling and reverie of the Gothic mason. {507} Görres's works are to be aesthetically regarded as churches wonderfully planned, thoroughly executed from deep foundations to spire-top; rich and finished masterpieces; but entirely distinct and different from other creations of the human mind by their Christian, holy, and ecclesiastical character. Hence arises their unpopularity in our time. Those who are able to understand and love art, as a rule, admire only the superficial, and are incapable of fathoming the depth of a work of Görres, and comprehending, in all its grandeur and vastness, his spiritual architecture. Even persons who have genius enough to think deeply are inspired by too profane a spirit to contemplate properly and feel the force of Görres' writings, which the incense of the holy of holies is ever wreathing with its delicious aroma. The literati, therefore, call him bombastic; and the philosophists say he is mystical; and thus one of the richest and deepest intellects of the nation remains a stranger to them, if not actually an object of their contempt." Thus Menzel.

The last observation is not, however, entirely true. As Catholic Germany awakes from its lethargy, and rises gradually higher over the materialism and frivolity of the present, bringing with it again into notice the lofty and eternal ideas of religion and history, recalling the glories of its artistic days, attested by its grand monasteries and cathedrals, the fame of Görres will grow, his merits be disclosed, his mind and services be better appreciated. Men will say of him in the future what he himself has written of the architect of the Cathedral of Cologne in his little book on The Cathedral of Cologne and the Minster of Strasburg: "The Cathedral of Cologne is the work of one of the greatest minds that ever left a trace of its power on earth. The dizzy height of the building, which we cannot contemplate without awe, gives us an idea of the profundity of the genius that planned it. In the conceiver of such a work were harmoniously blended the most singular and exceptional mental faculties. A creative imagination, productive as nature, which takes pleasure in the generation of manifold forms of being; power of intellect, which penetrates the very essence of things, and comprehends the whole ideal realm without effort; a clearness of apprehension, which, like a flash, lays bare the darkest objects; a reason which grasps the relation of things with perspicuity; arranging with ease their synthetic and analytic connections; finally, a deep feeling and sentiment of the beautiful, of the most pure and exalted character; all united to make their possessor capable for his undertaking. Besides, had he succeeded in completing it, he must have possessed a persevering will, a most extensive technical knowledge of the arts and trades; and an amount of practical knowledge which alone would make him an extraordinary genius." Görres, in thus describing the architect of the Cologne Cathedral, leaves us his own portrait.

The private life of Görres was free from blame; and in this regard he is a model among so many distinguished men, who are not always free from reproach in their domestic relations. Even his youth was marked by no follies. His domestic life was pure, and he brought up his children not only with a high intellectual training, but also in the fear of God and in the principles of Christian morality.

His house was the picture of a German farmer's. It was open to every good man, and closed only to the wicked and false. Its master was pleasant, jovial, and fond of gayety and innocent amusement. Görres was not a mere theoretical Catholic; but a true son of the church in his practical conduct, full of piety and Christian charity. He was generous to the poor and needy. He feared God, loved the church, and obeyed the pope. He was edifying at divine service, assisted daily at the holy sacrifice, and received holy communion frequently.

He was a short, thick-set man, able to bear labor and fatigue. Always healthy, he had hardly ever spent a day in bed. He had a broad brow and brilliant eyes. His hair was auburn, streaked with grey in his old age, hanging loosely about his head, so that Clement Brentano compared his appearance to that of an old lion shaking and pulling his mane caught in the bars of his cage.

Görres died as he had lived, well, pious, and happy. It is a remarkable fact, that great men have at last often to undergo great trials. Moses died before entering the promised land; Peter and Paul, in the midst of a fierce persecution excited against the young church they had founded; St. Augustine, while African Christianity was being destroyed by the Vandals; Gregory VII., dying, exclaimed, "I have loved justice and hated iniquity, therefore do I die in exile." In our time, O'Connell saw his beloved island a prey to famine, while he breathed his last far away from her. Görres, too, saw all that he had contended for well-nigh ruined, and the labor of years appeared to be in vain. Eight days before his death, he took to his bed, and received the blessed Eucharist. On January 25th, 1848, his children and friends celebrated his seventy-second birthday. He received holy communion again two days before his departure, which took place on January 29th, at half-past six in the morning, whilst his children and friends knelt at his bedside repeating the Litany for the dying; and while his friend and pupil, Professor Haneberg, was saying Mass for him. A letter, written just after his death by an eye-witness, contains this passage: "The corpse was beautiful. It became like alabaster. The head, face, and broad brow were calm, clear, and peaceful, as if freed from the cares of this life, and awaiting the resurrection of the just." Thus died, uttering holy sentiments, one of the greatest intellects of this or any other age.

An extraordinary remark of Görres, just before his death, is preserved. His mind wandered among the scenes of his former studies, and, recalling the dead nations of history, he said, "Let us pray for the peoples that are no more!"

Görres has been frequently called the O'Connell of Catholic Germany. There is some truth in the parallel. It is true he could not address a hundred thousand of his countrymen from the rostrum; yet his Mercury of the Rhine and his Athanasius could effect as much as his living voice. He was not, like O'Connell, the recognized leader of his people; yet all good men regarded him as their master; and all who had witnessed his patriotism in 1814, and his faith in 1837, trusted him as Ireland did her O'Connell. O'Connell's work was indeed more rapid and exciting in the present; but more efficacious in the future was what Görres had done, and more fruitful the seed which he planted. {509} Görres had not to free the Catholics of Germany from a yoke, such as England had put over the neck of her sister isle; still he was a real liberator, a liberator of Germans from foreign manners; for every nation is ordained of God, and it is a shame and a disgrace, by aping foreign manners, to deny the fatherland to which we belong by speech and nativity; a liberator of the church from state tutelage, which injured the civil as well as the ecclesiastical power; a liberator of the sciences from the shackles of rationalism and infidelity; a liberator of the catholic spirit and of catholic self-consciousness from the slumber of indifferentism and the chains of the spirit of the age; an agitator and excitator was he in the cause of truth and virtue; he dragged Catholic Germany out of the miry dungeon of pusillanimity, taught her self-respect, and made the blood, which had been stagnant, flow again in her veins. As O'Connell loved his country, his church, and liberty, so did Görres; especially that true liberty which is as distinct from the false as God is from idols. May Germany and the church never want geniuses like Görres in their need; and may God send a shower of such men to our own United States!

Nature And Grace.

In the article on Rome and the World in the Magazine for November last, it was shown that there is an irrepressible conflict between the spirit which dominates in the world and that which reigns in the church, or the antagonism which there is and must be between Christ and Satan, the law of life and the law of death; and every one who has attempted to live in strict obedience to the law of God has found that he has to sustain an unceasing warfare between the spirit and the flesh, between the law of the mind and the law in the members. We see the right, we approve it, we resolve to do it, and do it not. We are drawn away from it by the seductions of the flesh, our appetites, passions, and carnal affections, so that the good we would do, we do not, and the evil we would not, that we do. This, which is really a struggle in our own bosom between the higher nature and the lower, is sometimes regarded as a struggle between nature and grace, and taken as a proof that our nature is evil, and that between it and grace there is an inherent antagonism which can be removed only by the destruction either of nature by grace, or of grace by nature. Antagonism there certainly is between the spirit of Christ and the spirit of the world, and in the bosom of the individual between the spirit and the flesh. This antagonism must last as long as this life lasts, for the carnal mind is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be; but this implies no antagonism between the law of grace and the law of nature; for there is, as St. Paul assures us, "no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not according to the flesh." (Rom. viii. 1.) Nor does this struggle imply that our nature is evil or has been corrupted by the fall; for the Council of Trent has defined that the flesh indeed inclines to sin, but is not itself sin. It remains even after baptism, and renders the combat necessary through life; but they who resist it and walk after the spirit are not sinners, because they retain it, feel its motions, and are exposed to its seductions. {510} All evil originates in the abuse of good, for God has never made anything evil. We have suffered and suffer from original sin; we have lost innocence, the original righteousness in which we were constituted, the gifts originally added thereto, or the integrity of our nature—as immunity from disease and death, the subjection of the body to the soul, the inferior soul to the higher—and fallen into a disordered or abnormal state; but our nature has undergone no entitative or physical change or corruption, and it is essentially now what it was before the fall. It retains all its original faculties, and these all retain their original nature. The understanding lacks the supernatural light that illumined it in the state of innocence; but it is still understanding, and still operates and can operate only ad veritatem; free-will, as the Council of Trent defines, has been enfeebled, attenuated, either positively in itself by being despoiled of its integrity and of its supernatural endowment, or negatively by the greater obstacles in the appetites and passions it has to overcome; but it is free-will still, and operates and can operate only propter bonitatem. We can will only good, or things only in the respect that they are good, and only for the reason they are good. We do not and cannot will evil as evil, or for the sake of evil. The object and only object of the intellect is truth, the object and only object of the will is good, as it was before the prevarication of Adam or original sin.

Even our lower nature, concupiscentia, in which is the fomes peccati, is still entitatively good, and the due satisfaction of all its tendencies is useful and necessary in the economy of human life. Food and drink are necessary to supply the waste of the body and to maintain its health and strength. Every natural affection, passion, appetite, or tendency points to a good of some sort, which cannot be neglected without greater or less injury; nor is the sensible pleasure that accompanies the gratification of our nature in itself evil, or without a good and necessary end. Where, then, is the evil, and in what consists the damage done to our nature by original sin? The damage, aside from the culpa, or sin and consequent loss of communion with God, is in the disorder introduced, the abnormal development of the flesh or the appetites and passions consequent on their escape from the control of reason, their fall under Satanic influence, and the ignoble slavery, when they became dominant, to which they reduce reason and free-will as ministers of their pleasure. All the tendencies of our nature have each its special end, which each seeks without respect for the special ends of the others; and hence, if not restrained by reason within the bounds of moderation and sobriety, they run athwart one another, and introduce into the bosom of the individual disorder and anarchy, whence proceed the disorder and anarchy, the tyranny and oppression, the wars and fightings in society. The appetites and passions are all despotic and destitute of reason, each seeking blindly and with all its force its special gratification; and the evil is in the struggle of each for the mastery of the others, and in their tendency to make reason and free-will their servants, or to bring the superior soul into bondage to the inferior, as is said, when we say of a man, "He is the slave of his appetites," or "the slave of his passions," so that we are led to prefer a present and temporary good, though smaller, to a distant future and eternal beatitude, though infinitely greater. {511} Hence, under their control we not only are afflicted with internal disorder and anarchy, but we come to regard the pleasure that accompanies the gratification of our sensitive appetites and passions as the real and true end of life. We eat and drink, not in order to live, but we live in order to eat and drink. We make sensual pleasure our end, the motive of our activity and the measure of our progress. Hence we are carnal men, sold under sin, follow the carnal mind, which is antagonistic to the spiritual mind, or to reason and will, which, though they do in the carnal man the bidding of the flesh, never approve it, nor mistake what the flesh craves for the true end of man.

The antagonism here is antagonism between the spirit and the flesh, not an antagonism between nature and grace—certainly not between the law of nature and the law of grace. The law of nature is something very different from the natural laws of the physicists, which are simply physical laws. Transcendentalists, humanitarians, and naturalists confound these physical laws with what theologians call the natural law as distinguished from the revealed law, and take as their rule of morals the maxim, "Follow nature," that is, follow one's own inclinations and tendencies. They recognize no real difference between the law of obedience and the law of gravitation, and allow no distinction between physical laws and moral law. Hence for them there is a physical, but no moral order. The law of nature, as recognized by theologians and moralists, is a moral law, not a physical law, a law which is addressed to reason and free-will, and demands motives, not simply a mover. It is called natural because it is promulgated by the Supreme Lawgiver through natural reason, instead of supernatural revelation, and is, at least in a measure, known to all men; for all men have reason, and a natural sense of right and wrong, and, therefore, a conscience.

Natural reason is able to attain to the full knowledge of the natural law, but, as St. Thomas maintains, only in the élite of the race. For the bulk of mankind a revelation is necessary to give them an adequate knowledge even of the precepts of the natural law; but as in some men it can be known by reason alone, it is within the reach of our natural faculties, and therefore properly called natural. Not that nature is the source from which it derives its legal character, but the medium of its promulgation.

The law of grace or the revealed law presupposes the natural law—gratia supponit naturam—and however much or little it contains that surpasses it, it contains nothing that contradicts, abrogates, or overrides it. The natural law itself requires that all our natural appetites, passions, and tendencies be restrained within the bounds of moderation, and subordinated to a moral end or the true end of man, the great purpose of his existence; and even Epicurus, who makes pleasure the end of our existence, our supreme good, requires, at least theoretically, the lower nature to be indulged only with sobriety and moderation. His error is not so much in the indulgence he allowed to the sensual or carnal nature, which he was as well aware as others, needs the restraints of reason and will, as in placing the supreme good in the pleasure that accompanies the gratification of nature, and in giving as the reason or motive of the restraint, not the will of God, but the greater amount and security of natural pleasure. The natural law not only commands the restraint, but forbids us to make the pleasure the supreme good, or the motive of the restraint. {512} It places the supreme good in the fulfilment of the real purpose of our existence, makes the proper motive justice or right, not pleasure, and commands us to subordinate inclination to duty as determined by reason or the law itself. It requires the lower nature to move in subordination to the higher, and the higher to act always in reference to the ultimate end of man, which, we know even from reason itself, is God, the final as well as the first cause of all things. The revealed law and the natural law here perfectly coincide, and there is no discrepancy between them. If, then, we understand by nature the law of nature, natural justice and equity, or what we know or may know naturally is reasonable and just, there is no contrariety between nature and grace, for grace demands only what nature herself demands. The supposed war of grace against nature is only the war of reason and free-will against appetite, passion, and inclination, which can be safely followed only when restrained within proper bounds. The crucifixion or annihilation of nature, which Christian asceticism enjoins, is a moral, not a physical crucifixion or annihilation; the destruction of pleasure as our motive or end. No physical destruction of anything natural, nor physical change in anything natural, is demanded by grace or Christian perfection. The law of grace neither forbids nor diminishes the pleasure that accompanies the satisfaction of nature; it only forbids our making it our good, an end to be lived for. When the saints mortify the flesh, chastise the body, or sprinkle with ashes their mess of bitter herbs, it is to maintain inward freedom, to prevent pleasure from gaining a mastery over them, and becoming a motive of action, or perhaps oftener from a love of sacrifice, and the desire to share with Christ in his sufferings to redeem the world. We all of us, if we have any sympathies, feel an invincible repugnance to feasting and making merry when our friends, those we tenderly love, are suffering near us, and the saints see always the suffering Redeemer, Christ in his agony in the garden and on the cross, before their eyes, him whom they love deeply, tenderly, with the whole heart and soul.

But though the law of nature and the law of grace really coincide, we have so suffered from original sin, that we cannot, by our unassisted natural strength, perfectly keep even the law of nature. The law of nature requires us to love God with our whole heart and with our whole soul, and with all our strength and with all our mind, and our neighbor as ourselves. This law, though not above our powers in integral nature, is above them in our fallen or abnormal state. Grace is the supernatural assistance given us through Jesus Christ to deliver us from the bondage of Satan and the flesh, and to enable us to fulfil this great law. This is what is sometimes called medicinal grace; and however antagonistic it may be to the moral disorder introduced by original sin and aggravated by actual sin, it is no more antagonistic to nature itself than is the medicine administered by the physician to the body to enable it to throw off a disease too strong for it, and to recover its health. What assists nature, aids it to keep the law and attain to freedom and normal development, cannot be opposed to nature or in any manner hurtful to it.

Moreover, grace is not merely medicinal, nor simply restricted to repairing the damage done by original sin. Where sin abounded, grace superabounds. {513} Whether, if man had not sinned, God would have become incarnate or not is a question which we need not raise here, any more than the question whether God could or could not, congruously with his known attributes, have created man in what the theologians call the state of pure nature, as he is now born, seclusa ratione culpae et paenae, and therefore for a natural beatitude; for it is agreed on all hands that he did not so create him, and that the incarnation is not restricted in its intention or effect to the simple redemption of man from sin, original or actual, and his restoration to the integrity of his nature, lost by the prevarication of Adam. All schools teach that as a matter of fact the incarnation looks higher and farther, and is intended to elevate man to a supernatural order of spiritual life, and to secure him a supernatural beatitude, a life and beatitude to which his nature alone is not adequate.

Man regarded in the present decree of God has not only his origin in the supernatural, but also his last end or final cause. He proceeds from God as first cause, and returns to him as final cause. The oriental religions, the Egyptian, Hindu, Chinese, and the Buddhist, etc., all say as much, but fall into the error of making him proceed from God by way of emanation, generation, formation, or development, and his return to him as final cause, absorption in him, as the stream in the fountain, or the total loss of individuality, which, instead of being perfect beatitude in God, is absolute personal annihilation. But these religions have originated in a truth which they misapprehend, pervert, or travesty. Man, both Christian faith and sound philosophy teach us, proceeds from God as first cause by way of creation proper, and returns to him as final cause without absorption in him or loss of individuality. God creates man, not indeed an independent, but a substantive existence, capable of acting from his own centre as a second cause; and however intimate may be his relation with God, he is always distinguishable from him, and can no more be confounded with him as his final cause than he can be confounded with him as his first cause. Not only the race but the individual man returns to God, and finds in him his supreme good, and individually united to him, through the Word made flesh, enjoys personally in him an infinite beatitude.

God alike as first cause and as final cause is supernatural. And man therefore can neither exist nor find his beatitude without the intervention of the supernatural. He can no more rise to a supernatural beatitude or beatitude in God without the supernatural act of God, than he could begin to exist without that act. The natural is created and finite, and can be no medium of the infinite or supernatural. Man, as he is in the present decree of God, cannot obtain his end, rise to his supreme good or beatitude, without a supernatural medium. This medium in relation to the end, or in the teleological order, is the Word made flesh, God incarnate, Jesus Christ, the only mediator between God and men. Jesus Christ is not only the medium of our redemption from sin and the consequences of the fall, but of our elevation to the plane of a supernatural destiny, and perfect beatitude in the intimate and eternal possession of God, who is both our good and the Good in itself. This is a higher, an infinitely greater good than man could ever have attained to by his natural powers even in a state of integral nature, or if he had not sinned, and had had no need of a Redeemer; and hence the apostle tells us where sin abounded grace superabounded, and the church sings on Holy Saturday, O felix culpa. The incarnate Word is the medium of this superabounding good, as the Father is its principle and the Holy Ghost its consummator.

Whether grace is something created, as St. Thomas maintains, and as would seem to follow from the doctrine of infused virtues asserted by the Council of Trent, or the direct action of the Holy Ghost within us, as was held by Petrus Lombardus, the Master of Sentences, it is certain that the medium of all grace given to enable us to attain to beatitude is the Incarnation, and hence is termed by theologians gratia Christi, and distinguishable from the simple gratia Dei, which is bestowed on man in the initial order, or order of genesis, commonly the natural order, because its explication is by natural generation, and not as the teleological order, by the election of grace. The grace of Christ by which our nature is elevated to the plane of the supernatural, and enabled to attain to a supernatural end or beatitude, cannot be opposed to nature, or in any sense antagonistic to nature. Nature is not denied or injured because its author prepares for it a greater, an infinitely greater than a natural or created good, to which no created nature by its own powers, however exalted, could ever attain. Men may doubt if such a good remains for those who love our Lord Jesus Christ and by his grace follow him in the regeneration, but nobody can pretend that the proffer of such good, and the gift of the means to attain it, can be any injury or slight to nature.

There is no doubt that in the flesh which resists grace, because grace would subordinate it to reason and free-will, but this, though the practical difficulty, is not the real dialectic difficulty which men feel in the way of accepting the Christian doctrine of grace. Men object to it on the ground that it substitutes grace for nature, and renders nature good for nothing in the Christian or teleological order—the order of return to God as our last end or final cause. We have anticipated and refuted this objection in condemning the pantheistic doctrine of the orientals, and by maintaining that the return to God is without absorption in him, or loss of our individuality or distinct personality.

The beatitude which the regenerate soul attains to in God by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ is the beatitude of that very individual soul that proceeds, by way of creation, from God. The saints by being blest in God are not lost in him, but retain in glory their original human nature and their identical personal existence. This the church plainly teaches in her cultus sanctorum. She invokes the saints in heaven, and honors them as individuals distinct from God, and as distinct personalities; and hence, she teaches us that the saints are sons of God only by adoption, and, though living by and in the Incarnate Word, are not themselves Christ, or the Word made flesh. In the Incarnation, the human personality was absorbed or superseded by the divine personality, so that the human nature assumed had a divine but no human personality. The Word assumed human nature, not a human person. Hence the error of the Nestorians and Adoptionists, and also of those who in our own times are willing to call Mary the mother of Christ, but shrink from calling her [Greek text]

or the Mother of God. But in the saints, who are not hypostatically united to the Word, human nature not only remains unchanged, but retains its human personality; and the saints are as really men, as really human persons in glory, as they were while in the flesh, and are the same human persons that they were before either regeneration or glorification. {515} The church, by her cultus sanctorum, teaches us to regard the glorified saints as still human persons, and to honor them as human persons, who by the aid of grace have merited the honor we give them. We undoubtedly honor God in his saints as well as in all his works of nature or of grace; but this honor of God in his works is that of latria, and is not that which is rendered to the saints. In the cultus sanctorum, we not only honor him in his works, but we also honor the saints themselves for their own personal worth, acquired not, indeed, without grace, but still acquired by them, and is as much theirs as if it had been acquired by their unassisted natural powers; for our natural powers are from God as first cause, no less than grace itself, only grace is from him through the Incarnation. You say, it is objected, that grace supposes nature, gratia supponit naturam, yet St. Paul calls the regeneration a new creation, and the regenerated soul a new creature. Very true; yet he says this not because the nature given in generation is destroyed or superseded in regeneration, but because regeneration no more than generation can be initiated or sustained without the divine creative act; because generation can never become of itself regeneration, or make the first motion toward it. Without the divine regenerative act we cannot enter upon our teleological or spiritual life, but must remain for ever in the order of generation, and infinitely below our destiny, as is the case with the reprobate or those who die unregenerate. But it is the person born of Adam that is regenerated, that is translated into the kingdom of God's dear Son, and that is the recipient of regenerating, persevering, and glorifying grace. This is the point we insist on; for, if so, the objection that grace destroys or supersedes nature is refuted. The whole of Catholic theology teaches that grace assists nature, but does not create or substitute a new nature, as is evident from the fact that it teaches that in regeneration even we must concur with grace, that we can resist it, and after regeneration lose all that grace confers, apostatize from the faith, and fall even below the condition of the unregenerate. This would be impossible, if we did not retain our nature as active in and after regeneration. In this life it is certain that regeneration is a moral, a spiritual, not a physical change, and that our reason and will are emancipated from the bondage of sin, and are simply enabled to act from a higher plane and gain a higher end than it could unassisted; but it is the natural person that is enabled and that acts in gaining the higher end. Grace, then, does not in this life destroy or supersede nature, and the authorized cultus of the saints proves that it does not in the glorified saint or life to come.

The same conclusion follows from the fact that regeneration only fulfils generation. "I am not come," said our Lord, "to destroy, but to fulfil." The creative act, completed, as to the order of procession of existences from God, in the Incarnation or hypostatic union, which closes the initial order and institutes the teleological, includes both the procession of existences from God and their return to him. It is completed, fulfilled, and consummated only in regeneration and glorification. If the nature that proceeds from God is changed or superseded by grace, the creative act is not fulfilled, for that which proceeds from God does not return to him. {516} The initial man must himself return, or with regard to him the creative act remains initial and incomplete. In the first order, man is only initial or inchoate, and is a complete, a perfect man only when he has returned to God as his final cause. To maintain that it is not this initial man that returns, but, if the supposition be possible, another than he, or something substituted for him, and that has not by way of creation proceeded from God, would deny the very purpose and end of the Incarnation, and the very idea of redemption, regeneration, and glorification, the grace of Christ, and leave man without any means of redemption or deliverance from sin, or of fulfilling his destiny—the doom of the damned in hell. The destruction or change of man's nature is the destruction of man himself, the destruction of his identity, his human personality; yet St. Paul teaches, Rom. viii. 30, that the persons called are they who are redeemed and glorified: "Whom he predestinated, them also he called; and whom he called, them also he justified; and whom he justified, them also he glorified."

We can, indeed, do nothing in relation to our end without the grace of Christ; but, with that grace freely given and strengthening us, it is equally certain that we can work, and work even meritoriously, or else how could heaven be promised us as a reward? Yet it is so promised: "He that cometh to God must believe that he is, and is the rewarder of them that seek him." (Heb. xi. 6.) Moses "looked to the reward;" David had respect to the divine "retributions;" and all Christians, as nearly all heathen, believe in a future state of rewards and punishments. We are exhorted to flee to Christ and obey him that we may escape hell and gain heaven. The grace by which we are born again and are enabled to merit is unquestionably gratuitous, for grace is always gratuitous, omnino gratis, as say the theologians, and we can do nothing to merit it, no more than we could do something to merit our creation from nothing; but though gratuitous, a free gift of God, grace is bestowed on or infused into a subject already existing in the order of generation or natural order, and we can act by it, and can and do, if faithful to it, merit heaven or eternal life. Hence says the apostle, "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God that worketh in you both to will and to do, or to accomplish." (Philip, ii. 12.) But this no more implies that the willing and doing in the order of regeneration are not ours than that our acting in the order of nature is not ours because we can even in that order act, whether for good or for evil, only by the divine concurrence.

The heterodox confound the gift of grace by which we are able to merit the reward with the reward itself; hence they maintain, because we can merit nothing without grace, that we can merit nothing even with it, and that we are justified by faith alone, which is the free gift of God, conferred on whom he wills, and that grace is irresistible, and once in grace we are always in grace. But St. James tells us that we are "justified by our works, and not by faith only, for faith without works is dead." (St. James ii. 14-25.) Are we who work by grace and merit the reward the same we that prior to regeneration sinned and were under wrath? Is it we who by the aid of grace merit the reward, or is it the grace in us? If the grace itself, how can it be said that we are rewarded? If the reward is given not to us who sinned, but to the new person or new nature into which grace is said to change us, how can it be said that we either merit or are rewarded? {517} Man has his specific nature, and if you destroy or change that specific nature, you annihilate him as man, instead of aiding his return to God as his final cause. The theologians treat grace not as a new nature or a new faculty bestowed on nature, but as a habitus, or habit, an infused habit indeed, not an acquired habit, but none the less a habit on that account, which changes not, transforms not nature, but gives it, as do all habits, a power or facility of doing what without it would exceed its strength. The subject of the habit is the human soul, and that which acts by, under, or with the habit is also the human soul, not the habit. The soul, as before receiving it, is the actor, but it acts with an increased strength, and does what before it could not; yet its nature is simply strengthened, not changed. The general idea of habit must be preserved throughout. The personality is not in the habit, but in the rational nature of him into whom the habit is infused by the Holy Ghost. In our Lord there are the two natures; but in him the divine personality assumes the human nature, and is always the subject acting, whether acting in the human nature or in the divine. In the regenerated there are also the human and the divine; but the human, if I may so speak, assumes the divine, and retains from first to last its own personality, as is implied in the return to God without absorption in him or loss of personal individuality, and in the fact that, though without grace, we cannot concur with grace, yet by the aid of grace we can and must concur with it the moment we come to the use of reason, or it is not effectual. The sacraments are, indeed, efficacious ex opere operato, not by the faith or virtue of the recipient, but only in case the will, as in infants, opposes no obstacle to the grace they signify. Yet even in infants the concurrence of the will is required when they come to the use of reason, and the refusal to elicit the act loses the habit infused by baptism. The baptized infant must concur with grace as soon as capable of a rational act.

The heterodox who are exclusive supernaturalists, because we cannot without grace concur with grace, deny that the concurrence is needed, and assert that grace is irresistible and overcomes all resistance, and, as gratia victrix, subjects the will. Hence they hold that, in faith, regeneration, justification, sanctification, nature does nothing, and all that is done is done by sovereign grace even in spite of nature; but the fact on which they rely is not sufficient to sustain their theory. The schoolmen, for the convenience of teaching, divide and subdivide grace till we are in danger of losing sight of its essential unity. They tell us of prevenient grace, or the grace that goes before and excites the will of assisting grace, the grace that aids the will when excited to elect to concur with grace; and efficacious grace, the grace that renders the act of concurrence effectual. But these three graces are really one and the same grace, and the gratia praeveniens, when not resisted, becomes immediately gratia adjuvans, and aids the will to concur with grace, and, if concurred with, it becomes, ipso facto and immediately, gratia efficax. It needs no grace to resist grace, and none, it would seem to follow from the freedom of the will, not to resist it. Freedom of the will, according to the decision of the church in the case of the gratia victrix of the Jansenists, implies the power to will the contrary, and, if free to resist it, why not free not to resist? {518} There is, it seems to us, a real distinction between not willing to resist and willing to concur. Nothing in nature compels or forces the will to resist, for its natural operation is to the good, as that of the intellect is to the true. The grace excites it to action, and, if it do not will to resist, the grace is present to assist it to elect to comply. If this be tenable, and we see not why it is not, both the aid of grace and the freedom and activity of the will are asserted, are saved, are harmonized, and the soul is elevated into the order of regeneration without any derogation either from nature or from grace, or lesion to either.

We are well aware of the old question debated in Catholic schools, whether grace is to be regarded as auxilium quod or as auxilium quo; but it is not necessary either to inquire what was the precise sense of the question debated, or to enter into any discussion of its merits, for both schools held the Catholic faith, which asserts the freedom of the will, and both held that grace is auxilium, and therefore an aid given to nature, not its destruction, nor its change into something else. The word auxilium, or aid, says of itself all that we are contending for. St. Paul says, indeed, when reluctantly comparing his labors with those of the other apostles, that he had labored more abundantly than they all, but adds, "Yet not I, but the grace of God with me." But he recognizes himself, for he says, "grace with me;" and his sense is easily explained by what he says in a passage already quoted, namely, "Work out your own salvation; for it is God that worketh in you to will and to do," or to accomplish, and also by what he says in the text itself, (1 Cor. xv. 1,) "By the grace of God, I am what I am;" which has primary reference to his calling to be an apostle. God by his grace works in us to will and to do, and we can will or do nothing in relation to our final end, as has been explained, without his grace; but, nevertheless, it is we who will and do. Hence St. Paul could say to St. Timothy, "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. For the rest, there is laid up for me a crown of justice, which the Lord, the just Judge, will render to me at that day: and not to me only, but to them also who love his coming." (2 Tim. iv. 7, 8.) Here St. Paul speaks of himself as the actor and as the recipient of the crown. St. Augustine says that God, in crowning the saints, "crowns his own gifts," but evidently means that he crowns them for what they have become by his gifts; and, as it is only by virtue of his gifts that they have become worthy of crowns, their glory redounds primarily to him, and only in a subordinate sense to themselves. There is, in exclusive supernaturalists and exaggerated ascetics, an unsuspected pantheism, no less sophistical and uncatholic than the pantheism of our pseudo-ontologists. The characteristic mark of pantheism is not simply the denial of creation, but the denial of the creation of substances capable of acting as second causes. In the order of regeneration as in the order of generation we are not indeed primary, but are really secondary causes; and the denial of this fact, and the assertion of God as the direct and immediate actor from first to last, is pure pantheism. This is as true in the order of regeneration as in the order of generation, though in the order of grace it is thought to be a proof of piety, when, in fact, it denies the very subject that can be pious. Count de Maistre somewhere says, "The worst error against grace is that of asserting too much grace." {519} We must exist, and exist as second causes, to be the recipients of grace, or to be able even with grace to be pious toward God, or the subject of any other virtue. In the regeneration we do by the aid of grace, but we are, nevertheless, the doers, whence it follows that regeneration no more than generation is wholly supernatural. Regeneration supposes generation, takes it up to itself and completes it, otherwise the first Adam would have no relation to the second Adam, and man would find no place in the order of regeneration, which would be the more surprising since the order itself originates in the Incarnation, in the God-Man, who is its Alpha and Omega, its beginning and end.

Many people are, perhaps, misled on this subject by the habit of restricting the word natural exclusively to the procession of existences from God and what pertains to the initial order of creation, and the word supernatural to the return of existences to God as their last end, and the means by which they return or attain that end and complete the cycle of existence or the creative act. The procession is initial, the return is teleological. The initial is called natural, because it is developed and carried on by natural generation; the teleological is called supernatural, because it is developed and carried on by grace, and the election by grace takes the place of hereditary descent. This is well enough, except when we have to deal with persons who insist on separating—not simply distinguishing, but separating, the natural and the supernatural, and on denying either the one or the other. But, in reality, what we ordinarily call the natural is not wholly natural, nor what we call the supernatural is wholly supernatural. Strictly speaking, the supernatural is God himself and what he does with no other medium than his own eternal Word, that is, without any created medium, or agency of second causes; the natural is that which is created and what God does through the medium of second causes or created agencies, called by physicists natural laws. Thus, creation is a supernatural fact, because effected immediately by God himself; generation is a natural fact, because effected by God mediately by natural laws or second causes; the hypostatic union, or the assumption of flesh by the Word, which completes the creative act in the initial order and institutes the teleological or final order, is supernatural; all the operations of grace are supernatural, though operations in and with nature; the sacraments are supernatural, for they are effective ex opere operato, and the natural parts are only signs of the grace, not its natural medium. The water used in baptism is not a natural medium of the grace of regeneration; it is made by the divine will the sign, though an appropriate sign, of it; the grace itself is communicated by the direct action of the Holy Ghost, which is supernatural. Regeneration, as well as its complement, glorification, is supernatural, for it cannot be naturally developed from generation, and regeneration does not necessarily carry with it glorification; for it does not of itself, as St. Augustine teaches, insure the grace of perseverance, since grace is omnino gratis, and only he that perseveres to the end will be glorified. Hence, even in the teleological order, the natural, that is, the human, reason and will have their share, and without their activity the end would not and could not be gained. {520} Revelation demands the active reception of reason, or else it might as well be made to an ox or a horse as to a man; and the will that perseveres to the end is the human will, though the human will be regenerated by grace. Wherever you see the action of the creature as second cause you see the natural, and wherever you see the direct action of God, whether as sustaining the creature or immediately producing the effect, you see the supernatural.

The fact that God works in us to will and to do, or that we can do nothing in the order of regeneration without grace moving and assisting us, no more denies the presence and activity of nature than does the analogous fact that we can do nothing even in the order of generation without the supernatural presence and concurrence of the Creator. We are as apt to forget that God has any hand in the action of nature as we are to deny that where God acts nature can ever coöperate; we are apt to conclude that the action of the one excludes that of the other, and to run either into Pelagianism on the one hand, or into Calvinism or Jansenism on the other; and we find a difficulty in harmonizing in our minds the divine sovereignty of God and human liberty. We cannot, on this occasion, enter fully into the question of their conciliation. Catholic faith requires us to assert both, whether we can or cannot see how they can coexist. We think, however, that we can see a distinction between the divine government of a free active subject and of an inanimate and passive subject. God governs each subject according to the nature he has given it; and, if he has given man a free nature, his government, although absolute, must leave human freedom intact, and to man the capacity of exercising his own free activity, without running athwart the divine sovereignty. How this can be done, we do not undertake to say.

But be this as it may, there is no act even in the natural order that is or can be performed without the assistance of the supernatural; for we are absolutely dependent on the creative act of God in everything, in those very acts in which we act most freely. The grace of God is as necessary as the grace of Christ. God has not created a universe, and made it, when once created, capable of going alone as a self-moving machine. He creates substances, indeed, capable of acting as second causes; but these substances can do nothing, are nothing as separated from the creative act of God that produces them, upholds them, is present in them, and active in all their acts, even in the most free determinations of the will. Without this divine presence, always an efficient presence, and this divine activity in all created activities, there is and can be no natural activity or action, any more than, in relation to our last end, there can be the first motion toward grace without grace. The principle of action in both orders is strictly analogous, and our acting with grace or by the assistance of grace in the order of regeneration is as natural as is our acting by the divine presence and concurrence in the order of generation. The human activity in either order is equally natural, and in neither is it possible or explicable without the constant presence and activity of the supernatural. The two orders, the initial and the teleological, then, are not antagonistical to each other, are not based on two mutually destructive principles, but are really two distinct parts, as we so often say, of one dialectic whole.

The Holy Scriptures, since God is causa eminens, the cause of causes, the first cause operative in all second causes, speak of God as doing this or that, without always taking special note of the fact that, though he really does it, he does it through the agency of second causes or the activity of creatures. This is frequently the case in the Scriptures of the Old Testament, and sometimes, though less frequently, in the New Testament, though never in either without something to indicate whether it is the direct and immediate or the indirect and mediate action of God that is meant. Paying no attention to this, many overlook the distinction altogether, and fall into a sort of pantheistic fatalism, and practically deny the freedom and activity of second causes, as is the case with Calvin when he declares God to be the author of sin, which on his own principles is absurd, for he makes the will of God the criterion of right, and therefore whatever God does must be right, and nothing that is right can be sin. On the other hand, men, fixing their attention on the agency of second causes, overlook the constant presence and activity of the first cause, treat second causes as independent causes, or as if they were themselves first cause, and fall into pure naturalism, which is only another name for atheism. The universe is not a clock or a watch, but even a clock or a watch generates not its own motive power; the maker in either has only so constructed it as to utilize for his purpose a motive power that exists and operates independently both of him and of his mechanism.

Men speak of nature as supernaturalized in regeneration, and hence assume that grace transforms nature; but in this there must be some misunderstanding or exaggeration. In regeneration we are born into the order of the end, or started, so to speak, on our return to God as our final cause. The principle of this new birth, which is grace, and the end, which is God, are supernatural; but our nature is not changed except as to its motives and the assistance it receives, though it receives in baptism an indelible mark not easy to explain. This follows from the Incarnation. In the Incarnation our nature is raised to be the nature of God, and yet remains human nature, as is evident from the condemnation by the church of the monophysites and the monothelites. Catholic faith requires us to hold that the two natures, the human and the divine, remain for ever distinct in the one divine person of the Word. Some prelates thought to save their orthodoxy by maintaining that, after his resurrection, the two natures of our Lord became fused or transformed into one theandric nature; but they did not succeed, and were condemned and deposed. The monothelites asserted that there was in Christ two natures indeed, but only one will, or that his human will was absorbed in the divine. But they also were condemned as heretics. Our Lord, addressing the Father, says, "Not my will, but thine be done," thus plainly implying a human will distinct from, though not contrary to, the divine will. Can we suppose that the grace of regeneration or even of glorification works a greater change of nature in us than the grace of union worked in our nature as assumed by the Word? If human nature and human will remain in Christ after the hypostatic union, so that to regard him after his resurrection as having but one will or one theandric nature is a heresy, how can we hold without heresy that grace, which flows from that union, either destroys our nature or transforms it into a theandric or supernaturalized nature?

Let us understand, then, that grace neither annihilates nor supersedes or transforms our nature. It is our nature that is redeemed or delivered from the bondage of sin, our nature that is translated from the kingdom of dark into the kingdom of light, our nature that is reborn, that is justified, that by the help of grace perseveres to the end, that is rewarded, that is glorified, and enters into the glory of our Lord. It then persists in regeneration and glorification as one and the same human nature, with its human reason, its human will, its human personality, its human activity, only assisted by grace to act from a supernatural principle to or for a supernatural end. The assistance is supernatural, and so is the end; but that which receives the assistance, profits by it, and attains the end, is human nature, the man that was born of Adam as well as reborn of Christ, the second Adam.

We have dwelt long, perhaps to tediousness, upon this point, because we have wished to efface entirely the fatal impression that nature and grace are mutually antagonistic, and to make it appear that the two orders, commonly called the natural and the supernatural, are both mutually consistent parts of one whole; that grace simply completes nature; and that Christianity is no anomaly, no after-thought, or succedaneum, in the original design of creation.

The heterodox, with their doctrine of total depravity, and the essential corruption or evil of nature, and their doctrine, growing out of this assumed depravity or corruption, of irresistible grace, and the inactivity or passivity of man in faith and justification, obscure this great fact, and make men regard nature as a failure, and that to save some God had to supplant and create a new nature in its place. A more immoral doctrine, or one more fatal to all human activity, is not conceivable, if it could be really and seriously believed and acted on prior to regeneration, which is impossible. The heterodox are better than their system. The system teaches that all our works before regeneration are sins; even our prayers are unacceptable, some say, an abomination to the Lord, and consequently, there is no use in striving to be virtuous. After regeneration there is no need of our activity, for grace is inamissible, and if really born again, sin as much as we will, our salvation is sure, for the sins of the regenerated are not reputed to them or counted as sins. There is no telling how many souls this exclusive and exaggerated supernaturalism (which we owe to the reformers of the sixteenth century) has destroyed, or how many persons it has deterred from returning to the Catholic Church by the common impression, that, since she asserts original sin and the necessity of grace, she holds and teaches the same frightful system. Men who are able to think, and accustomed to sober reflection, find themselves unable to embrace Calvinism, and, confounding Calvinism with Christianity, reject Christianity itself, and fall into a meagre rationalism, a naked naturalism, or, worst of all, an unreasoning indifferentism; yet there is no greater mistake than to suppose that the church holds it or has the slightest sympathy with it. We have wished to mark clearly the difference between it and her teaching. Christian asceticism, when rightly understood, is not based on the assumption that nature is evil, and needs to be destroyed, repressed, or changed. It is based on two great ideas, liberty and sacrifice. {523} It is directed not to the destruction of the flesh or the body, for in the creed we profess to believe in the "resurrection of the flesh." Our Lord assumed flesh in the womb of the Virgin; he had a real body, ascended into heaven with it, and in it sitteth at the right hand of the Father Almighty. He feeds and nourishes us with it in Holy Communion; and it is by eating his flesh and drinking his blood that our spiritual life is sustained and strengthened. Our own bodies shall rise again, and, spiritualized after the manner of Christ's glorious body, shall, reunited to the soul, live for ever. We show that this is our belief by the honor we pay to the relics of the saints. This sacred flesh, these sacred bones, which we cherish with so much tender piety, shall live again, and reenter the glorified body of the saint. Matter is not evil, as the Platonists teach, and as the false asceticism of the heathen assumes, and with which Christian asceticism has no affinity, though many who ought to know better pretend to the contrary. The Christian ascetic aims, indeed, at a moral victory over the flesh, labors by the help of grace to liberate the soul from its bondage, to gain the command of himself, to be at all times free to maintain the truth, and to keep the commandments of God; to bring his body into subjection to the soul, to reduce the appetites and passions under the control of his reason and will, but never to destroy them or in any manner to injure his material body. Far less does he seek to abnegate, destroy, or repress either will or reason, in order to give grace freer and fuller scope; he only labors to purify and strengthen both by grace. Nature is less abnormal, purer, stronger, more active, more energetic in the true ascetic than in those who take no pains to train and purify it under the influence of divine grace.

The principle of all sacrifice is love. It was because God so loved men that he gave his only-begotten Son to die for them that they might not perish, but have everlasting life. It was love that died on the cross for our redemption. Nothing is hard or difficult to love, and there is nothing love will not do or sacrifice for the object loved. The saint can never make for his Lord a sacrifice great enough to satisfy his love, and gives up for him the most precious things he has, not because they are evil or it would be sin in him to retain them; not because his Lord needs them, but because they are the most costly sacrifice he can make, and he in making the sacrifice can give some proof of his love. The chief basis of monastic life is sacrifice. The modern notion that monastic institutions were designed to be a sort of hospital for infirm souls is essentially false. As a rule, a virtue that cannot sustain itself in the world will hardly acquire firmness and strength in a monastery. The first monks did not retire from the world because [it was] unfit to live in it, but because the world restrained their liberty, and because it afforded them no adequate field for the heroic sacrifices to which they aspired. Their austerities, which we so little robust as Christians, accustomed to pamper our bodies, and to deny ourselves nothing, regard as sublime folly, if not with a shudder of horror, were heroic sacrifices to the Spouse of the soul, for whom they wished to give up everything but their love. They rejoiced in affliction for his sake, and they wished to share, as we have already said, with him in the passion and cross which he endured for our sake, so as to be as like him as possible. {524} There are saints to-day in monasteries, and out of monasteries in the world, living in our midst, whom we know not or little heed, who understand the meaning of this word sacrifice, and make as great and as pure sacrifices, though perhaps in other forms, and as thoroughly forego their own pleasure, and as cheerfully give up what costs them the most to give up, as did the old Fathers of the Desert. But, if we know them not, God knows them and loves them.

Yet we pretend not to deny that many went into monasteries from other motives, from weakness, disappointed affection, disgust of the world, and some to hide their shame, and to expiate by a life of penance their sins; but, if the monastery often sheltered such as these, it was not for such that it was originally designed. In process of time, monastic institutions, when they became rich, were abused, as often the priesthood itself, and treated by the nobles as a provision for younger sons or portionless daughters. We may at times detect in ascetics an exaggeration of the supernatural element and an underrating if not a neglect of the natural, we may find, chiefly in modern times, a tendency amongst the pious and devout to overlook the fact that manliness, robustness, and energy of mind and character enter as an important element in the Christian life; but the tendency in this direction is not catholic, though observed to some extent among Catholics. It originates in the same causes that originated the Calvinistic or Jansenistic heresy, and has been strengthened by the exaggerated assertion of the human and natural elements caused by the reaction of the human mind against an exclusive and exaggerated supernaturalism. The rationalism and humanitarianism of the last century and the present are only the reaction of human nature against the exaggerated supernaturalism of the Reformers and their descendants, the Jansenists, who labored to demolish nature to make way for grace, and to annihilate man in order to assert God. Each has an element of truth, but, neither having the whole truth, each makes war on the other, and alternately gains a victory and undergoes a defeat. Unhappily, neither will listen to the church who accepts the truth and rejects the exclusiveness of each, and harmonizes and completes the truth of both in the unity and catholicity of the faith once delivered to the saints. The Catholic faith is the reconciler of all opposites. These alternate victories and defeats go on in the world outside of the church; but it would be strange if they did not have some echo among Catholics, living, as they do, in the midst of the combatants, and in constant literary and intellectual intercourse with them. They create some practical difficulties for Catholics which are not always properly appreciated. We cannot assert the natural, rational, and the human element of the church without helping, more or less, the exclusive rationalists or naturalists who deny the supernatural; and we can hardly oppose them with the necessary vigor and determination without seeming at least to favor their opponents, the exclusive supernaturalists, who reject reason and deny the natural. It is this fact very likely that has kept Catholics for the most part during the last century and the present on the defensive; and as, during this period, the anti-supernaturalists have been the most formidable enemy of the church, it is no wonder if the mass of devout Catholics have shown some tendency to exaggerate the supernatural, and been shy of asserting as fully as faith warrants the importance of the rational and the natural, or if they have paid less attention to the cultivation of the human side of religion than is desirable.

Some allowance must be made for the new position in which Catholics for a century or more have been placed, and it would be very wrong to censure them with severity, even if we found them failing to show themselves all at once equal to the new duties imposed upon them. The breaking up of old governments and institutions, founded by Catholic ancestors, the political, social, and industrial revolutions that have been and still are going on, must have, to some extent, displaced the Catholic mind, and required it, so to speak, to ease itself, or to take a new and difficult observation, and determine its future course. Catholics to-day stand between the old, which was theirs, and which is passing away, and the new, which is rising, and which is not yet theirs. They must needs be partially paralyzed, and at a momentary loss to know what course to take. Naturally conservative, as all men are who have something to lose or on which to rely, their sympathies are with the past, they have not been able as yet to accept the new state of things, and convert regrets into hopes. A certain hesitation marks their conduct, as if in doubt whether to stand out against the new at all hazards, and, if need be, fall martyrs to a lost cause, or to accept it and do the best they can with it. In this country, where Catholicity is not associated with any sort of political institutions, and Catholics have no old civilization to retain or any new order to resist, we, unless educated abroad, are hardly able to appreciate the doubts, hesitations, and discouragements of Catholics in the old world, and to make the proper allowances if at times they seem to attach as Catholics undue importance to the political and social changes going on around them, to be too despondent, and more disposed to cry out against the wickedness of the age, to fold their hands, and wait for Providence to rearrange all things for them without their coöperation, than to look the changes events have produced full in the face, and to exert themselves, with the help of grace, to bring order out of the new chaos, as their brave old ancestors did out of the chaos that followed the irruption of the northern barbarians, and the breaking up of the Graeco-Roman civilization. It is no light thing to see the social and political world in which we have lived, and with which we have been accustomed to associate the interests of religion and society falling in ruins under our very eyes, and we must be pardoned if for a moment we feel that all is gone or going.

But Catholic energy can never be long paralyzed, and already the Catholics of Europe are arousing themselves from their apathy, recovering their courage, and beginning to feel aware that the church depends on nothing temporary, is identified with no political or social organization, and can survive all the mutations of the world around her. Leading Catholics in Europe, instead of wasting their strength in vain regrets for a past that is gone, or in vainer efforts to restore what can no longer be restored, are beginning to adjust themselves to the present, and to labor to command the future. They are leaving the dead to bury their dead, and preparing to follow their Lord in the new work to be done for the new and turbulent times in which their lot is cast. "All these things are against me," said the patriarch Jacob, and yet they proved to be all for him and his family. Who knows but the untoward events of the last century and the present will turn out for the interests of religion, and that another Joseph may be able to say to their authors, "Ye meant it for evil, but God meant it for good?"

In all great political and social revolutions there must always be a moment when men may reasonably doubt whether duty calls them to labor to retain what is passing away, or whether they shall suffer it to be buried with honor, and betake themselves with faith and hope and courage to what has supplanted it. That moment has passed in the Old World, and nothing remains but to make the best of the present, and to labor to reconstruct the future in the best way possible. Happily for us, the church, though she may lose province after province, nation after nation, and be driven to take refuge in the catacombs cannot be broken up, or her divine strength and energy impaired. While she remains, we have God with us, and our case can never be desperate. The church has seen darker days than any she now experiences; civilization has been much nearer its ruin than it is now in Europe, and Catholics have now all the means to surmount present difficulties, which sufficed them once to conquer the world. There is no sense in despondency. Cannot the millions of Catholics do to-day what twelve fishermen of Galilee did? Is the successor of Peter to-day more helpless than was Peter himself, when he entered Rome with his staff to preach in the proud capitol of heathendom the crucified Redeemer? The same God that was with Peter, and gave efficacy to his preaching, is with his successor; and we who live to-day have, if we seek it, all the divine support, and more than all the human means, that those Catholics had who subdued the barbarians and laid the foundation of Christian Europe. What they did we may do, if, with confidence in God, we set earnestly about doing it. The world is not so bad now as it was in the first century or in the sixth century; and there is as strong faith, as ardent piety, in this age, as in any age that has gone before it. Never say, "We have fallen on evil times." All times are evil to the weak, the cowardly, the despondent; and all times are good to the strong, the brave, the hopeful, who dare use the means God puts into their hands, and are prepared to do first the duty that lies nearest them.

We see many movements that indicate that our European brethren are regaining their courage, and, counting the past, so glorious for Catholics, as beyond recovery, are endeavoring to do what they can in and for the present, quietly, calmly, without noise or ostentation; and they will not need to labor long before they will see the "truths crushed to the earth rise again," and a new order, Phoenix-like, rising from the ashes of the old, more resplendent in beauty and worth, more in harmony with the divine spirit of the church, and more favorable to the freedom and dignity of man. Truth dies never. "The eternal years of God are hers." The Omnipotent reigns, and thus far in the history of the church, what seemed her defeat, has proved for her a new and more brilliant victory. The church never grows old, and we can afford to be patient though earnest in her service. The spirit of God never ceases to hover over the chaos, and order, though disturbed for a time, is sure, soon or late, to reappear.

We feel that we have very inadequately discussed the great question of nature and grace, the adequate discussion of which is far beyond the reach of such feeble abilities and such limited theological attainments as ours; but we have aimed to set forth as clearly and as simply as we could what we have been taught by our Catholic masters on the relation of the natural to the supernatural; and if we have succeeded in showing that there is no antagonism between nature and grace, the natural and the supernatural, the divine sovereignty and human liberty, and that we can be at once pious and manly, energetic as men, and humble and devout as Christians, or if we have thrown out any suggestions that will aid others in showing it to the intelligence of our age, and if we have been able to speak a word of comfort and hope to our brethren who find themselves in a position in which it is difficult to determine how to act, our purpose will have been accomplished, and we shall have done no great but some slight service to the cause to which we feel that we are devoted heart and soul. We have aimed to avoid saying anything that could wound the susceptibilities of any Catholic school of theology, and to touch as lightly as possible on matters debated among Catholics. We hope we have succeeded; for these are times in which Catholics need to be united in action as well as in faith.

Matin.

                  I.

  Only when mounting sings the lark,
    Struggling to fields of purer air
  Silent her music when she turns
    Back to a world of gloom and care!


                 II.

  Only when mounting sings my heart,
    Fluttering on tremulous wing to God!
  Fainter the music as I fall—
    Mute, when I reach the lower sod!


                 III.

  Lark, in my heart this morn astir,
    Upward to God on eager wing!
  Seek for one pure, celestial draught,
    Fresh from th' eternal Music-Spring!

                     Richard Storks Willis.

A Word about the Temporal Power of the Pope.

When our Lord Jesus Christ was upon the earth, his enemies were able to persecute him and to excite a general hatred against him, but never able to ignore him, to make him forgotten, or to prevent the question concerning Christ from being the turning-point of the religious and political destiny of the Jewish people. The efforts they made to extinguish this question only served to extend it all over the world, and make it the turning-point of the religious and political destinies of all mankind.

It is the same with the Vicar of Christ. The warfare which is waged against him never removes him out of the way of his enemies, or causes him to be ignored by the world; but it upheaves and convulses the whole world, political as well as religious. Just at present it is unusually agitated, because for some time past a crisis has seemed to be impending. We have a word to say, in the first place, on the attitude of many persons, professing to be Christians, who do not acknowledge the spiritual authority of the pope, toward the party who are attempting to wrest from him by force his temporal authority as sovereign of Rome.

That avowed adherents of infidel socialism should disregard the principles of right and justice does not surprise us, for they have denied the basis of all right and justice. That a portion of the secular press, notorious throughout the world for an utter want of principle, should encourage every revolution which has any prospect of success, is precisely what we might expect from it, judging by the course it has always pursued, and the base maxims it unblushingly avows. The mockeries and insults of this class of writers are only echoes from the infidel press of Europe, and would be despised by every American who believes in the Christian religion and in decency, were they not directed against the pope. Serious argument upon the right of the matter might as well be addressed to a gorilla as to one of these writers.

The case is different, however, with those who profess sound Christian, moral, and political principles. Such persons are grossly inconsistent with themselves when they favor and sustain the party of Garibaldi who have sought to seize upon the Roman territory by an armed raid, or that party in Italy and Europe who advocate the forcible annexation of this territory to the Italian kingdom by its government, with the aid or consent of the other nations. They may say that the papacy is a hindrance to pure religion and civilization. So be it. But how is it to be put down? By argument, by moral means, in a just manner, or by violence and injustice? Have not the Catholics of the world a right to sustain the papal jurisdiction as a part of their religion? Protestants, no doubt, desire to see it abolished, and rejoice in every prospect which presents itself that the temporal kingdom of the Pope may be wrested from him, because they think that the loss of his spiritual supremacy will follow. But, have they any right, on this account, to favor unjust and unlawful attempts to wrest from him his temporal sovereignty? Is it lawful to do evil that good may come? Does the end justify the means?

They may say, that it would be better for the Roman people to have another government, and that they have a right, if they please, to establish another. We do not believe they have any more right to do this, than the people of the District of Columbia have, to shake off the government of the United States and establish another. But we will not argue this point, for it is unnecessary. The Roman people have recently shown that they prefer to remain as they are. The question is, as to the right of dispossessing the pope of his kingdom by a force from without. What right has the Italian kingdom to the Roman territory? Does the pretence that the glory and advantage of Italy require it to have Rome as a political capital justify its forcible annexation? Then interest and might alone make right, we must bid farewell to the hope that justice and law will ever rule in the world, and be content that the old, barbarous reign of violence, war, and conquest should continue for ever.

But what are we to say of a war, not levied by one king and people against another, but waged by a band of marauders invading a nation from another nation with which it is at peace, and which is bound by solemn treaty to repress all such invasions? Englishmen and Americans are loud enough in condemning rebellions, insurrections, violations of the laws and rights of nations, where their own countries are the aggrieved parties. What gross and shameful inconsistency, then, is it, for them to applaud an attack like that of the bandit Garibaldi and his horde of robbers upon the Roman kingdom. Sympathy and encouragement given to Mazzini, Garibaldi, and their associates, is sympathy and encouragement to a party of atheists and socialists who are aiming at the complete extirpation of all religion and all established political and social order from the world. Protestants little know to what ruin they are exposing themselves in abetting such a party. Their treacherous allies are making use of them as mere dupes and tools in their war upon the outward bulwarks of the Catholic Church; knowing well that, if they have once carried these, the slight barriers of Protestantism will offer but a feeble and momentary resistance. The friends of political and social order little think what a mine they are helping to run under their own feet, in abetting socialism. England is beginning already to reap the bitter fruit of the seeds of sedition and revolution she has been busily sowing in the soil of Europe. There is no knowing where the just retribution of her unprincipled agitation will stop. We have just as much cause to dread the irruption of infidelity and socialism in our own country. And if it does come, those who boast so much of their wealth, their prosperity, their superior culture and enlightenment, and attribute this material glory to their emancipation from Catholic ideas, will be the first victims of the volcano that will burst under their feet. We trust no such catastrophe will come, either in Europe or America. But if it is averted, it will be because the pope will stand his ground; and the event will prove that he has been the saviour not only of religion but also of civilization.

There are also some considerations which merit the attention of Catholics, who do acknowledge the Pope to be the Vicar of Christ, and give him their allegiance as the Chief Ruler and Teacher of the Church throughout the whole world.

The cause of the Catholic Church everywhere, and of every individual Catholic as a member of the Church, is bound up with the cause of the pope, and is identical with it. He is the head of the entire body, not merely as having precedence of dignity and honor over other bishops, or a merely nominal primacy, but as the bishop of the entire Catholic Church, laity, clergy and bishops included. He is the real head of the body, the source of jurisdiction, the principle of unity, catholicity, and apostolic succession, the principal organ of the intelligence and vital force of the Church, of its infallibility in doctrine and immortality in existence. Every blow upon the head affects sensibly every member. Every member is bound to exert itself to ward off all blows aimed at the head, for the preservation of its own life. A mortal blow on the head will cause the death of the whole body, and a stunning or seriously injurious blow on the head will paralyze its energies. All particular churches, all portions of Christendom, and all individual Christians, receive their life from communion with the Church of St. Peter, the principal See, and the Mother and Mistress of the Churches. "Where Peter is, there is the Church." The flock fed by the successors of St. Peter, the supreme pastor, is the only true flock of Christ. "Feed my lambs, feed my sheep," was said to St. Peter alone, and whoever is not fed by him, living in his successors in the holy Roman Church, with the sound, Catholic doctrine; whoever is not guided and governed by his pastoral staff, is no lamb of the flock of Christ, but an alien and a lost sheep. The most illustrious and numerous churches, the most cultivated nations, are smitten with spiritual disease, decay, and death, when they are severed from the unity of the See of St. Peter. The schismatical churches of the East, once the fairest portion of the heritage of the Lord, are a witness to this truth. So are the countless sects with their ever-varying, ever-multiplying heresies and divisions, in the West. We may even see in certain parts of the Catholic Church itself, what ruinous consequences follow from impediments placed by the civil power in the way of the full exercise of the papal supremacy over the bishops, clergy, and faithful. Bishops lose their independence and authority, priests their sacerdotal dignity and influence, and the people their Christian piety, as soon as they revolt from their obedience to the pope; and all these are weakened in proportion as his power to exercise his paternal solicitude and government over them is enfeebled.

Full, hearty, and loyal allegiance to the pope is therefore an essential part of Christian duty. It is the duty and the interest of all Catholic Christians, bishops, priests, and laymen, to stand by the pope, as the Vicar of our Lord Jesus Christ and God's Vicegerent upon earth; and to make common cause with him, as knowing that we must stand or fall together. There are special reasons why American Catholics should appreciate this high obligation. The American Catholic Church is to a great extent an offshoot from the Catholic Church of Ireland. It was the pope who sent St. Patrick into Ireland to convert that country from heathenism to Christianity. The Irish people have always been foremost among all other Catholics in filial reverence, devotion, and obedience to the See of St. Peter. When all but one man in the English hierarchy basely deserted their allegiance to the pope in submission to the will of a tyrant, only one Irish bishop of insignificant character imitated their example, and even he repented before his death. {531} It was for their loyalty to the pope that the Irish people were reduced to feed on nettles, both literally and figuratively. The glorious archbishop O'Hurley, tortured on Stephen's Green and hanged, the intrepid monks hurled into the sea from the heights of Bantry, the slaughtered victims of Drogheda and Wexford, and the rest of the noble army of Irish martyrs and confessors, suffered and died for this doctrine of the Catholic faith, that the Pope is the Vicar of Jesus Christ and the supreme head of the Church upon earth. The whole Irish nation has suffered martyrdom for three centuries, for its unswerving fidelity to the See of Peter. It would be unworthy of us, who have received the sacred plant of faith watered by the blood and preserved by the heroism of this faithful nation, and now enjoy full liberty to partake of its fruits and to propagate it far and wide, in peace, to degenerate from the sentiments of such noble ancestors.

Moreover, the Catholic Church in America has ever been under the most immediate and special care of the Holy See, ever obedient and loyal, and therefore, ever united and prosperous. Nowhere in the world do the bishops and priests receive a greater degree of respect and obedience from their people, or a more abundant fruit from their labors in preaching the word and administering the sacraments of Christ. No heresy or schism, no violent disputes, no extensive alienation of the faithful from their pastors, none of those internal disorders which are far more dangerous than any outward opposition, have as yet arisen to trouble our peace. The chief reason of this is found in the perfect and unbroken union of our hierarchy and people with the apostolic See of St. Peter. Were it not for this, as there is no coercive force of the state to enforce a compulsory exterior unity like that of the Russian Church, and no patriarchal jurisdiction of one bishop over all the others, the decrees of national or provincial synods would have no binding efficacy, the union of bishops with each other would be broken, the authority of the bishops would be defied by the clergy, of the clergy by the people, and the same disintegration tending to final dissolution would take place among us which we see in the surrounding sects. The same result would inevitably take place throughout the world, if the supremacy of the successor of St. Peter were overthrown. State policy, and the power of kings and parliaments, are broken reeds to lean upon. Were the church left to depend upon these, they would soon withdraw their support, and, bereft of a principle of internal life and unity, Christianity would resolve itself everywhere into dust and air, never again to be revived on earth.

Peter, living in the unbroken line of his successors, is the rock and foundation upon which the church, that is, Christianity itself, is built; and because the gates of hell shall never prevail against this rock, to overthrow it, therefore Christianity shall endure to the end of the world.

The full and unimpeded exercise of the spiritual supremacy of the pope over the Catholic Church throughout the whole world being necessary to its well-being, the perfect independence of this supremacy from all political power is also necessary as the condition of its free exercise. The experience both of the past and the present proves that the political power is always disposed to tyrannize over the church and deprive it of its divine right to liberty. {532} The only check to this domination of kings over bishops, and the only lever by which the episcopate may be raised out of this dependence on the civil power, is the independent power of the Holy See. The pope must confirm the nominations to bishoprics, and the decrees of local councils, otherwise they are null and void. Were it not for this prerogative, which Napoleon the First violently but unsuccessfully attempted to wrest from Pius VII., the king would be the real head of each national church in nearly every Catholic state. If one of these national churches had within its bounds the principal and supreme see of the whole Catholic Church, the sovereign of that nation, through his power over the nomination to that see and its administration, would have power to exercise dominion over the Catholic Church. If the archbishop of Paris or of Vienna had the supremacy, the emperor of France or of Austria would be the virtual head of the Catholic Church, as the English sovereign and the Russian sovereign are the real heads of the English and Russian churches, notwithstanding the nominal primacy of the archbishops of Canterbury and of Moscow. Just so, if the pope became the subject of a king ruling over his episcopal city of Rome. He could not exercise his spiritual supremacy, except in dependence on the will of the sovereign. He could not call an oecumenical council, send a legate, receive an ambassador, issue an encyclical, promulgate a decree, receive or send out the documents necessary for the government of the universal church, or possess the necessary means for the transaction of indispensable business, without the permission of the political authority. In time of war, his communication with the belligerents would be completely cut off. The nomination to the sovereign pontificate would either really, or at least in the opinion of other nations, always be controlled by political influence, and so also would be the confirmations or direct appointments to episcopal sees throughout the world. Laws in regard to marriage or other matters, over which the sovereign pontiff has direct jurisdiction, might be passed, which he would be obliged to condemn, and yet be unable to do so, or at least without perpetual conflicts with the civil power. He would be continually subject to the treatment which the Archbishop of Cologne received from the King of Prussia, and the bishops of Italy from Victor Emmanuel, confiscation, imprisonment, or exile. The exercise of his supremacy would therefore become impossible. For, it could only be exercised in dependence on the will of a monarch or a cabinet, and neither kings, bishops, or people would ever submit to such a supremacy. How would American Catholics like to have King Victor Emmanuel and Ratazzi or Ricasoli dictating the affairs of the church in this country? Our hierarchy here is, thank God! free from the dictation of the state, and the head of our hierarchy must also be a free and independent pope.

It is folly to imagine another and purely ideal state of things, in which the pope might have perfect independence without sovereignty. There is no likelihood that such a state of things will become actual, and there would be no security for its permanence did it ever begin to exist. Divine Providence has given the vicar of Christ a temporal sovereignty as the security of his independence and the bulwark of the liberty of the universal church. The pope has solemnly declared that it is the necessary and the bounden duty of all the members of the church, whether kings, prelates, or people, to maintain that sovereignty at all hazards. {533} To throw the whole burden of sustaining the Holy See and the authority of the successor of St. Peter upon Divine Providence, is both presumptuous and cowardly. Christ has promised that his church shall last to the end of the world, and he will fulfil this promise, if necessary, by miraculous intervention. But he has not promised that particular nations shall not lose the faith, or that faithlessness and cowardice shall not bring after them their natural disastrous consequences. The glory, prosperity, and extension of the Catholic Church depend on the efforts of the free human will; and the providence or grace of God will not aid us, except in proportion to our fidelity and generosity in maintaining his cause and our own. Our confidence that the holy Roman Church cannot be overthrown rests on the sure foundation of that divine word, not one iota of which can fail, even though heaven and earth may pass away. "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall never prevail against it." This is no warrant for our abandoning the ground to the enemies of the church, trusting that God will thwart their designs by miraculous intervention. But it is an encouragement to loyalty, fidelity, and unalterable hope in the ultimate triumph of the holy cause. It is our duty to do all in our power to secure this triumph by our own efforts, and having done this, we may then leave the result in the hands of Divine Providence. We can never foresee, with certainty, through what straits Divine Providence will permit the church to pass, or how far it will allow the designs of her enemies to proceed toward an apparent ultimate success. Nevertheless, there does not appear at present so much reason to apprehend dark and disastrous days for the church and religion, as there did during the epoch preceding the present one. Even during the reign of the present severely tried but indomitable chief pastor of the church, there have been periods far more critical and threatening than the present. Indeed, we may say that those Catholics who are desponding and discouraged now, derive their reason for foreboding evil more from their own timidity and impatience than from any real external motives. The Holy See is in perpetual conflict against powerful enemies, no doubt, and the Holy Father sometimes threatened with a prospect of exile from Rome. Yet, notwithstanding this, the march of events continually brings nearer the reconciliation and pacification of Christendom, upon the basis of a universal recognition of the independence and inviolability of the sacred domain of the Roman Church, which God has set apart as the seat of the successor of St. Peter. In truth, there has often been in the past a greater need of absolute reliance on the predictions of the divine word as the only firm ground of hope, than at present. We are not called upon for the same heroic exercise of faith and hope which was exacted from our ancestors. We can look back upon the dangers and trials through which they passed, and find in their result a reproach for our own pusillanimity, and a support for our confidence in the present and future triumph of the church. We are in an invincible fortress, on an immovable rock; and yet we do not appreciate the strength of our position as clearly as those do who are tossing about on the turbulent sea of the surrounding world. Although humiliating, it is yet true, that we can find no language so well adapted to stimulate faint-hearted Catholics to courage, as that uttered under an overawing compulsion by adversaries or aliens to the church. {534} One of the most eloquent of these reluctant tributaries, carried away by a kind of natural ecstasy, in contemplating this glorious theme, like another Balaam blessing the tents of Israel, rises to a kind of sublimity far above his usual flight, and seems to speak with a catholic inspiration worthy of a Bossuet. He is speaking of that dark era when Pius VII. ascended the chair of St. Peter, and these are his words:

"It is not strange that in the year 1799 even sagacious observers should have thought that at length the hour of the Church of Rome was come: an infidel power ascendant, the pope dying in captivity, the most illustrious prelates of France living in a foreign country on Protestant alms, the noblest edifices which the munificence of former ages had consecrated to the worship of God turned into temples of victory, or into banqueting houses for political societies, or into Theophilanthropic chapels; such signs might well be supposed to indicate the approaching end of that long domination. But the end was not yet; again doomed to death, the milkwhite hind was still fated not to die. Even before the funeral rites had been performed over the ashes of Pius VI., a great reaction had commenced, which, after the lapse of more than forty years, appears to be still us progress. Anarchy had had its day; a new order of things rose out of the confusion, new dynasties, new laws, new titles, and amidst them emerged the ancient religion. The Arabs have a fable that the great Pyramid was built by antediluvian kings, and alone, of the works of men, bore the weight of the flood. Such as this was the fate of the papacy; it had been buried under the great inundation, but its deep foundations had remained unshaken, and, when the waters abated, it appeared alone amid the ruins of a world which had passed away. The republic of Holland was gone, the empire of Germany, and the great council of Venice, and the Helvetian League, and the house of Bourbon, and the parliaments and aristocracy of France. Europe was full of young creations; a French empire, a kingdom of Italy, a confederation of the Rhine; nor had the late events affected only territorial limits and political institutions; the disposition of property, the composition and spirit of society, had, through a great part of Catholic Europe, undergone a complete change; but the unchangeable church was still there."

The unchangeable church was still there, when Pius VII. was restored to his episcopal city, where his successors, one after the other, ascended the throne of St. Peter, and when Macaulay wrote the words we have quoted. It is still there, now, after all the commotions of the last twenty years; there it will be until the day prefixed by the Creator for the end of all human institutions. We may apply to it, in a more elevated and spiritual sense, the words of the poet

  "While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand;
   When falls the Colisaeum, Rome shall fall;
   And when Rome falls, the world."

Plagiarism and John Bunyan.

There are not many writers of any popularity or eminence who have not in their day, either in their own behalf or by the sensitive proxy of their intimate friends, had occasion for self-defence against the charge of plagiarism. From young authors especially, some little slur or other on this tender point is pretty sure, at some time, to evoke a thin-skinned answer, replete with a peculiar modest defensive ferocity that critics know by heart, and grin over with a grim relish. This is a thing of course—a well-marked stage of the fever of authorship. Only we notice that most of those who begin with young Byron's philippics end with old Wordsworth's philosophy. The fact is, splendid sensitiveness, here as everywhere, does not pay, and beyond most men the author finds it cost him dear. For of all ill-matched and absurd controversies, there is none like a wrangle about plagiarism. It is a duel of javelins and catapults, of fly and lion. All the advantage is with the attacking party. The accusation is vague and sweeping to the last degree, and the easiest imaginable to make. It need not even be said; it can be sneered. And how cheap it is to be sophistical about it! A little ingenuity to cook up a factitious resemblance, a little malice to point a bit of irony or innuendo, and the thing is done. To rebut such crimination may take days of labor. These very days consumed, too, are so much dead disadvantage; the whole matter grows stale the while. Then the answer must not only conclusively meet the charge, both as to the animus furandi and the fact of theft, but it must be intrinsically interesting, both to revive interest enough in the subject for the reading public to go to the trouble of revising its opinion, and because every word an author writes is matter for fresh criticism, while his opponent may waive all pretensions to style. Practically we incline to think it is much as in battle, where it takes a man's weight in lead to kill him. Now and then, some one is demolished utterly by one of these elaborate broadsides, but the number of them that miss the mark must be enormous. It is only effects and successes that we all remember. The shot that sunk the Alabama at a few hundred yards, made more impression in history than the dozens of idle shell that the great Sawyer gun used to send spinning miles away over the Ripraps. One general net result is a vast waste of the author's time, which is always valuable to him, and sometimes to the public. And after all, with the truest aim and best powder—who is hit? Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, some nobody. And this is truer every day. Pope and Byron could at least single out their Dennises and Amos Cottles by name; but nowadays, what with pseudonyms and anonyms, and above all the editorial pronoun, one fights the very air.

Thus we find authors of standing strangely meek under audacious strictures of this sort, and very little given to tilting at the mosquitoes of the press. This is more than dignity; it is sense. But (and now we strike the point we have been coming at all this while) the world draws from this fact a very exaggerated inference. {536} It seems, to reverse the old law rule, that one story's good till another is told. The very fact of an accusation's going unanswered seems to crush it under a vis inertiae of silence. This is all worldly wise, but not very infallible. If a man shouts something against me before my street-door, and I let him shout away at his own sweet will, I am tolerably sure, whether it be truth or calumny he is vociferating, that his wind must give out after a while. The world, though, is apt instead of listening to him, to stare up at my window, and see if I mind it. If I make no sign, he is a vituperator, and some good citizen just mentions him to the policeman round the corner. But all this while may not he be bawling the blessed truth, and I slinking behind the shutters? Public opinion says no. If a man of standing does not deign or see fit to come out against a charge, it is a fabrication or a fancy sketch. Now, the truth is, as history well knows, that there is a vast amount of systematic stealing in the world of letters, and that these same majestic gentlemen, who are above replies, have done their very fair share of the stealing. What is the effect, then, of this false estimate of men and things? This: that when a writer has once attained station, with a decent regard to the conventionalities of literary larceny, he can steal all he chooses with impunity. All he has to do is to alter enough to keep him that runs from reading the resemblance. This done, there remains the one risk that some one who cannot be ignored may expose the theft. But this risk is not, by far, so great as it seems. The man of calibre enough for the task is generally an amiable man, and always a busy one, and has plenty of pleasanter things to do than airing his neighbor's peccadilloes. Besides, it is an even chance but he has some little appropriation of his own to cover up, and this fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind. Thus a very little judgment in the selection of the author stolen from passes the whole fraud scot free. And there are good reasons why there should be a good deal of this fraud. First-class plagiarism pays, like everything first-class. It has a high market value, with large and ungrudging profits. For the reading power is omnivorous, and it feels that an old author made modern, or a foreign author made native, is not as good as new but better. Pisistratus Caxton is a vast improvement on Tristram Shandy, and the Comedy of Errors on the Menaechmi; and the primmest of the decriers read Bulwer and Shakespeare, and do not read Plautus and Sterne. Boucicault's plays draw in London, and we never hear of English purists staying away till they can go to see the originals at Paris. But it is idle to multiply instances. The fact is too patent to need illustrating, that the nineteenth century prefers essences of books to books, and the juice of literary fruit to the fruit itself. Extracts, and digests, and compilations and abridgments, and horti sicci of all sorts are the order of the day, and the old fogies, who prate of meum and tuum, and dream of international copyright, and read old authors through, "miranturque nihil nisi quod Libitina sacravit," find that these are all side issues. The public does not care a rush where a man gets what it wants. This may be the best law, or it may not; the law it certainly is. Let any one who doubts the popularity of plagiarism, only take up that fine, furious, generous little book, Mr. Reade's Eighth Commandment, and see for himself what is the fashion and what is not.

But the honest crusader against literary despoilers and desecrators, soon finds that without the limits of downright pillage lies a vast debatable land, which has been the Flanders, the Kentucky, the Quadrilateral of critic controversy from time immemorial—the territory of mere resemblance. This is far more difficult ground, because the critic's own fallible perceptions of likeness enter as an element of possible error into his judgment, and the danger of doing injustice is great. Here, it is true, are found the expertest plagiarists of all—the vampires of literature—the thieves that steal the soul and leave the body. But close beside them stand the true scholars, to whose assiduity books yield up an honest wealth, and who melt and mould their well-worn treasure into solid ingots of golden thought or exquisite fretwork of glittering fancies. And more puzzling than both, we have the myriad legions of fugitive resemblances—an army of ghosts, present to the comparing consciousness, but impalpable to the analyzing sense. Obviously it will not do to apply here the martial law of literary vindication. Men are too much alike to be damned for striking even strange coincidences. Among the best writers there are so many parallelisms that a mind with any turn for hunting phantoms of similarity, soon comes to the saying of King Solomon about nothing new under the sun. At any rate, if it ever did exist, the era of entire novelty is of the past now. Take out what a keen, well-read man could trace to Shakespeare, Byron, Macaulay, Carlyle, the Bible, the Greek tragedians, the Standard Speakers, and the Declaration of Independence, and how much is there left of to-day's English and American literature? Yet among the imitations, if there are many wilful and culpable, there are many more innocent and unwitting. True, not every one is born with so developed an organ of unconsciousness as Mr. A. M. W. Ball, who astonished himself by originating some one else's poem in full. But very few read over their familiar authors without finding the germs of a thousand thoughts they had never suspected not to be all their own. Indeed, for some time after beginning, a young author could, if he should choose, (which he doesn't,) pluck up his ideas like young blades of corn, and find the original seed of some pet author at the root.

But critics have called the name of plagiarist far too often and too lightly. The charge is old enough, heaven knows, for people to know what they mean by it. Waiving those ancient Sanscrit sages, who seem with malice prepense to have been born so long ago that we can't more than half believe in them, and before there was any intelligible language for them to be wise in, we find that Job, our oldest modern writer, has been read out of the rubric by a theologue somewhere out West, who has discovered in his style gross and servile plagiarisms from the Bible. Homer stood tolerably well till the German omniscients found out that, like Artemus Ward's friend, Brigham Young's mother-in-law, he was numerous, when it at once becomes plain, from the great uniformity of style, that each one of him must have been a most accomplished plagiarist from the remaining fractional bards. Horace's spiteful and uncalled for commentaries on Lucilius, besides the outrageous ill taste of them, show that there was some shrewdness in the bite of the cimex Pantilius, the blear-eyed Crispinus, and other literary gentlemen—probably good fellows enough, too—as those ancient Bohemians went—who, no doubt, hinted at little likenesses between his sermo merus and Lucilius' sal nigrum. {538} Martial's epigrams have crucified a dozen thieves into immortality. And so the old bandying of hard words has come down the annals of literature, till the self-same wave of bitterness that whelmed the luckless insect Pantilius foams about the shallows of Mr. Swinburne's self-defence, and finally goes combing over the City Hall with Mr. Charles Reade for its Neptune, and threatens to make flotsam of that cosy fixture, the Round Table. Yet, with all these precedents to define it, plagiarism is to-day a purely relative term—a weapon of the partisan wars of letters. If our enemies commit a coincidence, that is plagiarism; when our friends pilfer, it is adaptation, version, studies in style, or some other euphemism.

Modern criticism has not signalized its advance by establishing any principle to decide this difficult question of what is really plagiarism. There is absolutely no standard or criterion yet, and each one who wishes to form a right opinion, is thrown upon his own devices to reach it. Amid the many delicacies and difficulties of judging in this matter, we have found, or fancied we found, one rule of singular service in guiding us to a satisfactory conclusion. It is noteworthy, to say the least, that almost all the great plagiarists and imitators of all time have been writers of the self-conscious or subjective order; men who wrote with Mrs. Grundy uppermost, and their theme next; whose real and primary aim was to exhibit and exalt themselves; to feed their personal vanity, ambition, or greed. The objective or intuitive class, on the contrary—those who wrote because they were full of their subject; thinking of it, feeling it, full of it; those in brief who develop their natures instead of advantaging themselves, are almost never caught depredating intentionally, while their very intentness on what they may have to say makes them the most frequent of unconscious imitators in mere manner and expression.

It may be generalizing too much to say that this fact contains a principle, but we do think it points to a presumption. The more satisfactory the rule, however, the more puzzling the exception, and in applying this test of subjectivity, we strike on quite a little casus conscientiae, in the issues presented by the two books which form our text.

Of all English writers, one of the last to pitch on for a plagiarist is honest John Bunyan. He, if ever man was, is sincere, objective—a convinced missionary and messenger. Grave, rough, outspoken, self-praising, yet rigid, he seems at a first glance to embody and epitomize his age; that strange, fermented, fanatical age, when England seems one vast presbytery—a Massachusetts of political, social, and religious austerities and extremes; when the Englishmen of history seem to lose their characteristics for a while, and turn to foreshadowed, mediaeval Yankees; when we never think of them in connection with blonde love-locks and blue eyes, and slashed doublets, and foaming ale, and big, merry, unmeant oaths, and cheery taverns, and champing steeds; but as stern, sombre, black-a-vised, steel-capped, praying infantry, with jerkins on their backs, and Sternhold and Hopkins in every third knapsack. Yet, when we look closely, Bunyan is not so representative a man as he appears. {539} He was not only a better and bolder man than his fellows, but at bottom a different one. The reason why he typifies so much of those days is really that the man had a large measure of that tact for apparent conformity with the masses which is the essence of popularity, and which in him covered much independence. A hundred years later, he would have been the Francis Asbury of England. Under the Puritan crust lay hidden a red-hot Methodist. His autobiography—by far his most interesting work, in our opinion—is full of an ebullient fervor that was then a favorite novelty, is now to most of us a psychological study, but would waken only electric sympathy without a touch of surprise in many a circuit-riding itinerant of the south-west—unless, perhaps, he should wonder that there were such orthodox Methodists so long ago. He also fails in not representing that pragmatical hypocrisy which culminated in the Rump Parliament and Praisegod Barebones, and finally rotted the Commonwealth into the Restoration. Controversial and conceited he may have been, and he had no little reason to be honestly proud of the volcanic force of manliness that found him an imbruted tinker-boy, and made him a respected leader of his people. But in his great work no man could be more self-forgetful, more impersonal, more transparent to the thought within him. He is rife, permeated, possessed with his subject. His powerful imagination, always morbidly vivid, and at times in his life, disordered, bends its full force to the work. "He saw the things of which he was writing," says one of his biographers, "as distinctly with his mind's eye, as if they were indeed passing before him in a dream." Now, this is not the sort of man to go culling other people's words for his warm and swarming fancies. But moreover Bunyan was attacked in his lifetime with charges of plagiarism, and replied with his usual aggressive emphasis, and in his characteristic doggerel—in the preface to his Holy War.

  "Some say the Pilgrim's Progress is not mine,
   Insinuating as if I would shine
   In name and fame by the worth of another,
   Like some made rich by robbing of their brother.

  "Or that so fond I am of being sire,
   I'll father bastards, or, if need require,
   I'll tell a lie in print to get applause.
   I scorn it; John such dirt-heap never was
   Since God converted him. Let this suffice
   To show why I my Pilgrim patronize.

  "It came from mine own heart, so to my head,
   And thence into my fingers trickled;
   Then to my pen, from whence immediately
   On paper I did dripple it daintily.

  "Manner and matter too was all mine own;
   Nor was it unto any mortal known,
   Till I had done it. Nor did any then,
   By books, by wits, by tongues, or hand, or pen,
   Add five words to it, or wrote half a line
   Thereof; the whole and every whit is mine." …

This leaves the suggestion of plagiarism apparently little room to stand upon, unless it fall back upon some safe generality, such as that in a republic (or commonwealth) all things are possible, or that the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked, etc.

Against this giant of truth, panoplied in the very robur et as triplex of self-conscious originality, comes out the queerest antagonist imaginable—a French David against a Welsh Goliath. These little books altogether deserve a passing word. Both are published privately and by subscription. One, the later, is a mere translation, arising out of its predecessor. The other is a most singular compilation, from a number of notes which one Mr. Nathaniel Hill, M.R.S.L., as we are not surprised to learn, died making. They make a book very unlike most books. To begin with, Mr. Basil Montagu Pickering, the publisher, has taken for his motto, "Aldi Discipulus Anglus," and the printing is an excellent imitation of that famous old press which so many dead scholars have blessed, and so many dead printers doubtless sworn at. {540} Then the engravings are very curious ones, copied from the oldest editions of the original, and combine a childlike range of scenery with a Chinese mastery of perspective. The text, though, is vilely marred by a variation of plan. Mr. Hill's idea was to show the indebtedness of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress to many earlier works, and its principal creditor happened to be this Pélerinage de l'Homme of Guillaume De Guileville. His editors finding it so quaint, were struck by the bright afterthought of making this book itself the main subject. It may have sold better, but for ourselves we differ toto caelo with their taste. Their method defies order, and results in a most extraordinary hotch-potch of queer quotations, Scripture references past number, antique French, archaic English to match, biographies, analogies, and translations, that reads like a fit of levity of old Fuller, or an excursus—or pilgrimage—from the Anatomy of Melancholy. Add now to all this, that to an old-fashioned translation of an antiquated poem by an obsolete monk, there are appended a body of notes full of all sorts of odd learning, and finally, that translation, notes and all, are by a woman, and the outré picture is complete.

The comparison between De Guileville and Bunyan is not originated by this book. Southey, among others, speaks of the Pélerinage, which he entitles the Pélerin de la Vie Humaine, (although this name is not given it in any of the editions on the very full list of this volume,) and dismisses the subject with a wary vagueness that has to our ear a soupçon of Podsnappery, and somehow makes us doubt if the worthy laureate ever read the book at all. But, at any rate, this is by far the most extended comparison yet made, and all the better in that it does not argue a preconceived theory.

One thing, at least, it plainly proves—that Master Bunyan very much overstated his originality in saying that manner and matter too were all his own. It shows that from the time of the Norman troubadors (not to go back to the Apocalypse of St. John) the dream-form which is the framing of The Pilgrim's Progress was a common and favorite device, and instances Piers Plowman's Vision, (A.D. 1369,) Walter de Mapes's Apocalypsis Golice, the older poem, The Debate of the Body and the Soul, Lydgate's Temple of Glass, Hampole's Prycke of Conscience, (1349,) Sir David Lyndesay of the Mount's poem, The Dreme, (1528,) and Dunbar's Daunce, (1470.) Probably Bunyan, not being accused of stealing so obvious and public an artifice, did not have it in mind at all when he made his sweeping self-assertion.

In looking further for resemblances, those who expect to find strong similarity of any sort will be disappointed. In fact, they would in ordinary cases be dismissed as trivial. But we must remember the vast difference between the two works. De Guileville's is a true mediaeval monastic "boke," justly described in this volume as "a cold and lifeless dialogue between abstract and unembodied qualities." It is, in all but its ancient quaintness, the dullest and driest of books; there is not a ray of reality in it anywhere. Bunyan, on the contrary, gives us men and women where the old prior of Chaliz has nothing but ghosts of abstract ideas. One is like the antiquated masques or miracle-plays; the other like the theatre before Garrick's day. {541} Thus between a galvanized French Roman of 1330 and a live English book of 1670, by a man innocent of French, any resemblance in diction would not only be matter of wonder but matter of the merest chance. We will, however, cite a few of the parallelisms given in the comparison which forms the gist and pith of these volumes. And first comes one which we cite because it contains the only lines we have seen worth remembering in De Guileville's dreary waste of dialogue. He is describing the lady (Gracedieu) whom his Pélerin meets at the outset.

          De Guileville.

  "Moult courtoise et de douce chère
   Me fut grandement car première
   Me saulua en demandant
   Pourquoy nauoie meilleur semblant
   Et pour quelle cause ie pleuroye
   Et saucune defaulte auoie.
   Adonc ie fuz comme surpris
   Pource que pas nauoye apris
   Que dame de si grant atour
   Daignast vers moi faire vng seul tour
   Fors et seullement pour autant
   Que cil qui a bonte plus grant
   Plus a en soy dhumilite
   Grant doulceur et benignite
   CAR PLUS A LE POMMIER DE POMMES
   PLUS BAS SENCLINE VERS LES HOMMES,
   Et ne scay signe de bonte
   Si grant comme est humilite,
   Qui ne porte ceste baniere
   Na vertu ne bonte entiere." [Footnote 52]

[Footnote 52: "Full courteously, and in most gentle wise Made she first salutation, questioning Wherefore that I bore not more cheerful mien And why I wept, and if in aught I lacked. And then I was as one o'erta'en with wonder, That lady of so great nobility Should even deign to turn towards such as I, Saving for this sole cause, that whoso most Of gracious ruth doth bless, the same alway Most in his bosom bears of lowliness. For the more rich in store of golden fruit, More deeply bendeth unto man the tree. Nor know I any sign of graciousness Great as humility. Who bears not that Graved on his banner, hath not truly virtue."]

     Lydgate's Translation.

  This ladye that I spak of here
  Was curteys and of noble chere
  And wonderly of gret vertu,
  And ffyrst she 'gan me to salue
  In goodly wise axynge of me
  What maner thyng yt myght be
  Or cause why I should hyr lere
  That I made so heavy chere,
  Or why that I was aye wepyng,
  Wher of when I gan take hede
  I ffyl into a maner drede
  For unkonnyng and leudnesse
  That ache of so great noblesse
  Dysdenede not in her degre
  To speke to on so pore as me;
  But yiff it were so, as I guess,
  Al only of hyr gentyllenesse,
  For gladly wher is most beute
  Ther is grettest humylyte,
  And that ys verrylye the sygne
  Suych ar most goodly and benygne,
  An apple tre with frut most lade
  To folk that stonden in the shade
  More lowly doth his branches loute
  Then a nother tre withoute.
  Wher haboundeth most goodness
  There is ay most of meeknesse,
  None so gret token of bewte
  As is parfyt humylyte.
  Who wanteth hyr in hys banere
  Hath not vertu hool and entere.

"The same gracious salutation," says our book, "is made by Evangelist to Christian whilst he is weeping." "I looked then," says Bunyan, "and saw a man named Evangelist coming to him, who asked, 'Wherefore dost thou cry?' 'Because I fear,' replies Christian, 'that this burden that is upon my back will sink me lower than the grave, and I shall fall into the grave.'"

The simile of the fruit-tree is excellent, and perhaps strikes us the better for its being the one oasis. The resemblance also is strong between the greetings of Gracedieu and Evangelist, and in fact, in the whole situation, and seems hard to account for without supposing Bunyan to have known Lydgate's or some other translation of the earlier author.

The next point is one of apparent discrepancy, but really of likeness. The Pélerin is stopped by a stream, at which he desponds—signifying the water of baptism at the entrance to the church. Bunyan being a Baptist, with strong liberal views of communion, (which, indeed, embroiled him at one time with the radicals of his sect,) naturally balked at this abhorrent papistical metaphor, and substituted his famous Slough of Despond, which, it will be remembered, he makes to be sixteen hundred years old—the age of Christianity at his day.

Another slight touch, perhaps worth noting, is where De Guileville's pilgrims come from Moses, (the Mr. Legality of Bunyan,) as if

  "Yssys du bourbier,
   Ou dun noir sac a charbonnier:"

while Pliable, in a like case, is represented as seeming "bedaubed with dirt," as if he had been "dipped in a sack of charcoal." This certainly looks like a pebble for Goliath's forehead. Also these same muddy pilgrims of the Pélerinage, returning "Enbordiz et encore tous familleux" come back all of a tremor and beg to join the others: so Christian, after his episode at Mr. Legality's, falls at the feet of Evangelist with prayers to be put again in the way of salvation. Again Christian's second companion Hopeful and the Pélerin's staff Hope are branches of one idea. Farther on, Gracedieu presents her protégé with "the identical pebbles that David had in his scrip when he fought against Goliath." Bunyan makes the damsels of the palace called Beautiful, in exhibiting that establishment to the delighted Christian, display, among other aesthetic accessories of the place, "the sling and stone with which David slew Goliath of Gath."

Another curious parallelism is not cited at all in this book. De Guileville's hero is accosted by Avarice, who, in true Amazon style, swears by her golden mammet she carries on her head ("mon ydole est mon Mahommet" says the old lady, instructively) that she will have his life, and makes him the alluring proposal, either to be killed at once, or to give up his staff and scrip, bow down to her mammet, acknowledge it the most worshipful of mammets, and then be killed after all. This reminds us very forcibly of the impressive occasion which so wrought on our childhood's susceptibilities, when "Apollyon straddled quite over the whole breadth of the way, and said, 'I am void of fear in this matter; prepare thyself to die; for I swear by my infernal den, that you shall go no farther: here will I spill thy soul!'" etc.

Such are the main body of the resemblances between the good old Cistercian abbot and the sturdy Baptist exhorter. There are many who will look them over and decide quite readily with Mr. Southey that the coincidences are fugitive and illusory, and that, as he says, The Pilgrim's Progress might have been exactly what it is, whether Bunyan had ever seen this book or not." But this does not show either much acumen or much thought in Mr. Southey. For all he says might be true from the reason we have before suggested—that Bunyan knew no French, or certainly not enough to master the dialect of De Guileville, and might see the book a thousand times quite harmlessly. We confess, even that if Bunyan had really been familiar with the original poem, these similarities would be trifling. But when he must have drawn if at all from some one of the numerous translations—all indifferently poor—which abounded in his time, slight resemblances mean more. Those who have ever played at the well-known game of passing a story through a number of persons, one by one, will appreciate the force of this. Bunyan could scarcely help seeing some of the translations. For, strange to say, this, to us the baldest of books, was popular for generations, both in France and England. It is hard to understand these cases. We are apt to look upon them as instances of the inveterate slowness of ancient people; but apart from the fact that this slowness is a very difficult thing to analyze, we know that in a few years we shall be slow ourselves. {543} But what every one does not think is, that we are slow to-day. Any one who happens to glance over the shelves of any of our large publishing houses can find there numbers of dull-seeming works, on various specialties, full of facts, figures, demonstrations, discoveries, and what seems to us literally lumber of all sorts. Yet these books sell, and pay an invariable profit to a well-established house. Who buys them and what becomes of them, we shall probably learn when the disappearance of pins, and the necessity of summer clothing, and the origin of evil, are duly cleared up. Certain it is, that the Pélerinage de l'Homme enjoyed a wide reputation and diffusion. Chaucer, especially, was familiar with its author, and his famous "A, B, C," is a palpable and, so far as we know, an undisguised imitation of De Guileville's Prayer to the Virgin, published in the same year 1330. Now, a work which, after filtering through three hundred years, another language and the brains of "painfulle" translators, could still yield the germ of the most nationally popular book in all English literature, has some claim to be called its original.

We shall not attempt to pass upon the question of plagiarism, for the honest reason that, as we have said, we really do not exactly know what the word means in the critical vernacular of to-day. The coincidences we have cited would certainly go to show that The Pilgrim's Progress is not the entire novelty which its author so explicitly proclaims it. On the other hand, it is not proven to complete satisfaction that "John such a dirt-heap ever was" as to mean to steal anything from anybody. Perhaps the most peaceable as well as the most novel conclusion that suggests itself, is to harmonize both sides of this question by a third theory, namely, that one may be a palpable plagiarist, as the word is often used, without in the slightest degree detracting from his originality. The statement sounds extraordinary, but its ingenious advocate, M. Philarète Chasles, is an extraordinary Frenchman, and is talking when he advances it, about the "divine Williams," who is an extraordinary subject for a Frenchman to talk about. We are very much mistaken if those who smile at this seeming contradiction of terms will not find some force in the subjoined excerpt, which we premise, however, suffers greatly in translation for want of the peculiar super-emphatic style of the original French.

"Genius consists in understanding better, penetrating better, surrounding with more light, what every one does superficially, or understands by half. One of the singular traits of Shakespeare is his supreme indifference as to the subject he is to treat of. He never cares about it; the excellent artisan knows how to find material in everything. He takes up at hap-hazard a pebble, a bit of wood, a block of granite, a block of marble. Little he cares for his predecessor's having made an old king disinherited by his daughters, act and talk upon the stage; it is a fact like any other fact, that counts for no more and no less. Shakespeare goes on to find whatever of tears and of power there is in the soul of this old man."

"People to-day are running after an inventiveness which real originality lacks; it dwells in the artist, not in the materials he employs. With all great men it is tradition, it is the people, it is the common heritage of ideas and customs that has gathered the materials. They have taken them as they came, and then laid their foundations, transmuted them, immortalized them.

"If what is called invention were not a deceptive quality, we should have to rate much higher than Dante, the first idle monk, who wrote, in lumbering style, a vision of Paradise and Hell; the coarse authors of certain Italian delineations would carry the day over Molière; the unknown writers of certain chronicles, divided into acts, would eclipse Shakespeare.

"In the epochs of literary decadence those are taken for inventors who, impelled by a certain ardor of temperament, and a certain fieriness of phrase, dislocate words and images, and think they have launched ideas. These folk proclaim themselves orators. Montaigne, Shakespeare, Molière took to themselves no merit but that of studying nature, the world, and man."

"The true function of genius is to second. —Etudes sur IV. Shakespeare, etc., par Philarète Chasles. 1851; p. 88, sqq.

There is no labor like making up one's mind, (unless it be, keeping it made up,) and we own ourselves charmed to find in this acute and able reasoning an outlet of escape from the whole duty of decision. And we think, too, that the many friends of the old Pilgrim—those who love him because (tenderest tie!) he was one of the picture-books of their infancy, those assuredly who have laughed at him in his French dress, converted to a good Catholic Palmer; [Footnote 53] and above all, the large Baptist connection of this magazine, will thank us; and if not, we assure them they ought to thank us, for this third horn of his sore dilemma.

[Footnote 53: Petite Bibliothèque de Catholique, tom. xix. This is a translation of the first part of The Pilgrim's Progress, and is duly modified to doctrinal fitness, and embellished with a frontispiece head of the Blessed Virgin. Southey speaks also of a Portuguese translation of 1782. Nil admirari … !]

The Legend Of The Seven Sleepers.
A.D. 439.

  The slaves of Adolius went forth on the hill,
    And in toiling and talking got half through their day.
  The sun was declining; the landscape was still,
    As it stretched far beneath. While they delved in the clay,
  And uncovered the rocks by command of their master,
  Their stories and comments came faster and faster—
    "How hot it became about noon!"
  "How the olives were prospering greatly!"
    That "the figs and the grapes would be plentiful soon—"
  And "what changes had happened in Ephesus lately."

  They wandered a century back, ay, and more,
    To the time when the edict of Decius went out,
  As they heard from their fathers. How fiercely it bore
    On the Christians! Their blood in the streets flowed about
  How the fame of Diana, whose beauty they knew
  By description, those martyrs with horror did view!
    How the Goth with his merciless torch
  From the Euxine had rushed, an invincible foeman,
    And spurning the goddess, had fired her high porch,
  Despite of the wide-sweeping blade of the Roman.
{545}
  Then one ceased his work, who was wrinkled and gray,
    And, his hand on his mattock, he said: "It appears
  Now since Decius did reign, from what wise people say,
    To be clear of one hundred and eighty good years.
  When his cruelty flourished, I'm told there were seven
  Good youths of our city—so long gone to heaven—
    Who fled to these parts and were pent
  By the emperor's soldiers, who came on a sally,
    And built up the cave." To his mattock he bent,
  And a rock that he loosened rolled down to the valley.

  They found a large rent where the rock had its bed,
    Which with eager assault they made larger by delving;
  And a cave was disclosed like a home of the dead—
    It was horrid and cold, it was rugged and shelving.
  The foulness of ages, unused to the light,
  Seemed grimly reclaiming its curtain of night.
    But look! as the mist grows more clear,
  There's a form moving outward—of hell or of heaven—
    The slaves did not question, but fled in their fear;
  But in truth this was Iamblichus, one of the seven.

  He paused at the mouth; placed his hands on his eyes;
    Then he looked toward Ephesus, bathèd in light;
  And he journeyed in haste, till with speechless surprise
    A cross on the grand city gate met his sight.
  He wondered, he doubted, he hearkened the din
  Of the city; and kissing the symbol, passed in;
    This place he so lately had known
  Was transformed—had grown foreign, and altered, and cold;
    He was famished for bread, and his wishes were shown;
  But they liked not his accents, his dress, or his gold.

  "Away to the judge with this madman or worse!"
    "He has treasure that must be accounted." They went.
  "I'm a Christian," he said, "and am wealthy; my purse
    I have offered for bread. Should it be your intent
  To enroll me a martyr, my life I'll lay down:
  Take my life! Take my wealth in exchange for the crown."
    Then the judge when he looked and saw clearly
  That Decius' head on the coin did appear,
    Declared, while he doubted, "this youth must be nearly
  Two hundred years older than any one here!"

  The bishop was sent for, and Iamblichus spoke:
    "Six others and he had but yesterday fled;
  They had slept in a cave, and this morning awoke;
    And he had been sent to the city for bread."
  "True sons," said the bishop, "of God's predilection!
  These men are all saints who have found resurrection.
{546}
    Resurrection indeed but from sleep,
  Which the God of all nature prolonging had shed,
    Like a life-saving balsam, to guard and to keep
  Those whose memory had passed with the ancient and dead."

  The city was emptied the emperor came,
    The people, the magnates and all, in a throng,
  Beat a broad hardened path to that cavern of fame,
    Where the young men of Ephesus slumbered so long.
  And when Iamblichus shouted, they came at his call;
  And the seven stood together amidst of them all.
    But nature asserted her sway,
  Which a special design had for once set aside;
    And they lived but to gaze on the light of the day,
  And imparting their blessing, they painlessly died.

  Through the wide Roman empire their fame travelled round;
    The East and the West have adopted the story;
  In Syriac, in Greek, and in Latin 'tis found;
    The Romans and Russians agree in their glory
  Where Mahomet conquered, they're known unto all,
  And are reverenced as saints from Algiers to Bengal.
    The cavilling sceptic may doubt;
  But sooner shall earth to destruction be hurled,
    Than Iamblichus' name be dethroned or die out,
  Or the tale of the sleepers depart from the world.

Family, Parish, And Sunday-school Libraries.

It would be trite to say that the press is an extraordinary power for good or for evil. Some have decried it, as if they looked upon it as not merely evil by accident, but bad in itself. We cannot agree with them. We regard the press, in the order of divine providence, as a rapid means of spreading the truth and the morality of the Gospel among mankind. There is an apostleship of the pen as well as of the mouth. The written word often does more than the spoken word; as a proof from Scripture may often tell more forcibly on the mind of an unbeliever, than an argument from tradition.

Printing is a blessing; the press is a boon and a power which the friends of God should know how to use better than his enemies. True, the latter employ it to great effect, What a torrent of bad literature is poured daily over the world! {547} The press is a huge monster, sending forth from its giant jaws poison, that circulates in the blood of society. Infidelity and false theology; immoral, obscene, and useless books are its offspring. Reviews, magazines, weekly and daily papers, issue from it; and are made the vehicles of falsehood and vice. Such is the fact. What are the friends of religion to do, when its enemies are so active? Will it do for us to sit down and express our longings for the good old times when there were no printed books? Hold up our eyes in holy horror, but let our hands hang unemployed by our side? Decry the wickedness of the press; the dishonesty of the authors, and deplore the vitiated taste of the populace, whose minds we see daily devouring the poisoned trash of novels and newspapers; and remain content with uttering an empty sigh? No; we must be up and doing. We must fight the foes of religion with their own weapons. We must use the press against those who abuse it. The old tar who was accustomed to see only wooden ships contend on the ocean; or the veteran of the battle-field who fought for liberty with an antiquated firelock, would be laughed at now for protesting against the use of ironclads or needle-guns in warfare. In vain would he say that what won battles half a century ago ought to win them still. So would it be unreasonable to cling solely to those weapons of spiritual combat which were good enough a century ago, but which to-day are blunt or rusty. We must copper the keels and plate the sides of our wooden vessels with iron; and remodel the ancient shooting-irons of the scholastics to meet the exigencies of modern circumstances. It can hardly be questioned that the amount of bad or useless books published daily is greater than the quantity of good ones. Now, whose fault is this? The fault of the writers? Yes, in part. But they tell us, when asked why they write improper works, that the people will not read any other kind; and that if they were to follow truth, and not to please the passions in their compositions, they would starve. The great cause of bad literature is, therefore, the corrupt taste of the masses. It is at the same time cause and effect; for literary men suit their books to it; and these again help to spread moral diseases farther, and make them sink more deeply into the brains of the community.

The chief means of counteracting the influence of bad books is by writing good ones; by spreading a taste for sound and wholesome reading. In this way can morality be preserved in the soul. To this end should we Catholics direct our energies. We number in this country many millions; and if we were all filled with an ardent zeal for souls, we should think no sacrifice too great, of time, labor, or purse, in order to destroy the pernicious effects of un-Catholic or anti-Catholic books and journals. Men will read. They need food for the mind as well as for the body. Let us give them wholesome food. It was in this sense that Pius IX., in speaking of France, said, "You Frenchmen have planted the tree of science almost everywhere. I do not object to this, provided you do not allow it to become the science of evil; and this will happen, if you do not inundate France with good publications." The words apply to our own country as well as to France.

Write and publish good books then! We do not mean by good books, merely technical, spiritual books. We mean interesting books, in which nothing against faith or morals is found; and in which everything tends to promote good morals. {548} A good novel, or any work of fiction, a pamphlet or brochure, a newspaper article—anything and everything, from a dear folio to a one cent tract, provided it be moral in aim and method, comes under the class of "good publications." We prefer small, cheap books to large and expensive ones. The people cannot understand learned works, but they can comprehend a tract, a magazine, or a small book, like those published in Paris, and scattered among the population by the zealous Abbé Mullois and his fervent associates of the French clergy and laity. Books for general and popular reading should be written and dressed in a popular style. Small works of fiction and anecdote, or an allegory containing a wholesome truth, will do more than a dry sermon. Horace tells us that the old schoolmasters used to give their pupils cakes, to incite them to learn:

    "—ut pueris olim dant crustula blandi
  Doctores, elementa velint ut discere prima."

We too, laughing, may tell the truth, and sugar-coat the pill so as to make its bitterness less sensible. It is astonishing to learn how much good has been done among the lower classes in France by the good priests and laymen just mentioned. The Abbé Mullois gives us instances of conversions effected, of wicked men reclaimed, of virtues instilled into minds almost brutal, by the casual perusal of some little book or tract. These small publications are put in a valise or trunk, and read in the cars, in the work-shop, at home, or in the house of a friend, and they leave a lasting impression behind them. Thus we quote the good Abbé's words:

"There was a poor widow with many children. The eldest, who alone could help her, was a very hard case. Instead of bringing anything home, he often stole the money necessary for the support of the family. His poor mother suffered, prayed, and wept in vain. But one day this young man being at home, had no money with which to go on a spree. He began to amuse himself with looking over a collection of old books on the chimney. He takes up one, reads it, becomes interested and is moved by it. He even weeps; he leaves the book reluctantly, but returns to its perusal next day. His mother observed a great change in his person; even his figure was transformed; but she was more surprised when her son, awaiting an opportunity to find her alone, addressed her as follows: 'My dear mother, I have made you suffer much; I am a wretch; I have seen it in a book. I shall never be able by work to aid you enough or pay all that I owe you. I have found a means of assisting you till my brothers and sisters grow up. I am going to enlist; you will receive a large bounty. This is the only way in which I can atone for my neglect of you.' And he immediately after joined the army."

This is but one of many instances recorded by Abbé Mullois in L'Ami du Jeune Clergé, a monthly magazine devoted to the interests of religion.

Go into many houses, and you will find the Ledger; the Sunday Mercury, the daily newspapers, the Atlantic Monthly, and often, even in Christian families, you may find publications far worse than these; occasionally, even lay hold of an obscene or grossly immoral book lying around loose, within reach of the children. Let our Catholic publications drive out all others—at least, such as are positively injurious—from Catholic families. Let the children, the young men and women, have Catholic books to read, and let the Catholic doctrines percolate through their minds even from early life.

How can we effect this? By children's, family, and parish libraries. We must write good books for the young, and give them opportunities of reading; parents should see to this; and should always have in their families a supply of good Catholic reading matter; a collection of tracts, or of tales, like those of Canon Schmidt, or a Catholic newspaper, magazine, or review. {549} A family library is a treasure in a house, and goes down from father to child as a most precious heirloom. Its benefits are spiritual; and it is often better than a fortune.

But the principal means of promoting a taste for Catholic literature, and encouraging those who have devoted their lives to its cause, is by the formation of parish libraries. Let us hear the Abbé Mullois pleading in this cause. "In order to combat bad books and bad doctrines, we must have and spread good books as the only efficacious method. It is useless to spend the time in complaining or in railing against evil publications. There is a new want in our days not known to the middle ages. The people know how to read, and they will read. The popular intellect is hungry, and we must feed it. You cannot argue with hunger; it is stronger than you; it will break and sweep away all your arguments and reasons. You have no right to say to some one who is dying of hunger, 'You are wrong to eat such food; it is unhealthy,' unless you can give him something good and wholesome. In hunger, people eat what they have, not what they would like to have.

"We say, then, that actions, not words, are necessary, and that every one should help, for there is plenty to do for all, both priests and laity.

"What must we do? Let us go straight to the point. In the first place, every parish should have a little library of select books, both instructive and amusing. Books of history, of science, of agriculture, on morals or religion, at the disposal of every one to read, and to bring back safely. You must have one, my reverend brother, else your parish will be considered the worst managed in France; for these libraries are almost everywhere in it."—Is this true of the United States?—" If it already exists, increase it annually, embellish and complete it. It brings in a revenue. Can it be possible that you have no parish library? Oh! how difficult it is to propagate good ideas! We spend money for schools, and invite the world to the banquet of science; we create appetites, but when they are willing to eat, we tell them there is little or nothing for them. We have schools for boys, and for girls, day, night, and Sunday-schools; but where is the use of all these if there is nothing to read, or nothing but what is pernicious? If we teach children to read, we must provide intellectual food for them, or show ourselves devoid of logic, reason, good sense, and heart."

To whom are we to look for the realization of the good Abbé's plan in our country? In the first place, to the clergy. They are our guides, our fathers, our leaders in every good enterprise. Their influence is unlimited. Probably in no country has a priest so much power, or so many opportunities of doing good, as in the United States. The politician may control several thousand votes; a brave general may so infuse his own courage into the hearts of his soldiers as to make them carry the fiercest battery with the cold steel. But no one can do as the priest. On a Sunday, from his pulpit or altar, he can, in a short discourse of fifteen or twenty minutes, influence the actions, open the purses, and create the spirit of enthusiastic sacrifice in a whole community. He can build a church; he can found a benevolent society; surely he can found a parish or Sunday-school library. He knows the ravages of souls committed by non-Catholic periodical or other literature. {550} He has only to say the word, and he, in a great measure, stops them. A sermon on the dangers of bad books will have its completion in the founding or enlarging of a parish library, filled with good publications. What an easy means of preventing so much evil!

"But," you say, "the clergy have no time." Undoubtedly their time is greatly taken up with parochial duties. In our country, bricks and mortar are by necessity as familiar to the eye of the priest, as books of theology. He has no time to write; very little time to read. This is true of the venerable senior clergy. But they need not do more than give their sanction to the work, and entrust it to the hands of the assistant, or of some responsible layman. A "few words from the pastor, recommending the library, and an occasional inspection of its management, will be sufficient. The curate, whose duties are not of so engrossing a nature as those of the pastor; or some good lay members of the parish; the young men of a literary or debating society; or members of the Saint Vincent de Paul Society; or the school-teacher, or, if need be, the schoolmistress, will do all that is necessary. In many parishes there are libraries, well conducted, well managed, and productive of immense moral and intellectual benefits among the young and old of both sexes. Our readers must know that there are such from their own experience. It will, therefore, require very little time from the pastor to have and to keep a parish library in perfect working order, according to rules laid down or sanctioned by himself. No zealous priest, who has once known the beneficial results of good family and parish libraries among his flock, would allow them to be neglected; or would not become a champion of our good cause. We ask, then, in the name of religion, of charity and morality; by the love of our holy faith, and by the zeal of the apostles, that all the clergy, young and old, should put their shoulders to the wheel with us, and roll on the car of Catholic progress, which carries in it our Catholic books and publications.

So many hundred priests, talented and learned, speaking from so many hundred pulpits and altars, guiding the consciences of so many millions of men, are a power able to defeat all the productions of a licentious press; and if, united by a common zeal, they but lock hands and pull together, they cannot fail to realize the already quoted expression of our holy Father, Pius IX., speaking of France, to inundate the country with good publications. We priests often fail to realize our power and influence.

Nor should the laity be idle. "In the day of a nation's peril," says Tertullian, "every citizen becomes a soldier; in the great struggles of the faith, every Christian becomes an apostle." Let the sacred fire of zeal pass from the bosom of the priest to burn in the breasts of the laity. There is a certain priesthood of the laity, which they do not sufficiently understand. They are too apt to be passive, to let the priest do all the labor, and only help him when called and urged; they forget that piety and good works are as essential to them as to their spiritual directors, and that so far from, their zeal being an intrusion on that of the priesthood, it is an acceptable assistance. How many a poor, tired priest longs that some good layman would relieve him of a portion of his burden, and enable him to bear the load and responsibility of his parish! We call on the laity, then, to come to the rescue: help in the cause of God! {551} Found libraries; or at any rate, stock a few shelves in your own homes with good books for yourselves and your friends or children. Become propagandists! You propagate the faith; you aid the pope, the bishops, and the priests; you are doing a work acceptable to God, when you help to spread good books or periodicals. Encourage others by your example. Are you a young man? Engage others with you in the cause of Catholic literature. Can you write? Have you a ready pen? Why not write a tract, or a good article for a Catholic paper? or buy it and give to your infidel or Protestant neighbors? You may save a soul by giving that little tract. You may save a soul for one cent! Do not be afraid because you are said to be too young; or, if some one patronizingly informs you of the fact, be sure you are right, and that God is on your side; then go ahead.

Hear how the zealous Montalembert answered the charge of being a young man, slurringly made against him by M. Villemain, in the house of peers, in the time of Louis Philippe. Montalembert had been defending the liberty of the church. "I shall argue, perhaps, too ardently, too warmly, with that youthful vivacity of which the minister of public instruction and others accuse me. Youth is a fault of which I am daily correcting myself. I thought myself already cured of it, until the honorable M. Villemain told me the contrary, and that I shall always remain a young man in his eyes. (Laughter.) But besides the youth of age which passes away, there is another youthfulness for which I shall never make an apology or defence; it is the youthfulness of heart and courage inspired by a faith whose doctrines never grow old, because they are immortal! This youthfulness of faith is my happiness and glory; and I hope never to excuse myself for it before you." Inexperience is not always the companion of youth. Young priest or young layman then, let your youth of years be like that of Montalembert, and not prevent you from aiding the holy cause of the Catholic press.

Little leisure is therefore required; and we have undoubtedly plenty of talent to write and give good books to the million; to establish family, children's, Sunday-school, or parish libraries.

The rules for the special management of libraries are easily found. Either obtain those already in use, or obtain a set of new regulations from the pastor. The regulations of many of our public libraries are used in many Protestant Sunday-school libraries. For false religions know to use the press; and Protestants know well the influence which their religious journals, periodicals, tracts, and other publications exercise on the minds of both young and old. We certainly ought not to be behind the propagandists of error in our propagandism of truth. We need not, therefore, specify any system of rules for the maintenance of good order in the case of libraries. Any librarian will easily find regulations that have been found to work successfully.

A more grave difficulty than that of finding rules to manage a library is that of obtaining the money to create it. Money is the main-stay and the backbone of Catholic publications. If it be the sinews of war, it is certainly the life of the press. Unless the public pays the author, he will not write; and you cannot collect books without money to purchase them. A hard-worked priest will say, "I have enough to do to raise money to build my church, or school, or parochial house, without spending it on books." {552} The layman will say, "You are always begging. We cannot give for everything; and I have no cash to spare for your magazine, for your tracts, or your books, for I have to give it for the new church, or the new school, or the new priest's house."

In answer to this difficulty, we observe, firstly, that a library, or collection of books, is almost of equal importance, in some respects more important, than a school or a house; secondly, a parish library costs but a trifle, which will not be missed either by priest or people.

Let us hear, before developing our answer, how the good Abbé Mullois, whose spirit inspires the whole of is article, resolves the objection in L'Ami du Jeune Clergé, for May and June, 1867:

"We know a man," says he, "who has given away in four years forty-two thousand volumes!"—Would any one in America do this?—"A zealous woman in Paris gives six of eight thousand francs yearly to help Catholic publications; and after sending every package of good books for distribution, she is sure to receive letters of this kind: 'Madam, I have heard of your great charity; you have sent books to such a place; they were liked, and so interesting that everybody wanted one to read. They did much good. Would you be kind enough to send me some?'

"The Society of St. Francis de Sales gives twenty-five or thirty thousand francs annually for this purpose; the society for the amelioration and propagation of good books spends fifty thousand francs a year in the work. It is not books, therefore, that are wanting. Let them be sought, and they will be found. Why are there so many corrupt publications? because they find readers. Let us make readers of good publications by doing our duty.

"In order to begin a library, thirty, forty, or fifty francs will do. A good pastor of the diocese of Soissons tells us the way in which he raised the funds to found a library, in the following terms: 'I wanted to establish this good work in my parish, but money was the difficulty. I soon conquered it. On Sun I preached on the necessity of education in general; and I told my parishioners that, if they wanted to be educated, I could furnish them about fifty volumes for thirty francs, to make a beginning. But how was I to get the thirty francs? Let thirty persons give me a franc apiece. This will enable me to found a library, and you will be able to read all your life for one franc! Next day, forty-five persons subscribed, and thirty-five paid the cash down. The others will pay during the year.'"

When we remember that a franc is about equal to a quarter-dollar of our currency; we, who are accustomed to give dollars by the tens and twenties for every collection, will smile at the naïveté of the bon curé and the modesty of his request.

He helps us, however, to answer our own difficulty. From all that we have written concerning the pernicious influence of bad publications, and the necessity of counteracting it by good ones, it follows that a good library in a parish, with reading parishioners, is almost as important as a good school. In fact, what good is the school, if, after leaving it, our children have no reading-room, no good books, to keep up the remembrance of what was learned in childhood? It is after his school days, that the young man meets all the great perils of his faith and morality. It is then young women want good books to read, instead of the yellow-covered trash, or pictorial, sensational serials, over which you may find the young of both sexes gloating of a Sunday afternoon, or of a rainy night, wasting their health of body and mind in this midnight perusal. The cause, then, of Catholic publications, of Catholic tracts, of the Catholic press, is the cause of religion itself. We are not exaggerating; we are only giving it that place among the means of preserving and propagating faith and good morals which the Catholic Church, speaking through the mouth of the supreme pontiff and bishops, give it.

A good book in the house is a guardian angel. It has the voice of a priest, and the tongue of inspiration. It speaks and enlightens the intellect; it warms the heart, and fills the mind with good thoughts, and the imagination with holy images. It speaks in the silence of the night, as well as in the effulgence of the day, and its impressions pass from the written pages to be engraved for ever on the soul of the reader.

What a trifle to found a library! Who objects to give it? We do not say merely thirty francs, like the parish priest of the diocese of Soissons. We suit the sum to the generous and wealthy character of the people. For our poor people are wealthy compared with the poor of Europe. Fifty persons giving a dollar apiece could lay the foundation of a library that might grow in the course of time into great magnitude and celebrity. By clubbing together, expenses are always diminished. It is the custom, as we know, of Catholic publishers, as well of all booksellers, to make a reduction in price when a large quantity of books is bought. A small tax of one or two cents a week on books lent from the library brings gradually a large revenue, which enables the librarian to increase his store. What parish would miss fifty dollars? What priest or people begrudge it for so good a purpose? Then let the work be undertaken, where it has not yet been begun; and progress with renewed zeal, where there has already been made a beginning.

Let the pulpits ring; give at least one sermon in favor of this good cause! Brothers of the clergy, veterans whose hair has grown gray in the church militant; you know that we do not exaggerate the importance of Catholic publications in the battle of our holy faith against the devil, the flesh and the world; we appeal to you! Young Levites, fresh from your school glories, do not forget your projects for God's honor and for the spread of his holy faith; we ask your succor also. And you, over-tasked yet generous laity, ever ready to respond joyfully to a call made on your faith or your charity, we ask you, too, to interest yourselves in the cause of Catholic publications. We ask all to unite with God, with the church, with the supreme pontiff and the episcopate, in furthering the work of the Catholic press, Catholic books, Catholic literature of every description; from the tract or little tale, the Sunday-school paper, to the ponderous theological or philosophical folio. God will crown our work. He asks but our cordial cooperation. Success must therefore follow our efforts; for if God is for us, who can withstand us? Si Deus pro nob is, quis contra nos?

"The necessity of a Sunday-school library no one disputes. But how am I to get one?" says the pastor.

Make a beginning. Buy Catholic tales, biographies, and the smaller class of books which are popular among children. More costly books can be added afterward.

At first give books to the more advanced classes as a reward for good lessons, good conduct, etc. As the library increases, the privilege can be extended till it embraces every class capable of profiting by it.

But how is the library to be supported and enlarged? Take up a collection every Sunday at the children's Mass, as is done in many churches in this city and elsewhere, where good libraries are already in existence. This will not only create a fund sufficient to sustain and enlarge the library, but will also give the children the habit of contributing to the support of religion, which will be of the greatest benefit to them in after life. {554} This plan has been successfully tried; the children have been able to support and steadily enlarge the library, and have also given liberally to other charitable objects.

Again, When and how shall the books be distributed? A very successful method is the following:

Number the classes in the Sunday-school. Divide the library into as many sections or alcoves as you have classes. There must be at least as many books in each alcove as there are scholars in any class. A separate catalogue of each alcove should be made and designated as section A, B, C, etc.

Erasive tablets may be easily procured. On one side may be written the names and numbers of the books in each section, and the other side used to record the numbers of the books selected. This being done, after the Sunday-school is opened, let the librarian or assistant give a catalogue of a section to each class; section A to class 1, section B to class 2, etc.

The teachers will then select books for the class, and mark the numbers on the tablet. The librarian collects the tablets and carries to each class the books selected. The teacher notes the number of the book against the name of the child who receives it in his class-book. The next Sunday, let the books be first collected and returned to their places. The catalogues are then given out. Those who chose from selection A before, should now have section B, and so on in rotation. Thus all will in turn select from each section of the library, and the books are distributed in a short time, without noise or confusion.

How shall the books be selected? This is not an easy task. Many have been deterred from starting a library on account of the difficulty in making this selection. In view of this, we have prepared a catalogue suitable for a parochial and Sunday-school library, which the reader can find in our advertising pages. These are put down at the lowest terms, and are selected with care, as the most suitable to make a beginning with. As funds increase, others can be added from time to time.

The Comedy Of Convocation. [Footnote 54]

[Footnote 54: The Comedy of Convocation in the English Church, in Two Scenes. Edited by Archdeacon Chasuble, D.D. 8vo, pp. 135. London: William Freeman.]

Satire without bitterness or rancor is a phenomenon in literature of which the world has seen few examples, and genuine, religious satire has been so rare, that we can hardly recall a single unexceptionable specimen. There was a day, to be sure, when every poet held it a part of his profession to lacerate with the weapon of his wit, or with the rhymed invective which too often passed for wit, whatever creed happened at the time to be most unpopular. Some few even of the great masters of verse, like Dryden and Butler, trenched upon the domain of religious controversy; but Dryden's Hind and Panther and Religio Laici are rather dogmatical poems than satires, and Butler's Hudibras, which is pure satire, is aimed less at a religious sect than at a political party. {555} Here we have, however, a prose satire in the Church of England, which is one of the most admirable specimens of that class of literature in our own or any other language. It is sharp without unkindness; it contains not a syllable of invective; it is honest; it is logical; the wit is radiant; the fun is overpowering; and the application is irresistible. Volumes could not expose the preposterous errors of Anglicanism with half the effect produced by this little pamphlet. The troubles and perplexities of the English divines, the absurdities of the privy council, the purposeless debates of convocations, the conflict of beliefs, the uncertainty of dogmas, the vain theories of deans and doctors, the darkness, the wavering, the inconsistency, the worldliness of the Anglican Church, are pictured in this little comedy to the very life. Its appearance has created in London a profound sensation. Anglicans are smarting under the exposure, and everybody else is laughing at the ludicrous exhibition. The authorship is unknown, but we are inclined to believe that the current rumor which ascribes it to Dr. J. H. Newman is well founded. We doubt whether there is another man in England capable of writing it.

The Dramatis Personae embrace a number of deans, archdeacons, and lesser ecclesiastical dignitaries, and the first scene takes place in "the Jerusalem Chamber," where Convocation is in session.

"Doctor Easy rose to propose the question of which he had given notice at the previous sitting of Con 'Would it be considered heresy in the Church of England to deny the existence of God?' It had occurred to him that he should, perhaps, adopt a form more convenient for the present debate, if he put the question thus: 'Would a clergyman, openly teaching that there was no God, be liable to suspension?'

"Archdeacon Jolly thought not. What the Church of England especially prided herself upon was the breadth of her views. No view could be broader than the one just stated, and therefore, none more likely to meet with the sanction of the privy council, which, he apprehended, was the real point to be kept in view in the discussion of this interesting question. (Hear, hear.)

"Dean Blunt concurred in the opinion that breadth and the privy council were kindred ideas. Still, it might be asked, could even the doctrinal elasticity of that tribunal become sufficiently expansive to embrace the enormous hypothesis of his learned friend? He ventured to think that it could. Let it be supposed that some clergymen of the Church of England—say the Archbishop of Canterbury—should publicly teach that there was no God. The case being brought before the privy council, it might be reasonably assumed that that supreme arbiter of Anglican doctrine would deliver some such judgment as the following:

'We find that the Church of England is not opposed to the existence of a God. At the same time, we cannot overlook the fact that the nineteenth article, in affirming that all churches, even the apostolic, have erred in matters of faith, obviously implies that the Church of England may err also in the same way. Therefore the Church of England may err in teaching that there is a God. We conclude, that whilst, on the one hand, the archbishop has taken an extreme or one-sided view of the teaching of the church; on the other, for the reason assigned, it is undoubtedly open to every clergyman either to believe in or to deny the existence of a God.'

"Archdeacon Theory would be disposed cordially to approve the judgment which the learned dean anticipated. He had always maintained that it was the duty of every Anglican to doubt the existence of God. (Uproar.) {556} Let him not be misunderstood. Speaking for himself, he had a moral and intellectual conviction that there was a God. He was not disputing the objective truth of the existence of a God: about that he could not suppose that a single member of Convocation could entertain the most transitory doubt. He was speaking only of their duty as members of the Church of England, and not at all of their obligation as Christians; two things which might happen in a particular case to be as wide apart as the poles, and to involve distinct and opposite responsibilities. Now, as members of the Church of England, he believed it was their duty to doubt, not only the existence of God, but also every separate article which the Church of England now taught, or might teach hereafter; and the more emphatically the Church of England appeared to teach, the more imperative was their duty to doubt. For, referring to the ingenious argument which Dean Blunt had put into the mouth of their national oracle, it was clear that the Church of England in denying her own infallibility, laid all her members under the religious obligation of doubting everything she taught. Fallibility, properly defined, was not simply liability to err, it was the state of error. As infallibility is a state of certainty, which does not admit of error; so fallibility is a state of doubt which does not admit of conviction. Now, the Church of England, in proclaiming her own fallibility, did so with a peremptoriness which elevated this part of her teaching, and this alone, to the dignity of dogma. For, whereas, in propounding other Anglican tenets, she so adjusted her definitions of doctrine as to leave the choice of possible and opposite interpretations to the discretion of her members; when speaking of this, the fundamental axiom of her whole theological system, she rose for the moment to the authority of a teacher, and consented to put on the robe of infallibility, in order to promulgate with greater force the dogma of her own liability to error."

Here is the key to the first scene. The discussion is maintained at considerable length, and carries us over the whole ground of the authority of the English church to teach divine truth; and in the course of it, some representative of each of the most prominent schools of theological opinion in the establishment takes occasion to express his mind. Dr. Viewy holds that since heresy is the choice of one's creed, as opposed to the submission of the will to authority, no Anglican can be guilty of heresy who obeys the teachings of his ecclesiastical superiors; and hence, in the Church of England, it might be conditionally, but could not be necessarily, heresy to deny the existence of God. As that church is taunted by her enemies with holding and rejecting every imaginable creed, the only safe course for a clergyman is to centre the whole of his obedience in that one bishop or rector, under whom, for the time being, he may find himself placed.

"In other words, since to obey any two ecclesiastical authorities at the same moment involved the risk of being pronounced a heretic by either one or the other—because no two clergymen are exactly of the same belief—the only effective safeguard against the possibility of heresy was personal obedience to one clergyman at a time. When first ordained to the office of the diaconate, from which he had been subsequently elevated to unmerited dignities, he found himself in the diocese of a low-church bishop—he might say a very low-church bishop—so low that any further descent into the regions of a purely negative theology would have left no doctrinal residuum whatever. {557} He at once decided, in virtue of his principle of obedience to authority, to teach his flock the religion of his bishop, which, by careful analysis, he resolved into two articles of belief—the denial of dogma, and the assertion of self. (Dean Pompous audibly whispered, 'Highly unbecoming.') But here he had met with a difficulty in starting; for it happened that his rector was a Puseyite; and that, consequently, in the main, whatever the bishop taught to be true, the rector taught to be false, and whatever the bishop taught to be false, the rector taught to be true. The case, as convocation knew, was so common in this country, as to form, perhaps, the rule in a majority of parochial cures. His principle, however, suggested an easy escape from the embarrassing position. He applied it thus: manifestly more obedience was due to a bishop than to a rector; yet a certain quantum of obedience was due to a rector, if only because a bishop had appointed him. It became, so to speak, a question of proportion rather than of theology, and was soluble, not by the thirty-nine articles, but by the rule of three; and, after working it out with religious care, the following commended itself to him as the solution of the problem. He would preach low-church doctrines on the Sundays, denying the sacramental view and all its consequences, as the homage of clerical obedience due to the bishop; but he would teach high-church doctrines during the week, without abating a single tenet, in discharge of the proportionate measure of obedience due to the rector. This practice gave rise, he was bound to admit, to some excitement in the parish, and led to the popular conviction that, however excellent his teaching might be in detail, there was a want of unity about it when looked at as a whole. Yet when he explained to his parishioners the purity of the motive which induced the apparent contradictions, and proved to them that his duplex system was designed only to reflect justly and proportionately the two aspects of Christianity exhibited by their bishop and their rector, the whole parish at once applauded the delicacy of his conscience, while it ceased not to question the value of his teaching. And so things went on with tolerable harmony for the space of a year; when, unhappily, both the bishop and the rector died about the same time; the former being quickly replaced by a high-church bishop, appointed by a friend in the cabinet, and the latter by a low-church rector, nominated by Mr. Simeon's trustees. It now became his duty, in consistency with his principle of obedience to personal authority, to invert the order and portion of his teaching. He would continue to give the Sundays to the bishop, and the week-days to the rector; but on Sundays he must now be a Puseyite, and on week-days an Evangelical; and this simple inversion, so equitable in itself, and inspired solely by the desire of submitting himself to his superiors, created such discord in the parish, that finally he was entreated, as the only means of restoring peace, to resign his cure of souls.

"Dean Pliable concurred, in the main, with the principle of the learned divine who had just resumed his seat, that obedience to authority was the first duty of a clergyman; but he utterly differed from him in his application of the principle, which appeared to him to be equally servile and injudicious. {558} That principle he conceived to be most effectually carried out, not by abject submission to this bishop or that, this rector or that—which might be both possible and convenient, if, in the Church of England, as in the Church of Rome, every bishop and every rector taught the same Christianity—but in the larger and nobler aim of faithfully representing at one and the same time all the Christianities taught by all the bishops and all the rectors of the Church of England. In other words, since every one confessed that it was impossible to teach a uniform theology in the Church of England, whose highest tribunal had ruled that her clergy might teach either of two opposite doctrines—and therefore both alternately—he was brought to the conviction that the only course open to Anglicans solicitous about theoretical unity was to profess at the same moment every doctrine held within their communion, and all their contradictories. (Great uproar: a well-known preacher was heard to exclaim—"He would convert us into ecclesiastical acrobats.")

"Dean Critical inquired, with a touch of irony in his voice and manner—'Could any of his reverend friends undertake to inform him what was the authority of the Church of England?' Hitherto the debate had gone only to show what it was not. Dr. Theory had maintained that there was no such thing. Dr. Viewy and Dean Pliable had each of them proved that it did not reside in the bishops and clergy, unless, indeed, it might be supposed to exist in equal measure in every one of them; but, as they were unhappily in direct opposition to one another on many fundamental doctrines, this was equivalent to saying that no authority to decide Christian doctrine existed in the Church of England. If there really were any such authority, convocation could hardly be more usefully employed than in defining its nature and fixing its limits.

"Archdeacon Jolly observed, without rising from his seat—'What say you to the Archbishop of Canterbury?' (Some laughter, which was immediately suppressed.)

"Dean Critical reminded the venerable archdeacon that the Archbishop of Canterbury was not alluded to in their formularies in any such character, and feared, it must be said without disrespect, that he had no more power to determine a disputed point of doctrine than his amiable lady, whose hospitality many of them had enjoyed. It was a lamentable fact that his Grace had no more authority over the people of England, nor over a single individual out of his own household, than … (a voice exclaimed, 'the King of the Sandwich Islands,' a suggestion which was greeted with mingled applause and disapprobation.)

"Archdeacon Jolly: Well, then, her Majesty the Queen, whom the church admits to be 'supreme' in all causes, spiritual as well as temporal?

"Dean Critical could not forget that her Majesty, in whom they recognized a model of every Christian virtue, frequented, indifferently, Presbyterian meeting-houses and the churches of their own communion. If, therefore, as the law appeared to admit, the authority of the Anglican Church resided in her royal person, it followed that the Westminster Confession and the Thirty-nine Articles were equally true, and that every Anglican was also a Presbyterian.

"Archdeacon Jolly: 'How about the Privy Council? If it be the ultimate judge of doctrine, must it not be the authority for which you are seeking?'

"Dean Critical thought not, because in fact, the sum of its decisions amounted to this—that the Church of England taught nothing and denied nothing, which was equivalent to saying that she believed nothing. A tribunal which decided in every case of disputed doctrine, as the privy council invariably did, that both the plaintiff and defendant were right, was a judicial curiosity that could hardly be said to afford the litigant parties much assistance in bringing their cause to an issue. The privy council might be an authority over the Church of England, whose decisions the latter was obliged to receive; but no one could seriously maintain that it was an authority to which any Anglican, of whatever party in the church, professed to submit his conscience in matters of faith.

"Archdeacon Jolly: 'Will you accept convocation as your authority?' (Loud laughter, with cries of 'shame' from Dean Pompous.)

"Dean Critical regretted that he could not accept convocation in the character of an Anglican Holy See: because, to say nothing of the general feeling of the country, and the malicious comments of the public press, which appeared to treat them with derision, and talked of their 'dancing round a may-pole,' his own observation of the proceedings of that assembly dissuaded him from any such view. Much experience had brought him to the sorrowful conviction that convocation was only a clerical debating-club, of which every member took himself for the pope, and the church for his pupil.

"Dean Critical: So supple and elastic in their nature as to be sworn to with equal facility both by those who claim to 'hold all Roman doctrine' and those who protest against it.

"Dean Critical: Thirty-nine opinions, one of which declares of all others, that they are human and fallible.

"Archdeacon Jolly did not know that he could offer any further suggestion, but, at least, one of the articles declared, 'the church hath authority in matters of faith.'

"Dean Critical was not unmindful of the fact, which had always appeared to him to be a device of the framers to express this idea: 'We admit that the church we are forming has no authority, but we recognize that if it were a church, it would have authority.' For it should be observed that while they said, 'the church hath authority,' they at the same time enjoined the clergy not to believe a single word she taught them, unless they found their own interpretation of the Scriptures to agree with hers! Thus they made the Church of England say to all her members: 'If you should accidentally be right in your interpretation of the Bible, put that down to me, for I am the church that teaches you; but if, which is far more probable, you should be wrong, put that down to yourself, for I have warned you to believe in nothing which you cannot prove for yourself out of the Bible.' ('Hear, hear,' from the Rev. Lavender Kidds.)"

This Rev. Lavender Kidds is the comic man of the drama. His one principle is "Bible Christianity," his one passion a dread of the pope.

"The Rev. Lavender Kidds (who seemed much excited, and rose amidst cries of 'order, order,' and considerable laughter) observed that he now assisted for the first time at the assembly of convocation, and had been deeply shocked by the unscriptural tone of the discussion. {560} (Suppressed merriment.) For his part, he gloried in the thirty-nine articles of their pure and reformed church, and especially in their noble testimony to the grand truth that the religion of Protestants was 'the Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible.' This was the true 'authority' of vital Christians, and he cared for no other. This was the simple and grand lesson of those venerable formularies which had been that day so grievously under-valued and calumniated. Really, it seemed to him to be preposterous in any Protestant assembly to talk so much of 'church-authority.' Authority, indeed! Who wanted it? And if they had it, who would obey it? Certainly no member of that house with whom he had the happiness of being acquainted—(laughter and ironical cheers)—least of all the high-church party, who had recently been forming a society to protect themselves against their bishops. (Renewed disapprobation.) He contended that their forefathers had done without authority, and had wisely regarded it as a mark of the beast. He was for the Bible and the Bible only. Perish the articles, and the church itself—no, his zeal was perhaps carrying him too far. What he meant to say was—in fact, he wished to observe—as long as they had the Word they wanted nothing else. He knew, indeed, that Dean Primitive and Archdeacon Chasuble preferred authority to Scripture—as long, that was, as they could keep the former entirely in their own hands; but he had invariably remarked that they refused to their bishops and superiors the obedience they required from their curates and parishioners. But Englishmen, he felt convinced, were not to be cajoled by a spurious popery; and if they must renounce their liberty, it would not be to those who used that liberty themselves to resist the very church they copied, in everything but their obedience. (General cries of 'Enough, enough,' amid which Mr. Kidds resumed his seat, with the air of one who had delivered a solemn and suitable protest.')

"Dean Primitive was unwilling that the observations of Mr. Kidds should pass without any other reply than Dean Blunt had thought fit to give them. He had spent thirty years of his life in combating the errors of that party in the church to which Mr. Kidds belonged, and he hoped to continue the same holy warfare to to the end. He was aware that the so-called evangelicals insisted upon the plainness of Scripture, and were accustomed to assume, with strange disregard of notorious facts, that nobody need find any difficulty in deciding the true meaning of any text whatever. With the permission of the house, he would give a few illustrations of the evangelical method of dealing with the inspired book; from which it would very clearly appear, that when they boasted of appealing to the Bible, they only appealed to their own version of it, that is, to themselves; and their favorite shibboleth, 'the Bible, and the Bible only,' meant simply, as Dean Blunt had well observed, 'my interpretation of the Bible, and not yours.'

"Thus, when our Lord said to his priests, 'I give to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven,' it is plain, according to the evangelicals, that he meant, 'I give to no man the keys of the kingdom of heaven.'

"When He declared, 'Whosesoever sins you remit, they are remitted,' beyond doubt he wished them to understand, 'I particularly withhold from you the power to remit sin.'

"When he gave the promise to his church, 'I am with you always, even to the end of the world,' manifestly he designed to say, 'I am with you only to the end of the third or fourth century, after which I shall desert you until the sixteenth.'

"When he announced, 'I will send the Holy Ghost, and he shall guide you into all truth,' it is clearer than the day that he wished to tell them, 'The Holy Ghost will teach you just so much of truth as each individual can gather from the private study of the Scriptures.'

"When he made the wonderful statement, 'The gates of hell shall never prevail against the church,' even children can see that he meant, 'Hell shall triumph over the church for eight hundred years and more.'"

The question is raised whether the Fathers and the first four General Councils cannot be taken as guides, and it is shown that they are as hard to interpret as the Bible itself. But cannot the clergy be appealed to as authorized interpreters? In replying to this query, the professor of theology said:

"There was not, he conceived, in the annals of human religion—of which the number was now almost beyond arithmetical calculation—so singular a paradox as that which was displayed in Puseyite theology. The claims of a Leo the Great, or a Gregory the Seventh, which, at least, whatever Protestants might think of them, were cordially admitted both in their own generation and in those which followed it, were only the utterances of timid self-abasement, compared with the super-oecumenical dogmatism of their high-church friends. 'Obey me,' said these gentlemen to their disciples, 'for obedience is the prerogative of the laity; but I obey nobody except my own interpretation of the fathers, or of such of them as I approve, because my church is not yet sufficiently catholic to deserve my obedience. At present I am obliged to create a church for you, because nothing worthy of the name is found just now on earth. The day will come when she will have been sufficiently taught by me, will cease to be Protestant without becoming Roman, and then I shall be able to obey the church, because, having learned from me the exact form of primitive Christianity, which exists nowhere at present but in my own ideal conception, the church will have come again into corporate existence, and will be worthy of your dutiful regard. It will then no longer be necessary for me, as it is unfortunately at present, to cumulate in my own person the functions of the pope, the saints, the fathers, the general councils, and Almighty God.'

"(Considerable agitation followed this speech, during which the sitting was suspended for some minutes.)

"The Rev. Lavender Kidds observed, as soon as the composure of the assembly was restored, that, however forcible the remarks of the learned professor might be as applied to Puseyism, he had shown that he was unwilling to grapple with the grand principle of Bible Christianity, of which he was the humble advocate.

"The professor intended no disrespect to Mr. Kidds and his party. Bible Christianity, since he must speak of it, (though he thought that former speakers had sufficiently disposed of the subject,) was only less preposterous than the rival theory which he had just ventured to describe. It required personal infallibility in all who professed it. It simply transferred to the individual the supernatural prerogative which the Romanist attributed to his church. {562} It was obvious to common sense that, if Mr. Kidds could interpret a particular translation of the Scriptures, so as to know infallibly both how much was necessary to be salvation, and exactly what was necessary to believed about it, he must himself be personally infallible.

"The professor must decline to give his own opinion, though of course he had one, on the question proposed by Dr. Easy; but he had no objection to state how he conceived it ought to be answered by the so-called Bible-Christian. That answer might be as follows:

"The existence of a church assumes the existence of a God; therefore, the denial of a God would be the same with the denial of a church. But the Church of England is a fact. Her teaching may be doubtful or contradictory, but her existence as a politico-ecclesiastical institution, professing belief in a God, is beyond dispute. It would, therefore, be heresy in the Bible Christian to deny the existence of a God; but it was quite open to him to believe in any kind of divinity he might prefer, and to clothe him with whatever attributes the Privy Council had permitted him to retain. …

"Archdeacon Jolly doubted whether the universal Nego of Mr. Kidds and his friends could combat successfully the eternal Credo of two hundred millions of Catholics. However, he was quite willing to consider Mr. Kidd's proposition; but he must be excused if he did so from his own point of view.

"There was a large class of persons in this country," continued the archdeacon, "who, having no definite religion of their own, and being slenderly endowed with common sense, were indebted to the Roman Catholic Church both for employment and maintenance. Let Mr. Kidds restrain his excitement; he would explain his meaning. He did not, of course, include Mr. Kidds among the class in question, though he believed that gentleman would willingly accept the statement of Sterne, who candidly confessed, that, 'when he had little to say or little to give his people, he had resource to the abuse of popery. Hence he called it his "Cheshire Cheese." It had a twofold advantage; it cost him very little, and he found by experience that nothing satisfied so well the hungry appetites of his congregation. They always devoured it greedily.'

"Perhaps Mr. Kidds was not aware that in his zeal to hasten the downfall of popery—which, even according to modern prophets, had still a few years to last, and which, judging by a recent tour he had made on the continent, presented anything but a moribund aspect—he was in violent opposition with many active and devoted Protestants. The persons to whom he alluded were, at this moment, full of anxiety lest popery should perish too soon! They could not afford to say farewell to their old friend at present, and desired only to keep him on his legs a little longer. Mr. Kidds was probably ignorant that a society had recently been formed in London, in connection, he believed, with the Protestant Reformation Society, to which it was designed to act as a timely and important auxiliary. The title of this new association was: 'Society for considering the best means of keeping alive the corruptions of Popery in the interests of Gospel Truth' It was, of course, a strictly secret organization, but he had been favored, he knew not why, with a copy of the prospectus, and as he had no intention of becoming a member, he would communicate it to the house. {563} It appeared from this document, and could be confirmed from other sources, that a deputation was sent last year to Rome, to obtain a private interview with the pope, in order to entreat his holiness not to reform a single popish corruption. He was assured that they had reason to believe, he did not know on what grounds, that the pope was about to make extensive reforms, beginning with the substitution of the thirty-nine articles for the creed of Pope Pius, and a permanent Anglican convocation in lieu of an occasional oecumenical council. A handsome present was entrusted to the deputation, and a liberal contribution to the Peter's Pence Fund. The motives set forth in the preamble of the address presented to his holiness were, in substance, of the following nature: They urged that a very large body of most respectable clergymen, who had no personal ill-will toward the present occupant of the Holy See, had maintained themselves and their families in comfort for many years exclusively by the abuse of popery; and if popery were taken away, they could not but contemplate the probable results with uneasiness and alarm. Moreover, many eminent members of the profession had gained a reputation for evangelical wit, learning, and piety, as well as high dignities in the Church of England, by setting forth in their sermons and at public meetings, with all their harrowing details, the astounding abominations of the Church of Rome. The petitioners implored his holiness not to be indifferent to the position of these gentlemen. Many of their number had privately requested the deputation to plead their cause with the amiable and benevolent Pius IX. Thus the great and good Doctor M'Nickel represented respectfully that he had filled his church, and let all his pews, during three-and-twenty years, by elegantly slandering priests and nuns, and powerfully illustrating Romish superstitions. A clergyman of noble birth had attained to the honors of the episcopate by handling alternately the same subjects, and a particularly pleasing doctrine of the Millennium, and had thus been enabled to confer a valuable living on his daughter's husband, who otherwise could not have hoped to obtain one. An eminent canon of an old Roman Catholic abbey owed his distinguished position, which he hoped to be allowed to retain, to the fact of his having proved so clearly that the pope was Antichrist; and earnestly entreated his holiness to do nothing to forfeit that character. A well-known doctor of Anglican divinity was on the point of quitting the country in despair of gaining a livelihood, when the idea of preaching against popery was suggested to him, and he had now reason to rejoice that he had abandoned the foolish scheme of emigration. Even a high-church bishop had been so hampered by suspicions of Romanistic tendencies, which were perfectly unfounded, that he had only saved himself from general discredit by incessant abuse of popery, though he was able to say, in self-defence, that he did not believe a word of his own invectives. Finally, a young clergyman, who had not hitherto much distinguished himself, having often but vainly solicited a member of his congregation to favor his evangelical attachment, at length hit upon a new expedient, and preached so ravishing a discourse on the matrimonial prohibitions of the Romish Church, and drew so appalling a picture of the domestic infelicities of the Romish priesthood, that on the following Monday morning the young lady made him an offer of her hand and fortune. {564} It was hoped that his holiness would give due consideration to interests so grave and manifold, and not peril them by hasty reforms, which nobody desired, and which nobody would receive with satisfaction.

"Another class of clergymen appealed still more urgently to the forbearance of the pope. They represented that they were in the habit of realizing large sums by the publication of prophetical works of which the whole interest turned upon the approximate destruction of 'the beast,' and that while they indicated, by the help of the apocalypse, the precise hour of his fall, they yet managed to put off the final catastrophe from year to year, and could hardly supply the successive editions which the curiosity of the public demanded. They hoped that his holiness would do nothing rash and imprudent which might compromise their particular industry. One of these gentlemen ingenuously confessed that without Antichrist, who was his best friend, and the invaluable book of Revelation, which was his chief source of income, he saw nothing before him but the workhouse. He begged to forward to the pope a copy of each of his works, including the following: 'Horns of the Beast,' neatly bound, with gilt edges; 'Antichrist,' handsomely got up, 'positively his last appearance in 1864, in consequence of other engagements,' with new editions in 1865, 1866, and 1867; also, 'Answer to an insolent pamphlet, entitled the "The Number and Street of the Beast proved to be that of the Rev. Dr. Comeagain."'

"Lastly, even members of parliament to whom nature had not been prodigal in intellectual endowments, urged with great force that they were able to get on their legs, and to stay there, detailing the prodigious incidents of conventual turpitude; making the blood to curdle, and the hair to stand on end, by thrilling narratives of nuns immured, and clanking chains, and bereaved mothers, invoking in agonized chorus, 'Liberty and Mr. Newdegate.' They hoped the pope would see in this fact the necessity of caution, lest he should unwittingly put to silence more than one independent member of parliament, deprive an illustrious assembly of its chief amusement, and rashly change the composition of the British House of Commons.

"Dean Pompous inquired (with a somewhat thick utterance, but with great dignity of manner) whether he understood the archdeacon to say that he had actually seen this document?

"Archdeacon Jolly: He had certainly said so; it had been shown to him in Rome by Cardinal Antonelli."

Archdeacon Chasuble held the theory that the Anglican establishment is a branch of the Catholic Church, and proved that the Catholic Church was necessarily infallible at one period of her existence. The gift of infallibility was suspended when Christendom became divided, and will be recovered when the Russian, the Roman, the Greek, the Anglican, and the Oriental branches reunite—a happy period, of whose arrival, he regretted to say, there was no immediate prospect. To this Dr. Candour undertook to reply:

"When the Roman, Greek, and Anglican communities should all become one, the church would once more become infallible. Three spurious and defective Christianities fused together, if anybody could persuade them to coalesce, would make one true and perfect Christianity. The giving up what each believed specifically true, and the uniting in what each believed specifically false, was that travail in the womb of Christendom which would give birth to the new infallibility. {565} He would only say, as the professor of theology had disposed of that point, that this was an obstetrical phenomenon which he did not think any one present would live long enough to witness.

"But he would now approach another aspect of the question, to which the archdeacon had attracted their attention. The low-church theory, he had told them, and the language of their articles and homilies, which assumed the defection of the Catholic Church, 'made void the promises of God.' Was the archdeacon quite sure that low-churchmen were the real or sole offenders? He thought not. Let him ask his friend whether even the 'diabolical millennium' of the English reformers, that dismal interval between the sixth and sixteenth centuries, was a conception more insolently subversive of the promises of God, more fatal to the Catholic idea of a divine, indefectible, and 'teaching church,' than the well-known Anglican conceit, that the early church was wholly pure, the mediaeval much less pure, and the modern quite unworthy of their obedience? Was it really so very respectful to the catholic idea, of which the archdeacon claimed to be the advocate, to assert, as he and his party did in every act of their lives, that, in spite of the 'promises of God,' the only really perfect church at this hour, protesting at once against Protestant heresies and popish corruptions, was the little group of Puseyites and ritualists within the national establishment? (Great laughter.)

"The archdeacon had reproached the low-church school, and the founders of Anglicanism, with making void the promises of God. Let the house consider how the high-church party interpreted those promises for themselves. According to their theory, the promise to be 'always' with the church applied only to the beginning and the end of her career, but not to the long interval between the two, during which the whole of Christendom was hopelessly sunk in error and corruption. It was curious to see that the high-church party cordially agreed with ultra-Protestants, that the Catholic Church during long ages had been teaching falsehoods! This was their reverence for 'the promises of God!'

"Again. The promise to guide the Church into 'all truth' had reference only to the integrity of truth before the mission of St. Augustine to England, and after the publication of the Tracts for the Times. The twelve hundred years between them, rather a long period in the life of the church, during which all Christians obstinately believed the supremacy of the pope, the office of the mother of God, and the mystery of transubstantiation—doctrines highly offensive to Puseyites—were merely an unfortunate parenthesis in the faithfulness of God, during which the catholic idea was lamentably obscured, and God forgot his 'promises.'

"Once more. The promise that the 'gates of hell' should 'never' prevail against the church meant only, according to the same school, that the principalities of evil, doing active work under the father of lies, should certainly prevail for a good many centuries, but that finally a little sect should rise up in the Church of England, able to discriminate with precision the errors of the Anglican, the Greek, and the Roman churches, and peacefully to conduct them all to the perfect truth which they had lost, to the unity which they had forfeited, and to a very remarkable and final triumph over the 'gates of hell.'

"The only true test of a theory was the result to which it led in practice. The branch-theory did not look well on paper, but perhaps it redeemed itself in its practical evolution. He would suppose, then, that the archdeacon, resolving to try his theory, set out on a foreign tour. Did he leave Dover an Anglican, and disembark at Calais a Roman Catholic? If so, at what particular spot in the Channel did he drop the Anglican articles and take up the Roman missal? Was it marked by a buoy? or was the transformation a gradual process, like the changes of temperature? On leaving Dover, he carried with him only two sacraments, which had grown into seven by the time he landed at Calais. Supposing the distance to be twenty-five miles, did he take up a new sacrament—he was going to say at every fifth milestone but the sea knew not such measures of distance. Were there fixed points at which he began to believe that transubstantiation was a holy mystery, and not a 'blasphemous fable;' that confirmation and extreme unction were divine sacraments, and not, as he had believed while breakfasting at Dover, a mere 'corrupt following of the Apostles'? Did he, in spite of the injunction with which they were all familiar, 'not to speak to the man at the wheel,' anxiously interrogate that individual as to the precise longitude in which it behoved him to cast away some Anglican delusion, and take up some Catholic truth? At what point of the voyage did the pope's supremacy begin to dawn upon him? And, finally, did the process of transformation, to which all branch-Christians were inevitably subject when they went to foreign lands, depend in any degree upon the weather? Was it quicker or slower in a heavy sea? or did sea-sickness in any way affect its development?

"The prolocutor of the house here rose, with an air of dignity becoming his official character, and expressed his conviction that the general feeling of the house was that the debate should now close. (Hear, hear.) That debate had proved a variety of things, which were more or less destructive to the national church, but nothing perhaps more clearly than this, that the public was right in regarding their discussions as very unprofitable to the interests of religion, either in their own land or in any other. … If the house shared his opinion, it only remained to determine what should be the place of their future meeting. (Applause.)

"Doctor Easy was delighted to be able to offer hospitality to his reverend friends. He lived, as they knew, in the immediate neighborhood of their fine old historical abbey, and his apartments were sufficiently spacious to afford a convenient place of meeting. He proposed, therefore, on the understanding that convocation was now happily extinct, that they should meet at his residence on that day week, when they could either resume the debate that had hitherto occupied them, or turn their attention to any other topic which might promise greater profit or amusement. (Loud cries of 'Agreed.') [Excunt omnes."

The second scene is introduced with the following description, the delicate humor of which is inimitable:

"Dr. Easy's drawing-room presented an animated appearance. Friendly greetings were exchanged, and decent hilarity pervaded the assembly. The gravest countenances relaxed from conventional severity. Archdeacons smiled as if in anticipation of coming enjoyment, and even deans responded to the salutations of the inferior clergy with unwonted urbanity. {567} The bright mirrors, well-selected pictures, and far-reaching sofas which adorned Dr. Easy's saloon, and bore witness at once to the amplitude of his revenues and the refinement of his taste, were evidently felt to be an improvement on the decorous gloom of the Jerusalem chamber. Tables of marble and rosewood were covered with choice engravings and other works of art. Portraits of the Misses Easy attracted the attention of the younger clergy. The absence of reporters imparted to their elder brethren a welcome sense of liberty. Free but not undignified postures preluded the familiar dialogue in which each could take cheerful part, without the unpleasant fear of newspaper criticism. Convocation had become a social or family reunion, and was evidently satisfied with the change. Informal discussion preceded the coming debate, and themes which never fail to interest the clerical mind occupied the company. Dean Pompous disputed with a neighbor the exact pecuniary value of a benefice likely to be shortly vacant, and suggested a probable successor to the dying incumbent. Dean Primitive conversed with Archdeacon Chasuble on the recent letter of the primate, inviting the bishops 'in visible communion with the Church of England' to a council in September. Had his friend noticed, he asked, that remarkable announcement that 'such council would not be competent to make declarations, or lay down definitions on points of doctrine'? His friend had certainly noticed it. He had heard of councils, both general and local, which had assembled to decide on points of doctrine, but it was the first time he had ever heard of a council summoned with the avowed object of avoiding all such questions. In such cheerful talk the reverend guests continued to indulge, till their number being at length complete, there arose suddenly, amid the hum of general conversation, a loud cry of 'Chair, chair!' Then the host, leaning against a chimney-piece, bowed to his friends, and prayed them to be seated. Silence being restored, the debate commenced as follows:

"Dr. Easy rejoiced that his reverend friends had attended in such imposing numbers. In compliance with their invitation, he had selected a subject to be submitted to their notice. Their last debate, as they seemed generally to feel, had proved to themselves and to the public that authority neither did nor could reside in the English Church. It was certain that no individual clergyman, nor all the clergy put together, could decide any point of doctrine whatever; so that the day seemed close at hand if it had not actually arrived—when an Anglican would be at liberty either to accept or reject every truth contained in the Christian revelation. The learned prolocutor had well epitomized all the points of their last debate, and gracefully justified the characteristic decisions of privy council, when he said, or at least implied, that the practical result of all Anglican teaching, as of all Anglican history, might be expressed in such a formula as this, 'Christianity, from first to last, is simply a matter of opinion;' or, 'The primary object of the Christian revelation is to render it impossible for any man to know the truth with certainty.'

"In confirmation of this view of their position as members of the Established Church, he was happy to be able to call their attention to the recent declaration of one of her highest dignitaries. {568} He regretted that he was not present with them, that he might have enforced in person the very striking statements which he was about to quote from a published volume of his sermons, with which he (Dr. Easy) had only become acquainted since their last meeting. The very Rev. Dr. Elliot, the present Dean of Bristol, had publicly asserted, without incurring the slightest shadow of reproach, these two momentous truths; (i) that the Church of England is, in all respects, a purely human institution; and (2) that her members are not bound in conscience to believe a single doctrine taught by her. But he would quote his exact words:

"'The Church of England,' said the Dean of Bristol, 'is created by the law, upheld by the law, paid by the law, and may be changed by the law, just as any other institution in the land.'

"'I cannot desire you to accept either what I affirm, or what the church affirms, as undoubtedly true, or the only true interpretation of the mysteries of God.'

"It was pleasant to see the conclusions at which they had arrived in a former debate embraced with so much energy of conviction by one of the highest functionaries of their national church. And now, accepting these conclusions as indisputable, and harmonizing perfectly with the life and history of that church, he was led to ask, 'If the authority of the English Church be purely human, can her orders be divine?' This was the question he should propose for their consideration, and without another word of preface, he would submit the following motion to their vote: 'That this meeting, being unanimous on the point that authority can have no existence in the Church of England, desires to pass to the discussion of the cognate question, "Are English orders human or divine?"'"

The discussion as to the validity of these orders is pretty exhaustive, and the arguments are put with a terseness and effect quite beyond adequate praise. The hand of a master in dialectics is evident from beginning to end. Instead of attempting a summary, which would necessarily fall far short of doing justice to this part of the pamphlet, we shall let the ritualistic clergyman give the following account of himself:

"I call myself a Catholic priest, because I am either that or a ridiculous impostor, and I object to be considered in that light. I claim the power of the keys, because they belong to the priestly office, and I will not allow that the clergy of any other church have more power than I have. I can consecrate the host, though I am not quite sure what that means, because I should be only a Protestant minister if I could not, and a Protestant minister is the object of my contempt. I can absolve from sin, though the English clergy never knew they could do it, because the commission was given to somebody, and, therefore, it must have been given to me. I teach the Church of England what she ought to hold, and instruct the Church of Rome what she ought to retract, because I clearly perceive the deficiencies of the one, and detect the excesses of the other. I assert that my doctrines are part of God's truth, but I communicate with those who flatly deny them, because, when I am taunted with this, I can always reply, that it is the mark of a self-willed man to seek another communion in order to quiet his conscience. {569} I countenance, by remaining in the Church of England, all the mortal heresies which have ever existed in her, but I tell my accusers that I only remain in her in order to remove them. I am in communion with no church in the world, but I invite them all to come into communion with me, and indicate the terms on which I will permit them to do so. I am not in schism, though I dwell in solitude, because the other Christian bodies refuse to associate with me; and I am not in heresy, though I every day communicate with heretics, because I do it only for their good. I do not obey my bishop, but I propose to him to obey me, which he foolishly declines to do. All churches have erred, but I am ready to teach them all, if they will only listen to me; and though the perfect idea of Christianity has perished from the earth, I am able to restore it at any moment, whenever I shall be requested to do so. I remain in the Church of England, though she allows most of her clergy to teach lies, because I do not choose to quit her; and I refuse to enter the Church of Rome, though she forces all her priests to teach truth, because I do not choose to obey her. I prefer to obey myself, because I find no other authority worthy to be obeyed; and, though I admit that this position has its disadvantages, I must positively decline to exchange it for any other."

"Dr. Easy said he could not permit his friends to depart, as they now manifested their intention to do, without thanking them both for their attendance on that occasion and for the part which they had taken in a discussion of great interest and importance. He would not abuse his privilege as their host by adding to the discourse of the archdeacon more than a few brief words. They had arrived, he supposed, at a common conviction on the two great questions of authority in the Anglican Church, and the real character of her orders. It was at once their wisdom and their safety to insist that both were purely human. Any other theory, as the archdeacon had clearly proved, would expose not only themselves but their common Christianity to contempt and ruin. Either ordination, as it existed in the English Church, was not a rite intended to produce a supernatural effect, except in a sense which might with equal justice be applied to the orders of Mr. Spurgeon or Mr. Newman Hall; or, if it was, the Reformed and Protestant ministry established by Elizabeth and inaugurated by Parker, which had never displayed the faintest trace of any such effect, was a failure so portentous, that they must remain for ever silent in the presence of any scoffing infidel who should use it as an argument against the truth of Christianity.

"He trusted, therefore, that they were about to separate that night with this practical conclusion, that the idea of a catholic priesthood, one in doctrine and divine in endowments, existing in the English Church, was not only a contradiction of her whole history, but absolutely inconsistent with the belief that Christianity was true. Either that foolish notion must be abandoned, or they must honestly admit that, at least, the English Church was a delusion. {570} For if any man could deliberately maintain, as a small party among them desired to do, that the entire body of the English clergy had been, from the beginning, a supernatural caste, though it was undeniable that they had always exactly resembled the laity in all their habits, principles, and actions; that they had received a special vocation from Heaven to teach the same unvarying doctrine, though no two of them could ever agree together what that doctrine was; that they possessed the faculty of retaining or remitting sin, though, for three centuries, they had never once attempted to use it, and had bitterly derided the assumption of it by the clergy of another community; that they were clothed, by the transforming grace of orders, with angelic purity and virginity, though they and their bishops had ever been even more impatient of a life of continence than any other class of human society; that they were able to call down God upon a human altar, though their own founders began their career by pulling down altars, and their own tribunals ruled that the English Church denied their existence; that the chief function of their ecclesiastical life was to offer the daily sacrifice, though the Church of England had carefully obliterated every trace of that mystery from the national mind; and, finally, that the highest spiritual privilege of their flocks was to adore the consecrated host, though their own prayer-book expressly declared it was 'idolatry to be abhorred of all faithful Christians.' If, he said, any man could seriously affirm the series of propositions here enumerated, and many more like them, he should be ready to admit, what it would no longer be possible to deny, that neither religion nor history had any real meaning, and that modern Christianity had been more fertile in childish conceits and preposterous delusions than any system of heathen mythology with which he was acquainted.

"If, on the other hand, they were content to believe with the whole nation, that the English clergy were simply the representatives of the English reformation; that they were Protestant ministers, not Catholic priests; that they were distinguished in nothing from other men, except as having undertaken to remind them, from time to time, of truths which all were too apt to forget; they would then assume the only character which really belonged to them, or in which either their own communion or any other would ever consent to recognize them. In that case, they would no longer expose either themselves or their religion to the world's contempt, nor unwittingly furnish the unbeliever with a fatal argument against the truth and the reasonableness of Christianity. The Church of England had never been the home of the supernatural, as all mankind knew from her own history; and to try to introduce so strange an element into such a receptacle would be a far more dangerous experiment than to 'pour new wine into old bottles.' They might as well attempt to inclose the lightning which could shiver rocks in the hands of an infant, as to make the English Church the shrine of mysteries which she had existed only to deny."

The pamphlet from which the above excerpts are made is now in press, and will soon be published by "The Catholic Publication House."

New Publications.

The Irish Reformation; or, The Alleged Conversion of the Irish Bishops at the accession of Queen Elizabeth, and the assumed descent of the present established hierarchy in Ireland from the ancient Irish Church, disproved.
By W. Maziere Brady, D.D., Vicar of Donoghpatrick and Rector of Kilberry, Diocese of Meath, and formerly Chaplain to the Earls of Clarendon, St. Germans, and Carlisle, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, etc., etc.
Fifth edition, containing also a letter from James A. Froude, M.A.; notices of the early Elizabethan Prelates, and of the sufferings of the Roman Catholic Bishops; and tables showing in juxtaposition the Anglican and Roman Catholic successions of Irish Archbishops, with lists of all Irish Roman Catholic Bishops from 1558 to the present time.
London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1867.
For sale by the Catholic Publication Society,
126 Nassau Street, New York.

The author of this book, which has become celebrated in Great Britain, and has received the highest commendations from the English secular press, is an Irish Protestant clergyman. Catholic clergymen and scholars may, therefore, think that it is written in favor of the Irish establishment, or lacking in thorough information on Catholic topics. On the contrary, it is the most damaging attack on that iniquitous institution that has yet appeared; replete with solid learning, and an invaluable companion to the excellent works of Msgr. Moran, of Dublin, on the Irish Catholic Church and hierarchy. It is not to be supposed, however, that Dr. Brady is a Catholic in disguise, a Romanizer, or an enemy of the church whose minister he is. He is a Protestant Episcopalian, a real believer in religious liberty, and a man of liberal sentiments, who respects the Catholic Church and loves the rights and welfare of the Irish people. He has written this work not against the doctrine or discipline of the Protestant Episcopal Church, but against the falsehoods, and ignorant or fraudulent misrepresentations of historical facts, by which certain writers have attempted to justify and bolster up the absurd pretence that the Anglican establishment in Ireland is the true Catholic Church of that country. These writers, among whom Palmer is a signal instance, pretend that the Marian bishops in Ireland, as a body, accepted the pretended reformation of Elizabeth; that the Irish hierarchy, church, and nation, renounced their allegiance to the Bishop of Rome, and to the doctrine of the Roman Church; that the apostolic succession was regularly transmitted to the Protestant bishops of Ireland, and that the present Roman Catholic hierarchy and church were established de novo, in a schismatical manner, by emissaries of the Pope. Consequently, they say, the Protestant archbishops of Armagh and Dublin are the canonical successors of St. Patrick and St. Lawrence; the other Protestant bishops are also the canonical successors to the ancient Catholic bishops of the sees they pretend to fill, the ecclesiastical property legally belongs to the Protestant establishment, and the Roman Catholic bishops are intruders who have drawn the majority of the Irish people into a schism. It was enough to have forced Protestantism into domination in Ireland by force, rapine, slaughter, and persecution without a parallel; to have robbed the Irish church and the Irish people of everything they possessed, without adding insult to injury by this preposterous pretence. Dr. Brady has laboriously and triumphantly refuted it, and Mr. Froude, the English historian, has given his full indorsement to Dr. Brady's statements. Dr. Brady proves that, at the most, two of the Marian bishops submitted to Elizabeth Curwin, of Dublin, and O'Fihil, of Leighlin. Curwin's apostasy is a notorious fact, but that of O'Fihil is denied by Dr. Moran, who adduces evidence against it. {572} Curwin was an Englishman, and consecrated by English bishops. Therefore, according to Dr. Brady, but one Irishman, having Irish consecration, deserted the communion of the Pope for that of the Queen and Parker. He goes through all the Irish sees seriatim, proving the continuity of succession from their ancient to their modern Catholic incumbents, and proving, also, the forcible intrusion of Protestants by degrees, and with many breaks, into the same titular sees. He states the conclusion derived from his facts and arguments thus: "In point of fact, the Irish nation from 1558 to 1867 has continued in communion with Rome, never having ceased to be, in its clergy, priests, and people, as thoroughly Roman Catholic as at the accession of Elizabeth," (p. 199.) The claim of a succession of orders by a line traceable to the old Irish hierarchy is also disposed of. The doctor shows that whatever orders the Irish Protestant church has are derived from Curwin, and from him alone, through Loftus, who was consecrated by him to Armagh, and thence transferred to Dublin, in lieu of Curwin himself, who was transferred to Oxford. Of course he does not deny the validity of the orders, but merely the fact that they descend from an Irish source. These orders cannot, however, be recognized by the Catholic Church for two reasons. First, there is a probability that Loftus was never ordained priest, and, consequently, was incapable of receiving Episcopal consecration. Second, he was consecrated by K. Edward's Ordinal, which is an invalid form. Anglicans may solace themselves as much as they please by the reflection that they can trace the Irish ordinations up to Curwin, an undoubted bishop, and may cover up the two great flaws we have pointed out in their validity, by the special pleading they are such adepts in using. This will not, however, benefit in any way those who are obliged to trace their orders to Parker, nor will it affect the position of either English or Irish Protestant clergymen in relation to the Catholic Church, or even to the schismatics of the East.

Dr. Brady throws much light on some other topics of historical interest. He shows, among other things, how bad was the character of Curwin, Loftus, and several others of the first Protestant bishops of Ireland, and, on the other hand, does justice to the virtues and martyr-like constancy of the Catholic prelates. He proves, against the denials of some Protestant writers, the truth of the history of the cruel martyrdom of that great hero of the faith, Archbishop O'Hurley, a man who richly deserves, in common with many other Irish martyrs, to be canonized.

The lists of Catholic bishops add much to the value of the work, and so also does the refutation of many Protestant calumnies against the Irish people, and the exposure of several falsifications of history.

On Catholic principles, the established church of Ireland is nothing but a schismatical sect, whose bishops are intruders upon the domain of the lawful bishops of the country. Even had they valid ordination, they could make no claim to a lawful succession in jurisdiction.

On Protestant principles, it is not in any way entitled to be considered as the national church of Ireland, but only as the church of a small minority of the people, whose ancestors forcibly intruded themselves upon the Irish soil by the aid of fire, and sword, and confiscation. We have no hostility against the Episcopalians of Ireland, who are not accountable for the crimes of their ancestors, and many of whom are worthy persons and true Irish patriots. We would not have them molested in their religious liberty, or even deprived of the churches in their possession, provided they can make any use of them, although it is so painful to Catholic feeling to see these ancient sacred shrines of the faith in their hands. But we would have them deprived of the privileges of a state establishment, Catholic and Protestant dissenters freed from the obligation of paying tithes to their clergy, and themselves left to sustain their own religion by their own contributions. The Irish establishment is a crying iniquity, and it ought to be suppressed. It is time, also, that the glorious history of the Catholic Church in Ireland, since the disastrous epoch of Henry VIII., should be better known than it is. {573} We thank Dr. Brady for his valuable contribution to truth and the cause of justice, and we recommend his work, as the production of a Protestant Episcopal clergyman of learning, honesty, and candor, to all who are interested in the history of Ireland, and especially to his own brethren in the ministry in this country.

The Three Holy Kings.
With Photographic Illustrations.
New York: Kurd and Houghton.

The writer of this volume presents us a short essay upon the Holy Wise Men of the East who came to adore our Lord soon after his nativity. The subject is one which requires considerable research to bring out a vivid picture of the character of the Magi, the circumstances of their journey to Judea, and their subsequent fortunes. The author confines himself to a simple reproduction of the gospel narrative, with a passing notice of the original bass-relief and pictures, with photographs of which the book is illustrated. It is well known that in the great Cathedral of Cologne is to be seen the shrine containing the relics of these holy kings. We are not surprised to find the writer discrediting the authenticity of these relics; but in the face of so much testimony, and against the weight of such ancient traditions, he who questions their truth must give solid, or at least plausible reasons, and not take it for granted as the author (we trust, innocently) does, that "some of the bones said to be of Saint Ursula and her eleven thousand virgins, which are everywhere exposed throughout the walls and pavement of the church of Saint Ursula, in the same city of Cologne, have been discovered to be those of sheep and other animals," in order to throw discredit upon the authenticity of all relics.

We refer him to an article entitled "The Truth of Supposed Legends and Fables," Catholic World, July, 1865, where he will find the subject of Saint Ursula treated in a masterly manner by His Eminence, the late Cardinal Wiseman.

We are surprised, however, to find the writer designating the Catholic Church as the Romish Church. This appellation every scholar knows, or ought to know, is slang, except in the mouths and on the pages of bitter and ignorant controversialists, where it is idiomatic. Messrs. Hurd & Houghton have published the book in their best style; and were these defects removed, we would cheerfully recommend it to our readers.

Ye Legende Of St. Gwendoline.
With Eight Photographs, by Addis, from Drawings by John W. Ehninger.
New York: G. P. Putnam and Son. 1867.

This truly magnificent volume, from the press of the Messrs. Putnam, is one of the choicest specimens of typography ever issued in the United States. The legend is written in early English, and the author has closely adhered throughout to the use of Saxon words and to the Saxon form of phrases. The story, replete with romance, is charmingly told, and reflects great credit upon the writer's literary ability. St. Gwendoline is first a princess, "fulle, fayre, and statelie, and of manie excellent dispositions, and verie learned, soe that there was no queene or princesse like her for beautie and goodlinesse and alle learninge." The king, her father, gives her a realm of her own, and then invites the neighboring kings and princes to visit her, hoping she would marry one of them. Though many came, she refused them all, because she did not love them. One, the King of Mynwede, dies in her presence, broken-hearted at her refusal. The description of this scene is unequalled for its simple and touching pathos. At last, Queen Gwendoline sees in a dream the face of a knight, whom, if a real person, she would certainly love; and at a tournament she discovers in the victorious champion the knight himself. Unfortunately for the love-sick queen,

  "She who weds not when she may,
  When she will she must have nay."

The knight is already a husband. Queen Gwendoline is good, pious, charitable; but love makes sad havoc with us all.

She will not give up her unlawful affection, and even prays for the death of the knight's own lady. Prostrate before the altar, with heart rebelling against God, an angel appears to her, and reasons with her. But what avail the best reasons, were they given by angels, when we have wilfully yielded ourselves up to the tyrannical mastery of passion? But God had great designs on Queen Gwendoline, and he lets this suffering fall upon her that he may purify her soul the more perfectly. The scene of her vision changes; the chapel walls divide, and before her is Calvary, with its "grayte crosse, whereon hung in paynes and woe ye Saviour of ye world. And ever mournfullie and stedfastlie Hee gazed upon her. And when ye Queene saw ye vision, shee cast her owne wille and her sinnes from her with a grayte crye."

And more than that. She becomes one of those who, for the love of God, sacrifice all human love. She lays aside her queenly crown, and royal robes, enters a convent; becomes, after many years, the abbess, and dies a saint.

We have given but a very imperfect sketch of this beautiful legend, but we hope enough to induce many of our readers to peruse it entire. The photographic illustrations are good, but such a rare publication as this ought to be adorned with first-class line engravings. Its appearance at the present time is very opportune, for it is a volume which will make a valuable and most appropriate present for the holidays.

Shamrock And Thistle; Or,
Young America In Ireland And Scotland. A Story of Travel and Adventure,
by Oliver Optic.
Boston: Lee & Shepard. 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 343.

The author of this volume is well known as the writer of several interesting stories for boys. The book before us purports to be adventures of United States Naval Cadets in Ireland and Scotland during the visit of the schoolship to British waters. The author's brief sketch of Irish history, and his descriptions of Irish scenery, is very fair, and generally correct. Occasionally he lets out the usual sneer at Irish poverty and Irish customs. He is especially severe on the Irish hackmen of Cork and the boatmen of Killarney. The book will interest youthful readers, for whom it is written. Its style is somewhat inflated, and it has a general tone of boyish exaggeration throughout, which we suppose was the intention of the author, as he wrote it for boys. This, however, we cannot approve, for we think the youth of America pick up these ideas easily enough without having them put before them as examples, in books intended for their use. We are willing to forgive the author for much of his exaggeration, for the fairness exhibited by him in speaking of Ireland and her history, and her many wrongs under English rule. It will at least give "Young America" a more correct idea of that country than can be found in "Peter Parley's" books, and others of that same stamp.

The Hymn Of Hildebert,
and other Mediaeval Hymns, with Translations.
By Erastus C. Benedict.
New York: Anson D. F. Randolph. 1867.

Mr. Erastus C. Benedict amuses himself "in his occasional hours of leisure," as he tells us, by translating the grand old hymns of the Catholic Church into English rhyme. But he finds them full of horrible anti-protestant doctrine, and it would never do to put the true meaning of the verses before the eyes of his Protestant brethren. Besides, either his literary or his Protestant conscience would doubtless forbid an honest translation. Not being able, therefore, to make an honest one, he makes a dishonest one rather than not make a book. We give him credit, however, for making an apology for doing so, wretched as it is. All the doctrinal assertions of these hymns were undoubtedly meant by the writers of them to be understood in a Catholic sense; but, says Mr. B., they may be understood in a Protestant sense, (just as the Scriptures are interpreted in a Protestant sense, we suppose,) and thus garbled, distorted, and falsified, he puts them out in print.

It is bad enough to disgrace one's walls with ridiculous imitations of the pictures of great masters, but to cut down a genuine Murillo or Vandyke to suit a second-hand frame, bought in a cheap auction lot, and then touch up what is left of the subject with a white-wash brush, is something too execrable to be expressed. We append an example or two for our readers' amusement.

  "Verbum caro, panem verum.
    Verbo carnem efficit;
  Fitque sanguis Christi merum.

  "Word made flesh, among us dwelling,
    With true bread and wine regaleth;
   By His word the mystery telling."

                              Page 55.

  "Inflammatus et accensus,
   Per te, Virgo, sim defensus
     In die judicii.

  "By a heavenly zeal excited,
   When the judgment fires are lighted,
     Then may I be justified."

                             Page 67.

  "Dogma datur Christianis,
   Quod in carnem transit panis,
   Et vinum in sanguinem.

  "Here to Christians Jesus preacheth,
   Here to us the mystery teacheth,
   Never sense perceiving it—
   Flesh and blood for us devoted,
   Are by bread and wine denoted,
   Living faith believing it."
                             Page 95.

These, we think, will suffice. The appearance of this new one among the many late republications in various forms of these hymns furnishes us with another gratifying proof that our Protestant friends are beginning to regret having consigned all the works of "popery" to perdition; and we rejoice that they rehabilitate her poetry among the first of them; for the poetry of a church is as truly the sincerest expression of its heart as it is of a people's. But in the name of sincerity let us have an honest version. When or where did a Catholic ever "understand" the works of a Protestant in a Catholic sense? Let Mr. Benedict try again. We are sure he can and will do better, for there is no sign of malicious intent in his volume; and his language, when speaking of the Catholic Church, and of the writers whose poems he reprints, is that of a scholar and a gentleman.

This well known and popular book is republished in beautiful form, with excellent illustrations, by the Messrs. Roberts, with an introductory notice by Epes Sargent. We cannot agree with Mr. Sargent, however, that Silvio Pellico, if living now, would have had any sympathy with the present Italian rebellion, or its unworthy and anti-Christian leaders, as he intimates. The publishers would do well to leave out the introductory notice.

Breaking Away: or, The Fortunes of a Student.
By Oliver Optic.
Boston: Lee & Shepard.

In this volume are described the adventures of the pupils of the Parkville Liberal Institute, consequent on their revolt against a tyrannical principal. Their "treasons, stratagems, and spoils" are told in pleasing style, and will meet none the less with boyish approval if somewhat difficult of imitation.

Climbing The Rope; or, God Helps Those who Help Themselves:
and
Billy Grimes's Favorite; or, Johnny Greenleaf's Talent.
By May Mannering.
Boston: Lee & Shepard.

These two volumes, the first of the "Helping Hand Series," are well adapted to make the youthful reader self-reliant, while carefully guarding against self-sufficiency. The principal characters are well drawn, and there are several charming episodes of village life. There is one blemish. How could Biddy O'Rooke, (sic,) "a good Catholic," say that "though she had been always to church, and confessed all her life, when she had a chance, it wasn't much of the Great Father himself that she heard"?

Alexis, The Runaway; or, Afloat in the World.
By Mrs. Rosa Abbott Parker.
Boston: Lee & Shepard.

The search of Alexis for his master, the Count von Homburg, results in some striking adventures by sea and land; in the New World and the Old. Pierre Grepan, fairly love-crazed Prissy Dean, and the kind-hearted Jacqueline Rasheburne, are well conceived.

Dotty Dimple At Her Grandmother's.
By Sophie May, author of Little Prudie Stories.
Boston: Lee & Shepard.

A charming little tale, attractive from its very simplicity; a true child's book.

The Life Of The Right Hon. J. P. Curran.
By Thomas Davis, M.R.I.A.;
and a Memoir Of The Life Of The Right Hon. Henry Grattan.
By D. O. Madden, of the Inner Temple;
with Addenda, and letter to Lord Clare.
Boston: Patrick Donahoe.

Those whom a bulky volume affrights will welcome this excellent abridgment of the early days, matured labors, and closing years of two of the most illustrious among the many eminent orators and statesmen whose eloquence and patriotism irradiated that saddest era in the history of Ireland, the extinction of her national independence.

Happy Hours Of Childhood.
A Series of Tales for the Little Ones.
By a member of the Order of Mercy, authoress of the Life of Catherine McAuley, etc.
New York: P. O'Shea.

Among the many books for children which the approach of the holidays yields, we accord the first rank to these charming tales, "which combine," to quote the authoress's own ideal of a really good juvenile, "all the fascinations of a lovely fairy tale with the highest spiritual teachings of which childhood is capable. We hope she will soon repeat this, her most happy experiment in childish literature.

Holly And Mistletoe:
Tales translated from the German of Rosalie Koch.
New York: P. O'Shea.

A collection of stories intended mainly for children, all inculcating self-denial, truth, and Christian trust. The translation is occasionally somewhat defective. Otherwise, the work is to be commended to the attention of those who wish to put into the hands of children pleasant and instructive reading.

The Catholic Publication Society has in press, and will soon publish, The Diary of a Sister of Mercy, by Mrs. C. M. Braine.

The Society will also publish, about New-Year's, Lectures on Reason and Revelation, by Rev. T. S. Preston. 1 vol. 12mo. Price, $1.50.

Books Received.

The Old Roman World;
the Grandeur and Failure of its Civilization.
By John Lord, LL.D. 1 vol. 8vo. pp. 605.

The History of the Church of God, during the Period of Revelation.
By Rev. Charles Colcock Jones, D.D.
1 vol. 8vo., pp. 558.

Prayers from Plymouth Pulpit.
By H. W. Beecher. 12mo., pp. 332.

The Glories of the Virgin Mother,
and Channel of Divine Grace.
From the Latin of St. Bernard, 1 vol. 16mo., pp. 172.

The Life of the Rev. J. B. M. Vianney,
the celebrated Parish-Priest of Ars, France.
Abridged from the French of Abbé Monin,
by Rev. B. S. Piot.
1 vol. 16mo. pp. 216.

The Catholic World.

Vol. VI., No. 35.—February, 1868.

Paris Impious And Religious Paris. [Footnote 55]

[Footnote 55: Les OEuores de Charité a Paris, par Julie Gouraud. Le Bien qui se fait en France, par M. l'Abbé Mullois.]

Am English lady, with whom the writer of this article fell into conversation one day at the table d'hôte of a Paris hotel, made the remark, "What a pity that the Parisians are so wicked!" This remark expresses the common opinion of English and American Protestants about Paris. The general desecration of Sunday, the evident lack of religion among a great portion of the people, the open infidelity of many of the leading newspapers, and other things of the like nature, strike their attention immediately. The extreme gayety of the French character appears, moreover, to the sedate Anglo-Saxon like an utter levity and frivolity. Puritan notions about Sunday, as foreign to the minds of continental Protestants as they are to those of Catholics, make them look also upon many innocent recreations and amusements in which the French people indulge on Sunday, as marks of an irreligious spirit, when they are not at all so. The consequence is, that they make an unfavorable judgment of the Catholic religion in consequence of what they see in Paris which is either really or in their opinion impious and immoral. This judgment is, however, altogether superficial; first, because the actual estimate of the religious and moral state of Paris is partial and one-sided; and second, because the responsibility of the really existing evils is unjustly cast upon the Catholic religion.

We propose, therefore, to give a more just and correct estimate of Paris as it is, by presenting its religious aspect in the same coup d'oeil with its irreligious aspect, and showing the true relations of the good and evil, as they exist side by side in mutual hostility and struggle, with each other and with their causes.

The light in which Paris is regarded as a Catholic city, and France as a Catholic nation, by English and American Protestants, is an incorrect one. As Paris represents France, we will speak of Paris alone, leaving the reader to apply to France generally, guided by his own knowledge and discretion, what we say about the capital. {578} Paris is rather to be called a city which was once Catholic, and which Catholicity is striving to reconquer, than an actually Catholic city. The French Revolution abolished the Catholic Church, exterminated the clergy and religious orders, and put an end to the Christian religion in Paris. The mass of the people lost all faith and religious sentiment, and consequently could not transmit them to the generations which have been born since, and which have, grown up in ignorance and heathenism. Since the partial restoration of the Catholic religion by Napoleon the First, constant and zealous efforts have been made to convert this heathen mass, yet a vast number of the people remain still practically heathen, and a considerable proportion of them are not even baptized. With the common people there is more of ignorance and thoughtlessness than of positive infidelity or aversion from the church. In the higher walks of life, beside the ignorant and thoughtless class who have but a slight tincture of Catholic belief, there is the large and influential class of the positive infidels, who keep up a continual war upon every form of revealed religion. The majority of the people of Paris having thus been always in a state of greater or less alienation from all positive Christian belief and wholly regardless of the authority of the church since the French Revolution, the proper observance of the Sunday has never been reestablished. The people having lost the habit of resting on that day, and having dropped all thought of going to church, business and work have gone on upon Sunday from the mere vis inertiae. The church and the minority of the population have not been able to bring back the general observance of the day. Consequently, those who wish to observe it and to have it observed, are to a great extent dragged in to follow the common custom by the necessity of the case, and the clergy are not able to insist as strongly as they would wish on the obligation of resting from servile labor. It is not to be supposed that the clergy and the genuine Catholics of Paris approve of this desecration of Sunday. Let any one read the eloquent remarks of F. Hyacinthe, the most celebrated preacher of Paris, on this subject, in our last number, and he will see a correct statement of the sentiments of the Archbishop of Paris and all his clergy respecting the observance of Sunday. It is indeed a shocking spectacle, and one disgraceful to the great French nation, to see all public works going on, nearly all shops open, all factories in motion, and to meet the crowd of blouses shoving their way through the other, well-dressed crowd, as they return from work on Sunday, which ought to be the poor man's holiday. As a consequence of this unnatural privation of the day of rest given him by God, the laborer, from sheer inability to make a mere machine of himself, seizes on the Monday. Instead of the holy, cheerful rest of Sunday, there is a dull, apathetic cessation of work on Monday, and the blouses are again met loitering about the streets and quays, too often in a state of intoxication. The accountability for this falls not upon the Catholic Church, but upon that party which has been and ever is working for her destruction, and which receives to a great extent the sympathy and encouragement of Protestants in England and America.

We cannot pretend to say precisely what proportion of the population of Paris is practically outside of the Catholic Church. We have been told by an American gentleman that one of the clergymen of St. Eustache estimated the population of that parish at 40,000, of whom 10,000 attend Mass, and 3000 approach the Sacraments. {579} If this estimate can be applied to the whole city, then 900,000 of the people habitually neglect the church, leaving 300,000 who habitually frequent it, out of whom somewhat less than 100,000 receive the Sacraments. If this estimate is incorrect, it will probably call out a more, correct statement from some of our friends in Paris, which we shall be glad to receive. Without committing ourselves, therefore, to any exact estimates, we may nevertheless affirm what is an evident fact, that there exists within the great world of Paris a smaller, but still in magnitude a considerable religious and Catholic world which is really one of the glories of Christendom for the extent and fervor of its works of faith, charity, and piety. There is a religious as well as an impious Paris, which, in many respects deserves to be held up as a model to the other portions of the Catholic Church, and is entitled to the admiration of all Christians throughout the world.

We will begin with the charities of Paris, leaving its religion to be spoke of afterwards. Paris is world-renowned for the number and excellence of its charitable institutions. These are not exclusively the work of the religious portion of the people, but common to all, from the imperial court down to the humblest class. There is a natural basis for charity in the French character. France is the most completely, highly, and universally civilized nation in the world. This civilization has been matured and brought to perfection by Christianity, yet the superiority of its kind and degree is due to the fact that Christianity found in the French character an uncommonly plastic and ductile material to work upon. The truth of this observation is proved by the refinement and politeness prevailing so universally among all classes. There must be something naturally amiable in the French character, which takes easily the refining, gentilizing influences of Christian civilization. In the ordinary, small affairs of life and common intercourse this is politeness, and it adds no little to the pleasantness and happiness of every-day existence, detracts no little from its burdens. Carried into a higher sphere, it becomes philanthropy. The Catholic religion evolved it into the highest activity and elevated it to the rank of supernatural charity. This charity is still the interior and principal wheel which imparts movement and supplies force. Yet its movement, once communicated, is retained even by those who have lost Catholic faith and charity, or who are acting chiefly in view of temporal motives. There is a general interest in and desire for the well-being and happiness of the whole people. There is not so much liberty in France as in some other countries, yet there is more equality and fraternity there than anywhere else on the globe. The government is somewhat despotic, yet there is no doubt that it labors for the well-being of its subjects. The utmost care is taken of life and property, and the most extreme vigilance is exercised to see that the public is well served in every branch of administration. The emperor is the hardest working man in Paris, and the empress is not at all behindhand in sustaining her part of the arduous as well as honorable duties of the throne. Who does not know that plans for model tenements, projects for relieving the laboring classes, charitable and benevolent enterprises of various sorts, are the continual subjects of interest and consultation in the palace of the Tuileries? {580} The emperor's fête on the fifteenth of August, with the abundant alms distributed on that day throughout every quarter of Paris, and the permission to ask alms of everybody conceded to the mendicant class, are like a gleam of more Catholic times, and present a pleasing contrast with the glum demeanor and frozen state of royalty in England and Prussia. We may speak here, also, of the remarkable honesty and fidelity in taking care of the property of others which is so general in Paris among all sorts of persons, especially those engaged in serving the public, and of which we might give a great number of instances, were it convenient to do so. In regard to hospitals, and other public institutions for the relief of the sick, poor, and otherwise suffering classes, it is needless to go into particulars to show how energetic and liberal is the action of the French government in regard to them.

English and American Protestants exaggerate too much the good of their own civilization, and blow their own trumpet in a fearfully sonorous manner. They think too much of long faces, measured gravity of demeanor, drawling tones, long prayers, set, evangelical phrases, and the tithing, in a metaphorical sense, of mint, anise, and cummin. They are blind to the gross social defects and evils marring their civilization; and to the corruptions and immoralities which are poisoning their national life-blood. We do not deny the evils which exist in Paris; nevertheless, we maintain that it is in a far sounder moral state, and far superior in general social well-being, to London or New-York. There remains, even in impious and worldly Paris, an effect produced by the Catholic religion in former times, and sustained even now by a secret supply of force from the same cause, which places it in a much nearer proximity to genuine Christianity than any other great city in the world. But we will leave these generalities and come to a closer inspection of the specific charities of Paris which are in an immediate relation with the Catholic Church, and chiefly sustained by her faithful members.

(1.) The Work of the Faubourgs. This is a society of ladies founded in 1848. Its object is to provide clothing and schooling for the poorest children in the outskirts of Paris, who are sought out and cared for by the ladies of the society in person. A concert of the first quality is given once a year which produces from 6000 to 8000 francs, and there are numerous subscribers at five francs a year.

(2.) The Maternal Society. This society was founded in 1788, with Queen Marie Antoinette as directress. Its object is to encourage mothers to nurse their own infants and to furnish them the assistance necessary to enable them to do it. Forty-eight sections of the city are assigned, each one to a lady of the society, and these forty-eight ladies meet once a month to regulate the distribution of the charities. On the day of the infant's birth, the mother receives ten francs and a set of baby-clothes, five francs a month for ten months, and a change of dress for the infant. If the mother is unable to nurse the infant, a nurse is provided. The ladies, moreover, take particular care to give good counsel and advice to the mothers of families whom they visit respecting their religious and moral duties. Napoleon the First placed the society under the protection of the Empress Maria Louisa, and gave it a donation of 100,000 francs. Nine hundred families are assisted and 60,000 francs expended by the society, every year.

(3.) The Cribs. The institution of cribs was established to furnish a supplement to the work of the maternal society. Great numbers of poor women are unable to remain at home during the day with their children, on account of the necessity of going out to work. The cribs afford them an asylum where their infants are taken care of during the hours of their absence from home. The merit of devising this work of charity belongs to M. Marbeau, a member of the council of charities, who founded the first crib in 1844 at Chaillot. The cribs are now established in every quarter of Paris. They are regulated by a council of administration under the presidency of the mayor. A committee of ladies appoints and superintends the inspectresses of the work. Sisters of Charity, aided by nurses, have charge of the cribs. A medical committee watches over the sanitary department. Since the foundation of the work, about fifteen thousands infants have been admitted. Neat little cradles or beds are provided for the youngest infants, walking-stools and playthings for the older ones, and some are left to tumble about and play upon the floor of a small room which is carpeted with a mattress. The mothers bring their infants in the morning, come during the day to nurse them, and take them home at night. On holidays they keep them at home during the day, and can do so on other days when they have no work.

(4.) Halls of Asylum. This is the delicate name given with true French politeness, that politeness to the poor of which little is known in England or America, to what we should call poor-schools or ragged-schools. The first attempt to institute these schools in France was made in 1770, and the celebrated Oberlin, a Protestant pastor in the Vosges, is said to have been the first proposer of the plan. It is only since 1826 that they have been in general and successful operation, owing chiefly to the exertions of Madame de Pastoret and M. Cochin. There are now in France 3308 asylums, which have educated 3,833,856 children, besides 2022 garderies, or little schools, which have received 5026 children. Many of these asylums are under the charge of religious of different orders, and others under lay teachers.

(5.) Common Schools. Besides the above-mentioned class of schools, there are 1168 public primary schools in Paris, upon which the municipal council expend yearly 497,344 francs. The whole number of schools in France is 73,271, attended by 4,855,238 children. A great many of these schools are under the care of religious of both sexes. To speak only of the Christian Brothers, this society has in France more than one thousand houses, and above nine thousand members. Thirty-one of these houses are in Paris, and they have several hundred schools under their charge. We have no exact statistics of a recent date, but in 1852 the number of their schools in Paris was 275.

(6.) Patronages. The work of patronage has for its object to watch over children of the laboring class after leaving school and going to work. The houses of the society are distributed all over Paris, and the number of apprentices under its care is 1800. The members are persons of the higher classes, and they exert themselves personally to find good places for their clients, to watch over them during their apprenticeship, and to lend them a helping hand in various ways. {582} The young people are assembled at the patronages on Sundays, where they have Mass and Vespers, religious instruction, study and recreation. They have also evening-schools during the week.

(7.) The Friends of Childhood. This society was founded in 1827, by a number of young gentlemen of fortune, for the succor of poor children without parents, or having parents who neglect to take proper care of them. The children adopted by the society are taken care of until they can be placed as apprentices. There is also a house in a pleasant quarter of the city, called the family mansion, where the apprentices who have been brought up by the society resort on Sundays and holidays, to meet their protectors and pass the day in a profitable and pleasant manner.

(8.) The Work of the Prisons. This is a very extensive charity and has many ramifications. The House of Paternal Correction is a place of detention where parents may place disorderly children, and in which, under the direction of religious brothers or sisters, an effort is made to reform, instruct, and prepare them for some kind of work in which they can gain a decent living. The Patronage of the Liberated watches over young persons after they have been dismissed from the place of detention. The Colony of Mettray receive young criminals, who are kept there, and employed in agriculture or shop-work until they come of age, when they are liberated. The Work of Imprisoned Debtors, established during the latter part of the sixteenth century, by Madame de Lamoignon, has in view the liberation of this unfortunate class by arrangements with their creditors, and for this purpose engages the services of magistrates and lawyers. In the mean time they are visited and looked after in prison, and help is given to their families. After they are dismissed from prison, an asylum is furnished them until they can obtain the means of gaining their own livelihood, or the means are provided of sending them to their own homes, if they have come to Paris from a distance, as is the case with the greater number. The Work of St. Lazarus, managed by ladies, is directed to the care of women of bad life, detained in the prison of St. Lazarus. Madame de Lamartine, an English lady, was the foundress of this branch of charity, encouraged and aided by the advice of the celebrated Mrs. Fry. The first object proposed and accomplished was the amelioration of the prison discipline, by introducing neatness and order, regular employment, religious instruction, and the happy influence of continual visits by the ladies engaged in the work. The second was the foundation of a house of refuge for the poor women whose term of imprisonment had expired. In this house everything is done to complete their reformation, and at the proper time arrangements are made to restore those whose conduct has been good to their parents, to find places for them in respectable families, or to procure their admission to some religious community whose rules admit of receiving penitents. Those who desire to remain, and are worthy to do so, continue in the house permanently, forming a separate class, under the name of Magdalens. On certain festival days the ladies go to communion with the prisoners of St. Lazarus in their chapel, and afterward give them a banquet at which the ladies themselves serve the table in white aprons, and afterward accept an invitation to take their own breakfast.

(9.) The Society of St. Francis Regis. This society was founded in 1822 by M. Gossin, an eminent magistrate of Paris, in order to remedy the widely-spread moral evil of illicit unions. Vast numbers of the lower classes in Paris and throughout France live together as man and wife in a permanent union without being lawfully married either in the eye of the church or in that of the civil law. The society searches out persons of this kind, persuades them to contract valid marriages, and provides for the expediting of all the documents and legal formalities necessary for this purpose, as well as for the expenses. Between the years 1826 and 1866, 43,256 illicit unions were rehabilitated by its efforts in the department of the Seine alone, beside all that was done in other parts of the empire.

(10.) The Work of the Sick Poor. This work derives its systematic organization from St. Vincent de Paul, and is the special sphere of the Sisters of Charity, of whom there are 10,000 in Paris alone. These devoted religious are not, however, alone or unaided in their work of visiting the sick poor. The work is systematically organized in each parish under the direction of the curé, and a general supervision is exercised by the Superior General of the Lazarists. There is a society of ladies who assist the curé and the Sisters of Charity in each parish in their labors. More than 50,000 sick persons are each year visited and provided with all that is necessary for their bodily and spiritual relief by the charity of these ladies.

The sick poor in hospitals receive the same kind and charitable succor, and private convalescent hospitals have been established to receive those who are dismissed from the public hospitals. One of these establishments, called The Asylum of the Sacred Heart of Mary, founded in 1840, has received more than 17,000 young female convalescents. There is one for children, called the Asylum of St. Hilary, in a pleasant place in the country, near Paris, founded by a young Parisian gentleman of rank, whose initials only are given as M. le Due de L.

(11.) The Little Sisters of the Poor. The nature of this institute is so well known that there is no need to enlarge upon it. It has five houses in Paris, one of them partly founded by the 7th Legion of the National Guard, which gave 14,000 francs for the purpose.

(12.) Convent of the Blind Sisters of St. Paul. This is a religious community not entirely composed of blind persons, but into which such are admitted, founded in 1853. Connected with it is an asylum for blind girls, who are received from the age of six years, and can remain during life if they please.

(13.) The Work of the Soldiers. This is intended to provide schools of elementary education and religious instruction for the young soldiers of the garrison of Paris. The schools are established with the consent of the military authorities near some church or chapel, in order that there may be a place of easy access for the members of the school to perform their devotions. Each school has its chaplain who superintends the religious exercises. The classes are taught by the Brothers of the Christian Doctrine, by educated lay gentlemen, and sometimes by the more intelligent and well-instructed soldiers. The school is held every evening between the hours of supper and rappel. After the lessons are over, prayer-books are distributed, usually The Soldier's Manual, or books containing hymns especially composed for soldiers, of which they are very fond. After some prayers have been recited or some hymns sung, an instruction is given or some good book is read; then some closing prayers are recited, and the school is dismissed. {584} Once a week there is a service entirely devoted to innocent recreations and religious exercises. On Sundays they have mass at an hour convenient for the soldiers, and vespers, with the Benediction, in the evening. At Easter, there is a retreat, followed by a general communion. The gentlemen engaged in this work are very punctual in their attendance, take great interest in their pupils, and find their intercourse with the soldiers very agreeable. When a regiment is exchanged to another military post, a register of the members of the school belonging to the regiment is confided to a trustworthy soldier, who delivers it to the priest in charge of the school at the new post, if there is one, and if not, is himself charged to keep up the good work among his comrades the best way he can. The number of soldiers brought under the influence of these schools is not very large, there being not more than 600 in attendance at Paris, but the admirable excellence of the plan is obvious, and there seems to be no reason why it should not have a more extensive success in due time.

(14.) The Society of St. Vincent de Paul. This society is the most extensive and celebrated of all existing religious associations among laymen, and has spread itself from Paris not only throughout France, but also into other countries of Europe, and into America. It was founded in 1833 by M. Bailly as a centre of reunion for Catholic young men, where they might learn to know each other, might give each other their mutual support and encouragement, and might act in combination for carrying on charitable works. Eight young students formed the original nucleus of the society, one of whom was the renowned Frederic Ozanam. The immediate stimulus to the formation of the society was given by the reproach of the St. Simonians that Catholicity was inert and incapable of doing any good in the social community. At the present time the society has 2400 members in Paris, many of whom are gentlemen of rank, judges, advocates, authors, physicians, or merchants. It is divided into numerous conferences, each one of which is perfectly organized. Its active work extends to searching out and relieving, as far as possible, every kind of moral and physical misery among the poorer classes. In a large number of schools for boys there are juvenile conferences where members are trained under experienced guides to the practice of charitable work, and there are analogous conferences also in some female schools.

There are many other charitable works carried on in Paris, for the publication of good books, for the provision of vestments and sacred vessels for poor country churches, and for a variety of other purposes which it would be impossible to enumerate completely. It is also well known that Paris is one of the great centres of foreign missionary operations. Yet, as it would be difficult to separate what belongs to Paris from the general work of the propagation of the faith, and the subject of French foreign missions is too extensive for a passing notice, we must leave it alone altogether.

Our meagre sketch of charities in Paris is necessarily somewhat skeletonian. Mlle. Gouraud, in her lively, charming volume, tells the story with that filling in of circumstantial narration and illustrative anecdote necessary to give its form completeness. {585} She writes under the guise of Letters from an English Lady in Paris to a Friend in England, and although like her countryfolk in general, quite unsuccessful in spelling English, yet her book is made more entertaining by the pretty little artifice. We would recommend our countrywomen to order this little book, and some others of the same kind, with their Parisian gloves, and to read them in lieu of the novels of Dumas and Hugo, if we had any hope that our advice would be listened to.

We have said enough to show that the charitable side of religion in Paris, if it be not in its extent of surface adequate to the dimensions of that great capital, is nevertheless in full proportion to the numbers and resources of the really Catholic population. Out of about one hundred thousand practical Catholics, from twenty to thirty thousand, including the clergy and religious, make it either the exclusive, or at least a principal end of their lives, to perform charitable works. Out of these, a great number may justly be entitled true heroes and heroines of charity. If there were a legion of honor of charity, its grand crosses would be plentifully distributed in Paris. Religion in Paris atones for its deficiency in quantity by the superior excellence of its quality. Like ottar of roses, a little of it diffuses a wide perfume, and it is even able to disinfect the atmosphere redolent of the odeurs de Paris. If the whole population of Paris were really Catholic, and the whole body of the easy classes would cooperate with the clergy and magistracy to reform the social evils and miseries which fester in the bosom of the working class, it is difficult to conceive the greatness of the result which might be accomplished. The French people are the most highly civilized, and the greatest civilizers in the world. Their civilization extends downward into the humblest classes, and ramifies indefinitely in every direction. Take Paris even as it is, in our opinion it is the best governed city in the world, and less immoral than any other great capital. There are great miseries in it, no doubt, but these miseries make more impression on philosophic Frenchmen than on other men, and they make more ado about them. It is a fixed idea in the French mind that every human being ought to have a pleasant time and enjoy life. Evidently, the French are, as a whole, the most cheerful and joyous people in the world, and even the cochers, who are among the most forlorn human beings in Paris, do not seem very discontented. Let the Catholic religion regain full sway over the French mind and heart, and it seems to us that the civilization of Christianity might attain its ultimatum in France. To regain that sway it is now bravely striving against formidable difficulties and opposition. And although we do not venture to pronounce a positive judgment on the probabilities of final and complete success, we think the aspect of affairs encouraging, and believe that the church has gained ground steadily in Paris and throughout France.

Historically, and according to the exterior, Paris is a Catholic city. The Catholic religion is the religion of the French people, and, as such, enters into the whole structure of the political, civil, and social fabric. The French Revolution was a moment of national delirium. When the nation came to itself, it was forced by its common sense to reestablish religion, restore the desecrated temples to Catholic worship, and recall the surviving remnant of the expatriated clergy. The Hôtel Dieu, a hospital near Notre Dame de Paris, built by Saint Vincent de Paul, still bears on its front the half-effaced inscriptions, Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. {586} There could not be a more expressive symbol of the triumph of religion over infidelity. The past, the present, and the future glory of France is identified with religion. The traditions of the first foundation of Paris, which cast a halo of sacred association over it, and which are perpetuated by so many splendid monuments, are religious. The names of Saint Dionysius, Saint Genevieve, Saint Louis, familiar as household words, continually recall them. The glorious churches, which are the chief ornaments of the city, Notre Dame de Paris, La Sainte Chapelle, Saint Denys, Saint Eustache, The Madeleine; the streets even, with their appellations borrowed from religion, impress them continually on the memory and imagination. The masterpieces of art which fill the galleries of painting embody the mysteries, the events, the great personages of religion. The sublime services of the church give their principal grandeur to the national festivals, and to the public pomp of the imperial government. This exterior Catholicity is not much in itself, it is true. Nevertheless, it is a point d'appui, of great service to religion in laboring to imbue with the living principles of Christian faith and virtue the minds and hearts of the people. Awaken them to a belief that religion is a reality, and to an earnest desire to act according to its precepts, and they become fervent Catholics at once. The general atmosphere holds the Catholic spirit in solution, ready to be precipitated under the proper influences.

So far as the actual piety and religion of Paris is concerned, we have anticipated in a great measure what is to be said about it, in speaking of the charities of Paris. We need do no more than allude to certain facts well known to all who have visited the city in such a way as to really learn anything about it, or who are well informed by reading. The clergy are numerous, well organized, and above all praise for their high sacerdotal virtues. The colleges and seminaries for ecclesiastical training are certainly unsurpassed except by those of Rome. A rich and abundant stream of theological and religious literature is perennially flowing from the Paris press. Active and able as are the infidel writers of Paris, they are overmatched by the advocates of religion, who have vindicated and are vindicating Christianity in a most triumphant manner in every branch of polemics. The principal parish churches in Paris are models which the world might imitate. As for the piety of that portion of the people who are really practical Catholics, it is enough to visit the churches on week-days or Sundays, especially such as are places of special devotion, like Notre Dame des Victoires, to be most powerfully and agreeably impressed with the evidence of its high quality and fervor. Those who are best qualified to judge consider it beyond a doubt that religion has made a great advance in Paris within the last twenty-five years, and is advancing gradually but surely toward a reconquest of the masses of the population. A great combat is going on throughout Europe for saving the Christian religion and Christian civilization, and one of its chief battle-grounds is Paris. We cannot dissemble our solicitude for the result, or our sentiment of the gravity of the crisis. We trust, however, that the noble words of that great Christian orator Père Hyacinthe may be verified: "Christian society may agonize, but it cannot die; for it bears the principle of immortality in its bosom."

Translated From The Journal De Bruxelles.

Bishop Dupanloup's Speech At The Catholic Congress Of Malines.

Permit me, gentlemen, first of all to thank you for having kept up and continued your excellent congress. I congratulate you not only on the sacred flame which animates you, or the zeal which shines so highly in your public sessions, but also on the works which are the enduring fruits of your meetings. In reading, yesterday and this morning, the volumes which contain the reports of the proceedings of your former sessions, I have been astonished at the amount of information, at the resolutions, and the useful institutions which have resulted from your labors.

You have done a good work, a sacred and fruitful work; bonum opus. For this I give thanks to God, the author of all good and after him to his eminence the cardinal archbishop of Malines, who, in his wisdom, has found the means of sustaining your work in spite of all opposition. (Prolonged applause.)

The presence, on this occasion, of Monsignor Dechamps will not permit of my expressing all that I feel in my heart toward him. I remember with pleasure that my first battles at Liege were fought under the inspiring influence of his noble example. Twenty-one years have elapsed since then, and, while these years have left the marks of age upon me, it seems as if they have only had the effect of making him younger. (Laughter and applause.)

Having told you of the deep impression which has been made upon me, relative to the praiseworthy character of your work, it will hardly be expected that I should attempt to fan the flame of your zeal: that would be useless. My object at present is, just by a few simple words, to add something if I can to that sacred fire burning in your hearts, of whose results, as set forth in the proceedings of your last sessions, I have read with so much admiration.

You need not fear, then, that I will, on the present occasion, as happened three years ago, impose upon your good nature. (Cries from all parts of "No, no! Speak, speak at length.") To abuse it this time is impossible, for my strength will not permit. I shall, consequently, be on my guard against the temptations to which one is exposed before such an audience as this.

I wish simply to remind you of the words of St. Paul, which are applicable now: "Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good." Noli vinci a malo, sed vince malum bono. You will perceive that these are words of great importance; and, with your permission, I shall offer a few remarks upon them. They are words deserving of serious consideration, for evil surrounds us, or rather presses upon us. This evil is present, acting, speaking. We must overcome this evil, but we must overcome it not by evil, but by good; in bono. Here we see our duty. The evil, gentlemen, has been in the world for a long time, and for this reason we should neither be astonished at it nor discouraged in our efforts. Let me simply remind you of the few last centuries. {588} What has Protestantism done? It has attacked the church which was in the sixteenth century. What has the eighteenth century done? It has attacked Christianity. The nineteenth century, gentlemen, has attacked everything—it has attacked God, the soul, reason, morals, society, the distinction between good and evil. Yes, gentlemen, everything is to-day shamefully, audaciously, impudently attacked. (Prolonged applause.) Here we see the extent and the intensity of the evil; here we see the necessity of overcoming it with good. We can do it; not without effort, it is true; but still we can do it. For us is reserved, henceforth, the glory of defending the law of reason, as well as that of faith; the natural, as well as the supernatural; the immortality of the soul, and the existence of the Deity, against the most audacious and the most foolish enemies that have ever been known. (Applause.)

I tell you, nevertheless, that the battle is a hard one, and certainly the acclamations which, on this occasion, greet the names of the church, the pope, and the holy Virgin, show that the evil is serious, that the sore is deeply seated, that the disease has thoroughly infected souls that are dear to us, and for which we ought to fight; has laid hold upon souls dear to us, and which we should save from ruin. Ah! gentlemen, what ought we not to do in order to save souls! We should be prepared to sacrifice our strength, blood, our lives if necessary. This is the price of victory; and that you may not forget it, the cross which is raised over this assembly reminds you of what is the price of souls. (Sensation.)

The struggle, then, is a severe one, and it is especially so now, seeing that never at any previous period has evil had more powerful means employed in its service than at the present time. We have to encounter not only against an immense, concealed organization, that of secret societies, the ramifications of which extend on all sides, but against a vast public organization, and against a press which spreads calumnies and lies in every quarter.

From whatever point of view we look at it, the contest is a terrible one. And observe, gentlemen, that the propaganda of evil knows no limits, and respects nothing; it attacks the rich, the poor, women, children, young girls. What do I say? It attacks even the dying, doing violence shamefully to their consciences, and snatching from them the consolation to be derived from a return to the faith. I ask these madmen, (for after all we are not here in the dark, but we fight in the light of day.) Whence came the idea of inducing any one to sign this infernal compact? What sort of man can he be who will persuade his fellow-creatures to enter into an engagement of this kind? And yet there are men who yield! Yes, there are men who pledge themselves never to return, even to their dying hour, to the religion and the hearts of their wives, to the religion and hearts of their daughters; for this is what these wicked, these barbarous separations amount to! (Sensation.)

The hatred of religion, gentlemen, is nowhere more marked than in Belgium. But I may add—what will, perhaps, astonish you when I say it—that it is to your honor it is so; for it is doubtless because they feel sensibly the power of your religion, of your faith, of your zeal, that they have been driven to hate so bitterly. {589} It is to your honor, for it proves that you are a Catholic nation, the most Catholic, perhaps, that there has yet been.

But, in spite of these good and solid reasons for battling on, some are frequently tempted to ask, "Is the struggle to go on for ever? It is sufficient to wear out the stoutest courage." Well, gentlemen, I tell you that, under different phases, the struggle will be eternal. Do you wish to have the proof of this? Hear it, gentlemen, from the mouth of the Master; hear it with that respect which his divine word commands: "The world hates you, but you know that it hated me before it hated you." And again: "I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves. If they have persecuted me, they will persecute you. The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord. If they have called the master Beelzebub, how much more will they also call his servants!"

You understand, then, gentlemen, it is what is good they persecute in you—it is the good, it is justice, it is the liberty of souls, it is eternal glory that they hate in you. It is the adorable name of Jesus Christ which they persecute in you. This is to your honor; and allow me to say, it is to the particular glory of that society with which Belgium is honored, that society which has provided for your children such highly accomplished and devout masters, that society the members of which cultivate so successfully in your midst the sciences and letters, and who are, I may say, the princes of learning and of Catholic divinity. (Applause.)

But if Jesus Christ has predicted persecution, he says to us at the same time, Fear not; nolite timere. And St. Augustine in his admirable comment on this exhortation says: "You complain, you are astonished, at seeing a flood of persecution rising against you. You cry out, Where, then, O Lord! is thy justice? But God answers you, Where, then, is your faith? Did I promise you anything else than from the height of my cross I baptized you in my blood? Did you become a Christian in order to enjoy here below all temporal prosperity? Num quid Christianus factus es ut in hoc saeculo floreres?"

Let us look more closely into this great question. It may certainly be asked, Since God holds in his eternal hands the hearts of all nations in every age—since he can turn the hearts of princes as he wills, may it not be presumed that he will put a check upon the passions of men, and allow his children to enjoy eternal peace? Well, no. "As high," says the prophet, "as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my thoughts above yours." What, then, does he to whom belongs the wisdom and the power think on this subject? Gentlemen, God, in his eternal councils, has judged that there is nothing more glorious for him, nothing more salutary for man, than that good was to prevail by conflict. Overcome evil with good, is the tower of strength of the divine power. God has thought—and let this thought, gentlemen, sink deep into your hearts; for you all, whatever your condition in life, have need frequently to meditate upon those teachings of Christianity which are at once a solid foundation and a glorious crown; God has thought, I say, that conflict in this world is necessary, that it is more worthy of him, and more worthy of us. In leaving men free to choose the good, God knows that there is the possibility of evil, which he has, thereby, hazarded; but he has ordained that there shall be conflict and struggle, without which that glorious thing we call virtue, virtus, would be unknown in the world.

And not only has he thought that, even after the fall, we were still great enough to be equal to great trials, but he has thought, also, that it would be more worthy of him and of us for us to pass through those trials. So, gentlemen, when Christ descended on earth, he chose the lot of suffering and of the cross. And St. Paul has found this foundation so solid, that he has made it the basis of his doctrine when he says that it was necessary that Christ should suffer in order that he might be raised in glory.

Well, permit me, gentlemen, to use this plainness of speech, for we are here as a family. I believe that God has judged rightly. I believe that bold adversaries are better for us than partial friends and unbounded prosperity. I believe that he will never leave our sufferings without their compensations. There is no age that has not had its glory. There are periods of consolation. Sometimes the sun rises and all seems easy.

We are told in Scripture that these bright periods often follow the darkness. There are times when the light of faith seems to be obscured. There are sometimes grievous misunderstandings among the friends of God, and sometimes deplorable manifestations of self-will. In this season of darkness, under the cover of this night, the beasts of prey leave their hiding-places: in ipsa hora pertransibunt bestiae. We hear men saying, God is evil. Property is robbery. We must have a new morality. And they would instil these things into the minds of your wives and your children. This is what we hear in the night. But the sun rises, and immediately these creatures retire into their holes. (Laughter.) Then the good man opens his door, sees that the weather is fine, that the sky is clear, and he goes forth to works of charity and virtue, laboring on in lively hope until the return of the darkness. (Applause.)

It is true that, when we see so much evil in the world, when we feel it near to us, and experience its effects, we are apt to become alarmed. But that would be wrong. A short time ago, on returning from Rome, where every one goes for consolation and hope, I passed through Pisa, where I found an admirable type of the church in the leaning tower of which you have all heard. Those who are ignorant of the secret of the skilful architect to whom we are indebted for this wonderful monument, cannot contemplate it without a certain degree of fear. But the craziness of the structure is in appearance only. It is the same with the church, which the Scriptures call the Tower of David, (Turris Davidcea,) surrounded by a thousand defences. When this leaning tower raises itself, it is like St. Peter's at Rome—an incomparable monument, grand, majestic, shining as if lighted with the fire of the setting sun. At this sight, gentlemen, we console ourselves, and take fresh courage, saying to ourselves, When afflictions come, I will think of St. Peter's at Rome, even when it appears like the leaning tower of Pisa. (Applause.)

This, gentlemen, is what I have to say to you about that conflict to which we are called to devote our strength, to consecrate our life, and even our death. Yes, gentlemen, when, upon my arrival here, I saw the illustrious writer who is now your host struggling with sickness and suffering, at the time when he was required to write some of those pages which awaken such noble sentiments in our souls, the reflection forced itself upon me: It is thus that we should combat, and never yield. (The orator was here about to leave the platform, but the opposition and entreaties of the audience prevented him.)

I crave your indulgence, gentlemen, he resumed; it is now two years since I have opened my mouth in my diocese. But let it be as you wish; only I throw the responsibility upon you of making my peace for me with the people of Orleans. (Orleanius.) (Great merriment.) I will add a few words respecting the conditions of this conflict.

The first is courage. Saint James the Evangelist, in addressing himself to young men, calls upon them to be strong, to be courageous; he says to them, "I speak to you because you are strong: quia fortis estis. I can say no more to you than this: Be courageous, never yield. Remember that you are, every day and under all circumstances, called upon to resist."

But there is something greater and more enduring than courage: it is devotedness. Yes, gentlemen, you must be devoted, in order that you may be the true friends of the poor, of the working people, of those who suffer and who weep, the support of all those works which is the life, the soul of the church, the blood—if I may so speak—which circulates in its veins.

The third quality which is demanded in this conflict is patriotism. O patriotism! I need not enlarge upon it in my speech. I will simply content myself with saying to you, You have a country; know how to defend it. (Immense applause.) You have the arts: in this respect there is no nation that surpasses you, and but one at most that equals you. You have industry, commerce, names among the most honored in Europe. You have I know not how much of generous, instinctive impulses against oppression, against debasing vices, against everything mean and degrading. Cherish, then, the strongest attachment to your country, and see that you preserve it.

I was told a few days ago that a journal of some character had said that Belgium is the sink of Europe. I said to myself, this is not abuse. There is, in fact, no nation of which so much can be said in the sense in which I wish now to speak. I myself, gentlemen, saw proof of this in walking through your city yesterday. In the street which runs along the magnificent city hotel of Brussels my eyes fell upon this sign: Liberal Association and Constitutional Union of Brussels. And what was there below? A wine-shop; and lower down another wine-shop, having for a sign the words "to Hell." (General merriment.) This, alas! is not all that I have seen in Brussels, gentlemen; but I pass on.

The fourth condition of the conflict is labor. Oh! how I wish that the Catholics were the most diligent, the most laborious of men. Yes; whatever you may be, work will benefit your family, your posterity. Depend upon it, gentlemen, the destinies of the world are in the hands of those who know how to work.

To this condition, to industry, to science, I would add intelligence and prudence. And here again, gentlemen, it is our Lord himself who gives us counsel: we are to have, he says, the artlessness of the dove, with the wisdom of the serpent. Yes, gentlemen, however much these words may have been abused, I insist upon them, and I call upon you to give heed to them. We must exercise that prudence of which the serpent is the symbol in the language of the east. We must use our judgment; we must intelligently apply our principles; we must maintain that good understanding which should ever exist among brethren. {592} To give up that to the enemy to trample under his feet, would be treachery. (Applause.) We must seek to understand the times in which we live and the wants of the times, the adversaries whom we have to combat and the means we ought to employ in meeting them, as God and revelation permit and demand of us. (Applause.)

There is another point on which you will allow me to insist. When I had the honor of being received in the French Academy, I was required to make a speech. In searching for a subject suited to the times in which we live, I remembered the words of an historian: "We have long since lost the true meaning of words." This, gentlemen, is a profound remark. The higher philosophy, which is in accord with Christianity, proclaims its truth; words, which are the signs of ideas, are the grand riches of humanity; they are the common treasure. To adopt the language of the adversaries of that philosophy, and Christianity, is, to speak plainly, the greatest fault which honest men can commit.

What are the words with which the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries achieved their success? what are those which are in the present day so much abused? There are three of them: Reformers, Philosophers, and (since they take great pleasure in being called so) Liberals.

Reformers! We must confess that the thing indicated by this word is more strange even than the word itself. You have the Council of Trent which has labored continually to reform the church. In this world men are the depositaries of divine truth, and I need hardly tell you that, where man is concerned, imperfection must always be looked for. Well, gentlemen, the church is a society which reforms itself; for this purpose she has held a thousand councils, and the Council of Trent decided that there should not be a session in which reform should not be considered. We have reform, then, on our side. What have they on the other? They have Luther, with the religion which he brought from the cloister; Calvin, with a society of the same nature; OEcolampadius, etc. And these were the men who devoted themselves to the work of reforming the church—the church, gentlemen, which they called Babylon! As for them, it was the Holy Jerusalem, which they peopled with their wives and their children!

But what is still more extraordinary is the abuse which has been made of the word liberal. When Count Felix de Merode—a man whose name I feel doubly honored in pronouncing here—a man who fought to reconquer religious, civil, and political liberty for his country—when he heard his adversaries called liberals, he indignantly exclaimed: "They are not liberals, they are libertines. It is as impossible to call them liberals as it would be to call a mother a barbarous mother."

Gentlemen, is all this what they call liberalism? I have lately heard Juarez spoken of as a liberal. It is not that I would judge the men who claim this title, but I believe they do not understand the thing. For my part I would not apply the term to them. And Garibaldi, gentlemen, is another liberal. Listen to his language: "My friends, my children"—this man has something paternal about him (laughter)—"we must crush the sacerdotal vampire; as for the priests, we must break their heads on the pavement of the streets." What a liberal! Ah! gentlemen, if Bossuet, if Fenelon, if Bourdaloue, could come back to this world, they would say to us, "But what have you clone with this beautiful French language?" {593} A liberal! But in our estimation he is the liberal man who does not deny to others the same justice and truth which he claims to have himself. The Portuguese Freemasons who drove out the Sisters of Charity, those of you who insult them, are still liberals! I say again, the thing is intolerable; and if I were a Belgian I would never betray my language, my honor, and my conscience by giving such a name to such men. (Applause.)

And so far as we are concerned, you know, gentlemen, how they pay us back. They call us the clerical party—that is to say, fools of the sacristy; or better still, the priest party. Shall I remind you of Voltaire, who invented the name wretch, by which he designated the church? And what name did he bear? He was called philosopher. Gentlemen, they would never get me to give the title of philosopher to a d'Holbach, to a Lamettrie, to any of those wicked men, conspiring with their master to crush the "wretch." I understand that they contemplate erecting a statue to the man who has given this name to Christianity. For my part, I say they will have raised a statue to infamy personified. (Prolonged cheers.) I am prepared to meet any opponent on this ground; and I will promise to give him, whenever he wishes to have them, such proofs of what I say as will resound throughout the whole of Europe. This violence done to common sense, to honesty, to French honor, is revolting to me. I repeat it, they are raising a statue to infamy personified. The Bishop of Orleans can think nothing better, can say nothing better of it. (Prolonged applause.)

You see, then, that we must have courage, devotedness, patriotism, prudence, and intelligence; I will add to these moderation and gentleness. Did not Christ say to his Apostles, "I send you forth as sheep among wolves"? Perhaps you will say to me, "But you give us several applications of this evangelical saying which it will not bear." Gentlemen, it is nowhere forbidden to the shepherd to give the alarm of the wolf, and to the sheep to believe it. Yes, we must be gentle, and Saint Chrysostom, commenting on these words, says: "We require protectors who attack little, but who defend well—pro pugnatorem, non impugnatorem" It is in this way, gentlemen—it is by gentleness—that we are to conquer. But if, instead of being sheep, we become wolves by abuse, if we wish to conquer and not to be convinced, we run the risk of being vanquished. Si lupi sumus vincimur.

And now, to conclude, I would express to you the deepest impressions of my soul. That which I admire most in this beautiful creation of the Deity, which makes man like the angels, is the flame of love which God has kindled in his soul. Gentlemen, what do the radiant looks of this assembly, this clapping of hands, these outbursts of enthusiasm, express? They express love. You love, gentlemen, and you love nobly. You love the church, your mother. Ah! you do well to love her with the purest and most generous love! The church is the fellowship of souls; herein is her beauty and her immortal glory. This is why, although she is in the world, she is not of the world. She lives by faith, hope, and love. She believes, she hopes, she loves. This earth is only the place of her pilgrimage; Heaven is her country, the King of Heaven is her father, Jesus Christ is her immortal spouse, the Holy Spirit her inspirer and her guide. {594} She has her pontiffs, whom you venerate, her doctors, her priests. There, at least, we find here below a divine and unchangeable constitution. Built on a rock that can never be moved, we have a supreme authority, a teachable people, faithful ministers, and, in short, (not to speak of others,) rights scrupulously respected, and duties faithfully performed. (Applause.)

That which seems astonishing at first sight is, that the church, notwithstanding her divine origin and her immortal destinies, should so often come to us with thorns on her brow. But this is because she comes from Calvary, and her favorite strains were those which inspired Saint Paul when he said, "God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of Jesus Christ." Among the songs of gladness sung by the church, as she travels through this world, there are none more dear to her than those which celebrate the passion, the temptations, the sorrows of Calvary. These are her household words. We feel that she received them from the dying lips of a divine being; but, sharing the grief of the God-man, she should go forth with him from the tomb to cover the earth with her children, in innumerable multitudes.

The church must expect to meet here below with indifference, with adversaries, with persecutors. This has been announced, or rather promised, to her; she is not to enjoy where she has not suffered; at some time or other we all suffer, we die for her. Yes! She always has martyrs, and it is only recently that several have been laid upon the altar. Ah! it is during these festivals, gentlemen, that you should see the church in order to feel how her heart beats. On the recent occasion the Vicar of Jesus Christ was surrounded by five hundred bishops, who hastened to him from all parts of the world. You should have seen the gladness, the glory, the universal enthusiasm which prevailed. We found there a strength to encounter anything—to go freely, cheerfully, to Abyssinia, to India, to America, everywhere. How vigorous, how deep, how indissoluble is the union of souls! Behold the church here, as we have seen her and experienced her power! America sent thirty-five bishops; for a century she had not more than one. At the last council of Baltimore there were forty-three, and the American bishops, on leaving Rome, obtained from the Holy Father the erection of twenty-three dioceses. You see how fruitful is this immortal cause of yours.

And in the midst of all these is the grand thought of the Sovereign Pontiff proclaiming the utility and the necessity of a general council. There is wisdom, there is energy! No, gentlemen, I have never seen a finer sight than this old man going direct to his object with a firmness which nothing can overcome. All around him may be in a state of trouble; the earth may fail under his feet; still he maintains his ground, and the church shall have her council. Yes, gentlemen, the kingdoms of this earth may be removed, inclinata sunt regna; but the bishops will one day meet in council, and with the chief will hold forth the light to those who require their help. The church shall have its council, in order that disputes may cease, that peace may dwell in our hearts; that the people may be drawn into the arms of their common father, so that there shall be but one flock and but one shepherd.

The Reign of Law. [Footnote 56]

[Footnote 56: The Reign of Law. By the Duke of Argyll. London: Strahan, 1867. 8vo, pp. 435.]

There is much in this work that we hold to be true and important, when considered by itself, without reference to the general views or doctrines of the author; but they are so interwoven with other things, that to us are evidently unscientific or untrue, that they lose nearly all their practical value. The author certainly does not lack ability, and is apparently learned in the sciences; but, unhappily for such a work as he appears to have meditated, he is no theologian and no philosopher. There is such a want of distinctness in his principles, and of clearness and precision in his statements, that, with the best intentions in the world to understand him, we are unable to make out to our own satisfaction what he is driving at, or for what purpose he has written his book.

1. The supernatural;
2. Law—its definitions;
3. Contrivance, a necessity arising out of the reign of law;
4. Apparent exceptions to the supremacy of purpose;
5. Creation by law;
6. Law in the realm of mind;
7. Law in politics.

These are great topics, and are intimately connected with theology and philosophy, faith and religion. But what has the author proposed to himself in treating them? What general view of religion or of science does he seek to bring out, illustrate, or establish? We can find in his book no satisfactory answer to either of these questions. He is a savant, not a philosopher, and there seems to be in his mind and in his book the same want of unity and wholeness, the same tendency to lose itself in details, that there is and must be in the special or inductive sciences when not subordinated to a general or a superior science, to be supplied only by theology or philosophy, which deals with the ideal, the universal, and the necessary; and we find it impossible to harmonize the several special views which he takes, integrate them in any general view which it can be supposed that he accepts, or which he is not found, first or last, directly or indirectly impugning. We understand well enough his language, which is simple and clear, so far as the words and sentences go; we understand, too, the parts of his book taken separately; but we frankly confess our inability to put the several parts together and understand them as a whole.

Our first impression, on looking through the work, was that the author wished to harmonize the sciences with the great primary truths of religion, by showing that the universe in all its departments, laws, facts, and phenomena proceeds from a productive will under the direction of mind or intelligence, for a purpose or end. In this view the laws of nature, producing effects in their order, could be carried up for their first cause to the divine will, or that will itself using the instrumentality of laws or means it had itself created. To harmonize the sciences with faith, or to render them compatible with faith, all that would need to be done would be to show that since the so-called natural laws themselves depend wholly on God, they can never restrain his freedom, or compel him to act through them, and only through them. We will not say that he has not had something of the sort in view; but, certainly, not uniformly and steadily.

We thought, again, that having the same end in view, he wished to show that all things are produced according to one and the same dialectic law, and| therefore, that viewed as a whole, in its principle, medium, and end, as the external expression of the Holy Trinity, which God is in himself, the universe must be really dialectic, and strictly logical in all its parts. Creation is the external word of God, as the Son is his internal word or expression. As the Creator is in himself the supreme logic, [Greek text]

logic itself, creation as his expression ad extra, or external image, must be as a whole and in all its parts strictly logical, as St. Thomas implies when he says, "God is the similitude of all things—similitudo rerum omnium." Not that the type of God is in the creature, as the noble duke more than once implies; but that the type of the creature, of creation, is in God. Hence there can be no anomalies, no sophisms in the Creator's works; nothing arbitrary, capricious; but order must run through all, and all must be subjected to the law of order, implied in the doctrine of Scripture, "God hath made all things by weight and measure." The author, then, might be understood as attempting, by his knowledge of the physical sciences, to prove à posteriori that this is true, and to show that this law of order reigns in the world of matter and in the realm of mind, in the plant and in the animal, in science and in faith, in religion and in politics, as the universal law of creation. Hence, the possibility and reality of science, which consists in recognizing this law and tracing it in all things, little or great.

Some things, the author says, may be construed in favor of such a purpose, but he seems sometimes to be asserting the universal reign of law and at others to be censuring those who do assert it, and refuting those who maintain that life is the product of law: plainly showing that he does not understand law in the sense supposed, nor always in the same sense. His definitions of law also prove that he is a stranger to the view we suggest, and has his mind fixed on something quite different. The "root idea" of law, he says, is that of force; and he defines law to be in its primary sense "will enforcing itself with power"—a very erroneous definition, by the way, for law is will directed by reason. He also understands by it the means, medium, or instrument by which will creates, for he does not seem to hold that God creates from nothing, or without means distinguishable from himself; so we are thrown back, and again puzzled to determine what he really does mean. We ask ourselves if he is not a really profound theologian, master of the deepest Christian philosophy, and simply endeavoring to translate it into the language of the savans, or if he is not totally ignorant of that philosophy, suggesting to those who know it far more than he has ever dreamed of himself? Something almost inclines us to think the former; but upon the whole we incline to the latter, and conclude that the less profound in philosophy and theology we regard him, the greater the justice we shall do him.

The author, as near as we can come at his meaning, holds that all action of the divine will is by law, and that law is the means or instrument by which it acts and produces its effects; or, in other words, God always and everywhere makes use of natural laws or forces to effect his purposes. {597} The definition he has given of law in its primary sense, "will enforcing itself with power," would seem to identify it with God himself, or at least with God willing and effecting his purpose; but he says: "Law is taken in certain derivative senses, in which hardly a trace of the primary sense is retained:

1. Law as applied simply to an observed order of facts.

2. To that order as involving the action of some force or forces, of which nothing more may be known.

3. As applied to individual forces the measure of whose operation has been more or less defined or ascertained.

4. As applied to those combinations of force which have reference to the fulfilment of purpose or the discharge of function.

5. As applied to the abstract conceptions of mind, not corresponding with any actual phenomena, but deduced therefrom as axioms of thought necessary to our understanding of them—not merely to an order of facts, but to an order of thought." (Pp. 64, 65.)

The last sense given to law proves clearly enough that the author knows nothing of philosophy, for it supposes the ideal or the intelligible is an abstract mental conception deduced from sensible phenomena, and therefore is objectively nothing, instead of being an objective reality affirmed to and apprehended by the mind. He is one who places the type of his God in the creature, not the type of the creature in God, and represents God to himself as the creature fulfilled or perfected, as do all inductive philosophers. But we will pass over this, as having been already amply discussed in this magazine.

We confess that we find very little that is definite in these pretended definitions of law. They tell us to what classes of facts law is applied, but do not tell us what law is, or define whether it is the force which produces the facts to which it is applied or simply the rule according to which they are produced; whether it designates the order of their production or is simply their classification. The author may reply that it is applied in all these senses and several more, but that defines nothing. What is it in itself, apart from its application, or the manner of its use? A word, and nothing more? Then it is nothing, is unreal, a nullity, and how then can it ever be a force, or even an instrument of force? "These great leading significations of the word law," he continues, "all circle round the three great questions which science asks of nature, the What, the How, and the Why:

1. What are the facts in their established order?

2. How, that is, from what physical causes, does that order come to be?

3. Why have those causes been so combined? What relation do they bear to purpose, to the fulfilment of intention, to the discharge of function?" (P. 65.)

This would be very well, if the sciences raised no questions beyond the order of second causes, but this is not the case. The author himself brings in other than physical causes. Will is not, in the ordinary sense of the word, physical; and he defines law to be, in its primary sense, will enforcing itself with power; and the question comes up, If these facts of nature are the product of will, of whose will? Does nature will or act from will? Is it by its will fire melts wax, the winds propel the ship at sea, or the lightning rends the oak? The author speaks of the facts of nature. Fact is something done, and implies a doer; what or who, then, is the doer? Here is a great question which the author raises, and which his definitions of law exclude. The whence is as important as the what, the how, or the why. {598} Moreover, the author mistakes the sense of the how. The answer to the question, how? is not the question, from or by what cause or causes, but in what mode or manner. Law in "these great leading significations" which circle round the what, the how, and the why, does in no sense answer the question whence, or from what or by what cause, and leaves, by the way, both the first cause and the medial cause, the principle and medium of the facts observed and analyzed. How then can he assert the universal reign of law? As far as we can collect from the senses of the word given, law does not reign at all; it lies in the order of natural facts, and simply marks the order, manner, and purpose of their existence in nature, or their arrangement or classification in our scientific systems. Nothing more.

Yet his grace means more than this. He means, sometimes at least, that to arrange facts under their law is to reduce them to their physical cause or principle of production. Such and such facts owe their existence to such and such a law, that is, to such or such a natural cause or productive force. And his doctrine is that all causes are natural, and that there is no real distinction between natural and supernatural. "The truth is," he says, pp. 46-47, "that there is no such distinction between what we find in nature, and what we are called upon to believe in religion, as men pretend to draw between the natural and the supernatural. It is a distinction purely artificial, arbitrary, unreal. Nature presents to our intelligence, the more clearly the more we search her, the designs, ideas, and intentions of some

  'Living will that shall endure,
   When all that seems shall suffer shock.'"

But, does nature when she presents the designs, the ideas, intentions, present the will whose they are? And if so, does she present it as her own will, or as a will above herself? Undoubtedly, the will presented by religion is the same will that is operative in nature, but religion presents that will not as nature, but as above nature, therefore as supernatural, for nothing can be both itself and above itself. Nobody pretends, certainly no theologian pretends, that the will presented by religion is above the will that is operative in nature, and calls it for that reason supernatural. The will in both is one and the same, but religion asserts that it is alike supernatural whether in religion or in nature. That will is the will of the creator: and does the author mean to assert that the distinction between the creator and the creature is unreal? Certainly not. Then he must be mistaken in asserting that the distinction between the natural and supernatural is "purely artificial, arbitrary, unreal," and also in controverting, as he does, the assertion of M. Guizot that "a belief in the supernatural is essential to all positive religion." He himself admits, p. 48, that M. Guizot's affirmation is true in the special sense that "belief in the existence of a living will, of a personal God, is indeed a requisite condition," and we will not be so unjust as to suppose that he either identifies this living will, this personal God with nature, or denies that he is above nature, its first and final cause, its principle, medium, and end, its sovereign proprietor and supreme ruler; for this lies at the very threshold of all true religion, is a truth of reason, and a necessary preamble to faith.

"But," the author continues, "the intellectual yoke, in the common idea of the supernatural, is a yoke which men impose upon themselves. Obscure thought and confused language are the main source of the difficulty." {599} In the case of the noble duke, perhaps so; but if he had been familiar with the clear thought and distinct language of the theologians, he probably would have experienced no difficulty in the case. What he really denies is not the supernatural, but, if we may so speak, the contranatural, which is a very different thing, and which all real theologians are as ready and as earnest to deny as any one is or can be; for they all hold grace is supernatural, and yet adopt the maxim, gratia supponit naturam, as we have heretofore shown in an article on Nature and Grace. The author very conclusively shows that the contradictory of what is true in nature cannot be true in religion. Some pretended philosophers in the time of Pope Leo X. maintained that the immortality of the soul is true in theology, but false in philosophy. The pope condemned their doctrine and vindicated common sense, which teaches every one that what is true in theology cannot be false in philosophy, or what is true in philosophy cannot be false in theology. Truth is truth always and everywhere, and never is or can be in contradiction with itself. But we cannot agree with the author that "the common idea" of the supernatural is that it is something antagonistic to nature. There may be some heterodox theologians that so teach, or seem to teach, and many men who are devoted to the study of the natural sciences suppose that approved theologians assert the supernatural in the same sense, and this is one reason why they take such a dislike to theology and become averse to faith in supernatural revelation. But we hold them mistaken; at least we are not accustomed to see the supernatural presented by learned and orthodox theologians as opposed to the natural. If such is the teaching of the heterodox, it is very unfortunate for his grace that he has taken their teaching to be that of the Christian church, or the faith of orthodox believers.

But the author's difficulty about the supernatural has its principal origin in his theology, not in his science. We do not like his habit of speaking of the divine action in nature as the action of will, for God never acts as mere will. We may distinguish in relation to our mode of apprehending him, between his essence and his attributes, and between one attribute and another; indeed we must do so, for our powers are too feeble to form an adequate conception of the Divine Being; but we must never forget that the distinctions we make in our mode of apprehending have no real existence in God himself. He is one, and acts always as one, in the unity of his being, and his action is always identically the action of reason, love, wisdom, will, power. When we speak of him as living will, we are apt to divide or mutilate him in our thought, and to forget that he never acts or produces effects by any one attribute alone. But pass over this—though we cannot approve it, for God is eternal reason as really and as fully as he is eternal will; the noble duke, following his theology, makes in reality this one living will the only actor in nature, the direct and immediate cause of all the effects produced in the universe. He thus denies second causes, as Calvin did when he asserted that "God is the author of sin." Taking this view, what is nature? Nature is only the divine will and its direct effects, or the one living will enforcing itself with power, using what are called natural laws or forces, not as second causes, but as means or instruments for effecting its purpose or purposes. Recognizing no created or second causes, and therefore no causa eminens or causa causarum, but only one direct and immediate cause, he can of course find no ground for a distinction between natural and supernatural. {600} All is natural or all is supernatural, for all is identical, one and the same. Hence, denying very properly all contrariety or antagonism between natural and supernatural, the author can accept miracles only in the sense of superhuman and supermaterial events. They are not supernatural, as men commonly suppose: they are wrought by the one invincible will at work in every department of nature, are in nature, and as natural as the most ordinary events that occur—only they are the effects of more recondite laws, which come into play only on extraordinary occasions, and for special purposes. They belong to what Carlyle, in the Sartor Resartus, calls "natural-supernaturalism," which is no real supernaturalism at all. The author's theology, which resolves God into pure will and power, has forced him to adopt his conclusion. His theology hardly admits, though it may profess not to deny, that God creates second causes, capable of acting from their own centre, and in their own order producing effects of their own. The difficulty he finds in admitting and understanding miracles as real supernatural facts, arises precisely from his not distinguishing between the first cause and second causes. His failure to make this distinction is caused by his misconception or confused conception of the real character of the divine creative act. Indeed, he hardly recognizes the fact of creation at all, as we might infer from his reducing the whole matter of science to the questions of the what, the how, and the why, omitting entirely the whence. His science deals solely with facts of the secondary order, and omits or rejects the ideal, in which all things have their origin and cause, as unknowable, imaginary, unreal.

The author speaks frequently of creation, and we are far from supposing that he means to deny it; but if we understand him, he does deny that the divine will creates without natural means or instrumentalities, and this appears to be what he means by "Creation by law." He asks, p. 14, "By supernatural power do we not mean power independent of the use of means, as distinguished from power depending on knowledge, even infinite knowledge of the means proper to be employed?" We think his question is not well put; certainly we never heard before of such a definition of the supernatural, unless by means is meant natural means; but as he denies all supernatural power as operating independent of the use of natural means, he must be understood as denying all creation from nothing, or that God creates all things by the word of his power, with no other means or medium than what is contained in himself. "The real difficulty," he says, "lies in the idea of will exercised without the use of means, not in the exercise of will through means which are beyond our knowledge." But what means were there through which the will could operate when nothing besides itself existed? Does the scientific author not see, unless he admits the eternal existence of something besides God, that on his ground creation must precede creation as the condition or means of creation? In the chapter on Creation by Law, pp. 280, 281, he says: "I do not know on what authority it is that we so often speak of creation as if it were not creation, unless it works from nothing as its material, and by nothing as its means. {601} We know that out of the 'dust of the ground,' that is, out of the ordinary elements of nature are our bodies formed, and the bodies of all living things." But out of what was the "dust of the ground" or "the ordinary elements of nature" formed? He continues: "Nor is there anything which should shock us in the idea that the creation of new forms, any more than in their propagation, has been brought about by the instrumentality of means. In a theological point of view it matters nothing what those means have been." It, however, matters something in a theological point of view whether we assert that God creates without other means than is contained in his own divine being, or only by working with preexisting materials, which are independent of him, and eternal like himself.

The author professes not to know on what authority creation is denied to be creation unless from nothing as its materials, and by nothing as its means; but he must have said this without well weighing the words he uses. A man makes a watch out of materials which are supplied to his hand, and by availing himself of a motive force which exists and operates independently of him; but nobody calls him the creator of the watch. Man has, strictly speaking, no creative powers, because he can operate only on and with materials furnished him by God or nature, and cannot himself originate his own powers nor the powers he uses. He can form, fashion, utilize, to a limited extent, what already exists, but he cannot originate a new law nor a new force. The Gentile philosophers, finding in man no proper creative power, concluded that there is no proper creative power in God, and hence they substituted in their systems for creation emanation, generation, or formation; and you will search in vain through Plato or even Aristotle for the recognition of the fact of creation. Holding that God cannot, any more than man, work without materials, even the soundest of the Gentile philosophers, say Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle, asserted the eternity of matter, and explained the origin of things by supposing that God impresses on this eternal matter, as the seal on wax, or in some way unites with it, the ideas or forms eternal in his own mind. Here is no creation, for though there is combination of the preexisting, there is no production of something where nothing was before; yet we cannot go beyond them, if we deny that creation proper is creation from nothing, or, as we have explained, that God creates without any material, means, or medium distinguishable from himself.

Yet no theologian pretends that God, in creating, works without means. No work, no act is possible or conceivable without principle, medium, and end. God can no more create without a medial cause than man can build a house without materials; but if the author had meditated on the significance of the dogma of the Trinity, he would have understood that God has the means or medium in himself, in his own eternal Word, by whom all things are made, and without whom was made nothing that was made. God in himself, in the unity of his own being, the mystery of the Trinity teaches us, is eternally and indissolubly, principle, medium, and end, in three distinct persons. The Father is principle, the Son or Word is medium, and the Holy Ghost is end or consummator. Hence God is complete, being in its plenitude, in himself, most pure act, as say the theologians, and, therefore, able to do what he wills without going out of himself, or using means not in himself. The medium of creation is the Word who was in the beginning, who was with God, and who is God. {602} Hence not only by and for God, but also in him "we live and move and have our being." To suppose otherwise is, as we have seen, to suppose God does not and cannot create by himself alone, or without the aid of something exterior to and distinguishable from himself, and nothing is distinguishable from him and his own creatures, but another being in some sort eternal like himself, which philosophy, as well as theology, denies.

Rectifying the noble author's mistake as to the creative act, and bearing in mind that God creates existences by himself alone, and creates them substances or second causes, capable of producing effects in the secondary order, we are able to assert a very real and a very intelligible distinction between the natural and the supernatural. Nature is the name for all that is created, the whole order of second causes, and as God creates and sustains nature, he must be himself supernatural. God has, or at least may have, two modes of acting; the one directly, immediately, with no medium but the medium he is in himself, and this mode of acting is supernatural; the other mode is acting in and through nature, in the law according to which he has constituted nature, or the forces which he has given her, called natural laws, and this mode is natural, because in it nature acts as second cause. God himself is above this order of nature, but is always present in it by his creative act, for the universe, neither as a whole nor in any of its parts, can stand save as upheld by the Creator. A miracle is a sensible fact not explicable by the laws of nature, and, therefore, a fact that can be explained only by being referred to the direct and immediate or supernatural action of God. Whether a miracle is ever wrought is simply a question of fact, to be determined by the testimony or evidence in the case. That God can work miracles may be inferred from the fact that creation does not exhaust him, and from the fact, the noble duke has amply proved, that the natural laws do not bind him to act only through them, or in any way restrain his freedom or liberty of action. In working a miracle, God does not contravene or violate the natural laws, or the order of second causes, that is, the order of nature; he simply acts above it, and the fact is not contranatural, but supernatural. It does not destroy nature; for if it did, there would be no nature below it, and it would, therefore, not be supernatural.

The author very properly rejects the origin of species in development, at least in the higher forms of organic life, and shows that Darwin's theory of the formation of new species by natural selection does not form new species, but only selects the most vigorous of preexisting species, such as survive the struggle for life. Old species indeed become extinct and new species spring into existence; but those new species or new forms of life which science discovers are not developments, but new creations. Creation, he holds, has a history, and is successive, continually going on. We doubt whether science is in a condition to say with absolute certainty that any species that once existed are now extinct, or that new species have successively sprung into existence; but assuming the fact to be as alleged, and we certainly are unable to deny it, we cannot accept the author's explanation. We agree with him that the creative will is as present and as active as it was in the beginning, or that creation is always a present act; but for this very reason, if for no other, we should deny that it is successive, or resolvable into successive acts, since that would imply that it is past or future as well as present. {603} Regarded on the side of God, there can be no succession in the creative act. Succession is in time; but God dwells not in time, he inhabiteth eternity. His act on his side must be complete from the instant he wills to create, and can be successive only as externized in time. Individuals and species when they have served their purpose disappear, and others come forward and take their places, not by a new creation from nothing, but because in the one creative act the appointed time and place for their external appearance have come. It is rather we who come successively to the knowledge of creation than creation that is itself successive. The creative act is one, but its externization is successive. The divine act effecting the hypostatic union of human nature with the divine person of the Word was included in the one creative act, and in relation to God and his act was complete from the first; but as a fact of time it did not take place till long after the creation of the world. It is very possible then to accept fully all the facts with regard to the appearance of new species that science discovers, without asserting successive creations; they are only the successive manifestations of the original creative act, revealing to us what we had not before seen in it.

In point of fact the author does not, though he thinks he does, assert successive creations, for he contends that the new are in some way made out of the old. He supposes the creative will prepares in what goes before for what comes after, and that the forms of life about to be extinguished approach close to and almost overlap the forms that are coming to be, and are in some way used in the creation of the new forms or species. This, as we have seen, is not creation, but formation or development, and hardly differs in substance from the doctrine of development that was held by some naturalists prior to Darwin's theory of natural selection. It supposes the material of the new creation, the causa materialis, is in the old, and the development theory only supposes that the material exists in the old in the form of a germ of the new. The difference, if any, is not worth noticing. The development again can, on any theory, go on only under the presence and constant action of the cause to which nature owes her existence, constitution, and powers.

For ourselves, we have no quarrel with the developmentists when they do not deny the conditions without which there can be no development, or understand by development what is not development but really creation. There is no development where there is no germ to be developed, and that is not development which places something different in kind from the nature of the germ. In the lower forms of organic life, of plants and animals, where the differences of species are indistinct or feebly marked, there may be, for aught we know, a natural development of new species, or what appears to be new species, that is, organic forms, not before brought out, or not perceived to be wrapped up in the forms examined; but in the higher forms of life, where the types are distinct and strongly marked, as in the mammalia, this cannot be the case, for there is no germ in one species of another. We object also to the doctrine that the higher forms of life are developed from the lower forms. Grant, what is possible, perhaps probable, but which every naturalist knows has not scientifically been made out, that there is a gradual ascent without break from the lowest forms of organic life to the highest, it would by no means follow that the higher form but develops and completes the lower. {604} Science has not proved it, and cannot from any facts in its possession even begin to prove it. The law of gradation is very distinguishable from the law of production, and it is a grave blunder in logic to confound them; yet it seems to us that this is what the noble author does, only substituting the term natural creation for that of natural development. He seems to us to mean by the universal reign of law, which he seeks to establish, that through all nature the divine will educes the higher from the lower, or at least makes the lower the stepping-stone of the higher; yet all that science can assert is that the lower in some form subserves the higher, but not that it is its fons, or principle, or the germ from which it is developed.

On the side of God, who is its principle, medium, and end, creation is complete, consummated, both as a whole and in all its parts; but as externized, it is incomplete, imperfect, in part potential, not actual, and is completed by development in time. Looked at from our side or the point of view of the creature, we may say it was created in germ, or with unrealized possibilities. Hence development, not from one species to another, but of each species in its own order, and of each individual according to its species; hence progress, about which we hear so much, in realizing the unrealized possibilities of nature, or in reducing what is potential in the created order to act, is not only possible, but necessary to the complete externization of the creative act. This development or this progress is effected by providence acting through natural laws or natural forces, that is, second or created causes, and also, as the Christian holds, by grace, which is supernatural, and which, without destroying, superseding, or changing nature, assists it to attain an end above and beyond the reach of nature, as we have shown in the article on Nature and Grace.

We, as well as the author, assert the universal reign of law, but we do not accept his definition of law, as "will enforcing itself with power," whether we speak of human law or the divine law, for that is precisely the definition we give to will or power acting without law, or from mere arbitrariness. The Duke of Argyle is a citizen of a constitutional state, and professes to be a liberal statesman; he should not then adopt a definition of law which makes might the measure of right, or denies to right any principle, type, or foundation in the divine nature. We have already suggested the true definition of law—will directed by reason; and God's will is always law, because in him his eternal will and his eternal reason are inseparable, and in him really indistinguishable. His will is, indeed, always law, because it is the will of God, our creator; but if it were possible to conceive him willing without his eternal reason, his will would not and could not bind, though it might compel. The law is not in will alone, or in reason alone, but really in the synthetic action of both. Hence St. Augustine tells us that unjust laws are violences rather than laws, and all jurists, as distinguished from mere legists, tell us that all legislative acts that directly contravene the law of God, or the law of natural justice, do not bind, and are null and void from the beginning.

Law in the other senses the author notes, and has written his work, in part at least, to elucidate and defend, in so far as the natural or inductive sciences, without theology or philosophy, that is, so called metaphysics, can go, is not law at all, but a mere fact, or classification of facts, and simply marks the order of coexistence or of succession of the various facts and phenomena of the natural world. The so-called law of gravitation states to the physicist simply an order or series of facts, not the cause or force producing them, as Hume. Kant, the Positivists, J. Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, and virtually even Sir William Hamilton, and his disciple Mr. Mansel, who exclude the ontological element from science, have amply proved. The idea of cause, of force, is not an empirical idea, but is given à priori.

There are several other points in the work before us on which we intended to comment, but we are obliged by our diminishing space to pass them over. The author says many true and important things, and says them well too; but we think in his effort to reconcile theology and science he fails, in consequence of being not so well versed in theology as he is in the sciences. He does not take note of the fact that the sciences are special, and deal only with facts of a secondary order, and are, therefore, incomplete without the science of the first cause, or theology. He does not keep sufficiently before his mind the distinction between God, as first cause, and nature, as second cause; and hence when he asserts the divine action he inclines to pantheism, and when he asserts the action of nature he inclines to naturalism. Yet his aim has been good, and we feel assured that he has wished to serve the cause of religion as well as that of science.

For ourselves, we hold, and have heretofore proved, that theology is the queen of the sciences, scientia scientiarum, but we have a profound regard for the men of real science, and should be sorry to be found warring against them. There is nothing established by any of the sciences that conflicts with our theology, which is that of the Church of Christ; and we have remarked that the quarrels between the savans and the theologians are, for the most part, not quarrels between science and theology, but between different schools of science. The professors of natural science, who had long taught the geocentric theory, and associated it with their faith, when Galileo brought forward the heliocentric theory, opposed it, and found it easier to denounce him as a heretic than to refute him scientifically. A quarrel arose, and the church was appealed to, and, for the sake of peace, she imposed silence on Galileo, which she might well do, since his theory was not received in the schools, and was not then scientifically established; and when he broke silence against orders, she slightly punished him. But the dispute really turned on a purely scientific question, and faith was by no means necessarily implicated, for faith can adjust itself to either theory. Men of science oppose the supernatural not because they have any scientific facts that militate against it, but because it appears to militate against the theory of the fixedness of natural laws, or of the order of nature. The quarrel is really between a heterodox theology, or erroneous interpretation of the supernatural on the one side, and the misinterpretation of the natural order on the other, that is, between two opinions. A reference to orthodox theology would soon settle the dispute, by showing that neither militates against the other, when both are rightly understood. There is no conflict between theology, as taught by the church, and anything that science has really established with regard to the order of nature.

We cannot accept all the theories of the noble duke, but we can accept all the scientific facts he adduces, and find ourselves instructed and edified by them. It is time the quarrel between theologians and savans should end. It is of recent origin. Till the revival of letters in the fifteenth century, there was no such quarrel—not that men did not begin to think till then, or were ignorant till then of the true method of studying nature—and there need be none, and would be none now, if the theologians never added or substituted for the teaching of revelation unauthorized speculations of their own, and if the savans would never put forward, as science, what is not science. The blame, we are willing to admit, has not been all on one side. Theologians in their zeal have cried out against scientific theories before ascertaining whether they really do or do not conflict with faith, and savans have too often concluded their scientific discoveries conflict with faith, and therefore said, Let faith go, before ascertaining whether they do so or not. There should, for the sake of truth, be a better mutual understanding, for both may work together in harmony.

"Beati Mites, Quoniam Ipsi
Possidebunt Terram."

  Thy song is not the song of morn,
    O Thrush! but calmer and more strong,
  While sunset woods around thee burn,
    And fire-touched stems resound thy song.

  O songstress of the thorn, whereon
    As yet the white but streaks the green,
  Sing on! sing on! Thou sing'st as one
    That sings of what his eyes have seen.

  In thee some Seraph's rapture tells
    Of things thou know'st not! Heaven draws near:
  I hear the Immortal City's bells:
    The triumph of the blest I hear.

  The whole wide earth, to God heart-bare,
    Basks like some happy Umbrian vale
  By Francis trodden and by Clare,
    When anthems sweetened every gale.

  When greatness thirsted to be good,
    When faith was meek, and love was brave,
  When hope by every cradle stood,
    And rainbows spanned each new-made grave.

                             Aubrey De Vere.

The Story of a Conscript.

Translated From The French.

XII.

But, as Sergeant Pinto said, all we had yet seen was but the prelude to the ball; the dance was now about to commence.

The sergeant had formed a particular friendship for me, and on the eighteenth, on relieving guard at the Warthan gate, he said:

"I have just seen the sapper Merlin, sergeant, who was on duty last night at the general's quarters, and he said nothing of it."

"Everything is moving; I feel his presence in the air. You do not yet understand this, conscript, but he is here; everything says so. Before he came, we were lame, crippled; but a wing of the army seemed able to move at once. But now, look there, see those couriers galloping over the road; all is life. The dance is beginning; the dance is beginning! Kaiserliks and the Cossacks do not need spectacles to see that he is with us; they will feel him presently."

And the sergeant's laugh rang hoarsely from beneath his long mustaches; and he was right, for that very day, about three in the afternoon, all the troops stationed around the city were in motion, and at five we were put under arms. The Marshal-Prince of Moskowa entered the town surrounded by the officers and generals who composed his staff, and, almost immediately after, the grey-haired Sunham followed and passed us in review upon the Place. Then he spoke in a loud, clear voice so that every one could hear.

"Soldiers!" said he, "you will form part of the advance-guard of the third corps. Try to remember that you are Frenchmen. Vive l'Empereur!

All shouted "Vive l'Empereur" till the echoes rang again, while the general departed with Colonel Zapfel.

That night we were relieved by the Hessians, and left Erfurt with the Tenth hussars and a regiment of chasseurs. At six or seven in the morning we were before the city of Weimar, and saw the sun rising on its gardens, its churches, and its houses, as well as on an old castle to the right. Here we bivouacked, and the hussars went forward to reconnoitre the town. About nine, while we were breakfasting, suddenly we heard the rattle of pistols and carbines. Our hussars had encountered the Russian hussars in the streets, and they were firing on each other. But it was so far off that we saw nothing of the combat.

At the end of an hour the hussars returned, having lost two men. Thus began the campaign.

We remained five days in our camp, while the whole third corps were coming up. As we were the advance-guard, we started again by way of Sulza and Warthan. Then we saw the enemy; Cossacks who kept ever beyond the range of our guns, and the further they retired the greater grew our courage.

But it annoyed me to hear Zébédé constantly exclaiming in a tone of ill-humor:

I thought that if they kept retreating we could ask nothing better. We would gain all we wanted without loss of life or suffering.

But at last they halted on the further side of a broad and deep river, and I saw a great number posted near the bank to cut us to pieces if we should cross unsupported.

It was the twenty-ninth of April, and growing late. Never did I see a more glorious sunset. On the opposite side of the river stretched a wide plain as far as the eye could reach, and on this, sharply outlined against the glowing sky, stood horsemen, with their shakos drooping forward, their green jackets, little cartridge-boxes slung under the arm, and their sky-blue trousers; behind them glittered thousands of lances, and Sergeant Pinto recognized them as the Prussian cavalry and Cossacks. He knew the river, too, which, he said was the Saale.

We went as near as we could to the water to exchange shots with the horsemen, but they retired and at last disappeared entirely under the blood-red sky. We made our bivouac along the river, and posted our sentries. On our left was a large village; a detachment was sent to it to purchase meat; for since the arrival of the emperor we had orders to pay for everything.

During the night other regiments of the division came up; they, too, bivouacked along the bank, and their long lines of fires, reflected in the ever-moving waters, glared grandly through the darkness.

No one felt inclined to sleep. Zébédé, Klipfel, Furst, and I messed together, and we chatted as we lay around our fire.

"To-morrow we will have it hot enough, if we attempt to cross the river! Our friends in Phalsbourg, over their warm suppers, scarcely think of us lying here, with nothing but a piece of cow-beef to eat, a river flowing beside us, the damp earth beneath, and only the sky for a roof, without speaking of the sabre-cuts and bayonet-thrusts our friends yonder have in store for us."

"Bah!" said Klipfel; "this is life. I would not pass my days otherwise. To enjoy life we must be well to-day, sick to-morrow; then we appreciate the pleasure of the change from pain to ease. As for shots and sabre-strokes, with God's aid, we will give as good as we take!"

"Yes," said Zébédé, lighting his pipe, "when I lose my place in the ranks, it will not be for the want of striking hard at the Russians!"

So we lay wakeful for two or three hours. Leger lay stretched out in his great coat, his feet to the fire, asleep, when the sentinel cried:

It was Marshal Ney and General Brenier, with engineer and artillery officers, and guns. The marshal replied "Sixth of the Line," because he knew beforehand that we were there, and this little fact rejoiced us and made us feel very proud. We saw him pass on horseback with General Sunham and five or six other officers of high grade, and although it was night we could see them distinctly, for the sky was covered with stars and the moon shone bright; it was almost as light as day.

They stopped at a bend of the river and posted six guns, and immediately after a pontoon train arrived with oak planks and all things necessary for throwing two bridges across. Our hussars scoured the banks collecting boats, and the artillerymen stood at their pieces to sweep down any who might try to hinder the work. For a long while we watched their labor, while again and again we heard the sentry's "Qui vive?" It was the regiments of the third corps arriving.

At daybreak I fell asleep, and Klipfel had to shake me to arouse me. On every side they were beating the reveille; the bridges were finished, and we were going to cross the Saale.

A heavy dew had fallen, and each man hastened to wipe his musket, to roll up his great-coat and buckle it on his knapsack. One assisted the other, and we were soon in the ranks. It might have been four o'clock in the morning, and everything seemed grey in the mist that arose from the river. Already two battalions were crossing on the bridges, the officers and colors in the centre. Then the artillery and caissons crossed.

Captain Florentin had just ordered us to renew our primings, when General Sunham, General Chemineau, Colonel Zapfel, and our commandant arrived. The battalion began its march. I looked forward expecting to see the Russians coming on at a gallop, but nothing stirred.

As each regiment reached the further bank it formed square with ordered arms. At five o'clock the entire division had passed. The sun dispersed the mist, and we saw, about three fourths of a league to our right, an old city with its pointed roofs, slated clock-tower, surmounted by a cross, and, further away, a castle; it was Weissenfels.

Between the city and us was a deep valley. Marshal Ney, who had just come up, wished to reconnoitre this before advancing into it. Two companies of the Twenty-seventh were deployed as skirmishers and the squares moved onward in common time, with the officers, sappers, and drums in the centre, the cannon in the intervals and the caissons in the rear.

We all mistrusted this valley—the more so since we had seen, the evening before, a mass of cavalry, which could not have retired beyond the great plain that lay before us. Notwithstanding our distrust, it made us feel very proud and brave to see ourselves drawn up in our long ranks—our muskets loaded, the colors advanced, the generals in the rear full of confidence—to see our masses thus moving onward without hurry, but calmly marking the step; yes, it was enough to make our hearts beat high with pride and hope! And I thought that the enemy might still retire and no blood be spilt, after all.

I was in the second rank, behind Zébédé, and from time to time I glanced at the other square which was moving on the same line with us, in the centre of which I saw the marshal and his staff, all trying to catch a glimpse of what was going on ahead.

The skirmishers had by this time reached the ravine, which was bordered with brambles and hedges. I had already seen a movement on its further side, like the motion of a corn-field in the wind, and the thought struck me that the Russians, with their lances and sabres, were there, although I could scarcely believe it. But when our skirmishers reached the hedges, the fusilade began, and I saw clearly the glitter of their lances. At the same instant a flash like lightning gleamed in front of us, followed by a fierce report. {610} The Prussians had their cannon with them; they had opened on us. I know not what noise made me turn my head, and there I saw an empty space in the ranks to my left.

All this was done so quickly that I had no time for thought. But fifty paces further on another flash shone out; there was another murmur in the ranks—as if a fierce wind was passing—and another vacant space, this time to the right.

And thus, after every shot from the Prussians, the colonel said, "Close up the ranks!" and I knew that each time he spoke there was a breach in the living wall! It was no pleasant thing to think of, but still we marched on toward the valley. At last I did not dare to think at all, when General Chemineau, who had entered our square, cried in a terrible voice:

As Zébédé knelt, I was now, so to speak, in the front rank. On came the line of horses, each rider bending over his saddle-bow, with sabre flashing in his hand. Then again the general's voice was heard behind us, calm, tranquil, giving orders as coolly as on parade:

The four squares fired together; it seemed as if the skies were falling in the crash. When the smoke lifted, we saw the Prussians broken and flying; but our artillery opened, and the cannon-balls sped faster than they.

Never in my life did such a wild joy possess me. On every side the cry of Vive l'Empereur! shook the air, and in my excitement I shouted like the others. But we could not pursue them far, and soon we were again moving calmly on. We thought the fight was ended; but when within two or three hundred paces of the ravine, we heard the rush of horses, and again the general cried:

On came the Prussians from the valley like a whirlwind; the earth shook beneath their weight; we heard no more orders, but each man knew that he must fire into the mass, and the file-firing began, rattling like the drums in a grand review. Those who have not seen a battle can form but little idea of the excitement, the confusion, and yet the order, of such a moment. A few of the Prussians neared us; we saw their forms appear a moment through the smoke, and then saw them no more. In a few moments more the ringing voice of General Chemineau arose, sounding above the crash and rattle:

We scarcely dared obey. Each one hastened to deliver a final shot; then the smoke slowly lifted, and we saw a mass of cavalry ascending the further side of the ravine.

The squares deployed at once into columns; the drums beat the charge; our artillery still continued its fire; we rushed on, shouting:

We descended the ravine, over heaps of horses and Russians; some dead, some writhing upon the earth, and we ascended the slope toward Weissenfels at a quick step. The Cossacks and chasseurs bent forward in their saddles, their cartridge-boxes dangling behind them, galloping before us in full flight. The battle was won.

But as we reached the gardens of the city, they posted their cannon, which they had brought off with them, behind a sort of orchard, and reopened upon us, a ball carrying away both the axe and head of the sapper Merlin. The corporal of sappers, Thorné, had his arm fractured by a piece of the axe, and they were compelled to amputate his arm at Weissenfels. Then we started toward them on a run, for the sooner we reached them the less time they would have for firing.

We entered the city at three places, marching through hedges, gardens, hop-fields, and climbing over walls. The marshals and generals followed after. Our regiment entered by an avenue bordered with poplars, which ran along the cemetery, and, as we debouched in the public square, another column came through the main street.

There we halted, and the marshal, without losing a moment, dispatched the Twenty-seventh to take a bridge and cut off the enemy's retreat. During this time the rest of the division arrived, and was drawn up in the square. The burgomaster and councillors of Weissenfels were already on the steps of the town-hall to bid us welcome.

When we were re-formed, the Marshal-Prince of Moskowa passed before the front of our battalion and said joyfully:

The battalion remained there until the next day. We were lodged with the citizens, who were afraid of us and gave us all we asked. The Twenty-seventh returned in the evening and was quartered in the old chateau. We were very tired. After smoking two or three pipes together, chatting about our glory, Zébédé', Klipfel, and I went together to the shop of a joiner on a heap of shavings, and remained there until midnight, when they beat the reveille. We rose; the joiner gave us some brandy, and we went out. The rain was falling in torrents. That night the battalion went to bivouac before the village of Clépen, two hours march from Weissenfels.

Other detachments came and rejoined us. The emperor had arrived at Weissenfels, and all the third corps were to follow us. We talked only of this all the day; but the day after, at five in the morning, we set off again in the advance.

Before us rolled a river called the Rippach. Instead of turning aside to take the bridge, we forded it where we were. The water reached our waists; and I thought how terrible this would have seemed to me when I was so much afraid of taking cold at Monsieur Goulden's.

As we passed down the other bank of the river in the rushes, we discovered a band of Cossacks observing us from the heights to the left. They followed slowly, without daring to attack us, and so we kept on until it was broad day, when suddenly a terrific fusilade and the thunder of heavy guns made us turn our heads toward Clépen. The commandant, on horseback, looked at us over the reeds.

The Cossacks gazed, too, toward the fight, and at the end of an hour disappeared. Then we saw the division advancing in column in the plain to the right, driving before them the masses of Russian cavalry.

We ran, without knowing why, along the river bank, until we reached an old bridge where the Rippach and Gruna met. Here we were to intercept the enemy; but the Cossacks had discovered our design, and their whole army fell back behind the Gruna, which they forded, and, the division rejoining us, we learned that Marshal Bessières had been killed by a cannon-ball.

We left the bridge to bivouac before the village of Gorschen. The rumor that a great battle was approaching ran through the ranks, and they said that all that had passed was only a trial to see how the recruits would act under fire. One may imagine the reflections of a thoughtful man under such circumstances, among such hare-brained fellows as Furst, Zébédé, and Klipfel, who seemed to rejoice at the prospect, as if it could bring them aught else than bullet-wounds or sabre-cuts. All night long I thought of Catharine, and prayed God to preserve my life and my hands, which are so needful for poor people to gain their bread.

XIII.

We lighted our fires on the hill before Gross-Gorschen and a detachment descended to the village and brought back five or six old cows to make soup of. But we were so worn out that many would rather sleep than eat. Other regiments arrived with cannon and munitions. About eleven o'clock there were from ten to twelve thousand men there and two thousand and more in the village—all Sunham's division. The general and his ordnance officers were quartered in an old mill to the left, near a stream called Floss-Graben. The line of sentries were stretched along the base of the hill a musket-shot off.

At length I fell asleep, but I awoke every hour, and behind us, towards the road leading from the old bridge of Poserna to Lutzen and Leipzig, I heard the rolling of wagons, of artillery and caissons, rising and falling through the silence.

Sergeant Pinto did not sleep; he sat smoking his pipe and drying his feet at the fire. Every time one of us moved, he would try to talk and say:

The clock of Gross-Gorschen was striking six when I awoke. I was sore and weary yet. Nevertheless, I sat up and tried to warm myself, for I was very cold. The fires were smoking, and almost extinguished. Nothing of them remained but the ashes and a few embers. The sergeant, erect, was gazing over the vast plain where the sun shot a few long lines of gold, and, seeing me awake, put a coal in his pipe and said:

"That astonishes you," he continued; "but we have not stirred, while the army has made a half-wheel. Yesterday it was before us in the Rippach; now it is behind us, near Lutzen; and, instead of being in the front, we are in the rear; so that now," said he, closing an eye and drawing two long puffs of his pipe, "we are the last, instead of the foremost."

"We gain the honor of first reaching Leipzig, and falling on the Prussians," he replied. "You will understand this by and by, conscript."

I stood up, and looked around. I saw before us a wide, marshy plain, traversed by the Gruna-Bach and the Floss-Graben. A few hills arose along these streams, and beyond ran a large river, which the sergeant told me was the Elster. The morning mist hung over all. We saw no fires on the hills save those of our division; but the entire third corps occupied the villages scattered in our rear, and headquarters were at Kaya.

At seven o'clock the drums and the trumpets of the artillery sounded the reveille. Ammunition-wagons came up, and bread and cartridges were distributed. Two cantinières arrived from the village; and, as I had yet a few crowns remaining, I offered Klipfel and Zébédé a glass of brandy each, to counteract the effects of the fogs of the night. I also presumed to offer one to Sergeant Pinto, who accepted it, saying that bread and brandy warmed the heart.

We felt quite happy, and no one suspected the horrors the day was to bring forth. We thought the Russians and the Prussians were seeking us behind the Gruna-Bach; but they knew well where we were. And suddenly, almost ten o'clock, General Sunham, mounted, arrived with his officers. I was sentry near the stacks of arms, and I think I can now see him, as he rode to the top of the hill, with his grey hair and white-bordered hat; and as he took out his field-glass, and, after an earnest gaze, returned quickly, and ordered the drums to beat the recall. The sentries at once fell into the ranks, and Zébédé, who had the eyes of a falcon, said:

"I see yonder, near the Elster, masses of men forming and advancing in good order, and others coming from the marshes by the three bridges. We are lost if all those fall upon our rear!"

"A battle is beginning," said Pinto, shading his eyes with his hands, "or I know nothing of war. Those beggarly Prussians and Russians want to take us on the flank with their whole force, as we defile on Leipzig, so as to cut us in two. It is well thought of on their part. We are always teaching them the art of war."

"Our part is simple," answered the sergeant. "We are here twelve to fifteen thousand men, with old Sunham, who never gave an enemy an inch. We will stand here like a wall, one to six or seven, until the emperor is informed how matters stand, and sends us aid. There go the staff officers now."

It was true; five or six officers were galloping over the plain of Lutzen toward Leipzig. They sped like the wind, and I prayed God to have them reach the emperor in time to send the whole army to our assistance; for there is something horrible in the certainty that we are about to perish, and I would not wish my greatest enemy in such a position as ours was then.

"You will have a chance now, conscripts; and if any of you come out alive, they will have something to boast of. Look at those blue lines advancing, with their muskets on their shoulders, along Floss-Graben. Each of those lines is a regiment. There are thirty of them. {614} That makes sixty thousand Prussians, without counting those lines of horsemen, each of which is a squadron. Those advancing to their left, near the Rippach, glittering in the sun, are the dragoons and cuirassiers of the Russian Imperial Guard. There are eighteen or twenty thousand of them, and I first saw them at Austerlitz, where we fixed them finely. Those masses of lances in the rear are Cossacks. We will have a hundred thousand men on our hands in an hour. This is a fight to win the cross in!"

"Do you think so, sergeant?" said Zébédé, whose ideas were never very clear, and who already imagined he held the cross in his fingers, while his eyes glittered with excitement.

"It will be hand to hand," replied the sergeant;" and suppose that, in the mêlée, you see a colonel or a flag near you, spring on him or it; never mind sabres or bayonets; seize them, and then your name goes on the list."

As he spoke, I remembered that the Mayor of Phalsbourg had received the cross for having gone to meet the Empress Marie Louise in carriages garlanded with flowers, and I thought his method much preferable to that of Sergeant Pinto.

But I had not time to think more, for the drums beat on all sides, and each one ran to where the arms of his company were stacked and seized his musket. Our officers formed us, great guns came at a gallop from the village, and were posted on the brow of the hill a little to the rear, so that the slope served them as a species of redoubt. Further away, in the villages of Rahna, of Kaya, and of Klein-Gorschen, all was motion, but we were the first the Prussians would fall upon.

The enemy halted about twice a cannon-shot off, and the cavalry swarmed by hundreds up the hill to reconnoitre us. I was in utter despair as I gazed on their immense masses, and thought that all was ended; nothing remained for me but to sell my life as dearly as I could; to fight pitilessly, and die.

While these thoughts were passing through my head, General Chemineau galloped along our front, crying:

The officers in the rear took up the word and it passed from right to left; four squares of four battalions each were formed. I found myself in the third, on one of the interior sides, a circumstance which in some degree reassured me; for I thought that the Prussians, who were advancing in three columns, would first attack those directly opposite them. But scarcely had the thought struck me when a hail of cannon-shot swept through us. They had thirty pieces of artillery playing on us, and the balls shrieked sometimes over our heads, sometimes through the ranks, and then again struck the earth, which they scattered over us.

Our heavy guns replied to their fire, but could not silence it, and the horrible cry of "Close up the ranks! Close up the ranks!" was ever sounding in our ears.

We were enveloped in smoke without having fired a shot, and I thought that in another quarter of an hour we should have been all massacred without having a chance to defend ourselves, when the head of the Prussian columns appeared between the hills, moving forward, with a deep, hoarse murmur, like the noise of an inundation. Then the three first sides of our square, the second and third obliquing to the right and left, fired. God only knows how many Prussians fell. But instead of stopping they rushed on, shouting "Vaterland! Vaterland!" and we fired again into their very bosoms.

Then began the work of death in earnest. Bayonet-thrust, sabre-stroke, blows from the butt-end of our pieces crashed on all sides. They tried to crush us by mere weight of numbers, and came on like furious bulls. A battalion rushed upon us, thrusting with their bayonets; we returned their blows without leaving the ranks, and they were swept away almost to a man by two cannon which were in position toward our rear.

They were the last who tried to break our squares. They turned and fled down the hillside, we firing as they ran, when their cavalry dashed down upon our right, seeking to penetrate by the gaps made by their artillery. I could not see the fight, for it was at the other end of the division, but their heavy guns swept us off by dozens as we stood inactive. General Chemineau had his thigh broken; we could not hold out much longer when the order was given to beat the retreat.

We retired to Gross-Gorschen, pursued by the Prussians, both sides maintaining a constant fire. The two thousand men in the village checked the enemy while we ascended the opposite slope to gain Klein-Gorschen. But the Prussian cavalry came on once more to cut off our retreat and keep us under the fire of their artillery. Then my blood boiled with anger, and I heard Zébédé cry, "Let us fight our way to the top rather than remain here!"

To do this was fearfully dangerous, for their regiments of hussars and chasseurs advanced in good order to charge. Still we kept retreating, when a voice on the top of the ridge cried "Halt!" and at the same moment the hussars, who were already rushing down upon us, received a terrific discharge of case and grape-shot which swept them down by hundreds. It was Girard's division who had come to our assistance from Klein-Gorschen and had placed sixteen pieces in position to open upon them. The hussars fled faster than they came, and the six squares of Girard's division united with ours at Klein-Gorschen, to check the Prussian infantry, which still continued to advance, the three first columns in front and three others, equally strong, supporting them.

I thought now of nothing but vengeance. I was wild with excitement and wrath against those who sought to kill me. I felt a sort of hatred against those Prussians whose shouts and insolent manner disgusted me. I was, nevertheless, very glad to see Zébédé near me yet, and as we stood awaiting new attacks, with our arms resting on the ground, I pressed his hand.

"We have escaped narrowly enough," said he. "God grant the emperor may soon arrive, for they are twenty times our strength."

I looked around to see if the sergeant was with us yet, and saw him calmly wiping his bayonet; not a feature showed any trace of excitement. I would have wished to know if Klipfel and Furst were unhurt, but the command, "Carry arms!" made me think of myself.

The three first columns of the enemy had halted on the hill of Gross-Gorschen to await their supports. The village in the valley between us was on fire, the flames bursting from the thatched roofs and the smoke rising to the sky, and to the left we saw a long line of cannon coming down to open upon us.

It might have been midday when the six columns began their march and deployed masses of hussars and cavalry on both sides of Gross-Gorschen. Our artillery, placed behind the squares on the top of the ridge, opened a terrible fire on the Prussian cannoneers, who replied all along their line.

Our drums began to beat in the squares to warn that the enemy were approaching, but their rattle was like the buzz of a fly in the storm, while in the valley the Prussians shouted altogether, "Vaterland! Vaterland!"

Their fire, as they climbed the hill, enveloped us in smoke—as the wind blew towards us—and hindered us from seeing them. Nevertheless, we began our file-firing. We heard and saw nothing but the noise and smoke of battle for the next quarter of an hour, when suddenly the Prussian hussars were in our squares. I know not how it happened, but there they were on their little horses, sabring us without mercy. We fought with our bayonets; they slashed, and fired their pistols. The carnage was horrible. Zébédé, Sergeant Pinto, and some twenty of the company held together. There they fought the pale-faced, long-mustached hussars, whose horses reared and neighed as they dashed over the heaps of dead and wounded. I remember the cries, French and German in a horrid mixture, that arose; how they called us "Schweinpelz," and how old Pinto never ceased to cry, "Strike bravely, my children; strike bravely!"

I never knew how we escaped; we ran at random through the smoke, and dashed through the midst of sabres and flying bullets. I only remember that Zébédé every moment cried out to me, "Come on! come on!" and that finally we found ourselves on a hillside behind a square which yet held firm, with Sergeant Pinto and seven or eight others of the company.

Then I saw blood and hair on my bayonet, and I knew that in my fury I must have given some terrible blows. Old Pinto told us that the regiment was totally routed; that the beggarly Prussians had sabred half of it, but we should find the remainder by and by. "Now," he cried, "we must keep the enemy out of the village. By file, left! March!"

We descended a little stairway which led to one of the gardens of Klein-Gorschen, and, entering a house, the sergeant barricaded the door leading to the fields with a heavy kitchen-table; then he showed us the door opening on the street, telling us that there lay our way of retreat. This done, we went to the floor above, and found a pretty large room, with two windows looking out upon the village, and two upon the hill, which was still covered with smoke and resounding with the crash of musketry and artillery. At one end was a broken bedstead and near it a cradle. The people of the house had no doubt fled at the beginning of the battle, but a dog, with ears erect and flashing eyes, glared at us from beneath the curtains.

The sergeant opened the window and fired at two or three Prussian hussars who were already advancing down the street. Zébédé and the others standing behind him stood ready. I looked toward the hill to see if the squares had yet remained unbroken, and I saw them retreating in good order, firing as they went from all four faces on the masses of cavalry which surrounded them on every side. {617} Through the smoke I could perceive the colonel on horseback, sabre in hand, and by him the colors, so torn by shot that they were mere rags hanging on the staff.

Beyond, a column of the enemy were debouching from the road and marching on Klein-Gorschen. This column evidently designed cutting off our retreat on the village, but hundreds of disbanded soldiers like us had arrived, and were pouring in from all sides; some turning ever and anon to fire, others wounded, trying to crawl to some place of shelter. They took possession of the houses, and, as the column approached, musketry rattled upon them from all the windows. This checked the enemy, and at the same moment the divisions of Brenier and Marchaud, which the Prince of Moskowa had dispatched to our assistance, began to deploy to the right.

The Prussians halted, and the firing ceased on both sides. Our squares and columns began to climb the hills again, opposite Starsiedel, and the defenders of the village rushed from the houses to rejoin their regiments. Ours had become mingled with two or three others; and, when the reënforcing divisions halted before Kaya, we could scarcely find our places. The roll was called, and of our company but forty-two men remained; Furst and Leger were dead, but Zébédé, Klipfel, and I were unhurt.

But the battle was not yet over, for the Prussians, flushed with victory, were already making their dispositions to attack us at Kaya; reënforcements were hurrying to them, and it seemed that, for so great a general, the emperor had made a gross mistake in stretching his lines to Leipzig, and leaving us to be overpowered by an army of over a hundred thousand men.

As we were reforming behind Brenier's division, eighteen thousand veterans of the Prussian guard charged up the hill, carrying the shakos of our killed on their bayonets in sign of victory. Once more the fight began, and the mass of Russian cavalry, which we had seen glittering in the sun in the morning, came down on our flank; the sixth corps had arrived in time to cover it, and stood the shock like a castle wall. Once more shouts, groans, the clashing of sabre against bayonet, the crash of musketry and thunder of cannon shook the sky, while the plain was hidden in a cloud of smoke, through which we could see the glitter of helmets, cuirasses, and thousands of lances.

We were retiring, when something passed along our front like a flash of lightning. It was Marshal Ney surrounded by his staff, and his eyes sparkled and his lips trembled with rage. In a second's time he had dashed along the lines, and drew up in front of our columns. The retreat stopped at once; he called us on, and, as if led by a kind of fascination, we dashed on to meet the Prussians, cheering like madmen as we went. But the Prussian line stood firm; they fought hard to keep the victory they had won, and besides were constantly receiving reënforcements, while we were worn out with five hours' fighting.

Our battalion was now in the second line, and the enemy's shot passed over our heads; but a horrible din made my flesh creep; it was the rattling of the grape-shot among the bayonets.

In the midst of shouts, orders, and the whistling of bullets, we again began to fall back over heaps of dead; our first divisions reentered Klein-Gorschen, and once more the fight was hand to hand. In the main street of the village nothing was seen or heard but shots and blows, and generals fought sword in hand like private soldiers.

This lasted some minutes; we checked them again, but again they were reënforced, and we were obliged to continue our retreat, which was fast becoming a rout. If the enemy forced us to Kaya, our army was cut in two. The battle seemed irretrievably lost, for Marshal Ney himself, in the centre of a square, was retreating; and many soldiers, to get away from the mêlée, were carrying off wounded officers on their muskets. Everything looked gloomy, indeed.

I entered Kaya on the right of the village, leaping over the hedges, and creeping under the fences which separated the gardens, and was turning the corner of a street, when I saw some fifty officers on the brow of a hill before me, and behind them masses of artillery galloping at full speed along the Leipzig road. Then I saw the emperor himself, a little in advance of the others; he was seated, as if in an arm-chair, on his white horse, and I could see him well, beneath the clear sky, motionless and looking at the battle through his field-glass.

My heart beat gladly; I cried "Vive l'Empereur!" with all my strength, and rushed along the main street of Kaya. I was one of the first to enter, and I saw the inhabitants of the village, men, women, and children, hastening to the cellars for protection.

Many to whom I have related the foregoing have sneered at me for running so fast; but I can only reply that when Michel Ney retired, it was high time for Joseph Bertha to do so too.

Klipfel, Zébédé, Sergeant Pinto, and the others of the company had not yet arrived, when masses of black smoke arose above the roofs; shattered tiles fell into the streets, and shot buried themselves in the walls, or crashed through the beams with a horrible noise.

At the same time, our soldiers rushed in through the lanes, over the hedges and fences, turning from time to time to fire on the enemy. Men of all arms were mingled, some without shakos or knapsacks, their clothes torn and covered with blood; but they retreated furiously, and were nearly all mere children, boys of fifteen or twenty; but courage is inborn in the French people.

The Prussians led by old officers who shouted "Forwärts! Forwärts!"—followed like packs of wolves, but we turned and opened fire from the hedges, and fences, and houses. How many of them bit the dust I know not, but others always supplied the places of those who fell. Hundreds of balls whistled by our ears and flattened themselves on the stone walls; the plaster was broken from the walls, and the thatch hung from the rafters, and as I turned for the twentieth time to fire, my musket dropped from my hand; I stooped to lift it, but I fell too; I had received a shot in the left shoulder and the blood ran like warm water down my breast. I tried to rise, but all that I could do was to seat myself against the wall while the blood continued to flow, and I shuddered at the thought that I was to die there.

Fearful that another bullet might reach me, I crawled to the corner of a house, and fell into a little trench which brought water from the street to the garden. My left arm was heavy as lead; my head swam; I still heard the firing, but it seemed a dream, and I closed my eyes.

When I again opened them, night was coming on, and the Prussians filled the village. In the garden, before me, was an old general, with white hair, on a fall brown horse. He shouted in a trumpet-like voice to bring on the cannon, and officers hurried away with his orders. Near him, standing on a little wall, two surgeons were bandaging his arm. Behind, on the other side, was a little Russian officer, whose plume of green feathers almost covered his hat. I saw all this at a glance—the old man with his large nose and broad forehead, his quick glancing eyes, and bold air; the others around him; the surgeon, a little bald man with spectacles, and five or six hundred paces away, between two houses, our soldiers reforming.

The firing had ceased, but between Klein-Gorschen and Kaya I could hear the heavy rumble of artillery, neighing of horses, cries and shouts of drivers, and cracking of whips. Without knowing why, I dragged myself to the wall, and scarcely had I done so, when two sixteen pounders, each drawn by six horses, turned the corner of the street. The artillery-men beat the horses with all their strength, and the wheels rolled over the heaps of dead and wounded. Now I knew whence came the cries I had heard, and my hair stood on end with horror.

"Here!" cried the old man in German; "aim yonder, between those two houses near the fountain."

The two guns were turned at once; the old man, his left arm in a sling, cantered up the street, and I heard him say, in short, quick tones to the young officer as he passed where I lay:

"Tell the Emperor Alexander that I am in Kaya. The battle is won if I am reënforced. Let them not discuss the matter, but send help at once. Napoleon is coming, and in half an hour we will have him upon us with his Guard. I will stand, let it cost what it may. But in God's name do not lose a minute, and the victory is ours!"

The young man set off at a gallop, and at the same moment a voice near me whispered:

Turning my head, I saw an old sergeant, withered and thin, with long wrinkles in his cheeks, sitting against the door of the house, supporting himself with his hands on the ground as with a pair of crutches, for a ball had passed through him from side to side. His yellow eyes followed the Prussian general; his hooked nose seemed to droop like the beak of an eagle over his thick mustache, and his look was fierce and proud.

"If I had my musket," he repeated, "I would show you whether the battle is won."

I thought that perhaps I should be buried in the morning, with the others in the garden opposite us, and that I would never again see Catharine; the tears ran down my cheeks and I could not help murmuring:

"In the shoulder! That is better than one through the body. You will get over it."

I thought that he pitied my youth and wished to console me; but my chest seemed crushed, and I could not hope.

The sergeant said no more, only from time to time he raised his head to see if our columns were coming. He swore between his teeth and ended by falling at length upon the ground, saying:

He gazed at the hedge opposite, where a Prussian grenadier was stretched, cold and stiff, the old sergeant's bayonet yet in his body.

It might then have been six in the evening. I was cold and had dropped my head forward upon my knees, when the roll of artillery called me again to my senses. The two pieces in the garden and many others posted behind them threw their broad flashes through the darkness, while Russians and Prussians crowded through the street. But all this was as nothing in comparison to the fire of the French, from the hill opposite the village, while the constant glare showed the Young Guard coming on at the double-quick, generals and colonels on horseback in the midst of the bayonets, waving their swords and cheering them on, while the twenty-four guns the emperor had sent to support the movement thundered behind. The old wall against which I leaned shook to its foundations. In the street the balls mowed down the enemy like grass before the scythe. It was their turn to close up the ranks.

I paid no further attention to the sergeant, but listened to the inspiring shouts of "Vive l'Empereur!" ringing out in the momentary silence between the reports of the guns.

The Russians and the Prussians were forced back; the shouts of our troops grew nearer and nearer. The cannoneers at the pieces before me loaded and fired at their utmost speed, when three or four grape-shots fell among them and broke the wheel of one of their guns, besides killing two and wounding another of their men. I felt a hand seize my arm. It was the old sergeant. His eyes were glazing in death, but he laughed scornfully and savagely. The roof of our shelter fell in; the walls bent, but we cared not, we only saw the defeat of the enemy and heard the nearer and nearer shouts of our men, when the old sergeant gasped in my ear:

He rose to his knees, supporting himself with one hand, while with the other he waved his hat in the air, and cried in a ringing voice:

And I, raising myself too from the ground, saw Napoleon, riding calmly through the hail of shot—his hat pulled down over his large head—his grey great-coat open, a broad red ribbon crossing his white vest—there he rode, calm and imperturbable, his face lit up with the reflection from the bayonets. None stood their ground before him; the Prussian artillerymen abandoned their pieces and sprang over the garden-hedge, despite the cries of their officers who sought to keep them back.

I saw no more, our victory was certain; and I fell like a corpse in the midst of corpses.

XIV.

When sense returned, all was silent around. Clouds were scudding across the sky, and the moon shone down upon the abandoned village, the broken guns, and the pale upturned faces of the dead, as calmly as for ages she had looked on the flowing water, the waving grass, and the rustling leaves. Men are but insects in the midst of creation; lives but drops in the ocean of eternity, and none so truly feel their insignificance as the dying.

I could not move from where I lay in the intensest pain. My right arm alone could I stir; and raising myself with difficulty upon my elbow, I saw the dead heaped along the street, their white faces shining like snow in the moonlight. The sight thrilled me with horror, and my teeth chattered.

I would have cried for help, but my voice was no louder than that of a sobbing child. But my feeble cry awoke others, and groans and shrieks arose on all sides. The wounded, thought succor was coming, and all who could cried piteously. And I heard, too, a horse neigh painfully on the other side of the hedge. The poor animal tried to rise, and I saw its head and long neck appear; then it fell again to the earth.

The effort I made reopened my wound, and again I felt the blood running down my breast. I closed my eyes to die, and the scenes of my early childhood, of my native village, the face of my poor mother as she sang me to sleep, my little room, with its niched Virgin, our old dog Pommer—all rose before my eyes; my father embraced me again, as he laid aside his axe at his return from work—all rose dreamily before me.

How little those poor parents thought that they were rearing their boy to die miserably far from friends, and home, and succor! Would that I could have asked their forgiveness for all the pain I had given them! Tears rolled down my cheeks; I sobbed like a child.

Then Catharine, Aunt Grédel, and Monsieur Goulden passed before me. I saw their grief and fear when the news of the battle came. Aunt Grédel running to the post-office to learn something of me, and Catharine prayerfully awaiting her return, while Monsieur Goulden searched the gazette for intelligence of our corps. I saw Aunt Grédel return disappointed, and heard Catharine's sobs as she asked eagerly for me. Then a messenger seemed to arrive at Quatre-Vents. He opened his leathern sack, and handed a large paper to Aunt Grédel, while Catharine stood, pale as death, beside her. It was the official notice of my death! I heard Catharine's heart-rending cries and Aunt Grédel's maledictions. Then good Monsieur Goulden came to console them, and all wept together.

Toward morning, a heavy shower began to fall, and the monotonous dripping on the roofs alone broke the silence. I thought of the good God, whose power and mercy are limitless, and I hoped that he would pardon my sins in consideration of my sufferings.

The rain filled the little trench in which I had been lying. From time to time a wall fell in the village, and the cattle, scared away by the battle, began to resume confidence and return. I heard a goat bleat in a neighboring stable. A great shepherd's dog wandered fearfully among the heaps of dead. The horse, seeing him, neighed in terror—he took him for a wolf—and the dog fled.

I remember all these details, for, when we are dying, we see everything, we hear everything, for we know that we are seeing and hearing our last.

But how my whole frame thrilled with joy when, at the corner of the street, I thought I heard the sound of voices! How eagerly I listened! {622} And I raised myself upon my elbow, and called for help. It was yet night; but the first grey streak of day was becoming visible in the east, and afar off, through the falling rain, I saw a light in the fields, now coming onward, now stopping. I saw dark forms bending around it. They were only confused shadows. But others beside me saw the light; for on all sides arose groans and plaintive cries, from voices so feeble that they seemed like those of children calling their mothers.

What is this life to which we attach so great a price? This miserable existence, so full of pain and suffering? Why do we so cling to it, and fear more to lose it than aught else in the world? What is it that is to come hereafter that makes us shudder at the mere thought of death? Who knows? For ages and ages all have thought and thought on the great question, but none have yet solved it. I, in my eagerness to live, gazed on that light as the drowning man looks to the shore. I could not take my eyes from it, and my heart thrilled with hope. I tried again to shout, but my voice died on my lips. The pattering of the rain on the ruined dwellings, and on the trees, and the ground, drowned all other sounds, and, although I kept repeating, "They hear us! They are coming!" and although the lantern seemed to grow larger and larger, after wandering for some time over the field, it slowly disappeared behind a little hill.

The Old Religion;

Or, How Shall We Find Primitive Christianity?

We Americans, generally, have got the name of being the most "go-ahead" people on earth. We are always looking out for "the last new thing," and, when we have got it, we try to sail past it, to do something better. We have tried our hands at everything under the sun; we have had our fair share in original invention, and when we have not invented we have brought out the last improvements. Amongst other things, we have tried our hands at the manufacture of religions, and if man could have made a religion, there is not a doubt that we should have succeeded. As it is, we worked the religious element with considerable originality. We have made tracks which no other people have ever thought of, and our imitations of religion have been a prodigious success.

But, in truth, the great majority of thinking people in this country have always remained deeply convinced of the truth of the old original Christianity as the work of God's revelation to man, not as the result of human thought. As a revelation, they know it must have been given once for all as a heavenly treasure, to be preserved in its antiquity to the end, not to be improved upon and adapted and remodelled by human ingenuity. {623} Hence, as a people, we are convinced of the claims of the Christian religion upon our allegiance, and understand moreover that not "the newest thing in religions," but the "veritable old religion," is not only the best, but is the only truth; our strength in life, our hope in death; the only thing we have to seek after, if as yet we have not found it, the pearl of priceless value, the purchase of our admission into heaven.

The question, therefore, as between Christians, narrows itself to the simple issue, Which is the old religion, and what was primitive Christianity?

But, again, we may narrow the question still more. All admit, as beyond all doubt, that there is one church, and one only, which is historically in possession of the old religion. Other churches in this country have their history, and we know when each began; some are not as old as the Declaration of Independence, none are older than the era of the Reformation, 300 years ago. The Catholic Church stands alone in her ancient descent and undaunted lineage amongst the churches of the modern creation. "True," it is answered, 'the Catholic Church is the old church' In the line of her bishops she can, no doubt, trace her descent until, as Macaulay says, 'history is lost in the twilight of fable.' If she cannot count name by name the long succession of her pontiffs up to the apostles, there is certainly no other church that can put in the shadow of a claim to apostolic succession. But ancient as she is, she is not old enough to be primitive, and we should hardly think that any educated Catholic would venture to stand up before the public and say honestly that he believed, and was ready to give proof, that the Catholic Church of the present day and primitive Christianity are identical."

Such, strange as it seems to Catholics, is very much the attitude of the educated Protestant mind, when least prejudiced toward the church. Protestants, even of this class, do not know that the identity of the Catholic religion and primitive Christianity is a first principle with us, and has always been so, centuries before Protestantism was heard of; that this is the one only basis on which the Catholic Church rests her exclusive right to "teach all nations," and has always rested it. Disprove the justness of this claim, and you have reduced the Catholic Church to the level of one of the sects. So ancient and world-wide a challenge can only seem new and strange to Protestants, because they do not know even our first principles, still less the reasonings on which they rest. But clearly it cannot be rash and foolhardy in us to put forward claims to which the intellect of the vast majority of Christians, for nearly twenty centuries, has given in its adhesion. But to come to our own age and to facts of our own experience which meet us at every turn, we hear every day and have heard for the last thirty years, here and in England, and in all other Protestant countries, of great numbers of conversions to the Catholic religion. Amongst them there have been many of the leading minds of the day, high-classed men, the flower of the universities, now holding eminent positions in different walks of science and literature, at the bar, in the senate, and in the church. {624} To name Dr. Newman as the leading intellect amongst recent converts to the Catholic Church, is to name one who possesses a more than European reputation, nay, who is as well known on this as on the other continent for acuteness and accuracy of thought, sobriety of judgment, and indefatigable research into every question involving the history of Christian antiquity, primitive belief and practice; and such men are but a reproduction, in our day, of the same type which we find in all those other men of high moral and intellectual endowments who, from the days of St. Augustine, have brought to the service of the church the mental powers which had been trained in the camp of her enemies. What do all such conversions involve but the emphatic admission, on the part of such converts, that the Catholic religion has made out her claim to identity with primitive Christianity?

Perhaps we, in this country, are more than others averse to bowing down to the authority of great names. Still it cannot be denied that peritus in arte sua, the man who has made any art or science his particular study is and always must be an authority. We may examine a question for ourselves, or try an experiment in physics, but we must admit that the chances are a hundred to one that, after having tried it, we shall find only the predicted result. It is in this sense that we have brought forward the authority of majorities, and of great names in the present question, not as deciding the matter, "What is the truth?" but as justly producing on the minds of unprejudiced persons a strong presumption in favor of the justness of such conclusions. If it be said that the undoubtedly great minds which have embraced the Catholic religion are no proof, or even presumption, that the Catholic religion is true, we reply, Be it so; they do, however, afford a strong presumption of the sincerity of such converts when, as is generally the case, it can be shown that they embraced the Catholic faith against the force of early prejudice and to their own temporal loss. And it affords also a strong persuasion that the reasons which they had for the change of religion must have been weighty, since they wrought conviction in the minds of men well capable of judging of the force of argument, and who knew also all that could be urged on the other side. In fact, the argument in favor of the Catholic religion, drawn from the fact of the great and good men who have in every age embraced it, is similar to that which is very commonly brought forward in favor of the general evidences of Christianity, from the fact of their having wrought conviction in the mind of St. Paul or of Sir Isaac Newton.

The large number of conversions taking place every day amongst ourselves, not merely of the unlearned but even more in proportion, of the more educated and the more morally elevated, and the special weight which the submission of persons specially eminent for moral and intellectual gifts carries with it, ought to have, and indeed are found to produce at least this effect on sensible men, that it makes them pause to consider, and try to assign a sufficient reason for such conversions. Anyhow, whether any reason good or bad can be assigned for this movement, it is a fact, to which no one who enters into society can shut his eyes. Conversion to the Catholic religion is like an epidemic; there is no neighborhood or profession, scarcely a family in any class of society in which conversions to the Catholic Church have not taken place. I enter a railway car or a steamboat; I go to a dinner party; I stand up with my partner at a ball; and, in the pauses of the busy hum of voices or of musical sounds, I become aware that my opposite neighbors are actually discussing with interest, attacking or defending, the Catholic religion.

Going into town by the cars the other day, I met my uncle Joe in a brown study. "Good morning, sir! why so gloomy?"

"Why, John, my eldest son, has become a Papist, sir; sorry for it; a good, steady lad, but he has got into the hands of the priests, sir; I fear it is all up with him. I suppose he will shave his head next, leave his boots at home, and turn out like one of those bare-footed friars we used to see in Belgium last fall."

"Well, but, uncle," say I, "it cannot be helped, you see; you would not have the boy, as you call him—though he is two and twenty if he is a day—go against his conscience and remain a nominal Protestant to please you." "No, sir," he replies, "you have me there; I stand up for the principle of liberty of conscience, sir. Yes, sir, liberty of conscience. I know all about it, civil and religious liberty, which the fathers of our glorious republic established once and for all time as the palladium of our constitution. But how the boy can fancy the Catholic religion to be true, and make a matter of conscience to join it, that is my puzzle, I can tell you."

"Well, but my dear sir, it is no flattery to say to you, your son is no fool. He knows what he is about; for his age, there is not a more promising young fellow at our bar; only last week old Judge Davis complimented him for the way in which he had taken a very complicated case in equity and literally turned it inside out and held it up for inspection. He is not a child; he has cut all his teeth, and is not one to be led by the nose by any man, be he priest or lawyer—you don't walk round a Yankee lawyer in a hurry."

"Well, that is true," said my uncle. "He has as sound a head as any lad I know, and at school and college he was always well up. Whatever has turned his head to Papacy? Do you know I sometimes think it is what they call a monomania—like the man who was sensible enough in everything else but mad on one point, and thought he was a pump; and another took to his room and could not be got to go out because he thought he was made of glass, and would not stand jostling in the streets. Then think of Joanna Southcote, Joe Smith, and the rest. My word! there is no end of the aberrations of the human intellect."

"Well, sir," I replied, "I don't think that will hold water, for you and I know a dozen sensible, first-rate men who have turned Catholics; no fanatics, but cool-headed men of business, good neighbors, good husbands, honest men. There is Mr. A., Judge B., General C., within the present year. They are not men to make a serious change, which they know would set every one talking and criticising them, unless they knew well what they were about, and could give reasons for the change and stand a little criticism."

"Well, that is nothing but common sense," he replied; "still I am puzzled, I can tell you, to think why they did it."

"Well, my dear sir, I think I can tell you why they did it. Because they found out that it was the old original religion, after all."

"Well, you do astonish me. I do believe you must have turned Catholic yourself, by the way you speak."

"That's a fact uncle! You see, we have not met for more than nine months. I was led, through the conversion of a very dear friend of mine, to examine into his reasons, and the result is, that I became a Catholic just before last Christmas."

"I am glad I met you to-day," he rejoined, "for to tell you the truth, I was very much cut up about this business. I have not seen John since he did it. I thought I should have to meet him to-day, and I fully intended to cut up rough with him over it. And so, Philip, you are a Catholic; let me look at you; well, I wonder how you felt when you went down on your knees and told the priest everything right away—but I suppose they did not get you up to that point, did they?"

"As for that," I replied, "set your mind at ease. I went to confession like any pious old woman, and when it was over, I never felt so light and happy since I was a boy. I felt as if I had got rid of a load, like Christian, in the Pilgrim's Progress, when his heavy burden fell off at the foot of the cross of Christ, and rolled down into his sepulchre, to be buried out of sight for-ever."

"Ah! well," said he, "if one could really believe in it, and was sure it was all true, I grant you. But I tell you what, I want to have some more talk about these matters. You see, I know nothing except by hearsay against the Catholic religion, and so I have no right to pronounce an opinion—but you can't deny that they have a bad name. Go into any of our churches and hear what they all have to say against the Catholics. I don't believe one half of it; it is clear out of the question that good moral men, with all their wits about them like many we know, could be Catholics if one half of the things said against them were true. Anyhow, they have got a bad name and there is no denying it."

"That is true enough," I answered; "but do you remember of whom it was said, 'As for this sect, it is everywhere spoken against,' and that Christ tells us that in those days he, the great teacher of truth, was called by those who did not believe in him, 'Beelzebub;' that is, they actually gave out that he was the devil! And then he goes on to say, 'If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more those of his household;' and I suppose in those days there were sincere, zealous men, of whom Saul was one, who took up this cry and repeated it, and so it came to be very generally believed."

"That's true, again," he answered; "but here we are, at your place, and I must go on to my office to get my letters. But after business I hope you will not dislike a little more talk on these matters; so you must go back with me to Linfield." It was agreed, therefore, that we should go home together, and that I should stop a few days at his country place, a few miles out of town.

We met accordingly by appointment, and were soon seated together in his carriage, and before long free from the noise and turmoil of the city, and driving along the quiet country roads, with the sights and sounds of harvest all around, and nothing to distract our converse on grave topics. "Well," he said, "your last words have been on my mind all day. Because so many speak against the Catholic religion, and it has got a bad name, that is no proof that it is not right. The Jews said worse of the early Christians and of our Lord himself.

"Then there is another thing you said, that what made you a Catholic was, that you came to see that the Catholic religion and primitive Christianity are identical—so I understood you. Am I right in this?"

"Certainly," I replied, "that is precisely my proposition; stated in that form, the whole question is put, as it were, in a nutshell."

"Just so," he answered, "if that were proved. So now tell me just how you proved it to yourself."

"With all my heart, sir," was the reply. "Then see here, we must first lay down our definitions of what I mean by primitive Christianity, and what I mean by the Catholic religion."

"Primitive Christianity, then," I continued, "is soon settled. By it I mean the religion taught by the apostles to their disciples, and by those disciples taught to others, and so on—the religion of the New Testament."

"Very good," he broke in; "no one can find fault with that, only we have always been taught that the religion of the New Testament, a primitive Christianity, was substantially the same as Protestantism, so that it never struck me till this moment that there was any fair doubt that the primitive Christians were Protestants, all but the name; and of course we know that the name was not given them at that day."

"All right! We will see about that later on," I continued. "Now let me tell you, in as few words as I can, what I mean by a Catholic."

"By a Catholic, then," I continued, "I mean a Christian who is a member of that vast, world-wide society which is generally known and called, by friend and foe, the Catholic Church, the spiritual head of which is the Bishop of Rome. This church, or united body—for you know the word church is the same as ecclesia in Latin or Greek, and means 'an assembly,' or 'united body'—this united body we call catholic, or universal, because it has always vastly outnumbered all other divided bodies of Christians, whether taken singly or all put together. The number of Catholics in the world is usually stated to be two hundred millions; of Russian, Greek, and Oriental schismatics about ninety millions, and Protestants of all denominations about seventy millions. This vast united body, as it has always borne the name of Catholic, so is it the only body of Christians that can be called the catholic or universal church, if we attach any meaning to the word as a definition of the visible church, such as we find set down in the Creed, 'I believe in the Catholic Church.' However, as the name Catholic is sometimes claimed in some indefinable sense by other bodies of Christians, those to whom it belongs of right, and by the force of terms, have no objection, for the sake of distinction, to the term sometimes applied to them, of Roman Catholic, meaning merely the real catholics; that is to say, those who, though universal, or spread everywhere, are yet united in one visible society, through being all in communion with the Bishop of Rome; being Roman in their centre of unity, and Catholic in their world-wide circumference.

"Thus the Catholic Church, alone of all Christian bodies, bears, as it it were, written on her forehead, that mark of unity divinely impressed by her Heavenly Founder and preserved by the power of his dying prayer, as a perpetual note of her heavenly origin. 'I pray thee, O Father, that they may be one in us, that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.'

"I think that you will admit that the old church founded by our Lord was to have on her these marks of unity and universality, and that these marks are to be found on no church at the present day but the church Catholic."

"Yes," he replied after a moment's reflection, "I think this may fairly be admitted; but unity is not all that our Lord prayed for; in the same prayer he said, 'Holy Father, keep them in thy truth,' and we say that the old church fell away, and that it no longer teaches the essential truths of the gospel, or has obscured them by false doctrines."

"Well, let that pass for the moment," I replied. "We will see later on whether you will continue to maintain these propositions. I will now state the principal points on which we are agreed with Protestants, and afterward the distinctive points on which we differ from them. And I think you will admit that the points on which we are agreed with you are precisely every one of those points which you would consider to be the great essential, fundamental doctrines of the gospel. We believe, then, in the unity and trinity of God, three coequal persons, one in substance, and in the incarnation of God the Son, who became the Son of Blessed Mary, ever Virgin, of the substance of his mother according to his manhood, as he had been from all eternity God the Son, of one substance with the Father—God of God. So we believe and hope for redemption and grace, to do good works acceptable to God, and which he will reward amply and solely from and through Christ our Lord, and in prayer, love, repentance, obedience, and holiness, as conditions of our salvation through him. And we believe that eternal perdition and endless woe will be the lot of those 'who neglect so great a salvation.' We believe also that all Holy Scripture is written by divine inspiration, and when studied and rightly understood, by aid of God's Holy Spirit, is most profitable for instruction in all Christian perfection. In a word, Catholics believe all that religious Protestants consider to be of the essence of true religion; and they also reject every tenet or position which can clash with these paramount truths of revelation. A Protestant, therefore, in becoming a Catholic, has to give up nothing which he believes essential in religion. No doubt he would have to add to his faith certain other truths which at present he does not hold, because he has not come to see that they are parts of revealed truth."

"I have not lost a word," he replied, "of what you have been saying. I confess it is quite a new light to me, that all these doctrines which you have stated are part and parcel of the Catholic faith; but, my dear Philip, I cannot help fancying that all Catholics are not like you, for I have always heard that they denied or obscured nearly every one of these doctrines."

"As for these statements of doctrine not being the authorized teaching of the church, I can only say that you will find them all stated fully by the authorities of our church in the canons and catechism of the Council of Trent, and stated briefly in every child's catechism. Yet, notwithstanding, as you say, Protestants generally seem to think that they know our religion better than we do ourselves; although they seldom read our books, they insist on denying that we really do hold these points which we profess to hold in common with them; but I think you will admit that we ought to be allowed to know our own creed best. It is a wonder that they do not rather rejoice to believe that we have so many points of faith in common, and those the very points in which they consider the essence of true religion to consist. It seems as if they had an instinctive feeling that the strength of their position would be broken up if once if should appear that the differences between themselves and the old religion were on but few points, and those such as they do not consider the most essential."

"Well, anyhow," he rejoined, "whatever be the reason, there is a strong prejudice on both sides; Protestants are as strongly convinced that you are in the wrong as you Catholics are convinced that you are right. One or other of us must be wrong; and if we assert that you are wrong against such a strong conviction on your part, and one that has subsisted for so many ages, and been held by such a vast majority, why, we are forced to admit that our strong conviction against you is no argument that we are in the right. But you can't deny that such a strong conviction as ours must have some foundation in reason."

"Just so," I answered, "I do not deny it at all. These same reasons seemed so convincing to me once that I could not have believed that any reasoning could have convinced me that I was mistaken. I will just touch on some of the reasons which weighed most with me against the Catholic religion. From my own experience I am convinced that the difficulty Protestants generally feel, in admitting that Catholics really do hold all that they deem to be essential, arises chiefly from this, that it seems to them clear and evident that certain other doctrines which we hold, such as the merit of good works, the invocation of Saints, the inherent efficacy of Sacraments, Purgatory, the real Presence, and the sacrifice of the Mass, the use of images, pictures, and relics, the Immaculate Conception, and devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and perhaps other doctrines and practices, must necessarily interfere with the mediatorial office of Christ and with the worship of God, and be impious or idolatrous."

"Well," he answered, "you have given a long list enough, and it makes me feel all over just as I was before I met you. I declare, to my dying day I never could take in all those things; and I can't see how you, or any sensible man, could come to believe them. Nay, don't tell me you believe them. Why, your church can't expect it of an American citizen, whatever may be the case with Frenchmen and Spaniards, that have been, as one may say, brought up to it, and had it bred in the bone. I am sure I could easier turn Jew and go back to the old original religion of all than become a Catholic."

"Have a care, my dear sir," I answered; "make no rash statements. I once thought as you do now. I can't answer all objections against these doctrines in one breath. Give me time, and I am not afraid of going into them one after the other. But I can't attempt it now; and now, as we are getting near home, just walk your horse along this shady bit of road, and I will finish for to-day. Now, with regard to all these doctrines which seem so strange and repugnant to you, let me say, as an honest man who once thought and felt as you do now, but who has come by God's grace to see things differently—let me say, as one who knows that he must answer for his every word before Christ's unerring tribunal, that there is not one of those points which is not capable of being shown in no degree to interfere with the supreme prerogatives of our divine Lord and only Saviour, and which is not capable of conclusive proof. Would to God that Protestants, instead of reading and hearing only what is said against us, would hear and read what we have to say for ourselves. These early prejudices, this 'human tradition,' which 'they have received to hold,' would be dispersed like the morning mists before the sun.

"The general answer that I would give to such objections is, read Catholic books, and you will find that all these allegations are as old as Protestantism, and that they have been answered a hundred times over."

"If we are Catholics, it is simply under God's grace, because we have read for ourselves, and have been satisfied with the Catholic answer on every single point. If I am asked to name any particular works which would be found specially useful—I mean works of a popular character—I would mention Bishop Milner's End of Controversy; The Faith of Catholics, by Waterworth; various works of Dr. Newman and Archbishop Manning; Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost, and Rule of Faith; the works of Archbishop Kenrick; and other works which may be obtained at any Catholic bookstore. But most Protestants, as was my own case when a Protestant, have a strong prejudice against reading Catholic books. I believe the basis of this prejudice (which would be logical enough if its basis were just) is much the same as that which would rightly disincline all religious persons, unless in some way it became a duty, from reading Socinian and deistical writings. They have been accustomed to consider that Catholics have this in common with Socinians and deists, that they all, more or less, reject those doctrines of redemption through Christ which every baptized and thinking Christian feels to be part of the inner life of his soul, which he would die rather than part from. But those who reason thus against the Catholic religion, and are unwilling to examine its evidence, forget that Thomas à Kempis, or the author of the Imitation of Christ, was a Catholic, a monk of the middle ages, devoted to every Catholic doctrine. His fourth book on the Eucharist manifests, in every page, his belief in the real Presence, and the sacrifice of the Mass; and he speaks of invocation of saints, purgatory, priestly absolution, and other Catholic doctrines. Yet this work, on account of the pure love of God and trust in a Saviour, which it breathes in every line, is almost as great a favorite with devout Protestants as it is with pious Catholics. Translated from beginning to end by John Wesley, it is to be found as a manual of piety, with his imprimatur, recommended by him, in the hands of all his followers.

"The same may be said of the works of St. Bernard, Fénélon, Paschal, all well-known names familiar through translations of their works to all well-read Protestants. Again, the Jansenist writers of the school of Port Royal are, I believe, generally admired by what are called the Evangelical school among Protestants. Yet the Jansenists all held the creed of Pope Pius, laid down at the Council of Trent, and all the distinctive doctrines of the Catholic religion.

"I have spoken before of Dr. Newman as a name honored by all, by Protestants as well as Catholics. No one has written more ably in defence of every doctrine of the church. Could he, who is the author of the lines I am just going to repeat, have written so truly and touchingly of the love of our Blessed Lord and faith in him, if he had held any doctrine which interfered with or overshadowed the supremacy of that Lord and only Saviour?

  'Firmly I believe, and truly,
     God is three, and God is one.
   And I next acknowledge duly
     Manhood taken by the Son.
   And I hope and trust most fully
     In that manhood crucified.
   And each thought and deed unruly
     Do to death as he hath died.
   Simply to his grace, and solely,
     Life and light and strength belong.
   And I love supremely, solely
     Him the Holy, him the Strong.
   And I hold in veneration,
     For the love of Christ alone,
   Holy church, as his creation,
     And her teaching as his own.'

                     Dream of Gerontius.

"Now, my dear uncle, you will understand the earnestness of a man who feels that it is beyond the power of words to express the depth of his convictions. These, indeed, I cannot impart to you. I cannot give you the gift of faith. But so far, at least, I feel sure you will go with me, in admitting that the facts I have just stated should lead serious Protestants to admit that they have been wrong in assuming that the Catholic religion, although a great religious fact, majestic for her antiquity, universality, and unity, as all must admit, has yet a mark against her which dispenses them from all search after truth in that direction. My last words shall be those which, though they seemed to St. Augustine to be uttered by the voice of a child, were yet, as he tells us, blessed to his own conversion: Tolle, lege'—Take and read.'"

Just as I had finished my last sentence, we drove into the approach to the mansion, where the ladies were already assembled on the lawn, a sign that the arrangements for dinner were completed, and that all were awaiting only the return of the master of the house. So, kindly greetings, inquiries after absent friends in Europe and America, and the other happy little accompaniments of an evening at home in the country in lovely autumn weather, effectually put a stop to all further conversation on the engrossing topics which had occupied us during the morning.

The next day rose bright and beautiful, almost too cloudless and sultry, if we had had a journey before us, and six or seven hours to pass in the stifling heat of ———. But we had agreed to take a day's holiday in the country, and, after breakfast, we strolled out together to the summer-house by the brook, where the daily papers and the last reviews, American and English, were laid out on the library-table of the cool retreat beneath the broad chestnut trees, which served my uncle as his study during the summer months. The other members of the family had their own reading and work to attend to. So we had the prospect of a long forenoon of leisure for reading or conversation. After the news of the day had been read and discussed, we each took up a review and read on pretty steadily for an hour or more. Then my uncle began to light his cigar, and I saw that he was watching when I should have finished the article I was reading, and that he was ready for a chat. When he saw that I was closing the volume, he began: "I have thought a good deal over all you said yesterday. Just give me a memorandum of one or two of the books you spoke of." I pencilled them down on the back of a letter and handed it to him; he put the memorandum into his pocket-book.

"Now," he said, "I should like to hear how you make out that the primitive Christians were Catholics. You know all my family are strict Episcopalians; there was one of them a bishop over in the old country, and we always took great pride in the Church of England; and I know we were always taught, and I've read several books about the old aboriginal British Church, which seemed to me to prove pretty clearly that, up to the year 600, or thereabouts, after Christ, the early Christians in Britain knew nothing of the authority of the Bishop of Rome, and opposed his claims when they were put forward by Augustine on his coming over to convert the Saxons."

"Well, sir," I replied, "curiously enough, I have just been reading your last number of the Saturday Review, which, as we all know, is no friend to Catholics, and I have been much struck by a very able article which, I think, you will find well worth reading. If you will allow me, I will read you a passage which may serve me as a text for what I shall have to say in answer to your question about the British Church, and how I make out that the early Christians were Catholics: 'The distinctive principle of the English Reformation was an appeal to Christian antiquity, as admirable, and probably as imaginary, as the "Golden Age" of the poets.' The writer then goes on to say, 'that the era of the Reformation was before the age of accurate historical criticism. The true method of historical criticism was as yet uncreated, and it is not too much to say that whatever accurate knowledge we now possess of the church of the first centuries, has been obtained within the last fifty years, and that a better acquaintance with the remains of antiquity has convinced us that many doctrines and practices which have been commonly accounted to be peculiarities of later Romanism, existed in the best and purest ages of Christianity.' (Saturday Review, 1866.)

"Ah! I should not wonder," he replied, "if they had hit the right nail on the head there; I must read that article—how is it headed?"

"Oh! you can't miss it," I answered, "the title is Primitive Christianity.[Footnote 57] Well, then, to answer your question. We argued yesterday as to the great leading doctrines on which Protestants and Catholics are at one, and which all Christians hold as essential. Now for what you would call the distinctive doctrines of the Catholic religion, or as the writer in The Saturday expresses it, 'what are commonly accounted (by Protestants) as peculiarities of later Romanism,' but which we Catholics hold to be no less essential truths of Christianity, part and parcel of the same revelation which teaches us the doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation. I will name three which I think you will admit are sufficiently distinctive. We hold, therefore:

"First. That for Christ's sake we are to obey the church, which he has made his infallible witness in the world, until he shall come again. 'The church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth.' (I Tim. iii. 15.)

"Secondly. That for the same reason we are bound to submit to the spiritual supremacy of the Pope or Bishop of Rome, the successor of St. Peter, whom Christ, who is himself 'THE ROCK,' or sure foundation of his church, left, when he ascended up out of sight, to be the Visible Rock, on which he willed to build up his church in unity.

"Thirdly. That God is to be worshipped by sacrifice, and that in place of the typical sacrifices offered to God, from the time of Adam to Moses, and from Moses to the time of Christ in the Levitical worship, he has instituted the great reality of the eucharistic sacrifice of Christ's body and blood, commonly called the Mass.

"Of course there are other doctrines which I might name, but these three are sufficient for my purpose. My proposition is, that these doctrines were as distinctively characteristics of primitive Christianity as they are of the Catholic Church of the present day, or what our friend in The Saturday calls 'Later Romanism.'"

"Well! go on," he rejoined, "I am all attention. I do not want to raise objection to details. I want to hear your whole argument to the end, then I shall see what I may find to say about it—meantime, I am much interested, and want to see how you make out your points. I like your mode of stating the question; it is straightforward, right up and down, and no mistake, as far as the statement of the case goes, only I want to see how you set about proving it. But, here, I am smoking all the cigars; don't you smoke?"

"Why, bless the man! how can I smoke and talk? There, you do all the smoking, and I'll do the talking just now; and then, when I've done, you may turn on the steam, and I'll do the smoking—turn about is fair play!

"Well, then, learned Protestants are now beginning to admit 'that many doctrines and practices which (at the time of the Reformation) were commonly accounted to be peculiarities of later Romanism, existed in the best and purest ages of Christianity.'

"Now, this is precisely what we Catholics have always maintained; only my proposition is, that the distinctive features of the Catholic religion are precisely those which mark the primitive church and the British Church in primitive ages, centuries before the time when St. Augustine, the first Bishop of Canterbury, came from Rome to convert our Anglo-Saxon forefathers, about the year of our Lord 600.

"Those who delight in the dream of a golden age of primitive Christianity, which was Protestant in all but the name, and only not Protestant in name because, as they imagine, there was then no pope to protest against, take special delight in dwelling on imaginary pictures of an early British Church, and this for a very simple reason, because here they can strike out boldly on the wings of fancy, without much danger of coming to grief against the hard stone wall of historical facts. There is no British writer, of whose works we have any vestige, earlier than the historian Gildas, who wrote about the year of our Lord 550! All they have to rely on for proof of any difference between the British Church and the other churches of Christendom is one single fact, which they learn from the historian Bede, who wrote in the eighth century. He relates that about the year 600 certain British bishops were found differing from the Roman Church on certain points, not of doctrine, but of discipline, and acting with a considerable amount of contumaciousness toward St. Augustine, the Roman missionary and first Archbishop of Canterbury. All this we fully admit, and are quite prepared to account for. But my proposition concerns the British Church, not in the year of our Lord 600, but centuries before, in the early primitive times, from the first conversion of Britain."

"Christianity was probably established, partially in Britain, in very early times, possibly in the days of the apostles, not impossibly by St. Paul himself, and, if so, it must have been the same in all essential features as that religion which the apostles and their immediate disciples preached and established everywhere else. History, however, records nothing definite concerning the Christianity of Britain, earlier than the fact related by the historian Bede, that, in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, emperor of Rome, at the request of Lucius, a British king, Pope Eleutherius sent missionaries into Britain. {634} Next, as to what kind of Christianity this was. I shall show that it was sharply marked with the characteristics of the Catholic religion which I laid down just now. Submission to the authority of the Bishop of Rome as head of the church, and a belief in the Real Presence and Eucharistic Sacrifice, commonly called the Mass.

"With regard to the authority of the Bishop of Rome, as Head of the Church, I will quote a well-known ancient writer, St. Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons in Gaul, born A.D. 120, martyred A.D. 202. He was a native of Asia Minor, a disciple of St. Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, who was himself a disciple of St. John the Evangelist. He was a contemporary of Pope Eleutherius, and visited Rome during his pontificate, as we learn from the historian Eusebius. Irenaeus is, therefore, a witness of peculiar value, since he was in a position to testify as to the belief of all Christians in his day, as well of the Eastern Church, in which he was trained, as of the Western Church, of which he became a bishop. The presumption is, also, that he taught to others what had first been taught to him by his master, St. Polycarp, and that St. Polycarp taught what he had learned from the inspired apostle. In the work of Irenaeus, Adversus Hiereses, (Book III., chap, ii., n. 1 and 2,) which may be consulted in any good library, we find it written. I will read from some short manuscript notes which I have here in my pocket-book, and which I made at the time I was looking into these matters before I became a Catholic.

"'As it would be a long task to enumerate the successions of all the churches, I will point out that tradition which is of the greatest, most ancient, and universally known church, founded and constituted at Rome by the most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul, and which derives from the two apostles that faith announced to all men, which, through the succession of her bishops, has come down to us.'

"Here, let me observe, by the way, in passing, we have the testimony of a great writer, who lived within fifty years of St. John the Evangelist, and was instructed by his immediate disciple, that the Church of Rome was founded by St. Peter and St. Paul. What then becomes of the statement, so often repeated—shall I call it ignorant, or impudent?—that the Bishop of Rome can have no claim to authority as successor of St. Peter, because there is no evidence that St. Peter was ever at Rome in his life?"

"Well, certainly," he interposed, "that statement will not hold water, for Irenaeus is an unexceptionable witness. But I interrupt your narrative. Pray, go on."

"Well, then, to continue what I was saying, before I made this digression, St. Irenaeus goes on in the same passage, 'With this church, (namely, the Church of Rome,) on account of its more powerful headship, (or primacy,) it is necessary that every church, that is, the faithful on every side, should be in accordance, in which church has always been preserved the tradition which is from the apostles. The blessed apostles, then, having founded and built up this church, committed the office of the episcopacy to Linus, of whom Paul makes mention in his Epistle to Timothy. And to him succeeded Anacletus, and after him Clement, who had also seen the blessed apostles, and conferred with them, and had before his eyes their familiar preaching and the tradition of the apostles; and not he alone, but there were many at that time, still alive, who had been instructed by the apostles. {635} To Clement succeeded Evaristus, Alexander Sixtus, Telesphorus, Hyginus, Pius Anicetus, Sater, and to him Eleutherius, who now in the twelfth place from the apostles, holds the office of the episcopate. By this order, and by his succession, that tradition which is from the apostles, and the preaching of the truth, have come down to us.'

"Here then we have the testimony of one who wrote only fifty years after the death of the last apostle, that the existing pope was the successor of Peter in the see of Rome, and there could have been as little doubt about the past as there is now as to the succession of the presidents of the United States or the sovereigns of England during the last century.

"And the testimony of St. Irenaeus as to the authority of the bishops of Rome over the whole church, since we learn from Eusebius, that Irenaeus had offered a firm but respectful opposition to two successive pontiffs, Eleutherius and Victor, on the question of the time of keeping Easter, a point on which some of the Eastern churches as also later the churches of Ireland and Britain, followed a different custom from the church of Rome. St. Irenaeus visited Rome on the matter, and dissuaded the pope from making this question at that time a term of communion. He succeeded in his endeavors, and so different churches were left to follow their own custom, until the matter was finally decided, and the Roman practice made obligatory on all, at the general Council of Nicaea, A.D. 325.

"Such then is the testimony of St. Irenaeus concerning the general belief of all Christians of his day as to the rights and authority of the bishops of Rome, or holy and apostolic see, as it was generally termed in very early times. He taught that it was the duty of all churches and of each one of the faithful, that is to say, of all who believe in Christ, to adhere to the faith and the communion of the holy see, which by Christ's institution had been constituted in the person of Peter and his successors the necessary centre of unity of all other churches—which held on this account the supremacy of more powerful headship or primacy of authority in the universal church, under Christ our Lord.

"It is manifest therefore, that this doctrine concerning the authority of the pope must have been taught, together with all other doctrines of the universal church, by the missionaries sent into Britain by Pope Eleutherius. St. Irenaeus tells us in another place that the faith of the whole church was one and the same. He says, for instance, in the following passage, 'The church spread over the whole world to the earth's boundaries, having received the faith, … sedulously guards it, as though dwelling in one house,' 'as having one soul,' and 'one heart,' and 'teaching uniformly as having one mouth, … nor do the churches of Spain or Gaul, or the East, or Egypt, or Africa, believe or deliver a different faith.' (Adv. Hieres. b. i. c. x.)

"But we are not left to conjecture as to the relation of Britain to the rest of Christendom, and to the see of Rome in primitive times. The next notice we have of the British Church is, that British bishops were sitting with the other Catholic bishops at the Council of Aries in Gaul in 314, when the Roman practice as to the time was confirmed and accepted, and at the Council of Sardica in Illyricum in 347, where the right of appeal from all bishops to the apostolic see was confirmed by a special decree. {636} This council, at the conclusion of its deliberations, writes to Pope Julius in the following terms: 'That though absent in body, he had been present with them in spirit,' and that it was best and most fitting that the bishops of each particular province should have recourse to him who is their head, that is, to the see of the Apostle Peter. (See Labbe's Councils, ii. 690.)

"That the primacy of the Roman see involved a real right of jurisdiction over other churches is manifest from the next fact of history bearing on the British Church. St. Prosper of Aquitain, a contemporary of the events he describes, writing in 430, tells us how a British priest, by name Morgan or Pelagius, had invented a heresy, (which still bears his name,) in which he denied the necessity of Divine Grace. That this heresy spread greatly in Britain, whereupon Pope Celestine, the same pope who sent Palladius and Patrick to Ireland, dispatched St. Germanus, Bishop of Auxerre in Gaul, as 'his vicar with Britain, and that he might drive away heresy, and restore Britain to the Catholic faith.' He tells us that he was received by the British bishops and presided at several national synods. St. Prosper also states as an existing fact then, just as any Catholic might make the same statement at the present day, that 'Rome as the See of Peter is head of the episcopal order in the whole world, and holds in subjection through the influence of religion, more nations than ever had been subdued by her arms.' (St. Prosper de Ingratitudine et Vocatione Gentium.)

"With the mission of St. Germanus the early history of the British Church closes. A dark and calamitous period of a hundred years succeeds, in which Britain is heard of no more until the time of Gildas, the British historian, who wrote about the year of our Lord 550, that is to say, about fifty years before the coming of St. Augustine.

"Britain, during this period finally abandoned by the Roman armies, is left a prey to continual invasion, first by the Picts and Scots, and then by the Saxons, who had settled down like a swarm of locusts upon the country, and driving the Britons before them into the natural fastnesses of Wales and Cornwall, had completely occupied the country and made it their own. At length the very name of Britain is lost; it had now become England, and a heathen land once more.

"The native historian Gildas describes the condition of his miserable countrymen, isolated from the rest of Christendom, overwhelmed by foreign invasion and by civil wars. As to religion, he tells us that it was at the lowest ebb, and that no heresy had arisen in the church which had not effected a lodgment in Britain: as to morals, he informs us that princes, nobles, and people were infected with the most shameful vices, and that even a large portion of the clergy were sunk in profligacy. There were still many bright exceptions amongst all classes, especially in the monasteries, which were numerous and filled with a multitude of holy souls, who had fled from the almost universal corruption of morals in that miserable age.

"Gildas, moreover, upbraids the clergy for their want of charity, and because through hatred of their Saxon conquerors they could not be induced to attempt their conversion to the faith of Christ.

"And be it remembered that Gildas wrote all this as an eye-witness of the state of the British Church in his day, and that he wrote only fifty years before the arrival of St. Augustine to preach the faith to the Anglo-Saxons. {637} Can we wonder then that when he invited the remnant of the British clergy to join him in his holy mission he met with a contumacious refusal, at least from some of them?

"I quote from a Protestant historian, (Hart's Ecclesiastical Record.) He quotes as follows from Bede's Ecclesiastical History. 'In many things,' says St. Augustine, 'ye act contrary to our custom, and those of the universal church; yet if in these three respects you will obey me, to celebrate Easter at the proper time, to perform the rites of baptism according to the custom of the Roman Apostolic Church, and to join me in preaching the Gospel to the English nation the word of the Lord, all other changes which you do, although contrary to our customs, we will bear with equanimity.' These terms they refused to comply with, and the above-named Protestant writer thus comments on their refusal. 'While we triumphantly cite these testimonies to our original independence, let us not seek to palliate the contumacious spirit displayed by the British clergy in their conference with Augustine. As Christians they ought cheerfully to have assisted in evangelizing the pagan Saxons. The terms which he proposed were mild and reasonable, and the faith which he professed was as pure and orthodox as their own.'

"It is quite clear that the faith of the British Church was essentially the same as that of St. Augustine, otherwise he would certainly have taken exception to such differences in essentials, and not solely of accidental points of discipline, and moreover it is inconceivable that he should have invited them to preach to the Saxons a faith different from his own. That the faith taught to our forefathers by St. Augustine was the same as that of the Catholic Church of the present day, does not require proof to any one who has made the most superficial study of the annals of the Anglo-Saxon Church. The supremacy of Rome, the doctrines of the real Presence, the sacrifice of the Mass, purgatory, devotion to the blessed Virgin and the Saints, are written on every page of her history, as narrated by Bede and the ancient chroniclers, and came to be incorporated into the very language and customs of the people.

"As for the grounds of the opposition of the British bishops to St. Augustine, this can be fully accounted for. The decay of faith and morals amongst clergy and people, isolation from the rest of Christendom, natural pride and hatred of the Saxons, all which Gildas tells us existed in the British Church in his day, are quite enough to account for their opposition to St. Augustine, and this opposition cannot in the truth of history be attributed to any primitive independence of Rome in the British Church. In the whole early history of British Christianity there is not one fact which proves any difference in faith whatever, or any variation in discipline inconsistent with that obedience to the Bishop of Rome as successor of St. Peter, which Irenaeus tells us was in his time considered essential for all churches, and which is at the present day as then, an essential feature of Catholic Christianity.

"In the absence, then, of all proof to the contrary, and in the presence of the positive evidence which I have given that the British Church stood in the same relation to Rome during the earlier and purer ages of her history, as all the other churches of Christendom, it is surely disingenuous not to admit the fact. It seems to me that thoughtful and candid persons can hardly fail to admit that as a controversial argument against the Catholic Church the less said about the British Church the better."

"Well, upon my word, my boy, I must say that my first impression—but mind, I reserve my judgment till after I have had time to reflect on the matter, read up your quotations in the original, and compare them with the context—I say my first impression is, that you have a good case, and that you have handled it very fairly. A good deal is involved in your being right or wrong in this matter; so much that, if you please, I would rather not pursue the question any further at present; but I shall not let it sleep. And now I see your cousins coming this way with their brother John. I must go and meet the old fellow, and shall treat him as if nothing had happened. I am very glad I happened to meet you yesterday; the truths you have suggested to my mind are serious ones."

"That is so," I replied, "and may they ripen in your mind and prove refreshing to your soul as they have to mine! Good-by!"

Sub Umbra

  The hills that like billows swell clear in the dawn,
  Seem heaving with conscious existence this morn;
  For all the broad woods on their bosom serene
      Are waving their ocean of green!


                      II.

  How fair! Save yon cloud sailing up from the west,
  Whose shadow falls dark on that bright, leafy breast
  But softly 'tis rocked: while beneath it is heard,
      In wood haunts, the note of the bird.


                     * * *

                      III.

  O heart! in yon shadow and soft-heaving sea,
  Thy God hath unfolded a lesson for thee;
  For oft while reposing 'neath sunniest skies,
      A cloud o'er thy rest may arise.


                       IV.

  But when from that cloud the dark shadow shall fall,
  Heave gently, heave gently though under the pall!
  And 'neath the dark shadow let, sweet as the bird,
      Thy low, quiet music be heard!

                                  Richard Storrs Willis.

Translated From The German.

Forget-Me-Not.

Or, The Picture That Was Never Seen.

The lord chamberlain, who had just returned from Italy, had become the subject of the greatest attention with the brilliant but not extensive circle which the queen was accustomed to assemble around her, in the king's secluded summer residence.

The narratives of the count's travels served to shorten an unpleasant, stormy evening, which visited the shady park surrounding the castle with gusts of rain and hail, interspersed with streaks of lightning and heavy reechoing claps of thunder. The imagination of the queen revelled in the recollections which the stories of the count awakened; but the king, more interested in business of state, interrupted the speaker suddenly, with the question as to whether anything new had transpired in the capital city, which he had passed through on his return. The lord chamberlain praised the quiet and elegance of the city, not neglecting to extol the wisdom of the sovereign to whom all this prosperity must be attributed, and closed with the assurance that, excepting the exhibition of industry and art, the inhabitants of the city were occupying themselves, at present, with nothing but their own homes and amusements. The Princess Eliza inquired interestedly concerning the success of that institution which owed its existence to her suggestion, and the count, passing slowly from one thing to another, ran easily into the enumeration of the articles exhibited in the tasteful gallery. He left till the last what he considered the crowning glory of the collection—the paintings by native artists—and described with the versatility of a cicerone all the pictures of Madonnas, pictures from every-day life, historical pictures and portraits, which were worthy of attention. Having come to the end, he interrupted himself suddenly, as if rebuking himself, and said—

"I had almost forgotten to mention a picture, which, although anonymous, and very unfavorably placed, deserves to be named as the gem of the gallery, both in idea and execution. I have seen nothing more wonderful in my life, and even now, when I speak of it, all the details of the striking picture appear clear and decided before the mind, so that I can give them without omitting anything essential."

This preliminary was calculated to raise the greatest curiosity, and the queen, with the company, formed a narrow circle around the narrator.

"Imagine, your majesties, a medium-sized tablet divided into two parts, of which each represents a single picture," began the lord chamberlain; "the conditions of space divide this picture in form: the character is one and the same. In the first, the principal figure is a maiden in the full blooming freshness of youth. The flowing drapery flutters lightly in the wind. One foot already rests upon the edge of the barge which wavers in suspended dance, and which the stream, curling up into foaming waves, seems about to drive from the shore, without rudder or anchor. {640} The eyes of the maiden look longingly into the distance: in her features lies romantic enthusiasm. On the shore which the mariner leaves, stand sympathizing friends. An old man, with silver hair, waves a farewell: a group of maidens, blooming as she, and familiarly clinging to each other, wave handkerchiefs and ribbons after the departing: a youth, handsome and earnest, folds his hands together, and out of the clouds, a friendly, loving, sorrowful countenance looks down upon her. Luxuriant roses signal from the beautiful shore, and form a rare contrast to the lurking, green-haired water-fairies who swim under the mirror of the water in scarcely defined outlines, and seem to pull the frail boat forward. The maiden, it is plain, goes hence on a dangerous journey; but a tender, shimmering cloud-figure, doubtless the ever young Hegemone, hovers near her, and by solicitous glance and imploring gesture, seems to express admonition and prayer. Whether the mariner shall be saved by the grace of this guardian angel, or fall by the wiles of the waiting fairies, is the question with which the gazer unwillingly leaves the charming picture to turn to its companion piece.

"In the picture which we now consider, the principal figure is a young man with walking-staff and travelling-bag, who passes rapidly away from the narrow doorway of a house, and steps out boldly on the broad highway. He breathes freely, and an earnest satisfaction speaks from his eyes. Joyfully starting out to meet life, he takes notice neither of the noble matron who would hold him back, nor of the affectionate maiden who longingly extends her hands to him, nor of the faithful dog that, although fastened by the chain, nevertheless raises himself entreatingly. From the windows of an inn may be seen a waiter, standing at a counting table and swinging his hat: a Jew stands in the way and holds out a paper, which the wanderer refuses: at the well in the foreground a thoughtless maid nods saucily and piquantly to the youth; and so far the picture represents a gay scene, a little saddened by the quiet grief in the background; but, before the wanderer, who looks carelessly around, gapes an abyss, in which is suspended a frightful dead body, with a severe but honest countenance. Its eyes are shut, but it raises the right hand warningly toward the approaching youth, while the left rests on the breast in quiet consciousness.

A short silence reigned in the company. The king rested gloomily in his chair; while the queen, on whom the affectionate daughters were leaning, at length replied:

"The picture is finished, and we have an obscure allegory, to find the key to which will not be difficult. Man and woman going from the narrow home-circle to enter upon life, leaving behind them the sheltering paternal roof, and the innocent joys of childhood; the youthful desire to toss upon tempestuous waters, or to journey on the parched highway; these are—or my feeling must be very much at fault—the subjects which the poetical painter wishes to represent."

"Your majesty's penetration is equal to the solution of the most obscure enigma," replied the count; "but in the attractive double picture lies still more, if one leave not out of notice that it is surrounded by a wreath of forget-me-nots; that the mariner wears these flowers in her hair, and the wanderer on his bosom. {641} The artist thought to give the signification of the harmless little flower, and how well he has succeeded in painting its characteristics. The departing is for those remaining behind a forget-me-not; but even these who remain on the spot which the loved one leaves, desire to impress their remembrance on the bird of passage just as firmly. 'Forget me not!' call after her the silver-haired father, the youthful friend, and the play companions of the maiden. 'Forget me not!' whispers the glorified mother out of the clouds, and the protecting spirit hovering over the waters. Well for the mariner if she fail not to hear the warning voice. Well for the youth, if the forget-me-not of the mother, the bride, and the creditor, cling long to his heart: he will return true and noble, scorning the temptations on the way of life, and remembering the paternal honor, which, through the dumb mouth of the dead body, calls to him 'Forget me not!'"

The queen rose hastily, nodded, as it seemed, overcome by tears, to the narrator, leaned upon the arm of her daughter, and apparently struggling to hide her emotion, left the room. The king threw a disapproving glance after her, which finally met that of the count, who stood transfixed in the middle of the hall, without knowing how or why so peculiar a circumstance had transpired.

"Will your majesty condescend to point out to me whether any indiscretion of mine has caused the present event, or whether it may be attributed to an unfortunate coincidence," said the count timidly. Instead of answering, the ruler gave those standing around the signal of departure, and commanded the count to remain. Being called nearer, and permitted to sit opposite the king, he waited impatiently for the discourse which his commander should direct to him.

"Your ignorance is excused," commenced the latter, in his usual short manner of speaking, "but the queen is unpleasantly affected by the name Forget-me-not. It is an old wound that has to-day been opened afresh, and hence the strange scene. It is, perhaps, nineteen years since I undertook the rule of this state. The care of it called me into the field against the enemy formed by the exiled royal family. I was but just married. In order to acquaint my aged father-in-law with the fortunate result of a battle, I sent to the capital a young ordnance officer. He returned to the camp at the time designated, but at the same time came secret dispatches from my zealous agents, who noted the disposition of the people, and kept guard on the actions of the crown-princess, my wife. The ordnance officer, who had long loved my wife in secret, had, in special audience, received from her hands, a bouquet of forget-me-nots. My jealousy knew no bounds. In the next tournament, the officer found his death, and—as it is said—on his breast lay the fatal flowers. After I had returned as victor, it became clear that my wife had intended this present for me, and that she was unacquainted with the feelings of the unsafe messenger who had retained for himself the love-gift of a queen. But now it was too late. Mother and sister mourned on his grave, and the tender heart of my wife was so shocked by such a catastrophe that even to-day, after so many years, her grief has again been manifested." The king was silent, and leaned his head on his hand. The count, overcome by the unusual confidence of his sovereign, and feeling himself inadequate to console, did not venture to reply. {642} The king, instead of dismissing him, remained in troubled thought, while a bitter smile played around his mouth. "Finally," he continued, "my position at that time was difficult. My zealous temperament was bent on vanquishing the obstacles in the way of my successful career. My motto was, 'Onward!' The people were dissatisfied that a man not of royal descent should have the audacity to claim the crown. I had, by force of arms, held the old king on his throne, banished the pretenders, and rescued the people, the property, and the church. I had shown that no one understood better how to readjust the disorganized affairs of state; but when the eyes of the old man closed, and I seized the sceptre, according to agreement, then arose a cry of consternation. The fools had believed that I would give the house which I had built up to the alienated Merovingians, and myself be satisfied with the position of major-domo. A conspiracy was formed. You remember that the flower forget-me-not passed for the symbol of rebellion. The faction of the refugees have not yet forgotten the day on which I gave the command which the times demanded. The first name which met me upon the list of those seized was Albo. The family of that officer bore this name. I knew that the baroness had hated me irreconcilably since the death of her son; that her daughter hated me not less, and that a determined ally of the exiles was about to offer his hand to the latter. Now burst the bombshell. In the house of Albo were said to have been held meetings. The baroness was said to have sworn to give her daughter to the one among her countless suitors who would take the most prominent part in my overthrow. My sternness passed the sentence of death upon the women; but the entreaties of my wife to whom it had been represented that the accusations which had been heaped upon the mother and daughter were only the work of envy and private hatred—disarmed my sentence. I banished the women, and confiscated their property. The bridegroom died in prison; and so the fate of that family was mournfully fulfilled." The king then continued in a monotonous tone: "I will not deny that later I have thought of these poor women who must wander in exile, with a certain unwilling pity, and that still later I made inquiries concerning them. No trace of them could be found. But I see that I have allowed myself to say more than is customary for me. We will pass to something else. Who is the painter who executed the picture of which you have spoken?"

"Sire," replied the count, "I do not know. He cannot, however, be unknown to the inspector of the gallery. I know only that he is not one of your majesty's subjects, and that he begged permission to exhibit the double picture for a few days. For the present he remains in the capital."

"Yes, yes," replied the king; "no one but Cremati can have created this picture; his power alone manifests itself in such allegorical compositions; and the allusion to the forget-me-not—yes, yes, watchful man we will make peace, and thy pride of art shall melt in the sunshine of my favor. I wish to see the painter, count. You will take pains to bring him here. He will not willingly obey, but an autographic command shall place all authority at your disposal. Depart as early as possible, and the day after to-morrow I shall expect to see the painter. Good night, count!"

The count departed, and the king retreated to his cabinet. After a few fruitless struggles, he overcame the melancholy which clouded his soul, and went to the table, on which lay in great numbers the reports and dispatches just brought in by the courier. He sought impatiently among the letters for one, which when found, he broke with anxiously suspended breath; but after the first line, the restless expectation vanished from his features; cheerfulness spread over them, and with a light "Good, good!" he took up the silver candlestick, impatient to share his satisfaction, and opened the tapestry door which led into the corridor connecting his rooms with the queen's. As he approached the door, he heard voices, and upon entering found the queen sitting in an arm-chair, and leaning, in pleasant resignation, upon Eliza's shoulder. At their feet, on an ottoman, sat Sophia, the younger princess, resting her smiling face on the mother's lap. The beautiful family picture charmed the king, and he commanded the ladies, who would have risen in his honor, to remain in their positions. The group remained, but the former spirit was gone; and the king himself, after a few moments' thought, broke the restraint.

"I forgot," he said, as he gave his daughters a sign to leave their places, "I forgot that my wish serves only to govern the actions of my family, but cannot charm away a grief. I cannot approve of the tears which I see in your eyes, madame. You have given to the court a spectacle, the cause of which is too antiquated to render it any longer excusable, and too unimportant to have been entrusted to your daughters, as I must imagine has been done."

"You err, sire!" replied the queen, drying the last traces of tears from her eyes; "the tenderness, not the curiosity of my daughters has comforted me."

"Right; that I must commend; and to prove that it pleases me to give pleasure, I will confide to you what gladdens my heart and somewhat lightens my paternal cares. This letter from my ambassador in a neighboring kingdom makes the heavens look joyful. The dissensions which have for so long a time threatened to separate that country and mine, are peacefully settled, and I hope to see soon at my court an ambassador with instructions to sue for Eliza's hand. So I have finally succeeded in entering fully into the band of sovereigns. The fortunate soldier is forgotten, and hereafter kings will speak to a king, and make room in their ranks for him whom fortune raised to their level. My name and the remembrance of my deeds will not pass away with my body. If I am blessed with no son, my grandchildren will wear my crown, and enjoy the fruits of my labors."

"May fortune still further attend you, gracious sire. Your wife willingly submits to your wisdom, and your daughters will fulfil the duties which your position imposes upon them."

"Have you not taught me early, beloved mother, that renunciation and offering is our destiny?" said Eliza calmly, but sighing softly. "I will obey my royal father without objection, without complaint, if—"

"If the prince do not disappoint the ideal that a maiden's heart is accustomed to create," said the king, "Be without fear, my daughter; the prince is renowned as a second Bayard, whose bravery goes hand in hand with the most pleasant courtesy. {644} He is not remarkably beautiful, as I understand, but moderately so, and possesses all those brilliant accomplishments which pertain to a royal education. At least you will be able to boast of a better suitor than your mother, whom I, having neither the advantage of beauty nor of birth, and grown up in the rough customs of the camp, won by the power of my sword, to the astonishment of her father. The brazen age ruled in the land then, and my sword must cut out for your grandfather the royal robe that he had taken from his cousins, as the people demanded. But with your marriage, daughter Eliza, shall begin the golden age. I will give fêtes, and the world shall wonder before my splendor as it has before my renown. This old Frankish building shall put on a festival dress, and gleam with gay pictures as for a carnival. Cremato comes again, and his brush shall prove worthy of my generosity."

"Cremato!" repeated the queen wonderingly; "Cremato," cried the princesses together, as they recalled the wonderful, sprightly Italian, who had many times appeared at the court like a flying shadow, and as quickly disappeared; and who did not fear to express the strongest criticisms on the drawings of the royal children, but from whom the little students learned more in a quarter of an hour—when he sometimes condescended to instruct—than from their well-paid court teacher in months. The queen thought proper to send the curious princesses to their apartments, a command that was quietly obeyed.

"What will Cremato here?" she asked her husband who, sunken in plans for the brilliant future, walked silently back and forward. "His name wakes only sorrowful recollections. Is there a new conspiracy to denounce? Shall blood flow again? Shall the innocent again wander in misery? Speak, my husband! Why shall the terrible accuser, who has the misery of thousands on his soul, return?"

"Woman condemns as quickly and as thoughtlessly as she excuses," replied the king earnestly. "Cremato, having by accident become acquainted with the first threads of the conspiracy, fulfilled the duty of a brave citizen in disclosing them. Cremato owed this service to the land and the prince who then gave him protection and security. The most indifferent stranger would have been to that extent under moral obligations. Cremato rescued thy throne through his denunciation. Neither for this favor nor the disinterestedness which refused every reward does he deserve the unthankfulness which thy mouth has spoken against him. It is true that many persons fell, but the pressure of necessity absolutely demanded them. Therefore, no word more about it! For all I have done—except one—I will answer before Him who judges the most powerful."

"And must this one example of vengeance work on for ever? Thy suspicious jealousy drove poor Albo to a certain death; and still, after my innocence was manifest, must make his family the offering of an ever insatiate revenge. Cremato's accusation—"

"Not so," replied the king, with vexation. "The guilt of the women came to my ear from another source. A report was spread that Albo was sacrificed … enough; the mother breathed vengeance, and for this the law demanded her life. I was gracious still!"

"Fearful grace," cried the queen, "which drove the unfortunate from their home and the graves of their dead, to wander in poverty and misery in a strange land. That was not what I asked when I prayed for mercy for the innocent. That was not what they expected when they sent petitions to thy throne to recall the sentence, and to allow them to return to their native land, even if it must be in poverty and want."

"A ruler does not play with law and verdict like the conjurer with a snake," spoke the king sharply. "The women who were thirsting for revenge could not be allowed to come back at that time: they cannot now: nevermore. And you, madame, might better let the dead rest. Your feelings lead you to a false conclusion. The gift of a few flowers caused the death of the thoughtless Albo. Your tears for that are shed in vain. The youth's destiny and my passion bear all the blame. You are free from all responsibility. Do not disturb yourself longer with frightful fancies. Leave the burden to my conscience. Admonishing to repentance is of no use, and only embitters. Such attempts it was, madame, that drove from my side the painter Cremato, to whom I had given my confidence. He did not accuse Albo's family, as you falsely believe; he defended them only too boldly. He took the liberty to speak to my conscience—to play the Massillon to me. I am tolerant only to a certain extent, and for nine years he has avoided the court, at which he so often appeared and went like a bird of passage."

"I did not know the man as you have painted him to me, sire," said the queen, only half convinced. "My heart shudders before extreme punishment and severe retribution, therefore I trembled before the informer who called forth both at that time. You say he comes again? Where has he lived, and how, until now?"

"I must explain," replied the king, "that I have no correct account of this man's residence for some time. He was a person worthy to be the friend of a king. I am not a chief of police. I need to know nothing more. Had he any settled dwelling-place? I do not know. In my dominions he has only wandered back and forth since that time. But, so much as I desire to see him again, I do not know whether I should not rather dread the meeting, as for many years I preserve his remembrance in fear."

"Fear!" asked the queen, with wondering eyes; "does the hero, my husband, know the possibility of fear?"

"The heart of iron trembles before the Eternal Judge, even when he speaks through the fearless tongue of a human being," answered the king, with anxiety depicted on his countenance. "Cremato's last words might convince thee, my guileless wife! He pleaded with impetuous eloquence for Albo's sentenced family; painted their suffering, that they must die far from the land that bore them, and asked their recall in the name of humanity. I refused.

"'Well!' spoke then the peculiar man, coldly and threateningly to me. 'I desist from further attempts to move the cold heart of the conqueror. Fortune's son no longer recognizes the unfortunate. But, from now on, another shall speak to him in my stead. Albo's fall, and the accompanying circumstances, are no secret, and my brush shall immortalize the unfortunate. His picture, in the pale mask of death—his picture—the herald of bloody tyranny, be my next work, and the recollection that I leave to you, sire. {646} Take it as my legacy; and as often as an injustice or cruelty comes into your soul, or on your lips, so often may this pale face, swaying on black ground, stand before your eyes. May it serve to moderate your vengeance: may it be to presumption a reminder of annihilation: may it sharpen the penitence of your conscience.' He went, but the sting of his words remained with me from that hour. My self-consciousness turned, thousands and thousands of times, back to the terrible picture which he had left to torture me. Many times, as my dreaming thoughts wandered over my battle-fields, arose, from all the bodies only this one giant countenance, ghost-like, before me. Often, when overcome by the weariness of business, I rested upon a chair, I have seen on the wall the promised picture—like to the old countenances of Christ, which swung on a black ground without neck or robe— frightfully and threateningly coming nearer, as a phantasmagoric image."

"Stop!" cried the queen, in terror, for, in addition to the shock which the reference to Albo had given her, the countenance of her husband had, while he had been speaking, become like that of a ghost, and his voice had sunk to a hoarse whisper. "The dreadful Cremato," continued she, "has he kept his word? How long has the unholy gift been in your hands? and have you destroyed it?"

The king shook his head. "I have never seen the painting," he answered. "Cremato has not kept his word; but I feel—I know certainly—that the picture is ended; that it exists, and that, if it came into my hands, the strength to destroy it would fail me; but look upon it I could not, for my fancy has already created it to break my heart. Countless sentences has it mitigated, countless misfortunes arrested; for, whenever I have taken the pen or opened the mouth to decide over the life, happiness, or honor of any subject, I saw him—I saw Cremato's dreadful work opposite me."

The king stopped suddenly, took a few thoughtful steps through the room, and went out; but the overpowering feeling which the disclosure of the long-kept secret had aroused in him, prevented the monarch's enjoying his rest. He left his couch, opened the window, and looked out into the still, cool summer night. The trees of the grove whispered, while here and there a drop, condensed from the moist air, fell sounding from leaf to leaf, and from the distance came an indistinct harmony, disturbing the song of the nightingale. As the listener's ear became accustomed to the rustling of the forest, the distant sounds became more distinct and figured themselves into a song that the king recognized, while it recalled a sweet tide of youthful recollections. The past, lying far back behind the confusion of endless wars, behind the tumultuous years of ambition and seeking for glory, worked its nameless magic on his soul. He saw himself again a boy on the rocks of the Mediterranean sea; he heard again as then—with never-ending satisfaction, the melodious song of the fishermen as they rowed out in the golden gleaming of the morning red, on in the rosy shimmer of evening when returning into secure harbors and the peace of their homes.

  O sanctissima,
  O piissima
  Dulcis Virgo Maria!
  Mater amata,
  Intemerata,
  Ora pro nobis!

But now it was no longer the strong tenor voices of the south, but two sweet female voices, so low and melodious, that rest and peace came back to him, and turning to his couch, he murmured softly:

"Holy, blessed fatherland. The rolling fates have taken me from thy lap to fasten me in a strange land, with a strange crown, but with blessings I think of thee; and blessed, thrice blessed, may'st thou be, O my loved fatherland, my sweet home!"

"That is not Cremato," spoke the king, as the count, according to the command, presented the modest painter, a slender, handsome youth, scarcely arrived at manhood.

"Guido was always a fortunate name for one of your art," replied the king, as he dismissed the count. "I have heard good of you. Have you brought with you the picture of which the count has spoken?"

"No, sire," said the painter; "a liberal connoisseur had bought it and taken it away, before the command of your majesty reached me."

"What a misfortune!" said the king condescendingly. "I am a patron of art, and desire to employ your brush."

"I am sorry," replied Guido, "that I have no specimen of my poor talent to show to your majesty. But I have brought with me a work which I hope will obtain your favor, sire. I was on my way to your court, and have Cremato's masterpiece to give to your majesty."

The king became pale at these words. He looked at the painter piercingly, but as he received the glance without restraint, questioned him further.

"His student, gracious sire! his student who buried him a few months ago at Naples, and promised the dying man to bring the picture to your majesty."

"Cremato dead!" sighed the king. "In him died a true artist, a peculiar but noble man. I have never inquired further concerning him. He was to me only a human being whom I could protect," added he slowly. "The last sign of his independence! You have brought it with you?"

"Yes, your majesty," replied Guido. "It stands in the anteroom. I hasten to bring it."

"Yet a word," began the king disturbedly to the artist. "The subject of the picture?"

"For me a secret," answered Guido. "The master worked on it with closed door—embellished it with his own hands, and locked it in the box. It stood long so, ready for departure. Cremato would entrust it only to me, and said to me, on his dying-bed, that only your majesty knew what that picture designated."

The king's countenance cleared, and he allowed that Guido should bring the box, in which the picture was locked, into the room. With a kind of grim horror, he refused to have it opened.

"Some other time," he said abruptly, "I will see if you are the student of your teacher. Did Cremato leave relatives to whom I can return the price of this masterpiece?"

"A mother and two daughters," replied Guido. "It is true, they are not pressed by want, but from a painter's inheritance is seldom left a surplus. Yet, do not pay for this gift in gold. Weighty grounds compel them to remain in a foreign land, and they wished to find a refuge in the kingdom that your majesty's wisdom makes happy."

"To take care of Cremato's daughters shall be my work, but perhaps his student has found his way to the heart of one of them?"

"I am already bound," said he, "but to take to them the hope of your majesty's grace will be my first duty. They will soon thank you in person." The king bowed and said:

"Let yourself be presented to the queen and look at the drawings of my two young daughters. Cremato's pupil has certainly inherited quickness in art from him. His spirit is in your eyes. You please me."

He dismissed the joyful painter and turned toward the secret picture. "It seems to me," he said to himself, "as if Albo's eyes looked through the wood in order to wound me. Angry friend! On thy death-bed, hast thou after so many years kept thy pledge and made the shade of the murdered one at home in my court? When will I obtain the strength to look at thy earnest work? To look at it! Never! I think I should die from the glance. I will never see it. I know it already too well. Away with it!"

With his own hands he set the box away behind the heavy silken curtain that fell down in long folds before a window. Then he threw himself into an arm-chair and asked himself, "How is it possible that one single deed performed in unjust revenge must perpetually swing its whip over my wounded heart? The fields which my battles have enriched with blood, the scaffolds which have been erected in the course of time—these disappear when my eyes look into the past; but Albo's grave lies ever open before them."

It had become late in the evening. Government cares occupied the king. He had worked with his counsellors. The reception room was deserted; but the tapers still burned in the rooms of the queen. The Princess Sophia, overcome by weariness, had gone to her room. The more beautiful sister kept her mother company. She endured impatiently the reading of the governess. An indescribable unrest spoke in every movement of the beautiful maid. Her eyes rambled from the ceiling to the walls, then looked fixedly down at the floor. The light work with which she employed herself did not increase in her hands, and dropped, finally, entirely from them. With growing unrest she changed her place a few times and started when the clock struck the departure of another hour.

The queen, a careful, loving mother, delayed not to notice this unusual behavior, and herself becoming anxious, took advantage of the first suitable pause which came in the reading, and released the lady from further duty for the evening. Mother and daughter remained alone.

"Please do me the favor to play something on the harp," said the mother to Eliza. "The instrument that I once played so readily will not do duty under my neglectful fingers. Quick young fingers succeed better in bringing feeling out of its strings. Play, my child; I need the enlivening."

Eliza obeyed. Her tender fingers glided over the strings in prelude. But the affectionate performer could not long hold the measured run of the selected piece. The restless, trembling spirit betrayed itself in the rising and falling tones. Andante became presto, and presently broke out into a striking dissonance.

"Forgive me, mother," cried the princess, springing up. "I cannot play any longer. My heart will break that I have since morning kept something secret, and secrecy must not be between you and me."

"It shall not," replied the mother, calmly, "because thy own feelings lead thee to confide."

The princess came closer to the mother, and related that in the morning, in her sister's room, almost under the eyes of Aja, while the strange painter was looking over Sophia's crayon sketches, a paper was dropped into her hands, on which she, with astonishment, read the words, 'Most gracious princess! Doubtless your heart is what your lovely features speak, noble, tender, gracious, and charitable. Oh! will you plead for the unfortunates who are hidden by Hergereita in the forest, and wait for a gleam of hope? Hear their prayer. Interest your elevated mother in this work of love. Protect the most humble from the anger of your father.' These strange, entreating words," continued the princess, "took possession of my heart. The painter must have placed the paper in my hands. My searching glance read in his the answer, 'Yes.' I should, perhaps, have scorned the boldness; but his entreating glance disarmed me. I could not shame him before my sister and the instructress. I concealed the paper, and this afternoon my devoted maid has spoken to Hergereita, and found an old, troubled-looking woman and two beautiful young girls, and, at my command, requested them to be in my room at eleven o'clock to hear how I can be useful to them. I should have liked to hear what the grieving ones wanted before speaking to you of them, dearest mother, but my unrest has betrayed me, and so, if you allow, I will bring the petitioners immediately before you."

"Thou hast done rightly, my daughter," said the queen, kissing Eliza's brow. "Thy trust excuses the censurable indiscretion of taking a paper from a stranger's hand. We will together find out what the circumstances of the strangers are, and deal with the young artist according to the truthfulness of his representation."

"The maid of her royal highness waits in the ante-room," said a maid to the queen.

"The pointer stands on the eleventh hour," whispered she. "The petitioners are certainly already in attendance, and, if you will allow it, I will command that they be conducted here."

The queen consented. The princess gave the necessary command, and in a short time a lady, dressed in mourning, entered the room. She seemed astonished at finding herself in the presence of the queen; but this circumstance failed to deprive her of the security of carriage which immediately betrayed her acquaintance with life of the highest stand, although her dress belonged to a time long past. Her noble, expressive countenance betrayed her great age, but the firm, erect gait almost denied the white hairs which spread out thinly under the black veil. With the usual bow, the matron approached the queen, kissed, before she could prevent it, the hem of her robe, then arose, and spoke with a voice filled with emotion:

"Your majesty sees before you a woman who has had the misfortune to become gray under sorrow, and older than her years would speak. Unjust fate has finally overcome my pride, and now when I have lost all except two hearts which love me, I pray only for the favor to be allowed to die within the borders of this kingdom. The making of a new throne could not so rejoice your illustrious husband as a grave in this land would rejoice me."

"Madame," replied the queen, astonished and overcome by the weary sadness in the suppliant's voice, "before you speak further, who are you Your name?"

At this moment the tapestry door opened, through which the king was accustomed to enter, and the monarch appeared suddenly before the women. The queen and Eliza were silent in terror. The stranger looked him fearlessly in the eyes. His wrathful look fell only on her. With a curious mixture of hardness, astonishment, and anger, he finally broke out into the words:

"Whom do I see here? What is passing here? How did you come into this room, Frau von Albo?"

"Albo!" cried the queen, and threw herself upon the arm of her trembling daughter.

"You have not forgotten me, sire!" answered the lady, earnestly and firmly. "For many years I have been unaccustomed to this name, and just here where it is proscribed I hear it again. Your presence, sire, decides my fate, which I would have intrusted to friendly hands. Unjustly banished from your state, I know only too well that I stand before you now as a criminal. I have stepped over the ban, and death is my fate. Dispose of this gray head as you will, only protect my grand-daughters, my king! Their mother has departed. They do not bear the hated name of Albo. Let them live in the home of their mother, to plant flowers on mine and their uncle's grave."

For a long time the king made no reply, but his expression was dark and menacing.

"I am no tyrant who thirsts for your blood," said he finally, "but guilty you are. I must know how all this has come about."

"Guido!" replied the king, and pulled the bell, "this presumptuous stranger shall answer to me on the spot."

The servant, who had come, was ordered to bring the painter immediately into the royal presence. The lady appeared to hear nothing of all that was passing. Her eyes raised toward heaven and her lips moving as if in prayer, she stood there as if separated from her surroundings and belonging to another world. The queen spoke conciliatingly to her husband, but his features remained hard and dark.

"Must pictures of a miserable past swing for ever before me?" murmured he. "Must death resign the booty long due him in order to torment me? And what could have induced you, Frau von Albo, now that you are on the verge of the grave, and have lived so long away, to put yourself into such a position?"

"Age makes me a child again," replied the baroness quietly. "I was miserable in the strange land; I must, even at the price of my life, see once again the spot which bore me. It remains my fatherland, in whose bosom my bones would gladly rest near those of my son."

"O sanctissima!" sang the two angel voices through the forest, and the tones came through the open window, and the king thought again of his fatherland, and sighed deeply.

At that moment the painter Guido entered, quickly and boldly. "Your command, your majesty," said he. The baroness interrupted him with the words, "I have lost my play, most gracious prince, and I commend to you the orphans whom I must leave."

"That will God and the brave king's magnanimity not allow," replied the betrayed, and went reverently to the royal pair. {651} "I am Prince Julius," said he. "I wished to convince myself, without being recognized, whether the soul of the beautiful princess, whose hand I wish to gain, were like her rare charms. My hope has not deceived me, and my confidence in your majesty's grace will surely be justified to the favor of the two innocent suppliants whom I recommend to your mercy."

The queen bowed pleasantly to the prince. Eliza, overcome by delighted surprise, clung bashfully to her mother. The king reached his hand to the prince and spoke with light reproach.

"The young hero, who is so welcome to my court, had no need of dissimulation in order to call out my justice. His word alone" ….

"Sire!" The prince interrupted him, "I flattered myself that the circumstances themselves would speak to the heart of the wisest of kings more than any word of the undistinguished man who would consider himself happy if the ruler whom he so admires would allow him to become his student and belong to his family."

The ambition of the king was so flattered by these words from a descendant of an old royal family that he, with joyful pride, led the exultant Julius to Eliza, with the words, "My prince, your bride." Turning toward the baroness, he spoke, "You have placed yourself under the protection of the queen. I will not have seen you, but a woman who conspires against me I will not endure in my kingdom. Go back. An amount sufficient to meet your expenses shall show that I do not allow private vengence to work against you—I cannot do more."

"Away from the home!" cried Frau von Albo sorrowfully; "no, no, never! Be merciful, your majesty! I have never plotted against you. The mother's heart commanded itself. I have never cursed you. The calumniation of your dead chancellor ruined me and chased me into banishment, and still I have never cursed you. Therefore show mercy. Do not keep an old woman in doubt. My daughter found her grave in the waves. I cannot seek it out to die on it. The grave-mound of my son is in this land. I cannot leave it again. Keep the gift of your graciousness, sire! Keep the property which was unjustly taken from us. Take my life. Take the last treasure, the legacy of my son; only let me finish my days here where I was born." In the outburst of feeling, the baroness had pulled a letter from her bosom, and with trembling hands handed it to the king. A few withered forget-me-nots, sprinkled with drops of blood, fell out on the floor. The king and queen stood trembling, and "O sanctissima!" sounded anew, blessing and entreating, through the silent grove.

"Cremato's daughters it is," answered Prince Julius, "and here stands his mother. Albo's sister was Cremato's wife, and, shortly before his death, perished on a pleasure excursion near the coast. Grief for her loss hastened his death, and his family, to whom your majesty to-day promised your protection, pray for a home in their fatherland. Shall they pray in vain?"

"Cremato the husband of your daughter?" asked the king, astonished. "Riddles multiply."

"In our humiliation and poverty in a foreign land, the strange man found us," answered the lady. "Less love than the warmest thankfulness which we owed gave him my daughter. God bless the noble man!" "God bless him!" said Julius quickly. "He was nobler than even his family knew. I was his student. To me he disclosed himself. His conscience had compelled him to discover that plot. His feelings tortured him when he discovered that Albo's innocent family had, through calumniation, become entangled in the terrible affair. Unable to disarm the anger of the insulted monarch, he sought untiringly the helpless family; found them, and compelled himself to take the yoke of marriage in order to become the protector of those whom he had undesignedly and unknowingly driven into ruin. The noble man kept his relations secret from the king, and left his court after he had proved that the hatred against the name of Albo was ineradicable. The king had never discovered that Cremato was his countryman. On his death-bed he confided to me his family and that picture which I have never seen. A picture which I finished after Cremato's plan, and had exhibited, attracted the notice of the lord chamberlain, and brought me here more quickly. Cremato's remembrance; that fatherland song that Cremato had taught his children; the sight of this worthy matron, of the noble queen, and your angel daughter's entreaties, shall finally move the heart of the king; and if I see rightly, if these be really tears which fill the eyes of the most noble-hearted monarch, then has my plan succeeded, and this night makes three happy."

"Take up the flowers," said he. Then, deeply moved, to Albo's mother: "I am not able to give you anything more precious, even when I return to you all the property that you have lost. Albo's, Cremato's mother, be greeted! forget as I forget. The few days that remain to you shall be peaceful, and your granddaughters shall be my care."

"Most noble king!" cried Julius, and fell on his breast. Wife and daughter embraced him. The baroness folded her hands and prayed. … "Oh! see, my Albo, how he redeems the past! Oh! forgive him, the repentant, as I forgive him!"

As the king freed himself from this embrace, two beautiful maidens lay at his feet and moistened his hands with their tears. They were Cremato's daughters. "O sanctissima!" he sighed, and softly left the room to hide his tears.

The monarch kept his word, and peace reigned in his kingdom. But Cremato's picture he ventured not to look upon, and for long years it stood locked behind that curtain. The baroness had long since slept in her grave, and her granddaughters were happy mothers by their own firesides.

A host of blooming grandchildren, Eliza's and Sophia's sons, had made the king himself a grandfather. Then death came upon him slowly, and warned him to quit the stage of life. Joyfully he made himself ready, and willingly allowed the crown, so valueless to the dying, to glide from his hands. Satisfied with life, and resigned to death, he asked calmly to see Cremato's picture. "I am strong," he said to the weeping wife, the only one entrusted with that secret. "Myself in the arms of death, the countenance of the dead will no longer terrify me." The cover fell; courageously the king threw his glance upon the glowing background, and the light of transfiguration came over his face. "It was no ghastly figure of death. A cherub, beaming in heavenly light and glory, nodded from the clouds. Ethereally beautified, Albo's features smiled upon him; the right hand of the angel pointed above, and the left reached out conciliatingly the wreath of forget-me-nots, taken from the golden hair.

The work of the noble painter, a sign of his love for man and his trust in God, transformed the last struggle of the monarch to the gentlest peace.

"Cremato! Albo!" stammered he, going smilingly. "Wife! Children! My people! farewell! and thou, my fatherland, Forget me not!"

"Couture's Book."

Perhaps it would have been more according to rule to have headed this article, "Painting-Room Method and Conversations," which is the title the author gives his work. But as it is invariably spoken of and thought of as "Couture's Book," I have but followed in the wake of others. The fact is, this is no regular book; it is but a series of printed talks, so characteristic, so entirely stamped with the individuality of the writer, that those who know him recognize his peculiar expressions, his eccentricities of manner, and almost seem to see his familiar gestures through its pages. Therefore it seems perfectly natural to call it "Couture's Book."

Couture, as all those well know who are at all familiar with modern French art, is one of those who has done most to raise and invigorate it. His great picture, the Roman Orgie, is in the principal room of the Luxembourg, of which it is one of the greatest ornaments. It is not my province to criticise him as an artist; others, far more capable, have given a favorable verdict long since. My purpose is to speak of his book, and to say something of the author personally, as the best means of understanding it.

In his tenth chapter, M. Couture gives us an interesting glimpse of his early days, and of the gradual development of his powers. All through life, one of his most striking characteristics seems to have been his utter inability to learn by rule; as a child, he was looked upon as almost a dunce, and his elder brother, who, as he expresses it, was "nibbling at Latin," looked down upon him from his height. From his earliest years, however, he had the passion of reproduction. Before he understood the use of pencils, he would cut out, with his mother's scissors, the outlines of all he saw. Later, he became painter-in-ordinary to all the boys of the neighborhood, and, by the help of the little men and women he drew and painted, became rich in tops and marbles. But, when his father, a man of remarkable intelligence for his station in life, placed him with a drawing-master, the "petit Thomas" could do nothing; he did not understand his master's instructions; he could not copy the models placed before him; he longed for nature, and for liberty to imitate just what struck his fancy. The result was, that the drawing-master, after a few months' trial, declared him to be wanting in capacity, and he was taken away!

The child is father to the man, and all through life, the cause of nearly all his trials and disappointments, and perhaps, too, of his successes, has been this inability to subject himself to established rules. He entered the atelier of Gros, as student, and fell sick with disappointment when, on a certain occasion, spurred on by the master's encouragement and advice, he produced what he calls a most pitiable failure; while, on the other hand, several of his attempts—the unaided works of his own inspiration—excited great admiration, and turned the public attention on the young painter. Finally, he determined to renounce master and rules, to trust to his own instinct, and to turn to public opinion for judgment. He succeeded; the public recognized and appreciated him. Nevertheless, this same disregard for established criterions, for academic dignities, etc., has proved the source of much annoyance to him; and, for some years past, M. Couture has refused to exhibit, or to bring himself forward in any way, as an artist. Abandoning himself to the joys and cares of a happy home-circle, enjoying his modest fortune as only a man who has known poverty, and has fought hard against it for nearly thirty years can, he lets people say what they will of him, and, with sturdy independence, works when he likes, and at what he likes. Of course, all sorts of reports circulate about him, and I have been told more than once, "Oh! as for Couture, he is dead; he can produce nothing more."

Not long ago, an artist, a firm friend of M. Couture, took me to see him. We were told by the concierge that monsieur was at home, au premier, à droite. So au premier, à droite we went; rang; the door was opened by a respectable man-servant; but just behind him was an extraordinary looking personage; it was M. Couture himself, who, with the curiosity of a child, wanted to see who was there. Imagine a figure scarcely five feet high, immensely fat—stout is not the word—with a red scarf tied round the huge waist, the shirt-collar open, untrammelled by any vestige of a cravat, and luxuriating in a sort of loose woollen jacket. There he stood, shaking his friend's hand, slapping him on the back, a hearty, kindly, puffing, panting engine of humanity. When I heard him talk, however, I forgot his unpoetic exterior; the flashing eye, the wonderful power of mimickry, the modulating of the voice, fascinated me. I have seen many good actors, but none who possessed the art of bringing scenes, people, expressions, so completely before one, as M. Couture. Everything he touches upon becomes a picture, color and truth everywhere. This is eminently the case with his book; he himself could only be taught through pictures—brought to his mind by the colors of the painter, the words of a writer, or the harmonies of the musician; through pictures he instructs others.

But to return to my visit. We were hospitably dragged into his den; a simple room joining the parlor, with no pretensions of being a studio about it. There was a picture on the easel, casts and drawings scattered around, an admirable portrait of his father, for whom he had an unbounded admiration, and a charming little flower-piece which was the bouquet he presented to his wife on her birthday; a few flowers in a glass, nothing more, but these few flowers, with the dewy softness and fragrance of nature about them, revealed the master's hand to me, as clearly as the more pretentious picture on which he was then working.

"Yes, M. Couture, and I admire it; for it is so simple, so easy to be understood."

But I find I have allowed myself to gossip on, and have not given you as yet any of those foretastes of the book which I promised myself should be the staple of this article. I want, by these foretastes, to interest Americans in this work which, by the simple wisdom of its maxims, the result of thirty years' work and experience, is eminently fitted to be a guide to young artists. Then, too, it is dedicated to America. M. Couture has a real sympathy and admiration for our vigorous, ever-growing country. Some of his favorite pupils were Americans, and of late years, most of the pictures which have left his easel have been purchased by our wealthy countrymen. I cannot resist the temptation of telling you an anecdote à propos, which I heard from a reliable source, and which is very characteristic:

A New York amateur went to M. Couture, and bespoke a picture. But the artist was probably in a lazy mood, and the picture lagged. Some friends of the New York gentleman warned him that it was often years before Couture would finish a commission, as he never worked unless the fancy took him.

"But," added one of them, "he is a strictly honorable man; attack him from that point, and you will have your picture."

So the amateur, writing a very polite note to the artist, enclosed the sum agreed upon as the price of the picture.

Before long, panting and puffing from the unusual exertion, Couture rushed to the gentleman's apartments, exclaiming, as soon as he could get breath:

"But you other Americans, you are a people of very singular customs! Here; what for you send me the pay before you get the picture?"

"I am an unlearned man; I know nothing; having had no instruction, I feel that I can inspire sympathy, only by a profound sincerity. Can a man, owing what he has only to his battle of life, his observations, and the shreds of knowledge and glimpses of books which came to him like real godsends, inspire interest? I doubt it, and I am even pretty sure that many people will find it preposterous that one should dare to write a book without having gone though the necessary studies. To these persons I will answer by my book itself wherein I try to prove that in everything a simple, sincere expression of sentiment is preferable to a learned expression thereof; for this plain reason, that men, getting their instruction through books are apt to forget, in the multiplicity of documents which absorb them, the good and true road—nature; to such I will say, 'You have the university on your side; well, as for me, I have my God, and do not fear you.' …

"It would be well, I think, to reassure the humble. Therefore, I say, have faith in your soul; follow your God who is within you, express what he inspires, and do not fear to oppose your divine lights to the horrible Chinese lanterns of the university. Enlighten and guide in your turn those who would restrain you by ridicule.

"If you are a farmer, speak of the products of the earth; if you are a business man, speak of that business which you understand; if you are an artist, speak of your art. Do not fear the inelegance of your language; it will always be excellent. Whatever you may say, you who understand that of which you speak, you can never express yourself more foolishly than those who make an art of words. …

"I compare myself, in my literary mishaps, to a man surprised in a storm. He seeks a refuge to save the brightness of his boots; but the hour of rendezvous is close at hand, and it still pours. He makes a dash, keeping close to the houses; the rain redoubles its fury, and he is glad to find shelter under a porte-cochère. There he stoops and examines himself; his boots have lost their lustre, his pantaloons are covered with mud; a porter, companion of his misfortune, has wiped the load of vegetables he carried, on his back. The irreproachableness of his attire is gone; he need no longer protect it; he accepts his fate bravely, and ceases to concern himself. He starts with a firm, grave step, and, as a first success, obtains the admiration of others less brave. Encouraged in his new resolution, he walks on unheeding the water which rises above the ankle; he comes to a torrent; he throws himself in without hesitation, and swimming, reaches the other side; another step, and he pulls the doorbell. The door opens. What a triumph! Misfortune has crowned him with her poetic charms. He is surrounded, cared for, and soon finds himself clad in comfortable clothes, with his feet in the host's slippers; he enlivens the guests with the recital of his Odyssey.

"This is my portrait, dear reader; all bespattered with ink, I come to ask you to take me in.

"I received my second lesson from the greatest writer of the age. Madame George Sand was good enough to give me a seat in her box, to hear the Champi. You know that in this charming play, a young lover wants to speak too well to her he loves; he has prepared his discourse with such care, and has so many fine things to say, that, when the decisive moment comes, all his ideas get inextricably mixed; the lover soon perceives that he is talking very badly and that his defeat is owing to his unlucky head; fortunately for him, however, his heart is on fire, and will be heard; then he speaks as he feels, and you know if he speaks well!"

So much for the introduction; now let us turn to the real object of his book—artistic instruction. I am sure all those who have felt the difficulties to be undergone by all beginners in art, will feel grateful to M. Couture for the simple, concise way in which he explains what the experience of many years has taught him. They will observe how carefully he avoids any fine phrases which seem to say much, and which in reality merely serve to bewilder the student. Listen to what he says of

Elementary Drawing.

"Place yourself in front of the object to be represented; have good tools, which must be kept neat and clean; look at what you see with much greater attention than at your own reproduction of it; keep—pardon my arithmetic—three quarters of an eye for the model, and one quarter for the drawing.

"Commence your drawing from a first distance, compare those which follow, making them subservient to the first.

"Establish either an imaginary or a real horizontal and perpendicular line before the objects to be represented; this means is an excellent guide which should always be adhered to.

"When, by slight indications, you have determined, established your places, look at nature with your eyes half closed. This manner of looking simplifies objects; details disappear; you then perceive nothing but the great divisions of light and shade. Then establish your masses; when these are correctly placed, open your eyes completely, and add the details, but with great moderation.

"Establish what I call dominants for your lights and shades. Look at your model attentively, and ask yourself which is its strongest light, and place it on your drawing there, where it is in nature; as, by this means you establish a dominant, you must of course, not exceed it; all other lights must be subordinate to it. The same thing must be said, the same calculation must be made, for the shadows; rub in your strongest vigor, your most intense black; then use it as a guide, a diapason, in order to find the value of your different shadows and half-tints."

Nothing can be more to the point, more simple than this, and surely M. Couture exemplifies what he says in his introduction: that what is felt strongly, and understood clearly, will be expressed with equal strength and clearness. He goes on to say with regard to

Elementary Principles Of
Drawing From Nature.

"You will only be able to copy the mobile objects of nature, when you are very certain of finding your places with rapidity; the means are always the same, but their application is more difficult. Therefore constant practice is necessary. A musician would say to you, Scales, more scales! and I say to you, Draw, draw incessantly! Draw from morning to night, in order to exercise your eye, and to acquire a steady hand."

The practical part of his book, M. Couture enlivens and illustrates by anecdotes taken from his own experience; these are the pictures by which, principally, he seeks to convey instruction. I will translate one of them for you:

"A young German entered my atelier to perfect himself, as he said, in his art; he made, as a beginning, a drawing which showed much technical ability.

"I complimented him on his cleverness, but at the same time told him that he had not copied his model faithfully, and that it would give me great pleasure to see his talent dedicated to the service of nature.

"'But indeed, sir,' said the young man, 'I assure you that I copied with the greatest exactitude.'

"'It may be so,' and while talking, I turned his drawing around. 'With whom did you study in Germany?'

"The conversation continued—then looking at the model who was standing, I said to him:

"'That is a superb model of yours; beautiful form, fine color, is it not so, what think you?'

"'See now, how the light inundates the chest; evidently that is the most luminous part of the body.'

"'See,' said he showing me the part where the light struck most forcibly; 'it is evidently there, that the most brilliant spot is found.'

"'I am willing to believe, and perceive with pleasure, that to a skilful hand you join a sound judgment. Decidedly you have a delicate perception of the value of light and shade; you will be able to render me great services. Let us see now, which is the most luminous point in your drawing.'

"Not seeing my purpose, he replied with great naivete that it was found on the knee.

"'Yes, sir; permit me to observe to you that if one were to compare that light to the other lights of the drawing, this one would be found to be decidedly the brightest.'

"'Very well, then; why is your light not placed as it is in nature? You see very clearly that it is found on the chest, and you put it on the knee; why not on the heel? And you will tell me that you copy your model faithfully! You will allow me to tell you that you have paid no attention to your differences of light. … Very well; one may easily make mistakes;' and I once more turned his drawing around. 'You have great painters in Germany. Overbeck, Cornelius, Kaulbach, all have talent of a high order. … Oh! just see how, at this moment, the model is well lighted; what brightness; what vigor in the shadows! See that hair; it is like velvet, and the shadows of the head, how transparent and strong; it reminds one of Titian; do you not think so? the crisping hair, matted; the blood rising to the head and the throat; all this is splendid in color, and is of far greater importance than all the rest. What think you? Suppose we turn your drawing to see if you have rendered the effect we have just been admiring. Let us see! Why, it is singular; you have forgotten that too!'

"'You see your head is colorless, and gives the idea, of papier-mache; you have the same fault in your shadows as in your lights. … In your work you compared nothing; absorbed by details, you saw them only; drawing small parts, you forgot the rest, and went on blindly.'

Occupations Of A Young Artist
Outside Of His Art.

"'You know it now; you are to draw morning, noon, and night; you have to bedaub a great many canvases, to use up a great many colors, and that for a long time. These exercises, these gymnastics not being very fatiguing, you can make good use of this period, to improve your mind with reading good books; the old classics, and our French classics too, it is well to study. But for you, artist, there are certain authors which I wish to point out to you, and which you will find of great use. Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, Molière, Cervantes, Rousseau, Bernardin de Sainte Pierre.

"In the first three, you will find grand lessons, useful to your art. Homer gives us primitive simplicity; Virgil, rhythm; Shakespeare, passion. Molière, too, will make you understand how you may ally fine language, beauty of form, to the expression of truth.

"Keep good company, and frequent especially the society of young men already advanced in art.

"Above all, beware of wanting to appear more than you really are; beware especially of using the sentiments of others, instead of your own; there is ruin; there, is darkness. Dare to be yourself: there is light. Be truly Christian; soften your heart; above all, be humble; in the art of painting, humility is your greatest strength.

"Being prepared by excellent reading, give your studies a good direction. Be careful to avoid ugliness.

"You should always carry about with you a small sketch-book, and dash in, with a few lines, the beauties which impress you; any striking effects, natural poses, etc. Do not forget to make yourself ant, bee; work indefatigably, and make for yourself, as soon as possible, a treasure-house of abundance. Exercise yourself early in composition, but always with elements gathered from your own experience.

Notice how in the foregoing admirable passages, the author inculcates the spirit of truth, as the fundamental principle of all art. This has proved the secret of his own success; his honest, child-like faith in nature, and his simple earnestness in copying it, are noticeable in all his works. It would be well if our young artists took this lesson to heart. We have talent in our country, great talent even; but it has no stamp of individuality; it imitates, it is half afraid of being original, therefore it stops short of greatness. This perhaps is the case with other things beside painting, and plausible excuses are to be found for it; we are a young nation, composed of heterogeneous elements; this is true, but we shall not thoroughly command the respect of the nations, and take our proper place among them, until, as they say of young folks, our character is more formed. Then we shall see more earnest truthfulness in everything. Art will take shape and consistency, and we shall hear people talk of the American school as an established fact, like those of France, Belgium, England, etc. This exposition year has naturally been one of comparison. It is a grand thought to have all the schools brought together, to compete for superiority. Our place in the huge building is a small one, and though there are clever pictures in the American art department, yet we shall have to make immense progress, before we conquer a place by the side of the French and Belgians. But our time will come, I feel confident.

But I must interrupt my patriotic prophecies, and let you enjoy, as I did, this anecdote of Béranger. I select it from others, for I thought it would be interesting, both as giving an insight into the artist's theory, and as affording a life-like glimpse of a great poet. Couture relates it à propos to his remarks on portrait-painting; of the necessity under which the artist labors, of being two men in one; of amusing, enlivening his sitter, of bringing out his best expression, so that the light of the inner man may shine through the features; and at the same time of being the artist, watchful, eager, earnest, with his mind intent on his work; catching the gleams of intelligence he evokes, and transfixing them to the canvas.

Béranger.

"I was urged to paint a portrait of Béranger. This I did not care to do. I had a great admiration for his talent and for his character; I feared that seeing him, becoming acquainted with his person, might lower the ideal I had formed of him. …

"At last a charming letter from Madame Sand, which was to serve as an introduction, decides me; I start, and soon find myself in Rue d'Enfer.

"I ask the concierge for M. Béranger. 'The right-hand staircase, there, in the court.' I direct my steps toward said staircase, ascend; before long I am stopped by a door; I. knock. Shuffling steps are heard, an old man appears, wrapped in a gray dressing-gown made of some common stuff.

"It would have been easy to present my letter of introduction; but I had had the evil thought to keep it. It was a precious autograph, signed with a very celebrated name. In it, it is true, I was judged in terms far too flattering, but one willingly abides by such kindly exagerations. In it too, my favorite poet was spoken of—the temptation was too strong to be resisted. I began to expiate my fault; I stammered a few words; I showed the paper and crayon which I had brought with which to make my drawing, for it was necessary to add action to words, so hostile was the aspect of the great man … alas! my defeat was complete, the door was closing. …

"'No sir,' he said, 'it is disagreeable to me; there are many portraits of me: among the number some are excellent; make use of these portraits, and leave me in peace.'

"'Well, M. Béranger, I only get what I deserve, for I have been guilty of a bad action; I was to have given you a letter; I kept it. I thought, so great was my vanity, that I could present myself without its aid, and commit this petty theft. I am punished, and it is but just.'

"I felt myself seized by my waistcoat, pulled in violently, then I heard the terrible door close but this time I was inside, pushed up against the wall of the entry.

"'You Couture? is it possible? you so young; why, what was I about to do—I was going to shut the door in your face!'

"'But don't you know that I adore you? don't you know that it is one of the dreams of my old age to have my portrait by you? do I consent to sit? why, I am entirely at your disposition!'

"I was deeply touched by this reception. When we were both somewhat calmed, I told him that I could make the drawing at his house, that I had brought all that was necessary, and that I should be happy to spare him the trouble of coming to me. {661} He would listen to nothing, put himself entirely at my service, insisted that I should name my own day and hour; and at the appointed day and hour, he was at my room.

"It was no small affair, for an old man to come all the way from the Rue d'Enfer to the Barrière Blanche, where I then resided. He was very tired, and said to me with a benevolent smile:

"'Dear child, for any other but you. … But come, where shall I place myself? what if I were to take a little nap?—for I have come a very long way.'

"I walked about my painting-room on tiptoe, for fear of waking him; then I came near him to examine him as he slept. He had a vast brain; by its size, by its form, it was easy to guess the greatness of the mind. The lower part of the face, however, seemed out of harmony with the upper. …

"My task was becoming difficult; to remain true to simple reality, to give to the public the image of an intelligence in its decline, was not what I wished. What should I do? I was making these reflections when he woke. I looked at him for some time fixedly, and I saw his eyelids lift themselves one after the other, and then fall again over his eyes. …

"'Monsieur de Béranger, are you acquainted with that new air composed for your Vieux Caporal?'

"'No,' said he, 'some fellows came to sing it to me; there were several of them; they said they had brought a piano in a carriage. As I chose my airs myself, and I doubt whether others can choose better than I, I do not wish to encourage these encroachments on my work. Therefore I refused to receive them.'

"'Oh! I know how you refuse like favors! Well, allow me to tell you that you were in the wrong, for the air composed for the thing seems to me more dramatic than the one you chose; since circumstances are favorable to it, and that it need not disturb you, I will sing you the Vieux Caporal.' And I sang.

"'Yes, you are right, it is very well; sing me the second verse. … Why, it is charming; sing it all to me; I like to hear you sing.'

"At the end of the song, his face had changed its character; his eyelids were sustained, and let me see his bright eyes, which seemed to be the light of that fine mind. I kept him in this atmosphere which made him young again; I made him live in the past; I spoke to him of Manuel, his friend. Ah! then, it was a veritable resurrection. We were then in 1850, but through the enchantment of memory, he returned to the struggles of the Restoration of 1820, thirty years' difference; well, I saw them disappear as by magic. I saw this genius revive! He would get up, walk about, come back to his seat, speaking of them, of the two hundred and twenty-one, as though they were still there; the arrows of Charles X., the aim reached, the plaudits of the crowds—he seemed to hear it all. Béranger was before me. All I had to do was to copy. …

"I have not been able to resist the temptation of relating an anecdote, doubtless too flattering for me; but on reflection, I have been so tormented by fools, that it is excusable in me to take comfort in the praises of a great mind."

Now let us turn once more to some of his practical instructions. Of color he speaks thus:

"If he is a true artist, he will bring in his coloring all the laws of art: Discrimination, development, idealization.

"I cannot help thinking of our critics who, in their innocence, always make sharply defined divisions of colorists and draughtsmen; being persuaded that a draughtsman cannot be a colorist, and that a colorist can never be a draughtsman. They carry this so far that when a picture seems to them detestable in color, they feel compelled to find great qualities of drawing in it; but if, on the contrary, a work is presented, with incontestable beauties of drawing, it is necessary, and you will never be able to convince them of the contrary, that the picture should be wanting in color.

"They do not know that all is in all, and that the value of execution in a picture is in just proportion with its conception.

"With great artists, there is a certain choice, an impulse toward a particular beauty which captivates them; like real lovers, they sacrifice every thing to their passion; but, understand it well; sacrifice is not abandonment.

"With great masters, such as Raphael, Poussin, the absence of coloring is a voluntary surrender; besides, they have a coloring peculiar to themselves, and of a superior order. …

"Now, let us turn toward the colorists. Rubens presents himself as their king; but king though he be, he is not the equal of Raphael, who is a veritable angel."

In their compositions, Couture would have his disciples follow nature, and the instincts of their own hearts. He wages war against what he calls dead art, as seen in the works of certain French artists who tried to imitate the Greeks exclusively. As he strongly expresses it, they disinterred a dead body, and galvanized it to give it the appearance of life. He would have the pleasing scenes of common life represented and spiritualized; nature, in her dewy, morning aspect, studied and loved. He says to them: "Be French, be patriotic, be of your own times; create a strong, healthy, modern school; do not imitate the Greeks; become their equals." It must not be thought from this that the antique is not appreciated; on the contrary, the young artist is urged, after he has become comparatively skilled in drawing—not before—to study the antique very seriously, and to take it as the invariable basis of all his works. But what Couture urges principally is originality and truthfulness. While pressing the earnest study of nature, he says:

"Love, that is the great secret; love enlightens. We are often surprised at the tenderness of parents for their children, and at the qualities which they see in them. We think they are mistaken, whereas it is we who are mistaken. …

"Read a book with but little attention; look over the first few pages; skip twenty pages, then forty; hasten to the conclusion at once. What pleasure will you find in such reading? You would certainly not have the audacity to judge of that work; you would surely wait until you were more familiar with it. But now, when, with a good will, you read page by page, the work captivates you, and you leave it only when it is finished; then you say this work is admirable!

"I do not think I am mistaken when I say that we are on the eve of seeing French high art spring into life. I see guarantees of it in the return of our young artists to nature; they are, if I may so express myself, at the first stage of that road which leads to the highest beauties."

Somewhere about the middle of his book, our original author stops for a familiar chat, "between the acts," as he calls it but, after a few pages, the conversation gets more serious again, and he gives a critique, or perhaps, more properly speaking, an essay, on various artists. After wandering in the sixteenth century with Jean Goujon—through the medium of a marvellously learned coachman—he comes back to modern times, and speaks of Ingres, Delacroix, and Decamps. It is not my province to question his opinion of these artists; my task is to give you a correct idea of his manner of doing so; therefore, leaving the critic to be criticised by his brother artists, which is pretty sure to happen, I choose his essay on the last named, Decamps, for translation. It gives a good idea of his style, and in it he has put away his severity, and indulges in genuine admiration, which is certainly pleasanter to listen to.

Decamps.

"Let us now turn toward the light, toward the sunshine; let us speak of Decamps—that abridgment of all picturesque qualities.

"In the grasp of his genius, he comprises everything; he makes himself the echo of all.

"His pictures speak to me of Salvator, Teniers, Poussin, Titian, Rembrandt, Phidias …. they tell the story of our world: infancy, old age, poverty, sumptuous wealth, war in all its horrors, smiling hills and dales, shady villas. Here, the intimacy of the home-circle, there the tempests of the imagination. The Shakespeare of painters, he translates everything into an adorable language of his own; he reminds one of the masters, without copying them; he sings of nature and exalts it; everything with him becomes lovable, charming, or terrible; a mere nothing, a simple knife on a table, painted by this marvellous genius, will awaken in one's mind, a whole poem; less still, a simple line, a dash of his pencil, is enchanting.

"I had the happiness of seeing this great artist; he was very simple. Living principally in the country, his dress was that of a somewhat careless sportsman; he was rather below the medium height; his head had great delicacy of outline, and was of rather a nervous character; he was fair; our sous stamped with the effigy of Napoleon III., when somewhat worn, remind one strikingly of Decamps. He was usually supposed to be a great sportsman; but I, who knew him, and observed him with the attention which my admiration of him inspired, noticed that his hunting was a mere pretext. I would often see him stop in a plain, lift his gun, take aim; one expected an explosion; not at all; after a short pause, he would replace the gun on his shoulder, and go on his way, to recommence the same game a little later. He nearly always returned with an empty game-bag to the inn of the 'Great Conqueror,' in the little village of Verberie; there he would take an old account-book, which he used as an album, and with whatever he happened to find, he would retrace the effects which he had observed during his pauses. I had several of these precious pages in my possession, but, unfortunately for me, they were stolen.

"I remember also, that when we were conversing, after the evening repast, he would roll little balls of bread in his fingers, then, with pieces of matches, which he added to his paste, kneaded in a peculiar manner, he would fashion charming little figures. I remember, in particular, a hunter followed by his dog; the man seemed weighed down by the game he carried; the tired dog followed his master with drooping ears. It was charming: this extraordinary artist gave life to everything he touched.

"He was fond of painting in the studios of his brother artists. It was at the room of a mutual friend that I saw him make the preparation of his beautiful picture, Cheveaux de Hallage, which is now at the Louvre. His sketch was reddish, solidly massed in; he used a great deal of brown, red, and burnt sienna in his preparations.

"He made a drawing before me, one day. The most adorable ass's head sprang into life from under his fingers. As soon as one of the creature's ears was abandoned by the artist, it seemed to quiver with impatience at having been restrained; all appeared by degrees, progressively and completely formed. I saw in their order of succession, a real head, a real neck, a real body covered with its roughened hair; the good creature seemed to have a name, a real character; one might have written its history.

"I have been talking of his amusements; but when he attempted higher productions, when, for example, he created his 'Bataille des Cimbres'—I speak of the large drawing, that in which an enormous chariot is dragged by oxen—what energy! what grandeur! Those men live; one shares their ardor, or their fears; one wants to help, to push, to save the women and children. See them yonder: they come, they crush everything that comes in their way. What a formidable mass! clouds of dust arise from under their horses' hoofs, and go to join the clouds in the heavens, which are numerous, and armed for combat, like the soldiers that cover the earth. And up yonder, do you see? No. Where? There; no, still higher … that cloud of ravens … they await the end of the day of slaughter.

"It is no longer a drawing; it is no longer a painting; it is an animated world which appears as by magic, transformed into wondrous marble, gilded by the sun of Greece. One looks, admires; one comes back to it many times, without ever tiring; one leaves so beautiful a thing with regret, to dream of it at night!

"I should like to be able to talk to you of his Joseph, of Sampson, of the Café Turc, of the Singes Cuisiniers, of the Supplice des Crochets, and of all his other wonders; but that would lead me too far; so, regretfully, I stop.

"Decamps was of an organization rare in the art of painting; he had the power of giving the qualities of greatness to small pictures. One might cite the small works of Rubens and Rembrandt, and even of the great Italian painters; but all these geniuses seemed to grow less in proportion to the restricted dimensions of their canvases. But Decamps is as great in his small pictures as in his more important works.

"I might hesitate to pronounce myself for or against certain artists. But, as for this one, I maintain that he will always keep a high place in the art of painting."

In the foregoing selections I have endeavored to give some idea of the author's manner; of his vigor, his clearness, his originality. With all its irregularity, this book is, I feel sure, destined to take an important place in art-literature. As a handbook of painting, it is most useful, and I trust soon to see a clear, truthful translation make it familiar to our American public. I should like it to be in the hands of every art-student.

Good advice, critiques on various artists, critiques on the schools, familiar chit-chat, occasional reveries on nature, full of poetry, anecdotes—all thrown together with a certain picturesque confusion, warm from the author's heart and brain: such is this book. It is a mirror of the man. Couture talks as he writes, and writes as he talks; if other merits are denied it, it certainly has that of perfect sincerity, and surely, in these days of artificiality, that is a great charm; so great a charm indeed, that many beside artists would find pleasure in reading it. And now, trusting that I have said enough to arouse some curiosity and interest in this work, I will let the author say his

Farewell!

"I have animated your courage; your sympathy, I feel, increases my strength; I have within me what it is well to possess—hope. Shall I live to see true French art born into this world? … I see it coming. Ah! how happy you are to be young! "Everything announces it to me, this art of which I dreamed; the indifference of the public for that which exists is a good sign; why, indeed, should it, so full of life, feel an interest in this painting, issued from the grave?

"Look around you, and produce pictures. As for me, I have followed the order of nature; I have planted in you the good seed of truth; I doubt not but that it will germinate. By simplifying the means, by shielding yourself from the embarrassment of complications, you will do a useful underground burrowing. When the young shoot springs from the earth, cover it with a protecting mantle; this shelter, this protection, this tutor, must be your instinct. Grow, become strong, cover yourself with leaves and fruits, and give refreshment and shade."

Magas; or, Long Ago.

A Tale Of The Early Times.

Chapter I.

Yes, long ago, about the year of grace 55, that is, about four years after the great apostle of the Gentiles had preached at Athens, a small but evidently a select band of worshippers was pouring forth from a small temple on the banks of the Illissus, situated but a short distance from that renowned city. This temple was dedicated to the sacred nine who preside over art, science, music, poetry, and dancing. There had been a special festival that day, and numerous pleasing exhibitions had been brought before the gratified audience. The mystic dance of the sacred sisterhood had typified most gracefully the harmony and union that reign among the muses; and peace presiding, showed that under her mild rule alone, the harmonies of earth could work their glorious mission to civilize and cheer the drooping heart of man. No sacrifice of blood was here admitted, but music, choral song, and recitation; poems, plays, and oratorical displays; tableaux and dances, symbolized alike the worship rendered, and the honor due to the chaste and favored nine. Therefore was it, that the audience was so select. The populace, which at that time consisted mainly of slaves, were for the most part too coarse and unrefined to appreciate the higher branches of the muses' lore, which were to-day brought forward: the games of the Saturnalia and the mysteries of Cybele were more in accordance with their taste, and, save the few slaves who attended on their masters as a matter of state, or for the sake of fashion, the spectators were of a dignified and refined aspect.

The games or exhibitions were about to close; a solemn dance accompanied by song had proclaimed the benefits to earth, which the sacred nine occasioned by their peaceful rule; and the last strophe ran to the effect:

  Here no strifes must warm the veins;
    For the muses' sister band
  Comes to lighten earthly chains,
    Comes to greet you hand in hand:
  Science lightens up the land
    Where the muses' sceptre rules,
  Skilful art instructs the hand,
    Strife is banished from their schools.
      Chorus: Choral sisters, intertwine,
                Sing the praise of muses high;
              For the muses are divine;
                Swell the anthem to the sky.

The song had ceased when suddenly, as the audience rose, thinking the performance concluded, a thrilling sweep of a lyre unseen arrested their steps; and a voice sweeter and clearer than any heard before sang out these words:

  The muse! a myth! is passed away,
    With earthly types of things unseen:
  'Twas but a cloud—refracting ray,
    Rolling the hidden world between
  And man's aspiring panting soul!
    Man's soul's divine, and yearns to clasp
  (Freed from the yoke of earth's control)
    That truth, but which eludes the grasp
  While veiled in mythic forms unreal!
    Awake! the day-star is arisen!
  No more shall error's veil conceal
    The lustrous, brilliant, light of heaven,
  Now streaming, glory to impart
  To vivify each human heart.

The crowd which had suddenly paused, now wondered, and turned to every side to look for the singer: in vain; the owner of that splendid voice was not to be seen, any more than the player on the silver-toned lute.

A strange influence had passed over the throng, unawares: it was hushed, awed, mesmerized as it were into another state of feeling. Exultation had passed away; bewilderment, questioning followed. What did it mean? myth! truth! glory! was it philosophy? was it poetry? or did an oracle speak? Man's soul divine! that was Platonism; but Plato's school, at its height some four hundred years previous, was now at a discount. Many sects discussed and disputed: but truth? Truth seemed as far off as ever; or rather it seemed a plaything or a something which men used to sharpen their wits on, that they might display their argumentative skill, in the intellectual arena; but for practical conclusions, for a real rule of life, which might be used as an every-day necessity, pooh! this was not to be thought of!

The Grecian world, such of it as was free, that is, not actually enslaved, not actually held as another man's chattel, was speculative and fond of discussion, but it does not appear that these discussions did much in forwarding the progress of truth among the majority of the population; for that majority were slaves—slaves, held for the most part in bondage of mind as well as of body. The dignity of manhood among these was unknown; and the purity, beauty, and loveliness of woman were sacrificed remorselessly to tyranny of the vilest description. We can but shudder as we recall doings even in the palmiest days of Grecian freedom, over which modesty compels the historian to cast a veil; for Grecian freedom even then meant freedom to the few; the workers, the toiling multitude were slaves—slaves who, when their numbers increased so as to alarm their masters, might be sacrificed en masse, as was too often the case. They were slaves not only in body, but in intelligence, for it was deemed dangerous to develop mind. Plato himself had been of this opinion, giving as his reason, "Lest they should learn to resist."

Philosophy was made for the few, for the free only, because only the free could carry out in practice the truths of the soul's divinity which philosophy pointed to.

The words which the poet Lucan puts into the mouth of Caesar, had long been acted upon even by the "wise and good" of the pagan world, though they dared not so openly express it. "Humanum paucis vivit genus." (Lucan. Phar.) "The human race exists but for the few." The workers, (that is, the slaves,) in other words, the majority, were utterly incapable of being benefited by the teachings of the sages of ancient Greece, not only by position, but in consequence of the dulness of intellect which the long maintenance of that position had occasioned. Poetry and philosophy condemned them as beings of an inferior order. Homer says in his Odys. 17, "that Jupiter has deprived slaves of half their mind;" and in Plato we find the following: "It is said that in the mind of slaves there is nothing sound or complete; and that a prudent man ought not to trust that class of persons." The consequence of this teaching was, that they were held to be a mean race, little elevated above the brute, and born for the convenience of their masters, and subject to their caprices; so the worship of the muses was, to them, with rare exceptions, a thing out of the question. These rare exceptions did, however, exist, and produced anomalous positions not always fruitful in morality.

The congregation of worshippers issuing from the temple of the muses was then composed almost entirely of the "free," although some few of the slaves attended their masters for purposes of state or style. Among the throng were three young nobles thus attended; and, as they issued from the edifice, they made their way to a grove in the rear, to which only a privileged few had access, and stationing their attendants within call, yet at some little distance, they stretched themselves in the shade, and began to discuss the adventure. Their names were Magas, Critias, and Pierus.

"The voice was heavenly," said Critias, "and the music faultless; but who could be the player, who the singer?"

"Nay, surely the divine Euterpe, aided by the equally divine Erato," said Pierus; "who but a muse could thus conceal herself?"

"But," interposed Magas, "you forget that the muse would not prophesy her own overthrow. The words we heard to-day portended that the worship was to be supplanted by another of a higher kind; it pronounced the muse 'a myth,' a type of something unseen, unreal in herself, but pointing to a reality. Now, what can this be?"

"I know not," said Critias, "unless it is also a revelation to make known the unknown, as that strange man said who preached here some four or five years ago; his words made an impression on me which haunts me still."

"His name was Paul," said Critias. "He was a small man; a Jew of Tarsus, (think of a Jew pretending to philosophy!) He came here and preached at first in the streets; then he was brought to the Areopagus; my father was one of the council, and he took me with him to hear what the new man would say. The place was thronged, but most of the fathers took the matter lightly enough. The impression he made was on the lowly, the slaves. They took his words to heart and pondered them. I have caught some of them at times repeating them to each other, as if they were oracles. His theory seems made for them especially."

"Or him who dares foment sedition among them?" broke in Magas. "He and others of his ilk had better beware. I remember something of the circumstance since you mention it, but my father thought it an attempt to raise an insurrection among the slaves. The preacher did well to take himself off."

"Harm!" answered Magas. "Harm! Epicurean that you are, will you never see harm till you hear the house is on fire? I tell you there is harm; he preaches 'equality' to slaves, and what good can come of that?"

"What harm, rather? The poor varlets know it for a fact that they are not the equals of their masters." "They are not equal; no, they are not equal," said Magas vehemently; "and they must never be permitted to think they are. Their numbers might give trouble to us if they imbibed such an idea, while to them it could be of no real service. They have muscle, but not intellect. Set them free, they would soon be at loggerheads among themselves."

"Intellectual greatness," said Critias, "is rare even among freemen; but some slaves have manifested that there is no deficiency in that respect."

"Some rare exceptions, perhaps, but that proves nothing. Aristotle says, and truly: 'The woman and the slave are distinguished by nature herself.'"

"Yes," said Pierus, "I remember the passage. He says, 'If we compare man to woman, we find that the first is superior, therefore he commands; the woman is inferior, therefore she obeys. The same thing ought to take place among all men. Thus it is that those among them who are as inferior with respect to others as the body is with respect to the soul, and the animal to man; those whose powers principally consist in the use of the body, (the only service that can be obtained from them,) they are naturally slaves.'"

"There can be no doubt about it," said Magas. "The very bodies of the slaves are different from ours; they are strong, muscular, and fitted for labor; ours are slimmer, more refined, more sensitive."

"I cannot see how you can build any argument on that," said Critias; "your grand philosopher, even while he asserts a different conformation of body to exist between the freeman and the slave, admits that it sometimes happens that to a freeman is given the body of a slave, and to a slave the soul of a freeman. I have often found it so. I know some very despicable citizens; and I have found some noble sentiments in slaves."

Critias laughed, and said, "Slaves have sentiment, and memory, and reflection; by whose permission I do not know; but how are you to get rid of it? That is the question."

"But," said Pierus, "we are losing sight of the question as to what the last singer intended to convey. Who do you think it was?"

"Some follower of the Jew Paul; I know no other sect who would dare call the muse a myth."

"I would give something to know what the Jewish fellow did say; do you remember?" asked Pierus.

"I think I can summon some one who does." And Critias called aloud to a slave, who drew near.

The man addressed was a gray-headed, stolid-looking person; his intelligence on common matters was not deemed great; he was, however, esteemed faithful, trustworthy, and affectionate. A sudden glow lighted up his features, as his master spoke to him, and he became animated with an expression that puzzled his hearers: he stood forth, threw out his right arm, and, in the attitude of an orator impressed with the dignity and importance of the subject, delivered word for word the speech made by the great apostle of the Gentiles in the hall of the Areopagus.

"My masters," said the slave, "when the preacher Paul was brought to the court of the Areopagites, and questioned concerning the new doctrine he was giving out to men, he stood in the midst of Mars' Hill and said:

"'Ye men of Athens, I perceive that, in all things, ye are too superstitious; for as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I beheld an altar with this inscription, To the unknown God; whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. {670} God that made the world and all things therein, seeing he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed anything, seeing he giveth to all life and breath, and all things; and hath made of ONE BLOOD all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth; and hath determined the times appointed, and the bounds of their habitations; that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him; though he be not far from every one of us. For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.'"

"Said! five years ago, and you repeat it now, word for word like a task," said Magas; "did you hear it more than once?"

Magas frowned and rose to his feet. "A dangerous doctrine for our slaves to have by heart," he muttered; then turning to his companions he said, "Send the varlets home; let us have our talk to ourselves."

At a sign from the masters, the servitors left the premises, and Magas resumed: "Do you leave that slave at large, Critias, with such a doctrine as that in his bosom?"

"And why not?" asked Critias; "poor, harmless old Merion, the unwearied attendant on my father's infirmities; his place could not be supplied in our household for his weight in gold."

"Well, yes, it is pretty poetry enough, rhapsodical enough, but, like all rhapsody, harmless."

"Harmless! Did you watch the other slaves as the old man lighted up; as he said: 'All mankind were of one blood, all the offspring of God,' master as well as slave! I am sure these varlets understood it so. Such teaching as that must kindle fire in men's hearts, must engender rebellion. That one slave, as you see, has got that and more by heart; do you think it has no effect on him?"

"No bad effect! why, man, do you not see that if our slaves once believe they are of one blood with their masters, that they are equally the offspring of God, they will arise and assert their dignity? Then who will do the work?"

"You are troubling yourself very unnecessarily, my dear Magas; there is no slave in our household who works so well or so faithfully as Merion."

"He's but biding his time," said Magas; "take care. The man that, being unlettered, got that doctrine by heart, did so because he cherished it, made much of it; he has studied its meaning, depend upon it; and the meaning to him must be freedom."

"You did not hear him out," said Critias; "he believes in a judgment after death, which shall right the wrongs of earth; the followers of this Jew have the oddest ways in the world. You know the Lady Damaris?"

"Well," rejoined Critias, "I have heard her assert that 'work' has a sanctifying tendency, whatever that means; and they say she takes pains to instruct her slaves in this singular philosophy; she often works with them, and treats them as if they were poor relations she was bound to see well provided for. Strange! isn't it?"

"Strange enough," said Magas, "but more dangerous than strange. The woman must be looked to."

"Nay, leave her to regulate her own household," said Critias, laughing: "if you want to make war, try your skill with men. There's Dionysius, who deserted the Areopagus soon after that preacher was here; he has freed some of his slaves, taught others to read, and teaches this new philosophy to all."

"The man must be crazed," said Magas; "these strange notions must end by revolutionizing society if they are allowed to get to a head. They must be put a stop to. Whom shall we have to work for us, when the slave thinks himself as good as his master?"

"We will work for ourselves then," said Critias. "And perhaps that would not be so very hard, after all. In the early days of the republic, our forefathers tilled their own fields; they were perhaps as happy as we are now."

"Are you also touched with this mania?" asked Magas, stamping his foot fiercely. "I say the slaves are ours by right of conquest; and, for the glory of my ancestral race, I'll keep my feet upon their necks."

"As the Roman keeps his foot on ours, eh, Magas? Could we rouse the slaves to noble deeds, through the working of noble thoughts, we might free our country yet."

"Come not upon that strain," said he; "we cannot overrule fate! Ha! what was that?"

'Twas a sweep of the same lute, a silver chord of melody that caught his ear. Breathlessly the trio listened, and soon these words pealed forth:

  He comes! He comes in clouds of glory!
    Haste, oh! haste to meet thy God!
  Angels, hymn the thrilling story,
    How on earth his footsteps trod;
  How those footsteps, faint and weary,
    Tracked thy path, thy soul to save.
  Quit, oh! quit sin's path, so dreary,
    Plunge thee in the saving waves.
  Ransomed is thy soul for ever,
    Ransomed by his precious blood,
  If but now from sin thou sever,
    Cleansed in the redeeming flood.
  Haste! oh haste! he comes to save thee,
    Then no more let sin enslave thee!

"'Tis the same voice!" Why did Magas turn pale as he said so? The trio separated to search the glades, the bushes, the thickets; every nook and corner was probed in vain. The muse, mentor, genius, or spirit, whatever it might be, was not to be found.

Chapter II.

Chione covered her face with her hands, her bosom heaved, tears trickled through her fingers; it was no gladsome greeting that she bestowed on her lover, yet it was she who had sought this interview, or rather had given opportunity for it, even while pretending to hide herself, and to shun the meeting she sought.

"A whole year have you been invisible, my Chione; a whole year have I sought you in vain; and, now that we meet, you do not throw your-self into my arms for very joy; you turn away, and your eyes are filled with tears!"

"Oh! would it were so, Magas! would that the sight of you did not move me thus; would I had never known you! Leave me, Magas!"

"Leave you now when, after a year's search, I have found you! Leave you! What is the meaning of this altered tone? Are you no longer Chione? Am I not Magas?"

"It is true," said Chione, in a very low voice; "it is true I am the slave Chione."

"The slave! O Chione! have I not promised you freedom if you but return my love? Last year did I not bid you become to me what Aspasia was to Pericles—my oracle, my inspirer, my divinity! and you left me; and now that your glowing charms have become endued even with a higher lustre; that your voice can at will enkindle each noble emotion while it thrills the soul with ecstasy, now your empire over me is all but overpowering."

"Not at first; the theme was so strange; it troubled me. But at the first tone uttered in the grove I knew you; I felt that you, and you only, could cause such a thrill as then agitated my whole being. O Chione! you were ever to me as the tenth muse. Say what has caused your absence?"

"No, no. How should I? I knew the voice, the voice of my own Chione, who had so long and so mysteriously disappeared, and I listened in the hope of discovering her retreat. I searched, but searched in vain; yet I felt sure it was to me she sang. Now tell me truly, did you not recognize me and address yourself to me?"

"But I did not hear them. Even of the first I heard nothing distinctly, or at least, nothing that I could understand; of the last, not a word; only the tones, the tones of my Chione, singing as of yore to enchant me; it sounded like a wail for other days; a promise, perhaps, for happier ones to come."

"A higher life! Yes, a life of love with thee, my Chione. A life of that sublime love where Cupid does honor to the muses, and becomes himself the inspirer of sacred song. Yes, thou wilt not deny it, though, for these eight days past, thou hast kept me on the search for thee. Thou sawest me in the temple, and to me were thy songs directed. I am sure of it; for the serving maidens assured me 'twas a full year since thou hadst thyself ministered there, and none had seen thee since save the daughter of the philosopher of the day, save Lotis only! She acknowledged the lute accompaniment, and that it was thy voice it accompanied."

"Nay, she was hard pressed; she could scarcely avoid the avowal. But now, cease this dallying and confess the truth: was not thy song for me?"

But Chione answered no more. Perhaps she was asking that question of her own heart, and could not answer it. She leant against a tree in the grove in which they were standing and sobbed bitterly, but no reply issued from her lips. At this juncture a stately personage approached, whom Magas perceiving, saluted with the respect due to his evident dignity. Chione, with her veil gathered around her, had her features turned toward the tree, her agitation betraying itself, however, by slight convulsions of her frame. {673} The stranger paused, and looked from one to the other. Magas was evidently a stranger to him; but when, surprised at the sudden silence, the maiden for an instant changed her posture, and the stranger uttered, in amazement, the name Chione, she started, gazed distractedly, and, in an instant, fled from the spot like an arrow shot from a bow, so swiftly did she disappear.

Magas would have followed; but the stranger, speaking in a courteous tone, yet with an authority he dared not disobey, inquired: "Is that young damsel of your kindred, my son?"

"Not so, my lord," said Magas; "I knew her a year ago, when she ministered in the temple of the muses. Her ravishing voice then enkindled all hearts; but she disappeared suddenly, and to-day I first encounter her after a long absence."

"I see how it is," softly rejoined the elder man; "beware, my son; set not your heart on one beyond your reach. Gold cannot purchase Chione. You will find others as fair, others who will serve you more readily in that very temple from which Chione has been taken. Pursue not one who belongs to another master."

"You must forgive me for not answering you," replied the sage; "in your present humor, it would but bring disorder to the state."

"One word," said Magas, springing forward so as to prevent the old man from departing; "one word Is it yourself?"

"It is not, my son," replied the other gently, as, slightly pushing by the young man, he left him with a passing salute.

Magas remained rooted to the spot, knitting his brows and gnashing his teeth with vexation. "So near the goal of all my hopes, and so suddenly foiled; but I will find her yet; and if gold will buy her, well! if not, why, other means must be tried."

It is no longer a grove yielding its pleasant shades in the sunny light of the beautiful climate of Greece; it is no longer the impassioned tone of Magas pouring the honeyed tones of flattering love into her ear; the slave is at the feet of her mistress, in the women's apartment of a small but elegantly adorned dwelling near unto the city, and again she is bathed in tears. Yet the voice in which she is addressed is more sorrowful than angry; the tones are rather those of a grieving mother than of an enraged mistress. But there was a decision, a firmness in the voice that told the lady was not to be trifled with.

"It is not a question of personal offence, my Chione; thou hast injured thyself, not me. A year ago, thou didst put on Christ, and vow allegiance to the one true God. Wilt thou now forsake him, to follow thy own passion?"

"No? then why dally with the tempter? why seek again what thou hast once abjured? When our holy bishop rescued thee from the service of the pagan altars, at thine own earnest entreaty, and brought thee here, to serve the Lord Jesus, didst thou not renounce paganism, its vices, its crimes, its sweets as well as its bitters?"

"And yet thou goest to a pagan temple, to attract the notice of a young pagan noble, the enemy of our faith!"

"I went not for that purpose, madam, though it ended so. I went to see Lotis, as I told you; she was seeking instruction from me as of yore; you are aware she was my pupil in music."

"And you gave it her, by causing her to help you attract your former admirer; fie! Chione, your tale hangs not well together."

"Lady, believe me, I knew not of the presence of Magas, until I saw him there; I was not thinking of him, until he stood beside the pillar within which I was concealed. It was on a sudden impulse that I acted. Lotis was beside me with her lute; we were both effectually concealed within one of those hollow, vaulted recesses used for emitting the more mysterious sounds of the deities, and which are known to so few that I felt myself doubly secure, when the sight of him who could not see me caused a rush of blood to my head; I gave Lotis a signal, which she obeyed, as thinking, perhaps, I had again a part in the performance as I used to have, and I sang, not of the muse, save as a thing of the past."

"I know you cannot believe in paganism again, Chione," said the lady solemnly; "it is not your head that is likely to be misled, at least not in the first instance. I fear your passions, not your understanding. The rush of blood was, methinks, to your heart, rather than to your head."

"Lady, I love my religion, or I should not have desired to leave the temple; I was honored there."

"Yes, Chione; and here you are not honored in a way that flatters your self-love; and that is why, after a year of trial, you seek the flattery of Magas, rather than the unimpassioned love of your Christian friends. Yet their love is less selfish, more sincere."

"It is cold, cold," muttered Chione. Aloud she said, "Madam, I dare assure you, my faith is as vivid now as it was a year ago."

"My poor child!" said the lady, laying her hand upon Chione's head, "go for to-night; another day, we will resume the subject. You are under the influence of passion at this moment; you know neither your own strength nor your own weakness; you scarcely know what you believe, what you doubt. Your passions are awakened, your self-love aroused, and perhaps wounded. These must be subdued; not by the exercise of the understanding, which is powerless against such formidable enemies; but by faith, which is the exercise of the heart in God; for with the heart man believeth unto justice. [Footnote 58] If, as you say, your faith is as vivid now as it was a year ago, go and exercise it in prayer, and I too will pray with you, my poor child, that our hearts may be fashioned after the pattern shown us in the mount."

Poor Chione! the tenth muse! with every pulse palpitating to the inspirations of poetical and musical genius—a genius which in her panted for expression, and nourished itself at the shrine of self-love. Poor Chione! bred an orphan in the temple of the muses; gifted with more than ordinary powers of mind, which had been cultivated even by the residence which had been hers from infancy; endowed with grace, beauty, and intelligence; fostered by the praises of Magas, who, from being the patron of the beautiful and interesting child, had become the admirer of the still and ever increasing loveliness of the maiden. {675} Poor Chione! The truths of Christianity unfolded to her by Merion, her uncle, also a slave, at a time when her understanding was about to reject the mockeries of a worship beautiful and fanciful indeed, but sustained by no interior power, appealing to no standard on which she could rely unhesitatingly, had taken hold of her imagination, had captivated her by their beauty, their coherence, their consistency. They were the realization of her fondest dreams, the filling up of the most beautiful pictures that her fancy had ever painted; they were a logical appeal to her understanding; and because they were all these, she adopted them, not beginning to comprehend the interior spirit, not fathoming even to the first degree, the mystery of the cross, that stumbling-block to the Jews, and foolishness to the Greeks. [Footnote 59] Chione's understanding was Christ's, and her imagination also, because the metaphysical propositions of the apostle met her approval, and the poetry and imagery of the church claimed her admiration; but her heart seemed still untouched, her thoughts still centred in herself, her loves and her hatreds still found their source in human passion. She judged all things as yet by a mere outward, human standard; and the tragic scenes recounted in the Gospels but moved her in the same manner, though in a higher degree, as would a tragedy of Sophocles or Euripides. They excited her feelings to admiration, nay to adoration; but for the regulation of the dispositions of her heart, they were not yet brought into play.

In fact, she was disappointed in religion, although she did not confess her disappointment even to herself. Up to the time she had become a Christian, all things had ministered to her self-love. When, yielding to the preaching of Merion, (for such it was, although addressed to so limited an audience,) she had besought his intercession to be removed from a place where, as her years increased, her beauty and position as a slave exposed her to danger, she had counted on being appreciated by the society which she entered; and as she had heard of many slaves having been set free by the Christians on account of the esteem in which they were held, she, fancying herself a very superior being to the generality of slaves, (her beauty, grace, and genius having ever called forth such unqualified admiration,) could not but deem that she should soon be accounted well worthy of such an advantage. When, then, she found herself at the age of sixteen, secluded in the household of the Lady Damaris, treated kindly, but not specially indulged; when she saw that her mistress, far from deeming her a prodigy, seemed to find in her serious failings needing correction, and that a probation was deemed necessary ere allowing her to profess the faith; she was more hurt than she permitted to appear: and the seclusion to which she had committed herself, when requesting to be transferred from the muses' temple to the silence and retirement practised by the household of the Lady Damaris, weighed upon her spirit, for it gave no scope to the love of display which excited her genius to pleasurable expression. Her intellectual convictions, indeed, remained unchanged, but her heart sought other interests than those around her; and when it appeared that one after another of the slaves attached to the lady received their freedom, according as they demonstrated to the satisfaction of their mistress that they were likely to make a good use of it, but that no hint was ever given to herself that she might expect a like boon, she began to wax impatient, to tax her mistress with partiality, and finally to raise the question whether she had not a right to free herself from tyranny. {676} Tyranny! The only restraint exercised in her regard was such as a tender mother's vigilance would deem necessary. She saw not that, at her years, the protection of the Lady Damaris was the greatest benefit this world could give her, accompanied as it was by genuine kindness, and an earnest desire to cultivate her heart and her understanding in the right direction.

Freedom! exterior, freedom for a girl of sixteen! this became her dream by night, her exclusive idea by day, and in acting upon the idea, she often violated the rules the noble and charitable lady had laid down for the regulation of her household.

On an occasion of this kind it was that she had visited the muses' temple, saying to herself that it was to give instruction to her former companion, whom she so much desired to meet again. There the sight of Magas had brought back all the flatteries and self-exulting thoughts of former days. She had then refrained from making herself known, for—a slave! and the noble Magas!—her heart revolted at the thought of what such a connection must be! A year ago she had fled from it; her pride had sustained her then; she had called it her virtue. Now she felt the need of his praises; now she longed for his sweet flatteries; the voice of truth had been too harsh for her self-love. She needed adulation, passionate adoration. Would Magas give it her? She had heard his exclamation recognizing her voice: from her hiding-place she had seen the zeal with which he had sought her; and eight days afterward, by dint of watching, she had contrived to meet him as if by accident, as we have seen; and what was to be the result?

Chapter III.

"Chione, my niece; nay, my daughter in Jesus Christ, tell me, for pity's sake, why do I find you here?"

"Uncle, I weary of the tedious routine of our household. I come to woo the naiads and the fauns of early days, for a little relaxation of my spirit."

"Nay, uncle, do not cast religion at me for ever. I mean no harm by speaking in the language of my childhood; and, indeed, I need to recreate my soul; my spirit is fainting away amid the tedium of our ever immaculate household."

"None, none at all, absolutely none. Have I not just said she is immaculate, faultless? too perfect, in fact, fair as the moon and as chaste; ay, and as cold too!"

"Cold! Lady Damaris who has spent her fortune in relieving the indigent, in soothing the sorrows of the mourner, in setting free the slave. Cold! Where, then, will you find the fire of charity?"

"You! Are you not too free already! as witness this unmaidenly step of visiting these glades alone and unprotected? Free! Are you not already as free as is safe for you? is not the Lady Damaris more a mother than a mistress to you? Go to, your labors are too light, your liberty too great, since you know not how to make a better use of it. A Christian maiden should have more reserve."

"None, if that is your object, and that alone, though even so, for one in your condition there might be danger. But, Chione, you do not come here either to woo the naiads or the fauns, or to sun yourself on the riverbanks. You come here to meet one you are bound to avoid, and I come to take you home again."

"Ay, by what right, base slave?" asked the voice of Magas, as he suddenly came upon the couple. "By what right dare you to interfere with the fairest muse of earth's bright temple? you who have scarcely brains enough to know whether Apollo steers his chariot from east to west or from north to south."

"Noble sir," said Merion respectfully, as if unheedful of the insulting tone in which he was addressed, "I am this maiden's uncle, and seek but to conduct her to a place of safety."

"I will dispense with thine office, by fulfilling it myself; take thyself hence, I say."

Merion looked at Chione, who, with an incomprehensible caprice, settled the dispute by rapidly taking flight in the direction of the abode of the Lady Damaris, thus again leaving Magas foiled at the moment he thought himself certain of an interview; and, what was still more perplexing, leaving him in a state of uncertainty as to whether she desired to grant him an interview or otherwise. He turned fiercely upon Merion:

"For cannot, say will not," said Magas, arresting him. "I insist on knowing where Chione lives."

"You cannot know it from me, sir," said Merion, breaking away, while fortunately some persons appearing in sight, forbade the noble Magas from renewing a contest with another person's servant; and thus the faithful guardian of Chione effected his escape.

It was, however, to the house of Dionysius he betook himself to consult with him concerning the measures to be taken to insure the safety of his wayward niece.

It was a difficult matter for the learned but simple-hearted bishop, known in the city as Dionysius the Areopagite, to interfere in. The conversion of this noble-hearted prelate had, in his own case, been so sincere, so entire, it was difficult for him to comprehend an adhesion given partly to the intellectual, partly to the moral bearings of the religion of Christ, an adhesion which more resembled a philosophical adoption of tenets, than the surrender of the whole being into the keeping of his divine Lord, such as he understood to be the requirement demanded of himself when, under the tuition of the great apostle, he had learned to put on Christ. The gospel had come to him, not in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Spirit, and in much assurance. [Footnote 60] It filled his soul, not only with its intellectual delights, with its wondrous solutions of the dread mysteries of existence, with its harmonious developments and sublime manifestations, but with interior light. "Faith" was to him as, alas! it is to so few, "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." [Footnote 61] It animated him wholly; it was a part of himself; he could say with the great apostle in very truth, "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me, and gave himself for me." [Footnote 62]

But Dionysius was the pastor of souls; he dared not refuse to come to the assistance of one of his flock, albeit, that one was a child, a slave, and that the request for his interference came to him also from a slave. The true-hearted Merion was worthy of his highest love; long since would he have redeemed him, and associated him in his labors of love, but that the slave ever put him off, pointing out to him others on whom the material chain weighed more heavily, so that its wearers were fainting under the burden, while he walked erect. The truth had made him free [Footnote 63] in soul, and he was not willing to encroach on the limited means placed at the disposal of the bishop by the faithful, while so many of the weaker brethren needed help to sustain their fainting steps. Besides, as a slave, bearing his own burden, Merion possessed a greater influence among his own class than he would have done had he accepted the purchase of his liberty. "The poor and lowly," said he to Dionysius, "have many advantages which you in higher stations wot not of. Truth is not veiled from them by politeness, or by the conventionalism of society; they see things as they are, unmasked, and view themselves also by another light than that which is shed on the man to whom everybody bows. I have often thought, my lord, that they need an extraordinary degree of grace, who are thus placed above the multitude. Since our Lord has declared that it is the 'poor who are blessed,' and he himself asks, 'How can ye believe, ye who receive honor one of another?' [Footnote 64] Believe me, then, my kind friend, there is a greater blessing in a position to which no worldly honor is attached than to others; at least for poor souls like mine, who cannot claim the extraordinary graces needed to clear away the mists which obscure the light from the great ones of this world." Thus pleaded Merion against his own advancement, to which the bishop replied:

"It is true, my Merion, we must all become 'poor in spirit,' giving all honor to God alone, for the good that is in us, since all that man has done is to pervert his gifts."

"And the more wonderful, the more exalted the gifts, the more they are perverted. Chione's beauty and talent are already turning her away from the religion she has professed."

"Nay, not so bad as that, my Merion. Neither is it the beauty or the talent that are in fault. These are God's gifts to Chione. It is the human self-love, the self-centralization which craves homage and admiration, that are to blame. It is the repetition of the primeval sin, the wilful separation of the soul from God, for the sake of inordinate gratification. But Chione has worshipped Christ. She will see her error and repent."

"Nay, now it is you who are wanting in confidence, my good friend. Chione is the child of your prayer. You begot her in the Lord, and He will preserve her for you. How, is not so plain. May be, she will fall. Gifts like hers too often lack humility, and humility, the foundation of the Christian character, sometimes needs a fall, in order to produce it. Faith you have already won for her, from God. Now set yourself to intercede for her again, to win other gifts which shall render her faith available to salvation. Ask for her, humility, at any price of suffering to yourself or her. God will grant your prayer, be assured of that, my friend. Now, as to what we can do for the exterior circumstance, let me know your wishes."

"We might try; though, rich and ardent as he is, he would be apt to trace her to any place within our power to send her. I have friends at Corinth. Should you be satisfied to send her there?"

"Else I would not have named them. But, reflect, to none is she as dear as she is to you. None will take the same interest in her, watch over her—"

"Her person will. How her mind will be affected, is another question. We cannot change the affections or annihilate desires by change of place. But it shall be as you wish."

"You know, full well, that the welfare of her household, temporal and eternal, is the object of that lady's constant solicitude. She will agree to anything she deems will promote it."

Chione was scarcely surprised when she was told that she was to be sent to Corinth. Nay, to do her justice, she was not altogether grieved. She knew her danger. Her pride and self-respect revolted from any degrading connection with Magas. And what other could she hope for? Neither as a slave nor as a freed-woman could Magas elevate her to the rank of his wife. He himself had proposed Aspasia for her model; but Aspasia to a Christian maiden! Dazzling as was the ideal, not for a moment did Chione suffer herself to believe it could be hers. Why, then, did she hover around her destruction, as a moth hovers around the candle? Why did her thoughts perpetually dwell on Magas as the only one who understood her, the sole being on earth who could appreciate her? Why had she endeavored, why did she still endeavor, to attract his attention the more that she knew the burning passion which fired his impetuous and vehement nature?

Chione felt but too truly the inward conflict of her soul. She loved Magas. She could not conceal herself from him if he were near—could not even avoid him. The attraction was too great. But at Corinth she could forget him, at Corinth other objects would occupy her, at Corinth she would again learn to love Christ. So to Corinth she consented to go, making so little opposition to the measure, that Merion half persuaded himself he had overrated her weakness.

Chione was conveyed away stealthily, in company with a Christian family who were making the journey homeward. Days elapsed; and Magas watched in vain, set spies in vain. Chione was not to be met with.

"The girl must be ill, or bewitched," said he. "Three appearances, and nothing heard of her! A whole year since I saw her before, and she so changed, beautified, and silenced when we met again! What can it mean?"

"What can what mean, Magas, that you are here talking to yourself, and flinging yourself about like a madman?"

"No. It was scarcely an adventure to be forgotten, save by one who cares for nothing, like yourself."

"Yes; and that they must be looked to. I wish you would let me question your slave awhile."

"Question all you like; but I warn you, Merion is not likely to answer you unless he likes."

"No! not to Merion! no! Not on a subject which interferes with no one, even though you have assumed it as a cobweb to your brain. Merion is a faithful servant. I consent to no torture while he continues such."

"Not if you learn that he is concerned in hatching a conspiracy against the state?"

But Magas was in love, and would neither hear reason nor be turned away from his purpose. Merion would tell him nothing. He said only that he had not seen the girl for many days, and that it was not his business to inquire to what place she had been sent. Lotis, the daughter of the principal philosopher of the day, had been her frequent companion in early days, but of late had seen her little, and, since the adventure in the temple, not at all. Lotis was suspected to know the name of Chione's owner; but, if she did, she kept it to herself. Months passed; and then Magas disappeared also, and, for a while, was not again heard of in Athens.

Philosophy Not Always Vain.

There are persons who think we err, and make our magazine too heavy by devoting so large a portion of it to quasi-philosophical discussions. All readers, we are aware, are not and need not be interested in such discussions; but there are some who want them, value them, and profit by them. One of our contributors has received the following letter from a distinguished professor in a Southern university, which proves that our heavy articles are read by some, at least, and have served the cause of truth.

October 26, 1867.
To The Author Of The Article On
"The Cartesian Doubt,"
Published In The November Number Of The Catholic World:

Dear Sir:
I beg you to accept the presentation of this copy of a book I published, as you see, in 1860.

I do not offer it with any idea that you will find in it anything new or instructive to you, or with any expectation that you will give it approval or praise. I have become conscious of several of the errors it contains.

I send it to you under the influence of two motives: 1st. To offer you a token of the deep gratitude I feel toward you for the article on "The Cartesian Doubt," and other articles (which I take also to be from your pen) entitled "Problems of the Age," published in The Catholic World; this gratitude being felt for the flood of religious and intellectual light they have shed upon my mind and heart, and for their having convinced me of the truth of many Catholic doctrines I had obscurely perceived, and which, through the clearness and force of your language and arguments, now shine to my eyes with unsullied lustre. Second. I also offer you this token, that you may thereby judge for yourself how far I was behind, and therefore what great advance I must have made toward a clear understanding of the true relation and subordination of philosophy to Catholic doctrine, now that I admit that doctrine as received through your articles, which I have no doubt are approved by the Church.

Hoping, sir, you will kindly receive this expression of my heartfelt thanks, I subscribe myself, affectionately and respectfully, yours.

The professor is mistaken in supposing that the article on The Cartesian Doubt and those on The Problems of the Age, are from the same writer. This, however, is a matter of no consequence; for in both the profoundest principles of philosophy are treated; and both, for the most part, set forth and defend the same philosophical doctrine. We lay before our readers another letter, from a distinguished lawyer, a recent convert to the church, which shows that our philosophical articles are read by eminent men, and with respect, even when their doctrine is not accepted.

Dear Sir: In The Catholic World for December, you say, on page 427, "The school Sir William Hamilton founded … avowedly maintains that philosophy cannot rise above the sensible, and that the supersensible, as well as the superintelligible, must be taken, if at all, on the authority of faith or revelation." Just before this, you also say, "The science neither of language nor of logic can be mastered by one who holds Sir William Hamilton was a philosopher," etc. Again, on page 424, you say, "The tendency of all inductive philosophy, as any one may see in the writings of … Sir William Hamilton and his school, is to restrict all science to the phenomenal, and, therefore, to exclude principles and causes, and consequently laws."

The ideas here advanced are new to my mind, and my object in troubling you with this letter is to request you to refer me to some philosophical work in which they are fully developed. I came into the Catholic Church in the spring of 1865, as I supposed by a process of induction, and by process of induction I am thoroughly convinced that we have higher and better evidence of the truth of the dogmas of the church, than of any scientific fact; indeed, better than we have of any other fact, save that of existence. But I have failed to discover in the writings of Sir William Hamilton (the only one of the writers you mention with whom I am even slightly acquainted) the tendency you describe, and I cannot understand how such a result could be produced by a legitimate inductive philosophy. Sir William Hamilton shows that induction, when applied to Deity, to the infinite or to the absolute, (he ought to have said to any spiritual existence also,) fails to yield even apparent truth, because it yields contradictions. It seems to me that this must be a very near approach to a true catholic philosophy, that is, to a definition of the field in which induction is to operate; and I find it a weapon which silences, if it does not convince, my Protestant friends; for if they admit that their reasoning powers—those faculties which enable them to make the boasted progress in physical science—give no help in explaining the relation which exists between them and their Creator, they then have to deny, with the deist, that any such application exists; or if it does exist, admit that it rests on authority, thus destroying the right of private judgment, a result in either case fatal to Protestant Christianity.

I don't think I am mistaken about what Sir William Hamilton teaches, for I have his works before me; but it is very possible that I do not comprehend the tendency of it; and I may be entirely wrong in regarding him as a philosopher second to but few since Aristotle. I am not seeking controversy, but information; and if you can refer me to a book, not too large for a hard-working lawyer to read, which will clearly define what is regarded in the Catholic Church as the philosophy or rationale of religion, you will confer a favor which will be long remembered.
Very respectfully.

The old controversy with heresy has lost its former importance, for heresy in our time gives way to downright infidelity, or total religious indifference, and the intelligent Catholic, who understands his age, is more disposed to recognize and cherish the fragments of Christian truth still retained by the sects respectively, than to point out and refute their heresies. He would be careful not to break the bruised reed or to quench the smoking flax. In these times all who are not against our Lord are for him. {682} The field of controversy has changed. The non-Catholic world is either slowly retracing its steps toward the church, or rushing headlong into rationalism, naturalism, humanitarianism, pantheism, atheism. The modern atheists are a far more numerous class than is commonly supposed. Virtually all naturalists, humanitarians, and pantheists are atheists, and the God admitted by the rationalists is not the living God, an ever-present Creator and upholder of the universe, but an abstraction, a vague generalization, or a God so bound hand and foot by the so-called laws of nature, as to be powerless, and incapable of a single free movement, or an efficient act.

These several classes of unbelievers pretend to base their denial of divine revelation, the supernatural, the Christian religion, the freedom, and even the very being of God, on science and philosophy; and it is only on scientific and philosophical ground that we can meet, and logically refute them. No doubt their objections are sophistical, unscientific, and unphilosophical, yet we can show that fact only by means of true science and sound philosophy. We say nothing here of what grace may do; for it works by a method of its own, and by inspiring the will and enlightening the understanding, it enables one, by a single bound, to rise from the lowest deep of infidelity to the sublimest height of faith—to a faith that penetrates within the veil—lays hold of the unseen and the eternal, and conquers the world. We speak now only of the human means of meeting and overcoming the objections of unbelievers to our most holy faith. We can meet and overcome them, and produce what theologians call fides humana, only by opposing the true philosophy to their false philosophy—genuine science to their pretended science, real logic to their shallow sophistries.

Is this a work that Catholics can prudently neglect? We think not. Every age has its own special work to perform, its own special enemies to combat, and there is neither wisdom nor utility, nor true courage in turning our backs upon the enemies that assail us, and dealing forth vigorous blows against enemies long since vanquished, and now dead, and ready to be buried. We must face the evil of to-day, the enemy that is actually in front of us, and with the arms that promise to be effective against him. This is not only wisdom, but a necessity, if we would defend the treasure committed to us. Error is constantly changing its forms, and we must attack it under the form it assumes here and now. To-day it apes the form of science and philosophy. It will avail us nothing to denounce philosophy as vain, or science as unreal or valueless. We must accept both, and oppose to the unreal or false the real and the true. We must meet and beat the enemy on his own ground, and with his own weapons. As the enemy chooses to attack us on the ground of science, reason, philosophy, we must meet him on that ground, and show that on that ground, as on every other, Catholicity is invincible, and able to command the victory.

All the great theologians of the church have been great philosophers; St. Athanasius, St. Basil, St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Augustine, St. Thomas, St. Bonaventura, Suarez, Bossuet, Fénélon, to name no others: and all the glorious ages of the church have been marked by profound and vigorous philosophical and theological studies, as the fourth, the twelfth, the thirteenth, and seventeenth centuries. {683} If the decline of faith marks a decline of science and philosophy, so also does the decline of science and philosophy mark usually a decline of faith. The revival of faith in our century has followed or been accompanied by a revival of the strong masculine philosophy of the fathers and the mediaeval doctors. In proportion as men cast aside the frivolezza of the eighteenth century, engage in serious studies, and learn to think, and think deeply and earnestly, faith revives, and men who as yet are not believers look with reverence and awe on the grandeur and beauty of the Catholic Church, over which time and place have no influence, exempt from human vicissitudes, and on which the storms and tempests of the ages beat in vain. All serious and thinking men turn toward her, and she only is able to give free and full scope to thought, and to satisfy its demands.

We do not, of course, fall into the absurdity of seeking to convert faith into philosophy, nor to substitute philosophy, for faith. Philosophy, strictly taken, is the rational element of faith, or, more strictly still, the preamble to faith. It does not give us supernatural faith, which is the gift of God; it only removes the intellectual prohibentia or obstacles to faith, and establishes those rational or scientific truths or principles which faith or revelation presupposes, which precede faith, and without which faith could have no rational basis or connection with science. All faith in the last analysis is belief and trust in the veracity of God, or the affirmation, Deus est verax, and presupposes that God is. We cannot talk of faith till we have proved from reason with certitude the existence of God. The immortality of the soul brought to light through the Gospel is not the simple existence of the soul in a future life, but the immortal life of the blest in glory, rendered possible and actual through the incarnation, and to which man by his natural powers neither does nor can attain. This immortality presupposes what is commonly meant by the immortality of the soul, an immortality common to the beatified and the reprobate. The immortality or continued existence of the soul is a rational truth, and was held by the heathen in all ages, and must be capable of being proved with certainty by reason prior to faith. Faith reveals to us a state of future rewards and punishments. But rewards and punishments presuppose free agency, or the liberty of man, which is a truth of reason, and to be proved from reason alone. Hence the Holy See required the traditionalists, who seemed disposed to build science on faith, or to found faith on scepticism, to subscribe a declaration that the existence of God, the spirituality of the soul, and the liberty of man are provable with certainty from reason alone prior to faith. These are philosophical truths, and the philosophy that denies them or declares itself unable to prove them is no philosophy at all. It is because these great truths are provable by natural reason that we are morally bound to believe the revelation of God when duly accredited to us as his revelation, and that refusal to believe it when so accredited is a sin.

It is easy to see, therefore, that Christian faith not only leaves a wide field to reason or philosophy, but makes large demands on philosophy, requires of natural reason the very utmost it can do; for the highest victory of reason is precisely in proving with certainty these three great scientific or philosophical truths just named. How little do they understand of our religion, who pretend that it dwarfs the intellect, gives no scope to reason, and appeals only to the external senses and the ignorance and credulity of the people! These considerations show that reason, science, or philosophy has a great and important part in relation to Catholic faith, and must have; for all the theologians agree that grace supposes nature, gratia supponit naturam. It is to the rational soul that God speaks.

Now, it is an undeniable fact, that what passes for philosophy with non-Catholics either denies those great truths which are prior to faith, or fails to prove them with certainty. With what effect, then, can we meet the errors of the age or of our country, and advance the cause of Catholic faith with those who reject it, without entering even deeply into scientific and philosophical discussions? To restore faith, we must restore reason and philosophy, which is its expression; for reason is, at present, more seriously assailed than faith. The controversy to-day is not, as it was a hundred and fifty years ago, between catholicity and heresy, but between catholicity and infidelity, between the church and those who deny all religion deserving the name; and this controversy is precisely in the field of philosophy. In denying the church and rejecting the Christian mysteries, the movement party of the age have lost reason, while professing to rely on it and to be guided by it. They have fallen below reason, and must be brought up to it, and be made to respect it. The so-called advanced party of humanity, the march-of-intellect or the progress-of-the-species party, deny not the faith only, but, in act, reason too. The party has no tolerable appreciation of the powers and capacities of natural reason; and the moment we can get its members to reason, to understand what reason can do, and is called upon to do, controversy is over. We have got their face turned toward the truth, and themselves making their way toward the church. Hence the great work immediately at hand is the defence of reason.

Those Catholics who have not been in a position to learn, or who have no call, in the way of duty, to study the wants and tendencies of the age, may not be aware of any necessity for this defence of reason, and therefore, for the philosophical essays, which, from time to time, we publish, and may well think that we fill with them a space that could be better filled with matter less heavy and more attractive to the bulk of readers. But those who, from their position or vocation, are obliged to study and comprehend the age, whose duty it is to master the literature and science of the non-Catholic world, and who are in habits of daily intercourse with fair-minded and liberal non-Catholics, feel the need of such essays, both for themselves and for those who hold our religion to be illogical, unintellectual, unphilosophical, and hostile to science. The age is earnest, terribly in earnest in the pursuit of material gain, and even in the cultivation of the material or inductive sciences; but, in spiritual matters, in the higher philosophy which is the preamble to faith, it is sadly deficient, and even indifferent; and this defect and this indifference must be overcome. We could not effect our purpose in publishing this magazine, or discharge our duty to our countrymen, if we did not do our best to overcome them; to stimulate those we are able to influence to devote themselves with greater earnestness to the study of the highest and gravest problems of reason now up for solution. Our readers know well that our aim is not simply to amuse or to render ourselves popular. {685} We do not believe it necessary to piety to put on a long face, to speak with a nasal twang, or to go about with the head bowed down like a bulrush. We delight to see the flowers bloom and to hear the birds sing; we love art and all the amenities of social life; but, with all this, we publish our magazine with a serious and earnest purpose. Ernst ist das Leben. We aim to serve the cause of faith, morals, intellectual culture, freedom, and civilization; to do what in us lies, God helping us, to restore our countrymen to faith in Christianity, and to Christianity in its unity and integrity; and to make them work with intelligence and zeal for the high destiny to which God, in his providence, is calling our beloved country.

The two letters we publish, among many other evidences that reach us, prove to us that we do not err in devoting a large space to the discussion of the highest and most difficult philosophical questions of the day. These letters are from men of education, culture, and the first order of intellect and intelligence. The first, which the author of the article on The Cartesian Doubt has kindly placed at our disposal, proves that our so-called heavy articles have cleared up the mind, at least, of one soul, and enabled him to see and admit the Catholic truth. The second letter proves equally the part that philosophy plays in bringing men of a high order of intellect to the faith, even when the particular system of philosophy followed is not precisely that which we ourselves defend. His letter shows that its writer takes an interest in philosophy, and believes in its utility. This is enough to justify us in our course.

The writer of this letter appears to be a little startled at our censure of the inductive philosophy, and especially of Sir William Hamilton. We cannot call that eminent and erudite Scottish professor a philosopher, for we understand by philosophy the science of principles and causes. All real principles are ontological, and Sir William Hamilton denies that ontology is or can be any object of human science. The only things pertaining to philosophy he admits are logic and psychology. But how can there be psychology without ontology? a soul without being? or science of the soul without science of being, that is, without ontology? The soul is not self-existent, has not its being in itself, but in God; "for in him we live, and move, and are," or have our being. How, then, construct a real science of the soul, or psychology, without science of being, and of the relation of the soul to real and necessary being, that is, of the divine creative act? Logic is both a science and art. Men may, no doubt, practise the art without a scientific knowledge of its principles; but, to understand logic as a science, he must understand its principles, and these are ontological. No man fully comprehends logic as a science till he has seen its type and origin in the tripersonality of God, and recognized its principle in the divine creative act. Sir William Hamilton, then, by excluding ontology, excludes from our science principles and causes, and leaves both logic and psychology without any scientific basis.

The writer says, "Sir William Hamilton shows that induction, when applied to deity, to the infinite, or to the absolute, (he ought to have said to any spiritual existence also,) fails to yield even apparent truth, because it yields contradictions." We say the same, and therefore, while we admit inductive sciences, we do not admit inductive science or philosophy. {686} Principles are given à priori, not obtained, as Kant has amply proved, by induction from the facts of experience, because without them no experience is possible. We agree with the writer, not that this "is a near approach to a true Catholic philosophy," but, "to a definition of the field in which induction is to operate." Induction is restricted to the analysis and classification of facts, which fall or may fall under sensible observation, or experiment, and therefore the inductive sciences are empirical, not apodictic. This is what we said, when we said, "The tendency of all inductive philosophy, as any one may see in the writings of Sir William Hamilton, is to restrict all science to the phenomenal, and therefore to exclude principles and causes, and therefore laws."

The writer says, "I came into the Catholic Church in the spring of 1865, as I supposed by a process of induction," etc., and very legitimately too, we doubt not. We by no means exclude inductive reasoning in its place. We do not depreciate the inductive sciences, but we hold with Bacon that, while the inductive method is the true method of studying the facts of the external world, or of constructing the physical sciences, it is inapplicable in the study of philosophy or metaphysics. Philosophy has been well-nigh banished from the English-speaking world by neglecting the admonition of Bacon, and attempting to construct philosophy by the inductive method very properly adopted in the construction of the physical sciences, thus reducing the philosopher to a simple physicist, and philosophy simply to one of the physical sciences, instead of recognizing her as their queen, the scientia scientiarum. The difference between our friend and us is not that we differ from him with regard to induction or the inductive sciences, but that we hold that there is a science above them, which controls them, gives them their law, and renders them possible, and which is not obtainable by induction. This science, which corresponds to the sophia or sapientia of the ancients, and which Aristotle held to be not empirical, and the science of first principles, is what we call, and the only science that we call, philosophy. What our friend understands by inductive philosophy lies below what we call philosophy, and begins where our philosophy ends.

In proving the miracles as historical facts, or the historical identity of the church in all ages, and her commission to teach all men and nations all things whatever our Lord has commanded or revealed to her, we follow the inductive process, and must do so, for no other is possible. But it must be observed that the inductive process would have even here no scientific value without the science of the principles, what we call the preamble to faith, namely, the existence of God, the spirituality of the soul, and human liberty. Without this science, the induction would conclude nothing, and our friend as well as we holds that this science is not attainable by any inductive process. It must also be observed that the inductions we draw from the historical facts in the case do not give us divine faith, but simply a human faith, or rational belief in the Catholic Church, as we have already explained. The Catholic believer is more certain of the truth of what the church teaches than he is of any historical fact; but this higher certainty is not the result of induction, for induction can give no certainty greater than we have of the facts from which it proceeds. {687} The greater certainty is the result of the donum fidei, or the supernatural gift of faith, by which the soul is born again or initiated into the order of regeneration, and begins its return to God as its final cause. The soul is thus really joined by grace to Jesus Christ, who is the real head of every man in the order of regeneration, and lives his life, as really as, in the order of generation, we live the life of Adam our progenitor. This certainty or firm persuasion, which St. Paul tells us "is the substance of things to be hoped for, the evidence of things not seen," rerum substantia sperandarum, argumentum non apparentium, which is of grace, must not be confounded with the fides humana, or certainty which is the product of induction. This latter certainty, which results from the motives of credibility fairly considered, and fully comprehended, and which, after all, leaves us outside the door of the church, is as great as any historical or inductive certainty can be, but it can be no greater.

The writer says he has failed to discover in the writings of Sir William Hamilton the tendency we describe, and that he cannot understand how such a result could be produced by the inductive philosophy; but he himself acknowledges that Sir William shows that induction, applied to the infinite or the absolute, fails to yield even apparent truth, and says he should have added, "or to any spiritual existence." This, with the proposed addendum, excludes from the inductive philosophy all but finite and material or sensible existences, as we asserted. Sir William maintains expressly that the infinite, the absolute, the unconditional cannot even be thought, because, if thought, it would be bounded and conditioned by our thought—an absurd reason, for it supposes that our thought affects the object we think! We think things because they are, not they are because we think them. The object conditions the thought, not the thought the object. Sir William's reason proves not that the object thought is not infinite, absolute, unconditioned, but simply that our thought on its subjective side is finite, or, in other words, that we are not infinite, and cannot think an infinite thought or perform an infinite act—no very novel assertion.

Exclude from philosophy the infinite, the absolute, the unconditional, you exclude God, and deny that the existence of God can be proved with certainty by reason, prior to faith. If you exclude all spiritual existences, you deny all but material existences, and that the spirituality of the soul is provable with certainty from natural reason. If you exclude God from your philosophy, you exclude the causa causarum, and therefore all finite or second causes. Unable to assert any cause or causes, your philosophy can recognize only, as we said, sensible phenomena; nay, not so much, but simply affections of the sensibility, without any power to refer them to any external object or cause producing them. We think it very easy, therefore, to understand wherefore the inductive philosophy, as gathered from the school of Sir William Hamilton, should, as we said, "tend to restrict all science to the phenomena, and therefore to exclude principles and causes, and consequently laws." Can our friend name anything more that can be an object of knowledge with Sir William Hamilton and his school? Will he say this is all philosophy can give? that is, all that can be known or proved by natural reason? {688} If so, what answer shall we make to Saint Thomas and all Catholic theologians who, with one accord, maintain that the existence of God, universal, necessary, immutable, real, self-existent and most perfect being, is demonstrable by reason? or to the Holy See who has required the traditionalist to subscribe the declaration we have already mentioned, namely, "Ratiocinatio Dei existentiam, animae spiritualitatem, hominis libertatem cum certitudine probare potest"? or to Saint Paul, who says, (Rom. i. 20,) "The invisible things of God, even his eternal power and divinity, are clearly seen from the creation of the world, being understood by the things that are made, per ca quae facta sunt intellecta?

We have dwelt the longer on this point because Sir William Hamilton happens just now to be esteemed by a large class of our countrymen as a great philosopher, and his writings are exerting a bad influence on philosophic thought. He, perhaps, had no contemporary who surpassed him in the literature of philosophy or philosophical erudition; he knew all systems, ancient, mediaeval, and modern, but he lacked the true ingegno filosofico, and though a born critic, he cannot as an original and comprehensive genius be compared even with Dr. Thomas Reid, the founder of the Scottish school. His great merit was in completing the doctrine of perception left imperfect by Reid, by proving that we perceive in 'the sensible order things themselves, not merely their phantasms, and that perceiving and perceiving that we perceive are one and the same thing. So far he asserted real objective knowledge, but knowledge only in the external or sensible order. But he undid all this again by maintaining that we see things under the forms of our own understanding; not as they are in themselves, but as we are intellectually constituted to see them. To an intellect constituted differently from ours they would appear different from what they do to us. This has an ugly squint toward the subjectivism of Immanuel Kant, and brings us back to the apparent or purely phenomenal. This supposes that all our knowledge is only knowledge relatively to us, or in relation to the present constitution of our minds. Hence, there is nothing absolute or apodictic in our science. Things may be in reality very different from what we see them, or from what they appear to us. This renders all our knowledge on its objective side uncertain, and opens the door to universal scepticism. We think we have done no injustice to Sir William Hamilton.

We rank Sir William Hamilton with the Positivists, as we do Mr. Herbert Spencer and Mr. J. Stuart Mill, because he restricts our science to the sensible and material order, and denies virtually that we can know principles and causes. We do not pretend that he, Mill, or Spencer agrees in all things with Auguste Comte, the founder of Positivism; we have no reason to suppose that he sympathized knowingly with Comte's avowed atheism, or with his deification and worship of humanity. But the fundamental principle of positivism, that which excludes ontology from the domain of science, is common to them all; and it is impossible to establish the existence of God, the spirituality of the soul, or the liberty of man, or anything else without the aid of ontological principles. Mr. Mansel, the ablest of Sir William Hamilton's disciples, seems well aware of it, and attempts to found science on faith, and faith on—nothing.

We would willingly comply with our friend's request, but we know of no philosophical work in our language such as he wishes us to name. The English-speaking world, since Hobbes and Locke, has had no philosophy, and we are aware of no English treatise on philosophy that has any philosophical value, though some good things may be found in old Ralph Cudworth, Henry More, and in Reid and Beattie. {689} We know nothing within a moderate compass in any other modern tongue that would meet the wishes of our friend much better. Balmes's Fundamental Philosophy, translated from the Spanish by H. F. Brownson, with an introduction by his father, Doctor O. A. Brownson, and published by the Sadliers in this city, is the best that occurs to us. Several Latin text-books, used in our colleges, such as Rothenflue's, Fournier's, Branchereau's, and the Lugdunensis, are, though not free from objection, yet good introductions to the study of philosophy. For ourselves, we collect our philosophy from Plato, Aristotle, the fathers and theologians, more especially from the mediaeval doctors of the church, aided by various modern writers, and our own reflections. We follow no one author, but regard St. Augustine and St. Thomas as the two greatest masters of Catholic philosophy that have yet appeared. As philosophy is the science of reason, we depend on the reason common to all men to confirm or to reject such philosophical views as we from time to time put forth.

Father Lacordaire. [Footnote 65]

[Footnote 65: The Inner Life of the Very Reverend Père Lacordaire, of the Order of Preachers. Translated from the French of the Rev. Père Chocarne, O.P., with the author's permission. By a Religious of the same Order. With preface by the Very Rev. Father Aylward, Prior Provincial of England. Small 8vo, pp. 556. Dublin: William B. Kelly. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.]

A complete biography of the eloquent Dominican whose name is one of the most brilliant in the history of the modern French Church is yet to be looked for. If it is ever adequately written, it will be a work of singular fascination. Rich, however, as Father Lacordaire's life was in materials for such a book, it was a life comparatively poor in striking incidents—a life whose best side lay apart from the world, and whose beauty could be clearly seen only by the light of a genuine religious spirit. In a word, it was his inner life which best merits our notice and awakens our sympathy. We shall hardly be going too far if we say that the history of his soul is a positive romance. This romance Father Chocarne has endeavored to relate in his excellent narrative of "The Inner Life of the Very Rev. Père Lacordaire." As a biography, it is defective; but it does not pretend to be a biography. It is, rather, a description of the mental and spiritual progress of the man, and a picture of his virtues.

Henry Lacordaire was the son of a village doctor of Recey-sur-Ource, in Burgundy, where he was born in 1802. The gentleness of temper for which he was afterward remarkable, distinguished him from his cradle, and the fiery eloquence by which he was to work such wonders may almost be said to have been a gift of his boyhood. As a child, his favorite amusement was to play at being priest, and from his mimic pulpit to inveigh against the sins of the world with an energy which often became alarming. {690} An incident, which he relates himself, and which may be found in his "Letters to Young Men," published by the Abbé Perreyve, illustrates at once the remarkable delicacy of feeling which formed, through life, so important an element of his character, and the piety which distinguished his early youth. At the age of ten he had been sent to school at the Lyceum of Dijon.

"From the very first day," says he, "my schoolfellows selected me as a kind of plaything or victim. I could not take a step without being pursued by their brutality. For several weeks they even deprived me, by violence, of any other food than my soup and bread. In order to escape their ill-treatment, I used, as often as possible, to get away from them during the time of recreation, and, going into the schoolroom, conceal myself under a bench from the eyes alike of my masters and companions. There, alone, without protection, abandoned by every one, I poured out religious tears before God, offering him my childish troubles, as a sacrifice, and striving to raise myself, by tender sentiments of piety, to the cross of his divine Son."

Father Chocarne's remark upon this story, though it may seem not altogether free from French fancifulness, is, after all, a just one.

"This little sufferer, hidden under a bench in the college of which he was afterward to be the honor, and taking refuge at the feet of the Great Victim, gives the key to the entire life of Father Lacordaire. He was not to be raised by God until he had been abased. He was to know glory, but only at the price of hard humiliations and bitter disappointments; and in the hour of success, as in that of trial, his refuge, his resource, his life, his very passion, was to be the cross, the cross of Him who sought the little schoolboy hidden under his bench."

There was nothing at Dijon to keep alive the fervor of his religious sentiments, and it was a time indeed when, in the confusion of the political upheaval which was soon to wreak havoc in the social life of France, faith was an unfashionable weakness, devotion was an exclusively feminine accomplishment, and piety was supplanted by a pinchbeck philosophy. What wonder, therefore, that he left college at the age of seventeen, with his faith practically destroyed—not an open infidel, but only a nominal Christian? At the age of twenty he went to Paris to commence the practice of the law. It may readily be supposed that in the society of the metropolis, which was then seething with political excitement, and intoxicated with dreams of impossible liberty, in the stirring occupations of his career at the bar where he achieved at once a very signal success, his religious impressions would be still further weakened. At first this certainly was the case; yet there was one peculiarity of his disposition which preserved him from a good many of the dangers of his way of life, and probably contributed, under God, to his conversion. He was one who thirsted for love, yet was without a single bosom friend. He never was attracted by the society of women; but he longed for the affection of some congenial companion of his own sex, who could enter into all his hopes and feelings, and share his disappointments and his pleasures. Without this—and his natural reserve long debarred him from it— Paris was to him a desert. He was forced to withdraw into himself. Solitude and habits of reflection begot an abiding melancholy. "There are in me," he writes at this time, "two contrary principles, which are always at war, and which sometimes make me very unhappy—a cold, calm reason, opposed to a burning imagination—and the first disenchants me of all the illusions which the second presents. {691} Nobody would commit more follies than I should do on one side of my being, were I not withheld by a habit of reflection which presents things to me in all their aspects. I have played the game of the material interests of this world, and, without having much enjoyed its pleasures or been intoxicated with its delights, I have tasted enough to be convinced that all is vain under the sun; and this conviction comes both from my imagination, which has no limits save the Infinite, and from my reason, which analyzes all it touches. I have a most religious heart, and a very incredulous mind; but, as it is in the nature of things that the mind must at last allow itself to be subjugated by the affections, it is most likely that I shall one day become a Christian. I am alike capable of living in solitude, and of plunging into the vortex of human affairs: I love quiet when I think of it, and bustle when I am in it, sometimes making my Castle in the air to consist in the life of a village curé, and then saying good-by to my day-dream as I pass the Pont-Neuf—held in my present position by that force of reason which convinces me that to try everything and to be always changing one's place is not to change one's nature, and that there are wants in the heart which earth is powerless to satisfy."

By what process he was led out of this darkness into the light of religious happiness, we do not know. Probably he never knew himself the precise means by which the grace of God wrought his conversion. "Would you believe it," he wrote in 1824, "I am every day growing more and more a Christian? It is strange, this progressive change in my opinions. I am beginning to believe, and yet I was never more a philosopher. A little philosophy draws us from religion, but a good deal of it brings us back again." His progress toward the truth was rapid. He shunned the society of his acquaintances. Sometimes he was detected on his knees behind the columns of silent churches. Sometimes his friends surprised him wrapt in sorrowful meditation among his books. At length the clouds broke away. The divine light burst upon him in all its magnificence. The loving friend whom he had sought so long he found in the person of his Saviour. The affectionate heart which had yearned for an object upon which to pour out its wealth found one in Jesus Christ. The eloquent lips had at last a theme worthy of their powers. He resolved to become a priest, and at the age of twenty-two accordingly entered the Seminary of St. Sulpice.

The serenity and peace of mind which came upon him in his new life was like the reaction after long restraint. He seemed created for the priesthood, for he had all the natural gifts most fitting the sacred calling; but his life had been forced into the wrong channel, and now that the pressure was removed, his soul rebounded with an elasticity at which his directors now and then stood aghast. The strict formalism of St. Sulpice, with its rigorous rules of propriety, was but little suited to his independent character; yet it was something more than a natural repugnance to unnecessary restraint which inspired him with a gaiety little known in the prim precincts of the seminary.

"It sometimes happened that his lively and original nature, not yet under much control, betrayed itself in sallies which manifested something of the gallica levitas, seasoned with Burgundian love of fun. The good directors were astounded, and hastened to repress this boisterous levity. He never could accustom himself to the square cap, that strange head-dress, the shape of which is so grotesque that one dares not call it by its true name. Against these caps Lacordaire declared war, a war at first carried on by epigrams, but which soon became one of extermination. {692} He would snatch them out of the hands of his friends and throw them into the fire. This gave rise to a great commotion, and very lively discussions ensued, some declaring in favor of the square cap, and others for the biretta, which was then a novelty. But novelty and argument were two things which St. Sulpice held in equal abhorrence. In the evening, therefore, at the hour of spiritual reading, the superior addressed them a grave reproof, and order was once more restored.

"The Abbé Lacordaire always displayed perfect submission to his directors; and if they were sometimes puzzled by the contrasts of his singular character, they never had occasion to complain of his want of humility, modesty, or obedience. He was beloved by all his companions: his deep and earnest nature, wholly given up to his new and sacred duties, was adorned with a certain freshness of poetry, with the fragrance of worldly refinement, and the grace of a character long pent up within itself, but now freely poured forth; and all this gave an indescribable charm to his personal intercourse which made him generally loved and sought after. All his masters, however, did not understand him; the singularity of some of his ways, his liberal opinions, and his instinctive repugnance to certain points of ordinary routine, doubtless now and then deceived their observant eyes, and prevented them from at once appreciating at its just value the pure gold which lay hidden at the bottom of the vessel."

The consequence of all this was that his superiors remained a long time in doubt about his vocation, and he was not allowed to receive holy orders at the usual time.

"They felt uneasy when they observed his ardor for debates, and the large claims which he made for reason. When he opened his lips in class to raise any objection, his words took so lively and original a turn, and his conclusions were so bold, that they often proved somewhat embarrassing to the professors. At last, in order to save time, they begged him to put off his difficulties till the end of the lecture. He forgot this sometimes; perhaps it was to relate a story, but the story generally ended in some treacherous question, or some home-thrust at the thesis of the master."

A project which he seriously began to entertain of becoming a Jesuit put an end to this hesitation, and in 1827 he was ordained priest. Very soon afterward an appointment as auditor of the Rota at Rome was offered him. It was an office pretty certain to lead to the episcopacy, but he refused it, and accepted the humble post of chaplain to a convent of visitation nuns in Paris, where his widowed mother came to live with him. The abundant leisure which remained to him in this humble position he diligently employed in study. At one time he had nearly made up his mind to become a missionary in the United States, and he had an interview respecting the project with Bishop Dubois, of New York, when that venerable prelate visited France in 1830. The bishop offered him the post of vicar-general. It would be curious to speculate what effect his acceptance of this proposal would have had upon the history of either the French or the American Church. Had he been vicar-general, he would probably have been the coadjutor and successor of Bishop Dubois, and the brilliant career of Archbishop Hughes would have been missed from our annals. In no other diocese than New York would Archbishop Hughes have found a proper field for the full exercise of his remarkable powers; in no other position than the one he actually occupied could he have done such good service to the church as he effected in this chief city of the new world. On the other hand, there can be no question that Henry Lacordaire was but imperfectly fitted for the hard and laborious work required in those days of an American bishop. It was rough work, and the tools needed to be not delicate but strong. To one who had refused a tempting offer from Rome, the prospect of a vicar-generalship in America cannot be supposed to have held out strong inducements; but there were some reasons why a career in this country presented itself to his mind in a strangely enticing light. {693} He had not forgotten his early aspirations for political independence. He had already given deep thought to the problem which was afterward to bring him into such prominence before the world, of associating society and the church, and breaking the unholy alliance between democracy and infidelity. Politically he was an earnest liberal; religiously he was a devout priest. In France, men did not readily see how the two characters could be united; but in America he believed that Catholicism was placed under conditions of development and action more favorable than in any country of Europe. "Who is there," he exclaimed, "who, at moments when the state of his own country saddens him, has not turned his eyes toward the republic of Washington? Who has not, in fancy, at least, sat down to rest under the shadow of her forests and her laws? Weary with the spectacle I beheld in France, it was on that land that I cast my eyes, and thither I resolved to go to ask a hospitality she has never refused to a traveller or a priest." Having obtained the consent of his archbishop, he went to Burgundy to bid farewell to his family. But while there, he received a letter from his friend, the Abbé Gerbet, which changed his course and determined him to remain in France.

In the spring of 1830, he had become intimate with the Abbé de la Mennais, in whom the hopes of so many of the most zealous of the religious party in France then centred. He was fascinated by the genius of that remarkable man; he believed in many of his theories; he tried, with only incomplete success, to accept his philosophy; but De la Mennais was an absolutist in politics, and Lacordaire was an earnest liberal. The revolution of 1830, however, swept away this barrier which had hitherto kept the two men apart. De la Mennais frankly accepted the great changes which followed the abdication of Charles X., and, in conjunction with some of his disciples, prepared to discuss the same problem of the church and society of which Lacordaire was about to seek the solution in America. In this work Lacordaire was invited to take part. "Nothing," says Father Chocarne, "could have caused him greater joy; it amounted to a sort of intoxication. … And thus the same enthusiastic love of liberty which was carrying this ardent and generous soul to a country blest with a larger freedom than his own, stopped him at the very moment of his departure, and fixed him for ever to take part in the destinies and struggles of his native land."

The Avenir newspaper, which was to be the vehicle of this discussion, was founded on the 15th of October, 1830. The noise of it had no sooner gone abroad than a young French gentleman of brilliant parts, then in Ireland, hastened home to claim a share of the labor. This was Montalembert, and in him Lacordaire found the friend for whom he had long sought, and a worthy object for the affection which he was burning to bestow. They met for the first time at the house of De la Mennais, and loved each other from the first with a love such as knit together the souls of Jonathan and David. De la Mennais, Lacordaire, and Montalembert were three of the principal editors of the new journal.

"They declared their object plainly enough: it was to claim back for the church of France every privilege of liberty, whilst rejecting none of its burdens. The revolution had just made a clean sweep of all ancient traditions. Since the restoration of order and public worship at the beginning of the century, the clergy had learnt to their cost the real value of that protection granted by a power which was ill-informed as to the real nature of its relations with the church; they had found out by experience what they had gained in consideration under the empire, under the restoration, and under the recently established régime of the bourgoisie. What attitude were they to assume toward the new government? Would the old endeavors to form an alliance between the throne and the altar now recommence? The Avenir was founded to preserve them from this temptation. Its programme was, respect for the charter and for just laws; but for the rest, an absolute independence of the civil government. It consequently advocated liberty of opinion for the press, and war against arbitrary power and privilege; liberty of education, and war against the monopoly of the university; liberty of association, and war against the old anti-monastic laws revived in evil times; the liberty and moral independence of the clergy, and war against the budget of public worship. Very vague and uncertain limits were assigned to these different liberties, and the reserves stipulated for in the declarations of doctrine disappeared often enough when the writers were carried away by the ardor of discussion, and the vehemence of invective. They were more frequently engaged, we must confess, in obtaining the thing they sought than in preventing its abuse. Far too radical in their principles, the polemics of the journal were yet more so in the course of action which they recommended. 'Liberty is not given, it is taken,' was a phrase continually repeated; nor did they scruple to add example to precept. Every morning the charge was sounded, and every day witnessed some new feat of arms. The clergy were addressed as an army drawn up in battle array. Every means was tried to kindle their ardor; the zeal of the tardy was stimulated, and deserters were set in the pillory. The chiefs of the party were harangued, the plan of campaign indicated beforehand, the enemy pointed out and pursued to death. Philosophers, enemies of religion, ministers, miserable pro-consuls, members of the university, citizens, and Gallicans were all attacked at once. Resistance did but rouse the spirit of the combatants; it seemed as though the sun always set too early on their warlike ardor. Patience and discretion were not much regarded in their system of tactics; they wanted to have everything at once, and could not wait for to-morrow, and what was not granted with a good grace was to be snatched by force, and at the point of the sword. This haughty and antagonistic attitude, this want of experience in men and things, more excusable in the young disciples than it was in their master, formed, in our opinion, the greatest fault of the Avenir. Its errors and exaggerations of doctrine might have been corrected with time, good advice, and the practical teaching of facts. But those haughty accents, so strange when heard from the lips of priests, alarmed even their friends, and created a certain consternation at Rome—Rome ever calm as truth, and patient as eternity. The responsibility of this false attitude must be charged chiefly on the Abbé de la Mennais and the Abbé Lacordaire. It was the latter who drew up the most incendiary harangues, and opened the most difficult questions.

"The philosophic opinions of M. de la Mennais, and the absolute theories of his journal, particularly those which represented the state payment of the clergy as the badge of shame and slavery, had excited a certain feeling of distrust among the episcopacy, which daily increased. The young disciples of M. de la Mennais were never afraid of a combat; but their faith and loyalty could not endure the vague suspicions raised against their orthodoxy. They began to desire a clear, open explanation, and they determined to go and demand it from the judge of all ecclesiastical controversies, the successor of St. Peter."

The first suggestion of this course came from Lacordaire. He reached Rome, with his two companions, about the end of December, 1831, and besought an audience with the Holy Father Gregory XVI. for the purpose of explaining their views and intentions, and, we may suppose, of defending their orthodoxy. But Rome is not readily moved by the dreams of young enthusiasts, and their reception was a cold one. They were denied a personal interview, and were required to put what they had to say into writing. At the end of two months, Cardinal Pacca condescended to notice their memorial, promised that it "should be examined," and courteously bade them go home. {695} The effect of this treatment upon De la Mennais and Lacordaire respectively, is a remarkable illustration of their characters. The one, deeply wounded in his pride, is sullen under the reproof and at last throws away for ever the precious gift of faith. The other acknowledges his errors, bows humbly to the command of God, and, delivered from "the most terrible of all oppressions, that of the intellect," starts afresh upon a more glorious career than the one he is forced to abandon. "When I arrived at Rome," he writes, "at the tomb of the holy apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul, I knelt down and said to God, 'Lord, I begin to feel my weakness, my sight fails me, truth and error alike escape my grasp; have pity on thy servant, who comes to thee with a sincere heart; hear the prayer of the poor.' I know neither the day nor the hour when it took place, but at last I saw what I had not before seen, and I left Rome free and victorious. I had learned from my own experience that the church is the deliverer of the human intellect; and as from freedom of intellect all other freedoms necessarily flow, I perceived the questions which then agitated the world in their true light." "It was at this moment, as I venture to believe," says Montalembert, "that God for ever marked him with the seal of his grace and laid up for him the reward due to his unshaken fidelity, so worthy of a priestly soul."

Lacordaire now resolved to return at once to France, and abandon the Avenir entirely. De la Mennais persisted in remaining at Rome longer and resuming the suspended periodical; but when the pope decided at last in his Encyclical Letter of August 15th, 1832, and decided against him, he made a temporary submission, and withdrew to his country-house at La Chesnaie. In this solitary retreat, where, in the days of his greatness, a knot of favorite disciples used to sit at his feet, he was once more joined by Lacordaire, who had more confidence in the reality of his master's obedience to the Holy See than after events justified. Before long, others of the young school gathered under the roof of the lonely manor-house. De la Mennais chafed daily more and more under the affront to his intellect. He gave signs of rebellion. His heart was torn by passion, and his lips let fall dark threats and alarming murmurs. "The harrowing spectacle," says Lacordaire, "became too much for me to bear." He wrote M. de la Mennais an affecting letter of farewell; and left La Chesnaie alone and on foot. It was not long before the apostasy of De la Mennais brought the sad history to an awful close.

The young priest, who had escaped from the snare, hastened to present himself to the Archbishop of Paris, Mgr. de Quélen. He was received with open arms, as a son who had returned wounded and weary from some dangerous adventure. "You want another baptism," said the archbishop, "and I will give you one." He reappointed him to the chaplaincy of the Visitation, and in the retirement of that peaceful retreat he found rest for his disturbed soul, and girded up his loins for a fresh battle with the world.

He spent about a year in this solitude, and then accepted an invitation from the officers of the Stanislaus College in Paris, to preach a series of conferences to the students. Here, at last, was the vocation for which God had designed him. The pulpit was his proper sphere. After the first day, the pupils had to give up their places to crowds of strangers, and the chapel could not contain the numbers who flocked to listen to his indescribable eloquence. {696} It was an eloquence not restricted by rules. The orator trampled under foot the artificial forms which for centuries had cramped and confined the utterances of the pulpit. He outraged at pleasure all the canons of the schools. His conferences were neither lectures, nor homilies, nor sermons, but rather were brilliant discourses on sacred subjects in which all the sympathies of the audience were by turns engaged. He spoke not merely as a priest, but as a citizen, a poet, a philosopher, as a man of the day, appreciating the spirit and the wants of his own time. But, like all men who strike out in a new path, and are not satisfied to follow exactly in the footsteps of their grandfathers, he encountered bitter opposition from a certain class of purblind formalists. His style, they said, was too human; his rhetoric was too erratic; his disrespect for the text-books of the schools of eloquence was positively appalling. Nay, was he not one of that pestiferous brood which De la Mennais had hatched in the woods of La Chesnaie, and which the Pope had solemnly condemned? Was he not a liberal in politics, a friend of liberty, an admirer of American republicanism? He had recanted his errors; but that was forgotten. He had given the strongest proofs of the steadfastness of his faith and the completeness of his submission to the Holy See; but these were overlooked. He was not merely an orator, but an accomplished theologian, for he had always been a hard student; but to this his opponents resolutely shut their eyes. They denounced him as a dangerous man, a fanatic, an innovator, and a corrupter of youth. Their clamor at last prevailed, and by order of the archbishop the conferences were suspended. This second humiliation, which he accepted with the same docility as the first, was of short duration. M. Affre, afterward Archbishop of Paris, pleaded so earnestly for his reinstatement that he was not only restored to the pulpit but appointed a series of conferences in the great cathedral of Notre Dame. We shall tell in his own words how, after a brief hesitation, he entered upon this important duty:

"The day having come, Notre Dame was filled with a multitude such as had never before been seen within its walls. The liberal and the absolutist youth of Paris, friends and enemies, and that curious crowd which a great capital has always ready for anything new, had all flocked together, and were packed in dense masses within the old cathedral. I mounted the pulpit firmly but not without emotion, and began my discourse with my eye fixed on the archbishop who, after God, but before the public, was to me the first personage in the scene. He listened with his head a little bent down, in a state of absolute impassibility, like a man who was not a mere spectator, nor even a judge, but rather as one who ran a personal risk by the experiment. I soon felt at home with my subject and my audience, and as my breast swelled under the necessity of grasping that vast assembly of men, and the calm of the first opening sentences began to give place to the inspiration of the orator, one of those exclamations escaped from me which, when deep and heartfelt, never fail to move. The archbishop visibly trembled. I watched his countenance change as he raised his head and cast on me a glance of astonishment. I saw that the battle was gained in his mind, and it was so already in that of the audience. Having returned home, he announced that he was going to appoint me honorary canon of the cathedral; and they had some difficulty in inducing him to wait until the end of the station."

The effect of these discourses was irresistible. All Paris came to hear them; and over the young men especially, into whose wants, tastes, feelings, hopes, aspirations, disappointments Father Lacordaire entered so thoroughly, because he had experienced them all himself, his influence was almost unbounded.

"What above all distinguished his preaching, and marked its providential mission, whilst it formed the chief reason of his success, was its adaptation to social needs. It gave to society what society was hungering and thirsting after; that Living Bread, the long privation of which had brought it to the verge of death; it spoke to the world of God, and of his Son, our Lord and Saviour. Christianity has a social existence, not only in the sense that it is itself a society, the most united, the most universal, the most ancient, the most Catholic, and the most perfect of all societies; but also in this, that all societies depend on and live by it, as the body depends on the soul, and draws its life from thence, and as man depends and lives on God. Now the society which the Abbé Lacordaire addressed was remarkable precisely in this, that it was without God. For the first time, perhaps, since civilized nations have had a history, men were to be seen endeavoring to progress without the aid of any positive commerce with heaven. But if it is with difficulty that an individual can live without religious faith, much more is it impossible for a nation to do so. What, in fact, is a nation but a great community of sufferings, miseries, weaknesses, and maladies of mind and body? Without religion, and above all, without Christianity, where is the remedy for all these evils, the consolation for all these misfortunes? The Abbé Lacordaire, himself brought back to Catholicism by his deep conviction that society could not do without the church, received as his peculiar mission the task of developing this truth to the eyes of his countrymen. 'The old state of society,' he said, 'perished because it had expelled God; the new is suffering, because God has not yet been admitted into it.' His constant aim, the thought which ran through all his instructions, his labors, and his entire career, was to contribute what he could in order that he might reenter into the faith and life of the age."

The conferences went on for two years without interruption, and with constantly increasing success. The archbishop bestowed upon the preacher the title of "the new prophet." All at once, in May, 1836, without any ostensible reason, he resigned his pulpit and went to Rome. The fact was, he had not succeeded in living down the misrepresentations and misconceptions which had embarrassed him before. He was still regarded in many quarters as a dangerous man, whose zeal was too rash, and whose orthodoxy was, at the best, but unfirm. What better could he do than seek refuge from detraction in the very bosom of the church? How could he better prove his devout obedience to the Holy Father than by seating himself at the very foot of the papal throne? In the retirement of the Christian capital, he pondered upon his future career. A life such as he had hitherto led he saw was impossible; whatever good he might effect by his preaching would hardly counterbalance the evil of the opposition he aroused among those who could not or would not understand him. Moreover, the archbishop had kindly intimated to him that there was no line of duty open to him except in the routine of regular parochial duty. For this he had neither fitness nor vocation. His only resource was consequently in one of the religious orders. None of them except the Society of Jesus had yet been restored in France. What a glorious task for him to bring back some of them to his native country! After long deliberation, his choice settled upon the Dominicans. The difficulties to be overcome were enormous; and not the least of the obstacles which he had to place under his foot was his own character, his independence of spirit, his love of liberty, his boldness in stepping out of the beaten path. We have no space to relate in detail how he fought and conquered. He made his novitiate at Viterbo, pronounced his vows in May, 1840, and the next day set out for Rome, where the convent of Santa Sabina had been consigned for his use and that of the six companions who were to join him in his mission.

His stay here was but brief, for he was eager to get back to France. In December, he reappeared in his native country, wearing the habit which had been banished from the kingdom for half a century.

"Here and there he met with a few marks of astonishment, and sometimes of hostility. At Paris, where he was expected by no one excepting his most intimate friends, many rejoiced to see him. His former enemies had no time to think of their old rancors, nor the lawyers their musty statutes. Everything else gave way before the sentiment of curiosity. All the world wished to see the friar, the spectre of past ages, the son of Dominic the Inquisitor; and especially to know what he was going to do and to say. Mgr. Affre, the new Archbishop of Paris, received Père Lacordaire with delight, saw no difficulty in his preaching at Notre Dame in his new habit, and only begged him to name whatever day he liked. We must leave Père Lacordaire himself to relate the story of this bold adventure.

"'I appeared in the pulpit of Notre Dame with my white tunic, gray-black mantle, and my tonsure. The archbishop presided, the keeper of the seals, and minister of public worship, M. Martin, (du Nord,) was also present, as he wished to observe for himself a scene of which no one could tell the issue. Many other distinguished persons concealed themselves in the assembly, in the midst of the crowd which filled the church from the doors to the sanctuary. I had chosen for the subject of my discourse the Vocation of the French Nation, in order to veil the audacity of my presence under the popularity of my theme. In this I succeeded, and next day the keeper of the seals invited me to a dinner-party of forty persons, which he gave at the chancellor's mansion. During the repast, M. Bourdain, formerly minister of justice under Charles X., leant toward one of his neighbors, and said, "What a strange turn of events! If, when I was keeper of the seals, I had invited a Dominican to my table, my house would have been burnt down next day." However, the house was not burnt, and no newspaper ever invoked the secular arm against my auto-da-fé.'

"This was, in fact, one of his happiest strokes—one of those surprises which he was fond of, and which suited the adventurous side of his character. The effect of this reappearance was immense; the religious standard had been planted in the very heart of the stronghold; but the victory was not yet completely gained, and many of those who had been dazzled and disconcerted by the brilliancy and unforeseen character of the attack, were not long ere they turned against him, and demanded an explanation of his illegal triumph, in the name of the state."

The establishment of the order in France was not effected without a good many troubles. There was trouble at Rome, where he was suspected and misunderstood until he proved his humility and obedience. There was trouble in France, where the government opposed the introduction of an order which was still forbidden by law, and threatened him with penalties which, after all, they lacked the courage to enforce; and where the timid and short-sighted among the clergy would rather have had him submit to wrong than compromise a sleepy sort of tranquillity by standing up boldly for the right. There was even a tedious controversy which, at this distance of time and place, seems wonderfully trivial, whether he should be permitted to preach in his white habit. But his courage conquered. One or two houses of the order were soon opened; and, when the revolutionary troubles came in 1848, the eloquent Dominican was one of the most popular men in France. With the establishment of the republic, a somewhat embarrassing question presented itself for his decision. It was not easy for him, occupying such a position as he did in the public eye, to stand aloof from the great public questions of the day. The good of religion seemed to require that he should mingle in the turmoil of politics. He tells how his determination was at last effected:

"Whilst I was thus deliberating with myself, the Abbé Maret and Frederic Ozanam called on me. They spoke to me of the trouble and uncertainty that reigned among Catholics; all old rallying-points were disappearing in what seemed likely to become a hopeless anarchy, which might render the new régime hostile to us, and deprive us of all chance of obtaining those liberties which had been refused by preceding governments. {699} 'The republic,' they added, 'is well-disposed toward us; we have no such acts of barbarity and irreligion to charge it with as disgraced the Revolution of 1830. It believes and hopes in us; ought we to discourage it? Moreover, what are we to do?—to what other party can we attach ourselves? What do we see before us but ruin? and what is the republic, but the natural government of a society that has lost all its former anchors and traditions?'

"To these reasons, suggested by the situation of affairs, they added higher and more general views, drawn from the future of European society, and the impossibility that monarchy should ever again find any solid resting-place. On this point I did not go so far as they. Limited monarchy, in spite of its faults, had always seemed to me the most desirable of all forms of government, and I only saw in the republic a momentary necessity until things should naturally take another course. This difference of opinion was serious, and hardly allowed of our working together in concert. Nevertheless, the danger was urgent, and it was absolutely necessary either to abdicate at this solemn moment, or frankly to choose one's party, and bring to the help of society, now shaken to its very foundations, whatever light and strength each one had at his command. Hitherto I had taken a definite position with regard to public events; ought I now to take refuge in a selfish silence because the difficulties were more serious? I might indeed say that I was a religious, and so hide myself under my religious habit; but I was a religious militant, a preacher, a writer, surrounded by a sympathy which created very different duties for me from the duties of a Trappist or a Carthusian. These considerations weighed on my conscience. Urged by my friends to decide, I at length yielded to the force of events, and though I felt a strong repugnance to the idea of returning to the career of a journalist, I agreed, in concert with them, to unfurl a standard on which should be inscribed together the names of Religion, the Republic, and Liberty."

This was the origin of a new political journal, the Ere Nouvelle, of which he commenced the publication in the spring of 1848. Nor was this all. The city of Marseilles elected him a representative in the constituent assembly; and, in his white Dominican habit, he took his seat there on the extreme left. We need hardly say that his political career was a bitter disappointment to himself, and a disappointment, too, to many of his friends. There was only one party with which his principles permitted him to ally himself; but that party, as he saw it in the assembly, could not enlist his sympathies. "I could not sit there," he said, "apart from democracy, and yet I could not accept democracy as I saw it there displayed." He held his seat only two weeks. On the 15th of May, a mob invaded the hall of meeting, and for three hours held their representatives intimidated. The next day Lacordaire resigned in disgust. "I found out," said he afterward, "that I was nothing but a poor little friar, and in no way a Richelieu; a poor friar, loving nothing but retirement and peace." Very soon afterward he withdrew likewise from the Ere Nouvelle, and here it may be said that his public life came to a close. He preached for some time longer in Notre Dame, but the boldness of his language gave offence, and, after the coup d'état of December, 1851, he resisted all entreaties to appear again in the cathedral pulpit. The strengthening and propagation of his order now took up all his attention. He visited his brethren in other countries, and made a short trip to England. Then, at the age of fifty, he resolved to devote himself to the education of the young. He founded houses of the third order of Dominicans for the express purpose of carrying on this important work, and in one of them, at Sorèze, he finally settled down to pass the remainder of his days. Here, with powers yet unimpaired, the man whose eloquence had stirred all France applied himself to teaching the Greek and Latin grammar. He had no fixed system of education, but his personal magnetism made up for other defects; he gathered around him the best instructors; he lived like a father in the bosom of his family; he filled the place with the odor of gentleness and piety. Here, on the 21st of November, 1860, after an illness of nearly a year, he preached his last.

Important as the labor was in which Father Lacordaire had spent the closing years of his life, we cannot help feeling that it was not the labor for which he had been specially endowed, nor was it that in which his heart was most deeply engaged. It is rather as the preacher of Notre Dame than as the president of Sorèze, rather as the reconciler of religion and society than as a teacher of boys, that he stands before us in the page of history. What a bitter comment is it upon the condition of affairs in France, fifteen or twenty years ago, that such a man could be stopped in such a career! The story of Lacordaire often reminds us of a passage in one of George Eliot's novels, where the life of one who had gone through bitter sorrow and disappointment is described as being "like a spoiled pleasure-day, in which the music and processions are all missed, and nothing is left at evening but the weariness of striving after what has been failed of." It was partly so with his life; not wholly, of course, for the reward of the striving came at evening, though the object of the struggle had been missed. Disappointment and weariness were the burdens which God laid upon him, and he leaves a brighter renown, as well as reaps a brighter reward, for the sweetness with which he bore them.

Sayings Of The Fathers Of The Desert.

Abbot Isaac said: I know a brother who was reaping, and who wished to eat an ear of corn, and he said to the master of the field: Are you willing I should eat one ear of corn? And he, hearing these words, was astonished and said: The field is thine, Father, and dost thou ask me? So scrupulous was the brother.

Abbot Sisois once said in confidence: Believe me, I have been thirty years without praying to God on account of my sins; but when I pray I say this: O Lord Jesus Christ, save me from my tongue. And yet it causes me to fall every day, and be delinquent.

Abbot Pastor said: As the bees are driven from their hives by smoke so that their honey may be obtained, even so does bodily rest banish the fear of the Lord from the soul, and take from it every good work.

A certain old man determined that he would drink nothing for forty days. Whenever he was tormented by burning thirst, he took a vessel, and, having filled it with water, placed it before him. And when his brethren asked why he did this, he answered: In order that, seeing what I greatly desire, and yet not tasting it, my suffering may be the more intense, and hence that the reward which God shall give me may be greater.

Providence.

  When I remember all my days,
  And note what blessings each displays,
  What words can speak my grateful praise?

  What varied beauty thrills my sight!
  What sounds my listening soul delight!
  What joys of touch and appetite!

  And, more than any joy of sense,
  The happiness serene, intense,
  That comes to me, I know not whence,

  Unless it be that He is near,
  And speaks some words I cannot hear,
  But which unto my soul are clear.

  For there are times—ah! who can tell
  The gladness inexpressible
  With which my soul doth overswell!

  Ev'n sorrows that once seemed to press
  My soul to brinks of wretchedness,
  I know were but his means to bless.

  Out of the deeps of pain and fear,
  He led me to a higher sphere,
  Where all his purpose is made clear.

  Had not such sorrow struck my ways,
  I had lived out my earthly days,
  Barren of either prayer or praise.

  Wherefore each day, when I recall
  The blessings which his hands let fall,
  For this I thank him most of all;

  And would not, if I could, forego
  The sorrow which he made me know,
  For unto it so much I owe.
{702}
  This happy life, this lovely earth,
  These joys which every day brings forth,
  Are now to me of tenfold worth.

  Such wondrous love all things disclose,
  Such joy through all my being glows,
  That in my soul a longing grows

  That I might see this One All-Good,
  And tell him all my gratitude,
  In words however weak and rude.

  But ah! I fear it cannot be
  That I this loving God can see,
  For he fills out infinity;

  And out of him there is no place
  Where I can stand to see his face:
  Enough, I lie in his embrace,

  And sometimes, albeit dimly, feel
  That he is near, and doth reveal
  Himself in joy unspeakable.

  I said, indeed, 'I shall not see
  Him face to face;' yet it may be
  That joy of joys awaiteth me.

  For when this grossness, that doth fence
  My being in the bonds of sense,
  Falls off when I am taken hence,

  New powers of which I do not know
  May be revealed in me, and show
  The One to whom myself I owe,

  And I may see him face to face.
    Lord, grant it of thy boundless grace,
  The crown of all my happiness!

From The Etudes Religieuses,
Historiques Et Litteraires,
Par Des Peres De La Compagnie De Jesus.

The Pre-historical Congress Of Paris.

An "International Congress of Anthropology and Pre-historical Archaeology" assembled in the amphitheatre of the Ecole de Médecine, at Paris, on the 17th of last August, and held sessions until the 30th. The meaning of the terms anthropology and archaeology is familiar; but the word pre-historical, being of recent origin, requires an explanation. It is used to designate either material objects, or events and epochs, or even men, anterior not only to written history, but also to all oral tradition and to every monument having a certain date and an origin historically determined.

In the lowest strata of the earth which we tread, in caverns unknown for centuries, under the tumuli or heaps of shells and fossils; in the bottom of lakes where formerly dwellings and villages were built on piles; and in cromlechs and raths, are found, with the bones of animals now extinct, arms, instruments, and utensils of stone, evidently fashioned by the hand of man. In the next stratum above, the same stone objects are found; but this time the stone is polished and accompanied with bones of a different character—most frequently the bones and horns of the reindeer. Human remains, skulls, jaw-bones, and teeth, begin to appear in greater quantity. But in these two first layers of the earth no metal is discovered. It is only in the third stratum that brass, then iron, often all the other metals, are met. These singular fossils, and the invariable order of their existence, in France as well as in other countries, are the facts of which the present essay treats.

The epoch in which iron begins to appear in the layers of the earth is one the date of which is known to us either by the relations of historians, or by traditional recollections, or by inscriptions and medals found in the soil. These strata, therefore, and their antiquities, belong to the historical epoch. But the lower strata, of more ancient formation, all the fossils found in them, curious specimens of primitive industry, monuments of the social state and manners of the first men; human remains also which bear testimony to man's physical conformation; all these, anterior to history, belong to pre-historical archaeology and anthropology. These sciences are very young in years and manners, but very old by their object and the age to which they carry back our thoughts.

The Paris Congress met to compare the discoveries of different countries, and thus obtain a more perfect knowledge of the pre-historical period, and draw more general inferences from it.

A first congress assembled in 1866, at Neufchâtel, in Switzerland; the second is that of Paris, last August; the third will meet this year in England. The Congress of Paris was singularly favored by the Universal Exposition. The most eminent representatives of European science were there. Russia alone was not represented. Among the foreign members who spoke were Franks, Squier, Vorsaae, Nilsson, Desor, Clément, Virchow, and especially Carl Vogt, the learned naturalist. {704} It was this outspoken and venturesome savant who at Neufchâtel declared himself a partisan of the man-monkey. France had there her Lartet, President, De Mortillet, Secretary, De Longperier, the learned antiquarian of the Louvre, and De Quatrefages, the eminent naturalist of the museum. These two last illustrious members of the French Institute had a preponderating influence in the congress, for the interest of science and the glory of their country. The Abbé Bourgeois, the Marquis de Vibraye, Alexander Bertrand, Alfred Maury, Henry Martin, and Doctor Broca, were also present and addressed the assembly.

If we are to believe certain reports, of which the positivist sheet La Pensée Nouvelle is the organ, it was proposed to prove satisfactorily that the appearance of man on the earth dates from one hundred to sixty, or at least from forty thousand years; that this appearance is not the result of a creation properly so called, but the term of a slow and necessary evolution, as would be, for instance, the progressive transformation of the monkey type into the human; imperceptibly taking place for thousands or rather millions of ages! In this way the authority of the Bible would be set at naught, as being old, and gradually falling to pieces; but more especially because it is revealed and undoubtedly true. We could then do without the hypothesis of a God, Creator of man, since our learned men would show that they could do without the hypothesis of a God, Creator of heaven and earth.

Was this the real aim of the Paris Congress? If so, it was the same as that which well-informed men allege to have been the object of the first hall of the history of labor in the French Exposition. It is certain that, for several years, many books, reviews, journals, and even so-called official discourses which every one may read, have openly tended in this direction.

But let us confine our remarks to the congress. We dislike to affirm that such was the fixed thought of the majority of the foreign and French members. The love of science, the praiseworthy desire of collecting information, or of giving it regarding facts very ancient in themselves, but very new in regard to us; these motives gathered in Paris important strangers, and Frenchmen of different classes and opinions. On the other hand, it seems impossible to deny that an ardent minority had the intention of overthrowing the biblical theory of creation both as to time and character; of this minority all except one were Frenchmen.

Yet—let us hasten to say it—the minority did not succeed. The scandal did not take place. The majority was not convinced of the falsity of the traditional teaching. The new doctrines were not found to be certain. A few affirmations and eccentric theories were expressed. But they were so justly, learnedly, and wittily answered, that the theorists had to doubt their ill-judged systems. This is a very important result, in such an affair.

A programme of all the excursions to be made in common to the Exposition, to the Museum, to the Palace of Saint Germain, to the megalithic monument at Argenteuil, to the environs of Amiens, to the Museum of Artillery, and to the Museum of the Anthropological Society, was traced in advance. Six principal questions occupied the six evening sessions at the Ecole de Médecine. {705} The day after these sittings, the members met again in the same place, in free session, each to propose his difficulties, hear the written communications of absent members; examine packages arriving daily, containing new specimens of the primitive works of man, arms, utensils, different instruments in stone, in bone, in bronze, or in iron found in the bowels of the earth, in caverns, or lakes and in Druidical cromlechs, raths, or mounds, in France, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Great Britain, Denmark—in short, everywhere.

The six fundamental questions formed six theses, comprising the entire domain of pre-historical knowledge. "What are the most ancient vestiges of man's existence? In what geological conditions, among what fauna and flora have they been found in the different parts of the globe; and what changes have taken place since then, in divisions of land and water?" This was the first question. Next question: "Has the dwelling of the primitive man in caverns been general? Is it true of one race alone, referable to one and the same epoch?" Third question: "What relations are there between the men to whom we owe the megalithic monuments, and those who formed the lake dwellings?" The fourth was: "Is brass the product of indigenous industry, the result of a violent conquest, or the effect of new commercial relations?" This had reference to the use of brass in the west. Fifth question: "What are, in the different countries of Europe, the chief characteristics of the first epoch of iron? Is this epoch anterior to the historical period?" The sixth and last was the most important question: "What are the notions acquired regarding the anatomical characteristics of man in the pre-historical times, from the most remote times to the appearance of iron? Can the succession of several races, and their traits, be discovered, especially in Western Europe?"

It is easy to see that the five first questions are delicate, difficult, and important, though they all centre in a point of chronology. But chronology in this case is the history of man. It is the Bible and revelation. It is tradition. It is faith. We must assign a reasonable date for those ancient débris of labor, or of the human beings whom we certainly meet in all the strata called quaternary; and probably also in the last layers of the tertiary strata, much more ancient than the quaternary. This date must in no wise change the sacred text. This date once found and demonstrated, would settle the dispute which still exists regarding the chronology of the Bible. We know that the Catholic Church gives us full liberty on this point. But the moment has not yet come for pre-historical archaeology to define the limits of the ages or years which it calls the age of cut stone; the age of polished stone, or of the reindeer; the age of brass, and the age of iron. The congress understood this well. Only two or three orators were bold enough to speak of thousands of years or of millions of years. Some savans have wonderful imaginations! But in general, no one ventured to determine or define the time. Almost always the gentlemen used the words epoch, age, period, without wishing to be more precise. They were afraid to compromise their reputations.

Without doubt, for the same reason, no savant or person of consequence wished in the beginning to sign his name to the catalogues of the Exposition, relating to the pre-historical antiquities, or hold himself personally responsible for them. {706} But behold! after five months, when the Exposition was near its close, on Thursday, August 29th, M. de Mortillet offered timidly to the congress a little volume of his composition, entitled, Pre-historical Promenades in the Universal Exposition. M. de Mortillet is also the author of an other book, The Sign of the Cross before Christianity. He is also collecting materials for the positive, or rather positivist and philosophical history of man. For M. de Mortillet imagines that it is necessary for men of genius to astonish others, if not by discoveries in truth, at least by their eccentricities. M. de Mortillet is a man of genius. The world may deny it. But M. de Mortillet is a better authority on the subject than any one else. This learned gentleman concludes his Promenades with these beautiful phrases: "The chronology taught in all our schools is terribly distanced. It hardly comprises the historical period. The law of the progress of humanity, the law of the development of races, and the great antiquity of man, are three consequences which follow clearly, distinctly, precisely, and irrefragably from the work which we have made on the Exposition." In these three phrases we perceive the wonderful wit, profundity, brilliancy, and genius of the author. It is astonishing how a gentleman of his extraordinary science, although he was secretary of its deliberations, could not exercise the smallest influence on the congress, either by his speeches or his books!

Pre-historical archaeology was enriched by many new discoveries at the congress. The Abbé Bourgeois, among other important facts, observed that traces of man were found in the tertiary stratum.

The anthropological question came last. Eight days before the close of the congress, M. de Quagrefages proposed that question, in presenting to it the first copy of his fine work, Rapport sur les Progrès de l'Anthropologie. With great science, clearness, and modesty, the illustrious naturalist, in rendering an account of his investigations, held the whole assembly attentive. The applause which he received showed the esteem in which the author was held, and the value of his book.

Other incidents formed a prelude to the final thesis; but some in an opposite direction. We cite a single example. It was asked whether the first men had been anthropophagi or not. It is well known that there is a school in France, as well as elsewhere, which deems it no dishonor to be descended from cannibals or monkeys. A member of the congress made a profession of faith on this point. The admitted head of this school (Doctor Broca) asked leave to speak on primitive anthropology. He began by saying that he had long hesitated before adopting the affirmative, and that the proofs so far given did not satisfy him; but a human bone, which he showed to the assembly, had finally convinced him. This bone had scratches at the end of it made by a flint. A man of the age of cut stone had tried to break the bone at this spot. He could not succeed. He had then tried to saw the bone in the middle with a flint, in order to obtain the marrow, with which he wished to regale himself. Some of the members laughed, especially when one, interrupting the orator, remarked that the pretended marks made by the stone saw seemed fresh, and produced by recent rubbing. When the demonstration was finished, the eminent archaeologist, M. de Longpérier showed, from the example of several historical races, and by specimens which are found in public museums, that objects of luxury, as well as utensils, were often made out of human bones. {707} Instances were given of mallets, bodkins, and musical instruments. As to the bone in question, nothing showed that the cuts and scratches on it pointed out by Doctor Broca were not caused by some one trying to make a whistle! The reader may guess the impression left on the congress by this remark, and the expression of the doctor's physiognomy.

In anthropology as in archaeology the celebrities of the congress alleged well-proven facts; either real fossils of the human body, bones, skulls, jaw-bones, teeth; or signs naturally connected with the subject, as hilts of swords, or bracelets fitting hands or arms much smaller than ours. But it was first required to prove the authenticity of these antique objects. Theories could not be established until after the discussion of these facts. So the theorists were not at ease. They may have complained of having been troubled or gagged. By whom? By men too learned to be the slaves of a system. If such complaint were made—and such is the rumor—they are the highest eulogium of those eminent men.

  "Si forte virum quem
  Conspexere, silent."
  [Footnote 66]

[Footnote 66: The vulgar herd in silence awestruck scan The face of him whom nature marks a man!]

At the closing session some human skulls, very ancient or supposed to be, were ranged on a table. Those heads were remarkable for the extraordinary length of the occiput, by their retreating foreheads, high cheek-bones, and prominent jaw-bones. The object of these skulls was to show the great similarity between the primitive man and the monkey. Doctor Broca, standing before the table, made a speech more than an hour long about those skulls, discussing the authenticity of some and reasoning on the others. He spoke also of a singular jaw-bone. He said a few words about the small hands. He should logically have concluded that the primitive man was a brother of the ape. Every one expected this. But at the decisive moment, he wheeled about, and confessed that there were not yet proofs enough to justify such a conclusion, and that it should not be urged. Was he afraid of ridicule or was he really convinced in making this concession? Let us say that it was conviction on his part. But the doctor's premises were not as inoffensive as his conclusion. M. de Quatrefages made short work of them. He so pulverized the arguments of Doctor Broca, that Carl Vogt, summoned against his will to help the doctor, admitted the conclusion of his colleague.

Vogt began by declaring himself a Darwinian. Although the theory of Darwin cannot satisfy the best naturalists, it knocks the man-monkey completely off his legs. Vogt admitted that it was impossible, in the actual condition of science, to hold the man-monkey opinion; so great is the distance between the lowest human type and the highest ape type. The Genevan Darwinian indeed added, that we might imagine, or might discover at some future day a common type of both races; but he was not very sanguine on this point. Only one thing, said he in conclusion, remains indisputable after all our discussions on the capacity of skulls and the shape of the head, namely, the progressive development of the brain and of the human skull, in proportion to the increasing development of intelligences.

We shall not dispute this double progress. It has the sanction of that most eminent naturalist and anthropologist M. de Quatrefages. We even admit a third progress with this savant; that made from Congress of Neufchâtel to the Congress of Paris. Even though we the should be accused of optimism, we shall even hope for greater progress in the future congresses. Yes, we expect it. Pre-historical studies will add to the facts already known others more significative still; and the learned will finally and unanimously adopt, in default of certitude, theories more probable and more convincing as they approach nearer to the truth.

Miscellany.

Singular Effects of Lightning.—Sir David Brewster has published an account of the effects of lightning in Forfarshire, which is of much interest. In the summer of 1827, a hay-stack was struck by lightning. The stack was on fire, but before much of the hay was consumed the fire was extinguished by the farm servants. Upon examining the hay-stack, a circular passage was observed in the middle of it, as if it had been cut out with a sharp instrument. This circular passage extended to the bottom of the stack, and terminated in a hole in the ground. Captain Thomson, of Montrose, who had a farm in the neighborhood, examined the stack, and found in the hole a substance which he described as resembling lava. A portion of this substance was sent by Captain Thomson to Sir David's brother, Dr. Brewster, of Craig, who forwarded it to Sir David, with the preceding statement. The substance found in the hole was a mass of silex, obviously formed by the fusion of the silex in the hay. It had a highly greenish tinge, and contained burnt portions of the hay. Sir David presented the specimen to the Museum of St. Andrew's.

Ancient Glacier in the Pyrenees.—M. Charles Martens, who was present at the meeting of the British Association, read a paper on the ancient glacier of the Valley of Argelez. This glacier and its affluents descended from the crest of the Pyrenees, whose summits now reach an altitude varying from 6000 to 9000 feet. The roots of the glacier were in the cirques of Gavarnie, Troumouse, Pragnères, etc., and the glacier extended into the plain as far as the villages of Peyrouse, Loubajac, Ade, Juloz, and Arcisac-les-Angles. Along the valley, polished and striated rocks, scratched pebbles, glacial mud, moraines, and erratic boulders, are the proofs of its existence. At Argelez, the thickness of the glacier was about 2100 feet, and, at the opening of the valley at the foot of the Pic de Geer, near Lourdes, 1290 feet. Between Lourdes and the village of Ade, the railway runs across seven moraines; and the railway from Lourdes to Pau is cut, as far as the village of Peyrouse, through glacial deposits. The Lake of Lourdes is a glacial lake, barred by a moraine, and surrounded by numerous erratic boulders proceeding from the high Pyrenean mountains. Some of the boulders are of large dimensions: thus one of them, between the lake and the village of Poueyferré, is thirty feet in length, twenty-three feet in width, and eleven feet in height. This lake of Lourdes, surrounded by hills covered with briars, reminds one, in many respects, of the small lakes of Scotland.

A Burning Well.—While some artisans were engaged in making borings for an artesian well at Narbonne, France, the water rushed forth with great violence, and soon burst into flame. The flame, which arises from the combustion of carburetted hydrogen, is reddish and smoky, and does not emit a smell either of bitumen or sulphuretted hydrogen. {709} The "sinking" for the spring was made on the left branch of the Aude, in a plain situate about two metres above the sea-level, and composed of alluvial mud. The alluvial mud extends to a depth of six metres; then follow tertiary limestones and marls, with the remains of marine shells. At the depth of seventy metres, the spring containing the inflammable gas was met with.

Comets and Meteors.—In a paper on this subject, laid before a late meeting of the Astronomical Society, Mr. G. J. Stony, Secretary to the Queen's University in Ireland, makes the following interesting observations, which tend to show, as Schiaparelli has already pointed out, that there is a very natural relationship between comets and meteors. If interstellar space, external to the solar system, be, as is most probable, peopled with innumerable meteoric bodies independent of one another, a comet while outside the solar system would in the lapse of ages collect a vast cluster of such meteorites within itself. Each meteorite which approached the comet would in general do so in a parabolic orbit; and, if it came near enough to pass through a part of the comet, this parabolic orbit would, by the resistance of the matter of the comet, be converted into an ellipse. The meteor would, therefore, return again and again, and on each occasion that it passed through the comet its orbit would be still further shortened, until at length it would fall in, and add one to whatever cluster had been brought together by the previous repetitions of this process. In this way a comet, while moving in outer space, beyond the reach of the many powerful disturbing influences which prevail within the solar system, would inevitably accumulate within itself just such a globular cluster of meteors as the November meteors must have been before they became associated with the solar system.

How the Earth's Rotation affects Gunnery.—Some may be found to doubt that the movement of the earth affects the direction of a ball expelled from a cannon; nevertheless, the fact is correct. In the Astronomical Register, Mr. Kincaid says that a simple illustration of this effect may be made by attaching to the same axis two wheels of different diameters, so that both shall rotate together. If the one have a diameter of three feet, and the other of one foot, it is evident that any point on the circumference of the larger will, during a revolution, move through three times as much space as a similar point on the periphery of the lesser circle, and will, therefore, move with three times the velocity. The figure of the earth may be considered as made up of an infinite number of such wheels, diminishing in size from the equator to the poles, and all revolving in twenty-four hours. Now, if a gun be fired from the equator in the direction of the meridian, which is obviously that of maximum deviation, at an object nearer the pole, it is plain that that object, being situated on a smaller circle than the gun, but revolving in the same interval of time, will move, during the flight of the projectile, through less space eastward than the shot, which will have imparted to it the greater velocity of the larger circle from which it started, and the latter will therefore tend to strike eastward from its butt.

Dodo-like Birds of the Mascarene Islands.—The Committee appointed in 1865 to investigate this group, has produced little result beyond the collection of a number of bones from Rodriguez. Professor Newton made some general remarks upon the specimens collected, and he especially dwelt on an unexpected confirmation of the testimony of Leguat, by the discovery of an extraordinary bony knob near the extremity of the wing. Leguat, whose account of the "Solitaire's" habits was the only one we possessed, mentioned a curious "ball," as big as a "musket-bullet," which the male birds possessed under their wing-feathers. Now, the existence of this ball was proved by the bony knob exhibited, and thus the veracity of old Leguat, on this point, as on so many others, was confirmed. In conclusion, Professor Newton called attention to the fact that at present we only knew of the didine bird of the island of Reunion, that it was white. {710} In the course of last year, Mr. Tegetmeier had shown him an old water-color painting of a white dodo, and this, he was inclined to believe, might represent this lost species, of which he trusted the French naturalists in that island would succeed in obtaining actual relics.

Mr. Foley's model for the O'Connell National Monument in Dublin has been unanimously adopted by the Committee. The work will be forty feet high, executed in bronze and granite. £10,000 is already subscribed toward the cost of its erection.

A Slander Refuted.—A work has lately appeared in England, in which everything Spanish is spoken of with the greatest contempt. In reply to the accusations made against the queen's chaplain, the Reverend Canon Dalton writes thus to the Athenaeum: "Will you allow me to protest against the character drawn by Miss Edwards of Padre Claret in her recent work entitled, Through Spain to the Sahara, which was reviewed in your last number, December 14th? When I was in Spain last year, I had several interviews with the queen's confessor. The estimate which I was then enabled to form of his character was the very opposite to that drawn by the authoress. I should like to know if Miss Edwards ever spoke a single word to Padre Claret, or even ever saw him. Then there is the testimony of Lady Herbert, in her work entitled Impressions of Spain in 1866, (London, Bentley, 1867,) at pages 211-12; her ladyship draws a very different character of the Padre, taken from a personal interview with the illustrious prelate. Again I should like to know what reasons Miss Edwards has for styling Claret's work, La Clave de Oro, a coarse work? All the works which he has published are purely of a devotional or literary character, and I am quite confident that nothing 'coarse' or unbecoming can be found in any one of them. Lastly, I never heard of Padre Claret's coach being driven by four splendid mules, because I believe he is not possessed even of a cab! J. Dalton."

New Publications.

Lectures On Reason And Revelation.
Delivered in St. Ann's Church, New York,
during the Season of Advent, 1867.
By the Rev. Thomas S. Preston.
New York: The Catholic Publication House, 126 Nassau Street.

The Lectures published in this volume were delivered during the Sunday evenings of Advent, in St. Ann's Church. They are five in number, on the following subjects: The Office of Reason, Relations of Reason and Faith, Conditions of Revelation, Revelation and Protestantism, Revelation and the Catholic Church. The author's thesis may be thus stated: The Catholic Church is proved by reason alone, from the evidences of credibility by which the Christian revelation is demonstrated. The Introduction, which is a distinct essay in itself, disposes of two objections; first, that the evidence of Christianity can be applied to pure Protestantism, and second, that the Catholic Church ought to be proved by miracles occurring in every age of her history, as well as at the outset. The Rev. author has handled his topics with great ability, in a clear, neat, and attractive manner, and with a brevity and simplicity which detract nothing from the force of the reasoning, while they lighten very much the task of the reader. These Lectures will be of great service both, to Catholics and to well-disposed inquirers after truth. The typographical execution of the volume is in the best style. As a specimen of our author's method and style, we extract the following passage from the introduction.

"In the following lectures it is the aim of the author to set forth, in a clear and concise manner, a simple argument whereby the claims of the Catholic Church are substantiated by reason alone. In the midst of the excitements of our day some of the plainest truths are forgotten, and men hold opinions or pass to conclusions without any logical grounds whatever. They even sometimes contradict the propositions which are self-evident to reason in their zeal for intellectual progress and emancipation from the thraldom of the past. That which is new is sought after, even though it overthrow the belief of truths heretofore generally admitted. We are not believers in total depravity, and have, therefore, great confidence in the good which still remains in human nature. And as we know that God's grace is ever with man to assist him to the knowledge of the truth, and to lead him in the way of virtue, we have great hopes that the intellectual and moral movements of our day will guide the honest and sincere mind to the true light which is its only illumination. It is a great mistake to suppose that the Catholic Church requires of any man that he should do away with his reason, or cease to exercise those powers which God has given him for the proper appreciation of truth and goodness. To man's intelligence revelation is addressed, and every new light from above only serves to enlarge the thirst for knowledge. The divine ways are ever harmonious, and the supernatural truth will never contradict the natural. The argument of these lectures depends upon the force of reason alone. We briefly explain the nature of human reason and the sphere of its operation. We show how the divine revelation gives its unerring evidence, to which a just intelligence must submit. We vindicate all the natural powers, and defend the exercise of their just prerogatives. God, speaking to man, is bound to give him unmistakable signs that he is speaking, and that no deceiver is imposing upon us. When these signs are given, then we are bound to believe the divine testimony, and entirely to accept truths which the veracity of our Maker vouches for. Private judgment has its full scope, as to it are clearly presented the tokens of every supernatural intervention. The extrinsic credibility of doctrines proposed to faith is thus assured to the full conviction of the understanding. If we go on to say that reason assured of a revelation cannot then be the judge of the intrinsic credibility of a dogma clearly revealed, we only say that reason must act in its own sphere, and that the finite must not venture to measure the infinite.

"It seems to us that no logical objection can be made against such a restriction of private judgment. If man, by his unaided powers, could find out all necessary truth, there would be no need of a revelation. Of things beyond the scope of his understanding, man can certainly be no judge, while it is equally certain that the word of God can never deceive.

"It is also a great misunderstanding to suppose that Catholics are not allowed to use their reason, or that faith has taken the place of our ordinary intelligence. So far from the truth is this supposition, that the aim of the present work will be to show that Catholics alone are the followers of true reason, always yielding obedience to its just dictates, and never swerving in any way from its rigid conclusions. The Catholic faith presents all its unanswerable claims before the mind, and then, as it appeals to our natural sense of truth and justice, it cannot contradict itself by doing away with the very faculty which is made the judge of its pretensions. Reason, rightly understood, leads with certainty to the light of revelation, and that light does in no way extinguish the spirit or vitality of nature. There is full scope for the play of the highest intelligence, not in the contradiction of evidence clearly established, nor in doubting truth already manifest, but in the constant and daily increasing appreciation of the beauties of God's revelation whereby all our faculties are brought into perfect harmony. There is neither manliness nor wisdom in the state of perpetual doubt which appears to be chosen by many as the exercise of a precious liberty. The Catholic believes because he has evidence of the divine power and goodness, and in the very highest exercise of reason bows down to God and him only. No human organization has a right to bind our consciences, and no body of men can form or direct our faith. God alone is our master, whose word is a law to our understandings and our hearts. The church is recognized by us because he has established it, and given to it authority to teach in his name, and we are ever ready to give to any honest mind a reason for the faith we hold and profess."

Poets are said to deal in fiction, which does not, however, imply that what they sing is false. One may relate a purely fictitious story, and it be "an ower-true tale" for all that. In fact, poetry is the most beautiful form of the expression of truth. Tell the truth in honest plain prose, and the chances are that you tell something very unpalatable. Facts are proverbially hard. On the contrary, poetry (if it deserves the name) is ever charming, winning, and popular. We say without hesitation, few of our living lyric poets have wreathed more charming verses than Mrs. Howarth. Simple and unaffected as they are, every line breathes the purest sentiment, and sends its touching pathos straight to the heart. The reason is plain. She reveals the truth as her own heart has known it. Here she guilelessly tells more of her own life, with all its struggles, toil, and bitter sorrows, than we think she intended. In a word, it is a volume not for the eye of strangers, but for the loving perusal of friends to whom she would wish to speak "eye to eye and soul to soul." We do not wonder, therefore, that, when these poems appeared a few years ago under the title of "The Wind Harp," without any prefatory key to their origin, a few careless critics should have failed to penetrate the hidden depths of their meaning. Our space does not permit us to quote as freely as we could wish. There are some undoubtedly better than others, but there is not one which our readers would not find worthy of particular choice and of special merit.

The first, "The Passion Flower," well deserves its place of honor. We give the opening verse:

  "I plucked it in an idle hour,
   And placed it in my book of prayer;
   'Tis not the only passion flower
   That hath been crushed and hidden there.
   And now through floods of burning tears
   My withered bloom once more I see,
   And I lament the long, long years,
   The wasted years afar from Thee."

From a poem entitled "Gethsemane" we cull this most beautiful and truly sublime thought.

  "'Tis said that every earthly sound
   Goes trembling through the voiceless spheres,
   Bearing its endless echoes round
   The pathway of eternal years.
   Ah! surely, then, the sighs that He
   That midnight breathed, the zephyrs bore
   From thy dim shades, Gethsemane,
   To thrill the world for evermore!"

      My Soldier Comes No More

  "Yes, many a heart is light to-day,
     And bright is many a home,
   And children dance along the way
     The soldier heroes come:
   And bands beneath the floral arch
     The gladdest music pour;
   While beats my heart a funeral march—
     My soldier comes no more.

   One morn from him glad tidings came,
     Joy to my heart they gave;
   At night I read my hero's name
     Amid the fallen brave.
   I know not where he met the foe,
     Nor where he sleeps in gore;
   Enough of woe for me to know,
     My soldier comes no more.

   Now here they come with heavy tramp,
     And flags and pennons gay,
   Who were his comrades in the camp,
     His friends for many a day.
   The music ceases as they pass
     Before my cottage door;
   The flags are lowered; they know, alas!
     My soldier comes no more.

   What care I for the seasons now?
     The world has lost its light:
   No spring can clothe my leafless bough,
     No morn dispel my night;
   No longer may I hopeful wait
     For summer to restore:
   My heart and home are desolate—
     My soldier comes no more.

Judging from such poems as "The Tress of Golden Hair," "Adrift," "The Stranger's Grave," and other pieces suggested by some ordinary accident in life, Mrs. Howarth possesses one of those finely strung natures which, like the AEolian harp, are moved to give forth harmony at the slightest breath that passes. The former title of her book, "The Wind Harp," was, to our thinking, singularly appropriate. The present volume is published in first-class style.

An Epistle Of Jesus Christ To The Faithful Soul.
Written in Latin
by Joannes Lanspergius, a Charter-House Monk, and translated into English by Lord Philip, XIXth Earl of Arundel.
New York: Catholic Publication Society.

This little book will be hailed by the faithful soul who desires to increase very much in the love of God, as if it were, what its title expresses, a letter written by the Saviour of the world himself, and addressed to him personally. It embodies the very, spirit and life of his instructions, and teaches us practically how to carry out in a systematic way the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount. It is easy to read that divine sermon in a sentimental way, to feel somewhat good while reading it, but without gathering much of its meaning, or with any desire to practise it any more than may be convenient. This book will not be very palatable to such persons. It contains the strong meat for vigorous and earnest souls, rather than the light and unsubstantial froth which merely nourishes a sickly sentimentalism. We do not doubt there are thousands of devout persons in this country who would find in this little work an invaluable treasure, and, once possessing it, they would on no account be willing to part with it. They would find its directions plain and simple, and eminently fitted to lift them up out of a low spirituality to the highest state of religious peace and perfection. Would to God this notice may meet their eye, so that they may not be without it. We need just such books now in this country, to serve to make a number of saints and saintly persons, who shall draw down from heaven a benediction on not only themselves, but on the church of God and all our fellow-citizens. May more of them be drawn out of the storehouse of old true Catholic piety and devotion, for our spiritual joy and edification.

It is only necessary to add, that the English of the translation is delightful, while the mechanical getting up of the book, its paper and type, render it most agreeable to read.

1. Napoleon And The Queen Of Prussia.
An Historical Novel, by L. Mühlbach.
Translated from the German, by F. Jordan.
Complete in one volume, with illustrations.
New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1867. 8vo, pp. 265.

2. The Daughter Of An Empress.
An Historical Novel, by L. Mühlbach;
translated from the German by Nathaniel Greene.
Complete in one volume, with illustrations.
New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1867, 8vo, pp. 255.

3. Marie Antoinette And Her Son.
An Historical Novel, by L. Mühlbach.
Complete in one volume, with illustrations.
New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1867. 8vo, pp. 301.

On a former occasion we noticed three of the Mühlbach books, all we had then read, as favorably as our conscience would permit; for we wish to be thought capable of recognizing literary merit in books written by others than Catholics. Now, Catholics have at least nature, and, though we do not recognize the sufficiency of nature without grace, we yet do not hold it to be totally corrupt, or count it good for nothing. We are always ready to recognize merit in literary works, by whomsoever written, if able, and true to genuine nature. The Mühlbach novels are written with spirit and ability, a talent almost approaching to genius, with some touches of nature, and with considerable historical information. Having said so much, we have exhausted our praise. The works are true throughout neither to nature nor to history, and their moral tone is low and unwholesome—pagan, not Christian. Their popularity, which can be but short-lived—for it is hardly possible to read one of them a second time—speaks very little in favor of the taste, the knowledge of history, or the moral tone of our American reading public, as far as published. The least faulty, and to us the least repulsive of the series, is Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia, though it shows less ability than Joseph II. and his Court. We broke down before we got half through The Daughter of an Empress, and we have read only a few pages of Marie Antoinette and her Son. We have had no desire to have our feelings harrowed up by a fresh recital of the horrors of the French Revolution, especially of the wrongs of the beautiful and lovely Queen of France, and the young Dauphin. Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia is, however, a book we can read, and some portions of it with deep interest; but even this is disfigured by namby-pamby sentiment. {714} Adulterous love, self-murders, and horrors of all sorts, enough both to disgust the Christian reader, and to give even a reader of strong nerves the nightmare for weeks after reading it. The Mühlbach is in ecstasy of delight when Napoleon overcomes the virtue of the Countess Walewski, and has no doubt that the self-murderer has ended all his troubles and rests in peace. She seems, through all her books, not to regard adultery, if prompted by love, or suicide either, if inspired by disappointed patriotism, as a sin. Indeed, throughout she writes as a low-minded pagan, not as a high-minded Christian. She apotheosizes persons who die with imprecations of vengeance on their enemies in their mouths, and by their own hands; and even the beautiful and slandered Queen Louisa has no higher aspirations than those of patriotism.

We have heretofore said of the Mühlbach books that they have too much fiction for history, and too much history for fiction; but even a great part of her history is itself fiction, in the sense of being untrue, which fiction never need be. Scott, in his historical novels, commits a thousand anachronisms, mistakes one person for another, and is rarely accurate in the minuter details; but he never falsifies history, and the impression he gives of an epoch or a historical person is always truthful. The impression the Mühlbach gives, even when historically correct as to details, is unhistorical and untrue. We are no believers in the immaculate virtue or high-mindedness of the royal and imperial courts of the eighteenth century, but no one who reflects a moment can believe that the Mühlbach gives a true picture of them. There is no doubt at all times much illicit love, cunning, intrigue, cruelty, vice, and crime, in the ranks of the great, but our experience proves that there is something else there also. At the time of the French Revolution the nobility were corrupt enough, but were they more so than the people who warred against them? Were the murderers and applauders of the murder of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette superior to them in either public or private virtue? If the great are bad, the little are seldom better; and nothing can have a more unwholesome effect on society than the multitude of novels poured forth by little women and less men, professing to describe the manners and morals, but really traducing the manners and morals of the upper classes. Such novels are untrue in fact, and serve only to gratify the mean curiosity and malice of the envious and the malignant. Whoever reads the late book of the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland will find that she and her husband furnished a model of the domestic virtues and affections. Even when the Mühlbach professes to write history, she does not write it, and perverts it quite unnecessarily when by no means demanded by the aesthetic exigencies of her story. We pass over the calumnies of the Jesuits and the private life of Ganganelli, Pope Clement XIV. They please us better than would her praise. But she represents Charles III., King of Spain, as refusing his consent to the suppression of the Society of Jesus after he had expelled the Jesuits from his own dominions, and when he was most urgent of all the Bourbon princes for their suppression. She represents France as in favor of the suppression, but holding back her formal assent till she could secure that of Spain, when it is well known, that the King, Louis XV. and Choiseul, then at the head of the French government, were rather favorable to the Jesuits than otherwise, and gave them up only after a decree of parliament had been rendered against them, and even then only in order to obtain from the parliament, always their bitter enemies, the registering of certain edicts in which the minister believed France was more interested than in preserving the society. The Spanish, French, Portuguese, and several of the Italian princes, demanded of the pope, under threats of schism, the suppression of the order before the Empress Marie Theresa reluctantly consented, at the order of the pope, to allow the Bull suppressing the society to be published in her dominions, as the Mühlbach has herself described in her Joseph II. and his Court. {715} These works are not only not trustworthy in their history, not only in their grouping and coloring falsify it, but they pervert the judgment, prejudice the mind so against the truth that it is able only with great difficulty to recognize it when it comes to be presented by learned and faithful historians.

The real name of the writer of the Mühlbach books is no secret. She is a widow, said to be personally a very estimable lady; and it has been reported that she intends coming to this country and taking up her residence with us, and certainly we would not treat her uncourteously. But if the report be true, it is a good proof that her works are not very popular in Germany, and bring her but small pecuniary remuneration. Her works will not long be popular even in this country; for their popularity here has, to a great extent, been due to their supposed value as truthful pictures of the courts of Berlin, Vienna, St. Petersburg, Paris, and Rome, in the last century, not to their weak and sickly sentimentalism, their low moral tone, their worship of Venus or Anteros, or their cynicism in religion. The American people are excessively fond of reading about courts, kings and queens, emperors and empresses, dukes and duchesses, counts and countesses; and chiefly because they have no such things among themselves, they see them only as shrouded in mystery. But when they find that the Mühlbach books do not, after all, raise the veil, or give any trustworthy account of them, they will drop them; for they adopt as their motto, Ernst ist das Leben, and can never be long fascinated by the debased paganism of the Mühlbach. We would by no means do the author the slightest harm in character or purse, but we advise her in the future not to make her novels sermons or moral lectures, but to animate them with a real ethical spirit, so that they will make the reader stronger and better, not weaker and worse even in the natural order.

Two Thousand Miles On Horseback.

Santa Fe And Back.

A Summer Tour Through Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, And New-Mexico,
In The Year 1866.

By James F. Meline.
New York: Hurd & Houghton. 1867.

Really good books of travel have been found so entertaining and successful in time past, that more recently every quarter of the accessible globe has spawned tourists, and journals, and diaries, and "notes," and "visits," of a thousand varieties of vapidness. England, as usual in matters of superficial mediocrity, has been completely distanced by America. We have dozens of diarists who are promising candidates for the compliment some wicked spirit once paid Bayard Taylor—of having travelled more and seen less than any man living. Singularly enough, our own country has fared the worst at our own hands; singularly, because, full of natural wonders of its own, it has not to send its Winwood Reades to Senegambia for interesting material, and its charming, boy-beloved Captain Mayne to swear at the luckless "closet-naturalist" from all the corners of the world. We could turn all the Royal Societies loose along the Mississippi, and furnish them matter for a quarto to each F.R.S. Yet since Porte Crayon sharpened the lead-pencil into the war-spear, and his charming cousins stepped finally out of the carriage, and "Little Mice" sank to the level of a "man and a brother, and possible Congressman," only one traveller worth following has kept the field—the inimitable, the perennial Ross Browne, in Washoe, or Italy, or St. Petersburg, still the prince and paladin of tourists. Thus there is wondrous great room in the upper story of this literature, with a whole fresh young continent to hold the mirror to. Mr. Meline has challenged boldly and well for a good place in the front rank of our books of travel. He has great advantages and great aptitude for the task. His advantages are that, unless our spectacles and his artifice deceive us, he is a thorough good fellow—the sine qua non of the traveller everywhere—the shibboleth of the brotherhood of cosmopolites. But besides this, mores hominum multorum vidit et urbes. {716} If we are not mistaken in remembering Mr. Meline as the same gentleman who was formerly French Consul in Cincinnati, he is a man who has known European capitals and landmarks, and, what is better, galleries and sculptures, and not known them in vain. And apt he certainly is. In the difficult art not to harp on anything, this book displays consummate judgment, and the choice of subjects shows a tact and skill most remarkable in what we understand to be a first book. There is just about enough fact to make the work decently solid, a good deal of fancy and impression, and above all, a light hand. The style as a whole is really good, because it does pretty evenly just what it attempts and professes—sometimes more, seldom less. The descriptions of Denver and Central City, and the account of the Pueblos of New Mexico interested us especially the former for its manner, the latter for its interesting and curious facts. But another reader would call our selection invidious, and cite quite another set of incidents. The fact is, Mr. Meline is everywhere vivid, easy, and suggestive, and we do think we like those two parts best because we have friends in Denver, and take a special interest in the old Poltec question.

Only one thing, barring a little pedantry here and there, we have to growl at in taking a grateful leave of a beguiling book. The author feels it his duty at painfully short intervals to say something funny, and has preserved and dished up the selectest assortment of aged, stale, and stupid jests we ever saw. We suspect him to be one of those terrible people who enjoy a witticism not wisely but too well. The moment he tries humor, his wonted taste and sparkle seem to take flight, and he grows to a dotage of inane merriment. It is hard to say whether the jokes he cracks himself, or those which he rehashes, ready cracked, are the more benumbingly dismal. The most provoking thing is, that the man is not at all wanting in play of wit; there are a hundred good and a few clever little side-hits in his volume. Only he must not force it. The moment he sets out systematically to be jocose, he is flatness itself.

But take him for all in all, Mr. Meline has written no commonplace book on a subject where commonplace has been achieved frequently and fully; and if he will learn to sketch like Ross Browne, or half so well, or else hire one of those private ubiquities, a "special artist," make no more jokes, quote some, if quote he must, that others have made within twenty years, and rely more on his liveliness of style, he has a future before him as a writer of travels.

The aim of the above volume is a good one. The purpose of its author is to aid the soul on its way in Christian perfection. The "truths" which it contains are taken from various Protestant authors, and a few from Catholic sources. The selections struck us at first as having been made without any sectarian bias or bigotry. Had we found it so unto the end, we should have given it our approval. But on page 166 we find the following:

"Will the martyrs, who sowed the seed of the church in their blood, have no part in the final harvest? The mighty reformers, who battered down the walls of tyrant error about the ears of wicked priests," etc.

Who G. W. Bethune is, from whose writings the above is extracted, we know not; we would, however, advise him, whoever he may be, when writing for the public, to respect its intelligence more, rant less, and remember there is a commandment which reads as follows,

The aim of this volume was to be acceptable to all readers; the quotations from the above writer omitted, would remove at least what is offensive to some.

It is not often that a neglected catholic truth finds so beautiful an expression as in the following passage by the "Country Parson:"

"There are few who have lived long in this world, and have not stood by the bed of the dying; and let us hope that there are many who have seen a Christian friend or a brother depart—who have looked on such a one as life, but not love, ebbed away as the eye of sense grew dim, but that of faith waxed brighter and brighter. {717} Have you heard such an one, in bidding you farewell, whisper that it was not for ever? have you heard such an one tell you so to live, as that death might only remove you to a place where there is no dying? And as you felt the pressure of that cold hand, and saw the earnest spirit that shone through those glazing eyes, have you not resolved and promised that, God helping you, you would? And ever since have you not felt that, though death has sealed those lips, and that heart is turning back to clay, that voice is speaking yet, that heart is caring for you yet, that soul is remembering yet the words it last spoke to you? From the abode of glory it says, 'Come up hither.' The way is steep, the ascent is toilsome; it knows it well, for it trod it once; but it knows now what it knew not then, how bright the reward, how pleasant the rest that remaineth, after the toil is past. And if we go with interest to the grave of a much-loved friend, who bade us when dying, sometimes to visit the place where he should be laid when dead; if you hold a request like that sacred, tell me, how much more solemnly and earnestly we should seek to go where the conscious spirit lives, than where the senseless body moulders! If day after day sees you come to shed the pensive tear of memory over the narrow bed where that dear one is sleeping; if, amid the hot whirl of your daily engagements, you find a calm impressed as you stand in that still spot where no worldly care ever comes, and think of the heart which no grief vexes now; if the sound of the world melts into distance and fades away on the ear, at that point whence the world looks so little; if the setting sun, as it makes the gravestone glow, reminds you of evening hours and evening scenes long since departed, and the waving grass, through which the wind sighs so softly, speaks of that one who 'faded as a leaf' and left you like 'a wind that passeth away and cometh not again,' oh! how much more should every day see you striving up the way which will conduct you where the living spirit dwells, and whence it is ever calling to you, 'Come up hither!' It was a weak fancy of a dying man that bade you come to his burying-place; but it is the perpetual entreaty of a living seraph that invites you to join it there."

The Layman's Breviary.
From the German of Leopold Shefer.
By C. T. Brooks.
Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1868.

Whatever may be the merit of the original German, certain it is, this English version flows like a free rivulet. Mr. Brooks is singularly happy in his versification. It might, however, just as well have been entitled by the author, the "Priest's Breviary" as the "Layman's Breviary," for it is quite plain he thinks both of those terms convertible. We search in vain for any trace of faith in the supernatural, and, considering the beauty of the sentiments, are sorry to find it wanting. The lack of it jars upon our Catholic nerves from the beginning of its perusal to its ending.

The Young Fur Traders, A Tale Of The Far North;

The Coral Island, A Tale Of The Pacific;

Ungava, A Tale Of Esquimaux Land;

Morgan Rattler; or,
A Boy's Adventures in the Forests of Brazil.

By R. M. Ballantyne. New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons.

In these "books for boys" amusement and instruction are admirably combined, the adventures met with being varied and thrilling, while the local descriptions embody so thoroughly the natural features of the regions visited, the productions, atmospheric phenomena, etc., as to render them not unworthy the perusal of children of a larger growth; they are also well got up; good paper, neat binding, numerous illustrations.

Where so much is praiseworthy, we are sorry their universal diffusion should be so seriously impeded, or rather utterly destroyed, by a most wanton display of sectarian rancor. In the Young Fur Traders, for instance, we meet with the following definitions, certainly not according to Webster: "Papist, a man who has sold his liberty in religious matters to the pope;" "Protestant, one who protests against such an ineffably silly and unmanly state of slavery." And in Morgan Rattler, a virulent attack on the Brazilian clergy, who, we are told, "totally neglected their religious duties; were no better than miscreants in disguise, teaching the people vice instead of virtue a—curse not a blessing to the land," etc.

We regret this pitiful outpouring the more that, as books of adventures for boys, they are otherwise all that could be desired.

The Spirit Of St. Vincent De Paul;
Or, A Holy Model Worthy Of Being Imitated By Ecclesiastics, Religious, And All The Faithful.

Translated from the work of the learned M. Andre—Joseph Ansart, converted Priest of the Order of Malta, etc.
By the Sisters of Charity,
Mount St. Vincent, New York.
New York: P. O'Shea, 27 Barclay street. 1868.

It is a valuable service to present to the public, as the author of the above translation has done, the pith of other and more compendious lives of the great St. Vincent de Paul. The life of our Saint cannot be read too often by priests, by the people, and by all lovers of their race. His zeal for religion and his love of the poor were unbounded almost; and the extent of his labors, and the good he did to the poor and distressed of humanity, were never perhaps equalled by any other man. To our non-Catholic readers we would say, read the life of this man, great in goodness, if you would obtain a true idea of the genuine and perfect fruit of the catholic faith. No one, whatever may be his creed, can read the life of St. Vincent de Paul without feeling his love for God and his fellow-men increased and inflamed. May it please God to raise up in his holy church in our own country a priest like St. Vincent de Paul!

Rome And The Popes.
Translated from the German of Dr. Karl Brandes,
by Rev. W. J. Wiseman, S.T.L.
Benziger Brothers. 1868.

This is a volume containing, within a small compass, and in a popular style, suited to the generality of readers, a history of the temporal power of the popes, by an author well acquainted with his subject. The translator has done a service to the public, in giving them the chance of reading it in English. Just at present it is quite appropriate as an offset to the ignorant and silly abuse of the papal sovereignty with which the public ears are filled. We recommend it to all our readers who wish to get some solid information on this subject. We must repeat, once more, in regard to this volume, a criticism we have to make too often, that its generally neat appearance is marred by many typographical errors. Cannot our Catholic publishers wake up to the importance of correcting their proofs properly?

Selections From Pope, Dryden, And Various Other Catholic Poets, who preceded the Nineteenth Century: with biographical and literary notices of those and other British Catholic Poets of their class, comprising a brief history of British Catholic Poetry, from an early period. Designed not only for general use, but also as a text-book or reader, and a prize-book for the higher classes in Catholic educational institutions. By George Hill, author of the "Ruins of Athens," "Titania's Banquet," and other poems. Examined and approved by competent Catholic authority. New York. 1867.

Mr. Hill expresses so succinctly in this old-fashioned title-page the real character and aim of his useful compilation that he leaves us, in fact, nothing further to say than that he has made his title good.

The Life Of St. Francis Of Assist, and a sketch of the Franciscan Order. By a Religious of the Order of Poor Clares, (in England.) With emendations and additions, by Very Rev. Pamfilo da Magliani, O.S.F., (Superior of one of the branches of the Franciscan Order in the U. S.) New York: P. O'Shea, 27 Barclay street. 1867.

Many beautiful lives of the Saints have been written in England within the last few years. This one deserves to be classed among them, and is, on the whole, the best history of the romantic and poetic life of St. Francis we have ever read. The sketches of the history of the Order, especially those relating to missions in heathen countries, and the short biographies of distinguished Franciscans, are of great value. The Life of St. Francis has a charm entirely its own, which never wears out, and his pious daughter has narrated it well. Such a book cannot be too warmly recommended in this age of avarice, worldliness, and luxury. We wish, however, that the proofs had been more carefully corrected.

Claudia.
By Amanda M. Douglas,
author of "In Trust," "Stephen Dane," etc.
Boston: Lee & Shepard.

In this novel, the characters are strongly drawn, the incidents varied and striking, the dialogue well sustained, but the general effect somewhat marred by a vein of moralizing, which, in light literature, unless of absolute necessity and of a high order, always degenerates into prosiness, causing in that vast majority of readers who seek amusement only, weariness, if not disgust.

The Queens Of American Society.
By Mrs. Ellet, author of "The Women of the American Revolution," etc.
New York: Charles Scribner & Co.

This volume is a signal illustration of one of the prevailing passions of the nineteenth century; a craving which brushes the bloom from the lives of our lovely young girls, and makes our charming matrons common; a passion for notoriety; a morbid desire to peep into other people's windows, or engage them in the improving occupation of looking into ours. Here we have the entrée not only into the minutiae of the drawing-rooms of these queens, but into their bedchambers, and stand beside their toilet-tables, and descend into their kitchens; in short, there is no part of the houses of these ladies living and moving in our midst, unransacked by the gossiping pen, save the nurseries, and we are left to doubt if these sumptuous homes contain such old-fashioned apartments. But the gossiping spirit of this book is not the only exceptionable feature; it is extremely snobbish. To have descended from the nobility, to have a thick volume of genealogy to fall back upon, (by the way, we may all have even a more ample chronicle than is here given us of these noble scions, if we will look at the records of the garden of Eden for our pedigree,) to be decked in velvets, point-lace, and diamonds, to have given "select dinners," or "lavish and gorgeous suppers," seems to be the most apparent end and aim of the majority of these living "queens." A sprinkling of pietism and charitable deeds is interpolated through the volume, apparently to give an "odor of sanctity" to the otherwise sensuous details. A catechism for the use of the rising generation of queens might be compiled from the pages before us. Here are two or three questions and answers taken at random from the proposed text-book:

"Q. What is the chief end of one aspiring to be a queen in American society?

"A. To be clothed in purple and fine linen, and to fare sumptuously every day.

"Q. How many gods are there in the 'best society'?

"A. Three.

"Q. Which are they?

"A. Genealogy, gold, and good eating.

"Q. What directions are given for dress?

"A. Whose adorning let it be the outward adorning, wearing of gold and pearls, and putting on of apparel."

The Comedy Of Convocation, in the English Church. In two scenes.
Edited by Archdeacon Chasuble, D.D.
New York: Catholic Publication Society.

This unique work, of which a notice appeared in the last issue of The Catholic World, is without doubt one of the most remarkable satires ever penned. The thorough knowledge it displays of the Anglican establishment, its incisive argumentation, the purity of its style, and its irresistible humor have never been surpassed in any essay of its kind.

These characteristics have led many critics in England and in this country to attribute its authorship to Dr. Newman; but while we think it in every respect worthy of that great writer, we feel disposed, from a more careful study of it, to believe that it has not emanated from his mind, while at the same time we are obliged to confess that we know of no other man in England who wields such a mighty pen. It has given the Anglican Church an herculean blow, and we cannot see how an honest member of the English Church or of its sister denomination, the "Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States," can rise from its perusal without an utter loss of confidence in the discordant, illogical, and unauthoritative system to which they have hitherto given their adherence. The baseless fabric crumbles at the touch of this literary giant, and sinks to a level where it can hardly elicit the admiration of its most zealous partisans.

Sadlier's Catholic Directory, Almanac, And Ordo For The Year Of Our Lord 1868: with a full report of the various Dioceses in the United States and British North America, and a list of the Archbishops, Bishops, and Priests in Ireland.
New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co.,
31 Barclay street. 1868.

The Catholic Almanac for this year makes its appearance a little earlier than it has for some years past. From a cursory glance at its contents, we think it is more correct in its details than some of its predecessors. It is gotten up with an eye to the strictest kind of economy.

We have received from THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION HOUSE, where they are for sale, the following new works just published in England:

The Monks of the West, by Count Montalembert, Vols. IV and V.

Saint Louis, King of France. The curious and characteristic life of this monarch, by De Joinville, translated from the French.

The Story of Chevalier Bayard, from the French of the loyal servant, M. de Berville and others.

The Life of Las Casas, by Arthur Helps.

Learned Women and Studious Women, by Bishop Dupanloup.

Cradle Lands: Egypt, Syria, and the Holy Land. By the Right Hon. Lady Herbert of Lea, illustrated.

The Round Towers of Ancient Ireland, by Marcus Keane.

The History of Irish Periodical Literature, from the end of the seventeenth century to the middle of the nineteenth century: its Origin, Progress, and Results. By Richard Robert Madden. 2 vols. 8vo.

Seek And Find; Or, The Adventures Of A Smart Boy.
By Oliver Optic.

Tommy Hickup; Or, A Pair Of Black Eyes.
By Rosa Abbott.
Boston: Lee & Shepard.

Books Received.

Nathan the Wise. A dramatic poem, by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. Translated by Ellen Frothingham, preceded by a brief account of the poet and his works, and followed by an essay on the poem by Kuno Fischer.

La Littérature Française contemporaire, recueil en prose et en vers de morceaux empruntés, aux écrivains les plus renommés du XIXe Siècle.

Histoire d'une Bouchée de Pain: L'Homme, par Jean Macé. With a French and English vocabulary, and a list of idiomatic expressions. A Manual of Anglo-Saxon for Beginners; comprising a grammar, reader, and glossary, with explanatory notes. By Samuel M. Shute, Professor in Columbian College, Washington, D. C.

Condensed French Instruction, consisting of grammar and exercises, with cross references. By C. J. Delille.

Lives of the Queens of England, from the Norman Conquest. By Agnes Strickland, author of Lives of the Queens of England. Abridged by the Author. Revised and edited by Caroline G. Parker.

Manual of Physical Exercises. By William Wood, Instructor in Physical Education. With one hundred and twenty-five illustrations.

Folks and Fairies. Stories for Little Children. By Lucy Randall Comfort. With engravings.

French's First Lessons in Numbers. French's Elementary Arithmetic. By John H. French, LL.D.

The Lover's Dictionary. A Poetical Treasury of Lover's Thoughts, Fancies, Addresses, and Dilemmas, indexed with nearly ten thousand references, and a Dictionary of Compliments, and a Dictionary of the study of the Tender Passion.

The Catholic World.

Vol. VI., No. 36.—March, 1868.

Canada Thistles.

The accident of a heavy snowstorm detained me, a little while ago, at the house of a friend in the country. It was certainly a pleasant place to be cast away in. My friend was a gentleman-farmer, who united a strong taste for rustic pursuits with an equally strong as well as an intelligent fondness for literature and art. In the matter of books and pictures, philosophy and religion, we were in sympathy with each other; but when he came to milch cows and turnips, my city education got the better of me. I could neither understand his conversation nor appreciate his enthusiasm. It was agreed, therefore, that as soon as he put on his long boots and set out for the barnyard, I should retire into his cheerful library, where a blazing fire of hickory-logs, shelves well stored with all that is best in literature, and a great green-covered table, on which papers, reviews, and magazines were piled in pleasant confusion, kept me in excellent spirits while he was attending to the daily duties of the farm. How I enjoyed those idle hours! Throwing myself back in a wide arm-chair, I passed the winter mornings skimming over the pages of my favorite authors, half reading them and half dreaming; and when my friend returned from his rounds, and stretched himself in another chair on the opposite side of the fire-place, we used to chat over the various subjects that had occupied my mind since breakfast. After dinner, we usually went back to the library with our cigars. The evening we always spent with the rest of the family in the parlor.

My friend read a great deal, and was also something of an author. He contributed essays on agricultural subjects to one or two magazines. He had even published a book or so in the course of his life; and he still amused himself by penning literary criticisms, for a periodical printed in New York. I was not surprised, therefore, to find his table burdened with a good many volumes, newspapers, and pamphlets, which I knew he would never have been at the trouble of ordering.

"Yes," said he, when I made a remark about the worthless character of some of these publications; "there is trash enough here to make a man melancholy. {722} People send me these things for their own purposes, and I read them sometimes for mine. I should be tempted to be sorry for the invention of printing, only if we lost the bane, we should lose the antidote with it. Besides, I have little faith in the negative sort of virtue which is founded on ignorance. We ought to grow wiser, day by day, with the number of our teachers; but what I see here often makes me doubt it. You will find that mankind have the same propensity to use calumny instead of argument that they had two or three hundred years ago. In matters of religion and history, I believe that lies are very much like Canada thistles: let them once take root, and it is next to impossible to get the field clear of them. You may cut them all down to-day, and to-morrow their ugly heads will be as high as ever. Now, here," he continued, picking up a handful of pamphlets and newspapers, "is a crop of Canada thistles. These are all philippics against the Catholic Church. I suppose their authors call them polemical publications; but there is not an argument in one of them. They are nothing whatever but slanders which have been demolished a hundred times; and yet here they are, as bold as ever. It is consoling to be told, as we often are, that 'Truth crushed to earth will rise again;' but if a lie crushed to earth has not an incorrigible habit of rising again, then I am no reader of current literature. You and I may go out into the field of theological controversy, and, being well armed and on the right side, we may cut down every one of the calumnies which are marshalled against the church; but we know that they will jump right up again as soon as our backs are turned, and swear that they never went down. It is rather discouraging to fight against a man who doesn't know when he is dead. To answer these things now, that I hold in my hand, would be like running around the battle-field in chase of a rabble of lively corpses."

"Well," said I, "you are partly right and partly wrong. We have got to cut away at the Canada thistles, as you call them, whether we root them out or not; if we don't, they will stifle the grain. Besides, your lively corpses cannot run for ever. You may galvanize a dead body into spasmodic activity, but you cannot bring it to life again; and I believe that, every time a lie is exposed, there is good done to somebody, though the exposure may have been made a hundred times before. Take the old fiction of a female pope; one of the most preposterous of anti-Catholic calumnies, and one of the easiest to demolish, because the admitted facts of history were so plain against it. That was an incredibly long time dying; but it is dead at last—so dead that even Mr. Murphy, of Birmingham, probably does not believe it. Well, that lie would never have been laid on the shelf if Catholics had not hammered away at it until they forced their enemies to listen to them. Take the St. Bartholomew massacre—"

"I don't know about that," interrupted my friend; "there is a good deal of vitality in that thistle yet. Two things have been proved, and are now admitted by the most candid Protestant historians—that the massacre was the crime of a political, not a religious, party, and that the number of the slain has been frightfully exaggerated. The old story used to be that 100,000 fell, and Lingard has shown that the number, in all probability, did not exceed 1500. {723} Notwithstanding this, I have a volume here, called Willson's Outlines of History, which, I learn, is used as a text-book in the College of the City of New York, and which represents the massacre as a rising of the 'Catholics of Paris' against their Huguenot brethren, declares that it lasted in the capital 'eight days and eight nights without any apparent diminution of the fury of the murderers,' and estimates the number of the victims at 50,000. Then the writer goes on to say that the pope caused medals to be struck in commemoration of the auspicious event, and returned public thanks to heaven. A student would never suspect from this that the assassins were not the Catholic inhabitants, but the hirelings of the queen mother. Besides, the massacre lasted, not eight days and nights, but three days and two nights. This fact is of more importance than at first appears. If the slaughter had lasted so long, and so many persons had been killed, it could hardly have been the work of a band of cutthroats; but if we remember that, as all reputable historians admit, it was over on the third day, and that the number of victims, according to Froude, who is the latest Protestant authority, certainly did not exceed 2000 in Paris, and 10,000 in all France, or, according to Lingard, 1500 in the whole kingdom, it is evident that it could not have been shared in by the Catholic inhabitants."

"Yes, and admits that the French Catholics cried out with horror at the outrage. Yet Froude is a most unwilling witness in our favor. His bias, as you know, is all the other way. The Calvinistic author of the martyrology of the Huguenots, published only ten years after the massacre, made careful search, and was able to find the names of only 786 persons who perished. Froude's estimate is too high, and Willson's is altogether preposterous. Then about that medal and the Te Deum at Rome; everybody knows that, as soon as the horrible deed was over, the first care of the French king was to justify himself at the other European courts by false accounts of what had taken place. His ambassador informed the pope that his majesty had discovered a Huguenot conspiracy against his life and throne, and had overcome it by promptly executing the criminals. It was in the belief of this lie that the pope caused public thanks to be given for the king's victory. This is a fact as well established as any other of the 16th century. Yet Mr. Willson, and men like him, choose to go on quietly disregarding it. I think it simply a sin that anybody so grossly ignorant or so shamefully perverse should be allowed to deceive the young with what they presume to call 'history.'"

"Froude has too melodramatic a mind, if I may use the expression, to be a good historian. He has a dangerous gift of sarcasm and invective, and a fatal knack of putting things together so as to make an effective situation. If an inconvenient truth pops up to mar the scene, he quietly knocks it on the head, and arranges the stage to suit himself. For instance, he wants to paint the duplicity of Charles, so he mentions his lying bulletins to the pope and the other sovereigns; but he also wants to impress us with the heartless bigotry of the pontiff; so, after showing on one page that the pope could not know the truth, he coolly assumes on the next that he did know it."

"I think the best account of the massacre I ever read in a Protestant publication is that in The New American Cyclopaedia. Not a perfect book, of course, but upon the whole, very honest."

"Yes, if you want to get a plain statement of facts, without party coloring, you must go to some work in which many heads and hands have worked together. You know an ordinary refracting telescope of the old sort shows distant objects, not as they really are, but tinged with prismatic colors, because no one lens has the power of transmitting all rays with equal impartiality; but by a combination of lenses we get at the exact truth; one corrects another. So, if you want a thoroughly impartial, achromatic account of anything, let a number of men work at it together For this reason, a good cyclopaedia is better than a volume of history; it is perfectly cold-blooded."

"Our friend Willson," I said, turning over the leaves as I spoke, "is certainly a telescope of the old sort. His book is as gay with prismatic colors as a parlor candelabrum. See here: 'The doctrine of infallibility means the pope's entire exemption from liability to err;' 'Indulgences are billets of salvation, professing to remit the punishment due to sins even before the commission of the contemplated crime.' Mr. Willson knows that neither of these definitions is correct."

"No, I don't believe he does. Remember what we said just now about thistles. To you and to me these statements seem—I don't know whether to say ludicrous or shocking. We know, as well as we know the alphabet, that while the church cannot err in defining dogmas, the pope, as a private individual, is as liable to err as Mr. Willson himself; that no sin can be forgiven before it is committed, and no past sin pardoned so long as the culprit purposes committing another; but I dare say Mr. Willson is ignorant of all this. There is a certain class of unfortunate Christians, now happily dying out, who are catechised in their youth into a hatred of the pope and all his works. They look upon his holiness as a superior sort of devil, rather more wicked and dangerous upon the whole than Satan, and not half so much of a gentleman. Willson was crammed full of these sentiments when he was a boy, and now he is trying to cram the coming generation. Here is a specimen of the moral nutriment which men of his stamp are brought up on. I cut it out of an old number of The Sunday-School Advocate, where it appeared as a comment on a picture of a Spanish flower-girl. There must be a funny twist in the mind of the writer who could get a lesson against popery out of that.

"'You never saw such a flower-seller, did you? You have not unless you have lived in Spain. The picture is meant to show you a Spanish lady, a Spanish flower-dealer, and a Spanish mule.

"'Spain is a beautiful land, but the people are not as happy as they are here. Why? Because they are Roman Catholics. Once they were a brave, powerful, rich, liberty-loving people; but a set of priests, called Jesuits, stole into the country, quenched their love of liberty, put out the lights of learning, trampled upon the true religion, and made the Spaniards boasters, bigots, and almost slaves to their kings and queens. Pity the Spaniards, my children, and pray to your heavenly Father to save this glorious land from ever being ruined by that great enemy to all that is good—the Roman Catholic Church.
x. x.'

"How can you wonder that a man who learns such nonsense in his childhood should say foolish things when he grows up? Still, Mr. Willson's ignorance does not excuse him. Any one who undertakes to write history is bound not to be ignorant. He cannot plead the prejudices of education in justification of his blunders. {725} To teach calumny and religious error is as much a crime as to administer medicines without knowing the properties of drugs. We have little tenderness for an ignorant chemist's boy who poisons us by mistake, and I don't know why we should have any more for an ignorant historian who lies out of prejudice. Besides, even if Mr. Willson did not know the truth, he knew there were two sides to the story, and he was bound to study and weigh them both, which he evidently has not done. His ignorance was not invincible."

"I think, however, that the faculty of the College of New York are more to blame for adopting this work as a text-book than the author was for writing it. You know, I suppose, what that college is. It is a part of our common school system, designed for the youth of every faith, and supported by tax on all citizens alike. To allow a word taught there which could offend the religious feelings of either Catholics or Protestants is a gross outrage upon public right. It only shows, what wise men of our church have all along maintained, that Catholics need hope for no good from state education. We must be taxed for what we don't approve, and support our own schools and colleges besides.—But enough of this. Let us see the rest of your thistles."

"Oh!" said he, laughing, "there are enough of them, I can assure you. Here, for example, is The Free-Will Baptist Quarterly for January, 1868. It contains an article on 'The Perversions of the Gospel a Proof of its Divinity,' and in the course of it occurs this sentence about the pope: 'He can remit sins or permit them, and his pardon and indulgences have been purchased with money.' Now, a quarterly is supposed to be edited with care and deliberation, and when such a periodical states that the holy Father has power 'to permit sins' it is guilty of a misstatement which I hardly know how to distinguish from a deliberate falsehood. The editor of The Baptist Quarterly is utterly inexcusable for not knowing that the doctrine which he attributes to the church is repudiated with horror by every theologian who ever wrote on our side. It has never been either maintained in theory or acted upon in practice. The statement of The Quarterly is one of the most atrocious calumnies ever uttered, and the editor was bound to know it. If he is so ignorant as not to know it, he is criminally presumptuous in undertaking the functions of a popular teacher. Then, again, he says that the pope's 'pardon and indulgences have been purchased with money.' This, too, is a positive falsehood, though we are willing to believe not an intentional one. In no case, and under no color, can pardon be obtained for money. The only price ever required, the only price which can ever suffice, is hearty repentance. After pardon has been granted, there remains, as we all know, a temporal penalty to be exacted by way of satisfaction, and for this the pope may decree the contribution of money for a charitable object or any other good deed. If the editor of The Baptist Quarterly does not know that this is the extent of an indulgence, then he has no business to be an editor. Ignorance does not excuse him. But let this pass. We were speaking just now of education here is an article quite à propos to that subject in The Churchman. It is called 'Rome and the Scriptures.' The writer begins by wondering at the insolence of 'Romanists' in denying that the church withholds the Bible from the laity; and how do you think he proceeds to prove that she does withhold it? {726} Why, by showing that she lays some very necessary restrictions upon the indiscriminate circulation of translations of the Bible. But, it is objected, every English-speaking Catholic family has a copy of the Douay Bible in the house. Yes, says The Churchman, because the church lets you have it; she could forbid it if she chose. What do you think of that as a specimen of argument? The church forbids the Bible, because she might, if she pleased, only she doesn't. Besides, this writer continues, the English of the Douay version is so bad that it is practically not the vernacular; the book is as much sealed to the comprehension of the common reader as if it remained in the original Hebrew and Greek. Thus, he says, 'in Galatians v. 19-23, we have a list of the "works of the flesh," and the "fruits of the Spirit." In our version occur the words, "lasciviousness, drunkenness, revellings, long-suffering." But in the Douay version instead of such honest English, which any person of ordinary attainments can understand, we have the words, "impudicity, elrieties, [ebrieties?] comessations, and longanimity." In Hebrews ix. 23, our version reads, "the patterns of things in the heavens;" but the Douay has it, "the exemplars of the celestials." Again, in Hebrews xiii. 16, instead of "to do good, and to communicate, forget not; for with such sacrifices God is well pleased," as in our version, the Douay reads, "Beneficence and communication forget not, "for with such hosts God is promerited." Is this what the Romanists call the Bible in the vulgar tongue?' Now, in point of fact, not a single one of the preceding texts is given in the form he quotes in the Catholic Testaments now in use. The passage from Galatians reads, 'immodesty, drunkenness, revellings.' Instead of 'the exemplars of the celestials,' we have 'the patterns of heavenly things;' and the verse from Hebrews xiii. runs thus: 'And do not forget to do good and to impart; for by such sacrifices God's favor is obtained.' In the first edition of the Douay Bible there were many obscure expressions which have since been amended. If the translators knew English but imperfectly, whose fault was it? The English government would not allow Catholics to get an education in their native country—hanged them if they caught them at it. That we have corrected their shortcomings is proof enough that we are anxious to facilitate the study of the sacred books. What would The Churchman say if we accused the Anglican establishment of trying to conceal the Scriptures from the common people, because the translations of Wickliffe and Coverdale contain many antiquated expressions? That would be every whit as just as to found a similar charge against us upon the imperfections of the first editions of Douay and Rheims, (which are older, it should be remarked, than the Bible of King James.)"

"After all," said I, "I cannot regard the authorized English Protestant Bible as a model of what a popular translation ought to be."

"Of course not. Don't you remember what Hallam says about it? Here is the passage: 'It is held to be the perfection of our English language. I shall not dispute this proposition; but one remark as to a matter of fact cannot reasonably be censured, that, in consequence of the principle of adherence to the original versions, which had been kept up ever since the time of Henry VIII., it is not the language of the reign of James I. {727} It may, in the eyes of many, be a better English, but it is not the English of Daniel, or Raleigh, or Bacon, as any one may easily perceive. It abounds, in fact, especially in the Old Testament, with obsolete phraseology, and with single words long since abandoned or retained only in provincial use.' (Literature of Europe, vol. ii. chap. 2.) The early Protestant versions are proof enough of the wisdom of our church in setting bounds to the license of careless or incompetent editors. You know there is one edition which is called by book-collectors 'the Breeches Bible,' on account of its rendering of a passage in the third chapter of Genesis, where Adam and Eve are said to have 'sewed together fig-leaves and made themselves breeches.' The king's printers, in 1632, were fined for publishing a Bible in which one of the commandments appeared in this form, 'Thou shalt commit adultery.' During the Commonwealth, a large impression of the Bible was confiscated on account of its corruptions, many of which were the result of design. One edition contained 6000 errors. Archbishop Usher, on his way to preach once, bought a London Bible in a bookseller's shop, and was dismayed to find that the text he had selected was omitted! In one of the English Bibles the first verse of the fourteenth (or in our Bible the thirteenth) Psalm is printed, 'The fool hath said in his heart, there is a God,' instead of 'no God.' Just see what that famous old Protestant divine, Thomas Fuller, says of this matter: 'Considering with myself the causes of the growth and increase of impiety and profaneness in our land, amongst others this seemeth to me not the least, viz., the late many false and erroneous impressions of the Bible. Now know, what is but carelessness in other books is impiety in setting forth of the Bible. As Noah, in all unclean creatures, preserved but two of a kind, so among some hundreds in several editions, we will insist only on two instances. In the Bible printed at London in 1653, we read, "I Corinthians vi. 9, Know ye not that the unrighteous shall inherit the kingdom of God?" for "not inherit." Now, when a reverend doctor in divinity did mildly reprove some libertines for their licentious lives, they did produce this text from the authority of this corrupt edition in justification of their vicious and inordinate conversations. The next instance shall be in the Bible printed at London in quarto (forbearing the name of the printer, because not done wilfully by him) in the singing Psalms, Psalm lxvii. 2:

  "That all the earth may know
   The way to worldly wealth,"

for "godly wealth."' Such blunders too are by no means confined to early impressions. Why, there is an edition of the Anglican Liturgy printed at Oxford, of all places in the world, in 1813, in which occurs this dreadful blunder: 'Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the Lord.'"

"After this, it looks well, doesn't it, for The Churchman to blame us for repressing the indiscriminate circulation of wild versions of the Scriptures?"

"My dear friend, if all men were consistent, the whole world would be Catholic. Protestantism from beginning to end is nothing but a huge inconsistency. But come: have we any more weeds to look at?"

"Here is a copy of The Observer; if we don't find something startling in it, it will be strange. Yes; here is a letter from the well-known Irenaeus on 'the relics at Aix-la-Chapelle.' Read what he says:

"'I found that pictures of the relics were for sale in all the shops, and I bought a few as souvenirs of my accidental pilgrimage; particularly I sought for a good representation of that one which is first on the list, and first in the admiration of the people. As the Virgin Mother Mary is held in higher honor by all good Catholics than the Son of God himself, so they likewise venerate, with a deeper reverence, the linen garment that she wore, than the cloth which was around the loins of the Saviour on the cross.'

What do you say to that? For my part, I cannot believe that a man so well informed on most subjects as Irenaeus is really thinks that 'Catholics hold the Virgin Mary in higher honor than the Son of God himself.' If he knows anything at all about the Catholic Church, he must know that this is a downright slander."

"In point of fact, I suppose he does know it; but he belongs to a class of persons who seem to think it no harm to say anything evil of Catholics for the sake of producing a sensation. The church in their eyes is merely a convenient subject for turning an eloquent sentence; a sort of corpus vile, upon which it is allowable to try all manner of oratorical experiments. Besides, you know The Observer is nothing but a journalistic stuffed Guy Faux, brought out periodically for the purpose of reminding mankind of the wickedness of the bloody papists."

"Do you know I pity the editor of that paper? he must have such awful nightmares. Just think of perpetually dreaming that the pope sits scowling on your stomach ready to strangle you, and a grand inquisitor lurks under the bed! I suppose The Observer never goes up-stairs in the dark without dread of stumbling over a rack, or running his hand into a thumbscrew, and never falls asleep without apprehensions of a popish massacre before morning. Has he any special bugaboo to-day?"

"'The Confessional.' I will not read the whole article. Some of it is too nasty. But here is a specimen:

"'The confessional in the Roman Catholic Church, and in every church that becomes corrupt enough to introduce it, and slavish enough to submit to it, is an engine of tyranny over the social, domestic, and private life of the people, with an extent, power, and wickedness it is hardly possible to conceive.

"'It operates chiefly through the women. In most of the Roman Catholic countries men have substantially deserted the confessional. They go once a year, at Easter, if at all. Many of them, nominally Catholics, do not take the communion, and therefore do not come under the ecclesiastical necessity of confessing. But women are more religious, more superstitious, and more submissive to priestly domination than men. Men have their business to think about, and often worship mammon. Religion is the highest of all mental occupations for women; their life is in it; it is their life—this and that to come. In Protestant as well as Roman churches women are the most and the best of the members. It has been so from the time they outnumbered the disciples at the cross and the grave of the Saviour. The confessional has its grasp on the women of the Roman Catholic Church; and through them it rules the households where those women are wives, mothers, sisters, children, or servants. It is enough for the purpose of the priests that they have one spy in a house; but the more the better, and the nearer that spy is to the head of the house the more valuable her service. The conduct of servants is carefully watched; and they are changed from time to time by the direction of priests, when the family has not the slightest suspicion of the cause. The priests often select willing and capable agents, who, in the capacity of servants, male and female, act as spies and emissaries in households they wish to supervise. The information thus obtained is recorded, transmitted to higher powers, and used, without scruple, in the secret and constant operations of the church to get control over the political and material interests of the state.'

"There is no excuse for this sort of thing. There is an untruth in almost every line. I don't charge The Observer with deliberate falsehood, but it needs a good deal of charity, in a case like this, to remember the difference between a mistake and a lie. {729} Mark you, the writer does not say: 'I believe the confessional to be used for purposes of oppression,' 'I suspect that the priests keep spies in every household.' 'I dare say the church interferes with our servants,' 'I take it for granted that the priests repeat what is said to them in confession;' but all these vague and ridiculous notions are stated in the broadest manner, as admitted historical facts. That is to say, The Observer makes the most atrocious charges against us without a particle of evidence to support them. 'I guess they are true,' says the writer; 'any way, I will make them.' The less the proof, the more emphatic the assertion. Suppose I have a vague suspicion that my neighbor has stolen money, and on the strength of that suspicion, not knowing whether it is well-founded or not, and having no means of knowing, I proclaim him as a thief all over town. Whether he is one or not, I commit a grave sin by defaming him on mere suspicion; and if he turn out to be an honest man after all, the fact that I believed my own story will not save me from the consequences of uttering slander. The old grannies of Protestantism act upon the principle that it is quite fair to ascribe any imaginable sin either to the pope or the devil. The wickedness of both being infinite, it is impossible to overshoot the mark."

"Even if all priests were demons, I don't see why they must also be described as idiots. 'Spies in the household!' Can you imagine anything more childish than listening to Bridget's and Mary Ann's reports of the daily life of their master and mistress? Can you imagine any use to which such information could be turned by the church? The Observer no doubt supposes that the archbishop of New York has daily morning audiences with his domestic emissaries, who tell him what time The Observer editor got up, how many eggs he ate for breakfast, what remarks he made at family prayers, whether the children were good, and how much butcher's meat was used in the house during the previous week. Then just think of the Roman Catholic Church being a vast intelligence-office, through which servants are changed about from house to house! You flatter yourself that you chose your cook out of a number of applicants for the place. Nothing of the kind she was sent to your house by the priests, and forced on you by a kind of legerdemain, just as a juggler forces a card. You think you discharged your last chambermaid. Oh! no; she went away because the priests had duties for her elsewhere. And the reports of all these spies, The Observer assures us, are actually written out, and transmitted to headquarters! I believe there is no limit to the credulity of a no-popery zealot."

"I am glad to see, however, that some Protestants have recognized the value of the confessional to society, and have spoken warmly of its sacred influence. I suppose you know how much attention has lately been drawn to the great appalling sin of modern American women—the murder of their offspring yet unborn. It is a sin so prevalent that, as I remember reading some time ago in The Congregationalist, it is said that in a certain populous district in a large western city, not a single Anglo-American child had been born alive in three years! It has not escaped the notice of physicians that no such practice prevails among the Catholic population. {730} Dr. Storer, of Boston, (a Protestant,) explains this difference in his well-known essay on the subject, by the influence of the confessional; and The Congregationalist took the same view. Indeed, both virtually admit that, if it were not for the confessional, the natural increase of population in the United States would be almost entirely checked."

"That is a good thing for The Observer to meditate upon; but I am afraid the venerable old alarmist is incorrigible. It is hard to reason with a man whose hair perpetually stands on end with fright."

"Yes, or with a professional dealer in bugaboos. But even if he believes all his stories, I don't see what good he can possibly expect to come of telling them. They are only irritating."

"Irritating! they are criminally dangerous. The greatest enemy to a community is the man who stirs up the animosity of religious denominations against each other. The natural effect of such stories is to inspire the ignorant and passionate on the one side with contempt and hatred, on the other with resentment; and how long can society be sure of peace when it is filled with such dangerous elements? Of course, the Catholics are not so silly or so wicked as to fly to arms whenever an insult is uttered against the church, neither are Protestants going to defend Luther and Henry VIII. with fire and riot; but suppose some unforeseen circumstance produces an outbreak, what a terrible responsibility will rest upon those who prepared the materials of combustion! Mr. Froude, speaking of the St. Bartholomew massacre, says, the guilt was the queen's, but her plan could never have been carried out, had not theological frenzy already been heated to the boiling-point. He is wrong in this case, for it is proved that theological frenzy had nothing to do with the slaughter; political frenzy is sometimes quite as dangerous; but I wish those who think he is right would apply his principle to the regulation of their own conduct. The frenzy which instigated the burning of the Charlestown convent, the bloodshed and incendiarism of the Native American movement in Philadelphia, and the Know-Nothing riots in different parts of the country, had been gathered up and nursed long beforehand by preachers like The Observer. They did not know what they were doing, I suppose, but others foresaw and predicted the consequences. Rant is always the forerunner of riot. The periodical excitement on the subject of popery which breaks out in the United States, like the cholera or yellow fever, has always been followed by lamentable disturbances. The man who makes his living by thundering at the corruptions of the Church of Rome, is an incendiary in fact, though he may not be in intention. Of course, it is a pity that men should be prone to anger. It is a pity that we are not always meek, and long-suffering, and forgiving; that we do not bear reproaches with patience, and repay calumnies with good deeds. Our Lord tells us to love our enemies, but only a few of us are good enough to obey him. If all Catholics were perfect Christians, The Observer might shout hard names at us until it was black in the face, and there would be no danger; but there is a good deal of human nature in us, after all, and it is better not to go near gunpowder with a lighted candle. I do not mean to say, of course, that there is danger of our deliberately resenting such attacks. We are far too sensible for that. No amount of abuse would, of itself, provoke us to break the peace. {731} But such calumnious harangues tend first to draw a broad line of distinction between Catholics and Protestants, and keep them apart, which, alone, is a social evil; then they inevitably fill the two parties with mutual dislike, and, in time, drive them to antipathy; the bad feeling gets worse and worse; and some day accident brings about a clash, and there is a terrible explosion, nobody knows exactly how, and nobody knows who is most to blame. All we can determine about it is, to use Froude's words, that it could not have happened 'had not theological frenzy already been heated to the boiling-point.' I think it is high time that all decent citizens, all honest theological disputants, should set their faces against the Gospel of Frenzy. I am willing to meet any man in a fair controversy, but there is nothing but danger and aggravation in bandying hard names. The only legitimate object of controversy is to make converts, and you can't do that without good temper and honest argument. The apparent purpose of such tirades as those of The Observer, is merely to show the preacher's own party how much better they are than the rest of the world. Nobody but a fool could expect them to do any good to the Catholics; you can't make friends with a man by abusing his mother. It ought to be clearly understood that calm theological discussion over points of discipline or dogma is always in order; but atrocious charges, unsupported by a tittle of evidence, deserve no name but that of sheer calumny, and all good men ought to detest them. If Protestant preachers only carried into the pulpit and the editorial chair the same rules of morality which, I am happy to believe, they generally practise in private life, they would observe this cardinal principle, not to publish infamous accusations against their neighbors unless they have personal knowledge of their truth."

Abscondita.

  Flower of the forest, that, unseen,
    With sweetness fill'st the vernal grove,
  Where hid'st thou? 'Mid the grasses green,
    Or those dim boughs that mix above?

  Thou bird that, darkling, sing'st a song
    That shook the bowers of paradise,
  Thou too art hid thy leaves among:
    Thou sing'st unseen of mortal eyes.

  Of her thou sing'st whose every breath
    Sweetened a world too blind to heed;
  Of Him—Death's Conqueror—that from death
    Alone would take the crown decreed.

  Thou sing'st that secret gifts are best;
    That only like to God are they
  Who keep God's secret in their breast,
    And hide, as stars are hid by day.

                         Aubrey De Vere.

Translated From The French.

The Story of a Conscript.

XV.

When I returned to myself, I looked around. I was in a long hall, with posts all around. I was in a bed, and beside me was an old gray-mustached soldier, who, when he saw my eyes open, lifted up my head and held a cup to my lips.

I could not help smiling as I thought that I was yet among the living. My chest and arm were stiff with bandages; I felt as if a hot iron were burning me there; but no matter, I lived!

I gazed at the heavy rafters crossing the space above me; at the tiles of the roof, through which the daylight entered in more than one spot; I turned and looked to the other side, and saw that I was in one of those vast sheds used by the brewers of the country as a shelter for their casks and wagons. All around, on mattresses and heaps of straw, numbers of wounded lay ranged; and in the middle, on a large kitchen-table, a surgeon-major and his two aids, their shirt-sleeves rolled up, were amputating the leg of a soldier, who was shrieking in agony. Behind them was a mass of legs and arms. I turned away sick and trembling.

But the man who impressed himself most on my memory was a surgeon with sleeves rolled up, who cut and cut without paying the slightest attention to what was going on around; he was a man with a large nose and wrinkled cheeks, and every moment flew into a passion at his assistants, who could not give him his knives, pincers, lint, or linen fast enough, or who were not quick enough sponging up the blood.

They had just laid out on the table a Russian carbineer, six feet in height at least; a ball had pierced his neck near the ear, and while the surgeon was asking for his little knives, a cavalry surgeon passed before the shed. He was short, stout, and badly pitted with the small-pox, and held a portfolio under his arm.

"Seventeen to eighteen thousand." Our surgeon left the shed to chat with his comrade; they conversed tranquilly, while the assistants sat down to drink a cup of wine, and the Russian rolled his eyes despairingly.

"See, Duchêne; you have only to go down the street, opposite that well, do you see?"

Then he returned to his Russian, whose neck he had laid open. He worked ill-humoredly, constantly scolding his aids.

The Russian writhed and groaned, but he paid no attention to that, and at last, throwing the bullet upon the ground, he bandaged up the wound, and cried, "Carry him off!"

They lifted the Russian from the table, and stretched him on a mattress beside the others; then they laid his neighbor upon the table.

I could not think that such horrors took place in the world; but I was yet to see worse than this.

At five or six beds from mine was an old corporal with his leg bound up. He closed one eye knowingly, and said to his neighbor, whose arm had just been cut off:

The other, who had hitherto shown the greatest courage, looked, and fell back senseless.

Every moment the wounded called for water. When one began, all followed, and the old soldier had certainly conceived a liking for me, for each time he passed, he presented the cup.

I did not remain in the shed more than an hour. A dozen ambulances drew up before the door, and the peasants of the country round, in their velvet jackets and large black, slouched hats, their whips on their shoulders, held the horses by the reins. A picket of hussars arrived soon after, and their officer dismounting, entered and said:

"Excuse me, major, but here is an order to escort twelve wagons of wounded as far as Lutzen. Is it here that we are to receive them?" '"Yes, it is here," replied the surgeon.

The peasants and the ambulance-drivers, after giving us a last draught of wine, began carrying us to the wagons. As one was filled, it departed, and another advanced. They had given us our great-coats; but despite them and the sun, which was shining brightly, we shivered with cold. No one spoke; each was too much occupied thinking of himself.

At moments I was terribly cold; then flashes of heat would dart through me, and flush me as in fever; and indeed it was the beginning of the fever. But as we left Kaya, I was yet well; I saw everything clearly, and it was not till we neared Leipsic that I felt indeed sick. The hussars rode beside us, smoking and chatting, paying no attention to us.

In passing through Kaya, I saw all the horrors of war. The village was but a mass of cinders; the roofs had fallen, and the walls alone remained standing; the rafters were broken; we could see the remnants of rooms, stairs, and doors heaped within. The poor villagers, women, children, and old men, came and went with sorrowful faces. We could see them going up and down in their houses; and in one we saw a mirror yet hanging unbroken, showing where dwelt a young girl in time of peace.

Ah! who of them could foresee that their happiness would so soon be destroyed, not by the fury of the winds or the wrath of heaven, but by the rage of man!

Even the cattle and pigeons seemed seeking their lost homes among the ruins; the oxen and the goats scattered through the streets, lowed and bleated plaintively. At the last house an old man, with flowing white hair, sat at the threshold of what had been his cottage, with a child upon his knees, glaring on us as we passed. His furrowed brow and stony eyes spoke of despair. {734} How many years of labor, of patient economy, had he passed to make sure a quiet old age! Now all was crushed, ruined; the child and he had no longer a roof to cover their heads.

And those great trenches—fully a mile of them—at which the country people were working in such haste, to keep the plague from completing the work war began! I saw them, too, from the top of the hill of Kaya, and turned away my eyes, horror-stricken. Russians, French, Prussians were there heaped pell-mell, as if God had made them to love each other before the invention of arms and uniforms, which divide them for the profit of those who rule them. There they lay, side by side; and those of them who could not die knew no more of war, but cursed the crimes that had for centuries kept them apart.

But what was sadder yet, was the long line of ambulances, bearing the agonized wounded—those of whom they speak so much in the bulletins to make the loss seem less, and who die by thousands in the hospitals, far from all they love; while at their homes cannon are firing, and church-bells are ringing with joyous chimes of victory.

At length we reached Lutzen, but it was so full of wounded that we were obliged to continue on to Leipsic. Fatigue and weariness overpowered me, and I fell asleep, and only awoke when I felt myself lifted from the ambulance. It was night, the sky seemed covered with stars, and innumerable lights shone from an immense edifice before us. It was the hospital of the market-place at Leipsic.

The two men who were carrying me ascended a spiral stairway which led to an immense hall, where beds were laid together in three lines, so close that they touched each other. On one of these beds I was placed, in the midst of oaths, cries for pity, and muttered complaints from hundreds of fever-stricken wounded. The windows were open, and the flames of the lanterns flickered in the gusts of wind. Surgeons, assistants, and nurses came and went, while the groans from the halls below, and the rolling of ambulances, cracking of whips and neighing of horses without, seemed to pierce my very brain. While they were undressing me, they handled me roughly, and my wound pained me so horribly that I could not avoid shrieking. A surgeon came up at once, and scolded them for not being more careful. That is all I remember that night; for I became delirious, and raved constantly of Catharine, Monsieur Goulden, and Aunt Grédel, as my neighbor, an old artilleryman, whom my cries prevented from sleeping, afterward told me. I awoke the next morning at about eight o'clock, and then learned that I had the bone of my left shoulder broken. I lay in the middle of a dozen surgeons; one of them a stout, dark man, whom they called Monsieur the Baron, was opening my bandages, while an assistant at the foot of the bed held a basin of warm water. The baron examined my wound; all the others bent forward to hear what he might say. He spoke a few moments, but all that I could understand was, that the ball had struck from below, breaking the bone and passing out behind. The surgeon, passing to another bed, cried:

"Yes; it is I, Monsieur the Baron," replied the artilleryman, proud to be recognized; "the first time was at Austerlitz, the second at Jena, and then I received two thrusts of a lance at Smolensk."

"Three sabre-cuts on my left arm while I was defending my piece from the Prussians."

The old artilleryman's heart seemed overflowing with joy; and, as I concluded from his name that he came from Alsace, I spoke to him in our language, at which he was still more rejoiced. He called me Josephel, and said:

"Josephel, be careful how you swallow the medicines they give you, only take what you know. All that does not taste well is good for nothing. If they would give us a bottle of Rikevir every day, we would soon be well."

When I told him I was afraid of dying of the fever, he laughed long and loud, and said:

"Josephel, you are a fool. Do you think that such tall fellows as you and I were born to die in a hospital? No, no; drive the idea from your head."

But he spoke in vain, for every morning the surgeons, making their rounds, found seven or eight dead. Some died in fevers, some in a deadly chill; so that heat or cold might be the presage of death.

Zunnier said that all this proceeded from the evil drugs which the doctors invented. "Do you see that tall, thin fellow?" he asked. "Well, that man can boast of having killed more men than a field-piece; he is always primed, with his match lighted; and that little brown fellow—I would send him instead of the emperor to the Russians and Prussians; he would kill more of them than a corps d'armée."

He would have made me laugh with his jokes if the litters were not constantly passing.

At the end of three weeks my shoulder had begun to heal, and Zunnier's wounds were also doing well, and they allowed us to walk in the large garden, full of elms, behind the hospital. There were benches under the trees, and we walked the paths like millionaires in our gray great-coats and forage-caps. The increasing heat presaged a fine year, and often, when looking at the beautiful scenery around, I thought of Phalsbourg, and the tears came to my eyes.

"I would like to know what makes you cry so," said Zunnier. "Instead of catching a fever in the hospital, or losing a leg or arm, like hundreds of others, here we are quietly seated in the shade; we are well fed, and can smoke when we have any tobacco; and still you cry. What more do you want, Josephel?"

Then I told him of Catharine; of our walks at Quatre-Vents; of our promises; of all my former life, which then seemed a dream. He listened, smoking his pipe.

"Yes, yes," said he; "all this is very sad. Before the conscription of 1798, I too was going to marry a girl of our village, who was named Margrédel, and whom I loved better than all the world beside. We had promised to marry each other; and all through the campaign of Zurich, I never passed a day without thinking of her. But when I first received a furlough and reached home, what did I hear? Margrédel had been three months married to a shoemaker, named Passauf.

"You may imagine my wrath, Josephel; I could not see clearly; I wanted to demolish everything; and, as they told me that Passauf was at the Grand-Cerf brewery, thither I started, looking neither to the right nor left. There I saw him drinking with three or four other rogues. As I rushed forward, he cried, 'There comes Christian Zunnier! How goes it, Christian! Margrédel sends you her compliments.' I seized a glass which I hurled at his head, and broke to pieces, saying, 'Give her that for my wedding present, you beggar!' The others, seeing their friend thus maltreated, very naturally fell upon me. I knocked two of three of them over with a jug, jumped on a table, sprang through a window, and beat a retreat."

"But that was not all," he continued, "I had scarcely reached my mother's when the gendarmerie arrived, and they arrested me. They put me on a wagon and conducted me from my brigade to my regiment, which was at Strasbourg. I remained six weeks at Finckmatt, and would probably have received the ball and chain, if we did not have to cross the Rhine to Hohenlinden.

"From that day, Josephel, the thought of marriage never troubled me. Don't talk to me of a soldier who has a wife to think of. Look at our generals who are married, do they fight as they used to?"

I could not answer, for I did not know; but day after day I waited anxiously to hear from home, and my joy can be more easily imagined than described when, one day, a large, square letter was handed me. I recognized Monsieur Goulden's handwriting.

I did not answer, but thrust the letter in my pocket, to read it at leisure and alone. I went to the end of the garden and opened it. Two or three apple-blossoms dropped upon the ground, with an order for money, on which Monsieur Goulden had written a few words. But what touched me most was the handwriting of Catharine, which I gazed at without reading a word, while my heart beat as if about to burst through my bosom. At last I grew a little calmer and read:

"My Dear Joseph: I write you to tell you I yet love you alone, and that, day by day, I love you more.

"My greatest grief is to know that you are wounded, in a hospital, and that I cannot take care of you. Since the conscripts departed, we have not had a moment's peace of mind. My mother says I am silly to weep night and day, but she weeps as much as I, and her wrath falls heavily on Pinacle, who scarcely now dares come to the market-place. When we heard the battle had taken place, and that thousands of men had fallen, mother ran every morning to the post-office, while I could not move from the house. At last your letter came, thank heaven! to cheer us. We hope now to see you again, but God's will be done.

"Many people talk of peace, but the emperor so loves war, that I fear it is far off.

"Now, Monsieur Goulden wishes to say a few words to you, so I will close. The weather is beautiful here, and the great apple-tree in the garden is full of flowers; I have plucked a few, which I send in this letter. God bless you, Joseph, and farewell!"

"Sit down, Zunnier, and I will read you my sweetheart's letter. You will see whether she is a Margrédel."

"Let me light my pipe first," he answered; and having done so, he added: "Go on, Josephel, but I warn you that I am an old bird, and do not believe all I hear; women are more cunning than we."

Notwithstanding this bit of philosophy, I read Catharine's letter slowly to him. When I had ended, he took it, and for a long time gazed at it dreamily, and then handed it back, saying:

"There! Josephel. She is a good girl, and a sensible one, and will never marry any one but you."

"Yes; you may rely upon her; she will never marry a Passauf. I would rather distrust the emperor than such a girl."

"I have received a bill for one hundred francs. Now for some white wine of Alsace. Let us try to get out."

"That is well thought of," said he, twisting his mustache and putting his pipe in his pocket. "I do not like to mope in a garden when there are taverns outside. We must get permission."

We arose joyfully and went to the hospital, when the letter-carrier, coming out, stopped Zunnier, saying:

"Well, here is something for you," said the other, handing him a little package and a large letter.

Zunnier was stupified, never having received anything from home or from anywhere else. He opened the packet—a box appeared—then the box—and saw the cross of honor. He became pale; his eyes filled with tears, he staggered against a balustrade, and then shouted "Vive l'Empereur!" in such tones that the three halls rang and rang again.

He went away laughing, while we ascended arm-in-arm, to ask permission of the surgeon-major, an old man, who had heard the "Vive l'Empereur!" and demanded gravely:

"Pardon, major; but I am more than usually merry." "I can easily believe you," said Monsieur Tardieu; "you want a pass to the city?"

The surgeon had examined my wound the day before. He took out his portfolio and gave us passes. We sallied forth as proud as kings—Zunnier of his cross, I, of my letter.

XVI.

I walked dreamily through the streets, led by Zunnier, who recognized every corner, and kept repeating:

"There—there is the church of Saint Nicholas; that large building is the university; that on yonder is the Hôtel de Ville."

He seemed to remember every stone, having been there in 1807, before the battle of Friedland, and continued:

"We are the same here as if we were in Metz, or Strasbourg, or any other city in France. The people wish us well. After the campaign of 1806, they used to do all they could for us. The citizens would take three or four of us at a time to dinner with them. They even gave us balls, and called us the heroes of Jena. Let us go in somewhere and see how they will treat us. We named their elector King of Saxony, and gave him a good slice of Poland."

"Hold! Here is the Golden Sheep Brewery. The front is on the other street, but we can enter here. Come!"

I followed him into a narrow, winding passage, which led to an old court, surrounded by rubble walls. To the right was the brewery, and in a corner a great wheel, turned by an enormous dog, which pumped the beer to every story of the house.

The clinking of glasses was heard coming from a room which opened on the Rue de Tilly. The sweet smell of the new March beer filled the air, and Zunnier, with a look of satisfaction, cried:

"Yes, here I came six years ago with Ferré and Rousillon. Poor Rousillon! he left his bones at Smolensk; and Ferré must now be at home in his village, for he lost a leg at Wagram."

At the same time he pushed open the door, and we entered a lofty hall, full of smoke. I saw, through the thick, gray atmosphere, a long row of tables, surrounded by men drinking—the greater number in short coats and little caps, the remainder in the Saxon uniform. They were mostly students, and the oldest of them—a tall, withered-looking man, with a red nose and long flaxen beard, stained with beer—was standing upon a table, reading the gazette aloud. He held the paper in one hand, and in the other a long porcelain pipe. His comrades, with their long, light hair falling upon their shoulders, were listening with the deepest interest; and as we entered, they shouted "Vaterland! Vaterland!"

They touched glasses with the Saxon soldiers, while the tall student bent over to take up his glass, and the round, fat brewer cried:

"Come, come, comrades!" cried Zunnier, "don't disturb yourselves. Go on reading. We do not object to hear the news."

But they did not seem inclined to profit by our invitation, and the reader descended from the table, folding up his paper, which he put in his pocket.

"Yes; it is finished," repeated the others, looking at each other with a peculiar expression.

"Yes; we know it very well," replied Zunnier; "but I like this little hall better. Here I used to come, long ago, with two old comrades, to empty a few glasses in honor of Jena and Auerstaedt. I know this room of old."

"Ah! as you please, as you please," returned the landlord. "Do you wish some March beer?"

The glasses were handed us, and Zunnier, who observed nothing, tried to open a conversation with the students; but they excused themselves, and, one after another, went out. I saw that they hated us, but dared not show it.

The gazette spoke of an armistice, after two new victories at Bautzen and Wurtschen. This armistice commenced on the sixth of June, and a conference was then being held at Prague, in Bohemia, to arrange on terms of peace. All this naturally gave me pleasure. I thought of again seeing home. But Zunnier, with his habit of thinking aloud, filled the hall with his reflections, and interrupted me at every line.

"An armistice!" he cried. "Do we want an armistice, after having beaten those Prussians and Russians three times? We should annihilate them! Would they give us an armistice if they had beaten us? There, Joseph, you see the emperor's character—he is too good. It is his only fault. He did the same thing after Austerlitz, and we had to begin over again. I tell you, he is too good and if he were not so, we should have been masters of Europe."

As he spoke, he looked around as if seeking assent; but the students scowled, and no one replied.

"Come, Joseph," said he; "I know nothing of politics, but I insist that we should give no armistice to those beggars. When they are down, we should keep them there."

After we had paid our reckoning, and were once more in the street, he continued:

"I do not know what was the matter with those people to-day. We must have disturbed them in something."

"It is very possible," I replied. "They certainly did not seem like the good-natured folks you were speaking of."

"No," said he. "The students, long ago, used to pass their time drinking with us. We sang Fanfan la Tulipe and 'King Dagobert' together, which are not political songs, you know. But these fellows are good for nothing."

I knew, afterward, that those students were members of the Tugend-Bund. No wonder they hated Frenchmen!

On returning to the hospital, we learned that we were to go, that same evening, to the barracks of Rosenthal—a sort of depot for wounded, near Lutzen, where the roll was called morning and evening, but where, at all other times, we were at liberty to do as we pleased. We often strolled through the town; but the citizens now slammed their doors in our faces, and the tavern-keepers not only refused to give us credit, but attempted to charge double and triple for what we got. But my comrade could not be cheated. He knew the price of everything as well as any Saxon among them. Often we stood on the bridge and gazed at the thousand branches of the Pleisse and the Elster, glowing red in the light of the setting sun, little thinking that we should one day cross those rivers after losing the bloodiest of battles, and that whole regiments would be submerged in the glittering waters beneath us.

But the ill-feeling of the people toward us was shown in a thousand forms. The day after the conclusion of the armistice, we went together to bathe in the Elster, and Zunnier, seeing a peasant approaching, cried:

Zunnier, mistrusting nothing, walked fifteen or eighteen feet out. He was a good swimmer, but his left arm was yet weak, and the strength of the current carried him away so quickly that he could not even catch the branches of the willows which hung over him; and were it not that he was carried to a ford, where he gained a footing, he would have been swept between two muddy islands, and certainly lost.

The peasant stood to see the effect of his advice. I rushed at him, but he laughed, and ran, quicker than I could follow him, to the city. Zunnier was wild with wrath, and wished to pursue him to Counewitz; but how could we find him among four or five hundred houses?

Returning to Leipsic, we saw joy painted on the countenances of the inhabitants. It did not display itself openly; but the citizens, meeting, would shake hands with an air of huge satisfaction, and the general rejoicing glistened even in the eyes of servants and the poorest workmen.

Zunnier said: "These Germans seem to be merry about something. They do not always look so good-natured."

"Yes," I replied; "their good humor comes from the fine weather and good harvest."

But when we reached the barracks, we found some of our officers at the gate, talking eagerly together, and then we learned the cause of so much joy. The conference at Prague was broken off, and Austria, too, was about to declare war against us, which gave us two hundred thousand more men to take care of.

The day after, twelve hundred wounded were ordered to rejoin their corps. Zunnier was of the number—I accompanied him to the gates. My arm was yet too weak for duty. My existence was them sad enough, for I formed no more close friendships, and when, on the first of October, the old surgeon, Tardieu, gave me my orders to march, telling me I was fully recovered, I felt almost relived.

XVII.

It was about five o'clock in the evening, and we were approaching the village of Risa, when we descried an old mill, with its wooden bridge, over which a bridle-path ran. We struck off from the road and took this path, to make a short cut to the village, when we heard cries and shrieks for help, and, at the same moment, two women, one old, and the other somewhat younger, ran across a garden, dragging two children with them. They were trying to gain a little wood which bordered the road, and, at the same moment, we saw several of our soldiers come out of the mill with sacks, while others came up from a cellar with little casks, which they hastened to place on a cart standing near; still others were driving cows and horses from a stable, while an old man stood at the door, with uplifted hands, as if imprecating Heaven's malison upon them.

"There," cried the quartermaster, who commanded our party, an old soldier named Poitevin, "there are fellows pillaging. We are not far from the army."

"Yes," returned the quartermaster coolly; "it is contrary to discipline, and if the emperor knew of it, they would be shot like dogs."

We crossed the little bridge, and found the thieves crowded around a cask which they had pierced, passing around the cup. This sight roused the quartermaster's indignation, and he cried:

Several turned their heads, but seeing that we were but three, for the rest of our party had gone on, one of them replied:

"Ha! what do you want, old joker? A little of the spoil, I suppose. But you need not curl up your mustaches on that account. Here, drink a drop."

The speaker held out the cup, and the quartermaster took it and drank, looking at me as he did so.

"Well, young man," said he., "will you have some, too? It is famous wine, this."

"Comrades," said the quartermaster, in a tone of gentle reproof and warning, "you know, comrades, you must go gently about it."

"Yes, yes, old fellow," replied a drum-major, with half-closed eyes, and a mocking smile; "do not be alarmed; we will pluck the chicken according to rule. We will take care; we will take care."

The quartermaster said no more, but seemed ashamed on my account. He remained in a meditative mood for some time after we started to overtake our companions, and, at length, said deprecatingly:

"What would you have, young man? War is war. One cannot see himself starving, with food at hand."

He was afraid I would report him; he would have remained with the pillagers but for the fear of being captured. I replied, to relieve his mind:

"Those are probably good fellows, but the sight of a cup of wine makes them forget everything."

At length, about ten o'clock, we saw the bivouac fires, on a gloomy hill-side. Further on, in the plain, a great number of other fires were burning. The night was clear, and as we approached the bivouac, the sentry challenged:

My heart beat, as I thought that, in a few moments, I should again meet my old comrades, if they were yet in the world.

Two men of the guard came forward to reconnoitre us. The commandant of the post, a gray-haired sous-lieutenant, his arm in a sling under his cloak, asked us whence we came, whither we were going, and whether we had met any parties of Cossacks on our route. The quartermaster answered. The lieutenant informed us that Sonham's division had that morning left them, and ordered us to follow him, that he might examine our marching-papers, which we did in silence, passing among the bivouac fires, around which men, covered with dried mud, were sleeping, in groups of twenty. Not one moved.

We arrived at the officers' quarters. It was an old brick-kiln, with an immense roof, resting on posts driven into the ground. A large fire was burning in it, and the air was agreeably warm. Around it soldiers were sleeping, with happy faces, and near the posts stacks of arms shone in the light of the flames. One bronzed old veteran watched alone, seated on the ground, and mending a shoe with a needle and thread.

Then the old soldier, looking at me, placed his hand upon the ground, to show that there was room beside him, and I seated myself. I opened my knapsack, and put on new stockings and shoes which I had brought from Leipsic, after which I felt much better.

"That is easily seen," said he; "you are fat as a beadle. They fed you on chickens down there, while we were eating cow-beef."

I looked around at my sleeping neighbors. He was right; the poor conscripts were mere skin and bone. They were bronzed as veterans, and scarcely seemed able to stand.

"Four months in the hospital!" said he whistling; "what luck! I have just returned from Spain, flattering myself that I was going to meet the Kaiserliks of 1807 once more—sheep, regular sheep—but they have become worse than guerrillas. Things are spoiling."

He said the most of this to himself, without according me much of his attention, all the while sewing his shoe, which from time to time he tried on, to be sure that the sewn part would not hurt his foot. At last he put the thread in his knapsack and the shoe upon his foot, and stretched himself upon a truss of straw.

In the morning I set out again with the quartermaster Poitevin, and three other soldiers of Sonham's division. Our route lay along the bank of the Elbe; the weather was wet and the wind swept fiercely over the river, throwing the spray far on the land.

He had halted suddenly, and stood listening. We could hear nothing but the sighing of the wind through the trees, and the splash of the waves; but his ear was finer than ours.

"They are skirmishing yonder," said he, pointing to a wood on our right. "The enemy may be toward us, and the best thing we can do is to enter the wood and pursue our route cautiously. We can see at the other end of it what is going on; and if the Prussians or Russians are there, we can beat a retreat without their perceiving us."

We all thought the quartermaster was right; and, in my heart, I admired the shrewdness of the old drunkard, for such he was. We kept on toward the wood, Poitevin leading, and the others following, with our pieces cocked. We marched slowly, stopping every hundred paces to listen. The shots grew nearer; they were fired at intervals, and the quartermaster said:

"They are sharp-shooters reconnoitering a body of cavalry, for the firing is all on one side."

It was true. In a few moments we perceived, through the trees, a battalion of French infantry, about to make their soup, and in the distance, on the plain beyond, platoons of Cossacks defiling from one village to another. A few skirmishers along the edge of the wood were firing on them, but they were almost beyond musket-range.

He had good eyes to read the number of a regiment at such a distance. I could only see ragged soldiers with their cheeks and famine-glistening eyes. Their great-coats were twice too large for them, and fell in folds along their bodies like cloaks. I say nothing of the mud; it was everywhere. No wonder the Germans were gleeful, even after our victories.

We went toward a couple of little tents, before which three or four horses were nibbling the scanty grass. I saw Colonel Lorain, who now commanded the third battalion—a tall, thin man, with brown mustaches and a fierce air. He looked at me frowningly, and when I showed my papers, only said:

I started off, thinking that I would recognize some of the Fourth; but, since Lutzen, companies had been so mingled with companies, regiments with regiments, and divisions with divisions, that, on arriving at the camp of the grenadiers, I knew no one. The men seeing me approach, looked distrustfully at me, as if to say:

I was almost ashamed to ask for my company, when a bony veteran, with a nose long and pointed like an eagle's beak, and a worn-out coat hanging from his shoulders, lifting his head, and gazing at me, said quietly:

Then I recognized my poor Zébédé. My appearance seemed to affect him, for, without rising, he squeezed my hand, crying: "Klipfel! here is Joseph!" Another soldier, seated near a pot, turned his head, saying:

This was all my welcome. Misery had made them so selfish that they thought only of themselves. But Zébédé was always good-hearted; he made me sit near him, throwing a glance at the others that commanded respect, and offered me his spoon, which he had fastened to the button-hole of his coat. I thanked him, and produced from my knapsack a dozen sausages, a good loaf of bread, and a flask of eau-de-vie, which I had the foresight to purchase at Risa. I handed a couple of the sausages to Zébédé, who took them with tears in his eyes. I was also going to offer some to the others; but he put his hand on my arm, saying:

We retired from the circle and ate, drinking at the same time; the rest of the soldiers said nothing, but looked wistfully at us. Klipfel, smelling the sausages, turned and said:

"That is all very well," said Zébédé; "but I find meat and drink the best comrades."

"Keep that, Joseph. I have not been so well regaled for more than a month. You shall not lose it."

A half-hour after, the recall was beaten; the skirmishers came in, and Sergeant Pinto, who was among the number, recognized me, and said:

"Well; so you have escaped! But you came back in an evil moment! Things go wrong—wrong!"

The colonel and commandants mounted, and we began moving. The Cossacks withdrew. We marched with arms at will; Zébédé was at my side and related all that passed since Lutzen; the great victories of Bautzen and Wurtzen; the forced marches to overtake the retreating enemy; the march on Berlin; then the armistice, the arrival of the veterans of Spain—men accustomed to pillaging and living on the peasantry.

Unfortunately, at the close of the armistice, all were against us. The country people looked on us with horror; they cut the bridges down, and kept the Russians and Prussians informed of all our movements. It rained almost constantly, and the day of the battle of Dresden, it fell so heavily that the emperor's hat hung down upon his shoulders. But when victorious, we only laughed at these things. Zébédé told me all this in detail; how after the victory at Dresden, General Vandamme, who was to cut off the retreat of the Austrians, had penetrated to Kulm in his ardor; and how those whom we had beaten the day before fell upon him on all sides, front, flank, and rear, and captured him and several other generals, utterly destroying his corps d'armée. Two days before, owing to a false movement of Marshal Macdonald, the enemy had surprised our division, and the fifth, sixth, and eleventh corps on the heights of Luwenberg, and in the mélée Zébédé received two blows from the butt of a grenadier's musket, and was thrown into the river Katzbach. Luckily he seized the over-hanging branch of a tree, and managed to regain the bank. He told me how all that night, despite the blood that flowed from his nose and ears, he had marched to the village of Goldberg, almost dead with hunger, fatigue, and his wounds, and how a joiner had taken pity upon him and given him bread, onions, and water. He told me how, on the day following, they had marched across the fields, each one taking his own course, without orders, because the marshals, generals, and all mounted officers had fled as far as possible, in the fear of being captured. He assured me that fifty hussars could have captured them, one after another; but that by good fortune, Blücher could not cross the river, so that they finally rallied at Wolda, and further on at Buntzlau their officers met them, surprised at yet having troops to lead. He told me how Marshal Oudinot and Marshal Ney had been beaten; the first at Gross-Beeren, and the other at Dennewitz.

We were between three armies, who were uniting to crush us; that of the north, commanded by Bernadotte; that of Silesia, commanded by Blücher; and the army of Bohemia, commanded by Schwartzenberg. We marched in turn against each of them; they feared the emperor and retreated before us; but we could not be at once in Silesia and Bohemia, so march followed march, and countermarch, countermarch. All the men asked was to fight; they wanted their misery to end. A sort of guerrilla, named Thielmann, raised the peasantry against us, and the Bavarians and Wurtemburgers declared against us. We had all Europe on our hands.

On the fourteenth of October, our battalion was detached to reconnoitre the village of Aken. The enemy were in force there and received us with a scattering artillery fire, and we remained all night without being able to light a fire, on account of the pouring rain. The next day we set out to rejoin our division by forced marches. Every one said, I know not why:

Sergeant Pinto declared that he felt the emperor in the air. I felt nothing, but I knew that we were marching on Leipsic. The night following, the weather cleared up a little, millions of stars shone out, and we still kept on. The next day, about ten o'clock, near a little village whose name I cannot recollect, we were ordered to halt, and then we heard a trembling in the air. The colonel and Sergeant Pinto said:

"The battle has begun!" and at the same moment, the colonel, waving his sword, cried:

We started at a run, and half an hour after saw, at a few thousand paces ahead, a long column, in which followed artillery, cavalry, and infantry, one upon the other; behind us, on the road to Duben, we saw another, all pushing forward at their utmost speed. Regiments were even hastening across the fields.

At the end of the road we could see the two spires of the churches of Saint Nicholas and Saint Thomas in Leipsic, rising amidst great clouds of smoke through which broad flashes were darting. The noise increased; we were yet more than a league from the city, but were forced to almost shout to hear each other, and men gazed around, pale as death, seeming by their looks to say:

Sergeant Pinto cried that it was worse than Eylau. He laughed no more, nor did Zébédé; but on, on we rushed, officers incessantly urging us forward. We seemed to grow delirious; the love of country was indeed striving within us, but still greater was the furious eagerness for the fight.

At eleven o'clock, we descried the battle-field, about a league in front of Leipsic. We saw the steeples and roofs of the city crowded with people, and the old ramparts on which I had walked so often, thinking of Catharine. Opposite us, twelve or fifteen hundred yards distant, two regiments of red lancers were drawn up, and a little to the left, two or three regiments of chasseurs-à-cheval, and between them filed the long column from Duben. Further on, along a slope, were the divisions Ricard, Dombrowski, Sonham, and several others, with their rear to the city; and far behind, on a hill, around one of those old farm-houses with flat roofs and immense outlying sheds, so often seen in that country, glittered the brilliant uniforms of the staff.

It was the army of reserve, commanded by Ney. His left wing communicated with Marmont, who was posted on the road to Halle, and his right with the grand army, commanded by the emperor in person. In this manner our troops formed an immense circle around Leipsic; and the enemy, arriving from all points, sought to join their divisions so as to form a yet larger circle around us, and to inclose us in Leipsic as in a trap.

While we waited thus, three fearful battles were going on at once; one against the Austrians and Russians at Wachau; another against the Prussians at Mockern on the road to Halle; and the third on the road to Lutzen, to defend the bridge of Lindenau, attacked by General Giulay.

XVIII.

The battalion was commencing to descend the hill, opposite Leipsic, when we saw a staff-officer crossing the plain beneath, and coming at full gallop toward us. In two minutes he was with us; Colonel Lorain had spurred forward to meet him; they exchanged a few words, and the officer returned. Hundreds of others were rushing over the plain in the same manner, bearing orders.

We took the direction of a wood, which skirts the Duben road some half a league. Once at its borders, we were ordered to re-prime our guns, and the battalion was deployed through the wood as skirmishers. We advanced, twenty-five paces apart, and each of us kept his eyes well opened, as may be imagined. Every minute Sergeant Pinto would cry out:

But he did not need to warn us; each one hastened to take his post behind a stout tree, to reconnoitre well before proceeding to another. We kept on in this manner some ten minutes, and, as we saw nothing, began to grow confident, when suddenly, one, two, three shots rang out. Then they came from all sides, and rattled from end to end of our line. At the same instant I saw my comrade on the left fall, trying, as he sank to the earth, to support himself by the trunk of the tree behind which he was standing. This roused me. I looked to the right and saw, fifty or sixty paces off, an old Prussian soldier, with his long red mustaches covering the lock of his piece; he was aiming deliberately at me. I fell at once to the ground, and at the same moment heard the report. It was a close escape, for the comb, brush, and handkerchief in my shako were broken and torn by the bullet. A cold shiver ran through me.

"Well done! a miss is as good as a mile!" cried the old sergeant, starting forward at a run, and I, who had no wish to remain longer in such a place, followed with right good-will.

Lieutenant Bretonville, waving his sabre, cried, "Forward!" while, to the right, the firing still continued. We soon arrived at a clearing, where lay five or six trunks of felled trees, but not one standing, that might serve us for a cover. Nevertheless, five or six of our men advanced boldly, when the sergeant called out:

Scarcely had he spoken, when a dozen bullets whistled through the branches, and, at the same time, a number of Prussians rose, and plunged deeper into the forest opposite.

But the bullet in my shako had rendered me cautious; it seemed as if I could almost see through the trees, and, as the sergeant started forth into the clearing, I held his arm, pointing out to him the muzzle of a musket peeping out from a bush, not a hundred paces before us. The others, clustering around, saw it too, and Pinto whispered,

"Stay, Bertha; remain here, and do not lose sight of him, while we turn the position."

They set off to the right and left, and I, behind my tree, my piece at my shoulder, waited like a hunter for his game. At the end of two or three minutes, the Prussian, hearing nothing, rose slowly. He was quite a boy, with little blonde mustaches, and a tall, slight, but well-knit figure. I could have killed him as he stood, but the thought of thus slaying a defenceless man froze my blood. Suddenly he saw me, and bounded aside. Then I fired, and breathed more freely as I saw him running, like a stag, toward the wood.

At the same moment, five or six reports rang out to the right and left; the sergeant, Zébédé, Klipfel, and the rest appeared, and a hundred paces further on, we found the young Prussian upon the ground, blood gushing from his mouth. He gazed at us with a scared expression, raising his arms, as if to parry bayonet-thrusts, but the sergeant called gleefully to him:

No one offered to injure him further but Klipfel took a beautiful pipe, which was hanging out of his pocket, saying:

"Fusilier Klipfel!" cried Pinto indignantly, "will you be good enough to put back that pipe? Leave it to the Cossacks to rob the wounded! A French soldier knows only honor!"

Klipfel threw down the pipe, and we departed, not one caring to look back at the wounded Prussian. We arrived at the edge of the forest, outside which, among tufted bushes, the Prussians we pursued had taken refuge. We saw them rise to fire upon us, but they immediately lay down again. We might have remained there tranquilly, since we had orders to occupy the wood, and the shots of the Prussians could not hurt us, protected as we were by the trees. On the other side of the slope we heard a terrific battle going on; the thunder of cannon was increasing, it filled the air with one continuous roar. But our officers held a council, and decided that the bushes were part of the forest, and that the Prussians must be driven from them. This determination cost many a life.

We received orders, then, to drive in the enemy's tirailleurs, and as they fired as we came on, we started at a run, so as to be upon them before they could reload. Our officers ran, also, full of ardor. We thought the bushes ended at the top of the hill, and that then we could sweep off the Prussians by dozens. But scarcely had we arrived, out of breath, upon the ridge, when old Pinto cried:

I looked up, and saw the Colbacks rushing down upon us like a tempest. Scarcely had I seen them, when I began to spring down the hill, going, I verily believe, in spite of weariness and my knapsack, fifteen feet at a bound. I saw before me, Pinto, Zébédé, and the others, making their best speed. Behind, on came the hussars, their officers shouting orders in German, their scabbards clanking and horses neighing. The earth shook beneath them.

I took the shortest road to the wood, and had almost reached it, when I came upon one of the trenches where the peasants were in the habit of digging clay for their houses. It was more than twenty feet wide, and forty or fifty long, and the rain had made the sides very slippery; but as I heard the very breathing of the horses behind me, without thinking of aught else, I sprang forward, and fell upon my face; another fusilier of my company was already there. We arose as soon as we could, and at the same instant two hussars glided down the slippery side of the trench. The first, cursing like a fiend, aimed a sabre-stroke at my poor comrade's head, but as he rose in his stirrups to give force to the blow, I buried my bayonet in his side, while the other brought down his blade upon my shoulder with such force, that, were it not for my epaulette, I believe that I had been well-nigh cloven in two. Then he lunged, but as his point touched my breast, a bullet from above crashed through his skull. I looked around, and saw one of our men, up to his knees in the clay. He had heard the oaths of the hussars and the neighing of the horses, and had come to the edge of the trench to see what was going on.

I had not strength to reply, but stood trembling like an aspen leaf. He unfixed his bayonet, and stretched the muzzle of his piece to me to help me out. Then I squeezed his hand, saying:

He told me that his name was Jean Pierre Vincent. I have often since thought that I should be only too happy to render that man any service in my power; but two days after, the second battle of Leipsic took place; then the retreat from Hanau began, and I never saw him again.

"We have escaped once more, Joseph, and now we are the only Phalsbourg men in the battalion. Klipfel was sabred by the hussars."

"Yes; he received over twenty wounds, and kept calling to me for aid." Then, after a moment's pause, he added, "O Joseph! it is terrible to hear the companion of your childhood calling for help, and not be able to give it! But they were too many. They surrounded him on ail sides."

The thoughts of home rushed upon both our minds. I thought I could see grandmother Klipfel when she would learn the news, and this made me think too of Catharine.

From the time of the charge of the hussars until night, the battalion remained in the same position, skirmishing with the Prussians. We kept them from occupying the wood; but they prevented us from ascending to the ridge. The next day we knew why. The hill commanded the entire course of the Partha, and the fierce cannonade we heard came from Dombrowski's division, which was attacking the Prussian left wing, in order to aid General Marmont at Mockern, where twenty thousand French, posted in a ravine, were holding eighty thousand of Blücher's troops in check; while toward Wachau a hundred and fifteen thousand French were engaged with two hundred thousand Austrians and Russians. More than fifteen hundred cannon were thundering at once. Our poor little fusilade was like the humming of a bee in a storm, and we sometimes ceased firing, on both sides, to listen. It seemed as if some supernatural, infernal battle were going on; the air was filled with smoke; the earth trembled beneath our feet; old soldiers like Pinto declared they had never seen anything like it.

About six o'clock, a staff-officer brought orders to Colonel Lorain, and immediately after a retreat was sounded. The battalion had lost sixty men.

It was night when we left the forest, and on the banks of the Partha among caissons, wagons, retreating divisions, ambulances filled with wounded, all defiling over the two bridges—we had to wait more than two hours for our turn to cross. The heavens were black; the artillery still growled afar off, but the three battles were ended. We heard that we had beaten the Austrians and the Russians at Wachau, on the other side of Leipsic; but our men returning from Mockern were downcast and gloomy; not a voice cried Vive l'Empereur! as after a victory.

Once on the other side of the river, we marched on amid the din of the retreat from Mockern, and at length reached a burial-ground, where we were ordered to stack arms and break ranks.

By this time the sky had cleared, and I recognized Schoenfeld in the moonlight. How often had I eaten bread and drank white wine with Zunnier there at the Golden Sheaf when the sun shone brightly and the leaves were green around? But those times had passed! I sat against the cemetery wall, and at length fell asleep. About three o'clock in the morning, I was awakened.

It was Zébédé. "Joseph," said he, "come to the fire. If you remain here, you run the risk of catching the fever."

I arose, sick with fatigue and suffering. A fine rain filled the air. My comrade drew me toward the fire which smoked in the drizzling atmosphere; it seemed to give out no heat; but Zébédé having made me drink a draught of brandy, I felt at least less cold, and gazed at the bivouac fires on the other side of the Partha.

"Yes," I replied; "and poor Klipfel is there too, but he no longer feels the cold."

My teeth chattered. These words saddened us both. A few moments after, Zébédé resumed:

"Do you remember, Joseph, the black ribbon he wore the day of the conscription, and how he cried that we were all condemned to death, like those who had gone to Russia?"

I thought how Pinacle had held out the black ribbon for me; and the remembrance, together with the cold, which seemed to freeze the very marrow in our bones, made me shudder. I thought Pinacle was right; that I had seen the last of home, and I cursed those who had forced me from it.

At day-break, wagons arrived with food and brandy for us. The rain had ceased; we made soup, but nothing could warm me; I had caught the fever. I was not the only one in the battalion in that condition; three fourths of the men were suffering from it; and, for a month before, those who could no longer march had lain down by the roadside weeping and calling upon their mothers like little children. Hunger, forced marches, the rain, and grief had done their work, and happy was it for the parents that they could not see the miserable end of their cherished sons.

As the light increased, we saw to the left, on the other side of the river, burnt villages, heaps of dead, abandoned wagons, and broken cannon, stretching as far as the eye could reach. It was worse than at Lutzen. We saw the Prussians deploy, and advance their thousands over the battle-field. They were to join with the Russians and Austrians and close the great circle around us, and we could not prevent them, especially as Bernadotte and the Russian General Benningsen had come up with twenty thousand fresh troops. Thus, after fighting three battles in one day, were we, only one hundred thousand strong, seemingly about to be entrapped in the midst of three hundred thousand bayonets, not to speak of fifty thousand horse and twelve hundred cannon.

From Schoenfeld, the battalion started to rejoin the division at Kohlgarten. All the roads were lined with slow-moving ambulances, filled with wounded; all the wagons of the country around had been impressed for this service; and, in the intervals between them, marched hundreds of poor fellows with their arms in slings, or their heads bandaged—pale, crestfallen, half dead.

We made our way, with a thousand difficulties, through this mass, when, near Kohlgarten, twenty hussars, galloping at full speed, and with levelled pistols, drove back the crowd, right and left, into the fields, shouting as they pressed on:

The battalion drew up, and presented arms; and a few moments after, the grenadiers-à-cheval of the guard—veritable giants, with their great boots, their immense bear-skin hats, descending to their shoulders and only allowing their mustaches, nose, and eyes to remain visible—passed at a gallop. Our men looked joyfully at them, glad that such robust warriors were on our side.

Scarcely had they passed, when the staff tore after. Imagine a hundred and fifty to two hundred marshals, generals, and other superior officers, mounted on magnificent steeds, and so covered with embroidery that the color of their uniforms was scarcely visible; some tall, thin, and haughty; others short, thick-set, and red-faced; others again young and handsome, sitting like statues in their saddles; all with eager look and flashing eyes. It was a magnificent and terrible sight. But the most striking figure among those captains, who for twenty years had made Europe tremble, was Napoleon himself, with his old hat and gray over-coat; his large, determined chin and neck buried between his shoulders. All shouted, "Vive l'Empereur!" but he heard nothing of it. He paid no more attention to us than to the drizzling rain which filled the air, but gazed with contracted brows at the Prussian army stretching along the Partha to join the Austrians.

"I did," I replied; "I saw him well, and I will remember the sight all my life."

"It is strange," said my comrade; "he does not seem to be pleased. At Wurzen, the day after the battle, he seemed rejoiced to hear our "Vive l'Empereur!' and the generals all wore merry faces too. To-day they seem savage, and nevertheless the captain said that we bore off the victory on the other side of Leipsic."

Others thought the same thing without speaking of it, but there was a growing uneasiness among all.

We found the regiment bivouacked near Kohlgarten. In every direction camp-fires were rolling their smoke to the sky. A drizzling rain continued to fall, and the men, seated on their knapsacks around the fires, seemed depressed and gloomy. The officers formed groups of their own. On all sides it was whispered that such a war had never before been seen; it was one of extermination; that it did not help us to defeat the enemy, for they only desired to kill us off, knowing that they had four or five times our number of men, and would finally remain masters.

Toward evening of the next day, we discovered the army of the north on the plateau of Breitenfeld. This was sixty thousand more men for the enemy. I can yet hear the maledictions levelled at Bernadotte—the cries of indignation of those who knew him as a simple officer in the army of the republic, who cried out that he owed us all—that we made him a king with our blood, and that he now came to give us the finishing blow.

That night, as we drew our lines still closer around Leipsic, I gazed at the circle of fires which surrounded us, and it seemed as if the whole world was bent on our extermination. But I remembered that we had the honor of bearing the name of Frenchmen, and must conquer or die.

The Old Roman World.
[Footnote 67]

[Footnote 67: The Old Roman World:
the Grandeur and Failure of its Civilization.
By John Lord, LL.D.
New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1867.]

Did Doctor Lord dream that the world would pronounce him immortal for having formed an ill-assorted museum of effete ideas gathered from all the kingdoms of thought? While he was writing the sheets of The Old Roman World, was he thinking of a political world, or an ecclesiastical world, or a literary world, or a military world, or conjuring up a visionary world? Did he base his claims to an imperishable name on his faculty to extract philosophical truth from historical facts, or on his powers of describing facts and communicating truths so as to be useful to his fellow-man, or on his irrepressible fluency in saying again and again, what had been better said again and again by others before? Did he intend to write a book; or are the sixteen chapters of his volume sixteen independent and unrelated pamphlets, or sixteen stump speeches, or sixteen lectures, or sixteen spiritualistic effusions in a meandering mood of mind?

Did he write to instruct the student, or amuse the indolent, or delight the world, or add to the lore of the learned? Did he ever read, in the original languages, the historians, the philosophers, the critics, the poets, the scientific writers on whose minds and merits he wrote; or has he seen them only as in a mirror, by means of encyclopedian dissertations, hand-books, and such second-hand depositories? Did he think that the world would regard his compilations as a faithful reflector of ancient minds and ancient life?

There is, however, in Dr. Lord's Old Roman World food for thought. No one denies the importance of the high and momentous questions connected with the Roman name. It is an unquestionable fact that, in the history of the human race, the Romans occupy the most prominent position. To the eyes of the historian, the Roman world is, amongst the nations of bygone centuries, what, to the eyes of the astronomer, the sun is amongst the heavenly bodies. The generative causes of that outshining social edifice have occupied the most splendid intellects in past ages, and have been analyzed anew in our day, according to his generalization, by Dr. Lord. To his mind it seems that the nations of the earth were welded into one body by the superior military mechanism of the Romans, and that the impaired efficiency of this military machinery, together with a certain mysterious fatality, produced the disintegration of the Roman empire, by destroying the cohesive qualities of Roman rule. Such is the pervading idea of his chapters. We know that vast empires have been born of the sword; but we have yet to learn that an empire embracing the nations, religions, and languages of the earth, could have been founded on, and conserved for centuries by, military mechanism. The Romans, like Attila, or Genghis Khan, or Alexander, or Sesostris, might have gone forth, and, either by bravery, or superior tactics, or vast levied armies, have overrun the nations of the earth; but military mechanism could never have raised and sustained through a long lapse of ages a mighty empire built on vanquished peoples. {752} And yet Rome not only conquered and incorporated independent races, but glued them to the centre Rome; so much so, that they lost animosity, language, institutions, and nationality to become Romans. Rome not only romanized Italy, but italianized the then known world. In the days of Hadrian and Trajan, the waves of the Mediterranean knew no lord but the Roman; from the margin of those seas were wafted the wealth and the produce of the world toward Rome; and far beyond that margin, through hundreds of miles, the genius and power of Rome were transforming the nations, building roads and palaces, founding cities, subdividing provinces, spreading the Latin language, and stamping the mind of Latium on the human race. From the Padus to Japugium the names of the Italian tribes were merged into the name of Rome. The men of Mesraim bowed before the Roman eagle, and saw the traditions of two thousand years vanish away before the institutions of Rome. The Asiatic cities renounced their pride of birth, and Greece yielded up a rich heritage of literary and military glory. The fiery valor of the Gauls and the martial memories of western nations were surmounted by the unconquerable energy of the Roman mind. To Rome the known nations of the world became as handmaids, and paid homage through a dozen generations. Whatever had been great in the world, whatever powerful, whatever beautiful, whatever renowned, whatever ennobling, was swallowed up in the mighty name of Rome. And when, amid the upheaving of humanity and the undulations of races, Rome sank as a ship in a troubled ocean, her spirit lived to elevate the Italian, the Frank, the Spaniard, the Norman, to be the princes of the families of mankind. Could military mechanism have accomplished such results? Could military mechanism, when it was no more, possess a renovating influence? Does not Sallust assert the superiority of the Gauls to the Romans in war? Besides, it is a questionable point whether the military systems of the Greeks are not preferable to the war tactics of the Romans. The Thessalian cavalry, and the Macedonian phalanx with its adaptability to evolutions, can stand a strict critical comparison with the Roman equites and Roman legion. The variety of movements in the phalanx, despite its inflexible and inseparable character, may well compensate for the individual and displayed energy of the Roman combination. That Polybius judges the mechanism of the Roman superior to that of the Greek, may be ascribable to the fact that he preferred attributing the subjugation of his countrymen, not to a superiority of valor, but of military manoeuvres. Does any one suppose that the army of Pompey, twice as numerous as that of Caesar, was worsted through the defect of theoretic military mechanism, rather than through the deficiency of the qualities which make a soldier? If any one will take the trouble of writing, in parallel columns, the organization, the sub-organizations, the war habiliments, the aggressive and defensive weapons, the laws of army management in sieges, in march, in battle, and in the tent, as they existed in Italy and Greece, we would leave to his candid judgment the decision on the speculative excellence of Grecian and Roman war systems, considered as a whole. And on the sea, the Romans were tyros when the Greeks had attained considerable perfection. The Romans defeated the Carthaginians, not on a system indigenously reared on the waters of Latium, but with a fleet formed after the fashion of an inimical craft wrecked on the Italian shore. {753} In the progressive days of Rome, the nomenclature of the parts and naval acts of a Roman vessel was suggested by, or adopted from, the preexisting terminology of Greece. What thence? Do we depreciate the military mechanism of Rome? By no means. But we unhesitatingly object to placing it as the primary cause of the elevation of Rome to the pinnacle of power. Where Doctor Lord placed Roman military mechanism, he should have mentioned Roman character and Roman institutions. In no place did character and institutions more powerfully concur to elevate the individual than in the city of old Rome, in the state of Latium, on the banks of the Tiber. The kings imparted a multifold and vigorous development to the martial, the religious, the aesthetical, the governmental, the utilitarian tendencies of the people. These fountains of grandeur poured their united streams of glory during the five centuries of the republic into a magnificent reservoir, to empty which there was demanded the lapse of five hundred years of enfeebling despotism. It would be long to trace the single developments. But we can see, and might explain by facts that, in as far as Rome incorporated with an equalization other powers, so far did she strengthen and aggrandize herself; whereas, incorporations subject to inequality were co-causes of her destruction. In the books of the Machabees we see that the Jews, in their emergency, called in the Romans as the justest amongst the Gentiles. In his preface Livy says: "Caeterum aut me amor negotii suscepti fallit, aut nulla unquam respublica nec major, nec sanctior, nec bonis exemplis ditior fuit; nec in quam tam serae avaritia luxuriaque immigraverint: nec ubi tantus tamdiuque paupertati ac parsimoniae honos fuerit: adeo quanto rerum minus tanto minus cupiditatis erat. Nuper divitiae avaritiam at abundantes voluptates desiderium per luxum atque libidinem pereundi perdendique omnia invexere." It is always safer to accuse those that are dead than those with whom we live; and surely, the historian that did not dread to attack the living, would not have failed to arraign the dead, had the dead deserved it. The expulsion and cause of expelling Tarquin, consecrated an individual self-respect which evermore remained an important element in the Roman character. This self-respect is the bulwark of individual freedom, and the most indestructible foundation of a social edifice. From it arose the acquisition by the populace of the jus suffragii, jus commercii, jus connubii, jus honorum. It was the mine which blew up, first, the patricians, and then the nobles. Where did Dr. Lord learn that patricians and nobles are synonymous terms? This self-respect imparted fortitude to the soldier, wisdom to the statesman, honor to the merchant. The individual was clothed with the majesty of his country. To uphold that majesty was the first duty of the Roman. Allied with self-respect, unchangeableness of purpose appears as a trait of the Roman character. Athens might have been a Rome, had the Athenian spirit the persistency of the Roman. There was, perhaps, no formative element of the Roman character so prominent as the practical common sense which made them learners in all the departments of life. The Romans admitted the perfectibility of their institutions and practices, so as to adopt from foreigners whatever they deemed an improvement. {754} The Spartan loved his country as intensely and as devotedly as the Roman, but Sparta, rejecting the eclecticism of Rome, remained cramped and undeveloped in its exclusiveness. These qualities of the mind, together with a physical strength, such as appears from the saying of Pyrrhus, "Had I the Romans for soldiers, I could conquer the world," led Rome along the highway of glory and power.

It would be folly to follow Dr. Lord through the many subjects on which he speaks. We take the first chapter of his work as a specimen of the wild, thoughtless, rambling manner in which he writes. It is headed "The Conquests of the Romans;" but in it one finds a paragraph on "the lawfulness of war," a paragraph on "the evils of war," a few pages on "Providence," a disquisition on the immediate and ultimate consequences of the Crusades, a paragraph on Providence again, something on the aspirations of the South, a paragraph to show "how petty legends indicate the existence of great virtues," a paragraph to show "how petty wars with neighboring states develop patriotism," something on morals and Cato, whom he characterizes as "a hard, narrow statesman," a chronicon Romanum, the history of the helepolis, a paragraph to show the necessity for the empire. Would any one imagine that the same man wrote of Rome under the emperors the following passages: "The real (page 13) grandeur of Rome is associated with the emperors. Great works of art appear, and they become historical. The city is changed from brick to marble, and palaces, and theatres, and temples become colossal. There are more marble busts than living men. A liberal patronage is extended to artists. Medicine, law, and science flourish. … The highest state of prosperity is reached that the ancient world knew." Again "Rome (p. 69) yields her liberties, and imperial despotism begins its reign—hard, immovable, resolute— under which genius is crushed. Empire is added, but prosperity is undermined. The machinery is perfect, but life is fled." Dr. Lord tells us that he loves to ponder on the sacred geese, but we would respectfully direct his pondering to the inconsistencies, contradictions, and false pronouncements with which his volume teems. He considers the Crusades the worst wars in history, uncalled for, unscrupulous, fanatical; but, though they were uncalled for, unscrupulous, and fanatical, he styles Bernard, Urban, Philip, and Richard, great men, far-sighted statesmen, and asserts that "the hand which guided that warfare between Europe and Asia was the hand that led the Israelites out of Egypt across the Red Sea;" and those wars which he pronounces worst he declares to have developed the resources of Europe, built free cities, opened the horizon of knowledge, and given a new stimulus to all the energies of the European nations. There are few who will agree with Dr. Lord when he says that the Romans "despised literature, art, philosophy, agriculture, and even luxury when they were making their grand conquests." He need only read his own description of the heroes who made the conquests to see the falsehood of his statements. There are few, too, who will say that he describes the characters of the ancients with accuracy. We would especially notice his defect of appreciation in the case of Homer, of Sophocles, and of the Latin historians. The grand excellence of Homer remains unseen by him. {755} The raising up of hero after and over hero, and the transference of a collective glory to Achilles may be said to constitute the greatest marvel of the Iliad. This generates the oneness which has been noticed and praised by all the ancients. The Doctor praises extravagantly Virgil's epic, but every candid reader will confess that he feels unconcerned, and, it may be, weary, as he wades though the last half of the AEneid, whereas he becomes more and more enraptured as he advances through the books of the Iliad. Diomedes is as grand a warrior as AEneas, and we doubt very much whether Virgil could have raised a higher model than AEneas, whereas Homer has worked the climax through four or five to Achilles. Who believes, or has believed, that Demosthenes' Philippics are more brilliant than his De Corona? To us Dr. Lord seems, in judging of the ancients, to have acted as a compiler rather than to stand boldly before the extant originals and pronounce his own judgment. When he does speak for himself, he seems to be more anxious to make himself singular than to see and tell the truth with accuracy. Speaking of "the solitary grandeur of the Jewish muse and the mythological myths of the ante-Homeric songsters," he looks rather in the light of a foolish fool than a serious writer communicating truth to a criticising world.

It is curious, touchy, and, we might say, laughable, to read over Dr. Lord's notions of the connection of the old Roman world with the church. Bossuet's idea of the old Roman empire being an instrument in the hands of God to propagate Christianity, has a deep fascination for our author; but Bossuet never gets the credit of it. We err very much if, in writing The Old Roman World, Dr. Lord did not intend to elaborate this conception in a work which the world would recognize as the rival of Gibbon's Decline and Fall. How does he do it? He discovers that there had existed an ineffable fatalism, according to which the Roman empire was doomed to die. What was old and heathen should disappear, that what was new and Christian might arise. The fading away of the Roman reign was unworthy to be compared with the glories about to be manifested. What were they? Were they the beauties of a grand society whose teaching authority as to the things of eternity was to be the Holy Spirit, whose head and sanctifier was to be Christ—of a society to be sustained by the hand of God, elevated above all societies, extended and visible through the world such as Bossuet conceived? Dr. Lord opines that, when Christianity is embraced by all, it is corrupted, and may be said to be dead except with a few chosen spirits; and when Christianity is embraced only by a few and is pure, it is valueless for the mass of mankind, being limited and uninfluential. On either horn of the dilemma, Christianity may be regarded as an unimportant and unprofitable school for the multitude. Yet he says that the world marches on in Christian progress. There are always some revivalists, some believers, as the Puritans, in a pure and personal God; and Providence, which "grandly and mournfully" eliminates the Roman world, consoles the human race by casting up, here and there, some select ones, some pure ones, some godly ones. But, if Dr. Lord merely wished to act the part of a noonday somnambulist or a dreamy rhapsodist, we would fain permit him to revel undisturbed in his reveries. We have, however, a right, as Catholics, to object to misrepresentations of Catholic doctrine. There are many honest and righteous Protestant minds whose vision may become jaundiced by the assertions of this writer. {756} Where has he learned that the Virgin has been made the object of absolute worship? When he speaks of ceremonies, and festivals, and pomps, he ought to look upon them as those do who use them. We have always been at a loss to understand what special enmity some people have against a special sense. If the senses are channels for communicating thought, why decry the legitimate use of any one of them performing its own function? Why instruct through the ear and not through the eye? Does not a map surpass all language in communicating geographical knowledge? Logically, one ought to praise God through the intuition of spirit vis-a-vis spirit and disown corporeal agents, eyes, tongue, ears, hands, physical actions; or recognize all, provided they be means of communicating thought. There is not and there never has been in the church, any imposing altar typical of Jewish sacrifices. As to the monks, either Lord admits the truth of what are called evangelical counsels, or he does not; if he does, he should not be at war with the monks for actuating what is true; if he does not, how does he get rid of the texts of the Bible which contain them? Did the monks effect nothing for the good of humanity? Were all the monks in pursuit of a purely contemplative life? Were there no teachers, no benefactors of the poor, no cultivators of deserts, and woods, and wildernesses amongst them? Were there no founders of cities, no evangelizers of savages? Surely, the disciples of Columbanus, of Benedict, of Basil, deserve something better than the following turgid rigmarole of a visionary fanfaron: "Monastic life (p. 559) ripened also in a grand system of penance and expiatory rights, such as characterized oriental asceticism. Armies of monks retired to gloomy and isolated places, and abandoned themselves to rhapsodies, and fastings, and self-expiations in opposition to the grand doctrine of Christ's expiation. They despaired of society and abandoned the world to its fate—a dismal and fanatical set of men overlooking the practical aims of life. They lived more like beasts and savages than enlightened Christians—wild, fierce, solitary, superstitious, ignorant, fanatical, filthy, clothed in rags, eating the coarsest food, practising gloomy austerities, introducing a false standard of virtue, regardless of the comforts of civilization, and careless of those great interests which were entrusted to them to guard.

The monks and hermits sought to save themselves by climbing to heaven by the same ladder that had been sought by the soofis and fakirs, which delusion had an immense influence in undermining the doctrines of grace. Christianity was fast merging itself into an oriental theosophy." It is a sad thing to see, and a tormenting thing to have to follow, through over six hundred pages, a man, rushing madly from subject to subject. We have no interest, except in the cause of truth and right, to censure Dr. Lord; and could we fairly, in the capacity of critic, have awarded him praise, we should have, without reluctance, and with warmth, performed the task. We should say that he must have labored long to compile his work; but if anything distinguishes that work, it is an unlikeness to the sources from which it is presumed to have been gotten up. The ancients conceived of a whole, and elaborated the natural component parts to form that whole; in the work before us the formative materials produce as grotesque a union as that in the minotaur, or centaur, or gorgon, or chimaera, or hydra, or sphinx. In the ancients, we are pleased with a modesty which dreads alike the overstatement or the withholding of the truth; Dr. Lord astounds us with an unblushing and unthinking recklessness of assertion. In presenting their thoughts to the world, the Greeks and Romans were scrupulous down to the collocation of a particle; Dr. Lord's production is overgrown with expletives, ambiguities, redundancies, and repetitions. To any one accustomed to gaze on the chaste, crystal, and refreshing pages of classic lore, his volume is an unendurable eyesore.

The Divine Loadstone.

       "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth,
       will draw all things to myself."


                   The Disciple.

  "Ah me! what doth my feet restrain,
     That I thy cross behold—
     A loadstone all divine—
   Drawing men's hearts with mystic chain
     As misers lured by gold,
     And yet it draws not mine?"


                   The Master.

  "My word is very truth, my son;
     All hearts to me should freely run;
     And if I draw not thee
       As sweetly as the rest,
   'Tis thou who wouldst the loadstone be,
   And draw the hearts of men to thee—
     Their love doth mine contest."


                   The Disciple.

  "Nay, Lord; 'tis only for thy heart I pine."


                   The Master.

  "Say'st so? Then give me, also, all of thine."

Translated From The German.

The Rival Composers.

Late one afternoon, in the autumn of the year 1779, a gentleman, walking in the garden of the Tuileries, was observed by the guard near the gate of the palace private grounds, gesticulating in a manner to excite suspicion. He was plainly dressed, and advanced in years. When the sentinel saw him, after walking briskly to and fro, and muttering half aloud, stop and lift his hand in a threatening manner toward the royal abode, he promptly arrested him. Calling two gens d'armes, he put the suspected man, supposed guilty of designs against the king, into their hands, to be conveyed to prison.

At the gate they met a richly gilded open carriage, in which sat two ladies, with a child and nurse. The taller of the ladies wore a hat of dark velvet, with drooping plumes, and a mantle of the same, with a flowing dress of satin, the sleeves trimmed with rich lace. The soldiers stopped to salute the young Queen Marie Antoinette, and the prisoner removed his hat and bowed low. At the same instant the lady leaned from the carriage, exclaiming, "Ah! Master Gluck!"

The queen laughed heartily when she heard her old music-master had just been arrested for disloyal practices near the palace; when he was only declaiming a passionate recitative out of his new opera! She insisted on his entering the carriage and going to the palace with her; while the astonished guards went to report their mistake.

Not unfrequently had the celebrated composer been the guest of the royal lady. He was wont to visit her in the garden of the Trianon, talking German with her, and exchanging reminiscences of Vienna. When the opera-house in Paris had resounded with the applause called forth by the representation of one of his operas, and he was sent for to the royal box, the queen's own hand had crowned him with the chaplet his genius had won.

At this period the music-loving population of Paris was divided into partisans of the two rival composers, Gluck and Piccini. The merits of each were discussed in every circle, and comparisons were made, often with a confused war of tongues; the dispute being, to whom the palm of superior greatness should be awarded. Each had composed a piece on the same subject, which was shortly to be represented; the success deciding which of the two should keep the field.

Late the same evening a number of the Parisian connoisseurs and artists were assembled in the brilliantly illuminated salon of the Café du Feu. Many of the noblesse were to be seen, surrounded by critics, amateurs, etc., and the company was in a Babel of declamation and argument; the battle-cries all over Paris being "Gluck" and "Piccini." Three young men, who had just entered, secured a place in a quiet side-room, where three others were seated; one in a corner, deep in the shadow of a pillar. Comfortably ensconced in an arm-chair, this man sat with head leaning back, drumming with the fingers of one hand on the table, and taking no notice of anything that passed. {759} Another occupant of the room was a handsome young Frenchman, with deep blue eyes shaded with heavy brown lashes, and complexion of the rich brown of Provence; he was poorly dressed, but his manner was graceful and spirited. His companion at the table was a long, thin, middle-aged man, with an air of discontent and spite in his whole demeanor. He wore a rough brown peruke; his features were heavy, and he had a pair of keen, squinting eyes, with a peevish, sinister twist about the mouth. He spoke French badly, his accent betraying the Saxon. He was speaking of Gluck, and ended his remarks by saying: "I cannot understand what a people of so much judgment and taste as the French find so great in this man!"

"Are you speaking," cried the young Frenchman, "of the creator of Armida, of Orpheus, of Iphigenia?"

"Ahem! yes. He is not esteemed highly among us in Germany, for he knows little or nothing of art-rules, as the learned Herr Forhel in Göttingen and other distinguished critics have proved."

"And you, a musician, a composer, a German, speak thus!" exclaimed the young man. "I know little of art-rules; but one thing I know and feel, the Chevalier Gluck has a grand and noble spirit. His music awakens elevated feeling; no low or common thought can approach me while I listen to it; even when spiritless and dejected, my despondency takes flight before the lofty joy I feel in Gluck's creations."

"And think you," cried young Arnaut, who belonged to the other faction, "that the great Piccini would enter into a contest with your chevalier, did he not know he was to strive with a worthy adversary!"

The German, nettled at the question, shuffled a little as he answered, "Hem! I suppose not; I only maintain that M. Gluck is not the best composer, as the learned Herr Forhel has proved. With regard to a church style—"

"Who is talking of church styles!" interrupted the brown youth, with vivacity. "The point is, a grand opera style! Would your learned critics change Gluck's Armida into a nun's hymn, or have his wild motets of Tauris sung in the style of Palestrina?"

The squinting man moved in his seat, sipped his orangeade, and muttered: "The learned Herr Forhel has proved that the Chevalier Gluck understands nothing of songs."

"Nothing of songs!" echoed all the company, in surprise. The German continued: "He cannot carry through an ordinary melody according to rule; his song is but an extravagant declamation."

The brown youth started to his feet in glowing indignation. "You are not worthy to be a German, sir," he cried, "thus to speak of your great countryman. All Paris acknowledges in Gluck a mighty artist; the dispute is only whether he or Piccini is the greater. Gluck's music is the true expression of feeling, alike removed from the cold constraint of rules and from capricious innovation! Whether he would excel in church or concert music—or would attempt it—we cannot tell! He has set himself one glorious task, and pursues that with all the strength of a great spirit!"

"What is your name, young man?" sounded a sonorous voice from the corner behind him.

The stranger, whom all turned to look at, had risen from his seat, and the light of the candles shone full upon his face.

"The Chevalier Gluck!" exclaimed several voices. Gluck smiled and bowed; then turning to the brown youth, he repeated his question.

"You are a musician, I perceive," said Gluck. "Will you call at my house? Here is my address."

Handing him the card, he turned to the squinting German, who sat embarrassed, and spoke to him with undisguised contempt:

"Mr. Elias Hegrin! It is an unexpected pleasure to see you in Paris; yet a pleasure—for I like to tell you honestly what a miserable rascal you are! You think I understand nothing of the rules of music or of songs—eh! You thought differently in Vienna, when you almost lived at my house, and received instructions in music from me, and took what I procured for you from patrons, and what I gave you out of my own pocket! You became my enemy because I candidly told you you could master only the lifeless form, not the spirit. You seek what you can never obtain—not for the sake of art, but for your own temporary advantage. You would do better as an honest tailor or shoemaker, than a mean musician! You could not forgive my telling you this! and so you go and abuse me in Göttingen! Go and do better, if you can; but I think that will be difficult; for he who belies art because he cannot compass her, will be likely to remain the rascal he has shown himself! Adieu, Messieurs!"

Queen Marie Antoinette had a private morning reception of her friends at her favorite Trianon. Comte d'Artois, just returned to Paris from his hunting castle, had come with his brother, the Comte de Provence, to pay his respects to his beautiful sister-in-law. They talked of the latest news in the capital, the balls, flirtations, witticisms, spectacles, etc., and of the new entertainment expected in the contest between Gluck and Piccini; the anticipations of which kept all Paris in dispute.

D'Artois declared himself for Gluck. "Your countryman," he cried to the queen, "is a splendid fellow! He went on the chase with me, and made five shots one after the other. As to the Italians, they do not know how to hold a gun!"

"I like the Italian music best," said the Comte de Provence. "You cannot well sing or dance to the German, as Noverre justly observes."

"Noverre had to dance to German music, though!" cried the queen, laughing. Then she told the story of the great dancing-master's visit to Gluck, and how he had ventured to tell him that no dancer in the grand opera could dance to his music in the Scythian ballets; and how Gluck, enraged, had seized the little man, and danced him through the whole house, up-stairs and down-stairs, singing the Scythian ballets; and had asked him, when the breath was nearly knocked out of Noverre, "Well, sir, think you, now, a dancer in the grand opera can dance to my music?" to which the poor panting victim had gasped out an eager affirmative! The story was much laughed at, and the arrogance of the opera artists commented on.

A page entered and announced, "The Chevalier Gluck, come to give the queen a lesson on the piano."

"We were talking of you, M. Gluck," said the Princess Elizabeth; "and her majesty praised you for an excellent dancing-master."

"And my brother thinks you an expert in hunting, and on that account he belongs to your party," remarked the Comte de Provence.

"Come," cried the queen, "you must not tease my good master! Leave him to save all his patience for his pupil—myself! He will have need of it, I assure you!"

"Because, Antoinette," said Gluck gravely, speaking in German, "you do not play half so well as queen, as when you were archduchess."

The queen laughed as she answered in the same language, "Wait but a little, Christophe! your ears shall ring presently. Ladies and gentlemen, will you be quiet?" She spoke to them in French, as she went to open the piano.

She inserted the key and turned it, perhaps too hastily; for she could not open the instrument. After several vain attempts, she called impatiently:

Gluck tried, but with no better success; the others took their turn; but the lock resisted all their efforts. The queen looked vexed.

"Take care, chevalier, what you say," said the Comte de Provence; "the lock is of the king's own making—of a new sort, I believe."

D'Artois went out, and in a few moments returned with the king. Louis XVI. wore a short jacket, his head covered with an unsightly leathern cap, his face glowing and begrimed with soot, his hands were rough as those of a locksmith, and a bundle of keys and picklocks were fastened to his belt. He went up to the piano, and examined the lock with the earnest manner of an artisan, tried several keys without success, shook his head dissatisfied, and tried others. Finding the right one at last, the lock yielded, and with an air of triumph, as if he had won a battle, he said, smiling on his wife,

But so long a time had passed, that the queen had lost the inclination. As she would not take her lesson, the Princess Elizabeth asked Gluck to play them something from his Iphigenia. He played the frenzy scene of Orestes. When he had finished it, the king exclaimed: "Excellent, chevalier! I am delighted. I will have your opera produced first, with all the care you like; and I hope the success will gratify you."

Two more visitors were announced—Signor Piccini and the Chevalier Noverre, who started and colored in some embarrassment when he saw Gluck. The king commanded the two composers to salute each other, which they did with dignity, cordiality, and easy grace. After the queen had spoken to them, the Chevalier Noverre reminded her majesty that she had been pleased to grant permission to Signor Piccini to play some new airs from his Iphigenia before her.

Marie Antoinette assented, and asked Piccini what selection he had made; to which he replied that Noverre had wished him to play the first Scythian dance.

D'Artois burst into a laugh; but the others restrained their mirth. At the queen's command, Piccini seated himself at the piano, the Comte de Provence and Noverre beating time to his music. All the company thought Piccini's Scythian dance more pleasing and better adapted to the grace of motion than that of Gluck. But D'Artois whispered to the king that the dance, though admirable and full of melody, was better suited for a masked ball in the salon of the grand opera than for a private abode in Tauris. {762} Gluck listened with earnest attention, evidently appreciating the merits of his opponent; but a light curl of his lips was seen, when Piccini indulged too freely in his pretty quaverings and tinklings. There was great applause when it was ended. Noverre praised the performance as displaying the inspiriting rhythmus which alone would enable the dancer to give true expression to his pirouettes and enterchats.

"I agree with you, Monsieur Noverre," interrupted Louis, "that Signor Piccini's music is admirable; but I hope you will also make yourself acquainted with the music of the Chevalier Gluck."

Noverre replied timidly, that the Chevalier Gluck and he were on the most friendly terms.

After the artists had left the royal abode, Gluck and Piccini took a courteous leave of each other. As Gluck stepped into his carriage, he said to Noverre: "Do not, chevavalier, forget his majesty's command. If I made you dance against your will, it was to introduce you to my music. I regret I am not a proficient in the art of dancing; yet I am, like yourself, chevalier of the order de l'Esprit, and in that character I wish you a good morning."

The rehearsals and preparations for the representation of the two Iphigenias were nearly complete, and the day was appointed when the masterpiece of Gluck was to receive the sentence of the Parisians. It was to be performed first; the preference having been yielded to him as the oldest of the two composers. He was at that time sixty-five.

Treatises, learned and superficial, were published, upon Gluck and Piccini, the differences in their style and in the two operas; all tinctured with party spirit, and many showing gross ignorance of music. The performers, too, fell into dissension. Piccini had hard work to propitiate, by attentions and favors, some who were opposed to him, that his work might not be spoiled by their perversity. Gluck resorted to threats, and made his enemies afraid of him. He trusted to the excellence of his motto, "Truth makes its way through all things;" and reflected that the worst success would not make a good work a bad one.

On the morning of the final rehearsal, the day before the first representation, young Mehul was announced. Gluck cordially welcomed him, and asked why he had not seen him before.

"I feared to disturb you," answered the young man. "But to-day my anxiety brings me."

"You have enemies; your opera is to be produced to-morrow! Should the success fall short of its merits—"

"Work, then, with bold heart! Lay hold on what glowing inspiration brings you, and mould it with earnest heed! The great thing is, to stand firm, and go on with spirit and strength. The world makes this hard for the artist, and many fall in the conflict."

"If I have gone through life neither a fool nor a knave, still I have my faults. To some the All-Benevolent has granted to know but little, till what they have attained is wasted, or in danger of being lost. Happy he who apprehends the better part, and holds it fast, though his heart be torn in the struggle! {763} What will you say when I confess to you, that perception of the highest—the only good, came late—fearfully late to me! Music was all to me from earliest youth. When a boy, in lovely Bohemia, I heard her voice in the dense forest, the gloomy ravine, or the romantic valley; on the bold, stark cliff; in the cheerful hunter's call, or the hoarse song of stream and torrent. I thought there was nothing so great and glorious, that man, impotent man, could not achieve it. Too soon I learned that something was impossible. How soon are the spirit's wings clipped! Then come harassing doubts, false ambition, thirst of gain, envy, disappointed vanity, worldly cares; the hateful gnomes of earth, that cling to you and drag you downward, when you would soar like the eagle toward the sun. Thus it is in youth, in manhood, in old age. One among many, redeemed from folly, discerns and appreciates the right, and might create the beautiful. But by that time the ardor and vigor of youth are gone; and to his enthusiasm, his newly acquired knowledge, there remains a grave!"

"Perhaps it is true; for when I burst the fetters of the unworthy and the base, there came to me a radiant vision from the pure, bright Grecian age. The work of holding it fast, and shaping it in the external world, is my last. And melancholy it is that a whole vigorous lifetime could not be consecrated alone to such a theme—or to yet higher ones. But I must submit in repentance and humility, for my shortcomings! I will bear it, whether these Parisians adjudge me fame and wealth, or hiss down my work."

The hour struck for the rehearsal, and Gluck, accompanied by his young friend, went to the Royal Academy of Music.

Nicolo Piccini, morose and out of humor, was walking up and down his room, glancing now and then at the manuscript of his opera that lay upon his writing-desk. At times he would go to the desk as if a happy thought had struck him, to add something to the notes; but the next instant he would let fall the pen, shake his head with a dissatisfied and melancholy air, and resume his walk through the room.

A knocking was heard; and after it was repeated twice, Piccini opened the door. Elias Hegrin came in. The composer seemed disturbed at his presence, and gloomily asked what he wanted. Hegrin answered that the Chevalier Noverre had informed him Signor Piccini wished to see him.

"By speaking the truth!" sternly answered Piccini. "Confess that you spoke falsely, when you told me Gluck stirred up all his friends to make a party against me!"

Elias Hegrin changed color, but he collected himself, and answered, "I spoke the truth."

"It is false, Elias! It was the same when you told me you had read the manuscript of my adversary, and that the work hardly deserved the honors of mediocrity."

"It was the truth, Signor Piccini, and I repeat my opinion of the opera of the Chevalier Gluck."

"So much the worse for your judgment! I have heard five rehearsals, and I must—ay, and will declare before all the world, that Gluck's Iphigenia is the greatest opera I know, and that in its author I acknowledge my master."

"I believed I had accomplished something worthy in my own work," continued Piccini; "and, indeed, my design was pure; nor is my work altogether without merit; but oh! how void and cold, how weak and insignificant does it seem to me, compared with Gluck's gigantic creation! Yes, creation! mine is only a work! a work that will vanish without a trace; while Gluck's Iphigenia will endure as long as feeling for the grand and the beautiful is not dead in the hearts of men!"

"Silence!" interrupted Piccini. "Why have you slandered the noble chevalier, and striven to bring down his works and his character to your own level? Are you not ashamed of such pitiful behavior? In spite of Noverre's recommendation, I have never fully trusted you; for I know that Noverre hated Gluck for having wounded his ridiculous vanity. But I never thought you capable of such meanness as I find you guilty of. Gluck stir up his friends to make a party against me! Look at these letters in Gluck's own hand, written to Arnaud, Rollet, Maurepas, wherein he judges my work thoroughly, dwelling upon the best parts, and entreats them to listen impartially to my opera as to his own, and to give an impartial judgment, as he is anxious only for the truth! My patron, the Comte de Provence, persuaded those gentlemen to send me these letters, to remove my groundless suspicions. I am deeply mortified that I ever condescended to make common cause with you! You have deceived me! Now, tell me, what induced you to act in this dishonorable manner toward your benefactor?"

Elias, shrunk into himself, replied in a lachrymose tone, "Ah! I am an unhappy man, and deserve your sympathy! From boyhood I heard it said at home that I had extraordinary talent for music, and would become a great composer, and win both wealth and fame. I studied zealously; my first work was praised in the town where I lived; but when I went to Vienna, I could do nothing."

"Gluck took you by the hand in Vienna, supported you, gave you instruction, and corrected your works."

"He did so; but he likewise told me I had no genius, and that I never could be a great composer."

"And did he deceive you? What have you proved yourself? You hate and slander him, then, because he honestly advised you to desist from useless efforts?"

"Yes, I hate him!" he exclaimed fiercely. "Confound him! All the fame and gold are for him, and none for me! I will do him all the harm I can! I will embitter his life!"

"Begone!" cried Piccini, full of horror. "We have nothing more in common. Honor, religion, guide the true man; your divinities are vanity, envy, cowardly malice! Such as you deserve no sympathy!"

Piccini's opera was admired, but that of Gluck obtained the victory, awakening universal enthusiasm. After its third representation, Gluck left the opera-house, followed by the acclamations of the enraptured multitude. Mehul was with him, going to sup at his house.

When they entered Gluck's drawing-room, both started with surprise to see a man wrapped in his mantle standing at the window and looking out. As they came in, he turned round and faced them.

"Most welcome!" cried Gluck cordially, taking the offered hand and warmly pressing it, "I esteem and honor so noble an adversary!"

"We are no longer adversaries!" exclaimed Piccini. "Our strife is at an end. I acknowledge you as my master, and shall be happy and proud to call you my friend! Let the Gluckists and Piccinists dispute as they like; Gluck and Piccini understand each other!"

"And love each other, too!" cried Gluck, with vivacity. "Indeed it shall be so!"

The Irish In America.
[Footnote 68]

[Footnote 68: The Irish in America.
London: Longman, Rees & Co.
New York, Boston, and Montreal: D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 1868.]

This is the title of a book recently published simultaneously in London and New York, and which bids fair to excite considerable attention east and west of the Atlantic. The author, Mr. John Francis Maguire, M.P., has long since attained to honorable distinction not only in Ireland, his own country, but in the British House of Commons. His visit to this country during the past year strengthened the favorable impression already made on those who had known him only through his published speeches and the prominent part he has taken for many years in the affairs of his native country. Heart and soul devoted to the best interests of that country, and of the Irish race everywhere; thoroughly acquainted with the Celtic nature, its capabilities for progress and improvement, and fervently devoted to the faith which is the richest inheritance of Catholic Ireland, Mr. Maguire felt anxious to see with his own eyes the actual condition of the Irish in America, what advantages they had gained by emigration, and how far they had retained and carried out in their new country the Christian traditions of the old. He accordingly visited America, availing himself of the interval between the sessions of parliament, and, in so far as his limited time permitted, took personal observations on the state of "the Irish in America." The book before us is the result of these observations.

In the main, Mr. Maguire has given his readers a fair and correct view of his subject, vast and comprehensive as it is; he has taken pains to find out the exact condition of the people of whom he writes, in the new home across the wave to which they have carried their broken fortunes as a race. The opening paragraph of the first chapter is well adapted to interest the general reader. It is as follows:

"Crossing the Atlantic, and landing at any city of the American seaboard, one is enabled, almost at a glance, to recognize the marked difference between the position of the Irish race in the old country and in the new. Nor is the condition of the Irish at both sides of the ocean more marked in its dissimilarity than are the circumstances and characteristics of the country from which they emigrated and the country to which they have come. {766} In the old country, stagnation, retrogression, if not actual decay—in the new, life, movement, progress; in the one oppression, want of confidence, dark apprehension of the future—in the other, energy, self-reliance, and a perpetual looking forward to a grander development and a more glorious destiny. That the tone of the public mind of America should be self-reliant and even boastful, is natural in a country of brief but pregnant history—a country still in its infancy, when compared with European states, but possessing, in the fullest sense, the strength and vigor of manhood—manhood in all its freshness of youth and buoyancy of hope. In such a country man is most conscious of his value: he is the architect of his country's greatness, the author of her civilization, the miracle-worker by whom all has been or can be accomplished. Where a few years since a forest waved in mournful grandeur, there are cultivated fields, blooming orchards, comfortable homesteads, cheerful hamlets—churches, schools, civilization; where but the other day a few huts stood on the river's bank, by the shore of a lake, or on some estuary of the sea, swelling domes and lofty spires and broad porticoes now meet the eye; and the waters but recently skimmed by the light bark of the Indian are ploughed into foam by countless steamers. And the same man who performed these miracles of a few years since—of yesterday—has the same power of to-morrow achieving the same wondrous results of patience and energy, courage and skill. But for him, and his hands to toil and his brains to plan, the vast country whose commerce is on every sea, and whose influence is felt in every court, would be still the abode of savage tribes, dwelling in perpetual conflict, and steeped in the grossest ignorance. Labor is thus a thing to be honored, not a badge of inferiority."

Mr. Maguire commences his American tour at Halifax, which, he says, "an enthusiastic Hibernian once described as 'the wharf of the Atlantic.'" He finds that, in that city, and indeed, throughout the provinces generally, the Irish form an important and influential element in the population. Of Halifax he says in particular:

"This Irish element is everywhere discernible; in every description of business and in all branches of industry, in every class and in every condition of life, from the highest to the lowest. There are in other cities larger masses of Irish, some in which they are five times and even ten times as numerous as the whole population of Halifax; but it may be doubted if there are many cities of the entire continent of America in which they afford themselves fuller play for the exercise of their higher qualities than in the capital of Nova Scotia, where their moral worth keeps pace with their material prosperity."—P. 3.

Speaking of the progress of the faith in Nova Scotia, and of the arduous labors of the devoted missionaries of years past and present, our author relates some facts that will no doubt astonish his European readers. In America they are neither new nor strange; for what is told of Nova Scotia either applies, or has applied, within the memory of some living, in a greater or less degree, to every part of the new world.

"Within the last ten years a Nova Scotia priest has discharged the duties of a district extending considerably over one hundred miles in length; and while I was in Halifax, the archbishop appointed a clergyman to the charge of a mission which would necessitate his making journeys of more than that many miles in extent. And when a missionary priest, in 1842, the archbishop would make a three months' tour from Halifax to Dartmouth, a distance, going and returning, of 450 miles; and would frequently diverge ten or even twenty miles from the main line into the bush on either side, thus doing duty for a population of 10,000 Catholics who had no spiritual resource save in him and a decrepit fellow-laborer on the brink of the grave.

"It is not three years since a young Irish priest, then in the first year of his mission, received what, to him, was literally a death-summons. He was lying ill in bed when the 'sick call' reached his house, the pastor of the district being absent. The poor young man did not hesitate a moment; no matter what the consequence to himself, the dying Catholic should not be without the consolations of religion. To the dismay of those who knew of his intention, and who remonstrated in vain against what to them appeared to be an act of insanity, he started on his journey, a distance of thirty-six miles, which he accomplished on foot, in the midst of incessant rain. {767} It is not possible to tell how often he paused involuntarily on that terrible march, or how he reeled and staggered as he approached its termination; but this much is well ascertained— that scarcely had he reached the sick man's bed, and performed the functions of his ministry, when he was conscious of his own approaching dissolution; and there being no brother priest to minister to him in his last hour, he administered the viaticum to himself, and died on the floor of what was then, indeed, a chamber of death. Here was a glorious ending of a life only well begun.

"Bermuda is included within the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Halifax, and to this fact is owing one of the most extraordinary instances of a 'sick call' on record. A Catholic lady in Bermuda was dying of a lingering disease, and knowing that further delay might be attended with consequences which she regarded as worse than death, she availed herself of the opportunity of a vessel then about to sail for Halifax to send for a clergyman of that city. The day the message was delivered to the clergyman, a vessel was to sail from Halifax to Bermuda, and he went on board at once, arrived in due course at the latter place, found the dying lady still alive, administered to her the rites of the church, and returned as soon as possible to his duties in Halifax; having, in obedience to this remarkable 'sick call, 'accomplished a journey of 1600 miles."—P. 16.

Not quite so interesting as this is the somewhat prolix account Mr. Maguire gives of his visit to Pictou, N. S., where he took passage for Prince Edward's Island. We do not think his readers would have sustained any loss by his omission of several pages in which a certain "Peter," resident in those parts, acted as his cicerone. "Peter" may have interested Mr. Maguire, but he will not interest his readers. There is one paragraph, however, in connection with the visit to Prince Edward's Island that we may not pass over here, for the reason that it, too, is of general application. Mr. Maguire is speaking of St. Dunstan's College in Charlottetown:

"This college is supplied with every modern requirement and appliance, and is under the able presidency of the Rev. Angus McDonald, a man well qualified for his important task, and whose title of 'Father Angus' is as affectionately pronounced by the most Irish of the Irish as if it were 'Father Larry,' or 'Father Pat.' The Irish love their own priests; but let the priest of any other nationality—English, Scotch, French, Belgian, or American—only exhibit sympathy with them, or treat them with kindness and affection, and at once he is as thoroughly 'their priest' as if he had been born on the banks of the Boyne or the Shannon. 'Father Dan' McDonald, the vicar-general, is a striking instance of the attachment borne by an Irish congregation to a good and kindly priest; and I now the more dwell on this thorough fusion of priest and people in love and sympathy, because of having witnessed with pain and sorrow the injurious results, alike to my countrymen and to the church, of forcing upon almost exclusively Irish congregations clergymen who, from their imperfect knowledge of the Irish tongue, could not for a long time make themselves understood by those over whom it was essential they should acquire a beneficial influence."—Pp. 46, 47.

Very interesting is our author's account of the Irish settlements in Prince Edward's Island and New Brunswick; one of the latter, Johnville, commenced within a few years, under the auspices of Right Rev. Dr. Sweeny, Bishop of New Brunswick, furnishes a striking proof of the advantages to be gained by settling on the land, instead of congregating in the over-crowded cities. The beneficent effect on their morals, the cultivation of kind feeling and fraternal charity amongst the settlers by the formation of these rural colonies is happily described in the following passage:

"The settlers of Johnville are invariably kind to each other, freely lending to a neighbor the aid which they may have the next day to solicit for themselves. By this mutual and ungrudging assistance, the construction of a dwelling, or the rolling of logs and piling them in a heap for future burning, has been quickly and easily accomplished; and crops have been cut and gathered in safety, which, without such neighborly aid, might have been irrecoverably lost. This necessary dependence on each other for mutual help in the hour of difficulty draws the scattered settlers together by ties of sympathy and friendship; and while none envy the progress of a neighbor, whose success is rather a subject for general congratulation, the affliction of one of these humble families brings a common sorrow to every home. {768} I witnessed a touching illustration of this fraternal and Christian sympathy. Even in the heart of the primitive forest we have sickness, and death, and frenzied grief, just as in cities with histories that go back a thousand years. A few days previous to my visit a poor fellow had become mad, his insanity being attributed to the loss of his young wife, whose death left him a despairing widower with four infant children. He had just been conveyed to the lunatic asylum, and his orphans were already taken by the neighbors, and made part of their families."—P. 68.

"On our return to St. John," says Mr. Maguire, "we met the postmaster-general—a Scotchman—who had recently paid an official visit to the settlement; and he was loud in the expression of his astonishment at the progress which the people had made in so short a time, and at the unmistakable evidences of comfort he beheld in every direction. The settlement of Johnville," he goes on, "is but one of four which Dr. Sweeny has established within a recent time. He has thus succeeded in establishing, as settlers, between 700 and 800 families, or, at an average of five persons to each family, between 3500 and 4000 individuals."

This one fact shows what might be done in that way for the social and moral improvement of many, many thousands of "the Irish in America," who need some favorable change in their condition, if they are to be saved from total destruction. If the vast superfluous populations of the cities could only be induced to scatter abroad through the rural districts, and work as laborers until they could afford to purchase land, much misery and degradation would be avoided. The Irish are chiefly an agricultural people at home; why will they not understand that those who were farmers or laborers "in the old country" would be most likely to succeed by following the same pursuits here? All the portions of Mr. Maguire's book relating to these Irish settlements are both useful and interesting. Of the progress of the Irish and their cherished faith in St. John's, the capital of New Brunswick, our author says:

"Forty years since, an ordinary room would have afforded sufficient accommodation to the Catholic worshippers of that day: now congregations of two thousand or three thousand pour out on Sundays and holidays through the sculptured portals of the Church of the Immaculate Conception. On All Saints' Day I beheld such a congregation issuing from an early mass, filling the street in front of the splendid building; and from the appearance of the thousands of well-dressed, respectable-looking people, who passed before me, I could appreciate not only the material progress of the Irish in St. John, but the marvellous development of the Catholic Church in that city."—P. 89.

Passing on into the Canadas, Mr. Maguire finds the Irish occupying as prominent a position as in any of the Lower Provinces. "Entering Canada at Quebec," he says, "the presence of a strong and even influential Irish element is at once observable. In the staple industry of this fine old city—the lumber trade—the Irish take a prominent part. . . . It is pleasant to hear that not only are the Irish in Quebec, and indeed along the St. Lawrence, among the most industrious and energetic portion of the population, but that they are thrifty and saving, and have acquired considerable property. Thus, along the harbor, from the Champlain market westward to the limits of the city, an extent of two miles, the property, including wharves, warehouses, and dwelling-houses, belongs principally to the Irish, who form the bulk of the population in that quarter. And by Irish I here mean Catholic Irish."

Following the course of the St. Lawrence, he reaches Montreal, and he thus describes the position of the Irish there:

"In no part of the British Provinces of North America does the Catholic Irishman feel himself so thoroughly at home as in the beautiful and flourishing city of Montreal. He is in a Catholic city, where his religion is respected, and his church is surrounded with dignity and splendor. In whichever direction he turns, he beholds some magnificent temple—some college, or convent, or hospital—everywhere the cross, whether reared aloft on the spire of a noble church, or on the porch or gable of an asylum or a school. In fact, the atmosphere he breathes is Catholic. Therefore he finds himself at home in the thriving commercial capital of Lower Canada. In no part of the world is he more perfectly free and independent than in this prosperous seat of industry and enterprise, in which, it may be remarked, there is more apparent life and energy than in any other portion of the British Provinces. It is not, then, to be wondered at that the Catholic Irish are equal in number to the entire of the English-speaking Protestant population, including English, Scotch, and Irish. It is estimated that the Irish Catholics are now not less than thirty thousand. Of these a large proportion necessarily belong to the working classes, and find employment in various branches of local industry. Their increase has been rapid and striking. Fifty years since, there were not fifty Irish Catholic families in Montreal. It is about that time since Father Richards, an American, took compassion upon the handful of exiles who were then friendless and unknown, and gathered them into a small sacristy attached to one of the minor churches, to speak to them in a language which they understood. In thirty years afterward their number had increased to eight thousand, and now they are not under thirty thousand."—P. 96.

Much more than he has said, Mr. Maguire might have said about the Irish in Montreal, and the positions of honor and emolument to which many of them have attained. Of the city itself, he digresses to speak as follows:

"It is foreign to the purpose of this book to describe the public institutions and buildings of any place; but I cannot refrain from expressing my admiration of Montreal, which is in every respect worthy of its high reputation. It has an air at once elegant and solid, many of its streets spacious and alive with traffic and bustle, its places of doing business substantial and handsome; its public buildings really imposing, and its churches generally splendid, and not a few of them positively superb. This description of the churches of Montreal is not limited to the Jesuits' Church, the stately Paroisse, and the grand church of St. Patrick, of which the Irish are deservedly proud; it applies with equal propriety to the Episcopalian Cathedral, and more than one church belonging to the dissenting bodies. Montreal is rich in all kinds of charitable, educational, and religious institutions; and such is the influence and power of the Catholic element, that this beautiful city, which is every day advancing in prosperity and population, is naturally regarded by the Catholic Irishman as a home. The humble man sees his coreligionists advancing in every walk of life, filling positions of distinction—honored and respected; and, instead of mere toleration for his faith, he witnesses, in the magnificent procession of Corpus Christi, which annually pours its solemn splendor through the streets, a spectacle consoling alike to his religious feeling and his personal pride."

Although it is not exactly germane to our subject, we must be pardoned for giving in this connection Mr. Maguire's observations on the admirable system of education, of which Catholic Lower Canada may well be proud.

"Education in Lower Canada is entirely free. Each denomination enjoys the most complete liberty, there being no compulsion or restriction of any kind whatever. And the magnificent Laval University, so called after a French bishop, enjoys and exercises every right and privilege possessed by the great universities of England. This university, which is eminently Catholic, obtained a charter conferring upon it all the powers that were requisite for its fullest educational development.

"The rights of the Protestant minority are protected in the amplest manner, as well by law as by the natural tendency and feeling of the majority; for there are no people more liberal and tolerant, or more averse to any kind of aggression on the faith or opinions of others, than the French Canadians; and the Irish Catholics too well remember the bitterness caused by religious strife in the old country, to desire its introduction, in any shape or form, or under any guise or pretence, into their adopted home. There are abundant means of education within every man's reach; and it is his own fault if his children do not receive its full advantage. {770} But the Irishman, whatever may be his own deficiencies as to early training, rarely neglects that of his children; and in Canada, as in the States, the fault attributed to him is not that he neglects to educate them at all, but that he is tempted to educate them rather too highly, or too ambitiously, than otherwise."—Pp. 95, 96.

Following the widely-scattered Irish race along the rivers and through the forests of the great northern countries, Mr. Maguire happily describes what they have done and are doing in Upper Canada, as Protestant, nearly, as Lower Canada is Catholic. Even there, he shows us, Catholicity is making as rapid progress as in any part of America, and there, as in many other parts of the world, its marvellous growth corresponds with that of the Irish race. Mr. Maguire's account of his travels in Upper or Western Canada is, indeed, highly interesting. It was his good fortune to meet in Hamilton, C. W., a well-known and much-honored patriarch-priest, Very Rev. Mr. Gordon, vicar-general of that diocese, from whom he obtained much valuable information concerning the Irish Catholic people of Western Canada. Mr. Maguire says in this connection:

"There is still living in Hamilton, Western Canada, as vicar-general of the diocese, an Irish priest—Father Gordon, from Wexford—who has witnessed astonishing changes in his time. He has seen the city founded, and the town spring up, the forest cleared, and the settlement created; the rude log chapel, in which a handful of the faithful knelt in the midst of a wood, replaced by the spacious brick church in which many hundreds now worship. And not only has he witnessed astonishing changes, but has himself done much to effect the changes which he has lived to see accomplished. … Father Gordon had charge of the back townships, twenty-four in number. We must appreciate the extent of his spiritual jurisdiction when we learn that a township comprised an area of twelve miles square and Father Gordon had to attend twenty-four of these. … Father Gordon spent half his time in the saddle; and though he spared neither himself nor his horse—but himself much less than his horse—it was with the utmost difficulty that he could visit the more distant portions of his mission oftener than twice or thrice a year; many a time did the active missionary lose his way in the midst of the woods, and after hours of weary riding find himself, in the dusk of the evening, in the very same spot from which he set out in the morning!"—Pp. 112, 117.

Some of Father Gordon's early adventures in the wild Canadian forests, are extremely interesting, but for them we must refer the reader to the book itself. Father Edward Gordon is nearly the last of the noble band of Irish missionaries who went to those remote regions with the first instalments of the Irish exodus that reached there. Another, his friend and fellow-laborer, Very Rev. Mr. McDonagh, died but a year or two ago at Perth, in the diocese of Kingston, of which diocese he was vicar-general. A third, if we mistake not, is still living, namely, Father Brennan, of Bellville, C. W. These are the men who laid the foundations of the Catholic Church in those parts of Upper Canada. In the Scotch settlements farther east, there are still a very few of the old Scotch missionaries remaining, chiefly McDonalds. One of the most thrillingly interesting portions of the book is that devoted to the account of the terrible ship-fever brought to Canada by the Irish emigrants in the ever-memorable years of 1847-8. Our author's description of its ravages at Grosse Isle, the quarantine station of Quebec, at Point St. Charles, Montreal, and in the cities of Upper Canada, is of deep and painful interest. The adoption of the orphan children of the poor Irish emigrants—of whom twelve thousand perished at Grosse Isle alone—by the friendly French Canadians, is beyond expression touching. How the good Canadian priests and bishops took charge, and induced their people to take charge of these "children of the faithful Catholic Irish," as they expressively called the poor orphans, is told by Mr. Maguire with the grace of a poet and the skill of a dramatist. {771} Yet the picture is nothing overdrawn, as the writer of this, and many others yet living, can bear witness from their own sad memories of those sorrowful days.

Outside the Catholic Church no such spectacle of charity was ever seen as that which met the eyes of the Canadian people in Montreal and their other cities in those two disastrous years, but especially the first. The following passage will give some idea of the extent to which Christian heroism was carried then and there:

"As in Quebec, the mortality was greater in 1847 than in the year following; but it was not till the close of 1848 that the plague might be said to be extinguished, not without fearful sacrifice of life. During the months of June, July, August, and September, the season when nature wears her most glorious garb of loveliness, as many as eleven hundred of 'the faithful Irish,' as the Canadian priest truly described them, were lying at one time in the fever-sheds at Point St. Charles, in which rough wooden beds were placed in rows, and so close as scarcely to admit of room to pass. In these miserable cribs the patients lay, sometimes two together, looking, as a Sister of Charity wrote, 'as if they were in their coffins,' from the box-like appearance of their wretched beds. Throughout those glorious months, while the sun shone brightly, and the majestic river rolled along in golden waves, hundreds of the poor Irish were dying daily. The world outside was gay and glad, but death was rioting in the fever-sheds. It was a moment to try the devotion which religion inspires, to test the courage with which it animates the gentlest breast. First came the Grey Nuns, strong in love and faith; but so malignant was the disease, that thirty of their number were stricken down, and thirteen died the death of martyrs. There was no faltering, no holding back; no sooner were the ranks thinned by death than the gaps were quickly filled; and when the Grey Nuns were driven to the last extremity, the Sisters of Providence came to their assistance, and took their place by the side of the dying strangers. But when even their aid did not suffice to meet the emergency, the Sisters of St. Joseph, though cloistered nuns, received the permission of the bishop to share with their sister religious the hardships and dangers of labor by day and night.

"'I am the only one left,' were the thrilling words in which the surviving priest announced from the pulpit the ravages that the 'ocean plague' had made in the ranks of the clergy. With a single exception, the local priests were either sick or dead. Eight of the number fell at their posts, true to their duty. The good Bishop, Monseigneur Bourget, then went himself, to take his turn in the lazar-house; but the enemy was too mighty for his zeal, and having remained in the discharge of his self-imposed task for a day and a night, he contracted the fever, and was carried home to a sick-bed, where he lay for weeks, hovering between life and death, amid the tears and prayers of his people, to whom Providence restored him after a period of intense anxiety to them, and long and weary suffering to him.

"When the city priests were found inadequate to the discharge of their pressing duties, the country priests cheerfully responded to the call of their bishop, and came to the assistance of their brethren; and of the country priests not a few found the grave and the crown of the martyr."—Pp. 145, 146, 148.

After a glance at the Irish in Newfoundland, where, in proportion to their numbers, and the extent of the island, they have done fully as much for their own advancement and that of religion, as in any other part of America, Mr. Maguire, before crossing the great waters that separate British America from the United States makes these pertinent remarks on the Irish exodus generally:

"There are few sadder episodes in the history of the world than the story of the Irish exodus. Impelled, to a certain degree, by a spirit of adventure, but mainly driven from their native land by the operation of laws which, if not opposed to the genius of the people, were unsuited to the special circumstances of their country, millions of the Irish race have braved the dangers of an unknown element, and faced the perils of a new existence, in search of a home across the Atlantic. At times, this European life-stream flowed toward the new world in a broad and steady current; at others, it assumed the character of a resistless rush, breaking on the shores of America with so formidable a tide as to baffle every anticipation, and render the ordinary means of humane or sanitary precaution altogether inadequate and unavailing."—P. 179

Having crossed into the territory of the United States, Mr. Maguire very judiciously prefaces his account of what he saw amongst the Irish there, by a long and carefully written account of the dangers to which emigrants and their pockets are exposed in New York, the great centre of emigration. This is one of the most useful portions of the work, and should be read, if possible, by every intending emigrant to the United States. The greater part of Chapter X. is devoted to it, comprising some amusing and characteristic anecdotes and some very important directions for the guidance of newly-arrived emigrants.

Mr. Maguire next turns his attention to the tenement-houses of New York, and the sanitary condition of their inhabitants. He devotes much space to this, and his remarks are clear, practical, and judicious. He evidently examined the condition even of the poorest and most wretched of the Irish in this metropolis. He speaks, in this connection, earnestly and feelingly on the great mistake, the terrible mistake made by those emigrants who, being farmers or country people at home, remain huddled together in the great cities here, instead of spreading abroad over the fertile regions of America, where land is to be had cheap, in some places almost for the asking.

"Let it not be supposed that, in my earnest desire to direct the practical attention of my countrymen, at both sides of the Atlantic, to an evil of universally admitted magnitude, I desire to exaggerate in the least. From the very nature of things, the great cities of America—and, in a special degree, New York—must be the refuge of the unfortunate, the home of the helpless, the hiding-place of the broken-down, even of the criminal; and these, while crowding the dwelling-places of the poor, and straining the resources and preying on the charity of their communities, multiply their existing evils, and add to their vices. Still, in spite of the dangers and temptations by which they are perpetually surrounded—dangers and temptations springing even from the very freedom of republican institutions, no less than from the generous social habits of the American people—there are thousands, hundreds of thousands, of Irish-born citizens of the United States, residing in New York and in other great cities of the Union, who are, in every respect, the equals of the best of American population—honorable and upright in their dealings; industrious, energetic, and enterprising in business; intelligent and quick of capacity; progressive and go-ahead; and as loyally devoted to the institutions of their adopted country as if they had been born under its flag. Nevertheless, I repeat the assertion, justified by innumerable authorities—authorities beyond the faintest shadow of suspicion—that the city is not the right place for the Irish peasant, and that it is the worst place which he could select as his home."—Pp. 235-236.

Mr. Maguire's limited time did not permit him to travel much in the interior of any State; he could but visit the principal cities. His account of the Middle, Southern, and great Western States, is written in general terms; he speaks at some length of the Irish settlements in the new States and territories, of the vast resources of the country, and the enormous quantity of public lands at the disposal of the United States government. After describing the progress of the Irish in the West and North-west, he adds:

"It is not at all necessary that an Irish immigrant should go West, whatever and how great the inducements it offers to the enterprising. There is land to be had, under certain circumstances and conditions, in almost every State in the Union. And there is no State in which the Irish peasant who is living from hand to mouth in one of the great cities as a day-laborer, may not improve his condition by betaking himself to his natural and legitimate avocation—the cultivation of the soil. Nor is the vast region of the South unfavorable to the laborious and energetic Irishman. On the contrary, there is no portion of the American continent in which he would receive a more cordial welcome, or meet with more favorable terms. This would not have been so before the war, or the abolition of slavery, and the upset of the land system, which was based upon the compulsory labor of the negro. {773} Before the war, the land was held in mass by large proprietors, and, whatever its quantity, there was no dividing or selling it—that is, willingly; for, when land was brought to the hammer, the convenience of the purchaser had to be consulted. But there was no voluntary division of the soil, no cutting it up into parcels, to be occupied by small proprietors. Now, the state of things is totally different."—P. 252.

Our author seems much impressed with the advantages offered by the "magnificent State of California" to Irish emigrants. Of it he says:

"There is not a State in the Union in which the Irish have taken deeper and stronger root, or thriven more successfully, than California, in whose amazing progress—material, social, and intellectual—they have had a conspicuous share. For nearly twenty years past, this region has been associated in the popular mind with visions of boundless wealth and marvellous fortunes; and it may be interesting to learn under what circumstances the Irish became connected with a country of such universal repute, and of whose population they form a most important and valuable portion."—P. 262.

Mr. Maguire waxes eloquent over the benefits conferred on his countrymen, in all the cities of America, by temperance societies. He deplores, over and over again, the fatal propensity to spirituous liquors, of which he everywhere saw lamentable instances amongst his countrymen in America. He says, in many places, that drink, and drink alone, is the cause why so many of the Irish do not find in the new world that success which crowns the efforts of so many thousands and even millions of their race. "Drink, accursed drink," he says, "is the cause why so many of the Irish in America fail, and fail miserably." On the other hand, he saw, wherever he went, east, west, north, and south, that those among them who attained to wealth and position were all sober men, many of them "teetotalers."

The love of home and kindred, which is one of the most beautiful as it is one of the strongest traits in the Irish character, is duly noted by Mr. Maguire as distinguishing them in America. The many and great sacrifices made by Irish emigrants here, and especially by servant-girls, are thus described by our author:

"The great ambition of the Irish girl is to send 'something' to her people, as soon as possible after she has landed in America; and, in innumerable instances, the first tidings of her arrival in the new world are accompanied with a remittance, the fruits of her first earnings in her first place. Loving a bit of finery dearly, she will resolutely shut her eyes to the attractions of some enticing article of dress, to prove to the loved ones at home that she has not forgotten them; and she will risk the danger of insufficient clothing, or boots not proof against rain or snow, rather than diminish the amount of the little hoard to which she is weekly adding, and which she intends as a delightful surprise to parents who, possibly, did not altogether approve of her hazardous enterprise. To send money to her people, she will deny herself innocent enjoyments, womanly indulgences, and the gratifications of legitimate vanity; and such is the generous and affectionate nature of these young girls, that they regard the sacrifices they make as the most ordinary matter in the world, for which they merit neither praise nor approval. To assist their relatives, whether parents, or brothers and sisters, is with them a matter of imperative duty, which they do not and cannot think of disobeying, and which, on the contrary, they delight in performing. And the money destined to that purpose is regarded as sacred, and must not be diverted to any object less worthy."—P. 315.

A very important and deeply interesting portion of Mr. Maguire's book is that which treats of the share the Irish have had in building up and sustaining the church in America. In all the checkered history of the Irish race, there is no page more glorious than that which records their fidelity to the faith, in foreign lands as well as at home; their heart-warm attachment to, and profound reverence for, their clergy; the mighty sacrifices they make, and have made to promote the interests of religion, and the important part they have played in the propagation of the faith:

"It has been confidently stated, that the moment the Irish touch the free soil of America, they lose the old faith—that there is something in the very nature of republican institutions fatal to the Church of Rome. Admitting, as a fact which cannot be denied, and which Catholics are themselves the first to proclaim, that there has been some, even considerable, falling off from the church, and no little indifferentism, it must be acknowledged that there has been less of both than, from the circumstances of the country, might have been reasonably expected; and that the same Irish, whose alleged defection en masse has been the theme of ungenerous triumph to those whose 'wish was father to the thought,' have done more to develop the Church, and extend her dominion throughout the wide continent of North America, than even the most devoted of the children of any other of the various races who, with them, are merged in the great American nation. This much may be freely conceded to them, even by those who are most sensitively and justly proud of what their own nationality has done to promote the glory of the Universal Church. Fortified by suffering and trial at home, and inheritors of memories which intensify devotion rather than weaken fidelity, the Irish brought with them a strong faith, the power to resist as well as the courage to persevere, and that generosity of spirit which has ever prompted mankind to make large sacrifices for the promotion of their religious belief."—P. 346.

In order to give a more correct idea to his European readers of the services rendered by the Irish in America to the cause of religion, our author gives a retrospective view of the rise and progress of Catholicity in the United States. This he illustrates by extracts from the writings and correspondence of various bishops and priests of the elder time, and also the later, and with interesting data from other sources. He dwells at some length on the foundation or introduction into these countries of the two great orders of Charity and Mercy, the one founded in Dublin by Mrs. McAuley, the other at Emmettsburg, Maryland, by Mrs. Seton, an American lady and a convert. A propos to the latter, he relates the following:

"It may be remarked, that this holy woman, this model wife and daughter, was deeply impressed with the religious demeanor of the poor Irish emigrants of that day—the opening of the present century—who were detained in quarantine at Staten Island, and attended by her father, as Health Physician to the port of New York. 'The first thing,' she says, 'these poor people did, when they got their tents, was to assemble on the grass, and all kneeling, adored our Maker for his mercy; and every morning sun finds them repeating their praises.' The scenes then witnessed at Staten Island remind one of those which were so fatally frequent in subsequent years. Even at that time—1800, and the years following—large numbers of emigrants arrived at the port of New York, suffering from the dreadful scourge of fever, so calamitous to the Irish race."—P. 363.

For all that relates to the illustrious prelates, Bishop England and Archbishop Hughes, their lives and their works, we must refer the reader to the book itself. An anecdote, in which Bishop England and one of his zealous priests were actors, will be found peculiarly interesting:

"One evening the bishop, who was on this occasion accompanied by one of his few priests—Father O'Neill; it need scarcely be added, a countryman of his own—drew up at a house of rather moderate dimensions, whose master was a marked specimen of the species surly. Negotiations were entered into for a dinner, which the liberal host was willing to give on certain conditions, somewhat exorbitant in their nature; but there was to be no further accommodation. 'You cannot stop the night, nohow,' said the agreeable owner of the mansion; and his look of dogged dislike was quite as emphatic as his words. After dinner, Dr. England sat on a chair in the piazza, and read his 'office;' while Father O'Neill, having no desire to enjoy the company of his unwilling entertainer, sauntered toward the carriage, a little distance off, where the boy was feeding the horses; and taking his flute from his portmanteau, he sat on a log, and commenced his favorite air, 'The Last Rose of Summer,' into which he seemed to breathe the very soul of tenderness. {775} From one exquisite melody to another the player wandered, while the negro boy grinned with delight, and the horses enjoyed their food with a keener relish. That

was here exemplified. As the sweet notes stole on the soft night air of the South, and reached the inhospitable mansion, a head was eagerly thrust forth, and the projecting ears thereof appeared eagerly to drink in the flood of melody. Another lovely air, one of those which bring involuntary tears to the eyes, and fill the heart with balm, was played with lingering sweetness, when a voice, husky with emotion, was heard uttering these words, 'Strangers! don't go! do stay all night! don't go; we'll fix you somehow.' It was the voice of the charmed host! That evening the two guests enjoyed the snuggest seats at the hearth, Father O'Neill playing for the family till a late hour. Next morning the master of the house would not accept of the least compensation. 'No, no, bishop! no, no, Mr. O'Neill! not a cent! You're heartily welcome to it. Come as often as you please, and stay as long as you can. We'll be always glad to see you; but,' specially addressing Father O'Neill, 'be sure and don't forget the flute!'"—P. 323.

Mr. Maguire's account of the Irish in the late civil war is long and interesting. He tells many interesting anecdotes of their heroism, their fidelity to their flag, whether Confederate or Federal, and also of the influence they, their religion, and its ministers exercised on the non-Catholics with whom they were brought in immediate contact. Here are one or two extracts:

"A Southern general said to me, 'The war has worn away many a prejudice against Catholics, such was the exemplary conduct of the priests in the camp and the hospital, and the Christian attitude of the church during the whole of the struggle. Many kind and generous acts were done by the priests to persecuted ladies, who now tell with gratitude of their services. Wherever an asylum was required, they found it for them. I wish all ministers had been like the priests, and we might never have had this war, or it would not have been so bitter as it was.'"—P. 480.

Exceedingly honorable to the Irish soldiers of the Union is the following testimony:

"The Irish displayed a still nobler quality than courage, though theirs was of the most exalted nature; they displayed magnanimity, generosity—Christian chivalry. From one end of the South to the other, even where the feeling was yet sore, and the wound of defeat still rankled in the breast, there was no anger against the Irish soldiers of the Union. Whenever the feeble or the defenceless required a protector, or woman a champion, or an endangered church a defender, the protector, the champion, and the defender were to be found in the Irishman, who fought for a principle, not for vengeance or desolation. The evil deeds, the nameless horrors, perpetrated in the fury of passion and in the license of victory whatever these were, they are not laid at the door of the Irish. On the contrary, from every quarter are to be heard praises of the Irish for their forbearance, their gallantry, and chivalry—than which no word more fitly represents their bearing at a time when wanton outrages and the most horrible cruelties were too frequently excused or palliated on the absolving plea of stern necessity."—Pp. 552, 553.

Of the Philadelphia riots and church-burning, and of the memorable struggle for the freedom of Catholic education in New York, Mr. Maguire gives interesting accounts. From this portion of the work we select the following. The author has been speaking of the beneficent effects exercised by convent schools; he goes on to say:

"What is true of convent schools is equally true of schools and colleges under the care of the great educational orders—Jesuits, Sulpicians, Vincentians, Redemptorists, Brothers and Sisters of the Holy Cross, Christian Brothers, Franciscans, and others."—P. 504.

When Mr. Maguire comes to speak of the Fenians, he generally takes a fair and impartial view of the subject. We must, however, object in toto to one remark of his. He says, on page 592:

"So far as I have been able to learn, my belief is, that among the Fenians in almost every State of the Union there are many thousands of the very cream of the Irish population."

So far is this from being the case, as it must have been represented to Mr. Maguire, that it was, and is, the constant complaint of the Fenians themselves, precisely that the "cream of the Irish population" kept widely aloof from them.

The concluding pages of the book are devoted exclusively to the strange phenomenon presented by the fondly-cherished, never-dying, hatred of England found among the Irish in every part of America; the deep-seated, burning thirst for vengeance on the power whose baneful influence has for many ages blighted the genius, the hopes, the energies of the Irish at home—whose colossal shadow has thrown into the shade the fairer and more graceful genius of the Celtic race, and made "the oldest Christian nation of Western Europe," the proud Celto-Iberian race, the poorest, the most abject of European nations, with all its wealth of genius, of poetry, of energy, of all that gives historic fame.

Mr. Maguire has given a good "bird's-eye view" of the Irish in America; he has shown them in various lights, and under various aspects; still his book has left much untold, much that would have interested the Irish and the friends of the Irish everywhere. There is, moreover, a want of method in the arrangement of this book—a certain haziness and indistinctness, that detracts considerably from its value as a book of reference. Too much is said of some things and some persons, too little of other things and persons; and these omissions unfortunately include what we here consider most honorable to "The Irish In America."

The Double Marriage.
[Footnote 69]

[Footnote 69: From The Diary of a Sister of Mercy. By Mrs. C. M. Brame. Now in press, by the Catholic Publication Society.]

Chapter I.

Just before vespers, as I came in from a visit to the hospital, Mother Frances, our superioress, called me to her, and said:

"Dear sister, you have been out nearly all day, and were up last evening; you can go into the church for vespers, and then you had better go to your cell."

After the service was ended, I remained a few minutes to say my prayers. When my time had expired, I went through the cloisters to my cell; and, just as I opened the door, I heard from the gate-bell a loud peal that rang through the silent house. I heard the door opened, and a hurried message delivered.

"Another call," I thought; and then came a quiet tap at my door. I opened it quickly, and Mother Frances entered, saying:

"I am grieved, sister, to disturb you so soon; but that poor girl, Mary MacNeal, is dying at the hospital, and she wishes most earnestly to see you."

There was no time to think of my aching head and wearied limbs. I dressed again hastily, and, together with the messenger, soon arrived at the hospital.

At the entrance of the ward where Mary lay I met the nurse. "Oh! God be praised, sister, that you're come at last! Poor Mary's only cry is for you."

This Mary MacNeal was a young girl who had been brought up in our schools, and afterward maintained herself by dressmaking. Hard toil, poor fare, and want of exercise did their work; and Mary lay dying in the last stage of consumption. She was a good girl, and had been long under my especial care. That very afternoon she had implored me to be with her during her last moments. When I reached her bed, a calm, happy smile welcomed me, and the feeble, faint voice spoke a few words of greeting, "And ye'll say the rosary, sister?"

I knelt down and complied with her request. When we said the last Gloria, Father Bernard came, and Mary received the last sacraments. I have stood by many a death-bed: I have seen the strong man in his agony expire; I have seen the atheist, fearing, dreading God, die, with despair in his glazing eye and faithless heart; I have seen infants die with the smile of an angel on their little faces; in every form I have met with death; but I never knew a soul leave this world that seemed more fit for heaven than that of this young girl. The rosary in one hand, the crucifix in the other, she lay so calm and still. Ever and anon, as I wiped the death-damp from the pale brow, she lifted her eyes as though to thank me. She seemed desirous to speak. I stooped over her to catch the few struggling words, and they were:

"Thank God, I have always loved the Blessed Mother; she is with me now." And she murmured the sweet names of Jesus and Mary.

Then the slight breath stopped; anon it came again; again it went, and without a struggle that happy soul took flight. I closed the eyes, still wearing the lingering look of gratitude and love; I crossed the hands, and twined the beads around them, and then knelt down and said the litany for the dead. I was now preparing to leave the hospital, when the nurse came, and asked me if I would step for a minute into the next ward, just to speak to a poor old woman who seemed to be getting worse. This ward was quite full; but I noticed a bed I had seen empty in the morning, occupied; when I had finished talking to the old woman, I asked who the fresh comer was.

"Ah! sister, she's in an awful way, let her be who she may. I asked her this afternoon if she would see you, or the priest; and I declare the look of her frightened me—it was so wild and fierce. But she's a lady, I am sure; for, though the poor feet of her were bare and bleeding, the few ragged clothes she had on were of the finest, and when she is in her senses, she speaks so lady-like; but she went on in a dreadful way, and told me not to talk to her of sisters or priests, but to do her the only kindness I could, and let her die alone; so there she lies, and not one bit or drop can I get down her."

I approached the bed carefully, shading the lamp with my hand. I set the light down on the table, and drew a chair close to the bedside, and sat down upon it. Loud, heavy breathing, and quick, frightened starts, told me the patient slept. I gently drew aside the sheet, with which she had covered her face and head, and started at the picture that met my gaze. {778} It was a woman, seemingly about two-and-twenty years of age; her face and neck were covered with a perfect mass of thick, glossy hair; it spread in its rich profusion over the pillow and the bed clothes. I took one of the tresses in my hand, and wondered at its length and softness. One small white hand was thrown above her head, and it grasped a portion of the hair so tightly that I could not move it, lest I should wake her. Before I had sat many minutes, the sleeper awoke with a loud, piercing scream, and a quick, fearful start. I laid my hands on her, to soothe her.

"I don't want you; go away; you only torment me." She turned from me, and concealed her face.

"I am afraid you mistake me," I said very gently; "indeed, I only wish to do you good."

"Don't mention his name to me. Leave me! Let me be forgotten by God and man. Let me die, and do not torment me."

"God loves you with an infinite love—a love more tender than you can imagine."

"I tell you to go! I am cursed? hated! I want no good; I will listen to none. Your words are all in vain; save them, and go!"

With these words she resolutely turned from me, and covered her face with the clothes, so that she could neither hear nor see me. I took my rosary, and knelt down, and said it for her; and ardently did I pray that the poor heart might be turned to God. When I had knelt above an hour, she turned fiercely round, and said

"Praying for me!" and a wild, fearful laugh sounded through the quiet room. "Praying for me; my name is forgotten in heaven. Don't do that. My mother is in heaven. Don't let my name be heard there, or she will know; but go away, and leave me. Heaven and earth have abandoned me; why need you care for me?"

The delirium and fever seemed to increase so rapidly, that I feared my longer stay would be useless. A torrent of words were pouring quickly from the parched lips; now a wild appeal, a fearful cry to God for mercy; then a dreadful outburst of reproaches and contempt against heaven; then a wild snatch of song, and a laugh so unearthly, it almost chilled the blood in my veins. Once, and once only, the loud voice grew calm and sweet, and a quiet look came upon the flushed face when she fancied she was a girl at home again, and her mother was speaking to her.

I went home, for I was of no use, and the nurse gave the poor sufferer an opiate before I left. I could not rest; that wild, beautiful face was before me, and those pitiful cries rang in my ears all night. The following morning I hastened to the hospital. I found my patient more quiet, and a good deal exhausted.

I procured a basin of cold water, and wetting a handkerchief, placed it upon her burning brow. Its coolness seemed to revive her; for after I had bathed her forehead for some minutes, she opened her eyes, and said, in a faint voice, "Is that you, mother? bless you, thank you;" but after looking earnestly at me, she turned away with a despairing sigh I never shall forget. After I had well bathed her face and head, I gathered the long hair and arranged it neatly under a cap. How beautiful she looked! the red flush had gone, and her face was fair and white as marble. The slight eyebrows were marked so clearly and arched so beautifully, and the noble open brow was so fair, I could distinguish every vein. Again my tears fell upon her face as I stooped over her. She gave a quick start, and said, "Who are you?"

"O sister!" and she turned and threw herself on my breast, "that is the first tear any one has shed over me since my mother died. My heart has been so proud, so full of bitter anger and hatred, that I thought nothing could ever again soften it; that tear was a dew-drop from heaven. A few moments since, I fancied you were my mother, for your hand lay upon my head just as hers did when she used to come, night after night, and bless me; just as it did the night before I left her. O sister! do not let me lie in your arms, you are so good, and I have been so wicked and sinful."

"I will indeed do all I can; for the present I must go. Will you let me put this around you?" (It was a medal of the Immaculate Conception.)

"I am, sister," and then a burning blush came over her face. "I am, but a guilty, ungrateful one."

At the end of an hour I returned, and found her weeping bitterly. She took my hand and kissed it. I tried to quiet her excessive grief. I said, "Do not cry, my child. Tell me, can I help you—can I do anything for you? My name is Sister Magdalen; what shall I call you?" She looked up with a sad face, and replied, "My name is Eva." "Well, then, Eva, be comforted; if you have sinned, there is mercy and hope for you; if you are unhappy, there is comfort. Look at this;" and I gave her my crucifix—"does not this teach you to love and hope?" There was no answer, nothing but bitter sobs. I knelt down, and said the Memorare, and then, taking Eva's hand, I was about to speak, when she said, "Sister, sister, when I am better, and have strength to talk, I will tell you my history, and you shall teach me to be better."

Day after day passed on, and she became so ill that we thought she must die; but God so willed it that she began to improve, and, at last, was able to speak and think rationally again. One evening I sat by her bed, saying the rosary while she slept, when, looking suddenly at her, I found her eyes open, and fixed upon me intently.

"Sister Magdalen," she said, "I want to tell you my history; it is a very sad one. I have sinned and suffered—will you hear me?"

Chapter II.

"I need not trouble you with the history of my childhood; it was spent alone with my dear mother, in a pleasant little village near Bristol, and was a very happy and innocent one. My father died before I was born, but he left an ample fortune to my mother. I was her sole care and treasure; next to me she loved and cared for our little church. The mission in our village was but a poor one; my mother was its chief support. To our care was given the sacristy, the chapel, the altar-linen and flowers. I used to spend hours in dressing the altar and arranging the flowers. The memory of those hours has never died; it has lived with me ever; and even amid scenes of vanity and passion, it has hung about me like the fragrance of a flower.

"My mother was the sweetest and most gentle of women; the early loss of her husband gave her a shock from which she never recovered; and she made a resolution at his death to devote her whole life to my education and to works of charity. I cannot think of her without tears; she was so patient and good, nor did I ever hear one unkind or hasty word from her.

"I grew up well skilled in all the accomplishments my mother loved and taught. One I was passionately fond of, and that was painting. I had a talent for it, and a cultivated taste.

"Imagine, sister, the course of a streamlet, with scarcely a ripple upon it, glittering in the bright sunlight, ever flowing calmly and gently, and you have a perfect image of my childhood.

"This lasted until I was sixteen. A few days after my birthday, a letter came from my mother's agent, a solicitor in London, requesting her immediate presence. Not liking to leave me behind, lest I should be dull, my mother offered to take me with her. I was overjoyed at the proposal. London was a distant fairyland to me, and I knew no rest or peace until we started. We were to stay at Mr. Clinton's, a distant relative of my father's, who kindly offered us the use of his house. He was married, but his wife was dead, and he had one only daughter, with whom I soon became intimately acquainted. Bella Clinton was an elegant girl, and foremost among the leaders of fashion. I had not been there long before I began to blush for my country dresses, and astonished my gentle, yielding mother by the extravagant demands I made upon her purse. Ah! there I learnt the fatal truth that I was gifted with beauty. I had heard strangers say at home, "What a handsome child! how like her father;" but I never realized the fact until I stood ready dressed for my first ball, where Bella had persuaded my mother to accompany us.

"Bella had chosen for me a robe of pale pink satin and a rich lace skirt; she twined pale pink flowers in my long black hair, and golden bracelets around my arms, and then led me to her mirror, and said, 'I am almost jealous, Eva!' {781} Ah! the lace pictured there was very fair, the eyes were flashing with light, the cheek was tinged like a rose, the white neck and arms shamed even the pearls that gleamed upon them. Beautiful, bright, and sparkling the picture was; but would to heaven I had died as I stood there, for I was then innocent and good.

"You, perhaps, sister, never saw or cared to see a ball-room; on me the effect was electrical. Just as we entered, the sweet, fascinating melody of a popular waltz was floating round the room; the room itself was radiant with light and beauty; jewels were shining, feathers waving, rich satins were gleaming; and the wearers, to my novice's gaze, were like beings from fairyland.

"Miss Clinton was soon surrounded with friends, and I listened with astonishment to her witty repartees and animated conversation. I was introduced to many of her friends; our group or party was, I could not fail to perceive, the most select in the room. I sat by my mother, endeavoring to give my attention to some officer who was detailing a striking adventure, when a face and form suddenly attracted my attention; it was that of a noble-looking man, with a head remarkable for the extreme beauty of its contour and the richness of its dark curls. The face, too, though not exactly handsome, was irresistibly attractive, from its aristocratic mould of feature and melancholy expression. His eyes were a singularly dark gray, shaded with long eyelashes; they had a tired, listless look. I watched this gentleman some few minutes, and then turning to my companion, said: 'Can you tell me who is that distinguished looking man standing just beneath the chandelier?'

"'Lord Montford. He is a clever man; but a very reserved, haughty character; he is known by the name of Le Grand Seigneur. I know him well, intimately; but I never can penetrate the veil of melancholy that hangs over him.'

"'No; he is one of the best parties of the season. Some say an early disappointment is the cause of his want of sociability; others say he has a distaste for the society of your charming sex.' And my informant made a low bow.

"A dozen more questions trembled on my lips; but not liking to continue the conversation, I remained silent. Suddenly looking up, I saw Lord Montford's eyes fixed upon me. I blushed, feeling like a guilty culprit. In a few minutes Miss Clinton came to me, and said:

"'Eva, you have made a splendid conquest. Here is Lord Montford asking to be introduced to you. Come with me.'

"'Go, Eva,' my mother said; and I went. My first impulse was to run away when I saw that tall, stately form bending before me; but he looked at me with so kindly an expression of interest and admiration that I accepted the invitation for the next quadrille with less of fear and restraint than I had hitherto felt. When the quadrille was over, Lord Montford took me into the refreshment-room.

"'It is no idle compliment to tell you, Miss Leason, that I enjoyed that dance more than I have done anything for years.'

"'Why?' I answered innocently, looking up with astonishment. He smiled and answered:

"'If I wished to flatter you, I should say because you are more beautiful and graceful than any lady I have seen for some time; but the real truth is, that I can perceive this is your first ball, and the freshness of your ideas is something novel to me.'

"'I am very sorry,' I began, half hesitatingly; 'indeed, I wish to be like every one else.'

"'Why, Eva,' said Miss Clinton, 'Surely you have some charm. I have known Lord Montford for years, and I never saw him so animated or so happy before.'

"But I need not dwell longer on this part of my life. Day after day, evening after evening, Lord Montford was by my side; and yet so quietly were these meetings conducted, that it always seemed that chance directed them. As Bella ceased jesting, my mother did not notice his attentions. I soon began to look upon seeing him as the only thing worth living for. I had no thought save for him. As yet no word of love passed his lips, though I could not but perceive that he regarded me with no common interest.

"One day, as we were all in the drawing-room, my mother suddenly announced her intention of returning home—almost directly. I looked at Lord Montford, and saw an expression of pain upon his face. I rose and went to the window to hide the tears that were starting to my eyes. In an hour after this, a servant brought me a note from Lord Montford, filled with expressions of love, and asking for an interview, and praying that I would not mention it to any one, even to my mother. I knew this was wrong, and this was the first false step in my career. I knew concealment from my mother was, in such a case, wrong; but stronger than the voice of conscience, stronger than the whispers of my angel guardian, stronger than the promptings of faith and obedience was the passion that reigned in my heart. I wrote a few words. My mother, Mr. Clinton, and Bella were going out to dine. I pleaded indisposition, and remained at home. I promised in the afternoon to grant Lord Montford the interview he desired. I went, when three o'clock came, to the library, and I left it in an hour the affianced bride of Lord Montford. One thing surprised me, and that was, that he used the most urgent entreaties that I would not mention our interview, or its result, to any one. Imprudently I promised.

"The day came when we left London, and yet no word would Lord Montford suffer to be spoken of our engagement. He stood in the hall as we passed from the house, and he hastily whispered to me:

"I could scarcely bear the quiet, tranquil beauty of home; my whole time was spent in wishing for and thinking of the promised letter.

"At length it came, and I went with it tightly held in my hand, to my own room. I cannot now remember all it said, but the concluding words I remember, and they were these: 'And now, Eva, I have told you how dear you are to me, how you have come across my dark dreary life like a bright sunbeam; without you I shall again become a dull, melancholy misanthrope; with you I may become a good and useful man. Will you refuse, Eva, to help me: One thing more. {783} A reason of the utmost importance prevents me from at present making public our engagement and marriage—a reason so potent that, if you refuse secrecy, we must part. Say, Eva, shall this be? Will you sacrifice my love, my hope, my happiness, for a scruple?'

"And so with a prayer for my consent, the letter ended; and then I laid it down and wept—ay, wept—for there was a calmer, holier feeling in my heart than I had known for a long time; and the struggle was hard. My mother, could I leave her thus? How had she nursed me, loved me! and with what pleasure and pride had she looked forward to my settling in life! Her sweet face came before me with all its goodness and purity. No; I could not leave her, I could not thus deceive and disappoint her. There was the church, too, with its altars and flowers; who would tend them? I could not go, and so I resolved—a resolution, alas! too soon to be broken.

"At this moment a hand was gently laid upon my shoulder, and looking up hastily, I saw my mother.

"'Eva, are you ill, my darling, or unhappy? Why are you here alone, and miserable?'

"I made no reply, but laid my head upon my mother's breast and cried aloud. Those were the last tears I ever shed there. I even feel now her soft hand caressing me, and drawing back the hair from my brow, while she soothed me as though I had been a little child.

"'I see you are, Eva.' And she laid me down gently, and sat by me until I slept. Two days afterward I was out, and turning round the road that led to the wood, I met Lord Montford. I found he had arrived that day, and had been waiting many hours for a chance of seeing me; but he looked so pale and ill I scarcely knew him. Let me tell the result in few words. I promised him to leave home, mother, and all things, and to accompany him wherever he would.

"'It is but for a short time, Eva,' said he, 'and then we will return, and your mother will forgive us and bless us.'

"'Why not wait the short time?' I said, for my face burned where my mother's tears had fallen.

"'I cannot; you do not know the reasons, Eva. But do not refuse me. You are the last tie that binds me to life and hope.'

"And he arranged that early the next morning I should meet his carriage in the park; that we should go straight to London, and there be quietly married; and then go on the same day to Paris.

"That night, sister, I never slept. Many times I half knelt to pray, and perhaps had I prayed, God would have heard me; but there was that in my heart that would not let me: and so, in wearily pacing my room, in bitter weeping and grief for my mother, in passionate tears, when I remembered my promise, in hard struggle and indecision, did I pass my last night under my mother's roof. When morning dawned, I tried to go and look at my mother; twice, thrice, I half opened the door, and, shuddering, closed it; and with my heart half breaking at leaving her, and yet drawn on irresistibly, I passed from my home a guilty fugitive, a cruel, wilful child. I went out into the pure, sweet, morning air, and it fanned so softly my burning face; the birds were singing such glorious carols of praise; the flowers were lifting their fair heads, drooping with dew; peace and beauty and joy were all around me; but in my heart were darkness and sorrow, grief and remorse. Suddenly a strong arm twined around me, and a low voice, whose tones I knew and loved too well, poured into my ears a rapture of love and thanks. {784} And in a whirl of time that seems to me now a dream, I was married, and in Paris. Immediately on our arrival at Paris, my husband wrote to my mother, telling her of our marriage, conjuring her for a time not to reveal it, and begging her forgiveness and blessing. An answer came, and my mother's gentle love spoke in every line, yet her heart seemed broken as she wrote. Trusting that time would reveal the mystery of my husband's strange desire for concealment. I threw myself into the vortex of pleasure and gayety. The hours passed like golden moments. I knew no wish, no caprice, that my husband did not immediately gratify. The most devoted love and ardent affection were lavished upon me; he was ever with me: if for one hour we were separated, he flew to me the next. Smiles chased the melancholy and languor from his brow, and the light in his eyes was to me brighter than the rarest jewel he loved to adorn me with. It was short but brilliant, this dream of mine; its bliss was dearly purchased. You will think the story that I am going to tell you strange, but there are stranger in the world.

Chapter III.

'I told you, sister, how devoted I was to painting; and this taste my husband spared no pains to gratify. He took me, one day, to one of the most splendid picture-galleries in Paris, and there, amongst other chef d'oeuvres, I noticed a most beautiful picture of St. Mary Magdalen. I stood entranced before it: it represented a graceful, slender figure kneeling fore a rustic altar. The hands were clasped in prayer, and the face was slightly raised toward heaven; but anything so exquisite as the blended look of remorse and love upon those splendid features I never saw; it was as though the raining tears had softened the dazzling beauty and brightness of the large, liquid eyes, and had blanched the roses on both cheek and lip, and had left over the fair face a lingering light, soft and spiritual. Long golden tresses waved over her shoulders, and lay (even as she knelt) upon the ground in their profusion and luxuriance. Hope and love were written on the noble brow, while such humility, such self-abasement were expressed in the prostrate, kneeling figure, that at one glance the history was read. I forgot time, place, and all things—my whole soul absorbed in the wondrous beauty of the picture. My husband had left me to procure a catalogue, when suddenly a heavy hand was laid upon my shoulder, and a voice hissed, rather than spoke, into my ear: 'Ay, look—for the sin that branded her is marked upon your brow!' The hot breath of the speaker flushed upon my cheek—a low, scornful laugh, and it was gone. Bewildered, I turned round, but saw no one who seemed likely to have addressed me or who seemed to notice me. A few paces from me, looking intently upon a small painting, there stood a tall, stately lady, and no one else was near. I hastened, when I recovered the use of my faculties, to ask her if she had seen any one speak to me, when she quickly arose, and left the room. As she turned to pass to the door, I saw her face; it was handsome, but so cold and haughty, and with so fierce an expression of self-will, that the words froze upon my lips; it was a strange face, too, and it haunted me all day. I was bewildered; but I did not tell my husband. {785} I did not wish to trouble or annoy him. I was frightened and out of spirits, and when evening came, my husband would insist upon my going to the opera. I went; but I could not forget those dreadful words. The opera was beautiful; but my attention would wander. Looking round the boxes, I suddenly saw the same lady I had met in the picture-gallery. Her handsome, haughty face bore an expression that surprised me; her large, glittering eyes were fixed upon me, and a smile of triumph, malicious and revengeful, curled her lip. I turned to my husband and said: 'I do wish, Percy, you would tell me who that lady is there opposite with the pink dress.' He turned, at my request; but when he saw her, his face became deadly pale, and convulsed with emotion. 'Do you know her?—are you ill?—what is the matter, Percy?' I cried.

"'Nothing,' said my husband, 'but the heat is too great; will you come home, Eva?'

"I rose, terrified, to leave the box, and turning again to look at the lady, I found her gone. As we were driving home, when my husband became more composed, I told him of my adventure in the picture-gallery, and asked him if he could possibly conjecture the meaning of it.

"'Why, why, Eva, did you not tell me this before? Now, do not be frightened; but I have decided to leave Paris by the midnight train: it is now ten o'clock; will you be ready?'

"My husband's manner was stern, and he became so silent that I dared not interrupt him. Directly we arrived at home, he left me to arrange for our journey, and, ringing for my maid, I told her to prepare for instant departure. I was tired, and my head ached with useless conjectures. I felt a foreboding of coming misery that I could not account for. I was in the drawing-room, packing a few books, when a servant entered and told me I was wanted. I said I could not see any one, I was engaged; but in a few minutes the man returned, and said the lady insisted upon seeing me, and before he had finished speaking, the lady I had seen at the opera stood before me.

"'You are leaving Paris,' she said, with a sneering smile; 'but it is important that you should grant me a few moments; perhaps I may alter your plans.'

"I bowed and the servant withdrew. She stood and surveyed me for some minutes with a strange, glittering look in her wild eyes; and then coming to me, she said:

"'You are passing fair. Percy Montford's second choice speaks well for his taste.'

"'I do not understand you, madam,' I said proudly; 'nor do I see by what right you intrude upon me or use my husband's name.'

"'Your husband, girl!' and a mocking laugh rang in my ears. 'Nay, Percy Montford is no husband of yours.'

"'Mad! No; and yet, I tell you, I am Lady Montford! You do not believe me? I will tell you again. Sixteen years ago, when I was young, and the world said beautiful, I became the lawful wife of the man who has deceived you.'

"'Nay,' said she, 'pause one minute before you summon aid or assistance. I repeat—sixteen years ago I was married. My husband had then no title; he was simply Mr. Ingram; he lived with me one year, and then, finding my temper hot and my spirit bitter, he left me, (amply provided for, it is true,) and has never seen me since. I have followed him, I have tracked him from city to city. I found out his admiration for you; I knew he would marry you secretly—openly he dared not, for fear of me. I could have saved you then, but I would not; I hated you because you were beautiful and good, and I have watched and waited with a fierce longing for the moment when your cup of joy was full, that I might dash it from your lips, and turn it to the poisoned chalice I have so long drunk. You still disbelieve me? Look,' and she took some papers and laid before me. My hands shook, and my sight failed me when I tried to read them; but I saw enough; and covering my face, I sank on my knees.

"I remember now, sister, that in my madness and my grief I knelt to that woman, and I prayed to her to unsay her fearful words. I can remember how she rejected me, how she scorned me and my wild prayers, and how proudly she stood over me, gloating in my misery.

"'No, Eva Leason! you broke your mother's heart—you had no mercy upon her, and I have none upon you. I am claiming only justice, I am speaking only truth.'

"'Ah! Percy, save her! You are so noble and good! You never deceived her, never betrayed her!' And then I remember no more, save that darkness seemed to come upon me until I lost all sense and feeling.

"When I recovered in some degree my recollection, I was lying upon a sofa, and my husband—ah! mine no longer!—knelt beside me, his face and head hidden, and yet I knew that he was weeping. She was gone.

"I sprang to my feet.' Percy,'I cried, 'tell me, is this true? You found her here. Has she told me the truth?' And I waited for his answer with my life depending on it.

"'And you have deceived me, stolen me from my mother and my home, and made me an outcast!' My heart seemed on fire. I tore the ring from my finger and the jewels from my hair, and threw them at his feet; but he knelt, and passionately implored me not to leave him, to listen to his story, to have mercy on him. But no, I heeded no word; I tore my dress from his hands; I rushed from him; I took no time; I had but one thought, and that was to fly. I was delirious with grief and anger; my cloak and bonnet were in the hall; I threw them on; and before Lord Montford knew where I was, I had taken a carriage, and was on my road to the station. My heart ached for my mother. I remember but very little else. I crossed the Channel, and my passage took nearly all my money: I had just enough to reach London, and then I was penniless. It seemed to me that I wandered for hours in the dreary streets, and at last I fell. I was picked up and carried here. Now, tell me, sister, was not my punishment bitter? Can you wonder that I craved to die, and hide my shame and misery?"

"You are much sinned against, Eva; but tell me how could Lord Montford marry you when he knew his first wife was living?"

"I do not know, sister; I cannot think; yet now I remember, that night he told me that he had married her when he was quite young, and had never known peace or rest since; and that, when he knew me, he loved me so and feared to lose me, he could not resist the temptation. {787} Did I tell you, sister, that the first thing I heard when I came to England was that my mother was dead? I saw it in a paper."

But, dear reader, I shall weary you if I repeat all poor Eva's long history; I must hasten and finish my story.

Some weeks after this, I was sitting with her, reading to her, when Mother Frances called me hastily from the room. I had told her Eva's history, and I felt from her manner that she had something of importance to say concerning her.

"Sister," said the superioress, "there is a gentleman in the convent parlor, and he has sent in his card. See, it is Lord Montford."

"O Mother Frances! what shall we do? what can we say to him? He has, then, traced poor Eva here!"

When we entered the parlor, Lord Montford rose, and when he addressed us, his voice trembled.

"May I ask," he began, "if a lady who some time since obtained shelter at the hospital, is still here? I have traced her here; can I be allowed to see her?"

"Lord Montford," said Mother Frances, "Eva's history is well known to me; and I have no hesitation in saying that, while this roof shelters her, she shall be safe from your further deceptions."

"Nay, you mistake, Rev. Mother, I am come to offer Eva the only reparation in my power. As you know my errors, concealment is useless. My first wife is dead, and I am come to make her my own again."

It took a long time to prepare Eva for this news; I dreaded it. She was so near the verge of the grave, that I feared the least agitation would be fatal. She bore it calmly; and when I had told her, Lord Montford entered the room, and I left them together.

Would, dear reader, that I could tell you, as the old story-books do, that Eva lived long and happily; but alas! no; she died three weeks after this, reconciled to God and to the church.

Eva Lady Montford lies in her quiet grave; violets are growing where her bright head was laid low. The winds chant drearily among the trees that shelter her tomb; and if you visit it when the morning sun gilds the flowers, or the moon silvers the leaves, you will always meet there one who, if he sinned deeply, has repented more deeply still.

From the wind that sighs over Eva's grave, comes there, my dear young reader, no warning to you? Is there no secret hoarded in that heart of yours, that a mother's eye has never penetrated; and if so, will it lead to your happiness in this world or the next? Ah! no; concealment or deception in the end works misery, let the cause be what it may. A pure and open heart before God, and a just and blameless one before the world, is my prayer for you.

The Church and Her Attributes.

The heterodox of all shades recognize, in some form or in some sense, what they call the church of Christ, and hold it in some way necessary, or at least useful, to salvation. The Anglicans profess to believe in a church founded by Christ himself, of which they claim to be a pure or purified branch; the Presbyterians profess to believe that there is a church, out of which there is no salvation; the Methodists and Baptists call their organizations churches, and hold them to be parts or branches of one universal or catholic church; and even Socinians, Unitarians, and Universalists, who deny the incarnation, speak of the church, though precisely what they mean by it is not easy to say. So far as we know, there is no sect, school, or party, not included among those whom our theologians call infidels or apostates, that does not profess a belief, of some sort, in the holy catholic and apostolic church of the creed.

In a controversy between us and the heterodox, the question is not, An sit ecclesia? but, Quid sit ecclesia? The controversy hinges, not on the existence of the church, but on what the church is, and only rarely on which is the true church; for when all have once come to agree as to what the church is, there will be little dispute as to which she is. We start, then, with the assumption that there is something to be called the church of Christ, and proceed at once to point out what she is.

The church of Christ, taken in its most comprehensive sense, in all states, places, and times, is, says Billuart: "Congregatio fidelium in vero Dei cultu adunatorum sub Christo capite—the congregation of the faithful, united under Christ the head, in the true worship of God." Most of the heterodox, as well as all Catholics, will accept this definition. But this definition includes the faithful who lived before Christ; as well as those who have lived since, and as those who lived and died before the incarnation could not enter into heaven before the way was opened by our Lord himself, who is the first-born from the dead, and the resurrection and the life, a definition more particularly adapted to the state of the church since the coming of Christ is needed. The church has indeed existed from the beginning; but before the Word was actually incarnated, she existed by prophecy and promise only; but Christ having come and fulfilled the promise, the church exists now in fact, in reality, for the reality foretold and promised has come. Hence St. Paul, in referring to the faithful of the Old Testament, says, "And all these being approved by the testimony of faith, received not the promise"—or the fulfilment of the promise—"God providing something better for us, that they should not be perfected without us." Heb. xi. 39, 40. The church, before Christ, was incomplete, and needed further fulfilment or perfecting; the church in the state in which she exists since Christ, is the church realized, completed, or perfected. According to this state, and as the kingdom of God on earth, she is, as Billuart again defines: "Societas fidelium baptizatorum ejusdem fidei professione, eorumdem sacramentorum participatione, eodem cultu inter se adunatorum sub uno capite Christo in coelis, et sub ejus in terris vicario summo pontifice—the society of the faithful, baptized in the profession of the same faith, united in the participation of the same sacraments and the same worship, under one head, Christ in heaven, and on earth under his vicar, the supreme pontiff." [Footnote 70]

All will not accept the whole of this definition; but all will agree that the church is a society embracing all the faithful, united in the true worship of God under one head, Jesus Christ in heaven; but the heterodox deny the union under one head or one regimen on earth. But what is a congregation or society of the faithful under Christ its head? A congregation or society under one head implies both unity and multiplicity, either many made one, or one manifesting or explicating itself in many, and in either sense supposes more than the heterodox in general understand by the church. The faithful, congregated or associated under one head, Christ, are one body, for Christ is the head of the congregation or society, not merely of the individuals severally; but the heterodox generally, in our times at least, make the church consist solely of individuals aggregated to the collective body of believers, because already united as individuals by faith and love to Christ, as their head; which supposes Christ to be the head of each individual of the church, but not of the church herself. According to this view, men are regenerated outside of the society or church, and join the church because supposed to be regenerated or born again, not that they may be born again. The church in this case is simply the aggregate of regenerated persons, and derives her life from Christ through them, instead of their deriving their life from Christ the head through her. The one view makes the church a general term, an abstraction, performing and capable of performing no part in the regeneration and sanctification of souls; the other makes the church a reality, a real existence, living a real life not derived from her members, and the real medium through which our Lord carries on his mediatorial work; and therefore union with her is not only profitable to spiritual life, but necessary to its birth in the soul, and therefore to individual salvation. This must be the case if we suppose Christ to be the head of the congregation or society called the church, and of individuals severally only as they are affiliated to her.

There is, we suspect, a deeper philosophy in the church than the heterodox in general are aware of. "The church," it was said in this magazine, in one of the essays on The Problems of the Age, "is the human race in its highest sense," that is, the regenerated human race, the human race in the teleological order, not in the order of natural generation, which is simply cosmic and initial. This supposes in the church something more than individuals, as, indeed, does society itself. With nothing but individualities brought together there is no society, there is only aggregation, because there is no unity, nothing that is one and common to all the individuals brought together. In all real society there is a social principle, a social life, in which individuals participate, but which is itself not individual, nor derived from the individuals associated. Thus in every real nation, not a pseudo nation made up of the forced juxtaposition of distinct and often hostile communities, there is a real national life. {790} An insult to the nation each one feels is an insult to himself; and if the existence of the nation is threatened, every one in whose heart throbs the national life, rises, and all, in the fine Biblical expression, "march as one man" to the rescue, prepared to save the nation or die in its defence.

The unity of social life is still more manifest when we come to the race. We are aware of the old quarrel between the nominalists and conceptualists on the one hand, and the old realists on the other; but we disposed of that controversy in the article entitled An Old Quarrel, in the Magazine for May of last year, and established, we think, the reality of genera and species, while we denied that of abstractions, or simple mental conceptions. If we deny the reality of genera and species, we must deny the fact of generation, and the Catholic dogmas of the unity of the species and of original sin. If all men have not proceeded from Adam by way of natural generation, there can be no unity of the species; and if no unity of the species, there can be no original sin, which is "the sin in which we are born," the sin of origin, the sin of the race, transmitted by natural generation from Adam to all his posterity. To deny the reality, of the species is to deny this, is to deny generation, that we are born in any sense of Adam; to deny generation is to deny regeneration; and to deny regeneration is to deny the whole Christian or teleological order. We cannot then logically be nominalists or conceptualists and Christian believers at one and the same time.

We do not pretend that the species subsists without individualization any more than we do that the individual can subsist without the species. What we contend for is, that in every individual there is that which is not individual, but distinguishable from the individuality, which is common to all the individuals of the species, and which in men binds all men, from the first to the last, together in the unity of their natural head or progenitor. The species is more than the individual, operates in the individual, determines his specific nature, and separated from which the individual is nothing; but the species does not subsist without individualization, and could not be explicated by natural generation if not individualized. Yet the entire race was individualized in Adam.

We can now understand the assertion that "The church is the human race in the highest sense," the regenerated race in its progenitor, its unity and reality, therefore in its real head, in the supernatural order. The head of the regenerated race, or the race in the supernatural or teleological order, is Christ himself, the second Adam, the Lord from heaven. Hence the apostle says, (i Cor. xv.,) "As in Adam all die, so in Christ all shall be made alive." The apostle, in this fifteenth chapter of his Epistle to the Corinthians, draws a parallel between the first Adam and the last Adam, which must hold good be the race as born of the first Adam, and the race as born anew of the last Adam; and, therefore, the race born anew must hold to Christ in the order of regeneration a relation strictly analogous to that borne by it in the natural or initial order, to the first Adam. The difference is, that in the natural order the race is explicated by natural generation, and in the supernatural or teleological order by the election of grace. But the relation between the members and the head is no less real in the one case than in the other, and we live in the order of regeneration, if born again, the life of Christ as really and truly as in the natural order we live the life of Adam. The church, then, proceeds as really through grace from Christ, the supernatural head, as the race itself proceeds from Adam, the natural head.

This view of the church is sustained by Saint Augustine, who represents Christ as both the head and the body of the church, and says Christ and his members are the whole Christ—totus Christus. If we view the church in her origin, her principle, her life, that is, in her head and soul, she is Christ himself; if we view her as the congregation or society of the faithful, made one in the unity of the head, the church is the body of Christ. Hence, Saint Paul teaches, (Colossians i. 18,) that Christ "is the head of the body; the church, who is the beginning, the first-born from the dead;" "the head, from which all the body, by joints and bands being supplied with nourishment and compacted groweth unto the increase of God." (Ib. ii. 19.) "Christ is the head of the church; he is the Saviour of his body." (Eph. v. 23.) "Now you are the body of Christ, and members of member." (i Cor. xii. 27.) "We are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones." (Eph. v. 30.) "And if one member suffer anything, all the members suffer with it: or if one member glory, all the members rejoice with it." (i Cor. xii. 26.) Nothing can more clearly or unequivocally assert Christ as the head of the church, the church as the body of Christ, or the members of the church as members of his body and members of one another, or the perfect solidarity of Christ and the church, and of the members of the church in Christ, and with one another, as implied in the definition of the church quoted from Billuart.

The men of the world do not understand this, because they recognize no existence but that of individual things, and have no conception of unity. What transcends the individual or particular, is, for them, an empty word, or a pure abstraction, therefore nothing. They have never asked themselves how individuals or particulars can exist without the general or universal, nor how there can be men without the generic man. What has not for them a sensible existence is, indeed, no existence at all. They seem never to reflect that, if there were no supersensible reality, there could be no sensible reality. The sensible is mimetic, depends on the intelligible or noetic which it copies or imitates. Take away the intelligible or non-sensible, and the sensible would be a mere appearance in which nothing would appear—less than a vain shadow.

We have defined the church in her origin, principle, and life, to be Christ himself; as the society of the faithful, to which all the faithful are affiliated, to be the body of Christ. But the principle on which we have asserted this union of the faithful with Christ, applies only to those who are in the order of regeneration; for in that order only is Christ our head, or are we, as individuals, affiliated to him, and included in him, as the father of regenerated humanity; and hence they who die unregenerated, suffer the penalty of original sin and of such actual sins as they may have committed. How then do we enter that order? By the new birth; by being born of Christ into it, as we enter the natural order by being born of Adam. The Pelagians, Socinians, Unitarians, and Universalists reject the distinction of the two orders, and recognize no regenerated humanity; the Calvinists, Congregationalists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Evangelicals, etc., hold that we are translated from the order of nature into the order of grace by the direct, immediate, and irresistible operation of the Holy Ghost. {792} But the Holy Ghost, in his immediate operations, is God acting in his divine nature, and the medium of our regeneration is God in his human nature, the Man Christ Jesus, who, on this view, would be superseded as the mediator of God and men. The order of regeneration originates in the Man Christ Jesus, the Word made flesh, or God in his human nature, not in God in his divine nature; and therefore, to be in that order, we must be born of God in his humanity. If we could be regenerated by the Holy Ghost, or God in his divine nature alone, without the intervention of God in his human nature, or the Man Christ Jesus as the medium or mediator, the incarnation would go for nothing, and we should be made by the new birth, sons of God in his divine nature; since neither the Father nor the Holy Ghost assumed flesh; as the eternal Word is himself the son of God, and God as he is God; which, we need not say, is simply impossible and absurd. By the hypostatic union with the Word, man becomes God in his personality, but not in his nature, for the human nature remains always human nature. The two natures remain, as we are taught in the condemnation of the Monophysites, for ever distinct in the unity of the one divine person. By regeneration we are elevated, indeed, to be sons of God, but sons of God by participation with the Eternal Son in his human, not in his divine nature. We are made joint-heirs with Christ, and sons of God by adoption, not by nature.

There is no act conceivable without principle, medium, and end. In the creation of man and the universe, the three persons of the holy and indivisible Trinity concur, but in diverse respects—the Father as principle, the Son or Word as medium, and the Holy Ghost as end or consuminator. In the regeneration, which St. Paul calls a "new creation," the whole Trinity also concur, the Father as principle, the Son as medium, and the Holy Ghost as end, consummator, or sanctifier; but here it is the Son in his human nature, not in his divine nature, that is the medium; for St. Paul says, "There is one God, and one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus." The Son, in his human nature, is the medium of the whole order of regeneration, or of our redemption, new birth, and return to God as our final cause or last end. We must then be begotten of him in his humanity by the Holy Ghost, as the condition of being born into the regeneration, and becoming members of the regenerated human race. The heterodox overlook this fact, and even when asserting the incarnation, leave it no office in the regeneration and sanctification of souls, or, at best, no continuous or permanent office. According to them, the mediatorial work was completed when Christ died on the cross, at least, when he ascended into heaven; and now the salvation of souls is carried on by the Holy Ghost without any medium or any participation of God in his human nature, as if one person of the indivisible Trinity could operate alone, without the concurrence of the other two! This, if it were possible, would imply the denial of the unity of God, and the assertion of the three persons of the Godhead as three Gods, not three persons in one God. The heterodox, the supernaturalists, as well as the naturalists, really deny the whole order of grace as proceeding from God in his human nature, its only possible medium, and hence the reason why they so universally shrink from calling Mary the Mother of God, and accuse of idolatry the devotion which Catholics pay to her. {793} Though the eternal Word took the flesh he assumed from her, yet, as that flesh is not in their view the medium of our spiritual life, they cannot see in her, more than in any other pure and holy woman, any connection with our regeneration, and our spiritual or eternal life. They cannot see that, in denying her claims, they virtually reject the whole Christian order.

The difficulty, though not the mystery, disappears the moment we recognize the sacramental principle, which it was the prime object of the Reformers to eliminate from the Christian system. In the definition of the church, she is said to be "the society of the faithful baptized in the profession of the same faith, and united inter se in the participation of the same sacraments." The sacraments are all visible signs signifying, that is, communicating grace to the recipient. Among these sacraments is one, which is the sacrament of faith, the sacrament of regeneration, that is, baptism, in which we receive the gift of faith, and are born members of Christ's body, and united to him as our head, and as the head of the regenerated race. In baptism we are regenerated, born into the supernatural order, the kingdom of heaven, and have the life of Christ infused by the Holy Ghost into us, so that henceforth we become flesh of his flesh, bone of his bone, one with him, and one with all the faithful in him, as really united to him in the spiritual order, as we are to Adam in the natural order, and derive our spiritual life from him as really as we derive from God, through Adam, our natural life. This is what we understand St. Paul to mean when he says, "It is written, the first man, Adam, was made a living soul; the last Adam a quickening spirit." The sacraments are all effective ex opere operato, and through them the Holy Ghost infuses the grace special to each, when the recipient opposes no obstacle to it. Infants are incapable of offering any obstacle, and are regenerated by baptism in Christ and joined to him. In the case of adults who have grown up without faith, the prohibentia, or obstacles to faith, must be removed, by reasons that convince the understanding and produce what theologians call fides humama, or human faith, such faith as we have in the truth of historical events; but this faith is wholly in the natural order, although it embraces things in the supernatural order as its material object, and does not at all unite us to Christ as our head. It brings us, when faithful to our convictions, to the sacrament of baptism, but cannot introduce us into the order of regeneration; the faith that unites us to the body of Christ, and through it with Christ himself, or divine faith, is the gift of God, and is infused into the soul by the Holy Ghost in the sacrament of baptism itself. [Footnote 71]

[Footnote 71: Theologians generally teach that an act of supernatural faith, elicited by the aid of a special transient grace, precedes the infusion of the habit of faith.—Ed. Catholic World.]

Hence, in her present state, only the baptized belong to the society called the church of Christ, and only the baptized are united as one body under Christ, their head in heaven, or under his vicar on earth. The satisfaction or atonement made by our Lord to divine justice, though it was made for all, and is ample for the sins of the whole world, avails individuals, or becomes practically theirs, only as through baptism, vel in re, vel in voto, they are really united to Him, and are in Him as their head, as we were in Adam; and hence the dogma, extra ecclesiam nulla salus, judged by the world to be so harsh and illiberal, is founded in the very nature and design of the church, of the whole mediatorial work of Christ, and in the very reason of the incarnation itself. {794} To say a man can be saved out of the church, is saying simply a man can be saved out of Christ, without being born of Him,—as impossible as for one to be a man and, in humanity, without being born of Adam. The justice, the sanctity, the merits, the life of Christ, can be really ours, only as we are really assimilated to His body, and are in Him as our living head, our Father in the order of grace; and hence it was not idly or inconsiderately, that St. Cyprian, one of the profoundest of the fathers, said: "He cannot have God for his father, who has not the church for his mother." It lies in the very nature of the case.

The other sacraments are channels of grace from the head to the body and its members; and are all means of sustaining or restoring the life begotten in baptism, preserving, diffusing, or defending the faith, bringing up children in the nurture of the Lord, augmenting the life and compacting the union of the body of Christ, and solacing individuals in their illnesses, and comforting and strengthening souls in their passage through the dark valley of death. The sacramental system is complete, and provides for all our spiritual wants. Baptism initiates us into the life of Christ; the Holy Eucharist nourishes that life in us; Penance restores it when lost by sin; Confirmation gives strength and heroic courage to withstand and repel the assaults of Satan; Orders provide priests for offering the unbloody sacrifice, the stewards of the mysteries of Christ, intercessors for the people, teachers, directors, and defenders, in the name of Christ, of the Christian society; Matrimony institutes and blesses the Christian family; and Extreme Unction heals the sick, or sustains, strengthens, and consoles the departing. Indeed, the sacraments meet all the necessities of the soul, in both the natural and the supernatural orders, from its birth to its departure, and even leave us not on the brink of the grave, but accompany us till received into the choir of the just made perfect.

The medium of all sacramental grace is the Man Christ Jesus, the Word made flesh, and the sacraments are the media through which the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ flows out from him, the Fountain,—the grace that begets the new life, justifies, sanctifies, and makes pleasing to God, we mean,—is infused by the Holy Ghost into the soul, and constitutes alike the vital principle of the individual, and of the whole body, quickening and sustaining each. In rejecting sacramental grace, the heterodox separate the individual soul, and also the church herself, from all real communion or intercourse with Christ, or God in his human nature, and accept the seminal principle of rationalism, into which we see them everywhere falling. They dissolve Christ, and render the Word efficient only in his divine nature. The sacraments are the media of our union with God in his human nature, through which the hypostatic union is, in some sort, repeated in us, or made by the Holy Ghost practically effectual to the justice and sanctity of believers, and the perfecting of the church, which is the body of Christ; and as this grace, in its principle and medium, is Christ himself, all who are born of it are born of him, and the life which they live in and by it is the one life of God in his humanity. {795} Looking at the church, in what theologians call her soul, she is literally and truly the man Christ Jesus, and looking at her as the whole congregation of the faithful, she is the body of Christ, and related to him as the body to the soul. It is this intimate relation of the church to God in his human nature, that led Moehler to represent the church as in some sort the continuation on earth, in a visible form, of the Incarnation; and she is certainly so closely united to his divine personality, that we may say truly, that he is her personality, as really as he is the personality of the flesh he assumed and hypostatically united to himself. Perrone says that, if we exclude from this view all pantheistic conceptions, it is scriptural, and, moreover, sustained by the fathers, especially St. Athanasius, who says, in writing of the Incarnation, "Et cum Petrus dicat: certissime sciat ergo omnis domus Israel, quia et Dominum eum, et Christum fecit Deus, hunc Jesum quern vos crucifixistis: non de divinitate ejus dicit, quod Dominum ipsum et Christum fuerit, sed de humanitate ejus, quae est UNIVERSA ECCLESIA, quae in ipso dominatur et regnat, postquam crucifixus ipse est: et quae erigitur ad regnum coelorum, ut cum illa regnet, qui seipsum pro illa exinanivit et qui induta servili forma, ipsam assumpsit." [Footnote 72] Christ, in his humanity, is the universal church, which rules and reigns in him. We cannot study the great fathers of the church too assiduously, and we wish we had earlier known it. The doctrine we are trying to set forth is there.

[Footnote 72: Edit. Maur. opp. tom. i. p. 2, p. 887; apud Perrone, Praelect. Locis Theolog. p. I. c. 2; De Anima Ecclesiae, Art. I.]

1. Because the hypostatic union is by the creative act of God, as much so as the creation of Adam.
2. Because, although God is really the church, regarded in her soul, it is God in his human, which is for ever distinct from his divine nature, and therefore in his created nature.
3. Because the Word was incarnated in an individual, not in the species, as some rationalists dream, save as the species was individualized in the individual nature he assumed; and,
4. Because, though Christ is identically the soul, the informing principle, the life of the church, the individuals affiliated to the body of the church retain their individuality, their human personality, and therefore their own free-will, personal identity, activity, or their character as free moral agents.

Not all individuals apparently affiliated to the body of the church are really assimilated to her, and vitally united to the body of Christ. They pertain to the society externally, but not by an inward union with Christ, the head and soul. They are, as St. Augustine says, "in not of the church," as the dead particles of matter in the human body which receive not, or have ceased to receive, life from it, and are constantly flying or cast off. Gratia supponit naturam. All the operations of grace presuppose nature, and nature has always the power to resist grace. Without grace nature cannot concur with grace; yet even they who have been born again, and have entered into the order of regeneration, are always able to fall away, or back, practically, into the natural order. Not every individual in the church is assimilated to her, nor every one who is assimilated to her will continue to the end. But she herself survives their loss and remains always one and the same body of Christ.

We have dwelt at great length on this view of the church, not because we have any special partiality or aptitude for mystic theology, but because we have wished to show that the church is not something purely external and arbitrary. We hold that all the works of God are real, and have a real and solid reason of being in the order of things which he has seen proper to create. He does nothing in the supernatural order, any more than in the natural order, without a reason, and a good and valid reason. We have wished to get at the reality, and to show that Catholicity is not a sham, a make-believe, a reputing of things to be that are not; but a reality, as real in its own order as the order of nature itself, and, in fact, even more so, as nature is mimetic, and Catholicity, to borrow a term from Plato, is methexic, and participates of the divine reality itself. All heterodox systems are shams, unphilosophical, sophistical, and incapable of sustaining a rigid examination. Their abettors do not, and dare not, reason on them. The age supposes Catholicity is no better, is equally unsubstantial, unreal, dissolving and vanishing in thin air at the first glance of reason. We have wished to show the age its mistake, and to let it see that Catholicity can bear the most thorough investigation, and that it has nothing to fear from the most rigid dialectics. We do not pretend to divest it of mysteries, or to explain the mysteries so as to bring them within the comprehension of our feeble understandings, but to show that the church, with all her attributes and functions, has a reason in the divine mind and in the order of things of which we make a part, and is a real, inward life, as well as an outward form.

From the view of the church which we have presented, it is easy to deduce her attributes. She is in some sort, according to St. Athanasius, the human nature of Christ, or Christ in his humanity, and he is her divine personality, for his humanity is inseparable from his divine person. That she is one, follows, necessarily, from the unity of Christ's person, from the fact that, in her soul, she is Christ and, in her body, is his body. Her unity is the unity of Christ himself, and the unity of the life she lives in him. There are individual distinctions and even varieties of race or family among men in the natural order, but all men are men only in that they are one in the unity of the species. Jesus Christ is not only the individual man Christ Jesus, but also in the order of regeneration the species, as Adam was both an individual man and the entire species in the order of genesis or generation. The church as growing out of the incarnation, and, in some sense, continuing it, and in her body composed of individuals born of him and affiliated to him, must necessarily be one, one in her faith, one in her sacraments, one in her worship, one in her love, one in the life that flows through her, animates and invigorates her, from the one Christ, who is her forma, or informing principle, as the soul is the informing principle of the body—anima est forma corporis, as the holy Council of Clermont defines. Diversity in any of these respects breaks the unity of the body and interrupts communion with the head, and the communion of the body with the soul, whence is derived its life. It is therefore all Christians have always held heresy and schism to be deadly sins, and the most deadly of all. They not only sever those guilty of them from the body or external communion of the church, but from her internal communion, from Christ himself, the only source of supernatural and divine life. {797} There is not only the grossest ingratitude and baseness in heresy and schism, but there is spiritual death in them. By them we die to Christ as, in the natural order, we should die to Adam, or lose our natural life, if we were deprived of our humanity or cut off from communion with its natural head. It is not from bigotry or intolerance that the church regards heresy and schism with horror; it is because they necessarily separate the soul from Christ, and destroy its spiritual life; because they reject Christ, and crucify him afresh. It is so in the very nature of the case, and she can no more make it not so, than the mathematician can make the three angles of a triangle not equal to two right angles. It is not, therefore, without reason that the church has always insisted that to keep the unity of the faith is the first of Christian duties, or that St. Paul bids St. Timothy to keep the deposit, and to hold fast the form of sound words; for without the faith it is impossible to please God. We know men may err without being heretics; we know that invincible ignorance, an ignorance not culpable in its cause, excuses from sin in that whereof one is invincibly ignorant; but there is no invincible ignorance where one may know the truth, but will not; and invincible ignorance itself cannot regenerate the soul, and elevate it to the supernatural order, which can be done only by faith given in baptism.

The church is holy, holy in her doctrines, her worship, her life, and in her living members. This follows necessarily from the fact, that in her soul she is Christ, and her body the body of Christ. She is holy as he is holy, and because he is holy, as she is one because he is one. Doubtless all individuals in her communion are not holy; for men may, as we have seen, be in the church and not of the church. Regeneration, or the infused habits of faith, justice, and sanctity, do not destroy one's individuality, or take away one's free-will; men may, if they will, profane the sacraments, eat or drink unworthily, even fall from grace, and become gross sinners against God and criminals before the state. These are not holy, but the reverse; yet all who are born again, and are united by a living bond to the church, may derive, if they will, life from Christ through her, and all who do so are holy in her holiness, as she is holy in the holiness of Christ. His life, the life of God in his humanity, is their life.

The attempt to disprove the sanctity of the church from the bad conduct of some, if you will many, of her members, overlooks the real character of the church, supposes her to be simply an aggregation of individuals, living only the life she derives from them; and it also starts from the false assumption that grace is irresistible and inamissible. Poor Luther, in the morbid state into which he fell in his convent, could find relief only in assuming that, as he had once been in grace, he must be still in grace, and sure of salvation; for grace, once had, can never be lost, however one may sin after having received it. Yet this doctrine was false, and but for his morbid, half insane state of mind, he would never have entertained it for a moment. Protestantism sprang from the diseased state of Luther's soul. A sad origin.

The church is visible as well as invisible. This also follows necessarily. The internal life of the church is invisible, hidden with God; but the body of the church is visible, as was the body of Christ when on earth. {798} The church is composed, as we have seen, of body and soul, and everybody living on earth in space and time, is by its own nature visible, and would not be body if it were not. The body of the church is composed of individuals united in the profession of the same faith, and in the participation of the same sacraments, under one head, and is therefore, since the individuals are visible, a visible body. The whole analogy of the case supposes her to be both invisible and visible, as are all the sacraments, which are visible signs or media of invisible grace. The church is the medium through which the soul is regenerated and comes into communion with Christ, the head, and derives life from his life; and how if not visible could we know where to find her, or be able to approach her sacraments, and through them be born again, and be united in the supernatural order to Christ, as in the natural order we are united to Adam? No: the church is as a city set on a hill, and cannot be hidden; and is set on a hill, made visible, that all may behold her, and flock within her walls.

The church is indefectible. This follows from the fact that Christ himself whose body she is, is indefectible, and dies no more, but ever liveth and reigneth. No matter whether you call the rock on which he said he would build his church, and against which the gates of hell shall not prevail, Peter, the truth that Peter confessed, or Christ himself, her indefectibility is equally asserted. He himself in every case, is the chief corner-stone, is, in the last analysis, the rock; and the church cannot fail, not because men may not fail, but because he who is her support, her life, cannot fail, since he is God, and as truly God in his human nature as in his divine nature. The heterodox of all shades, however they may err as to what she is, hold, as we have seen, that the church is, in some form, indefectible.

The church is authoritative. Her authority is the authority of Christ; and his authority is the authority of God in his human nature. "All power is given unto me," he said, "in heaven and in earth," and therefore is he exalted to be "King of kings and Lord of lords," so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow. The church is Christ in his humanity, and his authority is hers, for it is in and through her that he exercises his authority. To resist her, is to resist him, and to resist him is to resist God. "He that despiseth you, despiseth me, and he that despiseth me, despiseth him that sent me." This is no arbitrary authority, or authority resting solely on an external commission or appointment. It is internal and real in the church, as the body of Christ, because he is in her, lives in her, and governs in and through her. It is, then, no light thing to resist the authority of the church; for to do so, is not to resist the authority of fallible men, but the authority of God—is to resist the authority of the Holy Ghost himself. The age feels it, and seeks to justify itself in rejecting the church by denying the Divine sovereignty, or that God has any rightful authority over the creatures he has made. It demands liberty, and M. Proudhon, a man of iron logic, maintained that to assert liberty in the sense this age asserts it, we must dethrone God, and annihilate belief in his existence. "Once admit the existence of God," he said, "and you must admit the authority claimed by the church, the papal despotism and all." We have met this denial of the Divine sovereignty in the essay on Rome and the World, in the current volume of the Magazine, and proved, we think conclusively, that God is sovereign Lord and Proprietor of all his works. {799} Very few people are willing to avow themselves atheists, however atheistic may be their speculations; and most people have, after all, a lurking belief that God is sovereign, and has plenary authority over all the creatures he has made. Concede this, and the authority of the Son is conceded; and if the authority of the Son is conceded, that of the church cannot be denied or questioned.

The church is infallible. This follows necessarily, if our Lord himself is infallible, which it were impious to doubt. Our Lord is God in his human nature indeed; but God in his human nature is God no less than in his divine nature. In this is the mystery of the incarnation—that God should humble himself, assume the form of a servant, annihilate himself, as it were, become man, and be obedient unto death, even the death of the cross, and yet be God, have all the fulness of the Godhead dwell in him bodily; this is a mystery that only God himself can fathom. We know from revelation the fact, and can understand its relation to our redemption, justification, sanctification, and glorification; but it remains a fact before which we do, and always must, stand in awe and wonder. If Christ is God, God in his humanity and also in his divinity, for he includes both natures in the unity of his divine person. He has all the attributes of divinity, while he has also all the attributes of humanity, what the fathers mean when they say, "he is perfect God and perfect man." He knows all things, and can do all things, and can neither deceive nor be deceived. He is the divine personality of the church, who is not the individual man, but the human nature hypostatically united to himself, as we have seen from St. Athanasius. His life is her life, and she must, therefore, be infallible as he is infallible. He who is infallible as God is infallible lives in her, and she lives, breathes, moves, and acts by him and in him. How then, can she be not infallible? How could she err? She could no more err as to the truth that lives and speaks in her than God himself, for she is all in him, and in her soul indistinguishable from him. She is not infallible by external appointment or commission alone, but really so in herself, in her own life and intelligence. We speak of the soul of the church, but as her soul and body are not separated or separable, she must be equally infallible in her body, or as the body of Christ, who is the life and informing principle of the body. The body of the church, by virtue of its union with Christ is, and must be, infallible. But the body of the church is a society of individuals; and is it meant that all individuals in the communion of the church are infallible? There is in the church regenerated humanity which, though it subsists not without individualization, is not individual. This regenerated humanity is united to Christ, its regenerator, and derives its life from him. In all the individuals affiliated or assimilated to the body of the church, there is both this regenerated humanity and their own individuality. As regenerated humanity, no one can err, but in their individuality all individuals do or may err more or less. Reason is in all men, and reason within its sphere is infallible; but all men are not infallible in their understanding of what is reason, or what reason teaches. Individuals who are in the communion of the church, so far as made one with her body and one with the indwelling Christ, are infallible in his infallibility; but in their individuality they are not infallible. {800} Hence, when it is said the church is infallible, the meaning is, that she is infallible in the universal, not in the particular, or in the sense in which she is one, not in the sense in which she is many. Our faith as individual believers is infallible only in believing with the church, what she in her unity and integrity believes and teaches.

The church, we should have said before, is catholic. This follows from her unity and completeness. Catholic means the whole, or universal; and since the church is one, and is the body of Christ, who is "the way, the truth, and the life," she cannot but be catholic. She is catholic, in the words of the catechism, "because she subsists in all ages, teaches all nations, and maintains all truth." She is catholic because in her soul she is Christ himself; because in her body she is the body of Christ; because she is the whole regenerated human race in their head, the second Adam. Having Christ, who, in the order of regeneration, is at once universal and individual, she has the whole, has the universal life of Christ, has all truth, for he is the truth itself and in itself, and is the only way of salvation; for there is no other name given under heaven among men whereby we can be saved—neither is there salvation in another. She subsists in all ages, prior to the incarnation, as we have seen, by prophecy and promise; since the incarnation, in fact and reality; and has authority to teach all nations, and is set to make all the kingdoms of this world the kingdom of God and his Christ. Whatever is outside of her is outside of Christ, and is necessarily non-catholic.

The church is apostolic. This means that she is endowed with authority to teach and govern, not merely that she descends in the direct line from the apostles, the chief agents in founding and building her up, though, of course, that is implied in her unity and catholicity in time no less than in space. It means that she is clothed with apostolic authority; that is, authority in doctrine and discipline. This authority is distinguishable from the sacerdotal character conferred in the sacrament of orders. Men may have valid orders, be real priests, and actually consecrate in schism, or even heresy, as is the case with the clergy of the schismatic Greek Church and some of the Oriental sects. But these schismatic or heretical priests have no apostolic authority, no authority to teach or govern in the church, no authority in doctrine or discipline, and all their sacerdotal acts are irregular and illicit. This authority, which we have seen the church derives from the indwelling Christ, and possesses as his body, we call the apostolate. It is inherent in Christ himself, and is and can be exercised only in his name by his vicar, the supreme pontiff, and the pastors of the church under him and in communion with him. All the arguments that prove the visibility of the church prove equally the visibility of the apostolate, or, as Saint Cyprian calls it, the episcopate; all the arguments that prove the unity of the church prove the unity of the apostolate or episcopate; and, therefore, with those which prove the visibility of the church, prove a visible centre of authority, in which the episcopate takes its rise, or from which the whole teaching and governing authority under Christ radiates and pervades the whole body. The visible church being one, demands a visible head; for if she had no visible head, she would lack visible unity; and would be, as to her teaching and governing authority, not visible, but invisible. Hence Saint Cyprian, after asserting the episcopate or apostolate, held by all the bishops in solido, says, that the unity might be made manifest, or the apostolate be seen to take its rise from one, our Lord established one cathedra and gave the primacy to Peter. {801} Saint Cyprian evidently assumes the necessity of a visible centre of authority, so that we may as individual members of the church, or as persons outside the church seeking to ascertain and enter her communion, know what is her authority and where to find it. Hence in the definition of the church we began by saying she is defined to be "the society of the faithful, baptized in the profession of the same faith, and united inter se in the participation of the same sacraments, and in the true worship of God, under Christ the head in heaven, and under his vicar, the supreme pontiff on earth." The papacy is the visible origin and centre of the apostolate, as Christ is himself its invisible origin and centre, and is as essential to the being of the visible church as are any of the attributes we have seen to be hers. To make war on the supreme pontiff is to make war on the church, and to make war on the church is to make war on Christ, and to make war on Christ is to make war on God and man.

It is no part of our present purpose to discuss the constitution of the hierarchy or external organization of the church, which, to a certain extent, is and must be a matter of positive law, and which, though having its reason in the very nature and design of the church as founded by the incarnation, lies too deep in that mystery of mysteries for us to be able to ascertain it by way of logical deduction. The idea of one living God includes the three persons in the Godhead; the idea of the incarnation includes the church; and the idea of the church includes unity, sanctity, catholicity, visibility, indefectibility, infallibility, apostolicity; and the idea of apostolicity includes authority in its unity and visibility; and, therefore, the papacy is the visible origin and centre of the authority of the church as the visible body of Christ. So far we can go by reasoning from the ideas, principles, or data supplied by revelation. The rest depends on authority, and is not ascertainable by theological reason.

We know from the New Testament that our Lord has set in his church some to be apostles, some to be pastors, etc.; but these are all included in the supreme pontiff, who possesses the priesthood, the episcopate, the apostolate, the pastorate, in their plenitude; and all, except what is conferred in the sacrament of orders, is derived directly or indirectly from him, as its origin and source under Christ, whose vicar he is. This is enough for our present purpose, and it is worthy of remark that always has the papacy been the chief point of attack by the enemies of the church; for they have had the sagacity to perceive that it is the keystone of the arch, and that if it can be displaced, the whole edifice will fall of itself. It is the pope that heresy and schism today war against, and the whole non-catholic world seek to deprive him of the last remains of his temporal authority, because they foolishly imagine that the destruction of the prince will involve the annihilation of the pontiff. It is the pontificate, and Garibaldi avows it, not the principality, that they seek to get rid of. But they may despoil the prince; they cannot touch the pontificate. He who is King of kings and Lord of lords has pledged his omnipotence to sustain it. Our Lord has prayed for Peter that his faith fail not.

It were easy for us to cite the commission of our Lord to the teaching church, and from that to argue her authority to govern under him, and her infallibility in teaching; but we have had another purpose in view. We have wished, by setting forth the relation of the church to the incarnation, and deducing from that relation her essential attributes, to show how the church can be holy and yet individual Catholics can be unholy, and how individuals, all individuals in their individuality, can be fallible and err, and yet she be infallible. The heterodox argue against the church from the misconduct of individual Catholics. They ransack history and collect a long list of misdeeds, crimes, and sins, of which Catholics have been guilty, and then ask, How can a church who has done such things be holy or be the church of God? In the first place, we answer, none of the things alleged have been committed by the church, but, if committed at all, it has been by individuals in the church; and in the second place, even rebirth in baptism does not, as we have seen, destroy the personality of the individual, or take away his free-will. He can sin after grace as well as before, and glorification is promised only to those who persevere to the end. The church is holy by her union with Christ, as his body; individuals are so by their assimilation to her, and by living through her the life of Christ.

It is asked again how, if the church is infallible, can individuals be fallible; and if individuals are fallible, and do not unfrequently err, how can the church be infallible? How from any possible number of fallibles get an infallible? The answer is in principle the same. The church is infallible, for he who assumed human nature, and whose body she is, is her personality, for she is individualized in the individual human nature he assumed; but the individual is not in himself infallible, for he retains his own personality with all its limitations and imperfections. The infallibility is in Christ, and proceeds from him to the regenerated race, not to the individual member in his individuality. Our Lord assumed human nature without its human personality, though human nature individualized; but individuals assimilated to Christ through the church retain their proper human personality, and are infallible only in the church, only so far as they think and speak her thoughts, and believe what she believes and teaches. The pope himself is not personally infallible, but at most only when speaking ex cathedra, in union with the mind of the church, and declaring her faith. Hence some theologians maintain that the papal definitions themselves are reformable till expressly or tacitly accepted by the universal church, though we do not agree with them; for we regard the pope as the vicar of Christ in teaching as well as in governing, and, therefore, as expressing, when speaking officially, the infallible faith of the universal church. For us, in the language of St. Ambrose, ubi Petrus, ibi ecclesia. Whenever the church speaks, she speaks the words of her Lord, and is infallible and authoritative; whenever the individual speaks in his own individuality, he is fallible, and his words, as his, have no authority. The church can then be infallible and individuals fallible. Consequently, any arguments drawn from the errors and misdeeds of individuals have no weight against the church.

If non-Catholics would pay attention to this, they would write fewer books, publish fewer essays, and preach fewer sermons, against the church, for they have hitherto alleged little or nothing against her but the errors and bad conduct of churchmen. When they wish for examples of the purest and most heroic sanctity, they are obliged to seek them in her communion, and the most anti-Catholic among them feel that they may assert without proof any doctrine they happen to like, if the church has taught and teaches it. It is remarkable with what confidence and mental relish they assert particular doctrines for which they feel that they have her authority. Is it because a secret conviction of her infallibility lurks in the minds of all who are Catholic by their reminiscences? and would they not be far less enraged against what they call "the seductions of Rome," if it were not so, if they did not feel themselves constantly tempted to return to her communion? They resist her influence, in fact, only by a constant effort, by main strength.

But it is time to bring our remarks to a close. We have opened a vast subject, one to which we could do scant justice in a magazine article, even if we were otherwise able, as we are not, to treat it not altogether unworthily. No mortal can speak worthily of the church of Christ, in which the power, the wisdom, the justice, the love, and the mercy of God, of the indivisible and ever Blessed Trinity, in all their infinitude are, so to speak, embodied and displayed. Even God himself cannot do more or better than he has done in the church, for he gives in her himself, and more than himself even he cannot give. How great, how glorious, how awful is the church! How great, how exceeding great, the loving-kindness of God, who permits us to call her our mother, to draw life from her breasts, and to rest on her bosom! We love the church, who is to us the sum of all things good and holy, and we grieve daily over those who know her not; we grieve when her own children seem to treat her with levity or indifference; we are pained to the heart when we hear men, who have souls to save, for whom Christ died, and whom she longs to clasp to her loving bosom, railing against her, calling her "the mystery of iniquity," and her chief pontiff "the man of sin." We seem to see our Lord crucified afresh on Calvary, and to hear her sweet voice pleading, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

Magas; or, Long Ago.

A Tale Of The Early Times.

Chapter IV.

Four years are past since the incidents above related took place. The scene is neither at Athens nor at Corinth, but at Nauplia. [Footnote 73] Here, suddenly, a new school had been opened by a lady, which attracts a vast concourse of disciples. The lady is young, eloquent, beautiful, and the favor she meets with is almost unbounded. Powerful protectors are around her; and philosophy and science bow to her, though they hardly as yet determine to what school the doctrines she propounds belong. Among those who are attracted by her fame is a lady, just arrived from Athens to be enrolled among the followers of the new Aspasia, or Leontium as she is more generally called. Lotis is herself no mean or obscure daughter of those muses which this new professor has worshipped to such advantage. But Lotis is disappointed in her expectations; the entrance to the academy is guarded with such jealous care, that admission is not easy; in vain she sends her name as daughter of a citizen of Athens of some distinction in the philosophic world; strangers, and above all those from Athens, are carefully excluded. Yet the city continues to derive new lustre from this new propounder of exalted themes; and those who were fortunate enough to gain admission to her lectures, rang with applauses of the lucid doctrines taught; they compared her eloquence to that of Plato, her music to that of Amphion; and contended that, while all other sects were tending to the destruction of ancient truth, this lady demonstrated its existence in every nation, and brought it home to the heart and feelings. Lotis heard of nothing throughout the city but praises of the new exponent of wisdom who had travelled throughout the earth, and had learnt to harmonize the teachings of all philosophies.

"'Tis strange she will not admit you," said Lydon, a young disciple, to whom Lotis was complaining of her exclusion; "and the more to be regretted as she is preparing for departure; it seems she did not intend to stay so long at Nauplia in the first place; she was waiting for her protector, who had business at Athens. They will both set out for Rome when he returns."

"It is not easy to say. Magas is uncertain in his movements; he often acts from mere caprice. He may be here shortly."

"Likely it is the same. He has been travelling for these few years past, and in his travels picked up this philosopheress, who has so enchanted him."

"Words cannot describe her. She has the attractions of Venus with the majesty of Minerva. When in repose, her calm dignity demands our homage; but when she speaks, her features are lighted up with an expression which defies description; her eyes, deeply set as they are, dazzle with the intensity of their fire; she does not declaim, she speaks in a low yet in a distinct and earnest tone which all hear, words which seem to have been gathered at the very fount of wisdom. There is an indescribable melody in her voice, which melts the heart, and communicates the persuasion that she knows more than she says; that she holds back something as fearing the light would be too bright for our unaccustomed eyes: she infuses the desire to know the truth, the certainty that there is a truth; yet somehow, on reflection, the truth itself seems withheld, and we hope next time to hear a fuller exposition of that which no one doubts she possesses."

"It would take herself to expound it, in the clear, musical, irresistible manner with which she enforces conviction. I am afraid I should only spoil her discourse by repeating it."

"She teaches that truth is one—an immutable, eternal essence, containing within itself all good, all beauty, all harmony, all being; and that in it resides the creative power.

"She says this creative power is an emanation of the Deity, or rather the Deity himself made manifest. It is termed the Word.

"And the Word or creative power made the universe—made all those orbs which we see move around us by night and by day; and moreover, breathed life and intelligence into organic forms, that they might become conscious of, and enjoy existence. But for man she claims a higher life; she says he was created in harmony with the eternal essence, that he might know and enjoy a higher life than that of animals, but that he disregarded the conditions on which this higher life was held, and by violating them brought the disorder into the world which now oppresses it. Man is the only animal unfaithful to his instincts; the only one who does not trust his own nature; the only one who is unhappy in the non-realization of his aspirations."

"She does not propose one; she declares one. She says the Word became flesh, to communicate to man the Holy Spirit he had lost, and by losing which his misery was occasioned. This Holy Spirit comes alike from the Eternal Essence, and from the Word which is its manifestation, and purifies the heart of man, and so restores it to its primal state, or to a more holy one yet."

"That is just where she disappoints us. She gives glowing descriptions of truth, beauty, beneficence in every sort of manifestation, material and mental, and shows how the aspirations of the poets prove that a sublime ideal raises man above the practical existence we see him lead every day; but how to obtain this Holy Spirit we have not yet learnt."

"None but material ones; and according to her, material rules are only types of spiritual ideas. She says, as the body has assumed too much sway, it must be subdued by violence—that is, by maceration, fasting, and such like. She says passion must give way to reason, and the affections be rightly governed. This we knew before; but what we want is 'power' to carry out in practice the precepts we admire; or as she would say, 'how to obtain that Holy Spirit which is to live in us and direct us.'"

"I feel satisfied she does; we all feel satisfied she does. Her words come forth as oracles; we question not—we believe. She has been in India, in Cathay, in Tartary; and everywhere she says the same truth lies hidden under some material form, and needs but the light of the Holy Spirit to pierce through the veil and make itself manifest."

"You would be carried out of yourself. Yesterday she spoke on Light. Material light, with her, is but a type of a far higher light, which penetrates the spirit with beauty, harmony, and love, and makes it pure, holy, eternal, and capable of receiving true knowledge. Light, material light, was created at the same moment that intelligences and harmonies of a high spiritual order sprang to life, to enjoy it. She went off into something of this strain;

  God said: Let there be light!
    Effulgent light!
  As the wild watery mass chaotic lay;
  While o'er it did the Holy Spirit move.
  Obedient to the WORD, the glorious day
    Sprang into being; and effulgent light,
      Intelligence all bright
    Of seraph holy and of angel sweet,
    In glorious ecstasy their Maker greet,
  And the deep bliss of their creation prove.

  Spirits of beauty, spirits of power
  Then wakened to welcome the wonderful hour
  That gave them existence, with light for their dower!
  All dazzling the brightness illuming space,
  Investing all matter with beauty and grace—
  All lustrous the beauty, the grandeur divine
  That did in full glory resplendently shine:
    The Truth—though revealed—
    As in Type, yet concealed.
  The rays of the sun are less dazzling to sight,
  Than the sparkles begemming the pinions so bright
  Of the spirits who bowed at that mystical shrine,
  When first with an impulse or instinct divine
  They blent their sweet voices throughout every sphere,
  To worship in love that doth worship endear.

  Entrancing and entranced in love to greet,
    These beauteous spirits kindled into glow,
    And shed their lustre all that chaos through.
  And as those rays the harder mediums greet,
  The sleeping atoms wake as from a trance;
  The sparks electric shoot in mystic dance,
  Rousing the power inert to onward move;
  Impelled by rays of light, create by love,
  Light's piercing gleams evolve material day
  And angels' glances brighten up the clay;
  Refracted rays, the types of virtue bright,
  Enkindled atoms with their dazzling light;

  Splendor and brightness caught from angels' wings,
  Infuse their action; and such beauty springs
  From forth the atoms that, erst void and dark,
  Had lain awaiting th' ethereal spark,
  That now material beauty wears a grace
  In which a type of heaven itself we trace.
    All hail! material light!
    Emblem of seraph bright.
  Glowing with intelligence, the mirror of our God,
    Still dost thou bless our sense.
    Vesture of Omnipotence;
    Still with thy visions bright
    Dost dispel our darksome night,
  Thou image bright of heaven, on earth's else dreary sod.

"You must hear her to catch her fire, to glow with her enthusiasm. I give her words imperfectly; but her action, her delivery, the way in which she sounds the very depths of her hearers' hearts—that I cannot give you an idea of."

"I will try, but it will be difficult; the old door-keeper, stationed to keep her company select, will not take a bribe; and a list of names is daily handed to him of those who are to be admitted. But I will try."

"I think not. I have heard her speak of Egypt, India, and Cathay, [Footnote 74] but of Athens, never. To-morrow I will try to get admission for you as a resident of the city."

But neither Lydon, nor Lotis, nor any disciple was to be admitted on the morrow. The report was, that Leontium was ill, very ill; a sudden attack of one of those autumnal fevers to which Nauplia is subject, rendered her unable to appear in public. As days went on, the accounts became even more unfavorable; her delirium alarmed her attendants, who spoke of her being given over to the furies, and seemed to shrink from their duties. The arrival of Magas, after a few days, enforced attendance on the lady; the fever left her; but, weak and subdued, and laboring under the influence of the evil tongues of her attendants, Leontium awoke, to find much of her former prestige taken from her—nay, she even fancied Magas himself grown cold. {807} But this last was a mere fancy; the intellectuality, the poetic fire with which she was endowed, and which never left her, animated her features unconsciously, and the pallor and loss of flesh were more than compensated for by the ethereal expression which exalted her countenance to something beyond the human, albeit there were times when it became a question whether the genius that animated them were of Elysium or Tartarus. Magas paid homage to the mind, and was held captive; he asked not whence proceeded the charm that entranced him, he yielded to its influence, and was blest; the altered tone he attributed to the effects of fever; and the signs of mental disturbance, reported by the attendants, were laid to the account of the delirium usually attending such fever; he little dreamed that it was the mind acting on the body, not the body acting on the mind, that caused the derangement. . . .

Chapter V.

Lotis was a woman, with a woman's curiosity and a woman's pertinacity. She was one who had risen superior to the prejudices of her age and nation. She reverenced, nay, she worshipped greatness; but greatness, with her, meant power of intellect, strength of character, genius; thus, herself a free woman, she had not disdained to form an intimacy with a slave, when, in that slave, she recognized superior qualities. She had been the pupil of Chione in poetry, music, and eloquence, and had been aware of the passion Magas entertained for the beautiful slave. She was curious to see who had replaced her image in his heart; for she remembered enough of Magas to feel assured that, to ensure his constancy, he must worship as well as love; as also, that it required a woman of commanding genius to hold his mind in bonds.

Therefore was it, that she set a watch upon the house that contained the famed Leontium, that she diligently informed herself of her convalescence, and sought to know her daily movements.

One day, she heard that the lady's litter was being borne from the house to outside the city. Hastily she commanded a litter to be got for herself, and desired the bearers to follow whithersoever the other litter was borne. This was not, however, altogether so easy a matter; for the litter was no sooner out of the city gates, than the bearers proceeded rapidly across the plains for upward of a mile and a half, when they entered on a more sandy district. Gray, craggy rocks, of a dreary aspect, utterly devoid of verdure, began to hem in the prospect, and, at length, the bearers set down the litter in a heap of ruins of very astonishing character. Large stones, measuring twelve or fifteen feet in length, four or five in width, and of an equal length, rough and unhewn, were built into walls, without mortar, in the most solid manner, the walls being from twenty to twenty-five feet thick. Ruined gateways of unequal size, one looking toward Argos, the other northward, toward the mountain, peculiar in shape and construction, attested a workmanship of a race who had long since disappeared, since their work was modelled on another form than that which is termed Grecian, and was beyond the physical strength of the present race. Evidently, it was a citadel in ruins. {808} The site, an abrupt rock, commanding the adjacent country, was admirably fitted for the purpose; but the city it was to protect, the inhabitants to whom it was to guarantee security, where were they to be found? The enclosure, about seven hundred and fifty feet long by one hundred and sixty broad, was nearly filled with rubbish, or rather with stupendous stones; and outside of the enclosure all traces of the former city were completely obliterated. It was difficult to account for the invalid lady's choice of such a site for her meditation; but certain it is, she got out, clambered over the stones, motioned her attendants to keep themselves at a distance, and disappeared within the enclosure.

Lotis was now at a loss what to do. She descended from her litter; but to plunge at once into that unknown abyss of sand and ruin, she had hardly courage. Then what excuse could she frame for intruding? Hesitatingly she proceeded; but curiosity got the better of every other feeling; she climbed up the ruined citadel and looked down. It was not possible! yes, it was true—it could be no other! There, seated on a fallen column, leaning against the ruined arch, sat—Chione, the very picture of despair!

To descend softly, so as not to alarm her—to glide to her side as gently as the rugged pathway would allow, was the next idea, and this Lotis accomplished, though with some difficulty; she stood beside her former friend, unseen, unheard. Chione's distraction was too intense, her reverie too deep; her eyes were turned upward, tearless from the very depth of her emotion, and her hollow voice sounded at intervals but these sad words:

"My God! to know thee only by my loss! My God! can it be possible? My God! may I never, never love thee again? Thou first, thou fairest, thou only love!"

The despair of these accents, the deadly pallor of Chione's cheeks, the attitude, the site, the recollection of the past, struck a pang through the frame of Lotis; her tongue seemed to cling to the roof of her mouth; in her excitement she could but advance one step, lay her trembling hand on her friend's shoulder, and utter one word, "Chione!"

The lady started, and gazed earnestly at the form before her. It was some minutes before she spoke; when she did so, the tone of her voice was very low and soft; she simply said, "And what brings Lotis to the ruins of Tiryns?"

"To see the famed philosopher of the east. Three weeks have I been in the city, awaiting an introduction. This morning I followed the litter, that I might at least see the celebrated lady who has made all Nauplia ring with her name."

"I should have been yet more earnest, had I known it was Chione I was seeking. Your disappearance made a great sensation among your friends, and none missed you more than myself. You had bidden me hope, after that day at the temple, that our intercourse was to be renewed, but my hope was cheated. Why did you leave without telling me you were going?"

"I did not know it myself. My mistress disposed of me to a friend of hers at Corinth. I was taken away in the night."

"I led a dreary life at Corinth. The people I was with were good enough, but unlettered, and the woman was entirely given to housekeeping. She put a distaff into my hands, and thought badly of me that I would not spin from morning to night. I could not; my heart had been devoted to philosophy, to poetry, to art; this drudgery revolted me, though, as I said, the people were good, and of the true religion."

"Nay, ask me not; I cannot tell you now. I will tell you how I got away, or rather was forced away. One day, when on a errand for my mistress, I encountered Magas, and he seized me. He would hear no remonstrance; his boat was in the bay; he hurried me off. I went with him through Asia, visiting the temples, the schools of philosophy, the halls of art, the academies of science. Magas has been to me a patron, friend, encourager; he has brought me out, induced me to appear in public; and in fact, done all he could to make my life an elysiun. Impetuous as he is, to me he has been faultless."

"Then why have you spoken as if it were attainable? Why have you fired all hearts, in speaking to them of an indwelling God, who is to restore all things to more than primitive order and happiness? Why have you called the human soul the divine image, if it is not capable of happiness?"

"I said not that the human soul is not capable of happiness. I said only that supreme happiness is not a plant of this earth, and that is true. The earth has been cursed through the fault of man; it cannot yield us this happiness."

"But you give your hearers to understand that, through some means or other, happiness may dwell in our hearts; therefore I say, Chione, why dwells it not with you? Have you the means, or have you not?"

"I had," said Chione sadly. "Once I had the means of happiness; once I was blest. I have forfeited the means, I am happy no more."

"I hardly know. Sometimes I think on certain conditions they might be; but those conditions, those conditions, O Lotis!"

"They bid me renounce all! This life of excitement, this love of Magas, this applause of the multitude, this luxury of existence—to become again a slave. You know it well, Lotis, I am but a runaway slave."

"Your philosophy must be false, Chione, which implies such hard conditions. Slavery is a necessary evil, I grant; but still it is an evil to such as you, whose mind is exalted above the level of the herd. I cannot think that you are bound to slavery by any divine law; and as for human law, why, if you can keep clear of that, as you have done lately, who on earth will blame you?"

"You do not understand, you cannot understand how I am bound. Magas, you are aware, is not—can never be my husband."

"Well, I don't see why he might not be, if he paid the purchase-money for you, freed you, and then married you."

"But you are not nameless; you have made yourself a name in all the cities through which you have passed. We have heard of your fame at Smyrna, at Halicarnassus, at Ephesus, at—"

"Stop! Unconsciously you are paining me. It was at Ephesus I received the blow which is destroying me.'

"O Lotis! if I could but tell you of the hollowness of this philosophy the world so much admires; if I dared speak to you of the light that shineth in darkness, though the darkness comprehendeth it not; if my lips were not profane; if my life were not blighted like a tree struck by lightning; then I might tell you of that wisdom which is not in man's speech, but 'in the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.' But I dare not; I am unhallowed, unworthy. Leave me, Lotis. Seek another teacher."

"I will tell you, though to you the words will bear no meaning. But my heart must ease itself. I was walking through the streets, when I observed a crowd entering one of those temples frequented by the new sects. I entered with the rest. The preacher was dilating on the necessity of his auditors having the spirit of Christ, which if ye have not, he said, ye are none of his. He then proceeded to show how the world's sin had crucified the Lord of heaven; how essential purity, truth, virtue are to the Christian character; how every Christian's body was to become the temple of the Holy Spirit; and how impossible it was for the Holy Spirit to dwell with aught unholy, or aught not in union with God. Hence the absolute necessity of sanctity to be wrought in us by the power of God, to whom we must surrender our being. He then went on to speak of such Christians as had apostatized; and the words, he used burned into my heart like words of fire. 'It is impossible,' he said, 'for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, if they fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.' [Footnote 75] I heard no more; I fainted away. When I waked from my trance, I was at home, and Magas was standing over me. His anxiety respecting my health scarce enabled him to suppress his anger at my having been seen in a Christian assembly."

"That I can easily believe; nor do I see what you wanted with such low company, who have evidently bewitched you; for what need you care what was said in such an assembly as that?"

"What indeed, what indeed! O my God! that it should come to this, that I dare no longer pronounce thy name, that I should be ashamed of thee!" And Chione buried her face in her hands, and gave way to an excessive fit of weeping.

Lotis was puzzled. "Is this the great philosopher?" thought she; "the new Sappho, the Aspasia of the age? Is it illness or magic that has worked this mental derangement? for derangement it evidently is."

Lotis bent over her friend, endeavoring to console her, yet not knowing how, when she was suddenly relieved by the sound of horses' hoofs. She climbed to the top of the ruins. Magas was in sight. She returned to whisper the news to Chione. Chione rose, dried her tears by a strong effort of her will, and prepared to greet her protector with a smile. He was evidently in an ill-humor.

"What sudden caprice is this? What possessed you to come out here to a city of the past? A fine place this for a sick woman!"

"You said you were going to Argos. I knew not that you would require my presence."

"I was going to Argos, but was hindered when setting out; and when I inquired for you, and heard you had come hither, I put off my journey to learn what attraction could draw you to this place."

"How should I know? The Cyclops, I presume. Who else could have lifted these immense stones? What have you to do with who raised them or who destroyed them?"

"The place was in harmony with my feelings, with the meditation I was about to make on the transitory nature of human grandeur. It will be my next theme."

"You might choose a livelier one to advantage, Leontium," said Magas. "You are destroying your own mind by cherishing these gloomy thoughts. If, however, you want a fallen city to meditate on, Mycenae is but seven miles ahead; and there you may ruminate, if you will, on all the incidents of the Homerian epoch; and the wild, savage waste may be the savage emblem of the royal Agamemnon; while the ruins, which are absolutely magnificent, may prove another puzzle—as to how the mighty stones that form the edifices could have been lifted there. I measured two myself. They were immense. One single stone extends across a wide passage, and rests on the massive walls, forming the lintel. Another extends from the lintel to the interior of the edifice. It is thirty feet long, five feet thick, and twenty in width. It is becoming fashionable to doubt the existence of the Cyclops. But, I'd like to know, if they did not lift these stones into their places, who did do it? No mortal men of the present race would be able. So I go in for the old tradition of Cyclopean workers.

"Ah! Lotis, I did not observe you. I inquired for you at Athens, but was told you were travelling. Did you come out here with Leontium? Our secret will be safe with you, of course?"

"Of course," answered Lotis. "But I think you are somewhat too near Athens for safety from other tongues. You will not be able to keep the secret long from the public."

"I shall not try. We are bound for Rome shortly, and there we shall be safe. I would purchase safety, if safety were to be bought; but the mistress who held my Chione will not part with her right. Many offers have been made to her. She still hopes to reclaim Chione, and will not listen to money proposals. When you return, you may renew the offers, if you will favor me so much. I should prefer a legal release, if I could get one; but it matters little."

"No; but it causes me surprise that it should be herself who refuses freedom to Chione. I know many cases where she has freely granted it."

"She is an enigma, and so are all these people. It is not worth talking about. I don't believe she'd prosecute her claim to Chione, did she know Chione and Leontium were one and the same person."

During this colloquy Chione had sat motionless as a statue, and had seemed so absorbed in her own thoughts as to be unmindful of what was said. On its being ended, she rose, and requested Magas to call for her litter. When he had departed to do so, she turned to Lotis, and said earnestly:

"Let the Bishop Dionysius know, in confidence, who Leontium is, and what I said to you of Ephesus today."

Chapter VI.

"Even so, my lord. During her illness the report was that she was beset by the furies. When I saw her, it seemed as though the hand of some avenging god lay heavy on her. If, my lord, you Christians are adepts in magic, as many people believe I would ask you to disenthrall her from the influence under which she suffers, whatever it may be."

"And it is Chione who is this famous Leontium, who has made so great a sensation in the eastern cities?" continued Dionysius, as if not hearing the last speech of Lotis.

"I too have heard so; but for myself, I was never present at one of her instructions. I saw her alone, bowed down as it were beneath the weight of the truth she was carrying; but unable to speak the last word, that word which promised to be the key to all the rest, the solution of mystery, the harmonizer of ideas. That last word was not spoken at Nauplia; her pupils awaited it, but her tongue was as it were paralyzed. Some powerful influence seemed ever to prevent her from speaking it."

"My lord, may I venture to ask of you, do you believe, as some do, that Chione is in possession of a truth she dare not declare? that some divine hand is pressing down within her the word that is panting for expression? Is Chione bewitched?"

"If she so will, she may be delivered; but the supernatural Word she cannot speak has been offended; the sacrifice he demands is great; will she make it?"

"If in her power, I think she will. She is a mystery to me, as all life seems to be. What is that Word Chione has offended? how did she offend? what must she do to appease the divine wrath?"

"My child," said the old Areopagite solemnly, "truth is not a plaything wherewith to amuse the intellect, not a toy to while away a tedious hour with. Truth is the manifestation of the eternal harmonies, those harmonies which man has interfered with, into which he has introduced a discord, the discord of sin. The humility of man, the recognition of sin, such a recognition as brings the voluntary humiliation of self, must precede his admission to the kingdom where those harmonies are restored. The vainglory of philosophy, the pride of science, however correct may be their surmises, are without life. {813} They can neither restore these harmonies, nor catch a glimpse of the glory of that eternal comprehensive Unity, in which all beauty, melody, and good reside; that eternal idea of which matter is the varied type. A type now deranged by man's act so hopelessly, that human power is utterly inadequate to its restoration."

"But the restorer comes; the expectation of nations points to this," said Lotis; "and that expectation is everywhere; in India as in Cathay, in Greece and among the barbarians."

"Then why is he not proclaimed? Is this the unspoken word that Chione might not utter? Why, if the deliverer is here, is he not announced?"

"Because, before the disorder of exterior things can be remedied, the interior remedy must be applied to the soul. Exterior forms obey the interior impulse. Man is lord of matter, and man's disordered soul reflects itself upon the material subject to him. The disorder manifest throughout exterior creation will be remedied when the disordered spirit of man is healed. Therefore is it that, now that the restorer is come, he is not recognized; for he insists on the purification of the spirit, on the annihilation of selfishness, on the necessity of being reunited in spirit with the essential good as a precursor of other renovations. That done, exterior good follows as of course."

"Even as wealth follows industry, and health the practice of temperance," said Lotis.

"Natural virtue brings its results sometimes," said the venerable teacher, "when justice rules; but as matters stand now, the winner of wealth has often the least share. Oppression is one of the inevitable results of making self-love the centre of action instead of taking the justice of the eternal God for our guide. Man's soul was created in the image of God. Hence its affinity for beauty, its appreciation of lofty idea, its glowing enthusiasm at recital of heroic deeds: but man's will snapped the cord that bound it to the eternal will. Enamored of his own charms, he forgot the source of his beauty; proud of his mighty intellect, he has ceased to adore the God of all understanding; freeing himself from the shackles of duty, he cast away alike the nourishment of his beauty and the food of his towering intellect. Man's will must be directed to DESIRE God ere he can regain good. Hence the work of the Redeemer is interior; it is the implanting of the Holy Spirit as the necessary step to the true redemption."

The answer came slowly, solemnly, deliberately, and it fell on the ear of Lotis, as if a divine power accompanied it:

"The Saviour anointed," whispered she to herself, as she translated the words: "The Saviour of men, anointed by God." There was evidently a revelation to her, conveyed by the words; one of those miraculous influences which, in the early days, "long ago," were so common among truth-seeking souls. Her reverie lasted long, and the good bishop did not interrupt her. He knew that the Holy Spirit was shedding his influence upon her. Suddenly she turned upon him with the question:

"Jesus Christ is the Word of God, and the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us," answered the bishop.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him: and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men: and the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not." (St. John i. 1-5.)

And Lotis fell on her knees, saying, "Lead me to him, to the Divine Word, to Jesus Christ, for I will have no other master."

"It is well, my child," said the good bishop, laying his hand solemnly on her head. "It is well. May he who has thus directed your choice give you the further grace to continue unto the end. But, Lotis, you must learn the price of redemption; you must know who the Master is you have chosen."

And the venerable bishop, in a few short but impressive words, traced the history of the world from Adam's fall, through the line of patriarchs, through the perversion of morals which called forth the deluge. He spoke of the call of Abraham, of the mission of Moses, of the succession of the prophets unto John the Baptist; and finally, of the advent of our Lord himself; of his coming to his own, and of his own receiving him not; of his life, miracles, and crucifixion; of his death, resurrection, and ascension; and finally, of the descent of the Holy Spirit.

Lotis listened and believed, and demanded to be washed from her sins, that she might understand. She, yet a neophyte, seemed to comprehend that sin forms the darkness which hinders the soul from contemplating God. "Wash me from my sins," she said, "that I may see the light."'

Affairs In Italy.

Though the disgraceful part which the Italian monarchy has played in the late invasion of Rome by marauding bands is now a matter of common notoriety, elaborate efforts are still being made by a majority of the Italian, and a certain portion of the European, press to deny the well-known facts of the case. These organs are, however, only following the illustrious example set to them by Victor Emmanuel and Count Menabrea, whose official declarations that the revolutionists had acted entirely without the authority and knowledge of the Italian government are certainly the most pitiful subterfuges to which the king and the premier of a great power could possibly have been reduced. Indeed, we can hardly conceive a more humiliating spectacle than that which the Italian government presents in solemnly assuring the world that it had not been secretly leagued with filibusters, while, to crown the disgrace of the spectacle, nobody believes a word of its denial. {815} But General Menabrea has attempted even more than this. In his answer to the invitation to the European Conference, dated November 19th, 1867, he had the assurance to state that Rome, not Italy, was the real cause of the present trouble. On another occasion he ventured upon a somewhat similar statement by saying that experience had taught Italy the impossibility of maintaining friendly relations with her neighbor on the Tiber! It is difficult to believe that any public man should care so little for his reputation for truth as to utter such reckless falsehoods. The whole history of the past eight years gives him the lie, for it proves clearly that every provocation has come from that Piedmont which is now styled Italy. Provocations by resort to the revolution, as in the seizure of the Legations in 1859, and again in that of the Marches and Umbria in 1860, when Viterbo, the capital of the patrimony, was also taken by force; provocations by resort to legislation, as in the breach of the concordats, in the civil marriages in an unchristian form, in the suppression of the spiritual orders, in the confiscation of the ecclesiastical property, in the violent measures adopted against the episcopate, and in the parliamentary resolutions about Rome; provocations by the personal speeches and acts of King Victor Emmanuel, whom neither the sense of his exalted station nor the traditions of his strictly orthodox dynasty have deterred from expressions which he will yet have cause to deplore when the fruits they are destined to bear become fully apparent; in a word, all the provocations have come from the side of Italy. All the evidences of moderation and conciliation (as was seen to the very last in the case of the bishoprics) have come from the side of the Holy Father; but they were always repaid with the blackest ingratitude. The piratical raid against the church state was merely the fit ending and the logical result of that long series of aggressive measures which furnishes the counts in the indictment against the Italian monarchy. We need not recapitulate the provocations that have for years preceded the invasion of Garibaldi's filibusters; for everybody will readily recall to mind the machinations to excite a spirit of discontent in the holy city and the surrounding districts; the aid and comfort extended to the self-styled Roman Revolutionary Committee, which has its seat at Florence; the libels against the person of the supreme pontiff and his sacred office, which have disgraced not only the press, but the floor of the two chambers; the encouragement afforded to every incendiary and fugitive from Roman justice, and the marked favor shown to all such characters by the authorities. Indeed, but for the agency which the Italian monarchy had in bringing about the invasion, that demonstration would never have become what it is, one of the most flagrant outrages known to the law of nations in modern days. In the midst of profound peace, without a shadow of an excuse or a pretext on the other side, Italy has not only tolerated, but sanctioned, the publication of the most indecent attacks on the head of the church. She has permitted the circulation of revolutionary manifestoes and appeals against a neighboring state, whose integrity the honor of the nation was pledged to respect and enforce. {816} She has suffered the raising of money and arms for avowedly hostile and unlawful purposes; the opening of recruiting stations in public places, and under the direct patronage of high officials; the discussion of general plans for the campaign; the concentration of armed bands along her frontiers, and that under the eyes of troops ostensibly stationed there to disperse and prevent all such gatherings. She has enacted a farce, as foolish as it was discreditable, in regard to the chief conspirator himself, and carried this so far as to order her navy to blockade a deserted rock, while he was held in reserve, to be turned loose when the loyalty of the pope's subjects and the incapacity of the minor chiefs threatened to defeat the whole enterprise. All these are well-authenticated facts, and have since been proved by the admissions made by the Italian press. Thus, for instance, the Florence Diritto, of November 25th, 1867, uses the following significant language: "All the world," says this popular organ of the Italian democracy, in an article sharply criticising the past policy of Ratazzi's cabinet, "will remember that the Garibaldian movement, which was openly tolerated in its last phase by the government, had given rise to the general belief that the authorities were aware of everything going on, and fully prepared to assume all the consequences. Public opinion and the public press, as they beheld the government borne along by the mighty popular torrent, unanimously approved of the supposed determination of the ministry, and rejoiced to think that such a patriotic and exalted object as the acquisition of Rome should at once have the support of Garibaldi's irregular action and the avowed sanction of the government. The whole nation fancied that the ministry had taken all the precautions necessary to attain its ends in one way or other, and in any case. …. It is therefore impossible for us to describe how bitter the disappointment was when France intervened at the most critical moment. Rome remained quiet, Prussia gave no sign of moving, and the Italian army proved entirely unprepared for the emergency." It is in the face of such admissions as these that King Victor Emmanuel has ventured to issue a manifesto denouncing the invasion of St. Peter's patrimony as having been undertaken without the authority and knowledge of his government, and that his prime minister has dared to say it was Rome, not Italy, which should be blamed for the renewed interference of France.

It is the perfidy and lawless ambition of the Italian monarchy which have brought the French back to Rome. If this be regarded as a misfortune—as, no doubt, in a certain sense it is, for a foreign occupation always gives rise to an abnormal condition, whose evils are great and whose effects often prove lasting—to whom does the guilt attach? Not to the Holy Father, not to the Romans, who have turned a deaf ear to the whispers of treason, although their temptation was not great when we take into account the present state and prospects of the monarchy! But there is no need for us to indulge in sinister prognostications. Even had the Italian forces stationed on the line, where they neither protected the papal territory nor indicated the good faith of their own government, really prevented the invasion, the crisis must have come sooner or later. It was unavoidable from the very nature of the relations between the two neighbors. But it is extraordinary that the party who is alone to blame for it should claim as a reward to be released from the obligations contracted by the September convention. {817} We cannot bring ourselves to believe for a moment that the recent outrage will result to the advantage of its authors and abettors. In the sense of the parliamentary resolutions passed at Turin and Florence, the solution of the Roman problem means nothing less than the destruction of the papal rights, and the spoliation and the oppression of the church. It will be well to bear this fact distinctly in mind. The new monarchy has unmistakably shown how it means to respect its most solemn obligations and the vested rights of others; and, above all, it has shown how it would like to treat the head of the church. And this Italy dares to demand that the gate of the papacy should be intrusted to her safe-keeping? Were it possible to obliterate the whole history of the last eight years from men's recollection, the occurrences of the last few months would alone suffice to warn Christendom against listening to such a proposition. The Roman Catholic community will hardly feel disposed to see Victor Emmanuel the intestate heir of Garibaldi at Rome, as it has seen him once before at Naples.

The Roman problem requires, no doubt, a solution, for the French are merely a momentary expedient. The subject is one that interests the whole world, and which demands a settlement that will not again expose the supreme pontiff to the danger of being besieged at the Vatican, as was his handful of defenders in the Bicoque Monte Rotondo, where they fought one against ten. We shall not even touch here upon the claims of the pope as a mere temporal ruler, and the most ancient on earth at that. Our religious sentiment rebels against dragging a question whose two component elements are indivisible into the narrow sphere of politics, and still more into the sphere of revolutionary politics which has made the nationality idea its god. The Catholic sentiment resents the base suggestion of peril to the independence of the church and its head. It cannot conceive a popedom like the one to which the Byzantine exarchs have been reduced. It wants no repetition of a Greek patriarchate among Greeks and Turks. This is a question which concerns the entire civilized Christian world, and not the Roman Catholic powers alone. The royal speech from the throne to the North German Diet contained a passage alluding to the important interests which Germany and Italy are supposed to hold in common, and the chances of Prussia's support in the case of a war with France about Rome have, no doubt, entered largely into the calculations of the Florence cabinet. But Prussia alone has over eight millions of Roman Catholic subjects, who will never consent to the total destruction of the foundation on which the independence of their church rests, and who will therefore oppose every attempt to rob the pope of his temporality. Such, at least, is the inference which we are warranted in drawing from the spirit displayed during the last month in Germany, and especially at the Mainz meeting, where two thousand leading Catholics from all parts of the country discussed the dangers of the church state. The following are the resolutions which were passed unanimously on that occasion:

"1. Divine Providence has made the successor of St. Peter the sovereign of the Roman church state, and raised him above all mere national interests, that he might be the subject of no political power, but manage the religious affairs of all Christian nations in perfect independence. This sovereign right, conferred by God and confirmed by more than ten centuries possession, is neither to be surrendered by the Catholic Church, nor to be taken away from it by diplomatic treaties or a revolutionary popular vote. The arbitrary and chimerical scheme to make Rome the capital of Italy can never be considered in comparison with the rights and interests of Catholic Christendom.

2. The assertion that the pope, as a priest, is unfit to be the head of a political government, and therefore unable to promote the temporal welfare of his subjects, is an untruth sufficiently refuted by the history of a thousand years. The maintenance and restoration of the pope's political authority in its original integrity is the only means to save Italy from the demoralization which threatens her from the secret societies and King Victor Emmanuel's policy. To have the Holy Father in her midst constitutes to-day, as it has during her whole Christian past, the highest honor, the true greatness, and the blessing of Italy.

3. It is the duty of princes, and of every sovereign power, to protect the independence of the head of the church to which their Catholic subjects belong; and the Catholics of all nations are entitled to demand that these obligations should be sacredly observed. A government which countenances the violation of the supreme pontiffs rights makes itself the accomplice of the revolution. To suffer the government of Victor Emmanuel to encourage with impunity or to undertake itself enterprises tending to imperil the security of the Roman church state, is to undermine all respect for the law of nations and the principles of justice.

4. Love gifts, raised by the free, unanimous, and untiring devotion of all Catholics, must supply the Holy Father with that assistance which is indispensable for the government of the church, as long as treachery and force withhold from him the enjoyment of the estates bestowed on him in the past for the advantage of all Christendom. For this purpose a general organization must be formed.

5. In view of the present crisis, the maintenance of the army which the Holy Father requires for the protection of his own person and that of his loyal subjects is a matter which profoundly concerns the whole Catholic world. It should be a question of honor for every nation to be represented among its ranks, and Germans could not dedicate their lives to a nobler cause."

But apart from the influence of these eight millions of Roman Catholics in Prussia, no state which recognizes the binding force of its own civilizing mission, and claims to be governed by law, could take part in such a dangerous violation of international unity, whatever its political affinities and antecedents might otherwise happen to be. Germany may or may not have vast interests in common with the Italian nationality, and may even desire their realization. But the interests of religion rank far above those of Italian nationality, with which, as we have seen, the Roman question is constantly being confounded. The Italian monarchy, as at present constituted, can inspire little confidence and respect at home or abroad. Independent of all other considerations, it is difficult to perceive how any true friend of Italy, any patriot, could, even from a purely politico-national stand-point, approve of the Garibaldian raid, and the policy pursued by the Florence government in relation to it. What the new monarchy stands most in need of at present is something quite different from the Utopian completion of its unity. {819} If this object has not been reached already because Rome and its half a million of people are ruled by the pope, it will never be accomplished. The monarchy wants to strengthen itself internally, not to extend externally. A strong, able, and honest government, an efficient administration, a restored finance, a thorough system of public instruction, a development of its commerce, agriculture, and industry, and, above all, peace and harmony—these are the indispensable conditions to its future welfare, even to its existence. Nothing could therefore have been more fatal, even from the narrowest and most selfish point of view, than the breach of the September convention. It was, upon the whole, the most statesmanlike programme which the Italian government has yet adopted during its brief life, and should have been sacredly observed. Neither the treaty of alliance with Prussia, which gave Italy the chance to acquire Venetia, nor the peace of Vienna, which ratified that acquisition, could have exerted so far-reaching an influence on the domestic and foreign position of the country. The alliance with Prussia, it is true, contained the germs of advantages which might eventually have extended much beyond the settlement of the Venetian question and the abandonment of the Quadrilateral by the Austrians. But the fruition of these promises required time; for, as soon as Venetia was disposed of, it became evident that the connection between Italy and Prussia would have to remain long less intimate and important than the connection between Italy and France. As long as the latter power remained at Rome, the attention of the Italian statesmen would have to continue fixed rather on Paris than on Berlin. According to the intentions of its Italian framers, the convention of September 15th was to serve gradually to loosen the ties which bound Italy to France, and which began then already to be borne with impatience by the nation. By the evacuation of the Eternal City the Roman question was to be changed into an exclusively Italian question. But this project the conduct of the Italian monarchy, or, to speak more precisely, that of the statesmen who succeeded in office those who had devised the programme, has defeated, as we shall hereafter fully explain; and the result is, that the Roman problem has once more assumed a diplomatic, international phase, pending again between Florence and Paris.

The September convention has failed to put an end to these further pretexts for foreign interference in the domestic affairs of Italy, because its terms were never observed, and because its authors were not afforded a chance to carry their policy out. Nothing could have been more inauspicious than the fact that the statesmen who concluded the convention should have been driven from office on account of the Turin difficulties, at the very time when their measures had received the approbation of a large majority of the nation, and the sanction of the majority of the two chambers. The fall of the Minghetti ministry was an anomaly utterly contrary to all ideas of constitutional government. An important programme, which changed the entire policy of the country and committed it to a new one for the next future, had been accepted. It could never have been adopted without the sanction of the sovereign, nor without the approval of the country and its representatives in parliament. And yet those who had originated it and assumed all its responsibilities were compelled to resign power to men that accepted the legacy only because they could not help themselves, and whose views differed totally from those of their predecessors in office. {820} The Minghetti cabinet, which had to retire in consequence of the excitement caused among the people of Piedmont by the transfer of the national capital stipulated for in the September convention, was succeeded by the La Marmora, composed chiefly out of Piedmontese elements, although it repudiated all the principles of the Minghetti, while pretending to recognize the obligations resulting from the convention itself. It is easy to conceive the profound agitation produced by this change in the ranks of the moderate party, which had hitherto constituted the parliamentary majority. The most energetic element of this party had been the Piedmontese. Through its intimate relations with the reigning house, its long parliamentary experience, its business knowledge, its marked predominance in the administration and the army, the Piedmontese had always been the most trustworthy supporters of the moderate cause, the strongest bulwark against the incessant encroachments of radicalism. It was the majority of this element that now coalesced with the radicals for the purpose of fighting by their side against the late moderate leaders, whom they could not pardon for having severed the hegemony of Piedmont and Turin by the transfer of the capital to Florence. In addition to the desertion of the bulk of the Piedmontese, the remainder of the moderates split among themselves. Some refused to desert their fallen leaders; others, and especially such as had joined the new administration, while still content to adhere to a moderate policy and to accept the September convention as a part of it, yet thought they might safely venture to sacrifice the authors of the latter to the prejudices of Piedmont, and that without serious injury to the material features of the programme. This division between the supporters of the old cabinet, the so-called "Consorteria," and the new, became most conspicuous at the elections in the autumn of 1865, when the latter opposed, or permitted its followers to oppose, the candidates of the former, which resulted in large accessions to the radicals. The Ricasoli cabinet, formed in the spring of 1866, also hoped to strengthen itself by conciliating the radicals, while it continued to maintain the unfriendly attitude of its predecessors toward the Consorteria. But the result was, that the Ricasoli ministry failed to secure a majority when it dissolved parliament in February, 1867.

Is the steady decadence of the Italian monarchy due to the disintegration of the moderate party, or is this disintegration of the party of order merely a symptom of the general decline of the old country and the new kingdom? It will suffice to throw out these queries, and to contestate at the same time the circumstance that the influence of the government has diminished in the same ratio as that of the radicals has increased; that the confusion and disorder in all departments of the public service have kept pace with the financial embarrassment. Although every ministry called to office since 1864 has been more or less recruited from the débris of the old moderate party, each succeeding administration has proved itself less capable of resisting the advances of the radicals and the Piedmontese opposition, and the last Ratazzi ministry was forced at the start to depend altogether on their support and forbearance. {821} These being the facts, it is only natural that the programme of the moderates in relation to the Roman and the ecclesiastical questions should have lost authority year after year, session after session, until it has finally become impracticable of execution. The non-intervention policy presupposed first of all a government strong and honest enough to enforce a pacific course toward the pope. But no such government has ever yet been known in Italy. The secret negotiations with Rome, conducted by the La Marmora and the Ricasoli cabinets, (through Vegezzi and Tonello,) related only to spiritual affairs; but even these were defeated by the machinations of the radicals in parliament and in the press. This party desires no dealings whatever with the papal government, neither in relation to temporal nor spiritual matters. It is an uncompromising opponent of Cavour's maxim, Libero chiesa in libero stato, which it considers the greatest misfortune that could befall the country. Between the radicals of Italy and the Church of Rome the war is one of life and death. They charge the papacy with having caused the division and subjugation of the peninsula. They hold up the whole institution as the mortal foe of every national aspiration for unity and independence. They say that only doctrinarians and disguised clericals can draw a line of demarcation between Rome's temporal and spiritual rule, and openly boast that it is their mission to complete at once the unity of Italy, and to free the world from papacy. These are the leading points in the radical programme, and they are, therefore, the exact opposite to those laid down in the September convention.

But, despite the disintegration of the moderate party, despite the feebleness of the consecutive ministries in office since 1864, a programme which substitutes the subjugation of the church for its freedom, the physical conquest of Rome for its moral, would perhaps have less rapidly gained ground, had not an entirely new factor entered into the relations between the Italian and the papal governments—between church and state; and this factor was the all-engrossing financial question. The radicals cunningly used it to hasten the solution of the Roman problem by advocating the confiscation of the ecclesiastical property, and they succeeded in persuading the moderates to countenance a policy which was felt to be an outrage to all justice. The latter, instead of acting in accordance with the principle of a free church in a free state, accepted the radical postulates. The influence of the radicals constantly grew, because they were perfectly united, decided, and logical on all questions relating to church and state, while, the moderates only reluctantly, and with the secret consciousness of their own inconsequence, assented to measures which endangered both the discipline and possessions of the church. A party which fights boldly under its own colors may be vanquished to-day, yet rally again to-morrow and conquer at last; but a party which is compelled to hide its colors and to hoist those of its foes resigns all hopes of resuming the contest after the first reverse. As far as the interests of the papacy are, therefore, concerned, there is very little difference between the radicals and the moderates of Italy. Both would like to obtain Rome, only that the latter differ in regard to the means. While the radicals would resort to brute force, the moderates would trust to cunning and plotting; for they know that the Roman question is not, like the Venetian, a mere question of national independence and unity, which can be solved permanently by war or revolution. {822} Their object is not simply the destruction of the worldly power of the pope and the annexation of the small strip of territory still left to him. The supreme pontiff has more than once lost his temporality; but his ascendency over the minds of men was rather strengthened than weakened by his adversity, and with the aid of his moral authority, his spiritual influence, he has every time regained what he had lost. To deprive him, once for all, of his worldly power, he must first be reduced to a condition which will not allow him to avail himself again of his moral authority as the head of the church, and it is to this end that the moderates have been working in various ways.

In relation to the proposed European congress we have nothing to say, except that it is an impossibility. As the pastoral letter of the Bishop of Orleans forcibly remarked, such a conference could only be composed of kings; for the fate of the supreme pontiff should never be left to the decision of a Gortschakoff or a Bismarck.

Since the above article was written, the debates in the Italian chambers have shown to us anew that the Holy Father can expect nothing from the monarchy. They have proved again that the Roman question is considered by them to be a mere political question, and this without the slightest reference to its religious and international features. Cavour once announced, with the approbation of parliament, that Italy must have Rome; but General Menabrea knows full well the pressure under which the modern Machiavelli, the man of impromptu and chicane, was forced to resort to this expedient. Menabrea may, perhaps, never make common cause with Garibaldi as Ratazzi has done, not even for the sake of Rome; but he is equally destitute of moral principles. Italy, it appears, has not been rendered one whit the wiser or more honest by the deep humiliation which she has recently undergone; otherwise, she would not have the audacity to ask that the Catholic world should confide the fate of the church to a state which has for years persistently derided, oppressed, and plundered the church. Italy has too recently been leagued with one who never ceases to utter the vilest invectives and threats against the papacy, and she is quite ready to avail herself again of the next opportunity to outrage the law of nations by proclaiming the law of the revolution. Italy, even had she the wish, which she has not, would not have the power to protect the church, for she has unchained every element most hostile to it, and can now herself only exist by a chain of negations. To a state like this, to which nothing has been sacred since Charles Albert's revolt against Austria, in May, 1848, and which is so feeble internally, the Catholic world could never dream of intrusting its holiest and highest interests. Whole Europe would first have to take leave of its senses. It is not solely the Catholic powers which—unless, indeed, they aim, like Russia, at the total destruction of Catholicism—are profoundly concerned in this question. Every existing state has a vital interest in opposing this openly avowed scheme to unsettle all fundamental principles of equity and justice. Should the Italian doctrine triumph, as Menabrea dares to prophesy, the old feudal times, when might made right and brute force ruled supreme, would return on earth in this nineteenth century. The church state exists since eleven centuries, the Italian monarchy not yet as many years; the church state owes its rise to the consent of its populations, the Italian monarchy to a series of intrigues and violence, rendered successful through foreign support. {823} And now the Italian monarchy comes again, in the midst of peace, without cause or provocation, without the wish of those most deeply interested in the question, the Romans themselves, to declare once more, "Rome is mine!" Hers? how? Through those boasted moral means, which have turned out to be a band of filibusters, the accomplices of the banditti who selected the evening of the twenty-second day of October, 1867, for the purpose of inaugurating their heroic achievements with deeds of murder and arson? This is the policy—these are the principles—which General Menabrea, the putative father of the September convention and of a "moral solution" of the Roman question, has the unblushing hardihood to proclaim in the face of civilized and christianized Europe! What answer will the two hundred millions of Roman Catholics return?

The Love Of The Pardoned.

       "He to whom less is forgiven,
       the same loveth less."


         Disciple.

  "Sweet Lord,
  'Tis true thy love no measure knows;
    And yet thou must agree,
  A love within my bosom glows
    Thou canst not feel for me—
  The love that springs in pardoned hearts
  With all the joy such love imparts.
  I long, but why I do not know,
  That thou, dear Lord, couldst love me so."


         Master.

  "My child,
  Thy brethren are my images.
    Wherefore I said to thee:
  Whate'er thou doest unto these
    Thou doest unto me.
  Shall I have joy if thou dispense
    Thy bounty on their need,
  And if thou pardonest their offence
    Feel not the loving deed?
  That which thou doest is divine.
  Doubt not; their love is also mine!"

What Doctor Marks died of.

Some one at our camp-fire had chanced to mention Dr. Marks, which called forth the comment that the doctor had died of heart-disease—been found dead in his bed.

Major Arnold lifted his dark, bright eyes from dreaming over the coals, and looked steadily at the last speaker. "Died of heart-disease?" he repeated, with a slightly sceptical inflection.

The major looked into the fire again, and thoughtfully thridded his beard through his fingers, while he appeared to weigh the pros and cons of some impulse in his mind. The pros tilted the beam, and the major spoke. But he first drew his hand down across his eyes, and swept away, with that pass, the present scene of myriad tents, ghostly-white in the moonlight, or shining crimson in the light of scattered fires; of closely-crowding, shadow-haunted southern crags and forests that lifted themselves from our feet to the horizon, their black and ragged rim standing boldly out against a sky that was flooded with the mellow radiance of the full moon, all its stars and all its purple swamped in that silent and melancholy tide.

"Poor Anne Atherton!" I had not thought that our rough major could speak so softly. "I had been going to the door every day, for weeks, to ask how she was, hoping in spite of the doctors. But one morning, when I reached the steps, I saw a strip of crape tied round the bell-knob. No need of questions that day. Poor little Anne was gone!

"I call her little; but she was eighteen, and well-grown. It is only a fond way of intimating that she crept into all our hearts. People liked her for her honest beauty, her ready smile, and her cheerful voice. Anne was not one of your bilious-sublime sort, but a strong, sweet, sensible girl, with an apple-blossom complexion and a clear conscience. Her family were old friends of mine, and Anne was engaged and about to be married to my particular crony—John Sharon—one of the best fellows that ever trod shoe-leather. Poor John! My heart ached for him as I went down-town that day.

"There's a little Scottish poem that reminded me, the first time I read it, of John Sharon's loves and hates:

  'Tweed said to Till,
  "What gars ye rin sae still?"
  Till said to Tweed,
  "Though ye rin wi' speed,
  And I rin slaw,
  Whar ye droon ae man,
  I droon twa."'

"That evening I went up to the house with my arms full of white flowers. Minnie Atherton wanted me to go in to see her sister; but I hesitated. I had always disliked to look at a corpse, and I hated to lose from my mind the picture it held of that rosy-cheeked girl, and take in its place ever so fair an image of death.

"'She looks very peaceful,' Minnie said tearfully, seeing my unwillingness. 'And you may be able to comfort John. We can't get him away from her.'

"I never was much at comforting people. All that I know how to say to a crying woman is, 'Now, don't, my dear!' and to a crying man I couldn't utter a word. Since then I have marched up to a battery with less shaking of the nerves than I felt on that day when I went into the darkened room where Anne Atherton lay dead, and John Sharon sat looking at her. There were no tears in his eyes, there was no trembling in his lip or voice. He looked as though he had so long gazed upon and studied that face of hers that his own had learned the secret of its frozen calm. I could not tell which of the two was whiter.

"How beautiful she was! There was still a faint pink in her lips; but where that marvellous rich color had bloomed in the cheeks, and a fainter tint in the small ears and rounded chin, there was now only pure white. But that pallor revealed many an exquisite outline which had been unnoted when her color dazzled the eyes. Her head was turned aside, with one hand under the cheek, and her long, fair hair was put back from the face, and lay in shining ripples down her shoulders and back. She wore her bridal dress and veil, some filmy, frosty stuff, that looked as though it might melt, being so near the cluster of candles that burned at her head. There was no light in the room but from those candles.

"Minnie scattered my flowers over her sister's hair and dress. 'I am glad that you brought tuberoses,' she said, 'Anne always loved them.'

"A long, slow sigh heaved John Sharon's breast. He carefully took up one of the blossoms and looked it all over—the flower that Anne had loved! Then he laid it tenderly back again. Not all the blooms of earth could, for any other reason, have won a glance from him at that moment; but I know that he has a tuberose engraven as sharply upon his memory as you ever saw any white flower cut upon a tomb-stone.

"Presently Minnie left the room, glancing at me as she went. I ventured to lay my hand on John's shoulder. I know it, Arnold,' he said quietly. 'You would help me if you could. But there is no help on earth. Don't worry about me. I can't leave while she is above ground. There will be time enough, by and by, for rest.'

"'But I have a thought that consoles me,' he replied, leaning forward with tender passion to lay his hand on hers; 'I have not altogether lost her. I shall meet her again, my darling! I shall meet her again!'

"When I went up the next morning I found John trembling with excitement. 'I have just restrained myself from taking Dr. Marks's life!' he said, his teeth fairly chattering. 'What do you think that the brute dared to propose to me? He wants to make a post-mortem examination of Anne! That young form that the hand of man has never touched, to be cut up for the gratification of a mere professional curiosity! I told him to run for his life, or I would strangle him.'

"I tried to soothe him. 'These doctors get used to everything,' I said. 'Marks could have no idea how you feel about it.'

"He wrung his hands, still shivering with loathing of the thought that had been forced on him. 'I can't get over it!' he said. 'I am sorry that he was called in at the consultation. If I had known in season, he should not have come. {826} He is a coarse-grained fellow, who, for the sake of gratifying his curiosity about a disease, would outrage all the decencies of life. 'I believe, Arnold—' here John choked with the words he would have uttered.

"'My dear fellow, try to forget it,' I said. 'He has asked, and you have refused, and there's an end of the matter.'

"But he lifted his hand as though he could not bear to have the thought put into words. 'I shall watch her grave every night for a week,' he said. 'Will you watch with me tonight, Arnold?'

"Anne Atherton's case was a peculiar one. They had called it quick consumption, for want of a better name. She always persisted in saying that she had swallowed something sharp like a pin, and that it had entered her left lung; but of all her physicians, Doctor Marks was the only one who believed it possible that she might be right. On the strength of this half agreement he had proposed the examination.

"The South cemetery, just outside the city, used to be the paradise of body-snatchers. It was in a lonesome neighborhood, and two sides bordered on the open country. Many a grave in that cemetery had given up its dead to the dissecting-knife, while the bereaved ones at home little dreamed that its sacred rest had been disturbed. The Athertons had a lot there, and Anne was buried in it. We covered the new-made grave with evergreens, wreath linked in wreath, the whole sprinkled with white flowers—a pretty counterpane for the fair sleeper below.

"It was five minutes past nine in the evening when I vaulted over the stone wall, and walked down the central avenue. The Atherton lot was not far from the entrance, and instead of a high fence, with gate and lock like the others, it was surrounded only by a low rim of granite. As I approached, I saw the tall, white monument in the centre, and John Sharon leaning against it, and looking down on the wreath-covered mound at his feet. He started when he heard my step, and came to meet me, taking my hand in a strong, cold clasp.

"'We will sit here,' he said, leading me to a shady nook at the other side of the avenue.

"The place he had selected was a grove of Norway spruces which formed a half-circle, the open side facing the Atherton lot, and not more than two rods distant from it. Thoughtful for my comfort, though indifferent to his own, John had thrown a shawl over the horizontal slab of marble in the centre of this grave, and on that we seated ourselves. He had brought, too, a little flask of brandy, which he pressed into my hand, but would not taste of himself. It did not come amiss; for the season was the last of October, and the night chilly, though clear and calm.

"'I shall frighten him,' he said. 'I have my pistol here, and mean to fire it. I couldn't bear to have a fight over her grave.'

"We sat there and awaited in silence, John with his eyes fixed on the mound across the way. The last ray of the setting moon touched with a white lustre its wreaths, and every little ghost of a flower, then slipped up the shaft of marble near by, pointed with a luminous finger to the 'rest in peace,' engraven there, showed name after name, and date after date, stole up the cross at the top, lingered an instant on its summit, then melted into the air. {827} Following its flight with my glance, I saw that the sky was of a pale, transparent gray, with a few large stars in it. Clearly out against this background stood the roofs and spires of that sleeping city that breathed while it slept, and more clearly yet the monuments, and a fine tracery of the bare trees, branch, stem, and twig showing delicate as lace-work, of that nearer city which slept in awful, breathless silence, never stirring for sunrise nor sunset, never starting at any alarm, nor opening its eyes, let who would go by.

"The evening had been calm, but as it grew toward midnight a faint and fitful breeze came now and then, like a sigh, setting that net-work of branches in a shiver, and sweeping the dry leaves about with a low and mournful rustling. The place and time, the silence that was only broken by that weird and spirit-like wind, and yet more, the face of my companion, affected me strongly. John sat leaning slightly forward, his hands clasped on his knees, his gaze fixed on that grave he had come to watch, and as motionless as any stone about us. The frozen look of his face chilled me. I could not see nor hear that he breathed; and there was no movement of an eyelid even. I would have spoken to him if I had dared. I longed for some sound which would startle him out of that trance; but there he sat motionless, apparently lifeless.

"I took a swallow of brandy and tried to occupy my thoughts otherwise. I looked through the interstices of the trees near me and counted grave-stones. Close by were two old sunken graves with slate stones leaning awry at their heads, where lay, or had lain, grandfather and grandmother Sawyer—a later John Anderson and his wife, who had gone, hand in hand, up and down the hill, and now slept thegither at the foot. I say they had lain there; for, in the fifty odd years since their burial, it was most probable that their dust had left its place beneath those tumble-down slate stones and gone about other business, rising, may be, in grasses and flowers. Not much of the old couple left in their coffins, be sure. Perhaps the children had carried the last of them away in violets and mayweed, that very summer. Possibly the birds had pecked them up, in one shape or another.

"I turned and peered back to where a small white cross stood, looking like a child in its night-gown, with arms extended. I could fancy some dear little frightened thing coming to me in that lonely place, silent from fear, or only faintly whimpering, all of a tremor, poor babe! till I should reach and clasp it safe. The rustling of the leaves was its little bare feet in them, the sigh of air was its sobbing breath.

"I gave myself a shake. Well, to be sure! a white marble cross to mark where a child had been buried a year or two before. I remembered having seen, in June, a red-ripe strawberry on that grave, looking as though the little creature's mouth were put up through the sod to be kissed.

"I turned to John Sharon again. He had not stirred. I looked at the grave he watched, and wondered if, with that steadfast gaze, he could pierce the sod, as clairvoyants tell, and see Anne lying, cold and lovely, far below, with one hand under her cheek and the other on her breast, and her hair flowing down unbound, never again to float on any breeze, to toss with any light motion of hers, to be twisted about his fingers.

"I turned quickly to touch him, but, as I raised my hand, he started. A sough of air had arisen, faint but far-reaching; the leaves rustled and crept all about the many graves; and through that sound I heard a step.

"John's form came erect, as though stiffened by a galvanic shock, and he sharply turned his head aside to listen. For one moment there was silence again, then a sound of feet carefully treading down the avenue toward us. I heard the breath shiver through John's teeth, and saw him take something from his breast. Then two men came stealing across our view, their forms, as we sat low, defined against the sky. One was unknown to me, but the other was easy to recognize—Dr. Marks's large, athletic form loomed against the stars. Both men carried spades, and the doctor had a sack hanging over his arm. They went directly to the Atherton lot, and, after whispering together for a moment, the smaller man stooped to pull away the wreaths from the grave, and Dr. Marks set his spade to the earth and his foot to the spade.

"Without looking directly at John, I had seen him come forward with his knee to the ground, and raise his hand level with his eyes, and I was aware of a flicker before his face, as of light on polished metal. There was a faint sound of the spade thrust through loose gravel, and, as he heard it,' John started, and cried out as if the thrust had been through his heart. At the same instant a flame leaped out from the gloom wherein we lurked, the silence cracked with a sharp report, and both men dropped their spades and ran.

"John started to his feet, hastened to the grave which he had saved from profanation, and, after having removed from it, with loving care, every sign of disturbance, threw himself upon it, and sobbed as though his heart would break."

The major paused, brushed his hand across his eyes, and gazed a moment longer into the coals, in which he had seemed to read that story. Then he looked up quickly, straightened himself, and became aware again of the southern night, the many tents, and the fire-lighted faces of soldiers listening toward him.

"I had my suspicions," he resumed, in a changed voice, "that John's shot was not so harmless as he had intended it to be; but I said nothing to him, and when he told me to go home, I went. When I reached the street, I saw two men walking slowly away, one supporting the other. The next day I heard that Dr. Marks was dead. Strangely enough, we were able to keep the knowledge from John. He never left the house, except at night, till after a week, when we joined our regiments; and since then he has had enough to think of and to do without inquiring after Dr. Marks's health.

"The doctor's family said he died of heart-disease; and I don't blame them for putting the best face they could on the affair. The hearts of most people, when they die, have something the matter with them—they are likely to stop."

Bartoleme Las Casas.
[Footnote 76]

[Footnote 76: The Life of Las Casas, "The Apostle of the Indies." By Arthur Helps. London: Bell & Daldy. 1868. 12mo, pp. 292. For sale by the Catholic Publication Society, New York.]

Is The Charge In History Against Him Sustained?

Of all the great men of the Spanish race who ever visited the shores of the American continent, it may with truth be said that Bartoleme de las Casas, Bishop of Chiapa, was the greatest. His personal virtues, in which he surpassed others, were only equalled by the exalted purpose to which his long life was exclusively devoted. His career was beset with perils that would have appalled one who had not the courage and the constancy of a paladin; his toils, privations, and sufferings were without number. The insults, contumely, scorn, and malice to which he was daily, hourly exposed, not from a few only, but from all of his countrymen in the new world, were enough to crush the stoutest heart. He was, preeminently, the most hated, the most despised, the most universally unpopular being that crossed the broad Atlantic from Spain. Sometimes they denied him shelter; sometimes they refused him food; sometimes they threatened his safety, in premeditated assaults for his assassination; they fled from his presence at the altar as they would flee from a pestilence; and they compelled him often to become a fugitive in order to preserve his life.

Not only in America, but in Europe also, was he subjected to abuse and ridicule; but in Europe these were not universal. Public opinion was there divided. Those who had returned from the Western Indies, covered with renown and rolling in riches, who were celebrated in story, not only after the manner of knights-errant in romance, but in the very words, phrases, and language of romance—those who went forth from home, poor, needy, plebeian, and came back with untold wealth, to intermarry with the families of the highest grandees, to intermix their blood with the purest hidalgo, poured, forth their concentrated wrath upon his devoted head. But, on the other hand, courtiers all-powerful, prime ministers, and sovereigns received him with open arms, granted him prolonged audience, and commiserated his troubles, sympathizing deeply in his noble undertaking. In secret, however, they had often to regret their inability to render him the aid required for its success. With the clergy, and especially among the highest prelates, the confessors of royalty, the professors of the universities, the bishops, the archbishops, the primates, and cardinals, his return was greeted with the same satisfaction. From the lowly cloister to the imperial palace the same good wishes for him prevailed.

In the respectable classes of society at large, a singular reception awaited him. Although they venerate him as one among the best of mankind, they manifested their regard in the most opposite deportment. When he ascended the pulpit to discourse before the pious upon the unheard-of outrages, the fiendish wickedness, the appalling cruelties inflicted by Christians, and moreover, Christians who were their countrymen, upon simple, confiding, weak, inoffensive thousands and tens of thousands of Indians in the new world, the horror and abhorrence of congregations knew no bounds. {830} Their fears of Divine vengeance falling upon themselves rose in the same proportion, until they stood aghast lest a national calamity should come upon them, like unto that which swept away of old the cities of the plain. On the other hand, that portion of the public which is light-minded, full of levity, and for ever in search of novelty, encountered him elsewhere, on the plaza, in the college court, on the prado, where he walked under the trees, or at a posada where he dined; and they paused to listen to his talk, for he talked much and too often on the same theme—the rapacity and brutality of the cavaliers to the helpless, the innocent, the ignorant, defenceless aborigines—the adopted children of the holy father at Rome, the accepted wards confided to the tender keeping of the good Queen Isabella of blessed memory, to christianize and to civilize. While the monk poured forth an eloquent statement of their wrongs, the when, the where, and on what occasion, he named no names, in charity to the bad men; but his hearers made the proper application, well knowing the persons from common report; those millionaires just returned, whose mushroom bloom of dunghill beauty, outshone the roseate lustre of the ancient Guzmans and Colonas.

The successful adventurers to the Indies of the West had already received the popular and insulting nickname of the Cachopins of Laredo; they were of the same breed with the Indian nabobs of England in afterdays, and of the shoddy in our own. While, therefore, the single-minded monk, in the fervor of his eloquence, in the overflowing zeal for his cause, narrated what these people had done to the natives, his audience were learning how these men had made their money; and the more facts and indignation exhibited by the speaker, the more highly were they amused, the more heartily did they shake with silent laughter. The monk saw the scenes in the most serious light; they saw them in the most ludicrous aspect; for they were quietly in their mind contrasting the world-wide extent between Cachopin pretensions and Cachopin merit. And these, thought they, these baseborn and brutish fellows, who are receiving patents of nobility by the score, who aspire to quarter their crests upon the aristocratic escutcheon possessed by grandees of the first class, emblazoned with heraldic bears, eagles, lions, elephants, and leopards, borne, centuries before, upon banners of that chivalry who fought for Christendom at the cave of Covodonga, and for the preeminence of Spanish honor, courage, and courtesy over France at the rough vale of Roncesvalles—these are the fellows who wish to blend those proud emblematic animals with their new coats of arms, the tobacco leaf, the tomata, the roasting ear of Indian corn, the sweet potato, perhaps, the appropriate devices for the conquerors clubbed with a title taken from a miserable fish-town, in the meanest, poverty-stricken, peddler-producing province in the realm. [Footnote 77]

[Footnote 77: The Cachopin figured in the comedies, farces, romances, and lively pastorals of that age.

In the beautiful pastoral of the Diana, by Jorgé Montemayor, in a scene between Fabio, the page, and Felismena, who is disguised as a boy, Fabio says:

"I promise you on the faith of a hidalgo, (which I am, for my father is a Cachopin of Laredo,) that my master has better terms."—See Book 2, p. 87; the edition of 1542.

Don Quixote met the travellers on the road, and of course described the beauty of his Dulcinea, and when asked who she was—

"Her lineage, race, ancestry," answered the Don, "is not of the old Roman Curtius, nor the modern Colonas, nor the Moncadas of Catalonia, the Guerras of Aragon, nor Gusmans of Castile, but of Tobosa de la Mancha."

"And mine," said the traveller, "is of the Cachopins of Laredo."]

The great object which Las Casas desired to attain was, in its magnitude, commensurate with the mighty convulsions produced in the minds of his own nationality. It was not to protect or defend a parish, or a diocese, or a state from oppression, but to save from destruction a continent, a hemisphere of the habitable globe; it was to snatch and to shield millions of the natives in the Indies of the West from slavery to the white race; for, enslaved, the feeble Indian was sure to sink under the burdens imposed, most of them perishing within two months, and none of them surviving two years. If they went down to the grave in their ignorance and infidelity, their souls might be without the pale of salvation in their unregenerate state; if they were civilized, believed in Christ, and were baptized, what glory would redound to God, what treasure laid up in heaven for those aiding in their conversion, what myriads of communicants added to the church! Natural commiseration for their hard lot in this world, spiritual considerations for their fate in the next, along with reward held out to those who alleviated their distress now and prepared them for eternal happiness hereafter, were the exalted motives that prompted Las Casas to undertake the herculean task.

With such sublime intentions, his ardor was strengthened to undergo every toil and privation the body can suffer, to endure every agony, every indignity the spirit can receive. The measures he adopted for success, the means he employed to sustain them, the instruments he made use of, constitute the materials for his life. These were numerous, varied, dissimilar, and seemingly discordant. One was the simple being, almost in a state of nature in the rudest hut, living upon roots, sheltered by a frail canopy of leaves, clothed with a rabbit-skin or a yard of cotton, or without any covering at all, and possessed of an intellect just dawning into consciousness of its faculties, so that the common, almost universal opinion was that he did not as yet belong to the human species, but was born to live, to be worked, and to die like beasts of the field. On the other hand, Las Casas invoked the assistance of the most illustrious of the age, the refined and intellectual in the most powerful state in Europe. He impressed his thoughts upon the august Cesar, seated upon his imperial throne, who claimed legitimate succession in the divine line from the celestial deity.

For fifty years was his time devoted to this cause, with varied hope of success and disaster; but before he lay down to die, much had been achieved, and with the encouragement that more could be accomplished in the future. The life of Las Casas is yet to be written. Those who have essayed it so far have only furnished a few facts, mixed with many errors. They have not attempted to combine the materials into general principles, and to analyze the incentives of those who were his enemies, or who were his friends, and thus reduce the conduct of all into a general consistency. Sympathizing with him in his exertions, they conclude that those who opposed him were all bad men, and those who encouraged him were all good men. But that is not the temper in which biography and history ought to be written. Facts or events are only one part of the work; the causes which preceded or influenced them should be investigated. Nothing should be left to ignorant conjecture, to idle inference or gratuitous suspicion. {832} All the surroundings must be explained. In writing his biography some insight into the learning of that period and into the state of science at the time should be gained, especially in the departments of history, of moral philosophy, of the civil law, of the canon law, and international jurisprudence. Not even the lighter literature, including the popular poetry, the drama, and romances, can with safety escape observation. Above all, being at the era of the revival of learning, along with the first improvements in the art of printing, the changes made in modern languages are to be noted. In these transformations, the significance of many words and phrases was often doubtful. Sometimes they had to be taken according to their old meaning; sometimes again in the new. When astrology was banished, its theory was discarded; but at least two thirds of its terms were retained: when alchemy suffered the same fate, its vocabulary, as well as its crucibles, retorts, and alembics, were transferred to the chemical laboratory: when the practice of medicine was relinquished, physicians took possession of its expressions for comments, and wrote out their prescriptions in many of its hieroglyphics. These mutations were progressing when Columbus was sailing due west in search of a route to the east. Whether words were to be interpreted according to science, or according to suppositions which had prevailed before science, was often a difficult question to solve.

Illustrations would indicate how far research must go to understand the times and transitions taking place. It is needless to add, that nothing of the kind has been noted; nor, from appearances, will it ever be thought of. His writings have been glanced at to elucidate some point controverted, and then hastily thrown aside. What was learned, moreover, was in a confused mass of facts and dates, which were difficult to comprehend, and more difficult to reduce to a consistent form. The consequence has been that, instead of a knowledge of the learning and science at the period when he lived, to enlarge the circle of their literary reputations, they have embarrassed some historical subjects, and well will it be for them if they have not endangered their laurels. It would seem that many who have treated of Las Casas, or even touched upon his character, have fallen into some mistake, error, or curious blunder. Nor is their number confined to writers of an inferior order; it embraces some names renowned in Europe and America for justly merited historical excellence. They learned a few facts; they guessed the rest; and their guessing, like all loose conjectures in general, leads to false conclusions, with the consequent danger therefrom.

Las Casas commenced his History of the Indies in 1527. when he was in his fifty-third year; he concluded it in 1559, when he was in his eighty-fifth. He had in his possession some valuable documents obtained from Columbus; but beyond these he relied for the most part on his own knowledge of events, along with accredited rumors and reports in circulation. In his will he directs that the Historia shall not be made public for forty years after his decease. But reasons exist for the belief that it was read by Philip the Second, in the Escorial; and it is certain Antonio de Herrera availed himself of its information before the year 1600, when he completed his Description of the Indies of the West. The Historia by Las Casas still remains in manuscript in the Royal Academy of Madrid. {833} Herrera, being the chief royal chronicler of the Indies, and chronicler for Castile, was ordered by the supreme council of the Indies to prepare his Description. It is presented in the form of annals, where events are recorded in the year in which they transpired. Consequently the breaks are incessant in the regular sequence, to conform to chronological arrangement. But historical effect was not designed; historical accuracy in the statement of facts being all that was demanded.

To this end, Herrera consulted every book, in print or in manuscript, known to him, and had access to every official document in the archives of Simancas and Seville, to insure accuracy and verify every assertion. He does not often explain the policy or intentions of the government; because statecraft, in those days, enjoined the silence of Italian diplomacy and practised the secrecy of the Venetian Council of Ten. The royal purpose in what was done or ordered, was above the sphere of the annalist; the introduction of personal or private biography was below it. He took for his model and guide, through the intricate maze of voyages, discoveries, and adventures, the Historia of Las Casas. He adopted that part only, however, which his duty required; he rejected that which was uncertain, untrue, or purely of personal interest. In rejecting, he did not discredit Las Casas, believing him to be of undoubted veracity, and in general very accurate. But Las Casas had unavoidably fallen into errors, from defect of memory, with advancing years, and from misinformation, or from facts misunderstood by the manner in which they reached him. That Herrera should improve upon him or defer to his accuracy as a historian is not singular, and expresses a high appreciation of his excellence. Nor can it be surprising, when called upon to pronounce, in his Description, between the statements of Las Casas and his enemies, Oviedo and Gomara, he should decide that Las Casas had good cause for much feeling against them. When the voluminous work of Herrera was printed, it was found to be a masterly production; nor has its authority been seriously questioned since. At the present day it stands as imputing perfect verity. It ranks with the Annual Register and National Almanac; it is of the same class of publications, but far more extensive in its design.

The imperfections of Las Casas in his Historia and those portions not quoted by Herrera are the parts which first claim attention. In understanding his peculiar position toward those with whom he was thrown in contact, his inferences of the motives by which they were actuated cannot be implicitly relied on. He did not comprehend fully their situation; he could not account for their conduct, because explanations were not made which at a flash would have revealed the difficulties. In the absence of those he could not refrain from ascribing bad motives to some officials, such as Fonseca, Bishop of Burgos. Others he honored, because they were disinterested, pure, virtuous personages, with their sensibilities excited at the wrongs done to the aborigines, and who sympathized with him in his praiseworthy enterprise. Such, in his opinion, were Cesneros, Cardinal Ximenes, and Adrian, Cardinal de Tortosa. These prelates were in turn prime ministers, but their mode of receiving Las Casas was different. Ximenes was cold and austere in general, with his thoughts absorbed in affairs of state. {834} To Las Casas his deportment was not reserved; he was genial in his reception, and could read his traits at a glance; his feelings, too, were all on the same side, and it happened the interests of the crown were in accordance with his feelings. The cardinal, therefore, received him with unusual cordiality, and with much consideration; he listened to the facts communicated, to think them over, and to act upon them. He was thankful and considerate to Las Casas for the valuable information imparted, and sometimes relieved his poverty from his private purse. When the cardinal had learned all that Las Casas could tell about the condition of the Indies, he was graciously and quietly bowed out. For Ximenes had not the time nor inclination to hear more, which was sure to follow, if he could, with any decency, avoid the infliction.

Cardinal Adrian, subsequently Pope Adrian, was of a mild, quiet, disposition. He gave to Las Casas longer interviews, because he had more to learn, having recently come to Spain for the first time, from the Low Countries. Adrian therefore was more gracious still; but when Las Casas, in his nervous excitability, discoursed upon the never-ending theme of the injustice of Indian slavery, its sinfulness, its impolicy, its danger to the souls of persons in high places who tolerated it, and began on the Scriptures, the fathers, the decretals, the bulls, and the canon law, and the civil law, and the moral law, with interminable citations and iterations, the patience of even the meekest of cardinals would sometimes give way. For both Adrian and Cesneros understood these matters better than he did; and while assenting to the truth of what was uttered, they were not inclined to hear it so often and at such length repeated.

Ximenes, when not wishing to see him, time being too precious, turned him over to some dean or bishop; but Adrian, when desirous of more explanations, sent some friend among the Flemish counties to search for Las Casas, to converse with him, in order to acquire a thorough knowledge of the Indies, and of his opinions and plans. One day he met Señor De Bure by appointment, who felt an interest in the Indies. Las Casas was delighted to find the Flemish gentleman felt for the poor Indians, and forthwith his hopes rose that the government would do something. De Bure, in his eyes, was the very best of human beings. De Bure would listen to all that could be said, and soon took him to his uncle, De Laxao, who was the young sovereign's chamberlain, with inexpressible influence. De Bure was a buffer for Adrian, nothing more, to keep off Las Casas from that cardinal when he did not want to see him, but wished to be kept duly advised on Indian topics.

Fonseca was of a different mould; he was a man of business, rude, abrupt, with little delicacy in his manners to suppliants. He had a better acquaintance with the Indies; knew all about the condition of the natives; and if he had any sympathy for Las Casas, he did not permit it to be seen, nor for one moment would he countenance his proposals or listen to his plans. He deemed them as visionary as he had once viewed the scheme of Columbus to discover a new continent. He now was equally sure Las Casas could not civilize that continent when it was discovered. Consequently Las Casas loved Ximenes and Adrian, and heartily despised the Bishop of Burgos. {835} Every school-boy who ever read of Columbus or Cortez has learned what a very bad man was Fonseca, and all modern authors know what was in their school-books; but they know nothing more. Every life of Columbus, of Cortez, of Las Casas is written in the same vein. The Bishop of Burgos is abused in all of them. He treated the discoverer of America shamefully; he insulted the Protector of the Indians; he persecuted the conqueror of Mexico. These illustrious men denounced him, and their biographers are in sworn biographical fealty bound to denounce him also. Their heroes are never wrong; for what hero in biography or romance can ever be wrong? In the very nature of such compositions it is an utter impossibility. Fonseca was never in the right; for what opponent of their idols could have any reason or justice on his side?

Now, the best of reasons may be found for his policy to Columbus and Las Casas. They both wanted funds from the treasury when he was minister, and when no funds could be spared; for the nation was insolvent—a secret well known to him, but which it was all-important should not be known to the public. He would not give a ducat for any exploring voyage or prospective discovery, or for any expenses after a discovery was made. When Isabella begged and implored the cold minister to yield to her importunities for Columbus, he positively refused; nor could any entreaties induce him to relent. The queen, in consequence, had to pawn her jewels to equip the armada fitting out at Palos. Fonseca was not disgraced for his obstinacy; and although nothing of a courtier, he was too useful to be removed. Las Casas was served in the same way when Charles was anxious to aid him with funds. Fonseca was again as surly, and when at last the sovereign determined in council that, come what might, Las Casas should have aid, Fonseca washed his hands of the business, and soon after met him with a smile. This unexpected amiability Las Casas describes as evincing "some nobleness of nature." How many meritorious subjects, with honest claims on the treasury, were disappointed of a pittance thereby, is not considered. Knights who had spent their estates in prosecuting the wars against the Moors, who had grown old and poor in the royal service, who had fought for Christendom at Alhama, conquered at Malaga, and contributed to the siege and capture of Cordova, may have turned away heart-sick, in want of a maravedi, and only diminished the importunate, unsuccessful crowd besieging the doors of ministers, to swell the number of daily beggars at the hatch of some convent. In the novel of Gil Bias a picture is presented of the neglect shown to meritorious subjects, whose necessities are no less imperative than their deeds were commendable. Captain Chinchilla is a sample of thousands. He had lost an eye at Naples, an arm in Lombardy, and a leg in the Low Countries; but his sovereign had not a ducat to spare. In such condition of the finances, a minister required a heart of stone to turn away from starving appeals for a bare pittance or the smallest pension. Fonseca could not be just; how much less could he be generous? A man who would endure this for the crown deserved much of the royal favor. For this was Fonseca invaluable; his nerve to save every real to the state was a quality much wanted.

But Hernando Cortez never besought the royal bounty; why, then, should Fonseca persecute him? It is said he exhibited uniform malignity against all great men; he persecuted Cortez. To this last instance a reason can be interposed. {836} For some cause Fonseca took part in the private quarrel between him and Velasquez, the Governor of Cuba. What was the minister's motive is merely conjecture; but if true, it is not worthy of consideration. Velasquez and Cortez were both villains; and a controversy between them arose about the division of the Mexican spoils. The governor furnished the funds for that expedition, and fitted out the ships on joint account. He complained that Cortez made no return of the profits, Fonseca took the side of Velasquez and aided him in his suit. It was difficult to determine who had the law in his favor; but the man who would cheat his patron and partner, as Cortez certainly did, who would torture to death an innocent prisoner and that prisoner a dethroned monarch, as Cortez in cold blood put Guatomotz to the torture, is not only a contemptible knave, but a hideous monster in human form.

Velasquez was another of the same breed; and if his infamy was less, the opportunity for the display of his propensities was wanting; his field was not so magnificent; but he cultivated to the utmost extent the smaller space which Cuba presented. Bad faith toward each other was the common practice among colonial chiefs. Velasquez owed his appointment to the judges of the Audiencia of Hispaniola, who fitted him out to do business for both in the same way that he in turn had commissioned and supplied Cortez, and as Cortez again nominated certain confidential friends to govern Mexico when he undertook his unfortunate expedition to Honduras. Of course these friends cheated Cortez, as he had cheated Governor Velasquez, and as the governor had cheated the judges of the Audiencia, and as the judges were perpetually defrauding their sovereign. Not one spark of honor or honesty was exhibited by any of them. They were rapacious, reckless, restrained by no law or teaching or sense of morality; while the temptation before their eyes was too splendid and overpowering to resist. The breach of a solemn promise was cheap as a dicer's oath; it was not even a venal offence; the torture of the Indians was not a crime; the burning alive at a slow fire of the royal Aztec was at best only an indiscretion. Thousands, including girls and boys, had been subjected to the same treatment, and for the same purpose, to wring the last ounce of gold-dust from the unhappy creatures.

The proceedings of Governor Velasquez, in Cuba, were not unlike the conduct of Cortez in Mexico. The governor enslaved, he tortured, he destroyed; and so did every cavalier who came in contact with the natives. The only gentlemen in the Antilles were the buccaneers, the British, Dutch, and French pirates. They, to be sure, in search of booty, cut the throats of the Spaniards whom they captured; but they were of too much principle to conceal the plunder from their companions or to divide unfairly. But the Castilians did not stop with cutting throats of innocent Indians; they despoiled each other. They had not the proverbial honor found among thieves. In such a delightful society, moral rectitude was not one of the cardinal virtues; and if Fonseca inclined to Velasquez while popular opinion is with Cortez, the discrepancy may be ascribed to the fact that popular opinion will in such cases decide in favor of him whose baseness is the greater, the more magnificent and successful. {837} Las Casas detested Cortez, and preferred the governor; but he complains of the unjust policy of Ferdinand to Columbus. It is probable Las Casas is mistaken again; he knew nothing of cabinet secrets. The character of the great navigator deservedly stands high, not only for the splendor of his discoveries, but for the purity of his life. His fame cannot be assailed with any truth or propriety; while on the other hand, history does not accord much credit to Ferdinand for his public or private worth. Yet it is impossible, in considering all the circumstances, to avoid the conclusion that the king was right, and had at least equity to sustain him, or rather to justify his counsellors, for it was a matter of state. It is true, the crown of Castile had entered into a formal contract with Columbus to confer upon him a high command over all the countries he should discover. The king now refused to make good this stipulation; he broke the contract, and proposed compensation by estates conferred in Castile. Columbus held the crown to the bond and refused all compromise. He had set his heart on becoming the man of greatest wealth in the world and to bestow it all to Christendom in a cruza for the recovery of the holy places from the infidel. A more sublime purpose could not be conceived; for at the time, Constantinople was captured, the islands for the most part in the Levant overrun, Italy in danger, a foothold gained in Sicily and Sardinia, France hastily sending troops to the frontiers of Austria, Hungary invaded, the Knights Templars of St. John far in advance at Rhodes under fire, and prayers daily offered up by the people in their churches at Amsterdam, imploring the Almighty to avert the Saracen from their gates; the crowning victory for the Christians was not gained for a half-century later at the Gulf of Lepanto.

This brilliant scheme of Columbus to roll back the tide of war, engrossed his leisure hours. For its accomplishment, he hoped to obtain riches from the new world; and when made governor of Hispaniola, was avaricious to amass a stupendous fortune. Among other measures he sent three hundred natives to Seville, to be sold as slaves. Queen Isabella, hearing of it, ordered that they be sent back, declaring no one had a right to enslave her vassals. Although incensed, she did not reprimand Columbus. He had enough of difficulties to contend with in his administration, without the further burden of her displeasure; for it was soon found out he evinced an incapacity to govern men in civil society. Successful he might be in ruling sailors on the forecastle; but that had not taught him how to govern men on shore. He exacted implicit obedience; he pursued his own plans without consultation; he compelled cavaliers to assist in manual labor. Worse than all, he was a foreigner, and it ended in a revolt with open war. A royal commissioner was sent out to institute an investigation, which terminated in Columbus being sent to Seville in chains. Isabella, at this indignity offered to her favorite admiral, ordered the irons to be removed, but would not consent, withal, to reinstate him in authority. After her death, he renewed his application, without a better result; the king refused to comply with the words of the royal contract. The promise had been made, but it was made for the state—for the public benefit—and the opinion of lawyers was, that it could be broken if it were for the common good not to carry out its provisions. A proper equivalent could be awarded for the damage done to the admiral. {838} This was the theory of rights then; it is still the theory and practice of all governments at the present time. But Columbus refused every offer in the nature of a recompense, which would have left him rich, and placed him on a level with the highest grandees in the realm. He nursed his wrongs in silence, languished in comparative poverty, and died of a broken heart.

Las Casas never forgot this treatment of the great admiral, his warm personal friend; he distrusted princes ever after. He fell into the error common to most men soliciting court favor, that whatever was done to promote his wishes was done from personal considerations to him, through his individual exertions and influence, and not out of any regard for the welfare of the Indians. On the contrary, the welfare of the Indians was all that recommended him to the attention of the cardinals, or to royal notice, and invested him with importance. The policy of the crown was to save the aborigines from destruction. It might be a selfish policy, but it surely was, at the same time, enlightened and correct in every point of view. But every colonial official, every special agent, every Spaniard was thwarting the governmental plan, to promote their own interests and their private emolument. The proceeds of the plantations, of the mines, of the pearl fisheries, were in great demand at fabulous values, while the labor of the Indians enslaved was cheap and abundant; therefore, they were made slaves in the very face of the royal prohibition.

It is true these slaves sickened and died within a short period, but plenty more were forthcoming at a low rate; and thus the desolation went on. The crown had resolved to check the atrocity; but how could it be accomplished? The clergy were not implicated in the guilt, but they were incapable of assisting at first, or advising. The most of them, moreover, believed at one time that the natives were not human. The Dominicans, who arrived out about 1510, thought otherwise; and they, in turn, under the guidance of Las Casas, infused their opinion into the other brethren. His discussion before the young emperor with Quevedo, Bishop of Darien, was to settle their status; for Quevedo contended they were not intellectual beings. Many doubts prevailed also among the clergy, and it was the universal belief of the laity, according to Remisal, until, in 1537, Paul III. issued his famous bull declaring they were human and free, capable of instruction and salvation. The crown had great difficulties in the matter, and the ministers were much perplexed in learning what to do; but the imperial troubles were not disclosed to Las Casas, for the troubles were diplomatic secrets which to none could be divulged. Their confidence in his veracity, sincerity, and disinterestedness, was unbounded; he was the only one they could trust for a correct account. He was successively created Protector of the Indians, chaplain to the emperor, and Bishop of Chiapa. While the sovereigns appreciated him, esteemed him, heard every word he had to say bearing upon the subject, he mixed it up so often with so many extraneous remarks, observations, and quotations, that they must now and then have considered him an intolerable bore. With this comprehension of the principles maintained by the Castilian cabinet, a clue is discovered to guide through the mazes and intricacies of Indian politics. Emergencies sometimes compelled deviations or exceptions for the moment; but when the necessity passed away, the policy was immediately restored.

It is now time to turn to the new work of Mr. Arthur Helps. To those who have read a page about Las Casas, this book can excite only feelings of disappointment and regret. The public expected some improvement at least on preceding biographies, which was certainly a very moderate expectation; but it has not been gratified. The volume is written with the design to expatiate on the great virtues of the bishop, to eulogize his actions, to excuse his errors, to defend his fame. But the memory of Las Casas needs no aid of this kind in panegyric or palliation. His deeds have passed into history, and by its calm, enlightened, disinterested verdict he must stand or fall. So far he has not been favored with a dispassionate hearing, nor by any means with an enlightened public. A prejudice has prevailed against him, from one cause among his countrymen, from another source abroad; and Mr. Helps, without intending to do him harm, would strengthen the prevailing impression abroad by his publication, if it were generally read, but which is doubtful. On the second page, in stating "the character of Las Casas," he writes:

"The utmost that friends or enemies, I imagine, could with the slightest truth allege against him was an over-fervent temperament. If we had to arrange the faculties of great men, we should generally, according to our easy-working fancies, combine two characters to make our men of. And in this case we should not be sorry, if it might have been so, to have had a little of the wary nature of such a man as King Ferdinand the Second intermixed with the nobler elements of Las Casas. Considering, however, what great things Las Casas strove after and how much he accomplished, it is ungracious to dwell more than is needful upon any defect or superfluity of his character. If it can be proved he was on any occasion too impetuous in word or deed, it was in a cause that might have driven any man charged with it beyond all bounds of prudence in the expression of his indignation."

It will be perceived, on perusal that, wherever the bishop has been charged with any fault, imperfection, failure, or inconsistency, this author readily admits it, and then proceeds to offer extenuating circumstances, or to petition for mercy for his hero, on the plea that he had good intentions or had done important services. When, again, the author has some bright spot to dwell upon in his career, it is presented in a questionable shape, which deprives it of all lustre, leaving the suspicion on the mind of readers that the bishop is a much overrated man. Mr. Helps furnishes no new facts, he explains none that are old, he states very few correctly. About dates the author is most commonly in error when given; but for the most part he does not deign to notice them, which in this case is a blessing; for he seems as indifferent to their importance as if he were writing a novel or a love-letter. In the composition, he has had recourse to two works only—the History of the Indies, by Las Casas himself, and the History of Guatemala and Chiapa, by Remesal.

The Historia, by the bishop, is not the most important of his many productions, nor are the selections from Remesal made with much discrimination. The Conversion of the Indians in Verapaz, or the Land of War, is interesting; but Mr. Helps in his account does not leave much of its glory to Las Casas, while Las Casas was for ever boasting, with truth, of that achievement as his first success, and claiming it justly as peculiarly his own. In the same History of Guatemala it is narrated how Las Casas refused to visit the viceroy in Mexico, because he had ordered the hand of a priest to be cut off at Antequera. Mr. Helps translates it, the priest's head at Antequera; probably he does not know that Antequera is the ancient Spanish name for the modern city of Oaxaca.

With this slender stock of material the book was written; and in consequence, whenever a doubt arose about a fact, or a further reason was required for some elucidation, it will be seen, on every page, that writing history was made easy by guessing, or moral observations, of which some specimens are selected:

"I do not know what transaction he alludes to."
"I hardly see him without prophetic vision."
"It moves our pity to think."
"Probably being somewhat tired."
"Perhaps not wishing to alarm."
"I think with Las Casas."
"There is no doubt."
"I have scarcely a doubt."
"If the writer of this narrative may be permitted to fancy himself."
"I conceive for a single day."
"I fancy him sitting."
"It may be doubted, however."
"As it appears to me."
"I suspect the wisest amongst us would."
"I cannot but attribute."
"We may very well imagine."
"A young man, as I conjecture."
"Probably on that account."
"To me it seems."
"Always I imagine."
"We must not suppose."
"And so I think."

And so will every reader think. Mr. Arthur Helps has essayed to write history before. The Spanish Conquest in America stands to his literary credit. But he has a way peculiar to himself in the gestation and parturition of his historical offspring. He explains, in the preface to the third volume of his Spanish Conquest, his obstetrical mode of doing this thing. It is thus accounted for:

"In issuing this third volume, I take this opportunity of making a statement, which perhaps it would have been well to have made before.

"The reader will observe that there is scarcely any allusion in this work to the kindred works of modern writers on the same subject. This is not from any want of respect for the able historians who have written upon the discovery or the conquest of America. I felt, however, from the first, that my object in investigating this portion of history was different from theirs, and I wished to keep my mind clear from the influence which these eminent persons might have exercised upon it. … Moreover, while admitting fully the advantages to be derived from the study of these modern writers, I thought it was better upon the whole to have a work composed from independent sources, which would convey the impression that the original documents had made upon the author's mind."

With this explanation, nothing more remains to observe. If he has founded a school in this method, or if his original plan upon which to write history will die out with him, is yet to be seen. The Spanish Conquest, by Mr. Arthur Helps, is in thick, solid, heavy form, and in volumes no less than four. Insatiate Arthur! would not one suffice? His moral reflections and his axioms have one merit, if the number of ages in which they have been in common use can make them venerable. From the Pyramids centuries may look down upon some of them.

"There are few men to whom, up to the present time, the words which Shakespeare makes Mark Antony say of Caesar, would more apply than to Las Casas:

    'The evil that men do lives after them,
    The good is oft interred with their bones.'

At one inauspicious moment of his life he advised a course which has ever since been the one blot upon his well-earned fame, and too often has this advice been the only thing, which, when the name of Las Casas has been mentioned, has occurred to men's minds respecting him. He certainly did advise that negroes should be brought to the New World. I think, however, I have amply shown in the Spanish Conquest, he was not the first to give this advice."

This is the way Mr. Helps enters the lists to be his champion. We do not know where the evils of Las Casas live on—when the ossification of the good with his bones supervened. {841} Instead of quoting Shakespeare, a few lines written by the great British statesman, George Canning, for the Anti-Jacobin, in his ode to the "New Morality." would be more applicable to Mr. Helps himself:

  "Give me th' avowed, erect, the manly foe,
  Bold I can meet, perchance avert his blow;
  But of all plagues, good heavens! thy wrath can send,
  Save, save, oh! save me from the candid friend."

The memory of Las Casas has suffered greatly from many of those unthinking, unsearching plagues, who are ever ready to confess what "it is due to candor to state," etc. A dozen at least might be counted of names high in the roll of literature: Llorente, Washington Irving, Mr. Prescott, are among the number. The time has come to explode this bubble about his want of fixed principles. All are pleased to admit he was a good man, leading a virtuous life, with a noble purpose in view; but that he was inconsistent in recommending negro slavery, while advocating the emancipation of the Indians. Now, if one be in his right mind, and yet inconsistent in opinions or conduct, he cannot be virtuous in principle or practice. The expressions are incongruous. How can he be accounted virtuous, if at times he is vicious? How can he be received as good, when he has advised what is bad? Rectitude is wanting. In public life an inconsistent man is dangerous; because he destroys order and promotes disorder; he creates distrust in the absence of integrity in purpose. In private life no dependence can be reposed in him; he is not respected, and if the infirmity be great, his friends send him to an asylum for the insane.

"It is this expedient of Las Casas which has drawn down severe censure upon his memory. He has been charged with gross inconsistency, and even with having originated the inhuman traffic in the new world. This last is a grievous charge; but historical facts and dates remove the original sin from his door, and prove that the practice existed in the colonies, and was authorized by royal decree long before he took part in the question." [Footnote 78]

This charge was first made against the bishop by Dr. Robertson, in his History of America, in 1777. The doctor therein contrasts him with Cardinal Ximenes, Prime Minister of Spain, observing:

"Cardinal Ximenes, when solicited to encourage this commerce, peremptorily rejected the proposition, because he perceived the iniquity of reducing one race of men to slavery, while he was consulting about the means of restoring liberty to another. (Herrera Dec. ii. lib. ii. cap. 8.) But Las Casas, from the inconsistency natural to men who hurry with headlong impetuosity toward a favorite point, was incapable of making the distinction." (Herrera Dec. lib. ii. cap. 20.)

If Ximenes had been living when this exalted morality was accorded to him, his astonishment would have been great; he claimed no morality of that kind.

In turning to Herrera, at the eighth chapter, referred to by Dr. Robertson, it will be found the doctor has drawn upon his imagination for the paragraph on Ximenes. The cardinal was not thinking about morality, but about money. Herrera states it thus:

"At the same time it was ordered that negro slaves should not pass to the Indies; which order was understood at once; for, as they went out, in the scarcity of Indians, and as it was known that one negro did the work of four, whereby a great demand had arisen for them, it appeared to the Cardinal Ximenes, that he might place some tax on their exportation, from whence would result a benefit to the treasury."

But Herrera, in the twentieth chapter, does, with truth, connect Las Casas with the recommending of negro slaves. Every line of this passage must be carefully noted, in order to understand what follows. It is in these words:

"The licentiate Bartoleme de Las Casas … turned to another expedient, advocating that the Castilians, living in the Indies, might import negroes; for with them on the plantations and in the mines, the Indians would be much alleviated; and that it be advised to carry out a large number of workmen, with certain privileges accorded to them. Adrian, Cardinal of Tortosa, heard these suggestions with much pleasure. … And in order to know better the number of slaves required for the four islands, Hispaniola, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica, an opinion was asked from the Royal House of Trade at Seville, and they responding four thousand, persons were not wanting, who, to gain favor, informed the Governor de la Bresa, a Flemish gentleman of the council of the king, and his major-domo. De Bresa begged the monopoly of it; the king granted it, and De Bresa sold it to the Genoese for 25,000 ducats, on condition that the king would not bestow another monopoly for eight years. The grant was very injurious to the settlers of these islands, and for the Indians, for whose alleviation it had been ordered. Because when the traffic was free, as has been stated, every Castilian carried out slaves. But as the Genoese sold the privilege for each one for a large sum, few purchased, and thus this benefit ceased."

Searches were made in Herrera to prove that the traffic did not commence with Las Casas' advice. This fact was easily established; but it did not meet the issue. The question was, did Las Casas, in 1517, recommend the importation of negroes? and the fact was made out. Several points were rendered clear, and made so from the bishop's own History of the Indies; that he recommended the measure hastily; that it was an unfortunate recommendation; that his remorse was great for it; that he hoped God would forgive him, for he had done it in ignorance. Those who never examined further, infer that the criminality of the slave-trade was deemed as sinful at that time in the first half of the sixteenth as it is now in the last half of the nineteenth century. Hence the mistakes among modern historians.

When the investigation would appear to be concluded, and Las Casas condemned out of his own writings, the difficulty in the case in reality only commences. The rubbish surrounding it is removed; nothing more. What did Las Casas admit? Surely not the charge that he was inconsistent; for two centuries elapsed before the charge was made; but he accuses himself for having given the advice hastily; that it eventuated unfortunately, (but not to him;) that he gave it ignorantly; that he hoped to be forgiven. To present the case in its opposite aspect: if the advice had proved beneficial instead of injurious to the Indians, he would not have suffered remorse. He had given the advice without reflecting, without examination, consequently in ignorance; for if he had reflected for one moment, he would have foreseen what consequences would follow, and which proved disastrous to the natives.

But, while presented in this light, it is somewhat weakened by the accompanying words of Las Casas. Mr. Ticknor, in his excellent History of Spanish Literature, explains the remorse from another view. He concludes that the bishop, in giving the advice, was ignorant of the fact that the African negroes were captured in unjust war; and when he learns they were made slaves, as the Indians were enslaved, his soul was filled with horror for the sin he had committed in recommending the importation. Some of the words of Las Casas will bear out this hypothesis—on the first impression it would appear conclusive; but, unfortunately, other expressions must be explained, so as to give effect to every line. {843} Besides this, why should the bishop feel remorse for what was done ignorantly, when engaged in the holy work to promote the salvation of souls? Las Casas was too well versed in casuistry to deem himself criminal under these circumstances. Moreover, the bishop, when in the exercise of his sacred duties in his diocese of Chiapa, wrote out a rescript for his clergy, dated in November, 1546, wherein he charges them not to confess Christians holding Indian slaves, but does not include negro slaves. This, to be sure, might have been an oversight, were it not for a few lines written further down, where he cautions his clergy to guard well the holy sacrament of marriage as well among the negroes as the Indians. The document will be found in full in Remesal. From this it appears Las Casas, thirty years later, had not discovered that negroes were on the same footing with the Indians, being then seventy-two years old.

"This advice—that license be given to bring negro slaves to these countries—the Clerigo Casas first gave, not understanding the injustice with which the Portuguese take them and enslave them, which, from what happened from it, he would not have given for all he had in the world; for he always held it unjust and tyrannical making them slaves; for the same right as in them as in the Indians."

The translation of Mr. Helps is not followed; because he does not translate some of the words at all; and, in one instance, gives to a verb a wrong expression, inconsistent with the sentence and with a subsequent paragraph. The line, "After he had apprehended the nature of the thing," is no more to be found in the passage than in the Psalms. In the one hundred and twenty-eighth chapter of the Historia, Las Casas again refers to the subject, and states why, on the representation of the planters that they would free their Indians if permission were given to them to import negroes, he consented to recommend the measure to the crown. He next alludes to the bad consequences flowing from the monopoly, and concludes thus:

"Of this advice, which the clerigo gave, not a little did he afterward repent, judging himself guilty from his haste, (inadvertenti;) and because he saw, as it turned out to be, as unjust, the capture of the negroes as of the Indians. There was no other remedy than what he advised—to bring negroes in order to free the Indians, although he might suppose they were just captures, although he was not certain that his ignorance and good intention would excuse him in the divine wisdom."

It appears from the passage in Herrera, quoted above, that the advice was bad; for a monoply of the traffic in negroes was granted to De Bresa, who sold his speculation to the Genoese, and they raised the price so high that the planters could not purchase Africans nor import Christian-born negroes from Spain as formerly. In consequence, the trade in Indian slaves, who were cheaper, increased, to the chagrin of Las Casas for his inconsiderate suggestion. His heedless conduct, in his own eyes, at last appeared sinful. In some part of it he had displeased God; for the Deity permitted the Indian servitude to go on, which, in the mind of Las Casas, he would not have permitted had not he incurred, in some way, the divine displeasure. Was it his precipitancy of action in the measure? was it advising the importation of Africans, some of whom might have been captured in an unjust war, which incensed the Deity? Las Casas could not determine, and hence his confusion of mind and forgetfulness of the incidents in writing the Historia. Whatever view, however, may be taken of it, or which preferred, it is certain that, under no aspect, can the charge of inconsistency made by Dr. Robertson, and stated by Navarete, be sustained.

Washington Irving's note on Las Casas, in the appendix to his Columbus, evinces much commendable research, and a collection of all the facts he could find. But unfortunately, he had not studied the career of the bishop; he did not pursue his examination deep enough; he also overlooked some evidence before his eyes in Herrera. When Mr. Irving had finished his search and noted the evidence, he stated confusedly what he had collected, without discriminating between inferences and facts; sometimes treating facts as inferences or excuses in the biographies of Ximenes; sometimes treating the inferences in Robertson and Quintana as facts. He entered upon the examination impressed with the conviction that Las Casas had been inconsistent; that the moral conscience of that age was against slavery as much as it is now. He comes to no conclusion, and leaves the charge against the bishop in the same condition he approached it.

Mr. Prescott, in his excellent History of the Conquest of Mexico, in a note on Las Casas, copies only from Quintana, and thereby copies also, many of the mistakes of that celebrated Spanish author. The singular spectacle, therefore, among the curiosities of literature is presented in Mr. Prescott's Conquest, a work of sterling value, for its accuracy resting always upon respectable authorities, wherein a note is seen abounding in errors. Mr. Prescott is also a believer in the inconsistency of the bishop, and that the moral sense at that time was against slavery.

Mr. Ticknor, too, in his History of Spanish Literature, a history renowned and properly admired everywhere, with all his respect for the bishop, is not without his little literary imperfections. It is evident he is not familiar with the events, and their surroundings in the life of Las Casas. He places the famous controversy of the bishop with Sepulveda in 1519. But in that year was the well-known debate of Las Casas with Quevedo, the Bishop of Darien, in the presence of the youthful sovereign. Sepulveda was then a young man of twenty-six years. But Mr. Ticknor wanders in good company, one of the most eminent of England, the celebrated Sir James Mackintosh, who, in his Progress of Ethical Philosophy, states Sepulveda met Las Casas in argument in 1542. That, however, was the year of the famous assembly convoked by imperial order, at Barcelona and Molino del Rey, to take into consideration the bishop's Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies. Both of these able historians are wrong about the date of the Sepulveda discussion: even Mr. Helps knows better; it was in 1550. Mr. Ticknor further reports that the Brief Account was written for the emperor and dedicated to the prince, afterward Philip the Second. It would have been more proper to write that the Brief Account was written for the emperor, and ten years after printed and dedicated to the prince, then in England, the Prince Consort with Queen Mary.

The state of public opinion, in regard to slavery at that period, requires a few words in explanation in order to leave no uncertainty in the law, or stain on the crown, on the church, or civilization. It differed much from the present, because the condition of society was in many respects not analogous. Slavery was not then considered immoral; but was actually, in its practice, indicative of progress, in ameliorating the calamities of war and the fate of captives by land and sea. {845} Every war undertaken by a civilized nation, and declared in the usual forms, with the solemn religious ceremonies, was held to be a just war. It was an appeal to the God of armies, as an umpire or judge; it was the ordeal by battle. When a victory was won, it was held by the victors a divine decision in their favor; the vanquished were deemed criminals before high heaven; and as a punishment they were put to death. When the prisoners were too numerous for a general massacre, they were led captive to colonize some vacant territory, and to work for their masters. These victims did not feel grateful to their enemies for their clemency; but poured forth their thanks to Providence for his mercy. Their offspring continued in slavery; for the sins of the father were visited on the children to the third and fourth generations, for ever. Even in the course of time, when they intermixed in blood, language, and religion with the descendants of their conquerors, they were often held to servitude. This was the theory and the practice under it; but subject to many exceptions. Exchange of prisoners was sometimes effected; some were ransomed; some were released. At the date of the discovery of America, Spain had been at war with the Saracen for seven centuries; it was not only a just war, but a holy crusade. When captures were made on either side, slaughter ensued without compunction; but not invariably. Both armies and navies were acting on religious conviction; but both were better civilized, the infidel being deemed the more refined of the two. It is true, the old and young, the infirm and diseased, who were poor, were slain or pitched overboard; while the rich and the strong were held for slaves or for ransom. When a parent learned that his child or relation was spared, only enslaved, he felt the joy with which an American mother on the border hears the news that her little girl has not been scalped by the Camanches when captured.

In Europe, therefore, slavery was deemed a mitigation of the horrors of war: an evil inflicted by the hand of Providence, but a lesser evil. No one spoke or wrote against the institution; whoever had dared would have been considered not much better than a brute. Perhaps a few Moslem fanatics desired more Christian blood-letting; perhaps a few Christian fanatics wished a little more of the fluid from the arteries of Moors. Yet in no period of the world's history was it held just to retain slaves not captured in a just war. In Jerusalem, they were returned to the neighboring nations when acquired in private piratical forays. This was the Hebrew law. The law of Moses forbade man-stealing, mentioned in Isaiah, and repeated by Saint Paul in Timothy; but man-stealing meant no more than any other stealing of movable property.

In Athens, the same morality was recognized. Aristotle laid it down in his "Politics" that barbarians could not be held in servitude unless taken in a just war. Rome borrowed her international code from Greece, as she borrowed everything else intellectual. On the revival of learning in the west, the Roman civil law was introduced through the continent of Europe. The justice of war, the property acquired under it, the moral power to enslave, when, where, and in what cases, was elaborately taught at the universities. Its principles were as well understood in the canon law as in the civil law; teachers in ethical philosophy also expounded the doctrine which prevailed in every tribunal or judicature. They all agreed in their premises and maxims; they only differed in their application, as their minds were clear or obtuse.

The rules for the interpretation of laws were the same in the courts of civil or ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The presumption of law was that, as slavery of the foreign infidel existed in Spain, every infidel of a foreign nation was a slave. If one claimed his freedom, the burden of proof lay upon him to prove he was free. When negroes from Africa were brought by Portuguese slave-traders to the Seville market, the presumption arose that these creatures were of that condition. If one of them could show that he was not a slave, that he was not captured in war, but stolen from his tribe, he was adjudged a free man. It had always been known that men were stolen and sold; but every slave claiming to be free had to prove it. The public did not inquire into the fact when they purchased; they did not send to Senegambia. It is well known that mule-stealing is as common in Kentucky as sheep-stealing in the State of New York. Yet no one in the city, purchasing either kind of animal in the open market, will hesitate to buy mules or mutton from a regular drover or butcher. Who could wait, when taking his seat at breakfast, until his conscience was appeased to find out first whether the veal cutlet before him was not cut from a stolen calf? No one, high or low, in Spain, had any misgiving in the traffic of slaves, either in importing them to Andalucia or in exporting them to Jamaica.

But the natives of the Western Indies stood on a different footing, and when their question was first presented by Queen Isabella to the universities of Valladolid and Salamanca for a just opinion, whether the Indians could be enslaved, the professors unanimously decided they could not. The doctors of theology, versed in the canon law, maintained the aborigines of the western hemisphere were conceded to the crown by the bull of Alexander VI. granting the sovereignty of America to the kingdom of Castile and Leon, and the inhabitants, as wards to civilize and make Christians in express terms to be found in the pontifical document; that the sovereign had accepted it on these conditions. To break the promise was to betray the trust. On the other hand, the civil jurists held the Indians were vassals of the crown acquired in peaceful discovery and not reduced by war. Therefore they were never captured, and consequently could never be enslaved.

The crown agreed with the lawyers on the question of title by which the Indies of the West were held. The crown also recognized the stipulations in the bull to civilize and christianize the Indians. Consequently, it was resolved that just war could not be undertaken against them; but the government placed over them should be a missionary government; with a political polity, at the same time, for colonists only, from Castile. Hence, the innumerable mission establishments in America and the comparatively insignificant civil institutions for the Europeans; hence, also, the double aspect of formation in the vice-royalty— the dual government under one head.

The royal officials sent out had no jurisdiction over the Indians, except the viceroy; the religious missionaries had no charge over the Spaniards. As the natives greatly outnumbered the Castilians, the institutions, in a short time, inclined more to the ecclesiastical than to the civil or political; and the religious element continues predominant to the present day. {847} Presidents still govern in fact, although not in the same form as the old viceroys; and as the viceroys represented the king in temporal and spiritual matters, the republican presidents endeavor to imitate, in the plenitude of their power, both the sovereign and the pontiff.

Las Casas understood the law as laid down by the civil jurists, and as understood also by the theologians. Sometimes he defended the Indians under the civil code; sometimes under the canon law. In one way he appealed to his countrymen's sense of justice; in another, to their conscience. In general his arguments were based on the bull of Alexander, contending that the natives were placed in charge of the sovereigns by the head of the church for a religious purpose. Llorente considers this course the weaker side to take, because the pope has no prerogative to grant kingdoms, and principalities, and discoveries at pleasure; yet he excuses Las Casas, because this assumption of the pope's was generally recognized in that age. But the excellent biographer overlooks the words in the petition from Isabella to Alexander, desiring the sovereignty. A saving clause will be found in it, which intimates: "Distinguished lawyers are of opinion that the confirmation or donation from the pontificate is not requisite to hold possession justly of the new world." In that it will be perceived a reservation is inserted against the very power to grant that which it was requested to be granted.

The bishop was aware of this, but still preferred to appeal to the conscience of the conquerors and colonists; to portray the wickedness in enslaving, where their religious convictions might be touched, rather than rely upon the law of the case where every secular law was continually broken, and where even divine law was not much better respected. His policy was correct; its good effects ultimately were manifest, and at last eminently successful.

At this time died Hernando Cortez, the conqueror and scourge of Mexico. When his will was opened, one item directed, as Mr. Prescott translates:

"It has long been a question whether one can conscientiously hold property in Indian slaves. Since this point has not yet been determined, I enjoin it on my son Martin and his heirs, that they spare no pains to come to an exact knowledge of the truth, as a matter which deeply touches the conscience of each of them no less than mine.'

The historian, in a note on the same page, gives this extract in the original, where it reads differently, thus:

"Item, concerning the native slaves in New Spain, aforesaid; those of war as well as of purchase, there have been, and are many doubts," etc.

The term, "by purchase," refers to those natives who were slaves before the arrival of the Spaniards, and sold to him. Mr. Prescott does not perceive the point for which Las Casas was contending, and which touched the conqueror on his death-bed with all his mighty crimes fresh on his soul at the last moment, whether Indians, although taken in war, could be enslaved. On the next page Mr. Prescott remarks: "Las Casas and the Dominicans of the former age, the abolitionists of their day, thundered out their uncompromising invectives against the system, on the broad ground of natural equity and the rights of man." This is a mistake; Las Casas and other Dominicans always held up the bull of Alexander VI., as our abolitionists pointed to the National Declaration of Independence. {848} The glamour perpetually before the eyes of modern biographers about the natural equity and the rights of man prevailing in the sixteenth century has misled them into many errors.

Cortez had no scruples on the subject of his negro slaves! He does not provide for them. His man, Estevan, had the honor of introducing the small-pox to this continent, at Vera Cruz. Many of the race, both African and Spanish-born, were brought to the Indies before 1500; but soon after their arrival, proving refractory, they rebelled against the masters in what was called the Maroon war. Others ran away to the mountains, enticing the simple natives with them, where the negro lived in oriental leisure and luxury, in his harem, who worked for him, and provided for all his wants. In 1502, Governor Ovando recommended that further importation be prohibited; because they escaped, and would not work for the planters. The clergy joined in the recommendation, because the negroes took the Indians with them, whereby the Indian could not be instructed in religion.

In 1506, Ovando's recommendation was adopted; but in part only. The introduction of negroes from Africa was prohibited, while the colonists were permitted to bring over Christian negroes born in Spain. The king gave a special license for a few Africans to work in the mines, where they would not come in contact with the natives. Mr. Bancroft, in the fifth chapter of his History of the United States, is quite indignant at the royal hypocrisy; he, too, has the disease of natural equity and rights of man in the cerebellum. This historian observes:

"The Spanish government attempted to disguise the crime by prohibiting the introduction of slaves who had been born in Moorish families. … But the idle pretence was soon abandoned. … King Ferdinand himself (1510) sent fifty slaves to labor in the mines."

The same chapter fifth is full of precious reading to those who are curious to learn how facts sometimes may be interpreted, and history made up.

These are the reasons why Cardinal Ximenes was opposed to the trade, as explained by his biographers; and these, also, for the repugnance of Las Casas to it, as stated several times in his works. But the cardinal determined to raise revenue from the traffic; he thereupon, in 1516, stopped the trade until he could arrange the duties to be levied. For this stoppage, Dr. Robertson fired off an eulogium, which was not applicable. Washington Irving eagerly sought out the chapter in Herrera, referred to by the doctor, and was duly disgusted on finding that Ximenes was not thinking about sublime moral sentiments, but about money. The biographer of Columbus was much perplexed; he could only console himself for the discrepancy by remarking that, "Cardinal Ximenes in fact, though a wise and upright statesman, was not troubled with scruples of conscience on the question of natural rights." How a cardinal can be an upright man without an invariable delicacy of conscience, wherewith to decide justly at all times, surpasses common comprehension. The excuse for Ximenes is about equal to the compliment for John Smith, if it were said that the ubiquitous John is an exemplary member of society when he is sober.

On second thoughts, Mr. Helps, after all, may be entitled to higher rank, by comparison with other authors, than on first impression is accorded to him. {849} His home is in a hemisphere where historical questions, purely American, are receding more and more from public consideration; while most of the other gentlemen belong to this side of the Atlantic, where such subjects are rising in the horizon, and claiming greater attention. If facts, then, of the first magnitude are Overlooked in the new world, how many more will be overlooked in the old? If they do these things in the green tree at Boston, what shall be done by a Dryasdust in London?

Space does not permit an examination of other faults of less gravity attributed to Las Casas. It is said that, when he wrote his Brief Account, he exaggerated in over-stating the immense extent of the destruction among the aborigines; that his excited feelings and tender sensibilities had led him astray by the unparalleled atrocities perpetrated in his presence. But on the contrary, it was the magnitude of these atrocities which excited his feelings and shocked his sensibilities. Every word in the Brief Account can be maintained; furthermore, it will be found his statement in that tale of horror is not only true, but falls short of all the truth. Foreign nations, jealous and dreading the greatness of Spain, eagerly translated and published the Account. It soon appeared in print in English, in French, in Dutch, and Latin; it would have also been presented in German, if a German literature had been in existence: Caricature pictures embellished the pages, depicting scenes in the many modes of torture practised upon the Indians, upon the simple, innocent, confiding, naked men and women, upon little boys and girls, scarce beyond infancy.

These unheard-of crimes sent a thrill throughout Christendom, and set a stigma for cruelty on the Castilian name. The Spanish people, proverbial for their honesty, humanity, and integrity, acting with little wisdom, denied the correctness of the account; consequently, they were required to make good their denial. This being impossible, the nation took vengeance on the memory of Las Casas, when in his grave. But the conduct was foolish; the nation was no more responsible for the outrage on the natives, than it is responsible for a gang of desperadoes and outlaws in the mountain, who let loose their bull-dogs on kids and lambs in the Sierra Morena. Consequently, the name of Las Casas was held up to national execration, wherever was spoken the beautiful idiom of Castile. The learned looked upon his virtuous exertions with cold suspicion; literature became tinctured with it; the church, catching the tone of public opinion in the Iberian peninsula, withheld her recognition and recompense; thus ignoring perhaps her greatest ornament and benefactor in modern times. In the course of years, his name passed almost into oblivion in Spain when the asperity died out. But among the officials in Spanish America, hatred to him was imperishable. So far down, even in 1811, the Consulado of the City of Mexico denounced him as a "most illustrious Spanish declaimer, who wished to make himself renowned at the expense of the true national glory; and if he followed it some time, he gained at last the merited odium of posterity and the contempt of all honest and right-minded foreigners." At the same moment, nearly thirty millions of the native population, the descendants of those whom he was mainly instrumental in saving from slavery and consequent destruction, sent forth daily their grateful hymns in praise of his virtues, and in their orisons besought the heavenly grace to grant sweet repose to his imperishable soul.

Well does he deserve their gratitude. At the beginning, Las Casas was a missionary unto the missions; he taught the clergy first that the natives were intellectual beings like themselves; he organized the movement for the extirpation of slavery; he instructed them how to appeal to the conscience of the dying man holding fellow-men in bondage; he ordered them to refuse the sacraments to the strong, who approached the holy altar; he reported the plan for the missionary government to the sovereigns in Spain; he organized it in America; and originated the method by which the docile creatures were collected into communities or pueblos, far removed from the white race; he laid down the rules for the hours of labor and repose, for their instruction and for their civilization. He instituted the regulations for the guidance of the priests, and instilled into them the duty of watching over their flock at all times, in all places; to shield them from oppression; to alleviate their distress in sickness; to soothe them in affliction; to counsel them when in health; to be their guide, comforter, and friend. Nor has one of his teachings been changed or set aside. They remain to this day in full vigor in every pueblo, from the furthest confines of California to the most remote mission of Paraguay. When he passed away from earth, at the extreme age of ninety-two, the spirit with which his zeal was animated, was caught up by the priesthood who sat at his feet to listen to his inspired words. The germ he planted in their bosom grew with their growth, strengthened with their strength. A world was redeemed, and an humble monk from Seville, a truly God-fearing man, Bartoleme Las Casas, was their redeemer.

The time has gone by when the European mind can do him justice. Colonial affairs of the Western continent have no longer an interest in that quarter. His native land has thrown him off. It is only in America the greatness of his achievement can be portrayed, the lustre of his fame renewed. Nor can this pleasing task be accomplished in Spanish America, where as yet a provincial literature prevails. It must come, if come at all, from out of our own republic. More than one half of the immense, wide-spreading territory of the United States once belonged to Spain; and Spanish missionary institutions, laws, customs, and manners underlie the Anglo-Saxon historical, legislative, and judicial superstructure of a later period. Jurists are now in search, groping in the dark, for the clue to that seemingly inextricable labyrinth of civilization on which Spanish-American history is founded, and from whence contemporaneous laws and customs are derived, in order to elucidate intricate principles daily arising in the adjudication of titles to lands.

The highest court approaches the deciding of such cases with some trepidation and more distrust, lest they misapprehend a Spanish colonial law or do not understand the reason for the enactment of the law; or because, also, a contract may be misinterpreted from misinformation of local institutions and local phrases, that throw their atmosphere around expressed stipulations in legal documents. They now feel the necessity for an exposition dating back to the commencement of Castilian occupancy on this continent and the institution of missions. In vain have they sought for that source of knowledge, for that corner-stone upon which to construct the true theory over again of viceregal domination. {851} At last they will turn to the works of Las Casas, to master their contents; and when understood, they will lay their hand on what remains of his noble intellect, and exclaim, "Thou art the man." Then will be unfolded the mysteries of the Spanish colonial double codes, and advocates will expound them with the courage and confidence with which they expatiate upon the common law of England.

It was as idle to look among various races of peaceful aborigines, for the founder of their civilization, clothed in the garb of a warrior, wearing a sword at his side, as to expect to encounter the great protector and first chief magistrate of a mighty military nation under the cowl of a monk. Las Casas was to the Spanish domain west of the Mississippi river what Washington was to our English territory east of it; and as resort is constantly had to the writings of the great general, to understand the principles of government in one portion of the republic, reference must be made to the essays of the great missionary to explain the ideas and objects for which the other was inhabited. American jurisprudence will be the channel through which a proper estimate of Las Casas will be attained. Then shall his works be placed in the alcoves of libraries along with the documentary legacies of Washington, of Jefferson, of Hamilton, and Adams; and chapels will be erected to enshrine his relics in marbles, in malachite and lazuli, in gems and in gold. For it will then be established that Bartoleme Las Casas in America gained and preserved more souls to the church, than in Europe the heresy of Luther ever lost.

Sayings Of The Fathers Of The Desert.

There were two brothers of great sanctity, living in the same congregation, who, by their merits, saw in each other the grace of God. Now, it chanced that one of them went out on the sixth feria, apart from the rest of the congregation, and saw a person eating at an early hour. "Dost eat at this hour on the sixth feria?" said he. The next day Mass was celebrated as usual, and when the other brother looked at him, and saw that the grace which had been given him was gone, he was sad. And when they had entered his cell, he said: "What hast thou done, brother, for I no longer see the grace of God in thee as heretofore?" "I remember to have done nothing bad either in thought or in deed," was the answer. "Have you spoken to any one in an uncharitable manner?" asked the brother. Then recollecting himself, he replied: "Yes. Yesterday I saw some one eating at an early hour, and asked him whether he ate so early on the sixth feria. This, then, is my fault. But come, work with me for two weeks, and let us pray God to forgive me." They did so, and after two weeks' time he beheld God's grace again descending upon his brother, and, giving thanks to God, who alone is good, they were full of consolation.

New Publications.

The Friendships Of Women.
By William Rounseville Alger.
Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1868.

Mr. Alger has certainly given us a charming volume, and one which is distinguished for its freedom from the weak sentimentality and doubtful moral tone that one fears to find in publications of our day, whose aim it is to treat of the passions of the human heart. He has chosen the noblest and purest examples in history to illustrate his subject, and the incidents of life are selected with good taste and judgment. The Catholic Church refines and elevates every genuine sentiment of the heart, and we should, therefore, naturally look for the most shining examples of friendship among those of her children who have instanced in their lives her divine power of purification and exaltation of the soul. The best examples in this volume are such—St. Monica, and her great son, St. Augustine; St. Scholastica and her brother, St. Benedict; St. Jerome and St. Paula; St. Francis of Assisi and St. Clara; St. Francis de Sales and St. Jane Frances de Chantal; St. Theresa and St. John of the Cross; Sir Thomas More and his daughter, Margaret Roper; Eugénie de Guérin and her brother Maurice; Madame Swetchine and Father Lacordaire. In several places Mr. Alger recognizes this fact, and acknowledges that the Catholic faith tends to foster pure and exalted friendships. Noticing some very remarkable intimate friendships which sprung up between certain holy priests and their female penitents, he adds: "Unquestionably there have been very numerous friendships, worthy of notice, between clergymen and devout women in the Protestant sects. But they are different from those in the Catholic communion, which has, in this respect, great advantages. In the Protestant establishment all are on a free equality, and the religion is an element fused into the life. With the Catholics, the overwhelming authority of the church invests the priests with godlike attributes, while celibacy detaches their hearts from the home and family, leaving them ready for other calls. The laity are placed in a passive attitude, except as to faith and affection, which are more active for the restrictions applied elsewhere: and religion is pursued and practised as an art by itself. The church ritual, by its dramatic contents and movements, peerless in its pathetic, imaginative power, intensifies and cleanses the passions of those who appreciatively celebrate or witness it, and who are naturally attracted together, as, in blended devotional emotions and aims, they cultivate that supernatural act whose infinite interests make all earthly concerns appear dwarfed and pale. The instances already cited of the friendships thus originating, suffice to indicate the wealth in this kind of experience which must remain for ever unknown to the public."

The fact is plain, although Mr. Alger makes sorry work in attempting to philosophize upon it. A month's experience in the confessional, if that were possible for him, would teach him with whom "religion is an element fused into the life," and that the faith of a Catholic is not a matter of sentiment only, and it might reveal to him, also, the secret of that holy friendship of which, in truth, the world outside knows nothing. It certainly does surprise us that, from his close perusal of the lives of these friends in God, he has failed to discover it. We can tell him, however, the reason why he has not found the secret of their affection, for we read it plainly on every page of his book. He fails to recognize the reality of the supernatural, and therefore has no appreciation of any friendship which is not wholly human in its foundation and motive. This is the fault we have to find with modern non-Catholic literature, and which renders it so cold and sterile. {853} We are not the ones to carp at human love and human friendship. Both are of God, and blessed by him. The doctrines of Calvinism, which has darkened the spiritual life of those who have been nourished under its influence, and which stigmatizes the nature of man, with all its aspirations, as of the devil, devilish, is alone responsible for the degradation of the heart's affections, and that dearth of human friendship of which the author complains in his introduction, and the desire to reestablish which appears to have moved him to the composition of this work. The revolt against the doctrine of total depravity has resulted in pure naturalism and transcendentalism. Hence, human reason is deified together with the instincts. Reason is the highest, for there is nothing above it; and "act out thy instincts," is the holiest, for they are divine.

May not this inordinate cultivation of the passions, and their unbridled gratification, which is the burden of the sensational literature of our day, be a reaction from the unnatural restraints of puritanism? The actual state of things we leave our author to give in his own words. "The proportionate number of examples of virtuous love, completing itself in marriage, will probably diminish, and the relative examples of defeated or of unlawful love increase, until we reach some new phase of civilization, with better harmonized social arrangements— arrangements both more economical and more truthful. In the mean time, everything which tends to inflame the exclusive passion of love, to stimulate thought upon it, or to magnify its imagined importance, contributes so much to enhance the misery of its withholding or loss, and thus to augment an evil already lamentably extensive and severe." Why does not Mr. Alger ask himself the reason of this increasing immorality, and the diminution of the number of marriages? He says, again, "There never were so many morally baffled, uneasy, and complaining women on the earth as now." And why? His answer confirms what we have before said. "Because never before did the capacities of intelligence and affection so greatly exceed their gratification." Mr. Alger sees no other heaven than this earth, no "better part" than marriage; is blind to the supernatural end of man; fails to appreciate the examples of divine friendships he cites, and has no remedy to offer for the evils he deplores, but the stimulation of another human sentiment, purer in its conception, and less liable to abuse than the more ardent passion of love, and the establishment and cultivation of "woman's rights," to replace (we cannot help thinking it) the convent and its supernatural life of divine love; and substituting personal friendships for that charity which embraces the whole race. For, he says: "Now, the most healthful, effective antidote for the evils of an extravagant passion, is to call into action neutralizing or supplementary passions; to balance the excess of one power by stimulating weaker powers, and fixing attention on them; to assuage disappointments in one direction by securing gratification in another." And, again: "The good wife and mother fills a beautiful and sublime office—the fittest and the happiest office she can fulfil. If her domestic cares occupy and satisfy her faculties, it is a fortunate adjustment; and it is right that her husband should relieve her of the duty of providing for her subsistence. But what shall be said of those millions of women who are not wives and mothers; who have no adequate domestic life, no genial, private occupation or support? Multitudes of women have too much self-respect to be desirous of being supported in idleness by men, too much genius and ambition to be content with spending their lives in trifles; and too much devotedness not to burn to be doing their share in the relief of humanity, the work and progress of the world. If these were but all happy wives and mothers, that might be best. But denied that function, and being what they are, why should not all the provinces of public labor and usefulness which they are capable of occupying, be freely opened to them! What else is it save prejudice that applauds a woman dancing a ballet or performing an opera, but shrinks with disgust from one delivering an oration, preaching a sermon, or casting a vote? {854} Why is it less womanly to prescribe as a physician than to tend as a nurse? If a woman have a calling to medicine, divinity, law, literature, art, instruction, trade, or honorable handicraft, it is hard to see any reason why she should not have a fair chance of pursuing it."

Mr. Alger, however, catches some faint glimpses of the truth to which we have alluded, and we wish that he would ponder well the full meaning of his own language, when speaking of the friendship of Madame Swetchine and Father Lacordaire—a friendship which appears to have been a subject of intense interest to him, and to have awakened his unqualified admiration. "No one who has not read their correspondence, reaching richly through a whole generation, can easily imagine the services rendered by this gifted and saintly woman to this holy and powerful man. Community of faith, of loyalty, of nobleness, joined them. It was in looking to heaven together that their souls grew united. Drawn by the same attractions, and held by one sovereign allegiance, such souls need no vows, nor lean on any foreign support. The divinity of truth and good is their bond." What is this "divinity of truth and good"? Is it God, the living, personal God, who redeems, inspires, regenerates, sanctifies, and glorifies humanity, or is it not? What is the character of the life born of this communion in God? Are such friendships possible outside of revealed religion? We think not, and we regret that a mind of such culture as our author has shown his to be, should not see that he has been forced to go outside of the bounds of his own theory to find the realization of his ideal.

The final chapter of his work, "On the present needs and duties of women," is not so foreign to the title of the volume as one might be tempted to believe on a cursory reading. Mr. Alger finds, as he says in his introduction, that the position of woman in society is descending. He looks for some "new phase of civilization" to bring her back to a position of honor and usefulness equivalent to that which she is so rapidly losing. He blames Christianity and its traditions for making woman the weaker vessel, and reducing her to subjection under the rule of man, as the head of the divine institution of the family. It seems to us that this relative position of the man and the woman is established by pretty high authority.

"To the woman, also, he said, I will multiply thy sorrows and thy conceptions: in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children, and thou shalt be under thy husband's power, and he shall have dominion over thee." This, however, Mr. Alger conveniently rejects as a legend. But does he forget that the Christian church emancipated woman, and redeemed her from that degraded condition, into which, for want of the regenerating influence of the supernatural life of that church, she is once again descending? We are not surprised to see Mr. Alger throwing all revelation aside, denying original sin and its consequences. But let him beware. He will drag humanity back into the state of barbarism, or drown it in the sink of heathen licentiousness. This modern spirit of materialism, this throwing off the yoke of divine authority, is the result of the old temptation, "Ye shall be as gods, knowing good from evil," and we are present witnesses to the curse that is falling upon those who give ear to the tempter. Men and women forget God, and there is a fearful resuscitation of the basest forms of heathen immorality among them. Will Mr. Alger tell us to what principle (either of civilization or of religion) he attributes the dying out of the non-Catholic native American stock in New England, and what new phase of civilization will prevent its total extinction?

Mr. Alger would regenerate the millions of women whose aimless life he deplores, by making woman equal in all the duties of life to the man. No matter what the whole world has said before, no matter what superstitious revelations have said, no matter if the teaching of the Bible distinctly shows the contrary, no matter if the Christian church affirms by the mouth of St. Paul, "I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence; for Adam was first formed, then Eve." {855} "We are led," says our author, "by teachings of philosophy and science which we cannot resist," to differ with the traditions of the whole world and the Christian church, and as for the Apostle, "his logic limps;" for, "did priority of creation confer authority to govern, then man should obey the lower animals." (!)

Mr. Alger has a theory, and endeavors to illustrate it, and draw the logical conclusions. We fear that those conclusions will harmonize but ill with the experience of the human race, and will be found sadly wanting in their adaptability to its needs.

An Illustrated History Of Ireland.
With ten first-class full-page Engravings of Historical Scenes, designed by Henry Doyle, and engraved by George Hanlon and George Pearson; together with upwards of 100 woodcuts by eminent artists, illustrating the Antiquities, Scenery, and Sites of Remarkable Events.
1 vol. 8vo, pp. xiv., 581.
London: Longman & Co.;
New York: Catholic Publication Society, 126 Nassau Street.

We extend a most cordial welcome to this "Popular Illustrated History of Ireland." It is precisely such a manual of that deeply interesting and suggestive history, as should be in the hands of every man or woman who claims connection with the ancient race of the Gael, or who wishes to obtain a correct knowledge of that people. Such a manual could only have been produced in our generation. Thirty or forty years ago, it were an impossibility. Little was then known of the genuine materials of the history of Ireland; of the vast body of annals, which Eugene O'Curry deliberately affirmed, some twelve years since, must form the basis of any really intelligible version of the story of "ancient Erinn;" of the Genealogies and Pedigrees, the Historic Tales, the Law Books, the Topographical Poems, and of the whole mass of miscellaneous historical literature, which the national historian must avail himself of, before he can give us anything more than a dry and meagre outline; before he can bring out in full relief, the pregnant record of the colonization, conversion, invasions, persecutions, wars, struggles, triumphs and reverses; sufferings and sorrows of Innisfail; before he can supply those lights and shades, all those minute circumstances, "which explain not only historical events, but those equally or even more important descriptions, in which the habits and manners, the social ideas and cultivation, the very life of the actors in those events are" depicted for our instruction as well as entertainment. It is true there were then as now accessible scores, even hundreds of so-called "Histories of Ireland," from Dermod O'Connor's rude and ruthless translation of the Foras Feasa Ar Eirinn of Dr. Geoffrey Keating, down through the ponderous volumes of Leland, and Warner, and O'Halloran, and Plowden, and Ledwich, and Musgrave, to the crude compilations of Taaffe, and Gordon, and Crawford, and Commerford, and Lawless; to the more polished and pretentious, but not practically more useful, rather more pernicious epitome of Thomas Moore. There were Ogygias, Itineraries, Collectanea, Chronicles of Eri, and such pedantic rubbish, in heaps on the shelves of public libraries, in old book-stores, in the closets and chests of fossilized book-worms. All of those pseudo-histories served rather to discourage than advance the study of the real history of Ireland; to bring into disrepute, rather than to exalt, the Irish name, and race, and nation, and the glorious church founded by the great apostle of the faith.

To a learned and faithful, though almost forgotten representative of the venerable priesthood of Ireland belongs the high honor of having produced, in the language of the stranger, the first truly original work of an historical nature, an able, erudite, and inspiring history of the most devoutly cherished inheritance of the race, the ancient church of his native land; and this, too, within the memory of men yet living, and not far past the prime of life. We allude to the Ecclesiastical History of Ireland, of the Rev. Dr. John Lanigan, which was issued in four volumes octavo, from a Dublin press, in the year 1822. {856} It commenced with the introduction of Christianity into Ireland, and closed with the era of the Anglo-Norman invasion. Half a life-time was given to the preparation of the book, the accomplished author of which "spared no pains in the collection and collation of such documents as materially" bore on the subject, and such as were in his time accessible in the British Islands, and on the continent. His aim was "to exhibit a faithful picture of the doctrine and practice of the ancient Irish Church, and to show its connection, at all times, with the universal church of Christ." This he did as far as it was then in the power of a great and zealous scholar to do. But he felt, and his contemporaries were by him taught to appreciate, the want of a familiar and critical knowledge of the immense stores of Celtic lore, the full magnitude and importance of which it has since taken more than the average of a generation of unprecedentedly diligent research, and of unsurpassed ability, to ascertain and make clear.

Soon after the publication of the really great work of Dr. Lanigan—now altogether out of print—the famous Ordnance Survey of Ireland was fairly entered upon. In its prosecution, some of the most profoundly learned men of the country were employed, under the superintendence of Colonel Thomas A. Larcom and Dr. George Petrie. It was in connection with this great national undertaking that the knowledge and skill of the lamented scholars, Dr. John O' Donovan and Professor Eugene O'Curry, were first utilized for the public good. Thenceforward, with and without the aid of government, these great men pushed earnestly, enthusiastically onward, in their investigations into the extant materials of their country's history; rescuing from oblivion and decay priceless memorials of the past, in every form and shape, in Ireland and elsewhere whither they were called upon to exert themselves; and classifying, systematizing, translating, editing, annotating, and publishing, with unremitting industry, and with marvellous power and tact, until they ceased from their labors for ever, and passed hence to their reward. Great, indeed irreparable, was the loss which the history and literature of Ireland sustained in their deaths.

Without the impetus given to the investigation of the past of Ireland by the great, single-handed enterprise of the Rev. Dr. Lanigan, it is questionable whether the progress that was made in the succeeding thirty years could possibly have been achieved in the interest of the historical literature of the nation. Without the help of O'Donovan and O'Curry and Petrie, the race could not have had placed within its reach so vitally important a portion of that literature as has been given to the public in a thoroughly scholarly form and style, within the past twenty-eight years, by the Irish Archaeological, Celtic, Ossianic, and kindred archaeological societies, by Messrs. Hodges & Smith, by Mr. James Duffy, of Dublin, and through various other agencies. Without the advantages resulting from their labors, we could not have had the many very able works on general and special topics of national historical interest which, within our own recollection, have proceeded from the pens of truly national writers. Without the vast stores of information acquired by O'Donovan and O'Curry themselves, while prosecuting their fruitful studies and researches, even the Irish Grammar and the magnificent version of the Annals of Ireland of the former, and the celebrated Lectures on the Manuscript Materials of Ancient Irish History, the crowning work of the latter, could not have been produced in our day and generation. And it is saying no more than is frankly avowed by the vigorous writer of the Popular Illustrated History of Ireland, that, without the benefit of the light that has been thrown upon bygone times in Ireland, since Dr. Lanigan published his Ecclesiastical History, this latest and best of the modern histories of Ireland could not have been prepared for publication, and issued in such an appropriate style.

The work before us, for a copy of which we are indebted to "The Catholic Publication Society," makes a handsome octavo volume of over 600 pages, divided into 36 chapters, prefaced by an admirably written and very timely disquisition on the Irish land and church questions, the most vital questions of reform in Ireland in our time; and supplemented by a very full index. {857} It is illustrated by ten full-page historical engravings, from designs by Mr. Henry Doyle, a worthy son of the noble Irish Catholic artist, Richard Doyle, who refused to prostitute his genius in the interests of the assailants of his church through the columns of the London Punch; and by over one hundred very beautiful sketches on wood of the scenery, antiquities, sites of remarkable events, etc. etc. The illustrations, woodcuts and all, are in the very best style of the art which they represent. Mr. Doyle's contributions of themselves would form an attractive collection. The emblematic title-page, suggestive of all that is grand and noble in the period of the independence of the nation, is an exquisite picture. Of rare merit, likewise, are most of the other designs furnished by Mr. Doyle. The Emigrant's Farewell, opposite page 571, is a truthful, characteristic, and painfully suggestive sketch.

The narrative itself is as fine a specimen of comprehensive analysis and condensation as we have any knowledge of. It faithfully reflects the present advanced state of historical research in and relating to the country. It embodies all the ascertained facts of the history of Ireland. The character of its early inhabitants; their social, civil, and religious habits and customs; their martial, legal, literary, and—noblest, most glorious, most enduring of all—their missionary triumphs; all are accurately, though succinctly, portrayed. The tragic eras of the history of the nation, from the Invasion to the achievement of Catholic Emancipation—more than 650 years—are also limned in vivid colors. No available source of information has been unheeded by the writer, who seems to have not merely read, but studied earnestly, every published work of value or interest, down to the very latest publication, bearing directly or indirectly on the subject, not even excepting the driest and most abstruse of the several society tracts and monograms of the archaeologists. The sketches of early Celtic literature are worthy of even O'Donovan or O'Curry, brief, precise, and satisfactory. The book is trustworthy in all its peculiarities, eminently so in its text and notes, which are presented in a clear, unaffected, but most interesting style, and with a conscientiousness which is not obtrusive, but which is recognizable in every line of the writer.

We have been so interested in the details of the history, and so delighted by the more purely narrative parts, that we find we have marked for citation several peculiarly striking passages, for which we have no room. One passage which we give will serve as the meetest conclusion to our notice of the work; as well as to indicate the spirit of the history, and illustrate the flowing, artless, and pathetic style of the writer. In treating of the extant memorials of St. Patrick, it is thus beautifully remarked:

"One prayer uttered by St. Patrick has been singularly fulfilled. 'May my Lord grant,' he exclaims, 'that I may never lose his people, which he has acquired in the ends of the earth.' From hill and dale, from camp and cottage, from plebeian and noble, there rang out a grand 'Amen.' The strain was caught by Secundinus and Benignus, by Columba and Columbanus, by Brigid and Brendan. It floated away from Lindisfarne and Iona to Iceland and Tarentum. It was heard on the sunny banks of the Rhine, at Antwerp and Cologne, in Oxford, in Pavia, and in Paris. And still the old echo is breathing its holy prayer by the priest who toils in cold and storm to the 'station' on the mountain-side, far from his humble home. By the confessor who spends hour after hour, in the heat of summer and the cold of winter, absolving the penitent children of Patrick. By the monk in his cloister. By noble and true-hearted men, faithful through centuries of persecution. And loudly and nobly, though it be but faint to human ears, is that echo uttered also by the aged woman who lies down by the wayside to die in the famine years, because she prefers the bread of heaven to the bread of earth, and the faith taught by Patrick to the tempter's gold. By the emigrant, who with broken heart bids a long farewell to the dear island home, to the old father, to the gray-haired mother, because his adherence to his faith tends not to further his temporal interests, and he must starve or go beyond the sea for bread. Thus, ever and ever, that echo is gushing up into the ear of God, and never will it cease until it shall have merged into the eternal alleluia which the often-martyred and ever faithful children of the saint shall shout with him in rapturous voice before the Eternal Throne."

Legends Of The Wars In Ireland.
By Robert Dwyer Joyce, M.D.
1 vol. 12mo, pp. 352.
Boston: James Campbell. 1868.

This handsome little volume is, we believe, the first contribution of Dr. Joyce to Irish-American literature since his arrival in this country. We have read several of his sketches, years ago, in the Irish periodicals, and one of them, the "Building of Mourne," appeared in one of the first numbers of this magazine.

The stories Dr. Joyce has collated in this volume are told in an easy, racy style, and make pleasant reading for a winter's evening. They please us better than the majority of the sketches and stories about Ireland which have frequently appeared here and in England, as they are, with a few exceptions, free from that exaggeration of plot and detail which take away the moral effect of too many of the so-called legends. The book contains the following stories:

A Batch of Legends;
The Master of Lisfinry;
The Fair Maid of Killarney;
An Eye for an Eye;
The Rose of Drimmagh;
The House of Lisbloom;
The White Knight's Present;
The First and Last Lords of Firmoy;
The Chase from the Hostel;
The Whitethorn Tree;
The White Lady of Basna;
The Bridal Ring;
The Little Battle of Bottle Hill.

Verses On Various Occasions.
By John Henry Newman, D.D.
London: Burns, Gates & Co.
For sale at the Catholic Publication House.

Dr. Newman has conferred a long-expected favor upon many friends in the collection and publication of his poems under the present form. Those who have known and honored his course will appreciate the thoughtfulness which prompted him to subjoin the dates of their composition, as also the names of places where they were written. To such also those poems will, of course, be of the greater interest, which are, in fact, the sighs of his troubled heart as God led him step by step toward the church. These were composed between 1830 and 1833, and make up a large part of the volume. In the Apologia we get an insight into the trials of his mind, as he faithfully held fast to truth, and fought for it, even against his own, for conscience' sake. Here we look into his heart, and witness the communion of his spirit with God. Dr. Newman had many to doubt the sincerity of his course, the purity of his motives, and the singleness of his purpose. Who can read these spoken thoughts, spoken rather to God than to man, and doubt him still? We cannot refrain from transcribing one already well known, which is remarkable for the expression it conveys of the deep emotions of his soul at a time when his mind was torn with anxious doubt concerning the truth of Anglicanism. He felt, as most converts feel in their journey to the Home of Faith and Truth, that they are on the way to a promised land, led by the cloud of desolation that God raises in the desert, and yet know not where that Home is nor of what sort or fashioning it may be. The poem we allude to is entitled,

  "THE PILLAR OF THE CLOUD.

  "Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,
        Lead thou me on!
   The night is dark, and I am far from home—
        Lead thou me on!
   Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see
   The distant scene—one step enough for me.

  "I was not ever thus, nor prayed that thou
        Shouldst lead me on,
   I loved to choose and see my path; but now
        Lead thou me on!
   I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears,
   Pride ruled my will; remember not past years.

  "So long thy power hath blest me, sure it still
        Will lead me on,
   O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till
        The night is gone:
   And with the morn those angel faces smile
   Which I have loved long since and lost awhile."

We think some one has said—and if not, we say it ourselves—that the next difficult thing to writing a book is to give it a name. What every one has not failed to notice, who is conversant with the sermons of Dr. Newman, we find equally true of these poems, the felicity of his choice of titles. {859} It is the touch of genius; and we venture to assert that Dr. Newman excels in this all living writers. There is no evidence that these "Verses" were written or are published now for poetic fame, and yet no one can help but accord to them the praise due to poetry of a high order of merit; revealing at the same time, as they do, what a great deal of true poetry does not and need not necessarily show, the mind of the scholar and of the master of language. The volume closes with the remarkable poem entitled, "The Dream of Gerontius," which our readers have already enjoyed from the pages of The Catholic World.

The Blessed Eucharist Our Greatest Treasure.
By Michael Müller,
Priest of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer.
Baltimore: Kelly & Piet.

This work is written in plain and unaffected style to promote the noblest, best, and most useful of objects, the devotion to our Lord Jesus Christ present in the Most Holy Sacrament of the altar. Catholics are taught and believe this great mystery of love; but many, though they believe, do not seem to realize sufficiently what it is they believe. They have not thought much upon it. They have, not penetrated its depths. Their knowledge is superficial, and their devotion consequently is cold. And this for many reasons is particularly the case in this country. Here we have immense congregations and few priests, and they loaded down with the building of churches, and a variety of work which has been already done in other countries. The people often are either out of reach of the church, or struggling for the means of living, and therefore have grown careless, and failed to receive the instruction which they require. Hence there is need, and great need, of all the means of instruction which can be brought to bear, and good books on the grand doctrines of religion are calculated to do an incalculable amount of good. This book of Father Müller's is intended to supply much needed instruction on the Blessed Sacrament, and we hope it will receive an extensive circulation. In reading it, we are reminded of the Visits to the Blessed Sacrament by Saint Alphonsus, which have been so acceptable and useful throughout the whole church, and we do not doubt many souls will derive great edification and pleasure from its perusal.

The Cromwellian Settlement Of Ireland. By John P. Prendergast, Esq. With three maps. 1 vol. pp. 228. New York: P. M. Haverty. 1868.

This is the most thorough exposé of the wholesale plunder and robbery of the unfortunate Irish by the English soldiers under Cromwell yet published. It quotes the documents by the authority of which the land was taken from its rightful owners, and parcelled out to the jail-birds of the "protector."

Mr. Prendergast is a Dublin lawyer. He was in the circuit in the counties of Wicklow, Wexford, Waterford, Kilkenny, and Tipperary for ten years, when he received a commission to make pedigree researches in the latter county. His search for documents relating to Ireland was not confined to that country alone. He visited England, and examined the extensive Irish documents in the libraries there. But, he tells us, it was in the castle of Dublin he found the most important ones. These, along with extracts from others, found elsewhere, make up his book. It is full of historical materials on the confiscation of Ireland, never before published, which make it an important work to be studied by every student in Irish history. It throws a flood of light on the manner in which the Irish were robbed, exiled, murdered, and for no other purpose but to get their property for the invaders. It tells a sad and sickening story of wrong and outrage, unknown in the history of any other country in Europe, much of which has been kept hidden, because the guilty parties did not wish such things should see the light. But truth, like murder, will out, and Mr. Prendergast, who, it is well to observe, is not a Catholic, has done a good service to the cause of truth, in the volume before us.

Manual Of Physical Exercises.
By William Wood.
With one hundred and twenty-five illustrations.
New York: Harper & Brothers. 1867.

That physical education is absolutely necessary to a full and perfect development of the intellectual faculties, is now universally conceded. In this connection, therefore, we have but to add that the manual now before us gives, in simple phrase, aided by, numerous appropriate illustrations, a vast amount of information by which our health may be preserved, our strength increased, our mental powers as a consequence improved, and therefore, not only our individual comfort promoted, but our general usefulness as members of the body politic very materially enhanced.

Lives Of The Queens Of England, From The Norman Conquest.
By Agnes Strickland, author of Lives of the Queens of England.
Abridged by the author.
Revised and edited by Caroline G. Parker.
New York: Harper & Brothers. 1867.

This excellent abridgment presents us with a series of pen-portraits, strikingly and impartially depicted, of the Queens of England, from Matilda of Flanders, wife of William the Conqueror, to the present queen-regnant, Victoria. While giving, in a modified form, the more delicate facts of their history, it carefully retains all that is essential to a complete knowledge of their lives, public and domestic, their political triumphs and reverses, their private joys and sorrows.

Home Fairy Tales.
By Jean Macé.
Translated by Mary L. Booth.
With Engravings.
New York: Harper & Brothers. 1868.

In its illustrations, binding, and typographical excellence, this volume ranks first amongst the many which, during the holiday season just passed, have attracted the favorable regard of the rising generation. But, while cheerfully according this meed of praise to the Messrs. Harper, and no less acknowledging the merit of Miss Booth's translation, a vivid remembrance of what best pleased ourselves, in days gone by, compels us to add, that these tales, unlike many others we might enumerate, will never become household words with children. Fairy tales intended, as these evidently are, to convey a moral, may be likened to sugar-coated pills. The fault with these tales is, that the coating, so to speak, is too thin, and, consequently, the unpalatable though sanative globule too easily detected.

The Lovers' Dictionary.
A Poetical Treasury of Lovers' Thoughts, Fancies, Addresses, and Dilemmas, indexed with ten thousand references, as a Dictionary of Compliments, and Guide to the Study of the Tender Science.
New York: Harper & Brothers. 1867.

Of this anonymous volume, if the author's judgment and good taste had equalled his industry, mere mention on our part would suffice. But even a cursory examination compels us to add that, while it contains many beautiful poems and elegant extracts, we found very many indifferent, not a few objectionable from a want of appositeness, and some that should not have been inserted.

Should the author compile another volume, intended for the impressible of both sexes, we heartily wish him, in consideration of his zeal, "a little more taste," the more fully to carry out his good intentions.

"The Catholic Publication Society" has the following books in press, and will publish them as follows:

March 10, The Diary of a Sister of Mercy;
April 1, In the Snow; or, Tales of Mount St. Bernard, by Rev. Dr. Anderdon;
April 20, Nellie Netterville; or, A Tale of the Times of Cromwell, by Miss Caddell;
May 10, Problems of the Age.

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The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Catholic World, Vol. 06, October, 1867 to March, 1868.

The Catholic World. A Monthly Magazine of General Literature And Science VOL. VI. October, 1867, To March, 1868.

New York: The Catholic Publication House, 126 Nassau Street. 1868.

John A. Gray & Green, Printers, 16 And 18 Jacob Street, New York.

Contents.

Poetry.

New Publications.

The Catholic World Vol. VI., No. 31.—October, 1867.

Rome And The World.

With Christ.

The Managers Dilemma.

Translated from Le Correspondant. Learned Women And Studious Women. By Monseigneur Dupanloup.

I. M. De Maistre's Opinion.

II. The Question Fairly Stated.

III.

IV. Duty.

V. The Dangers of Repression.

VI. Fatal Results of Ignorance and Levity in Women.

The Early Christian Schools and Scholars. [Footnote 7]

Our Lady.

Our Boy-Organist. What He Saw, And What Came Of It.

Translated from les Etudes Religieuses, etc., etc. The Martyrs of Gorcum.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

Carlyle's Shooting Niagara.

Sayings Of The Fathers Of The Desert.

An Old Guide to Good Manners.

Ran away to Sea.

A Royal Nun.

Mr. Bashers Sacrifice, and why He made it.

A Few Thoughts About Protestants.

New Publications.

The Catholic World. Vol. VI., No. 32.—November, 1867.

Unpublished Letters Of General Washington.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

X.

XI.

XI.

XIII.

Aimée's Sacrifice. A Tale.

Chapter I.

Chapter II.

Chapter III.

Chapter IV.

Chapter V.

Sayings Of The Fathers Of The Desert.

All Souls' Day. 1866.

The Function of the Subjective in Religion. [Footnote 25]

Imogen.

The Jesuits In North America. [Footnote 31]

Translated from Le Correspondant. Learned Women and Studious Women. By Monseigneur Dupanloup. (Concluded.)

VII. Advantages of Intellectual Labor.

VIII. The Third Stage.

IX. Bad Habits and Prejudices.

X. Practice.

Baby.

The Cartesian Doubt. [Footnote 36]

Abridged from the German. The Composer's Difficulty.

Translated from Les Études Religieuses, etc. The Title Of The Kings Of England Defensor Fidei: Its Signification And Its Origin.

Seventy-three.

A Winged Word.

Translated from the French of L. Vitet. The Present Condition of Christianity in France

New Publications.

The Catholic World. Vol. VI., No. 33.—December, 1867.

The Third Catholic Congress Of Malines.

Translated From The French. The Story Of A Conscript.

I.

II.

The Catholic World.

A Monthly Magazine

of

General Literature And Science

VOL. VI.

October, 1867, To March, 1868.

New York:
The Catholic Publication House,
126 Nassau Street.
1868.

John A. Gray & Green,

Printers,

16 And 18 Jacob Street, New York.

The Catholic World

Vol. VI., No. 31.—October, 1867.

Translated from Le Correspondant.

Learned Women And Studious Women.

By Monseigneur Dupanloup.

I.

M. De Maistre's Opinion.

II.

The Question Fairly Stated.

IV.

Duty.

V.

The Dangers of Repression.

VI.

Fatal Results of Ignorance and Levity in Women.

Our Boy-Organist.

What He Saw, And What Came Of It.

Translated from les Etudes Religieuses, etc., etc.

The Martyrs of Gorcum.

The Catholic World.
Vol. VI., No. 32.—November, 1867.

Aimée's Sacrifice.

A Tale.

All Souls' Day.

1866.

Translated from Le Correspondant.

Learned Women and Studious Women.

By Monseigneur Dupanloup.

(Concluded.)

VII.
Advantages of Intellectual Labor.

VIII.

The Third Stage.

IX.

Bad Habits and Prejudices.

X.

Practice.

Abridged from the German.

The Composer's Difficulty.

Translated from Les Études Religieuses, etc.

The Title Of The Kings Of England

Defensor Fidei:
Its Signification And Its Origin.

Translated from the French of L. Vitet.

The Present Condition of Christianity in France

The Catholic World.

Vol. VI., No. 33.—December, 1867.

Translated From The French.

The Story Of A Conscript.

Joy In Grief.

From The French Of Marie Jenna.

Translated from the French of L. Vitet.

The Present Condition Of Christianity In France.

Translated From The Historisch-Politische Blaetter.

Peter Cornelius, The Master Of German Painting.

Translated From The German.

Bellini's Romance.

Translated from the French of Souvestre.

The Inside of a Stage-Coach.

The Catholic World.

Vol. Vi., No. 34.—January, 1868.

Translated From The French.

The Story Of A Conscript.

The Labor Question.

Translated From Le Correspondant.

I.

Family Education.

II.

The Education Of The Workshop.

III.

Education By Means Of The Sunday.

From The German Of Dr. J. B. Henry.

Joseph Görres.

The Legend Of The Seven Sleepers.
A.D. 439.

The Catholic World.

Vol. VI., No. 35.—February, 1868.

Translated From The Journal De Bruxelles.

Bishop Dupanloup's Speech At The Catholic Congress Of Malines.

"Beati Mites, Quoniam Ipsi
Possidebunt Terram."

The Story of a Conscript.

Translated From The French.

The Old Religion;

Or, How Shall We Find Primitive Christianity?

Translated From The German.

Forget-Me-Not.

Or, The Picture That Was Never Seen.

Elementary Principles Of
Drawing From Nature.

Occupations Of A Young Artist
Outside Of His Art.

Magas; or, Long Ago.

A Tale Of The Early Times.