CHAPTER V.

REMINISCENCES OF THE PAST.

After an absence of over twenty years, we returned to the pleasant

village in New England which had formerly exercised over us the charm

that pertains to the magic name of HOME.

Seeking out one of the few old neighbors who were left, on the

morning after our arrival, I was met with the surprised and joyful

exclamation,

"Why, my dear Mrs. J----! can it be possible that this is your own

self? I had no hopes of ever seeing you again in this world."

"It is indeed myself," I replied. "We have long been wanderers by

'field and flood;' but have at length returned to remain a short time

among the scenes of other years. If you are at leisure, I want to

settle down into my own cosy corner of the dear old sitting-room,

just as if I had never been away, and ask you as many questions about

village affairs and those of the olden time as you will want to

answer."

"You could not furnish me with a greater pleasure, I assure you! But

O my friend! what changes have taken place since you left! Very few

of those who were with us then still remain. Many have died, some

have gone 'West,' and some have found their way to San Francisco and

other parts of California."

"Where are the W----s?" I inquired.

"They removed to another place some years ago, and their family is

widely scattered; but they remain united in spirit, and steadfast in

the faith."

"And the S----s?"

"Only three of them are living. One has gone to the far West, and the

others have left this place. Little Kitty, after years of patient

suffering, during which she never ceased to thank God for having

permitted her to find in the holy Catholic Church 'the path over

which so many saints and martyrs have passed to heaven'--as she

expressed it--at length meekly and joyfully resigned her youthful

spirit to her Maker; leaving the light of a beautiful example to

shine around the lonely home, and console the bereaved family. Her

grandmother, who embraced the faith soon after her granddaughter made

profession of it, followed her to the other world in a few months,

consoled by all the rites of the church, in which, though she entered

its blessed inclosure late in life, she had in a 'short space,' by

her good words and works, acquired the merit of many years. Then

'Aunt Laura' and Kitty's younger sister joined them, 'rejoicing

in hope.' 'Aunt Ruby' survived them some years, and was often

heard to wish, with a sigh, that she could be sure she was as well

prepared to leave the world as her Catholic sister; but she never

had the courage to brave the ill-opinion of her own little world of

Congregationalism--over the modern innovations and delinquencies of

which she never ceased to mourn--by following that sister into the

only 'ark of safety.'"

"Ah!" I exclaimed; "how many changes indeed. Then I shall never see

those dear friends whom I had so fondly hoped to meet again. And

where is Mrs. L----, our energetic little knitter, who was so true to

every impulse of divine grace and truth?"

"She has long slept in the village cemetery. 'Faithful unto death!'

might well have been the inscription upon her grave. She passed

through severe and bitter trials, and was made to feel that there

are tortures as cruel as those of the rack or wheel, to a sensitive

spirit, in the cold contempt and neglect of those who should have

been her protectors, as they were her only earthly support. But she

never wavered for a moment in her firm trust, or ceased to rejoice

that she had been called to the profession of the true faith, which

abundantly sustained her under all her griefs and sufferings."

"And dear, gentle Mrs. N----? I felt sure she would forsake the

_ignis fatuus_ of Protestantism at last for 'the light of the star

that guided the wise men' of old, though she was so long in making up

her mind."

"She did so; and died rejoicing in its light, by the crib of

Bethlehem!"

"Do Mrs. H---- and her daughter still live?"

"The daughter died some years ago, and was laid near little Kitty

S----, whom she tenderly loved, and regarded as the chief instrument

of her conversion. Her mother has removed to some distance; but is

as fervently thankful to-day for the great gift of faith as she was

on that memorable one when she first accepted it, and turned from old

and dear associations to find the 'only home for the warm-hearted

Methodist,' in the bosom of the Catholic Church."

"I heard, soon after I left, that the G----s became Catholics. Was it

true?"

"Yes; and very faithful and fervent children of the church they were;

illustrating the beauty of Catholic truths by the shining virtues of

their lives. But, alas! of the whole family--father, mother, and five

children--but one survives. They departed followed by the prayers and

benedictions of the whole Catholic congregation, to whose service

they had devoted their best efforts."

"Then there were the B----s, the K----s, and the C----s, who were

deeply interested in Catholic truths when I left. Did they follow out

their convictions?"

"No; they were 'almost persuaded' to cast in their lot with the happy

band of converts; but the storm of obloquy and reproach which soon

gathered around the devoted company--without in the least disturbing

their peace--so appalled those outside, that they did not dare to

follow the inspiration, or ever again to seek its aid. Some became

Spiritualists, some Second Adventists, and those who remain nominally

as they were before, have fallen into hopeless indifference to all

religion, and intense worldliness; seeking in petty ambitions and

trifling pursuits the comfort they are no longer able to find in

the bosom of any sect. The glimmering of Catholic light which they

accepted had served only to reveal to them the utter emptiness of

Protestantism, when they steadfastly closed their eyes to any further

illumination. While life remains there is hope; but such cases as

these seem as nearly hopeless as any in this world can be."

We visited the cemetery, where reposed the mortal remains of so many

friends who had been the theme of our conversation; and I found

familiar names more numerous there than were familiar faces among

the living. We also sought together the spacious church which had

been erected during my absence, and which is a beautiful and enduring

evidence of the active zeal of a congregation which is richer in holy

memories, and in faith, hope, and charity, than in the goods of this

world.

FOOTNOTE:

[34] A question that used to be urged as a test of fitness for

membership, and an affirmative answer required. The custom has now

become obsolete.

SONNET.

TO ITALY.

All-radiant region! would that thou wert free!

Free 'mid thine Alpine realm of cloud and pine,

Free 'mid the rich vales of thine Apennine,

Free to the Adrian and the Tyrrhene Sea!

God with a two-fold freedom franchise thee!

Freedom from alien bonds, so often thine,

Freedom from Gentile hopes--death-fires that shine

O'er the foul grave of pagan liberty,

With pagan empire side by side interred;

Then round the fixed throne of their Roman sire

Thy sister states should hang, a pleiad choir,

With saintly beam unblunted and unblurred,

A splendor to the Christian splendor clinging,

A lyre star-strung, ever the "new song" singing!

AUBREY DE VERE.

IRELAND'S MISSION.

BY W. MAZIERE BRADY, D.D., AN IRISH PROTESTANT CLERGYMAN.

Few persons expected that the passing of Mr. Gladstone's

disestablishment bill would have immediately introduced a golden

age into Ireland. The leading promoters of that measure never

regarded it as one which was final and complete; but rather as a

necessary prelude to certain reconstructive measures more powerful

and important than itself. The abolition of the ascendency of an

alien church did not restore--and did not affect to restore--to the

Catholic Church its ancient status and endowments. The attempt would

be entirely vain to regather the _disjecta membra_ of the great body

of Irish church temporalities long since dispersed and broken up by

successive spoliations and alienations. The property dealt with by

the recent legislation is but a small fraction of what once belonged

to the Irish Church. Restitution, unhappily, is often impossible to

the statesman. He may build up an edifice upon ruins, and create new

empires out of revolutions. But he can no more give back to outraged

nationalities their unsullied honor, or to plundered kingdoms their

squandered treasures, than he can restore to those fallen from purity

their virgin crown or reëndow criminals with a conscience void of

offence and free from sear of guilt. And therefore the removal of

the alien church led to no replacement of the old Catholic Church in

the position vacated by its Protestant rival; but merely paved the

way for the introduction of constructive measures upon the nature

of which will depend the future, not of Ireland merely, but of the

British empire. Amidst these constructive measures the statesman will

not reckon any provisions for the maintenance or aggrandisement of

the Catholic Church in Ireland. A church which withstood calamity

and survived the loss of its possessions, and flourished under three

hundred years of bitter persecution, may safely be left to itself.

State patronage, in any extended form, might corrupt, but could

not strengthen, Irish Catholicism. Catholics in many countries are

beginning to feel that freedom of action and development is of far

greater value than endowments to the church. In Ireland, Catholics

have long since perceived and acknowledged that liberty--not the

enervating influence of court favor--is the true bulwark of Catholic

worship.

Legislators have, in fact, no occasion to take into their

consideration the Irish Catholic Church, except in so far as its

power and interests intermingle with the educational and other

social and political problems which demand deep and impartial

inquiry. Whoever examines, without prejudice or passion, the actual

position of Ireland as an integral part of the British empire must

confess that Ireland forms at this time, more than at any other,

the cardinal point of English policy. Gibraltar was once the key

to the Mediterranean and to political supremacy in Europe. Ireland

is to England another Gibraltar, on whose rock British power must

be either consolidated or riven. The Ireland of 1870 is rapidly

entering on a new phase of existence, which is none the less

worthy of the statesman's study because it is the result of causes

altogether beyond his control. Ireland is no longer an island

lying within a few hours' sail of the English navy, inhabited by

men whose interests may be disposed of without reference to the

wishes of any save the inhabitants of Great Britain. The people of

Ireland are by no means confined within the territorial limits of

that country. The Irish nation has two homes. The one is in Ireland,

the other is in America. Misgovernment sent half Ireland into

exile, and those exiles have prospered and multiplied to an extent

far exceeding any known examples of similar transmigrations. But

although there are two homes, there is but one nation of Irishmen.

Five millions of men occupy Irish soil, but far more than twice five

millions of Irishmen dwelling in foreign lands not only claim but

exercise an ever-increasing influence on Irish politics. Some few

among the ultra-conservative statesmen of England--and among them

one no less distinguished than the great chief of the late Tory

administration--looked with eyes of cruel satisfaction on the exodus

which wiser men regarded with awe as a hemorrhage draining away the

life-blood of their kingdom. The famine was to these bigoted men a

God-gift, which swept off what they flippantly termed a superabundant

population. Emigration was, in their eyes, a more tedious and costly

process for the decimation of Irish Catholics. Protestants, belonging

chiefly to the dominant and richer class, were in proportion to

their numbers less exposed than Catholics to the severity of the

famine and the necessity of expatriation. Famine and emigration,

if only Providence would prolong and intensify their action, would

alter--so they thought--the numerical proportions between Catholics

and Protestants make Ireland a Protestant country and render the

church establishment less anomalous. Let a few more years pass--so

argued these reasoners--and instead of having to legislate for a

Catholic, discontented, Ireland, over-populated and half-pauperized,

we shall have to deal with one comparatively Protestant, which

will be prosperous, happy, and loyal to the British crown. It is

recorded of an English statesman that he once expressed a wish--in

jest, no doubt--that Ireland were for an hour submerged in the

Atlantic, that it might rise again stripped of its inhabitants, a

fresh field for the importation of English Protestant colonists.

The folly of wishing for either a flood or a famine to repair the

defects of English legislation for Ireland, is now as apparent as

the cruelty. Even though the island of Ireland were reduced to such

a _tabula rasa_ as some bigots would desire, England must take into

account the thousands and millions of Irishmen in various lands who

constitute part of the Irish nation, and who think, plan, and pray

for the happiness of their traditional fatherland. And fortunately

for the interests of England, no less than of Ireland, a policy has

of late been adopted by the leaders of the great liberal party which

professes to deal with Catholic Ireland, not as with a venomous

thing to be guarded against, kept down, and, if possible, crushed,

but as a country to be tenderly regarded, carefully cherished, and

legislated for with a view to the contentment and preservation of

its Catholic people. The policy of Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Bright, and

the party of which they are now the recognized chiefs, is at present

but partially developed, yet has already produced good fruits.

Righteousness exalteth a nation, and England has risen immensely

in the opinion of wise and good men in Europe and America by that

great though tardy--the greater, perhaps, because so tardy--act of

righteousness, namely, the abolition of an English Protestant church

establishment for Irish Catholics. The sympathies of all honest men

in every quarter of the globe are with the English government in its

endeavor to stay the tide of Irish emigration, and retain Irishmen

upon their native soil as contented occupiers and owners of farms.

But admiration and sympathy are not the only rewards which England

may reap by steadily following out the policy begun by Mr. Gladstone.

The integrity of the British empire may be shown to depend upon the

continued development of the principles which carried the Irish

church bill of 1869 and introduced an Irish land bill in 1870. If it

be too presumptuous to attempt to forecast a triumphant progress for

those principles, it will yet be not wholly profitless to denote the

perils and obstructions which beset the way.

The disturbances and outrages which in Ireland preceded and followed

the passing of the disestablishment bill, were the natural result of

the violent harangues uttered by the fanatic debaters of the Church

Defence Association, many of whom announced to their excited auditors

that the land bill of Mr. Gladstone would confiscate the property

of Protestant land-owners in Ireland. The evil passions of men thus

deceived into a belief that a wrong was intended not only to their

church but to their lands, found vent not merely in hard words and

cruel threats, but in merciless deeds. Some Protestant landlords

withheld the accustomed local charitable contributions which, as

owners of property, they had hitherto given to various institutions.

Others issued notices of ejection against their tenants, and these

attempted ejections produced--as capricious injustice is certain

to do--ill-will and resistance. Outrages, even assassinations,

occurred. But such offences against public order may be expected to

cease when the causes of them are removed. Time will allay the heat

of bygone party conflicts. Agrarian outrages will, if the land bill

be good for any thing, occur as rarely in Ireland as in America.

Industrious laborers will, it is to be hoped, find it easy to rent

or purchase small holdings on which they may expend their toil, and

in which they may invest their savings without fear of their being

appropriated to the use of felonious landlords by means of notices

to quit. It is when the excitement of the land and church questions

shall have yielded to the pressure of other momentous questions, that

the real danger will threaten the onward march of those principles

which, in the opinion of many, can alone safely guide the mutual

relations between England and Ireland. The education question will

be a highly perilous one. If the liberal party put forward a scheme

for compulsory, or secular, or sectarian education, which shall, on

whatever pretext, either nominally or practically, tend to withdraw

the education of Catholic children from the immediate control of

the priests, the result will be disappointment and disaster. Free

education, in the sense of an education independent of religion,

has great charms in the eyes of English and Irish liberals. Some

Catholics are inclined to favor any scheme which would place a

superior system of secular instruction within the reach of the great

bulk of the poorer and middle class, even though it should not

provide for that religious training which is a characteristic of a

strictly Catholic education. But the Catholic clergy of Ireland, to

a man, and those members of Parliament who represent Irish Catholic

constituencies, will give strenuous and effectual opposition to

undenominational or secular education under its open guise, although

they may prove unable to resist the employment, in a modified shape,

of the principle which they regard as pernicious. It will be much

to the advantage of Great Britain if the education of Catholics in

England, as well as in Ireland, be made thoroughly Catholic. The

vast, and in many respects admirable system of national education in

Ireland, which, twenty or thirty years ago, was favorably regarded

by very many of the Irish Catholic bishops and clergy, has long

since been declared unsatisfactory by the Catholic hierarchy.

The elementary national schools are now merely tolerated. The

national model schools are loudly denounced. The national system

aimed at giving to all children a combined secular instruction and

at affording opportunities for separate religious instruction.

The priest and the parson were invited to become joint patrons

of schools. The board of education were to supply school-rooms,

teachers, books, and requisites for a secular instruction in which

all the pupils were to share. The ministers of various denominations

were to supply, either personally or by deputy, a religious teaching

to their respective pupils. Thus an hour or more was to be set apart

for religious teaching. During that hour the Catholic children were

to be taught the Catholic religion by the priest, or by one of the

masters under the priest's direction, and the Protestant children

were similarly to be taught the principles of Protestantism in

another room by the parson, or by one of the teachers under his

control. It was supposed that all ministers of religion would join in

carrying out a system which thus provided for the general education

of the poor, without interfering with the conscientious discharge

of that part of the ministerial duty of clergymen which relates

to the religious teaching of the young. The idea of instructing

Catholic and Protestant children together and bringing them up in

habits of mutual affection and esteem, was specious and captivating.

Who could withhold his quota of aid toward realizing the prospect

thus held out of future generations of educated Irishmen of various

creeds, each respecting the religious principles of the others while

strong in his own, and all loyal to the impartial government of the

British crown? Yet, at its very outset, the clergy and bishops of the

Protestant establishment held aloof from the national board. They

refused any partnership with Catholic priests in the management of

schools, and declared that their consciences would not permit them

to consent to support a system which set limits to the free use of

the holy Scriptures during secular instruction. In vain was it shown

that in Protestant universities, colleges, and higher schools, nay,

that in the very order for divine service according to the ritual

of the establishment, a limit was actually set to the use of the

holy Scriptures by the appointment of fixed times and places for the

study and reading and exposition of the sacred word. In vain was

it demonstrated that neither insult nor disparagement was intended

by regulations which might be looked on as scarcely different from

those which prevented a lecturer in mathematics from giving his

class a dissertation upon Isaiah, and denied a clergyman of the

establishment the privilege of interpolating his reading of the

litany with a chapter from the Apocalypse. The establishment clergy,

with a few notable exceptions, asserted it as their right and duty

to use the Scriptures at all times in their schools, and declared it

to be a sin to consent to suspend, even during the hours of combined

secular instruction, their office of teachers of divine truth. By

adopting this course they lost whatever claim to public estimation

they might otherwise have had as helpers of education, and hastened,

undoubtedly, the fall of their establishment. It has lately, through

the publication of Archbishop Whately's biography by his daughter and

of the journals of Mr. Senior, been fully disclosed that a desire

for proselytism, although in his lifetime he publicly professed

the contrary, was at the bottom of that able prelate's energetic

support of the national system. The religious and moral teaching

of the books used for combined secular instruction had, so argued

Whately in private, a strong tendency to implant truths which must

lead to the reception of Protestantism. Give free scope, so reasoned

the archbishop, to the national system, and, although the priests

may not perceive their danger, Ireland must cease to be a Catholic

country. When publicly advocating the national system, Whately's

language was, of course, far different. Then he maintained stoutly

that the books were thoroughly impartial, he repudiated with affected

loathing any dishonorable desire to make converts to Protestantism,

and he professed the most scrupulous respect for the consciences of

those who differed from him in religion. The posthumous publication

of Whately's real sentiments--destructive as that publication is

of much of his reputation, and especially of his character for

straightforwardness--forms a valuable vindication, not merely of

the behaviour of those more honest commissioners of education whose

refusal to adopt the Whately tactics led to Whately's retirement

from the board, but also of the conduct of the Catholic bishops and

clergy who have found it necessary emphatically to demand a radical

change in the system of national instruction so far as Catholics are

concerned.

It is, however, for the interests of Protestantism and of Great

Britain, as well as of Catholicism, that the education of Catholics

should be carried on more perfectly in accord with the desires of the

Catholic people. The principle of religious neutrality in education

has been tried in Ireland, and found wanting. It has not resulted

in bringing into the same school-rooms the young of various creeds,

and educating them in mutual love. Three or four Protestants may be

found in the same school with a hundred Catholics; or three or four

Catholics may attend a school frequented by a hundred Protestants.

But nowhere in Ireland is it possible to find a school where one half

of the pupils are Protestants and the other half Catholics, or where

the Protestant clergyman and the Catholic priest, as joint patrons,

superintend their respective classes. It is true, indeed, that

proselytism is discouraged by the rules of the board, and that no

favor is shown to one denomination more than to another. But with all

this endeavor after impartiality by its administrators, the system

inflicts a serious wound upon Catholicity. The authority of the board

is substituted for that of the Catholic Church. The national school

teacher, when in training for his office, learns his duties from

men of various religious denominations, who are not permitted, even

were they desirous, to impart a devotional color to what they teach.

The virtues must be commended on moral, not on religious grounds.

Patriotism may take root in ignorance; for no book of Irish history

is to be found in the list of Irish national school books. When the

trained teacher is set over a school, he still regards himself as

dependent upon the board which is his paymaster. Catholic teachers

may, and sometimes do, hold opinions different from those of the

priest, and even upon occasions refuse to carry out the priest's

directions in the matter of religious teaching. The influence of

the priest upon his flock is weakened by that very separation

between secular and religious instruction which is the basis of the

system of national education. Protestantism may flourish under the

impartiality, neutrality, and secularization of education at which

the originators of that system aimed; but Catholicism must inevitably

become deteriorated.

It was in past years the almost universal belief of Protestant

governments, that an Irish Catholic, in proportion as he ceased

to be loyal to his spiritual, would advance in loyalty toward his

temporal sovereign. Toleration was offered, even under Elizabeth

and James, to Catholics who would abjure the spiritual supremacy

of the pope. In modern times the same spirit of distrust shows

itself in the endeavor, on the part of some Protestant statesmen,

to offer to Catholics educational and other advantages upon

conditions inconsistent with Catholic practices. Those greatly err

who thus fancy that Great Britain will gain--either politically or

religiously--by the undermining of the influence of the Catholic

priesthood, or by leavening the education of Catholics with the

spirit of secularization. The Irish Catholic may be taught to unlearn

his faith, to neglect confession, and disobey the injunctions of his

priest; but no one will say that thereby he becomes, necessarily,

either a better Christian or a better subject to his sovereign. Such

a one may, or may not, become a Protestant or an infidel. When the

influence of the priest is weakened or destroyed, the Irish Catholic

becomes an easy victim to those who teach disloyalty and rebellion.

But his lapse into treason should be ascribed to the fact not of his

being a Catholic, but of his being a bad one. No good Catholic who

values the sacraments, and respects the precepts of his church, could

possibly join the treasonable brotherhoods denounced by the Catholic

priest from the altar, by the bishops in pastorals, and by the pope

himself. There are, however, too many Irish Catholics whose obedience

to their church is partial, or but nominal. Perhaps these men first

learnt in Irish national schools the lesson that religion, like

every thing else, has its appointed time and place; that Catholic

devotion forms no indispensable portion of secular studies, and that

priestly intervention in affairs not strictly religious is intrusive

and impertinent. The want of a truly Catholic training in early

life doubtless has led many an adult Catholic to hold that a priest

out-steps the proper sphere of his office, when he cautions his flock

against revolutionary excesses.

If misdirected and uncatholic teaching occasions many Irish Catholics

to become rebels in thought if not in deed, their education has

advanced and is advancing in another point, so as to render their

treason more dangerous. Irishmen in former years were prompt to seize

occasions for the overthrow of British rule, but lacked certain

qualities requisite for permanent success. They seemed incapable, for

any length of time, of combined action and resolution in the field or

the cabinet. They carried into battle the dissensions and jealousies

of their divided council-chambers. Brilliant displays of military

valor served only to mark more distinctly the fatal effects of

indecision and insubordination. Victory itself was often the prelude

to that demoralization of forces which is the worst consequence

of defeat. But now the Irish are swiftly learning to acquire those

qualities of organization and self-government which will render their

revolts more formidable and disastrous to England than hitherto they

have proved. Irishmen have shown themselves in American campaigns

not soldiers merely, but generals, and not merely skilful tacticians

in handling masses of troops before the enemy, but also able

organizers, clever in moulding and disciplining untrained materials

into effective battalions. Habits of promptitude, self-control, and

self-reliance belong to the Irish-American in perhaps even a higher

degree than to the Anglo-Saxon. The number is rapidly increasing

of Irishmen who, having acquired those habits in America, repair

to Ireland and communicate them in some degree to their brethren

at home. The peasantry of Ireland--already familiarized with

trans-Atlantic ideas of independence and republicanism--are apt to

become Americanized. Their sympathies are with the United States

rather than with England. If war broke out between Great Britain and

the States, no one doubts but that the first American army flung upon

Irish shores would find Ireland one vast recruiting field, and that

swarms of soldiers of Irish descent would fly from distant lands to

Ireland to lend their aid in rendering it, throughout its length and

breadth, a garrison impregnable to British attacks. And no one doubts

but that England--even though eventually victorious by land and

sea--would depart from such a conflict crippled in half her strength.

Ireland, alienated irrevocably, would be to England like a paralyzed

limb to the combatant, both a sign and a source of weakness. At no

very distant period from the termination of such a war, Ireland would

virtually become an American outpost, and would cease to be an

integral part of Great Britain. Without Ireland to rely upon, England

could scarcely be expected to maintain a position as a first-class

power in the event of war among European nations. Mercenary troops

might, indeed, for a time supply the want of Irish soldiers and

sailors. But the nation which has to hire foreign troops to fight its

battles is already in decay.

It is possible, however, that Ireland, instead of becoming the

occasion of ruin and dismemberment to the British empire, may prove

its mainstay and the bond of its integrity. If Ireland shall become

prosperous and contented under the changed policy of England, if its

population shall increase under prosperity, and if its nationality

shall be recognized and fostered--then no combination of European

foes, unaided by America, can hope to prevail against the United

Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. But why should America withhold

her hand, when opportunity shall have presented itself for dealing

a blow in repayment of old wrongs aggravated by recent disputes?

France may demand the armed assistance of the States, whose existence

as an independent government she so powerfully helped to create. He

reads ill the face of nations who fails to perceive that the great

body of Americans desire to see the pride of England humbled, and

that they are treasuring up their wrath against the day of wrath.

The native-born Americans are moved by the transmitted rancor of

past injustice. Those of Irish and Catholic descent have the wrongs

of Ireland and of the Catholic Church to avenge. All the traditions

of faith and patriotism are now arrayed against England, and the

influence of the Irish and Catholic population of the States is

sufficient to decide the political action of Congress in the

eventuality of the reasonableness of war with Great Britain becoming

a subject for discussion. Yet the Irish and Catholic element in

the American population might, under circumstances to be created

by English policy, prove the means of restraining from an almost

fratricidal contest the two great empires. Ireland may become

so linked to England that any blow struck against England would

equally harm Ireland. An enlightened legislation concerning the

soil of Ireland may lead to the break-up of absentee landlordism,

and substitute tens of thousands of owners and occupiers in place

of the few hundred feudal proprietors who now exact rack-rents from

an impoverished tenantry. The multiplication of resident working

farm-owners may afford remunerative and permanent occupation to

numerous agricultural laborers for whom there now offers only an

intermittent and precarious employment. The agricultural prosperity

of Ireland is a powerful bond of union with England, the nearest and

best market for Irish produce. Another bond of union may be found

in the grant of legislative independence, or such a modification of

the present parliamentary system as may place the disposal of purely

Irish interests in the hands of Irish representatives, satisfy the

just desires of the patriotic, and leave no room for sentimental

grievances to fester into international feuds. The Catholic religion,

subjected to no disabilities in either kingdom, and overshadowed by

no hostile establishment--for Englishmen themselves in a few years

will remove their present church establishment in the interests of

their church and of Protestantism--will form another tie between the

countries. English Catholics have always been loyal to the British

government. Irish Catholics may become just as loyal. Education may

render the rough Irish laborers, who frequent the centres of English

commerce and manufacture, as loyal as the most loyal in England, and

a valuable counterpoise to the ultra-democratic semi-infidels who

form the dangerous mobs of London, Liverpool, and other vast trading

and industrial cities. And if the social and political interests of

Catholic Irishmen and of Catholics in England become recognized as

identical with those of English Protestants, then the union between

Great Britain and Ireland will be completely consolidated, and the

Irish party in America will have neither excuse nor opportunity for

joining any other party which may desire, disregarding the welfare

of Ireland, to inflict a wound upon Great Britain. On the contrary,

the Irish and Catholic element in the States will be both able

and willing to throw its effective influence into the scale upon

the side of peace and good-will, whenever the differences between

the cabinets of London and Washington demand settlement. Ireland

will thus indirectly become the mediator between the contending

empires--the arbiter to reconcile the angry parent and the aggrieved

son. But Ireland, to be enabled to act this part, must be cherished

as Irish and Catholic, with its nationality unimpaired and its

faith untrammelled. And if the political interests of Great Britain

shall be served by the flourishing condition of Irish Catholicism,

the religious interests of Protestant England will not necessarily

be damaged. Nay, it may prove an advantage to Protestantism to be

brought upon equal terms into close and harmonious relations with

the fervent faith of the Catholic Church, which nowhere appears to

greater advantage than in Ireland. Rationalism and scepticism are on

the increase in Great Britain and elsewhere, and will prove far more

dangerous neighbors than the Church of Rome to the Church of England.

Infidelity is an enemy against whom both would do well, if not to

unite their strength, at least to direct their separate attacks. As

rivals in opposing vice and unbelief, they may learn to respect each

other, and, alas! have before them a field only too ample for their

most vigorous exertions.

MARY.

Sweet name of Mary, name of names save One--

And that, my Queen, so wedded unto thine

Our hearts hear both in either, and enshrine

Instinctively the Mother with the Son--

The lisping child's new accent has begun,

Heaven-taught, with thee; first-fervent happy youth

Makes thee the watchword of its maiden truth;

Repentant age the hope of the undone.

To me, known late but timely, thou hast been

The noon-day freshness of a wooded height;

A vale of soothing waters; the delight

Of fadeless verdure in a desert scene;

And when, ere long, my day shall set serene,

Be Hesper[35] to an eve without a night.

B. D. H.

FOOTNOTE:

[35] The evening star.

EMERSON'S PROSE WORKS.[36]

Mr. Emerson's literary reputation is established, and placed beyond

the reach of criticism. No living writer surpasses him in his mastery

of pure and classic English, or equals him in the exquisite delicacy

and finish of his chiselled sentences, or the metallic ring of his

style. It is only as a thinker and teacher that we can venture any

inquiry into his merits; and as such we cannot suffer ourselves to be

imposed upon by his oracular manner, nor by the apparent originality

either of his views or his expressions.

Mr. Emerson has had a swarm both of admirers and of detractors. With

many he is a philosopher and sage, almost a god; while with others

he is regarded as an unintelligible mystic, babbling nonsense just

fitted to captivate beardless young men and silly maidens with pretty

curls, who constituted years ago the great body of his hearers and

worshippers. We rank ourselves in neither class, though we regard

him as no ordinary man, and as one of the deepest thinkers, as

well as one of the first poets, of our country. We know him as a

polished gentleman, a genial companion, and a warm-hearted friend,

whose kindness does not pass over individuals and waste itself in a

vague philanthropy. So much, at least, we can say of the man, and

from former personal acquaintance as well as from the study of his

writings.

Mr. Emerson is no theorist, and is rather of a practical than of

a speculative turn of mind. What he has sought all his life, and

perhaps is still seeking, is the real, the universal, and the

permanent in the events of life and the objects of experience. The

son of a Protestant minister, brought up in a Protestant community,

and himself for some years a Protestant minister, he early learned

that the real, the universal, and permanent are not to be found in

Protestantism; and assuming that Protestantism, in some or all its

forms, is the truest exponent of the Christian religion, he very

naturally came to the conclusion that they are not to be found in

Christianity. He saw that Protestantism is narrow, hollow, unreal,

a sham, a humbug, and, ignorant of the Catholic Church and her

teaching, he considered that she must have less of reality, be even

more of a sham or humbug, than Protestantism itself. He passed then

naturally to the conclusion that all pretensions to a supernaturally

revealed religion are founded only in ignorance or craft, and

rejected all of all religions, except what may be found in them that

accords with the soul or the natural reason of all men. This may be

gathered from his brief essay, entitled _Nature_, first published in

1836. We quote a few paragraphs from the introduction:

"Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the

fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The

foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we

through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original

relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and

a philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion

by revelation to us, and not a history of theirs?... The sun

shines to-day also. There is more wool and flax in the fields.

There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our

own works, and laws, and worship.

"Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are

unanswerable. We must trust the perfection of creation so far

as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things

has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy.

Every man's condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those

inquiries he would put. He acts it as life before he apprehends

it as truth. In like manner, nature is already, in its forms

and tendencies, describing its own design. Let us interrogate

the great apparition that shines so peacefully around us. Let

us inquire, To what end is nature?

"All science has one aim, to find a theory of nature. We have

theories of races and of functions, but scarcely yet a remote

approach to an idea of creation. We are now so far from the

road to truth that religious teachers dispute and hate each

other, and speculative men are deemed unsound and frivolous.

But to a sound judgment, the most abstract truth is the most

practical. Whenever a true theory appears, it will be its own

evidence. Its test is, that it will explain all phenomena. Now

many are thought not only unexplained, but inexplicable--as

language, sleep, madness, dreams, beasts, sex." (Vol. i. pp. 5,

6.)

These extracts give us the key to Mr. Emerson's thought, which runs

through all his writings, whether in prose or poetry; though more

fully mastered and better defined in his later productions, essays,

and lectures, than it was in his earliest production from which

we have quoted. In studying these volumes, we are convinced that

what the writer is after is reality, of which this outward, visible

universe, both as a whole and in all its parts, symbolizes. He seeks

life, not death; the living present, not the corpse of the past.

Under this visible world, its various and ever-varying phenomena,

lies the real world, one, identical, universal, and immutable, which

it copies, mimics, or symbolizes. He agrees with Plato that the

real thing is in the methexis, not in the mimesis; that is, in the

idea, not in the individual and the sensible, the variable and the

perishable. He wants unity and catholicity, and the science that does

not attain to them is no real science at all. But as the mimesis, in

his language the hieroglyphic, copies or imitates the methexic, we

can, by studying it, arrive at the methexic, the reality copied or

imitated.

We do not pretend to understand Plato throughout, nor to reconcile

him always with himself; but as far as we do understand him, the

reality, what must be known in order to have real science, is the

idea, and it is only by ideas that real science is attained. Ideas

are, then, both the object and the medium of knowledge. As the medium

of knowledge, the idea may be regarded as the image it impresses on

the mimetic, or the individual and the sensible, as the seal on the

wax. This image or impression is an exact _fac-simile_ of the idea as

object. Hence by studying it we arrive at the exact knowledge of the

idea, or what is real, invariable, universal, and permanent in the

object we would know. The lower copies and reveals the next higher,

and thus we may rise, step by step, from the lowest to the highest,

to "the first good and the first fair," to the good, the beautiful,

or Being that is being in itself. Thus is it in science. But the

soul has two wings on which it soars to the empyrean, intelligence

and love. The lowest form or stage of love is that of the sexes, a

love of the senses only; but this lowest love symbolizes a higher or

ideal love, rising stage by stage to the pure ideal, or the love of

absolute beauty, the beautiful in itself, the love to which the sage

aspires, and the only love in which he can rest or find repose.

We do not say that Mr. Emerson follows Plato in all respects; for

he occasionally deviates from him, sometimes for the better, and

sometimes for the worse; but no one not tolerably well versed in the

Platonic philosophy can understand him. In his two essays on Plato,

in his second volume, he calls him the Philosopher, and asserts that

all who talk philosophy talk Plato. He also maintains that Plato

represented all the ages that went before him, possessed all the

science of his contemporaries, and that none who have come after him

have been able to add any thing new to what he taught. He includes

Christianity, Judaism, and Mohammedanism in Plato, who is far broader

and more comprehensive than them all. Plato of all men born of woman

stood nearest the truth of things, and in his intellectual and moral

doctrines surpassed all who went before or have come after him.

We find many things in Plato that we like, and we entirely agree with

him that the ideal is real; but we do not agree with Mr. Emerson,

that nothing in science has been added to the Platonic doctrine.

We think Aristotle made an important addition in his doctrine of

entelechia; Leibnitz, in his definition of substance, making it a

_vis activa_, and thus exploding the notion of passive or inert

substances; and finally, Gioberti, by his doctrine of creation as a

doctrine, or rather principle, of science. Plato had no conception of

the creative act asserted by Moses in the first verse of _Genesis_.

Plato never rose above the conception of the production of existences

by way of formation, or the operation of the plastic force on a

preëxisting and often intractable matter. He never conceived of the

creation of existences from nothing by the sole energy or power of

the creator. He held to the eternal existence of spirit and matter,

and we owe to him principally the dualism and antagonism that have

originated the false asceticism which many attribute to Christian

teaching; but which Christianity rejects, as is evident from its

doctrine of the Incarnation and that of the resurrection of the

flesh. Gioberti has shown, as the writer thinks, that creation is no

less a scientific principle than a Christian dogma. He has shown

that the creative act is the nexus between being and existences,

and that it enters as the copula into the _primum philosophicum_,

without which there could be no human mind, and consequently no

human science. There are various other instances we might adduce

in which people talk very good sense, even profound philosophical

and theological truth, and yet do not talk Plato. We hardly think

Mr. Emerson himself will accept all the moral doctrines of Plato's

Republic, especially those relating to marriage and the promiscuous

intercourse of the sexes; for Plato goes a little beyond what our

free-lovers have as yet proposed.

Aristotle gives us, undoubtedly, a philosophy, such as it is, and

a philosophy that enters largely into modern modes of thought and

expression; but we can hardly say as much of Plato. He has profound

thoughts, no doubt, and many glimpses of a high--if you will, the

highest order of truth; but only when he avowedly follows tradition,

and speaks according to the wisdom of the ancients. He seems to us

to give us a method rather than a philosophy, and very little of

our modern philosophical language is derived from him. Several of

the Greek fathers, and St. Augustine among the Latins, incline to

Platonism; but none of them, so far as we are acquainted with them,

followed him throughout. The mediæval doctors, though not ignorant of

Plato, almost without an exception prefer Aristotle. The revival of

Platonism in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries brought with it a

revival of heathenism; and Plato has since been held in much higher

esteem with the heterodox and makers of fanciful systems than with

the orthodox and simple believers. We trace his influence in what

the romancers call chivalry, which is of pagan origin, though some

people are ill-informed enough to accredit it to the church; and we

trace to his doctrine of love, so attractive to many writers not in

other respects without merit, the modern babble about "the heart,"

the confusion of charity with philanthropy, and the immoral doctrines

of free love, which strike at Christian marriage and the Christian

family. The "heart," in the language of the Holy Scriptures,

means the affections of the will, and the love they enjoin as the

fulfilment of the law and the bond of perfection is charity, a

supernatural virtue, in which both the will and the understanding

are operative, not a simple, natural sentiment, or affection of the

sensibility, or the love of the beautiful, and dependent on the

imagination.

Mr. Emerson is right enough in making the sensible copy or imitate

the intelligible, what there is true in Swedenborg's doctrine of

correspondences; but wrong in making the mimetic purely phenomenal,

unreal, a mere sense-show. The mimetic, the mimesis, by which

Plato means the individual and the sensible, the variable and the

transitory, is not the only real, nor the highest real, as sensists

and materialists hold; but is as real in its order and degree as

the methexic or ideal. Hence, St. Thomas is able to maintain that

the sensible species, or accidents, as he calls them, can subsist

without their subject, or, as we would say, the sensible body

without the intelligible body; and therefore, that the doctrine

of transubstantiation involves no contradiction; for it is not

pretended that the sensible body undergoes any change, or that the

sensible body of our Lord is present in the blessed eucharist.

So St. Augustine distinguishes the visible--the sensible--body

and the spiritual--intelligible--body, and holds both to be real.

The individual is as real as the species--the _socratitas_, in

the language of the schoolmen, as the _humanitas_--for neither is

possible without the other. The sort of idealism, as it is called,

that resolves the individual into the species, or the sensible

into the intelligible, and thus denies the external world, is as

unphilosophical as the opposite doctrine, that resolves the species

into the individual and the intelligible into the sensible. Even

Plato, the supposed father of idealism, does not make the mimesis

absolutely unreal. For, to say nothing of the preëxistent matter, the

image, picture, which is the exact copy of its ideal prototype, is a

real image, picture, or copy.

But Mr. Emerson, if he recognizes the methexis at all, either

confounds it with real and necessary being, or makes it purely

phenomenal, and therefore unreal, as distinguished from real and

necessary being. Methexis is a Greek word, and means, etymologically

and as used by Plato, participation. Plato's doctrine is, that all

inferior existences exist by participation of the higher, through

the medium of what he calls the plastic soul, whence the Demiourgos

of the Gnostics. His error was in making the plastic soul instead

of the creative act of God the medium of the participation. Still,

Plato made it the participation of ideas or the ideal, and, in the

last analysis, of Him who is being in himself. Hence, he made a

distinction, if not the proper distinction, between the methexis and

God, or being by participation and the absolute underived being, or

being in itself.

Mr. Emerson recognizes no real participation, and either excludes

the methexis or identifies it with God, or absolute being. He thus

reduces the categories, as does Cousin, to being and phenomenon, or,

in the only barbarism in language he permits himself, the ME--_le

moi_--and the NOT ME--_le non moi_--the root-error, so to speak, of

Fichte. He takes himself as the central force, and holds it to be the

reality expressed in the NOT ME. The NOT ME being purely phenomenal,

only the ME is real. By the ME he, of course, does not mean his own

personality, but the reality which underlies and expresses itself

in it. The absolute ICH, or ego, of Fichte is identical in all men,

is the real man, the "one man," as Mr. Emerson says; and this "one

man" is the reality, the being, the substance, the force of the whole

phenomenal universe. There is, then, no methexis imitated, copied,

or mimicked by the mimesis, or the individual and sensible universe.

The mimesis copies not a participated or created intelligible, but,

however it may be diversified by degrees, it copies directly God

himself, the one real being and only substance of all things. If

we regard ourselves as phenomenal, we are unreal, and therefore

nothing; if as real, as substantive, as force, we do not participate,

_mediante_ the creative act, of real being, but are identically it,

or identical with it; which makes the author not only a pantheist,

but a more unmitigated pantheist than Plato himself.

Neither Plato nor Mr. Emerson recognizes any causative force in the

mimesis. Plato recognizes causative force only in ideas, though he

concedes a power of resistance to the preëxistent matter, and finds

in its intractableness the cause of evil; Mr. Emerson recognizes

causative or productive force only in the absolute, and therefore

denies the existence of second causes, as he does all distinction

between first cause and final cause; which is the very essence of

pantheism, which Gioberti rightly terms the "supreme sophism."

We have used the Greek terms _methexis_ and _mimesis_ after Plato,

as Gioberti has done in his posthumous works, but not precisely

in Gioberti's sense. Gioberti identifies the methexis with the

plastic soul asserted by Plato, and revived by old Ralph Cudworth,

an Anglican divine of the seventeenth century; but though we make

the methexis causative in the order of second causes, we do not

make it productive of the mimesis. It means what are called genera

and species; but even in the order of second causes, genera are

generative or productive only as specificated, and species only as

individualized. God must have created the genus specificated and the

species individualized before either could be active or productive

as second cause. The genus does not and cannot exist without

specification, nor the species without individualization, any more

than the individual can exist without the species, or the species

without the genus. For instance, man is the species, according to

the schoolmen, the genus is animal, the _differentia_ is reason, and

hence man is defined a rational animal. But the genus animal, though

necessary to its existence, cannot generate the species man, any more

than it could have generated itself. The species can exist only as

immediately individuated by the first cause, and hence the pretence

of some scientists--more properly sciolists,--that new species are

formed either by development or by natural selection, is simply

absurd, as has been well shown by the Duke of Argyll. God creates the

species as well as the genera; and it is fairly inferred from the

Scriptures that he creates all things in their genera and species

"after their kind." Furthermore, if God had not created the human

species individualized in Adam, male and female, there could have

been no men by natural generation, any more than if there had been

no human species at all.

This, as we understand it, excludes alike the plastic soul of the

Platonists and the Demiourgos of the Gnostics, and teaches that the

mimesis is as directly created by God himself as the methexis. Mr.

Emerson, indeed, uses neither of these Platonic terms, though if

he had, he would, with his knowledge of the Christian doctrine of

creation, have detected the error of Plato, and most likely have

escaped his own. The term _methexis_--participation--excludes the old

error that God generates the universe, which is rather favored by

the terms genera and species. We use the term _mimesis_ because it

serves to us to express the fact that the lower copies or imitates

the higher, and therefore the doctrine of St. Thomas, that "Deus

est similitudo rerum omnium," or that God is himself the type or

model after which the universe is created, and which each and every

existence in its own order and degree strives to copy or represent.

The error of Plato is, that he makes the methexis an emanation rather

than a creature, and the plastic power that produces the mimesis;

the error of Mr. Emerson, as we view the matter, is, that he makes

the mimetic purely phenomenal, therefore unreal, sinks it in the

methexic, and the methexis itself in God, as the one only being or

substance, the _natura naturans_ of Spinoza.

With Plato, the mimesis is the product of the methexic, but is itself

passive, and the sooner the soul is emancipated from it the better;

though what is the soul in his system of ideas we understand not.

With Mr. Emerson, it is neither active nor passive, for it is purely

phenomenal, therefore nothing. With us it is real, and, like all

real existences, it is active, and is not a simple image or copy of

the methexic or the ideal, but is in its order and degree a _vis

activa_, and copies or imitates actively the divine type or the _idea

exemplaris_ in the divine mind, after which it is created.

Mr. Emerson says, in the introduction to his essay on _Nature_,

"Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of nature and

soul." But all activity is in the soul, and what is distinguishable

from the soul is purely phenomenal, and, if we may take his essay on

the _Over-soul_, not republished in these volumes, is but the soul's

own projection of itself. The soul alone is active, productive, and

it is myself, my own ego; not indeed in its personal limitations and

feebleness, but in its absoluteness, as the absolute or impersonal

_Ich_ of Fichte, and identically God, who is the great, the absolute

I AM.

The error is obvious. It consists in the denial or in the overlooking

of the fact that God creates substances, and that every substance

is, as Leibnitz defines it, a force, a _vis activa_, acting always

from its own centre outward. Whatever actually exists is active,

and there is and can be no passivity in nature. Hence, Aristotle

and the schoolmen after him call God, who is being and being in its

plenitude, _actus purissimus_, or most pure act, in whom there are

no possibilities to be actualized. Mr. Emerson errs in his first

principles, in not recognizing the fact that God creates substances,

and that every substance is an activity, therefore causative

either _ad intra_ or _ad extra_, and that every created substance

is causative in the order of second causes. What we maintain in

opposition both to him and Plato is, that these created substances

are at once methexic and mimetic in their activity.

It were an easy task to show that whatever errors there may be, or

may be supposed to be, in Mr. Emerson's works grow out of the two

fundamental errors we have indicated--the identification of soul,

freed from its personal limitations, as in Adam, John, and Richard,

with God, or the real being, substance, force, or activity, and

the assumption that whatever is distinguishable from God is purely

phenomenal, an apparition, a sense-show, a mere bubble on the

surface of the ocean of being, as we pointed out in our comments on

the proceedings of the Free Religionists, in the magazine for last

November, and to which we beg leave to refer our readers.

Yet, though we have known Mr. Emerson personally ever since 1836,

have held more than one conversation with him, listened to several

courses of lectures from him, and read and even studied the greater

part, if not all of his works, as they issued from the press, we must

confess that, in reperusing them preparatory to writing this brief

notice, we have been struck, as we never were before, with the depth

and breadth of his thought, as well as with the singular force and

beauty of his expression. We appreciate him much higher both as a

thinker and as an observer, and we give him credit for a depth of

feeling, an honesty of purpose, an earnest seeking after truth, we

had not previously awarded him in so great a degree, either publicly

or privately. We are also struck with his near approach to the truth

as we are taught it. He seems to us to come as near to the truth as

one can who is so unhappy as to miss it.

We regard it as Mr. Emerson's great misfortune, that his early

Protestant training led him to regard the Catholic question as

_res adjucata_, and to take Protestantism, in some one or all

of its forms, as the truest and best exponent of Christianity.

Protestantism is narrow, superficial, unintellectual, vague,

indefinite, sectarian, and it was easy for a mind like his to

pierce through its hollow pretensions, to discover its unspiritual

character, its want of life, its formality, and its emptiness. It

was not difficult to comprehend that it was only a dead corse, and

a mutilated corse at that. The Christian mysteries it professed to

retain, as it held them, were lifeless dogmas, with no practical

bearing on life, and no reason in the world for believing them.

Such a system, having no relation with the living and moving world,

and no reason in the nature or constitution of things, could not

satisfy a living and thinking man, in downright earnest for a truth

at least as broad and as living as his own soul. It was too little,

too insignificant, too _mesquine_, too much of a dead and putrefying

body to satisfy either his intellect or his heart. If that is the

true exponent of Christianity, and the most enlightened portion of

mankind say it is, why shall I belie my own understanding, my own

better nature, by professing to believe and reverence it? No; let me

be a man, be true to myself, to my own reason and instincts, not a

miserable time-server or a contemptible hypocrite.

If Mr. Emerson had not been led to regard the Catholic question as

closed, except to the dwellers among tombs, and to the ignorant and

superstitious, and had studied the church with half the diligence

he has Plato, Mohammed, or Swedenborg, it is possible that he would

have found in Christianity the life and truth, the reality, unity,

and catholicity he has so long and so earnestly sought elsewhere and

found not. Certain it is, that whatever affirmative truth he holds

is held and taught by the church in its proper place, its real

relations, and in its integrity. The church does not live in the past

nor dwell only among tombs; she is an ever-present and ever-living

church, and presents to us not a dead historical Christ, but the

ever-living and ever-present Christ, as really and truly present to

us as he was to the disciples and apostles with whom he conversed

when he went about in Judea doing good, without having where to

lay his head, and not more veiled from our sight now than he was

then from theirs. Does she not hold the sublime mystery of the Real

Presence, which, if an individual fact, is also a universal principle?

The Christian system, if we may so speak, is not an after-thought

in creation, or something superinduced on the Creator's works. It

has its ground and reason in the very constitution of things. All

the mysteries taught or dogmas enjoined by the church are universal

principles; they are truly catholic, the very principles according

to which the universe, visible or invisible, is constructed, and

not one of them can be denied without denying a first principle of

life and of science. Mr. Emerson says, in a passage we have quoted,

"All science has one aim, namely, to find a theory of nature," and

seems to concede that it has not yet succeeded in finding it. The

church goes beyond even the aim of science, and gives, at least

professes to give, not a theory of truth, but the truth itself; she

is not a method, but that to which the true method leads. She is the

body of Him who is "the way, the truth, and the life;" she gives

us, not as the philosophers, her views of the truth, but the truth

itself, in its reality, its unity, its integrity, its universality,

its immutability. At least such is her profession; for the faith

she teaches is the substance--hypostasis--of the things to be hoped

for, and the evidence of things not seen--_substantia sperandarum,

argumentum non apparentium_.

Such being her profession, made long before Protestantism was

born, and continued to be made since with no stammering tongue or

abatement of confidence, the pretence that judgment has gone against

her is unfounded. Many have condemned her, as the Jewish Sanhedrim

condemned our Lord, and called on the Roman Procurator to execute

judgment against him; but she has no more staid condemned than he

staid confined in the new tomb hewn from the rock in which his body

was laid, and far more are they who admit her professions among the

enlightened and civilized than they who deny them. No man has a

right to be regarded as a philosopher or sage who has not at least

thoroughly examined her titles, and made up his mind with a full

knowledge of the cause.

In the Catholic Church we have found the real presence, and unity,

and catholicity which we sought long and earnestly, and could find

nowhere else, and which Mr. Emerson, after a still longer and equally

earnest search, has not found at all. He looks not beyond nature,

and nature is not catholic, universal, or the whole. It is not one,

but manifold and variable. It cannot tell its origin, medium, or

end. With all the light Mr. Emerson has derived from nature, or

from nature and soul united, there is infinite darkness behind,

infinite darkness before, and infinite darkness all around him. He

says, "Every man's condition is a solution in hieroglyphic of those

inquiries he would put." Suppose it is so, what avail is that to him

who has lost or never had the key to the hieroglyph? Knows he to

interpret the hieroglyph in which the solution is concealed? Can he

read the riddle of the sphinx? He has tried his hand at it in his

poem of the Sphinx, and has only been able to answer that

"Each answer is a lie."

It avails us little to be told where the solution is, if we are not

told what it is, or if only told that every solution is false as soon

as told. Hear him; to man he says,

"Thou art the unanswered question;

Couldst see thy proper eye,

Alway it asketh, asketh;

And each answer is a lie:

So take thy quest through nature,

It through a thousand natures ply;

Ask on, thou clothed eternity;

Time is the false reply."

The answer, if it means any thing, means that man is "a clothed

eternity," whatever that may mean, eternally seeking an answer to the

mystery of his own being, and each answer he can obtain is a lie; for

only eternity can comprehend eternity and tell what it is. Whence

has he learned that man, the man-child, is "a clothed eternity," and

therefore God, who only is eternal?

Now, eternity is above time, and above the world of time,

consequently above nature. Catholicity, by the very force of the

term, must include all truth, and therefore the truth of the

supernatural as well as of the natural. But Mr. Emerson denies the

supernatural, and does not, of course, even profess to have any

knowledge that transcends nature. How, then, can he pretend to have

attained to catholic truth? He himself restricts nature to the

external universe, which is phenomenal, and to soul, by which he

means himself. But are there no phenomena without being or substance

which appears or which shows itself in them? Is this being or

substance the soul, or, in the barbarism he adopts, the ME? If so,

the NOT-ME is only the phenomena of the ME, and of course identical

with myself, as he implies in what he says of the "one man." Then in

me, and emanating from me, are all men, and the whole of nature. How

does he know this? Does he learn it from nature?

Of course, Mr. Emerson means not this, even if his various utterances

imply it. He uses the word _creation_, and we suppose he intends,

notwithstanding his systematic views, if such he has, contradict

it, to use it in its proper sense. Then he must hold the universe,

including, according to his division, nature and soul, has been

created, and if created, it has a creator. The creator must be

superior, above nature and soul, and therefore in the strictest sense

of the word supernatural; and as reason is the highest faculty of the

soul, the supernatural must also be supra-rational.

Does the creator create for a purpose, for an end? and if so, what

is that end or purpose, and the medium or means of fulfilling it,

whether on his part or on the part of the creature? Here, then,

we have the assertion of a whole order of truth, very real and

very important to be known, which transcends the truth Mr. Emerson

professes to have, and which is not included in it. We say again,

then, that he has not attained to catholicity, and we also say that,

by the only method he admits, he cannot attain to it. How can he

pretend to have attained to catholicity, and that he has already a

truth more universal than Christianity reveals, when he must confess

that without the knowledge of a supernatural and supra-rational truth

he cannot explain his origin or end, or know the conditions of his

existence, or the means of gaining his end?

Mr. Emerson says, as we have quoted him,

"Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are

unanswerable. We must trust the perfection of the creation so

far as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things

has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy."

Alway it asketh, asketh,

And each answer is a lie.

There is here a grand mistake. If he had said the Creator instead

of creation, there would have been truth and great propriety in

the author's assertion. Nature--and we mean by nature the whole

created order--excites us to ask many very troublesome questions,

which nature is quite incompetent to answer. The fact that nature is

created, proves that she is, both as a whole and in all her parts,

dependent, not independent, and therefore does not and cannot suffice

for herself. Unable to suffice for herself, she cannot suffice for

the science of herself; for science must be of that which is, not of

that which is not.

Mr. Emerson, we presume, struck with the narrowness and

inconsistencies of all the religions he had studied, and finding that

they are all variable and transitory in their forms, yet thought

that he also discovered something in them, or underlying them all,

which is universal, invariable, and permanent, and which they are

all honest efforts of the great soul to realize. He therefore came

to the conclusion that the sage can accept none of these narrow,

variable, and transitory forms, and yet can reject none of them as

to the great, invariable, and underlying principles, which in fact

is all they have that is real or profitable. To distinguish between

the transient and permanent in religion was the common aim of the

Boston movement from 1830 to 1841, when we ourselves began to turn

our own mind, though very timidly and at a great distance, toward

the church. Mr. Emerson, Miss Margaret Fuller, A. Bronson Alcott, and

Mr. Theodore Parker regarded the permanent elements of all religions

as the natural patrimony or products of human nature. The present

writer differed from them, by ascribing their origin to supernatural

revelation made to our first parents in the garden, universally

diffused by the dispersion of the race, and transmitted to us by the

traditions of all nations. Following out this view, the grace of God

moving and assisting, we found our way to the Catholic Church, in

which the form and the invariable and permanent principle, or rather,

the form growing out of the principle, are inseparable, and are

fitted by the divine hand to each other.

The others, falling back on a sort of transcendental illuminism, sunk

into pure naturalism, where such of them as are still living, and

a whole brood of young disciples who have sprung up since, remain,

and, like the old Gnostics, suppose themselves spiritual men and

women in possession of the secret of the universe. There was much

life, mental activity, and honest purpose in the movement; but those

who had the most influence in directing its course could not believe

that any thing good could come out of Nazareth, and so turned their

backs on the church. They thought they could find something deeper,

broader, and more living than Christianity, and have lost not only

the transient, but even the permanent in religion.

FOOTNOTE:

[36] _The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson_, New and revised

edition. Boston: Fields, Osgood & Co. 1870. 2 vols. 16mo.

THE HOLY-WEEK OF 1869 IN HAVANA.

GOOD-FRIDAY. HOLY-SATURDAY. EASTER-SUNDAY.

GOOD-FRIDAY.

Sad indeed was the aspect of all things within the cathedral

on Good-Friday morning. Black draperies covered the pulpit,

reading-desks, and seats reserved for the authorities, and every

one was attired in mourning. Instead of the rose-color and blue of

Holy-Thursday, the ladies now wore black or violet silks and satins

with jet ornaments.

All the personages of the preceding day were present, and the

religious services were in nowise different from those of the

Catholic Church in other lands, with the exception that, in the

reading of the passion, at the words "_gave up the ghost_," all

knelt, but did not kiss the ground, as is the custom in France.

During the adoration of the cross, in which the captain-general,

apparently almost too ill to stand, and the other gentlemen took

part, the choir sang the beautiful hymn _Pange lingua_, with its

tender burden of _Crux fidelis_. Never did it sound to me more

touching.

"Sing, O my tongue! the Victor's praise;

For him the noblest trophy raise,

The victory of his cross proclaim,

His glory and his laurelled fame;

Sing of his conquests, when he proved

The Saviour of the souls he loved.

O faithful cross! thou stand'st alone;

None like thee in our woods is grown,

None can with thy rich growth compare,

Or leaves like thine, or flowerets bear.

Sweet wood, sweet nails, both sweet and fair,

Sweet is the precious weight ye bear."

The adoration terminated, the procession was formed, exactly as

on the day before, to bring back the Blessed Sacrament from the

sepulchre. On reaching the foot of the steps, the captain-general

delivered up to the bishop the key he had worn suspended from his

neck since the preceding morning. As the procession returned, the

noble strains of the _Vexilla regis_ resounded through the great

church.

"The standard of our King unfurled

Proclaims triumphant to the world

The cross, where Life would suffer death

To gain life with his dying breath!"

My heart beat faster as I listened to the glorious hymn!

The communion made, vespers were chanted in grave and mournful tones,

and the service was concluded. As the bishop descended the nave to

leave the cathedral, the little girls of the nuns' schools crowded

around him to kiss his hand; and it was very pretty to see them clasp

his fingers, and look up in his kind face with a confiding smile.

* * * * *

As it had been officially announced that the meditation on the seven

words of Jesus on the cross, with the ceremony of the descent from

the cross, to be followed by the procession of the interment, were to

take place, as is usual every year, that afternoon in the church of

_San Juan de Dios_, I determined to be present.

At three o'clock, accordingly, I stationed myself in a shady

corner, not far from the principal entrance of _San Juan_, among

a crowd of soldiers, volunteers, and colored people. All gazed at

me inquisitively. I looked like a lady; but my somewhat Andalusian

physiognomy, shaded by the black lace mantilla, put them out a

little. I heard them at last decide that I was an _estranjera_,

(stranger,) and consequently considered capable of, and permitted,

any eccentricity, without derogating from my claim to respect.

Twenty minutes passed away thus; a south wind was blowing, and great

water-laden clouds were fast covering the sky; the heat was very

oppressive, and soon heavy drops of rain began to fall, and every one

rushed to shelter. I ran back to the cathedral, my nearest refuge.

The _Tenebræ_ had just commenced, and I sat there and listened to the

doleful lamentations of Jeremiah, and the wails of the holy women,

mingling with the thunder-crashes and the noise of the pouring rain,

which fell as it only falls within the tropics. It was a combination

of sounds not easily to be forgotten.

At half-past four, the storm was over, and the sky clear and blue

once more, so I determined to hasten to _San Juan_, and, though too

late to hear the meditation, still witness the descent from the

cross. To my surprise, on going to the door I found it impossible

to leave the church; the whole place in front of the cathedral was

knee-deep in water, and all the streets leading from it looked like

swift-flowing rivers! Not until five o'clock did the water subside

sufficiently to permit me to cross the street conducting to _San

Juan_, where, however, I fortunately arrived in time for the ceremony

I so much wished to see.

The high altar had been removed, and in its place, on an elevated

platform, were erected three great crosses, the centre one bearing

the image, large as life, of our Saviour, the other two those of the

thieves crucified with him; the face of the repentant sinner was

turned lovingly toward his Lord, that of the unrepentant looked away

with a scowl.

The figure of the victim was fearfully natural--the pallor of death

was on his blood-stained brow, the gash in his side, and his mangled

hands and feet were livid. Two priests, mounted on ladders placed

against the arms of the cross, were in the act of taking down the

writing when I got near enough to see well. At the command of the

preacher, who had just finished the meditation, and who directed them

from the pulpit, they then proceeded to draw out the nail from the

right hand; when loosened from the tree, the arm fell stiffly and as

if dead; before the other was freed, long and wide linen bands were

passed under both, and around the body, to sustain it and prevent

it from falling forward. _Llorad lagrimas de sangre_--"Weep tears

of blood," cried the preacher while this was being done amid the

breathless silence of the spectators, "he died for you!" So solemnly,

so tenderly did the priests perform their office, that it seemed no

representation, but dreadful reality, and my cheeks grew cold, and

my heart throbbed painfully when the pale, bruised body was gently

lowered and borne to the bier waiting to receive it.

Yes, this cruel death He died for us; but, O true and loving women!

one sweet and proud remembrance will be ours for all eternity--_our_

kiss betrayed him not, nor _our_ tongue denied--

"While even the apostle left him to his doom,

_We_ lingered round his cross, and watched his tomb!"

The preacher now descended from the pulpit, and quitted the church in

company with the other assistant priests; and the direction seemed

to be left in the hands of a fraternity called _los Hermanos de la

Soledad_--the Brethren of Solitude--a set of tall, fine-looking black

men, many with thin lips and _almost_ Roman noses. They were dressed

in robes of black glazed calico, with white lace tippets.

A quarter of an hour elapsed; the church remained crowded, but

there were no signs of preparation for the procession. Presently a

handsome, authoritative-mannered personage, evidently a Spaniard,

entered hastily, and, pushing his way unceremoniously through the

people, sought the members of the brotherhood, to whom he evidently

gave some orders, and then went away. A great silence prevailed, and

every one seemed to be waiting for something. I at last mustered up

courage to ask a brother when the procession would commence.

_No hay procesion hasta el año que viene_--"There will be no

procession until next year"--he answered in a very loud voice.

_Pero, señor, en el diario_--"But, sir, in the newspaper--" I began.

"_No hay procesion hasta el año que viene_," he repeated louder still.

The women broke forth in murmurs; but not a man spoke, though

compressed lips and scowling brows showed sufficiently what was

passing within. I must not omit to remark that the congregation

consisted almost entirely of colored creoles.

By dint of soft but firmly continued pushing, and a pleasant smile

when the individual I elbowed looked grimly at me, I forced my way

out of the disagreeable pack of volunteers and negroes, men and

boys, that surrounded me, to the chancel, where I found a number

of well-dressed and respectable-looking colored ladies seated on

the platform. There the discontent was louder, and I understood

distinctly that the disappointment was attributed more to the

ill-will of their rulers than to the bad state of the weather.

One woman, particularly, exclaimed angrily several times, and

sufficiently loud to be heard by all in that end of the building,

_Hay procesion para los Españoles, pero no para nosotros_--"There are

processions for the Spaniards, but not for us."

However, there was nothing to be done but to submit; so a few

persons went quietly away, and I at last succeeded in obtaining a

close view of the bier. It was in the form of a sarcophagus with

open sides, placed on a trestle concealed by black velvet drapery

spotted with silver stars; the upper part very tastefully decorated

with white and lilac flowers. The image lying within was covered

with a cloth of silver tissue, the head and feet left bare. Close by

stood another trestle, also covered with ornamented black velvet,

and supporting a small platform, on which stood the figures of the

Blessed Virgin, in deep grief, holding in her hand a very handsome

lace pocket-handkerchief, and of St. John, with a profusion of fair

ringlets, sustaining her in his arms. The bier, followed by the

Virgin and St. John, carried by the members of the black _Hermandad_,

escorted by soldiers and military music, and accompanied by a vast

number of people, constitutes the "procession of the interment,"

which every Good-Friday (when permitted) leaves the old church of

_San Juan de Dios_, passes through many streets of the city, and

before the palace of the captain-general, and stops at the cathedral,

into which it enters, and where the images are finally deposited with

great solemnity. This year, as we have seen, the procession did not

take place.

While examining with interest these curious remains of the piety

of the first settlers in the island, I heard some one cry out, _No

deja ninguno salir_--"Let no one go out"--and at the same moment saw

some soldiers lifting up and looking under the velvet draperies as

if searching for some one. Five very uncomfortable minutes followed;

the door by which I had entered was blocked up with soldiers and

volunteers, every one was frightfully silent--and I am not a heroine!

At last the people were allowed to go out by one door, while the

soldiers and volunteers slowly filled up the church by the other.

Exceedingly great was the relief I felt when I found myself safely

seated in the cars, (which in consequence of the rain had been

permitted to enter the city and station themselves in their usual

place,) and on my way home, where I arrived very tired and almost

disgusted with sight-seeing.

HOLY-SATURDAY.

At seven o'clock in the morning of the "_Sabado de Gloria_," the

"Saturday of Glory," as the Spaniards beautifully and expressively

call this great day, I was already established in my usual place

in the nave of the cathedral, though the religious ceremonies were

not to commence until eight. The attendance of the public generally

was less than on Maundy-Thursday and Good-Friday, and none of the

superior authorities of Havana, nor military and civil functionaries,

were present.

The new fire was lighted and blessed precisely as is done with us,

and the five grains of incense placed on the paschal candle; which,

however, was not a tall, thick taper, as in other countries, but

a veritable _pillar_ of wax, about a yard high and six inches in

diameter; transmitting to us most probably an exact resemblance of

that column of wax upon which the patriarch of Alexandria used to

inscribe the paschal epoch and the movable feasts, and which in

progress of time was employed as a torch during the paschal night,

and at last came to be regarded as the symbol of the resuscitated

Saviour, the true light of the world.

After reading the prophecies, the deacon, preceded by the holy cross

and the paschal candle, and accompanied by the clergy and many of

the faithful present, went in procession to bless the new water and

the baptismal fonts. This ceremony also was performed exactly as it

is with us. At its conclusion the deacon returned to the high altar,

and after sprinkling it and the congregation with the newly-blessed

water, the short mass of the day commenced.

Scarcely had the officiating priest begun to intone the _Gloria_,

when the central door of the church burst open, letting in a flood

of golden light; the cannon fired, the drums beat, the bells rang

out, and the loud organ pealed forth a triumphant strain, while

voices that seemed to come from heaven repeated high and clear, with

delicious harmony, _Gloria in excelsis Deo!_

We all simultaneously fell on our knees; for myself, I can say that

never in my life before had I experienced such rapturous emotion.

Never before had I so perfectly realized the triumph of life over

death! Never before, O my God! had I felt so deeply what it was to

praise thee, to bless thee, to adore thee, to glorify thee with my

whole heart. _Gloria in excelsis Deo!_

"God the Redeemer liveth! He who took

Man's nature on him, and in human shroud

Veiled his immortal glory! He is risen--

God the Redeemer liveth! And behold

The gates of life and immortality

Opened to all that breathe!"

The Alleluia was chanted in the same spirit of joy and exultation,

and the services concluded.

* * * * *

Without the church all was now gayety and bustle. The streets were

crowded as if by magic with vehicles of every description. The shops

were all open; the sweetmeat and fruit-sellers at their posts,

looking as if they had never been absent; the lottery-ticket venders

in full cry. The horses and mules had their heads decorated with

bows and rosettes and streamers of bright-colored ribbons, and their

tails elegantly plaited and tied up to one side of their saddle or

harness, with scarlet braid. Even the quiet, patient oxen sported a

bit of finery, and wore flowers on the ponderous yoke that weighed

down their gentle heads. Crowds of busy men hurried hither and

thither; gayly-dressed ladies drove about in their stylish quitrins;

loud talking and laughing was the order of the day among the colored

population; a riff-raff of little blackies pervaded the city, happily

_without_ the squibs, crackers, and fire-arms permitted them until

this year, but quite sufficiently boisterous to be intolerable; while

the church-bells kept ringing out, adding their clang to the noisy

confusion, and _not_ with that merry musical chime we are accustomed

to hear in England, the land of the scientific, well-trained

bell-ringer. But, indeed, nowhere since I listened years ago to the

bells of Saint Mary's in dear old smoky Manchester have I heard a

regular triple bob-major!

EASTER-SUNDAY.

The sun was not yet up when I started for town on Easter morning.

The procession of the resurrection--called, to distinguish it from

other processions of the resurrection, _del encuentro_, "of the

meeting"--was to commence at six o'clock, and I was determined that

no tardiness on my part should prevent my seeing the whole of this

singular relic of bygone ages. The transition from darkness to light

is so wonderfully sudden, however, in these latitudes, that it was

broad day when I reached the cathedral, which I found brilliantly

illuminated with wax tapers, and hung with crimson damask draperies.

Mass had just begun, and there was a considerable number of persons

present, most of them ladies, as is always the case in the churches

of Havana. How the sight of the men-crowded churches of the United

States would astonish these Cubans, who seem to believe that religion

is made for ignorant women and children, and that the less they

profess to have, the more enlightened they appear! As if the really

enlightened man were not he who most deeply feels the necessity of

his Maker's care and love--the consolation of addressing him in

prayer!

As soon as the service was ended, I hastened to the _Calle

Empedrado_, the street leading directly from the cathedral to _San

Juan_, and took up my station on the edge of the sidewalk, about

half-way between the two churches. The balconies of the houses and

the sides of the great barred, glassless windows were hung with red

and yellow draperies; and gayly-dressed ladies and children, and

crowds of colored people, with the inevitable volunteers, thronged

the streets. While thus waiting, I was struck by the appearance of

the dresses of the greater part of the colored creole women; nearly

all wore red, white, and blue, the antagonistic colors to red and

yellow. Their wearers, in all probability, intended by this show of

their political opinions to revenge themselves upon the Spaniards for

the loss of their much-loved procession on Good-Friday.

There was soon a murmur of expectation in the crowd around me, and

presently there appeared coming toward us from _San Juan_ the image,

large as life, of St. Mary Magdalen, dressed in a skirt of silver

tinsel, and an open dress of blue satin, trimmed with silver lace.

A profusion of long auburn ringlets flowed down each side of the

smiling face, and a very elaborate gilded glory was affixed to the

back of the head. The arms were slightly raised, and the hand held

out. This figure stood on a small platform supported on the shoulders

of four of the Brethren of Solitude, such tall men that the saint,

as she advanced rapidly, her curls streaming out behind her, seemed

to be running over the heads of the spectators. As she passed, all

the men took off their hats respectfully. The bearers halted just

in front of me, the Magdalen being supposed to look toward the

sepulchre; after a few minutes' pause, she suddenly turned and ran

back to the church of _San Juan_. In order, probably, to give a more

natural appearance to the image, the men who carried it, and who

evidently took extreme delight and pride in the duty, waddled as they

ran, and so communicated a most ludicrous deportment to the saint.

Every one laughed loud as they watched her roll from side to side,

plunging forward from time to time, and then recovering herself with

a jerk, her hair flopping up and down or streaming out on the air.

_Que bien corre, meneandose_--"How well she runs, shaking

herself!"--was the admiring exclamation of several persons near

me, and they laughed; yes, men, women, and children, black and

white, roared with laughter, and yet, I verily believe, not one

among them all laughed in derision, or felt the slightest sentiment

of disrespect. "Perfect love casteth out fear," says the apostle;

and it never entered into their heads that the good saint could be

displeased because, like simple children, they laughed at so artless

a representation of her. The grotesque movements excited their

hilarity, and they were hilarious on the impulse of the moment, and

without _arrière pensée_. The Latin race is sometimes remarkable for

a child-like simplicity in its actions which too often is mistaken by

colder temperaments for a lack of veneration and propriety.

In a little while the saint came running down the street again,

saluted respectfully again by the merry crowd. A halt of five

minutes, while she looked earnestly in the direction of the

sepulchre, and then she turned and rushed back, more violently

agitated than before, and amidst reiterated shouts of laughter, to

_San Juan de Dios_, to tell the Blessed Virgin the good tidings that

her Son was alive again.

And now the loud strains of martial music reached our ears, and we

saw emerging from the square in front of the cathedral, and slowly

advancing toward us, a high, handsome structure carried on the

shoulders of a member of the black _Hermandad_. In the centre of it

stood the image of the risen Saviour, crowned with a radiant glory;

his right hand extended as if to welcome, his left grasping a white

and gold banner, which displayed, when the breeze unfurled its folds,

a blood-red cross. A little angel with outspread wings seemed to

hover in front of the gorgeous fabric, as if to herald the coming

Lord. A regiment of colored soldiers, wearing white drill uniforms

with red facings, escorted this triumphal car, the band playing its

gayest airs.

At the same moment the Holy Virgin, attired in gold-colored silk

damask, with a magnificent halo around her head, appeared at the

opposite end of the street coming to meet him. She was followed at

a short distance by St. Mary Magdalen, now more subdued in manner.

The Virgin's arms were raised as if about to clasp them around her

beloved Son, and her face wore an expression of ecstatic joy.

The two processions met where I stood, and after a short pause,

St. Mary Magdalen, who was the nearest to the church of _San Juan

de Dios_, turned round and led the way thither, the Virgin turning

also, and the two processions now forming but one. Slowly, but to

the liveliest music, in which mingled the strains of Riesgo's hymn,

the whole mass of us--for we spectators fell into the ranks--moved

onward, every one looking glad and gay, and so we at last reached the

old church, which was far too small to contain one half of us, and

the images entered one after the other with all the assistants who

could force their way in. We weaker vessels, left outside, seeing it

hopeless to try to get in, soon dispersed. I have since learnt that

no kind of religious ceremony took place; the images were simply set

down, and after a while the church was cleared of the people and

closed for an hour or two.

There are processions of the resurrection from a great number of

churches perambulating the city every Easter-Sunday; but this one "of

the Meeting," is by far the most curious and interesting. That of the

church of the _Espiritu Santo_ is considered one of the prettiest,

because of the children in fancy dresses that take part in it.

This year, I was told, a great majority of them wore volunteer or

_cantinera_ (canteen-women, or sutler) costumes, to the great disgust

of Cuban mothers.

* * * * *

There was, of course, much festivity going on in the city and suburbs

all that day. There were family meetings and the pleasant _retreta_

in the evening for some; the theatre and public balls for others;

and, I am sorry to say, there was cock-fighting for that brutal

minority which in all countries seems to seek its greatest enjoyment

in the contemplation of bloody strife.

Yet, in sad truth, there had been strife enough in the streets of

Havana during the past week to have contented the most sanguinary

temper, and sorrow enough to have softened the hardest. Palm-Sunday

had witnessed the farewell to all that was dear to them of two

hundred and fifty unfortunate men; had witnessed, also, the wretched

end of the two youths about to embark with the other prisoners, and

the noble death of the courageous commissary of police, shot down

while he sought to protect them from the vengeance of the volunteers,

whom their mad bravadoes, as they were marched down to the ship, had

infuriated. In the course of the week a colored man had been killed

in the streets for seditious cries, and several others stabbed at

night by unknown hands. And as if to keep up the constant anxiety and

fear that overcast Havana like a lurid cloud, the Cubans by every

possible covert insult, and only just avoiding the most terrible

consequences, had shown their hatred of their Spanish rulers.

One trifling incident became a subject of interest and excitement

that would have been absurd under any other circumstances than the

present. On Good-Friday a _gorrion_ (sparrow) was found dead in the

_Plaza de Armas_ by a volunteer. Some say, though others contradict

the report, that the poor little bird had its eyes torn out, its

heart transfixed with pins, and a paper attached to one of its feet

containing the words, _Asi mueran todos los gorriones_--"May all

sparrows die thus!" Now, it must be understood that _gorrion_ is

another of the appellations bestowed on the Spaniards by the Cubans.

A few sparrows having been brought from Europe to the island by some

ship-captain, they prospered and multiplied in such a degree that

they soon outnumbered and domineered over the _Bijirita_, a native

bird somewhat smaller, but much resembling the sparrow in form,

color, and habits. An analogy being imagined between the Spaniards

and the new-comer--the name of _gorrion_ was given to all the

natives of the peninsula of Spain, while the Cubans adopted that of

_Bijirita_.

The little dead _gorrion_ found on Good-Friday was placed with much

ceremony in a glass coffin, and laid in state in a room of one of the

barracks, on a lofty catafalque, with velvet pall and lighted tapers

and a guard of honor. Crowns of fresh flowers, and of red and yellow

"everlastings," were suspended around and above the remains of the

typical bird, and two exquisite nosegays, each more than three feet

high, and as much in circumference, the gifts of the captain-general

and of the _generala_ his wife, stood one at the head, the other at

the foot of the mimic tomb. All the volunteers paid their respects

with much ceremony to the little representative of their race, and so

many people crowded to visit it on Holy-Saturday that it was at last

determined to utilize public curiosity.

On Easter-Sunday every person who wished to see the _gorrion_ was

obliged to pay ten cents, which were to go to the fund destined

to aid the volunteers disabled in the present terrible struggle.

On Easter morning the sum received amounted to three hundred and

fifty-one dollars!

A great number of songs, sonnets, and odes were composed in honor

of the poor little bird, and the manuscripts were tied by colored

ribbons to the crowns suspended above it. They have since been

collected and printed, and sold for the benefit of the same fund.

Many of them were published in the _Diario de la Marina_, the

official daily paper of Havana. The following are specimens of the

effusions:

AL GORRION.

Gloria al Gorrion que aquì veis

Inanimado y marchito,

Ya jamas de su piquito

El dulce canto oireis.

Pero en cambio no olvideis

Los que lo mireis con saña,

Que si ya la muerte empaña

Su mirada inteligente,

De su raza prepotente

Hay millones in España!

_La Compañia de Cazadores del 7^o Batallon._

TO THE SPARROW.

Glory to the Sparrow that you see here

Lifeless and blighted,

Never more from his little bill

Will you hear a sweet song.

But in exchange, do not forget,

You who look at him with ill-will,

That if indeed death has dimmed

His intelligent glance,

Of his most powerful race

There are millions in Spain!

_The Company of Cazadores of the 7th Battalion._

Aqui reposa un Gorrion

Que esta tarde se le entierra

Y otros cien en pié de guerra

La sirven de guarnicion,

Bijiritas, en tropel

Furiosas aleteais

¿Por ventura no observais

Que estais ya mas muertas que el?

Descansa en paz, oh gorrion,

Y admite esta ofrenda fria

De la cuarta compañia

De este quinto batallon!

TRANSLATION.

Here rests a Sparrow,

To be buried this afternoon,

And a hundred more in warlike trim

Serve him as a guard.

You crowds of Bijiritas

Who beat your wings with fury,

Do you not by chance remark

That you are already more dead than he is?

Rest in peace, O sparrow!

And accept this cold offering

From the fourth company

Of the fifth battalion.

The gorrion was buried, and Havana left once more without other

thought than that which had occupied Spaniards and Cubans for the

several months previous. It is said that in former days ships which

approached the tropic of Cancer, knew when they were nearing the

shores of Cuba by the sweet odor of flowers and honey borne to them

on the breeze; now, alas! the beautiful island is recognized from

afar rather by the light of her burning plantations--by the smell of

gunpowder and of blood! To all who have lived in Havana and who have

friends among both parties; to all who know and appreciate the proud

sense of honor and unshrinking courage of the one, and the quick

intelligence and high aspirations of the other, the present struggle

must and does give the deepest pain.

But while they sympathize sincerely with those who sorrow, they

believe that "behind a frowning providence God hides a smiling face,"

and that, the strife ended, Cuba will rise again from her ashes,

purified and regenerated; for it is written that "they who sow in

tears shall reap in joy"!

THORNS.

HOMAGE TO THE CROSS, GOOD-FRIDAY, 1870.

Here his head rested,

Crimsoned with blood;

Jesus' hard slumber-place,

Pillow of wood!

Here his eye clouded;

Dwell there, my gaze,

Where the dear light of love

Dyingly plays!

Here the nails rankled;

There the lance tore,

While strove the water-tide

Vainly with gore!