CHAPTER IX.

THE ARTIST MONK.

On the evening when Agnes and her grandmother had returned from the

convent, as they were standing after their supper looking over the

garden parapet into the gorge, their attention was caught by a man in an

ecclesiastical habit, slowly climbing the rocky pathway towards them.

“Isn’t that brother Antonio?” asked Dame Elsie, leaning forward to

observe more narrowly. “Yes, to be sure it is.”

“Oh, how glad I am!” exclaimed Agnes, springing up with vivacity, and

looking eagerly down the path by which the stranger was approaching.

A few moments more of clambering, and the stranger met the two women at

the gate with a gesture of benediction. He was apparently a little past

the middle point of life, and entering on its shady afternoon. He was

tall and well proportioned, and his features had the spare delicacy of

the Italian outline. The round brow fully developed in all the perceptive

and æsthetic regions, the keen eye shadowed by long dark lashes, the

thin flexible lips, the sunken cheek, where on the slightest emotion

there fluttered a brilliant flush of colour,—all were signs telling of

the enthusiast in whom the nervous and spiritual predominated over the

animal. At times, his eye had a dilating brightness, as if from the

flickering of some inward fire which was slowly consuming the mortal

part, and its expression was brilliant even to the verge of insanity.

His dress was the simple, coarse, white stuff gown of the Dominican

friars, over which he wore a darker travelling garment of coarse cloth,

with a hood, from whose deep shadows his bright mysterious eyes looked

like jewels from a cavern. At his side dangled a great rosary and cross

of black wood, and under his arm he carried a portfolio secured with a

leathern strap, which seemed stuffed to bursting with papers.

Father Antonio, whom we have thus introduced to the reader, was a

travelling preaching monk from the convent of San Marco in Florence, on a

pastoral and artistic tour through Italy.

Convents in the Middle Ages were the retreats of multitudes, of different

natures, who did not wish to live in a state of perpetual warfare and

offence, and all the elegant arts flourished under their protecting

shadows. Ornamental gardening, pharmacy, drawing, painting, carving in

wood, illumination, and calligraphy, were not unfrequent occupations of

the holy fathers, and the convent has given to the illustrious roll of

Italian art some of its most brilliant names. No institution in modern

Europe had a more established reputation in all these respects than the

convent of San Marco in Florence. In its best days, it was as near an

approach to an ideal community, associated to unite religion, beauty,

and utility, as ever has existed on earth. It was a retreat from the

commonplace prose of life into an atmosphere at once devotional and

poetic; and prayers and sacred hymns consecrated the elegant labours

of the chisel and the pencil, no less than the more homely ones of the

still and the crucible. San Marco, far from being that kind of sluggish

lagoon often imagined in conventual life, was rather a sheltered hotbed

of ideas—fervid with intellectual and moral energy, and before the age

in every radical movement. At this period, Savonarola, the poet and

prophet of the Italian religious world of his day, was Superior of

this convent, pouring through all the members of the Order the fire

of his own impassioned nature, and seeking to lead them back to the

fervours of more primitive and evangelical ages, and in the reaction of

a worldly and corrupt Church was beginning to feel the power of that

current which at last drowned his eloquent voice in the cold waters of

martyrdom. Savonarola was an Italian Luther—differing from him as the

more ethereally strung and nervous Italian differs from the bluff and

burly German; and like Luther he became in his time the centre of every

living thing in society about him. He inspired the pencils of artists,

guided the councils of statesmen, and, a poet himself, was an inspiration

to poets. Everywhere in Italy the monks of his Order were travelling,

restoring the shrines, preaching against the voluptuous and unworthy

pictures with which sensual artists had desecrated the churches, and

calling the people back by their exhortations to the purity of primitive

Christianity.

Father Antonio was a younger brother of Elsie, and had early become a

member of the San Marco, enthusiastic not less in religion than in art.

His intercourse with his sister had few points of sympathy, Elsie being

as decided a utilitarian as any old Yankee female born in the granite

hills of New Hampshire, and pursuing with a hard and sharp energy her

narrow plan of life for Agnes. She regarded her brother as a very

properly religious person, considering his calling, but was a little

bored with his exuberant devotion, and absolutely indifferent to his

artistic enthusiasm. Agnes, on the contrary, had from a child attached

herself to her uncle with all the energy of a sympathetic nature, and

his yearly visits had been looked forward to on her part with intense

expectation. To him she could say a thousand things which instinctively

she concealed from her grandmother; and Elsie was well pleased with

the confidence, because it relieved her a little from the vigilant

guardianship that she otherwise held over the girl: when Father Antonio

was about, she had leisure now and then for a little private gossip of

her own.

“Dear uncle, how glad I am to see you once more!” was the eager

salutation with which the young girl received the monk, as he gained the

little garden; “and you have brought your pictures,—oh, I know you have

so many pretty things to show me!”

“Well, well, child,” said Elsie, “don’t begin upon that now: a little

talk of bread and cheese will be more in point. Come in, brother, and

wash your feet, and let me beat the dust out of your cloak, and give you

something to stay nature; for you must be fasting.”

“Thank you, sister,” said the monk; “and as for you, pretty one, never

mind what she says. Uncle Antonio will show his little Agnes everything

by-and-by.—A good little thing it is, sister.”

“Yes, yes, good enough,—and too good,” said Elsie, bustling about;—“roses

can’t help having thorns, I suppose.”

“Only our ever-blessed Rose of Sharon, the dear mystical Rose of

Paradise, can boast of having no thorns,” said the monk, bowing and

crossing himself devoutly.

Agnes clasped her hands on her bosom and bowed also, while Elsie stopped

with her knife in the middle of a loaf of black bread, and crossed

herself with somewhat of impatience,—like a worldly-minded person of our

day, who is interrupted in the midst of an observation by a grace.

After the rites of hospitality had been duly observed, the old dame

seated herself contentedly at her door with her distaff, resigned Agnes

to the safe guardianship of her uncle, and had a feeling of security

in seeing them sitting together on the parapet of the garden, with

the portfolio spread out between them; the warm twilight glow of the

evening sky lighting up their figures as they bent in ardent interest

over its contents. The portfolio showed a fluttering collection of

sketches,—fruits, flowers, animals, insects, faces, figures, shrines,

buildings, trees; all, in short, that might strike the mind of a man

to whose eye nothing on the face of the earth is without beauty and

significance.

“Oh, how beautiful!” exclaimed the girl, taking up one sketch, in which a

bunch of rosy cyclamen was painted rising out of a bed of moss.

“Ah, that, indeed, my dear!” said the artist. “Would you had seen the

place where I painted it! I stopped there to recite my prayers one

morning; ’twas by the side of a beautiful cascade, and all the ground was

covered with these lovely cyclamens, and the air was musky with their

fragrance. Ah, the bright rose-coloured leaves! I can get no colour like

them, unless some angel would bring me some from those sunset clouds

yonder.”

“And oh, dear uncle, what lovely primroses!” pursued Agnes, taking up

another paper.

“Yes, child; but you should have seen them when I was coming down the

south side of the Apennines;—these were everywhere so pale and sweet,

they seemed like the humility of our most Blessed Mother in her lowly

mortal state. I am minded to make a border of primroses to the leaf in

the Breviary where is the ‘Hail, Mary!’ for it seems as if that flower

doth ever say, ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord!’”

“And what will you do with the cyclamen, uncle? does not that mean

something?”

“Yes, daughter,” replied the monk, readily entering into that symbolical

strain which permeated all the heart and mind of the religious of

his day; “I _can_ see a meaning in it. For you see that the cyclamen

puts forth its leaves in early spring deeply engraven with mystical

characters, and loves cool shadows and moist, dark places, but comes at

length to wear a royal crown of crimson; and it seems to me like the

saints who dwell in convents and other prayerful places, and have the

word of God graven in their hearts in youth, till their hearts blossom

into fervent love and they are crowned with royal graces.”

“Ah!” sighed Agnes, “how beautiful and blessed to be among such!”

“Thou sayest well, dear child. Blessed are the flowers of God that grow

in cool solitudes, and have never been profaned by the hot sun and dust

of this world!”

“I should like to be such a one,” said Agnes. “I often think, when I

visit the sisters at the convent, that I long to be one of them.”

“A pretty story!” cried Dame Elsie, who had heard the last words. “What!

go into a convent and leave your poor grandmother all alone, when she has

toiled night and day for so many years to get a dowry for you and find

you a worthy husband!”

“I don’t want any husband in this world, grandmamma,” said Agnes.

“What talk is this? Not want a good husband to take care of you when your

poor old grandmother is gone? Who will provide for you?”

“He who took care of the blessed Saint Agnes, grandmamma.”

“Saint Agnes, to be sure! That was a great many years ago, and times have

altered since then;—in these days girls must have husbands.”

“But if the darling hath a vocation?” suggested the artist, mildly.

“Vocation! I’ll see to that! She shan’t have a vocation! Do you suppose

I’m going to toil, and spin, and wear myself to the bone, and have her

slip through my fingers at last with a vocation? No, indeed!”

“Indeed, dear grandmother, don’t be angry!” pleaded Agnes. “I will do

just as you say,—only I don’t want a husband.”

“Well, well, my little heart,—one thing at a time; you shan’t have him

till you say yes willingly,” said Elsie, in a mollified tone.

Agnes turned again to the portfolio and busied herself with it, her eyes

dilating as she ran over the sketches.

“Ah! what pretty, pretty bird is this?” she asked.

“Knowest thou not that bird, with his little red beak?” said the artist.

“When our dear Lord hung bleeding and no man pitied Him, this bird,

filled with tender love, tried to draw out the nails with his poor little

beak—so much better were the birds than we hard-hearted sinners!—hence he

hath honour in many pictures. See here—I shall put him in the office of

the Sacred Heart, in a little nest curiously built in a running vine of

passion-flower. See here, daughter—I have a great commission to execute

a breviary for our house, and our holy father was pleased to say that

the spirit of the blessed Angelico had in some little humble measure

descended on me, and now I am busy day and night; for not a twig rustles,

not a bird flies, nor a flower blossoms, but I begin to see therein some

hint of holy adornment to my blessed work.”

“Oh, uncle Antonio, how happy you must be!” exclaimed Agnes, her large

eyes dilating and filling with tears.

“Happy!—child, am I not?” returned the monk, looking up and crossing

himself. “Holy Mother, am I not? Do I not walk the earth in a dream of

bliss, and see the footsteps of my most Blessed Lord and his dear Mother

on every rock and hill? I see the flowers rise up in clouds to adore

them. What am I, unworthy sinner, that such grace is granted me? Often

I fall on my face before the humblest flower where my dear Lord hath

written his name, and confess I am unworthy the honour of copying his

sweet handiwork.”

The artist spoke these words with his hands clasped and his fervid eyes

upraised, like a man in an ecstasy; nor can our more prosaic English give

an idea of the fluent simplicity and grace with which such images melt

into that lovely tongue that seems made to be the natural language of

poetry and enthusiasm.

Agnes looked up to him with awe, as to some celestial being; but there

was a sympathetic glow in her face, and she crossed her hands on her

bosom, as her manner often was when much moved, and, drawing a deep sigh,

ejaculated:—“Would that such gifts were mine!”

“They are thine, sweet one,” replied the monk. “In Christ’s dear kingdom

is no ‘mine’ or ‘thine,’ but all that each hath is the property of

the others. I never rejoice so much in my art as when I think of the

communion of saints; and that all that our Blessed Lord will work through

me is the property of the humblest soul in his kingdom. When I see one

flower rarer than another, or a bird singing on a twig, I take note of

the same, and say, ‘This lovely work of God shall be for some shrine, or

the border of a missal, or the foreground of an altar-piece, and thus

shall his saints be comforted.’”

“But,” said Agnes, fervently, “how little can a poor young maiden do! Ah,

I do so long to offer myself up in some way to the dear Lord who gave

Himself for us, and for his most Blessed Church!”

As Agnes spoke these words, her cheek, usually so clear and pale, became

suffused with a tremulous colour, and her dark eyes beamed with a deep,

divine expression; a moment after, the colour slowly faded, her head

drooped, and her long dark lashes fell on her cheek, while her hands

were folded on her bosom. The eye of the monk was watching her with an

enkindled glance.

“Is she not the very presentment of our Blessed Lady in the

Annunciation?” said he to himself. “Surely, this grace is upon her for

this special purpose. My prayers are answered.”

“Daughter,” he began, in a gentle tone, “a glorious work has been done of

late in Florence under the preaching of our blessed Superior. Could you

believe it, daughter, in these times of backsliding and rebuke there have

been found painters base enough to paint the pictures of vile, abandoned

women in the character of our Blessed Lady; yea, and princes have been

found wicked enough to buy them and put them up in churches, so that the

people have had the Mother of all Purity presented to them in the guise

of a vile harlot. Is it not dreadful?”

“How horrible!” ejaculated Agnes.

“Ah, but you should have seen the great procession through Florence, when

all the little children were inspired by the heavenly preaching of our

blessed Master. These dear little ones, carrying the blessed cross and

singing the hymns our Master had written for them, went from house to

house and church to church, demanding that everything that was vile and

base should be delivered up to the flames; and the people, beholding,

thought that the angels had indeed come down, so they brought forth all

their loose pictures and vile books, such as Boccaccio’s romances and

other defilements, and the children made a great bonfire of them in

the Grand Piazza, and thus thousands of vile things were consumed and

scattered. And then our blessed Master exhorted the artists to give their

pencils to Christ and his Mother, and to seek for her image among pious

and holy women living a veiled and secluded life, like that our Lady

lived before the blessed Annunciation. ‘Think you,’ he continued, ‘that

the blessed Angelico obtained the grace to set forth our Lady in such

heavenly wise, by gazing about the streets on mincing women tricked out

in all the world’s bravery?—Did he not find her image in holy solitudes,

among modest and prayerful saints?’”

“Ah,” exclaimed Agnes, drawing in her breath with an expression of awe,

“what mortal would dare to sit for the image of our Lady!”

“Dear child, there be women whom the Lord crowns with beauty when they

know it not, and our dear Mother sheds so much of her spirit into their

hearts that it shines out in their faces; among such must the painter

look. Dear little child, be not ignorant that our Lord hath shed this

great grace on thee. I have received a light that thou art to be the

model for the ‘Hail, Mary!’ in my Breviary.”

“Oh, no, no, no! it cannot be!” cried Agnes, covering her face.

“My daughter, thou art very beautiful, and this beauty was given thee not

for thyself, but to be laid like a sweet flower on the altar of thy Lord.

Think how blessed, if, through thee, the faithful be reminded of the

modesty and humility of Mary, so that their prayers become more fervent!

Would it not be a great grace?”

“Dear uncle,” replied Agnes, “I am Christ’s child. If it be as you

say,—which I did not know,—give me some days to pray and prepare my soul,

that I may offer myself in all humility.”

During this conversation Elsie had left the garden and gone a little way

down the gorge, to have a few moments of gossip with an old crony of

hers. The light of the evening sky had gradually faded away, and the full

moon was pouring a shower of silver upon the orange-trees. As Agnes sat

on the parapet, with the moonlight streaming down on her young, spiritual

face, now tremulous with deep suppressed emotion, the painter thought he

had never seen any human creature that looked nearer to his conception of

a celestial being.

They both sat awhile in that kind of quietude which often falls between

two who have stirred some deep fountain of emotion. All was so still

around them, that the drip and trickle of the little stream which

fell from the garden wall into the dark abyss of the gorge, could be

distinctly heard as it pattered from one rocky point to another, with a

light, lulling sound. Suddenly their revery was disturbed by the shadow

of a figure which passed into the moonlight and seemed to have risen

from the side of the gorge. A man, enveloped in a dark cloak with a

peaked hood, stepped across the moss-grown garden parapet, stood a moment

irresolute, then the cloak dropped suddenly from him, and the cavalier

appeared in the moonlight before Agnes. He bore in his hand a tall stalk

of white lily, with open blossoms and buds and tender fluted green

leaves, such as one sees in a thousand pictures of the Annunciation. The

moonlight fell full upon his face, revealing his haughty yet beautiful

features, agitated by some profound emotion. The monk and the girl were

both too much surprised for a moment to utter a sound; and when, after

an instant, the monk made a half-movement as if to speak, the cavalier

raised his right hand with a sudden authoritative gesture which silenced

him. Then turning toward Agnes, he knelt, and kissed the hem of her robe,

and laying the lily in her lap, exclaimed, “Holiest and dearest—oh!

forget not to pray for me!” He rose again in a moment, and, throwing his

cloak around him, sprang over the garden wall, and was heard rapidly

descending into the shadows of the gorge.

All this passed so quickly that it seemed to both the spectators like a

dream. The splendid man, with his jewelled weapons, his haughty bearing

and air of easy command, bowing with such solemn humility before the

peasant girl, reminded the monk of the barbaric princes in the wonderful

legends he had read, who had been drawn by some heavenly inspiration to

come and render themselves up to the teachings of holy virgins, chosen of

the Lord, in divine solitudes. In the poetical world in which he lived

such marvels were possible: there were a thousand precedents for them in

that dream-land of the devout, “The Lives of the Saints.”

“My daughter,” he said, after looking vainly down the dark shadows to

track the path of the stranger, “have you ever seen this man before?”

“Yes, uncle; yesterday evening I saw him for the first time, when sitting

at my stand at the gate of the city. It was at the Ave Maria; he came up

there and asked my prayers, and gave me a diamond ring for the shrine of

Saint Agnes, which I carried to the convent.

“Behold, my dear daughter, the confirmation of what I have just said to

thee! It is evident that our Lady hath endowed thee with the great grace

of a beauty which draws the soul upward toward the angels, instead of

downward to sensual things, like the beauty of worldly women. What saith

the blessed poet Dante of the beauty of the holy Beatrice?—that it said

to every man who looked on her, ‘_Aspire!_’ Great is the grace; and thou

must give special praise therefor.”

“I would,” said Agnes, thoughtfully, “that I knew who this stranger is,

and what is his great trouble and need,—his eyes are so full of sorrow.

Giulietta said he was the king’s brother, and was called the Lord Adrian.

What sorrow can he have, or what need for the prayers of a poor maid like

me?”

“Perhaps the Lord hath pierced him with a longing after the celestial

beauty and heavenly purity of paradise, and wounded him with a divine

sorrow, as happened to Saint Francis and to the blessed Saint Dominic,”

said the monk. “Beauty is the Lord’s arrow, wherewith He pierceth to

the inmost soul, with a divine longing and languishment which find rest

only in Him. Hence, thou seest, the wounds of love in saints are always

painted by us with holy flames ascending from them. Have good courage,

sweet child, and pray with fervour for this youth: there be no prayers

sweeter before the throne of God than those of spotless maidens. The

Scripture saith, ‘The beloved feedeth among the lilies.’”

At this moment was heard the sharp, decided tramp of Elsie re-entering

the garden.

“Come, Agnes,” she cried, “it is time for you to begin your prayers, or,

the saints know, I shall not get you to bed till midnight. I suppose

prayers are a good thing,” she added, seating herself wearily; “but if

one must have so many of them, one must get about them early: there’s

reason in all things.”

Agnes, who had been sitting abstractedly on the parapet, with her head

drooped over the lily-spray, now seemed to collect herself. She rose up

in a grave and thoughtful manner, and, going forward to the shrine of the

Madonna, removed the flowers of the morning, and, holding the vase under

the spout of the fountain all feathered with waving maidenhair, filled it

with fresh water, the drops falling from it in a thousand little silver

rings in the moonlight.

“I have a thought,” said the monk to himself, drawing from his girdle a

pencil and hastily sketching by the moonlight. What he drew was a fragile

maiden form, sitting with clasped hands on a mossy ruin, gazing on a

spray of white lilies which lay before her. He called it, The Blessed

Virgin pondering the Lily of the Annunciation.

“Hast thou ever reflected,” he asked of Agnes, “what that lily might be

like which the angel Gabriel brought to our Lady?—for, trust me, it was

no mortal flower, but grew by the river of life. I have often meditated

thereon, that it was like unto living silver with a light in itself,

like the moon—even as our Lord’s garments in the Transfiguration, which

glistened like the snow. I have cast about in myself by what device a

painter might represent so marvellous a flower.”

“Now, brother Antonio,” Elsie broke in, “if you begin to talk to the

child about such matters, our Lady alone knows when we shall get to bed.

I am sure I’m as good a Christian as anybody; but, as I said, there’s

reason in all things: one cannot always be wondering and inquiring into

heavenly matters—as to every feather in Saint Michael’s wings, and as to

our Lady’s girdle and shoestrings and thimble and work-basket; and when

one gets through with our Lady, then one has it all to go over about her

mother, the blessed Saint Anne (may her name be ever praised!) I mean no

disrespect, but the saints are reasonable folk, and must see that poor

folk must live, and, in order to live, must think of something else now

and then besides _them_. That’s my mind, brother.”

“Well, well, sister,” returned the monk, placidly, “no doubt you are

right. There shall be no quarrelling in the Lord’s vineyard: every one

hath his manner and place, and you follow the lead of the blessed Saint

Martha, which is holy and honourable.”

“Honourable! I should think it might be!” retorted Elsie. “I warrant me,

if everything had been left to Saint Mary’s doings, our Blessed Lord and

the Twelve Apostles might have gone supperless. But it’s Martha gets all

the work, and Mary all the praise.”

“Quite right, quite right,” said the monk, abstractedly, while he stood

out in the moonlight busily sketching the fountain. By just such a

fountain he thought our Lady might have washed the clothes of the Blessed

Babe. Doubtless there was some such in the court of her dwelling, all

mossy and with sweet waters for ever singing a song of praise.

Elsie was now heard within the house making energetic commotion, rattling

pots and pans, and effecting decided movements among the simple furniture

of the dwelling; probably with a view to preparing for the night’s repose

of her guest.

Meanwhile Agnes, kneeling before the shrine, was going through, with

great feeling and tenderness, the various manuals and movements of

nightly devotion which her own religious fervour and the zeal of

her spiritual advisers had enjoined upon her. Christianity, when it

entered Italy, came among a people every act of whose life was coloured

and consecrated by symbolic and ritual acts of heathenism. The only

possible way to uproot this was in supplanting it by Christian ritual

and symbolism equally minute and pervading. Besides, in those ages when

the Christian preacher was utterly destitute of all such help as the

press now gives in keeping under the eye of converts the great inspiring

truths of religion, it was one of the first offices of every saint whose

preaching stirred the heart of the people, to devise symbolic forms,

signs, and observances, by which the mobile and fluctuating heart of

the multitude might crystallize into habits of devout remembrance. The

rosary, the crucifix, the shrine, the banner, the processions, were

catechisms and tracts invented for those who could not read, wherein

the substance of pages was condensed and gave itself to the eye and

the touch. Let us not, from the height of our day, with the better

appliances which a universal press gives us, sneer at the homely rounds

of the ladder by which the first multitudes of the Lord’s flock climbed

heavenward.

If there seemed somewhat mechanical in the number of times which Agnes

repeated the “Hail, Mary!”—in the prescribed number of times she rose,

or bowed, or crossed herself, or laid her forehead in low humility on

the flags of the pavement, it was redeemed by the earnest fervour which

inspired each action. However foreign to the habits of a Northern mind

or education such a mode of prayer may be, these forms to her were all

helpful and significant; her soul was borne by them Godward, and often,

as she prayed, it seemed to her that she could feel the dissolving of all

earthy things, and the pressing nearer and nearer of the great cloud of

witnesses who ever surround the humblest member of Christ’s mystical body.

“Sweet loving hearts around her beat,

Sweet helping hands are stirred,

And palpitates the veil between

With breathings almost heard.”

Certain English writers, looking entirely from a worldly and

philosophical stand-point, are utterly at a loss to account for the

power which certain Italian women of obscure birth came to exercise in

the councils of nations merely by the force of a mystical piety; but the

Northern mind of Europe is entirely unfitted to read and appreciate the

psychological religious phenomena of Southern races. The temperament

which in our modern days has been called the mediæval, and which with

us is only exceptional, is more or less a race-peculiarity of Southern

climates, and gives that objectiveness to the conception of spiritual

things from which grew up a complete ritual and a whole world of

religious art. The Southern saints and religious artists were seers—men

and women of that peculiar fineness and delicacy of temperament which

made them peculiarly apt to receive and project outward the truths of

the spiritual life; they were in that state of “divine madness” which is

favourable to the most intense conception of the poet and artist, and

something of this influence descended through all the channels of the

people.

When Agnes rose from prayer, she had a serene, exalted expression, like

one who walks with some unseen excellence and meditates on some untold

joy. As she was crossing the court to come towards her uncle, her eye

was attracted by the sparkle of something on the ground, and, stooping,

she picked up a heart-shaped locket, curiously made of a large amethyst,

and fastened with a golden arrow. As she pressed upon this, the locket

opened and disclosed to her view a folded paper. Her mood at this moment

was so calm and elevated that she received the incident with no start or

quiver of the nerves. To her it seemed a providential token, which would

probably bring to her some further knowledge of this mysterious being who

had been so especially confided to her intercessions.

Agnes had learned of the superior of the convent the art of reading

writing, which would never have been the birthright of the peasant-girl

in her times, and the moonlight had that dazzling clearness which

revealed every letter.

She stood by the parapet, one hand lying in the white blossoming alyssum

which filled its marble crevices, while she seriously read and pondered

the contents of the paper.

TO AGNES.

Sweet saint, sweet lady, may a sinful soul

Approach thee with an offering of love,

And lay at thy dear feet a weary heart

That loves thee, as it loveth God above?

If blessed Mary may without a stain

Receive the love of sinners most defiled,

If the fair saints that walk with her in white

Refuse not love from earth’s most guilty child,

Shouldst thou, sweet lady, then that love deny

Which all-unworthy at thy feet is laid?

Ah, gentlest angel, be not more severe

Than the dear heavens unto a loving prayer!

Howe’er unworthily that prayer be said,

Let thine acceptance be like that on high!

There might have been times in Agnes’ life when the reception of this

note would have astonished and perplexed her; but the whole strain

of thought and conversation this evening had been in exalted and

poetical regions, and the soft stillness of the hour, the wonderful

calmness and clearness of the moonlight, all seemed in unison with the

strange incident that had occurred, and with the still stranger tenor

of the paper. The soft melancholy and half-religious tone of it was

in accordance with the whole undercurrent of her life, and prevented

that start of alarm which any homage of a more worldly form might have

excited. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that she read it

many times with pauses and intervals of deep thought, and then with a

movement of natural and girlish curiosity examined the rich jewel which

had enclosed the paper. At last, seeming to collect her thoughts, she

folded the paper and replaced it in its sparkling recess, and, unlocking

the door of the shrine, laid the gem with its inclosure beneath the

lily-spray, as another offering to the Madonna. “Dear Mother,” she

prayed, “if indeed it be so, may he rise from loving me to loving thee

and thy dear Son, who is Lord of all! Amen!” Thus praying, she locked the

door and turned thoughtfully to her repose, leaving the monk pacing up

and down in the moonlit garden.

Meanwhile the cavalier was standing on the velvet mossy bridge which

spanned the stream at the bottom of the gorge, watching the play of

moonbeams on layer after layer of tremulous silver foliage in the clefts

of the black, rocky walls on either side. The moon rode so high in the

deep violet-coloured sky, that her beams came down almost vertically,

making green and translucent the leaves through which they passed, and

throwing strongly marked shadows here and there on the flower-embroidered

moss of the old bridge. There was that solemn, plaintive stillness in the

air which makes the least sound—the hum of an insect’s wing, the cracking

of a twig, the patter of falling water—distinct and impressive.

It needs not to be explained how the cavalier, following the steps of

Agnes and her grandmother at a distance, had threaded the path by which

they ascended to their little sheltered nook—how he had lingered within

hearing of Agnes’ voice, and moving among the surrounding rocks and

trees, and drawing nearer and nearer as evening shadows drew on, had

listened to the conversation, hoping that some unexpected chance might

gain him a moment’s speech with his enchantress.

The reader will have gathered from a previous chapter that the conception

which Agnes had formed as to the real position of her admirer from

the reports of Giulietta was false, and that in reality he was not

Lord Adrian, the brother of the king, but an outcast and landless

representative of one branch of an ancient and noble Roman family, whose

estates had been confiscated and whose relations had been murdered, to

satisfy the boundless rapacity of Cæsar Borgia, the infamous favourite of

the notorious Alexander VI.

The natural temperament of Agostino Sarelli had been rather that of the

poet and artist than of the warrior. In the beautiful gardens of his

ancestral home it had been his delight to muse over the pages of Dante

and Ariosto, to sing to the lute, and to write in the facile flowing

rhyme of his native Italian the fancies of the dream-land of his youth.

He was the younger brother of the family and the favourite son and

companion of his mother; who, being of a tender and religious nature, had

brought him up in habits of the most implicit reverence and devotion for

the institutions of his forefathers.

The storm which swept over his house and blasted all his worldly

prospects, blasted, too, and withered all those religious hopes and

beliefs by which alone sensitive and affectionate natures can be healed

of the wounds of adversity without leaving distortion or scar. For his

house had been overthrown, his elder brother cruelly and treacherously

murdered, himself and his retainers robbed and cast out, by a man who had

the entire sanction and support of the head of the Christian Church, the

Vicar of Christ on Earth. So said the current belief of his times—the

faith in which his sainted mother died; and the difficulty with which a

man breaks away from such ties is in exact proportion to the refinement

and elevation of his nature.

In the mind of our young nobleman there was a double current. He was a

Roman, and the traditions of his house went back to the time of Mutius

Scævola; and his old nurse had told him often that grand story of how

the young hero stood with his right hand in the fire rather than betray

his honour. If the legends of Rome’s ancient heroes cause the pulses of

colder climes and alien races to throb with sympathetic heroism, what

must their power be to one who says, “_These were my fathers?_” Agostino

read Plutarch, and thought, “_I_, too, am a Roman!” and then he looked

on the power that held sway over the Tarpeian Rock and the halls of the

old “Sanctus Senatus,” and asked himself, “By what right does it hold

these?” He knew full well that, in the popular belief, all those hardy

and virtuous old Romans, whose deeds of heroism so transported him, were

burning in hell for the crime of having been born before Christ; and he

asked himself, as he looked on the horrible and unnatural luxury and vice

which defiled the papal chair and ran riot through every ecclesiastical

Order, whether such men, without faith, without conscience, and without

even decency, were indeed the only authorized successors of Christ and

his Apostles?

To us, of course, from our modern stand-point, the question has an easy

solution; but not so in those days, when the Christianity of the known

world was in the Romish Church, and when the choice seemed to be between

that and infidelity. Not yet had Luther flared aloft the bold, cheery

torch which showed the faithful how to disentangle Christianity from

Ecclesiasticism. Luther in those days was a star lying low in the gray

horizon of a yet unawakened dawn.

All through Italy at this time there was the restless throbbing and

pulsating, the aimless outreach of the popular heart, which marks

the decline of one cycle of religious faith and calls for some great

awakening and renewal. Savonarola, the priest and prophet of this dumb

desire, was beginning to heave a great heart of conflict towards that

mighty struggle with the vices and immoralities of his times, in which

he was yet to sink a martyr; and even now his course was beginning to be

obstructed by the full energy of the whole aroused serpent brood which

hissed and knotted in the holy places of Rome.

Here, then, was our Agostino, with a nature intensely fervent and

poetic—every fibre of whose soul and nervous system had been from

childhood skilfully woven and intertwisted with the ritual and faith of

his fathers,—yearning towards the grave of his mother; yearning towards

the legends of saints and angels with which she had lulled his cradle

slumbers and sanctified his childhood’s pillow, and yet burning with the

indignation of a whole line of old Roman ancestors against an injustice

and oppression wrought under the full approbation of the head of that

religion. Half his nature was all the while battling the other half.

Would he be Roman, or would he be Christian? All the Roman in him said,

“No!” when he thought of submission to the patent and open injustice

and fiendish tyranny which had disinherited him, slain his kindred, and

held its impure reign by torture and by blood. He looked on the splendid

snow-crowned mountains whose old silver senate engirdle Rome with an

eternal and silent majesty of presence, and he thought how often in

ancient times they had been a shelter to free blood that would not endure

oppression; and so gathering to his banner the crushed and scattered

retainers of his father’s house, and offering refuge and protection to

multitudes of others whom the crimes and rapacities of the Borgias had

stripped of possessions and means of support, he fled to a fastness

in the mountains between Rome and Naples, and became an independent

chieftain, living by his sword.

The rapacity, cruelty, and misgovernment of the various regular

authorities of Italy at this time, made brigandage a respectable and

honoured institution in the eyes of the people; though it was ostensibly

banned both by Pope and Prince. Besides, in the multitude of contending

factions which were every day wrangling for supremacy, it soon became

apparent, even to the ruling authorities, that a band of fighting-men

under a gallant leader, advantageously posted in the mountains and

understanding all their passes, was a power of no small importance to be

employed on one side or the other; therefore it happened, that, though

nominally outlawed or excommunicated, they were secretly protected on

both sides, with a view to securing their assistance in critical turns of

affairs.

Among the common people of the towns and villages their relations were

of the most comfortable kind, their depredations being chiefly confined

to the rich and prosperous; who, as they wrung their wealth out of the

people, were not considered particular objects of compassion when the

same kind of high-handed treatment was extended towards themselves.

The most spirited and brave of the young peasantry, if they wished to

secure the smiles of the girls of their neighbourhood and win hearts past

redemption, found no surer avenue to favour than in joining the brigands.

The leaders of these bands sometimes piqued themselves on elegant tastes

and accomplishments; and one of them is said to have sent to the poet

Tasso, in his misfortunes and exile, an offer of honourable asylum and

protection in his mountain-fortress.

Agostino Sarelli saw himself, in fact, a powerful chief; and there were

times when the splendid scenery of his mountain-fastness, its inspiring

air, its wild eagle-like grandeur, independence, and security, gave

him a proud contentment, and he looked at his sword and loved it as a

bride. But then again there were moods when he felt all that yearning and

disquiet of soul which the man of wide and tender moral organization must

feel who has had his faith shaken in the religion of his fathers. To such

a man the quarrel with his childhood’s faith is a never-ending anguish;

especially is it so with a religion so objective, so pictorial, and so

interwoven with the whole physical and nervous nature of man, as that

which grew up and flowered in modern Italy.

Agostino was like a man who lives in an eternal struggle of

self-justification,—his reason for ever going over and over with its plea

before his regretful and never-satisfied heart, which was drawn every

hour of the day by some chain of memory towards the faith whose visible

administrators he detested with the whole force of his moral being. When

the vesper-bell, with its plaintive call, sounded amid the purple shadows

of the olive-silvered mountains,—when the distant voices of chanting

priest and choir reached him solemnly from afar,—when he looked into a

church with its cloudy pictures of angels and its window-panes flaming

with venerable forms of saints and martyrs,—he experienced a yearning

anguish, a pain and conflict, which all the effort of his reason could

not subdue. How to be a Christian and yet defy the authorized Head of

the Christian Church, or how to be a Christian and recognize foul men

of obscene and rapacious deeds as Christ’s representatives, was the

inextricable Gordian knot which his sword could not divide. He dared

not approach the sacrament, he dared not pray; he sometimes felt wild

impulses to tread down in riotous despair every fragment of a religious

belief which seemed to live in his heart only to torture him. He had

heard priests scoff over the wafer they consecrated,—he had known them

to mingle poison for rivals in the sacramental wine,—and yet God had

kept silence and not struck them dead. Like the Psalmist of old he

cried, “Verily, I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in

innocency. Is there a God that judgeth in the earth?”

The first time he saw Agnes bending like a flower in the slanting evening

sunbeams by the old gate of Sorrento, while he stood looking down the

street lined with kneeling forms, and striving to hold his own soul in

the sarcastic calm of utter indifference, he felt himself struck to

the heart by an influence he could not define. The sight of that young

face, with its clear beautiful lines and its tender fervour, recalled a

thousand influences of the happiest and purest hours of his life, and

drew him with an attraction he vainly strove to hide under an air of

mocking gallantry.

When she looked him in the face with such grave, surprised eyes of

innocent confidence, and promised to pray for him, he felt a remorseful

tenderness, as if he had profaned a shrine. All that was passionate,

poetic, and romantic in his nature was awakened, to blend itself in a

strange mingling of despairing sadness and of tender veneration about

this sweet image of perfect purity and faith. Never does love strike

so deep and immediate a root as in a sorrowful and desolated nature;

there it has nothing to dispute the soil, and soon fills it with its

interlacing fibres.

In this case it was not merely Agnes that he sighed for, but she stood to

him as the fair symbol of that life-peace, that rest of soul, which he

had lost, it seemed to him, for ever.

“Behold this pure, believing child,” he said to himself,—“a true member

of that blessed Church to which thou art a rebel! How peacefully this

lamb walketh the old ways trodden by saints and martyrs, while thou

art an infidel and unbeliever!” And then a stern voice within him

answered,—“What then? Is the Holy Ghost indeed alone dispensed through

the medium of Alexander and his scarlet crew of cardinals? Hath the power

to bind and to loose in Christ’s Church been indeed given to whoever can

buy it with the wages of robbery and oppression? Why does every prayer

and pious word of the faithful reproach me? Why is God silent? Or is

there any God? Oh, Agnes, Agnes! dear lily, fair lamb, lead a sinner into

the green pastures where thou restest!”

So wrestled the strong nature, tempest-tossed in its strength,—so slept

the trustful, blessed in its trust,—then in Italy, as now in all lands.

A County Ball.

Amongst the pleasures in pursuit of which it is the custom to undergo

an extraordinary amount of hardship and suffering, the County Ball

is entitled to be mentioned, inasmuch as it happens often at a time

of year when frost and snow prevail; and that enthusiasm will carry

carriage-loads of people a distance of twelve or even twenty miles,

that they may dance in a crowd, denser even than that of a London ball,

if that is possible, and not go home till morning, when daylight has

probably appeared.

It generally takes place at the Town Hall, or at the best inn’s

best room, which is decorated with garlands and banners, on which

are represented the arms of the noble and influential families of

the neighbourhood; and there are portraits of aldermen and other

distinguished citizens of the town, illustrious for their civic virtues

or for having made their fortunes. And if you have not provided yourself

with a ticket beforehand, you have the privilege of being able to pay at

the door.

The music, when not supplied by the kind permission of the colonel of the

nearest regiment, is formed of the town band, and is remarkable chiefly

for the fact that, as the evening proceeds, their intonation becomes

more uncertain, but their performance generally more spirited and wilder

in execution. The company is composed partly of visitors and partly of

natives; the visitors being mostly swells from London and other distant

places, and having the conventional manners and customs of such; but the

natives may be distinguished by something more of distinct individual

character, and there is just a tinge of the rural in their aspect.

The native comes out strong in waistcoats—his array in that respect being

gorgeous. In ordinary “society” the waistcoat may be said to be, as it

were, merged in the man—a uniform sombreness pervading the entire evening

dress. But the country gentleman evidently cherishes his waistcoat—has

his favourite waistcoats, which he brings out on great occasions; and it

is evident that he has expended much thought on the selection, and that

as he expands his chest so as to display as much as possible of that

portion of his person, he is proportionately proud of the result.

[Illustration: BIRD’S-EYE VIEWS OF SOCIETY. NO. V. A County Ball.]

The County Ball is a great opportunity for the exhibition of uniforms,

militia, deputy lieutenant, and other fancy dresses; and it is probable

that there are few men with any position at all, who don’t find an excuse

for becoming something or other that entitles them to wear a little gold

embroidery on their coat, or a silver stripe down their trousers. As for

Scotchmen, it is believed that none are to be found, however mild in

appearance or manners, who, if their wardrobes were searched, would not

be found to possess, only waiting an opportunity to be worn, a complete

Highland suit, kilt and etceteras—if, indeed, the word complete can ever

be properly applied to that description of costume.

When the usual quantity of quadrilles, waltzes, lancers, country dances,

cotillons, reels, and “pop-go-the-weasels,” have been danced or struggled

through, in the nature of things comes supper, and then you will

observe that a comic man, generally recognized as such, and evidently a

great favourite in that part of the country, is called upon to make a

speech—returning thanks for the toast of “The Ladies,” probably; and he

rises to do so with the air of one who feels that he is the right man,

and the confidence following from a conviction that he is in the right

place. He proceeds to deliver a speech, which the county paper afterwards

describes as “replete with wit and humour,” and as received by the

delighted company with “one continued roar of laughter.”

I began by saying something about hardship and suffering, but those words

are now withdrawn. What does it matter, if people are good-humoured, and

bent upon being amused and amusing others, whether they are driven to

the scene of the festivity one or twenty miles, or if the state of the

weather is many degrees above freezing point? If the party be a merry

one, the longer the journey the better. May County Balls continue and

flourish!

My Scotch School.

I have read a good deal of late, in this Magazine and elsewhere, about

English public schools, their advantages and disadvantages, their merits

and their shortcomings. Have the public any ears to hear something about

the public schools of Scotland? Professor John Stuart Blackie has written

often and with great force about the Scottish universities, showing that

they exhibit the very defects which “Paterfamilias” has pointed out as

existing in the public schools of England, with some others to boot. I am

not aware that any one has treated in the same way of the Scottish public

schools. I am desirous to supply this defect for two—as I think—good

reasons. First, because I myself received the rudiments of my education

at one of those Scottish schools, and therefore know something of the

subject; and, secondly, because there is a great deal of misapprehension

in England with respect to Scotch schools and Scotch education generally.

The popular idea here seems to be that Scotland, as regards education,

is a sort of Tom Tiddler’s ground, a place where the people, both high

and low, roll and wallow in education—a land where the rivers run with

fertilizing lore; where all the pines are trees of knowledge; where

grammar is raked out of the ditches; and where even Greek roots are to be

had on the barren hill-sides for the trouble of digging. If this be true,

Scotland stands not where it did when I went to school.

Let me premise that I am not going to enter into a disquisition on the

subject, to analyze the plan of Scottish education, nor to be didactic

in any way whatever. I am simply about to give a sketch of my Scotch

school—the school I went to to be prepared for the university. There were

penny postage-stamps when I went to my Scotch school; the Reform Bill

had been passed eight years previously; daguerrotypes and the electric

telegraph were coming in. So it was but the other day. My school was the

parochial, or parish school, the school of all Scotch boys who dwell

in the country, whether high or low, gentle or simple. Here in England

the word “parish” is associated with all kinds of indignity—with the

Workhouse, the lock-up, the pound, the pauper’s allowance. It may,

therefore, seem to the English reader, ignorant of Scottish matters, when

I say I went to the parish school, that I wore a muffin cap and premature

knee-breeches (if the English mind can associate Scotland with these

nether integuments in any shape), and was educated at the public expense.

Let me dissipate this popular error.

The parochial school in Scotland claims equal dignity with the parish

Kirk. It is the chief educational establishment—the public school in

fact—of the district, and is part of the national system for spreading

education and enlightenment among the people of Scotland. The Kirk in

Scotland, that is to say, the Established Kirk, is supported by a levy

upon the occupiers of the land. The tax, however, is an indirect one,

and therefore does not provoke the discontent caused by tithes and

church-rates in England. The heritors, that is to say the landowners,

pay the amount (on a scale in proportion to the price of grain), and

repay themselves out of the rents of their tenants. This payment is not

set down as a separate item in the rent-charge, and so the tenant pays

his tithes and rates as he pays the tax upon his tea and tobacco. He is

bled without knowing it. The parish school shares in this revenue with

the parish kirk, but to a limited extent. Turning to the statistical

account of my parish—written by the hand which directed the earliest

calligraphical exercises of the one which now pens this—I find that

the said parish is six miles long by five miles broad, and contains—or

did contain then—a population of 1,661 souls. Those English persons

who indulge in extravagant notions of the abundance of educational

provision in the North may be a little surprised to learn that for this

widely-scattered population there were only two schools, each capable

of accommodating no more than sixty or seventy scholars. The endowments

of these educational establishments were by no means magnificent. The

allowance to the master of the parochial school (who was required to be

a college man of considerable classical attainments) was 34_l._ 4_s._

4_d._ per annum, with a dwelling-house and garden, and the fees of the

scholars.[3] The fees ranged from 10_s._ to 1_l._ per annum—ten shillings

for reading, writing, and arithmetic, and an extra ten for the classics.

The master of the other school—an auxiliary seminary established by the

General Assembly—received 25_l._ per annum and a cow’s keep, with the

fees, averaging about ten shillings per annum for each scholar. It was

not required that the master of this establishment should be a high

classic, or indeed a classic at all. The appointment was vested in the

minister, who was well content to select the candidate, whose letter,

soliciting the appointment, exhibited the fewest errors in orthography.

Perfection in that branch of grammar he never looked for and never got;

for how could you expect irreproachable orthography for 25_l._ a year

and a cow’s keep? The worthy man—the minister—made great exertions to

establish and carry on this school; but it was always a great source of

trouble to him. College men, of course, disdained to accept so trifling a

salary; or to undertake so undignified a duty as the instruction of poor

cottars’ children in the alphabet. The minister was, therefore, obliged

to accept the services of any half-educated aspirant for the honours

of a dominie, who could bring testimony to his respectability, and

write a tolerable letter. Most of the teachers—for there were frequent

changes—were Highlanders, who were more conversant with Gaelic than with

English, and who had learned the latter language as a foreign tongue.

They all spoke with a fearful Highland twang, all were married, all had

slatternly wives, and unreasonably large families. The cow that was kept

at the public expense for the sustenance (lacteally) of the General

Assembly’s schoolmaster had a hard time of it. Provender was scarce, and

the demand for milk excessive; and the schoolmaster’s cow generally died

of exhaustion, after a year or two of self-sacrifice.

I remember once going with the minister to pay a visit to the Assembly’s

Institute in these parts. When we arrived the academic grove was

deserted, and we were informed that the “squeelmaister and the loons

were oot on the peat moss.” There we found them, the dominie putting his

pupils through a very novel kind of military exercise. He had collected

his army on his own division of the moss, where his peats lay in stacks,

ready to be carted home, when he could afford to pay for the cartage.

We arrived on the scene just as the review began. “Now, poys,” said the

dominie, taking up a peat in each hand, “this is a sword and this is a

cun”—the Highland pronunciation of “gun”—“shoulder arms, poys.” Here

the “poys” took a peat in each hand and shouldered them. “March, poys,”

said the dominie, flourishing his peat sword; and away marched the boys

with their peats, until they reached the school-house, when the dominie

made them defile into a shed and ground arms; that is to say, lay down

their peats in a heap convenient for the domestic use. This was what

the dominie called his gymnastic exercises, which, he boasted, combined

amusement and exercise with instruction; but a suspicion arising that

these gymnastics were nothing more nor less than a Highland device for

carrying home the dominie’s fuel on an economical principle, an order was

issued from head-quarters that such military instruction should only take

place in play-hours, and should not be included in the regular curriculum

of study.

But I am wandering away from my own school, nestling five miles off among

the trees under the shadow of the old kirk. It is a plain one-storey

building divided into two parts; the one, consisting of three rooms

and a kitchen, forming the home of the schoolmaster, and the other the

schoolroom,—a tolerably large and airy apartment, with roughly plastered

walls, and furnished with deal desks and forms of the universal school

fashion. I do not remember that there were, at any time, more than sixty

scholars. They were gathered together from all parts of the parish. Some

of them came from a distance of four or five miles, and brought their

dinners with them, the provision invariably consisting of a little tin

can of milk and a bag of oat-cakes. It was a rule that each scholar

should contribute a load or two of peats every quarter for the school

fire; but some of them chose to bring a peat with them every morning.

These scholars made their morning’s journey to school rather heavily

loaded, having to carry, besides their satchel, the tin can of milk, the

white calico bag of oat-cake, and the peat. We were of all ages, sexes,

and conditions in this school. There was the son of the laird, the heir

to an ancient baronetcy. He wore corderoys like the rest of us, and had

five rows of broad-headed nails in his shoes. There were several sons of

the minister, all destined for one or other of the learned professions;

there were the sons of gentlemen farmers and the sons of poor cottars,

their dependants; and with these, on terms of the broadest academic

equality, mingled the grandson of the parish sexton and bell-ringer, the

son of a widow occasionally receiving parochial relief, and the sons and

daughters of carpenters, blacksmiths, and farm-servants, including the

female descendant of old Lizzy—pauper and egg vendor—who lit the school

fire and swept the school floor in discharge of young Lizzy’s fees. No

distinction of rank was preserved in any way whatever. The laird’s son

and the grave-digger’s son stood up in the same class side by side, and

I remember that the expectant baronet was often “taken down” by the

heir of the mortuary mattock. In the reading classes the boys and girls

were all mingled together, and I have often seen a big, hulking fellow

of eighteen—some ambitious cottar’s son who had taken to education

late—standing next to a little girl in short petticoats and heel-strapped

shoes. There was little jealousy on the score of religious belief in the

parish. There were several Roman Catholic boys among us, and they joined

in all our exercises, except the reading of the Bible and the saying of

the Shorter Catechism. At these times the Roman Catholic boys sat in

their seats and amused themselves; and not unfrequently, when memory

failed with regard to Justification, Sanctification, and Adoption, we,

Protestants, smarting under the consequences, were tempted to wish from

the bottom of our hearts that we had been brought up Papists.

There was one feature of our school which appears very startling to me

now, but which was never regarded as extraordinary by any of us at the

time. It was this. Illegitimate mingled with the legitimate offspring of

the same parents. Our parish was rather celebrated for irregularity in

the matter of births, owing entirely to a local proneness to irregularity

in the matter of marriage. This was not confined to the lower classes.

Gentlemen farmers, who moved in the minister’s own circle, occasionally

appeared before the Session to be admonished, and this sometimes led to

the scandalous anomaly of a gentleman farmer dining at the manse one week

and sitting on the stool of repentance the next. As there was only one

school in the neighbourhood, and as it was considered imperative that

every child, no matter what the circumstances of its birth, or position,

should be educated, it constantly happened that there were several

duplicates of families at the parochial school. In several instances,

that I well remember, the illegitimate scion lived in perfect harmony

with the legitimate in the bosom of the same family, and not unfrequently

the illegitimate member was regarded as the flower of the flock. I can

call up before me now two Marys and two Peters. The two Marys lived under

the same roof as sisters, and I never heard a word of reproach cast at

the elder Mary, albeit she was prettiest, cleverest, and illegitimate.

It was different with the two Peters. Peter the First lived with his

mother, Hagar, in the desert, an outcast from the paternal roof. But

on the common ground of the parochial school, he sat on the same form,

stood up in the same class, and shared equally in the Justification and

Adoption of the Shorter Catechism with Peter the true-born. Peter the

Base often enjoyed the satisfaction of giving Peter the True a “good

licking;” but these quarrels never originated in resentment, arising

out of their invidious relationship. So, you see, we were a strange,

heterogeneous assemblage at this Scotch school.

A stranger aspect still was occasionally presented when two or three

grown men and women took their places among us. I remember Betty, the

laird’s nurse, coming for a quarter to improve her handwriting; and,

nearly at the same time, the grown-up son of a neighbouring farmer, who

had an ambition to become acquainted with mensuration and surveying.

Betty had scarcely got to “round hand,” before the farmer’s son, who

was accustomed to pursue his studies on the opposite side of the desk,

fell in love with her, and the upshot of it was that the farmer’s son

and Betty threw learning to the winds, and went and got married before

the quarter was out. When Betty was squaring her elbows out at the large

text, the laird’s son was wont to take great delight in walking past her

and jogging her arm, in revenge for the ruthless way in which Betty used

to clean out his ears with a piece of rough flannel on washing nights.

An almost universal circumstance tends to make every Scottish parochial

schoolmaster discontented with his position and impatient of his

duties. The parish-school is the stepping-stone to the kirk, and each

schoolmaster when he is installed at the dominie’s desk, begins to long

for the day when he will “wag his head in the poopit.” The school-house

is the hard shell of the chrysalis; the manse, the flowery elysium of the

full-fledged butterfly. When I went to school, our schoolmaster was in

full cry after a kirk and a cure of souls. He spent a good deal of his

time in reading the newspapers, and, as it appeared to me, in looking out

for the demise of neighbouring ministers. Every morning after prayers, he

read the newspapers for about an hour, during which time, we, the pupils,

sat and learned our lessons, or more often amused ourselves, as quietly

as we could. When any unusual disturbance took place, the master threw

the “tag”—a piece of a gig trace burnt at the end to make it hard—at the

offender. The pupil hit by it—no matter whether he was the real culprit

or not—was expected to carry the instrument of punishment to the master

and to accept flagellation, commonly on the hands, but not unfrequently

(when the prospect of a kirk looked hazy and dim) upon a part of the body

which required preliminary untrussing of points to be got at. It fell to

the lot of Lizzy, the sweeper’s granddaughter, most frequently to have

to take up the “tag.” Lizzy, it is true, was a very “limb” in point of

trouble; but she had always more than her fair share of the gig trace.

The way in which our schoolmaster lifted his hand against the female sex

would have wholly disqualified him, in a nautical drama, from claiming

the name of a British tar. The English reader may think that it equally

disqualified him for the position of a British schoolmaster; but I do not

remember that any one was shocked by these proceedings at the time. If a

parent complained, it was not on the score of the indignity, but because

the “tag” left its marks.

The course of instruction pursued at our school included reading,

writing, arithmetic, geography, and the classics. In the general branches

all sorts, sizes, and sexes, stood up together in the same classes,

according to their relative state of advancement. The Greek and Latin

classes only were select, they being composed of some half-dozen boys of

superior station destined to go to college when they had mastered Latin

enough to enable them to spell through Cæsar and Virgil. With these the

master took considerable pains for his own credit’s sake; for it would

have been an eternal disgrace to him had his pupils been rejected on

their first easy examination at Aberdeen. In the other branches the

method pursued was one entirely of routine. Nothing was explained in

a rational or intelligible way. The only reading books in the school

were the Bible and McCulloch’s first, second, and third _Courses of

Reading_, three progressive volumes of badly selected extracts from

various authors; and at these we hammered away day after day, and over

and over again, from the moment we entered the school until the moment

we left it. There was not a single History in the school—not even a

History of England in its most modest form of abridgment. As for myself,

my early knowledge of English history was entirely derived from a sheet

of coloured portraits of the English kings pasted up on the wall of my

box-bed at home. My knowledge of the dates of their reigns, and the order

of their succession, is even now vividly associated with that coloured

sheet. Geography was taught from a book. We learned boundaries and the

names of countries by heart, and chattered them like parrots; but of the

characteristics of countries and their inhabitants we learned nothing

beyond that such and such a people “were a hardy race, who devoted

themselves to agriculture,” and the like. Arithmetic was taught in the

same way. When we had, by an entirely mechanical and illogical process,

committed to memory the multiplication table, we were given over to

somebody’s “Arithmetic,” to puzzle over rules and make our answers to

the questions tally, by any means whatever, with those in the book. I

remember, with regard to the rule of three, that we used to try one

position after the other, until we worked out the right answer. The

dominie never condescended to explain the simple logic of the process.

The result is, as regards myself, that I am to this day the greatest

dunce at figures in the world. I believe I have been detected refusing to

purchase oranges at two for three halfpence, but readily agreeing to take

five for sixpence, with the idea that it was a better bargain.

At the time of which I speak it was a rule of faith with all Scotch

schoolmasters that flagellation was the primary and most important agent

in the work of education. “Spare the rod, and you spoil the child,”

should have been written over the door of every parochial school. Every

boy who entered the portals of my Scotch school with a consciousness

of being imperfect in any lesson, left all hope of immunity from the

tag behind him. The slightest mistake in spelling, or in saying the

Shorter Catechism—that hated Shorter Catechism!—was punished by one or

more strokes of the tag on the extended hand. I have seen the order go

down a whole class, “Hold out your hand, sir.” And crack, crack, crack

went the tag on our unflinching palms. We knew if we flinched we should

get a double dose, and perhaps on another and more sensitive part of

our bodies. I think I may safely say that a day never passed without

a flogging. Two or three times a week the “tag” was the occasion of a

regular scene. This was when some spirited or big boy refused to hold

out his hand or untruss. I remember one notable occasion when the master

attempted to inflict the “extreme punishment” on a big ploughman of

eighteen or nineteen. There was a regular fight between them: and several

times master and pupil went down together on the floor, rolling and

struggling with all the desperation of men engaged in a mortal combat.

Both parties called upon the pupils to come to their assistance; but

we, small boys, were too much alarmed to side with either, albeit our

sympathies were decidedly with the ploughman. The result of this conflict

was highly agreeable to us all. The dominie was laid up for a week with

bruised legs, and during that time there was “no school.” The terror

inspired by the tag caused the boys to frequently play the truant; in

the vernacular this was called “fugieing.” Scarcely a day passed that

some boy did not “fugie,” or fly the school. There was one boy who was

particularly distinguished for this art. He had been punished for it over

and over again, and beaten at all points until he was black and blue,

but still he would “fugie.” He would come away from home in the morning

with his satchel and dinner; but, instead of going to school, would

betake himself to the forest, and spend the day in birds’-nesting, or

in devouring “blaeberries.” When his retreat was discovered, the master

started one morning in pursuit of him, followed by all the scholars in

a pack. We had a regular hunt, and greatly we enjoyed the sport, not

caring so much for the fate of the fugitive, as for the holiday and the

exemption for a few hours from lessons and the tag. Sandy, for that was

the fugitive’s name, was unearthed like a fox, and hunted like one, all

through the wood, and over the burn, and up the hill-side to a clump

of tall fir-trees, where, finding the dominie close upon him, with the

tag vengefully waved aloft, Sandy clambered up the smooth stem of a

tall larch-tree, and perched himself triumphantly among its topmost

branches. The dominie, who was not deficient in pluck when upholding the

prerogative of the tag, immediately made the attempt to follow him; but

finding the branches rather too slight to bear his weight, he was glad

to slide down again, after having successfully climbed the stem. Having

in vain commanded Sandy to come down, the dominie held a council of war

with himself for a few minutes, and suddenly resolved upon his strategy.

One of the boys was despatched to a neighbouring farm-house for an axe.

When it was brought, the dominie set to work at the root of the tree,

and, when he had given it two or three strokes, called out once more

to Sandy—“Will you come down, sir?” Sandy looked cautiously over from

his nest among the branches to see what probability there was of the

dominie’s being able to fell the tree, and, apparently, coming to the

conclusion that he couldn’t do it, contemptuously answered—“Na, I winna

come doon.” Once more the dominie laid the axe at the root of Sandy’s

citadel, and though he made little progress in cutting it, the tree shook

at every stroke, until Sandy, becoming rather uncomfortable, consented

to come down. He had no sooner reached the ground, than he was collared

and marched off to the school in triumph, and was duly whipped by extreme

process.

Our parents rarely interfered to protect us from the tag, when it was

administered in moderation; though occasionally some noise was made

when a boy was sent home utterly incapacitated from occupying a sitting

position. The miller’s wife—a strong-minded dame of the “rampaging”

order—so far from being maternally indignant when her son, Johnny, was

sent home in a state of pulp, would occasionally call in to enjoin the

dominie not to spare him. This lady was a chief actor in one of our most

memorable “scenes.” Her son Johnny had “fugied” for several days running,

and had been found out and duly whipped by the maternal order. Some time

after this the good lady found Johnny hiding in the mill, about the

middle of the day, when he ought to have been at school. I remember well

what came of that discovery. Late one afternoon we were startled from our

studies by a noise of wheels, the clattering of some iron instrument,

and the accents of a shrill, angry voice. The master immediately ran out

to see what was the matter, and we, the pupils, took the opportunity to

rush to the windows. It was the miller’s wife, who had arrived with her

son Johnny in a cart, keeping guard over him with the kitchen tongs.

The next minute Johnny was driven into the schoolroom by his infuriate

parent, who banged him with the tongs as he ran. I shall never forget the

scene that ensued. “Now have your wull o’ him,” said the Spartan parent

to the dominie. The dominie thus licensed, got out the tag; but Johnny

no sooner caught sight of that instrument than he was nerved to the most

desperate resistance. The moment the dominie advanced to seize him Johnny

scrambled over a desk and dodged him; and when the dominie ran round

after him he scrambled back again. The miller’s wife now came to the

dominie’s assistance, and for nearly a quarter of an hour both together

hunted Johnny over the desks and forms, hitting out at him with the tag

and the tongs, while the books, and slates, and milk-cans were scattered

all over the floor like broken armour on a battle-field. It was not until

Johnny was fairly out of breath that he gave in; and then he lay down

on his back on the floor, and turning himself rapidly round as on a

pivot, menaced first the dominie and then his mother with his iron-shod

feet. Johnny managed to resist the extreme penalty designed for him, but

what with the bumps he received in riding over the desks, and the random

blows from the tongs and the tag, he had punishment enough and to spare.

Of course, as we all saw and felt that this constant flagellation was

both cruel and unjust, we were never any better for it, and bore it or

resisted it manfully, as martyrs bear and resist persecution.

But notwithstanding the loose and desultory, not to say brutal, system

pursued at our school, the pupils of all degrees managed, in some way or

other, to acquire a very respectable quantum of knowledge, or, if not

knowledge itself, the groundwork of knowledge. The boys who learned Greek

and Latin went to college and took their degrees; the farmers’ sons went

home to give a higher intellectual life to the society in which their

families moved; and the humbler class of scholars carried away with them

to the plough’s tail, the carpenter’s bench, and the smithy, just enough

of the rudiments of learning to enable them to cultivate themselves by

after study. This fact may seem a contradiction to the picture I have

given of my Scotch school. In Scotland, however, bad teaching and a

high state of mental cultivation among the masses are quite consistent.

The fact is, the middle and lower classes in Scotland have a passion

for learning. The dearest ambition of the poor cottar is to educate his

children, and, if possible, to give one, at least, such an amount of

schooling as will fit him for a higher station than that occupied by his

parents. A poor hillside crofter will starve himself and his family for

ten years of their life to send one of the boys to college and qualify

him for the kirk. Such boys, however, learn more poring over their books

by the humble fireside at home, or out in the fields in the intervals of

their farm work, than at the school. They learn under every disadvantage,

because they are spurred on by a love of knowledge and a desire to raise

themselves. It is this universal thirst after knowledge and intellectual

cultivation that gives Scotland so decided a pre-eminence as regards

general education. Persons who can neither read nor write are common

enough in England, not alone in the country districts, but also in the

great towns. I doubt if you could find one such in all Scotland. The

classes corresponding to the “hinds” and “navvies” of England, cannot

only read and write, but are capable of enjoying literature in its higher

developments. Our farming-men at home used to spend their evenings,

after their frugal supper of kail brose, in reading the newspapers and

discussing the debates in Parliament. Our herd-boy taught himself the

elements of astronomy out in the fields, while tending the cattle. He was

the first to tell me the names of the planets and point them out to me.

I taught him, in return, a little Latin; and I remember, during my last

year at college, meeting this herd-boy in the quadrangle, arrayed in the

red toga. I have since heard that he carried off the first mathematical

prize.

FOOTNOTES

[3] In an abstract of a bill for bettering the condition of the

schoolmasters of Scotland, passed at the beginning of the century, it is

laid down that “the amount of salary to each parochial schoolmaster shall

not be less than the average annual wages of a day labourer, nor above

that of two day labourers.”

The Convict out in the World.

At stated periods, the governor of a convict prison gives audience to

such inmates of his mansion as may have complaints to make, or petitions

to prefer; and of the demands most commonly heard, from old and young,

one of the commonest is: “Please, sir, may I grow?” It sounds odd to hear

the naïve request put by some square-shouldered grey-haired fellow; but

it is usually found so reasonable that, after a word or two of inquiry,

the governor consents. The man wishes to let his hair grow within the

next three or four months before his leaving the prison; and it is the

first step towards his release, whether it be on the expiry of his

sentence, or on his earning a “conditional pardon.” Subsequently, the

chaplain of the prison sends forth certain formal questions as to the

man’s prospect of obtaining honest employment out of doors; and about a

month before the date of his departure, the chaplain addresses a letter

to any person by whom the prisoner hopes to be employed, describing the

man’s state of health, stating his conduct in prison, and asking whether

his report upon the subject of employment is true, or whether he has

any other means of support. In the majority of cases, I am told, the

replies are “satisfactory;” but, in some instances, they are otherwise,

and, in some, the man can give no reference. Within my own very limited

range of individual observation, I have observed in England the same

circumstance which I have noticed in Ireland—that the prisoner often

has a dread of returning to his friends, not only because he fears that

his character will be known, but because he is too well aware that

those with whom he has been acquainted before he entered the prison

will draw him back into evil courses. At once, then, we perceive a very

unexpected symptom of improvement: the desire of the prisoner to cut all

connection with his family, and to avow that he has no means, no chance

of obtaining help or employment, is one of the most tangible results of

his reformation. In cases where the reply is unsatisfactory, or the man

can give no reference, the governor and chaplain fill up a form in which

they express an opinion whether he is able to earn his livelihood. From

these inquiries and records returns are made to the Secretary of State,

specifying the men who are eligible to be recommended for release under

a conditional pardon. On receiving the order of the Secretary of State,

the licence is printed on a small parchment form, and on the back of that

form is the following schedule of conditions:—

“1. The power of revoking or altering the licence of a convict

will most certainly be exercised in case of his misconduct.

“2. If, therefore, he wishes to retain the privilege which, by

his good behaviour under penal discipline, he has obtained, he

must prove, by his subsequent conduct, that he is really worthy

of her Majesty’s clemency.

“3. To produce a forfeiture of the licence, it is by no means

necessary that the holder should be convicted of any new

offence. If he associate with notoriously bad characters,

leads an idle and dissolute life, or has no visible means of

obtaining an honest livelihood, &c., it will be assumed that

he is about to relapse into crime, and he will be at once

apprehended, and recommitted to prison under his original

sentence.”

Dressed in clothes provided for him by the prison, and suited to his

probable occupation, whether as an artisan or a labourer, his parchment

licence in his pocket, and the first instalment of his gratuity—probably

2_l._, more or less—with a soldier’s railway pass for the place of

his destination, the prisoner sets out. In less lucky instances, he

simply walks forth into space “to take his chance”—that is, to beg for

employment from those who are too busy to attend to him, or to supply

his necessities by some more familiar means. Upon the whole, however,

we might classify the prisoners into three classes: those who return

to their friends, those who proceed at once to some familiar place of

resort, and those who seek the “Discharged Prisoners’ Aid Society.”

I have already explained that those persons who were convicted under

the Peel’s Servitude Act of 1853, which accidentally omitted to provide

for the conditional pardon, form a class which has occasioned some

perplexity, but is gradually dying out. The men of this class are

divided into four “stages:” those in the second stage have sixpence a

week towards their gratuity, in the third ninepence, in the fourth one

shilling. Men sentenced under the amended Act of 1857 are divided into

three “stages:” in the second stage they receive fourpence a week, and

in the third eightpence. The larger sums given to the men of the first

class, together with some other indulgences in prison, are allowed as a

compensation for their losing the chance of getting a ticket-of-leave,

either in the colonies or at home. The accumulated gratuity sometimes

rises to a considerable amount. A friend who has studied the subject

minutely has found it to range as high as 27_l._ or 28_l._; usually it

ranges from 8_l._ to 20_l._; and he computes the average to be about

12_l._ As you already know, this is not handed to the man in one sum.

Supposing his gratuity to be of the average amount, on leaving the

prison he will receive 2_l._, with the deduction of a few pence for

postage which will be incurred on his account after his departure. Ten

days later he will receive 2_l._ more, at the end of two months 4_l._,

and at the end of three months the balance of 4_l._; so that he will be

five months and a half before he can draw the whole sum. Thus, if he is

discharged on the 1st of January, he will not have cleared his prison

account until the end of June. He cannot draw any of the instalments

without obtaining the endorsement of a clergyman, magistrate, or some

known persons, to a form which shows that he is living respectably and

supporting himself by honest work. Some time since, I am told by the

same friend, the discharged prisoners were often unable to obtain any of

their gratuity, and in most instances could not arrive at the closing

balance. It too frequently happened that the man would return to his

friends, recover his original character—that is, become a vagabond

and a thief—and so lose the power to procure the valuable endorsement

of a magistrate or clergyman. Another danger attended all convicts,

and still, I fear, attends the most hardened or the most desolate. At

every post where the man was likely to emerge from his seclusion was

stationed an agent appointed by the very worst of all “the dangerous

classes”—some Fagin or Fagin’s man, the caterer for criminal customers.

This functionary is of the same genus with those who tout at the

landing-pier of watering-places, with vocal cards issuing from their

mouths in praise of certain inns. The gentleman sallying forth from one

of her Majesty’s mansions, found himself suddenly courted as a welcome

customer, a “distinguished person,” with every convenience offered to him

for spending the money in his pocket as fast as possible, and perhaps for

discounting the great expectations of the next few months.

It was a knowledge of these facts which, in 1857, induced Mr. Whitbread,

the Member for Bedford, at present one of the Lords of the Admiralty,

to suggest the establishment of an Association for the express purpose

of holding out a helping hand to the discharged prisoner. He invited

Mr. William Bayne Rankin and other friends to assist him. Some lent

him their names, which were in themselves of great value; others gave

him their money, and some few rendered active co-operation. Mr. Rankin

became the honorary secretary of the Association, and Mr. F. Partridge

its secretary. By degrees the “Discharged Prisoners’ Aid Society,” which

is still an independent charitable body, has become a sort of volunteer

auxiliary to the Convict Department. The Association prepared forms,

which were sent to every convict prison in England; the nature of the

society is explained to each prisoner before his discharge; and he

accepts the help or not entirely according to his own free choice. In

early days, many prisoners hesitated to comply with the first peremptory

condition imposed by the society—that the whole of the gratuity should be

placed in its hands. Judged by graduates in a school not calculated to

afford the happiest study of human motives, the charitable gentlemen in

Westminster were regarded as a great joint-stock crimping establishment;

and the newly released suspected that they were to be as much victimized

as the German “redemptioners” were in America. By degrees, however, this

suspicion wore off; a knowledge of the manner in which the society worked

spread amongst the class on whose behalf it acted, and the business of

the corporation has expanded accordingly. At first, there would be two or

three cases a week; there are now three or four a day. At first, there

was scarcely work enough for one secretary; now the society employs a

secretary, two clerks, and one or two agents, and finds the machinery

altogether insufficient for its exigencies. During the last year, the

moneys passing through the hands of the society have amounted to an

aggregate between 10,000_l._ and 12,000_l._, composed principally of the

prisoners’ own money; for it must be confessed that no society has ever

done so much with such a narrow modicum of means. The list of actual

subscribers is slender, and we observed that the heaviest share of the

burden falls upon a very few in that short list. At the same time,

gentlemen at a distance do not scruple to claim the co-operation of the

society in helping forward individuals who may have excited a local or

individual interest.