"But you are tired long ago, and you can easily imagine what comes

after. See!" and she turned a ring on her finger until I could catch

the shimmer of its stone. "That is how it ended; and though I did

not accept it until the next spring in Rome, I shall always blame

that night for the whole affair. When I asked Fred why he took the

trouble to follow me after the double snubbing I had given him, he

said 'I was worth it.' But since we are engaged he teases me

shamefully--calls me doctor, hopes I intend to support him in

comfort and ease, and says that it always was his ambition to be the

husband of a strong-minded woman, and broadly hints about my

experience in traveling being so useful to him. And aunt? When I

first told her she looked so shocked and disappointed that I threw

myself in her arms, saying I would not distress her for the world;

that I would do anything she desired; that if she wished she might

send Fred off, for I loved her best on earth. But after some minutes

of deep thought she looked at me quizzically and replied, 'You know,

dear, I always said you must choose your career for yourself.' Then

seeing that I seemed hurt and ashamed, she kissed me and whispered,

'Love makes us selfish: my affection for you has grown stronger than

my ambition. If _you_ are happy, my Eleanor, I can wait patiently

for the advancement of the rest of my sex.'"

Then Eleanor rose, and drawing her shawl round her preparatory to going,

said shyly, "And what I came to tell you is, that the wedding will take

place at Christmas."

ITA ANIOL PROKOP.

AN AMERICAN LADY'S OCCUPATIONS SEVENTY YEARS AGO.

We are looking over sundry trunks and boxes, the careful and the

careless gatherings of three generations. There are law-papers in dusty

files; familiar gossipy letters from brothers and sisters and college

chums; dignified letters from reverend judges and law-makers; letters

bursting with scandalized Federalisms, and burning or melting with

long-forgotten joys and sorrows. We have read some thousands of these

papers, and begin to be very uncertain about the times we are living in.

What indeed is this year of our Lord? We have a dim recollection that we

have been wished a happy New Year in 1875, yet we are living and

thinking with the boys and girls of 1776, who have grown to be the men

and women of Jefferson's time.

To make things more misty to our comprehension, we are sitting by a

dormer window in a high, "hip-roofed" garret of a mansion built just

before the Revolution, and the air is redolent of ancient memories. The

very cobweb that swung across the window just now has a venerable

appearance, entirely inconsistent with the fact that the housemaid's

broom was supposed to have whisked across these beams but yesterday. But

then the housemaids of to-day, as everybody knows, are, as a source of

perplexity and vexation of spirit, always to be relied upon, but never

to be relied upon for anything else. And with the thought we sigh for

the "good old days" and the "good old servants" of our grandmothers.

Happy grandmothers! so blessed in their simple, quiet lives, unvexed by

ever-changing fashions and domestics! What did they know of trouble

whose best silk gowns remained in fashion from year to year, and whose

cooks never treated them to an empty breakfast-table, and a cool "I

thought I'd be a-lavin' this marnin', mum"? Happy grandmothers!

Thus thinking, we pick up a little rough paper-book with marbled covers

from the corner of the old hair trunk where it was long ago thrown by

some careless hand. The little tumbled book proves to be a diary. Not a

record of a soul's strivings and pantings after a higher life, or a

curiously minute inquiry into the possible reasons which induced the

Almighty to allow Satan to afflict Job, but a simple daily note-book,

the memoranda of a housekeeper. The old letters had been to us what the

newspapers of to-day will be to the great-grandchildren of the present

generation. The diary carried us back into the immediate home-life of

seventy years ago.

The diarist had been a fair and stately dame in her day, and it is easy

to remove her from the frame where her portrait hangs on the walls of

the south parlor, and fancy her seated in the same room before the

crackling fire jotting down the memoranda of the day. She is a pretty

sight, we think, sitting in her straight-backed mahogany arm-chair, with

her feet on the polished brass fender and her book resting on the little

stand, which also holds the two tall silver candlesticks with their tall

tallow candles, for wax candles are saved for gala-nights, when diaries

are not in requisition. She must have been nearly forty years old when

she wrote in this little book, but we see her as her portrait shows her,

very young-looking in spite of her stateliness, enhanced though it is by

the high turban of embroidered muslin edged with soft lace falling over

the clusters of fair curls on her temples, and by the black satin gown,

short-waisted and scanty, relieved only by delicate lace frills, which

shade the beautiful throat and the strong, white, shapely hands. The

shadow on her face as she gazes into the fire is not marvelous, for it

is winter in her quiet Connecticut home; the post comes but twice a

week; her husband is representing his State in Washington, and her only

child is studying in distant Yale. Perhaps, though, the shadow is not

that of pure loneliness. Is there not some perplexity in it? And

something also of vexation? Yes, and it is the very vexation of spirit

which--in the face of Solomon's venerable testimony to the contrary--we

had fancied to be peculiar to our own evil days. Almost the first entry

in this quaint little diary is to the effect that "Jim was sulky

to-night and gave short answers." A little farther on we find that

"Yesterday Jim went away without leave, and stayed all night;" which

delinquency, being accompanied by a suspicion of drunkenness, caused the

anxious dame to "send for General T---- to come and give Jim a lecture."

Lecturing, however, was not then so popular as now, and Jim appears to

have profited little by the veteran general's discourse, for on the very

next night he repeats his offence. We have reason also to fear that

Jim's honesty was not above suspicion, for we read that Betsey, an

American woman who acted as assistant housekeeper and companion, "found

in Jim's possession a red morocco pocket-book which I had given her, but

"--alas for Betsey!--"with the contents all gone."

Other entries to the effect that madam one day lost her key to the

wine-cellar, and the next day discovered the bibulous Jim in the said

cellar "sucking brandy through a straw inserted in the bunghole of the

cask," and that, "furthermore, Jim had confessed to having stolen and

sold a coffee-basin for rum," do not tend to raise in our estimation

this pattern of an ancient darkey. This time it appears that madam did

not need to call in the aid of General T----, for she admits that she

herself "lectured Jim severely;" sarcastically adding, "he professed

penitence, but that did not hinder him from stealing another basin

to-day."

But the refractory Jim, we think, must have been the exception which

proved the rule that all servants prior to the late Celtic invasion were

models of deportment. Accordingly, we are not surprised to find that

Betsey was a handmaiden held in high estimation, and that "old Jack" was

a servant whose shortcomings were offset by his general good conduct and

affectionate heart. But we find also that there was a certain Sally, who

could be tolerated only because of her great culinary skill; and an

uncertain Silvy, who appears to have been in mind, if not in fact, the

twin-sister of Jim, with a spice of Topsy thrown in.

The trouble in those days was not the prospect of suddenly losing cook

or nursemaid, but that there was no getting rid of either. The fact of

slavery was, under the act of 1793, slowly fading away from Connecticut,

but all its habits remained in full force. "I wish I could send Jim and

Silvy away," writes madam, "but the poor rascals have no place to go

to."

Silvy was a tricksome spright that delighted in breaking bottles of the

"best Madeira wine and spilling the contents over the new English

carpet" when the mistress had invited the parson's and the doctor's

families to dinner. This, though of course it was "not to be endured,"

might have been accidental, and so was very "tolerable" in comparison

with Silvy's next exploits of poisoning the beloved house-dog and

throwing by the roadside the bottle of wine--possibly emptied first--the

jar of jelly and the fresh quarter of lamb which had been sent to a poor

and sick old woman. These two offences, occurring on the same day, we

are sorry to confess, incited the stately, white-handed dame to do

something more decisive than to "deliver a lecture" to Silvy. It is

demurely recorded that "for these two misdeeds I whipped Silvy." What

effect the whipping had upon that somewhat too frolicsome damsel we are

not informed, but madam admits that it made herself ill, and adds that

"if Silvy does not reform it is impossible to see what can be done for

her, for she will not listen to remonstrance. Betsey is not strong

enough to punish so strapping a wench, and it does not seem right that a

man should be set to whip any woman or girl, even a wench, else Jack

could do it."

However, Jack's own patience having been tried by the refractory Silvy,

he seems to have taken the matter into his own hands, for his mistress

tells us how she was scandalized, on her return from church, by "finding

Jack whipping Silvy," while that young lady was "screaming vehemently,

so that all the people passing by could hear her." As Jack had

discovered Silvy engaged in the amiable diversion of breaking the legs

of the young calves by throwing stones at them, one can have a little

charity for his summary action, although, as madam gravely remarks, "he

might at least have waited until Monday."

The calves, by the way, had an unlucky winter of it, and were especially

shaky about the legs. We find that a few weeks later "Jack having

neglected to repair the barn floor, as he had been directed, a plank had

given way and three of the calves' legs had been broken by the fall." We

have felt a deep interest in the fate of these calves, but with all our

anxiety have failed to discover whether three calves had all their legs

broken, or only three legs in all had been sacrificed to Jack's culpable

neglect.

By this time we begin to think that madam would have been just as well

off if she had not kept so many servants, and to wonder what they could

have had to do. Perhaps it was the idle man's playmate that made the

trouble. But a little farther reading in the old diary dissipates this

illusion. If anybody thinks that our grandmothers must have been cursed

with ennui because they did not attend three parties a night three times

a week, with operas and theatres to fill in the off nights, they are

mightily mistaken.

Of sociability there could have been no lack in this rural neighborhood,

for besides a ball or two madam records numbers of tea-drinkings and

debating clubs, and meetings of the Clio, a literary club, at which

assisted at least two future judges of the supreme courts of the States

of their adoption, and several other men and women whose names would

attract attention even in our clattering days. Visiting, too, of the

old-fashioned spend-the-day sort had not gone out of date--was indeed so

common that madam one evening enters in her journal--whether in sorrow

or in thankfulness there is nothing to tell us, but at least as a

notable fact--that she had "had no company to-day."

But it was not company that occupied all the hours of so busy a dame as

our diarist. Though she had not to remodel her dresses in hot chase

after the last novelty of the fashion-weekly, she had to superintend the

manufacture of the stuff of which her maids' gowns and her own

morning-gowns were made, to say nothing of bed-and table-linen, etc.

Bridget in our day seems to think that to do a family washing is a labor

of Hercules. Yet seventy years ago before a towel could be washed the

soap wherewith to cleanse it must be made at home; and this not by the

aid of condensed lye or potash, but with lye drawn by a tedious process

of filtering water through barrels or leach-tubs of hard-wood ashes. The

"setting" of these tubs was one of the first labors of the spring, and

to see that Silvy or Jim poured on the water at regular intervals, and

did not continue pouring after the lye had become "too weak to bear up

an egg," was a part of Betsey's daily duty for some weeks. Then came the

soap-boiling in great iron kettles over the fire in the wide fireplace.

Apparently, this was not always a certain operation. Science had not yet

put her meddling but useful finger into the soap-pot, for madam sadly

records that on the twenty-first of May she had superintended the

soap-boiling, but had not been blessed with "good luck;" and on the

third of June we find the suggestive entry, "Finished the soap-boiling

to-day." Eleven days--for we must of course count out the two

Sundays--eleven days of greasy, odorous soap-boiling! We think that if

we had been in madam's slippers we should have allowed Sally, Silvy and

the rest to try the virtues of the unaided waters of heaven upon the

family washing, and when this ceased to be efficacious should have let

the clothes be purified by fire. But upon second thoughts, no: it was

too much trouble to make those clothes.

We are not yet through with the preparations for the washing. The

ancient housewife could not do without starch for her "ruffs and cuffs

and fardingales," and for her lord's elaborately plaited ruffles. Yet

she could not buy a box of "Duryea's best refined." The starch, like the

soap, must be made at home. "On this day," writes our diarist, "had a

bushel of wheat put in soak for starch;" and in another place we find

the details of the starch-making process. The wheat was put into a tub

and covered with water. As the chaff rose to the top it was skimmed off.

Each day the water was carefully turned off, without disturbing the

wheat, and fresh water was added, until after several days there was

nothing left but a hard and perfectly white mass in the bottom of the

tub. This mass was spread upon pewter platters and dried in the sun.

Another sore trouble was the breadmaking. The great wheat-fields of the

West were not then opened, and we find that the wheat was frequently

"smutty;" hence, that "the barrel was bad," which must sorely have tried

the soul of the good housewife. Woe be to Silvy if that damsel did not

carry herself gingerly on the baking-day when the long, flat shovel

removed from the cavernous brick oven only heavy and sticky lumps of

baked dough, in place of the light white loaves which the painstaking

housewife had a right to expect!

In the absence of husband and son the care of a large farm fell upon our

madam's shoulders, and the details of cost and income are dotted through

the little journal. We can imagine the lady, gracious in her

stateliness, marshaling old General T---- and Colonel C----, two

veterans of the Revolution, out into her barnyard to get their opinion

as to the value of her fat cattle, and the concealed disapproval with

which she received their judgment that forty-five dollars was a fair

price for the pair, "when," as she quietly remarks, "I considered that

fifty dollars was little enough for so fine a pair of fat cattle; and in

fact I got my own price for them the next day."

Fifty dollars was a much larger sum then than now. Imagine how many

things could be bought for fifty dollars, when butter brought but ten,

veal three or four, beef six or seven cents respectively per pound, and

a pair of fat young chickens brought but twenty-five cents! There is one

article upon whose accession of price we can dwell with pleasure. Madam

records discontentedly that it "took two men all day to kill four hogs,

_notwithstanding_ that she had spent fifty cents for a half gallon

of rum for them to drink." Fancy the sort of liquor that could now be

bought for a dollar the gallon, and the sort of men that could drink two

quarts thereof and live!

It is heretical, of course, to hint a syllable against the open

wood-fire which crackled and flickered so beautifully while our madam

wrote about her cattle and pigs and Jim and Silvy, but in truth we

cannot envy our ancestors the care of those fires. With three yawning,

devouring fireplaces constantly to be fed, and an additional one for

each of the guest-rooms so often occupied during the winter--for this

was the visiting season--there was no lack of business for Ralph, a

white man; and his colored coadjutors, Jack and Jim. When we look at the

still existing kitchen fireplace, nine feet in width and four in depth,

we cease to blame Jack for neglecting to mend the barn floor. We only

wonder that he found time to whip Silvy.

Among the occupations of the women one great time-consumer must have

been the daily scouring, so much woodwork was left unpainted to be kept

as white as a clean sea-beach by applications of soap and sand. Probably

a good deal of this hand-and-knee work fell upon the unfortunate Silvy,

as well as the polishing of the pewter plates, the brass fenders,

andirons, tongs, shovels, door-knobs, knockers, and the various brazen

ornaments which bedecked the heavy sideboards and tall secretaries.

Seventy years ago, when gas and kerosene were not, and wax candles were

an extravagance indulged in only on state occasions, even by the

wealthy, the tallow dip was an article of necessity, and "candle

dip-day" was as certain of recurrence as Christmas, though perhaps even

less welcome than the equally certain annual Fast Day. Fancy an immense

kitchen with the before-mentioned fireplace in the centre of one side.

Over the blaze of backlog and forestick, and something like half a cord

of "eight-foot wood," are swinging the iron cranes laden with great

kettles of melting tallow. On the opposite side of the kitchen two long

poles about two feet apart are supported at their extremities upon the

seats of chairs. Beside the poles are other great kettles containing

melted tallow poured on the top of hot water. Across the poles are the

slender candle-rods, from which depend ranks upon ranks of candle-wicks

made of tow, for cotton wick is a later invention. Little by little, by

endlessly repeating the slow process of dipping into the kettles of

melted tallow and hanging them to cool, the wicks take on their proper

coating of tallow. To make the candles as large as possible was the aim,

for the more tallow the brighter the light. When done, the ranks of

candles, still depending from the rods, were hung in the sunniest spots

of a sunny garret to bleach.

But all these employments were as play compared with the home

manufacture of dry goods. Ralph, Jack and Jim had no time for such work,

so two other men were all winter kept busy in the barn at "crackling

flax" and afterward passing it through a coarse hetchel to separate the

coarsest or "swingling tow." After this the flax was made up into

switches or "heads" like those which we see in pictures, or that which

Faust's Marguerite so temptingly wields. These were deposited in barrels

in the garret. During the winter the "heads" were brought down by the

women to be rehetcheled once and again, removing first the coarser, and

then the finer tow. This must have been a fearfully dusty operation. It

makes one cough only to think of "the inch depth of flax-dust" which

settled upon Betsey's protecting handkerchief while she "hetcheled."

The finest and best of the flax was saved for spinning into thread, for

cotton thread there was none, excepting, possibly, a little of very poor

quality in small skeins. The small wheel that we see in the far corner

of the garret--just like Marguerite's--was used for spinning the fine

thread. A larger wheel was used to spin the tow into yarn for the coarse

clothing for boys and negroes or for "filling" in the coarser linens.

All the boys, and very often the men--perhaps even our M.C.

himself--wore in summer trousers made of linen cloth, for which the yarn

was spun at home by the maids, and was then taken to the weaver's to be

made into cloth. Part of the linen yarn was dyed blue, and, mingled with

white or unbleached yarn, was woven into a chequered stuff for the

curtains of servants' beds and for dresses for the maids and aprons for

their mistresses. In view of the fact that all the bed-linen and most of

the table-linen was thus made at home, one cannot wonder that a

house-wife's linen-closet was an object of special care and pride.

If there were at that time any woolen manufactories in the United

States, their powers of production must have been very limited, while

foreign cloths could only have been worn by the gentlemen, and by them

probably not at all times, for a few years later than the date of

madam's diary we find that English cloths were sold at the then fearful

prices of eighteen and twenty dollars per yard. So sheep must be kept

and sheared, and their wool carded, rolled and spun. As linen-spinning

was the fancy-work of winter, so wool-spinning was that of summer. Back

and forth before the loud-humming big wheel briskly stepped the cheerful

spinner through the long bright afternoons of summer, busily spinning

the yarn that was to be woven into cloths and flannels of different

textures. Busily indeed must both mistress and maids have stepped, for

not without their labors could be provided the coats and trousers, the

undershirts, the petticoats and the woolen sheets, to say nothing of

blankets, white or chequered, and the heavy coverlets of blue or green

and white yarns woven into curiously intermingling figures, all composed

of little squares; and last, but not least, the yarn for countless pairs

of long warm stockings for the feet of master and man, mistress and

maid. For as a legacy from dying slavery the servants were still unable

or unwilling to provide for their own wants, and the house-mistress had

frequently to knit Jack's stockings with her own fair fingers, as well

as to "cut out the stuff for Jim's pantaloons," which she will "try to

teach Silvy to sew."

Did we think that we had reached the last purpose for which the homespun

woolen yarn was required? We were mistaken, for here is the entry:

"To-day dyed the yarn for back-hall carpet. Remember to tell the weaver

that I prefer it plaided instead of striped."

Economy of time must, one would think, have been the most necessary of

economies to the old-time housewives. With so many things to do, how did

they find time to make those marvels of misplaced industry, the patched

bed-quilts? Our diarist, rich as her closets were in blankets and linen,

left but few bed-quilts to vex the eyes of her descendants, yet we read

that "Betsey and I quilted a bed-quilt this afternoon"--their fingers

were surely nimble--"and in the evening"--happy change of

employment!--"Betsey finished reading aloud from Blair's

_Lectures._ To-morrow evening we shall begin the _Spectator_.

My husband has sent us by private hand Mr. A. Pope's translation of the

_Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, but it has not yet arrived. Strange

that a private hand should be slower than the post!"

And indeed the slowness of the post had been a source of frequent

disquietude to our madam during this lonely winter, for very lonely it

was to the waiting wife and mother, notwithstanding all her occupations.

"'Life's employments are life's enjoyments,'" she sadly writes on the

night before Christmas, "and surely I have not a few of them; but with

my beloved husband and son far from me I cannot half enjoy my life. I

have given the servants their presents to-night" (though living in

Puritan Connecticut, our madam was of Hollandish stock, and did not

ignore the Christmas festival), "and paid them eighteen pence apiece not

to wish me a Merry Christmas to-morrow, for little merriment indeed

should there be for me."

Yet she was a cheerful soul, this stately madam who sadly gazes into the

fire on the Christmas Eve of seventy years ago--a cheerful, loving soul,

and a kindly (notwithstanding her chastisement of the delinquent Silvy);

and after all the winter wore not unhappily away.

With the opening spring husband and son returned to gladden her heart,

and we close the little diary with a smile at once of sympathy and of

amusement as we read that while madam had intended to meet her loved

ones with the family coach on their landing from the sloop at

Poughkeepsie, thirty miles from her home, she was "so detained by reason

of the depth and vileness of the mud that it was full fifteen miles this

side the river" (Hudson) "that our coach fell in with a hired carriage

coming this way. The road was so bad that we had difficulty in passing,

and it was not until we were almost by that my dear husband noticed his

own coach. There was some trouble in getting from the one carriage to

the other, but when all were safely in the coach there was much

rejoicing, you may be sure."

ETHEL C. GALE.

A MARCH VIOLET.

Black boughs against a pale, clear sky,

Slight mists of cloud-wreaths floating by;

Soft sunlight, gray-blue smoky air,

Wet thawing snows on hillsides bare;

Loud streams, moist sodden earth; below

Quick seedlings stir, rich juices flow

Through frozen veins of rigid wood,

And the whole forest bursts in bud.

No longer stark the branches spread

An iron network overhead,

Albeit naked still of green;

Through this soft, lustrous vapor seen,

On budding boughs a warm flush glows,

With tints of purple and pale rose.

Breathing of spring, the delicate air

Lifts playfully the loosened hair

To kiss the cool brow. Let us rest

In this bright, sheltered nook, now blest

With broad noon sunshine over all,

Though here June's leafiest shadows fall.

Young grass sprouts here. Look up! the sky

Is veiled by woven greenery,

Fresh little folded leaves--the first,

And goldener than green, they burst

Their thick full buds and take the breeze.

Here, when November stripped the trees,

I came to wrestle with a grief:

Solace I sought not, nor relief.

I shed no tears, I craved no grace,

I fain would see Grief face to face,

Fathom her awful eyes at length,

Measure my strength against her strength.

I wondered why the Preacher saith,

"Like as the grass that withereth."

The late, close blades still waved around:

I clutched a handful from the ground.

"He mocks us cruelly," I said:

"The frail herb lives, and she is dead."

I lay dumb, sightless, deaf as she;

The long slow hours passed over me.

I saw Grief face to face; I know

The very form and traits of Woe.

I drained the galled dregs of the draught

She offered me: I could have laughed

In irony of sheer despair,

Although I could not weep. The air

Thickened with twilight shadows dim:

I rose and left. I knew each limb

Of these great trees, each gnarled, rough root

Piercing the clay, each cone of fruit

They bear in autumn.

What blooms here,

Filling the honeyed atmosphere

With faint, delicious fragrancies,

Freighted with blessed memories?

The earliest March violet,

Dear as the image of Regret,

And beautiful as Hope. Again

Past visions thrill and haunt my brain.

Through tears I see the nodding head,

The purple and the green dispread.

Here, where I nursed despair that morn,

The promise of fresh joy is born,

Arrayed in sober colors still,

But piercing the gray mould to fill

With vague sweet influence the air,

To lift the heart's dead weight of care,

Longings and golden dreams to bring

With joyous phantasies of spring.

EMMA LAZARUS.

WHAT IS A CONCLAVE?

It may be that before these lines meet the eye of the readers they are

intended for the world will be once again witnessing that function of

the Roman Catholic Church which of all others makes the highest

pretensions to transcendental spiritual significance, and is in reality

the most utterly and grossly mundane--a _conclave_. In any case, it

cannot be long before that singular spectacle is enacted on the

accustomed stage before the converging eyes of Christendom. In any case,

too, it will be nearly thirty years since the world has seen the like.

And never before since St. Peter sat (or did not sit) in the seat of the

Roman bishops has so long a period elapsed unmarked by the election of a

supreme pontiff. The coming conclave will be held under circumstances

essentially dissimilar from those surrounding all its predecessors, as

will be readily understood if we consider the difference which recent

changes, both lay and ecclesiastical, have made in the position of the

pope. If, on the one hand, the political changes in Europe have taken

from the cardinals the power of creating a sovereign prince, the

ecclesiastical changes which the late ecumenical council has wrought in

the constitution of the Church have placed in their hands the power and

duty of selecting a supreme ruler of the Church with acknowledged claims

to a loftier and more tremendous authority than the most high-handed of

his predecessors has hitherto claimed. And the nature of this authority

is such that the political rulers of the world may well feel--and are,

as we know, feeling--a more anxious interest in the result of the

election than they have for many a generation felt in the elevation of a

temporal ruler of the ci-devant States of the Church. Under these

circumstances it may be acceptable to our readers to have some brief

account of what conclaves are and have been.

That this method of choosing a supreme head of the universal Church was

in its origin abusive--that the earliest popes were chosen by the

suffrages of the entire body of the faithful, that by a process of

encroachment this election was in the course of time arrogated to

themselves by the Roman clergy, and was ultimately, by a further process

of similar encroachment, monopolized by the "Sacred College" of

cardinals,--all this is sufficiently well known. It is, however, curious

enough to merit a passing word, that a precisely analogous process of

progressive encroachment may be observed to have taken place in the mode

of appointing the bishops of the Church, not only in the Catholic, but

also in the Protestant branch of it. First freely elected by the body of

the faithful, they were subsequently chosen by the clergy, and lastly by

a small and select body of these in the form of a "chapter." Only in

this case a further step of encroachment being still possible, that step

has been made; and bishops are nominated in the Catholic Church

formally, and in the Anglican really, by the pope and the sovereign

respectively.

It does not seem that in the earliest elections made by the cardinals

the precautions of a "conclave," or a shutting up together of the

cardinals, was adopted. The first conclave seems to have been that which

elected Innocent IV. in 1243, and the motive for the locking up appears

to have been the fear of interference by the emperor Frederick, who was

at the time ravaging all the country around Rome. The first conclave

that was guarded by a Savelli, in whose family the office of marshal of

the Church and guardian of the conclaves became hereditary, was that

which elected Nicholas IV. in 1288. The mode in which this pontiff

merited his elevation is worth telling, apropos of conclaves. The

conclave had lasted over ten months, and been prolonged into the hottest

and most unhealthy season, insomuch that six cardinals died, many more

fell ill, and all ran away save one, the bishop of Palestrina. He,

"keeping large fires continually burning to correct the air," stuck to

it, remained in conclave all alone, and was unanimously elected pope at

the return of the cardinals when the pestilence had ceased. In 1270 we

find a conclave sitting under difficulties of another kind. It was at

Viterbo, and their Eminences sat for two years without making any

election; whereupon, we are told, Raniero Gatti, the captain of the

city, took the step of unroofing the palace in which they were assembled

as a means of hastening their decision. That their Eminences were not

thus to be hurried, however, is proved by their having subsequently

dated a bull, still to be seen with its seventeen seals, "from the

unroofed episcopal palace of Viterbo." There were four or five popes

elected subsequently to this, however, without conclaves; but from the

death of Boniface VIII. in 1303 the series of conclaves has been

unbroken. Celestine V., who abdicated in 1294, drew up the rules which,

confirmed by his successor, Boniface VIII., and by many subsequent popes

from time to time down to the last century, still regulate the

assembling and holding of the conclave, modified in some degree, as

regards the food and private comforts of the cardinals, by indulgence of

later pontiffs.

In old and long-since-forgotten books concerning the conclaves many

curious particulars may be found respecting the customs and ceremonies

connected with the disposal of the body of the deceased pontiff. A

learnedly antiquarian dispute has been raised on the question whether in

early times the body of a pope was embalmed, as we understand the word,

or only exteriorly washed and perfumed. It seems, on the whole, clear

that the first pope who was, properly speaking, embalmed, was Julius

II., who died in 1513. But here is a striking account of the condition

of things in the papal palace after the death of that great, high-handed

and powerful pontiff, Sixtus IV., which occurred in 1484, after a reign

of thirteen years. The statement is that of Burcardo (Burckhardt), the

papal master of the ceremonies, the same writer whose diary, jotted down

from day to day, has revealed to us the incredible atrocities of the

court of Alexander VI., the Borgia pope, who died in 1503. "For all that

I could do," writes the master of the ceremonies, who perhaps at that

time occupied some less conspicuous post in the papal court, "I could

not get a basin, a towel, or any kind of utensil in which the wine and

the water for the odoriferous herbs could be put for washing the body of

the deceased. Nor could I obtain drawers or a clean shirt for putting on

the body, though I asked for them again and again. At length the cook

lent me the copper kettle in which he was wont to heat the water for

washing the plates, together with some hot water; and Andrew the barber

brought me his barber's basin from his shop. So the pontiff was washed.

And as there was no towel to wipe the body with, I caused him to be

wiped with the shirt in which he died, torn into two halves. I could not

change the drawers in which he died and was washed, because there were

no others. His canonical vestments were put upon him without any shirt,

and a pair of red cloth stockings, furnished by the bishop of Cervia,

who was his chamberlain, and a long tunic, if I remember rightly, of red

damask, as well as some other things." This pope, whose body was thus

washed with his shirt torn in half for want of a towel, was that same

Sixtus the enormous wealth and boundless luxury of whose nephews seem

almost fabulous to readers even of these money-abounding days.

The explanation of the extraordinary state of things above described is

to be found in the custom which existed of sacking the apartments of the

deceased pope as soon as ever the breath was out of his body. The utter

lawlessness which prevailed at Rome _sede vacante_--that is to say,

during the interval between the death of one pope and the election of

his successor--was not, indeed, confined to the residence of the

departed pontiff. Throughout Rome all law used to be on those occasions

in abeyance. The streets were scenes of the most unbridled excesses and

violence of all sorts. That was the time for the satisfying of old

grudges. Murder was as common as murderous hate; and no man's life was

safe save in so far as his own hand or his own walls could protect it.

And walls did not always avail. I find a petition to Leo X. from a

monastery in Rome, setting forth that a document assuring certain

indulgences to the house had been lost at the time of the sack and

plunder of the convent during the last conclave. No sort of claim, it is

to be observed, is attempted to be set up of redress for the plunder and

destruction of the property of the convent; only a prayer that the

privileges in question might be again granted in consideration of the

loss of the document. A very curious illustration of Roman manners in

the sixteenth century is to be found in a practice with regard to these

periods of interregnum which I find recorded by Cancellieri in his work

on the conclaves. Roman wives, it seems, were forbidden--not without

reason--to leave their homes and go forth into the streets of Rome at

their pleasure. But in the articles of the marriage contract it was

stipulated that the lady should be free to go out on certain specified

occasions, mainly ecclesiastical festivals; and among these it was

always specially provided that the lady might go out during the days of

the exposition of the body of a deceased pope for the purpose of kissing

his feet. One would have thought that, looking to the state of things in

the city, the time of the interregnum would have been the very last to

select for ladies to venture into the streets. It would seem, however,

that the Roman matrons thought otherwise. Cancellieri says that it was

in those days a common saying among Roman ladies that "Happy were they

who were married to Spaniards!" For it would seem that the Spanish

husbands in Rome did not think it necessary to enforce this restraint on

their wives--a circumstance that rather curiously contradicts our

general notions of Spanish marital feelings and discipline.

In truth, the condition of Rome during the period of the conclave down

to very recent times affords a singular evidence of the virtue of the

old French formula, "Le roi est mort! Vive le roi!" as signifying the

non-existence of any period of transition between one embodiment of law

and authority and his successor; for the absence of any similar

provision in the case of the popes made Rome a veritable hell upon earth

during the period of a papal election.

But if the city outside the walls within which the purple fathers of the

Church were deliberating presented a scene which was a disgrace and a

scandal to Christendom, that which was being enacted within those walls

was very often still more profoundly scandalous. Never probably has any

human institution existed in which practice was more grossly and

notoriously in disaccord with pretensions and theory, and with respect

to which the highest and most sacred of all conceivable human sanctions

was so shamelessly desecrated and profaned to the lowest and vilest

uses.

Before touching on this part of the subject, however, it is necessary

first to give in as few words as possible some intelligible account of

the formal regulations and method of holding the conclave and electing

the pontiff. All the regulations, which have been made with extreme

minuteness, together with the subsequent modifications of them by

different pontiffs, would occupy far too much space to be given here.

The following rules seem to be the essential points. Ten days, including

that of the pope's death, are to be allowed for the coming of absent

cardinals. This delay may, however, be dispensed with for urgent

reasons. The conclave should properly be held in the building in which

the pope died. Regulations of various degrees of rigor have been made

for securing the isolation of the members of the Sacred College, greater

latitude and indulgence having been permitted as we approach modern

times. Sundry means also were devised for hastening the deliberations of

their Eminences. The old rule of Gregory X. prescribed that if an

election were not made in three days, the cardinals should be supplied

during the following five days with one dish only at dinner and one at

supper; and if at the end of those five days the election was still

uncompleted, the electors should be allowed only bread and water till

they had accomplished their task. But, as may be readily supposed, all

this has been materially modified. Many of the minute and rigorous

precautions for preventing communication with the world outside the

conclave have also fallen into desuetude. The purpose of these,

however--that is, the absolute prevention of any possibility of

consultation between those in conclave and those outside--is still

sought to be, and probably is, maintained. Cardinals obliged to leave

the conclave by ill-health, on sworn certificates of the two physicians

who are shut up with them in conclave, may return to it, if able to do

so, before the election is made. No censure or excommunication or

deposition of any cardinal by the pope whose successor is to be elected

can avail to deprive such cardinal of the right to take part in the

conclave and in the election. No cardinal under pain of excommunication

may say anything, or promise anything, or request anything, to or from

another cardinal for the purpose of influencing him in the giving of his

vote. It may safely be asserted, however, that pretty much all that is

done in the conclave from the beginning to the end of it is one long

contravention of this rule. The whole--at all events, the

main--occupation of those in conclave consists of exactly what is here

forbidden. The rule proceeds to declare that all such bargains,

agreements and obligations, even sworn to, are _ipso facto_ void,

and "he who does not keep them merits praise rather than the blame of

perjury." This merit elected popes have usually been found to strive

after with all their strength. Julius II., by a bull issued in 1505,

declared that any pope elected by means of bargains or promises is

elected simoniacally; that his election is null even if he have the vote

of every cardinal; that he is a heresiarch and no pope; that such an

election cannot become valid by enthronation, or by lapse of time, or by

the obedience of the cardinals; that it is lawful for the cardinals, the

clergy and the people of Rome to refuse obedience to a pope so elected.

On all which Monsignor Spondano in his ecclesiastical annals, remarks,

with a naïveté of hypocrisy which is irresistibly amusing, that inasmuch

as there would be considerable difficulty in applying the remedy

proposed, God has specially provided that there should never be any need

of it. How far Monsignor Spondano can have supposed that such was the

case will become evident from the account of the doings of a conclave

which I propose giving to the reader presently.

Together with the cardinals there are shut up in the conclave two

attendants, called "conclavisti," for each cardinal, or three for such

of them as are ill or infirm; one sacristan, two masters of the

ceremonies, one confessor, two physicians, one surgeon, one carpenter,

two barbers and ten porters. Any conclavist who may leave the conclave

cannot on any account return. The different cells prepared in the

Quirinal, Vatican or other place in which the conclave may be held are

assigned to the cardinals by lot. The election may be made in the

conclave in either of three different manners--by scrutiny of votes, by

compromise, or by acclamation. A vote by scrutiny is to be taken twice

every day in the conclave--once in the morning and once in the

afternoon. All the cardinals, save such as are confined to their cells

by infirmity, proceed to the chapel, and there, after the mass, receive

the communion. They then return each to his cell to breakfast, and

afterward meet in the chapel again. The next morning at 8 A.M. the

sub-master of the ceremonies rings a bell at the door of each cell; at

half-past eight he rings again; and at nine a third time, adding in a

loud voice the summons, "_In capellam Domini!_"

The arrangement of the Pauline Chapel at the Vatican, in which the

voting takes place, is as follows: The floor is raised by a boarding to

the level of the pontifical throne, which stands by the side of the

altar, and which is left in its place in readiness for the newly-elected

pope to seat himself and receive the "adoration" of his electors. All

around the walls of the chapel are erected as many thrones as there are

cardinals, and over each of them a canopy, so arranged that by means of

a cord it can be suddenly let down; so that at the moment the election

is pronounced all the canopies are suddenly made to fall except that of

the new pope. In front of each throne and under each canopy there is a

little table covered with silk--green in the case of all those cardinals

who have been created previously to the pontificate of the pope recently

deceased, and purple in the case of those created by him. The colors of

the canopies are similar. On each table are printed registers prepared

for registering the votes at each scrutiny, the schedules for giving the

votes, the means for sealing, etc. On the front of each table is

inscribed the name of the cardinal who is to occupy it, together with

his armorial bearings. In the midst of the body of the chapel are six

little tables covered with green cloth, with a seat at each of them for

the use of any cardinal who may fear that his neighbor might overlook

him while writing his voting paper if he wrote it on the table before

his throne. In front of the altar there is a large table covered with

crimson silk, on which are folded schedules, wafers, sealing-wax; four

candles, not lighted, but ready for use; a tinder-box with steel and

matches; scarlet and purple twine for filing the voting schedules; a box

of needles for the same purpose; a tablet with seventy holes in it,

answering to the number of cardinals if the college were full, and in

each hole a little wooden counter with the name of a cardinal, so that

there are as many counters as cardinals in the college; and finally, a

copy of the form of oath respecting the putting the schedules into the

urns, the two urns themselves, and a box with a key, used for receiving

the voting papers of such cardinals as may be too ill to leave their

cells. The two urns, however, at the time of the scrutiny are placed on

the altar. Behind the altar there is placed a little iron brazier or

stove, in which, after every scrutiny which does not succeed in electing

a pope, the voting papers are burned, together with some damp straw, the

object being to cause a dense smoke, which, passing by a pipe outside

the building, serves to inform the Romans that no election has yet been

made. Twice a day, at about the same hour every day till the election is

achieved, this smoke, which is eagerly watched for by all Rome, and

specially by the commandant of the Castle of St. Angleo, who is waiting

to fire a salute for the new pope, tells the city that there is no pope

yet. When the hour passes and no smoke is seen, it is known that the

election is made, and the cannoneers fire away without waiting to know

whom they are saluting.

There is no portion of the day or of the lives of the cardinals in

conclave which is not regulated by a host of minute regulations and

ceremonies. The introduction of the food supplied to them; the form of

bringing it from their palaces; the method of communication with the

outside world, and the precautions taken to prevent any communication

with reference to the great business in hand; the form and color of the

garments to be worn by their Eminences and by all the subordinates; the

amount of remuneration and perquisites to be received by the latter

(among which regulations I find the following: "Let no man receive

anything who has not purchased the office he holds"); the order of

precedence of everybody, from the dean of the Sacred College to the last

sweeper who enters the conclave with their Eminences,--all subject to

minute rules, which would require, one would imagine, a lifetime to make

one's self master of, and which, curious as some of them are, it is

impossible to find place for here. We must get on to the method of

voting.

Each cardinal has a schedule about eight inches long by six wide,

divided by printed lines into five parts. On the topmost is printed

"Ego, Cardinalis----," to be filled up with the name and titles of the

elector using it. On the second space are printed, toward either side of

the paper, two circles, indicating the exact place where the paper when

folded is to be sealed. On the middle space is printed the words "Eligo

in Summum Pontificem R'um D'um meum Dom. Card.," leaving only the name

of the person chosen to be filled in. On the fourth space two circles

are printed, as on the second, indicating the places of two more seals,

which, when the paper is folded and sealed down, make it impossible to

see the motto which is written, together with a number, on the last

space. On the back of the second and fourth divisions are printed the

words "nomen" and "signum," denoting that immediately under them are the

name and motto of the elector. There are also printed certain ornamental

flourishes, the object of which is to render it impossible to see the

writing within through the paper. Thus, the schedule, with its top and

bottom folds sealed down, can be freely opened so far as to allow the

name of the cardinal for whom the vote is given to be seen, but not so

far as to make it possible to see the name or motto of the giver of the

vote.

When the voting papers have been thus prepared, the senior cardinal, the

dean of the Sacred College, rises from his throne and walks to the foot

of the altar, holding his schedule aloft between his finger and thumb.

There he kneels and passes a brief time in private prayer. Then rising

to his feet, he pronounces aloud in a sonorous voice the following oath:

"Testor Christum Dominum qui me judicaturus est, me eligire quem

secundum Deum judico eligi debere, et quod in accessu praestabo" ("I

call to witness the Lord Christ, who shall judge me, that I elect him

whom before God I judge ought to be elected, and which vote I shall give

also in the _accessit_"). The last words allude to a subsequent

part of the business of the election, to be explained presently. It is

hardly necessary to point out to the reader that this oath, solemn as it

sounds, might just as well be omitted. It is as a matter of course

evident that each elector will give his vote for the person who

_ought_ in his opinion to be elected. But as to the _motives_

of that opinion, as to the _grounds_ on which it seems best to each

elector that such and such a man _ought_ to be elected, the oath

says nothing. The cardinals whose votes Alexander VI. bought thought, no

doubt, that in all honesty they _ought_ to give their voices for

the man who had fairly paid for them. But, putting aside such gross

cases, let the reader reflect for a moment how extensive a ground is

covered by the celebrated "A.M.D.G." formula ("Ad majorem Dei gloriam").

The conscience of an elector may be supposed to speak to him thus: "It

is true that I know A.B. to be a profligate and thoroughly worldly man,

but his influence with such or such a statesman or monarch will probably

be the means of saving the Church from a schism in this, that or the

other country. And that assuredly is A.M.D.G. And he is the man,

therefore, who ought to be elected."

Well, the oath having been thus pronounced, the voter places his folded

schedule on a silver salver, and with this casts it into the silver urn

which is on the altar. And one after another every cardinal present does

the same--every cardinal present except, however, any one who may not

have received at least deacon's orders. One so disqualified may indeed

be empowered to vote by dispensation of the deceased pope; but this

dispensation is usually given for a limited period--a few days

probably--only; and if this time has expired before the election is

completed the cardinal who is not in sacred orders must cease to vote

till he have received orders. It has frequently occurred that cardinals

have been ordained under these circumstances in the conclave. When all

the schedules have been placed in the urn, three cardinals, who have

been previously chosen by lot for the purpose, as scrutineers proceed to

verify the result of the voting. First, the schedules are counted to

ascertain that they are equal in number to the number of the cardinals

present. If this should not be the case, all are forthwith burned and

the business is recommenced. But if this is all right, then comes the

moment of interest which sets many an old heart beating under its purple

vestments. The three scrutineers seat themselves at the large table with

their backs turned to the altar, so that they face the assembly. Then

each cardinal in his throne-seat places on the little table before him a

large sheet duly prepared with the names of all the cardinals living,

and ruled columns for the votes, and pen in hand awaits the declaration

of these. The first scrutineer takes a schedule from the urn, unfolds

the central part, leaving the two sealed ends intact, takes note of the

vote declared within, and hands the paper to the second scrutineer, who

also notes the vote and hands it to the third, who declares the vote

aloud in a voice audible to all present, and each cardinal marks it on

his register. Then, if the votes shall have been sufficient to elect the

pope--that is, two-thirds of those voting--there is nothing more to be

done save to number the votes, to verify them, and then burn the

schedules. But if this is not the case, as it rarely if ever is, the

cardinals proceed to the _accessit_. The papers and all the forms

for this are precisely the same as for the first voting, save that in

the place of the word "Eligo" there is the word "Accedo," and that in

the place of the name of the cardinal voted for those who do not choose

to alter their previous vote write "Nemini" ("To no one"). Then the

matter proceeds as before; and if no election is effected, the assembly

breaks up, and meets for another voting and scrutiny that afternoon or

the next morning, as the case may be. And this is done twice every day

till the election is made. The reader, I fear, may think that I have

been prolix in my statement of these particulars of the method of the

election, but I can assure him that I have given him only the main and

important points, selected from some hundreds of pages in the works of

those who have treated on the wonderfully minute regulations and

prescriptions with which the whole matter is surrounded.

It will be easily seen that the moment of proceeding to the accessit is

the time for fine strokes of policy, for the most cautious prudence and

craftiest cunning. The general condition of the ground has been

disclosed by the results of the previous scrutiny. The possibilities and

chances begin to discover themselves. "Frequently," says the President

de Brosses, who was at Rome during the conclave which elected Benedict

XIV. in 1740, in the charming published volume of his

letters--"Frequently at the accessit everything which was done at the

preceding ceremony is reversed; and it is at the accessit that the most

subtle strokes of policy are practiced. Sometimes, for example, when a

party has been formed for any cardinal, the leader of the party keeps in

reserve for the accessit all the votes that he can count on as certain,

and induces those that he suspects may be doubtful to vote for the

person intended to be made pope at the first scrutiny, so as to make

sure by the number of votes given whether his supporters have been true

to their party, and to avoid unmasking his policy till he shall be sure

of his _coup_."

The story of the conclave which elected Cardinal Lambertini pope as

Benedict XIV., gives a curious picture of the schemes and intrigues

carried on in the mysterious seclusion of the conclave. Clement XII., of

the Florentine Corsini family, had died. The cardinal Corsini, his

nephew, was at the head of one faction in the conclave, and the cardinal

Albani, nephew of Clement XI., who died in 1721, at the head of the

other. The former party seemed at the beginning of the conclave to be

the most numerous. But De Brosses describes the two men as follows.

Corsini, he says, had little intelligence, less sense, and no capacity

for affairs. Of Albani, he says that he was "highly considered for his

capacity, and both hated and feared to excess--a man without faith,

without principles; an implacable enemy even when appearing to be

reconciled; of a great genius for affairs; inexhaustible in resource and

intrigue; the ablest man in the college, and the worst-hearted man in

Rome." It soon became clear that the struggle between the factions thus

led would be severe, and the conclave a long one. The history of the

plots and counterplots by which each strove to circumvent the other is

extremely amusing, but too long to be given here. After various

fruitless attempts, the Corsini faction concentrated all their forces on

Cardinal Aldrovandi. He was a man of decent character, and had the

support of a small body of independent cardinals, called the "Zelanti,"

who, to the great disgust and contempt of their brethren in purple, were

mainly influenced by the consideration of the worthiness of his

character. The number of voices needed to make the election was

thirty-four: Aldrovandi had thirty-three. Cardinal Passionei, the

scrutator who had to declare the votes, and a member of the opposite

faction, became, we are told, as pale as death when he announced with

trembling voice the thirty-third vote. There was every reason to think

that at the accessit he would have the one other vote needful to make

the election. But it was not so. The terrible Albani was too much

feared, and had his own party too well in hand. But the thing was run

very close. The danger was great that during the hours of the night that

must intervene before the next scrutiny some means might be found to

detach _one_ Albani follower from his allegiance. There was the

great bait to be offered that the one who changed his vote would be in

effect the maker of the new pope. Under these circumstances, Albani felt

that nothing but some "heroic" measure could save him. What he did was

this: There was a certain Father Ravali, a Cordelier, and one of the

leading men of his order, on whom Albani could depend, and who was, in

language more expressive than ecclesiastical, "up to anything." This

monk was instructed to seek a conference with Aldrovandi at the

_rota_. (The rota was the opening in the wall at which such

interviews were permitted in presence of certain high dignitaries

specially appointed to attend it, for the express purpose of hearing all

that might be said, and preventing any communication having reference to

the business of the conclave. How they performed their duty the present

story shows.) The monk began by saying that all Rome looked upon the

election of Aldrovandi as a certain thing. Aldrovandi, doing the humble,

replied that to be sure many of his brethren had deigned to think of

him, but that he did not make any progress--that there were those who

were too determinately opposed to his election, etc. The monk thereupon

goes into a long and unctuous discourse on all the sad evils to

Christendom of a conclave so prolonged. (It had already lasted over five

months.) To which Aldrovandi replies that he ought rather to address his

remonstrances to Cardinal Albani, who is in truth the cause of the

inability of the conclave to come to an election. "Ah, monsignor,"

returns the Cordelier, "put yourself in the place of the cardinal

Albani. I know his sentiments from the many conversations we have had

together. He is far from feeling any personal objection or enmity to

you. But you know that there has been in the past unpleasant feeling

between your family and his, and he fears that you are animated by

hostility toward him." "I assure you," replies Aldrovandi, falling into

the trap, "that he is greatly mistaken. I have long since forgotten all

the circumstances you allude to. Besides, as I remember, the cardinal

had no part in the matter. He can't doubt that I have the greatest

respect for his personal character. Besides, I am not the man to forget

a service rendered to me." "Since those are the sentiments of Your

Eminence," cries the monk, "I begin to see an end to this interminable

conclave. I perceive that there will be no difficulty in arranging

matters between Your Eminence and the cardinal Albani. Will you permit

me to be the medium of your sentiments upon the subject?" Aldrovandi is

delighted, and feels the tiara already on his head. Then, after a little

indifferent talk, the Cordelier, in the act of taking leave of the

cardinal, turns back and says, "But, after all, the mere word of a poor

monk like me is hardly sufficient between personages such as Your

Eminence and the cardinal Albani. Permit me to write you a letter, in

which I will lay before Your Eminence those considerations concerning

the crying evils of the length of this conclave which I have ventured to

mention to you, and that will give me an opportunity of entering on the

matters we have been speaking of. And then you, in your reply to me, can

take occasion to say what you have already been observing to me of your

sentiments toward the cardinal Albani." Aldrovandi eagerly agreed to

this, and the two letters were at once written. "I am told," adds De

Brosses, "that the letter of Aldrovandi was strong on the subject of the

_gratitude_ he should feel toward Albani." No sooner has the

perfidious Cordelier got the letter into his hand than he runs with it

to Albani, who goes with it at once to the body of the "Zelanti"

cardinals with pious horror in his face: "Here! Look at your Aldrovandi,

your man of God, that you tell me is incapable of intriguing in order to

become His vicar! Here he is making promises to seduce me into violating

my conscience."--"Alas! alas! It is too true! Clearly the Holy Ghost

will none of him. Speak to us of him no more!" So Aldrovandi's chance

was gone, and Albani found the means of uniting the necessary number of

voices on Lambertini, a good-enough sort of man, by all accounts, but

hardly of the wood from which popes are or should be made. He became

that Benedict XIV. who was Voltaire's correspondent, and who, as the

story goes, when he was asked by a young Roman patrician to make him a

list of the books he would recommend for his studies, replied, "My dear

boy, we always keep a list of the best books ready made. It is called

the _Index Expurgatorius_!"

Such were the doings of conclaves, and such the popes which resulted

from them, in that eighteenth century whose boasted philosophy pretty

well culminated in the conviction that pudding was good and sugar sweet.

Such will not be the conclave which will assemble at the death of the

present pontiff. The election will doubtless be scrupulously canonical

on all points; and, though it may be doubted how far the deliberations

of the Sacred College will be calculated to advance the truly understood

spiritual interests of humanity, there is, I think, little doubt that

they will be directed, according to the lights of the members, to the

choice of that individual who shall in their opinion be most likely to

advance the interests of the Church "A.D.M.G."

T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE.

MONSOOR PACHA.

Monsoor Pacha, it is pleasant to meet

Here, in the heart of this treacherous town--

Where faith is a peril and courtship a cheat,

More false to the touch than a rose overblown--

With a soul that is true to itself, as your own.

Monsoor Pacha, as two gentlemen may,

Civilized, city-bred, link we our hands:

Now from the town to the desert away!

Ours is a friendship whose spirit demands

The scope of the sky and the stretch of the sands.

Monsoor Pacha, doff your courtier's garb;

We have given to courtesy all of its dues;

Spring to your throne on the back of your barb,

Shake to the breezes your regal burnous,

Wave your lance-sceptre wherever you choose!

Monsoor, my chief! ah, I know you at length!

King of the desert, your children are come

To cluster, like sheep, in the shade of your strength,

Or to strike, like young lions, for country and home,

When your eyes are ablaze at the roll of the drum!

Monsoor, my chief! now one gallop, to see

The land you have sworn that no despot shall grind!

Though sun-tanned and arid, by Allah! 'tis free!

Its crops are these lances: these sons of the wind,

Our steeds, are its flocks--a grim harvest to bind!

Monsoor, my chief! how we dash o'er the sand,

Hissing behind us like storm-driven snow!

Flash the long guns of your wild Arab band,

Brandish the spears, and the light jereeds throw,

As, half-winged, through the shrill singing breezes we go!

Monsoor, my chief! send the horses away:

The sports of your tribe I have seen with delight.

Now let us watch while the rose-tinted day

Fades from the desert, and peace-bearing Night

Shakes the first gem on her brow in our sight.

Monsoor, my host! lo, I enter your tent,

As brother by brother, hands clasping, is led:

I sleep like a child in a dream Heaven-sent;

For have I not eaten the salt and the bread?

And Monsoor will answer for me with his head.

GEORGE H. BOKER.

CONSTANTINOPLE, Jan. 10, 1875.

HOW HAM WAS CURED.

This was in slave times. It was also immediately after dinner, and the

gentlemen had gone to the east piazza. Mr. Smith was walking back and

forth, talking somewhat excitedly for him, while Dr. Rutherford sat with

his feet on the railing, thoughtfully executing the sentimental

performance of cutting his nails. Dr. Rutherford was an old friend of

Mr. Smith who had been studying surgery in Philadelphia, and now, on his

way back to South Carolina, had tarried to make us a visit.

"You see," Mr. Smith was saying, "about a week ago one of our old

negroes died under the impression that she was 'tricked' or bewitched,

and the consequence has been that the entire plantation is demoralized.

You never saw anything like it."

"Many a time," said Dr. Rutherford, and calmly cut his nails.

"There is not a negro on the place," continued Edward, "who does not lie

down at night in terror of the Evil Eye, and go to his work in the

morning paralyzed by dread of what the day may bring. Why, there is a

perfect panic among them. They are falling about like a set of ten-pins.

This morning I sent for Wash (best hand on the place) to see about

setting out tobacco plants, and behold Wash curled up under a haystack

getting ready to die! It is enough to--So as soon as you came this

morning a plan entered my head for putting a stop to the thing. It will

be necessary to acknowledge that two or three of them are under the

spell, and it is better to select those who already fancy themselves

so.--Rosalie!" I appeared at the window. "Are any of the house-servants

'witched?"

"Mercy is," said I, "and I presume Mammy is going to be: I saw her make

a curtsey to the black cat this morning."

"Well, what is your plan?" inquired Dr. Rutherford.

Mr. Smith seated himself on the piazza railing, dangling his feet

thereagainst, rounding his shoulders in the most attractive and engaging

manner, as you see men do, and proceeded to develop his idea. I was

called off at the moment, and did not return for an hour or two. As I

did so I heard Dr. Rutherford say, "All right! Blow the horn;" and the

overseer down in the yard

Blew a blast as loud and shrill

As the wild-boar heard on Temple Hill--

an event which at this unusual hour of the day produced perfect

consternation among the already excited negroes. They no doubt supposed

it the musical exercise set apart for the performance of the angel

Gabriel on the day of judgment, and in less than ten minutes all without

exception had come pell-mell, helter-skelter, running to "the house."

The dairymaid left her churn, and the housemaid put down her broom; the

ploughs stood still, and when the horses turned their heads to see what

was the matter they found they had no driver; she also who was cooking

for the hands "fled from the path of duty" (no Casabianca nonsense for

_her!_), leaving the "middling" to sputter into blackness and the

corn-pones to share its fate. Mothers had gathered up their children of

both sexes, and grouped them in little terrified companies about the

yard and around the piazza-steps.

Edward was now among them, endeavoring to subdue the excitement, and

having to some extent succeeded, he made a signal to Dr. Rutherford, who

came forward to address the negroes. Throwing his shoulders back and

looking around with dignity, he exclaimed, "I am the great Dr.

Rutherford, the witch-doctor of Boston! I was far away in the North,

hundreds of miles from here, and I saw a spot on the sun, and it looked

like the Evil Eye! And I found it was a great black smoke. Then I knew

that witch-fires were burning in the mountains, and witches were dancing

in the valleys; and the light of the Eye was red! I am the great Dr.

Rutherford, the witch-doctor of Boston! I called my black cat up and

told her to smell for blood, and she smelled, and she smelled, and she

smelled! She smelled, and she smelled, and she smelled! And presently

her hair stood up like bristles, and her eyes shot out sparks of fire,

and her tail was as stiff as iron!" He threw his shoulders back, looked

imposingly around and repeated: "I am the great Dr. Rutherford the

witch-doctor of Boston! My black Cat tells me that the witch is

here--that she has hung the deadly nightshade at your cabin-doors, and

your blood is turning to water. You are beginning to wither away. You

shiver in the sunshine; you don't want to eat; your hearts are heavy and

you don't feel like work; and when you come from the field you don't

take down the banjo and pat and shuffle and dance, but you sit down in

the corner with your heads on your hands, and would go to sleep, but you

know that as soon as you shut your eyes she will cast hers on you

through the chinks in the cabin-wall."

"Dat's me!" said Mercy--"dat certny is me!"

"Gret day in de mornin', mas' witch-doctor! How you know? Is you been

tricked?" inquired Martha, who, having been reared on the plantation,

was unacquainted with the etiquette observed at lectures.

Wash groaned heavily, and shook his head from side to side in silent

commendation of the doctor's lore.

"My black cat tells me that the witch is here; and she _is_ here!"

(Immense sensation among the children of Ham.) "But," continued he with

a majestic wave of the arm, "she can do you no harm, for I _also_ am

here, the great Dr. Rutherford, the witch-doctor of Boston!"

"Doctor," inquired Edward in a loud voice, "can you tell who is conjured

and who is not?"

"I cannot tell unless robed in the blandishments of plagiarism and the

satellites of hygienic art as expunged by the gyrations of nebular

hypothesis. Await ye!" He and Mr, Smith went into the house.

The negroes were very much impressed. They have excessive reverence for

grandiloquent language, and the less they understand of it the better

they like it.

"What dat he say, honey?" asked old Mammy. "I can't heer like I used

ter."

"He says he will be back soon, Mammy, and tell if any of you are

tricked," said I; and just then Edward and the doctor reappeared,

bearing between them a pine table. On this table were arranged about

forty little pyramids of whitish-looking powder, and in their midst

stood a bottle containing some clear liquid, like water. Dr. Rutherford

seated himself behind it, robed in the black gown he had used in the

dissecting-room, and crowned by a conical head-piece about two feet

high, manufactured by Edward and himself, and which they had completed

by placing on the pinnacle thereof a human skull. The effect of this

picturesque costume was heightened by two large red circles around the

doctor's eyes--whether obtained from the juice of the pokeberry or the

inkstand on Edward's desk need not be determined.

In front of the table stood the negroes, men, women and children. There

was the preacher, decked in the clerical livery of a standing collar and

white cravat, but, perhaps in deference to the day of the week, these

were modified by the secular apparel of a yellow cotton shirt and

homespun pantaloons, attached to a pair of old "galluses," which had

been mended with twine, and pieced with leather, and lengthened with

string, till, if any of the original remained, none could tell the color

thereof nor what they had been in the day of their youth. The effect was

not harmonious. There was Mammy, with her low wrinkled forehead, and

white turban, and toothless gums, and skin of shining blackness, which

testified that her material wants were not neglected. There was Wash, a

great, stalwart negro, who ordinarily seemed able to cope with any ten

men you might meet, now looking so subdued and dispirited, and of a

complexion so ashy, that he really appeared old and shrunken and weak.

There was William Wirt, the ploughboy, affected by a chronic grin which

not even the solemnity of this occasion could dissipate, but the

character of which seemed changed by the awestruck eyes that rolled

above the heavy red lips and huge white teeth. There was Apollo--in

social and domestic circles known as 'Poller--there was Apollo, his hair

standing about his head in little black tufts or horns wrapped with

cotton cord to make it grow, one brawny black shoulder protruding from a

rent in his yellow cotton shirt, his pantaloons hanging loosely around

his hips, and bagging around that wonderful foot which did not suggest

his name, unless his sponsors in baptism were of a very satirical turn.

There were Martha, and Susan, and Minerva, and Cinderella, and

Chesterfield, and Pitt, and a great many other grown ones, besides a

crowd of children, the smallest among the latter being clad in the

dishabille of a single garment, which reached perhaps to the knee, but

had little to boast in the way of latitude.

There they all stood in little groups about the yard, looking with awe

and reverence at the great Dr. Rutherford, who sat behind the table with

his black gown and frightful eyes and skull-crowned cap.

"You see these little heaps of powder and this bottle of water. You will

come forward one at a time and pour a few drops of the water in this

bottle on one of these little heaps of powder. If the powder turns

black, the person who pours on the water is 'witched. If the powder

remains white, the person who pours on the water is _not_ 'witched. You

may all examine the powders, and see for yourselves whether there is any

difference between them, and you will each pour from the same bottle."

During a silence so intense that nothing was heard save the hum of two

great "bumblebees" that darted in and out among the trees and flew at

erratic angles above our heads, the negroes came forward and stretched

their necks over each other's shoulders, peering curiously at the

little mounds of powder that lay before them, at the innocent-looking

bottle that stood in their midst, and the great high priest who sat

behind. They stretched their necks over each other's shoulders, and each

endeavored to push his neighbor to the front; but those in front, with

due reverence for the uncanny nature of the table, were determined not

to be forced too near it, and the result was a quiet struggle, a silent

wrestle, an undertone of wriggle, that was irresistibly funny.

Then arose the great high priest: "Range ye!"

Not knowing the nature of this order, the negroes scattered instanter

and then collected _en masse_ around Mr. Smith.

"Range ye! range!" repeated the doctor with dignity, and Edward

proceeded to arrange them in a long, straggling row, urging upon them

that there was no cause for alarm, as, even should any of them prove

'witched, the doctor had charms with him by which to cast off the spell.

"Come, Martha," said Edward; but Martha was dismayed, and giving her

neighbor a hasty shove, exclaimed,

"You go fus', Unk' Lumfrey: you's de preacher."

Uncle Humphrey disengaged his elbow with an angry hitch: "I don't keer

if I is: go 'long yose'f."

"Well, de Lord knows I'm 'feerd to go," said Martha; "but ef I sot up

for preachin', 'peers to me I wouldn' be'feerd to sass witches nor

goses, nor nuffin' else."

"I don't preach no time but Sundays, an' dis ain't Sunday," said Uncle

Humphrey.

"Hy, nigger!" exclaimed Martha in desperation, "is you gwine to go back

on de Lord cos 'tain't Sunday? How come you don't trus' on Him

week-a-days?"

"I does trus' on Him fur as enny sense in doin' uv it; but ef I go to

enny my foolishness, fus' thing I know de Lord gwine leave me to take

keer uv myse'f, preacher or no preacher--same as ef He was ter say,

'Dat's all right, cap'n: ef you gwine to boss dis job, boss it;' an'

den whar _I_ be? Mas' Ned tole you to go: go on, an' lemme 'lone."

"Uncle Humphrey," said Edward, "there is nothing whatever to be afraid

of, and you must set the rest an example. Come!"

Uncle Humphrey obeyed, but as he did so he turned his head and

rolled--or, as the negroes say, _walled_--his eyes at Martha in a manner

which convinced her, whatever her doubts in other matters pertaining to

theology, that there is such a thing as future punishment. The old

fellow advanced, and under direction of the great high priest poured

some of the contents of the bottle on the powder indicated to him, and

it remained white.

"Thang Gord!" he exclaimed with a fervency which left no doubt of his

sincerity, and hastened away.

Two or three others followed with a similar result. Then came Mercy, the

housemaid, and as her trembling fingers poured the liquid forth, behold

the powder changed and turned to black! The commotion was indescribable,

and Mercy was about to have a nervous fit when Dr. Rutherford, fixing

his eyes on her, said in a tone of command, "Be quiet--be perfectly

quiet, and in two hours I will destroy the spell. Go over there and sit

down."

She tottered to a seat under one of the trees.

One or two more took their turn, among them Mammy, but the powders

remained white. I had entreated Edward not to pronounce her 'witched,

because she was so old and I loved her so: I could not bear that she

should be frightened. You should have seen her when she found that she

was safe. The stiff old limbs became supple and the terrified

countenance full of joy, and the dear ridiculous old thing threw her

arms up in the air, and laughed and cried, and shouted, and praised God,

and knocked off her turban, and burst open her apron-strings, and

refused to be quieted till the doctor ordered her to be removed from the

scene of action. The idea of retiring to the seclusion of her cabin

while all this was going on was simply preposterous, and Mammy at once

exhibited the soothing effect of the suggestion; so the play proceeded.

More white powders. Then Apollo's turned black, and, poor fellow! when

it did so, he might have been a god or a demon, or anything else you

never saw, for his face looked little like that of a human being, giving

you the impression only of wildly-rolling eyeballs, and great white

teeth glistening in a ghastly, feeble, almost idiotic grin.

Edward went up to him and laid his hand on his shoulder: "That's all

right, my boy. We'll have you straight in no time, and you will be the

best man at the shucking to-morrow night."

More white powders. Then came Wash, great big Wash; and when his powder

changed, what do you suppose he did? Well, he just fainted outright.

The remaining powders retaining their color, and Wash having been

restored to consciousness, Dr. Rutherford directed him to a clump of

chinquapin bushes near the "big gate" at the entrance of the plantation.

There he would find a flat stone. Beneath this stone he would find

thirteen grains of moulding corn and some goat's hair. These he was to

bring back with him. Under the first rail near the same gate Mercy would

find: a dead frog with its eyes torn out, and across the road in the

hollow of a stump Apollo was to look for a muskrat's tail and a weasel's

paw. They went off reluctantly, the entire _corps de plantation_

following, and soon they all came scampering back, trampling down the

ox-eyed daisies and jamming each other against the corners of the rail

fence, for, sure enough, the witch's treasures had been found, but not a

soul had dared to touch them. Dr. Rutherford sternly ordered them back,

but all hands hung fire, and their countenances evinced resistance of

such a stubborn character that Edward at length volunteered to go with

them. Then it was all right, and presently returned the most laughable

procession that was ever seen--Wash with his arms at right angles,

bearing his grains of moulding grain on a burdock leaf which he held at

as great a distance as the size of the leaf and the length of his arms

would admit, his neck craned out and his eyes so glued to the uncanny

corn that he stumbled over every stick and stone that lay in his path;

Mercy next, with ludicrous solemnity, bearing her unsightly burden on

the end of a corn-stalk; Apollo last, his weasel's paw and muskrat's

tail deposited in the toe of an old brogan which he had found by the

roadside, brown and wrinkled and stiff, with a hole in the side and the

ears curled back, and which he had hung by the heel to a long crooked

stick. On they came, the crowd around them following at irregular

distances, surging back and forth, advancing or retreating as they were

urged by curiosity or repelled by fear.

It was now getting dark, so Dr. Rutherford, having had the table

removed, brought forth three large plates filled with different colored

powders. On one he placed Mercy's frog, on another Wash's corn, and on

the third the muskrat's tail and weasel's paw taken from Apollo's shoe.

Then we all waited in silence while with his hands behind him he strode

solemnly back and forth in front of the three plates. At length the bees

had ceased to hum; the cattle had come home of themselves, and could be

heard lowing in the distance; the many shadows had deepened into one;

twilight had faded and darkness come. Then he stood still: "I am the

great Dr. Rutherford, the witch-doctor of Boston! I will now set fire to

these witch's eggs, and if they burn the flames will scorch her. She

will scream and fly away, and it will be a hundred years before another

witch appears in this part of the country."

He applied a match to Apollo's plate and immediately the whole place was

illuminated by a pale blue glare which fell with ghastly effect on the

awestricken countenances around, while in the distance, apparently near

the "big gate," arose a succession of the most frightful shrieks ever

heard or imagined. Then the torch was applied to Mercy's frog, and

forthwith every nook and corner, every leaf and every blade of grass was

bathed in a flood of blood-red light, while the cries grew, if

possible, louder and fiercer. Then came Wash's corn, which burned with a

poisonous green glare, and lashed its sickly light over the house and

yard and the crowd of black faces; and hardly had this died away when

from the direction of the big gate there slowly ascended what appeared

to be a blood-red ball.

"There she goes!" said the great Dr. Rutherford, and we all stood gazing

up into the heavens, till at length the thing burst into flames, the

sparks died away and no more was to be seen.

"Now, that is the last of her!" impressively announced the witch-doctor

of Boston; "and neither she nor her sisters will dare come to this

country again for the next hundred years. You can all make your minds

easy about witches."

Then came triumph instead of dread, and scorn took the place of fear.

There arose a succession of shouts and cheers, laughter and jeers. They

patted their knees and shuffled their feet and wagged their heads in

derision.

"Hyar! hyar! old gal! Done burnt up, is you? Take keer whar you lay yo'

aigs arfer dis!" advised William Wirt in a loud voice.--"Go 'long, pizen

sass!" said Martha. "You done lay yo' las' aig, you is!"--"Hooray

tag-rag!" shouted Chesterfield.--"Histe yo' heels, ole Mrs. Satan,"

cried one.--"You ain't no better'n a free nigger!" said another.--"Yo'

wheel done skotch for good, ole skeer-face! hyar! hyar! You better not

come foolin' 'long o' Mas' Ned's niggers no mo'!"

The next night was a gala one, and a merrier set of negroes never sang

at a corn-shucking, nor did a jollier leader than Wash ever tread the

pile, while Mercy sat on a throne of shucks receiving Sambo's homage,

and, unmolested by fear, coyly held a corncob between her teeth as she

hung her head and bashfully consented that he should come next day to

"ax Mas' Ned de liberty of de plantashun."

"But, Edward," said I, "why did those three powders turn black?"

"Because they were calomel, my dear, and it was lime-water that was

poured on them," said Mr. Smith.

"Well, but why did not the others turn black too?"

"Because the others were tartarized antimony."

"Where did you get what was in the plates, that made the lights, you

know?"

"Rutherford had the material. He is going to settle in a small country

town, so he provided himself with all sorts of drugs and chemicals

before he left Philadelphia."

"But, Edward," persisted I, putting my hand over his book to make him

stop reading, "how came those things where they were found? and the

balloon to ascend just at the proper moment? and who or what was it

screaming so? Neither you nor Dr. Rutherford had left the yard except to

go into the house."

"No, my dear; but you remember Dick Kirby came over just after dinner,

and he would not ask any better fun than to fix all that."

"Humph!" said I, "men are not so stupid, after all."

Edward looked more amused than flattered, which shows how conceited men

are.

JENNIE WOODVILLE.

ON THE STUDY OF SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS.

The last thing which the student learns, the last thing which the world,

that universal student, comprehends, is how to study. It is only after

our little store of facts has been laboriously accumulated, after we

have tried path after path that promised to take us by an easy way up

the Hill Difficulty, and have abandoned each in turn,--it is only when

we have attained a point somewhere near the top, that we can look down

and see the way we should have come, the one road that avoided

unnecessary steepness and needless windings, and led by the quickest and

easiest direction to the summit. The knowledge that we have thus gained,

however late to profit by it ourselves, should at least be valuable to

others. But, unfortunately, as Balzac has said, experience is an article

that no one will use at second hand. When the great teachers of the

world, who have been its most patient scholars, shall go to work to

teach us how to study, and when we are content to learn, then we shall

all be in a fair way to become sages.

But, in the mean time, there are two things we must apprehend--truisms

both of them, but, like all truisms, better known theoretically than

practically. The first is, that we must not use a microscope if we want

to study the stars; and the second is, that we must beware of having a

fly between the lenses of our telescope, unless we wish to discover a

monster in the moon. If a discriminating public would not consider it an

insult, one might add, in the third place, that it is useless to look

for lunar rainbows in the daytime.

It is true that all this sounds like child's play, but it is astonishing

how many of our Shakespearian critics commit one or all of these faults.

Forgetting entirely that criticism demands common sense, impartial

judgment, intense sympathy, a total absence of prejudice, and a great

deal of general information, they bring to their task minds deeply

tinctured with preconceived systems of truth, goodness and beauty, upon

whose Procrustean bed the unfortunate poet must be stretched; while, as

if ignorant of the history of thought, they judge the productions of

another age and another atmosphere by the canons of criticism that hold

good to-day among ourselves. Not only this, but they snuff enigmas in

every line, and scent abstruse theories behind the simplest

statement. They take up passages of Shakespeare whose obvious meaning

any person of average intelligence can understand, and turn and twist

them into such intricate doublings that they cannot undo their own

puzzle. They attack his poetry as if it were a second Rosetta Stone, or

as if it had to be read, like the lines in a Hebrew book, backward. They

study him in the spirit of the fool, who, being given a book upside

down, stood on his head to read it--a position naturally confusing to

the intellect.

Nor is it only in their methods of investigation that many of our

Shakespearian critics are at fault. Their fondness for rearing vast

temples of possibilities upon small corner-stones of fact is proverbial.

We know that Shakespeare went to London, where he both wrote and acted

plays, and upon this slender basis you may find, in almost any of his

commentators, such added items of biography as this sentence from

Heraud's book upon Shakespeare's _Inner Life:_ "That he had a house in

Southwark, that his brother Edmund lived with him, and that his wife was

his frequent companion in London, are all exceedingly probable

suppositions." So they may be to Mr. Heraud's mind, but the next

biographer shall form a totally different set of "exceedingly probable

suppositions" equally satisfactory to himself. The same critic says that

when Shakespeare, in his Sonnets, spoke of "a black beauty" (a phrase

universally used to express a brunette as late even as the age of Queen

Anne), the poet had his Bible open at Solomon's Song, and meant the

Bride "who is black but comely;" in other words, the Reformed Church.

Mr. Page, the artist, finds in the Chandos portrait, after it has been

cleaned and scraped, and upon the photographs of the German mask, a

certain mark which he thinks the indication of a scar. Two gentlemen,

one an artist, who have seen the mask itself, assure him that they find

his scar to be merely a slight abrasion or discoloration of the plaster;

but Mr. Page, secure in his position, quotes Sonnet 112,

Your love and pity doth the impression fill

Which vulgar scandal stamped upon my brow,

and triumphantly asks, "If that doesn't refer to the scar, what does it

refer to?"

The Sonnets of Shakespeare have been quite too much neglected by the

lovers of his plays, and Stevens said that the strongest act of

Parliament that could be framed would fail to compel readers into their

service. Two classes of minds, however, have always pondered over

them--the poets, who could not fail to appreciate their wonderful power

and beauty, and the psychologists, who have found in them an ample field

for speculation. The variety and extent of the theories of these latter

gentlemen can only be rivaled by the feat of the camel-evolving German.

Indeed, it is the true German school of thought to which these

speculations belong, and it is but just that to a genuine Teuton belongs

the honor of the most extraordinary solution of the mystery yet given.

It would take too long to sum up all the theories that have been

broached upon the subject, but two or three will do as an example.

Without stopping to dwell upon the ideas of M. Philarète Chasles, or of

Gen. Hitchcock, who believes the Sonnets to be addressed to the Ideal

Beauty, we will pass on to the book of Mr. Henry Browne, published in

London in 1870. His idea is that the Sonnets are dedicated to William

Herbert, afterward earl of Pembroke, and are intended chiefly as a

parody upon the reigning fashion of mistress-sonneting and upon the

sonneteers of the day, especially Davies and Drayton; that they also

contain much which is valuable in the way of autobiography, and that

"the key to the whole mystery lies in _Shakespeare's_ conceit (_i. e_.,

Mr. Browne's conceit) of the union of his friend and his Muse by

marriage of verse and mind; by which means, and for which favor, his

youth and beauty are immortalized, but which theme does not fully

commence till the friend had declined the invitation to marriage, which

refusal begets the mystic melody." Mr. Browne graciously accepts the

Sonnets in their order, and professes to be unable to name the real

mistress of Herbert, though he considers Lady Penelope Rich to

be the object of their allegorical satire.

Mr. Heraud also accepts the order of the Sonnets as correct. His book

contains an article on the Sonnets published by him in _Temple Bar_ for

April, 1862, the result, he declares (and far be it from us to dispute

it), of pure induction. He has evolved the theory that Shakespeare in

writing against celibacy had in view the practice of the Roman Catholic

Church; that the friend whom he apostrophizes was the Ideal Man, the

universal humanity, who gradually develops into the Divine Ideal, and

becomes a Messiah, while the Woman is the Church, the "black but comely

bride" of Solomon. "Shakespeare found himself between two loves--the

celibate Church on the one hand, that deified herself, and the Reformed

Church on the other, that eschewed Mariolatry and restored worship to

its proper object.... Thus, Shakespeare parabolically opposed the

Mariolatry of his time to the purer devotion of the word of God, which

it was the mission of his age to inaugurate."

This is pretty well for a flight of inductive genius, but it is quite

surpassed by the soaring Teutonic mind before mentioned, who, in the

words of the reflective Breitmann,

Dinks so deeply

As only Deutschers can.

This mighty philosopher, of whom Mr. Heraud speaks with becoming

reverence, is Herr Barnstorff, who published a book in 1862 to prove

that the "W.H." of the dedication means _William Himself_, and that the

Sonnets are apostrophes to Shakespeare's Interior Individuality! Mr.

Heraud thinks this idea is rather too German, but, after all, not so

very far out of the way, for in Sonnet 42 the poet certainly declares

that his Ideal Man is simply his Objective Self.[009] For, as Mr. Heraud

beautifully and lucidly remarks, "the Many, how multitudinous soever,

are yet properly but the reflex of the One, and the sum of both is the

Universe." And herein, according to Mr. Heraud, we find the key to the

mystery.