A Few Friends, and how they Amused Themselves.
A tale in nine chapters; containing descriptions
of twenty pastimes and games, and a fancy dress party.
By M. E. Dodge, author of Hans Brinker and The Irvington
Stories. 1869.
From D. & J. Sadlier & Co.:
Songs of Ireland and other Lands; being a collection
of the most popular Irish sentimental and comic songs,
1 vol. 18mo.
From Charles Scribner & Co., New York:
Essays on the Progress of Nations, in Civilization,
Productive Industry, Wealth, and Population, etc.
By Ezra C. Seaman,
1 vol. 12mo.
From D. Appleton & Co., New York:
Mental Science; a Compendium of Psychology, and the
History of Philosophy.
By Alexander Bain, M. A.
1 vol. 12mo.
----------
{721}{722}{723}
The Catholic World.
Vol. VIII., No. 48.--March, 1869.
An Apostolic Letter From His Holiness Pope Pius IX.
The letter of the Holy Father which we publish below, in Latin
and English, together with one from Cardinal Barnabo, Prefect of
the Congregation of the Propaganda, have just been received from
Rome. The readers of _The Catholic World_, and those persons
especially who have taken an active interest in, and have
generously contributed to, the establishment of the Paulist
Congregation, the Publication Society, and other associated
works, will doubtless feel gratified and encouraged by the
approving words with which the Holy Father has deigned to give
them his sanction and apostolic blessing. These gracious words of
the Vicar of Jesus Christ ought to encourage us all to redoubled
efforts for the advancement of our holy religion, and such, we
trust, will be their influence.
Admodum R. D.:
Cum Sanctissimus Dominus Noster non levi inter quibus afficitur
acerbitates jucunditate ex pluribus nunciis acceperit, D. Tuam
per Catholicos ephemerides curam omnem impendere ad religionis
nostrae sanctissimae studium fovendum, ad falsas doctrinas
refellendas, et ad hujus Apostolicae Sedis jura tuenda, aliquod
suae paternae dilectionis testimonium voluit exhibere. Pergratum
proinde erit D. Tuae literas Sanctitatis suae hisce adjectas
reperire, quibus factum iri confido ut majori usque studio et
alacritate inceptum opus prosequaris.
Cui quidem benevolae, quam Sanctissimus Pater erga Te testari
voluit, voluntati propensionis meae significationes addens, Deum
precor ut D. Tuae fausta quaeque largiatur.
Romae, ex Aed. S. Cong. de Prop.
Fide, die 5 Januarii, MDCCCLXIX.
D. Tuae.
Addictissimus,
Al. C. Barnabo, Pr.
[Transcriber's note: English translation.]
Very Reverend Sir:
Inasmuch as the Sovereign Pontiff, our Holy Father the Pope, amid
his many afflictions, has received great joy at hearing, through
many different sources, that your Reverence is taking such great
care to spread the knowledge of our most holy religion through
Catholic publications, adapted to refute false doctrine and to
defend the rights of this Apostolic See, he has desired to give
you a testimony of his paternal affection. Accordingly, it will
be most pleasing to your Reverence to receive, together with
this, the letter of his Holiness, by which I trust you may be
encouraged to pursue the work you have undertaken with still
greater zeal and alacrity.
Adding to the sentiments of good will which the Holy Father
declares toward you, the expression of my own regard, I pray God
that He may grant to your Reverence every kind of prosperity.
Rome, Office of the S. Cong.
of the Propaganda, January 5th,
MDCCCLXIX.
Most affectionately,
Al. C. Barnabo, PR.
----
Dilecto Filio, I. T. Hecker, Presbytero
Ac Rectori Missionariorum Collegii
A S. Paulo Nuncup., Neo-eboracum.
PIUS, PP. IX.
Dilecte Fili, salutem et Apostolicam Benedictionem. Gaudemus,
Dilecte Fili, te tui propositi memorem voce scriptisque
constanter adlaborare propagandae Catholicae religioni
dissipandisque errorum tenebris; ac tibi gratulamur ex animo de
incrementis, quae initis a te operibus accessisse discimus.
Scilicet confertae illae conciones, ubi Catholicam exposuisti
doctrinam, quaeque tui desiderium ita fecerunt aliis, ut ad
nobiliores ac frequentiores inviteris; existimatio, quam apud
ipsos dissentientes ephemeridi tuae CATHOLIC WORLD eruditio et
perspicuitas compararunt; aviditas qua passim expetuntur editi a
Societate Catholica, per te coacta, libelli; novi sodales, qui
culturae a te susceptae fines latius porrecturi, dant familiae
tuae nomen; alumni tandem, qui in idem opus, se tibi tradunt
excolendos, totidem sunt amplissimi fructus et diserti testes
zeli solertiaeque tuae, ac coelestis illius favoris, quo coepta
tua foecundantur. Quod sane facile intelliges quam jucundum Nobis
contingere debeat, qui id potissimum optamus, ut evangelium
nuncietur omni creaturae, ut sedentes in umbra mortis ad viam
salutis adducantur, ut demum destructis erroribus universis,
ubique veritatis regnum constituatur, in quo justitia et pax se
invicem osculantes, humanae familiae reddant ordinis
tranquillitatem jamdiu a monstrosis opinionum commentis abactam.
Dum itaque studia tua, et eorum, qui tibi opere, subsidio,
ingenio opitulantur, libentissime commendamus, maximas Deo
gratias agimus, quod ipsis obsecundare voluerit; eumque rogamus,
ut gratiae suae virtute, novos tibi jam currenti veluti stimulos
addat, aliosque atque alios adjutores tibi conciliet, qui tecum
industriam viresque suas conferant in commune Christiani populi
bonum. Coelestis vero favoris auspicem, et paternae nostrae
benevolentiae testem Apostolicam Benedictionem tibi tuaeque
Missionariorum familiae peramanter impertimus.
Datum Romae apud S. Petrum
die 30 Decembris, 1868, Pontificatus
Nostri Anno XXIII.
[Transcriber's note: English translation.]
To My Beloved Son, I. T. Hecker,
Priest And Superior Of The Missionary Congregation Of St. Paul,
New York.
PIUS IX., POPE.
Beloved Son, health and apostolic benediction. We rejoice,
beloved son, that you, mindful of your purpose, labor
continually, by your word and writings, to spread the Catholic
religion, and to scatter the darkness of error; and We heartily
congratulate you upon the increase which, as We have been
informed, the works undertaken by you have received. Undoubtedly
those thronged assemblies where you have set forth the Catholic
doctrine, and have thereby excited in others such a desire to
hear you, that you are invited to address audiences still larger
and more notable; the esteem which your periodical, THE CATHOLIC
WORLD, has, through its erudition and perspicuity, acquired, even
among those who differ from us; the eagerness with which the
tracts and books of The Catholic Publication Society, established
by you, are everywhere sought for; the new associates who enroll
themselves in your congregation to extend more widely the good
work you have undertaken; finally, the students who offer
themselves to you to be educated for the same work, all these are
so many abundant fruits and eloquent witnesses of your zeal and
skill, and of the divine favor through which your undertakings
are made fruitful. You will easily understand, of course, how
gratifying this must be to Us, who desire, above all things, that
the gospel should be preached to every creature; that those who
sit in the shadow of death should be brought into the way of
salvation; that, in fine, all errors being destroyed, the reign
of truth should be everywhere established; in which justice and
peace, kissing each other, may restore to the human family the
tranquillity of order, so long banished by the extravagances of
error. While, therefore, We most cordially commend your zealous
efforts, and those of your associates who contribute to the
success of the same by their labor, their gifts, or their
talents, We give especial thanks to God that He has condescended
to second them, and We pray Him that, by the power of His grace,
He may stimulate still more your already strenuous exertions; and
may give you more and more associates who, with you, shall bestow
their industry and strength on the common good of the Christian
people. And as a token of the divine favor, and an evidence of
Our paternal good will, We impart most affectionately to you, and
to your congregation of missionaries, Our apostolic benediction.
Given at Rome, at St. Peter's, on the 30th of December, 1868, in
the twenty-third year of Our Pontificate.
Pius IX., Pope.
----------
{724}
The Progress of Nations. [Footnote 277]
[Footnote 277: _Essays on Mm Progress of Nations, in
Civilization, Productive Industry, Wealth, and Population_.
By Ezra C. Seaman. First and Second Series, 12 mo.
PP. 645, 659. New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1868.]
The first series of the Essays which compose these two stout
volumes appeared as long ago as 1846, and has now been revised,
amended, and enlarged, and, after being long out of print,
republished in connection with a second collection similar in
character and general design. Mr. Seaman's purpose has been to
inquire into the principal causes of the welfare of nations, such
as morality, education, personal and political liberty,
commercial, mechanical, and agricultural development, and those
natural conditions of climate and geographical position which man
has no power to modify, and to show how these causes have
operated at various times and in various countries. To the
adequate treatment of so vast a theme, there should be brought
the labor of a life-time, the learning of a ripe scholar, and the
intellect of a philosopher. Mr. Seaman, we must frankly say, has
brought neither of the three. He has attempted what not one man
in a thousand would be wise to attempt; and if he has failed, he
has at any rate failed in very respectable company. The essays
are crude and fragmentary. They lack a sustained train of thought
and logical connection; they are encumbered with commonplaces and
repetitions; and the statistical and historical illustrations
with which they are thickly interwoven have the disadvantage of
being borrowed from sources that convey no weight of authority.
Citations from incompetent witnesses carry no force, but rather
weaken the effect of an author's statements.
The fundamental fault of Mr. Seaman's work is not its raggedness,
however; but it is the misapprehension, with which he starts, of
the meaning of his subject. He understands "Progress" merely as
material prosperity. "Civilization" means nothing in his mind but
"Productive Industry, Wealth, and Population." That people is the
most advanced which owns the most money and wears the best
clothes. The destiny of man is commerce and manufactures. The end
of civil society is the acquisition of wealth. Liberty is good
because it leaves man free to invent telegraphs and railroads.
Government is good because trade would be impossible without it.
Education is valuable because it stimulates production and
regulates industry. Religion is respectable because it develops
the intellectual faculties, and teaches us to restrain the
appetites whose free indulgence would undermine the constitution
or injure our fellow-man. We do not mean to say that Mr. Seaman
teaches these doctrines in so many words. He does not know that
he teaches them at all. If he ever sees this article, he will no
doubt be shocked at our interpretation of his argument. Yet,
pushed to their fair and by no means remote conclusions, these
are the teachings to which his essays amount. He seems to forget
that man was created to know and love God and promote the divine
glory, and that is the highest state of civilization in which he
most perfectly fulfils the end of his creation. There is no true
progress except toward this end.
{725}
There is no real prosperity, where this heavenly destiny is lost
sight of. There is no education which keeps it not constantly in
view. Mr. Seaman treats religion merely as an agency for the
development of civilization, whereas it is the very essence of
civilization itself. He thinks of the worship of God as a useful
mental exercise, which sharpens a man's wits and makes him keener
at a bargain. One who has practised his brain in theological
controversy must of necessity be the clearer-headed when he has
to decide between free-trade and protection, or calculate the
rate of exchange and the fluctuations of stocks. But theology is
not worship. Religion is a matter of the affections as well as
the intellect. The unlettered peasant can praise God, and is
bound to praise God, no less than the scholar. A purely
intellectual religion could not be of divine origin, since it
would only be suitable for a small minority of the human race; it
could not be the great business of every man's life, as religion
must be, if it is worth anything at all. "Happiness, in a future
world as well as in this," says Mr. Seaman, "is the sovereign
good of man, and constitutes the end and chief purpose of his
existence." That statement may pass if you understand happiness
to consist in the promotion of the divine glory; but not if you
place it in bank-notes and steam-engines. These seem to be the
goal of progress in our author's eyes, and he looks at nothing
beyond them.
With his false conceptions of the nature of society and religion,
it is not surprising that Mr. Seaman should thoroughly
misapprehend the work and purpose of that divinely organized
church to which we owe all the true civilization there is in the
world, and all the progress we have ever made. The only thread of
thought which can be clearly discerned running through his
essays, is the idea that Catholicism is the great enemy of
civilization. We wish it were quite as clear by what line of
argument he purposes to prove it. In one chapter, the church is
an enemy to education because she does not teach the people
enough. In another she is the enemy of free thought because she
teaches them too much. Now her offence is neglect, now it is
overmuch care. We don't see how it can be both.
"A part," he says, "and one of the most efficient parts of
government in all civilized countries, consists in the education
of the people." And he argues the necessity of education from the
fact that "the great mass of mankind ... are guided by imitation,
precedent, and the instruction of others." They have very few
ideas except those which are put into their heads by better
educated people, or are derived directly from the senses. "Such
people in all countries are under the influence and control ...
of the aristocracy, the clergy, the members of the learned
professions, and the military and civil officers of government."
The policy of the pope and the priesthood, he complains, is to
retain the masses in a state of ignorance. "The Bible is kept
from them; they are denied the right to read, and exercise their
own individual judgments in matters of religion, but must allow
their priests to read, think, and judge for them, and to form
their opinions; and no efforts are made by the priests to
establish common schools, or to teach the common people anything
beyond the catechism, and the ceremonies and dogmas of religion,
and absolute, unconditional submission in all things to their
priests and rulers.
{726}
Their whole efforts in matters of education are directed to
founding colleges and high-schools, for training up young men for
the priesthood, and instructing and breathing their opinions into
the children and youth of the aristocracy and the wealthy
classes." Now, before we go any further, let us prick a few of
the mistakes in this paragraph. There are so many we hardly know
how to begin.
1. The Bible is _not_ kept from the common people. It is
freely circulated in the vernacular, and our current English
version is older than the translation of King James. From the
time, in fact, when Bishop Ulphilas in the fifth century
translated the Bible into the Gothic tongue, down to our own day,
it has been the constant practice of the church to supply the
faithful with correct translations of the Holy Scriptures. The
use of false and garbled versions is indeed forbidden; but that
is another matter altogether.
2. Catholics are _not_ forbidden to read (!), nor do their
priests claim the right to read and think for them, or to form
their opinions. Mr. Seaman's statements on these points are so
preposterous that in his cooler moments we suppose he is sorry
for having made them.
3. Efforts have _always_ been made by our clergy to
establish schools for the common people. The first work of the
parish priest after he has built his church is to build a
school-house. The free education of the children of the poor has
the next place in his care to the service of the altar. There is
not a step in the whole system of education, from the
alphabet-class to the highest university cursus [Footnote 278],
to which the Catholic Church does not devote the labor of some
religious order or congregation, blessed and sanctioned and
assisted by the supreme Pontiff.
[Footnote 278: Transcriber's note: "course"]
She does not confine, she never has confined, her solicitude to
theological studies or the education of the rich. Teaching the
poor has been the chosen labor and chief glory of hundreds of her
saints, and is now the crowning work of many a flourishing order,
such as the Sisters of Charity, the Brethren of the Christian
Schools, and similar organizations, the prime object of which, be
it remarked, is the education not of the upper classes but of the
mass of the population. The Jesuits are more celebrated for their
colleges and higher seminaries than for rudimentary schools; but
they too have their primary classes in all places where there is
both need and opportunity for them; and even in their colleges
where every student is supposed to pay for his education, a
system of gratuitous instruction is pursued with a delicate
secrecy designed to spare the poor scholar any possible
mortification. Of course it is chiefly "the masses" who profit by
this hidden charity. Even Mr. Seaman himself, in another part of
his book, interrupts his censure of religious orders in general
by a confession that many of the communities of monks and nuns
have done good by devoting themselves to the education of the
young: if he had not confessed it, indeed, he must have been a
marvel of ignorance or dishonesty. With the history of the
common-school agitation led by Bishop Hughes in New York so fresh
in mind, he must be a bold partisan who would deny our anxiety to
keep in the very van of educational progress. The Catholic demand
for a share of the school fund was in reality a demand for the
admission of our parochial schools to the common school system of
the State. We were ready, nay anxious, to carry out the State
programme of instruction to its fullest extent, and admit the
State inspectors and examiners to scrutinize our operations
whenever they saw fit.
{727}
But sectarian bigotry has imposed a double tax upon our efforts
for the education of our children, and rather than we should
teach them about God opposes our teaching them anything at all.
We do the best we can. We pay our tax for the support of the
schools we do not approve; we pay another voluntary tax for such
parish schools as our poverty can afford; and if these are too
small to receive our children and too poor to do as much for them
as they would be glad to do, the fault is not ours but the law's,
which deprives us of the aid to which we are justly entitled from
the common fund. One thing is clear to every dispassionate
observer: the Catholics do twice as much for education as any
other denomination--nay, do that which no other denomination
would think of attempting. A state system of gratuitous
instruction is often referred to as one of the exclusive boons of
Protestantism. Well, in how many of the great countries of the
world, besides our own, is such a system known? Only in France
and Austria, which are Catholic, and in Prussia and Scotland,
which are Protestant. Protestant England has done less for
popular education, and has consequently a more grossly ignorant
peasantry than any other country on the globe equally advanced in
general civilization. Her great universities and grammar-schools
are the relics of Catholic foundations. The half a million of
pounds annual income which they enjoy is drawn from Catholic
endowments, perverted from their ancient uses; and it is
estimated that not more than three-fifths of this sum is actually
made available for educational purposes in any way whatever. So
shamelessly have these legacies of the ancient faith been
misapplied, that there are masters drawing large salaries for
presiding over schools which have no scholars, and a few years
ago it was found that the teachers of 708 inferior schools and 35
grammar-schools signed their returns with a mark! Of late the
government has made efforts for a reform, and the various
dissenting sects have also done a great deal in the establishment
of denominational schools; but no general system of popular
instruction has yet been devised. Popular education in fact is a
purely Catholic idea, almost as old as Christianity itself, and
the germ of the modern common-school system was in the bosom of
the ancient church. "After the introduction of Christianity,"
says _The American Cyclopaedia_, (art. "Common Schools,")
"and its accession to power, the duty of the authorities to
educate the young was speedily recognized by the bishops and
clergy. The object of this education was of course their training
in the doctrines of Christianity, but it was the first
recognition of the duty of giving instruction to the masses. As
early as A.D. 529 we find the council of Vaison recommending the
establishment of public schools. In 800 a synod at Mentz ordered
that the parochial priests should have schools in the towns and
villages, that 'the little children of all the faithful should
learn letters from them. Let them receive and teach these with
the utmost charity, that they themselves may shine for ever. Let
them receive no remuneration from their scholars, unless what the
parents through charity may voluntarily offer." A council at Rome
in 836 ordained that there should be three kinds of schools
throughout Christendom: episcopal, parochial in towns and
villages, and others wherever there could be found place and
opportunity. The Council of Lateran in 1179 ordained the
establishment of a grammar-school in every cathedral for the
gratuitous instruction of the poor.
{728}
This ordinance was enlarged and enforced by the Council of Lyons
in 1245. Thus originated the popular or common school as an
outgrowth of the Christian Church. "A council of the 16th century
speaks of schools in the priests' houses, and the decretals
abound in mention of popular instruction as one of the first
duties of the clergy and one of the traditional and most ancient
glories of the church. "If the important knowledge of reading and
writing was spread among the people," says the socialist
philosopher St. Simon, "it was owing to the church." If that
knowledge, during the political and social disorders of the
middle ages became so difficult of attainment that only a favored
few could acquire it, it was the church alone who kept the sacred
flame of learning alive in the schools and the cloisters,
maintained the great universities and grammar classes in the
midst of the most turbulent periods; and when society
crystallized again into order, brought forth the treasure of
knowledge which she had guarded so long, and gave it to the
world. [Footnote 279]
[Footnote 279: See _The Catholic World_ for
February, 1869-art. "The Ignorance of the Middle Ages."]
Nearly all the most famous institutions of learning in Europe are
of Catholic foundation. Rome is especially well provided with
schools, and the Roman College gives free instruction in the
classics and the sciences. And in "the face of all these
facts--knowing as he must know if he has studied the "progress of
nations" with a particle of intelligence, that the Catholic
Church has been the most munificent patron of learning the world
ever saw--Mr. Seaman has the sublime effrontery to say that "no
effort has ever been made in any Catholic country to educate the
mass of the people or any of the common classes, except some few
selected by the priests, to be educated and trained for the
ministry," and that "the great body of Catholics seem to be
studiously kept in profound ignorance, that they may be managed
and governed the more easily"! It seems to us it would be a good
and a just thing if the penalties against malpractice by which
the law protects the medical profession from ignorant charlatans
could be extended to the profession of literature. There is a
graceful compliment to the literature of the Catholic Church in
Matthew Arnold's essay on "The Pagan and Mediaeval Religious
Sentiment." For the benefit of Mr. Seaman and his class we cite
the passage nearly at full length:
"In spite of all the shocks which the feeling of a good
Catholic has in this Protestant country inevitably to undergo,
in spite of the contemptuous insensibility to the grandeur of
Rome which he finds so general and so hard to bear, how much
has he to console him, how many acts of homage to the greatness
of his religion, may he see if he has his eyes open! I will
tell him of one of them. Let him go, in London, to that
delightful spot, that Happy Island in Bloomsbury, the
reading-room of the British Museum. Let him visit its sacred
quarter, the region where its theological books are placed. I
am almost afraid to say what he will find there, for fear Mr.
Spurgeon, like a second Caliph Omar, should give the library to
the flames. He will find an immense Catholic work, the
collection of the Abbé Migne, lording it over that whole
region, reducing to insignificance the feeble Protestant forces
which hang upon its skirts. Protestantism is duly represented,
indeed; Mr. Panizzi knows his business too well to suffer it to
be otherwise; all the varieties of Protestantism are there;
there is the library of Anglo-Catholic Theology, learned,
decorous, exemplary, but a little uninteresting; there are the
works of Calvin, rigid, militant, menacing; there are the works
of Dr. Chalmers, the Scotch thistle, valiantly doing duty as
the rose of Sharon, but keeping something very Scotch about it
all the time; there are the works of Dr. Channing, the last
word of religious philosophy in a land where every one has some
culture, and where superiorities are discountenanced--the
flower of moral and intelligent mediocrity.
{729}
But how are all these divided against one another, and how,
though they were all united, are they dwarfed by the Catholic
leviathan, their neighbor! Majestic in its blue and gold
unity, this fills shelf after shelf and compartment after
compartment, its right mounting up into heaven among the white
folios of the _Acta Sanctorum_, its left plunging down
into hell among the yellow octavos of the _Law Digest_.
Everything is there, in that immense _Patrologiae Cursus
Completus_, in that _Encyclopédie Théologique_, that
_Nouvelle Encyclopédie Théologique_, that _Troisième
Encyclopédie Théologique_; religion, philosophy, history,
biography, arts, sciences, bibliography, gossip. The work
embraces the whole range of human interests; like one of the
great middle-age cathedrals, it is in itself a study for a
life. Like the net in Scripture, it drags everything to land,
bad and good, lay and ecclesiastical, sacred and profane, so
that it be but matter of human concern. Wide-embracing as the
power whose product it is! a power, for history, at any rate,
eminently _the Church_; not, I think, the church of the
future, but indisputably the church of the past, and in the
past, the church of the multitude.
"This is why the man of imagination--nay, and the philosopher,
too, in spite of her propensity to burn him--will always have a
weakness for the Catholic Church; because of the rich treasures
of human life which have been stored within her pale. The
mention of other religious bodies, or of their leaders, at once
calls up in our mind the thought of men of a definite type as
their adherents; the mention of Catholicism suggests no such
special following. Anglicanism suggests the English Episcopate;
Calvin's name suggests Dr. Candlish; Chalmers's, the Duke of
Argyll; Channing's, Boston Society; but Catholicism suggests
--what shall I say?--all the pellmell of the men and women of
Shakespeare's plays. This abundance the Abbé Migne's collection
faithfully reflects. People talk of this or that work which
they would choose, if they were to pass their life with only
one; for my part, I think I would choose the Abbé Migne's
collection. _Quicqnid agunt homines_--everything, as I
have said, is there."
But Mr. Seaman complains, not only that the Catholic Church
neglects to teach the people, but that she neglects to let them
alone. Not only has she never had any schools, but she has had
too many schools. She has taken no care of education, and
moreover she has meddled officiously with popular instruction
when she ought to have confined herself to masses and sermons.
The clergy, being for long ages the only teachers of letters,
science, philosophy, and religion, acquired an influence over
men's conduct and opinions which can only be regarded as
unfortunate. Yet, a little while ago, he said that in all
conditions of society the majority of mankind are ruled by the
thoughts and instructions of others, and that education is one of
the most important parts of government. Is it better that this
tremendous influence should be exerted by the wisest and most
virtuous class, or by those who are eminent only because they are
the most powerful? If any set of men are to mould the opinions of
the rest, should they not be the men who are best qualified by
study and by sacred pursuits to exercise that function with
intelligence and sincerity? We believe that when the child passes
from the hands of the parent, its best guides are the servants of
the church who have devoted themselves to the training of the
young in order that they may do good to their fellow creatures
and give glory to God. Mr. Seaman would entrust this sacred duty
to pot-house politicians, who covet office for the sake of gain.
The theory of a paternal government, which watches over all our
relations in life, and rears children to be good citizens, may be
all very well; but we know what governments are in practice, and
petty office-holders are the last men we should want to trust
with moulding the opinions of society. There is something too
demoralizing in the means by which they generally get their
places; and, after they have got them, how many are fit for them?
{730}
It is the duty of government to promote education and general
culture, that is very true; but _how_ this ought to be done
is another question. Mr. Seaman says the proper way is to remove
children from the influence of the two institutions which God has
designed for their guides and educators--the family and the
church--and to put them under the control of place-hunters, who
may possibly have a special talent for instruction, but are just
as likely to be fools and rogues. But he has no arguments to
support his opinions, and it is not worth while to answer sheer
dogmatism.
Mr. Seaman is not satisfied with once gravely declaring that "in
all Roman Catholic countries education by means of schools and
books is confined to the wealthy classes," and then blaming the
priests for interfering with the secular studies of the people
instead of confining themselves to religious teaching; asserting
that the Church has "usurped the whole domain of metaphysics and
philosophy," and yet that she has never done anything for
education at all; praising the Presbyterians of Scotland for
making schools a part of their religious establishment, so that
the young might be instructed "in the principles of religion,
grammar, and the Latin tongue," and upbraiding the church because
centuries earlier she had done the same thing; but he returns
time and again to the same misstatements and the same
contradictions. During the Dark Ages, he says, coming back again
to the Bible question, "the Scriptures were in the possession of
those only who were learned in the dead languages. _They had
never been translated into any of the modern languages._ A
good explanation of this remarkable fact may possibly be that the
modern languages, at the period to which Mr. Seaman refers, had
not yet taken a literary form. He probably means to say that the
sacred books had not been translated into the vernacular of any
people. If he does, he makes a great mistake. In the first place,
the Latin Vulgate was by no means a sealed volume. That version
had been made expressly to render the Scriptures accessible to
all. The tongue into which it was turned was the one most
generally understood by whoever had education enough to read any
book at all; and during the so-called Dark Ages, Latin was still
in common use all over the continent of Europe. It was not then a
dead language, so far as books were concerned, though in the
conversation of common life it had passed out of use. Moreover,
as we have already seen, translations of the Bible into other
languages were made as fast as those languages took shape.
Translations of the New Testament were made very early into all
the tongues then spoken by Christians. Portions of the Scriptures
were turned into Saxon by Adhelm, Egbert, the Venerable Bede, and
others, between the 8th and 10th centuries; and there was a
complete English version as early as 1290, that is to say, 90
years before Wycliffe's, which Hallam erroneously calls the
earliest. The first book printed at Guttenberg's press was a
Latin Bible, and in Italy, under the very eye of the church,
there were translations in use in the 15th century. The popular
fable that Luther first threw open the sacred book to the world
is one of the most mischievous falsehoods in history.
On almost every page we find errors hardly less monstrous. "Not
one valuable invention, discovery, or improvement," says Mr.
Seaman, "during the last three centuries and a half, has
originated where the human mind has been subject to Catholicism
.... and the same may be said of jurisprudence, government, and
science, as well as the useful arts."
{731}
The impudence of this assertion is enough to take away one's
breath. France, then, has done nothing for the arts or for
science, Catholic Germany has done nothing, Belgium has done
nothing, Italy has done nothing. Nay, more; if the Church for
three hundred and fifty years has blighted material progress, if
the Catholic clergy during that time have, as our amazingly
ignorant author declares, "restrained the human mind from the
prosecution of new discoveries in natural science under pretence
that the new opinions promulgated were contrary to Scripture, and
therefore impious and heretical," how does it happen that the
world made any discoveries at all before that period? Why, does
Mr. Seaman forget that the art of printing itself, the greatest
invention of all time, dates from that "dark age" when the power
of the Church was at its height, and Luther had not yet arisen,
and that its first use was in the service of the sanctuary? Does
he forget that Copernicus was a Catholic priest? that some of the
most brilliant of modern discoveries in the positive sciences, in
astronomy, in medicine, in natural philosophy, have emanated from
Catholic Italy and France, and that the science of jurisprudence,
to which he especially refers, owes more to those two countries
and Germany than to all the rest of the world? The case of
Galileo, to which of course he alludes, has so recently been
examined in two elaborate articles in this magazine that we need
give but little space to it here. It is enough to say that
although the Florentine philosopher was forbidden to wrest
Scripture to the support of his theory, and was censured for his
disobedience of a solemn obligation to let theology alone and
confine himself to science, the Church stood throughout his
patron and protector, and the Pope and the Cardinals were the
most zealous among his disciples. Mr. Seaman's statement that
"when Galileo taught in Italy the Copernican system of astronomy
as late as the year 1633, it was decided by the POPE and a
COUNCIL OF CATHOLIC CARDINALS AND BISHOPS" that the doctrine was
absurd and heretical, and he was "consigned to the
_dungeons_ of the INQUISITION and compelled to recant and
abjure his opinions in order to save his life," (the capitals and
Italics are Mr. Seaman's,) is a plain up-and-down falsehood.
There is no justification of it in any reputable history. "The
Pope and a council of Catholic Cardinals and Bishops" never
pronounced any judgment whatever either upon Galileo or his
doctrines, and never had anything to do with the affair. The
judgment, such as it was, expressed merely the opinion of the
"qualifiers," or examiners of the Inquisition--an irresponsible
committee attached to a civil tribunal, whose report carried no
theological weight, and no more represented the doctrine of the
Church, or the sentiments of Pope, Cardinals, and Bishops than
the Munchausenisms of Mr. Seaman represent the sober verdict of
history. The Church is not to be reproached for the blunders of
her individual members. Moreover, Galileo never was consigned to
the "dungeons of the Inquisition," and never was in peril of his
life.
The course of Mr. Seaman's argument leads him to a sketch of the
constitution and history of the church, and here he wanders in
such a maze of error, that it is bewildering to follow him.
{732}
He tells us that the Pope and the bishops have the most absolute
and unlimited power over the inferior clergy, sending them
wherever they choose, and appointing and removing them at
pleasure, and that the Pope exercises similar authority over the
bishops. Has our learned historian ever heard of such a thing as
_canon law_, which secures to the inferior clergy a perfect
immunity from arbitrary interference by their superiors, and
which is in force all over the Christian world, except in new
countries, where the church is yet too young to complete her
organization? He tells us that the church invented and upholds
the doctrine of the divine right of kings, and teaches that the
people are bound to submit passively under all circumstances, and
that no amount or continuance of oppression and tyranny can
justify resistance or rebellion in any case whatever. All history
contradicts this statement--contradicts it so plainly that we can
hardly account for the author's temerity. If we had the patience
to read his book straight through, we should probably find him on
some other page blaming the Popes for encouraging rebellion and
insurrection. As it is, he declares that "this tyrannical and
despotic doctrine, ... is the work of the clergy of a
comparatively modern period, and as late as the year 1682 the
University of Oxford, in England, adopted it." We presume Mr.
Seaman is aware that Oxford University in 1682 was
_Protestant_. He tells us that the Catholic Church is a
cruel and persecuting church, and refers to the penal statutes
against heresy, which were in force in England, from the 14th to
the 16th century, and under which, during the reign of Queen
Mary, "several hundred persons were burned;" but he seems not to
know that _all_ denominations, in those cruel times,
persecuted one another impartially; that Henry VIII. had set Mary
the example, and Elizabeth was a worthy follower of her father
and Calvin and the continental reformers were as bad as "bloody
Mary," and even the Protestant settlers of America had little
conception of the principle of religious freedom, until it was
taught them by the Catholics of Maryland. He declares that the
persecution of heretical sects during the 4th, 5th, and 6th
centuries, and the tyranny of the ecclesiastical aristocracy were
the actual causes of the decline of the Roman empire. This is too
much! Why, the commencement of the decline dates from the second
century, and the Roman ascendency was entirely overthrown by the
middle of the fourth; and during this period of decay, the church
had no power in the state, but was herself persecuted and driven
into the darkness of caverns.
We have spoken our mind plainly about this book, because we think
it is one of a class that deserve no mercy. A man who sets
himself to write history without consulting even the ordinary
sources of historical information commits an offence against
truth and against society. Ignorance does not excuse him.
Ignorance in such a case is a crime. Of course we do not suppose
that Mr. Seaman intentionally makes false statements. But he
makes random statements which the slightest examination would
have satisfied him were false. He was bound to undertake such an
examination, and not having done it, he bears the responsibility
of the falsehood. The passage we have already cited about Galileo
is a good example of what we mean. There is no color of authority
for the erroneous version of the case which Mr. Seaman gives.
{733}
He could only have evolved that story out of a vague impression
that the Pope and the Cardinals had done some very cruel and
illiberal thing to the philosopher; and he must have put it into
the words he used, because he considered those words effective in
representing the action of the church in a black aspect. But the
errors are very serious ones. They amount to the assertion that
the church has declared a scientific fact to be a theological
heresy. If this were true, the church would be no church. Not
being true, the words amount to a gross slander. If Mr. Seaman,
having been educated in a prejudice against Catholics, and
believing that they are cruel and vindictive people who ought to
be excluded from good society, should print a pamphlet, charging
the Archbishop of New York and his Vicar-General, and the editors
of _The Tablet_ and _The Catholic World_ with a
conspiracy to torture or murder the Rev. Dr. Prime, the fact that
he thought it probable the accusation _might_ be true, would
be no justification, and would not save him from the consequences
of a libel suit. The author who is guilty of slander in writing
the history of the past, cannot be mulcted in damages like the
criminal who carelessly destroys a private character; but he
deserves to be placed in the pillory of moral criticism and to be
held as a literary outlaw.
----------
The Silent Clock.
Its sounds were hushed by weeping love,
A sad heart bade it cease to move,
And one long hour of sorrow prove.
A heart and it did beat their last,
A trembling hand before it passed,
And endless silence on it cast.
A spectre from the silent lands,
A shadow of life's grief it stands,
Still pleading with uplifted hands,
Whose awful stillness seems to say;
Here was the closing of his day--
Here was the loosing of the clay.
Forget not one, of old so dear,
Lift up your hearts for him in prayer
As we are ever lifted here.
{734}
It shames the soul--that silent clock,
Its mournful muteness seems to mock
The love we thought no years could shock.
Our sighs and tears of fond distress
Have changed to smiles of happiness
It stands unchanged, dumb, motionless!
Geraldine.
----------
Who Shall Take Care Of Our Poor?
No. II.
The point of view in which we propound this problem is that of
the adequacy of the Christian Church, by its organic
institutions, to counteract, in America, those social and
political aberrations which, in the eastern hemisphere, have
developed and maintained the scourge of pauperism. On this
question, history is prophecy; an incomplete prophecy, yet
containing all the principles of action which a plastic
intelligence and fresh inspiration from its fountain life may
enable the church to adapt to our present exigencies.
Under myriad forms and faces, pauperism is the sphinx that
devours every society which cannot, within a certain time, find
its solution, unless wars have anticipated its fate.
Result of international wars, and source of intestine wars--those
irruptions of organized crime--pauperism is the ulcer on the leg
of civilization which betrays the impurity of its blood.
It behoves us on the threshold of this inquiry to distinguish
between accidental impoverishment, and pauperism as an organic
malady, which develops, as in Great Britain, _pari passu_
with population and even with the increase of wealth.
An earthquake devastates Peru, prostrates its cities and destroys
its harvests: its inhabitants suffer the greatest privations, but
having ready access to the soil in that prolific climate, little
or no chronic pauperism will result. The white population of our
immense South has been recently reduced by war to an extreme
distress. Flanders, Germany, France, the most prosperous
countries of Europe, have been scourged still more severely; yet
industrious generations suffice to efface the trace of war.
Pestilences, which decimate the population of a country, yet
respect property, and do not pauperize the survivors, but the
contrary; for they have freer access to the means of production.
But why is it that Great Britain--the old monarch of the seas,
with her predatory grasp on the neck of the Indies, with all her
stupendous machinery of production, and fearing no enemy from
abroad--is rotting with pauperism amid peace and wealth,
perishing like an old eagle, condemned to starvation by the
excessive curvature of his overlapping beak?
{735}
Behold our mother country, she whose laws and institutions we are
now in the main reproducing, she whose crimes against charity we
reorganize by exposing our soil to the cupidity of speculators,
whose pauperism we inherit by emigration, and whose fate we must
share, as certainly as the same causes produce the same effects,
unless we reform in our youth.
One hope, one faith, one path of social salvation, remains for us
both and for all the world--namely, cooperative Christian
association, that, baffling pride and greed, restores to the
workman the produce of his work, and renders the practical love
of our neighbor the means of satisfaction for our own needs,
whether of the senses or the soul. Now, Rochdale and its kindred
co-operative enterprises, whose success is so encouraging in
England; the masons and other artisan associations of Paris, like
the trades co-operations of Barcelona and the old Italian cities;
even the Hanseatic League, so monastic in its discipline--all
proceed in direct line from the Columbans, the Cistercians, and
other religious orders of the Benedictine group, who initiated
the agricultural Christianity of Europe. The seed sown in the
mediaeval heart did not rot amid that dissolution of society
which is called the _Reformation_. It has survived the
oppressions of aristocracy and capital no longer tempered by
monastic orders; it has survived the internecine competition of
our modern _proletariat_; and now the same organic type,
under new names, puts forth its leaf, buds, blooms, and fruits.
"If we look," says Balmes, "at the different systems which
ferment in minds devoted to the study of pauperism and its
remedies, we shall always find there association under one form
or another. Now, association has been at all times one of the
favorite principles of Catholicity, which, by proclaiming unity
in faith, proclaims unity in all things. If we examine the
religious institutions characteristic of Europe in its darkest
period of ignorance, corruption, and social dissolution, we
observe that the monks of the west were not content with
sanctifying themselves; from the first they influenced society.
Society had need of strong efforts to preserve its life in the
terrible crisis through which it had to pass. The secret of
strength is in the union of individual forces, in
_association_. This secret has been taught to European
society as by a revelation from heaven."
Sufficient attention has not perhaps been paid to the merit of
the industrial organization, introduced into Europe from the
earliest ages, and which became more and more diffused after the
twelfth century. We allude to the trades-unions and other
associations, which, established under the influence of the
Catholic religion, had pious foundations for the celebration of
their feasts, and for assisting each other in their necessities.
We must recognize here that highly effective organizations of
labor had taken root in Europe, either by the initiative of the
religious orders, (to whom the north owed its civilization,) or
in the congenial atmosphere of Catholicity; that in this
organization, co-operation, the Christian spirit, had supplanted
or prevented internecine competition, the secular spirit; that
this system of labor rendered pauperism impossible and elevated
the working classes to a plane of virtue, of dignity and
prosperity elsewhere unattained; that it had conquered and kept
its ground against feudal oppression and aggression, by a series
of bloodless battles in which wisdom and patience, self-control
and forethought, perseverance and the love of honorable uses,
vindicated the political superiority of the Christian principle;
finally that it possessed within itself vigorous reproductive or
propagative forces, and had indeed become the manifest destiny of
Europe at that epoch when schism in the church sowed everywhere
hatreds and discord, and denatured civilization, substituting the
ideal of individualism for that of solidarity.
{736}
Hence, incoherence and destructive competition alike in the
market as in the church. For labor, its result is pauperism; for
piety, despair.
Besides the religious motives which brought property into the
hands of the monks, there is another title, remarks Balmes, which
has always been regarded as one of the most just and legitimate.
The monks cultivated waste lands, dried up marshes, constructed
roads, restrained rivers within their beds, and built bridges
over them. Over a considerable portion of Europe, which was in a
state of rude nature, the monasteries founded here and there have
been centres of agriculture and the arts of social life. Is not
he who reclaims the wilderness, cultivates it, and fills it with
inhabitants, worthy of preserving large possessions there?
The religious and moral influence of the monks contributed
greatly, in early European epochs, to the respect of property as
well as persons against attacks which were so frequent in the
turbulent ages succeeding the overthrow of the Roman empire by
barbarian nations, that in some countries almost every castle was
a den of robbers, from which its chief overlooked the country and
sallied forth to collect spoils.
The man who is constantly obliged to defend his own is also
constantly led to usurp the property of others: the first thing
to do to remedy so great an evil was to locate and fix the
population by means of agriculture, and to accustom them to
respect property, not only by reasons drawn from private
interest, but also by the sight of large domains belonging to
establishments regarded as inviolable, and against which a hand
could not be raised without sacrilege. Thus religious ideas were
connected with social ones, and they slowly prepared an
organization which was to be completed in more peaceable times.
It is to the protection afforded to farmers by the monasteries in
retired places that we owe the dissemination of the people in
rural districts, which would have been otherwise impossible.
Those who have lived in a country convulsed by war, like our
South, can best appreciate this.
Mallet (_History of the Swiss_, vol. i. p. 105, a Protestant
authority) tells us that "the monks softened by their
instructions the ferocious manners of the people, and opposed
their credit to the tyranny of the nobility, who knew no other
occupation than war, and grievously oppressed their neighbors. On
this account the government of monks was preferred to theirs. The
people sought them for judges, (that is, as umpires.) It was a
usual saying that it was better to be governed by the bishop's
crosier than the monarch's sceptre."
The kindness and charities performed by the religious orders,
remarks Cobbett, (_History of the Protestant Reformation_,)
made them objects of great veneration, and the rich made them in
time the channels of their benevolence to the poor. Kings,
queens, princes, princesses, nobles, and gentlefolk founded
monasteries and convents, that is, erected the buildings and
endowed them with estates for their maintenance.
{737}
Others--some in the way of atonement for their sins, and some
from a pious motive, gave while alive, or bequeathed at their
death, lands, houses, or money to monasteries already erected. So
that in time the monasteries became the owners of great landed
estates; they had the lordship over innumerable manors, and had a
tenantry of prodigious extent, especially in England, where the
monastic orders were always held in great esteem, in consequence
of Christianity having been introduced into the kingdom by a
community of monks.
One of the greatest advantages attending the monasteries in the
political economy of the country was that they of necessity
caused the revenues of a large part of the lands to be spent on
the spot whence those revenues arose. The hospitals and all the
other establishments of the kind had the same tendency, so that
the revenues of the land were diffused immediately among the
people at large. We all know how the state of a parish changes
for the worse when a great land-owner quits his mansion in it,
and leaves that mansion shut up, and what an effect this has upon
the poor-rates. What, then, must have been the effect of twenty
monasteries in every county, expending constantly a large part of
their incomes on the spot? If Ireland had still her seven hundred
or eight hundred monastic institutions, there would be no
periodical famines and typhus fevers there; no need of sunset or
sunrise laws shutting the people up at night to prevent
insurrections; no projects for preventing the increase of
families; no schemes for getting rid of a "_surplus
population_;" no occasion for the people to live on third-rate
potatoes--not enough, at that; for their nakedness, their hunger,
their dying of hundreds with starvation, while their ports are
crowded with ships carrying provisions from their shores, and
while an army is fed in the country, the business of which army
is to keep the starving people quiet.
Sir Walter Scott thus exposes the nonsense of the "economists on
the non-influence of absenteeism." In the year 1817, when the
poor stood so much in need of employment, a friend asked the Duke
of Buccleugh why his grace did not prepare to go to London in the
spring? By way of answer, the duke showed him a list of laborers
then employed in improvements on his different estates; the
number of whom, exclusive of his regular establishments, amounted
to nine hundred and forty-seven men, who, with those whose
support depended on their wages, would reckon several thousand;
many of whom must have found it difficult to obtain subsistence
had the duke not foregone the privilege of his rank in order to
provide with more convenience for them. The result of such
conduct is twice blessed, both in the means which it employs and
in the end which it attains in the general economy of the
country. This anecdote forms a good answer to those theorists who
pretend that the residence of proprietors on their estates is, a
matter of indifference to the inhabitants of the district. Had
the duke been residing and spending his revenues elsewhere,
one-half of these poor people would have wanted employment and
food, and would probably have been little comforted by any
metaphysical arguments upon population which could have been
presented to their investigation.
"Many such things may be daily heard," says Howitt, "of the
present Duke of Portland."
{738}
The monks, whose religious character gave them an extraordinary
security, as they were the first restorers of agriculture, so
they were the first improvers of our gardens. Their long
pilgrimage from one holy shrine to another, through France,
Germany, and Italy, made them early acquainted with a variety of
culinary and medicinal herbs and various fruits, and amongst the
ruins of abbeys we still find a tribe of plants that they have
naturalized.
Lingard, writing of the consequences of the "_Reformation_,"
tells us that "within the realm poverty and discontent generally
prevailed. The extension of inclosures, and the new practice of
letting lands at rack-rents, had driven from their homes numerous
families whose fathers had occupied the same farms for several
generations, and the increasing multitudes of the poor began to
resort to the more populous towns in search of that relief which
had been formerly distributed at the gates of the monasteries.
The reformation preachers of the day--Knox, Lever, Gilpin,
Latimer--avow that the sufferings of the indigent were treated
with indifference by the hard-heartedness of the rich; while, in
the pursuit of gain, the most barefaced frauds were justified,
robbers and murderers escaping punishment by the partiality of
juries or corruptions of judges. They tell us that church-livings
were given to laymen or converted to the use of the patrons,"
etc.
In dealing with that shameful _pauperism_, the annual
reports of which ring in the ears of the British
government--"_mene, mene, tekel, upharsin_" which presaged
the fall of Babylon--it behoves us to distinguish the victim poor
and the _fighting poor_. The fighting poor exasperate the
evils of poverty by ineffective insurrections against the
organized government of the rich. Protesting against injustice
and maladministration by strikes, which they cannot sustain, and
which soon leave them at the mercy of the employers they have
defied, they provoke the severity of the laws by disorderly
conduct, by poaching, robbery, arson, etc., necessitating the
maintenance of a numerous and rigorous police, and even of
standing armies. These withdraw great numbers from productive
industry, and double the expenses of government, which must, at
last, be borne by the working classes, however indirect the
methods of taxation. It is true that the aristocracy in command
of armies could enrich England by the spoil of India, or Spain by
that of Mexico and Peru; but these ill-gotten gains have cursed
alike the robber and the robbed. No country has ever maintained a
real prosperity except by home production and the contentment of
its producing classes. The _fighting poor_, not organized in
armies under the discipline and pay of governments, but remaining
an integral part of the people, are intimately leagued with the
_victim poor_ by family ties, and even by the imminence of a
common fate, since a wound, a fit of illness, a fraud, the
prolonged lack of work, or other misfortune, may depress them
into pauperism. This class of poor is the most dangerous element
of a nation, and costs in waste and in precautions a great deal
more than the sum expended in pauper relief. An administrative
method which conciliates this class with the rich, with the
established government and public order, is evidently master of
the situation. This end has been achieved by the religious
organization of labor.
{739}
What the Catholic Church once did for England, under military
feudalism, she can do again, and more, because the present
financial and industrial feudalism is pacific in its tendencies
and susceptible of being harmonized with the interests of the
church and of labor by co-operative association; whereas the
former feudalism existed for war, was essentially opposed to the
spirit of Christianity, to the honor of productive industry, and
the prosperity of the people. Now, what is cure for Great Britain
may be prevention for America, which undergoes, like England, the
yoke of industrial feudalism. Allowing for the category of
accidents, for relief needed by the infirm, etc., vastly the
larger proportion of pauperism remains to be prevented by
opportune employments, of which the soil serves as the basis. Let
the religious orders reacquire everywhere, by all legitimate
means, the control of large bodies of land, which they shall
withhold from speculation, which they shall either administrate
by leases or by direct culture, and on which they shall establish
the arts of fabrication. Then they may subdue the world with its
own weapons, commanding capital and labor, conciliating them in
Christian action, and producing wealth without sacrificing the
producer to the product. They would lease farms or hire workmen
according to local and temporary expediency, but in either case
they would constitute, as of old, a bulwark between the people
and speculators, and they would reattach the masses by intimate
household ties. This begins as of old with the voluntary
assumption of social burdens, especially with the care of the
sick and infirm. By organizing a high order of attractive social
life at its rural institutions, where it is so much easier to
find healthful work for either sex and every age, the church will
counteract that destructive fascination which the city now exerts
over the country-folk. In restoring and upholding an order of
yeomanry, subject to its general administration of agriculture,
but free in a scope of action sufficient to content them, within
a predetermined plan, the Catholic Church would counterpoise the
present league of the Church of England with its aristocracy, as
its corporate philanthropies would counterpoise the corporate
selfishness of simple business firms.
Pursuing the noble initiative which the Jesuit order took in the
work of education, especially in Paraguay, it remains for the
church to second the views of American legislation in the
foundation of art and labor-schools, or agricultural and
polytechnic institutes, for the support of which public lands
were appropriated in 1842, although Minnesota alone has had the
wisdom to protest against the malversation of this fund to the
comparatively sterile work of our common schools.
It is not by any means an unreasonable assumption that, after a
few years of experience and discipline for the teachers, art and
labor-schools, embracing all the departments of rural and
domestic economy with religious and social training, may be made
self-supporting. From that day their popularity will be assured,
and pauperism will be well-nigh eradicated, together with the
vices and crimes which it engenders. The diploma of such an
institution might confer either a lease of land or an appointment
to some office of social use and profit. The administration of
the schools and charities of the church would supply a great many
such places.
{740}
We shall not ask whether it be not expedient and just to oblige
every family, in so far as it may be competent, to provide for
its own poor, because modern civilization has not the patriarchal
basis, the family has no such collective unity or substantial
existence among us, as formerly in Palestine, or still in the
Arab _douar_. At most can the family be held responsible for
its minors, since its authority does not extend beyond this
class; but we remark that the largest proportion of pauperism is
due to the neglect of efficient education during the years of
minority; so that with the actual population of the world, and
even in the most thickly settled countries, there need be no such
thing as pauperism, if the productive energies of the whole
people received during childhood and youth a practical direction;
while the diplomas of our labor and art-schools conferred valid
titles to the use of the soil or other means of remunerative
employment. If to organize such education for the children of
poor families be regarded as beyond the province of our
governments or secular powers, how much more extravagant must
this seem for the children of the rich, who are, however, exposed
every day to become poor, and whose wasteful idleness subtracts
so much from the possible resources of mankind? Is it not
self-evident that the influence of religious organizations has
every advantage over secular authority in reforming education
while rendering it universal? At once personal and corporate,
they can take an initiative which is refused to governments or
which governments decline. Now, as in the middle ages, in
civilized as in savage or barbarous states, they can restore to
labor its religious honor, they alone can successfully combat the
idleness and vices of fashionable dissipation, they can
substitute the arbitrament of Christian equity for that of fire
and sword, and while pouring oil on our troubled waters, they can
teach by example as well as by precept, those wholesome
restraints which prevent the increase of a local population
faster than the means of its subsistence.
If pauperism in this country is chiefly exotic, it is none the
less real, and none the less afflictive or disastrous. If an
obvious remedy exist in our vast tracts of unoccupied land, it is
so much the more urgent to organize while directing the tide of
emigration by the spirit of Christianity. By colonizing emigrants
under the guidance of religious orders we obviate the twofold
evils of their pauperism and their isolation.
----------
The Iliad Of Homer.
Rendered Into English Blank Verse
By Edward, Earl Of Derby.
It is our custom, or that of our time, to decry classical
education. We have a right to do so, no doubt, if our unfavorable
judgment regarding it is based upon a correct and intelligent
estimate of its value, as a method of training the youthful mind
and of disciplining the intellect by the exercise of its nascent
power upon works of model taste and unrivalled elegance.
Submitting classical education to this test, we cannot glibly
join in the outcry against it of those who see in it only a
process for acquiring a knowledge of Greek and Latin words, of no
earthly use to the possessor or to anybody else.
{741}
Neither, on the other hand, would we, upon such test, accept it
as the only canon of liberal education, to the exclusion of
others that may serve the purpose of instruction with more
practical advantage.
We would fain offer Earl Derby's translation of the _Iliad_
as an example, according to our notion, of the practical process
to be followed in studying the classic authors in order to profit
by their beauty, and of the gifts the mind receives from the
cultivation of classic literature. Not a poet himself, the noble
lord has imbibed into his own plastic mind the conceptions of the
"sovereign poet" in all their poetic beauty and serene grandeur,
and reproduces them for the English reader, shapely moulded, not
distorted nor disfigured. We shall not enter into a comparison of
his translation with that of Pope or Cowper, neither shall we
discuss the fitness of the metre he has adopted. His own
translation, if argument were wanted, would compel us to agree
with him that he has selected that metre best suited for
rendering the Homeric poem into English verse, and we give him
our hearty accord in his condemnation of the English hexameter--
a lumbering rhythm, not inaptly compared, by some author, to the
noise of pumpkins rolling on a barn-floor. We shall merely show,
by a few extracts, how he has succeeded in reproducing the
conceptions of the poem, and how happily he has caught, without
imparting any admixture of modern sentiment, the flowing style in
which the poet pours forth, as it were, without drawing breath,
his grand melodious strain. His translation is not a dead cast,
but a copy, and a copy instinct with life. His task was not an
easy one; and when we reflect upon his life and eminent station,
we cannot help thinking that to ordinary men the difficulty would
be much enhanced thereby. Still, it redounds the more to the
honor of English scholarship and English statesmanship, that the
foremost among its orators and statesmen, who, for more than a
quarter of a century, has borne a large share of the weighty
affairs of a vast empire; who by his talents has helped to solve
the thousand vexed questions of modern politics and reform,
could, during leisure, withdraw his mind from the absorbing
interests of the political arena, and allow it to repose on the
sublime naturalness of the _Iliad_, and float in placid
unison with the serene grandeur of Homer's song. Though the
translation is truly Homeric, yet, wrought as it is with spirit
and genius, it bears in it something of the mind it springs from.
The reader will not fail to discover in the echo of the
_Iliad_, so faithfully reflected in its purity, natural
freshness, and vigor, something of that splendid eloquence heard
amid strife as angry and as fierce as raged between Agamemnon and
Achilles.
In giving quotations, we shall omit those finer passages that are
familiar to most readers, such as those well-known passages of
the Third Book, with their beautiful similes, that describe the
Greeks assembling and passing in review before their leaders. On
these many a youthful and full-grown bard has tried his skill;
but never have we seen them so beautifully rendered as in the
translation before us. We select for our readers, first, that
picture in the Fourth Book, in which all the raging elements of
battle are thronged together--the maddening vengeance, the wrath,
the fury of hostile ranks in the horror of collision--and which
commences with the description of
{742}
"Discord unappeased, 504
Of blood-stained Mars the sister and the friend;
With humble crest at first, anon her head,
While yet she treads the earth, affronts the skies.
The gage of battle in the midst she threw,
Strode through the crowd and woe to mortals wrought,
When to their midst they came, together rushed 510
Bucklers and lances, and the furious might
Of mail-clad warriors; bossy shield on shield
Clattered in conflict; loud the clamor rose.
Then rose two mingled shouts and groans of men
Slaying and slain; the earth ran red with blood, 513
As when descending from the mountain's brow,
Two wintry torrents from their copious source
Pour downward to the narrow pass, where meet
Their mingled waters in some deep ravine,
Their weight of flood; on the far mountain side 520
The shepherd hears the roar; so loud arose
The shouts and yells of those commingling hosts."
Nothing can give a better idea of the power of the translator
than the manner in which he has compressed this passage, with its
bewildering throng of elements, into the same number of lines as
the original. We miss none of the simple grandeur, none of the
_directness_, none of the even, rapid movement so
characteristic of Homer. There is no importation of what belongs
not to Homer into it, no amplification, no turning aside from the
object, or indirectness in introducing and depicting every
incident in the picture. It is Homer's strain; grand, rapid, and
simple.
A few lines further on we have one of those beautiful images by
which the poet has a fondness for describing the fall of his
young heroes. Depicting the death of the stripling Simoisius, he
sings:
"Prone in the dust he fell; 552
As some tall poplar, grown in marshy mead,
Smooth-stemmed, with boughs up-springing toward the head."
Again of young Gorgythion, in the Eighth Book:
"Down sank his head, as in a garden sinks
A ripened poppy charged with vernal rains; 350
So sank his head beneath his helmet's weight."
And of Asius, in the Thirteenth Book:
"He fell as falls an oak, or poplar tall,
Or lofty pine."
These passages are placed together as containing some of the
poet's favorite and beautiful images, and as showing how happy
the translator has been in rendering them with truthfulness to
their natural grace.
Earl Derby is not less successful in reproducing the deep
tenderness and moving pathos that form a conspicuous feature of
the _Iliad_. We quote from the Sixth Book, from the
affecting scene between Hector and Andromache; but, instead of
Andromache's words, so well known through Pope's translation, we
give the answer of the noble Hector, the hero of the
_Iliad_, in which, with soul-felt tenderness, he seeks to
console his desponding wife: [Footnote 280]
[Footnote 280: To illustrate what we mean by the directness,
simplicity, and even rapid movement of Homer's verse, we cite
here from a popular English poet an extract which, though not
a parallel to the above, is somewhat kindred; it is the first
at hand, and will serve our purpose.
"Trust me, whatever fate my soul may gall,
Thou at thy woman's choice shall ne'er repine.
Trust me, whatever storm on me may fall,
This man's true heart shall ward the bolt from thine.
Hark, where the bird from yon dark ilex breathes
Soul into night so be thy love to me;
Look, when around the bird the ilex wreathes
Still sheltering boughs, so be my love to thee!
O dweller in my heart! the music thine;
And the deep shelter--wilt thou scorn it? mine."
It will be observed, in reading these exquisite lines, how
complex is the web of thought; how the artist, as it were,
lingers to work into it embroidery of words and images
borrowed from foreign objects. In Homer there is nothing but
the natural artless flow of feeling; the even movement, as it
springs from the soul, is not crossed by shadow or image from
any other object, nor does it diverge this way or that to
borrow of other sources in metaphor or comparison, tone,
color, or pathos. The movement in Homer is natural, direct,
even, rapid; and yet this natural, simple, deep gush of
feeling presents to us a most truthful, touching, and
expressive picture of a soul overwhelmed with tender love and
sorrow commingled, but facing the stern task of duty.]
"Think not, dear wife, that by such thoughts as these 512
My heart has ne'er been wrung; but I should blush
To face the men and long-robed dames of Troy,
If, like a coward, I could shun the fight.
Nor could my soul the lessons of my youth
So far forget, whose boast it still has been
In the forefront of battle to be found,
Charged with my father's glory and mine own.
Yet in my inmost soul too well I know 520
The day must come when this our sacred Troy,
And Priam's race, and Priam's royal self,
Shall in one common ruin be o'erthrown.
But not the thoughts of Troy's impending fate,
Nor Hecuba's, nor royal Priam's woes, 525
{743}
Nor loss of brethren, numerous and brave,
By hostile hands laid prostrate in the dust,
So deeply wring my heart as thoughts of thee,
Thy days of freedom lost, and led away
A weeping captive by some brass-clad Greek. 530
Haply in Argos, at a mistress' beck,
Condemned to ply the loom, or water draw
From Hypereia's or Messais' fount.
Heart wrung, by stern necessity constrained,
Then they who see thy tears perchance may say, 535
'Lo! this was Hector's wife, who, when they fought
On plains of Troy, was Ilium's bravest chief!'
Thus may they speak, and thus thy grief renew
For loss of him who might have been thy shield
To rescue thee from slavery's bitter hour. 540
Oh! may I sleep in dust ere be condemned
To hear thy cries and see thee dragged away."
The opinion of Lord Derby's oratory, entertained on this side of
the Atlantic, may tempt those who admire it to think that in this
translation his splendid eloquence and vigorous language would
have their fitting scope in depicting the scenes of camp and
field, in transmitting, lifelike, those angry encounters in the
councils of gods and men; but, that the most tender and delicate
tones of human feeling are not alien to his speech, is amply
proved by the lines we have quoted. The same deep chord of
feeling is struck by the words and modulations of this beautiful
passage that vibrates in the pathetic language and melody of the
Ionian bard.
We add another of those magnificent incidents of the
_Iliad_, where the struggle of warriors on the very brink of
battle is so grandly described by the poet. In the Thirteenth
Book, the Greeks, closely massed under the Ajaces,
Waited the Trojan charge, by Hector led
Spear close to spear, and shield by shield o'erlaid,
Buckler to buckler pressed, and helm to helm,
And man to man, the horse-hair plumes above,
That nodded on the warriors' glittering crests,
Each other touched, so closely matched they stood.
Backward, by many a stalwart hand, were drawn
The spears, in act to hurl; their eyes and minds
Turned to the front and eager for the fray.
On poured the Trojan masses; in the van
Hector straight forward urged his furious course:
As some huge boulder, from its rocky bed
Detached, and by the wintry torrent's force
Hurled down the cliff's steep face, when constant rains
The massive rock's firm hold have undermined,
With giant bounds it flies; the crashing wood
Resounds beneath it, still it hurries on,
Until, arriving at the level plain,
Its headlong impulse checked, it rolls no more;
So Hector, threatening now through ships and tents
Even to the sea to force his murderous way,
Anon, confronted by that phalanx firm,
Halts close before it."
This truly fine passage is the perfection of Homeric poetry. We
doubt if pen or brush has ever produced a picture abounding so
much in life and action. The marvellous combination of objects
presented to view in these lines, each heightening the effect of
the other, and all blending into one tumultuous action, stirred
by the fiery spirit of war, gives us a grand and terrific
picture. In reading it, with almost the noise and din and the
fray of warring men ringing in the words employed in the
translation, we feel as if we had never before been enabled, by
any English version, to enter into the full spirit of Homer
himself.
We give a last quotation from the closing scene of the poem,
where the cry of mourning Troy is raised over the lifeless body
of its brave defender. The wail of his wife and of his mother has
been heard; but there remains one other, the beauteous Helen,
whose fatal charms had deluged the plains of Troy with blood, had
inflicted on the lifeless hero on whom she now gazes in sadness
many a day of toil and many an hour of pain, and now had crowned
the heap of Ilium's sorrows with this last scene of woe. Her
words of love commingled with self-reproach, are the highest
tribute the poet could pay, in his closing verse, to the hero
whom, throughout his song, he endows with all the noblest traits
of son, of patriot, of brother, and of husband.
"Hector, of all my brethren dearest thou!
True, godlike Paris claims me as his wife,
Who bore me hither--would I then had died!
But twenty years have passed since here I came
And left my native land; yet ne'er from thee 895
I heard one scornful, one degrading word.
And when from others I have borne reproach,
Thy brothers, sisters, or thy brothers' wives
Or mother, (for thy sire was ever kind
Even as a father,) thou hast checked them still
With kindly feeling and with gentle words:
For thee I weep, and for myself no less;
For through the breadth of Troy, none love me now,
None kindly look on me, but all abhor."
{744}
In the portions of Lord Derby's translation we have here given,
we have not selected what are universally regarded as the most
beautiful passages of the poem. We have selected such passages as
from their crowded incidents, their bewildering throng of
objects, their rapid succession of scenes or deep and tender
pathos, appeared to us the most difficult for the translator to
reproduce. We doubt if there be a student of Homer who will fail
to find them a transcript of the poet's meaning, with almost
literal exactness, as well as a copy of the genius and spirit of
the poem. We had purposed selecting some passages which would
give our readers a sample of his manner of rendering the Homeric
epithets. The beauty of the few occurring in the above extracts
will not escape them. Students of Homer are aware how constantly
he appends distinctive epithets to persons, things, and places.
To translate these wherever they occur would give a strange,
unnatural cast to the poem. The English language, not like the
plastic Greek, could not bear along the burden of them; besides,
many of them would require an awkward paraphrase, which would
only add words, not vividness or distinctness, to the thought of
the poet. Lord Derby has wisely and discriminately dealt with
these; when he renders them, he does so with so much exactitude
and expressive force, that we feel rise within us, at this late
hour, a sigh of regret that we had not at our hand his version of
them, when we were students of Homer. In reading the translation
through, we cannot say where we would have an epithet added that
has been omitted, or where we would have stricken it out where it
has been preserved. We said that the translation is a copy of the
_Iliad_--a copy produced with genius and spirit. It will be
read with pleasure by the classical scholar, to whom it will
recall in their freshness and grandeur the scenes of that poem
which charmed him in years long past. It will be welcomed by the
general reader, who has not before tasted the charms of Homer's
song, and who will gratefully acknowledge it as a new treasure to
the storehouse of English literature. In it--and in the life of
the noble author, whose devotedness to classical literature could
not have lived through his busy political life, did he not in his
own inward consciousness ever find the great benefit and elegant
pleasure he had gained from it--is furnished for the public at
large the strongest argument we know against banishing classical
education from our schools and colleges.
----------
{745}
Lines written by Theodulphus.
Translated From The Latin.
Lines
Written By Theodulphus, Bishop Of Orleans,
A.D. 820, In A Copy Of The Holy Scriptures,
Transcribed By His Own Hand.
Light of God's law! divesting earth of gloom,
More white than snows, more bright than starry skies,
Beneath whose radiance good and virtue bloom--
From whom all error flies.
Blest word of God! gift of that wisdom, whence
Springs life and light! what worth exceeds thy worth?
Word that excels all words in sound and sense
As heaven excels the earth.
Whate'er of wonders human arts have taught
Have here their fountain--hence derive their force;
Of all the grand achievements of man's thought
Here wells the living source.
By day, by night here meditate, here school
To holiness thy hands, and lips, and soul:
Thou rulest others--be this book the rule
That shall thyself control.
This sharer of thy couch--joy of thine eyes,
Clasped in thy arms and on thy knees shall rest;
Thy watcher when soft slumber on thee lies--
Thy earliest morning guest.
Be not for knowledge only thy desire;
In virtue's presence learning's light is dim:
Deeds and not words the Almighty will require--
Yet offer both to him.
By ceaseless study learn, by actions teach,
Untiring seek for Wisdom's pathway here.
This meditate, a light thy heart will reach,
And make all fair and clear.
Who walks a tangled forest's briery way
By frequent treading makes it broad and plain.
And what the quick mind wins from day to day,
Slow study doth retain.
C. E. B.
----------
{746}
From The French Of Erckmann And Chatrian.
The Invasion; Or, Yegof The Fool.
Chapter XXI.
Jerome of Saint-Quirin had made good his retreat upon the
farm-house.
"Who goes there?" cried the sentries, as the party approached.
"People of the village of Charmes," replied Marc-Dives in his
voice of thunder.
They were recognized and allowed to pass.
The house was silent; a sentinel with shouldered arms paced in
front of the barn, where thirty partisans were sleeping upon the
straw. Catherine, at sight of the great dark roofs, the old
sheds, the stables, the ancient dwelling where her youth had
passed, where the peaceful and laborious lives of her father and
her grandfather had tranquilly glided away, the home which she
was perhaps about to leave for ever, felt a terrible pain at her
heart; but she spoke not of it, and springing from the sledge, as
she had often done before on her returning from market, she said:
"Come, Louise, we are home at last; thanks to God."
Old Duchene had pushed open the door, crying,
"It is Madame Lefevre!"
"Yes, it is we. Any news from Jean-Claude?"
"No, madame."
Then every one entered the huge kitchen.
A few coals yet glowed upon the hearth, and, under the immense,
overhanging chimney-piece, Jerome of Saint-Quirin was seated in
the shadow, in his great-coat; his long-pointed red beard hanging
on his breast; his thick staff between his knees, and his rifle
leaning against the wall.
"Ha! good morning, Jerome!" cried the old woman.
"Good morning, Catherine!" answered the grave and solemn chief of
Grossmann. "You come from Donon?"
"Yes. Things are going ill there, my poor Jerome. The Kaiserliks
attacked the farm-house when we left the plateau. We could see
only white coats on every side. They began to cross the abatis--"
"Then you think Hullin will be forced to abandon the road?"
"It is possible, indeed, if Pivrette does not come to his
assistance."
The partisans had neared the fire. Marc-Dives bent over the coals
to light his pipe; as he rose, he cried:
"Jerome, I ask only one thing of you; I know that they fought
well where you commanded--"
"They did their duty," interrupted the shoemaker; "sixty men lie
stretched on the side of Grossmann, who will bear witness to it
on the judgment-day."
"Yes; but who guided the Germans? They never could find of
themselves the pass of Blutfeld."
"It was Yegof--the fool Yegof," replied Jerome, and his gray
eyes, surrounded with deep wrinkles and thick white lashes and
brows, glittered through the darkness.
"Are you very sure of it?"
"Labarbe's men saw him ascend, leading the others."
{747}
The partisans gazed at each other with angry looks.
At the same moment, Doctor Lorquin, who had remained without to
unharness his horse, pushed open the door, crying:
"The battle is lost! Here are our men from Donon. I have heard
Lagarmitte's horn."
It is easy to imagine the feelings with which this news was
received. Every one thought of parent, friends, whom perhaps he
was never more to see, and all who were in the kitchen and the
barn rushed at once to the fields. Then Robin and Dubourg, posted
as sentries, cried:
"Who goes there?"
"France!" replied a voice.
And despite the distance, Louise, recognizing her father's voice,
would have fallen had not Catherine supported her.
Presently a great number of steps echoed upon the frozen snow,
and Louise, no longer able to contain herself, cried in a
trembling voice:
"Father Jean-Claude!"
"I am coming," replied Hullin; "I am coming."
"And my father?" cried Frantz, rushing to the sabot-maker.
"He is with us, Frantz."
"And Kasper?"
"He has received a little wound, but it is nothing: you will see
them both."
Catherine threw herself into Hullin's arms.
"O Jean-Claude! what a happiness it is to see you again!"
"Ay," replied he in a low tone; "there are many who will never
again see those they love."
"Frantz!" cried old Materne; "hallo! this way."
And on all sides, in the darkness, men sought each other, pressed
each other's hands and embraced. Others called aloud for "Vielau"
or "Sapheri," but no voice replied.
Then the calls grew hoarse, strangled, and finally ceased. The
joy of some and the grief of others were in horrible contrast.
Louise wept hot tears in Hullin's arms.
"Ah! Jean-Claude," said Mother Lefevre; "you have much to learn
of your daughter. Now I will tell you nothing, but we were
attacked--"
"Yes, we will talk of it by and by. Time presses," interrupted
Hullin. "The Donon road is lost; the Cossacks may be here at
daybreak, and we have yet many things to do."
He entered the farm-house. All followed. Duchene had just thrown
a fagot upon the fire. Those faces, black with powder, but still
breathing the fire of battle; those garments, torn by
bayonet-thrusts, some of them bloody, advancing from darkness
into the full light, offered a strange spectacle. Kasper, whose
handkerchief was bound around his forehead, had received a
sabre-cut; his bayonet, blouse, and high blue cloth gaiters were
stained with blood. Old Materne, thanks to his imperturbable
presence of mind, came safe and sound from the fray. The remnants
of the two troops of Jerome and Hullin were thus united. They
showed the same fierce countenances, animated by the same energy
and desire for vengeance, save that the last, worn-out with
weariness, sat wherever they might find room--on the fagots, the
hearth--with their heads bowed upon their hands, and their elbows
resting on their knees. The others looked around, unable to
realize that Hans, Juson, Daniel, had disappeared for ever, and
exchanging questions followed by long periods of silence.
Materne's two sons held each other by the arms, as if each feared
he would lose his brother, and their father, behind them, leaning
against the wall, gazed on with looks of delight.
{748}
"They are there; I see them," he seemed to say. "And they are
famous fellows, and both have escaped." The good man coughed, and
when some one came to speak to him about Pierre, or Jacques, or
Nicolas--of a son or a brother--he replied at random, "Ay, ay,
there are a good many stretched out yonder; but what would you
have? War is war. Your Nicolas did his duty. Be consoled." And
then he thought, "My boys are out of the scrape, and that is the
principal thing."
Catherine set the table with Louise. Soon Duchene, returning from
the cellar with a cask of wine upon his shoulder, placed it on
the sideboard. He opened it, and each of the partisans presented
his glass, or cup, or pitcher, to the purple fountain, which gave
back the leaping flames on the hearth in a thousand reflections.
"Eat and drink!" cried the old mistress of the house. "All is not
yet ended; you will yet need strength. Frantz, hand me down those
hams. Here are bread and knives. Be seated, my children."
Frantz, with his bayonet, roasted the hams at the fire.
Benches were brought forward; the men sat down, and ate with that
keen appetite which neither present grief nor thought of future
evil can make mountaineers forget. But all this did not keep
sorrow from the hearts of these brave fellows, and sometimes one,
sometimes another, would stop, drop his fork, and leave the
table, saying,
"I have had enough."
While the partisans thus recruited their strength, their chiefs
met in the neighboring hall to make their last determinations
relative to the defence. There were seated round the table,
lighted by a tin lamp, Doctor Lorquin--his great dog Pluto near
him, watching with uplifted muzzle; Jerome in the recess of a
window to the right; Hullin at the left, very pale. Marc-Dives,
with his elbow on the table and cheek resting in his hand, sat
with his back to the door, and showed only his brown profile and
one of the ends of his long moustache. Materne alone was
standing, as was his habit, leaning against the wall behind
Lorquin's chair, his rifle resting upon his foot. A murmur of
voices came from the kitchen.
When Catherine, who was called by Jean-Claude, entered, she heard
a sort of groan which made her tremble. It was Hullin speaking.
"Do you think," he cried, in a burst of wild grief, "that the
fate of those brave sons, those white-haired fathers, moved not
my heart? Would I not gladly have died a thousand times that they
might live? You know not the woes with which this night has
overwhelmed me. To lose life is but little; but to bear alone the
burden of such a trust!"
He was silent, but his trembling lip, the tear that coursed
slowly down his cheek, showed how heavily that trust weighed upon
him, in a position where conscience itself hesitates and seeks
support. Catherine noiselessly seated herself in the large
arm-chair on his left. After a few moments' pause, Hullin
proceeded more calmly:
"Between eleven o'clock and midnight, Zimmer came crying that we
were turned; that the Germans were coming down from Grossmann;
Labarbe was crushed; Jerome could hold out no longer. He said no
more. What was to be done? Could I retreat--abandon a position
which had cost us so much blood--the Donon road, the way to
Paris? I were a wretch indeed to do so; but I had only three
hundred against the four thousand at Grandfontaine, and I know
not how many descending the mountain.
{749}
But cost what it might, I determined to hold out; it was our duty
to do so. I thought that life is nothing void of honor; we might
all die, but never would it be said that we yielded the road to
France! Never, never, never!"
His voice again trembled, and his eyes filled with tears as he
added:
"We held it--for more than two hours--my brave boys held it. I
saw them fall; they died crying, 'God save France!' When the
battle began, I sent word to Pivrette. He, with fifty men, came
up--too late! too late! The enemy flanked us right and left; they
held three fourths of the plateau, and we were driven among the
firs toward Blanru, their fire crashing into our bosoms. All that
I could do was to collect the wounded who could yet drag
themselves along, and place them under the escort of Pivrette; a
hundred men joined him. I kept only fifty to occupy Falkenstein.
We cut through the Germans, who tried to cut off our retreat.
Happily the night was dark, otherwise not one of us would have
escaped. We are here, and all is lost. Falkenstein alone remains,
and we are reduced to three hundred. Now we must try who will
dare the bitter end. I tell you that my burden presses heavily
upon me. While the Donon road was to be defended, our duty was
clear; every man's life belonged to his country: but that road is
lost; ten thousand men would be needed to regain it, and even now
the enemy are entering Lorraine. What is to be done?"
"Resist to the last!" replied Jerome.
"To the last!" repeated the others.
"Is this your counsel, Catherine?" asked Hullin.
"Ay!" cried the old woman, with a glance of unconquerable
determination.
Then Hullin, in firmer tones, laid his plan before them:
"Falkenstein is our point of retreat. There is our arsenal; there
are our munitions; the enemy knows this, and will attempt to
storm it. We must all be there to defend it; the eyes of all our
countrymen must see us; they will say that Catherine Lefevre,
Jerome, Materne and his sons, Hullin, Doctor Lorquin, are there;
that they will not lay down their arms. This will revive the
drooping courage of all who have hearts to feel for their
country. Pivrette will remain in the woods; his force increasing
day by day. The land will be covered with Cossacks, with robbers
of every kind; and when the enemy's army has entered Lorraine, at
my signal Pivrette will fling himself between Donon and the road,
and the laggards scattered through the mountains will be caught
as in a net. We can also watch our chance to carry off their
wagons, harass their reserves; and if fortune favors, as we hope,
when those Kaiserliks are beaten by our troops in Lorraine, we
can cut off their retreat."
All rose, and Hullin, entering the kitchen, made this simple
speech to the mountaineers:
"My friends, we have determined to resist to the last.
Nevertheless each one is free to do as he pleases, to lay down
his arms and return to his village; but those who seek vengeance
will join us! They will share our last morsel of bread and divide
our last cartridge."
The old wood-cutter, Colon, rose and replied:
"Hullin, we are all with you; we began the fight together, and
together we will end it."
"Ay, ay!" cried every voice.
{750}
"This is your resolution? Then listen! Jerome's brother will take
command."
"My brother is dead," interrupted Jerome; "he lies on the side of
Grossmann."
There was a moment's silence, and then Hullin continued:
"Colon, you will take command of all who remain, except those who
formed the escort of Catherine Lefevre. I retain them with me.
You will rejoin Pivrette in the valley of Blanru."
"And our munitions?" cried Marc-Dives.
"I have brought my wagon with me," said Jerome. "Colon can supply
himself from it."
"Let them take the sledge too," cried Catherine. "The Cossacks
are coming, and they will steal everything. Our people must not
go away empty-handed; let them take with them oxen, cows, and
goats--everything; for whatever they take is so much won from the
enemy."
Five minutes after, the farm-house was a scene of pillage. The
sledge was loaded with hams, smoked meats, and bread; the cattle
driven from the stables; the horses harnessed to the great wagon,
and soon the train began its march, Robin at the head, blowing
his horn, and the partisans behind pushing at the wheels. When
they had disappeared in the woods, and silence suddenly succeeded
the tumult, Catherine, turning round, saw Hullin behind her as
pale as a corpse.
"Well, Catherine," he said; "all is finished. We will begin the
ascent."
Frantz, Kasper, and the men of the escort, Marc-Dives and
Materne, awaited them in the kitchen, resting on their arms.
"Duchene," said the good old woman, "go down to the village; they
must not ill-treat you on my account."
The old servant, shaking his white head, replied with eyes full
of tears:
"I might as well die here, Madame Lefevre. It is fifty years
since I came to this house. Do not force me away; that would kill
me."
"As you will, my poor Duchene," answered Catherine, much
affected. "Here are the keys of the house."
The old man seated himself on a stool by the hearth, with eyes
fixed and lips parted like one in some sad dream.
The others started for Falkenstein. Marc-Dives, on horseback, his
long blade hanging from his wrist, formed the rear-guard. Frantz
and Hullin, on the left, reconnoitered the plateau, and Jerome,
on the right, the valley; Materne and the men of the escort
surrounded the women. Strange! At every threshold, at every
window of the village of Charmes appeared faces, young and old,
gazing with curious eyes at the flight of Mother Lefevre, and
evil tongues were not wanting. "Ah! driven from your nest at
last," they cried. "You would meddle with what did not concern
you!"
Others muttered aloud that Catherine had been rich long enough,
and that all had their turn. As for the labor, the wisdom, the
kindness of heart, the thousand virtues of the old mistress of
Bois-de-Chênes, the patriotism of Jean-Claude, the courage of
Jerome and the three Maternes, the unselfishness of Doctor
Lorquin, the devotion of Marc-Dives--about all these things no
one had a word to say: their owners were beaten!
{751}
Chapter XXII.
At the bottom of the valley of Bouleaux, two musket-shots from
the village of Charmes, the little troop began slowly to ascend
the path leading to the ancient _burg_. Hullin, remembering
how he had taken the same path when he had gone to buy powder of
Marc-Dives, could not repress his grief. Then, notwithstanding
his visit to Phalsbourg, the sight of the wounded from Hanan and
Leipsic, the story of the old sergeant, he despaired not; he kept
all his energy alive, and never doubted the success of the
defence. But now all was lost; the enemy were descending upon
Lorraine, and the mountaineers flying. Marc-Dives rode along the
wall in the snow; his great horse, accustomed to the journey,
neighing, lifting his head and then dropping it beneath his
chest. The smuggler turned from time to time to throw a glance at
the opposite field of Bois-de-Chênes. Suddenly he cried:
"Ha! the Cossacks are showing themselves."
At this exclamation the entire party halted to look around. They
were already high above the village, and even the farm. The gray
winter dawn was scattering the morning vapors, and in the hollows
of the mountain side they saw a number of those wild horsemen,
pistol in hand, slowly approaching the old house. They were
separated like skirmishers, and seemed to fear a surprise. A few
moments after, others followed from the valley of Houx, then
others, and still others, all alike standing up in their stirrups
to see further. The first, passing the farm-house and seeing
nothing to fear, flourished their lances and turned half-way
round. The rest came up at a gallop, like rooks following one of
their number that rises in the air as if perceiving some prey. In
a few seconds the farm was surrounded, and the door pushed open.
Another minute and the windows flew out, shattered to pieces;
furniture, mattresses, linen followed from every side of the
house at once. Catherine, with lips pressed tightly together,
gazed calmly at all this destruction. For a long while she said
nothing; but suddenly seeing Yegof strike Duchene with the shaft
of his lance, and drive him from the house, she could not
restrain a cry of indignation.
"The wretch! coward! to strike a poor old man who can no longer
defend himself. Ah villain! if I had thee here!"
"Come, Catherine," said Jean-Claude; "we have seen enough, and
the sight does us no good."
"You are right," she replied; "let us go. I cannot bear it."
As they ascended, the air grew keener. Louise, the child of the
gypsies, with a little basket of provisions on her arm, clambered
at the head of the troops. The blue sky, the plains of Alsace and
Lorraine, and at the verge of the horizon those of Champagne, the
boundless immensity of space wherein sight was lost, inspired an
enthusiasm in all. They seemed to have wings, to pierce the blue
air like those great birds that glided from the tree tops over
the abysses, uttering their free and fearless cries. All the
wretchedness of the world beneath, its injustice and its
suffering, were forgotten. Louise saw herself a child on the back
of her mother--that poor wandering gypsy--and thought, "I have
never since been happier; never had less of care; never laughed
so much, sang so gayly, and yet we often lacked bread. Ah! those
dear days gone!" And the words of old songs rang in her ears.
As they neared the great red rock, crusted with its white and
black stones, and hanging over the precipice like the tower of
some grand cathedral, Louise and Catherine paused in ecstasy.
{752}
Above, the sky seemed yet deeper; the path cut in the rock yet
narrower. The valleys stretching on till lost in distance, the
boundless woods, the far-off lakes of Lorraine, the blue ribbon
of the Rhine--all the glorious scene filled them with emotion,
and the old woman said thoughtfully:
"Jean-Claude, He who lifted this rock to heaven, whose hand
hollowed these valleys, who scattered these forests, those
thickets, and even these little mosses upon his earth, will
surely render us what we deserve."
While they gazed thus, standing upon the forest terrace of rock,
Marc had led his horse to a neighboring cavern, and returned on
foot, saying, as he climbed before them.
"Be careful; you may slip."
At the same time he showed them, to the right, the blue
precipice, with the tops of the fir-trees so far down that they
seemed at its base. All were silent until they reached the
terrace where the vault began. Then they breathed more freely,
and saw in the middle of the passage the smugglers Brenn,
Pfeifer, and Toubac, with their great grey cloaks and black
slouched hats, seated by a fire which stretched all along the
rock. Marc accosted them:
"Here we are! the Kaiserliks are victorious. Zimmer was killed
last night. Is Hexe-Baizel above?"
"Yes," answered Brenn; "she is making cartridges."
"They may save us yet," said Marc. "Keep your eyes open, and if
any one ascends, fire on him."
The Maternes halted at the edge of the rock, and the three tall
men, with their hat-brims turned up, their powder-horns at their
sides, their rifles on their shoulders, and their muscular limbs,
and feet firmly planted on the point of the rock, stood, a
strange group, against the blue of the abyss. Old Materne, with
outstretched arm, pointed far, very far away, to an almost
imperceptible white spot among the firs, saying:
"Do you recognize that, my boys?"
And all three gazed with half-closed eyes.
"It is our house," replied Kasper.
"Poor Magredel!" said the old hunter; "how uneasy she must have
been for the last week; how often has she prayed for us!"
Marc-Dives, who led the party, uttered a cry of surprise.
"Mother Lefevre," said he, stopping short, "the Cossacks have set
fire to your house!"
Catherine heard this news calmly, and walked to the edge of the
cliff. Louise and Jean-Claude followed her. At the bottom of the
abyss stretched a great white cloud, through which shone what
seemed like a spark. That was all; but from time to time the
breeze blew aside the smoke and the fire appeared; the two high
gables, standing darkly out from the flames, the ruined barn and
the blazing stables; then all again was hidden.
"It is nearly finished," said Hullin in a low tone.
"Yes," replied the old mistress of the burning dwelling; "forty
years of toil and care are there turning to smoke. But no matter;
they cannot burn my good lands--my fine meadows of the Eichmath.
We will begin to labor once more; Gaspard and Louise will restore
all that mischief. I am content. I repent of nothing I have
done."
At the end of a quarter of an hour, millions of sparks arose, and
all the buildings fell--all save the dark gables. The party again
clambered up the path; and as they reached the highest terrace,
the sharp voice of Hexe-Baizel was heard:
{753}
"You, Catherine!" she cried "I never thought that you would come
to see me in my poor den."
Baizel and Catherine Lefevre had been school-girls together;
there was but little ceremony between them.
"Nor I," replied the latter; "but in misfortune one is glad to
find a companion of one's childhood."
Baizel seemed touched.
"Whatever is here is yours, Catherine," she cried. "Everything."
She pointed to her poor stool, her broom of green twigs, and the
five or six logs on her hearth. Catherine gazed on all in silence
for a few moments, and then said:
"They are not very grand, but they are substantial, and the
Cossacks will not easily burn your house."
"No, they will not burn it," laughed Hexe-Baizel; "they would
need all the trees in the county of Dabo to only warm the walls.
Ha, ha, ha!"
The partisans, after many toils and dangers, felt the want of
repose. Each man hastened to place his musket against the wall
and stretch himself on the floor. Marc-Dives opened the door of
the inner cavern for them, where they were at least sheltered,
and then sallied forth with Hullin to examine the position.
Chapter XXIII.
On the rock of Falkenstein, high in the blue air, rises a round
tower, the base of which is broken and sunken. This tower,
covered with brambles, hawthorn, and myrtle, seems old as the
mountain itself; it has survived French, Germans, and Swedes. Its
stones and mortar have become a solid mass, from which it is
almost impossible to break the smallest fragment, and the whole
structure wears a gloomy air of mystery which bears back the mind
to ages long past--ages which have no place in the memories of
man. Here was Marc-Dives wont to lie in ambush when the wild
geese flew south--if he had nothing better to do; and here
sometimes at night-fall, when their flocks pierced the fogs and
swept round in a broad circle before going to rest, would he
bring down two or three of their number--a feat which rejoiced
the heart of Hexe-Baizel, who wasted no time in preparing them
for the spit. Here too, in autumn, did Marc often set snares
among the bushes, where the thrushes loved to perch; and to crown
all, the old tower served him as a storehouse for his winter's
stock of wood. How often was Hexe-Baizel, when the northern gales
blew fierce, and the crashing of branches and groans of the
neighboring forests rose like the dashing of a tempest-tost
ocean--how often then was Hexe-Baizel almost torn from that old
tower and hurled to the opposite Kilberi! But her long fingers
held fast to the vines, and the wind only flapped her coarse hair
about her head.
Dives, perceiving that his wood, covered with snow and wet with
every rain, gave more smoke than flame, made a roof of planks for
his storehouse; and the smuggler relates that, while laying the
rafters, he found a screech-owl white as snow, blind and feeble,
but provided with field-mice and bats in abundance. For this
reason he called it the "Grandmother of the country," supposing
that all the other birds fed it on account of its extreme old
age.
Toward evening the partisans--placed on the lookout on every
terrace of the rock--saw white uniforms appear in the surrounding
gorges. Masses of men debouched from the depths on all sides at
once, showing an intention to blockade Falkenstein. Marc-Dives
seeing this, became thoughtful. "If they surround us," said he
musingly, "we cannot procure provisions; we must surrender or die
of hunger."
{754}
The enemy's staff were plainly seen on horseback around the
spring of the village of Charmes. There a stout officer was
observing the rock through a long field-glass; behind him was
Yegof, to whom he turned from time to time to question. The women
and children of the village looked on at some distance away, as
if enjoying the scene, and five or six Cossacks caracoled about.
The smuggler could bear no more; he took Hullin aside.
"Look," said he, "at that long line of shakos glistening along
the Sarre, and nearer, those others running like hares through
the valley. They are Kaiserliks, are they not? Well, what are
they going to do, Jean-Claude?"
"They are going to surround the mountain."
"That is clear. How many men do you think they have?"
"From three to four thousand."
"Without counting those in the open country. Well, what would you
have Pivrette do with his three hundred men against that mass of
vagabonds? I put the question frankly, Hullin!"
"He can do nothing," replied brave Jean-Claude simply. "The
Germans know that our munitions are at Falkenstein; they fear a
rising after they enter Lorraine, and wish to secure their rear.
The enemy's general sees that he cannot overcome us by force; he
has decided to reduce us by famine. All this, Marc, is surely
true; but we are men; we will do our duty; we will die here!"
There was a moment's silence. Marc-Dives knit his brows, but
seemed not at all convinced.
"We will die?" he repeated. "I do not see why we should die; that
idea did not enter our heads; there are too many people who would
be glad of it if we did."
"What would you do?" asked Hullin shortly; "do you want to
surrender?"
"Surrender!" cried the smuggler: "do you take me for a coward?"
"Then explain."
"This evening I start for Phalsbourg. I risk my neck passing
through the enemy's lines; but I would rather do that than fold
my arms and die of hunger. I will enter the city the first sortie
that is made, when I will try and reach a gate. The commandant,
Meunier, knows me; I have sold him tobacco for the last three
years. He, like you, served in Italy and Egypt. I will show him
the state of affairs. I will see Gaspard Lefevre. I will fix
matters so that they will probably give us a company. If we only
get a uniform, we are saved--do you see, Jean-Claude? All of our
brave people who are left will join Pivrette, and, in any case,
they can deliver us. That is my idea; what do you think of it?"
He gazed at Hullin, whose fixed and gloomy eye disturbed him.
"Is it not our only chance?"
"It is an idea," replied Jean-Claude at length; "I do not oppose
it."
And looking the smuggler straight in the eyes, he said:
"Will you swear to do your utmost to enter the city."
"I swear nothing," answered Marc, his brown cheeks flushing. "I
leave here all I possess--my wife, my goods, my comrades,
Catherine Lefevre, and you, my oldest friend! If I do not return,
I shall be a traitor; but if I return, you will explain, your
demand, Jean-Claude; we will clear up this little account between
us."
{755}
"Marc," said Hullin, "forgive me. I have suffered too much; I was
wrong; misfortune has made me distrustful. Give me your hand. Go;
save us; save Catherine; save my child! I say now to you, that
our only hope lies in you."
Hullin's voice quivered. Dives softened, but he said:
"Very well, Jean-Claude; but in such a moment you should not have
spoken so. Never let us again speak of it! I will leave my body
on the way or I will return to deliver you. I will start
to-night. The Kaiserliks already surround the mountain. No
matter; I have a good horse, and I was always lucky."
At six o'clock darkness had fallen on every peak. Hundreds of
fires flashing in the gorges showed where the Germans were
preparing their evening meal. Marc-Dives descended, groping his
way. Hullin listened for a few seconds to his comrade's
footsteps, and then turned, buried in thought, to the old tower,
where he had established his headquarters. He lifted the thick
woolen curtain which closed the entrance, and saw Catherine,
Louise, and the others gathered round a little fire, which
lighted up the grey walls. The old woman, seated on an oaken
block, her hands clasped around her knees, gazed fixedly at the
flame, her lips set tightly together, and her face seemingly
tinged with a greenish tint in its extreme pallor. Jerome,
standing behind Catherine, his folded arms resting on his staff,
touched the slimy roof with his otter-skin cap. All were sad and
disheartened. Hexe-Baizel, who was lifting the cover of a great
pot, and Doctor Lorquin, scraping the old wall with the point of
his sabre, alone kept their accustomed looks.
"Here we are," said the doctor, "returned to the times of the
Triboci. These walls are more than two thousand years old. A fine
quantity of water must have flowed from the heights of
Falkenstein and Grossmann through the Sarre and the Rhine since
fire was made before in this tower."
"Yes," replied Catherine, as if awakening from a dream, "and many
besides us have here suffered cold, hunger, want. Who knows how
many? And when a hundred, or two or three hundred years shall
have passed, still others may here seek shelter. They, like us,
will find the walls cold and the floor damp. They will make a
little fire, and gazing on each other as we now gaze, will ask,
Who suffered here before us, and why did they suffer? Were they
pursued, hunted as we have been, that they would fain hide
themselves in such a miserable den? And then they will think of
by-gone years, and no one may answer them!"
Jean-Claude drew near. In a few moments, raising her head she
said, as she looked at him:
"Well, we are blockaded; the enemy seeks to reduce us by famine."
"True, Catherine,' 5 replied Hullin. "I did not expect that. I
counted on an attack; but the Kaiserliks are not yet so sure of
us as they imagine. Dives has just started for Phalsbourg. He
knows the commandant; and if they only send a hundred men to our
succor--"
"We must not rely on it," interrupted the old woman. "Marc may be
captured or killed; and even should he succeed in making his way
through their lines, how could he enter Phalsbourg? You know the
city is besieged by the Russians."
All remained silent.
Hexe-Baizel soon brought some soup, and the party formed a circle
around the great smoking pot.
{756}
Chapter XXIV.