That night Jones came into my room with a quieter manner than usual. He

was evidently very happy, but his happiness had a sobering effect upon

him. He told me that he had made a plain avowal of his feelings to Agnes

Cortland as they walked home together, and that he had won from her the

confession that she loved him and had not been indifferent to him before

he left for Europe. I wished him joy of his good-fortune, though I could

foresee plainly enough that his difficulties had only begun. For a little

time these two innocent young souls--for Jones I knew to be singularly

unsullied by the world for a man of his age--would enjoy their paradise

undisturbed together. Then would come maternal explanations, and the

father’s authority would be invoked. A solemn promise would be exacted

from her to see him no more. Miss Cortland was much attached to her

parents, who would be sincerely anxious for her welfare. She would not

make much resistance. Some day there would come a storm of tears, and

poor Jones’s letters and the ring he gave her would be returned to him

by a faithful messenger, and a little note, blotted with tears, asking

him to forgive her and praying for his happiness. This must be the end.

A year or two of separation and a summer and winter in Europe with her

parents would leave nothing more than a little sad memory of her brief

New Hampshire romance; and in five years she would be married to some

foreigner of distinction or successful man of business, and would be a

happy wife and mother. As for poor Jones, he would probably be heard of

at rare intervals for a year or two as a trader on the Pacific coast

or prospecting a claim in Nevada. But men like him, vigorous, powerful,

well equipped in body and temper for the struggle with the world, are not

kept down long by such disappointments. The storm is fierce, and leaves

its scars after it; but the man rises above it, and is more closely knit

thereafter. Jones will make his mark in the world of business, if not of

art.

No unwelcome prophecies of mine, however, disturbed his happiness for

those few days. I let events take their course. Why should I interrupt

his dream by Cassandra-like anticipations of woe, which would have been

resented as a reflection upon the constancy of his idol? I know that

they met frequently for the following three or four days. Then came the

packing up for departure. My long holiday was over.

On a foggy morning in September we steamed up the Sound on a Fall

River boat. Through Hell Gate the stately boat sped on her way, past

Blackwell’s Island, and across the bows of the Brooklyn ferry-boats,

crowded with passengers for the city in the early morning. Around the

Battery we swept, into the North River, and slowly swung alongside of

Pier 28. Then the hackmen yelled at us; our coach stuck at the corner of

the street; a jam followed; the drivers swore; the policemen shouted and

threatened; the small boys grinned and dodged between the horses; and a

ward politician, with a ruby nose, looked on complacently from the steps

of a corner “sample” room. In one word, we were in New York, and our

village life in Hampshire was a thing of the past.

THE PALATINE PRELATES OF ROME.

Whatever is connected with our Holy Father must have an interest for

Catholics; and at the present time especially it would seem desirable to

know something about the origin and functions of those faithful prelates

of whom this article treats, and with some of whom American visitors to

Rome may be likely to have relations. They are called palatine prelates

because lodged in the same palace as the sovereign, and in these days of

trouble are the nearest to his most sacred Majesty in his solitude and

sufferings. They are four in number, and belong to the pope’s intimate

court and confidence, their names being registered in the Roman _Notizie_

immediately after those of the palatine cardinals among the members of

the pontifical family.

MAGGIORDOMO.

The majordomo, called in good Latin, the official language of the church,

_Magister Domus Papæ_, is the first of these prelates and one of the

highest dignitaries of the Holy See. The chief of the royal palace

has had in all countries immense influence and power; and in France

and Scotland, at least, the _Maires du palais_ and stewards succeeded

in mounting the throne. This officer, who, like the other three, is

always a clergyman, is the high steward of his Holiness and master of

his household, remaining day and night conveniently near to the Pope’s

person, of which he has the special care, and for the safety of which he

is responsible to the Sacred College. Until the present reign he was

supreme under the sovereign, in the civil, military, and ecclesiastical

affairs of the court, having his own tribunal of civil and criminal

jurisdiction.[141] Some years ago, however, a part of the prerogatives

of this office was transferred to the Cardinal Secretary of State; but

even now the majordomo is at the head of the administration of the palace

in which the Pope may reside for the time being, and on a vacancy of the

see is _ex-officio_, by a decree of Clement XII. in 1732, governor of

the conclave.[142] In this latter capacity, by a natural order of things

which cannot be long delayed (yet God grant it may!), he will have to

act a part during one of the most critical periods in the history of

Christian Rome. He has the privilege[143] for life of using the pope’s

arms with his own, and consequently retains this heraldic distinction

even after he has been promoted to the cardinalate to which his office

surely leads, sooner or later, according to a court custom that began

in the middle of the XVIIth century.[144] The origin of this office is

involved in some doubt, owing to its antiquity. It must have been that,

in the palace given to Pope Melchiades by the Emperor Constantine, some

person conspicuous for piety and prudence was appointed to keep the

members of a large and constantly-increasing court in mutual harmony and

subjection to authority, while relieving the pontiff of the immediate

superintendence of his household, and leaving him free to give his

precious time to public and more important matters. At all events, at

a very early period after this there is mentioned among the officers

attached to the _Patriarchium Lateranense_--as the old _Ædes Lateranæ_

were then called--a _Vice-dominus_, who was chosen from the Roman clergy,

and was often, as the more modern prelates have been, invested with the

episcopal dignity. He was answerable for the good order and harmonious

administration of the palace; and the extent of that portion of it

in which he dwelt and had his offices, as well as held his court of

jurisdiction over the papal domestics,[145] must have been large, since

it was called the _vicedominium_; and although his successor fifteen

hundred years later has not the same ample powers that he enjoyed, he is

still a personage so considerable that the part of the Vatican in which

he resides is known officially as the _Maggiordomato_. The earliest name

(not title) of such an officer which has come down to us is that of a

certain priest Ampliatus, who is mentioned in the year 544 as having

accompanied Pope Vigilius to Constantinople for the affair of the Three

Chapters, and being detached from the pontiff’s suite at Sicily on their

way back, with orders to hurry on to Rome, where the concerns of the

Lateran seem to have suffered by his absence. Anatolius, a deacon, held

the office under S. Gregory the Great, who was very particular to have

only virtuous and learned men about him; and in 742 Benedict, a bishop,

held it under S. Zachary, who sent him on a mission to Luitprand, King of

the Lombards. This officer is mentioned for the last time in history as

_Vice-dominus_ in the year 1044, when an archdeacon Benedict served under

Benedict IX. After this period, those who held the analogous position

were styled chamberlains of the Holy Roman Church until 1305, when, the

court being at Avignon, a large share of their duties and privileges was

given to a nobleman of high standing, who was called _Maestro del sacro

Ospizio_.[146]

Under Alexander V., in 1409, the Holy Father having returned to Rome,

mention is made for the first time, in a paper drawn up for the guidance

of the court, of a prefect of the apostolic palace--_Magister domus

pontificiæ_--who was the same as the later majordomo, the name only

having been changed by Urban VIII. in 1626. The series of these high

prelates, to the number of 99--belonging generally to the very first

nobility of Italy, and showing such illustrious names as Colonna,

Gonzaga, Farnese, Frangipani, Visconti, Acquaviva, Cybo, Cenci, Caraffa,

Pico della Mirandola, Piccolomini, Borghese, Borromeo, etc.--begins with

Alexander Mirabelli, a Neapolitan, who was named to the office by Pius

II. in the month of August, 1458.

MAESTRO DI CAMERA.

This officer, whose official title in Latin is _Prefectus cubiculi

Sanctitatis suæ_, is the second palatine prelate. He is the grand

chamberlain of his Holiness, carries out the entire court ceremonial,

and has the supervision of all audiences, as well as admittances of

whatever kind to the presence of the Pope. How important and confidential

is this post which he holds at the door of the papal chambers may best

be judged from the single fact that no one can approach the sovereign

without his knowledge in all and his consent[147] in most cases. He has

sometimes the episcopal character--in truth, was usually in times past

an archbishop _in partibus_; but it is now more customary for him to be

simply in priest’s orders. If, however, he be not already a prelate of

high rank, he is always, immediately after his nomination to the office,

made an apostolic prothonotary, with precedence over all his brethren

in that ancient and honorable college. Like his immediate superior, he

has the privilege of quartering the Pope’s arms with his own. He is the

keeper of the Fisherman’s ring, and at the Pope’s death delivers it up

to the cardinal chamberlain of the Holy Roman College, who gives him a

notarial receipt for it. This celebrated ring is the official one of the

popes, and gets its name from having the figure of S. Peter in a bark

and casting his net into the sea engraved upon it. Above this figure is

cut the name of the reigning pontiff. It is the first among the rings,

but the second in the class of seals, since it only serves as the privy

seal or signet used on apostolic briefs and matters of subordinate

consequence,[148] whereas the Great Seal is used to impress the heads

of SS. Peter and Paul in lead (sometimes, but rarely, in gold) on papal

bulls. At first this ring was a private and not an official one of the

pope; for in a letter from Perugia of March 7, 1265, addressed by Clement

IV. to his nephew Peter Le Gros, he says that he writes to him and to his

other relatives, not _sub bulla, sed sub piscatoris sigillo, quo Romani

Pontifices in suis secretis utuntur_; from which we gather that the ring

was in use some time before, but by whom introduced is unknown, as is

also the precise period when it became official, although this happened

during one or other of the XVth century pontificates. Perhaps the first

time that the now familiar expression, “Given under the Fisherman’s

ring,” is met with in the manner of a formal statement or curial formula,

such as it has been ever since retained, is in a document of Nicholas V.

dated from Rome--_Datum Romæ_--on the 15th of April, 1448.

The institution of this office is extremely ancient, but, like most

others of the court, it has had different names and increased or

diminished attributions at various periods. The modern Romans take a

legitimate pride in being able to deduce many of their great court

offices from the corresponding ones of the Cæsars, to whom their

sovereign has succeeded. Thus this officer is sometimes called in

classical Latin _Magister admissionum_, such an one being mentioned by

the historian Ammianus Marcellinus (xv. 5); and his office _Officium

admissionis_, which is found in Suetonius’ _Life of Vespasian_ (xiv.)

Among the members of the household of S. Gregory the Great in the year

601 there was a certain (S.) Paterius, _Secundicerius_ of the Holy See

(corresponding to the modern sub-dean of the apostolic prothonotaries,

the dean being _Primicerius_). He had to make known to the pope the

names of those who solicited the favor of an interview; and it is

probable that he also gave (as is now given) along with the name some

account of the quality and business of the visitor, for fear that the

pontiff should be unnecessarily intruded upon or brought in contact

with unworthy and perhaps dangerous characters. Investigators into the

origin of the offices of the Holy See have fixed upon this person as

the remote predecessor of the present _Maestro di Camera_; but all the

charges of the palace having been remodelled and placed nearly on their

present footing about four hundred and fifty years ago, and many of

the court records having been lost or stolen during the disturbed era

between the pontificates of Clement V. (1305) and Martin V. (1417)--which

includes the periods of Avignon and the schism--the authentic roll of the

holders of these high offices of state rarely begins earlier than the

XVth century. Thus the first grand chamberlain of the modern series is

Bindaccio Ricasoli of Florence, who was _Magister aulæ palatii_ to John

XXIII. in 1410. The present one is Monsignor Ricci-Paracciani, a Roman,

who, however, has become majordomo by Monsignor Pacca’s promotion. The

_Maestro di Camera_, being constantly in company with exalted personages

who seek an audience of the Holy Father and wait their turn in, or at all

events pass through, the _Anticamera nobile_, which opens immediately

into the Pope’s reception-room, must be distinguished for good breeding

and courtliness, and serve as a model to his subordinates in that august

apartment, lest it be said of him:

“His manners had not the repose

That marks the caste of Vere de Vere.”

Hence we are prepared to find the noblest families of Italy represented

in the office, and notice such patrician names as Odescalchi, Altieri,

Fieschi, Ruffo, Doria, Massimo, Pignatelli, Caracciolo, Barberini,

Riario-Sforza, etc.

UDITORE.

The auditor of his Holiness--_Auditor Papæ_--is the agent-general, most

intimate privy councillor, and canonist of the Pope. He is third in rank

of the palatine prelates, and lived in the Quirinal, where his offices

and the archives were situated, until the present iniquitous occupation,

since which they have been removed to the Torlonia palace, near the

Vatican. This office was instituted by Paul II. (1464-1471), and the

first to hold it was the renowned J. B. Millini, a Roman, who was at the

same time Bishop of Urbino (which was administered by some one else in

his name); he later became a cardinal under Sixtus IV., in 1476. His

successor at the present time is Monsignor Sagretti. Up to this century

the power and general influence of the auditor were extraordinary, since

he had a court of justice and ample jurisdiction, even exercising in the

name of the Pope the supremacy of appeal in many matters. For this reason

the great epigraphist Morcelli, who wrote before these judicial functions

were abolished, called him _Judex sacrarum cognitionum_. Formerly he gave

audience to all comers about matters of equity and appeal on Tuesdays,

in his apartment at the Quirinal, standing in his prelatic robes behind

a low-backed throne supposed by a sort of fiction to be then occupied

by the Pope;[149] hence he was called in choice Latin _Cognoscens vice

sacrâ_--_i.e._, in _lieu_ of his Holiness. The common Italian appellation

_Uditore Santissimo_ is only a corrupt rendering of the Latin _Auditor

Sanctissimi_. This post has always been occupied by one of the ablest

jurists in Italy; and even now the auditor must be both very learned and

most incorruptible, from the part that he takes officially in filling

vacant sees and making other important nominations.

MAESTRO DEL SACRO PALAZZO.

The Master of the Holy Apostolic Palace--_Magister Sacri Palatii

Apostolici_--is one of the most distinguished members for piety and

doctrine of the Dominican Order. He is the Pope’s official theologian,

and usually a consultor of several Roman congregations, more nearly

concerned with matters of faith and morals, as the Inquisition,

Indulgences and Relics, Index, etc. He ranks fourth among the palatine

prelates, and resided until the late invasion in the Quirinal Palace

with his “companion” and two lay brothers of his order. He is considered

an honorary auditor of the Rota, and as such has a place with the

prelates of this class in the papal chapels and reunions. He retains

the habit of his order, but wears on his hat a black prelatical band.

He is _ex-officio_ president of the Theological Faculty in the Roman

University, and the person to whom was entrusted the censorship of the

press. The origin of this office dates from the year 1218, when S.

Dominic, who established the Order of Friars Preachers, suggested to

Honorius III. that it would be proper if some one were charged to give

religious instruction to the many servants of cardinals, prelates, and

others, who used to spend their time idly in useless talk and slanderous

gossip with their brethren of the papal palace while their masters

were expecting an audience or engaged with his Holiness.[150] The Pope

was pleased, and at once appointed Dominic to the good work, who began

by explaining the Epistles of S. Paul.[151] The fruit of these pious

conferences was so apparent that the pope determined to perpetuate

them under the direction of a Dominican. Besides the more familiar

instructions, which were given at first extempore, it was arranged

later that while the pope and court were listening to the preacher

appointed to sermonize in the palace during Advent and Lent, the papal

domestics and other servants should also have the benefit of formal

discourses, but in another part of the building. It was always the father

_master_--_i.e._, doctor--who held forth to them until the XVIth century,

when the duties of his office becoming more onerous, especially by reason

of the many attempts to misuse the recently-discovered art of printing

to corrupt faith and morals in Rome itself, the obligation devolved upon

his companion--_Pro-Magister_ or _Socius_--who also holds three days of

catechism in preparation for each of the four general communions that

are given yearly in the palace. This deputy is appointed by the master,

and is a person of consequence, succeeding sometimes to the higher

office. The present master is Vincenzo Maria Gatti. When the learned

Alexander V. became pope (1409), the Master of the Palace was required

to stand by at his meals, especially on Sundays and festival days, and

be ready to propose difficult points of debate, or to enter into an

argument on any matter and with any person present as the Holy Father

should command.[152] There have been seventy-nine occupants of this

office since its institution (not to count several anti-masters created

by anti-popes), of whom seventeen have been made cardinals, and among

them the celebrated church historian Orsi. The great writer on Christian

antiquities, Mamachi, held this office with distinction. It is one, of

course, in which “brains” rather than “blood” find a place; and since

there is no royal road to learning--for as an old monkish couplet says:

“Gutta cavat lapidem, non vi, sed sæpe cadendo,

Sic homo fit doctus, non vi, sed sæpe studendo”

--we are not surprised that the series of Masters of the Apostolic Palace

exhibits no such names as those that predominate among the chamberlains

and majordomos--“Not many noble” (1 Cor. i. 26).

In the mother-church of the Dominican Order at Rome, _Santa Maria sopra

Minerva_, which is also the title of the first American cardinal,[153]

there is a special vault beneath the chapel of S. Dominic for the

entombment of the masters; but the brutal invaders who now hold

possession of Rome having forbidden all intra-mural burials--evidently

through malice, because, from the dry nature of the soil and the

perfection of Roman masonry, there could not be the slightest danger

from a moderate number of interments within the city--they will have to

sleep after death in some less appropriate spot: “How long shall sinners,

O Lord, how long shall sinners glory?… Thy people, O Lord, they have

brought low: and they have afflicted thy inheritance” (Ps. xciii.)

POWER, ACTION, AND MOVEMENT.

The word “motion” is now commonly used for movement, but it properly

means the action by which a thing is set into movement. This action,

or motion, of course proceeds from an agent, and consists in the

production of an act, or momentum, which must be terminated or received

in a patient. The active power of the agent is its substantial act as

virtually containing in itself all the acts which the agent is ready to

produce, according to its nature. This active power may therefore be

called the virtuality, or terminability, of the act by which the agent

is. The momentum produced by such a power stands to the power in the same

ontological relation as the _now_ of time to the virtuality of God’s

eternity, and as the ubication of a point in space to the virtuality of

God’s immensity; for in all these cases there is question of nothing

else than of an extrinsic terminability and an extrinsic term. We may,

therefore, in treating of motive powers and momentums, follow the same

order of questions which we have followed in our articles on space and

duration.

But the subject which we are about to investigate has a special feature

of its own; because in the exertion of active power, and consequently in

the momentums produced, there is something--_intensity_--which is not to

be met with either in the _when_ or in the _where_. For the _when_ and

the _where_ are mere terms of intervals or distances, and do not partake

in their continuity; from which it follows that they are not quantities,

but merely terms of quantities, whereas the momentum of motion is the

formal principle of the real changes produced by the agent in the

patient. And these changes admit of different degrees, and thus by their

greater or less magnitude reveal the greater or less intensity of the

exertion. The reason of this difference is very plain; for the _when_ and

the _where_ are not efficiently produced by God’s eternity and immensity,

for these divine attributes do not connote action. Their origin is not

to be traced to action, but to resultation, as we have explained in

our preceding articles. The entity of every creature, on the contrary,

proceeds from God as efficient cause--that is, it does not merely result

from the existence of other things, but it is actively produced; and,

since an act produced must have some degree of perfection, creatures are

more or less perfect as to their entity, and therefore have in their own

act a greater or less power of acting, according to the degree of their

entitative perfection. This explains why it is that there is intensity in

all action and in all act produced, whereas there is no intensity in the

_when_ and the _where_.

But, apart from this special feature, the questions regarding active

powers, actions, and the acts produced are entirely similar to those

which we have answered in treating of space and of duration. Nay, more,

the same questions may be viewed under three distinct aspects--viz.,

first, with reference to the divine power and its causality of contingent

things; secondly, with reference to second causes, their actions, and

the momentums produced by them; and, thirdly, with reference to these

momentums themselves and the local movements resulting from them. This

third view of the subject is the only one immediately connected with

the notions of space and of time, and we might limit ourselves to its

consideration. Nevertheless, to shed more light on the whole treatise,

we propose to say something of the other two also; for, by tracing

the actions and the phenomena of the material world to their original

sources, we shall discover that all different grades of reality are

linked with their immediate principles in such a manner as to exhibit

a perpetual analogy of the lower with the higher, till we reach the

highest--God.

To ascertain the truth of this proposition, let us recall to mind the

main conclusions established by us with respect to space. They were as

follows:

1st. There is void space--that is, a capacity which does not imply the

presence of anything created.

2d. Void space is an objective reality.

3d. Void space was not created.

4th. Absolute space is the virtuality, or extrinsic terminability, of

God’s immensity.

5th. Absolute space is not modified by the presence of matter in it--that

is, by its extrinsic termination.

6th. Ubications are extrinsic terms of absolute space, and their

relations have in space itself an extrinsic foundation.

A similar series of conclusions was established in regard to duration.

They were:

1st. There is a standing duration--that is, an actuality which does not

imply succession.

2d. Standing duration is an objective reality.

3d. Standing duration is not created.

4th. Standing duration is the virtuality, or extrinsic terminability, of

God’s eternity.

5th. Standing duration is not modified by the existence in it of created

things--that is, by its extrinsic termination.

6th. The _whens_ of creatures are extrinsic terms of standing duration,

and their relations have in standing duration their extrinsic foundation.

Before we give the analogous conclusions concerning active powers and

their causality, we have to premise that all power ready to act is

said to be _in actu primo_, or in the “first act,” with respect to its

termination and term, or act, which it is ready to produce. Its action

is its termination, and it consists in the causation of a _second act_.

This second act, inasmuch as it exists in its proper term, potency, or

subject, is called _actio in facto esse_--that is, an action wholly

complete, though the action proper is always _in fieri_; for it consists

in the very production of such a second act, as we have just stated. The

result of this production is the existence of a new reality, substantial

or accidental, according to the nature of the act produced. This

well-known terminology we shall use here for the parallel development of

the three classes of questions which we have to answer.

_Origin of Power._--First, then, with regard to the primary origin of

active and moving powers, we lay down the following conclusions:

1st. There is some absolute power--that is, a first act which has no need

of producing any second act.

2d. Absolute power is an objective reality.

3d. Absolute power is uncreated.

4th. Absolute power is the virtuality, or extrinsic terminability, of the

act by which God is.

5th. Absolute power is not modified by the production of effects--that

is, by its extrinsic termination.

6th. The beings thus produced are extrinsic terms of God’s power; and

although, owing to their intrinsic perfection, which may be greater or

less, they can be related to one another by an intrinsic foundation, yet

their “entitative distances” have only an extrinsic foundation--to wit,

God’s omnipotence.

Some of these propositions are so obvious that they might have been

omitted but for the object we have in view of pointing out the

parallelism of absolute power with space and duration.

The first of these conclusions is proved thus: All first act which

naturally needs to produce some second act has an intrinsic and natural

ordination to something distinct from itself; for all effect is really

distinct from its efficient principle. But it cannot be admitted without

absurdity that every first act has such an intrinsic and natural

ordination; for, if everything were thus ordained to something else,

all things would tend to some subordinate end, while there would be no

supreme end at all; for nothing that is ordained to something else can

rank as the supreme end. On the other hand, no subordinate ends can be

admitted without a supreme end. And therefore there must be some first

act which has no intrinsic necessity of producing any second act. Such a

first act is altogether absolute.

The second conclusion is evident. For what we call here “a first act”

is not an imperfect and incomplete act, since it needs no termination;

nor is it a result of mental abstraction and analysis, but a perfect

principle of real operations; for the epithet “first,” by which we

characterize it, does not imply that it lacks anything in its entity,

but, on the contrary, it means that it already contains eminently the

whole reality of the effects which it is competent to produce. Hence it

is clear that, if such effects are objective realities, the first act on

which their production depends is an objective reality, and a much better

one too.

The third conclusion needs no proof, it being evident that whatever

is created must tend to the end of its creation, which is the

manifestation of the perfections of its creator. This manifestation

implies action--viz., a transition of the first act to its second act.

Accordingly, a first act which has no necessary ordination to second acts

cannot be created.

The fourth conclusion follows from the third, since an uncreated act can

be nothing else than the act by which God is. This act, inasmuch as it

eminently contains the reality of all possible things, is extrinsically

terminable, and as thus terminable it exhibits itself as a “first” act.

But, since God has no need of creatures, such a first act has no need

of extrinsic terminations, and, as first, it constitutes omnipotence,

or God’s absolute power. This power in its infinite simplicity has an

infinite range, as it extends to all conceivable reality.

The fifth conclusion will be easily understood by reflecting that the

extrinsic termination of active power consists in giving existence to

contingent things by efficient action. Now, to act efficiently does not

bring about any intrinsic change in the agent; for all intrinsic change

follows from passion, which is the opposite of action. Nor does God, when

giving existence and active powers to any number of creatures, weaken

his own power. For the power imparted to creatures is not a portion of

the divine power, but a product of creation, and nothing, in fact, but

the created act itself. For, as all contingent things are created for

the manifestation of God’s perfections, all creatures must be active;

and as everything acts as it is in act, the act being the principle of

the acting, it follows that all act produced by creation is an active

power of greater or less perfection according to the part it is destined

to fill in the plans of its Maker. This shows that the act by which a

creature is, bears a resemblance to the act by which God is, inasmuch as

it virtually contains in itself all those acts which it is fit to produce

according to its nature. But, since all contingent act is extrinsic

to God, divine omnipotence is not entitatively and intrinsically more

actuated by creation than by non-creation; though, if God creates any

being, from the term produced he will acquire the real denomination of

Creator. Thus the existence of a contingent being is the existence of a

real term, which extrinsically terminates the virtuality of God’s act, in

which it is eminently contained. Its relation to its Creator is one of

total dependence; whilst God’s relation to it is that of first causality.

The foundation of this relation is the action which proceeds from God

and terminates in the creature.

The first part of the sixth conclusion, that beings produced by creation

are extrinsic terms of God’s power, has just been explained. But we say,

moreover, that the entitative distances between such beings have an

extrinsic foundation in God’s omnipotence. By “entitative distance” we

mean the difference in degree between distinct beings--_v.g._, between

a man and a tree--as we have explained in another place.[154] And we

say that, as the distance between two material points in space has its

extrinsic foundation in the virtuality of God’s immensity, so also the

entitative distance of two beings has its extrinsic foundation in the

virtuality of God’s infinite act--that is, in divine omnipotence. In

fact, the different degrees of entity conceivable between the tree and

the man are all virtually contained in God’s omnipotence, just as all the

distinct ubications possible between two points are virtually in God’s

immensity. Hence the foundation of such entitative distances is extrinsic

to the beings compared in the same manner as the foundation of local

distances.

But the terms produced by creative action, inasmuch as they possess a

greater or less perfection in their individual constitution, can be

compared with one another according to the relative degree of their

intrinsic reality; and thus, besides the extrinsic relation just

mentioned, they have a mutual relativity arising from an intrinsic

foundation. The relative degree of reality of a contingent being becomes

known to us through the relative intensity of its active power; which

implies that the beings compared have powers of the same species. If they

are not of the same species, the comparison will give no result.

_Remarks._--Before leaving this part of our subject, we have to notice

that, as the ubication, so also the act produced by creation, can be

considered both absolutely and respectively. A created act, considered

absolutely, is an act intrinsically completed by its essential potency,

and constitutes the being as it is _in actu secundo_. The same act,

considered respectively, or as ordained to something else, is a power

ready to act, and thus it is _in actu primo_ with regard to all the acts

which it is able to produce.

The essential act of a contingent being, be it considered absolutely or

respectively, bears no proportion to the perfection of its Creator, no

more indeed than a point in space to immensity, or a _now_ of time to

eternity. Hence all contingent act or power, whatever be its perfection

or intensity, as compared with God, is like nothing. It is only when

a created act or power is compared with another of the same kind that

we can establish a proportion between them as to degrees of perfection

and of intensity. These degrees are measured by comparing the relative

intensities of the effects produced by distinct causes of the same kind,

acting under the same conditions.

The quantity of efficient power may be conceived as a virtual sum of

degrees of power. In this particular the quantity of power differs

entirely from the quantity of distance; because this latter cannot be

conceived as a virtual sum of ubications. The reason of this difference

is that ubications, as being simple points, have no quantity, and

therefore cannot by addition make up a continuous quantity; whereas the

degrees of power always possess intensity, and are quantities; hence

their sum is a quantity of the same kind.

It may be useful to remark that all continuous quantity has a necessary

connection with the quantity of power, and that all extension owes its

being to the efficacy of some motive principle. In fact, all intervals,

whether of space or of time, are reckoned among continuous quantities

only on account of the quantity of continuous movement which can be

made, or is actually made, in them, as we have explained in a preceding

article; but the quantity of movement is itself to be traced to the

intensity of the momentum produced by the agent, and the momentum to the

intensity of the motive power. As soon as movement is communicated to

a point, its ubication begins to shift and to extend a continuous line

in space; and its _now_, too, for the same reason begins to flow and to

extend continuous time.

When the quantity of power is expressed by a number, its value is

determined, as we have stated, by the intensity of its efficiency in

a given time and fixed conditions. The unit of intensity by which the

amount of the effect produced is measured is arbitrary; for there is

no natural unit for the degrees of intensity, it being evident that

such degrees can be divided and subdivided without end, just like the

continuum. Hence the numbers by which we express degrees of intensity are

only virtually discrete, just as those by which we express continuous

quantities. The ordinary unit assumed for the measure of intensity is

that degree of intensity which causes a unit of weight to measure a unit

of distance in a unit of time. As all these units are arbitrary, it is

evident that such is also the unit of intensity.

Let us remark, also, that the power of natural causes has in its action a

twofold continuity--that is, with regard both to space and to duration.

As long as a natural cause exists, it acts without interruption, owing

to its intrinsic determination, provided there be, as there is always in

fact, some subject capable of being acted upon by it. This constitutes

the continuity of action with regard to duration. On the other hand,

the motive power of such natural causes is exerted, according to the

Newtonian law, throughout an indefinite sphere, as we have shown in

another place;[155] and this constitutes the continuity of action through

space. Moreover, if the point acted upon approaches the agent or recedes

from it, the continuous change of distance will be accompanied by a

continuous change of action; and thus the intensity of the act produced

by the agent will increase or decrease in a continuous manner through

infinitesimal degrees corresponding to the infinitesimal changes of local

relations occurring in infinitesimal instants of time. This relation of

changes is the base of dynamics. But enough on this point.

_Origin of movement._--We may now pass to the conclusions concerning

movement as dependent on its proximate cause. The power by which the

natural causes produce momentums of movement is called “motive power.”

This power is to be found both in material and in spiritual beings; but

as in spiritual substances the exercise of the motive power is subject

to their will, and consists in the application of a nobler power to the

production of a lower effect, we do not and cannot consider the power of

spiritual beings as merely “motive,” for it is, above all, intellective

and volitive. Material things, on the contrary, because they possess

no other power than that of moving, are characterized by it, and are

naturally determined to exercise it according to a law which they cannot

elude. It is of these beings in particular that the following conclusions

are to be understood.

1st. There is in all material creatures a motive power--that is, a first

act of moving--which, considered in its absolute state, has no need of

extrinsic termination, that is, of producing a momentum of movement.

2d. This motive power is an objective reality.

3d. The same power is nothing accidentally superadded to the being of

which it is the power.

4th. This power is the virtuality, or extrinsic terminability, of the act

by which the agent is.

5th. This power is not modified by the production of momentums in

extrinsic terms.

6th. The momentums thus produced are second acts of the motive power,

extrinsic to it; and though, owing to their intensity, which may be

greater or less, they can be related to one another through an intrinsic

foundation, yet their entitative distances have only an extrinsic

foundation--to wit, the agent’s power.

Some of these propositions are quite evident; but our present object is

not only to explain what may require a special discussion, but also,

and principally, to dissect our subject in such a manner as to make

it manifest that a perpetual analogy exists between the conditions and

the principles of all kinds of continuum, and that in all of them the

transition from the absolute to the relative, from the cause to the

effect, and from the formal reason to its formal result, is made through

a like process and through similar degrees. For this reason we think that

even those conclusions which seem too obvious to deserve mention become

interesting and serve a good purpose; for in the parallel treatment

of analogous subjects, those things which are clearer throw light on

those which are more abstruse, and about which we often feel a certain

hesitation.

The first of our present conclusions needs only a short explanation. When

we say that in every creature there is a motive power which, _considered

in its absolute state_, has no need of producing a momentum, we mean that

in every creature there is an act which is a principle of activity, but

that the exercise of this activity is not required for the substantial

perfection and essential constitution of the creature itself, though

it may be required for some other reason, as we shall see presently.

In fact, every substance has its own complete being independently of

accidents; and since the exertion of motive power is an accident, every

substance is entitatively independent of it. We conceive that if God had

created nothing but an element of matter, such an element would indeed

(on its own part) be ready to act and to produce a momentum of movement;

but, as there would be no subject capable of receiving a momentum, the

motive power would remain _in actu primo_--that is, without actual

exertion. And yet it is evident that the non-existence of other elements

can have no bearing on the intrinsic constitution and substantial

perfection of the element in the question. Therefore the power of an

element of matter is a first act, which, as far as the entity of the

element itself is concerned, has no need of producing any second act.

Nevertheless, since all creatures must in some manner glorify God

as long as they exist, because such is the true and highest end of

their existence, hence to every created power some proportionate term

or subject corresponds, in which its exertion is received without

interruption. In the same manner as the understanding never lacks an

intelligible object, and the sense never lacks a sensible term, about

which to exercise itself by immanent operation, the motive power

of inferior beings never fails to meet a proportionate--that is,

movable--term and to impress upon it a momentum of a certain intensity.

Hence, when we regard, not the substance of natural things as such,

but the natural necessity they are under of tending constantly to the

ultimate end of their creation, we see that their first act of moving

must always entail some second act, or momentum, in all the terms which

it can reach according to its natural determination.

The second conclusion is self-evident; for, if the principle of real

movement were not an objective reality, a real effect would proceed from

an unreal cause--which is absurd. Nor does it matter that the power is

only a “first” act. For, as we have explained above, it is first as

compared with the acts which it can produce, but it is intrinsically

complete in the entity of the agent, as it is terminated to its

substantial term.

The third conclusion is nothing but a corollary of the well-known axiom

that in all things the principle of operation is the substantial act:

_Forma est id quo agens agit_, and _Principium essendi est principium

operandi_. We have proved in another place[156] that no natural accident

possesses active power or is actually concerned in any of the effects

produced by the agent. This truth should be well understood by the modern

scientists who very commonly mistake the conditions of the action for

the active principle. Of course no creature can act independently of

accidental conditions; but these conditions have no bearing on the active

power itself--they only determine (formally and not efficiently) the

mode of its application according to a constant law. Thus the distance

of two material points has no _active_ influence on their motive power

or on their mutual action, but only constitutes the two points in a

certain relation to one another; and when such a relation is altered, the

action is changed, not because the power is modified, but because its

determination to act--that is, its very nature--demands that it should

in its application follow the Newtonian law of the inverse ratio of the

squared distances.

The philosophers of the old school admitted, but never proved, that,

although the substantial form is the main principle of activity in

natural things, nevertheless this principle was in need of some

accidental entity, that it might be proximately disposed to produce its

act. This opinion, too, originated in the confusion of active power

with the conditions on which the mode of its exertion depends. What

they called “active qualities” is now acknowledged to be, not a new

kind of active power superadded to the substantial forms, but merely a

result of the concurrence of many simple powers acting under determinate

conditions. The accidental change of the conditions entails the change

of the result and action, but the active powers evidently remain the

same. The ancients said also that the substantial forms were the active

principles of substantial generations, whereas the “active qualities”

were the active principles of mere alterations. As we have shown that

the whole theory of substantial generations, as understood by the

peripatetic school, is based on assumption and equivocation, and leads to

impossibilities,[157] we may be dispensed from giving a new refutation of

the opinion last mentioned.

Our fourth conclusion directly follows from the general principle that

the act by which a thing has its first being is its principle of action:

_Quo aliquid primo est, eo agit_. The substantial act, considered as to

its absolute entity, does not connote action, but simply constitutes the

being of which it is the act. In order to conceive it as an active power,

we must refer to the effects which it virtually contains--that is, we

must consider its virtuality. In this manner what is a second act with

regard to the substance of the agent, will be conceived as a first act

with reference to the effects it can produce, according to a received

axiom: _Actus secundus essendi est actus primus operandi_.

The fifth conclusion, notwithstanding the contrary opinion of many

philosophers, is quite certain. For all intrinsic modification is the

result of passive reception or passion. Now, to produce a momentum of

movement is action, not passion. Therefore, when such a momentum is

produced, no other subject is intrinsically modified by it except the one

which passively receives it. It is therefore the being which is acted

on, not that which acts, that acquires an intrinsic modification. The

power of the agent is not entitatively and intrinsically more actuated

by action than by non-action. Its action is an extrinsic termination,

and gives it nothing but the real denomination of agent, by which it is

really related to the term acted on. The patient, by its reception of

the momentum, becomes similarly related to the agent, as is evident. And

the relation consists in this: that the patient acquires formally an

act which the agent virtually contains. This relation is of accidental

causality on the one side and of accidental dependence on the other. The

foundation of the relation is the accidental action as coming from the

one and terminating in the other.

As everything that is in movement must have received the motion from

a distinct agent, according to the principle _Omne quod movetur, ab

alio movetur_, it follows that whatever is in movement is accidentally

dependent on an extrinsic mover; and, since all material elements are

both movers and moved, they all have a mutual accidental causality and

dependence.

Our sixth conclusion is sufficiently clear from what has been said

concerning the sixth conclusion of the preceding series. The momentum

of movement is evidently the second act of the motive power--that is,

the extrinsic term of its exertion. The entitative distance between two

momentums produced by the same mover is an extrinsic relation; for its

foundation is the virtuality of the act by which the agent is, as has

been explained above. But the same momentums, as possessing greater or

less intensity, can also be compared with one another according to their

intrinsic entity or degree; and thus they will be found to have a mutual

relation arising from an intrinsic foundation.

_Remarks._--As the ubication, so also the momentum produced by accidental

action, can be considered both absolutely and respectively. The momentum,

considered absolutely, is an act received in a subject--an absolute

momentum, an extrinsic term of the virtuality of the motive principle;

and, as such a momentum is only one out of the innumerable acts which

can proceed from the agent, it has an entity infinitely less than that

of the agent. It is evident, in fact, that between a substantial and

an accidental act there must be an infinite entitative disproportion,

both because no substance can be substantially changed by its accidents,

and because the substantial act can never be exhausted, and not even

weakened, by the production of accidental acts, as we have established in

another place.[158] The momentum is considered respectively when it is

compared with another momentum, in which case we can find the relation of

the one to the other as to intensity. This intensity is measured by the

quantity of the movement to which they give rise when not counteracted.

The unit of intensity is arbitrary in the momentums, as in their

principles, for the same reason--that is, because in neither case a

natural unit of intensity can be found. The number expressing the

relative intensity of a momentum is only virtually discrete, because

the momentum is only virtually compounded, since it is not a number of

distinct acts, but one act equivalent to many.

_Movement and its affections._--The production of a momentum entails

movement. The general definition of movement, according to Aristotle and

S. Thomas, is _Actus existentis in potentia ut in potentia_, or, as we

would say, an actual passage from one potential state to another. Now,

all created being is potential in two manners: first, on account of its

passive receptivity; secondly, on account of its affectibility, which is

a consequence of its passivity, as we have explained in the “Principles

of Real Being.”[159] Hence the momentum of movement, inasmuch as it is

received in the patient, actuates its passive potency; and inasmuch as

its reception entails a certain mode of being, it affects its resultant

potentiality. But besides this double potentiality, which is intrinsic to

the subject, there is another potentiality which refers to an extrinsic

term, and for this reason movement is considered both as it is a

modification of its subject, _ratione subjecti_, and as it points at an

extrinsic term, _ratione termini_.

With regard to its subject, movement is usually divided into _immanent_

and _transient_. It is called immanent when it results from immanent

acts, as when the soul directs its attention to such or such an object

of thought; and it is called transient when it brings about a change in

a subject distinct from the agent, as when a man moves a stone, or when

the sun moves the earth. But this is inaccurate language; for what is

transient in these cases is the _action_, not the _movement_.

With regard to its term, movement is divided into two kinds--that is,

movement to a place, _motus ad ubi_, and movement towards a certain

degree of perfection or intensity of power, _motus virtutis_.[160] The

first is called _local_ movement, of which we will speak presently. The

second is subdivided into _intension_, _remission_, and _alteration_.

Intension and remission are the acquisition or loss of some degree of

perfection or of intensity with regard to power and qualities; alteration

is the passage from one kind of quality or property to another. Thus, in

water, heat is subject to intension and remission; but when the cohesive

force of the molecules is superseded by the expansive force of vapor,

there is alteration.

It is important to notice that there is no _motus virtutis_ in primitive

elements of matter. The exertion of their power varies indeed according

to the Newtonian law, but the power itself is always exactly the same,

as its principle is the substantial act, which cannot be modified by

accidental action. It is only in material compounds that the _motus

virtutis_ can be admitted, for the reason that the active powers and

qualities in them are a result of composition; hence a change in the

mode of the composition brings about a change in the resultant. So also

in spiritual substances there is no _motus virtutis_, because their

active faculties are always substantially the same. True it is that the

intellect has also its passivity with regard to intelligible species,

and that it acts by so much the more easily and perfectly in proportion

as it is better furnished with intelligible species distinctly expressed

and arranged according to their logical and objective connection. But

this cannot mean that the active power of the intellect can be increased,

but only that it can be placed in more suitable conditions for its

operations. And the like is to be said of all acquired habits; for they

give a greater facility of acting, not by intensifying the intrinsic

power, but by placing the active faculty in such conditions as are more

favorable for its operation.

But let us revert to local movement. This movement may be defined as _the

act of gliding through successive ubications_. Such a gliding alters the

relations of one body to another, as is evident, but it involves no new

intrinsic modification of the subject. As long as the subject continues

to move under the same momentum, its intrinsic mode of being remains

uniformly the same, while its extrinsic relations to other bodies are

in continual change. Hence the local movement of any point of matter

merely consists in the act of extending from ubication to ubication, or,

as we may say, in _the evolution of the intensity of the momentum into

continuous extension_. The reason of this evolution is that the momentum

impressed on a subject has not only a definite intensity, but also a

definite direction in space; whence it follows that the subject which

receives the momentum receives a determination to describe a line in a

definite direction, which it must follow, owing to its inertia, with an

impetus equal to the intensity of the momentum itself. And in this manner

a material point, by the successive flowing of its ubication, describes a

line in space, or evolves the intensity of its momentum into extension.

Hence, of local movement we can predicate both _intensity_ and

_extension_. The intensity is the formal principle, which, by actuating

the inertia or mobility of the subject, evolves itself into extension.

The extension is the actual evolution of the momentum, and constitutes

the essence of local movement, which is always _in fieri_. And this

is what is especially pointed out in Aristotle’s words: _Motus est

actus existentis in potentia, ut in potentia_. The _actus_ refers to

the intensity, which is not _in fieri_, but has a definite actuality;

whilst the _in potentia ut in potentia_ clearly refers to the evolution

of extension, which is continually _in fieri_ under the influx of said

act. Accordingly, local movement is both intensive and extensive. But

this last epithet is to be looked upon as equivalent to “extending,” not

to “extended”; for it is the line drawn, or the track of the movement

already made, that is properly “extended,” whereas the movement itself is

the act of extending it.

The formal intensity of local movement is called _velocity_. We say the

_formal_ intensity, because movement has also a _material_ intensity.

The formal intensity regards the rate of movement of each element of

matter taken by itself, and it is greater or less according as it evolves

a greater or a less extension in equal times. The material intensity

regards the quantity of matter which is moving with a given velocity, and

is measured by the product of the velocity into the mass of the moving

body. This product is called the momentum of the body, or its quantity of

movement.

Local movement is subject to three affections--viz., _intension_,

_remission_, and _inflexion_. In fact, since local movement consists

in extending with a certain velocity in a certain direction, it is

susceptible of being modified either by a change of velocity, which

will intensify or weaken it, or by a change of direction--that is, by

inflexion. So long, however, as no agent disturbs the actual movement

already imparted to a body, the movement must necessarily continue in

the same direction and with the same velocity; for matter, owing to its

inertia, cannot modify its own state. This amounts to saying that the

tendency uniformly to preserve its rate and its direction is not an

accidental affection, but the very nature, of local movement.

This being premised, we are going to establish a series of conclusions,

concerning movement and its affections, parallel to that which we have

developed in the preceding pages respecting power and its exertions. The

reader will see that the chain of our analogies must here end; for, since

movement is not action, it affects nothing new, and produces no extrinsic

terms, but only entails changes of local relations. On the other hand,

the affections of local movement are not of a transient, but of an

immanent, character, and thus they give rise to no new entity, but are

themselves identified with the movement of which they are the modes. Our

conclusions are the following:

1st. There is in all local movement something permanent--that is, a

general determination of a lasting character, which has no need of being

individuated in one manner more than in another.

2d. This constant determination is an objective reality.

3d. This same determination is nothing accidentally superadded to local

movement.

4th. This determination is the virtuality of the momentum of movement, or

the act of evolving extension in a definite direction.

5th. This determination is not intrinsically modified by any accidental

modification of local movement.

6th. The affections of local movement are intrinsic and intransitive

modes, which identify themselves with the movement which they modify.

The first of these conclusions is briefly proved thus: whatever is a

subject of real modifications has something permanent. Local movement

is a subject of real modifications. Therefore, local movement involves

something permanent.

The second conclusion is self-evident.

The third conclusion, too, is evident. For whatever is accidentally

superadded to a thing can be accidentally taken away, and therefore

cannot belong to the thing permanently and invariably. Hence the constant

and fixed determination in question cannot be an accident of local

movement.

The fourth conclusion is a corollary of the third. For nothing is

necessarily permanent in local movement, except that which constitutes

its essence. Now, its essence lies in this: that it must evolve

extension at the rate and in the direction determined by the momentum

of which it is the exponent. Therefore the permanent determination of

which we are speaking is nothing else than the virtuality of the momentum

itself as developing into extension. And since the momentum by which the

moving body is animated has a determinate intensity and direction, which

virtually contains a determinate velocity and direction of movement,

it follows that the permanent determination in question consists in

the actual tendency of movement to evolve uniformly and in a straight

line--_uniformly_, because velocity is the form of movement, and the

velocity determined by the intensity of the actual momentum is actually

one; _in a straight line_, because the actual momentum being one, it

gives but one direction to the movement, which therefore will be straight

in its tendency. Whence we conclude that it is of the essence of local

movement to have _an actual tendency to evolve uniformly in a straight

line_.

Some will object that local movement may lack both uniformity and

straightness. This is quite true, but it does not destroy our conclusion.

For, as movement is always _in fieri_, and exists only by infinitesimal

instants in which it is impossible to admit more than one velocity and

one direction, it remains always true that within every instant of its

existence the movement is straight and uniform, and that in every such

instant it tends to continue in the same direction and at the same

rate--that is, with the velocity and direction it actually possesses.

This velocity and direction may, of course, be modified in the following

instant; but in the following instant, too, the movement will tend to

evolve uniformly and in a straight line suitably to its new velocity

and direction. Whence it is manifest that, although in the continuation

of the movement there may be a series of different velocities and

directions, yet the tendency of the movement is, at every instant of its

existence, to extend uniformly in a straight line. This truth is the

foundation of dynamics.

Our fifth conclusion is sufficiently evident from what we have just

said. For, whatever be the intensity and direction of the movement, its

determination to extend uniformly in a straight line is not interfered

with.

Our last conclusion has no need of explanation. For, since the affections

of local movement are the result of new momentums impressed on the

subject it is plain that they are intrinsic modes characterizing a

movement individually different from the movement that preceded. The

tendency to evolve uniformly in a straight line remains unimpaired,

as we have shown; but the movement itself becomes entitatively--viz.,

quantitatively--different.

_Remarks._--Local movement is divided into _uniform_ and _varied_.

Uniform movement we call that which has a constant velocity. For, as

velocity is the form of movement, to say that a movement is uniform is

to say that it has but one velocity in the whole of its extension. We

usually call “uniform” all movement whose apparent velocity is constant;

but, to say the truth, no rigorously uniform movement exists in nature

for any appreciable length of time. In fact, every element of matter lies

within the sphere of action of all other elements, and is continually

acted on, and continually receives new momentums; the evident consequence

of which is that its real movement must undergo a continuous change of

velocity. Hence rigorously uniform movement is limited to infinitesimal

time.

Varied movement is that whose rate is continually changing. It is divided

into _accelerated_ and _retarded_; and, when the acceleration or the

retardation arises from a constant action which in equal times imparts

equal momentums, the movement is said to be _uniformly_ accelerated or

retarded.

_Epilogue._--The explanation we have given of space, duration, and

movement suffices, if we are not mistaken, to show what is the true

nature of the only continuous quantities which can be found in the

real order of things. The reader will have seen that the source of all

continuity is motive power and its exertion. It is such an exertion

that engenders local movement, and causes it to be continuous in its

entity, in its local extension, and in its duration. In fact, why is the

local movement continuous _in its entity_? Because the motive action

strengthens or weakens it by continuous infinitesimal degrees in each

successive infinitesimal instant, thus causing it to pass through all

the degrees of intensity designable between its initial and its final

velocity. And again: why is the local movement continuous _in its local

extension_? Because it is the property of an action which proceeds from

a point in space and is terminated to another point in space, to give a

local direction to the subject in which the momentum is received; whence

it follows that the subject under the influence of such a momentum must

draw a continuous line in space. Finally, why is the local movement

continuous _in its duration_? Because, owing to the continuous change of

its ubication, the subject of the movement extends its absolute _when_

from _before_ to _after_, in a continuous succession, which is nothing

but the duration of the movement.

Hence absolute space and absolute duration, which are altogether

independent of motive actions, are not _formally_ continuous, but only

supply the extrinsic reason of the possibility of formal continuums.

It is matter in movement that by the flowing of its _ubi_ from _here_

to _there_ actually marks out a continuous line in space, and by the

flowing of its _quando_ from _before_ to _after_ marks out a continuous

line in duration. Thus it is not absolute space, but the line drawn in

space, that is _formally_ extended from _here_ to _there_; and it is not

absolute duration, but the line successively drawn in duration, that is

_formally_ extended from _before_ to _after_.

With regard to the difficulties which philosophers have raised at

different times against local movement we have very little to say. An

ancient philosopher, when called to answer some arguments against the

possibility of movement, thought it sufficient to reply: _Solvitur

ambulando_--“I walk; therefore movement is possible.” This answer was

excellent; but, while showing the inanity of the objections, it took no

notice of the fallacies by which they were supported. We might follow the

same course; for the arguments advanced against movement are by no means

formidable. Yet we will mention and solve three of them before dismissing

the subject.

_First._ If a body moves, it moves where it is, not where it is not. But

it cannot move where it is; for to move implies not to remain where it

is, and therefore bodies cannot move. The answer is, that bodies neither

move where they are nor where they are not, but _from_ the place where

they are _to_ the place where they are not.

_Second._ A material element cannot describe a line in space between

two points without gliding through all the intermediate ubications.

But the intermediate ubications are infinite, as infinite points can

be designated in any line; and the infinite cannot be passed over. The

answer is that an infinite multitude cannot be measured by one of its

units; and for this reason the infinite multitude of ubications which may

be designated between the terms of a line cannot be measured by a unit

of the same kind. Nevertheless, a line can be measured by movement--that

is, not by the ubication itself, but _by the flowing_ of an ubication;

because the flowing of the ubication is continuous, and involves

continuous quantity; and therefore it is to be considered as containing

in itself its own measure, which is a measure of length, and which may

serve to measure the whole line of movement. If the length of a line

were an infinite sum of ubications--that is, of mathematical points--the

objection would have some weight; but the length of the line is evidently

not a sum of points. The line is a continuous quantity evolved by the

flowing of a point. It can therefore be measured by the flowing of a

point. For as the line described can be divided and subdivided without

end, so also the time employed in describing it can be divided and

subdivided without end. Hence the length of a line described in a finite

length of time can be conceived as an infinite virtual multitude of

infinitesimal lengths, just in the same manner as the time employed in

describing it can be conceived as an infinite multitude of infinitesimal

instants. Now, the infinite can measure the infinite; and therefore it

is manifest that an infinite multitude of infinitesimal lengths can be

measured by the flowing of a point through an infinite multitude of

infinitesimal instants.[161]

_Third._ The communication of movement, as we know by experience,

requires time; and yet time arises from movement, and cannot begin before

the movement is communicated. How, then, will movement be communicated?

The answer is that time and movement begin together, and evolve

simultaneously in the very act of the communication of movement. It is

not true, then, that all communication of movement requires time. Our

experience regards only the communication of _finite_ movement, which,

of course, cannot be made except the action of the agent continue for a

finite time. But movement is always communicated by infinitesimal degrees

in infinitesimal instants; and thus the beginning of the motive action

coincides with the beginning of the movement, and this coincides with the

beginning of its duration.

And here we end. The considerations which we have developed in our

articles on space, duration, and movement have, we think, a sufficient

importance to be regarded with interest by those who have a philosophical

turn of mind. The subjects which we have endeavored so far to investigate

are scarcely ever examined as deeply as they deserve by the modern

writers of philosophical treatises; but there is no doubt that a clearer

knowledge of those subjects must enable us to extricate ourselves

from many difficulties to be met in other parts of metaphysics. It is

principally in order to solve the sophisms of the idealists and of the

transcendental pantheists that we need an exact, intellectual notion of

space and of time. We see how Kant, the father of German idealism and

pantheism, was led into numerous errors by his misconception of these two

points, and how his followers, owing to a like hallucination, succeeded

in obscuring the light of their noble intellects, and were prompted to

deny and revile the most certain and fundamental principles of human

reasoning. In fact, a mistaken notion of space lies at the bottom of

nearly all their philosophical blunders. If we desire to refute their

false theories by direct and categorical arguments, we must know how far

we can trust the popular language on space, and how we can correct its

inaccuracies so as to give precision to our own phraseology, lest by

conceding or denying more than truth demands we furnish them with the

means of retorting against our argumentation. This is the main reason

that induced us to treat of space, duration, and movement in a special

series of articles, as we entertained the hope that we might thus help in

cutting the ground from under the feet of the pantheist by uprooting the

very germ of his manifold errors.

NOT YET.

Methought the King of Terrors came my way:

Whom all men flee, and none esteem it base.

But lo! his smile forbidding me dismay,

I stood--and dared to look him in the face.

“So soon!” the only murmur in my heart:

For I had shaped the deeds of many years--

Ambitioning atonement, and, in part,

To reap in joy what I had sown in tears.

Then, turning to Our Lady: “O my Queen!

’Twere very sweet already to have won

My crown, and pass to see as I am seen,

And nevermore offend thy Blessed Son:

Yet would I stay--and for myself, I own:--

To stand, at last, the nearer to thy throne.”

SONGS OF THE PEOPLE.

Without going back to abstruse speculations on the origin of music in

England (there is a mania in our century for discovering the “origin”

of everything, and theorizing on it, long before a sufficient number of

facts has been collected even to make a pedestal for the most modest and

limited theory), we gather from the mention of it in old English poems,

and books on ballads and songs, glees and catches, that it existed in a

very creditable form at least eight hundred years ago. Indeed, there was

national and popular music before this, and the Welsh songs, the oldest

of all, point far back to a legendary past as the source of their being.

The first foreign song that mingled with the rude music of the early

Britons was doubtless that of the Christian missionaries in the first

century of our era, and after that there can have been little music among

the converted Britons but what was more or less tinged with a foreign

and Christian element. We know, too, that at various times foreign monks

either came or were invited to the different kingdoms in England to

teach the natives the ecclesiastical chant. Gardiner, in his _Music of

Nature_, says that “as the invaders came from all parts of the Continent,

our language and music became a motley collection of sounds and words

unlike that of any other people; and though we have gained a language of

great force and extent, yet we have lost our primitive music, as not a

single song remains that has the character of being national.” He also

says that before music was cultivated as an art, England, in common with

other countries, had its national songs, but that these, with the people

who sang them, were driven by the conquerors into Ireland, Scotland,

and Wales. This assertion is rather a sweeping one, and the recognized

formula about the ancient inhabitants of Britain being _all_ crowded

into certain particular districts is one that will bear modifying and

correcting. The British Anthropological Society has, during the last ten

years, made interesting researches in the field of race-characteristics

in different parts of England, and an accumulation of facts has gone far

to prove the permanence of some Gaelic, Cymric, and Celtic types in other

parts, exclusive of Wales and Cornwall. Dr. Beddoe and Mr. Mackintosh

have published the result of their observations, and the latter concludes

that “a considerable portion of the west Midland and southwestern

counties are scarcely distinguishable from three of the types found in

Wales--namely, the British, Gaelic, and Cymrian. In Shropshire, and

ramifying to the east and southeast, the Cymrian type may be found in

great numbers, though not predominating.… In many parts of the southwest

the prevailing type among the working classes is decidedly Gaelic.… North

Devon and Dorset may be regarded as its headquarters in South Britain.”

Then, again, the district along the borders of Wales, especially between

Taunton and Oswestry, and as far east as Bath, shows a population more

naturally intellectual than that of any other part of England, and that

without any superiority of primary education to account for it. The

people are what might be called Anglicized Welsh, and there is among

them a greater taste for solid knowledge than in the heart of England.

Lancashire is to a great extent Scandinavian, and also somewhat Cymrian,

as we have seen, and there the people are known as a shrewd, hardy race,

thoughtful and fond of study, and great adepts in music.

At a large school in Tiverton, Devonshire, nine-tenths of the boys

presented the most exaggerated Gaelic physiognomy; while at another, near

Chichester, the girls were all of the most unmistakable Saxon type. We

need not go further in this classification, and only introduced it to

show that massing together all British types in Wales and Cornwall is a

fallacy, such as all hasty generalizations are. It is not so certain,

therefore, that there exists no indigenous element in the old songs that

have survived, though in many an altered form, in some of the rural

districts of England. Then, again, how is the word “national” used--in

the sense of indigenous, or of popular, or of exclusively belonging to

one given country? English music was, before the Commonwealth, at least

as indigenous as the English language, as that gradually grew up and

welded itself together. As to popularity, there was a style of song--some

specimens of which we shall give--which was known and used by the

poorest and humblest, and a style, too, far removed from the plebeian,

though it may have been rather sentimental. Then glees and catches are,

though of no very great antiquity, essentially English, and are scarcely

known in any other country. If “national” stands for “political,” as many

people at this day seem to take for granted, then, indeed, England has

not much to boast of. That music is born rather of oppression and defeat,

and loves to commemorate a people’s undying devotion to their own race,

laws, customs, and rulers. Irish and Welsh and Jacobite songs exhibit

that style best, though only the first of the three have any present

significance, the two other kinds having long ago become more valuable

for their intrinsic or historical merit than for their political meaning.

Certain modern English songs, such as “Ye Mariners of England,” “Rule

Britannia,” “The Death of Nelson,” might be called national songs in the

political sense; but “God Save the King,” though patriotic and loyal, is

thoroughly German in style and composition, and therefore hardly deserves

the title national.

The Welsh have kept their musical taste pure. Mr. Mackintosh, in his

paper on the _Comparative Anthropology of England and Wales_, says of

the quiet and thoughtful villagers of Glan Ogwen, near the great Penrhyn

slate quarries, that “their appreciation of the compositions of Handel

and other great musicians is remarkable; and they perform the most

difficult oratorios with a precision of time and intonation unknown in

any part of England, except the West Riding of Yorkshire, Lancashire,

Worcester, Gloucester, and Hereford.” The three latter are towns where

the musical festivals are so frequent that the taste of the people

cannot help being educated up to a good standard. Hereford, too, is

very near the Welsh border. “The musical ear of the Welsh is extremely

accurate. I was once present in a village church belonging to the late

Dean of Bangor, when the choir sang an anthem composed by their leader,

and repeated an unaccompanied hymn-tune five or six times without the

slightest lowering of pitch. The works of Handel, Haydn, Beethoven, and

Mozart are republished with Welsh words at Ruthin and several other

towns, and their circulation is almost incredible. At book and music

shops of a rank where in England negro melodies would form the staple

compositions, Handel is the great favorite; and such tunes as ‘Pop goes

the Weasel’ would not be tolerated. The native airs are in general very

elegant and melodious. Some of them, composed long before Handel, are in

the Handelian style; others are remarkably similar to some of Corelli’s

compositions. The less classical Welsh airs, in 3-8 time, such as ‘Jenny

Jones’ are well known. Those in 2-4 time are often characterized by a

sudden stop in the middle or at the close of a measure, and a repetition

of pathetic slides or slurs.”

Much of this eulogium might be equally applied to the people of

Lancashire, especially the men, who know the great oratorios by heart,

and sing the choruses faultlessly among themselves, not only at large

gatherings, but in casual reunions, whenever three or four happen to

meet. Their part-singing, too, in glees, both ancient and modern, is

admirable, and they have scarcely any taste for the low songs which are

only too popular in many parts of England.

The songs of chivalry were another graft on the stock of English music,

and the honor paid to the bards and minstrels was a mingling of the love

of a national institution at least as old as the Druids--some say much

older--and of the enthusiasm produced by the metrical relation of heroic

feats of arms. The Crusades gave a great impulse to the troubadours’

songs, while the ancient British custom of commemorating the national

history by the oral tradition and the music of the harpers, seemed to

merge into and strengthen the new order of minstrels. Long before the

bagpipe became the peculiar--almost national--instrument of Scotland,

the harp held that position, as it has not yet ceased to do, in Ireland

and Wales. The oldest harp now in Great Britain is an Irish one, which

was already old in 1064. It is now in the museum of Trinity College,

Dublin. These ancient instruments were very different from the modern

ones on which our grandmothers used to display their skill before the

pianoforte became, to its detriment, the fashionable instrument for young

ladies; and even now the Irish and Welsh harps are made exactly on the

old models, and have no pedals. But the use of the harp was not confined

to the Welsh, and in the reign of King John, in the XIIth century, on

the occasion of an attack made on the old town of Chester by the Welsh

during the great yearly fair, it is recorded in the town annals that the

commandant assembled all the minstrels who had come to the place upon

that occasion, and marched them in the night, with their instruments

playing, against the enemy, who, upon hearing so vast a sound, were

filled with such terror and surprise that they instantly fled. In memory

of this famous exploit, no doubt suggested by the Biblical narrative of

Gideon’s successful stratagem, a meeting of minstrels is annually kept up

to this day, with one of the Dutton family at their head, to whom certain

privileges are granted. In the reign of Henry I. the minstrels were

formed into corporate bodies, and enjoyed certain immunities in various

parts of the kingdom. Gardiner[162] says that “the most accomplished

became the companions and favorites of kings, and attended the court

in all its expeditions.” Perhaps we may refer the still extant office

of poet-laureate to this custom of retaining a court minstrel near the

person of the sovereign. In the time of Elizabeth the profession of

a harper had become a degraded one, only embraced by idle, low, and

dissolute characters; and so it has remained ever since, through the

various stages of ballad-monger, street-singer and fiddler, in which the

memory of the once noble office has been merged or lost. In Scotland the

piper, a personage of importance, has taken the place of the harper since

the time of Mary, Queen of Scots, who introduced the pipes from France;

but in Wales the minstrel, with his harp, upheld his respectability much

longer, and even now most of the old families, jealous and proud of their

national customs, retain their bard as an officer of the household. The

writer has seen and heard one of these ancient minstrels, in the service

of a family living near Llanarth, the mistress (a widow) making it her

special business to promote the keeping up of all old national customs.

She was an excellent farmer, too, and had a pet breed of small black

Welsh sheep, whose wool she prepared for the loom herself, and with which

she clothed her family and household. In the neighboring town she had got

up an annual competition of harpers and choirs for the performance of

Welsh music exclusively. The concert was always the occasion of a regular

country festivity, ending with a ball, and medals and other prizes were

given by her own hand to the best instrumental and vocal artists.

In Percy’s _Reliques_ a description is given of the dress and appearance

of a mediæval bard, as personated at a pageant given at Kenilworth in

honor of Queen Elizabeth. The glory of the brotherhood was already so

much a thing of the past that it was thought worth while to introduce

this figure into a mock procession. This very circumstance is enough

to mark the decline of the art in those days, but already a new sort

of popular song had sprung up to replace the romances of chivalry. “A

person,” says Percy, “very meet for the purpose, … his cap off; his head

seemly rounded tonsure-wise, fair-kembed [combed], that with a sponge

daintily dipt in a little capon’s grease was finely smoothed, to make it

shine like a mallard’s wing. His beard smugly shaven; and yet his shirt,

after the new trink, with ruffs fair starched, sleeked and glittering

like a pair of new shoes; marshalled in good order with a setting stick

and strut, that every ruff stood up like a wafer.[163] A long gown of

Kendal-green gathered at the neck with a narrow gorget, fastened afore

with a white clasp and a keeper close up to the chin, but easily, for

heat, to undo when he list. Seemly begirt in a red caddis girdle; from

that a pair of capped Sheffield knives hanging at two sides. Out of his

bosom was drawn forth a lappet of his napkin [handkerchief] edged with a

blue lace, and marked with a true-love, a heart, and _D_ for Damain; for

he was but a bachelor yet. His gown had long sleeves down to mid-leg,

lined with white cotton. His doublet-sleeves of black worsted; upon them

a pair of poynets [wristlets, from _poignet_] of tawny chamlet, laced

along the wrist with blue threaden points; a wealt towards the hand of

fustian-a-napes. A pair of red neather stocks, a pair of pumps [shoes] on

his feet, with a cross cut at the toes for corns; not new, indeed, yet

cleanly blackt with soot, and shining as a shoeing-horn. About his neck

a red riband suitable to his girdle. His harp in good grace dependent

before him. His wrest [tuning-key] tyed to a green lace, and hanging

by. Under the gorget of his gown, a fair chain of silver as a squire

minstrel of Middlesex, that travelled the country this summer season,

unto fairs and worshipful men’s houses. From his chain hung a scutcheon,

with metal and color, resplendent upon his breast, of the ancient arms of

Islington.” The peculiarities marking his shoes no doubt referred to the

long pedestrian tours of the early minstrels.

Chaucer, in the XIVth century, makes frequent mention of music, both

vocal and instrumental. Of his twenty-nine Canterbury Pilgrims, six could

either play or sing, and two, the Squire and the Mendicant Friar, could

do both. Of the Prioress he quaintly says:

“Ful wel she sangé the service devine,

Entunéd in hire nose ful swetély.”

Dr. Burney thinks that part-singing was already known and practised in

Chaucer’s time, and draws this inference from the notice the poet takes

in his “Dream” of the singing of birds:

“… for some of them songe lowe

Some high, and all of one accorde”;

and it is certain that this kind of music was a great favorite with the

English people at a very early period, and was indebted to them for many

improvements. The same writer says that the English, in their secular

music and in part-singing, rather preceded than followed the European

nations, and that, though he could find no music in parts, except church

music, in foreign countries before the middle of the XVIth century, yet

in England he found Masses in four, five, and six parts, as well as

secular songs in the vulgar tongue in two or three parts, in the XVth and

early part of the XVIth centuries. Ritson, it is true, in his _Ancient

Songs from the Time of King Henry III. to the Revolution_, disputes

this, but Hawkins is of the same opinion as Burney. Mr. Stafford Smith,

at the end of the last century, made a collection of old English songs

written in score for three or four voices; but though the oldest music

to such songs is scarcely intelligible, the number collected proves how

popular that sort of music was in early times. (Perhaps the illegibility

of the music is due to the old notation, in use before the perfected

stave of four lines became general--the pneumatic notation, supposed by

Coussemaker, Schubiger, Ambros, and other writers on music to have been

developed out of the system of accents of speech represented by signs,

such as are still used in French.)

Landini, an Italian writer of the XVth century, in his _Commentary

on Dante_, speaks of “many most excellent musicians” as coming from

England to Italy to hear and study under Antonio _degli organi_ (a name

denoting his profession); while another writer, the choir-master of the

royal chapel of Ferdinand, King of Naples, mentions the excellence of

the English vocal music in parts, and even (incorrectly) calls John of

Dunstable (a musician of the middle of the XVth century) the “inventor of

counterpoint.”

One of the oldest compositions of this kind is a manuscript score in the

British Museum, a canon in unison for four voices, with the addition

of two more voices for the _pes_, as it is called, which is a kind of

ground, and is the basis of the harmony. The words, partially modernized,

are as follows (they are much older than the music, which is only four

hundred years old):

“Summer is a-coming in,

Loud sing cuckoo;

Groweth seed

And bloweth mead,

And springeth the weed new.

Ewe bleateth after lamb;

Loweth after calf, cow;

Bullock sterteth [leaps],

Buckè verteth [frequents green places],

Merry sing cuckoo;

Nor cease thou ever now.”

Dr. Burney says of this song that the modulation is monotonous, but

that the chief merit lies in “the airy, pastoral correspondence of the

melody with the words”--a merit which many modern compositions of the

“popular” type are very far from possessing. Under the Tudors music made

rapid strides. Dr. Robert Fairfax was well known as a composer in those

days, and a collection of old English songs with their music (often in

parts), made by him, has been preserved to this day. Besides himself,

such writers as Cornyshe, Syr Thomas Phelyppes, Davy, Brown, Banister,

Tudor, Turges, Sheryngham, and William of Newark are represented. Of

these, Cornyshe was the best, and Purcell, two hundred years later,

imitated much of his rondeau style, most of these composers being

entirely secular. Henry VIII. himself wrote music for two Masses, and

had them sung in his chapel; and to be able to take a part in madrigals,

and sing at sight in any piece of concerted music, was reckoned a part

of a gentleman’s education in those days. The invention of printing gave

a great impulse to song-writing and composing, though for some time

after the words were printed the music was probably still copied by hand

over the words; for the printing of notes was of course a further and

subsequent development of the new art. A musician and poet of the name

of Gray became a favorite of Henry VIII. and of the Protector Somerset

“for making certain merry ballades, whereof one chiefly was ‘The hunt is

up--the hunt is up.’”[164]

“A popular species of harmony,” says Ritson, “arose in this reign; it was

called ‘King Henry’s Mirth,’ or ‘Freemen’s Songs,’ that monarch being

a great admirer of vocal music. ‘Freemen’s Songs’ is a corruption of

‘Three-men’s Songs,’ from their being generally for three voices.” Very

few songs were written for one voice.

Ballads were very popular, and formed one of the great attractions at

fairs. An old pamphlet, published in the reign of Elizabeth, mentions

with astonishment that “Out-roaring Dick and Wat Winbars” got twenty

shillings a day by singing at Braintree Fair, in Essex. It does seem

a good deal, considering that the sum was equal to five pounds of

the present money, which again is equivalent to about thirty dollars

currency. These wandering singers, the lowly successors of the proud

minstrels, were in their way quite as successful; but, what is more

wonderful, their songs were for the most part neither coarse nor vulgar.

Good poets wrote for music in those days; _now_, as a general rule, it

is only rhymers who avowedly write that their words may be set to music.

As quack-doctors, fortune-tellers, pedlers, etc., mounted benches and

barrel-heads to harangue the people, and thus gained the now ill-sounding

name of mountebanks, so too did these singers call over their songs and

sing those chosen by their audience; and they are frequently called

by the writers of those times _cantabanchi_, an Italian compound of

_cantare_ (to sing) and _banchi_ (benches). Among the headings given of

these popular songs are the following: “The Three Ravens: a dirge”; “By

a bank as I lay”; “So woe is me, begone”; “Three merry men we be”; “But

now he is dead and gone”; “Now, Robin, lend me thy Bow”; “Bonny Lass

upon a green”; “He is dead and gone, Lady,” etc. There is a quaint grace

and sadness about the titles which speaks well for the manners of those

who listened and applauded. Popular taste has certainly degenerated in

many parts of England; for such titles _now_ would only provoke a sneer

among an average London or Midland county audience of the lower classes.

Gardiner says: “The most ancient of our English songs are of a grave

cast, and commonly written in the key of G minor.”

Among the composers of the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. was Birde,

who wrote a still popular canon on the Latin words “Non nobis, Domine,”

and set to music the celebrated song ascribed to Sir Edward Dyer, a

friend of Sir Philip Sidney, “My Mind to me a Kingdom is.”

Birde’s scholar, Morley, produced a great number of canzonets, or short

songs for three or more voices; and Ford, who was an original genius,

published some pieces for four voices, with an accompaniment for lutes

and viols, besides other pieces, especially catches of an humorous

character. George Kirbye was another canzonet composer, and Thomas

Weelkes has been immortalized by the good-fortune which threw him in

Shakspere’s way, so that the latter often wrote words for his music.

Yet doubtless the fame of the one, as that of the other, was chiefly

posthumous; and poet and musician, on a par in those days, may have

starved in company, unknowing that a MS. of theirs would fetch its weight

in gold a hundred years after they were in their graves.

“The musical reputation of England,” says a writer in an old review of

1834, “must mainly rest on the songs in parts of the period between 1560

and 1625.” And Gardiner says: “If we can set up any claim to originality,

it is in our glees and anthems.” The gleemen, who were at first a class

of the minstrels, are supposed to have been the first who performed vocal

music in parts, according to set rules and by notes, though the custom

must have existed long before it was thus technically sanctioned. The

earliest pieces of the kind _upon record_ are by the madrigal writers,

and were, perhaps, founded upon the taste of the Italian school; but

there soon grew up a distinction sufficient to mark English glee-music

as a separate species of the art. It is said that glee-singing did not

become generally popular till about the year 1770, when glees formed

a prominent part of the private concerts of the nobility; but their

being adopted into fashionable circles only at that date is scarcely

a proof of their late origin. The canzonets for three or four voices

must have been closely allied to glees, and a family likeness existed

between these and the madrigals for four or five voices, the ballets, or

fa-las, for five, and the songs for six and seven parts, which are so

prodigally mentioned in a list of works by Morley within the short space

of only four years--1593 to 1597. The number of these songs proves their

wonderful popularity, and we incline to think, with the writer we have

quoted, that the English, in the catches and glees, the works of the

composers of the days of Elizabeth and James I., and those of Purcell,

Tallis, Croft, Bull, Blow, Boyce, etc., at a later period, possess a

music essentially national and original--not imitative, as is the modern

English school, and not more indebted to foreign sources than any other

progressive and liberal art is to the lessons given it by its practisers

in other civilized communities. For if _national_ is to mean isolated

and petrified, by all means let us forswear nationalism.

Shakspere’s songs are scattered throughout his works, and were evidently

written for music. Both old and new composers have set them to music,

and of the latter none so happily as Bishop Weelkes and John Dowland,

his contemporaries and friends; the latter, the composer of Shakspere’s

favorite song (not his own), “Awake, sweet Love,” often wrote music

for his words. In his plays Shakspere has introduced many fragments of

_old_ songs and ballads; but Ritson says of him: “This admirable writer

composed the most beautiful and excellent songs, which no one, so far as

we know, can be said to have done before him, nor has any one excelled

him since.” This statement is qualified by an exception in favor of

Marlowe, a predecessor of Shakspere, and the author of the “Passionate

Shepherd to his Love”; and besides, it means that he was the first great

poet among the song-writers, who, in comparison with him, might be called

mere ballad-mongers. Shakspere’s love for the old, simple, touching music

of his native land, shown on many occasions throughout his works, is most

exquisitely expressed in the following passage from _Twelfth Night_:

“Now, good Cesario, but that piece of song,

That old and antique song we had last night:

Methought it did relieve my passion much,

More than light airs and recollected terms

Of these most brisk and giddy-paced times.

…

O fellow, come, the song we had last night.

Mark it, Cesario, it is old and plain;

The spinsters and the knitters in the sun,

And the free maids that weave their thread with bones,[165]

Do use to chant it; it is silly sooth,

And dallies with the innocence of love,

Like the old age.”

Though Shakspere’s plays were marked with the coarseness of speech

common in his time, and therefore not, as some have thought, chargeable

to him in particular, his songs, on the contrary, are of singular

daintiness. They are too well known to be quoted here, but they breathe

the very spirit of music, being evidently intended to be sung and

popularly known. The chorus, or rather refrain, of one, beginning, “Blow,

blow, thou winter wind,” runs thus:

“Heigh ho! sing heigh ho! unto the green holly;

Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly.

Then heigh ho! the holly!

This life is most jolly!”

The “Serenade to Sylvia” is lovely, chaste and delicate in speech as it

is playful in form; and the fairy song “Over hill, over dale,” is like

the song of a chorus of animated flowers. The description of the cowslips

is very poetic:

“The cowslips tall her pensioners be,

In their gold coats spots you see--

Those be rubies, fairy favors;

In those freckles live their savors.

I must go seek some dew-drops here,

And hang a pearl in every cowslip’s ear.”

Bishop Hall, in 1597, published a satirical poem in which he complains

that madrigals and ballads were “sung to the wheel, and sung unto the

pail”--that is, by maids spinning and milking, or fetching water; and

Lord Surrey, in one of his poems, says (not satirically, however):

“My mother’s maids, when they do sit and spin,

They sing a song.”

Now, we gather what was the style of these songs of peasant girls and

laborers from the writings of good old Izaak Walton, who mentions, as a

common occurrence, that he often met, in the fields bordering the river

Lee, a handsome milkmaid who sang like a nightingale, her voice being

good and the ditties fitted for it. “She sang the smooth song which was

made by Kit Marlowe, now at least fifty years ago, and the milkmaid’s

mother sang the answer to it which was made by Sir Walter Raleigh in

his younger days.… They were old-fashioned poetry, but choicely good; I

think much better than that now in fashion in this critical age.”[166] He

wrote in the reign of Charles I., and already deplored the influx of more

pretentious songs; but those he mentions with such commendation were the

famous “Passionate Shepherd to his Love” and the song beginning “If all

the world and love were young,” two exquisite lyrics of an elegance much

above what is now termed the taste of the vulgar.

Izaak Walton was as fond of music as of angling, and quotes many of the

popular songs of his day. He was a quiet man, and only describes the

pastimes of humble life. He used to rest from his labors in an “honest

ale-house” and a “cleanly room,” where he and his fellow-fishermen, and

sometimes the milkmaid, whiled away the evenings by singing ballads and

duets. Any casual dropper-in was expected to take his part; and among the

music mentioned as common in these gatherings are numbers of “ketches,”

or, as we should say, catches. The music of one of his favorite duets,

“Man’s life is but vain, for ’tis subject to pain,” is given in the old

editions of his book. It is simple and pretty; the composer was Mr. H.

Lawes. Other songs, favorites of his, were “Come, shepherds, deck your

heads”; “As at noon Dulcina rested”; “Phillida flouts me”; and that

touching elegy, “Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,” by George

Herbert. This is as full of meaning as it is short:

“Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,

The bridal of the earth and sky,

Sweet dews shall weep thy fall to-night

For thou must die.

“Sweet rose, whose hue, angry and brave,

Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye,

Thy root is ever in its grave,

And thou must die.

“Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses,

A box where sweets compacted lie,

My music shows you have your closes

And all must die.

“Only a sweet and virtuous soul,

Like seasoned timber never gives,

But, when the whole world turns to coal,

Then chiefly lives.”

Sir Henry Wotton’s song for the poor countryman, beginning--

“Fly from our country pastimes, fly,

Sad troops of human misery!

Come, serene looks,

Clear as the crystal brooks,

Or the pure, azured heaven that smiles to see

The rich attendance on our poverty!”

and some verses of Dr. Donne (both these writers being contemporaries

of James I.), are also mentioned by Walton as popular among the lower

classes in his day. Here is another instance of the power of song over

the peasantry in the early part of the XVIIth century. In the spring

of 1613, on the occasion of Queen Anne of Denmark’s return from Bath,

where she had gone for her health, she was met on Salisbury Plain by the

Rev. George Fereby, vicar of some obscure country parish, who entreated

that her majesty would be pleased to listen to a concert performed by

his people. “When the queen signified her assent, there rose out of the

ravine a handsome company, dressed as Druids and as British shepherds

and shepherdesses, who sang a greeting, beginning with these words, to a

melody which greatly pleased the musical taste of her majesty:

“‘Shine, oh! shine, thou sacred star,

On seely[167] shepherd swains!’

We should suppose, from the commencing words, that this poem had

originally been a Nativity hymn pertaining to the ancient church; and

it is possible that the melody might be traced to the same source.…

The music, the voices, and the romantic dresses, so well corresponding

with the mysterious spot where this pastoral concert was stationed,

greatly captivated the imagination of the queen.”[168] Anne of Denmark

admired and patronized the genius of Ben Jonson, the writer of several

musical masques often performed at court by the queen and her noble

attendants. The really classical time of English poetry and music was

before the Commonwealth, and popular music certainly received a blow

during the Puritan rule. Songs and ballads were forbidden as profane;

and in 1656 Cromwell enacted that “if any of the persons commonly called

fiddlers or minstrels shall at any time be taken playing, fiddling,

and making music in any inn, ale-house, or tavern, or shall be taken

proffering themselves, or designing or entreating any to hear them play

or make music in any of the places aforesaid,” they should be “adjudged

and declared to be rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars.” Fines and

imprisonments were often the penalties attached to a disregard of these

ordinances; but this opposition only turned the course of popular song

into political channels, and it became a point of honor among the

Royalists to listen to, applaud, and protect the veriest scamp who

called himself a minstrel. Songs were written with no poetical merit,

but full of political allusions, bitter taunts and sneers; and it was

the delight of the Cavaliers to sing these doggerel rhymes and make the

wandering fiddlers sing them. Many a brawl owed its origin to this. Even

certain tunes, without any words, were considered as identified with

political principle, and led to dangerous ebullitions of feeling, or

kept alive party prejudices in those who heard them. Popular music has

always been a powerful engine for good or bad, in a political sense.

Half the loyalty of the Jacobites of Scotland in the XVIIIth century

was due to inflammatory songs; Körner’s lyrics fired German patriotism

against Napoleon; and there has never been a party of any kind that did

not speedily adopt some representative melody to fan the ardor of its

adherents.

But if music and poetry were proscribed by the over-rigorous Puritans,

a worse excess was fostered by the immoral reign of Charles II. The

Restoration polluted the stream which the Commonwealth had attempted to

dam up. Just as, in a spirit of bravado and contradiction, the Cavaliers

had ostentatiously made cursing and swearing a badge of their party, to

spite the sanctimoniousness of the Roundheads, so they affected to oppose

to the latter’s psalm-singing roaring and immodest songs. Ritson says

that Charles II. tried his hand at song-writing, and quotes a piece by

him, beginning:

“I pass all my hours in a shady old grove.”

“Though by no means remarkable for poetical merit,” says the critic, “it

has certainly enough for the composition of a king.” Molière was not

more severe on the attempts of Louis XIV. But though the general spirit

of the age was licentious, many good songs were still written. Sedley,

Rochester, Dorset, Sheffield, and others wrote unexceptionable ones,

and the great Dryden flourished in this reign. One of his odes, “On S.

Cecilia’s Day,” is thoroughly musical in its rhythm, the refrains at the

end of each stanza having the ring of some of the old German Minnesongs

of the XIIth and XIIIth centuries. But his verses were scarcely simple

or flowing enough to become popular in the widest sense, which honor

rather belonged to the less celebrated poets of his day. Lord Dorset,

for instance, was the author of a sea-song said to have been written the

night before an engagement with the Dutch in 1665, and which, from its

admirable ease, flow, and tenderness, became at once popular with all

classes. The circumstances under which it was supposed to be written had,

no doubt, something to do with its popularity; but Dr. Johnson says:

“Seldom any splendid story is wholly true. I have heard from the late

Earl of Orrery, who was likely to have good hereditary intelligence,

that Lord Dorset had been a week employed upon it, and only retouched

or finished it on the memorable evening. But even this, whatever it

may subtract from his facility, leaves him his courage.” The anonymous

writer to whom we have referred[169] tells us that “the shorter pieces

of most of the poets of the time of Charles II. had a rhythm and cadence

particularly well suited to music. They were, in short, what the Italians

call _cantabile_, or fit to be sung.… In the succeeding reigns, with

the growth of our literature, there was a considerable increase in

song-writing; most of our poets of eminence, and some who had no eminence

except what they obtained in that way, devoting themselves occasionally

to the composition of lyrical pieces. Prior, Rowe, Steele, Philips,

Parnell, Gay, and others contributed a stock which might advantageously

be referred to by the composers of our own times.” Prior was a friend

and _protégé_ of Lord Dorset, who sent him to Cambridge and paid for his

education there. Parnell was an Irishman. His “Hymn to Contentment” is a

sort of counterpart to the old song “My Mind to me a Kingdom is”:

“Lovely, lasting peace, appear;

This world itself, if thou art here,

Is once again with Eden blest,

And man contains it in his breast.”

Gay, the elegant, the humorous, and the pathetic, shows to most advantage

in this group. He it was who wrote the famous ballad “Black-eyed Susan,”

and many others which, though less known at present, are equally

admirable. One of them was afterwards set to music by Handel, and later

on by Jackson of Exeter. But music did not keep pace with poetry; and

though Purcell, Carey, and one or two other composers flourished in the

latter part of the XVIIth and beginning of the XVIIIth centuries, they

kept mostly to sacred music, and the new songs of the day were generally

set to old tunes. Gay’s _Beggar’s Opera_, a collection of seventy-two

songs, could not boast of a single air composed for the purpose. The

music was all old, but the stage, says Dr. Burney, ruined the simplicity

of the old airs, as it invariably does all music adapted to dramatic

purposes. Indeed, we, in our own day, sometimes have the opportunity

of verifying this fact, when old airs or ballads are introduced into

operas to which they are unfitted. The “Last Rose of Summer” put into

the opera of _Martha_ is an instance in point; but, worse than that,

the writer once heard “Home, Sweet Home” sung during the music-lesson

scene in the _Barbier de Seville_. Adelina Patti was the _prima donna_,

and any one who has seen and heard her can imagine the contrast between

the simple, pathetic air and words, and the kittenish, coquettish,

Dresden-china style of the singer! Add to this the costume of a Spanish

_señorita_ and the stage finery of Rosina’s boudoir, not to mention the

absurd anachronism involved in a girl of the XVIIth century singing

Paine’s touching song. Of course the audience applauded vigorously;

for an English audience at the opera goes into action in the spirit of

Nelson’s words, “England expects every man to do his duty,” and the

incongruousness of the scene never troubles its mind.

Carey tried to stem the downfall of really good popular music by writing

both the words and music of the well-known ballad of “Sally in our

Alley,” which attained a popularity (using the word in its proper sense)

that it has never lost and never will lose. The song was soon known

from one end of the country to the other, and, like the old songs, was

“whistled o’er the furrowed land” and “sung to the wheel, and sung unto

the pail.” Addison was no less fond of it than the common people; but the

song was an exception in its time, and the poetry of the day never again

made its way among the great body of the people, as it had done under

the Tudors and the early Stuarts. Music and poetry both grew artificial

under the Hanoverian dynasty, and the mannerisms and affectations of

rhymers and would-be musical critics were sharply satirized by Pope and

Swift. In the reign of Queen Anne the Italian opera was introduced into

London, and the silly rage for foreign music, _because_ it was foreign,

soon worked its way among all classes. Handel brought about the first

salutary return to natural and simple musical expression, and, setting

many national and pastoral pieces to music, diffused the taste for good

music through the intermediate orders of the people, especially the

country gentry, but the masses still clung to interminable ballads,

with monotonous tunes and no individuality either of sense or of form.

Although England could boast of some good native composers and poets in

the XVIIIth century--for instance, among the former, Boyce, Arne, Linley,

Jackson, Shield, Arnold, etc.--still no good music penetrated into the

lower strata of society; for these musicians mostly confined themselves

to pieces of greater pretension than anything which was likely to become

popular. Wales and the North of England still kept up a better standard,

but the general taste of the nation was decidedly vitiated. Dibdin’s

sea-songs broke the spell and reached the heart of the people; but this

was rather a momentary flash than a permanent resurrection of good taste

and discernment. The custom of writing the majority of songs for one

voice, we think, had had much to do with destroying the genuine love of

music among the people. It seemed to shift the burden of entertainment

upon one member of a social gathering, instead of assuming that music

was the welcome occupation and pastime of the greater number; and

besides this, it no doubt fostered an undue rage for melody, or, as it

is vulgarly called, _tune_. We have often had occasion to notice how

bald and meagre--trivial, indeed--a mere thread of melody can sound

when sung by one voice, which, if sung in parts, acquires a majestic

and full tone. The fashion of solo-singing, which obtains so much

in our day, has another disadvantage: it encourages affectation and

self-complacency in the singer. The solo-singer is very apt to arrogate

to him or herself the merit and effect of the piece; to think more of the

individual performance than of the music performed; and to spoil a good

piece by interpolating runs and shakes to show off his or her powers of

vocal gymnastics. All this was impossible in the old part-songs, where

attention and precision were indispensable.

There are hopeful indications at present that England is not utterly

sunk into musical indifference, but, strange to say, wherever the good

leaven _does_ work, it does so from below upwards. The lower classes in

the North of England have mainly given the impulse; the higher are still,

on the whole, superficial in their tastes and trivial and mediocre in

their performances. Even as far back as 1834, the writer in the _Penny

Magazine_ already quoted gives an interesting account of a surprise he

met with at a small village in Sussex. (This, be it remembered, is an

almost exclusively Saxon district of the country.) Being tired of the

solitude of the little inn and the dulness of a country newspaper, he

walked down the street of the village, and, in so doing, was brought to a

pause before a small cottage, nowise distinguished from the other humble

homesteads of the place, from which proceeded sounds of sweet music. The

performance within consisted, not of voices, but of instruments; and

the piece was one of great pathos and beauty, and not devoid of musical

difficulty. When it was finished, and the performers had rested a few

seconds, they executed a German quartet of some pretensions in very

good style. This was followed by variations on a popular air by Stephen

Storace, which they played in excellent time and with considerable

elegance and expression. Several other pieces, chosen with equal good

taste, succeeded this, and the stranger enjoyed a musical treat where

he little expected one. On making inquiries at the inn, he found that

the performers were all young men of the village, humble mechanics and

agricultural laborers, who, for some considerable time, had been in the

habit of meeting at each other’s houses in the evening, and playing

and practising together. The taste had originated with a young man of

the place who had acquired a little knowledge of music at Brighton. He

had taught some of his comrades, and by degrees they had so increased

in number and improved in the art that now, to use the words of the

informant, “there were eight or ten that could play by book and in

public.”

At that time, and in that part of the country, this was an unusual and

remarkable proof of refinement and good taste; but at present, though

still the exception, it is no longer quite so rare to find uneducated

people able to a certain degree to appreciate good music. Much has

been written to vindicate English musical taste within the last thirty

or forty years; but still the fact can scarcely be overlooked that,

notwithstanding all efforts to the contrary, the standard of taste among

the masses is lower than it was in Tudor days.

Every one is familiar with the choral unions, the glee-clubs, the

carol-singing, Leslie’s choir, and Hullah’s methods, which all go far to

raise the taste of the people and enlist the vocal powers of many who

otherwise would have been tempted to leave singing to the “mounseers”

and other “furriners,” as the only thing those benighted individuals

could be good for. There is, as there has been for many generations, the

Chapel Royal, a sort of informal school of music; there is the Academy

of Music; there are “Crystal Palace” and “Monday Popular Concerts”;

musical festivals every year in the various cathedrals, oratorios in

Exeter Hall; and there soon will be a “National School of Music,” which

is to be a climax in musical education, the pride of the representative

bodies of wealthy and noble England (for princes and corporations have

vied with each other in founding scholarships); but with all this, the

palmy days of the Tudors are dead and gone beyond the power of man to

galvanize them into new activity. True, every young woman plays the

pianoforte; you see that instrument in the grocer’s best parlor and the

farmer’s keeping-room; but the sort of music played upon it is trivial

and foreign, an exotic in the life of the performer, a boarding-school

accomplishment, not a labor of love. You can hear “Beautiful Star,” and

“Home, Sweet Home,” and Mozart’s “Agnus Dei” sung one after the other,

with the same expression, the same “strumminess,” the same stolidity,

or the same affected languor, and you will perceive that, though the

singer may _know_ them, she neither feels nor understands them. Moore’s

melodies, too, you hear _ad nauseam_, murdered and slurred over anyhow;

but both the delicacy of the poetry and the pathos of the music are a

dead-letter to the performer. But though a few songs by good writers are

popular in the middle classes--for instance, Tennyson’s “Brook” and “Come

into the garden, Maud,” the immortal and almost unspoilable “Home, Sweet

Home”--yet there is also a dark side to the picture in the prevalence of

comic songs, low, slangy ballads, sham negro melodies (utterly unlike the

real old pathetic plantation-song), and other degrading entertainments

classed under the title of “popular music.” The higher classes give

little countenance or aid to the upward movement in music, and still look

upon the art as an adjunct of fashion. With such disadvantages, it is a

wonder that England has struggled back into the ranks of music-lovers

at all, even though, as yet, she can take but a subordinate place among

them.

PIOUS PICTURES.

A great deterioration having been observable for some time past in

the multitudinous little pictures published in Paris, ostensibly with

a religious object, some of the more thoughtful writers in Catholic

periodicals have on several recent occasions earnestly protested against

the form these representations are taking. Their remonstrances are,

however, as yet unsuccessful. The “article” continues to be produced on

an increasing scale, and is daily transmitted in immense quantities,

not only to the farthest extremities of the territory, but far beyond,

especially to England and America, to ruin taste, sentimentalize piety,

and “give occasion to the enemy to” _deride_ if not to “blaspheme.”

The bishops of France have already turned their attention to this

unhealthy state of things in what may be called pictorial literature

for the pious, and efforts are being made in the higher regions of

ecclesiastical authority to arrest its deterioration. In the synod lately

held at Lyons severe censure was passed on the objectionable treatment

of sacred things so much in vogue in certain quarters; and, still more

recently, Father Matignon, in his conference on “The Artist,” condemned

these “grotesque interpretations of religious truths, which render

them ridiculous in the eyes of unbelievers, and corrupt the taste of

the faithful.” The eloquent preacher at the same time recommended the

Catholic journalists to denounce a species of commerce as ignorant as it

is mercenary, and counselled the members of the priesthood to “declare

unrelenting war against this school of _pettiness_, which is daily

gaining ground in France, and which gives a trivial and vulgar aspect to

things the most sacred.”

This appeal has not been without effect. There appears in the _Monde_,

from the pen of M. Léon Gautier, the author of several pious and learned

works, a Letter “Against Certain Pictures,” addressed “to the president

of the Conference of T----,” in which the absurdity of these silly

compositions is attacked with much spirit and good sense. The _Semaine

Religieuse de Paris_ reproduces this letter, with an entreaty to its

readers to enroll themselves in the crusade therein preached by the

eminent writer--a crusade the opportuneness of which must be only too

evident to every thoughtful and religious mind. M. Léon Gautier writes as

follows:

You have requested me, dear friend, to purchase for you a

“gross” of little pictures for distribution among your poor and

their children.…