He was not mistaken: Wolsey escaped death, but only to find himself

surrounded by misery and abandoned to despair.

TO BE CONTINUED.

PRIMITIVE CIVILIZATION.[235]

If our modern men of science would not travel out of their sphere,

there would be no war between them and the church. In the name of the

Catholic religion we invite them to push onward in the path of scientific

discovery with the utmost energy and ardor of which they are capable.

But if their discoveries are to have any bearing on the truths of the

Christian revelation, we can accept nothing less than demonstration, and

they must not credit science, as does Mr. Tyndall, with mere theories

of speculative philosophy. With this reservation, we wish their labors

all possible success. But if poor fallible reason--whose discoveries,

after whole millenniums of toil, are little better than a record of the

blunders of one generation corrected by the blunders of another; and,

even on the supposition that they are all correct, are, by comparison

with what is unknown, as a drop of water compared with the limitless

ocean--ventures to deny the existence of the soul because it has no

lens powerful enough to bring it within the cognizance of the senses,

its conclusion is no longer scientific. The doctor has become a quack,

the philosopher a fool. If the torch which the Creator has placed at

the service of his creature, to help him to grope his way amidst the

objects of sense, and to illuminate his faith, is to be flung in his

face because it does not reveal the whole infinitude of the majesty of

his beauty, we can only compassionate so childish a misuse of a noble

gift. If natural philosophy is to rob the sensible creation of a motive

and end, and to proclaim it to be merely the result of an unintelligent

atomic attraction and evolution of forces, a more intelligent and a

more logical philosophy, in harmony with the unquenchable instinct of

immortality within the human soul, casts from it such pitiful trifling

with indignation and a holy disdain. If, in short, the science of nature

would dethrone nature’s Creator and God, we address to it the word which

He to whom all true science leads addressed to the ocean he placed in the

deep hollows of the earth: “Hitherto thou shalt come, and thou shalt go

no farther: and here thou shalt break thy swelling waves.”

Physical science cannot contradict the divine revelation. No discovery

hitherto made has done so; and until one such presents itself we are

entitled to assume its impossibility as a philosophical axiom. For this

reason we are of those who would give full rein to even the speculations

of experimental philosophy, so long as they are confined strictly within

the domain of secondary causes or natural law, and do not venture into a

sphere of thought beyond the reach of experimental science, where they

are immediately confronted with the dogmas of the faith.

We have never thought that the theory of the evolution of species

must of necessity transgress that limit. It has been made to do so by

_philosophuli_, if we may invent a name for them--speculative bigots,

who are bent on extorting from natural phenomena any plausible support

of the infidel prejudices of which they were previously possessed. A

more intelligent observation of scientific facts would have saved them

from a ridiculous extravagance which makes them resemble those afflicted

creatures, whom we so often meet with in asylums for the insane, who

suppose themselves to be God.

We must never lose sight of the fact that God can only communicate with

his creature in such a way as he can understand. If he were to reveal

himself to any of us as he is, we should die, unless he supplied us with

a miraculous capacity for supporting the vision. If he had inspired the

historian of those primitive ages to describe the astronomical phenomenon

which happened in the time of Joshua in the exact language of physical

science, what meaning would it have conveyed to people who did not

know that the earth revolves around its own axis and around the sun?

If it be objected, Why did not the Holy Spirit use language consistent

with scientific truth, and leave it to be understood afterwards in the

progress of science? we reply, Because it would have thwarted his own

designs to have done so. The Bible is a book of instruction in truth out

of the reach of human intelligence, not a book of natural science; and

it appeals to the obedience of faith rather than to reason. The mental

toil of scientific discovery was a part of the punishment inflicted on

the original transgression. To anticipate the result of that toil by

thousands of years would have been to contradict His own dispensation.

In the same manner the sublime record of the genesis of the illimitable

universe which weaves its dance of light in space is told in a few

sentences: The fiat of Him with whom one day is as a thousand years,

and a thousand years as one day, and the successive order of the

creation--that is all. Time was not then, for it was the creation of

time. Man can conceive no ideas independent of time, and so days are

named; but it is evident that the word may stand for indeterminate

periods of time. The creation of light was, it cannot be doubted,

instantaneous. But that creation was a law--limitation, relation,

succession--whose working was an evolution in successive orders or

stages, over which presided the Creator, and still presides. “My Father

worketh hitherto, and I work.” Each of these was a distinct creation,

perfect in itself, not an evolution of species. The creation was

progressive, but not in the sense of the creation of every one of its

six cycles evolving out of the preceding one; for in that case either

the lower would have disappeared or the evolution would be still in

operation. The firmament did not develop out of light, nor the ocean

and the dry land out of the firmament; nor were the fishes an evolution

from the sea-weed, nor the birds from the trees and shrubs, nor the wild

beasts from the reeds of the jungle, nor man from the lower animals. But

they were all to be made before his creation who was the sum and end

of all; and the atmosphere must be created before the birds, the ocean

before the fishes, the dry land before vegetable life.

And not only was there never any evolution of species into other species,

but the creation of every separate species was complete, so that

there has never been an evolution of any species into a higher state

or condition. There has never been any progress in that sense. Every

species, including the human being, remains precisely as it issued from

the hand of God, when it has not degenerated or disappeared. Indeed,

the tendency of all living things around us is to degeneracy and decay.

Whatever progress can be predicated of man is of his moral nature only,

and of his knowledge, through the divine revelation. But even that is not

a race progress, an evolution of species, but an individual one. If this

be conceded--and we think it scarcely admits of dispute--we see no danger

to the dogmas of the faith in allowing to the natural philosophers any

length of ages they may claim for the creation of the home of man before

he was called into being for whom it was destined.

Whatever period of time was covered by those cycles of creation,

throughout them it may be said that he was being made. If all was for

him and to end in him, it was in effect he who all along was being made.

Yet the whole was only a preparatory creation. It was only his body in

which all resulted. “A body thou hast prepared for me.” It was when “God

breathed into his nostrils the breath of life” that man was created. It

was then he became “a living soul.”

The error of the physicists who reject revelation is threefold. They make

the body the man; they thus assign to his body and the inner principle

which animates it a simultaneous beginning and joint development, some

of them going so far as to make the spirit itself, or soul, or whatever

they call the animating principle, the spontaneous product of material

forces. And, throwing back the beginning of the evolution process into

untold ages, by comparison with which the life of an individual is a

scarcely appreciable moment, they suppose the process to be still going

on as it begun. All this obviously contradicts the direct statements of

revelation. It is, indeed, shocking to mere human reason. The work of the

natural creation ended with the sixth day. Up to that time, whether the

periods were long or short, the work was going on. But it was complete

when the body which had been prepared for him was animated with the

spirit of life. After that there was no farther development. It is

contrary to reason to suppose it. It is contrary to the whole analogy of

nature. Not an instance can be adduced, throughout the entire creation,

of one species developing into another--not an instance even of any

species developing within itself into a higher order of being. But up to

that period, of which it is thus written, _Igitur PERFECTI SUNT cœli et

terra, et omnis ornatus eorum: COMPLEVITQUE Deus die septimo opus suum

quod fecerat; et requievit die septimo ab uni verso opere quod patrarat_,

we may admit, without risk of heterodoxy, any doctrine of evolution of

which the physicists may give us a satisfactory evidence.

The physicists, in support of their irrational theory of evolution,

maintain that the earliest developments of human consciousness were of

the lowest order, and that man has ever since been gradually progressing

towards a higher morality and loftier spheres of thought. In this able

and interesting work Father Thébaud demonstrates, by an exhaustive

induction from the history and literature of all the nations, that the

history of mankind up to the coming of Christ, instead of a progress, was

a continual retrogression.

In his introductory chapter he establishes, by proofs which should be

conclusive to all minds unprepossessed by an arrogant perversity, that

primitive man was in possession of a primitive revelation. In the morning

twilight of the ages, as far back as we can see across the Flood, up to

the very cherubim-guarded entrance to the seats of innocence from which

the erring creature had been driven, he traces everywhere those rites

and dogmas, in their elemental form, which, in their complete development

and full significance, made known to us by the revelation of the fulness

of time, are still of faith and observance amongst the sons of God from

end to end of the habitable globe. This revelation did not go beyond

monotheism, because the fallen immortal had to be prepared, through

long ages of discipline, for the revelation of the triune nature of the

Godhead, and of his restoration to the forfeited favor of his Father

by the incarnation and atoning sacrifice of the Eternal Son. We do not

remember to have met before with the ingenious hypothesis[236] that the

configuration of the earth, consisting of an all-embracing ocean, in the

midst of which vast continents are islands, evidences the design of the

Creator to have been that “men should have intercourse of some kind with

one another,” and that on the land.

“The oceans and rivers, instead of being primarily dividing

lines, intended to separate men from one another, had precisely

for their first object to become highways and common channels

of intercourse between the various nations of mankind.”

But our author considers that the social intercommunion to which the

configuration of the earth was to administer was not to develop in the

form of “an universal republic,” but that “men were to consent to exist

in larger or smaller groups, each of them surrounded with well-defined

limits determining numerous nationalities,” united in the bond of

religious uniformity which he terms patriarchal Catholicity.

The design of the Creator of universal brotherhood amongst his creatures

was not to be fulfilled before the lapse of ages, and throughout that

dismal period it has the appearance of being perpetually thwarted

by their perverseness. The memories of Paradise rapidly faded away

amongst them. After what period of time we are not told, the sons of

God committed a second infidelity by intermarrying with the daughters

of men. The result was a race of giants--giants in capacity and crime

as well as in bodily form--whose existence universal tradition attests.

In almost open alliance with the powers of darkness, they sank with

such fearful rapidity down the abyss of depravation, dragging with them

the better portion of the race, that, to avert the triumph of hell and

the utter reprobation of his creature, the offended Creator buried the

guilty memories of colossal crime beneath an universal deluge, at whose

subsidence the first civilization reappeared on the mountains of Asia in

all its earliest purity, brought across the forty days’ extinction of

life upon the earth by the eight souls who alone had turned a deaf ear to

the universal seduction. “This idea of a gradual and deeper degradation

of human kind,” says Frederick Schlegel, “in each succeeding age, appears

at first sight not to accord very well with the testimony which sacred

tradition furnishes on man’s primitive state, for it represents the two

races of the primitive world as contemporary; and, indeed, Seth, the

progenitor of the better and nobler race of virtuous patriarchs, was much

younger than Cain. However, this contradiction is only apparent, if we

reflect that it was the wicked and violent race which drew the other into

its disorders, and that it was from this contamination a giant corruption

sprang, which continually increased, till, with a trifling exception, it

pervaded the whole mass of mankind, and till the justice of God required

the extirpation of degenerate humanity by one universal flood.”

It does not admit of a moment’s doubt, as our author argues, that with

this terrible judgment began the dissolution of that fraternal unity

which God had intended should be the happy lot of the human family,

and for which the configuration of the earth was adapted. The gigantic

unity of crime was smitten to pieces in the helplessness of division.

They who had been brothers looked in one another’s faces and found them

strange. They opened their lips, and, lo! their speech was to others a

jargon of unintelligible sounds. The one could no more understand the

other than they could the wolf or the jackal with whom they both began

to be mutually classed. The intercommunion of families of men with one

another was rudely snapped asunder. There were no means of common action,

there was no medium of common thought. The fragments into which the human

family were smitten went off in different directions, to post themselves,

in attitudes of mutual distrust and defiance, behind mountains or

morasses, on the skirts of forests, the borders of torrents, or in

the security of measureless deserts, where their practised eyes swept

the horizon. Intercommunion was rendered still more impossible by the

mutual antagonism, fear, and hatred that prevailed. And the very ocean,

instead of being a pathway for the interchange of social life, became a

formidable barrier between man and man. The dangers to be encountered

on the lands to which the winds might bear them were more to be dreaded

than the terrible phantoms which, issuing ever and anon from the home

of the storms, raged across the ocean, and lashed into merciless fury

its roaring waves. Memory had lost, in the primeval language, the key of

its treasure-house. As years went on, amidst the exacting preoccupations

of new ways of life, new surroundings, new ways of expressing their

thoughts, and their increasing tribal or race isolation, the ideas upon

which their primeval civilization had been based grew dimmer and dimmer,

until they finally disappeared.

“To establish this in detail,” says the author of _Gentilism_, “is the

purpose of this work.” And this purpose appears to us to have been

accomplished in the most convincing manner.

The scientists maintain, and it is necessary to their evolution theory,

that man began with barbarism, and moved slowly onwards in the gradual

stages of their tedious evolution process towards what they call

civilization, which is to lead, we believe, in the future developments of

the ever-continuing evolution, to some loftier state and condition, of

the nature of which they supply us with not the faintest idea.

This notion of the original barbarism of man is one of those fallacies

which get imbedded in the general belief of mankind one knows not how.

Strange to say, it has been very generally acquiesced in for no manner

of reason; and it is only of late years that thoughtful men, outside of

the faith, have come to suspect that it is not quite the truism they had

imagined.

There is a reason for this: The attenuation of the claims of another

world on the every-day life and on the conduct of men effected by the

great revolt of the XVIth century, and the keener relish for the things

of this life which consequently ensued, have infected the sentiments of

mankind with an exaggerated sense of the importance of material objects

and pursuits. Thus the idea of civilization, instead of being that of

the highest development of the moral and whole inner being of social

man, is limited to the discovery of all the unnumbered ways and means of

administering to the embellishment and luxury of his actual life. His

very mental progress, as they term it with extraordinary incorrectness,

is only regarded in this light.

“The speculators on the stone, bronze, and iron ages,” writes

our author, “place civilization almost exclusively in the

enjoyment by man of a multitude of little inventions of his

own, many of which certainly are derived from the knowledge and

use of metals. Any nation deprived of them cannot be called

civilized in their opinion, because reduced to a very simple

state of life, which, they say unhesitatingly, is barbarism.…

Barbarism, in fact, depends much more on moral degradation

than on physical want of comfort. And when we come to describe

patriarchal society, our readers will understand how a tribe

or nation may deserve to be placed on an exalted round of the

social ladder, although living exclusively on the fruits of the

earth, and cultivating it with a simple wooden plough.”[237]

Father Thébaud next proceeds, with convincing force, to demolish the

argument in behalf of the gradual evolution of the entire race from

a state of barbarism, which the evolutionists allege to have been

inevitably its first stage of intellectual consciousness drawn from the

discovery of human skeletons in caves, and in the drift of long past

ages, in juxtaposition with instruments of rude construction belonging to

the palæolithic age and fossil remains of extinct animals. This argument

has always appeared to us so feeble as to seem a mystery how it could be

employed by learned men, unless in support of some preconceived opinion

which they would maintain at all hazards. The occasional outbreaks of the

Mississippi, the terrible devastation effected by the mere overflow of

the Garonne in the South of France, give but a faint idea of what changes

must have been effected upon the crust of the earth by the subsidence of

the huge mass of water, which must have been at least eight or nine times

as ponderous as all the oceans which have since lain at peace in its

hollows. As the prodigious volumes of water, sucked and drawn hither and

thither, as they hurried to their mountain-bed, rushed in furious tides

and vast whirlpools of terrific force, they must have torn up the earth’s

crust like a rotten rag. Whole valleys must have been scooped out down

to the very root of the mountains, and _débris_ of all kinds deposited

everywhere in all kinds of confusion, so as to afford no secure data

whatever for chronological, or zoölogical, or geological deductions.

Still more conclusive is Father Thébaud’s refutation of the argument

in behalf of the evolution theory drawn from the discovery of stone

implements of rude construction in what is asserted to be the earliest

drift deposit of iron in the later strata, and bronze in the latest. To

make this argument of any force it must be proved that these periods

evolved regularly and invariably from one another throughout the whole

race of mankind. Their _periodicity_, as Father Thébaud has it, must be

indisputably proved. But this is just what it cannot be. On the contrary,

“In this last age in which we live; in the previous ages,

which we can know by clear and unobjectionable history;

finally, in the dimmest ages of antiquity of which we possess

any sufficiently reliable records, the three ‘periods’ of

stone, bronze, and iron have always subsisted simultaneously,

and consequently are no more ‘periods’ when we speak of the

aggregate of mankind, but they are only three co-existing

aspects of the same specific individual.”[238]

To the same effect is the argument that

“The artistic distance between the rough palæolithic flints

and the polished stones of the neolithic period exhibits a gap

which tells but indifferently in favor of the believers in

continuous progress. Either there has been a strange severment

of continuity, or the men of the first period were better

artists, and not such rough barbarians as the remains we

possess of them seem to attest.”

The scientific arguments, however, of Father Thébaud, in disproof of

the alleged original barbarism of the human race, satisfactory as they

are, as far as they go, are little more than introductory to the more

conclusive historical argument which constitutes the body of his valuable

and very opportune work. “The best efforts to ascertain the origin of

man,” he justly remarks, “or primeval religion, by the facts of geology

or zoölogy, can at best only result in more or less probable conjectures.”

In an argument of this nature our author begins, as was to have been

expected, from that philosophical, impassive, and ancient people who

inhabit the triangular peninsula which stretches out from no vast

distance from the original seat of the renewed race of man into the

Southeastern Atlantic. There they have dwelt from times beyond which

history does not reach. Inheriting a civilization which dates from the

subsiding Deluge, whose gradual decadence can be distinctly traced, they

are in possession of the earliest writings that exist, unless the books

of Moses or the book of Job are older, which, we do not think it is rash

to say, is, at least, doubtful. We find ourselves in the presence of the

noblest truths of even supernatural religion, mingled, it is true, with

the gross pantheistical absurdities which had already begun to deface the

primitive revelation and to deteriorate the primitive civilization.

The general process throughout the world was, no doubt, as Father Thébaud

describes--

“After a period of universal monotheism, the nations began to

worship ‘the works of God,’ and fell generally into a broad

pantheism. They took subsequently a second step, perfectly well

marked, later on, in Hindostan, Central Asia, Egypt, Greece,

etc.--a step originating everywhere in the imagination of

poets, materializing God, bringing him down to human nature

and weakness, and finally idealizing and deifying his supposed

representations in statuary and painting.”[239]

But we must venture to differ from Father Thébaud as to the religion of

the Hindoos having ever taken the latter step. The form its pantheism

took, in consequence of its tenets of the incarnations of Vishnu--the

second god of the triad--and of metempsychosis, was a worship of animals,

and especially of the cow--a worship which prevails to this day. But

this was not the gross idolatry of the Greeks and Romans, but rather a

respect, a _cultus_, in consequence of the supposed _possible_ presence

in the former of departed friends, and of the incarnation of the divinity

in the latter. Their idols are huge material representations of the might

and repose which are the chief attributes of the Hindoo deity, or of

animals with which the above-named ideas were especially associated; but

we do not think they ever were worshipped as was, for example Diana by

the Ephesians.

Be this as it may, it in no way affects the incontrovertible testimony

which Father Thébaud adduces to the high state of civilization of this

remarkable people fifteen hundred years, at all events, before Christ.

He proves it from their social institutions, which issued from a kind

of tribal municipality closely resembling the Celtic clans, but without

the principle of superseding the rightful heir to a deceased _canfinny_

by another son in consequence of certain disqualifications, and that of

the ever-recurring redistribution of land, which were the bane of Celtic

institutions. The caste restrictions, our author shows from the laws of

Menu, were not nearly so rigorous in those primitive ages; and from the

same source he exhibits undeniable proof of that purity of morals which

evidences the highest stage of civilization, and which has sunk gradually

down to the vicious barbarism of the present day. We suspect, however,

that this latter has been somewhat exaggerated. It is certainly our

impression, taken from works written by those who have lived for years in

familiar intercourse with the people, that amongst the Hindoo women there

still lingers conspicuous evidence of the purity of morals which was

universal amongst them in the beginning of their history.

It might have been added, moreover, that the laws of Menu, in addition

to their high morality, display a knowledge of finance and political

economy, of the science of government, and of the art of developing the

resources of a people which indicate a very high state of civilization

indeed.

It is impossible for us, within the limits assigned us, to follow

Father Thébaud through an argument consisting exclusively of learned

detail. Our readers, if they would have any proper appreciation of it,

must consult the work itself. We remark merely that, starting from the

admitted fact that the Vedas contain the doctrine of plain and pure

monotheism, and that in those distant ages “doctrines were promulgated

and believed in” “which far transcend all the most solemn teaching of

the greatest philosophers who flourished in the following ages, and

which yield only to the sublime and exquisitely refined teachings of

Incarnate Wisdom,”[240] our author traces the inroads of pantheism from

the time when the doctrine, recently revived by men once Christians, of

an “universal soul” was openly proclaimed, and “when it was asserted

that our own is a ‘spark’ from the ‘blazing fire,’ that God is ‘all

beings,’ and ‘all beings are God.’”[241] And he traces elaborately the

change through the several mystical works of the philosophical Brahmins

subsequent to the Vedas. Buddhism is a comparatively modern development.

We doubt its being any form of Hindooism whatever. It appears to us to

be rather the earliest development of that spirit of hostility to the

life-giving truths of the Christian revelation which began its work

almost at their very cradle--that abject principle of materialism which,

after having dragged down the vast populations of China and of North and

Western India to the lowest depths of mental and moral degradation of

which human nature is susceptible, is now sweeping over Christendom, and

threatening to “deceive,” if it were possible, “even the very elect.”

Father Thébaud’s next chapter is devoted to a historical review of the

primeval religion and its decline in Central Asia and Africa. And here

the proof is more overwhelming, if possible, than in the case of India.

As to the monotheism of the great Doctor--if we may give him such a

title--of the ancient East, and of the Zends, there can be no manner

of doubt. Nay, “even the doctrine of the resurrection of the body is

clearly contained in the most authentic part of the Zend-Avesta.” There

is also that august personage, apart from all superior beings under God,

“who stands between God and man; shows the way to heaven, and pronounces

judgment upon human actions after death; guards with his drawn sword

the whole world against the demons; has his own light from inside, and

from outside is decorated with stars.” Our author makes Zoroaster,

at the latest, a contemporary of Moses, and justly observes that the

Zend-Avesta “represents the thoughts of men very near the origin of

our species.” Now, the magnificent eloquence and profound truth of the

thoughts we meet, rivalling at times the Book of Job, the beauty of the

prayers, and the elaborate splendor of the ritual, testify to a very

different state of things in those earliest days from that alleged by

the evolutionists. Father Thébaud decides the Zends to be Vedic, and

not Persian. And no doubt in the remarkable form and construction of

the poems--dramatic, and mostly in the form of dialogue--in the tone of

thought and leading religious ideas, they closely resemble the Hindoo

Vedas. But it is our impression that we do not find in the writings of

Zoroaster that perpetual insistence on the necessity of absorption into

the deity which characterizes the Hindoo poems--the _Bhagavât-Gita_, for

example. It would appear that the Persians occupied a special place in

the dispensation of God in the ancient world. The Holy Spirit, in the

prophecies, speaks of “my servant Cyrus whom I have chosen,” and it is

certain that the pure monotheistic worship was preserved longer in Persia

than in any nation of antiquity, except the Jewish. Its corruption was

into dualism, by which the spirit of evil, as in the Indian _Trimourti_,

was invested with almost co-ordinate power with the spirit of good. But

for full information on this important and interesting subject we must

refer the reader to Father Thébaud himself.

Our limits do not admit of our giving scarcely the faintest outline of

our author’s argument in proof of the monotheism of Pelasgic Greece, and

its gradual degradation to a sensual and idolatrous anthropomorphism in

Hellenic and Heroic Greece. The substantial genuineness of the Orphic

literature he successfully establishes, as well as the similarity of

its doctrines to those of the Vedas; from which he draws the obvious

inference that the two came from the same source, and that that branch

of the Aryan family carried with them to their more distant settlements

traditions of the primitive revelation so conspicuous in the Persian and

Hindoo mystic epics, but much defaced and distorted in the course of

their long and toilsome migrations. If _pure_ monotheism ever prevailed

in Pelasgic Greece, its reign was short. Indeed, to Orpheus himself are

ascribed pantheistic doctrines. It was the poets who ushered in that

special form of idolatry which took possession of Greece, the worship of

the human being deified with all his infirmities--the _anthropomorphism_

of the gods, as Father Thébaud calls it. And the chief sinner, on this

score, was Homer, the first and greatest of them all. Yet did that

densely-populated, unseen world of the Greeks--that sensuous, nay

vicious, idolatry--which peopled the ocean and the mountains and the

forests with gods, and imagined a divinity for every fountain, and every

grove, and every valley, and every rill, with its superior deities, up to

the supreme father of Olympus, himself subject to that forlorn solution

of the riddle of “evil”--fate--bear witness from Olympus, and from Hades,

and from the realms of the sea, to the primitive revelation. It bore

witness to a civilization from which that degradation of the ideas of

God to the level of humanity, in spite of its artistic grace and poetic

feeling, deformed, however, by a filthy lasciviousness, with its short

period of literary splendor and of exalted philosophy, ending with the

sophistical negations of scepticism, was a fall, and not a progress.

For all this, “the precious fragments of a primitive revelation are

found,” as Father Thébaud truly observes, “scattered through the

writings of nearly all ancient Greek and Latin philosophers and poets.”

His two chapters on this subject--chapter vii. on “Hellenic Philosophy

as a Channel of Tradition,” and chapter viii. on “The Greek and Latin

Poets as Guardians of Truth”--are perhaps the most interesting part of

his most interesting and instructive work. They embrace a subject which

has always appeared to us as more worthy of learned labor than any other

which could be named. That life would be well spent which should devote

itself to collecting all these fragments of traditionary truth from all

ante-Christian literatures. Such a work would not turn back the flood of

rationalism, whose first risings we owe to Greece--for it is rather moral

than intellectual--but it would materially obstruct it, and would rescue

from it many souls which might otherwise be lured to their destruction by

the feeble echoes of the sophists and Aristophanes, which, beginning with

Voltaire, are now multiplying through all the rationalistic press of the

world.

Meanwhile, we cordially commend Father Thébaud’s work on _Gentilism_ to

the attentive study of all who wish for solid information and sagacious

criticism on a subject which appears to us, without wishing in the least

to underrate scientific investigation, to be more interesting and more

important than all or any of the discoveries of physical science. These,

as has been proved of late years, may be turned against the truth, and

become thus a means of darkening instead of enlightening the soul. At the

best, be they correct or erroneous, great or small, many or few, they

cannot add an inch to our stature or a day to our lives. They do not

even add to our happiness.

But a false science--one which would assign to each of us an

insignificant phenomenal existence, whose individuality will disappear,

at the end of its few days of living consciousness, in an universal

whole in an eternal state of progress--is as fatal to human happiness as

anything can be short of the abyss of reprobation. More consoling, as it

is more in accordance with right reason, is the testimony which comes

to us trumpet-tongued, in one vast unison, from all the ages, that the

history of the race is one of decadence, not of progress. The sentence

passed was death. The road to death is decadence. The way is rounded;

there is a movement onward and a growth of life until the descent begins

which lands us in dissolution. But every moment from the first cry of

infancy is a step nearer to death; we are every one of us dying every

day; and a movement towards death is not progress. Individual experience

joins its voice to that of universal history in testimony of this. The

revelation of Christ has put us in possession of the highest and certain

truth; it has given us a more exalted moral, and has recast our nature in

a higher, nay, in a divine, mould. We are still dying every day; but the

certain hope of a joyful resurrection has deprived death of its agonizing

sting, and made it, like sleep, a source of happiness instead of despair.

But this is nothing like the progress of which the sceptics prate. It is

a supernatural stage in the dispensation of God for the renewal of his

fallen creature, predetermined before all time. His own part in it--the

natural order--is one long history of decadence. There has been the ebb

and flow, the rising to fall, of all movement. But decadence has all

along triumphed over progress. Amidst what a decadence are we now living

from the promising progress of the middle ages! And we are bid to expect

so terrific a retrogression before the consummation of all things, that

“even the elect shall scarcely be saved.”

It is the witness of all the ages--human progress ebbing and

flowing--but, on the whole, the flow does not overtake the ebb. The ocean

of life has been ever ebbing into its eternal abysses, and will ebb,

leaving behind it a dry and barren waste, until the morning of eternity

shall break over the withdrawing night of time, chaos shall be for ever

sealed in the confusion and sadness of its darkness, and the final word

shall go forth, of which the sublime physical law was only a type and a

shadow: “Let there be light!”

MADAME’S EXPERIMENT.

A SAINT AGNES’ EVE STORY.

“MY THOUGHTS ARE NOT YOUR THOUGHTS, NOR YOUR WAYS MY WAYS, SAITH THE

LORD.”

Madame the Countess of Hohenstein stood at the window of the great hall

of her palace, waiting for the coach which was to take her to a _château_

some leagues distant, where she was to grace a grand entertainment, and

to be kept for a whole night by her hosts as an especial treasure. For

Madame the Countess of Hohenstein, spite of her sixty years and her three

grown sons, was a famous beauty still and a brilliant conversationist,

and few were her rivals, young or old, throughout the kingdom. But

her face was clouded as she waited in her stately hall that January

afternoon, and she listened with a pained expression to the sound of

a footstep overhead pacing steadily up and down. She touched a bell

presently.

“Tell your master,” she said to the servant who answered it, “that I wish

to see him again before I leave.” And soon down the winding stairway she

watched a young man come with the same steady pace which might have been

heard overhead for a half-hour past.

No need to ask the relationship between the two. Black, waving hair,

broad brow, set lips, firm chin, the perfect contour of the handsome

face--all these were the son’s heritage of remarkable beauty from his

queenly mother; but the headstrong pride and excessive love which shone

from her eyes as he came in sight met eyes very different from them.

Large and black indeed they were, but their intense look, however deep

the passion it bespoke, told of an unearthly passion and a fire that is

divine.

“Ah! Heinrich love,” his mother said, “once more, come with me.”

“Nay, little mother,” he answered--the caressing diminutive sounding

strangely as addressed to her in her pomp of attire and stately

presence--“you said I need not go; that you did not care for me at the

baron’s.”

“Not so, Heinrich. I care for you everywhere, everywhere. I am lost

without you, love of my soul. But I know you hate it, and, if you must

stay from any place, better that than some others. There are no maidens

there I care for, my son.”

She watched the calm forehead contract as she spoke. “There! as ever,”

she exclaimed. “Wilt never hear woman mentioned without a frown? You

are no monk yet, child, at your twentieth year; nor ever shall be, if I

can help it. It is enough for me, surely, to have given two sons to the

priesthood, without yielding up my last one, my hope and my pride.”

Heinrich made no answer, for the sound of the carriage-wheels was heard,

and he offered his mother his hand, led her down the steps, and placed

her in the coach. She drew him towards her, and kissed him passionately.

“Farewell, my dearest,” she said. “I count the minutes till we meet

again.” And she never ceased to watch him as long as the mansion was

visible.

He was a sight of which many a mother might have been proud, as he stood

there bare headed, the winter sun lighting his face, the winter wind

lifting his dark locks, the fresh bloom of youth enhancing his peculiar

beauty. His mother sighed deeply as the coach turned a corner which hid

him from her view--a sigh often repeated during the course of her journey.

It was a full hour before she was out of her own domains, though the

horses sped swiftly over the frozen ground. All those broad acres, all

that noble woodland, all those peasant homes, were hers; and for miles

behind her the land stretching north and west belonged with it, for she

had married the owner of the next estate, and, widowed, held it for her

son. But at her death all these possessions must be divided among distant

unknown kinsmen, if Heinrich persisted in the desire, which had been his

from early boyhood, to become a monk. His mother’s whole heart was set

against it. Her aim in life was to find for him a wife whom he would

love, and whom he would bring to their home; she longed to hold before

her death her son’s son on her knee.

The coach stopped as the sun was setting; and at the palace door, too

eager for a sight of her to wait in courtly etiquette within, host and

hostess stood ready to greet this friend of a lifetime.

“No Heinrich?” they cried, laughing. “A truant always. And we have that

with us to-day which will make you wish him here. No matter what! You

will see in time.”

And in time she saw indeed. Going slowly up the marble stairs a half-hour

later, a vision of magnificent beauty, with her ermine mantle wrapped

about her, the hood fallen back from her regal head, the eyes with the

pained look of disappointment and longing still lingering in them in

spite of the loving welcomes lavished upon her, she came, in a turn

of the stairs, upon another vision of beauty radiant as her own, and

extremely opposite.

Coming slowly down towards her was a young girl, tall and slight, with a

skin of dazzling fairness, where the blue veins in temple and neck were

plain to see; a delicate tint like blush-roses upon the cheek; great

waves of fair hair sending back a glint of gold to the torches just

lighted in the hall; eyes very large, and so deeply set that at first

their violet blue seemed black--eyes meek and downcast, and tender as a

dove’s, but in them, too, a look of pain and yearning. The face at first

view was like that of an innocent child, but beneath its youthfulness lay

an expression which bespoke a wealth of love and strength and patience,

unawakened as yet, but of unusual force. Skilled to read character by

years of experience in kings’ palaces, madame the countess read her

well--so far as she could read at all.

Evidently the maiden saw nothing that was before her; but madame held her

breath in surprise and delight, and stood still, waiting her approach.

Not till she came close to her did the girl look up, then she too stopped

with a startled “Pardon madame”; and at sight of the timid, lovely eyes,

at the sound of the voice--like a flute, like water rippling softly, like

a south wind sighing in the seaside pines--madame opened her arms, and

caught the stranger to her heart. “My child, my child,” she cried, “how

beautiful you are!”

“Madame, madame,” the girl panted in amazement, carried away in her turn

at the sudden sight of this lovely lady, who, she thought, could be,

in her regal beauty and attire, no less than a princess--“Madame sees

herself surely!”

The countess laughed outright at the artless, undesigned compliment. “And

as charming as beautiful,” she said. “I must see more of you, my love.”

Then, kissing the cheek, red now as damask roses, she passed on. In

the hall above her hostess stood with an arch smile on her lips. “Ah!

Gertrude, we planned it well,” she said. “Fritz and I have been watching

for that meeting. It was a brilliant tableau.”

“But who is she, Wilhelmina? Tell me quickly. She is loveliness itself.”

“’Tis but a short story, dear. We found her in Halle. Her name is

Elizabeth Wessenberg. She is well-born, but her family are strict

Lutherans. She--timid, precious little dove!--became a Catholic by some

good grace of the good God. But it was a lonely life, and I begged her

off from it for a while. Oh! but her parents winced to see her go. They

hate the name even of Catholic. That is all--only she sings like a lark,

and she hardly knows what to make of her new life and faith, it is so

strange to her.”

“That is all! Thanks, Wilhelmina. I will be with you soon. I long to see

her once again.”

All that evening the countess kept Elizabeth near her, and every hour

her admiration increased. A maiden so beautiful, yet so ignorant of her

own charms, so unworldly, so innocent, she had never seen. Alone in her

room that night she fell trembling upon her knees--poor, passionate,

self-willed mother!--before the statue of the Holy Mother bearing the

divine Son in her arms, and she held up her hands and prayed aloud.

“I have found her at last,” she cried--“a child who has won her way into

my heart at once with no effort of her own; a pearl among all pearls;

one whom my boy _must_ love. Lord Jesus, have I not given thee two sons?

Give me now one son to keep for my own, and not for thee. Grant that he

may love this precious creature, fit for him as though thou thyself hadst

made her for him, even as Eve was made for Adam.” And then she covered

her face, and sobbed and pleaded with long, wordless prayers.

The next day saw her on her homeward way, but not alone. She had coaxed

in her irresistible fashion till she had obtained for herself from her

friend a part of Elizabeth’s visit; and Elizabeth felt as if she were

living in a dream, there in the costly coach, wrapped in furs and watched

by those beautiful eyes. Constantly the countess talked with her, leading

the conversation delicately in such a manner that she found out much in

regard to Elizabeth’s home, and penetrated into her hidden sorrows in

regard to the coldness and lack of sympathy there. And it needed no words

to tell that this was a heart which craved sympathy and love most keenly;

which longed for something higher and stronger than itself to lean upon.

Every time she looked at the sensitive face, endowed with such exquisite

refinement of beauty; every time the childlike yet longing, unsatisfied

eyes met hers; every time the musical voice fell upon her ears, fearing

ever an echo of that same craving for something more and better than the

girl had yet known, madame’s mother-heart throbbed towards her, and it

seemed to her that she could hardly wait for the blessing which, she had

persuaded herself, was surely coming to her at last.

Now and then she spoke of the country through which they passed: and to

Elizabeth it was almost incredible that such wealth could belong to one

person only. Now and then she spoke of “my son” in a tone of exultant

love, and then Elizabeth trembled a little; for she dreaded to meet this

stranger. Very grand and proud she fancied him; one who would hardly

notice at all a person so insignificant as herself.

“Here is the village chapel, Elizabeth,” madame said, as the coach

stopped suddenly. “Will you scold, my little one, if I go in for a minute

to the priest’s house? Or perhaps you would like to visit the Blessed

Sacrament while I am gone?”

Yes, that was what Elizabeth would like indeed; and there she knelt and

prayed, never dreaming how much was being said about her only next door.

“Father!” madame exclaimed impetuously to the gray-haired priest who rose

to greet her, “I must have Mass said for my intention every morning for

a week. See, here is a part only of my offering.” And she laid a heavy

purse upon the table. “If God grant my prayer, it shall be doubled,

tripled.”

“God’s answers cannot be bought, madame,” the priest said sadly, “nor can

they be forced.”

“They must be this time, then, father. You must make my intention your

own. Will you not? Will you not for this once, father?”

“What is it, then, my daughter?”

“Father, do not be angry. It is the old hunger wrought up to desperation.

I cannot give my boy to be a monk!”

The priest’s face darkened.

“No! no!” madame hurried on. “It is too much to ask of me. And now I have

found a bride for him at last. She waits for me in the chapel, fair and

pure as the lilies. I am taking her home in triumph.”

“Does Heinrich know of this?”

“Not one word. He cannot fail to love her when he sees her. It is for

this I ask your prayers.”

The priest pushed away the purse. “I will have none of this,” he said.

“It is far better to see my poor suffer than that this unrighteous deed

should be done. You call yourself a Catholic, and pride yourself because

your house was always Catholic; and yet you dare say that anything is too

much for God to ask of you! I am an old man, madame, and have had many

souls to deal with, but I never yet saw one whose vocation was more plain

than Heinrich’s to the entire service of God’s church. Will you dare run

counter to God’s will?”

“Nay, father, it cannot be his will. Our very name would die out--our

heritage pass from us!”

“And suppose it does! Who shall promise you that if Heinrich marries

there shall ever be child of his to fill his place? And what _are_ place,

and name, and heritage, madame? That which death, or war, or a king’s

caprice may snatch away in a moment. But your spiritual heritage shall

never die. What mother on earth but might envy you if you give your three

sons--your all--to God! Many are the children of the desolate, more than

of her that hath an husband, saith the Lord. _He_ maketh a barren woman

to dwell in a house the joyful mother of children. There is a place and a

name within his walls better than sons and daughters. Do you dream what

risk you run, what part you play, when you would tempt from his calling

one who, if you leave God to work his own pleasure, shall hereafter shine

as the stars through all eternity?”

She did not answer back with pride. Instead, her whole face grew soft,

and the large tears filled her eyes and ran slowly down her cheeks.

“I want to do right,” she said humbly; “but I cannot feel that it is

right. Father, see: I will not ask you to make my intention yours. But I

promise you one thing: I _must_ ask God to grant me this blessing, but it

shall be the last time. If I fail now, let his will be done. And do you,

father, ask him to make it plain to me what his will is.”

“God bless you, daughter!” the old priest answered, much moved by her

humility. “I will pray that indeed. But still I warn you that I think you

are doing wrong in so much as trying such an experiment as this which you

have undertaken.”

“No, no,” she cried again. “No, no, father. This once I must try, or my

heart will break.”

Again in the carriage, she pressed Elizabeth to her closely, and kissed

her, and said words of passionate love, finding relief thus for the

pent-up feelings of her heart; but Elizabeth knew not how to reply. It

troubled and perplexed her--this lavish affection; for she could not

repay it in kind. It only served to waken a suffering which she had known

from childhood, a strange, unsatisfied yearning within her, which came at

the sight of a lovely landscape, or the sound of exquisite music, or the

caresses of some friend. She wanted _more_; and where and what was that

“more,” which seemed to lie beyond everything, and which she could never

grasp?

She felt it often during her visit--that visit where attention was

constantly bestowed on her, and she lived in the midst of such luxury as

she had never known before. Something in Heinrich’s face seemed to her to

promise an answer to her questionings--it was so at rest, so settled;

and this, more than anything else about him, interested and attracted

her. Madame saw the interest, without guessing the cause. She felt

also that Heinrich was not wholly insensible to Elizabeth’s presence;

and though she asked him no direct questions, she contrived to turn

conversation into the channels which could not fail to engage him, and

which the young convert also cared for most.

Elizabeth decided that Heinrich knew more than any one else, but even

he tired her sometimes. “He knows _too_ much,” she thought, “and he is

so cold and indifferent. Yet he would not be himself if he were more

like madame; and she is too tender. Oh! what does it all mean? There is

nothing that makes one content except church, and one cannot be always

there.”

So passed the time till S. Agnes’ Eve. That night, when the young people

entered the dining-hall, madame was absent. She sent a message that they

must dine without her, as she had a severe headache, and Elizabeth might

come to her an hour after dinner.

The meal was a silent one. When it was over, and they went into the

library, Heinrich seated himself at the organ. Grand chorals, funeral

marches full of mourning and awe and hope, Mass music welcoming the

coming of the Lord of Sabaoth, filled the lofty room. When he ceased,

Elizabeth was sobbing irrepressibly.

“Forgive me, forgive me!” she said. “I cannot help it. O monsieur! I

know not what it means. Love and hate, beauty and deformity, joy and

suffering--I cannot understand. Nothing satisfies, and to be a Catholic

makes the craving worse. Is it because I am only just beginning, and

that I shall understand better by and by?”

He stood at a little distance from her, looking not at her at all, but

upward and far away.

“I will tell mademoiselle a story, if she will permit it,” he said. “Many

years ago there was a princess, very beautiful, very wise, and very

wealthy. Her councillors begged that she would marry, and at last she

told them that she would do so, if they would find for her the prince

she should describe, he should be so rich that he should esteem all the

treasures of the Indies as a little dust; so wise that no man could ever

mention in his presence aught that he did not already know; so fair that

no child of man should compare with him in beauty; so spotless in his

soul that the very heavens should not be pure in his sight. They knew not

where to find that prince, but their lady knew.”

He paused, though not as for an answer. He had guessed well his mother’s

plans and hopes; he fathomed as truly Elizabeth’s nature; and when he

spoke again, it was as no one except the priest of God had ever heard him

speak:

“There are some souls whom no one and nothing on earth can possibly

satisfy. Beauty, and learning, and friendship, and home, and love, each

alike wearies them. God only can content them, and he is enough--_God

alone_. To such souls he gives himself, if they sincerely desire it. It

is a love beyond all imaginable earthly love. It satisfies, yet leaves

a constant craving which we have no wish should cease. He understands

everything: even those things which we cannot explain to ourselves. It is

he finding whom the soul loveth him, and will not let him go.”

After saying this, he sat down once more at the organ, and played again

till the hour named by madame arrived. Elizabeth found her pale and

suffering, but with a glad look in her eyes.

“You have had talk together, then,” she cried. “I heard the music cease

for a while. And is he not charming and good, my Heinrich?”

“Yes,” Elizabeth said dreamily. “He made me understand a little

to-night--better than any one has ever done before.”

“Is that so, my little one? And how then?”

“Here,” Elizabeth said innocently, laying her hand on her heart, and with

no suspicion of the meaning which the countess attached to the act. “If I

could only understand more--more.”

“You will in time, most dear one--in time, in time.” And oh! the exulting

ring in madame’s voice. “But see, my precious, what I have to show you.”

A chest was drawn up beside madame’s easy-chair. She opened it, and

before Elizabeth’s dazzled eyes lay jewels of wondrous lustre and

value--long strings of pearls, changing opals with the fire-spark

trembling in them, sapphires blue as the sky, emeralds green as the sea,

and glittering diamonds. Madame drew out the costly things, and adorned

Elizabeth with one set after another by turn, watching the effect. Last

of all, she touched a spring, and took from a secret drawer a set of

pearls, large and round, with a soft amber tint in them. These she held

caressingly and sighed.

“Look, Elizabeth,” she said. “Forty years ago this very night I wore

them, when I was a girl like you. There was a great ball here. Some

one--ah! but how grand and beautiful he looked; my poor heart remembers

well, and is sore with the memory now--some one begged me to try the

charm of S. Agnes’ Eve. Dost know it, dear? Nay? Then you shall try it

too. Go supperless to rest; look not to left or right, nor yet behind

you, but pray God to show you that which shall satisfy your heart of

hearts.”

“Did he show you, madame?”

Madame sighed heavily. “Alas! love, alas! What contents us here? I had

it for a time, and then God took it from me. No prouder wife than I, no

prouder mother; but husband and sons are gone, all except my Heinrich.

Pray God to keep him for me, Elizabeth, Elizabeth.”

“And who, then, was S. Agnes, madame? And shall I pray to her that

prayer?”

Madame looked aghast, then smiled an amused yet troubled smile. “Nay,

child, I thought not of that. S. Agnes was one who loved our blessed Lord

alone, not man. She died rather than yield to earthly love and joy.”

“But why, madame?”

“O child, child! But I forget, You have only just begun the Catholic

life, my sweet. God’s love, then, is enough for some people; but they are

monks and nuns, not common Christians like you and me and Heinrich. We

could not live in that way, could we, Elizabeth--you and Heinrich and I?”

“And God would never grow tired of us, madame! Nor ever die! Nor ever

misunderstand! O madame! I think we could not live with less.” And

Elizabeth stood up suddenly, as if too agitated to remain quiet.

“Ah! love, you are only just a convert. In one’s first excitement one

fancies many things. You are meant to serve God in the world, my dear,

for many years to come--you and my Heinrich. Pray for him to-night.”

But hurrying along the hall to her own room, Elizabeth whispered

passionately in her heart: “I do not want to pray for him. Let him pray

for himself. His saints pray for him too, and God loves him, and he does

not need me. Does madame, then, suppose that he could ever care for me,

or I for him? I want more than he can give--more--more! _Show_ me my

heart’s desire, O God, my God!”

In her excitement and in the darkness she laid her hand on the wrong

door, and, opening it, found herself in an old gallery, at the end of

which a light was glimmering. Scarcely heeding what she did, she moved

toward it, and found that she was in the choir of the castle chapel. The

door fell gently to behind her, but did not close, and Elizabeth was

alone. Alone? The aisles were empty, the organ was still, the priest was

gone; but before the sacred shrine the steady ray of the lamp told that

He who filleth the heaven of heavens was dwelling in his earthly temple,

and that unseen angels guarded all the place.

But of angels or men Elizabeth thought not. Silently, slowly she moved

onward, her hands pressed upon her heart, whose passionate beating grew

still as she came nearer to the Sacred Heart which alone could fully

comfort, fully strengthen, fully understand. Slowly she moved, as one who

knows that some great joy is coming surely, and who lengthens willingly

the bliss of expectation.

And so she reached a narrow flight of steps, and made her way gently

down, and knelt. Outside, in the clear night, a great wind rose, and

rocked the castle-tower, but Elizabeth knew it not. She was conscious

only of the intense stillness of that unseen Presence; of peace flooding

her whole soul like a river; of the nearness of One who is strength and

love and truth, infinite and eternal.

“Show me my heart’s desire, O God, my God!” she sighed.

God, _my_ God! She lifted up her eyes, and there, above the shrine,

beheld the great crucifix of Hohenstein, brought from the far-off East by

a Crusader knight. She lifted up her eyes, and saw the haggard face full

of unceasing prayer, the sunken cheeks, the pierced hands and feet, the

bones, easy to number, in the worn and tortured body, the side with its

deep wound where a spear had passed.

Yet, looking upward steadily, all her excitement gone, a sacred calm

upon her inmost soul, Elizabeth knew that her prayer was answered, her

lifelong hunger satisfied. God had given her her heart’s desire.

God, _my_ God! No love but his could satisfy; and his could with an

eternal content. To that Heart, pierced for her, broken for her, she

could offer no less than her whole heart; and that she _must_ offer, not

by constraint, but simply because she loved him beyond all, above all,

and knew that in him, and in him only, she was sure of an unfailing, an

everlasting love.

Madame, seeking her in the early morning, found her room unoccupied,

then noticed the gallery-door ajar, and, trembling, sought her there.

Elizabeth had kept S. Agnes’ Eve indeed, but it was before the shrine of

S. Agnes’ Spouse and Lord.

“My daughter,” the countess said, using the word for the first time, and

with oh! how sad a tone--“what have you done this night, my daughter?”

Elizabeth lifted hand and face toward the shrine. “Madame,” she answered

slowly, as one who speaks unconsciously in sleep, “I have found Him whom

my soul loveth. I hold him, and I will not let him go.”

God himself had made his way plain indeed before Madame the Countess of

Hohenstein in this her last struggle with his will. The very plan which

she had chosen to gain her cherished hopes had crushed them. Not priest

or son, but the girl whom she herself had named for her final trial, had

shown her that God’s purposes were far aside from hers.

“Take all, O Lord!” she cried, while her tears fell like rain. “Take all

I have. I dare not struggle longer.”

One son gave up his life a martyr in the blood-stained church in Japan.

Another endured a lifelong martyrdom among the lepers of the Levant,

winning souls yet more tainted than the bodies home again to God. And

one, the youngest, and the fairest, and the dearest, was seen in China

and in India, in Peru and in Mexico, going without question wherever he

was sent, for the greater glory of God; but he was never seen in his

German home again. After they once left her, their mother never beheld

their faces. And she who had been taken to her heart as a daughter

entered an order in a distant land.

Yet none ever heard madame the last Countess of Hohenstein murmur against

her lot. Clearly, tenderly, patiently, more and more did God vouchsafe

to make his way plain to her. In chapel, day by day, she watched the

decaying banners which told of the fields her fathers won; saw the

monuments to men of her race who had fought and died for their king and

their land; read the names once proudly vaunted, now almost forgotten.

What was fame like this to the honor God had showered on her? Souls east

and west brought safe to him; life laid down for the Lord of lords; a

seed not to be reckoned; a lineage which could never fail; sons and

daughters to stand at last in that multitude which no one can number, who

have come out of great tribulation, with fadeless palms of victory in

their hands--such was her place and name in the house of God.

The quaint German text upon her tombstone puzzled travellers greatly, and

those who could decipher it wondered but the more. It ran thus:

_Requiescat in Pace._

GERTRUDE,

_Twenty-ninth and Last Countess of Hohenstein_.

The children of thy barrenness shall still say in thy ears: The place is

too strait for me; make me room to dwell in. And thou shalt say in thy

heart: Who hath begotten me these? I was barren, and brought not forth,

led away, and captive; and who hath brought up these? I was destitute and

alone; and these, where were they?

Thus saith the Lord God: Behold, I will lift up my hand to the Gentiles,

and will set up my standard to the people. And they shall bring thy sons

in their arms, and carry thy daughters upon their shoulders. And thou

shalt know that I am the Lord; for they shall not be confounded that wait

for him.

THE BASQUES.

We are all Basques. Nay, reader, be not startled at having your supposed

nationality thus suddenly set aside. An author of far more learning than

we can lay claim to--Señor Erro, a Spanish Basque--gravely asserts that

all the inhabitants of Europe and Asia, if not of America also, sprang

from the Basques. In short, they--that is, _we_--are the primitive race.

And this fearless writer, with a due sense of national superiority, goes

boldly on to prove that Adam and Eve spoke the Basque language in the

terrestrial Paradise, of which he gives a detailed description according

to the Biscayan interpretation of the Biblical account.

We remember how, in search of Adam--great progenitor!--whose

said-to-be-fine statue is among the army of saints on the glorious roof

of Milan cathedral, we got bewildered on that celestial height, so that

we do not to this day feel sure of having discovered the true Adam, and

might never have found our way down to earth again had it not been for

the kind offices of one of Victor Emanuel’s soldiers. So it is with many

a _savant_ in tracing the origin of the human species. Lost in threading

the way back to our first parents, they need some rough, uncultured soul

to lead them out of the bewildering maze--back to the point whence they

started.

But let us hope in this instance filial instinct has not mistaken the

genuine Adam--the first speaker, it is possible, of Basque. Señor Erro

finds in this language the origin of all civilization and science. It

must be confessed we have wofully forgotten our mother-tongue; for it is

said to be impossible to learn to speak it unless one goes very young

among the Basques. It is a common saying of theirs that the devil once

came into their country to learn the language, but gave it up in despair

after three hundred years’ application! It may be inferred he had lost

the knowledge he had made such successful use of a few thousand years

before in the Garden of Eden.

M. Astarloa, likewise a Biscayan, maintains that the extraordinary

perfection of this language is a proof it is the only one that could have

been conferred on the first man by his Creator, but in another place says

it was formed by God himself at the confusion of tongues in the tower of

Babel--which assertions rather lack harmony.

Max Müller, the eminent philologist, pretends a serious discussion

took place about two hundred years ago in the metropolitan chapter of

Pampeluna as to the following knotty points:

_First._ Was Basque the primitive language of mankind? The learned

members confessed that, however strong might be their private

convictions, they did not dare give an affirmative reply.

_Secondly._ Was Basque the only language spoken by Adam and Eve in the

garden of Eden?

As to this, the whole chapter declared there could be no doubt whatever

that it was “impossible to bring a reasonable objection against such an

opinion.”

This is extremely amusing; but, of course, too absurd to be true.

Besides, the archives of Pampeluna do not afford the slightest hint of so

singular a record.

Southwestern France, however, has many traditions of the Oriental origin

of its inhabitants. Tarbes and Lourdes are said to have been founded by

Abyssinian princesses. Belleforest, in his _Cosmography_, says Japhet

himself came into Gaul and built the city of Périgueux, which for several

ages bore his name. Père Bajole, of Condom, a Jesuit of the XVIIth

century, is less precise in his suppositions, but thinks the country was

peopled soon after the Deluge, and therefore by those who had correct

notions of the true God. Moreover as Noah, of course, would not have

allowed his descendants to depart without suitable advice as to the way

of salvation, especially to the head of the colony, he concludes that

many of the ancient Aquitanians were saved. The Sire Dupleix cites the

epistle of S. Martial to show they had retained some proper notions of

theology, which accounts for the rapid success of the first Christian

apostles of the country.

But to return to the Basques in particular: In the _Leyenda

Pendadola_--an old book of the XIth century--we read that “the first

settlement in Spain was made by the patriarch Tubal, whose people

spoke the language still used in the provinces of Biscay”--that is,

the Basque. William von Humboldt likewise attributed to the Basques an

Asiatic origin, and was decidedly of the school of MM. Erro and Astarloa,

though he rejected their exaggerations. The Basque language, so rich,

harmonious, and expressive, is now generally believed to be one of the

Turanian tongues. Prince Lucian Bonaparte shows the analogy between it

and the Hungarian, Georgian, etc.

The word Basque is derived from the Latin _Vasco_; for in Southwestern

France it is quite common to pronounce the letter _v_ like _b_--a habit

which made Scaliger wittily say: _Felices populi, quibus Vivere est

Bibere_.

The Basque country consists of several provinces on both sides of the

Pyrenees bordering on the Bay of Biscay. Labourd, Soule, and Lower

Navarre are now in the department of the Basses-Pyrenees, on the French

side. The two provinces of Biscay and Guipuzcoa--a part of Alava and of

Upper Navarre--belong to Spain. The whole Basque population cannot be

more than 500,000. The people, as we have had a proof of, are proud of

their ancient nationality; and though there is a difference of manners,

physiognomy, and even of idiom in these sections, they all recognize each

other as brethren. They are a noble race, and have accomplished great

deeds in their day. Entrenched behind their mountains, they long kept

the Romans at bay, drove back the Moors, and crushed the rear-guard of

Charlemagne.

The Basques have always been famous navigators. The first suggestion

that led to the discovery of America is said to have been given

Christopher Columbus by Sanchez de Huelva, a Basque pilot. The Basques

of Labourd certainly discovered Cape Breton. They were the first to go

on whale-fisheries, which, in 1412, extended as far as Iceland. And

Newfoundland seems to have been known to them in the middle of the

XVth century. The first name of Cape Breton--isle des Bacaloas or

Bacaloac--is a Basque name.

In the middle ages the Basques maintained a certain independence by means

of their _fueros_, or special privileges, which had been handed down from

time immemorial and confirmed by several of the kings of France. The wood

of Haïtze is still pointed out as the place where the assemblies of the

elders, or _bilçars_, were formerly held in the district of Labourd. Here

came together the proprietors of the different communes to regulate their

administrative affairs. The most of the assembly leaned on their staves

or against the venerable oaks of the forest. But the presiding member sat

on a huge stone, the secretary on another, while a third was used for

recording the decrees of the assembly, to which the kings of France and

Navarre were often forced to yield by virtue of their _fueros_.

And this country was never over-ruled by oppressive lords who held

it in subjection by means of their fortified castles. The device of

Bayonne--_Nunquam polluta_--seems to express the unstained independence

that had never been subjected to feudal dominion. It doubtless had great

families who distinguished themselves by their bravery and military

services, and were noted for their wealth, like the _casas de parientes

majores_--the twenty-four families of great antiquity--in Guypuzcoa,

among which was the family of Loyola of Aspeïtia, to which the immortal

founder of the Jesuits belonged, as well as that of Balda, his mother’s

family; but they never pretended to the feudal authority of the great

nobles of France and Spain. It was only in the XVth century that several

Basque families, who had become wealthy, ventured to erect some

inoffensive towers like those of Uturbi near St. Jean de Luz, occupied by

Louis XI. while on the frontier arranging the treaty between the kings of

Castile and Arragon.

It is said of the Basques of Spain: As many Basques, as many nobles. Many

of their villages have coats of arms on all the houses, which contrast

with the decayed lattices and crumbling roofs. The owners point to their

emblazonry with the air of a Montmorency. When the Moors invaded the

North of Spain, thousands of mountaineers rose to drive them out. As

they made war at their own expense, those who returned alive to their

cottages received the reward of gentlemen--the right of assuming some

heraldic sign and graving it on their walls as a perpetual memorial of

their deeds. In the valley of Roncal the inhabitants were all ennobled

for having distinguished themselves at the battle of Olaso, in the reign

of Fortunio Garcia. In the village of Santa Lucia, not far from Toledo,

an old house of the XIIIth century is still to be seen with double lancet

windows, which has its record over the door proving the part a former

owner had taken at the bridge of Olaso--an azure field traversed by a

river, which is spanned by a bridge with three golden arches surmounted

by the bleeding head of a Moor.

In a faubourg of Tolosa is a modest house stating that Juan Perez having

borne arms for more than fifty years in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Flanders,

etc., and taken part in the great naval victory over the Turks at Lepanto

under Don Juan of Austria, the emperor created him knight and gave him

for his arms the imperial eagle.

But most of these armorial bearings have reference to the chase, to

which the people were so addicted. The trophies they brought home,

instead of being nailed up over the door, were now graven there in

stone--sometimes a wolf, or a hare, or even a favorite hound. Two dogs

are on the arms inherited by the Prince of Viana, the donor of the fine

bells to the basilica of Notre Dame de Lourdes.

In the commune of Bardos is a château which bears the name of Salla from

the founder of the family. It was he who, fighting under Alphonse the

Chaste, King of Navarre, had his legs broken by the explosion of a rock,

from which time the house of Salla has had for its arms three _chevrons

brisés, d’or, sur un champ d’azur_. The most illustrious member of this

family is Jean Baptiste de la Salle, who founded the admirable order

of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, with a special mission for

instructing the poor.

Mgr. de Belsunce, the celebrated bishop of Marseilles, was also of Basque

origin. The Château de Belsunce is still to be seen--an old manor-house

with Gothic turrets bespeaking the antiquity of the family. The name is

associated with the legends of the country. Tradition relates that a

winged monster having terrified the whole region, a knight of this house

armed himself with a lance and went forth to attack the monster in his

den. The dragon, having received a mortal wound, sprang with a dying

effort upon his enemy, seized him, and rolled with him into the Nive.

From that time the family of Belsunce bore on its shield a dragon sable

on a field gules.

The arms of Fontarabia is a siren on the waves bearing a mirror and a

comb--symbol of this enchanting region. This historic place, once the

rival of St. Jean de Luz, now wears a touching aspect of desolation and

mourning which only adds to its attractions. Its ruins have a hue of

antiquity that must delight a painter’s eye. The long street that leads

to the principal square carries one back three hundred years, most of the

houses being in the Spanish style of the XVIth century. There are coats

of arms over every door, and balconies projecting from every story, with

complicated trellises or lattices that must almost madden the moon-struck

serenader. Nothing could be more picturesque than this truly Spanish

place. Many of the houses bear the imposing name of _palacios_, which

testify to the ancient splendor of this _ciudad muy noble, muy leal, y

muy valerosa_. Overlooking the whole place is the château of Jeanne la

Folle, massive, heavy, its walls three yards thick, its towers round--a

genuine fortress founded in the Xth century, but mostly rebuilt by

Charles V. Its chronicles are full of historic interest. Here took place

the interview between Louis XI. and Henri IV. of Castille, whose arrogant

favorite, Beltram de la Cueva, in his mantle broidered with gold and

pearls and diamonds, and his boat with its awning of cloth of gold, must

have offered a striking contrast to the extreme simplicity of the King of

France.

The fine, imposing church of Fontarabia, in the transition style, is a

marked exception to the Basque churches generally, which are of simple

primitive architecture, with but few ornaments; and these, at least on

the French side of the frontier, mostly confined to the sanctuary, which

is rich in color and gilding. Perhaps over the main altar is a painting,

but by no means by Murillo or Velasquez. If on the Spanish side, it may

be a S. Iago on a white steed, sword in hand, with a red mantle over his

pilgrim’s dress, looking like a genuine _matamore_, breathing destruction

against the Moors. The Madonna, too, is always there, perhaps with a

wheel of silver swords, as if in her bosom were centred all the sorrows

of the human race.

The galleries around the nave in the Basque churches gives them the

appearance of a _salle de spectacle_; but the clergy think the separation

of the sexes promotes the respect due in the sanctuary, and the people

themselves cling to the practice. The men occupy the galleries. They

all have rosaries in their hands. From time to time you can see them

kiss their thumbs, placed in the form of a cross, perhaps to set a seal

on their vows to God, as people in the middle ages used to seal their

letters with their thumbs to give them a sacred inviolability. Licking

the thumb was, we know, an ancient form of giving a solemn pledge; and,

till a recent period, the legal form of completing a bargain in Scotland

was to join the thumbs and lick them. “What say ye, man? There’s my

thumb; I’ll ne’er beguile ye,” said Rob Roy to Bailie Nicol Jarvie.

When Mass is over, every man in the galleries respectfully salutes his

next neighbor. This is considered obligatory. Were it even his deadliest

enemy, he must bow his head before him. Mass heard with devotion brings

the Truce of God to the heart.

The women occupy the nave, sitting or kneeling on the black,

funereal-looking carpet that covers the stone above the tomb of their

beloved dead. For every family has a slab of wood or marble with an

inscription in large characters, which covers the family vault below, and

their notions of pious respect oblige the living to kneel on the stone

that covers the bones of their forefathers. Or this _was_ the case; for

of late years burial in churches has been forbidden, and these slabs

now only serve to designate the inalienable right of the families to

occupy them during the divine service. It is curious and interesting to

examine these sepulchral slabs; for they are like the archives of a town

inscribed with the names of the principal inhabitants, with their rank

and occupation. In some places the women, by turns, bring every morning

an offering for their pastor, which they deposit on these stones like an

expiatory libation. Several of them are daily garnished with fruit, wine,

eggs, beeswax, yarn, and linen thread, and the _curé_, accompanied by his

servant or the sacristan, goes around after Mass to collect this tribute

of rural piety in a basket, and give his blessing to the families. These

offerings of the first-fruits of the earth are still continued, though

the dead are buried elsewhere.

The seat of that mighty potentate, the village mayor, is in the choir, as

befits his dignity, which he fully sustains by his majestic deportment in

sight of the whole congregation. Sometimes he chants at the lectern, like

Charlemagne. The square peristyle of the church is often divided between

him and the village school-master for their respective functions, as if

to invest them with a kind of sanctity.

In Soule the belfry is formed by extending upwards the western wall of

the church in the form of three gables, looking like three obelisks.

The bell is hung in the central one. The origin of this custom is thus

explained by M. Cénac Montaut:

“In former times, when the Basques had some difficulty about accepting

all the truths of the Gospel, the clergy were unable to make them

comprehend the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. One of the priests, like S.

Patrick with the shamrock, saw he must appeal to the senses in order to

reach the mind and heart. Entering his rude pulpit one day, he addressed

his flock something after the following manner: ‘Some of you, my dear

brethren, recently objected that the God of the Old Testament, in the

tables of the law, wished to be worshipped as one God, and that to add

now the Son and Holy Spirit to the Deity is to overthrow the law of Sinai

and affect the divine Essence itself.… My dear brethren, hitherto we have

had but one gable on our belfry, directing towards heaven the innermost

prayer of the heart, and bearing the bell by which God seems to speak to

us in return. If, now, two other gables were added to this, would not

this triple tower, standing on one base, and pointing to the same heaven,

still constitute one belfry?’”

This appeal was effective. Those who had been unable to accept the

abstract doctrine of the Trinity perfectly comprehended this material

unity. The other priests of Soule hastened to make use of so happy an

oratorical figure, and all through the valley of the Gave rose the

three-gabled, dogmatic belfries, such as we see at the present day.

Near the church is often a modest white house with a small garden

containing a few trees and flowers, where the Daughters of the Cross

devote themselves to the instruction of children, planting the seeds of

piety in their youthful hearts.

The Basque houses, with their triangular, tile-covered roofs, often

project like a _châlet_, and are painted white, green, and even pink.

The casements are made in the form of a cross, and stained red. The

doorway is arched like a church-portal, and has over it a Virgin, or

crucifix, or some pious inscription. There is no bolt on the door; for a

Basque roof is too inviolable to need a fastening. At the entrance is a

_bénitier_ (for holy water), as if the house were to the owner a kind of

sanctuary to be entered with purification and a holy thought. You enter

a large hall that divides the house into two parts, and contains all the

farming utensils. It is here the husbandman husks his corn and thrashes

his wheat. The uncolored walls of the rooms are hung with a few rude

pictures, as of the Last Judgment, the Wandering Jew, or Napoleon. There

are some large presses, a few wooden chairs, a shelf in the corner with

a lace-edged covering for the statue of the Virgin, who wears a crown of

_immortelles_ on her head and a rosary around her neck. At one end of the

room is a bed large enough for a whole family, and so high as almost to

need a ladder to ascend it. The open pink curtains show the holy-water

font, the crucifix, and faded palm branch annually renewed. There is

no house without some religious symbol. The Basque has great faith in

prayer. He stops his plough or wild native dance to say the Angelus. He

never forgets to arm himself with the sign of the cross in a moment of

danger. He makes it over the loaf of bread before he divides it among the

family. The mother makes it on the foreheads of her children at night. At

Candlemas a blessed candle burns under every roof in honor of the true

Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. It is the

boast of the country that Protestantism never found entrance therein,

even during its prevalence in Béarn at the time of Joan of Navarre,

though that princess took pains to have the Huguenot version of the New

Testament translated into Basque and published at La Rochelle in 1591

for their benefit. The whole Bible is now translated, M. Duvoisin having

devoted six years to the work, and Prince Lucian Bonaparte a still longer

time in settling the orthography and superintending the edition.

It must not be supposed, however, that the Basques are an austere race.

They are very fond of their national dances, and excel in the _jeu de

paume_. Among their other amusements is the _pastorale_, acted in the

open air with a _chirula_ (a kind of flute) and a tambourine for the

orchestra. The subject is borrowed from the Bible, the legend of Roland,

the wars with the Moors, etc. They are composed by native poets, and have

a certain antique simplicity not without its charm. The people flock to

these representations, as to their Cantabrian dances, in their gayest

attire. The old man wears a _béret_ drawn over his forehead, while his

long hair floats behind in token of the nobility of his ancient race.

He wears short breeches, long woollen stockings, and leather shoes with

handsome silver buckles.

The young Basque, straight, well formed, and proud in his bearing, wears

his blue _béret_ jauntily perched on one side of his head. His jacket is

short. Silver clasps fasten his collar and wristbands. He wears sandals

on his feet, with red bars across the instep. A bright red sash girdles

his waist--as of all mountaineers, enabling them to endure fatigue the

better, like the surcingle of a horse. “Beware of that young man with the

loose girdle,” said Sulla, speaking of Cæsar. For among the Romans the

word _discinctus_ was applied to the indolent, cowardly soldier, as _alte

cinctus_ (high-girdled) meant a prompt, courageous man.

The girls, slender in form, with regular, expressive features, are veiled

in a black mantilla, or else carry it on their arms. A gay kerchief is

wound around the back of their heads like a turban, leaving visible the

shining bands of their beautiful black hair.

The old women wear white muslin kerchiefs on their heads, with one corner

falling on the shoulder. On the breast is suspended a golden heart or

_Saint-Esprit_. Sometimes they are enveloped from head to foot in a

great black cloak, which is absolutely requisite when they attend a

funeral. This mantle forms part of the _trousseau_ of every bride of any

substance, and she wears it on her wedding-day, as if to show herself

prepared to pay due honor to all the friends who should depart this life

before her. It must be a great comfort for them to see this mourning

garment prepared in advance, and the sight of the bride veiled in her

long black capuchin must diffuse a rather subdued gayety over the wedding

party.

The Basques pay great respect to the dead. When a man dies, his next

neighbor on the right carries the crucifix before his bier in the funeral

procession, and his nearest neighbor on the left walks at its side.

And the whole neighborhood assembles around it in church, with lighted

candles in their hands, to hear the Mass for the Dead. They adorn their

graveyards with shrubs and flowers. And they never omit the month’s-mind,

or anniversary service.

Of course no one goes to the Basque country without visiting the famous

Pas de Roland. The whole region is singularly wild and picturesque.

We pass through a deep gorge encumbered with rocks, over which the

Nive plunges and foams in the maddest possible way. Twin mountains of

granite rise to the very heavens, their sides covered with the golden

broom, or furrowed with deep gullies that tell of mountain torrents. The

overhanging cliffs, and the dizzy, winding road along the edge of the

abyss, create a feeling of awe; and by the time we arrive, breathless and

fatigued, at the Pas de Roland, we are quite prepared to believe anything

marvellous.

“I lie reclined

Against some trunk the husbandman has felled;

Old legendary poems fill my mind,

And Parables of Eld:

I wander with Orlando through the wood,

Or muse with Jaques in his solitude.”

This archway was produced by a mere blow from the heel of the great

Paladin, who did not consider the mountain worthy the use of his mighty

sword. Everything is bathed in the golden light of the wondrous legend,

which harmonizes with the spot. We even fancy we can hear the powerful

horn of Orlando--the greatest trumpeter on record. We can see Carloman,

with his black plumes and red mantle--opera-like--as he is described in

the _Chant d’Altabisçar_! The natives, _pur sang_, do not call this pass

by the name of Roland, but _Utheca gaiz_--a bad, dangerous passage, as

in truth it is. It is the only means of communication with the opposite

side of the mountain. After going through it, the mountains recede, the

horizon expands, a country full of bucolic delights is revealed to the

eye, the exaltation of the soul subsides, and the mind settles down to

its normal state of incredulity.

Just below the Pas de Roland, on the French side, are the thermal springs

of Cambo, in a lovely little valley watered by the Nive. The air here is

pure, the climate mild, the meadows fresh and sprinkled with flowers, the

encircling hills are crowned with verdure. Never did Nature put on an

aspect of more grace and beauty than in this delicious spot. One of the

springs is sulphurous, the other ferruginous. They became popular among

the Spanish and Basques during the last century when patronized by Queen

Marie Anne de Neuberg, the second wife of Don Carlos II. of Spain. Some

of her royal gifts to the church of Cambo are still shown with pride.

These springs were visited as early as 1585, among others, by François

de Nouailles, Bishop of Dax, who is often referred to in proof of their

efficacy; but as that eminent diplomatist died a few weeks after he tried

the waters, the less said of his cure the better for their reputation.

Napoleon I., however, had faith in their virtues. He visited Cambo, and

was only prevented by his downfall from building a military hospital here.

Not two miles from Cambo is the busy town of Hasparren. The way thither

is through a delightful country, with some fresh beauty bursting on the

eye at every step. On all sides are to be seen the neat white cottages of

the laborers in the midst of orchards, meadows, and vineyards; sometimes

in the hollows of a valley like a nest among the green leaves; sometimes

on the hills commanding the most delicious of landscapes. Hasparren has

about six thousand inhabitants, mostly farmers, but who try to increase

their income by some trade. Twelve hundred of them are shoemakers; seven

or eight hundred are weavers, curriers, or chocolate-makers. The spacious

church is hardly able to contain the crowd of worshippers on festivals. A

curious history is connected with the belfry.

The government having imposed a tax on salt in 1784, the people around

Hasparren, who had hitherto been exempted, resolved to resist so heavy

an impost. They rang the bell with violence to call together the

inhabitants. Even the women assembled in bands with spits, pitchforks,

and sickles, to the sound of a drum, which one of their number beat

before them. The mob, amounting to two thousand, entrenched themselves

in the public cemetery, where they received with howls of rage the five

brigades the governor of Bayonne was obliged to send for the enforcement

of the law. Bloodshed was prevented by the venerable _curé_, who rose

from his sick-bed and appeared in their midst. By his mild, persuasive

words he calmed the excited crowd, induced the troops to retire and the

mob to disperse. The leaders being afterwards arrested, he also effected

their pardon--on humiliating conditions, however, to the town. The

hardest was, perhaps, the destruction of the belfry, from which they had

rung the alarm; and it was not till some time in the present century

they were allowed to rebuild it.

It is remarkable that the ancient Basques left no poems, no war-songs to

celebrate their valorous deeds, no epic in which some adventurous mariner

recites his wanderings; for the language is flexible and easily bends to

rhythm. But the people seem better musicians than poets. There are, to be

sure, some rude plaints of love, a few smugglers’ or fishermen’s songs,

sung to bold airs full of wild harmony that perhaps used to animate

their forefathers to fight against the Moors; but these songs have no

literary merit. Only two poems in the language have acquired a certain

celebrity, because published by prominent men who ascribed to them a

great antiquity. One of these is the _Chant des Cantabres_, published by

Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1817 in connection with an essay on the Basque

language. Ushered into the world by so distinguished a linguist, it was

eagerly welcomed by German _savants_, and regarded as a precious memorial

of past ages. M. von Humboldt took it from the MSS. of a Spaniard

employed in 1590 to explore the archives of Simancas and Biscay. He

pretended to have found it written on an old, worm-eaten parchment, as

well it might be if done soon after the invasion of the country by the

Romans. We wonder he did not also find the history of the conquest of

Cantabria in five books composed by the Emperor Augustus himself, said to

have been in existence in the XVIIth century!

The _Chant d’Altabisçar_ is said to have been discovered by M. La Tour

d’Auvergne in an old convent at St. Sebastian, in 1821, written on

parchment in characters of the XIIIth or XIVth century. It is unfortunate

so valuable a MS., like the original poems of Ossian, should have been

lost! The contents, however, were preserved and published in 1835,

and, though now considered spurious, merit a certain attention because

formerly regarded as genuine by such men as Victor Hugo, who, in his

_Légende des Siècles_, speaks of Charlemagne as “plein de douleur” to

think

“Qu’on fera des chansons dans toutes ces montagnes

Sur ses guerriers tombés devant des paysans,

Et qu’on en parlera plus que quatre cents ans!”

M. Olivier, in his _Dictionnaire de la Conversation_, enthusiastically

exclaims: “What shall I say of the Basque chants, and where did this

people, on their inaccessible heights, obtain such boldness of rhythm

and intonation? Every Basque air I know is grand and decided in tone,

but none more strikingly so than the national chant of the Escualdunacs,

as they call themselves in their language. And yet this fine poem has

for some of its lines only the cardinal numbers up to twenty, and then

repeated in reverse order. Often, while listening to the pure, fresh

melody of this air, I have wondered what meaning was concealed beneath

these singular lines. From one hypothesis to another I have gone back

to the time when the Vascon race, hedged in at the foot of the Pyrenees

by the Celtic invaders, sought refuge among the inaccessible mountains.

Then, it seemed to me, this _Chant_ was composed as a war-song in which,

after recounting, one by one, their years of exile, they numbered

with the same regularity, but in a contrary direction, their deeds of

vengeance!”

Such is the power of imagination. It is the

“Père Tournamine

Qui croit tout ce qu’il s’imagine.”

Let us give the literal translation of the lines in which M. Olivier

finds such an expression of sublime vengeance:

“They come! they come! What a forest of lances!

With many-colored banners floating in the midst.

How the lightning flashes from their arms!

How many are there? Boy, count them well!

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten,

eleven, twelve,

Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen,

twenty.

…

They fly! they fly! Where, then, is the forest of lances?

Where the many-colored banners floating in the midst?

The lightning no longer flashes from their blood-stained arms.

How many left? Boy, count them well!

Twenty, nineteen, eighteen, seventeen, sixteen, fifteen, fourteen,

thirteen,

Twelve, eleven, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three,

two, one.”

The first book in the Basque language was printed in the XVIth century,

in the same year Rabelais published his _Pantagruel_, in which he makes

Panurge ask in the Basque language for an _erremedio_ against poverty,

that he might escape the penalty of Adam which brought sweat to his

brow--a question many are still asking in far more intelligible language.

The most ancient specimens of genuine Basque literature show what changes

the language has undergone within four or five centuries, which is a

proof against the authenticity of these _Chants_. M. Bladé, a French

critic, says his butter-man readily translated every word of the _Chant

des Cantabres_, so admired by the Baron von Humboldt. Fortunately, it is

not needed to prove the valor of the Cantabrians when their country was

invaded by the Romans, nor that of _Altabisçar_ to show the part they

took in Roncesvalles’ fearful fight.

THE ETERNAL YEARS.

BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE DIVINE SEQUENCE.”

“Tranquil Hope still trims her lamp

At the Eternal Years.”--_Faber._

CHAPTER I.

OUR IMPRESSIONS.

It is probable that most of us have been, at some time in our

intellectual and spiritual life, conscious of a divergence between our

mental impressions and our received belief respecting the nature and

characteristics of the divine Being. Outside the closed-in boundaries of

our faith there has been, as it were, a margin of waste land which we

seldom explore, but the undefined, uncultivated products of which flit

athwart our imagination with something like an uncomfortable misgiving.

We do not go far into it, because we have our certain landmarks to stand

by; and while the sun of faith shines bright on these, we can say to

ourselves that we have nothing really to do with the sort of fog-land

which surrounds our own happy enclosure. Our allotment is one of peace

within the true fold of the church.

We know where we are; we know what we have got to do; and we refuse to

be seriously troubled by the dubious questions which may possibly never

disturb us, unless we deliberately turn to them.

To us, as Catholics, this is a safe resolve. We know the Church cannot

err. We believe, and are ready, absolutely and unreservedly ready,

to believe, all she puts before us as claiming our belief. And this

is no childish superstition. It is no unmanly laying down of our

inalienable right to know good from evil; it is no wilful deafness

or deliberate closing of our eyes. It is the absolutely necessary

and perfectly inevitable result of the one primary foundation of all

our belief--namely, that the church is the organ of the Holy Ghost,

the infallible utterance of an infallible voice, which voice is none

other and no less than the voice of God, speaking through and by the

divinely-instituted kingdom which comprises the church of God. With

this once firmly fixed in our hearts and intellects, nothing, can

disturb us. Even supposing something to be defined by the church for

which we were unprepared--as was the case with some on the definition

of the Infallibility of the Sovereign Pontiff--still these surprises,

if surprises they be, can be no otherwise than sweet and welcome. To

us there cannot be a jarring note in that voice which is the voice

of the Holy Ghost. The trumpet cannot give a false sound. It is our

fault--either intellectually our fault (which is rather a misfortune

than a fault) or spiritually (which is from our negligence and

lukewarmness)--if the blast of that trumpet painfully startle us from

our slumbers. To all who are waking and watching the sound can only be

cheering and encouraging. The good soldier is ever ready to hear it and

prompt to obey. The slumberer is among those to whom our Lord says: “You

know how to discern the face of the sky, and can you not know the signs

of the times?”[242]

He evidently expects us to know the signs of the times. The Lord is not

in the strong wind, nor is he in the earthquake or the fire. He is in

the gentle air.[243] But the wind and the earthquake and the fire are

his precursors, and those who have experienced, and heard, and witnessed

these warnings should be all attention for the softer sound which is the

utterance of the divine Voice in the church.

There should be no surprise save the surprise of a great joy, the

admiring astonishment of finding out how good our God is, and what

marvellous treasures of things new and old our great mother, the

church, lays before us from time to time, as the Spirit of God moves

over the ocean of divine love, as it were incubating the creations of

the world of grace. We lie down in our certainty as the infant lies

down in its mother’s lap, and we rise on the wings of hope and faith

as the lark rises in the morning light, without the shadow of a doubt

that the lambient air will uphold the little fluttering wings with

which it carries its joyous song to the gates of heaven. Underneath us

are the “everlasting arms,”[244] and therefore we “dwell in safety and

alone”--alone as regards those outside the church, who cannot understand

our security, because they have never grasped the idea that, the voice

of the church being the voice of the third Person of the ever-blessed

Trinity to doubt the church is the same as to say that God is a liar.

If we have dwelt thus at length upon our certitude, and upon the

intellectual and spiritual repose it gives us, we have done so for the

purpose of making it absolutely impossible for our readers to suppose

that when we speak of a divergence between some of our mental impressions

and our received belief, we are in any degree insinuating that we have

not got all we require in the absolute and definite teaching of the

church; or that we have any cause to feel troubled about any question

which the church has left as an open question, and respecting which any

one of us individually may have been unable to arrive at a conclusion.

All we mean is this: that there are certain feelings, impressions, and

imaginings which we find it hard to silence and extinguish, difficult to

classify in accordance with our substantial belief, and which hang about

us like a sail on the mast of a vessel which the unwary crew have left

flapping in a dangerous gale.

The points in question may be various as the minds that contemplate them.

They may embrace a variety of subjects, and may assume different shapes

and aspects, according to the external circumstances under which they

present themselves, or to the color of our own thoughts and feelings at

the moment they are before us. Their field is so vast and their possible

variety so great that it would be vain for us to attempt to give even

a glance at them all. Indeed, the doing so is beyond our capacity, and

would be beyond the capacity of any one man. For who shall tell what is

fermenting in the thoughts of one even of his fellow-beings? He can

merely guess blindly at the souls of others from having dwelt in the

depths of his own, and knowing, as the one great fact, that all men are

brothers.

We are far, therefore, from intending to take up all the possible

questions not hedged in and limited and defined by dogmatic teaching,

or to try and help others to come to a conclusion on each. We might as

well attempt to count the sands of the sea-shore. All we are proposing

to ourselves for our own consolation, and, if possible, for that of our

readers, is to lay hold of certain facts which will give a clew to other

less certain facts, and, in short--if we may be allowed to resort to a

chemical term--to indicate certain solvents which will hold in solution

the little pebbles that lie in our path, and which might grow into great

stumbling-blocks had we not a strong dissolving power always at our

command.

It is self-evident that there is one knowledge which contains all other

knowledge, and that is the knowledge of God. As all things flow from

him, therefore all things are in him; and if we could see or know him,

we should know all the rest. That knowledge, that seeing, is the “light

of glory.” Its perfection is only compatible with the Beatific Vision,

which vision is impossible to mere man in his condition of _viator_, or

pilgrim.[245] It is the conclusion of faith just as broad noon is the

termination of darkness. But as faith is the leading up to the Beatific

Vision, to the light of glory, and to the knowledge of all things,

therefore in its degree is it the best substitute for sight--the dawning

of a more perfect day, and the beginning of knowledge. Consequently,

“faith is the evidence of things that appear not.” And as it is some of

the things “that appear not” which are puzzling and bewildering many of

us, let us lay hold of our faith and go whither it shall lead us.

We can in this life only know God mediately and obscurely by reason and

faith. But as the direct and clear intuition of God in the Beatific

Vision will include the knowledge of all else, so even our present

imperfect knowledge of him comprises in a certain sense all other and

lesser science, and is necessary to the highest knowledge of created

things.

To do this thoroughly we will investigate the occasional divergence

between our mental impressions, as we sometimes experience them, and our

received belief of the Divine Nature and characteristics.

In a burst of holy exultation S. Paul asks, “Who hath known the mind of

the Lord?”[246]--not as though regretting his ignorance, but rather with

the feelings of one who, having suddenly come upon an evidently priceless

treasure, exclaims, Who can tell what wealth now lies before us?

Yes, indeed! we know him well while we know him but imperfectly. There

is more to know than we can guess at, but our hearts are too narrow to

hold it. And yet sometimes how full to overflowing has that knowledge

seemed! Have we not followed him from the cradle to the grave, in that

sweet brotherhood which he has established with each one of us? Have

we not lost ourselves in far-reaching thoughts of how, and where he was

when his brotherhood with us was not an accomplished fact, but only an

ever-enduring divine intention co-equal with his own eternal existence--a

phase of that very existence, for ever present to the Divine Idea, though

not yet subjected to the conditions of time? We have thought of him as

in the bosom of the Father in a way in which, wonderful to relate, he

never can be again in the bosom of the Father. A something has passed in

respect to the existence of God himself, and actually made a difference

in the extrinsic relations of the divine Being.

There was an eternity in which the Son of God--he whom we most seem to

know of the three Persons of the ever-blessed Trinity--dwelt in the bosom

of the Father unconnected with his sacred humanity. There was an eternity

when his name was not Jesus, when he was the Son of God only, and not the

Son of man.

We are expressing what everybody knows who is a Christian--a platitude

almost, and yet so full of wonder that, unless we have thoroughly gone

into it and sifted it, we have not ransacked half the riches of what we

can and may know of the “mind of the Lord.”

In truth, we are very apt to be repelled by this contemplation. There is

something dreary to us in the eternity when the Brother of our race and

the Spouse of our souls was only the everlasting Begotten of the Father,

dwelling in that inscrutable eternity to which we, as the creatures of

time, seem to have no link. Our thoughts and imaginations are shackled

by the conditions of our own being. Yesterday we were not. And so all

before yesterday seems like a blank to us. To-morrow we know will be--if

not for us in this identical state, yet certainly for us in some other

state. But that dim yesterday, which never began and of which no history

can be written, no details given, only the great, grand, inarticulated

statement made that the QUI EST, the “I am,” filled it--this appalls

us. Can nothing be done to mitigate this stupendous though beautiful

horror? Is there no corner into which our insignificance can creep, that

so we may look out upon those unknown depths without feeling that we

are plunging into a fathomless ocean, there to sink in blank darkness

and inanition? Surely the God of the past (as from our point of view we

reckon the past) should not be so appallingly unknown to us who have

our beloved Jesus in the present, and who look forward to the Beatific

Vision of the whole blessed Trinity with trembling hope in the future.

But before we can in any degree overcome the stupor with which we think

of the backward-flowing ages of eternity, we must endeavor more fully to

realize the nature of time.

We are all apt to speak of time as a period; whereas it is more properly

a state.

The generality of persons, in thinking of time in relation to eternity,

represent to themselves a long, long ago, blind past, and then an

interminable but partially appreciable future, and time lying as a sort

of sliced-out period between the two, which slice is attached to the

eternity behind and the eternity in front, and about which we have the

comfort and satisfaction of being able to write history and chronicle

events, either on a large or a small scale. We treat it as we should do a

mountain of gold, which we coin into money, and we conveniently cut it up

into ages, years, months, days, and hours. It is our nature so to do, and

we cannot do otherwise. It is the condition of our being. But as it will

not be always the condition of our being, there are few things we are

more constantly exhorted to than the attempt to raise our imagination,

or rather our faith, as much as possible out of these conventional and

arbitrary trammels, and dispose ourselves for that other state which is

our ultimate end, and where there are no years and no days.

In point of fact, time is only an imperfection of our being--an

absolutely necessary imperfection, because our being is finite, and

our state is a probationary state; and probation implies not only that

succession which is necessary in every finite being, but change and

movement in respect to things which are permanent in a more perfect

state. Our condition in time has not inaptly been compared to that of a

man looking through the small aperture of a camera-obscura, which only

permits him to behold a section of what is passing. The figures appear

and vanish. But the window is thrown wide open in eternity, and he sees

the whole at once. He is, therefore, under a disadvantage so long as he

is in the camera-obscura, viewing the landscape through a small hole.

And this is our position, judging of eternity through the aperture of

time. Even now we have a wonderful power of adding to our time, or of

shortening it, without any reference to clocks or sun-dials, and which,

if we think about it, will help to show us that time is a plastic

accident of our being.

When we have been very much absorbed, we have taken no note of time,

and the hours have flown like minutes. During that interval we have,

as it were, made our own time, and modified our condition with

reference to time by our own act. Time, therefore, is plastic. Were we

by some extraordinary and exceptional power to accomplish in one day

all that actually we now take a year to effect, but at the same time

intellectually to retain our present perception of the succession of

events, our life would not really have been shorter for the want of

those three hundred and sixty-four days which we had been able to do

without. Life is shorter now than it was in the days of the patriarchs.

But possibly the perception of life is not shortened. Nay, rather,

from the rapidity with which events are now permitted to succeed each

other, partially owing to the progress of science and to man’s increased

dominion over material force, the probability is that our lives are not

abstractedly much, if at all, more brief than Adam’s nine hundred and

thirty years. All things now are hastening to the end. They have always

been hastening. But there is the added impetus of the past; and that

increases with every age in the world’s history.

Now, let us imagine life, or a portion of life, without thought--that is,

without the act of thinking. Immediately we find that it is next door

to _no thing_, to no time, and no life. We can only measure life with

any accuracy by the amount of thought which has filled it--that is, by

the quantity of our intellectual and spiritual power which we have been

able to bring to the small aperture in the camera-obscura, by which to

contemplate the ever-flowing eternity which lies beyond, and cut it up

into the sections we call time.

Another example will show us how plastic is the nature of time. Take

the life of an animal. We are inclined to give the largest reasonable

and possible importance to the brute creation. It is an open question,

in which we see great seeds of future development, all tending to

increased glory to the Creator and to further elucidation of creative

love. Nevertheless, it is obvious that brutes perceive only or chiefly

by moments. There is, as compared with ourselves, little or no sequence

in their perceptions. There is no cumulative knowledge. They are without

deliberate reflection, even where they are not without perception of

relations and circumstances, past or future. Consequently, they are more

rigorously subjects to time than ourselves. Therefore, when we deprive

an animal of life, we deprive him of a remainder of time that is equal

to little more than no time, in proportion to the degree in which his

power of filling time with perception is less than our own.[247] All

we have said tends to prove that the existence of time is a relative

existence; it is the form or phase of our own finite being. It is an

aspect of eternity--the aspect which is consistent with our present

condition. For time is the measure of successive existence in created

and finite beings. As finite spirits we cannot escape from this limit of

successive existence, any more than a body can escape from the limit of

locality and finite movement in grace. Eternal existence is the entire

possession of life, which is illimitable, in such a perfect manner that

all succession in duration is excluded. This is possible only in God

himself, who is alone most pure and perfect act, and therefore is at once

all he can be, without change or movement. But the created spirit must

ever live by a perpetual movement of increase in its duration, because it

is on every side finite. Time, therefore, will continue to exist while

creatures continue to exist.

Having arrived at this conclusion we cannot refuse ourselves the

satisfaction of pointing out one obvious deduction--namely, that if

time has, in itself, only a relative existence, it is impossible it can

ever put an end to the existence of anything else. It is inconceivable

that the _non est_ can absorb, exterminate, annihilate, or obliterate

any one single thing that has ever had one second of real existence,

of permitted being, of sentient, or even of insentient, life. God can

annihilate, if he so will (and we do not think he will), but time

cannot. Time can hide and put away. It can slip between us and the only

reality, which is eternity; that is the condition of God, the QUI EST.

Wait awhile, and time will have, as it were, spread or overflowed into

eternity. It will hide nothing from our view. It will be “rent in two

from the top to the bottom,” from the beginning to the end, like the

veil of the Temple, which is its symbol. And then will appear all that

it has hitherto seemed, but only seemed, to distinguish. We shall find

it all in the inner recesses of eternity. What cause, in point of fact,

have we for supposing that anything which _is_ shall cease to exist?

Why, because we no longer behold certain objects, do we imagine them to

be really lost for ever? Is this a reasonable supposition on the part

of beings who are conscious that once they themselves were not, and yet

believe that they always shall be? Why should the mere diversity in other

existences make us apprehend that the missing is also the lost, and that

we have any substantial cause for doubting that all which exists will

go on existing? Do we anywhere see symptoms of annihilation? It is true

we see endless mutations, but those very mutations are a guarantee to

us of the continuousness of being. All material things change: but they

only change. They do not ever in any case go out and cease to be. If

this be true of merely material things, how absolutely true must it be

of the immaterial; and how more than probable of that which is partly

one and partly the other, of that far lower nature of the brutes, which

have a principle of life in them inferior to ours and superior to the

plants, and of which, since we do not believe their sensations to be the

result of certain fortuitous atoms that have fashioned themselves blindly

after an inexorable law, and independently of an intelligent Lawgiver,

we may reasonably predicate that they too will have a future and, in

its proper inferior order, an advanced existence. Everywhere there is

growth--through the phases of time into the portals of eternity.

The idea in the eternal Mind, of all essences, the least as well as the

greatest, was, like the Mind that held it, eternal--that is, exempt

from all limit of succession. The past, present, and future are the

progressive modes of existence and of our own perceptions rather than

the properties of the essences themselves. Those essences had a place in

the Eternal Idea; they occupy an actual place as an actual existence in

the phases of time, and they go on in all probability--may we not say

in all certainty?--in the endlessness of the Creator’s intention. Let

no one misunderstand this as implying that matter was eternal in any

other sense than its essence being an object of the idea of the eternal

God, it was always clearly present to the eternal Mind. Its actuality,

as we know it, dates from this creation of the crude, chaotic mass.

But once formed, and then fashioned, and finally animated, we can have

no pretence for supposing that any part of it will ever cease to be.

Nor can we have any solid reason for supposing that what has once been

endowed with sentient life will ever be condemned to fall back into the

all but infinitely lower form of mere organic matter, any more than we

have reason to suppose that at some future period organic matter will

be reduced to inorganic matter, and that out of this beautiful creation

it will please God to resolve chaos back again, either the whole or in

any one the smallest part. We have nothing to do with the difficulties

of the question. They are difficulties entirely of detail, and not of

principle; and they concern us no more than it concerns us to be able

to state how many animalcula it took to heave up the vast sierras of

the western hemisphere. The details may well puzzle us, and we cannot

venture on the merest suggestion. But the principle is full of hope,

joy, and security, which in itself is a presumption in its favor. If we

would but believe how God values the work of his own hands; if we would

but try to realize how intense is creative love, what much larger and

deeper views we should have of the future of all creation, and of the

glory that is prepared for us! Even the old heathen religions began by

taking larger and more accurate measure of these questions (though they

necessarily ended in error) than too many of us do with all the light of

the Gospel thrown upon them. The animism of the heathens, which makes no

distinction between animate and inanimate existence, but lends a soul

to each alike, had in it a sort of loving and hopeful reverence for

creation which is often wanting to us who alone truly know the Creator.

In their blind groping after faith it led them to fetichism, and further

on, as a fuller development of the same notion, to pantheism, and then

to the ever-renewed and quite endless incarnations of Buddha. But these

errors took their rise originally from a respectful and tender love of

that beautiful though awful nature which man found lying all around him;

external to himself, yet linked to himself, and beneath the folds of

which he hoped to find the hidden deity.

If these reflections have at all enabled us to understand the nature

of time, and to shake off some of the unreasonable importance we lend

to it in our imaginations--making of it a sort of lesser rival to

eternity, fashioning it into an actual, existing thing, as if it were an

attribute of God himself, instead of being, what it is, a state or phase

imposed upon us, and not in any way affecting him--we shall have done

much to facilitate the considerations we wish to enlarge upon. Eternity

is “perpetually instantaneous.” It is the _nunc stans_ of theology.

Time, on the contrary, is the past, present, and future of our human

condition--the _nunc fluens_ of theology.