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{i}
The Catholic World.
Monthly Magazine
Of General Literature And Science.
----------
Vol. IX.
April, 1869, To September, 1869.
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New York:
The Catholic Publication House,
126 Nassau Street.
1869.
{ii}
S. W. Green, Printer,
16 and 18 Jacob St., N. Y.
{iii}
Contents.
Aubrey de Vere in America, 264.
A Chinese Husband's Lament for his Wife, 279.
Angela, 634, 756.
Antiquities of New York, 652.
All for the Faith, 684.
Bishops of Rome, 86.
Beethoven, 523, 607, 783.
Catholic and Protestant Countries, Morality of, 52.
Catholicity and Pantheism, 255, 554.
Chinese Husband's Lament for his Wife, 279.
Council of the Vatican, The Approaching, 356.
Columbus at Salamanca, 433.
Council of Baltimore, The Second Plenary, 497.
Church, Our Established, 577.
Charms of Nativity, 660.
Conversion of Rome, The, 790.
Daybreak, 37, 157, 303, 442, 588, 721.
Duration of Life, Influence of Locality on, 73.
De Vere, Aubrey, in America, 264.
Dongan, Hon. Thomas, 767.
Emily Linder, 98, 221.
Educational Question, The, 121.
Filial Affection, as Practised by the Chinese, 416.
Foreign Literary Notes, 429, 711.
Faith, All for the, 684.
General Council, The Approaching, 14.
Good Old Saxon, 318.
Heremore Brandon, 63, 188.
Ireland, Modern Street Ballads of, 32.
Irish Church Act of 1869, The, 238.
Immigration, The Philosophy of, 399.
Ireland, A Glimpse of, 738.
Jewish Church, Letter and Spirit in the, 690.
Linder, Emily, 98, 221.
Lecky on Morals, 529.
Letter and Spirit in the Jewish Church, 690.
Leo X. and his Age, 699.
Little Flowers of Spain, 706.
Morality of Catholic and Protestant Countries, 52.
My Mother's Only Son, 249.
Man, Primeval, 746.
Moral Aspects of Romanism, 845.
Matanzas, How it came to be called Matanzas, 852.
New-York, Antiquities of, 652.
Nativity, The Charms of, 660.
Omnibus, The, Two Hundred Years Ago, 135.
Our Established Church, 577.
Pope Joan, Fable of, 1.
Problems of the Age and its Critics, 175.
Pope or People, 212.
Physical Basis of Life, The, 467.
Primeval Man, 746.
Paganina, 803.
Rome, The Bishops of, 86.
Ravignan, Xavier de, 112.
Ruined Life, A, 385.
Roses, The Geography of, 406.
Religion Emblemed in Flowers, 541.
Rome, Conversion of, 790.
Recent Scientific Discoveries, 814.
Spain, Two Months in, 199, 343, 477, 675.
Spiritism and Spirits, 289.
Supernatural, The, 325.
St. Mary's, 366.
St. Peter, First Bishop of Rome, 374.
Spanish Life and Character, 413.
Sauntering, 459, 612.
Sister Aloyse's Bequest, 489.
St. Thomas, The Legend of, 512.
Spiritualism and Materialism, 619.
Spain, Little Flowers of, 706.
Scientific Discoveries, Recent, 814.
St. Oren's Priory, 829.
The Woman Question, 145.
The Omnibus Two Hundred Years Ago, 135.
To those who tell us what Time it is, 565.
The New Englander on the Moral Aspects of Romanism, 845.
Woman Question, The, 145.
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{iv}
Poetry
A May Flower, 282.
A May Carol, 373.
Faith, 540.
Lent, 1869, 31.
March Omens, 97.
May Flower, 282.
May Carol, 373.
Mark IV., 587.
Mother's Prayer, A, 673.
Our Lady's Easter, 197.
Sick, 852.
To a Favorite Madonna, 564.
The Pearl and the Poison, 710.
The Flight into Egypt, 766.
The Assumption of Our Lady, 789.
Vigil, 405.
When, 72.
Waiting, 323.
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New Publications.
Allies's Formation of Christendom, 283.
Anne Séverin, 286.
Auerbach's Black Forest, 424.
Ark of the Covenant, The, 427.
Ark of Elm Island, 428.
Alice's Adventures in Wonder Land, 429.
Alice Murray, 570.
Appleton's Annual Cyclopaedia, 719.
An American Woman in Europe, 856.
A German Reader, 859.
Brickmose's Travels, 140.
Bacon's False and True Definitions of Faith, 422.
Banim's Life and Works, 716.
Costello, John M., 143.
Conyngham's Irish Brigade, 720.
Cantarium Romanum, etc., 856.
Dublin Review, The, 426.
Dolby's Church Embroidery and Vestments, 427.
Dotty Dimple Stories, 428.
Die Alte und Neue Welt. 575.
Die Jenseitige Welt, 715.
Divorce, Essay on, 860.
Eudoxia, 286.
Free Masons, The, 426.
Fernecliffe, 428.
Fénélon's Conversations with de Ramsai, 573.
Glimpses of Pleasant Homes, 423.
Hewit's Medical Profession and the Educated Classes, 423.
Herbert's, Lady, Love; or, Self-Sacrifice, 574.
Heat, The Laws of, 576.
Habermeister, The, 719.
Juliette, 429.
Life and Works of AEngussius, 141.
Little Women, 576.
Lover's Poetical Works, 859.
McSherry's Essays, 142.
Montarges Legacy, 286.
McClure's Poems, 288.
Manual of General History, 288.
Martineau's Biographical Sketches, 425.
Müller's Chips from a German Workshop, 571.
Mental Photographs, 576.
Mother Margaret M. Hallahan, Life of, 714.
Meditations on the Suffering of our Lord Jesus Christ, 856.
Nature and Grace, 574.
Notre Dame, Silver Jubilee of, 858.
Nora Brady's Vow, 859.
Oxenham on the Atonement, 568.
Pastoral of the Archbishop of Baltimore, 571,
Problematic Characters, 717.
Reminiscences of Mendelssohn, 428.
Report on Gun-shot Wounds, 857.
Sunday-School Class-Book, 287.
Studious Women, 287.
Salt-Water Dick, 428.
Sogarth Aroon, 719.
Service Manual, Military, 857.
Thunder and Lightning, 284.
Twelve Nights in a Hunter's Camp, 427.
Taine's Italy, Florence, etc., 574.
The Fisher Maiden, 576.
The Two Schools, 859.
The Irish Widow's Son, 860.
Veith's Instruments of the Passion, 141.
Wonders of Optics, The, 284.
Why Men do not Believe, 284.
Wiseman's Meditations, 421.
Winifred, 575.
Warwick, 716.
Walter Savage Landor, 718.
Wandering Recollections of a Busy Life, 718.
Way of Salvation, The, 859.
Young Christian's Library, 719.
----------
{1}
The Catholic World.
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Vol. IX., No. 49. April, 1869.
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The Fable Of Pope Joan.
"But avoid foolish and old wives' fables."--I Tim. iv. 7.
Every one is more or less familiar with the story of a female
pope, which runs thus: Pope Leo IV. died in 855, and in the
catalogue of Popes Benedict III. appears as his successor. This,
claim the Joan story-tellers, is incorrect; for between Leo and
Benedict the papal throne was for more than two years occupied by
a woman. Her name is not permitted to appear in the list of
popes, for the reason that historians devoted to the interests of
the church desired to throw the veil of oblivion over so
sacrilegious a scandal, and here, say they, is the true account
of the affair.
On the death of Leo IV. the clergy and people of Rome met to
elect his successor, and they chose a young priest, a comparative
stranger in Rome, who during his short residence there had
acquired an immense reputation for learning and virtue, and who,
on becoming pope, assumed the name of John VII., or, according to
some, John VIII. [Footnote 1]
[Footnote 1: And it was the most convenient one to take.
Before 855 there were seven popes named John, and at the
period when the story began to spread there had been
twenty-one.]
Now, the pope so elected was, in fact, a woman, the daughter of
an English couple travelling in Germany. She was born in Fulda,
where she grew up and was well educated. Disguised as a man, she
entered the monastery at Fulda, where she remained undiscovered
for years, and from which she eventually eloped with a monk. They
fled to England, thence to France and Italy, and finally to
Greece. They were both profoundly versed in all the science of
the day, and went to Athens to study the literature and language
of that country. Here the monk died. Giovanna (her name was also
Gilberta or Agnes, according to the fancy of the writer)
[Footnote 2] then left Athens and went to Rome, where her
reputation for learning and the fame of her virtue soon spread.
[Footnote 2: Her maiden name was for the first time given at
end of 14th century. It was then Agnes.]
She gave public lectures and disputations, to which she attracted
immense crowds of hearers, all delighted with her exemplary piety
and astonished at her matchless learning.
{2}
All the students of Rome, and even professors, flocked to hear
her. On the death of Leo, she was elected pope by the clergy and
people of Rome from among many men preëminent for their learning
and virtue. After governing with great wisdom for more than two
years--there being not the slightest suspicion of her sex--she
left the Vatican on a certain festival at the head of the clergy,
to walk in procession to the Lateran; but on the way was seized
with the pains of labor, and in the open street, amid the
astounded bishops and clergy and surrounding concourse of people,
then and there gave birth to a child--and died. After this
occurrence, it was determined that the pontiff in procession
should never pass that desecrated street, and a statue was placed
on the spot to perpetuate the infamy of the fact, and a certain
ceremony, minutely described, was ordained to be observed at the
consecration of all future popes, in order to prevent the
possibility of any similar scandal.
Of course there are numerous versions of the narrative,
infinitely varied in every detail, as is apt to be the case with
any story starting from no place or person in particular and
contributed to by everybody in general.
As told, this incident is supposed to fill every polemical
Protestant with delight, and to fill convicted Catholics with
what Carlyle calls "astonishment and unknown pangs."
Now, granting every tittle of the story as related to be true, we
see no good reason for delight on one side nor pangs on the
other. We repeat, conceding its entire truth, there is nothing in
the story that necessarily entails injury or disgrace on the
Catholic Church. Why should it? Catholic morality and doctrine do
not depend upon the personal qualities of popes. In this case,
supposing the story true, who was elected pope? A man--as all
concerned honestly believed--of acknowledged learning and virtue.
There was no intrigue, no improper influence; and those who
elected him had no share in the imposture, but were the victims,
not the participators, of the deceit practised. The cunning and
the imposture were all hers, and her crime consisted, not in
being delivered in the streets, but in not having lived chastely.
True, it was a scandalous accident; but the scandal could not add
to the original immorality of which, in all the world, but two
persons were guilty, and guilty in secret--for there is no
pretence, in all the versions, that the outward life of the
pretended she-pope was otherwise than blameless and even
edifying. Those who elected her were totally ignorant of her
sex--an ignorance entirely excusable--an error of fact brought
about by artful imposture. To their honor be it said, that they
recognized in their choice the sole merits of piety and learning,
and wished to reward them.
But a female pope was once the head of the church! Dreadful
reproach to come from those who call themselves Reformed,
Evangelical, and Puritans, who have not only tolerated but
established, nay, and even forced some queens and princesses to
declare themselves Head of the Church or Defender of the Faith in
their own dominions, and dispose--as one of them does to this
day--of church dignities and benefices, and order other matters
ecclesiastical according to their personal will and pleasure.
Let us now look into the story and examine the testimony on which
it is founded. The popess is said to have reigned two years and
more. Rome was then the greatest city and the very centre of the
civilized world, and always full of strangers from all parts of
the earth.
{3}
The catastrophe of the discovery brought about by the street
delivery took place under the eyes of a vast multitude of people,
and must have been known on the same day to the entire city
before the sun had set. An event so strange, so romantic, so
astounding, so scandalous, concerning the most exalted personage
in the world, must surely have been written about or chronicled
by the Italians who were there, and reported by letter or word of
mouth by foreigners to their friends at home, and found its way
from a thousand sources into the writings of the time; for it
must be remembered the pope, of all living men, was of especial
interest to the class who at that period were in the habit of
writing. Such testimony as this, being the evidence of
eye-witnesses, would be the highest testimony, and would settle
the fact beyond dispute. Where is it? Silence profound is our
only answer. Nothing of the kind is on the record of that period.
Ah! then in that case we must suppose the matter to have been
temporarily hushed up, and we will consent to receive accounts
written ten, twenty--well, we'll not haggle about a score or
two--or even fifty years later. Silence again! Not a scrap, not a
solitary line can be found.
And so we travel through all the history which learning and
industry have been able to rescue from the re-cords of the past
down to the end of the ninth century, and find the same unbroken
silence.
We must then go to the tenth century, where the murder will
surely out. Silence again, deep and profound, through all the
long years from 900 to 1000, and all is blank as before!
And now we again go on beyond another half-century, still void of
all mention of Pope Joan, until we reach the year 1058, just two
hundred and three years after the assigned Joanide.
In that year a monk, Marianus Scotus, of the monastery of Fulda,
commenced a universal chronicle, which was terminated in 1083.
Somewhere between these dates, in recording the events of 855, he
is said to have written: "Leo the Pope died on the 1st of August.
To him succeeded John, who was a woman, and sat for two years,
five months, and four days." Only this and nothing more. Not a
word of her age, origin, qualities, or circumstances of her
death. So far it is not much of a story; but little by little,
link by link, line by line, like unto the veridical and melodious
narrative of _The House that Jack built_, we'll contrive to
make a good story of it yet. The statement first appears in
Marianus. So much is certain. For during the seventeenth century,
when the Joan controversy raged, and cartloads of books and
pamphlets were written on the subject--a mere list of the titles
of which would exceed the limits of this article--every library
and collection in Europe was ransacked with the furious industry
of which a polemic writer is alone capable, for every--even the
smallest--fragment or thread connected with this subject.
Nevertheless, this ransacking was neither so thorough nor so
successful as during the present century; for, as the learned
Döllinger states, "it is only within forty years that all the
European collections of mediaeval MSS. have been investigated
with unprecedented care, every library, nook, and corner
thoroughly searched, and a surprising quantity of hitherto
unknown historical documents brought to light."
Comparing the so-called statement of Marianus with the latest
sensational and circumstantial relation, it is plain that the
story did not, like Minerva, spring full-armed into life, but
that it is the result of a long and gradual growth, fostered by
the genius of a long series of inventive chroniclers.
{4}
But where did the monk of Fulda get the story? Ah! here is an
interesting episode. His chronicle was first printed at Basle
(1559) from the text known as the Latomus MS. Its editor was John
Herold, a Calvinist of note, who, in printing the pas-sage in
question, quietly left out the words of the original, "_ut
asseritur_"--that is to say, "as report goes," or "believe it
who will"--thus changing the chronicler's hearsay to a direct and
positive assertion.
But the testimony of the Marianus chronicle comes to still
greater grief, And here a word of explanation. The Original MS.
Of Marianus is not known to exist, but we have numerous copies of
it, the respective ages of which are well ascertained. Döllinger
mentions two of them well known in Germany to be the oldest in
existence, in which not a word concerning the popess can be
found. The copy in which it is found is of 1513, and the
explanation as to its appearance there is simple. The passage in
question was doubtless put in the margin by some reader or
copyist, and by some later copyist inserted in the text, And so
we return to the original dark silence in which we started.
A feeble attempt was made to claim that Sigbert of Gembloux, who
died in 1113, had recorded the story; but it was triumphantly
demonstrated that it was first added to his chronicle in an
edition of 1513. The same attempt was made with Gottfried's
_Pantheon_ and the chronicle of Otto von Freysingen, and
also lamentably failed. In 1261, there died a certain Stephen of
Bourbon, a French Dominican, who left a work in which he speaks
of the popess, and says he got the statement from a chronicle
which must have been that of Jean de Mailly, a brother Dominican.
To the year 1240 or 1250 may then be assigned, on the highest
authority, the period when the Joan story first made its
appearance in writing and in history--nearly four hundred years
after its supposed date.
In 1261, an anonymous unedited chronicle, still preserved in the
library of St. Paul at Leipsic, states that "another false pope,
name and date unknown, since she was a woman, as the Romans
confess, of great beauty and learning, who concealed her sex and
was elected pope. She became with child, and the demon in a
consistory made the fact known to all by crying aloud to the
pope:
"Papa Pater Patrum papissae pandito partum,
Et tibi tunc edam de corpore quando recedam."
Some chroniclers relate it differently, namely, that the pope
undertook to exorcise a person possessed of an evil spirit, and
on demanding of the devil when he would go out from the possessed
person's body, the evil one replied in the Latin verses above
given, that is to say, "O Pope! thou father of the fathers,
declare the time of the pope's parturition, and I will then tell
you when I will go out from this body."
The demon always was a fellow who had a keen eye for the
fashions, and he appears to have indulged in alliterative Latin
poetry precisely at the period when that sort of literary
trifling was most in vogue among scholars who recreated
themselves with such lines as
"Ruderibus rejectis Rufus Festus fieri fecit;"
or
"Roma Ruet Romuli Ferro Flammaque Fameque."
{5}
A few years later, Martinus Polaccus or Polonus, Martin the
Polack, or the Pole, (Polack is now disused, Shakespeare makes
Horatio say, "_He smote the sledded Polack on the ice,_")
who died in 1278, the author of a chronicle of popes and emperors
down to 1207, says: "John of England, by nation of Mayence, sat 2
years, 5 months, and 4 days. It is said that this pope was a
woman." The chronicle of Polonus is merely a synchronistic
history of the popes and emperors in the form of dry biographical
notices. Nevertheless, from the fact that he had lived many years
in Rome and was intimate with the papal court his book had, to
use a modern phrase, an immense run. [Footnote 3]
[Footnote 3: The tradition concerning the resignation of Pope
Cyriacus was also widely spread by the same chronicle. The
story ran that Pope Cyriacus resigned the pontificate in the
year 238, and first took its rise a thousand years after that
date. It was pure fiction, and was connected with the legend
of St. Ursula and her 11,000 virgins. No such pope as
Cyriacus ever existed.]
It was translated into all the principal languages, and more
extensively copied than any chronicle then existing. The number
of copies (MS.) still in existence far exceeds that of any other
work of the kind, and this fact suggests an important reflection.
Great stress is laid by some writers on the multitude of
witnesses for Joan. But the multitude does not increase the proof
when they but repeat one another, and they suspiciously testify
in nearly the same words. "The advocates for Pope Joan," says
Gibbon, "produce one hundred and fifty witnesses, or rather
echoes, of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries.
They bear testimony against themselves and the legend by
multiplying the proof that so curious a story _must_ have
been repeated by writers of every description to whom it was
known."
The various versions that copy one another must necessarily bear
a strong family likeness. Their number can add nothing to their
value as proof, and is no more conclusive than the endeavor to
establish the doubted existence of a man by a great variety of
portraits of him, all--as Whately so well remarks in his
_Historic Doubts_--"all striking likenesses--of each
other."
In this case the most ancient testimony is posterior to the
claimed occurrence some four hundred years, and is utterly
inconsistent with the indisputable facts related by contemporary
authors. The erudite Launoy, in his treatise _De Auctoritate
Negantis Argumenti_, lays down the rule that a fact of a
public nature not mentioned by any writer within two hundred
years of its supposed occurrence is not to be believed. This is
the same Launoy who waged war on the legends of the saints,
claiming that much fabulous matter had crept into them. On this
account he was called "Dénicheur des Saints"--the Saint-hunter or
router--and the Abbé of St. Roch used to say, "I am always
profoundly polite to Launoy, for fear he will deprive me of St.
Roch." The general rule (Launoy's) so important in historical
criticism is in perfect harmony with a great and leading
principle of jurisprudence. In the Pope Joan incident the silence
of all the writers of that age as to so remarkable a circumstance
is to be fairly received as a _prerogative_ argument
(Baconian philosophy) when set up against the numerous modern
repetitions of the story. It may be taken as a general rule that
the silence of contemporaries is the strongest argument against
the truth of any given historical assertion, particularly when
the fact asserted is strange and interesting, and this for the
reason that man is ever prone to believe and recount the
marvellous; and in the absence of early evidence, the testimony
of later times is, for the same reason, only weaker.
{6}
Now this is in strict accordance with the principle of English
common law, which demands the highest and rejects hearsay and
secondary evidence; for scores of witnesses may depose in vain
that they have heard of such a fact; the eye-witness is the
prerogative instance. This is the logic of evidence.
And now we find that what happened to Marianus Scotus also befell
Polonus. He was entirely innocent of any mention of Joan! The
passage exists in none of the oldest copies, and is wanting in
all that follow the author's close and methodical plan of giving
one line to each year of a pope's reign, so that, with fifty
lines to the page as he wrote, each page covered precisely half a
century. This method is entirely broken up in those MSS. which
contain the passage concerning Joan, and the rage to get the
passage in was such that in one copy (the Heidelberg MS.)
Benedict III. is left out entirely and Joan put in his place. Dr.
Döllinger and the learned Bayle concur in the opinion that the
passage never had any existence in the original work of Polonus.
And just at this juncture the testimony of Tolomeo di Lucca
(1312) is important. He wrote an ecclesiastical history, and
names the popess with the remark that in all the histories and
chronicles known to him Benedict III. succeeded Leo IV. The
author was noted for learning and industry, and must necessarily
have consulted every available authority, and yet nowhere did he
find mention of Joan but in Polonus. In 1283, a versified
chronicle of Maerlandt (a Hollander) mentions Joan: "I am neither
clear nor certain whether it is a truth or a fable; mention of it
in chronicles of the popes is uncommon."
And now, as we advance into the fourteenth century, as
manuscripts multiply and one chronicler copies another, mention
of Joan increases; and successively and in due order, as the
malt, the rat, the cat, the dog, and all the rest appear in turn
to make perfect the nursery ditty, so the statue, the street, the
ceremony, and all the remaining features of the story come
gradually out, until we have it in full and detailed description,
and our popular papal "House that Jack built" is complete.
Then we have Geoffrey of Courlon, a Benedictine, (1295,) Bernard
Guidonis and Leo von Orvieto, both Dominicans, (1311,) John of
Paris, Dominican, (first half of fourteenth century,) and several
others, all of whom take the story from Polonus.
In 1306, we get the statue from Siegfried, who thus contributes
his quota: "At Rome, in a certain spot of the city, is still
shown her statue in pontifical dress, together with the image of
her child cut in marble in a wall." Bayle says that Thierry di
Niem (fifteenth century) "adds out of his own head" the statue.
But it appears that it was referred to twenty-three years earlier
than Siegfried by Maerlandt, the Hollander, who says that the
story as we read it is cut in stone and can be seen any day:
"En daer leget soe, als wyt lesen
Noch aleo up ten Steen ghebouween,
Dat men ano daer mag scouwen."
Amalric di Angier wrote in 1362, and adds to the story her
"teaching three years at Rome." Petrarch repeats the version of
Polonus. Boccacio also relates it, and was the first who at that
period asserted her name was not known.
Jacopo de Acqui (1370) says that she reigned nineteen years.
Aimery du Peyrat, abbot of Moissac, who compiled a chronicle in
1399, puts "Johannes Anglicus" in the list of popes with the
remark, "Some say that she was a woman."
{7}
In 1450, Martin le Franc, in his _Champion des Dames_,
expresses surprise that Providence should have permitted such a
scandal as to allow the church to be governed by a wicked woman.
"Comment endura Dieu, comment
Que femme ribaulde et prestresse
Eut l'Eglise en gouvernement?"
Hallam (_Literature of Europe_) mentions as among the most
remarkable among the Fastnacht's Spiele (carnival plays) of
Germany the apotheosis of Pope Joan, a tragic-comic legend,
written about 1480. Bouterwek, in his History of German Poetry,
also mentions it.
In 1481, "to swell the dose," as Bayle says, the stool feature of
the story first comes in.
In the Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493 (Astor Library copy) Joan is
put down as Joannes Septimus, and the page ornamented (?) with a
wood-cut of a woman with a child in her arms. It relates that she
gained the pontificate by evil arts, "malis artibus."
In the beginning of the same century there was seen a bust of
Joan among the collection of busts of the popes in the cathedral
at Sienna. And, more astonishing still, the story was related in
the _Mirabilia urbis Roma_, a sort of guide-book for
strangers and pilgrims visiting Rome, editions of which were
constantly reprinted for a period of eighty years down to 1550!
In the middle of the fifteenth century we find the story related
at full length by Felix Hammerlein, and later by John Bale, then
Bishop of Ossory, who afterward became a Protestant. He pretty
well completes the tale.
According to Tolomeo di Lucca, the Joan story in 1312 was nowhere
found but in some few copies of Polonus. Nevertheless, it is
notorious that at that time countless lists and historical tables
of popes were in existence, in none of which was there any trace
of the popess.
Suddenly we find extraordinary industry exercised in multiplying
and spreading the copies of Polonus containing the story, and in
inserting it in other chronicles that did not contain it. As the
editors of the _Histoire Littéraire e France_ aptly remark:
"Nous ne saurions nous expliquer comment il se fait que ce soit
précisëment dans les rangs de cette fidèle milice du saint-siège
que se rencontrent les propagateurs les plus naïfs, et peut-être
les inventeurs, d'une histoire si injurieuse à la papauté."
[Footnote 4]
[Footnote 4: "We cannot understand how it is that, precisely
among the ranks of the faithful soldiers of the holy see, we
find the most credulous propagators and, perhaps, inventors
of a story so injurious to the papacy."]
Dr. Döllinger answers this by stating that those who appeared to
be most active in the matter were Dominicans and Minorites,
particularly the former, (Sie waren es ja, besonders die ersten.)
This is specially to be remarked under the primacy of Boniface
VIII., who was no friend of either order. The Dominican
historians were particularly severe in their judgments on
Boniface in the matter of his difficulty with Philip the Fair,
and appear to dwell with satisfaction upon this period of the
weakened authority of the papal see.
In 1610, Alexander Cooke published in London, "_Pope Ioane, a
Dialogue Betweene a Protestant and a Papist, manifestly prouing
that a woman called Ioane was Pope of Rome: against the surmises
and objections made to the contrarie_," etc. Cooke has a
preface, "To the Popish or Catholicke reader--chuse whether name
thou hast a mind to;" which is very handsome indeed of Mr. Cooke.
{8}
The papist in the _Dialogue_ has a dreadful time of it from
one end of the book to the other, and Gregory VII. is effectually
settled by calling him "that firebrand of hell." Bayle grimly
disposes of Cooke's work thus: "It had been better for his cause
if he had kept silence."
Discussion of the story comes even down to this century. In 1843
and 1845 two works appeared in Holland: one, by Professor Kist,
to prove the existence of Joan; the other, by Professor Wensing,
to refute Kist. In 1845 was also published a very able work by
Bianchi-Giovini: _Esame critico degli atti e Documenti relativi
alla favola della Papissa Giovanna_. Di A. Bianchi-Giovini.
Milano.
It is doubtful if in all the annals of literature there exists a
more remarkable case of pure fable growing, by small and slow
degrees through several centuries, until, in the shape of a
received fact, it finally effects a lodgment in serious history.
Taking its rise no one knows where or how, full four hundred
years after the period assigned it, and stated at first in the
baldest and thinnest manner possible, it goes on from century to
century, gathering consistence, detail, and incident; requiring
three centuries for its completion, and, finally, comes out the
sensational affair we have related. All stories gain by time and
travel; scandalous stories most of all. These last are
particularly robust and long-lived. They appear to enjoy a
freedom amounting to immunity. Just as certain noxious and
foul-smelling animals frequently owe their life to the
unwillingness men have to expose themselves to such contact, so
such stories, looked upon at first as merely scandalous and too
contemptible for serious refutation, acquire, through impunity,
an importance that, in the end, makes them seriously annoying.
Then, too, well-meaning people thoughtlessly accept reports and
repeat statements that, through mere iteration, are supposed to
be well-founded. Let any one, be his or her experience ever so
small, look around and see how fully this is exemplified every
day in real life.
Moreover, there was no dearth of writers in the middle ages who
used, to the extent of license, the liberty of criticising and
blaming the papacy. By all such the Joan story was invariably put
forward by way of illustration; and they appear to have gone on
unchecked until it was found that the open enemies of the church
began to avail themselves of the scandal.
In 1451, AEneas Sylvius Piccolomini, (Pius II.,) in conference
with the Taborites of Bohemia, denied the story, and told
Nicholas, their bishop, that, "even in placing thus this woman,
there had been neither error of faith nor of right, but ignorance
of fact." Aventinus, in Germany, and Onuphrius Pauvinius, in
Italy, staggered the popularity of the story. Attention once
drawn to the subject, and investigation commenced, its weakness
was soon apparent, and testimony soon accumulated to crush it.
Ado, Archbishop of Vienne, (France,) who was at Rome in 866, has
left a chronicle in which he says that Benedict III. succeeded
immediately to Leo IV.
Prudentius, Bishop of Troyes at the same period, testifies to the
same fact.
In 855, the assigned Joanide period, there were in Rome four
individuals who afterward successively became popes, under the
names of Benedict III., Nicholas I., Adrian II., and John VIII.
During the pretended papacy of Joan these men were all either
priests or deacons, and must have taken part in her election, and
have been present at the catastrophe, Now, of all these popes
there exist many and various writings, but not a word concerning
the popess. On the contrary, they all represent Benedict III. to
have succeeded Leo IV.
{9}
Lupo, Abbot of Ferrières, in a letter to Pope Benedict, says that
he, the abbot, had been kindly received at Rome by his
predecessor, Leo IV.
In a council held at Rome, in 863, under Nicholas I., the pontiff
speaks of his predecessors Leo and Benedict.
Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims, writing to Nicholas I., says that
certain messengers sent by him to Leo IV. had been met on their
journey by news of that pontiff's death, and had, on their
arrival at Rome, found Benedict on the throne. Ten other
contemporary writers are cited who all testify to the same
immediate succession, and afford not the slightest hint of any
story or tradition that can throw the least light on that of the
female pope. "The time of Pope Joan," says Gibbon, "is placed
somewhat earlier than Theodora or Marozia; and the two years of
her imaginary reign are forcibly inserted between Leo IV. and
Benedict III. But the contemporary Anastasius indissolubly links
the death of Leo and the elevation of Benedict; and the accurate
chronology of Pagi, Muratori, and Leibnitz fixes both events to
the year 857."
But there is no smoke without fire, it is said; and the wildest
stories must have some cause, if not foundation. Let us see.
Competent critics find the story to be a satire on John VIII.
"_Ob nimiam ejus animi facilitatem et mollitudinem_" says
Baronius, particularly in the affair with Photius, by whom John
had suffered himself to be imposed upon. Photius, Patriarch of
Constantinople, was known to be a half-man, and yet so cunning to
overreach John. Therefore they said John Was a woman, and called
him Joanna, instead Of Joannes, in that tone of bitter raillery
constantly indulged in by the Roman Pasquins and Marforios, and
this raillery, naturally enough, in course of time came to be
taken for truth.
And again: Pope John X., elected in 914, was said to have been
raised by the power and influence of Theodora, a woman of talent
and unscrupulous intrigue. In 931, John, the son of Marozia and
Duke Alberic, and grandson of Theodora, was said to be a mere
puppet in the hands of his mother. "Their reign," (Theodora and
Marozia,) says Gibbon, "may have suggested to the darker ages the
fable of a female pope."
Again, in 956, a grandson of the same Marozia was raised to the
papal chair as John XII. [Footnote 5] He renounced the dress and
decencies of his profession, and his life was so scandalous that
he was degraded by a synod. Onuphrius Pauvinius and Liutprand are
quoted to show that a woman, Joan, had such influence over him
that he loaded her with riches. She is said to have died in
childbed.
[Footnote 5: At this period the church was as yet without the
advantages of the great reform effected by Gregory VII. in
1073, and the choice of a pope by the bishops or cardinals
was ratified or rejected by the Roman people, too often, at
that time, the dupes or tools of such men as the marquises of
Tuscany and the counts of Tusculum, who, says Gibbon, "held
the apostolic see in a long and disgraceful servitude."]
Long series of years preceding and following these events were
anything but times of pleasantness and peace to the successors of
St. Peter. Even Gibbon says, "The Roman pontiffs of the ninth and
tenth centuries were insulted, imprisoned, and murdered by their
tyrants, and such was their indigence, after the loss and
usurpation of the ecclesiastical patrimonies, that they could
neither support the state of a prince nor exercise the charity of
a priest."
{10}
Now, with such materials as these, a Pope Joan story is easily
constructed; for, with the license of speech that has always
existed in Rome in the form of pasquinades, it is more than
likely to have been satirically remarked by the Romans under one
or all of the three popes John, that Rome had a popess instead of
a pope, and that the chair of St. Peter was virtually occupied by
a female. These things would be repeated from mouth to mouth by
men who, according to their temper and ability, would comment on
them with bitter scoff, irreverent comment, snarling sneer, or
ribald leer, and they might readily have been received as matter
of fact assertions by German and other strangers in Rome.
Carried home and spread by wandering monks and soldiers, it is
only wonderful that they did not sooner come to the surface in
some such fable as the one under consideration. Diffused among
the people, and acquiring a certain degree of consistence by dint
of repetition through two centuries, it finally reached the ear
of the individual who inserted it in the Marianus chronicle in
the form of an _on dit_, and so he put it down "_ut
asseritur_"--"they say."
Certain it is that no such story was known in Italy until it was
spread from German chroniclers, and the absurdity was too
monstrous to pass into contemporary history even in a foreign
country.
But, it is answered, by Coeffetau and others, we do not hear of
it for so many years afterward because the church exerted its
omnipotent authority to hush up the story. There needs but slight
knowledge of human nature to decide that such an attempt would
have only served to spread and intensify the scandal. As Bayle
wisely remarks, "People do not so expose their authority by
prohibitions which are not of a nature to be observed, and which,
so far from shutting their mouth, rather excite an itching desire
to speak."
Then, too, it is claimed that for a period of several hundred
years after 855, writers and chroniclers, by agreement, tacit or
express, not only maintained a profound silence on the subject of
the scandal, but, in all Christian countries of the world,
conspired to alter the order of papal succession, forge
chronicles, and falsify historical records. And yet those who use
this argument tell us that in the city of Rome, under papal
authority, a statue was erected, an order issued, turning aside
processions from their time-consecrated itinerary, and customs as
remarkable for their indecency as their novelty were introduced,
_in order to perpetuate the memory_ of the very same events
tyrannical edicts were issued to conceal and blot out! Comment is
not needed.
The total silence of contemporary writers, and the immense chasm
of two hundred years (taking the earliest date claimed) between
the event and its first mention, was, of course, found fatal.
Consequently, an attempt was made to prop up the story by the
assertion that it was chronicled by Anastasius the Librarian, who
lived in Rome at the alleged Joannic period, was present at the
election of all the popes from 844 to 882, and must, therefore,
have been a witness of the catastrophe of 855. The testimony of
such a witness would certainly be valuable--indeed irrefutable.
Accordingly a MS. of the fourteenth century, a copy of the
Anastasian MS., was produced, in which mention was made of Pope
Joan. But this mention was attended with three suspicious
circumstances. First, it was qualified by an "_ut dicitur_"
"as is said." Anastasius would scarcely need an _on dit_ to
qualify his own testimony concerning an event that took place
under his own eyes, and must have morally convulsed all Rome.
{11}
Secondly, it was not in the text, but in a marginal note.
Thirdly, and fatally, the entire sentence was in the very words
of the Polonus chronicle. Naturally enough, it was found singular
that Anastasius, writing in the ninth century, should use the
identical phraseology of Polonus, who was posterior to him by
four hundred years.
But, in addition to these reasons, Anastasius gives a
circumstantial account of the election of Benedict III. to
succeed Leo IV., absolutely filling up the space needed for Joan.
In view of all which the critical Bayle is moved to exclaim,
"Therefore I say what relates to this woman (Joan) is spurious,
and comes from another hand." A zealous Protestant, Sarrurius,
writes to his co-religionist, Salmasius, (the same who had a
controversy with Milton,) after examining the Anastasian MS.,
"The story of the she-pope has been tacked to it by one who had
misused his time." And Gibbon says, "A most palpable forgery is
the passage of Pope Joan which has been foisted into some MSS.
and editions of the Roman Anastasius."
With regard to the early chronicle MSS., it must be borne in mind
that it was common for their readers (owners) to write additions
in the margin, A professional copyist--the publisher of those
days--usually incorporated the marginal notes with the text.
Books were then, of course, dear and scarce, and readers
frequently put in the margin the supplements another book could
furnish them, rather than buy two books. Then again--for men are
alike in all ages--those who purchased valuable books wanted, as
they want to-day, the fullest edition, with all the latest
emendations. So a chronicle with the Joan story would always be
more saleable than one without it.
But one of the strongest presumptions against the truth of the
story is seen in the profound silence of the Greek writers of the
period, (ninth to fifteenth century.) All of them who sided with
Photius were bitterly hostile to Rome, and the question of the
supremacy of the pope was precisely the vital one between Rome
and Constantinople. They would have been only too glad to get
hold of such a scandal. Numbers of Greeks were in Rome in 855,
and if such a catastrophe as the Joanine had occurred, they must
have known it. "On writers of the ninth and tenth centuries,"
says Gibbon, "the recent event would have flashed with a double
force. Would Photius have spared such a reproach? Would Liutprand
have missed such a scandal?"
We have disposed of the absurdity of the supposition that the
power and discipline of the church were so great as to enforce
secrecy concerning the Joan affair. But--even granting the truth
of this assertion--that power and discipline would avail naught
with strangers who were Greeks and schismatics. In 863, only
eight years after the alleged Joanide, the Greek schism broke out
under Photius, who was excommunicated by Nicholas I. There was no
period from 855 to 863 when there were not numbers of Greeks in
the city of Rome--learned Greeks too. Many of them agreed with
Photius, who claimed that the transfer of the imperial residence,
by the emperors, from Rome to Constantinople, at the same time
transferred the primacy and its privileges. Yet not only can no
allusion to any such story be found in any Greek writer of that
century, but there is found in Photius himself no less than three
distinct and positive assertions that Benedict III. succeeded Leo
IV.
The Greek schism became permanent in 1053, under Cerularius,
Patriarch of Constantinople, who undertook to excommunicate the
legates of the pope.
{12}
With Cerularius, as with Photius, the papal supremacy was the
main question, and neither he nor Photius would have failed to
make capital of the Joan fable, had they ever heard of it. So
also with all the Byzantine writers, and they were numerous. It
was not until the fifteenth century that the first mention of the
story was made by one of them, (Chalcocondylas,) an Athenian of
the fifteenth century, who, in his _De Rebus Turcicis_,
states the case very singularly: "Formerly a woman was in the
papal chair, her sex not being manifest, because the men in
Italy, and, indeed, in all the countries of the West, are closely
shaved." It is true that Barlaam, a Greek writer, mentioned it in
the fourteenth century; but Barlaam was living in Italy when he
wrote his book.
And now, as we reach the so-called Reformation period, we find
the tale invested with a value and importance it had never before
assumed. It was kept constantly on active duty without relief,
and compelled to do fatiguing service in a thousand controversial
battles and skirmishes. Angry and over-zealous Protestants found
it a handy thing to have in their polemical house. And, although
the more judicious cared not to use it, the story was generally
retained. Spanheim and Lenfant endeavored to think it a worthy
weapon, and even Mosheim affects to cherish suspicion as to its
falsity. Jewell, one of Elizabeth's bishops (1560) seriously, and
with great show of learning, espoused Joan's claims to existence.
Nor were answers wanting; and, including those who had previously
written on the subject, it was fully confuted by Aventinus,
Onuphrius Pauvinius, Bellarmine, Serrarius, George Scherer,
Robert Parsons, Florimond de Rémond, Allatius, and many others.
The first Protestant to cast doubt on the fable was David
Blondel. A minister of the Reformed Church, Professor of History
at Amsterdam, in 1630, he was held by his co-religionists to be a
prodigy of learning in languages, theology, and ecclesiastical
history. In his _Fable de la Papesse Jeanne_, with
invincible logic and an intelligent application of the true
canons of historical criticism, he demonstrates the absence of
foundation for the story, the tottering and stuttering weakness
of its early years, the suspicions which stand around its cradle;
and, instead of disputing how far the Pope Joan story was
believed or credited in this or that century, shows that by her
own contemporaries she was never heard of at all; the whole story
being, he says, "an inlaid piece of work embellished with time."
Blondel was bitterly assailed by all sections of Protestantism,
and accused of "bribery and corruption," the question being
asked, "How much has the pope given him?" Blondel's work brought
out a crowd of writers in defence of Joan, foremost among whom
was the Protestant Des Marets or Maresius, whose labors in turn
called out the _Cenotaphium Papessae Joannae_ by the learned
Jesuit Labbe, the celebrity of whose name drew forth a phalanx of
writers in reply.
But the worst for Joanna was yet to come. Another Protestant,
undeterred by the abuse showered upon Blondel, gave Joan her
_coup de grace_. This was the learned Bayle, who, with rigid
and judicial impartiality, sums up the essence of all that had
been advanced on either side, and shows unanswerably the
altogether insufficient grounds on which the entire story rests.
More was not needed. Nevertheless, Eckhard and Leibnitz followed
Bayle in the extinguishing process, and made it disreputable for
any scholar of respectability to advocate the convicted
falsehood.
{13}
There was no dearth of other Protestant protests against Joan.
Casaubon, the most learned of the so-called reformers, laughed at
the fable. So did Thuanus. Justus Lipsius said of it, "Revera
fabella est haud longè ab audacia et ineptis poetarum." [Footnote
6] Schookius, professor at Groningen, totally disbelieved it. Dr.
Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, said, "I don't believe the history
of Pope Joan," and gives his reasons. So, also, Dr. Bristow. Very
pertinent was the reflection of Jurieu, (a fanatical Protestant,
if ever there was one--the same noted for his controversy with
Bayle, who was a "friend of the family"--so much so, indeed, as
to cause the remark that Jurieu discovered many hidden things in
the Apocalypse, but could not see what was going on in his own
household,) in his _Apology for the Reformation_, "I don't
think we are much concerned to prove the truth of this story of
Pope Joan."
[Footnote 6: "In truth, it is a fable not much differing from
the boldness and silly stories of the poets."]
The erudite Anglican, Dr. Cave, says: "Nothing helped more to
make that Chronicle (Polonus) famous than the much talked of
fable of Pope Joan. For my own part, I am thoroughly convinced
that it is a mere fable, and that it has been thrust into
Martin's chronicle, especially since it is wanting in most of the
old manuscripts."
Hallam calls it a fable. Ranke passes it over in contemptuous
silence. So also does Sismondi; and Gibbon fairly pulverizes it
with scorn.
A favorite polemical arsenal for Episcopalians is found in the
works of Jewell, so-called Bishop of Salisbury. Let them be
warned against leaning on him concerning the Joan story. Listen
how quietly yet how effectually both Joan and Jewell are disposed
of by Henry Hart Milman, D.D., Dean of St. Paul's, in his
_History of Latin Christianity_: "The eight years of Leo's
papacy were chiefly occupied in restoring the plundered and
desecrated churches of the two apostles, and adorning Rome.
"_The succession to Leo IV. was contested between Benedict
III._, who commanded the suffrages of the clergy and people,
and Anastasius, who, at the head of an armed faction, seized the
Lateran, [Footnote 7] stripped Benedict of his pontifical robes,
and awaited the confirmation of his violent usurpation by the
imperial legates, whose influence he thought he had secured, But
the commissioners, after strict investigation, decided in favor
of Benedict. Anastasius was expelled with disgrace from the
Lateran, and his rival consecrated in the presence of the
emperor's representatives." [Footnote 8] Like Ranke, Milman also
passes over the Joan story with contemptuous silence.
[Footnote 7: Sept A.D. 855.]
[Footnote 8: Sept. 29, 855.]
In his _Papst-Fabeln des Mittelalters_, the learned Dr.
Döllinger has exhausted the erudition of the subject, and not
only demonstrated the utter unworthiness of the invention, but--
what is for the first time done by him--points out the causes or
sources of all the separate portions of the narrative. Thus, the
statue story arose from the fact that in the same street in which
was found a grave or monumental stone, of the inscription on
which the letters P. P. P. could be deciphered, there was also
seen a statue of a man or woman with a child. It was simply an
ancient statue of a heathen priest, with an attendant boy holding
in his hand a palm-leaf, The P. P. P. on the grave-stone, as all
antiquarians agreed, merely stood for _Propria Pecunia
Posuit_; but as the marvellous only was sought for, the three
P's were first coolly duplicated and then made to stand for the
words of the line already referred to--_Papa Patrum_,
etc.--much in the same way as Mr. Jonathan Oldbuck insisted that
A. D. L. L., on a utensil of imaginary antiquity he had found,
stood for AGRICOLA DICAVIT LIBENS LUBENS, when it only meant
AIKEN DRUM'S LANG LADLE.
{14}
The controversy concerning the
existence of Joan may be considered
as long since substantially closed, and
Joan, or Agnes, or Gilberta, or Ione,
as she is called in the English (Lond.
1612) edition of Philip Morney's
(Du Plessis Mornay) _Mysterie of Iniquitie_,
to stand convicted as an imposter,
or, more properly speaking, a
nonentity. Her story is long since
banished from all respectable society,
although it contrives to keep up a
disreputable and precarious existence
in the outskirts and waste places of
vagrant literature. We are even
informed that it may be found printed
under the auspices and sponsorship
of societies and individuals considered
respectable. If this be true, it is, for
their sakes, to be regretted; and we
beg leave severally to admonish the
societies and individuals in question,
in the words of the apostle: "_Avoid
foolish and old wives' fables: and exercise
thyself to piety._"
----------
Translated From The French.
The Approaching General Council.
By Mgr. Dupanloup, Bishop Of Orleans.
V.
The Help Offered By The Council.
This is the reason why that church, which is the friend of souls
and which was never indifferent to the evils in society, is now
so deeply moved. Undoubtedly the church and society are distinct;
but journeying side by side in this world, and enclosing within
their ranks the same men, they are necessarily bound together in
their perils and in their trials. The church has called this
assembly, therefore, because she feels that in regard to the
evils which are common to both, she can do much to forward their
removal.
However, let us be careful, as careful of exaggerating as of
diminishing the truth. Does it depend upon the church to destroy
every human vice? No. But in this great work, in this rude
conflict of the good against the bad, she has her part, an
important part, and she wishes to perform it. Man is free, and he
does good of his own free-will. But he is also aided by divine
grace, which assists him without destroying his liberty; for as
the great Pope St. Celestine said, "Free-will is not taken away
by the grace of God, but it is made free." Being the treasury of
celestial goods, the church is man's divine assistant, and lends
him, even in the temporal order, a supernatural aid. If to-day
she is assembling in Rome, and, as it were, is collecting her
thoughts, it is only in order to accomplish her task, to work
more successfully and powerfully for the welfare of mankind.
{15}
"Who can doubt," exclaims the Holy Father, "that the doctrine of
the Catholic Church has this virtue, that it not only serves for
the eternal salvation of man, but that it also helps the temporal
welfare of society, their real prosperity, good order and
tranquillity?" And who will deny the social and refining
influence of the church? "_Religion! Religion!_" an eminent
statesman [Footnote 9] has recently said, "_it is the very life
of humanity!_ In every place, at all times, save only certain
seasons of terrible crisis and shameful decadence. Religion to
restrain or to satisfy human ambition--religion to sustain or to
reconcile us to our sorrows, the sorrows both of our worldly
station and of our soul. Let not statesmanship, though it be at
once the most just and the most ingenious, flatter itself that it
is capable of accomplishing such a work without the help of
religion. The more intense and extended is the agitation of
society, the less able is any state policy to direct startled
humanity to its end. A higher power than the powers of earth is
needed, and views which reach beyond this world. For this purpose
God and eternity are necessary."
[Footnote 9: M. Guizot]
Then, too, the Holy Father, after he has alluded to the
beneficent influence of religion in the temporal order, proclaims
anew the concord, so often affirmed by him, between faith and
reason, and the mutual help which, in the designs of Providence,
they are called to lend one to the other. "Even," he says, "as
the church sustains society, so does divine truth sustain human
science; the church supports the very ground beneath its feet,
and in preventing it from wandering she advances its progress."
Let those who vainly strive to claim science as an antagonist to
the church understand these words! The head of the church does
not fear science, he loves it, he praises it, and with pleasure
he remembers that the Christian truths serve to aid its progress
and to establish its durability. The most illustrious scholars
who have appeared upon the earth, Leibnitz, Newton, Kepler,
Copernicus, Pascal, Descartes, before whom the learned of the
present time, if their pride has not completely blinded them,
would feel of very little importance, think the same about this
question as does the Sovereign Pontiff. This is demonstrated,
adds the Pope, by the history of all ages with unexceptionable
evidence. This too is the meaning of the well-known phrase of
Bacon, "A little learning separates us from religion; but much
learning leads us to it." Presumptuous ignorance or blind passion
may forget it; but the greatest minds have always recognized the
agreement of faith and science, the harmony between the church
and society, and rejected this antagonism of modern times, which
is so contrary to the testimony of history and the interests of
truth.
But let us not allow an ambiguous expression to become the
pretext for our opponent's attacks; how then does the church
attempt to reform society? History has answered this question.
Prejudice alone fancies that it has discovered some secret attack
upon the legitimate liberty of the human mind. The Council of
Rome will be the nineteenth Ecumenical Council, and the forty or
fifty nations which will be represented there have all been
converted in the same way; that is, they have been brought from
barbarism to civilization by the authority of her words, by the
grace of her sacraments, by the teaching of her pastors, and the
examples of her saints. Such are the ways of God and the action
of the church, sometimes seconded, but more frequently attacked,
by human powers.
{16}
Instructor of souls, the church uses the method of all good
education--authority and patience. Where there is doubt, she
affirms; where there is denial, she insists; where there is
division, she unites; she repeats for ever the same lessons, and
what grand lessons they are! The true nature of God, the true
nature of man, moral responsibility and free-will, the
immortality of the soul, the sacredness of marriage, the law of
justice, the law of charity, the inviolability of private rights
and of property, the duty of labor, and the need of peace. This
always, this everywhere, this to all men, to kings and to
shepherds, to Greeks and to Romans, to England and to France, in
Europe and in Australia, under Charlemagne or before Washington.
I dare to assert that the continuity of these affirmations
creates order in society and in the human mind, just as certainly
as the repeated rising of the same sun makes the order of the
seasons and success in the culture of the earth. O philosopher,
you who disdain the church! be candid and tell me what would have
become of the idea of a personal God among the nations, had it
not been for her influence? O Protestants and Greeks! admit that
without the church the image of Jesus Christ would have been
blotted out beneath your very eyes! O philanthropist and
statesman! what would you do without her for the family and the
sanctity of marriage?
What the church has once done, she is going to do again; what she
has already said, she is going to repeat; she will continue her
life, her course, her work, in the same spirit of wisdom and
charity; she will continue to affirm to man's reason those great
truths of which she is the guardian, and it is by this means, by
this alone, though by it most energetically, that she will act on
society.
It has been said that the religion of the masses of the people is
the whole of their morality. Then since morality is the true
source of good statesmanship and good laws, all the progress of a
people must consist in making the first principles of justice
influence more and more their private and public life. From this
it follows that every people which increases in its knowledge of
Christian truth will make substantial progress, while at the same
time every people which attempts to solve the great questions
that perplex mankind in any way opposed to the gospel of Christ
will be in reality taking the wrong road which can only end in
their utter destruction. Who expelled pagan corruption from the
world, who civilized barbarians by converting them? Look at the
East when Christianity flourished there; and look at it now under
the rule of Islam! The influence of Christianity upon
civilization is a fact as glaring as the sun. But the principles
of the gospel are far from having given all that they contain,
and time itself will never exhaust them, because they come out of
an infinite depth.
Now, although the centuries have drawn from the Christian
principle of charity, equality, and fraternity of man
consequences which have revolutionized the old world; still all
the social applications of this admirable doctrine are very far
from having been made. It is even, as I believe, the peculiar
mission of modern times to make this fruitful principle penetrate
more completely than ever the laws and customs of nations. If the
century does not wander from the path of Christian truth, it will
establish political, social, and economic truths which will
reflect upon it the greatest honor.
{17}
But it is the mission of the church and her council to preserve
these truths of revelation free from those interpretations which
falsify their meaning.
Then every great declaration of the truths of the Bible, every
explanation of the doubts and errors concerning it, every true
interpretation of Christianity by the masses of the people is a
work of progress, which is at once social and religious. This
then is why the church is using every effort, or, as says the
Holy Father, why she is exerting her strength more and more. This
is the reason why Catholic bishops will come from every part of
the world to consult with their chief.
It is in vain you say in your unjust and ignorant prejudice, the
church is old, but the times are new. The laws of the world are
also old; yet every new invention of which we are justly proud
would not exist, and could not succeed, were it not for the
application of those laws. You do not understand how pliant and
yet how firm is the material of which her Divine Founder has
built his church. He has given her an organization at once
durable and progressive. Such is the depth and the fruitfulness
of her dogmas, such too is the expansive character of her
constitution, that she can never be outstripped by any human
progress, and she is able to maintain her position under any
political system. Without changing her creed in the least, she
draws from her treasury, as our divine Lord said, things both new
and old, from century to century, by measuring carefully the
needs of the time. You will find that she is ever ready to adapt
herself to the great transformations of society, and that she
will follow mankind in all the phases of his career. The
Christian revelation is the light of the world, and always will
be; be assured that this is the reason why the coming council
will be the dawn, not as many think the setting, of the church's
glory.
VI.
The Unfounded Fears On The Subject Of The Council.
What then do timid Catholics and distrustful politicians fear?
Ah! rather let mankind rejoice over the magnanimous resolution of
Pius IX. It should be a solemn hope for those who believe, as
well as for those who have not the happiness of believing. If you
have the faith, you know that the spirit of God presides over
such councils. Of course, since it will be composed of men, there
may be possible weaknesses in that assembly. But there will also
be devoted service to the church, great virtues, profound wisdom,
a pure and courageous zeal for the glory of God and the good of
souls, and an admirable spirit of charity; and, besides all this,
a divine and superior power. God will, as ever, accomplish his
work there.
"God," says Fénélon, "watches that the bishops may assemble when
it is necessary, that they may be sufficiently instructed and
attentive, and that no bad motive may induce those who are the
guardians of the truth to make an untrue statement. There may be
improper opinions expressed in the course of the examination. But
God knows how to draw from them what he pleases. He leads them to
his own end, and the conclusion infallibly reaches the precise
point which God had intended."
But if one has the misfortune not to be a Christian and not to
recognize in the church the voice of God, from simply a human
point of view, can there be anything more worthy of sympathy and
respect than this great attempt of the Catholic Church to work,
so far as it is in her power, for the enlightenment and peace of
the world?
{18}
And what can be more august and venerable than the assembly of
seven or eight hundred bishops, coming from Europe, Asia, Africa,
the two Americas, and the most distant islands of Oceanica? Their
age, their virtue, and their science make them the most worthy
delegates from the countries in which they dwell, and the
recognized representatives of men of the entire globe with whom
they come in contact every day of their lives. It is a real
senate of mankind, seen nowhere but at Rome. And although our
mind should be filled with the most unjust prejudices, what
conspiracy, what excess, what manifestation of party feeling need
be feared from a meeting of old men coming from very different
parts of the earth, almost every one a complete stranger to the
others, having no bond of sympathy but a common faith and a
common virtue? Where will we find on earth a more perfect
expression, a more certain guarantee of wisdom, of wisdom even as
men understand it? I have ventured to say that modern times,
disgusted by experience with confidence in one man, have faith in
their assemblies. But what gathering can present such a
collection of the intelligent and the independent, such diversity
in such unity? Who are these bishops? Read their mottoes:
_"In the name of the Lord!"
"I bring Peace!"
"I wish for Light!"
"I diffuse Charity!"
"I shrink not from Toil!"
"I serve God!"
"I know only Christ!"
"All things to all men!"
"Overcome Evil by Good!"
"Peace in Charity!"_
As to themselves, they have lost their proper names. Their
signature is the name of a saint and the name of a city. Their
own name is buried, like that of an architect, in the foundation
stone of the building. Here are Babylon and Jerusalem; New York
and Westminster; Ephesus and Antioch; Carthage and Sidon; Munich
and Dublin; Paris and Pekin; Vienna and Lima; Toledo and Malines;
Cologne and Mayence. And added to this, they are called Peter,
Paul, John, Francis, Vincent, Augustin, and Dominic; names of
great men who have established or enlightened various nations
that profess Christianity, They do not bear the names of the past
and present only, they also bear those of the future. One comes
from the Red River, another from Dahomey, others from Natal,
Victoria, Oregon, and Saigon. We are working for the future,
although we are called men of the past. We are working for
countries which to-day cannot boast a single city, and for people
who are without a name. We go farther than science, even beyond
commerce itself, until we find ourselves alone and beyond them
all. When we cannot precede your most adventurous travellers, we
tread eagerly in their footsteps; and why? To make
Christians--that is to say, to make men, to make nations. What
then do you fear? Why do you object to such a council when you
entitle yourselves, with such proud confidence, the men of
progress and the heralds of the future?
Will it be nations who are disturbed by the council? How can
nations be menaced or betrayed by men who represent every nation
of the civilized globe? The bishops love their countries; they
live in them by their own free choice, and for the defence of
their faith. Will the bishops of Poland meet the bishops of
Ireland to plan the ruin of nations and the oppression of a
fatherland? And is there a single French bishop, or one from
England, or from any other country, who will yield to any one in
patriotism, who does not claim to be as good a Frenchman, or
Englishman, or citizen, as any one of his fellow-countrymen?
{19}
Is our liberty placed in jeopardy? What can you fear from men
who, from the days of the Catacombs up to the massacre of the
Carmelites, have established Christianity only at the sacrifice
of their life, and whose blood flowed freely in the days that
liberty and the church suffered the same persecution? Will the
bishops of America join those from Belgium and Holland in a
conspiracy against liberty? Will the bishops from the East unite
with the bishops of France, and so may other European countries,
in sounding the praises of despotism?
No, no; there is nothing true in all these fears; they would be
only silly phantoms were it not that they are the result of a
hatred which foresees the good which will be done, and wishes to
prevent it. What will the council do? I cannot say; God alone
knows it at this hour. But I can say that it is a council,
because eighteen centuries of Christianity and civilization know
and affirm it; a council, hence it is the most worthy
exemplification of moral force, it is the noblest alliance of
authority and liberty that the human mind can conceive; and I may
boldly assert that it never would have conceived it by its own
power.
I am not going to mark out the limits of liberty and power. I do
not intend now to show the characteristics of schism and heresy,
of English or German Protestantism, or of the false orthodoxy of
Russia. I will say only one word, and then proceed to make my
conclusions. It is this. If the Christian churches wish to become
again sisters, and if men wish to become brothers, they can never
do it more certainly, more magnificently, or more tenderly than
in a council, under the auspices and in the breast of that church
which is their true mother.
Do you imagine that you discover different opinions in the
church, and make this an obstacle? I would have the right to be
astonished at your solicitude, but I will suppose you to be
sincere, and I answer, You know very little about the church, Her
enemies daily declare that our faith is a galling yoke, which
holds us down and prevents us from thinking. And therefore, when
they see that we do think, they are perfectly amazed. This is one
of the conditions of the church's life, and the greatest amount
of earnest thinking is always within her fold. It is true that we
have an unchanging creed, that we are not like the philosophers
outside of the church, who do little more than seek a doctrine,
and endlessly begin again their searches. They are always calling
everything in question, they are continually moving, but never
reach any known destination. With us there are certain
established definite points, about which we no longer dispute.
And thus it is that the church has an immovable foundation, and
is not built entirely in the air. Yet liberty also has its place
in the church, Our anchors are strong and our view is unlimited;
for beyond those doctrines which are defined there is an immense
space. Even in dogma the Christian mind has yet a magnificent
work to accomplish, which can be followed for ever, because, as I
have already said, our dogmas, like God, have infinite depths,
and Christian intelligence can always draw from them, but never
drain them.
No one should therefore be astonished to see that Catholics argue
about questions not included within the definitions of faith,
many of which are difficult and complex, and which modern
polemics has only made more obscure.
{20}
The spirit of Christianity was long ago defined by St. Augustine
in these memorable words: _In necessary things unity, in
doubtful things liberty, in all things charity_. The course of
centuries has changed nothing. Besides, I have before said, and I
now repeat, that the council, precisely because it is
ecumenical--that is, composed of representatives from all the
churches in the world--bishops living under every political
system and every variety of social customs--excludes necessarily
the predominance of any particular school of a narrow and
national spirit and of local prejudices. It will be the great
catholic spirit, and not such and such particular notions, which
will inspire its decisions; and whatever may happen to be the
peculiar ideas of different schools or parties, the council will
be the true light and unity. There will be complete liberty left
in regard to all things not defined. But these definitions will
be the Catholic rule of faith, and they should not disturb any
one in advance. Again, they threaten nothing which is dear to
you, men of this age, they threaten only error and injustice,
which are your enemies as well as ours. If you wish to know the
real opinions of this magnanimous pontiff, who is the object of
so many odious and ungrateful calumnies, and of the bishops, his
sons and his brothers; if you wish to conjecture the spirit of
the future council, you will find it completely stated in these
few words of Pius IX., which were addressed to some Catholic
publicists, scarcely a year ago, and which have been inscribed on
their standard as a sacred motto: "Christian charity alone can
prepare the way for that liberty, fraternity, and progress which
souls now ardently desire."
I cannot repeat too often, and you, my brethren of the holy
ministry, cannot repeat too often, that great is the mistake of
those who denounce the future council as a menace or a work of
war. We live in a time in which we are condemned to listen to
all. But nevertheless we are not bound to believe all. When, a
year ago, the Pope announced to the bishops assembled in Rome his
determination to convoke an ecumenical council, what did the
bishops of the whole world see in this? A great work of
illumination and pacification--these are the precise words of
their address. The papal bull uses the same language. In this
ecumenical council, what does the Pope ask his brothers, the
bishops, to examine, to investigate with all possible care, and
to decide with him? Before everything else, it is that which
relates to the peace of all and to universal concord.
And when I read the bull carefully, what do I see on every page
and in each line? The expression of solicitude well worthy the
father of souls, and not less for civil society than for the
church. He never separates them. He is careful always to say that
their evils and their perils are mutual. The same tempest beats
them both with the same waves. At this time, which is called a
period of transition, religion and society are both passing
through a formidable crisis. There are men to-day who would wish
to destroy the church if they could; and who, at the same time,
would shake society from its very foundations. And it is for the
purpose of bringing help to them both, and to avert the evils
which menace them together, that the holy father has conceived
the idea of a council. The reason given by him to the bishops is
precisely to examine this critical situation, and suggest the
remedy for this double wound.
{21}
These are his words: "It is necessary that our venerable
brothers, who feel and deplore as we do the critical situation of
the church and society, should strive with us and with all their
power to avert from the church and society, by God's help, all
the evils which are afflicting them."
It has been told that the Pope wished to break off friendly
relations with modern society, to condemn and proscribe it, to
give it as much trouble as lies within his power. Yet never have
the trials which you endure, Christian nations, more sadly moved
the head of the church, never has his soul poured forth more
sympathetic accents, than for your perils and your sorrows. And
it has been noticed by every one, pillaged of three-fourth of his
little territory, reduced to Rome and its surrounding country,
placed between the dangers of yesterday and those of to-morrow,
suspended, as it were, over a precipice, the Pope seems never to
think of these things; he does not seek to defend his menaced
throne; not a sentence, not a single word, about his own
interests; no, in the bull of convocation the temporal prince is
forgotten and is silent--the pontiff alone has spoken to the
world.
VII
The Council And The Separated Churches
But all has not yet been said, Other hopes may be conceived of
the future council. We delight in anticipating other great
results. The letters of the Holy Father to the Eastern bishops
and to our separated Protestant brethren give us good ground for
hope.
At two fatal epochs in the history of the world, two great
divisions have been made in this empire of souls which we call
the church--twice has the seamless robe of Christ been rent by
schism and heresy. These are the two great misfortunes of
mankind, and the two most potent causes which have retarded the
world's progress. Who does not admit this? If the old Greek
empire had not so sadly broken with the West, it would have never
been the prey of Islamism, which has so deeply degraded it, and
which even now holds it under an iron yoke. Nor would it have
drawn into its schism another vast empire, in whose breast
seventy millions of souls groan beneath a despotism which is both
political and religious.
And who can say what the Christian people of Europe would be
today, were it not for Lutheranism, Calvinism, and so many other
divisions? These unhappy separations have made Christianity lose
its active power in retaining many souls in the light of divine
revelation which have since been wrested from it by incredulity.
And who can tell us how much they have retarded the diffusion of
the gospel in heathen countries?
Sorrowful fact! There are even now millions of men upon whom the
light of the gospel has never shone, and who remain sunken in the
shadows of infidelity. Think of the poor pagans on the shores of
distant isles! They are vaguely expecting a Saviour; they stretch
their arms toward the true God; they cry out by the voice of
their miseries and their sufferings for light, truth, salvation,
Eighteen centuries ago, Jesus Christ came to bring these good
tidings to the world, and spoke these great words to his
apostles, "Preach the gospel to every creature!" The church alone
has apostles of Jesus Christ, emulators of that Peter and Paul
who landed one day upon the coast of Italy to preach the same
gospel to our fathers and to die together for the
same faith.
{22}
But poor Indians! poor Japanese! Following the apostles of the
Catholic Church sent by the successor of him to whom Jesus Christ
said, "Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build my church,"
we see other missionaries who come to oppose them. But who sends
them? Is it Jesus Christ? What, then, is Christ, as St. Paul
asked of the dissidents of the first century, divided? Is not
this, I ask you, a dreadful misfortune for the poor infidels? And
is it not enough to make every Christian shed tears?
And union, if it were only possible, (and why should it not be,
since it is the wish of our Saviour)--union, especially because
now the way is open and distance has almost vanished, would it
not be a great and happy step toward that evangelization of every
creature which Jesus charged his apostles and their successors to
begin when he had left the earth?
Yes, every soul in which the spirit of Jesus dwells should feel
within a martyrdom when it considers these divisions, and repeat
to heaven the prayer of our Saviour and the cry for unity, "My
Father, that they may be all one, as you and I are one." This is
the great consideration which influenced the head of the Catholic
Church when, forgetting his own dangers, and moved by this care
for all the churches which weighs so heavily upon him, he
convoked an ecumenical council. He turns toward the East and to
the West, and addresses to all the separated communions a word of
peace, a generous call for unity. Whatever may be the way in
which his appeal is received, who does not recognize, in this
most earnest effort for the union of all Christians, a thought
from heaven, inspired by Him who willed that his Church should be
one, and who said, as the Holy Father has been pleased to recall,
"It is by this that you will be known to be my disciples"?
But will our brethren of the East and West respond to this
thought, this wish? The East! Who is not moved before this cradle
of the ancient faith, from whence the light has come to us? I saw
the Catholic bishops of the East trembling with joy at the
announcement of the future council, and expecting their churches
to awake to a new life and to a fruitful activity. But will the
Eastern churches refuse to hear these "words of peace and
charity" that the Holy Father has lately addressed to them "from
the depths of his heart"? [Footnote 10] And why should they be
deaf to this appeal? For what antiquated or chimerical fears? Who
has not recognized and been deeply touched by the goodness of the
pontiff? How delicately, and with what accents of particular
tenderness, does the Holy Father speak of our Oriental brethren,
who, in the midst of Mohammedan Asia, "recognize and adore, even
as we do, our Lord Jesus Christ," and who, "redeemed by his most
precious blood, have been added to his church!" What
consideration does he manifest for these ancient churches, to-day
so unfortunately detached from the centre of unity, but who
formerly "showed so much lustre by their sanctity and their
celestial doctrine, and produced abundant fruits for the glory of
God and the salvation of souls!" [Footnote 11]
[Footnote 10: Apostolic Letter of Pius IX., September 8th,
1868.]
[Footnote 11: _ibidem_.]
And, at the same time, we must admire his gentleness, his
forgetfulness of all his irritating grievances. The Holy Father
speaks only of peace and charity.
{23}
He asks only one thing, and that is, that "the old laws of love
should be renewed, and the peace of our fathers, that salutary
and heavenly gift of Christ, which for so long a time has
disappeared, may be firmly re-established; that the pure light of
this long-desired union may appear to all after the clouds of
such a wearisome sorrow, and the sombre and sad obscurity of such
long dissensions." [Footnote 12]
[Footnote 12: _Ibidem_.]
But let the Eastern bishops know that this deep longing for peace
and union is not found in the heart of the Holy Father alone; the
bishops and all the Christians of the West, how can they help
desiring this most happy event? Can there be any good gained in
keeping the robe of Christ torn asunder? And what--I ask it in
charity and for information--what can the churches of the old
Orient gain by not communicating with those of the entire
universe? Who prevents them? Are we yet in the time of the
metaphysical subtleties and cavils of the Lower Empire?
I have already alluded to the infidel nations. Let my brethren,
the Eastern bishops, permit me to recall to them what is at this
moment the state of the entire world and the situation of the
church of Christ in all its various parts. If in every time the
church of Christ has had to struggle, is she not now more than
ever before resisted and fought against? Is not the spirit of
revolution--and, unfortunately, it is an impious one--rising
against her on every side? And you, Eastern churches, whether you
are united or not, have you not also your dangers? Is not your
spiritual liberty unceasingly threatened? Is not Christianity
with you surrounded by determined enemies--at your right, at your
left, on every side? And will not the storm of impiety which now
disturbs Europe, since distance is no more an obstacle, burst
upon Asia, and will not the Christian races of the East become
contaminated by the repeated efforts of an irreligious press?
In such a critical situation, when every danger is directed
against the church of Jesus Christ by the misfortunes of the
time, the first need of all Christians is to put an end to
division which enfeebles, and to seek in reconciliation and peace
that union which is strength. What bishop, what true Christian,
will meditate upon these things, and then say, "No, division is a
good; union would be an evil"? On the contrary, who does not see
that union, the return to unity, is the certain good of souls,
the manifest will of God, and will be the salvation of your
churches? What follows from this? Can there be any personal
considerations, any human motives whatsoever, superior to these
great interests and these grave obligations? Your fathers, those
illustrious doctors, Athanasius, Gregory of Nazianzen, Basil,
Cyril, Chrysostom, did not find it hard to bend their glorious
brows before him whom they call "the firm and solid rock on which
the Saviour has built his church." [Footnote 13] If they were
living to-day, would they not, as Christians, and most nobly,
too, trample upon an independence which is not according to
Christ, but which is merely the suggestion of a blind pride? If
past centuries have committed faults, do you wish to make them
eternal?
[Footnote 13: _Ibidem_; words of St. Gregory of
Nazianzen, quoted by the Holy Father.]
But the time, if you will hear its lessons, will bring before
your mind the gravest duties. You who are surrounded on one side
by despotism, and on the other by Mohammedanism, surely, you
cannot fail to feel the peril of isolation, and the fatal
consequences of disunion.
{24}
May God preserve me from uttering a word which can be, even in
the most remote way, painful to you; for I come to you at this
moment with all the charity of Jesus Christ.
Indeed, whether I think of those unhappy races whose souls and
whose country have become sterile under the yoke of the religion
of Mohammed, or whether I turn my eye toward those great masses
of Russians, grave in their manners, religious, who have remained
in the faith, notwithstanding the degradation of their churches,
and notwithstanding the supremacy of a czar whose pretended
orthodoxy has never inspired even the least pity and justice for
Poland! equally do I feel the depths of my soul moved to pray for
those many nations who are worthy of our interest and our sincere
compassion. O separated brothers of the East!--Greeks, Syrians,
Armenians, Chaldeans, Bulgarians, Russians, and Sclavonians, all
whom I cannot call by name--see the Catholic Church is coming
toward you, she stretches out her arms to embrace you! O
brothers! come!
She is going to assemble, as the whole church, from all parts of
the civilized world. From our West, from your East, from the New
World, also, and from far distant islands, her bishops are now
hastening to answer the call of the supreme chief, to meet at
Rome, the centre of unity. But ah! she does not wish to assemble
her council without your presence, O brothers! come!
This is one of those solemn and infrequent occasions which will
take centuries before its equal is seen. The church offers peace.
"With all our strength we pray you, we urge you, to come to this
General Council, as your ancestors came to the Council of Lyons
and the Council of Florence, in order to renew union and peace."
[Footnote 14] But, On your Side, will you refuse to take a single
step toward us, and allow this most favorable opportunity to
escape? Who will venture to take this formidable responsibility
upon himself? O brothers! come!
[Footnote 14: Ibidem.]
The heart of the church of Jesus Christ does not change; but the
times change, and the causes which have, unhappily, made the
efforts of our fathers fail, now, thank God, no longer exist.
Then I say to you all, O brothers! come!
In regard to ourselves, we are full of hope; and, whatever may be
the resistance that the first surprise, or perhaps old
prejudices, have made, everything seems to us to be ready for a
return. "Rome," said Bossuet, in former times--"Rome never ceases
to cry to even the most distant people, that she may invite them
to the banquet, where all are made one; and see how the East
trembles at her maternal voice, and appears to wish to give birth
to a new Christianity!"
O God! would that we could see this spectacle! What joy would it
be for thy church on earth, in the midst of so many rude combats,
and such bitter affliction! What joy for the church in heaven!
And what joy, churches of the East, for your doctors and your
saints, "when from the height of heaven they see union
established with the apostolic see, centre of catholic truth and
unity; a union that, during their life here below, they labored
to promote, to teach by all their studies, and by their
indefatigable labors, by their doctrine and their example,
inflamed as they were with the charity poured into their hearts
by the Holy Spirit, for Him who has reconciled and purchased
peace at the price of his blood; who wished that peace should be
the mark of his disciples, and who made this prayer to his
Father, 'May they be one as we are one.'" [Footnote 15]
[Footnote 15: _Ibidem_. Unity will be the eternal
characteristic of the true church. Every question concerning
the church is reduced finally to this question, _Where is
unity?_]
{25}
Oh! then, listen to the language of the church, the true church
of Jesus Christ, who alone, among all Christian societies, raises
a maternal voice, and demands again all her children, because she
is their true mother! This is the reason why the Sovereign
Pontiff, after he has spoken to the separated East, turns toward
other Christian yet not catholic communions, and addresses to all
our brothers of Protestantism the same urgent appeal.
Protestantism! "Ah!" exclaimed Bossuet, in his ardent love, in
his zealous wish for unity, "our heart beats at this name, and
the church, always a mother, can never, when she remembers it,
repress her sighs and her desires." These are sighs and desires
which we have heard from the Holy Father in an apostolic letter
written a few days after the Brief addressed to the Eastern
bishops, to "all Protestants and other non-Catholics," and in
which he deplores the misfortunes of separation, and shows the
great advantage of the unity desired by our Lord. "He exhorts, he
begs all Christians separated from him to return to the cradle of
Jesus Christ. ... In all our prayers and supplications we do not
cease to humbly ask for them, both day and night, light from
heaven, and abundant grace from the eternal Pastor of souls, and
with open arms we are waiting for the return of our wandering
children." [Footnote 16]
[Footnote 16: Apostolic Letters of September 13th, 1868.]
See, then, what the Holy Father says, and, together with him, the
whole church. Shall we hope and pray always in vain? Will the
work of returning be as difficult as many think it? I know that
prejudices are yet deep; and the difficulty that the work of
tardy justice meets with in England is one proof among others;
but it is the business of a council to explain misunderstandings,
and, by appeasing the passions, prepare the mind to return to the
church. And, should any one be tempted to think me deluded, I
will answer that among those of our separated brethren who are
not carried away by the sad current of rationalism, there is a
daily increasing number who regret the loss of unity. I affirm
that this is true of America, that it is true of England, I will
answer, too, that more than once I have been made the recipient
of grief-stricken confidence, and heard from suffering hearts the
longing desire for the day in which will be fulfilled the words
of the Master, "There shall be one fold and one shepherd." Will
this day never come? Are divisions necessary? And why should we
not be the ones destined to see the days predicted and hailed
with joy by Bossuet? Here, undoubtedly, the dogmatic objections
are serious. But they will disappear, if the gravest difficulty
of all, in my opinion, is removed; and that difficulty is the
negation of all doctrinal authority in the church, that absolute
liberty of examination, which, willingly or unwillingly, is
certain to be confounded with the principles of rationalism. It
is for this reason that Protestantism bears in its breast the
original sin of a radical inconsistency, which is lamented by the
most vigorous and enlightened minds of their communion. And it is
upon this that we rely, at least for numerous individual
conversions, and, by God's grace, perhaps for the reconciliation
of a large number.
If this essential point is solved--and the solution is not
difficult to simple good sense and courageous faith--all the rest
will become easy. Reason says, with self-evident truth, that
Jesus Christ did not intend to found his church without this
essential principle of stability and unity.
{26}
He did not propose to found a religion incapable of living and
perpetuating itself, abandoned to the caprice of individual
interpretations. This is so clear of itself that it does not need
to be supported by any text of the Bible.
But there are texts which, to persons of candid mind, and without
any great argument, are equally convincing. I will repeat only
three; the first, "Thou art Peter," the primacy of St. Peter and
the head of the church; the second, "This is my body," the most
blessed sacrament; the third, "Behold thy mother," behold your
mother, the Blessed Virgin, Are you able to efface these three
sentences from the Gospel? Have you meditated upon them
sufficiently, and upon many others which are not less decisive?
Then from the Bible pass to history, and from texts to facts.
Do not facts tell you plainly that the living element of complete
Christianity is wanting in you? For, on the one hand, you have
had time to understand thoroughly the authors of rupture; and, on
the other, you are now able to consider its results. For three
centuries you have been reading the Bible; for three centuries
you have been studying history. Have not these three
centuries taught you a new and solemn lesson? The principle of
Protestantism, by developing, has borne its fruits; and the
predictions of catholic doctors in ancient controversies are
realized every day beneath your eyes. Contemporaneous
Protestantism is more and more rapidly dissolving into
rationalism; many of her ministers acknowledge that they have no
longer any supernatural faith; and recently a cry of alarm,
proceeding from her bosom, has resounded even in our political
assemblies. But a cry lost in the air! Dissolution will go on,
notwithstanding noble efforts and Christian resistance, always
increasing and ruining more thoroughly this incomplete
Christianity, which needs the essential power that preserves and
maintains, and which is nothing else than authority. To lose
Christianity in pure sophistry, this is the tendency of modern
Protestants, whether they are willing to admit it or not. But
good may come from an excess of evil, And what is more calculated
to enlighten many deceived but well-meaning souls concerning the
radical fault of Protestantism than this spectacle of
disintegration by the side of the powerful unity of the Catholic
Church, and the council which is going to be its living
manifestation?
There is another hope, little in accordance with human
probabilities, I know, but which my faith in the Divine mercy
does not forbid me to entertain, and that is, that even the Jews
themselves, the children of Israel, who, associating with us,
lead to-day the same kind of social life, will feel something
touch their hearts and bring them, docile at last, to the voice
of St. Paul, to the fold of the church. In the Jews, indeed, so
long and so evidently punished, I cannot help recognizing my
ancestors in the faith; the children of Moses, the countrymen of
Joseph and Mary, of Peter and Paul, and of whom it is written,
that they "who are Israelites, to whom belongeth the adoption as
of children, and the glory and the testament, and the giving of
the law and the service of God and the promises: whose are the
fathers, and of whom is Christ, according to the flesh, who is
over all things, God blessed for ever, Amen." [Footnote 17] I beg
them, therefore, to believe in Him whom they are yet expecting; I
beg them to believe eighteen hundred years of history; for
history, like a fifth gospel, proves the coming and divinity
of the Messiah.
[Footnote 17: Romans ix. 4, 5.]
{27}
Do not feel astonished, then, to see me full of compassion for
Protestant, Greek, and Jew, while I am accused of being severe
toward the abettors of modern scepticism. I recognize the
difference between errors which are nearly finished, and errors
which are just beginning; between responsible and guilty authors
who knowingly spread false doctrines, and their innocent victims,
who, after centuries, still cling to them. How can I help being
moved to tears when I see the people of my country, its mechanics
and its farmers, so industrious and so worthy of sympathy, young
men of our schools, whose active minds call for the truth, both
fall, almost before they are aware of it, into the hands of
teachers of error? When the reawakening of faith was so
perceptible a few years ago, and a decisive progress toward good
seemed to be accomplished, how quickly did the shadows gather
around us; dismal precipices opened beneath our feet, the breath
of an impious science and violent press became most potent, and
the beautiful bark of faith and French prosperity seemed ready to
sink before she had fairly left her port! Ah! I do, indeed,
execrate the authors of that cruel wreck, while I feel myself
full of pity for the many sincere souls I see among our separated
brethren, living in error, it is true, but they have never made
error live! With warmth I extend to such captive souls a friendly
hand. Let them come back to the church; for she it is who guards
Jesus Christ, the God of the whole truth, and invites them to
this great banquet of the Father of the family, where, as Bossuet
has well said, "all are made one."
May the coming council, in its work of enlightenment and
pacification, reconcile to us many souls who are already ours by
their sincerity, their virtue, and, as I know of many, even by
their desires. Let, at least, this be the heartfelt wish of every
Catholic! Yes, let us open our hearts with more warmth than ever
to these beloved brethren; let us wish--it is the desire of the
Holy Father--that the future council may be a powerful and happy
effort, and let us repeat unceasingly to heaven the prayer of the
Master, "May they be one, as we are one."
VIII.
The Catholic Church.
And you, whom the duties of my position compel me to address
persistently--in time and out of time, says St. Paul--adversaries
of my faith, though I speak to you with austere words upon my
lips, still know that it is with charity in my heart toward you
all, whether philosophers, Protestants, or indifferent to all
religion, yea, I would wish my voice could reach the most
wretched pagan lost in the shadow of the superstition which yet
covers half the globe. O brethren! I would that you could taste
for a single moment the deep peace that one feels who lives and
dies in the arms of the church! Bear witness with me to this
peace, my brethren of the priesthood, and every Christian of
every rank and of all ages! When one knows that he is surrounded
by this light, assured by her promises, preceded by those sublime
creatures who are called saints, and whose glory in heaven the
church of the earth salutes, bound by tradition to all the
Christian centuries by the successors of the apostles, and
founded, at last, upon Jesus Christ, what joy! what a company!
what power! and what repose in light and certainty!
{28}
I am firmly convinced, and each day brings forth a new proof,
that the enemies of the church do not really detest her. No; the
dominant sentiment among our enemies is not always hatred. There
is another feeling which they do not admit, which is far more
frequent among them, This is envy. Yes; they envy us; the
atheist, at the moment he is insulting a Christian, says secretly
to himself, "Oh! how happy he is!"
Let us not credit that which we hear said against the church,
that her majestic face has been for ever disfigured by calumny,
and that henceforth men can only see in her a mistress of tyranny
and ignorance. These violent prejudices certainly do have an
influence; our faults and our enemies undertake the business of
propagating them. But the church, in spite of this--and the
ecumenical council will prove this again to the world--will not
be any less the church of Christ, "without blemish and without
spot," notwithstanding the imperfections of her children; and
there is not one among those that attack her who can tell us what
evil the church has ever done to him. "_My people, what have I
done to thee?_"
What evil! Citizens of town and country, you owe to the Catholic
Church the purity of your children, the fidelity of your wives,
the honesty of your neighbor, the justice of your laws, the gay
festival which breaks in upon the monotony of your daily lives,
the little picture which hangs upon your wall; and, more than
these, you owe her the sweet expectation which waits by the
cemetery and the tomb! This is the evil she has done you--this
enemy of the human race!
And if you can raise your thought above yourself, above your own
interests, above your homes; if you allow your thoughts to soar
higher than the smoke which curls above your roofs, what a grand
spectacle does the Catholic Church present! She is great and
good, even in the little history of our life--greater and far
better does she appear in the history of the laborious
developments of human society. Inseparable companion of man upon
this earth, she struggles and she suffers with him; she has
assisted, inspired, guided humanity in all its most painful and
glorious transformations. It was she who made virtues, the very
name of which was yet unknown, rise up from the midst of pagan
corruption; and souls, so pure, so noble, so elevated, that the
world still falls upon its knees before them.
It was she who tamed and transformed barbarians; and who, during
the long and perilous birth of modern races in the middle ages,
has courageously fought the evil, and presided over all progress.
And it must be again the Catholic Church which will help modern
society to disengage from the midst of its confused elements that
which disturbs its peace, the principles of life from the germs
of death, by maintaining firmly those truths which alone can save
it.
Ah! we do not know the Catholic Church well enough. We live
within her fold, we are a part of her, and yet we do not
understand her. We ignore both what she was and what she is in
the world, and the mission God has given her, and the living
forces, the divine privileges, bestowed upon her, so that she may
accomplish eternally her task upon the earth, to maintain
immutably here below truth and goodness, and to remain for ever,
as an apostle said of her, "_the pillar and the ground of
truth_."
Surely, we never hear it made a matter of reproach that a pillar
remains unchanged; what would become of the edifice, if the
pillar were to leave its place?
{29}
Why, then, reproach the church for being immovable, and why is
not this immobility salutary for you? What will you do when there
are tremblings in regard to the truth like the trembling of the
earth? While you must disperse, we are uniting. What you are
losing, we are defending. We can say to modern doctrines, "We
knew you at Alexandria and at Athens; both you, your mothers,
your daughters, and your allies." The church can say to the
nations, when the Pope has gathered their ambassadors: "France,
thou hast been formed by my bishops; thy cities and their streets
bear their names! England, who has made thee, and why wert thou
once called the isle of saints? Germany, thou hast entered into
the civilization of the West by my envoy, St. Boniface. Russia,
where wouldst thou now be, were it not for my Cyril and my
Methodius? Kings, I have known your ancestors. Before Hapsburg,
or Bourbon, or Romanoff, or Brunswick, or Hohenzollern--before
Bonaparte or Carignan, I was old; for I have seen the Caesars and
the Antonies die; to-morrow I will be, for I am ever the same. Do
you answer that it will be without money, without dwelling,
without power? It may be so, for I have endured these proofs a
hundred times, always ready to address to nations the little
sentence Jesus once spoke to Zaccheus, 'This day I must abide in
thy house.' If I leave Rome, I will go to London, to Paris, or to
New York." It is only of the church and of the sun that it can be
said that to-morrow they will certainly rise; and this is the
reason that the church, in the midst of the disturbances of the
present time, boldly announces her council.
Admirable spectacle, that our century would wish not to admire,
but whose grandeur it is forced to acknowledge. Yes, many a
wearied eye rests with irresistible emotion upon this stately
pillar, standing alone in the midst of the ruins of the past and
of the actual destruction of all human greatness. The indifferent
feel troubled, surprised, attracted at the sight of the church
testifying her immortal power by this great act; and after they
have exhausted all their doctrines, they are tempted to exclaim
to the Supreme Pontiff that which Peter, the first pontiff, once
said to Jesus, "Master, to whom shall we go? you have the words
of eternal life."
Hear the words of life, you who doubt, who search, who suffer!
Hear them also, you who triumph, who rejoice, who lord it over
your fellowman! Hear the words that the church calls her little
children to repeat at every rising of the sun: _Credo_, I
believe! I believe in one God, the Creator. See, _savants_,
here is the answer to your uncertainties. _Credo_, I
believe! I believe in a Saviour of the world who has consecrated
purity by his birth, confounded pride by his precepts, rebuked
injustice by his sufferings, and proved his divinity and
immortality by his resurrection, I believe in Jesus Christ! See
in him, poor, afflicted humanity, poor, oppressed people, an
answer to your despair. _Credo_, I believe! I believe in the
Holy Ghost, in the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins, in the judgment, and in a life of
everlasting happiness to those who have fought the good battle.
See in our creed, O Protestants and philosophers! so divided in
your affirmations, so narrow in your hopes, the response to your
disputes. See in it, oppressive monarch, the answer to your
iniquities! And see, also, O pitiless death! the answer to your
terrors.
{30}
To love, to hope, to believe! Everything is contained in these
words; and it is the church who alone can preserve in unshaken
majesty and in the universal truth this _Credo_, that the
nineteenth century, now in the dawn of the twentieth, is going to
repeat with the two hundred and sixty-second successor of the
fisherman Peter, first apostle of Jesus Christ.
But, brothers, let us cease speaking; let us cease disputing, let
us cease fearing, let us bend the knee and pray!
O God! who knows the secret of your Providence, and who knows the
wonders which the church will yet display to the world, if men's
faults and their passion do not retard her? If religion and
society, leaning one upon the other, should advance, with mutual
concord, on their blessed course, what great steps would there be
toward the establishment of your reign upon the earth, toward the
progress of nations, toward liberty by the way of truth, toward
the real fraternity of men, toward the extinction of revolution
and of war, toward the peace of the world. Then a new era would
open before us, and a new great century appear in history. Let us
throw open our souls to these hopes; let us beg these blessings
of God, and let us foresee possible misfortunes only to prevent
them. Let it be known at least that Catholics are not men of
discouragement, of dark predictions, or of peevish menaces; but
men of charity, of noble hopes, of peaceful effort, and, at the
same time, of generous struggle.
Let us invoke St. Peter and St. Paul; let us invoke the Virgin
Mary, Mother of Jesus, the honor and the heavenly guardian of the
race of man; and, united to the souls of all the saints, let us
pray to the adorable Trinity reigning in heaven!
Let us pray that the council may be able to fulfill its task;
that the Christian world will not repel this great effort which
the church is making to help them; that light may find its way
into their minds, and that their hearts may be softened! That
misunderstandings may be explained, prejudices removed; that
unreasonable fears may disappear, and that Christianity, and
consequently civilization, may flourish with a new and more
vigorous youth. May the return to the church, so much desired and
so necessary, take place!
Let us pray for the monarchs of the world, that the wish and
formal request that the Holy Father made them in his letter may
be granted, May they cast aside all silly objections, and favor
by the liberty they give the bishops the future assembly of the
church, and let her council meet in peace.
Let us pray, too, for their people, that they may understand the
maternal intentions of the church; and, closing their ears to
calumny, may hear with confidence and accept with docility the
words of their mother.
Let us pray even for the avowed enemies of the church, that they
make a truce with their suspicions and their anger until the
church has announced, in her council and under the inspiration of
the Holy Ghost, her decrees whose wisdom and charity can hardly
fail to touch them.
Let us pray for so many men of good faith, men of science,
statesmen, the heads of families, workmen, men of honor, whom the
light of Jesus Christ has not yet enlightened, that they may now
receive its beneficent rays.
Let us pray that the anxious wishes of so many mothers, sisters,
wives, and daughters, who, in obscurity, are maintaining purity
and holiness in their families, often without being able to bring
our holy faith there, may at length be heard.
{31}
Let us pray for the East and the West, that they may be
reconciled; and for our separated brethren, that they may leave
the division which is destroying them, and answer the urgent
appeal of the holy church, and come to throw themselves in those
arms which have been open to receive them for three centuries.
Let us pray for the church, for her faithful children, and for
her ministers, that each day may find them more pure, more holy,
more learned, more charitable; so that our faults may not be an
obstacle to the reign of that God whose love we are appointed to
make known.
Let us also pray for the Holy Father. Deign, O God! to preserve
him to your church, and enable this great pontiff, who has not
feared, even amid the troubles of the age, to undertake the
laborious work of a council, to see its happy issue! May he,
after so many trials, bravely borne, rejoice in the triumph of
the church, before he goes to receive in heaven the reward of his
labors and
his virtues!
----------
Lent, 1869.
I.
We like sheep have gone astray,
Kyrie eleison!
Each his own misguided way,
Kyrie eleison!
Wandering farther, day by day,
Kyrie eleison!
II.
Shepherd kind, oh! lead us back;
Christe eleison!
Wrest us from our dangerous track,
Christe eleison!
Lest the wolves thy flock attack;
Christe eleison!
III.
Ope for us again thy fold,
Kyrie eleison!
Night approaches, drear and cold;
Kyrie eleison!
Death, perchance, and woes untold;
Kyrie eleison!
Richard Storrs Willis.
----------
{32}
The Modern Street-ballads Of Ireland.
The home of the street-ballad, pure and simple, is in Ireland. It
has nearly vanished in England, destroyed by the penny newspaper,
which contains five times as highly spiced food for the money. In
Ireland it still exists and supplies the place of the newspaper,
not only in appeals to the passion or reason, but as a general
chronicle of every event of importance, local or national, Very
often both are combined, and the leading article and the account
of political insult will be run into rude rhyme together, and the
story of a murder be interspersed with reflections on its sin.
The quantity of ballads is, of course, enormous, and to expect
that any but a small portion should possess more poetry than a
newspaper article would be unreasonable. But all are not of this
prosaic class, and some possess the genuine spirit of poetry
under their rude but often spirited diction.
The first question naturally asked is, Whence comes this enormous
flood of ballads? Who are the poets who produce them on every
imaginable subject, even the most verse-defying public meeting,
or in praise of humblest of politicians? Like the immortal Smiths
and Joneses, that make the thunder of the _Times_, their
names never appear, and though the ballad or the leading
article--and both have done so--may influence the fate of
nations, it will bring to the author only his stipulated hire. At
present, the street-ballads of Ireland are mostly composed by the
singers themselves. In ancient days, the weavers and tailors and
the hedge-schoolmasters used to be a fruitful source of supply,
the sedentary occupations of the former being popularly supposed
to foster the poetic talent, The latter class has vanished, and
if here and there one exists, it is in the shape of a red-nosed,
white-haired veteran, who is entertained in farmers' houses and
country _shebeens_, in memory of his ancient glory, when
sesquipedalian, long words and "cute" problems made him the
monarch of the parish next to the priest himself. However, the
singer of the ballad is, in most instances, the writer, who is
only anxious for a subject of interest on which to exercise his
muse, and generally turns out half-a-dozen verses of the
established pattern in half an hour. This he takes to the
publisher, who not only allows him no copyright, but does not
even make a discount in the price of his stock in trade, for
which he pays the same as his brother bards, who, finding his
ballad popular, will straightway strain their voices to it. But
then he has the same privilege with their productions, so that it
is all right in the long run. The ballads are printed on the
coarsest of paper with the poorest of type, and generally with a
worn-out woodcut of the most inappropriate description at the
head. Thus, for instance, I have one, where a portrait of Jerome
Bonaparte does duty over the "Lamentation of Lawrence King for
the murder of Lieut. Clutterbuck."
The ballad-singers are of both sexes, and are very dilapidated
specimens. The tone in which they send their voices on the
shuddering air is utterly indescribable--a sort of droning,
_pillelu_ falsetto, at once outrageously comical and
lugubrious. They sing everything in the same melancholy cadence,
whether lamentation or love-song. Very often, two, more
especially of women, will be together.
{33}
The first will sing the first two lines of a quatrain alone, and
then the second will join in, and they rise to the height of
discord together. Fair-days are their days of harvest, although
in cities like Cork or Waterford they may be seen on every day
except Sunday. A popular ballad will often have a very large
sale, and will find its way all over the country.
The greater portion of ballads composed in this way are, of
course, destitute of anything like poetry--mere pieces of
outrageous metaphor and Malapropoian long words, for which last
the ballad-singers have a ridiculous fondness. The singers sing
in a foreign language; they have lost the sweet tongue peculiarly
fitted for improvised poetry, in which their predecessors the
bards, down to the date of less than one hundred years ago, sang
so sweetly and so strongly, with such dramatic diction and happy
boldness of epithet. The language of the Saxon oppressor is from
the tongue, and not from the heart. As the mother of the late
William Carleton used to say, "the Irish _melts into the
tune_;" the English doesn't, and so many of the finest of the
ancient melodies are now songs without words. "Turlogh
O'Carolan," "Donogh MacConmara," and the "Mangaire Sugach" have
not left their successors among the "English" poets of the
present day. Among a people naturally so eloquent as the native
Irish, not even the drapery of an incongruous language can
entirely obscure the native vigor and strength of thought. A
ballad is sometime seen which, though often unequal and rude, is
alive with impassioned poetry, fierce, melancholy, or tender, and
it almost always becomes a general favorite, and is preserved
beyond its day to become a part of the standard stock. The songs
of so genuine a poet as William Allingham, who is the only
cultivated Irish poet who has had the taste and the spirit to
reproduce in spirit and diction these wild flowers of song, have
been printed on the half-penny ballad-sheets, and sung at the
evening hearth and at the morning milking all over Ireland.
"Lovely Mary Donnelly" and the "Irish Girl's Lamentation" have
become, in truth, a part of the songs of the nation, touching
alike the cultivated intellect and the untutored heart.
The street-ballads may be divided into five classes: patriotic,
love-songs, lamentations, eulogies, and chronicles.
The patriotic songs are disappointing. There are few to stir the
heart like the war-notes of Scotland. The reason is obvious. The
triumphs were few and fleeting, and the song of the vanquished
was only of hope or despair. They must sing in secret and be
silent in the presence of the victors. In most of the political
songs allegory is largely used. Ireland is typified under the
form of a lonely female in distress, or a venerable old lady, or
some other figure is used to disguise the meaning. Of course the
street ballad-singers dare not sing anything seditious, and even
the whistling of the "Wearing of the Green" will call down the
rebuke of the "peeler." The ballads that express the hatred of
the people to their rulers are sung in stealth and are often
unprinted. They are not usually the production of the hackneyed
professional ballad-singers, and are consequently of a much
higher order. The following is a good specimen, It is entitled
{34}
The Irishman's Farewell To His Country.
Oh! farewell, Ireland: I am going across the stormy main,
Where cruel strife will end my life, to see you never again.
'Twill break my heart from you to part; _acushla astore machree_.
But I must go, full of grief and woe, to the shores of America.
"On Irish soil my fathers dwelt since the days of Brian Borue.
They paid their rent and lived content convenient to Carricmore.
But the landlord sent on the move my poor father and me.
We must leave our home far away to roam in the fields of America.
"No more at the churchyard, _astore machree_,
at my mother's grave I'll kneel.
The tyrants know but little of the woe the poor man has to feel.
When I look on the spot of ground that is so dear to me,
I could curse the laws that have given me cause to depart to America.
"Oh! where are the neighbors, kind and true, that
were once my country's pride?
No more will they be seen on the face of the green,
nor dance on the green hillside.
It is the stranger's cow that is grazing now,
where the people we used to see.
With notice they were served to be turned out or starved,
or banished to America.
"O! Erin machree, must our children be exiled all over the earth?
Will they evermore think of you, _astore_,
as the land that gave them birth?
Must the Irish yield to the beasts of the field?
Oh! no--_acushla astore machree_.
They are crossing back in ships, with vengeance on their lips,
from the shores of America."
The songs which were in vogue among the young and enthusiastic
Fenians were, as might be supposed, of an entirely different
nature. They were not peasants, but half-educated artisans. The
proscribed _National Cork Songster_ contains probably more
rant and fustian than any similar number of printed pages in
existence. The verses, of course, bear a family resemblance to
those that appeared in the _Nation_ for a couple of years
previous to the events of '48, and in many instances are
reproductions. Those of a modern date are still more extravagant,
if possible, than that deluge of enthusiastic pathos; for among
the _Nation_ poets were Thomas Davis and James Clarence
Mangan, while among those of the Fenians of 1866 there is but one
that deserves the slightest shred of laurel. Charles J. Kickham,
now under sentence of fourteen years' penal servitude in her
Britannic Majesty's prisons, has written two or three pieces of
genuine ballad-poetry of great merit, which the people have at
once adopted as household songs. "Rory of the Hill" is of
remarkable spirit. It begins:
"That rake up near the rafters,
Why leave it there so long?
The handle of the best of ash
Is smooth and straight and strong.
And mother, will you tell me
Why did my father frown,
When to make hay in summer-time
I climbed to take it down?
She looked up to her husband's eyes,
While her own with light did fill,
'You'll shortly know the reason why,'
Said Rory of the Hill."
The love-songs, that are sung by the _colleens_ at the soft
dewy dawn, as they sit beside the sleek cows just arisen from
beneath the hedge, the nimble finger streaming the white milk
into the foaming pail, while the lark's song melts down from that
speck beneath the cloud, and the blackbird and thrush warble with
ecstasy in the hedge, the morning light shining across the dewy
green fields; or at
"Eve's pensive air,"
when the shadows are growing long, although the tops of the
swelling uplands are bright, and the crows are winging home, and
the swallows darting in the still air; or, in the winter
evenings, when the candles are lighted in the kitchen, and busy
fingers draw the woof, while the foot beats time to the whirring
wheel, are very numerous, and generally of a higher order of
merit than the patriotic songs. The pulses of the heart are freer
and its utterance dearer in human love than in love of country.
The beauties in which the Irish girls excel all others--the
blooming cheeks, and brilliant eyes, and wealth of flowing hair,
are the main objects of compliment, and are often transformed
into personifications of endearment.
{35}
_Colleen_, the universal term for young maidens, seems but a
corruption of _coolleen_, which means a head of curls or
abundant tresses. Grey and blue eyes are especially objects of
endearment, and even in the ancient Irish poems,
_green_-eyed is not unfrequently used, which is not so
unnatural as the English reader may suppose, the Irish word
expressing the indefinable tint of some lighter blue eyes, being
untranslatable into English. [Footnote 18]
[Footnote 18: "Sweet emerald eyes."--Massinger. "How is that
young and green-eyed Gaditana?" Longfellow's _Spanish
Student_.]
Although the modern love-songs are inferior to those in the Irish
language, for the reason that has been mentioned, that English is
not yet the language of the Irish heart, they often possess a
simple power, and, though seldom sustained throughout, a touch of
nature's genius, which the highest poet cannot reach with all his
art. How exquisite is the following:
"As Katty and I were discoursing,
She smiled upon me now and then,
Her apron string she kept foulding,
And twisting all round her ring."
Bits of poetry can be picked out of almost every love-ballad, as
witness the following:
"My love is fairer than the lilies that do grow,
She has a voice that's clearer than any winds that blow."
"With mild eyes like the dawn."
"One pleasant evening, when pinks and daisies
Closed in their bosoms one drop of dew."
"His hair shines gold revived by the sun,
And he takes his denomination from the _drien don_."
"I wish I were a linnet, how I would sing and fly.
I wish I were a corn-crake, I'd sing till morning clear--
I'd sit and sing to Molly, for once I held her dear."
"'Twas on a bright morning in summer,
That I first heard his voice speaking low,
As he said to the colleen beside me,
Who's that pretty girl milking her cow?"
"The hands of my love are more sunny and soft
Than the snowy sea foam."
"My love will not come nigh me,
Nor hear the moan I make;
Neither would she pity me,
Though my poor heart should break."
There is not one, however, that would bear quoting entire, and
none that comes anywhere near the flowers of the ancient Irish
love-songs which are some of the finest in the world. The
principal theme and delight of the ballad-singers are romantic
episodes, where a rich young nobleman courts a farmer's daughter
in disguise, and, after marriage, reveals himself, his lineage,
and his possessions to his bride; or where a noble lady falls in
love with a tight young serving-boy. Such a ballad will be as
great a favorite among the _colleens_ as the novels of
romantic love are said to be among milliners' apprentices. One
thing is especially noticeable among the love-ballads, and that
is the total absence not only of licentiousness, but even of
coarseness. The Irish peasant-girls at home are the most virtuous
of their class in the world, owing to the influence of the
confessional, the strong feeling of family pride, and the custom
of universal and early marriage. Not but there are unfortunates
who have made a "slip;" and when the ballad relates of such a
tragedy, it shows of how deep effect is the scorn of the parish,
and how wretched the fate of the unfortunate and her base-born
offspring. The "lamentations" or confessions of condemned
criminals are highly popular. Premeditated murder is rare among
the Irish peasantry, in comparison with the records of ruffianism
among the English laboring classes, and the interest excited by
the event is deeper, and extends to a larger space of local
influence. These lamentations are the rhymed confessions of the
criminals, giving an account of the circumstances of the tragedy,
sometimes in the third person, and sometimes in the first, always
concluding with a regret at the disgrace which the criminal has
brought on his relations, and imploring mercy for his soul.
{36}
They are of unequal merit, and, as a whole, not equal to the
love-songs. Once in a while, there is a touch of untaught pathos;
but being without exception the production of the hackneyed
writers, they are as little worth preservation as the "lives" of
eminent murderers which supply their places among us.
The narrative ballads tell of every event of interest to Irish
ears, from Aspromonte to the glorious steeplechase at Namore; the
burning of an emigrant ship, to a ploughing-match at Pilltown,
the same language being used for the one as the other. During the
late war in this country, every great battle was duly sung by the
Irish minstrels. The sympathies of the peasantry were usually
with the majority of their kindred in the North, but not
universally so. Thus does a bard give an account of the battle of
New Orleans, which would astonish General Butler:
"To see the streets that evening,
the heart would rend with pain.
The human blood in rivers ran,
like any flood or stream.
Men's heads blown off their bodies,
most dismal for to see;
And wounded men did loudly cry
in pain and agony.
The Federals they did advance,
and broke in through the town.
They trampled dead and wounded
that lay upon the ground.
The wounded called for mercy,
but none they did receive--"
The eulogies of person or place, some patron or his residence,
are innumerable, and ineffably absurd. Some years ago, an idle
young lawyer at Cork happened to be visiting Blarney Castle, when
one of these wandering minstrels came to the gate, and asked to
dedicate a verse to "Lady Jeffers that owns this station." The
request was granted, and the laughter of the guests, as the bard
recited his "composition," may be imagined. The occurrence and
the style of verse were common enough, but an idle banter incited
the gay youth into a burlesque imitation. The result was the
famous "Groves of Blarney," that has been sung and whistled all
over the world. Those who have not seen the originals might
imagine the "Groves of Blarney" to be an outrageous caricature.
But it is not so. It hardly equals and cannot surpass some of the
native flowers of blunder. The original is still sold in the
streets of Cork, and some extracts, in conclusion, will show how
much Dick Milliken was indebted to his unwitting model:
"There are fine walks in those pleasant gardens,
And spots most charming in shady bowers.
The gladiator, who is bold and daring,
Each night and morning to watch the flowers.
"There are fine horses and stall-fed oxen,
A den for foxes to play and hide,
Fine mares for breeding, with foreign sheep,
With snowy fleeces at Castle Hyde.
"The buck and doe, the fox and eagle,
Do skip and play at the river side.
The trout and salmon are always sporting
In the clear streams of Castle Hyde."
----------
{37}
Daybreak.
Chapter I.
"O jewel in the lotos: amen!"
A wide, slow whitening of the east, a silent stealing away of
shadows, a growing radiance before which the skies receded into
ineffable heights of pale blue and gleaming silver, and a March
day came blowing in with locks of gold, and kindling glances, and
girdle of gold, and golden sandals over the horizon.
Louis Granger, standing in the open window of his chamber,
laughed as he looked in the face of the morning, and stretched
out his hands and cried, "Backsheesh, O Howadji!"
Not many streets distant, another pair of eyes looked into the
brightening east, but saw no gladness there. Margaret Hamilton
remembered that it was her twenty-fifth birthday, and that she
had cried herself to sleep the night before, thinking of it. But
she would not remember former birthdays, celebrated by father,
mother, and sisters, before they had died, one after one, and
left her alone and aghast before the world. This, and some other
memories still more recent, she put out of sight; and, since they
would not stay without force, she held them out of sight. One who
has to do this is haunted.
The woman looked haunted. Her eyes were unnaturally bright and
alert, and shadows had settled beneath them; her cheeks were worn
thin; her mouth compressed itself in closing. At twenty-five she
looked thirty-five.
And yet Miss Hamilton was meant for a beauty--one of the
brilliant kind, with clear gray eyes, and a creamy pallor
contrasting with profuse black hair. The beautiful head was well
set; something vivid and spirited in the whole air of it. Her
height was only medium, but she had the carriage of a Jane de
Montford, and there were not wanting those who would have
described her as tall.
While she looked gloomily out, a song she had heard somewhere
floated up in her mind:
"The years they come, and the years they go,
Like winds that blow from sea to sea;
From dark to dark they come and go,
All in the dew-fall and the rain."
It was like a dreary bitter wind sobbing about the chimneys when
the storm is rising. She turned hastily from the window, and
began counting the hideous phantoms of bouquets on the cheap
wall-paper, thinking that they might be the lost souls of flowers
that had been wicked in life; roses that had tempted, and lilies
that had lied. The room, she found, was sixteen bouquets long,
and fourteen and a half wide.
When her eyes began to ache with this employment, she took up a
book, and, opening it at random, read:
"A still small voice said unto me,
'Thou art so full of misery,
Were it not better not to be?'"
Was everything possessed to torment her? She dropped the book,
and looked about in search of distraction. In the window opposite
her stood her little easel with a partly finished cabinet
photograph on it a man's face, with bushy whiskers, round eyes,
an insignificant nose, the expression full of a weak fierceness
superficially fell and determined, as though a lamb should try to
look like a lion.
{38}
One eye was sharply finished; and, as Margaret glanced at the
picture, this stared at her in so grotesque and threatening a
manner that she burst into a nervous laugh.
"I must turn your face to the wall, Cyclops, till I can give you
another eye," she said, suiting the action to the word.
A pile of unfinished photographs lay on a table near. She looked
them over with an expression of weariness. "O the eyes, and
noses, and mouths! Why will people so misuse the sunbeams? And
this insane woman who refuses to be toned down with India ink,
but will have colors to all the curls, and frizzles, and bows and
ends, and countless fly-away things she has on her! She looks now
more like an accident than a woman. When the colors are put in,
she will be a calamity. Only one face among them pleases me--this
pretty dear."
Selecting the picture of a lovely child, Margaret looked at it
with admiring eyes. "So sweet! I wish I had her here this moment
with her eyes, and her curls, and her mouth."
A sigh broke through the faint smile. There seemed to be a thorn
under everything she touched. Laying the picture down, she busied
herself in her room, opened drawers and closets and set them in
order; gathered the few souvenirs yet remaining to her--letters,
photographs, locks of hair--and piled them all into the grate.
One folded paper she did not open, but held an instant in fingers
that trembled as they clung; then, moaning faintly, threw it on
to the pyre. Inside that paper were two locks of hair--both
silver-threaded--twined as the two lives had been; her father's
and her mother's.
The touch of a match, and the smoke of her sacrifice curled up
into the morning sky.
Then again she came to a stand-still, and looked about for
something to do.
"I cannot work," she said. "My hand is not steady enough, and my
eyes are dim. What was it that Beethoven wrote to his friend? 'At
times cheerful, then again sorrowful; waiting to see if fate will
listen to us.' Suppose I should drop everything, since I am so
nerveless, and wait to see what fate will do."
Here again the enemy stood, The picture of waiting that came up
before her mind was that of Judge Pyncheon in the _House of the
Seven Gables_, sitting and staring blankly as the hours went
by--a sight to shriek out at when at length he was found. With a
swift pencil this woman's imagination painted a companion
picture: the door of her room opening after days of silence; a
curious, frightened face looking in; somebody sitting there cold
and patient, with half-open eyes, and not a word of welcome or
questioning for the intruder.
A clock outside struck ten. Margaret rose languidly and dressed
for a walk, after pausing to rest. Raising her arms to arrange
her hair and bonnet, she felt so faint that for a moment she was
obliged to lean forward on her dressing-table.
At length she was ready, only one duty left unperformed. Miss
Hamilton had not said her prayers that morning, and had not even
thought of saying them, or of reproaching herself for the
omission--a scandalous omission, truly, for the granddaughter of
the Rev. Doctor John Hamilton, and daughter of that excellent but
somewhat diluted deacon, John Hamilton, his son. But to pray was
to remember; and beside, God had forgotten her, she thought.
{39}
Miss Hamilton was not a Catholic, To her, Christ died eighteen
centuries ago, and went to heaven, and stayed there, only looking
and listening down in some vague and far-away manner that was
easier to doubt than to believe. The church into which, at every
dawn of day, the Beloved descends with shining pierced feet and
hands; with the lips that spoke, and the eyes that saw, and the
locks through which had sifted the winds of Olivet and the dews
of Gethsemane; with the heart of infinite love and pity, yes, and
the soul of infinite power--this church she knew not. To her it
was an abomination. The temples where pain hangs crowned with a
dolorous majesty, and where the path of sorrows is also the path
of delights, her footsteps had never sought. To her they were
temples of idolatry. Therefore, when troubles came upon her,
though she faced them intrepidly, it was only with a human
courage. What wonder if at last it proved that pain was stronger
than she?
With her hand on the latch of the door she paused, then turned
back into her chamber again. The society face she had assumed
dropped off; a sigh went shivering over her lips, and with it a
half-articulated thought, silly and womanish, "If I had some one
to come in here, put an arm around me--I'm so tired!--and say,
'Take courage, dear!' I could bear up yet longer. I could endure
to the end, perhaps."
A silly thought, but pitiful, being so vain.
Miss Hamilton was not by nature one of those who, as Sir Thomas
Browne says, looked asquint upon the face of truth. But she had
not dared to fully realize her circumstances, lest all courage
should die out of her heart. Now you could see that she put aside
the last self-delusion, and boldly looked her life in the face.
It was Medusa.
One of the bravest of soldiers has said that in his first battle
he would have been a coward if he had dared. Imagine the eyes of
such a fighter, a foe within and a foe without, and but his own
right arm and dauntless will between the two!
Such eyes had this woman. Of her whole form, only those eyes
seemed to live. But for them she might have been Margaret
Hamilton's statue.
At length she moved; and going slowly out, held on to the railing
in descending the stairs. Out doors, and down Washington street,
then, taking that direction involuntarily. It was near noon when
she found herself in a crowd on Park street, hastening through
it, without caring to inquire what the cause of the gathering
was. Coming out presently in front of the state house, and seeing
that there was space yet on the steps, she went up them, and took
her stand near a gentleman whom she had long known by sight and
repute. Mr. Louis Granger also recognized her, and made room,
quietly placing himself between her and the crowd. Miss Hamilton
scarcely noticed the movement. She was used to being attended to.
This gentleman was what might be called fine-looking, and was
thoroughly gentlemanly in appearance. He was cast in a large
mould, both form and features, had careless hazel eyes that saw
everything, and rather a lounging way with him. Indeed, he owned
himself a little lazy, and used laughingly to assert his belief
that inertia is a property of mind as well as of matter. It took
a good deal to start him; but once started, it took still more to
stop him. His age might be anywhere from thirty to forty, the few
silver threads in his fine dark hair counting for nothing. You
perceived that they had no business whatever there.
{40}
He was not a man who would catch the eye in a crowd; but, once
your attention was directed toward him, you felt attracted. The
charm of his face depended chiefly on expression; and those who
pleased him called Mr. Granger beautiful.
He stood now looking attentively at the lady beside him, finding
himself interested in her. Her eyes, that were fixed on the
advancing procession, appeared to see no more than if they had
been jewels, and her mouth was shut as if it would never open
again. The pale temples were hollow, the delicate nostrils were
slightly pinched, the teeth seemed to be set hard. He studied her
keenly, secure in her perfect abstraction, and marked even the
frail hand that clinched, not clasped, the iron railing. Mr.
Granger could read as much in a hand as Washington could; and
this hand, dazzlingly fair, full-veined, pink-palmed,
transparent, dewy, with heart-shaped finger-tips that looked as
though some finer perception were reaching out through the flesh,
was to him an epitome of the woman's character.
It was the 17th of March, and the procession in honor of St.
Patrick an unusually fine one. It flowed past like a river of
color and music, with many a silken rustling of the flag of their
adoption, but everywhere and above all the beautiful green and
gold of that most beautiful banner in the world--a banner which
speaks not of dominion, but of song and sunshine and the green
earth. While other nations, higher-headed, had taken the sun, the
star, the crescent, the eagle, or the lion for an emblem, or,
with truer loftiness, had raised the cross as their ensign, this
people, with a sweetness and humility all the more touching that
it was unconscious, bent to search in the grasses, and smilingly
and trustfully held up a shamrock as their symbol. Those had no
need to inscribe the cross upon their escutcheon who, in the face
of the world, bore it in their faithful hearts, and upon their
bowed and lacerated shoulders.
A pathetic spectacle--a countless procession of exiles; yet,
happily for them, the generous land that gave them a home grew no
dark willows to rust their harp-strings.
The music was, of course, chiefly Irish airs; but one band in
passing struck up "Sweet Home."
Margaret started at the sound, and looked about for escape. She
could not listen to that. Happening to glance upward, she saw a
company of ladies and gentlemen in the balcony over the portico.
Governor A---- was there, leaning on the railing and looking
over. He caught her glance, and beckoned. Margaret immediately
obeyed the summons, getting herself in hand all the way, and came
out on the balcony with another face than that she had worn
below. She had put on a smile; some good fairy had added a faint
blush, and Miss Hamilton was presentable. The governor met her
with a hearty smile and clasp of the hand. "I am glad to see
you," he said. "Will you stand here, or take that seat Mr.
Sinclair is offering you?"
"Yes, sir," he exclaimed, as Margaret turned away, continuing his
conversation with a gentleman beside him, "the English treatment
of the Irish is a clear case of cussedness."
"Our good chief magistrate is slightly idiomatic at times,"
remarked a lady near by.
A poetess stood in the midst of a group of gentlemen, who looked
at her, while she looked at the procession. "It is Arethusa, that
bright stream," she said with soft eagerness, "Pursued and
threatened at home, it has crept through shadowy ways, and leaped
to light in a new land."
{41}
Margaret approached Mr. Sinclair, who sat apart, and who made
room for her beside him.
Even now she noticed the splendid beauty of this man in whom
every physical attraction was perfected. Mr. Maurice Sinclair
might have posed for a Jupiter; but an artist would scarcely have
taken him for a model of the prince of the apostles. He was
superbly made, with a haughty, self-conscious beauty; his full,
bold eyes were of a light neutral tint impossible to describe, so
transparent were they, so dazzling their lustre; and his face was
delicately smooth and nobly-featured. One could scarcely regret
that the long moustache curling away from his mouth, then
drooping below his chin, and the thick hair pushed back from his
forehead, were of silvery whiteness. It did not seem to be decay,
but perfection. Mr. Sinclair used to say that his head had
blossomed.
He smiled as Miss Hamilton stepped slowly toward him, the smile
of a man entirely pleased with himself.
"Own now," he said, "that you are wishing to be Irish for the
nonce, that you might feel the full effervescence of the
occasion."
She shook her head listlessly.
Mr. Sinclair perceived that she needed to be amused. "See the
governor wave his handkerchief!" he said. "That man has been born
twice, once into Massachusetts, and the second time into all
creation."
She glanced at the object of his remarks, noting anew his short,
rotund figure, his round head with all its crow's-nest of black
ringlets, his prompt, earnest face that could be so kind. "There
isn't a drop of mean blood in his veins," she said. "He is one of
those rare men in whom feeling and principle go hand in hand."
Mr. Sinclair gave his shoulders a just perceptible shrug. "Do you
know all the people here?" he asked, observing that Margaret
looked searchingly over the company. "Let me play Helen on the
walls of Troy, and point out the notables whom you do not know.
That antique-cameo-faced gentleman whom you are looking at now is
the Rev. Mr. Southard. He is misnamed of course. He should be
called after something boreal, Does not he make you shiver? He
lives with my cousin, whom I saw you standing beside down there.
Louis likes him, or pretends to. Mr. Southard is not so much a
modern minister, as a theological reminiscence. He belongs among
the crop-heads; I have somewhere heard that he was a wild lad,
and is now doing penance. It is likely. One doesn't bar a
sheep-fold as one does a prison. He appears to be a little off
guard now, for a breath seems to have forgotten predestination.
When he looks like that, I am always reminded of something pagan,
He'd be horrified, of course, if he knew it. Mark that Olympian
look of painless melancholy, and the blue, motionless eye. What a
cold, marble face he has! Being too polished to retain heat, he
remains unmoved in the midst of enthusiasm. That's philosophy,
isn't it? He is one of those who fancy that ceasing to be human,
they become superhuman. They mistake the prefix, that's all. But
Mr. Southard bristles with virtues. I must own that I never knew
a man so forgiving toward other people's enemies."
"I know Mr. Southard well by reputation," Margaret interrupted
rather warmly. "He is human, of course, and so, fallible; but
every mountain in his soul is a Sinai!"
{42}
"Oh! he has his good points," Mr. Sinclair admitted tranquilly.
"I have known him to be surprised into a glorious laugh, for
which, to be sure, he probably beat himself afterward; and he has
a temper that peeps out now and then in a delightfully human
fashion. I have detected in him, too, a carnal weakness for
French chocolate, and a taste for pictures, even the pictures of
the Babylonians. Once I saw him stand five minutes before a faded
old painting of Cimabue's; I believe it was a virgin standing
between two little boys who leaned to kiss each other, a hand of
hers on either head, I don't condemn the man _in toto_. I
like his faults; but I detest his virtues!
"That stout, consequential person, with his chin in his cravat,
who as Suckling says of Sir Toby Mathews, is always whispering
nothing into somebody's ear, is Mr. ex-councilman Smith. He was
thrown to the surface at the time of the Know-Nothing ebullition,
and when that was over, was skinned off with the rest of 'em. He
considers himself a statesman, and looks forward with prophetic
goggle eyes to the time when his party shall be again in the
ascendant. He comes here to nurse his wrath, and I haven't a
doubt that he feels as though this procession were marching down
his throat. He used to be to a joiner, then a house-builder, then
he got to be a house-owner. Twenty years ago, my aunt Betsey, who
lives in the country, paid him two dollars to build a trellis for
her grape-vine, and he did it so well that she gave him his
dinner after the family had got through. Now he has a mansion
near hers that dwarfs her cottage to a bird-cage. His place is
really fine, grounds worth looking at, and a stone house with
bronze lions at the door. I don't know what he has lions there
for, unless to indicate that Snug the joiner lives within. I'm
not afraid of 'em. You've never heard of him here; but out there
he is tremendous. '_Imposteur à la Mecque, et prophète à
Médine_.'
"Still there are people even here who blow about him. Psaphon's
birds, of course, fed on Smith's oats, He hates me because he
thinks that I laugh at him; but I don't doubt that it soothes his
soul to know that the roses on his carpets are twice as large as
those on mine, and that he has ten pictures to my one. The first
thing you see when the vestibule door opens is a row of
portraits, ten of 'em, Smith and his wife, and eight children.
Ames painted 'em, and he must have had the nightmare regularly
till they were done. They are larger than life, and their eyes
move. I am positive that they move. I guess there are little
strings behind the canvas. There they hang and stare at you, till
you wish they were hanged by the necks. The first time I went
there, I shook my fist at 'em behind Smith's back, and he caught
me at it. I couldn't help it. The spectacle is enough to excite
any man's worst feelings. The parlor walls are covered with
landscapes painted from a cow's point of view, strong in grass
and clover, with pleasant drinking-places, and large trees to
stand under when the sun gets high. I never see such trees and
water in nature, but I dare say the cows do. My wife and I dined
there once. The eight children sat in two detachments and ate
Black Hamburg grapes, skins and all; and the peaches were brought
in polished like apples. My wife got into such a giggle that she
nearly strangled. I see, you sharp-eyed Bedouin, you want to
remind me that I have eaten of this man's salt. True, but he made
it as bitter as any that Dante ever tasted.
{43}
"That sober, middle-aged man in a complete suit of pepper and
salt, hair and all, is Mr. Ames, the member from N----, Polliwog
Ames they call him, from his great speech. Is it possible you
have never heard of it? It was the speech of the session. Some
one had introduced a bill asking an appropriation of ten thousand
dollars toward building a new museum of natural history. There
was a little palaver on the subject, then Ames got up. All winter
nothing had been heard from him but the scriptural yea and nay;
so, of course, every one was attentive, 'Gentle-men,' he said,
'while thousands of men, women, and children, in the city, and
tens of thousands in the commonwealth, are hungry to-day, and
will be hungry to-morrow, and are and will be too poor to buy
food; while paupers are crowding our almshouses, and beggars are
swarming in our streets; while all this poverty is staring us in
the face, and putting to us the problem, how are we to be fed and
clothed and sheltered, and kept from crime, and taught to read
and to pray? it would seem to me, gentlemen, an unnecessary not
to say reprehensible act, to appropriate ten thousand dollars of
the public money, in order that some long-nosed professor might
be enabled to show us how polliwogs wiggle their tails.' Having
said this, Mr. Ames shut his mouth, and sat down covered with
glory."
Margaret's only comment was to look earnestly at this man who had
remembered the poor.
They were silent a little while; then Mr. Sinclair spoke again,
in a lower voice. "I am going to Europe in a few weeks."
She had nothing to say to this. His going would make no
difference with her.
"You know, and everybody knows," he went on hastily, "that my
wife and I have not for years lived very happily together. I
think that few blame me. I would not wish all the blame to be
thrown on her, either. The fact is, we never were suited to each
other, and every day we grew more antagonistic. We had a little
sensible talk last week, and finally agreed to separate. She will
remain here, and I, as I said, shall go to Europe for an
indefinite time, perhaps for ever."
At any other time Margaret might have felt herself embarassed by
such a confidence. As it was, she hardly knew what reply to make;
but, since he waited, managed to say that if people could not
live peacefully together, she supposed it was best they should
separate.
He spoke again abruptly.
"Margaret, you cannot, if you would, hide your misery from me.
You are fitted to appreciate all that is beautiful in nature and
art, yet are bound and cramped by the necessity of constant labor
for your daily bread. You suffer, too, what to the refined is the
worst sting of poverty, the being associated with, often in the
power of, vulgar and ill-natured people, who despise you because
you are not rich, and hate you because, being poor, you yet will
not and cannot be like themselves. I know that there are those
who take delight in mortifying you, in misinterpreting your every
act and word, and in prejudicing against you persons who
otherwise might be your friends. What a wretched, double life you
live; petted by notable people on one hand, and insulted by
inferiors on the other! How long is it to last? You must be aware
that you are slipping out of the notice of your early friends.
You cannot accept their invitations, because you have not time,
and moreover, are not suitably dressed. By and by they will cease
to invite you. Do you look forward to marriage? Every day your
chances are lessening.
{44}
You are growing old before your time. I cannot see that you have
anything to look forward to but a life of ill-paid toil, a
gradual dropping out of the place that you were born and educated
to fill, a loss of courage and self-respect, a lowering of the
tastes, and at last, a sinking to the level of what you must
despise. If you should be taken ill now, what would become of
you?"
"I should probably go to the charity-ward of the public
hospital," Miss Hamilton replied coldly.
"What do you hope for?" he asked.
"I hope for nothing," she answered. "I know all that you tell me,
and far more."
Mr. Sinclair's eyes brightened. "What good are your fine friends
to you? You would never ask them to help you, I know; but if you
could bring yourself to that, would you not feel a bitter
difference? It is not mean to shrink from asking favors, when
they are for ourselves. Walter Savage Landor was neither mean nor
a fool; yet he makes one of his best characters say that the
highest price we can pay for a favor is to ask for it, and
everybody who has tried knows that. You would sink at once from a
friend to a dependent. Now your friends ask no questions, and you
tell them no lies. If they give the subject a thought, they fancy
you in some quiet, retired, and highly genteel apartment, if
rather near the eaves, then so for a pure northern light,
leisurely and elegantly painting photographs, for which you
receive the highest prices, and thanks to boot. They don't see an
upstartly assistant criticising your work, or a stingy employer
taking off part of the price for some imaginary flaw. And if they
did, they would only tell you that such annoyances are trivial,
that you must rise above them. I've heard that kind of talk. But
those who go down to battle with the pigmies know how tormenting
their bites are. The worst of it is, too, that you cannot long
maintain the dignity and purity of your own character in this
petty strife, It isn't in the nature of things, I don't care what
may be said to the contrary by parlor ascetics and philosophers.
They have no right to dogmatize on the necessary influence of
circumstances in which they have never been placed. Moreover,
constant labor is lowering to the mind, and any work is degrading
to the person who can do a higher kind of work. It may be saving
to him whose leisure would be employed in frivolity and license;
but that person is already base. The time you spend in studying
how to make one dollar do the work of five makes a lower being of
you. I can see this in you, Margaret. Your manners and
conversation are not what they were. You have no time to read, or
think, or look at pictures, or hear lectures, or listen to
music--none. You have only time for work, and, the work finished,
are too weary for anything but sleep; perhaps too weary for that
even, How long do you expect to keep up with such a life dragging
at you?"
Miss Hamilton lifted between her finger and thumb a fold of the
dress she wore. "All the time I could spare from my painting in
the last three weeks has been devoted to the task of making this
dress out of an old one," she said. "It was a difficult problem;
but I solved it. I was always fond of the mathematics. Of course,
during those three weeks my universe revolved around a black
bombazine centre. O sir! I know better than you can tell me, how
degrading such labor is. God in the beginning imposed it as a
curse; and a curse it is!"
There was again a momentary pause, during which Mr. Sinclair's
merciless eyes searched the cold face
beside him.
{45}
Margaret did not observe that all the company had gone, that the
procession had disappeared, the crowd melted away. She had sat
there and listened like one in a dream, too dull and weary to be
angry, or to wonder that such words should be addressed to her,
and such bold assertions made, where her most intimate friends
had never ventured a hint even.
When Mr. Sinclair spoke again, his voice was soft and earnest.
"Have you any friend so dear and trusty, that his frown would
make your heart ache yet more? In all the world, do you know one
to whom your actions are of moment, who thinks of you anxiously
and tenderly, for whose sake you would walk in a straight path,
though it might be full of thorns? Is there one?"
"There is not one," she said.
"Come with me, then!" he exclaimed. "Think of Italy, and what
that name means, of the east, of all the lands that live in song
and in story. Drop for ever from your hands the necessity for
toil, and let your heart and mind take holiday. 'Not one,' you
said; but, Maud, you mistook, I thought of you all the time, and
got your troubles by heart. Leave this miserable, cramping life
of yours, and come with me where we shall be as free from
criticism as if we were disembodied spirits. Forget this paltry
Boston, with its wriggling streets and narrow breaths. Fancy now
that the breeze in our faces blows off the blue Mediterranean,
the little dome above us rises and swells to St. Peter's, that
last flutter of a banner over the hill is the argent ground with
golden keys. Or Victor Immanuel has got Rome for his own, and
there floats the red, white, and green of Italy. How you would
color and brighten like a rose under such sunshine! Come with me,
Margaret, come!
She looked at him with troubled, uncomprehending eyes, groping
for the meaning under the flowery speech. His glance dazzled her.
"It is like a fairy-tale," she said. "How can it come true? I am
poor, yet you bid me travel as only the rich can. How am I to go
with you? who else is going?"
He smiled. "O silly Margaret! since there is no other way, and
since in all the world there is no one to care for or to question
you, come with me alone."
Then Margaret Hamilton knew that her cup of bitterness had lacked
one poisoned drop. She got up from the seat, shrinking away,
feeling as though she lessened physically.
But when she reached the door, Mr. Sinclair was there before her.
"At least, forgive me!" she heard him say.
"Let me go!" she exclaimed, without looking up.
"Remember my tenderness and pity for you," he urged.
"You have none!" she said. "Let me go."
"And you are not indifferent to me," he continued.
She lifted her face at that, and looked at him with eyes that
were bright, gray, and angry as an eagle's.
"Maurice Sinclair," she said haughtily, "I thank you for one
thing. Weary, and miserable, and lonely as I have been, I could
not have been certain, without this test, that such a temptation
would not make me hesitate. But now I know that temptation comes
from within, not from without, and that infamy attracts only the
infamous. I care for you, you think? My admiration and my
friendships are free; but I am not a woman to tear my hands on
other people's hedges. Let me tell you, sir, that I must honor a
man before I can feel any affection for him.
{46}
I must know that, though being human he might stumble, his proper
stature is upright. If I cared for you, I could not stand here
and scorn you, as I do; I should pray you to be true to your
noble self, to give me back my trust in you. I should forgive
you; but my forgiveness would be coals of fire on your head. If I
could love a man well enough to sin for him, I should love him
too well for that. Oh! it was manly, and tender, and generous of
you, was it not? I had lost all but self-respect, and you would
have taken that from me. But, sir, I have wings which you can
never entangle!"
"You have nowhere to turn," he said.
She stood one instant as though his words were indeed true, then
threw her hands upward, "I turn to God! I turn to God!" she cried
out.
When she looked at him again, Mr. Sinclair stepped aside and let
her pass.
But the strength that passion gives is brief, and when Margaret
reached the street, she was trembling with weakness. Where to go?
Not home; oh! not to that gloomy place! She walked across the
Common, and thence to the Public Gardens, every step a weariness.
"I must stay out in the sunshine," she thought, taking a seat
under the great linden-tree that stands open to the west.
"Darkness, and chilly, shadowed places are terrible. Oh! what
next?"
Though she had called on God, she yet believed not in him, poor
Margaret! Hers had been the instinctive outcry of one driven to
desperation; and when the impulse subsided, then darkness fell
again.
Sitting there, she drew from her pocket a little folded paper,
opened it in an absent way, and dreamily examined the delicate
white powder it contained. More than once, when life had pressed
too heavily, the enchanter hidden under this delusive form had
came to her aid, had loosened the tense cords that bound her
forehead, unclasping them with a touch as light and tender as
love's own, had charmed away the pain from flesh and spirit. She
recollected now anew its sinuous and subtile ways. First, a deep
and gradually settling quietude of mind and body, all disturbing
influences stealing away so noiselessly that their going was
imperceptible, a prickling in the arms, a languor in the throat
and at the roots of the tongue, a sweet fainting of the breath,
an entire and perfect peace. Then a slowly rising perception of
pleasures already in possession yet unnoticed before.
How delightful the mere involuntary act of breathing! How airily
intoxicating the full, soft rush of blood through the arteries,
swinging noisily like a dance to a song, never lost, in whatever
labyrinthine windings it might wander. How the universe opened
like a folded bud, like myriad buds that bloom in light and color
and perfume! The air and the sunshine became miracles; common
things slipped off their disguise, and revealed undreamed-of
glories. All this in silence. And presently the silence would be
found rhythmic like a tune.
She went no farther. The point at which all these downy
influences became twined into a cord as potent as the fabulous
Gleipnir, and tightened about both body and soul with its soft,
implacable coils--that her thought glanced away from.
She carefully shook the shining powder into a little heap in the
paper. There was ten times as much as she had ever taken at once;
but then she had ten times greater need of rest and
forgetfulness. Her head felt giddy, as if a wheel were going
within it.
{47}
Catching at that thought of a wheel, her confused memory called
up strange eastern scenes, a temple in a gorge among rocky
mountains; outside, the dash of a torrent foaming over its rough
bed between the palms; not far away, the jungle, where the tiger
springs with a golden flash through the shadows; within, hideous
carved idols with vestments of cloth of gold, and silver bowls
set before them, the noiseless entering of a gliding lama, the
bowed form and hand outstretched to twirl the praying-wheel,
whereon is wound in million-fold repetition the one desire of his
soul, "_Um mani panee, houm!_" O jewel in the lotos! Rest
and forgetfulness! So her thought kept murmuring with weary
persistency.
As she raised the morphine to her lips, some one touched her arm.
"Madam!" said a man's voice just behind her shoulder.
She started and half turned. "Well, sir!"
"What have you there?" he asked, without removing his hand.
She shook herself loose from him. "Will you go on, sir? you are
insolent!"
"I cannot go while you have such a face, and while that paper is
in your hand," Louis Granger said firmly; and reaching, took the
morphine from her.
Her glance slid away from his face, and became fixed.
"O child! what would you do?" he exclaimed.
She did not appear to hear him. She was swaying in her seat, and
her breath came sobbingly.
Mr. Granger called a carriage that was passing, and led her to
it. She made no resistance, and did not object, scarcely noticed,
indeed, when he seated himself opposite her.
"Walk your horses till I find out where the lady wants to go," he
said to the driver.
When, after a few minutes of sickening half-consciousness,
Margaret began to realize who and where she was, and looked at
Mr. Granger, she met his eyes full of tears.
"I have no claim on your confidence," he said, "but I desire to
serve you; and if you can trust me, I assure you that you will
never have reason to regret it."
Margaret dropped her face into her hands, and all the pride died
out of her heart.
"I was starving," she said. "I have not tasted food for
twenty-four hours; and for a week I have eaten nothing but dry
bread."
Mr. Granger leaned quickly and took her hand in a strong grasp,
as we take the hands of the dying, to give them strength to die.
"I worked day and night," she sobbed; "and I only got enough to
make me decent, and pay for my room. I have done all I could; but
I was losing the strength to do. I have been starving so for more
than a year, growing worse every day. I wasn't responsible for
trying to take the morphine. My head is so light and my heart is
so heavy, that everything seems strange, and I don't quite know
what is right and what is wrong."
Mr. Granger's sympathy was painfully excited. He was not only
shocked and hurt for this woman, but he felt that in some way he
was to blame when such things could be. He had also that
uneasiness which we all experience when reminded how deceitful is
the fair surface of life, and what tragedies may be going on
about us, under our very eyes, yet unseen and unsuspected by us.
"What if my own little girl should come to this!" he thought.
"What was Mr. Sinclair saying to you up there?" he asked
abruptly.
She told him without hesitation.
{48}
"The villain!" he muttered.
"No," Margaret replied sadly, "I think that according to his
light, he had some kind meaning. You know he doesn't believe in
any religion, that he denies revelation; yet you would not call
him a villain for that. Why then is he a villain for denying a
moral code that is founded on revelation? He is consistent. If
God and my own instincts had not forbidden me to accept his
proposal, nothing else would have had power."
She sighed wearily, and leaned against the back of the carriage.
"Promise to trust all to me now," Mr. Granger said hastily, "I am
not a Maurice Sinclair."
"Have I not trusted you?" she asked with trembling lips.
"Besides, it seems that God has sent you to me, and trusting you
is trusting him. I didn't expect him to answer me; but I called,
and he has answered."
Chapter II.
A Louis D'or.
With the exception of that perfect domestic circle not often
beheld save in visions, there is perhaps no more delightful
social existence than may be enjoyed where a few congenial
persons are gathered under one roof, in all the freedom of
private life, but without its cares, where no one is obliged to
entertain or be entertained, but is at liberty to be
spontaneously charming or disagreeable, according to his mood,
where comfort is taken thought of, and elegance is not forgotten.
Into such an establishment Mr. Granger's home had expanded after
the death of his wife. It could not be called a boarding-house,
since he admitted only a few near friends; and he refused to
consider himself as host, The only visible authorities in the
place were Mrs. James, the housekeeper, whose weapon was a
duster, and Miss Dora Granger, whose sceptre was a blossom.
The house was a large, old-fashioned one, standing with plentiful
elbow-room in a highly respectable street that had once been very
grand, and there were windows on four sides. All these windows
looked like pleasant eyes with spectacles over them. There was a
rim of green about the place, a tall horse-chestnut-tree each
side of the street,
and an irrepressible grape-vine
that, having been planted at the rear of the
house, was now well on its way to the front. This vine was
unpruned, an embodied mirth, flinging itself in every direction,
making the slightest thing it could catch at an excuse for the
most profuse luxuriance, so happy it could never stop growing, so
full of life it could not grow old.
In the days when Mr. Granger's grandfather built this mansion,
walls were not raised with an eye chiefly to the accommodation of
Pyramus and Thisbe. They grew slowly and solidly, of honest
stone, brick, and mortar. They had timbers, not splinters; there
wasn't an inch of veneering from attic to basement; and instead
of stucco, they had woodwork with flutings as fine as those of a
lady's ruffle. When you see mahogany-colored doors in one of
those dwellings, you may be pretty sure that the doors are
mahogany; and the white knobs and hinges do not wear red.
Cannon-balls fired at these houses stick in the outer wall.
Such was Mr. Louis Granger's home. Miss Hamilton had looked at
that house many a time, and sighingly contrasted it with the
dingy brick declivity in which she had her eyrie, Now she was to
live here.
"How wishes do sometimes come fulfilled, if we only wish long
enough!" she thought, as the carriage in which she had come drew
up before the steps.
{49}
Mr. Granger stood in the open door, and there was a glimpse of
the housekeeper behind him, looking out with the utmost respect
on the equipage of their visitor--for one of Miss Hamilton's
wealthy friends had offered her a carriage.
But as the step was let down, and the liveried footman stood
bowing before her, Margaret shrank back with a sudden
recollection that was unspeakably bitter and humiliating. In
spite of the mocking show, she was coming to this house as a
beggar, literally asking for bread. On the impulse of the moment,
she could have turned back to her attic and starvation rather
than accept friendship on such terms. In that instant all the
petty spokes and wheels in the engine of her poverty combined
themselves for one wrench more.
"I have been watching for you," said Mr. Granger's voice at the
carriage-door.
Margaret gave him her hand, and stepped out on to the pavement,
her face downcast and deeply blushing.
"I hope I have not incommoded you," she said coldly.
He made no reply, and seemed not to have heard her ungracious
comment; but when they reached the threshold, he paused there,
and said earnestly, "I bid you welcome to your new home. May it
be to you a happy one!"
She looked up gratefully, ashamed of her bitterness.
Mr. Granger's manner was joyful and cordial, as if he were
receiving an old friend, or meeting some great good fortune.
Bidding the housekeeper wait, he conducted Margaret to a room
near by, and seated her there to hear one word more before he
should go to his business and leave her to the tender mercies of
his servants. As she sat, he stood before her, and leaning on the
high back of a chair, looked smilingly down into the expectant
and somewhat anxious face that looked up at him.
"I am so cruel as to rejoice over every circumstance which has
been influential in adding to my household so welcome and
valuable a friend," he said. "I have worlds for you to do. First,
my little Dora is in need of your care. It is time she should
begin to learn something. I have also consented, subject to your
approval, to associate with her two little girls of her age, who
live near, and will come here for their lessons. Besides this, a
friend of mine, who is preparing a scientific work, and who does
not understand French, wishes you to make some translations for
him. Does this suit you?"
"Perfectly!"
"But first you must rest," he said. "And now I will leave you to
get acquainted with the house under Mrs. James's auspices. Do not
forget that your comfort and happiness are to be considered, that
you are to ask for whatever you may want, and mention whatever
may be not to your liking, Have you anything to say to me now?"
pausing with his hand on the door-knob.
"Yes," she replied, smiling, to hide emotion; "as in the Koran
God said of St. John, so I of you, 'May he be blessed the day
whereon he was born, the day whereon he shall die, and the day
whereon he shall be raised to life!'"
He took her hand in a friendly clasp, then opened the door, and
with a gesture that included the whole house, said, "You are at
home!"
Margaret glanced after him as he went out, and thought, "At home!
The French say it better: I am _chez vous!_"
{50}
"You have to go up two flights, Miss Hamilton," the housekeeper
began apologetically, with the footman still in her eye.
"But Mr. Granger said that you want a good deal of light. Mr. and
Mrs. Lewis occupy that front room over the parlor, and the next
one is the spare-chamber, and that one under yours is Mr.
Granger's, and that little one is Dora's, and the long one back
in the L is Mr. Southard's. Up this other flight, Miss Aurelia
Lewis has the front chamber. She likes it because the
horse-chestnut tree comes up against the window. In summer you
can hardly see through. It's like being in the woods. There, this
is your chamber," flinging open the door of a large, airy room
that had two deep windows looking over the house-tops straight
into the eyes of the east. The coloring of this room was
delightfully fresh and cool, the walls a pale olive-green, the
wood-work white, and the wide mantel-piece of green marble. There
were snow-white muslin curtains, Indian matting on the floor, and
the chairs were all wicker, except one, a crimson-cushioned
arm-chair. The old-fashioned bureau and wardrobe were of solid
mahogany adorned with glittering brass knobs and handles, and the
black and gilt framed looking-glass had brass candle-sockets at
each side. The open grate was filled with savin-boughs, and a
bright shell set in the midst. In the centre of the mantle-piece
was a white vase running over full of glistening smilax sprays,
and at each end stood a brass candlestick with a green wax candle
in it. There were three pictures on the three blank walls; one a
water-color of moss-roses and buds dew sprinkled, the second, a
chromo of a yellow-gray cat stretched out in an attitude of
slumbrous repose, her tail coiled about her lithe haunches, her
head advanced and resting on her paws, her eyes half shut, but
showing a sly line of watchful golden lustre. The third was a
very good engraving of the Sistine Madonna. A large closet with
drawers and shelves, delightful to feminine eyes, led back from
this quaint and pleasant chamber.
Margaret glanced around her pretty nest, then flung off her
bonnet and shawl, and, seating herself in the armchair by the
window, for the first time really looked at the housekeeper. Till
that moment she had not been conscious of the woman.
Mrs. James was hospitably making herself busy doing nothing,
moving chairs that were already well placed, and wiping off
imaginary specks of dust. She looked as though she would be an
excellent housekeeper, and put her whole soul in the business;
but appeared to be neutral otherwise.
"Everything here was as clean as your eye this morning," she
said, frowning anxiously as she stooped to bring a suspected
table-top between her vision and the light.
"Everything is exquisite," Miss Hamilton replied. "One can't help
having a speck of dust now and then, The earth is made of it, you
know."
The housekeeper sighed wofully. "Yes, there's a great deal of
dirt in the world."
When she was left alone, Margaret still sat there, letting the
room get acquainted with her, and settling herself into a new and
delicious content. Happening after a while to glance toward the
door, she saw it slowly and noiselessly moving an inch or two,
stopping, then again opening a little way. She continued to look,
wondering what singular current of air or eccentricity of hinge
produced that intermittent motion. Presently she spied, clasped
around the edge of the door, at about two feet from the carpet,
four infinitesimal fingertips, rosy-white against the
yellow-white of the paint. Miss Hamilton checked the breath a
little on her smiling lips, and awaited further revelations.
{51}
After a moment, there appeared just above the fingers a
half-curled, flossy lock of pale gold-colored hair, and softly
dawning after that aurora, a beautiful child's face.
"Oh! come to me!" exclaimed Margaret.
Immediately the face disappeared, and there was silence.
Miss Hamilton leaned back in her chair again, and began to
recollect the tactics for such cases made and provided by the
great law-giver Nature. She affected not to be aware that the
silken locks reappeared, and after them a glimpse of a low,
milk-white forehead, then a blue, bright eye, and finally, the
whole exquisite little form in a gala-dress of white, with a gay
sash and shoulder-knots.
Dora came in looking intently at the mantel-piece, and
elaborately unconscious that there was any one present but
herself. Miss Hamilton's attention was entirely absorbed by the
outer world.
"I never did see such a lovely flower as there is in that
window," she soliloquized. "It is as pink as ever it can be.
Indeed, I think it is a little pinker than it can conveniently
be. It must have to try hard."
Dora glanced toward the stranger, and listened attentively.
"And I see three tiny clouds scudding down the east. I shouldn't
be surprised if their mother didn't know they are out. They run
as if they didn't mean to stop till they get into the middle of
next week."
Dora took a step or two nearer, looked warily at the speaker, and
peeped out the window in search of the truant cloudlets.
"And there is another cloud overhead that has gone sound asleep,"
Miss Hamilton pursued as tranquilly as if she had been sitting
there and talking time out of mind. "One side of it is as white
as it can be, and the other side is so much whiter than it can
be, that it makes the white side look dark. If anybody wants to
see it, she had better make haste."
"Anybody," was by this time close to the window, looking out with
all her eyes, her hand timidly, half unconsciously touching the
lady's dress.
"Oh! what a splendid bird!" cried the enchantress. "What a pity
it should fly away! But it may come back again pretty soon."
Silence, and the pressure of a dimpled elbow on Margaret's knee.
"I suppose you don't care much about sitting in my lap, so as to
see better," was the next remark, addressed, apparently, to all
out-doors.
The child began shyly to climb to the lady's knee, and was
presently assisted there.
"Such a bird!" sighed Margaret then, looking at the little one,
thinking that by this time her glance could be borne. "It had
yellow specks on its breast," illustrating with profuse and
animated gestures, "and a long bill, and a glossy head with
yellow feathers standing up on top, and yellow stripes on its
wings," pointing toward her own shoulders, her glance following
her finger. Then a break, and an exclamation of dismay, "What has
become of my wings?"
Dora reached up to look over the lady's shoulder, but saw only
the back of a well-fitting bombazine gown.
"I guess they's flied away," said the child in the voice of a
anguid bobolink.
"Then I'll tell you a story," said Margaret. "Once there was a
lady who lived in a real mean place, and she didn't have a good
time at all. She was just as lonesome and homesick as she could
be. One day she brought home the photograph of a dear little
girl, and that she liked. And she wished that she could see the
real little girl, and that she could talk to her; but she had
only the paper picture.
{52}
Well, by and by she went to live in a delightful house; and while
she sat in her chamber, the door opened, and who should come in
but the same dear child whose picture she had loved! Wasn't the
lady glad then?"
"Who was the little girl?" asked Dora with a shy, conscious look
and smile.
The answer was a shower of kisses all over her sweet face, and
two tears that dropped unseen into her sunny hair.
To Be Continued
----------
Comparative Morality Of Catholic
And Protestant Countries.
It is truly refreshing to read in _Putnam's Magazine_ for
January, 1869, the article entitled, "The Literature of the
Coming Controversy," written, as we now know, by Rev. Leonard W.
Bacon, a Protestant minister of Brooklyn, In it, he castigates
most soundly the well known anti-popery society called "The
American and Foreign Christian Union," "numbering," as he says,
among its vice-presidents and directors, some of the most eminent
pastors, bishops, theologians, and civilians of the American
Protestant churches. Some of its publications he calls "wicked
impostures" and "shameful scandals," and wonders "how they can
stand, from year to year, accredited to the public by some of the
most eminent and excellent men in the country." Our wonder is
still greater how he can call men who countenance such things
"excellent." He says: "All the time that this society has been
running its manufactory of falsehoods and scandals, only the
resolute good sense of the public, in not buying the rubbish, has
saved the church of Christ from a burning and ineffaceable
disgrace." The disgrace to the church, it seems to us, is the
same, since its chief men are implicated in this proceeding,
"whether the public buy the rubbish or not." We honor Mr. Bacon
for his manly, straightforward conduct, and thank him for this
act of justice. It is the first we have had to rejoice in for a
long while, but we hope it will not be the last. The time seems
to be approaching, when calumny and abuse will no longer be
received with favor by the public, and the Catholic Church be
allowed to speak in her own defence, and listened to, and judged
of, according to her own intrinsic merits. All we ask is fair
play, and we are confident the truth will make itself known.
But the Rev. Mr. Bacon, after denouncing the lying and scurrilous
attacks against the church, goes on to say: "It is a pleasant
relief to take up another author--the Rev. M. Hobart Seymour, of
the Church of England. His two books, entitled _Mornings with
the Jesuits at Rome_, and _Evenings with the Romanists_,
are models of religious controversy. The latter of the two,
especially, being the more popular, is peculiarly fitted to be
effective in general circulation." .... "This sprightly,
instructive, and interesting book has gone out of print." ... It
is out of print in English; but desiring to gladden our eyes with
a copy of this model of "courtesy, fairness, ability, and
religious feeling," we procured a translation into Spanish,
entitled, _Noches con los Romanistas_, issued by The
American Tract Society, for the use of benighted Spaniards.
{53}
We have read the opening chapter, and found it enough. We are
tempted to exclaim with bitter disappointment, Is this all the
fairness and justice we are to expect from one who is described
as the "model" of a Protestant controversialist? We prefer the
McGavins, the Brownlees, or the Kirwans whom Mr. Bacon so justly
holds up to public scorn. This man stabs you in the dark; he is a
Titus Oates, who swears away your life by false testimony--by
telling just enough to convict you, when he knows enough to give
you an honorable acquittal.
This opening chapter has for its theme the relative effects of
Protestantism and the Catholic religion upon the morality of
those under their respective influence; and to show that Catholic
countries, in comparison to Protestant, are sinks of crime and
impurity. This, if fairly proved, would be a practical argument
of overwhelming force, sufficient to close the mind against all
that can be said in favor of the Catholic Church; and be a
sufficient reason, with most people, for refusing even to
entertain her claims to be the Church of God. We know that she is
Christ's Church, and that just in proportion as she exerts her
influence, virtue and morality must prevail; and that it is
impossible to prove, unless through fraud and misrepresentation,
that the practical working of her system produces a morality
inferior to that of any other.
We know all the importance of the question; it is one that
touches our good name, and we feel indignation against any one
who shall attempt to rob us of it, by any mean or unfair tricks.
Let us see how our "model" controversialist deals with this
matter. "In order not to cause a useless waste of time by going
over all sorts of crimes," he selects the greatest one, that of
murder or homicide. Then he selects England, and compares it with
nearly all the Catholic countries of Europe, and shows it to be
at least four times better than the very best of them. We do not
propose to ferret this out; we cannot lay our hands upon the
statistics of this particular crime, which seem to be everywhere
very loosely given; but we can show shortly, that his conclusions
are utterly false. He gives the number of persons
_imprisoned_ on this charge of homicide in England and
Wales, during 1852, as 74, and the annual mean for three years as
72. This will strike every one as simply ridiculous. Luckily, the
_Statistical Journal_ of 1867 gives the following tables of
this crime for 1865, as follows:
Verdicts Of Coroners' Juries.
Wilful murder, 227
Manslaughter, 282
Total, 509
Police Returns.
Wilful murder, 135
Manslaughter, 279
Concealment of birth, 232
Total, 646
Criminal Tables.
Wilful murder cases tried, 60
Manslaughter, cases tried, 316
Concealment of birth, cases tried, 143
Total, 519
{54}
If 519 were tried, we may judge of the number _imprisoned_.
The author of the article in the _Journal_ says: "The police
returns do not correspond with the coroners', and the discrepancy
is so great that I can only account for it on the supposition
that, according to the police view of it, infanticide is not
murder." The number of coroners' inquests held in 1865, in
England and Wales, was
Total 25,011
Verdict of accidental deaths, . . 11,397
He continues, "Open verdicts, as they are termed, such as, 'found
dead,' or 'found drowned,' are rendered in many cases when a more
accurate knowledge would have led to the verdict of 'wilful
murder.'"
It is just as easy to compare the total of first-class criminals
of all sorts, as to select homicide.
Alison [Footnote 19] says, "The proportion of crime to the
inhabitants was _twelve times_ greater in Prussia
(Protestant) than in France, (Catholic,) and in Austria,
(Catholic,) the proportion of convicted crime is not _one
fourth_ of what is found in Prussia." The _Statistical
Journals_ for 1864-65 show that France is better than England.
[Footnote 19: _History of Europe_, vol. iii. chap,
xxvii. 10, 11.]
There were no less than 846 deaths of children under one year
old, in 1857, in England and Wales from violent causes, [Footnote
20] from which we may form some little idea of the extent of only
one sort of homicide.
[Footnote 20: _Statistical Journal_, 1859.]
Only 74 incarcerations for homicide in all England and Wales for
the year 1852! Why, it is stated in the _New York Herald_ of
February 4th, that 78 persons were arrested last year for murder
in New York alone. We can easily imagine what the grand total for
the United States must be, and how much better is England, with
its pauperism and crime, than the United States?
Mr. Seymour undoubtedly is "sprightly" enough, but only
"instructive" by showing us the amount of nonsense which the
public is expected to swallow without examination, where the
Catholic Church is concerned, and the amount of fair play to be
expected from a "model" of a Protestant controversialist.
But as a comparison based on "homicide" alone would prove
nothing, any more than one based on drunkenness or robbery, Mr.
Seymour institutes another, in respect to unchastity, or
immorality, and here he sets up as his criterion the amount of
_illegitimacy_ among Catholics and Protestants respectively.
In any community, the moral condition is to be estimated by the
greater or smaller proportion of illegitimacy. We object to this
as a very unreliable test. In some communities, an illegitimate
birth is almost unknown, and yet they are the most corrupt and
licentious on the face of the earth. Infanticide and foeticide
replace illegitimacy. A young woman falls from virtue; but in
spite of the finger of scorn which will be pointed at her, her
sense of religious duty restrains her from adding a horrible
crime to her sin. What is her moral condition in the sight of
God, compared with that of the guilty one whom no fear of the
Almighty has restrained from the commission of this crime? The
absence of illegitimacy may be the most convincing proof of a
state of moral corruption, as in Persia and Turkey, where no
children except in wedlock, are suffered to see the light of the
world. [Footnote 21]
[Footnote 21: Storer, _Criminal Abortion_, p. 32.]
There are good reasons why more illegitimate children might be
expected to be born among Catholics than among Protestants, and
yet the former be much more the moral than the latter. "The
doctrine of the Catholic Church," says Bishop Fitzpatrick, "her
canons, her pontifical constitutions, her theologians, without
exception teach, and constantly have taught, that the destruction
of the human foetus in the womb of the mother, at any period from
the first instant of conception, is a heinous crime, equal at
least in guilt to that of murder." [Footnote 22]
[Footnote 22: Ibid. p. 72.]
{55}
This is understood by Catholics of all classes, and inspires a
salutary horror of the crime. Protestantism does not teach
morality in this definite way, but leaves people to reason out
for themselves the degree of criminality of particular offences.
Let us listen to Dr. Storer, an eminent Protestant physician. "It
is not, of course, intended to imply that Protestantism, as such,
in any way encourages, or indeed permits, the practice of
inducing abortion; its tenets are uncompromisingly hostile to all
crime. So great, however, is the popular ignorance regarding this
offence, that an abstract morality is here comparatively
powerless; our American women arrogate to themselves the
settlement of what they consider, if doubtful, purely an ethical
question; and there can be no doubt that the Romish ordinance,
flanked on the one hand by the confessional, and by denouncement
and excommunications on the other, has saved to to the world
thousands of infant lives." [Footnote 23] Rev. Dr. Todd, a
Protestant minister of Pittsfield, Mass., to his honor be it
said, has had the courage to declare the same thing in similar
words. [Footnote 24] Dr. Storer proceeds, "During the ten years
that have passed since the preceding sentence was written, we
have had ample verification of its truth. Several hundreds of
Protestant women have personally acknowledged to us their guilt,
against whom only seven Catholics, and of these we found, upon
further inquiry, that but two were only nominally so, not going
to the confession." [Footnote 25]
[Footnote 23: _Criminal Abortion_, P. 74.]
[Footnote 24: _Serpents in the Dove's Nest_.]
[Footnote 25: _Criminal Abortion_, p. 74.]
Two communities exist, in which, say, an equal amount of
unchastity occurs. In one, religion restrains from the commission
of further crime, and there is much illegitimacy apparent; in the
other, criminal abortion destroys all the evidence, and though
horribly corrupt in comparison, the appearance is all the other
way. Some such comparison might be made between Paris and Boston;
with what truth, each one can determine for himself, And there is
another reason which adds force to what has been said. In
Catholic countries, foundling hospitals, established for the very
purpose of saving infant life, exist everywhere, Knowing that the
temptation to conceal one's shame will, in many cases, be too
strong to be resisted, and thus one crime be added to another,
the impulse of Christian charity has caused the founding of these
hospitals, so that the infant, instead of being killed, may be
provided for, and the mother have a chance to repent, without
being for ever marked with the brand of shame. Scarcely any such
exist among Protestants. To set up, then, illegitimacy as the
best criterion of the morals of a community, is a palpable
injustice to Catholics.
But let us, nevertheless, follow Mr. Seymour on his own chosen
ground, He thinks the Catholic country people may, in the absence
of peculiar temptations, be as good as the Protestant; and that
the state of great cities will show more the influence of
religion on the morals of the people, We think the opposite; for
in great cities there are immense masses of degraded people, who
abandon the practice of religion, never go to church, and for
whom the Protestant church, at least, would be apt to disclaim
all responsibility. The country people are within the knowledge
and the voice of the preacher or the priest, and religion
exercises its proper influence upon them.
{56}
He selects London, on the Protestant side, as the largest city in
the world, the richest, and where there are "the most numerous,
the strongest, and the most varied temptations;" and, of course,
where there should naturally be the most vice and crime. But
facts contradict theory. The percentage of illegitimate births in
London is 4.2, while that for all England and Wales is 6.5, and
in the country districts, where the "numerous, strong, and varied
temptations" are wanting, it varies from 9 to over 11. [Footnote
26]
[Footnote 26: _Statistical Journal_, 1862.]
London is compared with Paris, Brussels, Munich, and Vienna; and
the rates are given as follows:
Proportion Of Illegitimate Births.
In Paris, Roman Catholic, thirty-three per cent.
In Brussels, Roman Catholic, thirty-five per cent.
In Munich, Roman Catholic, forty-eight per cent.
In Vienna, Roman Catholic, fifty-one per cent.
In London, Protestant, four per cent.
and then, to show that this fearful disproportion exists not only
in the capital cities, but also in other smaller ones, we have
another table:
Protestant England. R. C. Austria.
Bristol and
Clifton, 4 per ct. Troppau, 26 per ct.
Bradford, 8 per ct. Zara, 30 per ct.
Birmingham, 6 per ct. Innspruck, 22 per ct.
Brighton, 7 per ct. Laybach, 38 per ct.
Cheltenham, 7 per ct. Brunn, 42 per ct.
Exeter, 8 per ct. Linz, 46 per ct.
Liverpool, 6 per ct. Prague, 47 per ct.
Manchester, 7 per ct. Lemberg, 47 per ct.
Plymouth, 5 per ct. Klagenfort, 56 per ct.
Portsea, 5 per ct. Gratz, 65 per ct.
The inference from these figures, drawn with many exclamations of
surprise and horror, is, that the Protestant religion is ten
times as powerful against crime and vice as the Catholic, and to
create an overwhelming conviction of the essential corruption of
the latter. Nothing is further from the truth. London, Liverpool,
Birmingham, etc., are as corrupt as any cities of the world. The
cities of France and Austria need not fear the comparison, and
the more thoroughly it is made the better.
J. D. Chambers, Recorder of Salisbury, a Protestant, says:
[Footnote 27]
[Footnote 27: _Church and World_, 1867.]
"And here a few words on the unhappy reason why London and
other large towns of Great Britain and also Holland are
comparatively moral in this respect, and that in their cases
the average of this species of immorality is far below that of
the great cities of the continent; the fact that in this
respect the urban population of Great Britain appears to be
what it most certainly is not, comparatively pure, the rural
the most corrupt; whilst on the continent the reverse is
evident. There can be no doubt, as Mr. Lumley, in his able
_Poor-Law Reports_, has often hinted, that this difference
is owing to the prevalence of what has been justly called the
'social evil;' to the license, it may, in truth, be called
encouragement, which, in the populous districts of this
country, and notoriously in Holland, is given to public
prostitution. Of course there will be no illegitimacy among
Mohammedans and Hindoos, in Japan and China, or the African
tribes, nor also among those who live much in the same manner."
And, we might add, who practise infanticide and foeticide as
they do. He goes on, "In London, the fallen women may be taken,
at the mean of the estimates, at 40,000. ... In Birmingham, in
1864, there were 966 disreputable houses where they resorted;
in Manchester, 1111; in Liverpool, 1578; in Leeds, 313; in
Sheffield, 433. [Footnote 28] And here we have revealed a
plague-spot in English society which runs through every grade,
especially the artisan, manufacturing, and lower commercial
classes, who, as we have seen, in general never enter a church.
... There is no need, in addition, to dwell on the revelations
of the divorce court, which prove that Englishmen are nearly as
bad in this respect as the northern Germans. There is no one
who is acquainted with the condition of the families of
artisans who does not know the sad frequency with which they
abandon their wives, and how frequently they live in a state of
concubinage."
Alison corroborates this: "In London the proportion (of
illegitimacy) is one to thirty-six, the effect, it is to be
feared, of the immense mass of concubinage which there prevails,
under circumstances where a law of nature renders an increase of
the population from that source impossible." [Footnote 29]
[Footnote 28: _Statistical Journal_, 1864.]
[Footnote 29: Vol. ii. chap. xvii. 122.]
{57}
"In London, however, and the English cities, there are more
illegitimate births than appear on the registers, because
children of people who live together without being married are
registered 'legitimate.'" [Footnote 30] So much for London,
Liverpool, etc.
[Footnote 30: _Statistical Journal_, 1862.]
In Paris, a great proportion of the children reckoned
illegitimate are born in the lying-in hospitals, or brought to
the foundling hospitals, and the greater proportion of the
mothers are from the provinces, as will be seen from the
following table for 1856:
Mothers known, 3383
Department Seine, 551
Other departments, 2550
Foreign countries, 282
Children born in concubinage are reckoned illegitimate, and about
one-ninth of such children, on an average, are afterward
legitimated. The proportion of illegitimacy, then, for Paris
proper, on the best calculations, is not over 12 per cent; and
that of London, calculated on the same data, would probably be
quite as large, if not larger.
The same considerations apply to Brussels, Vienna, and Munich.
Large foundling and lying-in hospitals exist in al these places,
and are resorted to by all the country round. The figures for
these cities are in no sense a criterion of their morals.
In Munich and Vienna, there is another important thing to be
taken into account, which we shall explain when we come to speak
of countries. We see, then, how much value is to be attributed to
the heavenly purity of Protestant London, Liverpool, etc., in
comparison to the "astonishing," "horrible" corruption of
Catholic capitals on the continent. Moreover, in the latter the
"social evil" is kept within strictest limits, and under the
complete control of the government, and is not allowed to flaunt
itself in public, as in London and New York, These considerations
are strengthened by the case of Protestant Stockholm, where,
public prostitution being prohibited, the rate of illegitimacy is
over fifty to the hundred--quite equal to that of Vienna.
[Footnote 31] Why did not Mr. Seymour cite Stockholm, which is
notorious? I will answer: It was not convenient to spoil a good
story.
[Footnote 31: _Appleton's Cyc._, art. "Foundling
Hospital."]
Now as to the smaller cities of Austria, which, according to
Seymour, beat the world for corruption, what is to be said?
Simply, that they are no worse than their neighbors. What we have
said of the foundling and lying-in hospitals of Paris explains
the whole matter. "In Austria, excluding Hungary, there are forty
foundling and forty lying-in hospitals, and the number of
foundlings provided for by the government is over 20,000."
[Footnote 32]
[Footnote 32: _Ibid_.]
These hospitals exist, without doubt, in all these cities; and if
we subtract their inmates who come from the country we should
find that they do not compare unfavorably with their neighbors.
They include the chief cities of the German provinces of the
empire; and allowing only 4273 foundlings from the country to be
in their hospitals, which is certainly a very moderate
calculation, their own proper rate of illegitimacy would not
exceed ten per cent. This would be the case in Innspruck, for
example, if 53 only were received. Our "model of fairness" from
such data draws his main conclusions, which prove that he is very
"sprightly" at the figures, if nothing else. Shall we excuse him
on the plea of ignorance? No! he was bound to verify his
statements, and the conclusions from them; and if he had chosen
to take the pains, the sources of information were open to him.
{58}
An infamous calumny against the Catholic Church is invented by
somebody, and the whole tribe of popery-haters forthwith swear
roundly that it is "undoubted," "notorious," etc., and, by dint
of clamor, force the public to give credit to it.
But, seemingly aware that comparing London with cities so
different in climate, position, language, etc., has rather an
unfair look, he says he will take cities of two adjoining
countries of the same race, and gives us the following table:
_Austria, Rom. Cath. Prussia, Protestant._
Vienna, 51% Berlin, 18%
Prague, 47% Breslau 26%
Linz, 46% Cologne, 10%
Milan, 32% Konigsberg, 28%
Klagenfort, 56% Dantzig, 20%
Gratz, 65% Magdeburg 11%
Lembach, 47% Aix la Chapelle, 4%
Laybach, 38% Stettin, 13%
Zara, 30% Posen, 19%
Brunn, 22% Potsdam, 12%
The only thing this table proves is, that in Prussia the two
Catholic cities of Cologne and Aix la Chapelle are better than
any of the Protestant ones. They show excellently well in the
Protestant column; but then the reader who is not well-posted or
observant might suppose that, being in Protestant Prussia, they
are Protestant cities. We can hardly suppose Mr. Seymour, who is
a traveller, to be ignorant of so well known a fact. And how
comes it that Protestant Prussia makes so poor a show alongside
of the pure and virtuous cities of Birmingham and Liverpool,
where there are "so many and varied temptations"?
"If, then," he says, "the question of the comparative efficacy of
Romanism and Protestantism to restrain vice and immorality is to
be decided by the comparison of Austria and Prussia, we have as a
basis of a certain judgment this notable fact, that in ten cities
of Austria we find forty-five illegitimate births in the hundred,
and in ten cities of Prussia, sixteen only." We have seen what
this is worth. It seems to us that it would be more satisfactory
to compare Austria and Prussia at once than to pick out cities
here and there to suit one's purpose. And this seems to strike
our author; for he says, "They often assure us that some
Protestant countries, as Norway, Sweden, Saxony, Hanover, and
Wurtemberg are as demoralized as Roman Catholic countries. I
shall not deny the allegation; but if a profound demoralization
exists in some Protestant countries, that in Catholic countries
is much worse." Then he goes on in this style to make his
assertion good:
_Protestant. Catholic._
Norway, 10% Styria, 24%
Sweden, 7% Up. & L. Austria, 25%
Saxony, 14% Carinthia, 35%
Denmark, 10% Salzburg, 22%
Hanover, 10% Prov. of Trieste, 23%
Wurtemberg, 12% Bavaria, 24%
Here we have Styria, Upper and Lower Austria, Carinthia,
Salzburg, Trieste, which are not separate countries at all, but
simply the German provinces of the Austrian empire, and Bavaria,
compared with countries so different and wide apart as Norway,
Sweden, Saxony, Hanover, and Wurtemberg. This is tricky in the
extreme. Moreover, there is no reliance to be placed on the
figures which express their rate of illegitimacy, for a very good
reason. Marriage is forbidden to great numbers in German Austria
and Bavaria. "No person in Austria can marry if he does not know
how to read, write, and cipher." [Footnote 33] Besides, in both
countries, a man, before being permitted to marry, had to possess
a sum of money quite out of reach of a great many. _Appleton's
Cyclopaedia_ [Footnote 34] says, "In some German states the
obstacles to legal marriage are so great that numbers of people
prefer to live together in what would be perfectly legal wedlock
in Scotland and America, but is only concubinage by the local
laws of the state."
[Footnote 33: _Alison_, vol. iii. chap, xxvii. 9.]
[Footnote 34: Article Europe.]
{59}
They marry, but the state will not recognize the children as
legitimate, and the official registers are no criterion of the
real state of the case. Mr. J. D. Chambers says, [Footnote 35]
"In Bavaria, moreover, where the population is one-third
Protestant, there exists an atrocious state of law which forbids
marriage unless the contracting parties satisfy the authorities
that they are capable of maintaining a family without extraneous
aid. This, of course, leads to many secret marriages and illicit
connections, so that this country ought to be excepted from the
average."
[Footnote 35: _Church and World_, 1867.]
The Bavarians are as good a people as any in Germany, and it is a
shame to libel them. If countries are to be compared--and it is
the only fair and honest way to proceed--why not compare them in
a straightforward, obvious way--France and England, Prussia and
Austria--in fact, all the countries we can get the statistics of,
and show the result in a tabular form, so that we can understand
the _whole_ thing at a glance? This would effectually put a
stop to the cry of the vice of Catholic countries, which the
_Chicago Press_, of January 11th, declares to be "notorious
throughout the country." It is "notorious," because statements
like Seymour's, cooked up for a purpose, give rise to utterly
false conclusions, which are easily caught up and trumpeted,
through the pulpit and the press, all over the country.
We shall now, leaving out Bavaria, for the reasons above given,
give the latest and best statistics, in respect to illegitimate
births, which it is possible to get. They are taken from the
journals of the Statistical Society of London of the years 1860,
1862, 1865, 1867, the principal portions being compiled by Mr.
Lumley, Honorary Secretary of the society, and contained in that
of 1862, to be seen in the Astor Library. It will be interesting
to the general reader, apart from its controversial bearings.
In Prussia, we have statistics according to the religious creed
of the people. We shall, therefore, divide it into Catholic and
Protestant. We wish the same could be done for Holland and
Switzerland. Where there is a large minority differing from the
majority, it would be most interesting; but it cannot be done
except in Prussia. The number of illegitimate births in the
hundred is as follows, according to the latest accounts given:
_Catholic Countries._
1828-37, Kingdom of Sardinia, 2.1
1859, Spain, 5.6
1853, Tuscany 6.
1858, Catholic Prussia, 6.1
1859, Belgium, 7.4
1856, Sicily, 7.4
1858, France, 7.8.
1851, Austria, 9.
_Protestant Countries._
1859, England and Wales, 6.5
1855, Norway, 9.3
1858, Protestant Prussia, 9.3
1855, Sweden 9.5
1855, Hanover, 9.9
1866, Scotland, 10.1
1855, Denmark, 11.5
1838-47, Iceland, 14.
1858, Saxony, 16.
1857, Wurtemberg, 16.1
Mixed countries, where the Catholic population approaches the
half:
1859, Holland, 4.1
1852, Switzerland, 6.
Lest we be deemed to wish to conceal the depravity of Ireland, we
give what is given by Mr. J. D. Chambers, [Footnote 36] who
probably has access to the registrar's reports, which, of course,
we have not:
1865-66, Catholic Ireland, 3
and these, we remark, are _mostly in the north_, which is
Protestant.
[Footnote 36: _Church and World_, 1867.]
{60}
The particulars of the statistics throw a good deal of light on
the morality of the different countries, for instance, in France
and England. The rate of illegitimacy in all
England and Wales is 6.5
London only 4.2
Birmingham, 4.7
Liverpool, 4.9
In spite of the "numerous and varied temptations" of the large
towns, the rate is much less in them than in the country, which
runs after this fashion:
Nottingham, 8.9
York, N. Riding, 8.9
Salop, 9.8
Westmoreland, 9.7
Norfolk, 10.7
Cumberland, 11.4
In France, it is just the other way. The rate is,
In all France, 7.8
In Paris, 27.
Urban districts, 12.
Rural districts 4.2
La Vendée, 2.2
Brittany, Dep't. Cote D'Or, 1.2
Brittany and La Vendee remained Catholic through the storm of the
French Revolution, and at this moment are thoroughly so. In
Austria, the rate is: whole empire, only 9; urban districts, from
25 to 65; therefore, rural districts cannot be more than 5 or 6.
Prussia gives us, perhaps, the most conclusive test of the
effects of religion on morals; for the census has been carefully
taken according to creed, for many years, with uniform result
thus. There are over 11,000,000 Protestants, and over 7,000,000
Catholics, principally in the Rhine provinces, Westphalia, and
Posen. [Footnote 37] The rate
Among Catholics, 6.48 Among Protestants, 10.0
Westphalia, 3.7 Prov. of Prussia, 6.7
Rhineland, 3.3 Pomerania, 10.3
Posen 6.8 Brandenburg, 12.0
[Footnote 37: _Historische Blätter_, 9th Heft, 1867.]
Rev. T. W. Woolsey, of Yale College, New Haven, bears testimony
to this relative state of morals in regard to the kindred subject
of divorce, in an address before the Western Social Science
Convention, at Chicago, as follows: "We have made some
comparisons between the frequency of divorce in this country and
in other parts of Protestantism. Prussia had the reputation of
having the lowest system of divorce laws anywhere to be found.
But the ratio there of annual divorces to annual marriages in
1855 was, among non-Catholics, one to twenty-nine, or about 3.5
per cent less than in Vermont or Ohio, and far less than in
Connecticut, where it is 9.6 per cent. The greatest ratio nearly
thirty years ago in the judicial districts of Prussia was 57
divorces to 100,000 inhabitants; the least, 16 to 100,000: nay
more, in the Prussian Rhenish provinces, where the law is based
on the Code Napoleon, and where the Catholic inhabitants, being
numerous, must have some influence on the social habits of
Protestants, there were but four fair divorces to 100,000
Protestants, or twenty-four in all among 600,000 of that class of
inhabitants. I write this in pain, being a Protestant, if, as the
Apostle Paul says, 'I may provoke to emulation them which are my
flesh, and might save some of them.'"
Scotland might be supposed by our Protestant friends to be high
up on the list, having always been so completely under the
influence of the pure gospel of Calvin and Knox; but the rate for
Scotland is 10.1.
In the Lowlands, where Presbyterianism carried all before it, the
rate is from 10 to 15. In the Highlands, which remained to a
considerable extent Catholic, the average is 5.6.
{61}
Supposing the immorality of the large cities, Protestant and
Catholic, to be the same, though it is pretty sure the Catholic
are much the best, and confining our comparison to the mass of
the rural population, which is the fairer test, and the countries
would stand in the following order, beginning with the most
favorable:
Sardinia, Catholic.
Ireland, Catholic.
Holland, Mixed.
Spain, Catholic.
Switzerland, Mixed.
Tuscany, Catholic.
Catholic Prussia, Catholic.
Belgium, Catholic.
France, Catholic.
Sicily, Catholic.
Austria, Catholic.
England, Protestant.
Norway, Protestant.
Protestant Prussia. Protestant.
Scotland, Protestant.
Denmark, Protestant.
Sweden, Protestant.
Hanover, Protestant.
Iceland, Protestant.
Saxony, Protestant.
Wurtemberg, Protestant.
Thus, to sum up, the Catholic countries of Europe, perhaps
without an exception, are above the Protestant, if the number of
illegitimate births is accepted as a criterion of morality. Could
we get the statistics of infanticide, and of a still more common
and destructive crime, foeticide, and add them to the above, then
we could form a more just idea of the benefit the Catholic
religion, with her divine ordinance of Confession, has conferred
on the human race. But of course it is impossible to determine
with exactness the amount of this crime which hides itself in
profound darkness; we can only conjecture from sure indications
that it is one of fearful magnitude.
We need not go abroad; the evidence is at our own door. Take the
State of Rhode Island as a specimen. The number of children
annually receiving Catholic baptism exceeds the half of all the
children born in the State, although the Catholic population does
not exceed the third part; in other words, there are two
Protestants to every Catholic, and yet there are more Catholic
children born than Protestant. Illegitimacy is almost unknown
among Catholics, and the birthrate is at least 1 to 25, which
demonstrates that criminal abortion cannot exist to any extent
worth speaking of. The birth-rate among Protestants is i to over
50. What becomes of the children who ought to be born? Let Dr.
Storer speak: [Footnote 38] "Hardly a newspaper throughout the
land that does not contain their open and pointed advertisements.
... The profits that must be made from the sale of the drugs
supposed abortifacient, may be judged from the extent to which
they are advertised and the prices willingly paid for them." "We
are compelled to admit that Christianity itself, or, at least,
Protestantism, has failed to check the increase of criminal
abortion." [Footnote 39] To the same effect we have a writer in
Harper's very anti-popery Magazine: "We are shocked at the
destruction of human life upon the banks of the Ganges, as well
as on the shores of the South Sea Islands; but here in the heart
of Christendom, foeticide and infanticide are extensively
practised under the most aggravating circumstances. ... It should
be stated that believers in the Roman Catholic faith never resort
to any such practices; the strictly Americans are almost alone
guilty of such crimes." And Bishop Coxe, of the Protestant
Episcopal Church, has published to his people the following: "I
have hitherto warned my flock against the blood-guiltiness of
ante-natal infanticide. If any doubts existed heretofore as to
the propriety of my warnings on the subject, they must now
disappear before the fact that the world itself is beginning to
be horrified by the practical results of the sacrifices to Moloch
which defile our land."
[Footnote 38: _Criminal Abortion_, p. 55.]
[Footnote 39: Page 69.]
{62}
How is it with Protestant England? Dr. Lankester, one of the
coroners of London, declares that there are 12,000 mothers in
London alone, guilty of infanticide. [Footnote 40] In Prussia,
Mr. J. Laing says that, "Chastity, the index virtue of the moral
condition of the people, is lower than in almost any part of
Europe." [Footnote 41] Let us look at home. Our attention has
been so diverted to the _vice and immorality_ of our
Catholic neighbors, that we have begun to imagine ourselves the
most moral, the most virtuous, the most enlightened people on the
face of the earth, while, in reality, we are fast getting to be
the most corrupt and abominable. It would be well to call to mind
a little oftener the saying of our Lord, "First pull the beam out
of thine own eye, and then thou shalt see clearly to pull the
mote out of thy brother's eye."
[Footnote 40: _Church and World_, 1866, p. 57.]
[Footnote 41: _Spald. Miscell_. p. 484.]
We have thus exposed the untrustworthiness of Mr Seymour's
_Nights among the Romanists_. With the evidence before him,
he has kept back any honest and fair statement of it, and only
put forward such portion as would serve to substantiate an
utterly false conclusion, most injurious to us Catholics, both
religiously and personally; for we cannot be looked upon in the
mass as corrupt and vicious, without a great deal of personal
ill-will and contempt and hatred being engendered.
We call the attention of the Rev. Mr. Bacon to this. He has taken
a noble stand against base and unfair practices in the
controversy with the Catholic Church, and we hope he will
persevere in spite of the opposition he has raised against
himself. We feel inclined to forgive him for some sins of his
own, in this respect; for example, in speaking of the "Tax-Book
of Roman Chancery," when Bishop England has so clearly shown it
to be a base forgery. We hope our exposure of Mr. Seymour will be
met in a generous and Christian spirit, and that he will promptly
disavow all connection with him as an _amende honorable_ for
having recommended him.
We see, by _The Christian World_ of September, that the
American and Foreign Christian Union are going to reissue this
book, and we hope these "eminent and excellent" men, now that
their attention is called to it, will clean this out with the
rest of the filth of their Augean stable. And also the directors
of the American Tract Society are requested to consider seriously
whether defamation is exactly the most Christian weapon to fight
with, or the one most likely in the long run to overcome the
Catholic Church, and whether they should not withdraw from
circulation a book so damaging to their reputation as lights of
the pure Protestant Gospel, shining amongst the darkness and
moral corruptions of Popery.
----------
{63}
Heremore-Brandon; Or,
The Fortunes Of A Newsboy.
Chapter VIII.
As might have ben supposed, Dick was at Mr. Brandon's office long
before that gentleman made his appearance down-town. It was a
sultry morning, with occasional snatches of rain to make the
gloomy streets more gloomy, and the depressing atmosphere more
depressing. Mr. Brandon was sensitive to heat; he had no cool
summer retreat to go to in the evenings, and return from with a
rose in his button-hole in the mornings; and as, instead of being
grateful for the many years in which he had enjoyed this luxury,
he was disposed to consider himself decidedly ill-used in not
having it still, so soon as he found Dick waiting for him, he
began his repinings in the most querulous of all his tones:
"Pretty hard on a man who has had his own country-place, and been
his own lord and master, to come down to this blistering old hole
every morning, isn't it, Mr. Heremore? Well, well, some people
have no feeling! There are those old nabobs who were hand and
glove with me, mighty glad of a dinner with me, and where are
they now? Do they come around with '_How are you, Brandon?_'
and invitations to _their_ dinners? Indeed not!"
"Mr. Brandon, I have come to talk to you about some business,"
began Dick, who had prepared a dozen introductions, all forgotten
at the needed moment; then abruptly, "Mr. Brandon, did you ever
hear my name, the name of _Heremore_ before?"
It would be false to say that Mr. Brandon showed any emotion
beyond that of natural surprise at the abruptness of the
question; but it is safe to add that the surprise was very great,
almost exaggerated. He replied, coolly enough, as he hung up his
hat and sat down, wiping his face with his handkerchief:
"Heremore? It is not, so to say, a common name; and I may or may
not have heard it before. One who has been in the world so long
as I have, Mr. Heremore, can hardly be expected to know what
names he has or has not heard in the course of his life. I
suppose you ask for some especial reason."
"I do," said Dick, a little staggered by the other's
unembarrassed reply, "Did you not once know a gentleman in
Wiltshire, called Dr. Heremore?"
"This is close questioning from a young man in your position to
an old gentleman in mine, and I am slightly curious to know your
object in asking before I reply."
"I believe you were married twice, Mr. Brandon, and that your
first wife's maiden name was Heremore?"
"Well--and then?"
"And that she died while you were away, believing you were dead;
and and that she had two children," said Dick, who began to feel
uneasy under the steady, smiling gaze of the other--"and that
she had two children, a son and a daughter."
"Almost any one can tell you that my family consists of my first
wife's daughter, and two sons by my second wife. But that's of no
consequence. Two children, a son and a daughter, you were
saying."
"Yes, two; although you may have been able to trace only one. She
died in great poverty, did she not?"
{64}
"I decline answering any questions, I am highly
flattered--charmed, indeed--at the interest you show in my
family by these remarks; and I can only regret that my fortunes
are now so low that I know of no way in which to prove my
grateful appreciation of the manner in which you must have
labored in order to know so much. In happier times, I might have
secured you a place in the police department; but unfortunately,
I am a ruined man, unable to assist any one at present."
At this speech, which was delivered in the most languid manner,
and in a tone that was infinitely more insulting than the words,
Dick was on the point of thrusting his mother's letter before the
man's eyes, to show by what means he had obtained his knowledge;
but the cool words, the indifferent manner, had a great effect
upon our hero, who found it every moment more difficult to
believe in the theory that from the first had seemed so likely to
be the real one, and so he answered respectfully:
"I assure you, I mean no rudeness to you, Mr. Brandon; but I am
engaged in the most serious business in the world, for me. I may
be mistaken in you, and shall not know how to atone for the
mistake, should I come to know it; but I hope you will be sure of
my respectful intention, however I may err."
Mr. Brandon bowed, smiled, and played with his pen, as if the
conversation were drawing to a close. Dick, heated and more
embarrassed than ever, was obliged to recommence it.
"But was not your first wife's name Heremore? I beg you to answer
me this one question, for all depends upon it."
"A very sufficient reason why I should not answer it. But as you
to have something very interesting to disclose, perhaps we had
better imagine that her name was Heremore before it was Brandon.
Permit me to ask if, in that case, I am to own a relation in you?
I certainly cannot make such a connection as advantageous as I
could a year or so ago; but though I cannot prove the rich uncle
of the romances, I shall be glad to know what scion of my wife's
noble house I have the honor of addressing."
It seems easy to have answered "_your son_" but the words
would not come. More and more the whole thing seemed a dream.
What! a man so hardened that he could sit before his own son,
whom by this time he must have known to be his son, and talk
after this fashion of his dead wife's house! Impossible! If,
then, he should tell his tale, and tell it to an unconcerned
listener, what a sacrilege he would commit!
"A very near relative," Dick said at last. "I know that Dr.
Heremore's daughter married a Charles Brandon about twenty-five
years ago."
"Ah! I see! And you thought there was but one Charles Brandon in
in the world! You see I shall have to learn a lesson in
politeness from you; for I could conceive that there should be
room in this world even two Richard Heremores."
Poor Dick was silenced for the moment. He knew he was taking up
Mr. Brandon's time, and so the time of his employer. He walked up
and down the little office and thought it all over. Certain
passages in his mother's letter came to his mind. In this way,
perhaps, had her appeals been sneered at in the olden times!
"Mr. Brandon," he said, standing in front of his tormentor, his
whole appearance changed from that of the hesitating, embarrassed
boy to the resolute, high-spirited man--
"Mr. Brandon, there has been enough trifling.
{65}
I insist upon knowing if you were or were not the husband of Miss
Heremore. If you were not, it is a very simple thing to say so.
There are plenty of ways by which I can make myself certain of
the fact without your assistance; but out of consideration for
you, I came to you first."
"I am deeply grateful," with a mock ceremonious bow.
"But if you persist in this way of treating me, I shall have to
go elsewhere."
"And then?"
"Heaven knows I do not ask anything of you, beyond the
information I came to seek. I wondered yesterday why she should
have given me her father's name instead of mine; now I can
understand it. I had doubts while first speaking to you, but now
they are gone. I believe it is so. If you will not tell me as
much as you know of Dr. Heremore, I can go to his old home for
it. It would have saved me time and expense if you had answered
my questions; but as you please."
He was clearly in earnest. Mr. Brandon saw it, and stopped him at
the door.
"My wife's name _was_ Heremore," he said very indifferently,
"and her father has been dead these twenty years. You have your
answer. Permit me to ask what you mean to do about it?"
"Dr. Heremore was my grandfather," said Dick, coming back and
sitting down.
"Ah! indeed!" politely; "he was a very excellent old gentleman in
his way; it is much to be regretted that he and you should have
been unable to make each other's acquaintance."
"When my mother--your first wife--died, you knew she left two
children."
"One--a daughter. I think you have met her."
"There were two. I was the other."
"Are you quite sure?" asked Mr. Brandon in the same languid
tones; but, for the first time, it seemed to Dick that they
faltered.
"I am quite sure. You would know her writing."
"Possibly. It was a great while ago, and my eyes are not as good
as they were."
"You would recognize her portrait?"
"If one I had seen before, I might."
"I should say this was a portrait of the first Mrs. Brandon," he
said, taking that which Dick handed him and, looking at it, not
without some signs of embarrassment, "or of someone very like
her. And this is not unlike her writing, as I remember it. Oh!
you wish me to read this?"
Dick signed assent, watching him while he read. Whatever Mr.
Brandon felt while reading that letter, he kept it all in his own
heart.
"This is all?" he asked when he had read and deliberately
refolded it.
"It is all at present," answered Dick.
Then Mr. Brandon arose, handed the paper back, and said very
quietly but deliberately:
"My first wife is dead and gone; her daughter lives with me, and,
as long as I had the means, received every luxury she could
desire. The past is past, and I do not wish it revived.
Understand me. I do not wish it revived. I want to hear nothing
more, not a word more, on this subject. If I were rich as I once
was, I could understand why you should persist in this thing. I
am not yet so poor that the law cannot protect me from any
further persecution about the matter. Your mother, you say, named
you for your grandfather, not for me.
{66}
If you wish paternal advice--all that my poverty would enable me
to give, however I were disposed--I advise you to go for it to
her father, for whom she showed her judgment in naming you. Good
morning."
"You cannot mean this! You must have known me as a child, and
known my name before, long, long ago, and surely consented to it,
or she would not have so named me. Of course, it was by some
mistake the Brandon was dropped at first, not by her, but by
those who took care of me when she died; she could never have
meant such a thing; it was undoubtedly an accident. You cannot
mean to end all here--that I am not to know, to see, my sister!"
"I tell you I wish to hear not another word of this matter; do
you hear me? Have I not troubles enough now without your coming
to bring up the hateful past? You shall not add to your sister's,
whatever you may do to mine."
"I insist upon seeing her."
"You shall not. I positively forbid you to go near her. Now leave
me! I have borne enough."
"But I cannot let the matter rest here; you know I cannot. The
idea of it is absurd! If you do not wish me for a son, I have no
desire to force myself upon you. I do not know why you should
refuse to own me; I am not conscious of any cause I have given
you to so dislike me."
"I don't dislike you, nor do I like you particularly; I have no
ill-feeling against you, but I don't want this old matter dragged
up. I am not strong enough to bear persecution now."
"But I do not want to persecute you. I want--"
"Well, what _do_ you want?"
"I hardly know. I may have had an idea that you would welcome
your oldest child after so many years of loss, however unworthy
of you he might be. I may have thought that if you once were not
all you should have been to one who, likely, was at one time very
dear to you, it might be a satisfaction to you, even at this late
day, to retrieve--"
"You thought wrong, and it is not worth while wasting words on the
matter. I have got over all that, and don't want it revived. I
can't put you out, but I beg you to go; or, if you persist in
forcing your words upon me, pray choose some other subject."
"I will go, since you so heartily desire it; but I warn you that
I will not give up seeing Miss--my sister."
"As you please. You will get as little satisfaction there, I
fancy; though it may not be quite as annoying to her as to me."
"I shall try, at all events."
"Try. Go to her; say anything to her; make any arrangement with
her you choose; take her away altogether. I don't care a button
what you do, so you only leave me."
"I will leave you willingly, and am indeed sorry to have put you
to so much pain."
"Not a word, I pray you," answered Mr. Brandon, now polite and
smiling. "You have performed a disagreeable duty in the least
disagreeable way you could, I do not doubt. All I ask is, never
to hear it mentioned again."
Dick stayed for no more ceremony. Glad to be released from such
an atmosphere of selfishness and cowardice, he hardly waited for
the answer to his good-morning before turning to the street.
In less than an hour he was in the dreary room, with
_boarding-house_ stamped all over its walls, saying
good-morning to a stately young lady, very pale and
weary-looking, who kindly rose to receive him.
{67}
The little room was hot and close; there were no shutters to the
windows; the shades were too narrow at the sides; besides being
so unevenly put up that the eyes ached every time one turned
toward them, and the gleaming light was almost worse than the
heat.
"I have been trying for the dozenth time to straighten them,"
said Mary, drawing one down somewhat lower, "but it's of no use."
"Are they crooked?" asked Dick innocently.
"Well, yes, rather," answered Mary, smiling. "I think I never saw
anything before that was so near the perfection of crooked."
"I have seen your father this morning," Dick began, taking a
chair near the table.
"There is nothing the matter, I hope?" she questioned nervously.
"Nothing that any one but myself need mind. I made some
discoveries about myself last evening that I would like to tell
you. Have you time?"
"I have nothing to do. I shall be very glad if my attentive
listening can do you any service." She moved her chair, in a
quiet way, a little farther from his, and looked at him in some
surprise. She saw he was very earnest, excited, and greatly
embarrassed. She could not help seeing that his eyes were
anxiously following her every movement, eagerly trying to read
her face.
"I am afraid I shall shock you very much, and you are not well; I
am sorry I came. I thought only of my own eagerness to see you;
not, until this moment, of the pain I may cause you."
"Do not think of that. I do not think, Mr. Heremore, you are
likely to say anything that should pain me. I think you too
sensible--I mean, too gentlemanly for that."
"I hope you really mean that. I am sure I must seem very rude and
unpolished in your eyes; but I would have been far more so, had
it not been for you."
"For me?"
"Yes." And he told her about the Christmas morning in Fourteenth
Street.
"And you remembered that little thing all this time!" Mary
exclaimed. "And you were once a newsboy!"
"Yes; I was once a great, stupid, ragged newsboy. I do not mean
to deny, to conceal anything. I am so very sorry, for your sake;
but I hope you will like me in spite of it all. If just those few
words and that one smile did so much for me, what is there your
influence may not do?"
"Mr. Heremore, I do not in the least understand you."
"I don't know where to begin; this has excited me so that I do
not know what I am saying, and now I wish almost that you might
never know it; there is such a difference between us that I
cannot tell how to begin."
"Is it necessary that you should begin?" asked Mary. "You told me
you wished to speak to me, of some discoveries you had made in
regard to yourself. To anything about yourself I will listen with
interest; but I do not care to have anything said about myself;
there can be no connection between the two subjects that I can
see; so pray do not waste words on so poor a subject as myself;
but tell me the discovery, if you please."
"But it concerns you as much as it does me. Do you know much
about your own mother? She died, you told me, long ago."
"I know very little about her. I presume her death was a great
grief to papa; for he has never permitted a word to be said about
her, and anything that pains papa in that way is never alluded to.
{68}
The little I do know I have learned from my old nurse."
"You do not remember her?"
"Not in the least; she died when I was a mere baby."
"Did you ever see her portrait, or any of her writing, or hear
her maiden name?"
"No, to all your questions. Does papa know you are here, this
morning?"
"Yes; I went to him at once. At first he was very determined I
should not see you; but in the end, he seemed glad to get me
silenced at any price, and I was so anxious to see you that I did
not wait for very cordial permission."
"You did not talk to papa about my mother?"
"Yes, that is what I went for."
"How did you dare to do it? Was he not very angry? I am sure you
know something about mamma."
"Yes, I do. I have her portrait; this is it."
"Her portrait! My mamma's portrait! O what a beautiful face! Is
this really my mamma? Did papa see it? Did he recognize it?"
"I showed it to him. He did not deny it was hers."
"_Deny it was hers!_ What in the world do you mean, Mr.
Heremore? Where did you get it?"
Then Dick, in the best way he could, told the whole story of the
box, and gave her the letter to read. When Mary came to the part
which said, "_Will you love your sister always, let what may be
her fate? Remember, always, she had no mother to guide her_,"
she turned her eyes, full of tears, to Dick, saying no words.
"She did not know that it would be the other way," Dick replied
to her look, his own eyes hardly dry. "She would have begged for
me if she had known that--" farther than this he could not get.
Mary put her hands in his, and said earnestly:
"No need for that; her pleading comes just as it should. Will you
really be my brother--all wearied, sick, and worn-out as I am?
Oh! if this had only come two years ago, I could have been
something to you!"
But Dick could not answer a word, He could only keep his eyes
upon her face; afraid, as it seemed, that it would suddenly prove
all a dream.
But the day wore on and it did not prove less real. The heat and
the glaring light were forgotten, or not heeded, while the two
sat together and talked of this strange story, and tried to fill
up the outlines of their mother's history.
"I feel as if our grandpapa were living, or, if not living, there
must be somebody who knows something about him," she said.
"I think I ought to go and see. Mr. Staffs was very particular in
urging that."
"I think so; even if you learned nothing, it would be a good
thing for you just to have tried."
"I know I can get permission to stay away for a few days longer;
there's nothing doing at this season, Would it take long?"
"I don't know much about it; not more than two days each way, I
should think. There is a steamer, too, that goes to Portland, and
you can find out if Wiltshire is near there. The steamer trip
would be splendid at this season. Are you a good sailor?"
"I don't know. You have got a great ignoramus for a brother. I
have never been half a day's journey from New York in my life."
"Is that so? Well, you must go to Portland. How you will enjoy
the strong, bracing sea-breezes; they make one feel a new life!"
{69}
Then suddenly Dick's face grew very red, but bright, and he said
eagerly: "Would you trust me--I mean could your father be
persuaded--would you be afraid to go with me?"
"Oh! I wish I could! I would enjoy it as I never did a journey
before! Just to see the sea again, and with a brother! I can't
tell you how I have all my life envied girls with great, grown-up
brothers. Nobody else is ever like a brother. Fred and Joe are
younger than I, and have been away so much that they never seemed
like brothers. A journey with you on such a quest would be
something never to be forgotten."
"It doesn't seem as if such a good thing could come to pass,"
answered Dick. "I don't know anything about travelling; you would
have to train me; but if you will bear with me now, I will try
hard to learn. Do you think your father would listen to the
idea?"
"No; he would not listen to ten words about it. He hates to be
troubled; he would never forgive me if I went into explanations
about an affair that did not please him; but if I say, 'Papa, I
am going away for a couple of weeks to New England, unless you
want me for something,' he will know where I am going, what for,
and will not mind, so he is not made to talk about it; that is
his way."
"Will you really go, then, with me? You know I shall not know how
to treat you gallantly, like your grand beaux."
"Ah! don't put on airs, Mr. Dick; you were not so very humble
before you knew our relationship. Remember, I have known you
long."
"I wonder what you thought of me."
"I thought a great deal of good of you; so did papa, so does Mr.
Ames."
"You know Mr. Ames?"
"Ah! very well indeed; he comes to see us every New Year's day;
he actually found us out this year, and I got to liking him more
than ever; he has come quite often since, and we talked of you;
he says you are a good boy. I am going to be _grande dame_
to-day, and have lunch brought up for us two, unless Madame the
landlady is shocked."
"Does that mean I have staid too long?"
"No, indeed. Mrs. Grundy never interferes with people with clear
consciences, at least in civilized communities; in provincial
cities, and country towns she will not let you turn around except
as she pleases; that's the difference. There are no bells in this
establishment, or, if there are, nobody ever knew one to be
answered, so I will start on a raid and see what I can discover."
In course of time she returned with a servant, who cleared the
little rickety table, and then disappeared, returning at the end
of half an hour with a very light lunch for two; but that was not
her fault, poor thing!
Then hour after hour passed and still Dick could not leave her;
he had gone out and bought a guidebook, which required them to go
all over the route again, and there was so much of the past life
of each to be told and wondered at, that it was late in the
afternoon and Mr. Brandon's hand was on the door before Dick had
thought of leaving. Of course he must remain to see Mr. Brandon,
who, however, did not seem any too glad to see him. Nothing was
said in regard to the matter which had been all day under
discussion. Mr. Brandon talked of the news of the day, of the
weather, and the last book he had read, accompanied him to the
door, and shook hands with him quite cordially, to the surprise
of the landlady, who was peeping over the banisters in
expectation of high words between them.
{70}
Mr. Brandon even went so far as to speak of him as a very near
relative, as several of the boarders distinctly heard. Mr.
Brandon hated to be talked to on disagreeable subjects, but he
knew the world's ways all the same.
"Come very early to-morrow morning," Mary said in a low voice as
they parted, "and I will let you know if I can go."
Dick did not forget this parting charge, and early the next
morning had the happiness of hearing that her father had
consented to let her go.
"Papa isn't as indifferent as he seems," she said. "When it is
all fixed and settled, he will treat you just as he does the rest
of us, only he hates a scene and explanations. I suppose he
_was_ unkind to poor mamma, and now hates to say a word
about it; but you may be sure he feels it. And now you must take
everything for granted, come and go just as if you had always
been at home with us, and he will take it so."
"But what will people say?"
"Why, we will tell the truth, only as simply as possible--as if
it were an everyday affair--that papa's first wife died while he
was away from home, and that when he returned from Paris, where
he says he was then, the people told him you were dead too. I
don't know why that old woman should have told such a story."
"Nor I, but perhaps, poor, ignorant soul, she thought the boy was
better under her charge than given over to a 'Protestant,' who
had acted so like a heathen to the child's mother; but good as
was her motive, and perhaps her judgment, I hope she did not
really tell a lie about it, so peace to her soul. Who knows how
much Dick owes to her pious prayers?"
A very proud and happy man was Dick in these days, when he
journeyed to Maine with his newly-found sister. It is true that
the change in Mr. Brandon's circumstances did not enable Mary to
have a new travelling suit for the occasion, and that she was
obliged to wear a last year's dress; but last year's dress was a
very elegant one, and almost "as good as new;" for Mary, fine
lady that she was, had the taste and grace of her station, and
deft fingers, quick and willing servants of her will, that would
do honor to any station; so her dress was all _à la mode_,
and Dick had reason to be proud of escorting her. She had,
however, something more than her dress of which to be proud, or
Dick would not have been so grateful for finding her his sister;
she had a kind heart, which enabled her always to answer readily
all who addressed her, to make her constantly cheerful with Dick,
and to keep everything smooth for the inexperienced traveller,
who otherwise would have suffered many mortifications; she had,
too, a womanly dignity, a sense of what was due to and from her,
not as Miss Brandon, but as a woman, which secured her from any
incivility and made her always gentle and considerate to every
one. Dick could never enough delight in the quiet, composed way
in which she received attentions which she never by a look
suggested; for the gentle firmness, the self-possession, the
quiet composure, the perfect courtesy of a refined and cultivated
woman were new things to him; and to say he loved the very ground
she walked on would be only a mild way of expressing the feeling
of his heart toward her.
Added to all this, giving to everything else a greater charm,
Mary's mind was always alive; she had been thoroughly educated,
and had mingled all her life with intelligent and often
intellectual people, whose influence had enabled her to seek at
the proper fountains for entertainment and instruction.
{71}
Whatever passed before her eyes, she saw; and whatever she saw,
she thought about. In her turn, Mary already dearly loved her
brother; although two years younger than he, she was, as
generally happens at their age, much more mature, and she could
see, as if with more experienced eyes, what a true, honest heart,
what thorough desire to do right, what patience and what spirit,
too, there was in him, and again and again said to herself, "What
would he not have been under other circumstances!" But she
forgot, when saying that, that God knows how to suit the
circumstances to the character, and that Dick, not having
neglected his opportunities, had put his talent out to as great
interest as he could under other influences. There was much that
had to be broadened in his mind, great worlds of art and
literature for him to enter; but there was time enough for that
yet; he had a character formed to truth and earnestness, and had
proved himself patient and energetic at the proper times. It now
was time for new and refining influences to be brought to bear;
it was time for gentleness and courtesy to teach him the value of
pleasant manners and self-restraint; for the conversation of
cultivated people to teach him the value of intelligent thoughts
and suitable words in which to clothe them; for the knowledge of
other lives and other aims to teach him the value or the mistake
of his own. These things were unconsciously becoming clearer to
him every day that he was with his sister, who, I need hardly
say, never lectured, sermonized, or put essays into quotation
marks, but whose conversation was simple, refined, and
intelligent, whatever was its subject. Others greater than Mary
would come after her when her work was done, we may be sure; but
at the present time Dick was not in a state to be benefited by
such.
To Be Continued.
----------
{72}
When?
Come, gentle April showers,
And water my May flowers.
The violet--
Blue, white, and yellow streaked with jet--
Thickly in my bed are set;
Gay daffodillies,
Tulips and St. Joseph's lilies;
Bethlehem's star,
Gleaming through its leaves afar;
Merry crocuses, which quaff
Sunshine till they fairly laugh;
And that fragrant one so pale,
Meekest lily of the vale,
All are keeping whist, afraid
Of this late snow o'er them laid.
Come, then, gentle April showers,
And coax out my pretty flowers.
I am tired of wintry days,
Have no longer heart to praise
Icicles and banks of snow.
When will dandelions blow,
And meadow-sweet,
And cowslips, dipping their cool feet
In little rills
Gushing from the mossy hills?
I am weary of this weather.
Vernal breezes, hasten hither,
Bringing in your dappled train,
Tearful sunshine, smiling rain,
And, to coax out all my flowers,
Fall, fall gently, April showers.
----------
{73}
Translated From The French Of Le Correspondant.
Influence Of Locality On The Duration Of Human Life.
In every place there are influences which are favorable or
unfavorable to the duration of human life. The nature of the
soil, the atmospheric changes, the variations of the temperature,
the position of one's abode with respect to the points of the
compass and its elevation above the level of the sea, act in a
powerful manner upon the organization.
A vast forest is one the grandest, most enchanting and enlivening
scenes in nature. What an ineffable and touching harmony comes
from the varieties of foliage, and what a sweet perfume they lend
to the caressing breeze! What a soothing charm in their cool
shade, calming the fever of life, purifying the soul from all
passion, expanding and elevating the mind, and making man realize
more fully his celestial origin. All men who are endowed with
superior mental faculties have a natural and powerful inclination
for solitude--especially the solitude of a vast forest. The soft
light of its open spaces, the deep shades, the endless variety of
tones from the quivering leaves, the pungent sweetness of the
odors, the air full of vibrations and sparkling light, surround
and penetrate them. It seems to them a glimpse of a world of
mystery to which they have drawn near, and which harmonizes
perfectly with all the thoughts and feelings in which they love
to indulge.
Not only persons capable of reading the divine lessons written on
space, love to wander in the shades of vast forests, but great
noble hearts that have been wounded, also find here a balm. The
soothing melancholy they drink in, the divine presence they feel,
fill up the void left by some charming illusion that has been
dispelled. There are special places where the air we breathe, and
every exterior influence, tend to nourish and develop not only
physical but intellectual life. A beneficent spirit seems to
watch over the safety of humanity and to promote its happiness.
The fluids, the emanations that surround us, penetrate our
organization and become a part of our being; and in consequence
of the wonderful sympathy between the body and soul, it is
evident that they also influence our intellectual faculties.
Umbrageous forests are especially favorable to our existence;
trees are devoted and faithful friends that never reproach us for
their benefits, and their love is susceptible of no change,
Plants are for us a real panacea. They are the natural pharmacies
which Providence has established on earth for the prevention or
cure of our diseases. From their wood, barks, leaves, flowers,
and fruits, are exhaled essences which strengthen our organs,
purify the blood, and neutralize the noxious air around us.
The history of all ages shows that those regions which are
favored with vast forests have always been healthy and propitious
to man; but where the forests have been cut down, those same
regions have become marshy and the source of deadly miasmas, The
marsh fevers which now prevail in certain parts of Asia Minor
render them uninhabitable.
{74}
Nevertheless, ancient authors speak of marshes of small extent,
but not of marsh fevers, because then the forests still remained.
A thousand years ago, La Brenne was covered with woods,
interspersed with meadows. These meadows were watered by living
streams. It was then a country famous for the fertility of its
pastures and the mildness of its climate. Now the forests have
disappeared. La Brenne is gloomy, marshy, and unhealthy. The same
could be said of La Dombe, La Bresse, La Sologne, etc.
The following is a permanent example exactly to the point. In the
Pontine marshes, a wood intercepts the current of damp air laden
with pestilential miasmas, rendering one side of it healthy,
while the other is filled with its destructive vapors. The places
where forests have disappeared seem as if inhabited by evil
genii, who eagerly seek to enter the human frame under the form
of fevers, cholera, diseases of the lungs and liver, rheumatism,
etc. For example, it is sufficient to breathe for only a few
seconds in certain regions of Madagascar, or some of the fatal
islands near by, for the whole organization to be instantly
seized with mortal symptoms. The most robust and vigorous young
man, who goes full of ardor to those shores with the hope of a
bright future, affected by these miasmas, feels as if dying with
the venom of the rattlesnake in his veins; and, if he recovers
from his agony, it is often to drag out in sorrow the small
remnant of his days. How many unfortunate people of this class
have I not met during my voyage in the Indian Ocean. What a
sacrilege to think of destroying these delicious and mysterious
forests, with their atmosphere full of celestial vibrations, and
their divine orchestra, where the breeze murmurs in a thousand
tones the hymn which reveals the Creator to the creature! Every
sorrow is soothed in the depths of those beneficent shades. There
the soul, as well as the body, finds a repose which regenerates
it. The divinity descends; we feel its presence. It moves us to
the depths of our souls. It caresses us like the breath of the
mother we adore!
Man may live to an advanced age in almost every climate, in the
torrid as well as the frigid zone; but he cannot everywhere
attain the utmost limit of human life. The examples of extreme
longevity are more common in some countries than in others.
Although, in general, a northern climate may be favorable to long
life, too great a degree of cold is injurious. In Iceland, in the
north of Asia--that is, in Siberia--man lives, at the longest,
but sixty or seventy years. The countries where people of the
most advanced age have been found, of late years, are Sweden,
Norway, Denmark, and England. Individuals of one hundred and
thirty, one hundred and forty, and one hundred and fifty years of
age, have been found there. Ireland shares with England and
Scotland the reputation of being favorable to the duration of
life. More than eighty persons above fourscore years of age have
been found in a single small village of that country, called
Dumsford. Bacon said that he did not think you could mention a
single village of that country where there was not to be found at
least one octogenarian. Examples of longevity are more rare in
France, in Italy, and especially in Spain. Some cantons of
Hungary are noted for the advanced age to which their inhabitants
attain. Germany also has a good many old people, but few who live
to a remarkable age. Only a small number are to be found in
Holland. It is seldom that any one reaches the age of one hundred
in that country.
{75}
The climate of Greece, which is as healthy as it is agreeable, is
considered now, as it formerly was, favorable to longevity. The
island of Naxos is specially noted in this respect. It was
generally admitted in Greece that the air of Attica disposed
those who breathed it to philosophy.
Examples of longevity are to be found in Egypt, and in the East
Indies, principally in the caste of Brahmins and among the
anchorets and hermits, who, unlike the rest of the inhabitants,
do not abandon themselves to indolence and excesses of every
kind.
A careful computation of the comparative longevity, in the
different departments of France, has been made for 1860 and the
preceding years. The medium annual number of deaths in France, at
the age of one hundred years and upward, is 148. The following
fifteen _départements_, given in decreasing order, are those
which have the greatest number: Basses-Pyrenees, Dordogne,
Calvados, Gers, Puy-de-Dôme, Ariége, Aveyron, Gironde, Landes,
Lot, Ardèche, Cantal, Doubs, Seine, Tarn-et-Garonne. It will be
seen that a great number of mountainous districts are to be found
in these departments. It is surprising to see that of _la
Seine_ on this list. Nevertheless these departments do not
hold the same rank in respect to the ordinary duration of life;
which would seem to prove that some examples of extreme longevity
are not a sufficient index that a country is favorable to long
life. I give their numbers in order: Basses-Pyrénées, 7;
Dordogne, 42; Calvados, 2; Gers, 9; Puy-de-Dôme, 30; Ariége, 48;
Aveyron, 34; Gironde, 18; Landes, 52; Lot, 33; Ardèche, 43;
Cantal, 23; Doubs, 25; Seine, 53; Tarn-et-Garonne, 13.
The fifteen departments in which ordinary life is most prolonged
are: Orne, Calvados, Eure-et-Loir, Sarthe, Eure, Lot-et-Garonne,
Deux-Sèvres, Indre-et-Loire, Basses-Pyrenees, Maine-et-Loire,
Ardennes, Gers, Aube, Hautes-Pyrenees, et Haute-Garonne.
It is evident that places need not be very remote from each other
to produce a different influence on the duration of life.
That cold is injurious to the nerves, remarks M. Reveille-Parise,
is a truth almost as old as the medical art. A low temperature
produces not only a painful effect upon the skin, but it benumbs
and paralyzes the nerves of the extremities, and diminishes the
circulation of the fluids, and this gives rise to all sorts of
diseases.
Men of intellectual pursuits, having an extremely nervous
susceptibility, are particularly affected by change of
temperature. It is not surprising, then, to find that the mental
faculties have attained their utmost degree of perfection in
certain climates. Choice natures, such as poets and other men of
genius, only produce the finest fruit under the influence of an
ardent sun and a pure and brilliant atmosphere. It is only in
warm and temperate climates that nature and life are most lavish
of their treasures; there we find genuine creations; elsewhere
are imitations only, with the exception of the physical sciences,
which depend on continued observation. It is remarkable that, if
the men of the North have conquered the South, the opinions of
the South have always held sway in the North. Besides, fertility
of the soil and a mild temperature set man free, in southern
countries, from all present care and all anxiety respecting the
future, and infuse that blissful serenity of soul so favorable to
the flights of the imagination. In the misty climate of the
north, he has to struggle incessantly against the influence of
the weather, which so greatly diminishes the powers of the mind.
{76}
This struggle is almost always a disadvantage to the minds of
men, who are particularly impressible and often reduced to a
state of muscular enervation. Cold, dampness, fogs, violent
winds, sudden changes of temperature, frequent rains, endless
winters, uncertain summers with their storms and unhealthy
exhalations, are fearful enemies to an organization which is
delicate, nervous, irritable, suffering, and exhausted.
The state of the atmosphere, then, acts powerfully on the mental
faculties. There are really days when the mind is not clear. The
thoughts, sometimes so free and abundant, are suddenly arrested.
The sources of the imagination are expanded and contracted
according to the degrees of the barometer and thermometer. The
different seasons of the year have more influence than may be
thought, upon the master-pieces of art, upon the affections, the
events of life and even upon political catastrophes. History
relates that Chancellor de Cheverny warned President de Thou that
if the Duke de Guise irritated the mind of Henry III during a
frost, (which rendered him furious,) the king would have him
assassinated; and this really happened on the twenty-third of
December, 1588.
The Duchess d'Abrantès says:
"Napoleon could not endure the least cold without immediate
suffering. He had fires made in the month of July, and did not
understand why others were not equally affected by the least
wind from the northeast. It was Napoleon's nature to love air
and exercise. The privation of these two things threw him into
a violent condition. The state of the weather could be
perceived by the temper he displayed at dinner. If rain or any
other cause had prevented him from taking his accustomed walk,
he was not only cross but suffering."
We read in the Journal of Eugénie de Guerin:
"With the rain, cold winds, wintry skies, the nightingales
singing from time to time under the dead leaves, we have a
gloomy month of May. I wish my soul were not so much influenced
by the state of the atmosphere and variations of the seasons,
as to be like a flower that opens or closes with the cold and
the sun. It is something I do not understand, but so it is as
long as my soul is imprisoned in this frail body."
Ask the poets, artists, and men of thought, if a lively feeling
of energy and of joy, prompting to action and labor; or,
otherwise, if a certain state languor--of strange and undefinable
uneasiness--does not make them dependent on the state of the
atmosphere.
It may be considered, then, as an established principle, that a
temperate climate, mild seasons, and pure air constantly, renewed
constitute not only the highest physical enjoyment but the
indispensable conditions of health.
The physical character of places has a truly astonishing effect
upon man. A distinguished traveller, M. Trémaux, has endeavored
to prove, in several _mémoires_ to the Académie des
Sciences, that man be changed from the Caucasian to the negro
type simply by this influence. He calls attention to the
coincidences that exist between the physical types and the
geological nature of the countries acting especially through
their products. The least perfect, or rather, the type which is
farthest removed from our own, belongs to the oldest lands, and,
in a subsidiary manner, to climates the least favored. The most
perfect belongs to the countries which, within the smallest
limits, offer the greatest variety of formations, allowing the
most recent to predominate, and, in a subsidiary manner, to the
most favored climates. The type is also influenced by other
causes of a more secondary nature which are very complex.
{77}
The geological chart of Europe, says Mr. Trémaux, shows that the
greatest surface of primitive rock formations is in Lapland,
which possesses also the most inferior people; going to the south
of Scandinavia, gneiss and granite occupy also a great part of
the country, but that region is also connected with others more
varied. It contains many lakes, and its climate is more favored,
as well as its inhabitants. As to the Scandinavians of Denmark,
they have a purely Germanic type and are, in effect, upon the
same soil.
Russia possesses different formations of a medium age, but the
extended surface of each kind does not permit its people to
profit by the resources of those adjoining, and, consequently,
they are but indifferently favored. If we turn to the countries
which are in the best condition, we distinguish in general all
the west and south of Europe, and more particularly France,
Italy, Greece, the eastern part of Spain, and the north-east of
England. It is here, in truth, that civilization and the
intellectual faculties have most sway.
Race does not change while it remains upon the same soil and
under the same natural influences; whereas, it is gradually
modified, according to its new position, when it is removed to
another place.
The physical influences of a region, and of mixture of race, have
a distinct manner of acting. By cross-breeding, the features are
at once strongly modified in individuals, but especially
according to the region in which it takes place. Thus, in Europe,
the mixed race is more strongly inclined to the type of the white
man; in Soudan, to that of the negro. A type seems to be more
readily improved than degenerated. The physical character of a
place does not act in detail, but in a general manner, beginning
by modifying the complexion more and more in each generation. It
acts less quickly upon the hair, and more slowly still upon the
features. Cross-breeding is considered the principal modifying
agent only because its effects are at once perceptible, but it
can explain evident facts only in an imperfect manner.
The elevation of a place above the level of the sea has a radical
influence upon phthisis. With the design of indicating the
regions and the degrees of elevation within which this malady is
rare or completely unknown, Dr. Schnepp has made a compilation
from a series of meteorological observations, made in the
Pyrenees and at Eaux Bonnes, and from analogous documents
furnished by travellers who have lived upon the elevated and
inhabited plateaux of the old and new world.
The document on this subject which he sent to the Academy of
Sciences shows that, in the choice of a healthy locality for
invalids, people are too exclusively influenced by a warm
temperature, disregarding the more formal indications of nature
in distributing the maladies of the human race over the surface
of the globe. For instance, phthisis exists in the tropical zone.
In Brazil, it causes one fifth of the cases of mortality; in
Peru, three tenths, and in the Antilles, from six to seven, in
every thousand inhabitants. In the East Indies, the greater part
of the English physicians report, among the causes of death, two
cases from phthisis to every thousand people. In the temperate
zones, phthisis is one of the most devastating of diseases. It
generally attacks from three to four in every thousand
inhabitants. The three countries in which it was not to be found,
Algiers, Egypt, and the Russian steppes of Kirghis, have also
been invaded by it, although in a smaller proportion, In Algeria,
the deaths from phthisis are, to those from other causes, in the
proportion of one to every twenty-four or twenty-seven; in Egypt,
in the proportion of one to eight.
{78}
This old malady becomes more rare as we approach the higher
latitudes. It is supposed not to exist at all in Siberia, in
Iceland, and in the Faroe Islands. Thus, diseases of the lungs
seem to be more rare in certain cold countries than in warm
countries. It is also observed that at a certain altitude the
number of cases greatly diminish, and even completely disappear.
Brockman testifies that phthisis is rare on the plateaux of the
Hartz mountains at the height of two thousand feet above the
level of the sea; and C. Fuchs, stating the same fact concerning
certain elevations in Thuringia and the Black Forest, was the
first to advance the theory that phthisis diminishes according to
certain altitudes.
Dr. Brüggens, also, has since testified to the infrequency of
this disease in the Swiss Alps, at the height of 4500 to 6000
feet in the Engaddine; nor is it found among the monks of the
Great Saint Bernard at the altitude of 6825 feet. According to M.
Lombard, it completely disappears among these mountains at the
height of 4500 feet.
The populous cities of the American continent, which are situated
in the tropical zone at an altitude of six thousand feet above
the level of the sea, are exempt from lung diseases; although, in
the same latitude, phthisis is common in lower regions, This
immunity exists on the other hemisphere in the same zone--on the
elevated plateaux of Hindostan and the Himalaya. In examining the
state of the climate on the heights in which phthisis is seldom
or never found, we find there, even on the equator, a medium
temperature sufficiently low throughout the year; between twelve
and fifteen degrees on the heights below 9000 feet; between three
and five degrees on those between 9000 and 12,000 feet.
In the temperate zone it is still lower. But the warmest months
upon tropical heights do not vary more than six or eight degrees
from the medium temperature. It is the same on the plateaux of
the Alps and in Iceland, and is a general and common
characteristic of the regions in which phthisis is not found. The
deviations below the annual medium, appear even to increase this
immunity. If sufficient observations have not been made to decide
upon the degree of comparative humidity on the heights above
12,000 feet, we know that the elevation at which phthisis is
wanting, is in a hygrometrical condition more nearly approaching
saturation than the lower regions, and that the rains are also
more abundant there.
It is desirable that the heights of Cévennes, the Pyrenees, the
Alps, and, above all, the elevated parts of our Algerian
possessions should be carefully studied, with a view to the
treatment of lung diseases, which are the great scourge of the
human race, and which annually cause the death of more than three
millions of its number.
It is useful, not only to study different countries with respect
to their salubrity, but also to observe the different situations
in the same locality, and the different quarters of the same
city. M. Junod presented to the Academy of Sciences, some years
since, an essay on this subject, which is full of interest. In
considering the distribution of the population in large cities,
we are struck by the tendency of the wealthy class to move toward
the western portions, abandoning the opposite side to the
industrial pursuits, It seems to have divined, by a kind of
intuition, the locality which would have the greatest immunity in
the time of sore public calamities.
{79}
For example, let us speak first of Paris. From the foundation of
the city, the opulent class has constantly directed its course
toward the west. It is the same in London, and generally, in all
the cities of England. At Vienna, Berlin, St. Petersburg, and,
indeed, in all the capitals of Europe, this same fact is
repeated; there is the same movement of the rich toward the west,
where are assembled the palaces of the kings, and the dwellings
for which only pleasant and healthy sites are desired.
In visiting the ruins of Pompeii and other ancient cities, I have
observed, as well as M. Junod, that this custom dates from the
highest antiquity. In those cities, as is seen at Paris in our
day, the largest cemeteries are found in the eastern parts, and
generally none in the western. M. Junod, examining the reason of
so general a fact, thinks it is connected with _atmospheric
pressure_. When the mercury in the barometer rises, the smoke
and injurious emanations are quickly dispelled in the air. When
the mercury lowers, we see the smoke and noxious vapors remain in
the apartments and near the surface of the earth. Now every one
knows that, of all winds, that from the east causes the mercury
in the barometer to rise the highest, and that which lowers it
most is from the west. When the latter blows, it carries with it
all the deleterious gases it meets in its course from the west.
The result is, that the inhabitants of the eastern parts of a
city not only have their own smoke and miasmas, but also those of
the western parts, brought by the west wind. When, on the
contrary, the east wind blows, it purifies the air by causing the
injurious emanations to rise, so that they cannot be thrown back
upon the west. It is evident, then, that the inhabitants of the
western parts receive pure air from whatever quarter of the
horizon it comes. We will add, that the west wind is most
prevalent, and the west end receives it all fresh from the
country.
From the foregoing facts, M. Junod lays down the following
directions: First, persons who are free to choose, especially
those of delicate health, should reside in the western part of a
city. Secondly, for the same reason, all the establishments that
send forth vapors or injurious gases should be in the eastern
part. Thirdly and finally, in erecting a house in the city, and
even in the country, the kitchen should be on the eastern side,
as well as all the out-houses from which unhealthy emanations
might spread into the apartments.
M. Elie de Beaumont has since mentioned some facts which tend to
prove the constancy and generality of the rule laid down by M.
Junod. He noticed in most of the large cities this tendency of
the wealthy class to move to the same side--generally, the
western--unless hindered by certain local obstacles. Turin,
Liége, and Caen are examples of this. M. Moquin-Tandon has
observed the same thing at Montpellier and at Toulouse. Paris and
London also present analogous facts, although the rivers which
traverse those two great centres flow in a diametrically
different direction. Paris increased in a north-easterly
direction at the time when the Bastille, the Palais des
Tournelles, the Hotel St. Paul, etc., were built; but the
inhabitants were then influenced by fear of the aggressive
Normans, whose fleets ascended the Seine as far as Paris, and
were only arrested by the Pont-au-Change. At that time, and as
long as this fear lasted, they must have felt unwilling to live
in Auteuil or Grenelle, But since the foundation of the Louvre,
and especially since the reign of Henri Quatre, the current has
resumed its normal direction.
{80}
M. Elie de Beaumont is inclined to believe that, among the causes
of this phenomenon, we should reckon the temperature and the
hygrometrical state of the air, which is generally warmer and
more moist during the winds from the west and south-west than
during the east and north-east winds.
What most contributes to prolong existence is a certain
uniformity in heat and cold, and in the density and rarity of the
atmosphere. This is why the countries in which the barometer and
thermometer are subject to sudden and considerable changes are
never favorable to the duration of life. They may be healthy, and
man may live a long time there; but he will never attain a very
advanced age, because the variations of the atmosphere produce
many interior changes which consume, to a surprising degree, both
the strength and the organs of life.
Too much dryness or too much humidity are equally injurious to
the duration of life; yet the air most favorable to longevity is
that which contains a certain quantity of water in dissolution.
Moist air being already partly saturated, absorbs less from the
body, and does not consume it as soon as a dry atmosphere; it
keeps the organs a longer time in a state of suppleness and
vigor; while a dry atmosphere dries up the fibres and hastens the
approach of old age. It is for this reason, doubtless, that
islands and peninsulas have always been favorable to old age. Man
lives longer there than in the same latitude upon continents.
Islands and peninsulas, especially in warm climates, generally
offer everything that contributes to a long life: purity of air,
a moist atmosphere, a temperature often at one's choice,
wholesome fruit, clear water, and a climate almost unvariable. I
had an opportunity, long desired, of traversing the ocean as far
the Tristan Islands, and of returning to the Indian Ocean by
doubling the Cape of Good Hope with a captain who wished to
observe the different islands on the way. I was thus able, in
going as well as returning, to visit these numerous islands, and
I can speak of them from reasonable observation. But it is
sufficient to mention, from a hygienic point of view, the Isle of
Bourbon, (where I lived for many years,) to give an idea of the
sanitary condition of islands in general. Like most isles, the
Isle of Bourbon has a form more or less pyramidal. The shore,
almost on a level with the sea, is the part principally
inhabited. There are few villages in the interior of the island,
but many private residences. The temperature on the shore, though
very high, is less intense than is supposed: the medium
temperature being between 40° and 50°. The sea and land breezes,
which succeed each other morning and evening, refresh the
atmosphere and maintain a healthy moisture. It hardly ever rains
except during the winter, Besides, it is very easy to choose the
temperature one prefers. As the mountains are very lofty, they
afford every season at once. On the summit are seen snow and ice,
while at the foot the heat is tropical; so that it is sufficient
to ascend for ten or fifteen minutes to find a marked change of
temperature, And the colonists of but little wealth are careful
to profit by this precious favor of nature. They select two or
three habitations at different heights, in order to enjoy a
continual spring, During the cool season, they reside on the
sea-shore. Then they go to their dwelling a little above, where
the temperature is mild. And in the hot season, they ascend to
still higher regions.
It is impossible to express the pleasure of thus having several
dwellings at one's choice, in some one of which desirable
temperature can be enjoyed in any season.
{81}
I had three: one at St. Denis, capital of the colony, one at La
Rivière-des-Pluies, and another at La Ressource. La
Rivière-des-Pluies, belonging to M. Desbassayns, a venerable old
man and president of the general council, is the finest situation
on the island. It was formerly called the Versailles of Bourbon.
I inhabited a summer-house above which the surrounding trees
crossed their tufted branches, forming a dome of verdure in which
the birds came to warble. Regular alleys, extending as far as the
eye could reach, formed by superb mango-trees, were enclosed by
parterres, groves, gardens, woods, and all the surroundings of a
small village. Each large habitation in the colony had every
resource within itself, and was the faithful copy of the old
feudal castles.
La Ressource, a dwelling for the hottest season, belonging also
to M. Desbassayns, presented another kind of beauty. There was
less artistic luxury about it, but nature had lavished on it all
her splendor. After dinner, admiring the panorama which was
spread out as far as the horizon, I remarked to M. Desbassayns
that I did not believe it possible for the entire world of nature
to furnish a more beautiful perspective. "I have travelled a
great deal," said he, "and in truth I have never seen anything
like it, not even from the most magnificent points of view in
America." The venerable old man then took me by the arm and
invited me to visit his estate. He made me first look at his
woods, with their tufted foliage; the cane-fields; the deep
ravines; the streams, with their windings rising one above the
other in such a manner that the lower ones were perfectly
visible, and extending in successive circuits more or less varied
to the shore of the sea, which gleamed like a mirror as far as
the eye could reach, and upon the azure surface of which stood
clearly out, like silver clouds, the white sails from all parts
of the world which had given each other _rendezvous_ here,
and were constantly approaching this isle of lava, flowers,
shadows, and light, which they had taken as the centre of
_réunion_.
He made me afterward notice the verdant fields which had formerly
belonged to the parents of Virginia, the heroine of the romance
of Bernardin de St. Pierre. He related to me the true history of
Virginia, who was his cousin. Her death happened nearly as
described by the celebrated romancer. He made me notice, upon his
genealogical tree, the branch that bore upon one of its leaves
the name of Virginia!
M. Desbassayns had promised me some reliable notes respecting
her, and I was glad to offer them to my illustrious friend, Count
Alfred de Vigny, who, in giving me a farewell embrace, had
commissioned me to bear his most tender expressions of love to
the region which had inspired the touching narrative of St.
Pierre. But alas! remorseless death warns us to remember the
uncertainty of life, even when everything disposes us to forget
it.
He took me to one after another of the most interesting trees,
particularly to the _arbre du voyageur_, a kind of banana,
the leaves of which are inserted within one another like those of
the iris, so as to form, at the height of eight or nine feet, a
vast fan. Rain-water, and particularly dew, accumulates at the
bottom of these leaves, as in a natural cup, and is kept very
fresh; and if the base is pierced with a narrow blade, the liquid
will flow out in a thread-like stream, which it is easy to
receive in the mouth. The venerable old man opened one of their
vegetable veins by way of example, and I soon lanced a great
number of these providential trees, and refreshed myself with
their limpid streams.
{82}
Finally, he conducted me by a narrow path to the edge of a deep
ravine in which flowed an abundant torrent, forming capricious
cascades as it wound its way. After passing over a rustic bridge,
an admirable spectacle was presented to our view. An alley was
formed through a wilderness of bamboos, so sombre, so narrow, and
high, that it would be difficult to give an idea of it. It was as
if pierced through a forest of gigantic pipes; and when they were
agitated by a storm, they produced a harmony so plaintive, so
languid, and at the same time so terrible and full of poetry,
that I often passed the entire night in listening to it. I am not
astonished by what is related of these tall and sonorous
_culms_.
In those fortunate countries that are shaded by the bamboo, it is
said that happy lovers and suffering souls make holes in these
long pipes and combine them in such a way that, when the wind
blows, they give out a faithful expression of their joy or their
grief. Nothing is sweeter than the tones that are thus produced
by the evening breeze which attunes these harmonious reeds,
rendering them at once aeolian harps and flutes. As soon as I
found out this magical pathway, I betook myself there every day
at the dawn, to read, to meditate, and to take notes till the
hour of dinner. The next day after this visit, I had the
curiosity to destroy one of the _arbre du voyageur_. It
inundated me with its fresh stream, but I came near being
punished for this profanation of nature, at the moment I expected
it the least. A most formidable centipede escaped from the
splinters which I made fly, and only lacked a little of falling
directly on my face. M. Desbassayns was greatly astonished to see
it; for it is generally believed, he said, that these venomous
insects avoid this beneficent tree.
The enchanting heavens of that privileged region are always
serene, and the air is so pure that no gray tint ever appears on
the horizon; the mountains, hills, meadows, every remote object
indeed, instead of fading away in a dim atmosphere, beam out
against a sky of cloudless azure. This is what renders the
equatorial nights so resplendent. The astonished eye thinks it
beholds a new heavens and new stars. How charming is the
moonlight that comes in showers of light through a thousand
quivering leaves which murmur in the breath of the perfumed
breeze! and when to that is joined the far-off moan of the sea,
and the sounds that escape from the ivory keys or resounding
chords, which accompany the sweet accents of a Creole voice, we
feel as if in one of those islands of bliss which surpass the
imagination of the poets.
One of the things that travellers have not sufficiently noticed,
and which gives us a kind of homesickness for that beautiful
region, is the enchanting harmony which results from the noise of
the sea and the murmur of the breeze in the different kinds of
foliage, a harmony which calms the agitation of the soul as well
as the fever of the body. As there is every variety of
temperature, so there is a great variety of trees. There is one
especially remarkable, namely, the _pandanus_, which
resembles both the pine and the weeping willow, Its summit is
lost in the blue sky, and its numerous branches, borne by a
pliant and elegant stem, support large tassels of leaves, long,
cylindrical, and fine as hair; and when the breeze makes them
tremble in its breath, they murmur in plaintive melancholy notes
that, when once heard, we long to hear again and again.
{83}
The cocoanut or palm-trees, with their leaves long, hard, and
shining like steel, give out a sound like the clash of arms. The
gigantic leaves of the banana are the echo of the voice of an
overflowing torrent, piercing the air like the vast pipes of an
organ. The bamboos, with their tall reeds which moan and grind as
they bend, uttering long groans which, mingling with the tones,
the wailing, and the murmurs of a thousand other kinds of
foliage, with the deep roar of the agitated sea afar off, and the
sound of the waves breaking on the shore, form an immense natural
orchestra, the varied sounds of which, rising toward heaven, seem
to bear with them, in accents without number, all the joys and
all the griefs of the world.
These trees with their tall, slender stems, and thick foliage,
are continually bending in the incessant breeze, In the brilliant
light of that climate their shadow looks black; and, as it is
continually moving, you would think everything animate, and that
sylphs and fairies were issuing forth on all sides.
There is a constant succession of flowers with the strongest
perfume; and when those of the wood are in bloom, you would think
that every blade of grass, every leaf and every drop of dew gave
out an essence which the wind, in passing, absorbed in order to
perfume with it the happy dwellers in this Eden.
Those enchanted regions have inhabitants worthy of their abode.
The hospitality of the Creoles is proverbial. Every family is
glad to receive the stranger and soon considers him as a friend
and brother. The Creole women have the elegance of their
palm-trees. They are as fresh and blooming as the corolla that
expands at the dawn. Their kind courtesy envelops you like the
penetrating odors which come from the wonderful vegetation that
surrounds them. A Frenchman who meets another Frenchman in these
far-off countries regards him as a part of France which has come
to smile an him, and the intimacy, which is formed, is
indissoluble.
The traveller can never forget the touching scenes of the
_varangue_, the enchanting evenings passed there, and the
joyous cup of friendship there interchanged; sweet emotions
contributing to longevity more than is commonly believed.
One finds one's self in that fortunate land surrounded by
hygienical influences which are most favorable to a long life.
Let us add that the alimentary productions are of the first
quality. The water in the stony basins is limpid, and the
succulent fruits are varied enough to almost suffice for the
nourishment of the inhabitants. How can one be a favorite of
fortune and a prey to spleen without going to visit these places,
which exhale a sovereign balm?
Nevertheless, under that sky brilliant with pure light, in that
atmosphere of freshness of perfume and of harmony, it seemed to
me that a tint of infinite melancholy was everywhere diffused. I
regarded the glorious sky, I listened to the trembling foliage, I
breathed the penetrating odors, but something was everywhere
wanting. When I sought what it was that I missed, I found it was
the trees of my native land, which do not grow in every zone, and
where they do grow are not so fine as here. I instinctively
sought the wide-spreading oak, the lofty walnut, the chestnut
with its tender verdure, the tall slender poplar, the modest
willow, and the birch with its light shadow. I recalled the odor
of their foliage, associated with my dearest remembrances, but in
vain. I felt then an immense and inexpressible void that nothing
could fill, and tears naturally sprang from these vague and
profound impressions.
{84}
I hungered, I thirsted for the odor of the trees that had
overshadowed my infancy--an insatiable hunger, a thirst nothing
could satisfy. On returning from that remote voyage, especially
during the first weeks, I went to the nursery of the Luxembourg,
(alas! poor nursery!) I sought the fresh shades of the Bois de
Boulogne, and there, during long rambles, I crushed the leaves in
my hands and inhaled the perfume they gave out. I felt my lungs
expand, as if a new life was infused into them with the odor I
breathed. This invisible aliment which we derive from the
exhalations of the plants to which we have been accustomed from
infancy, had become for me an absolute necessity, a condition of
health.
A climate, a country may not at all times be favorable to
longevity, or at all times unhealthy. The predominance of one
industrial pursuit over another, the choice of one material
instead of another for building houses, or a sudden change in the
general habits, necessarily modifies, in a great degree, the
conditions of longevity. This is what has happened in the Isle of
Bourbon. Till within a few years, no epidemic or contagious
malady was known in that fortunate island; no fever, no cholera,
no throat complaints, no small-pox, etc. But all these diseases
have attacked its inhabitants since our manures, our materials
for building, and our products in general, have been used by them
in large quantities.
The drying up of a marsh, the cutting down of a forest, the
substitution of one crop for another, may effect atmospheric
changes through an extended radius, which will strengthen or
weaken the vitality of the people. Some years since, there was a
marsh behind the city of Cairo, which was separated from the
desert by a hill. It was always noticed that the pestilential
epidemics appeared to spring from that unhealthy spot and finally
to spread throughout the east. The Pacha of Egypt, without
thinking of this coincidence, noticed, on the other hand, that
the hill behind the marsh entirely concealed the fine view which
he would have from his palace, if it were removed. He gave orders
to cut the hill down and to fill up the marsh with its
_débris_, so that the winds which were formerly checked, had
free circulation and purified the atmosphere, while the soil,
thoroughly modified, ceased to emit the pestilential effluvia,
Since that event the plague has not reappeared. A caprice of the
Pacha effected more than all the quarantines and all the efforts
of science, He has freed the world, perhaps for ever, from the
most terrible of scourges.
It is known that the cholera comes from India. It is engendered
in the immense triangular space formed by two rivers: the Ganges
and the Brahmapootra. It is the East India Company according to
M. le Comte de Waren, that should be accused of treason to
humanity. It is that power which has destroyed the canals and the
derivations of the two finest rivers in the world. During the
last twenty-five years of English occupation the number of pools
in a single district, that of _Nort Arcoth_, which burst or
were destroyed, amounted to eleven hundred. In the time of the
Mogul conquerors, a fine canal, the Doab, extending from Delhi,
fertilized two hundred leagues in its course. This canal is
destroyed, and the lands, once so fertile and healthy, are now
the infectious lair of wild beasts, having been depopulated by
disease and death.
{85}
The hygienic condition of different countries, then, may be
modified in various ways. In 1698, Bigot de Molville, president
_à mortier_ of the Parliament of Normandy, found, after
careful research, that, of all the cities of France, Rouen
possessed the greatest number of octogenarians and centenarians.
Toward the middle of the last century this superiority was
claimed by Boulogne-sur-mer, which retained it for nearly fifty
years, and was then called the _patrie des vieillards_.
In a recent communication to the Academy, M. de Garogna remarked
that, in the printed or manuscript accounts we possess respecting
the former eruptions of Santorin, many very interesting details
are found concerning the different maladies occasioned by these
eruptions, and observed at that epoch in the island, which
support what we have said of the variable hygienic state of
different places. According to these reports, the pathological
result of the different eruptions included especially alarming
complications, serious cerebral difficulties, suffocation, and
derangement in the alimentary canal. He proved that morbid
influences were only manifest when the direction of the wind
brought the volcanic emanations. The parts of the island out of
the course of the wind showed no trace of the maladies in
question. Moreover, the sanitary condition of the places within
reach of the wind became worse or improved according to the rise
and fall of the wind. It should also be noticed that the morbid
influence of the volcanic emanations extended to islands more or
less remote from Santorin.
From this report the following conclusions are to be drawn:
1. The eruption in the Bay of Santorin, while in action, had a
manifest influence on the health of the people in that
island.
2. It especially occasioned complicated diseases, throat
distempers, bronchitis, and derangement of the digestive
organs.
3. The acidiferous ashes were the direct cause of the
complications, while the other morbid complaints should be
attributed to sulphuric acid.
4. Vegetation was likewise affected by the eruption while
active, and particularly plants of the order _Siliaceae_.
5. The changes in the vegetation were probably produced by
hydrochloric acid, at the beginning of the eruption.
6. The hydro-sulphuric emanations appear, on the contrary, to
have had a beneficial effect on the diseases of the grape-vine.
It perhaps destroyed the _oidium_.
It is evident that the question of local influences upon the
duration of life is a most comprehensive and fruitful one. Nature
gives us some formal indications, in dividing the maladies of the
human race; and the study of places and climates in a hygienic
point of view, although in its infancy, has already brought to
our notice many valuable facts. This study is full of interest.
We shall doubtless arrive at a knowledge of the exact relation
between such a malady, such an epidemic, and such a place, or
site, or position with respect to the points of the compass, as
well as of the beneficial and special influence exercised upon
our principal organs by the exhalations from different places,
which might well be called the genii of those regions.
----------
{86}
The Bishops of Rome. [Footnote 42]
[Footnote 42: _Harper's New Monthly Magazine. The Bishops
of Rome._ New York: Harper and Brothers, January, 1869.]
_Harper's Magazine_, we are told, has a wide circulation,
and some merit as a magazine of light literature; but it does not
appear to have much aptitude for the scholarly discussion of
serious questions, whatever the matter to which they relate, and
it is guilty of great rashness in attempting to treat a subject
of such grave and important relations to religion and
civilization, society and the church, as the history of the
bishops of Rome. The subject is not within its competence, and
the historical value of its essay to those who know something of
the history of the popes and of mediaeval Europe is less than
null.
Of course, _Harper's Magazine_ throws no new light on any
disputed passage in the history of the bishops of Rome, and
brings out no fact not well known, or at least often repeated
before; it does nothing more than compress within a brief
magazine article the principal inventions, calumnies, and
slanders vented for centuries against the Roman pontiffs by
personal or national antipathy, disappointed ambition, political
and partisan animosity, and heretical and sectarian wrath and
bitterness, so adroitly arranged and mixed with facts and
probabilities as to gain easy credence with persons predisposed
to believe them, and to produce on ignorant and prejudiced
readers a totally false impression. The magazine, judging from
this article, has not a single qualification for studying and
appreciating the history of the popes. It has no key to the
meaning of the facts it encounters, and is utterly unable or
indisposed to place itself at the point of view from which the
truth is discernible. Its _animus_, at least in this
article, is decidedly anti-Christian, and proves that it has no
Christian conscience, no Christian sympathy, no faith in the
supernatural, no reverence for our Lord and his apostles, and no
respect even for the authority of the Holy Scriptures.
The magazine, under pretence of writing history, simply appeals
to anti-Catholic prejudice, and repeats what Dr. Newman calls
"the Protestant tradition." Its aim is not historical truth, or a
sound historical judgment on the character of the Roman pontiffs,
but to confirm the unfounded prejudices of its readers against
them. It proceeds as if the presumption were that every pope is
antichrist or a horribly wicked man, and therefore every doubtful
fact must be interpreted against him, till he is proved innocent.
Everything that has been said against a pope, no matter by whom
or on what authority, is presumptively true; everything said in
favor of a Roman pontiff must be presumed to be false or unworthy
of consideration. It supposes the popes to have had the temper
and disposition of non-Catholics, and from what it believes,
perhaps very justly, a Protestant would do--if, _per
impossibile_, he were elevated to the papal chair, and clothed
with papal authority--concludes what the popes have actually
done. It forgets the rule of logic, _Argumentum a genere ad
genus, non valet_. The pope and the Protestant are not of the
same genus. We have never encountered in history a single pope
that did not sincerely believe in his mission from Christ, and
take it seriously.
{87}
We have encountered weakness; too great complaisance to the civil
power, even slowness in crushing out, in its very inception, an
insurgent error; sometimes also too great a regard to the
temporal, to the real or apparent neglect of the spiritual, and
two or three instances in which the personal conduct of a pope
was not much better than that of the average of secular princes;
but never a pope who did not recognize the important trusts
confided to his care, and the weighty responsibilities of his
high office.
We have studied the history of the Roman pontiffs with probably
more care and diligence than the flippant writer in _Harper's
Magazine_ has done, and studied it, too, both as an
anti-papist and as a papist, with an earnest desire to find facts
against the popes, and with an equally earnest desire to
ascertain the exact historical truth; and we reject as unworthy
of the most fanatic sectarian the absurd rule of judging them
which the magazine adopts, if it does not avow and hold that the
presumption is the other way, and that everything that reflects
injuriously on the character of a bishop of Rome is presumptively
false, and to be accepted only on the most indubitable evidence.
We can judge in this matter more impartially and disinterestedly
than the anti-catholic. The impeccability of the pontiff, or even
his infallibility in matters of mere human prudence, is no
article of Catholic faith. The personal conduct of a pontiff may
be objectionable; but unless he officially teaches error in
doctrine, or enjoins an immoral practice on the faithful, it
cannot disturb us. There are no instances in which a pope has
done this. No pope has ever taught or enjoined vice for virtue,
error for truth, or officially sanctioned a false principle or a
false motive of action. With one exception, we might, then,
concede all the magazine alleges, and ask, What then? What can
you conclude? But, in fact, we concede nothing. What it alleges
against the bishops of Rome is either historically false, or if
not, is, when rightly understood, nothing against them in their
official capacity.
The exception mentioned is that of St. Liberius. The magazine
repeats, with some variations, the exploded fable that this Holy
Pope, won by favors or terrified by threats, consented to a
condemnation of the _doctrine_ of Athanasius, that is,
signed an Arian formula of faith. It has not invented the
slander, but it has, after what historical criticism has
established on the subject, no right to repeat it as if it were
not denied. We have no space now to treat the question at length;
but we assert, after a very full investigation, that St. Liberius
never signed an Arian formula, never in any shape or manner
condemned the _doctrine_ defended by St. Athanasius, and
consequently never recanted, for he had nothing to recant. The
most, if so much, that can be maintained is, that he approved a
sentence condemning the special error of the Eunomians, in which
was not inserted the word "consubstantial," because it was not
necessary to the condemnation of their special error, and the
error they held in common with all Arians had already been
condemned by the council of Nicaea. Not a word can be truly
alleged against the persistent orthodoxy of this great and holy
pontiff, who deserves, as he has always received, the veneration
of the church.
The magazine repeats the slander of an anonymous writer, a bitter
enemy of the popes, against St. Victor, St. Zethyrinus, and St.
Callistus, three popes whom the Church of Rome has held, and
still holds, in high esteem and veneration for their virtues and
saintly character.
{88}
It refers to the _Philosophoumena_, a work published a few
years ago by M. E. Miller, of Paris, variously attributed to
Origen, to St. Hippolytus, bishop of Porto, near Rome, to Caius,
a Roman Presbyter, and to Tertullian. The late Abbé Cruice--an
Irishman by birth, we believe, but brought up and naturalized in
France, where he was, shortly before his death, promoted to the
episcopate--a profoundly learned man and an acute critic, has
unanswerably proved that these are all unsustainable hypotheses,
and that historical science is in no condition to say who was its
author. Who wrote it, or where it was written, is absolutely
unknown, but from internal evidence the writer was a contemporary
of the three popes named, and was probably some Oriental
schismatic, of unsound faith, and a bitter enemy of the popes.
The work is not of the slightest authority against the bishops of
Rome, but is of very great value as proving, by an enemy, that
the papacy was fully developed--if that is the word--claiming
and exercising in the universal church the same supreme authority
that it claims and exercises now, and was as regular in its
action in the last half of the second century, or within fifty or
sixty years of the death of the apostle St. John, as it is under
Pope Pius IX. now gloriously reigning. [Footnote 43]
[Footnote 43: _Vide Histoire de l'Eglise de Rome sous les
Pontificats de St. Victor, de St. Zephirin, et St.
Calliste_. Par L'Abbé M. P. Cruice. Paris: Didot Frères.
1856.]
When the magazine has nothing else to allege against the popes,
it accuses them of "a fierce, ungovernable pride."
"The fourth century brought important changes in the condition
of the bishops of Rome. It is a singular trait of the corrupt
Christianity of this period that the chief characteristic of
the eminent prelates was a fierce and ungovernable pride.
Humility had long ceased to be numbered among the Christian
virtues. The four great rulers of the Church, Bishop of Rome,
and the Patriarchs of Constantinople, Antioch, and Alexandria,
were engaged in a constant struggle for supremacy. Even the
inferior bishops assumed a princely state, and surrounded
themselves with their sacred courts. The vices of pride and
arrogance descended to the lower orders of clergy; the emperor
himself was declared to be inferior in dignity to the simple
presbyter, and in all public entertainments and ceremonious
assemblies the proudest layman was expected to take his place
below the haughty churchman, As learning declined and the world
sank into a new barbarism, the clergy elevated themselves into
a ruling caste, and were looked upon as half divine by the rude
Goths and the degraded Romans. It is even said that the pagan
nations of the west transferred to the priest and monk the same
awestruck reverence which they had been accustomed to pay to
their Druid teachers. The Pope took the place of their Chief
Druid, and was worshipped with idolatrous devotion; the meanest
presbyter, however vicious and degraded, seemed, to the
ignorant savages, a true messenger from the skies."
There was no patriarch of Constantinople in the fourth century,
and it was only in 330 that the city of Constantinople absorbed
Byzantium. The bishop of Byzantium was not a patriarch, or even a
metropolitan, but was a suffragan of the bishop of Heraclea. It
was not till long after the fourth century that the bishop of
Constantinople was recognized as patriarch, not, in fact, till
the eighth general council. There was no struggle in the fourth
nor in any subsequent century, for the supremacy, between Rome
and Antioch, or Rome and Alexandria; neither the patriarch of
Antioch nor the patriarch of Alexandria ever claimed the primacy;
but both acknowledged that it belonged to the bishop of Rome, as
do the schismatic churches of the East even now, though they take
the liberty of disobeying their lawful superior. In the fifth
Century, when St. Leo the Great was pope, the bishop of
Constantinople claimed the _second_ rank, or the first
_after_ the bishop of Rome, on the ground that
Constantinople was the new Rome, the second capital of the
empire.
{89}
St. Leo repulsed his claim, not in defence of his own rights, for
it did not interfere with his supremacy, or primacy, as they said
then, but in defence of the rights of the churches of Antioch and
Alexandria. He also did it because the claim was urged on a false
principle--that the authority of a bishop is derived from the
civil importance of the city in which his see is established.
It is not strange that the magazine should complain that the
pontifical dignity was placed above the imperial, and that the
simple presbyter took the step of the proudest layman; yet
whoever believes in the spiritual order at all, believes it
superior to the secular order, and therefore that they who
represent the spiritual are in dignity above those who represent
only the secular. When the writer of this was a Protestant
minister, he took, and was expected to take, precedence of the
laity. The common sense of mankind gives the precedence to those
held to be invested with the sacred functions of religion, or
clothed with spiritual authority.
That St. Jerome, from his monastic cell near Jerusalem, inveighs
against the vices and corruptions of the Roman clergy, as alleged
in the paragraph following the one we have quoted, is very true;
but his declamations must be taken with some grains of allowance.
St. Jerome was not accustomed to measure his words when
denouncing wrong, and saints generally are not. St. Peter Damian
reported, after his official visit to Spain, that there was but
one worthy priest in the whole kingdom, which really meant no
more than that he found only one who came, in all respects, up to
his lofty ideal of what a priest should be. Yet there might have
been, and probably were, large numbers of others who, though not
faultless, were very worthy men, and upon the whole, faithful
priests. We must never take the exaggerations of saintly
reformers, burning with zeal for the faith and the salvation of
souls, as literal historical facts. St. Jerome, in his ardent
love of the church and his high ideal of sacerdotal purity,
vigilance, fidelity, and zeal, no doubt exaggerated.
There can be nothing more offensive to every right and honorable
feeling than the exultation of the magazine over the abuse,
cruelties, and outrages inflicted on a bishop of Rome by civil
tyrants. The writer, had he lived under the persecuting pagan
emperors, would have joined his voice to that of those who
exclaimed, _Christianos ad leones;_ or had he been present
when our Lord was arrested and brought as a malefactor before
Pontius Pilate, none louder than he would have cried out,
_Crucifige eum! crucifige eum!_ His sympathies are uniformly
with the oppressor, never, as we can discover, with the
oppressed; with the tyrant, never with his innocent victim,
especially if that victim be a bishop of Rome. He feels only
gratification in recording the wrongs and sufferings of Pope St.
Silverus. This pope was raised to the papacy by the tyranny of
the Arian king Theodotus, and ordained by force, without the
necessary subscription of the clergy. But after his consecration,
the clergy, by their subscription, healed the irregularity of his
election, as Anastasius the Librarian tells us, so as to preserve
the unity of the church and religion. He appears to have been a
holy man and a worthy pope; but he was not acceptable to
Vigilius, who expected, by favor of the imperial court, to be
made pope himself, nor to those two profligate women, the Empress
Theodora and her friend Antonina, the wife of the patrician
Belisarius.
{90}
Vigilius and these two infamous women compelled Belisarius to
depose him, strip him of his pontifical robes, clothe him with
the habit of a monk, and send him into exile; where, as some say,
he was assassinated, and, as others say, perished of hunger. The
magazine relates this to show how low and unworthy the bishops of
Rome had become! Vigilius succeeded St. Silverus, and it
continues:
"Stained with crime, a false witness and a murderer, Vigilius
had obtained his holy office through the power of two
profligate women who now ruled the Roman world. Theodora, the
dissolute wife of Justinian, and Antonina, her devoted servant,
assumed to determine the faith and the destinies of the
Christian Church. Vigilius failed to satisfy the exacting
demands of his casuistical mistresses; he even ventured to
differ from them upon some obscure points of doctrine. His
punishment soon followed, and the bishop of Rome is said to
have been dragged through the streets of Constantinople with a
rope around his neck, to have been imprisoned in a common
dungeon and fed on bread and water. The papal chair, filled by
such unworthy occupants, must have sunk low in the popular
esteem, had not Gregory the Great, toward the close of sixth
century, revived the dignity of the office."
We know of nothing that can be said in defence of the conduct of
Vigilius prior to his accession to the papal throne. His
intrigues with Theodora to be made pope, and his promises to her
to restore, when he should be pope, Anthemus, deposed from the
see of Constantinople by St. Agapitus for heresy, and to set
aside the council of Chalcedon, were most scandalous; and his
treatment of St. Silverus, whether he actually exiled him and had
a hand in his death or not, admits, as far as we are informed, of
no palliation; but his conduct thus far was not the conduct of
the pope; and after he became bishop of Rome, at least after the
death of his deposed predecessor, his conduct was, upon the
whole, irreproachable. He conceded much for the sake of peace,
and was much blamed; but he conceded nothing of the faith; he
refused to fulfill the improper promises he had made, before
becoming pope, to the empress, confessed that he had made them,
said he was wrong in making them, retracted them, and resisted
with rare firmness and persistence the emperor Justinian in the
matter of the three chapters, and fully expiated the offences
committed prior to his elevation, by enduring for seven long
years the brutal outrages an indignities offered him by the
half-savage Justinian, the imperial courtiers, and intriguing and
unscrupulous prelates of the court party--outrages and sufferings
of which he died after his liberation on his journey back from
Constantinople to Rome.
We have touched on these details for the purpose of showing that
the principal offenders in the transactions related were not the
bishops of Rome, but the civil authorities and their adherents,
that deprived the Roman clergy and the popes of their proper
freedom. If the papal chair was filled with unworthy occupants,
and had sunk low in the public esteem, it was because the emperor
or empress at Constantinople and the Arian and barbarian kings in
Italy sought to raise to it creatures of their own. They deprived
the Roman clergy, the senate, and people of the free exercise of
their right to elect the pope; and the pope, after his election,
of his freedom of action, if he refused to conform to their
wishes, usually criminal, and always base. Yet _Harper's
Magazine_ lays all the blame to the popes themselves, and
seems to hold them responsible for the crimes and tyranny, the
profligacy and lawless will of which they were the victims. If
the wolf devoured the lamb, was it not
the lamb's fault?
{91}
St. Gregory the Great was of a wealthy and illustrious family,
and therefore finds some favor with the magazine; yet it calls
him "a half-maddened enthusiast," and accuses him of "unsparing
severity," and "excessive cruelty" in the treatment of his monks
before his elevation to the papal chair. But his complaisance to
the usurper Phocas, which we find it hard to excuse, and
especially his disclaiming the title of "Universal Bishop,"
redeem him in its estimation.
"A faint trace of modesty and humility still characterized the
Roman bishops, and they expressly disclaimed any right to the
supremacy of the Christian world. The patriarch of
Constantinople, who seems to have looked with a polished
contempt upon his western brother, the tenant of fallen Rome
and the bishop of the barbarians, now declared himself the
Universal Bishop and the head of the subject Church. But
Gregory repelled his usurpation with vigor. Whoever calls
himself Universal Bishop is Antichrist,' he exclaimed; and he
compares the patriarch to Satan, who in his pride had aspired
to be higher than the angels."
John Jejunator, bishop of Constantinople, did not claim the
primacy, which belonged to the bishop of Rome, nor did Gregory
disclaim it; but called himself "oecumenical patriarch." The
title he assumed derogated not from the rights and privileges of
the apostolic see, but from those of the sees of Antioch and
Alexandria. It was unauthorized, and showed culpable ambition and
an encroaching disposition. St. Gregory, therefore, rebuked the
bishop of Constantinople, and alleged the example of his
predecessor, St. Leo the Great, who refused the title of
"oecumenical bishop" when it was offered him by the Fathers of
Chalcedon. It is a title never assumed or borne by a bishop of
Rome, who, in his capacity as bishop, is the equal, and only the
equal, of his brother bishops. All bishops are equal, as St. John
Chrysostom tells us. The authority which the pope exercises over
the bishops of the Catholic Church is not the episcopal, but the
apostolical authority which he inherits from Peter, the prince of
the apostles. St. Gregory disclaimed and condemned the title of
"universal bishop," which was appropriate neither to him nor to
any other bishop; but he did not disclaim the apostolic authority
held as the successor of Peter. He actually claimed and exercised
it in the very letter in which he rebukes the bishop of
Constantinople. The magazine is wholly mistaken in asserting that
Gregory disclaimed the papal supremacy. He did no such thing; he
both claimed and exercised it, and few popes have exercised it
more extensively or more vigorously.
The magazine is also mistaken in asserting that St. Leo III.
crowned Charlemagne "Emperor of the West." Charlemagne was
already hereditary patrician of Rome, and bound by his office to
maintain order in the city and territories of Rome, and to defend
the Holy See, or the Roman Church, against its enemies. All the
pope did was to raise the patrician to the imperial dignity,
without any territorial title. Charles never assumed or bore the
title of Emperor of the West. His official title was "Rex
Francorum et Longobardorum Imperator." The title of "Emperor of
the West," or "Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire," which his
German successors assumed, was never conferred by the pope, but
only acquiesced in after it had been usurped. The pope conferred
on Charlemagne no authority out of the papal states.
We have no space to discuss the origin of the temporal
sovereignty of the bishops of Rome, nor the ground of that
arbitratorship which the popes, during several ages,
unquestionably exercised with regard to the sovereign princes
bound by their profession and the constitution of their states to
profess and protect the Catholic religion.
{92}
We have already done the latter in an article on _Church and
State_ in our magazine for April, 1867. But we can tell
_Harper's Magazine_ that it entirely misapprehends the
character of St. Gregory VII., and the nature and motive of the
struggle between him and Henry III., or Henry IV., as some
reckon, king of the Germans, for emperor he never was. Gregory
was no innovator; he introduced, and attempted to introduce, no
change in the doctrine or discipline of the church, nor in the
relations of church and state. He only sought to correct abuses,
to restore the ancient discipline which had, through various
causes, become relaxed, and to assert and maintain the freedom
and independence of the church in the government of her own
spiritual subjects in all matters spiritual.
"His elevation was the signal for the most wonderful change in
the character and purposes of the church. The pope aspired to
rule mankind. He claimed an absolute power over the conduct of
kings, priests, and nations, and he enforced his decrees by the
terrible weapons of anathema and excommunication. He denounced
the marriages of the clergy as impious, and at once there arose
all over Europe a fearful struggle between the ties of natural
affection and the iron will of Gregory. Heretofore the secular
priests and bishops had married, raised families, and lived
blamelessly as husbands or fathers, in the enjoyment of marital
and filial love. But suddenly all this was changed. The married
priests were declared polluted and degraded, and were branded
with ignominy and shame. Wives were torn from their devoted
husbands, children were declared bastards, and the ruthless
monk, in the face of the fiercest opposition, made celibacy the
rule of the church. The most painful consequences followed. The
wretched women, thus degraded and accursed, were often driven
to suicide in their despair. Some threw themselves into the
flames; others were found dead in there beds, the victims of
grief or of their own resolution not to survive their shame,
while the monkish chroniclers exult over their misfortunes, and
triumphantly consign them to eternal woe.
"Thus the clergy under Gregory's guidance became a monastic
order, wholly separated from all temporal interests; and bound
in a perfect obedience to the church. He next forebade all lay
investitures or appointments to bishoprics or other clerical
offices, and declared himself the supreme ruler of the
ecclesiastical affairs of nations. No temporal sovereign could
fill the great European sees, or claim any dominion over the
extensive territories held by eminent churchmen in right of
their spiritual power. It was against this claim that the
Emperor of Germany, Henry IV., rebelled. The great bishoprics
of his empire, Cologne, Bremen, Treves, and many others, were
his most important feudatories, and should he suffer the
imperious pope to govern them at will, his own dominion would
be reduced to a shadow. And now began the famous contest
between Hildebrand and Henry, between the carpenter's son and
the successor of Charlemagne, between the Emperor of Germany
and the Head of the Church."
This heart-rending picture is, to a great extent, a fancy piece.
The celibacy of the clergy was the law of the church and of the
German empire; and every priest knew it before taking orders.
These pretended marriages were, in both the ecclesiastical courts
and the civil courts, no marriages at all; and these dispairing
wives of priests were simply concubines. What did Gregory do, but
his best to enforce the law which the emperors had suffered to
fall into desuetude? The right of investiture was always in the
pope, and it was only by his authority that the emperors had ever
exercised it.
{93}
The pope had authorized them to give investiture of bishops at a
time of disorder, and when it was for the good of the church that
they should be so authorized. But when they abused the trust, and
used it only to fill the sees with creatures of their own, or
sold the investiture for money to the unworthy and the
profligate, and intruded them into sees, in violation of the
canons, and sheltered them from the discipline of the
church--causing, thus, gross corruption of morals and manners,
the neglect of religious instruction, and dangers to souls--it
was the right and the duty of the pontiff to revoke the
authorization given, to dismiss his unworthy agents, and to
forbid the emperors henceforth to give investiture.
The magazine says that if the emperor should suffer the imperious
pope to be allowed to govern at will the great bishoprics of
Cologne, Bremen, Treves, and many others, which were the most
important feudatories of his empire, his own dominion would be
reduced to a shadow. But if the emperor could fill them with
creatures of his own, make bishops at his will, and depose them
and sequester their revenues if they resisted his tyranny, or
sell them, as he did, to the highest bidder--thrusting out the
lawful occupants, and intruding men who could have been only
usurpers, and who really were criminals in the eye of the law,
and usually dissolute and scandalous in morals--where would have
been the rightful freedom and independence of the church? How
could the pope have maintained order and discipline in the
church, and protected the interests of religion? At worst, the
imperious will of the pontiff was as legitimate and as
trustworthy as the imperious will of such a brutal tyrant and
moral monster as was Henry. The pope did but claim his rights and
the rights of the faithful people. It was no less important that
the spiritual authority should govern in spirituals than it was
that the secular authority should govern in temporals. The pope
did not interfere, nor propose to interfere, with the emperor in
the exercise of his authority in temporals; but he claimed the
right, which the emperor could not deny, to govern in spirituals;
and resisted the attempt of Henry to exercise any authority in
the church, which, whatever infidels and secularists may pretend,
is of more importance than the state, for it maintains the state.
He never pretended to any authority in the fiefs of the empire,
or to subject to his will matters not confessedly within his
jurisdiction.
Does the writer in the magazine maintain that the Methodist
General Conference would be wrong to claim the right of choosing
and appointing its own bishops, and assigning the pastors,
elders, and preachers to their respective circuits; and that it
could justly be accused of seeking to dominate over the state if
it resisted, with all its power, the attempt of the state to take
that matter into its own hands, and appoint for all the Methodist
local conferences, districts, and circuits, bishops and pastors,
itinerant and local preachers, and should appoint men of
profligate lives, who scorned the _Book of Discipline_,
Unitarians, Universalists, rationalists, and infidels, or the
bitter enemies of Methodism; those who would neglect every
spiritual duty, and seek only to plunder the funds and churches
to provide for their own lawless pleasures, or to pay the bribes
by which they obtained their appointment? We think not. And yet
this is only a mild statement of what Henry did, and of what
Gregory resisted. The pope claimed and sought to obtain no more
for the church in Germany than is the acknowledged right of every
professedly Christian sect in this country, and which every sect
fully enjoys, without any let or hindrance from the state. Why,
then, this outcry against Gregory VII.? Do these men who are so
bitter against him, and gnash their teeth at him, know what they do?
{94}
Have they ever for a moment reflected how much the modern world
owes for its freedom and civilization to just such great popes as
Hildebrand, who asserted energetically the rights of God, the
freedom of religion, and made the royal and imperial despots and
brutal tyrants who would trample on all laws, human and divine,
feel that, if they would wear their crowns, they must study to
restrain their power within its proper limits, and to rule justly
for the common good, according to the law of God?
What Germany thought of the conduct of Henry is evinced by the
fact that when Gregory struck him with the sword of Peter and
Paul, everybody abandoned him but his deeply injured wife and one
faithful attendant. The whole nation felt a sense of relief and
breathed freely. An incubus which oppressed its breast was thrown
off. The picture of the sufferings of Henry traversing the Alps
in the winter and standing shivering with cold in his thin garb,
as a penitent before the door of the pontiff, is greatly
exaggerated, and the attempt to excite sympathy for him and
indignation against the pontiff can have no success with those
who have studied with some care the history of the times. Henry
was a bad man; a capricious, unprincipled, tyrannical, and brutal
ruler, and his cause was bad. The pope was in the right; he was
on the side of truth and justice, of God and humanity, pure
morals and just liberty. Leo the historian, a Protestant, and
Voigt, a Protestant minister, both Germans, have each completely
vindicated Gregory's conduct toward Henry of Germany, though
Harper's historian is probably ignorant of that fact, as he is of
some others.
As to the pope's subjecting Henry to the discipline of the
church, and depriving him of his crown, all we need say is, that
all men are equal before God and the church, and kings and
kaisers are as much amenable to the discipline of the church,
acknowledged by them to be Christ's kingdom, as the meanest of
their subjects. The pope assumed no more than the kirk session
assumed when it sent their King Charles II. to the "cuttie
stool." The revolutionists of Spain have just deprived Isabella
Segunda of her crown and throne, with the general applause of the
non-Catholic world, and no pope ever deprived a prince who denied
his jurisdiction, or his legal right to sit in judgment on his
case, nor, till after a fair trial had been had, and a judicial
sentence was rendered according to the existing laws of his
principality. We see not why, then, the popes should be decried
for doing legally, and after trial, what revolutionists are
applauded for doing without trial and against all law, human and
divine--unless it be because the pope deprived only base and
profligate monsters, stained with the worst of crimes; and the
revolutionists deprive the guiltless, who violate no law of the
state or of the church, The pope deprived for crime; the
revolutionists usually for virtue or innocence, only under
pretence of ameliorating the state, which they subvert.
But our space is nearly exhausted, and we must hurry on. Innocent
III. is another of those great bishops of Rome that excite the
wrath of _Harper's Magazine_--probably because he was really
a great pope, energetic in asserting the faith, in removing
scandals, in enforcing discipline on kings and princes as well as
on their subjects; in repressing sects, like the Albigenses, that
struck at the very foundations of religion and society, or of the
moral order; in defending the purity of morals and the sanctity
of marriage, and in espousing the cause of the weak against the
strong, of oppressed innocence against oppressive guilt.
{95}
This is too much for the endurance of the magazine. It indeed
does not say that Innocent did not espouse the cause of justice
in the case of Philip Augustus and his injured queen, Ingeburga;
but it contends that he did it from unworthy motives, for the
sake of extending and consolidating the papal authority over
kings and princes. Though he admits John Lackland was a moral
monster, and opened negotiations with a Mohammedan prince to the
scandal of Christendom, offered to make himself a Mussulman, and
would have embraced Islamism if the infidel prince had not
repelled him with indignation and contempt; it yet finds that
Innocent was altogether wrong in taking effective measures to
restrain his tyranny, cruelty, licentiousness, and plunder of the
churches and robbery of his subjects. His motive was simply to
monopolize power and profit for the papal see. He also, for like
reasons, was wrong in resisting Frederic II. of Germany, who, he
says, preferred Islamism to Christianity, as itself probably
prefers it to Catholicity.
The article closes with a tirade against Alexander VI., and his
children, Caesar and Lucretia Borgia, Roscoe, a Protestant or
rationalist, has vindicated the character of Lucretia, that
accomplished, capable, and most grossly calumniated woman, who,
in her real history, appears to have been not less eminent for
her virtues than for her beauty and abilities. Caesar Borgia we
have no disposition to defend, though we have ample grounds for
believing that he was by no means so black as Italian hatred and
malice have painted him. Alexander was originally in the army of
Spain, and his manners and morals were such as we oftener
associate with military men than with ecclesiastics, He lived
with a woman who was another man's wife, and had two or three
children by her. But this was while he was a soldier, and before
he was an ecclesiastic or thought of taking orders. He was called
to Rome for his eminent administrative ability, by his uncle,
Pope Callixtus III.; took, in honor of his uncle, the name of
Borgia; became an ecclesiastic; was, after some time, made
cardinal, and finally raised to the papal throne under the name
of Alexander VI. After he was made cardinal, if, indeed, after he
became an ecclesiastic, nothing discreditable to his morals has
been proved against him; and his moral character, during his
entire pontificate, was, according to the best authorities,
irreproachable. The Borgias had, however, the damning sin of
being Spaniards, not Italians; and of seeking to reduce the
Italian robber barons to submission and obedience to law, and to
govern Italy in the interests of public order. They had,
therefore, many bitter and powerful enemies; hence, the
aspersions of their character, and the numerous fables against
them, and which but too many historians have taken for
authenticated facts. The alleged poisonings of Alexander and his
daughter Lucretia are none of them proved, and are inventions of
Italian hatred and malice. Yet, though Alexander's conduct as
pope was irreproachable, and his administration able and
vigorous, his antecedents were such that his election to the
papal throne was a questionable policy, and Savonarola held it to
be irregular and null.
The magazine indulges in the old cant about the contrast between
the poverty and humility of Peter and the wealth and grandeur of
his successors; the simplicity of the primitive worship, and the
pomp and splendor of the Roman service.
{96}
There is no need of answering this. When the Messrs. Harper
Brothers started the printing business in this city, we presume
their establishment was in striking contrast to their present
magnificent establishment in Cliff street. When the world was
converted to the church, and the supreme pontiff had to sustain
relations with sovereign princes, to receive their ambassadors,
and send his legates to every court in Christendom to look after
the interests of religion--the chief interest of both society
and individuals--larger accommodations than were afforded by that
"upper room" in Jerusalem were needed, and a more imposing
establishment than St. Peter may have had was a necessity of the
altered state of things. Even our Methodist friends, we notice,
find it inconvenient to observe the plainness and simplicity in
dress and manners prescribed by John Wesley their founder. He
forbids, we believe, splendid churches, with steeples and bells;
and the earliest houses for Methodist meetings, even we remember,
were very different from the elegant structures they are now
erecting. We heard a waggish minister say of one of them, "Call
you this the Lord's house? you should rather call it the Lord's
barn."
The Catholic Church continues and fulfils the synagogue, and her
service is, to a great extent, modelled after the Jewish, which
was prescribed by God himself. The dress of the pontiff, when he
celebrates the Holy Sacrifice, is less gorgeous than that of the
Jewish high-priest. St. Peter's is larger than was Solomon's
temple, but it is not more gorgeous; and the Catholic service,
except in the infinite superiority of the victim immolated upon
the altar, is not more splendid, grand, or imposing than was the
divinely prescribed temple service of the Hebrews. The magazine
appears to think with Judas Iscariot, that the costly ointment
with which a woman that had been a sinner anointed the feet of
Jesus, after she had washed them with her tears and wiped them
with her hair, was a great waste, and might have been put to a
better use. But our Lord did not think so, and Judas Iscariot did
not become the prince of the apostles. We owe all we have to God,
and it is but fitting that we should employ the best we have in
his service.
Here we must close. We have not replied to all the misstatements,
misrepresentations, perversions, and insinuations of the article
in _Harper's Magazine_. We could not do it in a brief
article like the present. It would require volumes to do it. We
have touched only on a few salient points that struck us in
glancing over it; but we have said enough to show its
_animus_ and to expose its untrustworthiness. Refuted it we
have not, for there really is nothing in it to refute, It lays
down no principles, states no premises, draws no conclusions. It
leaves all that to be supplied by the ignorance and prejudices of
its readers. It is a mere series of statements that require no
answer but a flat denial. It is not strange that the magazine
should calumniate the popes, and seek to pervert their history.
Our Lord built his church on Peter, being himself the chief
cornerstone; and nothing is more natural than that they who hate
the church should strike their heads against the papacy. The
popes have always been the chief object of attack, and have had
to bear the brunt of the battle. Yet they have labored, suffered,
been persecuted, imprisoned, exiled, and martyred for the
salvation of mankind. What depth of meaning in the dying words of
the exiled Gregory VII., "I have loved justice, and hated
iniquity; therefore I die in exile." Alas! the world knows not
its benefactors, and crucifies its redeemers!
----------
{97}
March Omens. [Footnote 44]
[Footnote 44: From _Irish Odes and other Poems_, by
Aubrey De Vere, just Issued by the Catholic Publication
Society.]
ON ivied stems and leafless sprays
The sunshine lies in dream:
Scarcely yon mirrored willow sways
Within the watery gleam.
In woods far off the dove is heard,
And streams that feed the lake:
All else is hushed save one small bird,
That twitters in the brake.
Yet something works through earth and air,
A sound less heard than felt,
Whispering of Nature's procreant care,
While the last snow-flakes melt.
The year anon her rose will don;
But to-day this trance is best--
This weaving of fibre and knitting of bone
In Earth's maternal breast.
----------
{98}
Translated From The German
By Richard Storrs Willis.
Emily Linder.
A Life-portrait.
The circle of those who were witness to the blossom-period of the
city of Munich, that glorious epoch of twenty or thirty years
which dawned upon the Bavarian capital when Louis I. ascended the
throne, is gradually narrowing, and every year contracts it still
further. The name of her to whom this sketch is dedicated
belonged to this circle, and is closely associated with the best
of those who aided in inaugurating this brilliant epoch, and
rendering Munich a hearthstone of culture which attracted the
gaze of the educated world. Sunny period of old Munich! They of
that time speak of it with the same enthusiasm as of their own
youth. Yet to a future generation will their testimony sound like
some beautiful tradition.
To not a few, the name of Miss Emily Linder appeared for the
first time, as the intelligence of her death passed through the
public journals of February, 1857. Yet was her life no ordinary
one; and though it never tended to publicity, she accomplished
more in her great seclusion than many a noisy and feted
celebrity. Hers was a quiet and unassuming nature; she belonged
to those who speak little and accomplish much. It is therefore
befitting, now that she has gone to her home, here to speak of
her. Not so much to praise her, for she shrank from all earthly
praise; but to keep her memory fresh among her friends and to
present to a selfish, distracted age, poor in faith, the
animating example of a pure, faith-inspired, and symmetrical
character a life full of fidelity, unselfishness, and enthusiasm.
Swiss by birth and unchangeably devoted to her circumscribed
home, Emily Linder little dreamed, probably, when in early life
she wandered to Munich, that she would yet close a long life
there. But over this life, swiftly as it glided along, there
watched a special, directing Providence; and no one could more
cheerfully have recognized this Providence than did she. What
originally attracted her to Munich was Art: she probably
contemplated, at first, only brief and transient visit there; but
the metropolis of German art became a second home to her--even
more than this.
Emily Linder belonged to a wealthy mercantile family of Basle,
and was born at that place on the 11th of October, 1797. She
received a careful religious education, (in the reformed faith of
her parents,) and that varied instruction which rendered her
unusually wakeful mind susceptible to topics of deeper import.
She seemed to have inherited from her grandfather, who was a
lover and collector of artistic objects, a fondness for fine art.
Following this predilection, the gifted girl decided to seize the
pallet and devote herself to painting as an occupation. Such was
her entirely independent position as to fortune, that nothing but
inward enthusiasm could have led her to this step, or have
confined her from thenceforth to the easel.
{99}
The home of Holbein's genius offered her at first, doubtless,
inspiration enough. But a new star had arisen in German art, and
the youthful Swiss was drawn powerfully by its leading away from
home--to Munich. The modest city on the verdant Iser began at
that period to prove the goal of pilgrimage to every ambitious
disciple of art. Miss Linder also heard of it, and, instead of
going to Dresden, as she had intended, she turned for her further
improvement to Munich. On her arrival in this city she had
attained to an age of twenty-seven years; but her devotion to her
chosen profession was so earnest, that she entered as a simple
pupil the Academy of Fine Arts. In the catalogue of the academy,
Emily Linder is inscribed as historical painter, on the 4th of
November, 1824. But she frequented the studios only a few weeks.
At that time it was customary to accept ladies as pupils; but she
soon perceived that the position was hardly a becoming one,
surrounded by so many young people of various characters, and all
beginners like herself. She therefore had recourse to Professor
Schlotthauer for private instruction. Under the guidance of this
excellent master, "a veritable house-father in the painter's
academy," as Brentano characteristically termed him, she pursued
her studies in good earnest, and, according to the representation
of her teacher, made rapid progress in the severer style of
drawing, in which she had hitherto been less practised than in
painting. She soon perfected herself to such an extent that she
was enabled to complete her own compositions, and thus derived
double satisfaction from her profession.
It was indeed a pleasure in those days, competing with so many
enthusiastic young artists and with the newly-appearing works in
constant view, to labor and strive onward with the rest. This was
the time, too, when Cornelius assumed the directorship of the
Munich Academy and inaugurated, in grand style, the new era of
German art. A wondrous life dawned upon Munich art at that
period. Cornelius himself, in his old age, recalled with emotion
and enthusiasm this youthful period of new German art. At Rome,
thirty years later, on the occasion of the Louis festival of
German artists, 20th May 1855, while he was delivering an address
so celebrated for its many piquant flashes, he thus painted the
joyous industry of those days:
"But when King Louis ascended the throne of his fathers, then
began the sport. Zounds! what moulding, building, drawing, and
painting! With what eagerness, with what hilarity each went to
his work! But it was an earnest hilarity: ... nor was Munich at
that time a mere hot-house of art. The warmth was a healthy and
vital one, born of the flaming fire of inspiration, the
evidence of which every work, whatever its defects, bore upon
its very face. Those men who worked together in brotherly unity
knew that there confronted them the art tribunal of posterity
and of the German nation. It concerned them, now, that German
genius should open a new pathway in art, as it had already so
gloriously done in poetry, in music, in science."
In this glorious time of youthful aspiration, bold conception,
and joyful industry, Miss Linder began her artistic career in
Munich. Is it a wonder then that the city pleased her daily
better, and imperceptibly gained a home-like power over her? Nor
had she, by any means, a lack of intellectual incitement. Her
independent position and rare culture secured to her the most
agreeable social position. In the family of Herr von Ringseis, to
which she had brought an introduction from Basle, and where
gathered the nobility of the entire fatherland, she came into
contact with the most eminent artists and scholars.
{100}
Chief among these was Cornelius, who welcomed her to his family
circle. The old master of German art remained a life-long friend
of hers and warmly attached to her. Among her more intimate
companions, she numbered also the two Eberhards, Heinrich Hess,
Franz von Baader. Somewhat later, by the transfer of the
university to Munich, were added to these Schubert, Görres,
Schelling, Lasaulx. Also the two Boiseree, who in the autumn of
1827 came to Munich with their art collection, which had been
purchased by King Louis, were soon numbered among her nearer
acquaintances.
Amid so choice a circle there unfolded itself for the young
artist a spiritual and intense life, to which she abandoned
herself with all the joyous simplicity and freshness of an
artistic nature; a nature which was susceptible also to the
beautiful and the grand in other things--in poetry, in music, and
in science. The quiet, friendly lady-artist became everywhere a
favorite.
But, amid all these manifold occupations, there was ever a
certain earnestness, a striving out of the temporal into the
eternal. Even art was not to her a mere amusement. Genuine art
possesses an ennobling power, and she experienced what Michael
Angelo once said to his friend Vittoria Colonna, "True painting
is naturally religious and noble; for even the struggle toward
perfection elevates the soul to devotion, draws it near to God
and unites it with him." Attracted by the pure and lofty in art,
Miss Linder gave preference to religious painting, a taste which
was encouraged by her sterling master: and it caused her, though
a Protestant, special gratification, while ever seeking the best
studies, to paint or copy, whenever she could, devotional church
pictures.
In order to become acquainted, through actual observation, with
the principal works of Christian art, she determined on a journey
to Italy. Her first visit she decided to confine to the cities of
upper Italy, and in company with Professor Schlotthauer and his
wife, this plan was carried out during the summer and autumn of
1825. Milan, Verona, Padua, Venice, Bologna, were visited, and,
led by the hand of her intelligent master, they all passed under
her examination. The goal of her travel was to be Florence. But
the long-continued, fine autumn weather attracted the travellers
further and further, and at length they came to Perugia, the
middle point of the Umbrian school, and thence to the
neighboring, picturesque-lying Assisi. At this place a little
circumstance occurred which became of deep significance in the
after life of the artist.
The vetturino, familiar with the land and the people, called the
attention of the travellers to the fact that in Assisi there was
a monastery of German Franciscan nuns. A colony of poor German
women in the middle of Italian lands! That was enough to decide
the party to visit the monastery and greet their pious
countrywomen in the language of home. But they found the
sisterhood in evident distress. As they stood before the lattice,
the history of the monastery was briefly related to them by the
superior. It owed its origin to the patrician family Nocker of
Munich, and according to the terms of its establishment was
intended only for Germans, and more particularly for Bavarian
maidens. Under Napoleon I. it was suspended, and the nuns were
cared for in private dwellings, where, hoping for better times,
they still continued, as well as they could, the practice of
their vocation. These better times came. After the fall of the
Napoleonic dynasty, the purchasers of the monastery consented to
relinquish it, and the poor Franciscans could at least reoccupy
the building.
{101}
But it went so hard with them, that they were sometimes obliged
to ring the distress-bell, and the number of inmates diminished.
At the time of the arrival of our three travellers, they numbered
but twelve. An increase of numbers under such circumstances was
hardly to be hoped for, and the existence of the monastery seemed
again endangered. Municipal abolishment was threatened, with the
unavoidable prospect to the nuns of being distributed among the
various Italian monasteries. Now to maintain themselves as a
German order was everything to these Franciscans; and thus the
superior represented it to her travelling country-people, with
all simple-heartedness, closing her narration with the entreaty
that, on their return to Munich, they would not forget the little
German monastery in Assisi, but care for it as they might be
able, and cause younger sisters to come to them from Bavaria, in
order to save the establishment from utter extinction.
The three travellers took their leave filled with sympathy, and
promising to bear in mind the petition of the superior. They
commenced their homeward travel from Assisi, passed through Genoa
and reached Munich again in November. Miss Linder vigorously
recommenced her artistic occupations, filled with animation at
her new experiences. But during the winter evenings the Italian
trip often formed the topic of conversation in the Schlotthauer
family, and generally closed with the question, How shall we
manage to increase the number of candidates in the monastery at
Assisi? But at that period this was not so easy. The secular
spirit had spread itself broadly in German lands: the current of
fresh, Catholic life flowed mostly in hidden courses. But with
surprise they soon learned of its continued activity. Through one
of those invisible channels which Providence avails itself of, in
its own good time--in every-day life termed accident--the cry for
help of the superior at Assisi penetrated to to a village where
pious hearts were prepared for it. One day there came a letter
for Professor Schlotthauer from Landshut, addressed to him by an
unknown maiden of the humbler class named Therese Frish, stating
that she had heard of the monastery at Assisi, and the request of
the superior: in Landshut was a goodly number of young girls who
had long cherished the desire in their hearts for convent life,
and only waited for an opportunity to realize their wishes:
several of them, some possessed of means, were ready at any
moment to leave for Assisi. This was welcome intelligence, and
the friends of the superior in Munich were not backward in
performing their part. Thus in the spring they had the happiness
of seeing a little band of candidates departing for Assisi. The
monastery was rescued, and commenced from that time, through the
ever-increasing sympathy in Germany, a new and beneficent career.
From year to year, assisted by the people of Munich, there
wandered true-hearted though indigent maidens to this quiet
asylum of piety, to reach which, as Brentano wrote twelve years
later, (1838,) was the dearest wish of these pious children.
Her art trip had thus recompensed the maiden of Basle in a manner
little dreamed of or counted on. The impression which this
peculiar experience made upon her susceptible nature could not
well be a transient one. The little monastery at Assisi--what
could be more natural?--from thenceforth lay very closely to her
heart, and its memories became most dear to her. The personality
of the superior herself, her simple worth and naturalness,
gratefully appealed to her; and several years later, on making
her second Italian trip, she gladly revisited Assisi.
{102}
A friendly relation resulted, which, fostered by a regular
correspondence, became more intimate every year. She now began to
understand the true meaning of a voluntary Christian poverty: the
contemplation of which must naturally make a profound impression
upon a nature like hers. She had frequent occasion, by active
assistance, to prove herself a warm friend of the monastery.
Particularly at the time of the great earthquake, (1831,) when
this monastery of women was in great want and distress, she stood
by the nuns most generously. Ever after, indeed, she remained a
constant benefactress of the German daughters of the holy St.
Francis; and there, in the birth-place of the saint, was she most
assiduously prayed for. In Assisi lay the earliest germ of her
quietly-ripening, late-maturing conversion.
In the year 1828, Miss Linder returned to her native city, Basle,
in order to prepare for a more lengthened visit to Rome. Like
every genuine artist-heart, a powerful influence attracted her to
the ancient capital of art, to the eternal city. On her journey
thither, she touched at Assisi, having the happiness to escort to
the monastery of the Franciscans a new candidate from Munich and
to find the nuns there in happiest tranquillity. Cornelius and
Schlotthauer reported the same of them, when they passed through,
a year and a half later. They received permission from the bishop
to hold an interview with the German sisters in the claustral.
The innocent joyousness and deep peace of the German nuns was
very touching to them. The bishop gave the two artists the best
testimony of them in his assurance that he constantly presented
these pious Germans to their Italian sisters as an example for
imitation.
Accompanied with the nuns' blessing Miss Linder hastened toward
the eternal city, where a new world opened itself to her. Bright,
blissful days did she pass in Rome, and so well did it please
her, that she remained there nearly three years. Here again her
associates were the brightest spirits of the German art circle,
and their similarity of aim induced a friendly geniality which in
many ways enhanced the pleasure of her stay. Scholars and artists
of the German colony sought her society with equal delight. Here
she met Overbeck--that St. John among the artists--whose
friendship to her and to her subsequent life was of such
significance. Neher and Eberle received from her commissions.
With the painter Ahlborn she read Dante. The venerable Koch was
charmed with the society of the genial Swiss, and passed many a
winter's evening with her. Also Thorwaldsen, Bunsen, and Platen
were among her intimate acquaintance in Italy.
From Rome Miss Linder made a trip to Naples and Sorrento. With a
party of Germans, among whom was Platen, she passed there the
summer of 1830. The wondrous poetry of the landscape and skies of
Sorrento impressed with their fullest power the sensitive soul of
the artist. All three arts, poetry, music, and painting, were
brought into requisition to give adequate expression to her
enchantment and delight. She became herself a poetess under the
influence of all these glories, and described to her friends, who
remained behind at Rome, with veritable southern warmth of
coloring, her "captivating paradise." As in Rome she listened
with the veneration of an intelligent musician to the ancient
classic music of the Sistine chapel, so at the Bay of Naples she
bestowed her attention upon the popular Italian ballads. Theirs
was a genial company, and they sang much together; of their songs
and melodies she made a collection, and took home with her.
{103}
Platen, in his subsequent letters, reminded her of those days,
and, writing from Venice, requested of her the music of "triads
and octaves," which they had sung together in Sorrento.
On her return to Rome, late in the autumn of the same year, she
found Cornelius and his family there, and the friendly relations
which subsisted in Munich were warmly renewed. The presence of
the honored master created, in the Roman art world, an animated
and exhilarating activity, and the rest of her stay was thus
enlivened in the most agreeable manner. The following year, in
company with Cornelius, she started for home. It was hard
parting, as finally, in July, 1831, with a wealth of beautiful
and deep impressions, she bade farewell to the Hesperian land
which had become so dear to her, to return to Basle; and we must
not censure the artist that she found it difficult, as her
letters indicate, to forget the blue skies of Italy and accustom
herself again to the gray hues of the German heaven. The
sharpness of the contrast gradually softened, however, and the
old home feeling asserted itself. But the life in Rome remained a
bright spot in her memory, and even in later years, when the
conversation turned upon it, the habitually quiet lady became
warm and animated.
In Rome, on the other hand, the artists were equally loth to part
with the aesthetic Swiss. The venerable Koch sent her word,
through the the painter Eberle, how much he regretted that he
could no longer pass his winter evenings with her. Overbeck and
others held with her an animated correspondence. But she remained
in hallowed remembrance with the German art-colony, from the
assistance she rendered to youthful talent, and her encouragement
by actual commissions. The historical painter Adam Eberle,
particularly, a pupil of Cornelius, friend and countryman of
Lasaulx--a highly gifted and lofty mind, but struggling in the
deepest poverty--to him she proved a generous benefactress; and
we can truly say, that through her goodness his last days--he
died at Rome, 1832--were illumined with a final gleam of
sunshine. The letters which she received from the youthful
departed, partly during her stay in Rome, partly after her
departure, give ample testimony of this, and indicate the manner,
generally, of her benevolence in such cases. Immediately on their
first meeting in Rome, and learning of his condition, she gave
him a commission for an oil painting; with deep emotion he
thanked the friendly lady "for the confidence she had thus
reposed in a nameless painter." Subsequently she purchased also
several drawings of Eberle, each, like the oil painting, of a
religious nature; among others, one that she particularly prized,
and afterward caused to be engraved, "Peter and Paul journeying
to the Occident."
On forwarding this drawing to Basle, together with another, the
subject of which was taken from the Old Testament, "as the
product of his muse since her departure," Eberle thus writes:
"What chiefly attracts me to these Bible subjects is the
healthy and unaffected language, which I endeavor to translate
into my art. Regard this work of mine as a study which is
necessary for my taste. That which is lacking in it, I know
full well, without the power of supplying it. Accept it,
therefore, as it is. Altogether bad it is not. At a very sad
period was it undertaken, and many a tear has fallen upon it,
which, like a vein of noble metal, seven times purified in its
earthen crucible, glistens through it. I have, indeed, some
assurance that I have not fruitlessly worked, in Overbeck's
judgment upon it, whom you saw at Bunsen's: and this not a
little cheers me."
{104}
Her generous watchfulness wearied not in rescuing him, at the
times of his greatest need, and Eberle, with overflowing
gratitude, testified to these constant proofs of her goodness,
and, even more, to the great delicacy and the kindly words which
accompanied every act.
Her personal intercourse at Rome seemed also to have exerted a
favorable influence upon his religious sentiments. The taste for
mystical writings which, encouraged by Baader, she was
cultivating at that period, grew also upon him; and when, shortly
after her departure, Lasaulx came to Rome, Eberle was very happy
that he could continue with him this favorite and elevating
study. He writes to her at Basle on the 25th of September, 1831:
"An old friend of my youth and countryman of mine, C. Lasaulx,
is now my almost exclusive companion: he will probably remain
the winter here and share my dwelling with me. He is, as you
know, a zealous disciple of Schelling, is deeply versed in the
new philosophy, and, what to me is of still more value, in the
mysticism of the middle ages. I rejoice to have gained in him
some compensation for the loss of your society; yet I cannot
share the expectations which he bases upon the new philosophy.
Although my acquaintance with him has divested me of many a
former prejudice, I find myself, nevertheless, attracted only
the more to the 'one thing needful,' assured that only at the
fountain of living waters, Jesus Christ, can our thirst be
quenched."
He adds, however, concerning his friend:
"Lasaulx has nevertheless a very substantial Christian basis,
and if ever his _Knowing_ goes hand in hand with his
_Willing_, and his _Willing_ with his _Knowing_,
we may certainly expect something very sterling from him."
It was Lasaulx himself who communicated the news to their mutual
friend, in Germany, of the sudden death of Eberle. Eberle's plan
had been to pass yet a year in Rome, then return to Germany, and,
seeking again the sheltering wing of his master, Cornelius, in
Munich, there to close his art-wanderings. Thus he himself wrote
in a letter of the 7th of March, 1832. But a month later he was
no more. He succumbed to a disease of the stomach. Shortly before
his death, Miss Linder had cheered the invalid by a remittance.
On the 24th of April, 1832, Lasaulx thus wrote from Rome:
"Our friend Adam Eberle, at five o'clock in the afternoon of
the 15th of April, after a hard death-struggle, recovered from
the malady of this life. Good-Friday morning we bore him home.
Three days before his death he had the great joy of receiving
your last letter, and that which your love enclosed with it. He
was one of the few whose souls are washed in the blood of the
Lamb, offered from the beginning of the world. The Lamentations
and the Miserere of the divine old masters Palestrini and
Allrgri which you begged our friend to listen to for you, I
have listened to for both of you."
Munich had now so grown upon the affections of the artiste that
she again removed thither from Basle in 1832. After her life in
Rome, a residence in the German art-metropolis could not but be a
necessity to her, and the Bavarian capital was thenceforth her
home. Her house became more and more the peaceful abode of the
fine arts. Her fortune enabled her, by a succession of
commissions, gradually to collect a wealth of pictures and
drawings in which the Corypheans of Christian art were
represented. Among these Overbeck took the foremost place with a
series of subjects from the Evangelists, the choicest of
drawings, which during a period of thirty years gradually came
into her possession. A beautiful oil painting by Overbeck, which
she esteemed most highly, "The death of St. Joseph," was also
produced at this time, an elevated delineation of the death of
the just. From Cornelius she secured three cartoons of the wall
pictures in the Louis-church, ("The Creation,") in which this
mighty intellect was worthily represented.
{105}
In like manner an altar-piece by Conrad Eberhard, one of the most
thoughtful compositions of this admirable master, and intended
originally for one of the new church edifices of King Louis, took
its place among the gems of this house--just as the venerable
master himself, in all his purity of soul and pious simplicity,
took his place high in the friendship of the hostess.
Next to painting, the two sister arts, poetry and music, were
specially cultivated in the home of the artist. She had a clear
perception of the true and elevated in poetry, and kept pace,
even to old age, with the literary productions of the new era.
Her own poetic effusions were confined to the eye of her more
intimate friends; but there were some poems upon which Brentano
himself placed high value. Her library was a choice one, and her
knowledge of languages kept her acquainted with the best
productions of the modern cultivated nations. Her aesthetic and
scientific acquirements became her well, inasmuch as the
cultivation of the mind and of the heart with her kept even pace.
Miss Linder applied herself to music in full earnest. She not
only practised several instruments--the aeolodicon and harp were
always seen in her drawing-room--but she had herself instructed
by Ett in thorough-bass and the history of music. She followed
his instructions in harmony with practical exercises. In musical
history it was the religious department again which most appealed
to her: her researches went back to the earliest times, the
development of the true church style, and for the unfolding of
this subject she had found in Ett the right man. Moreover, she
stood in friendly exchange of views with Proske of Regensburg, a
profound student of ancient church music. Sometimes musical
gatherings were held, to which Ett brought singing-boys from the
choir of St. Michael's Church: ancient religious cantatas, the
compositions of Orlando di Lasso, Handel, Abbé Vogler's hymns,
and the like, were performed. Conrad Eberhard, an enthusiastic
admirer of music and of the master Ett, who with Schlotthauer
regularly attended the historical lectures on music, in his
ninetieth year spoke with loving recollection of these ennobling
evenings at Miss Linder's.
By this varied and earnest devotion to art, as well as artistic
and scientific enterprises, to which she constantly brought
willing and generous offerings, her life began to assume more and
more an ideal significance, and to gain that expansiveness of
horizon and completeness which secured for her a position in
society as peculiar as it was agreeable. If we would ask what it
was that identified this quiet spirit with so distinguished a
circle and made her house a rendezvous for scholars and artists,
in which the most brilliant and the most profound so gladly met,
the explanation would be just this--it was the awakened
intelligence which she brought to all intellectual topics, the
simple-hearted abandonment to the views of great minds, the
readiness with which she recognized and admired the true and the
beautiful in all things. It was equally the unselfish,
uncalculating enthusiasm, and the perfect purity of soul, which
compelled the respect of all. An unvarying geniality blended with
a quiet earnestness; a clear intelligence with a golden goodness;
a profound view of life in all its phases, from the very heights
of a sunny existence--herein resided the gentle attractiveness
with which she drew to herself the sympathies of the noblest
souls and held them fast.
{106}
A character of such a type is best reflected in its friends. Her
life for the most part flowed on so quietly and evenly that it
rose clearly to the view of only those who were nearest to her.
It seems, therefore, befitting that from among her many friends
we should select a few who, like her, are now at rest, and
mention some of their salient characteristics.
The foremost place is due to the painter-prince of the new
art-epoch himself, Cornelius--who was a friend from her very
youth, and only a few months after her, even in these latter
days, closed his earthly pilgrimage. The fame of the man and the
sense of his loss, still so freshly felt, will justify us in
dwelling somewhat more at length on him and his letters. It was,
indeed, the opinion of Emily Linder, toward the close of her
life, that the letters which she had received from Cornelius
might some day be of use in his biography.
At the time Miss Linder started from Munich upon her journey to
Switzerland and Italy, her relations with the family of the
celebrated painter had already become so intimate, that it was
continued in correspondence. Ordinarily it was an Italian-German
or double letter, from Carolina and Peter Cornelius, which
greeted her; they both recall, with friendly warmth, her
residence in Munich, and the message, "We miss you!" was
repeatedly wafted after her as she remained longer away. Frau
Carolina Cornelius evinced for her a very tender attachment. The
genial master himself honored her with confidences from time to
time, as to his artistic plans and undertakings. Particularly was
this the case when he was commissioned to prepare designs for the
Louis-church in Munich, whereby he saw the early realization of a
long-cherished and favorite idea of his; when the history of
mankind in grand outline, the creation, the redemption, the
sending of the Holy Ghost to the church, the last judgment,
presented itself to his mind. Then he felt impelled to open his
heart to his absent friend, and the postscript, which he appended
to a letter of his wife, rises into a veritable dithyrambic. He
writes on the 20th of January, 1829:
"I cannot better close this letter than by communicating a
thing which transports me and in which you, my dear friend,
will sympathize. Fancy my good fortune! After completing the
_Glyptothek_, I am to paint a church. It is now sixteen
years that I have been going about with the idea of a Christian
epic in painting--a painted _comoedia divina_--and I have
had hours, and longer periods, when it seemed I had a special
mission for this. And now my heavenly love comes like a bride
in all her beauty to me--what mortal after this can I envy? The
universe opens itself before my eyes: I see heaven, earth, and
hell; I see the past, the present, and the future; I stand on
Sinai and gaze upon the new Jerusalem; I am inebriated and yet
composed. All my friends must pray for me, and you, my dear
Emily. With brotherly love greets you CORNELIUS."
The artistic heroism of this soul--this man whose ideas grasped
the world--breathes in these lines with certainly wonderful
freshness. In other letters of this happy period his natural
humor gains the ascendant, and he indulges in sallies of mirth,
afterward begging her indulgence and a friendly remembrance of
"the crazy painter Peter Cornelius." Her replies were in a
simpler and graver tone, but full of that refreshing
independence, which appeared to a nature like his more than aught
else. She allowed his geniality full play without compromising
her sincerity, or her dignity. He is thus both "charmed and
edified" by her letters, and once made the remark of them, "All
that your personality led me to fancy of the beautiful and the
good finds more artless, more forcible and vivid expression in
your letters.
{107}
It becomes you uncommonly well, whenever you fairly assert
yourself."
In the year 1831 the cholera threatened, for a time, to visit
Munich. The preparations of the sanitary authorities to meet this
uncomfortable guest were already completed. Miss Linder was in
Basle, and sent thence a friendly invitation to Cornelius and his
family to take refuge at her domestic hearth. The knightly
response of the master, dated Munich, 15th of November 1831, is
as follows:
"Your friendly suggestion from the shelter of your hospitable
hearth to laugh at the cholera, and by the same opportunity,
perhaps, to reproduce a _Decameron_, corresponding
thereto, has an indescribable attraction for me, and I should
have acted upon it had I not been afraid to be afraid. From
sheer cowardice at the possible death of my honor, I must stand
the cartridges of the cholera. From the spot where my king and
so many admirable and honorable men stand their ground, must
Cornelius never run away. You will take in good part the
informality of this letter from your fanciful friend, yet he
craves of you an _indulgenza plenaria_ while he ends with
the bold declaration that he indescribably loves and honors you.
P. V. CORNELIUS."
At this period an idea seized Cornelius, which long occupied his
attention, namely, to record the noteworthy incidents of his own
eventful artist-life; a plan which certainly would have enriched
literature by at least one original work and have proved of
inestimable value to the history of modern art. Unfortunately,
the plan was never carried out; but it affords a proof of his
high esteem for his friend that Cornelius intended the memoirs to
be written in the form of letters addressed to her, as will
appear from the two following letters. They are written under the
influence of the same exuberant spirits in which the grand
conception of his "Christian epic" had placed him:
"Munich, February 12, 1832.
"Very Dear Friend: This is not meant as an answer to the
welcome and beautiful letter which you sent me through H.
Hauser; it is only a slight expression of my gratitude and my
great delight at the kindliness and the loyal friendship which
your dear letter breathes for me, unworthy. I have lately been
asking myself why this letter-writing, which, as you and all
the world knows, is a horror to me, since my correspondence
with you has set me back into that happy period when one can
write an entire library and yet not be satisfied. Had I more
leisure, I would carry out an old project to write the history
of my life in letter-form, after the manner of many French
memoirs, and addressed to you. Although for the present this is
not to be thought of, I by no means abandon the plan.
"Heroes and artists--in the most liberal way of viewing
it--have their truest and clearest appreciation in the pure
souls of women. Only Hebe might serve the nectar to Alcides;
only Beatrice conducts the singer into Paradise; Tasso's
delirium is a vague searching in a labyrinth where Ariadne's
thread is broken; Michael Angelo would have been as great a
painter as was Dante a poet had Beatrice opened heaven to him;
Raphael's thousand-feathered Psyche bore a material maiden into
the realm of the stars; her human blood enkindled his and slew
him. When I write my memoirs, you will see how it has gone with
me in this respect. In the mean time I allow you a peep through
the keyhole of my private drawer--it is a poor poem of my
youth, which as penance you must read, because you mockingly
called me a poet. [Footnote 45]
[Footnote 45: It is truly a very youthful poem,
addressed "To the Muse," commencing:
"Confided have I alone
in thee, O Muse," etc. ED.]
"I know not why I send these poor stanzas to you; it appears to
me as though you exercised some charm over the spirits of my
life, who must perforce appear before you. Perhaps one of these
days this letter might serve for a dedication to the book in
question, because, like an overture, it contains in itself the
leading motive. Now farewell, and take no offence at this gay
carnival-arabesque, The ladies of my family heartily greet you:
we have good news from Rome. Heaven bless you, vouchsafe you
cheerfulness and bliss, and bring you soon to us. Meantime,
however, write soon, and often send tidings
to your most devoted friend,
"P. Cornelius."
{108}
Four months later, he reverts to the same subject, on the
occasion of sending to her, while at Basle, a sketch of his
latest composition for the walls of the Louis-church, ("The
Epiphany,") accompanying which he writes:
Munich, June 21, 1832.
"Herewith you find a little sketch of a drawing just completed
for a large cartoon (the corresponding piece to the
Crucifixion,) and instead of interpreting it to you, I beg your
own interpretation of it; it would have such a charm for me to
read in your mind my own conceptions ennobled and beautified.
What coquetry! I hear you laughingly say; and yet I hope to be
pardoned. If it be true that artists have many feelings in
common with women, those which prompt us to try to please those
we love should meet with some indulgence.
"I occupy myself often, on my lonely walks, with the plan of my
intended memoirs; the material begins to assume shape; but
unless you apply to it the finishing touch, it will not be
presentable. I never could bring myself to entrust it to other
hands. In the retrospect of my life I find the material more
abundant than I had supposed. Very difficult will be the
shaping of much of it. How easily does many a tie and relation
in this life lose its true coloring and significance by
omissions; and yet must these very often occur, if the work is
to appear during my lifetime. Before beginning to write, I
shall communicate to you, orally, dearest friend, some portions
of the memoirs, and we can then discuss them at leisure--a
welcome plan to me, for thus will the undertaking fairly ripen.
With inmost respect and love, your devoted
"Peter Von Cornelius."
Finally, it may be allowable to make mention of a letter which he
addresses to her from Rome, on the 12th of October, 1833, while
he was working on his drawing of the Last Judgment. In this
letter we recognize his playful, working humor--and does he not
term these periods of creative activity his wedding time? In
several remarks, however, we discern both sides of his nature.
"My Noble Friend: It is really too bad! has he not yet written?
not even answered that charming letter from Salzburg? Well, I
must say, I am curious to see how he will justify himself.
"Thus I hear Schlotthauer exclaim; even Schubert ominously
shakes his head; but you are silent and thoughtful. I should be
in despair for an excuse for myself, having already shot off my
best arrows at you on similar occasions, exhausted my adroitest
terms--my best rhetoric. I say I should be in despair, if that
stupendous, that tremendous thing, 'The Last Judgment,' did not
take me under its protecting wing. Never has a man, probably,
with more sublimity asked pardon of a lady! And now, laying the
universe at your feet, I await composedly my sentence. From
this moment is my tongue loosed; and I can say to you that I am
celebrating my blissfullest time--my wedding time--the harvest
season of my holiest aspirations. How few mortals attain to
such happiness! and how ill-calculated is this world to afford
it!
"Gladly would I show you the work I am at present engaged
upon. Yet for a nature so quiet as yours, you appear to me far
too forcible and positive. Overbeck must love you a thousand
fold more than I: with me you suffer indulgence to take the
place of impartial justice. How I once fretted about such
things!
"What a treasure is a deep, positively incurable pain! Better
than the most unalloyed bliss which this poor world has to
offer, it brings us near to the Holy One. It is more faithful,
far less variable. It draws us into solitude, into ourselves.
"You surmise, doubtless, what I mean. Daily do I thank Heaven
that through you such knowledge was to come to me. This is
bitter medicine; administered, to a child, upon sweet fruit.
But why do I entertain you with such trivialities? In all books
of all nations we read the same thing; and yet when the poor
human heart is pressed with its heavy burthen, it feels just as
profoundly and acutely as in the very days of Troy itself; and
the utterances of joy and of love, like those of pain, are ever
new and their method inexhaustible; ever does one cast himself
upon the breast of a loving, sympathetic soul.
{109}
"Accept for the moment this confused scribble and remain
friendly and well-disposed toward me. Continue to peep through
my fingers, and leave me just five of them. I claim to myself,
however, the privilege of an unlimited love and veneration for
you. My entire household and all your friends send heartfelt
greeting; foremost of all, however, your
P. V. CORNELIUS."
The correspondence was interrupted when Cornelius removed to
Berlin; but not the friendship, which endured to the end. Nor did
the exchange of letters cease entirely; so that the ink-shy
master once asserted in Berlin, that he had written to no lady so
often as to her.
Among the earliest acquaintances of Emily Linder, was Father
Franz von Baader; as the nine letters indicate, which were
addressed to her, and published in the complete works of Baader.
The first of these was dated as early as the 25th of May, 1825,
therefore at the commencement of her residence in Munich; and the
contents indicate the immediate cause of their mutual attraction.
This letter has somewhat the nature of a memorial, in which the
philosopher draws a parallel between the art of painting and the
God-like art of benevolence; closing with the following words:
"Herewith commends himself to Miss Emily Linder--she who
rendered her memory so dear, so imperishable to him by an act
kindness performed at his request to a poor family--
Franz Baader."
The tie between them therefore lay in the admirable activity of
that quality by which Emily Linder quietly accomplished so
much--a high-hearted love for her neighbor.
From that time forward Baader regularly sent her his pamphlets
and works, and we can appreciate to what extent he tasked her
intellect when he forwarded her a copy of his _Speculative
Dogma or, Social-Philosophic Treatise_. He regarded it as a
pleasant duty to acquaint her from time to time with his literary
labors: and she spared herself to no trouble to follow even such
grave and abstruse topics. He succeeded in specially interesting
her in Jacob Böhme. Her intelligent remarks on Baader's article
upon the doctrine of justification led him to remark that her
letter afforded him a more satisfactory proof than many a
criticism that he had succeeded in reaching both the head and the
heart. In the year 1831, Baader dedicated to her a philosophic
paper entitled _Forty Propositions from a Religious
Exotic_," (Munich: Franz, 1831.) In the brief dedication of
this "little work on great subjects" we read, "While you in
ancient Rome are dedicating heart, soul, eye, and hand to art, it
may not be unwelcome to you to hear over the stormy Alps a
friendly voice, reminding you of that holy alliance of the three
graces of a better and eternal life, Religion, Speculation, and
Poetry, adding to these also, Painting." In the letter which
accompanies this pamphlet he places before her the leading
thoughts of the little work in a lucid manner:
"When the teachers of religion say that the whole Christian
faith rests upon the knowledge and conviction that God is love;
and that in this religion the love of God, of man, of nature,
is made a duty; so that, in fact, a oneness of love and duty is
announced, it would seem seasonable this unloving and
duty-forgetful age so to present the identity of these two,
love and duty, that mankind can discern the laws of religion in
those of love, and those of love in religion; which, I trust,
has been done in this pamphlet in a new, albeit rather a
homoeopathic manner."
Next to Baader is to be named his intellectual son-in-law, Ernst
von Lasaulx. He started, in the same year that Emily Linder left
Rome, upon his long journey through Italy and Greece, to the
Orient. They met in Florence, the 27th of July, 1831, and he
promised the artist a description of his travels.
{110}
In conformity with this promise ensued a series of letters
recording his experiences and impressions in Greece and the
promised land, fresh and warm to a degree seldom found, and full
of classic beauty. By whom could antiquity be better realized to
this art-enthusiast than by Lasaulx, the zealous student of
Grecian art-history, and equally a master of artistic prose!
Poetic sensibility and literary clearness go refreshingly hand in
hand in these letters; now in a description of his rides to that
"eloquent rock-architecture" of Cyclopean edifices, the Titanic
walls of the Acropolis of Tiryns and Mikene; or his solitary
wanderings among the prostrate, ruined glories strewn from
Corinth to Magara and Athens. At the first view of distant
Athens, the Acropolis and the Parthenon, the temple of Theseus
and the city behind the dark olive-woods he exclaims:
"Here is Greece, all of a departed glory worthy of the name,
which the noiseless waste of time and the insane fury of man
has left to the after-world. Never in my experience, and in no
other city, have I known such emotions. It is as though my
heart were turned into an AEolian harp, and the night winds
were sighing through its broken strings."
Despite all his predilections, however, for the classic land, he
did not suffer himself to be deceived as to a new Greece by the
occasion of the 12th of April, 1833, when he was present at the
formal surrender of the Acropolis to the Bavarian troops, when
Osman Effendi withdrew the Turkish forces, and the Bavarian
commander, Baligand, planted the Greek flag upon the northern
rampart. He remarks, in this description:
"It was a remarkable spectacle; the noisy, confused crowd of
Turks, Greeks, Bavarians and whatever other inquisitive Franks
had collected in the dusky colonnades of the Parthenon. As I
could not bring myself to any faith in the regeneration of
Greece, the rampant irony of this insane funeral wake only
added to my deep depression."
Written in the year 1833, and, hardly ten years later, what
confirmation!
Glorious passages does the traveller indite to his distant friend
over his pilgrimage through Palestine; profound melancholy at the
present condition of the holy land; devout emotions amid holy
places. On entering Jerusalem, Sunday, September 15. 1833, he
says:
"Burning tears and a cold shudder of the heart were the first,
God grant not the only, tributes which I offered for his love
and that of his Son."
His delineations inspired his friend with a holy longing, and she
entertained for some time afterward the idea of a journey to the
holy land. She had, indeed, made preparations (1836) for a
pilgrimage thither in company with Schubert, and only
considerations of health compelled her at last to abandon the
plan.
Subsequently, at the close of his life, Lasaulx crowned his
friendship for Miss Linder with a special literary tribute. He
dedicated to her his last great work, _The Philosophy of the
Fine Arts, Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Music, Poetry,
Prose_, (Munich, 1860.) As though from a presentiment of his
death, he felt impelled to bring his esthetic studies to a close,
sensible as he was that here and there were still omissions to
supply. But the book is the thoughtful labor of many years, and a
masterwork of style. In the dedication, which serves as preface,
and which was written in the Bavarian inn, at Castle Lebenberg,
in the Tyrol, on the 25th of September, 1859, after speaking of
the origin of the work, he refers, in the following words, to his
friend:
{111}
"That I dedicate this work particularly to you will be found
natural enough on a moment's self-examination. I met you, for
the first time, thirty years ago, at Munich, in a delightful
circle of friendly men and women, so many of whom are
constantly departing from us, that those who are still left
have to move nearer and nearer to each other at your hospitable
table. A few years later, I saw you in Florence again, as you
came from Rome and I went thither. The death of our
early-maturing friend, Adam Eberle, resulted in an association
with you as a correspondent, and since then you have proved to
me, my wife and daughter, both in bright and gloomy days, so
dear and true a friend, that it is now a necessity with me to
express my gratitude to you, even with this very work, whose
subjects are so akin to your own studies, and in writing which,
at this fortress of Lebenberg, I have so often thought of you
and our mutual friends, dead and living, chiefest among whom
should to yourself this book be a tribute."
A year and a half later, the noble and true soul of Lasaulx had
passed, and his grateful friend founded for him a memorial after
her own peculiar taste, the pious memorial of a stated mass for
his soul.
An early friend, also, and one true till death, was Gotthilf
Heinrich von Schubert, who met Miss Linder shortly after he was
called to the University of Munich. The amiable personality of
this _savant_ of child-like nature particularly appealed to
her. His fundamental views of religion accorded with her own; and
therefore, the elements of a spiritual harmony were already at
hand. Miss Linder was associated with his family during the
period of an entire human life, in the closest and purest
friendship, which particularly one test safely withstood--that of
her conversion. In his autobiography, Schubert alludes, in a few
words, to this friend of his household; and the comparison he
draws between her and the Princess Gallitzin shows how high a
position he accorded her. Speaking of the circle of friends in
which he chiefly moved, he mentions the names of Roth, Puchta,
Schnorr, Cornelius, Ringseis, Schlotthauer, Boisseree,
Schwanthaler, and then remarks:
"The gathering-point of many of these friends was the house of
the noble Swiss, Emily. At all times and in all places, in
larger as in smaller social circles, will each with pleasure
thus recall that grand life-picture, which was similarly
presented to a former generation at Münster, in the fair friend
of Hamann, of Stolberg, of Claudius."
Emily Linder was certainly the first, in her deep humility, to
deprecate such a comparison; but it is for both equally
creditable that the venerable sage felt constrained to bear such
testimony, even after her union with the Catholic Church.
Next to the testimony of scholars and artists, we will finally
quote an opinion from a female writer, a literary lady of the
higher walks of life. In the summer of 1841, came Emma von
Niendorf to Munich. She was in friendly relation with Schubert
and Brentano, and, several years later, recorded her
reminiscences of those sunny days at Munich in a lively and
imaginative little work. At Schubert's she formed the
acquaintance of Emily Linder, and was attracted closely to her.
She refers to her in glowing and expressive terms, depicting this
art-loving woman in the repose of her home:
"A noble Swiss, and for this reason remarkable, that, fortified
by exterior means and the most positive convictions, she
presented to me an ideal existence in a ripe and unwedded old
age, having achieved happiness. She lived only for science, for
art, for all that is beautiful and good. But everything was
illumined with the glory of a genuine Christian spirit. And how
this spirit reflected itself in all her surroundings!
{112}
I shall never forget it; the sitting-room, with work-basket,
books, flowers, harp, drawings by Overbeck; a drawing-room
separating these from a little house-chapel, which a painting
of Overbeck also embellished. And, where the organ awaited the
skilful fingers, a Madonna of the school of Leonardo da Vinci
smiled from the wall, while the little side-altar encased a
drawing of Albrecht Dürer. I found, also, in the house of this
lady a portrait of Maria Mori, in the Tyrol, admirably drawn
by her friend, the well-known lady artist, Ellenrieder,
somewhat idealized; a profile, with folded hands; long, brown,
down-flowing hair; the large, dark eye full of devotion, full
of sensibility, the _stigmata_ in the hands not to be
forgotten. ... This lady is a Protestant. The deepest coloring
of her soul is, perhaps, shading toward Catholicism; yet she
doubtless finds satisfying harmonies in the Gospel. By one of
those wonderful providences which life is so full of, this
earnest soul was planted between two strongly pronounced
natures--two opposite polarities of friendship, both deep and
sincere--Clemens Brentano and Schubert, who were on equal
terms of intimacy with her."
At the very time Emma von Niendorf put her work to press, she
knew not that the lady to whom these lines referred had already
attained that toward which "the deepest coloring of her soul
seemed to be shading." Emily Linder had sought and found
"satisfying harmonies" in the faith of the one, universal,
apostolic church.
Conclusion In The Next Number.
----------
Xavier De Ravignan. [Footnote 46]
[Footnote 46: _The Life of Father de Ravignan, of the
Society of Jesus_. By Father de Ponlevoy, of the same
Society. Translated at St. Beuno's College, North Wales.
12mo, pp. 693. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.
1869.]
Father De Ponlevoy's life of his friend and colleague, the
celebrated orator of Notre Dame, violates many of the canons of
biographical composition, and is nevertheless an admirable book.
As a narrative, it lacks clearness and symmetry; but as a picture
of the interior of a great and beautiful soul, it is wonderfully
vivid. It could only have been written by one who sympathized
completely with the subject, and understood the interior
illuminations and trials, and the complete detachment from the
world, which distinguished the illustrious preacher whose fame at
one time filled all Catholic Europe. Father de Ponlevoy has given
us therefore a valuable work. He has looked at De Ravignan's life
from the right point of view--the only point in fact from which
it offers any important material to the biographer. In a worldly
sense, the life was not an eventful one. He came of a noble yet
hardly a distinguished family, who preserved their faith in the
midst of the storm of revolution, and brought up their children
to love the church. Gustave Xavier was born at Bayonne on the 1st
of December, 1795. As a child he was remarkable for a gravity and
intelligence far beyond his years, a warm affection for his
parents, and a very pious disposition. After completing his
school and college education in Paris, he resolved to devote
himself to the law, and at the age of eighteen entered the office
of M. Goujon, a jurist of some distinction at the capital. He had
scarcely begun his studies, however, when France was thrown into
confusion by the return of Napoleon from Elba.
{113}
The young man threw down his books, enlisted in a company of
royalist volunteers, and after preparing himself for the campaign
by receiving holy communion, marched with his command toward the
Spanish frontier. His company belonged to that unlucky detachment
under General Barbarin, which was surprised and cut to pieces at
Hélette, in the Lower Pyrénées. General Barbarin fell, severely
wounded, and would have fallen into the enemy's hands, when De
Ravignan rushed forward through the fire and attempted to carry
him off the field. It was a generous but desperate act, which
would have led to the sacrifice of both. Barbarin saw the danger
of the young hero, and, freeing one of his arms, shot himself
through the head. Covered with the blood of his unfortunate
commander, Gustave sought safety in flight, wandered afoot and
alone through the Basque country, in the disguise of a peasant,
and, after many hardships and escapes, rejoined the army on
Spanish soil. He now received a commission as lieutenant of
cavalry, and was attached to the staff of the Count de Damas, who
sent him on a confidential mission to Bordeaux. Before he had any
further opportunity of winning distinction, the war was over, and
although tempting offers were made him to continue in the army,
he determined to adhere to the law, and was soon hard at work
again. The indomitable resolution, amounting even to sternness,
which distinguished him in after life, was already one of his
most remarkable characteristics. Whatever he did, was done with
all his might. He studied with the most intense application, and,
not satisfied with the reading necessary for his profession,
applied himself closely to the German and English languages, and
such lighter accomplishments as drawing and music. In due time he
was appointed a _conseiller auditeur_ in the royal court of
Paris, then under the presidency of Séguier. The influence of the
Duke d'Angoulême got him the appointment--not, however, without
some difficulty--and his colleagues received him coldly. He
awaited his time in patience, beginning each day by hearing Mass,
and studying thoroughly, systematically, and indefatigably. At
last, one day when the advocates happened to be out of court, a
civil cause of a very tedious nature was unexpectedly called. The
president turned, rather maliciously, to De Ravignan, and handed
him the papers, saying, "Let us see for once what can be done by
this young gentleman, whose acquaintance we have yet to make." On
the appointed day the "young gentleman" presented a clear and
logical report, and delivered it with a perfection of utterance
which caused the whole court to listen with astonishment. His
success at the bar was assured from that moment, and soon
afterward he was appointed deputy _procureur général_.
His life at this time presents a curious and instructive study.
He devoted a part of each day regularly to religious exercises;
he was a zealous member of a Sodality of the Blessed Virgin; he
had already in fact formed the idea of entering the priesthood,
if not of joining the Society of Jesus. But while he remained in
the world, he never neglected his professional pursuits, he
mingled freely in society, and showed himself, in the true sense
of the term, an accomplished gentleman. He was a great favorite
in company. "In him," says Father de Ponlevoy, "interior and
exterior were in perfect harmony. It would be impossible to
imagine a more perfect type of a young man: the expression of his
countenance was excellent, his forehead high and full of dignity,
his features fine and characteristic, his eyes deep and blue, by
turns animated and affectionate, his figure slight and graceful.
{114}
To this picture must be added scrupulous attention to person and
dress, perfect politeness, and a nameless something, the
reflection of a lofty mind, a great intellect, and a pure and
affectionate heart." Many years afterward, when he visited
London, to preach at the time of the World's Fair, one of the
principal Protestant noblemen of England said of him, "He is the
most finished gentleman I ever saw." His modesty, like many of
his other virtues, leaned toward severity. At a great
dinner-party one day, before he had embraced the religious life,
he was placed next a young lady whose dress was rather too
scanty. He sat stiff and silent until the unlucky girl ventured
to ask, "M. de Ravignan, have you no appetite?" He replied in a
half-whisper, "And you, Mdlle., have you no shame?"
He was twenty-six years of age when, after a retreat of eight
days, he entered the Seminary of Saint Sulpice. The resolution
had been gradually formed, yet it took everybody except his
mother and his spiritual director by surprise. His professional
friends and associates did all they could to draw him back to the
world. They sought out his retreat, and went after him in crowds.
"Ah!" he exclaimed, when he saw them, "I have made my escape from
you."
De Ravignan remained only six months in the seminary, and then
removed to the novitiate of the Society of Jesus, for which he
had made no secret of his preference. The life of a novice offers
little matter for the biographer. We are only told that his
course here was distinguished by a devotion which approached
heroism, a zeal that tended toward excess, and a strictness that
was often too hard and stern. Throughout his life, severity
toward himself, far more than toward others, was his principal
defect; but as years went on, this rigidity of character, always
more apparent than real, disappeared little by little in the
sunshine of divine love. He never spared himself in anything. He
surpassed all in his ambition for humiliation and suffering; the
only trouble was, that he sometimes went too far in attempting to
lead weaker brethren by the hard path he himself had trodden. A
novice once asked somebody for advice, and was recommended to
apply to Brother de Ravignan. "In that case," he rejoined, "I
know beforehand what I must do: I have only to choose the most
difficult course." In the scholasticate, he was known by the
_sobriquet_ of "Iron Bar." When the time came for his
admission to holy orders, after nearly four years passed in the
scholasticate at Paris and at Dôle, he was sent with five other
candidates to the Diocesan Seminary at Orgelet, where the
sacrament of ordination was to be administered. Before the party
set out, Brother de Ravignan was appointed superior for the
journey. His companions were seized with fear when they heard who
had been placed in charge over them; but their alarm was
groundless. "Nothing," said one of the company, "could exceed the
kindness, the affability, the attentiveness to small wants, the
simple joy of the young superior. He availed himself of his
character only to claim the right of choosing the last place, and
of making himself the servant of all." He was ordained priest on
the 25th of July, 1828.
The war against the Jesuits in France was approaching its crisis,
and the ordinance which deprived them of the liberty of teaching
and shut up all their colleges was promulgated just about the
time of Father de Ravignan's ordination.
{115}
Cut off from the privilege of secular instruction, the society
resolved to devote itself more zealously than ever to the
theological training of its own members. Father de Ravignan was
assigned a chair of theology at Saint Acheul, near Amiens; for he
was not only a thorough scholar, but he possessed a rare talent
for teaching, and according to the testimony of his pupil, Father
Rubillon, fully realized "the idea of a professor of theology
such as is depicted by St. Ignatius." The poor fathers, however,
were not to be left here in peace. In 1829, they received notice
to suspend their classes; but Father de Ravignan hastened to
Paris, saw the Minister of Public Instruction, and caused the
order to be set aside. The next year came the revolution of July.
Late in the evening of the 29th, a mob, led by an expelled pupil,
attacked the college, burst in gates, and with cries for "The
King and the Charter!" "The Emperor!" "Liberty!" and "Down with
the priests!" and "Death to the Jesuits!" proceeded to sack the
building. While some of the fathers took refuge in the chapel,
and others, expecting death, were busy hearing one another's
confessions, Father de Ravignan went upon a balcony, and tried to
make himself heard by the rioters. He persisted until a stone
struck him on the temple, and he was led away bleeding. To what
lengths the fury of the mob would have gone it is impossible to
say; but fortunately, in the course of their devastation they
stumbled into the wine-cellar, and all got drunk. The arrival of
a troop of cavalry dispersed the reeling crowd in the twinkling
of an eye, and the Jesuits were left to mourn over the ruins. The
next day it seemed certain that the attack would be renewed. The
college was deserted, and its inmates scattered in different
directions, Father de Ravignan being sent to Brigue in
Switzerland to resume his courses of theological instruction.
It was not until the close of 1834 that he came back to France.
Then we find him once more at Saint Acheul, where, since classes
were prohibited, a house had been opened for fathers in their
third year of probation. Three years later, he was appointed
superior of a new house at Bordeaux. There he remained until
1842.
In the mean time he had entered, imperceptibly, so to speak, upon
the great work of his life. He had preached many retreats at
different times to his own brethren, and to other religious
communities, but had rarely been heard in a public pulpit until,
during the Lent of 1835, while he was living at Saint Acheul, he
was selected to preach a series of conferences in the cathedral
of Amiens. He was forty years of age when he began this
apostleship, and he had been withdrawn from the world ever since
he was twenty-seven; yet he had not been forgotten. There was a
lively curiosity among his old friends to hear him; the members
of the bar in particular were constant in their attendance; and
the impression produced in Amiens was not only deep, but rich in
spiritual fruit. In Advent, he was appointed to preach a similar
course at the same place; and in Lent of the next year, we find
him preaching in the church of St. Thomas Aquinas, in Paris.
Nothing exactly like these conferences and courses of sermons, so
common in France, has ever been known to our country, and some of
our readers may find it difficult to appreciate the magnitude and
importance of the labor in which Father de Ravignan was now
engaged.
{116}
The audiences whom he had to address were not only poor,
unlettered sinners, whose consciences needed arousing; to these
of course he must speak, but with them came hundreds of the most
cultivated and critical listeners, who studied the speaker's
language and manner as they would a literary essay or an exercise
in elocution. The court, the army, the learned professions, and
the leaders of fashionable society crowded around the Lent and
Advent pulpits. The appearance of a new preacher was the
sensation of the metropolis. The newspapers criticised the
performance as they would criticise a play at the theatre. To
satisfy the exactions of such an audience as this, and yet to
preserve that unction without which preaching is a waste of
breath--to please the critical ear, and yet to move the callous
heart, required qualifications which few men combined. The most
famous of all the series of conferences had been those in the
great cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. Father Lacordaire had
there roused an extraordinary enthusiasm, and at the height of
his fame had abandoned the pulpit and gone to Rome for the
purpose of restoring the Dominican order to France. He earnestly
desired that Father de Ravignan should be his successor at Notre
Dame, and it is interesting to know that it was partly through
Lacordaire's agency, that the Jesuit was obliged in 1837 to begin
that grand series of discourses, extending over ten years, by
which he will be chiefly remembered. "No one could claim to be
the apostle of such an assembly as met in Notre Dame," says
Father de Ponlevoy,
"unless he were first of all a philosopher. The subject chosen
for the first year was accordingly a kind of Catholic
philosophy of history, depicting the broad outlines of the
struggle between truth and error. This idea is analogous to
that which inspired the _City of God_ of St. Augustine; it
was carried on in the station of 1838 by an explanation of
fundamental doctrines, beginning with the personality and
action of God, in opposition to the abstractions of the
pantheists, the ill-defined forms of deism and fatalism;
proceeding on to liberty, the immortality of the soul and the
end of man, against materialism. For all this, it was necessary
to go to first principles, to recall slumbering belief to life,
and again to establish doctrines which had been corrupted by
numberless errors. Some portion of the hearers were from this
time forward led to embrace the last practical conclusions, and
already F. de Ravignan had some consoling returns to the faith
to report. At the end of the station of 1838, he wrote:
"'The attendance has been large and remarkable for the great
number of distinguished persons, members of the present and
former ministries, peers, deputies, academicians, well known
Protestants, foreigners of rank, and a troop of young men.
"'There have been symptoms of approval, sometimes too freely
manifested; conversions, a few, but not many. Moreover, no
expressions of hostility, either in the newspapers or among the
audience. God be praised!
"'I have been forced to have some intercourse with a great many
people, and some of them persons of note. M. de Chateaubriand
paid me a visit; two interviews were arranged for me with M. de
Lamartine; several physicians and men of science have sought to
see me; some have been to confession. How many great men there
are ignorant of the faith, and sick in mind and heart.
"'God has supported me. I have felt his grace, his help to our
society, and the benefit of the prayers offered for my work. I
took care that none of the journals should employ short-hand
writers, that my words might not be published in a distorted
form.'"
From the very outset, Father de Ravignan had contemplated the
establishment of an annual retreat by way of a complement to his
conferences; but wishing to give his influence time to work
before he carried out this plan, he waited until 1841, and then
resolved to begin in the small church of the Abbaye-aux-Bois,
which with great crowding holds no more than 1000 or 1200 people.
{117}
Should the attendance be too large for this church, it was
arranged that he should remove to St. Eustache. He describes the
result of his experiment as follows:
"I gave notice of a retreat for men during Holy Week, only on
Palm-Sunday at Notre Dame before the conference; an instruction
every evening at eight o'clock till Holy Saturday inclusively.
On the Monday evening I went to the Abbaye-aux-Bois about
half-past seven. I found an extraordinary crowd, and difficulty
in getting places; and there was not a single woman. I had kept
them all out. For nearly two hours the whole church had been
full, and already a hundred people had gone away unable to get
in. I wanted to cross the bottom of the church, but I could not
get along. I was recognized, and with great earnestness, but
without uproar, I was asked to adjourn elsewhere. I promised to
do so. From the pulpit I was struck by this throng of men,
almost all young, who filled the doorways, the altars and no
disturbance. After having warmly congratulated them, I
appointed Saint-Eustache for the next day. Then I bade them all
rise for prayer. They all rose like one man. We recited the
_Veni Creator_, and the instruction followed on these
words: _Venite seorsum et requiescite pusillum--Come aside,
and rest a little_. I advised them all to remain for
benediction. All remained.
"Next day Saint-Eustache was filled five hours before the
service, and the following days they came even earlier.
"My heart is full of gratitude to God. His help has been plain.
I do not know that such a churchful of men was ever seen. The
iron gates at the doors, the bases of the pillars, the rails,
everything, was covered with people hanging on; the nave and
aisles filled and crowded beyond conception, and the deepest,
most religious silence--not one disturbance, no police--3000 or
4000 men's voices singing the _Miserere_, the _Stabat
Mater_. The sight affected me deeply.
"I at once adopted perfect apostolic freedom of language, and,
without preface, began to speak of sin, of hell, of confession,
etc. I delivered my address, and appointed six hours every day
which I would devote to men who might wish to see me. They have
come in shoals. I have been hearing confessions all the week,
six or seven hours a day, of men of all ages and positions in
life--all very much behindhand. God has given me consolation.
The prayers offered on all sides for this work have had a
visible effect. There has been a marked movement in Paris. More
Easter Communions everywhere. Our fathers have received many
more confessions of men. I have not declined a single one, and
I am still busy in finishing them.
"A good many came to tell me of their difficulties, and I said
to them, 'Well, believe me, there is but one way; take your
place there;' and all, with a single exception, made their
confessions.
"On Good-Friday the Passion sermon exhausted my strength; the
following day I had no voice left. I was unable to give the
closing instruction of the retreat on Holy Saturday. I wrote a
scrap of a note to inform the Curé of Saint-Eustache, and he
bethought him of reading it from the pulpit. All went off
quietly; the people waited for benediction and went home."
Lacordaire was a far more brilliant and poetical preacher than De
Ravignan, but the styles of the two men were so entirely
different that there can be no comparison between them. The
conferences of the Jesuit orator, studied in the cold light of
print, lack color and imagination; but they can only be judged
fairly by those who heard them delivered. The principal
characteristic of his delivery we should judge must have been
force--a force which amounted to majesty. He spoke with a
commanding air of authority, as one whose convictions were as
fixed as the everlasting hills. His power of assertion was
tremendous; with all this he was animated and impassioned,
although he generally commenced with a slow and measured cadence.
His style was a little rough, but nervous and striking. He did
not captivate, but he conquered. His gestures were dignified and
impressive; his attitude was modest but commanding; his personal
presence was noble. When he entered the pulpit, he remained a
long time motionless, with eyes cast down, waiting until the
assemblage became perfectly still. Then he made the sign of the
cross with a pomp and stateliness which became famous.
{118}
A Protestant minister who witnessed this solemn exordium
exclaimed, "He has preached without speaking a word!" It used to
be said, "When Father de Ravignan shows himself in the pulpit, no
one can tell whether he has just ascended from earth or come down
from heaven." One day he had been describing the wilful misery of
the unbeliever--his doubts, fears, melancholy, repinings, and
despair; the picture was drawn with a terrible force; the
audience sat as if paralyzed. Suddenly, want of breath compelled
the orator to pause. He folded his arms, and with inimitable
emphasis brought the climax to an end with these words: "And we--
we are believers!" The effect was overpowering. The people forgot
themselves, and a signal of applause ran through the church. The
priest was indignant. With glowing countenance and arm raised in
air, he cried, "Silence!" in a voice of awful reproof, and the
assembly was instantly hushed.
Still more effective, though less celebrated than the
conferences, were Father de Ravignan's retreats. In these he was
unapproached. He followed strictly the exercises of St. Ignatius,
to which he gave such unremitting study that he might well be
called a man of one book. His conferences were prepared with
great elaboration, but the retreats were improvisations. As years
went on, he devoted himself more and more closely to these latter
exercises, until they became at last his proper work in the
ministry; and when sickness, and the loss of his voice had
compelled him to abandon formal preaching, he continued to
conduct the retreats at Notre Dame, while Lacordaire resumed his
place in the pulpit.
It must not be supposed that the success of the Jesuit's oratory
was any indication of a growing favor for the society in France.
The opposition to its existence was still active, and the
government refused to acknowledge that as a society it had any
existence in the kingdom at all. The wildest stories about it
were published and believed. One day, in the midst of a
distinguished party assembled at the Tuileries to celebrate the
king's birthday, a person of influence disclosed a horrible plot:
the Jesuits had arms stored in the cellars of Saint Sulpice, and
only the day before, Father de Ravignan had been there concerting
measures with his accomplices. "Oh! yes," interrupted a lady of
the court, "I was at that meeting. We were drawing a raffle for
the poor. There were two or three hundred families so lucky as to
be set up with a coffee-pot or a sauce-pan." As a general thing,
however, whatever might be said of the society, Father de
Ravignan was treated with respect. Guizot made no secret of his
esteem for him, and Royer-Collard used to say, "Father de
Ravignan is artless enough to imagine himself a Jesuit." In the
little book which De Ravignan accordingly wrote about this
time--_On the Existence and the Institute of the
Jesuits_--there was a double purpose to be gained. He wished
to identify himself as thoroughly and as publicly as he could
with the society to which he had given his heart, and he wished
to share in the gallant battle which Lacordaire was fighting for
the right of the religious orders to exist in France under the
protection of the laws. The opposition in the legislative
chambers had been insisting that they ought not to exist; the
ministry replied that they did not exist; and right in the midst
of the dispute appears Father de Ravignan, like the poor prisoner
who called a lawyer to get him out of jail.
{119}
"But this is preposterous," said the counsel; "you can't be
arrested on such a charge as that!" "I don't know," said the
prisoner, "but I _am_ arrested." "Why, I tell you, you
_can't_ be: it is not legal; they have no right to put you
in jail." "Well, I only know that I _am_ in jail, and I want
you get me out." Father de Ravignan showed clearly enough that
they did exist, and had a right to legal protection. If they were
to be driven out of the kingdom, the government must face the
responsibility, and do it openly. A few days after the appearance
of the book, Lacordaire, being present at a meeting of the
Catholic Club under the presidency of the Archbishop of Paris,
exclaimed, "If we were in England, I should propose three cheers
for Father de Ravignan." The cheers were given with a will.
We have no space to follow Father de Ravignan in the varied
occupations of the next ten years. His health, always precarious,
broke down completely in 1847, and for the rest of his life he
was condemned to alternations of intense suffering, and of forced
inaction which was worse to him than pain. He was tormented with
chronic neuralgia, with dropsy on the chest, and a severe
affection of the larynx, that for long periods deprived him
entirely of the power of preaching. During these ten years of
suffering, he wrote his history of "Clement XIII. and Clement
XIV," a book which under the guise of an apology for the course
of the latter pontiff in the suppression of the Jesuits was in
reality an apology for the society, and a reply to the recently
published work of Father Theiner on the same subject. He founded
the sodality known as the Children of Mary, assisted in the
establishment of the Congregation of the Oratory, and was
zealously and constantly employed in the direction of souls and
the guidance of converts--gathering up, as Father de Ponlevoy
well expresses it, the fruit of his ten years' preaching. There
is hardly a distinguished name in the history of France at that
day which does not appear in connection with his. Madame
Swetchine was one of his co-laborers. Madame de la Ferronnays,
whose charming life has recently been told under the title of
_A Sister's Story_, was his devoted friend. Chateaubriand,
Count Molé, Walckenaër, Camper the celebrated navigator, Marshal
St. Arnaud, General Cavaignac, Prince Demidoff, Montalembert, De
Falloux, and Bishop Dupanloup--these are some of the illustrious
names which occur most frequently in his correspondence. A
celebrity of a very different sort with whom he had some
intercourse is thus alluded to in Father de Ponlevoy's Life:
"We cannot conclude this chapter without making some mention of
that well-known American _Medium_, who possessed the
unfortunate talent of turning other things besides tables, and
of calling up the dead for the amusement of the living. Much
has been said, even in the newspapers, about his close and
pious intimacy with F. de Ravignan; and it seems that an
attempt has been made to use an honored name as a passport to
introduce into France, and establish there, these wonderful
discoveries of the new world.
"The facts, in all their simplicity, are as follows: It is
quite true that, after the young foreigner had been converted
in Italy, he was furnished at Rome with an introduction to F.
de Ravignan; but by this time he had given up his magic at the
same time that he gave up his Protestantism, and he was
received with the interest which is due from a priest to every
soul ransomed with the blood of Jesus Christ, and especially,
perhaps, to a soul which is converted and brought back to the
bosom of the church. On his arrival in Paris, he was again
absolutely forbidden to return in any way to his old practices.
F. de Ravignan, agreeably to the principles of the faith which
proscribe all superstition, prohibited, under the severest
penalties he could inflict, all participation in or presence at
these dangerous and sometimes guilty proceedings.
{120}
Once the unhappy _Medium_, beset by I know not what man
or devil, was unfaithful to his promise; he was received with
a severity which prostrated him; I chanced at the time to come
into the room, and I saw him rolling on the ground, and
writhing like a worm at the feet of the priest, so righteously
indignant. The father was touched by a repentance which led to
such bodily agony, raised him up, and pardoned him; but,
before dismissing him, exacted a written promise confirmed by
an oath. But a notorious relapse soon took place, and the
servant of God, breaking off all connection with this slave of
the spirits, sent him word never again to appear in his
presence."
We shall not undertake, in the brief space that remains, to
describe the beauty of Father de Ravignan's character--his
touching humility, his rare sweetness of soul, his complete
detachment from earth, his patience, his charity, and his
unflagging zeal. He was once asked how he had attained such
mastery over himself. "There were two of us," he replied; "I
threw one out of the window, so that only I remained where I
was." Father de Ponlevoy applies to him the description which St.
Francis Xavier gave of St. Ignatius: "His character is made up of
three elements; a humility of mind which we can scarcely
understand, a force of soul superior to all opposition, and an
incomparable kindness of heart."
In the spring of 1857, a severe attack of sickness obliged him to
remove to Saint Acheul. He came back to Paris in the autumn,
apparently restored to as good health as he had experienced of
recent years, but he was already far gone in consumption. On the
3d of December, he passed a long time at the Convent of the
Sacred Heart, conversing with a poor person who wanted to enter
the church. Then he went into the confessional, and remained
there until physically exhausted. One of his penitents on that
occasion remarked that he spoke more than ever like a man who no
longer belonged to this world. He got home with great difficulty.
This was the last of his ministry. On the Feast of the Immaculate
Conception, he celebrated mass for the last time; but it was not
until the 26th of February that he passed to that blessed rest
for which he had yearned so long with an eagerness that he used
to call "homesickness." The account of his last days is too
beautiful to be abridged. With the awe inspired by the sublime
narrative, we prefer to drop our pen at the opening of this final
chapter, wherein the gates of heaven seem to stand ajar, and our
eyes are dazzled by the awful light which streams from the divine
presence.
----------
{121}
The Educational Question.
The articles upon popular education which have heretofore
appeared in this journal seem to have produced the effects which
were anticipated by the writer. The public interest has been
unusually excited by the discussion; and two classes of
antagonists have ventured to make an issue with the advocates of
a just distribution of the school fund. The first in order, but
much the least important in all other respects, is that confessed
fossil, the "no-popery" party, which ever and anon intrudes
itself upon the unwilling attention of our republican society,
braying itself hoarse with rage because it can neither command
the confidence of enlightened and liberal Protestants nor escape
the galling ridicule of six millions of its Catholic
fellow-citizens. This class is well represented in an elaborate
tract lately issued from the office of the American and Foreign
Christian Union, 27 Bible House, New York City, and purporting to
be a review of the article in the January number of _The
Educational Monthly_, presenting _The Roman Catholic View of
Education in the United States_. It requires no great amount
of logical acumen to enable the least intelligent of men to see
that this tract affords the most apt illustration of one of the
principal arguments we have advanced in support of the Catholic
claim. We have remained silent for the last three months, resting
satisfied that it would be impossible for "the stereotyped class
of saints and philosophers" to rush to the rescue of a cherished
injustice, without forthwith exposing its odious features in
their struggle to carry it victoriously through the battle-field
of a public controversy. The veil of Mokanna has fallen even
before the false prophet had time to secure a victim! or, to
speak more in accordance with scriptural analogies, the cloven
foot has discovered itself under the clerical robe and the
wickedness of the heart has burst out from the tongue. _Quare
fremuerunt gentes!_ Why, indeed, shall they rage and devise
vain things? Have they not fulfilled this prophecy of the royal
David for three hundred years; and have they not suffered the
derision threatened in the fourth verse of the second Psalm?
Where shall we find a more convincing proof than this very tract
of what the enemies of the Catholic faith and people design to
accomplish by a school system which they insincerely profess to
advocate on account of its intrinsic merits, in the face of the
historical fact that, wherever and whenever they have had the
power to control the state--as the early days of all New England
and of several of the other American States--they never failed to
use the school-room as an ante-chamber to the conventicle! After
they had been stripped of this power by such men as Jefferson,
Madison, Hamilton, and the liberal founders of American
institutions, they still struggled for many years to accomplish
by indirect means the injustice and iniquity which could not be
openly maintained under the constitutions and the laws of the
federal government and the several States. We all well remember
how the poor Catholic boys and girls of the free schools were
harassed by colporteurs and proselytizers, who carried baskets
filled, not with bread for the hungry children of poverty, but
with oleaginous tracts, cunningly devised to destroy in those
little pupils of the state the faith of their fathers and the
religious practices of their devout mothers.
{122}
Teachers were selected with especial regard to their bitter
hatred of the Catholic Church and their zeal for "Evangelical"
propagandism. When this failed to make any very perceptible
impression upon the numerical strength of the Catholic people,
then commenced the wholesale child-stealing, under the pious
pretext of cleaning out the moral sewers of society; and tens of
thousands of little children, stolen or forcibly wrested from the
arms of Catholic parents--too poor and friendless to protect the
natural and legal rights of themselves and their offspring--were
hurried off to the far West, their names changed, and their
temporal and eternal hopes committed to the zealous charge of
pious and vigorous haters of the popish anti-Christ! In spite of
all this, the Catholic population of the United States continued
steadily to rise like a flood tide, not only through foreign
immigration, but by reason of virtuous wedlock and the watchful
and severe faith and discipline of a church which forbids and
effectually prevents child-murder! The reader will find this
matter discussed in an article elsewhere in this number,
entitled, "Comparative Morality of Catholic and Protestant
Countries."
The writer of the tract issued from 27 Bible House is annoyed by
the comparison which the author of the article in _The
Educational Monthly_ instituted between the violent crimes of
our ancestors and the stupendous sins which have supplanted them
in modern times. The comparison was close-fitting as the shirt of
Nessus, and quite as uncomfortable. The Bible House replies to
this with a contrast between the intellectual, material, moral,
and religious advancement of the masses in England, the United
States, and every other Protestant country, in the nineteenth
century, and the debasement of the people of Spain, Italy,
Mexico, and South America. In the first place, we reply that our
present controversy concerns popular education in the United
States now and for a hopeful future, and not the past nor the
present of European or South American nations. In the next place,
we say that this is but another evidence of the malignant spirit
to which we are required to intrust the training of our Catholic
youth. They are to be taught that the church of their fathers is
the nursery of ignorance and vice; and that all the knowledge,
civilization, and virtue which the world enjoys are the offspring
of the so-called Reformation. They are to learn nothing of the
true history of Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Belgium,
Switzerland, Austria, Bavaria, and the Catholic principalities of
Continental Europe. They are never to hear of the vast libraries
of Catholic learning; the rich endowments of Catholic education
all over the world for ages; the innumerable universities,
colleges, academies, and free schools established by their
church, or by governments under her auspices, throughout
Christendom. They are not to be told how Oxford and Cambridge
were founded by their Catholic forefathers and plundered from
their lawful possession. The Bible House tractarian would not
willingly read to them from the _Notes of a Traveller_ by
that eminent Scotch Presbyterian, Samuel Laing, such passages as
these:
"The comparative education of the Scotch clergy of the present
generation, that is to say, their education compared to that of
the Scotch people, is unquestionably lower than that of the
Popish clergy compared to the education of their people. This
is usually ascribed to the Popish clergy seeking to maintain
their influence and superiority by keeping the people in gross
ignorance.
{123}
But this opinion of our churchmen seems more orthodox than
charitable or correct. The Popish clergy have in reality less
to lose by the progress of education than our own Scotch
clergy; because their pastoral influence and their church
services being founded on ceremonial ordinances, come into no
competition or comparison whatsoever in the public mind with
anything similar that literature or education produces; and
are not connected with the imperfect mode of conveying
instruction which, as education advances, becomes obsolete and
falls into disuse, and almost into contempt, although
essential in our Scotch church. In Catholic Germany, in
France, Italy, and even Spain the education of the common
people in reading, writing, arithmetic, music, manners, and
morals is at least as generally diffused, and as faithfully
promoted by the clerical body, as in Scotland. It is by their
own advance and not by keeping back the advance of the people,
that the Popish priesthood of the present day seek to keep
ahead of the intellectual progress of the community in
Catholic lands; and they might, perhaps, retort on our
Presbyterian clergy, and ask if they, too, are in their
countries at the head of the intellectual movement of the age?
Education is in reality not only not repressed but is
encouraged by the Popish Church, and is a mighty instrument in
its hands and ably used. In every street in Rome, for
instance, there are at short distances public primary schools
for the education of the children of the lower and middle
classes in the neighborhood Rome, with a population of 158,678
souls, has 372 public primary schools with 482 teachers; and
14,099 children attending them. Has Edinburgh so many public
schools for the instruction of those classes? I doubt it.
Berlin, with a population about double that of Rome, has only
264 schools. Rome has also her university with an average
attendance of 660 students; and the Papal States with a
population of 2,500,000 (in 1846) contain seven universities.
Prussia with a population of 14,000,000 has but seven."
Neither would our Bible House tractarian teach his Catholic
pupils to discriminate between times, circumstances,
opportunities, characteristics of race, influences of climate,
ancient traditional habits, and the complicated causes which
affect the life and development of each nation; so as to contrast
Protestant England with Protestant Denmark, and Catholic France
with Catholic Portugal; or, again, to compare each of these with
itself at different epochs of its own history. They are not to be
told that Spain was never as powerful, covering the seas with her
commerce and the earth with her conquests, and lighting up Europe
by her genius, as at the time when she was the most thoroughly
Catholic and the least tainted with that revolutionary infidelity
which was born of Calvin and has grown to be a giant destroyer
under Mazzini and Garibaldi. They are to be told, however, that
the glory of a Christian nation is to be measured by its national
debt, its fleets and armies, its opium trade, its Coolie traffic,
its bankrupt laws, its work-houses, its prodigious fortunes
mocking squalid poverty, its twenty millions of people who own no
foot of land and its vicious nobles and gentry who firmly grasp
it all, its telegraphic wires and cables, its huge ships and
thundering factories, its luxurious merchants who toil not, and
its starving able-bodied paupers who can find no work to do, its
grotesque mixture of the beautiful and the vile, of the grand and
the infamous, of the light of the skies and the darkness of the
obscene coal-pits, of the pride of science and the ignorance of
barbarism, of the perfume of fashionable churches and the stench
of gin-shops, of the industrial slavery of great towns and the
rotting idleness of vast lazar-houses, which make up the boasted
civilization of haughty England, and extort from the Bible House
the prayerful cry, "_Thank God, we are not like unto these
Romish Publicans!_" Happy Pharisees! we certainly do not
desire to disturb their self-complacency; but we wish to teach
our Catholic children that the simple habits, the earnest piety,
the manly truth and courage of the little Catholic Republic of
San Marino, which has preserved its liberties and independence
for over eight hundred years without losing its religion, are for
the citizens of this great democratic empire a more profitable
study than the doctrines of Malthus or the history of
cotton-gins.
{124}
As we have said in our former articles, we already have here
quite enough of the material, and a superabundance of animal
spirits and vigor; and that what we stand in need of is a
well-defined faith, moral duties clearly understood, and habits
of practical virtue firmly fixed in the daily life of all the
people, Without that, even temporal prosperity must be
evanescent; as it was with all heathen nations that have
successively ruled the world and perished. Without that, temporal
prosperity is a curse, and not a blessing; for what will it
profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?
Men make nations; and nationalities are of no value before God,
except only in so far as they conduce to the end of each
individual man's creation. The Indian who goes to heaven from his
wigwam in the forest attains his end. The philosopher who goes to
hell from his palace in London or Paris has wofully miscalculated
the worth of all human philosophy, statesmanship, and national
grandeur, as the idols of his worship. The pagans measured human
life and society by the standard of the Bible House, No. 27, if
we are to judge it by this tract!
So also, according to this tract, our Catholic children should be
taught in the schools that Voltaire became an infidel
_because_ he had been a Catholic and was trained at a Jesuit
college. It will nowhere appear in the lesson that he became an
infidel because he rebelled against the teachings of his church,
and renounced the maxims of his Jesuit tutors. When he so
zealously defended his thesis in vindication of Julian the
Apostate, his own apostasy was foretold by his master. His death
was the answer to his life. In his agony he called for a priest;
but three-score years of blasphemy had won to him the avenging
disciples who then encircled his bed like a wall of fire; and no
priest could reach the dying enemy of Christ!
This tract would also teach our children in the schools that it
was the teachings of the "Romish Church" which drove
revolutionary France from the altars of God. It would not be
explained to them how that revolutionary rage was but the
outburst of a volcano of passion which had smouldered during ages
of long suffering under the rule of kings and nobles; and that
the instincts of the people remained so true, that in the very
same generation they returned, like the people of Israel, to the
worship of God; and rushed to the altars of their fathers with
tears of repentance and joy. _They did not become
Protestants!_ How has it been with the descendants of the
godly men of Plymouth Rock? Quietly and with exquisite decorum
they have settled down into deists, pantheists, freethinkers,
free-lovers, spiritualists, and philosophers! Will they go back
to Puritanism?
"Facilis descensus Averni!"
The tract tells our children that Gibbon left the Protestant
Church for the Catholic, and finally landed in infidelity. Why
did he not go back to Protestantism?
The tract also tells our children that this is a Protestant
country; which means that all its glories are Protestant, and
that the Catholic, with Italy and Spain before his eyes, should
be thankful that he is tolerated here. Are our children to learn
this lesson at the schools?
{125}
Now, in the first place, if Bishop Coxe and other Protestant
witnesses are reliable,[Footnote 47] our Bible House friends may
as well begin to prepare their nerves to see our great country
become Catholic, at least as much of it as will remain Christian
at all. Perhaps they will then value the wisdom and liberality of
that admonitory sentence in the article of _The Educational
Monthly_ which reads thus:
[Footnote 47: See page 61 of this number.]
"We are quite sure that if the Catholics were the majority in
the United States, and were to attempt such an injustice," (as
that involved in this school question.) "our Protestant
brethren would cry out against it, and appeal to the wise and
liberal examples of Prussia and England, France and Austria!
Now, is it not always as unwise as it is unjust to make a
minority taste the bitterness of oppression? Men governed by
the law of divine charity will bear it meekly and seek to
return good for evil; but all men are not docile; and
majorities change rapidly and often, in this fleeting world! Is
it not wiser and more politic, even in mere regard to social
interests, that all institutions intended for the welfare of
the people should be firmly based upon exact and equal justice?
This would place them under the protection of fixed habit,
which in a nation is as strong as nature; and it would save
them from the mutations of society. The strong of one
generation may be the weak of the next; and we see this
occurring with political parties within the brief spaces of
presidential terms. Hence we wisely inculcate moderation and of
retribution."
In the next place, although the present majority of the American
people are non-Catholic, we deny that they are Protestants, as a
nation, in a political sense. The institutions of the country are
neither Catholic nor Protestant. They recognize no one faith more
than another. Christian morality is accepted as the basis of
public and private duties by common consent; that is all.
Religious liberty was not born of the theocracy of New England.
Hancock and Adams, under the lead of Jefferson, departed very far
from the instincts of Calvinism and the traditions of Plymouth
Rock when they laid the foundations of this government; and this
is one of the things which we certainly intend to have our
children taught. We do not intend that they shall be "poor boys
at the feast," humbly thankful for such crumbs as our Bible House
friends may magnanimously bestow upon the "Romish aliens;" but
they shall be told to hold up their heads, with the full
consciousness that they are American citizens, the peers of all
others, and in no way disqualified, by the doctrines or morals of
their church, to perform every duty as faithfully and as ably as
any other men of any other creed. They shall not be terrified
with the "_raw head and bloody bones_" of "degraded Italy,"
"besotted Spain," and the other terrible examples of the
destroying influence of their old mother church. We shall teach
them not to trust any morality which does not rest upon a clear
faith; and we shall show them how that faith commands obedience
to lawful authority, purity of motive in all public acts, and
universal charity for all men.
Some of our readers may be surprised that we have devoted so much
space to this tract. Our motive should be apparent. We said, in
the beginning of this article, that this tract sounds like the
voice of one of the two classes of opponents who are arrayed
against us on this question; and that in itself it affords a
perfect illustration of our main argument, which is this, clearly
stated in the following paragraph from the article in _The
Educational Monthly_:
"And more than this, Catholics know by painful experience that
history cannot be compiled, travels written, poetry, oratory,
or romance inflicted upon a credulous public, without the
stereotyped assaults upon the doctrines, discipline, and
historical life of their church.
{126}
From Walter Scott to Peter Parley, and from Hume, Gibbon, and
Macaulay to the mechanical compilers of cheap school
literature, it is the same story told a thousand times oftener
than it is refuted; so that the English language, for the last
two centuries, may be said without exaggeration to have waged
war against the Catholic Church. Indeed, so far as European
history is considered, the difficulty must always be
insurmountable; since it would always be impossible for the
Catholic and Protestant to accept the same history of the
Reformation or of the Papal See, or the political, social, and
moral events resulting from or in any degree connected with
those two great centres and controlling causes. Who could
write a political history of Christendom for the last three
hundred years and omit all mention of Luther and the pope? And
how is any school compendium of such history to be devised for
the use of the Catholic and Protestant child alike?"
Now, it is very well understood that, with all their doctrinal
differences and sectarian antipathies, all the Protestant sects
can nevertheless, as a general rule, accept any Protestant
history of the so-called Reformation, and of the wars,
diplomacies, public events, and moral results springing from or
connected with that episode in the religious annals of our race;
but can Catholics accept such? Will you compel Catholic parents
to accept for their children histories written in the spirit of
this Bible House tract, which tells us (p. 3.) that the Catholic
faith "_taught the people that a Romish priest is to them in
the place of God; that a Romish priest can create his
Creator!_"
The very encyclopedia, quoted by our tractarian is another
Roundhead trooper armed against the papal anti-Christ! And so,
the bright Catholic boy will be amused with the antics of the
feasting and fighting monk in _Ivanhoe_; whilst graver
calumnies will convince him that the church of his fathers, and
of the great-grandfathers of her modern revilers, is truly a den
of thieves and a house of abominations.
It may as well be distinctly understood, once and for all, that
we cannot consent that our children shall receive secular
education without religious training; and that we understand very
well that such religious knowledge as we desire them to possess
cannot be imparted by those who are hostile to us. We intend also
to teach them to respect and uphold all the rights, social,
political, and religious, of their fellow-citizens, upon the
plain injunction of the Scriptures that they shall do unto others
precisely as they would have others do unto themselves. At the
same time we will teach them to love and revere their ancient
mother church, as the custodian for fifteen hundred years of that
Bible which she is falsely accused by this tract of
"_fearing;_" as the munificent patroness of every art and
the mistress of every science; as the friend and supporter of
liberty when united to order and justice; as the enemy of pride,
license, and disobedience to lawful authority; as the guardian of
the sanctity of marriage against the pagan concupiscence of the
divorce courts; as the sword of vengeance uplifted over the heads
of the child-murdering destroyers of populations; in fine, as the
hope and future salvation of this republic and all its precious
endowments of personal manhood, honor, virtue, and faith, and all
its national institutions of self-governing popular sovereignty,
equal rights, and faithful citizenship, based, not upon infidel
revolutionary "_fraternity_," but upon a noble Christian
brotherhood. Certainly, even if we were mistaken in our estimate
of the fruitfulness and power of the Catholic faith, it would be
no less an evidence of our sincere patriotism, that we are
anxious to impress upon the children of the church the conviction
that in faithfully serving their country they are only obeying
the commands of their religion.
{127}
As we do not intend that our children shall be either untaught or
mistaught in regard to this sublime knowledge and duty, we shall
insist on educating them ourselves, with or without receiving our
just share of the public taxes, to which we do contribute very
largely, the declaration of the Bible House tract to the contrary
notwithstanding.
We have devoted more space to this first, class of objectors than
they could claim from our courtesy, because we believe that they
nominally represent many honest men who will cheerfully admit the
truth when they see it.
There is another and a far different class of persons who take
issue with us upon this question, and for whom we entertain a
perfect respect--first, because they treat the subject with
evident fairness and commendable civility; and secondly, because
from their stand-point, there would appear to be much good reason
in their objections to our claim. It gives us very great pleasure
to use all our honest endeavors to remove their difficulties.
This class is represented by the editorial articles which
appeared in _The Chicago Advance, The Troy Daily Press_, and
several other papers, criticising the article of _The
Educational Monthly_. The objections may be summed up as
follows:
_First_, (and the most important.) That denominational
education would prevent the complete amalgamation or
"unification" of American citizenship, and tend to increase
sectarian bitterness, to the prejudice of republican
institutions.
_Secondly_. That it would destroy the harmony and efficiency
of the general school system.
_Thirdly._ That the Catholic people are richer in the jewels
of the Roman matron, _their children_, than they are in the
_images of Caesar_, the coin of the country! and that
therefore they would draw from the common fund an amount much in
excess of the taxes paid by them; which would not be just.
We shall candidly consider these objections in the order in which
we have stated them.
As to the first: It would be fortunate, in a temporal point of
view, if all the people were of one mind in religion, especially
if they happen to have the true faith; inasmuch as nothing so
conduces to the general harmony and good will as the total
absence of all religious strife. But we see that such a state of
things cannot be hoped for here. Not only is the community
divided into Protestants, Catholics, and a large body of citizens
professing no faith at all, but the Protestant community itself
is subdivided into innumerable conflicting sects. In defiance of
any system of public education, these various religious
organizations will always be widely separated from each other,
and from the Catholic Church, on questions of doctrinal belief.
The issue then remains nakedly before us, Shall public education
be entirely divorced from revealed religion, and shall we commit
the morals of our children to the saving influences of a little
"_reading, writing, and arithmetic;_" or, shall we have them
educated in some form or another of practical Christianity? The
arguments on this point have been so fully elaborated in our
articles heretofore published, that it would be superfluous to
repeat them now. We may, however, recall to mind the conclusive
evidence afforded us of the correctness of our theory by the
actual experience of such governments as those of England,
France, Prussia, and Austria; under which, as we have shown in
those articles, the denominational system is carried out to the
fullest extent, producing harmony, instead of discord, in
populations composed, as here, of numerous religious bodies. It
is an old adage that one fact is worth a dozen arguments.
{128}
We find that, after long years of earnest study of this difficult
question, and after exhausting every half-way expedient, the
statesmen of the countries we have named adopted with singular
unanimity the views which we are presenting for the serious and
candid consideration of the American public. We shall quote
briefly from a few of those statesmen who are well-known leaders
of opinion in the European Protestant world.
Lord Derby: "Public education should be considered as inseparable
from religion;" the contrary system is declared by him to be "the
realization of a foolish and dangerous idea."
Mr. Gladstone: "Every system which places religious education in
the background is pernicious."
Lord John Russell insisted that in the normal schools, which he
proposed to have established, "religion should regulate the
entire system of discipline."
M. de Raumer: "They have acquired in Prussia a conviction, which
becomes daily more settled, that the fitness of the primary
school depends on its intimate union with the church." In 1854,
he writes that "education should repose upon the basis of
Christianity, the true support of the family, of the commune, and
of the state."
M. Guizot, the former very eminent Protestant prime minister of
France, deserves to be specially quoted, although we are but
repeating the extracts which we gave in another article. His
words should be written in letters of gold. Let the enemies of
religious education, if they can, present a satisfactory answer
to this superb declaration:
"In order to make popular education truly good and socially
useful, it must be fundamentally religious. I do not simply
mean by this, that religious instruction should hold its place
in popular education, and that the practices of religion should
enter into it; for a nation is not religiously educated by such
petty and mechanical devices. It is necessary that national
education should be given and received in the midst of a
religious atmosphere, and that religious impressions and
religious observances should penetrate into all its parts.
Religion is not a study or an exercise to be restricted to a
certain place, and a certain hour; it is a faith and a law,
which ought to be felt everywhere, and which after this manner
alone can exercise all its beneficial influence upon our minds
and our lives."
The first Napoleon, the restorer of order and religion in France,
influenced, at the time, merely by human considerations, and
speaking only as a wise lawgiver, and not as a practical
Christian, insisted upon the necessity of making the precepts of
religion the basis of education in the university, whose halls
had echoed the blasphemous unbelief of the disciples of Voltaire.
At our very door, we have likewise the judgment and example of
our Canadian neighbors, demonstrating the feasibility of
connecting secular education with the most thorough instruction
in the doctrines and practices of the different churches. Such
opinions and facts should have some weight with our friends here
who are fearful of the proposed experiment.
{129}
We know, by our own personal experience, that young men educated
at the exclusively Catholic College of Mt. St. Mary's, in
Maryland, and other young men, graduates of Yale and Princeton,
where Catholics are rarely if ever seen, meet afterward in the
world of business or politics, and immediately learn to value
each other according to intrinsic personal worth, and to exchange
all the mutual courtesies and discharge all the reciprocal duties
of social life. It is the same with Catholics and Protestants
educated together at the many Catholic colleges in the United
States, where the Catholic pupils are nevertheless invariably
instructed, with the utmost exactness, in all the doctrines and
practices of their church. There are thousands of such living
witnesses throughout the country, ready to attest the correctness
of our statement. It proves this, (what _we_ know to be true
without the proof,) that the education received by Catholics at
their own schools, whilst rigidly doctrinal, uniformly inculcates
charity, urbanity, and every duty of good citizenship. There is
not, therefore, and never can be any difficulty, on the part of
Catholics, to meet their Protestant fellow-citizens in all the
relations of life, private and public, with the utmost frankness,
fraternity, and confidence, provided that they are not repelled
by harshness or chilled by distrust. Their religion teaches them
that such is their duty. Certainly, if such happy results are
realized even in England, Prussia, and Austria, where all
barriers, whether social or religious, are traditionally more
difficult to surmount, how can it be that we must expect
animosities to be engendered under the free action and the
liberal intercourse of our republican society?
We must, therefore, consider the fear expressed by this first
objection as wholly groundless. But even were it otherwise, what
then? Should we, therefore, sacrifice to such an apprehension the
far more momentous considerations that our republican,
self-governing community can never safely trust itself in the
great work of perpetuating the liberties of a Christian nation
without planting itself upon the morality of the Gospel; that the
revealed doctrines of Christ are the foundation of his moral
code, and that to practise the one faithfully the people must be
taught to believe the other firmly; and that religion so taught,
as M. Guizot admirably expresses it, "is not a study or an
exercise, to be restricted to a certain place and a certain hour;
it is a faith and a law which ought to be felt everywhere;" and
that "national education should be given and received in the
midst of a religious atmosphere!"
What would the advantage of a more perfect amalgamation or
unification of citizenship avail us, if, to obtain it, we were to
strike from under our institutions the only solid basis upon
which they can rest with any hope whatever of being able to
withstand the rude shocks of time, to which all mortal works are
subject, and which destroyed the grandest structures of pagan
power, solely because they rested upon human wisdom and human
virtue, unaided by revealed religion and supernatural grace? We
cannot, therefore, admit any force in the first objection.
As to the second: How can the harmony or efficiency of the school
system be disturbed by permitting a school to be organized for
Catholic children in any district or locality where the requisite
number may be found to render it practicable, in accordance with
the general policy of the law? It is presumed that the law
contemplates the education of all these children, and we cannot
see that the harmony of the system consists in putting them into
any one school-room rather than another. It is not proposed to
withdraw them from the general supervision of the state, or to
deny to the state the authority to regulate the standard of
education, and to see that its requirements are complied with.
This is done in every one of the countries of which we have
spoken.
{130}
No one is so unreasonable as to expect that separate schools
shall be organized where the number of pupils may be below a
reasonable uniform standard; as it is not proposed to increase
the expense of the system. On the contrary, as far as concerns
the education of our Catholic children in the city of New York,
we propose to reduce the cost considerably, as we shall explain
before we close this article. It is said that the several
Protestant denominations may demand the same privilege. Suppose
that they do. If they have a sufficient number of children in any
particular locality for the proper organization of a separate
school under the law, and are willing to fulfil its requirements,
how can the general system be impaired by allowing them to do so?
This is the condition annexed to the privilege in all those
countries which have adopted this liberal policy. The proposition
seems too plain for argument. When a college contains five
hundred boys, two hundred may be classed in the higher division,
three hundred in the lower, and each may have separate
playgrounds and recitation halls. So, if a district contains two
hundred of one faith, and three hundred of another, or of several
other creeds, surely the two hundred may be organized into one
school and the three hundred into another, or into several
others, according to the standard of numbers, as may be required
by the law. The whole question, therefore, is purely one of
distribution, not at all above the capacity of a drill-sergeant!
The same number of children would be educated, probably in the
same number of schools, and at the same cost, as now. The course
of secular education prescribed by the state could be rigidly
enforced in all such schools without assailing the conscience of
any one, because we suppose that the state would not object that
Catholics should learn English history from Lingard, whilst
others might prefer Hume and Macaulay. We presume that there
would be no disagreement in regard to reading, writing,
arithmetic, mathematics, natural philosophy, and those things
which constitute the general studies of primary and high schools.
It is only with such that the state has any right to intermeddle,
and it is only such that the state professes to secure to its
pupils. The state may say, "The public welfare requires that the
citizens of a self-governing nation shall receive sufficient
intellectual culture to enable them to discharge their duties
understandingly;" but the state has no right to say that its
pupils shall take their knowledge and form their opinions of the
great moral events of history from D'Aubigné or from Cardinal
Bellarmin. It was this that troubled the great Catholic and
Protestant governments of Europe, until experience discovered to
them the simple solution of the difficulty which we are so
earnestly endeavoring to commend to the acceptance of the
American people. Have we not at least a right to expect that our
motives will not be misrepresented; and that we shall be believed
when we say that we are not hostile to the public schools, but,
on the contrary, most earnestly anxious to secure for them the
widest usefulness and the greatest efficiency. We know that that
cannot be if religion be excluded; and that it must be excluded
where so many conflicting creeds confront each other.
As to the third: If it were true that the Catholic people
contributed almost nothing to the school fund, as is no doubt
sincerely believed by some who are not disposed to do us
injustice, a very serious question would, nevertheless, be
suggested by such a statement as this, which we copy from the
article in _The Chicago Advance_ already referred to:
{131}
"Our American population is principally Protestant, partly
Romish, slightly Jewish, _and increasingly rationalistic or
infidel_." Now, it is unquestionably true that the infidels in
this country can count but very few amongst their number who ever
knelt at a Catholic altar. Still, it is the theory of our
opponents that ignorance is, in itself, the source of all evil,
and the parent of impiety. It would certainly, therefore, be a
terrible calamity for the country if the children of six millions
of Catholics were deprived of education because their fathers
paid no taxes! To educate them would be unanimously regarded as a
public necessity; just as our police authorities remove contagion
at the public expense. If this view of public economy be true,
(and we need not dispute it in this argument,) then it follows
that the question of educating the Catholics is altogether
independent of what they do or do not contribute to the treasury.
Educated they must be; but suppose that they steadily refuse to
receive the knowledge offered, except upon the condition that
their consciences shall not be violated, and their parental
responsibilities disregarded, by subjecting their children to a
training inconsistent with the spirit of their religion; how
then? Will you consign the six millions to what you call the
moral death of ignorance, and suffer their carcasses to putrefy
upon the highway of your republican progress, poisoning the
fountains of your national life? Or will you prefer, in the
spirit of your institutions, to respect their conscientious
opinions, and to enable them, in the manner we have already
indicated, to coöperate with you in the full development of your
great and noble policy of universal popular education?
But, is it true that the Catholic people have no substantial
claim as tax-payers? Such might have been the case twenty-five
years ago; but every well-informed man knows that it is not so
now. Wealth, amongst the Catholic population, may perhaps be less
perceptible, because it is more diffused than it is amongst some
other bodies of our citizens; but no man who is familiar with the
cities of New York, Brooklyn, Baltimore, St. Louis, Chicago,
Milwaukee, and all others, from the sources of the Mississippi to
the Gulf, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific, or with the
Catholic farm-settlements of the Western States, can shut his
eyes to the fact that our Catholic people are thrifty and
well-to-do in the world; and that very many of them possess large
wealth. A member of the British Parliament, in a recent work upon
the Irish in America, has demonstrated this by undeniable
statistics. The same is true of Catholics here of all other
nationalities. We have not the time nor space, neither is it
necessary, to go into the details of this question. We suppose
our readers to be intelligent and well-informed, and that they
can readily recall to their minds the facts which substantiate
the truth of our assertion.
Are there those, sharp at a bargain, who will say, "Well! the
Catholics have the resources to educate themselves, and are doing
so now; let them continue the good work without calling upon the
state for any portion of the public funds, to which they
contribute by their taxes"? The dishonesty of such a proposition
is shown in the simple statement of it. It is true, as we have
said over and over again, that the Catholic people, after paying
their taxes to the state, have, with a generous self-sacrifice
amounting to heroism, established all over this country more
universities, colleges, academies, free schools, and orphan
asylums than have ever been founded by all the rest of the nation
through private contributions.
{132}
A people capable of such great deeds in the cause of civilization
and religion are not to be despised, _can never be
repressed_, and certainly should not be denied justice, when
they ask no more!
We hope that we have satisfactorily answered the objections of
those honest adversaries, with whom we will always be happy to
interchange opinions in a spirit of candor and sincere respect.
In order that our readers may obtain some idea of what the
Catholic people, unaided by the state, have done and are doing
for popular education in this country, we shall now present a
brief summary or synopsis from Sadlier's _Catholic
Directory_ for 1868-9.
In the archdiocese of Baltimore, there are ten literary
institutions for young men, twelve female academies, and nine
orphan asylums. We shall include the latter, in all instances,
because they invariably have schools attached for the instruction
of the orphans. There are in the same archdiocese about fifty
parish and free schools, the average attendance at which, male
and female, exceeds ten thousand.
In the archdiocese of Cincinnati, comprising a part of the State
of Ohio, there are three colleges, nine literary institutes for
females, two orphan asylums, and seventy-six parochial schools,
at which the average attendance is about twenty thousand.
In the archdiocese of New Orleans, there are twenty academies and
parochial schools for females, and ten academies and free schools
for males; attended by seven thousand five hundred scholars; and
one thousand four hundred orphans in the asylums.
The archdiocese of New York comprises the city and county of New
York, and the counties of Westchester, Putnam, Dutchess, Ulster,
Sullivan, Orange, Rockland, and Richmond. We have lately examined
a carefully prepared list of schools, more complete than that
given in the directory, by which it appears that there are
forty-nine, with a daily attendance of upward of twenty-three
thousand children. Of these schools, twenty-six are in the city
and county of New York, and have a daily attendance of over
nineteen thousand pupils. We shall have occasion to speak more
particularly of New York City at the close of this article.
In the archdiocese of San Francisco, there are three colleges,
three academies, thirty-two select and parochial schools, and two
orphan asylums, providing for nearly seven thousand children, of
whom about four hundred are orphans in the asylums, and upward of
three thousand are free scholars.
In the archdiocese of St. Louis, there are three literary
institutions for males, nine for females, and twenty parochial or
free schools, with seven thousand five hundred pupils in daily
attendance, besides nine hundred orphans in four asylums.
In the diocese of Albany, comprising that part of the State of
New York north of the forty-second degree and east of the eastern
line of Cayuga, Tompkins, and Tioga counties, there are six
academies for males, and six for females, seven orphan asylums,
ten select schools, and fifty-eight parochial schools, with an
average attendance of between ten and eleven thousand.
{133}
The diocese of Alton, comprising a portion of the state of
Illinois, has two colleges for males and six academies for
females, one orphan asylum, and fifty-six parochial schools, with
an attendance of about seven thousand five hundred scholars.
The diocese of Boston comprises the State of Massachusetts, and
has two colleges, three female academies, thirteen parochial or
free schools, five thousand eight hundred scholars, and five
hundred and fifty orphans in the asylums.
The diocese of Brooklyn comprises Long Island, and has one
college in course of erection, eight female academies, nineteen
parish schools, attended by over ten thousand scholars, and three
asylums, and one industrial school, containing seven hundred
orphans.
The diocese of Buffalo comprises twelve counties of the State of
New York, and has five literary institutions for males, sixteen
for females, three orphan asylums, and twenty-four parochial
schools, the attendance on which is specifically set down at
something over eight thousand; but it is stated (page 137) that
between eighteen and twenty thousand children attend the Catholic
schools of that diocese.
The diocese of Chicago comprises a portion of the State of
Illinois, and has eight academies for females, seven colleges and
academies for males, two orphan asylums, and forty-four parochial
schools, attended by over twelve thousand children.
The diocese of Cleveland, comprising a part of Ohio, contains one
academy for males and six for females, four asylums sheltering
four hundred orphans, and twenty free schools educating six
thousand scholars.
The diocese of Columbus, comprising a part of Ohio, has one
female academy, twenty-three parochial schools, with over three
thousand pupils; the exact number is not given.
The diocese of Dubuque comprises the State of Iowa, and
contains twelve academies and select schools, and parochial
schools at nearly all the churches of the diocese, educating ten
thousand children.
The diocese of Fort Wayne comprises a part of Indiana, and has
one college, one orphan asylum, eleven literary institutions, and
thirty-eight parish schools.
The diocese of Hartford comprises Rhode Island and Connecticut,
and contains three literary institutions for males and six for
females, twenty-one male and twenty-three female free schools,
the former attended by forty-two hundred, and the latter by
fifty-one hundred scholars, besides four hundred orphans in four
asylums.
The diocese of Milwaukee has two male and four female academies,
and thirty-five free schools, attended by between six and seven
thousand children, and four orphan asylums, containing over two
hundred orphans.
The diocese of Philadelphia contains eight academies and
parochial schools, under the charge of the Christian Brothers,
with twenty-five hundred scholars; forty-two other parochial
schools, attended by ten thousand pupils; twenty-four academies
and select schools for females; three colleges for males; and
five asylums, now containing seven hundred and seventy-three male
and female orphans.
The above statement embraces but nineteen of the fifty-two
dioceses and archdioceses in the United States, as it would
extend this article to an unreasonable length were we to
undertake to give the statistics of each; which, in regard to
many of them, are not sufficiently full in the _Directory_
to enable us to present satisfactory results.
{134}
Although in many of them the Catholic population is small and
sparse, our readers would nevertheless be surprised, no doubt, to
see how each one has struggled to supply itself with schools and
charitable institutions; and how amazingly they have succeeded,
when we consider the comparative scantiness of their resources.
We have, however, given enough to afford some idea to our
Protestant brethren of the vast interest which their Catholic
fellow-citizens have in this question of the public-school fund,
and of the great claim to the sympathy and good-will of the
country which they have established by their unparalleled efforts
in the cause of popular education.
As we have shown above, the Catholics of the archdiocese of New
York are educating twenty-three thousand of their children,
nineteen thousand within the city limits. The value of their
school property is placed at eleven hundred and fifty thousand
dollars. For the education of these twenty-three thousand, it is
estimated that their annual expense does not exceed one hundred
and thirty thousand dollars. The actual cost of the Catholic free
schools in New York City is put down at $104,430 for nineteen
thousand four hundred and twenty-eight scholars; which is about
five dollars and a half for each. We have before us the _Report
of the Board of Education for 1867_, from which it appears
that "the cost per head for educating the children in the public
schools under the control of the Board of Education for the year
ending 1867, based upon the cost for teachers' salaries, fuel and
gas, was $19.75 on the average attendance, or $8.50 on the whole
number taught." Adding the cost of books and stationery, each
pupil cost $21.76 on the average attendance, or $9.40 on the
whole number taught. The basis of the above calculation is:
_Teachers' salaries_, $1,497,180.88; _fuel_, (estimated
in a gross amount of expenses,) $163,315.12, and _gas_,
$13,998.96, making a total of $1,674,496.96. But in fact the
_actual expenditures_ for 1867 were $2,973,877.41; which
cover items that enter equally into the estimate we have given of
the Catholic expenditures for school purposes. In that year New
York City paid to the state as its proportion of school tax
$455,088.27; out of which it received back by apportionment
$242,280.04, a little more than one half, the rest being its
contribution to the counties; at the same time the city raised
for its own schools nearly $2,500,000; being the ten-dollar tax
for each scholar taught, and the one twentieth of one per cent of
the valuation of the real and personal property of the city. From
this our readers will gather some idea of what popular education
can cost, even with the best management.
It is well known that the Catholic people, through their church
organizations, and by the unpaid assistance of their religious
orders, such as the Christian Brothers, possess peculiar
advantages, which enable them to conduct the largest and
best-arranged schools at the smallest possible cost. Why will not
the state permit us to do it? Or, rather, why will not the state
do us the justice to reimburse the actual expenses which we make
in doing it? For it is a thing which we have already accomplished
to a great extent. Suppose that the city of New York was now
educating the nineteen thousand children who attend our schools;
at $19.75 each, it would cost $375,250; or at $8.50 each it would
cost $161,500, this last sum being sixty thousand dollars more
than we pay for the same!
{135}
We have shown, however, that this calculation cannot be made to
rest upon the basis given by the board, when you come to
institute a comparison between the expenditures for the public
schools and for ours. We are willing, nevertheless, to rest our
claim even upon such a contrast as those figures show; and we ask
the tax-payers of New York whether they are willing to follow the
lead of our adversaries and add a few hundred thousand dollars
extra to the annual taxes, for the satisfaction of doing us
injustice?
It is universally conceded that the school-rooms of New York are
dangerously over-crowded; and the Board of Education finds it
almost impossible to meet the growing necessities of the city.
There are still thousands of Catholics and Protestants unprovided
for. Give us the means, and we will speedily see that there is no
Catholic child in New York left without the opportunity of
education. We will do this upon the strictest terms of
accountability to the state. We will conduct our schools up to
the highest standard that our legislators may think proper to
adopt for the regulation of the public school system. We shall
never shrink from the most rigid official scrutiny and
inspection. We shall only ask that, whilst we literally follow
the requirements of the state as to the course of secular
education, we shall not be required to place in the hands of our
children books that are hostile to their faith, or to omit giving
to their young souls that spiritual food which we deem to be
essential for eternal life.
In all sincerity and truth we must say, that we have not yet
heard an argument which could shake our faith in the justice of
our cause; and that it will ultimately prevail, by the blessing
of Providence, we cannot possibly doubt; for, we have an abiding
confidence in the integrity and generosity of the American
people.
----------
The Omnibus Two Hundred Years Ago.
"I allays thought till to-day," remarked elegant John Thomas to
Jeames, as they were clinging to the back of their mistress's
carriage during a shopping drive in Bond street, London, "that
them 'air nuisances the 'busses was inwented in this 'ear
nineteen centry."
"I allays thinked so," responded Jeames sententiously.
"Not a bit," resumed John Thomas, "them air celebrated people the
Romans, the same as talked Lat'n, you know, 'ad plenty of 'em.
"'Ow d'you know that?" inquired Jaemes.
"I seed it this blessed morning in one o' master's Lat'n books. I
was a tryin' what I could make out of Lat'n, and I seed that word
'_omnibus_' ever so many times; and that's the correc' name
for 'bus--' _bus_ is the wulgar happerlation."
"I know that," growled Jeames.
"'Ow true it is, as King David singed to 'is 'arp, there's
nothing new under the sun!" exclaimed John Thomas
enthusiastically.
The carriage stopped at this moment and the interesting
conversation was interrupted.
{136}
But although people who understand more Latin than John Thomas
have not yet discovered that the Romans were acquainted with that
cheap and convenient mode of conveyance, they may have believed,
like him, that omnibuses were a modern invention, and may be
surprised to learn that, more than two hundred years ago, in the
reign of Louis the Fourteenth, Paris possessed for a time a
regular line of these now indispensable vehicles.
Nicolas Sauvage, at the sign of St. Fiacre, in the Rue St.
Martin, had been accustomed for many years to let out carriages
by the hour or day; but his prices were too high for any but the
rich; and so in the year 1657, a certain De Givry obtained
permission to "establish in the crossways and public places of
the city and suburbs of Paris such a number of two-horse coaches
and caleches as he should consider necessary; to be exposed there
from seven in the morning until seven in the evening, at the hire
of all who needed them, whether by the hour, the half-hour, day,
or otherwise, at the pleasure of those who wished to make use of
them to be carried from one place to another, wherever their
affairs called them, either in the city and suburbs of Paris, or
as far as four or five leagues in the environs," etc., etc.
This was a decided step in advance; but the prices of these
hackney coaches were still too high for the public generally, and
they consequently did not meet with the success anticipated. At
length, in 1662, appeared the really cheap and popular
conveyance--the omnibus--under the patronage of the Duke of
Roanès the Marquis of Sourches, and the Marquis of Crenan. These
noblemen solicited and obtained letters patent for a great
speculation--carriages to contain eight persons, at five sous the
seat, and running at fixed hours on specified routes.
"On the 18th of March, 1662," says Sauval, in his _Antiquities
of Paris_, "seven coaches were driven for the first time
through the streets that lead from the Porte St. Martin to the
palace of the Luxembourg; they _were assailed with stones and
hisses by the populace_."
This last assertion is much to be doubted; more especially as
Madame Perier, the sister of the great Pascal, has described in
an interesting letter to Arnauld de Pomponne, the general joy and
satisfaction that the appearance of these cheap conveyances gave
rise to in the people; a state of feeling which seems far more
probable than that which _stones and hisses_ would manifest.
Madame Perier writes as follows:
"PARIS, March 21, 1662.
"As every one has been appointed to some special office in this
affair of the coaches, I have solicited with eagerness and have
been so fortunate as to obtain that of announcing its success;
therefore, sir, each time that you see my writing, be assured
of receiving good news.
"The establishment commenced last Saturday morning, at seven
o'clock, with wonderful pomp and splendor. The seven carriages
provided for this route were first distributed. Three were sent
to the Porte St. Martin, and four were placed before the
Luxembourg, where at the same time were stationed two
commissaries of the Chatelet in their robes, four guards of the
high provost, ten or twelve of the city archers, and as many
men on horseback. When everything was ready, the commissaries
proclaimed the establishment, explained its usefulness,
exhorted the citizens to uphold it, and declared to the lower
classes that the slightest insult would be punished with the
utmost severity; and all this was delivered in the king's name.
{137}
Afterward they gave the coachmen their coats, which are
blue--the king's color as well as the city's color--with the
arms of the king and of the city embroidered on the bosom; and
then they gave the order to start.
"One of the coaches immediately went off, carrying inside one
of the high provost's guards. Half a quarter of an hour after,
another coach set off, and then the two others at the same
intervals of time, each carrying a guard who was to remain
therein all day. At the same time the city archers and the men
on horseback dispersed themselves on the route.
"At the Porte Saint Martin the same ceremonies were observed,
at the same hour, with the three coaches that had been sent
there, and there were the same arrangements respecting the
guards, the archers and the men on horseback. In short, the
affair was so well conducted that not the slightest confusion
took place, and those coaches were started as peaceably as the
others.
"The thing indeed has succeeded perfectly; the very first
morning the coaches were filled, and several women even were
among the passengers; but in the afternoon the crowd was so
great that one could not get near them; and every day since it
has been the same, so that we find by experience that the
greatest inconvenience is the one you apprehended; people wait
in the street for the arrival of one of these coaches, in order
to get in. When it comes, it is full; this is vexatious; but
there is a consolation; for it is known that another will
arrive in half a quarter of an hour; this other arrives, and it
also is full; and after this has been repeated several times,
the aspirant is at length obliged to continue his way on foot.
That you may not think that I exaggerate I will tell you what
happened to myself. I was waiting at the door of St. Mary's
Church, in the Rue de la Verrerie, feeling a great desire to
return home in a coach; for it is pretty far from my brother's
house. But I had the vexation of seeing five coaches pass
without being able to get a seat; all were full: and during the
whole time that I was waiting, I heard blessings bestowed on
the originators of an establishment so advantageous to the
public. As every one spoke his thoughts, some said the affair
was very well invented, but that it was a great fault to have
put only seven coaches on the route; that they were not
sufficient for half the people who had need of them, and that
there ought to have been at least twenty. I listened to all
this, and I was in such a bad temper from having missed five
coaches that at the moment I was quite of their opinion. In
short, the applause is universal, and it may be said that
nothing was ever better begun.
"The first and second days, there was a crowd on the Pont-Neuf
and in all the streets to watch the coaches pass; and it was
very amusing to see the workmen cease their labor to look at
them, so that no more work was done all Saturday throughout the
whole route than if it had been a holiday. Smiling faces were
seen everywhere, not smiles of ridicule, but of content and
joy; and this convenience is found so great that every one
desires it for his own quarter.
"The shopkeepers of the Rue St. Denis demanded a route with so
much importunity that they even spoke of presenting a petition.
Preparations were being made to give them one next week; but
yesterday morning M. de Roanès, M. de Crenan, and M. the High
Provost (M. de Sourches) being all three at the Louvre, the
king talked very pleasantly about the novelty, and addressing
those gentlemen, said,' And _our_ route, will you not soon
establish it?'
{138}
These words oblige them to think of the Rue St. Honoré, and to
defer for some days the Rue St. Denis. Besides this, the king,
speaking on the same subject, said that he desired that all
those who were guilty of the slightest insolence should be
severely punished, and that he would not permit this
establishment to be molested.
"This is the present position of the undertaking. I am sure you
will not be less surprised than we are at its great success; it
has far surpassed all our hopes. I shall not fail to send you
exact word of every pleasant thing that happens, according to
the office conferred on me, and to supply the place of my
brother, who would be happy to undertake the duty if he could
write.
"I wish with all my heart that I may have matter to write to
you every week, both for your satisfaction and for other
reasons that you can well guess. I am your obedient servant,
G. PASCAL."
Postscript in the handwriting of Pascal, and very probably the
last lines he ever traced: he died in August of the same year:
"I will add to the above, that the day before yesterday, at the
king's _petit coucher_, a dangerous assault was made
against us by two courtiers distinguished by their rank and
wit, which would have ruined us by turning us into ridicule,
and would have given rise to all sorts of attacks, had not the
king answered so obligingly and so dryly with respect to the
excellence of the undertaking, so that they speedily put up
their weapons. I have no more paper. Adieu--entirely yours."
Sauval affirms that Pascal was the inventor of this cheap coach,
and Madame de Sévigné seems to allude to the enterprise in a
passage of one of her letters which commences "_apropos_ of
Pascal." It is certain that he and his sister were pecuniarily
interested in the speculation, and it is more than probable that
it was he who induced his rich friend the Duke of Roanès, to take
so prominent a part in the undertaking. But we must not consider
Pascal in the light of a vulgar speculator--earthly interests
affected him but little personally--deeds of charity, the many
ills and pains of premature old age, and the sad task of watching
over a life always on the brink of extinction, almost wholly
engrossed his thoughts during his last years. He saw in this
affair an advantage to the public in general, and if any
pecuniary profits resulted, his share was intended for the
benefit of the poor, as is very evident by the following extract
from the little work Madame Perier dedicated to the memory of her
brother.
"As soon as the affair of the coaches was settled, he told me
he wished to ask the farmers for an advance of a thousand
francs to send to the poor at Blois. When I told him that the
success of the enterprise was not sufficiently assured for him
to make this request, he replied that he saw no inconvenience
in it, because, if the affair did not prosper, he would repay
the money from his estate, and he did not like to wait until
the end of the year, because the necessities of the poor were
too urgent to defer charity. As no arrangement could be made
with the farmers, he could not gratify his desire. On this
occasion we perceived the truth of what he had so often told
me, that he wished for riches only that he might be able to
help the poor; for the moment God gave him the hope of
possessing wealth, even before he was assured of it, he began
to distribute it."
{139}
In the ninth volume of the _Ordonnances de Louis XIV._, we
find, concerning the establishment of coaches in the city of
Paris, that these cheap conveyances are permitted "for the
convenience of a great number of persons ill-accommodated, such
as pleaders, infirm people, and others, who, not having the means
of hiring chairs or carriages because they cost a pistole or two
crowns at least the day, can thus be carried for a moderate price
by means of this establishment of coaches, which are always to
make the same journeys in Paris from one quarter to another, the
longest at five sous the seat, and the others less; the suburbs
in proportion; and which are always to start at fixed hours,
however small the number of persons then assembled, and even
empty, if no person should present himself, without obliging
those who make use of this convenience to pay more for their
places," etc.
These regulations are similar to those of our modern omnibus; but
the quality of the passengers was more arbitrary; for in the
tenth volume of this same _Register_, we find it enacted
that "Soldiers, Pages, Lacqueys and other gentry in Livery, also
Mechanics and Workmen shall not be able to enter the said
coaches," etc., etc.
The first route was opened on the 18th of March; the second on
the 11th of April, running from the Rue Saint Antoine to the Rue
Saint Honoré, as high as St. Roch's church. On this second
opening, a placard announced to the citizens that the directors
"had received advice of some inconveniences that might annoy
persons desirous of making use of their conveyances, such, for
instance, when the coachman refuses to stop to take them up on
the route, even though there are empty places, and other similar
occurrences; this is to give notice that all the coaches have
been numbered, and that the number is placed at the top of the
moutons, on each side of the coachman's box, together with the
fleur de lis--one, two, three, etc., according to the number of
coaches on each route. And so those who have any reason to
complain of the coachman, are prayed to remember the number of
the coach, and to give advice of it to the clerk of one of the
offices, so that order may be established."
The third route, which ran from the Rue Montmartre and the Rue
Neuve Saint Eustache to the Luxembourg Palace, was opened on the
22d of May of the same year. The placard which conveys the
announcement to the public, gives notice also, "that to prevent
the delay of money-changing, which always consumes much time, no
gold will be received."
Every arrangement having thus been made to render these cheap
coaches useful and agreeable, they very soon became the fashion;
a three act comedy in verse, entitled, "The intrigue of the
coaches at five sous," written by an actor named Chevalier, was
even represented in 1662 at the Theatre of the Marais. An extract
from this play is given in the history of the French Theatre, by
the Brothers Parfaict.
But the ingenious and useful innovation on the old hackney-coach
system, though so well conducted and so well administered, so
highly protected, and so warmly welcomed, was not destined to
live long. After a very few years, the undertaking failed, and
the omnibus was forgotten for nearly two centuries! Sauval tells
us that Pascal's death was the cause of this misfortune; but the
coaches continued to prosper for three or four years after that
event.
{140}
"Every one," says Sauval, in a curious page of his
_Antiquities_, "during two years found these coaches so
convenient that auditors and masters of _comptes_,
counsellors of the Chatelet and of the court, made no scruple to
use them to go to the Chatelet or to the palace, and this caused
the price to be raised one sou; even the Duke of Enghien
[Footnote 48] has travelled in them. But what do I say? The king,
when passing the summer at Saint-Germain, whither he had
consented that these coaches should come, went in one of them,
for his amusement, from the old castle, where he was staying, to
the new one to visit the queen-mother. Notwithstanding this great
fashion, these coaches were so despised three or four years after
their establishment that no one would make use of them, and their
ill success was attributed to the death of Pascal, the celebrated
mathematician; it is said that he was the inventor of them, as
well as the leader of the enterprise; it is moreover assured that
he had made their horoscope and given them to the publicunder a
certain constellation whose bad influences he knew how to turn
aside."
[Footnote 48: Henri-Jules de Bourbon-Condé, son of the great
Condé.]
We can give no description of this ancient omnibus; no drawing or
engraving of it is believed to exist; but it is probable that it
resembled the coaches represented in the paintings of Van der
Meulan and Martin.
It is impossible to attribute to any other cause than that of the
arbitrary choice of passengers, the failure of an undertaking
which appeared to possess every element of success. The people
who _needed_ the cheap coach were debarred from the use of
it; the tired artisan returning from his hard day's work; the
jaded soldier hurrying to his barrack before the beat of the
tattoo that recalled him had ceased; the pale seamstress with her
bundle; each was refused the five sous lift, and had to foot the
weary way; while the aristocracy and rich middle class enjoyed
the ride, not as a social want, but as a fashionable diversion,
and tired of it after a time, as fashionable people even now tire
of everything fashionable. It was reserved for the marvellous
nineteenth century, so fruitful in good works, to endow us with
the true omnibus, that is, a carriage for the use of every one
indiscriminately, in which the gentleman and the laborer, the
rich man and the poor man can ride side by side. This really
_popular_ conveyance has now become in all highly civilized
communities so veritable a _necessity_ and habit that it can
never again fall and be forgotten like its faulty forerunner, or
the omnibus of two hundred years ago.
----------
New Publications.
TRAVELS IN THE EAST-INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO.
By Albert S. Brickmose, M.A.
With Illustrations. 1 vol. 8vo, pp. 553.
New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1869.
This elegantly got up volume of travel the author tells us, in
his preface, is taken from his journal, "kept day by day," while
on a visit to the islands described, the object of which visit
was to re-collect the shells figured in Rumphen's _Pariteit
Kamer_. The author travelled from Batavia, in Java, along the
north coast of that island to Samarang and Surabaya; thence to
Macassar, the capital of Celebes; thence south through Sapi
Strait, between Sumbawa and Floris, and eastward to the southern
end of Timur, (near the northwestern extremity of Australia;)
thence along the west coast of Timur to Dilli, and north to the
Banda Islands and Amboina.
{141}
Having passed several months in the Moluccas, or Spice Islands,
he revisited the Bandas, and ascended their active volcano.
Returning to Amboina, he travelled in Ceram and Buru, and
continued northward to Gilolo. Thence he crossed the Molucca
Passage to the Minahassa, or northern end of the Island of
Celebes, probably the most beautiful spot on the surface of our
globe.
Returning to Batavia, he proceeded to Padang, and thence made a
long journey through the interior of the island to the land of
the cannibals. Having succeeded in making his way for a hundred
miles through that dangerous people, he came down to the coast
and returned to Padang. Again he went up into the interior, and
examined all the coffee-lands. From Padang he came down to
Bencoolen, and succeeded in making his way over the mountains and
down the rivers to the Island of Banca, and was thence carried to
Singapore. This work opens a new field, hitherto but little
known, to the reader of books of travel and adventure. His
descriptions, if not always very vivid, are told in a clear,
unaffected manner, without that egotism so often found in books
of travel.
----------
The Instruments Of The Passion Of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
By the Rev. Dr. J. E. Veith,
Preacher at the Cathedral of Vienna.
Translated by Rev. Theodore Noethen,
Pastor of the Church of the Holy Cross. Albany, N. Y.
Boston: Patrick Donahoe.
Dr. Veith, a convert from Judaism, is one of the most
distinguished writers and preachers of Vienna. The present work
is rich in thought and original in style. It is one of a series
which the translator proposes to bring out in an English dress,
if he receives encouragement, as we hope he may. F. Noethen,
although a German, writes English remarkably well, and deserves
great credit for his zeal and assiduity in translating so many
excellent and practical works of piety. In point of excellence in
typography and mechanical execution, this book deserves to be
classed with the best which have been issued by the Catholic
press.
----------
The Life And Works Of St. AEngussius Hagiographus,
or Saint AEngus the Culdee, Bishop and Abbot at
Clonenagh and Dysartenos, Queens County.
By the Rev. John O'Hanlon.
Dublin: John F. Fowler,
3 Crow street. 1868.
For sale by the Catholic Publication Society, New York.
This tract is a treatise on the life and writings of an humble
and laborious monk of the early ages in Ireland, who published,
if we may use the expression, his _Felire,_ Fessology, or
Calendar of Irish saints, as long ago as 804. From the
biographical and historical value of this poetical work, St.
AEngus ranks among the very earliest of the historical writers of
modern Europe. In this view, no less than to draw attention to
one whose holy life induced the Irish church to ascribe his name
on the dyptics, it is well that the present generation should be
asked to pause and look upon this life, so humble, laborious, and
holy, and which so strongly commended him to the veneration of
succeeding ages. The Rev. Mr. O'Hanlon treats his subject
systematically, displaying great research and sound criticism,
and it is to be hoped that his treatise will induce some of the
publishing societies in Ireland to issue an edition of the works
of this venerated father of the Irish church.
The _Felire_ of St. AEngus consists of three distinct parts:
the first, the Invocation, containing five stanzas, implores the
grace of Christ on the work; the second, comprising 220 stanzas,
is a preface and conclusion to the main poem; the third part
contains 365 stanzas, one for each day of the year. They comprise
not only the saints peculiar to Ireland, but others drawn from
early martyrologies. This poem was regarded in the early Irish
church with great veneration, and the copies that have descended
to us have a running gloss or commentary on each verse, making it
a short biography of the saint briefly mentioned in the poem.
{142}
In this form its value has long been known to scholars, whose
frequent use of it shows the light it frequently helps to throw
on Irish history and topography. We trust that the work of the
Rev. Mr. O'Hanlon will not be fruitless.
----------
Essays And Lectures on,
1. The Early History of Maryland;
2. Mexico and Mexican Affairs;
3. A Mexican Campaign;
4. Homoeopathy;
5. Elements of Hygiene;
6. Health and Happiness.
By Richard McSherry, M.D., Professor of Principles and Practice
of Medicine, University of Maryland.
Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1869. Pp. 125.
The Early History Of Maryland.
The sketch of colonial Maryland is drawn with a masterly hand,
showing, in the first place, the author's thorough knowledge of
its history; and, secondly, the poetic language in which his
ideas are couched tell plainly how completely his heart is imbued
with love for his native Terra Mariae.
Dr. McSherry is right when he calls his State "the brightest gem
in the American cluster." To the Catholics of this broad land it
is surely so; and the names of Sir George Calvert and his noble
sons, the founders of this "Land of the Sanctuary," should be
enshrined with love and reverence in the hearts of all who
profess the old faith and appreciate our religious liberty.
Mexico And Mexican Affairs.
The article on "Mexico and Mexican Affairs" was written at the
suggestion of the editor of _The Southern Review_, and is a
synopsis of the political history of Mexico from the time of the
conquest to the tragical end of the ill-fated Prince Maximilian.
As a colonial possession of Spain, Mexico enjoyed a more quiet
existence and a more stable government than either before or
since that period of its history. "Churches, schools, and
hospitals were distributed over the land; good roads were made,
and, without going into detail, industrial pursuits were
generally in honor, and were rewarded with success."
Political revolution again agitated the country in the
commencement of this century, followed by the establishment of an
empire under Iturbide; this in turn gave place to a republican
form of government in 1824.
No stronger proof of the belief of our order-loving and
law-abiding neighbors in the republican doctrine of rotation in
office can be given than the fact that during the forty years of
the Republican government "_the record shows forty-six changes
in the presidential chair._" The accounts of revolution and
counter-revolution among the dominant spirits of that time beggar
description, and leave us to conclude that a frightful condition
of strife, desolation, and misery reigned throughout the entire
period. "The rulers of Mexico kept no faith with their own
people; none with foreigners or foreign nations. They gave
abundant cause for the declaration of war made against them by
England, France, and Spain, and for the provocation of the war by
France, when the other powers withdrew." The author describes the
inducements held out by the assembly of notables to Maximilian,
after the French occupation, to accept the throne; and how at
last he unfortunately acceded to the request, and sailed for Vera
Cruz in May, 1864. The subsequent career of this nobleman, who
had thus linked his fate with that of Mexico is feelingly
depicted. It was but a short period of three years from his
"splendid reception at Guadalupe, when about entering his
capital, to his fall by Mexican treachery, and subsequent murder
on the 19th of June, 1867." The author blames ex-Secretary Seward
for not preventing this tragical end of the amiable and highly
cultivated prince, and thinks that as the Indian Juarez had been
enabled to prosecute his illegal claim to the presidency by the
support and comfort derived from the United States, he would not
have dared refuse a claim for this boon, made in a proper spirit,
by Mr. Seward.
The names of Maximilian and his devoted, beautiful Carlotta will
always bring moisture to the eyes of those who can sympathize
with the afflictions and sufferings of their fellow-beings.
Mexico has commenced a new chapter of her history. True, the
preface so far is not encouraging; but let us hope her experience
in the past may cause a better record for the future.
{143}
A Mexican Campaign Sketch.
This is an interesting account of the author's travels, as
surgeon, with the army which, in 1847, under General Scott,
fought its way through the historical battles of Contreras,
Churubusco, Molino del Rey, to Chapultepec: and the final
entrance, on the 14th of September, to the Mexican capital. The
description of the appearance of the valley of Mexico, as the
army descended the mountain side, is very beautiful. The author
says, "The valley or basin of Mexico lay spread out like a
panorama of fairy land; opening, closing, and shifting, according
to the changing positions of the observers. At times nothing
would be visible but dark recesses in the mountain, or the grim
forest that shaded the road; when in a moment a sudden turn would
unfold, as if by magic, a scene that looked too lovely to be
real. It was an enchantment in nature; for, knowing as we did
that we beheld _bona fide_ lakes and mountains, plains and
villages, chapels and hamlets, all so bright, so clear, and so
beautiful, it still seemed an illusion of the senses, a dream, or
a perfection of art--nay, in the mountain circle we could see the
very picture-frame."
How long the mixed races of this beautiful country are to
continue their tragical and at times ludicrous efforts at
self-government is a problem to be solved in the future.
An Epistle On Homoeopathy.
The doctor's logical arguments in this article we would recommend
to the perusal of our friends who prefer the more palatable
medicine of that school,
Lecture On Hygiene.
A Lecture On Health And Happiness.
These lectures contain many sound practical hints for the general
reader whereby he may avoid many causes of disease, and prolong
his life to a natural limit. We give the doctor's testimony on
two interesting points. He says:
"Excesses at table are disastrous enough, and in this they are
worse than over devotion to Bacchus; namely, that they
undermine more slowly and more insidiously; but otherwise,
strong drinks are vastly worse. There are persons who think
wines and liquors essential to health; but as the rule, they
are useless at best; and at worst, destructive to soul, and
body, and mind. Strict total abstinence is generally, I might
say universally safe; while even temperate indulgence is rarely
safe or salutary." (P. 119.)
"Tobacco deserves the next place. It is most marvellous how
this nauseous weed has taken hold upon the affections of man.
It surely is of no benefit to health, but I dare not say it
conduces nothing to happiness. When I see an old friend take
his pipe, or cigar, after the labors of the day, and the
evening meal; when his good honest face beams beneath the
fragrant smoke which rises like incense, making a wreath around
his gray hairs; when his heart expands, and he becomes genially
social and confidential, I can hardly ask Hygeia to rob him of
his simple pleasure. A good cigar is almost akin to the 'cup
that cheers, yet not inebriates.' But honestly, tobacco is
pernicious in all its forms; not like whiskey, indeed, but
still pernicious." (P. 121.)
As an entirety, the doctor's book presents a charming diversity
of subjects, each in itself of sufficient interest to chain the
earnest attention of the reader, and well repay him for its
perusal.
----------
John M. Costello; Or, The Beauty Of
Virtue Exemplified In An American Youth.
Baltimore: John Murphy & Co. 1869.
This neat little volume contains a well-written memoir of a young
aspirant to the priesthood who died a few years ago at the
preparatory seminary of St. Charles.
There is a peculiar charm about the life of a pious Catholic boy
whose heart has always yearned after the realization of the
highest type of Christian virtue. Such a life presents a picture
of simple beauty, in which the smallest details present points of
more than common interest. One sees here how truly the
supernatural life of grace illumines and adorns the commonest
actions of the Christian, and clothes them with a merit that
purely human virtue would never gather from them. There is
nothing in the life of a St. Aloysius or a St. Stanislaus,
however insignificant or commonplace in the eyes of the world,
that can be deemed trivial or unworthy of record.
{144}
Whatever they do is a saintly act. Their words are the words of a
saint. This is the secret of the wonderful influence which the
history of these pure souls has exerted on the minds and hearts
of the thousands and tens of thousands to whom it has become
known. This thought was constantly before us while perusing the
present beautiful tribute to the memory of young Costello. It is
impossible to read the description of the most ordinary events of
the life of this holy child of God without emotion. What in
others of his age and general character might justly be unworthy
of note in him becomes worthy to be written in letters of gold.
We would say to all Catholic parents, among the hundreds of
volumes standing on the bookseller's shelves inviting purchase by
their gay bindings and prettily illustrated pages, and almost
forcing themselves into your hands as birthday or holiday
presents to your darling children, choose this one, and teach
them, by the winning example of such virtue as they will here see
presented to them, to emulate, not the daring exploits of some
lion-killer or wild adventurer, or, it may be, the imaginary
success of some fortunate youth in the pursuit of riches, but
rather the heroism, the piety, the humility, the chastity, the
self-renunciation of the Christian saint. All who love God and
have the spiritual interests of our Catholic youth at heart will
feel deeply grateful to the reverend author for having given to
the world his knowledge of a life so well calculated to edify and
inspire its readers with admiration of what is, after all, the
highest and best within the sphere of human aim, to lead a holy
life, and die, though it be in the flower of youth, the death of
a saint. Let us have more books like this one, that, with God's
blessing on the lessons they impart, we may have more such lives.
----------
P. F. Cunningham, Philadelphia, is about to publish _The
Montarges Legacy_, and _The Life of St. Stanislaus._
----------
Books Received.
From John Murphy & Co., Baltimore:
New editions of the following books:
Practical Piety set forth by St. Francis de Sales,
Bishop and Prince of Geneva.
1 vol. 12mo, pp. 360, $1.
A Spiritual Retreat of Eight Days.
By the Right Rev. John M. David, D.D.,
1 vol. 12mo. $1.
Kyriale; or, Ordinary of Mass: a Complete Liturgical Manual,
with Gregorian Chants, etc.; in round or square notes, each
$1.25.
The Holy Week: containing the Offices of Holy Week, from the
Roman Breviary and Missal, with the chants in modern notation.
$1.25.
Roman Vesperal: containing the complete Vespers for the whole
year, with Gregorian Chants in modern notation. $1.50.
From W. B. Kelly, Dublin:
The Catholic Church in America. A Lecture delivered before the
Historical and AEsthetical Society in the Catholic University
of Ireland.
By Thaddeus J. Butler, D.D., Chicago.
For sale by the Catholic Publication Society,
126 Nassau street. 25 cents.
From KELLY, PIET & Co., Baltimore:
The Wreath of Eglantine, and other Poems:
Edited and in part composed by Daniel Bedinger Lucas.
1 vol. 12mo, $1.50.
Eudoxia; a Picture of the Fifth Century.
Translated from the German of Ida, Countess Hahn Hahn.
1 vol. 12mo, $1.50.
From D. & J. Sadlier & Co.:
St. Dominic's Manual; or, Tertiary's Guide.
By two Fathers of the Order.
1 vol. 18mo, pp. 533.
From C. Darveau, Quebec, C. E.:
St. Patrick's Manual, for the use of Young People, prepared by
the Christian Brothers.
1 vol. 24mo, pp. 648.
From Leypoldt & Holt, New York:
The Fisher Maiden: a Norwegian Tale.
By Bjornstjerne Bjornson.
From the author's German edition, by M. E. Niles.
12mo, pp. 217, $1.25.
The Gain of a Loss: a Novel.
By the author of The Last of the Cavaliers.
1 vol. 12mo, pp. 439, $1.75.
From Clark & Maynard, New York:
A Manual of General History: being an Outline History of the
World from the Creation to the Present Time. Fully illustrated
with maps. For the use of academies, high-schools, and
families.
By John J. Anderson, A.M.
Pp. 400.
From Ivison, Phinney, Blakeman & Co., New York: A
Dictionary of the English Language, Explanatory, Pronouncing,
Etymological, and Synonymous.
Counting-House Edition.
With an appendix containing various useful tables. Mainly
abridged from the latest edition of the Qutarto Dictionary of
Noah Webster, LL. D.
By William G. Webster and William A. Wheeler.
Illustrated with more than three hundred engravings on wood.
Pp. 630.
From Longmans, Green, Reader & Dyer, London:
The Formation of Christendom. Part II.
By T. W. Allies.
1 vol. 8vo, pp. 495.
The Catholic Publication Society having made arrangements with
Mr. Allies to supply his book in America, will soon have this
volume for sale. Price, $6.
From James Duffy, Dublin:
The Life and Writings of the Rev. Arthur O'Leary.
By the Rev. M. B. Buckley.
1 vol. 12mo, pp. 410.
From W. W. Swayne, New York and Brooklyn:
The Poetical Works of Sir Walter Scott.
Vol. 1, paper, 25 cents.
From Harper & Brothers:
The Poetical Works of Charles G. Halpine.
With a Biographical Sketch and Explanatory Notes.
Edited by Robert B. Roosevelt.
1 vol. pp. 352.
-------
{145}
The Catholic World.
Vol. IX., No. 50.--May, 1869.
----------
The Woman Question.
[Footnote 49]
[Footnote 49:
1. _The Revolution_: New York. Weekly. Vol. III.
2. _Equal Rights for Women_. A Speech by George William
Curtis, in the Constitutional Convention at Albany, July 19,
1868.
3. _Ought Women to learn the Alphabet?_ By Thomas
Wentworth Higginson.]
The Woman Question, though not yet an all-engrossing question in
our own or in any other country, is exciting so much attention,
and is so vigorously agitated, that no periodical can very well
refuse to consider it. As yet, though entering into politics, it
has not become a party question, and we think we may discuss it
without overstepping the line we have marked out for
ourselves--that of studiously avoiding all party politics; not
because we have not the courage to discuss them, but because we
have aims and purposes which appeal to all parties alike, and
which can best be effected by letting party politics alone.
In what follows we shall take up the question seriously, and
treat it candidly, without indulging in any sneers, jeers, or
ridicule. A certain number of women have become, in some way or
other, very thoroughly convinced that women are deeply wronged,
deprived of their just rights by men, and especially in not being
allowed political suffrage and eligibility. They claim to be in
all things man's equal, and in many things his superior, and
contend that society should make no distinction of sex in any of
its civil and political arrangements. It will not, indeed, be
easy for us to forget this distinction so long as we honor our
mothers, and love our wives and daughters; but we will endeavor
in this discussion to forget it--so far, at least, as to treat
the question on its merits, and make no allowance for any real or
supposed difference of intellect between men and women. We shall
neither roughen nor soften our tones because our opponents are
women, or men who encourage them. The women in question claim for
women all the prerogatives of men; we shall, therefore, take the
liberty to disregard their privileges as women. They may expect
from us civility, not gallantry.
{146}
We say frankly in the outset that we are decidedly opposed to
female suffrage and eligibility. The woman's rights women demand
them both as a right, and complain that men, in refusing to
concede them, withhold a natural right, and violate the equal
rights on which the American republic professes to be based. We
deny that women have a natural right to suffrage and eligibility;
for neither is a natural right at all, for either men or women.
Either is a trust from civil society, not a natural and
indefeasible right; and civil society confers either on whom it
judges trustworthy, and on such conditions as it deems it
expedient to annex. As the trust has never been conferred by
civil society with us on women, they are deprived of no right by
not being enfranchised.
We know that the theory has been broached latterly, and defended
by several political journals, and even by representatives and
senators in Congress, as well as by _The Revolution,_ the
organ of the woman's rights movement, that suffrage and
eligibility are not trusts conferred by civil society on whom it
will, but natural and indefeasible rights, held directly from God
or nature, and which civil society is bound by its very
constitution to recognize, protect, and defend for all men and
women, and which they can be deprived of only by crimes which
forfeit one's natural life or liberty. It is on this ground that
many have defended the extension of the elective franchise and
eligibility to negroes and the colored races in the United
States, and hold that Congress, under that clause of the
Constitution authorizing it to guarantee to the several States a
republican form of government, is bound to enfranchise them. It
may or may not be wise and expedient to extend suffrage and
eligibility to negroes and the colored races hitherto, in most of
the States, excluded from the sovereign people of the country; on
that question we express no opinion, one way or the other; but we
deny that the negroes and colored men can claim admission on the
ground either of natural right or of American republicanism; for
white men themselves cannot claim it on that ground.
Indeed, the assumption that either suffrage or eligibility is a
natural right is anti-republican. The fundamental principle, the
very essence of republicanism is, that power is a trust to be
exercised for the public good or common weal, and is forfeited
when not so exercised, or when exercised for private and personal
ends. Suffrage and eligibility confer power to govern, which, if
a natural right, would imply that power is the natural and
indefeasible right of the governors--the essential principle of
all absolutism, whether autocratic, aristocratic, monarchical, or
democratic. It would imply that the American government is a
pure, centralized, absolute, unmitigated democracy, which may be
regarded either as tantamount to no government, or as the
absolute despotism of the majority for the time, or its right to
govern as it pleases in all things whatsoever, spiritual as well
as secular, regardless of vested rights or constitutional
limitations. This certainly is not American republicanism, which
has always aimed to restrain the absolute power of majorities,
and to protect minorities by constitutional provisions. It has
never recognized suffrage as a personal right which a man carries
with him whithersoever he goes, but has always made it a
territorial right, which a man can exercise only in his own
State, his own county, his own town or city, and his own ward or
precinct. If American republicanism recognized suffrage as a
right, not as simply a trust, why does it place restrictions on
its exercise, or treat bribery as a crime? If suffrage is my
natural right, my vote is my property, and I may do what I please
with it; dispose of it in the market for the highest price I can
get for it, as I may of any other species of property.
{147}
Suffrage and eligibility are not natural, indefeasible rights,
but franchises or trusts conferred by civil society; and it is
for civil society to determine in its wisdom whom it will or will
not enfranchise; on whom it will or will not confer the trust.
Both are social or political rights, derived from political
society, and subject to its will, which may extend or abridge
them as it judges best for the common good. Ask you who
constitute political society? They, be they more or fewer, who,
by the actual constitution of the state, are the sovereign
people. These, and these alone, have the right to determine who
may or may not vote or be voted for. In the United States, the
sovereign people has hitherto been, save in a few localities,
adult males of the white race, and these have the right to say
whether they will or will not extend suffrage to the black and
colored races, and to women and children.
Women, then, have not, for men have not, any natural right to
admission into the ranks of the sovereign people. This disposes
of the question of right, and shows that no injustice or wrong is
done to women by their exclusion, and that no violence is done to
the equal rights on which the American republic is founded. It
may or it may not be wise and expedient to admit women into
political, as they are now admitted into civil, society; but they
cannot claim admission as a right. They can claim it only on the
ground of expediency, or that it is necessary for the common
good. For our part, we have all our life listened to the
arguments and declamations of the woman's rights party on the
subject; have read Mary Wollstonecraft, heard Fanny Wright, and
looked into _The Revolution_, conducted by some of our old
friends and acquaintances, and of whom we think better than many
of their countrymen do; but we remain decidedly of the opinion
that harm instead of good, to both men and women, would result
from the admission. We say not this because we think lightly of
the intellectual or moral capacity of women. We ask not if women
are equal, inferior, or superior to men; for the two sexes are
different, and between things different in kind there is no
relation of equality or of inequality. Of course, we hold that
the woman was made for the man, not the man for the woman, and
that the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the
head of the church, not the wife of the husband; but it suffices
here to say that we do not object to the political
enfranchisement of women on the ground of their feebleness,
either of intellect or of body, or of any real incompetency to
vote or to hold office. We are Catholics, and the church has
always held in high honor chaste, modest, and worthy women as
matrons, widows, or virgins. Her calendar has a full proportion
of female saints, whose names she proposes to the honor and
veneration of all the faithful. She bids the wife obey her
husband in the Lord; but asserts her moral independence of him,
leaves her conscience free, and holds her accountable for her own
deeds.
Women have shown great executive or administrative ability. Few
men have shown more ability on a throne than Isabella, the
Catholic, of Spain; or, in the affairs of government, though
otherwise faulty enough, than Elizabeth of England, and Catharine
II. of Russia. The present queen of the British Isles has had a
most successful reign; but she owes it less to her own abilities
than to the wise counsels of her husbands Prince Albert, and her
domestic virtues as a wife and a mother, by which she has won the
affections of the English people.
{148}
Others have shown rare administrative capacity in governing
religious houses, often no less difficult than to govern a
kingdom or an empire. Women have a keener insight into the
characters of men than have men themselves, and the success of
female sovereigns has, in great measure, been due to their
ability to discover and call around them the best men in the
state, and to put them in the places they are best fitted for.
What women would be as legislators remains to be seen; they have
had little experience in that line; but it would go hard, but
they would prove themselves not much inferior to the average of
the men we send to our State legislatures or to our national
Congress.
Women have also distinguished themselves in the arts as painters
and sculptors, though none of them have ever risen to the front
rank. St. Catharine of Egypt cultivated philosophy with success.
Several holy women have shown great proficiency in mystic
theology, and have written works of great value. In lighter
literature, especially in the present age, women have taken a
leading part. They almost monopolize the modern novel or romance,
and give to contemporary popular literature its tone and
character; yet it must be conceded that no woman has written a
first-class romance. The influence of her writings, speaking
generally, has not tended to purify or exalt the age, but rather
to enfeeble and abase it. The tendency is to substitute sentiment
for thought, morbid passion for strength, and to produce a weak
and unhealthy moral tone. For ourselves, we own, though there are
some women whose works we read, and even re-read with pleasure,
we do not, in general, admire the popular female literature of
the day; and we do not think that literature is that in which
woman is best fitted to excel, or through which she exerts her
most purifying and elevating influences. Her writings do not do
much to awaken in man's heart the long dormant chivalric love so
rife in the romantic ages, or to render the age healthy, natural,
and manly. We say _awaken_; for chivalry, in its true and
disinterested sense, is not dead in the coldest man's heart; it
only sleepeth. It is woman's own fault, more than man's, that it
sleeps, and wakes not to life and energy.
Nor do we object to the political enfranchisement of women in the
special interest of the male sex. Men and women have no separate
interests. What elevates the one elevates the other; what
degrades the one degrades the other. Men cannot depress women,
place them in a false position, make them toys or drudges,
without doing an equal injury to themselves; and one ground of
our dislike to the so-called woman's rights movement is, that it
proceeds on the supposition that there is no inter-dependence
between men and women, and seeks to render them mutually
independent of each other, with entirely distinct and separate
interests. There is a truth in the old Greek fable, related by
Plato in the _Banquet_, that Jupiter united originally both
sexes in one and the same person, and afterward separated them,
and that now they are but two halves of one whole. "God made man
after his own image and likeness; male and female made he
_them_." Each, in this world, is the complement of the
other, and the more closely identified are their interests, the
better is it for both. We, in opposing the political
enfranchisement of women, seek the interest of men no more than
we do the interest of women themselves.
{149}
Women, no doubt, undergo many wrongs, and are obliged to suffer
many hardships, but seldom they alone. It is a world of trial, a
world in which there are wrongs of all sorts, and sufferings of
all kinds. We have lost paradise, and cannot regain it in this
world. We must go through the valley of the shadow of death
before re-entering it. You cannot make earth heaven, and there is
no use in trying; and least of all can you do it by political
means. It is hard for the poor wife to have to maintain a lazy,
idle, drunken vagabond of a husband, and three or four children
into the bargain; it is hard for the wife delicately reared,
accomplished, fitted to adorn the most intellectual, graceful,
and polished society, accustomed to every luxury that wealth can
procure, to find herself a widow reduced to poverty, and a family
of young children to support, and unable to obtain any employment
for which she is fitted as the means of supporting them. But men
suffer too. It is no less hard for the poor, industrious,
hardworking man to find what he earns wasted by an idle,
extravagant, incompetent, and heedless wife, who prefers gadding
and gossiping to taking care of her household. And how much
easier is it for the man who is reduced from affluence to
poverty, a widower with three or four motherless children to
provide for? The reduction from affluence to poverty is sometimes
the fault of the wife as well as of the husband. It is usually
their joint fault. Women have wrongs, so have men; but a woman
has as much power to make a man miserable as a man has to make a
woman miserable; and she tyrannizes over him as often as he does
over her. If he has more power of attack, nature has given her
more power of defence. Her tongue is as formidable a weapon as
his fists, and she knows well how, by her seeming meekness,
gentleness, and apparent martyrdom, to work on his feelings, to
enlist the sympathy of the neighborhood on her side and against
him. Women are neither so wronged nor so helpless as _The
Revolution_ pretends. Men can be brutal, and women can tease
and provoke.
But let the evils be as great as they may, and women as greatly
wronged as is pretended, what can female suffrage and eligibility
do by way of relieving them? All modern methods of reform are
very much like dram-drinking. The dram needs to be constantly
increased in frequency and quantity, while the prostration grows
greater and greater, till the drinker gets the _delirium
tremens_, becomes comatose, and dies. The extension of
suffrage in modern times has cured or lessened no social or moral
evil; and under it, as under any other political system, the rich
grow richer and the poor poorer. Double the dram, enfranchise the
women, give them the political right to vote and be voted for;
what single moral or social evil will it prevent or cure? Will it
make the drunken husband temperate, the lazy and idle industrious
and diligent? Will it prevent the ups and downs of life, the fall
from affluence to poverty, keep death out of the house, and
prevent widowhood and orphanage? These things are beyond the
reach of politics. You cannot legislate men or women into virtue,
into sobriety, industry, providence. The doubled dram would only
introduce a double poison into the system, a new element of
discord into the family, and through the family into society, and
hasten the moment of dissolution. When a false principle of
reform is adopted, the evil sought to be cured is only
aggravated. The reformers started wrong.
{150}
They would reform the church by placing her under human control.
Their successors have in each generation found they did not go
far enough, and have, each in its turn, struggled to push it
farther and farther, till they find themselves without any church
life, without faith, without religion, and beginning to doubt if
there be even a God. So, in politics, we have pushed the false
principle that all individual, domestic, and social evils are due
to bad government, and are to be cured by political reforms and
changes, till we have nearly reformed away all government, at
least, in theory; have well-nigh abolished the family, which is
the social unit; and find that the evils we sought to cure, and
the wrongs we sought to redress, continue undiminished. We cry
out in our delirium for another and a larger dram. When you
proceed on a true principle, the more logically and completely
you carry it out the better; but when you start with a false
principle, the more logical you are, and the farther you push it,
the worse. Your consistency increases instead of diminishing the
evils you would cure.
The conclusive objection to the political enfranchisement of
women is, that it would weaken and finally break up and destroy
the Christian family. The social unit is the family, not the
individual; and the greatest danger to American society is, that
we are rapidly becoming a nation of isolated individuals, without
family ties or affections. The family has already been much
weakened, and is fast disappearing. We have broken away from the
old homestead, have lost the restraining and purifying
associations that gathered round it, and live away from home in
hotels and boarding-houses. We are daily losing the faith, the
virtues, the habits, and the manners without which the family
cannot be sustained; and when the family goes, the nation goes
too, or ceases to be worth preserving. God made the family the
type and basis of society; "male and female made he them." A
large and influential class of women not only neglect but disdain
the retired and simple domestic virtues, and scorn to be tied
down to the modest but essential duties--the drudgery, they call
it--of wives and mothers. This, coupled with the separate
pecuniary interests of husband and wife secured, and the facility
of divorce _a vinculo matrirmonii_ allowed by the laws of
most of the States of the Union, make the family, to a fearful
extent, the mere shadow of what it was and of what it should be.
Extend now to women suffrage and eligibility; give them the
political right to vote and to be voted for; render it feasible
for them to enter the arena of political strife, to become
canvassers in elections and candidates for office, and what
remains of family union will soon be dissolved. The wife may
espouse one political party, and the husband another, and it may
well happen that the husband and wife may be rival candidates for
the same office, and one or the other doomed to the mortification
of defeat. Will the husband like to see his wife enter the lists
against him, and triumph over him? Will the wife, fired with
political ambition for place or power, be pleased to see her own
husband enter the lists against her, and succeed at her expense?
Will political rivalry and the passions it never fails to
engender increase the mutual affection of husband and wife for
each other, and promote domestic union and peace, or will it not
carry into the bosom of the family all the strife, discord,
anger, and division of the political canvass?
{151}
Then, when the wife and mother is engrossed in the political
canvass, or in discharging her duties as a representative or
senator in Congress, a member of the cabinet, or a major-general
in the field, what is to become of the children? The mother will
have little leisure, perhaps less inclination, to attend to them.
A stranger, or even the father, cannot supply her place. Children
need a mother's care; her tender nursing, her sleepless
vigilance, and her mild and loving but unfailing discipline. This
she cannot devolve on the father, or turn over to strangers.
Nobody can supply the place of a mother. Children, then, must be
neglected; nay, they will be in the way, and be looked upon as an
encumbrance. Mothers will repress their maternal instincts; and
the horrible crime of infanticide before birth, now becoming so
fearfully prevalent, and actually causing a decrease in the
native population of several of the States of the Union as well
as in more than one European country, will become more prevalent
still, and the human race be threatened with extinction. Women in
easy circumstances, and placing pleasure before duty, grow weary
of the cares of maternity, and they would only become more weary
still if the political arena were opened to their ambition.
Woman was created to be a wife and a mother; that is her destiny.
To that destiny all her instincts point, and for it nature has
specially qualified her. Her proper sphere is home, and her
proper function is the care of the household, to manage a family,
to take care of children, and attend to their early training. For
this she is endowed with patience, endurance, passive courage,
quick sensibilities, a sympathetic nature, and great executive
and administrative ability. She was born to be a queen in her own
household, and to make home cheerful, bright, and happy. Surely
those women who are wives and mothers should stay at home and
discharge its duties; and the woman's rights party, by seeking to
draw her away from the domestic sphere, where she is really
great, noble, almost divine, and to throw her into the turmoil of
political life, would rob her of her true dignity and worth, and
place her in a position where all her special qualifications and
peculiar excellences would count for nothing. She cannot be
spared from home for that.
It is pretended that woman's generous sympathies, her nice sense
of justice, and her indomitable perseverance in what she
conceives to be right are needed to elevate our politics above
the low, grovelling and sordid tastes of men; but while we admit
that women will make almost any sacrifice to obtain their own
will, and make less than men do of obstacles or consequences, we
are not aware that they have a nicer or a truer sense of justice,
or are more disinterested in their aims than men. All history
proves that the corruptest epochs in a nation's life are
precisely those in which women have mingled most in political
affairs, and have had the most influence in their management. If
they go into the political world, they will, if the distinction
of sex is lost sight of, have no special advantage over men, nor
be more influential for good or for evil. If they go as women,
using all the blandishments, seductions, arts, and intrigues of
their sex, their influence will tend more to corrupt and debase
than to purify and elevate. Women usually will stick at nothing
to carry their points; and when unable to carry them by appeals
to the strength of the other sex, they will appeal to its
weakness. When once they have thrown off their native modesty,
and entered a public arena with men, they will go to lengths that
men will not.
{152}
Lady Macbeth looks with steady nerves and unblanched cheek on a
crime from which her husband shrinks with horror, and upbraids
him with his cowardice for letting "I dare not wait upon I
would." It was not she who saw Banquo's ghost.
We have heard it argued that, if women were to take part in our
elections, they would be quietly and decorously conducted; that
her presence would do more than a whole army of police officials
to maintain order, to banish all fighting, drinking, profane
swearing, venality, and corruption. This would undoubtedly be, to
some extent, the case, if, under the new _régime_, men
should retain the same chivalric respect for women that they now
have. Men now regard women as placed in some sort under their
protection, or the safeguard of their honor. But when she insists
that the distinction of sex shall be disregarded, and tells us
that she asks no favors, regards all offers of protection to her
as a woman as an insult, and that she holds herself competent to
take care of herself, and to compete with men on their own
ground, and in what has hitherto been held to be their own work,
she may be sure that she will be taken at her word, that she will
miss that deference now shown her, and which she has been
accustomed to claim as her right, and be treated with all the
indifference men show to one another. She cannot have the
advantages of both sexes at once. When she forgets that she is a
woman, and insists on being treated as a man, men will forget
that she is a woman, and allow her no advantage on account of her
sex. When she seeks to make herself a man, she will lose her
influence as a woman, and be treated as a man.
Women are not needed as men; they are needed as women, to do, not
what men can do as well as they, but what men cannot do. There is
nothing which more grieves the wise and good, or makes them
tremble for the future of the country, than the growing neglect
or laxity of family discipline; than the insubordination, the
lawlessness, and precocious depravity of Young America. There is,
with the children of this generation, almost a total lack of
filial reverence and obedience. And whose fault is it? It is
chiefly the fault of the mothers, who fail to govern their
households, and to bring up their children in a Christian manner.
Exceptions there happily are; but the number of children that
grow up without any proper training or discipline at home is
fearfully large, and their evil example corrupts not a few of
those who are well brought up. The country is no better than the
town. Wives forget what they owe to their husbands, are
capricious and vain, often light and frivolous, extravagant and
foolish, bent on having their own way, though ruinous to the
family, and generally contriving, by coaxings, blandishments, or
poutings, to get it. They set an ill example to their children,
who soon lose all respect for the authority of the mother, who,
as a wife, forgets to honor and obey her husband, and who, seeing
her have her own way with him, insist on having their own way
with her, and usually succeed. As a rule, children are no longer
subjected to a steady and firm, but mild and judicious
discipline, or trained to habits of filial obedience. Hence, our
daughters, when they become wives and mothers, have none of the
habits or character necessary to govern their household and to
train their children. Those habits and that character are
acquired only in a school of obedience, made pleasant and
cheerful by a mother's playful smile and a mother's love.
{153}
We know we have not in this the sympathy of the women whose organ
is _The Revolution_. They hold obedience in horror, and seek
only to govern, not their own husbands only, not children, but
men, but the state, but the nation, and to be relieved of
household cares, especially of child-bearing, and of the duty of
bringing up children. We should be sorry to do or say anything
which these, in their present mood, could sympathize with. It is
that which is a woman's special duty in the order of providence,
and which constitutes her peculiar glory, that they regard as
their great wrong.
The duty we insist on is especially necessary in a country like
ours, where there is so little respect for authority, and
government is but the echo of public opinion. Wives and mothers,
by neglecting their domestic duties and the proper family
discipline, fail to offer the necessary resistance to growing
lawlessness and crime, aggravated, if not generated, by the false
notions of freedom and equality so widely entertained. It is only
by home discipline, and the early habits of reverence and
obedience to which our children are trained, that the license the
government tolerates, and the courts hardly dare attempt to
restrain, can be counteracted, and the community made a
law-loving and a law-abiding community. The very bases of society
have been sapped, and the conditions of good government despised,
or denounced under the name of despotism. Social and political
life is poisoned in its source, and the blood of the nation
corrupted, and chiefly because wives and mothers have failed in
their domestic duties, and the discipline of their families. How,
then, can the community, the nation itself, subsist, if we call
them away from home, and render its duties still more irksome to
them, instead of laboring to fit them for a more faithful
discharge of their duties?
We have said the evils complained of are chiefly due to the
women, and we have said so because it grows chiefly out of their
neglect of their families. The care and management of children
during their early years belong specially to the mother. It is
her special function to plant and develop in their young and
impressible minds the seeds of virtue, love, reverence, and
obedience, and to train her daughters, by precept and example,
not to be looking out for an eligible _parti_, nor to catch
husbands that will give them splendid establishments, but to be,
in due time, modest and affectionate wives, tender and judicious
mothers, and prudent and careful housekeepers. This the father
cannot do; and his interference, except by wise counsel, and to
honor and sustain the mother, will generally be worse than
nothing. The task devolves specially on the mother; for it
demands the sympathy with children which is peculiar to the
female heart, the strong maternal instinct implanted by nature,
and directed by a judicious education, that blending of love and
authority, sentiment and reason, sweetness and power, so
characteristic of the noble and true-hearted woman, and which so
admirably fit her to be loved and honored, only less than adored,
in her own household. When she neglects this duty, and devotes
her time to pleasure or amusement, wasting her life in luxurious
ease, in reading sentimental or sensational novels, or in
following the caprices of fashion, the household goes to ruin,
the children grow up wild, without discipline, and the honest
earnings of the husband become speedily insufficient for the
family expenses, and he is sorely tempted to provide for them by
rash speculation or by fraud, which, though it may be carried on
for a while without detection, is sure to end in disgrace and
ruin at last.
{154}
Concede now to women suffrage and eligibility, throw them into
the whirlpool of politics, set them to scrambling for office, and
you aggravate the evil a hundred fold. Children, if suffered to
be born, which is hardly to be expected, will be still more
neglected; family discipline still more relaxed, or rendered
still more capricious or inefficient; our daughters will grow up
more generally still without any adequate training to be wives
and mothers, and our sons still more destitute of those habits of
filial reverence and obedience, love of order and discipline,
without which they can hardly be sober, prudent, and worthy heads
of families, or honest citizens.
We have thus far spoken of women only as wives and mothers; but
we are told that there are thousands of women who are not and
cannot be wives and mothers. In the older and more densely
settled States of the Union there is an excess of females over
males, and all cannot get husbands if they would. Yet, we repeat,
woman was created to be a wife and a mother, and the woman that
is not fails of her special destiny. We hold in high honor
spinsters and widows, and do not believe their case anywhere need
be or is utterly hopeless. There is a mystery in Christianity
which the true and enlightened Christian recognizes and
venerates--that of the Virgin-Mother. Those women who cannot be
wives and mothers in the natural order, may be both in the
spiritual order, if they will. They can be wedded to the Holy
Spirit, and be the mothers of minds and hearts. The holy virgins
and devout widows who consecrate themselves to God in or out of
religious orders, are both, and fulfil in the spiritual order
their proper destiny. They are married to a celestial Spouse, and
become mothers to the motherless, to the poor, the destitute, the
homeless. They instruct the ignorant, nurse the sick, help the
helpless, tend the aged, catch the last breath of the dying, pray
for the unbelieving and the cold hearted, and elevate the moral
tone of society, and shed a cheering radiance along the pathway
of life. They are dear to God, dear to the church, and dear to
Christian society. They are to be envied, not pitied. It is only
because you have lost faith in Christ, faith in the holy Catholic
Church, and have become gross in your minds, of "the earth,
earthy," that you deplore the lot of the women who cannot, in the
natural order, find husbands. The church provides better for them
than you can do, even should you secure female suffrage and
eligibility.
We do not, therefore, make an exception from our general remarks
in favor of those who have and can get no earthly husbands, and
who have no children born of their flesh to care for. There are
spiritual relations which they can contract, and purely feminine
duties, more than they can perform, await them, to the poor and
ignorant, the aged and infirm, the helpless and the motherless,
or, worse than motherless, the neglected. Under proper direction,
they can lavish on these the wealth of their affections, the
tenderness of their hearts, and the ardor of their charity, and
find true joy and happiness in so doing, and ample scope for
woman's noblest ambition. They have no need to be idle or
useless. In a world of so much sin and sorrow, sickness and
suffering, there is always work enough for them to do, and there
are always chances enough to acquire merit in the sight of
Heaven, and true glory, that will shine brighter and brighter for
ever.
{155}
We know men often wrong women and cause them great suffering by
their selfishness, tyranny, and brutality; whether more than
women, by their follies and caprices, cause men, we shall not
undertake to determine. Man, except in fiction, is not always a
devil, nor woman an angel. Since the woman's rights people claim
that in intellect woman is man's equal, and in firmness of will
far his superior, it ill becomes them to charge to him alone what
is wrong or painful in her condition, and they must recognize her
as equally responsible with him for whatever is wrong in the
common lot of men and women. There is much wrong on both sides;
much suffering, and much needless suffering, in life. Both men
and women might be, and ought to be, better than they are. But it
is sheer folly or madness to suppose that either can be made
better or happier by political suffrage and eligibility; for the
evil to be cured is one that cannot be reached by any possible
political or legislative action.
That the remedy, to a great extent, must be supplied by woman's
action and influence we concede, but not by her action and
influence in politics. It can only be by her action and influence
as woman, as wife, and mother; in sustaining with her affection
the resolutions and just aspirations of her husband or her sons,
and forming her children to early habits of filial love and
reverence, of obedience to law, and respect for authority. That
she may do this, she needs not her political enfranchisement or
her entire independence of the other sex, but a better and more
thorough system of education for daughters--an education that
specially adapts them to the destiny of their sex, and prepares
them to find their happiness in their homes, and the satisfaction
of their highest ambition in discharging its manifold duties, so
much higher, nobler, and more essential to the virtue and
well-being of the community, the nation, society, and to the life
and progress of the human race, than any which devolve on king or
kaiser, magistrate or legislator. We would not have their
generous instincts repressed, their quick sensibilities blunted?
or their warm, sympathetic nature chilled, nor even the lighter
graces and accomplishments neglected; but we would have them all
directed and harmonized by solid intellectual instruction, and
moral and religious culture. We would have them, whether rich or
poor, trained to find the centre of their affections in their
home; their chief ambition in making it cheerful, bright,
radiant, and happy. Whether destined to grace a magnificent
palace, or to adorn the humble cottage of poverty, this should be
the ideal aimed at in their education. They should be trained to
love home, and to find their pleasure in sharing its cares and
performing its duties, however arduous or painful.
There are comparatively few mothers qualified to give their
daughters such an education, especially in our own country; for
comparatively few have received such an education themselves, or
are able fully to appreciate its importance. They can find little
help in the fashionable boarding-schools for finishing young
ladies; and in general these schools only aggravate the evil to
be cured. The best and the only respectable schools for daughters
that we have in the country are the conventual schools taught by
women consecrated to God, and specially devoted to the work of
education. These schools, indeed, are not always all that might
be wished.
{156}
The good religious sometimes follow educational traditions
perhaps better suited to the social arrangements of other
countries than of our own, and sometimes underrate the value of
intellectual culture. They do not always give as solid an
intellectual education as the American woman needs, and devote a
disproportionate share of their attention to the cultivation of
the affections and sentiments, and to exterior graces and
accomplishments. The defects we hint at are not, however, wholly,
nor chiefly, their fault; they are obliged to consult, in some
measure, the tastes and wishes of parents and guardians, whose
views for their daughters and wards are not always very profound,
very wise, very just, or very Christian. The religious cannot,
certainly, supply the place of the mother in giving their pupils
that practical home training so necessary, and which can be given
only by mothers who have themselves been properly educated; but
they go as far as is possible in remedying the defects of the
present generation of mothers, and in counteracting their follies
and vain ambitions. With all the faults that can be alleged
against any of them, the conventual schools, even as they are, it
must be conceded, are infinitely the best schools for daughters
in the land, and, upon the whole, worthy of the high praise and
liberal patronage their devotedness and disinterestedness secure
them. We have seldom found their graduates weak and sickly
sentimentalists. They develop in their pupils a cheerful and
healthy tone, and a high sense of duty; give them solid moral and
religious instruction; cultivate successfully their moral and
religious affections; refine their manners, purify their tastes,
and send them out feeling that life is serious, life is earnest,
and resolved always to act under a deep sense of their personal
responsibilities, and meet whatever may be their lot with brave
hearts and without murmuring or repining.
We do not disguise the fact that our hopes for the future, in
great measure, rest on these conventual schools. As they are
multiplied, and the number of their graduates increase, and enter
upon the serious duties of life, the ideal of female education
will be come higher and broader; a nobler class of wives and
mothers will exert a healthy and purifying influence; religion
will become a real power in the republic; the moral tone of the
community and the standard of private and public morality will be
elevated; and thus may gradually be acquired the virtues that
will enable us as a people to escape the dangers that now
threaten us, and to save the republic as well as our own souls.
Sectarians, indeed, declaim against these schools, and denounce
them as a subtle device of Satan to make their daughters
"Romanists;" but Satan probably dislikes "Romanism" even more
than sectarians do, and is much more in earnest to suppress or
ruin our conventual schools, in which he is not held in much
honor, than he is to sustain and encourage them. At any rate, our
countrymen who have such a horror of the religion it is our glory
to profess that they cannot call it by its true name, would do
well, before denouncing these schools, to establish better
schools for daughters of their own.
Now, we dare tell these women who are wasting so much time,
energy, philanthropy, and brilliant eloquence in agitating for
female suffrage and eligibility, which, if conceded, would only
make matters worse, that, if they have the real interest of their
sex or of the community at heart, they should turn their
attention to the education of daughters for their special
functions, not as men, but as women who are one day to be wives
and mothers--woman's true destiny.
{157}
These modest, retiring sisters and nuns, who have no new theories
or schemes of social reform, and upon whom you look down with
haughty contempt, as weak, spiritless, and narrow-minded, have
chosen the better part, and are doing infinitely more to raise
woman to her true dignity, and for the political and social as
well as for the moral and religious progress of the country, than
you with all your grand conventions, brilliant speeches, stirring
lectures, and spirited journals.
For poor working-women and poor working-men, obliged to subsist
by their labor, and who can find no employment, we feel a deep
sympathy, and would favor any feasible method of relieving them
with our best efforts. But why cannot American girls find
employment as well as Irish and German girls, who are employed
almost as soon as they touch our shores, and at liberal wages?
There is always work enough to be done if women are qualified to
do it, and are not above doing it. But be that as it may, the
remedy is not political, and must be found, if found at all,
elsewhere than in suffrage and eligibility.
----------
Daybreak.
Chapter III.
Chez Lui.
Miss Hamilton did not go down to dinner the first day; but when
she heard Mr. Granger come in, sent a line to him, excusing
herself till evening, on the plea that she needed rest. The truth
was, however, that she shrank from first meeting the family at
table, a place which allows so little escape from embarrassment.
Her door had been left ajar; and in a few minutes she heard a
silken rustling on the stairs, then a faint tap; and at her
summons there entered a small, lily-faced woman who looked like
something that might have grown out of the pallid March evening.
The silver-gray of her trailing dress, the uncertain tints of her
hair, deepening from flaxen to pale brown, even the cobwebby
Mechlin laces she wore, so thin as to have no color of their
own--all were like light, cool shadows. This lady entered with a
dainty timidity which by no means excluded the most perfect
self-possession, but rather indicated an extreme solicitude for
the person she visited.
"Do I intrude?" she asked in a soft, hesitating way. "Mr. Granger
thought I might come up. We feared that you were ill."
Margaret was annoyed to feel herself blushing. There was
something keen in this lady's beautiful violet eyes, underneath
their superficial expression of anxious kindness.
"I am not ill, only tired," she replied. "I meant to go down
awhile after dinner."
"I am Mrs. Lewis," the stranger announced, seating herself by the
bedside. "My husband and I, and my husband's niece, Aurelia
Lewis, live here. We don't call it boarding, you know. I hope
that you will like us."
{158}
This wish was expressed in a manner so _naïve_ and earnest
that Margaret could but smile in making answer that she was quite
prepared to be pleased with everything, and that her only fear
was lest she might disturb the harmony of their circle--not by
being disagreeable in herself, but simply in being one more.
With a gesture at once graceful and kind, Mrs. Lewis touched
Margaret's hand with her slight, chilly fingers. "You are the one
more whom we want," she said; "we have been rejoicing over the
prospect of having you with us. You do not break, you complete
the circle."
Her quick ear had caught a lingering tone of pain; and she had
already found something pathetic in that thin face and those
languid eyes. Miss Hamilton did not appear to be a person likely
to disturb the empire which this lady prided herself on
exercising over their household.
"I know very little about the family," Margaret remarked. "Mr.
Granger mentioned some names. I am not sure if they were all. And
men never think of the many trifles we like to be told."
Her visitor sighed resignedly. "Certainly not--the sublime
creatures! It is the difference between fresco and miniature, you
know. Let me enlighten you a little. Besides those of us whom you
have seen, there are only Mr. Southard, my husband, and Aurelia.
We consider ourselves a very happy family. Of course, being
human, we have occasional jars; but there is always the
understanding that our real friendship is unimpaired by them. And
we defend each other like Trojans from any outside attack. We try
to manage so as to have but one angry at a time, the others
acting as peacemakers. The only one who may trouble you is my
husband. I am anxious concerning him and you."
With her head a little on one side, the lady contemplated her
companion with a look of pretty distress.
"Forewarned is forearmed," suggested Miss Hamilton.
"Why, you see," her visitor said confidentially, "Mr. Lewis is
one of those provoking beings who take a mischievous delight in
misrepresenting themselves, not for the better, but the worse. If
they see a person leaning very much in one way, they are sure to
lean very much the other way. Mr. Southard calls my husband an
infidel, whatever that is. There certainly are a great many
things which he does not believe. But one half of his scepticism
is a mere pretence to tease the minister. I hope you won't be
vexed with him. You won't when you come to know him. Sometimes I
don't altogether blame him. Of course we all admire Mr. Southard
in the most fatiguing manner; but it cannot be denied that he
does interpret and perform his duties in the preraphaelite style,
With a pitiless adherence to chapter and verse. Still, I often
think that much of his apparent severity may be in those
chiselled features of his. One is occasionally surprised by some
sign of indulgence in him, some touch of grace or tenderness. But
even while you look, the charm, without disappearing, freezes
before your eyes, like spray in winter. I don't know just what to
think of him; but I suspect that he has missed his vocation, that
he was made for a monk or a Jesuit. It would never do to breathe
such a thought to him, though. He thinks that the Pope is
Antichrist."
"And isn't he?" calmly asked the granddaughter of the Rev. Doctor
Hamilton.
Mrs. Lewis put up her hand to refasten a bunch of honey-sweet
tuberoses that were slipping from the glossy coils of her hair,
and by the gesture concealed a momentary amused twinkle of her
eyes.
{159}
"Oh! I dare say!" she replied lightly. "But such a dear,
benignant old antichrist as he is! Ages ago, when we were in
Rome, I was in the crowd before St. Peter's when the pope gave
the Easter benediction. Involuntarily I knelt with the rest; and
really, Miss Hamilton, that seemed to me the only benediction I
ever received. I did not understand my own emotion. It was quite
unexpected. Perhaps it was something in that intoxicating
atmosphere which is only half air; the other half is soul."
Margaret was silent. She had no wish to express any displeasure;
but she was shocked to hear the mystical Babylon spoken of with
toleration, and that by a descendant of the puritans.
Mrs. Lewis sat a moment with downcast eyes, aware of, and quietly
submitting to the scrutiny of the other--by no means afraid of
it, quite confident, probably, that the result would be
agreeable.
This lady was about forty years of age, delicate rather than
beautiful, with a frosty sparkle about her. Her manner was
gentleness itself; but one soon perceived something fine and
sharp beneath; a blue arrowy glance that carried home a phrase
otherwise light as a feather, a slight emphasis that made the
more obvious meaning of a word glance aside, an unnecessary
suavity of expression that led to suspicion of some pungent
hidden meaning. But with all her airy malice there was much of
genuine honesty and kind feeling. She was like a faceted gem,
showing her little glittering shield at every turn; but still a
gem.
"Aurelia is quite impatient to welcome you," she resumed softly.
"You cannot fail to like her, when you happen to think of it. She
is sweet and beautiful all through.
"Now I will leave you to take your rest, and read the note of
which Mr. Granger made me the bearer. I hope to see you this
evening."
Margaret looked after the little lady as she glided away,
glancing back from the door with a friendly smile and nod, then
disappeared, soundless save for the rustling of her dress. She
listened to that faint silken whisper on the stairs, then to the
soft shutting of the parlor door, two pushes before it latched.
Then she read her note. It was but a line. "Rest as long as you
wish to. But when you are able to come down, we all want to see
you."
She went down to the parlor after dinner, and found the whole
family there. There was yet so much of daylight that one
gentleman, sitting in a western window, was reading the evening
paper by it; but the stream of gaslight that came in from some
room at the end of the long _suite_ made a red-golden path
across the darkened back-parlor, and caught brightly here and
there on the carving of a picture, a curve of bronze or marble,
or the gilding of a book-cover, and glimmered unsteadily over a
winged Mercury that leaned out of the vague dusk and sparkle,
tiptoe, at point of flight, with lifted face and glinting eyes.
Mr. Granger stood near the door by which Margaret entered,
evidently on the watch for her; and at sight of him that slight
nervous embarrassment inseparable from her circumstances, and
from the unstrung condition of her mind and body, instantly died
away. To her he was strength, courage, and protection. Shielded
by his friendship, she feared nothing.
Mrs. Lewis and Dora met her like old friends; that florid
gentleman with English side-whiskers she guessed to be Mr. Lewis;
and she recognized that fine profile clear against the opaline
west.
{160}
Mr. Southard came forward at once, scarcely waiting for an
introduction.
"A granddaughter of the Rev. Doctor Hamilton?" he said with
emphasis. "I am happy to see you."
Miss Hamilton received tranquilly his cordial salutation, and
mentally consigned it to the manes of her grandfather.
Mr. Lewis got up out of his armchair, and bowed lowly. "Madam,"
he said with great deliberation, "I do not in the least care who
your grandfather was. I am glad to see _you_."
"Thank you!" said Margaret.
The gentleman settled rather heavily into his chair again. He was
one of those who would rather sit than stand. Margaret turned to
meet his niece, who was offering her hand, and murmuring some
word of welcome. She looked at Aurelia Lewis with delight,
perceiving then what Mrs. Lewis had meant in saying that her
husband's niece was sweet and beautiful all through. The girl
radiated loveliness. She was a blonde, with deep ambers and
browns in her hair and eyes, looking like some translucent
creature shone through by rich sunset lights too soft for
brilliancy. She was large, suave, a trifle sirupy, perhaps, but
sweet to the core, had no salient points in her disposition, but
a charmingly liquid way of adapting herself to the angles of
others. If the looks and manners of Mrs. Lewis were faceted,
those of her husband's niece were what jewelers' call _en
cabochon_. What Aurelia said was nothing. She was not a
reportable person. What she _was_ was delicious.
"I remember Doctor Hamilton very well," Mr. Lewis said when the
ladies had finished their compliments. "He was one of those men
who make religion respectable. He held some pretty hard
doctrines; but he believed every one of 'em, and held 'em with a
grip. The last time I saw him was seven or eight years ago, just
before his death. They had up their everlasting petition before
the legislature here, for the abolition of capital punishment;
and a committee was appointed to attend to the matter. I went up
to one of their hearings. There were Phillips, Pierpont, Andrew,
Spear, and a lot of other smooth-tongued, soft-hearted fellows
who didn't want the poor, dear murderers to be hanged; and on the
other side were Doctor Hamilton with his eyes and his cane,
common sense, Moses and the decalogue. They had rather a rough
time of it. Andrew called your grandfather an old fogy, over some
one else's shoulders; and Phillips tilted over Moses, tables and
all, with that sharp lance of his. But Doctor Hamilton stood
there as firm as a rock, and beat them all out. He had the glance
of an eagle, and a way of swinging his arm about, when he was in
earnest, that looked as if it wouldn't take much provocation to
make him hit straight out. Phillips said something that he didn't
like, and the doctor stamped at him. Well, the upshot of the
matter was, that capital punishment was not abolished that year,
thanks to one tough, intrepid old man."
"My grandfather was very resolute," said Margaret, with a slight,
proud smile.
"Yes," answered Mr. Lewis, "he would have made a prime soldier,
if he hadn't made the mistake of being a doctor of divinity."
"The church needed his authoritative speech," said Mr. Southard,
with decision. "To the minister of God belongs the voice of
denunciation as well as the voice of prayer."
{161}
Mr. Lewis gave his moustache an impatient twitch.
Mr. Granger seized the first opportunity to speak aside to
Margaret. "You like these people? You are contented?" he asked
hastily.
"Yes, and yes," she replied.
"You think that you will feel at home when you have become better
acquainted with them?" he pursued.
"It seems to me that I have always lived here," she answered,
smiling. "There is not the least strangeness. Indeed, surprising
things, if they are pleasant, never surprise me. I am always
expecting miracles. It is only painful or trivial events which
find me incredulous and ill at ease."
The chandeliers were lighted, and the windows closed; but,
according to their pleasant occasional custom, the curtains were
not drawn for a while yet. If any person in the street took
pleasure in seeing this family gathering, they were welcome.
Mrs. Lewis broke a few sprays from a musk-vine over-starred with
yellow blossoms, and twined them into a wreath as she slowly
approached the two who were standing near a book-case. "_Vive
le roi!_" she said, lifting the wreath to the marble brows of
a Shakespeare that stood on the lower shelf.
Margaret glanced along a row of blue and brown covers, and
exclaimed, "My Brownings! all hail! there they are!"
"You also!" said Mrs. Lewis, with a grimace. "Own, now, that they
jolt horribly--that the Browning Pegasus is a racker, and that
the Browning road up Parnassus is macadamized with--well,
diamonds, if you will, but diamonds in the rough. True, the hoofs
do make dents; they do dash over the ground with a four-footed
trampling; but--" a shrug and a shiver completed the sentence.
"Mrs. Browning needs a lapidary," Mr. Granger said; "but her
husband's constipated style is a necessity. His books are books
of quintessences. At first I thought him suggestive; but soon
perceived that he was stimulating instead. He seems to have
brushed a subject. Look again, and you will see that he has
exhausted it."
Margaret read the titles of the books, and in them read, also,
something of the minds of her new associates. There were a few
shining names from each of the great nations, and a good
selection of English and American authors, the patriarchs in
their places. She had a word for each, but thought, "I wonder why
I like Lowell, almost in silence, yet like him best."
Near this was another case of books, all Oriental, or relating to
the Orient. There were the Talmud and the Koran; there were
hideous mythologies full of propitiatory prayers to the devil.
There were _Vathek, The Arabian Nights, Ferdousi_, and a
hundred others. Over this case hung an oval water-color of sea
and sky with a rising sun blazing at the horizon, lighting with
flickering gold a path across the blue, liquid expanse, and
flooding with light the ethereal spaces. On a scroll beneath this
was inscribed, "Ex Oriente Lux."
"Light and hasheesh," said Mr. Southard laughingly. "Don't linger
there too long."
Mr. Granger called Dora to him. "What has my little girl been
learning to-day?" he asked.
The little one's eyes flashed with a sudden, glorious
recollection. "O papa! I can spell cup."
The father was suitably astonished.
"Is it possible? Let me hear."
The child raised her eyebrows, and played the coquette with her
erudition. "You spell it," she said tauntingly.
{162}
Mr. Granger leaned back in his chair, and knitted his brows in
intense study. "T-a-s-s-e, cup."
"No-o, papa," said the fairy at his knee.
"T-a-z-z-a, cup!" he essayed again.
Dora shook her flossy curls.
"T-a-z-a, cup!" he said desperately.
The child looked at him with tears in her eyes.
"Oh!" he said, "c-u-p, cup!" at which she screamed with delight.
"How blue it sounds," said Margaret. "Like a Canterbury bell with
a handle to it."
A tray was brought in with coffee, which was Dora's signal to go
to bed. She took an affectionate leave of all, but hid her face
in Margaret's neck in saying good night.
"Who was the little girl in the picture?" she whispered.
"It was you, dear," was the reply.
"I keeped thinking of it this ever so long," said the child.
Her father always accompanied her to the foot of the stairs; and
the two went out together, Dora clinging to his hand, which she
held against her cheek, and he looking down upon her with a fond
smile.
Margaret shrank with a momentary spasm of pain and terror, as she
looked after them. How fearful is that clinging love which human
beings have for each other! how terrible, since, sooner or later,
they must part; since, at any instant, the hand of fate may be
outstretched to snatch them asunder!
"Are you ill?" whispered Aurelia, touching her arm.
Margaret started, and recollected herself with an effort; then
smiled without an effort; for the door opened, and Mr. Granger
came in again, glancing first at her, then coming to sit near
her.
"I have found out the origin of coffee," Mrs. Lewis said. "It is,
or is capable of being, a Mohammedan legend. I will tell you.
When Mother Eve, to whom be peace! fell, after her sin, from the
seventh heaven, and was precipitated to earth, as she slipped
over the verge of Paradise, she instinctively flung out her arm,
and caught at a shrub with milk-white blossoms that grew there.
It broke in her hand. She fell into Arabia, near Mocha. The
branch that fell with her took root and grew, and had blossoms
with five petals, as white as the beautiful Mother's five
fingers. And that's the history of coffee. Aura, give me a cup
without delay. That story was salt."
"Why should we not have sentiments with so wonderful a draught?"
Mr. Granger said. "Propose anything. Shall I begin? I have been
reading the European news. Victor Emmanuel is dawning like a sun
over Italy. I propose Rome, the dead lion, with honey for
Samson."
Mr. Lewis pushed out his underlip. He always scouted at
republicans, red or black.
"I follow you," he said immediately, with a sly glance at Mr.
Southard. "Rome, the rock that does not crack, though all the
bores blast it."
There was a momentary pause, during which the eyes of the
minister scintillated. Then he exclaimed, "Luther, the Moses at
the stroke of whose rod the rock was rent, and the gospel waters
loosed."
"Ah! Luther!" endorsed Mr. Lewis with an affectation of
enthusiasm. "Greater than Nimrod, he built a Babel which babbles
to the ends of the earth."
Mr. Southard flashed out, "Yes; and every tongue can spell the
word Bible, sir!"
"And deny its plainest teachings," was the retort; "and vilify
the hand that preserved it!"
{163}
"Now, Charles," interposed Mrs. Lewis, touching her husband's
arm, "why will you say what you do not mean, just for the sake of
being disagreeable? You know, Mr. Southard, that he cares no more
for Rome than he does for Pekin, and knows no more about it,
indeed. The fact is, he has the greatest respect for our
church--may I say _militant_?"
"Sweet peacemaker!" exclaimed Mr. Lewis, delighted with the neat
little sting at the end of his wife's speech.
Aurelia lifted her cup, and interposed with a laughing quotation:
"'Here's a health to all those that we love. Here's a health to
all them that love us. Here's a health to all those that love
them that love those that love them that love those that love
us.'"
This was drunk with acclamations, and peace restored.
After a while Mr. Lewis managed, or happened, to find Margaret
apart.
"I protest I never had a worse opinion of myself than I have
tonight," he said. "There I had promised Louis and my wife to let
religion alone, and not get up a skirmish with the minister for
at least a week after you came; and I meant to keep my promise.
But you see what my resolutions are worth. I am sincerely sorry
if I have vexed you."
He looked so sorry, and spoke so frankly, that Margaret could not
help giving him a pleasant answer, though she had been
displeased.
"The fact is," he went on, lowering his voice, "I have seen so
much cant, and hypocrisy, and inconsistency in religion that it
has disgusted me with the whole business. I may go too far. I
don't doubt that there are honest men and women in the churches;
but to my mind they are few and far between. I've nothing to say
against Mr. Southard, and I don't want any one else to speak
against him. I say uglier things to his face than I would say
behind his back. He's a good man, according to his light; but you
must permit me to say that it is a Bengal-light to my eyes. I
can't stand it. It turns me blue all through."
"Perhaps you do not understand him," Margaret suggested. "May be
you haven't given him a chance to explain."
"I tried to be fair," was the reply. "Now Southard," said I,
"tell me what you want me to believe, and I'll believe if I can."
Well, the first thing he told me was, that I must give up my
reason. 'By George, I won't!' said I, and there was an end to the
catechism. Of course, if I set my reason aside, I might be made
to believe that chalk is cheese. Perhaps I am stubborn and
material, as he says; but I am what God made me; and I won't
pretend to be anything else. I believe that there is somewhere a
way for us all--a way that we shall know is right, when once we
get into it. These fishers of men ought to remember that whales
are not caught with trout-hooks, and that it isn't the whale's
fault if there's a good deal of blubber to get through before you
reach the inside of him. St. Paul let fly some pretty sharp
harpoons. I can't get 'em out of me for my life. And, for another
kind of man, I like Beecher. His bait isn't painted flies, but
fish, a piece of yourself. But the trouble with him is, there's
no barb on his catch. You slip off as easily as you get on."
Margaret was glad when the others interposed and put an end to
this talk. To her surprise, she had nothing to reply to Mr.
Lewis's objections. And not only that, but, while he spoke, she
perceived in her own mind a faint echo to his dissatisfaction. Of
course it must be wrong, and she was glad to have the
conversation put an end to.
{164}
They had music, Aurelia playing with a good deal of taste some
perfectly harmless pieces. While she listened, Miss Hamilton's
glance wandered about the rooms, finding them quite to her taste.
The first impertinent gloss of everything had worn off, and each
article had mellowed into its place, like the colors of an old
picture. There was none of that look we sometimes see, of
everything having been dipped into the same paint-pot. The
furniture was rich in material and beautiful in shape; the
upholstery a heavy silk and wool, the colors deep and harmonious,
nothing too fine for use. The dull amber of the walls was nearly
covered with pictures, book-cases, cabinets, and brackets; there
was every sort of table, from the two large central ones with
black marble tops, piled with late books and periodicals, to the
tiny teapoys that could be lifted on a finger, marvels of gold,
and japanning, and ingenious Chinese perspective. On the black
marble mantel-piece near her were a pair of silver candelebra,
heirlooms in the family, and china vases of glowing colors,
purple, and rose, and gold. There was more bronze than parian;
there were curtains wherever curtains could be; and withal, there
was plentiful space to get about, and for the ladies to display
their trains.
All this her first glance took in with a sense of pleasure. Then
she looked deeper, and perceived friendship, ease, security, all
that make the soul of home. Deeper yet, then, to the vague
longing for a love, a security, a rest exceeding the earthly. One
who has suffered much can never again feel quite secure, but
shrinks from delight almost as much as from pain.
She turned to Mr. Southard, who sat beside her. "I am thinking
how miserably we are the creatures of circumstance," she said, in
her earnestness forgetting how abrupt she might seem. "When we
are troubled, everything is dark; when we are happy, everything
that approaches casts its shadow behind, and shows a sunny
front."
He regarded her kindly, pleased with her almost confidential
manner. "There is but one escape from such slavery," he said.
"When we set the sun of righteousness in the zenith of our lives,
then shadows are annihilated, not hidden, but annihilated."
When Margaret went up-stairs that night, she knelt before her
open window, and leaned out, feeling, rather than seeing, the
brooding, starless sky, soft and shadowy, like wings over a nest.
Her soul uplifted itself blindly, almost painfully, beating
against its ignorance. There was something out of sight and
reach, which she wanted to see and to touch. There was one hidden
whom she longed to thank and adore.
"O brooding wings!" she whispered, stretching out her hands. "O
father and mother-bird over the nest where the little ones lie in
the sweet, sweet dark!"
Words failed. She knew not what to say. "I wish that I could
pray!" she thought, tears overflowing her eyes.
Margaret did not know that she had prayed.
Chapter IV.
Just Before Light.
The days were well arranged in the Granger mansion. Breakfast was
a movable feast, and silent for the most part. The members of the
family broke their fast when and as they liked, often with a book
or paper for company.
{165}
Most persons feel disinclined to talk in the morning, and are
social only from necessity. This household recognized and
respected the instinct. One could always hold one's tongue there.
If they did not follow the old Persian rule never to speak till
one had something to say worth hearing, they at least kept
silence when they felt so inclined.
Luncheon was never honored by the presence of the gentlemen,
except that on rare occasions Mr. Southard came out of his study
to join the ladies, who by this time had found their tongues.
They preferred his usual custom of taking a scholarly cup of tea
in the midst of his books.
To the natural woman an occasional gossip is a necessity; and if
ever these three ladies indulged in that pardonable weakness, it
was over their luncheon. At six o'clock all met at dinner, and
passed the evening together. This disposition of time left the
greater part of the day free, for each one to spend as he chose,
and brought them together again at the close of the day, more or
lest tired, always glad to meet, often with something to say.
Margaret found herself fully and pleasantly occupied. Besides
translating, she had again set up her easel, and spent an hour or
two daily at her former pretty employment. The value of her
services increased, she found, in proportion as she grew
indifferent to rendering them; and she could now select her own
work, and dictate terms. But her most delightful occupation was
the teaching her three little pupils.
There are two ways of teaching children. One is to seek to impose
on them our own individuality, to dogmatize, in utter
unconsciousness that they are the most merciless of critics,
frequently the keenest of observers, and that they do not so much
lack ideas, as the power of expression. Such teachers climb on to
a pedestal, and talk complacently downward at pupils who,
perhaps, do not in the least consider them classical personages.
We cannot impose on children unless we can dazzle them, sometimes
not even then.
The other mode is to stand on their own platform, and talk up,
not logically, according to Kant or Hamilton, but in that
circuitous and inconsequent manner which is often the most
effectual logic with children. We all know that the greatest
precision of aim is attained through a spiral bore; and perhaps
these young minds oftener reach the mark in that indirect manner,
than they would by any more formal process.
This was Miss Hamilton's mode of teaching and influencing
children, and it was as fascinating to her as to them. She
treated them with respect, never laughed at their crude ideas,
did not require of them a self-control difficult for an adult to
practice, and never forgot that some ugly duck might turn out to
be a swan. But where she did assert authority, she was absolute;
and she was merciless to insolence and disobedience.
"I want cake. I don't like bread and butter," says Dora.
Mrs. James fired didactic platitudes at the child, Aurelia
coaxed, and Mrs. Lewis preached hygiene. Miss Hamilton knew
better than either. She sketched a bright word-picture of waving
wheat-fields over-buzzed by bees, over-fluttered by birds,
starred through and through with little intrusive flowers that
had no business whatever there, but were let stay; of the shaking
mill where the wheat was ground, and the gay stream that laughed,
and set its shining shoulder to the great wheel, and pushed, and
ran away, blind with foam; of the yeasty sponge, a pile of milky
bubbles.
{166}
She told of sweet clover-heads, red and white, and the cow and
the bees seeing who should get them first. 'I want them for my
honey,' says the bee. 'And I want them for my cream,' says Mooly.
And they both made a snatch, and Mooly got the clover, and
perhaps a purple violet with it, and the cream got the sweetness
of them, and then it was churned, and there was the butter! She
described the clean, cool dairy, full of a ceaseless flicker of
light and shade from the hop-vines that swung outside the window,
and waved the humming-birds away, of pans and pans of yellow
cream, smooth and delicious, of fresh butter just out of the
churn, glowing like gold through its bath of water, of pink and
white petals of apple-blossoms drifting in on the soft breeze,
and settling--"who knows but a pink, crimped-up-at-the-edges
petal may have settled on this very piece of butter? Try, now, if
it doesn't taste apple-blossomy."
Nonsense, of course, when viewed from a dignified altitude; but
when looked up at from a point about two feet from the ground, it
was the most excellent sense imaginable. To these three little
girls, Dora, Agnes, and Violet, Miss Hamilton was a goddess.
Margaret did not neglect her own mind in those happy days. Mr.
Southard marked out for her a course of reading in which, it is
true, poetry and fiction, with a few shining exceptions, were
tabooed; but metaphysics was permitted; and history enjoined tome
upon tome, striking octaves up the centuries, and dying away in
tinkling mythologies. She read conscientiously, sometimes with
pleasure, sometimes with a half-acknowledged weariness.
Mr. Southard was a severe Mentor. As he did not spare himself, so
he did not spare others, still less Margaret. She failed to
perceive, what was plain to the others, that, by virtue of her
descent, he considered her his especial charge, and was trying to
form her after his notions. She acquiesced in all his
requirements, half from indifference, half from a desire to
please everybody, since she was herself so well pleased; and then
forgot all about him. It was out of his power to trouble her save
for a moment.
"You yield too much to that man," Mrs. Lewis said to her one day.
"He is one of those positive persons who cannot help being
tyrannical."
"He has a fine mind," said Margaret absently.
"Yes," the lady acknowledged in a pettish tone. "But if he would
send a few pulses up to irrigate his brain, it would be an
improvement."
Of course Mr. Southard spoke of religion to his pupil, and urged
on her the duty of being united with the church.
"I cannot be religious, as the church requires," she said
uneasily, dreading lest he might overcome her will without
convincing her reason. "I think that it is something cabalistic."
"Your grandfather, and your father and mother did not find it
so," the minister said reprovingly.
Margaret caught her breath with pain, and lifted her hand in a
quick, silencing gesture. "I never bury my dead!" she said; and
after a moment added, "It may be wrong, but this religion seems
to me like a strait-jacket. I like to read of David dancing
before the ark, of dervishes whirling, of Shakers clapping their
hands, of Methodists singing at the tops of their voices 'Glory
Hallelujah!' or falling into trances. Religion is not fervent
enough for me. It does not express my feelings. I hardly know
what I need. Perhaps I am all wrong."
{167}
She stopped, her eyes filling with tears of vexation.
But even as the drops started, they brightened; for, just in
season to save her from still more pressing exhortation, Mr.
Granger sauntered across the room, and put some careless question
to the minister.
Mr. Southard recollected that he had to lecture that evening, and
left the room to prepare himself.
"I am so glad you came!" Margaret said, "I was on the point of
being bound, and gagged, and blindfolded."
Mr. Granger took the chair that the minister had vacated, and
drew up to him a little stand on which he leaned his arms, "I
perceived that I was needed," he said. "There was no mistaking
your besieged expression; and I saw, too, that look in Mr.
Southard's face which tells that he is about to pile up an
insurmountable argument. I do not think that you will be any
better for having religious discussions with him. You will only
be fretted and uneasy. Mr. Southard is an excellent man, and a
sincere Christian; but he is in danger of mistaking his own
temperament for a dogma."
"If I thought that, then I shouldn't mind so much," Margaret
said. "But I have been taking for granted that he is right and I
wrong, and trying to let him think for me. The result is, that
instead of being convinced, I have only been irritated. I must
think for myself, whether I wish to or not. Now he circumscribes
my reading so. It is miscellaneous, I know; but I am curious
about everything in the universe. I don't like closed doors. He
thinks my curiosity trivial and dangerous, and reminds me that a
rolling stone gathers no moss."
"And I would ask, with the canny Scotchman,'what good does the
moss do the stone?'" Mr. Granger replied. "The fact is, you've
got to do just as I did with him. He and I fought that battle out
long ago, and now he lets me alone, and we are good friends. Be
as curious as you like. I heard him speak with disapproval of
your going to the Jewish synagogue last week, and I dare say you
resolved not to go again. Go, if you wish; and don't ask his
permission. He frowned on the Greek anthology, and you laid it
aside. Take it up again if you like. Even pagan flowers catch the
dews of heaven. Your own good taste and delicacy will be a
sufficient censor in matters of reading."
"Now I breathe!" Margaret said joyfully. "Some people can bear to
be so hemmed in; but I cannot. It does me harm. If I am denied a
drop of water, which, given, would satisfy me, at once I thirst
for the ocean. I cannot help it. It is my way."
"Don't try to help it," Mr. Granger replied decisively; "or,
above all, don't allow any one else to try to help it for you. I
have no patience with such impositions. It is an insult to
humanity, and an insult to Him who created humanity, for any one
person to attempt to think for another. Obedience and humility
are good only when they are voluntary, and are practised at the
mandate of reason. There are people who never go out of a certain
round, never want to. They are born, they live, and they die, in
the mental and moral domicil of their forefathers. They have no
orbit, but only an axis. Stick a precedent through them, and give
them a twirl, and they will hum on contentedly to the end of the
chapter. I've nothing against them, as long as they let others
alone, and don't insist that to stay in one place and buzz is the
end of humanity.
{168}
Other people there are who grow, they are insatiably curious,
they dive to the heart of things, they take nothing without a
question. They are not quite satisfied with truth itself till
they have compared it with all that claims to be truth. Let them
look, I say. It's a poor truth that won't bear any test that man
can put to it. The first are, as Coleridge says, 'very positive,
but not quite certain' that they are right; to the last a
conviction once won is perfect and indestructible. Rest with them
is not vegetation, but rapture.
"Fly abroad, my wild bird! don't be afraid. Use your wings. That
is what they were made for."
Margaret forgot to answer in listening and looking at the
speaker's animated face. When Mr. Granger was in earnest, he had
an impetuous way that carried all before it. At the end, his
shining eyes dropped on her and seemed to cover her with light;
the impatient ring in his voice softened to an indulgent
tenderness. Margaret felt as a flower may feel that has its fill
of sun and dew, and has nothing to do but bloom, and then fade
away. She had no fear of this man, no sense of humiliation with
regard to the past. Her gratitude toward him was boundless. To
him she owed life and all that made life tolerable, and any
devotion which he could require of her she was ready to render.
Her friendship was perfect, deep, frank, and full of a silent
delight. She did not deify him, but was satisfied to find him
human. He could speak a cross word if his beef was over-done, his
coffee too weak, or his paper out of the way when he wanted it.
He could criticise people occasionally, and laugh at their
weakness, even when his kind heart reproached him for doing it.
He liked to lounge on a sofa and read, when he had better be
about his business. He needed rousing, she thought; was too much
of a Sybarite to live in a world full of over-worked people.
Perhaps he was rusting. But how kind and thoughtful he was; how
full of sympathy when sympathy was needed; how generously he
blamed himself when he was wrong, and how readily forgot the
faults of others. How impossible it was for him to be mean or
selfish! His rich, sweet, slow nature reminded her of a rose; but
she felt intuitively that under that silence was hidden a heroic
strength.
Mr. Southard's lecture was on the Jesuits; and all the family
were to go and hear him.
"Terribly hot weather for such a subject," Mr. Lewis grumbled.
"But it wouldn't be respectful not to go. Don't forget to take
your smelling-salts, girls. There will be a strong odor of
brimstone in the entertainment.
Margaret went to the lecture with a feeling that was almost fear.
To her the name of Jesuit was a terror. The day of those
powerful, guileful men was passed, surely; and yet, what if, in
the strange vicissitudes of life, they should revive again? She
was glad that the minister was going to raise his warning voice;
yet still, she dreaded to hear him. The subject was too exciting.
The lecture was what might be expected. Beginning with Ignatius
of Loyola, the speaker traced the progress of that unique and
powerful society through its wonderful increase, and its
downfall, to the present time, when as he said, the bruised
serpent was again raising its head.
{169}
Mr. Southard did full justice to their learning, their sagacity,
and their zeal. He told with a sort of shrinking admiration how
men possessed of tastes and accomplishments which fitted them to
shine in the most cultivated society, buried themselves in
distant and heathen lands, far removed from all human sympathy,
hardened their scholarly hands with toil, encountered danger,
suffered death--for what? That their society might prosper! The
subject seemed to have for the speaker a painful fascination. He
lingered while describing the unparalleled devotion, the
pernicious enthusiasm of these men. He acknowledged that they
proclaimed the name of Christ where it had never been heard
before; he lamented that ministers of the gospel had not emulated
their heroism; but there the picture was over-clouded, was vailed
in blackness. It needed so much brightness in order that the
darkness which followed might have its full effect.
We all know what pigments are used in that Plutonian
shading--mental reservation, probableism, and the doctrine that
the end justifies the means; the latter a fiction, the two former
scrupulously misrepresented.
Here Mr. Southard was at home. Here he could denounce with fiery
indignation, point with lofty scorn. The close of the lecture
left the characters of the Jesuits as black as their robes. They
had been lifter only to be cast down.
Miss Hamilton walked home with Mr. Granger, scarcely uttering a
word the whole way.
"You do not speak of the lecture," he said when they were at the
house steps. "Has it terrified you so much that you dare not?
Shall you start up from sleep to-night fancying that a great
black Jesuit has come to carry you off?"
"Do you know, Mr. Granger," she said slowly, "those men seem to
me very much like the apostles; in their devotion, I mean? I
would like to read about them. They are interesting."
"Oh! they have, doubtless, books which will tell you all you want
to know," he replied.
"_They!_" repeated Margaret. "But I want to know the truth."
Mr. Granger laughed. "Then I advise you to read nothing, and hear
nothing."
"How then shall I learn?" demanded Miss Hamilton with a touch of
impatience.
"Descend into the depth of your consciousness, as the German did
when he wanted to make a correct drawing of an elephant."
"No," she replied remembering the story, "I will imitate the
Frenchman; I will go to the elephant's country, and draw from
life."
"That is not difficult," Mr. Granger said, amused at the idea of
Miss Hamilton studying the Jesuits. "These elephants have jungles
the world over. In this city you may find one on Endicott street,
another on Suffolk street, and a third on Harrison avenue."
They were just entering the house. Margaret hesitated, and paused
in the entry.
"You do not think this a foolish curiosity?" she asked wistfully.
"You see no harm in my wishing to know something more about
them?"
Mr. Granger was leaving his hat and gloves on the table. He
turned immediately, surprised at the serious manner in which the
question was put.
"Surely not!" he said promptly. "I should be very inconsistent if
I did."
She stood an instant longer, her face perfectly grave and pale.
"You are afraid?" he asked smiling.
{170}
"No," she replied hesitatingly, "I don't think that is it. But I
have all my life had such a horror of Catholics, and especially
of Jesuits, that to resolve even to look at them deliberately,
seems almost as momentous a step as Caesar crossing the Rubicon."
Chapter V.
The Sword Of The Lord And Of Gideon.
Boston, at the beginning of the war, was not a place to go to
sleep in. Massachusetts politics, so long eminent in the senate,
had at last taken the field; and that city, which is the brain of
the State, effervesced with enthusiasm. Men the least heroic,
apparently, showed themselves capable of heroism; and dreamers
over the great deeds of others looked up to find that they might
themselves be "the hymn the Brahmin sings."
Eager crowds surrounded the bulletin, put out by newspaper
offices, or ran to gaze at mustering or departing regiments.
Windows filled at the sound of a fife and drum; and it seemed
that the air was fit to be breathed only when it was full of the
flutter of flags.
Ceremony was set aside. Strangers and foes spoke to each other;
and the most disdainful lady would smile upon the roughest
uniform. From the Protestant pulpit came no more the exhortation
to brotherly love, but the trumpet-call to arms; and under the
wing of the Old South meeting-house rose a recruiting office, and
a rostrum, with the motto, "The sword of the Lord and of Gideon."
The Lord of that time was he at the touch of whose rod the flesh
and the loaves were consumed with fire; who sent for a sign a
drench of dew on the fleece; at the command of whose servant all
Ephraim shouted and took the waters before the flying Midianites,
with the heads of Oreb and of Zeb on their spears.
Of course there was a good deal of froth; but underneath glowed
the pure wine. It is true that many went because the savage
instinct hidden in human nature rose from its unseen lair, and
fiercely shook itself awake at the scent of blood. But others
came from an honest sense of duty, and offered their lives
knowing what they did; and women who loved them said amen. It was
a stirring time.
It is not to be supposed that our friends were indifferent to
these events. It was a doubtful point with them, indeed, whether
they could be content to leave the city that summer. Mr. Southard
was decidedly for remaining in town; and Mr. Granger, though less
excited, was inclined to second him. But Mr. Lewis had, early in
the spring, engaged a cottage at the seaside, with the
understanding that the whole family were to accompany him there,
and he utterly refused to release them from their promise. As if
to help his arguments, the weather became intensely hot in June.
Finally they consented to go.
"We owe you thanks for your persistence," Mr. Granger said, as
they sat together the last evening of their stay in town. "I
couldn't stand two months of this."
Mr. Lewis was past answering. Dressed in a complete suit of
linen, seated in a wide Fayal chair, with a palm-leaf fan in one
hand and a handkerchief in the other, he presented what his wife
called an ill-tempered dissolving view. At that moment, the only
desire of his heart was that one of Sydney Smith's, that he could
take off his flesh and sit in his bones.
{171}
Aurelia and Margaret sat near by, flushed, smiling, and languid,
trying to look cool in their crisp, white dresses.
Miss Hamilton would scarcely be recognized by one who had seen
her only three months before. Happiness had done its work, and
she was beautiful. Her face had recovered its smooth curves and
bloomy whiteness, and her lips were constantly brightening with
the smile that was ever ready to come.
Mr. Granger contemplated the two young ladies with a patriarchal
admiration. He liked to have beautiful objects in his sight; and
surely, he thought, no other man in the city could boast of
having in his family two such girls as those who now sat opposite
him. Besides, what was best, they were friends of his, and
regarded him with confidence and affection.
Mrs. Lewis glanced from them to him, and back to them, and pouted
her lip a little. "He is enough to try the patience of a saint!"
she was thinking. "Why doesn't he marry one of those girls like a
sensible man? To be sure, it is their fault. They are too
friendly and frank with him, the simpletons! There they sit and
beam on him with affectionate tranquillity, as if he were their
grandfather. I'd like to give 'em a shaking."
Mr. Southard was walking slowly to and fro from the back-parlor
to the front, and he, too, glanced frequently at the sofa where
sat the two unconscious beauties. But no smile softened his pale
face. It seemed, indeed, sterner than usual. The war was stirring
the minister to the depths.
Mr. Lewis opened a blind near him. A beam of dusty gold came in
from the west; he snapped the blind in its face.
"Seems to me it takes the sun a long time to get down," he said
crossly. "I hope that none of your mighty Joshuas has commanded
it to stand still."
No one answered. They sat in the sultry gloaming, and listened
dreamily to the mingled city noises that came from near and far;
the softened roll of a private carriage, like the touch of a
gloved hand, after the knuckled grasp of drays and carts; the
irritating wheeze of an inexorable hand-organ; and, through all,
the shrill cry of the news-boy, the cicada of the city.
The good-breeding of the company was shown by the perfect
composure of their silence, and the perfect quiescence of their
minds, by the fact that their thoughts all drifted in the same
direction, each one after its own mode.
Mrs. Lewis was thinking: "Those poor horses! I wish they knew
enough to organize a strike, and all run away into the green,
shady country."
The husband was saying relentingly to himself, "I declare I do
pity the poor fellows who have to work during this infernal
weather."
The others were still more in harmony with Mr. Granger when he
spoke lowly, half to himself:
"If that beautiful idyl of Ruskin's could be realized; that
country and government where the king should be the father of his
people; where all alike should go to him for help and comfort;
where he should find his glory, not in enlarging his dominion,
but in making it more happy and peaceful! Will such a kingdom
ever be, I wonder? Will such a golden age ever come?"
Margaret glanced with a swift smile toward Mr. Southard, and saw
the twin of her thought in his face. He came and stood with his
hand on the arm of her sofa.
{172}
"Both you and Mr. Ruskin are unconsciously thinking of the same
thing," he said, with some new sweetness in his voice, and
brightness in his face. "What you mean can only be the kingdom of
God; and it will come! it will come!"
Looking up smilingly at him, Margaret caught a smile in return;
and then, for the first time, she thought that Mr. Southard was
beautiful. The cold purity of his face was lighted momentarily by
that glow which it needed in order to be attractive.
Aurelia rose, and crossing the room, flung the blinds open. The
sun had set, and a slight coolness was creeping up.
"This butchery going on at the South looks as if the kingdom of
God were coming with a vengeance," said Mr. Lewis, fanning
himself.
"It is coming with a vengeance!" exclaimed Mr. Southard. "God
does not work in sunshine alone. Job saw him in the whirlwind.
Massachusetts soldiers have gone out with the Bible as well as
the bayonet."
Mr. Lewis contemplated the speaker with an expression of
wondering admiration that was a little overdone.
"What _did_ God do before Massachusetts was discovered?" he
exclaimed.
"I was surprised to hear, Mr. Granger, that your cousin Sinclair
had joined a New York regiment," Mrs. Lewis said hastily. "Only
the day before the steamer sailed in which he had engaged
passage, some quixotic whim seized him, and he volunteered. I
cannot conceive what induced him."
"I think the uniform was becoming," Mr. Granger said dryly.
"I pity his wife," pursued the lady, sighing. "Poor Caroline!"
"She has acted like a fool!" Mr. Lewis broke in angrily. "It was
her fault that Sinclair went off. She thorned him perpetually
with her exactions. She forgot that lovers are only common folks
in a state of evaporation, and that it is in the nature of things
that they should get condensed after a time. She wanted him to be
for ever picking up her pocket-handkerchief, and writing
acrostics on her name. A man can't stand that kind of folderol
when he's got to be fifty years old. We begin to develop a taste
for common sense when we reach that age."
"He showed no confidence in her," Mrs. Lewis said, with downcast
eyes, "He often deceived her, and therefore she always suspected
him."
"I think that a man should have no concealments from his wife,"
said Mr. Southard emphatically.
"That's just what Samson's wife thought when her husband proposed
his little conundrum to the Philistines," commented Mr. Lewis.
Margaret got up and followed Aurelia to the window.
"I am very sorry for Cousin Caroline," said Mr. Granger, in his
stateliest manner, rising, also, and putting an end to the
discussion.
"He is always sorry for any one who can contrive to appear
abused," Mr. Lewis said to Margaret. "If you want to interest
him, you must be as unfortunate as you can."
Margaret looked at her friend with eyes to which the quick tears
started, and blessed him in her heart.
He was passing at the moment, and, catching the remark, feared
lest she might be hurt or embarrassed.
"Don't you want to come out on to the veranda?" he asked,
glancing back as he stepped from the long window.
The words were nothing; but they were so steeped in the kindness
of the look and tone accompanying them that they seemed to be
words of tenderness.
{173}
She followed him out into the twilight; the others came too, and
they sat looking into the street, saying little, but enjoying the
refreshing coolness. Other people were at their windows, or on
their steps; and occasionally an acquaintance passing stopped for
a word. After a while G----, the liberator, came along, and
leaned on the fence a moment--a man with a ridge over the top of
his bald head, that looked as if his backbone didn't mean to stop
till it had reached his forehead, as probably it didn't; a
soft-voiced, gently-speaking lion; but Margaret had heard him
roar.
"Mr. G----," said Mr. Granger, "here is a lady with two dactyls
for a name, Miss Margaret Hamilton. She will add another, and be
Miriam, when your people come out through the Red Sea we are
making."
"Have your cymbals ready, young prophetess," said the liberator.
"The waters are lifting on the right hand and on the left."
The next day they went to the seaside, the ladies going in the
morning to set things in order; the gentlemen not permitted to
make their appearance till evening.
After a pleasant ride of an hour in the cars, they stepped out at
a little way-station, where a carriage was awaiting them. About
half a mile from this station, on a point of land hidden from it
by a strip of thick woods, was their cottage.
The place was quite solitary; not a house in sight landward,
though summer cottages nestled all about among the hills, hidden
in wild green nooks. But across the water, towns were visible in
all directions.
They drove with soundless wheels over a moist, brown road that
wound and coiled through the woods. There had been a shower in
the night that left everything washed, and the sky cloudless. It
was yet scarcely ten o'clock; and the air, though warm, was fresh
and still. The morning sunshine lay across the road, motionless
between the motionless dense tree-shadows; both light and shade
so still, so intense, they looked like a pavement of solid gold
and amber. If, at intervals, a slight motion woke the woods, less
like a breeze than a deep and gentle respiration of nature, and
that leaf-and-flower-wrought pavement stirred through each
glowing abaciscus, it was as though the solid earth were stirred.
A faint sultry odor began to rise from the pine-tops, and from
clumps of sweet-fern that stood in sunny spots; but the rank,
long-stemmed flowers and trailing vines that grew under the trees
were yet glistening with the undried shower; the shaded grass at
the roadside was beaded, every blade, with minute sparkles of
water; and here and there a pine-bough was thickly hung with
drops that trembled with fulness at the points of its clustered
emerald needles, and at a touch came clashing down in a shower
that was distinctly heard through the silence.
The birds were taking their forenoon rest; but, as the carriage
rolled lightly past, a fanatical bobolink, who did not seem to
have much common sense, but to be brimming over with the most
glorious nonsense, swung himself down from some hidden perch,
alighted in an utterly impossible manner on a spire of grass, and
poured forth such a long-drawn, liquid, impetuous song, that it
was a wonder there was anything of him left when it was over.
Three pairs of hands were stretched to arrest the driver's arm;
three smiling, breathless faces listened till the last note, and
watched the ecstatic little warbler swim away with an undulating
motion, as if he floated on the bubbling waves of his own song.
{174}
In a few minutes a turn of the road brought them in sight of the
blue, salt water spread out boundlessly, sparkling, and
sail-flecked; and presently they drove up at the cottage door.
This was a long, low building, all wings, like a moth; colored,
like fungi, of mottled browns and yellows; overtrailed by
woodbines and honeysuckles, through which you sometimes only
guessed at the windows by the white curtains blowing out.
"Why, it is something that has grown out of the earth!" exclaimed
Margaret. "See! the ground is all uneven about the walls as it is
about the boles of trees."
This rural domicil faced the east and the sea; and an unfenced
lawn sloped down to the beach where the tide was now creeping up
with bright ripples chasing each other.
The house was pleasant enough, large and airy; and, after a few
hours' work, they had everything in order. Then, tired, happy,
and hungry, they sat down to luncheon.
"Isn't it delightful to get rid of men a little while, when you
know that they are soon to come again?" drawled Aurelia, sitting
with both elbows on the table, and her rich hair a little
tumbled.
Margaret glanced at her with a smile of approval. "That sweet
creature!" she thought. And said aloud, "You know perfectly well,
Aura, that all the time they are gone we are thinking of them and
doing something for them. Whom have we been working for to-day
but the gentlemen, pray?"
To her surprise, Aurelia's brown eyes dropped, and her beautiful
face turned a sudden pink.
"I never could carve a fowl," said Mrs. Lewis plaintively. "But
there must be a beginning in learning anything. I wish I knew
where the beginning of this duck is. Aura, will you go look in
that Audubon, and see how this creature is put together? We are
likely to be worse off than Mr. Secretary Pepys, when the venison
pasty turned out to be 'palpable mutton.' We shall have nothing."
Margaret started up. "Infirm of purpose, give me the carver!" she
cried; and seizing the knife, in a moment of inspiration,
triumphantly carved the mysterious duck, and betrayed its hidden
articulations.
Mrs. Lewis contemplated her with great respect. "My dear," she
said, "I have done you injustice. I have believed that though you
could succeed admirably in the ornamental and the extraordinary,
you had no faculty for common things. I acknowledge my
error.'Nemesis favors genius,' as Disraeli says of Burke."
After luncheon and a siesta, they dressed and went out onto the
lawn to watch for the gentlemen, who presently appeared.
Mr. Granger presented Margaret with a spike of beautiful pink
arethusa set in a ring of feathery ferns. "It came from a swamp
miles away," he said. "I wanted to bring you something bright the
first day."
"You always bring me something bright," she said.
To Be Continued.
-------
{175}
_Problems Of The Age_, And Its Critics.
The article from _The Independent_ of August 20th, which we
quote in full below, has been sent to us by the writer of it,
with an accompanying note, requesting us to take notice of its
observations. Our remarks will, therefore, be chiefly confined to
this particular criticism on the _Problems of the Age_,
although we shall embrace the opportunity to notice also some
other criticisms which have been made in various periodicals.
"The pastor of the Broadway Tabernacle, many years ago, taking
a hint from Archbishop Whately,'traced the errors of Romanism
to their origin,' _not_ 'in human nature,' but in Old
School theology. The ultra-Calvinist doctrine of original sin,
he argued, necessitated the dogma of baptismal regeneration;
and the doctrine of physical inability brought in the notion of
sacramental grace. Mr. Hewit is a living example, and his book
is documentary proof, of the justice of this theory. His early
training was under the severest of schoolmasters, in the oldest
of schools. The problems on which his mind has been exercised
from his birth are such as this: How men can be 'born depraved,
with an irresistible propensity to sin, and under the doom of
eternal misery.' With admirable infelicity, a treatise on
questions like this--the freshest of which are as old as
Christian theology, and the others as old, if not older, than
the fall of man--has been entitled _Problems of the Age_,
on the ground (as we are informed in the preface) that they are
'subjects of much interest and inquiry in our own time.' From
his hereditary embarrassments on these subjects, the writer
makes his way out to a new theodicy, which on the subject of
the existence of sin is Taylorism, word for word; on the
subject of natural depravity is something like Pelagianism; and
on the subject of original sin is a curious notion, which he
strives mightily to represent as the sentiment of Augustine.
The whole series of ideas is labelled 'Catholic Theology,' and
represented as the antagonist of Protestant opinion.
"The volume deserves no small praise as a specimen of lucid,
consecutive argument on difficult questions, conducted in pure
English. The only serious blemish upon the author's style is
his habit, when he has said a thing once in good English, of
saying it over again immediately in bad Latin. But this, we
suppose, is less the fault of his taste than of his position.
The logic of the book, also, has not more faults than are
commonly incident to such discussions; it is strong for pulling
down, feeble in building up. It reduces to absurdity the
statements of some of his antagonists, with wonderfully
complacent unconsciousness that a smart antagonist could get
exactly the same hitch about the neck of _its_ statement,
and drag it to the same destruction.
"The plan of the work is curious. It begins with the primary
cognitions of the mind, and goes forward with an _à priori
_ argument for the existence of God: that if God exists, he
must necessarily exist in Trinity; must create just such a
universe; must be incarnate in the Second Person; must redeem a
fallen race; must institute the Roman Catholic Church, its
sacraments and ritual. The second part is devoted to finding in
Augustine the ideas of the former part--ideas some of which,
unless that lucid author has been hitherto read with a veil
upon the heart,
'Would make _Augustine_ stare and gasp.'
"Besides the limits of space, which are imperative, two reasons
suffice to excuse us from examining in detail the course of
this ingenious and protracted argument:
"_First_. It is a matter of comparatively little interest
to scrutinize severely the _processes_ of a reasoner to
whom one half of his _conclusions_ are prescribed
beforehand, under peril of excommunication and eternal
damnation, while he holds the other half under a vow to
repudiate them at a moment's notice from the proper authority.
"_Second_. It is profoundly unsatisfactory to argue
against any such book, whatever its origin or pretensions, as
representative of the Roman Catholic theology. From page to
page the author challenges our respect and deference for his
views as being the teachings of the church.'This is Catholic
truth; this is Catholic theology.'
{176}
But, once let us give chase to one of his propositions, and
hunt it down into the corner of an absurdity, and we are sure
to hear some of the author's confederates trying to call off
the dogs with the assurance,'Oh! that is only a notion of
Hewit's;' or, 'only a private opinion of theologians;' or,
'only the declaration of an individual pope;' or, 'only a
decree of council which never was generally received: the
church is not responsible for such things as these.' So
slippery a thing is 'Catholic doctrine'! So unrestful is the
'repose' offered to inquiring minds by that church, which
divides all subjects of religious thought into two classes:
one, on which it is forbidden to make impartial inquiry; the
other, on which it is forbidden to come to settled
conclusions."
We confess that it appears to us a very puzzling "problem" to
find out how to answer the foregoing criticism, or the others
from non-catholic periodicals which it has been our hap to fall
in with. Not one of them has seriously controverted the main
thesis of the book they profess to criticise, or to make any
well-motived adjudication of the several portions of the argument
by which the thesis is sustained. Some, like the one before us,
attempt to set aside the whole question; others content
themselves with a round assertion that the arguments are
inconclusive; and the residue confine themselves to generalities;
or, at most, to the criticism of some minor details. We should
not think it worth while to trouble ourselves or our readers with
a formal replication to such superficial critics, were it not for
the opportunity which is afforded us of bringing into clearer
light the total lack of all deep philosophy or theology in the
non-catholic world, and the value of the Catholic philosophy
which we are striving to bring before the minds of intelligent
and sincere inquirers after truth.
The criticisms begin with the title of the work. The critic of
_The Independent_ objects to our calling old questions
_problems of the age_. _The Southern Review_ coincides
with him, and suggests that they should rather have been called
"problems _of all ages;_" while another critic, in _The
Evening Post_, gives his verdict that they are all to be
classed as "problems of a bygone age." This last criticism is the
only one founded upon a reason; and is, at the same time, a full
justification of the appropriateness of the title before all
those who still profess to believe in the revelation of God. The
different classes of protesters against the teaching of the
church have wearied themselves in vain in searching for a
satisfactory solution of the problems of man's condition and
destiny; either in some new rendering of divine revelation, or in
some system of purely rational philosophy. The despair produced
by their utter failure vents itself in the denial that these
problems are real ones, capable of any solution at all, and in
the attempt to relegate them finally into the region of the
unknowable. This is a vain effort. They have forced themselves
upon the attention of the human mind ever since the creation, and
they will continue to do so, in spite of all efforts to exorcise
them. The relations of man to his Creator, the reason of moral
and physical evil, the bearing of the present life on the future,
the significance of Christianity, and such like topics, can be
regarded as obsolete questions only by a most unpardonable
levity. The so-called Liberal Christian and the rationalist may
in deed proffer the opinion that the solutions we have given are
already antiquated. But, with all the hardihood which persons of
this class possess in so remarkable a degree in claiming for
themselves all the light, all the intelligence, all the spiritual
vitality existing in the world, we must persist in thinking that
their triumphant tone is some what prematurely assumed.
{177}
We insist that the problems of bygone ages are the problems of
the present ages, and that the solutions of bygone ages are the
only real ones, as true and as necessary at the present moment as
they have ever been. The restless mind of the non-Catholic world,
having broken away from its intellectual centre to wander
aimlessly in the infinite void, has plunged itself anew into all
the puzzle and bewilderment from which Christianity with its
divine philosophy had once delivered it, and, wearied with its
wanderings, longs and yet delays to return to its proper orbit.
Hence the great problems of past ages have become emphatically
the problems of the present, and must be answered anew, by the
same principles and the same truths which past ages found
sufficient, yet presented in part in modified language, in a new
dress, and with special application to new phases of error. The
title _Problems of the Age_ is therefore fully justified as
the most felicitous and appropriate which could have been chosen
for a treatise intended to meet the wants of those who are
seeking for help in their doubts and difficulties respecting both
natural and revealed religion. Any believer in the Christian
revelation who cannot recognize this, and heartily sympathize in
any well-meant effort to present the Christian mysteries in an
aspect which may attract honest and candid doubters or
unbelievers, shows that he has mistaken his side, and has more
intellectual sympathy with unbelief than he would willingly
acknowledge, even to himself.
Another anonymous critic sets aside with one sentence the entire
argument of the book; because, forsooth, it begins with the
assumption that the Catholic doctrine is the only true one, and
demands a preliminary submission of the reader's mind to the
authority of the Catholic Church. Nothing could be more
superficial and incorrect than this statement of the thesis
proposed by the author. The whole course of the argument supposes
that an unbeliever or inquirer after the true religion begins
with the first, self-evident principles of reason; proceeds, by
way of demonstration, to the truths of natural theology, and by
the way of evidence and the motives of credibility advances to
the belief of Christianity and the divine authority of the
Catholic Church. The thesis proposed or the special topic to be
discussed by the author is, Supposing the authority of the
Catholic Church sufficiently established by extrinsic evidence,
is there any insurmountable obstacle, on the side of reason, to
accept her dogmas as intrinsically credible? The implicit or even
explicit affirmation that Catholic philosophy is the true and
only philosophy, that it alone can satisfy the demands of reason,
is no begging of the question; for it is not stated as the
_datum_ or logical premiss from which the logical
conclusions are drawn. It is stated as being, so far as the mind
of the sceptical reader is concerned, only an hypothesis to be
proved, an enunciation of the judgment which is made by the mind
of a Catholic, the motives of which the non-catholic reader is
invited to examine and consider by the light of the principles of
reason, or of those revealed truths of which he is already
convinced.
A most sapient critic in the London _Athenaeum_, venturing
entirely out of his depth, makes an observation on the statement
that absolute beauty is identical with the divine essence, which
we notice merely for the amusement of our theological readers.
The statement of the author is, that beauty is to be identified
with the divine essence, by virtue of its definition as the
splendor of truth, and because truth, being identical with the
divine essence, its splendor must be also.
{178}
This consummate philosopher argues that beauty must be
identified, not with the divine essence, but with its splendor,
because it is the splendor of truth. The splendor of God is,
then, something distinct from God; and he is not most pure act
and most simple being! We cannot wish for a more apposite
illustration of the total loss of the first and most fundamental
conceptions of philosophy and natural theology out of the English
mind--a natural result of that movement which began with Luther,
when he publicly burned the _Summa_ of St. Thomas.
_The Mercersburg Review_ denies the demonstrative force of
the evidences of natural religion and positive revelation;
referring us to conscience, or the moral sense, as the ground of
belief in God and in Jesus Christ. This is another proof of the
truth of our judgment, that the radical intellectual disease
which Protestantism has produced requires treatment by a thorough
dosing with sound philosophy. The corruption of theology has
brought on a corruption of philosophy, and heresy has produced
scepticism, so that we can hardly find a sound spot to begin with
as a _point d'appui_ for the reconstruction of rational and
orthodox belief. We do not despise the argument from conscience
and the moral sense, or deny its validity. We did not specially
draw it out, because we were not writing a complete treatise on
natural theology; but it is contained in the metaphysical
argument establishing the first and final cause. Apart from that,
it has no conclusive force. What is conscience? Nothing but a
practical judgment respecting that which ought to be done or left
undone. What is the moral sense, but an intimate apprehension of
the relation of the voluntary acts of an intelligent and free
agent to a final cause? It is only intellect which can take
cognizance of a rule or principle directing a certain act to be
done or omitted, or of the intrinsic necessity of directing all
acts toward a final cause or ultimate end. The intellect cannot
do this, or deduce an argument from conscience and the moral
sense for the existence of God, unless it has certain infallible
principles given it in its creation; and with these principles,
the existence of God and all natural theology can be proved by a
metaphysical demonstration, proceeding from which, as a basis, we
prove Christianity and the Catholic Church by a moral
demonstration which is reducible to principles of metaphysical
certitude. Deny this, and conscience, or the moral sense, is a
mere feeling, a sensible emotion, a habit induced by education, a
subjective state, which is just as available in support of
Buddhism or Mohammedanism as of Christianity. _The Mercersburg
Review_ is trying to sustain itself midway down the declivity
of a slippery hill, afraid to descend where the mangled remains
of Feuerbach lie bleaching in the sun, and unwilling to catch the
rope which the Catholic Church throws to it, and ascend to the
height from whence Luther, in his pride and folly, slid. Kant's
miserable expedient of practical reason may suit those who are
content with such an insecure position; but it will never satisfy
those who look for true science, and certain, infallible faith.
_The Round Table_, in a notice which is, on the whole, very
favorable and appreciative, complains that we have accused
Calvinism of being a dualistic or Manichaean doctrine. We have
not only affirmed, but proved that it is so. By Calvinism,
however, we mean the strict, logical Calvinism of the rigid
adherents of the system.
{179}
The moderated, modified system, which approaches more nearly to
the doctrine of the most rigorous Catholic school, we do not wish
to censure too severely. Neither do we charge formal dualism, or
a formal denial of the pure, unmixed goodness of God even upon
the strictest Calvinists. What we affirm is, that, together with
their doctrine respecting God, which is orthodox, they hold
another doctrine respecting the acts of God toward his creatures,
which is logically incompatible with the former, and logically
demands the affirmation of an evil and malignant principle
equally self-existent, necessary, and eternal with the principle
of good, and thus leads to the doctrine of dualism in being. Many
orthodox Protestants have spoken against Calvinism much more
severely than we have done; and, in fact, while we cannot too
strongly reprobate its logical consequences, we always intend to
distinguish between them and the true, interior belief which
exists in the minds of many Calvinists, excellent persons, and
really nearer to the church, in their doctrine, as practically
apprehended, than they are aware of.
Our _Independent_ critic is displeased with the Latin
quotations from scholastic theology which we have somewhat freely
employed, and compliments us, as he apparently supposes, by
suggesting that this violation of good taste is to be ascribed,
not to any lack of judgment on our part, but to the fault of our
position. It is somewhat amusing to notice the patronizing air
which this well-meaning gentleman assumes, and the evident
complacency with which, from the height of his little, recently
constructed eminence, he looks down with a smile of pitying
forbearance upon our unfortunate "position." We will consent to
waive, once for all, all claims of a personal nature to any
consideration which is not derived from our position as a
Catholic and a humble disciple of the scholastic theology. That
theology is the glory and the boast of Christendom and of the
human intellect. We are firmly convinced that there is no true
wisdom, science, illumination, or progress to be found, except in
following the broad path which scholastic theology has explored
and beaten. Although our nice critic--who seems to have more
admiration for the effeminate classicism of Bembo and the age of
Leo X. than the masculine _verve_ of St. Thomas--may call
the scientific terminology of the schoolmen "bad Latin," we shall
venture to retain a totally different opinion. It is unequalled
and unapproachable for precision, clearness, and vigor. We have
employed it because our own judgment and taste have dictated to
us the propriety of doing so. We have not been led by servile
adhesion to custom, or the affectation of making a display, but
by the desire of making our meaning more clear and evident to
theological readers, especially those whose native language is
not English, and of introducing into our English theological
literature those definite and precise modes of reasoning which
belong to these great schoolmen. We can easily understand the
aversion of our opponents to the schoolmen, in which they are
only following after their predecessor, Martin Bucer, who said,
albeit in Latin, _Tolle Thomam et delebo Ecclesiam Romanam_,
"Take away Thomas, and I will destroy the Roman Church." To the
personal remarks of the critic in regard to the author and the
history of his religious opinions we give a simple
_transeat_, and pass to what semblance of argument there is
in rejoinder to the thesis defended in the _Problems of the
Age_.
{180}
The critic says that the same process of logic which the author
employs against his opponents would destroy his own statements.
This is a mere assertion, without a shadow of proof, and we meet
it with a simple denial. It is, moreover, a piece of triviality
with which we have no patience. It is the language of the most
wretched and shallow scepticism, conceived in the very spirit of
the question of Pontius Pilate to our Lord, "What is truth?" We
have been engaged for thirty years in the study of philosophy and
theology, and have carefully examined and weighed the matters we
have undertaken to discuss. The substance of the doctrine we have
presented is that in which the greatest minds of all ages have
been agreed; and it has been proved and defended against every
assault in a manner so triumphant that its antagonists have
nothing to say, but to deny the first principles of logic, the
possibility of science, the certainty of faith. There are,
undoubtedly, certain minor points which are open to question and
difference of opinion. But, as to our main thesis, that the
Catholic dogmas are not contradictory to anything which is known
or demonstrable by human science, we defy all opponents to refute
it.
By another subterfuge, equally miserable, our critic shakes off
all responsibility of even noticing the serious, calm, and
well-motived statements which we have made respecting Catholic
doctrines. We hold, he says, one half of our doctrines as
prescribed by authority, under pain of excommunication and
damnation; and the other half, under an obligation to renounce
them at a moment's warning, from the same authority; therefore,
no attention is to be paid to our arguments. This is one of the
most remarkable and most discreditable statements we remember
ever to have come across in a writer professing himself an
orthodox Christian. Does this inconsiderate writer see to what a
dilemma he has reduced himself? Either he must admit that Jesus
Christ, the apostles, the Bible, teach him with authority, and
plainly and unequivocally, certain doctrines which he is bound to
believe, under penalty of being cast out from the communion of
true believers, and incurring eternal damnation; or he must deny
it. In the first case, he must retract his words, or give the
full benefit of them to the rationalist and the infidel, against
himself. In the second case, he must lay aside his mask, and step
forth with the discovered lineaments of an open unbeliever. We
receive the dogmas of faith proposed by the church because they
are revealed by Jesus Christ through his Holy Spirit, who is
indwelling in the body of the church. We cannot revoke these
dogmas into an examination or discussion of doubt, any more than
we can doubt our own existence, or the first principle of
reasoning. Nevertheless, as we can argue against a person who
doubts these first principles, or give proofs and evidences to an
ignorant man of facts or truths whose certainty is known to us;
so we can give proofs of dogmas of faith which we are not
permitted to doubt for an instant to one who does not believe
these dogmas, or understand the motives upon which their
credibility is established. It is unlawful to doubt the being and
perfections of God, the immortality of the soul, the truth of
revelation. Yet we may examine thoroughly all these topics to
find new and confirmatory proof and answers to objections. One
who is in doubt or ignorance may examine and weigh evidences in
order to ascertain the truth, and does not sin by keeping his
judgment in suspense until it obtains the data sufficient to make
a decision reasonable and obligatory.
{181}
In arguing with such a person, it is necessary to descend to his
level, and reason from the premises which his intellect admits.
In like manner, when it is a question of the Trinity, the
Incarnation, the divinity of Jesus Christ, the canonicity and
inspiration of the Scriptures, and all other Catholic dogmas;
although a Catholic may not doubt any one of these, and would act
unreasonably if he did, since he has the same certainty of their
truth that he has of his own existence or the being of God; yet
he may examine the evidences which are confirmatory of his faith
for his own satisfaction, and reason with an unbeliever in order
to convince him of the truth. The subterfuge by which our critic
and some other writers, especially one in _The Churchman_,
attempt to evade the inevitable deductions of Catholic logic,
which they cannot meet and refute--namely, that we cannot, with
consistency, argue about doctrines defined by infallible
authority--is the shallowest of all the artifices of sophistry.
When the Son of God appeared on the earth in human nature, and in
form and fashion as a man, claiming infallible authority, and
demanding unreserved obedience, it was necessary for him to give
evidence of his divine mission. A Jew, a Mohammedan, or a
Buddhist cannot, in reason or conscience, believe in Jesus Christ
until this evidence has been proposed to him. When it is
sufficiently proposed, he is bound to believe; and, once becoming
aware that Jesus is the Son of God, he is bound to believe all
that he has revealed, simply upon his word. But, supposing he has
been erroneously informed that the teaching of Jesus Christ
contains certain doctrines or statements of fact which are in
contradiction to what seems to him to be right reason or certain
knowledge, it is unquestionably both prudent and charitable to
correct his mistakes upon this point, and thus remove the
obstacles to belief from his mind. Precisely so in regard to the
Catholic Church. The demand which she makes of submission to her
infallible authority, as the witness and teacher established by
Jesus Christ, is accompanied by evidence. It is upon this
evidence we lay the greatest stress; and in virtue of this it is
that we present the Catholic doctrines as certain truths which
every one is bound to believe. Undoubtedly, the infallibility of
the church once established, it is the duty of every one to
believe the doctrines she proposes, putting aside all
difficulties and objections which may exist in his own imperfect,
limited understanding. Yet, if these difficulties and objections
do not lie in the very mysteriousness, vastness, and elevation of
the object of faith itself, but in merely subjective
misapprehensions, it is right to attempt to remove them, and to
make the exercise of faith easier to the inquirer. Moreover,
although it is sufficient to prove the infallibility of the
church, and then, from this infallibility, to deduce, as a
necessary consequence, the truth of all Catholic teaching; it
does not follow that each separate portion of this teaching
cannot be proved by other and independent lines of argument. The
divine legation of Moses is sufficiently proved by the authority
of Christ; but it can be proved apart from that authority. So,
the Trinity, the real presence, baptismal regeneration, or
purgatory, are sufficiently and infallibly proved from the
judgment of the church; but they may be also proved from
Scripture, from tradition, and, in a negative way, from reason.
In the _Problems of the Age_ our principal intention has
been to clear away difficulties and misapprehensions from the
object of faith, in order that candid inquirers might not be
obliged to assume any greater burden upon their minds than the
weight of that yoke of faith which the Lord himself imposes.
{182}
In doing this, we have endeavored not only to clear the dogmas of
faith from the perversions of heretical doctrines, but also to
distinguish them from theological opinions, which rest only on
human authority, and are open to discussion. We have also thought
it best, not merely to mark off doctrines of faith, and leave
them in their naked simplicity, free from that theological
envelope which is sometimes confounded with their substance; but
also to give them that dress which, in our opinion, is best
fitted to set off their native grace and beauty. We have not
simply expressed the definitions of the church, discriminating
from them the opinion of this and that school, and thus barely
indicating what must be, and what need not be believed, in order
to be a Catholic. We know the wants of the class of minds we are
dealing with. They feel the need of some general view which shall
give them a _coup a'oeil_ of the theological landscape, and
enable them to embrace the details and single objects contained
in it in one harmonious whole. They have had so much sophistical
reasoning and false philosophy, as well as bad and repulsive
theology, dinned into their ears and minds that they cannot be
satisfied without some better system as a substitute. We were
obliged, therefore, not only to point out that certain
opinions--generally repugnant to those who have been sickened by
imbibing the Calvinistic and Lutheran poison--are not obligatory
on the conscience of any Catholic, but also to present the
opinions of another school more remote from Protestant orthodoxy,
and less repugnant to those who are called liberal Christians.
Our critic seems to imagine that, in doing this, we are merely
playing an adroit game in which all kinds of theological or
philosophical opinions are used as counters, without reference to
truth, and merely with the view of winning as many converts as
possible, by any show of plausible argument. At any moment, he
says, we are ready to throw away the whole, if commanded to do so
by authority. Once caught, those who have been drawn into the
church by an artifice will have their minds tutored in a far
different way, and be obliged to keep themselves ready to accept
the very contrary of that which we assured them was sound,
orthodox doctrine, at the arbitrary will of the ecclesiastical
authority. Until that authority defines precisely what the sound
Catholic doctrine is, we can have no settled, well-grounded
opinion; but only conjecture and hypothesis. Let the absurdity of
any of these hypotheses be shown by some Protestant
controversialist, and the plea is ready that the church is not
responsible for private opinions. Yet we have been artful and
audacious enough to put forth a network of such hypotheses as
Catholic doctrine when they are not Catholic doctrine, and are
directly controverted by other Catholic writers. In an article
which appeared lately in _Putnam's Monthly_, publicly
ascribed to the same gentleman who is the avowed author of the
criticism we are noticing, there is a general charge made upon
"Americo-Roman preachers," of presenting a "plausible
pseudo-Catholicity" quite different from the genuine Italian and
Irish article. _The Churchman_, not long ago, made a similar
statement which, if not mendacious, is supremely foolish and
ignorant, respecting F. Hyacinthe, and certain other devoted
Catholics in France.
{183}
The whole is a tissue of cobwebs, which a stroke of the pen can
sweep away. The Holy See is not accustomed to condemn suddenly
and by the wholesale the probable opinions of grave and learned
theologians, much less the doctrines of great and
long-established schools. In the _Problems of the Age_, we
have been careful to follow in the wake of theologians of
established repute, and not to lay down propositions whose
tenability is doubtful or suspected. It is possible that some
definitions or decrees may be made hereafter which may require us
to modify some of our opinions in theology or philosophy, and we
shall undoubtedly submit at once to any such decisions. But there
is no probability that we shall ever be called upon to change
radically and essentially that system of theology which we have
derived from the best and most esteemed Catholic authors. There
is certainly no reason to think that the tenets distinguishing
the Dominican from the Augustinian school will ever be condemned
in a mass. Those which distinguish the Jesuit school from either
or both of these have been through a severe ordeal of accusation
and trial long ago, and have come out unscathed. The same is true
of the doctrines of Cardinal Sfondrati. Suarez, St. Alphonsus,
Perrone, and Archbishop Kenrick are certainly respectable
authority, and a good guarantee of the orthodoxy of opinions
sustained by their judgment. Perrone, whom we have followed more
closely than any other author in treating of the most delicate
and difficult questions, has taught and published his theology at
Rome. It has passed through thirty seven editions, and is more
popular as a text-book than any other. He is a consultor of the
Sacred Congregations of the Council and the Index, Prefect of
Studies in the Roman College, and, together with Fathers Schrader
and Franzlin, eminent theologians of the same Jesuit school, a
member of the Commission of Dogmatic Theology, which is preparing
the points for decision in the coming Council of the Vatican. The
doctrines advanced in the _Problems of the Age_ in
opposition to Calvinism, in accordance with the theological
exposition of Perrone, cannot, therefore, be qualified as
peculiar or curious opinions of the author, as pseudo-Catholic or
Americo-Roman theories, or as liable to any theological censure
of unsoundness.
Nevertheless, we have not, as the critic asserts, set forth these
or other opinions indiscriminately, and in so far as they vary
from the opinions of other approved Catholic authors, as being
exclusively the Catholic doctrine. We have used extreme care and
conscientiousness in this respect, although our critic is
incapable of appreciating it, from his lack of all thorough
knowledge of the controversy he has unadvisedly meddled with. We
do not qualify as Catholic doctrine, in a strict sense, anything
which is not _de fide obligante_, or admitted by the
generality of theologians, without opposition from any
respectable authority, as morally certain. We censure no really
probable opinion as contrary to Catholic doctrine, and are
disposed to allow the utmost latitude of movement to every
individual mind competent to reason on theological subjects,
between the opposite extremes condemned by the church. It does
not follow from this, however, that our doctrine is mere
hypothesis, and that we are forbidden or unable to come to any
positive conclusions beyond the formal definitions of the church.
The substance and essential constituents of the doctrine are
certainly Catholic, and common to all schools.
{184}
The Council of Trent condemned the heresies of Calvin and Luther,
and the Holy See, the whole church concurring, has condemned the
heresies of Jansenius and Baius. We know, also, what was the
theology of the men who framed and enacted the decrees condemning
those errors, or affirming the opposite truths, what was the
spirit animating the church at that time, and continuing in it
until the present; and we have in the episcopate, but especially
in the Holy See, the living, authentic teacher and interpreter of
the doctrine contained in the written decrees. There is,
therefore, a solid and common basis upon which all Catholics
stand, and upon which it is possible and allowable to construct
theological theories or systems. Learning, logic, the intuitive
power of genius, and the special gifts imparted by the Holy
Spirit to certain favored men, have their full scope in carrying
on this work. Through their activity, conclusions, deductions,
expositions, elucidations, may be attained, which have a value
varying all the way from plausible conjecture and hypothesis up
through the different degrees of probability, to moral certainty.
For ourselves, we have always studied to find in the most
approved authors those opinions which approach as nearly as
possible to moral certainty; or, in default of such, those which
are admitted to be probable, and to our mind appear intrinsically
more probable than their opposites. We write and speak,
therefore, not with an economy, or as presenting opinions likely
to captivate our readers, but with an interior conviction, in
accordance with that which we believe to be really the revealed
and rational truth; or else we indicate that we are speaking
under a reserve of doubt and suspended judgment. As for the
insinuation that we are concerned in any artful scheme for
palming off a plausible pseudo-Catholicity in lieu of the
Catholicity of the Pope, the Roman Church, and of the faithful
people of Ireland, we repudiate it as false, groundless, and
injurious. We hold unreservedly to the Pope and all his doctrinal
decisions; to the genuine, thorough, uncompromising Catholicity
of Rome and the universal church; to the faith for which the
martyred people of Ireland have dared and suffered all. Nothing
could be more opposed to that astuteness for which Catholic
ecclesiastics generally obtain extensive credit, than to attempt
such a foolish scheme in this country and age of the world as
some persons attribute to us for the purpose of nullifying the
effect of our influence and arguments upon the minds of candid
inquirers after truth. For what purpose or end could we desire to
propagate the Catholic religion in this country, unless we are
convinced that it is the only true religion established by Jesus
Christ, and necessary to the salvation of the human race? With
this conviction, it would be the most supreme folly to preach any
other doctrine but that genuine and sound Catholic doctrine which
is sanctioned by the supreme authority in the church, and which
we desire to propagate. Individuals may, no doubt, err, even with
good intentions, in the attempt to discriminate between the
permanent and the variable, the essential and the accidental, the
universal and the local elements in Catholicity; and in the
effort to adjust the relations between the doctrine and
institutions of the church and new conditions of human science,
or political and social order. But it is impossible for any
individual or clique either to master or resist the general
Catholic sentiment, and thus to cause the acceptance of any form
of pseudo or neo-Catholicism as genuine Catholicity.
{185}
Moreover, there is the vigilant eye and strong arm of
ecclesiastical authority ready every moment to detect and
restrain the aberrations of private judgment, and to condemn all
opinions or schemes which cannot be tolerated without endangering
either doctrine or discipline. The voice of the Holy Father is
heard throughout the world, and the voice of the whole Catholic
Church will reverberate to the uttermost parts of the earth from
the approaching Ecumenical Council. All intelligent persons, more
especially all inquisitive, shrewd, and cool-headed Americans,
have the means of knowing what genuine Catholic doctrine is.
Whoever should attempt to set forth a dilution of Catholicity
with Grecism, Anglicanism, rationalism, or any other kind of
individualism, as a lure to non-catholics, would, therefore,
simply gain nothing, unless a little unenviable notoriety should
seem to his vanity a gain worth purchasing by the betrayal of his
trust. The people of this country want the genuine Catholicity,
or nothing. They will not be deluded a second time by a
counterfeit, and become followers of a man, a party, or a sect.
Nor do we wish to deceive them. We desire to set before them the
doctrine and law of the Catholic Church in their purity and
integrity, that they may have the opportunity of embracing them
for their temporal and eternal salvation. We have had this end in
view in writing and publishing the _Problems of the Age;_
and, knowing well the delicacy and difficulty of the task, we
have spared no pains to study the decisions of councils and the
Holy See, to compare and weigh the statements of the most
approved theologians, and to make no explanations which we were
not satisfied are tenable, according to the received criterion of
orthodoxy. We do not desire, however, or exact that any of our
statements should be taken upon trust by any one. We have written
for thinking and educated persons, who have need of light upon
certain dark points of Christian doctrine; who are in earnest,
and willing to take the time and trouble necessary for learning
the truth. Such persons, if they read only English, will find all
that is requisite, in addition to the citations made in the
_Problems of the Age_, in _Möhler's Symbolism_.
Scholars and theologians may satisfy themselves more fully by the
aid of the collection of dogmatic and doctrinal decrees contained
in Denziger's _Enchiridion_, and of the theologies of
Billuart, Perrone, and Kenrick, the first of whom is a strict
Thomist, the second a Jesuit, and the third of no particular
school. In the exposition of the more antique and technically
Augustinian tenets, the works of Berti, Estius, Antoine, Cardinal
Noris, and Cardinal Gotti can be consulted. There are many other
books relating to the Jansenist controversy, in Latin, French,
and English, from which the fullest information can be obtained
in regard to the history of the desperate struggle which that
pseudo-Augustinian heresy--so nearly allied to the more moderate
Calvinism and to one form of Anglicanism--made to gain a foothold
in the church, and its thorough and complete discomfiture by the
learning and logic of the great Thomist and Jesuit theologians,
and the authority of the Holy See.
There remains but one more point to be noticed, closely connected
with the topic just now discussed, the charge of Pelagianism made
by our critic against our own doctrines, and of semi-Pelagianism
made by _The Mercersburg Review_, against the same, which
the latter does not distinguish from the doctrine of the Roman
Church.
{186}
The learned Professor Emerson, of Andover, long since called the
attention of his co-religionists to the fact that the designation
of Pelagian is used in this country very much at random, and by
persons who have no accurate notion of the tenets of Pelagius.
Calvinism, Jansenism, and Baianism are heresies on one side of
the line; Pelagianism and semi-Pelagianism on the opposite. The
Catholic doctrine is the truth which they all deny or pervert,
exaggerate or diminish, by their false perspective. Therefore,
each of them accuses the Catholic doctrine of the error opposite
to its own error. This is no new thing, but was long ago
complained of by St. Athanasius and St. Hilary. The Arians
accused the Catholics of being Sabellians, and the Sabellians
accused them of being Arians or Arianizers. We uphold both nature
and grace, against Calvinists and Pelagians, therefore we are by
turns accused of denying both. In the present instance, we are
accused of denying or diminishing grace. The accusation is
foolish, and shows a very slight knowledge of theology in those
who make it. The Pelagian heresy asserts that human nature is
capable of attaining the beatitude which the holy angels and
saints possess with Jesus Christ in God, by its own intrinsic
power, and is in the same state now as that in which Adam was
originally constituted. The contrary doctrine is so clearly
stated and so fully developed in the _Problems of the Age_,
that it suffices to refer the reader to its pages. The
semi-Pelagian heresy asserts that human nature is capable of the
beginning of faith by its own efforts, and also of meriting grace
by a merit of congruity. This heresy is unequivocally condemned
by the church, and rejected by every school and every theologian.
There is not a trace of it in a single line we have written.
This leads us to notice a misapprehension into which the editor
of _The Religious Magazine_ of Boston has fallen. This
Unitarian periodical is one which we esteem very much, on account
of its excellent and truly devout spirit; and its contributors
belong to a class of liberal Christians whose tendencies inspire
us with much hope. It is with pleasure, therefore, that we
recognize the candid and amicable tone of the notice which it has
given of that which we have written especially for those whose
intellectual direction is in the line which it follows. Our
Unitarian critic has, however, made the great mistake of
supposing that we use an orthodox phraseology, without any ideas
behind it different from those of liberal Christians or
rationalists. He says, "Setting aside what we cannot help calling
theological technicalities, his account of man's moral being
accords almost entirely with that which our liberal Christianity
would give." "Perhaps the criticism upon our author must be, that
he only retains in word and form much which he has abandoned in
fact." The writer of this has been so accustomed to associate
certain Catholic formulas and words with Calvinistic ideas, that
they seem to him to mean nothing when dissociated from them. With
him, the logical alternative of Calvinism is Unitarianism; and
whoever agrees with him in rejecting the former, must
substantially agree with him in holding the latter, however his
language may vary from that which he himself uses. The reason of
this is, that he fails to apprehend the Catholic idea of the
supernatural order; that is, of the elevation of the rational
creature to the immediate intuition of the divine essence in the
beatific vision. We fear that in the last analysis it will be
found that Unitarians have lost the distinct conception of the
personality of God, and retain only a vague, confused notion of
him as abstract being, and therefore not an object of direct
vision.
{187}
Hence, they conceive of the highest contemplation and beatitude
of man in the future life as a mere evolution and extension of
our natural intelligence and spontaneity. Or, if they do conceive
of heaven as a state in which the soul attains to a direct,
personal fellowship and converse with God as a friend, a father,
a supreme, intelligent, living, and loving Spirit, with whom the
human spirit comes into immediate relations, like those of man
with man on earth, they still believe that we are capable of
attaining to this by the mere development of our natural powers,
and by purely natural acts. There is, therefore, a great chasm
between the Unitarian and the Catholic doctrine. The latter
teaches, in the mystery of the Trinity, the only real and
possible conception of personal subsistence in the divine
essence, and sets forth the concrete, living, active,
impersonated God, in whom is infinite, self-sufficing beatitude,
without any necessity to create for the sake of completing the
reason, and relations, and end of his being. This infinite
beatitude consisting in the contemplation and love of his own
essence which is actuated in the Trinity, presents the idea of a
beatitude infinitely superior to and distinct from any felicity
to which we have any natural aptitude or impulse. Its cause and
object is the divine essence, directly and immediately beheld by
an intellectual vision, of which our corporeal vision of material
objects is but a faint shadow. The Catholic doctrine teaches that
human nature must be elevated by a supernatural gratuitous grace
in order to attain to this vision of God; that in Christ it is so
elevated, even to a hypostatic union with the second person of
the Trinity; that in Adam it was elevated to a lesser or adoptive
filiation; that the angelic nature is also elevated to a similar
state; and that men, under the present dispensation; are subjects
of the same grace. The church teaches, moreover, that this grace
is granted to men, since the fall, only through the merits of the
sacrifice of Jesus Christ upon the cross; that without divine
grace they cannot even begin a supernatural life; that no merely
natural virtue deserves this grace; and that it is by faith,
which is the gift of God; by the sacraments, and by good works
done in the state of grace, in the communion of the Catholic
Church, that we can alone obtain everlasting life with Christ.
There is as much difference between this doctrine and any form of
Unitarianism as there is between the sun and the earth; the
star-studded sky and a neat, well-kept flower-garden. Catholics
may differ from each other in regard to certain questions
concerning the state of human nature when destitute of grace; but
we are all agreed in regard to the need of grace for attaining
the end we are bound to strive after, the conditions of obtaining
this grace, and the obligation of complying with them, as well as
in regard to the insufficiency of all media for bringing the
human race even to its acme of temporal progress and felicity,
except the institutions and teaching of the Catholic Church.
-------
{188}
Heremore-Brandon;
Or, The Fortunes Of A Newsboy.
CHAPTER IX.
When they arrived at the Wiltshire depot, Dick and Mary were
still undecided what step to take next; for neither of them
favored the idea of asking at once for Dr. Heremore, feeling
certain that the probabilities of his being alive would vanish
the moment that such an inquiry was proposed.
It was a nice enough town, with fine breezes from the sea blowing
through its streets, and a quaint look about the houses that made
Dick, at least, feel as if they were in a foreign land. Dick and
Mary stood on the depot platform together, undecided still.
"Let us walk a little way up and see what we can see," Mary
proposed.
All that they found at first were a few lumber-wagons, a
market-wagon, and now and then a group of boys playing; but
finally they came upon a store, at the door of which several
long-limbed countrymen were talking and chewing tobacco. I should
have said "chewing and talking;" for the chewing was much more
vigorously prosecuted than the talking. The presence of the
strangers, one a lady in a plain but very stylish dress,
attracted some attention; the men surveyed them in a leisurely,
undazzled way, hardly making room for them to pass; for, having
seen the sign POST-OFFICE in the window of this store, Dick and
Mary concluded to enter and make inquiries. The afternoon sun
streamed in upon the floor; the flies buzzed at the windows; and
a man, with his hat on and his chair tilted back, was at the back
of the store. He made no sign of changing his position when he
first saw the strangers, not because Mr. Wilkes was any less well
disposed toward "the ladies" than a city merchant would be, but
because country people fancy it is more dignified to show
indifference than politeness. In time, however, he tilted down
his chair, freed his great mouth from its load of tobacco, and
lounged up to the counter where Mary and Dick were standing.
"I want to ask you a question," Dick answered to the
storekleeper's look; "I suppose you know this town pretty well?"
Dick was so afraid of the answer that he did not know how to put
a direct question in regard to Dr. Heremore.
"Rather," was the laconic reply, with no change of the speaker's
countenance.
"Do you know if a Dr. Heremore lived here once, twenty-five years
or so ago?"
"I wasn't here in them days," for Mr. Wilkes was a young man who
did not care to be old.
"I did not suppose you did know, of your own knowledge; I thought
you might have heard."
"I suppose you have come to see him?"
"Or to hear of him," added Dick.
"Come from Boston or York, I suppose?"
"From New York," answered Dick; "can you tell us who is likely to
give us information?"
{189}
"About the old doctor?" asked Mr. Wilkes in the same impassive
manner.
"Yes," said Dick, rather impatiently.
"I suppose you are relations o' his?"
"We came to get information, not to give it," Dick replied in a
quiet tone but inwardly vexed.
"Well," answered the storekeeper, not in the least abashed by
this rebuke, "there's an old fellow lives up yonder, who knows
pretty much everything's been done here for the last forty years;
you'd better go to him; if any one knows, he does. Better not be
too techy with _him_, I can tell you, if you want to find
out anything; people as wants to take must give too, you know.
That there road will take you straight to the house; white house,
first on the left after you come to the meeting house."
"Thank you; and the name?"
"Well, folks usually calls him 'The Governor' round here; you,
being strangers, can call him what you please."
"Will he like a stranger's calling?"
"Oh! tell him I sent you--Ben Wilkes--and you are all right."
"Thank you!" Mary and Dick replied and turned away. "Ben Wilkes,"
who, during this conversation, had seated himself on the counter,
the better to show his ease in the strangers' society,
which--Mary's especially--secretly impressed him very much,
looked leisurely after them as they passed out of the store; then
took out some fresh tobacco, and returned to his chair.
"I don't like to go," said Mary, "it may be some joke upon us."
"I am afraid it is," answered Dick; "but, after all, what can
happen that we need mind? If it is a gentleman to whom he has
sent us, no matter how angry he is, he will see that you are a
lady, and you will know how to explain it; if he has sent us to
one who is not, I guess I shall be able to reply to him."
Their walk was a very long one, but the meeting-house at last
came in sight, and next it, though there was a goodly space
between, was a large white house, irregular and rambling, with
very nicely kept shrubbery around.
Dick opened the gate with a hand that was a little nervous; but
Mary whispered as their feet crunched the neatly bordered gravel
walk to the low porch, "It is all right, I am sure; there is an
old gentleman by the window."
"Will you be spokesman this time?" asked Dick.
Mary nodded, and as the path was narrow and they could not well
walk side by side, she was in front, so that naturally she would
be the first to meet the old gentleman. A very fine old gentleman
he was; a large man with a fine head, and, as his first words
proved, a remarkably full, sweet voice. Seeing a lady coming
toward him, he rose at once from his arm-chair, closed his book
and advanced a step or two to greet her. Mary was one of those
women toward whom courteous men are most courteous from the first
glance; and this old gentleman, who moved toward her with all the
grace and ease of a vigorous young man, was one of those men to
whom gentle women are gentler, from the first, than to others.
"Good-evening," he said, as Mary looked up to him with a smile at
at once pleasant and deferential. "Good-evening," and as she did
not say more than these words, the gentleman continued, "I will
not say, 'Come in,' for it is too pleasant out of doors for that;
but let me give you chairs."
{190}
"Thank you, sir, we are strangers, but, we hope, not intruders,"
she replied.
"Certainly not," he answered. "It is a great pleasure for me to
receive my old friends, and a pleasure to me to make new ones;
and strangers, even if they remain strangers, bring with them
great interest to the quiet lives of us old people." This he said
in a tone not in the least formal, or as if "making a speech,"
and still looking more at Mary than at her brother. They were not
yet seated, and no expression but that of kindly courtesy crossed
his face while looking into the sweet, gravely smiling one before
him; his tones were hardly altered when he added, "I have waited
for you these many long years, Mary; but I never doubted you
would come at last. You must not play tricks upon my old heart;
it has suffered too much to be able to sustain its part as it did
in old times."
Mary drew back a step, at this strange address, but she could not
withdraw her eyes from his, as in tender, gentle tones he spoke
the last words. Dick stood closer to her, but said nothing.
"Indeed, you mistake," Mary said, with great earnestness; "I have
told you the truth, I am really a stranger, although you have
called me by my name, Mary. I am Mary Brandon, and this--"
"Is your husband. Well, Mary, are you not my daughter? If you
were changed, why come to see me? I heard you were changed. I
spent four years in Paris and Rome, following up the trace given
me in New York, and then I came back disappointed but not
despairing. 'Mary will not die without sending for me or coming
to me,' I said; and I have taken care always to be ready for you.
I never thought you could come to me with coldness or
indifference. I was prepared for almost anything--to see you poor
and broken-hearted; no shame, no sin, no sorrow that would part
us. I did not think to see you come back beautiful, happy, rich,"
a glance at her dress, "and without a word of greeting."
"Dr. Heremore?" said Dick, not because he believed or thought it,
but because the words came forced by some inward power greater
than his knowledge.
"Well, Charles," answered the old gentleman, sadly but
composedly, turning at this name, "can you explain it?"
And then Mary understood it all. The years were nothing to him
who had waited for his child's return, She was in his arms before
Dick had recovered from his first bewilderment, now, by this act
of hers, trebly increased.
"Ah my child! if I spoke severely, it was only because I could
not bear the waiting. I knew your jokes of old, darling; but when
one has waited so long for the dear face one loves, the last
moments seem longer than all the years. I will ask no questions.
I see you two are together, and it is all right. You can tell me
all at your leisure. Now, Mary, I must kill the fatted calf. Even
though you and Charles have not returned as prodigals," he added
as if he would not, even in play, risk hurting them.
"Not yet, please," said Mary. "Let us have it all to ourselves
for a few minutes." And they seated themselves on the sunny
porch, the old gentleman's delight now beginning to show itself
in the nervous way he moved his hands, and his disjointed
sentences.
{191}
Mary took off her hat at once, and threw it, with rather more of
gayety than was quite natural to her, upon one of the short
branches, looking like pegs, which had been left in the pillars
of the porch.
"You haven't forgotten the old ways--eh, Mary?" Dr. Heremore
asked, as he saw the movement. "I remember well how proud you
were the day you first found you could reach that very peg, and
you are as much a child as you were that day, is she not,
Charles?"
"Pretty nearly," answered Dick, who could not fulfil his part
with Mary's readiness.
"How deliciously fresh everything looks!" exclaimed Mary.
"You should have seen it in June. I never saw the roses thicker.
O pet, how I did wish for you, then! The time of roses was always
your time."
"And I love them as much as ever!" exclaimed Mary, telling the
truth of herself. "Next year, if I am alive, I will be here with
them; we will have jolly times looking after them. I have learned
a great deal about flowers lately, but I shall never love roses
like yours." This indeed, Mary felt to be true.
"Flora has had to be replaced," said her grandfather observing
her eyes resting on a statue in the garden in front. "I will show
you the alterations I have made, and a few are improvements. But
you must have something to eat now. I cannot let you go a minute
longer. You came up by the boat, I presume?"
"Yes, and had a hearty dinner," Mary answered, having a dread of
a servant's entering, and getting things all wrong again, "To eat
now will only spoil our appetite for tea, and I want you to see
what an appetite I have."
"Perhaps you are too tired to go around the garden?"
"Tired! No, indeed."
"I am afraid it will not interest you much, Charles," the old
gentleman said to Dick. "You never did care much about the little
place."
"Oh! I assure you, I would be delighted to see it all," Dick
answered, eagerly; but Mary had noticed the constraint in her
grandfather's voice whenever he addressed the supposed Charles,
and said quickly:
"Oh! we don't want you, you don't know a rose from a sunflower;
pick up a book and read till we come back."
"This way, dear; have you forgotten?" Dr. Heremore said, looking
at her in a perplexed manner as naturally enough she turned away
from the house. "This way, dear, you lose the whole effect if you
go around. Come through the house. There, dear old Mary," he
added, smilingly handing her a glass of wine which he poured out
from a decanter on the sideboard in the dining room. "Drink to
'The Elms' and no more jokes upon old hearts."
"To our happy meeting and no more parting," added Mary, drinking
her wine with him. He poured out a glass for Dick, or Charles, as
he thought him, and, rather formally, carried it to him It was
very clear that "Charles" was no favorite.
All through the trim garden, and then through the whole house,
Mary followed her grandfather, her heart, as it may be believed,
full of love for the tender father of her lost mother. She stood
in the room which that mother had occupied, and could not speak a
word as she gazed reverently around. It was a thorough New
England bedroom--a high mahogany bedstead, a long narrow
looking-glass with a landscape painted on the upper part, in a
gilt frame, a great chintz-covered arm-chair by the bed, a round
mahogany table, with a red cover and a Bible, a stiff,
long-legged washstand in the corner, a prim chest of drawers
under the looking-glass between the windows, composed the
furniture of the room; a badly painted picture of a young girl in
the dress of a shepherdess, and a pair of vases on the mantel,
were the only ornaments; a crimson carpet and white
window-curtains were plainly of a later date than the furniture.
{192}
"I have had to alter some things," said Dr. Heremore, as they
came out of the room, "but I got them as much like the old ones
as I could, that you might feel at home here. Your baggage should
be here by this time, should it not? How did you send it?" "We
left it at the station," answered Mary. "You know we were not
sure--not certain sure that we should find you."
"I suppose not, I suppose not. These have been long years, Mary,
but they have not changed us, after all. But I must send for your
trunks. I suppose Charles has the checks."
"We brought but very little with us," Mary said, considerably
embarrassed, and, seeing the change in his countenance, she
hastened to add, "But now that it is all right and we have found
the way, we will stay with you until you turn us out; at least, I
will."
"Then you will send for more things, and how about the children?"
with the same perplexed look at her. Mary knew not what to say.
Was it not better to tell him the real truth at once? How could
she go on with this deception, as innocent as any deception can
be, and yet how break down his joy in its very midst? Silently
she stood beside him, at a hall window, looking upon the prospect
he had pointed out to her, considering what answer to make him.
He, too, was silent; for a long time the two stood there, and
then it was the doctor who spoke first.
"Mary, your children must be men and women now. I had forgotten
how long it was; but I remember you were here last the year the
meeting-house over there was put up, and I just was thinking that
was over twenty years ago. Richard was a few months old, then.
Mary, don't deceive me. Tell me the truth."
Mary turned sadly toward him, and laid her hands in his.
"_Grandpapa_, I will," was all she said.
It was a great blow to him, but something had been hovering
confusedly before his mind ever since they came out together, and
now it was clear. He turned abruptly away from her at the first
shock, then came to her more kindly than ever. "Forgive me,
dear," he apologized with mournful courtesy; "I did not mean to
be rude, but it is a great shock. You are very like her, very
like her, but I should have known at once that those years could
not have left her a girl like you. I will not ask more--your
mother--"
"My _father_ is living," Mary said, with tears streaming
down her face, as he stopped, "and that is my brother
down-stairs."
"Is he your only brother? have you sisters?" he asked.
"We are your only grandchildren," she answered; and he understood
that his child was dead, and another woman had filled her place.
"You are a noble girl," he said, with lingering tenderness in
every word. "We will go down now. I will greet Richard, and then,
dear, you will let me be alone for a little while. I shall have
to send for your things, you know."
"If it is any trouble--" began Mary.
{193}
"None, I will see about it at once."
They went down, and he greeted Richard, then went away slowly,
still begging them to excuse him for the inattention to them.
Soon after, a barefooted boy of twelve or fourteen or so went
whistling down the road past the house, staring at them as he
went by; an hour after, the same boy returned with their bags;
these were taken up-stairs by a thin, severe-looking, very
neatly-dressed woman, who quickly and with only a word or two
showed them their rooms, and told them that, as soon as they were
dressed, tea would be ready.
Mary dressed in her mother's room with a sense of that mother's
spirit around her. She fortunately had brought a dress with her,
so that she was able to make a slight change. Then slowly and
with great reverence she went down the stairs, meeting Dick in
the hall, to whom she whispered, "O Dick! how I love him; but I
am afraid it will kill him; the purpose for which he has lived
these twenty years is taken from him. Can we give him another?"
"It may be that you can," Dick replied, looking tenderly into her
sweet face, all aglow with the bright soul-life which had been
kindled so actively in the last hours. "If you can, Mary, try it;
do not think of anything else; stay with him, do anything you
think right and good for him; he deserves more from us than--"
Dick hesitated, not willing to speak unkindly of Mr. Brandon, who
certainly had been a father to Mary--"than any other."
"I will try," Mary answered speaking quickly and in a low voice.
"If it seems best that I should stay a little while, you will
explain to papa? But perhaps, after all, it will be you who will
be able to replace her best."
"We shall see," Dick said, and then Dr. Heremore was seen coming
toward them, with less lightness in his step than they had
noticed before; otherwise there was but little change, except
that his voice was more mournfully tender than at first.
"It is a long time since I saw that place filled," he said,
arranging a chair for Mary before the tea-urn. "And it is very
sweet to me to see your bright young face before me; a long time
since I have had so strong an arm to help me," he added, as Dick
eagerly offered him some little assistance, "and I am very
grateful for it."
There were no explanations that night; he talked to Dick and Mary
as to very dear and honored guests, of everything likely to
interest them, and was won by their eager attention to tell them
many little things about his house and grounds, which were his
evident pride and pleasure, all in the same subdued, courteous
way that had attracted them from the first. There seemed, in the
beginning, a far greater sympathy between Mary and him than he
had with Dick, which was the reason, undoubtedly, why he devoted
his attention more especially to his grandson, whose modest
replies, given with a heightened color and an evident desire to
please, were very winningly made.
"I have two noble grandchildren," he said to them as they stood
up to say good-night. "My daughter, short as her life was, did
not come into the world for a small purpose; she did not live for
little good; she has sent me two to love and esteem, and to win
some love from them, I trust--yes, I _believe_."
{194}
The next day, he set apart a time and then there were full
explanations from both sides. Dick's story we know already. Dr.
Heremore's can be told in a few words. His daughter married, when
very young and on a short acquaintance, a gentleman who was
spending his summer holidays in the vicinity of Wiltshire, and,
immediately upon her marriage, had gone to N---- to reside; they
remained there until Richard was a month old, when his daughter
made him a long--her last--visit; from there to New York, whence
a letter or two was all that came for some little time; then one
written evidently in great depression of spirits. Dr. Heremore,
on receipt of this, went at once to New York to see her, only to
hear that she had gone with her husband to Europe. A little
further inquiry proved to his satisfaction that Mr. Brandon was
in the South, and that his wife was not with him; his letters
were unanswered, and his alarm was every day greater and more
painful. At last, he followed a lady--described to be somewhat of
his daughter's appearance, bearing the same name, who had joined
a theatrical company, though of this last he was not aware for a
long time--to Europe. As he had said before, he came back
disappointed but not despairing, to hear of Mr. Brandon's
death--the same false report, perhaps intentionally circulated,
which his daughter had heard. Her letters to him, of which she
spoke in her letter to Dick, were lost while he was away
searching for her. He had not been rich, then; but coming home,
he had resumed his practice, and lived patiently awaiting news of
her, energetically laboring to secure a small fortune for her
should she ever come to claim it. This little fortune he would
divide at once, he said, between her two children; for "what," he
argued with them, "what is the use of hoarding it to give to you
later when, I trust, you will not need it half as much? A few
hundreds in early youth are often worth as many thousands in
after-years."
"That will do for Dick," Mary conceded, "because it _would_
be a great thing for him to have a little start just now; and
besides, there's Somebody Else for _him_ to think of; but I
will take my share in staying here. You will not drive me away?"
"Your father?"
"Papa would--it's a shabby thing to say--be very willing to have
me away, in his present circumstances. He has been wishing and
wishing for Fred and Joe constantly ever since they went; but for
me--he thinks girls are a sort of nuisance, I know he does; and
will be very grateful to you if you divide the burden with him."
"But if--just as I got used to loving you, there should be
another Somebody Else besides Dick's? How about this out of
civilization place, then?"
Mary grew very red indeed, but answered readily, "Oh! that's a
long way off; and besides, he may not think this out of
civilization, you know."
So it was settled. One of the clerks who had been from early
boyhood in Ames and Narden's store had been long intending to
start out on his own account, and Dick was very sure that they
could fulfill their olden dream of partnership, now that Dr.
Heremore was willing to give them a start. Dick went down to New
York the day after this conversation, and there was a long talk
between the members of the firm, and the two clerks, which
culminated in a dinner and the agreement that all was to go on as
it had been going, until the first of May, when there would be a
new bookseller's firm in the New York Directory, to wit, BARNES
AND HEREMORE.
{195}
After a brief conversation with Mr. Brandon, Dick hurried to
Carlton, and was not long making his way to the shadowy lane. To
her honor and glory be it said, Trot was the first to see him;
and without waiting for a greeting, not even for the expected
"dear 'ittle Titten," ran with all speed into the house, crying,
"Thishter! Thishter! Mr. Dit ith toming!" at the top of her
voice; and Rose, all blushing at being caught "just as she was,"
had no time to utter a word before "Mr. Dit," was beside her.
There was great rejoicing over Dick; the children pulled him in
every direction, to show him some new thing he had not yet seen,
until he began to tell the story of his adventures, when they
stood around in perfect silence. Mrs. Alaine and Mrs. Stoffs
wiped their eyes between their smiles and their exclamations of
delight; old Carl once held his pipe in one hand and forgot to
fill it for nearly a minute, so absorbed was he; but Rose alone
did not say a word of congratulation when Dick's good fortune and
his brightened future were announced. I even think she had a good
cry about it, after a little talk with Dick by herself, that
evening, so hard it is to leave one's home.
"There's not a thing to wait for now," Dick had said, with
beaming eyes; and poor Rose's ideas of "youth," and "time to get
ready," and all that sort of remark, were put aside without the
least consideration. "We will have a little house of our own,"
Dick continued, "we will not go to boarding, as some people do;
you are too good a housekeeper for _that_, I am sure; and as
New York has no houses for young people of moderate means, we
will have a home of our own near the city. Shall we not, Rose?"
Dick was a very busy young man for a couple of months after this.
One thing Dr. Heremore did that seemed hard, but not so very
unnatural, and of which no one who has never felt a wrong to some
one dearly loved should judge. He begged that he might never see
Mr. Brandon, nor be asked to hold any communication with him. He
gave Mary a certain sum of money, which he wished her to use for
her father and step-brothers; but beyond that, he left Mr.
Brandon to help himself.
After attending to all his grandfather's requests and
suggestions, Dick, as he had been invited to do, returned to
Wiltshire to give an account of his management, and to take up
some things for Mary's use. He was on his way to the boat when he
suddenly started and exclaimed, "Mr. Irving!" for no less a
person than his "Sir Launcelot" was standing beside him. Mr.
Irving, not recognizing him, bowed slightly and passed on, and
Dick began to be relieved that Mary was so far away; perhaps,
after all, it was a great deal better.
But another surprise was in store for Dick, who--an inexperienced
traveller even yet, and always in advance of time--had gone on
and waited long before the boat prepared to leave; for at the
last moment a carriage drove rapidly to the pier, and a gentleman
sprang from it in time to catch the boat. It was "Sir Launcelot."
"Mr. Heremore, I believe," he said to Dick, when they met
somewhat later on the boat. "I called on Mr. Brandon to-day, just
after you met me, to pay my respects to him on my return from
Europe. I found him in a different business from that in which I
had left him, and very reserved. I asked after the ladies of his
family, who, he told me, were at your grandfather's and his
father-in-law's, in Maine, adding that there was a long story,
which I had better come to you to hear, if you had not already
left. I have business in Maine, so followed you up."
So they made acquaintance; and the new-found relationship with
Mary was explained, as also the reverses Mr. Brandon had met
with.
{196}
"His wife dead, too, you tell me! How shocked he must have been
at my questions of her! How like him not to give me a hint!"
exclaimed Mr. Irving.
The new friendship progressed well, as it often will between two
gentlemen, one of whom is in love with the other's sister,
although there was a wide difference between their characters.
Mr. Irving was many years older than Dick, as his finished
manners and his manly presence attested, without the aid of a few
gray hairs on his temples, not visible, and half a dozen or so in
his heavy moustache, very visible and adding much to his good
looks, in the eyes of most of the ladies who saw him. It seemed
as natural to Dick that this travelled man, so polished, so
princely as he was, should be just the one to please his
high-bred sister, and he captivated by her, as that he himself
should belong to Rose and she to him. Consequently he did not put
on any of the airs in which brothers, especially when they are
very young, delight to appear before their sister's admirers.
Dick had even tact enough, when they reached Dr. Heremore's house
--for, of course, Mr. Irving's "business in Maine" did not
interfere with his accompanying Dick to Wiltshire--to be, very
busy with the carriage and trunks, while Mr. Irving opened the
little gate, and announced himself to the young lady on the
porch. When Dick, a few minutes after, greeted his sister, he had
no need, though Mary's color did not come as readily as Rose's,
to say with Sir Lavaine:
"For fear our people call you lily maid,
In earnest, let me bring your color back."
I think that Dr. Heremore, though the very soul of courtesy,
looked rather sadly upon Mr. Irving; but he was not long left in
any uncertainty in regard to that gentleman's wishes; for the
very next day his story was told; how he had known and loved Mary
from her very earliest girlhood, but that he was afraid of his
greater age, and, anxious that she should not be influenced by
their long acquaintance and the advantages his ripened years had
given him over admirers more suited to her in age, he had gone to
Europe, but lacked the courage to remain half the time he had
allotted, and now was back, and--"
"And, ah! yes, I understand; I am to lose her," said her
grandfather sadly. "I knew I could not keep her."
"Giving her to me will not be losing her. We talked about it last
night, and we are both delighted with this place; and as I am
bound to no especial spot, (Mr. Irving was an author,) and she
loves none half so much as this, we can well pitch our tent
here."
But when further acquaintance had enabled the man of "riper
years" to take a place in Dr. Heremore's life which neither Mary
nor Dick could fill, it was settled that the old house was large
enough for the three; and as Mr. Irving was wealthy, healthy, and
wise, the sun of Mary's happiness shone very brightly.
There's nothing more for me to say except that Dick went down to
Carlton still once again, and that in its church there is a
little altar of the Blessed Virgin, whereon Rose had the
unspeakable delight--so precious to every pious heart--of laying
a beautiful veil--Mary's gift to her "sweet little
sister"--which Trot looks critically at every Sunday, and may be
a little oftener, and puzzles her small head wondering if its
delicate texture--the veil's--will stand the wear and tear of the
years that must pass before she can replace it with hers; which
always makes uncle Carl laugh. And Rose has persuaded Mary to
dedicate her own in the same way, and Mary has laughingly
complied, a little shame-faced, too, at her own secret pleasure
in doing it, at the same time half wondering "what will come of
it." Rose does not wonder; she thinks she knows.
As for Dick, there is every reason to believe that this coming
Christmas there will be two or three glad hearts travelling
around in company with two or three rough, ragged, shaggy boys;
that he will carve his own Christmas turkey at his own, own
table; and that there will be a _couleur de Rose_ over all
his future life.
----------
{197}
Our Lady's Easter.
I.
She knelt, expectant, through the night:
For He had promised. In her face
The pure soul beaming, full of grace,
But sorrow-tranced--a frozen light.
But, ere her eastward lattice caught
The glimmer of the breaking day,
No more in that sweet garden lay
The buried picture of her thought.
The sealed stone shut a void, and lo!
The Mother and the Son had met!
For her a day should never set
Had burst upon the night of woe.
In sudden glory stood He there,
And gently raised her to his breast:
And on his heart, in perfect rest,
She poured her own--a voiceless prayer.
Enough for her that he has died,
And lives, to die again no more:
The foe despoiled, the combat o'er,
The Victor crowned and glorified.
{198}
II.
What song of seraphim shall tell
My joy to-day, my blissful queen?
Yet truly not in vain, I ween,
Our earthly alleluias swell.
It is but just that we should thus
Our Jesus' triumph share with thee.
For us he died, to set us free.
Thou owest him risen, then, to us.
But thou, sweet Mother, grant us more
Than here to join the festive strain:
To hymn, but never know, our gain
Were ten times loss for once before.
Thy faithful children let us be.
Entreat thy Son, that he may give
The wisdom to our hearts to live
In his, the risen life, with thee.
For so, amid the onward years,
This feast shall bring us strength renewed;
To pass secure, o'er self subdued,
To Easter in the sinless spheres.
-------
{199}
Two Months In Spain During The Late Revolution.
September 9, 1868.
To-day, while they are yet celebrating the Nativity of the
Blessed Virgin, we enter Spain, that mysterious world behind the
Pyrenees, so different from all others, and of which we know so
little! To-day is also the anniversary of my birthday into the
Catholic Church, and now it is my birthday into Catholic Spain!
"La tierra de Maria Santisima."
Leaving Perpignan (in the Pyrénées Orientales) by diligence, we
pass through a most tropical looking country, amidst hedges of
aloe, and oleander, and pomegranates, (reminding one of Texas in
the character of the soil, the productions, and even the houses;)
we soon begin the ascent of the mountains; and, before it is
quite dark, we are across the Pyrenees. By the light of a
beautiful sunset we have some grand mountain views, and encounter
a group of Spanish gypsies, dark, ragged, and dirty, but highly
picturesque. All along these mountains are cork-trees of
prodigious size, with black, twisted trunks, from which the bark
has been stripped--their fantastic shapes taking the form of nuns
or monks--great ghosts in the dim light. Perthus, on the other
side the mountains, is the last French town; high above which
towers the fortress of Bellegarde, built by Louis XIV. in 1679.
Just outside this town we pass a granite pyramid, on which is
written "Gallia." A fellow-passenger tells us we are on Spanish
soil. All cry, "Viva España!" and we look out upon a
solemn-looking soldier, who stands by a cantonnier, above which
floats the red and yellow flag of Spain. La Junguera is the first
Spanish town; and here is a rival fort to the towering French one
so lately seen. Here our luggage is visited, and we have our
first experience of Spanish courtesy. The gentlemen passengers
all come to ask, "Will the ladies have fruit?" "Will they have
wine?" And one of our party, wishing to give alms to a blind
beggar, and asking change for a franc, one of the gentlemen gives
her the money in coppers, and refuses to take the franc; which,
it seems, is the Spanish custom.
At Figueras we eat our first _Spanish supper_; no
inconsiderable meal, if we may judge by this one. First came the
inevitable soup, (_puchero;_) then, boiled beef; next in
course, cabbage and turnips, eaten with oil and vinegar, and the
yellow sweet-pepper which is the accompaniment to everything, or
may be eaten alone, as salad. The third course was stewed beef;
next, fried fish, (fish, in Spain, never comes before the third
course;) and now, stewed mushrooms; but, as they are stewed in
oil, (and that none of the sweetest,) we pass them by. After
this, lobster; then cold chicken and partridge; and now the
delicious fruits of the country, and the toasted almonds which
are universal at every meal, and cheese. Coffee and chocolate
terminate this repast, for which we pay three and a half francs,
and after which one might reasonably be expected to travel all
night.
{200}
Gerona appeared with the early dawn; a curious old town of 14,000
inhabitants, on the river Oña, and looking not unlike Rome with
its yellow river, its tall houses, and balconies. Both this town
and Figueras have made themselves memorable in wars and sieges.
Indeed, what Spanish town has not its tale of heroism and brave
defence during the French invasion of 1809-11? These towns were
both starved into capitulation, after sieges which lasted seven
or eight months, the women loading and serving the guns during
the siege, and taking the places of their fallen husbands or
lovers, like the "Maid of Saragossa." We were glad to leave the
diligence for the railway which runs by the lovely Mediterranean
coast, passing many pretty towns with ruins of old Moorish
fortresses and castles on the hills beyond. In one of these
towns, Avengo de Mar, the dock-yards are very famous, and a naval
school was here established by Charles III.
Mataro, a place of 16,000 people, seemed very busy and thriving.
This, too, has its tale of siege and slaughter. The French have
left behind them in Spain a legacy of hate. Of the ruins of a
monastery near one of these towns a pretty story is told. Two
Catalonian students passing by this beautiful site, one
exclaimed, "What a charming situation this would be for a
convent! When I am pope, I will build one here." "Then," said the
other, "I will be a monk, and live in it." Years after, when the
latter _had_ become a monk, he was sent for to Rome, and
being presented to the pope, (Nicholas V.,) recognized in him his
old friend and companion, when in the act of receiving his
blessing. The pope embraced him; reminded the monk of his
promise; built the convent, in which, we presume, the latter
lived and died. The beautiful convent was utterly destroyed in
the civil wars of 1835, when the monks were all driven from
Spain.
"The sacred taper-lights are gone,
Gray moss hath clad the altar stone,
The holy image is o'erthrown,
The bell hath ceased to toll.
"The long-ribbed aisles are burnt and shrunk,
The holy shrine to ruin sunk,
Departed is the pious monk;
God's blessing on his soul!"
----
Barcelona, Province Of Catalonia.
Hotel De Las Cuatro Naciones.
September 10.
How charming looks this gay, busy city, with its shady streets,
beautiful gardens and fountains, the sea before it, the mountains
behind, fortifications on every side, seemingly impregnable. Our
hotel is on the "Rambla," a wide boulevard, like those of Paris,
upon which most of the fine buildings are situated, and which is
the principal promenade. In the evening, we go to one of the
theatres, and hear a French opera beautifully sung.
Friday, 11.
The books tell us that Barcelona was founded by Hamilcar, the
Carthaginian, B.C. 237. Cesar Augustus raised it to a Roman
colony. Ataulfo, the first king of the Goths, chose it for his
court. In 713, it fell into the hands of the Moors, who were
expelled by Charlemagne in 801. From this time, it belonged to
the Duchy of Aquitaine, and was governed by counts, until Charles
the Bold made it an independent kingdom, to reward Count Wilfred
el Velloso, who had aided him against the Normans. Count Raymond
Berenguer IV. united Catalonia with Arragon, by marrying the
heiress of that kingdom, from which time it was the rival of
Genoa and Venice. It has always been the centre of revolutionary
movement, restlessly endeavoring to regain its independence. The
Catalans are industrious, bold, and enterprising.
{201}
Indeed, so much do they surpass the people of other parts of
Spain in activity and enterprise, that they are called the
Spanish Yankees, and Barcelona is termed the Manchester of Spain.
Manufactories of cotton and silk; the most famous laces of Spain;
a most flourishing trade, as well as fine schools and public
libraries, are to be found here. They boast that the first
experiment with steam for navigation purposes was made in
Barcelona, the inventor having displayed his steamboat before
Charles V. and Philip II., in 1543. Charles, being occupied in
foreign conquests, took little notice of this, and, through fear
of explosion, the discovery was abandoned, and the secret died
with the inventor.
Barcelona has a very large French population. In the Calle
Fernando, we see shops handsome as those of Paris. Already we
find most tempting Spanish fans for a mere trifle; and at every
turn the delicious chocolate is being made into cakes by
machinery. There are many fine churches. The cathedral is a grand
specimen of the Gothic Catalan of the thirteenth century--one of
the most imposing churches we have seen in Europe. "Sober,
elegant, harmonious, and simple," as some traveller describes it.
The Moors converted the old cathedral of their Gothic
predecessors into a mosque. James II., "el conquistador," one of
the greatest of the Catalan heroes, commenced this in 1293. The
cloisters are very interesting; have a pretty court, with
orange-trees and flowers, and a curious old fountain of a knight
on horseback; the water flowing from the knight's head, his toes,
and from the tail and mouth of the horse. In the crypt is the
body of St. Eulalia, the patron saint of Barcelona; removed from
St. Maria del Mar, where it had been kept since the year 878.
Before this shrine Francis I. heard mass, when a prisoner in
Spain, after the battle of Pavia. In the choir, over each finely
sculptured stall, is painted the shield of each of the knights of
the Golden Fleece. Here was held a "chapter," or general
assembly, presided over by Charles V., March 5th, 1519. Charles,
then only king of Spain, occupied a throne on one side hung with
damask and gold; opposite was the empty throne of Maximilian,
first emperor of Germany, (his grandfather,) hung in black.
Around the king were assembled Christian, King of Denmark;
Sigismund, King of Poland; the Prince of Orange, the Dukes of
Alba, Friaz, Cruz, and the flower of the nobility of Spain and
Flanders.
There are some curious old monuments in the church, and a
crucifix called "Cristo de Lepanto," which was carried on the
prow of the flagship of Don John, of Austria, in the battle of
Lepanto. The figure--of life size--is all inclined to one side;
and the faithful of that day assure us that the sacred image
turned itself aside, to avoid the Moslem bullets which were aimed
at it. Certain, it was never struck.
While in the church, we see a funeral mass, which is peculiar in
some of its ceremonies, and very solemn in the dim religious
cathedral light, where every kneeling figure, with its black
mantilla, seems to be a mourner. After the credo, little tapers
are distributed, and, at a certain part of the mass, are lighted.
The priest comes to the foot of the altar. Each person, bearing a
lighted taper, goes forward in procession, the men on one side,
the women on the other. Each one kisses the cross upon the stole
of the priest, as if in submission to the will of God. The
candles are extinguished, and deposited in a plate.
{202}
Walking on the Rambla this evening, we hear a drum, and,
following the crowd, witness the performance of a Spanish
mountebank, whose sayings must have been very witty, to judge by
the plaudits of the crowd. He had a learned dog, which so far
surpassed all the dogs we had ever seen that I am persuaded he
was cleverer than his master.
Saturday, September 12.
A rainy day. But we take a long walk through the crooked, narrow
streets; going into the Calle de la Plateria (the street of the
jewellers) to see the curious long filagree earrings worn by the
peasants. We are as much objects of curiosity to these people, as
they are to us, (bonnets and parasols being rarely seen in
Spain.) An old man, touched my blue veil, yesterday, asking,
"Queste paese?" and when I told him we were "Americanos," he
rejoined, "Me speak England; me like Americanos." Even the
poorest people here are courteous and respectful; and their
language seems to have borrowed so much that is flowery and
poetic from their Arab progenitors, that it would seem
exaggerated and insincere, were it not accompanied by a grave and
earnest manner as well as gesticulation. We ask a beggar the way
to a certain street. He accompanies us all the way, declines any
remuneration, and at parting says, "Go, and may God go with you!"
A policeman, seeing us endeavor to enter the Plaza Real, to look
at the monument to the king, opens the gate, though the public
are not admitted. We thank him for making an exception in our
favor; and upon going out, he bids us "Adios," adding,' "May your
beauty never be less." At the _table d'hote_, every Spaniard
bows as we enter, and all rise when we leave the table. In the
centre of the table is a pyramid of cigars and matches most
fantastically arranged; and it is the custom for gentlemen to
smoke at every meal! We visit St. Maria del Mar, a church
considered by many to be superior to the cathedral,
architecturally. It was built in 1329, on the site of a former
church, erected to contain the body of St. Eulalia. The arched
roof is of immense height; the main altar of black and yellow
marble. The church is hung with many pictures by Spanish artists,
and has the usual amount of stucco and gilding for which Spanish
churches have been remarkable since the days of Columbus, when
gold was so plentiful with them.
Sunday, 13th.
We hear mass in the little Gothic church of St. Monica, hard by,
and go afterward to the cathedral, which is even more impressive
upon a second view. Several baptisms are going on, and the very
babies are dressed in mantillas--the white mantillas worn by the
lower classes, which are very pretty. White silk, trimmed with
white lace, or of the lace alone; the silk, which is a long
strip, is pinned to the hair on top of the head, and the lace
falls over the face, or is folded back. Young ladies wear them of
black lace, in the street or for visits; silk, for the churches;
and these with the never-failing accompaniment of the fan, belong
to all alike; rich and poor, old and young. The fan serves as
parasol, and strange to say, that, with this alone to shelter
them from the sun, these women should be so beautifully fair; and
in Valencia they are famed for their white complexions! Surely
the sun in Spain is kinder than in America, for freckles and
sun-burn are never seen.
{203}
The men wear a red or purple cap, which they call "gorro;" a sort
of bag which hangs down behind, or at the side, or is more
generally folded flat across the forehead; a red or purple sash,
(_faja;_) a short jacket; sandals (_espardinya_) of
hemp or straw, tied with strings. We drive through the streets,
and find most of the shops closed, (Sunday;) and see through the
open doors that every house, even the very poorest, looks nice
and clean.
In the evening, we drive upon the Prado del Gracia, which
terminates in the little town of Gracia, where are pretty villas,
and stop at a convent for the evening service. It is of this very
convent that they tell how, in the Moorish invasion of Al
Mansour, when his soldiers were recruiting for the harems of the
Balearic Islands, (Minorca and Majorca,) the poor nuns, thinking
to avoid so horrible a fate, heroically cut off their noses to
disfigure themselves; but it did not avail to save them; for
history records that they were carried off, in spite of their
noses, or, rather, in spite of the want of them.
Barceloneta is a suburb where live the fishermen, and where we
find docks crowded with shipping. From this we have a fine view
of the Fort Montuich, built upon a high rock. There is also a
citadel near the sea, and a beautiful promenade upon the walls,
(Muralea del Mar.) And amongst the public buildings is a
university, said to be the finest in Spain; many hospitals and
charitable institutions, and a theatre (the Lycée) which they
claim to be larger than San Carlo, in Naples, the Scala, in
Milan, or even the new-opera house in Paris. Barcelona is the
birthplace of Balmes, the author of that great work,
_Protestantism and Catholicity compared in their Influence upon
Civilization_.
Valencia Del Cid, Sept. 14.
Yesterday, at six in the morning, we leave Barcelona for "the
City of the Cid," arriving at ten o'clock at night; a long,
fatiguing, but interesting day. The railway runs by the blue
Mediterranean, with stern, bleak mountains close on the other
side; or through vineyards, and fig and olive groves, with which
are mingled peaches, apples, and quinces, showing that all
varieties of fruits meet together in this favored clime. In
passing Martorell, the third or fourth station from Barcelona, we
have a fine view of Montserrat; a picturesque, jagged mountain
1000 feet high, where is a monastery, one of the most celebrated
pilgrimages in Spain. On the opposite side is a famous old Roman
bridge (over the Llobregat river) called "del Diablo," built in
531 B.C., by Hannibal, in honor of Hamilcar. At one end is a
triumphal arch. Here the views are particularly fine.
Villafranca comes next, the earliest Carthaginian colony in
Catalonia, founded by Hamilcar. Next we see Terragona, an ancient
city, on a steep and craggy eminence, founded by the Scipios. It
was long the seat of the Roman government in Spain; now famous
for its fine wines.
Here the costume of the peasants begins to look more eastern. The
full, short linen pantaloons, (on each leg a petticoat;) a red
handkerchief, worn as a turban; sometimes leather leggings, but
more frequently legs red from the wine-press, where they have
been treading out the grape-juice. The peasants are simple and
friendly, and, seeing few strangers, look upon them as guests,
and seem never disposed to speculate upon our ignorance of the
prices of things. One of our party offered to pay for a tempting
bunch of grapes which we saw in a man's basket, who pressed to
look at us in one of the stations. With difficulty he was
prevailed upon to take a real, (five cents.) He then offered
more, which we in turn declined.
{204}
Waiting till the train moved off, he sprang forward, and dropped
into my lap a bunch which must have weighed several pounds, and I
looked back to see him smiling most triumphantly. At another
station (a poor place in the mountains) a modest, clean-looking
woman came forward with glasses of water. No one paid anything
for drinking it. But when she came to our carriage, one of the
party gave her two reals, (ten cents in silver.) The poor thing
shook her head sadly, saying, "No tengo cambia." (But I have no
change.) When she was made to comprehend that she was to keep it
_all_, her face glowed with delighted surprise; and as we
moved off, we saw her showing the money to all around her. No
doubt she took my friend for the queen herself!
At Tortosa, on the Ebro, we begin to see the palm-trees. And here
we enter the province of Valencia, the brightest jewel in the
crown of Spain. The Moors placed here their paradise, and under
their rule it became the garden of Spain. From them the Cid
rescued it in 1094, and here he governed like a king, and died
here in 1099. It was then annexed to Castile and Arragon. It is a
fortified town, about three miles from the sea; and with its
narrow streets, tall houses, balconies, with curtains and blinds
hanging outside into the street, looks perennially southern and
Spanish. We come up from the station in a "tartana," a vehicle
peculiar to Valencia, a sort of omnibus on two wheels, made to
hold six persons; without springs, and with one horse. The driver
sits on the shaft, with his legs dangling down, or supported by a
strap. This vehicle jolts horribly, but is very cheap and
convenient.
Tuesday, September 13.
To-day we first see the museum, in which are many pictures of
Spanish artists, both ancient and modern--two of Spagnoletto, and
several of Ribalta and Juanes--two Valencian artists of whom they
are very proud. The last is especially famed for his beautiful
pictures of our Lord. We saw here the ancient altar used by James
the Conqueror, "Don Jaime," as he is called--the great hero of
Catalonia, son of Pedro I. He was one of the first sovereigns who
established standing armies in Europe. Amongst other wise
institutions, the municipal body of Barcelona was his work. He
died in Valencia, 1276, on his way to the monastery of Poblet to
become a monk, confiding his goodly sword, "La Tizona," to his
son Don Pedro, in whose favor he had abdicated that year.
In this museum are many remains of the ancient Saguntum, (now
called Murviedro,) which is but a few miles from Valencia, and a
model of its old Roman theatre. In the court of the building are
some palm-trees three hundred years old.
We next visit an ancient church of the Jesuits to see one of
Murillo's "Immaculate Conceptions," which is very beautiful. Then
the "Audiencia," an ancient building of the sixteenth century,
where are the courts of justice and other courts. Here is some
wonderful old carving, and curious portraits of Inquisitors;
civil, on one side, ecclesiastical on the other. We were glad to
see that the former greatly outnumbered the latter. After this,
we go to one of the finest hospitals in the world; with marble
floors, and pillars supporting a lofty ceiling; the great windows
opening into gardens of orange, and myrtle, and jessamine; all
clean, fresh, and cool; with an altar so placed in the centre,
under a lofty dome, that every patient could see and hear the
divine office. The whole building was alike well arranged; the
kitchen large and convenient, and the dispensary grand.
{205}
Certainly, in all our experience--and we have visited hospitals
everywhere--we have seen nothing so _inviting_, so really
elegant, as this. Here we meet the two loveliest women we have
seen in Spain; both sisters of charity; one having charge of the
dispensary, and the other of the foundling institution connected
with the hospital. Such white complexions; lovely color; such
eyes, and eyelashes, and teeth! Specimens of the beauty of
Valencia. And such charming groups of children as we saw amongst
these unhappy disowned ones! Unconscious of their fate, they
played merrily in the cool court, till, seeing strangers, many
ran to hide their beautiful eyes behind the sister's apron. The
school-room would have done honor to the most "_enlightened
nation_," which might here take a lesson from "_benighted
Spain_." Great placards hold the "A B C." Slates hang in order
by the little benches against the wall; pictures of beasts and
birds, for natural history; maps, for geography; drawings, for
mathematics; balls strung on wires, for counting; large books
filled with colored engravings of Bible history, from the birth
of Adam to the end of the Apocalypse. And such neatness and
order! There is one department for the little ones whose mothers
leave them each morning, when they go out to work, returning for
them at night. Their tiny baskets hung in a row. Some, who were
quite babies, were being greatly petted, because it was their
first day away from the mother.
While in the school-room, one of the party began examining a
large map of Spain with reference to our projected route. The
sister seeing this, lowered the map by a cord, and calling a
little fellow of five years, he pointed out the oceans by which
Spain is surrounded, named the rivers and mountains, the
provinces of Spain, and the principal towns; never once making a
blunder, though he often paused to recollect himself.
We drive to see the queen's garden, where is every tropical tree
and flower. This, with other gardens, borders upon the Alameda, a
broad, shady promenade extending three miles to the sea. There is
another promenade called the "Glorieta," where the band plays
every morning from nine to eleven. We see, also, the Plaza de
Toros, (the arena for the bull-fights,) one of the finest in
Spain, capable of holding twenty thousand people; built so
exactly like a Roman amphitheatre that we feel as if we looked
upon the Colosseum in the days of its glory. It is evident that
these people inherit the love of this their national pastime from
their Roman ancestors. Happily, the fashion is dying out. In
Valencia, the bull-fights occur but once or twice a year. They
are now making preparations for a three days' "funcion," to begin
on the 24th. We saw the poor horses doomed to death. Forty a day
is the average number. The men are rarely killed, but often badly
hurt.
Wednesday, September 16.
This morning we go to the markets to see the wonderful display of
fruits for which Valencia is so famous. Never were such grapes
and peaches, melons and figs, oranges and lemons, apples and
pears, the last as fine as could be seen in all New England; the
nuts and vegetables equally good. Potatoes, and tomatoes, and
peppers, of mammoth size, and even the Indian corn and rice as
good as those of America. But even the Spanish gravity is here
upset at sight of our round hats, short veils, and parasols.
{206}
The women hold their their sides with laughter, and we are driven
to resolve upon wearing mantillas and fans, which fashion we soon
after, in self-defence, adopt. We go to the shops to buy fans,
which are a specialty of Valencia, as are also the beautiful
striped blankets, (mantas,) which are as indispensable to a
Valencian as the fan is to the Valencienne; and is at once his
cloak, his bag, his bed, his coverlet, and his towel. They say of
a Valencian, that he has two uses for a watermelon--to eat his
dinner, and make his toilette. After eating the melon, he washes
his face with the rind, and wipes upon his manta. They wear it
slung gracefully over the left shoulder, or over both shoulders,
the ends falling behind; and over the head-handkerchief is often
worn the pointed hat of Philip II.'s time, with wide, turned-up
brim.
To-day we visit the cathedral and San Juanes. Like most of the
great churches of Spain, the cathedral occupies the site of a
Roman temple. This, made into a church by the Goths, was changed
to a mosque by the Arabs, and now (since 1240) it is again a
Christian church. Some of the doors, and many of the ornaments,
are Moorish. The gratings--of brass--are very handsome; as are
the altars and screen, of marble and alabaster. This last is most
abundant in Spain. A palace opposite to our hotel (that of the
Marquis de los Aguas) is beautifully adorned on the outside with
statues, and vases, and flowers of alabaster in relievo.
All these Spanish churches are much ornamented with stucco and
gilding, according to the taste of the time in which they were
built. The cathedral has some good pictures in the sacristy; and
within the sanctuary hang the _spurs_ of Don Jaime upon his
shield. His body is in one of the chapels.
In an old chapter-house we were shown some great chains taken
from the Moors, and a series of portraits of all the archbishops
of Valencia; and so much is it the habit to gesticulate in this
country, that even these dignitaries, instead of being painted in
_ecclesiastical attitudes_, have their fingers in every
imaginable position. One must know their expressive language to
read what each of these worthies may be saying.
After some shopping, we go to call upon the present archbishop, a
graceful and dignified person, who received us most kindly, and
presented us each a chapelette and scapular. He has a grand old
palace, very plainly furnished; a pretty chapel; and, in a fine
old hall, with groined roof, were portraits of his predecessors
from the sixth century to the present day.
We have a visit from the English consul, to whom we brought
letters. He is very kind and friendly, and full of offers of
service. The Spanish sun seems to have warmed the English heart,
which seldom gives out so much, save in its own foggy island. He
sends us some fine wine, which, with some iced orgeat, secures us
a merry evening.
Thursday, 17.
This morning we hear mass in the Church of the Patriarch, into
which no woman may enter without being veiled. Then we visit the
house in which St. Vincent Ferrer, the patron of Valencia, was
born, and where is a fountain greatly esteemed for its miraculous
powers.
While at breakfast, a young man enters, whom we take for a
Spaniard, but who proves to be an American, and from Maine! He
has lived in Cuba, however, and it turns out that his father is a
friend of the Spanish ladies with whom we are travelling.
{207}
He gives a pleasant account of his travels in the north of Spain;
tells of the wonders of Burgos; of the railway between that and
Miranda, which shows such extraordinary engineering skill; and of
the fine scenery through which he has passed. Yesterday, on the
mountains, he saw three sunsets; or rather, saw the sun set three
times, in descending from range to range.
It is delightful to meet an American who, instead of complaining
of the discomforts of travelling in Spain, as most of our people
do, sees only what is pleasant. For ourselves, we have been most
fortunate; good hotels, most obliging people, and, so far from
being extortionate, (as we were told to expect,) we find Spanish
hotels cheaper than those of any other part of Europe. To-day we
eat the "pollo con arroz," one of the national dishes, (rice with
chicken and saffron,) and find it very good.
Hans Andersen, in his little book on Spain, says:
"Connected with Valencia, are several of the old Spanish
romances about the Cid--he who in all his battles, and on
occasions when he was misjudged, remained true to his God, his
people, and himself; he who, in his own time, took rank with
the monarchs of Spain, and down to our own time is the pride of
the country which he was mainly instrumental in rescuing from
the infidels. As a conqueror he entered Valencia, and here
lived with his noble and heroic wife, Zimena, and his
daughters, Doña Sol and Doña Elvira; and here he died in 1099.
Here stood around his bed of death all who were dear to him.
Even his very warhorse, Babieca, was ordered to be called
thither. In song, it is said that the horse stood like a lamb,
and gazed with his large eyes upon his master, who could no
more speak than the poor horse himself. ... Through the streets
of Valencia passed at night the extraordinary cavalcade to San
Peder de Cordoña, which the departed chief had desired should
be his burial-place. The victorious colors of the Cid were
carried in front. Four hundred knights protected them. Then
came the corpse. Upright upon his war-horse sat the dead;
arrayed in his armor with his shield and his helmet, his long
white beard flowing down to his breast.
"Gil Diaz and Bishop Jeronymo escorted the body on either side;
then followed Doña Zimena with three hundred noblemen. The gate
of Valencia toward Castile was opened, and the procession
passed silently and slowly out into the open fields, where the
Moorish army was encamped. A dark Moorish woman shot at them a
poisoned arrow, but she and a hundred of her sisters paid the
forfeit of their lives for that deed. Thirty-six Moorish
princes were in the camp; but terror seized upon them when they
beheld the dead hero on his white charger.
'And to their vessels they took flight,
And many sprang into the waves.
Two thousand, certainly, that night
Amid the billows found their graves.'
"And the Cid Campeador thus won, after he was dead, good tents,
gold and silver; and the poorest in Valencia became rich. So
says the old 'Song of the Cid in Valencia.'
Cordova -- Province Of Andalusia --
Fonda Suiza -- Hotel Suisse.
September 18.
After a long night journey, (by rail,) we reach a hotel rivalling
the cleanness and comfort of the genuine Swiss hotel, and find
ourselves in the ancient capital of the Moorish empire, and in
that lovely, bright Andalusia, so famed throughout the world.
From the time we leave Valencia until we reach Jativa, (about
fifty miles,) we pass over the "Huerta" (the "garden") of
Valencia, one continuous plain of verdure; pastures which are cut
from twelve to seventeen times a year. Golden oranges, and other
fruits hang above these green fields; and dates, and figs, and
peaches, and pears, and quinces, pomegranates, plums, apples,
melons, and grapes, and olives, with Indian corn, rice, and every
vegetable in equal perfection. Well might the Moors term this
plain (with Andalusia) "the Paradise of the East." For centuries
after their expulsion, their poets still sang verses expressive
of their grief for its loss, and it is said they still mention it
in their evening prayers, and supplicate Heaven to restore it to
them.
{208}
And this fertility is all their work. Every stream has been
turned from its channel into numberless little canals, which
water this luxurious soil; and these are arranged with such skill
and care that crop after crop has its share of irrigation, and in
its just proportion. From Jativa the country becomes more
mountainous. We pass the ruins of an old chateau on a high hill,
(Montesa,) seat of an ancient order of chivalry which existed
after the suppression of the Templars. We next pass Almanzar,
Chinchilla, Albacete, where they sell the famous "Toledo blades,"
now hardly so famous. Here we are in La Mancha, and when we stop
in Alcazar at midnight, we are near the village of Troboso, which
Cervantes makes the dwelling of Don Quixote's Dulcinea. Alcazar
is claimed as the birth-place of Cervantes.
Here we leave our road for the grand route between Madrid and
Cordova; and here we are crowded into carriages with other
ladies, a fate from which we have hitherto been defended; each
conductor treating us as if we had been especially committed to
his care, and sparing us all annoyance. Fortunately, at
Manzanares two of these ladies leave us, and we make acquaintance
with the third, who is very kind and polite; offers us a share of
her luncheon, and gives us much information of people and things
in Spain. She is a Portuguese, and tells us how much larger and
finer are the olive-trees in her country than in Spain; she
remembers one tree which eight men could not clasp. From her we
hear much of the queen as from an unprejudiced source, and learn,
what we gathered afterward from many credible sources, that this
poor queen is a good woman, a very pious woman, full of talents
and accomplishments, generous to a fault, with strong feelings
and affections, which induce her to reward to excess those whom
she loves or who have served her; and this has given rise to the
injurious reports which have found their way to every foreign
newspaper, but which no _good_ people in Spain believe.
From Andujar the country is very uninteresting, more of a grazing
country, where we see immense herds of cattle, sheep, horses, and
goats, with picturesque shepherds minding them. The men wear
short trousers, opened several inches at the ankle, showing the
untanned leathern buskin, (as is seen in the old pictures of
Philip II.'s time,) a red sash, and the black hat turned up all
around. Presently we come upon the Guadalquivir, upon which
Cordova is situated, and which is crossed here by a bridge of
black marble. We drive up the cool, shady streets, catching
glimpses, through open doors and curtains, of the little paradise
within--the marble courts, with fountain, and orange-trees, and
flowers, and vines--a vestige of the old Moorish time. In fact,
everything here so preserves its Arabic character that one is
transported six centuries back, into the palmy days of the
Kalifs, when this city was said to have contained half a million
of inhabitants, 200,000 houses, 60,000 palaces, 700 mosques, 900
baths, 50 hospitals, and a public library of 600,000 volumes. Of
all these glories only the mosque remains to show by its
magnificence that these accounts cannot be exaggerated.
{209}
Saturday, September 19.
We hasten to see the mosque, (the cathedral now,) and, entering a
low door-way in the wall which surrounds it, you find yourself in
a beautiful oriental court, with fountains, and rows of tall
palms, and ancient orange trees and cypress. This is called "the
court of ranges." Open colonnades surround the court on all sides
save one, from which twenty doors once opened into the mosque;
only one of these is now open. Enter this, and you find yourself
in a forest of pillars--a thousand are yet left--of every hue and
shade, no two alike, of jasper, and verde antique, and porphyry,
and alabaster, and every colored marble, fluted, and spiral; and
over these, rises arch upon arch overlapping each other. These
divide the mosque into twenty-nine aisles from north to south,
and nineteen from west to east; intersecting each other in the
most harmonious and beautiful manner. The Moors brought these
pillars from the ancient temples of Rome, and Nismes, and
Carthage. The mosque was built in the eighth century, by Abd El
Rahman, who aimed to make it rival those of Damascus and Bagdad.
It is said he worked upon it an hour every day with his own hand,
and it is certain that it ranked in sanctity with the "Caaba" of
Mecca, and the great mosque of Jerusalem. Ten thousand lamps
illuminated it at the hour of prayer; the roof was made of arbor
vitae, which is considered imperishable, and was burnished with
gold. The chapel, where is the holy of holies--where was kept the
Koran--gives one an idea of what the ornaments of the whole must
have been. Here the carvings are of the most exquisite fineness,
like patterns of lace; the gold enamel, the beautiful mosaics,
are as bright as if made yesterday. In the holy of holies--a
recess in this chapel--the roof is of one block of marble, carved
in the form of a shell, supported by pillars of various-colored
marble. Around this wall a path is worn in the marble pavement,
by the knees of the faithful making the mystic "seven rounds;"
and our guide tells us that, when a few years ago, the brother of
the king of Morocco came here, he went round this holy of holies
upon his knees, seven times, crying bitterly all the while. The
chapel of the Kalifs is also remarkable, from the floor to the
ceiling, the marble being carved in these beautiful and delicate
patterns.
From the cathedral, we go to visit the old Roman bridge of
sixteen arches, which spans the Guadalquivir. This looks upon
some ruins of Moorish mills, and the orange-gardens of the
Alcazar, (now in ruins,) once the palace of Roderick, the last of
the Goths. As we pass the modern Alcazar, (used as a prison,) an
old cavalry officer comes out of the government stables, and
invites us to look at the horses--the silky-coated Andalusians of
which we have heard so much, and the fleet-footed, graceful
Arabians. Each horse had his name and pedigree on a shield over
his stall. Returning to our hotel for breakfast, we go out again
to see the markets and the shops; visit some churches, and the
lovely promenade by the Guadalquivir. Our costumes excite great
remark; one woman says to another, "They are masqueraders;"
another lifts her hands and exclaims "Ave Maria;" and but for the
intervention of our guide, who reproves their curiosity, we
should be followed by a troop of children.
Sunday, 20.
Coming to breakfast, we are charmed to find our young American
friend whom we had left in Valencia; and, in spite of a pouring
rain, we all set out to hear high mass in the cathedral. The
mosque was consecrated, and made the cathedral, when the city was
captured by St. Ferdinand in 1236.
{210}
Several chapels and altars were then added, and in 1521, the
transept and choir were begun, to make room for which, eighty
pillars were sacrificed. Charles V., who gave permission for this
act of vandalism, was deeply mortified when he saw what had been
done, and reproved the canons of the church, saying, they had
destroyed what was unique in the world, to raise that which could
be found anywhere.
While we are at mass, our young American arrives with the guide,
to tell us that a _revolution_ has broken out, and entreats
us to return to the hotel. Some of the ladies are much alarmed;
but my friend and myself, remembering that revolutions are
chronic in Spanish countries, and are generally bloodless, we
maintain our ground, too old soldiers to be driven from the field
before a gun is fired; and the result justifies our faith.
Nobody quits the church. We have a solemn procession of the
Blessed Sacrament after mass, winding through these beautiful
aisles, accompanied by a band of wind instruments, the whole
congregation following. We reach home to find our
fellow-travellers very much frightened and annoyed at the
prospect of a long detention; but we are assured that the worst
which can befall us is a delay of a few days, to which we can
well submit in this comfortable inn. Making acquaintance with our
fellow-prisoners, we grow jolly over our misfortunes. The
railways are all cut; General Prim and his colleagues (the exiled
generals) are besieging Cadiz; and the queen has fled to
Biarritz, to claim the intervention of the Emperor Napoleon.
These are some of the rumors which are rife during the day. Hosts
of red umbrellas parade the town--the most formidable weapon
which we encounter; a few voices faintly cry "Libertad!" and
"Viva!" some damp-looking soldiers pass by, with lances from
which depend little red flags, looking limp and hopeless in the
heavy rain. These troops declare for the people. We ask one of
these what they want; the answer is, "Liberty." (Of course.) "And
what is that?" "We want a _King_. We will not be governed by
a woman." Inflammatory hand-bills are distributed amongst the
crowd, very vague in their demands, "_an empty throne_"
being the first requisite on the list.
One man is killed, (a fine young officer of the queen's troops
mercilessly shot down,) and another man is wounded. In the
evening, we hear that the revolution is accomplished in Cordova;
the insurrectionists have the city!
Monday, 21.
All is peaceful in appearance, and we go out to shop, to find
some of the filagree jewelry for which Cordova is remarkable--an
art retained from the time of the Moors. The rain drives us in,
and we spend the day with music, books, and in conversation with
our new friends--a Spanish lady of rank, who has come to Cordova
about a lawsuit, and who shakes with fright, and goes about with
a glass of water and a cup of vinegar to quiet her nerves; the
poor lady neither eats nor sleeps. The others are of different
calibre; a sturdy Scotch lady, and her companion, a sweet and
charming German girl. "Who's afeard!"
Tuesday, 22.
We are roused by the sound of military music, and find that 5000
of the queen's troops are entering the city. Such.
splendid-looking fellows! Such handsome officers! It is plain the
city is taken in earnest _now!_ The inconstant populace
clamor and shout; all is enthusiasm; the report is, that the
insurrectionists are fled to Seville; the roads are repaired, but
we are not allowed to leave the city.
{211}
Still prisoners of _war!_ Later in the day, we hear that the
troops we saw this morning are those which had joined the
insurgents at Seville. The queen's troops, commanded by the
Marquis de Novaliches, are outside the town, fearing to be too
few for those within, and waiting the turn of events. It is
supposed there will be some compromise entered into; a convention
patched up; and no fighting. The prime minister, Gonzales Bravo,
has fled from Madrid, where all is anarchy. This man, who has
been the author of all the oppressive measures, and all the
banishments which have made the queen's government unpopular,
now, in her hour of need leaves her to her fate, after cruelly
deceiving her. When she feared the danger of revolution, he
assured her she might leave the country without any anxiety; and
she went to Biarritz in ignorance of the truth; thus giving her
enemies the very opportunity they desired. Even now, (they say,)
were she to return, and throw herself upon the generosity of the
people, she would be received kindly; such is the loyalty of
Spaniards to their monarchs. The influence of Bravo banished the
Montpensiers, (the queen's sister and her husband, the son of
Louis Philippe,) who were naturally her best friends, and to whom
she had showed every kindness. He sent away many of her most
popular generals; and now they return, with men and arms, and
British and Prussian gold; the people sympathize with them, the
troops join them; we hear from Cadiz, that there was a perfect
ovation upon their landing.
To-day, we have a fine walk in a beautiful park, on one side of
the city, from whence we have a charming view of the mountains;
on one side, so grand and bold, with olive groves, and white
country houses sparkling in the sunshine; on the other side, the
hills are low, and their graceful, wavy outlines have the
peculiar purple hue belonging to Spain, and form a striking
contrast to the others. Between the two, lies the city, and the
fertile plains about it. We lose our way in the tortuous streets,
and spend the morning peeping into the beautiful patios,
(courts,) which open to the heavens, or have sometimes a linen
awning over them; with marble pavements, over which the cool
fountains play; with orange-trees, and flowers, amongst which
sofas, and chairs, and pictures are disposed; and around which
often runs a marble corridor, with pillars and curtains,
communicating with the other apartments. Here the family sit, and
here take place the "tirtulias," the meetings for talk and music.
A picture of one of these patios is thus charmingly translated
from one of Fernan Caballero's beautiful tales by a late English
traveller; and which any one who has been in Spain will
recognize:
"The house was spacious, and scrupulously clean: on each side
the door was a bench of stone. In the porch hung a little lamp
before the image of our Lord in a niche over the entrance,
according to the Catholic custom of putting all things under
holy protection. In the middle was the 'patio,' a necessity to
the Andalusian. And in the centre of this spacious court an
enormous orange-tree raised its leafy head from its robust
trunk. For an infinity of generations had this beautiful tree
been a source of delight to the family. The women made tonic
decoctions from its leaves; the daughters adorned themselves
with its flowers; the boys cooled their blood with its fruits;
the birds made their home in its boughs. The rooms opened out
of the 'patio,' and borrowed their light from thence.
{212}
This 'patio' was the centre of all the 'home;' the place of
gathering when the day's work was over. The orange-tree loaded
the air with its heavy perfume, and the waters of the fountain
fell in soft showers on the marble basin, fringed with the
delicate maiden-hair fern. And the father, leaning against the
tree, smoked his 'cigarro de papel;' and the mother sat at her
work, while the little ones played at her feet, the eldest
resting his head on a big dog, which lay stretched at full
length on the cool marble slabs. All was still, and peaceful,
and beautiful."
We close the day with a farewell visit to the cathedral. Surely
it is the most wonderful building in the world. Even St. Peter's
hardly fills one with greater astonishment. This is altogether
unique; and its grace, and elegance, and harmony win one to love
it. We lingered by the chapel of the holy of holies, finding
beauties which we had not before seen, and bade farewell to it
with deep regret; then wandered to the bridge over the
Guadalquivir, and gazed upon the truly eastern prospect it
reveals.
To-day, a great robber from the mountains, upon whose head a
price had been fixed by the late government, comes boldly into
town. The people cry, "Viva Pacheco!" In half an hour after, we
hear he has been shot--the victim of private revenge.
Cordova is the birthplace of Lucan, the author of the
_Pharsalia_; of the two Senecas; of many eminent Moslem
poets and authors, and of the famous Gonzales de Cordova, "El
Gran Capitan."
----------
Pope Or People.
[Footnote 50]
[Footnote 50: The _Congregationalist and Boston
Recorder_, Boston, March 4th, 1869.]
We confess to having read with no little surprise an elaborate
article in the _Congregationalist and Boston Recorder_
entitled _Pope or People_. Had we met the article in a
professedly Unitarian journal or periodical we should have
thought little of it; but meeting it in the recognized organ of
the so-called orthodox Congregationalists of Massachusetts, we
have read it with no ordinary interest. It shows that the
Protestant, especially the old Puritan mind of the country, is
profoundly agitated with the church question under one of its
most important aspects. He who reads with any attention the
leading American sectarian journals can hardly fail to perceive
that there is a growing distrust in the Protestant world of the
Protestant rule of faith, and a growing conviction that the only
alternative, as the journal before us expresses it, is either
pope or people. Of course the journal in question has no clear
apprehension of either of the alternatives it suggests, but it
does see and feel the need of certainty in matters of religious
belief, and is in pursuit of it. It says:
{213}
"One of our great men once declared that the thing most to be
desired in this world, by an intelligent mind, is an
unfaltering religious belief. In the sense in which he meant
it, his remark is unquestionably true; and it explains the
philosophy of much of the success of the Romish Church. Men do
crave certainty in their conviction; such certainty demands
infallibility on which to found itself, and the papal system
offers the promise of just that infallibility. And thousands
upon thousands of minds rest in that; and being able to receive
it, it meets that innate and inextinguishable craving of the
soul for stability under its feet, and gives them a
great--though it be a fallacious--peace.
"But multitudes, and some even among the nominal adherents of
the papacy, are not able so to receive that doctrine, and are
consequently driven to seek for some other rock on which to
found the house of their faith; too often with the result of
building it on the sand, with its seductive security for fair
weather, and its terrible and irremediable fall when the
tempestuous night-time of death shall come. But for those who
reject the pope and that certitude of conviction which he
offers, what solid ground is there on which to stand secure?"
If the writer knew the Catholic religion better, he would know
that the peace we find in believing is not "fallacious," for "we
know in whom we believe and are certain;" but he does see that to
an unfaltering religious belief infallibility of some sort is
absolutely indispensable, and that the Catholic Church promises
it; yet, unable or unwilling to accept the pope or the church, he
looks around to see if he cannot find elsewhere some infallible
authority in which one may confide, an immovable rock or some
solid ground on which one may stand and feel that his footing is
sure. Does he succeed? We think not. He finds an alternative
indeed, but not an infallible authority, and he has proved very
conclusively that outside of the church there is and can be no
such authority for faith. He says:
"As we look at it, only two alternatives are possible in this
matter of an infallible faith; either the conditions of it
exist outside of the soul in some constituted and certified
authority, or within the soul in the purest and loftiest
exercise of its reason--and we use this word as
_including_ conscience--under the enlightenment of God's
Spirit through his Word. If outside of the soul, in any central
and constituted authority, then in the pope; for it may as well
be in him as anybody, nobody else claims it, and he does. If
inside the soul, then any pope is an impossibility and an
insult, and God remits every man to those conditions of secure
decision which he has established in his breast, and holds him
responsible for a judgment and a life founded upon them. And
this latter, precisely, is God's way with men. He never
commands them to hang their faith on the pope or the bishop;
but rather inquires--in that tone of asking which is equivalent
to the highest form of injunction--'Why, _(aph' heauton,)
out of your own selves_, do ye not judge what is right?'
Even in that precept which many will be swift to quote against
us in this connection,'Obey them that have the rule over you,
and submit yourselves,' it is first true that these 'rulers,'
as the context proves, are mere (_hëgoumenön_) leaders,
and men of example who were already dead, with no flavor of
potentiality therefore about them; whose 'faith' is to be
imitated rather than whose commands are to be submitted to; and
true, in the second place, that the entire appeal of the
apostle is to the tribunal of the Hebrews' reason as the court
of ultimate decision, inasmuch as he declares that for them to
fail thus to follow the good example of the illustrious and
holy dead who had walked before them in the heavenly way, would
be 'unprofitable' for them; leaving the necessary inference
that men are bound to do what is for their highest profit, and
therefore bound to decide, in all solemnity, what will be for
that profit, and, so deciding, by inevitable necessity, to
assume in the last analysis the function of positive masterhood
over themselves and their destiny."
The alternative here presented is not pope or people, but pope or
no external authority for faith. But why, supposing the internal
or subjective authority to be all that is here alleged, is the
pope an impossibility or an insult? Why may there not be two
witnesses, the one internal, the other external? Is the
revelation of God less credible because confirmed by two
witnesses, each worthy of credit?
{214}
The external and the internal do not necessarily exclude, and, if
both are infallible, cannot exclude each other, or stand opposed
one to the other. I do not deny or diminish the need or worth of
reason by asserting the infallibility of the church, nor the
importance and necessity of the infallible church by asserting
the full power and freedom of reason. The Catholic asserts both,
and has all the internal light and authority of reason that our
Puritan doctor can pretend to, and has the infallible church in
addition.
We may say the same when is added to "the purest and loftiest
exercise of reason" the enlightenment of God's Spirit through his
Word. This word, on the hypothesis, must be spoken inside of the
soul, or else it is an authority outside of the soul, which the
writer cannot admit. His rule of faith is reason and the interior
illumination of the Holy Ghost. The Catholic rule by no means
excludes this; it includes it, and adds to it the external word
and the infallible authority of the church. Catholics assert the
interior illumination and inspiration of the Holy Spirit as fully
and as strenuously as the Puritan does or can. The authority
inside the soul, be it more or be it less, does not exclude the
external authority of the church, nor does the external authority
of the church exclude the internal authority of reason and the
Spirit. Catholicity asserts both, and interprets each by the
authority of the other. Catholics have all the reason and all the
interior "enlightenment of God's Spirit" that Protestants have,
and lay as much stress on each, to say the least, as Protestants
do or can.
The great mistake of non-catholics is in the supposition that the
assertion of an external infallible authority necessarily
excludes, or at least supersedes, reason and the interior
illumination of the Spirit. This is false in logic, and, as every
one who understands Catholic theology knows, is equally false in
fact. There is a maxim accepted and insisted on by all Catholic
theologians, that settles, in principle, the whole controversy;
namely, _gratia supponit naturam_. Grace supposes nature,
revelation supposes reason, and the external supposes the
internal; and hence no Catholic holds that faith is or can be
produced by the external authority of the church alone, though
infallible, or without the grace of God, that illuminates the
understanding and inspires the will. Hence our Lord says, "No man
cometh to me, unless the Father draws him." In our controversies
with Protestants we necessarily insist on the external authority,
because that is what they deny; hence is produced an impression
in many minds that we deny the internal, or make no account of
it. Nothing can be more untrue or unjust, as any one may know who
will make himself at all familiar with the writings of Catholic
ascetics, or with the Catholic direction of souls.
But while we assert the internal we do not concede that it is
alone sufficient. "Dearly beloved, believe not every spirit, but
try the spirits, whether they be of God," (I John iv. i.) Saints
may mistake their own imaginations or enthusiasm for the
inspirations of the Spirit, and even in their case it is
necessary to try the spirit, and, in the very nature of the case,
the trial must be by an external test or authority. The test of
the internal by the internal is simply no test at all.
{215}
The beloved apostle in this same chapter of his first epistle
gives two tests, the one doctrinal and the other apostolical: "By
this is the Spirit of God known: every spirit that confesseth
Jesus Christ to have come in the flesh is of God, and every
spirit that dissolveth Jesus (by denying either his humanity or
his divinity) is not of God." "We are of God. He that knoweth God
heareth us; he that is not of God heareth us not; by this we know
the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error." The internal,
then, must be brought to the test of apostolic doctrine and of
the apostolic communion or the apostolic authority, both of which
are external, or outside of the soul. The assertion of the
external does not supersede the internal, nor does the assertion
of the internal supersede the necessity of the external
infallible authority. The error of our Puritan journalist is in
supposing that if the one is taken the other must be rejected; he
should know that no one is obliged to choose between them, and
that both, each in its proper place and function, may be and must
be accepted. It is true, neither reason nor the inspiration of
the Spirit can deceive or mislead, us; but we may be deceived as
to what reason really dictates, and as to whether the internal
phenomena really are interior inspirations of the Spirit; and
therefore to the safety and certainty of our faith, even
subjectively considered, the external infallible authority of the
pope or church is indispensable.
This is evident enough of itself, and still more so from the
article before us. The insufficiency of reason and the spiritual
light, either in the writer or in us, appears in his
understanding of the text of St. Paul, Hebrews xiii., which, as
he cites it, reads, "Obey them that have rule over you, and
submit yourselves;" but as we read it, "Obey your prelates and
submit to them." Which of us has the true version of the words of
the apostle? The Puritan interpreter says these prelates, or
"these rulers," were mere leaders, and men of example, who were
already dead, with no flavor of potentiality, (sic,) therefore,
about them; and whose "faith" is to be imitated, rather than
whose commands are to be submitted to. We are disposed to believe
that they were not dead men, but living rulers placed by the Holy
Ghost over the faithful, to whom the apostle commands them to
submit; and we are confirmed in this view by the reason which the
apostle assigns for his command: "For they watch as having to
give an account of your souls, that they may do this with joy,
not with grief." Which of us is right? The journalist tells us,
moreover, that "the entire appeal of the apostle is to the
tribunal of the Hebrews' reason as the court of ultimate
decision." We hold that the apostle, from beginning to end,
appeals to the revelation held by the Hebrews, and argues from
that and the character of their sacrifices and the levitical
priesthood, that both were types and figures of the real and
everlasting priesthood of Christ and his one all-sufficient
sacrifice. Christ having come in the end of the world, and
offered himself once for all, the types and figures must give way
to the reality they prefigured and announced. Therefore the
Hebrews should accept Christ as the fulfilment of their law. He
undoubtedly reasons, and reasons powerfully, but from revealed
premises. Here we and the journalist are at odds; we cannot both
be right: who shall decide between us? While we thus differ,
supposing us equally able, learned, and honest, how can either
find his cravings for certainty satisfied?
{216}
It is a very common prejudice among Protestants and rationalists
that Catholics eschew reason, and assert only an external
authority which operates only on the will. It seems to be
forgotten that it was the reformers who denied reason, and set up
the authority of the written Word against it. No one, as far as
our knowledge extends, ever spoke more contemptuously of reason
than did Doctor Martin Luther; and the old Puritan and
Presbyterian ministers to whose preaching we listened in our
boyhood were continually warning us to beware of the false and
deceitful light of reason, which "dazzles but to blind." This was
in accordance with the doctrine of total depravity with which the
reformers started; man being clean gone in sin and totally
corrupt in his nature, his reason, as well as his will, must be
corrupt, turned against God and truth, and therefore worthy of no
confidence. No doubt, Protestants have softened the harshness of
many of the doctrines of the reformers, and in several respects
have drawn nearer to what has always been the teaching of the
church; but it is hardly fair in them to charge the errors of
their ancestors, which they have outgrown or abandoned, upon the
church which has always condemned them. The Bishop of Avranches,
Pascal, the Traditionalists, and some others, commonly regarded
as Catholics, yet for the most part tinctured with Jansenism,
have indeed seemed to depreciate reason in order the better to
defend faith; but the church has expressly or virtually condemned
them, and vindicated the rights of reason. Whoever knows Catholic
theology, knows that the church never opposes faith or authority
to reason, but asserts both with equal earnestness and emphasis,
and denies that there is or can be any antagonism between them.
The reformers did not assume that no external infallible
authority is necessary to faith. They denied the infallible
authority of popes and councils, but asserted that of the written
Word, interpreted by private judgment, or rather, by the private
illumination of the Spirit, called by some in our day the
Christian conscience, or consciousness. Our Puritan journalist,
though he rejects not the Scriptures, very ably refutes this
theory of the reformers:
"There lies before us a recent number of a religious quarterly
containing an elaborate article entitled 'An Infallible Church
or an infallible Book--which?' the great object of which is to
dethrone the Pope and enthrone the Bible, as the subject of
indubitable faith, with that religious certitude with which it
may logically comfort the soul. To quote its own language, it
would make the Bible 'the supreme and only arbiter in things
spiritual.' And this, it thinks, would cause' divisions to
cease among us for ever.' But this forgets that the Bible is
always at the mercy of its interpreters, and that its unity
becomes continual diversity--being all things to all men, as
they compel it, by the manner in which they receive it. This is
not true merely in the extreme cases of those who are--and who
know that they are--'handling the Word of God deceitfully;' it
is true, as well, of those who mean to treat it with extremest
reverence and humility or receptive faith. Here, for example,
are two meek and lowly, yet wonderfully clear-headed disciples,
like Francis Wayland and Bela Bates Edwards; both able scholars
and patient students of the Word; both, so far as human eye can
judge, eminently seeking and securing the habitual guidance of
the Holy Spirit: and yet, as a matter of fact, reaching, upon
certain points which both feel to be of serious importance,
conclusions as to what is taught in the Bible, diametrically
opposite, and beyond possibility of reconciliation. And who can
deny that the one--seeming to himself to find them in the
Bible--was as sacredly bound to hold, practise, and teach
Baptist, as the other, Pedobaptist views."
We need add nothing to this refutation. Protestants have had from
the first all the Bible, all the private judgment, or private
illumination, they now have or can hope to have; and yet they
have never been able to agree among themselves on a single dogma
of faith. The only point on which they have been unanimous is
their hostility to the Catholic Church.
{217}
They have no standard by which to try the spirit; and the Bible,
not a few among them are accustomed to say, profanely, "is a
fiddle on which a skilful player may play any tune he pleases."
Protestants may go to the Bible to prove the doctrines they have
been taught by their parents or ministers, or held from
Protestant tradition; but they never, or rarely ever, obtain
their doctrines from the study of the Holy Scriptures. Hence,
sects the most divergent appeal alike to the Bible; and each
seems to find texts in its favor. How can any thinking
Protestant, who knows this, not be perplexed and uncertain as to
what he should believe? The writer admits the difficulty, and
asks:
"Are we to understand, then, that Christ is divided? Is there
no such thing as absolute truth? This cannot be admitted, and
we avoid the admission of it by the claim that God's absolute
truth is a truth of love and life, through dogma yet not of
dogma; so that it may be reached and realized by approaches not
only from different but sometimes from opposite directions."
But this does not, as far as we can see, help the matter. Concede
that charity or love is the fulfilling of the law, and that
nothing more is required of any one than perfect charity, yet the
love here asserted is, though not of dogma, "through dogma."
Unless, then, we are sure of the absolute truth of the dogma, how
can we be sure of the truth of the love and life, since there are
many sorts of love? The dogma, according to the Puritan writer,
is not the principle, indeed, but it is the medium of the love
and life. Will a false medium be as effectual in relation to the
end as a true medium? Can a falsehood be, in the nature of
things, any medium at all? If we say the absolute truth is a
truth of love and life through dogma, it seems to us absolutely
necessary that the dogma should be absolutely true; but, whether
the dogma is absolutely true or not, the writer concedes that
those who reject the infallibility of the church have no certain
means of determining. If it be said that the true love and life
are practicable with contradictory dogmas, as is said in the last
extract made, then dogmas are indifferent; and whether we believe
the truth or falsehood of God or Christ; of the human soul; of
the origin and end of man; of man's duties, and the means of
discharging them,--can make no difference as to the truth of our
love and life. The truth of love and life is not, then, an
intellectual truth; a truth apprehended by the mind; but must be
a mere affection of the heart, or, rather, a mere feeling,
dependent on no operation of the understanding, but on some
internal or external affection of the sensibility. The love will
not be a rational affection, but a simple sentiment, sensitive
affection, or sensible emotion, and as far removed from charity
as is the sensuous appetite for food or drink.
The _Congregationalist and Recorder_ seems aware that it has
not yet found a solid ground to stand on, and fairly abandons its
pretension to be able to arrive at absolute truth at all without
the pope. It says:
"It is, then, both the privilege and the duty of every man to
be a law unto himself; and out of his own reason and
conscience, enlightened from all knowledge that can be made
available by his own researches and those of his fellows, and
more especially by the patient and docile study of the
Bible--all in the most profound, uninterrupted, and prayerful
dependence upon the Holy Spirit--to judge what is right. From
the decision which he thus reaches there can be, for him, no
appeal. Whether it is anybody's else duty to follow the course
prescribed therein, or not, it is _his_ duty to do so. He
has plead his cause before his infallible tribunal, and its
decision over him is necessarily supreme and inexorable.
{218}
Not to obey it, would be to be false equally to God and to
himself. _If it be not absolute right which he has reached,
it stands in the place of absolute right for him; and only
along its road, however thorny, and steep, and high, can he
climb up toward heaven_. Practically, then, we insist upon
it, there is no infallibility possible to man, but that which
is resident in his own soul."
The conclusion is that to which all who seek their rule of faith
in private judgment and private illumination, or inside the soul,
must come at last; namely, the man is a law unto himself; that
is, is his own law, and, therefore, his own truth. Out of his own
reason and conscience, enlightened by the best study he can make,
he is to judge supremely what is right. This, we need not say, is
pure rationalism. It is man's duty to abide by the conclusion at
which he arrives; for although it may not be the absolute right,
yet it is the absolute right for him. This makes truth and duty
relative; what each one, for himself, thinks them to be. What
infallibility is here to oppose to the infallibility of the
church? Suppose it is announced to a man that God has established
a church which he by his presence renders infallible, to teach
all men and nations; will it not be the duty of that man to
listen to the announcement, and to investigate to the best of his
ability, and with all diligence, whether it be so or not? If,
through prejudice, indifference, or any other cause, he fails to
do so, will his conviction against such church be excusable, and
absolute truth or right, even for him? The article continues:
"And, in the matter of systems, we submit that there is no
logical pause possible between the two extremes to which we
referred, near the beginning of this article--that each man's
own conscientious reason be his umpire, or that that reason be
implicitly surrendered to some sole arbiter without. It must be
pope or people; the absolutism of the papacy or the democracy
of Congregationalism. There is no intermediate stand-point on
which the aristocracy of Presbyterianism, or the limited
monarchy of Methodism, or Episcopacy, can solidly build itself.
And this is, in point of fact, the unintended confession of
actions that are louder than words, in all these systems;
inasmuch as an appeal to the people in their individuality is
their quick, sharp sword which cuts every knot that draws hard
and cannot be untied."
But we do not see how this follows. The writer, if he has proved
anything, has proved, not that Congregationalism is a ground on
which one can stand, but that the individual is. He places the
infallible tribunal in the inside of the individual soul;
Congregationalism places it, if anywhere, in the congregation or
brotherhood. He should have said, therefore, that it is either
pope or individualism. We readily agree that there is no solid
ground between the pope and the people, taken individually, on
which any third or middle party can stand; but is individualism,
or the individual soul, a solid ground on which any one can
stand, without danger of its giving way under him? We have seen
that it is not, because an external standard is needed by which
to try the internal; and the writer himself concedes it, if he
understands the force of the terms he uses. He confesses that a
man, after due investigation, with all the helps he can derive
from the Holy Scriptures and the Spirit, cannot be certain of
arriving at absolute truth--that is, at truth at all; he can only
arrive at what is true and right for him, though it may not be so
for any one else. At best, then, he attains only to the relative,
and no man can stand on the relative, for the relative itself
cannot stand except in the absolute.
{219}
His whole doctrine amounts simply to this: What I honestly and
conscientiously think is true and right, is true and right for
me; that is, I may follow what I think is true and right with a
safe conscience: but whether I think right or wrong; in
accordance with the objective reality or not, I do not and cannot
know. What is this but saying that infallibility is both
impossible and unnecessary? Relying on what is inside of the
soul, then, without any authority outside of it, we cannot attain
to that certainty the writer began by affirming to be necessary,
and craved by the soul; and which he proposed to show us could be
had without the pope. All the writer does, is to show us that
without the infallibility of the pope or church, we cannot have
infallible faith; and to attempt to prove that we do not need it,
and can do very well without it. What does he establish, then,
but what Catholics have always told him, that there is no
alternative but pope or no infallibility? He says:
"We are even prepared to go so far as to claim that, as human
nature has been divinely constituted, it is a psychological
impossibility for any man to waive this prerogative of being
the _supreme authority_ over himself in regard to his
religion; for if he decides to accept the pope and his dictum
as conveying to him the sure will of God, that infallibility
can only be received as such by an express volition of his own
thus to receive it; that is, the man infallible stands behind
the pope infallible, and decrees that he shall become to him an
infallible pope; so that all the infallibility which the pope
can have is just only what the man had before, and gives to him
by his volition."
In this it is not only conceded that the internal, as we have
seen, does not give infallibility, but asserted that man is so
constituted that he is incapable of having an infallible faith.
Consequently, there can be no infallible teaching. It goes
farther, and denies the supreme authority of God in matters of
religion; and, like all error, puts man in the place of God. It
says: "It is a psychological impossibility for any man to waive
his prerogative of being the supreme authority over himself in
regard to his religion." This is the necessary conclusion from
the writer's assumption in the outset, that the infallible
authority is inside the soul, not outside of it; therefore,
purely subjective and human. Consequently, man is his own law,
his own sovereign; therefore independent of God, and the author
and finisher of his own faith. This is pretty well for a
Calvinist, and the organ of New England Puritanism! But we
charitably trust that the writer hardly understands the reach of
what he says. He confounds the action or office of reason in
receiving the faith, or the internal act of believing, with the
authority on which one believes, or on which the faith is
received. The act is the act of the rational subject, and
therefore internal. The authority on which the act is elicited is
accredited to the subject, and therefore necessarily objective or
external. I believe on testimony which comes to me from without,
or a fact or an event duly accredited to me. I believe the
messenger from God duly accredited to me as his messenger,
although he announces to me things far above my own personal
knowledge, and even mysteries which my reason is utterly unable
to comprehend. Hence, Christians believe the mysteries recorded
in the Holy Scriptures, because recorded by men duly instructed
and authorized by God himself to teach in his name.
The Puritan writer will hardly deny that St. Peter was a duly
accredited apostle of our Lord, and therefore, that what he
declares to be the Word of God is the Word of God, and therefore
true, since God is truth itself.
{220}
Suppose, then, the pope to be duly accredited to us as the
divinely authorized and divinely assisted teacher and interpreter
of the teaching of our Lord, whether in person or by the mouth of
the apostles, would reason find any greater difficulty in
believing him than in believing St. Peter himself? Of course not.
Now, Catholics look upon the pope as the successor or the
continuator of Peter, and therefore as teaching with precisely
the same apostolic authority with which Peter himself would teach
if he were personally present. It is not more difficult to prove
that the pope succeeds to Peter than it is to prove that Peter
was an apostle of our Lord, and taught by his divine authority.
The same kind of evidence that suffices to prove the one suffices
to prove the other. Suppose it proved, should we not then have an
infallible authority for faith other than that which is inside
the soul? Should we not be bound by reason itself to believe
whatever, in the case supposed, the pope should declare to be
"the faith once delivered to the saints"?
Our Puritan psychologist, and Protestants very generally, contend
that, since the authority of the pope is accredited to reason,
and we by reason judge of the credentials, therefore we have in
the pope only the authority of our own reason. This is a mistake.
We might as well argue that an ambassador accredited to a foreign
court can speak only by authority of the court to which he is
accredited, since it judges of the sufficiency of the credentials
he presents, and not at all by the authority of the court that
sends him. This would be simply absurd. The ambassador represents
the sovereign that sends him, not the sovereign to whom he is
sent or accredited. The credentials of the pope are presented to
our judgment, but what the pope, the accredited ambassador from
God, announces as the will of his sovereign and ours, must be
taken not on the authority of our own judgment, but on the
authority of the ambassador. The pope is not, indeed,
commissioned to reveal the truth, for the revelation is already
made by our Lord and his apostles, and deposited with the church.
The pope simply teaches what is the faith so revealed and
deposited, and settles controversies respecting it. Our own
reason, operating on the facts of the case, judges the
credentials of the pope or the evidences of his divine
commission, but not of the revelation to which he bears witness.
The fact that God has revealed and deposited with the church what
the pope declares God has so revealed and deposited, we take on
his authority. It is a mistake, then, to say that there can be no
authority in faith or religion but the authority which every man
has even of himself. To deny it is simply to deny the ability of
God to make us a revelation through inspired messengers, or
otherwise than through our natural reason.
It is equally a mistake to suppose that belief or an external
infallible authority is simply a volition or an act of the will,
without any intellectual assent. We might as well argue that the
credit a jury yields to the testimony of a competent and credible
witness is simply a volition without any conviction of the
understanding. Infallible authority convinces the understanding
as well as moves the will. We do not believe the revealed truth
on the authority of the pope; we believe it on the word of God,
who can neither deceive nor be deceived; but we believe on the
authority of the pope or church the fact that God has revealed
it. The church or the pope is not authority for the truth of what
is revealed--for God's word suffices for that; and we believe it
on his veracity--but is the infallible witness of the fact that
God has revealed or said it.
{221}
If God has made a revelation of supernatural truth, as all
Christians hold, the fact that he has made it, since it
confessedly is not made to us individually, must be received by
us, if at all, on the testimony of a witness. This is what is
meant by believing on authority. If we believe the fact at all,
we must believe it either on some authority or on no authority.
If on no authority, we have no reason for believing it, and our
belief is groundless. If on some authority, then either on a
fallible or an infallible authority. A fallible authority is no
authority for faith. Then an infallible authority, and as the
authority must be duly accredited to us--therefore, be itself
outside of us--it must be an infallible external authority. The
Puritan journal should therefore have headed its article, not
Pope or People, but, Pope or no Faith. Without the infallible
authority or witness, we may have opinions, conjectures, guesses,
more or less probable, but not faith, which excludes doubt, and
is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things
not seen. The Puritan is able, but has not mastered his subject.
There are many things for him yet to learn.
We have called attention to the article we have reviewed, as one
of the signs of what is going on in the Protestant evangelical
world. It is beginning to learn that there is no resting in the
infallible Book without an infallible interpreter. It begins to
see that it has therefore no authority for dogmas, and it is
gradually giving them the go-by. Dogmas discarded, Christianity,
as a revelation of mysteries or of truth for the intellect, goes
with them, and Christianity becomes a truth only for the heart
and conscience. Then it is resolved into love, and love without
understanding, therefore a sentimental love, and, with the more
advanced party, purely sensual love. This is whither
Protestantism is undeniably tending, and well may Dr. Ewer say
that, as a system of religion, it has proved a failure. It has
lost the church, lost practically the Bible, lost faith, lost
doctrine, lost charity, lost spirituality, fallen into a sickly
sentimentalism, and is plunging into gross sensuality. Here
endeth the "glorious reformation."
----------
Translated From The German
By Richard Storrs Willis.
Emily Linder.
II.--Her Conversion.
We are now arrived at the most important period of her life. Miss
Linder often referred with thankful heart to God's guiding
providence; and in the steady progress of her spiritual life thus
far is this not to be mistaken. Naturally religious, and inspired
with an unaffected yearning for the entire truth, she was happily
conducted into a circle of friends where her dawning faith
received both impulse and guidance. Exterior incidents
strengthened a certain interior magnetic bias. Since the day
which rendered Assisi so dear to her, an invisible power had
drawn her toward the visible church, and her leaning to
Catholicity was imperceptibly strengthened.
{222}
Her activity in art deepened her sympathies with a church in
which art finds its true place and consecration. An intellectual
intercourse of many years with friendly Catholic men and families
could not fail to remove many a prejudice. Thus had an unexpected
but powerful combination of circumstances conspired to lead a
mind ingenuously seeking the truth to Catholicity. It would be
quite a mistake, however, to suppose, as has been thought by
some, that the personal influence of any friend whatever had
worked decisively upon her determination to take the final step.
No one could do this; not even Brentano, strong as was his
interest in her spiritual life.
Clemens Brentano had come to Munich in October, 1833, and made
his domestic arrangements in his usual characteristic style at
Professor Schlotthauer's, "in one of the most pious and genial of
Noah's arks," as he facetiously describes it. His associations
led him into the same social circle in which Miss Linder moved,
and soon after his arrival he made her acquaintance. Her pious
earnestness, her cultivated, artistic nature, her charming and
judicious benevolence, enchained his interest; and he believed,
as is stated in his biography, to have found in her just the
nature for the Catholic faith. One knows with what strength and
zeal Brentano devoted himself (and in increasing ratio with
increasing years) to such friends as were dear to him in the
matter, particularly, of their acquaintance with the faith of his
own church, and their participation in her blessings. His
animated desire to instruct, which was ever without affectation
or concealment, expressed itself in just such cases with the
utmost freedom and frankness. Whoever reads that clever letter,
"To a Lady Friend," written during these years at Munich, can
tolerably well judge of the tone and style with which he brought
home to a pious Protestant the warmth and depth of his religious
convictions.
Certain is it that Miss Linder gained, through Brentano, a deep
insight into the inner life of the church and the hidden graces
and forces which stream through her. He had the power, as she
said, "of making some things intelligible which might otherwise
remain for ever closed to one." The life and the visions of
Katharina Emmerich, which he read aloud on her weekly
reading-evenings, made a profound impression upon her. As though
in confirmation of what she heard, she saw with her own eyes at
Kaldern a similar phenomenon in Maria von Mörl, that astounding
living wonder, and was penetrated with the atmosphere of truth
with which, as Gorres expresses it, Maria von Mörl seemed
enveloped. She caused a portrait of this phenomenon to be
executed by her lady friend, Ellenrieder; and always gladly gave
her visitors (as is stated by Emma Niendorf) a full description
of the _stigimated_, just as Brentano was wont to do in his
letters. In this, as in other ways, was her intercourse with
Brentano of service to her. To many an outwork of knowledge did
he build a bridge, a _pontifex maximus_, as he once
jestingly applied the term to himself. Finally, his own Christian
death made a profound and lasting impression upon her.
Any other influence than mild, patient instruction was, once for
all, excluded by her. Even the holiest zeal, if it sought, in any
way, to crowd in upon her, could only force a nature like hers
into antagonism, and check everything like quiet development.
{223}
With all her humility, this lady possessed the self-reliance and
genuine independence of a Swiss. She sought the way of truth with
such deep longing that she willingly accepted guidance; but with
such severe scrutiny, that she was not to be confused, and was
inaccessible to every kind of coaxing from any side. For, from
the quarter of her old theological standpoint there was no lack
of friendly advice, or of opinions bringing great weight with
them,--supposing that mere human opinions could ever have decided
such a question. Even raillery was not lacking. Platen gave his
particular attention to this kind of weapon, and put himself to
no little trouble to ridicule her out of her Catholic
proclivities. The theological tendency she had taken since the
days passed at Sorrento had become to the poet of the
_Abassiden_ altogether "too romantic," and he hoped to cool
her religious zeal with a cold irony. Thus, he once satirically
addressed himself to her from Florence, (February 24th, 1835,)
"Might one be so bold as to enquire what progress you have made
in your conversion to the only saving church; or is this a
secret? In case of a change of religion, I trust you will follow
the advice of a friend, and turn, rather, to the Greek Church.
For, if you prize Catholicism on account of its antiquity, the
Greek Church is doubtless older. And is it the ceremonial which
particularly attracts you; then here, too, is the Greek service
far more aesthetic and imposing." Count Platen doubtless felt
that in a theological controversy he was no match for his
well-informed friend; and therefore, in his letters he appealed
to her as an artiste. True, the barrenness of Protestantism in
art he quietly admitted; but all the better success he promised
himself in an attempt to belittle the merit of the church in the
field of art by certain cunning sophistries. In several of his
letters he stumbled upon the neither very bright nor novel idea
of presenting the church as at an obsolete standpoint.
"Certainly," he admonishes the artist, "Catholicity, as a thing
of a former age, is highly to be esteemed, but not for the
present. Her time is past, even for art. Perhaps by and by an
artera may dawn upon her, but this will be of a purely aesthetic
nature; for a blending of art with religion is no longer among
the possibilities," etc. The thought that his friend, after all,
might take some such fatal step evidently gave the poet much
uneasiness; for even in his last letter to her, written but two
weeks before his death, he makes another attempt at the same
style of argument. It is contained in a description of Palermo,
written at Naples, September 7th, 1835: "I received your welcome
letter shortly after my return from Calabria. I know not how my
mother could write you that Palermo did not please me; or, if so,
to what extent this was the case. I simply remember saying that
the location of Palermo bore no comparison with that of Naples.
There are certainly lacking the islands, Vesuvius, and the coast
of Sorrento; although the mountain background of Palermo is very
beautiful. The Rogers chapel, there, is something that would
please you--a church of the twelfth century, in perfect
preservation; its style that of the old Venetian and Roman
churches; and although of smaller dimensions, yet the finest of
them all. It is the more interesting to attend a service there,
because one sees that Catholic culture was calculated solely for
the Byzantine style of architecture; for with such surroundings,
only, could it be effective. Thus does Catholicity, even as to
architecture, prove itself a thing of the past."
{224}
Enough of this. Such platitudes as these were not calculated to
entangle a nature far too deep for them, or check the development
of a work so earnestly undertaken. Emily Linder well knew that
the church has already outlived many just such "obsolete
standpoints," and many such prophets of evil, who have mistaken
their wishes for reality, and phrases for axioms. How dignified
and how welcome, in comparison with this sophistry from Naples,
must have seemed to her the greeting of an old friend and art
companion addressed to her from Rome, in the spring of 1833: "Be
assured that I often fervently remember you to our Lord. Do you
the same by me. May a holy unrest and impatience fill us to take
'by violence' the kingdom of heaven!"
This holy unrest had indeed for some time possessed her, and on
many an occasion broke forth in expressions of touching and
yearning expectancy. While viewing the cathedral of Cologne, in
the year 1835, she ardently exclaims, "Ah! of a certainty an age
whose lofty inspirations (and of no transient kind) could produce
such monuments as this, deserved neither the epithet of rude nor
dark. There resided in it a light which we, with our (gas!)
illumination, could never produce." Again, as to the interior of
the grand cathedral--"I know not why, but I cannot repress my
tears. An irrepressible melancholy and yearning seizes me here."
The same year, after viewing with Schubert the minster at Ulm,
she makes this noteworthy observation in her journal, "It almost
pained me that the old cathedral is no longer used for Catholic
service, and that the choir and sanctuary are now so desolate."
Already had she adopted many Catholic views. At an early period
she believed in an active sympathy between this and the other
world, and a purification of the soul in that world. The church's
benediction was highly prized by her; for which reason, even as
Protestant, she was in the habit of bearing about with her on her
travels a little flask of holy water. Many of her views were as
yet very undecided; but strong and irrepressible was her longing
for that truth which should bring her peace. This clung by her in
all her wanderings, and often drew from her a deep cry of the
heart. The notes which she made during a trip to Holland, in
company with Schubert, in the year 1835, closed with the
following words, "These lonely days of travel have left me much
time for meditation. To-day a crowd of thoughts and emotions
fairly thronged upon me. I said to myself, To what purpose all
this? Whither is this invisible power impelling us? Are we really
advanced by it, or made the happier? Often this affluence of
emotion rises to a kind of transport; then, again, it turns to
pain, for I know not the why nor the whither. Is there a
connectedness in all this? Is it enduring? Once more, then, why?
During this journey of mine I have often prayed, O Lord, let me
know thy will. Let me follow the path which is pleasing to thee.
Lead me but to thyself, and in any way thou mayst choose. Let it
become clear what thou really desirest of me. By this means I
experienced great relief, and also the certainty that He, who
with such signal fidelity had thus far led me, would clearly make
known to me his will, would guide me into his paths."
{225}
As the interior movement increased, she was impelled to confer
with intelligent friends in the distance concerning this most
momentous interest of her life. Especially with Overbeck there
ensued a correspondence which, continuing for years, was of great
assistance in attaining to religious clearness. Overbeck took
kindest interest in her doubts and scruples. He had formerly gone
over the same ground, and could therefore confer with her about
such matters "as a brother." His letters grew into a connected
vindication of Catholic doctrine, and the truth and beauty of the
church, expressed in the mild, clear, fervent, and touching
language of one equally worthy of respect as man and artist. With
a nature like Overbeck's, where the man and the artist are not
two distinct individualities, but are united in a higher form
--Christianity--words have a more elevated significance; and a
correspondence with him must have necessarily possessed an import
more than usually edifying. Emily Linder deeply felt this. We
take her own testimony when we say that Overbeck's letters
contributed largely toward her religious development; and, by the
overwhelming conviction of his words, no less than by his own
deep spirituality, she attained to a knowledge of very vital
truths. She viewed the assistance he rendered her in the light of
a perpetual obligation; and in later years, long after she became
a Catholic, she breathed, in her letters to the admirable master,
a "God reward you for it."
Meantime, however, she had to pass through many a severe
struggle. The wrestling and testing which her conscientiousness
imposed upon her was of long continuance. The dread of a hasty
step which might afterward plunge her into the deepest unrest,
caused her to advance but cautiously. Her mental vacillation
continued for quite a period, during which she was filled with
unsatisfied spiritual yearnings. She stood just on the portal of
the church, afraid to enter. Many a prayer, far and near,
ascended in her behalf to heaven. Brentano lived not to witness
the conversion he so longed for. But the hope which gladdened his
last days attained a realization the year after his death.
In 1842, she wrote to an artist friend in Frankfort, "I am fully
satisfied that I entertain no prejudices, and honestly wish to
know God's will. He has already cleared away many a spiritual
obstacle, and transformed much within me. When it is his holy
will to lead me into the church, I am confident that he will
remove every remaining hinderance to my conviction." She thought,
however, that the church did not give Protestants a very easy
time. Their acceptance of the Tridentine confession of faith was
a hard matter. Still, her mind had already attained to such
clearness that she now desired the instruction of some competent
priest. Through the instrumentality of Diepenbrock, a theological
teacher was brought to her, who gained her confidence. She
earnestly began her task, zealously and perseveringly devoting to
it several hours a week for an entire year. The structure of
Catholic faith began to open itself to her now with all its
interior consistency and harmony. One scruple after another
vanished, including those which finally troubled her; as, for
instance, the expression, "Mother of God;" the alleged mutilation
of the holy sacrament, by withdrawal of the cup from the laity,
etc. In the words of her spiritual guide, she learned to
distinguish that which is divine, and essential, and immutable in
the church, from that which is human, and incidental, and
mutable; and what had hitherto proved an insurmountable obstacle,
the seemingly mechanical, and often rude devotions of the common
people, as also the worldly splendor of the hierarchy--this
ceased to trouble her more.
{226}
In the autumn of 1843, Miss Linder made another tour to the Tyrol
and Upper Italy, and few could surmise that she was so near to
the decisive step. She writes from Munich, on the 16th of
October, "I have just made with the Schuberts a somewhat
fatiguing trip as far as Verona, where, by the way, I had almost
come to a standstill, to copy a picture there. We then remained
for a couple of weeks in Botzen, where all was so quiet, and
reposeful, and secluded, that it was right grateful to me." Amid
this stillness and seclusion to which she abandoned herself,
still more than in Munich, was finally brought to maturity "the
great work of redemption."
Toward the end of November, 1843, on the approach of Advent,
there burst upon her spiritual life a new era, and her long
suspense and yearning resolved itself into the cry, "I will enter
the church!" The final word of decision was immediately winged to
heaven on a prayer. Upon the threshold of that expectant season,
when the church sings, "Drop down dew, ye heavens, from above,
and let the clouds rain the just," she participated, one morning,
with the most ardent devotion, in a low mass celebrated in
conformity with her intention. This was the decisive hour. She
left the chapel with the joyous and unalterable resolve to enter
into fellowship with the Catholic Church. All was overcome, aided
and enlightened by the grace of God. Standing before her little
house altar, she rehearsed, for the first time, the Catholic
creed.
The first to whom the glad intelligence flew was a noble pair,
Apollonia Diepenbrock and her brother, the latter of whom was
subsequently the celebrated cardinal and bishop of Breslau, but
at that time, the vicar-general of Regensburg. Both were
associated with the pious artiste in a friendship of many years,
and had been long familiar with the course of her religious
development. Melchior von Diepenbrock, during just this last
period, had been a faithful and intelligent adviser to her. The
disciple of Sailers responded to the joyous intelligence with a
peace-greeting befitting a shepherd of the church. He wrote on
the 29th of November, 1843:
"Hindered by very unwelcome business, I was unable, either
yesterday or the day before, to express my heartfelt sympathy
and delight over the surprising intelligence of your note of
Saturday. Surprising, because I had not anticipated so sudden a
loosening of the fruit, ripe as it was. But the wind 'which
bloweth where it listeth,' stirred the tree, and the ripe,
mellow fruit fell into the lap of the true mother, where it
will now be well cared for, growing mellower and sweeter until
the coming of the Bridegroom. My hope and prayer for you now
is, that peace and rest may be yours after a suspense and
unrest which has thus loosed itself in the simple and welcome
words,'I will enter the church.' But you have every reason to
be at rest; for a church which has given birth to a Wittman, a
Sailer, a Fénélon, a Vincent de Paul, a Tauler, a Suso, a
Thérèse, a Bernard, an Augustine, an Athanasius, a Polycarp,
and so on, up to the apostles themselves, and which has nursed
them on her breast with the self-same heavenly doctrine; from
whose mouth and from whose life, in turn, this same identical
doctrine has been breathed down like a fragrant aroma, through
a course of eighteen hundred years; in such a church is there
safe and good travelling companionship for heaven. Following
their guidance, you need not fear going astray. I therefore,
from my very soul, bid you welcome to this noble company to
which you have long since, through your intense yearning, and
by anticipation, belonged, but now have identified yourself
with openly, by a grasp of the hand and a kiss of
reconciliation; with whom you will soon fully and finally be
incorporated by that most sacred seal and covenant, that
highest consecration of love, the holy Eucharist. You have had
a rough and thorny path to travel, and passed through long
years of struggle, doubt, and conflict, to arrive at this goal.
{227}
Bind, now, the olive wreath of peace coolingly around your
heated temples. Let all labor of the brain, all strain of the
intellect, now subside. Live a life of tranquillity. Open your
heart to a reception of the holy gifts which the church, as you
enter, proffers you. And above all, banish all anxiety and
doubt, for therewith you gain nothing, and spoil all. Let your
barque, wafted by the breath of God, glide peacefully down the
broad stream of the church's life. Revel in the stars, and the
flowers which mirror themselves therein, the denizens that
disport there; and, should now and then an uncouth, repulsive
creature catch your eye, reflect that the kingdom of God is
still entangled in the contradictions of developement. Think
upon that great world-net which gathers souls of every
description, and upon the angel who, upon the great day, will
separate them all. And now I commend you to God. Once more, may
peace and joy in the Holy Ghost be your morning-gift."
And soon this "morning-gift" possessed her soul. Being fully
prepared, her admission, as she had wished, could be immediate.
But she desired to take the step in all quietness, and only a few
of her friends, like Professor Haneberg and Phillips, were
informed of it the evening before, she desiring to secure for
herself their prayers.
On the 4th of December, 1843, Emily Linder, accompanied by her
friend Apollonia, in the Georgian Seminary chapel made solemn
profession of the Catholic faith. On the day following, the papal
nuncio, Viale Prelà, administered to her, in his house-chapel the
sacrament of confirmation; delivering, at the same time, an
eloquent address in German. The friend before mentioned was
godmother, and, as one present remarked, by her faith, her love,
her prayers, and her efforts, she had indeed proved her spiritual
mother. In company with this friend, she went to Regensburg, in
order to withdraw into retirement, and to be alone with her
new-born joy.
Her letters during this period give animated testimony to what
extent, and with what daily increase, this joy was experienced. A
jubilant rapture pervades the letters which announce the event to
distant friends, particularly those addressed to Overbeck in Rome
and Steinle in Frankfort; both friends and companions in art.
These and a few others had been admitted to her confidence in
spiritual matters. To the latter, whom, of her younger friends,
she particularly prized and respected, she thus announces the
circumstance, "This time I come to you with but few words; words
no longer conditional, but right conclusive. I am a Catholic.
Could I have written to you, as I wished, to ask your prayers for
me before the eventful hour, even then you might have been taken
by surprise; but now the news has doubtless reached you from
Munich, and I write this letter simply as confirmation, and
because I wish that you should be informed of it by me
personally. You have lately hardly thought, I suppose, that it
would come so soon; and yet I was long prepared for it. After
many a struggle, particularly of late, it had become to me a
positive necessity, a natural and necessary development of my
spiritual life. When I had once announced my determination to the
clergyman who for some time had been instructing me, my desire
was to take the step right quickly. My good Apollonia left
Regensburg immediately for Munich, to be present at my reception
into the church; and the day following this I was confirmed. I
have now accompanied my friend hither to escape from all
excitement and pass some days in retirement; needed opportunity
of fortifying myself against much that must necescessarily come,
that is hard and disagreeable.
{228}
Yet has God been inexpressibly kind and gentle in his dealings
with me thus far."
A letter to the same friend on the 19th of January thus reads:
"My last letter was very, very brief; but the glad tidings had
to come first, and for this few words were needed. But now six
weeks have flown, and it may give you pleasure to hear that I
am daily newly bleat, newly affected by the great goodness of
God. You may not have doubted this, yet you may be glad to be
assured of it, having always taken such interest in my welfare.
Ah dear Steinle! how sweet, how sweet a thing to be in the
church! I ask myself every day, Why then, I? Why just to myself
has this grace been vouchsafed, in preference to others so much
worthier of it? How can this have come about? For no other
reason, surely, than because so many faithful souls living
close to God, have interceded, so untiringly interceded for me,
that God could not resist their importunity. How often, how
very often must I exclaim, as you have done, God be praised and
extolled for ever. Now for the first time do I understand that
deep longing and incessant yearning of the heart. Oh! would
that all, all were in God's one, great house; would that all
could experience the friendliness, the inexpressible
friendliness of the Lord, he whose mercy transcends all
understanding and conception. Ah dear friend! supplicate and
implore God for me, that this grace--I will not say may be
deserved, how could this ever be?--but that I may daily more
deeply comprehend and appreciate it, and that my life may
become one song of thankfulness and benediction. I am still
like a happy little child at rest in the lap of its mother. The
cross will yet come, and perhaps must necessarily do so; yet am
I not dismayed; for well I know where, at any hour, courage,
and strength, and consolation are to be found.
"Hitherto has God made it very easy to me. My sister--the only
one I have--was surprised and grieved at the first
intelligence; but rather, I think, from a loving dread that I
might be estranged from her. Now that she finds this is not the
case, I hear no complaint from her. My nieces and my intimate
friends at home are all unchanged. Just here, too, my friends
have remained the same; only two of my young lady acquaintances
thought it due to their religious convictions to break with me;
but lo! on New Year's day they both came and threw their arms
around my neck. ... God be with us all! May he purify and
sanctify us and help us mature to life eternal. Once again,
pray to God for me. Join me in ascribing thanks to him for his
inexpressible goodness. With heartfelt friendship,
"Emily Linder."
From this time forth Advent possessed for her a peculiarly
festive significance. She celebrated each recurring anniversary
with feelings of the humblest gratitude, making it a threefold
festival, and greeting it with the joyousness and bliss of a
child who had received on that day the costliest of gifts; for it
was the anniversary of her day of final decision, her reception
into the church, and her confirmation. On the 27th of December,
1844, she thus writes again to the same friend:
"Shall I attempt to depict to you the experience of my inner
life? Oh! it is ever yet to me, to use your own expression, the
pure mother-milk of inexpressible grace and goodness. Such, at
times, is the intensity of my joy, that it is as though I must
hold fast my heart with both hands. I have been celebrating of
late a great festivals of the soul; for at advent time I
entered the church, but included in my devotional intention,
also, was the celebration of my decision and confirmation; all
these were occasions of spiritual festivity. One entire year of
grace and blessedness! ... The kind Tony F---- calls me 'the
pet-child of the Lord.' This may be so; but when I enquire,
Whence this to me? oh! then I must deeply, deeply bow myself,
and with profoundest shame can only still enquire of my Lord,
Whence this to. me? ... Nor will I entertain forebodings for
the future. He who infuses such rapture into the heart,
can--yes, must--impart strength and courage, when he lays the
cross upon our shoulders. He will do it, too--benedictions on
his holy name!"
{229}
How idle, now, appeared all the fears and anxiety as to a too
hasty step, which had rendered her final decision so difficult,
while still standing at the diverging pathways. Not a trace more
of the unrest which had so troubled her. The morning-gift of
peace and joy in faith, which Diepenbrock's kind wishes bespoke
her, had become indeed her assured inheritance. A song of
thankfulness warbled unceasingly in her heart.
A few more expressions which escaped her, will show that the
transport she experienced was not the effect of transient
excitement. On one occasion she thus addresses a friend:
"You may be assured, of course, without written proof, that I
often think of you: but how often I breathe to you spiritually
my joy, my exceeding joy--do you know this? My heart often
sings like that of a little child before a Christmas-tree, over
the inexhaustible goodness of God, and knows not how it should
demean itself in the possession of such imperishable gifts. How
good, how very good has God been thus to call me into his holy
church!"
On the recurrence of advent she writes again on the 8th of
December, 1845, as to the celebration of this festive period of
hers:
"During the past week I have been celebrating my apparently
quiet but really great and momentous festival, the anniversary
of my reception into the church. Ah! dear Steinle, what can I
say more than, Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is
within me bless his holy name! How inexpressibly great his
mercy and grace, how past all thinking and conceiving! ... To
be safe-sheltered in the church in times like these, when no
hold and no firm footing outside of her can be found! Oh! if
our brethren but knew what peace is hers--if they could but
imagine what they are thrusting away from them! It is enough to
make one's heart bleed. But this I can assure them, that only
in the church can one really know her; only by living her life
can one understand that life. Outside of the church can one
learn much about her, of course, and to a certain extent inform
himself; but then, she is not only a something that _has_
been--an historical church--she is a present-existing, living
church, because Christ is still alive in her, and still active
in his work of reconciliation. Of such a church-life. we can
have no outside idea, just because we do not live it. How often
should I like to tell Clemens how it is with me now. But, God
willing, he surmises it and rejoices thereat. In all things be
praise to God!"
In these words there rings out, certainly, the genuine, clear
tone of a heart happy in its faith. Equally evident in these
passages is the fact, that her personal relations with her
Protestant friends and relatives knew no change. With a certain
pious fidelity of friendship, which was peculiar to her, she
sought to hold fast to the old ties which had become so dear, and
always met her former companions in faith with the same simple,
trusting affection. Cornelius, who welcomed her conversion with
heartfelt interest, after his return from Rome writes to her from
Berlin, on the 4th of June, 1844:
"In Rome I learned that you had at last fully _taken
heart._ It did not surprise me. God bless you, and protect
you hereafter both from spiritual pride and indifference."
Certainly no one could less need this admonition than Emily
Linder, who was a pattern of lowly humility. No one was more
sweetly considerate and liberal than she; and Abbot Haneberg most
justly remarked at her grave, that, after her conversion, she was
scrupulous to discharge all the duties of friendship toward her
former companions in faith, and never failed fully to appreciate
all who proved worthy of her respect.
This unchanging fidelity induced her to make a trip, the very
summer after her conversion, to her native city of Basle, and to
Lucerne, where resided other relatives of hers. A personal visit
just at that time seems to her then more a duty than ever, in
order that her relatives might have ocular evidence "that the
Catholic Church is not an estranging one, and cherishes no
feeling like that of hate."
{230}
This sentiment regulated her conduct throughout. A longing for a
universal religious reunion strongly possessed her, and she was
deeply grieved to see many honest Protestants standing so near
Catholicity, who did not recognize "the historic church in the
existing one," mainly (judging by her own experience) from a lack
of proper information and from a certain shyness, which they
could not explain even to themselves. "The emergency is great;
souls are hungering and thirsting; but the more sensitive of the
Protestants shrink from that shock to the feelings and social
relations which they fear will ensue--a great mistake; for love
will experience no diminution; it will be increased. But outside
of the church they know nothing of this. Alas! how much do they
not know!"
This was written in 1846. Three years later she recurred again to
her favorite idea in a charming letter addressed to Professor
Steinle from Regensburg, on Ascension-day, May 17th, 1849:
"As I stood gazing at the people thronging up the steps and
through the grand old portals of our superb cathedral, my heart
was strangely moved. I saw in spirit the time when all people,
united again and happy, would stream with songs of hallelujah
through these portals and proclaim the wonderful works of God.
Could I but see this and then depart in peace! Such may not be
my lot, but in eternity the intelligence may yet reach me and
be a theme of thanksgiving to God."
As though from her very childhood a member of the church, she
felt from the first moment entirely at home in her precincts and
in the blessed activity of her communion, becoming quickly and
easily wonted to all Catholic practices, to which she gave
herself up with all the intelligence and abandonment of her soul.
How well she now appreciated the truth of the words addressed to
her on joining the church by the noble Cardinal Diepenbrock, "You
press now the ground which, not only Christ's own footsteps, but
his very hands, betokened as the foundation of his church; which
his spirit consecrated, which, his love hallowed: the soil whence
all those vines should spring, which clinging around and
clambering over his cross, may literally by and on him bear
fruits of love, of humility, of fidelity, to all eternity!" And
following his faithful precepts, she forthwith launched her
barque, and, wafted by the breath of God, it glided peacefully
over the broad stream of the church-life.
Amid the deep peace which flowed in upon her, she now recommenced
with fresh vigor her artistic occupations, devoting herself with
more fervor than ever to religious painting. The forenoon was
regularly passed at the easel. What a pleasure it must have been
to her now to produce altar and other pictures for the house of
the Lord! These she donated to poor churches, sending them
sometimes to great distances, even to poor Catholic communities
in Greece and Paris. Whenever a call for assistance reached her,
according to her capacity she was ready with her offering. Her
great industry in art enabled her to respond to numerous
requests, and in the course of a long life she rendered many a
poor parish happy, which would otherwise have been long compelled
to dispense with churchly embellishment. Free from all artistic
fastidiousness, she never disdained to make copies of other
pictures. Thus with great interest and ability she made a copy of
a picture by Overbeck, which she had in her collection, for the
chapel of the Sisters of Mercy in Munich.
{231}
With a modest esteem for her own abilities, she always worked
under the supervision of an old master, whose judgment never
failed to have its weight with her. A deep and tender sensibility
pervades her pictures; and if she betrays a certain timidity in
the technical execution, there is evidence of great industry and
attention to detail. One of her best works, perhaps, is a
portrait of Brentano, an oil painting remarkable for likeness and
spirituality of expression. After his death, she had this
lithographed by Knauth, and copies struck off. It is given in the
first volume of his complete works, and is accompanied by a verse
which serves as a burthen to one of his most beautiful legends,
as it might to the legend of his life, commencing,
"O star and flower, soul and clay,
Love, suffering, time, eternity."
The ancient and laudable habit among lovers of art to enrich, by
special orders and purchases, their own homes--that noble
privilege of educated wealth!--she practised to a lavish extent.
Her collection of pictures embraced gradually works of the most
eminent artists. Besides the masters already mentioned,
(Overbeck, Cornelius, Eberhard,) Steinle was represented in a
series of glorious creations. Several of these, like the
"Manger-Festival of St. Francis," the "Legend of St. Marina,"
were the source of some of Brentano's beautiful inspirations and
are now included in his sacred poems. In addition to these
artists were Schnorr, Schraudolph, Schwind, Führich, Neher,
Eberle, Ahlborn, Koch, etc. In another respect, also, she
approved herself a true artist, namely, by rendering constant
assistance to such pupils of the distinguished masters with whom
she was friendly, as gave evidence of talent. Her helping hand
alone rendered, indeed, many an artistic undertaking possible;
and not a few artists had occasion, in such instances, to admire
not only the liberality but delicacy with which she dispensed
orders and bore with trying delays. She exhibited an
extraordinary degree of patience in the friendly manner with
which she would conform herself to personal circumstances and
private relations which did not at all concern her, even in cases
of work delayed for years and paid for in advance. She would even
heap coals of fire upon their heads by surprising them with
further money advances--a charity which at times was exceedingly
opportune. By this and similar methods Miss Linder, without any
display, accomplished much good, and constantly experienced the
pure pleasure of making others happy. And in yet another manner
she showed a noble liberality. With rare unselfishness she would
allow copies to be made and disseminated of the most valuable
drawings in her collection, her own private property. She not
only encouraged efforts of this kind, but sometimes at her own
expense actually initiated them. By this multiplication of fine
works of art she shared prominently in that noble task undertaken
by Overbeck and his companions--the establishment of a more
dignified and elevated art standard.
True art seemed to assume with her, year by year, a graver
aspect. In judging of a work, she deemed its intent just as
important as its execution. She discerned in art a reflected
radiance from the world of light: and all that did not tend
upward to this she regarded as idle effort and labor lost. She
observed with pain an increasing tendency to the material,
particularly since the year 1850; and nothing more deeply
incensed her than a demeaning of art to low and base uses.
{232}
Even in Munich, after Cornelius left and Louis. I. descended the
throne, there existed no longer the ancient standard. What is now
left of that school of sacred art, once blossoming out with such
inspiriting vigor? It now leads the existence of a Cinderella.
Even in the year 1850, Miss Linder remarked: "Our academy affords
me no longer any very great pleasure: the period of love and
inspiration has passed. Shall we ever see its return?"
The gathering clouds in the political horizon and the disturbance
of social relations were not encouraging to any hope like this.
But at just such a time, when outside life was forbidding, she
found how grateful a definite aim and mission may be, and
experienced the quiet delight of art and art-occupation more than
ever. She thus writes from Pöhl, a favorite resort of hers in
summer, adjacent to the Ammersee, "I shall yet make a little tour
in the Tyrol and then ensconce myself in winter quarters, where I
shall be happy in a work already commenced and which will
immediately engross me. It is a source of the greatest happiness
in these days to have a given task. How much it enables one to
get rid of!" On viewing Gallait's picture of "Egmont and Horn" in
the exhibition, she remarked, "I should not care to own the
picture, and yet there is much to admire in it. The sphere of art
is so extensive and yet so limited--after all, one cannot but
feel that everything not in God's service is, to say the least,
superfluous."
An evening quiet overspread her relations with the outside world.
But uninterruptedly until her death she kept up, in her own home,
the accustomed hospitality. Her house was always a central point
of really good society. No literary or artistic celebrity could
long tarry in Munich without an invitation to her table, around
which every week a little circle was gathered. Privy-Counsellor
von Ringseis usually acted as host, a man whose varied knowledge,
ripe experience, and inexhaustible humor better befitted him than
any other to blend the most opposite characteristics of the
guests. With friends in the distance she maintained an extensive
correspondence, and also cultivated her friendly relations with
them by regular summer trips: a passion for travel and a love of
nature remaining true to her into advanced old age.
A nature so profound, so true, and so enlightened was constituted
for friendship, and Emily Linder served as a model in this
regard. She possessed those two qualities by which it is best
retained--candor and disinterestedness. What she was capable of
as to the latter quality has already been sufficiently shown. An
open frankness was the groundwork of her character. She possessed
a kind but impartial judgment, and in the right place she knew
how to assert it. The same sincerity was expected of others, and
nothing with her outweighed truthfulness. Whoever offended in
this point came to conclusions with her speedily and once for
all. A half-and-half sincerity or prevarication could force even
her dovelike mildness to resentment. When called to pass judgment
upon the work of a friendly artist, there arose a noble contest
between frankness and kindness. Her opinions were always to the
point, and by the soundness of her judgment she gave food for
reflection. But in cases of a change of opinion after more mature
consideration, she was quick to acknowledge herself at fault. A
single incident may illustrate this. On occasion, of a defence,
by an artist, of a celebrated master, to one of whose works she
had taken exceptions, she replied:
{233}
"My first judgment, then, was unquestionably hasty. But among
friends I shall never like that degree of caution always
insisted upon which admits of no quick and impulsive word; for
thus would all open-heartedness be repressed; a thing which no
amount of shrewdness or cool deliberation could ever replace. I
beg for myself the privilege therefore, hereafter, just as
often, and perhaps just as hastily, to express my opinion."
She reposed the same confidence in the judgment of others. All
the more weighty art matters about which she concerned herself
were submitted to the counsel and decision of intelligent friends
of art. She took the most lively interest, also, in every
important event or crisis in the families of these friends. Her
thoughtful consideration loved to express itself in pleasant
souvenirs and playful surprises of gifts; and her fidelity often
extended even to the departed. Many a friend, after having passed
to a long home, was endowed with a memorial Mass which she
established for the repose of his soul. The Klee and Möhler
memorial, a composition of Steinle, copies of which she caused at
her own expense to be made, she intended (an intention, indeed,
never realized) as an aid to the establishment of a Klee and
Möhler fund; and a lasting monument it would have proved to the
memory of these two noble men. For any expression of fidelity
toward herself she was deeply grateful; particularly in her more
advanced years, after she became more and more aware how rare a
thing is disinterested attachment in this age of unprincipled
selfishness. "Any instance of loyal attachment," said she, "moves
me the more deeply in these times, when truly it is no
fashionable virtue."
A special object of her loving thoughtfulness was her beloved
Assisi, the little convent of the German sisters of St. Francis.
In times of great distress, particularly during the ravages of
the Revolution, it was no small consolation and delight to
receive thence, after a long interval, reassuring intelligence.
Particularly was this the case during the Mazzini terrorism of
1849. In the autumn of this year, she announced to a friend, with
something like motherly pride: "I have received tidings lately
from our German nuns at Assisi. Appalling things have happened at
Rome, and indications of the same have threatened elsewhere, even
at Assisi. But the good women bravely set at naught all
intimidation and threat, and have come out entirely unharmed.
Yes, even the gangs themselves are reported to have said: One
cannot get the better of these Germans, they pray too much. May
we all of us lay hands upon the same trusty weapon!" The
burgher-maiden whom she took with her as candidate to Assisi on
her journey to Rome in 1829, has already been, for the last
twenty-four years, Superior of the German convent; it so chanced
that she attained to this position the very year that Emily
Linder became a Catholic. During that time, more than twenty
Bavarian maidens followed her to Assisi. If the gratitude of
happy people, who praise God daily that they have found "the true
ark of peace," ever proved a blessing, this blessing accrued, in
rich measure, to the artist from Assisi. Her name is entered in
the memorial book of the convent, and, so long as this spiritual
order exists, she will live there as their "best benefactress,
and as their dear, good mother in Christ." Thus is she spoken of
in the numerous and touching letters of the pious sisters.
{234}
Seldom has a human being made a more magnanimous use of a large
income than the departed Emily Linder. Her benevolence was on a
grand scale. Her whole nature was generosity itself; but that
which at first was but natural good will to all became afterward,
by the pious spirit which pervaded her, an element of her
religious worship. She considered herself but as the almoner of
the riches God had entrusted to her. Her goodness was of that
serene character which never showed aught of impatience toward
those begging or initiating charities. She gave to both with
equal friendliness. She contributed lavishly to public
institutions for the sick and suffering. And yet what she gave to
the individual poor, and such special families as were commended
to her, must also have been a very considerable sum. In these
simpler distributions of charity she showed a marked delicacy.
The modest poor who came to her house she never allowed to be
waited on by her servants, but administered to their wants
herself. In some instances she bore her gifts on certain
specified days to their dwellings; and in these cases she was
just as systematic, and as punctual to the day and the hour, as
in all things else. Christmas in her house was a festival of the
poor. The lines of Clemens Brentano in his collection of sacred
poems, entitled _To the Benefactress, on the Occasion of her
Presentation to the Poor_, refer to this incident. To what
extent and in what instances she served as unknown guardian
angel, her intimate friends rather guessed at than knew. The
character of her benevolence, generally, was piously-noiseless
and still. Through hidden channels she often reached far in the
distance, sustaining and rescuing (both physically and
spiritually) where the need was very urgent. Often, thus, a gift
flowed forth from her and sped like a sunbeam into some
languishing heart. Many an obstacle has she removed from the path
of a struggling child of humanity; into many a stout but wounded
spirit has she infused new life and energy. Clemens Brentano
termed this a "heavenly little piece of strategy."
This noiseless activity in art and benevolence did not withdraw
her attention from what was going on outside, and although she
never stepped beyond the natural boundaries of her position, and
was of too quiet a nature to mingle generally in the strife of
parties, she nevertheless, to the last year of her life,
maintained a lively interest in all the great church and
political questions of the day. The prodigious changes which took
place in the world during the fourth period of her life, what
heart would not have been profoundly stirred by them? But,
however painful to her the prevailing Machiavelism of the age,
the insanity of the revolutionary leaders, the pitiable confusion
of the people, and the undermining of all conservative bulwarks
in state and society, courage and hope still maintained the upper
hand. The pressure upon the church and the Pope filled her
perhaps with concern, but did not dismay her. She had the right
standard, and the consolation which it brought, in judging of the
destinies of the nations. When the revolutionary storms of 1848
and 1849 burst upon them and swept over Germany and Italy, she
remarked: "The experience of all history, and the consolation it
imparts, is just this: God allows men their way to a certain
point, and where the end seems just achieved. But then is
inscribed with an almighty hand, the '_Thus far_.' And
though his church be shaken, this is far better for us than to be
reposing upon cushions of ease."
{235}
Her confidence was similarly undisturbed during the succeeding
momentous years. During her attendance upon the drama of _The
Passion_, at Oberammergau, in the year 1860, she was occupied
with reflections upon the stupendous drama of passion of our own
times. "There is something so fearfully grand in the present
events of the world," she wrote to her friend in Frankfort, "that
a certain elevation fills the soul, raising one above this little
life of ours upon earth. The image in our mind of the holy father
is already so spiritualized that it begins to be invested with
the sanctity of the martyr. How many may have to follow in his
martyr footsteps? Shall we live to see the victory? At my time of
life, no; and yet a secret joy often possesses me at the thought
of this glorious era. But I say with you, the great task for us
all is to gain heaven. God vouchsafe this!" The latest period of
German distress she lived through with the intensest sympathy.
She accepted the appalling catastrophe as a severe trial, even to
her own personal feelings and hopes, and recognized in this
calamity the initiation of a still greater. "For me," she wrote
to the same friend, "the hope of any kind of a future is now
past. I must subject my heart to no more disappointment; but the
mercy of God for the individual is still attainable and great; to
every one accessible and possible. You belong, of course, to the
younger generation, and can still dream of a sunrise for our
German fatherland. The result of the present calamity, swiftly as
it may seem to be plunging us into irremediable ruin, will,
nevertheless, never go the length intended by the Prince of Evil.
God stands above him; that is certain. The future will be a
different one; a very different one, from that which we could
ever surmise or guess, even the future of the church. And this
future will be God's. Let that content us."
Her life was a bright contrast to the demoralization, the unrest,
the arrogant selfishness of our age. She presented to those among
whom she lived the picture of a self-sustained, unselfish,
reposeful soul. Humility, trust in God, and compassion, this was
the fundamental harmony of her daily life. Old age, which often,
indeed, smooths away from the good all little imperfections and
blemishes of character, rendered her still more considerate,
patient, and gentle. Her love of simplicity was as great as were
her means. In her own household, well systemized, careful
economy; outside of this, severe, almost noticeable plainness.
But to her applied the line of the poet:
"A blessing she could see in lowliness to be."
While denying herself, she gave with lavish hand to poverty and
distress, to art and to the church. She moved with measured,
dignified pace; but a certain religious harmony of action
imparted to her being and doing an indescribable grace, which is
always the accompaniment of inward purity, and a religion based
upon humility.
The Abbé Haneberg, in his beautiful tribute at her grave,
remarked, "She seemed, during the last twenty years of her life,
to emulate the most pious of her friends and daughters of Assisi,
and to aim even to outdo them, so systematic and untiring was her
service to God." Of this, however, her friends knew but little.
How much she thus quietly accomplished was never fully known
until after her death. It will suffice here to state that in the
year 1851 she informed herself, through the Superior at Assisi,
of their daily regulations, and the usual succession of religious
exercises. Her everyday life was identified with the daily life
of the church.
{236}
She appreciated the significant beauty and expressive symbolism
of churchly ordinances, and in close observance joined in their
celebration. To this end, she followed the _Ordo_ of her
diocese, and her favorite prayer-book was the Missal. Her
knowledge of languages stood her in good stead here; for, in
addition to the modern languages, she had also learned Latin, and
had become sufficiently familiar with it to follow intelligently
the language of the church. Cardinal Diepenbrock, in 1850, wrote
to her of a lady who was occupying herself with the Latin, or
church, language; "A worthy study," he remarked. "Have you not
also begun it? It strikes me that Clemens was saying something
about it. But perhaps you were able to get no farther than the
_mensa_; the _mensa Domini_ would naturally be enough
for you." But she went farther than this. In her manuscripts were
found Latin exercises, written under the guidance of the worthy
old Bröber. One room of her spacious residence was arranged as a
chapel, in which was the superb altar-piece by Eberhard, "The
Triumph of the Church." This chapel was favored by the ordinariat
with a Mass licence. On the anniversary of her union with the
church she was accustomed to receive holy communion here; and
here the departed Bishop Valentin, of Regensburg, once celebrated
Mass. Here, also, she devoted daily a certain time to meditation
and the perusal of the Holy Scriptures. Her favorite place of
devotion, however, was the little chapel of the ducal hospital
which she frequented twice a day; early in the morning, and again
at evening. She had for years a quiet little place in the organ
gallery where, day by day, in all weather, and at all seasons of
the year, she consecrated a couple of hours to prayer.
As the years flew by, she withdrew herself more and more from the
world, and sought to be "hid in God." The departure to their
final home of so many friends, together with other events, served
as slight admonitions, which by her thoughtful heart were not
unheeded. She recognized in this matter fresh cause of gratitude
to God, who was dealing so tenderly with her to the very end. "I
consider it," she wrote, "a special favor of the Lord that he
grants me so long a preparation for my final hour." Years
previously, she had put herself in Christian readiness for her
last journey, and only hoped that it might prove "a good death
hour." With customary precision, she had ordered all her temporal
affairs. She had even made provision as to her interment, and the
final burial service. Her arrangements for the latter of these,
written in a bold and beautiful hand, were dated the 7th of
October, 1865. On the festival of the Epiphany, 1867, she was for
the last time in her favorite little chapel of the ducal
hospital. Only a few weeks previously, she had begun to feel ill,
and now symptoms of dropsy suddenly developed themselves. The
invalid recognized her condition with Christian resignation, but
did not yet relinquish hope of a recovery. "The task now is, to
resign myself and to be patient. God help me to this," she wrote
at the close of January. It was her last letter. Her friend
Apollonia hastened from Regensburg, and she, who, twenty-three
years before, had stood at her side when received into the
church, was now to stand at her death-bed. The invalid requested
that her friend should remain with her one week; and exactly at
the close of the week she died. During her illness she found
special consolation in the house-altar, where, to her great
spiritual comfort, her worthy confessor repeatedly celebrated
mass.
{237}
From this Eberhard altar, where she first made profession of
Catholic faith and where she yearly commemorated that happy
event, she now received the viaticum and extreme unction. In
conformity with her wish, on the festival of St. Apollonia mass
was again celebrated in her little chapel. It was her last mass,
and the final union of the two friends in holy sacrament. She
seemed now to rejoice in her approaching dissolution as though it
were a return home. One morning as her priest entered, she
stretched out her arms and exclaimed, "May I--oh! may I go home?"
"Yes, the guardian angel accompanies you, he guides you thither,"
was the reply. Thereupon she was silent, remained in deep
meditation, and spoke but little after. Yet she seemed to
participate in all that transpired; if prayer were uttered, she
prayed also; to all who drew near she gave a friendly glance,
but, for the most part, remained absorbed and still.
On the day preceding her death, she summoned all her strength,
and with difficult effort gave expression to several wishes, the
last of her earthly life. She recalled an admirable artist, whom
she held in high personal esteem, from whom she had long desired
a picture as an addition to her collection. She directed a very
considerable sum to be sent to him for a historical picture,
which was now to be painted for the museum at Bale. The future of
her poor, also, such as had been accustomed to receive little
charities, engaged her thoughts; she desired that these charities
should be continued until they had found other benefactors. Her
last words were in allusion to Jerusalem. She bethought herself
of the "Watchers at the Holy Sepulchre," (of the order of St.
Francis,) and also of the "Zion Society," to both of which she
had made yearly contributions, and which she now similarly
remembered. Thus had her life its characteristic close. Her last
mental activity was exercised in works of charity, of art, and of
religion. With a glance at Jerusalem and the sepulchre of her
Saviour, she now went forward toward the new Jerusalem. Her end
was the falling asleep of a child. In the early morning of the
12th of February, 1867, without a single death-struggle, she sank
into slumber--quietly, painlessly, peacefully.
A gentleman, intimately befriended with her, remarked, "After her
death, I had occasion to observe the intense grief of those who
had been recipients of her bounty, and then first became aware
what a truly royal munificence had been hers, which all were
ignorant of, save God and the poor." Such were the tears that
followed her, together with those countless others, which during
her life she had already dried.
On the afternoon of the 14th of February a long funeral
procession, composed of the best Catholic society of Munich, and
throngs of the poor, together with the superintendent of public
charities, (then represented by the mayor of the city,) moved
from the pleasant mansion on the corner of Carl street toward the
cemetery, to render their last homage to this noble friend of art
and the poor. The Abbé Haneberg, an old friend of hers,
pronounced the benediction of the church over her grave, which
was located not far from the grave of Möhler.
{238}
In her written instructions, Emily Linder desired only a simple
stone cross above her, the pedestal of the cross bearing the
inscription:
The slumberer, here, confides in the mercy of God:
the simplest, but in its simplicity, the most touching testimony
to a being whose interior life was all humility and trust in God,
and whose exterior activity had been the purest mercy itself. To
her might be applied a verse of the beautiful requiem addressed
by Brentano to another departed friend:
"He, for whom our willing gifts
On the needy we confer,
From his eight beatitudes
Singled Mercy out for her."
The whole spirit which accompanied her through a life of seventy
years still lived on in her bequests. The half of her large
fortune she left to benevolent and charitable objects; chiefly to
schools and hospitals. True Swiss that she was, she was specially
mindful of her native city. The largest amount donated--200,000
florins--was bequeathed to the Bishop of Bale, for the benefit of
his diocese. Her art-treasures were, with few exceptions,
incorporated with the museum of Bale, to whose first
establishment she had originally contributed no small amount, and
which, with true patrician feeling, lavishly endowed during her
life.
In these bequests to art and to the church, Emily Linder reared
for herself a monument which will keep her in blessed
remembrance; and this monument is only the last milestone of
record on the pathway of a life thickly studded with works of
charity. Truly a significant, steadfast existence, harmonious
from its commencement to its very close.
In days of depression and perplexity would we gaze upon a
portrait of true humanity, ennobled and enlightened by
Christianity, (a portrait we might well present as a study to the
young,) we may point with quiet confidence to the departed Emily
Linder, and exclaim: Behold here a character noble, unselfish,
and complete--a nature of rare purity and depth--a transparent
and beautiful spirit, who verified her faith by her love.
----------
The Irish Church Act Of 1869.
"They" (the Anglican ministers of Ireland) "will not fleece
the sheep they cannot feed, and spend the spoils of a people
conquered, not won.--
"_London Times_, March 4th, 1869.
The measure for the disestablishment and disendowment of the
English Church in Ireland, recently introduced by the English
premier into the British Parliament, is one of the most startling
and boldest steps which has yet been taken by that body to
rectify the criminal blunders of three hundred years of mistaken
legislation. Mr. Gladstone, in moving the first reading of the
act, in a very long speech, evidently prepared with great care,
while admitting it to be "the most grave and arduous work of
legislature that ever has been laid before the House of Commons,"
felt the necessity of cautiously and almost apologetically
stating the case and explaining the views of those with whom he
acted. Mr. Disraeli, the leader of the opposition, while agreeing
with his distinguished successor in office in nothing else, was
forced to allow the scheme to be "one of the most gigantic that
had ever been brought before the house"--an opinion which,
judging from the temper of all parties inside and outside of
parliament, appears to be unanimously entertained.
{239}
The friends of the act are numerous in England as well as in
Ireland, embracing all the Catholic population and a very large
portion of dissenting Protestants of more advanced and liberal
views in both countries. The Catholics of Ireland see in it the
destruction of that infamous system which has not only robbed
them of their altars and the graves of their ancestors, but
compelled them to support in idleness and luxury what even
Disraeli himself long since denounced as "an alien church."
Though the partial restitution contemplated at this late day by
this act bears no corresponding comparison with the magnitude of
the evils borne, it is still restitution, and a most significant
and, in a sense, abject admission of the utter failure of the
experiment of the English government to force Protestantism on an
unwilling people. The successful passage of the act will also
necessitate the expenditure of large sums of money for purely
charitable purposes, and what, in a national sense, is of more
importance, it will remove one of the most salient and fruitful
causes of Irish discontent. But it is in England that the
question assumes the most portentous magnitude; for it has become
apparent to every one there that the fall of the Irish
Establishment is but the first act in the drama of the total
severance of church and state in the entire British empire. The
entering wedge well driven home in Ireland, the results in other
parts of the United Kingdom become merely a matter of time. Sir
John Grey, one of the strongest supporters of Mr. Gladstone's
bill, himself a Protestant, hints at this in an article in a late
number of his paper, the Dublin _Freeman's Journal_, in
which he says: "He (Gladstone) will soon have powerful
auxiliaries in the English curates, and they have more influence
in forming public opinion in England than the bench of bishops
and the ten thousand incumbents. The Irish curates will be in Mr.
Gladstone's favor, and if ever disestablishment should be the lot
of England--_and he would be a rash politician who would
negative such a proposition_--the English curates would have
in Mr. Gladstone's Irish measure a precedent for an equal measure
of justice to themselves."
The opposition to the act comes in the first place from the whole
body of Anglican bishops and clergymen in Ireland, if we except
the Bishop of Down and a few badly paid curates who would benefit
by its passage. The Orangemen, that most pestiferous of all
social and political scourges, of course sustain their reverend
friends, and their loyalty on this occasion has culminated in a
remonstrance signed, it is said, by over two thousand noblemen
and landed "gentry." Hostility to the policy foreshadowed by Mr.
Gladstone was very active and virulent in England during the late
elections, and is now exhibited in the Commons by a large and
active tory minority. The English ecclesiastics have also taken
up the cry with equal earnestness and scarcely less vehemence. At
the last sitting of the New Convocation of Canterbury in London,
an address to the queen in opposition to the provisions of the
act was proposed and carried by the upper house, and upon being
sent down to the lower house for adoption, the following and
similar amendments were enthusiastically added:
{240}
"Above all," say those reverend gentlemen, "we are constrained by
our sense of duty to your majesty and to the Reformed Church of
England and Ireland, humbly to represent to your majesty that
disestablishment of the church in Ireland cannot be had without
repudiation, on the part of the nation, of the necessity and
value of the Reformation." This language is explicit and forcible
enough, but the Synod of both Houses of Convocation of the
Province of York, held on the same day, goes a little farther.
"This convocation," they affirm, "view with sorrow and alarm the
proposed attempt to disestablish and disendow the Irish branch of
the United Church of England and Ireland, as seriously affecting
the interests of the church in that part of the British
dominions; as a fatal encroachment on the prerogatives of the
crown; as unsettling the constitution of church and state
guaranteed by engagements entered into by acts of union, and
confirmed to members of the church by the solemn sanction of the
coronation oath."
That part of the coronation oath prescribed by the first William
and Mary, chapter sixth, to which allusion is here made and which
is the straw that the drowning Anglicans are endeavoring to
grasp, reads as follows: "_Question:_ Will you, to the
utmost of your power, maintain the laws of God, the profession of
the Gospel, and the Protestant Reformed Religion established by
law? And will you preserve unto the bishops and clergy of this
realm, and to the churches committed to their charge, all such
rights and privileges as by law do or shall appertain unto them
or any of them? _King and Queen_: All this I promise to do,
(king and queen lay hands on the holy Gospel, saying,) so help me
God." The condition of this solemn oath would at first sight
appear to preclude the queen from signing the act, were we not
assured by the confident tone, and even the express words, of Mr.
Gladstone that her majesty's views were entirely in accord with
those of her first minister, and in fact, that she had already
placed in the hands of parliament her right of ecclesiastical
appointments in Ireland.
The history of the Irish Church Establishment, now happily about
to disappear for ever, is so familiar to most intelligent readers
that it requires but a passing notice. Since its birth at a
so-called Irish parliament, summoned by Lord Grey in 1536, down
to the present time, so unjust have been its proceedings, so
rapacious its ministers, and so oppressive its exactions of an
ill-governed and neglected people, with whom it never had the
least sympathy, that Christendom has stood aghast in mingled
wonder and disgust. Not only were the Catholics of Ireland
despoiled of their churches, abbeys, and convents, the monuments
of piety and learning and the dispensaries of Christian charity,
reared by the hands of benevolent ancestors for over a thousand
years, but the very humblest abodes of worship were handed over
to a foreign clergy, preaching a new religion at the point of the
sword, ignorant of the very language of the country, and by birth
and training bitterly hostile to every interest, spiritual and
temporal, of the people they were sent to teach. Nor was this
all. The despoiled masses were compelled to pay, and still pay,
for the support of this "alien" church a tithe on every foot of
cultivated land in the kingdom, and upon the produce and stock
derived from or raised on the same.
{241}
The amount of property thus filched from the overburdened farmers
and peasantry of Ireland under color of law, and the additional
_annual revenue_ wrung from that half-famished nation, is
thus estimated by no less an authority than the English premier:
[Footnote 51]
[Footnote 51: This, of course, is but a very small portion
indeed of the property taken from the Catholic Church in
Ireland under Henry VIII. and succeeding monarchs. Most of
the abbey lands were first vested in the crown and then
granted to courtiers and others at a nominal rent as the
reward of their apostasy. Many of the wealthiest families in
Ireland derive their titles to their lands from those acts of
spoliation.]
"The commissioners appointed in 1868 estimated the annual value
at £616,000, but, with all respect for their long labors, he
must differ from them, for they had placed it too low; for one
of their body, in a subsequent publication, estimates it at
£835,000, but for the present purpose he would take it at
£700,000. The capitalized amount was as follows:
Tithe rent charge, £9,000,000
Land, £6,250,000
Other property in money, etc., £750,000
Total, £16,000,000
The result is that the whole value of the ecclesiastical
property of Ireland, reduced and cut down first of all by the
almost unbounded waste of life tenants, and secondly by the
wisdom or unwisdom of well-intentioned parliaments--the
remaining value is no less than £16,000,000 of money,
considerably more than on a former occasion I ventured to
estimate, but then my means of information were smaller than
they now are."
From the contemplation of past injustice we can now turn with a
sense of relief to the provisions of the act itself, and which,
under such peculiar circumstances, are perhaps as wisely and
judiciously framed as can be expected. On its passage it may be
slightly altered in some of its minor details, but there is
little room for doubt that the act substantially as first
presented will become law.
And first, those parts of the Acts of Union of the Irish and
English parliaments, passed at the beginning of this century,
permitting certain Irish bishops to sit _ex officio_ as
lords spiritual in the British House of Peers, and giving to the
decrees, orders, and judgments of certain ecclesiastical courts
in Ireland the force and authority of law in that part of the
realm, are unconditionally repealed. The thirteenth section of
the act prescribes: "On the 1st day of January, 1871, every
ecclesiastical corporation in Ireland, whether sole or aggregate;
every cathedral corporation in Ireland as defined by this act
shall be dissolved, and on and after that day no archbishop or
bishop of the said church shall be summoned to or be qualified to
sit in the House of Lords."
Thus we see that Irish Anglican bishops will no longer be
considered worthy to sit beside their right reverend brethren of
England on the benches of that respectable but rather sleepy
conclave known as the House of Lords, and that the Protestant
Church in Ireland will be resolved into a mere voluntary body
consisting of clerics and laity, whose regulations will only
affect themselves as matters of mutual contract, but who will
have no legal jurisdiction nor recognition except such as may be
conferred by subsequent acts of parliament on local corporations.
When we reflect that the prelates thus so unceremoniously thrust
out of the Lords, and who with their _confrères_ are
stripped of all extrajudicial authority, were, and still are, the
most active promoters of the Act of Union and the fiercest
opponents of its repeal, we cannot help admiring the poetic
justice which now offers the bitter draught to their lips. Like
Macbeth, they but taught "bloody instructions, which, being
taught, return to plague the inventor."
{242}
The act next provides for the appointment of a commission which
shall exist for ten years from the commencement of its
operations, and be clothed with full power to reduce to its
possession all the property, lands, tenements, and interests of
or now belonging to the Established Church of Ireland, and to
reconvey, sell, or dispose of the same according to the
provisions of the act, after the 1st day of January, 1871. The
church-buildings now in use by the Established Church will be
handed over, with all their rights, to the "governing body" of
the particular church under the voluntary system of organization;
those not in general use or so dilapidated as to be incapable of
repair, being from their antiquity or the beauty of their
architecture, like St. Patrick's, Dublin, to the number of
twelve, will be transferred by the commissioner to the care of
the Board of Public Works, with an adequate appropriation in
money for their proper care and preservation. Against this latter
arrangement we entirely and emphatically protest. St. Patrick's
Cathedral at least, if not every one of those twelve churches
which the Anglicans have neither the numbers to decently fill nor
the generosity to keep in repair, instead of being put in care of
poor-law commissioners or any other secular body, should be
handed over to the Catholics of the country, the real owners and
spiritual heirs of their founders. This, after all, would be
nothing more than an act of tardy justice, and a reproof not only
to the sacrileges committed in them by the "Reformers" of the
sixteenth century, but to Anglican poverty and niggardliness in
the nineteenth century. In the hands of the poor-law commissions,
who have shown little reverence and less antiquarian lore, those
magnificent temples will become simply objects of wonder to the
passing tourist; surrounded by all the artistic and beautiful
graces of our holy faith, they would be living, breathing
evidences, as it were, of the unswerving devotion to and the
glorious rejuvenation of that faith in the Island of Saints. If
not too late, we wish to see this portion of the act changed; if
this cannot be done, we wish to see the Catholic and the liberal
members of parliament move in the matter by the means of
subsequent legislation.
See and glebe houses and their curtilages and gardens vested in
the commissioners may be sold to the governing body of any church
to which they are attached, for a sum equal to twelve times the
annual value of the house and land so conveyed, payment to be
made in installments within twenty-two and a quarter years. Upon
application from the same or a similar governing body, the
commissioners may sell, in the case of a see house, thirty acres,
and of any other ecclesiastical residence, ten acres, contiguous
land, for such sum as may be agreed upon by arbitration. It is
further provided that, whenever any church or church sites vest
in the commissioners, not subject to the above conditions, they
shall dispose of the same by public sale at their discretion.
This latter clause, though simple in its terms and apparently
unimportant, constitutes in reality one of the most interesting
features in the act. Knowing as we do the intense devotion of the
Irish Catholics for the crumbling ruins of the old churches built
by their brave and zealous ancestors, where in the olden time
walked so many holy men now with the saints in heaven, and the
cold indifference or ignorance of the Anglican clergy in relation
to such sanctified places, we can confidently predict that not
many years will elapse ere those precious memorials of the past
will be in the possession of the people who have so watched in
silence and in tears their desecration by the followers of the
religion of Henry and Elizabeth.
{243}
It will also be remarked in this part of the act the constant
recurrence of the term "governing body," so expressive of the
total reduction of the once proud Church of England in Ireland as
by "law established" to the same condition as that occupied by
mere Methodists and Presbyterians.
Graveyards, a subject scarcely less attractive than churches, is
next dealt with in this elaborate act. When a church having a
burial ground attached to it is vested in the commissioners, and
the church-building is subsequently reinvested in the "governing
body," the burial ground will be included in the order conveying
the same; otherwise the burial grounds will be transferred to the
poor-law guardians within whose district the same may be
situated, to be used by them in a manner similar to those already
taken or purchased by such guardians. This clause when carried
out will change many graveyards now exclusively controlled by
Protestants, but which in reality are and formerly were the
property of Catholics, into places of public burial, and, _a
fortiori_, Catholic.
Having disposed of the material interests and franchises of the
Irish Church, we next come to the most important part (only,
however, as far as the parties immediately affected are
concerned) of the act, though the framers, evidently with a keen
eye to the pockets of the disestablished, place it among the
first in general interest. It appears under the unostentatious
sub-title of "Compensation to persons deprived of Income." It
provides that, on and after the 1st of January, 1871, the
commissioners, having in the mean time ascertained the amount of
annual income of the holder of any archbishopric, bishopric,
benefice, or cathedral preferment, curacy, etc., shall pay to the
holder of the same an annuity equal in amount to such income for
life, or as long as such incumbent continues to perform the
duties of such office; or such incumbent may commute his annuity
in return for a certain payment in bulk, upon his own application
and at the discretion of the commission. For these purposes the
sum of about £5,000,000, or twenty-five millions of dollars, will
be required to be paid out of the assets in the hands of the
commissioners. This amount divided between two thousand
ecclesiastics would give an average of twelve thousand five
hundred dollars for each, but as that number includes the
curates, the most numerous and worst paid of the Anglican
clergymen, the archbishops and other high dignitaries will find
themselves in receipt of enormous revenues during the term of
their natural lives. Then there are other persons who are to
become pensioners on the public bounty to the amount of four
million five hundred thousand dollars; such as parish clerks,
sextons, officers of cathedrals and ecclesiastical courts,
parochial school-masters, organists, and all that sanctimonious
and useless tribe whose mock gravity and unbending advocacy of
church and state so frequently proved a source of amusement and
derision to their less orthodox and perhaps less mercenary
neighbors. With a sigh we part with that grave, shabby-genteel
link between the Protestant curate and the seldom-met poor pauper
of the Anglican Church, well remembering in our early boyhood
with what awe we gazed upon their long, sallow visages as they
stalked by meditatively, clothed in all the little brief
authority of quasi-clerical life.
{244}
Thirty millions of dollars may be considered a large sum with
which to pension off the clergy and their followers of a church
which does not count three quarters of a million of souls, of all
degrees, sexes, and ages; but it will be money well spent if it
heep [helps?] to eradicate an evil which has so long afflicted a
patient people. [Footnote 52]
[Footnote 52: A late number of _The Catholic Opinion_
(London) gives us the following statistics: There are, it is
said 700,000 Anglicans in Ireland and 36,000,000 Catholics in
France; that is, 51 times as many Catholics in France as
Anglicans in Ireland. The budget therefore of Catholic
worship in France should be 51 times £800,000, or
£40,800,000, to write which is enough to show the monstrous
iniquity of which Ireland has been the victim. The
Presbyterians, numbering 523,291 persons, receive a _regium
donum_ for their ministers amounting to £40,547, and a
subsidy of £2050 for their theological college at Belfast,
making a total of £42,597. Protestant dissenters have no
endowment, nor yet Catholics, excepting a subsidy to the
college at Maynooth of £26,360. Thus the Anglican
Establishment in Ireland has a revenue of about £800,000 for
700,000 persons, or about £1 3s. per head. The Presbyterians
receive from the government £42,597 for 523,291 persons, or
about 1s. 7 1/2d. per head. Catholics, £26,360 for 4,505,265
persons, that is, LESS THAN ONE PENNY HALFPENNY per head.
According to the last census, that of 1861, there were in
Ireland:
Per Cent of the
whole Population.
4,505,265 Catholics, that is, 77.7
693,357 members of the Established Church, 11.9
523,291 Presbyterians, 9.0
76,661 Protestant dissenters, 1.2
393 Jews, 0.0
5,798,967 Total 100.0]
The holders of advowsons, or the right to appoint to church
livings--with the exception of the queen, corporations sole and
aggregate dissolved by the act, and trustees, officers, and
persons acting in a public capacity--are entitled to certain
compensation to be ascertained by arbitration; one million five
hundred thousand dollars being allowed for the liquidation of
this description of claims. As no Catholic can exercise this
right, even though the owner of the land in fee from which the
right to appoint arises, it follows that whatever compensation is
made will go to Protestants only. It would seem to any person
other than an Anglican landlord that this clause is not only not
in harmony with the equitable spirit of the body of the act, but
that it is manifestly unjust. Advowsons are as much a relic of
ancient feudal barbarism as any that were abolished by law under
the commonwealth or Charles II., and should have been swept away
when all the other devices for defrauding the industrious poor
were abolished centuries ago. We waive altogether the question of
their simoniacal character; for a custom so convenient for the
land-holder and so profitable for younger sons of aristocratic
families would hardly be condemned on that account by those who
so largely profit by it. In addition to all the money which the
commissioners are to reimburse as above mentioned, we find that
upon the property of the Irish Church there is a building debt of
some one million and a quarter dollars for the repair of
churches, glebes, etc., which the commissioners are instructed to
pay.
Thus we see that the sum of nearly thirty-two millions of dollars
has been set aside as an inducement to the loosening of the grip
of a very small and mercenary faction on the public purse
ostensibly, but in reality on the very vitals of the industrial
interests of the country. Let us now see what corresponding
compensation has been made for the Catholics and dissenters.
It is well known that for over a century the Presbyterians of
Ireland have been annually in the receipt of a limited sum of
money called the _regium donum_. At first, as the term
indicates, this was simply a gift from the crown, but of late
years it has been regularly voted by parliament, and last year it
amounted to £45,000. This grant is to be withdrawn; and as an
equivalent, a sum of about four millions of dollars is to be
capitalized by the commissioners, the annual interest of which
will be nearly equal to the present donation. In addition to
this, seventy-five thousand dollars are to be bestowed on the
Presbyterian college of Belfast.
{245}
But the Catholics, who, notwithstanding the vast emigration of
the last twenty-five years, form three fourths of the entire
population, fare even worse than their dissenting brethren. The
paltry grant of £26,000 to Maynooth College is to cease, and a
sum equal to less than a half of that appropriated to the
Presbyterians is to be substituted, the interest only of which
will be devoted to the support of that distinguished nursery of
Catholic learning. The building debt of some twenty thousand
pounds which the college owes to the Board of Public Works is to
be paid off by the commissioners; but, apart from this trifling
sum, the Catholics of Ireland gain no direct material advantage
from the enforcement of the new act; and it is to be hoped that,
when time confirms the sagacity of the statesmen who have
suggested the introduction of the present reform, and has done
full justice to the moral courage of the men who have proposed it
to the imperial parliament, the self-denial and disinterestedness
of the Irish Catholic hierarchy, clergy, and people will be duly
appreciated. However little flattering such unequal distribution
of funds may be to the rightful claims of Catholics, we presume
they will not think it worth their while to object to it. Many of
them, we are disposed to think, would be willing to dispense
altogether with state aid, if the rule were made general as far
as regards Protestant sects. The Catholic Church in Ireland has
never been desirous of leaning for support on the arm of the
British government, and the experience of its members at home and
in this country has amply proved that the church is always more
prosperous and more powerful for good in inverse proportion to
its reliance on the secular arm.
There is no provision made for Trinity college, that being left
for future legislation, with an intimation from the premier that,
while its interests will be properly attended to, it shall be
deprived of its exclusively sectarian character. This is well.
Trinity was endowed with many thousand broad acres violently
taken from the rightful owners, the Irish chiefs, by Elizabeth,
which must now yield an enormous revenue. It has been in times
past, to a great extent, the nursery of enlightened intolerance
and philosophic indifference; but when we recall the names of
Swift and Mollineux, Grattan, Curran, the Emmets, Petrie, and
McCullough, and many other illustrious friends of Ireland, who
studied in its venerable halls, and there partially developed the
germs of that keen wit, fiery eloquence, and scientific lore
which graced a nation even in its darkest hour of humiliation, we
can forgive their old _alma mater_ a great many
backslidings. Trinity should be allowed to retain her revenues,
and when her wide gates are thrown open for the reception alike
of the Catholic, the Anglican, and the Dissenter, her sphere of
usefulness will not only be enlarged, but doubly increased by the
competition between the diverse elements of which the population
of Ireland is composed. She will then cease to be sectarian, and
become, in the truest sense, national.
We now come to the matter of assets to be reduced into possession
by the commissioners, out of which the several sums above
mentioned are to be paid--assets which, according to Mr.
Gladstone's estimates, will amount to £16,000,000, or eighty
million dollars.
{246}
Of this sum, £9,000,000, it is expected, will be derived from the
commutation or obliteration of tithe rent charges; that is to
say, the owners of lands from which tithes are now derived can,
by the payment of a fixed sum to the commissioners, be for ever
relieved from the tithe exaction; and, should they be unable to
pay the whole sum down, they are to be allowed forty-five years
wherein to pay it by instalments. Tithes, it must be remembered,
have not, for nearly forty years, been collected directly from
the cultivator of the soil, but from the owner, who, of course,
added it to the rent, and thus, though the objectionable adjuncts
of distrain and imprisonment for tithes, as such, were done away,
the tenant had still to pay the odious tax in another form. As
the clause of the act regulating this branch of the duties of the
commissioners is perhaps the last of such a nature that will ever
be allowed to encumber the statute-book of the British
parliament, we quote it entire, simply premising that it seems
fair enough, and in terms decidedly favorable to the landlords.
Section 32 recites:
"The commissioners may at any time after the 1st day of
January, 1871, sell any rent charge in lieu of tithes bestowed
on them under this act to the owner of the land charged
therewith, in consideration of a sum equal to twenty-two and a
half times the amount of such rent charge, and upon any such
sale being so made, the commissioners shall, by order, declare
the rent charge to be merged in the land out of which it
issued, and the same shall merge and be extinguished
accordingly. Upon the application of any owner so purchasing,
the commissioners may, by order, declare his purchase money, or
any part thereof, to be payable by instalments, and the land
out of which such rent charge issued to be accordingly charged
as from a day to be mentioned in such order, for forty-five
years thence next ensuing, with an annual sum equal to four
pounds ten shillings for every one hundred pounds of the
purchase money, or part thereof, so payable in instalments. The
annual sum charged by such order shall have priority over all
charges and incumbrances, except quit or crown rents, and shall
be payable by the same persons, and be recoverable in the same
manner as the rent charge in lieu of tithes, heretofore payable
out of the same lands. Owner, for the purposes of this section,
shall mean the person for the time being liable to pay rent
charge in lieu of tithes under the provisions of the acts of
the first and second years of the reign of her present majesty,
chap. 109."
When all the charges incumbent on the commissioners are provided
for, including one million dollars for themselves, a matter which
they will not be likely to neglect, there will be left of the
effects of the defunct Establishment the handsome sum of over
seven million pounds sterling. What disposition to make of this
money was a puzzling question for a long time among the
legislative administrators. That it was to be devoted to some
Irish purpose was understood from the first; but grants of money
to Ireland have heretofore turned out to be mere jobs, much more
beneficial to government employees than to the supposed
recipients of the bounty. Besides, as Mr. Gladstone says, they
wanted to make this measure a finality, and to dispose of the
money once and for ever. To have divided it among all religious
denominations _per capita_, would throw the bulk of it into
possession of the Catholics, to the great chagrin of the sects;
and to have expended it on one or two local internal improvements
would have created sectional jealousy, and given rise to the cry
of favoritism. Appreciating these difficulties, the friends of
the act have resolved, and, we think, very wisely, to devote it
to the general charities of the island, not directly connected
with any particular denomination, as follows:
{247}
"1. The support of infirmaries, hospitals, and lunatic asylums
in connection with the grand jury cess or other assessment in
lieu thereof.
"2. In support of reformatory and industrial schools, Ireland
acts, and in aid of other grants for that purpose.
"3. The salaries of trained or skilled nurses for poor persons
in sickness or in labor.
"4. The suitable education and maintenance of the blind and of
the deaf and dumb poor in separate asylums.
5. The suitable care, training, and maintenance, in separate
asylums, of poor persons of weak intellect, not requiring to be
kept under restraint. The commissioners may, from time to time,
during their trust, report to her majesty whether there is any
income available for the purposes mentioned in this section,
and, upon such report being made, it shall be lawful for her
majesty, by order in council, to direct such available portion
of income to be applied for the aforesaid purposes, or any of
them, under such management and control as aforesaid."
The poor-law commissioners are to be entrusted with this capital
sum, and the distribution of the annual revenue arising
therefrom, which is calculated at £310,000. There are two very
patent reasons for this distribution. Already the sum of £140,000
for similar purposes is annually raised by a tax called "county
cess;" "a heavy tax, an increasing tax," says Mr. Gladstone, "and
a tax not divided, like the poor law, between the owner and the
occupier, but paid wholly by the occupier; and a tax not limited,
like the poor law, to occupations above four pounds in value, but
going down to the most miserable huts and cabins. The holders of
these most wretched tenements are now required in Ireland, and
required increasingly from year to year, to pay, not that which
is done by the wealthier portion of the occupants who contribute
to the poor law, but to pay for that class of want and suffering
which ought undoubtedly to be met, which in every Christian
country should be liberally met, but which can only be met by the
expenditure of considerable funds in comparison with those which
are paid to support the pauper." The frightful increase of those
classes of unfortunates to be thus provided for in view of the
decrease of the entire population by emigration [Footnote 53]
calls loudly for some legal interposition. From 1851 to 1861 the
number of deaf and dumb persons increased from 5180 to 5653; and
during the same decade the blind increased from 5787 to 6879,
while the number of lunatics increased from 9980 to 14,098, or
nearly fifty per cent!
[Footnote 53: The emigration from Ireland from May 1st, 1851,
to December 1st, 1865 amounted to 1,630,722 souls.]
With this last act of Christian charity, we hope to see the
traces of former injustice gradually fade away from the public
mind, and the bitter memories and sectarian jealousies of the
past give place to a new era of good feeling and brotherly
affection. Time is not only a great healer of wounds, but a great
reformer of ideas. Taking a retrospective glance at the history
of Ireland for the past hundred years, and watching how, step by
step, the church in Ireland, from the veriest depths of
despondency and contumely, has risen in power, strength, and
numbers by its own innate vitality, we are not too sanguine in
believing that it has a glorious future before it, unsurpassed by
that of any country in Europe. Though its members embrace the
great majority of the poorest classes in the land, they have, in
that short period, studded the country with magnificent
cathedrals and substantial parish churches; though unaided by a
government which, if not positively hostile, was certainly
indifferent, they have built and are generously sustaining,
hundreds of colleges, convents, hospitals, and asylums, where
learning flourishes as in the pristine ages, and where the poor,
the needy, and afflicted are comforted and consoled.
{248}
And though famine has decimated the hardy peasantry, and
emigration has torn millions of the "bone and sinew" from their
native shores, the Catholics of Ireland are still, as they always
will be, the people of Ireland. It is true that a great many
changes have yet to be effected through the means of legislation
before the Irish or English Catholic is placed on an equal
footing with his more favored fellow-subject. In Ireland, he must
eventually have equal representation in the British parliament.
The laws controlling the marriage of persons of different
religious beliefs, those relating to the tenure of lands and
spiritual devises, and to the disqualification for office on
account of religious opinions, must be repealed and sent to dwell
with all the other legal rubbish of a bygone age of bigotry. The
Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, which is a disgrace to an enlightened
government and a standing insult to the bishops and people of the
country, must share the same fate before the crown can expect or
ought to receive that heartfelt loyalty which springs from good
and impartial government. The times in which we live imperatively
demand those reforms, and we are very much mistaken in the
strength and spirit of our co-religionists in the United Kingdom
if they do not also quickly and pertinaciously demand them.
We are gratified, in looking over our files of leading English
journals, to find that they all with one voice, a few old and
obscure tory papers excepted, support the liberal party in its
leading measure, and are waging war with their trenchant pens
against the effete anti-Catholic party in the Commons. We hope,
also, to see our brothers of the American press, secular and
religious, who so generally advocate the support of churches by
voluntary contributions, giving a word of encouragement to their
cousins across the Atlantic.
Granting that the passage and proper execution of the present act
will be a most important step in the right direction, it still
seems to us unfortunate that it was not taken years ago. With a
fatality that so generally attends English political and
religious concessions, it has been so long delayed that it now
appears to be more the offspring of fear and intimidation than
the result of wise and mature conviction. If British statesmen
will yield only to force what they refuse to sound argument and
the logic of facts, they must expect the same motive power to be
again applied when demands neither so reasonable nor so well
founded are to be put forward. In common with our brethren in
every part of the world, we view with great satisfaction this
awakening sense of public justice in the English mind; but let it
not falter now, as if exhausted by one solitary effort. Let a
good landlord and tenant act be passed without unnecessary delay,
and some comprehensive measures be adopted for the development of
the industrial resources of the nation, and then, indeed, that
chronic state of disaffection which has afflicted every
generation in Ireland since the invasion may be radically cured.
-------
{249}
My Mother's Only Son.
The rain is falling heavily, to-night. It has a dull, desolate,
lonely sound, as if it were bent upon reminding me of another
night more desolate, dull, and lonely even than the present. What
right have I, who have so much happiness about me now, to be
searching the dark annals of past sorrow, or to unearth a hidden
misery, that will come like a blighting shadow between me and all
the pleasures that might be mine? Yet that rainy, dismal night
_does_ come back to me with a force and terror I would
rather not remember.
I would rather not remember it, because my son, just budding into
manhood, has left me to-night, for the first time, and gone to
take his place in an old firm in a neighboring city. The world
and its allurements are temptingly laid out before him. He is a
noble, handsome boy, so bright and promising. They tell me he
will always have friends, plenty of friends; that he has all the
elements of popularity, and is destined to become a general
favorite. Dangerous attractions these; they have made wiser heads
than yours, my darling, very giddy and very light; hearts, too,
have been brought to mourning, while the admiring friends of
yesterday could cast only a look of pity on their lost friends as
they passed by.
My own brother was all this; gifted in an eminent degree with
energy and manly courage to sustain him in any generous
undertaking. We had everything to hope from him; he had
everything to hope from himself. With prospects fair and bright,
an old banker, a friend of my father's, gave him an eligible
situation. It was an office of trust; he was proud of the
confidence placed in him, and left home with the full resolve of
filling it with honor to himself and credit to the good man who
had placed him there. His letters were pleasant and joyous, full
of the new pleasures he had never dreamed of in our quiet life at
home. His graceful manners and natural gentleness soon
established him as a favorite in society; his social pleasures
were daily increasing, and his attention to business was both
active and energetic.
My mother had a slight misgiving. It was only the shadow of a
thought, she said--that Arthur, in the new pleasures that
surrounded him, might become weaned from us or might learn to be
happy without us. In her deep love for her gifted boy she had
never thought such an event possible, and instantly reproached
herself for the thought.
In going from home, my brother had left a great waste, an empty
place behind him, and his letters were our only comfort.
What light and pleasure they brought to our quiet fireside, that
would have been so dreary without them. There were only three of
us, and while his letters were so fresh and vigorous, they almost
kept up the delusion that we were not separated; but there came a
change.
We may have been slow in discovering it, but we did discover it,
and then to miss him as we missed him through the long winter
nights seemed like losing a star that had led us, that we had
followed, until it passed under a cloud and left us, still
waiting, still watching, for it to come again.
{250}
He paid us a flying visit now and then, and my mother,
unconscious of the cause of his disquietude--for he was both
anxious and disturbed--would redouble her exertions to bring back
his waning love, making every allowance for the indifference, the
coldness, and the neglect that were so glaringly apparent to
other eyes, yet so delicately obscured from her motherly vision.
Not that my brother made any effort to conceal his restless
desire to leave us, or that his interests and pleasures were
centred elsewhere. I was very young, yet old enough to see that
there was a mercy in _this_, my mother's blindness.
Her beautiful boy seemed to carry the sunshine of her life with
him; she thought him caressed and petted, the favorite of
society, and the embodiment of all that was noble. He has seen so
much of the luxury and elegance of life in the great city, how
can we expect him to be contented with our home, where everything
is so different? Thus she would reason with me, and thus, I
sometimes thought, she would reluctantly reason with herself.
One day, a letter came to us from the banking-house, where my
brother had gradually risen to an honored position. It was from
the banker himself, our dear old friend; he told, in the
tenderest manner, that Arthur had acquired habits which rendered
him unfit for an office of trust. He deeply regretted the
necessity of making this known to her; he ended by suggesting
that the gentle influence of home might do much toward bringing
him to a sense of his condition.
My mother read the letter, folded it carefully, reopened it, and
read it again. She then handed it to me without speaking a word.
When I had finished reading it, I looked at her; she was still
immovable, helpless as a child in this her great despair. Her
apathy was the more distressing to me as I was entirely alone. I
dare not consult any one, dare not ask the advice of our kind
neighbors. She had roused herself just enough to tell me it must
be kept as secret as death. I was only sixteen, I had never acted
for myself--there had been no occasion in our quiet life for a
display of individual courage or independence. I had grown up
under my mother's guidance, had never been five miles away from
home, where every day was like all the yesterdays that had gone
before it. And now this great journey lay before me. There was no
one else to go; _I_ must take it alone.
We were both ignorant of the nature of my brother's disgrace. Mr.
Lester had made no mention of it further than to say that he
could keep him no longer in the bank. I could only conjecture in
my own mind what it might be. Of course I thought of dishonesty;
what else could have driven him from a situation where he was so
honored and trusted?
The railroad was some miles distant from our little village;
despatch was necessary; I must meet the evening train. My brother
was ill; I was going to him; this would quiet our neighbors and
put an end to curious speculations. Surely I was not far from the
truth--he must have been ill indeed when his proud head was
brought down so low.
Again and again reassuring my mother that I would bring him back,
telling her in all sincerity that I knew he would be able to
clear himself in her eyes so that not a spot or blemish would be
left on his fair name, (Heaven knows how easy this might be.
{251}
Let him lay his head on her faithful breast, and twine an arm
about her neck, and lovingly whisper, "Mother, I am
_innocent_, all is right;" the _world_ might sit in
judgment and cry "_Guilty_," she would heed it not,) I
became so preoccupied, so entirely absorbed with the
_object_ of my journey, that the journey itself had no
novelty for me, though everything was new and startling. Now I
was hurrying to the great city that I had so often thought and
dreamed about. It was only in a confused way that I could settle
it in my mind that I was really going there. That I was strange,
and new, and unused to the busy scenes that lay before me seemed
no part of my business. My brother--would he come home with me?
He might be angry that I had come. Could I ask him to tell me the
truth? No, I could not see him so humiliated; I would rather hear
the story of his shame from other lips than his.
It was near midnight when I reached his lodgings.
"Is Arthur Graham at home?" I, trembling, asked of a kindly
looking woman who opened the door.
"He is, miss, and sorely in need of some one to look after him."
Had it come to this? Was my brother an object of pity, even to
her? I asked to see him, not wishing to prolong this painful
interview. She desired me to enter, and we approached his room. I
opened the door cautiously. The woman's manner was so mysterious,
I trembled and began to be afraid; she had told me he was not
sick. Of course I thought he was a prisoner and perhaps chained
in his own room. The light was very dim, and, as I advanced, I
stumbled and was near falling over--what?--over the prostrate
form of my own brother, lost, degraded, fallen.
As I bent down to see why he did not speak to me, I discovered
the truth. He, the pride and hope of our lives, had sunk into a
drunkard. I uttered no cry; I was no longer terrified; I thought
only of my mother.
I was all that was left her now, and, as I bent over him,
wondered if that face was his, so changed, so sickening; neglect
and ruin had already settled there. I tried to smooth the heavy
hair, that lay in thick, dank masses about his reeking forehead.
How old, how terribly old, he had grown in so short a time! I
dare not cherish a feeling of loathing; he was my brother, and
needed my love as he had never needed it before. For him--for in
him I was protecting my mother--I must set aside all youth and
girlhood. A woman was needed now, a woman calm, firm, and
resolute. Of myself I was weak, but Heaven would help me. A
conviction settled upon me, as I sat there, with my travelling
wrappings still unremoved, that his case was hopeless. I could
see a lonely, dishonored grave, far away from us in a strange
land. I know not why this sight should rise before me, my brother
was young, and others as debased as he had risen to a good and
noble life. Thus I reasoned with myself, and yet that lonely
mound of earth would come before me, and I felt powerless.
But I had no time for misery. I had come to protect and assist.
My girlhood was passing away with the shadows of the night, for
to-morrow's sun must find me a woman, prepared to meet the stern
duties that were now mine.
The night was far advanced, and I was trying to gather up my
newfound energies, when I felt a kindly hand removing my bonnet.
It was the good woman who had met me at the door; she was waiting
to show me my room and to offer me some refreshment.
{252}
"You can do no good here," she continued, as she assisted me to
arise, "until morning."
She shook her head doubtfully as she whispered, "You are very
young, yes, quite too young to undertake it even then. But if you
are afraid he will give you the slip before you are up, (he often
does that,) just lock the door."
She did so and put the key in her own pocket.
The little room assigned me was cleanly; it had an air of comfort
about it greatly in contrast with the slovenly chamber I had just
left. The gentle creature made nothing of undressing me,
lamenting the while as if I had been a stricken child that had
unexpectedly fallen into her motherly hands.
I had made no allusion to my brother as yet. I could not speak of
him, and only ventured to ask the woman as she was leaving me how
long he had been in this condition. "I might ask you the same
question, miss, for surely it is not a day nor a month that has
brought him to _this_."
To _this!_ What a world of misery there was in that one
simple word! It seemed to carry with it the low wailing of a lost
soul.
We were to have paid my brother a visit soon, my mother and I. It
was to have been a surprise, and I had gone so far as to arrange
the dress I should wear, for I was anxious to appear at my best
before Arthur's friends. And here I was spending my first night
in New York. No kin of mine had bid me welcome. No brother had
folded me in his loved embrace, and held me out to see how pretty
I had grown, proudly kissing me again and again, and telling me
how happy my coming had made him.
In my peaceful days I had thought of all this; and oh! how easily
it might have been!
I arose early; but, early as it was, the woman had apprised
Arthur of my arrival. I found him morose and sullen. He demanded
my reasons for coming so abruptly upon him. He had not asked
after my mother, nor given me one word of kindly greeting; and
when, in a harsh tone, he asked why I thus intruded myself, my
great reserve of womanly strength fled from me, and I cried long
and bitterly.
He was naturally kind and gentle. He came to me, wiped the tears
from my cheek, and told me he did not intend to be cruel. His
hand trembled violently, as he laid it on my head, and his whole
frame shook and quivered, though I could see he made a desperate
effort to control himself. When he had recovered his composure,
he seemed to know why I had come, and implored me not to say one
word to him; he was miserable enough already.
"Come home with me, Arthur dear," I whispered. "You can soon
change your life, and be your own self again."
I ventured to tell him that mother had been taken very ill, when,
with a look, he begged me to say no more. He could not bear even
an allusion to his condition, and I had no wish to harass him.
What a slave he had become to the one ruling passion of his life!
Regardless of my presence, he drank again and again from a bottle
near him. Once when I laid my hand upon the glass, he told me
that he needed it to steady his nerves, and he would be all right
soon. It was in vain that I urged him to accompany me home. He
told me he had another situation in view, not anything like the
one he had just left, but very good in its way. I could tell my
mother this; it might comfort her.'Twas all the hope I had to
carry home.
{253}
As years went by our sorrows were softened. We had become
accustomed to Arthur's manner of life. At times he seemed
changing for the better, and again he would go back to his old
habits.
It was in early summer time, when everything on our little farm
was at its best. The solitary womanly habits that had come so
early upon me were still very strong with me. I was not yet old,
only twenty-two; and on this lovely summer night I was planning
our quiet future, when a carriage stopped before the door, and
Arthur came in, leading, or rather carrying, a delicate young
girl.
'Mother," said he, "this is my wife! Grace, this is my mother and
sister."
"Your wife!" we repeated.
"Oh! yes," he replied. "We have been married nearly a year, and I
hoped to better my circumstances before I should make the fact
known to you." We saw that the poor child, for such she seemed,
was sadly in want of woman's kindly care. So pale, so
sorrow-stricken, so young, yet so bowed down and disappointed! I
knew nothing of her story, but she was my brother's wife, and I
gave her a sister's love. That night I watched by her bed; and,
as the pale moonlight fell upon her rippling hair, I wondered
what art, what witchery or power my brother had used to bring
this delicate creature to be a sharer of his misery and shame.
She waked with a sudden start, and called in a wild, frightened
way for help. She was really ill, now, and before morning the
doctor laid a feeble baby in my mother's arms.
My new-found sister and her wailing infant had all our tenderest
care. We were glad that she had come to us that we might, in the
love we gave her, make up in some degree for the sorry life the
poor unfortunate child had taken upon herself. She staid with us;
our home was hers. Arthur returned to New York.
Her history was soon told. She was an orphan, entirely dependent
upon the bounty of an aunt who had daughters of her own to be
settled in life. She met Arthur. The fascination of his manners
and the interest he took in her friendless condition won her
heart. The misfortune of his life was well known to her, but she
trusted to _her_ love, feeling sure that a life's devotion
must redeem him. A dangerous experiment, this; too often tried,
and too often found a hopeless failure. For her sake, he
_did_ try to be firm and strong, and manfully combated his
besetting sin; but an hour of weakness came; old associates
returned, and old habits with them. In a moment of hilarity and
pleasure all his firmness gave way; his delicate young wife was
forgotten, and she awakened all too soon to the knowledge that
her husband's love for liquor was greater than his love for her.
The dear, sweet girl and her pretty infant had lived with us
nearly a year, when, one cold, drizzly night like this, Arthur
came home. He had grown so reckless of late, that we were not
surprised when he came reeling into our presence. He began by
demanding a small amount of money which Grace had been husbanding
with care. She made no reply to any of his angry threats, nor did
she give him the money. Dead to all sense of manhood, he rose to
strike her. Her infant was sleeping on her breast. She leaped to
flee from him, but before we could save her, he struck her. She
fell heavily; the sleeping babe was thrown against the iron
fender. It uttered one feeble cry, and closed its eyes _for
ever_.
{254}
The mother rose, and with a desperate effort snatched her dead
child from my arms, pressed it to her breast, rocked it to and
fro, and tried to give it nourishment. My mother and I spent that
terrible night with a dead infant, a frenzied mother, and a
father lost in hopeless despair. Every rustle in the trees, every
sound in the air, brought the horror of death upon us, for each
murmur seemed fraught with vengeance. Was my brother a murderer?
His own tender infant had fallen dead at his feet. The act must
pass without a name, for in our woe we had none to give it.
He sat there through the weary hours of the night, a haggard,
desperate fear settling upon him. He dare not approach his wife;
the sight of him increased her frenzy, and she prayed that she
might never see his face again.
Misery had made my mother strong and she could help me. Calm,
cool, and deliberate action was necessary now.
Arthur must leave us before morning. No one had known of his
coming. The child's sudden death must be in some way accounted
for, in what way I knew not. My mother whispered God would help
us.
Arthur slunk away in his guilt and misery. He took no leave of
us, but silently crept out in the darkness. There was darkness on
every side, it was bearing down upon him with the weight of an
avenging fury. I watched him, bowed and desolate, stealing away
from us, away from all that was dear to him, from all that had
loved him, and could not, even now, cast him off. I lingered
until the last sound of his footsteps died away. I knew then as I
know now, that we should never see him again. The rain fell upon
him as he passed out. It fell upon me as I stood there, and I
thought it was falling far away where I had seen a lonely grave.
I washed our martyred babe and dressed it for the burial. There
was a mark upon its little neck that the solemn wrappings of the
grave must cover. It might be bared before the judgment-seat to
plead for an erring father.
My mother died soon after of a broken heart. She never recovered
the shock of that terrible night. The curse that settled upon her
poor, misguided son made him none the less her child; and she
would try, with all the tenderness of her wounded spirit, to
think of him as he was, innocent, true, and noble, when first he
left her. When we learned that he had died on foreign shores, and
was buried on a lonely island, she thanked God that he was no
longer a homeless wanderer.
My sister Grace is with me still, loving and cherishing my young
children, leading them and me to better life by the chastened
beauty of her own Christian character.
-------
{255}
Catholicity and Pantheism.
Number Six.
The Finite.
In the pantheistic theory, the finite has no real existence of
its own. It is a modification, a limit of the infinite. The sum
of all the determinations which the primitive and germinal
activity assumes, in the progress of its development, constitutes
what is called cosmos. The interior and necessary movement of the
infinite, which terminates in all these forms and determinations,
is creation. The successive appearance of all these forms in this
necessary development is the genesis of creation. The finite,
therefore, in the pantheistic system, does not exist as something
substantially distinct from the infinite, but is one form or
other which it assumes in its spontaneous evolutions.
As the reader may observe, this theory rests entirely upon the
leading principle of the system that the infinite is something
undefined, impersonal, indeterminate, and becomes concrete and
personal by a necessary, interior movement; a principle which,
viewed in reference to the finite, gives rise to two others,
first, that the finite is a modification of the infinite; second,
that the finite is necessary to the infinite, as the term of its
spontaneous development. Now, in the preceding articles, we have
demonstrated, first, that the infinite is actuality itself; that
is, absolute and complete perfection; second, that in order to be
personal, he is not impelled to originate any modification or
limit. Hence, two other principles concerning the finite, quite
antagonistic to those of pantheism. First, the finite cannot be a
modification of the infinite, because perfection, absolutely
complete, cannot admit of ulterior progress. Second, the finite
is not necessary to the infinite, because the interior and
necessary action of the infinite does not terminate outside of,
but within himself, and gives rise to the mystery of the Trinity,
explained and vindicated in the last two articles. Consequently,
his necessary interior action being exercised within himself, he
is not forced to originate the finite to satisfy that spontaneous
movement, as Cousin and other pantheists contend. The finite,
therefore, can neither be a modification nor a necessary
development of the infinite. And this consequence sweeps away all
systems of emanatism, of whatever form, that may be imagined.
Whether we suppose the finite to be a growth or extension of the
infinite, as the materialistic pantheists of old seemed to
imagine; or mere phenomenon of infinite substance, with Spinoza;
or ideological exercise of the infinite, as modern Germans seem
to think--according to the principle laid down, the finite is
impossible in any emanatistic sense whatever. To any one who has
followed us closely in the preceding articles, it will appear
evident that these few remarks absolutely dispose of the
pantheistic theory concerning the finite, and close the negative
part of our task respecting this question.
{256}
As to the positive part, to give a full explanation of the whole
doctrine of Catholicity concerning the finite, we must discuss
the following questions:
In what sense is creation to be understood?
Is creation of finite substances possible?
What is the end of the exterior action of God?
What is the whole plan of the exterior action of God?
Before we enter upon the discussion of the first question, we
must lay down a few preliminary remarks necessary to the
intelligence of all that shall follow.
God's action is identical with his essence, and this being
absolutely simple and undivided, his action also is absolutely
one and simple. But it is infinite also, like his essence, and in
this respect it gives rise, not only to the eternal and immanent
originations within himself, but also may cause a numberless
variety of effects really existing, and distinct from him, as we
shall demonstrate. Now, if we regard the action of God, in itself
originating both _ad intra_ and _ad extra_, that is,
acting within and without himself, it cannot possibly admit of
distinction. But our mind, being finite, and hence incapable of
perceiving at once the infinite action of God, and of grasping at
one glance that one simple action originating numberless effects,
is forced to take partial views of it, and mentally to divide it,
to facilitate the intelligence of its different effects. These
partial views and distinctions of our mind, of the same identical
action of God, producing the divine persons within himself, and
causing different effects outside himself, we shall call moments
of the action of God.
There are, therefore, two supreme moments of the action of God,
the interior and the exterior. Whenever we shall speak of the
action of God producing an effect distinct from and outside of
him, we shall call it exterior action, to distinguish it from the
interior, which originates the divine personalities. Moreover, we
shall call exterior action of God, all the moments of it which
produce different effects. We shall call creation that particular
moment of his external action which, as we shall see, causes the
existence of finite substances, together with their essential
properties and attributes.
Now, as to the first question, in what sense can creation be
understood; or, otherwise, what are the conditions according to
which creation may be possible? On the following: First, the
terms laid down by the action of God must be in nature distinct
from him. Second, they must be produced by an act which does not
cause any mutation in the agent. Third, therefore, they must be
finite substances. For, suppose the absence of the first
condition, creation would be an emanation of the divine essence;
since, if the terms created were not different from the nature of
God, they would be identical with it, and consequently creation
would be an emanation or development of the substance of God. The
absence of the second condition would not only render it an
emanation of the substance of God--because, if creation implied a
mutation in him, it would be his own modification--but it would
render it altogether impossible, since no agent can modify itself
but by the aid of another. If, therefore, creation cannot be
either an emanation or a modification of God, it must be distinct
from his substance. Now, something distinct from the substance of
God, and really existing, and not a modification, cannot be
anything but finite substance. Finite, because, the substance of
God being infinite, nothing can be distinct from it but the
finite; substance, because something really existing, and which
is not a modification, gives the idea of substance.
{257}
Creation, therefore, cannot be understood in any other sense
except as implying the causation of finite substances. But is
creation of finite substances possible? In answer to this
question, let it be remarked that the essence of a thing may have
two distinct states: one, intelligible and objective; the other,
subjective and in existence. In other words, all things have a
mode of intelligible existence, distinct from the being by which
they exist, in themselves; the one may be called objective and
intelligible; the other, subjective. To give an instance, a
building has two kinds of states: one, intelligible, in the mind
of the architect; the other, subjective, when it exists in
itself.
Now, the possibility of a thing to have a subjective existence in
itself, depends upon the intelligible and objective state of the
same thing. Because that only is possible which does not involve
any contradiction. But that which does not involve any
repugnance, is intelligible. Therefore the possibility of a thing
implies its intelligibility, and its subjective existence depends
upon its objective and intelligible state. This is so true, that
the transcendental truth of beings, in their subjective state of
existence, consists in their conformity with their intelligible
and objective state. As the truth of a building consists in it
conformity with the plan in the mind of the architect.
From these principles it follows that, in order to establish the
possibility of the creation of finite substances, we must prove
three different things: First, that they have an intelligible
state; in other words, that their idea does not involve any
repugnance. Second, that there exists a supreme act of
intelligence, in which the intelligible state of all possible
finite substances resides. Third, that there exists a supreme
activity, which may cause finite substances to exist in a
subjective state conformable to their objective and intelligible
state. When we have proven these three propositions, the
possibility of creation will be put beyond all doubt. Now, as to
the first proposition, pantheists have denied the possibility of
finite substances. Admitting the general possibility of
substance, they deny the intrinsic possibility of a finite one;
and, as everything which is finite is necessarily _caused_,
the whole question turns upon this--whether, in the idea of
substance, there is any element which excludes causation and is
repugnant to it. Every one acquainted with the history of
philosophy knows that Spinoza coined a definition purposely to
fit his system. He defined substance to be that which exists in
itself, and cannot be conceived but by itself. [Footnote 54]
[Footnote 54: Eth. 1, Def. 1.]
This definition is purposely insidious. That which exists in
itself may have a twofold meaning; it may express a thing, the
cause of whose existence lies in itself, a self-existing being;
or it may imply a thing which can exist without inhering in or
leaning on any other. Again, that which cannot be conceived but
by itself may be taken in a double sense--a thing which has no
cause, and is self-existent, and consequently contains in itself
the reason of its intelligibility; or it may signify a thing
which may be conceived by itself, inasmuch as it does not lean
upon any other to be able to exist. Spinoza, taking both terms of
the definition in the first sense, had the way paved for
pantheism; for if substance be that which is intelligible by
itself because self-existent, it is evident that there cannot be
more than one substance, and the cosmos cannot be anything but
phenomenon of this substance.
{258}
Hence the question we have proposed: Is there, in the true idea
of substance, any element which necessarily implies
self-existence, and excludes causation? Catholic philosophy
insists that there is none. For the idea of substance is made up
of two elements: one positive, the other negative. The positive
element is the permanence or consistence of an act or being--that
is, the _existing_ really. The second element is the
exclusion or absence of all inherence in another being in order
to exist.
Now, every one can easily perceive, that to exist really does not
necessarily imply self-existence, or contradiction to the notion
of having been caused by another. Because the notion of real
existence or permanence of a being does not necessarily imply
eternity of permanence, or, in other words, does not include
infinity of being. If the permanence or real existence of a being
included eternity of permanence, then it could not have a cause,
and should necessarily be self-existent. But we can conceive a
being really existing, which did not exist always, but had a
beginning. The better to illustrate this conception, let it be
remembered that duration or permanence is one and the same thing
with being; and that, ontologically, being and duration differ in
nothing. The permanence and duration of a being is, therefore, in
proportion to the intensity of a being. If the being be infinite,
the highest intensity of reality, the being is infinitely
permanent; that is, eternal, without beginning, end, or
succession. If the being be finite and created, the permanence or
duration is finite also; that is, has beginning, and may,
absolutely speaking, have an end. Everything, therefore, really
existing without inhering in another, whether it be infinite or
finite reality--that is, whether it have a cause or be
self-existent--is a substance. If it be self-existent, it is
infinite substance; if it be caused, it is finite substance. This
is so evident that none, slightly accustomed to reflect, can fail
to perceive the difference between being self-existent and
existing really. The two things can go separately without the one
at all including the other. A thing may exist as really after
being caused, as the substance which is self-existent and
eternal, so far as existing really is concerned.
To show that the idea of substance, however, is such as we have
been describing, it is sufficient to cast a glance at our own
soul. It is evident from the testimony of consciousness, that
there is a numberless variety of thoughts, volitions, sensations;
all taking place in the _me_, all following and succeeding
each other without interruption, like the waves of the ocean
rolling one upon the other, and keeping the sea always in
agitation. We are conscious to ourselves of this continual influx
of thoughts, volitions and sensations; but, at the same time that
we are conscious of this, we are conscious also of the identity
and permanence of the _me_ amid the fluctuations of those
modifications. We are conscious that the _me_, which
yesterday was affected with the passions of love and desire, is
the same identical _me_ which is to-day under the passion of
hate. This permanence or reality of the _me_, amid the
passing and transitory affections, gives the idea of substance or
real existence; whilst the numberless variety of thoughts and
feelings which affect it, and which come and go while the
_me_ remains, gives the idea of modification, or a thing
which inheres in another in order to exist.
{259}
The above remarks must put the possibility of finite substance
beyond doubt. But before we pass to the second question, we
remark that any one sooner than a pantheist could call in
question the possibility of finite substance; because if, as we
have demonstrated in the second article, the infinite of the
pantheists be not an absolute nonentity, a pure abstraction, it
is nothing but the idea of finite being or substance. Hence, to
prove the possibility of finite substance to the pantheist, we
might make use of the argument _ad hominem_. That which is
intelligible is possible, by the principle of contradiction. But
the idea of finite substance is intelligible to the pantheists,
being the foundation of their system; therefore, finite
substances are possible.
Second question: Is there a supreme act of intelligence, in which
reside all possible finite substances in their objective and
intelligible state?
The demonstration of the second proposition follows from that of
the first.
For the idea of finite substance does not involve any repugnance,
by the principle of contradiction. Therefore it is necessarily
possible, as we have demonstrated. But that which is necessarily
possible, is necessarily intelligible; because everything that is
possible may be conceived. Therefore the idea of finite substance
is necessarily intelligible, and may be conceived by an
intelligence able to grasp the whole series of possible finite
substances. But God is infinite intelligence, and as such is
capable of apprehending all possible finite substances. Therefore
in God's intelligence resides the whole series of possible finite
substances, in their intelligible and objective state.
To render this argument more convincing, let us look into the
ontological foundation of the possibility of finite substances.
Finite substances are nothing but finite beings; consequently
they are not possible, except inasmuch as they agree with the
essence of God, which is the infinite, _the being_, and as
such is the type of all things which come under the denomination
and category of being. God, therefore, who fully comprehends his
essence, comprehends, at the same time, whatever may agree with
it; or, in other words, comprehends all possible imitations, so
to speak, of his essence; and consequently, all the possible
imitations of his essence residing in his intelligence, there
dwells at the same time the intelligible and objective state of
all possible finite substances. St. Thomas proves the same truth
with a somewhat similar argument. "Whoever," he says,
"comprehends a certain universal nature, comprehends, at the same
time, the manner according to which it may be imitated. But God,
comprehending himself, comprehends the universal nature of being;
consequently he comprehends also the manner according to which it
may be imitated." Now, the possibility of finite substance is a
similitude of the universal being. Hence, in God's intelligence
resides the whole series of possible finite substances.
Third proposition: There exists a supreme activity which may
cause finite substances to exist in a subjective state. For St.
Thomas argues that the more perfect is a principle of action, the
more its action can extend to a greater number and more distant
things. As for instance, if a fire be weak, it can heat only
things which are near it; if strong, it can reach distant things.
Now, a pure act, which is in God, is more perfect than an act
mixed of potentiality, as it is in us.
{260}
If therefore by the act which is in us we can not only produce
immanent acts, as for instance, to think and to will, but also
exterior acts by which we effect something; with much greater
reason can God, by the fact of his being actuality itself, not
only exercise intelligence and will, but also produce effects
outside himself and thus be the cause of being. [Footnote 55] The
great philosopher Gerdil, appropriating this reason of St.
Thomas, develops it thus: "In ourselves, and in particular
beings, we find a certain activity; therefore activity is a
reality which belongs to the _being_ or the _infinite_.
The effect of activity when the agent applies it to the patient,
consists in causing a mutation of state. The intensity of acts,
depending on intelligence, has a force to introduce a mutation of
state in the corporal movements. This may be seen in the real
though hidden connection of which we are conscious to ourselves,
between the intensity of our desires and the effect of the
movements which are excited in the body; and better still, in
certain phenomena which sometimes occur, though rarely, when the
imagination, apprehending something vividly and forcibly,
produces a mutation of state in the body which corresponds
somewhat with the apprehension of the imagination. [Footnote 56]
[Footnote 55: C. G. lib. ii. ch. 6.]
[Footnote 56: An imminent danger of being burned to death,
vividly apprehended, has sometimes entirely cured persons
altogether paralyzed and unable to move.]
Now this change in the body, corresponding to what takes place in
the fancy, that is, in the objective and intelligible state,
shows that there exists a certain, though hidden, force and
energy by which, from what exists in an intelligible state, may
be introduced a mutation in the corresponding state of subjective
existence. Therefore the efficacy of the supreme intelligence,
being the greatest and the highest, in force of the supreme
intensity of being which resides in it, may not only effect a
change conformable to a relative, intelligible state in things
already existing, but also cause them to pass altogether from the
intelligible state into the state of existence. And, assuredly,
if the finite intensity of desire and of imagination may produce
an effort of corporal movement, the supreme intensity of the
Infinite Being may, certainly, produce a substantial, existing
being; since the supreme intensity of the Being bears infinitely
greater proportion to the existence of a thing, than the
intensity of desire does in relation to a corporal movement. The
term, therefore, of the supreme activity, is to effect, outside
of itself, the existence of things which had only an intelligible
and objective being in itself." [Footnote 57]
[Footnote 57: Gerdil, _Del Senso Morale_.]
It is well to remark here, that the supreme activity is not by
any means determined necessarily to create; for the activity may
be determined to a necessary operation, in that case only when
the agent is actually applied to the subject capable of receiving
a change of state. But creation is not the result of the
application of the supreme activity to a subject coexisting with
itself; because nothing coexists originally with the supreme
activity. Therefore creation cannot be an action determined by
any necessity, but must depend only upon the energy or will of
the supreme intelligence in which the highest activity dwells.
Hence it follows, that creation, as to its term, is not
necessary, either because there is any principle in God impelling
him necessarily to create, as we have seen, or because there is
any principle outside of God forcing him to create; because
outside of the supreme activity nothing exists.
{261}
What is necessary about the creation of finite substances, is
their intelligible and objective state, or their intrinsic
possibility. For everything which does not imply any repugnance
by the principle of contradiction, is intrinsically possible and
intelligible. That which is intrinsically possible is
essentially, necessarily, and eternally so. Consequently, the
objective state of finite substances is necessarily so.
Pantheists, confounding the objective and intelligible state of
the cosmos with its state of subjective existence; in other
words, identifying the ideal with the real, the ideological with
the ontological, have been led to admit the necessity of
creation. This is particularly remarked in the systems of
Schelling and Hegel; the one admitting, as first principle, the
absolute identity of all things; the other identifying the
_idea_ with _being_. Both confounded the objective and
intelligible state of the cosmos with its state of subjective
existence; and once the two are identified, it follows that, as
the one, which is the intelligible, is necessary, eternal, and
absolute, the other, the subjective, becomes also necessary and
eternal; and hence the necessity of creation. Catholicity, on the
contrary, carefully distinguishing between the ideal and the
real, the objective and the subjective, and admitting the
necessity and eternity of the first, because everything
intelligible necessarily and eternally resides in the supreme
intelligence, denies the necessity of the second, because of that
very intelligible state which it admits to be necessarily and
eternally so.
For a finite substance is not, and cannot be conceived as
possible or intelligible, except it is supposed to be contingent
or indifferent in itself to be or not to be, not having in itself
the reason of its existence. This is the only condition according
to which finite substances can be possible. Were it otherwise,
were a finite substance supposed to be necessary, it would be
self-existent, and have in itself the reason of its existence;
and in that case it would no longer be finite, but infinite. To
suppose, therefore, a finite substance not contingent is to
suppose it necessary, is to suppose a self-existing finite
substance, or, in other words, an infinite finite substance,
which is absurd, and, therefore, unintelligible and impossible.
The intelligibility, therefore, or objective state of finite
substances, which is necessary, eternal, and absolute itself,
requires the contingency of their existence in a subjective
state; and, consequently, their contingency is necessary because
their intelligibility is necessary; and their creation is free,
because whatever is indifferent in itself to be or not to be,
absolutely depends, as to its existence, upon the will of the
supreme intelligence.
An objection is here raised by pantheists impugning the
possibility of the creative act. It is as follows: Given the full
cause, the effect exists. Now, the creative act, the full cause
of creation, is eternal; therefore, its effect must exist
eternally. But, an eternal effect is a contradiction in terms;
because it means a thing created and uncreated at the same time.
Therefore, creation is impossible in the Catholic sense, and can
be nothing more than the eternal development and unfolding of the
divine substance. Given the cause, the effect exists. Such an
effect, and in such a manner as the cause is naturally calculated
to produce, it is granted; such an effect and in such a manner as
the cause naturally is not intended to produce, it is denied.
{262}
Now, what is the cause of creation but the will of God? And how
does the will naturally act, except by a free determination, and
in the manner according to which it determines itself?
Consequently, creation being an effect of the will of God, it
will follow just when and how the will of God has determined it
shall. Hence the will of God being eternal, it does not follow
that the effect should be eternal also. In other words, given the
full cause, the effect exists when the cause is impelled to act
by a necessary intrinsic movement. But when the cause is free,
and perfectly master of its own action and energy, the cause
given is not a sufficient element for the existence of the
effect, but, two elements are required, the cause and its
determination, and the free conditions which the cause has
attached to its determination. Nor does this imply any change in
the action of God when creation actually takes place. For that
same act which determines itself from eternity to create, and to
cause substances and time, the measure of their duration,
continues immutable until the creation actually takes place; and
the creation is not an effect of a new act, but of that same
immutable and eternal determination of God.
We conclude, finite substances are intrinsically possible; they
have an intelligible and objective state in the infinite
intelligence of God. God's infinite activity may cause them to
exist in a subjective state conformable to their intelligible
mode of existence. Therefore, creation in the Catholic sense is
possible.
Before we pass to the next question, we must draw some
corollaries.
First. God can act outside himself, since he can create finite
substances with all the properties and faculties which are
necessary elements of their essence, and naturally and
necessarily spring from it.
Second. The creative act implies two secondary moments; one,
called preservation, and the other, concurrence. Hence, if God
does create, he must necessarily preserve his effects, and concur
in the development of their activity. Preservation implies the
immanence of the creative act, or the continuation of the
creative act of God, maintaining finite substances in their
existence. The necessity of this movement is proved by the
following reason:
Every finite being is, in force of its nature, indifferent to be
or not to be; that is, every finite being contains no intrinsic
reason necessarily requiring its existence. Hence, the reason of
its existence lies in an exterior agent or cause. But the finite
being once existing, does not change its nature, but
intrinsically continues to be contingent, that is, indifferent to
be or not to be. Therefore, the reason of the continuation of its
existence cannot be found in its intrinsic nature, but in an
exterior agent; that is, in the action of the Creator. So long,
therefore, as the action of God continues to determine the
intrinsic indifference of contingent being to be or not to be, so
long does the finite exist. In the supposition of the act
ceasing, the finite would simultaneously cease to be.
Nor does this argument impugn the _substance_ of finite
beings. For, as we have seen, substance is that which exists
really, though the reason of its existence lie in the creative
act; whereas, what we deny here in the argument is the
continuation of existence by an intrinsic reason, which would
change the essence of the finite, and, from contingent, render it
necessary.
{263}
The second moment of the creative act is concurrence. Finite
substance is a being in the way of development; a being capable
of modification. Now, no being can modify itself, can produce a
modification of which it is itself the subject, without the aid
of another being who is pure actuality. Therefore, finite
substances cannot modify themselves without the aid of God. The
action of God aiding finite substances to develop themselves, is
called concurrence. We have already proved, in the second
article, the principle upon which this moment of the action of
God is founded. We shall here add another argument. A finite
substance is a being in the way of development; a being in
potency of modification; and when the modification takes place,
it passes from the power or potency to the act. Now, no being can
pass from the power to the act except by the aid of being already
in act. Consequently, finite substances cannot modify themselves
except by the aid of being already in act. Nor can it be supposed
that finite substances can be at the same time in potency and in
act with regard to the same modification; for this would be a
contradiction in terms. It follows, then, that having power of
being modified, they cannot pass from the power to the movement
without the help of another being already in act. This cannot be
a being which may itself be in power and in act, for then it
would itself require aid. It follows, therefore, that this being,
aiding finite substances to modify themselves, must be one which
is pure actuality, that is, God.
Third corollary: From all we have said follows, also, the
possibility of God acting upon his creatures by a new moment of
his action, and putting in them new forces higher than those
forces which naturally spring from their essence, nor due to them
either as natural properties, attributes or faculties. For, if
God can act outside himself, and effect finite substances
distinct from him; substances endowed with all the essential
attributes and faculties springing from their nature; if he can
continue to maintain them in existence, and aid them in their
natural development, we see no contradiction in supposing that he
may, if he choose, grant his creatures other forces superior
altogether to their natural forces, and, consequently, not due to
them as properties or attributes of their nature.
For the contradiction could not exist either on the part of God
or on the part of the creature. Not in the former, because God's
action being infinite, may give rise to an infinity of effects,
one higher and more sublime, in the hierarchy of beings, than the
other. Not in the latter, because the capacity of the creature is
indefinite. It may receive an indefinite growth and development,
and never reach a point beyond which it could not go. Therefore,
the supposition we have made does not imply any repugnance either
in God or in the finite, the two terms of the question. Now, that
which involves no repugnance is possible. It is possible,
therefore, that God may act upon his creatures by a moment of his
action distinct from the creative moment, and put in them forces
higher than their natural forces, and not due to them as any
essential element or faculty.
The other questions in the next article.
-------
{264}
Aubrey de Vere in America.
[Footnote 58]
[Footnote 58:
_Irish Odes and Other Poems_.
By Aubrey De Vere.
New York: The Catholic Publication Society,
126 Nassau street. 1869.]
The first if not the strongest attraction this book will have for
American curiosity is not in its contents, but in their
selection. The poems presented are culled from a much greater
number, especially and expressly for the American market, and the
choice interests us vividly as indicating an English author's
deliberate _business_ opinion of that market. This edition
has not been prepared without thought: Mr. De Vere does not often
do anything without thought. Moreover, it has been, if we are not
misinformed, somewhat unusually long in press, and several of the
poems already published have been actually revised and improved
on by their painstaking author to the very last copy, and differ
in quite a number of minutiae from their former selves. Hence
Americans must be all the more surprised at the singular estimate
of taste and the singular conception of their character, which
appear to underlie this book. We cannot help thinking--nay, we
cannot help seeing--that Mr. De Vere has not selected so well as
he would have done if he had ever lived in America, or, if he had
had intelligent, practical, and experienced American advice.
There was only one way to do this thing rightly. It was to
consider either what we, the Americans, ought to like the best,
or what we would like the best; to weigh the facts well, to
settle on some definite plan or theory of selection, and carry
this out with some little sternness to the end, only leaving the
path for the very choicest flowers. We cannot trace any
strictness of system in this book: it has neither spinal column
nor spinal cord, but is made up of miscellaneous
samples--_disjecta membra poetae_. Sometimes we imagine it
to be a compromise of plans, and sometimes a random jumble. Too
many of the best poems we miss, and some of the author's most
taking _lines_ of thought stated nearly, and some totally
unrepresented. On the other hand, some mediocre pieces abound as
to which we seek but cannot find an extrinsic cause for their
reproduction. Our own suggestion to Mr. De Vere would have been
to make _general interest_ his prime criterion in choosing.
We are a very heterogeneous nation, and it is not every topic
that can unite our various tastes. For any wide or national
success here, a book must have at least a kernel of thought or
sentiment which shall appeal directly to almost the only thing we
have in common here--our humanity. Next to such poems--and Mr. De
Vere has written not a few--we should have taken the best
expressed; the boldest or most beautiful. This indeed is but a
branch corollary of the other principle, because we all love fine
expressions of ideas. On these two principles we think we could
have made up from the copies of Mr. De Vere's poetry one of the
most attractive books of the year. We think he has missed this in
several ways. To begin with, we cannot see anywhere that he ever
once grasped the idea of addressing himself to the whole American
people. There is pabulum enough for Boston, and for devout
Catholics everywhere; but where is the intelligence of Georgia,
or California, or Ohio in his estimates for the popularity of
this volume?
{265}
Some of the poems err in the direction of abstruseness, many in
being founded on obscure facts; a few embody the gross fault of
being occasional pieces--the flattest and most surely flat of all
possible forms of dulness. That Mr. De Vere could forget himself
to this last degree is to us proof positive that he never thought
of pleasing the whole American reading community.
We have heard this praised as sagacity, since this work's
appearance, on the ground that, as an outspoken Catholic and
Irishman, he could never have succeeded. To this the American
observer says, "_Distinguo_." Mr. De Vere is too elevated
and refined a thinker to be a poet of the people anywhere; but it
is, if anything, his religion, not his Celtic outbursts, that
stand in his way here. We are--heaven knows with good
reason--tolerably well past literary prejudices against
foreigners. A foreign author, having no friends nor enemies, no
clique nor counter-clique among the critics here, will have a
fair trial by American public opinion always, on the one
condition that he do not stand upon his being a foreigner and
insist on cramming pet theories down our throats.
But we do question whether there may not be a measure of truth in
the suggestion that Mr. De Vere, here as everywhere, is too
conspicuously Catholic for popularity. We see little of sectarian
prejudice among our best non-Catholic men; perhaps because so
many of them are freethinkers or indifferentists in religion. But
Protestant prejudice controls some otherwise first-class
criticism, much more of lower grade, and very many ordinary
readers and buyers of books. Perhaps Mr. De Vere is too
pronounced for these--too full and too proud of his faith. Many a
bigoted Protestant who can just barely make up his mind to hear a
man out in spite of his being a "Romish idolater," etc., etc.,
lays down a book the instant he suspects--what Protestantism is
always peculiarly quick to suspect--propagandism. Such men might
know that if proselyte-making were Mr. De Vere's aim, his
obviously shrewder plan would have been, first to gain influence
and popularity by neutral poems, and then, entrenched on the
vantage-ground of public favor, to bombard the community with his
explosive Catholic notions to some purpose. But this would be far
too much thinking for a bigoted man to go to the trouble of,
especially when it is so much cheaper, as well as more sweet to
the deacons and elders, to be unjust and slurring. So we fear
that many Protestant organs of opinion will reject the poetry for
the religion, and so do Mr. De Vere's book harm as an American
venture so far as the non-Catholics are concerned.
On the other hand we do believe that his Irish pieces would be
his best hold on public favor; for he certainly is one of the
best-informed men in Irish history of all the late writers; and
if there is one thing an American admires more than another--in
literature or anything else--it is a man that knows what he is
talking about.
But this is all of the dead past now; the book is upon us. We go
on to this question--since Mr. De Vere did not aim to please us
all, what was his aim? He has not told us in the natural
place--the preface--and we can only ask the reader to decide for
himself whether it is, as we said, compromise or jumble. The
selection of the Irish pieces is infinitely the worst of all. The
best, because the most truly Irish, of these, are in Inisfail.
{266}
There are very many Irishmen indeed who would not appreciate the
sonnet to Sarsfield and Clare, and who could make neither head
nor tail of "The Building of the Cottage;" but take up Inisfail
and read out "The Malison," or "The Bier that Conquered," or the
"Dirge of Rory O'More," to any Irish audience, and see if they
understand it or not!
There lay one main element of strength of a book like this; and
yet we do not recall a single piece from "Inisfail" in the entire
collection! It is inconceivable to us except upon the very
well-known and extremely ill-understood principle that an author
always differs with his readers, and generally with posterity, as
to what is his best. In our own humble opinion, for instance,
"The Bard Ethell" or "The Phantom Funeral," as historical
pictures, or the "Parvuli Ejus" or "Semper Eadem" as pure poetry,
is singly worth the whole fifty pages of Irish Odes, sonnets, and
interludes that begin this new volume: and we doubt as little
that Mr. De Vere would smile in benign derision at our notion. So
we will not dispute about tastes, and simply say that we do not
understand the classification of the main body of the Irish
pieces. Especially is this hard to discover the reason for
omitting Inisfail in the light of the following passage from the
preface: "I cannot but wish that my poetry, much of which
illustrates their history and religion, should reach those Irish
'of the dispersion,' in that land which has extended to them its
hospitality. Whoever loves that people must follow it in its
wanderings with an earnest desire that it may retain with
vigilant fidelity, and be valued for retaining, those among its
characteristics which most belong to the Ireland of history and
religion."
The remainder of the selected poems are purely miscellaneous, and
are chiefly remarkable to us as again showing how curiously
authors estimate themselves. We do indeed meet with much of the
best there is; but we miss, as we have said, very much more. And
having, as we have, a personal intimacy with many of Mr. De
Vere's poems, we feel really resentful to see our favorites
slighted and supplanted by others which--as it seems to us, be it
remembered--no one could ever like half so well.
After all, Mr. De Vere may be right and we wrong; but we feel so
interested in his success, and so earnestly desirous of
recognition for his high abilities, that--we do wish he had done
it our way!
The first sixty pages of the present volume are composed mainly
of a sort of rosary of ten odes, all strung on Ireland and the
Irish. Now, odes we disbelieve in generally. We think they
contain more commonplace which we imagine we admire, and which we
don't and can't admire, than any other variety of composition in
English literature. They are the supremely fit form of a few
peculiar orders of thought. The cause of Ireland is not one of
these, and Mr. De Vere has tried hard and failed, to prove the
contrary. Irish griefs are too human, Irish sympathies too
heartfelt, to be reached by this road in the clouds. One good
ballad or slogan is worth practically a million odes. As Ode I.
in this very series beautifully puts it,
"Like severed locks that keep their light,
When all the stately frame is dust,
A nation's songs preserve from blight
A nation's name, their sacred trust.
Temple and pyramid eterne
May memorize her deeds of power;
But only from her songs we learn
How throbbed her life-blood hour by hour."
{267}
But, waiving their final cause, three of the odes are good, the
first two, and the seventh--the best of all--which, as also the
ninth, is republished from the book of 1861. The close of this is
singularly touching and true, and well worth recalling even to
many who must have admired it before.
"I come, the breath of sighs to breathe,
Yet add not unto sighing;
To kneel on graves, yet drop no wreath
On those in darkness lying.
Sleep, chaste and true, a little while,
The Saviour's flock and Mary's,
And guard their reliques well, O Isle,
_Thou chief of reliquaries!_
"Blessed are they that claim no part
In this world's pomp and laughter:
Blessèd the pure; the meek of heart
Blest here; more blest hereafter.
'Blessed the mourners.' Earthly goods
Are woes, the master preaches:
Embrace thy sad beatitudes,
And recognize thy riches!
"And if, of every land the guest,
Thine exile back returning
Finds still one land unlike the rest,
Discrowned, disgraced, and mourning,
Give thanks! Thy flowers, to yonder skies
Transferred, pure airs are tasting;
And, stone by stone, thy temples rise
In regions everlasting."
"Sleep well, unsung by idle rhymes,
Ye sufferers late and lowly;
Ye saints and seers of earlier times,
Sleep well in cloisters holy!
Above your bed the bramble bends,
The yew tree and the alder:
Sleep well, O fathers and O friends!
And in your silence moulder!"
Scattered about between these odes we find a miscellany of minor
pieces whose function seems to be that of interludes or thin
partitions. Of these _hors-d'oeuvres_ some are new, some
old; the majority, for Mr. De Vere, commonplace. He cannot write
a page without hitting on some happy phrase or just thought, but
there is a little more than this to be said of almost all. The
best is this sonnet which we do not remember having seen before:
"The Ecclesiastical Titles Act.
"The statesmen of this day I deem a tribe
That dwarf-like strut, a pageant on a stage
Theirs but in pomp and outward equipage.
Ruled inly by the herd, or hireling scribe.
They have this skill, the dreaded Power to bribe:
This courage, war upon the weak to wage:
To turn from self a Nation's ignorant rage:
To unstaunch old wounds with edict or with jibe.
Ireland! the unwise one saw thee in the dust,
Crowned with eclipse, and garmented with night,
And in his heart he said,'For her no day!'
But thou long since hadst placed in God thy trust,
And knew'st that in the under-world, all light,
Thy sun moved eastward. Watch! that East grows gray!"
We have also a long series of selections from the entire body of
our author's published works. Here we are glad to welcome to
America many of his best poems. The sonnets especially are as a
rule well chosen. We miss many a lovely one, but we should miss
these that are before us just as much. Mr. De Vere has also with
excellent judgment honored with a place in this book his three
charming idylls, "Glaucè," "Ione" and "Lycius"--among his very
finest pieces of word-painting, and which have more of the old
classic mode of expression than any modern poems in our language
save Landor's, and perhaps Tennyson's "OEnone." We wonder, by the
way, why a man who could write these idylls has never given us
any classical translations. We are sure they would be remarkably
good. The long poem of "The Sisters" is also reprinted in full.
It is good, and we will not say that it is not a good piece here;
but on reading it over, the discussion and description which
frame the picture seem to us better than the picture itself.
Indeed, we have begun to suspect more and more that Mr. De Vere's
strength lies in his descriptive powers. It might surprise many
other readers of his, as much as it did us, to examine for
themselves and discover how many of their most admired passages
are portraits. In mere verbal landscape-painting he stands very
high. His very earliest books abound in felicities of this sort,
and the _May Carols_ are fairly replete with them, and in
fact contain a whole little picture gallery in verse.
{268}
And from the "Autumnal Ode--one of the very latest in his latest
book [Footnote 59] --we select one of many passages which amply
prove that Mr. De Vere's hand has not forgotten her cunning:
No more from full-leaved woods that music swells
Which in the summer filled the satiate ear:
A fostering sweetness still from bosky dells
Murmurs; but I can hear
A harsher sound when down, at intervals,
The dry leaf rattling falls.
Dark as those spots which herald swift disease,
The death-blot marks for death the leaf yet firm.
Beside the leaf down-trodden trails the worm.
In forest depths the haggard, whitening grass
Repines at youth departed. Half-stripped trees
Reveal, as one who says,'Thou too must pass,'
Plainlier each day their quaint anatomies.
Yon poplar grove is troubled! Bright and bold
Babbled his cold leaves in the July breeze
As though above our heads a runnel rolled.
His mirth is o'er; subdued by old October,
He counts his lessening wealth, and, sadly sober,
Tinkles his minute tablets of wan gold."
[Footnote 59: Dated in October, 1867.]
This is very vivid, and the closing fancy extremely graceful and
pleasing. Poplars, by the way, seem to be a favorite theme of our
author. Every one familiar with his poems will recall another
beautiful description in his idyll of "Glaucè," in which occur
these lines:
"How indolently
The tops of those pale poplars bend and sway
Over the violet-braided river brim."
And there are other instances also.
But it is waste of argument to go on giving illustrations of Mr.
De Vere's power to depict the external world; it is like proving
Anacreon a love-poet. What we wish to call attention to is the
nature, not the existence, of his talent for description. It
seems to us that, throughout his works, the faculty of
delineation is not the ordinary sensuous susceptibility of poets,
but rather a clear, tender truthfulness in reproducing
impressions alike of thought and sense. The somewhat unusual
result from which we deduce this opinion is, that he describes
quite as happily in the moral order as the physical. This has not
been adequately noticed by his critics, His beautiful
_genre_ pictures appear to have absorbed almost all of the
public attention. We think this is more than their due. Indeed,
whenever he sets out to paint traits, Mr. De Vere is quite as
sure to make a hit as in his landscape sketches. This volume
chances to afford us one striking set of examples of this. There
are in it three several summaries of the characteristics of
different nations. One--the remarkable epitome of England in the
sonnets on colonization--has been published in this magazine
before, (Vol. iv. No. 19, p. 77.) The next we take from the
"Farewell to Naples," (p. 70.) We think it will bear quoting,
though it has been in print since 1855, and was written as long
ago as 1844.
'From her whom genius never yet inspired,
Nor virtue raised, nor pulse heroic fired;
From her who, in the grand historic page,
Maintains one barren blank from age to age;
From her, with insect life and insect buzz,
Who, evermore unresting, nothing does;
From her who, with the future and the past
No commerce holds, no structure rears to last;
From streets where spies and jesters, side by side,
Range the rank markets, and their gains divide;
Where faith in art, and art in sense is lost,
And toys and gewgaws form a nation's boast;
Where Passion, from Affection's bond cut loose,
Revels in orgies of its own abuse;
And Appetite, from Passion's portals thrust,
Creeps on its belly to its grave in dust;
Where Vice her mask disdains, where Fraud is loud,
And naught but Wisdom dumb and Justice cowed;
Lastly, from her who, planted here unawed,
'Mid heaven-topped hills, and waters bright and broad,
From these but nerves more swift to err hath gained,
And the dread stamp of sanctities profaned,
And gilt not less with ruin, lives to show
That worse than wasted weal is wasted woe--
We part, forth issuing through her closing gate
With unreverting faces not ingrate."
Is this not stingingly true? If only the critics found it in
Byron, would it not be inevitable in all the select readers and
speakers, and rampant in the "Notes on France," "Letters from
Italy," "Thoughts while Abroad," etc., which ministers are so
sure to write, and which we hope congregations buy?
{269}
The other is a still stronger, and, coming from Mr. De Vere, a
very bold as well as trenchant portraiture--no less than the
English idea of Ireland. True, Mr. De Vere does not even pretend
to agree with it, but that, an Irishman himself, and a devoted
patriot, he can see her so exactly as others see her, makes it
wonderfully good, and raises what would otherwise have been a
mere success of exact expression, to the rank of a high
imaginative effort.
"How strange a race, more apt to fly than walk;
Soaring yet slight; missing the good things round them,
Yet ever out of ashes raking gems;
In instincts loyal, yet respecting law
Far less than usage: changeful yet unchanged:
Timid yet enterprising: frank yet secret:
Untruthful oft in speech, yet living truth,
And truth in things divine to life preferring:
Scarce men; yet possible angels!--'Isle of Saints!'
Such doubtless was your land--again it might be--
Strong, prosperous, manly never! ye are Greeks
In intellect, and Hebrews in the soul:
The solid Roman heart, the corporate strength
Is England's dower!"
We cannot devise an addition that could complete this picture of
the Sassenach's view of the Gael. It is to the life--the
"absolute exemplar of the time." Only we fear that Mr. De Vere
has furnished those who do not particularly love his country with
rather an ugly citation against her, and Irishmen may perhaps
complain of him for giving to such a powerful delineation the
sanction of an Irish name. If so, it will be the highest
compliment in the world; yet it has ever been a dangerous gift to
be able to see both sides of the shield.
We have only suggested our belief, not asserted it as a fact,
that Mr. De Vere's fullest power is in description; but the idea
grows on us every year, and we wish he would set the question
finally at rest in some future work. Let him for once in his life
make this great gift of his the essential, instead of the
incident, and write something purely descriptive.
There is another thing--rather a curious thing, perhaps--that we
note in the choice of the old poems. In a former review, some
little time since, we took occasion to speak of the
chameleon-like way in which Mr. De Vere's style--always in its
essence his own--unconsciously reflects his reading of certain of
our best authors. There are poems that recall Shakespeare, and
Wordsworth, and Landor, and Tennyson, and Shelley. But there are
also others--many of them among his best--which are all himself.
Consciously or unconsciously, Mr. De Vere has come back to these
at the last, and they constitute a notable majority of those he
has picked out for this volume. The ode on the ascent of the
Apennines, the "Wanderer's Musings at Rome," the "Lines written
under Delphi," the beautiful "Year of Sorrow," "The Irish Gael
(_alias_ Irish Celt) to the Irish Norman"--all these are of
this class. Perhaps the poet has come to love the best those of
his poems which hold the purest solution of his own nature, or
perhaps it may be mere chance; only certain it is that the most
characteristic of his pieces predominate very largely throughout.
We cannot, however, pass on to the new poems without expressing
our profound disrespect for one selection in this volume. It is
notorious that, as we hinted before, authors are poor judges of
the relative excellence of their own works. To this rule there
are, apparently, no exceptions. Let us take one rankling example.
No lover of Tennyson but groans inwardly with disgust over that
insane hoot called "The Owl," with its noble description of the
very witching hour of night:
"_When cats run home_, and night is come,"
and the impotent beauty of the poet's ejaculation:
"I would mock thy chant (!) anew,
But I cannot mimic it.
Not a whit of thy tuwhoo,
Thee to woo to thy tuwhit," etc., etc.
--human nature can stand no more of it.
{270}
We had long loved to believe that this was a sceptred hermit of
an example, wrapped in the solitude of its own unapproachable
fatuity. It has gone blinking and tu-whooing through edition
after edition, with the muffy solemnity characteristic of the
eminent fowl, its subject. But Mr. De Vere has paralleled it at
last with a certain "Song" which we find in this volume. On the
4th of September, 1843, in a preface to his first book of verses,
[Footnote 60] he tells us that this poem was written considerably
earlier than 1840.
[Footnote 60: _The Search after Proserpine_. Oxford and
London. 1855.]
Three years ago, we remember observing and laughing at it, and
thinking whether it would not be well to speak of it as the one
blemish in all his works, on his elsewhere perfect grammar.
Deeming it a mere Homeric dormitation, we passed it by. And now,
after thirty years face to face with it, comes Mr. De Vere, at
last, and drags from utter and most laudable oblivion this
hapless
"SONG.
"He found me sitting among flowers,
My mother's, and my own;
Whiling away too happy hours
With songs of doleful tone.
"My sister came, and laid her book
Upon my lap: and he,
He too into the page would look,
And asked no leave of me.
"The little frightened creature laid
Her face upon my knee--
'_You_ teach your sister, pretty maid;
And I would fain teach _thee_.'
"He taught me joy more blest, more brief
Than that mild vernal weather:
He taught me love; he taught me grief:
He taught me both together.
"Give me a sun-warmed nook to cry in!
And a wall-flower's perfume--
A nook to cry in, and to die in,
'Mid the ruin's gloom."
If Mr. De Vere had only attended in 1840 to the very reasonable
request of the young person in the last verse, we should have
been spared one of the very silliest little things in the English
language. And yet in thus haling it from the
"nook to sigh in and to die in
'Mid the ruin's gloom,"
where public opinion had long since left it in peace, he has done
good. It is instructive to his admirers to see for themselves how
very badly he could write before the year 1840. If intended as a
public penance of this nature, it is perfect of its kind, and the
humility of it will rejoice all Christian souls, excepting,
perhaps, the indignant shade of Lindley Murray.
Not far behind this in inanity is the "Fall of Rora," all the
good part of which was published years ago, and all the bad part
of which is raked up and added for this edition. But from this to
the end of the book are new poems of a very different order. To
begin with, we have a number of miscellaneous sonnets. They are
none of them poor, but the first that particularly arrests
attention, by its fine harmony and happy illustration, is
"Kirkstall Abbey.
"Roll on by tower and arch, autumnal river;
And ere about thy dusk yet gleaming tide
The phantom of dead Day hath ceased to glide,
Whisper it to the reeds that round thee quiver:
Yea, whisper to those ivy bowers that shiver
Hard by on gusty choir and cloister wide,
My bubbles break: my weed-flowers seaward slide:
My freshness and my mission last for ever!'
Young moon from leaden tomb of cloud that soarest,
And whitenest those hoar elm-trees, wrecks forlorn
Of olden Airedale's hermit-haunted forest,
Speak thus,'I died; and lo, I am reborn!'
Blind, patient pile, sleep on in radiance! Truth
Dies not: and faith, that died, shall rise in endless youth."
The arrangement of the double rhymes, which gives the peculiar,
rich rhythm, is a very unusual one with these sonnets. In the
whole two hundred and fifty before this, we only recall one or
two other instances, notable among which is the famous one
beginning,
"Flowers I would bring, if flowers could make thee fairer,"
and the effect is almost always excellent.
{271}
On the heels of this treads another (of the same rhythm also) too
good to pass by:
"Unspiritual Civilization.
"We have been piping, Lord; we have been singing!
Five hundred years have passed o'er lawn and lea
Marked by the blowing bud and falling tree,
While all the ways with melody were ringing:
In tented lists, high-stationed and flower-flinging
Beauty looked down on conquering chivalry;
Science made wise the nations; Laws made free;
Art, like an angel ever onward winging,
Brightened the world. But O great Lord and Father!
Have these, thy bounties, drawn to thee man's race
That stood so far aloof? Have they not rather
His soul subjected? with a blind embrace
Gulfed it in sense? Prime blessings changed to curse
Twixt God and man can set God's universe."
Better, perhaps, than either of these, as combining the best
qualities of both, is the one on
"Common Life.
"Onward between two mountain warders lies
The field that man must till. Upon the right,
Church-thronged, with summit hid by its own height,
Swells the wide range of the theologies:
Upon the left the hills of science rise
Lustrous but cold: nor flower is there, nor blight:
Between those ranges twain through shade and light
Winds the low vale wherein the meek and wise
Repose. The knowledge that excludes not doubt
Is there; the arts that beautify man's life:
There rings the choral psalm, the civic shout,
The genial revel, and the manly strife:
There by the bridal rose the cypress waves:
And there the all-blest sunshine softest falls on graves."
This is, we think, one of the author's very best. It evolves a
happy allegory very neatly with a happy description, to express a
thought too large, it is true, for development in such brief
space, but highly suggestive. The question, how far wisdom lies
in action, may be raised in a sonnet, and remain unsettled by a
thousand treatises.
Several versions from Petrarch's sonnets are admirable, and serve
to confirm our already expressed opinion that Mr. De Vere could
give us excellent translations.
Perhaps, however, readers of our author will be most interested
by the following, which is in an altogether different vein from
the general run of these sonnets, and indeed is perhaps rather a
curious subject for a sonnet to be made about at all. Still there
is no accounting for these poets. Here it is, with all its
oddities upon its head:
"A Warning.
"Why, if he loves you, lady, doth he hide
His love? So humble is he that his heart
Exults not in some sense of new desert
With all thy grace and goodness at his side?
Ah! trust not thou the love that hath no pride,
The pride wherein compunction claims no part,
The callous calm no doubts confuse or thwart,
The untrembling hope, and joy unsanctified!
He of your beauty prates without remorse;
You dropped last night a lily; on the sod
He let it lie, and fade in nature's course;
He looks not on the ground your feet have trod.
He smiles but with the lips, your form in view;
And he will kiss one day your lips--not you."
Where did our pious philosopher, of all men, learn to discourse
thus sagely and plainly of the uncertainty of all things amorous?
We think he makes a very good case, and only add our emphatic
indorsement, if that can serve the young lady, and join in
warning her to find a warmer lover, unless the untrembling and
unsanctifled is very, very handsome, in which case we know better
than to advise her at all.
The next particularly good piece is the opening one of a
miscellany, and is called
"The World's Work.
"Where is the brightness now that long
Brimmed saddest hearts with happy tears?
It was not time that wrought the wrong:
Thy three and twenty vanquished years
Crouched reverent, round their spotless prize,
_Like lions awed that spare a saint_;
Forbore that face--a paradise
No touch autumnal ere could taint.
"It was not sorrow. Prosperous love
Her amplest streams for thee poured forth,
_As when the spring in some rich grove
With blue-bells spreads a sky on earth._
Subverted Virtue! They the most
Lament, that seldom deign to sigh;
O world! is this fair wreck thy boast?
Is this thy triumph, vanity?
"What power is that which, being nought,
Can unmake stateliest works of God?
What brainless thing can vanquish thought?
What heartless, leave the heart a clod?
{272}
The radiance quench, yet add the glare?
_Dry up the flood; make loud the shoal!
And merciless in malice, spare
That mask, a face without a soul?_
"Ah! Parian brows that overshone
Eyes bluer than Egean seas!
One time God's glory wrote thereon
Good-will's two gospels, love and peace.
Ah! smile. Around those lips of hers
The lustre rippled and was still,
As when a gold leaf falling stirs
A moment's tremor on the rill!"
We wish to call attention here to the very curious image
italicized in the second verse. Every one is struck by it at
once; every one sees the great beauty of it at once: and yet the
code of a narrow and merely rhetorical criticism would weed it
out like a wildflower shyly intruding in "ordered gardens great."
The simile is not at all a particularly happy one in relation to
the preceding idea; it is well enough, but there have been apter
similes, and there will be. And reducing it to fact, probably it
is one of the most exaggerative images ever written. But yet it
is beautiful--really beautiful, not a verbal juggle that entraps
the imagination in fine words. The force lies in the bringing
into juxtaposition in a new way those old emblems of beauty,
flowers and sky, and the daring inaccuracy of it only adds a
charm. It does a poetical thought sometimes no harm to be loose.
Nature can do clear-cut work enough when she makes things for
use; but all the visible loveliness of this world is in vague
outlines, formless masses, incomplete curves. The law that
softens the distant mountain-tops is the same that makes the
beauty of these lines. Theirs is the rarer excellence that rises
above rule. We notice it the more in Mr. De Vere that his
strength lies generally in the other direction, of photographic
exactness in reproduction. We like the very looseness of such
expressions; they are like the flowing robes of beautiful women.
The third verse also is excellent throughout, especially in the
fine metaphor in the sixth line, and the intensity of "merciless
in malice." This makes it so much the more provoking that the end
is weak, insignificant, and abrupt, and in a vicious style that
seems to be more and more the fashion of to-day. Still, there
have been worse things; does not Horace end an ode with
_"Mercuriusque"?_
The next short song, though nothing remarkable, perhaps, as pure
poetry, we cite because it is so like the author--Aubrey De Vere
all over, and the shortest epitome of his style we have yet seen
in any of his works.
"A Song Of Age.
I.
"Who mourns? Flow on, delicious breeze!
Who mourns, though youth and strength go by?
Fresh leaves invest the vernal trees,
Fresh airs will drown my latest sigh.
What am I but a part outworn
Of earth's great whole that lifts more high
A tempest-freshened brow each morn
To meet pure beams and azure sky?
II.
"Thou world-renewing breath, sweep on,
And waft earth's sweetness o'er the wave!
That earth will circle round the sun
When God takes back the life he gave!
To each his turn! Even now I feel
The feet of children press my grave,
And one deep whisper o'er it steal--
The soul is His who died to save.'"
We like the honesty and earnestness of this none the worse for
knowing that Mr. De Vere is no longer a young man. And yet does
it not seem hard to realize that so good a writer has been before
the public nearly thirty years, and seen a generation of flimsy
reputations hide him from the eyes of the herd? We can only with
difficulty realize, beside, that any one with so romantic and
novel-like a name can ever be old. And will he ever be? Is it not
true in a deeper and other sense, that whom the gods love die
young?
{273}
The "Lines on Visiting a Haunt of Coleridge's" are not excelled
by anything in all the volume, but hang so closely together,
that, having to quote all or nothing, we are constrained by their
length to pass on to an interpolated copy of verses by S. E. De
Vere, which gives us a moment's pause. We do not know whether the
unknown S. E. is a gentleman or lady; whether the mysterious
initials stand for Saint Elmo or Selah Ebenezer, Sarolta
Ermengarde or Sarah Elizabeth. But we do know that in this poem,
"Charity," (p. 276,) is one passage of some beauty, as thus:
"O cruel mockery, to call that love
Which the world's frown can wither! Hypocrite!
False friend! Base selfish man! fearing to lift
Thy soilèd fellow from the dust! _From thee
The love of friends, the sympathy of kind
Recoil like broken waves from a bare cliff,
Waves that from far seas come with noiseless step
Slow stealing to some lonely ocean isle;
With what tumultuous joy and fearless trust
They fling themselves upon its blackened breast
And wind their arms of foam around its feet,
Seeking a home; but finding none, return
With slow, sad ripple, and reproachful murmur!"_
We find concluding the work a set of sonnets called "Urbs Roma,"
dedicated to the Count de Montalembert; all smooth, polished,
elegant, and dim; with no salient beauties anywhere that
distinguish one above another--golden means. The real climax of
the volume is at the "Autumnal Ode." This is far the best of the
new poems, and one of the best of any of its author's, new or
old. In structure it bears a general resemblance to the rest of
Mr. De Vere's longer odes; and the style is ripe, lofty, easy,
and well-sustained. We have already given one citation from its
rich stores, but there are two more especially worthy of
attention. The first is a description like the one cited, and
quite in Mr. De Vere's own vein.
"It is the autumnal epode of the year;
The nymphs that urge the seasons on their round,
_They to whose green lap flies the startled deer
When bays the far-off hound,
They that drag April by the rain-bright hair,
(Though sun showers daze her and the rude winds scare)
O'er March's frosty bound,
They whose warm and furtive hand unwound
The cestus falls from May's new-wedded breast--_
Silent they stand beside dead Summer's bier,
With folded palms, and faces to the west,
And their loose tresses sweep the dewy ground."
III.
"A sacred stillness hangs upon the air,
A sacred clearness. Distant shapes draw nigh:
Glistens yon elm-grove, to its heart laid bare,
And all articulate in its symmetry,
With here and there a branch that from on high
Far flashes washed as in a watery gleam;
_Beyond, the glossy lake lies calm--a beam
Upheaved, as if in sleep, from its slow central stream._"
The images, and the way the allegory is sustained, are the beauty
of the first stanza. The second is perhaps more artistic still.
The adjective "sacred" is an artful and ingenious one. Without
any apparent particular propriety in its places--a hundred other
words might be effective as qualifications of "stillness" and
"clearness"--yet, we find, on passing to the next thought, that
it has had its result in preparing the mind for a more vivid and
imaginative view of the whole scene. The remaining delineation is
exact and cumulative, as our author's descriptions always are;
and the closing lines are a singularly true and acute observation
of an effect of light that very few would notice in the actual
landscape, or will appreciate even now their attention is called
to it. But people who are sensible enough to _bask_ now and
then in the ripeness of an autumn day will feel an electric
contact of recognition.
Perhaps we cannot do better than to close this rambling notice
with the closing lines of this elegant and thoughtful poem:
"Man was not made for things that leave us,
For that which goeth and returneth,
For hopes that lift us yet deceive us,
For love that wears a smile yet mournetlh;
Not for fresh forests from the dead leaves springing,
The cyclic re-creation which, at best,
Yields us--betrayal still to promise clinging--
But tremulous shadows of the realm of rest;
For things immortal man was made,
God's image, latest from his hand,
Co-heir with Him, who in man's flesh arrayd
Holds o'er the worlds the heavenly-human wand:
His portion this--sublime
To stand where access none hath space or time,
Above the starry host, the cherub band,
To stand--to advance--and after all to stand!"
{274}
These lines are the real end and culmination of a book which
will, on the whole, do much to raise Mr. De Vere's reputation in
this country to a level nearer his deserts. With its human share
of faults, it is a truer, an abler, and a more scholarly book
than often issues from an American press, and contains everywhere
lofty and pure thought, with never a taint of evil, and never a
morally doubtful passage. And we only wish for our country, that,
of his readers, there may be many in whom these his poems may sow
motives as unselfish and aims as noble as those which, we
sincerely believe, inform the inner life of the true poet and
Christian, Aubrey De Vere.
----------
About Several Things.
And, to begin with, about the poverty and vice of London! Hood
and and Adelaide Anne Procter, Dickens, James Greenwood,
[Footnote 61] have made these more familiar to us than the
streets of our own cities. We have talked with Nancy on London
bridge and skulked with Noah Claypole beneath its arches--swept
crossings with poor Joe and starved with the little ragamuffin in
Frying Pan Alley.
[Footnote 61: _Author of a Night in a London Workhouse_,
and of the _True History of a Little Ragamuffin_.]
The poor of London are representative beings to us all. As we
walk through the streets, each ragged or threadbare wanderer
tells us a story heard long ago and half forgotten. That
miserable woman huddled up in a doorway is a brickmaker's wife,
and the thin shawl drawn about her shoulders hides the only marks
of attention she ever receives from her pitiful husband. Her baby
is dead, thank God! safe beyond the reach of blows and hunger and
cold. Her story will soon be ended, if we may judge by her thin
face, and the eager look in her eyes, and the short, hacking
cough. The shilling you slip into her hand will only prolong her
misery, but it gives you a moment's consolation, and brings a
flash of gratitude into her poor face. Good-by, Jenny! When we
meet you at the judgment-seat of God, we wonder if it will occur
to us we might have done more for you to-day than give you a
shilling and a glance of recognition.
"Alas for the rarity
Of Christian charity
Under the sun.
Oh! it was pitiful!
In a whole city-full
Home she had none."
We wonder if Thomas Hood was much better than other people? If he
found homes for the homeless and food for the hungry? We cannot
get Jenny out of our head. Her wants would be so easily supplied.
In all London is there no place where lodging and fire and food
are provided for the decent poor?
{275}
The portly policeman at the street corner says yes, there are
several refuges, but the one in this district is kept by Sisters
of Mercy, in Crispin street, No.30 or thereabouts. Asking poor
Jenny to follow us, (she manifests a mild surprise at our
sympathy,) we cross Finbury Circus, pass Bishopsgate street,
without; and soon find ourselves in Crispin street, standing at
the modest entrance of the House of Mercy. We are not the only
applicants for admission this dreary November afternoon. Women
with children and women without them are sitting on the steps or
leaning against the wall, waiting for the hour of five to strike,
blessed signal for the door to open. It is only half-past four
now, says the sister portress. Jenny must join the throng
lingering about the house; but we as visitors may come in and see
the preparations made for their entertainment.
This then is the refuge described by Miss Procter, and her pretty
garland of verses is still sold for its benefit. In 1860, there
was no Catholic refuge in England, and excellent as were those
supported by Protestants, they did not supply all demands. Rev.
Dr. Gilbert of Moorfields Chapel found in a block of buildings,
called by a pleasant coincidence, "Providence Row," a large empty
stable separated by a yard from No. 14 Finsbury Square. The
Sisters of Mercy were then seeking a house more suited to their
needs than the one in Broad street. The two projects fitted each
other like mosaic; No. 14 Finsbury Square should be the convent,
the stable should be the refuge. Benches and beds were provided
at first for fourteen persons only; but in February, 1861,
additional provision was made for forty-six women and children.
Before the month of April, 1862, 14,785 lodgings, with breakfast
and supper, had been given.
But charity is as unsatiable in its desires as self-indulgence,
and Dr. Gilbert's ideas soon outgrew the stable in Providence
Row. The present refuge, giving accommodation to three hundred
adults and children, was opened last autumn. It will be in
operation from October to May of every year, on week-days from
five P.M. to half-past seven A.M.; on Sundays, throughout the
twenty-four hours. In this room on the ground floor, with its
blazing fire, the women are received for inspection. If any one
shows herself unworthy of assistance, either by intoxication or
by the use of bad language, she is turned away. Without doubt
many sinners are admitted to the refuge, and the sisters rejoice
in being able to check their course of evil for twelve hours; but
no one receives hospitality here unless she can conform outwardly
to the habits of decent persons. This is the only refuge where
admission depends on the good character of the applicant. It has
proved an efficient preventive of the contamination so much to be
dreaded whenever the poor and ignorant are brought together in
large numbers.
The selection of guests being made, their dresses and shawls, wet
with London fog and mud, are dried by the fire; and the fixture
basins round the room are placed at their service with a
bountiful supply of water.
From the inspection-room they pass to a large apartment, where
they have supper, and sit together in warmth and comfort until
bedtime. The supper consists of a bowl of excellent gruel and
half a pound of bread for each person. It is to be observed that,
though the accommodations are good of their kind, affording a
decent asylum to the homeless, they are not calculated to attract
those who can find comfortable shelter elsewhere.
{276}
At an early hour night-prayers are said by a sister, and the
women are shown to the dormitories. The beds are constructed in
an ingenious manner, economizing space and making perfect
cleanliness practicable. Two inclined planes, fastened together
at the higher end, pass down the middle of the dormitory. Two
more inclined planes pass down the sides of the room with the
higher end next the wall. These platforms are partitioned off by
planks into troughs about two feet wide and six feet long, (that
is to say, the length of the slope of the platform,) looking much
like cucumber frames without glass. These are the beds, and at
the foot of each is a little gate, which can be opened to admit
of drawing out a sliding plank in the bottom of the trough. This
is done every morning by the sisters in charge of the
dormitories, and the floor beneath is swept. But now the little
gates are closed and the beds are ready for their forlorn
occupants. Each is furnished with a thick mattress and pillow
covered with brown enamel cloth and with a large coverlet of
thick leather. As the women go to bed thoroughly warm and wear
their clothing, they sleep comfortably under these odd-looking
quilts; especially the mothers, who often hold one little child
in their arms while another nestles at their feet. The bedding is
wiped carefully every morning, and thus the dormitories are kept
free from vermin. A cell partitioned off at each end of the
dormitory, with two or three windows, provides the sisters in
charge with a private room and at the same time with a post of
observation. The arrangements for water throughout the house are
excellent, including a hose fixed in the wall of every dormitory,
ready to be used in case of fire.
At half-past six in the morning, the sleepers are roused; at
seven they have breakfast, consisting, like the supper, of a
basin of gruel and half a pound of bread. At half-past seven,
they leave the refuge, some times to be seen no more, sometimes
to return night after night for weeks together. On Sunday they
can remain all day. But, as persons are admitted without
distinction of creed, they are allowed to leave the refuge during
the hours of morning service to go to church. A short lesson in
the catechism is given every evening at the refuge; but only
Catholics are allowed to attend the classes unless occasionally
by especial permission. They have, for their Sunday dinner, as
much strong beef soup as they can eat with bread.
The arrangements for men are similar to those for women, though
less extensive. The entrances are separate, and there are
watchmen in the male dormitory. The refuge provides thirty-two
beds for men and one hundred and fifty for women. It is by
packing in children with their parents that so many individuals
are lodged.
The survey of the building ended, we pass out of the front door
just as five o'clock strikes, and the tattered throng, Jenny
among them, present themselves for admission. This institution
could be copied with good effect in several American cities. Its
system of management guards against two evils. Provision being
made only for the bare necessities of life, no temptation is
offered to impostors. Propriety of behavior being ensured by
strict surveillance, the chance of contamination is materially
lessened, perhaps wholly removed.
{277}
It is no unusual thing, even in the United States, for men and
boys, women and girls, to spend a night in the station-house
because they have no other place to sleep. A refuge is less
expensive than other charitable establishments. The first cost of
a building is considerable; the annual outlay in provisions,
fuel, and light, comparatively trifling. The money spent every
year in indiscriminate almsgiving in a large city would serve to
support a night refuge for several hundred persons. But while
providing for the houseless poor of to-day, we should remember
that their numbers are increasing with every successive
generation. The children of our poorest class must be rescued
from their present migratory life, divided between street, jail,
and penitentiary.
Much has been done for girls, and we can only desire an extension
of the work. With an increase of funds, the Sisters of Charity,
of Mercy, of the Good Shepherd, and of Notre Dame could
accomplish a mission of great importance to the future prosperity
of our country. These ladies devote their lives to saving from
misery and degradation the children of those who cannot or will
not perform a parent's duty. They need money to accomplish this.
We too often dole it out to them as if they had asked alms for
themselves. Let us give them not only money but sympathy and
encouragement. Many a good work has failed for want of friendly
words to give the strength for one final vigorous effort.
But what is to be done for the boys? They may be divided into
three classes. First, children guilty of no worse crime than
friendlessness. Second, small boys obnoxious to the police for
petty infringements of the laws; third, newsboys, bootblacks, and
costermongers, more or less familiar with the vices of city life.
The third class is developed from the other two, because
neglected poverty naturally gravitates to vice and crime.
The development of a true ragamuffin is a process painfully
interesting to watch. At an age when the children of the rich
take sober walks attended by nursery-maid or governess, he knows
the streets as well as any watchman. At seven years old, he is
arrested by some energetic policeman for throwing stones,
bathing, stealing a bunch of grapes, or some other first-class
felony. Once in the hands of the law, there is no redress for him
unless he is "bailed out." He must go to jail to wait for
trial-day--perhaps three or four weeks. The turnkeys do their
best for him; find him a decent companion if he is frightened,
or, still better, give him a cell to himself, where he looks more
like a squirrel in a cage than a criminal offender. I have seen
in one day four mere babies in prison for "breaking and
entering!"
But, with all the precautions used in a well-ordered jail to
prevent mischief, our infant ragamuffin comes out older by many
years than he went in. He has been in prison, and his tiny
reputation is gone for ever. A few years later he comes back,
arrested for some grave misdemeanor; a sly, old-fashioned little
rogue by this time, gifted with an ingenuity fitting him
admirably to be the tool of some professional thief. Then begins
a course of sojourns in workhouses and juvenile penitentiaries.
By and by he reappears in jail with a smart suit of clothes, the
fruit of a successful burglary, and you are informed with an air
of conscious superiority that this time it is a house of
correction or State's prison offence. There is ambition in crime
as well as in other careers, we may be sure. He grows up to be a
drunkard, a libertine, a bad husband, and the father of children
more degraded than himself. We know of an entire family having
been in prison at one time, father, mother, and all the children.
{278}
Who is to blame for this career of vice and crime? Not the
officers of the jail, who bitterly regret the necessity of
receiving children, but cannot set them free. Not the judges, who
are sworn to administer the laws as they stand, not to improve
upon them.
The police are to blame for exercising their enthusiasm for order
upon babies, instead of making examples of grown men guilty of
similar misdemeanors, but harder to catch.
The public is to blame for making insufficient provision for the
reclamation of juvenile offenders. Above all, we Catholics are to
blame, because these are usually the children of foreign parents,
and Catholics, at least in name.
Let us build an asylum in the air for these poor little urchins.
Aerial philanthropy requires no funds, and very little executive
ability. Who knows but our plan may be carried out in earnest,
one of these days, by some Dr. Gilbert, trustful of small
beginnings, and content to let his project first see the light in
a stable?
We would have _one division_ devoted to little orphans, and
children whose parents are willing to resign them for a time or
for ever.
A second division should be given to the infant criminals of whom
we have just spoken. Their offences are always bailable. A
trustworthy person should be employed to go bail for all children
under ten years of age, and bring them to the asylum to await
their trial. The judges gladly sentence children to serve out a
term at a juvenile home instead of sending them to
penitentiaries. Thus we should recover them after their trial,
for a length of time proportioned to the importance of severing
old associations. Their circumstances should be thoroughly
investigated and reported to the judge--character of parents,
place of residence, etc., etc.
These two divisions should be under the charge of female
religious; with several male attendants to do menial work and
enforce discipline in the few instances where strong measures
might be necessary, but without possessing any authority except
the reflected one of acting under the matron's orders. The
necessity of vigilance can hardly be exaggerated. One child of
vicious habits can corrupt many more. But since direct
surveillance is irritating even to children, a routine of light
and frequently-varied occupation would be found useful in giving
vent to restless activity, which is at the root of many childish
misdemeanors. The superintendents must learn to distinguish fun
from mischief; energy from insubordination.
A third division should provide a refuge for newsboys and others
of the same tribe. These older boys should be under the charge of
the Christian Brothers. An evening school, a library of books
such as boys enjoy, and a collection of innocent games would form
an important element in the plan of management. They should be
persuaded to put a portion of their earnings in the savings bank,
and induced if possible to alter their roving life and learn a
trade. Preference should be shown to lads of correct life over
those who have been in prison, but encouragement and countenance
given to every boy willing to conform to the rules of the refuge.
We lay less stress upon separating the good from the bad among
the lads for two reasons. A boy of fourteen or fifteen who has
not been corrupted by street life must be temptation-proof. It is
difficult to judge the respective merits of lads of that age or
to learn their past histories. They must to a great extent be
taken on trust.
{279}
In the course of a few years a fourth division would become
necessary to provide for the little boys grown too old for
petticoat government. This division should also be under the
charge of the Christian Brothers.
The institution would be very expensive, unless it were made
partially self-supporting. There is a good deal of light work
connected with trades that might be done by boys resident in the
house. Perhaps in time city governments would wake up to the fact
that it costs less to give boys a good plain education than to
support rogues and paupers; but our dream of charity is rudely
dispersed by a yawn from our companion and a suggestion that we
should reach Piccadilly sooner by the underground railroad than
on foot. The gaslights stare despondingly at me through the
yellow fog. A London Arab solicits a penny for clearing the slimy
crossing, and wonders at the glow of charity with which we press
sixpence into his grimy palm. Where are we? In London? Yes, but
there are orphans wandering homeless about the streets of
American cities, too; bootblacks going to destruction by scores;
tiny children falling victims to the misplaced zeal of policemen;
and not even the corner-stone of our asylum is laid!
----------
A Chinese Husband's Lament For His Wife.
Translated From The French Of M. Stanislas Julien,
Professor Of The Chinese Language, Paris.
I.
It was in the fifth watch of the first day of the year, when the
winter's cold was most intense, that my tender wife died. Can
there be on earth a man more unhappy than I? O my wife! if thou
wert still here, I would give thee a new robe for the new year;
but woe is me, thou art gone down to the sombre abode where flows
the yellow fountain. Would that husband and wife could see one
another again! Come to me in the night--come to me in the third
watch--let me renew for a little while the sweetness of the past.
II.
In the second moon, when spring has come, and the sun stays each
day longer in the sky, every family washes its robes and linen in
pure water, and husbands who have still their wives love to adorn
them with new garments. But I, who have lost mine, am wasting my
life away in grief; I cannot even bear to see the little shoes
that enclosed her pretty feet!
Sometimes I think that I will take another companion; but where
can I find another so beautiful, wise, and kind!
{280}
III.
In the third moon, the peach-tree opens its rose-colored
blossoms, and the willow is bedecked with green tresses. Husbands
who have still their wives go with them to visit the tombs of
their fathers and friends. But I who have lost mine go alone to
visit _her_ grave, and to wet with my hot tears the spot
where her ashes repose. I present funereal offerings to her
shade; I burn images of gilded paper in her honor. "Tender wife,"
I cry with a tearful voice, "where art thou, where art thou?" But
she, alas! hears me not. I see the solitary tomb, but I cannot
see my wife!
IV.
In the fourth moon, the air is pure and serene, and the sun
shines forth in all his splendor. How many ungrateful husbands
then give themselves up to pleasure and forget the wife they have
lost! Husband and wife are like two birds of the same forest;
when the fatal hour arrives, each one flies off a different way.
I am like a man, who, beguiled by the sweet fancies of an
enchanting dream, seeks, when he awakes, the young beauty that
charmed his imagination while he slept, but finds around him only
silence and solitude. So much loveliness, so much sweetness
vanished in one morning! Why, alas! could not two friends, so
dearly united, live and grow gray together!
V.
In the fifth moon, the dragon-headed boats float gaily on the
waters. Exquisite wines are heated, and baskets are filled up
with delicious fruits. Each year at this season, I delighted to
enjoy the pleasures of these simple feasts with my wife and
children. But now I am weary and restless, a prey to the
bitterest anguish. I weep all day and all night, and my heart
seems ready to break. Ah! what do I see at this moment? Pretty
children at merry play before my door. Yes, I can understand that
they are happy; they have a mother to press them to her bosom. Go
away, dear children, your joyous gambols tear my heart.
VI.
In the sixth moon, the burning heat of the day is almost
unbearable. The rich and the poor then spread their clothes out
to air. I will expose one of my wife's silken robes, and her
embroidered shoes to the sun's warm beams. See! here is the dress
she used to wear on festal days, here are the elegant little
slippers that fitted her pretty feet so well. But where is my
wife? Oh! where is the mother of my children? I feel as if a cold
steel blade were cutting into my heart.
VII.
In the seventh moon, my eyes overflow with tears; for it is then
that Nieaulan visits his wife Tchi-niu in heaven. Once I also had
a beautiful wife, but she is lost to me for ever. That fair face,
lovelier than the flowers, is constantly before me. Whether in
movement or at rest, the remembrance of her that is gone from me
never ceases to rack my bosom. What day have I forgotten to think
of my tender wife--what night have I not wept till morning?
VIII.
On the fifteenth day of the eighth moon, her disk is seen in its
greatest splendor, and men and women then offer to the gods
melons and cakes, ball-like in form as the orb of night. Husbands
and wives stroll together in the fields and groves, and enjoy the
soft moonlight.
{281}
But the round disk of the moon can only remind _me_ of the
wife I have lost. At times, to solace my grief I quaff a cup of
generous wine; at times I take my guitar, but my trembling hand
can draw forth no sound. Friends and relations invite me to their
houses, but my sorrowful heart refuses to share in their
pleasures.
IX.
In the ninth moon, the chrysanthemum opens its golden cup, and
every garden exhales a balmy odor. I would gather a bunch of
newly-blown flowers if I had still a wife whose hair they could
adorn! My eyes are weary with weeping--my hands are withered with
grief, and I beat a fleshless breast. I enter the tasteful room
that was once my wife's; my two children follow me, and come to
embrace my knees. They take my hands in theirs, and speak to me
with choking voices; but by their tears and sobs I know they ask
me for their mother.
X.
On the first day of the tenth moon, both rich and poor present
their wives with winter clothing. But to whom shall I offer
winter clothing? I, who have no wife! When I think of her who
rested her head on my pillow, I weep and burn images of gilded
paper. I send them as offerings to her who now dwells beside the
yellow fountain. I know not if these funereal gifts will be of
use to her shade; but at least her husband will have paid her a
tribute of love and regret.
XI.
In the eleventh moon, I salute winter, and again deplore my
beautiful wife. Half of the silken counterpane covers an empty
place in the cold bed where I dare not stretch out my legs. I
sigh and invoke heaven; I pray for pity. At the third watch I
rise without having slept, and weep till dawn.
XII.
In the twelfth moon, in the midst of the winter's cold, I called
on my sweet wife. "Where art thou," I cried; "I think of thee
unceasingly, yet I cannot see thy face!" On the last night of the
year she appeared to me in a dream. She pressed my hand in hers;
she smiled on me with tearful eyes; she encircled me in her
caressing arms, and filled my soul with happiness. "I pray thee,"
she whispered, "weep no more when thou rememberest me. Henceforth
I will come thus each night to visit thee in thy dreams."
-------
{282}
A May Flower.
A look and a word, my sweet lady;
A thought of your kind heart, I pray,
For a flower that blooms by the roadside,
This beautiful morning in May.
I know that engagements await you;
I know you have many to meet;
Yet, pray, linger here for a moment,
And look at this flower of the street.
'Tis but May, my sweet lady, and hardly
Has spring had the time to look bright;
Yet this flower it called into being
Already is smitten with blight.
Already upon its fair leaflets
Lie heavy the grime and the dust;
Its shrivelled and lack-lustre petals,
Tell a story--stop, lady!--you must.
For a soul is in danger, my lady,
The soul of this drooping street flower;
And you by a look can recall it
To life, or 'twill die in an hour.
Ah me! if you knew but the power
Of one word of kindness from you;
Could you see what a tempest of passion
A glance of your eye would subdue!
What hope once again would awaken
To arm this poor soul for the right!
Thanks, my lady! Go happily onward,
The tempted is strengthened with might.
-------
{283}
New Publications.
The Formation Of Christendom.
Part II.
By T. W. Allies.
London: Longmans, Green, Reader & Dyer.
New-York: The Catholic Publication Society.
This volume is the dictation of a scholarly mind and the work of
an experienced pen. It forms the second volume of a work not yet
complete, the first part of which appeared in 1865. In the six
chapters which composed the first volume, as the author tells us
in his advertisement to the present one, he described
Christianity creating anew, as it were, and purifying and
introducing supernatural principles into the individual soul;
showing how the new religion restored the fallen dignity of man
by insisting on his individuality and personal responsibility, by
consecrating the married and counselling the virginal life. The
vile secrets of that viler pagan society are partly revealed, and
the influence of the Gospel is shown in a graceful parallel
between St. Augustine and Cicero. The author further says, that,
having examined the foundations, he has now reached the building
itself and comes "to consider the Christian Church in its
historical development as a kingdom of truth and grace; for while
the soul of man is the unit with which it works, 'Christendom'
betokens a society." It is then the first epoch of such a kingdom
that the author would describe in the present volume.
Accordingly, we have a graphic account of the polytheism which,
at the birth of Christ, reigned throughout the world, save in one
of its most insignificant lands, the frightful power of this
false worship, its relation to civilization, to the political
constitution of the empire, to national feeling in the provinces,
to despotism and slavery, and its hostile preparations for the
advent of the "Second Man." Then follows the teaching of Christ
and the institution of his church, a statement of the nature of
the latter, its manner of teaching and propagation, its
episcopacy and primacy. Then, a picture of the history of the
martyr church through the first three centuries, its sublime
patience under persecution, and its struggle with swarming
heresies that menaced from within. After this, the author
prepares for a dissertation on that strife between Christianity
and heathen philosophy, which terminated on the downfall of the
Alexandrian school, by sketching the history and influence of
Greek philosophy until the reign of Claudius; and, reserving this
dissertation for a future volume, the author closes the present
number of his contemplated series. It is a serious disadvantage
to any work to be published piecemeal. Nevertheless, English
readers, interested in the study of the early ages, and
especially those who have read with pleasure Mr. Allies's former
productions, will be glad to notice the publication of this
volume. But Mr. Allies's work, also, belongs to a class, small
indeed, but all the more worthy of encouragement, namely, that of
original Catholic histories in the English language. It is,
therefore, an attempt to partially supply a want which no one
book, however popular, can adequately meet. In the face of an
ungrateful heathenism that to-day secretly sighs after the
Augustan age, and openly asks, "What has been gained by all this
religion?" daring to draw unjust parallels between the heroes of
Christian tradition and contemporary pagan models, it is the duty
of all who love the Christian name to encourage true historical
criticism; that men may know all that they at present owe to the
Catholic Church; and if they will not acknowledge her to-day as
the guide to true civilization, may learn from the record of the
past how her genius has presided over all that is greatest and
noblest in the past history of mankind.
-----
{284}
Thunder And Lightning.
By W. De Fonvielle.
Translated from the French, and
edited by T. L. Phipson, Ph.D.
Illustrated with thirty nine engravings on wood.
1 vol. 12mo, pp. 216.
The Wonders Of Optics.
By F. Marion.
Translated from the French,
and edited by Charles W. Quinn, F.C.S.
Illustrated with seventy engravings on wood.
1 vol. 12mo, pp. 248.
New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1869.
These two volumes are the first issues of the "Illustrated
Library of Wonders," to be published by Messrs. Scribner & Co.
They are highly interesting to the general reader, as well as to
persons of scientific attainments. The accounts given of the
peculiar and novel freaks of lightning are curious and
instructive. The illustrations in both volumes are well executed,
and make these books specially attractive to young people. In the
work on optics, the telescope, magic lantern, magic mirror, etc.,
are fully explained.
----
Why Men Do Not Believe;
Or, The Principal Causes Of Infidelity.
By N.J. Laforet, Rector of the Catholic University of Louvain.
Translated from the French.
New York: The Catholic Publication Society,
126 Nassau Street.
Pp. 252. 1869.
Whoever has had the happiness of attending the Catholic Congress
of Belgium must have noticed among the distinguished gentlemen
seated by the side of the president the prepossessing,
intellectual countenance of Mgr. Laforet, the Rector Magnificus
of the University of Louvain. Although still a young man, he
holds a high place among the writers who adorn European Catholic
literature. His best known and most elaborate work is an
excellent _History of Philosophy_. In the present volume,
which is quite unpretending in size, and written in such a simple
and easy style as to be easily readable by any person of ordinary
education, he has, perhaps, rendered even a greater service to
the cause of religion and sound science than by his more
elaborate works. It is an excellent little treatise on the causes
of infidelity, which has already produced happy fruits among his
own countrymen by bringing back a number of persons to the
Christian faith, and we trust is destined to accomplish a still
greater amount of good in its English as well as its French
dress.
Mgr. Laforet assigns as the causes of the infidelity which
prevails, unhappily, to such a considerable extent in our days,
ignorance of the real grounds and nature of the Christian
religion, materialism, and the consequent moral degradation which
it has produced. He denies in a peremptory manner that it has
been caused by progress in science or the more perfect
development of the reasoning faculty, and supports this denial by
abundant and conclusive proofs. The origin of modern infidelity
he traces historically and logically to Protestantism, showing
that it has been transplanted into France and other Catholic
countries from England and Germany. Anti-Catholic writers are
fond of retorting upon us the charge that Protestantism breeds
infidelity by the countercharge that Catholicity breeds
infidelity. They say that it lays too great a burden on reason by
teaching, as Christian doctrine, dogmas that intelligent,
educated men cannot receive without doing violence to their
reason. They point to the infidelity that prevails to a certain
extent among educated men in Catholic countries as a proof of
this assumption. The writer of an article in a late number of
_Putnam's Monthly_, entitled, "The Coming Controversy," has
reiterated this charge, and alleges the fact that some of the
educated laymen belonging to the Catholic Church in the United
States do not approach the sacraments, as an evidence that they
have lost their faith, which is a corroboration of the alleged
charge against the Catholic religion of breeding infidelity in
intelligent, thinking minds.
{285}
The whole of this specious argument is a fabric of sand. In the
first place, it is no proof that men have lost their faith
because they do not act in accordance with it. The entire body of
negligent Catholics are not to be classed among infidels, any
more than negligent Jews or Protestants. Nevertheless, we would
call the attention of those Catholic gentlemen of high standing
who neglect the practice of their religious duties, and fail to
take that active part on the side of the church and of God which
they ought to take, to the scandal they thus give and to the
occasion which the enemies of the church take from their criminal
apathy to revile that faith for which their ancestors have
suffered and contended so nobly. Neither is it true that anywhere
in the world the apostates from the faith are superior in
intelligence and culture to its loyal adherents. We hear too much
of this boasting from free-thinkers and infidels of their
intellectual superiority. On the field of philosophy and positive
religion they have been completely discomfited by the champions
of religion. Some of their ablest men have passed over to our
camp convinced by the pure force of argument, as, for instance,
Thierry, Maine de Biran, Droz, and to a certain extent Cousin.
Many others, and recently one most notorious individual, Jules
Havin, the chief editor of the infamous _Siècle_, of Paris,
have repented at the hour of death. D'Holbach, one of the chiefs
of the infidel party in France, thus writes: "We must allow that
corruption of manners, debauchery, license, and even frivolity of
mind, may often lead to irreligion or infidelity. ... Many people
give up prejudices they had adopted through vanity and on
hearsay; these pretended free-thinkers have examined nothing for
themselves; they rely on others whom they suppose to have weighed
matters more carefully. How can men, given up to voluptuousness
and debauchery, plunged in excess, ambitious, intriguing,
frivolous, and dissipated--or depraved women of wit and
fashion--how can such as these be capable of forming an opinion
of a religion they have never examined?" [Footnote 62] La Bruyère
says, "Do our _esprits forts_ know that they are called thus
in irony?" [Footnote 63] It is no argument against either
Catholicity or Protestantism that infidelity exists in Catholic
or Protestant countries. Before this fact can be made to tell in
any way against either religion it must be proved that it
contains principles which lead logically to infidelity, or
proposes dogmas which are rationally incredible, and thus
produces a reaction against all divine revelation. This has never
been done, and never can be done in respect to the Catholic
religion. So far as Protestantism is concerned, it has been done
repeatedly and can be done easily. We do not rejoice in this; on
the contrary, we grieve over it, and our sympathies are with
those Protestants, such as Guizot, Dr. McCosh, President Hopkins,
and others who defend the great truths of spiritual philosophy,
of Theism, the divine mission of Moses and Christ, and other
Christian doctrines against modern infidelity. Nevertheless, we
cannot help pointing out the fact that they are illogical as
Protestants in doing this, and are unable, after giving the
evidences of the credibility of Christianity, to state what
Christianity is in such a manner as completely to satisfy the
just demands of human reason, or to justify their own position as
seceders from the genuine Christendom.
[Footnote 62: _Système de la Nature_, tom. ii. c. 13.
Cited on page 106. ]
[Footnote 63: _Les Caractères_, ch. xvi. Cited on page
188.]
Our own youth are exposed to the temptation of infidelity on
account of their imperfect religious education, and the influence
of the Protestant world in which they live, saturated as it is
with the most pestilent and poisonous influences of heresy,
infidelity, and immorality. Good Protestants they will never
become. They can only be good Catholics, bad Catholics, or
infidels. Our friends of the Protestant clergy have no reason,
therefore, to count up and exult over those who are lost from the
Catholic fold, for Satan is the only gainer.
{286}
Let us have a sufficient number of clergy of the right sort, an
ample supply of churches, colleges, schools, and Catholic
literature, and we will engage that the desire for a purer and
more spiritual religion will never lead our Catholic youth to
become Protestants, or the desire for a more elevated and solid
science make them infidels. Such books as the one we are noticing
are of just the kind we want, and we recommend it warmly to all
thinking young men and women, to all parents and teachers, and to
all readers generally.
----
The Montarges Legacy.
By Florence McCoomb.
Philadelphia: P. F. Cunningham. 1869.
We thank the gentle author of this charming story for the
satisfaction derived from its perusal. Not wishing, by entering
into detail of plot or incident, to diminish the pleasure in
store for its readers, we will merely say that, while
sufficiently exciting, it is by no means morbidly sensational;
that the characters are well portrayed; the incidents varied; the
dialogue not strained, yet not monotonous; the descriptive
portion easy and natural; and that, pervading all, is a true
Catholic spirit.
----
Anne Severin.
By Mrs. Augustus Craven.
New York: The Catholic Publication Society.
1 vol. 12mo, pp. 411. 1869.
We do not like the controversially religious novel. There is
generally too much pedantry; too great an admixture of theology,
politics, and love, to suit our taste. But the story of _Anne
Severin_, by the gifted author of _A Sister's Story_, is
not of this kind, it is permeated throughout with a purely
religious feeling; just enough, however, to make it interesting,
and to give the reader to understand that the writer is truly
Catholic in all she writes. The scene of the story opens in
England, about the beginning of this century, when there were
"troublous times in France," and changes to the latter country,
where the thread of the narrative is spun out. The heroine, Anne
Severin, is not an ideal character. It is one that is not rare in
Catholic countries, or in Catholic society. She is a true woman,
in the truest sense of the word, a model for our daughters. The
contrast between her and the English-reared girl, Eveleen
Devereux, is clearly drawn. The one truthful, religious,
conscientious in all her actions, kind, amiable, and loveable;
the other, fickle-minded, constantly wavering, and a flirt,
courting admiration for admiration's sake, yet intending to do
right in her own way, but failing because she did not have the
_true_ religious teaching that Anne Severin had. No better
book of the kind could be put in the hands of Catholics as well
as non-Catholics of both sexes. No one can help for a moment to
see in what consists the difference between these two women. Anne
Severin had a positive, soul-sustaining faith to fall back upon
in her troubles. Eveleen Devereux had nothing but the emptiness
of a religion of the world which failed her in the hour of
tribulation.
----
Eudoxia: A Picture Of The Fifth Century.
Freely translated from the German of Ida,
Countess Hahn Hahn.
Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. Pp. 287. 1869.
This historical tale, which has already appeared as a serial in
an English periodical, and also in an American newspaper, has
been very favorably received on both sides of the Atlantic. It is
now issued in handsome book form, and will, no doubt, have, as it
deserves, an extensive circulation.
----
The Illustrated Catholic Sunday School Library.
Third Series. 12 vols. pp. 144 each.
New York: The Catholic Publication Society,
126 Nassau Street. 1869.
{287}
The titles of the volumes contained in this series are:
Bad Example;
May-Day, and other Tales;
The Young Astronomer, and other Tales;
James Chapman;
Angel Dreams;
Ellerton Priory;
Idleness and Industry;
The Hope of the Katzekopfs;
St. Maurice;
The Young Emigrants;
Angels' Visits;
and The Scrivener's Daughter, and other Tales.
That in the variety of its contents this series is fully equal to
its predecessors is evident from the above list; and the careful
supervision to which each issue is subjected renders it
unnecessary to say another word in its praise. We can safely
promise a rare treat to our young friends when, either
well-deserving at school, or an indulgent parent, will have made
them happy in its possession.
----
The Sunday-school Class-book.
New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1869.
This last work of The Catholic Publication Society will be
appreciated by every Sunday-school teacher who has experienced
the torments of an ill-arranged and poorly-made classbook. The
chief characteristics of this small but important work are
_clearness_ and _completeness_. Its new feature is the
plain, brief, but very decided rules to be found on the inside of
each cover. In size it allows a goodly space for marks in detail.
In binding and quality of paper, it is far in advance of anything
yet offered to the Catholic Sunday-school teacher. It provides a
"register" for eighteen or twenty scholars, in which should be
plainly and neatly written the names, etc., of each member of the
class. Then comes a monthly record, extending across two pages,
in which allowance is made for "the fifth" Sunday, and a space
for a "Monthly Report." And in this we have the grand improvement
on all other classbooks in use.
Twelve such double pages are furnished, thus covering the space
of one year; and on the last half-page there are columns provided
for a yearly report, in which plain figures must be placed by
every teacher to the satisfaction of superintendents, who have so
often experienced the mortifying necessity of declaring teachers'
methods of marking more mysterious than hieroglyphics.
What has long been needed is not a class-book fitted for the
educated few who devote their spare hours to Sunday-school
teaching, nor a mere record book for large and continually
changing classes of beginners, but a plain, comprehensive book
which any teacher can understand at a glance, and which will
enable him to influence the conduct, if not the studious habits,
of those committed to his charge, instead of calling for an extra
waste of time, in order to mark with precision in perhaps a badly
lighted school-house. Let every teacher send for a copy, examine
it for himself, and see how simple this often neglected duty can
be made. If the rules which are contained therein be attended to,
there will be no necessity of carrying the book away from the
school, which arrangement insures the double object of marking
while the impression of each recitation is fresh and of having
the book in readiness to mark at the next recitation. And, until
every teacher attends to both these duties, in spite of
qualifications in other respects, he will still have much to
learn before he becomes a perfect Sunday-school teacher.
This little book is substantially bound in cloth, and is sold for
twenty cents a copy, or, to Sunday-schools, at two dollars per
dozen.
----
Studious Women.
From the French of Monseigneur Dupanloup, Bishop of Orleans.
Translated by R. M. Phillimore.
Boston: P. Donahoe. Pp. 105. 1869.
This able essay of the Bishop of Orleans was translated for and
appeared in _The Catholic World_ very soon after its
appearance in France, nearly two years ago. We see Mr. Donahoe
has used the London translation.
-------
{288}
Poems.
By James McClure.
New York: P. O'Shea. Pp. 148. 1869.
We cannot praise the "poems" contained in this volume, and the
modesty of the author's preface disarms adverse criticism.
----
A Manual Of General History:
being an outline history of the world
from the creation to the present time.
Fully illustrated with maps.
For the use of academies,
high-schools, and families.
By John J. Anderson, A.M.
New York: Clark & Maynard. Pp. 401. 1869.
This compendium is in some respects inaccurate; much that is
comparatively trivial is admitted, while really important events
are entirely ignored; and on certain points there is, if not an
actual anti-Catholic bias, an absence, at least, of that strict
impartiality to be demanded, as of right, in all compilations
intended for use as text-books in our public schools.
----
The Catholic Publication Society has now in press the Chevalier
Rossi's famous work on the Roman Catacombs--_Roma
Sotterranea_. It is being compiled, translated, and prepared
for the English reading public by the Very Rev. J. Spencer
Northcote, D.D., president of Oscott College, Birmingham, and
author of a small treatise on the catacombs. The present work
will make a large octavo volume of over five hundred pages, and
will be copiously illustrated by wood-cuts and
chromo-lithographs--the latter printed under De Rossi's personal
supervision. This will be an important addition to our
literature, and will, we doubt not, attract considerable
attention in this country. The same Society will have ready about
May 1st, _Why People do not Believe_--a library edition as
well as a cheap edition; _Glimpses of Pleasant Homes_, by
the author of _Mother McCauley_, with four full-page
illustrations; _Impressions of Spain_, by Lady Herbert, with
fifteen full-page illustrations. The two last-mentioned books
will be very appropriate for college and school premiums. _In
Heaven we know Our Own _ will be ready in June. The Fourth
Series of the _Illustrated Catholic Sunday-School Library_
is also in preparation. _The Life of Mother Margaret Mary
Hallahan, O.S.D._, founder of the Dominican Conventual
Tertiaries in England, is announced, and will be ready in June or
July.
----
Messrs. John Murphy & Co., Baltimore, announce as in
press _The Life And Letters Of The
Rev. Frederick William Faber, D.D._,
Priest of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri.
By Rev. John E. Bowden, priest of the same oratory.
P. F. Cunningham, Philadelphia, has in
press, and will soon publish,
_Ferncliffe_.
----
Books Received.
From Joseph Shannon, Clerk of the Common Council, New York.
Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York for 1868.
From P. Donahoe, Boston:
America in its Relation to Irish Emigration.
By John Francis Maguire,
Member of Parliament for the City of Cork.
Swd. Pp. 24.
From Fields, Osgood & Co., Boston:
The Danish Islands: Are we bound in honor to pay for them?
By James Parton. Swd. Pp. 76. 1869.
-------
{289}
The Catholic World.
Vol. IX., No. 51.-June, 1869.
----------
Spiritism And Spiritists.
[Footnote 64]
[Footnote 64: 1. _Planchette; or, the Despair of
Science_. Being a full Account of Modern Spiritualism, its
Phenomena, and the various Theories regarding it. With a
Survey of French Spiritism. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1869.
2. _Des Rapports de l'Homme avec le Démon_. Essai
Historique et Philosophique. Par Joseph Bizouard, Avocat.
Paris: Gaume Frères et J. Duprey. 1863 et 1864. Tome VI.,
8vo.
3. _The Spirit-Rapper. An Autobiography_. By o. A.
Brownson. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. 1854.
4. _Interesting Facts in relation to Spirit Life and
Manifestations_. By Judge Edmonds. New York: Spiritual
Magnetic Telegraphic Agency.
5. Spiritualism Unveiled, and shown to be the Work of Demons.
By Miles Grant. Boston: _The Crisis_ Office.]
Worcester, in his dictionary, gives as the second meaning of the
word _spiritualism_, "the doctrine that departed spirits
hold communication with men," and gives as his authority O. A.
Brownson. We think this must be a mistake; for Dr. Brownson uses
in his _Spirit-Rapper_, the term _spiritism_, which is
the more proper term, as it avoids confounding the doctrine of
the spiritists with the philosophical doctrine which stands
opposed to materialism, or, more strictly, sensism, and the moral
doctrine opposed to sensualism. We generally use the word
_spiritual_ in religion as opposed to natural, or for the
life and aims of the regenerate, who walk after the spirit, in
opposition to those who walk after the flesh, and are
carnal-minded. To avoid all confusion or ambiguity which would
result from using a word already otherwise appropriated, we
should use the terms _spiritism_, spiritists, and spirital.
The author of _Planchette_ has availed himself largely of
the voluminous work of the learned Joseph Bizouard, the second
work named on our list, and gives all that can be said, and more
than we can say, in favor of spiritism. He has given very fully
one side of the question, all that need be said in support of the
reality of the order of phenomena which he describes, while the
French work gives all sides; but he passes over, we fear
knowingly and intentionally, the dark side of spiritism, and
refuses to tell us the sad effects on sanity and morality which
it is known to produce. A more fruitful cause of insanity and
immorality and even crime does not exist, and cannot be imagined.
{290}
We have no intention of devoting any space specially to
_Planchette_, or the "little plank," which so many treat as
a harmless plaything. It is only one of the forms through which
the phenomena of spiritism are manifested, and is no more and no
less the "despair of science," than any other form of alleged
spirital manifestations. Contemporary science, indeed, or what
passes for science, has shown great ineptness before the alleged
spirit-manifestations; and its professors have, during the twenty
years and over since the Fox girls began to attract public
attention and curiosity, neither been able to disprove the
alleged facts, nor to explain their origin and cause; but this is
because contemporary science recognizes no invisible existences,
and no intelligences above or separate from the human, and
because it is not possible to explain their production or
appearance by any of the unintelligent forces of nature. To deny
their existence is, we think, impossible without discrediting all
human testimony; to regard them as jugglery, or as the result of
trickery practised by the mediums and those associated with them,
seems to us equally impossible. Mr. Miles Grant in his
well-reasoned little work on the subject, says very justly, it
"would only show that we know but little about the facts in the
case. We think," he says, p. 3,
"No one, after a little reflection, would venture to say of the
many thousands and even millions of spiritualists,
[spiritists,] among whom are large numbers of men and women
noted for their intelligence, honesty, and veracity, that they
are only playing tricks on each other! ... Can any one tell
what object all these fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters,
children, dear friends, and loved companions can have in
pretending that they have communications from spirits, when
they know, at the same time, that they are only deceiving each
other by means of trickery?"
In our judgment such an assumption would be a greater violation
of the laws of human nature or the human mind and belief, than
the most marvellous things related by the spiritists, especially
since the order and form of the phenomena they relate are nothing
new, but have been noted in all lands and ages, ever since the
earliest records of the race, as is fully shown by M. Bizouard.
The author of _Planchette_ says the Catholic Church concedes
the facts alleged by spiritists. This, as he states it, may
mislead his readers. The church has not, to our knowledge,
pronounced any official judgment deciding whether these
particular facts are real facts or not; for we are not aware that
the question has ever come distinctly before her for decision.
She has had before her, from the first, the class of facts to
which the alleged spirit-manifestations belong, and has had to
deal with them, in some place, or in some form, every day of her
existence; but we are not aware that she has examined and
pronounced judgment on the particular facts the modern spiritists
allege. She has, undoubtedly, declared the practice of spiritism,
evocation of spirits, consulting them, or holding communication
with them--that is, necromancy--to be unlawful, and she prohibits
it to all her children in the most positive manner, as may be
seen in the case of the American, or rather Scotchman, Daniel
Home, the most famous of modern mediums, and the most dangerous.
For ourselves, we have no doubt of the order of facts to which in
our view the spirit-manifestations so called belong; we have no
difficulties, _a priori_, in admitting them, though we do
not accept the explanation the spiritists give of them; but when
it comes to any particular fact or manifestation alleged, we
judge it according to the generally received rules of evidence,
and we require very strong evidence to convince us of its reality
as a fact.
{291}
We adopt, in regard to them, the same rule that we follow in the
case of alleged miracles. We have not a doubt, nor the shadow of
a doubt, that miracles continue to be wrought in the church, and
are daily wrought in our midst; but we accept or reject this or
that alleged miracle according to the evidence in the case; and,
in point of fact, we are rather sceptical in regard to most of
the popularly received miracles we hear of. Credulity is not a
trait of the Catholic mind. It is the same with us in relation to
this other class of alleged facts. We believe as firmly in the
fact that prodigies are wrought as we do that miracles are; but
do not ask us to believe this or that particular prodigy, unless
you are prepared with the most indubitable evidence. We are far
from believing every event which we know not how to explain is
either a miracle or a prodigy.
We have examined with some care the so-called
spirit-manifestations which the spiritists relate, and we have
come, according to our best reason, to the conclusion that much
in them is trickery, mere jugglery; that much is explicable on
natural principles, or is to be classed with well-known morbid or
abnormal affections of human nature; but, after all abatements,
that there is a residuum inexplicable without the recognition of
a superhuman intelligence and force. We say _superhuman_,
not _supernatural_. The supernatural is God, and what he
does immediately or without the intermediation of natural laws,
as has been more than once explained in this magazine. The
creation of Adam was supernatural; the generation of men from
parents is not supernatural, for it is done by the Creator
through the operation of natural laws or second causes. What is
done by created forces or intelligences, however superior to man,
is not supernatural, nor precisely preternatural, but simply
superhuman, angelic, or demoniac. There is a smack of paganism in
calling it, as most contemporary literature does, supernatural;
for it carries with it the notion that the force or intelligence
is not a creature, but an uncreated _numen_, or an immortal.
Now, what is this superhuman intelligence and force revealed by
these spirit-phenomena? We know that many who admit the phenomena
refuse to admit that they reveal any superhuman force or
intelligence. They explain all by imagination or hallucination.
These, no doubt, play their part, and explain much; but the
author of _Planchette_, as well as M. Bizouard, have, it
seems to us, fully proved that they do not and cannot explain
all, even if they themselves did not need explanation; others
again, to explain them, have recourse to what they call animal
magnetism, or to a force which they call od, odyle, odyllic, or
odic force; but these explain nothing, for we know not what
animal magnetism or what odic force is, nor whether either has
any real existence. These terms do but cover our ignorance. Mr.
Grant ascribes them to demons, and endeavors to show that the
demon mesmerizes the medium who wills with his will, and acts
with his force and intelligence; but our modern science denies
the existence of demons.
{292}
The spiritists themselves pretend that the phenomena are produced
by the presence of departed spirits. But of this there is no
proof. It is acknowledged on all hands that the spirits can
assume any outward form or appearance at will. What means, then,
have we, or can we have, of identifying the individuals
personated by the pretended spirits? The author of
_Planchette_ says, in a note, p. 62:
"If spirits have the power, attributed to them by many seers,
of assuming any appearance at will, it is obvious that some
high spiritual sense must be developed in us before we can be
reasonably sure of the identity of any spirit, even though it
come in bearing the exact resemblance of the person it may
claim to be. We think, therefore, that the fact that the spirit
... bore the aspect of Franklin, and called itself Franklin, is
no sufficient reason for dismissing all doubts as to its
identity. It may be that we must be in the spiritual before we
can really be wisely confident of the identity of any spirit."
That is, we must be ghosts ourselves before we can identify a
ghost, or die in the flesh, and enter the spirit-land, before we
can be sure of the identity of the spirits, or of the truth of
anything they profess to communicate not otherwise verifiable!
It is pretended that the spirits have latterly rendered
themselves visible and tangible. Mr. Livermore, of this city,
sees and embraces his deceased wife, who caresses and kisses him,
and he feels her hands as warm and fleshlike as when she was
living. Suppose the phenomena to be as related, and not eked out
by Mr. Livermore's imagination; the visible body in which she
appeared to him could have been only assumed, and no real body at
all, certainly not her body during life--that lies mouldering in
the grave. And all the spirits teach that the body thrown off at
death does not rise again. They nowhere, that we can find, teach
the resurrection of the flesh, but uniformly deny it. If the
spirits, then, do really render themselves visible and tangible
to our senses, it must be in a simulated body; and why may they
not simulate one form as well as another? The senses of sight and
touch furnish, then, of themselves, no proof that a departed
spirit or a human spirit once alive in the flesh, is present,
communicating through the medium with the living.
The assertion of the pretended spirit of its identity counts for
nothing, whether made by knocks or table-tipping, by writing or
by audible voice and distinct articulation; for the spiritists
themselves concede that some of the spirits, at least, are great
liars, and that they have no criterion by which to distinguish
the lying spirits from the others, if others there are, that seek
to communicate with the living. Conceding all the phenomena
alleged, there is, then, absolutely no proof or evidence that
there are any departed spirits present, or that any communication
from them has ever been received. The spirit of a person may be
simulated as well as his voice, features, form, handwriting, or
anything else characteristic of him. Spiritism, then, contrary to
the pretension of the spiritists, proves neither that the dead
live again, nor that the spirit survives the body. It does not
even prove that there is in man a soul or spirit distinct from
the body. We call the special attention of our readers to this
point, which is worthy of more consideration than it has
received.
The spiritists claim that the alleged spirit-manifestations have
proved the spirituality and immortality of the soul, in
opposition to materialism. This is their boast, and hence it is
that they call their doctrine spiritualism, and seek to establish
for it the authority of a revelation, supplementary to the
Christian revelation. Their whole fabric rests on the assumption
that the manifestations are made by human spirits that have once
lived in the flesh, and live now in the spirit-world, whatever
that may be.
{293}
Set aside this assumption, or show that nothing in the alleged
spirit-manifestations sustains it, and the whole edifice tumbles
to the ground. There is nothing to support this assumption but
the testimony of spirits that often prove themselves lying
spirits, and whose identity with the individual they personate,
or pretend to be, we have no means of proving. Unable to prove
this vital point, the spiritists can prove nothing to the
purpose. The spirits all say there is no resurrection of the
dead, and therefore deny point-blank the doctrine that the dead
live again. If we are unable, as we are, to identify them with
spirits that once lived united with bodies that have mouldered or
are mouldering in their graves, what proof have we, or can they
give, that they are, or ever were, human spirits at all? If they
are not proved to be or to have been human spirits, they afford
no proof that the soul is distinct from the body, or that it is
not material like the body, and perishes with it. If, then, the
men of science have shown themselves little able to explain the
origin and cause of the phenomena, the spiritists have shown
themselves to be very defective as inductive reasoners.
"But the phenomena warrant the induction that they are produced
by spirits of some sort, or that there are intelligences not
clothed with human bodies between whom and us there is more or
less communication." Of themselves alone they warrant no
induction at all, but are simply inexplicable phenomena, the
origin and cause of which lie beyond the reach of scientific
investigation; but, taken in the light of what we know
_aliunde_, they warrant the conclusion that they proceed
from a superhuman cause, and that there are spirits which are, in
some respects, stronger and more intelligent than men; but
whether the particular spirits to whom the spirit-manifestations
in question are to be ascribed are angelic or demoniac, must be
determined by the special character of the manifestations
themselves, the circumstances in which they are made, and the end
they are manifestly designed to effect.
We make here no attack on the inductive method followed in
constructing the physical sciences. We only maintain that the
validity of the induction depends on a principle which is not
itself obtained or obtainable from induction. Hence Herbert
Spencer and the positivists who follow very closely the inductive
method, relegate principles and causes to the "unknowable." The
principle on which the inductive process depends cannot be
attained to by studying the phenomena themselves, but must be
given immediately, either in _a priori_ intuition or in
revelation. Books have been written, like Paley's _Natural
Theology_ and the _Bridgewater Treatises_, to prove, by
way of induction, from the phenomena of the universe, the being
and attributes of God, and it is very generally said that every
object in nature proves that God is, and that no man ever is or
can be really an atheist; but no study of the phenomena of nature
could originate the idea or the word in a mind that had it not.
Men must have the idea expressed in language of some sort before
they can find proofs in the observable phenomena of nature that
God is. Hence, those _savants_ who confound the origination
of the idea or belief with the proofs of its truth, and who see
that the idea or belief is not obtainable by induction, are
really atheists, and say with the fool in his heart, God is--not.
We do not assert that God is, on the authority of revelation; for
we must know that he is before we have or can have any means of
proving the fact of revelation; yet if God had not himself taught
his own being to the first man, and given him a sign signifying
it, the human race could never have known or conceived that he
exists.
{294}
The phenomena or the facts and events of the universe which so
clearly prove that God is, and find in his creative act their
origin and cause, would have been to all men, as they are to the
atheist, simply inexplicable phenomena.
So it is with the spirit-manifestations, whether angelic or
demoniac. The existence of spirits must be known to us, either by
intuition or revelation, before we can assign these phenomena a
spirital origin and cause. We do not and cannot know it
intuitively; and therefore, without recurring to what revelation
teaches us, these manifestations, however striking, wonderful, or
perplexing they might be, would be to us and to all men
inexplicable, and we could not assign them any origin or cause.
Revelation--become traditionary, and so embodied in the common
intelligence through language as to control, unconsciously and
unsuspected, the reasonings even of individuals who pride
themselves on denying it--furnishes the principle needed as the
basis of the induction of the principle and cause of the
spirit-manifestations. Revelation teaches that God has created an
order of intelligences superior to man, called angels, to be the
messengers of his will. Some of these remained faithful to their
Creator, always obedient to his command; others kept not their
first estate, rebelled against their sovereign Lord, were, with
their chief, cast out of heaven into the lower regions, and
became demons or evil spirits.
The spiritists complain of our scientific professors, but without
just reason; for, on the principles of modern science, the proofs
they offer of their doctrines prove nothing but their own logical
ineptness. Science, if it will accept no revelation, and
recognize no principle not obtained by the inductive method, has
no alternative but either to deny the manifestations as facts, or
to admit them only as inexplicable phenomena. The class of facts
are as well authenticated, as facts, as any facts can be; but the
explanation of them by the spiritists is utterly inadmissible,
and sound inductive reasoners, who exclude all revealed
principles, must reject it. The professors are not wrong in
rejecting that explanation as unscientific; for it would be even
more unscientific to admit it; and perhaps, if compelled to do
one or the other, we should hold it more unreasonable to admit it
than to deny outright the facts themselves.
The fault of the professors is in denying the necessity to the
validity of induction of principles neither obtainable nor
provable by induction, and in supposing that we can construct an
adequate science of the universe without the principles which are
given us only by divine revelation. Without these principles we
can explain nothing, and the universe is a vast assemblage of
inexplicable phenomena; for it is only in those principles we do
or can obtain a key to its meaning. Hence, modern science, which
excludes both revelation and intuition _a priori_, explains
nothing, reduces nothing to its principle and cause, and only
generalizes and classifies observable phenomena, which, we
submit, is no science at all. Certainly, we do not pretend that
science is built on faith, as the traditionalists do, or are
accused of doing; but we do say that, without the light of
revelation, we cannot construct an adequate science of the
universe, or explain the various facts and events of history.
{295}
If I did not know from revelation that the devil and his angels
exist, I might observe the facts of satanophany, but I should not
know whence they came, or what they mean. I might be tempted,
vexed, harassed, besieged, possessed, by evil spirits as the
spiritists are; but I should be ignorant of the cause, and
utterly unable to explain my trouble, or to ascribe it to any
cause, far less to satanic invasion. The prodigies would be for
me simply inexplicable prodigies. But, taught by revelation that
the air swarms with evil spirits, the enemies of man, and enemies
of man because enemies of God, we can see at once the explanation
of the spirit-manifestations, and assign them their real
principle and cause.
We know that many who call themselves Christians are disposed to
doubt, if not to deny, the personal existence of satan, and to
maintain that the word, which means an enemy or adversary, is
simply a general term for the sum of the evil influences to which
we are exposed, if not subjected. As if a generalization were
possible where there is nothing concrete! We get rid of no
difficulty by this explanation. Influence supposes some person or
principle from whom or from which proceeds the influence or the
in-flowing. If you deny satan's personal existence, you have no
option but either to deny evil altogether or to admit an original
eternal principle of evil warring against the principle of good,
that is, Manichaeism, or Persian dualism, which, though
Calvinism, indeed, in teaching that evil or sin is something
positive, may imply it, is neither good philosophy nor sound
Christian theology. According to sound philosophy and theology,
God alone hath eternity, and by his word has created heaven and
earth, and all things therein, visible and invisible. All the
works of God are good, very good; and as there is nothing in
existence except himself that he hath not made, it follows
necessarily that evil is not a positive existence, but is simply
negative, the negation or absence of good. It originates and can
originate only in the abuse of his faculties by a creature whom
God hath created and endowed with intelligence and free-will, and
therefore capable of acting wrong as well as right. To assert
that man is subjected or exposed to evil influences leads
necessarily to the assertion of a personal devil who exerts it.
You must, then, either deny all evil influences from a source
foreign to or distinguishable from man's own intrinsic nature, or
else admit the personal existence of satan and his hosts.
Satan and his hosts having rebelled against God, and in refusing
to worship the incarnate Son as God, were cast out of heaven, and
became the bitter enemies of him and the human race. Satan, as
the chief of the fallen angels, evil demons, or devils, carries
on incessant war against God, and seeks to draw men away from
their allegiance to him, and to get himself worshipped by them in
his place. Hence, he seeks by lying wonders to deceive them; by
his prodigies to rival in their belief real miracles; and, by his
pretended revelations of the spirit-world, to substitute belief
in his pretended communications for faith in divine revelation,
and thus reestablish in lands redeemed by Christianity from his
dominion the devil-worship which has never ceased to obtain in
all heathen countries. The holy Scriptures assure us that all the
gods of the heathen are demons or devils. These took possession
of the idols made of wood or stone, gold or silver, [Footnote 65]
had their temples, their priests and priestesses, their service,
and were worshipped as gods.
[Footnote 65: This explains _Planchette_, which is a
step toward the revival of heathen idol-worship.]
{296}
They gave forth oracles, and were consulted, through their
mediums, in all great affairs of state, and their omens and
auguries, which the people consulted to learn the future, as the
spiritists do their mediums. Spiritism belongs to the same order.
The spirits, as Mr. Grant well proves, are demons, and the whole
thing has for its object to reestablish, perhaps in a modified
form, the devil-worship which formerly obtained among all nations
but the Jews or chosen people of God, and still obtains among all
nations not yet Christianized. It began in the grand apostasy of
the Gentiles from the patriarchal religion, which followed the
confusion of tongues at Babel; and the spiritists are doing their
best to revive it in the grand apostasy from the Christian
church, which took place in the sixteenth century, and of which
we have such clear and unmistakable predictions in the New
Testament. So adroitly has satan managed, that, if it were
possible, the very elect would be deceived. So much we say of the
origin and cause of the spirit-manifestations.
If we examine more closely these manifestations, we shall find
evidence enough of their satanic character. All satanic invasions
bring trouble or perturbation, while the angelic visitations
always bring calm, peace, and order. The divine oracles are
clear, precise, distinct, free from all ambiguity; for he who
gives them knows all his works from their beginning to their end.
Satan's oracles are always ambiguous, stammering, and usually
deceive or mislead those who trust them. Satan is a creature, and
his power and intelligence, though superhuman, are not unlimited.
The universe has secrets he cannot penetrate, and he can do no
more than his and our Creator permits. He has no prophetic power,
for God keeps his own counsels. He can only guess or infer the
future from his knowledge of the present. He has no creative
power, and can never produce any thing as first cause. Hence, he
can operate only with materials fitted to his hand. The
spiritists tell us that it is not every one that can be a medium.
It is only persons of a certain temperament, found much oftener
among women than among men, and, among men, only with those of a
feminine character, and wanting alike in manly vigor and robust
health. The spirits can communicate only through such as nature
or habit has fitted to be mediums, and the communications have
always something of the character of the medium through which
they are made. The limited power of satan, his inability to know
the future, which exists only in the divine decree, and his lack
of power to form his own medium, render the spirit-communications
extremely vague, uncertain, obscure, and feeble.
The dependence of satan on the medium is manifest. The spirits
will not communicate if anything disturbs the medium, or puts the
pythoness out of humor, like the presence of hard-headed
sceptics, or a too critical examination by keen-sighted
scientific professors determined not to be deceived. Their
communications, oral or written, from the pretended spirits of
distinguished authors, poets, philosophers, statesmen, are by no
means creditable to satan as a scholar or a gentleman. Then
again, the spirits really tell us nothing that amounts to
anything of the spirit-world. Their representations make it a dim
and shadowy region, in which the spirits of the departed wander
about hither and thither, without end or aim, apparently worse
off than in the Elysian fields of the ancients, which resemble
more the Christian hell than the Christian's heaven.
{297}
There is an air of unreality about them; they are the umbrae of
heathen philosophy, not living existences; and their region, or,
more properly, their state, would be distressing, if one believed
at all in the representations given by them. One thing is
evident--the spirits know or can say nothing of the beatific
vision, which proves that they are not blessed angels. They do
not see God, and are clearly banished from his presence. He forms
not the light nor the blessedness of their state. They seem, like
troubled ghosts, to linger around the places where they lived in
the body, pale, thin, shadowy, miserable, anxious to communicate
with the living but only occasionally permitted to do so, and
even then only to a feeble extent. Friends and acquaintances in
this life may recognize, we are told, each other in the
spirit-world, but whether with pleasure or pain, it is difficult
to say. The picture of their disembodied life is very sad, and
the Christian soul finds it dark, hopeless, cheerless, and
depressing; as the condition of those doomed to take up their
abode with the devil and his angels must necessarily be.
The doctrines the spirits teach and confirm with lying wonders
are what the apostle calls "the doctrines of devils." They are
unanimous in declaring that there is no devil and no hell. God
may not be absolutely denied, but his personality is obscured,
and he appears only in the distance, as an infinite abstraction,
being only in the sense in which, Hegel might say, being and
not-being are identical--remote from all contemplation,
indifferent to what is going on in the world below him, asking
neither prayers nor worship, love nor veneration, praise nor
thanksgiving, and receiving none. The spirits echo the dominant
sentiments of the age, and especially of the circle with which
they communicate. They are, where they are not held in check by
the lingering respect of the circle for Christianity, furious
radicals, great sticklers for progress without divine aid, and of
development without a created germ. Yet the doctrines they teach
are such as they find in germ, if not developed, in the minds of
their mediums. They sometimes deny every distinctively Christian
doctrine, and are sure to pervert what of the faith they do not
expressly deny. In general, they assert that the form of religion
called Christianity has had its day, and that there is a new and
sublimer form about to be developed, and that they come to
announce it, and to prepare the way for it. The new form of
religion will free the world from the old church, from bondage to
the Bible, to creeds and dogmas, the old patriarchal systems and
governments, and place the religious, social, and political world
on a higher plane, and moved by a more energetic spirit of
progress. This is the mission of spiritism. It is destined to
carry on and complete the work commenced by Christ, but which he
left unfinished, and inchoate.
The special object of the spirits, it is pretended, is to
convince the world of the immortality of the soul; but in what
form, what condition, what sense? The immortality of the soul, or
its survival of the body, was generally believed by the heathens,
however addicted to demon-worship they might be; but the life and
immortality brought to light by the Gospel they did not believe,
and the spirits do not teach it or affirm it. The spirits seem to
know nothing of immortal life in God, and into which the
sanctified soul enters when it departs this life, and is purified
from all the stains it may have contracted in the flesh.
{298}
The only immortality they offer is the immortality of evil demons
or the angels who kept not their first estate. But even of such
an immortality for the human soul, they offer no proof. They are
lying spirits, and their word is worthless, and their identity
with human souls once united to human bodies which they
personate, is not and cannot be established. They deny the
resurrection of the dead, which St. Paul preached at Athens, and
they give, as we have seen, no proofs that the soul does not die
and perish with the body. Their doctrines are simply calculated
to deceive the unwary, to draw them away from their allegiance to
the Lord of heaven, and to drag them down to the region where
dwell the angels that fell.
The ethical doctrines of the spirits are as bad as can be
imagined, and the morals of the advanced spiritists would appear
to be of the lowest and most revolting sort. It matters not that
the spirits give, now and then, some good advice, and say some
true things; for the object of satan is to deceive, and his
practice is usually to lie and deceive by telling the truth. The
truth he tells gains him credit, and secures confidence in him as
a guide. But he takes good care that the truth he tells shall
have all the effect of falsehood. He gives good moral advice, but
he removes all motives for following it, and takes away all moral
restraints. He wars against authority in matters of faith and
morals, as repugnant to the rights of reason, and in political
and domestic life as repugnant to liberty and the rights of women
and children. All should do right and seek what is good, but no
one should be constrained; only voluntary obedience is
meritorious; forced obedience is no virtue. The sentiments and
affections should be as free as the air we breathe, and to
attempt to restrain them is to war against nature herself. They
are not voluntary either in their origin or nature, and therefore
are not and should not be subjected to an outward law. Love, the
apostle tells us, is the fulfilling of the law, the bond of
perfection. How wrong, then, to undertake to put gyves on love,
to constrain it, or to subject it to the petty conventionalities
of a moribund society, or the rules of an antiquated morality!
Taking no note of the distinction between the supernatural love,
which Christians call charity, and love as a natural sentiment,
and as little of the distinction between the different sorts of
love even as a natural sentiment, as the love of parents for
children and children for parents, the love of friends, the love
of country, the love of truth and justice, and the love of the
sexes for each other, or simply sexual love, satan lays the
foundation, as we can easily see, if not blinded by his
delusions, for the grossest corruption and the most beastly
immorality.
Hence the spiritists very generally look upon the marriage law as
tyrannical and absurd, and assert the doctrine of free love. The
marriage is in the love, and when the love is no more, the
marriage is dissolved. None of our sentiments depend on the will;
hence, self-denial is unnatural, and immoral. Prostitution is
wrong, for no love redeems and hallows it; and for the same
reason it is immoral for a man and a woman to live together as
husband and wife, after they have ceased to love each other. It
is easy to see to what this leads, and we cannot be surprised to
find conjugal fidelity not reckoned as a virtue by spiritists; to
find wives leaving their husbands, and husbands their wives, or
the wife choosing a new husband as often as she pleases or wills;
and the husband taking a new wife when tired of the old, or an
additional wife or two, Mormon-like, when one at a time is not
enough.
{299}
Indeed, Mormonism is only one form and the most strictly
organized form, of contemporary spiritism, and woman's-rightism
is only another product of the same shop, though doubtless many
of the women carried away by it are pure-minded and chaste. But
the leaders are spiritists or intimately connected with them. The
_animus_ of the woman movement is hostility to the marriage
law, and the cares and drudgery of maternity and home life. It
threatens to be not the least of the corrupting and dangerous
forms of spiritism.
Mr. Grant, who is a staunch Protestant, and hates Catholicity
with a most hearty hatred, gives, on adequate authority, a sketch
of the immorality of spiritists which should startle the
community: we make an extract:
"We pass to notice some further facts relative to the
_moral_ tendency of spiritualism. We have read its
_claims_, and found them very high; but there is abundant
proof to show that, instead of its being 'ancient Christianity
revived,' it is the worst enemy Christianity ever had to meet.
We believe it to be satan's last grand effort to substitute a
false for the true Christianity. His snares are laid most
ingeniously; and, unless very watchful, ere people are aware of
it, they will be caught in some of his traps. Thousands and
millions are already his deluded victims, and, like a terrible
tornado, he is sweeping with destruction on every side.
Occasionally we hear a warning voice from one who has escaped
from his power, like a mariner from the sinking wreck; but
most, after they once get into the spiritualist 'circle,' are
like the boatman under the control of the terrible whirlpool on
the coast of Norway--destruction is sure.
"The next witness we introduce is Mr. J. F. Whitney, editor of
the New York _Pathfinder._ He was formerly a warm advocate
of spiritualism, and published much in its favor. He says:
"'Now, after a long and constant watchfulness, seeing for
months and years its progress and its practical workings
upon its devotees, its believers, and its mediums, we are
compelled to speak our honest conviction, which is, that the
manifestations coming through the acknowledged mediums, who
are designated as rapping, tipping, writing, and entranced
mediums, have a baneful influence upon believers, and create
discord and confusion; that the generality of these
teachings inculcate false ideas, approve of selfish,
individual acts, and endorse theories and principles which,
when carried out, _debase_ and make them _little
better than the brute_.'
"Again he says: 'Seeing as we have the gradual progress it
makes with its believers, particularly its mediums, from
lives of _morality_ to those of _sensuality_ and
_immorality_, gradually and cautiously undermining the
foundation of good principles, we look back with amazement
to the radical change which a few months will bring about in
individuals.'
"He says in conclusion: 'We desire to send forth our warning
voice; and if our humble position as the head of a public
journal, our known advocacy of spiritualism, our experience,
and the conspicuous part we have played among its believers;
the honesty and the fearlessness with which we have defended
the subject, will weigh anything in our favor, we desire
that our opinions may be received, and those who are moving
passively down the rushing rapids to destruction, should
pause, ere it be too late, and save themselves from the
blasting influence which those manifestations are causing.'
"Forbidding To Marry.
"Among other instructions of the spirits, the apostle Paul has
assured us that they will be opposed to the marriage
laws,'forbidding to marry.' I Tim. iv. 3.
"At the Rutland (Vt.) Reform Spiritualist Convention, held in
June, 1858, the following resolution was presented and
defended:
"'_Resolved_, That the only true and natural marriage is
an exclusive conjugal love between one man and one woman; and
the only true home is the isolated home, based upon this
exclusive love.'
"The careless reader may see nothing objectionable in the
resolution; but please read it again and observe what
constitutes _marriage_, according to the resolution,'an
exclusive conjugal LOVE between one man and one woman.'
{300}
The poison sentiment is covered up by the word '_one_.'
What constitutes marriage now, according to the laws of the
land? Do we understand that, when we see a notice of a
marriage in a paper, which took place at a certain time and
place, that then the parties began to love each other
exclusively? Certainly not; but at that time their love was
sanctioned by the proper authorities, and thus they became
husband and wife. But the resolution states that the
_marriage_ should consist in the 'exclusive conjugal
_love_.' Then it follows, when either party loves another
exclusively, the first marriage is dissolved, and they are
married again; and if the other one does not happen to find a
spiritual 'affinity,' then there is no alternative left but to
make the best of it, as many have been compelled to do.
According to this resolution, one is married as often as his
love becomes '_exclusive_' for any particular individual.
This is one item in the boasted 'new social order,' which the
spirits propose to establish when the political power is in
their hands. It is called by them the 'Divine Law of
Marriage.' A large number of spiritualists are already
carrying out this resolution practically, regardless of the
laws of the land.
"A similar resolution was presented at the National Spiritual
Convention held in Chicago, from Aug. 9th to 14th, 1864 It was
offered by Dr. A. G. Parker, of Boston, chairman of the
committee on social relations. This point is strongly urged by
the spirits and spiritualists.
"At the Rutland Reform Convention, which closed June 27th,
1858, the resolution under consideration was earnestly
advocated by able men and women. Said Mrs. Julia Branch, of New
York, as reported in _The Banner of Light_, July 10th,
1858, when speaking on the resolution: 'I am aware that I have
chosen almost a forbidden subject; forbidden from the fact that
any one who _can_ or _dare_ look the marriage
question in the face, candidly and openly denouncing the
institution as the sole cause of woman's degradation and
misery, are objects of suspicion, of scorn, and opprobrious
epithets.'
"She further remarked in the defence of the resolution, and the
rights of women, 'She must demand her freedom; her right to
receive the equal wages of man in payment for her labor; _her
right to have children when she will, and by whom_.'"
Much more to the same effect, and even more startling, we might
quote; we might give the account of the spiritist community at
Berlin, Ohio; but we have no wish to disgust our readers, and
this is enough for our purpose; it is sufficient to prove to all,
not under the delusion, that spiritism is of satanic origin, and
to be eschewed by all who wish to remain morally sane, and to
lead honest and upright lives. We are not disposed to be
alarmists, and, like the majority of our countrymen, are more
likely to err on the side of optimism than of pessimism; but we
cannot contemplate the rapid spread of spiritism since 1847, when
it began with the Fox girls, without feeling that a really great
danger threatens the modern world, and that there is ample reason
for all who do not wish to see demon-worship supplanting the
worship of God throughout the land, to be on their guard. Mr.
Grant, who seems to be well informed on the subject, tells us
that since that period, spiritism "has become world-wide in its
influence, numbering among its ardent supporters many of the
first men and women of both continents. Ministers, doctors,
lawyers, judges, congressmen, governors, presidents, queens,
kings, and emperors, of all religions, are bowing to its
influence, and showing their sympathy with its teachings."
Mr. Grant should not say, "of all religions;" some Catholics may
have become spiritists, but they cannot become so, and persist in
following spiritism without severing themselves from the church.
Some spiritists have been told by the spirits to become
Catholics; but the church has required them to give up spiritism,
and they have either done so, or left her communion, like Daniel
Home, and returned to their communion with the demons. The church
forbids her children to have any dealings with devils. But with
this rectification the statement is not exaggerated.
{301}
The spread of spiritism has been prodigious, and proves not only
the power and cunning of satan, but that the way for his success
had been well prepared, and that no small portion of the modern
world were in the moral condition of the old world at the epoch
of the great Gentile apostasy, and ready to return to the heathen
darkness and superstition, the vice and corruption, from which
the Gospel had rescued them, or, at least, had rescued their
ancestors.
We know not the number of spiritists in our country. We have seen
it stated that they reckon their numbers by millions; but there
can be no doubt that they include a very large portion of our
whole population. Has this fact anything to do with the
astounding increase of vice and crime in our country within the
last few years, the undeniable corruption of morals and manners,
and the growing frequency of murder and suicide? Senator Sprague,
an honorable and an honest man and a true patriot, stated, the
other day, in his place in the Senate of the United States, that
our country is morally and politically more corrupt than any
other country in the civilized world. We hope he is mistaken, but
we are afraid that he is not wholly wrong. It is idle to
attribute this corruption to the influences of the late civil
war, and still idler or worse than idle, to attribute it, as some
do, to the heavy influx of foreigners; for, though among those
are many old-world criminals, the great body of the foreigners,
when they land here, are far more moral, honest, upright,
conscientious, than the average of native Americans; and though
they soon prove that "evil communications corrupt good manners,"
much of the patriot's hope for the future depends on them,
especially the Catholic portion of them, if, in due season, their
children can be brought under the influence of the church, and
receive a proper Catholic training.
Unhappily, the simple, natural virtues of former times, such as
existed in ancient Greece and Rome, and exist even now in some
pagan and Mohammedan countries, have, to a fearful extent, been
lost with us, and the sects have nothing with which to supply
their place, or to oppose to this terrible satanic invasion. They
have indeed done much to prepare the way for it, and are doing
still more, by their opposition to the church, to render it
successful. But, though the danger is great and pressing, we are
not disposed to think, with Mr. Grant, that we are in what he
calls the "world's crisis." The danger is far less than it was;
because the satanic origin and character of the so-called
spirit-manifestations are widely suspected, and are beginning to
be exposed. Satan is powerless in the open day. He is never
dangerous when seen and known to be satan. He must always
disguise himself as an angel of light, and appear as the defender
of some cause which, in its time and place, is good, but,
mistimed and misplaced, is evil. He has done wonders in our day
as a philanthropist, and met with marvellous success as a
humanitarian, and will, perhaps, meet with more still as the
champion of free love and women's rights. But he has no power
over the elect, and, though he may besiege the virtuous and the
holy, he can captivate only the children of disobedience, who are
already the victims of their own pride, vanity, lust, or
unbelief.
The end of the world may be at hand, and these lying signs and
wonders may be the precursors of antichrist; but we do not think
the end is just yet. Faith has not yet wholly died out, and the
church has seen, perhaps, darker days than the present.
{302}
The power of Christ, or his patience, is not yet exhausted; the
gospel of the kingdom has not yet been preached to all nations;
three fourths of the human race remain as yet unconverted, and we
cannot believe that the church has as yet fulfilled her mission,
and Christianity done its work. Too many of the sentinels have
slept at their posts, and there has been a fearful lack of
vigilance and alertness of which the enemy has taken advantage.
The sleepers in Zion are many; but these satanic knocks and raps,
and these tippings of tables, and this horrid din and racket of
the spirits to indicate their presence, can hardly fail to awaken
them, unless they are really sleeping the sleep of death. The
church is still standing, and if her children will watch and
pray, she can battle with the enemy as successfully as she has
done so many times before.
Many Catholics have had their doubts of the reality of the
alleged spirit-manifestations, and, even conceding them as facts,
have been slow to recognize their satanic origin and character.
But those doubts are now generally removed. The fearful moral and
spiritual ravages of spiritism have dispelled or are fast
dispelling them, and it will go hard but here and now as always
and everywhere, what satan regards as a splendid triumph shall
turn out against him and bring him to shame. Thus far in his war
against the Son of God all his victories have been his defeats.
One thing is certain, that the only power there is to resist this
satanic invasion is the Catholic Church; and there is, unless we
greatly deceive ourselves, a growing interest in the Catholic
question far beyond any that has heretofore been felt. Thinking
and well-disposed men see and feel the impotence of the sects;
that they have no divine life, and no divine support; that they
stand in human folly, rather than even in human wisdom. Eminent
Protestant ministers eloquently proclaim and conclusively show
that Protestantism was a blunder, and has proved a failure; and
there springs up a growing feeling among the more intelligent and
well-disposed of our non-Catholic countrymen, that the judgment
rendered against the church by the Reformers in the sixteenth
century was hasty, and needs revision, perhaps a reversal. This
feeling, if it continues to grow, can augur but ill for the
ultimate success of satan and his followers.
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{303}
Daybreak.