Of the Director and Council of New Netherland respecting loose

Wampum.--Passed, 30 November, 1647.

"_Resolved_ and concluded in Council at _Fort

Amsterdam_, that, until further Order, the loose Wampum

shall continue current and in circulation only that, in the

mean while, all imperfect, broken, or unpierced beads can be

picked out, which are declared Bullion, and shall, meantime, be

received at the Company's counting-house as heretofore.

Provided that the Company, or any one on its part, shall, in

return, be at liberty to trade therewith among the Merchants or

otter Inhabitants, or in larger parcels, as may be agreed upon

and stipulated by any individual, or on behalf of the Company."

{655}

"Ordinance

Of the Director and Council of _New Netherland_ further

regulating the currency.--Passed 14 September, 1650.

"The Director-General and Council of _New Netherland_, To

all those who hear, see, or read these presents, Greeting.

Whereas, on the daily complaints of the inhabitants, we

experience that our previous Ordinance and Edict relative to

the poor strung Wampum, published under date 30 May, A° 1650,

for the accommodation and protection of the people, is not

observed and obeyed according to our good intention and

meaning; but that, on the contrary, such pay, even for small

items, is rejected and refused by Shopkeepers, Brewers,

Tapsters, Tradespeople, and Laboring men, to the great

confusion and inconvenience of the Inhabitants in general,

there being, at present, no other currency whereby the

Inhabitants can procure from each other small articles of daily

trade; for which wishing to provide as much as possible, for

the relief and protection of the Inhabitants, the Director and

Council do hereby Ordain and command that, in conformity to our

previous Ordinance, the poor strung Wampum shall be current and

accepted by every one without distinction and exception for

small and daily necessary commodities required for

housekeeping, as currency to the amount of Twelve guilders and

under only, in poor strung wampum; of twelve to twenty-four

guilders half and half, that is to say, half poor strung and

half good strung Wampum; of twenty guilders to fifty guilders,

one third poor strung and two thirds good strung wampum, and in

larger sums according to the conditions agreed upon between

Buyer and Seller, under a penalty of six guilders for the first

time, to be forfeited on refusal by contraveneor hereof; for

the second time nine guilders, and for the third time two

pounds Flemish and stoppage of his trade and business, pursuant

to our previous Edicts.

"Thus done and enacted in Council by the Director and Council,

this 14 September, 1650, in _New Amsterdam_."

"Ordinance

Of the Director-General and Council of _New Netherland_

regulating the currency.--Passed 3 January, 1657.

"The Director-General and Council of New Netherland,

"To all those who see or hear these presents read, Greeting,

make known.

"Whereas they, to their great regret, are by their own

experience daily informed, and by the manifold complaints of

Inhabitants and Strangers importuned, respecting the great,

excessive and intolerable dearness of all sorts of necessary

commodities and household supplies, the prices of which are

enhanced from time to time, principally among other causes, in

consequence of the high price of Beaver and other Peltries in

this country beyond the value, which, by reason of the great

abundance of Wampum, is advanced to ten, eleven and twelve

guilders for one Beaver; And Wampum being, for want of Silver

and Gold coin, as yet the most general and common currency

between man and man, Buyer and Seller, domestic articles and

daily necessaries are rated according to that price, and become

dearer from time to time; the rather, as not only Merchants,

but also, consequently, Shopkeepers, Tradesmen, Brewers,

Bakers, Tapsters, and Grocers make a difference of 30, 40, to

50 per cent when they sell their wares for Wampum or for

Beaver. This tends, then, so far to the serious damage,

distress and loss of the common Mechanics, Brewers, Farmers and

other good Inhabitants of this Province, that the Superior and

inferior magistrates of this Province are blamed, abused and

cursed by Strangers and Inhabitants, and the Country in general

receives a bad name, while some greedy people do not hesitate

to sell the most necessary eatables and drinkables, according

to their insatiable avarice; viz., the can of Vinegar at 18 @

20 stivers; the can of Oil at 4 @ 5 guilders; the can of French

wine at 40 @ 45 stivers; the gill of Brandy at 15 stivers, and

two quarts of home brewed Beer, far above its price, at 14@15

stivers, &c., which the greater number endeavor to excuse on

the ground that they lose a great deal in the counting of the

Wampum; that it is partly short and partly long; that they must

give 11@12 and more guilders before they can convert the wampum

into Beaver."

So that, at last, the home government took it up, and in 1659

they wrote to the council at New Amsterdam, among other things:

{656}

"From this particular reduction of the Wampum a second general

reduction must necessarily follow, if the depreciation thereof

is to be prevented. This arises in consequence of the great

importation of Wampum from New-England, which barters therewith

and carries out of the country not only the best cargoes sent

hence, but also a large quantity of beaver and other peltries,

whereby the Company is defrauded of its revenues and the

merchants here of good returns, while the Factors and

inhabitants there remain with chests full of Wampum, which is a

currency utterly valueless except among New Netherland Indians

only," etc.

The rate of depreciation may be discovered from the fact that an

ordinance passed in April, 1641, fixed it at 4 polished and 5

unpolished for one stiver, while another, passed in December,

1662, fixed it at 24 for one stiver; and that in 1650 it was

fixed at 6 white and 3 black for one stiver, and twelve years

afterward at 24 white and 12 black for one stiver--making what

President Johnson would call a depreciation of 400 per cent in

that short time.

Religion.

The government interfered very much in religious matters, seeming

to aim not so much at protection against molestation as to

produce conformity of opinion, by making the people view such

things as the Director and Council did.

Between April, 1641, and November, 1673, fourteen ordinances were

passed concerning Sunday. And between June, 1641, and November,

1673, there were sixteen ordinances as to religion.

As to Sunday, the laws were:

11 April, 1641.--"No person shall attempt to tap beer or any

other strong drink during divine service, nor use any other

measure than that which is in common use at Amsterdam."

This law was preceded by a recital:

"Whereas complaints have been made to us that some of the

inhabitants here are in the habit of Tapping Beer during Divine

Service, and of making use of small foreign Measures, which

tends to the dishonor of religion and the ruin of this state."

13 May, 1647.--"None of the Brewers, Tapsters and

Tavern-keepers shall on the rest day of the Lord by us called

Sunday, before two of the clock when there is no sermon, or,

otherwise, before four o'clock in the afternoon, set before,

tap or give any people any Wine, Beer or strong liquors of any

kind whatever, and under any pretext, be it what it may," etc.

That law has this preamble:

"Whereas we see and observe by experience, the great disorders

in which some of our inhabitants indulge in drinking to excess,

quarreling, fighting, and smiting, even on the Lord's day of

rest, whereof, God help us! we have seen and heard sorrowful

instances on last Sunday," etc.

10 March, 1648.--After reciting that the former edict is

disobeyed, they say,

"The reason and cause why this our good Edict and well meant

Ordinance is not obeyed according to the tenor and purport

thereof, are that this sort of business and the profit easily

accruing therefrom divert and lead many from their original and

primitive calling, occupation and business, to resort to

Tavern-keeping, so that nearly the just fourth of the city of

New Amsterdam consists of Brandyshops, Tobacco or Beer-houses."

And they enact, among other things, that tapsters and

tavern-keepers shall not

"sell nor furnish Beer or Liquor to any person, travellers and

boarders alone excepted, on the Sunday, before three o'clock in

the afternoon, when Divine Service is finished."

{657}

29 April, 1648.--After complaining again of non-observance of

former laws, they renew and amplify previous edicts, and declare

that,

"having for the stricter observance thereof, with the preadvice

of the Minister of the Gospel, deemed it expedient that a

sermon shall be preached from the sacred Scriptures, and the

usual prayers and thanksgivings offered from this time forward

in the afternoon as well as the forenoon," etc., and forbid all

tapping, fishing, hunting, and business during divine service.

26 October, 1656.--Repeating their complaints, they enact an

ordinance against performing on Sunday any work, such as

ploughing, mowing, building, etc., and, as they term it,

"much less any lower or unlawful exercise and amusement.

Drunkenness, frequenting Taverns or Tippling-houses, Dancing,

Playing ball, Cards, Trick-Track, Tennis, Cricket or Nine-pins,

going on pleasure parties in a boat, car or wagon, _before,

between or during Divine Service_," and forbidding the sale

of liquor "_before, between or during the sermons_," etc.

12 June, 1657.--They forbid all persons, "of what nation or rank

he may be," to entertain any company on Sunday or during divine

service.

18 November, 1661.--They forbid all work on Sunday under "the

penalty of £1 Flemish for the first time, double as much for the

second time, and _four times double as much_ for the third

time." (Silent as to the fourth time.)

And they forbid all entertainments in taverns, and any giving

away or selling any liquor.

10 September, 1663.--The director-general and council of New

Amsterdam passed an ordinance against which the burgomasters and

schepens of New Amsterdam rebelled, and which they refused to

enforce, for the reason that it was "too severe and too much in

opposition to the Freedoms of Holland."

That law extended the former laws to the whole of Sunday from

sunrise to sunset, and in addition prohibited any riding in cars

or wagons, any roving in search of nuts or strawberries, and the

"too unrestrained and excessive playing, shouting and screaming

of children in the streets."

16 June, 1641.--They began by securing to all Englishmen who

might settle with them "the free exercise of Religion."

16 November, 1644.--They granted to the town of Hempstead the

power of using and exercising "the Reformed Religion with the

Ecclesiastical discipline thereunto belonging."

10 October, 1645--They granted to the town of Flushing the

"Liberty of Conscience according to the Custom and manner of

Holland, without molestation or disturbance from any magistrate

or any other Ecclesiastical minister."

19 December, 1645.--They made the same grant to Gravesend.

At a later day a change seems to have come over them, as witness

the following:

"Ordinance

Of the Director and Council of New Netherland against

Conventicles.--Passed 1 February, 1656.

"Whereas the Director and Council of _New Netherland_ are

credibly informed and apprized that here and there within this

Province not only are Conventicles and Meetings held, but also

that some unqualified persons in such Meetings assume the

ministerial office, the expounding and explanation of the Holy

word of God, without being called or appointed thereto by

ecclesiastical or civil authority, which is in direct

contravention and opposition to the general Civil and

Ecclesiastical order of our Fatherland; besides that many

dangerous Heresies and Schisms are to be apprehended from such

manner of meetings. Therefore, the Director General and Council

aforesaid hereby absolutely and expressly forbid all such

conventicles and meetings, whether public or private, differing

from the customary and not only lawful but scripturally founded

and ordained meetings of the Reformed Divine service, as this

is observed and enforced according to the Synod of Dordrecht,"

etc.

{658}

On 21 September, 1662, they enacted that "beside the Reformed

worship and service, no conventicles or meetings shall be kept in

the province, whether it be in houses, barnes, ships, barkes, nor

in the woods nor fields."

In December, 1656, they enacted an ordinance containing this,

among other things:

"Further, whenever, early in the morning or after supper in the

evening, prayers shall be said, or God's word read, by any one

thereunto commissioned, every person, of what quality soever he

may be, shall repair to hear it with becoming reverence.

"No man shall raise or bring forward any question or argument

on the subject of religion, on pain of being placed on bread

and water three days in the ship's galley. And if any

difficulties should arise out of the said disputes, the author

thereof shall be arbitrarily punished."

They repeatedly passed ordinances requiring their officers to be

of the reformed religion.

"Ordinance

Of the Director-General and Council of New Netherland

prohibiting the bringing of Quakers and other Strollers into

New Netherland.--Passed 17 May, 1663.

"The Director-General and Council of New Netherland, To all

those who shall see or hear these Presents read, Greeting, make

known.

"Whereas we daily find that many Vagabonds, Quakers and other

Fugitives are, without the previous knowledge and consent of

the Director General and Council, conveyed, brought and landed

in this Government, and sojourn and remain in the respective

Villages of this Province without those bringing them giving

notice thereof, or such persons addressing themselves to the

government and showing whence they come, as they ought to do,

or that they have taken the oath of fidelity the same as other

Inhabitants; the Director General and Council, therefore, do

hereby Order and command all Skippers, Sloop Captains and

others, whosoever they may be, not to convey or bring, much

less to land, within this government, any such Vagabonds,

Quakers and other Fugitives, whether Men or Women, unless they

have first addressed themselves to the government, have given

information thereof, and asked and obtained consent on pain of

the importers forfeiting a fine of twenty pounds Flemish for

every person, whether Man or Woman, whom they will have brought

in and landed without the consent or previous Knowledge of the

Director General and Council, and, in addition, be obliged

immediately to depart out of this government with such

persons."

17 March, 1664, they ordained that the schoolmasters shall appear

in church with their scholars, on Wednesday before divine

service, and be examined after service by the minister and

elders, "as to what they have committed to memory of the

Christian Commandments and Catechism, and what progress they have

made."

On 1 October, 1673, 8 November, 1673, and 15 January, 1674, they

passed ordinances that the sheriff and magistrates, or the schout

and magistrates, each in his quality, take care that the reformed

Christian religion be maintained in conformity to the Synod of

Dordrecht, (or Synod of Dort,) without suffering or permitting

any other sects attempting any thing contrary thereto, or

suffering any attempt to be made against it by any other

sectaries.

On 12 November, 1661, they passed a law imposing "a land tax at

Esopus to defray the expense of building a Minister's House

there."

On 13 February, 1657, the court of Breuckelen (Brooklyn) imposed

an assessment on that town to pay "the Rev. Minister De J.

Theodorus Polhemius fl 300," as a supplement of his promised

salary and yearly allowance.

Miscellaneous.

A few more instances of the manner in which our staid and quiet

Dutch progenitors managed their affairs will suffice for this

paper, already long enough.

{659}

_The Ferry_.--In an ordinance regulating the ferry at the

Manhattans, passed 1 July, 1654, it was among other things

enacted:

"Item. The Lessee shall be bound to accommodate the passengers

on summer days only from 5 O'clock in the morning till 8

O'clock in the evening, provided the windmill [Footnote 167]

hath not taken in its sail.

[Footnote 167: The windmill here spoken of stood on the old

Battery, and seemed to serve as a barometer or indicator of

bad weather to all the people.]

"Item. The Lessee shall receive ordinary Ferriage during the

Winter from 7 O'clock in the morning to 5 O'clock in the

evening; but he shall not be bound, except he please, to convey

any one over in a tempest, or when the windmill hath lowered

its sail in consequence of storm or otherwise."

_Wages_.--In 1653, the director and council of New

Netherland passed an ordinance fixing the rate of wages to be

paid to carpenters, masons, etc. But the directors at Amsterdam

disapproved of it "as impracticable."

_Fast Driving_.--Here, now, is a law which would illy enough

suit our times, and which shows us how queer were the times when

such a regulation could exist.

"Ordinance

Of the Director and Council of New Netherland regulating the

driving of Wagons, Carts, etc., in New Amsterdam.--Passed 27

June, 1652.

"The Director-General and Council of _New Netherland_, in

order to prevent accidents, do hereby Ordain that no Wagons,

Carts or Sleighs shall be run, rode or driven at a gallop

within this city of _New Amsterdam;_ that the drivers and

conductors of all Wagons, Carts and Sleighs within this city

shall not sit or stand on them, but now henceforth within this

City (the Broad Highway alone excepted) shall walk by the

Wagons, Carts or Sleighs, and so take and lead the horses."

_Danger from Fire_s.--They passed quite a number of

ordinances on this subject.

In January, 1648, they recite that the people do not keep their

chimneys clean, whereby "greater damage is to be expected in

future from fire, the rather as the houses here in New Amsterdam

are, for the most part, built of wood, and thatched with reed,

beside which the chimneys of some of the houses are of wood,

which is most dangerous;" and they forbid any more wooden

chimneys, but those already built may remain.

They appoint as fire wardens to see that the chimneys are kept

clean, "from the Hon. Council, Commissary Adriaen D'Keyser; from

the commonalty, Thomas Hall, Marten Crigier and George Wolsey."

On 28 September, 1648, they direct the fire wardens to visit

every house, "and see that every one is keeping his chimney

properly clean by sweeping."

And finally, on 15 December, 1657, they passed a law which

complains, as usual, of the non-observance of former laws, and

recites that "divers calamities and accidents have been caused,

and are still to be apprehended, from fire; yea, a total ruin of

this city, inasmuch as it daily begins to be compactly built,"

etc.;

And enact that "all thatched roofs and wooden chimneys, Hay ricks

and hay stacks within this city shall be broken up, and removed

within the time of four consecutive months," "to be promptly put

in execution for every house, whether small or large, Hay rick,

or hay stack, or wooden chimney, hen houses, or hog pens," etc.;

And then, after reciting that "whereas, in all well ordered

Cities and Towns it is customary that Fire Buckets, Ladders, and

Hooks be found provided about the corner the streets and in

public houses," they authorize the burgomaster, "to send by the

first opportunity to Fatherland for one hundred to 150 Leather

Fire Buckets," etc.

{660}

_Marriages_.--On 15 January, 1658, after reciting that "the

Director General and Council not only are informed, but have even

seen and remarked that some persons, after the proclamation and

publication for the third time of their bans, or intention of

marriage, do not proceed further with the solemnization of their

marriage, as they ought, but postpone it from time to time, not

only weeks, but some months, which is directly contrary to, and

in contravention of, the good order and custom of our

Fatherland:"

They enact that marriage must be solemnized within one month

after the last publication, or appear in council and show cause:

And that "no man and woman shall be at liberty to keep house as

married persons before and until they are lawfully married, on

pain of forfeiting one hundred guilders, more or less, as their

quality shall be found to warrant, and all such persons may be

amerced anew therefor every month by the officer, according to

the order and the custom of our Fatherland."

----------

The Charms Of Nativity.

In this day, when a spirit of restlessness seems to have seized

upon the various peoples of the world, and operates to produce

great movements from one locality to another, or from one country

to another, we propose to devote some pages to the discussion of

this interesting subject. The world may be said to be grossly

material; for surely no land of flowering beauty, however rich in

the wealth of nature's charms, can, to a sentimental and

spiritual soul, be at all comparable to those heavenly flowers of

love which bloom in the vicinage in which we were reared. In

leaving a cold and bleak country even, we may go to one where

nature has stamped her own warmth, as she is sure to do, on the

hearts of her inhabitants; but those scenes to which we were

earliest used are, by far, dearer to the sensitive soul, than

others which, in distant lands, crop out more gorgeously; and the

playmates, the associates of our hearts, our early lives, even

though it may be in the very chill and frost of barren rocks and

dreary plains, are far dearer to us than the welcome of

strangers, let it be as warm and as sunny as genial and glowing

hearts can make it. The stranger, with soul, in a strange land,

has fully felt the truth of these remarks. These are

considerations which should operate powerfully with us to bind us

to our homes and our own communities. But the benefits of staying

at home, or of enlarging the area of "civilization" and of

settlement but slowly, are not confined, by any means, to our

feelings. To prevent the loneliness which we naturally feel in a

strange country is not the only object to be gained by migrating,

when we migrate at all, slowly, and but little at a time, (say a

few miles only,) and by making our habitations as permanent as

possible. There are, perhaps, weightier considerations, even,

which should govern in the matter than the loneliness and the

estrangement which we must suffer for years, when we make distant

removals.

Home is, in its full meaning, a most heavenly word. It is a word

that is allied with every principle of our natures. It is the

nursery in which our spirits are trained. It is the seat of our

religion and the abode of our loves. There can be to us but one

home, that is, in the full sense of the term.

{661}

And that home is a locality, a place, where, with the kindred

ideas, elements, and social and spiritual partnerships of our

earlier lives and beings, we can enjoy life pure and perfect as

we at first received it. Any local or social estrangements from

these pure elements of life, no matter how complete the

surrounding appointments of comfort may seem to be which draw us

away from them, do not constitute and make up the bulk of what,

properly, is to the human spirit to be considered home.

The loss of home, then, by removal to a distance from those

earlier scenes, localities, peoples, ideas, and customs of which

we are a part, is a far greater loss to us, considered in the

aggregate, than is at first apparent by any mere feelings of

loneliness or estrangement which we may suffer in a strange

community. Because, while these feelings undoubtedly indicate to

us the part of our lives with which we have parted in leaving

those scenes and associations of which we were a part, they do

not always reflect back to us the painful vacuum which is created

at home by our absence; and therefore, our feelings are not

always an accurate measurement of the full injury done by the

detaching of human elements from their proper places, to be

thereafter located in strange and distant lands. And it may

properly be said that the suffering of these feelings by those

who have removed is not the greatest injury done by such

removals. For, while feelings represent some of the injury done

to us by such removals, they certainly do not represent all of

it. The strongest powers of a man, naturally considered, are in

the locality or in the society in which he was raised. He may, in

distant communities, where social life is just taking root, or

where, indeed, it has already taken root, be, to outward

appearances, a more prominent person than at home, where he was

raised. He may be called into public life oftener, and be made to

assume offices of trust which at home he never would have

assumed, and, perhaps, never could have assumed. But, after all,

he is really not so important a personage in his new locality,

and in his new offices, as he would have been at home in his

natural offices. This statement may appear, to some minds,

paradoxical. But it really is not so, examined by the light and

the law of uses and of natural adaptations. We shall not go into

any extended discussion, however, of this particular question,

but we shall assume, at the outset, that the circle of

"civilization" or of settlement, should be but slowly and

gradually enlarged. There are a great many strong reasons for

this plea of widening and enlarging the circle of "civilization"

or of settlement. The same reasons which operate to show that no

single individual can be as useful (in the scale of nature) in a

community distant and remote from his birthplace, as he could in

serving out his natural uses in his birthplace, will operate

equally to show that such distant removals are not healthy for

whole communities of people. Our border States, some of which are

very far out from the centres of settlement, have been peopled by

persons leaving the older and denser communities where they were

born and raised, and repairing to these new "settlements." The

effect of it has been, in many instances, to change the wheel of

individual fortune, and to place some in high positions who, in

their native communities, would never have reached those

positions. But we shall argue that this result has not always

been beneficial to the parties so elevated.

{662}

The natural growth of communities, that is, the growth by

enlarging the circle of settlement but slowly and connectedly, is

sustained by every healthy law of economy. Even in the gross

matter of material wealth, the bulk of the people are better off

in an old than in a new community. We venture the assertion that

this remark will hold good even as between the outer border

States of the West, and the inhabitants of those countries from

whose populations these States have, in a large measure, been

settled. But it will especially hold true as between the people

of those outer border States and the people of a corresponding

class of our older States.

But what is the moral exhibit? What do the facts here prove? They

prove, incontestably, that the standard of law, of morals, of

religion, and of society, in all the vast multitude of its

meaning, is, in the "new settlements," incomparably below what it

is in the old communities. These are grave proofs, and of

importance enough, in our judgment, to settle a national policy

against the building up of new communities at great distances

from the old ones.

If it were physically possible to detach one half of the

territory of an old state, and to send the detached portion, with

its entire population, to some distant and remote country, and

there locate it, even this huge mass of matter and of peoples

would greatly suffer by the shock of the new situation. The earth

has its affinities as well as people have theirs, and no

considerable portion of the earth (that is, if such a thing were

possible at all) could be detached from its proper place, where

all of its connections are natural and healthy, and could be

transported to another portion of the globe where the materials

and the fashions of nature are not exactly of the same kind,

without suffering by the change. How much more, then, will human

beings, who are more subject to influences, suffer by a

corresponding change? The laws of affinity and of sympathy must

be preserved in the commonest things even; and if such a change

as we have spoken of were possible in any considerable portion of

the earth's surface, the peoples carried along with the detached

portion would, for a time, have the same laws, the same customs,

the same religions--would see the same scenery, and would, to

some extent, breathe the same air to which they had all along

been accustomed; but, in the course of time, they would find

themselves laboring and struggling in full sympathy with the

earth so detached for sympathy with the new objects and new

external surroundings of the new situation, until a perceptible

change would take place in their feelings, and in the very ardor

of their religious worships.

We have put the case in this strong form to show what will be

done by change. Change in one thing necessarily involves change

in another thing. We cannot change our habitations and our

abodes, without also changing all in us which is peculiar to

locality and the law of locality; and in this alone there is a

large volume of life. That society is always the best which holds

the closest together, and in which the work of adaptation and

assimilation has been carried on the longest between its members.

The superior frame of English society, which is the growth of an

old community, and the sturdy world of the English people, will

demonstrate this. There is a certain morality in locality, too,

and the morality developed by a particular locality is always the

healthiest for its people. We do not, however, mean to say that

the morality of locality is _sui generis_--that it is

something which is peculiar to particular localities independent

of the people of those localities.

{663}

This is an absurdity which we will not utter. But we merely mean

to say that the morality of localities, or of the people of

particular localities, is influenced, more or less, by the

surrounding circumstances of locality. This remark will be

strongly verified in the different social habits and moral

sentiments of people whose occupation, from natural causes,

differs; circumstances, for instance, of different situation,

such as make some people nautical and seafaring, while others are

agricultural and domestic. It is in this wise that locality may

be said to have its morality, and that the peculiar phases of

morality developed by the natural and unavoidable circumstances

of situation are the best for the people of that locality. This

is a proposition which we imagine no one will dispute. But there

are very often carried into a particular locality certain phases

of morality, or rather the want of it, which have no connection

with the locality, and with which the genius of the locality has

nothing to do. These are positive conditions of vice and

immorality which may be engendered in any community.

Sensibilities are the most delicate and refined things

conceivable. They are the result of the most delicate nurture of

the feelings, the associations, and the relationships of life.

The peculiar modes of association of a people--the peculiar frame

and structure of their domestic relationships--has a great deal

to do with the type and kind of their sensibilities. In a new

country, where everything is rough, the sensibilities cannot be

as nice and as refined as in an older community where they are

nursed. Sensibilities, then, depend for their flexibility, and

for the grain of their qualities, on the fineness--on the

niceness--of the social food on which they have been fed. This is

constantly being illustrated to us in the treatment of animals,

even, which certainly have sensibilities of a certain kind.

Where the finer threads of society, then, are preserved, and

where there are close-knit sympathies between the people, without

too much of the rough work of a rough country to harden them and

to dry up the fountains of the sensibilities, we may always there

expect to find the flowers of love blooming in the greatest

abundance. New countries, then, are not as favorable to the

development of these feelings as older ones are, and the moral

havoc in such countries is, usually, very great. But, apart from

the rough circumstances of a new country, which have upon the

feelings a hardening effect, the mental sensibilities are greatly

influenced by scenery, and by the natural effect of air,

temperature, etc. These refined elements are just as much a part

of the mental food on which we feed as anything else is. All our

ideas of comfort, of beauty, and of healthiness do not come from

artificial surroundings and from the frame-work of society which

we may have constructed. Mental emotions are excited in us by

scenery; and that of the particular kind to which we have been

used, though in reality it may, to some extent, be barren and

bleak, is to us the most charming. The appearance of things in

nature is indissolubly associated with our earlier lives,

memories, incidents, occurrences, and sentiments; and so we, in

the very nature of things, must love this earlier record better

than any subsequent one which we may make. It necessarily follows

that we love those peculiar features in nature the best which are

the closest associated with our earlier experiences of life.

{664}

The analyzing spirit will detect, at a slight glance, even the

minute and particular differences between the outward features of

different localities. The eye of the student of nature will at

once perceive the smallest shades of difference in the leaves of

trees of the same class in different localities. To the sensitive

mind the rain, even, of different localities will have a

different spirit, and its falling will make a different

impression upon the mind. We are a wonderfully constructed

battery, and the effect of these manifold things in nature upon

the organism cannot be estimated, or correctly judged of, by any

but those who, by living in new and strange countries, have had

full experience of it. The chemistry of the soul is more

marvellous than that of flesh and matter, and the effect of

scenery, of air, of the spirit of the air, and of all the vast

and grand combinations of matter on the brain, and on the life

principles of man, cannot be judged of until, to him, some

foreign country has written its strange history on his organism,

and he discovers that, though in reality he is the same

individual, still he does not see nature through the same eyes

through which he was wont to see it, and does not feel its

refreshing spirit as he was wont to feel it. These are some of

the sad mental impressions made by great changes from one distant

locality to another. Could anything be more hurtful or injurious

to the human spirit? Could anything be more obliterative of

morality, than not to respect and act out, every day of our

lives, its sacred lessons in close connection with those old

school associations with which we linked life the fondest, and

through which we enjoyed it the dearest? The early dawn as it

came to us shaded by the hills and the forests common to the

localities in which we were born and reared; our parting with the

great companion of the day, influenced by the same surroundings;

the familiar notes of the night-birds common to our localities;

the peculiarities of the very gusts of wind there; the peculiar

haze of the atmosphere; the methods in which the very trees droop

their branches; these, these are all familiar scenes and things

to us all, and are, we may say, the school-house associates of

our earlier lives, when our spirits were first learning the great

lessons of life--those lessons under which life in us was

organized and under which it has spread its richest and its

grandest panorama. Change these localities and these scenes, and

we feel as though we had parted with dear friends whose

association is necessary to our lives, and for years afterward,

they form, in our minds, an ever present picture of their

appearance. These familiar scenes are the old oaken trees, so to

speak, under whose umbrageous bowers we learned our first lessons

of virtue and of life; and we cannot give them up, and part from

them, without also surrendering some of the sacred lessons which,

in their midst and in their hallowed shadow, we learned. But,

throughout, the parting with home, and going into new localities,

makes a new era in our lives. The village boy, who is the object

of charity, and who has no ties to bind him but those of the

guardian public, feels it. He even feels, when he parts with the

dear scenes of his nativity, almost as though he had taken leave

of the very God, whom he had been taught to worship, and that he

lay launched out upon a great wide ocean of uncertainties, there

to hunt for another God, and other friends. How must it, then, be

with those who are a part of the household and the inheritance of

human affections? Mother, father, brothers and sisters are

gathered for the sad parting.

{665}

Tears of deep grief fall thick and fast. There is, indeed,

occasion for them. The heir of the possession, or the mate of

fraternal friendship and love, is about to become a stranger. He

is about to seek a home! (ah! sad word, in this connection,) it

may be in the midst of olive-groves and of vineyards--away from

the home of his inheritance, and the family are summoned to

bemoan their loss. Years are to pass between him and them before

they meet again, and when they do meet they are to each other

strangers. This is indeed a sad picture. Can the growth and the

building up of "a new country" compensate for it? I say not. I

say that the planting of empire even, in the name and under the

titles of the home government, it may be in some grandly tropical

country, will not repay for these losses and for these

sacrifices. Political grandeur is not the only object to be

attained in this world. In fact, it is but an epitome of the

grand and the beautiful objects of life. The comforts of home,

and its solid connections, are worth more to us than all the

offices in the world could be without them. And how few are there

who nowadays appreciate and enjoy the comforts of home, even in

their own natural communities, who are weighed down with the

shackles and the plunder of office? How much more deplorable,

then, the fate of the poor office-holder at a distance from his

natural home, and those associates of his early life, found

nowhere outside of home, which make life agreeable, and give to

it its charms and its zest? His fate must indeed be pitiable and

deplorable in the extreme. It is only, then, viewed generally, in

the interests "of the public," (a most false "public interest,")

that we heretofore have been enabled to find so much heroism in

the spirit of venture and of distant emigration that the almost

entire press of the country have lauded it, and have praised it

"as a spirit of public enterprise;" which praise has done much

toward exciting in the people of the world that restlessness and

feverish spirit of excitement, which has led so many men and

families to leave their natural attachments, and to seek location

either in foreign and distant countries, or in States, at least,

remote from those in which they were reared. These removals have

always, when viewed in a moral and social light, been more

productive of harm to the parties concerned than of good. Avoid

them, in the future, would be our earnest advice to all good

people. The best and greatest men of the world have invariably

staid at home.

But are not the boundaries of civilization to be extended, may be

asked? Most assuredly they are; but only slowly and by degrees,

like waves as they spread and enlarge from a centre of disturbed

waters. This is, undoubtedly, the true method of enlarging the

area of settlement and of "civilization."

The parties immediately concerned are not alone the parties

injured by distant removals. They affect, more or less, the world

at large. The bad morals, engendered by innumerable people

leaving their homes, where the sediments of society have settled

to the bottom, and repairing to new and remote localities where

there is no strongly constructed web of society, are not confined

alone to the localities where the social connections are loose;

but they spread like some terrible plague, and seize upon the

minds of people of the denser and older communities.

{666}

A reciprocal interchange in morals is finally established between

these remote and unlike communities, until the tone of the one is

measurably improved, while that of the other is gradually

reduced, and made worse by the interchange than it was before.

These are some of the damaging effects of "new settlements," at a

distance from the older ones. The law perfected is to be found

only in the close and tight connections of society, with all of

the social interests well defined, and with social rights so

clear that one person will not interfere with those of another.

This degree of social security and comfort is the perfection of

the law; and no civilized government has any interest in

upholding a system of "settlement" and of colonization which

impairs the strength of the social structure.

Society has been built under the guardianship of the church, and

any system either of "settlement," or of politics, which

threatens the integrity of society, is against the interests of

government, and equally against the interests of the Christian

religion. Government is the secular means which we employ to

enforce those wholesome moral inspirations of the church which

have constructed society on sure foundations. Anything which

attacks this wholesome system is at war with the Christian

religion, and, consequently, against the higher civilization of

the age. The sacred affinities and congenialities of home should

not be disturbed, and society debauched, by a mania amongst the

people for separations and removals. "Those whom God hath joined

together let no man put asunder," applies also to the firm

welding together of those whose lots he has made similar by

nature, as it does to that holy matrimonial alliance by which a

man takes to himself a consort and a mate, and by which a woman

takes to herself a husband. That government is not truly and

reliably built on the foundations of the Christian religion which

disregards any of these sound maxims of social life, and which

makes provision for scattering those members of society who are

the most natural to each other, and which holds out to them the

very strongest inducements to scatter and to form new

associations. Such is certainly not a healthy law of society, and

is in direct contravention of the great natural order. We must

pay attention, in this as in all other things, to the

associations made by nature. It is a monstrosity to suppose that

there is not power enough in nature to adapt those to each other

who were born together. It is a faith in this sort of power which

associates people together in family groups, and which upholds

the vast system of paternal and fraternal relations established

throughout the world. If it were not for the belief in the

perfect natural adaptation to each other of persons born of the

same parents, we would not have so strong a system for rearing

them together, and for imposing upon those who are responsible

for their being so large a duty to keep them together whilst

taking care of them. Nature, it is true, would suggest this duty,

but society has strengthened it. It is the perfect fitness,

naturalness, and adaptation of beings for each other, who were

born together, which makes the family system strong, and which

imposes upon parents the moral duty of keeping their offspring

together while they take care of them; by which means the

beautiful and sacred relations of brother and sister are

established in something more than in the mere name. But we will

not discuss a proposition which is so plain. It is not necessary

for us to do it. The main feature which, in this connection, it

is the most necessary for us to notice, is the necessity for some

system by which violent separations between members of the same

community and family may be avoided, and by which society may be

strengthened in its foundations.

{667}

For, if these separations tend, as they most assuredly do, to the

weakening of the family ties, it is necessary for us to take some

strong measures in order to bind families more closely together;

or else, the whole system of society, through these very means of

neglect, will ultimately be disorganized, and will go to pieces.

Indeed, we are rather verging on such a condition in this country

now. We have what we call homes, it is true; but we now have

really very little of the true family system. Nearly one half of

the time of the younger members of the family--if not more--is

not now spent, in the great majority of cases, under the paternal

roof; and there is now in American society a perfect mania for

being anywhere else except at home, and there may be said to be

no family law. This is certainly a most deplorable state of

things, and if pushed to further extremes, will ultimately

disorganize society altogether. Whenever that may be done,

government will then be impossible. So it behooves the public men

of this country to look about for some remedy for this most

distressing evil. Where can it be found? is the important inquiry

of to-day. Our opinion is, that emigration, the restless spirit

of movement, which our system of legislation has developed, is

the fruitful source of the evil, and consequently, to correct it,

we must change our migratory habits and policy. We have organized

too many "territories," and have encouraged the building of too

many railroads in far distant and remote regions from the centres

of settlement, thereby causing our people to emigrate and to move

about from one place to another. We have not sufficiently

encouraged stability in the people. We have pursued a course of

legislation which has made them restless, speculative, and

venturesome. In this way we have not developed the real wealth

which we might have developed had our people staid at home, and

preserved their even, temperate avocations. But the material

injury done by this system of removals has not been the principal

evil of it by any means. Society has been unhinged by it. The

strong attachments of home have been violently rent asunder, and

by that means, our people have been compelled to look for their

amusements, their enjoyments, and their entertainments, more in

public than in private. This has had upon their dispositions,

their habits, and their morals a most unbalancing effect, until

now very little indeed is held by them to be any longer secured.

These are the gigantic evils of the day with which we now have to

battle, and the important question of the hour is, How are they

to be met?

The question is much more easily asked than answered. A huge evil

is upon us, however, and we must devise ways of ridding ourselves

of it. Indeed, we do but develop the strength of the human, by

devising means for the overthrow--the complete overthrow--of all

of our evil conditions. No condition, then, however bad, may be

supposed to be too gigantic for our efforts. Let us but keep

steadily in view the great and important aims of life, and we

certainly can make all else succumb to them. In working out the

great problem of life, we must expect often to have to go back,

and work it over again. We must often undo much of the work which

we may suppose ourselves to have done, and must do it over again,

in order to avoid errors and to correct mistakes.

{668}

It may be a hard task for us to perform; but nevertheless, we

must do it. We know that there is a common error that in national

affairs God is at the helm, and that we cannot steer wrong; that

everything that has been done in the national "destiny" has been

rightly done, and that God is certainly with us there in every

step that we may take. This is certainly a most fatal error. God

is no more with us in our national course than he is in our

individual business, and in this we very often find it necessary

to retrace our steps, and to correct errors. If we were to accept

every individual misfortune, and every individual piece of bad

management, as the direct work of God, and should make no effort

to correct it, our private fortunes would be in a most deplorable

condition. Without, then, being irreverent, we must recognize God

in ourselves, in our national as well as in our individual

matters, and must understand that good results are invariably the

offspring of good motives and of good efforts, and that bad

results are invariably the offspring of bad motives and bad

efforts. We must understand this, and we must make results the

guide and the criterion of divine will and divine favor. If

results are good, we must suppose that God favors them; if they

are bad, we must suppose that he disapproves them; and, as we

honor him, we must set about correcting them. This, in my

judgment, is the true criterion by which to judge of the divine

will and the divine favor. Under this rule, then, we are at

liberty, and we are expected to scrutinize every act of national

conduct, and to see whether or not it is full of the seeds of

good results; and if we find that it is not, then, at whatever

cost to us the thing may have been done, to expunge it, and

correct the error. This is sound national wisdom, as it would be

sound individual wisdom. We have, then, already, too many

railroads extending into far, remote regions of our country,

distant from the centres of settlement, inviting our people to

leave their homes and their families, and to emigrate in quest of

fortune and of new honors. These invitations by our government

are like so many snares set by the tempter to tempt us into sin

and wickedness. I would say that all of the sacred interests of

society would dictate to us the policy of abandoning the building

of these roads, and equally to abandon the policy of organizing

"new territories," to thereby tempt our people to hunt for new

fields of "settlement." Let us make that strong which we already

have. Let us refine and civilize as we go, and let us make but

slow haste in extending the boundaries of our "settlements." This

would seem, to our mind, to be the suggestion of wisdom. We must

not conclude, either, that because money has been spent, and

labor has been performed, that therefore we may not abandon

altogether huge enterprises of "settlement" which have already

been begun, and that our people now in remote "settlements" may

not, in a great measure, return to their former homes. Such a

course, undertaken on a large scale, might be productive of the

best results, and perhaps, in the course of time, would be. But

we must not anticipate too much. We must reach this proposition

by degrees. We must, in a matter so grave as this, be, as in the

process of settlement, slow. We must not proceed with it too

fast.

The degrees of civilization are remote from each other. Indeed,

government would be of but little use if it were not productive

of the best results, where it is applied in the best spirit and

under the soundest administration.

{669}

We cannot, from the very nature of the circumstances, expect

these results for it in distant and remote regions from the

centres of settlement, where the population is sparse, and where,

on account of the formidable difficulties of a new country and

new fields of labor, there is but little time on the part of the

people to devote to social improvements. These are difficulties,

certainly, to be considered, in estimating the scale of

civilization of a people. We naturally look for a much healthier

tone in an old community than we do in a new one. In an old

community there is a much larger surface from which to choose an

occupation, and the various interests of society are much better

connected than they are in the new communities. These are

important things to be considered by the adventurer after a

home--if so paradoxical a thing is to be allowed as that a home

may be found by adventure! In fact, the thing is impossible.

Adventure can never make a home. A home is the product of

continuing possession, and of careful culture. It is not

necessarily a particular house, or a particular piece of land,

which has been in the same hands for generations, which makes a

home. But it is a continuous abiding of the same family and its

members for several generations in the same neighborhood, the

same locality, which makes, in the fullest sense, a home. They

are then a part--incorporated as such by nature--of the community

and of the locality in which they may chance to dwell. It is

this, more than the continuous possession of a particular house

or a particular piece of ground, which makes home. The woods, the

streams, the outer walls of nature to which people have been

accustomed, must have been the same, or similar and kindred ones,

for at least several generations, in order to make for them a

home. Where this has been the case, there nature is fully

incorporated in those beings. There is not, then, in their own

peculiar locality, a leaf, or a tree, or a flower, or a bird,

that is not fully understood, and interiorly possessed by them.

Through the manifold processes of nature, they, in this time,

have made acquaintance with things in nature, and have become a

much stronger part of the creation. Any traveller will tell us

that, when he first begins to wander, things in nature at a

distance from home appear strange to him, and that he never does

become as well acquainted with them as he is with those

corresponding things which he has left behind, that have been not

only his, but also the familiar associates of his parents before

him. This, we will venture to say, will be the testimony of all

travellers. There is, in this testimony, a great lesson to be

learned by us. It is the lesson that, if we want to be a

part--absolutely a part--of creation, so as to have immediately

under our control, at all times, a commanding sense and

consciousness of our power in nature, and over it, as a part of

it, we must stay where our organisms command the elements the

best, and where, by long residence, they have become the strong

masters of things in nature. This is certainly no new philosophy.

If it has not been fully heretofore eliminated as a philosophy,

in this form, it certainly has in other forms, just as

substantial and far more practical. What are our feelings

connected with our return to the earth but a confirmation of this

doctrine? Every man who has a soul in him loves his own native

soil; and when the solemn hour of dissolution approaches, he

feels, as one of the last of his earthly hopes, that he would

like to be gathered to the graves of his fathers, in the land of

his and of their wanderings.

{670}

This is an event which is capable of testing the matter, and of

proving the attractions which our earliest homes have for our

spirits. When all nature is dissolving in us, we naturally look

for support to those localities where life was organized in us,

and which have fortified us the strongest with those forces on

which we must rely the most to ward off dissolution. Thus our

minds and our affections are naturally carried back to the land

of our birth, in a way to make us love it above all other spots

of earth, and in a way to cause us to desire it as our last

resting-place. If these last trials do not show to the human

spirit--drawing upon all of its resources for support--where its

chief strength in nature lies, whether in the new home, or the

old one, then perhaps our theory that we lose many of the

essential elements of life by migrating, and by going to a great

distance from the home of our nativity, may not, indeed, be a

sound one. But we must take the case of the normal spirit to

prove it. The moods of the spirit that has been debauched and

made common; that has lost the love of its sanctuaries by

dishonorable and aimless wanderings, are not a fair test of our

philosophy. We must take some spirit who has gone into a distant

land seeking fortune, with the love of home in his heart, and

with the responsibilities of family upon him; and let the trial

of dissolution come upon him, even after years of absence, and

see if his last thoughts are not directed to the home of his

childhood, and if the last appeals which he makes in his mind to

nature to save him are not addressed to the genius, the

localities, the scenes, the cherished associations, of his

earlier home. This must be so. It is unavoidable. The cool stream

from which we drank in our boyhood thirst often has power, when

vividly called to mind, to abate the rage of some terrible fever;

and the maternal hand, as we see it in imagination laid upon us,

long years, even, after that hand has been stilled, has power to

soothe us. Thus fancy makes medicine from the past, and the

chosen spots of the spirit's earlier wanderings are the places to

which she goes for her healing arts.

The maternal breast has attractions for us as long as we live.

Its sorrows are our sorrows, and it is upon the same principle

and by the same laws of correspondence that we love our earlier

homes the best, and that they have over our morals a stronger

control and a more salutary influence than any other society or

community can have. In fact, a removal from our own community and

our own home is too often looked upon as a license to do as we

please, and is interpreted as a relaxing of the social traces in

which we had been bound. It is not worth while, at present, to

explore the philosophy of this fact, but it is a fact, and we

therefore deal with it accordingly. We know that the white man is

the representative of civilization, and that he carries with him

a Christian inheritance wherever he goes. We know that in any

situation in which he may be placed, he will strive to ally

himself with his God. We know that he has fixed the cross of his

worship upon many a bleak mountain of this land, and that he has

planted the vineyard of peace in the remote regions of the

wilderness. We know that he has established government, erected

schools, built churches, and planted the seeds of society in far

and distant regions from the centres of civilization. We know all

this, and yet we know, or believe, that if this same potent mass

of human beings, thus scattered and toiling separate and apart

from each other, had held together under the strong covenants of

a powerful society, and had advanced in a body to occupy and

possess the land, holding together at every step, the rainbow of

God's favor would have spanned over them in such luminous light

that we of this continent would now have been a strong and

powerful and united people, in the enjoyment of a civilization

and in the possession of a purity of social life neither enjoyed

nor possessed by any other people on the earth.

{671}

It may be supposed by some that this position assumes too much;

but our own opinion is, that it may be brought almost down to a

demonstration. Such a social wreck as follows the violent

segregation of members of the same family or community, to form

in new communities, must be followed by a corresponding civil

prostration. But wild and incoherent ideas of government will be

entertained, and the strength of the masses in such communities,

or in old ones, either, that have been much affected by these

separations, may, upon any wild and great excitement, although in

reality springing but from trivial causes, be organized to

overturn rather than to sustain a government. Without intending

in the least to be sectional, or even to verge, in the slightest

degree, on the brink of politics, we will venture to say that the

history of events in this country within the last few years will

sustain this position. Too much liberty--such as is usually

enjoyed in new communities free from proper social

restraints--confuses the reason. Law, as a centre of action, is

the only safeguard of any people; and to be law, it must be

firmly planted in constitutions beyond the reach of the passions

of the populace. To maintain law as a centre, there must not be

too many flying forces connected with it at a distance from those

regular and steady communities which have developed it. For,

unless the system of law is equally developed, and the structure

of society (upon which the law is founded) is equally perfected

in every part of a country where the central source of labor is

equally controlled by law-givers from every part, we must expect

a general deterioration of morals, corresponding to the mixture

of good and bad elements which are the active forces of the

lawmaking power. Too many "territories," and too many new States

at a distance from the older communities, tend, in our judgment,

to unsettle the morals of the country, and, through the morals,

the laws, and ultimately through the laws, the government itself.

We have divided our people into fractions too fast. It would have

been better for our own, and for the interests of humanity, if we

had held more firmly together in better connected and more

contiguous communities. Our people would not then have had the

same wild ideas about "law" that many of them have to-day, and

the better united interests of the country would have made a more

loving and united people.

Unity, in the affairs of men, is certainly a great desideratum.

Immense geographical and social divisions between people usually

produce a spirit of alienation, and, in many instances, of

absolute hostility. Mere navigable streams of water and railroad

connections cannot so connect a people at the distance of many

hundreds of miles from each other as to make them but one people.

The nearest possible approach that can be made to a close social

and sympathetic connection between peoples who are separated from

each other by so much space, is to bridge the space over by

densely packed masses of human beings, and then we establish

lines of mental and social sympathy which will make them but one

people. This is the only method, aside from the bond of religious

unity, by which a close and hearty cooperation can be secured

between people even of one blood and living under the same laws.

The human bridge connecting together remote parts of a country is

the most complete.

{672}

The true policy, then, is not to plant colonies or "settlements"

at distances from the centres of settlement, and to bridge over,

with human beings, the intervening space, by degrees. But on the

contrary, for us to advance in a body, closely connected, and to

carry, unbroken, our civilization with us as we go. There will

then be no spasmodic disturbances of the law. The wild passions

of the wild tribes who roam our borders will not then be

incorporated (as is now too often the case) by our people, who go

in fragmentary bodies to great distances from the solid

settlements, and there make their dwellings amidst the rude

timbers of nature. There would be, under this plan of settlement,

an equipoise and a balance. It would be regular, steady, and not

as now fragmentary. The arrangement of the State divisions--as a

form of government--would not, in the least, be interfered with.

We only propose that, instead of disjointed masses of human

beings going off by themselves at great distances from the main

settlements, people hold, as they go, more together as a body,

and that we encourage wild schemes of emigration less. They have

had upon our people, upon our laws, and upon society, a most

disastrous and unsettling effect. The policy which we propose

does not interfere with commerce or with healthy travel, but is

only against the wild spirit of emigration which has seized upon

the world, and which moves those not engaged in commerce to seek

new homes.

The charms of nativity will be greatly increased by educating the

mind to look upon our earlier homes as the theatres in which we

are to act our parts in life. It will develop in us a more

conformatory spirit in life, and will secure for us the

measureless blessings of a compact and united society. A

different training and a different practice are the fruitful

sources of those wild idiosyncrasies in society which teach us

that all men should be to us alike, and that there are no sacred

fountains of the affections where the faith of the heart ever

beams bright, and where the hallowed altars of love and

confidence have established their holiest worship. In a word, the

home-training, continuing through a life, and ending, for the

most part, where begun, that is, under the genius of the same

state laws, and amongst people of a kind, is indispensable to

happiness, and to the natural enjoyment of life. It is equally,

alas! indispensable to a full understanding of the genius of law

and to the development of that conservative spirit in us which

will teach us to value the blessings of social life far too much

for us ever to interfere in their sacred enjoyment by other

people. The man of home, then, as against the emigrant and the

wanderer, is a man of peace, a man of law, a man of religion, and

a man of society. He does not go with his rifle to destroy, nor

with his individual will to make it the law of the surrounding

country; but he is content to stay at home, and he accepts the

developments of society there as he finds them, and labors

conscientiously, when improvement is needed, to improve them; but

always within the boundaries of those barriers which Christianity

and conscience have set up as the landmarks of his labors.

{673}

If we would preserve our stability, then, as a people, and make

our government and society what they ought to be, we must change

our wandering habits, and must cultivate the flowers of home-love

as the only sure guarantee of peace and happiness. We must not

allow our wandering ambitions to stretch away into other domains;

but we must put upon ourselves the bridle of wisdom, and must be

content to people our fields at home with the laborers which we

now offer to other lands, to other climes, and to other states.

This policy will make us _truly_ great.

----------

A Mother's Prayer.

The regent of a goodly realm,

A sovereign wise and fair,

Gazed fondly on her youthful son,

And breathed her earnest prayer;

The one wish of her loving heart,

Her ceaseless, solemn thought,

Sole boon her love had craved for him,

The only prize she sought.

Was it new conquests? blood-bought gems

To deck his kingly hand?

Fair realms by cruel triumphs wed

Unto his rightful land?

Rich trappings? robes of royal state?

A fawning courtier throng?

Or minstrels' ringing lays, to pour

The flatteries of song?

Nay, nay, no earthly leaven base,

No worldly dross could cling

Unto that pure, maternal prayer

For France's youthful king.

'My precious son! more dear than life,

More prized than aught on earth,

In all this false and fleeting world

My only gift of worth!

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"Oh! loved and treasured as thou art,

Far rather would I weep

Above the bier where thou wert laid

In thy last, dreamless sleep,

Than live to know this form of thine

Held, foully shrined within,

A tarnished gem, a soul defiled,

By _e'en one mortal sin._."

Well answered was that mother's prayer:

No foul, polluting taint

E'er marred the white and shining soul

Of France's royal saint.

His pure baptismal robe of grace

Unstained through life he wore;

The lily sceptre of the just

King Louis brightly bore.

O Christian matron! in thy heart

This lesson fair enshrine;

And let the blest, heroic prayer

Of holy Blanche be thine.

For what are all the gifts of earth,

The charms of form and face,

If the immortal soul hath lost

Its bright, baptismal grace?

Ay! what avails the wealth of worlds,

If, lured by syren vice,

God's heir hath sold his birthright fair,

His only "pearl of price"?

In vain may proud ambition grasp

Vast realms to tyrants given,

If from his guilty hand hath passed

The heritage of heaven.

-------

{675}

Two Months In Spain

During The Late Revolution.

MADRID.

Monday, Oct. 19.

We visit the "Museo" to-day--the richest picture-gallery in the

world. Ten Raphaels, forty-six Murillos, sixty-two Rubens,

sixty-four Velasquez, forty-three Titians, etc. But even

Raphael's "Perla," (that holy family called the Pearl,) even his

"Spasmo de Silicia," (Christ falling beneath the cross,) even

Guido's exquisite Magdalen and Spagnoletto's "Jacob's Dream,"

even these great pictures sink to nothingness beside Murillo's

"Annunciation," his "Adoration of the Shepherds," "Eleazar at the

Well," "The Martyrdom of St. Andrew," the "Divine Shepherd," the

Infant Saviour giving St. John to drink from a shell, called "Los

Niños de la Concha," the "Vision of St. Bernard," and those

wonderful "Conceptions" which embody "all that is most sublime

and ecstatic in devotion and in the representation of divine

love."

The more one sees of Murillo, the more one is convinced that he

is the greatest painter of the world. Others may have points of

excellence superior to his; but his subjects are so full of piety

and tenderness, so fascinating in coloring, and appeal so at once

to the heart and the common sense of mankind, that they please at

once the learned and the unlearned. The Spaniards say of him that

he painted "Con leche y sangre," with milk and blood, so

wonderful are his flesh tints.

The "Spasmo de Silicia" is so called from the convent for which

it was painted, "St. Maria della Spasima," in Palermo. "The

Virgin's Trance on the way to Calvary" is considered by some

critics only second to the "Transfiguration."

The "Perla" is so named because Philip IV., beholding it for the

first time, exclaimed, "This is the pearl of my pictures." It

belonged to the Duke of Mantua, was bought by Charles I., and was

sold with his other pictures by the "tasteless puritans and

reformers."

Tuesday, Oct. 20.

Spend another hour in the "Museo," looking at the pictures of the

Flemish and Dutch schools--fifty-three Teniers, twenty-two Van

Eycks, fifty-four Breughels, twenty-three Snyders, ten

Wouvermans, etc. A wonderful gallery, so rich in great masters.

We then go to see the "House of the Congress," which is

handsomely decorated. The ministers' bench is here blue, while

the others are red.

The library is small but very handsome. From this we go to the

interesting artillery museum, and then to see the coach-houses

and stables of the palace, begun by Charles III. and finished by

Ferdinand VII. One felt more than ever sorry for the poor

fugitive queen, at sight of all this majesty. Beautiful Arabian

and Andalusian horses and mules, over a hundred carriages of

every hue and shape, from the black, cumbrous thing in which poor

Jeanne la Folle carried about the coffin of her handsome husband,

to the beautiful modern carriage in which the lovely Infanta went

so lately to her bridal! All had a personal sort of interest; but

most touching of all was the sight of the little carriages and

perambulators which bore evidence of having been long used by the

royal children.

{676}

The state carriages are very grand, many of them gifts from

crowned heads: one from the first Napoleon; another from the

present emperor to Queen Isabella; and a handsome plain English

coach from Queen Victoria to her majesty. But even more than the

carriages do the saddles and embroidered housings, the plumes,

and harness, and trappings, and liveries, give one an idea of

this splendor-loving court, especially those belonging to the

days of Charles III. and Philip V. Above all these stood the

crowned lion, with his feet on two worlds, significant of the

greatness of Spain. And where is she, so lately the mistress of

all this grandeur? The people told us that there had been

thirteen thousand people dependent upon the queen's privy purse;

that she had a school in the palace for all the children of her

servants; and that there was no end to her generosity and

kindness; and that, had she not been away, the revolution would

never have occurred.

And just here we meet a long line of troops, horse, foot, and

artillery, who proved to be the men who had fought so bravely for

their queen at Alcolea, and at such fearful odds. The men of

Novaliches!

And no man cried, "God bless them!" as they passed, weary and

dispirited, through the streets; their enemies would not do them

honor, and their friends dared not.

When we reached the hotel, General Prim was making a speech to a

ragged, dirty mob, who were shouting for "Libertad." He told them

it was his saint's day--that they need not work, he would give

them money. So, after distributing some coppers, he got into a

fine carriage and drove off. While we struggled to get in, one of

our party heard some of the poor women exclaim softly, "Our poor

queen!" and then the usual piteous exclamation, "Ay Dios mios!"

"Ay Dios mios!"

Wednesday, Oct. 21.

Go this morning to "finish" the pictures in the Museo--if such a

thing could be done--but the more one looks, the more one feels

it impossible ever to finish with them.

The sculpture-gallery (gallery of Isabella II.) is very handsome,

but contains only a few antiques of interest and a beautiful

modern statue of St. John of God carrying a sick man out of his

burning hospital. Next we go to the gallery of the Belli Arti,

where, among other good pictures, are four of Murillo's, and

first of these "St. Elizabeth of Hungary washing the Lepers," one

of the greatest pictures in the world--by some considered

Murillo's very best. It was painted for the "Caritad" of Seville,

for which its subject made it peculiarly appropriate. The

beautiful saint is the centre of a group of nine persons plainly

dressed in black, an apron before her, the crown upon her head,

and above and around a soft luminous halo seems to beam from her

whole person. Her white hands are washing the head of a ragged

boy who leans over the basin, and writhes with pain. A lovely

young girl holds a pitcher, another the ointments, and an old

woman with spectacles peers between them. In front of the

picture, a beggar-man is taking off the dirty bandage from his

leg, ready for his turn to be washed. On the other side, a

withered old crone, with stick in hand, gazes eagerly on the

saint, who speaks with her. A lame beggar on crutches is behind,

and in the distance is the palace and a dinner-table upon the

terrace, surrounded by beggars, upon whom the queen waits,

showing her charity in another form.

{677}

An artist who was copying the picture made us remark the

wonderful variety and harmony in the figure, the tender pity of

the saint's expression, the natural and graceful grouping, and

the soft light over all. Many critics find the sores too truly

painted to be agreeable to look upon; but (as some Protestant

traveller says of it) "her saint-like charity ennobles these

horrors, on which her woman's eye dares not look; but her royal

hand does not refuse to heal, and how gently! The service of love

knows no degradation."

In another room are two semicircular pictures, taken also from

Seville, (from the church of St. Maria de la Blanca,)

representing the legend of the founding of the great church of

St. Maria Maggiore in Rome, in the year 360.

The first picture represents the "Dream" of the Roman patrician

and his wife, in which he sees the Blessed Virgin in the heavens,

pointing out the spot where the church shall be built--upon which

spot the snow will fall in August. In the companion picture, the

founder and his wife are kneeling before the pope relating the

vision, while in the dim distance is seen a procession advancing

to the appointed place.

Coming from the Museo, we go to see the palace of the Duke of

Medina Coeli, one of the richest nobles of Spain and one of the

highest in rank. A regal establishment, with a greater air of

comfort than prevails in most palaces. Gardens and

picture-galleries, a theatre, suites of magnificent rooms--one in

rose-colored satin, with walls hung in gray silk.

Thursday, Oct. 22.

Set out for Toledo; pass the palace of "Aranjuez," the St. Cloud

of Spain, as la Grandja, built by Philip V., is its Versailles.

We mistake our way, and are left on the plains of la Mancha in a

miserable "posada," or rather a "venta," (the lower grade of

inn,) where we remain all day with nothing visible save one of

Don Quixote's windmills, which we are sorely tempted to battle

with after the fashion of that redoubtable hero. How truly it has

been said of this sterile-looking country, the "old Castile of la

Mancha," by a witty traveller--" the country is brown, the man is

brown, his jacket, his mantle, his wife, his _stew_, his

mule, his house--all partake of the color of the saffron, which

is profusely cultivated, and which enters into the composition of

his food as well as his complexion."

At length we are cheered by the arrival of a lovely Spanish woman

and her daughter, who are returning from their estate near by,

and come, like ourselves, to wait the train for Madrid.

The daughter had been educated in the Sacré Coeur Convent near

Madrid. Spoke French well. She told us in her lively way that,

though these plains looked so brown and desert-like, they brought

good crops and "put money in the pocket," and that back from the

roads were fine plantations of olive and vine.

Saturday, Oct. 24.

Some Spanish friends come to show us some of the hospitals and

other great charities of Madrid, which numbers forty in all.

First, to the general hospital, attended by the Sisters of

Charity--a city in itself, where are over eighteen hundred sick

poor. It covers an immense extent of ground, and, like all

Spanish hospitals, has shady courts, and gardens, and corridors

running around the courts. All was clean and comfortable, the

sisters tenderly feeding the sick children and old people, and

reading or praying beside the beds.

{678}

From this we go to the most interesting of all, called the

"Maison de la Providence," supported by the ladies of rank in

Madrid, and under the care of the French Sisters of Charity, who

wear the familiar "cornette." Here, besides _enfants

trouvés_ and orphans, they have (or had) six hundred poor

children, taken out of the streets. Many of these are kept for

the day, the parents seeking them at night: all of them are

taught gratuitously. We were shown a room in which forty of the

smallest (not one over two years) had been put to bed for the

noonday sleep, perfect little cherubs, side by side, on the

tiniest and whitest of beds, with fringed curtains above them.

The sister opened the window-shutters to give us a look at this

lovely picture; and the light woke many of them, who sat up

rubbing their bright eyes, and looking with wonder at the

strangers, but not one cried. In one corner were great basins and

towels showing why the faces were so clean and rosy.

The sister then took us to the playground, where hundreds of

little things, from the ages of three to six years, were playing;

the boys on one side, the girls on the other; the sisters with

them. We were invited to remain and see them go into school, that

we might see the system of uniting instruction with amusement,

which has been so successfully employed by these charitable

teachers. At the sound of an instrument, (something like a

castanet,) the little things fell into ranks, one behind the

other, the hindmost holding on with both hands to the shoulders

of the one who preceded him. In this way, and slowly keeping time

with their little feet, they marched into the room, marching and

countermarching with admirable precision. Three divisions of

eight, headed by a "captain," (a well-drilled soldier,) form, and

go to their seats; each captain helps to seat his division, and

then counts to see if he has the correct number. The children

then rise to say the Lord's Prayer, all in concert, slowly and

reverently, preceding it with the "sign of the cross," made with,

some, such tiny fingers! The sister next proceeds to give a

lesson. Great black letters, on wooden blocks, (so large as to be

seen by all,) are one by one laid in grooves upon an inclined

plane, the children all (together) calling out the letter as it

is placed, spelling the word, then reading (or rather, singing)

the sentence. If the sister makes a mistake, a dozen little

voices correct it. A child of six is next chosen to spell a

sentence, and severe were the little critics when he misplaced a

letter. Next came a lesson in Scripture history. A book of

colored prints was opened here and there, and the stories were

told by the children in their own pretty way, of Adam and Eve,

David and Absalom, etc. We were presently shown the children old

enough to be taught to work, little things of five and six years,

knitting or sewing; and then a class making plain sewing; and

then the larger orphan girls, working the finest needlework and

embroidery.

And this is one of eight such institutions in Madrid! It is kept

up by individual charity; and the fear is, that it must be

curtailed if not closed on account of the revolution; the ladies

who contributed most to it having been forced to leave with the

queen's party, or having absented themselves from fear of getting

into trouble. These high-born ladies have had also many schools

in different parts of the city, where they taught the poor every

Sunday, as in our Sunday-schools. The provisional government has

stopped all these, on the pretext that they are "incendiary," as

they have also that of the "Conferences of St. Vincent de Paul"!

{679}

Our Spanish friends tell us of the closing, yesterday, of the

"royal school," (founded many centuries ago by one of the kings

of Spain, and supported from the privy purse of the reigning king

or queen,) for the daughters of the nobility who have met with

reverse of fortune, orphans and others of good birth but of no

means. Yesterday these poor girls were turned out, homeless,

houseless; and as they passed along, the brutal rabble insulted

them with cries of, "Come out, you thieves; you have eaten our

bread long enough; come out, and let us have place." To-day, we

see them tearing down the building. And this is "progress!"

We hear that the carriage of the Duchess Medina Coeli has been

assaulted to-day, the crown upon her carriage pelted, the glasses

broken, with the cry of "Down with the aristocrats!"--that fatal

cry, which (with many other bad things) they borrow from the

French, and which was the signal to spill so much "good" blood.

Toledo.

October 25.

Only three hours' time (by rail) separate Toledo and Madrid, the

old and new world of Spain! What a contrast between the two!

Toledo towers like an eagle's nest on the steep rock, the "dark,

melancholy" Tagus winding below, with walls and Moorish gates and

steep crags, with Roman and Gothic and Arabic ruins, with

glorious memories of the fierce and warlike Goths, and of its

imperial renown under Charles V.; while the modern upstart,

Madrid, has nothing of which to boast, save fine houses, and

shops, bustle and traffic, noise and dirt, "progress" and

revolution!

Toledo is said to have been a Phoenician or Grecian colony, then

conquered by the all-absorbing Romans, 146 B.C., and the favorite

resort of the Jews who fled from Jerusalem after its fall, and

who became here rich and powerful, and exercised an important

influence in the history of the country until expelled by

Ferdinand and Isabella, in 1492.

In the fifth century, the Goths conquered Spain and founded that

splendid and powerful kingdom which, after three hundred years,

ended with Roderick in 712, when the Moors, under Taric,

overthrew the Goths in the battle of the Guadalete, and overran

all Spain. In 1085, it was reconquered by Alonzo V., and Toledo

was the seat of the court until removed by Philip II. to Madrid

in 1560, and (for a few years) to Valladolid.

Our first duty is to the cathedral, considered by many persons to

be the finest building in the world. It was commenced by St.

Ferdinand in 1227, on the site of a mosque, which, in turn, had

been built upon a church founded in 587 by St. Eugenius, the

friend and disciple of St. Denis, who introduced Christianity

into Spain. It employed one hundred and forty-nine of the

greatest artists of the world two hundred and sixty-six years to

complete and render it the masterpiece it now is. The cathedral

of Seville is grander, higher, more impressive from its austere

simplicity; but this, from its greater lightness, the mingling of

the early Gothic with the later and more florid style, from the

Moorish carvings on the white stone of which it is built, is more

graceful and beautiful; and from the thousand memories of great

men and great deeds with which it is associated, its royal tombs

and statues, its Muzurabic chapel, its great relics, its grand

treasures, is infinitely more interesting.

{680}

We arrived in time to hear the high mass--the glorious organs,

and fine voices, while the morning sunlight streamed through

seven hundred and fifty stained windows and among eighty-eight

colossal pillars. Picturesque groups knelt before the different

shrines. We chose the chapel of St. Ildefonso, raised upon the

spot where, according to the legend, he received the chasuble

from the hands of the Blessed Virgin, which Murillo has made the

subject of one of his finest pictures.

Near this chapel is the altar at which Ferdinand and Isabella

heard mass after the conquest of Granada. The grand retablo of

the main altar extends from the altar to the ceiling, and is

considered a marvel of exquisite carving, representing the scenes

in the passion of our Lord--the work of twenty-five artists, of

whom John of Bologna was one.

On either side of this, (in niches,) are the tombs of Sancho the

Brave, Alfonso VII., and Sancho the Wise, and, below these, that

of the great Cardinal Mendoza. On each side of the altar are

screens, of which the carvings in marble are exquisite, as are

the seventy stalls of the choir, which are divided by jasper

pillars. The two pulpits are of gilt metal resting on marble

columns, and are of the finest workmanship. The chapels are

exceedingly rich, especially that of Santiago, built by that

worthless favorite of John II. of Castile, Don Alvaro de Luna, as

the burial-place of his family. Upon his tomb was originally a

statue which was contrived so as to rise and kneel at the time of

the "elevation" during mass; but Queen Isabella, the wife of John

II., (who was the means of bringing him to justice,) had it

changed. He lies quietly enough now, with his sword between his

legs, while kneeling figures of knights pray at each corner of

the tomb.

The chapter-house contains portraits of all the archbishops of

Toledo, many pictures, and a superb carved and inlaid ceiling of

alerce wood. Here have been held all the important councils of

Spain. There is a chapel filled with interesting relics, and the

treasures of the church surpass those of all Spain in value.

Among these is the cross which Cardinal Mendoza carried in

procession at the surrender of Granada, and planted on the walls

of the Alhambra; a custodia of gold and silver, weighing

twenty-five arobas--about six hundred pounds--nine feet high, and

covered with myriads of statuettes and exquisite ornaments. It

was given by Queen Isabella, and made from the first gold sent by

Columbus from America. There was one vestment covered with

eighty-five thousand pearls; another with as great profusion of

coral; a crown, and other ornaments of diamonds and other jewels;

a missal, given by St. Louis; some silver plate carved by

Benvenuto Cellini; and in the vestuario is the grandest display

of vestments in the world. Those at St. Peter's are not so fine.

Many of these were given by cardinals Mendoza and Ximenes, by

Queen Isabella, and other sovereigns; and most of them many

centuries old, yet preserving the brightness of the gold and

silver work, and the colors of the embroidery. There were the

chairs used by these great dignitaries, and the hangings used to

adorn the church on the occasion of the thanksgiving for the

victory of Lepanto.

{681}

But above all this is the interest felt in the "Muzarabic

Chapel," built by Cardinal Ximenes, (_Cisneros_, as they

call him in Spanish,) to preserve the ancient liturgy of the

Muzarabes, (Muzarabes--mixed Arabs,) who were the Goths who,

after the conquest of Spain by the Moors, agreed to live under

the Moslem rule, retaining the Christian worship. This is the

oldest ritual in Spain, introduced here by the apostles of this

country, St. Torquatus and his companions. It was at first, in

most respects, similar to the Roman liturgy; but underwent many

changes after the conquest of Spain by the Visi-Goths and

Vandals, who were Arians, and brought with them to Spain their

liturgy, which was Greco-Arian, written in Latin.

This Gothic liturgy was almost exclusively adopted in Spain,

after the fourth council of Toledo in 633, when St. Isidore of

Seville and other celebrated Spanish bishops of this period, to

put a stop to the disorders in the churches, arranged the ritual

and obliged all to follow it. Even after the introduction of the

Gregorian liturgy, the Spaniards retained their own, and it was

universal up to the eighth century, when the Moors conquered

Spain. By those Goths who submitted to the Moors, and who were

promised freedom of their religion, it was guarded with the

utmost vigilance; and even after Spain was conquered by the free

Spaniards, (who had meantime adopted the Gregorian rite,) the

Muzarabes retained their own Gothic rite, and it was allowed to

them in six parishes, just as it had existed during the six

hundred years of Moorish domination.

But as the Muzarabic families disappeared or mingled with others,

their venerable and ancient liturgy gradually disappeared; and

but for cardinals Mendoza and Ximenes, it must have been lost

entirely. The first formed the design which Ximenes carried

out--gathered up all the manuscripts of their liturgy, had them

revised by their own priests, and printed a great number of the

missals, and built this chapel in his own cathedral, (called "ad

Corpus Christi,") and founded a college of thirteen priests to

serve it, confiding to the chapter of the cathedral the

protection of this religious foundation. Other bishops followed

his example, and in the sixteenth century a chapel was founded in

Salamanca, and another in Valladolid; but the one in Toledo seems

to be the only one now existing: here the mass is said every day

at nine o'clock; but few attend it, and it has become a mere

liturgic curiosity.

It commences with a prayer very little different from the Roman

liturgy; then the same psalm "Judica me," the introit, the

"Gloria in Excelsis," a lesson from the Old Testament, then the

gradual and epistle. The prayers of the offertory are almost

identical with those of the Roman liturgy; then follow prayers

like the Greek and Milanese liturgies; then the preface. But the

canon of the mass is different; the trisagion is followed

immediately by the consecration, and the credo is said at the

"elevation." The host is divided into two parts; the priest then

divides one part into five, and the other into four small bits;

places them upon the paten, upon which is engraved a cross

composed of seven circles, so that seven pieces of the host are

placed in the seven circles. He then places (on the right) at the

side of the cross upon the paten, the other two parts; each of

these nine parts has a name corresponding to a mystery in the

life of Christ, and they form, placed upon the paten the

following figures,

Incarnation, Passion,

Nativity, Death,

Circumcision, Resurrection,

Epiphany, Ascension,

Eternal Kingdom.

{682}

After this division, follows the "Pater," a prayer for the

afflicted, for prisoners, the sick and the dead. The priest then

takes a particle of the host corresponding to the words, "Eternal

Kingdom," and lets it fall into the chalice, pronouncing the

appropriate words; then he blesses the people, and communicates;

then the particle of the host corresponding to the word

"Ascension," recites a prayer for the dead, says the "Domine, non

sum dignus," and communicates with the particle of the host just

mentioned, and so successively with all the others; empties the

chalice, takes the ablutions, says the post-communion, the "Salva

Regina," blesses the people, and leaves the altar.

Over the altar of the Muzarabic chapel is a picture of the taking

of Oran, (in Africa,) which Ximenes conquered at his own risk and

his own expense, and made a gift of it to the crown of Spain.

Opposite the cathedral is the archbishop's palace, where is a

library open to the public, and adjoining this is the "Casa del

Ayuntamiento," house of the municipality, built by Del Greco, a

Greek who came to Toledo in 1577, where he became famous as

painter and architect.

We now travel through the narrow, precipitous streets, visiting

curious and beautiful architectural remains of the Gothic and

Moorish times, found in public and private buildings, strange

projecting door-posts, with cannon-ball ornaments; traverse the

"Zocodover," the market square, which is most Moorish looking,

with irregular windows and balconies, and is as well the

fashionable promenade, and lounging place as place of traffic.

Among the many churches, two are especially interesting in

arabesque remains--St. Maria de la Blanca and El Transitu, built

in 1326, which were once synagogues; the latter was afterward

given by Queen Isabella to the order of Calatrava.

Next to the cathedral in interest is the church of St. Juan de

los Reyes, (St. John of the Kings,) St. John being the special

patron of the kings of Spain. This was built by Ferdinand and

Isabella in 1496, in thanksgiving for the victory of Toro, where

they defeated the king of Portugal, who had set up a rival to the

throne of Castile, in the person of Jeanne Beltranea, the natural

daughter of Jeanne of Portugal, wife of Henry II., the elder

brother of Isabella. Upon the outside walls of this church hang

the chains taken off the Christians found in captivity in

Granada. The interior has been much changed; but there still

remain the high tribunes used by the royal family, and much of

the curious and elaborate carving, whose richness was once past

all description. The cloisters of the adjoining convent of

Franciscans, now in ruins, were once one of the most splendid

specimens of florid Gothic art in the world. The fine pointed

arches and delicate arabesque carvings are now half covered by

passion-vine and ivy, and the pretty garden is a desert wild. In

this convent the great Cardinal Ximenes made his novitiate as a

Franciscan monk, from which retirement he was called, by Cardinal

Mendoza, to be the confessor of Queen Isabella; and this

wonderful woman, who had the discernment to know and choose men

who could aid her in her great designs, when Mendoza died, named

as successor to the "great cardinal" the poor monk Francis

Ximenes, who became at one time bishop of Toledo, primate of

Spain, and grand chancellor of Castile; and though, in this

position, the first personage of the court, and the greatest

grandee of the kingdom, he still retained the simple habits of

the Franciscan; and it was necessary to have an order from the

pope to induce him to assume the appendages belonging to his

rank.

{683}

Indeed, it is said that under his robes of silk and velvet he

wore the "cilice" and the coarse brown habit of his order; and

after his death was found the little box with the needles and

thread with which the great primate of Spain mended his own

garments. He concluded the treaties which made Spain at this time

the greatest power of the world; and it is wonderful how this

man, already old--for he was sixty when he assumed the

primacy--how he could at once attend to the various and

multiplied duties of which he is said never to have neglected

anything. He lived in the age of great men, of Mendoza, (el gran

cardinal,) of Gonzales de Cordova, (el gran capitan,) of

Christopher Columbus, and many others, and took part in all the

great events of this great age. Immediately upon the invention of

printing, he had printed the celebrated polyglot Bible of Alcala,

which cost him 500,000 francs of our money, and was in itself

enough to immortalize him. He founded universities, built

colleges, endowed professorships and scholarships, and built

convents and schools for the education of poor children. Raumer,

in his _History of Europe_, says of him, "His sagacity and

his activity were equal to his sanctity. Embracing all the

branches of administration, nourishing the grandest plans and

projects, he neglected for these neither piety nor science. As a

warrior, he commanded in 1509 the crusade which made a descent in

Africa, and conquered Oran. He founded, upon principles which do

honor to his intelligence, the university of Alcala, and directed

the printing of the celebrated Bible to which this city gives its

name. He is the only man admired by his contemporaries as a

politician, a warrior, and a saint at the same time."

From the esplanade in front of the church of St. Juan de los

Reyes is a fine view. The great manufactory of the "Toledo

blades" lies below upon the wild and melancholy Tagus, which

winds through the plain; beyond are the mountains. The bridge of

St. Martin spans the Tagus on one side, with its Moorish towers

at either end. The tower of Cambron, one of the great Moorish

towers, is in front, in which is a lovely statue of St. Leocadia,

and near the bridge of St. Martin, on the city side, is the site

of the palace of the Gothic kings. Here are some arches of a ruin

called "Los Vaños de Florinda"--she who was the daughter of the

apostate Don Julian, and with whose unhappy fate is involved that

of the last of the Gothic kings.

The Alcazar, which overlooks the whole city, was a Moorish

palace, then a fortress, with additions made by Alonzo VI., in

1085. Improved by Don Alvarado de Luna, and then by Charles V. in

1548, and by Philip II.'s great architect, Herara, there only

remains the great patio, with its fine columns and the

magnificent staircase for which Philip sent directions from

England. Burned in the war of the succession, it was repaired by

Cardinal Lorenzana, a munificent patron of arts, and whose whole

life was devoted to good works, who made it a silk factory for

poor girls. The French injured it again in 1809, and it has been

a ruin until now, when some repairs seem to be going on by order

of the queen.

{684}

The esplanade in front commands a fine view. Just below is the

military college, formerly the great hospital of Santa Cruz,

founded by Cardinal Mendoza. On a height near are the ruins of

the castle of Cervantes, not the author Cervantes, but one which

belonged to the Knights Templars. We pass through the Puerta del

Sol, one of the great Moorish gates, follow the steep and winding

way by the remains of an old Roman bridge and fortress, cross the

bridge of Alcantara, and so--leave Toledo.

----------

All For The Faith.

There is a mystery, an evangel, in suffering; and this fiery

evangel, God's message to our immortality, prepares and perfects

the soul for the long hereafter.

In a humble room sat Sir Ralph de Mohun and the Lady Beatrice.

The soft sunlight of Provence was fading, and athwart the rose

leaves the dying flush rested on this fairest type of girlish

loveliness. Absorbed in her rosary, she sat at the open window;

while, bending near, Sir Ralph watched the gorgeous heavens,

gazing with no thought of the surroundings, and

thinking--thinking as we so often do in the hours that fate

allows us for decision.

Glimpses of his proud English home stole upon the old man's

vision; of the shadowy oak-lined halls and stately corridors

where, as a boy, he had looked with childish pride upon portraits

of a brave line that had passed their own childhood there; the

cross of the old chapel glittered in his dreams, for beneath it

the mother of his children slept. But now, homeless and an alien,

he would never again see the white cliffs of the land his heart

loved best.

The battle of the Boyne had crushed the lingering hopes of the

Cavaliers who had forsaken home and kindred to follow the last

Stuart king. If James had only possessed average tact, he might

have retained the affection of his subjects; but strong-willed

without discrimination, zealous without wisdom, his whole reign

was a succession of errors which could not but alienate the

middle classes, all ways practical and struggling against the

encroachments of the aristocracy. Nobly did the Cavaliers rally

to the rescue of this last Catholic king, when, forsaken even by

those of his blood, he stood alone, held at bay by the same

subjects who had sworn him fealty. All through the darkness of

his mistaken flight, through the changeful, disastrous campaign,

and, so trying to their haughty spirit, even unto the court of

Louis, where sneering courtiers dared to greet them with slights

and contumely, they neither swerved nor varied. All this had

tested their loyalty, tried their faith; yet they neither changed

nor forsook him: and of this band none had suffered more than

gallant Sir Ralph de Mohun.

A very pleasant life was that of the Catholic gentry in England;

they hunted, they were jovial at their meetings, but devout in

the chapel; and no class of the English subjects were more

orderly and refined. But when the old crown rested on other than

the brow of a Stuart, they left the broad moors and sunny downs,

and fled with the monarch who represented not only their

government, but their faith, in old England.

{685}

Stripped of the wealth that had given him comfort, despoiled of

all that makes a man's position a blessing, the brave knight

steadily, defiantly met an adverse fate. "_Noblesse

oblige!_" spoke in every phase of his stormy life; he would

suffer, ay, die, as a gentleman, with no murmur to the world of

the sorrow and strife within. But an uncontrolled, unsubdued

feeling warred with the iron resolve which supported him, and

this was his devotion to the last bairn left him by his fair

Scottish wife.

Twenty summers had deepened her girlhood into that rare

womanhood, refined through suffering, strengthened by discipline;

and the sweet eyes shone with a softer light, a more earnest

loveliness, as they gazed from under the long, dark lashes; while

the gentle, low voice owned a subdued tone, very different from

the lightsome carol that had gladdened bluff Sir Ralph at the gay

meet in old Suffolk. But times were different now, and the table

was becoming scantier, while the silver grew very low; and the

soldier who had rallied the dragoons at the Boyne, had stood

unmoved when advancing squadrons of the English, his own blood in

the front ranks, swept on to attack him, felt his eyes dim as he

watched his frail, last blossom, and knew that soon she would be

in a strange land all alone.

The afternoon faded into night, and the scanty fire could not

warm the chill and bare chamber in which the old man lay. He was

dozing in the great arm-chair, and Beatrice was crouched on a low

cushion near, when softly the door opened. Was the young girl

dreaming, as with her large eyes larger still, she rose

instinctively, rose as though swayed by an unseen spirit, and

walked out upon the terrace?

"Beatrice, I have risked life, almost honor for this."

"Philip Stratherne, life belongs to honor, and honor should never

be risked."

The speech cost her an effort, for her voice was faint and very

low.

"I have come to offer peace and comfort, my darling, and--dare I

whisper the story which you used to listen to, under the elms at

home?"

"Sir Philip Stratherne, you forget the past; you will not

remember the blood that lies between us."

"My darling! my darling! we have no past save what you gave to

me. Life belongs to honor, your own sweet voice has told me, and

we are commanded to 'love without dissimulation;' therefore the

logic of courts and battle-fields shall claim no power here."

"Philip! Philip!" was all the maiden could find speech to answer,

uttered in a tone meant to be reproachful.

Two years of sorrow had passed since the fatal battle of the

Boyne, and the heart of the maiden was very sore, very lonely,

very hungry for the one love that made her life.

"Beatrice!" called from the room, and she entered.

"Come and sing to me, little one; for I have been dreaming sad

dreams of the old home." And so she sat on her cushion at his

feet, and sang in her soft alto:

"It was a' for our rightful king,

We left fair Scotia's strand;

It was a' for our rightful king,

We e'er saw Irish land,

We e'er saw Irish land!

"The sodger frae the war returns,

The sailor frae the main;

But I hae' parted frae my love,

Never to meet again,

Never to meet again.

"When day is done, and night is come,

And a' things wrapt in sleep;

I think o' one who's far away,

The lee lang night, an' weep,

The lee lang night, an' weep."

"Will Sir Ralph Mohun welcome the son of an old friend?"

{686}

The old man turned hastily, and Philip Stratherne stood before

him.

"The time was, Sir Philip, when I should have grasped your hand

with all the feeling which my love for the boy inspired. Now, you

are under the roof of what is left me, and therefore I am

silent."

There was a stately courtesy in all this which embarrassed and

wounded the young man.

"This, certainly, is not my former welcome; but the times have

changed the manners, Sir Ralph, and we must accept the change."

"True, Sir Philip. There is little that I can offer you now; yet

methinks there is a seat for you."

The young man hesitated, and then sat down.

"I have not learned diplomacy on battle-fields, Sir Ralph,

therefore I will without preamble tell you what is heavy on my

heart. First, to be selfishly eager, I have come to ask you for

what you promised years ago--your daughter. Sir Ralph de Mohun,

you were once young, and blood coursed as fiery then as now. Can

you find it in your heart to separate us? Then, secondly, your

old friends at court offer entire restitution and pardon, if you

will accept the new _régime_, with England's faith."

"If I have been true to my country, then must I still be true to

my God! Philip Stratherne, if I had not loved you from your

boyhood, the words that would come to my lips would tell you what

my heart wills to speak to _all_ who have proved false! For

the rest, my daughter has the Mohun blood, and she knows what her

church teaches."

And Beatrice sat silent, crushed as a lily powerless from the

storm. She knew her duty, she felt her love. Reason--honor told

her that even love could not span the chasm through which the

blood of her gallant brothers flowed. They, too, had followed the

fortunes of the Stuart king, and one lay dead before the bastions

of Londonderry, while another gave up his young life with the

war-shout on his fearless lips, in the van of his father's

regiment at Newtown-butler.

It was Philip Stratherne who led the detachment of Enniskillen

horse that rode down the mere handful of Irish dragoons, inspired

by Guy Mohun's ringing cry; and Sir Ralph had listened to Philip

Stratherne's voice, as, clear and steady, it rallied the

Enniskilleners to the charge that had snatched that last son from

him. Not only for the Stuart had he yielded his glorious life,

but for the cross, for the faith, in the defence of which

centuries had borne brave testimony for the Mohuns, not only in

bonnie England, but on every battle-field in Christendom.

A stern self-control subdued the old man; but the girl, the woman

was suffering; honor commanded, duty pleaded, but a wilder,

stronger, stormier feeling fought within her now. The color

crimsoned the fair face, and the sweet eyes turned, rested for

one moment on the young man with all the girl's tenderness, all

the woman's passion--a mute appeal, a dying cry for help; then

with the delicate hands clasped tightly over her breast, as

though to keep down the heart's mad struggling, she spoke so low

that the words seemed almost inarticulate, yet to the man

listening with such painful eagerness each sound knelled the

death which knows no "resurgam!" Only the simple words came

faltering forth, came sobbing as the wind soughs the prelude to

destruction, ere the lightning scathes its fiery death; and so in

this whisper he heard,

"Were I a false Mohun, I could not be a true Stratherne."

{687}

Then without a word she left them; and when the old man sought

her, he found her lying as one dead before her crucifix. Tenderly

he raised her, and from his lips sounded the prayer:

"May the Lord receive the sacrifice from thy hands, to the praise

and glory of his name, and to the benefit both of us and of his

holy church."

"Amen!" whispered a low voice, and the soft eyes unclosed all dim

with tears.

No murmur escaped her lips, no regret was ever spoken, but fairer

and frailer in her rare loveliness, the old man trembled as he

watched her, and he cried in the bitterness of his agony,

"Save me, O God! for the waters are come in even unto my soul."

It was Holy-week, the most solemn of the Lenten season, and

Beatrice Mohun knelt in the old cathedral during the impressive

_Tenebrae_, and as the fourteen candles were extinguished,

and the solemn _Miserere_ rose, from the depths of her heart

came the prayer:

"Let not the tempest of water drown me, nor the deep swallow me

up."

And the pervading gloom corresponded with her own spirit; her

life owned no brightness, and the one tie left her seemed fast

wearing away. Trouble had weakened the iron constitution of Sir

Ralph; for more exhausting than mere physical pain is the

ceaseless care that preys upon the vitals, claiming life as its

tribute.

He felt that he could buy back ease and comfort for his darling,

and he knew that for him earth held but a very few years; but to

obtain all this, he must barter his honor, yield his creed, and

the old blood still owned the fierceness of a changeless

fidelity. No Mohun had ever swerved, not even in the dark days of

the last Tudor, nor after, when his graceless daughter held the

sceptre. And now, though bereft of home, with his gallant sons

lying far from their kindred, his fair young daughter

life-wrecked, his own existence a burden, when even starvation

mocked them, the loyal spirit knew no change; but staunchly by

the old faith, true to the weak king, the brave knight still

fought his adverse destiny.

And Beatrice came back through the darkness, and leaned against

the couch on which her father lay.

"Come to me, little one; for I fear that you are not as strong as

in the days when wild Bess bore you to the hunt. Have you any

regrets for the past, my darling?"

"Duty gives us discipline, papa, and it would not be right to

question Providence."

"Bravely spoken, my daughter; you nerve a courage which was

growing too human to be strong. But you grieve at the choice

which has kept you the slave of an old man's caprice?"

"O papa!" and a low quick sob stopped her; then with more control

she quietly said, "You forget that it was not only to be with

you, but to remain firm and loyal to holy church; and papa, I

often think that earth is only the high road to a better world;

therefore I only pray that the end may be very near."

"Little one, bring the light nearer--let me look upon your face;

hold it nearer, darling. Ah God! this is the dimness which brings

my warning. Quick, daughter mine, send for Father Paolo. Now, O

God! my eyes, darkened with the mist of death, fix their last

dying looks on thy crucified image. Merciful Jesus, have mercy on

me!"

{688}

Father Paolo did come, and in the gray dawn of Good-Friday the

old knight lay dying.

"Kyrie Eleison!" said the clear voice of the holy father, and,

clasping closer the blessed crucifix, the old man's voice was

steady as he responded, "Christe eleison!" And alone in her agony

the young girl knelt.

A clattering of hoofs sounded in the court-yard, and a quick

step, that startled her even then, broke the solemn stillness.

"In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum," prayed the

priest.

"Domine Jesu Christe, suscipe spiritum meum," in clear, earnest

tones rung out the old man's voice; then the door was flung open,

and Philip Stratherne entered.

"Not too late, thank God! Hold her not away from me. Say now that

you die William's subject, and all your own shall be hers."

The closing eyes opened, the old strength came back to them, and

a sweet smile illumed his face, as the words came,

"Maria, mater gratis, mater misericordiae, tu me ab hoste

protege, et in hora mortis suscipe!" And with a long low sigh the

spirit passed away to God.

With a sob that rent her heart in twain, Beatrice threw herself

beside her father.

"My darling, come with me; the last obstacle has passed away, and

God has given you as my legacy."

She made no answer. The solemn monotone of the priest alone was

heard, "Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat

ei."

But to all this the man was deaf; he only saw the prostrate girl,

and listened to her sobs of agony.

"My waif has drifted to her haven, and I will guard her with my

life."

His strong arms were around her, and the voice that thrilled her

soul was sounding in her ears. How could she send him from her?

"Ah! God help me!" she cried.

"Et ne nos inducas in tentationem," came in deep, sonorous tones

from the priest.

"Sed libera nos a malo," sounded the response.

And further, "Domine, exaudi orationem meam!"

"Et clamor meus ad te veniat!" and Beatrice fainted with these

words upon her lips.

"Son, leave her to us," urged the priest, but he would not go

till she opened her sweet eyes.

"Daughter!"--and she caught the hand of Father Paolo, as in the

desperation of agonized despair. A shadow darkened Philip

Stratherne's brow.

"The cursed priest again!" he muttered between his closed teeth.

"Tell me when I may see you again, Beatrice, free from these

fearful surroundings."

"The Monday of Easter-week," was all she replied, and he left

her.

And when the Monday dawned, bright with the carol of birds, he

sought her; but the old chateau by the valley was silent, the

shutters barred, and the flowers drooping and dead. An aged woman

came hobbling to him, who said, with the tears dimming her old

eyes, "Ah! the sweet bird has flown, master, and St. Ursula

guards her from behind the bars."

"God of heaven, save me! Here is gold if you will prove this

false."

"Keep your gold for charity, master; for the truth is strong; and

our holy Mother keeps her safe from all evil."

{689}

Wild with the horror of losing her, he strode across the valley

to the convent near. The angelus was sounding, and over the

hills, up the broad river, the holy prayer-call echoed, for the

Easter season rejoiced the earth; her _jubilate_ for the

blessed link connecting the God-man with humanity.

Blade, and leaf, and blossom gloried in the new life, and the

spring sun spread over the natural world the same light with

which the resurrection gladdened the soul; but to all this was

the young man blind and deaf and dumb--for surging and beating

within his heart was the stormy, o'er-mastering human feeling. He

only knew that the woman to whom he bent the knee in this mad,

idolatrous love was lost to him, he only felt that fate had

snatched her from him for ever! The sister started, as his

deathly face presented itself. With scarcely human utterance, he

asked for the Lady Beatrice, and after a few moments, the

messenger returned, and a folded paper was put in his hand. He

read:

"The Lord keepeth thee from all evil:

may the Lord keep thy soul!"

And she, with her intenser passion, clinging steadily, loving

unselfishly, as only a woman can, gave him up; yielded her costly

tribute to the faith which taught her that loyalty to God

demands, if need be, all that life and love can give. Then, faint

and weary, bruised and suffering, yet staunch and true to her

faith as she was, the holy church opened its arms to her,

comforting the broken spirit, healing the bleeding heart, and

blessing her with the precious benediction that brings its calm

to those who seek the life that dieth not. In deeds of unselfish

love and sacrifice, she passed her days; all the strength within

her clinging to the cross, all the human passion purified,

glorified into the worship of the Lamb whose blood had made her

whiter than snow. And safe in her haven, the dove of peace rested

upon her heart; for the "fellowship of the Holy Ghost" had

sanctified her: and thus, when her summers were yet in their

flush, she passed away to God.

But he forgot her in the years that came after, and found

happiness in the fair English Protestant, whose children heired

the broad lands of the brave Mohuns. Verily man's love is

fleeting, but in God is eternal life; and while we pay our

tribute to one who was so strong in resisting, we pray that all

who are thus tempted may likewise prove ready to yield all for

the faith.

-------

{690}

The Struggle Between Letter And Spirit In The Jewish Church.

Conference Preached In The Cathedral Of Notre Dame,

In Paris, By R. Pere Hyacinthe, January 3, 1869.