guide-books, that it would be a work of great service to Catholic
tourists, if some competent person would prepare a guide-book for
their use, with reference to all the places and objects specially
interesting to them as connected with their religion and its
history.
-----
Rhymes of the Poets.
By Felix Ago.
Philadelphia: E. H. Butler & Co. 1868.
A very amusing satirical essay upon "allowable rhymes," selected
from the verses of a large number of poets.
----
Lake George: Its Scenes and Characteristics, with Glimpses of
the Olden Times; to which is added some account of Ticonderoga;
with a description of the route to Schroon Lake and the
Adirondacks. With Illustrations.
By B. F. De Costa,
1 vol. 12mo, pp. 196.
New York: A. D. F. Randolph. 1868.
This is an excellent little book for tourists to Lake George and
the surrounding country. The first white man who saw Lake George
was the Jesuit missionary, Father Jogues, who, having arrived at
that beautiful lake on the eve of the festival of Corpus Christi,
called it "The Lake of the Blessed Sacrament," a name it retained
until changed by the English to its present one. The author takes
pains to correct the many misstatements of other writers with
regard to historical events which occurred in the vicinity of the
lake. The account of the defeat of the English by Montcalm, 1757,
is given; and the reported connivance of that general in the
massacre of the English troops after their surrender is disposed
of as one of the "wild exaggerations of the day." Yet it is only
a few years ago that a distinguished general, while on a visit to
the lake, reiterated, in a speech to his admirers, the terrible
cruelty of the French in allowing the captives to be massacred in
cold blood, and asserted that it was one of the customs of that
barbarous age, and therefore was not prevented by Montcalm. Mr.
De Costa says, with reference to this reported massacre: "That
class of writers who furnish what may be called apocrypha of
history, have delighted in wild exaggerations of this event.
Drawing their material from the crudest sensation accounts of the
day, they have not hesitated to record as facts the most
improbable fancies. It is to be regretted that these accounts
have crept into so many of our popular school histories, in one
of which, now extensively used, we are informed that, when
Montcalm went away, he left the dead bodies of one hundred women
shockingly mangled and weltering in their blood. The account is
based upon a supposed letter of Putnam's that was never written,
and is of the same authority as that favorite but now exploded
story of the school-boy, which relates Putnam's descent into the
wolfs den." He also truly says that "national enmity has had much
to do with these misrepresentations of Montcalm, who was every
way a noble and humane man, as well as the ablest general of his
day in all North America." Religious animosity had its share in
it, too, and no small share either. The French were Catholics;
the English, Protestants; and it was only in perfect keeping with
the English literature of the day to paint everything done by the
French Catholics in the darkest colors possible. But this calumny
cannot stand the tests of the critic of to-day, and we are glad
to see a little hand-book like this, which must become popular
with the tourist of the Northern lakes, stamp the fictions which
have crept into history as they deserve, and give its readers the
truth.
{719}
The work is printed on good paper, and illustrated with wood-cuts
of the most noted places referred to in its pages.
------
Democracy in the United States:
What it has Done, What it is Doing, and What it will Do.
By Ransom H. Gillett, formerly Member of Congress from St.
Lawrence County, N.Y.; more recently Registrar and Solicitor of
the United States Treasury Department, and Solicitor for the
United States in the Court of Claims, etc.
New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1868.
This is what, we suppose, will be termed, in the language of the
market, a _seasonable_ book, it being brought out just in
time for, and adapted to, the political campaign upon which the
country has now fully entered. It aims to give a succinct but
complete history of the Democratic party, of its measures and its
leading men, from its beginning down to the present time. We are
not ourselves politicians enough to judge how faithfully or
reliably this has been done. The volume--a compact one of some
four hundred pages--is brought out in the Messrs. Appleton's
excellent style of book publishing, and will, of course, have an
extensive sale.
------
Histoire De France.
Par V. Duruy.
Nouvelle Edition, illustrée d'un grand
nombre de gravures et de cartes geographiques.
Paris: Hachette. (New York: Christern. 2 vols. 12mo.)
This is a part of a course of compendious universal history
prepared by a number of learned writers, under the direction of
M. Duruy. It is a clear and succinct history of France from the
earliest epoch to the year 1815, with an appendix containing a
summary of events from 1815 to 1866. The history of France is of
the greatest interest and importance, and but little known among
us, especially in its Catholic aspects. This book is, therefore,
one of the most useful text-books for the instruction of classes
studying the French language, which can be studied; and most
invaluable also for others, who are able to read French, and who
desire to have a brief but complete exposition of French history.
Besides its numerous and valuable maps, it contains more than 300
remarkably well-executed and artistic woodcuts, which add very
much to its value and interest. The study of the French language
and literature has been too much neglected in our American
colleges and higher schools. Every person of liberal education
ought to read and speak the French language. We recommend this
book to the attention of teachers, parents, and all persons
occupied with the study of French, and also to intelligent
tourists, to whom it will prove an invaluable companion on a
visit to _La Belle France_.
------
O'Shea's Popular Juvenile Library.
First series. 12 vols. Beautifully illustrated.
New York: P. O'Shea. 1868.
The titles of the volumes in this series are as follows:
The Inquisitive Boy and the Little Ragman;
The Picture and the Country Cousins;
Augusta and Christmas Eve;
The Young Guests, and other stories;
The Page, and other stories;
The Young Artist;
The Gray Woman of Scharfenstein, and other stories;
The Young Painter;
Tailor and Fiddler;
Sobieski's Achievements;
Hedwig of Poland;
The Young Countess.
These tales are taken principally from the German and French, and
are unexceptional in matter.
------
The Catholic Crusoe.
Adventures of Owen Evans, Esq., Surgeon's Mate,
set ashore with five companions on a desolate island
in the Caribbean Sea, 1739. Given from the Original MSS.,
by Rev. W. H. Anderdon, M.A.
New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 12mo, pp. 519.
{720}
A notice of Dr. Anderdon's very entertaining story appeared in
_The Catholic World_ for December, 1867. The reprint before
us is very well got up, but lacks an interesting feature of the
original edition, namely, its maps and illustrations.
------
The Queen's Daughter; or, The Orphan of La Granja.
By the author of _Grace Morton_, etc.
Philadelphia: Peter F. Cunningham. Pp. 108.
A pleasant tale for young folk, neatly bound, and, in general
typographical execution, a very decided improvement on its
predecessor, _Elinor Johnstone_.
------
The Complete Poetical Works of Thomas Campbell,
with a Memoir of his Life.
New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1868.
So far as the paper and binding are concerned, this edition of
Campbell is beautifully got up; but we cannot say as much for the
type, which is the very reverse of beautiful.
------
A Popular Treatise on the Art of House Painting,
Plain and Decorative.
By John W. Masury. New York: D. Appleton & Co.
A very useful book, on an important subject, for those who would
preserve their houses, and have them tastefully and, at the same
time, economically painted. The mechanical portion of the work is
executed in the Messrs. Appleton's best style.
------
Celebrated Sanctuaries of the Madonna.
By Rev. J. Spencer Northcote, D.D.
Philadelphia: P. F. Cunningham. 1868.
This is an American edition of Dr. Northcote's work, the English
edition of which we noticed in our July number. It is brought out
in very handsome style, and reflects credit on the taste of the
publisher.
------
Announcements.--"The Catholic Publication Society" has in press,
or in preparation, the following new works:
1. Symbolism. By Adam Moehler. This will be ready about
August 1st.
2. Second Series of Illustrated Sunday-School Library. Ready
about September 1st, twelve vols., for titles of which see
advertisement on second page of cover.
3. Memorials of those who suffered for the Catholic Faith in
Ireland, in the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth
Centuries. Collected and edited from the original
authorities, by Myles O'Rielly. B.A., LL.D. This will be one
of the most important books relative to Ireland ever
published in this country. It will be ready about September
1st.
4. Cradle Lands--Egypt, Palestine, etc. Illustrated.
By Lady Herbert. Ready November 15.
5. Love; or, Self-Sacrifice. By Lady Herbert.
6. Life of Father Ravigan, S.J.
7. Third Series of Illustrated Sunday-School Library.
------
Books Received.
From P. Donahoe, Boston.
Plain Talk about the Protestantism of To-day. From the French
of Mgr. Segur. 1 vol. 32mo, pp. 253. Price, 60 cents.
From J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia.
Alleghania; or, Praises of American Heroes.
By Christopher Laomedon Pindar.
---------------------
{721}
The Catholic World.
Vol. VII., No. 42.--September, 1868.
The Veneration Of Saints And Holy Images.
The veneration paid to saints by Catholics with the formal
approbation or tacit sanction of the supreme authority in the
church is, together with the use made of their images and that of
Christ in religious worship, under the same sanction, the one
feature of the Catholic system most obnoxious to Protestants.
They do not hesitate ordinarily to qualify it as idolatry, that
is, as a rendering of the worship due to God alone to creatures,
both living and inanimate, similar to that which the heathen
system of polytheism ascribes to its numerous divinities and
their images.
We propose to discuss this matter briefly, not with the intention
of proving that the Catholic doctrine and practice are truly a
genuine outgrowth of the Christian religion by extrinsic
evidence, but of showing their intrinsic harmony with Christian
first principles, and refuting the objections derived from these
first principles against them. As the subject naturally divides
itself into two distinct parts, already clearly indicated in our
opening paragraph, we shall confine our remarks at present to the
first part of it, or that relating to the veneration of saints.
The preliminary charge of idolatry, or a direct contradiction to
the monotheistic doctrine of natural and revealed theology, is
perfectly groundless, and, however it may be modified and
diminished, there is not an atom of truth in it upon which any
objection to the Catholic doctrine can be based.
Idolatry, or the worship of the creature instead of the creator,
originates in ignorance or denial of the true conception of the
one living and true God. God is not worshipped, because he is not
known or believed in. By necessary consequence, something which
is not God is conceived as highest, best, most excellent, most
powerful, without reference or relation to God as the author and
sovereign of all that has any existence. The pantheist is an
idolater of all nature, but especially of himself. Even Socrates,
Plato, and Aristotle were not free from idolatrous principles,
although probably free from all sin in the matter, since they
ascribed to the universe a certain amount of being not caused by
the intelligence and will of God as creator.
{722}
Neither are our modern rationalists free from the same error,
since they withhold from God the homage of their reason, and give
it to themselves as to persons possessing intelligence which is
independent of God. Wilful and obstinate heretics are all
likewise in the same category; for, by rejecting a part of what
God has revealed, they, by implication, profess to be superior to
God in intelligence, and substitute an idol of their own vain
imagination in lieu of that eternal truth which is identical with
the essence of God. Idolaters, in the strict sense of the word,
or polytheists, such as the ancient Greeks and Romans were, paid
a formal worship to their gods, as superior beings having a
supreme and irresponsible control over nature and over men. It
was a worship which was a substitute for that originally given to
the true God, totally contrary to it, and an insuperable barrier
to the spread of monotheism as a religion. These false divinities
were, therefore, the rivals of the true God, and filled the place
in the religious worship of the heathen which was filled by him
in the worship established by divine revelation from the creation
of mankind. It is evident, from the very statement of what
idolatry is in itself, that a veneration paid to any creature,
which is proportionate to the degree of excellence which it has
received from the creator, is not idolatrous, and cannot detract
from the supreme veneration which is due to God as the sovereign
lord of the universe. Those who condemn the religious honor paid
to created natures by the Catholic Church cannot therefore lay
down an _a priori_ principle from which to demonstrate in
advance that this honor is necessarily idolatrous, unless they
previously demonstrate that the excellence ascribed to these
natures is such that God cannot communicate it to a creature. The
worship paid to the sacred humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ is
that which is apparently the most obnoxious to the charge of
idolatry of any other species of relative worship which the
church has decreed to be due to any created nature. Our chief
controversy is, therefore, with Jews, Mohammedans, Unitarians,
and others who claim to be pure theists and who deny the
incarnation. What we affirm against these is, that they cannot
demonstrate the impossibility of the incarnation. They cannot
demonstrate the impossibility of a hypostatic union between the
human nature and the divine nature, by virtue of which the
personality of the human nature is divine, and the human nature
is the nature of God, and thus worthy of relative adoration.
Therefore, they cannot argue that the divinity of Jesus Christ
has not been revealed, and that divine worship is not due to him
by the law of God, because God cannot reveal such a doctrine or
command such a worship without contradicting the essential truth
of his nature. Suppose that evidence is given sufficient in
itself to authenticate the revelation of the mystery of the
incarnation, and at once it becomes evident that divine worship
is due to Jesus Christ as God incarnate, precisely because
worship is due to God. The question is then only debatable on the
point whether this revelation has been made or not. If it could
be proved that it has not, and that Jesus Christ is a created and
finite person, it would follow that the worship paid to him by
all orthodox Christians is idolatrous.
{723}
It would be idolatrous to worship any man who should pretend to
be God incarnate when he is not, or who should be erroneously
believed by his disciples to be a divine person, without any
reference to the question whether any such incarnation can be or
has been decreed by the wisdom of God. We are not attempting to
prove the truth of the doctrine of the divinity of Jesus Christ,
or to prove directly that the worship we pay to him is not
idolatrous. Everything, we admit, depends on proving it. If it
cannot be proved, Christianity is a superstition, and must be
classed with Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Mohammedanism. For the
proof of the truth and reality of the incarnation, we must refer
the reader elsewhere. We are intent on showing that no elevation
of created nature which is possible is in any way incompatible
with the supreme dignity and sovereignty of God, and,
consequently, no honor due to such an elevated nature
incompatible with the supreme worship due to the divine majesty.
We are also intent on showing that it is principally the fact of
the incarnation on which the whole question hinges, and the
worship paid to Christ against which the objections of so-called
theists to saint-worship are levelled. The incarnation is the
principle of saint-worship. All orthodox Protestants are accused
of idolatrous saint-worship by Unitarians, Jews, Mohammedans, and
all pure theists. It is true that the orthodox do not regard
Jesus Christ as a mere saint, but all others regard him as being,
at the highest, only the greatest among the saints. All
Protestants who are orthodox on the incarnation, and conformed in
belief to the doctrine of their own confessions and great
divines, believe that the holy humanity of Jesus Christ is
entitled to divine worship. They are obliged to worship not only
the divine nature of Jesus Christ, but also his human nature, his
soul and body. Yet, the human nature of Christ is a created and
finite substance, not possessing a single divine attribute. How,
then, can it receive the worship due to God alone? Evidently it
cannot receive such a worship as terminating in itself, or as
absolute. It is impossible for the intellect to make the judgment
that the substance of the body and of the soul of Jesus Christ is
the infinite, self-existing being whom we call God, and from whom
all things derive existence. Why, then, is the humanity of Jesus
Christ to be worshipped? Because of the divine person to whom it
belongs. The soul and the body of Jesus Christ are the soul and
body of the Son of God. The same person who is God is also man,
and his humanity is inseparable from his person. It is,
therefore, on account of and in relation to his divine person
that his human nature is adored with the worship of latria. If
our Lord should condescend to come upon the earth again, we are
persuaded that every sincere Protestant who believes in his
divinity would gladly prostrate himself at his feet to pay him
supreme adoration, and, if he were able to look upon his face,
would feel that he was gazing upon the very countenance of God,
and that the eyes of the Lord of heaven and earth were fixed upon
him. If there are any whose mind or feelings revolt from the
worship of the Son of God in his human body and through the
medium of his visible form, let them admit at once that they are
no believers in the incarnation, that they have abandoned the
doctrine of the ancient Protestant confessions and are really
Unitarians. Those who fully admit the Catholic doctrine that the
sacred humanity of Jesus Christ is to be adored must range
themselves at once on our side and prepare to defend our common
cause. They must defend themselves and us against the charge of
idolatry.
{724}
They cannot do it without laying down the principle that, when a
created nature is elevated to a special union with the divine
nature, and made to participate with it in dignity, it is worthy
of a proportionate religious veneration. The more orthodox
Unitarians cannot deny this principle without condemning
themselves. They give a veneration at least equal to that which
Catholics call the worship of hyperdulia to Jesus Christ; and as
they do not acknowledge in him any dignity differing in kind, but
only one differing in degree, from that of angels, prophets,
martyrs, confessors, and other saints, they cannot consistently
deny the propriety of giving a lesser veneration, or worship of
dulia, to the saints. Episcopalians and other Protestants
dedicate days and churches in honor of the Blessed Virgin and the
saints, which are acts of very high religious veneration. Only
those who refuse all religious veneration either to Jesus Christ
or to any created nature, because they deny any supernatural
elevation of created nature into a mysterious union with the
divine nature, have any pretext or appearance of consistency in
their charge of idolatry against Catholic saint-worship. Yet it
is precisely the trinitarian Protestants who are loudest and most
violent in repeating this charge. So far as rationalists and
Unitarians are concerned, it is not of much utility to discuss
the question of the veneration of the Virgin and of the saints
directly. The preliminary question of the incarnation has first
to be settled. It is the divine worship we pay to Jesus Christ
which is their great stone of stumbling and rock of offence. We
leave them aside, therefore, to pursue the one direct line of
argument on which we started, namely, that the veneration of
saints flows logically out of the worship of the sacred humanity
of Christ; and is rooted in the doctrine of the incarnation.
Orthodox Protestants are bound to pay divine worship, or the
adoration of latria, to the soul and body of Jesus Christ; a
worship which would be idolatry if the humanity of Christ were
not united to the divine nature in one personality, so that the
worship of Christ as man is necessarily referred to his divine
person and terminates upon it. For the same reason, they are
bound to pay an inferior veneration, or worship of dulia, to the
saints, because they also are united to the divine nature through
the incarnation and in Christ, as his co-heirs and brethren, the
participators of his glory. They are not united with the divine
nature in one personality, therefore they cannot receive divine
worship. But they are in a lesser mode made "partakers of the
divine nature," as the Scripture explicitly declares, and,
therefore, deserve a veneration commensurate with their degree of
union, which is ultimately referred to God, who is "worshipped in
his saints." To compare the veneration of the saints of God with
the Greek polytheism is simply absurd. It is connected with and
springs out of the doctrine of pure monotheism and the worship
paid to the one true God. It does not, in the slightest degree,
supplant this doctrine or worship, confuse the idea of God, or
interfere with the recognition of his sole and absolute
sovereignty. It presents necessarily, and by its very essence,
the saints as the creatures, the servants, the courtiers,
ministers, and favored friends of God, intercessors and advocates
for men before his throne.
{725}
It presents, therefore, necessarily, God as their creator,
sovereign, and as the source and fountain of all their sanctity,
beatitude, and glory, the author and giver of all the blessings
asked for through their intercession. The perpetual presence of
the true idea of God preserves the idea of the hierarchy of
creatures from all corruption or perversion, and keeps
continually before the mind their relation and subordination to
the supreme and absolute Lord of the universe.
In the same way, the presence of the true idea of the incarnation
prevents the idea of the mediation of the saints between God and
man from being corrupted. It is impossible for the Blessed Virgin
or any other saint to take the place in the Catholic idea which
belongs to Jesus Christ as the Redeemer and Saviour of mankind,
the Mediator between God and man. It is clearly understood and
vividly realized that Jesus Christ is the medium of union between
God and man through the hypostatic union of human nature with the
divine nature in his person. His expiation of sin derives its
infinite value from the divinity of his person. His merits derive
their infinite value also from his divinity. He is the source and
fountain of grace and mercy, because he is God and possesses life
in himself. He is the sacrifice perpetually offered in the divine
eucharist, the perennial source of life from which the soul is
fed in the holy communion. The mediation of the saints is derived
from him, subordinate to and dependent on his mediation. The
Blessed Virgin and the saints are honored on account of their
relation to him, and are invoked as his agents and ministers in
dispensing grace. It is impossible, therefore, to attribute to
them any separate merit or independent power; and, so far from
the devotion to Our Lady or the saints impeding the view of
Christ, it only brings him into bolder relief, and by contrast
and comparison enhances the conception of his infinite elevation,
as their and our creator and sovereign, above all creatures even
the most exalted. Dr. Johnson with his usual strong good sense,
saw this, and with his usual manly honesty avowed it, as every
one knows who has read his Life by Boswell. Intelligent
Protestants ought to be ashamed of themselves for perpetually
reiterating the stupid charge against the Catholic Church, that
she substitutes the Virgin and the saints as objects of worship
in the place of God, or as objects of confidence in the place of
our Saviour Christ. The only excuse for those who make this
assertion is invincible ignorance, an excuse not very creditable
to men who profess to be theologians. It may avail for those who
have grown too old to make any new studies or receive any new
ideas, and for those whose intelligence and learning are so
circumscribed that they cannot become acquainted with or
understand the arguments of Catholic theologians. But for those
who have the obligation and the opportunity to study and
understand these grave questions, but yet persist, either through
culpable ignorance or wilful dishonesty, in misrepresenting
Catholic doctrine, there can be no excuse. In spite of our desire
to stretch charity to its utmost limits, we cannot help thinking
that they are afraid to meet the question openly and fairly,
afraid to investigate, and afraid to discuss the issue between us
on its real merits. They apprehend, more or less vaguely or
distinctly, that they cannot maintain their ground if they state
the Catholic doctrines fairly and argue against them as they
really are. Their instinct of self-preservation teaches them that
their only safety consists in the smoke which they create by
their incessant fusillade of misrepresentation, and which hides
the true aspect of the field from their deluded followers.
{726}
We leave this part of our subject with a reiteration of what we
have already affirmed and proved. The attempt to prove _a
priori_ from the idea of God, or from the idea of the
incarnation and mediation of the Word made man, that the
religious veneration of the saints is incompatible with the
supreme worship due to God, and the supreme confidence we are
bound to repose in the merits and grace of the sacred humanity of
Jesus Christ, is perfectly futile. The only real question is one
of evidence: whether the Catholic Church can furnish evidence of
her divine authority to teach that the Blessed Virgin and the
saints have received a subordinate office of mediation, and are
to be honored and invoked by a special and formal _cultus_.
If the evidence which is proposed can be refuted, the worship of
the saints may be qualified as a vain observance, a superstition,
a useless addition to Christianity. But it can never, with any
reason, be denominated idolatry; because it distinctly limits
itself to that veneration which is simply commensurate with a
merely created and derived dignity, leaving intact and perfect
the supreme worship of God. It can never be denominated a
substitution of many saviours and mediators in place of the one
Saviour and Mediator Jesus Christ; because it leaves the doctrine
of his mediation intact and perfect. That this evidence can be
demolished by sound historical learning, scientific exegesis of
the Scriptures, or solid theological arguments, we have no fear.
We do not think our antagonists have much hope of doing it. They
have already said all that can be said on their side, and only
damaged their own cause by it. They cannot get rid of the
universal testimony of all ages and countries to the Catholic
doctrine, without resorting to principles which subvert their own
foundation and leave them to sink down into the pit that has
swallowed up Rénan and Colenso. These topics have been
exhaustively handled by numerous and able Catholic writers, to
whom we refer those readers who wish to investigate them. We turn
now to the second part of our subject, which relates to the honor
paid to the sacred images of Christ and the saints.
Anticatholic writers are so illogical, careless, and confused in
their arguments against Catholic doctrines and practices, and use
so much rhetoric, directed merely _ad captandum vulgus_,
especially when they take up this, which is one of their favorite
themes, that it is very difficult to follow and refute them in a
clear and methodical manner. They deal very much in assertions
and vituperative expressions, in misrepresentations, ridicule,
and low attempts at wit, in unmeaning laudations of themselves as
the only enlightened and spiritual persons in the world, and
wholesale depreciation of Catholics, especially the simple and
pious peasantry and common people of Catholic countries. We
suppose that the substance of their objections against the
veneration of images, extracted and reduced to a clear and
precise statement, would be something like this: The use made of
images in religious worship by Catholics is idolatrous, because
it either is actually an adoration of images as gods in place of
the true God, or, if not, leads to and encourages such a worship,
and bears the outward appearance of being identical with it. It
is, therefore, to be condemned, as intrinsically dangerous in
itself, and therefore prohibited under the old law, and as in
many cases among the uneducated grossly superstitious and
heathenish.
{727}
It is, therefore, on a par with the idolatry of the Greeks and
Romans, and other pagan nations, which is so severely denounced
in the Holy Scriptures, and so unmercifully ridiculed by the
early Christian writers; although enlightened Catholics, like
enlightened pagans, may be free from the grossness of the vulgar
superstition.
A full discussion of the subject would require us to go into the
question of the nature of image-worship among the heathen
nations. This has been done already by Bishop England, who has
handled the whole matter with great learning and ability in his
"Letters to the _Gospel Messenger_." It has also been
briefly but satisfactorily treated in an article on "Is it
Honest?" in a former number of this magazine. We may assert it as
a certain and established fact, that the heathen priests and
other intelligent advocates of polytheism held the opinion, so
far as they were sincere believers in their own system, that the
divinities whom they worshipped were in some way bound to their
images, and acted through them as the soul acts through the body.
They did not, of course, worship the metal or wood of which the
images were composed; but they did worship the images themselves,
as being animated statues informed by a divine virtue, and really
containing the persons they represented. Philosophers like
Socrates, Plato, and others, and persons who were imbued with the
principles of the more sound and monotheistic philosophy, were
not idolaters in the strict and gross sense. They regarded the
divinities of the popular mythology as only a sort of genii, and
probably considered their images as only representations intended
to impress the senses and keep alive the belief and devotion of
the people. But the doctrine of polytheism was not the doctrine
of the sounder and higher philosophy. The system was idolatrous,
both in its substitution of imaginary beings for the one, true
God, and also in its offering of the worship due to God to images
as containing their imaginary divinities. It is necessary to take
into account, in estimating the idolatrous character of this
heathen worship, not only that it terminated upon objects which
were not divine as the ultimate end of the homage given, without
reference to the supreme creator and lord, but also that these
objects were unreal and imaginary beings. It was not, therefore,
merely an undue exaltation of the creature, but a substitution of
mere creations of the imagination in lieu of the true God. It
was, therefore, not only polytheism, or a denial of the unity of
God, and a division of the deity among many beings possessing
divine attributes, but _idol_-worship, that is, the worship
of nonentities in place of the real, infinite Being. The image
represented nothing real. It was worshipped as related to an
imaginary divinity, supposed to reside in it and to communicate
to it a certain divine quality. There being no such person really
existing, the image was a mere idol; and the worship had no real
object to terminate upon except the material of which it was
composed. A man who cherishes and honors the picture of his wife
has a real and legitimate object upon which the affections and
emotions awakened by the picture may terminate; but an artist who
falls in love with a picture painted after an imaginary ideal in
his own mind loves a mere painted form, an idol, and is,
therefore, guilty of an absurd form of picture-worship.
{728}
If this love takes the place of the love of God in his soul and
leads him to place his supreme good in this imaginary being, he
is an idolater. The heathen had nothing in their idols but lumps
of wood, stone, or metal, fashioned to represent some imaginary
being. They were therefore open to all the ridicule and scorn of
the prophets and other servants of the true God, for shaping to
themselves gods which were the mere creations of their own art
and skill. The condemnation of idols in the Holy Scripture falls,
therefore, not chiefly upon the mere use of images as
representing the object of worship, but upon the making and
honoring of images representing beings who, if they existed,
would not be entitled to the worship they received, and who, in
point of fact, had no real existence. Idolatry is also called in
the Scripture demon-worship, because, as we understand it, the
demons by means of it seduced men away from the worship of God,
and also because, by possessing the images of the false gods,
speaking through the oracles, and inciting to the commission of a
multitude of crimes in connection with idolatry, they reduced the
heathen into servitude to themselves.
The prohibition of images to be used in the worship sanctioned by
the divine law was a precept of discipline enacted for a special
reason. The reason was the same which lay at the foundation of
that economy by which the trinity of persons in the Godhead, the
incarnation of the Son in human form, the hierarchy of angels,
the glory of the Mother of God, the exaltation of the saints to a
deific union, were at first obscurely revealed, and only
gradually disclosed to the clear knowledge and belief of the
generality of the faithful. It was necessary to establish first
the doctrine of the divine unity and spirituality, then the
Trinity and Incarnation, so firmly in the faith of the people of
God, that it could not be disturbed by anything similar to the
corrupt worshipping of created things, before it was safe to
allow the glorification of all creation and all nature, which is
the consequence of the Incarnation, to be fully manifested. The
Trinity and Incarnation were but dimly revealed, and only
explicitly known by the _élite_ of the faithful, in order
that the attention of the childish, imperfect minds of those who
lived in those early ages, surrounded by a brilliant and
seductive polytheism, might be fixed principally on the unity and
spirituality of the divine nature. It was the special mission of
the patriarchal and Mosaic dispensations to preserve and hand
down the doctrine of the one, true God. There would have been a
danger in distinctly revealing the Trinity before the time, that
the dogma would have been corrupted and perverted by a false
conception of the plurality of persons in the divine being, as of
a plurality of beings. The Incarnation would have been perverted
also into anthropomorphism, or the conception of the divine
nature as identical with human nature. Too distinct a knowledge
of the angelic hierarchy would have dazzled the minds of a people
predisposed and continually tempted to idolatry, and would have
withdrawn them from the contemplation and worship of God.
Sculpture and painting would have affected their senses and
imagination too powerfully, and would have fostered the
disposition to conceive of the divine nature as divided among
many deities, and resembling material, created objects. It was
necessary that Christ should come and manifest himself to men in
his true character, and that he should establish an infallible
church, competent to teach and define the Trinity and Incarnation
in their relation to the divine unity, to condemn all errors, and
to direct the development of theology with unerring certitude,
before the grand and abstruse mysteries of faith could be safely
exposed to the gaze of the multitude.
{729}
Our Lord himself proceeded with great caution in these matters,
and so did the apostles and their successors. The trinity in
unity and the person of Christ had first to be proposed and to be
sunk indelibly into the mind of the church, before the Blessed
Virgin and the saints could be brought prominently forward; and
religion had first to be imbued with spirituality and pure,
robust morality, before the splendor of worship and the riches of
the fine arts, and all the subsidiary means of impressing the
senses and the imagination, could receive their due development.
Nevertheless, that the unity of revelation might be manifest and
the continuity of development be kept unbroken, everything which
was destined to bloom forth in its season in full splendor upon
this grand plant of God whose branches are destined to overshadow
the world, existed in germ and bud from the very beginning. It
would lead us too far to follow up this thought. Orthodox
Protestants will admit it in regard to the principal mysteries of
Catholic faith. The text of Scripture shows plainly that
ceremonial, architecture, and music, in a word, all that was not
liable to lose its symbolic character too easily in the minds of
the people, were profusely employed in the religion of the old
law. Philosophy, poetry, science, and literature were kept in
abeyance to a great extent, and yet given sufficiently for
intellectual culture in the inspired writings. And,
notwithstanding the restriction placed on sculpture and painting,
yet images were to a certain extent made use of, by the divine
commandment, for symbolic purposes in the sanctuary and in the
temple. This is their true and legitimate use, and they are to be
classed with other symbols, emblems, or exterior signs and
representations to the senses of persons and things in the
supersensible and celestial world. Sacraments, holy places, holy
things, temples, altars, vestments, ceremonies, images, all
belong to the same order, and find their reason and principle in
the Incarnation. The Incarnation is the highest consecration and
elevation of material substance and form. The body of Christ is
hypostatically united to the divine nature and made the true,
living image of the Godhead, as the Second Council of Nice
teaches, the medium by which God is manifested in the sensible
and visible order. Through Christ the whole material universe is
sanctified and united with God as its final cause. The fanciful
theosophies and mythologies of the heathen world were only
abortive efforts to express this truth. Mr. Gladstone has
recently given utterance to this idea in very beautiful language,
so far as Greek polytheism is concerned, in his review of _Ecce
Homo_. Heathen art was similarly a perverted foreshadowing of
Catholic art, copied after the ideal, not of redeemed and
glorified but of fallen nature, not of heaven but of hell, which
is but a dark counterpart of heaven.
Modern Protestants will generally admit the lawfulness and
utility of sculpture and painting, considered as the outward
expression of the Christian ideal of beauty, the representation
of persons, scenes, places worthy of respect, means of improving
the senses and imagination with religious ideas.
{730}
They are not like their ancestors, who defaced sanctuaries,
rifled the tombs of the saints, burned relics, broke
stained-glass windows, destroyed sculptures and paintings, and,
with barbarous vandalism, did what they could to efface the
glorious monuments of the ages of faith. The remnants of these
sacred relics of antiquity which they have now in their
possession they preserve with jealous care. They even make use of
sculpture and painting to perpetuate their own heretical
tradition, as well as to set forth what they have retained that
is truly Christian. They adorn their churches with works of art,
and erect monuments and statues to their own chiefs and leaders,
as, for instance, the monument to the English pseudo-martyrs at
Oxford, and the statue of Luther recently unveiled with so much
pomp and ceremony at Worms. They are, therefore, precluded from
making objection to the use of sculptured or painted images of
Christ and the saints in general, and are restricted to
objections against certain uses of these images in religious
rites or worship, and certain acts of respect and veneration
which are exhibited toward them. We will, therefore, proceed to
show that this use of images is precisely identical in principle
with that use of them to which Protestants do not object, and in
conformity with the natural and necessary laws of the human mind,
which even the most violent iconoclasts cannot break.
The human mind is forced to use images as its media; and,
although it is not necessary to have these images sculptured or
painted, it is by reason of the aforesaid necessity of using
images of some kind that man instinctively seeks in sculpture and
painting a suitable outward form and expression of his
intellectual images, and finds so much pleasure in beholding
these intellectual images expressed in works of art by others.
The human intellect is incapable of contemplating the divine
essence immediately. It forms an intellectual conception or image
which represents God to itself, but which is most imperfect and
inadequate. Any one who should believe that God really is like
the conception or imagination he is able to form of him, would
commit as great an absurdity as one who should believe that he is
like a venerable old man with a long white beard. Not only is the
conception or intellectual image of God formed by the mind always
inadequate, but it is often false in certain respects.
Aristotle's conception of God was essentially a false one; so is
that of the Deists, of the Calvinists, and of those Universalists
who deny his retributive justice. Even the highest
contemplatives, as they themselves positively affirm, although
they speak of a certain purely spiritual and imageless view of
God, never contemplate God so directly that they can dispense
with every intellectual species or image as a medium, and intend
only by imageless contemplation to designate a degree of
subtility in their intellectual operations which renders them
pure and spiritual by comparison with those of grosser minds.
Probably most persons of uncultivated intellects represent God to
their imagination under some majestic and venerable human form,
and think of him as seated on a throne, in a superb palace, with
his ministering angels, also clothed in corporeal forms,
attending upon him. Those whose clear intellectual conceptions
enable them to rid themselves of every image borrowed from the
human figure in thinking of God, will still find that their minds
make use of certain emblems, figures, or images of the divine
attributes, such as light, the sea, the atmosphere.
{731}
Much more will they find themselves compelled to transfer to
their conception of the divine intelligence and volition the
analogy of their own manner of thought, of their sentiments and
affections. In the same manner, when a person thinks of Jesus
Christ, meditates on his life, death, and glorified state in
heaven, he will form to himself images which represent his ideal
conception, images so much the more distinct as they reflect the
humanity of Christ with which we are far more immediately united
than we are with the divine nature, and which we are therefore
able to represent more exactly and vividly to our imagination.
Are we to say, then, that every person worships the image of God
or of Jesus Christ which his intellect has formed, and becomes
thereby an idolater? Certainly not. His reason and faith assure
him of the existence of God and Christ as objectively real,
distinct from his own mental conception, and surpassing all his
apprehensions. His intention in worship is directed to God as he
really is, and is true worship, although the intellectual media
which the soul is obliged to make use of are imperfect and
inadequate.
The case is no way altered if the sculptured or painted image of
Christ is made use of, instead of or together with the
intellectual image. The crucifix is only a permanent image
affecting the exterior senses, as the intellectual representation
is a transient image affecting the interior senses. Coleridge
says that a picture is "an intermediate somewhat between a
thought and a thing." The same may be said of a statue, though a
statue is more of a thing than a painting is. The material
substance employed by the artist is merely the substratum of the
form, which is something ideal, as language is merely the medium
of thought. In painting or sculpture of real merit, the higher
and more perfect conceptions of men who possess the artistic gift
are transferred to the minds of those whose ideal conceptions are
of an inferior order, or who, at least, are not able to give
their conceptions an outward and permanent expression. The artist
who makes a statue or painting of our Lord intends to represent
him according to the ideal which he has in his own mind. His
object is to bring the ideal conception of Christ vividly and
distinctly before the imagination of the beholder. The more
completely he succeeds in producing the desired effect, the more
perfect will be the identification of the image with the object
it represents in the imagination of the beholder; that is, the
image, the more completely it is an image, the less does it
attract attention to its own separate reality, and the more does
it fix the attention of the mind on the object it represents. A
person whose mind is susceptible to the influence of art, looking
at a masterpiece of painting or sculpture, forgets that it is
only a representation, and seems to himself to be looking at the
reality. His imagination transports him to the scene of
crucifixion, and he is spell-bound as he gazes on the face of the
dying Christ. The same emotions arise in his mind that would
arise if he were actually gazing upon the crucifixion itself. If
he is a Christian, he will spontaneously elicit acts of worship
toward the Son of God dying on the cross. These interior acts
will manifest themselves by exterior signs, by the respectful
posture, the silence, the reverential expression of countenance,
the moistened eye, which betray the workings of the soul within
to any attentive observer. Suppose that he kneels down and offers
a prayer, that he kisses the feet of the image of Christ, that he
exclaims aloud, "My Lord and my God!" is that idolatry?
{732}
Is he worshipping a picture or a statue? If he is, then all the
merely interior and mental acts of a person who is affected by a
statue or picture of Christ are equally idolatrous. If the
sculptured or painted image of Christ is really substituted for
Christ himself, and receives as a reality, distinct in itself,
any homage or affection which it terminates as an ultimate
object, then all admirers of works of art are guilty of the same
species of absurdity, commit the same unreasonable act, in a
lesser degree, which culminates, in the case supposed, in the
supreme folly of adoring marble, ivory, canvas, and paint. That
class of persons who go into raptures over works of art,
therefore, have nothing to say against the Catholic use of the
crucifix which is not contradicted by their own practice and
avowed sentiments. If the devout sentiments awakened by a
crucifix or a painting of the crucifixion are legitimate for once
and for the space of half an hour, they are legitimate at all
times. If it is lawful to go to a picture-gallery in order to see
a masterpiece, it is lawful to buy it, to hang it in an oratory,
to visit it every day, and to make a regular and constant use of
it, as a means of exciting devotion. If the inward sentiments it
awakens are lawful, so is their outward expression; and if this
outward expression is in itself lawful, it may be prescribed as a
law by the ritual of the church. The same principle that
justifies the making of a crucifix, and the looking upon it with
emotion, justifies the church in placing it above the altar,
bowing or genuflecting before it, incensing it, exposing it on
Good Friday to veneration, and chanting the words: "Ecce lignum
crucis, _venite adoremus_."
The crucifix, considered as a material object, is merely treated
with the same respect which is shown to a Bible, an altar-cloth,
a chalice, or any other object devoted to sacred uses. As a
representation, it is not distinguished from the object which it
represents, and the acts of interior or exterior veneration which
terminate upon it are merely relative, and are referred
altogether to Jesus Christ. They are like the kiss which a man
imprints upon his wife's picture, or the uncovering of the head
when a procession passes the statue of Washington. There is only
one question, therefore, in regard to the veneration given to the
crucifix, and that is, Does the object or person represented,
that is, our Lord Jesus Christ, deserve the worship of latria, or
divine worship, which we pay to him, and which we signify by
these exterior marks of respect toward his image? The same is the
case with the images of the Blessed Virgin and the saints. The
veneration paid to them has no respect to the material of which
they are composed, but passes to their prototypes, that is, the
persons represented. The only question, therefore, is, Do these
prototypes deserve the honor we intend to pay them? If they do,
it is right to signify this honor by marks of respect to their
images, such as bowing, offering incense, burning lights,
decorating the shrines in which they are placed with flowers, and
kneeling before them to offer prayers.
We have already shown that those who have the mere devotion of
taste and imagination toward statues and pictures act in a manner
precisely analogous, and pass through the same mental process
which is exhibited by the Catholic in the respect which he pays
to the sacred images of Christ and the saints.
{733}
The only difference is, that the latter makes use of his
imagination in the service of a real and practical faith and
piety. His devotion is not a mere intellectual or sentimental
devotion, but a spiritual exercise. It is, therefore, less
dependent on the artistic merit and excellence of the
representation than the merely sentimental excitement of the
votary of art. A rude crucifix or a simple image of the Blessed
Virgin is sufficient for the only purpose for which the devout
Catholic makes use of them, as a help to fix the senses and
attention, a sort of step-ladder by which he may raise his mind
to the contemplation of Christ and his blessed mother. Many other
circumstances give value to sacred objects besides their
intrinsic worth. Their history, their antiquity, the associations
connected with them, the traditions of past ages which cluster
about them, often give them a sacredness far beyond the charm of
symmetry and beauty. Of the two, we should much prefer to have
Bernini's exquisite statue, over which the Rev. Mr. Bacon goes
into raptures which betray his refined love of art, destroyed,
rather than the venerable statue of St. Peter, which, with
manners the reverse of exquisite and refined, he calls "a grimy
idol." Even persons of the most exquisite taste often love an old
house, old portraits, old articles of furniture, and many other
old things, intrinsically ugly and valueless, far more than any
similar objects which are new, costly, and fabricated in the
highest style of art. For the same reason, certain objects of
devotion, which are devoid of all artistic excellence, may be
very dear and venerable to Catholics of the most cultivated
taste. Much more, then, it is natural that rude and unsightly
statues or pictures should be objects of devotion to Catholics of
uncultivated taste. Protestants make a great mistake in judging
of the sentiments of the common people in Catholic countries.
They attribute to superstition what is really to be ascribed only
to uncultivated taste. The sentiments which are awakened by
masterpieces of art they can understand; but they cannot
understand that ordinary and even grotesque images are
masterpieces of art and models of beauty to the rude and childish
mind of the multitude. To their prejudiced and distorted fancy,
these images appear like idols, and the devotion of the people
toward them like a stupid idol-worship. They do not appreciate
the fact that they are to these simple people what
_chefs-d'oeuvre_ of religious art are to them--a vivid
representation, in outward form, of their own highest ideal. The
susceptibility of these untutored minds to those emotions which
are awakened through the senses is far greater than that of the
more educated, though it is not so chastened. This is especially
the case with the southern races. Poetry, music, painting,
everything which appeals to the imagination, finds a ready
response in their ardent temperament. It is, therefore, a proof
of the highest wisdom in the church that she has taken advantage
of all these means of impressing religious ideas upon the minds
of all classes of men in every stage of intellectual development.
There are some whose devotion takes a more purely intellectual
form, and who elevate their minds to God and heaven more easily
by interior recollection and meditation than by any exercise of
the imagination or any outward aids. A few prefer the solitude of
a cell or a cave to Cologne Cathedral, and an hour's abstracted
contemplation to all the pageantry of St. Peter's.
{734}
Such are permitted and encouraged to follow the bent of their own
inclination and the leading of the divine Spirit. The mass of
men, however, even of the educated and cultivated, need the help
of the exterior world to give them the images and emblems of
divine and spiritual things without which they cannot fix their
attention or awaken their emotions. The quality and quantity of
the helps and instruments with which they worship God vary
indefinitely. The devotion of those whose state is a kind of
intellectual childhood, or in whose temperament imagination and
passion predominate, will necessarily be more sensuous than that
of more cultivated minds or races of a more cool and sedate
temperament. It is the same principle, however, which pervades
and regulates all; the spirit is one, though the form varies. The
true mystic, who is absorbed in the contemplation of the divine
nature, does not deny to the sacred humanity of Christ, to the
Blessed Virgin, the saints, or to any holy things, their worth
and excellence, although he does not fix his attention upon them
so frequently and so directly as others. The great saints and
theologians of the church never despise the devotions of the
people or accuse them of superstition. The distinction between
the intelligent few and the superstitious many in the Catholic
Church, is one which the most highly educated and spiritually
minded Catholics disdain and repudiate as a dishonor to
themselves. It is made by sciolists, who are unable to answer the
arguments of our theologians or to deny the sanctity of our
saints, and who seek to evade in this way the overwhelming force
of the evidence for the truth of our religion. The veneration of
saints and the use of images in religious worship, they say,
though it does not prevent the _élite_ of Catholics from
offering a supreme and pure worship to God and looking up to
Jesus Christ as their only Saviour, leads the multitude to
superstition and idolatry. We are better judges of the fact than
they are. They know next to nothing of the practical working of
our religion, or of the ideas and state of mind of our people. We
know these things. We have, at least, as much abhorrence of
idolatry as they have, and as much zeal for the enlightenment and
spiritual welfare of the multitude. We know that there is no
taint of superstition or idolatry in the devotion of our people.
The Catholic Church keeps the ideas of God and Christ vividly
before the minds of her children; they realize them in a manner
of which those who are out of the church have no conception. The
accusation of withdrawing from God and our Lord that which is due
to them--to divide and scatter it among inferior beings--comes
with a very bad grace from Protestants. What have they done to
reclaim mankind from polytheism and to spread the worship of the
true God? They have done nothing, except to cripple the efforts
of the Catholic priesthood by sowing dissension in Christendom
and giving the scandal of disunion to infidels. They have bred
anew the old heresies against the Trinity and the Divinity of
Christ which had become extinct, together with the more monstrous
error of pantheism. We, the Catholic priesthood, have conquered
the ancient heathenism, have planted everywhere Christianity,
have established on an immovable foundation the doctrine of the
divinity of Jesus Christ, together with the worship of his
adorable name.
{735}
We are now carrying on the work of converting the heathen, and of
defending theism and Christianity against the hosts of enemies
raised up against them by the revolt of the sixteenth century. If
Christianity is to gain in the future new and more glorious
triumphs over the false religions of the world, it will be
through our labors and our blood that she will win her victories.
Not only do the defence and advancement of the supernatural order
rest on us; we are obliged also to defend nature, reason, the
arts, the poetry and romance of life, from a gloomy Puritanism, a
hopeless scepticism, a desolating materialism, which would sweep
away all spiritual philosophy, all sound science, all gayety and
charm in life, all joyousness in religion, all ideality and
heroism in the sphere of human existence. It is against a
universal iconoclasm we have to contend--an iconoclasm which
seeks to throw down and deface the image of celestial truth and
beauty, to break the painted windows through which the light of
heaven streams in upon this earthly temple, to efface those
angelic and saintly forms with the Madonna who is the queen of
the whole bright multitude, to overthrow the cross, and finally
to drag down the sacred humanity of Christ, together with the
deity that dwells in it and is worshipped through it, leaving
mankind without a temple, an altar, a Saviour, or a God. We have
learned the nature of the warfare we are engaged in too well from
the conflicts of eighteen centuries, to be deceived or misled. We
know that an attack on the smallest portion of the edifice of the
Catholic Church means its total subversion, and that,
consequently, it is just as necessary to resist it as if it were
avowedly aimed at the foundation. We know that we cannot and must
not yield up the smallest fragment of Catholic truth for any
plausible end whatever. Although, therefore, the veneration of
saints and holy images is not among the most necessary and
fundamental parts of the Catholic religion, yet, as the principle
from which it proceeds is an integral portion of Catholic
doctrine, we shall always maintain it with the same fidelity as
we do the primary truths of the Creed, the Unity and Trinity of
the Godhead, the Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection of Jesus
Christ. The images of Christ, of the Blessed Virgin, and of the
saints, will always remain above our altars and on the walls of
our churches; the Salve Regina and Litanies of the Saints will
never cease to be chanted in our solemn services; and we shall
continue to adore the Incarnate Word in his sacred humanity with
the worship of latria until the end of the world.
------
{736}
Nellie Netterville; Or,
One Of The Transplanted.
Chapter XV.
Before leaving the guard-room, Ormiston poured out a large goblet
of wine from a flask which he had sent one of the soldiers to
procure at a wine-tavern hard by, and insisted upon Nellie
drinking it to the last drop.
The remainder of the flask he gave to Roger, who, truth to say,
was almost as much in need of it as Nellie; and they then all
went forth together, O'More having previously pledged his word,
both to Ormiston and Holdfast, to consider himself merely as a
prisoner at large, until they themselves should release him from
his parole.
Their way led them from the gate-house into Bridge street, and
from thence to Ormond Gate, Earl's Gate, "Geata-na-Eorlagh," as
it was then sometimes called. With Major Ormiston in their
company, this was opened to them without a question, and they
afterward proceeded, as fast as Nellie's strength permitted, up
the steep hill street, debouching into the Corn Market. Entering
the latter, they found themselves face to face with Newgate, the
great criminal prison of the city. There it stood, dark, strong,
and terrible--too strong, Roger could not help thinking, to be a
fitting prison for the frail, dying woman it was guarding for the
hangman. It seemed, indeed, almost like an abuse of power to have
cast her there, so helpless as she was, and powerless, in the
strong grasp of the law.
Newgate had originally formed a square, having at each of its
four angles a tower, three stories high, and turreted at the top.
Two of these however, those facing toward the city, had been
recently taken down; and when Nellie looked upon it for the first
time, it consisted merely of the gate-house, with its portcullis
and iron gates, and a strong tower at either end. Near the prison
stood the gibbet, metaphorically as well as really; for few,
indeed, in those sad days, were the prisoners who, once shut up
within the walls of Newgate, ever left them for a pleasanter
destination than the gallows. From the position in which it
stood, they could hardly avoid seeing it as they passed onward
toward the prison; but in the faint hope of sparing at least poor
Nellie's eyes this terrible apparition, Ormiston stepped a little
in advance of his companions, and placed himself between her and
it. Roger, however, upon whose arm she leaned, knew, by the
sudden tremor which shook her frame that this tender caution had
been in vain. Nellie, in fact, had already seen and guessed at
the ghastly nature of its office there; and as her eye glanced
reluctantly--and almost, as it were, in spite of herself--toward
it, she felt as if she had never before thoroughly realized the
awful position in which her mother stood. What wonder that she
grew sick and giddy as the thought forced itself, in all its
naked reality, on her mind, that her mother--_her mother_,
the very type and personification of refined and delicate
womanhood--might at any hour be dragged hither, shrinking and
ashamed, beneath the rude hangman's grasp?
{737}
What wonder that her very feet failed to do their office, and
that Roger was compelled rather to carry than to lead her past
the spot, never pausing or suffering her to pause until they
stood before the gates of Newgate?
Here, as at the city gate, the name and authority of Ormiston
procured them ready admission, the jailer receiving them with
courtesy, and showing them at once into a low, vaulted room on
the ground-floor of the prison. Notwithstanding this, however,
Ormiston had no sooner announced the name of the prisoner they
had come to visit, than the man showed symptoms of great and
irrepressible embarrassment.
"The prisoner had been very ill," he muttered; "had burst a
blood-vessel in the morning, and the bleeding had returned within
the hour. A doctor had been sent for, and was at that moment with
her; but if Major Ormiston could condescend to wait, he would
call his wife, who was also in attendance on the poor lady, and
would tell her to announce the arrival of a visitor. It must be
done gently," he repeated over and over again, "very gently; for
the doctor had already told him that any sudden shock would of
necessity prove fatal."
Ormiston eyed the man curiously as he blundered through this
statement. He knew enough of Newgate, as it was then conducted,
to doubt much if the visit of a doctor was a luxury often
vouchsafed to its inhabitants; and feeling in consequence that
some mystery was concealed beneath the mention of such an
official, he was almost tempted to fancy that Mrs. Netterville
was already dead, and that, on account of the presence of her
daughter, the man hesitated to say so. The next moment, however,
he had leaped to another and more correct conclusion, though for
Nellie's sake, and because intolerance formed no part of his
character, he made neither question nor comment, as the jailer
evidently expected that he would, on the matter. Greatly relieved
by this apparent absence of suspicion on the part of the English
officer, the man brought in a stool for Nellie to sit upon, and
then once more announced his intention of going in quest of his
wife. Just as he opened the door for this purpose, Ormiston
caught a glimpse of a tall, gray-haired man, who passed down the
passage quickly in company of a woman. The jailer saw him also,
and with a sudden look of dismay upon his features, closed the
half-opened door, and turned again to Ormiston.
"It was the doctor," he said with emphasis--"the doctor who had
just taken his departure; and as there was nothing now to prevent
their seeing the sick lady, he would send his wife at once to
conduct them to her cell."
A long ten minutes followed, during which time Nellie sat quite
still, her face hidden by her hands, and shivering from head to
foot in fear and expectation. The door opened again, and she
sprang up. This time it was the jailer's wife who entered.
"The poor lady had been informed," she said, "of the arrival of
her daughter, and was longing to embrace her. Would the young
lady follow her to the cell?"
Nellie was only too eager to do so, and they left the room
together. Ormiston hesitated a moment as to what he would do
himself; but not liking to leave Nellie entirely in the hands of
such people as jailers and their wives were in those days, he at
last proposed to Roger to follow and wait somewhere near the cell
during her approaching interview with her mother.
{738}
To this Roger readily assented, and they reached the open door
just as Nellie entered and knelt down by her mother's side.
More than a hundred years later than the period of which there is
question in this tale, the treatment of prisoners in the Dublin
Newgate was so horrible and revolting to the commonest sense of
decency and humanity as to demand a positive interference on the
part of government. There is nothing, therefore, very astonishing
in the fact, that the state in which Nellie found her mother
filled her brimful with sorrow and dismay. The cell in which she
was confined was low, and damp, and dark, and this she might have
expected, and was in some degree prepared for; but she had not
counted on the utter misery of its appointments; and the sight of
her pale mother--death already haunting her dark eyes, and
written unmistakably on her ghastly features--stretched upon the
clammy pavement, a heap of dirty straw her only bed, and a
tattered blanket her only covering, was such a shock and surprise
to Nellie that, instead of joyfully announcing the fact of her
reprieve to the poor captive, as she had intended, she fell upon
her knees beside her, and wept over her like a child.
"Mother! mother!" was all that she could say for sobbing, as she
took her mother's hand in hers and covered it with tears and
kisses. Mrs. Netterville appeared for a moment too much overcome
to speak, or even move, but gradually a faint flush passed over
her wan face, and her eyes at last grew brighter and more
life-like, when Nellie, making a strong and desperate effort to
command her feelings, suddenly wiped away her tears and bent over
the bed to kiss her.
"O mother! mother!" the poor girl could not refrain from once
more sobbing, "is it thus that I see you after all?"
"Nay, child," the mother gasped with difficulty, "you should
rather thank God for it on your knees. See you not it is an
especial mercy? If I had not burst a blood-vessel to-day,
to-morrow--yes, to-morrow"--a shudder ran through her wasted
frame, and she broke off suddenly.
"But I have brought you a reprieve," sobbed Nellie, hardly
knowing what she said, or the danger of saying it at that
moment--"a reprieve which is almost a pardon. Only a few days
more, and you would have been free, whereas now--now"--tears
choked her utterance, and, hiding her face on her mother's scanty
coverlet, she sobbed as if her heart were breaking. Mrs.
Netterville half raised herself on her pallet bed. For one brief
moment she struggled with that desire for life which lurks in
every human breast, and which Nellie's exclamation had called
forth afresh in hers. For one brief moment that phantom of life
and liberty, lost just as they had been found again--lost just as
they had become more than ever precious in her eyes--that
contrast between what was to be her portion and what it
_might_ have been, deluged her soul with a bitterness more
intolerable than that of death itself, and her frail body shook
and trembled like an aspen leaf beneath the new weight of misery
thus laid upon it. That one unguarded word of Nellie's had, in
fact, changed, as if by magic, all her thoughts and feelings and
aspirations. Death and life, and health and sickness, freedom and
captivity, had each put on a new and unexpected aspect in her
eyes, and that very thing which, only a minute or two before, had
seemed to her soul as a source of real consolation, had suddenly
taken the guise of a great misfortune. It was as if God himself
had mocked her with feigned mercy; a weaker soul might so have
said, and sunk beneath the burden! But with that strong and
well-tried spirit the struggle ended otherwise.
{739}
Clasping her wasted hands together, and lifting up her eyes to
heaven, the dying woman exclaimed, in a voice which none could
hear and doubt of the truth of the sentiments it uttered, "My
God! my God! Thy will, not mine, be done!" Then she fell back
quietly on her pillow, exhausted indeed with the effort she had
made, but calm and smiling and resigned, as if that sudden
glimpse of renewed happiness and life had never, mirage-like,
risen to mock her with its beauty.
The first use Mrs. Netterville made of her victory over nature
was to comfort Nellie.
"Weep not, dear child," she whispered tenderly; "weep not so
sadly, but rather thank God with me for the consolation which he
has given us in this meeting. Where is Hamish?" she added,
turning her dim eyes toward the open door, where Ormiston and
O'More were lingering still, and evidently fancying that one or
other of them was her absent servant--"where is Hamish? He has
done my bidding bravely; why comes he not forward, that I may
thank him?"
"Hamish is not here, mother; I left him with my grandfather."
"God help you, child!" moaned Mrs. Netterville, a sudden spasm at
her heart at the thought of her unprotected child, "God help you!
have you come hither all this way alone?"
"Mother," said Nellie in a smothered voice, "I am not alone.
Roger More came with me. Without him it would have been
impossible."
"Roger More--Roger More," repeated Mrs. Netterville, trying to
gather together her memories of the days gone by. "It was in the
arms of a Roger More that your father breathed his last."
"In mine, dear lady!" cried Roger, unable any longer to resist
the temptation of presenting himself to Nellie's mother--"in
mine! And knowing that the father did me the honor to call me
friend, Lord Netterville has had the great kindness to entrust me
with the daughter in this long journey, which the love she bears
you compelled her to undertake."
Something in the tones of Roger's voice, rather than in the words
he uttered, seemed to strike on the mother's ear. She smiled a
grateful smile of recognition, and then turned a questioning
glance, first upon his face and afterward on Nellie's. Perhaps
Roger interpreted that glance aright. At all events,
he took Nellie's hand, and, as if moved by a sudden inspiration,
laid it on her mother's, saying:
"Only the day after that on which I saw her first, I told her
that I would never ask for this dear hand until her mother was by
to give it."
"Her mother gives it," said Mrs. Netterville solemnly. "Yes! for
I guess by Nellie's silence that her heart is not far from you
already."
"Mother, mother!" cried Nellie, resisting Mrs. Netterville's
feeble efforts to place her hand in Roger's--"not here--not
now--not when you are dying."
"For that very reason," gasped the mother. "My son," she added,
fixing her eyes full on Roger, "_you_ can understand. I
would see my Nellie in safe hands before I go."
"It would be the fulfilment of my dearest wish," said Roger
earnestly, "if only it be possible."
{740}
"It _is_ possible," she was beginning; but pausing at the
sight of Ormiston, who had by this time joined himself to the
group around her bed, she added in an apprehensive tone, "but
there is a stranger present."
"Not a stranger, but a friend," the young officer replied, in a
tone of sincerity it would have been impossible to doubt, even if
Nellie had not whispered, "A friend, indeed! Without him we could
hardly have been with you now."
"Then I will trust him as a friend," Mrs. Netterville replied.
"The gentleman who left me as you entered--"
"The doctor," Ormiston interrupted, with a marked emphasis on the
word.
"Well, the doctor," she replied, with a languid smile. "He can do
all I need, and he lives close at hand, with the merchant William
Lyon, who knows him not, however," she added, mindful of the
safety of the person named--"who knows him not in any other
character than that of a lodger and chance sojourner in the
city."
"In ten minutes he shall be here," said Ormiston, "if I can
induce him to come with me. Meanwhile I will give orders to the
jailer to leave you undisturbed."
"If you permit it, Major Ormiston, I will go with you," said
Roger, not only zealous for the success of the embassy, but
anxious, likewise, that before taking such a decided step Nellie
should have the opportunity of a private conference with her
mother. "I think my name, and a word which I can whisper in his
ear, may be of use--otherwise he might fear a snare."
Ormiston assenting to this proposition, the young men departed,
and for the first time since the commencement of their interview
mother and daughter were alone together.
For some minutes, however, neither of them spoke. Mrs.
Netterville lay back, endeavoring to recover breath and strength
for the coming scene, and Nellie was completely stunned. The
shock of finding her mother dying at the very moment when she had
hoped to restore her to new life--the bodily weariness consequent
on her journey--the sudden, and, to her, the most inexplicable
resolution to which Mrs. Netterville had come in her regard--all
combined to paralyze her faculties, and, hardly able to think or
even feel, she sat like a statue on the floor beside her mother.
From this state of stupor she was roused at last by the sound of
the dying woman's voice:
"Nellie!"
"Mother!" cried the girl; and then, as she felt that poor
mother's hand feebly endeavoring to twine itself round her neck,
she burst into a fresh flood of tears. They saved her senses,
perhaps--who knows? Creatures as strong in mind as she was, and
stronger far in body, have died or gone mad ere now beneath such
a strain on both as had been put upon her for weeks.
"Nellie, my child--my only one--weep not!" her mother whispered
tenderly. "Believe me, little daughter, that I die happy."
"O mother, mother!" Nellie sobbed; "and I thought to have given
you life!"
Mrs. Netterville paused a moment, and then, in a voice tremulous
with feeling, she replied:
"Nellie, I would not deceive you. Life is no idle thing to be
cast off carelessly as a garment; and for one brief moment the
thought that, but for this sudden malady, I might yet have lived
some years longer, filled my soul with sorrow! But it is over
now--more than over--and I am at peace. Why should I not? for you
are safe--you for whom I chiefly clung to life! Yes! now that a
man good and generous, as I long have known Roger More to be, is
about to take my place beside you, I go without repining--nay,
'repining' is not the word," she said, correcting herself--"I go
in great joy and jubilation to the presence of my God."
{741}
"O mother!" sobbed Nellie, cut to the soul by this allusion to
her marriage, "that is the worst of all. Do not insist upon it, I
entreat you."
"Silence, Nellie!" Mrs. Netterville answered, almost sternly.
"Think you I could die happy if I left you--a child--a
girl--unprotected in this wild city?"
"Mother, be not angry, I beseech you," Nellie pleaded, "if I
remind you that I came hither safe!"
"Ay, but you were coming to your mother, and the world itself
could say no evil of one bent on such a mission. To-morrow,
Nellie, you will be motherless, and I will not have it said of
you hereafter, that you went wandering through the country
protected by a man who had no husband's right to do it. Child,
child!" Mrs. Netterville added, in a tone of almost agonized
supplication, "if you would have me die in peace, if you would
not that your presence here (instead of joy) should cast gall and
vinegar into the cup of death, you will yield your will to mine,
and go back to your grandfather a wedded woman."
"Mother!" cried Nellie, terrified by the vehemence with which her
mother spoke, "dear mother, say no more! It shall be even as you
wish. I promise. Alas! alas! this weary bleeding has commenced
again--what shall I do to aid you?"
Mrs. Netterville could not speak, for blood was gushing violently
from her lips, but she pointed to a jug of water on the floor.
Nellie took the hint at once, and dipped a handkerchief into the
water; with this she bathed her mother's brow, and washed her
lips, until by degrees the hemorrhage subsided, and the dying
woman lay back once more pale and quiet on her pillow.
Just then, to Nellie's great relief, the jailer entered, bearing
a lighted torch; for the sun was going down, and the cell was
almost dark already.
After him came Ormiston and O'More, accompanied by the
gray-haired man who had been with Mrs. Netterville at the moment
of their own arrival in the prison. Ormiston took the torch from
the jailer's hand, and placing a gold piece there instead,
dismissed him, with orders to close the door behind him, and to
give them due notice before shutting up the prison for the night.
As he set the torch in the sconce placed for it against the wall,
the light fell full upon Mrs. Netterville's face, which looked so
pale and drawn that for a moment he thought that she was dead,
and whispered his suspicion to the stranger.
The latter drew a small vial from his bosom, and poured a few
drops upon her lips. They revived her almost immediately; she
opened her eyes, and a smile passed over her white face as they
fell upon her visitant. "You here again, my father!" she murmured
beneath her breath. "I thank God that you have had the courage.
You know the purpose for which I need you?"
"I know it--and, under the circumstances, approve it," the
stranger answered quietly. "The sooner, therefore, that it is
done the better it will be for all."
"Poor child--poor Nellie!" murmured Mrs. Netterville, as she
caught the sound of the low sobbing which, spite of all her
efforts at self-control, burst ever and anon from Nellie's lips.
"Poor little Nellie! no wonder that she weeps. It is a sad,
strange place for a wedding, is this prison-cell!"
{742}
"These are strange times," said the priest kindly, "and they
leave us, alas! but little choice of place in the fulfilment of
our duties. Nevertheless, sad as all this must seem at present, I
am certain that your daughter will, some day or other, look back
upon her wedding in this prison-cell with a sense of gladness no
earthly pomp could have conferred on marriage; for she then will
understand, even better than she does now, how, by this
concession to a mother's wishes, she has secured peace and
happiness to that mother's death-bed. That is," he added, turning
and pointedly addressing himself to Nellie, "if sorrow for her
mother's state is the sole cause for all this weeping?"
Nellie felt that he had asked indirectly a serious question, and
she was too truthful not to answer it at once. She did not speak,
however--she could not; but she gave her hand to Roger, and made
one step forward.
"Come nearer," whispered her mother, "come nearer, that I may see
and hear."
Roger drew Nellie nearer, until they both were standing close to
the sick woman's pillow.
"Raise me up," the latter whispered faintly.
He lifted her in his strong arms, for she was as helpless as a
child, and placed her in a sitting posture, with her back
supported by the wall near which her bed was placed.
As soon as she had recovered a little from the faintness
consequent on this exertion, she waved her hand to Roger as a
signal that the ceremony should begin. The priest turned at once
to the young couple, and commenced his office, making it as brief
as possible. Brief, however, as it was, and bare of outward
ceremonial, Ormiston, as he stood a little in the background,
could not help feeling that he never before had looked on, might
never again behold, such a strangely touching scene. The wasted
features of the poor mother, for whom death seemed only waiting
until her anxiety for the safety of her child had been set at
rest for ever; the fair face of Nellie, pale now with grief and
watching, but ready as a budding rose to flush into yet brighter
beauty with the first return of sunshine; Roger, with such a look
of grave yet conscious gladness in his eyes as best suited the
mingled nature of the scene in which he was a foremost actor; the
priest, who, at the risk of his own liberty or life, was
fulfilling one of the most solemn offices of his sacred calling;
the vaulted roof above, glistening in the damp as the light
flashed on it, and the bare, bleak walls around, with the names
of many a weary captive inscribed upon them; joy and sorrow, hope
and fear; life springing forward, on the one hand, to its
brightest hours, and sadly receding, on the other, into the
shadows of the tomb--all were gathered together in that
prison-cell, and combined to form a picture which would have
needed the pencil of a great master to render in its full force
and truth.
It was done at last! Nellie had said the word which made her a
wedded wife, and Mrs. Netterville folded her in her arms, and
whispered, "Thank you, dearest, thank you; for I know what this
must have cost you!" and then placing her hand in Roger's, added,
"Take her, my son--take her; God is my witness that I give her to
you without a fear for her future happiness. To you in whose arms
the father died I may well intrust the daughter!"
{743}
"You shall never repent it, mother--never!" said Roger, with
that calm, determined manner which better than many words, brings
assurance to the soul, of truth. "I loved her from the first day
I saw her, not so much for her brightness and her human beauty,
as for that higher beauty which I thought I discovered in her
soul, and which she has bravely proved since then. Over beauty
such as that time has no power; the love, therefore, that springs
from it must last for ever."
"It is well, my son," replied Mrs. Netterville, "I thank you, and
believe you. And now, be not angry if I bid you go! For this one
day Nellie must be all my own--to-morrow there will be no one to
dispute her with you."
She spoke the last words hurriedly, for the jailer entered at
that moment to inform Ormiston that the prison was about to be
shut up for the night, and that it was his duty to see that all
strangers left it.
"But not Nellie--not my child?" said Mrs. Netterville, with an
appealing look, first to the jailer and then to Ormiston. "Surely
you will leave Nellie with me?"
"They must!" cried Nellie passionately, "for by force alone can
they drag me from you."
"Sir," said the dying woman, addressing herself this time to
Ormiston alone, "add this one favor, I beseech you, to all the
others you have done me, and let my child close my dying eyes?"
"I cannot refuse you, madam," he replied, much moved. "But is
your daughter equal to the effort? Would it not be better to have
the jailer's wife as well?"
"No--no!" cried Nellie, answering before her mother, who looked
half inclined to assent to this proposition, could reply. "I am
equal, and more than equal. I would not have a stranger with us
to-night for the world."
"Come for her, then, at the first dawn of day," said Mrs.
Netterville, with a glance, the meaning of which they understood
too well. She gave her hand in turn to each of the young men, and
then signed to them to withdraw. Ormiston did so at once; but
Roger turned first to Nellie, and taking her passive hand, lifted
it silently to his lips. Not to save his life or hers could he
have done more than that in the solemn presence of her dying
mother.
He then followed Ormiston. The priest lingered a moment longer to
speak a word of cheer to his poor penitent; but the jailer
calling him impatiently, he also disappeared, and the cell-door
was closed behind him.
Chapter XVI.
The rattling of the key in the lock as the jailer shut them up
for the night came like a death-knell on poor Nellie's ear. So
long as Ormiston and Roger had been there beside her, she had,
quite unconsciously to herself, entertained a sort of hope that
something (she knew not what) might yet be devised for the solace
of her mother; and now that they were gone indeed, she felt as
people feel when the physician takes his leave of his dying
patient, thus tacitly confessing that all hope is over. The lamp,
which, in obedience to a word from Ormiston, the jailer had
brought in trimmed and lighted for the night, revealed the cell
to her in all its bleak reality, and as she glanced from the
straw pallet, which at Netterville they would have hesitated to
place beneath a beggar, to the pitcher of cold water, which was
the only refreshment provided for the dying woman, Nellie felt
anew such a sense of her mother's misery and of her own inability
to procure her comfort, that, unable to utter a single syllable,
she sat for a few moments by her side weeping hopelessly and
helplessly as a child.
{744}
Mrs. Netterville heard her sobbing, and, after waiting a few
minutes in hopes the paroxysm would subside, said gently:
"Nellie--my little one--weep not so bitterly, I entreat you; you
know not how it pains me."
"How can I help it, mother?" sobbed the girl, unable to conceal
the thought uppermost in her own mind. "_You_ suffer, and
the lowest scullion in the kitchen of Netterville would have
deemed herself ill-used in such poverty as this!"
"Is that all, my child?" said her mother, with a faint smile.
"Nay, dear Nellie, you may believe me, that, to a soul which
feels itself within an hour of eternity, it is of little moment
whether straw or satin support the body it is leaving. Eternity!
yes, eternity!" she murmured to herself "Alas! alas! how little
do we realize in the short days of time the awful significance of
that word, for ever!
"Mother, you are not afraid!" burst from Nellie's lips, a new and
hitherto unthought-of anxiety rushing to her mind.
"Afraid!" Mrs. Netterville echoed the expression with a smile.
"No, my daughter, by the grace of God and goodness of Our Lady I
am not afraid. Nevertheless eternity, with its ministering angel
Death, are awful things to look on, Nellie, and if I could smile
at aught which makes you weep, it would be to think that such a
silly grievance as a straw pallet could add to their awfulness in
your eyes."
"Not to their awfulness, mother," Nellie sobbed, "but to their
sorrow; it is such a pain to see you comfortless."
"And has no one else been comfortless in death?" Mrs. Netterville
whispered almost reproachfully. "Only consider, Nellie, this
straw bed which you lament so bitterly is a very couch of down
compared to His, when he laid him down upon the hard wood of the
cross to die."
"Mother, forgive me; I never thought of that," said Nellie
humbly. "I only thought of your discomfort."
"Think of nothing now, dear Nellie, but this one word of
Scripture, 'Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord;' and hope
and pray that it may be so with me to-night. Now, dry your eyes
and listen, for I have much to say, and but little time left
wherein to say it. Dry your eyes, for I cannot bear to see you
weeping thus. Your tears have almost the power to make me repine
at death."
The last hint was sufficient. Nellie resolutely checked her
tears, and laid her head down on her mother's pillow, in order
that the latter might speak to her with less danger of fatigue.
Then, in a few earnest, touching words, Mrs. Netterville set
before her daughter the duties of her new state of life, and gave
advice, which, precious as it would have been at any time, was
doubly precious then, coming as it did from the lips of a dying
mother; after which, true to an idea ever uppermost in the Irish
mind, and which she had too thoroughly adopted her husband's
country not to feel as keenly upon almost as he could have done
himself, she adverted to her own place of burial.
"It cannot be at Netterville, I know," she said. "I may not
sleep, as I had ever hoped, by the side of my brave husband! But
in your new western home, dear Nellie--in your new western home,
where the churches, I believe, are yet undesecrated--there, if
it be possible, I would gladly take my rest--there, where you can
come sometimes to pray for your poor mother, and where, when my
husband's father follows me, as no doubt he must full soon, he
can be laid quietly to sleep beside me."
{745}
She paused, and Nellie muttered something, she hardly knew what,
which she hoped would sound like an assent in her mother's ears.
Not for worlds would she have saddened her at such a moment by
allowing her to discover that Roger, like themselves, had been
robbed of his inheritance, and that, instead of that quiet
western home of which she spoke so confidently, her wedded life
with him must be spent of necessity in a foreign land.
Whatever she did or did not say, her mother evidently fancied it
was a promise in conformity with her wishes, and went on in that
low, rambling way peculiar to the dying:
"It was not thus--not thus that I had thought to visit that wild
land. I dreamed of a resting-place and a welcome--a meeting of
mingled joy and sadness--and then a homely life, and at its close
a peaceful ending. But it is better as it is--much better. Our
next meeting will be all of joy--joy in that eternal home where
God gathers together his beloved ones, and bids them smile in the
sunshine of his presence. Yes, yes! it is better as it is!"
"As God wills. He knows best--he knows," and then Nellie
stopped, powerless to complete the sentence.
"Remember me to my father, Nellie, "Mrs. Netterville continued
faintly--"for father I may truly call him who has been in very
deed a parent to me ever since I was wedded to his son. And poor
Hamish also--let him not think himself forgotten, and tell him
especially of the gratitude I feel for this great consolation
procured me by his faithful service--my Nellie's heart to rest on
in dying--my Nellie's hands to close my eyes in death."
The last words were barely audible, and after they were uttered
Mrs. Netterville lay for a long time so mute and still that,
fancying she was asleep, Nellie hardly dared to move, or even
almost to breathe, lest she should disturb her. At last she felt
her mother's hand steal gently in search of hers.
"Your hand, dear Nellie," she whispered softly. "Nay, do not
speak, my daughter, but take my hand in yours, that I may feel,
when I cannot see, the comfort of your presence."
Nellie took her mother's hand in hers. It was as cold as ice, and
she gently tried to chafe it. But the movement disturbed the
dying woman.
"It prevents me thinking, Nellie," she whispered faintly, "and my
thoughts are very sweet."
The words sent a gush of tenderness and joy to Nellie's heart,
telling her, as they did, that her mother's was at peace. But the
physical condition of that poor mother still weighed heavily on
her soul, and taking the mantle from her own shoulders, she laid
it on the bed, hoping thus gradually and imperceptibly to restore
warmth to the failing system. Mrs. Netterville perceived what she
had done, and, true to that forgetfulness of self which had been
the chief characteristic of her life, she would not have it so.
"Nay, nay, child," she murmured as well as she could, for she was
by this time well-nigh speechless, "put it on again, for you need
it, and I do not. This death-chill is not pain."
{746}
She tried to push it from her as she spoke, and became so uneasy
that Nellie, in order to calm her, was forced to resume the
garment. Satisfied on this point, her mother closed her eyes like
a weary child, and fell into a dozing slumber. It was the stupor
preceding death, but Nellie, never suspecting this, felt thankful
that her mother's hacking cough had ceased, and that her
breathing had become less painful. For more than an hour she sat
thus, her mother's hand in hers--praying, watching,
weeping--weeping silent, soundless tears--not sobbing, lest it
should disturb the sleeper.
The night passed onward in its course, but day was yet far off
when the lamp began to waver. Sometimes it flickered and
sputtered as if just going to be extinguished, and then again it
would flare up suddenly, casting strange shadows through the
gloomy space, and deepening the pallor on the sleeper's brow,
until it almost seemed as if she were dead already. Lower still,
and lower, after each of these fresh spurts, it sank, while
Nellie watched it nervously; but just as she fancied that it had
actually died out, it flashed up high and bright again, full upon
her mother's face. Nellie turned eagerly to gaze once more upon
those dear features. Even as she did so, a rush of darkness
seemed to fill the cell--darkness that could be almost felt--and
a pang seized upon the poor girl's heart, for she knew at once by
intuition that the lamp was now gone indeed, and that she had
looked for the last time on the face of her living mother.
The sudden change from light to darkness seemed somehow to
disturb the invalid. She opened her eyes wearily, and something
like a shudder passed over her; but when she felt her daughter's
hand still clasping hers, a heavenly smile (pity that Nellie
could not see it then--she saw its shadow on the dead face next
day, however) settled on her features, and she whispered:
"You here still, dear child? Thank God--thank God for that!"
"Mother, what would you?" Nellie asked, amid her tears.
"It is coming, Nellie; be not frightened, dearest. It is coming
like a gentle sleep. Pray for me, dear one; pray loud, that I may
hear you."
What prayer could Nellie say at such a moment? An orphan already
by the loss of her father, she was about to be doubly orphaned in
her mother's death, and her thoughts turned naturally and
spontaneously toward that other Parent whose home is heaven, and
who, Father as he is to each of us, has pledged himself to be so
in a yet more especial and individual manner to the fatherless of
his earthly kingdom.
The words of the "Our Father" seemed to rise unbidden to her
lips.
"Our Father who art in heaven."
"Who art in heaven," her mother repeated after her; and then came
a pause of sweet, and solemn meditation.
"Thy kingdom come," Nellie once more found voice to say. Mrs.
Netterville had ever kept the desire of that kingdom in her heart
of hearts. Surely he was now calling her to enjoy it in eternity!
So Nellie thought, and the thought gave her strength and courage
to go on.
"Thy will be done!"--that _will_ which was calling her last
parent from her side. Nellie sobbed aloud as she uttered the
words, but Mrs. Netterville took them up, and, in a voice of
ineffable love and sweetness, kept repeating over and over again,
as if she never could weary of the sentiment.
"Thy will be done; _thy_ will--_thy_ will--thy will,
ever merciful and to be adored--thy will, my God, my Father, and
my Redeemer--thy will, not mine, be done!"
{747}
Nellie listened until she almost felt as if she herself were
standing with her mother on the threshold of eternity. A sweet
and awful calmness settled on her soul. She knew intuitively that
her mother was in the very act of dying, but she no longer felt
fear or sorrow. It was as if the Judge of the living and the
dead, not stern and exacting, but tender and approving, was
descending in person to that bed of death to speak the sentence
of his faithful servant. It was as if saints and angels were
crowding after him, bowed down, indeed, beneath his awful
presence, but yet glad and jubilant over the crowning of a sister
spirit, and bringing the songs and sweetness of heaven itself on
the rustling of their snowy wings. And in the midst of such
thoughts as these, Nellie still could hear her mother's voice
repeating, "Thy will, my God, not mine, be done."
Fainter still and fainter grew that voice, as the soul which
spoke by it receded toward eternity; then all at once it died
away, and Nellie felt that the last word had been said in heaven.
It was very dark now, and very cold--the cold that precedes the
dawn--cold in Nellie's heart within, and cold in the outside
world around her. She shivered, and was scarcely conscious that
she did so. Was her mother really dead? She knew it, and yet
could scarce believe it. For a little while she knelt there
still, waiting and holding in her breath in the vague, faint hope
that once more, if it were even for the last time, once more that
sweet, plaintive voice might greet her longing ear. But it never
came again. At last, by a great effort, she put forth her
trembling hand and touched her mother's face. It was already
growing cold, with that strange, hard coldness which makes the
face of the dead like a marble mask to the living hands that
touch it. She shuddered; nevertheless, with an instinctive
feeling of what was right and proper by the dead, she did not
withdraw it until she had pressed it gently on the eyelids, and
so closed them without almost an effort.
That done, she knelt down once more, and, hiding her face in the
scanty bedclothes, tried to pray.
......
Day began to dawn at last, and a few sad rays forced their way
into that gloomy cell; but Nellie never saw them. Sounds began to
come in from the newly-awakened city, but Nellie never heard
them. The prison itself shook off its slumbers, and there was a
slamming of distant doors and an occasional hurried step along
the passages; and still she took no heed. She knew, in a vague,
careless way, that at one time or another some one would be sent
to her assistance, and that was all she thought or cared about
it. In the mean time she prayed, or tried to pray; but when at
last they did come, they found her stretched upon the floor, as
cold almost and quite as unconscious as her dead mother.
Chapter XVII.
"To the memory of Francis, Twelfth Baron of Netterville, one of
the Transplanted, and of Mary, the widow of his only son."
{748}
Nellie stooped to decipher the inscription, but it may be doubted
if she saw aught save the stone upon which Hamish, in obedience
to his master's dying orders, had engraved it, for her eyes were
full of tears. A hurried journey to the west, another death-bed,
and a few weeks more of tears and renewed sense of desolation had
followed the events recorded in our last chapter, and then at
last a holy calmness settled upon Nellie's soul--a calmness and a
happiness which was all the more likely to endure that it was
founded upon past sorrows bravely met and meekly borne, in a
spirit of true and loving resignation to the will of Him who had
laid them on her shoulders. From the day of her departure from
Clare Island, the old lord had drooped like a plant deprived of
sunshine, and he died on the very evening of her return, his hand
in hers, smiling upon her and her brave husband, and leaving for
only vengeance on his foes the inscription which heads this
chapter, to be engraved upon his tombstone.
Nellie laid him to rest beside her mother; for through the
kindness of Ormiston she had been enabled to carry out Mrs.
Netterville's dying wishes, and to bear her remains to that
western shore which she had so fondly and so vainly fancied was
to be her daughter's future home. Ormiston had done yet more. He
had obtained a reversal of the sentence of outlawry against
Roger, coupled with the usual permission to "beat his drum," as
it was called, for recruits to follow his banner into foreign
lands, to fight in the armies of foreign kings. It was the evil
policy of those evil times.
To rid Ireland of the Irish was the grand panacea for the woes of
Ireland, the only one her rulers ever recognized, and of which,
therefore, they availed themselves most largely, careless or
unconscious of the fatal element of strength they were thus
flinging to their foes. As a native chieftain and a well-tried
soldier, Roger had a double claim upon his people, and short as
had been the time allotted to him for the purpose, fifty men, of
the same breed and mettle as the soldiers who fought at a later
period against an English king until he cursed, in the bitterness
of his heart, the laws which had deprived him of such subjects,
had already obeyed his summons. They assembled under the
temporary command of Hamish, near the tower, waiting the moment
for embarkation, and the ship that was to convey them to their
destination was riding at single anchor in the bay on that very
morning when Nellie and her husband knelt for the last time
beside her mother's grave. It was like a second parting with that
mother. But with Roger at her side she could not feel altogether
friendless or unhappy, and they prayed for a little time in
silence, with a calm sense of sadness which had something of
heavenly sweetness in it. At last it was time to go, and Roger
laid a warning finger upon his young wife's shoulder. She did not
say a word, but she bent down once more and kissed her mother's
name upon the stone; then she gave her hand to Roger, and they
left the churchyard together. While she had been lingering there,
Henrietta had landed with Ormiston at the pier to bid her a last
adieu. The quick eye of the English girl instantly perceived the
goodly company of recruits assembled near the tower, and with a
little smile of malicious triumph she pointed them out to her
companion. Ormiston shook his head reprovingly. He was too
thoroughly a soldier not to lament the policy which drafted large
bodies of men into foreign armies, but he was full at that moment
of his own concerns, and had little inclination to waste time in
discussing the wisdom of his leaders. The truth was, Henrietta's
reception of him on his arrival from Dublin the night before had
disappointed him.
{749}
He had come in obedience to her own written orders, as conveyed
to him by Nellie, and instead of the frank, loving meeting which
his own frank and loving nature had anticipated, he had found her
shy, cold, and, he was forced to confess to himself, almost
unkind. At first he consoled himself by attributing this in a
great measure to the presence of her father, before whom she
always seemed naturally to assume the bearing of a spoiled and
unruly child; but when at her own invitation he had rowed her
that morning to Clare Island, and her manner, instead of
softening, as he had hoped, grew even colder and more constrained
than it had been before, he became seriously distressed, and
unable to endure the suspense any longer, they had hardly landed
from the boat ere he turned short round upon her, and said:
"Henrietta, before you move one step further, you must answer me
this question--are we in future to be friends or foes?"
"Not foes! Oh! certainly, not foes!" Henrietta stammered, taken
quite aback by the suddenness of the question. "Oh! certainly,
not foes!"
"Because I cannot endure this uncertainty much longer," he went
on as if he had not heard her. "I must have an answer, and that
soon. I might, indeed, insist upon your own letter, but I will
not. It was written under a sudden impulse, and the word that
gives you to me for a wife must be said with a calm consciousness
of its import. What shall that word be, Henrietta--yes or no?"
"Yes, if you will have me," she said, in a low voice,
half-turning away her head as she did so.
"If! So long and so faithfully as I have loved you, and do you
still talk of _if?_" he answered, almost reproachfully.
"There is an 'if,' however," said Henrietta; "and when you have
heard me out, you will have to decide the question for yourself."
"Nay, the only 'if' for me is the 'if' that you really love me,"
he replied wistfully, and in a way which showed he felt by no
means certain upon that score.
"That is the very thing," she answered, flushing scarlet. "Harry,
dear Harry, remember that I have never had a mother's care, and
promise to be still my friend, even if what I have got to tell
you should alter all your other wishes in my regard."
"What can you have to say that could do that?" he asked
impatiently. "For God's sake, Henrietta, say it out at once,
whatever it may be!"
"It is not so very easy, perhaps," she said in a low voice. And
then she added quickly: "They call me a woman grown, Harry, and
yet in some few things I think that I am still almost a child."
"In a great _many_ things rather, I should say," he could
not resist saying, with a smile.
That smile reassured her, and she went on quickly: "You know that
it has never been a new thing to me to consider myself your wife,
Harry. My father has treated me from childhood as your affianced
bride, and we have played at being wedded in the nursery. You
cannot be surprised, therefore, if in my feelings toward you
there has been something of unquestioning security, which does
not enter usually, I think, into the relations in which we stood
toward each other. This kind of sisterly feeling--oh! do not
look so cross, Harry," she cried, suddenly stopping short, "or I
shall never be able to go on." "Do not talk of sisterly feeling,
then," he answered moodily, "for _that_ I cannot bear."
{750}
"I need not, for I do not feel in the least like a sister to you
now," she answered, with a pretty _naïveté_, that made him
almost depart from the attitude of cold seriousness in which he
had elected to receive the confessions of his betrothed. He
checked the impulse, however, and signed to her quietly to
proceed.
"You know, for you were with us at the time," she accordingly
went on, "how much I was charmed with this wild western land when
my father first brought me hither. You know, too, of my
indignation when I found that the real owner had been deprived of
it in order to our possession. True, I had heard before of the
law of transplantation enacted for the benefit of our army, but
not until it stared me in the face as an act of private
injustice, done for the enrichment of myself, did I thoroughly
appreciate its iniquity. From that moment the very abomination of
desolation seemed to me to rest upon this land, which I had once
felt to be so beautiful. I grew angry and indignant with all the
world--with my father chiefly, but with you also, Harry, because,
though I acquitted you of all active share in the robbery, I yet
felt that it was your character as a good officer, capable of
holding it against the enemy, which had encouraged him to commit
it. From dwelling upon the injustice, I went on almost
unconsciously to question of its victim. At first, however, I
only thought of him with a sort of contemptuous pity, as of a
half-tamed savage wandering sadly among the hills which had once
been his own. But one day I met him. You remember that evening
when I returned home so late, that you and my father became
alarmed and went out to seek me? I told you then that I had lost
my way, but I did not tell you that it was the O'More who had
helped me to regain it, and who, finding I was nervous at the
lateness of the hour, had walked back with me nearly to the
gates. He was a gentleman, there was no mistaking that; and there
was something so foreign in his look and accent, that I never
even dreamed of him as the owner of the Rath, until I asked him
to come in and make the acquaintance of my father. Then--I can
hardly tell you in what words, but I know that they were
courteous, and that I felt them to be all the more cutting for
that reason--he told me WHO he was. In my surprise and shame, I
tried, I believe, to stammer out something like an apology for
the wickedness of which he had been the victim; but he cut me
short with a cold, quiet smile, pointed to the gate, which we had
by this time almost reached, saluted, and so left me. Harry, from
that moment, wild dreams began to float through my brain as to
how I might restore him to his own. There was one way, and only
one way, in which, as a woman, I could do it. Remember, I was not
yet seventeen, dear Harry."
"I have need to be reminded of it," he answered bitterly, "when I
am forced to listen to such things as you are saying now."
"And yet I loved you all the time, Harry; I did, indeed," she
answered in a low, earnest voice. "I loved you, although I think
I knew it not--should never, perhaps, have known it quite, if we
had not at last quarrelled and parted, as I thought, for ever. In
the first keen suffering which that parting caused me, my heart
woke up all at once to a true knowledge of itself, and I felt
that, dormant as my love for you had been, it had yet become so
deeply rooted in my whole being that by no effort of my own will,
(and you know that it is a pretty strong one, Harry,") she added
with a faint smile--"by no effort of my own will could I have
transferred it to another."
{751}
"Go on," said Harry, now smiling in his turn, for she had paused
in a little maidenly confusion at this full and frank avowal of
her sentiments in his regard--"go on, for I can listen to you
with patience now, Ettie."
"I never dreamed again, Harry, of any other than yourself," she
answered softly; "and When, the day after your departure, I went
to Clare Island to warn him of a coming danger, (but not, I do
assure you, with any other motive,) I saw at once that if he ever
cared for any woman in the world, it was, or soon would be,
Nellie Netterville. It did not grieve me that it was so, but I
confess it wounded my woman's vanity a little, and for a moment I
felt inclined to be angry with her. But I was ashamed of the
pitiful feeling, and for the first time in my life, perhaps, I
tried to conquer my evil passions. In this her sweet, quiet
frankness greatly helped me, and her forgetfulness or forgiveness
of the great injury I, or at all events, my father, had inflicted
on her, made me blush for my own unkindness. If ever you take me
for a wife, Harry, and that you find me a more manageable one
than I have given you reason to expect, remember that you will
owe it entirely to her example."
"Nay, nay! not entirely!" here interposed Harry, "for the sun
shines in vain upon a barren soil."
"And now," continued Henrietta, regardless of the compliment,
"can you forgive me, Harry? Believe me, you know all, I have told
you the truth, and the whole truth. I would not deceive you in
such a matter for the world."
"My love, I believe you, and I am more than satisfied," he
answered in a tone of trustful tenderness which left no room for
doubting in Henrietta's mind.
"And, Harry," she added pleadingly, "our home that we have left
in England is as pleasant, if not so sublime, as this, and we can
call it, at all events, honestly our own!"
"Some day, dear Ettie, we will go there; and should your father's
death ever place these lands at our disposal, we will leave them
to their rightful owner."
"O Harry! how could I doubt you?" she said remorsefully. "Can you
ever forgive me for it?"
"Yes, if you will never doubt again," he answered with a bright
smile. "But, hark! the bugle sounds, and yonder is Roger and his
wife talking to old Norah at the tower-gate."
Henrietta looked in that direction, and she saw that Nellie was
taking leave of the old woman, who had flung herself at her feet,
and was sobbing bitterly. This much she could guess from the
attitude and action of both parties; but she could not guess the
infinite delicacy and feeling which Nellie contrived to put into
that last farewell, nor yet the reverent admiration with which
Roger watched his young wife, as, silencing her own deeper
sorrows, she soothed the old woman's clamorous grief over the
departure of her hereditary chieftain and his bride, "her
beautiful, darling, young honey of a new mistress!"
Nellie was still occupied in this manner when the bugle once more
sounded. The soldiers, who at the first summons had mustered
together under the command of Hamish, instantly put themselves
into motion, and, with flags flying and pipers playing, marched
past the tower, saluting Roger as they did so, and coming down to
the place of embarkation amid the wails of music which, martial
and spirit-stirring in the beginning, had died gradually away
into such wild, plaintive strains as best befitted the thoughts
of men who were leaving their native land for ever.
{752}
Another moment, and Nellie threw herself into Henrietta's arms,
and the two girls sobbed their farewells in silence. Then some
one separated them almost by force, there was a short bustle of
departure and a clashing of oars, and when Henrietta could see
again through her blinding tears, Nellie had nearly reached the
ship which was to convey her to her new home; while over the
crested waves came the voices of the soldier-emigrants singing
that farewell song which rang so often and so sadly in those days
along the coasts of Ireland, that it has left, unhappily, many an
echo _still_ to wake up thoughts of bitterness and distrust
in the minds and memories of her living people.
Years afterward, when Henrietta was a happy wife and mother in
her quiet English home, and her friends, thanks to her generosity
and her husband's, were once more settled in that western land
which was dearer to them than all the shining kingdoms of the
earth, the music of that wild "Ha-till" would strike at times
suddenly on the chord of memory, and she would weep again almost
as bitterly as she had wept upon that late autumn morning when,
floating over the waters of Clew Bay, came those voices to her
ear, sadly singing:
"Mute in our grief, our fortunes broken.
Land of Eire, [Footnote 221] farewell, farewell!
Sad is that word--half-wept, half spoken--
Sad as the sound of the passing bell.
Ha-till, ha-till! we return no more,
Eire, beloved, to thy winding shore!
"Ever in dreams to see thee weep!
Ever to hear thy wail of pain!
Bitter as death, and as dark and deep.
The grief that we carry across the main.
Ha-till, ha-till! we return no more,
Eire, beloved, to thy winding shore!
"Happy the dead who have died for thee!
More happy the dead who died long ago!
Who never in sleep had learned to see
The grief and shame that have laid thee low.
Ha-till, ha-till we return no more,
Eire, beloved, to thy winding shore.
"Farewell! we have poured out our blood like rain,
We asked for naught but a soldier's grave;
Yet say not thou we have sought in vain.
While foes confess that thy sons are brave.
Ha-till, ha-till! we return no more,
Eire, beloved, to thy winding shore."
[Footnote 221: The ancient name for Ireland.]
The End.
---------------
{753}
The Holy Shepherdess of Pibrac,
Canonized By Pope Pius IX. In 1867.
In the latter part of the sixteenth century, beneath the walls of
Toulouse, bloomed, almost unseen and unknown, a little flower of
the fields, whose delicate chalice emitted a perfume scarcely
perceptible to mortal sense. It passed away, and seemed
forgotten; but its odor still lingered where it had blossomed;
and after a few years had gone, its dust was gathered into the
sanctuary, that the holy place might be filled with the celestial
fragrance.
Germaine Cousin was born at Pibrac, a village of nearly two
hundred families in the environs of Toulouse, about the year
1579. The parish church was dependent on the great Priory of the
Knights of Malta in that city. The chateau belonged to the Du
Faur, Lords of Pibrac. The actual proprietor was Guy, famous at
once as an orator, a poet, and a successful courtier. Once the
proudest remembrance of the place was the visit of Catharine de
Medicis and her daughter, Margaret of Navarre, who were
magnificently entertained by the Lord of Pibrac. But now the
visit of the two queens, and the fame and opulence of the great
orator, are nearly forgotten; while the memory of our holy
shepherdess has lived for nearly three centuries in the hearts of
all the inhabitants of Pibrac. The chateau is a forsaken ruin;
but the church has become a place of pilgrimage, because Germaine
prayed beneath its arches, and there found a tomb.
Her father was a poor husbandman, to whom tradition gives the
name of Lawrence. Her mother's name was Marie Laroche. From the
first moment of her existence, she seemed destined to suffering
and affliction. She was infirm from her birth, being unable to
use her right hand, and afflicted with scrofula. While yet a
child, she became motherless; and, as if these were not trials
enough to accumulate at once upon the head of one so frail, her
father did not long delay to fill the vacant place on his hearth.
Absorbed in her own children, this second wife, instead of
pitying the hapless orphan whom Providence had confided to her
care, conceived an aversion for her. But the trials to which
Germaine was subjected were proofs of the divine favor. To them
she was indebted for the brilliancy of her virtues, especially
humility and patience.
As soon as she was old enough, her step-mother, who could not
endure her presence at home, sent her forth to guard the flocks.
This was her occupation the remainder of her life. But even in
the depths of her lonely life, our shepherdess created for
herself a more profound solitude. She was never seen in the
company of the young shepherds; their sports never attracted her;
their jeers never disturbed her thoughtful serenity; she only
spoke sometimes to girls of her own age, sweetly exhorting them
to be mindful of God!