Fifty days were thus passed by the prisoner, when on the 10th

Thermidor, a great tumult being heard in the street, it was

supposed the populace were rushing to massacre all in prison; it

was the announcement of the death of Robespierre.

The representatives, Bourdon de l'Oise and Legendre came soon

after to visit the prison and assign the fate of each. All were

set at liberty except Madame de La Fayette, on whom they were not

willing to pronounce sentence until they sent for the decision of

the committee. The unhappy woman was but little concerned at the

prolongation of her captivity; for she had just learned that her

mother, her grandmother, and her sister had perished on the 4th

Thermidor. Her grief was overwhelming, but she never revolted,

her prayers preserved her. "Now," she wrote to her children, "I

find the sentiments of those I mourn, those, too, that I desire,

and those that I pray God to put in my heart, and sometimes I

obtain all at once." Notwithstanding the active solicitations of

Mr. Monroe, the new minister from the United States, Madame de La

Fayette was not liberated; Le Piessis was used for other

purposes, so she was transferred to the Maison Delmas, rue Notre

Dame des Champs; she remained there four months, and met there

with the strangest people, for it was now the partisans of the

reign of terror who peopled the prisons; but there, as

everywhere, she gained the respect of all. Her physical

sufferings were great during the rigorous winter of 1794 and

1795. Everything froze in her room, and she was peculiarly

sensitive to cold. God granted her in her distress a precious

consolation in the visits of the Abbé Carrichon. He gave her all

the details she hungered after of the death of the three dear

persons that he had accompanied to the scaffold, and with him she

made a complete examination of all the faults of her life. On the

23d of January, 1795, the deliverance, so long retarded, of

Madame de La Fayette was finally signed, and she was set at

liberty.

Her first care on leaving prison was to hasten to Mr. Monroe and

thank him for all he had done for her, and begged him to finish

the good work by obtaining passports for herself and family. She

had but one aim, to rejoin her husband in Germany with her

daughters, and place her son in safety in America. The letter she

wrote General Washington, in which she portrays with simplicity,

firmness, and dignity the obligations she was under to M. Frestel

for his devotion to her and her family, and begs for him the

regard he deserves, is truly remarkable. As to her son, she

expresses herself thus: "My wish is, that my son may lead a very

retired life in America, and continue the studies that three

years of misfortune have interrupted; and that being far away

from scenes which might abase or too strongly irritate him, he

may work to become an efficient citizen of the United States, of

which the principles and sentiments are entirely in accordance

with those of French citizens."

When the time came to part with her only son, the separation

seemed cruel to her mother's heart; but she was firmly convinced

she acted in this matter as her husband would have dictated. She

found her strength in this thought. As we read of so many

sacrifices, sufferings, and sorrows so valiantly supported, we

find ourselves so associated in the sentiments of this

incomparable person, that we wait with feverish anxiety the

moment when she should rejoin her husband. The memoirs of Madame

de Montagu give us the details of the touching reunion of Madame

de La Fayette at Altona with her two sisters and her Aunt de

Tessé; they will be found in the account of Madame de Lasteyrie.

{792}

The conversation with the Emperor of Austria is also there given.

He granted her permission to shut herself up at Olmutz, and by

opening heaven to her, he could scarcely have made her happier.

"'We arrived,' wrote Madame de Lasteyrie, 'at Olmutz, the 1st

of October, 1795, at eleven o'clock in the morning, in one of

the covered carriages found at all the posts, our own having

been broken on the way. I never shall forget the moment when

the postillion showed us from afar the steeples of the town.

The vivid emotion of my mother is ever present with me. She was

almost suffocated by her tears; and when she had sufficiently

recovered herself to speak, she blessed God in the words of the

canticle of Tobias: "Thou art great, O Lord, for ever, and thy

kingdom is unto all ages, for thou scourgest and thou savest,"

etc., etc. My father was not informed of our arrival; he had

never received a letter from my mother. Three years of

captivity, the last passed in complete solitude, inquietude

concerning all the objects of his affection, and sufferings of

every kind, had deeply undermined his health; the change in his

countenance was frightful. My mother was struck by it; but

nothing could diminish the intoxication of her joy, but the

bitterness of her irreparable losses. My father, after the

first moment of happiness in this sudden reunion, dared not ask

her a question. He knew there had been a reign of terror in

France, but he was ignorant of the victims. The day passed

without his venturing to examine into her fears, and without my

mother having the strength to explain herself. Only at night,

when my sister and I were shut into the next room assigned to

us, could she inform my father that she had lost on the

scaffold her grandmother, her mother, and her sister.'"

Madame de La Fayette shared her husband's captivity twenty-seven

months. She paid with her health--we may say with her life--the

privilege of being reunited to him she loved, and proving to him

her tenderness; but it was such great happiness to her that,

whatever the severity that accompanied it, it seems not even at

such a price to have been too dearly bought.

At last the success of the French arms opened the dungeon of

Olmutz. The French plenipotentiaries, in signing the treaty of

Campo Formio, exacted that the prisoners should be immediately

set at liberty. The gates of the fortress were therefore opened

to them, and the 16th of September, 1797, they set out for

Hamburg. It was just five years and a half since their arrest.

Happy to owe his liberty solely to the triumph of the French

army, M. de La Fayette addressed to General Bonaparte the

expression of his gratitude and that of his companions in arms,

in these terms:

"Hamburg, Oct. 6, 1797.

"Citizen General: The prisoners of Olmutz, happy to owe their

deliverance to your irresistible arms, have enjoyed in their

captivity the thought that their liberty and life were attached

to the triumphs of the republic and to your personal glory.

To-day they enjoy the homage they would love to render to their

liberator. It would, indeed, have been gratifying to us,

Citizen General, to have offered in person the expression of

these sentiments, and to have looked upon the theatre of so

many victories, the army that won them, and the hero, who has

placed our resurrection among the number of his miracles. But

you know the journey to Hamburg has not been left to our

choice. It is from the place where we have said good by to our

jailers that we address our thanks to their conquerors. In the

solitary retreat in the Danish territory of Holstein, where we

will go to try and re-establish the health you have saved, we

will join to our vows or patriotism for the republic the most

lively interest in the illustrious general, to whom we are not

only attached for the services he has rendered our country and

in the cause of liberty, but for the particular obligations

that we delight to owe him, and that the deepest gratitude has

for ever engraven in our hearts. Salutation and respect.

"Lafayette,

Latour Maubourg,

Bureaux de Pusy."

{793}

Among all the marks of sympathy showered upon the escaped victims

of Austrian tyranny, none touched M. de La Fayette more deeply

than one from Madame de Staël--full of respect and emotion.

Mathieu de Montmorency added to it a few lines in which these

words strike us: "The constant occupation of your misfortunes and

your courage has outlived in me, and ever will, my alienation

from all political activity; but I believe I should renew all my

ancient enthusiasm to welcome one so constant in the cause of

liberty."

Although the health of Madame de La Fayette was destroyed, she

preserved her wonderful activity and force of character. It was

she, the only one of her family, whose name was not on the list

of the banished, who was able the first to enter France, and

there regulate her affairs and the return of all her relations.

It was she again who, after the 18th Brumaire, understood that

General La Fayette should return immediately without waiting for

any authority that might possibly have been refused him. Sure of

the marvellous tact with which she judged her surroundings, he

followed her advice without any other information. The news of

his arrival in Paris was not pleasing to the first consul; he

wanted the general to return to Holland and solicit his entrance,

like every one else. Madame de La Fayette called upon him, was

graciously received, exposed the peculiar position of her

husband, and the favorable effect that his return could not fail

to produce on all honest and patriotic men, and proved herself

noble, skilful, and prudent. "I am delighted, madame," said the

first consul to her, "to have made your acquaintance; you have

great good sense, but you understand nothing of business."

However, it was agreed to that M. de La Fayette might remain

openly in Paris without asking permission. Madame de Lasteyrie,

in her recital, in which the most noble sentiments are expressed

so simply and happily, has given us a page that portrays the

whole soul of her heroic mother.

"Retirement would still have been preferable to my father under

the consular magistracy of Bonaparte; under the despotism of

Napoleon, it was, through honor, enforced upon him. In either

case, it fulfilled the wishes of my mother. After so much

suffering and exhaustion, a retired life--perfect quietude

would not have been necessary for her--in which in peace she

could consecrate the affections of her soul to those dearest to

her, was the only earthly happiness she sought. She felt too

deeply, too passionately, I may say, the emotions of family

life to desire others. Neither the grandeur of her former

state, nor the _éclat_ even of her misfortunes, had

excited in her that pride of imagination which cannot bear a

simple existence. Her devotion rose above every trial, but the

sentiments and easy duties of an obscure destiny sufficed for

her heart. Love filled it entirely."

What can we add to this picture? Nothing, only to ask the perusal

of the admirable letter of M. de La Fayette, which ends the

volume. He there relates the long agony, the tender and charming

delirium of the heavenly creature whose affections he possessed.

To have seen him a practical Christian would have been the

realization of her most cherished wish. "If I am going to another

home, you must feel," she said to him once, "that I shall be

occupied there with you. The sacrifice of my life would be very

little, however much it may cost me to part with you, if it could

assure your eternal happiness."

Another time, she said to him: "You are not a Christian?" As he

did not reply, she said: "Ah! I know what you are, a fatalist."

"You believe me proud," answered the general, "are you not a

little so yourself?" "Oh! yes!" she cried, "with all my heart. I

feel that I would give my life for that sect."

{794}

Another time, in this half delirium which led astray her ideas,

but never her heart, she said: "This life is short, troubled; let

us be reunited in God, and set out together for eternity." Her

God and her husband were her thoughts to the last moment. She

died on Christmas night, the 25th of December, 1807, pressing the

cherished hand and saying, "I am yours for ever."

Those who wish to finish this picture of conjugal love, must do

as we have done, seek in the memoirs of an illustrious

contemporary the scene that completes it. In the _Memoires de

M. Guizot_, in the year 1834, we read:

"Some months before M. de Talleyrand had retired from public

affairs, another celebrated man, very different in character,

and celebrated in other ways, had disappeared from all worldly

scenes. No life had been more exclusively, more passionately

political than that of M. de La Fayette; no man had more

constantly placed his political sentiments and ideas above all

other preoccupations and all other interests, and yet in his

death he was completely estranged from them. Having been ill

for three weeks, he approached his last hour; his children and

family alone surrounded his bed. He spoke no more, and they

supposed he could not see. His son George noticed that, with an

uncertain hand, he sought something on his breast; he came to

the assistance of his father and laid in his hand the medallion

that M. de La Fayette always wore suspended from his neck. He

pressed it to his lips, and expired."

This medallion contained the likeness and hair of Madame de La

Fayette, his wife whom he had lost twenty-seven years before.

Thus, already separated from the entire world, alone with the

thought and image of the devoted companion of his life, he died.

When his obsequies were spoken of, it was a recognized fact in

the family, that M. de La Fayette wished to be buried in the

little cemetery adjoining the convent of Picpus, by the side of

Madame de La Fayette, in the midst of the victims of the

revolution, for the most part, royalists, and of the aristocracy,

whose relations had founded this pious establishment. This wish

of the veteran of 1789 was scrupulously respected and carried

out. An immense crowd, troops, national guards, people of all

kinds accompanied the funeral procession through the avenues and

streets of Paris. Arrived at the gate of the convent, the crowd

was stopped; the interior enclosure could not admit more than two

or three hundred persons; the family, the near relations, the

principal authorities entered alone, walked silently through the

convent into the modest garden, then penetrated the cemetery.

There no political manifestation took place; no discourse was

pronounced; religion and the intimate memories of the soul alone

were present; politics had no place near the death-bed or the

tomb of the man whose life it had filled and governed.

Léon Arbaud.

-------------

{795}

Translated From The Revue Du Monde Catholique.

Flaminia.

By Alexandre De Bar.

"So you really believe that the soul lives for ever?" said the

Baron Frederic.

"Certainly I do," answered the Count Shrann.

"That is very strange," replied the first speaker, emptying at a

single draught a tankard of beer whose size a German could alone

look at without trembling.

"And you believe that those whom we have loved in this world we

shall again love in the next, and they will remember us even as

we shall remember them?"

"Certainly I do!" again replied the count.

"This is yet more strange," observed the baron; and then both of

them continued to smoke on in silence. They seemed, indeed, so

completely absorbed in the contemplation of the bluish clouds of

smoke which they continued to puff forth so regularly into the

already misty and thickened atmosphere, that one might reasonably

have thought that the discussion would end there; but such was

not the case.

Let us profit by this interval to make known to our readers who

were the Count Shrann and the Baron Frederic. They were two old

fellow-soldiers, of whom the recollection yet remains in the

minds of those who knew them, as being the most perfect type of

that warm and devoted friendship which is less rare than one

thinks or than one will admit. They were two brave Germans, who

had courageously held their places during the wars in the

commencement of this century. They had fought side by side with

all the ardor of their youth and patriotism, and had on many

occasions saved each other's lives by their bravery. This

community of dangers and obligations had yet further strengthened

the links of a friendship commenced in their childhood; so that

when the peace of 1815 gave to Europe, wearied out by war, a time

of rest, our two friends placed their experience and capabilities

at the service of their country, as they had already offered the

tribute of their blood and courage, each taking on himself the

tie and responsibility of married life. Both married on the same

day the two daughters of a neighbor whom the war had ruined; and

if their brides were little endowed with worldly possessions, at

least they were rich in virtues, and that is a wealth which

equals the former, although it be much less sought after, and, we

may even add, more difficult to find.

Unfortunately these marriages so alike in happiness were far less

so in their duration; for at the end of two years Gertrude, the

wife of the Baron Frederic, died, leaving in the heart and life

of her husband a void which nothing could fill. Many were the

efforts made to console the poor baron, many were the mothers who

lavished on him their sweetest smiles; many were the maidens who

directed on him their chaste regards, and who pictured to

themselves a brilliant future in which his name and fortune held

a prominent place; but all was useless, for the baron remained

quite insensible to these efforts and designs.

{796}

His friend, and even his sister-in-law, counselled him to seek in

a new marriage that close and loving friendship which he was so

well adapted to appreciate; but at length, seeing him so

obstinately faithful to the memory of Gertrude, they feared to

afflict him, and so ceased to press him on the subject, trusting

all to time, which, nevertheless, rolled on without bringing any

change to the baron's regrets and resolutions. His was one of

those strongly organized minds where the impressions, lively as

they are lasting, resist the stronger that they are unaccompanied

by outward efforts. Hence was it that the baron supported,

without giving way an instant, the blow which had struck him, and

yet the wound in his heart remained as sensitive and as painful

as on that day when with his own hands he placed his well-beloved

Gertrude in her shroud. Old age came on, bringing with it its

longing for rest, and then the two friends quitted their public

life as they had entered it, side by side. The baron went to live

with his brother, for thus he designated his friend; and only

once every year left his castle to visit his own property and

tenants, toward whom he showed a kindness without limit. Some of

these tenants abused that kindness, and paid their rent year

after year, with tears, excuses, and complaints, the worthy baron

leaving them unmolested; and when his steward spoke to him of

sending off the estate these families, he replied: "Better that

this should happen to me, who have patience with them, than send

them away to those who probably would have none." No sooner was

he returned to the castle than he forgot all these things, and

recommenced spoiling and fondling his nephews and nieces, of whom

he had no small number; for the Count Shrann was a descendant of

those ancient families who seemed to have presented the prolific

virtue of the golden age; nor did the number of his nephews and

nieces give any anxious thoughts to the baron, since often would

he say to his friend:

"Why torment yourself so much about the future of your children?

You will always have enough to settle them all in life; and

besides, I myself, who have but cousins in I do not know what

remote degree of affinity, I find it but just that these my

nephews should inherit my property before them."

And then the count became silent, for he found the baron's answer

quite natural, and such as he himself should have made, had their

positions been reversed. Between these two men, so closely united

by affection and so similar in heart and understanding, there was

but one subject on which their point of view was diametrically

opposed, and that was the one with which they were engaged at the

opening of this chapter. Count Shrann, who had been brought up by

a loving and pious mother, was a Catholic both in heart and soul;

whilst the Baron Frederic had, on the contrary, lost both his

parents at a very early age, and had been brought up by his

uncle, who boasted of being the friend and the protector of the

Encyclopedists; so that Frederic had been educated in that cold

and barren school of materialism which Voltaire has the doubtful

honor of having founded. Baron Frederic believed in nothing

spiritual, a circumstance which caused great chagrin to his

friend, whence it happened that on this, as on so many former

occasions, the two friends, after the dinner-hour, had passed

long hours in smoking and drinking huge tankards of beer, whilst

making the same questions and the same answers on this, the one

great subject of their difference in opinion and faith.

{797}

"So you believe that the soul lives for ever?" said the baron.

"Certainly I do," replied the count.

"It is very strange," answered the baron; and then both

recommenced to smoke yet more vigorously than before. After a

lapse of time during which two less serious men would have

discussed three or four such subjects of conversation, the count

recommenced: "What do you see so strange in my remark?"

"It is to see a mind such as yours give way to similar ideas and

tales fit only, to say the best of it, to frighten children

with."

"I, for my part, am yet more astonished to see a man so logical

as yourself refuse to believe it; and how dare you treat as

springing from weakness of mind that belief which you cannot deny

fortifies the soul and places it above the blows of adversity?"

"The soul, the soul," replied the baron, "what is the soul? A

name without a substance, and I do not know what of indefinable

and vague. A something that we can neither see nor touch, and

which eludes both the senses and the understanding. I, for my

part, believe in nothing but that which I can see or touch."

"I would remind you, my dear friend, that there are a crowd of

things in which you believe, without ever having seen them."

"It is because science explains those things, and I believe in

her."

"Science! why, you are too clever not to admit of her inability

to give you a full explanation of any one thing. Science proves

that the fact exists, but she does not explain the first cause of

its existence. She discovers the eternal laws which rule the

universe, and it is by that means that she conducts the

unprejudiced spirit from the discovery of things created to the

knowledge of the Creator of all things; but the first causes of

these same laws are utterly unknown to her."

"And what tells you that she will not yet discover them?"

"Never! For if the human understanding is immense, yet it is not

infinite. We have seen many discoveries and marvels; our

great-grandchildren will witness yet many more; but these will

not be produced in any more developed sense than that which I

just now indicated to you. The first causes will ever rest

unknown to them as for us."

"But where are the proofs which prove the existence of the soul,

and render it palpable to the eyes of the understanding?"

"The eyes of the heart, do they not equal those of the

understanding?" quickly answered the count. "What! You feel

within yourself a soul which thinks and which loves, which

possesses in itself a longing for happiness, a thirst for truth,

so utterly beyond the happiness and the truths of this world that

it can only be a _souvenir_ or a revelation, from on high,

of something purer and more perfect; you love the good and you

spurn the evil, even to self-sacrifice; nay, more, you prefer

death to the evil; you hear in the depths of your heart that

powerful voice which cries to all humanity that the soul cannot

die; and yet you ask for a proof of the existence of this soul,

and of its immortality! Death is visible to us on every side. He

menaces us; he presses upon us; all that is above, beneath, on

each side of us, is dead or dying.

{798}

Man alone drives back before him that supreme law of final decay

and oblivion; he whose life is comparatively much shorter than

that of all other existences in this world, he alone hopes for an

eternity which has no type here below, and which he could not

even have conceived in himself, had it not been revealed to him.

Surrounded by errors, he dreams the truth; wretched in this life,

he dreams of a happiness without alloy; mortal, he dreams of

immortality. Is not all this an infallible proof of his future

destiny? God, who created man, would not he be both cruel and

unjust had he given him all these profound aspirations toward a

future state of happiness, only to plunge him finally in the

abyss of eternal death? That secret voice speaks to you also, my

friend; it resounds in the silence of your heart, and offers to

you, as it does to others, its consoling hopes. Why do you not

listen to it? When you saw before you, pale and discolored,

destined to an inexorable decay, the body of her whom you so much

loved; when the mouth that had so lately spoken to you, closed

for ever; when those eyes, in which you had ever read their

tenderness, became fixed, dull, and without expression; when that

hand, which had but a moment before sought yours to press it for

a last time, fell for ever powerless, equally insensible to the

kisses with which you covered it, and to your tears, which rained

on it--" Here the baron, without trying to hide his emotion,

dried, with the back of his hand, the tears that this

recollection of his beloved Gertrude caused him. The count

continued: "That mouth, those eyes, that hand, they are the same;

but where is the soul which animated them? Did you not then hear

that interior voice which called with yet greater force, Thou

shalt see her again? That body which the earth will hide

to-morrow is but the form, and not the essence--the outward

shape, but not the living spirit. A soul which you loved, and

which rendered to thee an equal affection, animated that form,

and rendered it palpable to your senses; that soul has fled, and

the body falls back lifeless. The outward form rests here

motionless and insensible, but the soul has remounted toward that

celestial country where it shall await your coming, ready again

to love you with an affection which shall have to suffer no

second separation. And this is so true, my friend, that even

whilst you deny this consciousness that the soul has of its

future life and of its existence, you yourself obey that feeling;

for you are faithful, not to the simple memory of Gertrude, but

to Gertrude whom you feel to be still living, though far distant

from you, and you desire to be able to say to her, when the

moment of your meeting shall come: 'Thou seest that no other love

has ever been mingled with thine in my heart; my own beloved one,

thou didst wait for me, and I am come as full of thy recollection

and of thy love as on that day when thou didst leave me.'"

Whilst the count was thus speaking, the baron had literally

hidden himself in clouds of smoke, out of which came forth, by

and by, a voice, trembling and changed by deep emotion, which

answered:

"Ah! that I could believe as you do! In taking away from men

these consoling thoughts, the materialists cried loudly that they

were but working for the happiness of humanity yet wrapped in the

shades of superstition; whilst, in truth, they were but plunging

it into a gulf yet more profound and more implacable; for there

is no real happiness possible where there exists a constant fear

of losing that happiness.

{799}

I know very well that the error was much more pleasant than the

truth, and that in place of the hope, perhaps false, but

certainly full of consolation, to re-find our friends one day,

they have left us but the terrible certainty of having for ever

lost them, and that they leave us with the heavy burden of misery

which is crushing human nature, after having broken the very

support that aided man to bear its weight. Now that the evil is

done, how remedy it? And if I do not believe, what must I do that

I may believe?"

"Acknowledge humbly our utter helplessness; humble the pride of

an imperfect reason, which is irritated by the thought that there

is something above it; listen to our conscience which speaks

within us; and then, meekly kneeling down before the God who has

created the universe, repeat to him, with simplicity and faith,

these words of the blind man in the gospel, who cried, 'Lord,

that I may receive my sight!' God is not deaf to persevering

prayer. Pray, therefore, and you shall see likewise."

"Certainly," said the baron, "if I saw, I should at once believe;

but who ever saw a soul?"

"My great-grandfather did," answered the count.

"You are joking."

"Not at all. Adolphus Shrann, my great-grandfather, saw not only

one soul, but even two!"

"He was dreaming, then."

"No, for he knew what he was going to see, and that thought alone

was sufficient to keep him awake."

"Ah! then in that case somebody made a jest of him, and by some

optical delusion caused him to believe that he had seen a

veritable supernatural vision."

"No, I assure you it was not so," replied the count. "I am

determined to relate the history to you in full, this evening;

and," added he, with a voice changed by the ardent friendship

that he felt for the baron, "I should esteem myself really happy

if its recital could cause you to kneel down side by side with me

before the altar of that God whom you are so worthy to know. It

is but there that we are separated, and did you know all that my

true friendship suffers in the thought that, after living these

long years together, and after having shared all the trials and

the pains of this life until our old age, notwithstanding this, I

should yet be alone when the hour comes to receive the

recompense. Ah! my dear Frederic, that single thought would

suffice to empoison the joys of paradise."

Here the two friends warmly shook hands, and after having again

replenished their tankards and their pipes, the count commenced

the story that you are going to hear.

"You know," said the count, "that the Shrann family has always

been cited as one of the most fruitful in all Germany."

"And you! you certainly have not derogated from the example of

your ancestors," said the baron.

"Neither had the Count Franz, the same who was raised from the

rank of baron to that of count by Ferdinand III., in 1645, since

he was the father of fifteen children, eight boys and seven

girls; and of these lads Adolphus, the seventh son, was the only

one who remained to perpetuate the name and race, for the others

gave their lives to defend their country and the empire. But if

this numerous offspring was an honor to the family, it was also a

great cause of anxiety to the count; it being a fact that though

a numerous family be a source of fortune to a poor farmer, such

is not the case with a poor nobleman; and it was no slight task

to place advantageously all these children, so that they might

worthily bear and uphold their family name.

{800}

Count Franz made, therefore, the most active endeavors to marry

his daughters and to establish his sons; and he succeeded as well

as he had hoped, since only one son remained at home, and that

was Albert, the youngest child; nor did the future of this the

last scion of his race much disturb the count, destined as he

was, by him, from his very youth, to enter the church. But divine

Providence often smiles at and overthrows our wisest

calculations, and this is what occurred in Albert's case; for,

notwithstanding the serious tendency given to his education, it

was found that of the eight sons of the count this, the youngest,

showed the greatest courage and taste for war. This martial

spirit was the great despair of his tutor; for the lad left on

the smallest pretext his studies and his books to play with an

old rusty sword that he had found in one of the lumber-rooms of

the castle, and with this he amused himself for hours, fencing

against his desk or stool, and shouting all the war cries and

songs that he had heard or read. When the vexed tutor complained

of his pupil's conduct to the count, and of his little attention

to his more serious studies, joined to his openly expressed

contempt for them, the count answered, 'Bah! never mind; time

will change all this, and you know that it is only natural that

he should have imbibed a little of the family taste for war.' The

seventh son, Adolphus, likewise distinguished himself by his

recklessness of danger and by his great courage. This conformity

of tastes, yet more than the similarity of their ages, had

closely united these the two youngest brothers together; so that

when the day came that the younger saw the elder leave home as a

lieutenant in the army, to engage in that life of adventure and

danger of which they had so often talked together, he was seized

with a yet stronger repugnance to the future destined for him.

The prospect of spending his days in the retirement of the

cloister, instead of sharing with his brother the glorious

achievements of a soldier's life, inspired him with not only a

strong distaste for this future, but even with an aversion to all

that then surrounded him. Albert fell into a great despair and

lethargy; no longer did his tutor dread that rusty sword with

which Albert had been wont to frighten him; not that his studies

progressed any better for that; for although he read with

pleasure the Iliad and the AEneid, he shrunk back with distaste

from the study of theology, and when any observations were made

to him on the subject, alleged that 'he should always know enough

to cause him to die from _ennui_.' Not that the sentiment of

religious feeling was dead within him, far from that; he was, on

the contrary, animated with the liveliest and most sincere faith;

nor was it that he felt an invincible repugnance to the

obligations of the priesthood, for he was generous, sober,

charitable, and patient, and therefore esteemed slightly the

sacrifices that the ecclesiastical state requires. What he

disliked and dreaded above all was a life of uniformity and of

repose, such as seemed to him the life of a priest. This

antipathy to the future for which he was destined grew from day

to day, when, unable at last to fight any longer against his

inclinations, he armed himself with all his resolution, and

respectfully represented to his father his invincible dislike to

becoming a priest, and asked of him the favor of being allowed to

become a soldier.

{801}

Great was the discomfiture of the count on hearing this demand.

What was he to do? he who had made all his arrangements in order

that Albert might become a bishop; and here was this son who in

place of bearing the mitre and pastoral staff, desired nothing

less than to wield the sword and don the coat of mail.

"'It is very perplexing,' at last answered the count, after

having scratched his ear several times; 'this idea of yours

completely upsets all my plans; but rather than see you become a

bad priest it shall be as you desire. Although,' again added he

with a heavy sigh, 'it is very perplexing.'

"Albert, after having again explained to his father all the

reasons for his repugnance to the life of a priest, continued,

'You see, my dear father, that it is not a taste for the

pleasures of the world that drives me from the priesthood; it is

only my dislike to the monotony of such a life that hinders me

from embracing it. My vocation leads me to follow a career of

danger and of change, and not one of ease and uniformity. But I

think that there is a means of conciliating the ideas that your

tenderness had suggested for me and my own tastes.'

"'I desire nothing better than that,' answered the count with

visible chagrin, 'but how to do so, that is the question. I wish

you to become a bishop, and you desire to become a captain; now,

we are no longer in the days when bishops wore a suit of mail

inside their robes.'

"'That is true, dear father; but you could place me in a position

to become one day a knight-commander,' (here the count lifted up

his head with an air of satisfaction.) 'The order of St. John of

Jerusalem,' continued Albert, 'is a glorious order, assimilating

to the church by its vows and its constitutions, and to the army

by its obligations and labors. The Turks are now menacing

Christendom; what more glorious use can one make of one's sword

than to defend one's brothers in Jesus Christ, and to oppose

one's self against the barbarity of the Mussulman, who already

regards Europe as a wild beast does his prey? What more glorious

destiny than to consecrate one's courage and one's life to force

back even to the very sands of Asia those hordes of infidels

whose domination, similar to a pestilential atmosphere, has

brought ruin and death upon the fertile countries where it

extends?

"'If, then, as I hope, you will consent to my desires, I shall

find in that career the occasion to place in a yet higher rank

the glorious name that you have given me; and thus both my

ancestors and yourself shall have reason to be proud of their

descendant."

"My worthy ancestor, on hearing this proposition, felt a similar

satisfaction to that which a man would feel who, after being shut

up in a chest during some hours, could at last stretch his limbs

out again in liberty. Therefore was it that he seized eagerly a

proposition which drew him out of a great difficulty; for between

ourselves, be it said, the worthy man was more accustomed to

fighting than to solving difficult questions. It was easy for the

count to prove the sixteen quarters of nobility which the rules

of the order required for the admission of Germans; moreover, he

had several friends in the order whose influence he made use of;

nothing, therefore, opposed itself to the realization of Albert's

desires; and, in consequence, a few weeks after the above related

conversation, he left Germany, and became page to Nicholas

Coroner, then Grand Master of the order, and Governor of Malta.

{802}

In this position he did not fail to make himself very soon

remarked by his dauntless courage and impetuous audacity. The

requisite occasions did not fail him; each day the galleys of the

order darted from their ports, as the eagle from his eyrie, and,

powerful as the eagle, seized on some one of the innumerable

Turkish pirates which were then ravaging the coasts of the

Mediterranean, burning villages, and carrying off their wretched

inhabitants to reduce them into a painful and degrading slavery.

In this manner the order rendered the most important services to

Europe, whilst the most adventurous spirit in it found means, in

this incessant warfare, to satisfy his thirst for danger. Albert,

ardent and indefatigable, scorning danger and braving Death, who

seemed to shrink back before so much bravery and audacity, fought

so often and so well, that scarcely was the time of his novitiate

finished, than, by the general consent of his companions in arms,

and the approbation of the grand master, he was created knight.

In truth, it was impossible to show more valor and

self-diffidence. This latter quality shows forth the more, that

it was not an ordinary virtue in the order. Some years thus

rolled on, during which the bravery of Albert had caused him to

be known and remarked in all the commanderies of Europe; but the

time was come when at length he should appear on a field more

worthy of his talents.

"I will not here give you a recital of the events which brought

the troops of Mohammed IV. under the walls of Vienna; since, in

the first place, you recollect them as well as I do; and in the

second place, it is too sad a thought for him who feels within

him a soul truly German, to reflect that there was a day when

German hearts beat with fear before the standards of Mohammed! At

the time when the Hungarians, with a blindness that even their

excess of patriotism does not excuse, called into the heart of

Europe those born enemies of European civilization, Albert was in

Germany. At the first news which reached him of the march of

Mustapha on Vienna, he hurried to the commanderies that were

nearest to him, and animating the zeal of the knights, united

together without great difficulty a few of his companions, with

whom he hastened on to that city. They reached Vienna on the very

day that Leopold I. left it; and terrible was the consternation

then reigning in that town, abandoned by those who ought to have

been the first to face the danger and animate the courage of

others by their example.

"The brave Count of Staremberg commanded the fortress which he

did not dare hope to save, although he was determined to die in

its defence. The aid that Albert brought was joyfully accepted by

him; for he had but eight or ten thousand men to defend the city

against the Turkish army, whose number was three hundred

thousand; and besides this, the city was badly provisioned and

insufficiently armed. Nevertheless, the defence was organized in

the best manner possible; arms were distributed to all the

citizens; and even the schoolboys were taught to carry arms, and

perform the active service of the defence of the walls; whilst

the entire population determined to suffer famine, and all the

other horrors of a prolonged siege, rather than yield tamely to

the enemy. These preparations made, they awaited the infidels;

nor did they wait long; for in a few days after the departure of

the emperor, the Turkish army encamped before Vienna, and opened

its first trench.

{803}

Then began in earnest that terrible siege. Albert performed

prodigies of valor; now directing a sortie, then driving back an

assault, ever in the foremost rank, he, as it were, multiplied

himself, going on every side; he foresaw and provided against all

emergencies; his courage excited even the most timid, whilst his

unchangeable calm reassured their fears. In the midst of all this

peril, which seemed endless, he alone seemed at his ease; so much

so, that the Count of Staremberg used to say, 'Oh! that I had

only one hundred knights like him; for then, in place of resting

here blocked up, like a rat in his hole, I would drive back, and

follow up these three hundred thousand Turks to the very walls of

Constantinople!' During all this time, notwithstanding the

pressing demands of the Pope, Innocent IX., and in spite of the

necessity which bound the other Christian nations to prevent

Vienna's falling into the hands of the infidels, the aid so much

needed was but slowly organized. Already had the siege lasted two

months, and nothing had yet happened to relieve the despair of

the wretched inhabitants, already weakened by famine. There

seemed to them no alternative between a cruel and lingering death

and a yet more painful slavery. Almost were they reduced to the

last extremities. It was quite impossible to obtain provisions,

and the ammunition was nearly exhausted, whilst many of the

cannon had become useless for service; and yet no voice was heard

that spoke of surrender. Soldiers and citizens, alike excited by

the example and firmness of the chiefs, supported with courage

and resignation all the horrors of a desperate defence. At last

the signals and banners of King John Sobieski were seen from the

walls as he came to their rescue, leading the combined forces of

Europe. It was time! The King of Poland, notwithstanding the

immense inferiority of his troops in point of numbers, hesitated

not a moment to take the most favorable position for giving

battle to the enemy. Mustapha, on his side, divided his troops

into two divisions, the one destined to make a last and desperate

assault upon the city, and to enter it by main force through the

breaches already made in its walls; whilst the second division

was to stop the passage of Sobieski, and to hinder him from

giving any aid to the besieged. But the impetuosity of the attack

of the Christians was such that the battle became but a rout on

the side of the Mussulmans, as they fled before their pursuers on

every side, and were as soon and as completely dispersed as is a

wisp of straw before a hurricane. Vienna free, Europe breathed

again, being once more delivered from the immediate fear of the

crescent, whilst awaiting the day when the Mussulman should be

for ever driven back to the arid sands from whence he came. This

heroic defence spread a new lustre upon the arms and reputation

of the order. But none of its knights had acquired a similar

renown to that of Albert. The name of this young warrior was in

every mouth, his souvenir in every heart, and he shared with John

Sobieski the enthusiastic ovation made by the Viennese to their

deliverers. The loudest acclamations of admiration and gratitude

greeted him during the day that he accompanied the King of

Poland, who, still covered with the blood of his enemies, went in

solemn state to the cathedral of St. Stephen, there to assist at

the Te Deum which was sung in thanksgiving to God for this

miraculous delivery of the city from the Turks.

{804}

Mustapha, forced to make such a speedy retreat, had left in the

possession of the Christians all his treasures, tents, and

baggage. Among the spoil was found the standard of the Prophet.

This, it was decided, should be offered to the pope as a gage and

as a memorial of the victory, and it was Albert who was chosen to

perform this honorable mission. His old father nearly died with

joy on learning of the glorious renown of his son; and I leave

you to guess if he did not praise himself in his heart for not

having resisted the desires of Albert. The old count foresaw in

the future his family giving a grand-master to the Order of St.

John, and he trembled with happiness in thinking of the honor

which would thus result to the Shrann race and name. In fact, one

could hardly say where would have stopped the worldly honors of

Albert, had not God reserved for him a yet more sweet and

glorious recompense for his labors in his service."

At this point of his story, the count took a few minutes' repose,

minutes that were fully employed, to judge by the manner in which

he emptied the tankard that stood before him; and as the two

friends did nothing without each other's aid or example, the

baron hastened to imitate his friend; and when his tankard left

his lips, there did not remain sufficient in it to satisfy the

thirst of a wren. Then, grasping with a firm hand the immense jug

of beer which awaited their good pleasure, he filled his own

glass and passed the jug on to the count, who, with an equal

dignity and silence, took his share. It is true that the baron

paid but a slight attention to all these details of a family

history that the count so complacently related to him; perhaps he

was getting impatient for the appearance of the two souls that

had been promised him; but he let no indication of his impatience

escape him, and continued to smoke on with great tranquillity,

puffing forth clouds of smoke which seemed timed to the cadenced

sounds of an old clock that stood beside him, whose sculptured

oak case would have delighted the taste of an antiquary. At

length the count recommenced: "The Turks appeared to have

abandoned their projects upon Germany, but the war yet continued

with activity between themselves and the order and the Venetians

on the shores of the Mediterranean. Notwithstanding the greatest

sacrifices, and the most valiant efforts on the part of the

Turks, Candia had fallen into the hands of the order; a new

expedition was then resolved upon to lay siege to Coron, and

Hector de La Tour de Maubourg, having been chosen as its

commander, he made choice of Albert for his lieutenant.

"Upon one of the galleys that the pope had joined to the allied

fleets of the Knights of St. John and of the Venetians, the young

Giovanni Balbo, only heir to one of the most distinguished names

in the republic of Venice, had been sent out by his father. This

illustrious family had long been a friend to our house, and, in

fact, we counted several alliances between the two families.

When, therefore, Giovanni learnt that Albert was in the fleet, he

made several attempts to become acquainted with him; and

succeeded so well, that in a short time they became the greatest

friends in the world.

"On this event, so slight in its appearance, nevertheless

depended the destiny of Albert. You must have remarked, my

friend, that it is the same with us all. The acts the most

important in our lives, those which decide our future, and from

which result our happiness or misery in this world, have always

as their first commencement, some circumstance which is perfectly

indifferent in itself, but the results of which have an influence

on our entire destinies.

{805}

"One would say that divine Providence mocked our proud reason, in

thus making use of events which at first sight seem so utterly

unfitted to arrive at the end which it proposes to itself; and I

might even add, that this impenetrable mystery would alone

suffice to eyes less wilfully blinded than your own, to prove the

existence of an unseen power that is unrestrained by human laws

and prejudices. Does God owe to each one of us a miracle? Ought

he to suspend for each individual man the eternal laws which

govern the universe? Can we not believe in him unless we see the

very rivers flow back to their sources? Does he not manifest

himself to us at each instant of our lives, on each side of us

and in us? Is not the admirable connection of events which exists

in this world sufficient to make the certitude of his power and

of his incessant action shine forth to the vision of the soul, as

shines forth before the eyes of the body the brilliant multitude

of planets that have each their appointed path in the wide space

of heaven? The siege was terrible, and its success cost to the

Order of Malta one and twenty of its bravest knights; Hector de

la Tour de Maubourg was among the number of the dead, and Albert,

who had flown to his side to protect him, had fallen covered with

wounds, which caused his life to be despaired of. His youth, the

strength of his constitution, and, above all, the tender care

taken of him by his friend Giovanni, finally triumphed over the

severity of his wounds, and as soon as he was sufficiently

recovered to bear the fatigues of the voyage, Giovanni brought

him to Venice to visit his family, who received him with the

warmest hospitality. I have told you that Giovanni was the only

heir of the Balbo family; this was but partly true, since there

were two daughters, Flaminia, who had then attained her

eighteenth year, and Antonia, who was but seventeen.

"Nothing could be more unlike than these two sisters, Flaminia

and Antonia. Although both were in looks and in character equally

charming, Heaven had gifted them with very dissimilar talents and

tastes. Nevertheless, this did not impede the existence of an

intimate friendship between these two natures so diametrically

opposed; and, later in their lives, it proved no hinderance to a

complete confidence. It is thanks to this confidence--that arose

between them one day by reason of an imperious necessity of

mutual aid and sympathy--that I can now describe the more

intimate particularities of this history. Antonia, as you may

judge from the portrait of her hanging in the room, was one of

that sort of beauties that seem to overflow with vigor and life.

Her complexion slightly brunette; her eyes of a deep black, ever

glistening under her well-arched eye-brows, notwithstanding the

depth of her eye-lashes; her mouth ever smiling, with its full

and firmly designed lips; her perfectly chiselled nose, whose

nostrils dilated at every instant; and, above all, the extreme

vivacity of her face, where was portrayed, as in a mirror, every

emotion that agitated her, even the most fugitive; all in her

appearance indicated one of those vigorous natures that have need

of real physical exertion. An over-rich development of physical

forces impedes the flight of the imagination. Thus, Antonia was

always remarked for the vivacity of her impressions, for the

impetuosity of her sentiments, and for the sallies of her quick

and brilliant spirit.

{806}

But that world of reverie, peopled with vague and indefinable

forms; that world illumined by a supernatural light, where we

catch the glimpses of a happiness unknown here below; that world

which is created by the soul and colored by the imagination, was

to her quite unknown. Whilst her sister delighted in all this,

and listened with her whole heart to those harmonious voices

which spoke to her of a coming happiness penetrating and sweet as

the joys of heaven, Antonia was bounding like a young fawn among

the trees of their garden, or, mounted on a spirited horse,

rapidly ascended the paths of the mountains that surrounded the

town. The same impetuosity was to be remarked in her sympathies

and antipathies; she could not moderate her expression of them,

nor did she even seek to impose upon herself a useless constraint

on this subject. On the other hand, Flaminia seemed already to

bear in her entire appearance the impress of those sorrows that

she was destined to suffer. Her look, so sweet and sad even in

its smile, was half veiled with her eyelids, and gave to her face

an indefinable expression of melancholy. That expression could be

again found in her delicately shaped mouth, and even in her

movements full of languor and grace. Whilst Antonia, lively and

petulant, employed by every outward effort the too abundant

forces of her life and youth, Flaminia seemed to place hers in

reserve for the terrible moment of need. She concentrated in the

depths of her soul all her impressions; nor could she give to

herself a reason for so doing. She had the consciousness of her

exquisite sensibility, and protected it, under the shield of

indifference and affected calm, against all contact that could

have wounded it. But under this apparent indolence an attentive

eye could have easily recognized the marks of an ardent soul and

of a strong nervous organization. A sudden flame would at moments

lighten up those glances usually veiled in indifference, the soft

and musical voice took an accent of enthusiasm, and her whole

expression changed, being animated by the power of an emotion

that she no longer restrained, and whose vibrations were the more

violent, because her soul, far from pouring itself on all that

surrounded her, as did Antonia's, was one of those that at a

given hour in life is destined to concentrate all its force on a

single thought and on an only affection. Outwardly cold and

impassible, her excessive sensibility showed itself by scarcely

perceptible signs; but later in life, happy to find at her side a

heart filled with similar ideas, all this ice melted. Is there

not in us, at the moment when life commences, that is to say, at

the epoch when the soul awakes from the long slumber of infancy,

a vague presentiment of our future destinies? For the same reason

that we have so often seen the bravest soldiers tremble on the

morning of a battle, feeling beforehand that death will call them

during the day, is there not likewise in us a voice which warns

us of the trials that we shall have later in our lives to endure?

The birds have a presentiment of the coming storm, even when the

atmosphere is yet full of splendor; the very insects that crawl

upon the ground foresee in the autumn the rigors of the

approaching winter, and envelop their eggs with a double covering

of silk; and why should man be less favored than the birds or

insects? Why should he be the only creature that is delivered up,

as it were, with his hands and feet bound, to the rigors of the

future?

{807}

It is possible that Flaminia obeyed that sentiment of moral

modesty that causes us to hide from all eyes our better

qualities--those secret riches of our hearts, that we may lavish

them without stint upon the hidden object that we have chosen.

She knew herself to be incapable of half-loving any object, and

she felt that her heart was a fragile instrument; that, if

touched by a skilful hand, it would render harmonious sounds, but

that it would infallibly break under a rude or awkward touch; and

she wished to preserve it from such a fate. None of those

surrounding her suspected the power of this instrument; on the

contrary, her great outward calmness passed for the evident

indication of a certain coldness of heart, whilst the expansive

nature of her sister was considered as the sign of an extreme

sensibility. Flaminia was much grieved at being thus

misunderstood, and very often, in the silence of the night,

bitter tears flowed from her eyes; very often the ivory crucifix

which hung at the head of her couch, saw opening before it that

soul so full of purity and love, that came to seek, at that

inexhaustible source, a present consolation and a future

strength. Sometimes she fancied that she heard in herself the

distant mutterings of the heart's tempest; then she prayed with

ardor, almost feverishly, as she listened to the murmur within

her of those mysterious voices which warned her of a near peril,

and told her to spread around her those riches of affection full

of loving ardor, that then devoured her, and that one day would

consume her. In these moments of instinctive alarm, she drew

herself yet closer to God, hiding herself under the shadow of his

protecting hand, ever lifted up over those who with faith invoke

it; and then she felt herself reassured. At such moments as these

was it that she felt herself to be so completely alone,

notwithstanding the parental tenderness that surrounded her, and

she suffered by this loneliness. In truth, Flaminia was

right--she was alone; for though both the Prince and Princess

Balbo cherished their daughter, yet time seemed to have passed on

for her alone, and not for them. The child had merged into the

young girl; the _naïve_ graces of the infant had given place

to the more opened charms of youth, yet they had remarked nothing

of all this. They dreamt not even that parental affection ought

to be modelled after the child of whom it is the object, and

ought to transform itself and grow with that child. They did not

understand that the protecting tenderness accorded to the infant

who shelters himself under it as does a bird in its nest, becomes

insufficient for the heart that time has developed, and that has

need of leaning upon sentiments less protecting and more

friendly. One of the most dangerous shoals in the difficult task

of educating children, is doubtless that of noticing the first

moments when the child whom we have held until then under our

hand, and caused, as it were, to live of our own life, lays aside

the trammels of infancy, and seeks to fly with his own wings. It

is then that we ought to know how so to modify our affection that

we may inspire that freedom and that confidence in ourselves that

will protect this second period of life, as a salutary fear

protects the first.

"Now for the development of these sentiments, so fragile and

delicate, we must seize the instant when the child commences to

become a man, when he first feels awakening in him thoughts and

sensations that are his own, and not simply the echo or

reflection of our own.

{808}

It is at that moment, and then only, that we can ever arouse such

confidence. If we allow this fleeting and critical period of his

existence to escape us, never can we hope to recall it; and

however powerful may be his sense of filial affection, the child

will never again show us that confidence that we have repulsed;

we shall have left his young heart, just awakening to the dawn of

life, in an isolation that is always painful, and oftentimes

dangerous, since it lends to the already strong voice of the

passions the charms of solitude and mystery. Unhappily--and this

is almost always through an ill-advised tenderness--we too often

close our eyes to this transformation; habit blinds us, and the

child escapes from our control. Such had been the case with

Flaminia. Her mother was one of the most virtuous and excellent

of women; the prince, as I have already told you, adored his

children; but both of them, as well as Giovanni, who was fifteen

years older than the eldest of his sisters, regarded these two

lovely girls but as the two children who so lately had charmed

them by their _naïveté_ and grace. This situation, in which

the two sisters shared, should have sooner given rise to a

confidence equal to their friendship; but besides that their

difference of tastes often separated them, no exterior event had

yet happened to show them the power of their mutual affection and

the community of ideas that ought to be its consequence. Thus

Flaminia lived alone and gave herself up without reserve to the

sweet charm of vague reverie; she listened with a deep joy to

those mysterious aspirations that spoke to her of happiness, nor

could she assign any form to these thoughts, that, all uncertain

as they were, yet threw her into a delicious trouble. She sought

solitude, and spent long hours sitting at the balcony of her

window, her forehead leaning on her long white hands, while her

eyes filled with tears that had no sorrow as their source, as she

regarded the deep and large purple shadows which the setting sun

cast on the blue waters of the Mediterranean. Although she was

unconscious of the meaning of these frequent reveries, and would

have been unable to explain the reason of that melancholy, so

full of mingled pain and pleasure, into which she loved to plunge

herself, yet she hid most carefully from every eye the state of

her mind, dreading above all things lest any one should suspect

the happiness she felt in yielding to its charm. At the moment

when providence was about to bring together Albert and Flaminia,

he also found himself in some such a state of mind as that which

I have just portrayed. A glorious renown had at first seemed to

him the only thing in this world worthy of envy; but that idol so

ardently followed had been, little by little, despoiled of its

brilliant _prestige_; the nearer he approached it, the more

faint and dim became the aureole of splendor with which he had

believed it surrounded; and when he at last saw himself in full

possession of his desire, when the renown of his name had

resounded to the most distant commanderies of his order, which

regarded him as its firmest support and most assured hope; then

he saw with affright that a glorious name is insufficient in

itself, and that it must be regarded in a Christian life, or at

least in connection with some one who is dear to us, and whose

heart would rejoice and sympathize with our glory. When Albert at

last understood the truth, he felt himself sad and unhappy; for

be looked vainly around him--he was alone!

{809}

An immense void then made itself felt in his soul--a void that

even his glory was unable to hide from him, and which friendship

was powerless to fill. Like Flaminia, he felt himself isolated on

the earth; but while her solitude was sweetened by a hope as

vague as her thoughts and desires, that of Albert was a

bottomless abyss, full of discouragement and despair.

"The profound darkness of night then fell upon his soul, an

obscurity similar to those sombre and cold nights in winter, when

the eye sees not a single star piercing the sky covered with

clouds; and when the sad heart hears but the moans of the wind

that bends the tops of the bare trees as it passes over them,

mingled with the boding cry of the birds of prey which slowly

wheel around in the thick and misty atmosphere. A lassitude had

fallen on him similar to that which a traveller feels at the

sight of a straight and monotonous road which extends as far as

the eye can reach in a dry and burning plain. Seeing nothing

around him that seemed worthy either a desire or an effort, he

allowed himself to be carried slowly on by time toward the common

end; nor did he hasten that course by his vows; for even whilst

he firmly believed in the joys of eternity, he felt not his soul

drawn toward them. If he had run forward to meet death, it was

through his natural intrepidity; for he felt in its presence but

the same desolating indifference that he had shown at the moment

of his recovery to life. Such were the secret sentiments of

Albert and Flaminia when their mutual destiny placed them for the

first time in presence of each other in the ancient _salon_

of the Palace Balbo. We are both of us, my dear Frederic, so far

distant from the time when our hearts first experienced these

impressions of affection, that there now remains to us but a very

slight recollection."

"You are deceived," interrupted the baron; "from the day when for

the first time I saw my poor Gertrude, until that when I placed

her in her tomb, I have forgotten nothing of all that has passed

between us. There is not an hour of that much-regretted time

which is not present in my memory; not an incident, however

slight it may have been, that I cannot recall in even its

slightest details!"

"You can the more easily understand, then," continued the count,

"how it was that these two souls united themselves so closely the

one to the other, that there soon existed between them but a

single life, a single taste, and a single thought; and how it was

that they both preserved, even until their very last moment, the

most absolute certainty of their mutual affection, without ever

having interchanged a single word on the subject. Scarcely had

they been but a few days together, when already Albert had

penetrated into all the thoughts of Flaminia. He read in her

heart as in an open book; he divined all its secrets; that soul

which to all others was closed, he saw opening, and breathed all

its perfumes< foresaw all its destinies! Was it, then, in a few

commonplace conversations that he had gained so complete an

insight into that heart habitually closed? No; he had not judged

Flaminia by any acquaintance that he had gained of her character

by her words or actions; he had only looked upon her, and

instantly, by intuition, he had understood her; and this was so

true, that there were moments when it might have been said that

he saw her think. On her side, Flaminia saw the soul of Albert by

that same light which I should call supernatural, did I not

consider it as one of the eternal laws instituted by the Creator.

{810}

She knew him to be loyal and generous, and she saw his

unchangeable goodness and patience; not because he had had any

occasion of showing them before her, but because a lively and

penetrating light thus showed him to her. All that Albert felt

found in her an echo; the mirror does not more faithfully produce

the image than did her soul his slightest sensations. By his side

she felt happy, because she felt herself understood and loved. A

new existence then opened for her; movement and activity

succeeded to her vague reveries and habitual indolence; new

horizons showed themselves each day to her soul. Nature became

more beautiful, the flowers more sweet, the sun more brilliant;

it seemed to her that her eyes had been shut until then, and that

they now opened for the first time. At the same time that a new

affection acquired over her soul a stronger influence than her

affection for her family had yet exercised on her, even these

became more lively and more complete. Nevertheless, it was no

longer at that source whence she had so long drawn her sensations

and ideas that she now went to seek them: all came to her from

Albert, or had reference to him. She saw by his eyes and thought

by his ideas; her tastes, her desires, were nothing else than the

tastes and desires of Albert. Were he present, she seemed to live

with delight; in his absence it seemed to her that her life lost

its intensity, and all became sad and indifferent to her; he was

the soul that gave life to all. In a word, he had become a part

of herself, an indispensable condition for the perfection of her

being and existence. I have no need to tell you that she did not

render to herself so exact an account of the state of her soul as

that which I have just sketched to you. She had, in truth, the

consciousness of the change that was taking place in her, but the

reasons of this change remained enveloped in a profound obscurity

that her spirit could not penetrate; she obeyed her feelings of

tenderness without being able to analyze them. And yet the more

she felt that Albert alone filled her heart and thought, the more

she instinctively enveloped herself exteriorly, with regard to

him, in her mantle of ordinary indifference. But when hazard left

her alone with Albert, then a sudden transformation took place in

her. All that indifference melted away, as do the last snows of

springtime under the heat of the sun. She delivered herself up

unrestrainedly to the generous enthusiasm of her loving nature,

her expression became more gentle, her voice more tender, and her

heart beat faster in her bosom, which rose and fell agitated by

an emotion so delicious and powerful that it resembled even

grief; for in our weak nature, joy and suffering have a very near

resemblance."

Concluded In Next Number.

----------

{811}

John Sterling.

Whatever importance may attach to the life and writings of John

Sterling, is due to the fact of his having been a representative

man. Without being supremely original, without anything wonderful

in his career, he has been made the subject of a memoir by two

eminent men, Archdeacon Hare and Thomas Carlyle. The one

represents Anglican belief, which is partial infidelity, and the

other nineteenth-century belief, which is infidelity, pure and

simple; and both the one and the other have drawn the portrait of

their friend and hero in colors of their own mind. Archdeacon

Hare has traced with regret the lapse of Sterling into unbelief,

while Carlyle has seen in that very lapse a rise into

transcendental faith of the highest order. Neither of them has

neglected, but, on the contrary, both keenly appreciated

Sterling's literary labors and merits; and both would concur in

pointing him out as a type of that new creation of thinkers and

supposed philosophers in whom doubt and trust are ever contending

for the mastery--who are ever seeking, and never able to come to

the knowledge of the truth--a mongrel breed, sprung from an

unnatural union between scepticism and Christianity.

John Sterling was born at Kaimes Castle, in the Isle of Bute, on

the 20th of July, 1806. His father rented a small farm attached

to the Castle, and the first four years of Johnny's life were

spent on a wild-wooded, rocky coast, among headlands, storms, and

thundering breakers. Nature gave him a good schooling; for, when

he left the Isle of Bute, it was for the well-grassed,

many-brooked village of Llanblethian, in the Vale of Glamorgan.

Five years more passed in that pleasant spot, and time never

effaced the lovely images it imprinted on Sterling's mind. Every

line and hue, he said, were more deeply and accurately fixed in

his memory than those of any scene he had since beheld.

Beautifully and with deep feeling did he retrace the impressions

they made on his childish fancy, in an article written in the

_Literary Chronicle_ in his twenty-second year. He had not

seen the spot since he was eight years old, yet he described the

old ruin of St. Quentin's Castle, the orchard of his home, the

school where he used to read the well-thumbed _History of

Greece_ by Oliver Goldsmith, and the garden-sports of himself

and his playmates, with as much distinctness as if they had been

_souvenirs_ of the previous spring. Very precious are such

recollections, for one personal experience is worth a hundred

facts learnt from books.

When Napoleon returned from Elba, in 1815, little Sterling was in

the midst of French school-boys, at Passy, shouting, _Vive

l'Empereur_. His father had become a writer in the

_Times_, under the name of _Vetus_, and was in hopes of

being appointed one of its foreign correspondents. The Hundred

Days which convulsed Europe drove the Sterlings from France; and

fortune, who tries literary aspirants with her ficklest moods,

shifted the father from Russell Square and Queen Square, to

Blackfriars Road and the Grove, at Blackheath. At last he rode at

anchor, and was permanently connected with the _Times_.

{812}

John was sent to Dr. Burney's school, at Greenwich, and afterward

came under the tuition of Dr. Waite, at Blackheath, and of Dr.

Trollope, the master of Christ's Hospital. He was twelve years

old when his younger brother, Edward, died. It was an early age

to become familiar with death. John felt the loss as if he had

been a Catholic. God or nature, one knows not which, taught him

the communion of saints. "Edward is near me now," he used to say

to himself. "Edward is watching me. He knows what I am doing and

thinking. He is sad for my faults. I must, I will strive to do

what he would approve." Very active was his mind at this period.

His keen eye observed everything; his soul was winged. He read

the entire _Edinburgh Review_ through, from the beginning,

and cart-loads of books from circulating libraries, "wading," as

Carlyle says, "like Ulysses toward his palace, through infinite

dung." No advantages of education were denied him. At the

University of Glasgow he was tutored by Mr. Jacobson, since

Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford and Bishop of Chester; and

in 1824, when he was in his nineteenth year, he removed to

Trinity College, Cambridge, where another man of eminence,

Julius, afterward Archdeacon Hare, became his tutor and his

lasting friend. He was in all respects worthy of such friendship.

A youth who, with a delicate frame, could stand waist-deep in the

river, to aid in passing buckets to and fro, when the buildings

of King's Court were on fire, must have had a singular disregard

of self, and readiness for all moral enterprise. "Somebody must

be in it," he said, when his tutor remonstrated with him. "Why

not I, as well as another?" Friendships were the best gift

Sterling received from Cambridge. The classical knowledge he

acquired there was not very exact, nor did he submit to any

strict discipline. In the Union he was "the master-bowman," and

out of such comrades as Charles Buller, Richard Milnes, John

Kemble, Richard Trench, and Frederic Maurice, he made of the two

last dear and intimate friends. He and Frederic Maurice, indeed,

married two sisters; and to him and Coleridge he owed chiefly the

formation of his opinions and character. The latter was at that

time beginning to found a school of thought, and the former,

Frederic Maurice, is now, and has long been, a recognized leader

of the Broad Church party, in the Anglican communion.

If ever there was a moonstruck prophet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge

was one. As a poet, he was a star; as a divine, an _ignis

fatuus_. He subjected faith to reason, coquetted with

infidelity, embraced Germanism, and discoursed by the hour on the

church and the _Logos_ in language all musical and shining,

but conveying no meaning whatever to any one of his hearers.

[Footnote 228]

[Footnote 228: Carlyle's _Life of Sterling_, p. 73.]

Your reason (_Vernunft_) bound you to accept a multitude of

facts and principles which your understanding (_Verstand_)

rejected. With a good understanding only you might be an

unbeliever, but reason would exalt you into a Christian.

Everything depended on this distinction, and if you could not

comprehend it, (which nobody could,) so much the worse for you.

Yet English society was fast being ensnared by such theosophic

nonsense and hazy "Kantean transcendentalism." The clear dogmas

of traditional faith and the simplicity of Scripture, likewise,

were being observed in a cloud of jargon.

{813}

Dr. Pusey in his youth was sliding into German subtleties; Isaac

Taylor was watering Christianity down into human philosophy; Dr.

Arnold was pleading for an Erastian church comprising all sects

and denominations; Dr. Hampden's terminology was effacing the

time-hallowed language of the schools; Coleridge, with his

drunken imagination, and Milman, with his rationalistic solution

of Scripture miracles, were paving the way for Strauss and Renan;

and if it had not been for the Oxford revival of primitive

tradition and patristic lore, the English mind would have

wandered away into the bleak desert of infidelity without one

oasis--one guiding path by which to return to the fresh pasture

of truth and peace.

Sterling, unfortunately, was not brought under this happier

influence. The seed sown in him by Coleridge and his compeers

produced, as we shall see, its natural fruit, and made him a

forerunner of that worship of humanity which is now to so large

an extent superseding the worship of Christ. After spending a

year in Trinity College, Cambridge, he migrated to Trinity Hall,

and in 1827, quitted the university altogether. He had to seek a

profession, and knew not what to choose. He tried a private

secretaryship, and ended, of course, with literature--the

profession of all clever men who have none. For that, and

especially for periodical literature, he was best fitted, for his

thoughts were quick and brilliant, "beautifullest sheet-lightning

not to be condensed into thunderbolts," deriving their momentum

from swift strokes, not from metallic weight.

The copyright of the _Athenaeum_ being for sale, Sterling

and his gifted friends thought it would make a fine opening for

them. He wrote much in it in the years 1828 and 1829, together

with Maurice, who was editor. His "_Shades of the Dead_,"

"Alexander the Great," "Joan of Arc," "Wycliffe," "Columbus,"

"Gustavus Adolphus," "Milton," and "Burns," are full of thought,

color, and enthusiasm, but they produce a saddening effect. They

are "a beautiful mirage in the dry wilderness; but you cannot

quench your thirst there!" Sterling knew not the stand-point from

which alone the characters of past times can be duly appreciated.

He describes Joan of Arc as "perhaps the most wonderful,

exquisite, and complete personage in all the history of the

world," yet he maintains that "her persuasion of the outward

appearance of divine agency was caused by a _diseased_

excitability of the fancy." As if to hear a voice from heaven "to

assist her in governing herself," to see an angel, and receive

visits from the departed, implied of necessity a diseased

imagination! He sees in Wycliffe a Gospel hero almost as full of

"immortal wisdom" as Coleridge, his "Christian Plato," He couples

him with Erigena, who "questioned transubstantiation--the

master-sorcery," and Berengarius, who "opposed the same monstrous

doctrine." But he tells us in praise of these new lights, what

may well be regarded as dispraise, that "they encouraged

themselves to cast away the belief of all that Luther afterward

rejected by the simple study of the Bible, _unaided by general

knowledge, and without the guidance of sufficient

interpreters_." Such is the fatal admission of one of whom his

friend and biographer, Archdeacon Hare, writes that "the most

striking and precious quality in his writings is the deep

sympathy _with the errors and faults, and even with the sins,

of mankind_." Here, then, is another admission--an admission,

not of the disciple, but of the master, that while Sterling

combated that Catholic religion which is from first to last the

worship of Christ, he was already exhibiting the most decided

symptom of Positivism, or the worship of Humanity.

{814}

He dwells, again, with delight on the goodness and greatness of

Columbus; he assures us that he was a diligent student of the

Bible, had a childlike simplicity of faith in the truths of

religion; was, in his own belief, the chosen minister of

providence, watched over by saints and angels, pointed in his

path across the waters by the mother of the Lord, and holding in

his hand the cross as the only ensign of triumph; and yet, with

strange perversity, he comes to the conclusion that the mind of

this fearless discoverer was "in many respects dark and weak,"

and that his faith, though nobler than that of the multitude

around him, was "not the purest Christianity." Sterling himself,

in short, held a purer creed, (if he could only have defined it,)

and we shall see presently to what it led.

When his mind first came into Coleridge's plastic hands, it was

simply chaotic as regards religion. Instructed by the oracle of

Highgate, he engrafted a belief in Christianity, such as it was,

on his original "piety of heart," (as Carlyle calls it,) and his

"religion, which was as good as altogether ethnic." In this new

phase of mental hallucination, his sceptical zeal against what he

deemed superstition abated, and his radicalism, toning down, lost

some of its wildest features. In this frame he wrote and

published a novel called _Arthur Coningsby_. It was then his

only book, and it brought him little satisfaction. The babe was

still-born, and had it lived, the father, as it seems, would have

had little love for his own offspring. Coleridge's moonshine

glittered on his pages, but its outlooks into futurity were

confused and sad. It was "gilded vacuity," opulent misery. The

hero is himself--a youth plunging into life without any fixed

principle to guide him; full of democratic, utilitarian, and

heathenish theories; he suffers shipwreck--the shipwreck of the

mind; and then by the hand of some semi-Christian quack, like

dreamy Coleridge, is guided into a port which is no harbor, and a

church where there is no anchorage. Such was _Arthur

Coningsby_. But to Carlyle Sterling never mentioned the name

of the novel, nor would hear it spoken of in his presence.

During the years in which it was planned, written, and published,

from 1829 to 1832, Sterling wooed and won Susannah Barton, a

kindly and true-hearted wife, to share his pleasures and trials;

made an intimate friend of General Torrijos, a Spanish exile; and

was silly enough to aid him and a little band of democrats

(including an Irishman named Boyd, who had more money than wits)

to purchase a ship in the Thames, arms and stores, for the

purpose of invading Spain and proclaiming a republic! Sterling

himself was to have taken part in the mad expedition; but Cupid,

as usual, was stronger than Mars; and Susannah, who was not yet

Mrs. Sterling, prevailed on her lover to lay his armor aside. Of

course, the Spanish envoy got tidings of the plot; and the ship,

with its crew and cargo, was seized in the king's name when

dropping down the river. Coleridge's moonshine, it seems, was not

strong enough yet to dispel the dark frowns of democracy.

In 1830, the marriage contract was sealed; but alas! in this

fallen world the glad moment of our realized hopes is almost

always dashed with some strange and unexpected sorrow. Sterling's

health failed, and his lungs, menaced by consumption, asked for a

warmer climate.

{815}

The year 1831 found him in the island of St. Vincent in the midst

of tropic vegetation, tornadoes, and slaves as yet unworthy of

freedom. One hurricane, fiercer than its fellows, stripped the

roof from the house where Sterling lived, and whirled about the

cottages of the negroes as if they had been chaff. Meanwhile, in

December, 1831, Torrijos, the deluded democrat general, reaches

Spain, runs ashore at Fuengirola with fifty-five desperadoes like

himself, seizes a farm, barricades it, is surrounded, surrenders,

is haled with his comrades to Malaga, and with them all, the rich

Irishman included, is swiftly fusiladed. "I hear the sound of

that musketry," wrote Sterling; "it is as if the bullets were

tearing my own brain." No wonder, for to his brain the folly of a

wild enterprise was mainly due.

Repentance came; religion was his study; and prayer, earnest

prayer for guidance, arose from his lips as he sat under the

dates and palms, and gazed on the mirror of summer seas. Such

prayer had been answered more fully if teachers such as

Coleridge, with his gift of words, and Edward Irving, with his

gift of tongues, had not already imbued him with a multitude of

truths which were half untruths, and untruths which were half

truths. He believed himself to be "in possession of the blessings

of Christ's redemption;" and though he scarcely as yet knew the

elements of Christianity, he began to think of teaching it. It is

always the way with pious Protestant youths. They have vocations

to preach before they are schooled; and what ought to be taken

for presumption is hailed by their friends as the most signal

proof of grace. So Sterling, wearied of West India life, formed a

vague scheme of anti-slavery philanthropy, and turned his face

toward Europe and his thoughts toward the ministry of the

Established Church.

It was in June, 1833, and on the banks of the Rhine, that the

unripe aspirant for holy orders met his old friend and tutor, the

Rev. Julius Hare. That worthy gentleman encouraged a desire he

should rather have checked, and Sterling was not long in arriving

at a determination to become Mr. Hare's curate at Hurstmonceaux

in Sussex, and wear, at least, the surplice and stole, though he

had no hood or academical degree to adorn himself withal. So on

Trinity Sunday of the following year, he came out of Chichester

Cathedral a raw deacon, and established himself with his family

in a modest mansion in a quiet, leafy lane of Hurstmonceaux. Very

diligent was Sterling in his pastoral duties; but the fervor of

his zeal soon cooled. In September he began to have misgivings,

and in February following he had quitted the path he had

prematurely chosen. The reason assigned was loss of health; but

Carlyle guessed shrewdly, and with too much truth, that Sterling

was disappointed even to despair by the church whose garment he

had spasmodically caught by the hem. The virtue he expected did

not go forth from it, and the glimmer of truth which reached him

came through a dense cloud of confused writings. The very names

of these betokened chaos, and the twilight that struggled through

them was sufficient neither to cheer nor to guide. Many pages of

Archdeacon Hare's memoir are filled with extracts from Sterling's

letters, and accounts of his favorite studies at this period.

They form a labyrinth none can thread, where he wanders to and

fro without landmarks, bourn, light, or hope. The more he reads

the Old Testament, the less can he believe in its miracles; and

having no guide who speaks with authority, he applies for

satisfaction in vain to one charlatan after another as confused,

fanciful, and blind as himself.

{816}

Fancy a system of theology taught by Tholuck, Schiller, and

Olshausen; by Schleiermacher, Mackintosh, and Milman, by the

Koran and Kant, by Jonathan Edwards, Coleridge, and Maurice! Such

were Sterling's instructors, and it is not to be wondered at that

they created more doubts than they removed, and that under their

influence he discarded all faith in a hierarchy, a church, and a

Bible written by plenary inspiration. Christianity, he thought,

could only become true by changing with the times; and if any

existing society or church was to be the nucleus of a new system,

it could only be by the sloughing off of much that was old. How

utterly deplorable would be the condition of the human race if

left to the teaching of such philosophers and divines. After two

thousand years of Christian schooling, it would know nothing more

than ancient Greece and Rome of God and of its own destinies. All

revelation must be doubted of anew in order that anything may be

believed, and the _improved_ Christianity to be given in

these last days to the world would owe all its changes and

improvements to men as feeble and fallible as ourselves. Better,

far better, had it been for you, John Sterling, to be instructed

by a simple parish priest bred among the mountains, and

ministering in that church which is the pillar and ground of the

truth, than be handed over as you were by Coleridge, Maurice, and

Hare, to Strauss, Mill, and Carlyle--from unbelief in the bud to

unbelief in full, gaudy, flaunting blossom.

We cannot discover anything imposing in Sterling's talents. Even

in secular learning he was a reed shaken by the wind. His essays

and poems want definite view and bold outline. It is a grand

thing to see both sides of a question, but it is a pitiful thing

to say as much for one side as for another. The want of first

principles makes all Sterling's pages dreamy and pointless. He

has no point to steer from, no harbor to steer to; he is always

toiling against wind and tide, making no way, and accounting it

triumphant success only not to be shipwrecked. Had he confined

his criticisms to matters of taste, he might have been endured,

but he _will_ be piercing the clouds without any ballast to

steady or rudder to guide his balloon.

In February, 1835, Sterling first became personally acquainted

with that extraordinary writer, Thomas Carlyle. He met him in his

natural element, the society of brilliant free-thinkers. He was

side by side with John Stuart Mill at the India House, and then

at Sterling's father's with the Crawfords and other

_literati_, with whom unbelief was wisdom. His writings, and

particularly _Sartor Resartus_, made a great impression on

Sterling, though he saw the strange and extravagant defects of

its style, and labored hard to convince the author of his own

belief in a "personal God." But the poison did its work. The

strong inward unrest, the Titanic heaving of Teufelsdröckh's

spirit communicated itself to Sterling's, and whirled it away

still further from central peace. Carlyle could only stimulate

the intellect, and fill it with exuberant images. He had heard

without regret of Sterling's abandonment of democracy, and he saw

with greater satisfaction his defection from parochial work. He

regarded the pen as his vocation, and the greatest instrument for

good in the world. Not that Sterling broke outwardly with the

church, or declared himself a renegade.

{817}

On the contrary, he now and then performed service for a friend

at Bayswater, but it became more and more evident that his faith

in Christianity was partial and unsound. His mind was not in the

highest degree devotional, nor had he that fear of the Lord which

is the beginning of wisdom.

His knowledge of German writers hitherto was confined to

semi-sceptics and self-appointed evangelists, Neander and the

like. Carlyle introduced him to higher souls, if literary merit

constitutes height. He brought him to the feet of Goethe,

Richter, Schiller, and Lessing, and with these he tried to

satisfy the void which an imperfect religion had been unable to

fill. Mr. Dunn, an amiable Irish clergyman, became one of their

chosen circle, and we learn from Sterling himself that _his_

theology was compounded of the Greek fathers, mystics and ethical

philosophers, and that its main defect was an insufficient

apprehension of the reality and depth of sin. The very word sin

is considered objectionable in the school of Carlyle and Mill,

because it, is the correlative of grace. Sterling's friends

seemed fated to be the enemies of his soul. He had another named

Edgeworth, a nephew of Miss Edgeworth the novelist. He was well

read in Plato and Kant, yet even less of a believer than they.

"He entertained not creeds, but the Platonic or Kantean

_ghosts_ of creeds." So says Carlyle, of whom Sterling bears

witness, that "_his_ fundamental position is the good of

evil, and the idleness of wishing to jump off one's own shadow."

Deplorable health again, in 1836, drove Sterling to a sunnier

clime. He was always dodging and jerking about "to escape the

scythe of Death." At Bordeaux his feeble frame revived, and he

delved in the mines of literature for fine gold. The theological

fever in his mind had abated. Such is Carlyle's account--and the

health of pure reason returned, or almost returned. He had done

with theology, rubrics, church articles, and "the enormous

ever-repeated thrashing of the straw." But did he find the grain?

If theology is chaff, where shall we look for wheat? Will the

heart of mankind accept literature as the _summum bonum_,

the guide of life, the antidote of sin, sorrow, and death? Yet

for it Carlyle and Sterling bid farewell to Christianity, and

cry: "Adieu, ye threshing-floors of rotten straw, with bleared

tallow-light for sun; to you adieu!" _The Sexton's Daughter_

was a poem which indicated Sterling's gradual renunciation of

those fragments of Christianity which still clung to him. He even

began to think of attacking revelation, on the principle of folly

rushing in where angels fear to tread. The Christian religion, he

believed, would be really indebted to him for meddling with its

foundations, and he should be "doing good to theology," by

writing what would for ever exclude him from ministering even in

the Church of England. His letters at this period are full of

distressing jumble, which Archdeacon Hare records as Christian

with a certain unction, and Carlyle, more sagacious, claims as

antichristian with a chuckle of delight.

A _sickly_ shadow of the parish church still hung over

Sterling's compositions, according to the latter biographer, and

he gives an amusing description of the parson-like way in which

his friend read aloud the _Sexton's Daughter_ at Blackheath,

and gave painful effect to its maudlin morality. It was "a dreary

pulpit, or even conventicle manner; that flattest moaning hoo-hoo

of predetermined pathos, with a kind of rocking canter introduced

by way of intonation, each stanza the exact fellow of the other,

and the dull swing of the rocking-horse, duly in each."

{818}

The invalid poet had returned from Bordeaux, but he did not

remain long at Blackheath. Again he crossed the waters in

cheerful quest of balmier air, and the manifold bliss of health.

Daily he rode among the rocky slopes and redundant foliage of

Madeira, writing to Carlyle often for recreation, and reading

Goethe's Life and Works with fear and delight. He called him "the

most splendid of anachronisms," and spoke of his life as

"thoroughly, nay, intensely pagan, in an age when it is men's

duty to be Christian. In truth," he adds, "I am afraid of him, I

enjoy and admire him so much, and feel I could so easily be

tempted to go along with him." Thus all things conduced to lead

Sterling's mind down the steep. Lyell's _Geology_ opened a

new flutter (not line) of thought, and bewildered him with the

view it presented of "the abysmal extent of time."

From Professor Wilson, alias Christopher North, the presiding

spirit of Blackwood, Sterling received great

encouragement--perhaps more than he deserved. But ingenious

madness is all that the public requires in the magazines of some

countries. _Laudari a Laudato_ is always a rare delight. Had

Carlyle been editor, his criticisms on Sterling's Tales and Poems

would have been more severe, yea, and more just than Wilson's--he

of the _Isle of Palms_. Thus he says of _The Onyx

Ring_: "There wants maturing, wants purifying of clear from

unclear; properly there wants patience and steady depth. The

basis is wild and loose; and in the details, lucent often with

fine color, and dipt in beautiful sunshine, there are several

things misseen, untrue, which is the worst species of

mispainting." This it was that blurred and marred all poor

Sterling's productions; everything was _misseen_, and

therefore mispainted. In one particular he was to be praised and

envied--he saw things on the sunny side. In spite of sickness, he

was cheerful, and buoyancy of spirit kept him afloat on a sea

where many would have sunk. John Stuart Mill was now editing

_The London and Westminster Review_, and Sterling was

sufficiently vague and unsound to be thought a valuable

contributor. In that _Review_ he discoursed of Montaigne,

Simonides, and Carlyle, while in the _Quarterly_ of 1842, he

criticised Tennyson. Of these critiques the best is that on

Simonides, for the subject was best fitted to Sterling's taste

and powers. He was a better judge of Greek poetry and Greek

character than of writers like Montaigne, Carlyle, and Tennyson,

who have lived in Christian times, and must be judged by

Christian rules. He could hardly wander wide of his theme while

dealing with the bright wine, luscious fruit, honey, and crystal

founts of Ceos, while gathering up the costly fragments of its

gifted bard, and rendering in English the chaste and delicately

chiselled verses of him who has "not left a single line inspired

by love."

But the case was altered when Sterling tried to appreciate

Montaigne, The task was above him. He was neither a believer nor

an unbeliever, but partly both. He could neither wholly praise

nor wholly blame Montaigne's scepticism. He had an instinctive

leaning toward the writer who adopted _Que sçay-je?_ as his

motto, and followed the natural religion of Sébonde. He honored

one whose writings were condemned at Rome, and thought, for that

very reason, they must have some good in them.

{819}

He admired an essayist who sat loose to the received opinions and

belief of his time, chose Plutarch for his favorite author, (as

Rousseau and Madame Roland did after him,) and "of all men seemed

most thoroughly to have revered and loved the saint, prophet, and

martyr of pagan wisdom, Socrates."

Perhaps Socrates would not be in such good odor with the sceptics

of our day, if he too had not been in some sense an unbeliever.

Perhaps it is in his _protesting_ character that they

chiefly admire him, and trace in him some resemblance to the sage

of Wittemburg. They admire him, and set him up as a model,

because he was a witness against the established and popular

religion of his country. Yet it may be that Socrates had really

more faith than they have, and with all the disadvantages of

paganism, made, if we may so speak, a better deist than

nineteenth-century sceptics. Perhaps his mind was clearer, after

all, than Montaigne's, or than Sterling's, who wrote of Montaigne

that, "in the bewilderment of his misunderstanding at the

immensity and seeming contradictions of the universe, perhaps he

even hoped that _one day or other_ the puzzle of existence

would find its solution in _the accompanying puzzle of

revelation_."

We have not time, in this place, to follow Sterling's review of

his friend Carlyle's works. Suffice it to say, what we believe to

be the fact, that he discovered Carlyle's intellectual stature to

be high because the literary world had already recognized it as

such; but he did not discover the extent of Tennyson's powers

because the literary world had not yet recognized them. This is

not very complimentary to Sterling's critiques or

penetration--but dreamy and indistinct beauty is all that he ever

reaches, and his _exposé_ of Carlyle's philosophy is as hazy

and unsatisfactory as his appreciation of Tennyson is hesitating

and imperfect.

After founding the Sterling Club, our hero once more turned his

face toward the sweet south. In company with his friend. Dr.

Calvert, he crossed the Alps, and wandered from city to city

through the garden of Europe, till he reached, in the winter of

1838-9, the city without a rival. Perhaps Sterling was apt to let

other people reflect for him. If he had set his own thoughts

originally to work, he could hardly have failed to detect in the

metropolis of Christendom something more than he pretended to

find. A philosophic mind, even of a minor order, could not allow

itself to dwell on Rome, the Holy See, and the pontifical line,

without finding in them matter for the greatest consideration and

most searching inquiry. Whence the mighty, the enduring influence

of these on mankind and mankind's history, if there lie not at

their root, principles which escape the glance of superficial

observers? Whether divine, human, or diabolical, they must

deserve philosophical research, were it only for the magnitude of

their results. Yet Sterling is bold enough to affirm that "one

loses all tendency to idealize the metropolis and system of the

hierarchy into anything higher than a piece of showy

stage-declamation, at bottom thoroughly mean and prosaic." Again

he tells us that "The modern Rome, pope and all inclusive, are a

shabby attempt at something adequate to fill the place of the old

commonwealth." So warped was his judgment that St. Peter's itself

found little favor in his eyes. His artistic notes are as unsound

as his religious ones. Prejudice jaundiced all. "I have seen the

pope," he says, "in all his pomp at St. Peter's; and he looked to

me a mere lie in livery."

{820}

But to him perhaps St. Peter on his cross would not have appeared

truth in undress. He derived, it is to be feared, little good

from his visit to the tombs of the apostles. To him they were

tombs indeed--vaults, charnel-houses, painted sepulchres. Mrs.

Sterling's premature confinement recalled him to England, and in

the summer of 1839 he was housed at Clifton, and enjoying the

noxious friendship of an amiable deist, Mr. Frank Newman, brother

of the great convert to Catholicism of the same name. He, too,

had once professed Anglican Christianity, but he resigned his

fellowship at Oxford, and openly combated the divinity of the

Holy Ghost.

At Clifton Sterling became familiar with Strauss; we do not mean

Strauss in person, but in his still more dangerous _Life of

Christ_. Here was, indeed, a "lie in livery," yet Sterling

pronounced it "exceedingly clever and clear-headed, with more of

insight, and less of destructive rage than he expected." It would

work, he said, deep and far, and it was well for partisans on one

side and the other to have a book of which they could say, "This

is our Creed and Code--or, rather, Anti-Creed and Anti-Code."

Alas! John Sterling, are you come to this? The "lie in livery"

whom you saw in Rome would have taught you better. He bid you

adore him whom Strauss denies, and hold fast to him as the Way,

the Truth, and the Life.

There is little to be said of Sterling's poetry, and that little

such as his ghost might not like to hear. It never caught the

public ear, and if it had caught, could not have charmed it. He

had not the slightest taste for music, nor any tune in him. His

verses were merely rhymed, and barely rhythmical _speeches_,

not _songs_. "The thoughts were not much above the sound,

and the latter was as unmusical as a drum. Carlyle strongly

advised him to stick to prose, and declared that his "poetry" had

"a monstrous rub-a-dub, instead of a tune." Whether in prose or

verse, haze, insufficiency, and failure marked all he attempted.

At Falmouth, as at Clifton, he moved in a luminous atmosphere of

intellects gone astray. While there he published _The

Election_, a poem in eleven books, which describes in heroic

verse the contest between Frank Vane and Peter Mogg for an

English borough. There were graceful touches here and there; but

the pages wanted that originality which is the only passport to

permanent success. The _Election_ was followed by

_Strafford_ and _Coeur de Lion_, but the one subject

was _too_ dramatic, and the other one _too_ epic, for

Sterling's muse.

In 1842, he was listening to rhapsodists reciting Ariosto on the

mole at Naples, or boating round the promontory of Sorrento. His

spoiled and purposeless existence was drawing near its close. A

painful sense of its uselessness forced itself frequently on his

mind. His life, he wrote, had ceased to be a chain, and fell into

a heap of broken links. Versatility in his father became

irresolution in him. That father, Edward Sterling, possessed an

improvising faculty without parallel, and had a fair field for

its display in the pages of the _Times_. There,

conjurer-like, he set forth "three hundred and sixty-five

opinions in the year upon every subject." There, day after day,

he hit the essential _animus_ of the great Babylon with

extraordinary precision. There he performed to admiration his

marvellous somersaults, not only without shame, but with the ease

and daring of one who is always right.

{821}

There he appeared as Whig or Tory, Peelite or Anti-Peelite, not

as the whim took him, but as it took the blatant public for whom

he wrote. There "Captain Whirlwind," as Carlyle used to call him,

let loose his winds, and, securely anonymous, looked forth from

his cave on the seething seas and thundering surges which he

rolled on the shore. The son could not but reflect in a degree

the father's face. Hence, in John Sterling we find, to his

misfortune, great and habitual uncertainty. "Christianity," he

wrote, not long before his death, "is a great comfort and

blessing to me, although I am _quite unable to believe all its

original documents_." What kind of Christianity was this which

comforted him, and whence did it derive its evidences? The same

inconsistency and vagueness appears in his remark--and it was

one of his latest--that he had gained but little good from what

he had heard or read of theology, but derived the greatest

comfort from the words, "Thy will be done." As if these words did

not involve the whole circle of theology, as the egg contains the

chicken, and the acorn the oak.

In the beginning of 1843, Sterling broke a blood-vessel; his

mother also became seriously ill; and his father's mansion at

Knightsbridge, "built on the high table-land of sunshine and

success," was filled at once with bitterness and gloom. Very

affectionate and pious were Sterling's letters to his mother; nor

can it be said that death came to either of them unawares. They

saw the grim shadow approach, and awaited his stroke with such

fortitude as their sense of religion gave them. "Dear mother,"

wrote Sterling, "there is surely something uniting us that cannot

perish, I seem so sure of a love which shall last and reunite us,

that even the remembrance, painful as that is, of all my own

follies and ill tempers cannot shake this faith. When I think of

you, and know how you feel toward me, and have felt for every

moment of almost forty years, it would be too dark to believe

that we shall never meet again."

On Good Friday, 1843, Sterling's wife had borne him another

child, and, with her infant, was doing well. The post arrived on

the Tuesday following, and Sterling left her for a moment to read

the tidings brought of his mother. He returned soon with a forced

calm on his face, but to announce his mother's death. Alas!

another bereavement, still more desolating, was at hand. In two

hours more his beloved wife also was numbered with the dead. His

two best friends were cut down by a single blow; to him they died

in one day--almost in one hour. A mother's love is unique: there

is nothing like it in the world; a wife's love is all that

imagination can picture of earthly affection; and to Sterling

they were now both things of the past. Alone, alone he must

pursue his pilgrimage, haunted by the perpetual remembrance of

joys never to return. "My children," he cried, "require me

tenfold now. What I shall do, is all confusion and darkness."

It is in such seasons of bereavement especially that the Catholic

realizes his church as the mourner's solace and the outcast's

home. But Sterling, unhappily, was debarred from this best and

sweetest consolation. Friends he had in abundance, but they were

almost all errant meteors like himself, and stars shining in

mist. By the death of his mother he became rich, when riches

could no longer purchase increase of joy. He took a house at

Ventnor in the Isle of Wight, and there strove to live for his

children and in a sphere of poetry.

{822}

But his lyre had few listeners; and it would be but loss of time

to criticise at length what is now forgotten. Now and then he

went up to town, and even entertained friends in his father's

desolate dwelling at Knightsbridge. It was like "dining in a ruin

in the crypt of a mausoleum." His silent sadness was manifest to

all through the bright mask he sometimes wore. "I am going on

quietly here, rather than happily," he wrote from Ventnor to Mr.

Frank Newman; "sometimes quite helpless, not from distinct

illness, but from sad thoughts and a ghastly dreaminess. The

heart is gone out of my life." That life was fast ebbing away,

and he knew it; he was drifting into the vast ocean of eternity,

and he watched without regret the receding shore. A certain piety

sustained him. "God is great," he would exclaim with Moslem

fervor, "God is great." His heart yearned especially toward

Carlyle, and the Maurices were constantly at his side. Infidelity

and semi-Christianity, in death as in life, were his presiding

genii. He clasped the Bible in his feeble hand, though he

believed it but in part. He prayed to be forgiven; he thanked the

all-wise One; but it was long since he had begun "to deem himself

the opponent, the antagonist of everything that is," and

antagonism is a frame of mind little conducive to peace and joy.

A few days before his death he wrote to Carlyle: "I tread the

common road into _the great darkness_, without any thought

of fear, and with very much of hope. Certainty, indeed, I have

none. ... Toward me it is more true than toward England, that no

man has been and done like you. Heaven bless you! If I can lend a

hand when THERE, that will not be wanting." To this same friend,

four days before his death, he addressed some stanzas which

Carlyle has not published, but says they were written as if in

starfire and immortal tears." His eyes were closed on this world

on the 18th of September, 1844. He sleeps in the burying-ground

of Bonchurch, and is embalmed in the memory of his friends.

His natural virtues were of the highest order; his life was

correct, his temper uncomplaining, his soul transparent, and his

imagination lively. Standing, as he did, midway between belief

and unbelief, he conciliated the esteem and friendship of

believers and unbelievers, if Archdeacon Hare and Mr. Maurice are

to be reckoned among the former. The archdeacon, indeed, goes far

in the excuses he makes for Sterling, saying, "Such men we honor,

although they fall; nay, _we honor them the more because they

fall;_" a sentiment so extravagant that the most liberal

Catholic will condemn it without hesitation.

Every life has its moral; and that of Sterling's is certainly no

exception to the rule. He is a type of educated England in the

present day--half-Christian, half-infidel. Nature and cultivation

had given him all that was requisite to make him a useful member

of society, and to cheer his dying hours with the retrospect of

an existence applied to the happiest and highest ends. But one

thing was wanting in him, a steady purpose and a clear view of

the means by which it was to be obtained. If he had been

fortunate enough to know, enjoy, and exemplify the Catholic

religion, it would have supplied him with a definite scope, and

have laid down a rule of faith and obedience by which to compass

his ends; it would have collected all his scattered forces, given

edge to his arguments, sober color to his imagination,

satisfaction to his yearnings, rest to his disquiet, comfort to

his sadness.

{823}

It would have enabled him to realize with all the certitude of

faith facts which by the light of nature he could not credit, and

truths which he could not comprehend. It would have taught him

with authority things which his teachers propounded in doubt,

asserted feebly, or distinctly denied. It would have saved him

from a wasted existence, from the shallow theology of Archdeacon

Hare and his "Guesses at Truth," from the puzzle-headed

metaphysics of Coleridge, the wild utterances of Edward Irving,

the Arian tendencies of Maurice and Dean Stanley, the

supercilious incredulity of Carlyle, the proud unbelief of

Francis Newman, and the efforts, intentional or unintentional, of

them all to bring about an unnatural and odious alliance between

infidelity and Christian faith. They have labored hard to

establish a school, and in England the results of their toil is

unhappily everywhere apparent. Unbelief is wearing a Christian

mask; and often has the language of Christ on its lips. Ministers

of religion scatter doubts in evangelical terms, and scoffers

mimic the tones and language of honest disciples. Atheists and

Deists do homage to the son of Mary, and speak respectfully of

saints, doctors, and popes. Protestant divines apologize for

sincere unbelievers, and quote with approval the writings of the

apostles of doubt. Conciliation and compromise are loudly called

for on both sides, and hatred of all law and dogma is extolled as

charitable and wise. The proposal of marriage between

Christianity and Infidelity is openly published; and the Catholic

Church alone solemnly and persistently forbids the banns.

--------------

Saint Columba.

Columba, gentlest of all names! Bequest

Of a strong Celtic mother to a child

Who, unto life's meridian, kept the wild,

Impassioned grandeur of his race; his guest

The patriot bard; while innocence oppressed

Flew, with the instinct of souls undefiled,

To his great heart, who, to the guileless mild.

Called heaven's swift curse upon the lifted crest

Of lawless power. And still the generous mind

Pores, kindling, o'er heroic legends quaint,

In which grave history dips her brush to paint

That nature fierce and tender; but combined

With grace celestial, till the man we find

Crowned with th' eternal glories of the saint.

----------

{824}

Gheel.

A Colony Of The Insane,

Living In Families And At Liberty.

The Belgian Kempen Land is a vast stretch of sandy plains in the

provinces of Anvers, Brabant, and Limburg. Its chief parish,

Gheel, has a population of some 12,000, about one fifteenth of

which are lunatics in family treatment, and many of them occupied

in the usual routine of domestic, field, and garden work. This

custom has prevailed there for a thousand years. In the seventh

century, a chapel was built and dedicated to Saint Martin, the

apostle of the Gauls. Some cells of pious hermits surrounded it

and formed the principal nucleus of Gheel. Here the young

daughter of a pagan king of Ireland sought a refuge from his

incestuous love, accompanied by Gerrebert, the priest who had

converted herself and her mother to Christianity. Her father,

discovering her traces, pursued her, caused Gerrebert to be put

to death, and his servants refusing to execute his sanguinary

orders against his daughter, he cut off her head with his own

hands, thus avenging, by the most horrible crime, the defeat of

his guilty passion. Certain lunatics who witnessed this terrible

martyrdom, and others whom piety led to the grave of the victims,

as the legend runs, were cured. Gratitude and faith attributed

the merit of these cures to the holy young virgin, henceforth

honored as the patroness of the insane. Attracted by hopes of a

miracle, other families brought their afflicted to the foot of

the memorial cross and double bier. The visitors, on their

departure, confided their patients to the charity of the

residents. This custom became an institution. Little by little, a

village was formed here, animated by work as well as prayer, and

which became, at last, an important burgh. A large and beautiful

church, built in honor of Saint Dymphna, replaced Saint Martin's

chapel, early in the twelfth century, and was consecrated on its

completion in 1340, by the Bishop of Cambrai. The popular

devotion there was approved by a brief of Pope Eugene IV., in

1400. A vicariate composed of nine priests and a director was

instituted in 1538, and in 1562 changed into a chapter consisting

of nine canons and a deacon.

From these times up to our own day, a current of pilgrimage has

been sustained by the malady and by faith.

This fountain of prayer in the desert, these pious cares

solicited and granted, have become a source of industry and

liberty for the insane, and of prosperity for the district. This

is readily explained. The barren soil of the Kempen renders it

difficult to live there, hospitality was more onerous there than

elsewhere, and economy as well as religious charity counselled

the host to have but one board with his guest. To keep him apart

would have been losing the time of those occupied in taking care

of him. Left at liberty, he would naturally accompany them to the

fields, and there, before the soil which solicited arms, another

step of progress was accomplished. So, without any constraint, by

the attractions of social labor and of gentle influences, many of

the insane became useful members of the family.

{825}

The first inspirations of religion, reenforced by considerations

of economy, came to be organized in a secular practice of humble

virtues by the habit of affectionate cares. Thus, in the rude

middle ages, the Gheel folk, without the light of science, but in

that of a religious faith made fruitful by the heart and

sustained by their interest, practised a treatment of insanity

based on the liberty of movement, on rural and domestic industry,

and on the sympathy of an adoptive family, far from all that

might recall a sinister past.

The arbitrary discipline founded on geometrical and military

ideas in modern times has not spared Gheel; yet, whatever abuses

ten centuries had introduced and habit protected there, as well

as its good services, were ascertained by a most thorough

inquest. The new regulations for Gheel in 1851-'52-'57 and '58

secure, as far as written laws can go, the well-being of the

insane.

The insane are admitted at Gheel without distinction as to

nation, religion, age, sex, or fortune. Every one is welcomed

with sincere sympathy, and receives the same hygienic and medical

care, though nothing prevents the rich from enjoying their

fortune, or whatever, in the way of luxuries, their relatives may

provide for them. One English gentleman, for instance, consumes

in festive entertainments the income of a large estate. Of late

years, the Belgian administration has excluded from Gheel certain

dangerous forms of lunacy, such as homicidal and incendiary

monomanias, and those who are constantly bent upon escaping from

any place to which they may have been taken, or whose affections

are of such a nature as to disturb public decency. It does not

appear, however, that this recent transfer of 250 patients had

been called for by any disasters. It was rather a concession to

administrative routine, and Mr. Parigot, the inspector at that

time, regrets that the colony should thus have lost a class of

patients the control of whom best attested its moral power. Both

the patients and their guardians felt aggrieved by this arbitrary

measure.

No distinctive dress is worn by the insane; their garments are

such as are worn by the country folk in general, so that nothing

calls public attention to them, nor reminds them of their

peculiar situation.

Liberty under all its forms is the good genius which has

inspired, protects, and preserves this colony: especially the

liberty to come and go, to sleep or get up, to work or to rest,

to read or write or talk at pleasure, to receive one's friends or

correspond with them without any restriction. The supreme science

of government consists in not contradicting the insane, but

humoring their innocent fantasies, or imposing nothing by force,

but obtaining all by persuasion. Unless some evident and

particular inconvenience prevents it, they enter public places,

smoke a pipe at the _café_, play a hand of cards, read the

papers, or drink a glass of beer with the neighbors. The

tavern-keepers are not allowed to sell wine or distilled liquors.

If liberty, equality, and fraternity are not _political_

terms there, they are the realities of common life. The lunatic

is a man, and is treated as such by the same right as all his

brothers in God.

You would never hear at Gheel such a complaint as this, by a poor

lunatic confined in an asylum, where, indeed, he was the subject

of intelligent and devoted cares:

{826}

"They call us _patients_, to control and to oppress us, but

they do not allow us the indulgence of sick folk! Often after a

restless night, I would like to sleep in the morning. But no: the

hour has come, the bell rings, we must rise whether we will or

not. I am not, then, a patient any longer!"

At Gheel, no bell strikes the limit between sleep and waking.

Pleasure, the example of activity, and appetite, are stimuli

sufficient to counteract sluggishness. Sleep is never disturbed,

unless by order of the physician on some particular occasion.

Often, says Dr. Parigot, I have asked on entering, "Where is

Mr.----?" The answer would be, "Doctor, our _heerke_ is

still abed; his breakfast is waiting him there by the fire;" and

this at ten or eleven o'clock.

It may be asked whether the frequency of accidents and of escapes

does not counterpoise the advantages of so much liberty.

No! accidents are neither common nor serious. Quarrels and spats

are easily appeased; they occur very seldom, which is due, in

part, to the tendency of the insane to keep apart rather than to

associate with each other. This tendency is not contravened at

Gheel, as at asylums, where the annoyance of forced association

exasperates susceptible characters and irritable nervous systems.

"I am really mad, then, for them to condemn me to live with these

people!" cried a monomaniac in despair. Enter almost any hall of

an asylum where the insane assemble to warm themselves: you will

be heart-struck by the sinister expression of this feeling in

persons most of whom are as sensible as yourself to manias which

are not their own, and whose punishment consists in finding

themselves everywhere and always with the insane. These men and

women are overwhelmed with _ennui_. The room in which they

pass the night does not belong to them, and this warmed gallery,

that yard, that garden, are for them but walled cages. You may

read upon their faces the aggravation thus occasioned, while the

chances of their cure diminish daily.

Now, turn to the lunatic at Gheel, who enjoys the free air, and

feels a property in his chamber, in his books, his tools, his

plants, his stones and various collections. He adorns his

domicile after his own fashion; his inscriptions or designs

appear upon the walls. He is busy in acting his dream; he roams

in the woods and fields; he fishes in the streams, or spreads

snares for birds, or labors at his will. Another writes all day

in the sand of the streets the story of his thoughts--

hieroglyphics to which he alone has the key. A third relieves his

inward agitation by external movement; all day innocently busy,

he returns tranquillized to his lodgings at night The rest are at

work with their hosts, or at sport with the children, their

friends and peers.

That melancholy which engenders the disgust of life, may often be

calmed by a change so complete in one's whole existence, while

the predisposition to it is not aggravated by the despair of

incarceration. Dispersion in families distinct and often

isolated, counteracts the danger of contagious imitation.

In the course of half a century, only two acts of personal

violence are on record.

The enjoyment of their personal liberty sufficiently explains why

so few try to escape from Gheel. Most of the patients have found

there a deliverance from previous constraint; yet, to provide

against all casualties, the administration, as soon as advised of

the disappearance of a patient from his guardian's premises, sets

in movement an effective police corps.

{827}

Before this was instituted, the spontaneous intervention of the

neighbors sufficed; for it was understood, for many leagues

round, that any individual whose demeanor awakened suspicions of

his sanity, should be conducted to Gheel as to his legal

residence. The restorer of a runaway was also entitled to mileage

for his trouble. When it is known that a certain lunatic is beset

with the idea of escaping, which may take possession of the

insane like any other, it is customary, after obtaining a permit

therefor from the physician in charge, to fasten two rings or

bracelets, covered with sheep-skin, upon the legs, with a covered

chain, about a foot in length, connecting them. By this means the

lunatic, without being confined, has his movements obstructed,

while attention is directed to him. How preferable this is to the

mortal _ennui_, to the sullen despair of confinement in an

asylum! What matters it to the patient that his limbs are free,

if before him is the barrier of bolts and bars--of massive doors,

and impassable walls!

The _morale_ of the insane cannot be otherwise than

favorably affected by association with persons who protect him

with solicitude, while they appeal to his good sense and good

will, admitting him on a footing of equality to their hearths,

their tables, and their work: such a welcome banishes from his

mind the idea of humiliation and oppression, which everywhere

else is connected with that of sequestration. Instead of being a

pariah shaken off by society, he now belongs to humanity; his

dignity as a man is safe, for it is respected in its chief

privilege--liberty.

In the name of this liberty, he is trusted--he is constituted, in

a measure, the arbiter of his own lot. If he do[es] not abuse it,

supervision of him is relaxed. If his freedom be sometimes

limited, the least remaining gleam of reason suffices to render

him conscious that the restrictions imposed are not hostile in

their spirit, but are simply precautions which he may disarm by a

rational conduct.

Such sentiments sustain or awaken within him the life of the

soul; they influence his manners and bearing. He does not lose

the habit of society, and if he one day return home, it may be

without shame or embarrassment; his absence will have been a

journey, and not a humiliating sequestration.

Translated from political into psychologic language, liberty is

spontaneity; and if we analyze it more profoundly, we find this

term applicable to those actions only which employ the limbs, the

senses, and the intellectual faculties as ministers of our inmost

affections of will. For all spontaneous action, the head, the

hands, and the heart are in union--the conflict between the

spirit and the flesh is reconciled.

This supreme harmony implies the unison of man with himself, with

his fellow-creatures, and with his spirit-fountain life. Express

it as you will, its conception is the basis of the Christian

therapeutics of insanity. All must be obtained of the lunatic by

gentleness, and not by intimidation or violence; nothing ought to

oppress the individuality of the patient. The mission of the

guardians is to render inoffensive, amiable, and useful, a person

imperfectly conscious of his acts. It is by one of the noblest

powers of the spirit that they say to him virtually, Be free, and

understand the sympathies that animate us. Alexander of Macedon

accepted the beverage of his physician Philip before mentioning

that Philip had been accused of intending to poison him.

{828}

Now the insane are, in the immense majority of cases, no more

guilty of ill intentions than the Acarnanian doctor, and our

Alexanders of Belgium are poor peasants.