I was "most happy," of course, and wished them both, with a bow to

Miss Minnie, a Merry Christmas.

"We were getting afraid, Mr. Holiday, lest we should be obliged to

begin without you," said that bright-eyed and altogether beautiful

young lady, in a tone of voice which I afterward characterized in a

violently worded poem, written just before midnight, as 'rippling

diamonds' and 'dropping pearls.'

"Afraid!--without _me_?" I exclaimed, placing a most unjustifiable

emphasis upon the personal pronoun. "I am highly flattered."

"Not at all; my father tells me he feels deeply indebted to you in

assisting him in the choice of some toys designed for the children."

"For--for--laughing," stammered I. "Do you think, Miss Acres, that one

might be indebted to another for a laugh?" I was thinking of my stupid

fall on the ice, and began to regret my having accredited to No. 8 or

10 those sounds of merriment which reached my ears.

"If one gives good cause," she replied, with the quietest and most

provoking of smiles. The deep, dark eyes twinkled again, and Nos. 8

and 10 stood acquitted.

"Come, Mr. Holiday," said Mr. Acres, "let us take an inspection of the

forces. Wagon is loaded, strange man hired, with a watch in his

pocket, off he goes; whence he comes or whither he goes, nobody knows.

Ha! ha! Minnie, my dear, put me down one, your ancient Owl has struck

a poetic vein; no time to register it, however. Come along; while I am

immortalizing myself, twenty hungry families are waiting for a

Christmas dinner they don't expect to get, and their mouths watering

for plum-puddings and mince pies that they have not the most distant

expectation of"--and the good old soul led the way into the hall, and

thence into the court yard, at the entrance of which stood a large

covered furniture-cart, filled to over-flowing with the wonderful

twenty baskets destined to distribute happiness among as many poor and

suffering families, and make their hearts merry on Christmas day. Each

basket was labelled with its direction, number, and time of delivery.

"Now, John," said Mr. Acres to the driver as he mounted to his place

on the cart, "remember, you are born deaf and dumb, can't hear a word

nor even say 'Merry Christmas,' until you come back here and report."

"Lave me alone, sir," replied John with a broad grin, "the fun shan't

be spiled for me."

"He enters into it, he enters into it, you see," said Mr. Acres,

addressing Minnie and myself. "What's the time, John, by yours?"

"Near eleven, sir."

"Time's up, then.

"One, two, three, and off you go.

Twenty baskets piled in a row:

Ask me no questions, for I don't know.

Positively, my darling, there's something inspiring in the air this

morning."

John cracked his whip, and the cart moved out of the yard, turned down

the street, and was soon out of sight. Mr. Acres was a perfect picture

of happiness as he stood gazing at the departing vehicle, rubbing his

hands with delight, and his full, round face beaming with intense

satisfaction. As I glanced at Minnie I saw her eyes filled with tears

of love and pride as she watched the movements of her father. Turning

about suddenly he noticed her emotion, upon which he went up to her,

and placing a hand on her either cheek said with mock gravity:

{546}

"Miss Minnie Acres, the Darling of the World and the Sunshine of my

life, is hereby invited to attend the funeral of twenty baskets

without further notice. Ha! ha! you recollect Bob, you know; and no

time to lose either," he added, taking Minnie's hand in his right and

mine in his left, and turning toward the parlor; "so let us get at it,

my dears; excuse the liberty, Mr. Holiday, I'm in a glorious humor,

and it's Christmas day, and here we are, and here's the list, so sit

ye down; and Bob, Bob! you rascal, where are you?"

The rascal thus vociferously called for responded immediately by

presenting at the door a form about four feet in height, of the rarest

obesity, clothed in a dark-gray suit, evidently denned for the first

time, and holding with both hands the stiffest and hardest of hats.

There was no motion of his lips visible, but a sound was heard as if

it proceeded from the inside of a cotton-bale, which was understood to

mean--

"Here I am, sir; respects, gentlemen and ladies, and a Merry

Christmas."

"Pretty time of day for that" said Mr. Acres, "as if a body were just

out of bed, and hadn't heard Mass yet. Oh! I see," he continued,

glancing at Bob's new clothes, which I have no doubt were the delivery

of an order from T. Acres, Esq., made that very morning by Tibbits &

Son, fashionable tailors. "Well, Merry Christmas, Bob; but don't stand

bowing there all day"--which feat that individual seemed to be vainly

attempting to execute, but could not get through with to his entire

satisfaction--"come in, and stand there by Miss Minnie, and listen to

the checking off, and we'll see if it's all right as a trivet, as it

should be. Lord! I'd eat no dinner if there was one left out."

The "checking off" commenced immediately, the time being up for the

delivery of the first basket. Nothing could exceed the delight of the

old gentleman as Minnie read from the list the names of the parties

who at that moment received the basket, their places of residence, and

a detailed account of the articles sent. Each basket contained a

sufficient supply for a hearty Christmas dinner for the family,

jellies, wines, and other delicacies for the sick, some articles of

clothing, and last of all the toy monkey.

"They've all got one," said Mr. Acres, chuckling with glee as monkey

Number One was mentioned; "but we must do it regular and put them all

down, or I should be afraid we overlooked one, which isn't likely,

however, for they are all down at the bottom of each basket, and I

with them there myself."

One by one the baskets were checked off, Mr. Acres with watch in hand

calling "time," and Minnie reading thereupon the names of the parties

and contents of the basket allotted to them. We very soon realized the

old gentleman's promise that we would have a roar, for as the

distribution went on the merriment increased, as all considered it

their bounden duty to laugh louder and longer at the mention of the

monkey of the basket then checked off than they did at the last one.

Even Bob, whose risible powers seemed to be rather limited, and which

were evidently under still greater restraint by reason of the

additional dignity which became the new outfit, succeeded in

increasing the hilarity of the occasion by the comical manner he

performed his appointed duty in the checking off, which consisted in

answering "right" when the number and names were announced, and

submitting any information obtained of the parties in question through

the intervention of a certain Mrs. McQuirey, whose "absence at the

present delightful reunion," explained Mr. Acres, "was owing to the

numerous duties with which that excellent lady had burdened herself."

These duties, I afterward learned, consistent in making a daily

morning visit to a number of sick poor people who Mr. Acres had taken

under his fostering care. Bob's information was remarkable for its

brevity of expression as well as for its peculiarly ventriloquistic

character, due to the extraordinary amount of adipose matter which

enveloped his organs of speech. {547} Of basket Number Five, for

instance, he said, "Bad--husband goes it every Saturday

night--children thin as broom handles." Or Number eight he reported:

"Measles--shanty--rags scare--allers hungry." Of Number Ten,

"Wus--man broken leg--wife no work--ain't fit neither if there was

millions." Of Number Twenty, the last, having by this time exhausted

his stock of adjectives, he summed up his report thus: "Extremely wust

o' the hall lot--widder--nine mortal bags o' hungry bones--and what

will you do with 'em?"

"Do with them!" exclaimed Mr. Acres, "we'll have Mrs. McQuirey look

them up, Bob, eh? Minnie, dear, take a note of Number Twenty, that

basket is only a bite."

The baskets being all checked off, Bob was ordered to produce

forthwith a bottle of wine and glasses. "Now that we've got through

with it comfortably," said Mr. Acres, "we'll drink all their healths,

and wish 'em a Merry Christmas," which was done, all standing.

"Hoping," continued that Prince of Charity, glass in hand, and

following toward the four points of the compass, as if the whole

twenty families were arranged about him in a circle, "that you may all

have many happy returns of the season, and never know a Christmas that

is not a merry one."

Never was a toast drunk with purer enthusiasm or a heartier good-will.

Believing it to be the part of some one to cheer the sentiment, and

not seeing any of the parties present who might with great propriety

perform that duty, Bob took it upon himself to act their proxy, which

he accordingly did by waving his new hat in a circle and giving three

muffled "Hoo-rays" from the cotton bale.

In a few minutes John the messenger returned. He was at once

introduced to the parlor, where he gave a glowing account of his

errand.

"The shammin' deaf an' dumb was thryin' to me sowl above all. It wint

aginst me not to be able to say the top o' the mornin' to ye, or aven

God save all here on a Christmas dhay to the crathers, an' the Lord

forgive me for peepin' an' a listenin' whin they thought I was deaf as

a post, but it was in a good cause. It tuk the tears out o' me two

eyes, so it did, to hear thim wondherin and prayin 'and a blessin'

yez, and a cryin' for joy, and to see the childer dancin' the monkeys

like mad. Och! but it's a glory to be a rich man like yer honor. Me

mouth wathers whin I think o' the threasures ye're a hapin' up above."

"Bob," interrupted Mr. Acres, shifting uneasily in his seat, "you had

better get out the crape hat-bands, for I see a funeral coming round

the corner."

"A funeral is it?" said John. "May it be a thousand years afore it

shtops forninst yer honor's doors."

"Thank ye, John; thank ye," said Mr. Acres, suddenly rising and going

to the window, where he stood apparently deeply interested in the view

of a blank wall and some smoky chimney-pots before him.

"Whin _his_ day comes," continued John, loud enough to be overheard by

Mr. Acres, "what a croonin' and a philaluin' thim poor crathers will

be makin'. Sure, their tears will be droopin' like diamonds into his

grave."

This was too much for Mr. Acres, who turned around, presenting a

picture of inconsolable grief. It was only after two or three violent

efforts to clear his throat of some unusually large obstacle which

appeared to have stuck there that he succeeded in saying:

"Merry Christmas, John! Merry Christmas! You will find a plum-pudding,

John, waiting down-stairs," and immediately began another survey of

the blank wall and chimney-pots, making at the same time several

abortive attempts to whistle.

{548}

John took the hint, and bowed himself out of the room. A dead silence

ensued upon his departure, which no one appeared to find sufficient

reason to break. In vain did I rack my brains to find an appropriate

remark, but the words would not arrange themselves into a grammatical

sentence. As I chanced to lift my eyes to the full-orbed face of Bob,

standing bolt upright behind Minnie's chair, I became convinced at

once of the fact that I had been intently and impudently staring at

that Darling of the World for some time, whose beautiful downcast

face, half shaded by a profuse cluster of raven curls I thought might

engage the attention of any individual, say for an unlimited term of

years. Embarrassed by this discovery, I took up the basket list and

became at once deeply absorbed in its perusal. Unfortunately, the

paper appeared to be possessed of some diabolical fascination which

prevented my looking away from it or opening my mouth. How long this

state of things might have continued is difficult to say, had not Bob

broken the silence by a question, addressed, as it seemed, rather to

mankind in general then to any particular individual within hearing:

"This ain't Christmas is it?"

"Yes, it is, you rascal," replied Mr. Acres; who, being either

satisfied with his inspection of the blank wall and the chimney-pots,

or had concluded to defer their more minute examination to another

time, at that moment came forward to the table. "Go and order up lunch

directly, Minnie, my darling; Mr. Holiday will give us the pleasure of

his company, and also to dinner. Meanwhile, Mr. Holiday will be glad

to hear you sing, my dear, and I will go and have Number Twenty looked

after; that basket was only a bite, only a bite."

Mr. Alfred Holiday immediately led Miss Minnie Acres to the piano,

where he listened with rapt attention to that young lady's singing of

Miss Hemans's "O lovely voices of the sky;" upon which Mr. Alfred

Holiday made the stupid remark that he had never heard any one of

those "voices of the sky" before that day. Afterward Miss Minnie Acres

and Mr. Alfred Holiday looked over a portfolio of prints together,

when that young gentleman discovered that all his fingers were thumbs,

and besought Miss Minnie Acres to hold one of the prints for him,

when, looking at her and at the same time pretending to examine the

picture with a critical eye, he declared he never saw anything so

beautiful in his life, which irrelevant observation caused Miss Minnie

Acres to say to Mr. Alfred Holiday, "Why! you're not looking at it!"

whereupon that gentlemen became speechless and blushed from the roots

of his hair to the depths of his best necktie. Of the events of the

rest of the day Mr. Alfred Holiday distinctly remembers the following

facts. Lunch being announced, Mr. Alfred Holiday took Miss Minnie

Acres to the table, acted in the most insane manner while there, and

lead Miss Minnie Acres back to the parlor; that he played backgammon

with Miss Minnie Acres, and doubtless left an impression on the mind

of that young lady that he was utterly ignorant of the game; that he

accompanied Miss Minnie Acres to Vespers, and returned with her; that

he took Miss Minnie Acres to dinner, during which a gentleman, who to

the best of his belief was Mr. Thomas Acres, told him several times

that he, Mr. Alfred Holiday, ate nothing, a fact of which that

gentleman was not aware; that after the cloth was removed Mr. Alfred

Holiday sat staring at an empty chair opposite him, for the possession

of which he could cheerfully have impoverished himself and gone upon

the wide, wide world; that certain musical sounds proceeded from the

direction of the parlor, Mr. Alfred Holiday asseverated in the

strongest terms to be "divine;" that upon his return to the parlor he

was only restrained by the presence of a third person from throwing

himself upon his knees and explaining: "Thou art the Darling of the

World and the Sunshine of my life," but which he nevertheless repeated

{549} in his mind an innumerable number of times; in a word, that Mr.

Alfred Holiday fell head over ears in love with Miss Minnie Acres, and

made of all, which up to the present writing he has religiously, that

if she would accept his hand and heart, which she did a few weeks

after, he would send her twenty baskets of provisions to as many poor

families every Christmas Eve, as a thank-offering, and a grateful

remembrance of the hour when he laughed, and thereby one the most

beautiful and most faithful wife that a man ever have.

----------

From The London Society.

A CHRISTMAS DREAM.

A Pilgrim to the West returned, whose palm-branch, drenched in dew,

Shook off bright drops like childhood's tears when childhood's heart is new,

Stole up the hills at eventide, like mist in wintry weather,

Where locked in dream-like trance I lay, at rest among the heather.

The red ferns, answering to his tread; sent up a savor sweet;

The yellow gorse, like Magian gold, glowed bright about his feet:

The waving brooms, the winter blooms, each happy voice in air,

Grew great with life and melody, as if a Christ stood there.

Unlike to mortal man was he. His brow rose broad and high:

The peace of heaven was on his lip, the God-light in his eye;

And rayed with richer glory streamed, through night and darkness shed,

To crown that holy Pilgrim's brow, the one star overhead.

Long gazing on that staff he bore, beholding how it grew

With sprouts of green, with buds between, and young leaves ever new.

The marvels of the Eastern land I bade him all unfold.

And thus to my impassioned ears the wondrous tale he told:

"Each growth upon that sacred soil where one died not in vain,

Though crushed and shed, though seeming dead, in beauty lives again:

The branching bough the knife may cleave, the root the axe may sever,

But on the ground his presence lighted, nothing dies for ever.

"Where once amid the lowly stalls fell soft the Virgin's tear,

The littered straw 'neath children's feet turns to green wheat in ear.

The corn he pluck'd on Sabbath days, though ne'er it feels the sun,

Though millions since have trod the field, bears fruit for every one.

"The palms that on his way were strewn wave ever in the air;

From clouded earth to sun-bright heaven they form a leafy stair.

In Cana's bowers the love of man is touched by the divine;

And snows that fall on Galilee have still the taste of wine.

"Where thy lost locks, poor Magdalen! around his feet were rolled,

Still springs in woman's worship-ways the gracious Mary-gold:

Men know when o'er that bowed down head they hear the angels weeping,

The purer spirit is not dead--not dead, but only sleeping.

{550}

"Aloft on blackened Calvary no more the shadows lower:

Where fell the piercing crown of thorns, there blooms a thorn in flower.

Bright on the prickled holy-tree and mistletoe' appear,

Reflecting rays of heavenly shine, the blod-drop and the tear.

"The sounding rocks that knew his tread wake up each dead abyss,

Where echoes caught from higher worlds ring gloriously in this;

And, leaning where his voice once filled the temple where he taught,

The listener's eyes grew spirit-full--full with a heavenly thought."

The Pilgrim ceased. My heart beat fast. I marked a change of hue;

As if those more than mortal eyes a soul from God looked through.

Then rising slow as angels rise, and soaring faint and far,

He passed my bound of vision, robed in glory, as a star.

Strange herald voices filled the air: glad anthems swelled around:

The wakened winds rose eager-voiced, and lapsed in dreamy sound.

It seemed all birds that wintered far, drawn home by some blessed power,

Made music in the Christmas woods, mistaking of the hour.

A new glad spirit raptured me! I woke to breathe the morn

With heart fresh-strung to charity--as though a Christ were born.

Then knew I how each earth-born thought, though tombed in clay it seem,

It bursts the sod, it soars to God, transfigured in a dream.

ELEANORA L. HERVEY

--------

From the Month.

VICTIMS OF DOUBT.

It is not the fashion at present to scoff at Christianity, or to make

an open profession of infidelity. Ponderous treatises to prove that

revealed religion is an impossibility, and coarse blasphemies against

holy things, are equally out of date. Yet to men of earnest

convictions, whether holding the whole or only some portions of

revealed truth, the moral atmosphere is not reassuring. The pious

Catholic, the Bible-loving Protestant, and the hybrid of the last

phase of Tractarianism, are alike distrustful of the smooth aspect of

controversy and the calm surface of the irreligious element. There is

something worse than bigotry or mischief, and that is skepticism. And,

if we may judge from what we hear and read, it is this to which most

schools of thought outside the Catholic Church are rapidly drifting,

if they have not already reached it, and into which restless and

disloyal Catholics are in danger of being precipitated. An answer made

to an old Oxford friend by one who was once with him in the van of the

Tractarian movement, but did not accompany him into the fold, "I agree

with you, that if there is a divine revelation, the Roman Catholic

Church is the ordained depository of it; but this is an uncertainty

which I cannot solve," would probably express the habitual state of

mind of a fearfully {551} large number of the more thoughtful of our

countrymen, and the occasional reflection of many more who do not

often give themselves time to think. And to the multitudes who are

plunging or gliding into doubts the Catholic system, which there

unhappy training has made it one of their first principles to despise

for detest, has not even presented itself as an alternative.

The current literature of the day, which is mostly framed to suit the

taste of the market, and reacts again in developing that taste further

in the same direction, is pre-eminently, not blasphemous, or

anti-Catholic, or polemical, but sceptical. The following description

of the periodical press by the Abbé Louis Baunard, in his recent

publication, [Footnote 168] might seem to have been written for

London instead of Paris:

[Footnote 168: Le Doute ses Victimes dans le Siècle présent, par M.

l'Abbé Louis Baunard. Paris.]

"With some rare exceptions, you will not find any rude scoffing,

violent expressions, unfashionable cynicism, harsh systems, or

exclusive intolerance. Yet is not controversy that is the business of

these writers, but criticism. They deal in expositions and

suppositions, but almost always without deciding anything. It is a

principle with them that there are only shades of difference between

the most contradictory propositions; and the reader becomes accustomed

to see these shades in such questions as those which relate to the

personality of God, the divinity of Jesus Christ, and the supernatural

generally. This does not hinder these men from calling themselves

Christians, in the vague sense of a loose Christianity, which allows

the names of ancient beliefs to remain, while it destroys their

substance. They do not assault the old religion in front, but silently

undermine the foundations on which it rests, and carry on ingenious

parallels by the side of revealed truth, till some conclusion emerges

which utterly subverts it, without having appeared to be intentionally

directed against it. There is one review, the most widely circulated

of all, in the same number of which an article dearly atheistical will

be found by the side of another article breathing the most correct

orthodoxy, and very much surprised to see itself in such company. Such

concessions to truth, which are made only now and then, serve to give

the publication that makes them a certain appearance of impartiality,

and thus to accredit error, and to lay one more snare for the reader."

We may be inclined, on a cursory perusal of such periodicals as The

Saturday Review, to indulge gleefully in the laughter excited by the

ludicrous aspect in which some pompous prelate or fussy evangelical

preacher is presented; or to admire the acute and seemingly candid

dissection, at one time, of a Protestant scheme of evidences, at

another, of an infidel philosophy; or to rejoice in the substitution

of decorous calmness for rancor and raving in handling Catholic truth.

But when we study a series of such publications, and notice how

systematically all earnest convictions are made to show a weak or

ridiculous side, and all proofs of Christianity to appear defective,

and how, under a smooth surface of large-minded impartiality, there

beats a steady tide of attack upon all supernatural virtue and all

supernatural truth, our hearts must needs ache to think of the effects

of such teaching on multitudes of imperfectly grounded minds. In the

words of the author to whom we have referred: "Right and wrong, true

and false, yes and no, meet and jostle each other, and are mistaken

for each other in minds bewildered and off their guard, and mostly

incapable of discrimination: till at length, lost in these

cross-roads, tired of systems and of contradictions, and not knowing

in what direction to find light, all but the most energetic sit down

and rest in doubt, as in the best wisdom and the safest position." But

to sit down in doubt is either to abdicate the highest powers of a

reasonable being, or to admit an enemy that will use them as

instruments of torture. Except for {552} souls of little intellectual

activity, or wholly steeped in sense, this sitting down in doubt is

like sitting down in a train that is moving out of the station with

the steam up and no engine-driver, or in a boat that is drifting out

of harbor into a stormy sea.

The Abbé Baunard has collected the experiences of some of these

reckless and storm-tossed wanderers into a painfully interesting

volume. He has selected from the chief sceptical philosophers and

poets of the present century those who, in private journals or

autobiographical sketches, have made the fullest disclosures of the

working of their own minds, and has let them speak for themselves. He

calls them "victims of doubt," and bids us listen with compassion to

their bitter lamentations over the wreck of the past, and their gloomy

anticipations of the future, and to the cries of pain and shame which

seem forced out of them, even amidst their proudest boasts of

independence and most resolute rejections of revealed truth. But,

although an expression here or there may be unguarded, he

distinguishes very clearly between pitying and excusing these victims.

He reminds us that compassion for the sufferings entailed by doubt

cannot absolve from the guilt of doubt. He protests against the claim

made by sceptics to be regarded as warriors in conflicts in which only

the noble engage, and as scarred with honorable wounds; and against

the notion that to have suffered much in a wrong cause is a guarantee

of sincerity and a title to salvation. He quotes with reprobation the

plea of M. Octave Feuillet: "Ah! despise as much as you choose what is

despicable. But when unbelief suffers, implores, and is respectful, do

you respect it. There are blasphemies, be assured, which are as good

as prayers, and unbelievers who are martyrs. Yes, I firmly believe

that the sufferings of doubt are holy, and that to think of God and to

be always thinking of him, even with despair, is to honor him and to

be pleasing to him." He would not admit the same plea in the more

plausible form and more touching language in which it is urged by Mr.

Froude: "You who look with cold eye on such a one, and lift them up to

heaven, and thank God you are not such as he, and call him hard names,

and think of him as of one who is forsaking a cross, and pursuing

unlawful indulgence, and deserving all good men's reproach! Ah! could

you see down below his heart's surface, could you count the tears

streaming down his cheek, as out through some church-door into the

street come pealing the old familiar notes, and the old psalms which

he cannot sing, the chanted creed which is no longer his creed, and

yet to part with which was worse agony than to lose his dearest

friend; ah! you would deal him lighter measure. What! is not his cup

bitter enough, but that all the good, whose kindness at least, whose

sympathy and sorrow, whose prayers he might have hoped for, that these

must turn away from him as from an offence, as from a thing for bid?

--that he must tread the wine-press alone, calling to God-fearing man

his friend; and this, too, with the sure knowledge that of coldness

least of all he is deserving, for God knows it is no pleasant task

which has been laid on him." The fallacies which are dextrously

interwoven in this passage, that sympathy precludes condemnation, that

intense suffering of any kind sanctities the sufferer, and that the

state of doubt is imposed as a burden and not wilfully incurred and

retained, are refuted out of the mouth of those who resort to them. We

see, indeed, in the records of these victims of doubt, various

circumstances leading to their fall; such as the heathenish state of

the colleges where some of them lost their faith, the antichristian

theories of science and philosophy magisterially propounded to them,

the personal influence of friends who were already committed to

skepticism, poisonous literature thrown in the way, and the excitement

of political revolutions; and, of course, in the case of {553} those

who had not received a Catholic education, the far greater palliation

of the absence of a coherent system of belief. But, at the same time,

we see no less plainly the working of wilful negligence and

presumption in their descent into the abyss, and of wilful pride and

obstinacy in refusing to seek the means of extrication from it. They

are victims of doubt as others are victims of a habit of opium-eating

or gambling; and if we sympathize with them more deeply than with

these latter, it is rather because their anguish is more intense and

more refined than because it is less the harvest of their own sowing.

By the side of those who fell, there were others of the same

sensibility of mind, placed in the same circumstances, exposed to the

same assaults, who stood firm by prayer and humility, and who found in

their faith a provision for all their mental wants, and a fountain of

peace under the heaviest trials. And by the side of those who, having

once made shipwreck of their faith, plunged more and more deeply into

despair of knowing anything with certainty, till they flung away the

life that their own doubts had made an intolerable burden, there were

others equally astray and equally burdened, who worked their way back

to life and peace by the same path of earnest and humble prayer. Some

of these contrasts are very effectively presented by our author, and

others will suggest themselves to his readers.

The victims whose wanderings and sufferings are portrayed in this

volume are Théodore Jouffroy, Maine de Biran, Santa Rosa, Georges,

Farcy, and Edmund Schérer from among the philosophers of the century;

and Lord Byron, Friedrich Schiller, Heinrich von Kleist, and Leopardi

from among the poets; followed by a less detailed account of a group

of French sceptical poets, Alfred de Musset, Henri Heine, Murger,

Gérard de Nerval, and Hégésippe Moreau, whose writings are mostly too

gross for quotation, although enough is given to show that their

experience of the effects of doubt resembled that of the rest. All,

with the exception of M. Schérer, who is the editor of the French

paper Le Temps, have passed into a world where doubt is no longer

possible--two of them by their own hand, and two more by violent

deaths which they had gone to meet rather from weariness of life than

from enthusiasm for the cause for which they fought.

There is only one of the whole number, Maine de Biran, whose death was

thoroughly satisfactory; and he, though certainly to be reckoned among

the victims of doubt, which clouded the best years of his life, and

from which he only very slowly worked his way to freedom, is

introduced rather in the way of contrast to the other philosophers and

especially to Jouffroy. The great difference in his case lay in two

things, that he paid more attention to the moral nature of man, and

did not so wholly subordinate the desire of the good to the search

after the true, and that he was on his guard against that pride of

intellect which we see so rampant in his fellow-philosophers. While

all the most celebrated men of Paris were paying court to him, and

although, even before he had published anything beyond some short

metaphysical treatises, M. Royer Collard cried, "He is the master of

us all," and M. Cousin pronounced him to be the greatest French

metaphysician since Malebranche, his own private reflection was:

"Pride will be the ruin of my life, as long as I do not seek from on

high a spirit to direct mine, or to take its place." Yet it was not

till his fifty-second year, after many years' vain pursuit of truth in

different systems of sensualistic and rationalistic philosophy, and of

happiness first in pleasure and then in study and retirement, that he

set himself resolutely to try surer means. "Not finding," he wrote in

May, 1818, "anything satisfactory either in myself or out of myself,

in the world of my ideas or in that of objects, I have been for some

{554} time past more determined to look for that fixed resting-place

which has become the need of my mind and of my heart, in the notion of

the Absolute, Infinite, and Unchangeable Being. The religious and

moral beliefs which reason does not create, but which are its

necessary basis and support, now present themselves to me as my only

refuge, and I can find no true knowledge anywhere than just there,

where before, with the philosophers, I found only dreams and chimeras.

My point of view has altered with my disposition and moral character."

From this time the progress upward was steady. We find notices in his

journal of earnest prayer, of daily meditation, of study of the

gospels and the Imitation of Christ. Four years of physical suffering

and outward trials deepened the work of conversion, and were passed

with Christian resignation. The last words that he wrote were words of

certainty and peace: "The Christian walks in the presence of God and

with God, by the Mediator whom he has taken as his guide for this life

and the next." The Ami de la Religion of July 24th, 1824, contained

the notice: "Maine de Biran fulfilled his Christian duties in an

edifying manner, and received the sacraments at the hands of his

pastor, the curé of St. Thomas d'Aqnin."

Théodore de Jouffroy, if his life had not been suddenly cut short,

would probably have had the same happiness. After having devoted his

immense powers of mind to the study and dissemination of sceptical

philosophy from 1814 to 1839, when bad health forced him to resign the

professor's chair, he had begun to soften his tone, to speak

respectfully of revealed religion, and to look wistfully and hopefully

to it for the solution of the great problems which it had been the

business and the torture of his life to investigate by the unaided

light of his own intellect. He had conversed with Monseigneur Cart,

the bishop of Nîmes, and had said to him, "I am not now one of those

who think that modern societies can do without Christianity; I would

not write in this sense to-day. You have a grand mission to fulfil,

monseigneur. Ah! continue to teach the gospel well." He took pleasure

in seeing his daughter preparing herself for her first communion; and

speaking about a work of Lamennais to the clergyman who was

instructing her, he said with a deep sigh, "Alas! M. le Curé, all

these systems lead to nothing; better--a thousand times better--one

good act of Christian faith." The curé left his room with good hopes

of his conversion, and in the belief that the faith of his childhood

had come to life again in his part. But before he could see him again,

and put these hopes to the test, Jouffroy expired suddenly and without

previous warning on the 1st of March, 1842.

Two or three of the French poets had time to ask for a priest, or to

admit one when, in the hospitals to which their excesses had brought

them, a Sister of Charity proposed it. Leopardi, outwardly at least

sceptical and gloomy to the last, received a doubtful absolution from

a priest, who came when the dying man was insensible. [Footnote 169]

To all the rest even as much as this was wanting.

[Footnote 169: We have used this expression, also aware of the

letter of Father Scarpa published first in the journal Scienza e

Fede, and afterward in the eighth addition of Father Curci's Fatti

ed Argomenti in risposta alle molte parole di V. Gioberti, in which

he gives an account of Leopardi's recourse to his ministry and

reconciliation by his means to the church in 1836; not, of course

because we agree with Gioberti that this simple and modest letter is

"a tissue of lies and deliberate inventions and a sheer romance from

beginning to end;" but because Leopardi's letters in the beginning

of 1837 and his continuance in the composition of his last poem the

Paralipomeni, the conclusion of which was dictated a few days before

his death, seems to suggest the melancholy alternative either of a

feigned conversion or of a relapse into skepticism. He told Father

Scarpa when he offered himself to be prepared for confession that he

had been banished from his Father's house; and that he was now

penitent, and was about to publish papers which would show his

alterated sentiments. It is amusing to notice that to the staid and

decorus Quarterly Review, as well as to Gioberti, this was to great

an opportunity to be lost of reviling the Jesuits. Accordingly, on

no other ground than that Father Scarpa repeated _as told him by

Leopardi_ what his letters contradict, and that he was not quite

correct in guessing at his age and described his appearance ten

years after his interview with him, the reviewer indorses Gioberti's

description, and calls the letter "an instance of audacity beyond

all common efforts in that kind." The habitual mendacity in

Leopardi's letters, and his offer, while an unbeliever, to be

ordained in order to hold a benefice which he intended _after saying

a few Masses_ to have served by another, make it unfortunately not

improbable that his conversion was only pretended.]

{555}

We have not space to go into the details of these melancholy

histories; but we must give a few extracts in illustration of the keen

regret with which these victims of doubt look back to the religious

convictions of their youth from the cheerlessness and misery of the

state to which they have reduced themselves, and of the involuntary

homage which, even while refusing to submit to the teaching of the

church, they are forced to pay to it. Here is Jouffroy's reminiscence

of the happy days of faith: "Born of pious parents and in a country

where the Catholic faith was still full of life at the beginning of

this century, I had been early wont to consider man's future and the

care of my own soul the chief business of life, and all my subsequent

education tended to confirm these serious dispositions. For a long

time, the beliefs of Christianity had fully answered to all the wants

and all the anxieties which such dispositions introduce into the soul.

To these questions, which to me were the only questions that ought to

occupy man, the religion of my fathers gave answers, and those answers

I believed, and, thanks to my belief, my present life was clear, and

beyond it I saw the future that was to follow it spread itself out

without a cloud. At ease as to the path that I had to pursue in this

world, at ease as to the goal to which it was to conduct me in the

other, understanding the phases of life and death in which they are

blended, understanding myself, understanding the designs of God for

me, and loving him for the goodness of his designs, I was happy with

the happiness that springs from a firm and ardent faith in a doctrine

which solves all the great questions that can interest man." His

faith, the liveliness of which had been somewhat shaken by an

indiscriminate perusal of modern literature during the latter part of

his classical studies at Dijon, gave way entirely before the lectures

of M. Cousin in the Ecole Normale at Paris, to which he was

transferred in 1814, and the combined influences of flattery and

ridicule with which his sceptical fellow-students there assailed him.

He describes the terrible struggle between "the eager curiosity which

could not withdraw itself from the consideration of objections which

were scattered like dust throughout the atmosphere that he breathed,"

and on the other hand the influences "of his childhood with its poetic

impressions, his youth with its pious recollections, the majesty,

antiquity, and authority of the faith which he had been taught, and

the rising in revolt of the whole memory and imagination against the

incursion of unbelief which wounded them so deeply." His faith was

gone before he realized the loss: some time afterward he thus painted

the horrors of the discovery: "Never shall I forget that evening in

December when the veil that hid my unbelief from myself was rent. I

still hear my footsteps in the bare narrow apartment, in which I

continued walking long after the hour for sleep. I still see that moon

half-veiled by clouds which at intervals lit up the cold window-panes.

The hours of night glided by, and I took no note of them. I was

anxiously following my train of thought, which descended from one

stratum to another toward the depth of my consciousness, and

scattering, one after another, all the illusions which had hitherto

concealed it from me, made its outline every moment more visible. In

vain did I try to cling to these residues of belief as a shipwrecked

sailor to the fragments of his ship; in vain, alarmed at the unknown

void in which I was about to be suspended, I threw myself back for the

last time toward my childhood, my family, my country, all that was

dear and sacred to me: the irresistible current of my thought was too

strong. Parents, family, recollections, beliefs--it forced me to quit

all. The analysis was continued with more obstinacy and more severity

in proportion as it approached its term, {556} and it did not pause

till it had reached it. Then I was aware that in my inmost self there

was no longer anything left standing. It was an appalling moment, and

when, toward morning, I threw myself exhausted on my bed, I seemed to

see my former life, so smiling and so full, effaced, and another

gloomy and desolate life opening behind me in which I was henceforth

to live alone--alone with my fatal thought which had just banished me

thither, and which I was tempted to curse."

A few years after this crisis in Jouffroy's life, the same sort of

catastrophe was experienced in a distant country by another highly

gifted soul, and wonderfully similar is the victim's description of

it. Leopardi, the rival, in the opinion of many of his countrymen, of

Tasso in poetry and of Galileo in philosophy, in whom a prodigious

industry was united in rare combination to a subtle intellect and a

refined imagination, who was reading Greek by himself at eight years

old, and before he was nineteen was versed in several oriental

languages, was engaged in literary correspondence with Niebuhr,

Boissonado, and Bunsen, and was the author of numerous translations

from the Classics, a valuable translation of Porphyry on Plotinus, and

an erudite historical essay in which there are citations from four

hundred ancient authors--had, like Jouffroy, prepared the way for his

fall by an overweening confidence in his own great intellectual

powers, and by a recklessly excessive devotion to study. To this was

added the chafing of disappointed ambition, and irritation against his

father for refusing to give him the means of leaving home. His ruin

was completed by the conversation of Pietro Giordani, an apostate

Benedictine monk, who soothed and condoled with him, flattered his

vanity by telling him that "if Dante was the morning star of Italy's

sky, Leopardi was the evening star," and succeeded in inoculating him

with his own scepticism, which in himself was mere shallow impiety,

but in the deeper mind of his pupil, led, if his writings can be

trusted, to as hopelessly complete a disbelief of God, the soul, and

immortality, as is possible for a human being to bring himself to

endure. In a letter of March 6th, 1820, to his friend and seducer, he

says: "My window being open one of these evenings, while I was gazing

on a pure sky and a beautiful moonlight, and listening to the distant

barking of dogs, I seemed to see images of former times before me, and

I felt a shock in my heart. I cried out, like a convict, baking pardon

of nature, whose voice I seemed to hear. At that instant, as I cast a

glance back on my former state, I stood, frozen with terror, unable to

imagine how it would be possible to support port life without fancies

and without affections, without imagination and without enthusiasm--in

a word, without anything of all that, a year ago, filled up my

existence and made me still happy, notwithstanding my trials. Now I am

withered up like to reed; no emotion finds an entrance any longer into

my poor soul, and even the eternal and supreme power of love is

annihilated in me at my present age." He was but twenty-two then; and

through the seventeen years that is shattered constitution lasted, he

was ever speaking of life as an agony and a burden, sometimes proudly

declaring that he would not bend under its weight, sometimes

passionately asking for sympathy and love, but always recurring to

this sad refrain: "The life of mortals, when youth has past, is never

tinged with any dawn. It is widowed to the end, and the grade is the

only end to our night." "I comprehend, I know only one thing. Let

others draw some profit from these vicissitudes and passing

existences; it may be so, but for me life is an evil."

We have seen the account given by the French philosopher Jouffroy and

the Italian poet Leopardi of their feelings on waking up to the

knowledge that the faith of their childhood had passed away; let us

compare one more such experience that of the German {557} Von Kleist.

"For some time, my dear friend," he writes to the lady to whom he was

affianced, "I have been employed in studying the philosophy of Kant,

and I am bound to communicate to you a conclusion which I am sure will

not affect you as deeply and as painfully as it has myself. It is

this: we cannot be certain whether what we call truth is really the

truth or only an appearance. In this last case, the truth that we

sought after here below would be nothing at all after death; and it

would be useless to try to acquire a treasure which it would be

impossible to carry to the tomb. If this conclusion does not pierce

your heart, do not laugh at a wretch whom it has deeply wounded in all

that is most sacred to him. _My noble, my only aim has vanished, and I

have none_. Since this conviction entered my mind, I have not touched

my books. I have traversed my chamber, I have placed myself by an open

window, I have run along the street. My interior disturbance has let

me to visit smoking-rooms and cafés to get relief. I have been to the

theatre and the concert to dissipate my mind. I have even played the

fool. But in spite of all, in the midst of all this agitation, the one

thought that occupied my whole soul and filled it with anguish was

this: your aim, your noble and only aim has vanished." A few years of

the repetition of this sorrowful wailing, and then, after writing to

his sister, "You have done everything to save me that the power of a

sister could do, everything that the power of man could do; the fact

is, that nothing can help me here on earth," he escaped from doubt to

pass before the Judgment-seat by his own hand.

We must give one more of the many recurring expressions of regret with

which the volume abounds. We are inclined to regard Santa Rosa with

even more profound compassion than the other victims, on account of

the warm and tender piety of his earlier youth, and the absence in him

of the arrogance and scorn that overflows in the others in the midst

of their sufferings. All who knew him agreed that it was hardly

possible to know him without loving him. Unfortunately, his struggles

in the cause of Italy threw him into close association with many who

had mistaken infidelity for liberty. Still more unfortunately, he

contracted a close intimacy with M. Cousin, and soon began to love him

more than truth and than God, and under the blighting influence of his

teaching his own faith disappeared. M. Cousin has published his

letters with frequent and large omissions, but there remains abundant

evidence that he was always regretting the past. The following passage

occurs after something omitted: "O my friend, how unfortunate we are

in being only poor philosophers, for whom the continuance of existence

after death is only a hope, an ardent desire, a fervent prayer! Would

that I had the virtues and the faith of my mother! To reason is to

doubt; to doubt is to suffer. Faith is a sort of miracle. When it is

strong and genuine, what happiness it gives! How often in my study I

raise my eyes to heaven, and beg God to reveal me to myself, but above

all, to grant me immortality!" Twice in his life--when in prison in

Paris with the expectation of being given up to the Piedmontese

police, which would have been to be sent to the scaffold, and again

when beginning a serious philosophical work--he returned to a better

mind. Whether time and grace to return once more were given him,

behind the Greek battery in the isle of Sphacteria, where he fell

fighting bravely, we cannot tell.

Besides the implicit homage to the faith involved in such regrets of

the past as we have been witnessing, the writings of most of these

philosophers and poets contain many testimonies to their involuntary

acknowledgment of the claims of the revealed system which they had

abandoned. We will cite only one, from a discourse of Jouffroy on his

usual subject, the {558} problem of the destiny of man: "There is a

little book which children are made to learn, and on which they are

questioned in church. Read this little book, which is called the

Catechism; you will find in it an answer to all the questions that I

hare proposed--all without exception. Ask the Christian whence the

human race comes, he knows; whither it is going, he knows. Ask this

poor child, who has never in his life dreamed of it, to what end he

exists here below, and what he will become after death; he will give

you a sublime answer, which he will not comprehend, but which is not

the less admirable. Ask him how the world was produced, and for what

end; why God placed animals and plants in it; how the earth was

peopled, whether by one family or several; why men speak different

languages; why they suffer; why they contend; what will be the end of

it all--he knows. The origin of the world, the origin of the human

race, the question of races, the destiny of man in this life and in

the other, the relation of man to God, the duties of man to his

fellows, the rights of man over creation--he is acquainted with all;

and when he is grown up, he will be equally free from hesitation about

natural rights, political rights, and the right of nations; for all

this is the outcome and clear and spontaneous product of Christian

doctrine. This is what I call a great religion; I recognize it by this

sign of its not leaving unanswered any of the questions which interest

humanity."

Edmond Schérer and Friedrich Schiller, as well as Lord Byron, differ

from the other instances in never having known the true faith; but

they show that the loss of a firm hold of those fragments of

Christianity that are retained outside of the fold leads to something

of the same result as the loss of the faith. The sketch of M.

Schérer's life is very interesting, for it shows the inevitable result

of Protestantism in a highly logical and reflective mind which refuses

the alternative of submission to the Catholic Church. His installation

in the chair of theology in the Evangelical Seminary of Geneva in 1844

was hailed as a triumph by all the devout adherents to the reformed

religion, who looked to him as the invincible champion against the

socinianism prevailing all around. He set himself to the work of

proving the inspiration of Scripture without having recourse to the

authority of the Catholic Church, and the result, after passing

through various phases of sentimentalism and eclecticism, was to land

him in such conclusions as that "the Bible has so little of a monopoly

of inspiration, that there are writings not canonical the inspiration

of which is much more evident than in some of the biblical writings;"

and finally, that Protestantism and Catholicism, Christianity and

Judaism, are only conceptions more or less exact of a common object

and phases in a great movement of progressive spiritualization; that

morality itself is only relative; and that absolute certainty of any

kind is a dream. He may well say, as he has lately said: "Alas! blind

prisoners as we are, laboring at the overthrow the past, we are

engaged in a work which we do not understand. We yield to a power of

which it seems at times that we are the victims as well as the

instruments. The terrible logic whose formulas we wield crushes us

while we are crushing others with it."

The moral of these and other such histories--the moral of Froude and

Francis Newman and Clough--is that as God never made his children for

perplexity and anguish, he never made them for doubt, and must have

provided a secure asylum from it, not in ignorance or thoughtlessness,

but in a system of divinely guaranteed authority. The lesson from the

Nemesis of doubt is the conclusion of Augustine Thierry: "I have need

of an infallible authority, I have need of rest for my soul. I open my

eyes, and I see one only authority, that of the Catholic Church. I

believe what the Catholic Church teaches; I receive her Credo."

----------

{559}

Translated from the German

WHAT MOST REJOICES THE HEART OF MAN?

It was two days before the holy Christmas of the old year, and a very

hard season when Martin (a farmer, to whom heaven had granted a rich

harvest, to reward him for the faithful tillage of his land) entered

the house. He had taken his grain to the market-town, and, thanks to

the brisk demand, had parted with it at an unusually high price. And

now, returning home with a full purse, he called his wife, and pouring

out the money before her on the table, said laughingly: "Look, Agnes,

that will give us a rare treat! what thinkest thou, mother? What most

rejoices the heart of man? I want something that shall make me right

joyful."

"O Martin!" replied the wife, "it must be found, then. But this whole

day has my heart been very heavy; and even if I made something very

nice indeed, I don't think it would go to the right spot;" and when

Martin asked why, she continued: "Thou hadst not been gone long

yesterday morning when in came our neighbor's Clara, weeping and

mourning, and said her father was like to die, and would I for God's

sake come to their assistance and give him something nourishing. I

could understand, then, how matters still it, and taking with me just

whatever there was in the house, I ran down to the hut. O dear God!

what misery was there! The man lay on a little straw, so white and

feeble; the poor wife knelt beside him, crying and sobbing; and their

children hung round them, half naked, and living pictures of hunger,

and not a bit of bread in the whole house. And indeed, Martin, that is

not the only home where such want is! I don't know, but it seems as if

I ought not to enjoy one cheerful hour while so much wretchedness

surrounds us."

While Martin let his wife speak out her thoughts, his eyes were

musingly bent before him. Then he rose, and grasping Agnes's hand,

exclaimed: "Now I know what to do, mother! A joyful heart will I have,

for doing good to others gladdens the heart more than wine and good

cheer. Let us see, then, what the dear God has given us." And now he

counted out from the money first the rent due to his landlord, then

enough to pay all that he owed, and lastily all that must go toward

preparing for the next year s crop. Still there remained a pretty

little sum, so he said: "Now, mother, count up the poor of our

village, and heat the oven, and bake for every grown person two big

loaves, and for every child a smaller one; and then send the bread

round, adding to each loaf a jug of wine and two florins. Then when

the people have a Merry Christmas, and can say grace without tears,

our hearts will be light, I am thinking, even if we set nothing on the

table besides our usual fare."

Now when Agnes heard her husband speak thus, her heart grew very

happy, and she said yes to everything, and shook flour into the

bread-trough, and baked all day and all night. So on that day when the

church sings "Gloria in excelsis Deo!" there was not one in that whole

parish who had not enough to eat; and many a one who for a long time

had not tasted wine refreshed himself on that day, thanking with heart

and lips the farmer and his wife. These two had merely their usual

homely fare upon the table, but within their breasts were joyful

hearts and the consciousness of a good deed.

{560}

So far, so good; but something else happened afterward; for as,

according to the proverb, a pleasure never comes alone, so have good

works an especial power of multiplying themselves. And of that we are

now going to hear something.

When it came to the landlord's ears that his farmer, who was no

capitalist, had made a Merry Christmas for himself in the love of the

holy Christ-child, he was well pleased, and thought to himself that he

too might try something of the same sort. Therefore he appointed a day

(the octave of the blessed Christmas, New-Year's day) when all the

poor in his parish should be invited to the castle. In the hall was a

long table covered with a fine white cloth for the poor people, and a

smaller one for himself and his family. At this small table he placed

Farmer Martin and his wife Agnes, and near the head too, which has no

small significance among knights and noblemen. But he said that he

honored such excellent people as his own friends and relations,

believing that the heart makes better nobility than a long pedigree.

When now the table was filled with the sons and daughters of poverty,

grace was said by the chaplain, while all remained standing and joined

devotedly in his prayer. Then were bread-cakes set on the board, and

huge pieces if roast beef, and for each person a bumper of good old

wine; but if any one was ill and could not come to the feast, then was

his share despatched to his home, with a beautiful gold piece and a

friendly greeting from his gracious lord. So all the parish poor had a

second time plenty to eat and drink, and more than one enjoyed himself

better on that day than ever before in his life.

When the people had had a good dinner, they thought the feast was at

an end, and wished to express their thanks courteously to the host,

but he begged them to wait a little quarter of an hour longer, for

something else was coming. Then four lottery vases were placed on the

table, one for the men, another for the women, a third for boys, and a

fourth for girls; and when all the guests had been arranged ranged

according to age and family, one after another put his hand into a

vase and drew forth a number, one fifteen, another twenty-one, a third

two, and so on until each person had a number. Then they looked at

their numbers and thought, What does this all mean? and they waited

full of expectation.

Suddenly a side door opened, and the servants brought in a wooden

frame, on the four sides of which hung all sorts of garments, one side

for men, another for women, and then for boys and girls, as at a fair;

and everything was new and neat and strong, such as peasant-folks like

to wear, and a number was fastened on each piece. Some one called out,

"Now look for the numbers that you have in your hands." The men looked

shyly at each each other, as if to say, "Can he really mean it?" but

the women were more clever, and had soon found white and colored

skirts, aprons, stockings, neckerchiefs, and handkerchiefs to match

their numbers, and were helping their husbands and children in their

search. Before long not one single thread hung on the frame, and every

one possessed his appointed prize, and was rejoicing over it, for it

really seemed as if to each person had fallen the very thing he most

needed. Of course many were there who were in need of everything.

When now the time for leave-taking came, and the happy people thanked

their gracious lord in their best manner, he shook hands with each one

like a good old friend or father, at the same moment slipping into the

palm of every man a thaler. Then were there fresh rejoicings and

renewed thanks, and the worthy folk would not soon have made an end of

it, if their benefactor had not quickly broken {561} a path through

the crowd who blessed him, and so eluded their acknowledgments.

But then their hearts being full to overflowing, they longed to have

some outlet to their gratitude; so they seated farmer and his wife in

two chairs, placed them in a pretty wagon, to which they harnessed

themselves; and the worthy couple, in spite of expostulation, were

borne home in triumph. Such rejoicings had not been seen for many a

long day, and even now do the people of B---- talk of brave Martin and

his excellent wife Agnes; of the feast and the lottery and the dollars

of their kind and gracious lord in the castle yonder.

--------

From The Reader.

THE REPUBLIC OF ANDORRA.

The Val d'Andorra lies on the southern side of the central Pyrenees,

between two of the highest mountains, the Maladetta and the Moncal. It

is bounded on the north by the department of Ariège; on the south by

the district of Barrida, the territory of Urgel, and part of the

viscounty of Castelbo; on the east by the valley of Carol and part of

the Cerdana; on the west at by the viscounty of Castelbo, the valleys

of San Juan and Terrem, the Conca de Buch, and the communes of Os and

Tor. The principal mountain-passes into France are those of Valira,

Soldeu, Fontargente, Siguer, Anzat, Arbella, and Rat; those

communicating with Spain are Port Negre, Perefita, and Portella. Some

of these are only passable during part of the year. The greatest

length of the territory is about forty miles; the greatest breadth

about twenty-four miles. The country is mountainous, but includes some

excellent pasturage. The highest summits visible are Las Mineras,

Casamanya, Saturria, Montclar, San Julian, and Juglár. The principle

rivers are the Valira, the Ordino, and the Os, none of which are

navigable. At the greatest elevation the snow remains upward of six

months. In summer the rains are very frequent. The purity of both air

and water renders the climate very healthy, and the inhabitants are

remarkable for their longevity, many living to the age of one hundred.

Devonian beds lie unconformably on upper silurian, which latter forms

a valley of depression, having the town of Andorra in its synclinal

axis. There are many mines producing iron of the best quality; one of

lead, several of alum, quartz, slate, some quarries of jaspers, and

several kinds of marble. Besides the trees common to Europe, the flora

includes the cacao or chocolate. There are, likewise, many medicinal

roots and plants. Wheat, barley, rye, and hemp are cultivated; and

grapes, figs, dates, and olives are also seen. In the low parts of the

south tobacco is much grown. Indian corn is only occasionally to be

met with. The fauna include the bear, wild boar, wolf, boquetin

(_Capra Pyrenaica?_), chamois, mule, fox, blackcock, or _gallina de

monte_, squirrel, hare, partridge, pheasant, and several species of

eagles; there are also a great many blackbirds and nightingales. The

population of the whole republic has been estimated as low as 5,000,

and even higher than 15,000, but it probably does not exceed 10,000;

that of the capital has been reckoned as high as 2,800, but this

probably refers to the whole parish, {562} and is, even then, greatly

over-estimated. The name Andorra has been derived from the Arabic, but

it is, without doubt, considerably older than the time of the Moors.

It is probably from the Gaelic _an-dobhar, an-dour_, which will

variously translate, "the water," "the territory," "the border of a

country." In the Roman period the Val d'Andorra formed part of the

country of the Ceretani, who gave their name to the Cerdana; and, at

the time of the Goths, of the district called Marea de Espana. It was

the last tract of country of which Moors obtained possession in

Catalonia, and the first which they abandoned. There are traditions of

the republic even prior to the time of Charlemagne. Catalonia, being

invaded by the Moors, the Andorrans, in 778, asked aid of the emperor,

who thereupon crossed the Pyrenees, and having united his forces with

those of Catalonia, which consisted principally of the mountaineers of

Andorra, after a brilliant campaign drove the Moors to the left bank

of the Ebro. Having established a military organization for the

defence of the territory, Charlemagne recognized certain rights in

favor of the Andorrans; but, at the same time, gave to the see of

Urgel the tithes of the six parishes into which the valley of Andorra

was divided. The Moors having again invaded the territory, the emperor

despatched his son, Louis le Debonnaire, who drove out the Moors, and

ceded the sovereignty of the valley to Sisebertus, first bishop of

Urgel. The charter bears the date of 803, and the signature of

Ludovicus Pius, the name by which Louis has always been known to the

republic. Charles the Bold having illegally granted to the Counts of

Urgel the sovereignty over the lands of the republic, another dispute

arose between the bishop and the counts, and the independence of the

valley was again disturbed. Upon this the bishop asked assistance of

Raymond of Foix, and an alliance was entered into by which the

independence of the valley wad vested jointly in the house of Foix and

the see of Urgel, and Raymond forthwith expelled the Counts of Urgel

from Andorra. This took place in the twelfth century. The bishop

failing to surrender the moiety of the republican lands, Bernard of

Foix, in 1241, laid siege to the city of Urgel, and the Bishop was not

only compelled to yield to the demands of the count, but also, within

a certain time, to procurers of papal ratification of the investiture

of the house of Foix in the joint sovereignty of the republic. The

convention having been again violated by the see of Urgel, it was

finally settled, in 1278, that the right of suzerainté should be

possessed jointly by the Bishop of Urgel and the Counts of Foix. This

tree is the act of independence Of the republic, and is known to the

people of Andorra by the name of "Parialge." It stipulated that the

republic should pay annually a tribute of 960 francs to the Counts of

Foix, and half that amount to the see of Urgel, and that each should

have the privilege of nominating one of the two officers called

viguiers. The house of Foix being united, first with that of Béarn,

and then to that of Moncada and Castellvel Rosanes, was finally

absorbed in the house of Bourbon, and the joint protectorate became at

the end of the sixteenth century, merged in the government of France,

and the see of Urgel. On 25th March following a treaty was concluded

by which the republic should pay the annual tribute to the

receiver-general of the department of Ariège, in return for which it

was to receive some commercial privileges as to the free export of

certain goods. It was further stipulated that one of the viguiers of

the republic should be chosen from the department of Ariège, and that

three deputies of the Valley should nearly take an oath to the prefect

of the same department. Napoleon is said to have affixed his name to

the original charter of Charlemagne. {563} The privileges of the

Andorrans have been several times acknowledged by France and Spain.

Even the war with Spain did not injure the neutrality of the republic.

In 1794, a French column having penetrated into the centre of Andorra,

for the purpose of laying siege to the city of Urgel, the Andorrans

sent a deputation to assert the neutrality and independence of the

valley, and General Charlet gave immediate orders to withdraw. The

Andorrans have never taken part in the wars of their neighbors. The

rich pasturages between Hospitalet, in France, and Soldeu, in Andorra,

in former times attracted the cupidity of the people of Hospitalet,

who have several times endeavored to take forcible possession of them:

the Andorrans having appealed to the law, judgment was given in their

favor in 1835 by the Court Royal of Toulouse. There is no form of

sovereignty in Europe exactly similar to that of Andorra. The republic

is governed by a syndic, a council of twenty-four, together with two

viguiers or magistrates, and two judges. The French government and the

see or Urgel possess a co-ordinate right of confirmation over the

appointment of the syndic. The twenty-four members of the council

consist of the twelve consuls who represent the six parishes or

communes, and the twelve consuls who held office during the preceding

year. These latter are called councillors. One of the viguiers is

appointed by the French government, the other Bishop of Urgel. The

former is chosen for life, and is generally a magistrate of the

department of Ariège; the latter holds office for three years only,

and is chosen from among the subjects of the republic. He is not

required to be an educated man. The viguiers alone exercise the

criminal authority. Civil justice is rendered by two other judges, one

of whom is appointed by each viguier from a list of six members, drawn

up and presented by the syndic. In both criminal and civil cases the

judges are guided by equity, common sense, and custom only, and yet no

complaints are heard of. Parties to suits, both criminal and civil,

have the right of appearing by counsel, who is styled _rahonador_, or

speaker. The decision of the criminal courts is communicated to the

council, who reassemble to receive it. The sentence of the court, once

proclaimed by the council, is irrevocable, and is put in execution

within twenty-four hours. The criminal court is rarely convoked. There

are few crimes committed in the republic. One man was executed for

murder about six years since. The expenses of justice are paid partly

by the delinquents, partly by the council. The armed forces consist of

six companies, one for each parish, and scarcely amount to 600, but in

case of need all the inhabitants are soldiers. There is no enlistment;

one individual between the age of sixteen and sixty is chosen from

each family. There is no national flag, and no drums are used. The

service is unpaid. Public instruction is in the worst state. The

priest of each parish is obliged to provide a school in his own house,

but no one is compelled to send his children. Those who desire a

better education for their children send them either to France or

Catalonia. The only form of religion is the Roman Catholic. Political

refugees from Spain and France are always hospitably received.

Foreigners resident in the republic pay yearly five Catalan sous, and

enjoy all the privileges of the natives, except that of holding any

public office. If a foreigner marries an heiress, he is accounted a

citizen, but he must first obtain an authorization from the

council-general. The Andorrans are somewhat above the ordinary size of

Spaniards. In stature they are thin and wiry. In character they are

active, proud, industrious, independent, religious, faithful to their

ancient customs, and very jealous of their liberties. They are

inquisitive, great talkers, but suddenly dumb and ignorant when they

imagine their interest at stake. Those engaged in public affairs are

generally {564} hospitable, but most of the people are rather

suspicious of strangers. They speak the Catalan dialect, which is a

compound of Castilian and the ancient languages of the south of

France. They also use many modern French words, which they pronounce

after their own fashion. The people are poor, and glory in their

poverty, as they thereby preserve their independence. Should they grow

rich, they would be sure to be absorbed either by France or Spain. A

large portion of the wealth of the republic consists in its flocks of

sheep. Each landowner is possessed of a considerable flock. The price

of a sheep ranges from twelve to twenty francs. The fleeces suffice to

clothe the whole of the male population. The exports into Spain

consist of iron, in large quantities, sheep, mules, and other cattle;

cloths, blankets, cheese, butter, and excellent hams. Those into

France include untanned skins, sheep, mules, calves and wool. The

number of sheep and mules sent annually into Spain and France amounts

to 1,000. Considering the size of the republic, the imports from Spain

are considerable: they include some of the necessaries of life, as

corn and salt. The only imports from France are fish and compound

liquors. There is a good deal of contraband between the republic and

Spain and France. It consists principally in wines, vinegar, salt, and

a small quantity of silk. The contrabandistas between the valley and

Spain are generally Spaniards. There are no land conveyances, and the

transport of goods and merchandise is carried on with horses and

mules. There are no restrictions on commerce, and no stamps; and no

passports are required. The republic contains six parishes or

communes, namely, Andorra la Vieja, San Juliá de Loria, Canillo,

Ordino, En Camp, and La Massana. There are also thirty-four villages

and hamlets, the chief of which are Escaldas, Santa Caloma, and

Soldeu. There are but few ancient remains in the republic. The

capital, Andorra la Vieja, or "The Old" is so called to distinguish it

from Andorra in Spain, Province Teruel. There is a good weekly market,

and considerable business is transacted in imported corn. It is a

miserable place, with houses built of the _débris_ of schist and

granite, and generally without stucco. During the civil wars it

suffered greatly from hostile attacks, and the suspension of commerce.

The palace, called Casa del Valle, is an ancient building, constructed

of rough pieces of granite. The _façade_ is heavy and massive, and has

only three windows, of unequal dimensions, with some louvers; in its

left angle is a turret pierced with loopholes, and surmounted with a

cross. Above the portal, which resembles a _porte cochère_, is the

inscription _Domus_ consilii, _sedes justitiae_, under which is and

escutcheon of white marble, with the arms of the republic. The

interior of the palace is in a state of complete ruin. On the ground

floor is the national prison and the stables, where the members of the

council have the privilege of putting up their horses during the

sessions. The kitchen is on a grand scale, with immense hearts and

cauldrons. A staircase, which savors of antiquity, leads to the

chamber on the first floor, where the council meets. It is a vast hall

of an imposing aspect. At one end is a chair for the syndic, who sits

as president of the assembly; along either wall are benches of oak for

the twenty-four councillors; and between the corridors is a picture of

Jesus Christ. In another part of the hall are preserved in the

archives of the government, which include the grant of Charlemagne and

his son. They are kept in an armory or cupboard in the wall, closed by

two wooden shutters, where they have remained intact since the

expulsion of the Moors. The cabinet has six different locks and keys,

which are kept by the executive officers of the six communes whose

documents have been separately deposited. This cabinet has no outer

door, and can only be opened in the presence of the six heads of the

departments, who are bound to be present at the deliberations {565} of

the council. There are five sessions of the council annually, but when

necessary, extraordinary sessions are also held. When the general

council is unable to assemble, the syndic general, or, in his absence,

the sub-syndic, represent it, and act in its name; sometimes, also, a

junta general is convoked, at which assist a consul, or a consul and a

councillor, for each parish. In the juntas, matters of minor interest

are discussed, and the consuls and councillors who take part in them

are entrusted with the powers of their colleagues. To the general

council pertains everything relating to police, and all disputes in

commercial matters. The chapel is dedicated to San Heremengol,

formerly Bishop of Urgel and Prince of Andorra, and will repay a

visit.

--------

ORIGINAL.

CATHOLIC CHRISTMAS.

The evening of the last day of the church's advent arrives. She

gathers her ministers around her, and, singing hymns of glad

expectation, they remain in her temples, even until midnight. Let us

listen to the grand harmony!

Divided into two vast bodies, they peal forth the verses of the royal

prophet in alternate chorus; and who could tire hearkening? Well does

Durendus say, that "the two choirs typify the angels and the spirits

of just men, while they cheerfully and mutually excite each other in

this holy exercise." We fancy ourselves among the choirs of heaven, as

St. Ignatius once was in spirit, when he learned the method of

alternate chanting.

Oh! whose heart does not yearn toward the church in these her days of

longing! She has laid away from her all that is dazzling and joyous;

yet is she most charming. Anxious love, like a sun, burns over her,

altering her color; yet is she all beauty--bright and rich and

warm--her aspect teeming with purity and love and inspiration. "I am

black, but beautiful." (Cant. i. 4)

It is midnight. Long since men ceased from their labors. The din of

traffic has been hushed for hours. Yet there is a sound through all

the world. From every city and town and village, from spire-crowned

hill and from holy valley, from numberless sweet nooks and by-ways, it

swells forth, the sound of a grand harmony, the voices of myriads

chanting. Now the tones speak of longing; now they tremble with

expectation; then there is a burst of rapture following the mellow

warbling of desire. It is the voice of the church longing for her

Beloved! She shall be gratified, for even now there is a knocking at

her temple gates. The chant is hushed, and a voice, gentle as the

lisping of a child, breathes the sweet entreaty, "Open to me, my

sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled; for my head is full of dew and

my locks of the drops of the night." (Cant. v. 2.) Yes, lovely Babe,

gladly will the temple-doors open to thee; for many a long and weary

mile did thy mother journey with thee beneath her heart!

Winter ruled the earth. Chill blew the breezes, and coldness was over

all nature. Shivering had the aged saint and Mary asked for shelter,

but the inns were filled, and none in Bethlehem would trouble to

receive them. Riches were not theirs, and all saw that the {566}

unknown mother's time was near; hence, fearing they might have to look

to the child, they shut her from their dwellings. The only place of

refuge her holy spouse could find for his charge was a cheerless

stable, hollowed from a rough, cold rock. The ox and the ass were

their only earthly companions; hay and straw formed the rude couch

upon which the mother brought forth her child at midnight. Jesus!

Saviour! she wraps thee scantily in swaddling-clothes, and lays thee

shivering in a manger. Well then may the dew and the drops of the

night hang heavy upon thy locks!

But, though in Bethlehem these unknown travellers were outcasts, God

did not desert them. The glimmerings of adoring angels' wings fell

upon the mother's eyes to comfort her heart, for there were angels

near in numbers. They hovered over and within the hut, making it ring

with the most blessed hymn that mortal or angelic ears had ever heard:

"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good-will."

Instantly upon this knocking the church rises to open to her Beloved,

and now begins her joy. Now she will celebrate his birthday, and her

heart leaps high in bidding him welcome. Her torches, her sanctuary

lamps, the countless candles on her altars, all are lighted with the

speed of love; their shining shows her spouse that she was so full of

expectation, so confident of his coming, that she has already cast

away her weeds of mourning and desire, and has arrayed her charms in

her most precious robes. Evergreens and tapestry are twining and

glowing all about her--in her niches, upon her piers, her arcades, her

parapets, her cloister-galleries, her massive stalls, her carved and

fretted ceilings. Her altars and her sanctuaries have festoons and

garlands, and crowns of sweetest design, and veils and hangings of

choicest embroidery. She peals her bells and sweeps her fingers over

her organ-keys, and tunes her many instruments, to fill her temples

with the rapturous canticle of the day, "Gloria in excelsis Deo."

But let us circumscribe our views. As we may behold the joy of the

universal church in even her smallest division, let us see how, in the

good old Catholic times, the simplest villagers celebrated the first

day of the Incarnate Eternal!

The few rich men among them have sent stores of flowers and fruits

from their conservatories to deck the green branches gathered in the

forest. Pious ladies have brought in the various ornaments, which they

have been preparing for weeks, as an offering for their new-born

Saviour. The happy pastor and many of his spiritual flock have been

busy in the church four days, disposing the decorations with untiring

ingenuity and taste.

Now it is almost midnight. The skies are clear and studded with

twinkling stars. Ice is over all the streams, snow is over all the

streets and fields, and weighs down the trees. Stillness is upon the

the village, yet not the stillness of slumber. You can see that

something is transpiring which takes not place at other midnights; for

lights are glimmer through the cottage-windows, and, now and then,

cheerful forms are seen passing to and fro. They are all expecting,

and they shall not be delayed; for hark! suddenly a merry peal of

bells bursts over them; joyously it rings forth--now in soft, sweet

cadence, and now in swelling harmony. It pours along the streets and

fills the village dwellings. It echoes through the cloudless vault,

over the snowy fields and the glassy streams, reaching even the

scattered hamlets in the distance. Suddenly and joyously the music

bursts upon all:

"Adeste fideles, laeti, triumphantes

Venite, venite in Bethlehem."

And the cottage-doors are thrown open, and groups of merry children

sally forth gladly shouting, "Christmas, Christmas!"

{567}

Then the tapers are extinguished, and the villagers all hasten forth

with holy eagerness to see their Jesus cradled in the manger; and, as

they direct their steps toward the old church, they awaken the

midnight echoes with that sweet old carol:

"Now the circling year have given

The joyful season, when from heaven

Life descended to the earth

In the Babe who took his birth

From our sweet Lady!

"Behold him in the manger laid,

Owned by the cattle of the shed,

Who know their God meanest bands

Enswathed by the tender hands

Of our sweet Lady!

"Now he smiles on Joseph blessed;

Now he seeks his mother's breast;

Now he sobs, and now he cries,

All beneath the guardian eyes

Of our sweet Lady!

"Run, run, ye shepherds, haste and bring

Your simple homage to our King!

Ye heaven-called watchers, taste and see

Our God, meek-seated on the knee

Of our sweet Lady!"

Thus they stream along from every cottage, along every pathway toward

the church, men, women, and little children, singing and chatting

happily. Far off in the moonlit distance you see small parties

hastening over the white plains from their scattered homes to mingle

in the festival. How beautifully do they remind us of those happy

shepherds who left their flocks near the "Tower of Ader," and went

over to Bethlehem, to see the word that had come to pass!

The bells continue pealing out their music to the midnight, and the

church continues filling. Listen to the half-suppressed ejaculation of

joyous surprise as each new group enters the holy place and beholds

its charming decorations! Over every window's curve, and hanging down

by its sides, is a mighty wreath of evergreens. In front of every

hallowed niche lights are burning, and wreaths of foliage hang over

it. The pillars are all twined round and round, up to the very

ceiling, with ivy, holly, laurel, intermingled with those berries that

grow red in winter. But who shall describe the glories of the

sanctuary! The arch that rises over it flows with the fullest folds of

tapestry, white as snow, save where they are here and there

interwrought with flowers of rose-hued silk and thread of gold, and

intertwined with holly and laurel, and boughs of the orange-tree with

its golden clusters. On the altar-steps are vases filled with

evergreens, slender strings of ivy twisting around tall branches and

bending gracefully between them down even to the floor. The altar is

crowded with lighted candles, and along the intervals of the

candlesticks flow festoons of slender branches, leaves, and flowers. A

stole of flowers decorates the very crucifix; the tabernacle sparkles

in its richest veil.

Oh! in olden times even a village church was grand beyond description;

for then men took a pride in their religion. They loved to see God's

Bride in bridal splendor; they loved to see the Queen in regal

vesture; they loved to see the Sister of the Church in heaven with

something like heavenly glory around her. The rich man gave of his

abundance, the poor man gave of his labor, ladies wrought

embroidery--all in holy unison strained every nerve to make her

temples beautiful.

Now the church has filled with kneeling forms. The rich and the poor,

the lady and the servant, the laborers and they for whom they labor,

here kneel side by side, they are all equal here, for they are all

alike, are God's own children, the brethren of the Babe of Bethlehem.

The steeple-bells have ceased to peal, for not a single thought must

now wander outside. Eyes and ears and heart and soul and every feeling

are intent upon the grand occurrences within.

Presently blue clouds of sweet incense are seen floating toward the

sanctuary, and modestly there comes a youth swinging a silver censer;

a long procession of little acolytes, clad in snow-white surplices and

bearing lighted tapers, follow him slowly; a saintly looking priest,

in precious vestments, closes the holy array. His {568} youthful

attendants are chosen boys of blameless life and pleading aspect: and,

indeed, they look pure and innocent and cherub-like, as they dispose

themselves around the holy place, and kneel toward the altar.

Then amid half-suppressed, repentant cries for "mercy on us," swelling

forth from the choir, the psalm is said--the psalm of preparation, of

praise, of hope, of humble confidence: the confession is made; prayers

for pardon, lights and gracious hearing are repeated. Then the priest

ascends "unto the altar of God," and whispers prayers, speaking

rapturously of the "Child that is born to us, the Son that is given to

us." But look at hie countenance as he returns slowly to the middle of

the altar; you can see that he is full of some grand event--his soul,

his heart, his feelings, all hold jubilee. One more entreaty for mercy

repeated again and again with passionate earnestness, and he raises

his eyes and his arms as though about to ascend in ecstasy, and, like

one inspired, he breaks forth in the angelic hymn, "Gloria in excelsis

Deo." It is the signal of jubilee. Suddenly there is a burst of many

little bells, shaken by the hands of the surpliced children, ringing

out their silver music until the hymn is ended by the priest; the

organ's richest and fullest chords are struck, swelling forth in

harmony like that which the rivers made in Paradise when they sang

their first hymn of praise to him who set them flowing, and the full

choir of trained voices burst forth: "Et in terra pax hominibus."

Truly you think yourself at Bethlehem. It seems as though the Child

were just born--as though you heard the heavenly hosts singing their

grand anthem--saw the shepherds wondering and adoring--beheld the

Infant lying in the manger, a fair, radiant, smiling little Babe, with

an old saint beside it, leaning on his staff, and a comely virgin, in

a trance of motherly affection, kissing its bright forehead. So these

villagers seem to feel it all. A start of joy runs through the whole

assembly, a radiance lights up every feature; friends kiss each other,

fathers kiss their children, mothers kiss their little ones; a whisper

runs from soul to soul through all the church--"Pax hominibus."

Then follow collect, the epistle, the gradual, a gospel, all full of

the grand event. And then the choir's jubilee begins again, as the

anointed one at the altar intones "Credo in unum Deum." Who shall tell

the stirless reverence of each prostrate form, as all bow yet lower at

the words that still the mystery of the night! Softly the organ

warbles in its mellowest keys; from the richest voice in all the choir

sweetly flow the words "Et Homo factus est." Every mind reflects, and

every heart is melted.

Then comes the offertory; and all present, according to their various

means, make their offerings for those "who serve the altar," and for

the poor. While the priest raises in offering the paten with the Post

and the chalice with wine, the villagers also, kneeling, make an

offering of their homage to their new-born Redeemer; and mothers lift

their little ones to heaven in spirit, praying that they may advance

"in wisdom and age and grace with God and men," as did the Child of

Mary. Then follows the washing of the heads, with its appropriate

prayers; then, the secretas, the preface, the whispered prayers for

God's church, for friends and benefactors, for all the living

faithful.

The moment of consecration draws nigh. Books are laid aside, hands are

clasped upon the breast, every head is bent. The sweet voices in the

choir have been hushed; the organ's silvery tones, murmuring more and

more softly, have at length died away, awe-stricken by the silence

that fills God's house. Yes! silence fills it, for silence now seems a

something--a breathless, pulseless, but mighty spirit feeling all

this temple, as the cloud of God's glory once filled the tabernacle.

You think you could almost {569} most hear a spirit move, you feel as

though you were among the angels when they waited breathless to behold

the effect of the sublime utterance, "Let there be light." Bending low

in reverend humility, the priest in a whisper of awe speaks the

almighty words, "This is my body," "This is the chalice of my blood;"

the light breathing of that whisper is heard even in the bosom of the

Eternal Father, the golden gates of Paradise are thrown open, and God

"bows the heavens and comes down." He is here, this church is now the

hut of Bethlehem, this altar is the manger; for the Child is born upon

it as really as the Virgin-mother there brought him forth.

As when of old light was made, there was a music of the spheres, of

the sun and moon and all the stars and planets, singing their morning

hymn of gratitude, so is the stillness now also broken, so does the

choir, warbling in swelling glee, burst forth in grand climax,

"Hosanna in excelsis." And in the mean time priest and people united

utter to their new-born Saviour many rich and beautiful prayers for

the living, for the faithful departed, for themselves.

The villagers are absorbed in prayer; it seems as though their fervor

kept redoubling, as though the flames of holy love burned higher and

higher every instant. Well they may, for the moment is approaching in

which each heart will be a manger in which Jesus will be laid, each

breast a tabernacle in which love itself shall dwell. Already there is

a move among them; with modest gait, with clasped hands and downcast

eyes, they advance to the sanctuary, the mystic bread is given to them

line after line, and, bearing their God with them, they all return in

reverence to give thanks, to petition for good things. Serenity is in

their eyes and on their features, joy is in their hearts, rapture in

their souls, peace among their feelings, and Jesus within their bosoms

harmonizing all. O truly happy Christmas! O the bliss that now is

theirs, the comfort of this moment! Well may the chanters hymn: "O

Jesus, God! Great God! Good Pastor! Sweet Lamb! O Jesus, _my_ Jesus! O

Bread! O Manna! O Power! what dost thou not grant to man!"

Then praises and thanks are sung joyously by the priest, and his hand

is stretched in blessing from the altar. The Mass is over, and the

procession moves from the sanctuary, while the choir chants aloud,

"Praise the Lord all ye nations, praise him all ye people. Because his

mercy is confirmed upon us, and the truth of the Lord remaineth for

ever." (Ps. cxvi.)

The chant dies away, and for awhile not a sound is heard through all

the sacred building. No one stirs as yet; all remain some time to

return thanks, to allow the impression of the festival to sink deep

into their souls. At length they rise, and bowing lowly toward the

altar, they go forth. At the church-door hands are shaken, kisses

given, warm embraces are exchanged, and joy and happiness and all the

blessings of the Child's nativity are wished and wished again.

But follow them home from their midnight celebration. For a long time

the village slumbers not; lights glimmer through the cottage-windows,

and within groups are kneeling around a little home-made oratory, with

a little crib in the middle, and candles around it. This is of greater

importance than the gathering around the yule-fire or the decked tree.

Moreover, all did not go home when Mass was over. Go back to the

church, and behold those silent figures praying in every posture that

feeling can suggest. There, before that tabernacle, a mother prays the

divine Child for her own babe; a virgin prays for purity like to that

of the Virgin-mother; the child of misery seeks consolation from him

who was born in a stable; many repeat over and over again the canticle

of the angels, and all beg the blessings of him over whom the angels

sang it. At length these also are gone; the lights {570} are quenched

about the altar, all, save the silver lamp which is never

extinguished; all is still as was the stable when the shepherds had

adored and gone back to their flocks.

But the festival of our Saviour's birth is not over yet. "As the day

comes round in music and in light;" you again see the villagers

wending their way to the church; and a third time, when the sun is in

the mid-arch of heaven. Each time is witnessed the same sublime

celebration that we beheld at midnight; for three births of Christ are

celebrated. His birth from the Father before lime began; his birth

from the immaculate Virgin as a wailing babe at Bethlehem; his mystic

birth, by faith and by the sacrament of love, in the heart of each

humble adorer.

Such was Christmas in the happy olden times. Alas! that a blight

should ever have come upon it. Truly they have not done well to

despoil that village church of all its charming features. Well may the

church exclaim, weeping: "The keepers that go about the city found me;

they struck me, and wounded me: the keepers of the walls took my vail

from me." (Cant, v. 7.) Fondly do we trust she will soon again be

clothed in splendor. The pope that reigned when England fell away

grieved sadly for her fall. In his distress he put away the triple

crown; and even now his statue sits uncrowned, with downcast eyes, as

though his grief had hardened him to stone. But soon, we trust, he

will again lift up his eyes. Soon, we trust, will his successors

rejoiced to find the crown replaced, not by mortal, but by angel

hands. Shall we not hope and pray that our own dear land, also, will

form not the least brilliant jewel in that crown? One day this church

will again deck herself with the flowers she once wore, but which

rebellious hands toward to pieces, scattering the leaves around her.

Then shall we once again celebrate the good old Catholic Christmas

times, and celebrate them with the increased joy which is born of the

wanderer's returned. God granted it speedily!

------

MISCELLANY

_Spots on the Sun.--Science Review_.--We would draw the attention of

our scientific readers to a remarkable opinion and theory of Sir John

Herschel's with regard to the nature of those curious objects

discovered by Mr. Nasmyth on the surface of the sun, and generally

called, from their peculiar shape, "willow leaves." We believe Sir

John first propounded this theory in an article on the sun, published

in Good Words, but it does not seem to have been noticed by many

astronomers. However wild the hypothesis may appear, it has just

received a further sanction from its eminent author, by its

republication in his new book of Familiar Lectures, which we notice

elsewhere. Sir John says: "Nothing remains but to consider them (the

so-called willow leaves) as separate and independent sheets, flakes,

or scales, having some sort of solidity. And these flakes, be they

what they may, and whatever may be said about the dashing of meteoric

stones into the sun's atmosphere, etc., are evidently the immediate

sources of the solar light and heat by whatever mechanism for whatever

processes they may be enabled to develop, and, as it were, elaborate

these elements from the bosom of the non-luminous fluid in which they

appear to float. Looked at in this point of view, we cannot refuse to

regard them as organisms of some peculiar and amazing kind; and though

it would be too daring to speak of such organization as partaking of

the nature of life, yet we do know that vital action is competent to

develop both heat, light, and electricity." Strange and startling as

is such an explanation, yet scientific men will remember that when we

{571} knew as little about the cause of the black lines seen in the

spectrum of the sun as we now know about these appearances on the sun

itself, Sir John Herschel suggested, in 1833, that very explanation

which was the foundation of the memorable law announced by the German

philosopher, Kirchhoff, in 1859--a law now universally accepted as

affording a perfect solution to the long-standing puzzle of

Fraunhofer's lines.

_Simple Net for the Capture of Oceanic Animals,--Science Review_.--In

a paper read before the Microscopical Society of London on the fauna

of mid-ocean, Major S. R. Owen gives the following directions for the

preparation of a simple form of net for the above purpose, and which

maybe rigged out at a few hours' notice. A grommet should be made for

the mouth, to which three cords may be attached to connect it with the

towing-line; that line should be a good stout piece of stuff and

capable of bearing a great strain. To the grommet should be attached,

first, a bag, the upper part of which may be made of a thin canvas,

the lower part of strong jean, ending in a piece of close calico or

linen; the bottom must be left open, and tied round with a tape when

used; this will be found convenient for taking out the contents, and

by leaving it open and towing it so for a short time it can be

thoroughly washed. Over the whole an outer covering of the strongest

sail-cloth should be put, the upper part, in like manner, attached to

the grommet, the lower part left open, and a portion for a foot or

eighteen inches of the seam left to be coarsely laced up with a piece

of cord, the same being done for the bottom itself. If necessary, a

third covering may be put between these of any strong but rather

porous material; but this in its turn should be left open at the

bottom, and only tied when required for use. Its length should be so

adjusted when tied that the inner lining of calico may rest against

it, and be relieved from the strain. The outer sail-cloth should, in

like manner, be laced up to receive and support the whole.

_A New Magnesium Lamp_.--An ingenious form of magnesium lamp, the

invention of Mr. H. Larkin, and which was first exhibited at the Royal

Institution a couple of months since, was shown at the _soirées_ of

the British Association at Nottingham. Instead of the ordinary ribbon

or wire of the commoner forms of magnesium lamps, magnesium powder is

employed. Hence all machinery is dispensed with, the magnesium being

contained in a reservoir, from a hole in the bottom of which it falls

like sand from an hour-glass. The powder is allowed to fall upon the

flame of a small gas-jet, and by this it is inflamed, giving all its

usual illumination. In order that a sufficient quantity of powder may

be employed, and that the hole in the reservoir may be large enough to

allow of a regular flow, without waste of magnesium, the latter is

mixed with fine sand. The size of the aperture is regulated by a

stopcock. When it is desired to light the lamp, the gas is first

turned on, just sufficiently to produce a small jet at the mouth of

the tube, which small jet, being once kindled, may be allowed to burn

any convenient time, until the moment the magnesium light is required.

All that is then needed is to turn on the metallic powder, which

instantly descends and becomes ignited as it passes through the

burning gas. This action of turning on and off the metallic powder may

be repeated without putting out the gas, as often and as quickly as

desired; so that, in addition to the ordinary purpose to which lamps

are applied, an instant or an intermittent light of great brilliancy,

suitable for signals or for light-houses, may be very simply produced

with certainty of effect and without the smallest waste of metal. The

first evening an objection was made that the blue tone of the light

created a cold and somewhat ghastly effect. On the second occasion Mr.

Larkin remedied this by mixing with the magnesium a certain quantity

of nitrate of strontia.--_Journal of the Society of Arts_.

_An Artificial Eye for restoring Sight_.--An apparatus of this kind,

whose efficiency we much doubt, has been described by M. Blanchet, in

a paper in which he details the operation for its insertion under the

title of Helio-prothesis. The operation consists in puncturing the eye

in the direction of the antero-posterior axis with a narrow bistoury,

and introducing a piece of apparatus to which M. Blanchet gives the

name of "phosphore." The operation in most instances produces little

pain, and when the globe of the eye has undergone degeneration there

is no pain at all, and the "phosphore" apparatus is {572} introduced

without difficulty. The description of this contrivance is this: "It

consists of a shell of enamel, and of a tube closed at both its ends

by glasses, whose form varies according to circumstances." M. Blanchet

thus describes the operation: "The patient's head being supported by

an assistant, the upper eyelid is raised by an elevator, and the lower

one is depressed. The operator then punctures the eye with a narrow

bistoury, adapting the width of his incision to the diameter of the

'phosphore' tube which he intends to insert. The translucent humor

having escaped, the 'phosphore' apparatus is applied, and almost

immediately, or after a short time, the patient is partially restored

to sight!" Before introducing the apparatus it is necessary to

calculate the antero-posterior diameter of the eye, and if the lens

has cataract it must be removed. Inasmuch as the range of vision

depends on the quantity of the humor left behind, M. Blanchet

recommends the employment of spectacles of various kinds.--_Popular

Science Review._