CONTROVERSY ON IMPORTANT POINTS.
"Brother," said Annie, "I begin to perceive that it is of necessity
that philosophy divides itself into two branches, the exoteric and
esoteric. The human mind evidently needs considerable preparation to
be able t comprehend the higher ideas that lie hidden under first
teachings. It is not so much the teachings that are separate as that
the mind must pass through a given process to arrive at the meaning.
Every form of matter seems a metaphor, involving a spiritual idea, and
many minds seem powerless to penetrate to this; they necessarily
remain content with the material explanation."
"And yet you blame religion for presenting defined dogmas, practical
methods, and real precepts to her children, forgetting that this is
the necessary preparation to higher truth, and that every mind must
begin at the beginning?"
"I blame only trivial and childish practices; I reject only untenable
doctrines."
"As for example?"
"The idea that a good God will plunge us into hell!"
"Have you ever reflected on what God is, Annie?"
"No! how should we know aught of such a being?"
"Chiefly by revelation, but also somewhat by observation."
"Give me your idea on the subject, Eugene."
"God is light, power, and love. He created intelligent beings, that he
might impart to them a degree of these attributes, and in their degree
call upon them to participate in the joys they impart. The unvarying
law impressed on material agencies, whether endowed with vitality or
not, did not (in all reverence be it spoken) content the love of God;
the enforced obedience of the material world to the attractions acting
upon it, and the instincts animating the various races of the verified
matter, though beautiful, though glorious evidence of power, wisdom,
and benevolence, did not call forth a consciousness of creatureship,
could not render to the creator a free-will offering of warm,
outpouring, grateful love. This the Creator desired. It is his
pleasure to desire to be loved; and he created the human soul for the
satisfying of this desire; he rendered it free, and endowed it with
the faculty of loving, that it may freely offer the purest love to
himself."
"Go on; how do you reconcile this with hell?"
"God is pure, holy, incapable of defilement, change, or division. His
essential being penetrates all space, comes in contact, literally,
with all material and spiritual existence. Now, God created the human
soul like unto himself, with affinities to himself, and in proportion
as that likeness continues or is restored, light, love, and power
exist in that soul. The absence of these constitutes disease, which
will result in spiritual death. They are absent in the wicked, and the
divine rays entering that soul cause pain, even as the rays of the sun
cause pain when they enter the eye of the body after it has become
diseased."
"But eternally?"
"The soul preserves its identity and consciousness eternally, though
it undergoes spiritual death. If by an act of volition it has lost
light, love, and power, it has not lost immortality, and the divine
rays, penetrating this wreck of life, necessarily fill it with terror
and dismay when all affinity for purity and holiness are destroyed.
The spirit of love, culturing the spirit of hate, must produce pain,
discord, rage; and as the strife is now unequal and hate is impotent,
it creates despair also. We see this on a minor scale on earth. The
French revolution {617} brought prominently before us men whose
spiritual faculties seemed already dead--men given up to a reprobate
sense, who appeared utterly beyond conversion, and who were styled by
the vulgar incarnate demons; yet these are immortal beings who will
carry their dispositions beyond the grave. Should you like hereafter
to come in contact with such?"
Annie shuddered. She thought of Alfred Brookbank, whose mere entrance
into the room had often caused her blood to curdle.
Eugene continued: "Remember, sister, that evil means cutting ourselves
off voluntarily from God, and thereby subjecting ourselves to become
the prey of our own passions, of our own selfishness, which when once
loosed may lead to every kind of excess. Good, on the contrary, is
living in God, adoring his will, admiring his perfections, loving his
law. While on earth the choice of good and evil is before us; and what
repugnances to perfect action or to perfect dispositions we find
difficult to overcome in this our fallen state will be overcome for us
if we pray in a sincere, in a co-operative spirit, or rather we shall
receive power to overcome all evil and to accomplish all good if only
in simplicity of heart we turn to him who is faithful to fulfil all
promises; for he has said, 'Ask and you shell receive' all graces
necessary to form in you the true spiritual life. If we choose to
neglect this means appointed by God, we have no right to complain of
the result."
"I will pray," whispered Annie.
"I, too," said Mrs. Godfrey, who was for the most part a silent
listener in these discussions. "Strange it is, Eugene, that you should
be teaching the principles which I ought to have instilled into you
from youth upward."
"Why, you were not a Catholic, mother!" said Eugene.
"No! but I had many opportunities of becoming instructed, had I been
willing; but I was worldly; I cared for none of these things; I did
not think the time would come when I should consider sorrow and
sickness a blessing: without that fearful malady and these paralyzed
limbs I might have died in ignorance of all that it most concerns me
to know. I have lived without God; dare I hope, Eugene, he will accept
my tardy return to him now?"
"The grace that is working in your heart to make you wish that return
is an evidence of his love for yon, dear mother; only continue to
respond to it, and all will be well."
. . . . .
"Brother," said Annie, on another occasion, "the accounts that we have
of the ancients soon after the deluge seem to denote that they were a
race of wondrous power. The mere history we have of the building of
the city of Babylon, its wondrous walls, its bricks so well cemented
by bitumen that they seemed imperishable; its six hundred and
seventy-six squares, so planned that they preserved the ventilation of
the city in perfect order; its provision for water; its hanging
gardens and palaces--to read of such cities as this and Nineveh and
many others, one imagines a fairy tale in hand instead of realities.
Then, I presume, the raising of those immense blocks of stone which go
to form the Pyramids would puzzle our modern engineers, as would many
things in that land of wonders, Egypt. Conceive a modern traveller
losing his way among the ruins of ancient temples that strew the site
where Thebes once stood, passing the night in the rude hut of a
Bedouin or Copt erected amid these ruins, and in the morning seated
upon a fallen pillar, making his meditation on 'Progression.' All
ancient, very ancient history, is instinct with power. What does this
mean?"
"That probably the knowledge that Adam imparted to his descendants was
greater than that which we now possess, or the intellectual faculties
may have been stronger before passion and egotism again corrupted the
race."
{618}
"You think the earlier men really possessed higher intellectual
facilities than we have now?"
"I think their works would warrant the assumption. Beside, it is
reasonable to suppose that Adam was created perfect according to his
nature, that it was endowed with the highest spiritual and
intellectual faculties, capable not only of understanding the material
creation in its laws of attraction, in the relationships of matter to
matter, but also of comprehending the type enfolded in each material
manifestation; the spiritual co-relationship existing between such
manifestation and the idea it represents. This spiritual faculty was
overborne by sin, impurity deluged the world, and a material deluge
destroyed the race. But to Noah, doubtless, the mental organization as
well as the spiritual power descended; hence immediately after the
deluge we see mighty works which betoken that high creative intellect
which inspire modern imitators with mute wonder."
"Then you think sin was absolutely a destroying power?"
"I do, even from the first. The intellectual faculties, when used as
the mere servant of the selfish passions, shrink and cannot receive
their full expansion, cannot perceive spiritual relationships, cannot
perceive man's moral relationships, each one to his fellow. Indulgence
of the passions, inordinately pursued, of itself cripples the
intellect and takes away the desire of intellectual culture;
selfishness, on the other hand, shuts up the fountains of knowledge,
in order to retain the material power that knowledge gives for selfish
purposes. Both these causes were in operation to cause that inequality
of fortune which finally wrought the 'castes' among mankind. The
knowing ones kept the knowledge transmitted from Noah downward in
their own exclusive possession, which the majority submitted to at
first in order more freely to indulge their passions, and afterward
because they could not help themselves, having (under the influence of
passion) fallen out of the intellectual sphere. Laws compelling by
force certain restraints became necessary, and soon labor was
performed by force also, and most of the laborers became slaves. These
laws, in their action, usually touched only the governed, that is,
those who had let the intellectual power slip from them. The governors
had, almost universally, power to trample on the common law when
applied to themselves; it was only when they came in contact with each
other, and intruded on each other's privileges, that they were called
to account. I speak not of the theory, but of the practice; there was
one law for the rich, another for the poor, throughout all ages. What
was called civilization, before the coming of Christ, did not touch
the poor, the enslaved; the down-trodden slaves had little chance of
justice or of mercy. What was meant by liberty applied only to the
freemen; the want of remembering this leads many two mistakes in
comparing the civilization of ancient and modern times. The gospel
preached to the poor taught them to repress the empire of the
passions, thus slowly but surely causing that rise of intellect in the
masses which has swept slavery from Europe, and from all countries
where the laborer has followed even imperfectly this first requisite,
the doing which has enabled him to cultivate his intellect
sufficiently to compete with those in possession of power. A people
enslaved my passion easily succumb to external force, as a virtuous
people, however poor, have an innate power of preserving external
freedom. The external depends on the internal. One is a manifestation
of the other; almost a consequence."
"Then," said Annie, "if I have understood you aright, man was
originally in direct communication with his Creator. Sin not only
destroyed this communication, which was the source of all knowledge
and happiness, it impaired the faculties through which that
communication is held."
"Yes," said Eugene.
{619}
"And as temporal happiness is but the reflex of spiritual happiness,
the necessary result of order in the spiritual relationship, it
follows that the spiritual order must be restored before the natural
order can yield the happiness it is calculated to produce. This, then,
is the redemption, penance, violence to flesh, and to self will,
before the restoration can take place; these being the necessary
medicine to heal the soul's diseases. Those who refuse the medicine
perish."
"You surprise me, sister," said Eugene; "you are apt at
understanding."
"You forget that long since the enigma was propounded to us. I am but
just getting my ideas into form. You will tell me if I have drawn
correct inferences. Man, by the fall, lost not only actual knowledge
and actual means of knowledge, but he lost empire over the animal
world, and, worse than all, over himself; he became a slave to his own
appetites and passions, and to his own self-will. From this state no
effort of his own could rescue him. The Redeemer came to offer him
means of rescue, to enable him to re-establish spiritual
communication, to bring man again into such actual relationship with
God that he shall look up to him, practically as well as
theoretically, as the highest metaphysical teacher; as the source of
real power and light to the understanding; the restorer of all things
to their pristine harmony. Is this so?"
"It is."
"And naturally this restoration must begin by the healing of the
disorders of the soul. The first impulses of grace create desire for
goodness, purity, and truth; but the old man is still within, and can
only be subdued by violence done to ourselves. 'The kingdom of heaven
suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.' This is why the
saints welcome mortification and suffering, looking on them as tools
with which to subdue themselves, with which they may be enabled to
offer themselves a living sacrifice to God. This is why what men call
'progress' is repugnant to sanctity--progress meaning increased
facilities for indulging the passions; facilities which, as we advance
in sanctity, we learn to dispense with more and more. This is what
Euphrasie meant when she puzzled us at her first coming."
"Indeed, sister, I believe it is."
"And her non-appreciation of human learning must have arisen from the
intense pleasure she felt in personal, absolute dependence upon God.
She did not want to know the material intermediate sequences; of all
things, she preferred feeling they came to her directly from her
Father's hand."
"I presume this was the case."
"Then, too, if I understood her aright, the soul, purified by prayer,
mortification, and good works, becomes by the grace of God detached
from the things of this world; it seeks its rest only in God, and then
it begins to regain some of the sublime spiritual privileges it had
lost. Even on earth it may hold communication with the glorified
spirits in heaven, while these glorified spirits themselves, blessed
with the beatific vision, drink in sensations of beauty, harmony, and
delight, such as exist only in God, and of which we cannot form the
slightest conception."
Eugene could only press his sister's hand in silence. She continued:
"It is this union of spiritual natures with our struggling existence,
this interest taken by the saints in glory in the members of the
church militant on earth, that you term the 'communion of saints,' is
it not, Eugene?"
"Yes, Annie."
"And men have dared to call the recognition of this divine union, of
this sacred bond of love, idolatry! It is the true conquest over
death! the earnest of our own loving immortality! How absurd to call
so beautiful a demonstration of the effect of divine charity
'idolatry'!"
"As absurd," said Eugene, "as to believe that God, in providing means
to redeem men from the death of sin, should not watch over those
means, and preserve them intact from man's defilement."
{620}
"Yes," interposed Mrs. Godfrey, "it is wonderful that men who believe
in revelation should not see, _primâ facie_, that the same miraculous
interposition which produced the revelation would, as if of necessity,
watch over and protect that revelation." Then suddenly becoming very
earnest, she said: "Eugene, I am drawing near my end, I feel it every
day more. You must bring me a priest, if, indeed, one so worthless as
I can become a member of the church of Christ. O my God! it scarcely
seems possible that a life of worldliness should be followed by an
eternity of bliss! But I will hope against my feelings of justice! The
blood of Jesus is powerful to save. O my God! accept it; it was shed
for me in pity and in mercy."
"And for me, too," said Annie. "I must be a Catholic also."
"But have you considered the cost, Annie? Your husband! your
children!"
"I have weighed everything, and am resolved."
"I think feet, O my God!" said the sick woman. "O eternal justice! I
offer thee my children's faith, my children's courage, in union with
the precious blood of thy Son, to atone for my own shortcomings. Oh!
bless these my children--give them grace to persevere!"
There was a solemn pause. Than she added: "Annie, there is suffering
in store for you, but you will accept it. Eugene will be to a friend,
a protector, a guide. I made my will before this malady came on. I
dare not change it now, lest it should be disputed. I left to Eugene
all that I have to leave, but he will provide for you, if provision is
needed; and you, Annie, will confide in him when you need a friend."
"I will, dear mother," faltered Annie. "Surely, we have always loved
each other."
Eugene threw his arm around his sister's waist, and kneeling by his
mother's side, solemnly pledged himself self to watch over his sister
and care for her.
TO BE CONTINUED.
----------
ORIGINAL.
PARDON.
"Many sins are forgiven her, because she hath loved much."
Love may, then, hope to quite refund
What sin hath ta'en away?
Poor heart! thou hast a debt beyond
Thy straitened means to pay.
My sins in number far excel
The sands beside the sea.
Lord! if thou wilt, I pay thee well.
Then lend thy heart to me.
----------
{621}
From Chamber's Journal.
SEA-SIDE FLOWERS.
Visitors to the sea-shore love to wander along the beach in search of
the beauteous shells of scallop or cowry, left by the retiring tide,
and delight to trace their exquisite design and structure; or,
scrambling over the shiny rocks, covered with treacherous algae, will
appear into the little pools, fringed with crimson and purple weed,
inhabited by various anemones, gray shrimps, and darting fish, in
hopes of discovering some new treasure to capture, and carry off in
triumph for the aquarium at home; but how few care to examine the
modest beauty of the many sea-side flowers blooming on regarded at
their very feet; nay, their very existence often unknown, or looked
upon as common weeds, devoid of all beauty or interest. Many a lover
of wildflowers and country beauty will pause in the fields and lanes,
and even dusty roads that skirt the shore--especially if they be on
the southern coasts of England--where the brier and hawthorn hedges
are tangled with luscious honeysuckle, and the primroses cluster in
masses; where the wild hyacinth peeps from amidst the nettles, and the
speedwell opens its "angel's eyes" of loveliest azure; but as they
approached the sea-beach, the proverb of its sterility,
"Barren as the sand on the sea-sure,"
is felt, and not is expected or looked four but the rich harvest of
the ocean's wondrous things cast on the shingle, or left in the pools
beyond. The immediate banks and links of the sea-side are usually
treeless, and, to non-observant eyes, dreary wastes; but not a spot on
this wide world is without its interest and beauty, and delightful it
is, when rambling along the sandy beach, listening to the music of the
waves on the pebbly shore, to find how many lovely blossoms are
scattered even here, ornamenting the rugged sides of the chalky cliff
or rock, weaving a flowery tapestry over the sloping links, and
binding together with interlaced roots the loose substance of many a
sand-bank.
Unlike the country meadows, where the loveliest blossoms appear with
the earliest sunshine of the year, the fairest sea-side flowers are to
be gathered during the summer and autumn months; though even in
spring, the turf which enamels the links, down often to the water's
edge, will be found decked with an occasional early blossom,
"As if the rainbows of the first fresh spring
Had blossomed where they fell."
While, at all seasons of the year, here as elsewhere,
"Daisies with their pinky lashes"
raise their glad faces to the sun:
"On waste and woodland, rock and plain.
Its bumble buds unheeded rise;
The rose has but a summer reign--
The daisy never dies."
The first gleam of spring sunshine is, however, reflected not only by
the silver daisy, but by that "sunflower of the spring," the golden
dandelion, which glitters as early as April on the sandy, grassy
slope, familiar to all, and common everywhere. The leaves of the
dandelion grow from the root; they are deeply cut and notched, and
from this have gained their name, which we English have corrupted from
the French _dent-de-lion_. The Scotch call the dandelion the hawkweed
gowan. The leaves are much eaten on the continent for salad, and a
medicine is extracted from the root. Every one is familiar {622} with
the downy ball that succeeds the flower:
"The dandelion with globe of down,
The school-boy's clock in every town.
Which the truant puff's amain,
To conjure lost hours back again."
When Linnaeus proposed the use of what he termed a floral clock, which
was to consist of plants which opened and closed their blossoms at
particular hours of the day, the dandelion was one of the flowers
selected, because its petals open at six; the hawkweed was another--it
opens at seven; the succory at eight, the celandine and marigold at
nine, and so on, the closing of the blossoms marking the corresponding
hours in the afternoon. Nor is this the effect of light on the plants,
because, when placed in a dark room, the flowers are found to open and
close their petals at the same times.
In the month of May many sea-side blossoms appear; but in June they
burst forth in such wild profusion that we are at a loss to know which
to gather first:
"For who would sing the flowers of Jane,
Though from gray morn to blazing noon.
From blazing noon to dewy eve.
The chaplet of his song he weave,
Would find his summer daylight fail,
And leave half told the pleasing tale."
We must only attempt to pluck such as are most common, and most likely
to attract attention.
Many a sea-side cliff is adorned with the handsome pale-yellow
clusters of the sea-cabbage, which flowers from May until the late
autumnal months, and is very ornamental, hanging in tufts from the
crevices of the chalky heights. It grows from one to two feet high,
has woody stems, and leaves a deep green, tinged with purple and
yellow. It is very common on the Dover cliffs, where it is gathered,
and sold to be boiled and eaten. From it spring our numerous varieties
of cabbage; and this reminds me how very greatly we are indebted to
our sea-side plants for many of our most valuable vegetables: the
fresh crisp celery, the dainty asparagus, the beet, and sea-kale, in
addition to the cabbage, are all derived from our salt-marshes, and,
under careful cultivation, have become what they are.
The rest-harrow, which we gather in the cornfield, may also be found
adorning many a green patch on on the chalky cliff-side or sandy bank
near the sea. Its woody thorns are more abundant and stronger than
when when flourishing in richer soil. Its leaves are numerous and
small, its butterfly-shaped blossoms usually a purple-rose color, but
sometimes almost white. Near the sea-side, I have often found the
little see-pearl-wort, which requires close observation to detect it.
It grows upright, has tiny, delicate leaves, and flower-cups tinged
with a reddish-purple color.
Very common in the sand is the sea-rocket, a smooth, glaucous plant,
with pretty lilac-pink flowers, which often mixes its blossoms with
the white petals of the scurvy-grass.
But June flowers press upon us: here we have plentiful at Dover and
many other sea-side places the viper's bugloss, certainly one of the
handsomest wild-flowers, either of the neglected field or beach that
we have. It is a magnificent plant, sometimes attaining the height of
three feet, its rich purple blossoms, with their long bright-red
stamens, often extending half-way down the stems. It is peculiar for
the variety of tints it exhibits in its flowers, the buds being a rosy
red, but expanded blossom a rich purple, which gradually assumes a
deep blue. Sometimes it is found white. The stems and leaves are
covered with bristles and brownish warts, or tubercles. Its name is
taken from the resemblance the seeds bear to a viper's head, and its
spotted stem to the snake's skin; and in olden times the plant was
supposed to heal the bite of a viper. It flourishes best on a chalky
bill or sandy waste ground:
"Here the blue bugloss paints the sterile soil,"
and rears its rich spike of closely sent flowers with a stately air.
Though its foliage is coarse, its blossom is very beautiful; not easy,
however, together, for bees are ever hovering around it; {623}
"Flying solicitous from flower to flower,
Tasting each sweet that dwells
Within its scented valves";
and oft tearing their delicate wings among the thick, hairy prickles.
The common kidney-vetch flourishes luxuriantly by the sea-shore,
decking the heights with its handsome yellow flowers from May to
September. It crowds its blossoms into flower-cups, thickly covered
with down; and two such tufts or beads usually grow at the top of each
stem. It is as common a flower on the continent as with us, though it
varies in color--owing, Linnaeus tells us, to the nature of the soil.
The French call it _barbe de Jupiter_, Jupiter's beard. We also give
it the names of lady's-fingers and lambtoe. Clare tells us:
"The yellow lambtoe I have often got,
Sweet creeping o'er the banks in sunny time."
Daring June, the common pellitory of the wall spreads over many a
rocky spot, sometimes trailing its stems over the surface, and at
others rising erect, a foot high. Its leaves grow up the hairy stalk,
and are mixed with the small purple-red flowers that lie closely
against the stem. The white ox-eye, though loving best to bow in
beauty midst the waving grass of the meadow, may yet be found straying
near the coast; and very beautiful are its large solitary
flower-heads, with their rich golden centre and pure white ray.
Several thistles are to be found flourishing by the sea-coast,
blooming from June to September. Perhaps the most familiar is the
common sow-thistle, growing on almost every waste place, and greatly
relished by rabbits, on account of the milky juices it contains. Its
leagues are deeply notched, the lobes turned backward, its flowers
yellow. The milk-thistle is easily recognized by its large leaves
veined with white, and deep purple flowers. It is a prickly plant,
often growing as high as four or five feet. Though common in England,
it is rare in Scotland, and, I have red, is only to be found on the
rocky cliffs near Dumbarton Castle, where tradition tells it was
planted by Mary, Queen of Scots. The star-thistle may occasionally be
found among the wild blossoms of the sea-side, growing on cliff-tops,
or green patches of the beach. It has hard woody spines, standing out
from the flower-cup only, and in this differs from the other thistles;
which are usually covered with sharp bristles, and seem defiantly to
announce:
"I am sir Thistle, the surly,
The rough and the rude and the burly;
I doubt if you'll find
My touch quite to your mind,
Whether late be your visit or early."
July comes laden with a host of fair blossoms of her own, as numerous
as those of June:
"Bright gems of earth, In which perchance we see
What Eden was, what Paradise may be."
Perhaps one of the most attractive, as well as one of the first in
beauty, and blooming down almost to the water's edge, is the
yellow-horned poppy, scattering its crumpled golden blossoms with
every passing breeze on the surrounding sea-weed. Its stems and leaves
are a delicate blue-green, wearing the bloom that is called glaucous,
from which its botanical name is taken. It is hairy, and its peculiar,
curved, horn-like pods are often half a foot long. It is a showy,
handsome plant, but smells badly, and is said to be poisonous. Quite
as pretty, and far less harmful, is the sea-convolvulus, trailing its
rose-colored bells with yellow rays, and dark-green succulent leaves,
in clusters on the sandy links, where it presents a succession of
delicate, short-lived flowers; and equally common but less showy, are
the green blossoms and thick wavy leaves of the sea-beet (_Beta
maritima_), which, when cultivated, we often recognize as a useful
vegetable. I have often gathered near the sea the hound's-tongue,
easily recognized by its dark purple-red blossoms, and strong smell of
mice. Its soft downy leaves are supposed to resemble in form the
tongue of a dog, and from this it derives its Greek and common name.
It is a tall plant, often growing two feet hi. Its foliage is a dull
green, its flowers a rich claret color.
{624}
On the sandy downs and in the rock-crevices down even to the shore,
"Flourishing so gay and wildly free,
Upon the salt-marsh by the roaring sea,"
are the pink and white heads of the sea-pink, or well-known thrift, so
often used as a bordering in our flower-gardens, but here hanging in
little tufts from the rocks, thriving where little nourishment can be
afforded, and thus well meriting its name. Its leaves grow from the
root, and mostly resemble coarse grass. Its flowers form round heads
of lilac-pink blossoms, and crown downy stalks, some four inches high.
There, too, is
"The sea-lavender, which lacks perfume,"
and is a species of everlasting, retaining its color and form long
after being gathered. Its spike of blue-lilac flowers is very
handsome. There are several species of sea-lavender; and in August we
have the delicate, lilac-blue blossoms and bluish-green foliage of the
upright-spiked sea-lavender, so often gathered to deck the winter
vase. It is smaller both in leaf and flower than the former species.
Growing down, even amid the sand, we may now gather the compact head
of the tall eryngo, or sea-holly, which has blue blossoms, in shape
resembling the thistle's; and firm prickly leaves, beautifully veined,
and adorned with that pale sea-green bloom so common in our sea-side
plants. It grows about a foot high, and is stiff and rigid.
One of the purest-tinted blue flowers that we have may be found
flourishing by the sea. It is the narrow-leaved pale flax, a sweet,
delicate, fragile blossom, that drops its petals as we gather it. It
is a tall plant, with a solitary flower on each stem, and small
alternate leaves, adorning each to the root. Its stem is tough and
fibrous, like all its species. The flax cultivated for commerce is a
pretty pale-blue bell, erect and fragile, dancing and trembling with
the faintest whisper of the passing breeze. Mrs. Howitt well describes
it:
"Oh! the goodly flax-flower!
It groweth on the hill;
And be the breeze awake or asleep
It never standeth still!
It seemeth all astir with life,
As if it loved to thrive,
As if it had a merry heart
Within its stem alive."
How pretty are the little sendworts now in blossom, especially the
sea-pimpernel, or sea-side sandwort, which blooms in shining, glossy
patches only a few inches high. Its clustering white flowers are
almost hidden by the sick, crowding, succulent leaves. There are ten
species of sandwort. Perhaps the commonest of all is the sea-spurry
sandwort, which hangs its little blossoms in trailing tufts from the
cliff-sides.
In this month also we may gather the white-rayed flowers of the
sea-side feverfew, which often grows far down on the beach. Its
blossoms are the size of a daisy, its stems tick, its leaves stalky,
its growth low. And now also, decking the size of the banks, is the
perfoliate yellowwort with its bright yellow flowers, and pale
sea-green leaves, which grow in couplets, joining at the base, the
stalk passing through them. The plant grows about a foot high, is not
uncommon, and to be found in flourishing abundance on the Kentish
coast.
Fringing the summit of the tall sea-cliffs, and clothing with its
clusters of yellowish-white flowers and fleshy sea-green leaves the
many crevices on the steep sides of the rocks, we may see the
samphire, so plentiful on the southern shores, and especially at
Dover, where it is gathered during May 4 pickle. That there is danger
to the gatherer we may infer from Shakespeare's mention in King Lear,
whence the scene is laid near Dover:
"Half-way down
Hangs one that gathers samphire: dreadful trade!"
{625}
Several kinds of sea southern wood are now showing their green
flowers; the saltwort and funny-looking, jointed-branched, leafless
glasswort are to be gathered now, both so useful for the soda they
contain.
There is a species of nightshade often to be found flourishing on our
see beaches, with blossoms shaped like the potato-flower, but white,
and followed by black berries, highly poisonous.
These are also the dwarf-centaury and dwarf-tufted centaury, neither
growing beyond a few inches in height, both possessing light-green
stems and clusters of rose-colored blossoms.
The buck's-horn plantain is common on the sea-shore. It derives its
name from the peculiar cutting of its leaves.
Very common on the rocky bank is the wild mignonette. Though lacking
the sweet fragrance of the garden species, its pale greenish-yellow
spikes are very ornamental. The sea-side pea grows on the links and
banks of our beaches, but is uncommon. Its butterfly shaped blossoms
remind one of the sweet-pea of the garden:
"Where swelling peas on leafy stalks are seen,
Mixed flowers of red and azure shine between."
During the great famine of 1555, it is said that thousands of families
subsisted on the seeds contained in the pods of the sea-side pea.
Near the beach, I have often gathered the knot-grass, so named from
the knottiness of its stem, and to be found flourishing everywhere:
"By the lone quiet grave,
In the wild hedgerow, the knot-grass is seen,
Down in the rural lane,
Or on the verdant plain,
Everywhere humble, and everywhere green."
Shakespeare has called it "the hindering knot-grass," on account of
the obstacles its trailing, tangled stems offer to the husbandman.
Milton speaks of it as
"The knot grass, dew besprent."
It is familiar to almost every eye, forming little green patches even
between stones of our streets, its tiny pale-pink blossoms growing so
closely to the stem as to be half hidden among the leaves. Its seeds
and young buds afford a store of food for birds; and it is said that
swine and sheep love to feed upon it. Milton tells us,
"The chewing flocks
Had ta'en their supper of that savory herb,
The knot-grass."
It bears little resemblance to a grass but this reminds me that among
our sea-side plants the grasses are perhaps the most interesting, as
well as useful and important, and are often of great service by their
spreading mass of tough underground stems offering a strong resistance
to the inroads of the sea. Several of the shores of England are so
protected; and the greater part of the coast of Holland, being
composed of dikes, owes its security to the powerful obstacles the
peculiar growth of these grasses affords. Thus we see
"The commonest things may ofttimes be
Those of the greatest utility.
How many uses hath grass which groweth,
Wheresoever the wild wind bloweth."
Useful as the sea-side grasses are, however, we have not space in this
short paper to take more than a passing glance at them, remarking that
the two most deserving of notice for their value in sea-resistance are
the sea-wheat grass and the sea-reed.
I have often seen flourishing near the sea-coast the rich clusters of
the ragwort (_Senecio Jacoboea_), bright as the golden sunbeam, waving
its tall blossoms in the breeze, and emitting a strong smell of honey.
It opens its flowers first in July, but often,
"Coming like an after-thought,
When other flowers are vainly sought,"
lingers on until Christmas; and when cold winds and wintry snows have
withered every other flower, this remains,
"A token to the wintry earth that beauty liveth still".
Very pretty is the yellow carpet spread on the dry bank by the yellow
bed-straw, with its mass of tiny blossoms and slender thready leaves
of brilliant green. Its flowers, like those of the ragwort just
mentioned, also smell sweetly of honey. In the Hebrides, a
reddish-brown dye is extracted from its roots.
{626}
In September, we see the tall, handsome golden-rod, not only in our
woods and hedgeways, but also on the sea-side cliff, somewhat stunted
in growth, but still beautiful with its crowded clusters of golden
blossoms, over which butterflies, moths, and bees hover incessantly,
in spite of its
"Florets wrapped in silky down,
To guard it from the bee."
In the days of Queen Elizabeth it was sold in the London markets by
herb-dealers. It was supposed to cure wounds.
Then also the Michaelmas daisy, or sea-starwort, opens its pale lilac
petals, and continues to blossom until other flowers have nearly all
faded away:
"And the solo Lawson which can glad the eye
Is yon pale starwort nodding to the wind."
It often grows as high as three feet; its leaves are smooth, a sickly
green in color, and very succulent. At this time we shall also find
the marsh-mallow. It is a medicinal plant, containing a quantity of
starchy mucilage, which is formed into a paste, and taken as a cure
for coughs. Its flowers are a pretty rose-tint; its leaves soft,
downy, and very thick. It grows about two feet high, and is altogether
an attractive, handsome plant, the more more valued,
"Because a fair flower that illumines the scene
When the tempest of winter is near;
'Mid the frowns of adversity, cheerful of mien,
And gay, when all is dark and serene".
Such are a few of the sea-side blossoms to be gathered on our coasts.
Let my reader, next summer, take a ramble along the beach, and hunt
for themselves, when they may discover a host of fresh beauties rising
on all sides, creeping over the loose sand, topping the rocky heights,
or decking the grassy slopes--
"As though some gentle angel,
Commissioned love to bear,
Had wandered o'er the greensward,
And left her footprints there."
Let not the humblest, most neglected flower be discarded, for each
bears its own little mine of beauty, front with instruction, and the
promptings of pure and holy thoughts, that lead the mind from "nature
up to nature's God."
"Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege
Through all the years of this our life to lead
From joy to joy; for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e're prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful face, that all that we behold
Is full of blessings."
----------
ORIGINAL.
ON THE REQUEST OF THE DAUGHTER OF HERODIAS.
"I will that forthwith thou give me
in a dish the head of John the Baptist."
Fie, silly child! Thou askest more
Than Herod doth engage to grant--
As time hath truly shown.
That head, enshrouded in its gore,
Would be a price exorbitant
For all of Herod's throne.
------
{627}
ORIGINAL.
THE CHURCH AND MONARCHY.
Mr. Bancroft, the learned and philosophical historian of the United
states, in one of his volumes devoted to the history of the American
Revolution, makes the remark that "Catholics are in general inclined
to monarchy, and Protestants to republicanism." This is a very common
opinion with non-Catholic American writers, and a large portion of the
American people honestly fear that the rapid spread of catholicity in
this country is pregnant with danger to our republican institutions.
Dr. England, late bishop of Charleston, one of the most illustrious
Catholic prelates the country has ever had, maintained, on the
contrary, with great earnestness and force, that the church does not
favor monarchy, but does favor republicanism. What is the fact in the
case? The question is not doctrinal, but historical, and relates to
Catholics and Protestants, rather than and Protestantism.
It should be observed before entering into any investigation of the
historical facts in the case, that in the Catholic mind theology is
superior to politics; and no intelligent Catholic ever consents or can
consent to have his religion tried by a political standard. The
church, the Catholic holds, represents what is supreme, eternal,
universal, and immutable in human affairs, and that political
principle or system which conflicts with her, is by that fact alone
condemned as false; for it conflicts with the eternal, universal, and
immutable principles of the divine government, or the truth and
constitution of things. Religion is for every one who believes in any
at all the supreme law, and in case of conflict between religion and
politics, politics, not religion, must give way.
Well grounded in his faith, sure of his church, the Catholic has never
any dread of historical facts, and can always, so far as his religion
is concerned, enter upon historical investigations with perfect
freedom and impartiality of mind. He has no fear of consequences. Let
the historical fact turn out as it may, it can never warrant any
conclusions unfavorable to his religion. If the fact should place his
politics in conflict with his religion, he knows they are so far
untenable, and that he must modify or change them. The historian of
the United States is deeply penetrated with a sense of the
independence and supremacy of moral or spiritual truth, and with a
justice rare in non-Catholic writers, attributes much of the
corruption of French society in the last century to the subjection of
the church to the state. Most non-Catholic writers, however, consider
what is called Gallicanism as far more favorable to society than what
they call Ultramontanism; and in doing so, prove that they really,
consciously or unconsciously, assume the supremacy of the political
order, not of the religious. But in this they grossly err, and make
the greater yield to the less; for not only is religion in the nature
of things superior to politics, but one is always more certain of the
truth of his religion than he is or can be of the wisdom and soundness
of his politics.
The church teaches the divine system of the universe, asserts and
maintains the great catholic principles from which proceeds all life,
whether religious or political, and without which there can be neither
church nor state; but it is well known that she prescribes no
particular constitution of the state or form of civil government, for
no {628} particular constitution or form is or can be catholic, or
adapted alike to the wants and interests of all nations. Whatever is
catholic in politics, that is, universally true and obligatory, is
included in theology; what is particular, special, temporary, or
variable, the church leaves to each political community to determine
and manage for itself according to its own wisdom and prudence.
Every statesman worthy at all of the name knows that the same form of
government is not fitted alike to the wants and interests of all
nations, nor even of the same nation through all possible stages of
its existence; and hence there is and can be no catholic form of
government, and therefore the church, as catholic, can enjoin no
particular form as universally obligatory upon Catholics. Were she to
do so she would attempt to make the particular universal, and thus war
against the truth and the real constitution of things, and belie her
own catholicity. The principles of government, of all government, are
catholic, and lie in the moral or spiritual order, as do all real
principles. These the church teaches and insists on always and
everywhere with all her divine authority and energy; but their
practical application, saving the principles themselves, she leaves to
the wisdom and prudence of each political community. The principles
being universal, eternal, and unalterable, are within the province of
the Catholic theologian; the practical application of the principles,
which varies, and must vary, according to time and place, according to
the special wants and interests of each political community, are
within the province of the statesman.
Such being the law in the case, it is evident that the church does and
can prescribe no particular form of civil government, and Catholics
are free to be monarchists, aristocrats, or democrats, according to
their own judgment as statesmen. They are as free to differ among
themselves as to forms of government as other men are, and do differ
more or less among themselves, without thereby ceasing to be sound
Catholics. Mr. Bancroft, however, does not even pretend that the
church requires her children to be monarchists, and he more then once
insinuates that her principles, as Bishop England maintains, tend to
republicanism, the contrary of what is done by most non-Catholic
writers.
To determine what is the fact we must define our terms. _Monarchy_ and
_republic_ are terms often vaguely and loosely used. All governments
that have at their head a king or Emperor are usually called, by even
respectable writers, monarchies, and those that have not are usually
called republics, whether democratic like ancient Athens, aristocratic
like Venice prior to her suppression by General Bonaparte, or
representative like the United States. But this distinction is not
philosophical or exact. All governments, properly speaking, in which
the sovereignty is held to rest in the people or political community,
and the king or emperor holds from the community and represents the
the majority of the state, are Republican, as was Imperial Rome or is
Imperial France; all governments, on the other in which the
sovereignty vests not in the political community, but in the
individual and is held as a personal right, or as a private estate,
are in principal monarchical. This is, in reality, the radical
distinction between republicanism and monarchy, and between
civilization and barbarism, and it is so the terms should be
understood.
The key to modern history is the struggle between these two political
systems, or between Roman civilization and German barbarism, and
subsequently to Charlemagne, were especially between feudalism and
Roman imperialism. In this struggle the sympathies and influences of
church have been on the side against barbarism and feudalism, and in
favor of the Roman system, and therefore on the side of republicanism,
Rome, theoretically and in name, {629} remained a republic under the
emperor from Augustus to Augustulus. However arbitrary or despotic
some of the Caesars may have been and certainly were in practice, in
principle they were elective, and held their power from the political
community. The army had always the faculty of bestowing the military
title of Imperator or emperor, and all the powers aggregated to it, as
the tribunitial, the pontifical, the consular, etc., were expressly
conferred on Augustus by the senate and people of Rome. The
sovereignty vested in the political community never in the person of
the emperor. The emperor represented the state, but never was himself
the state. In principle Roman imperialism was republican, not in the
strict or absolute sense monarchical at all.
The barbarian system brought from the forests of Germany was in its
principle wholly different. Under it power was a personal right, and
not, as under Roman imperialism, a trust from the community. With the
barbarians there were tribes, nations, confederations, but no
commonwealth, no republic, no civil community, no political people, no
state. Republic, _res publica_, Scipio says, in the _Republica_ of
Cicero, cited by St. Augustine in his _De Civitate Dei_, means _res
populi_; and he adds, that by people is to be understood not every
association of the multitude, but a legal association for the common
weal. "Non esse omnem coetum multitudinis, sed coetum juris condensu
et utilitatis communione sociatum." [Footnote 175] In this sense
there was no people, no _res populi,_ or affairs of the people, under
the barbarian system, nor even under the feudal system to which, with
some Roman ideas it gave birth after Charlemagne. Absolute monarchy,
which alone is properly monarchy, according to Bishop England, did not
exist among the barbarians in its full development; but it existed in
germ, for its germ is in the barbarian chieftainship, in the fact that
with the barbarians power is personal, not political, a right or
privilege, not a trust, and every feudal noble developed is an
absolute monarch.
[Footnote 175: Apud St. Augustine, tom. vii. 75. B.]
These two systems after the conquest occupied the same soil. What
remained of the old Roman population continued, except in politics, to
be governed by the Roman law, _lex Romanorum_, and the barbarians by
the _lex barbarorum_, or their own laws and usages. But as much as
they despised the conquered race, the barbarians borrowed and
assimilated many Roman ideas. The ministers of the barbarian kings or
chiefs were for a long time either Romans or men trained in the Roman
schools, for the barbarians had no schools of their own, and the old
schools of the empire were at no time wholly broken up, and continued
their old course of studies with greater or less success till
superseded by modern universities. The story told us of finding a copy
of the Civil or Roman Law at Amalfi, in the eleventh century, a fable
in the sense commonly received, indicates that the distinction between
barbarian and Roman in that century was beginning to be effaced, and
that the Roman Law, as digested or codified by the lawyers of
Justinian, was beginning to become the common law in the West as it
long had been in the East, and still is in all the western nations
formed within the limits of the old Roman empire, unless England be an
exception. There was commenced, even before the downfall of Rome, a
process of assimilation of Roman ideas and manners by the barbarians,
which went on with greater force and rapidity in proportion as the
barbarians were brought into the communion of the church. This process
is still going on, and has gone furthest in France and our own
country.
The barbarian chiefs sought to unite in themselves all the powers that
had been aggregated to the Roman emperor, and to hold them not from
the political community, but in their own personal right, which, had
they {630} succeeded, would have made them monarchs in the fall and
absolute sense of the term. Charlemagne tried to revive and
re-establish Roman imperialism, but his attempt was premature; the
populations of the empire were in his time not sufficiently Romanized
to enable him to succeed. He failed, and his failure resulted in the
establishment of feudalism--the chief elements of which were brought
from Germany. The Roman element, through the influence of the church
and the old population of the empire, had from the close of the fifth
century to the opening of the ninth acquired great strength, but not
enough to become predominant. The Germanic or barbarian elements,
re-enforced as they were by the barbarians outside of both the church
and the empire, were too strong for it, and the empire of Charlemagne
was hardly formed before it fell to pieces. But barbarism did not
remain alone in feudalism, and Roman principles, to some extent, were
incorporated into feudal Europe, and the Roman law was applied,
wherever it could be, to the tenure of power, its rights and
obligations; to the regulation, forfeiture, and transmission of fiefs,
and to the administration of justice between man and man, as we apply
the Common Law in our own country. But the constitution of the feudal
society was essentially anti-Roman and at war with the principles of
the Civil or Roman Law. Hence commenced a struggle between the feudal
law and the civil--feudalism seeking to retain its social
organization based on distinctions of class, privileges, and
corporations; and the civil law, based on the principle of the
equality of all men by the natural law, seeking to eliminate the
feudal elements from society, and to restore the Roman constitution,
which makes power a trust derived from the community, instead of a
personal right or privilege held independently of the community.
In this struggle the church has always sympathized with the Romanizing
tendencies. It was under the patronage of the Pope that Charlemagne
sought to revive Imperial Rome, and to re-establish in substance the
Roman constitution of society; but his generous efforts ended only in
the systematization and confirmation of feudalism. The Franconian and
especially the Swabian in emperors attempted to renew the work of
Charlemagne, but were opposed and defeated by the church, not because
she had any sympathy with feudalism, but because these emperors
undertook to unite with the civil and military powers held by the
Roman emperors the pontifical power, which before the conversion of
the empire they also held. This she could not tolerate, for by the
Christian law the Imperial power and the pontifical are separated, and
the temporal authority, as such, has no competency in spirituals. The
Popes, in their long and severe struggles with the German emperors, or
emperors of the holy Roman empire, as they styled themselves, did not
struggle to preserve feudalism, but the independence of the church,
threatened by the Imperial assumption of the pontifical authority held
by the emperors of pagan Rome. This is the real meaning of those
struggles which have been so strangely misapprehended, and so grossly
misrepresented by the majority of historians, as Voigt and Leo, both
Protestants, have conclusively shown. St. Gregory VII., who is the
best representative of the church in that long war, did not struggle
to establish a theocracy as so many foolishly repeat, nor to obtain
for the church or clergy a single particle of civil power, but to
maintain the spiritual independence of the church, or her independent
and supreme authority over all her children in things spiritual,
against the Emperor, who claimed, indirectly at least, supreme
authority in spirituals as well as in temporal's. For the same reason
Gregory IX. And Innocent IV. Opposed Frederic II., the last and
greatest of the Hohenstaufen, the Ward in his childhood of Innocent
III. {631} Frederic undertook to revise Roman imperialism against
mediaeval feudalism, but unhappily he remembered that the pagan
Emperor was Pontifex Maximus, as well as Imperator. Had he simply
labored to substitute the Roman constitution of society for the feudal
without seeking to subject the church to the empire, he might have
been opposed by all those Catholics, whether lay or cleric, whose
interests were identified with feudalism, but not by the church
herself; at least nothing indicates that she would have opposed him,
for her sympathies were not and have never been with the feudal
constitution of society.
In the subsequent struggles between the two systems, the church, as
far as I have discovered, has uniformly sympathized with kings and
kaisers only so far as they simply asserted the republican principles
of the Roman constitution against feudalism, and has uniformly opposed
them, whenever they claimed or attempted to exercise pontifical
authority, or to make the temporal supreme over the spiritual, that is
to say, to subject conscience to the state. But in this she has been
on the side of liberty in its largest and truest sense. Liberty, as
commonly understood, or as it enters into the life, the thought, and
conscience of modern Christian nations, is certainly of Greek and
Roman, not barbarian origin, enlarged and purified by Christianity.
The pagan republic united in the sovereign people both the pontifical
and imperial powers as they were in the pagan emperors, and hence
subjected the individual, both exteriorly and interiorly, to the
state, and left him no rights which he could assert before the
republic. The Christian republic adds to the liberty of the state, the
liberty of the individual, and so far restricts the power of the state
over individuals. This personal or individual freedom, unknown in the
Graeco-Roman republic, Guizot and many others tell us was introduced
by the German invaders of the Roman empire. They assign it a barbarian
origin; but I am unable to agree with them, because I cannot find that
the German barbarians ever had it. The barbarian, as the feudal,
individual freedom was the freedom of the chief or noble, not the
freedom of all men, or of all individuals irrespective of class or
caste. This universal individual freedom, asserted and in a measure
secured by the Christian republic, could not be a development of a
barbarian idea, or come by way of logical deduction from the barbarian
individual freedom, for it rests on a different basis, and is
different in kind. The only ancient people with whom I can find any
distinct traces of it are the Hebrew people. It is plainly asserted in
the laws of Moses for the Jewish people. Christianity asserts it for
all, both Jews and Gentiles, in that noble maxim. We must obey God
rather than men. Every martyr to the Christian faith asserted it, in
choosing rather to be put to death in the most frightful and
excruciating forms than to yield up the freedom of conscience at the
command of the civil authority, and the church shows that she approves
it by preserving the relics of martyrs, and proposing them to the
perpetual veneration of the faithful. The martyr witnesses alike to
faith and the freedom of conscience.
To this individual freedom, as the right of manhood, the real enemy is
the feudal society, which is founded on privilege; and where then
should the church be found but on the side of those who asserted
Graeco-Roman civilization as enlarged, purified, and invigorated by
Christianity against the barbarian elements retained by the feudal
society? It was her place as the friend of liberty and civilization.
There can be no question that since the beginning of the fifteenth
century the interests of humanity, liberty, religion, have been with
the kings and people, as against the feudal nobility. It is owing to
this fact, not to any partiality for monarchy, even in its
representative sense, that the church has supported the monarchs in
their struggle against feudal privileges and corporations.
{632}
But it is said that she has favored Roman imperialism not only against
feudalism, but also against democracy. This is partially true, but she
has done so for the very reason that in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries she opposed the German emperors, because everywhere, except
in the United States, it seeks to unite in the republic or state,
after the manner of the pagan republic, both the imperial and the
pontifical powers. In the United States this has not been done; our
republic recognizes its own incompetency in spirituals, protects all
religions not _contra bonos mores_, and establishes none; and here the
church has never opposed republicanism or democracy. In Europe she has
done so, not always, but generally since the French revolution assumed
to itself pontifical authority. In the beginning of the French
revolution, while it was confined to the correction of abuses, the
redress of grievances, and the extension and confirmation of civil
liberty, the Pope, Pius VI., the cardinals, prelates, and people of
Rome, encouraged it; and the Pope censured it only when it transcended
the civil order, made a new distribution of dioceses, enacted a civil
constitution for the clergy, and sought to separate the Gallican
Church from the Catholic Church, precisely as the Popes had previously
censured Henry IV., Frederic Barbarossa, Frederic II., Louis of
Bavaria, and others. She opposes to-day European democrats, not
because they are democrats, but because they claim for the people the
pontifical power, and seek to put them in the place of the church,
nay, in the place of God The more advanced among them utter the words,
people-pontiff and people-God, as well as people-king, and your German
democrats assert almost to a man humanity as the supreme God. She
opposes them not because they make deadly war on monarchy and
aristocracy, and assert the sovereignty, under God, of the people, but
because the war against catholic truth, the great eternal, universal,
and immutable principles of the divine government, which lie at the
basis of all government and indeed of society itself, and of which
she is the divinely appointed guardian in human affairs. If she
supports the European governments against them, it is not because
those governments are monarchical or aristocratic in their
constitution, but because they represent, however imperfectly, the
interests of humanity, social order, civilization, without which there
is and can be no real progress. She cannot oppose them because they
seek to establish democratic government unless they seek to do so by
unlawful or unjust means, because she prescribes for the faithful no
particular form of civil government, and cannot do it, because no
particular form is or can be Catholic. She offers no opposition to
American democracy.
The church opposes, by her principles, however, what is called
Absolutism, or what is commonly understood by Oriental despotism, that
is, monarchy as understood by Bishop England, under which the monarch
is held to be the absolute owner of the soil and the people of the
nation, and may dispose of either at his pleasure. This is evident
from the fact that when she speaks officially of the state generally,
without referring to any particular state, she calls it _republica_,
the republic; especially is this the case when she speaks of the civil
society in distinction from the ecclesiastical society. Our present
Holy Father, in his much miss apprehended and grossly misrepresented
Encyclical of December 8, 1864, calls the civil community _republica_,
or commonwealth. St. Augustine denies that God has given to man the
lordship of man. He gave man the lordship or dominion over irrational
creations, but not of the rational made in his own image, "Rationalem
factum ad maginem suam noluit nisi irrationabilibus, dominari: non
hominem homini, sed hominem {633} pecori. Inde primi justi pastores
pecorum magis quam reges hominum constituti sunt." [Footnote 176]
Hence he denies that the master has the lordship of his servants or
slaves, and admits slavery only as a punishment, as does the civil law
itself. For the same reason we may conclude against despotism. If the
master has not the absolute lordship of his servants, far less can a
king have the absolute lordship of a whole nation. St. Gregory the
great cites St. Augustine with approbation, so also, if my memory
serves me, does St. Gregory VII., the famous Hildebrand, who tells the
princes of his time that they hold their power from violence, wrong,
Satan.
[Footnote 176: De Civit. Dei. Opera, tom. vii. 900.]
Catholic writers of the highest authority St. Augustine, St. Thomas,
Bellarmin, and Suarez, whom to cite is to cite nearly the whole body
of Catholic theologians, follow in the main the political philosophy
of Greece and Rome as set forth by Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero; and
there is no doubt that, while vesting sovereignty in the community, or
the people politically associated, they generally incline to monarchy,
tempered by a mixture of aristocracy and democracy, as does Aristotle
himself. But the monarchy they favor is always the representative
monarchy, the Roman, not the feudal or the oriental. The prince or
king, according to them, holds his power from the people or community,
_jure humano_, not _jure divino_, and holds it as a trust, not as a
personal and indefeasible right. It is amissible; the king may forfeit
it, and be deprived of it. St. Augustine asserts, and Suarez after
him, the inherent right of the people or political society to change
their magistrates and even their form of government; and the Popes, on
more occasions than one in the middle ages, not only excommunicated
princes, but declared them by a sovereign judgment deprived of their
crowns, which proves, if nothing else, that kings and kaisers are held
by the church to be responsible to the nation for the manner in which
they use their trusts, for the Popes never declared a forfeiture
except on the ground that it was incurred by a violation of the civil
constitution.
There were numerous republics in Europe before the reformation, as
Venice, Genoa, Florence, the Swiss Cantons, and many others, not to
speak of the Lombard municipalities, the Hanse towns, and the Flemish
or Belgian communes, all of which sprang up during Catholic times, and
were founded and sustained by a Catholic population. Nearly all of
them have now disappeared, and some of them almost within our own
memory; but I am not aware that there is a single republic in Europe
founded and sustained by Protestants, unless the United Dutch
Provinces, now a monarchical state, be a partial exception. The fact
that Catholics as a body are wedded to monarchy is therefore not
susceptible of very satisfactory proof, not even if we take monarchy
only as representing the majesty of the people, in which sense it is
republican in principle.
Protestantism is in itself negative, and neither favors nor disfavors
any form of government; but the reformation resulted, wherever it
prevailed in Europe, in uniting what the church from the first had
struggled to keep separate, the pontifical and the imperial or royal
powers, and also in maintaining the feudal monarchy instead of the
Roman or representative monarchy. In every nation that accepted the
reformation the feudal monarchy was retained, and still subsists. The
crown in them all is an estate, as in England, and in some of them is,
in fact, the only estate recognized by the constitution. The elector
of Saxony, the landgrave of Hesse, the margrave of Brandenburg, the
kings of Sweden, of Denmark, and of England and Scotland, became each
in his own dominions supreme pontiff, and united in his own person the
supreme civil and ecclesiastical powers. The same in principle {634}
became the fact in the Protestant Netherlands and the Protestant
cantons of Switzerland; and though some Protestant European states
tolerate dissent from the state religion, there is not one that
recognizes the freedom of religion, or that does not subject religion
to the civil power. The political sense of the reformation was the
union of the imperial and pontifical powers in the political
sovereign, and the maintenance of the feudal monarchy and nobility, or
the constitution of society on feudal principles. Nothing, then, is or
can be further from the fact than that Protestants generally incline
to republicanism, except the pretense that Protestantism emancipates
the mind and establishes religious liberty.
No doubt, the feudal monarchy and nobility struggled in all Europe to
maintain themselves against the Greco-Roman system represented by the
Civil Law and favored by the theologians of the church and her supreme
pontiffs. So far as the struggle was against the feudal nobility, or,
as I may term it, the system of privilege, the church, the kings, and
the people have in their general action been on the same side; and
hence in France, where the struggle was the best defined, the great
nobles were the first to embrace the reformation; they came very near
detaching the kingdom itself from the church, during the wars of the
Ligue, and were prevented only by the conversion, interested or
sincere, of Henri Quatre. Henry saw clearly enough that monarchy could
not struggled successfully in France against the feudal nobility
without the support of the church and the people. Richelieu and
Mazarin saw the same, and destroyed what remained of the feudal
nobility as a political power. They, no doubt, did it in the interest
and for the time to the advantage of monarchy. Louis XIV. concentrated
in himself all the powers of the state, and could say "_L'état, c'est
moi_--I am the state," and tried hard to grasp the pontifical power,
and to be able to say, "_L'église, c'est moi_--I am the church;" but
failed. Always did and do kings and emperors, whether Catholic or
non-Catholic, seek to enlarge their power and to gain to themselves
the supreme control not only of civil but also of ecclesiastical
affairs, and courtiers, whether lay or cleric, are always but too
ready to sustain absolute monarchy. Warring against the system of
privilege, for national unity against the disintegrating tendencies of
feudalism, monarchy threatens in the seventeen and eighteenth
centuries to become absolute in all Europe, but it met with permanent
success in no state that did not adopt the reformation, and ceased to
be Catholic.
I hold that Roman constitution, as modified and amended by
Christianity, is far better for society and more in accordance with
religion and liberty, then the feudal constitution, which is
essentially barbaric. If we look at Europe as it really was during the
long struggle hardly yet ended, we shall see that it was impossible to
break up the feudal constitution of society without for the moment
giving to the kings and undue power, which in its turn would need to
be resisted. But in all countries that remained Catholic, monarchy was
always treated as representative by the theologians, and the
republican doctrines that subsequent to the reformation found
advocates in Protestant states were borrowed either from the agents or
from Catholic writers--for the most part, probably, from the mediaeval
monks, of whom modern liberals know so little and against whom they
say so much. It was only in those countries where the reformation was
followed and religion subjected to the state that the feudal monarchy
developed into the oriental. England under Henry VIII., Edward VI.,
Elizabeth Tudor, and James and Charles Stuart, had lost nearly all its
old liberties, and nearly all power was centred in the crown. The
resistance offered to Charles I. was {635} not to gain new but to
recover old liberties, with some new and stronger guaranties. The
Protestant princes of northern Germany governed as absolutely as any
oriental despot. The movement toward republicanism started in the
south, not in the north, in Catholic not in Protestant states. The
fact is patent and undeniable, explain it as you will.
I admit that Catholic princes, as well as Protestant, sought to grasp
the pontifical power, and to subject the church in their respective
dominions to their own authority, but they never fully succeeded. The
civil power claimed in France more than belonged to it; but while it
impeded the free movements of the Gallican Church, it never succeeded
in absolutely enslaving it. Louis XIV., or even Napoleon the First,
never succeeded in making himself the head of the Gallican Church; and
the Constitutional church created by the Revolution, and which, like
the Church of England, was absolutely dependent on the civil power,
has long since disappeared and left no trace behind. In Spain,
Portugal, Naples, Tuscany, Austria, attempts to subject religion to
the state have not been wanting, but, though doing great harm to both
the ecclesiastical and the civil society, they have never been
completely successful. It is only in Protestant states that they have
fully succeeded, or rather, I should say, in non-Catholic states, for
the church is as much a slave in Russia as in Great Britain.
Bossuet, courtier and high-toned monarchist as he was, and as much as
he consented to yield to the king, never admitted the competency of
the king in scriptuals strictly so called; and if he yielded to the
king on the question of the regalia, it was only on the ground of an
original concession from the head of the church to the kings of
France, or the immemorial custom of the kingdom, not as an inherent
right of the civil power. He went too far in the Four Articles of 1682
to meet the approbation of Innocent XI., but he did not fall into
heresy or schism. And it may be alleged in his defence, that if he had
not gone thus far the court would most likely have gone further, and
have actually separated the Gallican Church from the Holy See.
Bossuet was unquestionably a monarchist and something of a courtier,
though he appears to have had always the best interests of religion at
heart; and we can hardly say that he did not take the best means
possible in his time of promoting them. As one of the preceptors of
the Dauphin, father of the Duke of Burgundy, of whom Fénelon was the
principal preceptor, he taught the political system acceptable to the
king; but he impressed on his pupil as much as possible under that
system a sense of his responsibility, his duty to regard his power as
a high trust from God to be exercised without fear or favor for the
good of the people committed to his charge. Fénelon went further, and
hinted that the nation had not abdicated its original rights, and
still retained the right to be consulted in the management of its
affairs; and he was dismissed from his preceptorship, forbidden to
appear at court, and exiled to his diocese, while every possible
effort, in which it is to be regretted that Bossuet took a prominent
part, to degrade him as a man and a theologian, and to procure his
condemnation as a heretic, was made by the French court. But heretic
he was not; he simply erred in the use of language which, though it
had been used by canonized saints, was susceptible of an heretical
sense. The Congregation condemned the language, not the man, nor his
real doctrine. He retracted the language, not the doctrine, and
edified the world by his submission.
There is hardly any doctrine further removed from every form of
republicanism than that of the divine right of kings, defended by
James I. of England in his Remonstrance for the Divine Right of Kings
and the Independency of their Crowns, written in reply to a speech of
the {636} celebrated Cardinal Duperron in the States-General of France
in 1614--the last time the States-General were convoked till convoked
by the unhappy Louis XVI. at Versailles, in May, 1789. In that work, a
copy of the original edition of which, as well as of "his majestie's
speech in the Star-chamber," now lies before me, their kingship
immediately from God, and are accountable to him alone for the use
they made of their power. He denies their accountability alike to the
Pope and the people. This was and really is the doctrine, if not of
all Protestants, at least of the Anglican Church and of all Protestant
courts; but it is not and never was a Catholic doctrine. The utmost
length in the same direction that any Catholic writer of note, except
Bossuet, ever went, so far as I can find, is that the king, supposing
him to be elected by the people, does, when so elected, reign _de jure
divino_ or by divine right; but Suarez [Footnote 177] refutes them,
and maintains that the royal power emanates from the community, and is
exercised, _formaliter_, by human right, _de jure humano_, and thus
asserts the real republican principle. Balmes, in his great work on
the Influence of Catholicity and Protestantism on European
Civilization compared, cites an instance of a Spanish monk who in the
time of Philip II. ventured one day to preach the irresponsibility of
the king, but was compelled by the Inquisition to retract his doctrine
publicly, in the very pulpit from which he had preached it.
[Footnote 177: De Legibus, lib. iii., cap. 3 and 4, i.]
He who has studied somewhat profoundly the internal political history
of the so-called Latin nations of Europe, will find that they have
had, from very early times, a strong tendency to republicanism, and
even to democracy, and that the tendency has been checked never by the
church, but by the kings and feudal nobility. The doctrines of 1789
were no novelty in France even in the thirteenth century, and they
were preached very distinctly and very boldly in the Ligue when the
nation was threatened with a non-Catholic or Huguenot king, even by
Jesuits. The great Dominican and Franciscan orders have never shown
any strong attachment to monarchy in any form, and have rarely been
the courtiers or flatterers of power. That the sad effects of the old
French revolution produced a reaction in many Catholic minds, as well
as in many Protestant minds, in favor of monarchy, is very true; and
perhaps the most influential portion of European Catholics, living as
they do in the midst of a revolution that makes war on the church, on
civil order, on society, on civilization itself, cling to the royal
authority as the lesser evil and as their only security, under God,
for the future of religion. And it is not strange that they should.
But this, whether wise or otherwise, is only accidental, and no people
will be more loyal republicans than Catholics, when the republic gives
them security for life and property, and more than all, for the free
and full exercise of their religion as Catholics, as is the case in
the United States.
The republic of the United States, we are told, was founded by
Protestants, and it is only the United States that can give the
slightest coloring to the pretense that Protestants are inclined to
republicanism. But, closely examined, the fact gives less coloring
than is commonly supposed. The republic of the United States can
hardly be said to be founded either by Catholics or Protestants: it
was founded by Providence, not by men. The Puritans, the most disposed
to republicanism of any of the original colonists, were dissenters
from the Church of England, and the principles on which they dissented
were in the main those which they had borrowed or inherited from
Catholic tradition. They objected to the Church of England that she
allowed the king to be both king and pontiff, and subjected religion
to the civil power. In this they only followed the example of the
Popes. They {637} with the Popes denied the competency of the civil
power in spirituals. This was the principle of their dissent, as it
has recently been the principle of the separation of the Free Kirk in
Scotland from the national church. As the king was the head of the
Church of England, making it a royal church, they were naturally led
to defend their dissent on republican principles. M. Guizot seems to
regard the English revolution, which made Cromwell Lord Protector of
the realm, as primarily political; but with all due respect to so
great an authority, I venture to say that it was primarily religious,
that its first movement was a protest against the authority of the
king or parliament to ordain anything in religion not prescribed by
the word of God. I state the principle universally, without taking
notice of the matters accidentally associated with it, and so stated
it is a Catholic principle, always asserted and insisted on by the
Popes. It was primarily to carry out this principle, and to regain the
civil liberties lost by the nation through the reformation, but not
forgotten, that they resisted the king, and made a republican
revolution, which very few foresaw or desired. The Puritans who
settled in the wilds of America brought with them the ideas and
principles they had adopted before leaving England, and if they had
republican tendencies, they were hardly republicans.
Mr. Bancroft, in Volume IX. of his History of the United States, just
published, shows very clearly that at the beginning of their disputes
with the mother country the colonists were not generally republican in
the ordinary sense of the word, but attached to monarchy after the
English fashion, and also that the struggle in the minds of the
colonists was long and severe before they reluctantly abandoned
monarchy and accepted republicanism. The American revolution did not
originate in any desire to suppress monarchy as it existed in Great
Britain and establish republicanism, but to resist the encroachments
of the mother country on their rights as British colonists, or rather,
as British subjects. The rights of man they asserted had been derived
from the civil law, for the most part through medium of the common
law, and the writings, if not of Catholic theologians, at least of
Catholic lawyers. They held as republicans not from Protestantism, but
chiefly from Greece and Rome. Moreover, a monarchical government was
impracticable, and there really was no alternative for the American
people but republican government or colonial dependence. In the main
our institutions were the growth of the country, and were very little
influenced by the political theories of the colonists or the political
wisdom and sagacity of American statesmen. Hence they are more
strictly the work of Providence than of human foresight or human
intelligence and will. It is therefore that their permanence and
growth are to be counted on. They have their root in the soil, and are
adapted to both the soil and the climate. They are of American origin
and growth.
Religious liberty is not, as I have shown, of Protestant origin. Most
of the colonists held the Catholic principle of the incompetency of
the civil power in spirituals, but the greater part of them held that
the civil power is bound to recognize and to provide for the support
by appropriate legislation of the true religion, and that only. Yet as
they were not agreed among themselves as to which is the true
religion, or what is the true sense of the revealed word, and having
no authoritative interpreter recognized as such by all, and no one
sect being strong enough to establish itself and to suppress the
others, there was no course practicable but to protect all religions
not _contra banos mores_, and leave each individual free before the
law to choose his own religion and to worship God according to the
dictates of his own conscience. This was of absolute necessity in our
case if we were to form a political community and carry on civil
government at all.
{638}
I do not claim that Catholics founded civil and religious liberty in
the United States, nor do I deny that so far as men had a hand in
founding them, they were founded by Protestants, but I do contend that
our Protestant ancestors acted in regard to them on Catholic rather
than on Protestant principles. We have so often heard civil and
religious liberty spoken of as the result of the reformation that many
people really believe it, and many good honest American citizens are
really afraid that the rapid increase of Catholicity in the country
threatens ruin to our free institutions. But the only liberty
Protestantism, as such, has ever yet favored, is the liberty of the
civil power to control the ecclesiastical. There is no danger to any
other liberty from the spread of Catholicity. There is a great
difference between accepting and sustaining a democratic government
where it already legally exists, and laboring to introduce it in
opposition to the established and to the habits, customs, and usages
of the people where it does not exist. And even if Catholics in other
countries had a preference for the monarchical form, they would not
dream of introducing it here, and would be led by their own
conservative principles, if here, to oppose it, since nothing in their
religion requires them, as a Catholic duty, to support one particular
form of government rather than another.
Protestantism affords in its principles no basis for either civil or
religious liberty. Its great doctrine, that which it opposes as a
religion to the church, is the absolute moral and spiritual inability
of man, or the total moral and spiritual depravity of human nature, by
the fall. This is the central principle of the reformation, from which
all its distinctive doctrines radiate. This doctrine denies all
natural liberty and all natural virtue, and hence the reformation
maintains justification without works, by faith alone, in which man is
passive, not active, and that all the works of unbelievers or the
unregenerate are sins. Man is impotent for good, and does not and
cannot even by grace concur with grace. All his thoughts and deeds our
only evil, and that continually, and even the regenerate continue to
sin after regeneration as before, only God does not impute there seems
to them, but for his dear Son's seek turns away his eyes from them,
and imputes to them the righteousness of Christ, and with it covers
their iniquities. There is no ground on which to assert the natural
rights of man, for the fall has deprived man of all his natural
rights; and for republican equality the Reformation phones at best the
aristocracy of grace, of the elect, as was taught by Wickliffe, and
attempted to be realized by Calvin in Geneva, and by the Puritans in
New England, who confined the elective franchise and eligibility to
the saints, which is repugnant to both civil and religious liberty for
all men.
It is time that our historians and popular writers should reflect a
little on what they are saying, when they assert that the reformation
emancipated the mind and prepared the way for civil and religious
freedom. This has become a sort of cant, and Catholics here it
repeated so often that some of them almost think that it cannot be
without some foundation, and therefore that there must be something
uncatholic in civil and religious liberty. It is all a mistake, and
illusion, or a delusion. The principles of the reformation, as far as
principles it had, were and are in direct conflict with them, and
whatever progress either has made has been not buy it, but in spite of
it, by means and influences it began its career by repudiating. The
man reared in the bosom of the reformation has no conception of real
religious, civil, or mental liberty till he is converted to the
Catholic faith, and enters as a freeman into the Catholic Church.
I have dwelt at length on this subject for the sake of historical
truth, and also to quiet the fears of my non-Catholic countrymen that
the spread {639} of the church in our country will endanger our
republican or democratic system of government. That system of
government is quite as acceptable to Catholics as it is to
Protestants, and accords far better with Catholic principles then with
the principles of the reformation. The church does not make our system
of government obligatory on all nations; she directly enjoins it
nowhere, because no one system is adapted alike to all nations; and
each nation, under God, is free to adapt its political institutions to
its own wants, taste, and genius; but she is satisfied with it here,
and requires her children to be loyal to it. It is here the law, and
as such I supported it. I might not support a similar system for Great
Britain, France, or Russia; because, though it fits us, it might not
fit equally well the British, the French, or the Russians, or as well
as the systems they already have fit them. My coat may not fit my
neighbor, and my neighbor's coat may not fit me. I am neither as a
Catholic nor as a statesman a political propagandist. But I love my
own country with an affection I was unconscious of as a Protestant,
and Americans bred up Catholics will always be found to be among our
most ardent patriots, and our most stanch defenders of both civil and
religious freedom.
The mistake is that people are too ready to make a religion of their
politics, and to seek to make the system of government they happen to
be enamored of for themselves a universal system, and to look upon
all nations that do not accept it, or not blessed with it, as deprived
of the advantages of civil society. They make their system the
standard by which all institutions, all men and nations, are to be
tried. They become political bigots, and will tolerate no political
theories but their own. Hence, the American people are apt to suppose
there is no political freedom where our system of government does not
prevail; and to conclude because the church recognizes the legitimacy
in other forms of governments in other countries, and does not preach
a crusade against them, that she is the enemy of free institutions and
social progress. All this is wrong. Religion is one and catholic, and
obligatory upon all alike; political systems, save in the great
ethical principles which underlie them, are particular, national, and
are obligatory only on the nation that adopts them. There are catholic
principles of government, but no catholic or universal form of
government. Our government is best for us, but that does not prove
that in political matters we are wiser or better than other civilized
nations, or that we have the right to set ourselves up as the model
nation of the world. Other nations may not be wholly forsaken by
Providence. Non-Catholic Americans cry out against the church that she
is anti-republican; but if we were monarchists we should cry out as
did the monarchical party in the sixteenth century, that she is
anti-monarchical and hostile to the independence of kings. Let us
learn that she may in one age or country support one form of civil
constitution, and without inconsistency support a different system in
another.
--------
{640}
From All the Year Round.
"DEO OPT. MAX"
Art thou drowsy, dull, indifferent,
Folder of the hands,
Dreaming o'er the silent falling
Of life's measured sands?
Living without aim or motion,
Save thyself to please,
Careless as the beasts that perish,
Sitting at thine ease?
Not for thee the mighty message
Rings in startling tone;
Vainly would its peeling accents
Strike through hearts of stone.
Sounding o'er the clash and clatter
Of this earth's vain din,
Unto you, that live in earnest,
And that work to win,
Thus it speaks: "Aspirants, toilers
For some lofty gain,
See ye spend not strength and spirits,
Hope and faith, in vain!
"All that soars past self is noble--
Every upward aim--
Make it nobler yet--the noblest!
And immortal fame!
"Let not good or great content ye--
Higher and still higher,
Only for the best, the greatest,
Labor and aspire!
"Spurning all that's partial, doubtful,
All your vigor bend
(Worthiest aim and worthiest effort)
To a perfect end!
"Thus have all true saints before ye,
All true heroes striven,
Reaching for the best, the highest,
Beyond earth to heaven."
------
{641}
Translated from the French.
ROBERT; OR, THE INFLUENCE OF A GOOD MOTHER.
CHAPTER FIRST.
"Although young on the earth,
I am already alone.
. . . . .
And when I ask myself
Where are those I love?
I look at the green turf."
LAMARTINE.
THE ORPHAN.
The traveler who passes through the village of the baths of Mount
Dore, situated at the base of the mountain of Angle, will find that
between the mountains the little streams of Dore and Dogne unites, and
take the name of the river Dordogne. In looking at the course of this
new-born River, he will see to the left of the mountain of Ecorchade,
thus named for its ruggedness and its deep ravines. This mountain
crumbles away each day under the powerful hand of time, and its
volcanic wrecks move the valley with strange sounds, which the echo
takes up and wafts to the most distant spots. On the other side of the
valley, to the right of the mountain, and in front of Ecorchade, is
another mountain, the round top of which is covered with verdure and
with wood. Its base is formed of basaltic columns of black, white, and
gray rocks of different shapes and sizes, which stand there like a
troop of phantoms. Near the base, and in one of the fissures of this
mass of rocks, piled up by some giant hand, there was, about
twenty-five years ago, a little house, constructed, one might imagine,
by the spirit of the mountain, to serve as a refuge for travellers
when the furious children of the tempest were unchained. Hidden by the
abrupt flanks of the mountain, and masked in the spring and summer by
the dense foliage of trees centuries old, this retreat suddenly became
visible to mortal eye. But the chief interest attached to it is, that
for twelve years it was inhabited by a high-bred lady, who chose this
secluded spot, and placed herself, one might say, on the first step of
this gigantic ladder, which seemed by degrees to draw her nearer to
heaven, and away from the vain pursuits of earth. She came unattended,
carrying in her arms an infant several months old. This child, her
son, was the object of her most tender care, and was the only thing
that was to endear her to this savage solitude. From whence came this
person, who was she, and what were her resources for living? No one
knew. Her real name even was to remain a mystery for all, even for
those eager and pitiless people who are always ready to unravel the
causes of secret sorrow, and who rejoice when they can see tears and
suffering. Such people are like a species of wasp that only approach
to sting you most cruelly. The people of the valley had on many
occasions tried to stop this young woman and capture her confidence by
testimonials of friendship and feigned sensibility, but they had seen
their insidious advances repulsed with such coldness that, deceived
and disappointed, they were obliged to put an end to their efforts.
Finally, when all curiosity had subsided and given place to the most
complete indifference, they learned in some way that she called
herself Madame Dormeuil, and her little boy Robert. There was one
person, however, who had received the intimate confidence of Madame
Dormeuil, and that was the curé of the village, and from time to time
he was seen directing his steps toward the solitary abode, where more
than one indiscreet eye had wished to penetrate. At the time this
story opens it is {642} night, one of those glorious nights of the
month of May, nights full of sweet mysteries and soft perfumes, nights
the nightingale resounds in harmonious cadences. It is the hour of
silence and repose for humanity; but still a dim light shone through
one of the windows of this isolated house. As the hours of the night
advanced, when all nature slept, even the smallest insect under the
humid leaves of the rose, hard necessity constrained even the inmates
of this house to sleep, but alas! It proved a funeral awakening. The
tender mother, who, during the infancy of her child, had tasted in
this modest asylum moments of happiness, pure and chaste, such as our
only given to maternal love, closed her eyes, and breathed out her
last sigh, with no one here but her little son. In vain he calls his
dear mother, her voice can reply to him no more. Poor child! what will
become of him? for he has no one in the wide world to love and protect
him; and in the bitterness of his grief he sobs and cries, "Dead!
dead! I have no mother now!" and takes her hand, but it is cold and
stiff, and no longer sensible to the soft pressure of his. The
unaccustomed silence of those lips, that never parted but to speak
tenderly to him, is more than he can bear, but suddenly his face
recovers its habitual serenity, and a smile lights up his pallid
cheeks. What means this sudden change, this almost instantaneous
forgetfulness of sorrow, which drives in an instant the tears of love?
But do not blame him; it is not forgetfulness, but remembrance--the
remembrance of his mother's last words--her last adieu, her last
sublime expression of a love which cannot be extinguished, even by the
cold shadow of death, for it re-lives in heaven. "My child," said his
mother to him on that day, "I have loved you much, but I must leave
you. I am going to live with the angels, but I will watch over you. Be
wise, honest, laborious; love God with all your heart, and others as
yourself, and he will bless you. Do not grieve for my loss, for I will
still be useful to you in heaven. I will pray there for you. Take
courage, and always remember, when you are in trouble, to raise your
thoughts to the eternal throne, and consolation will not be denied
you." These were the words which Robert remember, and which stopped so
suddenly the violence of his grief. This was why he almost thought his
mother was not dead; this was why he felt no fear, though alone; with
these sweet thoughts forever present, he fancied her eyes would reopen
and smile upon him. He knelt in prayed with fervor, seeming to solicit
some special manifestation, and his attitude told that he mentally
invoked of his mother and the Protector of children what he knew to be
good for them; and his prayer, no doubt, was favorably received, for
it his imagination he saw the home of the saints. "My mother!" cried
the child, transported with joy, "is it thee? Oh! speak, I pray thee,
speak to thy Robert!" But the celestial vision faded, and he saw
nothing but the thousands of little globes of light, the sparkling
fire of which dazzled his eyes. Thus maternal influence, even from the
tomb, comes as a gentle authority to this pious orphan. We will see
him in each important event, and in each critical phase of his life
invoking this mysterious and beneficent power that presides over him
from heaven, in the presence of his mother. It is already under the
generous impulse of this belief that he is consoled and strengthens,
and returns to the funeral chamber, and calls again upon prayer and
reflection.
Robert had never played with children. Always with his mother, whom he
passionately loved, and who conversed with him as she would have done
with an older person, he had acquired a seriousness of conversation
and a precocity of judgment which made him, though still a child in
years, almost a man in his intelligence and good sense. Child of
solitude, wild flower of the mountain, he was {643} entirely ignorant
of the habits of cities and of society, but he possessed an instinct
which took the place of large experience in human nature. He was what
God had made him, good and generous, loving the beautiful with the
fervent adoration which characterizes great souls, and feeling a deep
repugnance for even the appearance of evil. These inestimable gifts
God in his wisdom has seen fit to endow to certain souls.
Robert was not more than twelve years of age, but he could read and
write well. Possessed of a good memory, he had retained the many
recitations made him by his mother in geography and sacred and profane
history. His course of reading had not been extensive, for his mother
had but few books; but she had been to him the living book from which
he had gained all he knew, and which developed the qualities of the
heart and Christian virtues which, later in life, shone so brilliantly
in him. Robert was often absorbed in thinking over his past life, so
rich in delicious memories. He remembered that his mother had spoken
to him of Paris with an emotion which betrayed itself in her trembling
voice. She was born there, she had told him, and had passed a part of
her youth there. He remembered perfectly that, each time his mother
referred to the subject, she exercised upon him a charm which entirely
captivated his attention. If by her glowing descriptions of Madame
Dormeuil had any intention of exciting in her son the wish to go to
that city, she completely succeeded, for, notwithstanding his tender
years, the words of his mother had filled him with an ardent desire to
see the place predestined to be the most beautiful and most wonderful
city ever built by the hands of man. This desire taking hold of him,
he naturally thinks of the means of satisfying it, if the unfortunate
circumstances in which he finds himself will forget. Moved by the
strong wish, which was not weekend when obstacles presented
themselves, Robert tried to get things ready to start. Opening a
closet where he had often seen his mother put things she intended for
him, the first object that met his eyes was a package, tied, and
bearing this inscription, "For my son when he is twenty-one years of
age." Under this was another paper, folded double, but not tied. He
opened this, looking at the words which were written at the top: "My
last requests." "When I shall be no more, my son," said Madame
Dormeuil (and unfortunately the hour of death approaches very near)
"quit this mountain where thou hast been a happy child, and go to
Paris, where thou wast born. God and my love will conduct thee there,
but constantly place thyself under his protection. Work; make thyself
beloved, by thy sweetness and perseverance and good conduct. A voice
within said to me one day, that happiness crowned all virtuous
efforts, and this prediction of my heart will be realized, and thy
mother will rejoice in heaven when she sees it descend on thee. Thou
wilt find in a purse some crown pieces; it is all that I possess.
Start soon, walk the short roads, have courage. Avoid bad children,
seek the old and the wise. Pray to God fervently, and he will never
abandon the good who walk in his presence and keep in their hearts the
counsels of a mother. Adieu, my child, my dear and much loved Robert I
will meet you in a better world than that in which I leave you, my
poor little one, and then we will never part again."
Robert covered with kisses and with tears the words traced by the
failing hand of his mother; then, when he was a little calmed, it made
him happy to know that she had conceived a plan which was precisely
the same he had thought of, and that she was solicitous for him to go.
The rest of the night passed slowly enough to the young orphan. At
daybreak he came down from the mountain and knocked at the door of the
rectory. The virtuous and worthy curé, who preached to the inhabitants
of the village of Bains, received him with the utmost kindness, for he
had known him long and well, and had already initiated him into the
{644} mysteries of our divine religion, and from his pure and touching
morals he had been led to give him his first communion. When he saw
the poor child in such distress he could scarcely utter a word, so
much did he feel for his bleeding heart, either could he ask him the
questions he knew he ought relative to his leaving the isolated place
in which he had lived, nor could Robert have answered them so full was
he of emotion; but he said to him in a paternal tone and full of
interest: "Let us see, my child, what is to be done with your effects.
Don't you think that you should leave the place, now that you are
alone? What do you intend to do? Have you formed any project? If you
have confidence in me, tell me your ideas, speak to me openly, and all
that I can possibly do for you I will with pleasure I have no
occupation but to do good to others, to console them in their sorrows,
and take them by the hand with a need assistance." "Thank you, good
curé," replied Robert, with sweetness and respect. "I desire to obey
the wishes of my mother, who tells me to go to Paris. See what she
says to me--this dear, good mother--before she dies," holding to him
with the trembling hand the precious paper containing the
interpretation of his mothers wishes. He then said: "Is it not a
sacred duty I owe my mother, that of accomplishing her last request?"
"Yes, my dear child, but you are very young to make so long a journey
on foot to Paris. Do you know any one there?" "No, sir; but my mother
said I must go, and no matter how I get there I must do it." "Your
resolution is praiseworthy my child, yet it seems to me that you
should reflect a little, before undertaking what seems so much for
you. But if you really must attempt it, I will give you a letter to a
friend of mine, who is now curé of the Church of Saint-Germain
l'Auxerrois. This recommendation, I hope, will be of great assistance
to you, for my friend is a man of rare virtues and inexhaustible
charity Place your cell under his protection, and I do not doubt but
you will soon be out of embarrassment. I think you should sell your
furniture, the proceeds would in large your funds very much. But, my
child, your extreme youth frightens me. I am afraid you will never get
to Paris." "Oh! be tranquil, good father. I trust so much to God as my
guide that I know I shall arrived without accident, and with but
little fatigue." "Go, my child, I have no longer any objection; and
since you desire it so much, I will do all I can to facilitate your
project. While I am gone refresh yourself; take something to eat, it
will strengthen your body, which cannot but be feeble under the
sufferings of your soul. Do you hear, my child? I want you to take
some nourishment, if it is only a little you will feel better after
it. I will return directly," and, looking kindly at him, the venerable
curé went out, to see which of his parishioners would purchase the
furniture belonging to the orphan.
CHAPTER II.
"Still an hour of suffering,
Still a sad farewell".
. . . . .
THE FAREWELL.
The curé was a all time absent, and when he return had no good news
for Robert; his errand had been ineffectual. "My child," said he, "my
wishes for disposing of your furniture have been in vain, but do not
be discouraged. Let us go and pay the last mark of respect to your
mother, and then we will speak of other things." Robert followed him,
and on the way told him of the package of papers he had found in the
closet, the contents of which he was not to know until he had attained
his majority.
"I advise you, my child, to leave me the package to take care of. If
you should lose it, it would be an irreplaceable loss, and might be
attended with {645} serious results. You need fear no accident on my
part, for, if God should call me to him, before we meet again, I will
put it in safe hands; for instance, if it please you, to the Notary of
Besse, a small town about two leagues from here. It might be a long
time before you would return, but the grave of your mother will draw
you here, and I know you are too good a son to forget it. I am sure,
then, of seeing you sometimes if God wills it, for it is the Supreme
Arbiter who decides the length of our days." They had come by this
time to the house, the door of which was opened by a woman who had
been sent there by the curé to "lay" out the mother of the poor
orphan. Her body was then enclosed in the coffin, and the _cortége_
took the way which led to the churchyard, where rest at last the king
and his subjects, the rich and the poor. Oh! what courage it requires
to bear up under the sorrows of this last sad walk, above all when the
earth receives the remains of a cherished mother. How each sound that
fell on the coffin bruised this poor child's heart! And were it not
for the consoling hope, the firm belief, that his mother was in
heaven, his life would be one of despair; but he believed what she
told him before she died, that she would rest on the bosom of God, and
that she would watch over him with the same love and the same
solicitude of which she had given him so many proofs during her life.
He was the last to leave this new grave, which hid from his sight
forever the only being he ever loved, and which was watered with
filial tears. "Oh!" he exclaimed, "if I can only put a stone over my
good mother, it will be a consolation to know, when I visit the spot
where I leave my heart, that it is marked by the love of a son." Full
of this idea he revealed it afterward to the good curé, who took an
interest in it, and listened, with tears in his eyes, while the child
cultures the cost of a simple so. "But, my child," he said sadly, "all
simple as it may be, it will still be too dear for your feeble
resources. Wait for executing this pious wish until you have more to
spare. I cannot promise you that it will be a new one, but I will
place a wooden cross on your mother's grave." Robert, although
saddened at the non-success of his project, felt the wisdom of the
advice which was given him. He resigned it for the present, hoping
that a more prosperous time would come, when miserable pecuniary
considerations need not stop him in the accomplishment of what he felt
was a filial duty. Then after having thanked the pastor, and told him
how grateful he was to him for his paternal care and loving advice, he
asked his permission to pass another night in the house where he first
remembered the light of day. "Go, my child," said the curé, moved by
his touching resolution, "go if you feel strong enough: solitude
raises the soul and purifies its approach to the Creator. Sometimes
remember the consoling words of our divine Saviour, 'Blessed are they
who mourn, for they shall be comforted.' It is time for you to go. May
God in the silence of your solitary night visit your desolate soul,
and with his paternal hand wipe away your tears. To-morrow morning I
will see you, and we will arrange about your affairs."
The courageous child, for he was courageous to put himself face to
face with so many dear remembrances, wished to visit once more the
haunts of his infant joys, where his mother had guided his tottering
steps, and, later, where she had explained to him the wonders of
nature in the presence of these wonders. Yes, he wished to see them
all again, and engrave them in an ineffaceable manner upon his memory.
They were all dear to his heart, all filled with thoughts of his
mother, and the most tender caresses had been exchanged there between
them. He recalled the dreams of those days when his head rested on his
mother's bosom, and he felt himself {646} bathed in love and
happiness; he recalled the charm of that intercourse, when two hearts
are bound in sweetest sympathy; and it was for this purpose that he
wandered over the mountain, stopping at each loved spot, until he
reached the highest plateau. There he sat down, but not before looking
around him, for, for the first time in his life, he felt a little
timid and frightened. The magic beauty of his surroundings was not
new, he had seen it all often before, had contemplated it a thousand
times, but a sort of unquiet terror seizes him, and betrays itself in
tears. It seems but a day since he bounded and frolicked gayly in the
same places, under the eye of his mother, and now what a strange and
sorrowful change! He is alone; his strength and courage all gone. He
seems so small and insignificant by the side of these masses of rocks,
so gigantic and imposing, which look at him as though they would crush
him. Little by little he becomes reassured; he thinks he hears above
him chords of infinite sweetness; these ravishing sounds seem to come
from the sky; it is a choir of angels, who chant the notes of some
sweet melody. The child is transported with delight: he listens; his
soul is strengthened, he is not deceived. From among those harmonious
voices he discovers one well known to him, the sound of which makes
him happy. He knows it is his mother's, and she calls tenderly to him:
"Robert, what do you believe? am I not always with you? Look, my
child, and admire this grand picture, radiant with waves of gold and
purple from the declining sun. Look in wonder at what God has done for
you." These words transformed Robert. He is transported with a new
emotion, and, prostrating himself on his knees, cries, "O God! O God!
how wonderful art thou, how grand are thy works!" After he had
satisfied his soul with the enchanting scene, he went to all the spots
where he had sat with his mother, and gave them each a long and
sorrowful look, and then bade farewell to them. "Farewell, dear
mountain, farewell beautiful valley. I gaze at you perhaps for the
last time. And, shady wood, where I have so often slept, watched by my
tender mother, you who have protected me from the two great heat of
the sun, farewell also. I must leave you now, and I know not if I
shall ever gaze upon your glories again. I would I could pass my life
in your deep shades, and hear you whisper unceasingly the cherished
name of my mother. But it cannot be; and now farewell. And thou,
beautiful and fertile Limagne, that I see shining in the distance, I
salute thee, and will soon traverse light green fields. Be hospitable
to the poor little orphan, and made by smiling aspect and fresh
verdure be a happy presage for me." He stood some moments silent and
immovable, lost in regrets, and then returned to the house. During the
night involuntary fear filled his mind. When the rays of the moon
penetrated his chamber and the stars shed their soft light, he felt
revived, and waited for the vision of the preceding night, but it came
not, and his lips quivered, and at last sleep came to close his
eyelids and repair the strength of his body and mind. The next day the
curé found him somewhat consoled, at least more calm than before he
slept. Together they made an inventory of his modest furniture, which
was worth about fifty pounds. In one of the drawers they found a small
medallion containing the portrait of a gentleman. The face was
handsome and expressive, though a little hard. It was easy to see that
it was a person of high rank; and if the good curé had been less
preoccupied and had examined closely the face, he would, perhaps, have
been struck by the resemblance which existed between the features of
the child and those of the miniature. He would have concluded beyond
doubt that it was his father. But he simply handed it to Robert,
saying almost mechanically, "It is necessary to preserve this with
care." The {647} examination being concluded, he said to him: "My
child, I have not found any purchasers for this furniture, and may not
for some time. I will give you, however, what I suppose to be its
value, and if I should get more for it shall be glad to remit it to
you; by thus doing I will have time to look about, and can, perhaps,
dispose of it two more advantage." The poor child knew not how to
reply to this kindness, but he said, "All that you have done is right,
my dear father, you are too good to take so much trouble for me, and I
thank you with all my heart." Again the curé closed the door and took
Robert's hand. He burst into sobs at the idea of being separated from
all which reminded him of his mother, but he baked him to have
courage. "Courage, my child. I know you suffer in leaving a spot
sacred to your mother's memory; it is but a natural feeling but you
cannot stay. Leave all to my care, accomplish the wish of your mother,
go to Paris, and if the blessing of an old man, a blessing which calls
down that of God, can inspire you with resolution and confidence in
the future, I give you mine, and made it make you happy." In saying
these words he had laid his hands on the head of the child, who was
kneeling before him.