It is only within the last ten years that the deep slumber of that

quiet neighborhood has been disturbed by the noise and bustle of this

busy life--that a railroad has gone out of its way to upset the

sedate propriety of ecclesiastical Wells, or the peaceful repose of

monasterial Glastonbury; hitherto the stillness and quiet of that

lovely country was the same as when mass was sung in the superb

cathedral of the one place, and the palmer or the {674} penitent bent

his steps to the holy well of the other. But alas! the life of the

nineteenth century has broken in upon it; the railway has dashed

through that beautiful valley with its sacrilegious march; and at

Wells, the cathedral of Ina, with its matchless front, studded with

apostles and martyrs, kings, bishops, knights, and mystic emblems,

vocal as it were with history, now frowns upon the contentions of two

rival companies; whilst at Glastonbury there is a railway station

erected almost over the very bones of the saints. Alighting from this,

we make our way to the ruins; but as we go, will just view their past

history. After the dissolution of the abbey there was an effort made

to restore it in the time of Mary, but unavailingly; from that period

it was allowed to fall into decay. It is difficult to estimate whether

the hand of man or the hand of time has been busier about its

spoliation. At the period of Cromwell, who loved to worship God in the

"ugliness of holiness," it must have been nearly entire, but that hero

could not pass the town without putting a shot through those

unoffending ruins in the name of the Lord, which act, however

appropriate as an expression of Puritan feeling, was sadly detrimental

to the architecture of Glastonbury Abbey. Then in 1667, as we have

already alluded to, the Quakers got possession of the kitchen, hired

at a nominal rent, paid in hard Quaker money--that glorious kitchen,

sanctified by so much saintly cookery--for their grim assemblies.

There is a great deal of what is aptly called the "romance" of history

in this fact if we only had time to think about it--that it should

come to this, monasticism with its princely head, its grand religions

life and ceremonies, its painting and staining, its chanting and

intoning, itself in all its glory, driven from the face of the

country, and modern Quakerdom sitting silent in its ruined kitchen

waiting to be "moved." It has suffered much, also, from the gross

vandalism of the people themselves. Naturally a simple people, they of

course knew nothing of antiquarianism, although that science is

irreverently said to master many simples among its votaries. For years

then it was their practice to use the materials of the abbey for

building purposes, and it is not difficult to find scattered for miles

around the country, in farmhouses and even in hovels, portions of

sculpture over doorways and fireplaces which speak of mediaeval

workmanship. But a worse degradation still befel the place, and the

walls which at one time would have been regarded as invested with the

odor of sanctity, and even now are sacred to us as a priceless

historical monument, were actually sold as materials for mending the

roads, to the lasting shame of overseerdom and the powers that were at

Glastonbury. But the day for building huts or mending roads with

ecclesiastical sculpture is gone, and the little that remains of

Glastonbury Abbey has found its way into the hands of those who appear

to know how to preserve it, and have the intention to do so. After all

this decay and vandalism very little is left of the old abbey--some

portions of St. Joseph's church with the crypt--some walls of the

choir of the great church; the two east pillars of the tower, forming

a grand broken arch, a lasting memento of the original splendor; there

are portions, also, of some of the chapels and the abbot's kitchen,

the most complete of all. The eye is at once arrested by the portals

of St. Joseph's church, which still remain in a tolerable state of

preservation, sufficient to enable one to form an idea of what a

triumph of decorative art they were. Nothing could be more profusely

ornamented than the northern portal; it was composed of semi-circular

arches, receding in succession and diminishing in size as they recede

into the body of the building; the exterior arch being about twelve

feet by eleven, and the interior nine feet by six. The four fasciae

are covered with sculptured representations supposed to be {675}

commemorations of royal and noble people connected with the

monastery--saints, pilgrims, and knights. The forms graven on these

fasciae are interpreted in Warner's History of Glastonbury to

represent the following subjects. The uppermost fascia is almost

obliterated, though still showing a running pattern of tendrils and

leaves interspersed with figures of men and animals; toward the centre

the sculpture is much mutilated, though something can be traced like

the effigy of a person in long robes seized on the shoulder by a

furious animal. Beyond him are indistinct remains of three or four

upright figures, and the rest is filled up by foliage. The second

fascia is made up of eighteen separate ovals, each of which contained

a distinct subject; the two first are defaced; the third contains a

person apparently kneeling; the fourth, a female with a head-dress

sitting on a conch; the fifth, a female on horseback; the sixth, a man

on horseback; the seventh, a crowned personage on horseback; the

eighth, the body of a deceased person stretched on a couch, with a

canopy over it, the corpse covered, and the head resting on a pillow;

nine and ten the same; eleven, a knight in a coat of chain armor, with

a pointed shield charged with the cross, indicative of a crusader;

twelve, a regal personage with a flowing beard and in long robes,

crowned, and sitting on a throne; thirteen, a knight in chain armor

falling from his horse as if wounded; fourteen, a figure like the

former, the right arm stretched out and holding a sword which impales

an infant; fifteen, the upright figure of a female with a veil,

apparently in male costume; sixteenth, another body stretched out on a

couch; seventeen, unintelligible; eighteen, a figure of a pilgrim. The

intervals between all these ovals are sculptured into foliage. There

can be very little doubt that the subjects contained in these ovals

were the representations of monarchs, knights, persons, and events

connected with the history of the abbey. The fourth fascia is much

mutilated; but Warner thinks it referred to some act of munificence,

from the canopied couch it displays, with a figure recumbent upon it

and representations of angels guarding it. The portal toward the south

was on a similar plan to the northern, but with five instead of four

fasciae. One, two, and five are covered with finely chiseled foliage;

the third is plain; the fourth only partially worked. According to the

authority already mentioned, the only two ovals which are complete

represent in the first the creation of man, and in the second the

eating of the fruit. In the former is to be seen an upright figure

with a nimbus or glory round its head, designating the Almighty in the

act of calling man into being, and at his feet is man himself. In the

latter there is the tree with Satan behind it, and Adam and Eve

sitting with the apples. The appearance of these two portals,

independent of the interest lent them by Warner's speculations as to

their import, is very striking. In their perfection they must have

been masterpieces of that exquisite taste and minute labor which the

men of that age devoted to the embellishment of the church. Taking the

ruins in a mass, it would be difficult to find anywhere such a

specimen of broken grandeur. Standing upon the spot at the extreme

east, where was the high altar of the church, the eye wanders down a

grand vista of some five hundred feet, relieved in the midst by that

solitary, magnificent, broken arch towering up high in the air, with

rich festoons of ivy hanging about it in lavish luxuriance like the

tresses of some gigantic beauty, and far down in the distance are the

crumbling remains of St. Joseph's chapel, the gem of the whole, with

its arched windows and profuse decoration, the tops of its walls

covered over with straggling parasites, which curl over its brow like

the scanty locks of sere old age. And as we reflect that this sacred

spot was the cradle of our {676} Christianity; that this building was

the mother of our Church; that far back in the bygone ages of

barbarism vagrant missionaries wandered foot-sore and worn to this

very spot; planted with their own hands the cross of Christ; built up

with those hands the rude rush-covered shed which served as the first

temple raised to God in these islands; spent their lives here in

preaching that good tidings to a benighted pagan people, laid their

bones down by the side of the work of their hands, and left their

mission to their successors; that in process of time this little

community became a mighty power, and that rush-covered shed a splendid

temple, whose history is collateral with that of the country for

nearly twelve centuries, and now it lies all battered and broken,

crumbling away and wasting like human life itself--the mind shrinks

appalled at the thought of the vicissitude which brought about so

complete a ruin.

"O who thy ruine sees, whom wonder doth not fill

With our great father's pompe, devotion, and their skill?

Thou more than mortall power (this judgment rightly waid)

Then present to assist at that foundation laid;

On whom for this sad waste, should justice lay the crime?

Is there a power in fate? or doth it yield to time?

Or was this error such that thou could'st not protect

Those buildings which thy hands did with their zeal erect?

To whom did'st thou commit that monument to keepe?

That suffereth with the dead their memory to sleepe.

When not great Arthur's tombe, nor Holy Joseph's grave,

From sacrilege had power their sacred bones to save;

He who that God-in-Man to his sepulchre brought,

Or he which for the faith twelve famous battles fought;

What? did so many Kings do honour to that place

For avarice at last so vilely to deface?" [Footnote 100]

[Footnote 100: Drayton's Polyolbion]

In the neighborhood of the town is a hill known all over the world by

the name of Wearyall Hill, so called (according to the chronicles)

because St. Joseph and his companions sat down here to rest

themselves, weary with their journey. As the legend goes St. Joseph is

said to have stuck his staff in the earth and left it there, when lo!

it took root, grew, and constantly budded on Christmas Day! This was

the legendary origin of the far-famed holy thorn. Up to the time of

Queen Elizabeth it had two trunks or bodies, and so continued until

some nasal psalm-spoiler of Cromwell's "crew" exterminated one,

leaving the other to become the wonder of all strangers, who even then

began to flock to the place. The blossoms of this remaining branch of

the holy thorn became such a curiosity that there was a general demand

for them from all parts of the world, and the Bristol merchants, then

very great people in their "line," turned this relic of the saint into

a matter of commercial speculation, and made goodly sums of money by

exporting the blossoms to foreign countries. There are trees from the

branches of this thorn growing at the present moment in many of the

gardens and nurseries round about Glastonbury, nay, all over England,

and in various parts of the Continent. The probability is, as

suggested by Collinson in his "History of Somerset," that the monks

procured the tree from Palestine, where many of the same sort

flourish.

In the abbey church-yard, on the north side of St Joseph's chapel,

there was also a walnut tree which, it was said, never blossomed

before the feast of St. Barnabas (the 11th June). This is gone. These

two trees, the holy thorn and the sacred walnut, were held in high

estimation even long after the monasteries had disappeared from the

land. Queen Anne, King James, and many of the nobility of the realm

are said to have given large sums of money for cuttings from them; so

that the "odor of sanctity" clung about the old walls of Glastonbury

long after its glory had departed; nay, even the belief in its

miraculous waters lingered in the popular mind, and was even revived

by a singular {677} incident so late as the year 1751. The

circumstances are somewhat as follows:--One Matthew Chancellor, of

North Wootton, had been suffering from an asthma of thirty years'

standing, and on a certain night in the autumn of 1750, having had an

usually violent fit of coughing, he fell asleep, and, according to the

depositions taken upon his oath, dreamed that he was at Glastonbury,

somewhere above the chain gate, in a horse track, and there found some

of the clearest water he ever saw in his life; that he knelt down and

drank of it and upon getting up, fancied he saw some one standing

before him, who, pointing with his finger to the stream, thus

addressed him: "If you will go to the freestone shoot, and take a

clean glass, and drink a glassful fasting seven Sunday mornings

following, and let no person see you, you will find a perfect cure of

your disorder, and then make it public to the world." He asked him why

he should drink it only on Sunday mornings, and the person replied

that "the world was made in six days, and on the seventh day God

rested from his labor, and blessed it: beside, this water comes out of

the holy ground where a great many saints and martyrs have been

buried." The person also told him something about Christ himself being

baptized, but this he could not distinctly remember when he awoke.

Impelled by this dream, the man kept the secret to himself, and went

on the Sunday morning following to Glastonbury, which was three miles

from the place where he lived, and found it exactly according to his

dream; but being a dry time of the year, the water did not run very

plentifully; however, dripping his glass three times in the pool

beneath the shoot, he managed to drink a quantity equal to a glassful,

giving God thanks at the same time. This he continued to do for seven

times, according to the injunction of the dream, at the end of which

period he had entirely lost his complaint. The effect of this story is

remarkable. As soon as it was noised abroad, thousands of people of

all sects came flocking to Glastonbury from every quarter of the

kingdom to partake of the waters of this stream. Every inn and house

in the town, and for some distance round, was filled with lodgers and

guests; and it is stated upon reliable authority that during the month

of May, 1751, the town contained upward of ten thousand strangers.

Even to this day, there is a notion amongst the peasantry, more

especially the _old women of both sexes_, that the water is good for

the "rheumatiz."

After the scenes of violence, the ruthless vandalism, which this old

abbey has gone through, it cannot be a matter of surprise that so

little remains of all its grandeur; but it is a fact much to be

lamented, because, as it was in its time one of the grandest

ecclesiastical edifices in the country, so, if it had been preserved

intact like its old rival, the cathedral at Wells, it would have been

one of the most important and valuable items in the monumental history

of England; that broad page where every nation writes its own

autobiography; how valuable we find it in our researches as to the

life of bygone times; and yet how little do we appear to do in this

way as regards our own fame; how little do we cultivate our monumental

history. One of the most lasting evidences of greatness which a

country can leave behind it for the admiration and instruction of

posterity, is the evidence of its national architecture--its

architecture in the fullest sense of the term, not its mere roofs and

walls, but the acts which it writes upon those walls, its statues and

monuments. There are only two agencies by which national fame can be

perpetuated--literature and art. The pen of the historian or the poet

may give the outline of national manners and the description of

national achievements, but art, as it exists in the extant monuments

of the architecture of that nation, gives the {678} representation of

the actual life as it was, fills up the outline, and presents us with

something like the substance: it does not describe, but illustrate; it

is, in fact, the petrified manifestation of the very life itself. We

have read much about the splendor of those extinct civilizations of

the Pharaohs, and of the marvels of Babylonish grandeur, but what a

flood of light was thrown upon our dim conceptions by the resuscitated

relics of a buried Nineveh! In Grecian poets and Grecian historians we

make the acquaintance of the heroes and the heroism of that heroic

existence; but in the Elgin marbles we see the men and the deeds in

all their natural grandeur, petrified before us in the graphic

sublimity of motionless life. To come a little nearer our own times

and to the mother of our civilization, what a confirmation of the

historic tradition of the Rome of our studies have we found under that

hardened lava which for centuries has formed the tombstone of

Herculaneum and Pompeii. What vivid illustrations of Roman life and

Roman manners are continually being discovered in those buried cities;

and so of every nation and time it is its history which narrates its

glory, but it is its architecture alone which must illustrate and

confirm it. There is no fear of the present age of our country leaving

no evidence of its power behind it. That evidence is written in

indelible characters deep even to the very bowels of the earth itself,

through the heart of mountains, over broad rivers, across plains, its

scroll has been the broad bosom of the country, upon which it has

engraven its character truly with a pen of iron; but there is a danger

that we shall leave very little monumental history behind us in our

architecture. . . . .

Protestantism, too, was an iconoclast as regards Catholicism, but it

contented itself with desecrating temples, pulling down altars,

tearing away paintings, but it substituted nothing in their place; it

would admit of no allurements in the Church but that of genuine piety,

and supplied no attractions for the thoughtless, the careless, the

unbelieving, but its bare walls and cold ministrations. This feeling

is now undergoing a marked change; we are beginning to see that

plainness in externals may conceal a considerable amount of pride and

worldliness, and thus Quakers are leaving off their curious garb, and

Methodists are building temples; it is beginning to dawn upon men's

minds, at last, that ugliness is one of the most inappropriate

sacrifices man can offer to his God, that as in the olden times the

patriarchs used to offer up the first-fruits of the field, so in these

later times we should offer up the first-fruits of our achievements;

the choicest productions of art, science, and every form of human

genius should be presented to him who is the God of all humanity. As

we raise up temples to his honor and glory, where we may come with our

supplications for his mercy, our adoration of his power, where we may

bring our purest thoughts, our noblest hopes, our highest aspirations,

and our best emotions; so let us decorate that temple with the best

works of our hands as we hallow it with the best feelings of our

hearts. The reason given by Solomon for exerting all the power and

wealth of his kingdom to decorate the temple was simply, "This house

which I build is great, for great is our God above all gods;"

[Footnote 101] and the approval and acceptance of it by him for whom

it was built is recorded in his own words: "Now mine eyes shall be

open, and mine ears attent unto the prayer that is made in this place,

for now have I chosen and sanctified this house, that my name may be

there for ever, and mine eyes and mine heart shall be there

perpetually."

[Footnote 101: 2 Chron. ii. 5.]

And that we may not go to the other extreme, as some churches have

done and do in our day, and imagine that if we decorate our temple

with all the choicest offerings we can bring it is enough, and God

will be satisfied with the mere offering, there is, following {679}

immediately upon his gracious acceptance and approval of Solomon's

temple, the solemn warning in his own words: "But if ye turn away and

forsake my statutes and my commandments, which I have set before you,

and shall go and serve other gods, and worship them, then will I pluck

them up by the roots out of my land which I have given them; and this

house which I have sanctified for my name will I cast out of my sight,

and will make it to be a proverb and a byword among all nations. And

this house which is high shall be an astonishment to every one that

passeth by it, so that he shall say, 'Why hath the Lord done this unto

this land and unto this house?' And it shall be answered, 'Because

they forsook the Lord God of their fathers, which brought them forth

out of the land of Egypt, and laid hold on other gods, and worshipped

them and served them; therefore hath he brought all this evil upon

them.'" [Footnote 102 ]

[Footnote 102: 2 Chron. vii. 15, _seq_. ]

That is the canon of church building as ordained by God himself--make

the church as grand an offering as you can, but keep the ritual

pure--fill the temple with all the emblems of his glory, but remember

that it is he only who is to be worshipped. Such is the teaching of

revelation; and now we turn to nature, that boundless temple which God

has built up to himself with his own hands. Had he been a God of mere

utility instead of a God of beauty and glory; had he only considered

the bare convenience and accommodation of the human race, a

proportionate amount of dry land in one place, and a proportionate

amount of water in another, would have sufficed to meet all human

wants; there was no practical need for the variegated aspect, of

natural scenery, of hill and dale, mountain and valley, of rippling

stream and sweet-smelling flowers; but the world of nature was built

for something higher than the mere dwelling place of man. It was built

as a temple in which he should honor his God, and which was therefore

filled with a myriad of beauties to excite his admiration, to please

his eye, to fill his soul with gratitude and joy, and to raise his

heart to that God who has given him such a beautiful home, furnished

not only with the means of supplying his necessities, but embellished

with the choicest beauties of creative power. What is nature but a

gorgeous temple, laid out and decorated by the hand of God himself,

with its broad pavement tesselated with endless varieties of verdure,

with mountain altars which Christ himself loved to frequent and hallow

with his prayers, its long aisles fretted with luxurious foliage

pillared with tall trees, which bend their tops together in the

matchless symmetry of nature's arch, all vocal with the deep-toned

music of rushing waters, and melodies warbled by the unseen songsters

of the air, spanned over with the boundless blue ceiling of heaven

itself, lit up by day with the sunshine of his majesty, and at night

by the stars placed there with his own hands?

Let us, whilst we endeavor to get at the truth of history, appeal also

to revelation and nature.

------

{680}

From The St. James Magazine.

CITY ASPIRATIONS.

Oh, not in the town to die!

With its restless trampling to and fro,

And its traffic-hubbub above, below,

And the whirling wheels that hurry by.

And the chimney forests, blacken'd and high--

Oh, mercy! not in a town to die!

In a town I may live, and strive, and toil,

And grow a part of the living turmoil;

A cog-wheel in a machine of men.

Turning to labor again and again,

Doing my work with the multitude,

With a spirit wean'd, and a heart subdued,

Pausing sometimes, in a moment of ease,

To yearn and sigh for a meadow breeze,

For the whispering rustle of summer trees,

And the dreamy murmur of golden bees,

And the field-path margined by many a flower.

And the village church with its grey old tower;

Yet still, for sake of my babes and thee.

Sweet wife, I may work courageously;

May bide in a town, and with iron will

Go laboring on in the hubbub still.

Where the wheels of the man-machine ever spin,

Money, and money, and money, to win.

But to _die_ in a town, in turmoil and smoke,

'Mongst houses, and chimneys gaunt and high.

When the silken cord of the soul is broke,

Methinks the vapors so heavy would lie.

It scarce could soar, as it should, to the sky.

Oh, live as I may, to brook it I'll try--

But, mercy! not in a town to die!

------

{681}

From The Month.

THE FACULTY OF PARIS IN THE TIME OF MOLIÈRE.

In a former number we gave a slight sketch of the laws and etiquettes

of the old French Medical Faculty. The state of things there described

was already on the wane when Molière dealt it a blow, from the effects

of which it never recovered. But there is one characteristic of the

position of the medical body which is inherent in its very nature, and

is likely to be as enduring as the world itself, allowing for the

modifications of varying times and changing manners. So long as our

poor humanity shall be subject to disease and death, so long will

medicine and its scientific administration be esteemed a necessity.

Some, indeed, judge both to be well-nigh unmitigated evils; but at any

rate, if evils, they are necessary evils; and even the greatest

railers at the doctor and his drugs are pretty sure to send for him in

the hour of danger, lean on him for hope, and swallow his potions. The

medical man thus obtains an exceptional position. He is introduced

into the sanctuary of the family, sees us in our unguarded moments,

receives our confidence, and often wins our friendship. He never comes

as a judge or a censor. We feel at our ease with him. Our esteem for

him is personal, and independent of all considerations of rank or

fortune. He is a stranger to all the conflicting interests which

divide parties from each other, and can visit persons of all shades of

opinion and of views the most opposite, whether of religion or

politics, without causing the shadow of an offense. From all this it

results that the doctor is often admitted to the closest intimacy by

men occupying the highest positions. Hence the footing of

quasi-equality accorded, often to the obscure son of AEsculapius,

raised by his profession to a post of dignity and benevolent

authority, which, while it obtains for him consideration and respect,

clashes in nothing with the social importance of the patient. It was

so, in a certain degree, in the seventeenth century, when classes were

divided much more widely than at present, and reverence for birth and

rank much stronger; and we have numerous instances of the friendship

subsisting between doctors and the highest in the land.

It is true that the medical faculty did actually number amongst its

members men who had undoubted claims to nobility; and we find from

Larroque's _Traité de la Noblesse_ that doctors, as distinguished from

apothecaries and surgeons, were held not to derogate from their rank

by the practice of medicine. But further, the medical profession was

held to confer a species of nobility; for of nobility there were

reckoned to be three sorts--nobility of race, nobility of royal

concession, and personal nobility, such as in peculiar cases we find

conferred on the whole _bourgeoisie_ of certain towns. This

distinction offended no one, as it expired with its recipient, on whom

while living it conferred many practical advantages, such as exemption

from taxation. In Paris this circumstance was of small moment,

because, as members of the university, the doctors enjoyed all manner

of immunities. But in the provinces it was different. In the south of

France, in particular, these privileges were energetically claimed on

the ground of the honor of the profession, and they were traditionally

referred to Roman times. Montpellier {682} was full of these

reminiscences of the past, and in Dauphiné the nobility of the doctors

was even transmitted from father to son. At Lyons it was remembered

that Antonius Musa had cured the Emperor Augustus, and had received a

gold ring for himself and his successors in the art. "Accipe annulum

aureum, in signum nobilitatis ab Augusto et Senatu Romano medicis

concessae," were the words used in the aggregation of a doctor by the

college of that city.

The misfortune was that there must of necessity be some contrast

between this theoretical nobility and the practical life of the

physician. He must, if he would gain his living, go from house to

house indiscriminately, and receive his pay from all classes, like the

butcher or the baker. The doctors endeavored to smooth over this

anomaly by affecting considerable state. They might be seen threading

the streets of Paris mounted on mules, in large wigs and with ample

beards. The mule gave an almost episcopal air. "The beard is more than

half the doctor," says Toinette, in the _Malade Imaginaire_, When the

fashionable Guénaut took to a horse, it raised quite a scandal, which

Boileau has commemorated:

"Guénaut, sur son cheval, en passant m'éclabousse."

Many, not satisfied with this degree of state, paid their visits in

the long magisterial robe, with scarlet hose and band, the famous

_rabat_, to which Pascal wittily alludes when he says, "Who could

place any confidence in a doctor without a _rabat_?" Not only were the

doctors careful to uphold their dignity by these forms, but the Paris

Faculty was extremely jealous in maintaining its exclusive position.

Its members not merely refused, as was natural, to meet in

consultation any of the host of quacks with which the capital swarmed,

and who found frequent access to the houses of the great lords and

ladies, often as sceptical in regard to orthodox practitioners as they

were credulous in the extreme of the pretensions of these heretical

interlopers, but they likewise stood aloof from men as respectable as

themselves--the honorable doctors of Montpellier, of whom perhaps a

few words anon. In the meantime we will take a hasty glance at the

members of the Paris Faculty apart from their official life; for they

were men after all, and did not always figure in wig and gown. They

must have had their private as well as public existence; but it is a

more difficult task to obtain a sight of them _en déshabille_.

In history, of course, it were vain to seek anything beyond the record

of public events; and even the contemporary memoirs of the age of the

Grand Monarque tell us more about the court and its festivities, the

_réunions_ of the wits of the day, and the current gossip and scandal

of the hour, than about the ordinary domestic life of any class,

particularly of such as ranged below the aristocratic level. We are

too apt to believe, from the revelations that are made in the light

literature of the time, that the brilliant surface of the Augustan age

of France concealed a general mass of corruption in the higher

classes, and of misery in the lower. But this would be a false

conclusion. The _bourgeoisie_, as a body, were complete strangers to

the ferment of ambition and intrigue so rife in the upper strata of

society. They had their own interests, their own pursuits, and were in

the main an industrious and worthy class, sufficiently independent to

be able often to regard those above them with a secret, and not always

undeserved, contempt. To confine ourselves, however, to the doctors.

Two courses were open to them. They might shut themselves up within

the round of their own immediate occupations and studies, and limit

themselves to the social circle of their colleagues and compeers. The

faculty, as we have seen, was a little community in itself, with its

own traditions, laws, distinctions, glories. Here, satisfied with

their moderate gains, the doctors might preserve their independence

{683} and live in all security and honor; or, on the other hand, they

might try their fortune in the world and seek the favor of the great.

The enterprise involved a certain loss of liberty and a corresponding

detriment to that nice delicacy of feeling which is the guardian of

severe probity. There were doctors of both kinds; those of the first

class were by far the most numerous. The others were the richest; but

the esteem in which they were held by their brethren was in the

inverse ratio to the wealth acquired by this compromise of dignified

independence.

The illustrious dean, Guy Patin, who enjoyed an immense reputation in

his day, furnishes an example of the life of voluntary isolation and

of practical activity systematically confined to professional or

scientific subjects. He is now remembered chiefly for that on which he

probably least valued himself--his epistolary correspondence, never

designed for publication, but which is extremely interesting, not only

as a record of events great and small, the memory of which has long

passed away, but for the freshness both of ideas and style for which

it is remarkable. These letters exhibit Guy Patin as an apparent

compendium of contradictions--a believer in medicine, a sceptic in

almost all else; obstinately tenacious of the privileges of the

faculty, but full of liberal, and even republican, aspirations;

confident in the steady advance of science, but always railing at

modern times and extolling the past. Yet there is a clue to many of

these seeming contradictions; Guy Patin was a dean. Before he was

dean, you felt that he would be dean; later, he has been dean. He has

studied minutely all the details of the organized institution to which

he is indebted for all that he is--he has made its spirit and doctrine

his own; for the faculty _has_ a doctrine. The experimental method is

newer in medicine than in the other sciences. In the seventeenth

century we find in its place simple observation guided by theory;

which theory was no other than that of the father of medicine,

Hippocrates--viz., that nature tends to a cure, and that disease is

but an outward manifestation of a salutary effort of the vital

organization to counteract the destructive causes at work. The

physician's part was to aid this process rather than to interfere with

it. This view, we may observe, is finding favor anew in certain

quarters in our own day; and we may perhaps be allowed humbly to

express an instinctive leaning toward any theory of which the

practical result might be a system of comparative non-intervention.

But this by the way. Certainly Hippocrates's fundamental principle did

not deter medical practitioners of the olden time from much painful

interference with the workings of nature under the plea of assistance;

a course to which their elaborate doctrine concerning the humors of

the body--which, however, they did _not_ derive from Hippocrates, but

of which the germ exists in the other great authority, Galen--much

contributed.

The period we are considering was one of transition. Men felt the need

of progress; and this feeling evoked a number of medical

adventurers--the revolutionists, as we may call them, of medicine.

Placed between two opposite systems--the one resting on tradition and

on principles, at any rate, in great measure sound; the other calling

itself progress, but having nothing to allege save a number of vague

aspirations and anticipations, some genuine discoveries mingled with

much baser metal, and half-truths obscured by palpable error--can we

wonder that the faculty should be tempted to confound all novelties in

one sweeping act of reprobation, and intrench itself in a state of

obstinate opposition? Guy Patin shared this feeling, though not to

excess. He was no enemy, as we have said, to a wise and safe progress;

but he had the shallowness and narrowness which belongs to a certain

range of cleverness. He was not the man to accept anything new which

it required {684} breadth, elevation, and comprehensiveness of mind to

discern. He had also his favorite theory of simplicity; and this made

him suspicious of aught which seemed at variance therewith. He looked

askance, for instance, at Harvey and the circulation of the blood. We

have said that Guy Patin was a sceptic, yet he was not an unbeliever.

His language certainly is often extremely irreverent; but just as he

sometimes speaks in terms bordering on modern liberalism, while all

the time, by his attachment to medical traditions, to the faculty, and

to monarchy, he is securely anchored in respect for antiquity and

authority, so is it as regards religion, and we must not conclude from

his free expressions that he is a decided freethinker. Nevertheless it

must be confessed that he betrays a very uncatholic mind and temper;

and as we cannot believe that he stood alone in this respect, it may

serve as an indication of the spirit of many of his order, and of the

prevalence of opinions which were later to bear such bitter fruit.

Guy Patin was content with his sphere; he had no desire to overstep

it. His friends and intimates were from amongst his own medical

brethren, or they were members of the legal and magisterial body. By

marriage he was connected with the latter class; and moreover there

was always a close analogy of manners and sentiments betwixt the

medical body and the _noblesse de robe_. To his friendship with the

President de Thou, brother to Cinq Mars' unfortunate accomplice, we

may attribute much of his animosity to the minister Richelieu. Guy

Patin is, in short, a systematic grumbler, a regular _frondeur_; but

it is chiefly in talk and speculation. He is in reality no

revolutionist. Speaking of his frequent social meetings with two

lawyer friends, he observes: "Our conversation is always gay. If we

talk of religion or of state affairs, it is always historically,

without dreaming of either reformation or sedition. We converse

chiefly on literary subjects. With a mind thus recreated, I return

home, where, after some little converse with my books, or with the

record of some past consultation, I retire to rest."

Such was the honorable position of an independent member of the

faculty. But what was the condition and social estimate of those who

sought the favor of the nobility? Undoubtedly their standing was much

inferior to that which they came to occupy a hundred years

later--thanks to the spread of the utilitarian spirit, which raised

all the positive sciences into high esteem. In the eighteenth century

fine ladies had their pet physician, as they had their philosophic or

poetic _protégé_; but in the seventeenth a great personage thought he

conferred much honor on a doctor by seeking a cure at his hands. The

nobles were glad, it is true, to have their familiar physician; though

the physician, if he had any self-respect, must have felt that he paid

rather dear for admission to this familiarity, not to speak of the

actual large sums by which, in the case at least of princes of the

blood-royal, they had to buy their offices. But we are here chiefly

speaking of a less aspiring class, who angled for the casual good

graces of the aristocratic order. See how Madame de Sevigné speaks of

the doctors, whom she is always consulting and always unmercifully

quizzing. See her malicious pleasure when she can get four or five

together to discuss her bile, her spleen, her humors, when she would

ply them with questions and contrive to make them contradict each

other. She talks of the profession as a humbug, yet she never passes

through a town without consulting what she calls "the chief

ignoramuses of the place." She consults them, and then turns them into

ridicule. They know this, and take their legitimate revenge in high

charges. But strange to say, although so contemptuous toward the

privileged doctors, Madame de Sevigné has quite a weakness for all

quacks or unlicensed dabblers in the {685} art, and is even credulous

in their regard. However, it would seem that science with this lively

lady is not the sole requirement. "My dear," she says, speaking of a

certain elegant Signor Antonio, an Italian son of AEsculapius, "he is

twenty-eight years old, with the most beautiful and charming face I

ever saw. He has Madame de Mazarin's eyes, and his teeth are

perfection. The rest of his face is what you might conceive Rinaldo's

to have been, with large black curls, altogether making the prettiest

head in the world. He is dressed like a prince, and is a thorough _bon

garçon_." We are a long way off the wigs and _rabats_, it will be

seen; but we have got a clue to the secret. It is the _médecin bon

garçon_ Madame de Sevigné is in search of. She finds him at the

baths--_les eaux_. He has none of the pedantry, possibly little of the

science, of his Paris brethren of the faculty. He is a man of the

world, and can sacrifice to the graces. Medically, his part seems

restricted to drenching and dosing his patients with hot water. Tired

of court amusements, they fly to the _douche_ and the vapor-bath to

expel those inward vapors of which Frenchwomen, and indeed our own

great-grandmothers, complained so much. Madame de Sevigné goes through

this ordeal perseveringly; but she has her alleviations. "My

doctor"--this is another pet _bon garçon_--"is very good. Instead of

resigning myself to two hours' _ennui_, inseparable from _la

suerie_(the sweating process) I make him read to me. He knows what

life is; he has no trickery about him; he deals with medicine like a

gentleman (_en galant homme_); in short, he amuses me."

At court the doctors had more serious trials. Beside the task of

pleasing this or that capricious and exacting patron, they had to

beware of displeasing twenty others. The princes of the blood shared

with the sovereign the right to choose their own physician from any

quarter they pleased, who became forthwith invested _ipso facto_ with

all the privileges of the Paris faculty. Possibly, to make a little

display of authority, they would often decline selecting him from the

honored precincts of the Rue de la Bûcherie, and perhaps take a doctor

of Montpellier. Hence interminable jealousies. Then the doctors would

sometimes be drawn into mixing themselves with party politics, and get

into the Bastille; but this was their own fault. To escape the shaft

of ridicule was more difficult. It appears certain that in _L'Amour

Médecin_ Molière ventured upon satirizing four of the court physicians

under assumed names; and this in the presence of the king himself,

before whom the piece was played. Possibly Louis, whose docility to

his physicians stands in remarkable contrast with his lofty distance

toward others, might not be sorry to indulge occasionally in a laugh

at his masters, or have a brief fling of independence, like a truant

schoolboy. Of his habitual bondage to their authority we have the

record in a journal of the royal health, magnificently bound in folio

and besprinkled _fleurs-de-lis_, which has been preserved. It was

begun in 1652 at the desire of the boy-sovereign himself--who thus

gave early tokens of his methodical tastes--and it was kept up till

four years previous to his death, when it suddenly ceases, possibly

because even the pen of flattery became unable to disguise the

approaches of inevitable death. The whole is in the handwriting of

Louis' three successive physicians, Valot, Daquin, and Fagon. No man,

it is said, is a hero to his _valet de chambre_; still less, we may

imagine, to his apothecary. That the king should have to submit to all

those medical appliances which in Molière's pages are recorded in such

plain terms was perhaps a necessity--judged at least to be so; but

that etiquette should require that the whole court should be regularly

apprised of all these details, is a little surprising. {686} The diary

is, however, interlarded with no small amount of flattery. Valot

inaugurates his office, for instance, by a memoir on the king's

temperament, which was that of which "heroes are made;" and all is in

the same adulatory and stilted style. But the writer is by no means

unsparing of self-laudation. It is with much evident self-complacency

that he registers for the benefit of posterity the different remedies

with which "heaven inspired him" to prescribe for the preservation of

a health so precious. "Plaster for the king," "potion for the king,"

and so on, figure in large characters. He can also play the prophet,

and announce coming measles, dysenteries, etc., _from which the king

is to be exempt_. There are temporary interruptions to Valot's

absolute rule; these were the seasons when Louis was campaigning; the

monarch on these occasions despised the care of his health, and threw

physic to the dogs. The doctor groaned and remonstrated, but was fain

to await the close of the campaign to resume his authority and make up

for lost time. He died in his office. His nephew and successor,

Daquin, was a Montpellier doctor and a converted Jew. He was a clever

man of moderate science. But he entered on his charge in difficult

days. A gouty prince, subject to melancholy, and desirous to abate

nothing of his customary attention either to business or amusement, is

not an easy patient to manage. Beside, the royal valetudinarian met

with sundry accidents while under this physician's care. Daquin was an

accomplished courtier, and even improved upon Valot in the art of

flattery. From him we learn the remarkable fact that "the king is

subject, like other men, to catch cold." With all his tact, Daquin did

not escape disgrace. Perhaps he made too undisguised a display of his

acquisitive disposition; indeed, he was a notorious beggar. It is

related that one day Louis, being informed of the death of an old

officer, expressed regret, saying that the man had been to him a

faithful servant, with the merit, rare in a courtier, of never having

asked for anything. While making this observation, he fixed his eyes

pointedly on Daquin. The physician, no way disconcerted, naively said,

"May one venture to inquire, sire, what your majesty gave him?" The

king was silenced, for the bashful courtier in question had never

received any royal favor whatsoever. Daquin was dismissed in 1693. He

had asked for the archbishopric of Tours for his son. He had so often

offended, if offence it were considered, in making bold requests, that

it is hardly likely that this application was the real cause of his

disgrace. It was probably rather the consequence of the king's rupture

with Mme. de Montespen, to whom Daquin owed his elevation. It appears

that ever since the king's marriage he had found some difficulty in

maintaining his position, from which it is natural to infer that

adverse influences were at work; indeed, it was a _protégé_, or rather

a friend, of Mme. de Maintenon who was promoted to fill his place--a

circumstance corroborative of this supposition. Fagon appears to have

been a very estimable man, and the attachment and mutual esteem

subsisting between him and his patroness, with whom he had first

become acquainted in his capacity of physician to the Duc de Maine,

never abated. [Footnote 103] He won the confidence also of Louis, and

the favor he enjoyed while still in his position of secondary

physician was much increased at the period of the king's great illness

by a trifling circumstance which made a strong impression on the

monarch's mind. One night all the surgeons and doctors, {687} Daquin

included, had ventured to go to bed. The king had taken a _bouillon_,

and the fever seemed to be subdued. But Fagon, unobserved by the rest,

slipped back and took his post in an arm-chair in the ante-room. He

was thus at hand to comfort and administer a _tisane_ to the sick

monarch, whose fever shortly returned, and who, albeit with the fear

of Daquin greatly before his eyes, ventured to accept the services of

the attentive subaltern. The _tisane_ sent Louis to sleep, and made

Fagon's fortune. Three months afterward he was first in command. He

deserved his elevation to an office which was a post of no slight

honor and profit. [Footnote 104] He bore his honors meekly, and was

remarkable for a spirit of disinterestedness as rare as it was

creditable to him. Fagon closes the list of the court physicians of

the seventeenth century, and indeed carries us on into the eighteenth.

All reserve being made in his favor, it must be confessed that the

great dramatist's satire was richly deserved by those doctors of

royalty, whose ambitious manoeuvres, intrigues, and paltry rivalries

were enough to excite the indignation of any honest man.

[Footnote 103: Fagon was the nephew of Guy de la Brosse, the founder

of the _Jardin du Roi_, now developed into the magnificent Museum of

Natural Science and himself also an eminent botanist. He was named

professor of botany at this establishment by Valot, who, as first

physician to the king, was its superintendent.]

[Footnote 104: The king's physician ranked with the great officers

of the crown, and received orders from the sovereign alone, to whom

he took an oath of fidelity; and he became a count in virtue of his

office, and transmitted his nobility to his children. He was

entitled to the same honors and privileges as the high chamberlain.

He was a councillor of state, and received the usual emoluments.

When he visited the faculty, he was met at the door by the dean,

bachelors, and beadles, although he himself might not be a Paris

doctor. He had, beside, very extensive authority, enjoying a species

of medical jurisdiction throughout the kingdom.]

We have seen that the independent physician, who stood aloof from

courting the great, could lead an honorable and tranquil life; but it

would be a mistake to conclude that profound peace reigned within the

medical corporation itself. On the contrary, it was the scene of a

bitter internecine war between the men of the new ideas, the men of

progress, and the adherents to tradition and the received system. But

to excite men's passions ideas must assume a concrete form, which then

becomes at once a rallying-point and a watchword. Such in the

seventeenth century were the circulation of the blood and antimony.

Ever since the days of Galen the liver had been held to be the origin

of the veins, and of those organs by which blood is transmitted to the

whole body. Harvey's announcement accordingly raised a universal

commotion in the medical world: perhaps his doctrine would have met

with less opposition but for the discovery of the lacteal veins by an

Italian anatomist, Gasparo Aselli, in the year 1622. These veins, as

most of our readers probably know, originating in the intestines,

receive and convey thence the products of digestion--the chyle. Imbued

with the doctrine of Galen, and deceived by appearances, Aselli, it is

true, believed the liver to be their ultimate destination. Immediately

there was one general outcry against these intrusive vessels: their

non-necessity was put forward as a conclusive objection--a very common

argument, it may be noted, with the old doctors. Really it was not

worth upsetting received notions on their account--the lacteal vessels

were superfluous. Even Harvey, who was among Aselli's opponents,

joined in insisting on this unsatisfactory reason. "It is not

_necessary_," he says, "to seek a fresh channel for the transport of

the chyle in the lacteal veins." It was evident, he said, that the

chyle was carried from the intestines by the mesenteric veins.

But in 1649 Pecquet, a Frenchman, completed the demonstration, by

showing that the lacteal veins do not terminate in the liver, but in a

reservoir, to which his name was given. Now indeed the liver, and

Galen, and the whole edifice of medicine, were threatened; nothing

could be deemed sacred any longer. The liver was not the origin of the

veins, if the blood careered in a circle, having neither beginning nor

end; and the chyle did not go to the liver. {688} "_Quid de nostra

fiet medicina?_" was the sorrowful exclamation of one of the doctors

of the Montpellier faculty when Pecquet had triumphantly expounded his

discovery before them. Ah, there was the difficulty! _Quid de nostra

fiet medicina?_ We are condemning our past--an argument which weighs

powerfully against all conversions. Nothing can afford stronger

evidence of the deep conviction entertained that the whole existing

system was at stake, than the opposition of a physician of so much

eminence, intellectual and scientific, as Riolan, whom alone of all

his adversaries Harvey judged worthy of a rejoinder. It is

astonishing, indeed, to see a man of his stamp reduced to throw

himself on such arguments as the uselessness and degradation of the

liver if the new hypothesis be admitted; to find him urging the

impropriety of allowing impure unelaborated chyle to go straight to

the heart, which under these circumstances it must do--thus converting

that noble seat of vital heat into an ignoble kitchen. And then, once

there, how was the chyle to be got rid of? An absurd list of

suppositions follows, intended to prove, by an exhaustive process, the

sheer impossibility of disposing of the chyle after having arrived at

such an _impasso_. _Ergo_, the chyle _must_ go to the liver. In fact,

it cannot go anywhere else with either reason or propriety. Such are

the contemptible arguments to which even superior minds will stoop

when they battle against evidence. Harvey, however, found many

partisans amongst the Paris faculty. Guy Patin, as we have said, was

not of the number: he was not a deep thinker, and trusted his friend

Riolan. Harvey's followers were called "circulators." Now "circulator"

in Latin means a charlatan--that is enough for Guy Patin. The debate

ceased with Riolan's death: the doctrine had been gradually gaining

ground. In 1678 its victory had been achieved when Louis instituted at

the Jardin des Plantes a special chair of anatomy for propagating the

new discoveries.

The battle about antimony raged still more fiercely, inasmuch as the

question admitted of less tangible proof. There is a legend that this

mineral was first exhibited in a pure state and applied to medical

purposes by Basil Valentine, a Benedictine monk of Erfurt, in the

beginning of the sixteenth century; he gave it to his hogs, who throve

marvellously. This is to be attributed to the arsenic contained in the

drug, which fattens when taken in small quantities--a fact well known

to the peasants of Styria and Lower Austria. Basil next gave it to his

monks, who fell sick; from which he drew the following conclusion:

"This metal suits hogs; it does not suit monks." Hence its name of

antimony. Thirty years later Paracelsus took up the study of antimony,

and endeavored to introduce its use, with that of other minerals, in

medicine. This would have been to break completely with tradition; but

Paracelsus was half-cracked, and not very intelligible. The sixteenth

century was the age of alchemy, especially in Germany, where it was

ardently pursued, in connection with the occult sciences, by men who

rivalled Paracelsus in obscurity. In France transcendental chemistry

found less favor, and there was early a split between the

pseudo-mystics and the chemists. The former cultivated astrology; but

astrology, as an aid to medicine, had quite fallen into disrepute in

the seventeenth century, being abandoned to low vagabond quacks.

Chemistry, however, was making gradual progress and striving to

establish its place in medicine. The sympathy manifested for this

science at Montpellier was quite enough to indispose toward it the

faculty of Paris. The absurd blunders into which its association with

alchemy had betrayed it in times past weighed also on its reputation;

but, above all, the contempt for antiquity manifested by its adepts

was calculated to condemn it in the eyes {689} of the majority of the

physicians, brought up as they were in reverence for all that

chemistry pretended to reform or destroy.

There were not wanting, however, conciliatory spirits, who strove to

effect a compromise between the past and the present, and make room

for the new chemical theories in the received system. It has already

been observed how Galen's theory of the humors of the body had been

elaborated: all medical language was grounded upon it. [Footnote

105] Disease was the result of the vitiation of these humors, each

humor having its special morbid product. To expel this vitiated humor

was the task of the doctor; but why might not minerals be added to his

pharmacopoeia, without interfering with his principles? This seemed

reasonable; and as a matter of theory the faculty were not unwilling

to let it pass. The difference arose on the practical question. All

were agreed that the peccant humor was to be expelled; but the

faithful followers of Hippocrates attached great importance to

awaiting what was called the _coction_ of the humors. This was the

work of nature, which was employed in making an effort which the

physician was called only to second,--an effort of which fever was but

the symptom. It was esteemed a very nice point to hit off the proper

moment, and not prevent or disturb the crisis which was thus

preparing: hence the need of mild measures. Whoever will refer to the

apothecary's bill in the first scene of Molière's _Malade Imaginaire_

will see that lenifying, softening, tempering, and refreshing, were

the avowed objects of the drugs administered. Such was Hippocratic

medicine; mild, at least, in theory. We must make one exception as

respects bleeding: these enemies of violent measures bled with a

vengeance; they shed torrents of blood. They bled old men of eighty,

and babies two months, nay, even two days old; and this "without

inconvenience,"--so they said. We presume some of the sufferers

survived,--thanks to a strong constitution. Riolan says that there are

twenty-four pounds of blood in the human body, and that twenty can be

lost without causing death; _ergo_, it is keeping within very

reasonable bounds to deprive a man of only the half of his blood.

[Footnote 106]

[Footnote 105: M. Raynaud, to whose amusing work we are again

largely indebted, notices that much of this language still survives

in the diction of the common people. Many of their ideas and forms

of expression still reflect the old doctrine of humorism; just as

they have retained many words and idioms now become obsolete in the

upper and more shifting strata of society.]

[Footnote 106: The famous Guy de la Brosse refused to be bled. He

called bleeding the remedy of sanguinary pedants, and said he would

rather die then submit to the operation. "And he did die," says M.

Basalis, a brother doctor; adding, "The devil will bleed him in the

next world, has such a rascal and unbeliever deserves." Such are the

imprecations hurled at the man who ventured on refusing to die _in

proper form_. Could Molière have written anything more sublimely

comic?]

The object of bleeding, of course, was the expulsion of the vitiated

humors supposed to be contained in it; but it is hardly reconcilable

with the doctrine of waiting for their _coction_ to commence

operations by attacking a disease at once with a lancet. But this is

one of Guy Patin's primary convictions, as well as of numbers of his

brethren, and they conscientiously acted on the same. It was otherwise

as respected emetics. Antimony administered in the potent quantities

then used was a most frightful emetic. No one in those days thought of

giving infinitesimal doses, or suspected that what was poisonous in

large, might be salutary in fractional, proportions. It was reserved

for Rasoni to discover that antimony could be thus beneficially

administered. And so the whole question lay between those who held as

a principle that the peccant humor was not to be expelled till after

_coction_, and those who maintained that the sooner the morbific

matter was ejected from the system the better.

It is true that the horrible prostration of strength consequent on

this summary process was sufficient to alarm men's minds, and furnish

a reasonable topic to the opponents of {690} antimony. The quarrel

occupied a whole century; of course we cannot attempt to go into even

its most elementary details. In 1566, the parliament prohibited the

use of this drug. The year 1666 saw it rehabilitated by the same body.

The motive of the first decree was the report of the faculty that

antimony was an incorrigible poison. The idea, as we just now

observed, that diminution of quantity might effect what was

unattainable by correctives, did not occur to the medical mind of that

day. In 1615 there was a fresh unanimous decree against antimony, also

indorsed by parliament; but the scientific world was still on the

search for a _corrective_, and converts, or perverts, were being

secretly made within the very sanctuary of the faculty. In 1638, the

dean, Hardoun de Saint-Jacques, suddenly published an incomplete

pharmaceutic codex, which had been in course of preparation for twelve

years. In this dictionary antimonial wine actually figured in its

alphabetical place. How had the enemy contrived to creep into the

citadel? No one could say. This incident was the occasion of a deluge

of pamphlets, of which the very form and language are, for the most

part, like a dead letter to us. Hippocrates, Holy Scripture, history,

and the fathers, are all called into court. Even the definition of

antimony gives rise to much discussion; and it is gravely argued

whether Adam, when conferring names in Paradise, named this drug, and

if so, what he called it. Even the troubles of the Fronde did not

check this medical civil war. Antimony had quite a literature of its

own. Guy Patin, of course, was inimical, but a little cautious while

the question of his deanship was impending. Afterward he launches out;

he hates chemistry, he hates antimony, he hates Guénaut, who is its

warm advocate, and is beside Cardinal Mazarin's physician (Guy Patin

is always in political opposition). Guénaut, he says, has poisoned his

wife, daughter, and two sons-in-law with this drug; at last he poisons

himself, and dies a martyr to his infatuation. And then the faculty

have twice condemned antimony. That is more than enough for Guy Patin.

However, a great event turned the balance in his favor. During the

campaign of 1658, the king, then twenty years of age, was attacked by

typhus. Valot had been absent a few days, sent by Louis, as the

journal tells us, to settle a quarrel between the physicians and

surgeons who were treating the Maréchal de Castelnau for a mortal

wound--poor marshal! He hastened back to his master, and fell to work

vigorously, sparing neither bleeding nor dosing; but the king got

worse, and Guénaut was sent for. The court-physicians--Valot, Esprit,

Daquin, Yvelin, beside a local doctor--were all there disputing over

the monarch's sinking body. A great consultation is now held, presided

over by the cardinal; and he votes for antimony. It was given. The

king took an ounce, and marvellous are the recorded effects. However,

whether in consequence or in spite of the dose, he recovered. Louis

was at that time his people's darling and idol; they adored their

young monarch, and he had been saved by Guénaut and antimony! Guy

Patin's embarrassment at this crisis is a little ludicrous. The dose,

he urges in extenuation, was small; but he concludes that, after all,

what saved the king "was his innocence, his youth and strength, nine

good bleedings, and the prayers of good people like himself and

others." Defections now became numerous, and the faculty was in a

false position. In fact, most of the doctors gave antimony in spite

of the two decrees, the last of which interdicted the mention of it.

In 1666 the embargo was finally removed, after a tedious and ponderous

process, as were all processes in those days, before the parliament;

and the doctors were henceforth permitted "to give the said emetic

wine for the cure of maladies, to write and dispute about it,"' etc.,

but it was not lawful for persons to take it {691} without their

advice. The question had been decided in the faculty by ninety-two

doctors against ten. The decree came to sadden the last days of Guy

Patin, and of a few more respectable old stagers, who were unable to

advance with their age.

But this internal conflict was not the only one which the faculty had

to sustain. There was the perennial dispute with the surgeons. Surgery

and medicine are twin sciences, if they be not rather branches of one

and the same. Hippocrates, Galen, Celsus, made no practical

distinction between them; nevertheless, they came to be entirely

separated in mediaeval practice. Two causes may be assigned for this:

the first was the quasi-ecclesiastical character of the medical

profession in early days, which rendered the shedding of blood and

other operations incompatible with the position of men who were either

clerics or bound by clerical rules. Still, though they could not

themselves draw blood, they could prescribe blood-letting and other

sanguinary operations; and this led, of course, to the existence of

another class, paid to carry out their orders. But a second and far

more enduring cause was the strong prejudice existing in feudal times

against manual labor as degrading. In vain might the surgeons urge

that it was absurd to regard as merely mechanical an occupation which

necessitated much scientific knowledge. The university shared the

feelings of the faculty on this point; and while admitting the doctors

into its fellowship, rejected the surgeons. Excluded from this

fraternity of liberal science, the surgeons gave themselves diligently

to professional study. As early as the fourteenth century we meet with

their celebrated confraternity, placed under the patronage of Sts.

Cosmas and Damian, which boasted of its foundation by St. Louis, and

which maintained its existence for five centuries. The quarrel with

the doctors began in the middle of the fifteenth century, and

terminated only on the eve of the Revolution, when St. Cosmas's

College and the faculty were both alike to share the universal

shipwreck of all the ancient institutions.

The surgeons had long been in the habit of availing themselves of the

aid of the barbers in certain ordinary operations, and bleeding was at

last entirely abandoned to their hands. Just, however, as the faculty

wished to depress the surgeons, and the latter were desirous to raise

themselves to an equality with the faculty, so also the surgeons were

resolved to keep down their servants the barbers, who, on their part,

aspired to rise in the professional scale. The policy of the faculty

was to foster their rivalry, and thus keep a check upon both; but as

the nearest enemy is always the most dreaded, the time came when it

was judged prudent to elevate the barbers, whose very inferiority

rendered them less obnoxious, in order the better to make head against

the surgeons; and so the faculty adopted the barbers, in whom it hoped

to find docile clients, in order to mortify its unsubmissive children.

It magnificently compared this measure to the call of the Gentiles and

rejection of ungrateful Israel. But the barbers held their heads up

now, and requested to study anatomy. Here was a difficulty. University

regulations strictly enjoined that all public lessons should be in

Latin; but what was the use of talking Latin to barbers? So the

lecture was to be in Latin, and the explanation in French. Apparently

to facilitate the comprehension of the classic tongue by the

unlearned, the use of that whimsical Latin which Molière has so

happily caricatured then first began. A clever compromise was now

supposed to have been effected. A doctor was to teach in the

amphitheatre of the faculty without touching the body; a surgeon was

to dissect; the barbers were to be present, and try to understand.

This was in 1498.

Further concessions followed; and in 1505 the faculty allowed the

barbers to be inscribed on the dean's {692} register, and, after

passing through an examination, to be formally received as scholars.

They paid, however, for their lessons, and took an oath never to

prescribe an internal remedy, but to have recourse to the doctors for

the medical treatment of their patients. On these conditions the

proudest of scientific corporations extended its protection to, and

even took into a certain fellowship, a profession not only humble, but

so much despised, that in Germany at that period barbers were not

admitted into any trade corporation. The credit of the king's

barber--an important personage, who enjoyed familiar opportunities for

asking favors--had something perhaps to say to the prosperity of this

trade in France. And the barbers continued to prosper; it was their

interest, indeed, to keep well with the faculty, whose protecting hand

once withdrawn, they would helplessly fall back under the cruel

bondage of their old masters. But as time went on, they grew

confident. The troubles of the League unhinged society, and for some

years we find them neglecting to take the oath of fidelity. Meanwhile

surgery had attained a proud position, and at the end of the sixteenth

century was much in advance of the other sciences, both in its spirit

of independent inquiry and in experimental practice.

Many eminent names illustrate its annals at this period. At the head

of the corporation was Ambroise Paré, the restorer--we might almost

say the creator--of modern surgery. He had been a barber's boy in his

youth, and still treated his old associates with much consideration.

Perhaps this honorable notice helped to turn their heads a little, for

they actually began to set up school for themselves, and to maintain

theses. This got them a snub from the faculty, and a prohibition from

parliament, which recalled to their recollection the ancient statute

which permitted their intervention only "_pro furunculis, bocchiis, et

apostumatibus_." But the time was past for enforcing such laws; every

day the barbers more and more emancipated themselves from thraldom;

and in 1629 they obtained the right of having their receptions

presided over by the king's barber or by his lieutenant.

The surgeons meanwhile had left no stone unturned to get admission

into the university, to have a recognized right to lecture publicly,

and to receive the chancellor's benediction. They were several times

granted the king's license to this effect; but the university

disregarded the royal injunction, and even set at naught a Papal bull

which, in 1579, recognized the surgeon's title to the chancellor's

benediction. There was a consequent _appel comme d'abus_ from that

Gallican body to the parliament. Nevertheless, more than one

chancellor was found to comply with the Pope's rescript.

Such, then, was the situation of parties in the beginning of Louie

XIV.'s reign. Three rival corporations existed; in principle united,

but mutually independent. There was the faculty, petrified as it were,

in its immobility, demanding from the others a submission it could not

obtain; there was the corporation of surgeons, intermediary between

the learned bodies and the trading _bourgeoisie_, wearing the gown on

days of ceremony, holding examinations, conferring degrees, but

keeping shop; [Footnote 107] and there were the barbers, with neither

gown nor school, but living at the expense of the two former classes,

and, by long prescription, freely practising surgery, and even

medicine to a certain extent. The reasons for old distinctions had

passed away--nothing remained but inveterate rivalries. Anatomy was

the perpetual theatre for dissension. The surgeons never had resigned

themselves to the secondary part allotted to them. They claimed {693}

to teach what they understood at least as well as their superiors. But

how to get bodies? The dean of the faculty had an exclusive claim to

those of all executed criminals, and none other were procurable.

Accordingly, whenever an execution occurred there was a regular

scramble for the poor wretch's body. The students of surgery and the

barber-apprentices assembled on the Place de Grève, where they had no

difficulty in finding recruits amongst the rabble. Scarcely had the

executioner done his work, when these bands, armed with swords and

sticks, rushed on the yet warm corpse, which was carried off by the

victors to some shop, in which they barricaded themselves against the

_maréchaussée_. Many of these disgraceful acts went unpunished.

Sometimes the faculty would despatch an official to claim the body; he

was always sent about his business; and then recourse was had to law.

The report of an unfortunate _huissier_, who was actor and victim in

one of these scenes, may be seen in a _procès-verbal_ of the time. He

was sent to seize a body which had been taken to St. Cosmas's. There

he found three professors (in cap and gown!) giving an anatomical

demonstration to a large audience. He was received with yells, and

cruelly beaten. A force coming to his rescue, the students cut up the

corpse into bits rather than let the faculty get it.

[Footnote 107: They hang up at their windows as a sign three

emblematic boxes, surmounted with a banner bearing the figures of

Sts. Cosmas and Damian.]

A common interest and a common hatred of their domineering antagonist

ended by drawing together the two inferior orders, and finally led to

their reunion. The increasing number of the barbers, unrestrained by

any rule, and unrestrainable by any law, threatened to swamp surgery

altogether; and so the men of letters made up their minds to extend

the hand of fellowship to the artisans, and receive them back, not as

slaves any longer, but as brethren. In 1655 the surgeons swallowed

this bitter pill; they took upon themselves the shame of uniting with

the barbers, and the barbers entered on the privileges of the

surgeons. Parliament ratified the contract, and the faculty was

scarcely named in the affair. It was left stranded. Its servants, whom

it had raised from the dust to do its work and fight its battles, had

betrayed it and gone off with arms and baggage to the enemy's camp.

But it was not long without perceiving that it might draw profit from

what seemed a discomfiture. The surgeons had conferred their

privileges on the barbers; in return they had, of course, accepted the

liabilities of their new associates. Now the barbers were bound by

contract to an oath of fidelity, and other obligations of a pecuniary

nature, to the faculty. This body accordingly claimed either that the

union effected should be dissolved, or that both companies should be

subject to the engagements by which the barbers had bound themselves.

It renewed at the same time all its former claims of supremacy, and

its old prohibitions against teaching and conferring degrees, but,

above all, against the assumption of the _cap and gown_.

Three years did this process last, which occupies a voluminous place

in the parliamentary registers. The surgeons eventually lost their

cause; and that which did not a little contribute thereto was the

manifestation of their own miserable internal dissensions. "St. Luke

has been stronger than St. Cosmas!" exclaimed the triumphant Guy Patin

at the news of this great victory. Seventy-two doctors went in

procession, in grand costume, to thank the president, Lamoignon, and

the avocat-général, Talon; and in order to testify their special

gratitude to the latter, it was decreed that, having well merited of

the faculty, he and his family should be attended gratis in

perpetuity. A magnificent edition of Hippocrates in five folio volumes

was presented along with this decree, inclosed in a silver box. For

several days not one of the crest-fallen {694} surgeons was to be seen

in the streets, and six of their number, it is said, fell sick. Gladly

would they now have dissolved the unhappy _mésalliance_ they had

contracted, but it was too late. Both barbers and surgeons, indeed,

alike felt that the defeat was final; but on the latter it must have

fallen with the most crushing severity. Before the close of the year

the chair in which Ambroise Paré had sat--the symbol of departed

greatness--was removed. They had to pay the impost, take the oath of

fidelity--no humiliation was spared them. Thus forced into a

preposterous alliance, which was made the pretext for its degradation,

the surgical profession languished for many years. The faculty on this

occasion certainly committed its worst fault. For paltry questions of

precedence it retarded for a century the progress of surgery, which

did not emerge from the inferior position to which the decree of 1660

had reduced it until time and necessity led to a reconstitution of

surgery and shaving as two distinct professions. It was then that

Louis XV., at the instance of La Peyronie, created the Royal Academy

of Surgery, which furnished so many illustrious names to science in

the eighteenth century, and which would doubtless have extinguished

the old faculty if the Revolution had not saved it the trouble by

destroying them both.

Our space forbids us to notice the other great battle of the faculty

during the period which has immediately fallen under our

consideration--that which it waged and won against the Montpellier

doctors. But the Montpellier school would deserve a notice by itself;

and the interest which gathers round it has been heightened by the

important questions, physiological and philosophical, connected with

its name in the present day.

A word or two more, and we have done. When Molière was about to deal

the faculty its most grievous wound, it was triumphant on all sides.

Yet, as a system, it was already doomed to that destruction which had

fallen on the whole scholastic method in science prevailing in the

middle ages. Hippocrates, it is true, furnished the text-book of

medicine, but it was Hippocrates virtually commented by Aristotle, as

all the old medical phraseology and medical argumentations abundantly

prove. Much of the ridicule attached to that venerable body against

which Molière has raised an inextinguishable laugh had its origin in

the retention of this language, with all the quiddities of the

schools, and of those curious dialectic exercises which formed the

approved method of mental gymnastics in the middle ages long after

they had been discarded everywhere else. The rest of the ridicule

which falls to the due share of the faculty must be laid to the

account of the selfishness, pride, and egotism inherent in human

nature, but which always strike us more forcibly when exhibited in a

state of things foreign to current ideas and manners.

In conclusion, we would point out what we conceive may be esteemed as

a sound point in the system of that day--its treatment of man as a

whole. There is no divorce with these old doctors between body and

soul. Modern medical science has affected to treat the body apart from

any regard to the spiritual portion of man's nature. While allowing

the immense progress made in medicine and surgery in modern times, we

cannot but feel that a serious error was committed in dividing what

our fathers deemed inseparable. The materialistic errors of the

eighteenth century, and, in particular, the materialism so prevalent

in the learned medical body, are a standing comment on the systems

which made clear decks of those fundamental principles which had come

down to us from the earliest antiquity, and which had received the

sanction of the Christian schools, in whose teaching physiology and

psychology were always closely united; the study of the soul crowning

{695} that of physiology. We witness with satisfaction a strong

reaction amongst many members of the French medical body toward views

which harmonize thoroughly with the old doctrine of the Angel of the

School, laid down long before those modern discoveries which are

beginning slowly to lead men back, not to the pedantry of the olden

time, but to those ancient paths from which our fathers would have

deemed it heresy to wander.

------

From The Sixpenny Magazine.

HANDWRITING.

Men, like trees, have a curved line which, touching at the

extremities, forms a figure which is the general estimate of their

characters. Individual traits are lost in the harmony of them all. The

hand may be delicate; the face coarse; there may be contradiction

between the eye and the brow, between the motive power and the object

desired; but still the man is a unity unlike any other man, and yet

similar in original traits.

To tell character by confining one's self to one exhibition of a

faculty, would be like trying to tell the climate of a place by

staying there one day. But in the other extreme, the collecting of

facts proves nothing unless there have been opportunities for the

display of other qualities than the ones in which the person is not

interested. I, for instance, always dislike making new acquaintances;

I get sulky whenever it is forced upon me; that does not prove that I

may not be pleasant enough when allowed to act as I please.

One man, with no taste for a certain pursuit, is forced into it, kept

at it, and, as he gives evidence of dislike, is accused of being

almost a fool. Wonderful that in something else he should be a

proficient at the first attempt. Yet it is not the doing a thing, but

the getting pay for it, that is difficult; not the reading of

character, but the applying it. What value is the being able to

understand why men's handwritings vary, save as interesting?

Yet, perhaps, many a reader will glance over this and be inclined to

acquire the skill.

First, does the man write often moderately, or very nicely? Did he

write in a hurry, or not? Lastly, is his temperament nervous or

inclined to be heavy?

Bad writing may arise from haste, nervousness, and want of practice;

but the handwriting of the illiterate is intrinsically different from

that of a nervous scholar. A man who writes badly when in haste must

be a nervous man; so scrawly writing may be reduced to want of

self-command. The man of business asks of the scholar, "Why can't you

sell your labor and become rich?" The scholar may ask, "Why don't you

give your money and write a book?" It is as impossible for one to

change as the other. Poverty of brains can be no more overcome than

poverty of purse. The right plan is for the two to divide. Money for

talent. Ridiculous for money to wait for brains, or brains to be

contemptuous of money. There must be help. Look at the writing! That

nervous sweep of the pen is not the characteristic of a man to sway

material matters; he is not thick-headed enough; the blows crush him.

On the other hand, that round, manly, firm chirography, regular as a

troop of horses, indicates outward show, but there is no brain,

sentiment, intense sensibility behind. {696} A bird is in a quiver of

excitement at the least noise, but a cow stands looking on without the

least alarm. Women write small. Indolence, affectation, and weakness

are indicated, and indolence is nature's guard for nervous persons.

Take particular instances. A is a man of medium size, high forehead,

hair of the Yankee brownish hue, eyes deep-set and rather small, nose

small, mouth firm, chin rather weak. Physically, he is inclined to be

of a nervous, sanguine temperament; hope large, caution large; animal

propensities strong. He is a man of business, writes considerably,

generally about business. His habit of mind exact. Now, what will be

his characteristic handwriting? Ask half a dozen different men who are

interested in judging of character, and compare their answers. His

habits of business will have made his writing to a certain extent

formal. He will have tried to make it a plain hand. His long practice

in keeping books will have taught him to be able to write large or

small; his nervousness will have taught him to use abbreviations; his

solidity and preference for mercantile pursuits will have made him

always more or less subject to self-command. He writes, then, not like

the man of mere intellect, to get his thoughts upon paper for

preservation, but for others to read. He thinks constantly how he will

affect others; how they will understand him. He employs formal

expressions because they are better understood. He says, "Rec'd three

bales goods," instead of telling in many words the same fact, but

writes not obscurely, but with particular care that they shall be

read.

A lawyer will fill out a writ, and, save an undulating line, no one

but the initiated would understand that a legal phrase was implied.

The man of business deals with facts. The facts may be expressed

briefly, in a formal way, hurriedly, but always with the intention of

being read. That some business men do write badly is nothing to this

purpose. I am speaking of the desire in you to write plainly.

Now my man, described, sits down to tell his correspondent that a

certain lot of goods has arrived, all save one package. He writes

rapidly, exactly, and with the wish that the others shall read what he

says at once and without mistake. His nervous power would urge him to

haste and carelessness, but his business education will restrain him.

How will his writing show it? His mind is not particularly active. He

is not thinking what to say, but to explain an understood fact. I

think, all these circumstances taken into consideration, his letters

will be open, frank regular, round, and well-looking, but at the ends

of the longest wider, and at the tops and bottoms of long letters will

be a perceptible twitch as if he grew there first a little impatient

at the delay.

Boldness and delicacy of handwriting may not indicate more than

straight-forwardness or caution. A prudent, secretive man generally

writes fine, generally also boldly. A passionate nature is confined,

and, unless great ability of pencraft is acquired, will rather betray

his interest by weakness and indecision in his letters than by excess

of power. A fine writer is either one who holds himself in control or

a thick-headed nobody, a calm, passionless man, or a mere copyist, for

to pay attention to the mere form, augurs that the man's mind is not

very much excited by his theme.

Writing full of unnecessary thrusts and turns betokens a man undecided

and wavering. A direct up and down style is his who cares nothing for

ornament--prefers comfort with regularity to luxury without. A

slovenly man scrawls his own nature. A timid man writes commandingly,

with unequal heaviness of line. Indolent men avoid trouble and write

small. A bold, careless, obstinate man writes variably, at one time

well, at another ill. Nothing can charm a man, especially if careless

himself, like neatness in the letters of a lady.

------

{697}

From The Lamp.

ALL-HALLOW EVE; OR, THE TEST OF FUTURITY.

BY ROBERT CURTIS.

CHAPTER XXIII.

The long-wished-for day appointed for this great match had now

arrived, and there was not a man of a hundred in each parish beside

the two leading men who had not on that morning taken his hurl from

the rack before he went to prayers, inspected it, weighed it in his

hand, to ascertain if the _set_ lay fair to the _swipe_, as he placed

it on the ground.

Two o'clock in the afternoon had been appointed for the men to be on

the ground, and punctual to the moment they were seen in two compact

masses beyond opposite ends of the common. They had assembled outside,

and were not permitted to straggle in, in order that their approach

toward each other, in two distinct bodies, amidst the inspiring cheers

of their respective parties, might have the better effect. This great

occasion had been talked of for weeks, and was looked upon, not only

by the players themselves, and the two great men at their heads, but

it might be said by the "public at large," as the most important

hurling-match which had been projected for years in that or perhaps

any other district. The friends of each party, beside hundreds of

neutral spectators, had already occupied the hills round what might be

called the arena.

Conspicuous at the head of the Rathcash men as they advanced with

their green sleeves amidst the cheers of their friends, Tom Murdock

could be seen walking with his head erect, and his hurl sloping over

his shoulder. He kept his right hand disengaged that he might fulfil

the usual custom of giving it to his opponent, in token of goodwill,

ere the game began.

He was undoubtedly a splendid handsome-looking fellow "that day."

Upwards of six feet high, made in full proportion. His shirt tied at

the throat with a broad green ribbon, having the collar turned down

nearly to the shoulders, showed a neck of unsullied whiteness, which

contrasted remarkably with the dark curled whiskers above it. His men,

too, were a splendid set of fellows. Most of them were as tall and as

well made as himself, and none were under five feet ten; there was not

a small man among them--the picked unmarried men of the parish. Their

green sleeves and bare necks, with their hurls across their left

shoulders, as in the case of their leader, elicited thunders of

applause from the whole population of Rathcash upon the hill to their

right.

A deep ditch with a high grass bank lay between the common and the

spot where Emon-a-knock and his men had assembled.

Phil M'Dermott was silent. He was not yet reconciled to the color

which their leader had chosen. Of course he could not account for it,

but he did not half like it. To him it looked sombre, melancholy, and

prophetic. But Phil had sense enough to assume a cheerfulness, if he

did not feel it.

Emon himself, though five feet ten and a half inches high, was about

the smallest man of his party. In every respect they equalled, if they

did not exceed, the Rathcash men.

{698}

"Come, boys," said Emon; "Tom Murdock is bringing on his men; we'll

have to jump the bank. Shall I lead the way?"

"Of course, Emon; an' bad luck to the man of the hundred will lave a

toe on it."

"No, nor a heel, Phil," said the wit.

"Stand back, boys, about fifteen yards," said Emon. "Let me at it

first; and when I am clean over, go at it as much in a line as you

can. Give yourselves plenty of room and don't crowd."

"Take your time, boys," whispered the prophet, "an' let none of us

trip or fall."

"Never fear, Phil," ran through them all in reply.

Emon then drew back a few yards; and with a light quick run he cleared

the bank, giving a slight little steadying-jump on the other side,

like a man who had made a somersault from a spring-board.

The Shanvilla population--the whole of which, I may say, was on the

surrounding hills--rent the air with their cheers, amidst which the

red sleeves were seen clearing the bank like so many young deer. Not a

mistake was made; not a man jumped low or short; not a toe was left

upon it, as the prophet had said--nor a heel, as the wit had added. It

was an enlivening sight to see the red sleeves rising by turns about

eight feet into the air, and landing steadily on the level sward

beyond the bank.

The cheers from Shanvilla were redoubled, and even some of the

Rathcash men joined.

The two parties were now closing each other in friendly approach

toward the centre of the field, where they halted within about six

yards of each other; Tom Murdock and Emon-a-knock a tittle in advance.

They stepped forward, with their right hands a little extended.

"Hallo, Lennon!" said Murdock; "why, you are dressed in silk, man, and

have a cap to match; I heard nothing of that. I could not afford silk,

and our sleeves are plain calico."

"So are ours, and I could afford silk still less than you could; but

my men presented me with these sleeves and this cap, and I shall wear

them."

"Of course, of course, Lennon. But I cannot say much for the color;

blue would have looked much better; and, perhaps, have been more

appropriate."

"I left that for the girls to wear in their bonnets," replied Lennon,

sarcastically. He knew that Winny Cavana's holiday bonnet was trimmed

with blue, and thought it not unlikely that Murdock knew it also.

They then shook hands, but it was more formal than cordial; and

Murdock took a half-crown from his pocket. He was determined to be

down on Emon-a-knock's poverty, for a penny would have done as well;

and he said, "Shall I call, or will you?"

"The challenger generally 'skies,' and the other calls," he replied.

"Here then!" said Murdock, standing out into a clear spot, and curling

the half-crown into the air, eighteen or twenty feet above their

heads.

"Head," cried Lennon; and head it was.

It was the usual method on such occasions for the leader who won the

toss to throw the ball with all his force as high into the air as

possible, and, as a matter of course, as far toward his opponent's

goal as he could. The height into the air was as a token to his

friends to cheer, and the direction toward his opponent's goal was

considered the great advantage of having won the toss.

This was, however, the first occasion in the annals of hurling where

this latter point had been questioned. Emon-a-knock and Phil M'Dermott

were both experienced hurlers; and previous to their having taken the

high bank in such style, from the field outside the common, they had

stepped aside from their men, and discussed the matter thus:

"Phil, I hope we'll win the toss," said Emon.

"That we may, I pray. You'll put the ball a trifle on its way if we

do, Emon."

{699}

"No, Phil, that is the very point I want to settle with you. I have

always remarked that when the winner of the toss throws the ball

toward the other goal, it is always met by some good man who is on the

watch for it; and as none of the opposite party are allowed into their

ground until 'the game is on,' he has it all to himself, and generally

deals it such a swipe as puts it half-way back over the others' heads.

Now my plan is this. If I win 'the toss,' I'll throw the ball more

toward our own goal than toward theirs. Let you be there, Phil, to

meet it; and I have little fear that the first puck you give it will

send it double as far into our opponent's ground as I could throw it

with my hand. Beside, the moment the ball is up, our men can advance

all over the ground, and another good man of ours may help it on. What

say you, Phil?"

"Well, Emon, there's a grate dale of raison in what you say, now that

I think of it; but I never seen it done that way afore."

It had been thus settled between these two best men of Shanvilla; and

Emon, having won the toss, cast his eye over his shoulder and caught a

side glance of Phil M'Dermott in position, with his hurl poised for

action.

Contrary to all experience and all expectation, Emon-a-knock, instead

of casting the ball from him, toward the other goal, threw it as high

as possible, but unmistakably inclining toward his own. Here there was

a murmur of disappointed surprise from Shanvilla on the hill. But it

was soon explained. Phil M'Dermott had it all his own way for the

first puck, which was considered a great object. Never had such an

expedient (_nunc_ dodge) to secure it been thought of before.

M'Dermott had full room to deal with it. There was no one near him but

his own men, who stood exulting at what they knew was about to come.

M'Dermott with the under side of his hurl rolled the ball toward him,

and curling it up into the air about a foot above his head, met it as

it came down with a puck that was heard all over the hills, and drove

it three distances beyond where Emon could have thrown it from his

hand. The object of the backward cast by the leader had now been

explained to the satisfaction of Shanvilla, whose cheers of

approbation loudly succeeded to their previous murmurs of surprise.

"Be gorra, they're a knowing pair," said one of the spectators on the

hill.

But I cannot attend to the game, which is now well "on,"' and tell you

what each party said during the struggle.

Of course the ball was met by Rathcash, and put back; but every man

was now at work as best he might, where and when he could, but not

altogether from under a certain sort of discipline and eye to their

leaders. Now some fortunate young fellow got an open at the ball, and

gave it a puck which sent it spinning through the crowd until stopped

by the other party. Then a close struggle and clashing of hurls, as if

life and death depended on the result. Now, again, some fellow gets an

open swipe at it, and puck it goes over their heads, while a rush of

both parties takes place toward the probable spot it must arrive at;

then another crowded struggle, and ultimately another puck, and it is

seen like a cannon-ball on the strand at Sandymount. Another rush,

another close struggle and clashing of hurls, and puck, puck; now at

the jaws of this goal, now at the jaws of that, while the cheers and

counter-cheers re-echo through the surrounding hills.

It is needless to say that Tom Murdock and Emon-a-knock were

conspicuous in all these vicissitudes of the game. No man took the

ball from either of them if he was likely to get a puck at it _in

time_; but no risk of a counter-puck would be run if an opponent was

at hand to give it. This was the use of the distinguishing colors, and

right curious it was to see the green and red sleeves twisting through

each other and rushing in groups to one spot.

{700}

After all, Emon's color "did not look so bad;" and Shanvilla held

their own so gallantly as the game went on, that betting--for it was a

sort of Derby-day with the parish gamblers--which was six, and even

seven, to four on Rathcash at the commencement, was now even for

choice. Ay, there is one red-haired fellow, with a small eye and a big

one, who shoves three thimbles upon a board at races, has offered five

fippenny-bits to four upon Shanvilla; and well he may, for Emon and

his men had got the ball amongst them, and Emon's orders were to keep

it close--not to puck it at all, now that they had it, but to tip it

along and keep round it in a body. This was quite fair, and would have

been adopted by the other party had they got the chance.

They were thus advancing steadily but slowly. The Rathcash men were on

the outside, but found it difficult, if not impossible, to enter the

solid body of Shanvilla men, who were advancing with the ball in the

middle of them toward Rathcash goal.

"To the front, to the front, boys, or the game is lost!" roared Tom

Murdock, who was himself then watching for an open to get in at the

ball.

Forthwith there was a body of the green-sleeves right before

Shanvilla, who came on with their ball, tip by tip, undaunted.

Still Rathcash was on the outside, and could not put a hurl on the

ball. It was a piece of generalship upon the part of the Shanvilla

leader not often before thought of, and likely to be crowned with

success. The cheers from Shanvilla on the hills were now

deafening--the final struggle was evidently at hand. Rathcash on the

hills was silent, except a few murmurs of apprehension.

"This will never do, boys!" said Tom Murdock, rushing into the center

of Shanvilla and endeavoring to hook the ball from amongst them; but

they were too solid for that, although he had now made his way within

a hurl's length of Emon.

Emon called to his men to stoop in front that he might see the goal

and judge his distance.

"A few yards further, boys," he cried, "and then open out for me to

swipe: I will not miss either the ball or the goal."

"Steady, Emon, steady a bit!" said Phil M'Dermott; "don't you see who

is, I may say, alongside of you? Keep it close another bit."

"In with you, men! what are you about?" roared Tom Murdock; and half

a score of the green-sleeves rushed in amongst the red. Here the

clashing of hurls was at its height, and the shouts from both sides on

the hill were tremendous. Shanvilla kept and defended their ball in

spite of every attempt of Rathcash to pick it from amongst them; but

nothing like violence was thought of by either side.

Shanvilla seemed assured of victory, and such of them as were on the

outside, and could not get a tip at the ball, kept brandishing their

hurls in the air, roaring at the top of their voices, "Good boys,

Shanvilla, good boys!" "Through with it--through with it!" "Good

boys!"

Emon looked out. Though he did not see the stones, he saw the

goal-masters--one red, the other green--ready expecting the final

puck, and he knew the spot.

"Give me room now, Phil," he whispered, and his men drew back.

Emon curled the ball into the air about the height of his head, and

struck it sure and home. As if from a cannon's mouth it went over the

heads of Rathcash, Shanvilla, and all, and sped right through the

center of the stones--hop--hop--hop--until it was finally lost sight

of in some rushes. But another blow had been struck at the same

moment, and Emon-a-knock lay senseless on the ground, his face and

neck, shirt and sleeves, all the same color, and that color

was--blood.

Tom Murdock's hurl had been poised ready to strike the all the moment

Lennon had curled it into the air. Upon this one blow the whole {701}

game depended. Emon was rather sideways to Tom, who was on his left.

Both their blows were aimed almost simultaneously at the ball, but

Tom's being a second or two late, had no ball to hit; and not being

able to restrain the impetus of the blow, his hurl passed on and took

Emon's head above the top of the left ear, raising a scalp of flesh to

the skull-bone, about three inches in length, and more than half that

breadth.

The cheers of Shanvilla were speedily quashed, and there was a rush of

the red-sleeves round their leader. Phil M'Dermott had taken him in

his arms, and replaced the loose piece of flesh upon Emon's skull in

the most artistic manner, and bound it down with a handkerchief tied

under the chin. He could see that no injury had been done to the bone.

It was a mere sloping stroke, which had lifted the piece of flesh

clean from the skull. But poor Emon still lay insensible, his whole

face, neck, and breast covered with blood.

There was some growling amongst the Shanvilla boys, and those from the

hill ran down with their sticks to join their comrades with their

hurls; while the Rathcash men closed into a compact body, beckoning to

their friends on the hill, who also ran down to defend them in case of

need.

This was indeed a critical moment, and one that, if not properly

managed, might have led to bloodshed of a more extended kind. But Tom

Murdock was equal to the occasion. He gave his hurl to one of his men

the moment he had struck the blow, and went forward.

"Good heaven, boys, I hope he is not much hurt!" he exclaimed.

"Rathcash should lose a hundred games before Shanvilla should be

hurt."

As he spoke he perceived a scowl of doubt and rising anger in the

faces of many of the Shanvilla men, some of whom ground their teeth,

and grasped their hurls tighter in their hands. Tom did not lose his

presence of mind at even this, although he almost feared the result.

He took Emon by the hand and bid him speak to him. Phil M'Dermott had

ordered his men to keep back the crowd to give the sufferer air. Poor

Emon's own remedy in another cause had been resorted to. Phil had

rubbed his lips and gums with whiskey--on this occasion it was near at

hand--and poured a few thimblefuls down his throat. He soon opened his

eyes, and looked round him.

"Thank God!" cried Tom Murdock. "Are you much hurt, Lennon?"

The very return to life had already quashed any cordiality toward Emon

in Tom's heart.

"Not much, I hope, Tom. I was stunned; that was all. But what about

the game? I thought my ear caught the cheers of victory as I fell."

"So they did, Emon," said M'Dermott; "but stop talking, I tell you.

The game is ours, and it was you who won it with that last puck."

"Ay, and it was that last puck that nearly lost him his life,"

continued Tom, knowingly enough. "We both struck at the ball nearly at

the same moment; he took it first, and my hurl had nothing to hit

until it met the top of his head. I protest before heaven, Lennon, it

was entirely accidental."

"I have not accused you of it's being anything else, Murdock; don't

seem to doubt yourself," said Emon in a very low weak voice. But it

was evident he was "coming-to."

Still the Shanvilla men were grumbling and whispering. One of them, a

big black-haired fellow named Ned Murrican, burst out at last, and

brandishing his hurl over his head, cried out:

"Arrah, now, what are we about; boys? Are we going to see our best man

murdered before our eyes, an' be satisfied wid a piper an' a dance? I

say we must have blood for blood!"

"An' why not?" said another. "It was no accident; I'm sure of that."

"What baldherdash!" cried a {702} third; "didn't I see him aim the

blow?" And the whole of Shanvilla flourished their hurls and their

sticks in the air, clashing them together with a terrific noise of an

onslaught.

Tom Murdock's cheeks blanched. He feared that he had opened a

floodgate which he could not stop, and that if there had not been,

there would soon be, murder. His men stood firm in a close body, and

not a word was heard to pass amongst them.

"Don't strike a blow, for the life of you, boys!" he cried, at the

same time he took back his hurl from the man to whom he had given it

to hold, who handed it to him, saying, "Here, Tom, you'll be apt to

want this."

The Shanvilla men saw him take the hurl, and thought it an acceptance

of a challenge to fight. They now began to jump off the ground,

crying, "Whoop, whoop!" a sure sign of prompt action in an Irish row.

At this still more critical moment, Father Farrell, the parish priest

of Shanvilla, who had been sent for in all haste "for the man who was

killed," was seen cantering across the common toward the crowd; and

more fortunately still he was accompanied by Father Roche, the

parish-priest of Rathcash. They were both known at a glance; Shanvilla

on his "strawberry cob," and Rathcash on his "tight little black

mare."

It is needless to say that the approach of these two good men calmed

to all appearance, if not in reality, the exhibition of angry feeling

amongst the two parties.

"Here, your reverence," said one of the Shanvilla men to Father

Farrell,--"here's where the man that was hurt is lying; poor

Emon-a-knock, your reverence."

Father Farrell turned for a moment and whispered to his companion,

"I'll see about the hurt man, and do you try and keep the boys quiet.

I can see that Shanvilla is ready for a fight. Tell them that I'll be

with them in a very few minutes, if the man is not badly hurt. If he

is, my friend, I'm afraid we shall have a hard task to keep Shanvilla

quiet. Could you not send your men home at once?"

"I'll do what I can; but you can do more with your own men than I can.

Rathcash will not strike a blow, I know, until the very last moment."

They then separated, Father Farrell dismounting and going over to

where Emon-a-knock still lay in M'Dermott's arms; and Father Roche up

toward the Rathcash men.

"Boys," said he, addressing them, "this is a sad ending to the day's

sport; but, thank God, from what I hear, the man is not much hurt. Be

steady, at all events. Indeed, you had better go home at once, every

man of you. Won't you take your priest's advice?"

"An' why not, your reverence? to be sure we will, if it comes to that;

but, plaise God, it won't. At worst it was only an accident, an' we're

tould it won't signify. We'll stan' our ground another while, your

reverence, until we hear how the boy is. Sure, there's two barrels of

beer an' a dance to the fore, by-an'-by."

"Well, lads, be very steady, and keep yourselves quiet. I'll visit the

first man of you that strikes a blow with condign--"

"We'll strike no blow, your reverence, if we bant struck first. Let

Father Farrell look to that."

"And so he will, you may depend upon it," said Father Roche.

The Shanvilla men had great confidence in Father Farrell in every

respect, and there was not a man in the parish who would not almost

die at his bidding from pure love of the man, apart from his religious

influence. They knew him to be a good physician in a literal, as well

as a moral, point of view; and he had been proving himself the good

Samaritan for the last seventeen years to every one in the parish,

whether they fell among thieves or not. He had commenced life as a

medical student, but had (prudently, perhaps) preferred the Church.

{703} In memory, however, of his early predilections, he kept a sort

of little private dispensary behind his kitchen; and so numerous were

the cures which nature had effected under his mild advice and harmless

prescriptions, that he had established a reputation for infallibility

almost equal to that subsequently attained by Holloway or Morrison.

Never, however, was his medical knowledge of more use as well as value

than on the present occasion.

Shanvilla grounded their weapons at his approach, and waited for his

report. Father Farrell of course first felt the young man's pulse. He

was not pedantic or affected enough to hold his watch in his other

hand while he did so; but, like all good physicians, he held his

tongue. He then untied the handkerchief, and gently examined the wound

so far as possible without disturbing the work which Phil M'Dermott

had so promptly and judiciously performed. His last test of the state

of his patient was his voice; and upon this, in his own mind, he laid

no inconsiderable stress. In reply to his questions as to whether he

felt sick or giddy, Emon replied, much more stoutly than was expected,

that he felt neither the one nor the other. Father Farrell was now

fully satisfied that there was nothing seriously wrong with him, and

that giving him the rites of the Church, or even remaining longer with

him then, might have an unfavorable effect upon the already excited

minds of the Shanvilla men. He therefore said, smiling, "Thank God,

Emon, you want no further doctoring just now; and I'll leave you for a

few minutes while I tell Shanvilla that nothing serious has befallen

you."

He then left him, and hastened over toward his parishoners, who

eagerly met him half-way as he approached.

"Well, your reverence?" "Well, your reverence?" ran through the

foremost of them.

"It is well, and very well, boys," he replied; "I bless God it is

nothing but a scalp wound, which will not signify. Put by your hurls,

and go and ask the Rathcash girls to dance."

"Three cheers for Father Farrell!" shouted Ned Murrican of the black

curly head. They were given heartily, and peace was restored.

Father Farrell then remounted his strawberry cob, and rode over toward

where Father Roche was with the Rathcash men. They were, "in a

manner," as anxious to hear his opinion of Emon-a-knock as his own men

had been. They knew nothing, or, if they did, they cared nothing, for

any private cause of ill-will on their leader's part toward

Emon-a-knock. They were not about to espouse his quarrel, if he had

one; and, as they had said, they would not have struck a blow unless

in self-defence.

Father Farrell now assured them there was nothing of any consequence

"upon" Emon; it was a mere tip of the flesh, and would be quite well

in a few days. "But, Tom _a-wochal_," he added, laughing, "you don't

often aim at a crow and hit a pigeon."

"I was awkward and unfortunate enough to do so this time, Father

Farrell," he replied. And he then entered into a full, and apparently

a candid, detail of how it had happened.

Father Farrell listened with much attention, bowing at him now and

then, like the foreman of a jury to a judge's charge, to show that he

understood him. When he had ended. Father Farrell placed his hand upon

his shoulder, and, bending down toward him, whispered in his ear, "Oh,

Tom Murdock, but you are the fortunate man this day! for if the blow

had been one inch and a half lower, all the priests and doctors in

Connaught would not save you from being tried for manslaughter."

"Or murder," whispered Tom's heart to himself.

By this time Emon-a-knock, with M'Dermott's help, had risen to his

feet; and leaning on him and big Ned Murrican, crept feebly along

toward the boreen which formed the entrance to the common.

{704}

Father Farrell, perceiving the move, rode after him, and said, as he

passed, that he would trot on and send for a horse and cart to fetch

him home, as he would not allow him to walk any further than the end

of the lane. Indeed, it was not his intention to do so; for he was

still scarcely able to stand, and that not without help.

Before he and his assistants, however, had reached the end of the

lane, Father Farrell came entering back, saying, "All right, my good

lads; there is a jennet and cart coming up the lane for him."

Emon cocked his ear at the word jennet; he knew who owned the only one

for miles around. And there indeed it was; and the sight of it went

well-nigh to cure Emon, better than any doctoring he could get.

TO BE CONTINUED.

--------

From The Month.

INQUIETUS.

We put him in a golden cage

With crystal troughs; but still he pined

For tracts of royal foliage.

And broad blue skies and merry wind.

We gave him water cool and dear;

All round his golden wires we twined

Fresh leaves and blossoms bright, to cheer

His restless heart: but still he pined.

We whistled and we chirped; but he

Trilled never more his liquid falls,

But ever yearned for liberty,

And dashed against his golden walls.

Again, again, in wild despair,

He strove to burst his bars aside;

At last, beneath his pinion fair,

He hid his drooping head and died!

And so against the golden bars--

Life's golden bars--our poor souls smite.

Pining for tracts beyond the stars.

Freedom and beauty, truth and light

Those bars a Father's hands adorn

With leaves and flowers--earth's loveliest things--

With crystal draughts; but still we mourn

With thirsting for the "living springs."

Nor crystal draughts, nor leaves and flowers,

The exiled heart can satisfy:

We shake the bars; and some few hours

We droop and pine, and then we die,

We die! But, oh, the prison-bars

Are shatter'd then: then far away,

We pass beyond the sky, the stars--

Beyond the change of night and day.

------

{705}

From Chambers's Journal.

A KINGDOM WITHOUT A KING.

Lichtenstein is the name of the smallest principality in the great

German "Vaterland," and this has hitherto been the most remarkable

thing that could be said about it, for in the great political world it

has as yet played no part. It appears, however, that its time has now

arrived; and for the benefit of those who might receive this bit of

intelligence with a sceptical smile, I subjoin a few words of

explanation.

In order fully to appreciate this important question, it will be

necessary to commence by going back into the past--if not so far as to

the Flood, at least to some part of the twelfth century.

It will not do to believe that the Lichtensteiners are people of

vulgar extraction. True, their ancestors hardly anticipated that the

house of Lichtenstein would ever be reckoned among the reigning

families of Europe; but this did not affect the nobleness of their

quarterings. The founder of the house was a lively and enterprising

Lombard, and related to the Este family. He went to Germany with the

object of making his fortune, and there he married, 1145 A.D., a

little princess of the house of Schwaben. They had not the slightest

fraction of a principality, but they had plenty of children to educate

and provide for. Their fortune was not very large, but, in his quality

of Lombard, the father exercised the lucrative business of an usurer,

whenever the occasion presented itself. The sovereigns of those times

were often in want of money, and our Lombard supplied them with this

article, proper security being forthcoming. When the time of

restitution arrived, it was not always convenient to the debtors to

pay in cash, and the affair was therefore generally settled by means

of small pieces of land, titles, or privileges. The Lichtensteiners

soon became allied to the greatest German families. In the year 1614,

the Emperor Matthias ceded to them, in settlement of their pecuniary

claims, the principality of Troppau, in Schlesien. Ten years later,

the Emperor Ferdinand II. added to their possessions the principality

of Jagendorff. Then they obtained the title of "Prince of the Holy

Roman Empire;" and by this time they had purchased the districts of

Vadutz and Schnellenberg, on the borders of the Rhine, and close to

the Swiss frontier. These possessions form the actual principality of

Lichtenstein, which has the small town of Vadutz for its capital.

The Congress of Vienna--contrary to its principles of

mediatization--resolved, for reasons which we abstain from

investigating, to maintain Lichtenstein as a sovereign and independent

state, and gave it an entire vote in the German Confederation.

In return for these advantages, Lichtenstein had to provide a

contingent of ninety men and one drummer to the federal army. It is

important not to lose sight of these ninety men and one drummer, for

they play a principal part in the impending question. The subjects of

the principality of Lichtenstein, according to the last census,

numbered 7,150; they are clever people, of a peaceable disposition,

but impressed with no particular awe for authorities. They even have a

slight taint of independence, undoubtedly owing to the close vicinity

of Switzerland.

{706}

A year had scarcely elapsed after the remodelling of the map of Europe

by the Congress of Vienna, when the inhabitants of Lichtenstein

addressed themselves to their sovereign, John I., and declared with

rustic frankness that they had no objection to being ruled by him,

since the Congress had decided it so; but that they found it entirely

superfluous to pay any civil list; beside, they were too few in number

to contribute every year ninety men and one drummer to the federal

army. Prince John was an excellent man, and, moreover, he was

immensely rich. He informed his subjects that he could do very well

without any civil list; and as for the federal contingent, he

concluded a convention with the Austrian government, by which the

latter undertook to furnish it together with its own. With this the

loyal subjects declared themselves satisfied; and everything went on

well until the year 1836, when Prince Aloysius I. ascended the throne.

In the meantime, the natives of Lichtenstein had made various

reflections. The conclusions arrived at were: that a prince, even if

paid nothing, entails sundry expenses on the country where he is

reigning; festivals have to be given, as well as solemn audiences,

illuminations, fire-works, etc.

Accordingly, they sent a deputation to their new lord and master, and

made it obvious, to him that he must indemnify the country for all

expenses of the description alluded to. Aloysius I. was as excellent a

monarch as his predecessor; he admitted the claims of his subjects,

and made an agreement with them concerning an annual indemnity, which

he paid with exemplary regularity.

The Lichtensteiners had now attained the object of their wishes; they

led an existence entirely ideal. They occupied a position unique in

Europe, nay, in the whole world; for, instead of paying for

government, they actually were paid for submission to it. It would now

be supposed that nothing in future could disturb the good

understanding existing between prince and people. But alas! that the

old saying should here find its application--namely, that he who has

got yellow hair, wants it also to be curled.

John II. became Prince of Lichtenstein. One fine morning he said to

himself: "Since I have no civil list, nay, since I--contrary to all

established usages--pay a tribute to my subjects, I ought at least to

have full liberty to live according to my tastes. This small capital

is a bore. I have plenty of money; I will set out for Vienna!" No

sooner said than done. John II. built a magnificent palace in the

capital of Austria, and there he lived in a luxurious style. The

government of the principality he intrusted to a minister, with whom

he corresponded. But when were those stupid Lichtensteiners to be

satisfied? They put their heads together and resolved to send a

deputation to their supreme master in Vienna; and one particular

morning, just as the prince had got out of bed, a dozen of the most

distinguished among his subjects made their appearance. After the

customary reverences and ceremonies, the deputation put forth its

request with becoming solemnity, expressing itself somewhat to the

following effect: "We don't pay your serene highness any civil list;

on the contrary, your serene highness pays an annual indemnity to us.

But your serene highness is in possession of a large fortune, and

spends it in a royal manner, by the which formerly your principality

benefited. If, now, your serene highness continues to reside in

Vienna, you inflict a serious loss upon your subjects; and it appears

therefore to us but just that you should in future inhabit at least

six months of the year your own capital." Several demands of a

political nature were appended to this petition. John II. granted

their request, and issued, moreover, a brand-new constitution, with a

parliament of fifteen members, whom he promised to pay out of his own

pocket.

{707}

But what about the ninety men and the drummer? Well, now the

difficulty arises, for they are exactly the cause of the present

dispute.