[Transcriber's notes: This text is based on text and image files
from the Internet Archive and
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/moajrnl/browse.journals/cath.1867.html.
Page numbers are shown in curly braces, such as {123}. They have been
moved to the nearest sentence break.]
{i}
The Catholic World.
_Monthly Magazine_
of
General Literature and Science
------
Vol. V., NO. 25
April to September 1867.
------
New York:
The Catholic Publication House,
126 Nassau Street.
----
1867
{ii}
John A. Gray & Green
Printers,
16 & 18 Jacob Street, New-York/
{iii}
Contents.
Athlone and Aughrim, 119.
Ancor-Viatt, a New Giant City, 135.
An Old Quarrel, 145.
A Naturalist's Home, 189.
Animals, The Souls of, 510.
Americus Vespucius and Christopher Columbus, 6ll.
An Irish Saint, 664.
Birds, Architecture of, 349.
Bible, Protestant Attacks upon the, 789.
Bride of Eberstein, The, 848.
Church and State, 1
Conversions to the Catholic Church, Dr. Bacon on, 104
Conscience, The Revenge of, 236.
Catholic Doctrine and Natural Science, 280.
Cousin, Victor, 338.
Church and the Roman Empire, The, 362.
Christianity and Social Happiness, 414.
Congresses, Catholic, 433.
Crucifix of Baden, The, 480, 672.
Catholic Church and Modern Art, The, 546.
Christianity and its Conflicts, 701.
Decimated, 794.
Early Rising, 754.
Eberstein, The Bride of, 848.
Father Ignatius of St. Paul, 174.
Father of Waters, The, 354.
Flavia Domitilla, The Two Lovers of, 386, 529, 651, 815.
Fathers of the Desert, Sayings of, 814.
Godfrey Family, The, 34.
Holy Sepulchre, Procession in the Church of, 232.
He went about Doing Good, 258.
Ireland, Invasions of, by the Danes, 768.
Ireland, The Churches of, 828.
Lady of La Garaye, 227.
Lectures and Conferences among the Ancients, 289.
Libraries of the Middle Ages, 397.
Lorraine, Lakes of, 522
Miscellany, 140, 284, 428, 570, 714, 856.
Mediaeval Universities, 207.
Mercersburg Philosophy, 253.
Mortality of Great Capitals, 422.
Minor Brethren, The, 495.
Marriage, Indissolubility of, 567, 634.
Moore, Sir Thomas, 633.
Missionary Journey in South America, Scenes from, 807.
Miner, The, 852.
Paris, A Talk about, 97.
Père Hyacinthe, Sketch of, 382.
Papacy Schismatic, Guettée's, 463, 577.
Plants, The Struggle for Existence among, 538.
Procter, Adelaide Ann, 553.
Parisian Problems, Solution of some, 691.
Playing with Fire, 697.
Paris, Old, 824
Ritualism, 52.
Robert; or, The Influence of a Good Mother, 66, 194.
Rationalism, Lecky's History of, 77.
Rome or Reason, 721.
Sister, The Story of, 15.
Spain, Modern Writers of, 26.
Spain, Impressions of, 160, 320, 443, 594, 738.
Speech, Visible, 417.
The Birds' Friend, 268.
Time-Measurers, 271.
Three Leaves from an Old Journal, 627.
Thermometers, 707.
Tuscan Peasants and the Maremna, 710.
Tetzel, John, 838.
Verheyden's Right Hand, 309.
Wandering Jew, The, 761.
----
Poetry.
A Dream, 94.
Asperges Me, 134.
At Threescore, 235.
A Family Motto, 257.
Abide in Me, 767.
Blessed Sacrament, Praises of the, 347.
Beams, 753.
Confiteor, 206.
Columbus, 525.
Charles the X. at the Convent of Yuste, 671.
Forebodings, 494.
Gladiators' Song, The, 521.
Hidden Crucifixion, The, 159.
Il Duomo, 608.
Kettle Song, 51.
Looking Down the Road, 172.
Laudate Pueri Dominum, 413.
Leaf of Last Year, This, 545.
May, A Fancy, 318.
Mary's Dirge, 631.
Mea Culpa, 690.
Napoleon, The Death of; 379.
Olive Branches in Gethsemane, 14
Planting of the Cross, 139.
{iv}
Regret, 442.
Rhoda, 784.
Sleep, My Tears in, 193.
Sir Ralph de Blanc-Minster, 460.
The Church and the Sinner, 25.
The Cross, 65.
Under the Violets, 663.
Wasted Vigil, The, 823.
------
New Publications.
Art of Illuminating, Practical Hints on, 144
American Boys and Girls, 430.
Antoine de Boneval,574.
Appleton's Annual Cyclopaedia, 719.
Bible, Literary Characters of, 576.
Barbarossa, 719.
Beauties of Faith, 720.
Catholic Tracts, 142, 715.
Christian Love, Three Phases of, 144.
Cunningham's Catholic Library, 144.
Christian Unity, Lectures on, 287.
Catholic Anecdotes, 576.
Christianity and its Conflicts, 576.
Critical and Social Essays, 718.
Cummiskey's Juvenile Library, 720.
Coaina, 720.
De Guerin, Maurice, Journal of, 288.
Döllinger's First Age of Christianity, 716.
Études Philologiques sur Quelques Langues Sauvages de l'Amerique, 575.
Frithiof's Saga, 431.
Fronde's History of England, 573.
First Historical Transformations of Christendom, 717.
Fathers and Sons, 718.
Faber's Notes, 719.
L'Echo de la France, 143.
Labor, Sermon on the Dignity and Value of, 431.
Mühlbach's Historical Romances, 285.
Moore's Irish Melodies, 432.
Monks of the West, The, 715.
Manual of the Lives of the Popes, 720.
Melpomene Divina, 859.
Poems, Miss Starr's, 716.
Roman Pontiffs, Lives and Times of, 576.
St. Dominic, Life of, 288.
Student of Blenheim Forest, The, 574.
Studies in English, 574.
Stories of the Commandments, 720.
Science of Happiness, 860.
Studies in the Gospels, 860.
Tracts, Catholic, 142, 715.
Three Phases of Christian Love, 144.
The Man with the Broken Ear, 720.
------
{1}
The Catholic World.
Vol. V., NO. 25--April 1867.
Church And State. [Footnote 1]
[Footnote 1: Essay on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism,
considered in their fundamental Principles. By Donoso Cortes, Marquis
of Valdegamas. From the original Spanish. To which is prefixed a sketch
of the Life and Works of the Author, from the Italian of G. E. de
Castro. Translated by Madeleine Vinton Goddard. Philadelphia:
Lippincott and Co. 1862. 16mo. PP. 835.]
The political changes and weighty events that have occurred since, have
almost obliterated from the memory the men and the revolutions or
catastrophes of 1848 and 1849. We seem removed from them by centuries, and
have lost all recollection of the great questions which then agitated the
public mind, and on which seemed suspended the issues of the life and death
of society. Then an irreligious liberalism threatened the destruction of
all authority, of all belief in revelation, and piety toward God; and a
rampant, and apparently victorious, socialism, or more properly,
anti-socialism, threatened the destruction of society itself, and to
replunge the civilized world into the barbarism from which the church, by
long centuries of patient and unremitting toil, had been slowly recovering
it.
Among the noble and brave men who then placed themselves on the side of
religion and society, of faith and Christian civilization, and attempted to
stay the advancing tide Of infidelity and barbarism, few were more
conspicuous, or did more to stir up men's minds and hearts to a sense of
the danger, than the learned, earnest, and most eloquent Donoso Cortes,
Marquis of Valdegamas. He was then in the prime and vigor of his manhood.
Born and bred in Catholic Spain at a time when the philosophy of the
eighteenth century had not yet ceased to be in vogue, and faith, if not
extinct, was obscured and weak, he had grown up without religious fervor, a
philosophist rather than a believer--a liberal in politics, and disposed to
be a social reformer. He sustained The Christinos against the Carlists, and
rose to high favor with the court of Isabella Segunda. He was created a
marquis, was appointed a senator, held various civil and diplomatic
appointments, and was in 1848 one of the most prominent and, influential
statesmen in Spain, I might almost say, in Europe.
The death of a dearly beloved brother, some time before, had very deeply
affected him, and became the occasion of awakening his dormant religious
faith, and turning his attention to theological studies. His religious
convictions became active and fruitful, and by the aid of divine grace
vivified all his thoughts and actions, growing stronger and stronger, and
more absorbing every day.
{2}
He at length lived but for religion, and devoted his whole mind and soul to
defend it against its enemies, to diffuse it in society, and to adorn it by
his piety and deeds of charity, especially to the poor. He died in the
habit of a Jesuit at Paris, in May, 1853.
Some of our readers must still remember the remarkable speech which the
Marquis de Valdegamas pronounced in the Spanish Cortes, January 4, 1849--a
speech that produced a marked effect in France, and indeed throughout all
Europe, not to add America--in which he renounced all liberal ideas and
tendencies, denounced constitutionalism and parliamentary governments, and
demanded the dictatorship. It had great effect in preparing even the
friends of liberty, frightened by the excesses of the so-called liberals,
red republicans, socialists, and revolutionists, if not to favor, at least
to accept the _coup d'état_, and the re-establishment of the Imperial
_régime_ in France; and it, no doubt, helped to push the reaction that
was about to commence against the revolutionary movements of 1848, to a
dangerous extreme, and to favor, by another sort of reaction, that
recrudescence of infidelity that has since followed throughout nearly all
Europe. It is hardly less difficult to restrain reactionary movements
within just limits than it is the movements that provoke them.
The new American Cyclopedia says Donoso Cortes published his Essay on
Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism in French. That is a mistake. He
wrote and published it in Spanish, at Madrid, in 1851. The French work
published at Paris, the same year, was a translation, and very inferior to
the original. A presentation copy by the distinguished author of the
original Spanish edition of 1851 to the late Mr. Calderon de la Barca--so
long resident Spanish minister at Washington, and who was his life-long
personal and political friend--is now in my possession, and is the very
copy from which Mrs. Goddard, now the noble wife of Rear Admiral Dahlgren,
made the translation cited at the head of this article. Mr. Calderon--a
good judge--pronounced the work in Spanish by far the most eloquent work
that he ever read in any language; and I can say, though that may not be
much, that it far surpasses in the highest and truest order of eloquence
any work in any language that I am acquainted with. In it one meets all the
power and majesty, grace and unction of the old Castilian tongue, that
noblest of modern languages, and in which Cicero might have surprised
himself.
The work necessarily loses much in being translated, but Mrs. Goddard's
translation comes as near to the original as any translation can. It is
singularly faithful and elegant, and reproduces the thought and spirit of
the author with felicity and exactness, in idiomatic English, which one can
read without suspecting it to be not the language in which the work was
originally written. There is scarcely a sentence in which the translation
can be detected. It must have been made _con amore,_ and we can
recommend it as a model to translators, who too often do the work from the
original language into no language. The following, from the opening pages,
is a fair specimen of the thought and style of the author, and of the
clearness, force, and beauty of the translation:
"Mr. Proudhon, in his Confession, of a Revolutionist, has written these
remarkable words: 'It is surprising to observe how constantly we find all
our political questions complicated with theological questions.' There is
nothing in this to cause surprise, except it be the surprise of Mr.
Proudhon Theology being the science of God, is the ocean which contains
and embraces all the sciences, as God is the ocean in which all things
are contained. All things existed, both prior to and after their
creation, in the divine mind; because as God made them out of nothing, so
did he form them according to a model which existed in himself from
eternity.
{3}
All things are in God in a profound manner in which effects are in their
causes, consequences in their principles, reflections in light, and forms
in their eternal exemplars. In him are united the vastness of the sea,
the glory or the fields, the harmony of the spheres, the grandeur or the
universe, the splendor of the stars, and the magnificence of the heavens.
In him are the measure, weight, and number of all things, and all things
proceed from him with number, weight, and measure. In him are the
inviolable and sacred laws of being, and every being has its particular
law. All that lives, finds in him the laws of life; all that vegetates,
the laws of vegetation; all that moves, the laws or motion; all that has
feeling, the law or sensation; all that has understanding, the law of
intelligence; and all that has liberty, the law of freedom. It may in
this sense be affirmed, without falling into Pantheism, that all things
are in God, and God is in all things. This will serve to explain how in
proportion as faith is impaired in this world, truth is weakened, and how
the society that turns its back upon God, will find its horizon quickly
enveloped in frightful obscurity. For this reason religion has been
considered by all men, and in all ages, as the indestructible foundation
of human society. _Omnis humana societatis fundamentum convellit qui
religionem convellit_, says Plato in Book 10 of his laws. According to
Xenophon (on Socrates), "the most pious cities and nations have always
been the most durable, and the wisest." Plutarch affirms (contra Colotes)
'that it is easier to build a city in the air than to establish society
without a belief in the gods.' Rousseau, in his Social Contract, Book
iv., ch. viii., observes, 'that a State was never established without
religion as a foundation.' Voltaire says, in his Treatise on Toleration,
ch. xx., 'that religion is, on all accounts, necessary wherever society
exists.' All the legislation of the ancients rests upon a fear of gods.
Polybius declares that this holy fear is always more requisite in a free
people than in others. That Rome might be the eternal city, Numa made it
the holy city. Among the nations of antiquity the Roman was the greatest,
precisely because it was the most religious. Cesar having one day uttered
certain words, in open Senate, against the existence of the gods, Cato
and Cicero arose from their seats and accused the irreverent youth of
having spoken words fatal to the Republic. It is related of Fabricius, a
Roman captain, that having heard the philosopher Cineas ridicule the
Divinity in presence of Pyrrhus, he pronounced these memorable words:
'May it please the gods, that our enemies follow this doctrine when they
make war against the Republic.'
'The decline of faith that produces the decline of truth does not
necessarily cripple, but certainly misleads the human mind. God, who is
both compassionate and just, denies truth to guilty souls, but does not
deprive them of life. He condemns them to error, but not to death. All an
evidence of this, every one has witnessed those periods of prodigious
incredulity and of highest culture that have shown in history with a
phosphorescent light, leaving more of a burning than a luminous track
behind them. If we carefully contemplate these ages, we shall see that
their splendor is only the inflamed glare or the lightning's flash. It is
evident that their brightness is the sudden explosion of their obscure
but combustible materials, rather than the calm light proceeding from
purest regions, and serenely spread over heaven's vault by the divine
pencil of the sovereign painter.
"What is here said of ages may also be said of men. The absence or the
possession of faith, the denial of God or the abandonment of truth,
neither gives them understanding nor deprives them of it. That of the
unbeliever may be of the highest order, and that of the believer very
limited; but the greatness of the first is that of an abyss, while the
second has the holiness of a tabernacle. In the first dwells error, in
the second truth. In the abyss with error is death, in the tabernacle
with truth is life. Consequently there can be no hope whatever for those
communities that renounce the austere worship of truth for the idolatry
of the intellect. Sophisms produce revolutions and sophists are succeeded
by hangmen.
"He possesses political truth who understands the laws to which
governments are amenable; and he possesses social truth who comprehends,
the laws to which human societies are answerable. He who knows God knows
these laws; and he knows God who listens to what he affirms of himself,
and believes the same. Theology is the science which has for its object
these affirmations. Whence it follows that every affirmation respecting
society or government, supposes an affirmation relative to God; or, what
is the same thing, that every political or social truth necessarily
resolves itself into a theological truth.
"If everything is intelligible in God and through God, and theology is
the science of God, in whom and by whom everything is elucidated,
theology is the universal science. Such being the case, there is nothing
not comprised in this science, which has no plural; because totality,
which constitutes it, has it not. Political and social sciences have no
existence except as arbitrary classifications of the human mind. Man in
his feebleness classifies that which in God is characterized by the most
simple unity. Thus, he distinguishes political from social and religious
affirmations; while in God there is but one affirmation, indivisible and
supreme.
{4}
He who speaks explicitly of what thing soever, and is ignorant that he
implicitly speaks of God; and who does not know when he discusses
explicitly any science whatever, that he implicitly illustrates theology,
has received from God simply the necessary amount of intelligence to
constitute him a man. Theology, then, considered in its highest
acceptation, is the perpetual object of all the sciences, even as God is
the perpetual object of human speculations.
"Every word that a man utters is a recognition of the Diety, even that
which curses or denies God. He who rebels against God, and frantically
exclaims, 'I abhor thee; thou art not!' illustrates a complete system of
theology, as he does who raises to him a contrite heart, and says, 'Lord,
have mercy on thy servant, who adores thee.' The first blasphemes him to
his face, the second prays at his feet, yet both acknowledge him, each in
his own way; for both pronounce his incommunicable name."
The work shows no great familiarity with the writings of the later
theologians, and no fondness for the style and method of the schools, but
it shows a profound study of the Fathers, and a perfect mastery of
contemporary theories and speculations. The author is a man of the
nineteenth century, with the profound thought of an Augustine, the
eloquence of a Chrysostom, and the tender piety of a Francis of Assissium.
He has studied the epistles of St. Paul, and been touched with the
inspiration of that great apostle's burning zeal and consuming charity. He
observes not always the technical exactness of modern theological
professors, and some French _abbés_ thought they detected in his
_Ensayo_ some grave theological errors, but only because they missed
the signs which they were accustomed to identify with the things signified,
and met with terms and illustrations with which they were unfamiliar. But
he seizes with rare sagacity and firmness the living truth, and presents us
theology as a thing of life and love.
The principles of the essay are catholic, are the real principles of
Christianity and society, set fourth with a clearness, a depth, a logical
force, a truthfulness, a richness of illustration and an eloquence which
have seldom, if ever, been surpassed. But some of the inferences be draws
from them, and some of the applications he makes of them to social and
political science are not such as every Catholic even is prepared to
accept. The author was drawn to religion by domestic afflictions, which
saddened while they softened his heart, and he writes, as he felt, amid the
ruins of a falling world. All things seemed to him gone or going, and he
looked out upon a universal wreck. His spirit is not soured, but his
feelings are tinged with the gloom of the prospect, and while he hopes in
God he well-nigh despairs of the world, of man, of society, of
civilization, above all, of liberty, and sees no means of saving European
society but in the dictatorship or pure despotism acting under the
inspiration and direction of the church. He was evidently more deeply
impressed by what was lost in the primitive fall or original sin than by
what in our nature has survived that catastrophe. He adored the justice of
God displayed in the punishment of the wicked, justified him in all his
dealings with men, but he saw in his providence no mercy for fallen
nations, or a derelict society. This life he regarded as a trial, the earth
as a scene of suffering, a vale of tears, and found in religion a support,
indeed, but hardly a consolation. The Christian has hope in God, but is a
man of sorrows, and his life an expiation. Much of this is true and
scriptural, and this world certainly is not our abiding place, and can
afford us no abiding joy. But this is not saying that there are no
consolations, no abiding joys for us even in this life. Consolations and
joys a Christian has in this world, though they proceed not from it. It can
neither give them nor take them away; yet we taste them even while in it.
This world is not the contradictory of the world to come; it is not heaven,
indeed, and cannot be heaven, yet it is related to heaven as a medium, and
the medium must partake, in some measure, of both the principle and the
end.
{5}
The great merit of the essay is in deducing political and social from
theological principles. This is undoubtedly not only the teaching of the
church, but of all sound philosophy; and what I regard as the principal
error of the book is the desire to transfer to the state the immobility and
unchangeableness which belong to the church, an institution existing by the
direct and immediate appointment of God. The author seems to be as
unwilling to recognize the intervention of man and man's nature in
government and society as in the direct and immediate works of the Creator.
He is no pantheist or Jansenist, and yet be seems to me to make too little
account of the part of second causes, or the activity of creatures; and
sometimes to forget, or almost forget, that grace does not supersede
nature, but supports it, strengthens it, elevates it, and completes it. He
sees only the Divine action in events; or in plain words, he does not make
enough of nature, and does not sufficiently bring out the fact that natural
and supernatural, nature and grace, reason and faith, earth and heaven, are
not antagonistic forces, to be reconciled only by the suppression of the
one or the other, but really parts of one dialectic whole, which, to the
eye that can take in the whole in all its parts, and all the parts in the
whole, in which they are integrated, would appear perfectly consistent with
each other, living the same life in God, and directed by him to one and the
same end. He, therefore, unconsciously and unintentionally, favors or
appears to favor a dualism as un-christian as it is unphilosophical. God
being in his essence dialectical, nothing proceeding from him can be
sophistical, or wanting in logical unity, and one part of his works can
never be opposed to another, or demand its suppression. The one must always
be the complement of the other. Christianity was given to fulfil nature,
not to destroy it. "Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the
prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil." (St. Matt. v. 17.)
The misapprehension on this subject arises from the ambiguity of the word
_world_. This word is generally used by ascetic writers not to
designate the natural order, but the principles, spirit, and conduct of
those who live for this world alone; who look not beyond this life; who
take the earth not as a medium, but as the end, and seek only the goods
this world offers. These are called worldly, sensual, or carnal-minded
people, and as such contrast with the spiritually minded, or those who look
above and beyond merely sensible goods--to heaven beyond the earth, to a
life beyond the grave, a life of spiritual bliss in indissoluble union with
God, the end of their existence, and their supreme good as well as the
supreme good in itself. In this sense there is a real antagonism between
this world and the next; but when the world is taken in its proper place,
and for what it really is, in the plan of the Creator, there is no
antagonism in the case; and to despise it would be to despise the work of
God, and to neglect it would be not a virtue, but even a sin. This world
has its temptations and its snares, and as long as we remain in the flesh
we are in danger of mistaking it for the end of our existence, and
therefore it is necessary that we be on our guard against its seductions.
But the chief motive that leads souls hungering and bursting for perfection
to retire to the desert or to the monastery is not that they may fly its
temptations, or the enemies to their virtue, for they find greater
temptations to struggle against and fiercer enemies to combat in solitude
than in the thronged city; it is the love of sacrifice, and the longing to
take part with our Lord in his great work of expiation that moves them.
Simply to get rid of the world, to turn the back on society, or to get away
from the duties and cares of the world, is no proper motive for retirement
from the world, and the church permits not her children to do it and enter
a religious order so long as they have duties to their family or their
country to perform.
{6}
Nothing could better prove that the church does not suffer us to contemn or
neglect the natural or temporal order, or regard as of slight importance
the proper discharge of our duties to our families, our country, or natural
society. The same thing is proved by the fact that the process for
canonization cannot go on in a case where the individual has not fulfilled
all his natural duties, growing out of his state or relations in society.
_Gratia supponit naturam_.
In consequence of his tendency to an exclusive asceticism, a tendency which
he owed to the unsettled times in which he lived, and the reaction in his
own mind against the liberalism be had at one time favored, Donoso Cortes
countenanced, to some extent, political absolutism; and had great influence
in leading even eminent Catholics to denounce constitutionalism,
legislative assemblies, publicity, and free political discussion, as if
these things were un-catholic, and inseparable from the political atheism
of the age. There was a moment when the writer of this article himself,
under the charm of his eloquence, and the force of the arguments he drew
from the individual and social crimes committed in the name of liberty and
progress, was almost converted to his side of the question, and supported
popular institutions only because cause they were the law in his own
country. But without pretending that the church enjoins any particular form
of civil polity, or maintaining the infallibility or impeccability of the
people, either collectively or individually, a calmer study of history, and
the recent experience of our own country, have restored me to my early
faith in popular forms of government, or democracy as organized under our
American system, which, though it has its dangers and attendant evils, is,
wherever practicable, the form of government that, upon the whole, best
conforms to those great Catholic principles on which the church herself is
founded.
But the people cannot govern well, any more than kings or kaisers, unless
trained to the exercise of power, and subjected to moral and religious
discipline. It is precisely here that the work of Donoso Cortes has its
value. The reaction which has for a century or two been going on against
that mixture of civil and ecclesiastical government which grew up after the
downfall of the Roman empire in the west, and which was not only natural
but necessary, since the clergy had nearly all the learning, science, and
cultivation of the times, and to which modern society is so deeply indebted
for its civilization, has carried modern statesmen to an opposite extreme,
and resulted in almost universal political atheism. The separation of
church and state in our age means not merely the separation of the church
and the state as corporations or governments, which the popes have always
insisted on, but the separation of political principles from theological
principles, and the subjection of the church and ecclesiastical affairs to
the state. Where monarchy, in its proper sense, obtains, the king or
emperor, and where democracy, save in its American sense, is asserted, the
people, takes the place of God, at least in the political order. Statolatry
is almost as prevalent in our days as idolatry was with the ancient Greeks
and Romans.
Even in our own country, it may be remarked that the general sympathy is
with anti-Christian--especially anti-papal insurrections and revolutions.
We should witness little sympathy with the Cretans and Christians of the
Turkish empire, if they were not understood to be schismatics, who reject
the authority of the pope in spirituals as well as in temporals. Yet, prior
to the treaty of Paris in 1856, the Greek prelates were, under the Turkish
sovereignty, the temporal lords of their people, and the design of that
treaty, so far as relates to the Eastern Christians, was to deprive them of
the last remains of temporal independence, and to complete the conquest of
Mahomet II. The complete subjection of religion to the state is called
religious liberty, the emancipation of conscience.
{7}
Our American press applauds the Italian ministry for laying down the law
for the Italian bishops, restored their sees, from which the state exiled
them, and prescribing them their bounds, beyond which they must not pass.
The Italian State does not, as with us, recognize the freedom and
independence of the Spiritual order, but at best only tolerates it. It
asserts not only the freedom and independence of the state in face of the
church, but its supremacy, its right to govern the church, or at least to
define the limits within which it may exist and operate.
This is what our age understands by the separation of church and state. If
it foregoes, at any time or place, the authority to govern the church, it
still holds that it has the right to govern churchmen the same as any other
class of persons; that the civil law is the supreme law of the land; and
that religion, when it happens to conflict with it, must give way to it.
The law of the state is the supreme law. This is everywhere the doctrine of
European liberals, and the doctrine they reduce to practice wherever they
have the power, and hence the reason why the church visits them with her
censures. Many devout believers think the separation of church and state
must mean this, and can mean nothing else, and therefore that the union of
church and state must mean a return to the old mixture of civil and
ecclesiastical government of the middle ages. Hence a Donoso Cortes and a
Baron Ricasoli are on this point in singular accord. Our American press,
which takes its cue principally from European liberals, takes the same
view, and understands both the separation and the union of church and state
in the same sense.
Yet the American solution of the mutual relations of church and state is a
living proof, a practical demonstration that they are wrong. Here the state
does not tolerate the church, nor the church either enslave or tolerate the
state, because the state recognizes the freedom or conscience, and its
independence of all secular control. My church is my conscience, and my
conscience being free here, my church is free, and for me and all
Catholics, in the free exercise of her full spiritual authority. Here it is
not the state that bounds conscience, but conscience that bounds the state.
The state here is bound by its own constitution to respect and protect the
rights of the citizen. Among these rights, the most precious is the right
of conscience--the right to the free exercise of my religion. This right
does not decide what the civil law shall be, but it does decide what it
shall not be. Any law abridging my right of conscience--that is, the
freedom of my church--is unconstitutional, and, so far, null and void.
This, which is my right, is equally the right of every other citizen,
whether his conscience--that is, his church--agrees with mine or not. The
Catholic and the Protestant stand on the same footing before the law, and
the conscience of each is free before the state, and a limit beyond which
the civil law cannot extend its jurisdiction. Here, then, is a separation
of church and state that does not enslave the church, and a union of church
and state that does not enslave the state, or interfere with its free and
independent action in its own proper sphere. The church maintains her
independence and her superiority as representing the spiritual order, for
she governs those who are within, not those who are without, and the state
acts in harmony, not in conflict with her, because it confines its action--
where it has power--to things temporal.
The only restriction, on any side, is, that the citizen must so assert his
own right of conscience as not to abridge the equal right of conscience in
his fellow-citizen who differs from him. Of course the freedom of
conscience cannot be made a pretext for disturbing the public peace, or
outraging public decency, nor can it be suffered to be worn as a cloak to
cover dissoluteness of manners or the transgression of the universal moral
law; when it is so made or worn it ceases to be the _right_ of
conscience, ceases to be conscience at all, and the state has authority to
intervene and protect the public peace and public decency.
{8}
It may, therefore, suppress the Mormon concubinage, and require the Latter
Day Saints to conform to the marriage law as recognized by the whole
civilized world, alike in the interests of religion and of civilization.
But beyond this the state cannot go, at least with us.
It may be doubted whether this American system is practicable in any but a
republican country--under a government based on equal rights, not on
privilege, whether the privilege of the one, the few, or the many.
Democracy, as Europeans understand it, is not based on equal rights, but is
only the system of privilege, if I may so speak, expanded. It recognizes no
equal rights, because it recognizes no rights of the individual at all
before the state. It is the pagan republic which asserts the universal and
absolute supremacy of the state. The American democracy is Christian, not
pagan, and asserts, for every citizen, even the meanest, equal rights,
which the state must treated as sacred and inviolable. It is because our
system is based on equal rights, not on privilege--on rights held not from
the state, but which the state is bound to recognize and protect, that
American democracy, instead of subjecting religion to the state, secures
its freedom and independence.
Donoso Cortes can no more understand this than can the European democrat,
because he has no conception of the equal rights of all men before the
state; or rather, because he has no conception of the rights of man. Man,
he says, has no rights; he has only duties. This is true, when we speak of
man in relation to his Maker. The thing made has no right to say to the
maker, "Why hast thou made me thus?" Man has only duties before God,
because he owes to him all he is, has, or can do, and he finds beatitude in
discharging his duties to God, because God is good, the good in itself, and
would not be God and could not be creator if be were not. But that man has
no rights in relation to society, to the state, or to his fellow man, is
not true. Otherwise there could be no justice between man and man, between
the individual and society, or the citizen and the state, and no injustice,
for there is no injustice where no right is violated. Denying or
misconceiving the rights of man, and conceiving the state as based on
privilege, not on equal rights, the Spaniard is unable to conceive it
possible to assert the freedom and independence of the state, without
denying the freedom and independence of the church.
But, if republican institutions based on equal rights are necessary to
secure the freedom and independence of the church, the freedom and
independence of the church, on the other hand, are no less necessary to the
maintenance of such institutions. I say, _of the church_, rather than
of religion, because I choose to speak of things in the concrete rather
than in the abstract, and because it is only as concreted in the church
that the freedom and independence of religion can be assailed, or that
religion has power to protect or give security to institutions based on
equal rights. The church is concrete religion. Whether there is more than
one church, or which of the thousand and one claimants is the true church,
is not now the question. The answer of the Catholic is not doubtful. At
present I am treating the question of equal rights, and asking no more for
the church before the state than for the several sects. Of course, I
recognize none of the sects as the church, but I am free to say that I
regard even the lowest of them as better for society than any form of
downright infidelity. There is something in common between Catholics and
the sects that confess Christ as the Son of God, incarnate for our
redemption and salvation, which there is not, and cannot be, between us and
those who confess not Christ at all. But this is a digression.
{9}
Equal rights must have a foundation, something on which to stand. They
cannot stand on the state or civil society, for that would deny them to be
rights at all, and reduce them to simple privileges granted by the state
and revocable at its will. This is precisely the error of the European
liberals, who invariably confound right with privilege. All European
society has been, and still is to a great extent, based on privilege, not
right. Thus in England you have the rights--more properly, the privileges
or franchises--of Englishman, but no rights of man which parliament is
bound to recognize and protect as such. There is no right or freedom of
conscience which the state must respect as sacred and inviolable; there is
only toleration, more or less general. In the new kingdom of Italy there
are the privileges and franchises of Italians, and, within certain limits,
toleration for the church. Her bishops may exercise their spiritual
functions so long as they do not incur the displeasure of the state. The
supremacy of the state is asserted, and the ecclesiastical administration
is at the mercy of the civil. It is so in every European state, because in
none of them is the state based on equal rights. The United States are the
only state in the world that is so based. Our political system is based on
right, not privilege, and the equal rights of all men.
The state with us rests on equal rights of all men; but on what do the
equal rights themselves rest? What supports or upholds them? The state
covers or represents the whole temporal order, and they, therefore, have
not, and cannot have, their basis or support in that order. Besides the
temporal there is no order but the spiritual, covered or represented by the
church. The equal rights, then, which are with us the basis of the state,
depend themselves on the church or spiritual order for their support. Take
away that order or remove the church, or even suppress the freedom and
independence of the church, and you leave them without any support at all.
The absolutism of the state follows, then, as a necessary consequence, and
might usurps the place of right. Hence political principles must find their
support in theology, and the separation of church and state in the sense of
separating political from theological principles is as hostile to the state
as to the church, and to liberty as to religion. It is not easy to
controvert this conclusion, if we consider whence our rights are derived,
and on what they depend for their reality and support. These rights, which
we do not derive from the state or civil society, and hold independently of
it, among which the Declaration of Independence enumerates "life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness," which it asserts to be "inalienable," whence
do we hold them but from God, our Creator? This is what is meant when they
are called the natural rights of man. They are called natural rights,
because rights held under the natural law, but the natural law in the sense
of the jurists and theologians, not in the sense of the physicists or
natural philosophers--a moral law addressed to reason and free-will, and
binding upon all men, whatever their state or position; not a physical law,
like that by which clouds are formed, seeds germinate, or heavy bodies tend
to the centre of the earth; for it is a law that does not execute itself
and is not executed at all without the action of the reason and will of
society. It is necessarily a law prescribed by the Author of nature, and is
called the natural law, the law of natural justice, or the moral law, in
distinction from the revealed or supernatural law, because promulgated by
the supreme Lawgiver through natural reason, or the reason common to all
men, which is itself in intimate relation with the Divine Reason.
{10}
These natural equal rights are the law for the state or civil authority,
and every law of the state that violates them violates natural justice, and
is by that fact null and void; is, as St. Augustine says, and St. Thomas
after him, "Violence rather than law," and can never be binding on the
civil courts, though human courts not unfrequently enforce such laws. Not
being derived from the state or civil society, these rights are evidently
not in the temporal order, or the same order with the state, and therefore
must have, as we have seen, their basis in the spiritual order, that is, in
theology, or have no basis at all.
The existence of God as the creator and upholder of nature, I do not here
undertake to prove; for that has been done in the papers on _The Problems
of the Age_, which have appeared in this magazine. I am not arguing
against atheism in general, but only against what is called political
atheism, or the doctrine that theology, and therefore the church, has
nothing to do with politics. The state, with us, is based on the equal
rights, not equal privileges, of all men; and if these equal rights have no
real and solid basis beyond and independent of civil society, the state
itself has no real basis, and is a _chateau d'Espagne_, or a mere
castle in the air. Hence political atheism is not only the exclusion of the
church from politics, but the denial of the state itself, and the
substitution for it of mere physical force. Political atheism cannot be
asserted without atheism in general, without, in fact, denying all
existence, and, therefore, of necessity, all right. Political atheism is,
then, alike destructive of religion and politics, church and state, of
authority and liberty. Deny all right independent of the state, and the
citizen can have no right not derived from the state, which denies all
liberty; deny all right independent of the state, the state itself can have
no right to govern, unless the state itself be God, which would be
statolatry, alike absurd and blasphemous.
The rights of the state and of the citizen, alike must be derived from God,
and have a theological basis, or be no rights at all, but words without
meaning. There is then no such separation between politics and theology as
European democracy asserts. Such separation is unphilosophical, and against
the truth of things. It has been so held in all ages and nations of the
world. All the great theologians, philosophers, and moralists of the human
race have always held polities to be a branch of ethics, or morals, and
that branch which treats of the application of the catholic principles of
theology to society, or the social relations of mankind. The permanent,
universal, and invariable principles of civil society are all theological
principles, for there are no such principles outside of theology, and the
office of the state is to apply these principles only to what is local,
temporal, and variable. It is evident then that principles, properly so
called, lie in the theological order, and come within the province of the
theologian, not of the statesman, and are therefore to be determined by the
spiritual society, not by the civil.
It is, then, the spiritual not the temporal, religion not politics, that
asserts and maintains these rights, and religion does it in asserting and
maintaining the right of conscience, which is the right of God, and the
basis of all rights. The right of conscience is exemption from all merely
human authority--a right to be held by all civil society as sacred and
inviolable; and is the first and impassable barrier to the power of the
state. The state cannot pass it without violence, without the most
outrageous tyranny. It is then religion, not the state, that asserts and
maintains freedom; for the state when it acts, acts as authority, not as
liberty. So, on the other hand, is it religion that asserts and maintains
the authority, I say, not the force, of the state. The authority of the
state is its right to govern. In respect to civil society itself, it is
liberty; in respect to citizens, it is authority. Being a right on the part
of the state or society, it, like all other rights, lies in the spiritual
order, and is equally sacred and inviolable.
{11}
Religion, then, while it makes it the duty of the state to recognize and
protect the rights of the individual citizen, makes it the duty of the
individual citizen to recognize, respect, and defend the rights of the
state or society. The duty in both cases is a religious duty, because all
right is held from God, and only God can enjoin duty, or bind conscience.
Deny God, and you deny religion; deny religion, and you deny all duty and
all right;--alike the rights and duties of the state and the rights and
duties of the individual citizen, and, therefore, alike both liberty and
authority, which being correlatives can never exist the one without the
other. There is no denying this conclusion without denying reason itself.
But religion, as an abstract theory, is powerless, as are all abstractions,
and exists only as concreted, and religion in the concrete is the church.
In the state and in the individual, God operates indeed, but mediately,
through natural or secondary causes; but in the church immediately, for the
church is his body, and her vitality is the Holy Ghost, who dwells in her,
and is to her something like what the soul is to the body, _forma
corporis_. Religion without the church is a theory or a vague sentiment;
religion concreted in the church is a living reality, a power, and is
efficient in vindicating both rights and duties, and affording a solid
support to both liberty and authority. The sects, as far as they go, are
concrete religion, but not religion in its unity and integrity. They are
better than nothing; but lacking the unity and catholicity of truth, and
being divided and subdivided among themselves, they can very imperfectly
perform the office of religion or the Catholic Church. They are unable to
make head against material force, and to maintain with any efficiency the
rights of the spiritual against the encroachments of the temporal, or to
prevent the state from asserting its own absolute supremacy. They exist not
by a recognized right, but by state tolerance; they are suffered to exist
and are protected, because they become auxiliaries of the state in its
efforts to break the power and influence of the church, whose authority in
spirituals is more repugnant to them then is state supremacy. Hence we find
that wherever, except in the United States, the spiritual power is broken
and divided into a great variety of sects, the state claims to be supreme
alike in spirituals and temporals; and it is very doubtful if the freedom
and independence of the spiritual order could long be preserved even in our
country should our sectarian divisions continue. These divisions are
already generating a wide-spread indifference to religion, almost a
contempt for it; while there are manifest and growing tendencies to extend
the authority of the state beyond its legitimate bounds into the domain of
individual liberty. The unity and catholicity of the church, representing
the unity and catholicity of the spiritual order, will soon be seen to be
necessary to preserve our free institutions.
It was concrete religion, in its unity and catholicity embodied in the
church as an institution, that was able during the middle ages to assert
the freedom and independence of the spiritual order, which is only another
term for the freedom and independence of conscience, against the political
order. She was thus constituted a living reality, a concrete power, and the
powers of the earth had to reckon with her. Constituted as society then
was, she needed and exercised more positive power in the temporal order
than was agreeable to her, or than is necessary in a society constituted
like ours. The republic, then, was pagan, and sought to be supreme
everywhere and in everything, or in other words, to subject the spiritual
order to the temporal, as it was in pagan Rome, and for the most part
continued to be even in Christian Rome of the East, till its conquest by
the Turks. Hence the relation between Peter and Cesar, between the pope and
emperor, was ordinarily that of antagonism.
{12}
It was necessary that the pope should be clothed with a power that could
control princes, and force them to respect the rights of conscience, or the
independence of the church, which to be sufficient must be positive as well
as negative. The temporal authority, or the authority of the church over
the temporal, claimed and exercised over secular princes seeking to combine
in themselves both the imperial and the pontifical power, was no
usurpation, and rested on no grant of civil society, or _jus
publicum_, as has sometimes been asserted, but grew out of the necessity
of the case; its justification was in its necessity to maintain her own
independence in spirituals, or the freedom of conscience. It was her right
as representing the spiritual order, and would be her right still in a
similarly constituted society, and the modern world is reaping in its
advanced civilization the fruits of her having claimed and exercised it.
The necessity for claiming and exercising that power in a society
constituted as is the American does not exist, because in our society the
state frankly concedes all that she was in those ages struggling for. There
was nothing which Gregory VII., Innocent III., Boniface VIII., and other
great popes struggled for against the German emperors, the kings of France,
Aragon, and England, and the Italian republics, that is not recognized here
by our republic to be the right of the spiritual order. Here the old
antagonism between church and state does not exist. There is here a certain
antagonism, no doubt, between the church and the sects, but none between
the church and the state or civil society. Here the church has, so far as
civil society is concerned, all that she has ever claimed, all that she has
ever struggled for. Here she is perfectly free. She summons her prelates to
meet in council when she pleases, and promulgates her decrees for the
spiritual government of her children without leave asked or obtained. The
_placet_ of the civil power is not needed, is neither solicited nor
accepted. She erects and fills sees as she judges proper, founds and
conducts schools, colleges, and seminaries in her own way, without let or
hindrance; she manages her own temporalities, not by virtue of a grant or
concession of the state, but as her acknowledged right, held as the right
of conscience, independently of the state. Here she has nothing to conquer
from the state, for the civil law affords her the same protection for her
property that it does to the citizen for his; and therefore all that she
can seek in relation to the constitution of our civil society, is that it
should remain unaltered.
True, the sects have before civil society the same freedom that she has,
but the state protects her from any violence they might be disposed to
offer her. They are not permitted to rob her of her churches, desecrate her
altars, molest her worship, or interfere with her management of her own
affairs. Their freedom in no respect whatever abridges hers, and whatever
controversy she may have with them, it is entirely on questions with which
civil society has nothing to do, which are wholly within the spiritual
order, and which could not be settled by physical force, if she had it at
her command, and was disposed to use it. Lying in the spiritual order, they
are independent of the state, and it has no right to interfere with them.
There is nothing, then, in the freedom of the sects to interfere with the
fullest liberty of the church, so long as the state recognizes and protect
her freedom and independence as well as theirs. There is nothing, then,
that the church can receive from civil society, that she has not in the
United States, and guaranteed to her by the whole force of the civil
constitution.
{13}
It is one of the mysteries of Providence that what the popes for ages
struggled for and still struggle for in the old world, and in all parts of
the new world originally colonized by Catholic states, should for the first
time in history be fully realized in a society founded by the most
anti-papal people on earth, who held the church to be the Scarlet Lady of
the Apocalypse. Surely, they builded better than they knew. But explain it
as you will, such is the fact. The United States is the only country in the
world where the church is really free. It would seem that both state and
church had to emigrate to the new world to escape the antagonisms of the
old, and to find a field for the free and untrammeled development of each.
It is idle to fear that the church will ever seek to disturb the order
established here, for she supports no principle and has no interest that
would lead her to do it. Individual Catholics, affected by the relations
that have subsisted between church and state in the old world, and not
aware that the church has here all that she has ever struggled for against
kings and princes, may think that the church lacks here some advantages
which she ought to have, or may think it desirable to reproduce here the
order of things which they have been accustomed to elsewhere, and which in
fact the church has submitted to as the best she could get, but has never
fully approved. These, however, are few, and are soon corrected by
experience, soon convinced that the real solution of the questions which
have so long and often so fearfully agitated the nations of Europe, has
been providentially obtained by the American people. The church has no wish
to alter the relation that exists with us between her and the state.
But there is a very important question for the American people to ask
themselves. With the multiplicity of sects, the growing indifference to
religion, and the political atheism consciously or unconsciously fostered
by a large portion of the secular press and but feebly resisted by the
religious press, will they be able to reserve the freedom and independence
of the spiritual order, or protect the equal rights on which our political
institutions are founded? Instead of asking, as some do, are the presence
and extension of the church dangerous to our institutions, should they not
rather ask, is she not necessary to their safety? The higher question to be
addressed to the sects undoubtedly is, can men save their souls without the
church? but in addressing politicians and patriots, it is not beneath the
Catholic even to ask if the republic, the authority of the state, and the
liberty of the citizen, both of which rest on the freedom and authority of
conscience, can be saved or preserved without her? Are not the unity and
catholicity which she asserts and represents, and which the sects break and
discard, necessary to maintain the freedom and independence of the
spiritual order against the constant tendency of the political order and
material interests to invade and subject it?
This is the great question for American patriots and statesman, and I have
written in vain, if this article does not at least suggest the answer.
Hitherto almost everywhere Catholics have found themselves obliged to
contend against the civil power to gain the freedom and independence of
their church, and at the same time, in these later centuries, to sustain
that power, even though hostile to liberty, in order to save society from
dissolution. Here they have to do neither, for here church and state,
liberty and authority, are in harmonious relation, and form really, as they
should, but two distinct parts of one whole; _distinct_, I say, not
_separate_ parts. There is here a true _union_, not _unity_,
of church and state--a union without which neither the liberty of the
citizen nor the authority of the state has any solid basis or support. The
duty of the Catholic on this question is, it seems to me, to do his best to
preserve this union as it is, and to combat every influence or tendency
hostile to it.
{14}
Donoso Cortes demonstrates most clearly that religion is the basis of
society and politics, but he is apparently disposed to assert the unity of
church and state, with European liberals, but differing from them by
absorbing the state in the church, or by virtually suppressing it; while
they would suppress the church or absorb her in the state. My endeavor in
what I have written has been to preserve both, and to defend not the unity,
but the union of church and state. This union in my judgment, has never
existed or been practicable in the old world, and I do not believe it is
even yet practicable there, and consequently, I regard whatever tends there
to weaken the political influence of the church as unfavorable to
civilization, and favorable only to political atheism, virtually asserted
by every European state, unless Belgium be an exception. But here the union
really exists, in the most perfect form that I am able to conceive it; and
for the harmonious progress of real civilization, we only need the church,
the real guardian of all rights that exist independently of civil society,
to become sufficiently diffused or to embrace a sufficient number of the
people in her communion; to preserve that union intact, from whatever
quarter it may be assailed.
This, we are permitted to hope, will ere long be the case. The sects,
seeing their freedom and independence require its maintenance, must in this
respect make common cause with us; and hence the spiritual power is
probably already nearly, if not quite strong enough to maintain it against
any and every enemy that may arise. As to the controversy between the
church and the sects, I do not expect that to end very soon; but truth is
mighty and in the end will prevail They will, no doubt, struggle to the
last, but as the state cannot intervene in the dispute, and must maintain
an open field for the combatants, I have no doubt that they will yield at
last, because the church has the truth in its unity and integrity, and they
have it only as disunited or broken in scattered fragments. Reason demands
unity and catholicity, and where reason is free, and assisted by grace, she
must win the victory.
------
Original
On The Olive-branches In The Garden Of Gethsemane.
Unto the spreading olive-branches thus spake I:
"Emblems of peace!
Why do ye mock His bitter grief?
He cometh here to seek relief:
And ye His woes increase!"
When for the silent trees my Jesus made reply:
"It should be so;
To men the sign of peace and life,
To Me should be of death and strife,
Who save them by My woe."
------
{15}
Translated from Le Correspondant
The Story of A Sister.
by Augustin Cochin.
Would you wish to see happiness realized on earth? It reigned in the palace
of Simonetti at Rome, in the family of the ambassador of France, in the
month of May, 1830. The ambassador was the Count de la Ferronaya. He had
been for a long time ambassador in Russia, where his character, his natural
gifts, his integrity, had triumphed over the reserve and _hauteur_ of
the Emperor Nicholas, who treated him as a friend. He was also the friend
of the King of France, who, in 1828, appointed him minister of foreign
affairs. Handsome, brilliant, brave, intelligent, he bore in his heart and
in his appearance the qualities which constitute the true French gentleman.
He had married the niece of the devoted, faithful Duchess of Tourzel, who
accompanied the king and queen to Varennes as governess to their children.
Three boys and four girls were the result of this happy marriage. This
family, endowed with birth, rank, and so many gifts of this world, were
united at Rome, under the most beautiful sky, in the most beautiful month
of the year, in the sunny brightness of an unclouded existence. The
revolution of July, 1830, having wrested the monarchy from the Bourbons,
the Ferronays were not unhappy. God had not yet taken everything from them,
he had only taken their riches. The father, by his fidelity, had grown in
public respect; his sons and daughters had been prepared by a solid
education for industry and self-sacrifice. For fifteen years the parents
had enjoyed uninterrupted prosperity, but they had not forgotten their days
of exile; and when poverty overtook them they met her as an old friend,
meekly bowing to the hand from whom all changes come. They went to live in
retirement at Castellamare, where their house was the image of their life,
a small chamber and a magnificent view, a radiant horizon seen from a
narrow dwelling. Soon after we find them at Chiaja, gay, happy, the
brothers quitting home for an active life, the sisters loving each other
devotedly, gathering flowers in Lady Acton's garden to wear them at the
next ball, presented at court, deprived of their fortune, but still happy;
tasting the pleasure that we find in traveling, and that we ought to find
in the journey of life--the pleasure which consists in admiring ardently
what we do process without the vanity of personal possession. However, this
delightful life was not exempt from danger: a stranger has too much
liberty; he is not subject to the supervision of relatives, friends,
neighbors, or rivals, who exercise a control which, though often trying, is
more often useful. Diplomatic families, above all, accustomed to be treated
with consideration, to form transient acquaintances, passing from court to
court, from St. Petersburg to London, from London to Rome, live in a
cosmopolitan world, the most delightful, the most amusing, but by far the
most dangerous. The family of M. de la Ferronays had not long escaped this
danger, which was rendered still more seductive under the charming sky and
in the luxurious climate of Italy. However, we do not pretend that this
story introduces us to exceptional creatures; this is not a voyage to the
country of the angels; we are still upon earth with common mortals. Albert,
one of the younger brothers, was the first to perceive the dangers of this
too self-indulgent life, and he had the courage to escape from it.
{16}
He was a brave heart in a frail body; be was capable of making a mistake,
but utterly incapable of excusing an unworthy action by an unworthy
doctrine. Providence gave him the support of two friends, who drew him at
eighteen from the enervating influences which he held in such horror, and
the elevating power of whose example transformed the child into a man. Both
survived him. M. Rio had been placed in the foreign office by M. de la
Ferronays; he refused to change his opinions to please M. Polignac, or to
abjure his oath to satisfy M. Guizot. M. de Polignac and M. Guizot,
respecting his courage and firmness, had not forsaken him; and making use
of his leisure to gratify his tastes as well as to show his gratitude, he
begged his old chief to allow him to return to his son the favors that he
had received from himself, and to permit him to take Albert to be his
companion in that delightful journey among the churches and classical
associations of Italy, to which we owe his great work on Christian Art. The
other friend, the Count de Montalembert, was younger, his heart was filled
with love of the church and of liberty; and devoting himself to their
service, with an eloquence and activity which nothing could tire, he
arrived in Italy to rejoin MM de Lamennais and Lacordaire. They set out all
three for Rome in the month of January, 1832, and nothing appears more rare
and more touching than the position of the gifted trio who arrived in the
eternal city, the first in search of beauty, the second in pursuit of
truth, and the third going unconsciously to encounter the pure love of his
life. At St. Petersburg M. de la Ferronays had become acquainted with the
family of the Count d'Alopeus, Russian minister at Berlin, whose daughter,
Alexandrine, was much attached to Albert's sisters. After the death of her
husband, in 1831, the Countess d'Alopeus came to Rome, and the young people
met for the first time on the 1st of January, 1832.
We must read in Le Recit d'une Soeur, or rather in the story of
Alexandrine, a journal which begins at this date, the origin, the progress,
the incidents, and the development of the pure, innocent love of
Alexandrine and Albert de Ferronays; those conversations which touch so
deeply the heart; the friendship which changes into a warmer sentiment the
name of brother which no longer satisfies; and at last the words "I love
you" whispered on the steps of St. Peter's one beautiful evening in spring.
A journey to Naples united the two families at Vomero, in the pretty villa
of Trecase. We passed the greatest parts of our evenings on the terrace.
Everything was enchanting; the two gulfs, the shores, Vesuvius, the sky
gleaming with stars, the air breathing perfume above all to love--to love,
yet to be able to speak of God. Delightful and innocent hours, who would
wish to efface you from these pages, and who would wish not to have known
your happiness!
But I hear stern voices cry out in alarm, lest this book should fall into
the hands of young girls. "This book," they say, "is not written for them."
Is it then necessary because we are Christians, to cast down our eyes and
blush, when we hear those sacred words: Reason, love, liberty? What would
life be without these words? Ah! you may allow your daughters' eyes,
without fear, to wander over these brilliant pages, if they will only turn
the leaves, and read to the end, to learn the uncertainty of human hope,
the length of human suffering, the gentle consolations of faith, and the
beauty of this holy union of tenderness and purity, under the protection of
God.
In the month of November, it was thought better that Albert and Alexandrine
should separate. They were engaged, but one was without fortune, the other
was a Protestant. Their friends wished them to reflect, to try the strength
of their attachment. It was absence without pain, full of hope. After three
months Albert came back.
{17}
The same family life recommenced, full of little home scenes; _naïve_,
tender, sweet. This continued for three more months, short but happy, sunny
days without clouds; and doubtless the beauty of nature, the enchantment of
an innocent affection, the presence of God, formed a paradise around and
above them.
"On Holy Thursday," wrote Alexandrine, "my mother allowed me to go with my
friends, to _Tenebrae_ at the chapel of the palace, to hear the
charming music. In spite of my frivolity, the beautiful chapel, the
singing, and above all, perhaps, the happiness of praying with Albert,
inspired me to such a degree, that I prayed with gentleness and
recollection. I was pleased to have the air of a Catholic. M. de La
Ferronays took us there, and the return on foot was delightful. It was
bright moonlight, and the air was heavy with the perfumes of spring. We
went into several churches to pray before the holy tomb. Albert and I threw
ourselves upon our knees, one besides the other, on the pavement of the
church. I remember that I felt an indescribable calm; and I don't know what
I asked from God, but I felt that we both implored his protection for us,
and that, we felt it realized." The two families separated on the 30th of
April. Alexandrine went with her mother to Germany, Madame de Ferronays
took her two oldest daughters and Albert to France, and their father placed
the two youngest in the convent de la Trinité du Mont at Rome. They left
Naples together, but separated at Civita Vecchia. Albert not feeling well,
his father kept him with him; leaving him at the inn, while he took his
wife and children to the wharf for embarkation. He embraced them, following
with his eyes the receding vessel, sending kisses from afar to the
fast-fading shadows; and then when the last faint smoke of the steamer
disappears in the circle of the horizon, he sighs, oppressed with a weight
to which all are familiar, the heavy weight of loneliness which is
inseparable from farewell words to those we love. He returned silently and
sadly to the inn, where a frightful spectacle met his eyes. Albert is
dying! They are bleeding him; one moment later he would be dead. It is
necessary to read for oneself in his own words, the letters of a father to
a mother. A father alone, a stranger in an inn, beside the deathbed of his
child. "We were kept in an agony of suspense from three o'clock until
seven. At seven the perspiration which, until then, had resisted all our
efforts, this welcome perspiration showed itself, and became excessive. O
my friend! with what faith, with what fervor of gratitude, I thanked
heaven! How everything changes its nature and aspect when we nurse an
invalid whom we love! The physicians say that this dreadful crisis will
re-establish his health. He is saved! O my God! I Frank thee! for today I
can feel only joy. O all you who are loved by heaven! give thanks for me,
and ask God to smite me, but to spare my poor children." During this time
Mademoiselle Alopeus had arrived in Rome, and was once more amid the scenes
and associates where she first met Albert, when she learned that, instead
of returning to France, he was dying at Civita Vecchia. In despair, she
wrote to him, and wished to fly to him; she could not do so, and she
quitted Rome without seeing him, feeling that he was only more dear to her
because she had so nearly lost him. "At Viterbo," she writes, "where we
slept, I heard them speak of the death of a young man, whose body was
exposed in the neighboring church; this distressed me. I could not bear to
hear anything that reminded me that Albert could die."
Eugenie To Alexandrine.
"I pray for you, for you and Pauline, for Pauline and you. I do not mention
Albert. Albert is comprehended in you; it is the same prayer. God has loved
him; God has spared him. God will bless him, and to bless him is to bless
you. With what fervor have I repeated my favorite prayer that God would
take my share of happiness and unite it to yours, that you may have a
double portion.
{18}
This desire realized would insure my bliss." In order that nothing might be
wanting in this union of noble souls, Albert, just convalescent, writes to
his friends, Montalembert and Rio, letters full of energy and confidence.
Calm and serenity succeeded to this anxiety and disquiet. We find the two
families united at Rome in September, 1833, where the young sister, Olga,
makes her first communion. They then went to Naples, where Albert met them,
looking so well that his health had never seemed so perfectly established.
It was Alexandrine's health which, at this time, gave them cause for
anxiety. Her mind was distressed, though she did her best to conceal her
trouble. Her mother had not failed during their travels in Germany to
represent to her Albert's bad health and his poverty. Happily he had
recovered his health, but he was still poor. I do not know what prudent
parents will say, but I agree with Monsieur de la Ferronays, who wrote thus
to his wife: "They will be poor, but they will be truly happy. I have
neither the courage nor the wish to oppose them; you will not be more cruel
than I am." Alexandrine was still suffering. She was lying sadly on the
sofa one evening at twilight, when her sister came to her, and told her
that her wishes were realized; that she might look upon Albert as her
future husband. These joyful tidings worked her cure--happiness is the best
medicine. The marriage of Monsieur and Madame Albert de la Ferronays was
preceded by that of the Countess d'Alopeus with the Prince Paul Lepoukhyn.
Many dreary months of waiting elapsed, but I will not resume the letters at
this period--one word is sufficient. Lovers are always permitted to repeat
the same things. It was at this time that the sad revolt of M. de Lamennais
took place, and Albert causelessly, but nobly anxious, writes thus to his
friend: "Let us throw ourselves at the foot of the cross, which is the
foundation of the church, not to undermine her, but to support and defend
her; but, above all, I pray you do not commit yourself to M. de Lamennais.
You know the happiness which is to be mine in the spring; but I will
postpone it and fly to you if you wish me to do so." To these enthusiastic
words his friend replied: "There is not a word in your letter which does
not accord with all I have thought and desired. I used every effort to
induce M. de Lamennais to do as I have done--to bow to the inscrutable
dispensations of providence; and humbly, and with docility, to await the
will of heaven." But we must leave the two friends to return to the
preparations for the marriage, which was at last celebrated on the 17th of
April, 1834. In the evening a carriage took Albert and Alexandrine to
Castellamare. They were handsome, talented, good, and happy, and they
loved.
Blissful dream! which as yet knew no awakening. If we could judge of life
by outward appearances, we would believe that these bright anticipations
would last for ever. All the family rejoined the newly married couple at
Castellamare. "A staircase, embowered by vines and roses, led to the pretty
house, the ground floor of which, occupied by Albert and Alexandrine,
opened by large windows into the garden. Charles and Emma occupied the
first floor; my parents, Fernand, my sisters and myself the second, and at
each story these terraces communicated by outside staircases. We were
always in communication by these terraces, and were only too glad of an
excuse to be together, for never was a family more perfectly, more happily
united." The sister who painted this little picture, which seems bathed in
sunlight, added to the happiness of all during this pleasant summer, by her
marriage; and her younger sister, Eugenie, melancholy and enthusiastic,
overpowered with happiness, exclaimed, "Oh! if life is so delightful, what
must be the joy of heaven; death is then better than all!"
{19}
From Castellamare they went to Sorrento, thence to Rome, then to Pisa,
where they spent the winter, and where they were joined by their faithful
friend, like themselves young, intelligent, and amiable. "You can imagine,"
wrote Albert to his sister, "that he does not render our life less
charming." "He left us in tears," writes Alexandrine. This friend was the
Count de Montalembert. From Pisa M. and Madame de la Ferronays embarked for
Naples in the month of March, and thence a month later for Malta, _en
route_ for the east. This journey was full of amusing and piquant little
incidents. Friendship and affection followed them wherever they went. What
delight to visit Castellamare, Sorrento, Pisa, Naples, Malta, Smyrna,
Constantinople, Odessa, Vienna, Venice, at twenty years of age with hearts
full of love! "The dim light of my lamp falling on her dear head--is not
this worth all the world?" writes Albert. Alexandrine was filled with
enthusiasm on returning to Italy. "O dear Italy!" she cries, "I return to
thee for the ninetieth time, and always with renewed pleasure." But alas!
this journey, made under these happy auspices, resembled the course of the
inhabitant of the seas whom the harpoon of the fisherman has wounded, and
who plunges and escapes in agitation and affright, carrying the iron in his
side. The health of Albert and the religion of Alexandrine were the two
poisons hidden under this smiling exterior. Ten days after his marriage,
Albert in putting his handkerchief to his mouth, drew it away covered with
blood. At Pisa he was better, at Constantinople quite well, at Rouen he was
at death's-door. At Venice he was again better, and the husband and wife
went together to Lido.
While the wife was disturbed for the health of her husband, he was
trembling for more important interests. From the commencement of their
love, Albert's most ardent desire had been to see Alexandrine kneel at the
same altar, and practice the same faith, as himself. This hope seemed sure
of realization when they married, for God was ever with them in their
happiest hours; since their marriage a feeling of delicacy had kept them
silent on the great subjects of conversion. Albert did not wish that
Alexandrine should be constrained by her affection for him, and she feared
for herself the same powerful influence. She was not willing to sacrifice
her reason to the dictates of her heart, and dreading the displeasure of
her mother, she dreaded still more the censures of conscience. She desired
to submit to conviction, and to resist the pleadings of her love. We
recognize here the transparent sincerity of a character of which Albert
said truly, "I never saw in her the slightest affectation."
Thus Albert's health and Alexandrine's religion agitated them both with a
constant, silent anxiety, which introduces something tragical and sorrowful
into their history. Being prevented by his health from devoting himself to
the service of his country and his church, Albert had concentrated all his
desires on the establishment of truth in the heart dearest to him. Nothing
could be more touching than Alexandrine's care for Albert's health. The
charming Swede, the graceful daughter of the North, the belle of the
Neapolitan _fêtes_, was transformed into the attentive nurse, hiding
her fears, and accepting disagreeable duties. Shut up in a sick room,
closing with her delicate fingers the curtains, while Albert was asleep,
weeping while he slept, and, smiling when he woke. At this cruel moment
hope is absent; sorrow extends still more and more her heavy icy hand over
this hitherto so happy pair. Albert, at Venice, became so ill that they
sent for his family. They come, they see him, he is dying, but he is
consumed with an irresistible desire to revisit his country. They set out
in a carriage at short journeys. They leave Venice the 10th of April, and
arrive in Paris on the 11th of May.
{20}
On the 26th Albert is established 13 Rue de Madame, in a hired room near
the Luxembourg. He is a little better and much happier, for he is in
France, surrounded by his friends. They are young, they are good, they are
happy--why then, death, sickness, and the crushing sorrow of approaching
separation? Why all this anguish at once--conversion refused to the prayers
of Albert--recovery refused to the tears of Alexandrine? O God! where art
thou? Thou art absent when they all wait for thee. Thou wert the witness of
their innocent love, the author of their union. Thou wert with them when
they were happy, and now they suffer, they cry, and thou dost not hear, and
yet they have had days of perfect happiness and a youth without clouds.
Thou didst create them. Thou hast forsaken them.
Thou permittest that they should be afflicted, and when they cry, thou wilt
not answer. Why didst thou say by thy prophet, "Before they call I will
answer. As they are yet speaking, I will hear." Thy promises but add to
their sufferings the pain of disappointed hope. O God! where art thou? With
their hearts wrung by the same sorrow, the disciples were walking on the
road to Emmaus, when meeting a stranger they confided to him their trouble.
"We hoped that it was he who would have redeemed Israel, and to-day is the
third day since these things were done." They did not know that God was
present, though hidden from them in the silence of the little chamber,
where these poor Jews, who represent too well our patience so soon
exhausted, and our unworthy dejection, were sadly assembled together.
Suddenly their hearts awoke and they recognized in the breaking of bread
this ever-present God who gives himself to us as the pledge of future
immortality. The miracle of the little cottage of Emmaus is enacted every
day, and was visible at the death-bed of Albert de La Ferronays. Already at
Venice, during the night of the 6th of March, Albert appeared oppressed in
his sleep, and Alexandrine, overwhelmed by the agony of the coming
separation, watched by his bed. "At half-past five," she writes, "the color
left his lips, he spoke with effort and desired me to send for his
confessor. 'Has it come to this? Has it come to this?' I cried; then I
added at the same moment, 'now I am a Catholic.' In pronouncing these
words, firmness, if not happiness, filled my heart." On the 14th of March
she wrote to her mother a truly sublime letter, which I will quote at
length. "From love and respect to you, my mother, I have not inquired into
the claims of the Catholic religion for fear that I should find it true,
and I should be forced to embrace it. But now I am possessed with an
irresistible desire to belong to the same faith as my Albert. At no price,
however, not even to soften the death-bed of my husband, would I act
disloyally toward God. Be assured, I shall not act without conviction. Dear
mother, allow me to be instructed, and when you meet again your poor
widowed daughter, ah! you will not repine at her being a Catholic. If the
Catholic Church had no other advantage over ours than that she prays for
the dead, I should prefer her." On his side Albert, with his dying hand,
traced in his journal these words, which were his last: "O Lord! I implored
thee by day and by night, Give her to me, grant me this joy if it only
lasts for one day. Thou heardest me, O God! why should I complain. My
happiness was complete, if it was short, and now thou hast granted the rest
of my prayers, and my dear one is about to enter the bosom of the church,
thus giving me the assurance that I shall see her again in that happy home
where we shall both be lost in the beatific vision of thy boundless love."
On the 27th of May, 1836, Madame de Ferronays knelt before an altar,
arranged in her husband's room, on which the Abbé Martin de Mourien
celebrated mass, and made her profession of the Catholic faith.
{21}
On the night of the 5th or 7th of June, she received her first communion at
the same mass where Albert received his last. I will describe this pathetic
scene in the words of Alexandrine herself. "Albert was in bed, be had not
been able to rise. I knelt beside him, I took his hand, it was thus that we
commenced the mass of Abbé Gerbert. As the mass advanced, Albert made me
let fall his hand, this dear hand that was to me so sacred that in the most
solemn hour of life I felt that I did not offend God in retaining it.
Albert drew it from me, exclaiming, 'Go, go, belong only to God.' The Abbé
Gerbert addressed a few words to me before giving me communion, then be
gave it to Albert, then again I took his beloved hand; we expected every
moment would be his last." No book could contain, no imagination could
depict a scene more tenderly, more profoundly pathetic. At this point we
read no more, we weep; it is to thee, O God! that the soul turns, to thee
that the soul ascends, to thee who truly and really wert present in his
chamber of suffering, walking so to speak on the waves of death, and
saying, "Fear not, I am with thee." O my Protestant brethren: it is to you
that this page seems to be dedicated; it is you who have formed the
character of this young girl; it is to you that she owes the habit of
living in the presence of God, to you she owes the loyalty, the perfect
sincerity of her intentions and the zeal with which she purifies her
conscience; at each moment guarding it as a stainless mirror which must
ever reflect the image of God. She followed _you_ on the road to
Emmaus, where Jesus explained to his disciples the sacred Scriptures; but
like the disciples she has thrown down the book, it could not satisfy her;
she has followed God to his holy table. By the bed of death, on the edge of
the yawning abyss of irreparable separation, hymns and words disappear like
useless sounds and barren discourses. Famished for hope and for
consolation, the soul has need of stronger food. She must tear down the
veil, and lay hold of God. O my Protestant brethren! read this history of a
Christian, who was yours until the moment when stretching out her
despairing hands toward nothingness, she came to us to be united in God
with her dying husband. Read the sad but striking description of the days
that follow the first communion. It is to you that I would dedicate the
story of this sublime agony, accompanied so tenderly by the church to the
last sigh of the passing soul.
On the 27th of June, after two years of married life, at twenty-two years
of age, Albert returned to God!
Is not this sad enough? Why should we continue after such scenes? What new
spectacle can move us? We have known the bride, the wife. We are going to
follow the widow; to follow her from the extremity of human sorrow, to
consolation, even to joy and love, reformed again in God. The only
difference between the widow of India burned in the ashes of her husband
and the Christian widow, is that the Christian is consumed more slowly. She
waits for death, instead of seeking it; from the first day of bereavement
an invisible fire, which nothing can extinguish, saps the spring of her
life.
The first moments are the most cruel, but they are not the hardest to
endure; when one can say yesterday, the day before yesterday, it is only
absence, it is not the abyss of an irreparable adieu.
Alexandrine to Pauline.
"Boury, July 10, 1836.
"Pauline--Pauline! I could have written to you on the 29th of June, had I
not been occupied with other things. I repeat, I could have done it. God
has given me the power to do and to endure much far beyond all I ever
believed possible, for have I not seen the eyes of Albert close in death?
have I not felt his hand grow cold for ever? Eugenie will tell you that
God has granted me that which I asked of him. He died resting in my arms,
my hand in his.
{22}
Alone, and very quietly, I closed his dear eyes, deprived of sight, and
perhaps of feeling. I whispered close into his ear the name so beloved,
Albert! I had nothing more tender to say to him than this word which
expressed everything I felt. I wished that the last sound which should
fall upon his ear should be my voice, growing fainter and fainter until
it was lost in the distance and darkness of that gloomy passage, which
leads at last into the light. Alas! my voice, like myself, was obliged to
remain on the confines, obliged for the first time to be separated from
him. O Pauline! I was strong then, unnaturally strong. I was still
stronger for three days, then I commenced to grow weaker and weaker, and
each morning I seemed feebler than the night before."
This estimable widow of twenty years, always ardent and always perfectly
natural, expresses a truth even in her first sensations. Little by little
sorrow intensifies, courage fails, despair commences. The sympathy of
friends, which had until then a little occupied, distracted, and deadened
the pain, without healing it, becomes colder and more distant, and the soul
is enveloped in the icy shades of silence and solitude.
Alexandrine to Pauline.
"To tell me at my age that all happiness is passed, that makes me
shudder, and yet my only rest will be to feel entirely inconsolable, for
I should loathe myself if I felt that I could again enjoy the amusements
of life, or look upon the world otherwise than I do now. Albert was to me
the light which colored everything. With him pearls, jewels, pretty
rooms, beautiful scenery, appeared to me lovely. Now, nothing charms me.
I have but one wish, to know where he is. To see if he is happy, if he
loves me still; to share all things with him _now_ as I promised to
do on earth before God."
Yes, the faithful widow sees nothing, she is ever with the absent; it is
not he who is dead, it is the world which has gone from her, which is
shrouded in darkness. But in the long weary hours, when she listens to the
plaintive murmurings of her own heart, the Christian widow hears another
voice of heavenly music, and angels whisper in her ear those gentle words,
"Blessed are those who weep, for they shall be comforted." "Blessed are the
pure in heart, for they shall see God." It is not only in heaven that pure
hearts see God, they see him everywhere on earth, in all objects, in all
creatures--in all events they recognize him, they contemplate him. An
unexpected brightness is introduced little by little into this desolate
life. The world is colored anew; obscured by sorrow, it is transfigured by
faith.
She who is afflicted is not consoled, she is accepted, supported; from this
day a miracle commences. She whose affections have been riven, seeks to
love again in making friends for him whom she has lost, in interesting for
him the saints whom she invokes, the poor whom she assists. Some days after
the death of Albert, Alexandrine sold a beautiful pearl collar, a relic of
happy days, and she wrote:
"Pearls! symbol of tears!
Pearls! tears of the sea,
Gathered with tears in the depths of the ocean,
Worn often with tears in the midst of the pleasures of the world;
Resigned to-day with tears in the greatest of human sorrows,
Go, dry tears, by changing into bread."
The love of the poor became for this young Christian a sublime
consolation--the love of Jesus Christ in the persons of the poor--the love
of the poor in the thought of Albert. To love the unhappy when we are
unhappy is an exquisite sign of perfection in our poor human nature, but a
sign happily very common. Is it not much more difficult when we suffer to
love the happy--not to be impatient of their pleasures, to lend ourselves
to them, and though our own hearts are for ever shut against joy, to be
able to rejoice with those who rejoice? Le Récit d'une Soeur shows us the
Christian widow in the midst of her family, among her young sisters and
brothers, smiling, amiable, communicating, no doubt, by her presence to the
pleasures of the house the tinge of melancholy which ever belongs to the
joys or earth.
{23}
The commencement of the second volume of Madame Craven's history is
occupied with the _tableau_ of the interior of her family, who were
united at the Chateau of Boury during the years 1836, '37, and '38, which
followed the death of M. Albert de la Ferronays. Obliged, by the diplomatic
career of her husband, to change frequently her residence--to go from
Naples to Lisbon, to London, to Carlsruhe, to Brussels--Madame Craven was
almost always separated from her parents and her sisters. To this
separation we owe the correspondence which serves today to interest and
console us.
The description of the interior of the Chateau de Boury, depicted in these
letters, resembles a conversation, where each speaks in his turn and with
his own peculiar accent. But I will pass over this family picture to return
to Madame Albert de la Ferronays, the principal character in my story.
In the month of October, 1837, they removed the body of Albert to Boury, in
order to bury it in a sepulchre, where they had arranged two places without
separation.
"Yesterday, alone with Julia, by the aid or a little ladder, Alexandrine
descended into the excavation in order to touch and to kiss, for the last
time, the coffin in which is enclosed all that she loves. In doing this
she was on her knees in her own tomb. On the stone she had engraved:
'What God hath put together, let no man put asunder.'"
In 1838 she rejoined her mother in Germany, where she spent the second
anniversary of the 29th of June. From Ischl she wrote to her sister a
touching description of the death of a young priest, who died of
consumption eleven months after his ordination. From Germany Madame de la
Ferronays went to Lumigny, from thence to Boury; and when the family
resolved to pass the winter of 1839 in Italy, she returned with a sad
delight to this beautiful country, where she had been so happy. She wished
to revisit all the scenes of her past happiness--to see again the rocks,
the trees, the mountains, which had been witnesses of her felicity--not
without tears, but without complaining; with the sweet serenity of perfect
resignation. "It is here," she said, "that I have been so full of bliss
that this world and life appeared too beautiful." After the description of
the second journey to Italy, there follows the account of the successive
deaths of M. de la Ferronays and the young daughters, Olga and Eugenie. At
this time, always absolutely sincere, incapable in anything of being
carried away by feeling, Alexandrine thought of entering a convent; she
relinquished the idea, but resolved to live in poverty for the poor. From
this day she dreams no more, she writes no more, she acts. Her love
expresses itself in joyous accents, in words of heavenly sweetness,
accompanied by austere virtues. It is the miracle and the triumph of true
piety, What is this? demands a disdainful world. Who is this devotee,
draped in black, who ventures out in the most inclement season, laden with
bundles? Has she paralyzed her heart? Does she love no one? Is she a piece
of mechanism, passing from the dreary garret to the dark cellar in the poor
neighborhood which surrounds her? No; this widow is a great lady, bearing
one of the oldest names of France. She is going to visit the dying, to
supply them with clothes and food, to teach their ignorant children; and on
her return she takes her pen, and from this heart, which you believe cold
and frozen, flow forth these words: "O my dear sister! can I fill you with
joy and courage in writing? Would that it were in my power; you do not know
how I love you, but you will know in eternity, where we shall enjoy each
other's love fully and completely."
{24}
This devotee paid a visit to another devotee, an old Russian lady, of whom
she writes: "I have seen Madame Swetchine; this delightful, excellent woman
told me that we ought not to speak ill of life, for it is full of beauty;
and yet this woman, so tender and so pious, is overwhelmed with moral and
physical suffering. She said to me, 'I love what _is_, because it is
true; I am contented.' The longer I live the more I wish to have my heart
filled with love, and only with love." Of all Alexandrine's former
pleasures, the sole relaxations she permitted herself were music and
reading. Part of her time she spent in Paris in the hospitals, which she
entered with the joyous, animated air of a young girl who sets out for a
_fête_, or a warrior who returns from battle. She ended by hiring a
little room in the Rue de Sèvres in order to live more plainly. Her
sisters, in looking into her wardrobe, found that it contained nothing. She
had robbed herself to give to the poor. This noble woman had but one cause
--the cause of God. She became the generous servant, almost the soldier of
the church, interesting herself in the cause of freedom, contributing to
foreign missions, seconding the educational projects of her friend, M. de
Montalembert; and, from the quiet of her little chamber, giving forth her
money and her prayers for the service of God. Madame Craven, in a letter,
dated the 31st of July, thus writes: "The evening of my departure from
Boury we went into the cemetery to pray. Alexandrine knelt beside Albert's
tomb, on the spot which, twelve years before, had been prepared for
herself. I was on my knees, by Olga. The night was warm and beautiful. As
we strolled slowly home, I turned and admired the setting sun, which was
embellishing, with its many colored rays, this sad spot. 'I love the
setting sun,' I exclaimed. 'Since my sorrow,' replied Alexandrine, 'the
setting sun makes me sad. It is the precursor of night. I do not like the
night. I love the morning and the spring--they bring before me the reality
of life that never ends. Night represents to me darkness and sin; evening
the transitory nature of the world; but morning and spring give me promise
of the resurrection and renewal of all things.' As we continued our walk,
Alexandrine said: 'Rest assured that all that pleases us most upon earth is
but a shadow; that the reality is alone in heaven. What is there upon earth
so sweet as to love? And I ask you if it is not easy to conceive that the
love of the divine love ought to be the perfection of this sweetness?--and
is not this the love of Jesus Christ? I should never have been comforted if
I had not learnt that this love exists for God, and is everlasting.' I
replied, 'You are very happy so to love God.' She answered me--and her
words, her expression, her attitude will remain ever engraved on my
memory--'O Pauline! should I not love God? should I not be transported
with joy when I think of him? How can you imagine there is any merit in
this, even that of faith, when I think of the miracle that he has wrought
in my soul? I loved, and desired the joy of earth--it was given to me. I
lost it, and I was overwhelmed with despair. Yet, to-day my soul is so
transformed that all the happiness I have ever known pales and grows dim in
comparison with the felicity with which God has filled my soul.' Surprised
to hear her speak thus, I said: 'If you had offered to you a long life to
be spent with Albert, would you accept it?' She replied, without
hesitation. 'I would not take it.' This was our last conversation, and as I
saw her then I see her now, with a flower of jessamine in her hand, her
face lighted up with heavenly beauty; and so she will ever appear to me
until I meet her again where there will be no more parting.' Alexandrine
died some months after, on the 9th of February, 1848.
If the angels could die, they would die as she did. Her last words to
Albert's mother were: "Tell Pauline it is so sweet to die."
{25}
On the 14th of November of the same year, Madame de la Ferronays rejoined
her husband, her son, and her three daughters. On the tombs of Albert,
Alexandrine, Olga, and Eugenie, and of their father and mother, one single
epitaph is necessary. It comprehends their life; it is the epitome of their
faith; it is the conclusion, the explanation, the design of this book:
"Love is stronger than death."
------
Original
The Church And The Sinner.
The Church
Prithee, why continue eating,
Child, the husks of swine?
Thou thy soul art only cheating
With this food of thine.
The Sinner.
Other food hath long been wasted,
Mother, by my sin;
All its empty joys are tasted,
Sorrows now begin.
The Church.
Hadst thou not a loving Father,
Child, and happy home?
There with him have rested, rather
Shouldst thou than to roam.
The Sinner.
Yes; but he his now degraded
Son would never know;
From his memory I have faded,
Mother, long ago.
The Church.
Child, the Father ne'er forgetteth
Whom he called his son,
To him naught but pride now letteth
Not thy feet to run.
The Sinner.
Worthy for his lowly servant
Am I not, I know;
Yet with love and sorrow fervent
Will arise, and go!
------
{26}
From The Dublin University Magazine.
Modern Writers Of Spain.
The literary portion of English and French people take little interest
about what philosophers and romance writers are doing on the outer borders
of Europe. Scarcely does an editor of a literary journal direct his
subscribers' attention to the current literature of Russia, Norway, Spain,
or Portugal. The most universally-read Englishman would be puzzled if you
asked him who is the Dickens or the Braddon of Transylvania, or if anything
worth reading has lately appeared in the Portuguese province of Alentejo.
Thanks to the talents and the genial disposition of Frederica Bremer, and
the vigorous and original character of Emily Carlen's novels, and the
interest excited for Norse literature by William and Mary Howitt, we have
become familiarized with the popular literature of Sweden. Worsae and
Andersen have made us attend to literary sayings and doings among the
meadows and beech woods and _havns_ of the Danish Isles. The efforts
of Count Sollogub and one or two other enlightened Russians have failed to
dispel our apathy on the subject of native Russian literature, and at this
moment we can recollect among the contents of our own reviews and magazines
for five or six years back, only two notices of the productions of living
Spanish novelist or romancist. Either we (English and French) are too much
absorbed in our own literature, and consequently negligent of that of our
neighbors, or those neighbors are producing nothing worthy [of] notice, and
in either case our efforts will scarcely turn public attention into a new
channel. Our intention is merely to advert to some literary features in the
life of the Spain of the present day. We shall not find her altogether
neglectful of the claims of her children who are at the moment striving to
add to her literary renown.
Cervantes Remembered Too Late.
There is something very saddening in those solemnities held in honor of
departed genius. We see much time taken from necessary business, much
eloquence wasted--often with a side glance toward self-glorification, and
much money thrown away, which, if once timely and prudently used, would
have relieved the anxieties and cheered the existence of the ill-favored
son of genius.
In the article on Cervantes which appeared in the University for August,
[Footnote 2] allusion was made to his imprisonment and harsh treatment in a
certain town of La Mancha. It is the same whose name, he says, in the
commencement of Don Quixote, he does not choose to remember. It has been
ascertained that this village of unenviable reputation is Argamasilla; and
the very house where he resided against his will, and dreamily arranged the
plan of his prose epic, has been identified. The Infanta Don Sebastian has
purchased it, with a view to its preservation, and a patriotic and spirited
printer, Don Manuel de Ribadeneira, has obtained permission to work off two
impressions there of the Life and Adventures of the ingenious Hidalgo, Don
Quixote. One is, in the Paris idiom, an edition of luxury, intended for the
libraries and _salons_ of the great, the other a carefully executed
but low-priced edition for the populace.
[Footnote 2: See Catholic World for October, 1886.]
{27}
The English cannot be accused of having neglected their own Cervantes in
his need. He appears to have united to his comprehensive and mighty genius,
good business habits, consulted the tastes of his public while endeavoring
to improve them, watched the behavior of his door-keepers, and though
probably not a rigid self-denier, made his outlay fall far short of his
income, and enjoyed some years of life in respectable retirement. So his
countrymen feeling no remorse on his account, show their respect for his
memory by eating and drinking heartily on stated occasions, and boring each
other with stereotyped speeches. When suitable days for jubilees or
centenaries or tercentenaries arrive, they take more trouble on themselves.
They journey to a small town in Warwickshire, and celebrate the event in as
tiresome a fashion as if they were members of the "British Association for
bettering the Universe," under all the inconveniences of crowded rooms,
crowded vehicles going and coming, and dear hotels. They manage matters of
the kind in Spain with a difference.
Some years since a statue was erected to Cervantes in front of the Congress
building, and the historian, Antonio Cavanilles, took occasion to mention
the opinion of the ghost of the great Spaniard on the matter in a dialogue
held between them.
"During my life they left me in poverty. Now they raise statues which are
of no manner of use to me, and they never celebrate a mass for the repose
of my soul--a thing of which I have much need."
Whether the Marquis of Molins, the same gentleman who superintended the
editions of Don Quixote at Argamasilla, took this appeal to heart or not,
it is certain that since the year 1862 a solemn high mass and office have
been celebrated for the above-mentioned purpose before the Royal Academy of
Madrid. M. Antoine de Latour, [Footnote 3] in his Études Littéraires sur
l'Espagne Moderne, has left an account of one of these solemnities, some
particulars of which are worth being presented.
[Footnote 3: This gifted and agreeable writer was born at Sainte Yrieix
(Haute Vienne) in 1818, and educated at the college of Dijon. He held
professorships at the College Bourbon and the college Henri Quatre.
Louis Philippe confided to him the education of the young Duc de
Montpensier, and in 1848 he shared the exile of the house of Orleans.
He made his literary _début_ in poetry, his other productions
being an Essay on the History of France in the Nineteenth Century, an
Account of the Duc de Montpensier's Journey to the East, and and essays
on Luther, Racan, Vertot, Malherbe. &c. He has resided for a
considerable time in Spain, and written four or five works Spanish
subjects.]
In 1616 Cervantes was interred in the church of the Convent of the
Trinitarians, where his daughter had taken the veil. Some fifteen years
afterward the community removed to the site now occupied by them, and the
impression is strong that in the removal the remains of the poet were
brought to their own house, his daughter being alive, or but recently dead
at the time. In the chapel of their convent the annual solemnity takes
place on the 16th April. The convent stands in the street called after
Cervantes' contemporary and dramatic rival, Lope de Vega. We proceed with
M. de Latour's account of what he witnessed.
Our visitor found the chapel hung with black cloth trimmed with gold
fringe. In the centre was a catafalque on which rested the habit of St.
Francis borne by Cervantes during the last three years of his life, a
sword, prison-fetters, a crown of laurel, and a copy of the first edition
of Don Quixote. At each corner of the catafalque stood a disabled soldier,
and at each side, and extending the whole length of the chapel, ran two
lines of seats for the members of the various academies.
At the lower end of the chapel, on seats connecting the extremities of the
long rows mentioned, sat the Alcaid, the rector of the University, and the
curé of Alcala de Henares, Cervantes' birthplace, where the record of his
baptism was discovered some time since.
{28}
Among the remarkable personages met to celebrate the occasion, M. de Latour
noticed the Marquis de Molins, its institutor; M. Hartzembuch, a dramatic
poet, an idolizer of Cervantes, and the zealous superintendent of the two
Argamasilla editions of the Don; Ventum de la Vega, the Marquis de Santa
Cruz, whose ancestor fought at Lepanto, and Antonio Cavanilles, the eminent
historian before mentioned. Seated behind the academicians were the most
illustrious ladies of Spain, all appropriately attired in mourning dress.
The Archbishop of Seville celebrated high mass, the different parts of
which were accompanied with music as old as the days of Cervantes himself.
The distinguished composer, Don Francisco Asenjo Barbieri, had sought these
pieces out with much trouble, some of them having for a long time been only
heard in the Sistine chapel at Rome. We subjoin the openings of some of
these, with the authors and dates.
_Regem cui omnia vivunt_ (the king by whom all things live) was
composed by Don Melchior Robledo, chapel master in Saragossa in 1569, the
same year when Cervantes' little collection of elegiac poems on Queen
Isabel appeared.
_Domine in furore tuo_ (Lord (rebuke) me not in thy fury) was the
composition of Don Andres Lorente, organist in Alcala de Henares,
Cervantes' birthplace. He himself probably heard it sung there in his
youth.
_Versa est in luctum cithara mea_ (my harp has changed to sorrow) was
composed for the funeral of Philip II. by Don Alfonso Lobo.
_Libera me_ (deliver me), the composition of Don Matias Romero, Chapel
Master to Philip III., dates from about the death of Cervantes.
Don Francisco de Paula Benavides, the young bishop of Siguenza, preached
the sermon. Taking his text from St. Paul, "Being dead he still speaketh
through faith," he proceeded with the panegyric of the great-souled poet
and soldier, and of all the illustrious dead who have honourcd Spain by
their writings. He did not neglect to interest the nuns, who were listening
with all their might behind their lattices. Their order had been
instrumental in restoring the brave Saavedra to his country, and to their
exertions Spain and the world were in part indebted for the Don Quixote and
the Exemplary Novels. They possessed the remains of the poet in their
house, and thus bound to his memory they must not omit the care of his
salvation to their prayers. The delivery of the discourse, according to M.
Latour, was marked with a noble simplicity, and a manner combining
sweetness with vigour.
Next morning he returned to the convent, hoping to be gratified with the
sight of Cervantes' tomb. Alas! he learned that when the remains were
transferred from the old house, sufficient attention was not paid to keep
them apart from those of others who were removed along with them. So,
though it is morally certain that the present convent of the Trinitarians
guards all that remains of the body, once so full of life and active
energy, they are now undistinguishable from the relics of the nameless
individuals who had received interment in the same building.
The Modern Novel:
Donna Caecelia De Faber.
We are not to imagine Spain insensible to the merits of her living gifted
sons and daughters, and ever employed in shedding tears over the tombs of
her Cervantes, her Lope de Vega, or her Mendoza. No. She possesses living
writers whose names are not only known from Andaluçia to Biscay, but are
even spoken of in Paris _salons_. The most distinguished among these
is the lady who chooses to style herself _Fernan Caballero_, her real
name being Caecilia de Faber, her birthplace Alorges in Switzerland, and
her father, M. Bohl de Faber, a Hamburgh merchant, and consul for that city
at Cadiz.
{29}
She has been married more than once, and thus enabled to combine experience
with natural ability in her pictures of life and manners. Through the favor
of the queen she holds apartments in the Alcazar of Seville, and the
splendid old Moorish city could not possess a writer better qualified to
paint the manners of the little-doing, much-enjoying people of that
southern paradise, Andalulçia, and the delights of the happy climate, where
life is not only supportable, but enjoyable at very small expense.
Besides happily seizing and vividly sketching what takes place among the
aristocracy of Seville in their Patios [Footnote 4] and Tertulias (reunions
in their _salons_), this authoress has made herself thoroughly
acquainted with the circumstances and characters and peculiar customs of
the country laborers and shepherds. Melodramatic situations abound in some
of them, and perhaps these are more relished by her Spanish readers than
others whose chief merit consists in truthful and picturesque tableaux of
the order of things among which they are placed, and which consequently
possesses no novelty for them. We can readily conceive how French and
English students of her novels and romances would prefer this latter class
for their entertainment. Who would not rather listen to a couple of
Andaluçian peasants discussing the clime and people of Britain than to some
terrible, exciting though undignified, domestic tragedy? (_A_. is
dissuading _B_. from making the voyage to Britain.)
"_A_. The earth is there covered with so deep a crust of snow that
people are buried in it.
"_B_. Most Blessed Mary! But they are quiet folk, and do not carry
stilettoes.
"_A_. They have no olives, no gaspacho, [footnote 5] and must put
up with black bread, potatoes, and milk.
"_B_. Much good may it do them.
[Footnote 4: The Patios are the interior flagged courts surrounded by
colonnades from the roof of which lamps are suspended. In the centre of
the court is a fountain surrounded by shrubs in fruit or flower. Seated
on sofas in the corridor, or on carpets near the fountain, the princely
owners enjoy an elysium during hot weather.]
[Footnote 5: Soup made up of olive oil, vinegar, spices, etc.]
"_A_. The worst is, there are neither monks nor nuns there; the
churches are few, and the walls of them as bare as if they were
hospitals; no private chapels, no altars, no crucifixion.
"_B_. Oh, my sun, my white bread, my church, my Maria Santissima, my
delightful land, my Dios Sacramentado! How could I think to change you
for that land of snow, of black bread, of bare-walled churches, of
heretics? Horrible!"
Fernan Caballero enters with warm-hearted sympathy into the pleasures and
troubles of her country people. Few could read without interest her sketch
of the peasants returning at evening from their work. We fancy Sancho Panza
and a neighbor coming home to meet the greeting of Tereza and his children,
himself mounted on _Dapple_, while the little foal frolics about,
unconscious of its own future life of labor. Sancho carries a basket of
fruit and vegetables covered with the sappy maize stalks, which will
furnish a delightful supper to the patient _burra_. Sancho's neighbor
is riding beside him, and you will hear in a quarter of an hour of their
conversation more proverbs than John Smith and Tom Brown would quote in
seven years. The burras quicken their pace as they approach the village,
for the children of both men are running to meet them, while their wives
are looking out for them from the porches of their doors. Sancho dismounts
and sets his younger child on Dapple, while his elder frolics about her and
makes free with her ears. Sancho's neighbor gets his youngest into his lap,
while one of the elder boys takes the halter and the other gambols about
with the trusty house dog, asses and dog being much better treated than if
their lot lay in Berkshire or Donegal.
With their innumerable rhymed proverbs, their chatty propensities, their
happy clime, fine country, facility of procuring a livelihood, few wants,
and lively and happy temperaments, the Andaluçian peasants afford suitable
subjects to Fernan Caballero's pencil.
{30}
They see in the many natural advantages they possess, the goodness of God
and the favors of the saints; and their pious legends, in connection with
every object round them, are innumerable. "Toads and serpents are useful in
absorbing the poisonous exhalations of the earth; the serpent attempted to
bite the Holy Infant on the journey into Egypt, so Saint Joseph appointed
him to creep on his belly thenceforth. Some trees have the privilege of
permanent foliage because they sheltered the HOLY FAMILY on the same
journey. The Blessed Virgin hung the clothes of the Infant Jesus on a
rosemary bush to dry, so its sweetest perfume and brightest blossoms are
reserved for Friday. The swallow plucked some of the thorns out of the
Saviour's crown, therefore he is a favorite bird with all Christians, while
the owl is obliged to keep his eyes shut and whimper out, '_cruz,
cruz,_' because he irreverently stared at our suffering Lord on the
cross. The hedgehog should be well treated, because he presented to the
Blessed Virgin some sweet apples on the tips of his prickles, while the
earwig is deservedly hated for boring his way into, and effectually
spoiling the nicest of them." Most of these poetically develop fancies are
or were familiar with the Roman Catholic peasantry of Ireland, and probably
amongst the populace of moat continental countries.
Perhaps the most powerful of our authoress's stories is La Gaviota (the
sea-gull), giving the career of a selfish, ill-disposed country girl,
gifted with some beauty and a fine voice. She obtains a gentle German
doctor for husband, is patronized by a duke, trained for the office of a
prima donna, becomes fascinated by a bull fighter, proves false to her
estimable husband, and ends badly of course. Devout and moral as the
authoress undoubtedly is, she does not avoid strong and exciting situations
no more than Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe or Mrs. Oliphant. Such is the scene
where the betrayed husband sees her seated beside the bullfighter among his
unedifying associates, and that other of the death of her paramour by a
furious animal in the arena before her eyes, and these are matched by
passages in the Alvareda Family.[Footnote 6] This story, which is entirely
occupied with country folk, and incidents of the war in Buonaparte's time,
and scenes of brigandage, is next to La Gaviota in power. The match-making
scene between the garrulous and saving Pedro and his relative that is to
be, the _Tia_ Maria, fully as provident as himself, might have
happened in a country farmhouse in Wexford or Carlow, and would have been
described by Banim or Griffin or Carleton, nearly in the same terms.
[Footnote 6: A translation of this story was given in The Catholic
World of last year, as Perico the Sad; or, The Alvareda Family.]
The Andalusians are as partial to bantering each other as the natives of
Kilcullen or Bantry, but all is taken in good humor.
In reading the country business in this and others of our authoress's tales
we have been forcibly reminded of corresponding pictures so truthfully
painted in Adam Bede. We could scarcely fancy such a piece of extravagance
as the following to be uttered by a Spanish lady, till assured of the fact
by Fernan Caballero. _Casta_ wishes to induce her elderly lover, Don
Judas Taddeo Barbo, to cease his persecutions. He does not read, and
entertains feelings of repugnance to literary ladies in general; so she
takes him into her confidence.
"'Yes, yes I am a poet, but do not mention it, I beg. Some of my works
are printed, but I have put the names of my friends to them. Martinez de
la Rosa's poems are mine, not his. I have also tried my hand on
theatrical pieces. The Consolations of a Prisoner, attributed to the Duke
de Rivas, is my composition.'
"'Who would have suspected a lady, so young, so beautiful, so womanly, so
attractive? Why, a writing woman ought to be old, ugly, and slovenly--a
man-woman!'
"'All prejudices, Don Judas. Have you read my Tell?'
"'Miguel Tell, the Treasurer? No. I never read; it injures my sight.'
{31}
"'Well I must read an extract from my great historical work on William
Tell, not Miguel the Treasurer.' (Here poor Don Judas began to meditate
an escape, the very thing the lady wished.)
"'William Tell, my hero, was a native of Scotland who refused to bow down
to the beaver hat of the English General, _Malbrun_, set up on a
high pole. Out of this circumstance arose the thirty years' war, at the
end of which Tell was proclaimed King of England under the title of
William the Conqueror. He brought disgrace on his royal name by causing
his wife, the beautiful Anne Boleyn, to be beheaded. Struck with remorse
he sent his son Richard Lion-heart on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. On
his return he was imprisoned for his great admiration of Luther, Calvin,
Voltaire, and Rousseau, members of the Revolutionary Directory which put
the pious King Louis XIV. to death. About that time Don Pedro the Cruel
established the inquisition in Spain to prevent such proceedings in his
kingdom, and thus he obtained his surname'"
Poor Don Judas was terrified by the erudition of the cunning lady, who thus
got rid of him.
The collected works of this lady have been printed at the expense of the
queen. It is only seventeen or eighteen years since she began to write,
and, if we can trust the accuracy of foreign biographers, she is now in her
seventieth year. Two volumes of selections from her works entitled The
Castle and Cottage in Spain, have appeared in an English dress.
Rustic Tales: Don Antonio De Trueba.
The writer next to be noticed, by birth a Biscayan peasant, is now or was
lately a sub-editor of a newspaper. Don Antonio de Trueba y la Quintana was
born 24th December, 1821. In the preface to one of his works he presents
this picture of his birthplace and his early life.
"On the slope of one of the mountains of Biscay stand four white houses
nearly hidden in a wood of walnut and chestnut trees, and which cannot be
seen at any distance till winter has deprived the trees of their foliage.
There I passed the first fifteen years of my life.
"In the valley is a church whose spire pierces the surrounding canopy of
foliage, and is seen above the chestnut and ash trees. In this church
they celebrate two masses, one at the rising of the sun, the other two
hours afterward.
"We, the young boys of the hamlet rose every Sunday with the song of the
birds, and went down to the early mass, singing and jumping over the
bushes. The elders of the families attended the later devotions. While
the fathers and grandfathers were so occupied, I took my seat under a
cherry tree opposite the door, and had a full view of the entire vale
till it approached the shore. I was soon joined by four or five young
girls with cheeks as blooming as the cherries which hung over our beads,
or the red ribbons which bound the long braids of their hair. They would
request me to make some verses for them to sing in the evening to the
accompaniment of the basque tambourine, when the young would be dancing,
and the aged looking on in sympathy with their enjoyment."
Don Antonio was already a poet, though his material sources of information
and inspiration were very easily counted. His library consisted of the
Fueros (Customs) of Biscay, Samanego's Fables, Don Quixote, a book of
ballads, and two or three volumes of the Lives of the Saints. At fifteen
years of age (1836), the Carlist cause gathering the youth of Biscay to its
side, Antonio's parents not being enthusiastic partisans of that party,
sent their son to a distant relative in Madrid, who could do nothing better
for the future poet and novelist than employ him in his hardware shop to
take down door-hinges, pokers, and frying-pans for his customers.
For ten tedious years did our poet in embryo do the duty of a shopman by
day, treat himself the to a book when be could, and spend in study great
part of the time that should be given to sleep. Bad business or failure
obliged him at the end of the time mentioned to look out for other
occupation, and since that time he has been connected with journalism, the
evenings still being devoted to poetry and romance.
The ordinary vehicle in which the nameless poets of Spain utter their
thoughts to the people is the quatrain, in which the second and fourth
lines rhyme after a fashion, the accented vowels corresponding without
exception, the consonants when it pleases Apollo. This is what they call
the _Romance_, and in which Trueba has endeavored to improve the taste
of the people by a genuine poetic feeling, and perfection in the structure
of the verse.
{32}
But our Biscayan thought a poet's life incomplete without the sympathy
which only a loving and intelligent wife can afford. So he incurred the
expense of a household, as well as gave support to his aged parents. Along
with laboring at the public press and writing and publishing Los Cantares,
he found time to compose his Rose-colored Tales, all concerned with the
ordinary life of the country in which his boyhood was passed, and all seen
through that softly colored magic medium through which mature age loves to
look back to the period of careless hopeful youth. These stories are called
The Resurrection of the Soul, The Stepmother, From our Country to Heaven.
The Judas of the House, and Juan Palamo. All end happily, all are imbued
with the purest morality, and breathe an atmosphere in which live the best
feelings of our nature.
While writing the dedication of them to his wife, he was enlivened by the
anticipation of a visit they would shortly make to his natal village.
"While I write this, the most cherished wish of my life is about to be
gratified. Before the July sun withers up the flowers, the breezes and
the flowers of my native hills shall cool our foreheads, and perfume our
hair. The venerable man who honors himself and thee in calling thee his
daughter, is now going from house to house in the village, and telling
the companions of my boyhood, while tears of joy find their way down his
check, 'My children are coming; my son is about revisiting his native
valleys as lovingly as he bade them adieu twenty years ago.'
"And our father and our brothers are thinking on us every moment, and
doing all in their humble means to beautify and cheer the apartments
destined for us. Every time they come to the windows, they expect to see
my form on the hillock where they caught the last site of me seventeen
years ago."
Alas! what disappointments wait on such pleasant anticipations! Paying a
tardy visit to the scenes so lovingly and pleasurably remembered, the
careworn elderly man finds dear old houses levelled; new, raw ones reared
on their site; old paths and ways deserted, and new roads laid down; new
and uninteresting topics filling up conversation, the once fresh and fair
romantic boys and girls now common-place husbands and wives, except such as
have been removed by death or change of residence. His former comrades,
youths and maids once buoyant with bright hopes, are now gray-haired and
wrinkled, or distressed, or departed, and of the revered and loved old
people of long ago not one has been left to bid him welcome. There are now
no ties to detain him in his long regretted native place; he hastens back
to his ordinary colorless occupation and cares, rendered agreeable or
tolerable by habit, and wishes he had not gone on that sorrowful journey.
In the greater part of these tales figures the Indian, that is, one who has
spent some time in Mexico or the West Indies, and returns to cheer or
disturb the former companions of his early life. The narratives are made up
of simple village annals, loves and jealousies, injustices and their
punishments, generous deeds and their recompenses, constancy sharply tried
and victorious, unions at the threshing floors, Sunday morning devotions,
Sunday evening recreations, troubles of good housewives with their
play-loving little boys, and all the worries and comforts and joys and
griefs that attend on the lives of those whose lot is to cultivate the
earth, the curé always filling the office of the good fairy in household
tales.
Satire: Don Jose Gonzalez De Tejada.
Don José Gonzalez de Tejada may be taken as the representative man of the
living Spanish satirists. Few looking on the steady, easy-going, fat, and
florid young man with good-nature playing about the corners of his mouth,
would suspect the keen spirit of satire which inspires his verses.
{33}
Making use of the romance form before explained, he celebrated in the
public papers the late triumphs of his country over the Moors, and these
verses were in every one's mouth. In his satires he never condescends to
personalities. He lashes selfishness, rage for wealth, worldliness, lack of
patriotism, etc. He calls his collection "Anacreontic Poems of the latest
Fashion," but they have nothing of the genuine Anacreontics but the form.
The classic student, or even the reader of Moore's translation, recollects
the bibulous old poet's direction to the painter about his mistress's
portrait. Here is the Spanish equivalent:
"Figure to me, O photographer of my soul!
the beauty who holds me in thrall.
"As to countenance, let her be dark or fair,
to me it's all the same.
"But let sparkling diamonds give lustre to her tresses,
and two golden lamps hang from her ears.
"Let her neck be dark, or possess the whiteness of alabaster,
but for decency's sake cover it with pearls or sapphires.
"Let her graceful form be shrouded with rich valuable stuffs.
A rich binding always enhances the value of books.
"While she rolls along in her _calèche_ my
attention is occupied with her rich liveries
and the cost of the equipage.
"Happy he who, prancing along by the carriage,
or seated by her side, cigar in mouth,
can exclaim, 'All that surrounds me is mine!'
"Paint her for me in ball costume, at the mass,
or the _retiro_, ever richly dressed,
ever surrounded by opulent charms.
"But alas! her greatest charms you cannot
see to portray--her father's crowns!
On these is my heart fixed."
Don José is somewhat old fashioned in his notions. He does not attribute
all the qualities of and overruling Providence to the mere progress of
science and the additions to our corporal conveniences. Here is his vision
of the origin of printing:
"Turning the earth into a sponge with his tears,
man presented himself all dreeping at the throne of Jupiter.
"And cried, 'Good evening, O powerful god,
maker of stars, of worlds, and of domestic fowl!
"Thou createdst us one day from nothing
mixed with a little mud; thou hast bestowed
on us genius enveloped in a soft covering of flesh.
"'The world is a cage, and each of us a
parrot climbing and balancing himself over
his neighbor's head.
. . . . .
"'Thou hast bestowed us ears which to
the deaf are a mere ornament, and a tongue,
best gift of all.
"'Placed between the teeth she gives
them to understand that unless she lies, they
can have nothing to chew.
"'But alas! in our time she is incapable to
express all that the fruitful brain conceives
and brings forth.
"'Lengthen it then the third of a perch, or
give it for aid an additional organ.
"'Juppy made a grimace, and the affrighted
hills sunk, and the poles trembled.
"'Well,' said the deity, always prodigal of gifts,
'I shall convert into tongues sundry vile things of this lower world.
"'Of old shirts, of disgusting rags, I shall
make gay clothes for the press,
flesh and blood for the daily paper.
"'In the feathered garb of the goose are
cannons sufficient to win treasures.
"'Let your arms cease to brandish the war-like steel,
and turn inert and fat bodies of men into sieves.
"'Iron fashioned into slender tongues
which sing along the paper, shall there engrave
the conceptions of genius.
"'And in order that you may attain the steepest summits,
I shall furnish your heads with pride and envy in abundance.
"'Advance, throw shame behind, flatter the proud,
copy, deride, calumniate, and be
sure to burn incense in your own honor.
"'I have spoken.' And he added, rubbing his chin,
'Henceforth you are a man; hitherto you were but an ape.'"
History: Don Antonio Cavanilles.
Don Antonio Cavanilles, an advocate and member or the Academy, has
distinguished himself by his yet unfinished history of Spain, an
interesting narrative, evincing the most patient research, and attractive
from the adjuncts of customs and phases of the different eras, and personal
traits of the historical personages. Don Modesto Lafuente is engaged on
another history of the same country. Don Antonio belongs to the school of
Livy and Herodotus, Don Modesto writes in the spirit and with the pen of a
Manchester radical.
{34}
The Drama: Don Adelardo Lopez De Ayala.
Zealous as the first historian for the preservation of the heroic and
unselfish character of the genuine Hidalgo, Don Adelardo Lopez de Ayala
writes his drama of "So Much per Cent," in which he excites unmeasured
contempt for the greed of gold, and the rage of speculation, whose visit to
the old soil of chivalry the author deprecates with all his might.
Don Gaspar Bono Serrano, a brave and devout military chaplain, once
attending the wounded in Don Carlos's camp, and an Arragonese by birth, has
given the lie to the public impression that no poet is born outside of
Castile and Andalulçia.
While it must be owned with regret that pestilent French novels have found
their way in abundance across the Pyrenees, the native literature of Spain,
with scarce an exception, maintains its ancient _prestige_ for
Christian morality. Long may the word continue to be said!
Want of space prevents any notice of the _feuilleton_ and the drama of
Spain at the present day, and other literary topics interesting the Spanish
capital. An instance of the interest taken in sound fictional literature in
high quarters is furnished by the publication of the complete collected
novels of Fernan Caballero, and of Antonio Trueba at the expense of the
Queen. Meanwhile Fernan, or rather Doña Caecilia, (_née_) de Faber,
dwells in the Royal Alcazar of Seville in apartments granted by her queen,
employs herself writing an educational work for the junior portion of the
royal family, and enjoys an extensive view from her windows over the old
Moorish buildings, the Guadalquiver, and the charming Andaluçian landscape
through which it winds.
------
Original.
The Godfrey Family; or, Questions Of The Day
Chapter XXVIII.
With a woman's tact, Adelaide set to work to provide some powerful
attraction for her father; and luckily the proposed formation of a
scientific society brought many men of his own way of thinking to town just
then: and among them Mr. Spence, and a lord or two of "promotion of
knowledge" celebrity. Having managed thoroughly to interest her father in
this society, Adelaide told him that sea-air would benefit Hester's health,
that she intended to go with her for a few weeks to try it, that meantime
Mr. Spence would keep him company in the house, which Lucy Fairfield would
take charge of. To this Mr. Godfrey, though somewhat taken by surprise,
assented: he had already, at Adelaide's request, invited Mr. Spence to
spend a few weeks with him; but that gentleman was not exactly well pleased
to find on his arrival that the ladies were already preparing for
departure. He had intended to win a bride during his visit, thinking that
even if Hester proved obdurate, he might have a chance with the fair young
widow. But the carriage was already at the door. "I shall send the carriage
back, father, in a day or two;" said Adelaide. "I do not care to have my
horses at a livery stable; Hester and I are going to rusticate, ride
donkeys, climb hills, and throw pebbles into the sea: we take only Norah
with us, and you will have to see that the carriage horses are duly
exercised every day." She waved her hand in adieu, giving no time for
reply. The gentlemen could only bow their assent. Mr. Godfrey was too well
acquainted with Adelaide's imperious temperament to think of disputing her
commands; he had long learned to respect even her eccentricities. Was she
not a duchess?
{35}
The journey went on well enough the first day, but on the second, Adelaide
surprised her retinue by sending them back with the carriage, telling them
she would proceed onward with a hired vehicle. The coachman and footman
looked as if they would like to remonstrate, but it had been proved to be
somewhat dangerous to argue with this very positive lady, accustomed to
obey no will except her own. They submitted in silence, therefore, though
much against their inclination. "Now," said Adelaide, when they had
departed, "we can enjoy the luxury of being ourselves, unencumbered by
state and trappings. Hester, do you think you can teach Norah to call me
plain 'ma'am,' for a little while, till we return home? I am again Adelaide
Godfrey, that name will tell nothing and will enable us to act as we like,
observed by any."
It was not found difficult to initiate Norah into the idea that the great
duchess wanted to lay aside her dignity for a while, for the truth was
Norah's difficulty had ever been to get herself to say "your grace," on
requisite occasions. These preliminaries settled, the ladies proceeded on
their journey, took ready furnished lodgings in H----, and prepared to lead
the quiet life of the middle classes of society when out on a "bathing for
health" excursion.
The location of the Catholic chapel was soon examined, the priest's house
communicating with it. In neat straw bonnets trimmed with white, and plain
muslin dresses, Adelaide and Hester assisted at the daily mass. In the
priest they recognized at once the Abbé Martigni, and in the noble-featured
youth who knelt by his side Adelaide traced the likeness, now first
becoming dear to her, of her late husband. A day or two elapsed ere she
could summon courage to call at the house. At length the moment arrived for
the looked-for visit; the sisters had, however, scarcely gained entrance to
the outer court, when their attention was attracted by loud sobs from a
little boy and girl, who stood weeping as if their hearts would break. The
abbé was speaking to the woman with whom they came; he then turned to the
children, and patting them on the heads, said tenderly: "I will come
directly, my poor children." He turned hastily away without receiving his
visitors. Adelaide took the boy's hand kindly. "What is the matter?" she
asked. The boy could not speak for weeping, but the woman answered: "His
mother, my lady, poor Biddy, shure, she has fallen from her seat, on to the
stone pavement, while she was cleaning the windows of a large house in
Queen street, and they say she must die."
Adelaide whispered, "take me to your mother;" the boy looked at the woman;
"aye," said she, "do you and Sissy go home with the ladies, I will wait to
show his reverence the way." Led by Adelaide and Hester, the girl and boy
threaded back the way to their wretched home, and entered it some time
before the priest arrived. In one of those dreary places of large cities
called a "blind alley"--where the houses nearly meet in the upper stories,
and where the sunshine of heaven is excluded; surrounded by bad smells, and
the very atmosphere of which makes us shrink and shudder as we enter the
damp and dirty houses, the inhabitants of which are for the most part very
dirty also--here in a cellar, darker even than its neighbors, lay a poor
widow with four children weeping around her. The woman was barely sensible;
her brain and spine were injured; the doctor had said she could not live
till night; two women, neighbors, were with her trying "to get sense out of
her," as they said. It was the first time the sisters had ever witnessed
such a scene. The very walls were covered with dirt; the floor was partly
brick, and where these were broken away, the foot slipped into holes of the
bare earth; the windows were so covered with dust and cobwebs it was
difficult to find out what they were made of.
{36}
On a low pallet, on a dirty straw-bed, with no blankets, no sheets, naught
save one dirty coverlet, lay a figure with long, dark, lank hair, almost
covering her face and person. Adelaide approached, but the woman heeded her
not; her large dark eyes were set: she moaned from time to time, but spoke
not. "Where do you feel pain?" kindly inquired the lady. "Oh I bless you,
my lady, she cannot spake," said one of the women. "The Lord be praised,
here comes his reverence," said the other. "May the sweet Jesus lend her
her senses a few minutes, to let her spake to the priest!" The abbé
entered; he looked very grave; he sat down on the bed (there was no other
seat in the room) to examine the pulse and breathing of the patient. He
spoke to her. She answered not. "Try to rouse her," he said to the women.
They called to her: "Biddy, dear, shure here's his reverence. Biddy, won't
you spake to the priest?" She continued unconscious. "Have you a
smelling-bottle?" he said to Adelaide. "We must bring her to consciousness,
I wish I had some _eau-de Cologne_." "I will fetch you some," laid
Adelaide.
The sisters went out and purchased the _eau-de-Cologne_, also bread
and refreshments for the children; and then in that damp, unwholesome den,
the duchess watched long hours by the side of the unfortunate woman. She
was unattended too, for Hester had grown faint, and Adelaide had insisted
on her going home, and the abbé had left for a while. At length
consciousness returned, and the poor mother opened her eyes again. The
priest was immediately sent for, as he had desired to be, and the first
words she whispered betrayed a consciousness of his presence, for they
were: "Bring me my God! O my sweet Jesus, come!" The room was cleared for a
few moments. Biddy had been a faithful member of the church--she was a
monthly communicant, and the last sacraments brought unspeakable
consolation to her. She had remained silent and in prayer for some time. A
change came over her, and she motioned the father to come near to her. "I
am dying, father, and but for one thought it were sweet to die. My
children--oh! my children! I have struggled--father, you know I have
struggled to keep them in the true faith, to make them love Jesus and Mary;
and _now_, must they go to the scoffers? must they hear their faith
laughed at? O my God! O my Jesus! have pity on my children! Mary, my
mother, send a mother to my children. Let me come to thee in love and not
in fear. O mother of God, pity my children!" Agony caused the drops to
stand on the poor woman's brow; tears streamed down her cheeks; her hands
were clasped convulsively together; it was as though the soul were anxious
to depart, but delayed in order to plead with heaven in favor of the dear
little ones it left behind. There was a solemn pause within that dreary
chamber. The dim candle seemed to take a bright unearthly light. The
spirits of all were hushed in awe. Surely angels were hovering near,
whispering to the mother that her prayer was heard, for a smile broke over
the features, the hands unclenched themselves, peace overshadowed the room;
and then, as if moved by a power she could not withstand, Adelaide came
forward and knelt down in solemnity by the dying woman's side. Taking
within her own that now almost lifeless hand, she said: "I promise you, my
sister, before God and this holy priest, that I will take care of your
children while I live, and that they shall be carefully brought up in the
holy Catholic Faith." The woman's eyes were no longer sensible to sight,
but her spirit beard the promise. "I thank thee, O my God!" she uttered.
Shortly after a ray of indescribable rapture lighted up her features,
"Jesus, Mary, I come!" she said; and the soul had flown to its home in the
bright, bright realms of everlasting bliss.
· · · · ·
{37}
"This must be a pauper's funeral," said Adelaide, as she rose from her
knees. "Father, I am a stranger here; will you appoint some one to see to
it?" She placed her purse in his hand as she spoke. The father looked at
her. "Surely I have seen you before," he said; "your face is familiar to
me, but I cannot remember where we met." Adelaide blushed. "I will see you
after the funeral," she said; "meanwhile, may I ask you to point out some
woman to go home with me, and take charge of these children? I will pay her
well for her trouble." The abbé sent for a woman; a coach was called, and
Adelaide took the poor children to her lodgings. Here they were fed,
washed, clothed in neat mourning, and made ready to do the last sad honors
to their mother's remains.
A large concourse of Irish neighbors attended the funeral, though of course
all eyes were attracted to the stranger ladies, who walked up the aisle
with a child at each side of them. The priest was evidently moved as he
turned to address the assembly; and ever and anon his eye would glance to
Adelaide, as if trying in vain to make out who she was. His discourse was
on the history of poor Bridget, who lay before them. It ran something after
this fashion: "My friends, as we pass through life, and the actions and
thoughts of _real_ human beings come under our notice, one reflection
seems to strike us more forcibly than all the rest; it is this: that the
_real_ heroism of the earth is often overlooked, not only by the world
at large, but also by the actors themselves. The greatest acts of virtue
are performed by those who are unconscious of their greatness--the
greatest works done in this miserable world are done by those who never
dream that they are heroines at all. A lady is thought wondrously
condescending if, from charity, she sit for a few hours in an atmosphere
which the poor one she is tending endures always. She is deemed charitable
if, from her abundance, she bestows alms on the naked and starting. Now,
all this is _well_, very well; I would encourage such efforts to the
utmost; they bring a blessing both to the giver and receiver: but for
heroism, it is oftenest with the sufferer. I will relate to you a history
with which I have only been made acquainted within these few hours. I had
it from the lips of a friend who arrived from Ireland two days ago, in
search of her who now lies before us. Bridget Norton was the daughter of an
Irish farmer, who was somewhat better off than the majority; the farm-house
was well kept; the dairy was a picture of neatness. Everything around the
place was so fixed that they added to the completeness of the landscape.
Bridget was a fine handsome girl, sought after by many, and unfortunately
among her suitors was one base enough to vow revenge for the preference she
gave to the man she married. Bad times came; the rejected suitor became
agent for the landlord, and he perpetually harassed Norton for cash on
every possible pretense; while he made base proposals to the wife, which
were rejected with the scorn they deserved, and the rage of the deceiver
increased. The landlord was unluckily a proselytizer. He conferred great
gifts to all who would go to the English church, but was relentless against
all who held out. Young Norton took sick; when he was at the worst, the
agent found a flaw in his lease, and served an ejectment on the family at
the very time that the husband was unable to leave his bed. Then his cattle
died, some said by poison, and his crops failed. The man sank under these
reverses, and died. The landlord made many offers to Bridget of assistance
if she would send her children to his school and to church, and the agent
contrived many species of persecution to get her into his power. Bridget
fled to Liverpool, and by sheer hard work contrived to maintain her family
decently for some time; but her persecutor traced her, followed her,
blackened her character, so that she lost her employment.
{38}
Again she fled, but sickness overtook her ere she had made herself known;
she lost one of her children by sickness also, and, lastly, was compelled
to sell her little furniture to buy bread; last week she moved to the
cellar where she died. You know in what state she was found there. Yet
throughout these trials her confidence in God never has faltered; she has
for the last five years suffered hardship, penury, want, and persecution.
Amid all she has kept faithful to God, forgiven her enemy, and taught her
children the catechism. They have often wanted food, but never missed their
prayers; they have often been clothed in rags, but never neglected a mass
of obligation. This, for one brought up as Bridget had been to love
neatness and take pride in appearing respectable, argues no small victory
over human respect. But the love of God was deeply rooted in her heart; she
knew that exercise elicits virtue; she felt herself at school to an
all-wise Father, who appointed for her the lessons best suited to bring out
that unfailing trust which was conspicuous in her character, and which, in
spite of her many trials, bore her cheerily throughout them all. Yes,
cheerfulness was (as is attested by all who knew her) Bridget's most
amiable characteristic, and it proceeded from her implicit trust in God.
She had a martyr's courage and a martyr's love, and I think it would be
risking little to suppose that even now she may be wearing in heaven the
martyr's crown. Yet she passed through the world unnoticed, and certainly
was not counted among its heroines."
CHAPTER XXIX.
Immediately after the funeral Adelaide called on the abbé, according to her
promise. She was accompanied by Hester.
"Well," said the good father as soon as the preliminary compliments had
passed, "as you have taken possession of four of my spiritual children, to
whom I am in some sort a guardian, you must allow me to ask your name and
state. You are a stranger in this city, it appears.'
"I am. My name is Adelaide: I am a widow."
"And the name of your husband?"
"My husband was the late Duke of Durimond."
The father started: he looked again. "That accounts for my fancy," he said.
"I was sure I had seen you before. I recognize you perfectly now:' but what
can bring your grace hither, and in this guise?"
"Father," said Adelaide, "I came to apologize to you for my conduct on that
dreary occasion that you know of; to beg your pardon and your prayers."
The good priest raised the lady, for Adelaide had knelt to him as she
uttered the last words. "You have my prayers, my child," he said; "you have
long had them: it was his last request that I should daily pray for you.
And as for pardon, such an act of humility would redeem a worse offence. Be
at peace, I beg of you."
"And did the duke really interest himself on my account?"
"He did, and most sincerely; it was a constant topic with him. He ever
maintained that, with your nobility of character, you must eventually
follow in your brother's footsteps. I presume I may conclude you have now
done so."
"Not so, father. Hester (whom you probably also recognize) and myself are
but inquirers as yet, and the difficulty is that our inquiry must not be
suspected just now. We came to request assistance from your charity; but we
beg you not to name us otherwise than as ladies of your acquaintance. The
Misses Godfrey will pass unheeded by, but if you address me as your grace
again, you will bring upon us the attention we are trying to avoid."
"I will try to remember Miss Godfrey; it will be a little difficult, I
fear, but I need not tell you my services are at your disposal."
{39}
"This is indeed returning good for evil," said Adelaide.
"Do not speak of it; good has already come of that to which you allude, as
is usually the case if we wait long enough. Let the past be past. But
surely I have seen you both at mass; you have, then, lost your prejudice
against the church."
"Indeed, yes," said Adelaide. "Our great regret is that we have not faith.
The system which you propose is beautiful in all its bearings. It is our
torment to feel that all that is beautiful in poetry or in art, nay, even
in ethics, belongs to Catholicity, yet we do not belong to it. A hall of
sculpture representing the Catholic ideal, as the figures of the duke's
pantheon represent the pagan myth, would form the most sublime elucidation
of the high triumphs of soul over self that could be imagined. There is no
act of heroism, mental, moral, or physical, that would not find a
representative in some authenticated historic personage. From martyrdom
endured to maintain the truth of alleged facts, to voluntary poverty chosen
as the best preservative of the disposition to receive and maintain truth,
there is a regular chain of virtue personified. There is a reality about
Catholicity (in books at least) which we find nowhere else."
"Where is your difficulty, seeing that you admit all this?"
"I can hardly explain it, yet it seems to shape itself thus: Why, if men
are so blessed with a divine religion, is the world so bad? History gives
us saints, sublime ones, who make our very souls thrill with the recital of
their unselfish spirt, exemplified in act; but, on the other hand, the same
history tells us of multitudes of bad men for one good one. The men who
attempted to poison St. Benedict, were monks, men who had renounced all for
Christ; and the multitudes were Catholic up to the fifteenth century, yet
what fearful struggles for power, and indulgence of luxury in high places,
and of crime among all, high and low! Most of the saints were reformers,
combating with their fellow-Catholics for virtue; and now, are all
Catholics unselfish, unworldly?"
"It seems," said Hester, "that a very definite amount of good has been
achieved by Christianity, in giving an impetus to the spirit of the masses
to claim intellectual rights by the recognition of man's spiritual equality
before God; and to strip off illegitimate uses of power from the sense of
justice thus evolved. It has also placed our sex on a footing permitted by
no other religion--this is much, very much; but here it seems to stop, and
these are but indirect results. Religion professes to inculcate higher
motives than the improvement of earthly position, desirable as this may be.
Men are now selfish in their avowed principle, and this, I think, must
ultimately destroy all that has been achieved. Self-gratification as a
motive, and the only motive recognized, must lead back to want of
discipline, and from that the step to barbarism is easy. Only under the
Christian dispensation has labor been honored; in all other civilizations,
slaves, captives of the sword and spear, have performed by compulsion the
work of tilling the soil and so forth; and yet men now seek to avoid labor,
the real labor of producing, as if they still thought it fit for slaves
only; any other kind of occupation is preferred, as more noble. If this is
the result of eighteen hundred years of Christian teaching, I own it
puzzles me. Where are the direct results of unselfishness and of corporal
sacrifice for the attainment of spiritual good, that books teach us to
expect?"
"These are very painful facts," said the abbé, "which distress the heart of
many a Catholic priest; but with reference to their influence on faith, I
think a little reflection will explain most of the phenomena without
prejudice to such souls as are earnestly seeking truth. We must remember
that there was a time when whole nations suddenly assumed the name of
Christians under the influence of the ruling powers.
{40}
The majority of these people were not only ignorant, but many did not care
to learn high spiritual truths; the conversion was necessarily partial,
even that which was genuine. But because all divine truth is positive and
co-relative to natural truth, some degree of enlightenment followed even in
the natural order; and worldly minds, who had no affinity for spiritual
revelations laid hold, notwithstanding this, of the types that presented
spiritual truths, and, finding they bore an earthly signification also (as
all real enlightenment does, the body being the mate for the soul), they
seized on the lower meaning, and hence the civilization of that ilk. This
is not wrong, but it is defective; as far as it is moral, it is the
material expression of a spiritual idea; but it does not touch the first
step of the ladder by which we rise to God--it is the lesser influence of a
principle comprehending affinities of an infinitely higher character."
"But this does not explain the corruption in high places."
"Power and greatness and wealth do not confer spirituality; no, nor does
intellect. When the church grew wealthy and powerful, many a wolf entered
in sheep's clothing for the sake of the perquisites. The miracle is that
the church survived such destructive influences, not that she suffered by
them."
"And the more immediate trouble with the present conduct of Catholics?"
"May be referred to similar causes. They inherit their religion without
giving its real conditions a thought; to this may be added the fact that,
for the last three hundred years, the attention of immense numbers has been
directed to polemics instead of to the requirements of religion. There have
been so many disputes about which is the true faith, that practically faith
has been assumed to mean 'holding a correct intellectual creed.' Now,
without derogating, in the least degree, from the importance of holding the
right faith, even in this light, it is certain that these controversies
have drawn the soul from that more serious business to which a right
intellectual creed is but the first step, though an important, a very
important one. The object of religion is, the union of the soul to the will
of God. This is an individual matter, one which cannot be laid hold of
_en masse_, but must be personally brought home to every individual.
To effect this, there must be;
1. Desire of good--real, earnest, sincere.
2. Prayer for good, arising from the firm conviction that in God
only resides all good--from him only all good can come.
3. Co-operation in act, including not only correct moral action,
but a constant endeavor to instruct ourselves, more and more, in
divine lore, with an earnest zeal of rising continually in spiritual
life.
Now, if you examine these conditions, you will find that few observe them,
compared with the numbers who bear the name of Catholics--and the power of
Catholicity must he judged of by its effect on those who observe its
precepts, not by the multitudes who conform by halves, or by less than that
proportion, to its teachings. You would not judge of the effect of a
medicine by those who keep it in their houses, but by those who take it."
"Are not those Catholics, then, who do not act up to their religion?"
"In as far as they neglect their religion they are imperfect Catholics. It
would, however, be very dangerous for us to judge how far their
imperfections arise from culpability on their part. All men are wounded by
the fall in some shape or other; some have this faculty impaired, some
that; consequently there will be gradations of virtue apparent everywhere,
the cause of which we cannot fathom, and the delinquencies of which we
cannot judge. As regards judgment, all we have to do with is with
ourselves; our faculties, great or little, with imperfections greater or
less, must, as far as in us lies be devoted to God--be improved for him--be
exercised in accordance with his will as manifested to us. 'This do and ye
shall live.'"
{41}
Chapter XXX.
An Interview And A Letter.
It were superfluous to reiterate the instructions given by the good abbé to
the neophytes under his guidance; where the instructor is learned, patient,
and gentle, and the learner docile and humble, the result may be easily
predicted. One day, in the course of conversation, the abbé said to
Adelaide: "If you are looking for examples in Christian life, I could name
one living in this neighborhood, living so simple and beautiful a life,
that those who have the happiness of knowing her, half believe her to be an
angel in disguise."
"I think I know whom you mean," said Adelaide; "already have I paused at
the threshold of her dwelling, wishing to enter, but hardly knowing whether
I dared."
"She will be glad to see you. She has a better memory than I; she
recognized you at church, and has interested herself warmly in your
conversion."
Thus encouraged Adelaide ventured on the visit. The greeting between the
two ladies was that of _sisters_; they wept together, clasping each
other's hand in silence. We pass over the exciting scene. Adelaide was
completely fascinated by all she saw. For the first time in her life she
felt that glow of thrilling interest that binds heart to heart, and makes
us know what real love is, when that love is founded in God. Ellen was one
of those happy temperaments, so rare on earth, that seem formed to dispense
the sunshine of happiness on all who came under their influence. Heaven
seemed to have descended to earth to dwell with her, and in that heaven she
had learned to live--out of herself altogether. Her life was passed in
doing good, but, so unconsciously to herself was that good done, that she
seemed but to be following her own pleasure all the time. The one great
sorrow of her life surmounted, she had resigned herself (no! resignation
would not express the depth of her devotedness); rather had she thrown her
whole being into the profound abyss of the mystery of God, seeking only his
will, mysterious as it was to her. She came at last to live as a child on
the daily promise, forming no plans, asking nothing of the morrow, but ever
seeking to pour out her great love in making others happy. The poor, the
sick, the wretched, were her friends, her children, the objects of her
tenderness, and her presence was to them as a ray of sunshine to lighten
every woe. There are few Ellens on this weary earth, for nature and grace
seemed to combine in her to diffuse their charms. Those who knew her asked
themselves, where was her share of the original taint, "of that trail of
the serpent which is over us all"? Though Adelaide's senior by many years,
she had so youthful, so buoyant an expression, albeit chastened by the
atmosphere of purity and sanctity in which she moved, that you could not
connect the idea of _age_ with her frame at all. Adelaide felt that
she had obtained a friend, a sister, a guide for the future, and a
friendship was quickly cemented between the two that ended but with life.
Meantime the hour approached when the sisters were to be received into the
church. Hester was not a little agitated as she thought of the effect that
would be produced upon her father: it was as much as Adelaide and Ellen
could do with their united efforts to calm her fears. Adelaide's firm mind
bade her take her resolution according to her conviction, and face the
consequences like a soldier.
"Yes, if they were consequences to myself," sighed Hester; "but my future,
will it not suffer from it? Suppose he should sicken as my mother did!"
"Dear Hester," said Ellen, "you must leave off trusting yourself, in this
manner, and apprehending consequences, as if you had the control of events.
Do you not believe God reigns omnipotent?"
"Why, yes, certainly I do."
"Then let your first offering to him be a practical recognition of that
belief; trust him for your father as well as for yourself."
{42}
Hester had had deeds prepared, restoring, as best she might, the property
which had been appropriated to her experiments, to its former destination.
To her father during life was the income of the estate assigned; to her
brother the reversion. For herself she reserved only that portion which she
had a right to consider as her share.
The deeds were handed to Eugene for his inspection the night on which he
arrived at the abbé's abode, on the day previous to that on which the
ceremony was to take place.
"This was not necessary," he said to the abbé, "I had already given up my
right, and was reconciled to the result."
"That is a question for you to settle with your sister, my young friend,"
said the abbé. "The young lady has acted on her own sense of what was
fitting in the matter. She did not consult me, and if she had I should have
declined interference in family matters; but I think you will hurt her
feelings if you make objections. Wait at least till her mind is more
composed; she is just now agitated on her father's account: best let the
first excitement pass away, ere you disturb her mind again."
The ceremony was a private one, for it was a matter yet to be considered
how to break the matter to Mr. Godfrey. After its performance, the brother
and sisters were yet in consultation about the advisability of setting out
at once for London, when a courier was announced from the Marquis de
Villeneuve, with a letter to Hester. The young lady glanced over the
contents, then suddenly rose, and locked herself in her own room. Eugene
invited the man to wait. But it was some hours ere Hester admitted even her
sister to her apartment. Thus ran the letter:
To Miss Hester Godfrey.
"Most Honored Lady:
I have been many times at H*** lately, but dared not ventured to see you,
although from some words which my friend the abbé let fall, I rejoiced to
learn that the object of your visit was the realization of anticipations
I had long indulged in. I have long felt convinced that a mind so earnest
as yours must finally seek refuge in the ark of the true church. I dared
not disturb your retreat; I dared not intrude on the visible work of God.
But let me be the first to offer my congratulations; let me now express
the high regard, esteem, nay, may I use a softer word, and say love, with
which I have long regarded you.
"Lady, I will not speak to you in the language of passion; for a long
time past I have had to keep my feelings under control, for deep as has
been my admiration of yourself I dared not make you aware of it while the
obstacle of faith stood between us. A Catholic man seeks in marriage a
HELP-MEET for him, a partner in joy, a soother in sorrow, a confidant and
co-operator in his views, a companion and a friend under every reverse.
To set out with diverse sustaining powers would mar this idea in the
outset, to say nothing of the want of that special blessing which God
confers on those he himself joins together.
"Dear lady, when I came to Europe some few years ago, it was with the
special intention of taking back a wife. When my friend De Meglior in
that most solemn hour before his death confided to me the care of his
daughter, I thought the companion I sought for was found; but Euphrasie
soon showed herself so visibly the elected bride of heaven that all my
anxiety was quickly directed to preserving her from sacrilege. You then
came before me, with your earnest mind, your indomitable courage, your
high intellect and intensity of zeal. From that time my heart was no
longer my own, though I dared not give utterance to its desires. The
obstacle which stood between us is removed, yet I dare not venture into
your presence without your sanction; I should feel a repulse too keenly.
"Lady, my father was an enthusiast like yourself. He went to America in
the hope of doing his part to sanctify the career of intelligence and of
liberty opened for the first time in the world's history for the laboring
classes as a body. He helped to build churches, to found schools in
conjunction with ecclesiastical authority, and did whatever a secular
could do to guide a movement which he respected and sympathized with, but
one which he felt would be exposed to great peril, unless that divine
principle which is the true source of government both in the family and
in the state, could be brought to bear upon it.
{43}
He feared that 'liberty' on a mere rationalistic principle, that is,
standing on purely human strength, severed from the divine idea which
gave it being, would, however beautiful in its poetry, soon degenerate
into license; soon succumb beneath the empire of passion, and be led to
tolerate laws subversive of true progress. It was the aim of his life to
inculcate that 'Truth is one;' that the human idea cannot be disjoined
from the divine idea without fatal results; that real earthly happiness,
through differing in intensity, is the same in essence as that we look to
enjoy hereafter in heaven. That all earthly intelligence, an earthly
beneficence which seeks permanence, must be founded on the repression of
such inordinate desire as impede and frustrate the development and
employment of our higher faculties. For all beauty, harmony, and love
must be brought out in accordance with that law of the spirit, which he
has given us, as our rule of action, we being children of the spirit.
"The working out of this purpose is the legacy which my dear father,
lately deceased, has bequeathed unto his children. To this purpose I have
consecrated myself; and because I know your high power of intellect,
because I have witnessed your zeal, your energy, your devotedness to
good, I ask you to become the help-meet to carry out this purpose.
"In all ages of the church, since the first miracle was performed at the
request of Mary, woman's aid has been in requisition for high purposes.
The conversion of every nation of Europe is associated with the name of a
woman, and woman gives the tone to society in every Christian land. I
feel then that without the aid thus specially appointed for man, my
father's purposes would lose more than half the influence necessary to
carry them out. But working together, under the sanction of the church,
surely two earnest minds might hope to effect something. If we cannot
make an impression on a world of infidelity, it will yet be something if
we are allowed to instill into the minds of Catholic children, that
'Credo' means something more than an intellectual assent to a series of
metaphysical dogmas. If we can assist the self-sacrificing pastors of the
church in rehabilitating the idea of the divine institution of the family
and of the state which is fast vanishing beneath the crude notions of
human progress which sanction so easily the dissolution of sacred
ties--if we can throw whatever influence we do possess into the right
scale, we shall then have ample reason to begin a rejoicing which shall
last for ever. For there is the promise that however gloomy the
appearance, error shall not ultimately prevail, and happy are they who
here on earth shall have formed the royal guard of honor around the
citadel of Truth, who shall have stood as sentinels appointed to watch
beneath its glorious standard, when the combat is at highest.
"Dear lady, may I hope you will think this an object worthy of your
ambition? may I hope you will regard with favor one who has loved you so
long, though he dared not confess it until to-day?
"One word from you will bring me to your feet. May I hope that word will
be spoken?
Edward De Villeneuve."
"Well," said Adelaide, when at length she gained admission, and had taken
the letter from her sister's unresisting hand, "I think you have kept the
courier waiting long enough, and 'tis not a long answer the poor man wants,
since one word is all he asks."
"What will my father say, Adelaide?"
"The old marquis was my father's most dearly loved friend. He will accept
the son for the father's sake; the question is, will you accept him?"
"I have never thought of marrying at all."
"No, but you admire this gentleman. Your eyes, your voice betray you. I
shall send him the one word he asks for so prettily."
"You will do no such thing;" but Adelaide had glided from the room, and
shortly after Eugene set forth with the courier in quest of his friend,
whom he finally succeeded in persuading to return with him, without
awaiting a response to his missive.
It is not our intention to present to our readers the details of the scenes
that followed within the next few weeks; we leave to their more vivid
imaginations to fancy the arguments by which M. de Villeneuve won the
consent of his ideal lady. A few days more, and he was travelling to London
with Eugene to obtain the formal consent of Mr. Godfrey.
"Is that the secret of Hester's dejection?" thought the father, and that
thought made his consent the readier.
"But how can you, so staunch a member of the church, resolve to marry a
heretic?"
"Hester it no heretic," replied the marquis.
"Love covers all faults, I see," said Mr. Godfrey, smiling. "Well, settle
that matter between yourselves, only you must put no constraint on Hester
on the score of religion. She is a spoiled child, and would ill brook
opposition; it would break her heart if it came from one she loved."
{44}
The arrival of the carriage which brought Hester and the duchess back to
the mansion, put an end to the colloquy, and at the next consultation with
the ladies the marquis suggested that, seeing Mr. Godfrey had already laid
hold of the wrong idea, it was as well to let time undeceive him in a
natural way. "Your English law," said he, "compels marriage to be legalized
by the English establishment. We will receive the sacrament of marriage
privately in the morning and legalize it in your drawing-room afterward,
before an English minister.[Footnote 7] After Hester is once my wife, Mr.
Godfrey will not take it to heart that she should follow her husband's
religion, even if he inquire about the matter." And thus the matter was
managed, and the marquis and his lovely bride were already on the point of
starting on their wedding tour, when a startling missive from Annie threw
all the circle in commotion. Sir Philip Conway had been thrown from his
horse while hunting, and had broken his neck. But his wickedness had
outlived him; he had left orders in his will that his wife should be
debarred access to his house, or to his children, further providing that
neither of those children should inherit one acre of land or one shilling
of his property unless they were brought up apart from their mother.
Annie's letter was dated from a hotel near to her late husband's
dwelling-house.
[Footnote 7: This was the case before the passing of the Catholic
Emancipation Bill.]
"I doubt their power to enforce that will," said Eugene, as be handed the
letter to his father, after reading it aloud.
"And so do I," said Adelaide; "at all events, Annie shall have her
children, property or no property."
The marquis, Hester, all the party present expressed in varied tones their
indignation, and Mr. Godfrey, borne along by the current of family opinion,
at length joined in the resolve to see Annie replaced in possession of the
children _coute qui coute_. The wedding trip took the direction of Sir
Philip's dwelling, and as soon as it was ascertained that the funeral was
over, Adelaide, with that determination that marked her character, drove up
to the house, accompanied by the party comprising her father, brother, the
marquis, and Hester. She demanded to see the children. The dowager Lady
Conway appeared with her daughter. The duchess bowed, and requested to see
the children.
The lady hemmed--hesitated--did not know. "The children were under the
guardianship of Mr. Brookbank," she said; she supposed he must be
consulted.
The name seemed to strike the marquis. "What Brookbank?" he asked.
"He was Sir Philip's agent and man of business, and is left his executor."
"Is he any relative to the family at Estcourt?"
"Why, yes, it is the same family; they have moved here."
The entrance of the gentleman in question put an end to the questioning,
but the marquis kept a sharp eye upon him.
With smooth, bland words and deprecating gestures, Alfred Brookbank
proceeded to explain to the duchess that it was his duty, his very painful
duty, to deny her grace's request at the present moment, until measures had
been taken to secure the due and legal administration of Sir Philip's will.
Adelaide's indignant remonstrances were unheeded, and a very painful
feeling was pervading the party, when suddenly M. de Villeneuve rose and
said: "Mr. Brookbank, may I beg the favor of a few words in private?"
Alfred rose, and led the way to another apartment. Half an-hour elapsed;
the party awaited the event in silence. Alfred did not return, but the
marquis did, and with him entered the two children and their nurse,
equipped for a drive.
{45}
With a bow, the marquis addressed the ladies of the house: "Mr. Brookbank
has consented to entrust the guardianship of these two children to me for
the present. I have the honor to wish you good morning." His wife and the
rest of the party rose at his signal, and departed, carrying off the
children with them.
"Now," said he, when they were once more together, "let no one ask me how
this was managed, because I have passed my word that so long as Lady Conway
is not molested in her custody of these children, I will explain nothing. I
do not know how the law will decide respecting the property; Mr. Godfrey
will, perhaps, see to that. But I wish Lady Conway and her children could
be prevailed upon to cross the Atlantic with us; I fear leaving that fellow
any legal power, when I am out of the way to hold him to the bargain he
made with me to-day."
"I will go with you, Annie, if you like to take the trip," said Eugene.
"And Euphrasie and the dear nuns are going," said Annie; "I am willing to
travel in such good company."
. . . . . .
Chapter XXXI.
America.
Two years have passed since the events happened which we last presented to
our readers: it is on the other side of the Atlantic that our view now
opens, but the friends we greet are of those we left behind.
The scene is in a beautiful extensive garden, well planted with trees;
behind, on an eminence, rises a large white house with numerous piazzas
which contrast pleasingly with the green sward and shrubs before it. The
slope before the house is covered with groups of children weaving garlands,
for it is a holiday, the feast of St. Aloysius; and all the schools have
freed their pupils great and small. Feeling the privilege of the day, the
children have bounded into the grounds of their patrons, M. and Madame de
Villeneuve. They knew that a strawberry festival was preparing for them,
and on their parts were anxious to be busy. Festoons were hung from pillar
to pillar. The large refectory was opened, and the walls garlanded; merry
voices were singing childish hymns and songs, and good humor was visible
everywhere.
The grounds were very spacious; far away might be seen grown persons in
holiday-trim; lads and lasses preparing the tables, and a band of music
sending up, every now and then, cheery notes to gladden all around.
In yonder silent glade too, half hid by the thickness of the foliage,
Eugene Godfrey is walking with his young bride; they are not yet past the
honeymoon, and are bound for England. To-morrow is the day fixed for their
departure, and the lady-bride; formerly Elise de Villeneuve, the youngest
and fairest daughter of the house of De Villeneuve, is sentimentalizing
very prettily her regrets at leaving, perhaps for ever, the paternal
mansion.
Clotilde de Villeneuve, who has already entered as a postulant at the
convent which is visible on that eminence to the right--rising majestically
above the world and backed in the distance by the interminable forest; from
which it is separated by that lovely series of lakes which lie at the foot
of the hill on which the building stands--Clotilde de Villeneuve has for
this one day consented to break inclosure that she may bid good-by to the
young sister she brought up so carefully since her mother died.
There is another lady there, looking fairer and younger than when we saw
her last, giving directions in a very pleasing tone; and ever and anon
looking back, a little anxiously perhaps, to see what two young girls were
doing with a something in a bundle of white muslin, which seemed very
animated, and which the nurses are trying to kill with kindness.
{46}
The pastor approaches, a fine old man with mild eyes, white hair, and a
very benevolent aspect. All the little ones rise and courtesy, and Hester,
yes, our old friend Hester, comes forward to greet him affectionately.
"Where is your husband, my dear lady?" asked the good priest, after
returning the preliminary greeting.
"Well, I hardly know, he has been on the _qui vive_ all day, here and
there and everywhere. I hardly know where he is now. Do you want him
particularly, father? You seem uneasy."
"Let us go in out of this hot sun," said the pastor, wiping his forehead.
They adjourned to the parlor, which opened on both sides to a piazza shaded
by climbing plants, and thus promised a cool retreat. Hester handed the old
gentleman a refreshing drink, for he seemed weary and excited. On setting
down the glass, be whispered: "Are we alone here? Is anyone listening?"
"Not that I am aware of." said Hester, glancing in all directions. "I see
no one, father, what is the matter?"
"There is mischief brewing in the city yonder; I want to see your husband.
For the last six weeks there has been a strange man there, of singular
eloquence, fomenting discord about Catholics, getting up a no-popery cry,
uttering fearful scandals concerning the convent; to-night the people
threaten to burn it down."
"Can this be true? Who is your informant?"
"My man Walter. It seems he knew the stranger in England."
"I know Edward has been annoyed with reports of some plots, but he thought
as little about it as he could; he never harmed any body, and cannot
imagine any body would harm him."
"This is a religions or rather a fanatical plot. What the purpose is, it is
difficult to discover. The designer means something dark, you may be sure,
the multitude are but his tools. He has used all the plea he could find;
have not your committees refused many applications to receive pupils?"
"Yes, Edward acts on his father's plan, and he says the old marquis always
insisted that a child was more formed by his companions than by his
teachers; that one dissipated worldly companion would contaminate a school.
It seems he loved real children, and hated the little bits of affectation,
aping men and women, which we now so often see; so Edward will positively
not have a child in the schools unless he knows the home influence they are
under. In fact, our schools are not only exclusively Catholic, those we
call normal schools are open only to picked Catholics. Edward wants them to
turn out good and efficient teachers of practical Catholicity, and before
he receives a pupil he not only exacts certain promises from the children,
but from the parents also, as to the influence they will exercise from a
distance. As long as they attend his schools they are under certain
restrictions, at home as well as abroad."
"All this is good for the children, but it has made enemies. Those out of
the pale pretend something must be wrong in so exclusive a system; they are
jealous of advantages from which their children are excluded."
"But a great deal of the influence exerted is purely religious; how can we
bring that influence to bear on such as are not Catholics, or who are
worldly Catholics, who come merely for secular advantages?"
"I am not saying you are not right; I only say you have made enemies."
"I believe my husband would rather give up the schools than compromise his
principles. He has been intimately acquainted with the management of some
Catholic schools in which all parties were admitted: the rule was to all
alike, it was difficult to make a distinction. Children, non-Catholics,
were admitted to religious societies, services, and processions.
{47}
He has a very firm conviction that the result was that they were led to
believe that assisting with due outward decorum, without the internal
feeling of reverence, was all that Catholicity required; while the
Catholics themselves, seeing others without faith were thus admitted,
naturally ceased to regard faith as so essential a matter as the sermons
heard in church proclaim it to be, and became liberal Catholics when they
retained their faith at all. My husband knows he is called bigoted, but I
do not think it has changed his feeling. He thinks the Catholic school a
sacred place; and the soul of a little baptized child a thing to be guarded
with reverential awe."
"Yes, I know De Villeneuve's reverence: he should have lived in the times
when the catechumens were driven out of the church before the sacred
mysteries could be performed."
"Indeed, father, I have seen his whole frame quiver with terror when any
one, Catholic or non-Catholic, behaved irreverently in the presence of the
blessed sacrament. He maintains that the worldliness of the age springs
from the want of this reverence."
"He may be right, but meantime we must provide for the present safety. Your
brother is not gone?"
"No, he starts to-morrow. I will send for him to come and see you."
M. de Villeneuve was not to be found, for the very cause that brought the
priest to his dwelling. He was in earnest conference with the priest's man
Walter on the subject of the projected attack. "Are you sure it was your
brother that you saw?"
"Quite sure, sir."
"You did not let him see you?"
"I did not; I was very careful on that point."
"And you are sure they fixed tonight?"
"Quite sure, but if disappointed tonight they will try some other night."
"Did you hear of any one person marked out for any special object."
"There will be an attempt made to carry off Lady Conway and her children."
"I suspected as much. Well, we must be prepared; I will row Lady Conway
across the lake, and you can drive her up the country to neighbor
Friendly's house, without anyone suspecting the matter. Be silent and
cautious, I will prepare watches secretly. You get home as quickly as you
can from the drive."
"I will, sir."
The _fête_ passed off without any alarm: no one would have dreamed
that an attack was expected. The nuns one by one left the convent, which
was supposed to be the object aimed at by the attack, and let the watchers
guard the dwelling, while they took refuge at M. de Villeneuve's mansion.
They dared not alarm the inmates of the school-house, which they thought
was left out of the plot, lest their plan of safety should be frustrated.
But an armed band watched over its safety in the hovels, and wherever they
could be stationed unseen.
It was a dreary watch, though a lovely night; the round, full moon threw
its splendid light over hill and and valley, lake and forest glades. Not a
sound was heard. The watchers did not trust themselves to speak, lest they
should give the alarm outside. Eleven, twelve, one, two; shall we wait
longer? Yes, there is a sound outside; the out-houses are already on fire,
and the school-house and the convent--all at once. A whole multitude of
rioters are in the grounds; they force the convent doors, and, to their
surprise, are met by armed men.
"Save, save the children," is the cry; "let everything go, even the
prisoners, till they are saved." There is no engine, the city is so far
away, and rioters are all around; but ladders had been prepared during the
day, and everyone was soon in requisition. But the fire seemed then the
least evil, for as each young lady was borne from the flames a mob
surrounded her, and a fight ensued for possession. It was a terrible scene,
the more terrible as it was impossible to get the children and teachers
together to see if all were there.
{48}
There was no resource but to fire on the assailants, and accordingly a
volley was discharged. This sobered the people somewhat; they loosed their
hold and fled. One man, with a few followers, lingered awhile, apparently
very anxious still to examine the parties saved; he was observed and seized
by a strong hand and bound. Alfred Brookbank was the prisoner of his
brother Walter.
And now are the pupils all saved? for the house is burning fast. How
anxiously they were counted! What a relief to find them all there! There
were no lives lost, and but that the building had been fired in many places
at once, that could have been saved by the valiant arms who were there to
defend it. But the evil work had been done effectually, the convent and
school-house were level with the ground. Many of the valuables had been
removed the day before; but the furniture was destroyed. The newspapers
said it was the work of the mob; yes, but that mob was excited by one man's
revengeful soul, which had animated the spirit of that mob to frenzy.
Americans are too generous to make war upon defenceless women, unless
incited thereto by some false tale of wickedness.
To bring the poor frightened children into the house, and to send to the
city for police, occupied nearly all the night, and part of the next day;
and then they took time to examine the prisoner who had been cast bound
into the cellar. He was crest-fallen and terror-smitten at last! He knew
the tale of terror his brother would have to tell; the quarrel about the
estate; the offer to compromise; the attempt to drown him by throwing him
over-board near the falls; and, finally, the belief on Alfred's part that
the crime had been consummated when a body, disfigured and shapeless, had
been picked up below the falls. He did not wait long in jail to have this
and a long catalogue brought out against him--he died by his own hand.
Walter Brookbank wandering, restless, and dissipated, had been seized with
fever in a wretched hovel, where he was found by some poor Catholics, who
brought the priest (then on a mission in that district) to see him. The
priest had him tended and cared for till he was well, then invited him to
his house, and converted him to a Christian life; redeemed him doubly,
first from the death of this life, then from that of the next. Walter had
been grateful, and preferred to live henceforth as servant of the church,
than to re-encounter the perils of the world by claiming his inheritance;
it passed by default to his mother and sisters.
Our tale draws to its conclusion.
The multitude who, deceived by Alfred Brookbank's inflammatory tongue, had
fired the convent, slunk away to their homes, ashamed, at length, of having
expended all their energy in a cowardly attack on defenceless women and
children. Would I could say they repented and endeavored to repair the
mischief; but it was not so, the convent was rebuilt, but it was by
Catholic money, by Catholic hands, and by Catholic hearts; and save the
ring-leader, who, as we have seen, judged himself, the perpetrators of the
dastardly deed remained unsought for by the authorities, undiscovered and
unpunished.
This event checked for a while the work of the good society which M. de
Villeneuve had founded, and of which he was the president and the "animus."
This society was composed of enlightened Catholic fathers and mothers, who
were fervent in their desires of establishing high Catholic education on a
firm and practical basis. It was a committee formed to aid the practice of
those precepts delivered by the zealous pastors of the church; to examine
the books put into the hands of children, and to have them written, if none
suitable were found, on the subjects required; to discuss all points of
discipline recommended to them by the teachers, and provide that the
financial department should not harass those who had charge of the
intellectual department.
{49}
They were outside co-operators in the good work of education; valuable
coadjutors in a matter in which it concerns every good Catholic to interest
himself, for society is made up of individuals, and on the good training of
those individuals depends the public welfare.
Their schools comprised both sexes; I will now speak of the girls only, as
it was the matter in which our friend Hester most interested herself, for
the reason that she thought that the formation of good women, wives and
mothers, is lost sight of in the fashionable circles of our large cities.
She had discovered that the fathers and husbands (men of large wealth and
of thriving business) were, through the extravagance and non-domesticity of
their families (more particularly of their wives and daughters), leading a
life of torture under the appearance of prosperity; and that young men,
with incomes of from $1,500 to $2,000 a year, shrank from marrying, because
of the extravagance and selfishness they daily witnessed among the ladies.
"Now," said Hester, with something of her old positiveness, "if this is so,
the responsibility of the shame and degradation of so many unfortunate
women lies at the door of the rich and honored ladies who turn aside from
them in disgust, and the education of true women must be the basis of the
renovation of society: for to woman's influence is confided the happiness
of the family, as to family influence is committed the guardianship of the
state. Where the family is out of joint, the state will be out of joint
too. O my dear Edward! I now comprehend the prophecy you think so much of:
'That the worship of the blessed mother of God will be in after times one
such as is not dreamed of in the present age of disruption. The blessed
Virgin is the example of all womanhood; the family of Nazareth the true
type of the Christian family; labor, purity, intelligence, submission, such
must be the watchwords of all womanly training; such will form happy
households and forward true progress.'"
The objects of the educational institutions at Villeneuve were in strict
accordance with these views; they comprised several classes, and in each
class were several departments.
The highest was that of a boarding-school, regulated by the nuns
themselves; it was within the enclosure, though apart from the convent, and
having its own allotted grounds. It was a normal school, the object of
which was to prepare efficient school teachers for the parochial schools
throughout the country. No pupil could enter this establishment under
fifteen years of age, or for a shorter period than three years; and if at
the end of that time she had won her diploma, she was expected for the two
years following to place herself at the disposal of the church, to teach
any parochial school that might require such assistance. Besides the
thorough course of instruction given during these three years, to enable
the pupils to fulfil their duties efficiently as school-teachers, and to
keep pace with the secular knowledge required by the age, the pupils were
required to do all their own work: they took it by turns to provide for the
household; the cooking, washing, every part of the household work, and
making their own clothes, were all done by themselves; so that at the end
of the five years, when their term of teaching had expired, they were ready
to become either efficient members of society, fit to perform the duty of
wife, mother, or teacher, or to enter religion, should such prove to be
their vocation.
The second class of schools were named the probation schools; these, in
their various departments, received children of all ages under fifteen, but
Catholics only. The parents of the children attending these schools were
required to give a guarantee that, during the children's attendance at
these schools, they should not be allowed to read either novels or any
other books not approved by the committee, nor attend any place of
amusement disapproved by the church.
{50}
In fact, during their attendance at school, it was a part of the labor of
the directors to provide suitable relaxation within the school grounds,
that they might the more easily discourage all dissipation outside. There
were also regulations concerning deportment and dress, which formed very
efficient aids in inculcating Christian manners, but the details of which
it is not necessary to give here.
These schools are supposed to be the Christian schools _par
pre-eminence_. The young ladies of the first-named schools were much
sought as wives, when their excellence became known; most of them could
have married rich men, had they chosen to marry out of the church, but
this, I need hardly say, they refused to do. Many entered teaching
sisterhoods, and proved very efficient members of the society which they
joined.
The children of the second series were, on the other hand, simple, joyous,
affectionate, pious, and obedient. The age for childhood was renewed, and
the results were very pleasing.
Besides these, the committee prevailed on M. de Villeneuve to establish
(after the incendiary fire) general schools open to the community at large.
In these schools the routine was Catholic; none but Catholic books were
admitted, and as much Catholic training was introduced as the public mind
would bear. These institutions were thronged, for the teachers were
efficient, and the discipline much approved of. These were the best
remunerating schools of the series. But M. de Villeneuve could never be
brought to be satisfied with the results, and only in deference to the
wishes of his friends did he tolerate them at all. His chief care was to
prevent children from these schools being admitted to serve in the church
or to take part in religious processions, until they had been well proved,
and then he wished them removed to the Christian schools before he
presented them to the pastor. Many thought the man a monomaniac, he had so
great a horror of sacrilege, or indeed of witnessing any irreverence in the
church at all. Strangely enough, his wife Hester saw in this only an
additional virtue, which she endeavored to assist her husband in enforcing,
as indeed she did in all his regulations.
A week or two after the fire, when the excitement had somewhat subsided,
Eugene took his young wife to England. He found that Adelaide had been so
busy during the past two years in providing orphan asylums, refuges, and
hospitals, and so forth, that Mr. Godfrey had been very frequently alone,
and this rendered him very glad to welcome his pretty, gentle
daughter-in-law, and he persuaded Eugene to establish himself at Estcourt
Hall, that he himself might have a home for his old age. In due time he
learnt to amuse himself with his, little grand-children, utterly forgetful
that they were members of a hated church. I never heard that be became a
Catholic himself.
Eugene soon found interest and employment in aiding the Catholic movement
which first agitated for emancipation, and then employed earnest minds in
co-operating with the declared will of the church, to give efficiency to
the measures which soon after provided a Catholic hierarchy for England.
As soon as Mr. Godfrey's comfort was provided for in Eugene's household,
Adelaide united her efforts to those of Ellen, and together they
established a society, which in after years developed itself as one of the
many orders of Mercy which bless the great city of London. Without a
uniform, though living under a rule, these ladies and their associates
perform countless deeds of charity and kindness, the origin of which is
often unknown to the recipients. Few among that saintly community are more
anxious to obey, or to humble themselves, than the once proud duchess.
Generous to all, to herself alone she became sparing and non-indulgent, and
if the voice of praise, often publicly lauding her, met her ear in private,
she would say, with a sigh, "Ah! how easy is all this, to give when we have
more than we want, and to love those who spend their life in toil for the
comfort and luxury of the wealthy.
{51}
But to love God as Bridget Norton loved him; to trust him when nothing but
clouds and darkness were around; to face starvation, disgrace, and all, in
trust that God would bring up those dear little ones for himself--this is
heroism. Oh! talk not of the goodness of the rich; they are great people in
this world of false show, but Bridget Norton called down the angels to
witness her death and bear her noble martyr soul to heaven."
. . . .
Annie's children rewarded her care; the boy became a worthy priest, and the
girl, after witnessing the consecration of her brother, requested
permission to enter the convent in which she was brought up. Mother and
daughter received the veil on the same day. All efforts to recover the
property for the children proved fruitless. But they had long since learned
that happiness does not consist in wealth.
------
Original
Kettle Song.
Sing, kettle, sing!
Busily boil away!
My goodman to the field has gone,
The children are out at play.
Sing, kettle, sing!
Sing me a merry song!
You and I have company kept
This many a year along.
Sing, kettle, sing!
I'll join with a low refrain--
Needle and thread drawn through my work,
Like steadily falling rain.
Sing, kettle, sing!
The far-off fancies come,
But never a sad or a weary thought
Along with your cheery hum.
Sing, kettle, sing!
The hearth is swept and clean,
And the tidy broom in the corner stands
Like a little household queen.
Sing, kettle, sing!
Evening is drawing nigh,
The shadows are coming down the hill
And coming up in the sky.
{52}
Sing, kettle, sing!
Shadows are on the wall--
The last stitch done! a merry shout!
And here are the rovers all!
Sing, kettle, sing!
By the merry candle-light,
And you and I'll keep company
Again to-morrow night!
Fanny Fielding.
-------------
Original.
Ritualism.
by John R. G. Hassard.
In one of the up-town streets of New-York there is a Protestant Episcopal
Church dedicated to St. Alban. It is externally a plain, unattractive
little building of brick and stone, in the early English style, with a
modest little porch, and a sharp high roof, surmounted by a belfry and a
cross. Within there is little to be seen in the way of ornament about the
body of the church. The seats are plain benches rather than pews, and are
free to all comers. But any one who should enter St. Alban's, not knowing
to what denomination it belonged, and should look toward the sanctuary,
would be very apt to fancy for a moment that he had got into a Catholic
Church. Let us imagine ourselves among the crowd of curious spectators who
fill the edifice of a Sunday morning. In place of the reading-desk
conspicuous in most Protestant meeting-houses, there is a very
proper-looking altar set back against the chancel wall, and ornamented with
a colored and embroidered antependium. Behind it, instead of a painting,
there is an illuminated screen-work, with inscriptions in old English
ecclesiastical text, not much easier to be read than if they were in Latin.
Where the tabernacle ought to be, stands a large gilt cross; on each side
of it are vases and ornaments. On a shelf which runs along the wall back of
the altar there are candlesticks, three tall ones at each side, and two
others just over the altar itself. We see altar-cards, such as are used at
mass; a burse for holding the corporal; and a chalice covered with a veil,
the color of which varies with the season of the ecclesiastical year. Today
not being a festival, the hue is green. At one end of the altar is a big
book on a movable stand. At the epistle side is a credence table with a
silver paten, on which is the wafer-bread for communion, and with vessels
of wine and water that might be called cruets if they were only a little
smaller. The pulpit stands just outside the railings on the left. There is
a little raised desk on it for the preachers's book or manuscript, and this
desk is covered with a green veil. Opposite the pulpit on the right hand
side is a lectern with a bible on it. The lectern likewise has green
hangings. On one side of the sanctuary is a row of stalls, precisely like
those we see in some of our cathedrals and seminary-chapels. On the other
are benches for the choristers. The organ is in a recess just behind them,
and the organist sits in the chancel, in full view of the people, with his
back to the instrument. He wears a white surplice, and presents altogether
a very respectable and ecclesiastical appearance.
{53}
The appointments of St. Alban's being so very much like those of a real
church, we shall not be surprised to find the service almost equally like a
real mass. At the appointed hour an acolyte in cassock and surplice lights
the two candles on the altar. Then we hear a chorus of male voices--
principally boys--intoning a chant, and presently a procession issues from
the vestry door and files into the chancel. First comes a lad wearing a
black cassock and short surplice, and carrying a cross on a tall staff.
Then follow the chanters, men and boys, similarly attired; then one or two
clergymen, or perhaps theological students, also in cassock and surplice;
next two little boys in red cassocks; and finally two officiating
ministers, wearing long albs. The "priest" has a green stole, crossed on
his breast, and confined at the sides by a cincture; the "deacon's" stole
is worn over the left shoulder. The clerks take their places in the stalls;
the singers proceed to their benches. The cross-bearer kneels at one side
of the altar; the "priest" kneels at the foot of the steps, with the deacon
behind him and the acolytes at his side. The service about to be performed
is not the "Order of Morning Prayer" prescribed by the prayer-book, but
simply the communion service. The officiating minister (for the sake of
convenience let us call him what he calls himself--the priest; though
without, of course, admitting his sacerdotal character) chants a short
prayer, very much in the style of the chanting we hear at mass, and the
choir respond "Amen." Then the litany is chanted antiphonally, by one of
the clergy and the choristers alternately; it is in the main a translation
of that part of our litany of the saints in which we address Almighty God
directly, without asking the intercession of his blessed. This over, the
ministers and acolytes retire in the same order in which they entered, and
the organist plays a voluntary, during which the other six altar-candles
are lighted. When the clergy return the priest is seen in a green maniple
and chasuble. The latter differs from the vestment worn by the Catholic
priest at mass only in being less stiff in texture, pointed behind, and
covering the arm nearly to the elbow; and instead of being embroidered with
a cross on the back it is marked with a figure nearly resembling the letter
Y. With hands clasped before his breast the priest now ascends the steps,
and standing before the altar, with his back to the people, goes on with
the second part of the service. We need not describe it, for it is
principally translated from the missal. The words are all repeated in a
tone which is half reading and half chanting, and whenever the minister
says "Let us Pray," or "The Lord be with you," he turns round to the people
like a priest chanting "Oremus" or "Dominus Vobiscum." The epistle and
gospel are read by the deacon. The sermon follows; a rather vague and wordy
discourse, chiefly remarkable for the frequent and affectionate use of the
term "Catholic." The preacher begins by saying "In the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," and the more devoutly disposed of
the congregation thereupon cross themselves. After the sermon comes the
most solemn part of the service, taken nearly verbatim from the canon of
the mass; and at the commencement a great many of the congregation who
apparently are not communicants, leave the church with reverential faces,
as if they supposed the old law forbidding catechumens to witness the more
sacred mysteries were still in force. But the curious spectators, who
compose a large proportion of the audience, are under no such scruple about
remaining.
{54}
We need not describe the order of the service in detail, because the words
are almost exactly those to which we are ourselves accustomed, and the
ceremonies come as close to those of the mass as it is possible to make
them come. Whenever the ministers or attendants pass before the altar they
make a low bow to the cross. As the time of consecration approaches, the
deacon goes to the corner of the altar, and the acolytes bring him there
the bread and water and wine, which he hands to the priest, the wine and
water being mixed in the chalice. The prayer of consecration (a translation
of our own) is chanted like the rest of the service, until the priest
reaches the words, "This is my body," etc., "This is my blood," etc.;
those, suddenly dropping his voice, he repeats in a low voice, bending
over, and immediately afterward lifting up the elements on high. The
attendants, during this ceremony, hold up the corners of his vestment.
After the consecration all make genuflections, instead of bows, when they
have occasion to pass before the altar.
After receiving communion himself, the priest administers it to the deacon
and clergy and the altar boys. The people then approach the railing and the
priest gives them the consecrated wafer, using the formula prescribed in
the Catholic and the Protestant Episcopal liturgies alike--"The body of our
Lord Jesus Christ," etc.; but with each morsel of bread before he gives it
he makes the sign of the cross, which is a striking innovation in the
Protestant service. The deacon follows with the chalice. Before the
communion, however, a general confession is recited, and then the priest,
turning toward the people with great solemnity, repeats the form of
absolution, making the sign of the cross as he does so with outstretched
arm. After communion the celebrant scrapes the crumbs from the paten into
the chalice, and takes the ablutions at the corner of the altar exactly as
the priest does at mass. And when the congregation is dismissed at the
close, it is with a blessing and the sign of the cross, just as we are
dismissed after the _Ite, Missa est_ at the end of the mass.
On specially solemn occasions incense is used at St. Alban's, and various
other ceremonies are performed which have been borrowed from the Catholic
ritual. For example, candles are placed about the corpse when the burial
service is read.
We have described a service at St. Alban's, because that is the church in
which the ritualistic ideas, as they are called, are carried out to the
fullest development they have thus far attained in the United States. But
the rector and congregation of St. Alban's are by no means the only persons
of the Protestant Episcopal denomination who entertain those ideas. They
are only a little more advanced in their views than the majority of the
High Church Episcopal party. There are many places in New York where Sunday
services are conducted more or less in conformity with the practices of the
ritualists; and antiphonal chanting and other popish abominations have been
introduced, even into sober old Trinity Church itself. The number of those
who believe that divine service ought to be conducted with a more elaborate
ceremonial than any Protestant sect has thus far admitted is rapidly
increasing, and among them are many of the most distinguished and
influential of the Episcopal clergy.
But if so many strange things are done in our own country, they are nothing
to the innovations which are rapidly gaining ground in the Church of
England. The ritualistic movement in Great Britain is not so much the
struggle of an enthusiastic party for change or reform as it is the
spontaneous working of a logical doctrinal development which is gradually
spreading throughout the community. There is a struggle attending it; but
it is the struggle of the let-alone party for its repression, not of the
apostles of ritualism for its extension. And in spite, perhaps partly in
consequence, of the bitterness of the opposition, the number of churches in
which the good old Catholic ceremonies are revived in their ancient
splendor is, daily augmenting, and the zeal of the congregations is
increasing.
{55}
Ritualism in England is not what Punch is so fond of representing it--a
mere system of ecclesiastical millinery, born of the sick brains of foolish
and fanciful young curates; but it is a genuine expression of the sentiment
of a respectable minority of the Protestant laity. The numerous
prayer-books and similar works, prepared for the use of laymen under
ritualistic inspiration, are sold by _millions_ of copies. One
entitled "The Churchman's Guide to Faith and Piety," contains formulas for
morning and evening prayer, with an examination of conscience; devotions
for saints' days; instructions for systematic sacramental confession, and
for devoutly receiving the holy Eucharist and assisting at the sacred
mysteries; and _prayers for the faithful departed_. The real presence
and the sacrificial character of the holy Eucharist are expressed in the
clearest possible manner. There are several hand-books of devotion toward
the blessed sacrament, and manuals of religious exercises in honor of
certain particular manifestations of the divine goodness, such, for
instance, as the passion of our Saviour. A collection of "Hymns, Ancient
and Modern," of which it was stated some time ago that over one and a half
millions of copies had been sold, contains simply the principal hymns of
the Breviary, and in a work entitled "An Appendix to the Hymnal Noted," the
advanced Puseyite will find complete directions for using those hymns in
public worship, according to the rubrics of the Breviary. An English
publisher has just announced a new manual containing "the offices of prime
and compline and the vigils for the dead; the forms of blessing and
sprinkling holy water; the _Missa in nocte Nativitatis Domini_; the
Lenten litanies; the blessing of the ashes and the palm branches; the
washing of the altars and the _Maundy_; the benediction of the fonts
on Holy Saturday, and the like: translated from the Latin, with an
introduction and explanatory notes, and illustrated with extracts from the
consuetudinary of the church of Sarnm and the plain-song of the Mechlin
office-books."
"Matins" and "vespers" are chanted in many of the English churches by
choristers robed in surplices and ranged on each side of the chancel. The
Gregorian tones are used to a great extent. The officiating clergyman wears
a cope on festival days, and it has been the custom until lately to incense
the altar during the chanting of the _Magnificat_. The most complete
return, however, to the practice of the ancient church is seen in the
celebration of the Eucharist. All the Catholic vestments--the amice, alb,
cincture, maniple, stole, and chasuble--have been restored. The regulations
of the rubrics respecting different colors for different days and seasons
are followed. Sometimes the celebrant is attended by a deacon and a
subdeacon, acolytes, and censer bearers; and the use of candles on the
altar is very common. Even in churches where candles, incense, and colored
vestments are unknown, the Introit, taken from the Roman missal or the
missal of Salisbury, is frequently chanted at the beginning of the service,
and it is a very common practice to add to the regular liturgy contained in
the Book of Common Prayer various prayers taken from the ordinary and the
canon of the mass. For example, the minister often prefixes to the service
the psalm _Judica me, Deus_ with the antiphon, the _Confiteor_,
etc., which we hear every day at mass. So, too, when the celebrant is
placing the bread and wine on the altar, he borrows our offertory and the
prayers which follow it, his own liturgy not having furnished him with
anything appropriate to the occasion. The Anglican office sets down no
prayers for the priest's own communion; he, therefore, supplies the
omission by reciting in a low voice the _unde et memores_ of the
missal.
{56}
The use of crucifixes and images, and especially the image of the blessed
virgin, holding her divine Son in her arms, is by no means uncommon among
the more advanced ritualists; and some clergymen are in the habit of
blessing objects of devotion, such as medals and crosses, and even of
blessing holy water. A correspondent of a London newspaper writes a letter
of indignant complaint about the Christmas celebrations this season, at
some of the "advanced" churches, in one of which he declares that
"numberless tapers shed their halo of glory upon a veritable
_Bambino_," or figure of the infant Saviour lying in the manger. An
Anglican Missal has been published at Oxford, containing the order of the
Communion service, without any other part of the Liturgy. This service is
commonly spoken of as the "mass," and we even hear of "high mass," and "low
mass," to say nothing of matins and vespers. A few weeks ago we read an
account in an English paper of a nuptial mass in one of the ritualistic
churches. The faithful address their ministers as Father John, Father
Peter, or whatever the Christian name may be, and talk of their
"confessors" and "spiritual directors" with all the composure of genuine
Catholics.
The following description of a service at St. Alban's in London in holy
week, is taken from an English newspaper:
The altar on Maundy Thursday was vested in white and the holy Eucharist
was solemnly celebrated at 7 A.M. when many of the members of a
confraternity attached to the church communicated. After the morning
service the altar was entirely stripped of all its vestings and ornaments
except the candlesticks, and so remained until Easter eve. On Good
Friday, there was a meditation at 8 A.M., which was well attended. The
church was full at 10.30, when matins and the ante-communion office were
said. The sermon was followed by the chanting of the Reproaches, and the
hymn _Pange Lingua_. At 2 P.M., after the singing of the litany, the
Rev. A. H. Mackonochie preached the three hours' agony, the order of
which was as follows: (1.) One of the words of our Lord on the cross, was
chanted by the choir; (2.) A short sermon on the word was next
pronounced; (3.) All knelt in silent meditation, the organ playing
softly; (4.) A hymn was sung. This order was observed for each of the
words on the cross, the whole service lasting three hours and a half. At
3 o'clock, the hour of our Lord's death, the bell was tolled for five
minutes, while all knelt in silence. Even-song, or vespers, took place at
7 P.M. The sermon was followed by the chanting of the _Stabat Mater_
and _Miserere_. A meditation on the taking down from the cross
closed the evening. All through the day the bell was tolled solemnly, and
most of the congregation appeared in mourning. On Easter eve there was
service at 9 P.M. The church was elaborately decorated for the coming
festival with white and scarlet hangings, hot-house flowers, and candles.
The service opened with a procession, the chanters singing the old Easter
hymn _O filii et filiae_, and three of the attendants carrying
banners. Then vespers were chanted, and after the reading of the second
lesson the sacrament of baptism was administered to twenty-eight persons.
On Easter Sunday the Eucharist was celebrated at 7, 8, and 9 A.M.; at
10.30, matins were sung; and at 11.15 there was a grand Easter service
which we suppose the high and dry "Anglo-Catholics" would call high mass.
The ministers and attendants, with lights and banners, entered in
procession, while the choristers chanted the hymn _Ad Caenam Agni_.
As soon as they reached the altar, the Introit was sung, and the "mass"
or communion service, was then celebrated in the usual manner, another
breviary hymn, the _victimae Paschali_, being chanted at the
offertory.
In an account of the holy week services at St. Philip's, Clerkenwell, we
read that on Palm Sunday the altar was vested in black, the cross veiled
with crape, and the retable strewn with palm branches.
{57}
The choir, bearing palms, entered the church, singing the hymn "Ride on,
etc.," preceded by the processional cross which was also veiled with crape.
At a church in the diocese of Manchester recently, the services for Good
Friday began at midnight, with a litany and sermon. At 6 A. M. there was a
litany again, with a second sermon. At 9 A. M. followed matins and a
sermon; at noon a special service and sermon; at 3 P. M. litany and sermon;
at 6, evensong, and sermon, at 9, litany, sermon and benediction. The
Church Times, a ritualist periodical, remarked that it was "cheering to
find the Catholic view of the observance of the great fast so admirably
developed in a diocese so terribly over-ridden by Puritanism."
Some of our readers may remember the circumstances attending the funeral of
the Rev. John Mason Neale at East Grinstead, England, in August 1866. Dr.
Neale was well known as the author of some admirable translations of
Breviary hymns, as one of the most earnest apostles of ritualism, and as
the founder of a convent of women. The burial ceremonies, in the chapel of
Sackville College, included what might be called a high mass of requiem,
with priest, deacon, and sub-deacon, habited in magnificent vestments of
black silk trimmed with silver; an assistant priest; and a master of
ceremonies, or _ceremoniarius_. The service commenced with the introit
"Grant them eternal rest, O Lord." After the epistle the _Dies Irae_
was chanted in Grergorian melody, as the gradual. When choir and
congregation assembled after communion in the college quadrangle, there to
form themselves into a procession, one of the clergy repeated the prayer,
_Deus, qui nobis sub sacramento mirabili_, which is always chanted in
the Catholic church at the benediction of the blessed Sacrament. In the
procession, besides clerks, chanters, acolytes, and cross-bearer, appeared
the "sisters of the third order;" novices; "sisters of the second order" in
white veils edged with blue; "professed sisters;" the mother superior,
assistant mother, and mistress of novices of Dr. Neale's convent; superiors
of other orders; "brothers associate;" etc. The corpse "was vested in
cassock, surplice, and black stole; a crucifix was in his crossed hands,
the same one which he was in the habit of having before him when hearing
confessions." In an appendix to a virulent little treatise against
ritualism by the Rev. Robert Vaughan, D.D., [Footnote 8] there are
descriptions of services in several of the advanced churches; and the
author says: "This is the course of things in a large number of our city
and suburban churches over the kingdom; and not a few churches in our
smaller towns, and even in our villages, do their best, as before
intimated, toward imitating the example set them by their more fashionable
and wealthy neighbors. The editor of The Church Times filled some thirty
columns of that journal with such reports as we have cited, relating to the
celebrations of last Easter, and stated that the accounts he had published
were 'only a small selection from the overwhelming mass' which had reached
him," Proof enough that the movement, as we said before, is very widely
extended and essentially popular.
[Footnote 8: Ritualism in the English Church in its Relation to
Scripture, Piety, and Law. By Robert Vaughan, D.D. 12mo. London: 1866.]
Everybody remembers the commotion raised a year or two ago by an
enthusiastic gentleman named Lyne who called himself "Brother Ignatius,"
and made a very foolish and unfortunate attempt to establish a Protestant
order of Benedictines in England. But other efforts to introduce religious
communities into the Church of England have been more prosperous, and there
are now at least 400 or 500 members of various sisterhoods, who take vows,
some for life, some for three years. [Footnote 9]
[Footnote 9: Sisterhood have obtained a precarious footing in the
United States. There is one in New York, whose members wear a costume
suggested somewhat of the cloister and somewhat of the mantua-maker's
shop. They have neat little things, between caps and veils, on their
heads; make-believe rosaries hanging from their girdles; and black
bombazine gown's distended to fashionable dimensions by means of
hoop-skirts.]
{58}
In all cases there is a novitiate of one or two years, and it is said that
women who take the vows almost always adhere to them. Brotherhoods are not
at all flourishing, but there is a loud call for them among the ritualists,
and we see no reason to doubt that they will soon follow in the general
progress of the Catholic revival. Of the number of congregations in which
ritualistic practices are followed, we have no exact account; but a
disinterested authority in which we have confidence estimates the number of
the clergy who entertain the advanced views at about 2000. Among them are a
few of the bishops, the most prominent being Dr. Wilberforce, bishop of
Oxford, and Dr. Hamilton, bishop of Salisbury. Indeed, the rapid progress
of the new ideas seems to have thrown the thorough-going Protestants into a
fever of alarm. Courses of lectures are got up to counteract the growing
spirit, and monster petitions and memorials are presented to the bishops by
the clergy and people of their dioceses. A remonstrance with five hundred
signatures has been laid before the Bishop of Salisbury; a memorial with
two thousand and three hundred names has been presented to the Bishop of
Gloucester; and four hundred and twenty-three of the clergy of London have
united in a protest. Colored vestments are worn in twelve of the London
churches, incense is used in six, and colored stoles have been introduced
in three, which have not yet adopted the full "Eucharistic vestments."
Not very long ago a grand exhibition of ecclesiastical ornaments and
vestments from churches of the establishment in various parts of the
kingdom was held at Norwich. Eucharistic (that is, colored) vestments were
contributed by a hundred churches, and it was estimated that there were two
hundred and fifty or three hundred other churches in which they were
habitually used. The number is probably now larger. Many of these vestments
were of extraordinary richness. There were silks and velvets covered with
delicate and elaborate embroideries, and bedecked with a literal profusion
of diamonds, pearls, and various precious stones. One chasuble, not
jeweled, was valued at £220, Or $1,100. There were crosiers, mitres,
stoles, and superb crimson copes--all in use at the present day--not to
speak of numerous relics of antiquity, even relics of the saints and the
twelve apostles, and a fragment of the true cross.
The confessional in the Anglican Church is not an innovation by any means;
but under the protecting wings of ritualism it is assuming much greater
prominence than it has ever enjoyed before. In St. Alban's, New-York, you
will not find a confessional box; but you may make a confession there, if
you feel so disposed, and the reverend pastor is ready to absolve penitents
with the usual formularies. At St. Alban's in London, however, they do
things in a much more complete style, with a box and a grating, and all the
other Catholic accessories--with the trifling exceptions of sacerdotal
character and jurisdiction on the part of the confessor. An Anglican
minister of Protestant proclivities, named Ormiston, recently made an
experimental visit of investigation to the Rev. Mr. Mackonochie's
confessional at St. Alban's, and at a meeting of the National Protestants
Institute on the 28th of January last, was cruel enough to tell all that
happened there. He went on one of the days set apart for receiving the
confessions of men, took his turn with a number of others who were waiting,
and in course of time found himself in the confessional box, peering
through a hole at the Rev. Mr. Mackonochie, who was vested in a surplice
and purple stole. Mr. Ormiston stated that he wished to make a "special"
confession, and was thereupon requested to kneel. He could not bring
himself to do this, but he made believe do it--probably he squatted--and
then proceeded to his unbosoming. The Rev. Mr. Mackonochie must have been
rather unpleasantly amazed by what followed.
{59}
Pulling out a written paper Mr. Ormiston read, in a loud tone so as to be
heard by the people outside, this humble confession of sins: "I have but
too imperfectly discharged my solemn ordination vow of being ready with all
faithful diligence to banish and drive away all erroneous and strange
doctrines contrary to God's word,' and _especially the damnable doctrine
now maintained by those priests in the Church of England, commonly called
'Puseyites,' together with their popish practices_, whereby they are
seeking to dethrone the blessed gospel of God's free grace, and to set up
in its stead the 'burning lies' of anti-christ." He asked for absolution,
but Mr. Mackonochie could not be persuaded of his penitence (though the
sinner vowed that he never was more sorry in his life), and refused to give
it. So Mr. Ormiston handed his card to the confessor, and came away, "bowed
down and crushed," as he said, "with a sense of the evil which this awful
system is working."
The question of the legality of the ritualistic innovations, or, to speak
more accurately, of these restorations of ancient practice, has been before
the law courts and the houses of convocation, but thus far without decided
result. The Church Union in England, have published the opinions of nine
eminent lawyers to whom the matter was referred, including Sir R.
Phillimore, Sir Fitzroy Kelly, Sir W. Bovill, and Mr. Coleridge, all of
whom are in favor of the legality of the "Eucharistic vestments," six in
favor of two lights on the altar during the communion service, four in
favor of wafer bread, and all more or less against the incensing of
"persons or things." A committee of the lower house of convocation made a
report on these subjects, which was presented to the upper house last June;
and in view of the position taken by the authors of this report, and of the
legal opinions above referred to, as well as the opposition of Dr. Tait,
bishop of London, to the practices therein condemned, the rector of St.
Alban's, Holborn, has felt himself compelled to discontinue, under protest,
the objectionable manner of using incense, and the elevation of the bread
and wine at the consecration. In an address to his congregation on the
feast of the Epiphany, be declares his persuasion that the house of
convocation is wrong, but he thinks it better to yield. "I must tell you,"
he adds, "for your own satisfaction, that the less obtrusive elevation
indicated in the words of the prayer-book, 'here the priest is to take the
paten into his hand,' and 'here he is to take the cup into his hand,' is
quite sufficient for the ritual purpose, that, namely, of making the
oblation of the holy sacrifice to God. The use of incense will now be
discontinued at the beginning of the service, at the gospel, and at the
offertory. Before the consecration prayer the censer will be brought in. At
the consecration, incense will be put into it by the thurifer, but it will
not be used, as at present, 'for censing persons and things.' This is a
mode of using incense allowed by the ecclesiastical opinion, and not
disallowed by the legal one."
Some time ago a number of prominent clergymen and laymen of the American
Episcopal Church, addressed a letter to Bishop Hopkins of Vermont, asking
his opinion "whether an increase of ritualism would be advisable," or
whether it was best to be satisfied with "the ordinary average of present
parochial practice"? The reply of Bishop Hopkins is contained in a little
volume published last year.[Footnote 10] It is an elaborate defence of the
lawfulness and reasonableness of the ritualistic practices, though it
deprecates any authoritative infringement on the liberty which the
Episcopal body has heretofore exercised in such matters.
{60}
"I incline to regard it as most probable," the bishop says, "that this
ritualism will grow into favor by degrees until it becomes the prevailing
system. The old, the fixed, and the fearful, will resist it. But the young,
the ardent, and the impressible will follow it more and more. The spirit of
the age will favor it because it is an age of excitement and sensation. The
lovers of 'glory and of beauty' will favor it, because it appeals with far
more effect to the natural tastes and feelings of humanity. The rising
generation of the clergy will favor it, because it adds so much to the
solemn character of their office and the interest of their service in the
house of God." And as for the effect of the movement upon the low
churchmen, he believes that it will only become a more marked distinction
between parties which have long existed, and which might well be allowed to
appear in a more decided form without danger to the peace and prosperity of
the denomination.
[Footnote 10: The Law of Ritualism. By the Rt. Rev. John Henry Hopkins,
D.D., LL. D., Bishop of Vermont. New York: Hurd & Houghton.]
As might be supposed, Bishop Hopkins says a great many sensible things
about ritualism in general, though their application to the particular case
before him is not always of the clearest. The ceremonial part of divine
worship is not, he declares, a matter of indifference. God gave the most
explicit instructions for the performance of public worship under the
Levitical law. He described the tabernacle that was to be erected in the
wilderness and the temple of Solomon which succeeded it, giving minute
directions for the fashioning of all their parts; for the incense, the
golden censers, the candlesticks, and the rich priestly vestments that were
to be used when the descendants of Aaron approached his presence. And under
the new dispensation this beautiful and elaborate system, so often
pronounced by Almighty God "an ordinance for ever," was not swept wholly
out of existence, though certain parts of it passed away into a higher and
more extensive form of divine arrangement. The animal sacrifices ceased,
because they were only types of the great sacrifice which the cross of
Christ fulfilled. The restriction of the priesthood to the family of Aaron
was abolished, because the new covenant was not restricted to a single
nation, like the old, but was made with all the peoples of the earth. The
rest of the Mosaic law, Dr. Hopkins argues, remained in force. His argument
is not a good one, for it would lead him to absurdities. If the old ritual
was not abolished, why do modern Christians not observe it? What authority
have they for omitting all the more onerous parts of the ceremonial, and
retaining only the rich garments and lights and fragrant incense, which
please the senses without imposing any particular burden? If ritualism had
no better argument in its favor than the book of Leviticus, there would be
little to say in its defence. Dr. Vaughan, who reasons that ritualism is
unlawful in the Christian church, because there is no book of rites in the
New Testament corresponding to the book of Leviticus in the old, is as
logical as Dr. Hopkins. The Bishop of Vermont, however, is apparently
sensible that there must be some authoritative enactment on the subject;
that God, either by his church or by some other inspired mouthpiece, must
have abolished or modified the Jewish ritual, and substituted a new one, or
else we ought still to observe the full Mosaic ceremonial, on the principle
that laws are binding until they are repealed. To us, Catholics, the case
is clear enough. We have the authority of the church of God for all we do;
she abolished the old Jewish rites, and she ordained the Christian
ceremonial. And Dr. Hopkins is sensible enough of the importance of this
authorization, for he tries to apply it to his own denomination, and
thereby, of course, admits that the church has uniformly followed the
rightful practice, and that the Protestant sects have been all wrong.
{61}
He shows, from the writings of the early fathers and from other ancient
documents, that the term "altar" was constantly used in primitive times in
connection with the celebration of divine services; that the altars were
both of wood and or stone, and that hence there is no reason for the
restriction which many Protestants would lay upon the Lord's Table; that it
should be "an honest table, with legs to it;" and that candles and incense
were habitually used at the celebration of the divine mysteries. A much
more important matter, Bishop Hopkins says, is the use of oil or chrism in
confirmation; and this, he admits, "is plainly stated by Tertullian to have
been the established practice in the year 200." And he quotes a remarkable
passage from Bingham's" Antiquities of the Christian Church" (a Protestant
work), to the effect that "it was this unction at the completion of baptism
to which they [the early Christians] ascribed the power of making every
Christian, in some sense, partaker of a royal priesthood, which is not only
said by Origen, but by Pope Leo, St. Jerome, and many others." His remarks
on the subject of sacerdotal vestments are not less striking. He mentions
the proofs brought forward by Baronius, that St. James the Just, first
bishop of Jerusalem, and St. John the Evangelist "wore the golden ornament
which was prescribed for the mitre of the high priest in the Mosaic
ritual." He refers to Constantine's gift of "a rich vestment, embroidered
with gold," to Macarius, bishop of Jerusalem, to be worn by him in the
celebration of the sacred offices. He cites ancient decrees concerning the
_orarium_, or stole, and the different manner in which it was to be
worn by priests and by deacons; mentions the ring and staff prescribed for
a bishop; and especially refers to the fact that black, as the symbol of
sin and mourning, was everywhere excluded. Bishop Hopkins brings forward
these things by way of showing the multitude of points of conformity
between the early Christian and the ancient Jewish ritual; but they do not
seem to have awakened in his mind the question, "Which, then, is the true
Christian church?" nor does he perceive that, however strongly they may
support the Catholic practice, they do little good to the Episcopalians.
The first Church of England men understood the propriety of ritualistic
magnificence a great deal better than their descendants do. When they cast
off faith and obedience they did not at the same time cast off the rich
priestly robes, nor put out the altar lights, nor stop the swinging of
censers and chanting of psalms. The ritual of the primitive Protestants was
hardly less gorgeous than that of mother church herself. When Archbishop
Parker was consecrated in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, he wore "a long
scarlet gown and a hood, with four torches carried before him: Bishop
Barlow had a silk cope, being to administer the sacrament; four
arch-deacons, who attended him, wearing silk copes also." And a puritanical
Protestant, Thomas Sampson, complained to Peter Martyr in 1550 that the
ministry of Christ was banished from the English court, because the image
of the crucifix was allowed there, with lights burning before it. Dr.
Hopkins is at pains to show that the custom and unrepealed law of the
Church of England justify the use of a processional cross, two lights on
the altar, incense, surplice, alb, girdle, stole, dalmatic, tunicle,
chasuble, cope, amice, cape or tippet, maniple, hood, and cassock; that the
use of oil in confirmation and extreme unction, and of _prayers for the
dead_, which are found in the first Prayer-book of Edward VI., though
they were subsequently omitted from the liturgy, has never been prohibited
and is still lawful. We suspect that to many Protestants this statement
will be a little startling.
It will not be more startling, however, than a view of what the liturgy of
the Church of England was in the first years of her heresy, and what,
according to the ritualistic party, it ought rightly to be now.
{62}
It seems to be generally admitted that what is known as the first
Prayer-book of Edward VI., published in 1549, is the standard to which the
ceremonial of the Establishment ought to be referred; that whatever was
sanctioned or permitted under the rubrics of that work may be lawfully used
or done now; and that the subsequent revisions of the Prayer-book, inasmuch
as they have authoritatively condemned none of the ancient forms and
expressions of doctrine embodied in that earlier ritual, have no
restrictive force upon the liberty of the modern revivers of old Catholic
practices. Let us see, then, what the first Prayer-book of Edward. VI. was,
in its order of the communion service, the present battle-ground of
ritualism.
This portion of the liturgy was entitled, "The Supper of the Lord and the
Holy Communion, commonly called the Mass." It is divided into "the
Ordinary," and "the Canon." The first part begins with the Lord's Prayer;
and then follow the Collect for purity, the Introit (now omitted), the
_Kyrie Eleison_, the _Gloria in Excelsis, Dominus Vobiscum_,
Collects for the day and for the king, the Epistle, Gospel, and Nicene
Creed, the sermon, Exhortation, Offertory, and Oblation; _Dominus
Vobiscum, Sursum Corda_, the Preface, and the _Sanctus_. The canon
now consists of one long prayer of consecration, but in the Prayer-book of
1549 it comprised many other parts copied pretty closely from the missal;
and the confession and absolution, which are now transferred to an early
part of the ordinary, came in their proper place immediately before the
communion. After communion were the _Agnus Dei_ and Post-Communion,
the Collects, and other prayers and ceremonies, very much as we have them
in the mass. The rubric of 1549 says: "When the clerks have done singing
the _Sanctus_, then shall the priest or deacon turn himself to the
people and say, 'Let us pray for the whole state of Christ's church;'" to
which the present office adds the words, "militant here on earth." An able
paper in a collection of essays by advanced ritualists, published in London
last year, [Footnote 11] argues from this that prayers for the dead
formerly had place and are still allowable in the English liturgy. If this
be not so, the author says, "we shall find ourselves placed in a dilemma
which to a Catholic mind is inexpressibly painful. For.... it follows that
the liturgy of the English Church is the only living liturgy, the only
known extant liturgy which is wanting in remembrance of its faithful
departed. From which dilemma we may devoutly say, Good Lord, deliver us."
[Footnote 11: The Church and the World: Essays on Questions of the Day.
By various writers. First series. Edited by the Rev. Orby Shipley, M.
A. Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyre. 1866.]
In the consecration prayers there is an important part found in the book Of
1549, but now left out, of which the same writer says: "We can scarcely too
deeply deplore the loss, or earnestly desire that it may be restored to
us." This is the invocation of the Holy Ghost, and it reads as follows:
"Hear us, O merciful Father, we beseech thee, and with thy holy spirit and
word vouchsafe to bl+ess and sanc+tify these thy gifts and creatures of
bread and wine, that they may be to us the body and blood of thy most
dearly beloved son Jesus Christ." Here we have not only an authorization
but an explicit direction for the use of the sign of the cross, at which
many good Episcopalians shudder nervously as at a diabolical popish
invention. It was left out of the later Prayer-books, but never prohibited.
Before the communion there is a formula of invitation which the minister is
to read to the people, bidding them to the Lord's table. In the present
Prayer-book it contains nothing which calls for special remark; but in that
of 1549 it embraced the following passage: "And if there be any of you
whose conscience is troubled and grieved in anything, lacking comfort or
counsel, let him come to me, or to some other discreet and learned priest,
taught in the law of God, and confess and open his sin and grief secretly
.... _that of us he may receive comfort and absolution_," etc.
{63}
The writer of the essay above quoted favors not only a return to the old
Edwardian liturgy, but a revival of various other usages to which we need
not more particularly refer than by saying that they all have a genuine
Catholic flavor. He sees no reason, apart from prejudice, why Anglicans
should not call their communion service by "the old English word 'Mass;"
and he deprecates the Protestant custom of consuming at once all the bread
and wine which are blessed for the Lord's Supper, without reserving any for
the visitation of the sick. "Those who minister among the lowest poor in
missionary work," he says, "can bear witness how distressing oftentimes are
celebrations in the crowded and sick rooms of a town population." And he
quotes an instance in which the Eucharist had to be consecrated for a dying
man who occupied one corner of a crowded room tenanted by several other
families. In another corner crouched a woman of the vilest class, and
during the consecration unclean insects were crawling over the "fair white
linen cloth" upon which the elements were laid. Can we wonder that to a
minister who believes in the Real Presence, and in his own power to
consecrate, a celebration such as this must seem like profanation?
If there were nothing in this ritualistic revival but an attempt to borrow
the rich robes of faith and dress up in them the shrunken form of heresy,
it would hardly be worth our attention. It is little to us whether the
human laws of the realm of England permit the ministers of the Established
Church to stand with their backs to the congregation or not; whether they
may legally burn candles in daylight, or swing censers, or chant their
prayers instead of saying them, or wear colored and embroidered vestments
instead of the plain surplice and the black gown. Since they have taken the
liberty to discard faith and obedience, one would think it of little matter
that they should discard ceremonies also. After they have lost the
substance, why should they care for the form? If they could abolish, for
instance, the celibacy of the clergy, they had surely as good a right to
abolish a red or green chasuble. Indeed, to be logical, they ought to
ordain, alter, and abolish just what they please. But it is impossible not
to see that there is a great deal more in this movement than a mere
striving after beautiful and impressive forms. There is first a reawakening
of the Catholic idea of public worship, and a rejection of the common
Protestant theory. It is the Protestant principle, not always expressly
acknowledged, but practically acted upon, that the primary object of a
religious service is the edification of the people; it is the Catholic idea
that the chief purpose of that service is the worship of Almighty God. The
Englishman, Thomas Sampson, whose complaint to Peter Martyr touching lights
and crucifixes, we quoted just now, says in the same letter: "What hope is
there of any good when our friends are disposed to look for religion in
those dumb remnants of idolatry, and not in the _preaching_ of the
lively word of God?" And what is it but a recognition of this principle
which causes most of the Protestant sects to lay such stress upon sermons
as to make them the predominating feature of every service, and often gives
their public prayers such a doctrinal and exhortatory character that they
can hardly be distinguished from sermons except by the substitution of the
phrase "Almighty God" for "Beloved brethren"? Now, the ritualists, whatever
their shortcomings, are at any rate free from this absurdity.
Sermon-hearing or meditation, says one of their late writers, may be
salutary enough in its proper time and place, but it is not worship. Here,
no doubt, is a great advance in the right direction.
But this is not all.
{64}
An essay "On the Eucharistic Sacrifice" in The Church and the World gives
the Catholic doctrine still more explicitly, and acknowledges "that
Christian worship is really the earthly exhibition of Christ's perpetual
intercession as the sole high priest of his church, the sole acceptable
presenter of the one worship of his one body in heaven and in earth, and
that as such it culminates in his own mysterious presence, in and by the
sacrament of his most precious body and blood."
In this recognition of the true functions of the Christian ministry, the
true character of the worship which ought to be offered in God's holy
temple, we may suppose the ritualists to be pretty well agreed. But
doctrinally, they may be divided into two classes. With the one class, a
gorgeous ritual is merely the gratification of an aesthetic or antiquarian
taste; with the other it is the logical development of an advance in
doctrine. The one class would bring back the practice of the Anglican
Church to what it used to be in old days; the other would imitate the rites
and ceremonies which were followed in the Catholic Church ages before
Anglicanism was heard of.
The second class is, we believe, the more numerous, as it certainly is by
far the more important of the two. Its views are set forth with frankness
and decided ability in the volume which we have already quoted; and we are
certain that no one can read these essays without feeling that the
ritualists are legitimate successors of the tractarians of thirty years
ago, and that there is promise of as much good from the agitation which
they are leading as came from the great movement of Dr. Newman and Dr.
Pusey. "Ritualism," says one of the essayists, "is not employed as a
side-wind, by which to bring in certain tenets surreptitiously, but as the
natural complement of those tenets after they have been long and sedulously
inculcated." The burning of candles and incense is of very little moment,
considered as a mere form, but it is of great moment when it is done as the
ritualists do it for the sake of rendering honor to the real presence of
our Lord. It is of no consequence what order of words or what gestures or
what dress the Anglican minister uses in reading the communion office,
because he has not the priestly character, and if he followed literally the
missal itself, he could not celebrate a valid mass. But if he comes as
close to the missal as he can, by way of testifying that he believes in the
doctrines stated and symbolized in the missal; if he imitates the
ceremonies of the daily Christian sacrifice, in order to show his belief in
the sacrificial character of the Eucharist, that fact becomes of serious
importance, and indicates a genuine progress toward truth, at which every
good Catholic ought to rejoice. The practice of auricular confession is not
new in the Anglican Church; but it acquires additional significance when it
is spoken of, as it is in the Church and the Word, by the name of "the
sacrament of penance," for the Church of England recognizes no sacraments
except baptism and the supper of the Lord.
If there is any name which a genuine ritualist really hates it is that of
Protestant. The avowed purpose of the advanced school is to unprotestantize
the Church of England; and the writer just quoted speaks of having found
comfort at a time of spiritual doubt and trial, in the belief that the
English Church was still a part of the Catholic Church, "unless she sinned
sufficiently at the reformation to justify Rome in cutting her off." "Our
place is appointed us," says the same essayist, "among Protestants and in a
communion deeply tainted in its practical system by Protestant heresy; but
our duty is the expulsion of the evil, and not flight from it, any more
than it is a duty for those to leave the Roman Church who become conscious
also of abuses within her system." The Church of England indeed, has but a
weak hold upon the faith or affection of the ritualists of this school.
{65}
We find the XXXIX. Articles spoken of as "those Protestant articles
tacked on to a Catholic liturgy, those forty stripes save one, as some have
called them,
laid on the back of the Anglican priesthood;" and in the same book we are
told that "the universal church, and not the Church of England, is becoming
the standard to which doctrine and practice must be conformed, and the
advantages in many respects of other divisions of it over our own are
becoming recognized." Prepared as many of these men are to accept the
doctrines of the church in every particular except the supremacy of the
Pope and the immaculate conception of the blessed Virgin, and to follow her
discipline even to clerical celibacy, religious vows, and sacramental
confession, can we doubt that there is hope of their overcoming the
remaining obstacles to their conversion, and that the London Weekly
Register is right when it calls this "the most important religious crisis
that England has witnessed since the so-called Reformation."
And even in the vagaries of the other branch of ritualists, the church
milliners, if we may be allowed the expression, who imagine they are
bringing back their errant sect to the honest life of old, when they copy
the forms and ceremonies, the lights and vestures, the incense and the
chants of the primitive liturgy, without conforming to the doctrines which
these observances are intended to symbolize; who set up as their standard
of conformity not the universal church as she has been through all ages,
but the Anglican establishment as it was in its infancy, before it had
quite forgotten Catholic truth and propriety; even in the hollow ritualism
of this school, we say, there is cause for gratification. Unlike the
builders of material temples, who must work up from base to summit, these
ecclesiastical architects can sometimes construct their foundation after
the superstructure is finished. The mere copying of sacred forms is apt to
lead them to the sacred faith and spirit; and, any way, it is something
gained to know that one can bend before a crucifix without breaking the
commandments, and that frankincense is not an abomination in the sight of
the Lord.
------
Original.
The Cross.
O Tree, how strong thy branches are,
To bear such wondrous, weighty fruit!
"_He_ strength imparts."
Than all, thy fruit is sweeter far.
What genial soil doth feed thy root?
"Men's loving hearts."
------
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Translated from the French.
Robert; Or, The Influence Of A Good Mother.
Chapter VII.
"To be an artist . . . .
It is his hope, his faith, his ambition."
Genius, however great, will not make a man famous unless he works for fame.
Robert felt this and had strength, perseverance, and courage to labor, for
he was poor and of obscure name, and he knew what he could do, and was
determined to do it. But, like all who struggle through this life, he had
his depressions and his griefs, which he bore bravely; and if
discouragement ever glided into his soul, he instantly resorted to prayer,
and peace and repose would then spread their wings over him. He imposed
upon himself the strict obligation of never wasting a moment of time, and
chained himself to his work, as a galley slave is chained; accepting his
present life, mercenary and prosaic as it is, with perfect resignation and
happiness, feeling that God has made it thus, and that he must be thankful
for it. Existence was a happiness to him, for his heart was good, and duty
was to him perfect joy; and knowing he was necessary to the happiness of
Madame Gaudin, he devoted himself to her as a son. By degrees her strength
returned, and at last she was able to resume the management of the
household, which placed more time at Robert's disposition, and his mind,
rid of these cares, regains its elasticity and primitive vigor. Artistic
reveries come back, the fire of creative inspiration fills his soul, and he
stands before his canvas, on which the faint outlines of the Virgin are
traced. Then another dream seizes him, and hours and days and weeks of
patient labor are necessary to faithfully bring out his ideas, and at first
all is chaos; but slowly the canvas becomes animated, and finally Robert,
like Pygmalion, stands in ecstasy before his work. His body trembles with
enthusiasm, his eyes moisten, his knees give way under him--and why this
emotion? He has faithfully presented the scene where, between God and his
mother, his happy childhood was passed. The picture is astonishingly and
wonderfully true. Here stands out boldly the savage grandeur of Ecorcharde,
with its rugged sides and deep ravines--there the valley through which the
silver waters of the Dordogne run--the village of Bains--the church spire,
the rectory--and all the crowning glory of this mountain, its woods and
sombre verdure. There the little house where Robert had lived for twelve
years, and, at the extremity of the valley, the peak of Sauci, which
majestically crowned the whole. The memory of the young artist is faithful,
and he forgets nothing. Standing on a clearing on the mountain side is a
woman, and a child is playing near her; it is Robert and his mother. The
sun is just sinking below the horizon, and sheds upon the scene the glory
of its waves of gold and purple. Each day Robert gave many hours to this
picture, in which he relived his childhood's days; and, when completed, it
was a perfect masterpiece of grace and taste, and finished with much care.
His touch was fresh and bold--the animals that reposed in the valley were
perfect, the trees of exquisite foliage, and the lights and shades of
delicious harmony.
One morning the young painter was at work, bringing out a stronger effect
of light on his picture, when a loud knock at the door drew him from his
work. He opened it, and standing before him was his late master.
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"Where have you been, my dear Robert?" asked the illustrious artist; "I
have been so uneasy about you. Tell me why you have not been in my studio
for so long a time?"
Robert, touched by this mark of interest, given with so much affability and
simplicity, replied by a recital of the painful position in which he had
been thrown by the sickness of Madame Gaudin, and told in such warm terms
of her generous conduct to him, that the artist did not know which to
admire most--the lively gratitude of the one, or beautiful devotion of the
other.
The artist grasped his hand, and, pressing it warmly, said, "You have done
your duty, and can never reproach yourself with ingratitude." Then, turning
toward the picture, he explained, "Can this be your work? It is wonderful?"
After a few moments, in which he was perfectly absorbed, he said, "Robert,
you are ignorant of your talent; you know more than I do, and must be a
great painter ere long." Then, clasping the stupefied young man in his
arms, be pressed him to his heart in a generous transport of admiration.
Madame Gaudin, who had gone out to buy provisions for the day, stopped at
the open door to ask what it could all mean; and when she understood what
they were speaking about, she felt a great joy, and exclaimed, "I knew it;
I knew he would be a great painter." Her excess of happiness made her steps
a little trembling and uncertain; and, without caring for the presence of
the stranger, she said to Robert, "God will bless thee, my boy; God will
recompense thy Christian virtues, and all the affection thou hast had for a
poor old woman like me." Then, noticing the artist, she said, "I cannot
help it; excuse me, sir, but I must embrace him, I must press him to my
heart, and then I will be content."
Robert yielded to her caresses in a manner which attested better than words
the sincerity of his attachment for the worthy woman.
The approbation and praises given his work by his master made a profound
impression on the mind of Robert.
"My dear boy," said the artist, "I will buy your picture at a good price.
Each one of us should aid others to find the road on which he has gathered
the flowers of fortune. God has blessed my work and made me rich, but I
cannot enjoy the favors of fortune alone; I must aid others, and share with
them the riches that God has loaned me. My purse, my credit, my protection
are yours to-day, and I want you to use them without hesitation, for I
cherish you as a pupil and love you as a friend. When I pay the debt of
life, I hope to endow a great painter. Work, then, my boy; work for glory;
you are now on the road to fame, and it will lead you to fortune." Before
leaving he put in Madame Gaudin's hand a well-filled purse, and said, "Keep
silence; say nothing of this to Robert."
Robert had another joy on this eventful day. Toward night he was going on
an errand for Madame Gaudin, and near the Pont Neuf, by the Place Dauphine,
he heard the voice of a man uttering a kind of lament for Napoleon. The
voice was loud and strong, and in its modulations there was so much sorrow
that he hastened toward the man, to see if his features verified a
suspicion that came across his mind. He knew he had seen this man before.
He was a street singer; and the longer he listened to him, the more
convinced was he in his belief. Soon his eyes were fixed on a large wound
in his forehead, and, no longer doubting, he called out, "O Cyprien! my
good Cyprien!" at the same time holding out his hand.
"Pardon--excuse me--I do not know you."
"But are you not Cyprien Hardy, ex-grenadier of the Imperial Guards?" said
Robert.
"I am no other person; but I can't remember to have seen you before."
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"I remember you," said Robert, with expression. "The little orphan that you
took before the palace at Fontainebleau and conducted to Paris, although
eight years ago, has not forgotten his protector and friend, and now wishes
to shake hands with him; you will not refuse me that pleasure surely?"
"Ah! truly no--a thousand times no--I cannot refuse. Touched there," said
he, putting his hand on his heart, "I know it is Robert who speaks to me;
my little Robert, grown to be a man. You have changed much, young man, and
so have I; but that does not matter; I have suffered cruelly. Oh my loved
emperor! if I could only go to him."
"Come with me," said Robert; "we can talk entirely as we please when alone;
come with me and I will take you to a person who knows you already, and
who, I am certain beforehand, will be glad to see you."
The idle and curious people who were standing by when this touching
recognition took place all walked off and left the place clear to our
friends.
"A thousand thunders, Mister Robert, you are no prouder now in Paris than
when we came in together, but you walk too fast for my old legs."
"Pardon me, Cyprien," said he, stopping quickly, "but I am so anxious to
get you home that I forget you may be fatigued and may need my arm. Take
it, my friend, for it is sure, like my affection for you; take it and we
can walk faster. I am afraid Madame Gaudin will be uneasy if I stay out so
long, and I do not like to give her the least uneasiness."
"Oh!" said the soldier, stretching up, for he was bent more by grief than
years, "you are a worthy young man, and not proud at all. You do not blush
to give your arm to a brigand of the Loire; for that is what we poor
soldiers who regret our emperor are called. But tell me, who is this Madame
Gaudin--what in the deuce do you call her?"
"Gaudin, my good Cyprien."
"Gaudin! Oh! well, I suppose she is some particular person, is she?"
"She is a good and excellent woman, to whom I owe all that I am, and who
has made every sacrifice for me, and whom I love with all my heart."
"Ah! I understand; it is a widow that wants to catch you?"
"Oh! no, my good Cyprien," said Robert, laughing; "it is a person that you
know, the old housekeeper of the lamented Abbé Verneuil. You know the
priest who gave me so sweet a welcome when I arrived in Paris, and who
placed me at the house of Madame de Vernanges?"
"Yes, yes; it comes back to my memory now, and I took a bitter hatred
against her the day I pulled the door bell at the curé's. She looked at me
with a pair of eyes that shone like balls of fire, because I twisted my
mustache when I spoke to her. Well, what has become of the priest?"
"Alas! he is dead, and much too soon for me. Oh! it was one of my dark
days, Cyprien."
"The same as mine for my emperor. I weep for him as you weep for the curé."
"We have good reason, my friend, to remember such men, and to forget them
would be to forget ourselves."
"So you tell me, old Gaudin is living with you?"
"No, no; I should have told you I lived with the dear, good woman; for
since the death of the abbé this generous woman has provided for all my
wants, spent for me her hard savings, and in every way tried to console me
for what I had lost. Yes, my friend, this good Madame Gaudin pushed forward
my taste for drawing and painting; and I thank her from the depths of my
heart, and can say without vanity that these sacrifices have not been lost.
I am rejoiced that I can give her some happiness, and it may be that in the
turning of the wheel of fortune I may gain wealth, and all that I have and
all that I may ever have shall be hers, for she has done everything for
me."
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"Certainly," said Cyprien, "and I embrace the good woman with my heart,"
mounting slowly as he said it, the four steps that led to their house.
Robert had gone in ahead of him and returned with Madame Gaudin, who
received the old soldier kindly, and feasted him as a friend, making his
lonely and bruised heart feel happier than it had for a long time. After
supper Robert asked him to tell them all that had happened him since they
last met.
"There is but one subject for me, my dear Robert," said he, "and that is my
emperor. I have so much joy and so much sorrow when I pronounce this
cherished name; I am so moved when I recall the days when fortune abandoned
him, that it is almost better for me not to revert to the subject; but,
since you wish it, I will commence. When we had seen the last of the Little
Corporal, and I found I could do nothing more for him, I commenced singing
his praises through the streets, even at the risk of being imprisoned; and
now he is dead," said he, with a melancholy air--"died on that lonely rock
where he was held a captive, and the only hope I have left is in heaven."
He looked so tired now that Robert made him go to bed, and before he was up
in the morning ran out and brought him suitable clothes, so that when he
awakened he found new ones instead of the rags he had laid on his bed. "I
want Cyprien to stay with me," said Robert, "for he has been a faithful
soldier, and I am young, and can work for us both;" but it was a difficult
matter to get his consent for this arrangement, and he had to tell him many
times that he would be so useful to him, and that he really needed him
before he would accept the offer. Finally he agreed to become an inmate of
the modest household. He mixed colors for the young painter, rendered
little services to Madame Gaudin, who did all she could to aid Robert to
make him happy. From this time God seemed to open to him the treasures of
the choicest favors, and to spread them in profusion on the head of the
young painter. Warmly recommended to the world by the great artist who had
been his master, esteemed for his excellent conduct, and justly appreciated
for his talent, which was now burning in all its lustre, he could look
forward to a happy future. His mother's prediction was being gradually
accomplished, and this aided him. Whenever he sat down to composing, he
first implored the assistance of God, with the firm belief that it would
not be refused; and it was not, for the blessed Lord crowns with benefits
those who serve him with love. Nothing gives courage like the certainty of
success; and, full of an indefatigable ardor for his art, he worked hard,
disdaining the vain pleasures of the world, and his labor was recompensed.
As he advanced in age, the love of his art consumed him the more, and in
place of the wild enthusiasm he felt at first he was filled with a deep and
serious sentiment, and wanted to study the old masters under the bright sky
of Italy. The only drawback he had ever had to his dreams of studying there
was the thought of leaving Madame Gaudin alone; but now that Cyprien was
with her, he would keep her company during his absence. He was too firmly
convinced of the old man's affection to doubt for a moment that he would
fail to fulfill any instructions he might give him; but before leaving
France he wished to visit his native mountain, and pray on the grave of his
mother. He was now twenty-one years of age, and had not forgotten the
package he was to receive when he attained his majority, and which he felt
sure contained some instructions from his well-beloved mother, which it
would he a pleasure for him to obey. After quieting his fears about Cyprien
and poor Madame Gaudin, he wiped away the tears of the good woman, embraced
her tenderly, and, after receiving Cyprien's promise to take good care of
the charge confided to his friendship, Robert set out for l'Auvergne.
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