Chapter IX.

"A man may lose in a moment

His glory, empire, and dazzling throne."

--Victor Hugo.

Robert, after having lingered long on the shores of Lake Geneva, in the

city and its environs, so rich in natural beauties, and having admired the

grandeur of the Alps, and, above all, Mount Blanc, the Jura, and Mount

Salère, arrived at Saint René, a small village at the foot of the Great St.

Bernard. This was the 20th of May, 1824.

The young painter wished to pass the night at the convent with the monks,

so he asked for a guide, but was told that they only started in the morning

to take travellers to that high point, and the innkeeper advised him to

wait until the next day; but he was not willing to take this advice, as

time was so precious to him that a day passed in inaction was an

irreparable loss. So be started out through the village to look for a

guide, but the man had told him the truth--there was not a guide to be

found. Robert expressed so much regret at his disappointment to a worthy

old man that he replied:

"If it were any other day Joseph would conduct monsieur better than anyone

else, for be was the oldest guide, but unfortunately he could not do it,

for it was the 20th of May, and this day he always spends at church in

praying for his benefactor. But if you will go to his house you can see

him; it is down there," at the same time pointing to a pretty little

cottage with a garden in front. "A famous history, monsieur, that of

Joseph, and if he goes up with you, be will tell it you, and I must not

take up more of your time."

"I am much obliged for your information, my good man, and will try and put

it to profit." Then he took the road toward the house, and soon reached it,

but imagine his disappointment to find it closed! As he was turning to

leave, he met a man of about fifty years of age, with a woman, still fresh

and beautiful, leaning on his arm, and they seemed to be absorbed in each

other; and in looking at them Robert forgot for a moment the guide he was

seeking. They stopped at the gate, and were about entering it when he

asked, "Is this the man Joseph of whom I was told--the guide up the

mountain?"

"At your service, sir," replied he. "I am the person; do you wish to be

taken there?"

"I do, but they told me at the village that you could not be induced to go

on the 20th of May, but I thought I would ask for myself, and I assure you

I will be very grateful if you can make this sacrifice in my favor, for I

have the greatest desire to pass the night with the good monks." His

amiable and polite manner had won the favor of the guide, but still he was

undecided. Robert, seeing his hesitation, begged him to give his consent.

"It seems a little late to start," said the guide, reflecting and looking

as if he did not care to go.

"Oh, we can walk fast," said Robert gayly.

"Well, I find I must give up to you," said he, half sadly, half smiling.

"Come in the house, sir, while I change my clothes, and you may flatter

yourself with having gained a victory. It has been many years since I put

my foot on the mountain on the anniversary of this great day. It has been

twenty-four years since then."

Robert was looking at a picture while he spoke, representing Napoleon

mounted on a mule, climbing up the Saint Bernard, escorted by a guide.

"Aye, aye," said Joseph with emphasis, "this is my history--that guide who

walks by the side of the first consul is me, I had the honor of conducting

him."

"Indeed," cried Robert, "oh! do tell me about it. If my poor Cyprien was

only here, how delighted he would be to hear of the emperor he loves so

much."

"Is this Cyprien one of his faithful soldiers, sir?"

{75}

"Yes, and he is more than that; he is one of those soldier heroes who would

give the last drop of their heart's blood for the emperor. I have had the

happiness, with God's aid, to have saved from misery this noble wreck of

imperial glory, for he was indeed miserable when he lost his emperor."

"Well, my good young man, that decides me at once, for, since you have

saved one of the old soldiers of the emperor, I can refuse you nothing, for

I loved him also, and had good reasons for so doing. We will start, and on

the way I will tell you to whom I am indebted for this pretty little house,

so good a wife, and children, that make all my joy. We must go rapidly, or

we will run the risk of a storm, for we have only time to arrive before

night, and in our mountains storms come up very suddenly." Then turning to

his wife, he embraced her and said, "Don't be uneasy, Margaret, I will

return to-morrow." They walked briskly, and soon left the village behind

them, and the guide commenced his history.

"Twenty-four years ago, our valley was not so peaceful as it now is. It was

invaded by French troops, whose tumult was rather a strange contrast to the

usual noise of the mountains--the roar of the tempest and the moving of

the avalanches. The guides all became worn out with fatigue, and one

morning I was ordered out. I did not receive the order with much pleasure,

but I was young, poor, and unfortunately in love with the most beautiful

girl in the valley. The officer whom I was to guide wore a three-cornered

hat, and enveloped in a sort of gray riding coat. He had with him two other

gentlemen, but be rode first, and I was at his side. He was rather

singular, and did not seem to know or care where he was, though we were

above frightful precipices which gave the bravest a vertigo, but he was as

tranquil as if on a lounge in his chamber. It seemed so strange to me that

he had no fear and was so silent. But after awhile he spoke to me,

questioned me about my life, my pleasures, my troubles. His manner was so

winning that I told him everything, and when on the chapter of my loves

told him I would die if I could not marry Margaret.

"Well," said he, smiling, "why not marry her then?"

"For a very simple reason," I replied. "I am poor and she is rich, and I

cannot obtain the prize until I have a house and garden."

He listened eagerly, then questioned me a great deal, and at last fell into

a a reverie, and remained silent and absorbed, until we arrived at the

convent, where the good monks came out to receive us. I did not pay much

attention to this, I was so chagrined. A little time after, the officer

came to me with a letter, which he directed me to take to the headquarters

of the army, on the other side of the mountain. I went and returned in the

evening from Saint Pierre with the answer. Imagine my surprise and

mortification when I found that the person with whom I had spoken so

familiarly was none other than the first consul, and his companions were

General Duroe and Secretary Bourrienne. I was terrified, thinking I should

be thrown into prison for daring to speak so familiarly to my superior.

What an end to my fears! The first consul gave me for my trouble a house,

garden, and money, so that all my dreams were in an instant realized. I

could now marry Margaret, and I was so completely overcome with joy that I

thought it was a miracle. This great man did all for me, and you can now

see why I love the emperor, and why all my happy remembrances are dated

from the 20th of May.

This was only one of the many kind acts of Napoleon during his glorious

life; and if we are electrified in reading of his high military deeds, how

much more touching are those simple charities which show the beauty of his

soul, and the goodness and generosity of his heart, that will ever render

his memory immortal.

{76}

Joseph had related with so much spirit and animation his astonishing

adventure, and Robert had listened with such eagerness, that neither

thought of hastening their steps. The guide had necessarily consumed more

time in relating it than we take, and night was fast coming on. The sun had

long gone down, and the guide listened uneasily to a kind of rolling noise

that sounded like distant thunder.

"The deuce!" he cried, "it will not be long before it is upon us. It is the

voice of the storm; don't you hear it? Oh! mercy! we have lost time, and I

have been the cause of it. O holy Virgin, come to our help!"

Robert could not conceive the cause of his fright, but, stopping to listen,

he felt the same terror. "O Lord my God, protect me!" was his simple

prayer, which gave him strength to follow the guide, and the consciousness

of danger gave them wings.

A violent wind filled the air with the snow that was loosened by the

mildness of the atmosphere, and it was so thick that they could scarcely

see. Then the tempest flapped its strongest wings, and moved huge masses of

snow, which threatened at each moment to ingulf them. These frightful

avalanches, these precipices, these abysses without bottom, these peaks

almost lost to sight, these eternal glaciers, and the imminent peril which

appeared on all sides, and presented, above all, the image of death; all

these sublime horrors, which freeze with fear the heart of guilty man,

Robert contemplated with joyous tranquillity. Before the awful majesty of

this grand scene, he adored God, whose powerful hand can raise the anger of

the elements or calm them at his pleasure. But the tempest increased so

much in fury that he was obliged to concentrate all his faculties to

preserve his equilibrium. The snow was blinding, and the guide, in terror

of making false steps that might plunge them into some abyss, went along

hesitatingly, lamenting and believing they were lost. More uneasy for the

guide than himself, in their alarming position, Robert tried to raise his

courage by speaking of his wife and children, when in an opening of the

path a large sign appeared.

"Oh! we are saved:" said the guide in a faltering voice, and, with a hand

made stronger by hope, rang a large bell, which had a clear, vibrating

sound.

This was the signal of distress that told the good monks that travellers

needed their help. But in the raging of the storm the sound of the bell is

not heard at the convent, and, numbed with cold and fatigue, Joseph swoons

on the snow. Robert tries to warm him and bring him back to consciousness,

but without avail, and at last he is seized with vertigo and dreadful

shiverings, and his numbed limbs refuse to take him further. But the

strength of his soul is greater than his body, and he falls breathing a

prayer to God. Not a sound but the noise of the elements is heard, and the

sliding of the snow that covers their inanimate bodies, and threatens to

leave no trace of them.

"O God! will you let the orphan, whom you have taken under the wings of

your love, perish in this mountain solitude? Will not his pious invocation

be carried to your throne by the angel of prayer?"

Listen! The liberators come; the snow is scratched away with precaution,

and they are found by the noble dogs, gifted with almost sublime instincts

which they consecrate to man, with a devotion and fidelity that puts to

shame many of the human species. Yes; it was "Help" and "Saviour" who had

found the spot where Robert and the guide lay, and breathed on their hands

and faces to try to relieve them; but, being unable to do it, they made the

mountain re-echo with their barks, which brought out the monks, whom they

guided to the spot. The bodies were then carried to the convent, and after

a few hours restored to consciousness; and the kind monks heartily gave

thanks that they were permitted to rescue from certain death two of their

fellow-beings. Could any mission be more noble than theirs; any devotion

more self-sacrificing?

{77}

Impossible; and in all the known world they are honored for their sublime

virtues, and acknowledged as noble martyrs of Christian charity.

Robert passed eight days at the convent, and on each one saw the touching

piety and indefatigable solicitude of the monks. The last few days he made

several excursions over the mountain, where perpetual winter reigns; and

was dazzled by the lustre of the immense glaciers, and the glory of his

lonely surroundings. He sometimes thought if he were not an artist he would

consecrate the remainder of his life to the practice of charity, but his

love of art was too strong, and sunny Italy held out such attractions that

be was lured on, carrying with him the benediction and good wishes of those

noble men who had brought him back to life.

------

From the Dublin Review

Lecky's History Of Rationalism.[Footnote 12]

[Footnote 12: History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of

Rationalism in Europe. By W. E. Lecky, M.A., London: Longmans, Green &

Co.]

It has been said by a very high authority that the study of history is

destined to assume a new aspect, from the application to it of a higher

order of minds and a more philosophical method of treatment. We are passing

out of the age of speciality into the age of generalization. Innumerable

observers have collected facts, and innumerable speculators have multiplied

theories; and we now seem to have arrived at that period when it becomes

the proper function of the thinker to co-ordinate the stores of knowledge

which have been set apart for him by others; evolve laws from the multitude

of instances; separate the truth from the falsehood of conflicting

theories; conjoin effects with their causes, and trace the half-revealed

and far-reaching relations between distant and apparently unconnected

phenomena. The influence of such a spirit--long felt in the less

complicated sciences--is now, even in England, beginning to act on those

which are more intricate. For history the time is rapidly passing away

during which a great but much erring thinker could say that it was the

unfortunate peculiarity of the history of man that, although its separate

parts had each been handled with considerable ability, hardly anyone had

hitherto attempted to combine them into a whole, or to ascertain the way in

which they are connected with each other. On the contrary, he said, a

strange idea prevailed among historians that their business was merely to

narrate events; so that, according to the notion of history in his day

prevalent, any writer who, from indolence of thought or from natural

incapacity, was unfit to deal with the highest branches of knowledge, had

only to pass some years in reading a certain number of books, and then he

was, _ipso facto_, qualified to be a historian. The time is fast

coming when those dreary and monotonous narratives of court intrigues and

party cabals will exist only to memorialize an age when the history of

kings was substituted for the history of nations, and the consideration of

the actions of a few individuals for the exposition of the life of the

whole social organization.

{78}

History is growing to be less of a chronicle and more of a science; her

office is no longer thought to be confined to the registration of a few

superficially prominent facts; but the discovery, by a scientific

induction, of historical laws, and the investigation of causes, is chiefly

aimed at; and, as the circumstances which have to be taken into account in

such a method of writing history are often dismissed by the older school of

writers as almost unworthy of notice, and are, moreover, exceedingly

numerous and of almost infinite complication, a far wider and more

diversified range of learning and a far greater power of analysis than were

formerly either required or expected are supposed in the historian.

It would be idle to imagine that the influence of this more philosophical

way of writing history will not extend, or has not extended, to theology.

One of its first results has been the unpremeditated vindication by

non-Catholic writers of the mediaeval church. And that naturally; for the

action of the church in the middle ages was founded on their social state,

and it was therefore only when history descended into the bosom of society

that she could receive a fuller meed of justice. The Catholic Church has

been more philosophically treated, and her primary attribute, that she is a

kingdom, more perfectly realized; while a flood of light has been thrown on

the historical character of Protestantism, and to that farrago of heresies

the conclusions arrived at have been almost uniformly unfavorable. Nor must

we suppose that it will affect only the treatment of the external history

of Christianity, and leave untouched the history of its dogmas. It has

effected, and will hereafter, to a still greater extent effect, that both

Catholic doctrines and heretical opinions will be studied not only, as

heretofore, in their objective aspect--with respect to their evidence and

connections one with another--but more and more in their subjective aspect,

as to their influence on the minds of those who hold them. We have, to a

great extent, yet to see the results of a profound and extensive study of

dogmas in this light; but to study them in this light is undoubtedly the

tendency of the present age. We have thus opened to us a field of

investigation almost new, and in its nature very different from the beaten

tracks in which controversialists have hitherto followed one another.

Whatever be the results that may be thus finally arrived at, there cannot

be a doubt but that they will be fraught with immense advantage to the

cause of truth; and in the course of any researches that may be made into

the subjective influence of individual dogmas a number of facts hitherto

but little attended to--will be brought forward from the most various

sources; so that it will exceedingly behove those who have to attend to the

defence of Christianity to make sure that these are truly alleged and

represented.

Mr. Lecky, as we have before noticed, endeavors to apply to religious the

more advanced method or secular history. He attempts to trace the

subjective influence of religious opinions, the manner in which they

mutually affected each other, and in which they acted or were reacted on by

the other influences of their time. He does not pay much attention to the

question of _evidence_, or to the arguments by which they were

supported, except in so far as the use of particular arguments or lines of

argument affords him some indication of the temper of the times of which he

writes. The very idea of his work--a history of religious

opinions--compelled him to attend to this rather than to the alleged

evidence of particular doctrines: the latter being the proper province of

the theologian as the former is of the historian. But from this necessary

one-sidedness of his work Mr. Lecky seems to have been led into a

corresponding one-sidedness of mind. Every one will grant that education,

disposition, the opinions, and, still more, the tone of those around us

make it exceedingly difficult to treat religious questions on the sole

ground of evidence; and Catholics are continually urging this against the

Protestants who, by their denial of the infallibility of the church,

multiply indefinitely the number of questions which have to be thus

decided; but Mr. Lecky goes further, and says that there really is not

sufficient evidence for us, situated as we are, to come to a reliable

conclusion at all.

{79}

It is natural, therefore, that he should now and then take occasion to sift

supposititious evidence and fallacious arguments; and in several places he

states with great force the nature and logical value of the reasons given

against some or other of the old doctrines now denied by Protestants. An

instance of this may be interesting to our readers; the subjoined passage

is taken from his second chapter On the Miracles of the Church:

"If we ask, what are the grounds on which the cessation the of miracles

is commonly maintained; they may, I suppose, be summed up such as

follows:

"Miracles, it is said, are the divine credentials of an inspired

messenger announcing doctrines which could not otherwise be established.

They prove that he is neither an imposter nor an enthusiast; that his

teaching is neither the work of a designing intellect nor of an

overheated imagination. From the nature of the case, this could not be

proved in any other way. ... Miracles are, therefore, no more improbable

than a revelation; for a revelation would be ineffectual without

miracles. But, while this consideration destroys the common objection to

the gospel miracles, it separates them clearly from those of the Church

of Rome. The former were avowedly exceptional; they were designed to

introduce a new religion, and to establish a supernatural message. The

latter were simply means of edification; they were directed to no object

that could not otherwise be attained, and they were represented as taking

place in a dispensation that was intended to be not of sight but of

faith. Besides this, miracles should be regarded as the most awful and

impressive manifestations of divine power. To make them habitual and

commonplace would be to degrade if not to destroy their character, which

would be still further abased if we admitted those which appear trivial

and puerile. The miracles of the New Testament were always characterized

by dignity and solemnity; they always conveyed some spiritual lesson, and

conferred some actual benefit, besides attesting the character or the

worker. The mediaeval miracles, on the contrary, were often trivial,

purposeless, and unimpressive; constantly verging on the grotesque, and

not unfrequently passing the border.

"Such is, I think, a fair epitome of the common arguments in favor of the

cessation of miracles; and they are undoubtedly very plausible and very

cogent; but, after all, what do they prove? Not that miracles have

ceased, but that, _supposing_ them to have ceased, there is nothing

surprising or alarming in the fact. ... This is the full extent to which

they can legitimately be carried. As an _à priori_ proof, they are

far too weak to withstand the smallest amount of positive testimony.

Miracles, it is said, are intended exclusively to accredit an inspired

messenger. But, after all, what proof is there of this? It is simply an

hypothesis, plausible and consistent it may be, but entirely unsupported

by positive testimony. Indeed, we may go further, and say that it is

distinctly opposed by your own facts. ... You must admit that the Old

Testament relates many miracles which will not fall under your canon. ...

But the ecclesiastical miracles, it is said, are often grotesque; and

appear _primâ facie_ absurd, and excite an irresistible repugnance.

A sufficiently dangerous test in an age when men find it more and more

difficult to believe any miracles whatever. A sufficiently dangerous test

for those who know the tone that has been long adopted, over an immense

part of Europe, toward such narratives as the deluge or the exploits of

Samson, the speaking ass or the possessed pigs! Besides this, a great

proportion of the ecclesiastical miracles are simply reproductions of

those which are recorded in the Bible; and if there are mingled with them

some that appear manifest impostures, this may be a very good reason for

treating these narratives with a more jealous scrutiny, but is certainly

no reason for maintaining that they are all below contempt. The Bible

neither asserts nor implies the revocation of supernatural gifts; and if

the general promise that these gifts should be conferred may have been

intended to apply only to the apostles, it is at least as susceptible of

a different interpretation. If these miracles were actually continued, it

is surely not difficult to discover the beneficial purpose which they

would fulfil. They would stimulate a languid piety; they would prove

invaluable auxiliaries to missionaries laboring among barbarous and

unreasoning savages, who, from their circumstances and habits of mind,

are utterly incapable of forming any just estimate of the evidences of

the religion they are called upon to embrace. .... To say that these

miracles are false because they are Roman Catholic is to assume the very

question at issue."--Vol. i. pp. 173-177.

{80}

There is nothing, indeed, that is particularly new in this reasoning; our

readers must have frequently seen or heard it urged against Protestants;

but it is valuable in Mr. Lecky's history, as showing the view taken of the

ordinary Protestant arguments by the higher class of anti-Catholic writers.

In a similar manner he disposes of the vulgar arguments against magic and

sorcery in a passage which, however, is, we regret to say, too long for

quotation (Vol. i. pp. 9-16). He there concludes by saying that the

evidence on that subject is so vast and so varied, that it is impossible to

disbelieve it without what, on any other subject, we should consider the

most extraordinary rashness. The subject was examined in tens of thousands

of cases, in almost every country in Europe, by tribunals which included

the acutest lawyers and ecclesiastics of the age, on the scene and at the

time when the alleged acts had taken place, and with the assistance of

innumerable sworn witnesses. As condemnation would be followed by a fearful

death, and the accused were, for the most part, miserable beings whose

destruction can have been an object to no one, the judges can have had no

sinister motives in convicting, and had, on the contrary, the most urgent

reasons for exercising their power with the utmost caution and

deliberation. The accusations were often of such a character that all must

have known the truth or falsehood of what was alleged. _The evidence is

essentially cumulative._ Some cases, it is added, may be explained by

monomania, others by imposture, others by chance coincidences, and others

by optical delusions; but, when we consider the multitudes of strange

statements that were sworn to and registered in legal documents, he

confesses that it is very difficult to frame a general rationalistic

explanation which will not involve an extreme improbability.

And now, passing to another subject, even Catholics may find in the

following passage something worthy of being dwelt on:

"The world is governed by its ideals, and seldom or never has there been

one which has exercised a more profound and on the whole a more salutary

influence than the mediaeval conception of the Virgin. For the first time

woman was elevated to her rightful position, and the sanctity of weakness

was recognized as well as the sanctity of sorrow. No longer the slave or

toy of man, no longer associated only with ideas of degradation and of

sensuality, woman rose, in the person of the Virgin Mother, into a new

sphere, and became the object of a reverential homage of which antiquity

had had no conception. Love was idealized. The moral charm and beauty of

female excellence was for the first time felt. A new type of character

was called into being; a new kind of admiration was fostered. Into a

harsh and ignorant and benighted age this ideal type infused a type of

gentleness and of purity unknown to the proudest civilizations of the

past. In the pages of living tenderness which many a monkish writer has

left in honor of his celestial patron; in the millions who, in many lands

and in many ages, have sought with no barren desire to mould their

character into her image; in those holy maidens who, for the love of

Mary, have separated themselves from all the glories and pleasures of the

world, to seek in fastings and vigils and humble charity to render

themselves worthy of her benediction; in the new sense of honor, in the

chivalrous respect, in the softening of manners, in the refinement of

tastes displayed in all the walks of society; in these and in many other

ways we detect its influence. All that was best in Europe clustered

around it, and it is the origin of many of the purest elements of our

civilization,"--Vol. i. pp. 234-235.

"But," he is pleased to add, "the price, and perhaps the necessary price,

of this was the exaltation of the Virgin as an omnipresent deity of

infinite power as well as of infinite condescension." Here we have an

example of the extraordinary mistakes which are occasionally made by Mr.

Lecky. We by no means accuse him of intentional misrepresentation; and in a

work of nearly a thousand pages, of which there is scarcely a page without

a note, and scarcely a note without six or seven references or quotations,

it was impossible but that some inaccuracies should creep in. But he

unfortunately often uses a looseness and generality of reference which

makes his notes almost useless to anyone desirous of verifying them, and

his inaccuracies, some of which bear with them an appearance of great

carelessness, are incredibly frequent; while we desiderate in him that

fulness of theological knowledge which a writer ought to possess who

criticises dogmatic systems so dogmatically as he does.

{81}

In the present case he actually seems to think that the Blessed Virgin was

regarded as an omnipresent deity because it was believed that she could

hear prayers anywhere addressed to her. But the teaching of Catholic

theologians makes a very great difference between the omnipresence of God

and the manner in which the Blessed Virgin and the saints are cognizant of

the prayers poured out to them on earth. The Scotists ordinarily teach that

God reveals to the saints in glory whatever it is expedient that they

should know; the Thomists that they see in the vision of God the prayers

and the necessities of men; some have urged the elevation and expansion of

even their natural faculties consequent on their entrance into the state of

glory; but none have ever supposed them to be present, as God is, to the

whole created universe. Mr. Lecky, proceeds to state that before the belief

that a finite spirit could hear prayer wherever offered was firmly

established, it was believed that at least they hovered round the places

where their relics had been deposited, and there, at least, attended to the

prayers of their suppliants. In support of this assertion he quotes the

following words as from St. Jerome: "Ergo cineres suos amant animae

martyrum, et circumvolant eos, semperque praesentes sunt; ne forte si

aliquis precator advenerit absentes audire non possint," to which he gives

the extraordinary reference, "Epistolae, 1. iii. c. 13." These words indeed

occur in St. Jerome; but they occur as the sarcasm of an opponent which St.

Jerome gives only in order to refute it. The passage is quoted from

Vigilantius in St. Jerome's book against that heretic; but the saint

himself calls it a "portent worthy of hell," and argues, in reply to the

idea expressed in it, that we cannot set laws to God; that the martyrs

follow the Lamb wheresoever he goeth; that the demons wander over the whole

world; and are the martyrs to be shut up in a box? As to the Blessed Virgin

being regarded as a deity of infinite power and infinite condescension,

those Catholic writers who in their devotional writings have spoken the

most strongly of her power, have merely said that God will never refuse her

anything she asks, and that she will never ask anything inconsistent with

his Providence. Mr. Lecky shows in many other places the grossest ignorance

of Catholic theology. He quotes, in evidence of the present belief of the

Roman Church in demoniacal possession, a ritual which, he says, "is used in

the diocese of Tarbes." He need not have gone to an obscure provincial

ritual for proof of his assertion; he will hardly find any Catholic

theologian who denies it; and the most used, and best known of our modern

theological writers has devoted a special chapter to the subject (Perrone,

De Deo Creatore, Part I., c. v.) The doctrine of punishment by a material

fire "still lingers," he tells us, "in the Roman Catholic manuals for the

poor." If by this he meant that it does not remain also among theologians,

this is not true; Perrone, one of the most moderate, calls it, "sententia

communiter reccpta." (De Deo Creatore, Part III., c. vi. a. 3.)

In the latter part of his chapter "on the Developments of Rationalism," Mr.

Lecky has put forward an opinion that the doctrine of the material

character of the penal fire is closely connected with the ancient opinion,

that the soul is in some sense material. The doctrine of a material fire

became, he says, the foundation of all opinion that the soul is of a

material nature; and he refers to Tertullian, citing De Anima, c. viii.

This assertion is, however, utterly without foundation. It nowhere appears

that this was the chief foundation on which this error was rested. Far from

making this material conception of punishment the chief ground of his

argument, Tertullian, in the passage quoted by Mr. Lecky, does not argue

from the materiality of the fire at all.

{82}

What he does argue from is the corporeal manner in which Abraham, Dives,

and Lazarus, are represented in the Gospel; from Abraham's bosom the tongue

or Dives, and the finger of Lazarus; and he mentions the "ignis" merely in

an incidental manner, and not to argue from its material nature, but to

found his reasoning on the general proposition that whatever is susceptible

of "fovela" or of "passio" must be corporeal. It is, of course, quite

conceivable that a writer, who believed the soul to be of a material

nature, might argue from the commonly received opinion of a material fire;

but the origin of this opinion was in fact quite different. Some of those

who held it even believed the "fire" of hell to be metaphorical. But before

the advent of Christianity the minds of the people had been constantly and

persistently directed to the sensible and the material; from the ranks of

the people Christianity was recruited; and it is not wonderful if somewhat

of their former habits of thought clung to those who were converted. It was

only by degrees, and after a patient and silent opposition to prevailing

habits of thought, that Christianity succeeded in spiritualizing religious

conceptions; and the time which elapsed before this had been effected--a

period of more than three hundred years--was one of no little confusion in

this regard. But no one seems to have been led into the error of supposing

the human soul to be material by the notion of a material fire. Some

believed this to be the case because they could not see how it could

possibly be otherwise; they were unable to rise to the idea of a spirit,

properly so called; they could not conceive anything to be real, and not

material. That this was the case, in particular, with Tertullian, cannot be

doubted, whether we consider his way of speaking in the whole book _De

Anienâ_, in the book _Adv. Praxeam_, c. xi., and in the _De Carne

Christi_, c. xi., or the pre-eminently sensuous and realistic character

of his mind. The Platonic philosophy was another foundation of this opinion

respecting the human soul. Some writers who were especially attached to

Platonism, as Origen, explained the Platonic doctrine of emanation as

meaning that God alone is a pure Spirit, all beings proceeding from God

having a trace of materiality greater or less as they are more or less

removed from him. They therefore believed all created spirits to be in some

sense material; and forms of expression which may seem properly to belong

to this opinion remained, as is often the case, long after the opinion

itself had vanished. But the source of the whole error was, as is evident,

the materialized method of conception of pre-Christian times.

But Mr. Lecky goes much further than this. He tells us that this opinion of

the materiality of the human soul--which, if we except at most two or

three writers, had certainly died out in the sixth, if not in the fifth

century--was the dominant opinion in the middle ages:

"Under the influence of mediaeval habits of thought, every spiritual

conception was materialized, and what at an earlier and a later period

was generally deemed the language of metaphor, was universally regarded

as the language of fact. The realizations of the people were all derived

from paintings, sculpture, or ceremonies that appealed to the senses, and

all subjects were therefore reduced to palpable images. The angel in the

last judgment was constantly represented weighing the souls in a literal

balance, while devils clinging to the scales endeavored to disturb the

equilibrium. Sometimes the soul was portrayed as a sexless child, rising

out of the mouth of the corpse. But, above all, the doctrine of purgatory

arrested and enchained the imagination. ... Men who believed in a

physical soul readily believed in a physical punishment, men who

materialized their view of the punishment, materialized their view of the

sufferers.

"We find, however," he proceeds, "some time before the reformation,

evident signs of an endeavor on the part of a few writers to rise to a

purer conception of the soul." And he goes on to attribute this to "the

pantheistic writings that flowed from the school of Averrhoes;" and to

ascribe to the Cartesian philosophy "the final downfall of the

materialistic hypothesis." Vol. i. pp. 373-378.

{83}

It is not too much to say that the whole of this is entirely unsupported by

evidence. Anyone who likes to glance over the Coimbricenses _De

Animâ_, the beginning of the second book of the Sentences, the questions

_De Animâ_ in the Summa of St. Thomas, the recapitulation of the

scholastic theology on that subject in the third volume of Suarez, or the

very earliest treatises _De Angelis_, will see that, far from there

being merely "a few writers" who maintained the spirituality of the soul,

the notion of immateriality was as well defined in the dominant scholastic

philosophy as ever it was by Descartes; whose doctrine that the essence of

the soul is thought, was clearly stated by the scholastics in the sense

that intellection can only belong to the spiritual, and not to the material

and the extended. [Footnote 13] The manner in which the Scholastics

explained the punishment of a spiritual being by a material fire affords us

a test-question on this subject. _Did_ their "intense realization" of

this doctrine lead them to infer the materiality of the soul? Certainly

not. On the contrary; _because_ all thoroughly realized the

spirituality of the soul, all felt this difficulty regarding the manner of

its punishment; but, although there was sufficient diversity among them as

to its explanation, not one had recourse to the materialistic hypothesis.

[Footnote 13: See St. Thomas Contra Gentiles, 1.2, c. 49, 50, 51, 65,

cf. 66, where an immense number of arguments, in great part, of course,

drawn from the philosophy of the day, is heaped up to prove the

spirituality of the soul.]

Nor is Mr. Lecky correct in stating that the Arabian philosophy had a

spiritualizing influence on philosophy and theology. That philosophy

eminently favored the "_multiplicatio entium sine necessitate_," than

which nothing is more unspiritualizing. Some of those who held it expounded

the doctrine of matter and form in a manner dangerous to the spirituality

of the soul. [Footnote 14] They held the perilous doctrine of emanation,

and it would be quite a mistake to suppose that the description of error

which they taught had any conformity of spirit with the poetical and

sentimental pantheistic theories of the present day.

[Footnote 14: See St. Thomas, Op. de Angelis, cap 5.]

It is chiefly from the character of the then religious art, which (of

course) represented spiritual subjects by material symbols, that Mr. Lecky

argues that the middle ages materialized all spiritual conceptions. Thus,

in a note to p. 232, vol. 1., he speaks thus:

"The strong desire natural to the middle ages to give a palpable form to

the mystery of the Incarnation, was shown curiously in the notion of a

conception by the ear. In a hymn, ascribed to St. Thomas à Becket, occur

the lines:--

"Ave Virgo, Mater Christi,

Quae per aurem concepisti,

Gabriele nuntio."

And in an old glass window, now I believe in one of the museums of Paris,

the Holy Ghost is represented hovering over the Virgin in the form of a

dove, while a ray of light passes from his beak to her ear, along which

ray an infant Christ is descending."--Langlois, _Peinture sur

Verre_, p. 157.

And our readers will remember remarks of a like bearing in the quotation

last given. Such criticisms are, however, to us merely evidence of so many

curious misapprehensions. They merely show that an acquaintance with the

history of religious art is but a very inadequate preparation for writing

the history of religious dogmas. It is perfectly impossible to represent

spiritual things in painting and sculpture otherwise than by material

images. Nothing is more common than so to represent them even among

Protestants of the present day; nothing was more common in the Old

Testament, the very stronghold of the ancient anthropomorphites. We feel no

inclination to deny that it is exceedingly difficult for the poor and the

ignorant to rise to the conception of a spirit, and almost all mankind

represent to themselves even the very Deity under some refined material

image; but when such representations occupied a prominent position in

public worship, there was an opportunity, and that frequently made use of,

of correcting an untruthful imagination.

{84}

We have no hesitation in saying that there is far more unconscious

anthropomorphism among the Protestant than among the Catholic poor. The

doctrines of revelation make known a world akin to, yet not the same as,

this; they tell of an order of things itself unseen, but possessing

counterparts and shadows here. It is, therefore, not wonderful that there

exists a constant tendency to forget that these are but imperfect types and

symbols, and to remodel the truths of faith into conformity with what we

see around us. To correct this tendency is one of the functions of the

science of theology; and the conclusions of theology, infiltrating among

the people, keep them from sinking into earthly and anthropomorphic views

of religion, these conclusions being communicated by the ordinary resources

in the hands of the church, which, certainly, are far more efficacious in

the Catholic than in the Protestant system. Indeed, of all the reproaches

which have been directed against the theology of the middle ages, that of

being in its spirit gross and material is one of the most unfounded and the

most unjust. With far greater truth might such a reproach be directed

against the Protestant theology of the last three centuries. In the middle

ages, theology had a code and a standard of her own; she was the queen of

the sciences; she regulated and moulded the ideas of the time. Now,

condemned to occupy a subordinate position, she is content to take her

ideas from those current in the world, and to use her terms, not in their

proper and theological signification, but in the meanings derived from the

manner of their present use in physical science and in common life. An

example of this occurs in the case of the word _person_, the loss of

the theological meaning of which among Protestants has confused, if not

obliterated, the doctrine of the Trinity. In Protestantism, the belief of

the people lives chiefly by a tradition propagated through no recognized

theological channel; a tradition which, consequently, daily grows more

feeble and less definite; which is continually becoming more and more

corrupted, more low, and earthly, and anthropomorphous. Look at the common

Protestant idea of the happiness of the blessed. The great Catholic

doctrine which places the essence of the beatitude of man, not in a

prolongation and refinement of the pleasures of this world, not even in the

sight of Christ's humanity, but in that vision of God as God which is

emphatically called beatific, had almost faded out of sight. They look

forward to an earthly millennium, which is little better than a

glorification of commerce, material prosperity, and natural virtue, to be

succeeded by a heaven of which the joys very much resemble those which some

Catholic theologians with Suarez [Footnote 15] assign to infants who die

without baptism. But against the reproach of lowness and materialism of

conception being ever directed against the theologians of mediaeval times,

the doctrine of the beatific vision, which they so fully and so beautifully

evolved, stands a perpetual protest. For in what was this coarseness and

lowness of thought more likely to appear, than in their conception of the

greatest happiness of man? Or who were more likely to teach what is far

removed from vulgar and worldly conceptions than men who placed the sum of

all happiness in the vision and fruition of divine essence, which,

according to them, could be seen by no corporal eye, [Footnote 16] and in

which was, they said, that joy which eye had not seen nor ear heard,

neither had it entered into the heart of man to conceive? The whole of the

scholastic treatise _De Deo Uno_ is but another magnificent protest

against such an accusation.

{85}

The heresy of Gilbert Porretanus [Footnote 17] would never be condemned by

the Protestants of the present day; nor has ever the conception of the

divine simplicity in perfection been so fully realized as it was by those

much-abused theologians. The mediatorship of our blessed Lord is now

commonly apprehended by Protestants in a manner which makes a real

difference of character between the father and son; but no one who knows

anything of the scholastic doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation can

imagine that these theologians would have tolerated for a moment a notion

so frightfully heretical. With respect to psychology, the scholastic age

saw the death of Traducianism; and anyone who has attended to the earlier

scholastic opinions respecting the manner in which spirits suffer in the

penal fire, will have seen that they are of a more "spiritual" tendency

than those of most Protestant theologians. [Footnote 18]

[Footnote 15: De Peccato Originall.]

[Footnote 16: St. Thomas, in ima & q.12, a. 3; and other older authors

in Sent. i. 1, d.1, & l. 4, d.49]

[Footnote 17: Lombardus in Sent. i. 1, d.33, 34; and the commentators

_ad loc_.]

[Footnote 18: Sensation and "sensitive imagination" appeared to the

scholastic to be of sole material a character, that they would not

admit that these and other sensitive affections can exist in a separate

spirit; and, consequently, those theologians who explain the punishment

of separate spirits by the analogy of the soul and body, were compelled

to admit that the pain must be different in kind from the "passio

conjuncti."]

Mr. Lecky's criticisms on the opinion that the penal fire is literal and

material, and on the supposed general materialism of religious conception

in the middle ages, have led us into somewhat of a digression. We have yet,

however, one more remark to make. While he concedes that after the time of

Averrhoes "a few writers" endeavored to rise to a more spiritual manner of

conceiving the truths of faith, he asserts that in the preceding period,

before his influence and that of such sects as the Beguins had begun to be

felt, the state of things was infinitely worse. From the sixth to the

twelfth century materialism in religion was absolutely dominant. That the

period preceding the advent of the scholastic epoch was one of great

depression of theological science, cannot be doubted; and the amount of

what may in a general way be called anthropomorphism current at any period

is to a great extent conditioned by the want of general cultivation. But it

is very easy to overrate this depression. The episcopal and synodical

letters, for instance, which were exchanged concerning the subject of

adoptionism do not present to us theological science at, by any means, a

low ebb. The same may be said respecting the controversy in the ninth

century on the Eucharist; and the controversy on Predestination, if it do

not reveal any large amount of historical learning, at least exhibits

considerable activity of mind. Such of the writings of authors of that

period as the present writer has looked into, show an amount of learning

and acuteness which was certainly unexpected by him. That period was

necessarily uncritical; but we regard the taste for allegorizing, then as

formerly prevalent, to be an indication of something very different from a

degraded and material habit of thought. The great teacher of the

pre-scholastic age was St. Augustine, one of the most spiritual of the

fathers; and the writer who was chosen to supplement him was St. Gregory

the Great, who went farther than, and improved on, St. Augustine himself.

And, as to the religious art of that period, Mr. Lecky has himself alluded

to a peculiarity which, strangely enough, seems to have given him no

disquietude as to his general conclusion. In that period, he says:

"We do not find the smallest tendency to represent God the Father.

[Footnote 19] Scenes, indeed, in which he acted were frequently depicted,

but the First Person of the Trinity was invariably superseded by the

Second. Christ, in the dress and with the features appropriated to him in

the representations of scenes from the New Testament, and often with the

monogram underneath his figure, is represented creating man, condemning

Adam and Eve to labor, ... or giving the law to Moses. With the exception

of a hand sometimes extended from the cloud, and occasionally encircled

with a nimbus, we find in this period no traces in art of the Creator.

{86}

At first we can easily imagine that a purely spiritual conception of the

Deity, and also the hatred that was inspired by the type of Jupiter,

would have discouraged artists from attempting such a subject, and

Gnosticism, which exercised a very great influence over Christian art,

and which emphatically denied the divinity of the God of the Old

Testament, tended in the same direction; but it is very unlikely that

these reasons can have had any weight between the sixth and the twelfth

centuries. For the more those centuries are studied, the more evident it

becomes that the universal and irresistible tendency was then to

materialize every spiritual conception, to form a palpable image of

everything that was reverenced, to reduce all subjects within the domain

of the senses."--(Vol. i. pp. 224-5.)

[Footnote 19: We cannot ourselves, as Catholics, admit that there is

necessarily the smallest impropriety or inexpediency in picture or

sculptured representations of God the Father (See Denzinger, n. 1182

and 1482); yet we may fairly argue that the absence of such, at the

period in question, disproves Mr. Lecky's assertion that the dominant

tendency of that period was anthropomorphous.]

The most celebrated of the theologians of the middle ages is undoubtedly

St. Thomas Aquinas. St. Thomas, however, comes in for an extra share of

misrepresentation. At p. 72, vol. ii., we read of him, that he was one of

the ablest writers of the fourteenth century--he died in the thirteenth--

and that "he assures us that diseases and tempests are the direct acts of

the devil, that he can transport men at his pleasure through the air," and

that "omnes angeli, boni, et mali, ex naturali virtute habent potestatem

transmutandi corpora nostra." Now all this is precisely what St. Thomas

denies. In the first place, anyone would imagine from the manner in which

our author writes, that the great mediaeval theologian imagined that, in

the ordinary course of things, diseases and tempests are produced by

Satanic agency. St. Thomas never taught any such thing, but over and over

again refers both the one and the other to natural causes. [Footnote 20]

[Footnote 20: V.g., Comm. in Ps. xvii., and in Arist. Meteor. i. 2,

lect xvi.; cf. Summa, i. 2, q. 50, a. 2.]

Mr. Lecky ought to have written "may be;" but the meaning of the words

would have been very different, and their point would have been taken away.

Secondly, while St. Thomas teaches, in accordance with Holy Writ, that the

demons can exercise power over material things, he also teaches that they

cannot directly change the qualities of things, nor produce any

preternatural change except local motion: nor that at their pleasure; for

it is a principle with him that God does not permit them to do all that

which they have _per se_ the power of doing. [Footnote 21]

[Footnote 21: Questiones de Malo, q. 16, art. 9, etc.; Questiones de

Potentia Dei, q 6. art. 5.]

Thirdly, as to their natural power of transmuting our bodies. We have not

been able to find the exact words quoted above, but many similar phrases

occur in the _objections_ in the ninth article of the _Quaestio de

Daemonibus_, which, it is sufficient to say, St. Thomas solves by

saying:

But on the other hand, St. Augustine [Footnote 22] says "Non solum animam

sed nec corpus quidem nulla ratione crediderim daemonom arte vel

potestate in brutalia lineamenta poese converti." ... I reply that, as

the apostle says, "all things made by God in order," whence, as St.

Augustine says, "the excellence of the universe is the excellence of

order. ... and therefore Satan always uses natural agents as his

instruments in the production of physical effects, and can so produce

effects which exceed the efficacy of the natural agents; [Footnote 23]

but he cannot cause the form of the human body to be changed into that of

an animal, because this would be contrary to the order established by

God; and all such conversions are, therefore, as Augustine shows in the

place quoted, according to phantastical appearance rather than truth.

[Footnote 22: De Civ. Dei. 1. 18, c. 88.]

[Footnote 23: I.e., which exceeds their ordinary effects, because he

can use them more skillfully (cf. ad. 11).]

At p. 350 of vol. I., Mr. Lecky tells us that the mediaeval writers taught

that God would make the contemplation of the sufferings of the lost an

essential elements in the happiness of the blessed. He does not know of

what he writes. It was taught that the essential element in their happiness

--the _Essentia Beatitudinis_,--is the vision of God; all else

accessory and subordinate. In a note to justify his assertion, he adds

these words:--"St. Thomas Aquinas says, 'Beati in regno coelesti videbunt

poenas damnatorum ut beatitudo illis magis complaceat.'" The quotation is

not accurate.

{87}

After quoting Isaias, ult. 24, be says, "Respondeo dicendum ad primam

questionem quòd a beatis nihil subtrahi debet quod _ad perfectionem

beatitudinis_ eorum pertineat: _unumquodque autem ex comparatione

contrarii magis cognoscitur_, quia contraria juxta se posita magis

elucescunt; et ideò, ut beatitudo sanctorum eis magis complaceat, _et de

eá uberiores gratias Deo agant_, datur eis ut poenam impiorum perfecte

intueantur." [Footnote 24] The passage of St. Thomas, as given by Mr.

Lecky, is just one of those which may very well bear either of two

meanings. It might mean something very repulsive and very cruel. But the

unmutilated passage can bear but one interpretation. St. Thomas does not

say that they rejoice in the sufferings themselves; but that they are

permitted to see them, in order that they may feel yet more intensely how

precious is their own beatitude, and thank God the more heartily for their

own escape.

[Footnote 24: supplementum ad tertiam partem Summa, q.94, a. 1.]

In a note to his chapter on the Industrial History of Rationalism, Mr.

Lecky charges St. Thomas with what is nothing less than moral obliquity.

The Duchess of Brabant, he says, had a scruple of conscience about

tolerating the Jews. She therefore consulted St. Thomas; "who replied,

among other things that the Jews were doomed to perpetual servitude, and

that all their property being derived from usury might lawfully be taken

from them." Mr. Lecky is inaccurate both as to the confiscation of their

property and as to the perpetual servitude. St. Thomas does not say that

all their property was derived from usury, and it would, indeed, have been

rather a rash judgment in him to say so. But the Duchess of Brabant had

apparently desired to impose new burdens on the Jews, and in writing to St.

Thomas had stated that all their property seemed to be derived from usury;

to which he replied, that _if this were so_, they might lawfully be

compelled to make restitution. Nor does this by any means imply that all

their property was to be taken away from them, as appears from St. Thomas's

letter among his opuscula, [Footnote 25] and from his general doctrine

respecting restitution. [Footnote 26] With respect to the perpetual

servitude what St. Thomas does say is this: "_Although according to the

laws_ the Jews be, or were, through their own fault doomed to perpetual

servitude, and thus princes could appropriate their possessions as their

own, yet this is to be understood leniently, so that the necessaries of

life be by no means taken from them. _But since we ought, as the apostle

declares, to walk honestly in the sight of those who are without, of Jews

and Gentiles, and the Church of God, as the laws declare, compulsory

service is not to be required of them, which they were not wont to perform

in time past._" He goes on to say that if ill-gotten goods were taken

from the Jews, it would be unlawful for her to retain them, but they would

have to be restored to those from whom they had been unjustly taken; and

even under these conditions he declines to sanction any proceeding against

them, but only "si nihil aliud obsistat." Mr. Lecky also quotes, he says,

the Histriones of St. Thomas. What the Histriones of St. Thomas are, we

have not, we confess, the most remote idea.

[Footnote 25: Opusc. xxii, in calce Opusculi de Regimine Principum.]

[Footnote 26: Summa, 2, 2, q. 61-62, etc.]

Mr. Lecky professes to give the analyses of various theological beliefs and

tones of thought which have prevailed in other times. Of these, however, he

has had but little or no practical experience. He consequently puts before

us only certain restricted points of view, which have strongly impressed

themselves on his mind in the course of his studies and meditations. We are

hurried along by his words as by a flood; but while the effects which some

particular doctrine possibly _might_ produce if it were held alone are

vividly set before us, he totally loses sight of those other doctrines,

which were organically connected with it, and modified and regulated its

action. To evade one difficulty be falls into another: he concentrates his

gaze on a point that he may see more clearly; but, confining it there,

loses sight of those harmonies and contrasts, which make up the beauty of

the whole. In one direction this defect has had very great influence.

{88}

"Veritas" is, it is said, "in medio;" the present age has gone wrong all on

one side; and Mr. Lecky, who is an advanced disciple of the present age,

consequently considers that preceding ages have gone wrong all on the

other. He sees that there is a very great difficulty in adequately

realizing phases of thought so very different from those which now prevail.

And, because of this, he expends his strength on the points of difference,

neglecting for their sake things nearer to his apprehension; and the very

natural consequence is that he gives us a distorted and exaggerated picture

in which the common elements are not sufficiently brought out.

An instance of this occurs in his treatment of the subject of eternal

punishment. The general organization and want of order which pervades his

work is quite insufficient to account for the pertinacity with which he

again and again recurs to the subject. Like the whole anti-Christian party,

and very naturally, he detests the doctrine with his whole spirit; and he

allows this detestation to color his whole views of the middle ages. He

attributes to its influence whatever he finds, or imagines himself to have

found, of a hard, cruel, and repulsive character in their theory and

practice. He begins by misrepresenting the character of the doctrine

itself. He separates it from the conditioning doctrines which were taught

along with it, and which regulated and directed its influence. He dwells

almost entirely on the terrible side of the then existing Christianity, and

almost altogether neglects the operation of the concurring principle of

love, the opposite pole of the Christian motives. And then he concludes

that to its influence was due the severity of punishments in the middle

ages. A universal terrorism was produced. The sense of the divine mercy was

destroyed. The sufferings of the lost were at first regarded with horror;

but as men became more used to the thing, the horror was changed to

indifference, and the indifference to a barbarous delight in the

contemplation and even the infliction of pain. It will not require many

arguments to show that such a method of treatment is monstrous. Mr. Lecky

ought to have noticed that the causes which in the middle ages led to

peculiar stress being laid on the doctrine of eternal punishment, were

causes external to, and mostly in direct opposition, to the church; and

that their tendency was met by a corresponding realization of an opposite

pole of Christian feeling.

We cannot better introduce what

we have to say on the severity of punishments,

and the alleged callousness

of disposition in mediaeval times, and,

indeed, on Mr. Lecky's whole criticism

of the subject of eternal punishment,

than by a passage from a most able

writer:

"One of the effects of civilization (not to say one of the ingredients in

it) is, that the spectacle, and even the very idea, of pain, is kept more

and more out of sight of those classes who enjoy in their full the

benefits of civilization. The state of perpetual personal conflict,

rendered necessary by the circumstances of former times, and from which

it was hardly possible for any person, in whatever rank of society, to be

exempt, necessarily habituated everyone to the spectacle of harshness,

rudeness, and violence, to the struggle of one indomitable will against

another, and to the alternate suffering and infliction of pain. These

things, consequently, were not as revolting even to the best and most

actively benevolent men of former days, as they are to our own; and we

find the recorded conduct of those men frequently such as would be

universally considered very unfeeling in a person of our own day. They,

however, thought less of the infliction of pain, because they thought

less of pain altogether. When we read of actions of the Greeks and

Romans, or of our own ancestors, denoting callousness to human suffering,

we must not think that those who committed these actions were as cruel as

we must become before we could do the like. The pain which they

inflicted, they were in the habit of voluntarily undergoing from slight

causes; it did not appear to them as great an evil as it appears, and as

it really is, to us, nor did it in any way degrade their minds."

[Footnote 27]

[Footnote 27: J.S. Mill, Dissertations and Discussions; Art

Civilization.]

{89}

The scale, in fact, according to which degrees of pain were computed, was

much less minute then than now. This arose from the imperfect subdivision

of labor in society, and the consequently more frequently recurring

necessity of personally putting forth powers of endurance and of action;

from the continual wars and commotions; from the imperfection of the

mechanical appliances which now alleviate suffering; from a sterner and

rougher manner of living, necessitated by the undeveloped state of the

social arts; from the intimate intermingling of the civil and the military

life, arising out of the feudal system; and from a multitude of other

causes. To these, however, we must add another of far more potent

influence. The inchoate mediaeval nations were only emerging from a state

of barbarism; and the associations of that barbarism still tenaciously

clung to them in the gloomy superstitions common among northern nations, in

cruel ordeals, in internecine warfare, in the whole texture of their social

and national traditions. The causes referred to by Mr. Mill were in

operation almost as much in the civilization of Greece and Rome as in the

middle ages; but this circumstance, which is one on which we need not

dilate, increased, and must have increased, to an enormous extent the

activity of the tendencies on which be remarks. If indeed, there were two

nations exactly alike in every particular, except that the one believed

eternal punishment and set small store by pain, so as severely and even

barbarously to punish offenses, while the other did neither of these

things--we should in that case plausibly assert a direct causal connexion

between holding the eternity of future punishment and a hardness and

callousness of temper. But we cannot argue in this free and easy manner,

where the instances from which we have to make our induction are so

multifariously different as are the social condition of the present day and

the social condition of mediaeval times. We must not thus arbitrarily

single one from out of a multitude of causes. Reasoning from the known

principles of human nature, we can say with all confidence that the causes

just enumerated must have operated, and operated very powerfully, to

produce many and severe punishments, the carelessness for and of suffering,

the trials by ordeal and by torture, which existed at the period of which

we write. And thus we also see that those representations of the torments

of the lost, on which Mr. Lecky expends such a vast amount of rhetoric,

must have produced these effects immeasurably less than they would now

produce; far more powerful means had to be resorted to then to produce an

amount of feeling for which gentler methods now suffice.

Nor has Mr. Lecky fairly represented the doctrine of eternal punishment in

itself. To contemplate the infliction of pain naturally produces, he says,

a callousness and hardness of feeling. This statement embodies only a half

truth, and the reasoning founded on it is in the highest degree fallacious.

When the Catholics of ancient times contemplated the anguish of the lost,

the habits which they endeavoured to form were habits of horror for the sin

which entailed that anguish. There is a great difference between thus

actively contemplating suffering, and beholding it merely in a passive

manner, and with a view to some other end. The surgical operator, the

public executioner, the soldier, who look at it in this latter light, may

and do in time become hardened and indifferent. But it is far otherwise in

the former case; and there is a great difference between reflecting on the

pains of others, and reflecting on the pains which may one day be our own.

It is reasonable and natural to suppose, and is found to be in reality the

case, that one who contemplates the sufferings of others merely and purely

as of others, and habitually avoids referring them in any way to himself,

will in the end become hard and cruel.

{90}

But the very essence of sympathy consists in an unconscious association of

ourselves with others in their sufferings. The Calvinist, therefore, the

believer in "assurance," who fancies himself to be one of the elect, and

from his security safely thinks of all the torments of the reprobate as

things in which it would be sinful for him even for a moment to imagine

that he can have part, may but grow callous at the thought of hell--may

even delight to think of it, and revel in the representation of the anguish

there. But such a spirit is altogether opposed to the whole bent of

Catholic meditation on that subject. The Catholic, when he meditates on

these torments, thinks of them as of others, only that the thought may more

vividly come home to himself; he thinks of them as of what he may one day

have to endure. And again, the thought of our own personal suffering can

make us hard and firm only when we consider it as a thing not to be

avoided, but to be braved. It is almost a truism to say, that those men are

of all the most soft and timid, who are continually representing to

themselves means of escape from vividly imagined dangers. And no Catholic

would meditate on these torments that he might nerve himself to brave them,

but that he might seek means to avoid them. Catholics, of course, accept,

on the ground of God's Word, that awful doctrine of our faith which we are

now contemplating. So far as they argue for it from reason at all, they say

that this doctrine is the necessary sanction of the moral law; and the

force of that argument will be felt by none more strongly than by Catholics

themselves, who, from holding the existence both of a future temporal and

of a future eternal punishment for sin, are better able to judge what

effects would be likely to be produced, if hell were, in the common

teaching, resolved into a kind of purgatory. But it must never be forgotten

that in the Catholic religion the doctrine of eternal punishment, is taught

under certain accompanying conditions, which intimately affect its

practical bearing. The first of these conditions is the doctrine of

purgatory, of which M. Comte thus speaks:

Il serait facile de reconnaître que l'institution, si amèrement

critiquée, du purgatoire fut, au contraire, très-heureusement introduite,

dans la pratique sociale du Catholicisme, à titre d'indispensable

correctif fondamental de l'eternité des peines futures; oar, autrement,

cette éternité, sans laquelle les prescriptions religieuses ne pouvaient

être efficaces, eût évidemment déterminé souvent ou un relâchement

funeste, ou un effroyable désespoir, égalemeut dangereux l'un et l'autre

pour l'individu et pour la société, et entre lesquels le génie Catholique

est parvenu à organiser cette ingénieuse issue, qui permettait de graduer

immédiatement, avec une scrupuleuse précision, l'application effective du

procédé religieux aux convenances de chaque cas réel. [Footnote 28]

[Footnote 28: Philosophie Positive, vol. v. p. 269 (Ed. 1864).]

In reading this quotation, it must be remembered that M. Comte was not a

Catholic, and regarded the Catholic Church as merely a human institution.

But, the truths to which that unhappy thinker here draws attention, are so

evident, that they hardly require proof. If the sole future punishment of

sin be believed to be an eternal punishment, such as is that of hell, it is

not difficult to perceive what effects will follow. The timid, and those

who are naturally religiously minded, will form a gloomy and austere notion

of religion, which will produce some of the effects noted by Mr. Lecky, and

in the end, by provoking a necessary reaction, work the destruction of all

religion whatever. Those, on the contrary, who are irreligiously inclined,

will be still further moved to give up all ideas of religion as

impracticable, and will be disgusted by its tone and spirit; while the

doctrine of eternal punishment will lose its force by being applied to

light and trivial offences.

But we must also notice another condition of the realization of this

doctrine; which is provided in the Catholic system; and which, like that of

purgatory, has been rather neglected by Protestantism.

{91}

It has been noticed by some writers that the sacramental system of the

church provides an admirable safeguard, and one in an especial manner

necessary in the middle ages, against outbreaks of fanaticism. According to

the teaching of the Catholic Church, the sacraments are the great means,

channels, and conditions of grace. And this produces a system and an order,

a definite method of procedure in the spiritual life, which, assisted by

the ascetical and mystical theology so minutely cultivated, abundantly

directs enthusiasm and represses fanaticism. And we do not doubt that if

Protestantism, with its doctrine of private judgment and private direction,

had been the form of Christianity existing in the middle ages, Christianity

would have sunk into a condition of which paganism and the Gnostic heresies

alone afford a parallel. But this sacramental system has also another,

though a co-ordinate effect. Grace is insensible and unfelt, to confound it

with the natural religious feelings and emotions is to make religion no

longer a discipline and a duty, but a sentiment. And because it is unfelt,

it is necessary that it should ordinarily be given through some external

and sensible rite, in order to ward off undue and pernicious doubt and

anxiety. Now, according to Catholic teaching, while, on the one hand, it is

impossible for any one to know with absolute certainty what is his

spiritual state before God; on the other hand, the doctrine of confession

and absolution supplies all with a means of knowing, with a greater of less

amount of probability, what their real condition is. On the morally

beneficial tendency of the first part of this teaching it is unnecessary to

dilate, and any scrupulosity or vain terror which, if it stood alone, it

might excite, is amply provided against by the second. And thus, through

the correlative doctrines of purgatory, of the consequent distinction

between mortal and venial sins, of confession and absolution, and by means

of its moral theology, Catholicism provides that the doctrine of eternal

punishment shall press with greater or less force, exactly as its influence

is more or less required. It does not leave the believer to the diseased

imaginations of his own mind, but provides an external code to which he

must submit, and an external direction by which he will be guided. It

provides a means by which he may know whether he is or is not in a state of

sin, and a definite remedy whereby he may extricate himself from it; while

it holds out a hope of salvation to all, and teaches that no man ever

existed whose case was so desperate that he could not, if he co-operated

with grace, as he has the power of co-operating, look for pardon. With the

heretical sects the case is widely different. The very name of Calvinism

calls up associations on which it would be painful to dwell. The

conjunction of the doctrines of eternal punishment and necessitarianism

must always, even where these doctrines are but to a very inadequate extent

realized, produce a type of religious thought and feeling as repulsive as

it is degrading. Of this it would be superfluous to speak. But

Protestantism repudiates the practice of confession and the doctrine of

absolution. Then, indeed, wherever the eternity of punishment was realized,

it produced a diseased and unhealthy state of mind. Anxiety, doubt, terror,

were necessarily the predominating feelings in the minds of men; an anxiety

which could be calmed no longer now that there was no confessional, and a

doubt which admitted of no direction now that each man had to be almost

entirely his own counsellor, while all were faltering and divided as to the

"direction of the ways of life." The "doctrine of final assurance" was,

indeed, put forward to remedy the evil. But that doctrine only served to

aggravate it. For to one class of minds it only supplied a new cause of

terror; and to another it gave a very fruitful occasion of cultivating a

disposition perhaps the most detestably proud, callous, and selfish, which

has ever appeared among mankind.

{92}

We must not, however, be supposed to deny that, through causes the

character of which may partially be gathered from the preceding remarks,

the doctrine of eternal punishment was very prominent in the middle ages.

And how, it will be asked, did the church of those ages meet this

extraordinary prominence? To have met it by merely insisting on the

blessedness of heaven, would obviously have been most inadequate. Our

natural constitution, and the circumstances of our life here, are such that

our ideas of happiness, and especially of permanent happiness, are, as it

has often been urged, far less definite and far less acute than our ideas

of pain; and for this reason it has been wisely brought about that what has

been made known to us of the blessedness of heaven is far less definite and

complete, than is what we know of the punishment of the wicked. But for

this very reason, the prominence of the doctrine of their eternal

punishment could not be efficaciously met by insisting on this blessedness.

But there is another set of ideas and feelings directly opposed to the

despair and unmitigated fear which would be produced by the sole

contemplation of the torments of the lost; and it is a set of ideas and

feelings which nowhere find so natural a home as in Catholicism. From the

manner in which the doctrine of the Incarnation is dwelt on in the Catholic

system, and from the consequently almost human character which is given to

the love of God and to the contemplation of the divine perfections as set

forth in Christ, there results an ardor, an intensity, an active continuity

of that love, which is simply incomprehensible to those who are external to

the machinery of the Catholic Church. If it be asked, then, how did the

church of those times meet the extraordinary, development of the doctrine

we have been considering, the answer is patent to the most superficial

reader of the mediaeval saints and theologians. They met it by an, at

least, equal development of the doctrine of divine love. St. Bernard, Hugo

of St. Victor, St. Anselm, all especially breathe in their works this sweet

and devout spirit. The writings of St. Bernard, and those passages of such

exquisitely tender devotion which occur in the writings of St. Augustine,

became, in particular, the texts on which succeeding writers expanded and

dilated. A spirit of meekness and tenderness of devotion, an intense and

fervid love of God, are the themes on which they peculiarly delight to

dwell, and the virtues on which they peculiarly love to insist. It was this

age that produced the Imitation; toward the close of it appeared the

Paradisus Animae: and whoever was the actual author of the former work, it

possesses remarkable affinity with the spirit and even the style of Gerson.

Nor was this temper of mind confined to purely mystical writers. The

writings of St. Francis of Assisi, of St. Bridget, St. Catherine of Sienna,

and others, attest, indeed, that the type of sanctity was, in some sense,

changing under its influence; but it passed on to the great theological

teachers of the age. St. Thomas of Aquino, the best and greatest of them

all, lived and struggled in the very midst of the conflict with infidelity

which was then agitating the church, and yet even he found time to write a

number of short spiritual treatises which display the most tender and the

most delicate devotion. This is especially seen in his book De Beatitudine.

Richard of St. Victor wrote a work De Gradibus Violentae Charitatis, "On

the degrees of violent charity." St. Bonaventure received the name of "The

Seraphic Doctor" from the ardor of his piety; the titles of a few of his

works--De Septem Itineribus AEternitatis, Stimulus Amoris, Amatorium,

Itinerarium Mentis ad Deum--will be sufficient to show its character. The

tender and loving spirit which those great doctors manifested in their

devotion, broke out also in their correspondence with their friends, as may

be perceived even from the extracts from the letters and sermons of certain

of them which the Count de Montalembert has inserted in his Monks of the

West.

{93}

Other momenta of a more general nature show the operation of the same

tendency. For the first time detailed lives of our blessed Lord came into

general circulation. Devotion to the passion assumed a far more prominent

position than before; of the spirit which animated it we have a most

touching example in the little book attributed to St. Juliana of Norwich.

The Canticle of Canticles suddenly took a place in the affections of the

pious, which even in the primitive church it had never known. St. Bernard

composed on it his celebrated Sermones super Cantica, St. Bonaventure and

Richard of St. Victor both wrote commentaries on it; St. Thomas has left us

two, and it was while dictating the second of these that he passed out of

this world, celebrating the blessedness of divine love. Nor can we

altogether omit to notice three devotions, two of which certainly exercised

a very considerable influence. In an age in which the spirit of love and

devotion to our blessed Lord had assumed such large proportions, in which

the doctrine of the Incarnation was for the first time completely treated

in a scientific manner, and in which the subject of original sin was more

profoundly investigated, and the questions concerning the Immaculate

Conception consequently began to be cleared up and to assume a definite

form and coherence, it was natural that a great devotion should manifest

itself to our Blessed Lady. And of the tendency and the effects of this

devotion Mr. Lecky has himself spoken. The character of the devotion to St.

Joseph, also, is sufficiently well known, and it was first, we believe,

treated at length by Albertus Magnus. Devotion to the Blessed Sacrament was

to an indefinite extent stimulated by the institution of the Feast of

Corpus Christi; and it, of a truth, is a devotion which of all others

breathes a spirit of tenderness and of love.

We can now only make a few concluding remarks. We have already given a

general estimate of the work, on a few points of which we have here

touched; for we considered it better to speak of two or three connected

subjects more fully, than to distract ourselves and our readers by flying

comments on the many and very diverse subjects there treated. We have only

explicitly to add what we have before implied, that we consider it a very

dangerous book. It is all the more dangerous, because Mr. Lecky is not a

furious fanatic; because of his spurious candor; because of his partial

admissions; because of his engaging style. And in an age like the present,

when the dogmatic principle is so bitterly attacked by those without, and

sits so lightly on the necks even of believers, it is exceedingly

dangerous. For, as was to be expected, it sets the dogmatic principle

utterly at defiance, and from beginning to end is a continued protest

against it. Mr. Lecky's idea of education, and his theory of the manner of

formation of religious opinions, are alike thoroughly opposed to it. In

education he would have the bare principles of morality only, as far as

possible, inculcated; dogma, as far as possible, excluded; and if any

amount of dogmatic teaching is unavoidably admitted, it is to be taught

only so as to rest as lightly as possible on the mind, and with the proviso

that the opinions then taught will have to be reconsidered in after life.

With respect to the formation of religious opinions, his book teaches a

kind of Hegelianism. Society is continually changing, and the best thing we

can do is to follow the most advanced minds in society. There is an

everlasting process, in which we can never be sure that we have definitely

attained to the truth. The end of this, of course, is to make all opinions

uncertain. We may know what we like best, or what the tendencies of society

incline it and us to believe; but we can never, as to religious opinions,

know what is objectively true.

{94}

It is not very difficult to discover what is the nature of this process

which is called rationalism. In former times the religious spirit

predominated over the secular; but from a variety of causes, and in

particular on account of the immense development of secular science since

the time of Bacon and Descartes, the secular scientific spirit has since

predominated over the religious. And rationalism is merely one of the

results of this predominance; a consequence of the application to religious

subjects of secular habits of thought. This may manifest itself, now in one

way, now in another; in the denial now of transubstantiation, now of the

doctrine of the Trinity; but its root and origin is the same: it tends (and

this quite takes the romance out of it) to the elimination of the religious

ideas, and it is strengthened by whatever strengthens what we have called

the secular scientific, or weakens the religious, spirit. Hence that

dislike of authority and that over-clouding of the moral character of

religious truth; hence that distaste for the miraculous and the mysterious,

and that tendency to put into the background, and even to deny, the

doctrine of grace; and if the internal wants of those who have just

"escaped from the wilderness of Christianity, and still have some of the

thorns and brambles sticking to their clothes," make it necessary that

something should be substituted for that which is being taken away--a

baseless and often unreal sentimentalism is substituted for honest

religious duty and earnest devotion. It is only too much to be feared that

the world will educate itself out of this also; and that, in the case of

those who refuse submission to the Catholic Church, the secular spirit will

more and more grow toward its full ascendancy, and therefore toward a total

extinction of the already weakened religious ideas.

-------

Original.

A DREAM.

A procession passed by in my fitful dreams,

So strange that it now like a nightmare seems.

I beheld a long line of wifeless men

Whom their living wives might claim again.

And widows and orphans who never gave

Husband or parent up to the grave.

In the hands of each of this motley train

Was a broken heart and a broken chain:

And a veil hung down over every face

Hiding the shame of a deep disgrace.

A figure they bore on a funeral bier,

Of a form that belonged to another sphere.

Not a line of humanity could I trace

In its ghastly, shadowy, hideous face.

From its jaws came a noisome, poisonous breath,

That hung o'er the bier like the mist of death;

Then spread like a pestilence through the air,

And husbands and wives standing here and there

{95}

Its magical circle of mischief within--

Opened their mouths and sucked it in.

Then, straightway, like beasts, grovelled prone in the dust,

Burning with jealousy, anger, and lust.

I marvelled to see as I looked again

All these were now widows and wifeless men.

In their hands, like those in the funeral train,

Was the broken heart and the broken chain.

And as the strange throng passed hurriedly by,

They chanted this dirge with a savage cry:

Dig its grave deep.

Hide it well out of sight,

Lest it come to the light,

And our hearths and homes smite

With a curse and a blight.

Dig its grave deep.

Dig its grave deep.

Lest its treacherous smile

May our reason beguile;

Lest its rottenness vile

May the nation defile.

Dig its grave deep.

Dig its grave deep.

For lust and for gold

It has bartered and sold

All that dearest we hold;

Let its death-knell be tolled.

Dig its grave deep,

Dig its grave deep.

The land has been rife

With its bloodshed and strife

Between husband and wife.

Crush, crush out its life.

Dig its grave deep.

Dig its grave deep.

It has stood by the side.

Of bridegroom and bride

Whom it meant to divide,

And their troth falsified.

Dig its grave deep.

Dig its grave deep.

It feedeth on lies.

It breaketh all ties;

And all innocence dies

'Neath the glance of its eyes.

Dig its grave deep.

{96}

Dig its grave deep.

'Tis an offspring of shame

Deserving no name;

From the devil it came,

To return to the same.

Dig its grave deep.

Dig its grave deep.

'Tis a curse and a bane:

Its touch is profane;

And brings sorrow and pain

In its murderous train.

Dig its grave deep.

Dig its grave deep.

'Tis a damning disgrace

To a people or race,

Who there nature abase

To give this thing place.

Dig its grave deep.

Dig its grave deep.

Pile earth, rocks, and stones

On its festering bones:

Naught for it atones:

Hell its parentage owns.

Dig its grave deep.

As I looked once again on what funeral bier,

My limbs became rigid through horror and fear;

For the hideous form breathed its breath in my face,

And spreading its arms to invite an embrace,

Beckoned me on with an ominous nod;

I cried, Fiend, avaunt! in the name of God!

And awoke.--On that bier I had seen the foul corse

Of the scourge of our country, THE LAW OF DIVORCE.

{97}

Original.

A Talk About Paris.

By An Old Bachelor.

So much has been said, written, thought, and exaggerated about Paris, that

little remains to be said, written, thought, or exaggerated about it.

Still, keeping clear of the broad road reserved to guide-books and

travellers, I flatter myself that a comfortable, easy chat about it and its

inhabitants, may not be unwelcome to my friends across the broad Atlantic.

If you hope some day to visit this great city--and what American does not

cherish that hope?--pray that that day may not be made a dark one by the

unceasing rain, and slippery, sloshy mud, which often usher in the winter.

No place so wretched as Paris in the rainy season; elsewhere one may make

up one's mind philosophically to india rubbers, umbrellas, and the blues,

but here it seems a sort of personal insult when the sun does not shine,

and brighten the long rows of while houses. Was not Paris made for

enjoyment, light-heartedness, and sunshine? At this season, it is not

unfrequent to hear visitors, with a grave shake of the head, declare that

they are really quite disappointed; that it is not at all what they had

expected, and that other places are much more interesting. They quarrel

with the emperor for his great work of regenerating and beautifying the

Paris of crooked, narrow, but picturesque memory. The changes he has

wrought are indeed marvellous; and though he may well grumble at the

wholesale destruction of old places, and also at the discomfort attendant

on constant pulling down and building up, yet the unprejudiced traveller

cannot but stand amazed at all that has been done during one man's reign,

and also feel a certain degree of gratitude for the comfort of wide,

well-paved streets, and well-built modern houses.

My first visit to Paris was some twenty years ago, when I was sent on my

travels, before settling down to a hum-drum law office. I remember well

many quaint nooks and corners, which I look for in vain now. Among other

places, I see in my mind's eye a certain queer old tavern restaurant, famed

for its English dishes, its gray-haired waiters, and its cheapness; it

stood in Rue St. Lazarre, at the head of the Chaussée d'Antin, a wide and

populace thoroughfare. Here, escaping from my establishment "de garçon"

hard by, I used to find myself at about six o'clock waiting for my slice of

"Ros bif." Well I remember the old room, with its comfortable half light,

and white-covered tables; well, too, do I remember the old gentleman who

invariably took the cosiest nook, and secured the paper over which he

invariably dozed; and the student of medicine who carved his chicken with a

skill that made my blood run cold. But more vividly than all do I remember

a young countryman of mine, an artist, with his English wife, a young

girlish creature, who particularly interested me; they seemed so happy,

made so light of that hard struggle with poverty--which so often turns the

strength of young men to despair, and the love of young wives to sourness--

that I made an effort, notwithstanding my shyness, to become acquainted

with them. We have been friends ever since, and as I write, the young

artist, having conquered in the battle of life, is both known and respected

in his native country; as to his wife, though she certainly is no longer

girlish, she is as merry as ever, surrounded by her bevy of grown and

growing daughters.

{98}

Remembering all these things, one of my first excursions was to this place,

hoping to live these memories over again, and thereby perhaps to feel young

once more. But I looked in vain; on the very spot where the humble

restaurant stood, towers at this moment a beautiful new church, with wealth

of statues and ornaments; it is called "La Ste. Trinité," and is the pride

of the neighborhood. But I looked at its highly decorated white façade with

a feeling of disappointment. I should so have liked another slice of that

famed "Ros Bif!" Everybody has heard about the boulevards of Paris,

encircling the city, and intersecting it in every direction, giving it

fresh air and beauty. Every one, too, has heard of the straight new

avenues, radiating from the Arc de Triomphe like rays from a sun, and of

the manifold new streets which have swallowed up so many old ones; and,

above all, of the wonderful opera house, which stands just opposite Rue de

la Paix, and which is to be one of the wonders of the world. I have heard

and read that it is almost finished, therefore conclude that it is my own

want of perceptive powers which makes it still appear to me like a huge,

uniform mass; lately, however, through the breaks in the scaffolding I have

perceived parts nearly finished, with ornaments of color and white marble,

and from these glimpses I conclude that when the time comes, I shall be

able to indulge in the ecstasies of admiration expected from all beholders

of this mammoth enterprise.

But all this is not Paris, Paris of olden times, of history; it is

beautiful, but it is terribly new, and the old fogies of the Faubourg St.

Germain, emerging from their narrow streets, shake their heads at the broad

new avenues, with their unmitigated straightness and meaningless

uniformity.

The other night I went to hear a play now much in vogue, called La Maison

Neuve, a capital satire on this "Nouveau Paris," and full of local hits.

But why should I attempt to tell you anything about it? Americans know

everything about everything, and probably while you are reading this, The

New House is figuring in large letters on the play bills at Wallack's, and

managers "out West" are conning over the possibilities of adapting this

nice little tid-bit of novelty to their stage. All the French shading, all

the palpable hits, will, alas! be made limpingly to apply to New-York,

Chicago, St. Louis, etc. We are a great people, there is no doubt; but do

we not, sometimes, in our great hurry to be ahead of everybody else, make

little mistakes? In a recent conversation with some French friends, I

mentioned that La Famille Benoiton was figuring East and West. "Mais

comment! how can they understand it? even Frenchmen, if not Parisians,

would have difficulty! mais c'est impayable." I quietly replied that we

were a great nation, which is a convenient answer on many occasions; but

between ourselves, is it not a pity that we do not aim at a little

originality? that we must ape Paris quite so much?

But, to return to La Maison Neuve. It was hissed at first, its satire was

perhaps a little too piquant; but some of the thorns being removed, it

blooms in glory, and Frenchman clap furiously at the merciless cutting up

of Boulevard Malesherbes, and the upstart fashions of young France. From

what I have seen and observed, I fancy the play is an exaggerated, but on

the whole a tolerably faithful picture of modern French life, with its want

of depth, its tinsel, its sham, and its immorality. But let us leave the

theatre--though the charming, light, natural acting, which we heavier

Americans cannot imitate, make it wonderfully attractive--in turn once more

to Paris streets.

{99}

After all, life is not in the houses, or rather slices of houses, which

people call apartments, but in the streets. At this season, one does not

feel astonished at it; every body, even the rheumatic old bachelor, feels

tempted to leave the smoky chimney--why do French chimneys always

smoke?--and wander up and down peering into all the shop windows, with

their wealth of beautiful things, tempting one to buy a Christmas or New

Year's gift for every body under the sun. We must acknowledge that our

cousins of France have a most wonderful art of displaying their merchandise

to the best advantage. Did anyone ever imagine anything more seductive than

a French confectioner's? It is really dangerous to pass the establishments

of Boissier and others on the Boulevard, with their beautiful display of

boxes, caskets, vases, and quaintly dressed figures of grand ladies, etc.,

all filled with delicious bonbons. As to the toys, there is positive genius

displayed in these pleasures of a moment; indeed, these shop-keepers are

not only artists, they are satirists. Approach, dear ladies, look at these

dolls, and sigh for fashion, if you can; these unimaginable gew-gaws, these

extraordinarily long robes, which give the dear creatures the appearance of

being half on the floor, and half above it, these--these ... but I lack the

milliner vocabulary, or I would stun you with the etceteras; then the turn

of the head, the stare through the miniature eye-glass, and the little

curly dog led by a ribbon! Messieurs the shop-keepers! I bow to you, you

are greater satirists even than those sharp-penned writers of a certain New

York literary review.

The other day, having reached the upper part of the Boulevard, near the

Porte St. Dennis, I could not but stop and gaze down that long stream of

human life which lay before me; not a particle of the pavement was to be

seen, nothing but a living mass of bustling, pushing, quarreling humanity.

All classes, all ages, almost all countries, were there. Men in blouses.

and men in broad-cloth; beggars and nobles; innocent children, and men with

the inevitable marks of an ill-spent life on care-worn faces; silk attired

dames, and white-capped _bonnes_; loud-voiced ladies with unimaginable

boots, and the shortest possible walking dresses; anxious mothers trying in

vain to keep their excited little ones from running against portly

gentlemen, or loaded _commissionaires_. Fancy all this, with a Babel

of German, Italian, Spanish, and much more frequent English, with the noise

of street organists and Italian harpists, the screaming of itinerant

merchants, the dashing of carriages, the swearing of drivers, and you will

have some idea of the scene. As I stood in a sheltered nook observing, I

could not but think of Kribble Krabble, Hans Andersen's philosopher, who

showed his friend what seemed to be a city full of fighting, devouring

monsters, in a drop of water. I wonder if from those quiet stars, so calm

and pure, this busy scene does not also appear like that drop of ditch

water; whether some beings gifted with a penetrating vision denied to us,

do not see into the true natures of this elbowing host, and weep over the

monsters of cruelty, of cunning, of hypocrisy, of degradation

disclosed--inevitable adjuncts of a large city. Let us look again; we, less

gifted, see only beings one much like the other, all seemingly busy in

enjoying the gay scene around them, eagerly prying into the glittering

shops, or passing quickly by the thousand booths that during Christmas week

transform the street into a real Vanity Fair. They laugh, chat, seem happy,

and surely to be happy one must be innocent! Let us believe them so; let us

pass on, brushing by yon gaudily dressed woman, yon sinister-eyed man, and

thank heaven that we are not cursed with the magical glass of Kribble

Krabble. After all, do not those slashing satirists do more harm than good,

in bringing so vividly to the light of day things that might as well be

kept in the background? Is it not better philosophy to shut one's eyes to

much that passes around one, at this season especially, for it is Christmas

time, when there should be peace on earth?

{100}

Speaking of Christmas, reminds me to speak of the churches, which I have as

yet neglected. Paintings, engravings, and photographs have already made the

outside of these churches familiar to you, therefore I will not dwell on

that branch of the subject. Notre Dame, grand old Gothic Notre Dame, is on

an island in the Seine. It seems to look down, in its grandeur, on both old

and new Paris. On one side it seems sadly to recall the bloody memories of

years gone by; the rise and downfall of dynasties; the rise and downfall of

families still sheltered in the old streets of the old St. Germain quarter;

the death of the old _régime_, the breaking of hearts. On the other

hand, it seems to frown on gorgeous new Paris; on the beautiful panorama of

buildings along the bank of the river, the Tuileries, the Louvre, the Hotel

de Ville, etc., and beyond these, scores of new white buildings, and the

ruins of others, comparatively new, which are to give place to still finer

ones. The old church, with its quaintly carved monsters and old towers,

seems to stand as a warning of the time that is to come, when all these

great works of man shall be but vanity, and as chaff. This is a solemn

church, as it should be, and gloom seems to dwell in its lofty arches.

It is the Madeleine, the beautiful, bright Madeleine, which seems to be the

favorite church of the Parisians. It was here that, with great difficulty,

I found a seat on Christmas morning. As I entered the services had begun,

and a beautifully clear boy's voice was holding a high note, while a full

orchestral band was playing the accompaniment. The church was crowded, and

I noticed that a great many Protestants, both English and American, were

present. I have heard much and read much of the impropriety and want of

respect evinced by these in sacred places, but, except for a little more

staring, and perhaps some little more whispering, their conduct, as far as

I could observe, did not differ essentially from that of their Catholic

neighbors. In these large churches there is always an amount of bustle, and

a want of reverence, which, to an American Catholic, is, I confess, very

shocking. The constant coming in and going out is occasioned, in some

degree, by the fact that often, during high mass, several low masses are

going on at the side altars; but still the want of reverence evinced by

numbers and numbers of these French Catholics, is a fact too apparent to be

denied. I do not mean to say that I have not observed many who seemed to

realize what was going on before them, but most of these had "old

_régime_" written on their faces. With young France it is the fashion

to doubt, to scoff, or to be utterly indifferent, and who dares to disobey

fashion? But let us return to the ceremony.

The altar of this famed church has often been described. The marble group

above it is singularly beautiful, it represents Mary Magdalen, supported by

angels; the figures are of heroic size, and of the purest white marble. At

this altar ministered a large number of golden-robed priests, surrounded by

a bevy of boys in scarlet and white. Had I, too, been a Protestant,

ignorant of the deep and holy meaning hidden under these symbols, and

seeing in them but the glitter of gold and rich colors, I dare say I

should, like them, have pronounced it but a gorgeous show, a theatrical

display; as it was, my thoughts flew eagerly back to a certain well

remembered chapel across the Atlantic, where I had often assisted at the

same ceremony performed with a simplicity and devotion which contrasted

pleasingly with this grand high mass at the Madeleine. Persecution and

poverty are wonderful safeguards to the virtue of man; they are, perhaps,

also necessary to the perfection of churches. Religion--faith--must always

remain pure, but the professors thereof may easily be influenced by the

accidents of wealth and splendor.

{101}

While making these reflections, and indoctrinating myself with charity

toward our Protestant brethren, the mass went on, and the really beautiful

music filled the lofty church. But there was something discordant to my

ears in the harmony of the violins and brass instruments; to my mind the

organ alone, that most holy of instruments, is worthy of ministering to the

service of God. Still, the music was beautiful, and after all true music is

always sacred; and when at the elevation the loud instruments held their

breath, and a rich barytone voice alone was heard, I had to confess that,

whatever its surroundings, religion and religious spirit are always to be

found by him who really seeks them.

Remember, also, that I have been talking of the Madeleine, which is

essentially the worldly church of Paris. At St. Roch, situated in Rue St.

Honoré, and from whose steps the blood-thirsty crowd jeered at Marie

Antoinette as she was being led to the Place de la Concorde, where stood

the awful guillotine; at Notre Dame de Lorette, and many others, there is

less glitter, less parade, and apparently more devotion. At St. Roch, the

beautifully trained choir of boys, and the good music given, attract many

Protestants; still the feeling of the church is more Catholic than that of

the Madeleine. Here, as elsewhere, I was struck by the vast number of

priests in the sanctuary. I thought of our own overworked, faithful

priests, and could not help wondering whether a little of their hard work

would not be good for those before me.

As I look over what I have written I find that there is no small amount of

grumbling and fault-finding in the foregoing pages; I smile to myself as I

discover that I have fallen into the little peculiarity which I have so

often noticed in my countrymen and countrywomen in Paris: that of finding

fault. No American, or Englishman either, whom you may question, will utter

ten words on the subject, without abusing the French. "There's no trust to

be put in them; they are a lying, mean set," are among the mildest

accusations poured forth; and there certainly is some truth in the charges.

Americans, with the people at large, are a flock of rich fools, sent over

by their lucky stars, on purpose to be fleeced; consequently all the

tradespeople you employ, your servants and their ally the _concierge_,

invariably ask you about double as much as they would ask a Frenchman, and

laugh at you while pocketing your gold. The art of cheapening things, so

well understood by the people here, is a new experience to you. You do not

like to walk into a handsome shop and offer half the price asked for an

article, you are not accustomed to it, feel awkward; all of which the wily

shopman sees well enough, and, of course, you end by giving the price

required. But that French lady next to you, so handsomely dressed, does not

hesitate an instant; you think she at least would have disdained that art

of the _bourgeoisie_; not a bit of it; she insists, the clerk, bowing

much more respectfully than he did to you, wraps up the article, and the

lady sails out in triumph.

But for all this, Americans seem to find wondrous charms in this city, and

prolong their stay for one month to two, then to six, and not unfrequently

rush back to New York, settle up their affairs, and return to live here

permanently, despising the French more and more every year, of course! At

this present moment, if all our countrymen and countrywomen, now residing

here, were suddenly transplanted to the western prairies, they would form

quite a respectable sized city, which would, according to the invariable

western custom, begin to defy its sister cities to show a bigger figure

when the census came to be taken. But I fancy very few of these Americans,

if the question were put to them, would be willing thus to be transported

for the good of their country. We are undoubtedly a very patriotic people;

but we believe, most devoutly, that charity begins at home.

{102}

Among these same countrymen of ours I notice the names of a number of

well-known artists, who, I understand are well thought of in the artistic

world. It is pleasant to hear them praised by our cousins of France, but I

cannot help thinking that America, still so young in art, can ill spare her

gifted children.

Talking of artists, let me tell you of a sad little incident that came

under my own observation. We are all dimly conscious that poverty,

sometimes in its direst aspect, harasses the beginning or nearly all artist

lives. We have heard that N., whose beautiful picture drew crowds at the

last exhibition, and who cannot fulfil all the commissions that pour in

upon him--that the same man, not many years ago, might have starved but

for the aid of his fellow students; we know this, but, surrounded by

comforts and luxuries, it is the hardest thing in the world to realize

poverty. We walk the streets, brush by numbers of ragged women, throw a

copper to a bare-footed little beggar, but how often do we in our thoughts

follow those poor creatures to the hovels or garrets or cellars which serve

them as homes? how little we can imagine the cold and damp which chill

their bones, or the hunger which gnaws them! Still less do we realize, I

think, that beings with the education and feelings of gentlemen, should

have to endure these same horrors. I have before my mind, as I write, the

face of a young man, an enthusiast in his art, who, while engaged on a long

dreamt-of, cherished work, found that in consequence of the war in America,

the supplies on which he had calculated gave out. What to do? abandon his

work, his career perhaps? return beggared to his native western town,

without the promised work which was to show that his time had not been

wasted? Never, better starve! and starve he actually would have done, but

for the help of a student friend, almost as poor as himself, who shared his

daily loaf with him; and so the young man finished his picture, took it

over to America, where artists who saw it, seeing that it showed more than

ordinary talent, bestirred themselves, and making up a sufficient sum, sent

the young man back to his studies, feeling sure that the world would hear

of him some day. But I am wondering, let us return to Paris, and to the

incident which I was about to relate.

Some few weeks ago I was invited to dinner by some friends settled here for

the winter. The meeting was a pleasant one, and I left the brilliantly

lighted, handsome rooms with a pleasing glow over me, a reflection perhaps

from the good cheer which both mind and body had enjoyed. As I was passing

the inevitable _concierge_ lodge, the Cerberus kennel of every French

house, I was stopped by the sound of plaintive voice, and looking around I

saw a little girl, a child of some ten years, pleading evidently for some

great favor with the gruff _concierge_ himself, who, notwithstanding

all his decided negative shakes of the head, seemed to be struggling with a

certain degree of pity. The child was wretchedly dressed, and her little

hands were blue with cold, but in her upturned, pitifully old child's face,

there was a certain look of refinement that struck me. I approached and

asked what the matter was.

"Ah, pardon, monsieur! it is not of my fault; orders you see must be

obeyed, and the landlord ..."

Then he told me the story. It seemed that a month or two before he had been

a witness to the turning out from a miserable hole of a poor family; the

father called himself an artist, poor devil! his wife had a baby in her

arms, and there was a little girl. Seeing their utter distress, and

remembering a couple of miserable rooms dignified by the name of

"Appartements de garçon," but which did not let easily as they were dark

and uncomfortable, he had asked the landlord to allow them to occupy them

temporarily.

{103}

Shortly afterward the poor wife, a delicate, consumptive creature, died;

the baby did not survive her many hours, and the two were buried at the

expense of the parish, "But now it is impossible that they stay longer, the

rooms are let, and they must leave. What will you? monsieur perceives that

it is not of my fault." Monsieur feels a pang cut to his very heart. In

that same house, where such a short time since he was feasting and

laughing, a weary heart, perhaps, was breaking, and a young child

struggling with sorrow that made it old.

I asked the man if I might be allowed to see this unfortunate artist, and I

saw the child's face brighten as she slipped from his side to mine. I took

her hand and we went up, not the broad, handsome staircase which led to my

friends' apartments, but a dingy flight of stairs at the back of the court.

I was quite out of breath when we at last reached the door of this

"appartement de garçon." The child ran in, crying out: "Papa, papa I voici

an monsieur qui vient te voir."

A man dressed in miserable, ragged clothes, with a pitiful remnant of

gentility about him, was sitting at a rickety white wood table, his face

buried in his poor, thin hands, which I noticed were white and finely

shaped. At the sound of his child's voice be hastily got up, and seeing me,

bowed and offered me the only chair in the room, with a grace worthy of a

drawing room. I felt the tears well up to my eyes as I looked at this poor

wreck, and thought to myself how many dead hopes and dead aspirations lay

buried on that heart. I did not accept the chair, but held out my hand.

Something in the simple action, or in my face, perhaps, expressed the

sympathy I felt; it was too much for the poor man; be threw himself on the

bed sobbing convulsively; you see he was weakened by hunger and cold and

sickness. I put some money in the _concierge's_ hand, and he left us,

bowing respectfully.

When I turned I saw that the child had thrown herself by the side of her

father; he was moaning, but the sobs had already ceased. I felt his

forehead and hands, and found that he was in a raging fever. I looked

around, the place was miserable enough, and utterly unfit to be a sick

room. The _concierge_ shall be gratified, thought I, they shall leave

to-night; and sending the little girl out for a carriage, I was left alone

with my patient.

His face was much flushed, his eyes wild, and all my efforts to keep him

quiet were vain; I was obliged to let him talk. I soon gathered his whole

history from his incoherent words. There was nothing very new in it, it was

the old story of a respectable father, with a prejudice against the fine

arts; of a weary struggle first for fame, and then, forsooth, for bread; of

a foolish marriage with a girl as poor as himself, of children born to want

and misery, of unappreciated talent, etc. There was an unfinished picture

on the easel, and several others about the room; the poor man's eager eye

followed my movement as I looked at them, and he sank back comforted as I

praised his works. Heaven forgive, the charitable falsehoods! for that

glance sufficed to show me that I was comforting one of those wretched

beings who had just talent enough to conceive great things, without the

power of executing them, which is about the saddest of sad states.

The child soon returned, and I caused my poor invalid to be transported to

the Hotel Dieu, until I could make some other arrangement for him; his

little girl I put under the care of an honest woman who lived hard by,

where she slept; the days she spent by her poor father's bed. That bed he

never left, the hard struggle had been too much for him; the death of his

wife and child had been too severe a blow to the weak, loving, unfortunate

man. Brain fever soon declared itself and one dark, sad December day, his

little daughter and I followed his poor coffin to the nearest cemetery. The

child was very quiet, but her tearless eyes were unutterably sad.

{104}

I interested my friends in the sad story, and no happy mother, as she drew

her own dear ones to her heart, refused to help this bereaved one. So, we

made up a purse for her, and the other day I took her to a good school

where she is to remain until she is old enough to support herself, poor

little orphan! As I was about to leave her, she turned and said in her

quiet, undemonstrative way, a few words which I shall not put down here,

but which caused me to turn toward the door rather quickly, and to pretend

that I had a bad cold in my head.

This is no mere fancy sketch; I only wish it were a solitary instance.

Alas! for the poor in this great, rich, bustling, worldly city! But we must

bid adieu to it, with its delights, its wonderful sights, its wild

merriment, and its dumb misery. Adieu to it, and to you, my readers, a

happy, happy New-Year!

-------

Original.

Dr. Bacon On Conversions To The Catholic Church. [Footnote 29]

[Footnote 29: A Roman Philosopher. A Review of an Article on

Conversion in The Catholic World. By Rev. Dr. Bacon of Yale College.

"New Englander." January, 1867.]