The following day happened to be the anniversary of his death, or rather of

his birthday in heaven, when a touching and beautiful ceremonial is

observed. The archbishop and his clergy come to the hospital to give the

holy communion to the sick in each ward. A procession is formed of the

ecclesiastics and the sisters of charity, each bearing lighted tapers, and

little altars are arranged at the end of each ward, beautifully decorated

with real flowers, while everything in and about the hospital is fresh and

clean for the occasion. A touching incident occurred in the male ward on

that day, where one poor man lay in the last stage of disease. The

eagerness of his look when the archbishop drew near his bed will never be

forgotten by those who were kneeling there; nor the way in which his face

lighted up with joy when he received his Lord. The attendant sister bent

forward to give him a cordial afterward: he shook his head, and turned his

face away; he would have nothing after _that_. Before the last notes

of the "Pange Lingua" or the curling smoke of the incense had died out of

the ward, all was over; but the smile on the lips and the peace on the face

spoke of the rest he had found. Afterward there was a magnificent service

in the church, and a dinner to all the orphans in the sisters' schools.

{330}

Another interesting expedition made by our travellers was to the Carthusian

convent outside the town. Sebastiani desecrated and pillaged the wonderful

treasures it contained; but the tortoise-shell and mother-of-pearl doors

and presses remain, reminding one of those in the Armenian church at

Jerusalem, at the shrine of St. James. There are also two statues of St.

Bruno, by Alonso Caño; wonderful for their life-like appearance and

expression, but still not equal to the incomparable one at Miraflores.

There are some beautiful alabaster and agate pillars still left in the

chapel behind the high altar, which it is to be supposed were too heavy for

the spoilers to carry off. In the cloister are some curious frescoes of the

martyrdoms of the Carthusians, at the time of the Protestant Reformation,

by Henry VIII. of England. The guide who accompanied our travellers said

slyly to the only Catholic of the party: "We had better not explain the

subject of these. Let them imagine they are some of the horrors of of the

Inquisition--_that always takes with English people!_" Another picture

was startling both in subject and coloring; it was that of a dead doctor,

much venerated in life, who, on a funeral panegyric being pronounced over

him, started from his coffin, exclaiming that "his life had been a lie, and

that be was among the damned!" The friar who showed our party over the now

deserted convent was like Fray Gabriel in Fernan Caballero's novel of La

Gaviota. When the rest of the Carthusians were turned out by the

government, he would not go. "I was brought here as a little child," he

said, "and know no one in the world;" and so he sat himself down by the

cross and sobbed. They let him stay and keep the garden and the church, but

his life is over. "The blood does not run in his veins--it walks!" Like

Fray Gabriel, he will die kneeling before the Christ to whom he daily prays

for those who have so cruelly wronged and robbed him. The view from the

terrace in front of the church is beautiful, overlooking the rich and

cultivated plain of Soto de Roma, the property of the Duke of Wellington,

with the mountain of Parapanda above, the hills of Elvira, and the pass of

Moelin, which forms the bridle-road to Cordova. The gardens also are

delightful: no wonder the poor monks clung to their convent home!

In the afternoon our travellers walked up to the Generalife, a villa now

belonging to the Panavicini family, a branch of the great Genoa house, but

formerly the palace of the Sultana. Passing through vineyards and

fig-trees, they arrived at the gate of the fairy garden, with its long

straight borders, fringed with myrtle, irrigated by the Darro, which is

carried in a little canal between the flower-beds, and with a beautiful

open colonnade overlooking the Alhambra, while a less formal garden sent up

a shower of sweet scents from the orange trees and jessamine trellises

below. Through this colonnade they passed into the living-rooms, exquisite

in their Moorish carvings and decorations. In one of them there are a

number of curious though somewhat apocryphal portraits, including one of

Boabdil, and of another Moorish king of Granada, with his wife and

daughter, who turned Christians, and were baptized at Santa Fé. In the

outer room are portraits of an the "bluest blood" of Granada. But the

gardens form the greatest charm. The ground was covered with Neapolitan

violets and other spring flowers. Roses climbed over every wall, and

magnificent cypresses, and aloes in full flower, shaded the beds from the

burning sun. The largest of these cypresses, called the Sultana, is twelve

feet in circumference, and to this tree the fatal legend of the fair Zoraya

is attached. Behind these cypresses is a flight of Italian-looking steps,

leading to another raised garden, full of terraces and fountains. On the

steep brow of the hill is an alcove, or summer-house, from whence the views

over Granada and the Alhambra are quite enchanting, every arch being, as it

were, the setting or frame of a new and beautiful picture.

{331}

Above this again, is a Moorish fortress, and a knoll called the Moors

Chair, from whence the last Moorish king is said to have sadly contemplated

the defeat of his troops by the better-disciplined armies of Ferdinand and

Isabella grouped in the plains below. Scrambling still higher up, our

travellers came to the ruins of a chapel, and to some curious caverns, with

a peep into a wild gorge to the right leading into the very heart of this

mountainous and little-visited region. Boabdil's sword, and other relics

and pictures of the fifteenth century belonging to the Pallavicini family,

are carefully preserved by their agent in their house in the town, and had

been courteously shown to our travellers when they called to obtain

permission to visit the villa. Returning toward their hotel, they thought

they would prolong their walk by visiting the great cemetery, or "Campo

Santo," which is a little to the north of the Generalife. Long files of

mourners had been perpetually passing by their windows, the bier being

carried on men's shoulders, and uncovered, as in the East, so that the face

of the dead was visible. Each bier was followed by the confraternity to

which he or she belonged, chanting hymns and litanies as they wound up the

long steep hill from the town to the burial-ground. But all appearance of

reverence, or even of decency, disappears at the spot itself, where the

corpse is stripped, taken out of its temporary coffin, and brutally cast

into a pit, which is kept open till filled, and then, with quicklime thrown

in, closed up, and a fresh one opened to be treated in a similar manner. It

is a disgrace to Catholic Spain that such scenes should be of daily

recurrence.

Another villa worth visiting in the neighborhood of the Alhambra is that of

Madame Calderon, where the obliging French gardener took our travellers all

over the gardens and terraces, the hot houses and aviaries, the artificial

streams and bridges, till they came to the great attraction of the place--

a magnificent arbor-vitae, or hanging cypress, falsely called a cedar of

Lebanon, which was planted by St. John of the Cross, this site being

originally occupied by a convent of St. Theresa's. The house is thoroughly

comfortable inside, with charming views over the "vega," and altogether

more like an English house than anything else in Spain. If anyone wished to

spend a delightful summer out of England, they could find no more agreeable

retreat; perfect as to climate, and with the most enjoyable and beautiful

expeditions to be made in every direction. It is worth remembering, as

Madame Calderon, being now a widow, is anxious to let her residence, having

another house in Madrid. There is a church close by, and a dairy attached

to the garden, which is a rarity in Spain, and a public benefit to the

visitors at the Alhambra; and the clever and notable French wife of the

gardener makes delicious butter, and sells both that and the cream in her

mistress's absence--luxuries utterly unknown anywhere else in the

Peninsula.

Bad weather and heavy snow (for they had visited Granada too early in the

year) prevented our travellers from accomplishing different expeditions

which they had planned for the ascent of the Sierra Nevada, and visiting

Alhama and Adea, and other interesting spots in the neighborhood. But they

drove one day to the Alameda, where all Granada congregates in the evening,

and from whence the view looking on the mountains is beautiful.

Returning by the Moorish gateway, called the Puerta de Monayma, they came

to an open space, in the centre of which is a statue of the Virgin. Here

public executions used to take place, and here, in 1881, Mariana Pineda, a

lady of high birth and great beauty, was strangled. A simple cross marks

the spot. Her crime was the finding in her house a flag, maliciously placed

there by a man whose addresses she had rejected.

{332}

From this "plaza" our travellers drove to the conflux of the rivers Darro

and Xenil, which together form the Guadalquiver; and from thence proceeded

to a mosque, where a tablet records the fact of its having been the place

where the unfortunate king Boabdil gave the keys of the town to the

Christian conquerors, Ferdinand and Isabella, and then himself rode slowly

and sadly away from his beautiful palace by a mountain still called the

"Last Sigh of the Moor," immortalized both in verse and song. The

accompanying ballad, with its plaintive wailing sound, still echoes in the

hearts and on the lips of the people:

Ay de mi Alhama

Paseabase el Rey Moro

Por la ciudad de Granada

Desde la puerta de Elvira

Hasta la de Bibarrambla

Ay de mi Alhama!

Returning, they visited the church of Las Angustias, where there is a

wonderful but tawdrily dressed image of the Blessed Virgin, who is the

patroness of the town. The French sisters of charity have a large orphanage

and day-school here, established originally by Madame Calderon; but the

situation, in the street called Recogidas, is low and damp, and their

chapel being almost underground, and into which no sun can ever enter,

seriously affects the health of the sisters. Here, as everywhere, they are

universally beloved and respected, and the present superior is one

eminently qualified, by her loving gentleness and evenness of temper, to

win the hearts of all around her. The dress of the people of Granada is

singularly picturesque: the women wear crape shawls of the brightest

colors, yellow, orange, or red, with flowers stuck jauntily on one side of

the head just above the ear; the men have short velvet jackets, waistcoats

with beautiful hanging silver buttons (which have descended from father to

son, and are not to be bought except by chance), hats with large borders,

turned up at the edge, red sashes round the waist, and gaiters of untanned

leather, daintily embroidered, open at the knee, with hanging strips of

leather and silver buttons. Over the whole, in cold weather, is thrown the

"capa," or large cloak, which often conceals the threadbare garments of a

beggar, but which is worn with the air of the proudest Spanish 'hidalgo.'

This evening, the last which our travellers were to spend in Granada, they

had a visit from the king and captain of the gypsies, a very remarkable

man, between thirty and forty years of age, and a blacksmith by trade. He

brought his guitar, and played in the most marvellous and beautiful way

possible: first tenderly and softly; then bursting into the wildest

exultation; then again plaintive and wailing, ending with a strain of

triumph and rejoicing and victory which completely entranced his hearers.

It was like a beautiful poem or a love-tale, told with a pathos

indescribable.

{333}

It was a fitting last remembrance of a place so full of poetry and of the

past, with a tinge in it of that sorrowful dark thread which always seems

woven into the tissue of earthly lives. Sorrowfully, the next morning, our

travellers paid their last visit to the matchless Alhambra, which had grown

upon them at every turn. Then came the "good-by" to their good and faithful

guide, _Bensaken_, that name so well known to all Granada tourists;

and to the kind sisters of charity, whose white "cornettes" stood grouped

round the fatal diligence which was to convey them back to Malaga. And so

they bade adieu to this beautiful city, with many a hope of a return on

some future day, and with a whole train of new thoughts and new pictures in

their mind's eye, called forth by the wonders they had seen.

------

Original.

Victor Cousin And His Philosophy.

The papers some months since announced the death at Paris of M. Victor

Cousin, the well-known eclectic philosopher and Orleanist statesman. The

reëstablishment of the Imperial _régime_ in France had deprived him of

his political career, never much distinguished; and whatever interest he

may have continued to take in philosophy, he produced, as far as we are

aware, no new philosophical work after the revolution of July, 1830, except

prefaces to new editions of his previous writings, or to other writers

whose works he edited, and some "Rapports" to the Academy, among which the

most notable is that on the unpublished works of Abelard, preceded by a

valuable introduction on the scholastic philosophy, which he afterward

published in a separate volume under the title of La Philosophie

Scholastique.

M. Cousin was born at Paris in 1792, and was, the New American Cyclopedia

says, the son of a clock maker, a great admirer of Jean Jacques Rousseau,

and he was, of course, brought up without any religious faith or culture,

as were no small portion of the youth of France born during the Revolution.

Pierre Leroux maliciously accuses Cousin, after he had quarreled with him,

of having been, when they were fellow-students together, a great admirer of

_L'Ami du Peuple_, the journal in which Marat gained his infamous

notoriety. His early destination was literature, and he was always the

littérateur rather than the philosopher; but early falling under the

influence of M. Royer-Collard, a stanch disciple of the Scottish school,

founded by Reid and closed by Sir William Hamilton, he directed his

attention to the study of philosophy, became master of conferences in the

Normal School, and, while yet very young, professor of the history of

philosophy in the Faculté des Lettres at Paris. His course for 1818, and a

part of is course for 1819 and 1820, have been published from notes taken

by his pupils. Being too liberal to suit the government, he was suspended

from his professorship in 1824, but was restored in 1828, and continued his

lectures up to the Revolution of 1830. Since then he has made no important

contributions to philosophical science.

The greater part of M. Cousin's philosophical works are left as fragments

or as unfinished courses.

{334}

His course of 1829-30 ends with the sensist school, and the critical

examination of Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding. His translation of

Plato was completed indeed; but the arguments or introductions, except to a

few of the Dialogues, and the Life of Plato promised, have never appeared.

He seems to have exhausted his philosophical forces at an early day, and

after publishing a new and revised edition of his previous writings, to

have devoted himself chiefly to literature, especially to the literary

history of the first half of the seventeenth century, and the biography of

certain eminent ladies that played a very distinguished part in the

political intrigues and insurrections of the period. It is doubtful if any

man living had so thorough and minute a knowledge of the literature, the

religious controversies, the philosophy, the polities, and the biography of

the period from the accession of Louis XIII. to the end of the wars of the

Fronde, and the triumph of Mazarin over his enemies, as he possessed. His

Duchesse de Longueville, Madame de Sablé, Duchesse de Chevreuse, and Madame

de Hautefort, and his history of the conclusion of the wars of the Fronde,

are, as literary works, unrivalled, written with rare simplicity, purity,

grace, and delicacy of expression and style, and have an easy natural

eloquence and charm never surpassed by any writer even in the French

language. He has resuscitated those great dames of the seventeenth century,

who live, love, sin, repent, and do penance in his pages as they did in

real life. He seems, as a Parisian has said, to have really fallen in love

with them, and to have regarded each of them as his mistress, whose honor

be must defend at the risk of his life.

The French, we believe, usually count M. Villemain as the most perfect

master of their beautiful language; but to our taste he was surpassed by

Cousin, if not in the delicacy of phrase, which only a Frenchman born or

bred can appreciate, in all the higher qualities of style, as much as he

was in depth and richness of feeling, and variety and comprehensiveness of

thought. Cousin was by far the greater man, endowed with the richer genius,

and, as far as we can judge, equally polished and graceful as a writer. As

a philosophical writer, for beauty, grace, elegance, and eloquence he has

had no equal since Plato; and he wrote on philosophical subjects with ease

and grace, charmed and interested his readers in the dryest and most

abstruse speculations of metaphysics. His rhetoric was captivating even if

his philosophy was faulty.

M. Cousin called his philosophical system eclecticism. He starts with the

assumption that each philosophical school has its special point of view,

its special truth, which the others neglect or unduly depress, and that the

true philosopher weds himself to no particular school, but studies them all

with impartiality, accepts what each has that is positive, and rejects what

each has that is exclusive or negative. He resolves all possible schools

into four--1st. The Sensist; 2d, the Idealistic--subjectivistic; 3d, the

Sceptical; 4th, the Mystic. Each of these four systems has its part of

truth, and its part of error. Take the truth of each, and exclude the

error, and you have true philosophy, and the whole of it. Truth is always

something positive, affirmative; what then is the truth of scepticism,

which is a system of pure negation, and not only affirms nothing, but

denies that anything can be affirmed? How, moreover, can scepticism, which

is universal nescience, be called a system of philosophy? Finally, if you

know not the truth in its unity and integrity beforehand, how are you, in

studying those several systems, to determine which is the part of truth and

which the part of error?

There is no doubt that all schools, as all sects, have their part of truth,

as well as their part of error; for the human mind cannot embrace pure

unmixed error any more than the will can pure unmixed evil; but the

eclectic method is not the method of constructing true philosophy any more

than it is the method of constructing true Christian theology.

{335}

The Catholic acknowledges willingly the truth which the several sects hold;

but he does not derived it from them, nor arrived at it by studying their

systems. He holds it independently of them; and having it already in its

unity and integrity, he is able, in studying them, to distinguish what they

have that is true from the errors they mix up with it. It must be the same

with the philosopher. M. Cousin was not unaware of this, and he finally

asserted eclecticism rather as a method of historical verification, than as

the real and original method of constructing philosophy. The name was

therefore unhappily chosen, and is now seldom heard.

Eclecticism can never be a philosophy. All it can be is a method, and is,

as Cousin held, a method of verification rather than of construction.

Cousin's own method was not the eclectic, but avowedly the psychological;

that is, by careful observation and profound study of the phenomena of

consciousness, to attain to a real ontological science, or science of the

soul, of God, and nature. This method was severely criticised by Schelling

and other German philosophers, and has been objected to by ontologists

generally, as giving not a real ontology, but only a generalization. Dr.

Channing called the God asserted by Cousin "a splendid generalization"--a

very just criticism, but perhaps not for the precise reason the eloquent

Unitarian preacher assigned. Cousin does not maintain, theoretically at

least, that we can, by way of induction or deduction from purely

psychological facts, attain to a real ontological order. His real error was

in the misapplication of his method, which led him to deny what he calls

necessary and absolute ideas, and terms the idea of the true, the idea of

the beautiful, and the idea of the good, are being, and therefore God, and

to represent them as the word of God--the precise error which, Gioberti

rightly or wrongly maintains, was committed by Rosmini. It must be admitted

that Cousin is not on this point very clear, and that he often speaks of

ontology as an induction from psychology, in which case the God he asserts

would be, for the reason Channing supposes, only a generalization.

But we think it is possible to clear him from this charge, so far as his

intention went, and to defend the psychological method as he professed to

apply it. He professed to attain to ontology from the phenomena of

consciousness, or the facts revealed to consciousness; but he labors long

and hard, as does every psychologist who admits ontology at all, to show,

by a careful analysis and classification of these phenomena or facts, that

there are among them some, at least, which are not derived from the soul

itself, which do not depend on it, and do actually extend beyond the region

of psychology, and lead at once into the ontological order. In other words,

he claims to find in his psychological observation and analysis real

ontological facts. It is from these, not from purely psychological

phenomenon, that he professes to rise to ontology. So understood, what is

called the psychological method is strictly defensible. Every philosopher

does and must begin by the analysis of thought, that is, in the language of

Cousin, the fact of consciousness, and there is no other way possible. That

the ideal formula enters into every one of my thoughts is not a fact that I

know without thought, and it can be determined only by analyzing the

thought one thinks, that is, the fact of consciousness. The quarrel here

between the psychologists and the ontologists is quite unnecessary.

What is certain, and this is all the ontologist need assert, or, in fact,

can assert, that ontology is neither an induction nor a deduction from

psychological data. God is not, and cannot be, the generalization of our

own souls.

{336}

But it does not follow from this that we do not think that which is God,

and that it is from thought we do and must take it. We take it from thought

and by thinking. What is objected to in the psychologists is the assumption

that thought is a purely psychological or subjective fact, and that from

this psychological or subjective fact we can by way of induction attain to

ontological truth. But as we understand M. Cousin, and we studied his works

with some care thirty or thirty-five years ago, and had the honor of his

private correspondence, this he never pretends to do. What he claims is

that in the analysis of consciousness we detect a class of facts or ideas

which are not psychological or subjective, but really ontological, and do

actually carry us out of the region of psychology into that of ontology.

That his account of these facts or ideas is to be accepted as correct or

adequate we do not pretend, but that he professes to recognize them and

distinguish them from purely psychological facts is undeniable.

The defect or error of M. Cousin on this point was in failing, as we have

already observed, to identify the absolute or necessary ideas he detects

and asserts with God, the only _ens necessarium et reale_, and in

failing to assert their objectivity to the whole subject, and in presenting

them only as objective to the human personality. He never succeeded in

cutting himself wholly loose from the German nonsense of a

subjective-object or objective-subject, and when he had clearly proved an

idea to be objective to the reflective reason and the human personality, he

did dare assert it to be objective in relation to the whole subject. It was

impersonal, but might be in a certain sense subjective, as Kant maintained

with regard to the categories. There always seemed to remain in his mind

some confusion between the subject and object, and hence his translator in

Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature, never ventures to translate _le

moi et le non-moi_, subject and object, or the soul and the world, but

introduces into the language such barbarisms as the _me_ and the

_not-me_. Indeed, at the time those Specimens were published, there

were few, if any, of the scholars of the modern Athens that understood or

could be made to understand the real distinction between objective and

subjective; and we observed the other day, in looking over the

_Einleitung_ of a German professor, that he speaks of the

objective-object, the objective-subject, the subjective-object, and the

subjective-subject.

It is very easy to understand why Kant should assert objective-subjective,

for he held that the categories are necessary, irresistible, and

indestructible forms of the subject, but independent of the human will or

personality, or of proper human activity, nay, the very conditions of that

activity, imposed on us not by our will, but by the very constitution all

of our intellectual nature. But why Cousin should have hesitated to assert

the complete disjunction between subject and object in thought is what we

are unable to explain. He maintains strenuously that the object is distinct

from the personality of the subject, or that it is always, in his own

language, _le-non-moi_, but not that it is distinct from the whole

soul. He distinguishes the subject between personal activity and

impersonal. The personal is subjective, the impersonal is objective, but

objective in relation to what? To the personal only. There is, no doubt,

the distinction he asserts, and it is recognized by all our theologians in

their distinction between _actus humanus_ and _actus hominis_.

The _actus humanus_ is an act of free will, the _actus hominis_

is an involuntary act; but both are acts of the subject, man. All action of

man, whether personal or impersonal, voluntary or involuntary, is

subjective, but for involuntary acts he is not held morally accountable.

{337}

This same failure to mark the real distinction between subjective and

objective, and making it simply the distinction between personal and

impersonal, _le moi_ and _le non-moi_, has greatly deprecated the

value in his philosophy of the distinction M. Cousin notes between

intuition and reflection. According to him they are but two modes of the

activity of one in the same reason--which reason, he asserts is our faculty

of intelligence. Reason, he says, is our only faculty of knowing, by which

we know all that we do know, whatever the sphere or object of our

knowledge. Reason, then, is subjective, and consequently so are all its

modes of activity. Intuition is as subjective as reflection, and hence the

distinction between intuition and reflections, really so important when

rightly understood, says nothing in favor of the objectivity of what M.

Cousin calls absolute or necessary ideas. It is in his philosophy simply a

distinction between personal and impersonal, between the spontaneous

activity and the reflective of the same subject; yet it is on this very

distinction that he bases the validity of his ontology and his whole

metaphysical system. By it he explains genius, inspiration, revelation, and

religious faith. These are operations of the spontaneous reason, and divine

because the activity of the spontaneous reason is not personal. In this

way, he legitimates all the religions of all ages and nations. He places

prophetic and apostolic inspiration and the inspiration of genius in the

same category, and resolves them all, in the last analysis, into what we

commonly called enthusiasm. But as reason, whether personal or impersonal,

is subjective, a faculty of the human soul, it is not easy to see why its

spontaneous activity should be more divine or authoritative then its

reflective activity. Does M. Cousin hold with the Arabs that the ravings of

the maniac are divine inspirations?

Cousin seems to us never to have clearly understood the real character of

the distinction between intuition and reflection, on which he rightly

insists. Intuition is impersonal, divine, infallible, authoritative, he

maintains, while reflection, partaking of the imperfections and pettiness

of our own personality, is individual, fallible, and without authority,

save as supported by intuition. All that we ever do or can know is given us

primarily in intuition, and what is so given constitutes the common sense,

the common faith or belief of the race. There is less, but there can never

be more, in reflection than in intuition. The difference between the two is

the difference between _seeing_ and _beholding_. I see what is

before me, but to behold it I look. I look that I may determine what it is

I see. But it is clear from this illustration that the intuition is as much

the act of the subject as is the reflection. The only difference between

them is that asserted by Leibnitz between simple perception and

apperception. In simple perception I perceive all the objects before me,

without noting or distinguishing them; in apperception I note that it is I

who perceive them, and distinguish them both from myself and from one

another. The intuition is _à posteriori_, and is no synthetic judgment

_à priori_, as Kant terms what must precede experience in order to

render experience possible.

Nor is it true to say that all our knowledge is given in the primitive

intuition. What is given in the primitive intuition is simply the ideal,

self-evident truths, as say some, first principles of all science, which

are at the same time the first principles of all reality, and could not be

the first principles of science if they were not the first principles of

reality, say others. Even they who assert that the ideal formula, _Ens

creat existentias_, is intuitive, never pretend that anything more than

the ideal element of thought or experience is intuitive. The ideal formula

is simply the scientific reduction of the categories of Aristotle and Kant

to three, and their identification with reality; that is, their reduction

to being, existence, and the creative act of being, which is the real nexus

between them. These three categories must be given intuitively, or _à

priori_, because without them the intelligence is not constituted, and

no science, no experience, is possible.

{338}

But in them, while the principles of all science are given, no knowledge or

apprehension of particular things is given. The intuition constitutes, we

would say creates, the faculty of intelligence, but all science is acquired

either by the exercise of that faculty or by divine revelation addressed to

it.

Reduced to its proper character as asserted by M. Cousin, intuition is

empirical, and stands opposed not to reflection, but to discursion, and is

simply the immediate and direct perception of the object without the

intervention of any process, more or less elaborate, of reasoning. This is,

indeed, not an unusual sense of the word, perhaps its more common sense,

but it is a sense that renders the distinction between intuition and

reflection of no importance to M. Cousin, for it does not carry him out of

the sphere of the subject, or afford any basis for his ontological

inductions. He has still the question as to the objectivity and reality of

the ideal to solve, and no recognized means of solving it. His ontological

conclusions, therefore, as a writer in The Christian Examiner told him as

long ago as 1836, rest simply on the credibility of reason or faith in its

trustworthiness, which can never be established, because it is assumed that

to the operation of reason no objective reality is necessary, since the

object, if impersonal, may for aught that appears be included in the

subject. Notwithstanding his struggles and efforts of all sorts, we think,

therefore, that it must be conceded that Cousin remained in the sphere of

psychology, and that the facts the study and analysis of consciousness gave

him, have in his system no ontological value, for he fails to establish

their real objectivity. His passage from psychology is a leap over a gulf

by main strength, not a regular dialectic passage, which he professes to

have found, or which he promises to provide, and which the true analysis of

thought discloses.

M. Cousin professes to have reduced the categories of Kant and Aristotle to

two, substance and cause, or substance and phenomenon. But, as he in fact

identifies cause with substance, declaring substance to be substance only

in so much as it is cause, and cause to be cause only in so much as it is

substance, he really reduces them to the single category of substance,

which you may call indifferently substance or cause. But though every

substance is intrinsically and essentially a cause, yet, as it may be

something more than cause, it is not necessary to insist on this, and it

may be admitted that he recognizes two categories. Under the head of

substance he ranges all that is substantial, or that pertains to real and

necessary being, and under the head of cause the phenomenal, or the effects

of the causative action of substance. He says he understands by substance

the universal and absolute substance, the universal, necessary, and real

being of the theologians, and by phenomena not mere modes or appearances of

substance, but finite and relative substances, and calls them phenomena

only in opposition to the one absolute substance. They are created or

produced by the causative action of substance. If this has any real

meaning, he should recognize three categories, as in the ideal formula,

_Ens creat existentias_, that is, being, existence, or creature, and

the creative act of being, the real nexus between substance or being and

contingent existences, for it is that which places them and binds them to

the creator. In the ideal formula the categories are all reduced to three,

which really include them all and in their real relation. Whatever there is

to be known must be arranged under one or another of the three terms of the

formula, for whatever is conceivable must be being, the creative act of

being, or the product of that act, that is to say, existences. The ideal

formula is complete, for it asserts in their logical relation the first

principles of all the knowable (_omne scibile_) and all the real

(_omne reale_), and of all the knowable because of all the real, for

what is not real is not knowable. M. Cousin's reduction to substance and

cause, or being and phenomena, besides being not accurately expressed, is

unscientific and defective.

{339}

We do not think M. Cousin ever intended to deny the creative act of being,

or the reality of existences, or what he calls phenomena, but he includes

the act in his conception of substance. God is in his own intrinsic nature,

he maintains, causative or creative, and cannot, therefore, not cause or

create. Hence, creation is necessary. Being causative in his essence,

essentially a cause, and cause being a cause only inasmuch as it causes or

is actually a cause, God is, if we may so speak, forced to create, and to

be continuously creating, by the intrinsic and eternal necessity of his own

being. This smacks a little of Hegelianism, which teaches that God perfects

or fills out his own being, or realizes the possibilities of his own

nature, in creating, and arrives at self-consciousness first in man--a

doctrine which our Boston transcendentalists embodied in their favorite

aphorism, "In order to be you must do"--as if without being it is possible

to do, as if imperfection could make itself perfection, or anything by

itself alone could make itself more than it is!

But the doctrine that substance is essentially cause, and must from

intrinsic necessity cause in the sense of creating, is not tenable. We are

aware that Leibnitz, a great name in philosophy, defines substance to be an

active force, a _vis activa_, but we do not recollect that he anywhere

pretends that its activity necessarily extends beyond itself. God is _vis

activa_, if you will, in a supereminent degree; he is essentially

active, and would be neither being nor substance if he were not; he is, as

say Aristotle and the schoolmen, most pure act; and hence the theologians

discover in him a reason for the eternal generation of the Son, and the

eternal procession of the Holy Ghost, or why God is necessarily indivisible

Trinity; but nothing in this implies that he must necessarily act _ad

extra_, or create. He acts eternally from the necessity of his own

divine nature, but not necessarily out of the circle of his own infinite

being, for he is complete in himself, the plenitude of being, and always

and everywhere suffices for himself, and therefore for his own activity.

Creation, or the production of effects exterior to himself, is not

necessary to the perfection of his activity, adds and can add nothing to

him, as it does and can take nothing from him. Hence, though we cannot

conceive of him without conceiving him as infinitely, eternally, and

essentially active, we can conceive of him as absolute substance or being

without conceiving him to be necessarily acting or creating _ad

extra_.

M. Cousin evidently confounds the interior act of the divine being with his

exterior acts, or acts _ad extra_, or creative acts. God being most

pure act, says the eclectic philosopher, he must be infinitely active, and

if infinitely active he must develop himself in creation; therefore,

creation is necessary, and God cannot but create. This denies while it

asserts that God is in himself most pure act, and assumes that his nature

has possibilities that can be realized only in external acts. It makes the

creation necessary to the perfection of his being, and assumes either that

he is not in himself _ens perfectissimum_, or most perfect being, or

that the creation, the world, or universe, is itself God; that is, the

conception of God as most perfect being includes both substance and cause,

both being and phenomenon. Hence, with the contradiction of which M. Cousin

gives more than one example, and which no pantheistic philosopher does or

can escape, in asserting creation to be necessary, he declares it to be

impossible; for the phenomena substantially considered are God himself,

indistinguishable from him, and necessary to complete our conception of him

as absolute substance, or most perfect being.

{340}

In the preface to the third edition of his Philosophical Fragments, M.

Cousin says the expression, "Creation is necessary," is objectionable, as

irreverent, and appearing to imply that God in creating is not free, and he

willingly consents to retract it. But we cannot find that he does retract

it, and, if he retracts the expression, he nowhere retracts the thought. He

denies that he favors a system of fatalism, and labors hard to prove that

though God cannot but create, yet that in creating he is free. God, he

says, must act according to his own essential nature, and cannot act

contrary to his own wisdom and goodness; yet in acting he acts freely.

There is a distinction between liberty and free will. Free will is liberty

accompanied by deliberation and struggles between opposite motives and

tendencies. In God there can be no hesitancy, no deliberation, no struggle

of choice between good and evil. Yet is he none the less free for that.

There are sublime moments when the soul acts spontaneously, with terrible

energy, without any deliberation. Is the soul in these sublime moments

deprived of liberty? The saint, when, by long struggles and severe

discipline, he has overcome all his internal enemies, and henceforth acts

right spontaneously, without deliberating--is he less free than he who is

still in the agony of the struggle, or are his acts less meritorious? Is

the liberty of God taken away by denying that he is free to act contrary to

his nature?

Whether the distinction here asserted between liberty and free will is

admissible or not, or whether all that is alleged be true or much of it

only error, we pass over, as the discussion of the question of liberty

would lead further than we can now go; but in all he says he avoids the

real question at issue. Certainly, there can be no hesitancy on the part of

God, no interior struggle as to choice between good and evil, no

deliberation as to what he shall do or not do; nothing that implies the

least possible imperfection can be in him. Certain, again, is it that God

is not free to alter his own nature, to change his own attributes, or to

act contrary to them, to the eternal essences of things, or to his own

eternal ideas. But that is not the question. The real question is, Is be

free to create or not create at his own will and pleasure? Among the

infinite number of contingents possible, and all according with his own

essential attributes, is he free to select such as he chooses, and at his

own will and pleasure give them existence? This is the only question he had

to answer, and this question he studiously avoids, and fails, therefore, to

show that they are wrong who accuse him of asserting creation as the

necessary and not the free act of God. The charge of asserting universal

fatalism and pantheism he therefore fails to meet. He fails to vindicate

the liberty of God, and therefore, though he asserts it, the liberty of

man. All pantheism is fatalistic, and the doctrine of Spinoza is not more

decidedly pantheistic than the system adopted and defended by Cousin.

We are far from believing that M. Cousin thought himself a pantheist, for

we do not think he ever understood his own system. He was more than most

men the dupe of words, and, though not destitute of philosophical genius,

philosophy was never his natural vocation, any more than it was his

original destination. He was always, as we have said, the littérateur

rather than the philosopher. Much allowance should also, no doubt, be made

for the unsettled state of philosophy in France when he became, under

Royer-Collard, master of conferences in the Normal School of Paris, and the

confused state of philosophical language that was then in use. Throughout

his whole ontology, he is misled by taking the word substance instead of

_ens_ or being. He says that he understands by substance, when he

asserts, as he does, that there is only one substance, what the fathers and

doctors of the church mean by the one supreme, necessary, absolute, and

eternal being, the _Ego sum Qui sum_, I am that I am, of Exodus, the

name under which God revealed himself to Moses. This is an improper use of

the word.

{341}

No doubt being is substance, or substantial, but the two terms are not

equivalents. Being has primary reference to that which is, as opposed to

that which is not, or nothing; substance is something, and so far coincides

with being, but something in opposition to attribute, mode, or accident, or

something capable of supporting attributes, modes, or accidents. Being is

absolute in and of itself, and therefore strictly speaking one, and it is

only in a loose sense that we speak of beings in the plural number, or call

creatures beings. There is and can be but one only being, God, for he only

can say, _Ego sum Qui sum_, and whatever existences there may be

distinguished from him have their being not in themselves, but in him,

according to what St. Paul says, "in him we live, and move, and have our

being: in _ipso vivimus, et movemur, et sumus._" There is in this view

nothing pantheistic, for being is complete in itself and sufficient for

itself. Consequently, there can be nothing distinguishable from being

except placed by the free creative act of being, that is, creation or

creatures. The creature is not being, but it holds from being by the

creative act, and may be and is a substance, distinct from the divine

substance. Being is one, substances may be manifold. Hence, in the ideal

formula, the first term or category is _ens_, not _substans_ or

_substantia_.

Cousin, misled by Descartes and Spinoza, and only imperfectly acquainted

with the scholastic philosophy, adopts the term substance instead of being,

and maintains sturdily, from first to last, that there is and can be but

one substance. Whence it follows that all not in that one substance is

unsubstantial and phenomenal, without attributes, modes, or activity.

Creatures may have their being in God and yet be substances and capable of

acting from their own centre as second causes; but, if there is only one

substance, they cannot themselves be substances in any sense at all, and

can be only attributes, modes, or phenomena of the one only substance, or

God. God alone is in himself their substance and reality, and their

activity is really his activity. By taking for his first category substance

instead of _ens_ or being, M. Cousin found himself obliged virtually

to deny the second. He says he calls the second category phenomena, only in

opposition to the one universal substance, that he holds them to relative

or finite substances. This shows his honorable intentions, but it cannot

avail him, for he says over and over again that there is and can be but one

substance. Either substance is one and one only, he says formally, or it is

nothing. The unity of substance is vital in his system, and unity of

substance is the essential principle, of pantheism. He himself defines

substance as that which exists in itself and not in another.

M. Cousin say pantheism is the divinization of nature, or nature taken in

its totality as God. But this is sheer atheism or naturalism, not

pantheism. The essence of pantheism is in the denial of substantial

creation or the creation of substances. The pantheist can, in a certain

manner, even admit creation, the creation of modes or phenomena, and there

are few pantheists who do not assert as much. The test is as to the

creation of substance, or existences that can support attributes, modes, or

accidents of their own, instead of being simply attributes, modes, or

accidents of the one substance, and thus capable of acting from their own

centre as proper second causes. He who denies the creation of such

existences is a pantheist, and he who affirms it is a theist and no

pantheist, however he may err in other matters. Had M. Cousin understood

this, he would have seen that he had not escaped the error of Spinoza. With

only one substance, it is impossible to assert the creation of substances.

The substance of the soul and of the world, if there is only one substance,

is God, and they are only phenomenal or mere appearances; the only activity

in the universe is that of God; and what we call our acts are his acts.

{342}

Whatever is done, whether good or evil, he does it, not only as _causa

eminens_ or _causa causarum_, but as direct and immediate actor.

The moral consequences of such a doctrine are easy to be seen, and need not

be dwelt upon.

No doubt M. Cousin, when repelling the charge of pantheism preferred

against him, on the ground of his maintaining that there is only one

substance, thought he had said enough in saying that he used the word

phenomena in the sense of finite or relative substances; but if there is

only one substance, how can there be any finite and relative substances?

And he, also, should have considered that his use of the word phenomena was

the worst word he could have chosen to convey the idea of substance,

however finite, for it stands opposed to substance. He says _le moi_

and _le non-moi_ are in relation to substance phenomenal. Who from

this could conclude them to be themselves substances? He says he could not

maintain that they are modes or appearances of substance only, because he

maintains that they are forces, causes. But it sometimes happens to a

philosopher to be in contradiction with himself, and always to the

pantheist, because pantheism is supremely sophistical and

self-contradictory. It admits of no clear, consistent, logical statement.

Besides, no man can always be on his guard, and when his system is false,

the force of truth and his good sense and just feeling will often get the

better of his system. He has, indeed, said the soul (_le moi_) and the

world (_le non-moi_) are forces, causes; but he has also said, as his

system requires him to say, that their substantial activity is the activity

of the one only substance, which is God.

It were easy to justify these criticisms by any number of citations from M.

Cousin's several works, but it is not necessary, for we are attempting

neither a formal exposition nor a formal refutation of his system; we are

merely pointing out some of his errors and mistakes, for the benefit of

young and ingenuous students of philosophy, who need to be shown what it is

necessary to shun on the points taken up. Most, if not all, of M. Cousin's

mistakes and errors arose from his having considered the question of method

before he had settled that of principles. He says a philosopher's whole

philosophy is in his method. Tell me what is such or such a philosopher's

method, and I will tell you his philosophy. But this is not true, unless by

method he means both principles and method taken together. Method is the

application of principles, and presupposes them, and till they are

determined it is impossible to determine the method to be adopted or

pursued. The human mind has a method given it in its very constitution, and

we cannot treat the question of method till we have ascertained the

principles of that constitution. Principles are not found or obtained by

the exercise of our faculties, because without them the mind can neither

operate nor even exist. Principles are and must be given by the creator of

the mind itself. To treat the question of method before we have ascertained

what principles are thus given, is to proceed in the dark and to lose our

way.

Undoubtedly, every philosopher must begin the construction of his

philosophy by the analysis of thought, either as presented him in

consciousness or as represented in language, or both together. This is a

mental necessity. Since philosophy deals only with thought or what is

presented in thought, its first step must be to ascertain what are the

elements of thought. So far as this analysis is psychological, philosophy

begins in psychology; but whether what is called the psychological method

is or is not to be adopted, we cannot determine till we have ascertained

the elements, and ascertained whether they are all psychological or not. If

on inquiry it should turn out that in every thought there is both a

psychological and an ontological element given simultaneously and in an

indissoluble synthesis, it is manifest that the exclusively psychological

method would lead only to error.

{343}

It would leave out the onto logical element, and be unable to present in

its true character even the psychological; for, if the psychological

element in the real order and in thought exists only in relation with the

ontological, it can be apprehended and treated in its true character only

in that relation. Whether such be the fact or not, how are we to determine

till we know what are the principles alike of all the knowable and of all

the real--that is, have determined the categories?

The error of the psychological method is not that it asserts the necessity

of beginning our philosophizing with the analysis of thought, or what M.

Cousin calls, not very properly, the fact of consciousness, but in

proceeding to study the facts of the human soul, as if man were an isolated

existence, and the only thing existing; and after having observed and

classified these facts, either stopping with them, as does Sir William

Hamilton, or proceeding by way of induction, as most psychologists do, to

the conclusion of ontological principles--an induction which both Sir

William Hamilton and Schelling have proved, in their criticisms of Cousin's

method, is invalid, because no induction is valid that concludes beyond the

facts or particulars from which it is made. The facts being all

psychological, nothing not psychological can be concluded from them. Cousin

feels the force of this criticism, but, without conceding that his method

is wrong or defective, seeks to avoid it by alleging that among the facts

of consciousness are some which, though revealed by consciousness or

contained in thought, are some which are not psychological, and hence

psychology leads of itself not by way of induction, but directly, to

ontology. The answer is pertinent, for if it be true that there is an

ontological element in every thought, the analysis of thought discloses it.

But, hampered and blinded by his method, Cousin fails, as we have seen, to

disengage a really ontological element, and in his blundering explanation

of it deprives it of all real ontological character. His God is

anthropomorphous, when not a generalization or a pure abstraction. What

deceives the exclusive psychologists, and makes them regard their

inductions of ontology from psychological facts as valid, is the very

important fact that there are no exclusively psychological facts; and in

their psychology, though not recognized by them as such, and according to

their method ought not to be such, there are real ontological

elements--elements which are not psychological, and without which there

could be no psychological elements. These elements place us directly in

relation with the ontological reality, and the mistake is in not seeing or

recognizing this fact, and in assuming that the ontological reality,

instead of being given, as it is, intuitively, is obtained by induction

from the psychological. Ontology as an induction or a logical conclusion is

sophistical and false; as given intuitively in the first principles of

thought, it is well founded and true. The mistake arises from having

attempted to settle the question of method before having settled the

question of principles. The simple fact is that the soul is not the only

existence, nor an isolated existence. It exists and operates only in

relation with its creator and upholder, with the external world, and with

other men or society, so that there are and can be no purely psychological

facts. The soul severed from God, or the creative act of God, cannot live,

cannot exist, but drops into the nothing it was before it was created.

Principles are given, not found or obtained by our own activity, for, as we

have said, the mind cannot operate without principles. The principles, as

most philosophers tell us, are self-evident, or evidence themselves. If

real principles, they are and must be alike the principles of being and of

knowing, of science and reality. They must include in their real relations

both the psychological and the ontological. As the psychological does not

and cannot exist without the ontological, and, indeed, not without the

creative act of the ontological, science is possible only on condition that

the ontological and the psychological, as to their ideal principles, are

intuitively given, and given in their real synthesis, as it has been

abundantly shown they are given in the ideal formula.

{344}

The ontological and psychological being given intuitively and

simultaneously in their real relation, it follows necessarily that neither

the exclusively psychological method nor the exclusively ontological method

can be accepted, and that the method must be synthetic, because the

principles themselves are given in their real synthesis. Clearly, then, the

principles must determine the method, not the method the principles. It is

not true, then, to say that all one's philosophy is in one's method, but

that it is all in one's principles. If M. Cousin had begun by ascertaining

what are the principles of thought, necessarily asserted in every thought

and without which no thought is possible, he could never have fallen into

his pantheism, which every thought repudiates, and which cannot even be

asserted without self-contradiction, because in every thought there is

given as essential to the very existence of thought the express

contradictory of pantheism of every form.

M. Cousin professes to be able, from the method a philosopher follows in

philosophizing, to foretell his philosophy; but although we would speak

with the greatest respect of our former master, from whom we received no

little benefit, we must say that we have never met a man, equally learned

and equally able, so singularly unhappy in explaining the systems of the

various schools of philosophy of which he professes to give the history. We

cannot now call to mind a single instance in which he has seized and

presented the kernel of the philosophical system he has undertaken to

explain. He makes the Theaetetus of Plato an argument against the sensists,

or the doctrine of the origin of all our ideas in sensation--when one has

but to read that Dialogue to perceive that what Plato is seeking to prove

is that the knowledge of the sensible, which is multiple, variable, and

evanescent, is no real science at all. Plato is not discussing at all the

question of how we know, but what we must know in order to have real

science. Cousin's exposition of what he calls the Alexandrian theodicy, or

of neoplatonism, is, notwithstanding he had edited the works of Proclus, a

marvel of misapprehension alike of the Alexandrian doctrine and of

Christian theology. He describes with a sneer the scholastic philosophy as

being merely "a commentary on the Holy Scriptures and texts from the

fathers." He edited the works of Descartes, but never understood more of

that celebrated philosopher than enough to imbibe some of his worst errors.

He has borrowed much, directly or indirectly, from Spinoza, but never

comprehended his system of pantheism, as is evident from his judgment that

Spinoza erred only in being too devout and too filled and penetrated with

God!

He misapprehends entirely Leibnitz's doctrine of substance, as we have

already seen. His own system is in its psychological part borrowed chiefly

from Kant, and in its ontological part from Hegel, neither of whom has he

ever understood. He has the errors of these two distinguished Germans

without their truths or their logical firmness. And perhaps there was no

system of philosophy, of which he undertook to give an account, that he

less understood than his own. He seems, after having learned something of

the great mediaeval philosophers in preparing his work, Philosophic

Scholastique, to have had some suspicions that he had talked very

foolishly, and had been the dupe of his own youthful zeal and enthusiasm;

for, though he afterward published a new edition of his works without any

essential alteration, as we infer from the fact that they were placed at

Rome on the Index, he published, as far as we are aware, no new

philosophical work, and turned his attention to other subjects. Even in his

work on the Scholastics, as well as in his account of Jansenism in his work

on Madame de Sablé, we recollect no re-assertion of his pantheism, nor even

an unorthodox opinion.

{345}

It was a great misfortune for M. Cousin as a philosopher that he knew so

little of Catholic theology, and that what little he did know, apparently

caught up at second-hand, only served to mislead him. We are far from

building science on faith or founding philosophy on revelation, in the

sense of the traditionalists; yet we dare affirm that no man who has not

studied profoundly the Gospel of St. John, the Epistles of St. Paul, the

great Greek and Latin fathers, and the mediaeval doctors of the church, is

in a condition to write anything deserving of serious consideration on

philosophy. The great controversies that have been called forth from time

to time on the doctrine of the Trinity, the Incarnation, the two natures

and the two wills in the one person of our Lord, the Real Presence of our

Lord's body, soul, and divinity in the Eucharist, liberty and necessity,

the relations of nature and grace, and of reason and faith, throw a

brilliant light on philosophy far surpassing all the light to be derived

from Gentile sources, or by the most careful analysis of the facts of our

own consciousness. The effort, on the one hand, to demolish, and on the

other to sustain, Catholic dogma, has enlightened the darkest and most

hidden passages of both psychology and ontology, and placed the Catholic

theologian, really master of the history of his science, on a vantage

ground which they who know it not are incapable of conceiving. Before him

your Descartes, Spinozas, Kants, Fichtes, Schellings, Hegels, Cousins,

dwindle to philosophical pigmies.

The excellent M. Augustin Cochin thinks that M. Cousin rendered great

service to the cause of religion by the sturdy warfare he carried in

defence of spiritualism against the gross sensism and materialism of the

eighteenth century, and nobody can deny very considerable merit to his

Critical Examination of Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding. Dr. C. S.

Henry translated it some years ago, in this country, and published it under

the rather inappropriate title of Consin's Psychology, and it has no doubt

had much influence in unseating Locke from the philosophical throne he

formerly occupied. But the reaction against Locke and Condillac, as well as

the philosophers of Auteuil, had commenced long before Consin became master

of conferences in L'Ecole Normale; and we much doubt if the subtiler and

more refined rationalism be has favored is a less dangerous enemy to

religion and society than the sensism of Condillac, or the gross

materialism of Cabanis, Garat, and Destutt de Tracy. Under his influence

infidelity in France has modified its form, but only, as it seems to me, to

render itself more difficult of detection and refutation. Pantheism is a

far more dangerous enemy than materialism, for its refutation demands an

order of thought and reasoning above the comprehension of the great mass of

those who are not incapable of being misled by its sophistries. The

refutation of the pantheism of our days requires a mental culture and a

philosophical capacity by no means common. Thousands could comprehend the

refutation of Locke or Condillac, where there is hardly one who can

understand the refutation of Hegel or Spinoza.

Besides, we do not think Cousin can be said to have in all cases opposed

the truth to sensism. His spiritualism is not more true than sensism

itself. He pretends that we have immediate and direct apprehension of

spiritual reality--that is, pure intellections. True, he says that we

apprehend the noetic only on occasion of sensible affection, but on such

occasion we do apprehend it pure and simple. This is as to the apprehension

itself exaggerated spiritualism, and would almost justify the fair pupil of

Margaret Fuller in her exclamation, "O Miss Fuller! I see right into the

abyss of being." Man, not being a pure intelligence, but intelligence

clothed with sensibility, has and can have no pure intellections.

{346}

M. Cousin would have been more correct if instead of saying that the

affection of the sensibility is necessary as the occasion, he had said, we

know the supersensible indeed, but only as sensibly represented.

In this sense we understand the peripatetics when they say: "Nihil est in

intellectu, quod non prius fuerit in sensu." The medium of this sensible

representation of the intelligible or spiritual truth to the understanding

is language of some sort, which is its sensible sign. M. Cousin would have

done well to have studied more carefully on this subject the remarkable

work of De Bonald, a work, though it has some errors, of an original genius

of the first order, and of a really profound thinker. Had he done this, he

might have seen that the reflective reason cannot operate without language,

and understood something of the necessity of the infallible church to

maintain the unity and integrity of language, whose corruption by

philosophers invariably involves the loss of the unity and integrity of the

idea. It might also have taught him that a philosophy worth anything cannot

be spun by the philosopher out of his own consciousness as the spider spins

her web out of her own bowels, and that without as much at least of

primitive revelation or the primitive instruction given by God himself to

the race, as is embodied in language, no man can successfully cultivate

philosophy.

As minister of public instruction under Louis Philippe, M. Cousin labored

hard and with some success, we know not how much, to extend primary schools

in France; but he in part neutralized his services in this respect by his

defence of the university monopoly, his opposition to the freedom of

education, his efforts to force his pantheistic or at best rationalistic

philosophy into the colleges of the university, and his intense hatred and

unrelenting hostility to the Jesuits, who have first and last done so much

for education and religion in France as well as elsewhere. Ordinarily a man

of great candor, and of a most kindly disposition, his whole nature seemed

to change the moment a Jesuit was in question. He was no friend to the

Catholic religion, and after the writer of this became a Catholic, he

forgot his French politeness, and refused to answer a single one of his

letters. To him we were either dead or had become an enemy. He moreover

never liked to have his views questioned. In politics he belonged to the

_Doctrinaire_ school, and supported the _juste milieu_. In the

Revolution of 1848, and under the Republic, he opposed earnestly socialism,

and attempted to stay its progress by writing and publishing a series of

philosophical tracts, as if philosophy could cure an evil which it had

helped to create. When society is in disorder, old institutions are

falling, and civilization is rapidly lapsing into barbarism, it is only

religion, speaking from on high with the power of truth and the authority

of God, that can arrest the downward tendency. "Religion," said Lamennais

in the first volume of his Essay on Indifference in Matters of Religion,

"is found at the cradle of nations; philosophy at their tomb." Woe to the

nation that exchanges faith for philosophy! its ruin is at hand, for it has

lost the principle of life. After the _coup d'état_ little was heard

of Cousin either in the world of politics or philosophy, and his last years

appear to have flowed away in the peaceful pursuits of literature.

Rumors from time to time reached us during the last dozen years that M.

Cousin had become a Catholic, and for his sake we regret that they have

remained unconfirmed. It is reported, on good authority, that he regularly

attended mass, and was accustomed to say his morning and evening prayers

before an image of Our Lady; but it is agreed by his most intimate Catholic

friends that he never made any formal profession of Catholic faith, and

died without receiving or asking the sacraments of the church.

{347}

That in his later years his mind turned at times toward the church, that

his feelings toward religion were softened, and that he felt the need of

faith, is very probable; but we have seen no evidence that he ever avowed

publicly or privately any essential change in his doctrine. He always held

that the Catholic faith is the form under which the people do and must

receive the truth; but he held that the truth thus received does not

transcend the natural order, and is transformed with the _élite_ of

the race into philosophy.

We have found in his works no recognition of the supernatural order, or the

admission of any other revelation than the inspiration of the impersonal

reason. Providence for him was fate, and God was not free to interpose in a

supernatural way for the redemption and salvation of men. Creation itself

was necessary, and the universe only the evolution of his substance. There

is no evidence that we have seen that he ever attained to the conviction

that creation is the free act of the creator, or felt even for a moment the

deep joy of believing that GOD IS FREE. Yet it is not ours to judge the

man. We follow him to the mouth of the grave, and there leave him to the

mercy as well as the justice of him whose very justice is love.

We are not the biographer of Victor Cousin; we have only felt that we could

not let one so distinguished in life, who had many of the elements of a

really great man, and whom the present writer once thought a great

philosopher, pass away in total silence. Genius has always the right to

exact a certain homage, and Victor Consin had genius, though not, in our

judgment, the true philosophical genius. We have attempted no regular

exposition or refutation of his philosophy; our only aim has been to call

attention to his teachings on those points where he seemed to approach

nearest the truth, and on which the young and ardent philosophical student

most needs to be placed on his guard, to bring out and place in a clear

light certain elements of philosophic truth which he failed to grasp. We

place not philosophy above faith, but we do not believe it possible to

construct it without faith; we yet hold that it is necessary to every one

who would understand the faith or defend it against those who impugn it. If

on any point what we have said on the occasion of the departure of the

founder of French eclecticism shall serve to make the truth clearer to a

single ingenuous and earnest inquirer, we shall thank God that he has

permitted us to live not wholly in vain.

------

Original.

Praises Of The Blessed Sacrament.

Imitated from Madame Swetchine.

O vault of heaven, clear and bright!

All spangled o'er with stars to-night,

Canst say how many worlds of light

Adorn thy glorious firmament?

For here I long my voice to raise

To him who hath my heart always.

And fain would know how oft to praise

The sweet, All Holy Sacrament.

{348}

O shining sun! for every ray

That from thee beamed since Eden's day,

And shall, till this world pass away,

And all thy light and heat be spent:

For each bright ray my voice I'd raise

To him who hath my heart always,

And sing a canticle of praise

To this Most Holy Sacrament.

O trackless sea! could I but save

And count each short-lived glist'ning wave;

Their sum would tell how oft I crave

To praise the Blessed Sacrament.

O fields! for every grassy blade

Of which thy beauteous robe is made,

Let offerings sweet of praise be laid

Before the Blessed Sacrament.

O pleasant gardens! could I know

How many flowers within you grow:

So many flowers of praise I'd strew

Before the Blessed Sacrament.

O wide, wide world! canst tell to me

How many grains of dust in thee?

So many would my praises be

To this Most Holy Sacrament.

O earth! thy praises have an end;

To seraphs I the task commend.

Their tireless voices they must lend

To praise the Blessed Sacrament.

Eternity! duration long!

To thee alone it doth belong

To measure when should cease the song

That lauds the Blessed Sacrament!

------

{349}

From Chambers's Journal.

Architecture Of Birds.

If we desire to look upon something which the first inhabitants of our

planet saw exactly as it is to-day, we have only to stand before a bird's

nest. Your bird is no innovator: he laid down the plan of his dwelling at

the creation of the world, and, while everything around him has been

changing, assuming new forms, yielding to the influence of fashion, has

remained content with his primitive architecture ever since. He calculates

the number, and considers the necessities of his family, and with unerring

sagacity provides for them all. He imitates none of his neighbors, and his

neighbors, in their turn, display no inclination to imitate him. There is

in our rural districts a tradition of a farmer's daughter, who, having

observed her mother winnow at a certain barn-door, stuck to the same

locality through life, without the slightest reference to the quarter from

whence the wind blew. So exactly is it with the bird. He cares for nothing

but his own ideas of comfort, convenience, suitability--whether the

original type of his mansion necessitated its being built on the summit of

a rook or a tree, under the eaves of a house, or in the thick foliage of a

bush, in the crevice of a cliff, or amid the rustling grass of a meadow.

To study the habitations of birds is to traverse the whole extent of man's

universal habitation, through every zone from the equator to the polar

circle; from the tops of the highest ranges, amid unscalable crags and

snows, to the sedgy margin of the sea, and the mossy banks of streams.

Whenever the air is fanned by a wing--wherever eggs are deposited--

wherever little bills are opened almost hourly for food--wherever the hen

sits, and the male bird roves and toils to support her--wherever, from

bough or twig, he pours music into the woods, to cheer his helpmate during

her labor of love, there is poetry; whether, as on the lofty surface of

Danger Island, or amid the flowery bogs of the Orinoco, the airy artisan

works in solitude, or, on village roof and church spire, clings to the

vicinity of man. Naturalists gravely inform us that birds are bipeds like

ourselves, which in some cases may be thought to account for their fondness

for our society, as with the sparrow, the swallow, the red-breast, and the

martin; but, on the other hand, several members of this numerous family,

though they boast of no more legs than we, make careful use of those they

have to keep out of our way. Even among the swallow tribe, there is one

remarkable branch which abjures the man-loving qualities of his

congeners--we mean the sea-swallow of the Twelve Thousand Islands, which in

breeding-time mounts high into the air, takes a scrutinizing survey of the

earth beneath, and, selecting for his quarters the least frequented,

descends, skims into some lofty cave, and there builds his procreant

cradle. In this way he hopes to elude observation. Flattering himself that

his whereabouts will remain undiscovered, he darts away with his wife to

their favorite element the ocean, where it breaks upon solitary shores,

and, flying along its crested surges, gathers from amid the foam and spray

the materials of its dwelling, the nature of which still remains unknown.

Whatever it may be, it forms a delicate bassinet in which to deposit its

eggs and rear its young. Less white than alabaster, the nest of the

sea-swallow is of a light color, and semi-transparent, odoriferous in

smell, glutinous, and rather sweet to the taste.

{350}

Rows of these little bowls, which look like so many vessels of porcelain,

run along the rocky walls of caverns, and are filled with a thickly

bedropped with spots of celestial blue. To the people of the Flowery Land,

these nests are a delicacy, which, when of the best quality, are weighed in

the market against gold. What, however, renders some nests better than

others is uncertain; it may be that in parts of the ocean the ingredient

which imparts the most delicate flavor to the substance is not to be found;

or else, on shore, the flowers that supply the perfume are too few, so that

the swallow is compelled to have recourse to blossoms of inferior

sweetness.

From the mouth of the swallow's cave, you may sometimes, from a long

distance, discern another and very different specimen of ornithological

building. This is a mound, sometimes sixty or seventy feet in length,

almost as much in diameter, and about six feet high. This also is a nest,

or rather a city of nests, for it is constructed so as to receive a whole

republic of birds, who, as in a well-ordered state, have all their separate

dwellings, with streets, highways, common chambers, breeding apartments,

and so on. In some, there you find callow citizens, or fledglings, or eggs,

or the grave parents of the state, discussing or meditating upon its common

interests. Nothing can be more curious than a section of such a bird mound,

with its various cells and compartments laid open to the view.

From this cyclopean style of architecture, the distance is prodigious to

the house of the tailor-bird, which selects for its habitation the inside

of a leaf, and with its bill and claws sews its house to it. It takes a

filament of fine grass, and, steadying the leaf with one of its feet, uses

its bill for a needle, or rather for a borer; then, having made a little

hole, it introduces the grassy filament into the edge of the leaf, and

afterward doing as much for the other edge, weaves between both a sort of

herring-bone netting, strong enough to support its nest. Within this net it

immediately begins building until it has wrought a small soft purse,

sufficiently capacious to contain the female and her eggs. The habitation

being completed, she enters tail foremost, leaving her little head and bill

visible at the top of the purse, situated directly under the leaf's stem,

and forthwith commences her maternal duties. Now begins the business of the

male, which flies backward and forward in search of such delicacies as his

lady loves; and, having been successful, approaches the leaf, and, with

true martial tenderness, puts them gently into the female's mouth. He then

seats himself upon a branch overhead, and, watching his helpmate as she

swings to and fro in her airy couch, twitters or sings incessantly to keep

up her spirit's.

Among us, the most accomplished bird-architect is the wren, which, in

compliment to his building powers, is by our neighbors called the

_roitelet_, or little king; and certainly no king has a more

comfortable dwelling. The most flexible grass roots, the finest grass, the

softest moss, the most delicate down from its own breast, constitute the

materials of this beautiful structure, which forms a perfect sphere of dark

emerald green. This edifice has two doors, one at which the little king or

queen enters, the other through which it emerges when it desires to stretch

its wings or plume its feathers. When at home, the point of the bill and

the tip of the tail are visible at the opposite entrances, while the

vaulted roof protects it from raindrops, and assists in concentrating the

heat by which the regal fledglings are hatched. The builder of St. Paul's,

when projecting his magnificent dome, may have taken a hint from his

ancestors the wrens. But, unwilling to accumulate all her gifts on one of

her children, nature has left the _roitelet_ quite without the power

of charming Madame Wren by his voice, a fact to which Shakespeare alludes

where he says:

"The nightingale, if she should sing by day,

When every goose is cackling, would be thought

No better musician then the wren."

{351}

But this unmusical character does not belong to all the varieties of the

wren, since there is one kind which may be regarded as a songster. With

respect to external appearance, there are few northern birds more favored

than the golden-crested wren, the feathers of whose crest, as they glance

and quiver, look like sprays of burnished gold in the sunbeams. The war

recently declared against these little people is as absurd as it is cruel.

Supposed to be the gardener's enemies, they have been hunted down without

pity or remorse; whereas, instead of destroying the fruit, they only eat

the insects which do really destroy it, and should therefore be esteemed as

little winged scavengers, who clear away from gardens very much that is

pernicious. If we understood our own interest, we should look upon our

diminutive ally, not exceeding two drachms in weight, much as the Turks do

upon the stork, which they reverence for its filial piety. If contempt can

dwell within breasts so small, the wren must surely feel it for the stone

curlew, which, too ignorant or too lazy to build a nest at all, lays its

eggs on the bare ground, where they are crushed by Hodge's foot or by the

plough.

The country people in France love the song of the wren, which is most

agreeable in the month of May, that being the breeding-season. In many

French provinces, the rustics entertain so great a respect for the

_roitelet_, that they not only abstain from injuring it, but will not

so much as touch its nest, built sometimes against the sides of their

houses or stables, though generally a thick bush or full-foliaged tree is

preferred. Like nearly all other birds, the wren takes a fancy to some

particular locality, where it will construct its habitation, in spite of

dangers and difficulties. Its eggs, from ten to twelve in number, are about

the size of peas, and when they are hatched it becomes so fierce and

pugnacious that it will attack large birds, and put them to flight by the

punctures of its sharp bill. It is the smallest of European birds, and

holds, therefore, with us the place which the humming-bird occupies in Asia

and America. This diminutive creature, which is as ingenious as it is

affectionate, forms its tiny nest with cotton or fine, silky filaments,

which it twines and arranges so as to afford the softest conceivable couch

for its eggs, which never exceed two in number, and resemble small white

beads, dotted with bright yellow. The young, when they first emerge from

the shell, are little larger than flies, and perfectly naked, though a fine

down soon appears upon the skin, which gradually ripens into feathers so

brilliant and dazzling in color as not to be exceeded by the rarest gems,

or even by the tints of the rainbow. So great, in fact, is the beauty of

these birds, that the ladies of the countries in which they abound suspend

them instead of diamonds as drops to their earings.

Tiny as the humming-bird is, neither the eagle nor the condor exceeds it in

love for its young. A French missionary, during his residence in Surinam,

took a humming-bird's nest in which the young were just hatched, and placed

it on the sill of an open window in a cage. The parents, as he conjectured,

followed their young, and brought them food, the male and female by turns,

which they introduced between the bars of the cage. At length, finding that

no attempt was made to harm them, they grew fond of the place, and perching

upon the top of the cage, or flying about the room, rewarded the worthy

priest by their music for the delicate fare he soon learned to provide for

them. This was a sort of soft paste made of biscuit, Spanish wine, and

sugar, and nearly transparent. Over this they passed their long tongues,

and when they had satisfied their hunger, either fell asleep or burst forth

into song. Familiarity, if it did not in their case breed contempt, at

least banished all apprehension, for they alighted on the priest's head, or

perched on his finger, where their long rainbow-like tails floated like

little ribbons in the air. But all earthly pleasures have an end; a rat ate

up the humming-birds, nest and all, and left the poor missionary to seek

for new companions.

{352}

Down among the coral-reefs in the Southern Pacific you meet with other bird

structures, which in their way deserve equal attention. Here the sea-eagles

build their nests, always, if possible, in the same islet, and, if there be

such a convenience, on the same tree. On a small wild flat in the ocean,

too confined to allure inhabitants, and apparently too arid for vegetation,

there grew nevertheless one tree, on which a pair of fishing-eagles erected

their dwelling. There these lords of the waves, contemplating their vast

empire, sat aloft in their eyrie, male and female, looking at their eggs,

and dreaming of the future. Our readers will remember the Raven's Oak,

which the woodman, whose brow like a penthouse hung over his eyes, felled

and floated down the course of the river. So it was with the tree of the

fishing-eagles; some savage applied his axe to the stem, and down it came,

though, it is to be presumed, not while the young eagles were in the nest,

for the mother did not break her heart, neither did the father follow the

timber with vindictive pertinacity. On the contrary, having consulted his

helpmate, he took up his lodgings in a bush, and there provided as well as

he could for the support and comfort of his heirs and successors. There

might be tall trees at no great distance, there might also be islands

larger and prettier; but he was born on this sandy flat; he therefore loved

it, and stuck to it, and, had it not provided him with a bush, he would

have built his nest on the sand. Such, over some creatures, is the power of

locality. The higher the nature, the more extensive become the sympathies,

so that to some it is enough if they can rest anywhere on this globe. They

love the planet in general, but would like, if they could, to make a

country excursion from it to Jupiter, Sirius, or Canopus, just by way of

exercising their wings.

We have seen the humming-bird building in a little garden shrub, the

tailor-bird in the folds of a leaf; but there is one of their family which

selects a far more extraordinary situation, in order to place its young

beyond the reach of vermin. Selecting the tallest tree within the range of

its experience, it weaves for itself a sort of long pouch with a narrow

neck, and suspends it to the point of a bare twig some sixty or seventy

feet from the ground. There, in its pensile habitation, it lays its eggs,

warms them into life, and when the callow brood begin to open their bills,

feeds them fifty or sixty times in the day with such dainties as their

constitutions require. This bird is the _Aplonis metallica_, about the

size of a starling, with plumage of a dark glossy green, interfused with

purple, which gives forth as it flies bright metallic reflections. The

aplonis is gregarious, like man, since it loves to build its nest in the

close neighborhood of other creatures of its own species, so that you may

often behold fifty nests on the same tree, waving and balancing in the air.

On the plain beneath, the aplonis sees from its nest the long necked emu

flying like the wind before the hunter, immense flights of white pigeons,

or the shy and active bower-bird constructing its palace, four feet long by

almost two feet in height, where it eats berries with its harem, brings up

its offspring, and, darting hither and thither before the savage, seeks to

allure him away from its home. All the shrubs, and vines, and low thickets

in the vicinity are haunted by perroquets no larger than sparrows, whose

plumage, gorgeous as the brightest flowers, may be said to light up the

woods.

The only European bird that builds a pensile nest is one of the family that

we familiarly denominate toun-tits. This liliputian architect is as choice

in his materials as he is skilful in the arrangement of them--his bases,

his arches, his metopes, and architraves consist of cobwebs, the finest

mosses, the most silky grasses, which are woven, and twisted, and matted

together, so as to defy the drenching of the most pitiless storms, while

within, his wife and little ones recline on beds of down as soft as the

breast of a swan.

{353}

Scarcely less genius is displayed by the magpie, which, having constructed

its dwelling with extraordinary care, covers it with a sheath of thorns,

which, bristling all round like quills upon the fretful porcupine,

effectually defend it from the approach of insidious enemies. The portal to

this airy palace is at a little distance scarcely visible; but if you

diligently observe, you will perceive the magpie dart swiftly between the

thorns, and disappear beneath his formidable _chevaux de-frise_. To

this stronghold he sometimes carries his strange thefts--his gold and

silver coins, his spoons, his sugar-tongs, and any other bright article

that strikes his fancy. Birds of the dove kind are proverbial for the

slovenly style in which they provide for their families. Putting together a

few sticks, which form a sort of rack to support their eggs, they think

they have done enough for posterity, and forthwith lay without scruple upon

this frail cradle. It may be fairly conjectured that they say to

themselves: "If man will eat my eggs, my young ones, and me, upon him be

the charge of seeing that I have decent accommodation." In the same spirit

act all the barn-door fowls, hardly taking the trouble to find a soft place

for their eggs, but laying anywhere, like the stone curlew. This reckless

depravity of the maternal instinct has generally been attributed to the

ostrich as well as to the domestic hen--but unjustly. She lays, it is true,

her eggs in the sand, but not without knowing where she puts them, and not

without visiting the same spot daily to lay a new egg, till, as the French

say, she has finished her _ponte_. If the case were otherwise, how

could we account for finding all her eggs together? Nature has informed

her, that in those warm latitudes in which she shakes her feathers, it is

quite unnecessary for her to squat upon her eggs, which the solar heat

amply suffices to hatch; indeed, so scorching is the sand of the desert,

that if she did not lay her family hopes tolerably deep, her eggs would be

roasted instead of hatched. To the superficial observation of man, the

surface of the desert looks all alike--smooth, undulating, or blown up into

hillocks; but the ostrich's practised eye is able to detect the minutest

elevations in the arenaceous plain, so that she can go straight to the spot

where her first egg has been left, to deposit a second and a third close to

it. Indeed, the Arabs, who habitually traverse the waste, sometimes rival

her in keenness of perception, and take forth her treasures, while in

maternal confidence she is scouring hither and thither in search of food.

To many others among the inferior animals, man deals forth his unthinking

reproaches. To the cuckoo, for example, he objects to her habit of

obtruding her egg or eggs into other people's premises, and leaving them

there to be hatched by sparrow, wry-neck, or starling, as the case may be.

But while bearing thus hard upon the cuckoo, he forgets the terrible curse,

under which, like another Cain, she walks about the earth, urged forward by

some resistless impulse, and condemned to the eternal repetition of two

analogous notes--cuckoo, cuckoo. What do those syllables mean? The Abbé de

Nemours, who devoted twenty years to the language of birds, or one of the

original doctors of the Hellenic mythology, might perhaps have explained,

but has not; so we must be content to regard as a mystery the secret of the

cuckoo, which in some respects resembles those _ames damnées_ which

fly for ever over the Black Sea, according to inconsiderate tradition, for

if they never paused to build nests or lay eggs, it must have been all over

with them long before this time. The cuckoo has some odd tricks which have

seldom been noted; for instance, she seems to find out some small bird's

nest, say, in a hole in the wall, too small by far for her to enter. In

this case, she squats upon the ground, lays her egg, and then, with bill or

claws, takes it up, and pokes it into the hole, after which she flies away,

shrieking her awfully monotonous song.

{354}

In a forest in France, we used day after day to watch this smoky-blue

traveller, as, in the dawn of a summer's morning, she flew across the leafy

glades, or down the glens, resting her weary feet for a moment on some

giant bough, and then shooting away through the soft green light, repeating

her strange and ominous cry. What is the original country of the cuckoo?

Has she any original country? Or is she not one of those wretched

cosmopolites who know no attachment to any hallowed spot, no love or

knowledge of parents, having been brought up by strangers, who regarded her

from her birth as an ugly changeling, thrust by some evil spirit into their

nest? Surely the cuckoo is to be pitied, since she knows no home, has never

seen a hearth, or experienced the soft care of fabricating a nest or

hatching an egg.

------

Original.

The Father of Waters.

Some one has said that rivers are the great moving highways of the world.

In the earlier ages, when, from a restless and feverish impulse, whole

nations became nomadic, their migrations were doubtless influenced by the

rivers lying in their track. History tells of barbaric people that wandered

around the Euxine and along the banks of the lower Danube found their way

to central Europe.

Before the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, rivers, and especially the

Rhine, played a considerable part in that extensive commerce which found

its way from India to the cities of the Hanseatic League. Weary caravans

brought the spices, gems, and rich fabrics of the East to the shore of the

Mediterranean, whence they were carried westward mainly by Venetian traders

timidly skirting the coast in their frail barks, venturing up rivers or

making long journeys wherever the prospect of traffic invited. The old

castles on the Rhine were built by feudal robbers, who were wont to descend

from their strongholds to plunder merchants travelling on this great

thoroughfare of mediaeval commerce.

In time they were induced to forego the chances of occasional booty for the

payment of a stipulated toll. Doubtless the princely Hohenzollern could

trace back their genealogy to the feudal _high-toll_ barons of the

Rhine, who furnished the original idea of the modern _Zollverein_ of

Germany. _La mer, c'est l'empire_, and, after the great maritime

discoveries had opened a new route to India, it, in good part, diverted

that distant commerce from the rivers, which the ocean reaches like shining

arms over the continents as if to grasp dominion. As the elements of modern

civilization became developed, societies crystallized, and the

nationalities hitherto disturbed by migrations and conquests settled down

where we now find them, rivers came gradually to serve their legitimate

purpose of internal and international communication--a purpose resembling

that which they fulfil in the physical economy of the earth, they are the

veins which bring back to the ocean, through innumerable brooks and rills,

seeming to have their sources in the ground, yet having unseen springs in

the air, the moisture that the sun has already drawn up from the seas in

invisible buckets, and wafted away in shining clouds to be poured out in

rain or dew upon the thirsty hills.

{355}

Our own country, however, furnishes the best illustration of the importance

and use of rivers. Its great physical features, of which the river system

is perhaps the most striking, seem to make it a fit arena for those

wonderful triumphs over the elements and the forces of nature which it is

our privilege to enjoy. Their vastness would have intimidated races of men,

weak and cowardly from long habits of servility, superstitious, torn with

fierce passions and hatreds, and able to contend with the fatality of

material things only on that diminutive scale afforded by the physical

conformation of Europe.

The traveller descending the lower Danube finds the ruins of old Roman

towns, Trajan's way cut for a distance of thirty miles in the steep solid

rock of the Carpathians for the passage of his Roman legions, and, below

the Iron Gate, the piers of Trajan's bridge, erected by him for the same

purpose nearly eighteen centuries ago. Hardly less remarkable are the

memorials of the bloody wars between the Christians and the Turks, the

places made memorable by the campaigns of Eugene and Suwarrow and the

Eastern war. But, excepting now and then a walled town, there are to be

seen comparatively few habitations of men, and none of that active,

sleepless life which lines the banks of our great rivers.

There are no richer plains in the world than those of the lower Danube. Why

is it that the pent-up millions of Western Europe do not find their way

thither, as in the time of Trajan vast multitudes emigrated from slavery

impoverished Italy to that Eldorado of the Roman world? The very facility

afforded by the river for hostile inroads has driven or kept the

inhabitants from its banks, and to a great extent left them desolate

wastes. The feverish restlessness which once made barbarous nations nomadic

now seizes upon the individual; and a constant stream of immigration,

oppressed by the despotisms of the Old World, bursts forth in the midst of

us like a new fountain of Arethusa.

And in our own country the astonishing facilities of communication afforded

by the telegraph and long lines of railroads seem to detract somewhat from

the importance of rivers. We can only appreciate their value when we think

of them in connection with the toil requisite for subduing the wilderness

and laying under contribution the resources of our country. How earnestly

and bravely our forefathers battled in this warfare, one generation taking

up the task where it was left by another, so as to subdue the land and

render possible such marvels as the Pacific railroad! Whatever may be the

social development of the human race hereafter, and however wonderful the

applications of art and science to the uses of life, will not our own age

be looked back upon as perhaps the grandest in its history? To have lived

in a period that saw the mysteries of Central Africa explained, the

continents united with telegraphic nerves, the oceans traversed with

steamships and monitors, the seas clasped together with railways, and, as

we hope, the thin air made a navigable element, will be to have enjoyed the

most startling triumphs of emotion of which the soul is capable.

What first strikes the attention upon comparing the rivers of the New and

the Old World is the diminutive size of the latter, especially of many in

the most civilized portions of Europe, or rendered famous in classical

times. The Nile, with its ancient mysteries, its dim historic memorials of

one of the oldest civilizations, its stupendous monuments of human wisdom

and of human folly over which the centuries have brooded in solemn silence,

and its wonderful physical peculiarities, is, indeed, a magnificent river.

{356}

Reaching from the Mediterranean to the central regions of Africa, and

forming an intimate connection with its great lake and river system, it

will doubtless accomplish for that portion of Africa what the Mississippi

has done, and is now doing, in the material development of the United

States--what the Danube may also accomplish in Eastern Europe, the Amazon

in South America, and the Hoang Ho in Eastern Asia, when their expiring

strata of civilizations shall have been aroused by the restless, aggressive

spirit of modern times. The Jordan is only a mountain torrent. The Tiber

and the Po can be swum with a single arm. The Simois and Scamander, the

sacred rivers of Troy, are, like the Rubicon, the merest brooks, and would

hardly drive a saw-mill. The Cephisus can be leaped across, and the Ilissus

scarcely suffices for a few Athenian washerwomen, sorry representatives of

its nymphs and graces of old.

The Mississippi river drains not far from a million and a quarter square

miles of territory, equal to about one third of the extent of Europe. From

the source of the Missouri, on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, to

the Balize, is, following the windings of the river, a distance of four

thousand five hundred miles. A circular line drawn through the head waters

of the Mississippi and its chief tributaries would not be less than six

thousand miles in length. With all of its confluents the Mississippi forms

a great moving sinuous highway fully twenty-five thousand miles long, and

ploughed by many thousand steamboats. They stretch out as if to embrace the

beauty, to grasp the wealth, and gather, as into a lap, the products of the

vast region between the two mountain chains of the continent; the coal and

oil of the Alleghanies, the gold of the Rocky Mountains, the grain, lumber,

and lead of the North, and the cotton, sugar, and tropical fruits of the

South. Equally well will they serve for the distribution of the Asiatic

commerce and travel which will be poured across the continent on the

completion of the Pacific railroad. St. Louis may then become a great

distributing centre, and the same causes which have made London, Paris,

Vienna, and Pekin the commercial capitals of their respective countries,

may, in time, give that favored and opulent city the supremacy now enjoyed

by the great marts of trade on the Atlantic coast. It is hardly safe to

predict what may be the social and material, much less the intellectual

possibilities of that near period, when, gliding on "the pale iron edge,"

we may jostle Chinese mandarins _en route_ for Europe, and European

money kings on their way to the Golcondas of the East.

The lotus-eating tourist of the Nile floats dreamily along the river

between quaint villages and graceful palm-trees, past the pyramids, past

the deserted sites of ancient cities, past the stupendous ruins of Luxor

and Thebes. The monotony of the desert is broken by gloomy hills of

sunburnt rock, and by the narrow strip of verdure which fringes both banks

of the river. Should he push his explorations further, he will come in

contact with the barbarous negro tribes of the upper Nile, and may

encounter troops of giraffes and elephants.

How different the objects that attract the attention of the voyage up the

Mississippi! The eye is charmed with the prospect of orange groves, of vast

fields of sugar-cane of the deepest green, and of cotton plantations whose

verdure and bloom at the proper season are only equalled in beauty by the

snow-like whiteness of the opened balls. The forests are hung with long

festoons of moss, giving them a sombre, funereal aspect. For between two

and three hundred miles, both river banks, called coasts in Louisiana, are

lined almost continuously with plantations, which, before the war, were in

a high state of cultivation and furnished homes of luxury. The region now

teeming with such active and varied life, inspired by the adjacent city of

New Orleans, is made romantic by the adventures of De Soto and La Salle,

and the wandering hither of the Acadians, known as _Cagians_ by the

Louisianians, whose sufferings in the wilderness excited even the

compassion of hostile savages.

{357}

Further up the river vast forests intervene, with here and there a

straggling town or settlement on the banks. The monotony is broken by the

sight of enormous flat-boats and rafts floating lazily down the current;

and an occasional column of black smoke rising high above the trees in the

distance indicates the presence of a steamboat, but, so crooked is the

river, it is often impossible to say whether above or below. In consequence

of the great bends, approaching boats are sometimes moving in parallel

lines in the same direction, or are absolutely diverging and running from

each other. Now and then the huge steamboat stops to land, perhaps, a

single passenger, or, at long intervals, at a wood-yard where some settler

is laying the foundation of a future fortune, the stump being usually the

first product of American industry. The rude, vigorous, untamed aspect of

the region seems, to a certain degree, to be reflected in the

characteristics of the passengers on board. Still further north the

traveller begins first to feel the pulses of that wonderful life which is

throbbing throughout the great West. Here are vast prairies waving with

fields of grain, and dotted with mounds built perhaps before the pyramids

of Egypt. Up the Missouri one will soon reach the great plains on which

roam herds of buffaloes and tribes of red men. About the head-waters of the

Mississippi and its chief confluents is to be found some of the wildest

mountain scenery on the continent. Where, upon the banks of a single river,

are to be seen such varieties of climate, scenery, and animated life?

Very remarkable are the physical, it might almost be said paradoxical,

characteristics of the Mississippi. Its average width below Natchez is not

so great as from Natchez to Cairo. At Vicksburg, the river rises and falls

about forty feet; at New Orleans not more than twelve feet. During the

lowest stage of water, the largest ships experience but little difficulty

in crossing the bar at the passes; when the great floods have filled the

banks above to overflowing, deep-draught vessels can hardly be got over the

bar. Below the mouth of Red river streams run out of the Mississippi

instead of into it. Much of the distance below Cairo the river runs, not in

an ordinary channel between the hills, but on the crest of a ridge of its

own formation. The source of the Mississippi is about two and a half miles

nearer the centre of the earth than the mouth, thereby causing it to run

actually uphill.

The delta of the Mississippi, properly, extends from the mouth of the Red

river to the gulf, a distance of about three hundred miles, following the

windings of the river. It has an area of about fourteen thousand square

miles, and its numerous bayous form an admirable system of natural canals.

To the delta really belongs the left bank of the river below Manshac, where

the bayou Manshac formed an outlet from the Mississippi to lake

Pontchartrain, until it was closed by General Jackson in the war of 1812,

to prevent the British getting into the river above New Orleans. The bayou

could not be reopened without jeopardizing the safety of the city. A

crevasse some distance above New Orleans, a few years ago, inundated the

back streets. Skiffs took the place of omnibuses, and when the waters

subsided some of the residents were surprised to find alligators

"herbivorating" in their gardens. There is also a large partially alluvial

tract west of the Atchafalaya, which covers the wonderful salt mine of

Petit Aunce Island, and out through which ooze the petroleum springs of

Calcasieu, where the Cagians have long been in the habit or greasing the

axles of their rude carts.

Extending from the mouth of the Red river to a point above Cairo is the

great alluvial plain of the Mississippi, varying from thirty to fifty miles

in width, and containing a territory of about seventeen thousand square

miles.

{358}

The bluffs retreat from the east side of the river in many places, making

room for rich bottom lands, and touch the river only at one point on the

west side, namely, at Helena, Arkansas. From Cairo to the Balize is by the

river almost twelve hundred miles, while in a straight line it is only five

hundred. The frequent changes in the bed of the Mississippi, caused by

"cut-offs," where it forces a channel through a narrow neck of land around

which it has hitherto flowed in a wide circuit, have left numerous

semicircular lakes and _fausses rivières_, whose tranquil waters

abound with alligators and wild fowl.

The soil of the delta is filled with whole trees deposited while it was in

process of formation. A sudden change in the direction of the river

sometimes unearths the trunks, standing erect and close together, as if

they had grown where they are found. While boring an artesian well in New

Orleans, they came upon a solid cypress log nearly five hundred feet below

the surface. The Mississippi is said to be, geologically, one of the oldest

rivers on the globe. We happened to be with Professor Hyrtl of Vienna a few

years ago, when be received, as a contribution to his unequalled museum of

natural history, a couple of _ganoid_ fishes, now to be found only in

the "father of waters." They were clad in coats of mail, fitting them for

existence in bodies of water dashed about by conflicting tempests and

currents and convulsed by the upheavals of the earth. At the base of the

obelisk of Heliopolis, erected by Sesostris four thousand years ago, one

can see that, during that long interval of time, the valley of the Nile has

been raised about nine feet around the monument. A friend of mine, engaged

in sinking a shaft in the alluvium over the salt mine of Petit Aunce

Island, recently exhumed the skeleton of a mastodon, and the rude

implements and traces of the habitation of a people that must have passed

away centuries ago. Skirting the delta on the gulf shore are vast

shell-banks, consisting entirely of millions upon millions of cubic yards

of small sea-shells. The popular superstition of the country ascribes their

origin to the Indians, who came down to the coast for subsistence and

deposited the shells where they are now found. But their existence in such

vast quantities, in a purely alluvial region, is one of the curious

problems of geology. In view of these facts, what ages upon ages is the

mind carried back by the formation of the delta and the great alluvial

plain of the Mississippi, to that far-off time when the place they now

occupy was covered with a silent sea in which floundered the ichthyosauri

of the pre-Adamic period!

The most remarkable feature of the lower Mississippi, and that which gives

origin to very many of the peculiarities already mentioned, is the annual

rise of its waters in consequence of the rain and melting of the snow

above. Egypt owes its fruitfulness in great part to the sediment yearly

deposited by the Nile wherever it overflows the land. We saw _fellahs_

scattering seed upon the fresh and scarcely uncovered ooze, almost in the

shadow of the Great Pyramid, and treading it in with oxen, as mentioned by

Herodotus. The side canals are filled when the flood is at its height, and

every possible means is employed to retard the fertilizing waters for

irrigation, as rain very rarely falls. Just below the head of the delta an

immense _barrage_, or dam, has been built across both the Damietta and

Rosetta branches of the Nile, for the purpose of keeping back the flood.

When the Nilometer indicates that the river has risen to a certain height,

there is rejoicing throughout Egypt, a plentiful harvest being safely

predicted from a full river.

It is directly the reverse along the Mississippi. The planter depends upon

the rains, not upon irrigation; upon the accumulated alluvial richness of

former ages, and not upon the annual deposit of the river. He does not

invite an overflow, but labors to prevent it by every means in his power.

{359}

A low stage of water, like that of 1864, is hailed as a providential

blessing. The unprecedented floods of the present year have swept away

millions of dollars worth of property, and produced extreme misery.

The lower Mississippi generally begins to rise in November or early in

December, and, with rare exceptions, attains the maximum volume in April or

May. The rise is at first gradual, and usually comes from the tributaries

below the Ohio. As the season advances, the rains and the melting of the

winter snows enlarge the Tennessee, the Cumberland, the Ohio, and the upper

Mississippi, whose freshets, often amounting to devastating floods, and

sometimes becoming vast inundations, are successively poured into the lower

Mississippi. Finally, and sometimes as late as June, the Missouri

contributes the drainage of the great plains and of the eastern slope of

the Rocky Mountains. Descending steamboats, which have overtaken and passed

the rise, announce the coming of a great tidal wave bringing possible

destruction with it. The _bottures_ of the lower river are first

covered, the banks are rapidly filled, and the torrent of foaming and

turbid waters begins to rush down with accumulated velocity. Immense

quantities of driftwood are drawn into the swiftest part of the current, in

a continuous line that twists and writhes in the tortuous channel like a

great black serpent, or is, day after day, whirled round in vast eddies, as

at Port Hudson. Many a Federal soldier who has stood guard on the banks of

the Mississippi will remember the great trees, with roots and branches high

in the air, that floated down in grim processions, and in the gloom and

darkness of the night seemed to glide past like spectral fleets. As the

river rises, immense bodies of water escape from the natural channel and

flow away into the swamps of Arkansas, Mississippi, and upper Louisiana.

The low alluvial plain of the Mississippi becomes a vast reservoir. Without

this, it would be impossible to control the flood below. The banks are

entirely covered, and the voyager beholds an immense lake spread out before

him, whose waters rush through the forest with a subdued and angry roar,

the wide open space between the trees alone indicating the course of the

river. And now, wherever in this vast region civilization has planted her

foot, begins that conflict between man and the elements and the forces of

nature, which in one form or another is as old as the human race. In Egypt

it was typified in the never-ending contest of Typhon and Osiris. Osiris

represented the fertile land of Egypt, the product of the Nile; Typhon, the

encroaching desert, as solitary and incomprehensible as the ocean itself,

the desert whose storms and waves or shifting sand, respecting only the

places they cannot reach, have destroyed armies and caravans, depopulated

immense regions, and turned the course of mighty rivers. The old

civilization of Egypt, the giant Antaeus of mythology, who could not be

vanquished so long as his foot touched the solid, fertile earth, interposed

enormous obstacles to the advances and inroads of the desert. Count de

Persigny wrote a book during his political imprisonment to prove that the

pyramids were built as barriers to protect the alluvial land of the Nile

from the encroaching sand of the desert.

To progress is, everywhere, to combat. The human race maintains a perpetual

and tremendous strife with the fatality of material things, whether it be

in the form of the stubborn elements, the overwhelming forces of nature, or

the subtle, inexorable laws that govern the material world. Barbarism is a

defeat, from cowardice of spirit; civilization, a triumph over them. And

nowhere else is the conflict more terrible than where it is attempted to

control the floods that sweep down the valley of the Mississippi from the

very heart of the continent. The forces of the winds and of the ocean are

not so irresistible. It is a hand-to-hand combat, in which to be vanquished

is to be destroyed.

{360}

The thousands of miles of levees built on the banks of the Mississippi and

its great bayous, at an expense of many million dollars, are the means

employed to arrest the watery element. In some places they are between

fifteen and eighteen feet high, with a base of one hundred and twenty feet.

As the threatening river rises against them, they are put in the best

condition, and watched with the utmost care, lest the little crawfish, or

accident, a storm, or some malicious enemy should make an opening which,

ever so small at first, would rapidly enlarge into a crevasse. Sometimes

the river bank caves in, carrying away the levee, and permitting the water

to rush in uninterruptedly. In the spring of 1863 the writer of this

article rode in a carriage one evening around a point of land a few miles

above Baton Rouge, which, to the extent of several acres, disappeared

during the night. The following day the fields in the rear resembled a

large lake. Shortly after the capture of Port Hudson, a portion of the bank

slid into the river with a battery of guns. The famous citadel and many of

the rebel earthworks on those historical bluffs have since shared the same

fate.

Should the levee, from any cause, give way, every possible effort is made

to close the breach. Planters from miles above and below hurry to the

crevasse with all their available help. Piles are driven into the ground

close together, and in two parallel rows a few feet apart, both above and

below the opening, and in such a direction as gradually to have the lines

approach each other at no great distance in the rear of the crevasse.

Between these rows of piles are thrown sacks of earth, hay, or anything

that will arrest the rushing flood. Presently the narrowing space between

the dams can be spanned with pieces of timber, and then the torrent is soon

checked and the levee replaced.

The State of Louisiana paid last year thirty thousand dollars for closing

the Bouligny crevasse, a few miles below New Orleans. Crevasses above the

city, owing to their greater magnitude, are, however, rarely closed. An

effort was made in 1865 to rebuild the great Chim and Robinson levee, on

the right bank of the river, a short distance below Port Hudson. This

crevasse occurred in 1863, and was of such enormous extent that, through

it, a river more than a mile wide and several feet deep rushed out of the

Mississippi. A steamboat, several flatboats and rafts, and vast quantities

of driftwood were swept into the irresistible torrent. It required over

three hundred thousand cubic yards of earth to replace the levee, and an

outlay or nearly one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The tremendous

flood of last April broke through the newly constructed work. The levee

commissioners refused an offer to close the crevasse for eighty thousand

dollars, and in a few days a great part of the new levee was swept away.

Deep gulches were cut in the plantations where the disaster occurred. The

ditches were filled, sandbanks formed in many places, and the sugar-cane

fields covered with the _débris_ of the Mississippi. There were two or

three crevasses of nearly equal magnitude between Port Hudson and the mouth

of Red river, and upper Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi suffered

terribly from the overflow, caused in great part by the breaking away of

the newly built levees. The entire valley of Red river, whose bottoms

furnish perhaps the best cotton lands in the world, was inundated below

Jefferson, Texas. Many of the best buildings in Shreveport and Alexandria

were undermined. The planters betook themselves to the upper rooms of their

houses, and the cattle crowded together on the little knolls found here and

there on the river bank. A friend who came down during the inundation

stated that he saw at least twenty thousand animals thus perishing from

hunger, and being gradually swept away by the rising flood. At one time

thirteen parishes were said to be in great part under water.

{361}

Many millions' worth of property was destroyed, and the unstinted charity

of the Federal government to the sufferers, through the Freedmen's Bureau,

was measured only by cargoes of provisions sent to their relief.

But the overflows of the Mississippi have this year been still more

disastrous. Instead of pouring out successive floods, Red river, the

Arkansas, the Ohio and its great tributaries, and even the upper

Mississippi have risen simultaneously and poured their mighty inundations

into the lower river. The Mississippi was at one time fifty miles wide at

Memphis, and the great alluvial plain or basin became an inland sea several

hundred miles in length. There have for some time been but few places where

landings could be made between Cairo and the mouth of Red river. Days and

even weeks must elapse after the river begins to recede at Cairo before it

can be affected at New Orleans or even at Vicksburg, so enormous is the

body of water that must find its way to the gulf. The bottom-lands of

Mississippi, especially those of the Yazoo region, and of upper Louisiana,

were nearly all under water before the delta people suffered from the

inundation. But as the irresistible flood swept down toward the gulf, levee

after levee gave way, and at present the tracts overflowed can be estimated

only by parishes and counties, the plantations only by thousands, and the

loss of property only by millions of dollars. There are nearly a dozen

crevasses between the mouth of Red river and New Orleans, not one of which

it has been possible to stop. The crevasse at Grand Levee, Morganza, is a

mile wide, and through it rushes a river twelve feet deep. To restrain the

mighty flood would require immense levees through the entire delta, several

feet higher than those already constructed.

The parish of Tensas, the finest cotton district of Louisiana, is almost

entirely under water. The inundation extends far up the Cortableau and

almost to the rich prairies of Opelousas. The sugar plantations of

Terrebonne and Lafourche are invaded by the flood, and the Opelousas

railroad rendered useless. The rich lands of Grosse Tête, Fordoce, and the

Marangouin, for the first time in the memory of Creoles, are almost

entirely inundated. Thousands of families have been driven from their

homes. Certain districts, overflowed for three successive years, begin to

assume the appearance of a wilderness. The garfish, the alligator, and

wildfowl have, in fact, resumed possession of many of the choicest portions

of the state. Should the waters not soon subside, the product of cotton on

the bottom-lands of Louisiana and Mississippi will be very small. April is

the month for planting, and from present appearances the floods will not

begin to recede before the month of May.

So great is the interest of the Northern States in the cotton and sugar

produced an the bottom-lands of the Mississippi, that evidently the general

government ought to assume the responsibility of rebuilding the levees on a

scale that will insure protection. This policy would be at variance with

the traditions of the government as regards internal improvements. But

neither the planters who have hitherto been assessed for nearly the entire

outlay, nor the impoverished states, are now in a condition to do what is

required.

Of the two plans proposed far leveeing the delta of the Mississippi, one

consists in increasing the number of the bayous, or lateral outlets, and

thereby diminishing the volume of water in the main channel; the other, in

closing up all the bayous, and, with levees of sufficient strength,

retaining the floods in the natural bed of the river. In some remarks made

upon the subject by Mr. Banks in Congress, he expressed his preference for

the former theory, and intimated his intention, should the proper occasion

occur, of advocating a large appropriation by the general government to put

it in practical execution. The general government has, in fact, virtually

pledged itself to undertake the work as soon as the Southern States again

come into the Union.

{362}

Mr. Banks is well acquainted with the topography of Louisiana, and can

estimate the enormous outlay required for leveeing the bayous Lafourche and

Plaquemine, to say nothing of the Atchafalaya, and opening new outlets,

upon each of which, however small, the work would have to be done as

thoroughly and upon as vast a scale as upon the Mississippi itself. This

theory is based upon the false assumption that, in case of a bayou or a

crevasse, the depth of the river at any point below the outlet is

diminished exactly in proportion to the quantity of water taken by it from

the main channel. When the great crevasse, over a mile wide, occurred last

spring above Baton Rouge, I could not see that the volume of water at Baton

Rouge was much diminished thereby, but the current of the river was

materially lessened. When several large crevasses occur, of course, both

the volume and the current of the river below must be diminished. And the

slower the current, the greater the deposit of sediment on the bed of the

river, the effect of which is to lift up the whole body of water and

increase the tendency to overflow. The great _desideratum_ is to

prevent the formation of deposit, which can be done only by maintaining a

certain rapidity of current. The more effective and scientific plan would,

therefore, seen to be to confine the floods to a single channel by means of

levees built sufficiently far back to prevent their destruction by the

caving in of the river banks, and strong enough for any emergency. The work

of leveeing would thus be concentrated, vast areas of now useless

swamp-land would be made available, and the bayous could be used as canals

for internal communication. Nor should it be forgotten that, as the regions

bordering the tributaries of the Mississippi are settled and the forests

cleared up, the actual quantity of water drained from them is from year to

year diminished. The floods of the upper Mississippi have already been

notably affected by this general law. But disasters like those of the

present year, although exceptional, can be averted only by levees

constructed upon a gigantic scale, and, as the wilderness of the great

alluvial plain whose swamps now receive such vast quantities of water

becomes settled like the delta, the levees will have to be proportionally

enlarged.

------

From The Dublin Review;

The Church and the Roman Empire.

[Footnote 112]

[Footnote 112: _L'Eglise et l'Empire romain au l Ve Siécle._ Par

M. Albert de Brogile, de l'Academie Francaise. Troisième

partie--Valentinien et Théodose. Paris: Didier.]

When we opened the two last volumes of this noble work, we fancied that,

after devoting a considerable degree of attention and study to the fruitful

events of the decline and fall of the Roman empire, we had little to learn

about its government, its institutions, manners, customs, and modes of

thought. We had felt, indeed, a strange interest in watching the slow but

sure development of Christianity, as it tumbled down, one by one, every

landmark of ancient heathenism; here forcing back the ugly iceberg into its

olden limits, there bringing forth a new and verdant vegetation to conceal

the blackening ruins of the past; now enchasing, within its virgin gold,

some relic of primitive wisdom, or again planting its wooden cross among

the wastes and forests of Germania, as a beacon for a future world.

{363}

And yet, after all, in these last volumes of Prince de Broglie we have

found much to admire and much to remember.

Are there many books of which we could say the same? Or, in other words,

are there many that would so amply repay the trouble of perusing them?

Whoever undertakes to read any work of serious importance, whatever its

nature and subject, will do well to ask himself, when he comes to the

conclusion, How has the author fulfilled his promises? How far has he

carried out his plan, how far justified his pretensions to impartiality, if

we have to do with a historian? The reader will not therefore be astonished

that we should apply the same rule to the work now before us. When Prince

Albert de Broglie started upon his now completed undertaking, what was his

main view and object he himself shall answer

in the words he penned in 1852:

"The mild and intelligent influence of the church was never more striking

than when she came forth for the first time on the stage of the world.

... In the days when Jesus Christ was born in an obscure town of Judaea,

the empire was pacified, the Roman laws established on a sound basis, the

Roman manners polished and refined unto corruption; the Roman empire had

acquired its utmost development beyond the pale of Christianity, under

the shadow of a false worship and of false gods. Everything bore the

stamp of idolatry. The civil and political laws, founded first of all by

those patricians who were alike priests and lawyers, and then by those

Caesars whose supreme pontificate was deemed their prime dignity, were in

every direction pervaded by polytheism. Arts, letters, private manners,

all was heathen. Not a temple but acknowledged the protection of a

divinity--not a poem but embalmed its memory--not a banquet but began

with a libation--not a home but kindled a fire sacred to the Lares. Being

thus totally independent of Christianity, this civilization was

foredoomed to become its enemy--fate, indeed, to which it had not been

found wanting. Roman society, giving up for once its usual habits of

political toleration, had heaped upon Christianity contempt and insults

and persecutions without end. For three long centuries, Christianity had

grown up through ignominy and bloodshed. Wise men had scoffed at it,

politicians chastised it, the mob hooted it fiercely and savagely. The

blood of the martyrs had defiled the basis of the finest edifices in

Rome, whilst the smoke of the burning stake had blackened their crowning

frontispieces.

"So, when the progress of truth, supported by the revolutions of

politics, had at last made the church triumphant with Constantine, what a

favorable opportunity and how many excellent reasons had she for

overthrowing all this profane and sacrilegious civilization! If, on the

very morrow of her triumph, the church had declared open war to Roman

society, if she had fired its monuments, broken to pieces its statues,

burnt its libraries, overthrown its laws--all this would have been but a

lawful deed of reprisal. ... Both means and motives were equally

plentiful for this summary justice. Without any appeal to the ardor of

new converts, the forests of Germany held within their wastes a reserve

of wild auxiliaries, ever ready to undertake the task on their own

account. The empire had already received its death-blow, through its own

internal anarchy, and through the barbarian invasions. The church stood

in no need of dealing the fatal blow--she had but to let it fall. ...

This, however, the prudent and tender mother of the human race did by no

means do. She looked upon Roman civilization not as the cursed gift of an

evil spirit, but as the motley product of human labor. As is the case

with every creation of a fallen being, there must needs be found hidden

behind the mists of error certain rays of light which were not to be

extinguished, but, on the contrary, brought back within the ever-burning

focus of eternal truth. Peacefully settling down in the midst of the

imperial society, taking up her abode in Rome itself, whilst Constantine

flew from the city, as if afraid of the old genius of the republic, the

church, far from destroying anything, adopted all, correcting and

reforming all by her own insensible influence, raising the victorious

sign of the cross above every monument, and breathing the healthy warmth

of Christian inspiration into every law. The fourth century of the

Christian era is not only remarkable for the men of genius by whom it was

illustrated. What is a constant subject of admiration, and what I should

not be astonished to see some future historian investigate hereafter more

deeply, is that slow labor of purification and absorption to which the

Christian religion subjected heathen civilization. It is this

transformation of a whole society, not by any material conquest, but

through the influence of a moral doctrine, which I shall attempt to bring

forth in the following picture." [Footnote 113]

[Footnote 113: V. i., Avertissement, pp. i-v.]

{364}

Most certainly the whole work is but the grand demonstration of the above

outline, but nowhere does it come forth in such glowing characters as in

the two last volumes. There is hardly a page in which you do not meet with

this silent yet ever-rising tide of Christian ascendency, which ends in

mastery over every relic of Roman civilization. In vain does the temporal

power struggle to maintain its own ground; it is itself hurried on with the

stream, and forced to give up the contest in sheer despair. At the distance

of sixteen centuries, we are often reminded of what took place at the dawn

of our own age; and, could we but change names, we might almost imagine we

have before us certain modern figures familiar to every reader. Let us

take, for instance, Valentinian I., who ascended the imperial throne in 364

A.C., and chose for associate his brother Valens, as the ruler of the East.

Valentinian was a sturdy soldier, an austere Christian, of no original

genius, but yet endowed with such qualities as were not unequal to his

difficult task.