"I would not wonder to find a worse edict than that of Nero posted on

brazen tablets in the Campus Martius in a few days. Domitian is under the

impression that they in their private meetings are plotting against his

life and throne. He has already ordered one of the most intimate and

trusted friends of Jesus to be arrested at Ephesus and to be brought in

chains to Rome," said Aurelian.

At this announcement Clement, who had been a quiet listener, started as if

with sudden pain; then as suddenly recovering his composure, he asked: "Is

it possible they could think of dragging the good old man across the sea in

this wintry weather? The journey would kill him."

"It is not only possible, but it is a fact," said Aurelian.

"You know this good old man, then?" asked Sisinnius.

{395}

"Know him! Yes, good right have I to know him. There is not a country from

the Pillars of Hercules or the Tin Islands of the North to the sunny steeps

of Asia and syrtes of Africa, in which I have not been and met with many

friends. Most of those I loved and labored with are gone"--he wiped away a

tear--"but of all that remain there is none more worthy, none more

venerated, none more dear to my heart and to the heart of one far greater

than I, than John of Ephesus. He is the last of a generation now almost

passed away--a generation of mighty workers--giants in their way--sent on

earth to lay the foundations of an edifice, the stories of which are to be

laid on age after age until they reach the sky. When he is gone, the last

direct link between that generation and the present will be taken away.

Already the work they commenced has fallen on frail and feeble shoulders."

Here the speaker, who had forgotten his company in the warmth of his

language, bent his head upon his breast, and again his lips moved silently.

All present looked on wonderingly: there was something in the old man's

appearance to excite their admiration.

Soon after, Clement rose to depart. Theodora and Sisinnius endeavored to

induce him to remain. He had spent nights from time to time in their house,

when the former had been sick; but now he was not to be moved.

"Young men!" he said as be rose, "we may or we may not meet again, No one

can count on another day; it is better to arrange tonight what the morrow

might not dawn upon." Theodora and Flavia bent their eyes inquiringly upon

him: addressing them, he said: "To you I address the words often said to me

by one I journeyed with for many years: 'Be always ready with lamps

trimmed. The shadow of this world is passing away. The night is at hand;

but remember there is a bright and lasting dawn beyond it.' Allow an old

man, whose pilgrimage in this world will not be long, to invoke his

blessing upon you all." He raised his outspread hands, and the ring with

the engraven cross shone out as he solemnly said, "May my blessing and the

blessing of the unknown God descend upon you. May he soon gather you all

into that glorious edifice he has sent his workmen to build on earth, and

there manifest to you the _admirable light_ and beauty of his

countenance!" While he spoke, Flavia and Theodora bent their heads, as if

some unseen influence was descending upon them; while Sisinnius and

Aurelian attributed the manner of Clement to an eccentricities not

previously noticed.

After Clement's departure, Aurelian approached Flavia to express his

anxiety about her health. She was agitated. He saw that her face did not

wear the sunshine welcome and the loving smile with which it heretofore

brightened at his approach. She seemed sad, yet not unhappy, but anxious to

avoid his presence and his look. Could the insinuations of Zoilus be true?

Formerly when she went from home, or when she expected to meet him, she

took trouble to heighten her great natural beauty of appearance and manner

by artificial assistance. Her toilet table and attendants were models for

the Roman ladies, who spent enormous sums on Asiatic cosmetics and Ionian

female slaves to aid them in dressing. All seemed now changed with Flavia.

Her dress was a mourning one of brown cloth, such as the wives of Roman

shopkeepers might wear, drawn modestly about her from chin to feet, without

a single ornament. Her hair was bound in no Persian head-dress, as was then

the fashion with high-born dames; but was folded unpretendingly about her

head, so as to conceal as much as possible the fair proportions of her full

and polished forehead. Her dark eyes, usually so full of hearty affection,

were not upturned as of old to his. He saw something was out of joint.

Could it be the effect of sickness? If so, he would pour out all his

fortune, melt down the silver and golden images of his ancestors, at

Clement's feet, and beseech him to cure her. Or could it be that she had

transferred her affections from himself to the young officer lately

returned from Judea? Such were the thoughts flitting through the mind of

Aurelian as he found himself alone with Flavia. Sisinnius had beckoned

Theodora away.

{396}

"Flavia!" he at length said, "in what have I offended? You appear

distressed at my approach. Who can have a better right to that affection

you always professed for me than I, who shall call you by a new endearing

title on the next Kalends?"

"The next Kalends! You cannot be in earnest, Aurelian!" she said.

"Your guardian and adopted father, the emperor, has chosen that day for the

fulfilment of the promise you have made me. It is a day to be for ever

marked with Cretan chalk in my memory," he replied.

"But it cannot be! It is impossible!"

"Why not? How?" he asked.

"O Aurelian! you are too noble, too generous, you have been always too kind

to me to force me to fulfil a promise which can never bring me aught but

misery!"

"Misery? Why, have you not always professed the greatest confidence and

love of me? Have I done anything to lose them? You admit I have not. How,

then, can the fulfilment of your engagement make you miserable?"

"I shall never," she answered, "forget your kindness day after day to me,

and I shall always love you as my brother. But any other relationship there

cannot be!"

"I see it all plainly," he said. "You too have been infected by this new

plague: you have withdrawn your affections to bestow them on another?"

"And suppose I have," said Flavia, grasping at another mode of calming his

excitement. "You are too high in rank, too proud to accept the hand of one

who cannot bestow her heart with it?"

"By Hercules! I know who this Christian enchanter is, and by the honor of a

Roman knight--"

"Then, if you know him well, you cannot blame me for bestowing my

affections on him. He is so beautiful, so noble, so glorious beyond the

sons of men. His teeth are whiter than milk, and the words of his mouth are

like the dripping of the honey-comb. He is encompassed with perpetual

youth, and crowned with a comeliness which shall never fade. All these

enduring qualities he promises to confer on me if I will love and serve

him!"

"Love him then, infatuated girl! But serve him you never shall, if the

sword and fortune of Aurelian can prevent it!"

"Aurelian, my brother! I will pray and ask him that you also may know him;

for, if you did, you could not help loving and serving him."

"Do you wish to mock my misery," he bitterly asked, "now that you have

blighted all on which my hopes of happiness rested? But, Flavia! remember I

am not to be put off, if the power of Domitian can crush this Christian

viper! Remember your uncle's fate!"

And turning be left the room.

TO BE CONTINUED.

------

{397}

From The Dublin University Magazine.

The Libraries Of The Middle Ages And Their Contents.

Father Hardouin On The Classics.

The fourteenth century was doubtlessly an era of great literary activity

with regard to transcribing and filling libraries with copies of the Latin

Scriptures, of theological works in general, and of the classics. The

learned and eccentric Jesuit, Father John Hardouin, fixed on it for the

composition of all the supposed classic treasures of antiquity which we

possess, except the works of Cicero, Pliny's Natural History, the Satires

and Epistles of Horace, the Georgics and nine Eclogues of Virgil, the

comedies of Plautus, the poems of Homer, and the history of Herodotus. All

the rest were the brain-produce of the cloistered scholars of the

thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, especially the latter, as being

distinguished by the rage for collecting manuscripts and forming libraries.

Not only were these supposed fruits of the classic pagan tree the growth of

the Christian intellect of that late time, but the works of St. Augustin

and his disciples were composed for them nine hundred years after their

funerals.[Footnote 120]

[Footnote 120: John Hardouin, the son of a bookseller of Quimper, was

born in 1646. He entered at an early age into the Society of Jesus. He

soon distinguished himself by acute perception and a great memory, but

still more by cherishing such paradoxes as the above. The AEneid,

according to him, was the work of a Benedictine of the thirteenth

century, and was an allegorical description of St. Peter's journey to

Rome; and Horace's _Lalage_ was a type of the Christian religion.

The antique metals were all modern inventions, each letter representing

a word. "You are quite right, father," said an antiquary to him one

day. "These letters found on so many metals, Con. Os., and supposed to

stand for 'Constantinopli Obsignatum,' (stamped [sealed] at

Constantinople,) are evidently intended to read, 'Cusi Omnes Nummi

Officina Benedictina'--all moneys struck in the Benedictine Mint." He

was a most firm believer in all the dogmas of revealed religion, but a

thorough Pyrrhonist in human traditions. He classed Jansenism,

Thomassin, Malebranche, Quesnel, Arnauld, Nicole, Pascal, Descartes, Le

Grand, and Regis among the atheists. They were Cartesians, merely

another name for unbelievers. His learning was most extensive and his

works numerous. He died in Paris in 1729 at the age of 88.]

There was in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries a literary warfare

between the Classicists and Romancists as real as that which sprung up in

Paris before the three days of July, but much less noisy. We find among the

145 volumes bequeathed to the library of the church of Langres in 1365, by

Jean de Saffres, about two dozen of romances whose titles deserve to be

remembered. They were Renart, (Reynard the Fox,) Girart de Roussillon,

Garin la Loherain, Aimeri de Narbonne, Raoul de Cambrai, Bueves de

Barbastre,[Footnote 121] Jean dit le Lanson, Parise la Duchesse, Merlin,

Courberau d'Oliferne, Gibert dit Desrée, les Sept Sages, les Machabées,

Troie la Grant, (Troy the Great,) Florimont, la Rose, Beaudoux, (Sweet

Beauty or Beautifully Sweet.) Clyges, Perceval le Gallois, Basin et

Gombaud, Amadas, (Amadis, qu.,) Galaad, Lancelot, Tristan, (Sir Tristrem.)

[Footnote 121: A cherished manual of our youth was Wild Roses or

Cottage Tales, published by Anne Lemoine in some court whose name has

escaped our memory. One of the stories was "Barbastal, or the Magician

of the Forest of Bloody Ash!" Was _Bueves de Barbastre_ the

original of that terrible and interesting narrative?]

The Care Bestowed On The Libraries.

We may be certain that St. Benedict had not such books as these in his mind

when he composed the following prayer of blessing on the works to be copied

by his monks, a prayer which has been preserved in the Abbey of

Fleuri-sur-Loire:

"O Lord, let the virtue of thy Holy Spirit descend on these books; let it

purify them, bless them, sanctify them. Sweetly enlighten the hearts of

those who read them, and impart their true sense to them. Grant us also

to be faithful to the precepts emanating from thy light, in accomplishing

them by good works, according to thy will"

{398}

The same respect for good books is found in an the abbeys of the

Benedictines. The very high value the religious communities set on rare

works connected with their order, subjected the monks of the abbey of St.

Denis to a cruel imposition in 1389. An imposter, such as some who have

practised mighty deceptions in our times, a supple Greek named Paul Tagari,

passing himself off for the patriarch of Constantinople, obtained thirty

thousand crowns of gold from the king of Cyprus, on imparting the royal

unction to his majesty, and a magnificent reception from the pope at

Avignon, as he held out strong assurances of the return of the Greek schism

to the faith. He announced to the simple monks of St. Denis the existence

of some manuscripts from the hand of the very patron of their order, Saint

Dionysius the Areopagite, who had heard the words of life from the lips of

St. Paul himself, when he spoke to the news loving people of Athens on the

hill of Mars. Two brothers set out on foot to Marseilles, and, deluded by

the knave's representations, journeyed on from that to Rome. The Greek had

got their money, but they got nothing by their long journey but the labor

and expenses of performing it, and the chagrin of the disappointment.

The monks of Cluni were particular in the illustrating and the binding of

their volumes. As a general rule the outsides of the volumes in the abbey

libraries were not attractive. The Bernardine houses of Citeaux and

Clairvaux affected the plainest style. We may here give an instance of the

care taken of the precious volumes, by quoting the library rules of the

canons regular: "The _armarius_ (literally, guardian of shelves or

presses) should apply labels to the backs, catalogue the volumes, go over

them twice or thrice in the year, see that they were not crowded, and that

every volume was in its place." In case of a loan he was to record the

borrower's address, the title of the volume, and the deposit received,

which in all cases should be the registered value of the book. When the

book was highly prized, he was not to give it out without the express

sanction of the prior or abbot. He had charge of the parchment, the ink,

the pens, the bodkins, and the penknives, and he kept an eye on the intern

and extern copyists. The writers of funeral billets and of business letters

were also under his control. He provided his indoor copiers with a quiet

apartment where no one had right of ingress but the abbot, the prior, or

the sub-prior. He examined the purity of the texts, the binding, the

condition of the volumes. He kept the volumes in daily use, such as the

Bibles, the accounts of the passion, the lives of the saints, and the

homilies in a place accessible to all, regulated the readings during meal

times, and corrected faults committed in reading or chanting, and arranged

processions. Our Benedictine librarian had no sinecure.

The Rich Libraries Of the Begging Brothers.

The Dominicans were no less careful of their literary treasures. In a

general chapter of the order, held at Saragossa in 1309, it was forbidden

to every prior, sub-prior, or officer commissioned by them, to bestow,

sell, lend, or pledge any book of which there was but one copy in the

respective houses. Whoever was guilty of infraction was to be deprived of

his faculties (official to wit) for three years. The theological works

should not be sold out of the order. Whoever disobeyed should, till the

restitution of the property, fast on bread and water one day in every week.

A student was privileged, in cases of urgent necessity, to sell a book, the

Bible and the great work of St. Thomas of Aquino excepted.

The English Richard de Bury before mentioned found the Dominicans the most

keen-scented and zealous retrievers of rare treasures in bibliography.

{399}

"When," said he, "they traverse seas and deserts, when they search the

recesses of convents, they never forget me. What beast of chase can

escape these keen hunters? What fish so small can wriggle out of their

nets?"

He goes on, mentioning how they despatch to him sermons lately preached in

Rome, discourses delivered at a Paris university, and adds:

"We are now about visiting their convents and their books. There in a

profound poverty we shall discover untold of treasures. We shall find in

their baskets and their wallets, along with such crumbs as men fling to

the dogs, the unleavened bread of proposition, the bread of angels, the

granaries of Joseph filled with wheat, all the riches of Egypt, all the

sumptuous presents which the queen of Sheba offered to Solomon. Yes!

having come into the vineyard at the eleventh hour, the friars-preachers

have secured the richest vintage." (Victor le Clerc.)

These Begging Brothers, being a rich and numerous branch, secured the most

valuable works everywhere. The Archbishop of Armagh having sent four

theological students to complete their course at Oxford, they were obliged

to return as they went, the Mendicant friars having bought up all the

books: so that the poor Irishmen could neither borrow nor buy the Bible nor

any theological work.

Divers presents were made from time to time to these lovers of books. In

the end of a MS. of the Dominicans at Clermont, containing the pastoral of

St. Gregory, and some tracts of St. Jerome and St. Isadore of Seville, is

found the following note:

"The Seigneur Peter d'Andre, citizen of Clermont, licentiate in both

laws, (LL.D.,) at first bishop of Noyon, then of Clermont, and finally of

Cambrai, has given us this book and many others. Wherefore we bind

ourselves to Celebrate his anniversary [Footnote 122] in perpetuity. You

who read in this book, pray to God for him, for he has done us great

kindnesses, and we owe much to him, as well as to his family. Let him who

shall wickedly efface these words be Anathema! So be it! Dated on St.

George's day, the 23d of the month of April, 1377."

[Footnote 122: That is, celebrate divine offices for the repose of

soul.]

The Franciscans possessed poor libraries compared with those of the

Dominicans. Indeed the accumulation of the profane writers seemed

inconsistent with the spirit of the order. The following story was put in

currency either to advance the views of the body or throw ridicule on their

fear or neglect of classic literature. We incline to the first theory, and

will give the outline of the little drama with as little irreverence as we

can.

There were two Friars Minors in a convent at Marseilles, one the guardian

of the library, the other the reader, and both attentive students of the

rare old pagan classics. On the same night the summons came to both, and a

monk of their order, but living in a distant province, had a vision at the

moment of their departure which terrified him not a little. He saw them

passing to judgment, preceded by two mules heavily laden with books, and it

appeared to him that their patron, St. Francis, was commissioned to examine

into their lives, and pass sentence. The awe-struck monk then heard the

following questions and answers: "What use made you of these books?" "We

read them." "Did you act as they recommended?" "By no means." "Then as it

was through a principle of vanity and in contempt of your holy law of

poverty you amassed so many volumes, and left neglected that which God

ordained, you and your books shall!" ...... The poor monk awoke terrified

beyond expression, and was confirmed in his utter neglect of Homer, Virgil,

and Horace, and in his predilection for the study of the Bible and the

early fathers.

The Sorbonne.

If the universities had heard the above narrative, it did not make much

impression on them. They multiplied books--the university of Paris

particularly; but this last was unprovided with a suitable lodgment for

them as well as for itself, and was obliged to borrow accommodation for its

assemblies from the establishment of the Mathurins, and for its sermons on

great occasions, the pulpit of the Dominicans, corner of the Rue Saint

Jacques.

{400}

It left to posterity only one library of importance, that of the

Sorbonne. [Footnote 123]

[Footnote 123: This much spoken of institution was founded by Robert, a

canon of Cambrai, born in the village of Sarbon, in the Ardennes, in

1201. He was much endeared to Louis IX, (St. Louis) by his learning and

piety, and became his chaplain. He conceived the project of an

institution in which clergymen supported by government might

gratuitously instruct poor students in theology, and thus give great

assistance to the university. St. Louis warmly approving his design,

the institution was opened in 1252 with sixteen poor scholars selected

from England, Gaul, Normandy, and Picardy, the four nations so called.

Four German scholars were afterward affiliated. Each candidate for

admission was obliged to maintain these propositions against all

opponents one day from five A.M. to seven P.M. The institution

continued to maintain its reputation for theological science down to

the first revolution. It was reestablished, and still exists.]

Among the rare old collections of manuscripts, that of the Sorbonne

deserves honorable mention. In 1290 it included 1017 volumes. About that

time a heroic socius simply calling himself "John," seeing so many volumes

never taken off the shelves nor opened, owing to the want of a catalogue,

set to the work, and made out one to the best of his abilities, assorting

the books into a few general classes. He arranged the works in each class

by the authors' names, and after the title he copied a few words of the

commencement--a very useful proceeding. Generally the books in the convents

were only lent to the brothers or other inmates of the house, or to some

one of the order; but in the Sorbonne library the volumes were freely lent

to all applicants on depositing somewhat more than the value of the work in

gold, silver, or some more valuable book, the rule being _Extraneo sub

juramento_-to an extern--under oath, (to return the work.)

We find the lending system in full vigor with most of the libraries either

gratis or at a very trifling charge. Besides the catalogues, they possessed

at the Sorbonne a registry for the lending department. In this registry

were not only marked the opening words of the first page, but also those of

the third, sometimes those of the last leaf but one, in order that, if the

borrower was rogue enough to return a volume different from the one

borrowed, he might be easily detected. It is a matter worth attention, the

low prices set on books in common use by ordinary folk or by students.

Tullius de Officiis, de Senectute et de Amicitia was valued at decem

sols--say five pence sterling. Allowing even for the high value of money at

the time in relation to that of our day, the price seems out of all

proportion with the materials of the book and the time bestowed on the

writing. Baron Tauchnitz at this moment would make the poorest student pay

about half a florin for it, notwithstanding the aid of movable type and

steam presses.

Some of the works in this register were distinguished by the word

_catenatus_, (chained to its place,) others by _deficit_. Among

books in this category were most of the Libri in Gallico. These were called

romances, whatever the subject. Thus we find Romancium de Rosa, Romancium

quod incipit Miserere mei, (one of the Seven Penitential Psalms;) Romancium

de decem praeceptis, sine rigmo, et dicitur Gallice, (romance of the Ten

Commandments unrhymed and issued in the French language;) Le libre roiaus

(roiaulx, royal) de Vices et Virtus (sic): Incipit Ce sont li X

commandemens.

From the year 1321 they began to bestow or sell numbers of the less

important works, for the library had outgrown the calculated proportions,

and such things as the students' _cahiers_ (copy books) and old

sermons only took up valuable space.

The learned Bishop of Durham bequeathed his valuable library to the

university of Oxford in 1344; and actuated by the same good spirit, left

directions that the books should be lent even as the works in the Sorbonne

on receiving sufficient security.

{401}

Unprincipled Book Borrowers.

Many were the deplorable losses of valuable books incurred by lending but

yet the practice was productive of too many and too great benefits to be

discontinued. No one in our days, except a true bibliomaniac or the keeper

of a circulating library, can enter into the sore feelings of abbot or

rector of a university when the invaluable MS. was either lost or returned

damaged. Such a heart-scald was inflicted on Peter called Monoculus,

(one-eyed,) abbot of Clairvaux, when a book lent to a neighboring abbot was

returned as wet as if it had been placed under a water-pipe. Observe the

rascality of the messenger! He came by night, made a great bustle, turned

off the attention of the unsuspicious librarian, got another volume

instead, and departed at a very early hour to escape a perquisition. This

was in 1187. In the next century the Abbot Philip, with feelings soured by

such instances of want of principle, would not lend the tracts of St.

Augustin, humbly and earnestly demanded. No; there they were--too large to

be carried away. "His dear brother was welcome to send an accredited writer

to make a copy."

Proprietors of valuable books became so chary from sad experience, that

unless the messenger who came to borrow was provided with a good steed, he

would not be entrusted with the treasure. This supposes some distance to

separate lender from borrower.

Saint Louis and Charles the Wise were liberal in bestowing and lending.

Borrowers, as has been their custom since the days of Job, were found

frequently false in their vows, and after the reign of poor Charles VI.,

_deficit_ was found in multiplied instances in the royal register

after the names of works in request. So strong was the desire among

lettered people to be the owners of valuable works that a certain learned

monk was not considered above the temptation of what some lawyers have

termed _conveyancing_. In a life of St. Bernard it is related that one

day at Clairvaux he thus addressed three novices: "One of you will make his

escape this night: let the others watch and not allow him to take away

anything." Two fell asleep, the spirit of evil sitting very heavy on their

eyelids. The third, who staid awake, saw about daybreak two giants enter,

and place under the nostrils of one of the sleepers a roast fowl encircled

by a serpent. Roused by the deluding smell, he got up, approached the

library, forced open the door, and was about making off with some of the

literary treasures. Being stopped by his fellow-students, he attempted to

scale the wall, but being prevented and still remaining impenitent, he lost

his reason, and continued in that state till be died.

In some of the old abbeys the place of the library is still to be found

sunk in the thickness of the wall, as well as the desks of wood or stone

before it, fixed there for the behoof of the copyists.

Fires aided the class of knavish borrowers in destroying the labors of the

learned and their copiers. Twenty-two thousand volumes were reported as

burned at Saint Vicent at Laon. The entire books of Livy were lost, if some

people are to be trusted, at the Benedictine abbey of Malmesbury. A savant

said he saw the Treatises on the Republic, by Cicero, in a certain convent

in 1517, and when he inquired some time after for it, the reply was, that

they had been _furto praerepti_, [Footnote 124] (thievishly

abstracted.)

[Footnote 124: Cardinal de Mai was enabled to rescue a portion of the

work. A copy of his edition was published in London in 1828, with a

fac-simile of a page of the palimpsest exhibiting the ancient and

modern letters.]

Besides strong locks and vigorous anathemas, chains were used to secure

some of the most valued volumes from pilfering fingers. Some suspected

books were even fastened to their shelves with stout nails, as tradition

relates to have happened to Roger Bacon's works at the hands of his

unscientific brethren, Lord Litton's Friar Bungay being probably the most

active on the occasion. Under the treatment of the nails the book could not

be read. A relic of the old custom has remained till now in some churches

of Florence, where missals and rituals may be read under wire gratings, and

even the leaves turned over.

{402}

Unworthy Curators.

As a rule libraries in the possession of kings and lords were not as

carefully watched as those in convents. A remarkable exception to

conventual care is recorded by Boccaccio when relating a visit to the

Benedictines of Mount Cassino. He found the door of the library left open,

and the books covered by a thick coat of dust, grass growing on the

windows, the volumes imperfect, the margins clipped, and everything

denoting the greatest negligence. On inquiring the cause of the injury to

the volumes, he learned that they erased the writing from the vellum to

write psalters (the Seven Penitential Psalms) for young people on them, and

clipped off the margins to receive short prayers. About the same time the

French king's library was not better secured. It was near the falconry, and

the new librarian Giles Malet, apprehensive that the "birds and other

beasts" would take the liberty of coming in and injuring the volumes, the

wire-worker got eighteen golden francs for applying wire screens to the

windows.

At the same convent of Mount Cassino, Mabillon saw the remains of a

manuscript of the tenth century, converted to covers. Montfaucon was

informed by the archbishop of Rosano that one of his predecessors being

rather annoyed by a succession of curious scholars to inspect some Greek

documents in his possession, hid them in the earth to get rid of the

annoyance. [Footnote 125]

[Footnote 125: The first of these two eminent scholars was born in the

diocese of Rheims in 1632, and became a Benedictine monk at St. Maur,

same diocese, at the age of 21. Being employed at Saint Denys to show

the curiosities of the place, he fortunately broke a glass which had

once belonged to Virgil! He received his _congé_ in consequence.

His next employment was on the lives of the Saints of the Benedictine

order, the Spicilegium, and when his brethren of St. Maur were editing

the works of the fathers he was entrusted with those of St. Bernard.

Being sent by Colbert into Germany to collect for the library archives

of France, he made many valuable acquisitions. The celebrated abbot of

La Trappe, De Rancé, having contended that many in a religious state

should not distract their attention with literature, Mabillon was

appointed to answer him, a duty which he performed with great effect,

but in a very mild manner. Le Tellier presented him to Louis XIV., by

whom he was graciously received. The learned Du Cange being consulted

by a stranger on some abstruse points, sent him to Dom Mabillon. "You

have applied to an ignorant person," said D. M. "Go to my master in

erudition, M. de Cange." "Why!" said the other, "it was he who directed

me to you." This modest and devout and learned man died in Paris in

1707 at the age of seventy-five. Among his chief works is that history

of the Benedictine order, and a work on diplomacy.]

Notwithstanding the care shown in influential quarters by heads of

religious houses, by kings, by universities, and even the threats of

excommunication issued against all pilferers or destroyers of good books,

many instances of cruel neglect such as those quoted occurred. The curators

of the Sainte Chapelle of Bourges felt so little interest in their literary

property that the library was converted into a fowl-house, and valuable

works were discovered there by sorrowful visitors, lying open on the desks,

it being hard to say whether they were worse treated by the feathered or

the unfeathered two-legged animals. These negligences notwithstanding, the

work of conserving and reproducing standard works in the classics, and

others in the native tongue, went on vigorously, the brave laborers little

aware of the mighty aid near at hand for lightening and abridging the labor

of hands and pens, and even unable to conceive the possibility of the

results of a few mechanical appliances to the rapid and almost infinite

multiplication of literary works, a single copy of which required such

close application, and such a length of time for its production.

If Saint Louis, when painfully increasing his library in the Sainte

Chapelle, volume by volume, and at slow intervals, had been vouchsafed in

one of his nightly visions the knowledge of the art and mystery of

printing, and, while his whole being was filled with joy and admiration,

suddenly awoke, and found all the steps of the process completely vanished

from his memory, what anguish would have seized on him for a time, and with

what disgust he would continue to witness the snail-like progress of a

book, word by word, and line by line, till the writer reached the colophon.

{403}

However, the possibility of what we now look on as a commonplace privilege

and convenience never disturbed the equanimity of the earnest laborers of

the fourteenth century, and they performed their daily tasks with patient

content, and frequently with enjoyment.

Lay Libraries and Popular Fictions.

The Bibliotheque Royal dates its origin from a collection in the Sainte

Chapelle of Saint Louis's palace, made by the good king for his own special

reading, as well as for that of his friends of good taste. Something was

done by his successors, but the real history of the royal library begins

with Charles V., surnamed the "Wise."

Old house-keeping accounts preserved till the great fire on 27th October,

1737, and then partially destroyed, have put it into the power of

archaeologists to point out that particular tower of the Louvre called the

Library Tower. There were two floors wainscotted with _boìs

d'Irlande_--shillela oak, as we may suppose--vaulted with cypress wood,

and all ornamented with bas-reliefs. The painted windows were furnished

with brass wire and iron bars. There were _lutrines_, (choristers'

desks,)' _pupitres tournants_, (desks revolving on pivots,) and some

of these were brought from the palace. Thirty small chandeliers and a

silver lamp were lighted when evening came, and thus the students were

enabled to study at night.

From some of the household accounts of Charles V. still in preservation, we

learn that this Irish oak, to the amount of four hundred and eighty pieces,

was presented in 1364 to the Wise King, to be used in the building of his

castle, the donor being the seneschal of Hainault. The chief part of the

volumes in the library of the Louvre were in the French tongue.

Besides the pieces of native literature already mentioned, we may here

quote the following as the established favorites:

Romances About Charlemagne And His Peers:

Berte, Roland et Olivier, Roncevaux, Merlin, Gaidon, le Voyage à

Jerusalem, Ferabras, Garin de Monglane, Dame Aye, Amis et Amile,

Jordain de Blaives, Ogier le Danois, (Holger the Dane,) Beuve

d'Aigremont, les Quartre Fils d'Aymon, Maugis, Aubri le Bourgoing, Gui

de Nanteuil, Beuve de Hanstone, Basin, Carlon, Anseis de Carthage,

Guillaume au Court Nez.

Tales Of The Round Table:

La Mort d'Artus, le Saint Graal, Gauvain, l'Atre Perilleux, (Castle

Perilous,) Glorion de Bretagne, Giron le Courtois (Sir Gawain, qu.)

Meliadus, and those already mentioned.

Poems And Romances:

Cleomedes, Blancandin, Gerart de Nevers, le Comte de Poitiers, Flore et

Blanche-fleur, Gautier d'Aupais, Gui de Warwick, Meraugia, la Manckine,

Robert le Diable.

Poems On Classic Subjects:

Troie, Enéas, Narcissus, la Prise de Thèbes, (the Taking of Thebes,) le

Siège d'Athènes, Ypomedon, Thesalus, Alexandre, Jules César, Vespasien.

Poems On Religious Traditions:

les Machabées, la Passion, les Trois Maries, Barlaam et Josaphat, Lives

of the Saints and Miracles.

Poems On Modern Subjects:

Godefroi de Bouillon, le Voeu du Paon, (the Vow of the Peacock,) Songs,

Fabliaux, collections of stories, such as the Dolopathos, allegorical

compositions, as la Rose, le Renart, la Poire, l'Escoufle, instructive

compositions like l'Image du Monde, le Livre de Charité, les

Bestiaires, les Lapidaires, books of hunting, etc.

Many of these volumes were richly bound, and liberally paid for. The

Duchess of Brabant, in 1369, paid to Maitre Jean six sheep for binding a

French book.

{404}

In 1376, Godfrey Bloc (suitable name!) charged his patron, the Duke of

Brabant, seven sheep and a half for binding Meliadus, and in 1383, twelve

sheep for binding the Saint Graal, called in the bill by its other title,

Joseph of Arimathea.

In the age of which we are treating Greek was little studied or known. The

scholars were ignorant of the Greek historians, of the dramatic poets, even

of Homer, of whom the poet Petrarch said, when his eyes first rested on a

copy, "Your Homer is dumb to me, or rather I understand him not."

Boccaccio, when young, attempted to translate him. Some Dominicans studied

the language, but it was for the sake of their sermons, not to be able to

peruse Homer, or even St. Chrysostom or St. Basil. The Greeks were

schismatics, and everything coming from them was liable to a moral

quarantine. The works of Aristotle and some others were accessible in Latin

translations.

It is time to glance at the other subjects which, along with the classics

and the romances in the native tongue, occupied the minds of the scholars

of the fourteenth century, and filled the books they produced with such

care and patience.

The Educational Cursus of the Fourteenth Century.

All the humanities of the day were included in the Trivium and the

Quadrivium, the first comprising grammar, rhetoric, and dialectics, and the

second, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. This was apparently a

strait circle for human intelligence to move in at freedom, but the prime

masters in the intellectual craft endeavored to enlarge the various

compartments to their widest extent. Thus into rhetoric crept poetry,

epistolary correspondence, didactics, and translation. With dialectics came

in philosophy entire. "Aristotle and his numerous interpreters," among whom

were many saints, authorized free discussions on the highest abstractions

of thought, on the natural sciences, on physiology and the curative art, on

politics, and even on common law. Thus, without going out of the Trivium,

see what a vast amount of facts were lugged in, analyzed, and discussed. In

dialectics no subject was let drop till it was turned in every point of

view, analyzed, and established in true or fancied relation to every other

thing.

Grammar.

They were not at all scant--these earnest seekers--in grammatic manuals.

They had their "Large Donatus," their "Small Donatus," and the commentary

on Donatus by Remy of Anxerre; Priscian, entire and in abridgments; Bede's

metres, and several modern works. Those not content with the mere

enunciation of the old rules, would moralize them something in this style:

"'What is a prenomen?' [Footnote 126] _Man_ is thy nomen,

_sinner_ is thy prenomen. So when you pray to God, make use only of

thy prenomen, and say, 'O Heavenly Father, I invoke not thy name as man,

but I implore thy pardon as sinner.'"

[Footnote 126: In Caius Julius Caesar, _Caius_ is the prenomen,

corresponding to our Christian name, _Julius_ is the nomen or

family name, _Caesar_ the adnomen, derived from some particular

event or circumstance.]

Wonderful were the applications of even such simple things as the four

(five) declensions. The first declension was from the obedience of God to

the suggestion of the devil. Eve made this declension. The second is from

the obedience of God to the obedience to the woman. This declension was

made by Adam. The third declension is from Paradise to this world; the

fourth from this world to hell.

Analogies of grammar and piety were often of a slight and whimsical tissue.

Some of them might be classed with modern conundrums, thus. "Why is the

preposition a theme of pleasure to the elect? Because _Illi praeponuntur

damnandis._" "Why does an interjection resemble the sufferings of the

damned? Because it is the expression of the soul by an unmeaning sound."

{405}

Such was the tendency of the time for extracting moral conclusions, that

Ovid's Metamorphoses served as an excellent text-book for the learned

Dominican Thomas Walleis, for the enunciation of a series of moral axioms

which the Epicurean poet of Augustus's court never dreamed of for a moment.

Philippe de Vitri, friend to Petrarch, made a Latin prose version of the

book, and educed Christian dogmas from the least austere of the tales.

The attention paid by our fourteenth century scholars to their Latin

grammar, and their aptitude to convert it to as many uses as the Knave in

the folk story did his pack of cards, ceases to excite much wonder when it

is recollected that a practical grammar of the native language at the time

was a complete desideratum. What a falling was that from the state of

things when the Canterbury pilgrims may be supposed to have collected at

the Tabard Inn in Southwark, and when the trouvères told and sung their

lays. Every Chaucerian will recall at once the sweet nun, Madame

Englentyne:

"That of hire smylyng was ful simple and coy;

Hire grettest ooth was but by Seint Loy;

Entuned (the service) in hire nose ful semyly.

And Frensch she spak ful faire and fetyaly.

After the scole of Strattford atte Bowe.

For Frensch of Paris was to hire unknowe."

French must consequently have been taught with more or less attention to

grammar rules long before the period with which this paper is occupied, and

it is a case of comfort to archaeologists that a French grammar exists

written by Gautier de Biblesworth in the thirteenth century, for the

instruction of English natives in that language, and principally for Lady

Dionysia de Monchensi, of the county of Kent, wife to Count Hugh de Vere.

The author in his preface modestly announced it as "Le Tretys Ke (qui)

Mounsire Gauter de Bibelesworth fist (fit) a ma Dame Dionysie de Mounchenay

pur aprise de Language." [Footnote 127] Master Biblesworth, if that was his

name, mixed his grammatical rules with educational precepts, beginning very

properly at the birth of his pupil, and naming the different parts of the

body, terms of agriculture, domestic economy, hunting, fishing, and

gardening, and all conveyed in octosyllabic verse, with the slightest

possible pretension to poetry.

[Footnote 127: "The treatise which Monsieur Walter de Blblesworth has

composed for My Lady, Dionysie de Mounchenay, to learn the language,"

etc.]

That people with some pretensions to education took pride in speaking the

"Frensch of Paris" with propriety long before the fourteenth century, is

evinced by the boast of the Picard trouvère, Guernes, who recited his poem

at the tomb of Saint Thomas of Canterbury in 1173:

"Mes languages est buens car en France ful nez." [Footnote 128]

[Footnote 128: "My language is good, for in France was I born." The

reader will remark the Latin instead of the modern French form for the

verb _was_.]

Quenes de Bethunes, a contemporary and authoress of several fine songs,

excused herself for using provincial words, for "she was of Artois, not of

Pontoise." A century later, the poets mention the request in which

professors of French were among foreigners. They relate how "good Queen

Bertha of the long feet spoke French like any lady of Paris"--more favored

in this than Chaucer's good prioress. There was a humorous poem current

among the people, in which _Dom. Barbarisme_ played a ludicrous part,

and which would not have circulated among the laity if they had no notion

of French grammar.

Domestic troubles and other causes, for whose introduction we have not

space, had effected the destruction of grammatical treatises previous to

1400. About that date the translator of the psalter into the vulgar tongue

thus bewailed the general ignorance:

"Et pour ceu que, nulz ne tient eu son parlier, ne rigle certenne,

mesure, ne raison. Est langue romance si corrompue qu' à poinne li uns

eutent l'aultres, et à poinne puet on trouveir à jour d'ieu personne qui

saiche escrire, anteir,(_Chanter_,) ne prononcieir en une meisme

semblant menieir, mais eseript, ante, et prononce, li uns en une guise,

et li aultre eu une aultre." [Footnote 129]

[Footnote 129: And because no one observes in his speech either a

certain rule, measure, or reason, the romance tongue is so corrupted

that scarcely one understands another, and scarcely can a person be

found to-day who knows how to write, sing, and pronounce in the same

manner; but they write, sing, and pronounce--one in one way, another in

a different way.]

{406}

The strong predilection of churchmen and princes for the Latin tongue was

one of the chief causes of the tardy amelioration of the French language

and French grammar. In a council held in the palace in 1398, where the

vulgar tongue was spoken, a learned ecclesiastic, by name Pierre Plaoul,

excused his indifferent style of speaking by his want of familiarity with

the tongue. Others spoke as bad or worse, but made no apology. It was as

late as 1345 that the government thought it advisable to put forth in the

language of the people laws respecting the tanners, curriers, and makers of

baldrics and shoes in Paris, as they were ignorant of Latin.

The early composers of French grammars under the new order, instead of

studying the spirit of the language as it was then spoken by educated

people, subjected it to the rules of the Latin tongue as given by Donatus

and others. Much time was lost and much linguistic error propagated by this

arrangement. As time went on, and that attention which had been entirely

given to a foreign tongue began to be shared with the language of the

country, some philologists took to study its construction, and frame

suitable rules for the government and concord of its chief parts; and by

degrees the orthography and the syntax of the language became subject to

laws which fitted its character.

Rhetoric.

Under the name rhetoric, as already mentioned, were joined to eloquence

historic recitals, letter writing, didactic teaching, translations, and

poetry. Few treatises on the art have survived. The Dominicans were fonder

of practising than teaching it, and some who taught it correctly could not

refrain from allegorizing on it in the style already alluded to. Under

Molenier's management, three kings, Barbarisme, Solecisme [Footnote 130],

and Allebolé, make war on three queens, Diction, Oration, and Sentence.

[Footnote 130: The Greek inhabitants of _Soli_ in Cillcia suffered

"their parts of speech" to be affected for the worse by intercourse

with the neighboring barbarians. So the fastidious Athenians began to

designate all infractions of grammar as _solecisms_.]

They possess in common ten arrows--pleonasm, tautology, ellipse, tapinosis,

(obscurity, qu.,) etc. Allebolé has thirteen daughters, Barbarisme

fourteen, and Solecisme twenty-two, and the number of grandchildren is not

small. If any reader desires to see how men of some talent can lose

themselves in matters trifling and intricate at the same time, let him

procure Molenier's treatise, or even that of the chronicler Chastellain,

where he will find Dame Rhetoric accompanied by science, gravity, multiform

riches, flowery memory, noble nature, precious possession, laudable

deduction, old acquisition, etc.

The professors of rhetoric in the middle ages had sundry classic writers to

fall back on, such as Quintilian, Aristotle, Cicero, etc. They had also the

aid of Priscian, Donatus, and Isadore of Seville. Among the earliest

specimens of eloquence assuming the garb of the vulgar tongue was the

eulogium pronounced on the brave Bertrand du Gueselin by the bishop of

Auxerre, Ferrie Cassinel, at the request of Charles VI. A poet of the

century thus described its effects:

"Les princes fondolent en larmes,

Des mots que l'evesque monstroit;

Quar il disoit, 'Plorez gens d'armes

Bertrant qui trestant vos amoit.

On doit regreter les fex d'armes

Qu'il fist au temps qu'il vivoit.

Dieux ait pitie sur toutes ames;

De la sienne quar bonne estoit.'"

[Footnote 131]

[Footnote 131:

"The princes melted in tears

At the words which the bishop spoke;

for he said, 'Weep, ye men of arms,

Bertrand, who so much loved you.

We should regret those feats of arms

Which he performed in the time he lived.

O God! have pity on all souls;

and in _his_, for he was good.'"]

Four men of that era distinguished themselves by eloquence at the bar, and

in addressing assemblies in the tumultuous days of the poor demented king.

Jean Faure and Guillaume le Breul besides their speeches, left behind them

valuable works on jurisprudence; and their learned contemporary, Yves de

Kaermarten, acquired such a good name that he was promoted to the Calendar

of Saints.

{407}

We are unable to quote any other gentleman of the bar whose sanctity

attained the heroic degree. Renault d'Acie and Jean des Marès ventured

among the political tempests of the day, and perished in their patriotic

efforts.

Few instances of eloquence, ancient or modern, could surpass that of

Charles the Bad, King of Navarre, if we can trust the chroniclers. Having

been released from prison, and brought to Paris, 29th November, 1357, he

ascended a platform near the Pre aux-cleres (the Clerk's Meadow) in the

morning, and kept a considerable portion of his ten thousand auditors

either crying at, or deeply sympathizing with, his pretended wrongs, till

the dinner hour of the citizens had passed. He afterward scattered his

poison among multitudes at the Greve and the Halles. His oration made to a

deputation at St. Denis bears an annoying resemblance to some delivered not

very long since in various American cities, by patriots of our own time:

"Gentlemen and friends," said he, "no ill luck can befall you which I

will not freely share. But I strongly counsel you, while you govern

Paris, to provide yourselves well with gold and silver. Confide in me.

Send me here freely all that you can put together. I shall give you a

good account of it, and will have at your service numerous men at arms,

many comrades who shall defend you from your enemies."

The speeches of the wicked king were mostly prefaced by texts, but it is

not rightly known whether this _argumentum ad crumenam_ was so

garnished.

While some exhibited their eloquence in defending or accusing prisoners,

and others spoke against king, or chiefs of obnoxious parties, some

minstrels were still to be found chanting the old romances for ready money.

In 1368, the municipal authorities of Valenciennes are found allowing

Colart de Maubeuge, "xii gros, in value vi sols ix deniers, for playing on

his instrument, and singing gests of arms." The ancient romances of

Charlemagne, of King Arthur, and of the wars of Troy, were still in

possession of the popular mind, but such poets as there were did not fail

to seize on recent or passing events, and do their best to immortalize

them, as well as perpetuate their own fame. The raising of the walls of New

Ross, on the Barrow, was celebrated by a poet of the day in two hundred and

nineteen verses, in which the patriotism of the citizens, and the clergy,

and the ladies, was sung, not forgetting the beauty of the women of all

degrees, whose delicate hands did not disdain to bring materials to the

masons. "Yet in no part of the earth, where the minstrel had been, did he

ever see such beauty."

"Kique la fu pur regarder

Meint bele dame, y put veer

Ke unke en terre ou jal esté,

Tants belies ne vi in fossé."

The siege of Carlaverock by King Edward I., in 1300, where six hundred men

defended the place against three thousand assailants, was sung by an

eye-witness in octo-syllabic rhyme.

The Vow of the Heron, commencing the war between Edward III. and Philippe

de Valois, was not neglected by the rhymers. Collins, trouvere of John of

Hainault, Lord of Beaumont, in a poem of five hundred and sixty-six

eight-syllable verses, lamented the fate of the brave old king of Bohemia,

and his ostrich plume and the other victims of the battle of Creci,

signalized by the minstrels of the era as in

"L'an mil iij.c.xl.vj.,

Que nos seigneurs furent occis

En la bataille de Creci;

Jhü Cris leur face mierci!"

[Footnote 132]

[Footnote 132:

"The year one thousand, three hundred, forty, and six,

When our lords were slain

In the battle of Creci;

Jesus Christ show them mercy!"]

{408}

The life and deeds of the Black Prince were commemorated by Chandos, the

herald of Sir John Chandos, Constable of Aquitaine, in five thousand and

forty-six verses, of the same measure as those others recorded. We quote a

few lines of the courteous communications between the captive king and the

chivalric prince.

"Li rois Johan lui ad dit,

'Beaux douis cosins pur Dieu mercit.

Laissez; il n'apartient a moi,

Car par la foi que jeo vous doi,

Plus avez ei jour d'hul d'honour

Qu'onques n'éust prince a un jour.'

Dont dist il prince, 'Sire douls,

Dieux l'ad fait et non mie nous.

Si l'en devons remercier,

Et de bon coer vers lui prier,

Qu'll nous ottroier sa gloire,

Et pardonner cesto victoire,'" etc.

[Footnote 133]

[Footnote 133:

"But King John to him said,

'Fair, sweet cousin, God-a-mercy,

Let be; it belongs to me not,

For, by the faith which I owe thee,

More honor this day you've won

Than ever did prince in any one day (of fight)'

Then to him said the prince, Sweet sire,

God has achieved it, not we ourselves,

So to him we should give thanks,

And with good heart thus pray to him,

That he would give us his glory,

And pardon this victory.'"]

The single-minded and patriotic Du Guesclin was not forgotten by the poetic

chroniclers. Jean Cuvelier, in 1384, put his deeds in verse.

Judicious historians have not disdained to avail themselves of these

productions of the rhymers. They have extracted those passages from them

which were despised by the matter-of-fact chroniclers, but which had an air

of probability, and were calculated to add picturesque and interesting

features to the narrative.

It is highly probable that every ancient narrative poem which was not

inspired by mere emulation of former poets had some foundation in fact. The

mere invention of subjects, as well as their treatment, is a feature of

comparatively modern times. The personages figured by _Reynard, Bruin,

Isgrim_, and the other animals of the great beast-epic of the middle

ages, once lived and acted some way in the spirit of their four-footed

substitutes.

Toward the end of the century, the taste for the old rhymes, romances, and

narratives began to veer round to more trivial and simple subjects, and to

take more interest in the distinctions between the different classes of the

shorter pieces of poetry. Prosody had been in process of cultivation for

some time, and now the attention of such dilettanti as filled courts and

the castles of the nobles was more strongly arrested upon feet, accents,

lengths, measures, and number of lines in each piece, than in the deed

recorded or sentiments expressed.

While Froissart was searching for material for his chronicle, in 1392,

Eustache des Champs was instructing poetic students in the difference

between _chansons, balades, virelais,_ and _rondeaux_. He was

well entitled to do so, having himself composed 80 virelais, 171 rondeaux,

1,175 balades. These ballads he divided into _Leonines, Sonnantes,

equivoques, retrogrades,_ etc., etc.; but in the next century his merits

were forgotten in presence of Henri de Croy, who subdivided his ballads

into _communes, balladantes, fatrisées_, and the rondeaux into simple,

twin, and double. Then care should be taken not to mix the rhymes beaten,

broken, re-linked, doubled tailed, etc., in form of amorous complaint. The

combination denominated _ricquerac_, and that called _baguenaude_

we would explain but for the misfortune of being ignorant of their

structure. The first, perhaps, was a disjointed affair, like some negro

melody, the other, a perpetual hovering round the predominant idea,

whatever it might be.

That was the golden age of bouts rimés, logogriphes, enigmas,

chronographes, achrostiches, and fatfasies, (unmeaning combinations of

words.) In Henri de Croy's great work, even the single fatrasies were

distinguished from the double ones. The reign of these egregious morsels

still lingers in some almanacs, people's penny periodicals, and even in the

Paris Illustrated News, where the logogriph, consisting partly of letters

and partly of pictured objects, keeps the subscribers in misery till next

Saturday, when the solution appears.

{409}

The taste of the public with regard to spectacles was not superior to that

of the readers of the time for such trifles as have been just mentioned. In

1313, when the young princes, sons of Philip the Fair, received the order

of knighthood, a grand mystery was exhibited to the people of Paris, where

the Infant Saviour was presented smiling on his mother and eating an apple,

surrounded by the three kings of Cologne, (the Magi,) the twelve apostles

saying their paternosters, the souls of the blessed in paradise singing

hymns in unison with ninety angels, and the reprobate in hell howling for

the entertainment of about a hundred demons.

Of translations, which were also included under the head rhetoric, we have

already spoken. As Latin was almost the only language from which the

versions were made, the spirit of that language must have had considerable

influence on future compositions in the vulgar tongue.

Dialectics.

In teaching and learning the dialectics, which embraced metaphysics,

jurisprudence, political economy, and even claimed physics for its

jurisdiction, the object seemed rather a victory in a war of words and

ideas than discoveries of new truths or the establishment of old ones.

Hair-splitting and sophistry flourished in all the contests. So useless and

even criminal seemed this amazing waste of time to quiet-minded and earnest

people, that a legend was current in the twelfth century of a dead scholar

appearing to a comrade in a robe of hell all covered with sophisms. Another

displayed himself wrapped round and oppressed with a heavy parchment all

covered with closely written exercises in the _dialectique_. Both

attributed their present sufferings to the sort of logic they had acquired

in the Paris schools.

Irish students were as redoubtable in these witty duels in the Sorbonne and

in Salamanca as Irish colonels and generals of later times in the armies of

France and Spain and Austria. In metaphysics, the realists, with John Duns

Scotus for leader, warred with the nominalists, using such arms as were

supplied by substantial forms, quiddities, heccéites, polycarpéites, and

other such chimeras, the result being nothing but obscurity of the

understanding from these clashings in the dark. Sometimes the sharp-witted

dialecticians intruded rashly on the domains of theology and morality, and

were smartly pulled up, as in the case of the great interpreter of

Aristotle, Nicolas d'Autrecourt, in 1348, for this ingenious proposition:

"A young man of good birth met with a sage who undertook to communicate

the 'universal science' to him without delay, for a hundred crowns; but

the young man had no other means to procure the money than by stealing

it. Was he justified in this theft? Certainly; for we must do what is

agreeable to God; but it was agreeable to God that this young man should

get instruction, and he had no other means to get it than theft; ergo,"

etc.

A sharp condemnation by the Theological Faculty of Paris was all the honor

awarded to Mr. Nicolas's plausible conclusion.

In physics and natural history, our philosophers of the middle ages were

more prone to depend on Aristotle and Pliny, and later dreamy sages, than

to resort to careful observation. Theory, not induction, was their darling

mode of enlarging the domain of human knowledge, and no fact fitted

comfortably in its place without being moralized. Far away in the realms of

Prester John were to be found giants, pigmies, men with one eye in front

and three behind, female warriors, griffins, licorns, and alerions, animals

well adapted to point a moral.

The learned Pierre Bercheure, who translated Livy, informed his readers

that the toad was mute in every country but France. _Moral_: The

Frenchman, a babbler at home, is perforce mute when he goes abroad. The

learned Bercheure either intended to hint that the Gaul too much neglected

the study of foreign languages, or that, while vainglorious at home, he

became meek and humble when he crossed the frontier.

{410}

Still proceeding in this moral strain, Dr. Bercheure asked, "Why, in the

territory of Orange, was utterance by sound denied to all toads, one only

excepted?" No answer being received, he gave this explanation: The holy

bishop, Florent, being much disturbed in his meditations by the

disagreeable songs of the toads, ordered them to be silent. They obeyed on

the moment, and the good bishop was so touched by their prompt attention to

his command that he revoked his order. However, the stupid messenger who

brought the news, instead of using the plural form of the

verb--_cantate_--merely said _canta_, and thus only one of the

community ever after could avail itself of the privilege: nasty Mercury!

say we. These additions to Pliny could scarcely be called improvements in

the science of natural history.

For a long time the healing art was nearly monopolized by the religious

houses, but it was not so without an occasional scruple of conscience on

the part of the chiefs in the various orders. They feared that their art

might too much engross the attention of the practitioners. To moderate

their mere scientific ardor, the following legend was sent abroad among

them: There was a skilful medical man among the monks of Citeaux, whose

time was so much taken up in provincial excursions that he was not found in

the convent unless at the great festivals. As he was employed on one of the

feasts of the Blessed Virgin, singing in choir with the rest, he was

favored with a vision of his heavenly patroness distributing a spoonful of

elixir to every one of the singers, himself alone excepted. He made a

gesture of supplication not to be treated to such an unenviable

distinction, but this reply reached the recesses of his understanding

without any action of the senses: "Physician, thou hast no need for my

elixir, for you do not deny to yourself any consolation." A radical change

was wrought in the man, and on the next solemnity he was favored as the

rest. Such was the rapture into which he was thrown, that for the future

his healing excursions were as short and as few as possible.

There was no college of physicians at Paris nor Montpellier in the

beginning of the twelfth century, but considerable progress was made in

founding medical establishments during the next two hundred years. Some

enthusiastic pill-taker thus expanded in commendation of the faculty of

Paris in 1323:

"In this city, where there is no want or consolation or succor, the

physicians appointed to look after our health and the cure of our

maladies, and whom the sage orders us to honor as being created by the

Most High for our needs, are so numerous that, when they pass through the

streets to discharge their duty in their rich dresses and in their

doctoral caps, those who have need of them have little trouble to get an

interview. Oh! how we should love these good physicians, who, in the

practice of their profession, philosophically conform themselves to the

rules of science and long experience!"

We have seen a copy of the Medical Review, a brochure, in rhyme, issued in

Dublin circa 1775, eulogizing by name the several physicians and surgeons

who practised in our city at that period. It was written throughout in the

spirit of the above extract, and, but for the evident good faith of the

writer, would be supremely ludicrous.

All the old writers on the subject were not so complimentary to the

faculty. Some of the members deserved what they got if they were of the

sect of the impudent Arnaud de Villeneuve, some of whose counsels to his

students took this shape: "You examine perhaps the ... of a patient without

being anything the wiser for it, but say, 'There is an obstruction in the

liver.' The patient may perhaps answer, 'But, master, it is in my head I

feel the illness.' You answer without hesitation, 'It is from the liver it

comes.' Always make use of the word obstruction. They don't know the

meaning of it, and it's all for the best that they should not."

{411}

But skilful or the reverse, the doctors of the fourteenth century found all

their resources powerless to arrest the epidemic which about the middle of

it swept across Europe. Its visitations were more appalling than those of

cholera in our times. The physicians behaved as feeling and heroic men, and

were swept off in thousands, while doing their duty by their patients.

There was no writer found to introduce a series of licentious stories as

sequel to a harrowing account of the scourge.

Among those who essayed to cure Charles VI. of his mental malady was Arnaud

Guillem, who came in 1393 from Languedoc to Paris, bringing with him the

volume Smagorad, which "Adam had received by way of consolation a century

after the death of Abel." There is some doubt about his being put to death

for failure; but two Augustine monks suffered in 1398, and four sorcerers

in 1403, for the same liberty taken with sick majesty. It is probable that

the heads stuck on spikes over palace gates for similar failures in our

Household Stories had some foundation in pre-historic times. In one of his

lucid intervals the poor king directed that once in the year the dead body

of a criminal should be delivered to the Faculty of Medicine at

Montpellier, a proof that he set more value on the study of the human

subject than the virtue of charms or other superstitious processes. Among

medical treatises of the fourteenth century, some disfigured by the dreams

of the astrologer, the alchymist, and the sorcerer, that of Gui de Chauliai

stands pre-eminent for scientific attainment.

Arithmetic Geometry, Music, and Astronomy.

At first scholars were careful to avoid the title of mathematicians.

Something magical and occult was attached to it, as in the old Roman times.

Mathematician and felon were synonymous terms. Mere arithmetic was in

better odor; it was useful in concocting the ordinary tables set in the

beginning of prayer-books, and including the golden number, the epact, the

dominical letter, etc.[Footnote 134] Calendars were carefully compiled all

through the era in question. It has often puzzled us to know how

calculations to any extent could be effected by the Xs and Vs and Is which

denoted numbers previous to the eleventh century. Wretched was the pupil's

lot (if such an incident ever took place) required to perform an operation

in long division, in multiplication by tens of thousands, or to extract the

cube root of a large number. Great are our obligations to the Arabians for

the use of their system of notation.

[Footnote 134: These names mysterious to scholars of city and

university, were household words with the masters of Hedge schools and

their advanced pupils half a century ago.]

A household joke of the day throws light on the incapacity of the wives of

small citizens to manage deep calculations. A few of the husbands drinking

agree that he whose wife could not count up to four accurately should pay

the reckoning. The calculation of Robin's wife was "One, two, three, seven,

twelve, and fourteen." John's wife began at two. Tassin's wife tossed her

head, and said she was not a baby, and would not count at all. We cannot

find out which of the husbands paid the scot.

The geometry of the day chiefly confined itself to the measurement of land,

but there were treatises on perspective, and portions of the Latin Euclid

extant.

Charles the Wise was not without charts and maps of the world. Many such

existed, but, as may be supposed, tolerably incorrect. The earth was

supposed to consist of two hemispheres, glued, as it were, to each other,

and the globe somehow maintained its place in the void like a suspended

lamp.

In 1366, King Charles V., in order to prevail on Pope Urban V. not to

remove to Rome, urged that Marseilles was in the centre of the civilized

world. This would be rendered still more sensible by cutting off Greece

from the general map.

{412}

"The schismatic Greeks cut themselves off from the spiritual world by their

separation from the church: let their land be removed from the material

world." It does not appear that this ingenious proposition was put in

practice.

Of accounts of foreign parts there was no lack, and it must be said that

the early books of travels and accounts of countries, if less strictly

confined to facts than ours, were much more entertaining. A copy of Marco

Polo's travels was presented in 1307 to Charles Count of Valois by John de

Cepoy, son of the Venetian ambassador. John de Meun translated into French

the Wonders of Ireland. They had also the Wonders of England, India, the

World, etc.

Several works were composed in the fourteenth century on the subject of

music, but chiefly in Latin and with reference to the established canons of

sacred melody.

Astronomy had a hard strife with the impostor astrology, which had been so

long in possession of the general intellect. However, some glimmerings of

the true state of heavenly things had been gradually entering the minds of

the astrologers themselves. The total eclipse of the moon on the night of

the 15th of January, 1305, terrified the Parisians. It was mentioned as an

_Eclipsis Lunae horribilis_. But an eclipse of the sun, 31st January,

1310, was predicted by the Faculty of Astronomy. Another in 1337 was

treated of by John of Genoa, who, in 1332, had composed his canon of

eclipses. Comets gave considerable disturbance to the public mind during

this century. They predicted the death of Louis X., and the destruction of

France, the plague, and all varieties of deceit, lies, hatred, and

insubordination, etc. However, science was making a sure though slow

progress, and toward the close of the century the learned were in

possession of many astronomical facts unknown at the beginning. The comets

made their fearful visits at these dates--March, 1315, July, 1337. April,

1338, 1340, 1346, 1360, 1368, 1378.

Several voyages and land journeys were performed during this century, and

among the rest that by our own Sir John Mandeyille, some of whose

discoveries were inferior to those of the truth-loving Lemuel Gulliver

alone. The Holy Land possessed strong attractions for devout and cultivated

souls. Of all these the most enthusiastic was the Tuscan Dominican,

Riccoldo di Monte da Croce. Having gained the valley of Josaphat, he

believed himself at the end of the world, and thus gave vent to his burning

thoughts:

"We saw about the middle or the valley the tomb of the Blessed Virgin

Mary, and, considering it to be the place of the final Judgment, we

passed between the Mount of Olives and Mount Cavalry, weeping, and

trembling with fear, as if the Supreme Judge was already above our heads.

In this sentiment of awe we thought within ourselves, and we said to each

other--'It is from above this hill that the most Just of Judges will

pronounce his decision. Here is the right hand, there is the left. We

then selected, to the best of our judgment, our places on the right, and

each sunk in the ground a stone to denote his own. I sunk mine, and I

retain that spot for myself, and for all those who, after receiving from

me the word of God, shall persevere in faith, in charity, and in the

truth of the holy gospel, and we marked the stone in the presence of many

of the faithful, who wept with us, and whom I call on as witnesses this

day."

We have come to the end of our sketch of the progress of intelligence

during a brief portion of its course, namely, that portion immediately

preceding the epoch of the invention of the printing-press. The impediments

in the way of scientific progress were great and humorous. Many weak

spirits were discouraged, and did nothing; others, some few of whom we have

particularized, wrought like giants, and thus benefited themselves and

their kind. Among these benefits we do not reckon in chief the conveniences

and luxuries which distinguish our existence from that of the Samoyeds or

dog-ribbed Indians. The Mussulman, well to do, and spending the eleven

twelfths of his time in mere indolence and indulgence of the senses, would

be better off discharging the duties of porter or ferryman.

{413}

No, the chief advantages we derive from the advance of human knowledge is

the easier and swifter communication between the scattered members of the

great human family, the advance of education among the working classes, and

the healthy occupation of so many active and energetic minds, which,

without suitable work to do, would prey on themselves, and become a curse

to their possessors.

------

Original.

Laudate Pueri Dominum. [Footnote 135]

[Footnote 135: Died at the Convent of the Visitation, Georgetown,

D.C. on the 18th of April, .... a young girl thirteen years of age,

who was received into the bosom of the Holy Church October 2d, 1866.]

"I will wash my hands among the Innocent,

and so will I compass thy altar, O Lord!"

Oct. 2d. Feast Of The Holy Guardian Angels. Baptism

In snowy robe and spotless veil

Stands the fair child at the altar rail.

"Of Holy Church what askest thou?"

"The FAITH," she murmured. Upon her brow

The bright drops fell. An angel smiled

In the face of God, all he said: "Thy Child!"

Dec. 8th. Feast Of The Immaculate Conception. First Communion.

In snowy robe and spotless veil

Kneels the fair child at the altar rail.

"Of Holy Chinch what cravest thou,

On suppliant knee and with rev'rent brow?"

"My Lord, my Hope, in whom I live."

"'Tis thy Child!" said the angel. "Master, give!"

April 14th. Palm Sunday. Burial.

In snowy robe and spotless veil

Lies the fair child at the altar rail.

"Of Holy Church what askest thou,

Palm-branch in hand, and with flower-crowned brow?"

"In robe baptismal yet undefiled,

MY LOVE!" Said the angel: "He waits thee, Child!"

------

{414}

Translated from Paris l'Union.

Christianity And Social Happiness.

It is the fate of illustrious men to reproduce the tendencies of the age in

which they live--whether for good or evil. Thus, the study of characters,

that the engraver of fame has impressed on the memory of humanity, leads

frequently to a knowledge of the age to which they belonged, and from this

knowledge much that is useful can be elicited.

A man has lived among us, whose noble character, generous aspirations,

illusions even, or exaggerations, are reflected in his contemporaries.

Lacordaire is France of the nineteenth century, and the thought that

germinated in the soul of the celebrated Dominican, and until his time

awaited its development, borne down by the weight of intellectual ruin

which the school of Voltaire had amassed, this thought harmonizes so well

with the genius of the day, and with its research, that it seems impossible

not to recognize the ray of light destined to dissipate for ever the

shadows of doubt and unbelief, which lead astray and weaken the life of our

generation.

"I have attained to my catholic belief," writes Lacordaire, "through my

social beliefs, and today nothing appears plainer to me than such a

consequence. Society is necessary, therefore the Christian religion is

divine; for it is the means of leading society to perfection by accepting

man with all his weaknesses, and social order with its every condition."

Such words cannot be too deeply considered; and the truths that they

express are in such close affinity with the tendencies of our time that it

is easy and profitable to meditate upon them. We wish for the happiness of

the masses, social prosperity, and the advancement of civilization;

therefore, we wish for Christianity. Humanity is called upon to peaceably

develop its strength, while releasing itself from the bonds of the monster

called pauperism, with whom physical misery is only the clothing of moral.

Therefore humanity is called upon to germinate in a reviving sun all

Christian teachings.

Do you wish for facts? You are children of an age that acts only by

experience. Well, then, light the torch of history, and, throwing its rays

over the annals of the world, read the observations spread before your

eyes, and compare the actual state of an ancient and modern people. In

instructing and bringing man to a sense of his greatness and duty, who has

raised and elevated social relations? Who has broken the chains of pagan

slavery? Who has sown the seed of all intellectual and moral virtue in

those vast regions that barbarian night had enveloped? Who, then, has given

servants to weakness, to suffering, to the disinherited by fortune, to all

those that grief had touched with an unpitying hand? Who has founded large

schools, asylums of science and art; great centres from which have parted

in radiating those who, by gigantic works, accomplished under the

observation of astonished generations, have merited the appellation of the

Cultivators of Europe? Who has done all these things, if not the church,

that is to say, Christianity teaching, directing, and moralizing humanity?

Christianity, then, not only elevates man to a moral grandeur unknown to

pagan nations, but through its influence society exists in a material

prosperity to which Greece and Rome never attained. Profane history shows

us a few privileged ones, satiated, we may say, with riches, but beneath

and around them, we see only a servile mass vegetating in degrading misery.

{415}

What a difference, say we, with a modern wise economist, M. Perin,

professor in the university or Louvain--what a difference in the riches of

the sun between the Roman empire in its happiest time and contemporary

Europe! What difference in products, in the multiplicity and rapidity of

communication, in the cheapness of transportation, and in the extent of

relations which to-day embrace the entire world!

What a difference, again, in the financial resources of states, in their

armies, in their material. What a difference and what superiority on the

side of modern nations, not only in that which constitutes their individual

happiness, but in that which makes the material power of nations and their

true force. What superiority especially in the mass of wealth destined for

the consumption of a people. Time, since the thirteenth century, has rolled

on in the full power of Christian civilization, and has evidenced a period

of prosperity which has had no equal in history. These are the facts. But

science does not stop at facts. Its mission is to investigate by labor of

which it only has the secret and the glorious trouble, the why as well as

the end of things.

Science is the knowledge of objects of observation studied by their causes:

cognitio rerum per causas. We ask of it, therefore, the reason of the

marvellous power we have just proved in Christianity; and in order not to

extend our investigations, we will content ourselves by seeking with it how

material prosperity and the wealth of nations come from a religion which

preaches the doctrine of renunciation.

The reason of the prosperity of nations truly Christian is, it seems to us,

evident. We find them practising generally the virtues of which

Christianity is the apostle and propagator. Economists will tell, you

without capital, that is to say, without expenditure with the view of

reproduction, there can be no social riches. But is this expenditure

compatible with vice, that never has enough to satisfy its brutal

appetites?

Virtue, then, is the source of social ease, and in it only the remedy for

pauperism. "If you do not give a people virtue, the only serious guarantee

of present expenditure and future capital, you can never entirely defend it

against an invasion of misery. In vain you may accumulate well-being and

ease around the domestic hearth; in vain make and increase capital from

growing wealth, if you do not accumulate a capital conservative of all

other, that of virtue." We are happy to quote these beautiful words, only a

few days since fallen from the pulpit of Notre Dame.

Just now we pronounced the word renunciation. Well, it is necessary that

all understand that Christian self-denial is a dispensing force, the

results of which are incalculable. It elevates the poor man beyond

discouragement, and preserves for him the energy with which he diminishes

the privations of his family. To him it comes to destroy the individuality

which absorbs the opulence of the rich. To him it leads the beneficent

current of fortune, which flows from those who have toward those who have

not. To him, at last, it brings riches in every way, since under its mild

influence each one profits by its thousand sacrifices, although he

individually may make none. Let us be permitted to borrow some lines from

the beautiful book of M. Périn, De la Richesse dans les Sociétés

Chrétiennes:

"Follow the course of ages," said this wise economist, "and you will ever

find Christianity accomplish through the virtue of self-denial the work of

each epoch, forcing humanity toward progress, and even saving it from the

perils of success. Run through the society of to-day, and in every degree

of civilization that a contemporary world presents us, in the same picture

and at a single glance, and in the varied phases that pervade our different

societies, you will find Christianity proportion its action to

circumstances; you will find it endeavoring to impress all countries and

races with the salutary impulse for progress by the power of self-denial,

while it is ever the same in principle, and ever infinitely varied in its

applications and fertile in its effects."

{416}

Self-denial! Yes, it is this which gives Christian souls that holy love of

work which is the productive element of social riches. To make a sacrifice

of one's repose to God, while bending under the yoke of painful labor, is

the joy of the Scripture disciple. He wishes for such joy, he loves it, and

it was to obtain it that the children of Saint Benedict have sown its seed

in the uncultivated deserts of the old Europe or under the murderous sun of

Africa.

At the time of its decay and corruption Rome, it is said, was at the same

time lazy and servile. But, even in the days of its grandeur, can we

believe that labor showed itself to the eyes of the Roman people

transfigured by that aureole which gives it incomparable beauty, so grand

that one loves it with a love which might seem folly if it were not supreme

wisdom? Such a sentiment can only be born with the doctrine of renunciation

and the thought of the Saviour. "To re-establish labor and the condition of

the workman, it was necessary that Christ, making himself a laborer, should

wield with his own royal and divine hands, in the workshop of Nazareth, the

axe and the tools of the carpenter."

These words, which we borrow from a course of political economy, delivered

with so much eloquence to the Faculté de Droit de Caen, by M. Alexandre

Carel, finish by exemplifying how labor, and, by consequence, the wealth of

society, owes so much to Christianity.

The limits of an article do not permit us to develop further the ideas

necessary to understand all its power and truth. We can only resume them in

saying:

To occupy one's self with social and political studies is to follow the

impulse that our age impresses on intelligence. To find the condition

necessary for the well-being of society, of which we form a part, would be

from the point of view of contemporary aspirations one of the finest

victories that the public mind could carry with it, one of the greatest

satisfactions that the heart can obtain. Well! may our eyes open at last.

Let us learn to see that, without neglecting secondary means, it is

necessary, to attain the end desired, to christianize the people.

Christianity with its virtues, its doctrine of self-renunciation, its labor

transfigured by freedom and love, behold the agent, and the only one

capable of producing the prosperity with which we would wish to endow

nations. Let us understand these things, and we shall march with success to

the conquest of social happiness. But we shall do better still. Penetrating

the harmonious connection that unites effects to causes, we shall ask of it

the secret of the superhuman power that escapes from it by submission to

the Scripture; and soon we can repeat again the conviction of Lacordaire:

"Christianity is the means of leading society to its perfection, by

accepting man with all his weaknesses, and social order with its even

condition. Society is necessary; therefore the Christian religion is

divine."

------

{417}

From The Lamp.

Visible Speech.

Mr. Alexander Melville Bell has recently brought under the notice of the

Society of Arts his very remarkable system of Visible Speech or Universal

Language, which is (says Chamber's Journal) intended to remove an absurdity

which vitiates all ordinary alphabets and languages. This absurdity is the

utter want of agreement between the appearance of a letter or word and the

sound which it is intended to convey; between the visible form of the

symbol and the sound and meaning of the thing symbolized; between (for

instance) the shape of the letter C and the value of that letter in the

alphabets which contain it. This is an old difficulty--how old, we do not

know; but to understand the proposed remedy, it will be necessary to have a

clear idea of the defect to which the remedy is to be applied.

Spoken language may, for aught we know, have had its origin in an attempt

to imitate, by the organs of the voice, the different sounds which animate

and inanimate nature presents. Man could thus recall to the minds of those

around him those notions of absent objects and past actions with which the

sounds are connected. The expression of abstract qualities by the same

means would be a later object, and one more difficult of attainment. When

the eye instead of the ear had to be appealed to, or the signs rendered

visible instead of audible, the system of hieroglyphics would at once

suggest itself, by marking on a tablet or paper, a piece of ground or a

smooth surface of sand, a rude picture of the object intended. When we get

beyond these preliminary stages, however, the difficulty rapidly increases.

There is no visible picture by which we could convey the meaning of such

sentiments as are called in English virtue, justice, fear, and the like,

except by so elaborate a composition as it would require an artist to

produce; nor could an audible symbol for each of these sentiments be

framed. It would take a Max Müller to trace how the present complication

gradually arose. That there _is_ a complication, anyone may see in a

moment. What is there in the shape of the five letters forming the word

table, in these particular combinations of curved and straight lines, to

denote either the sound of the word or the movements of the mouth and other

vocal organs which produce its utterance? Nothing whatever. Any other

combination of straight and curved lines might be made familiar by common

use, and substituted for our plain English word, with as little attention

to any analogy between the visible symbol and the sound of the thing

symbolized.

Numerous attempts have been made to devise some sort of alphabet in which

the shapes of the letters should in some way be dependent on the movements

of the vocal organs--not actual pictures of them, but analogies, more or

less complete. Without going to earlier labors, we may adduce those of

Professor Willis. Nearly forty years ago, he showed that the ordinary vowel

sounds--_a, e, i, o, u_--are produced on regular acoustic principles;

that "the different vowel sounds may be produced artificially, by throwing

a current of air upon a reed in a pipe; and that, as the pipe is lengthened

or shortened, the vowels are successively produced"--not in the order

familiar to us, but in the order _i, e, a, o, u_, (and with the

continental sounds,

_i_ like _ee_,

_e_ like _ay_,

_a_ like _ah_,

_u_ like _oo_.)

{418}

Eighty or ninety years ago, Mr. Kratzenstein contrived an apparatus for

imitating the various vowel sounds. He adapted a vibrating reed to a set of

pipes of peculiar forms. Soon afterward, Mr. Kempelen succeeded in

producing the vowel sounds by adapting a reed to the bottom of a

funnel-shaped cavity, and placing his hand in various positions within the

funnel. He also contrived a hollow oval box, divided into two portions, so

attached by a hinge as to resemble jaws; by opening and closing the jaws,

he produced various vowel sounds; and by using jaws of different shapes, be

produced imperfect imitations of the consonant sounds _l, m_, and

_p_. By constructing an imitative mouth of a bell-shaped piece of

caoutchouc, imitative nostrils of two tin tubes, and imitative lungs in the

form of a rectangular wind-chest, he produced with more or less

completeness the familiar sounds of _n, d, g, k, s, j, v, t_, and

_r_. By combining these he produced the words _opera, astronomy,_

etc., and the sentences _Vous etes mon ami--Je vous aime de tout mon

coeur_. By introducing various changes in some such apparatus as this,

Professor Willis has developed many remarkable facts concerning the mode in

which wind passes through the vocal organs during oral speech.

The useful work would be, however, not to imitate vocal sounds by means of

mechanism, but to write them so that they should give more information as

to their mode of production than our present alphabet affords. Such was the

purport of the _Phonetic_ system, which had a life of great activity

from ten to twenty years ago, but which has since fallen into comparative

obscurity. Mr. Ellis and the Messrs. Pitman published very numerous works,

either printed in the phonetic language itself, or intended to develop its

principles. Bible Histories, the New Testament, the Sermon on the Mount,

Pilgrim's Progress, Paradise Lost, Macbeth, The Tempest--all were printed

in the new form; and there were numerous works under such titles as

Phonetic or Phonographic Alphabets. Almanacs, Journals, Miscellanies,

Hymn-books, Note-books, Primers, Lesson-books, and the like. The intention

was not so much to introduce new forms of letters, as new selections of

existing letters to convey the proper sounds of words. There was an

unfortunate publication, the Fonetik Nuz, which worked more harm than good

to the system, seeing that it was made a butt for laughter and

ridicule--more formidable to contend against than logical argument.

Mr. Bell contemplates something more than this. He has been known in

Edinburgh for twenty years in connection with numerous works relating to

reading, spelling, articulation, orthoëpy, elocution, the language of the

passions, the relations between letters and sounds, logograms for

shorthand, and the like. As a writer and teacher on these subjects, he had

felt, with many other persons, how useful it would be if we could have a

system of letters of universal application; letters which, when learned in

connection with any one language, could be vocalized with uniformity in

every other. There are two obstacles to the attainment of this end: first,

that the association between the existing letters and sounds is merely

arbitrary; and second, that international uniformity of association is

impracticable, because the sounds of different languages, and their mutual

relations, have not hitherto been ascertained with exactitude or

completeness.

Mr. Bell, as he tells us, feeling that all attempted collations of existing

alphabets have failed to yield the elements of a complete alphabet, tried

in a new direction. Instead of going to languages to discover the elements

of utterance, he went to the apparatus of speech itself, endeavoring to

classify all the movements of tongue, teeth, lips, palate, etc., concerned

in the pronunciation of vocal sounds. By this means, he hoped to obtain,

from the physiological basis of speech, an organic scale of sounds which

should include all varieties, known and unknown.

{419}

To transfer these sounds to paper, in the form of visible characters, a new

alphabet was necessary. To have adopted letters from the Roman, Greek, or

other alphabets, constructed on no common principle of symbolization, would

have been to introduce complexity and confusion, and to create a conflict

between old and new associations. He therefore discarded old letters and

alphabets of every kind. He set himself the task of inventing a new scheme

of symbols, each of which should form a definite part of a complete design;

insomuch that, if the plan of the alphabet were communicated by diagrams,

each letter would teach its own sound, by expressing to the reader's eye

the exact position of the sound in the physiological circuit. Could this

object be attained, not only would there be a universal alphabet; there

would be a scheme of letters representative of sounds, and not, like

ordinary alphabets, associated with sounds only by arbitrary conventions.

Mr. Bell believes that he has achieved this result, and his expositions

before the Ethnological Society, the College of Preceptors, and the Society

of Arts, have had for their object the presentation of various phases of

the system. The fitness of the term _visible_ speech may, be urges, be

shown by the analogy of an artist, who, wishing to depict a laughing face,

draws the lines of the face as seen under the influence of mirth; be

depicts, in fact, _visible_ laughter. Every passion and sentiment,

emotion and feeling, has this kind of facial writing; and an idea of it

might be expressed on paper by a picture of the muscular arrangements of

the face, so that all persons seeing the symbols would have a common

knowledge of their meaning. In forming any sound, we adjust the parts of

the mouth to certain definite attitudes; and the sound is the necessary

result of our putting the mouth in such a shape. If, then, we could

represent the various positions of the mouth, we should have in those

symbols a representation of the sounds which cannot but result from putting

the mouth in the positions symbolized. Now, Mr. Bell claims to have applied

this system of symbolization to every possible arrangement of the mouth: he

claims that, whatever your language, and whether you speak a refined or a

rustic dialect, he can show, in the forms of his new letters, the exact

sounds you make use of. If this be so, a Chinaman may read English, or an

Englishman Chinese, without any difficulty or uncertainty, after he has

learned to form his mouth in accordance with the directions given him by

the letters. Nearly all the existing alphabets contain vestiges of a

similar relation between letters and sounds--a relation which has nearly

disappeared during the changes which alphabetic characters have gradually

undergone. Mr. Bell gave the following anecdote illustrating this relation:

"Shortly before I left Edinburgh, in the early part of last year, an

elderly lady called on me, accompanied by two young ladies, who were going

out to India as missionaries. The elderly lady had been for upward of

twenty years engaged in mission work, and she spoke the language of the

district like a native. Nevertheless, she could not teach the English girls

to pronounce some of the peculiar sounds which she had acquired by habit.

They had been for some time under her instruction, but they could not catch

the knack of certain characteristic elements. Having heard of 'Visible

Speech,' the lady called to solicit my assistance. I know nothing of the

language she pronounced before me. Some of the sounds I had never heard in

linguistic combinations, though, of course, I am acquainted with them

theoretically. I saw the young ladies for half an hour, but this proved

long enough to give them the power of pronouncing the difficult sounds

which, while they did not know precisely what to do, they could not

articulate. Strangely enough, since I came to reside in London, I heard a

clergyman and former missionary, speaking of these very girls, remark on

the great success with which they pronounced the Canarese language before

they left this country; and the speaker knew nothing of their previous

difficulty, or how it had been overcome."

{420}

The system analyzes all sounds according to the mode in which they are

produced. The number of sounds discriminated in various languages amounts

to several times the number of letters in the English alphabet; and even in

English, although there are only twenty-six letters, there are at least

forty different sounds. The Church Missionary Society employ nearly two

hundred different letters or symbols in their several printed books; and

the list is even then imperfect as regards many of the languages.

Mr. Bell finds thirty symbols sufficient to denote all the two hundred

varieties of vowel and consonant sounds. What kind of symbols they are, we

do not know, (for a reason presently to be explained;) but he states that,

while each elementary sound has its own single type to express it in

printing, he requires only thirty actual types to express them as used in

language. Each symbol has a name, which does not include the sound of the

letter, but merely describes its form. The learner has thus at first only

to recognize pictures. But the name of the symbol also expresses the

arrangement of the mouth which produces the sound; so that, when the symbol

is named, the organic formation of its sound is named at the same time. In

order that thirty symbols may denote two hundred sounds, Mr. Bell has

adopted certain modes of classification. All vowels receive a common

generic symbol, all consonants another; vocality and whisper have their

respective symbols; so have inspiration, retention, and expulsion of

breath; so have the touching and the vibration of the several vocal organs;

so have the lips, the palate, the pharynx, the glottis, and the different

parts of the tongue; so has the breathing of sounds through the nostrils,

or through nearly closed teeth. There are thirty of these generic meanings

altogether, and they are combined to make up letters, every part of every

letter having a meaning. The thirty symbols need not be represented

mechanically by exactly thirty types; they may be embodied in a larger or

smaller number, according to taste or convenience; such of the symbols as

together represent simple elements of speech being properly combined in

single types. "The highest possible advantages of the system," we are told,

"would be secured by extending the number of types to about sixty. At

present, I and my sons--as yet the only experts in the use of visible

speech--write the alphabet in a form that would be cast on between forty

and fifty types, which is but little more than the number in an ordinary

English fount, including diphthongs and accented letters. This number does

not require to be exceeded in order to print, with typographic simplicity,

the myriad dialects of all nations."

Mr. Bell pointed out the prospective usefulness of his system in

telegraphic communication. The symbols of speech may, in all their

varieties, be transmitted by telegraph, through any country, without the

necessity for a knowledge of the language adopted on the part of the

signaller. He would only have to discriminate forms of letters; he may be

totally ignorant of the value of a single letter, and yet may convey the

telegram so as to be intelligible to the person to whom it is virtually

addressed. It is known that the telegrams from India now reach London in a

sadly mutilated and unintelligible state, owing to their passing through

the hands of Turkish and Persian agents who do not know the English

alphabet; an evil which, it is contended, would be removed by the adoption

of the new system.

{421}

The mode in which Mr. Bell illustrated his method was curious and

interesting. His son uttered a great variety of sounds--whispered

consonants, vocal consonants, vowels, diphthongs, nasal vowels,

interjections, inarticulate sounds, animal sounds, mechanical sounds--all

of which are susceptible of being represented in printed or written

symbols. Then, the son being out of the room, several gentlemen came

forward and repeated short sentences to Mr. Bell, some in Arabic, some in

Persian, some in Bengali, some in Negro patois, some in Gaelic, some in

Lowland Scotch, some in Norfolk dialect; Mr. Bell wrote down the sounds as

he heard them, without, except in one or two cases, knowing the purport of

the words. The son was called in, and, looking attentively at the writing,

repeated the sentences with an accuracy of sound and intonation which

seemed to strike those who were best able to judge as being very

remarkable.

There is something a little tantalizing in the present state of the

subject. We know that there is _a_ system of symbols, but we do not

know the symbols themselves. Mr. Bell states that, besides the members of

his own family, only three persons have been made acquainted with the

symbols, and the details of their formation--namely, Sir David Brewster,

Professor de Morgan, and Mr. Ellis. He has not intended, and does not

intend, to secure his system to himself by any kind of patent or copyright;

and yet, if he made it fully public at once, he would lose any legitimate

hold over it to which he is rightly entitled. He has submitted his plan to

certain government departments, but has found that it is "nobody's

business" to take up a subject which is not included in any definite sphere

of duty. He has next endeavored to interest scientific societies in the

matter, so far as to induce them to urge the trial of his plan by the

government. He says: "I am willing to surrender my private rights in the

invention _pro bono publico_, on the simple condition that the costs

of so introducing the system may be undertaken at the public charge."

Teachers there must be, because "the publication of the theory of the

system and the scheme of symbols must necessarily be supplemented by oral

teaching of the scales of sound, in order that the invention may be applied

with uniformity." The reading of the paper gave rise to some discussion at

the Society of Arts, not as to the value and merit of the system itself,

but as to anything which the society can do in the matter. It is one rule

of the society that no new invention shall be brought forward without a

full explanation of the _modus operandi_ as well as of the leading

principles; and in this case, the objection lay that the inventor declined

to make public, unless under some government agreement, the actual secret

of his method. Mr. Bell replied that, if even he were to write a sentence

in view of the audience, it would add very little to their real knowledge

of the subject; but he furthermore said he was ready to explain the details

of the system to any committee whom the council of the society, or any

other scientific body, may appoint. To us it appears that neither Mr. Bell

nor the society is open to blame in the matter. He has the right to name

the conditions under which he will make his system public; while they have

the right to lay down rules for the governance of their own proceedings.

The results actually produced struck the auditors generally with surprise;

and there can be little doubt that the system will in some way or other, at

all events, work itself into public notice.

------

{422}

Comparative Mortality of Great Capitals.

Our recent alarm at the appearance and progress of the cholera in London

may have drawn the attention of many who had before been accustomed to pass

them by with indifference, to those columns in the papers in which the

reports of the Registrar-General on the state of the public health are from

time to time recorded. But we are perhaps hardly yet sufficiently awake to

the importance and interest of the statistics there contained, any more

than to the value of the short and, at first sight, rather unintelligible

tables which embody, day after day, the meteorological phenomenon collected

in London from so many different points on our own coast and those of

adjacent countries. These last statistics have an interest which does not

yet belong to those which relate to the public health, in that they embrace

reports from so many distinct places which can be compared together. We, of

course, only publish our own statistics of health, disease, births, and

deaths; and we have not yet seen our way to the information that might be

gathered by a comparison of our own condition in these respects with that

of others under similar circumstances. The interest and value of such a

comparison is obvious enough; and some of the results which might be hoped

from it, if it were systematically and scientifically made, may be guessed

at by the perusal of a thin volume of less than two hundred pages, lately

published in Paris by M. Vacher, [Footnote 136] which at first sight may

seem not to promise very much except to professional readers, but from

which we shall take the liberty of drawing a few facts which certainly seem

worthy of the attention of the more general public.

[Footnote 136: Etude Médicale et Statistique sur la Mortalité à Paris,

à Londres, à Vienne et à New-York en 1865. D'aprés les Documens

officiels, avec une Carte Météorologique et Mortuaire. Par le docteur

L. Vacher. Paris: F. Savy, 1866.]

Canning once said, in answer to some one who alleged "a well-known fact"

against him, that there was but one thing more fallacious than a fact, and

that was a figure. We must all be ready to allow that the results which we

see embodied so neatly in a set of figures in statistical tables are, after

all, but approaches to the truth; and they are not put forward as anything

more. Still, there is often a wonderful accuracy about the average results

given by statistical inquiries; and it is obvious that when the result of

one calculation is confirmed by that of another independent of the former,

or when one uniform result is given by a continued series of inquiries, or

when there is a very decided preponderance on one side of a comparison,

such as cannot be accounted for by chance, it would be absurd to refuse to

assent to conclusions thus obtained. With this single preliminary remark,

let us proceed to some of the facts collected for us by M. Vacher.

He begins by giving due credit to this country for having taken the lead in

the publication of the kind of statistics with which he has to deal. The

reports of the Registrar-General are all that he can desire. New York and

Vienna have followed, more or less fully, the example set in London. It has

also been copied in St. Petersburg, as far as the registration of deaths is

concerned; and it is hoped that a weekly publication of the results will

soon be made in that city. Paris joined the movement at the end of 1864 or

the beginning of 1865.

{423}

There is, however, some difference of system. The chief point is, that in

England the medical man who attends a sick person reports the cause of

death; in Paris there are certain official physicians, _vérificateurs des

décès_, and these, instead of the attending physician, assign the cause.

The superiority of the English system seems to be acknowledged. M. Vacher's

book is founded on the reports thus produced.

His first business is, of course, to settle approximately the population of

the four capitals with whose statistics he deals--a matter of considerable

difficulty, even with all the results of the census before him. He

calculates the number of the inhabitants of Paris in 1865 at 1,863,000;

those of London were 3,028,600; those of Vienna, 560,000; and those of New

York, 1,025,000, (in 1864.) At the present rate of increase, Paris will

double its population in 32 years, London in 40, Vienna in 44, and New York

in 13½. On the other hand, this increase is not to be set down to the

excess of births over deaths, which in London, in 20 years before 1861, was

only 328,189--about a third of the actual increase, (35 per cent.) In a

similar period, the births exceed the deaths in Paris by only 13 (and a

fraction) per cent of the whole increase. Immigration has therefore the

largest share in the increase of the population. A flow is continually

setting in from the country to the town in the age in which we live, and it

enriches the largest towns, and the capitals especially. New York,

receiving annually so many immigrants from Europe, is, of course, beyond

the others in its gains from this source. Paris has undergone great

vicissitudes as to the number of its inhabitants. In 1762, the population

seems to have been about 600,000. It fell off immensely during the

Revolution; even in 1800 it was only 547,756. From 1790 to 1810 the number

of deaths exceeded the number of births. Since that time the proportion has

been reversed, except in years of great epidemics.

Of the four capitals with which M. Vacher deals, Vienna, the smallest, had

the largest proportion of deaths in 1865. In Vienna the proportion was 1 to

31 of the inhabitants; in Paris, notwithstanding the ravages of the cholera

in October--causing 6591 deaths (nearly an eighth of the whole)--it was 1

to 36; in New York, 1 to 40; in London, 1 to 41. In Paris, London, and New

York, the death rate has diminished in its proportion to the population for

some time past. In Paris, in the three decades of years from 1830 to 1860,

it fell successively from 1 to 31, to 1 to 34, and then to 1 to 38. There

has been the same improvement in the other two cities. In New York, fifteen

years ago, the rate of deaths was 1 to 22--nearly twice as high as at

present. We do not see any statement in M. Vacher's pages as to the case of

Vienna. He attributes the improvement in Paris to some extent to the great

public works and measures for securing the health of the population which

have marked the second empire; but much more, it would seem, to the better

management of the hospitals. In Paris and Vienna a much larger proportion

of the inhabitants die in hospitals than in New York and London; and, as

far as we are concerned, M. Vacher includes workhouses and asylums of all

kinds under the general name of hospitals. He finds, on comparing some

scanty statistics of the last century with the facts of the present, that

in old times the number of deaths in hospitals was far greater in

proportion to the cases admitted than now; and he thinks that, in Paris at

least, this almost explains the improvement in the death-rate. In New York

the same improvement may have had many causes, but it is remarkably

coincident as to time with the magnificent changes made, at an immense

cost, in the water supply of that city. From some meteorological tables

compiled with great care by M. Vacher, we gather the rather surprising

result that the variations of temperature during the year, which have

considerable influence on the death-rate, are greatest at Vienna, (nearly

27°,) next at New York, (25°,) much lower in Paris (17°,) and lowest of all

in London, (15°.)

{424}

One of the most interesting questions at the present time on this subject

is that of the water supply. M. Vacher begins with a cordial tribute to the

Romans on this head. The magnificent aqueducts by which the city of Rome

was supplied date from the time of the early republic, though the emperors

increased their number. At an early point of their history, therefore, the

Romans were wise and liberal enough to dispense with the waters of the

Tiber for drinking. They carried their system everywhere when they became

the masters of the world; in France, in Spain, and in Italy many aqueducts

can still be traced which were their work. We may be quite certain that if

Britain were now a Roman province, the Thames water companies would never

be allowed to supply water except for the streets, and great aqueducts

would long since have brought us the pure water of Bala Lake or Windermere.

Thanks to the popes, modern Rome though not so profusely supplied as in

imperial times, is still very far in advance of all other cities in the

world in this respect. [Footnote 137] M. Vacher reckons the water supply in

ancient Rome as 1492 _litres_ a day for each inhabitant; in modern

Rome it is 1040; in New York, 159; in Vienna. 134; [Footnote 138] in Paris,

according to the new system, 109; in London, 132. But no city seems to have

its _houses_ so well supplied as London; in Rome a great quantity of

water is wasted, being left to run away from the fountains, while the

houses are not conveniently provided with water. We suppose that our old

friend the house-cistern, against which we have heard so many complaints

lately, is not an essential feature in our system of house supply.

[Footnote 137: M. Vacher attributes the salubrity of Rome--for,

considering its position, it enjoys remarkable salubrity--to the

abundance and good quality of its water. Lancisi, who practiced there

as a physician in the last century, accounts for the longevity of its

inhabitants in the same way. At all events, remarks M. Vacher, "il est

impossible de n'étre pas frappé de ce fait, que les historiens ne

mentionnent pas un seul example de peste à Rome, et qu'au moyen age et

dans les temps modernes elle a constainment échappé aux atteintes de la

pests et du choléra, qui ont sévi à plusteurs reprises en Italie." But

Rome has certainly been visited by the cholera more than once, and the

rest of the statement is surely contrary to history.]

[Footnote 138: This statement is, however, an anticipation. The

municipality of the Vienna has undertaken some immense works in order

to improve the water supply, at a cost of 16,000,000 florins. The works

are not yet completed: but M. Vacher gives the quantity of water for

each inhabitant which they are expected to furnish. Hitherto the city

has been supplied, it would seem, partly from the Danube, partly by

wells. The new supply will be drawn from three different sources among

the neighboring mountains.]

M. Vacher gives the following conclusions as to the sanitary effect of good

and abundant water. He tells us that inorganic substances contained in

water are comparatively innocuous to the health of those who drink it; on

the other hand, great injury is caused by the presence of organic matter.

The best water in Paris--that of the springs on the north--contains nine

times as much of calcareous salts as the water of the Seine; but it is

justly preferred for drinking purposes. On the other hand, M. Vacher quotes

the testimony of M. Bouchut, a professor at the Ecole de Médecine, for the

fact that he noticed the frequency of epidemic diarrhoea during the summer

months in the Quartier de Sèvres and that it had been almost stopped in

cases where the doctors had ordered the water of the Seine to be no longer

used, and had substituted for it water from the artesian well of Grenelle.

He adds his own experience at the Lycée Napoleon, which is supplied from

the reservoir of the Pantheon, which receives its water from the Seine and

the aqueduct d' Arcueil. He had known as many as fifteen students at once

ill of diarrhoea, and the disease was stopped by the "alcoholization of all

the water." [Footnote 139]

[Footnote 139: P, 106. M. Vacher here cites the Indian case quoted by

Mr. Farre in is cholera report. The natives in India drink boiled water

as a preventative against cholera; and it has been found that out of a

great number in the family of a single proprietor in Calcutta, all of

whom took this precaution, not a single person had been attacked even

in the worst times of the prevalence of cholera. But Dr. Frank has

disapproved at least the universality of this fact.]